Pug from hell

Finally, I decided to level my hunter on the Horde side. I'm a bit bored of questing but I took the time to do those that were Horde specific to see the other side of the story. So I quested as little as possible, leveled my profession and did as much dungeons as I could. Even tough it's always the same four instances, I had fun collecting pieces of the Azure Serpent Set wich is pretty cool looking.

Even tough the majority of those instances run went smoothly, one stand out from the others. I joined a pug (Pick Up Group) in Temple of the Jade Serpent, there is me, a pally tank, another random dps and two guildies, an healer and a shadow priest. The priest started pulling, berating the tank and started the first boss without waiting for anyone so I got locked out of the room. The party managed to down the boss even without the help of my awesome hunter dps (*cough cough). Face pull and thrash talk continued until we reached the main hall with the third boss. The tank pulled all the room and quit so we wiped. While we were waiting for a tank replacement, the two guildies decided to kick the other dps because he wasn't performing has well as a level 87 should (we were all 86). Other tank and a dps replacement comes and we killed the third boss. The priest was now bottom dps and maybe ashamed of all he did because he leaved the group (at least that's the only thing I could think of). His guildmate healer coincidentally went offline a short time after. We kicked him and promptly finished the instance.

After this I was wondering: what push people to be such jerks? Those two guildies were competent people and the tank they harassed was doing a good enough job. The only wipe we had was because of the tank rage quitting during a fight. If those two had only kept to themselves we would have cleared the instance way faster and they would have a chance to get more loot and XP. I guess, like the Sha, those two feeds on the negative emotions of the people unlucky enough to have them in there group.

More old contents

A couple of weeks ago I had soloed Black Temple, wich was difficult before because of the first boss Naj'entus. He would stun a random person in the raid and if you were alone nobody could remove the debuff and he would heal himself up to full.  Now because of a combination of higher dps and the nerf from 5.1, he didn't gave me any difficulty neither the other boss after. I also had soloed Tempest Keep and I got a lucky drop as a reward for my effort.

So during his vacation my Death knight decided to go through some more old contents. First stop was Outland, my death knight headed to Sunwell Plateau, a raid I hadn't the chance to see much. I wasnt sure if I would be able to go far in there, I remembered going in there with level 80 pug and wiping against Felmyst. I entered and got killed by one of the first group of adds I encountered. Turns out Sunblade Slayer gives you a debuff that remove 25% health every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. Humbled, I slowly cleared my way up to the first boss. For this boss you need to split the raid in two.. Oh wait I'm alone! Turns out you can skip him by running through the area and he will despawn after you leave the room. Second boss, Brutallus, went down the first time, even tough I had a huge stack of Meteor slash on me. Felmyst was more difficult as I had not much experience with this fight. You need to watch where the drake is positionning and move away so you dont get one shot by his trail of flame. After a couple of wipe, I got the hang of it and down him. After this, Sunwell was a cake walk. Turns out I didn't finish this raid on my DK before so I got the Outland raider achievement as well.

Back in Northrend, I was in Naxxramas trying to get some transmog drop when I got an achievement I tought I already had: Shocking. Looking it up, I saw that the only other achievement I was missing for Glory of the raider was A poke in the eye wich is killing Malygos with less then 9 player. I wasn't a fan of vehicle combat back in Wrath so I was a little reluctant to head there. One of my friend came along and we nailed the encounter after a couple of attempts. Drake vehicle scale with gear so you can mostly ignore Surge of power but since there is only two of us, it's important to keep both the self heal buff and the debuff up. So we basically used the 1-3-1-1-2 rotation.

Next, my friend helped me get the red proto drake from Glory of the hero. One of the achievement was Experienced Drake Rider and it needed multiple run in the Occulus. I was skeptical we could two man it but we cheesed it the worst way. My friend just disembarked from his mount and dpsed the last boss, while I just tried to hang on to my drake. The last achievement I needed was Zombiefest, wich we run a couple of time before we pulled it correctly. You need to kill 100 zombie in one minute and there is only 85 zombies in the first part of the dungeon. The zombies won't respawn if you kill the second boss. So you need to kite the second boss in the first building, wait that all zombies respawn then kill him. After that you clear the building, get back in the first part of the dungeon to get all the zombies and bring them to the second part so you can finally got enough zombie to get the achievement.  I don't quite understand why they would make an achievement that felt so unnatural but anyway I got my red proto drake.

My death knight found another special place in Northrend. I had ventured into Ulduar a couple of weeks ago up to the crazy cat lady. So I reactivated my raid lockout and ventured into Freya Conservatory of life. In there I killed the three ancients but kept Freya alive while picking every flowers in there. Every day or so the flower respawn so I just go there and pick them up. It's like my private garden.

During my death knight vacation, my druid got some love and leveled to 90. I've leveled as bomkin but I still struggle with the rotation. I'd like to get this toon revered with the August Celestial so I can unlock the new enchants but first I must go back to grinding Golden Lotus reputation. I'm also doing Tillers dailies so I can start farming Mote of harmony wich I would like to craft some inscription BoA staff. With the commendation, the reputation goes up fast so it's not so bad.

Next I would be leveling my hunter. Have a happy new year 2013!

Merry christmas!

So you remember my death knight got a vacation because of burnout issue? So, to relax before his ship to Northrend arrive he bought a ticket for the Brawler Guild. He actually had a blast early in the morning, there was nobody there and he had time to reaching rank 6 with a mix of blood tanking and frost dpsings. There is monk heirloom, pets and titles to get! Only thirty minutes before departure, his beeper ring: Prince Anduin was in trouble again! So he had to get back to Pandaria and rescue Anduin from Garrosh and his crazy scheme and barely made it to catch his ship. Year 2013 will be a busy year with the Thunder king and Garrosh to take care of, so he will be glad to take some time off.

Anyway, on the eve of christmas, my death knight and my army of alts wanted to tell you: Merry christmas and happy new year!

Update: If you want your christmas presents, that might contains various recipes and pets, and the linked Feat of strenght you'll need to do the daily You're a Mean One.

Death knight brooding in Pandaria

So my death knight has lapsed back into depression after months of campaneering in Pandaria. At first, he tought that the excitement of a military life will give him a new purpose in life. He scouted Pandaria and acted as diplomats for numerous factions. He tanked for masses of ungrateful, ninja'ing pug's in dungeons across the continent. He repelled waves of Mogus attacks and hunted them down in Mogushan Vaults, killed the Empress of the Mantids in the Heart of Fear and pursued the Sha of fear to the Terrace of Endless Springs. He lead the landing of the Alliance on the beach of Karasang, mounting countless attacks against the Horde. He acquired a legendary sha-touched weapon guided by a new shady leader. And then what? More grinding against pitiful and weak foes. But one particular event pushed him over the edge. While performing administrative duty (mostly spying) for Prince Anduin, one of his superiors questionned his new outfit, wondering if it was fit for a death knight officer. Maybe my death knight spent too much time in the Black Temple frolicking with warlocks and it's other demonic inhabitants.

Anyway, he asked for a release from the army but his superior refused and told him to take a couple of weeks off instead. But now he has heard the calling of home again while aiding fellow guildies acquiring the legendary Shadowmourne. He now dreams of replacing Bolvar Fordragon as king of the Icecrown Citadel and as ruler of Northrend

As for my paladin, as soon as he got to max level, he rushed back to his camp in Blackrock mountain. He is happy for now fighting against hordes of fire elementals, dragons, orcs and evil dwarfs. And he won't be able to rest until all evil has been purged from the mountain (or until he gets all the cool transmog and that pesky legendary drop).

While those two heroes of the Alliance are off chasing dreams and pursuing evil, my horde hunter is eager to join the fray and will take the opportunity to explore Pandaria. There is rare pets to tame and tons of hunter weapons to acquire!

Soloing Blackwing Lair

In the last post I mentionned that I tried to solo Blackwing Lair on my pally but after a couple of tries I asked a friend for help. This week my buddy wasn't online and guildies were busy so I realized I was on my own. So I clenched my teeth and decided to venture in there alone.

The first fight in Blackwing lair is against Razorgore. You need to control the boss by clicking an orb and destroy all the eggs in the room using his abilities. The tricky parts to that fight is that there tons of adds that will attack Razorgore and if he dies, he blow up the raid (that means you). But while browsing the web for tips I found a video made by a guy named Swunt who told exactly how to do this. The trick is that since he is friendly while you control him, you have the time to cast one instant heal, it will break the control and make him hostile again but he will be healed. I only had to use Lay on hand halfway through the fight and it gave me enough time to destroy all the eggs. When like five or so adds are on Razorgore I stopped using the controlling orb (to interrupt control I used the simple macro /dance) and cleared some adds so he wouldn't get overhelmed. After the boss destroy all the eggs, he will get back to full health, about 500 k, and you can put him down once for all (until the weekly reset).

The second boss, Vaelastrasz, is a dps race because he inflicts a debuff, called Burning Adrenaline, that reduce max health by 5% every second, so you have 20 second to down him. The debuff didn't seem to be dispellable so if you down him you'll probably have to corpse run.

After this, you'll have to kill some annoying thrash. First there is some dragonkin that will sent you in the air dealing some fall damage that could take out a careless level 90. Then, it's the supressor room that reduce movement and attack speed, meaning a long walk while aggroing tons of annoying whelpings. The third boss, Broodlord Lashlayer, has nothing special so just bash his head in and be done with him.

Then come more thrash, only one add is worth mentionning: Blackwing spellbinder, who are apparently immune to spells, so you'll have to beat on them the old fashioned way. While fighting this thrash you will also encounter three patrolling drakes that are considered bosses: Flameroc, Firemaw and Ebonroc. Only the last one gave me trouble, he puts a debuff, called Shadow of Ebonroc, that when he hits you also heals him up for 25k. I didn't knew that when I encountered him so I just outdpsed his healing but it took me a couple of minutes. Some of the tips I've seen would be to dispell the debuff, put on tanking gear with high mitigation so you don't get hit as often, get high shadow resistance so the debuff has less chance to be applied or just kite him.

The seventh boss is Chromaggus, it can be a challenge for some class that can't dispel. He will put five different affliction (debuff) on you, a magic, a curse, a poison, a disease and another one that can be cured with Hourglass Sand. If you have the five debuff, you will be mind controlled for five minutes, so try to avoid this. I didn't realize I could Cleanse the debuff when I did it, so I just spammed Hourglass Sand when I got the Bronze affliction and I blew all my DPS cooldown to down him as fast as I could and it worked. After the fight, I also removed all debuff with Divine Shield, so it could also have helped during the encounter. For classes who cannot cleanse, you could try to get some potions that can cleanse like Purification potion.

And finally, the last boss: Nefarian. After all you've been through this fight is ridiculously easy. Kill a metric tons of adds and switch to Nefarian when he is in dragon form. Among some of the cool things that dropped from him is what is considered by some to be the coolest 2-handed sword in the game: Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood (wich apparently belonged to Andui Lothar, one of the most famous heroe of Azeroth). So I hope you'll have fun soloing Blackwing lair. Good hunting!

Patch 5.1: First impression

The first content patch since the launch of the expansion two months ago was released last week. There is no new raids in this patch, akin to 4.1 Rise of the Zandalari but instead of introducing new dungeons, this time it's three new scenarios, with two of them that are faction specific.

One of the major feature of this patch is two new factions, Operation: Shieldwall for Alliance and Dominance Offensive for Horde, with new sets of dailies. Both armies have landed on Karasang Wilds beach. As your hero knows the way of the land better then anyone else, you participate in the landing of the military forces. You'll meet a couple of familiar faces, clashes with the opposing faction and stroll around two brand new military bases (Alliance and Horde). After a short questline, dailies are unlocked. I bought a nice looking trinket from the quartermaster, even tough it was ilvl 458 Mr. Robot told me it was better then what I had. Doing the dailies will also nets you reputation for Wrathion, and it's linked to his legendary quest line. But I still have to collect a couple of sigil of wisdom to unlock the new quests from him.

After I reached friendly with that new faction, a new quest appeared that sent me back to Stormwind to re-enlist a retired spy who was hiding out in a mysterious place, Bizmo Brawlpub. This place houses the Brawler's guild that organize one-on-one fight against various opponents and beasts. Everybody can hang out there but to participate you need to get a Blood-Soaked invitation either from the Black auction house in the Veiled stairs or from certain mobs of the opposite faction in Karasang Wilds. That's one thing I'd like to try eventually.

One quality of life improvement, especially for people like me who are behind in their dailies, is the new Grand commendation that you can buy from quartermaster of the pandaria faction once you reach revered. Those commendation double the amount of experience you can get from dailies.

Another quality of life improvement of this patch is that you no longer need to be in a raid to enter the older raids, plus they nerfed some boss that were impossible (or very difficult) to solo. As an incentive, new pets drops from some bosses of the vanilla wow raids (all the level 60 raids plus Naxrammas who was originally in Eastern Plaguelands before reappearing in Northrend). So I headed to Blackwing lair with my pally, a place I don't go often because the first boss, Razorgore, needs more then one person to down. But that raid contains the famous Tier 2 pieces paladin set wich I'm collecting (plus Sulfuron ingot needed for the Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker legendary quest).

For those who haven't been there (or if it's been a long time), Razorgore is a boss that must be mind controlled to destroy dragons eggs while tons of adds try to kill him and the one controlling him. If he dies before all the eggs are destroyed, everyone in the room die. But now he has more health points and the damage done to the person controlling the boss no longer break concentration. So I tried soloing him with my pally but the boss kept dying from the adds. Hopefully, one of my friend logged on and offered to help. There is one or two bosses that might be tough to solo like Vaelastrasz (he puts a debuff that can kill a level 90) and Chromagus (when you got five different debuff you are controlled for five minutes).

So there is a lot of exciting things to do in the new patch. Good hunting!

Into the heart of fear - LFR

Fabad, blogger extraordinaire, is reporting inside the inside the Heart of fear with a small assault force wich is bent on eradicating the insects problem of the Dread Waste.

Doing thoses fights on the LFR at the release I noticed a step up in difficulty compared to Mogushan Vault. So I decided to make a general guidelines for the bosses you'll encounter there from a melee DPS point of view. But as I was writing this post, LFR got hit by a series of nerf that trivialized even more most of those fights. Anyway, it's done, so here it is:

Imperial Vizier Zor'Lok: The first boss you'll encounter, you will have to follow him to three different platforms where he will have different abilities. 
- Attenuation: You need to dodge discs he sends all around him in a spiral.
- Convert: He will control 3 raid member, dps them to 50% to free them.
- Force and verve: that is a damage raid wide ability where you have to run to an area protected by a yellow protective barrier to mitigate damage.
When he reach 40%, he will move to the center and uses all three abilities. If you were mindlessy dpsing away, now would probably be a good time to pay attention to the fight, so try to stay alive until he die.

Blade Lord Ta'yak: This boss has one ability called Unseen strike that targets a random player but all damage is spread between people that are in the vicinity. The guy who is targeted will have a red arrow on his head, so stack on him or he will be one-shotted. The boss has another ability that prevents players to just stack in one place for all the fight, it's called Wind step and it will hit a random player and the one who are within 8 yards of him, so it's better to be a little spread out if you can. Also tornadoes will spawn during the fight, so move away from them. At 20% health, another phase begin. He will teleport to an end of the corridor and you've got to chase him as he will send tornadoes down the corridor. Dodge them and be wary of spots on the floor indicating a tornado will spawn when you got near him. At 10% health, he will move to the other end of the corridor, so rinse and repeat .

Garalon: This giant bug should be kited around  the area by dedicated healers or ranged that knows what they're doing, while the two tanks stays in front of him at all time. Because, if the boss cleave doesn't hit two player, he gets a stackable buff called Fury. Since it's LFR, there is a chance that the raid will completely ignore that mechanic and let one of the tank kite him. So help the healers by minimizing the damage you take and use self heals when you have to. DPS must focus on the legs to slow him, the damage you do on the legs will also reduce Garalon total health pool. Bonus: if you are within 12 yards of the leg you got a 100% damage increase buff. Apart from the cleave, you must avoid stepping on the pheremone trail left behind by the kiter. And most importantly, you must be careful not to get under Garalon (indicated by a purple circle) or it will trigger the Massive Crush ability wich is raid wide damaging attack and would probably kill you if you are under him.

This finish the first wing of Heart of fear, come back when you're done to read the second parts.

Wind Lord Mel'jarak: In this fight, there will be nine adds of three type (all adds of a same type share the same health pool):
- Menders who cast an interruptable heal.
- Blademasters who simultaneously charge a random player.
- Trappers that have two abilities: Amber Prison that will cc a player (right click the player to remove it) and a debuff call Corrosive resin that can be removed by moving but will leave a residue in the path of the player.

Only four adds can be crowd controlled (CC) at one time or CC's will be reset. I found out that the best way to do this boss is to mark the adds that will be have to be kept CC'ed: two Menders, one Blademaster and one Trapper. CC'ing one blademaster will reduce the damage done to the random player that will be charged. Mark the remaining Mender who will be focused on first and mark a Blademaster who will be focused next, then finish off the Trappers. After this the boss can be defeated pretty easily. Another way, typical of LFR, is to pull before the CC are done and gather all the adds in a pack and AoE them down, it's just that it takes longer.

Amber-Shaped Un'sok: One of the most important ability of this boss is that he will transform a random player in a mutated construct. For the first phase, only the tanks will be transformed but in the subsequent phase any player can. When mutated, the player must use two abilities: if the construct is casting Amber explosion use Struggle for control to interrupt, else use Amber Strike on cooldown wich stack a debuff on the boss. The dps need to burn both the boss and the construct because if it ran out of energy, the mutated player will died. That player is automatically released when it health reach 10% in LFR. Otherwise, if you are targeted by Amber scalpel, kite it away from other people.

Phase two start when boss reach 70% health. All dps must switch to Amber Monstrosity and the controlled player. If you are mutated, try to interrupt Amber explosion of the Monstrosity as much as possible by using Amber Strike.

Phase three starts when the Monstrosity is dead. You can switch dps back to boss. It's a burn phase so just go crazy on dps.

Grand Empress Shek'zeer: That fight is pretty straightforward for dps in LFR. You will alternate between dpsing the boss and the adds when the Empress retreats. When adds comes out, focus on the smaller one first then take out the big one. If an add focus on you, just kite it. After two wave of adds, you wont need to switch again, just dps that big girl.

Some sha-touched weapon drops from the Empress but if you are plate dps, you will have to wait for the Terrace of endless spring to get one. Sha-Touched weapon can be gemmed with a legendary gem given by the black Prince at the end of his legendary questline.

Pro-tip:  Enjoy a meal at the Thanksgiving table near the Storwmwind gates to get a +10% reputation buff.