Legion of love!

This morning I was reading a post on Blizzard Watch about act of kindness in wow. It struck a chord with me because I recently start to do some group content. But first let me tell you that yes, I wanted to post more (at the very least once a month) but I was enjoying Legion so much I didn't took any leisure time to write about it. But now I'm starting to feel like I can relax a bit. I will just tell you what happened since my last post then I will be back with my subject, the legion of love!

So I wasn't sure if I wanted to raid this expansion but I did as much as I could to be raid ready. My guild raid three times a week which is way more then I wants and anyway there at least once a week that I can't make it, so raiding wasn't even an issue. My guildmates are making good progress, doing mythic dungeon, including Court of stars and Arcwell right off the bat, clearing normal on first week and now are 5/7 heroics, so I'm happy for them. I remember when I was a fresh level 110 and they were already doing world quest and I was like: 

"WQ? What is that?"

"Oh it rewards phat lewt." 

"Bah I don't have time for that, I'm way too busy leveling profession and getting rich. Oh, is this BoE BiS? Because it's like 80k on the AH." 

My guildmates were like "Should you not keep it for yourself?" 

"Hell no, it's like 2 free month of wow!"

So anyway, I was one ilvl short of gear objective of 840 when the raid came out. I haven’t leveled a profession to max level yet since I had the good idea of dropping every gathering profession, so I had to begin anew (I was sure they were getting rid of the limits on gathering profession after WoD). I didn't level Inscription much since I was selling herbs at ludicrous price. Now most prices have dropped but things like gems, necklace enchants and the Sky Golem still have outrageous prices and I didn't had time to benefit from it since I have not leveled any alt yet. Next one in the list is my warrior who is enchanter and skinner then my paladin who is miner and blacksmith. So I just did they're artefacts and some entry level profession quest. 

Since then I've done a lot of world quest (which kept me busy, got good rewards and are actually fun), I've done tons of questing in Suramar which is my favorite zone so far.  At the beginning I had a hard time in that zone but now I'm fairly comfortable pretending I'm a nightborne, grappling and navigating around except for one elite part of the city which still is challenging. I have leveled and geared my followers (epic 830 which is a little low now that I have 850 mission), I got artefacts for all my druid specs and I managed to progress to the end of the Falanaar tunnel with my withered army, so I'm almost through solo content which leads me to group content and that's back to the subject of my post.

This expansion I feel like it's an expansion of love and I'll tell you why. First hint of that is the join scenario in Assault of the broken shore, two full raid, one horde and one alliance progressing together to rescue Tirion and his Argent dawn, boy he must have smiled when he saw us fighting together. Blizzard tried to convince Alliance that Horde betrayed them during that scenario but come on nobody bought that, Sylvanas blew her horn so the alliance had plenty of time to retreat and they would even had the time to rescue Wrynn since Fel Reaver 2.0 was one shot by the king. But hey, Greymane and Sylvannas they have a history so let them bicker but me I'm seeing the big picture. I fought both with horde and alliance during the invasions and they are all my bros (except forsaken, even my tauren had cold sweat when he visited Undercity). 

I've been playing WoW just before wrath came out so I'm used to competing for nodes and tagging as much mob as I can to complete quest. But this time even if I would want to be a jerk I wouldn't be able to. Mobs are shared within faction, rares, nodes and quest objectives are open to all. So I surprised myself stunning a mob attacking a horde player or helping another kill his mob instead of stealing his node. Hey why not, we are all bros, no? Playing in the world, I didn't see a single jerk, I thought to myself: "They must be all doing group contents or harassing low level on PvP server".

I eventually had to do some dungeons, I did normal when I could and heroics from time to time but everything went smoothly so I was thinking, it's too easy, that's why there is no drama. Then the Raid Finder came. People where talking shit, making lewd comments about Il-gynoth and such but except the random comment like "Oh half the raid is gonna die to this mechanic" (which in fact happened) or "Why DPS sucks so bad and why are they purposely standing in the fire" I didn't heard much negative stuff. One time we did Dragons of nightmare but some people where complaining that one of the tank was dumb and didn't understand the mechanics so they started a vote to kick that tank (even though we one shot the boss). I admit I voted yes but only so we could get over with it but anyway the vote didn't passed. People were like "Who cares, its raid finder, stop complaining". So I pinched myself and thought to myself I've witnessed a once in a lifetime anomaly.

And then this weekend I did my first mythic. I have two dungeons mythic only that I unlocked this week in Suramar and there is Karazan that is coming in the next patch that I absolutely wanna try so I wanted to get my feet wet. I had a mythic dungeon quest in Hall of valor so I read the adventure guide and queued for an heroic as quick practice (which took only 10 min as dps). It was tougher than I expected, I died at least once on thrash but no wipe and it was a painless run. Plus I realized it was the only dungeon I haven’t done in heroic because I got the Legion dungeon hero achievement. So I read the strategy thoroughly on wowhead, trying to find out which mechanic was different on mythic and how I could do better and I queued on group finder.

It took some time but I got accepted in a group and we managed to grab an healer and a tank while I was doing world quest waiting. When we got a group I realized I had to get to the portal, fortunately I was in Stormheim questing and our group leader was a warlock. We started and... wiped on thrash. Our healer apologized and our warrior tank said not to worry. We slowly progressed to the second boss, during that time I was on the low end of DPS and again I died on thrash. I was starting to worry and already I was like: "Oh well at least I tried, I'll try to hang around as much as I can before they kick me". We wiped a couple of time on second boss then the healer quit and said to get a better healer. Next healer we had was solid and we managed to get to the last boss. It went much smoother, I wasn't on the verge of dying every second so I had more time to concentrate on my DPS and I realized I didn't switch my trinket that's why I wasn't proccing (I had my agility trinkets). So I was climbing back to the top of the dps chart but we wiped on Odin like five time and the healer was showing signs of impatience, I think his friends were waiting for him, then he quit without a word. It took a couple of minutes, some healer declined and I thought it was game over. Meanwhile the tank and his DK bro were fooling around with toys and pretending to fight. Then a healer came and we managed to down the last boss. All that took two hours, I got no loot but I had fun and I learned a lot, not just about how to prepare (I had no flask, no food buff and the wrong trinket) or how to avoid certain mechanics but how people are nicer then what I was expecting from experience.

While I never doubted that we could triumph against the legion no matter what, I now think that if we all stand together, Horde and Alliance, and that if player continue to be nice, patient and helpful to each others, nothing would be able to stand against us, no legion, no old gods, no titans what's not or elementals horrors from outer space. Oh I hear you and I know what you are saying: there will be content drought, people will quit, wow will die, winter is coming and here will be sucks on top of sucks for everyone. But until then, dear reader, enjoy our legion of love!

Ding: Level 110!

I am so busy enjoying this expansion that I didn't update my status yet until now. Last week I reached level 110 after two days and about 20 hours of playing. I not only battled legion of enemies but I also had to contend with lack of sleep, real life aggro and DDOS attacks from evil hackers. By the way, DDoS means Distributed Denial of Service and means tons of computer sending superfluous request to a server so it is so busy it cannot handle legitimate request (like wow user who just want to log or whose toon is interacting with wow server).

The launch was super smooth and I was kind of wary because for Warlord of Draeonor I took a day off and couldn't play much because my server was a lagfest (I'm on full population server). When Legion was up I logged in and discovered that I couldn't skip the Broken Shore scenario. So I braced myself and go through it again. After this small prelude, I chose the guardian druid artefact. It was the first time doing it and it was rougher then I tought.

The first zone I did was Aszuna, I didn't had trouble surviving even when I was pulling as much adds as I could, especially when Incarnation: Guardian of Ursoc was off cooldown. I managed to hit level 102 after that zone and I went after the Scythe of Elune, the boomkin weapon. I tried out the spec with the dungeon Eye of Azshara. It was rough because everyone was new in it but we didn't wipe. One fight was close but I did some crazy kiting while the others were dead and managed to down king Deepbeard when he enraged (well, I just hit moonfire as fast as I could while running away in circle). 

The second zone I did was Valsharah and it's a beautiful zone, it fits very well with druid lore. The only thing is I thought it lacked demon (like most of the other zones), I mean I know they are devious and busy scheming behind curtains but where is the Legion army? After that zone it was late but I decided to venture into Stormheim, so I started the scenario and massive lag happens. I briefly thought I would be stuck in this scenario forever. Quest givers were not spawning and hearthstone wasn't working. I finally managed to finish the scenario after a couple of logging in and out. Lag was still going on so I went to bed.

The second day I did Stormheim then I finished with Highmountain. I was super tired and I found those two zones frustrating but really it was because I was rushing to level cap. Same lag happened during the evening but I had just reached the level cap so I call it a night. I was a little disapointed of the time it took me to reach the level cap but I managed to identify some of the things I could have done to improve. First, it would really have helped if I had done a dry run on the beta server because I lost time figuring out some quest, like a named mob that was underground, or just findind the inn in Thunder totem. Plus I was busy reading quest text to soak in all that new lore. Second, I had the Handy notes addon to find treasure and rare but I lost much time trying to get those hard to reach treasure or going out of my way to fight a rare, I should have focus more on quest. Oh well, live and learn.

After one week I still have tons of new content to see. Right now I just finished the druid campaign, I unlocked Suramar, I did some profession quest and I'm splurging on world quest and exploration. And I have yet to play on my alts.

Go and enjoy Legion!

Tonight is the night

So everybody is pretty excited because Legion is coming out tonight. I played a bunch this weekend and managed to level my warrior up to level 100 doing invasions. I checked out some Class Halls in the beta (they are all awesome but I think the rogue one is particularly fun). I also made last minute preparations.  I transmogged my toons so they look sharp when they arrive to Broken Isles. I got an appropriate weapon for my hunter who appears to have sold his gun and gone survival, a small mistake I corrected by doing the Broken shore scenario. I did Dragon Soul with my rogue to check out the new Outlaw spec. I also switched a couple of professions around since I ditched most of my gathering professions in Warlords.

Tomorrow I will level as much as I can. Since Cata I've always tried to level in one day but I never managed it. I'm a slow leveler: I read all the quests, I explore, I reflect about Alliance and Horde war strategies, I level profession and fight rares. Mostly I do the race to max level for fun because I don't plan to raid seriously this expansion. I've been away for so long I don't even know which guild I will be parking my main and toons. Some guild I was playing in are now deserted, others have become much more raid focused, I will see.

So I got my day off, my flasks, my potions, my snacks and my beverages ready. But there is one important question left: which class will I play at launch and which artefacts will I get first? It's not my DK this time. And the new artefacts gave me the incentive to try out new specs, I've changed my decision a couple of time, first retribution pally, then boomkin, then mage, then shaman. I had a blast trying a gnome hunter this weekend on the beta, I also messed around with rogue and warrior. With invasions even the toon I don't play much managed to gear up so it's not even a problem this time. 

But since I want to be semi-serious tomorrow with my rush to level 110, I'll play a class that I love and a spec that is familiar to me, the bear. I will probably do the dungeon quest that you get at the end of each zone but for your sake (and mine) I won't tank any of those and leave it to the professionals (who hopefully know what they are doing in those new dungeons). I'll switch to boomkin for those after I can get my second artefact. I've been Eye of Azshara once on the beta and it went pretty smoothly. There is some strategies with artefacts for leveling, the simplest one would be to use your main spec to level. But I've read that there is survival issues with some spec and I don't feel familiar enough with boomkin to learn as I level. So I will level my guardian artefact as I'm leveling and switch at max level.

Happy leveling in legion!

Back for legion

So a lot of things changed since my last post. I fought during the Siege of Orgrimmar, I obtained fel fire for my warlock, I got Shadowmourne, I conquered the Iron Horde in an alternate reality and last but not least my human death knight has faction changed to Horde!


Although at first I was pleased by the leveling experience in Warlord of Draenor and I was excited by the new garrison feature I burned out on World of Warcraft shortly after the release of Tanaan jungle. Let just say that the best souvenir I kept from that expansion was the nice pile of gold I managed to acquire.


I didn't think that I would resub to World of Warcraft but I was invited to the Beta and I was amazed at all the class lore that the new expansion has. The artefacts quests are short but fun and each class halls I have managed to unlock are beautifully stunning.  So I'm out of retirement to lead the people of Azeroth in the fight against the Legion. I might not take part in raiding aside from LFR but I intend to get a truckload of artefacts starting with the Scythe of Elune, the famed Ashbringer and the shard of Frostmourne. I currently have seven classes up to level 100 including a demon hunter, I have a warrior and a monk at level 90 and I have a boost that I will probably use on a shaman to get the iconic Doomhammer.


I've also tried out the class trial, which will be available as boost when the new expansion comes out. It's a mini tutorial that you have on your way to the Broken shore that teach you a basic rotation and a couple of key ability of the class. There is only one spec by class that you can use for the trial, for example, the spec for paladin is retribution. The talents are already chosen and the action bar is filled gradually. It's nicely done and get you up and running to jump into the action.


There much less ability to use in this expansion (around 15) and the rotation is simplified, which I think is for the best. I also tried out leveling a toon from 1 to 10 and its much smoother then what I remembered. Each class start with a default spec, for the druid that was feral, a spec I've rarely used (I've mainly leveled and raided as guardian). But it was much more fun and unique to quest as kitty then as a generic caster like it was before as a level 1. And the feral form is very useful to be familiar with regardless of the spec you choose. So I look forward to leveling a druid in the near future and I've planned to level in a couple of zones that are rich in night elf and druid lore, like Darkshore, Ashenvale, Feralas, Zangamarsh, Grizzly Hills and Mount Hyjal. I leveled in Teldrassil without experience heirloom (tough I kept my heirloom weapon, necklace and trinket) and I didn't outlevel the zone (although I skipped a couple of quest). It seems some time was dedicated to improve the leveling experience, which is nice for people who likes to level alt.

While I'm waiting for the expansion I've already decked out my paladin in full legion gear (very nice looking for transmog). I'm also planning to level my warrior and monk with the invasions. Since there is now six invasions every two hours and that I can beneficiate from Potion of Accelerated Learning, full heirloom and some rested XP I might be able to ding them to level 100 before next week without too much hassle.


Until next time enjoy your last week of Warlord of Draenor!




Update: I managed to level my monk from 91 to 100 last night and it was super fun. I got sweet gear and over 400 shards, enough to get me a pet, a cloak, a trinket and a BOA warglaive (other piece of equipment didn't have agility on them so I was kind of meh). Those invasions are action packed and there tons of neat stuff to see. I might have to try the siege engine with my warrior tough because the fight are a little rough for melee.

Warlock leveling

Another draft that I found in my blog, again that was during Mist of Pandaria:


"As a side project I'm leveling a warlock and I have a blast. I was motivated to try this class because I've seen one of my friend tackling the green fire quest at level 90 and it looked awesome. I was arguing with that same friend that leveling was too easy and that you always outleveled the zone before the story was finished and he said that it was because I was using heirloom. So I decided to level this alt without heirloom and without the guild XP bonus. I also decided to level only by questing and not queueing for dungeon or battleground, except if there is interesting lore in it. One of the only classic dungeon I've done was Ragefire chasm because it was revamped to reflect the change occurring in Org.


I've done the blood elf starting zone (1-5) then moved to the forsaken zone. Silverpine is an epic zone and it's fun to see the Forsaken side of the story, plus you get to save Sylvanas and piss Garrosh off. The zone story culminates in Silverfang dungeon. After this I moved to Hillsbrad wich has a very interesting storyline. The area moved from alliance to horde domination. You got to fight the Stormpike from Alterac Valley and help the Forsaken clean up after a chemical warfare on Southshore.


There is some group quest that are challenging like Yetimus and the Durnholde challenge. I managed to solo those group quest up to Bloodvenom before another questing warlock joined me. To solo Bloodvenom I stood on the ledge and if he killed my voidwalker I would drop down and try to kite him. There is also a hidden Plant vs Zombie minigame in the northwest corner of that zone. I found out that the best strategy in this game is to plant two rows of sunflower, one row of pea shooter and 2 rows of tentacles. For the final boss, I used pumpkin on cooldown and it was a piece of cake.


I am currently in my thirties and I've specced destruction as it looked like the most efficient spec to quest. But I can't wait to try Demonology spec in Outland where there is so much demons to tame.
I plan to quest in the adjacent zone up to Eastern Plaguelands then go to the Badlands, Burning steppes, Swamp of sorrows and quest near the portal before I go in Outland. I will surely quest in Outland because I like Hellfire and Zangamarsh zone. I will also do Hellfire rampart at least once, one of my favorite Outland dungeon, I can already hear the healer yelling "TANK PLEASE PULL MORE, MORE! I'll probably skip as much questing as I can in Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm so after Outland it will probably be a combination of heirloom, questing and dungeon queuing.


All in all, I like the warlock class and I feel like it's the evil ranged counterpart of the Death knight."


I had fun leveling this one, I stayed way past level 70 in Outland, completing almost every quest in Shadowmoon valley, which is chock full of sweet warlock lore. I also loved every bits of the Green fire quest. From farming the book in Isle of Thunder to the epic ending in Black Temple. The last fight in that chain quest was very hard, I did it in destruction spec and it must have taken me hours of tries and tons of consumables. Eventually I did it when I had more gear by burning him as fast as I could. After that, even when I had average DPS in Siege of Orgrimmar I felt like I was part of a very elite club shooting bolt of green fire.

I am legendary

When I logged back on my blog I noticed I had a couple of drafts that I didn't post back then, so here it is for your reading pleasure. It's in Pandaria so welcome back to memory lanes!


"Hello, I've been away all summer and couldn't play World of Warcraft but I'm back for patch 5.4. Last week I got the last Secrets of the empire token I needed for Wrathion legendary quest. I turned the quest and Wrathion told me to go kill Lei-Shen and take his heart. Duh, I had to do that wing again in raid finder after weekly reset.


The next part of the legendary quest was fun and challenging, I tried the melee dps challenge with my frost DK and got my ass handed to me. You have to kill the ooze pretty quickly using howling blast and blood boil because if they corner you while Wrathion cleave you or if he goes into mirror image while he oozes are still alive, it's game over. Even by talenting into Chillbains I couldn't do it.


I heard the tanking challenge was easier but the only tanking I've done in this expansion with this toon was Mogushan Vault on raid finder. By the way, Mogushan Vault was my favorite raid this expansion and I had tons of fun tanking the raid finder, especially the last encounter with the twins. I knew that raid rather well because I cleared it on normal difficulty with my hunter while it was current. 


For the tanking challenge I got help from Taoshi the rogue which I recruited in the Shado-pan. It took me couple of try but I finally did it. I used Army of the dead right at the start, I interrupted and taunted what I could, used Anti-magic barrier liberally and manage to down Deathwing before the spike phase where you have to position yourself between the spike and Wrathion.


All in all, it was fun and I'm finally catching up with the legendary quest, so when patch 5.4 comes out I can pick up the quest right there. From what I know it would involve killing stuff in Timeless Isle and fighting the Celestial as World boss. All things that I would have done anyway.


I might try to join a flexible raid group because I'd like to get my hands on the heirloom axe dropped by Garrosh. Since it scale to level 100 it would make leveling easier in the next expansion."

 

Update: I did join a flex group and we farmed Garrosh for months, and I got both his axe and an intellect staff for my warlock. Flex allowed to queue for the last wing and the group I had was super fast, so I had a blast farming Garrosh.

My strange pet battle addiction

I finally succumbed to pet battle. It all began when I did the achievement Raiding with leashes. I farmed the old raids for a couple of week but Chrominius wouldn't drop. I was tired of running Blackwing lair so I bought it on the AH. The problem is that he was level 15 and I couldn't learn him. So I decided to level a team.

I did the pet battle tamer quests and tried to collect as many different pets as I could. My team consisted of three rares: a black rat, an ash spiderling and Chrominius when I got access to it. Having a critter in my team wasn't the optimal choice tough because I was often faced against beast opponents.

A typical battle would be my spider attacking first: web, leech, poison, leech, web and so on, slowly draining my opponent health. My rat would then go, hopefully against another critter since he had an attack that was strong against his own kind. He would poison then stampede them wich leaves a powerful debuff on the ennemy that would double the damage of the following attacks. The only drawback was that to apply the debuff you had to do three round of swarm wich do rather weak damage. I tried to apply it just before dying, so my next pet could benefit from it. Chrominius was my secret weapon for two reason: he could apply the same debuff with Howl and he had a magic nuke that could do up to 2k damage but that would leave him powerless for three round, so I would use it as a finisher, hope it connects and cheese most of the fight with it.

I managed to beat all pet battle tamer up to Northrend but then they became too much to handle so I leveled my pets to 25 before coming back. After this I managed to beat every pet battle tamer including Chi in Pandaria. I then moved on to the achievement Pandaren Spirit Tamer and Fabled Pandaren tamer. But here was a couple of fights that I couldn't beat with my group composition, such as Ti'un the Wanderer and the Thundering pandaren spirit. So I decided to level different family of pet with a method called "Haul em up". This method consist of attacking with the pet you are leveling then switching with max level pet to finish the battle. As long as your pet can survive one round you can match him against way higher level pet then him and get bonus experiences due to difficulty.  I leveled an aquatic pet this way so I could add a healer to my team and a flying amber moth, who was strong against aquatic and resistant against beast. With these two new members I managed to beat all the spirit tamers and all the elite beasts.

With patch 5.3, there is a new achievement called Raiding with leashes II: Attunement edition. So it  it will give me a reason to visit Kara again. All those raids can be soloed including Kara chess event, the red riding hood and Lady Vashj. Mileage may vary depending on your class tough, good luck!

A test of valor (points!)

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've posted but it doesn't mean I've stopped playing WoW. My pally is pretty busy crafting a bunch of new pieces at the thunder forge, like the Lionheart Executioner, while my druid finally got the mats to craft the Inscribed crane staff, wich is Bind on account.

But since I'm a little behind in Wrathion legendary quest line, I've spent most of the time capping my valor point on my DK for the quest A test of valor. To mix things up I dusted off my tanking set and started doing heroics. The dungeons are very forgiving now and I can chain pull tons of thrash without deplenishing healer mana. With this newfound confidence I started tanking Mogushan Vault raid finder using walkthrough from the blog No life at 90. It wasn't as tough as I tought and it made capping my valor points more fun. I did get the gear to tank Heart of fear but full clear might have to wait because I have now collected my 6000 valor points.

So I picked out my two new quest and I immediately started to do the The Lion Roars one. I had a couple of ilvl 450 PvP piece that my pally had crafted, so decked out in a mix of PvP and dps gear I went into Silvershard mine.We roflstomped the Horde, I didn't died once and I personally killed a couple of bad guy myself including some seemingly squishy blood DK. The temple was another story. I tried to carry the orb but I wasn't that good even in blood spec and when feral druid or other baddies focused on me I was dying pretty quickly. So I let more experienced pvp'ers carry orbs and I tried to protect them and kill opposing healer. After my fourth game I finally got a win. So I only had one quest left.

I did A change of command with a bunch of guildies who had done it before. We had a standard group with one tank, one healer and three dps and it was a piece of cake. So for now I've started collecting Secrets of the empire in the Throne of thunder  raids. This raid is challenging enough in raid finder, particularly bosses like Dorrumu and Lei Shen.

Later and have fun!

Rise of the Thunder King

It's been a couple of weeks since patch 5.2 came out and there is plenty of new contents. One of the thing I was most excited to see was the new raid. The sixth first bosses of this new raid are challenging enough for raid finder, like the infamous Zandalari council. The new determination buff is a welcome addition, with 5% more health, healing and damage everytime the raid wipe. It helps to learn new fights, encourages people to persist and allows Blizzard to make the raid finder a little bit more difficult at start.  After a couple of weeks people will get geared and the average group will probably one-shot most of these bosses.

There is plenty of new dailies to keep you busy and two new reputation to grind, Shadopan assault and either Sunreaver Onslaught or Kirin Tor Offensive depending on your faction. If you happened to see a rare that has been spotted in general chat, try to get there to participate in the fight. If you manage to down the rare, even if you are not in a group, you can loot it. There is a chance for a key to drop that will allow you to unlock Trove of the treasure king, wich is a one person timed scenario.

While you are doing dailies, you are participating in a server effort to unlock more zones on the Isle of Thunder. At first the Horde and the Alliance are stoming the beach of the island. But after a week or so, you can enter a single person scenario to establis a base of operation. From there, you can choose a set of dailies PvE or PvP that will gives you extra reward. Others zones will be unlocked each week that will have more rewards, like the fabled Anvil of thunder.

I think that the difficulty have been raised slightly in this patch and it's fun!

Pro-tip: Get your necklace from the Shado-pan assault faction, available at neutral reputation.

How to be raid geared in less then a month

It's been more then a month since my last post, so I owe you some explanations of what I've been doing during those times. I played a lot with my Horde hunter and I joined a new guild.  They were constantly looking for people to fill raid spots so I couldn't wait to get geared up. Here is how I did it with only a limited amount of gold and no alt to craft me gear (since all my other high level toons are alliance).

Week 1: I ran a lot of heroics and I finished up the quest line in Dread waste to fill gaps in my gear.

Week 2: I was a little short on unlocking raid finder (ilvl 460), so I looked what I could buy with my valor point. This is when I realised that I had to gain rep with the various faction to unlock the valor point gear. I've done em all with my DK alliance side but now I had to do them again. Hopefully since patch 5.1 you could get recommendation and get rep at twice the rate. I unlocked the justice point trinket from Operation Dominance and I bought some cheap epics pants from the AH. After this I barely reached the minimum ilvl to enter raid finder. I was fortunate enough to get invited by the guild to a normal MSV run were we managed to down five bosses and I got a couple of drops. I also got a pattern. At first I was puzzled, what were some of the mats needed? Turned out you have to DE epic, so it might have to wait before I craft some. Instead I polished up my leatherworking skills and crafted myself a chest piece. It pushed me over the 470 ilvl threshold and I unlocked the other tier of raid finder.

Week 3: I continued doing the raid finder and I got another invite from the guild where we did the first five bosses in MSV.

Week 4: I got  lucky with the Sha of anger and I got the first tier set bonus. I also reached 480 ilvl. My dps have start to pick up and I fully cleared MSV on normal. While my dps are still on the low side, about 60 k overall, I was  finally able to carry my load. I had fun raiding normal mode and it has shed a new light on the encounters in Raid finder.

One piece of gear I'd like to get my hands on before the new raids open is a Sha touched weapon, wich could be a big boost to my dps since I'm still sporting an heroic bow. Plus I'd like to finish the legendary quest to get my gem, I still have a couple of sigil of power to get. Valor point piece will also cost less so I'm looking for some bargains when patch day drop. If you got extra valor to spend before patch day, you could also upgrade your weapon or trinket. Those upgrades won't be available when 5.2 launch.

Have fun with the new contents!

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!