Monday, March 31, 2008

Magtheridon

Darkfall raided Gruul and Magtheridon this evening. Gruul went a lot better than Mag. As in despite wipes on both Maulgar and Gruul we took them down, but despite a couple of hours of work on Mag he was still alive by the time we had to call it.

We did get Mag down to 25% on one of our attempts, and I'm sure that the next time we try him he shall die. But we had to keep re-explaining the fight to new people who had to swap in for other people who had to leave to go to sleep.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Leotheras

While everyone else in the World of Warcraft looks at the new zones and patch content that was released Tuesday morning, Darkfall decided to explore new content is a more guild-specific way, and made their first attempt at Leotheras the Blind last night. It was just to look at the fight.

Tonight, we are about to try again, and hopefully will manage it. We certainly have the firepower. The question is do we have the coordination.

I'd post some screenshots - I have so many now I need to devote some time, but I don't really have any means of cutting them on this computer. I will be fixing that soon...

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

how depressing

Here I was, thinking about how great it was that I was able to play Wow this last weekend, and without dedicating oodles of time I got Vhaas up to 62, some gear upgrades, a nice LW piece for Khyrie; took Eeyan through 2 heroics on PUGs, picking up 10 badges, and pulled him through Shadow Lab as well, then got him the badged neck as a nice upgrade; Kuan went into the BGs and got enough honor to pick up a PvP neck, which boosted his crit considerably, and in the interim went on a raid to pull down a boss he hadn't seen down'd before.

How great is all that. Then I compare it to list of things to get done and it's all no, no, no, no...

draNgNon progress 24 March

Well, I've had not much time to play, even less to post, and it's already time for my progress based on my last list. I feel bad as this last weekend I actually got a lot done and this sort of post doesn't capture it. Anyhow...

Kuanchichi
• Exalted with Keepers of Time
• Heroic Arc
• PvP... get at least 2 pieces of S1
• Arenas 5x5
• farm for [Major Frost Prot]
• 350 on 2H Axes
• Learn Cauldron of Major Fire Prot
• Pick up the badged healy shield
• no progress
• cleared the quest
• picked up [Vindicator's Pendant of Conquest] instead
• no time
• no runs
• nope
• needed primals for other stuff
Eeyan
• Revered with Thrallmar
• Finish Scryer quest chains in SMV
• Neutral with Netherwing
• Path of Conquest
• Strat run
• Scholo run
• 375 blacksmithing
• 340+ all ranged
• nowhere near
• must turn in Book of Fel Names
• needs Zuluhed
• one chain cleared
• nope
• nope
• no progress
• 338 arrows, 340 guns
Aurochh
• Start on Badlands
• Clear BB quests in STV
• Uldaman
• 280 enchanting
• Mounted
• Started
• nope. will drop
• nope
• no progress
• on a brown kodo
Vhaas
• Clear outdoor Silithus quests
• Start Dranei quests in Hellfire
• BRD
• Still needs hives
• Started
• nope
more: level 62!
Trismestigus
• quests in Silithus
• 290 Tailoring
no progress on any of this


So I'm cheating because I've already started, but here is the next list of Stuff. Kuan's hasn't changed much, now...

Kuanchichi
• Exalted with Keepers of Time
• PvP... get at least 2 pieces of S1
• Arenas 5x5
• farm for [Major Frost Prot]
• 350 on 2H Axes
• Learn Cauldron of Major Fire Prot
• Pick up the badged healy shield

Eeyan
• Revered with Thrallmar
• Revered with Ogri'la
• Finish Scryer quest chains in SMV
• Neutral with Netherwing
• Path of Conquest
• Strat run (for Tier 0 Shoulders and Pants)
• Scholo run (for Tier 0 Hat)
• 375 blacksmithing
• 340+ all ranged

Aurochh leveling, enchanting skillups
• Stonard flight point
• Clear BB quests in STV
• Uldaman
• 280 enchanting

Vhaas mount money, Dranei rep
• Clear outdoor Silithus quests
• Clear Dranei quests in Hellfire
• BRD
• Try Hellfire Ramparts maybe

Trismestigus mount money, tailoring
• quests in Silithus
• 290 Tailoring

Monday, March 24, 2008

a minor respec for Eeyan.

So Eeyan has been making some progress. He got enough badges to get the Badged neck for rogues; that was pretty helpful. He's fun to play. But he's spec'd for outdoors, i.e., to deal with being the mob's target, as opposed to in a raid, where he should not be getting hit at all.

Saturday Eeyan got hauled all over the place in pugs. Heroic Hellfire Ramparts, normal Shadow Labyrinth, Heroic Botanica. Lots of badges, no real gear upgrades, although he picked up a couple [Brutal Tanzanite] from Bot that I guess I'll shove in a pair of badged boots once the 2.4 patch drops. But during all this his spec was bugging me. Not the outdoor part; our tank left in the middle of SL and Eeyan effectively tanked the trash from Blackheart to Vorpil as we looked for a replacement. But I knew something that was working for leveling should be changed now he's 70, and I'd let it go too long.

Tonight after Darkfall down'd VR (woot) I pulled Eeyan out for a couple or four dailies, and while he was flying from Skettis to Ogri'la I figured out part of Eeyan's problem. He had 3 points in increasing damage in Sinister Strike and Evis, which are not really where the damage comes from at 70 since those are expensive attacks. So I later hauled him to UC and paid the respec gold to move those three points into Improved Slice & Dice.

We'll see, next round of heroics, what that does for his DPS, which seems stuck in the low 400's per Recount. Then again I suppose that's not too bad for a toon that's only ever been in Kara three times.

Void Reaver Down

This evening Darkfall downed Void Reaver. It was officially the second time the guild had done that, but the first time that Viljo and Kuanchichi had been there for it.

It was annoying to tromp through all the trash on the way there. However it wasn't painful like the first time we were there two months ago. Of course once we got there the RL decided that we all needed to have VoidReaverAlarm downloaded from curse. So there was a bit of a delay as we all had to relog to do that.

Anyway we had one false start on VR where someone decided they wanted aggro more than the tanks did. And started dps-ing almost immediately. :(

But then we we smooshed VR!! We killed him with 30 seconds to spare! And there were only 24 of us. :) He dropped double hero tokens, which was actually quite considerate with 7 mages, 2 warlocks, and 2 hunters in the raid. So Viljo bid all his dkp and now has the lovely Mantle of Tirisfal! Whee! Tier 5! Whee awesome looking red shoulders!! Wheee!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Alliance Elves

On Friday night Vhaas and Khyrie continued their adventures in Outland. The humans and dwarves in honor hold are too depressing to deal with, so aside from a quest here and there with really nice rewards we are skipping them.

However the draenei at the Temple of Telhamat are much nicer. And they give elephant rep, I mean Exodar rep, for Vhaas. So we wandered around doing their quests until we hit level 62. Ravagers, flayers, and anything else in our way was slaughtered as we quested.

I will note that our night elves are pretty severely undergeared. Blacktalon the Savage was hard to kill when the two of them were level 61.

Anyway, after leveling and turning in quests Vhaas and Khyrie went back to Darnassus to train. And from there the two of them went to Silithus to do some of the last few quests they had there.

All in all it was a relatively relaxing evening of questing.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

On to Magtheridon

After a long hiatus from playing, Kuanchichi and Viljo signed on last night, poked around Alterac Valley, and were displeased as Horde still can't reliably win AV on our battlegroup. Our guild chat was talking about possible Mag attempts, so we then dragooned some guildies, to come run Heroic Arcatraz with us.

We ended up with three officers in the party as they are geared enough for the challenge, and off we went, to wipe til repairs on Vereketh the Unbound. We finally decided fuckit, it was stupid this fight was so hard, I mean seriously why, and worked our way through the rest of the instance.

There were some deaths and wipes in there, it was like playing a normal instance in the normal game, before acquiring Tier 4+ level epics. All in all the run was 2.5 hours or so. But we downed the rest of the bosses, they weren't nearly that difficult, and keeping the oversized gnome alive wasn't so hard either.

Now there is only one Trial of the Naaru quest left: Magtheridon. We really wanted to have that quest in our log, before the guild downed Mag.

Meanwhile, Kuan apparently got an upgrade to one of the only two blue pieces of gear he retains. Harbinger dropped this crazy blue trinket that looks designed for Ele Shaman: [Shiffar's Nexus-Horn]. Kuan grabbed it, and I went websurfing to compare it to [Xi'ri's Gift] which is what he has. I found a thread in the druid forums talking about it. Even with the hidden (possibly 45 second?) cooldown, the new trinket appears to proc often enough to beat the rep trinket hands down: one in 5 crits, which for Kuan will mean roughly every 15 or so LB casts, or 25 or so other spells. That is more than every 2 mins, and it's passive which frees up another button. So Kuan has the badged trinket to use for burst damage as a frontload on bloodlust or berserk, and the passive one to just boost DPS.

I will try it today and see. If the procs put the badged trinket on cooldown, then I will stick with [Xi'ri's Gift] for more control. If the two effects can stack, well, I win perhaps. However perhaps not, I was noticing Kuan bumping up against the 130% threat ceiling quite a bit last night...

Monday, March 10, 2008

draNgNon (no) progress 10 March

It's been 2 weeksalready? It has! Well I remained unhappy with my DPS, and life in the Real World sucked. So, pretty much no progress whatsoever on the list I had two weeks ago, other than Eeyan clearing most of the Stormspire quests, and Kuan finally got 350 on 2H Maces! That has been bugging me. Meanwhile I have not updated the blog as much as I'd like, I have not played as much WoW as I have been previously, and and and. Life > Wow. Sometimes that's not so good.

Here the list again, with a couple edits. Kuan's DPS has improved but still bottoms out the list in the 25 mans. So I need to focus on improving my reflexes here. Or UI. Or both.

Kuanchichi Flask of Supreme Power, PVP, and Pugs
• Exalted with Keepers of Time
• Heroic Arc
• PvP... get at least 2 pieces of S1
• Arenas 5x5
• farm for [Major Frost Prot]
• 350 on 2H Axes
• Learn Cauldron of Major Fire Prot
• Pick up the badged healy shield

Eeyan blacksmithing, 0.5 quests, epic mount money for Teltanara
• Revered with Thrallmar
• Finish Scryer quest chains in SMV
• Neutral with Netherwing
• Path of Conquest
• Strat run (for Tier 0 Shoulders and Pants)
• Scholo run (for Tier 0 Hat)
• 375 blacksmithing
• 340+ all ranged

Aurochh leveling, enchanting skillups
• Start on Badlands
• Clear BB quests in STV
• Uldaman
• 280 enchanting
• Mounted

Vhaas mount money, Dranei rep
• Clear outdoor Silithus quests
• Start Dranei quests in Hellfire
• BRD

Trismestigus mount money, tailoring
• quests in Silithus
• 290 Tailoring

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Epic Flyer

Tonight Eeyan and Telt and Kuan and Viljo ran around and did dailies. Dailies and dailies and dailies.

And then Kuan and Viljo picked up the heroic Sethekk daily and smooshed Ikiss. Well actually we both died in the attempt, but the group did one shot him. (Stupid Ikiss) Either way there were badges.

Then we calculated. And If money was pooled Telt had enough to get her epic flyer.

So she did! The one that looked best for her was the Swift Yellow Windrider!


This means that between all 4 of our horde level 70s we have spent more than 25,000 gold getting them on epic ground and flying mounts.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

small WoW-ness

The WoW has been mostly on hiatus recently. But Kuan and Viljo did have a good run through heroic Bot on Saturday night. My favorite tank, Isd, is back from vacation. He has a macro that invites both of us at the same time. :) That always makes me happy.

On Friday night Eeyan and Telt went into regular bot and arc with a pally friend who recently specced prot. She had tanky gear from Kara and some heroics and did a perfectly fine job except for maybe one mis-pull. But mostly we just tore through and got rep and quests done. :)