In The Mountains

Kuanchichi the Diplomat

Kuanchichi is now exalted with Timbermaw Hold, earning him the title of Diplomat. He proved his talent with diplomacy by bringing an Offering of Peace from the Timbermaw to Thrall. Thrall was quite appreciative.

Ele Shaman Glyphs

We bailed out of work early on a promise of Ulduar hard modes raiding. But of course that did not materialize. So as I waited to see what happened, I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to reexamine Kuanchichi's glyphs.

Now Kuan has been doing some relatively craptacular dps in the ICC raids Darkfall has been running. I had been running with Flametongue Weapon, Flame Shock (note the tooltip here doesn't match what it was, which is that Flame Shock ticks could crit) and Totem of Wrath ever since Kuan lost his Tier 8 2-piece bonus. After comparing some raid log analyses of Kuan's damage with Hellshot's, whose was much higher, I decided I would swap out the Flametongue Weapon for Lightning Bolt, which scaled better, and had a bigger effect as Kuan's haste goes up.

Then, this week, Patch 3.3.3 dropped. In the Patch Notes (note for later: this is not a permalink), it calls out:

Flame Shock: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes and is affected by spell haste.

Since there was nothing in the notes about Shaman glyphs, I figured: well gee, that sure renders the Flame Shock glyph useless; I'd better swap that out. I was thinking, Lava.

But look at that tooltip again! Imagine my surprise when I logged in to see: Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Flame Shock damage by 60%. Whoa! Lava Burst is stuck on that 8 second cooldown, and I am thinking that 10% of spell power once every 8 seconds probably wasn't a good trade for at least 6 ticks (depending on haste and whether I ever pick up piece #4 of the Tier 10 gear) that will crit 1-3 times. Well, gee. Maybe it is. I wasn't sure. But considering it, I am thinking both of these are better than the Totem of Wrath which is, basically, an extra 84 spell power.

I looked at the Spell Coefficients page on Wowwiki and decided whoever designed this at Blizzard oughta be fired. How can they possibly maintain that code, what good is spellpower...

I went to the Thunder Bluff target dummy to try it out. 5300 with Totem of Wrath Glyph. 5800 with Glyph of Lava. I think I'll stick with Glyph of Lava this week and see what a difference it makes with raid buffs.

How the Horde Views the Alliance:

Icecrown Citadel Dialogue: Sister Svalna

In ICC, once you get through the lower spire and fight your way past Deathbringer Saurfang and into the Upper Spire you have some choices to make.

Well first you must make it past the deadly steam boss. It's like the slimes after Patchwerk all over again, except this is only a test of patience. Seriously all you have to do is not get hit by the blue gas. Just wait for it to clear, and then run past the jets. Wait for the next set of jets to clear and then run through them too. It's not hard at all, just requires patience.

Anyway, once past that you open up another transporter, and can go any of three different ways. Left to the Plague Wing. Forward to the Blood Wing. Right to the Frost Wing.

The beginning of the Frost Wing is full of frosty-type vyrkul and a few Ashen Verdict champion types who are there to help you.


Captain Brandon yells: By the light, the transporter worked!
Captain Rupert yells: I can feel the Lich King reaching out... watching us.
Crok Scourgebane yells: Our champions have lost much blood in the struggle to activate the Scourge transporter. We must be prepared to return the favor. Follow me, men!


Crok Scourgebane yells: Ready your arms, my Argent Brothers. The Vyrkul will protect the Frost Queen with their lives.
Captain Arnath yells: Even dying here beats spending another day collecting reagents for that madman, Finkelstein.


Crok Scourgebane yells: Enough banter! Our champions have arrived - support them as we push our way through the hall!
Sister Svalna yells: You may once have fought beside me, Crok. But now you are nothing more than a traitor. Come, your second death approaches!



Crok Scourgebane yells: Quickly, push on!
Captain Brandon yells: No amount of healing can save me now. Fight on, brothers...


Captain Rupert yells: It was... a worthy afterlife.


Crok Scourgebane yells: Her reinforcements will arrive shortly, we must bring her down quickly!
Sister Svalna yells: Foolish Crok. You brought my reinforcements with you. Arise, Argent Champions, and serve the Lich King in death!
Sister Svalna yells: Come, Scourgebane. I'll show the mater which of us is truly worthy of the title of "Champion"!
Captain Rupert yells: Ther is no escaping the Lich King's will. Prepare for an explosive encounter!
Sister Svalna yells: What a pitiful choice of an ally, Crok!
Crok Scourgebane yells: I'll draw her attacks. Return our brothers to their graves, then help me bring her down.


yells: What? This strength...? All of the pain is gone! You... must join me in the eternal embrace of death!


Sister Svalna yells: Perhaps... you were right, Crok.


Captain Rupert yells: What an... explosive ending!
Captain Brandon yells: I'm sorry...
Crok Scourgebane yells: I'll remain and inform Tirion of our progress. You must press on and bring down Sindragosa. Lok'tar, champions!
Captain Arnath yells: The loss of our comrades was unpreventable. The lived and died in teh service of the Argent Crusade.

~~~
Crok is the Ebon Champion, and there are four other Argent Crusaders with him. They are the questgivers from Zul'drak. And not the same ones die each time. I took the following screenshot from a different run. This time Arnath didn't survive:

Captain Arnath yells: Never... could reach... the top shelf...

Shadow's Edge

Darkfall killed Festergut for the first time a couple of two weeks ago. It was quite exciting, and we actually did a good job of pulling together and kicking Festergut's ass.

The most exciting part of this was for Darklite. He is top ret pally in Darkfall. For a long long time he was the only ret pally. And he has very much paid his dues, as part of that time was during BC, when he was close to last on any damage meter you cared to run when we were in Mt. Hyjal, SSC, and TK. But now karma has rewarded him. He's usually one of the top three dps, swapping with an awesome hunter and our excellent cat druid depending on the particular fight.

Anyway, when Festergut fell over dead in a pile of unnameable parts Darklite received Festergut's Acidic Blood


Highlord Darion Mograine says: So, it has begun...
Highlord Darion Mograine says: Behold! The binding of the sacred and corrupt; the forging of Shadow's Egde, a weapon of untold potential!

Highlord Darion Mograine says: Bend it do your will, and yo shall wield unspeakable power!
Highlord Darion Mograine says: Fail, and your soul shall forever be it's slave.

Here is Darklite with a shiny new weapon.

I'm not entirely clear on the entire rest of the chain, but I believe that the next thing Darklite has to do is gather souls. Something like 1000 souls in ICC have to be killed while he is wielding Shadow's Edge. Or possibly he has to give the killing blow? As I said, I'm unclear on what needs to happen next. No matter what though, that weapon is awesome.

Stinky

Ah, the neverending war between Mages and Warlocks. You'd think that we'd put aside our differences and agree to just hate the rogues or hunters. But no, no that would be far too sensible. Instead there is endless veiled disparagement.

One of the common things is making fun of one another's spells. For example I never refer to a Fel Toilet by it's official name. I much prefer the name Fel Toilet. It rather looks like a toilet, and it's got the sound of a refilling toilet tank perfect.

Someone forgot to flush:

Twilight Vanquisher

Last night, before we ran our scheduled Icecrown Citadel raid, one of our guildies asked if anyone was interested in a 25man Obsidian Sanctum 3d Zerg Pug. Since I have been full of resentment that nobody in guild is willing to run that with us, I said I would go, and so did Clara.

They were checking if everyone was in ICC gear, and the 25man has 1 healer and 2 tanks and 22 DPS. It took two tries.

Oddly enough I didn't get a screenshot. But Kuan and Viljo are both wearing the Twilight Vanquisher title now.

Random screenshot

Vault of Casino

Last Saturday I slept in a bit. DraNgNon had been playing WoW, but she woke me up and told me to log Telt on. I did as she logged off and I was promptly invited in to heal a 10man Vault of Archanvon run. Despite my trepidation and the creation of a fail angel just before Toravon died all the bosses were one-shot.



I was not surprised that Telt hadn't previously killed Toravon or even Koralon, but I really thought she'd killed Emalon, and certainly that she had killed Archavon...

Anyway we killed the bosses and finished up just in time for DraNgNon to finish making tasty breakfast for both of us. I win!

Further adventuers in PUGing

PUG
- n. Pick Up Group. A group of semi-random people assembled, usually through the Dungeon Finder in WoW, to slaughter the creatures in a dungeon in search of phat lewts.
- n. Pug. A very annoying small and ugly dog.



At the moment, in WoW, the first time your character does a random heroic you'll get two Emblems of Frost. With enough of these you can buy fabulous pieces of gear. So everyone wants to do their daily random.

The problems with the daily random is that everyone has a different wait time. This time depends on time of day, day of week, and your role.


Often the wait for a dps is loooong. I've heard that it can be as long as half an hour, but I have never experienced that myself. I usually have waits of anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, with the occasional 20 minute wait. Generally the best way to get the notification to pup up is to start doing something else. Murphy's Law never fails to kick in then.


The wait for healers is not nearly as long. I've never had to wait more than about 10 minutes. The single exception to this was late at night; I think there weren't any tanks around anywhere.


Tanks have a queue wait time of anywhere from 1 to 2 seconds. I have been queueing Mornara as both tank and dps since she got her dual spec. Not once has she been chosen as dps and not once has she waited longer than 2 seconds for the dungeon to pop up.

Icecrown Citadel Dialogue: Lord Marrowgar

For completeness I have screen shotted what Marrowgar says. Being a big whirling pile of bones he's doesn't have a whole lot to say.


Lord Marrowgar yells: This is the beginning AND the end, mortals. None may enter the master's sanctum!


Lord Marrowgar yells: I see... Only darkness.