DoTs Strike Again!

In the continuing trend of laziness due to lack of time, I'll let the picture I took tell the story this time. Once again, DoTs saved the day. That and our evasion tanking rogue (as you can see from the conversation below). Definitely a team effort to avoid failure :-). For some reason, it's these type of kills that I like the best; when you're on the edge and just barely pull it out through good play and quick thinking. We're still learning a lot of these fights, but this is why I like playing with the group we have: the cheers and warm fuzzies that go out after a kill like this. Here's the pic:

Merely a Flesh Wound, Indeed.

Things Are Heating Up

The month of July shall forever (after this one) be known as my wedding month. As such, it's getting a little busy around home. Thus, I may be a bit flaky on the posting for this month, as RL will come and go. I have a plan to make something that'll cover my wedding and honeymoon time "off" and I'm hoping its cute/funny. However, don't expect much of substance from me over the next month as I'll just go for entertaining and short instead. That is, unless they sneak a live patch in on me... then I might have to do a REAL post :-).

So in the spirit of randomness, today I wanted to share a screen shot from a game I've been trying out recently (you may have heard of it): Aion. Thanks go out to Ixobelle who really turned me on to the game with his recent post about it.

This shot really illustrates a lot. You can see the UI (stock), even with some quest tracking on the side. You can see the beauty of it. You can see some small skirmishes in the background. And you can see the wings! ZOMG wings. I'm going to give all the classes a try and pre-order my copy soon (I've cancelled my EVE subscription by the way. It was all right, just didn't really hook me). By the time this comes out in September, I'll have time to enjoy it. It's not going to replace WoW, by any means, but it is another game that is REALLY fun. If you want better reviews, Ixo's is good and so is Samo's over at Hardcore Casual. So, anyway, here is the shot:

Yes, I'm playing a girl. I have a guy too, but he's not nearly as stunning :-).

Please Mr. Postman.

Blahahahahah. I-wentandransacked-mymaster's-room-whenhewasn't-looking-and-found-copiesofthese-hiddenaway-in-his-sock-drawer. HeeHeeHee! NowI'll-publish-them-for-alltosee. He'll-besoangry! Haha! Whataclever-imp-I-am! This'll-teach-him-to-neglect-me-infavor-of-thatwhorish-succubus! Ohno-herehecomes! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeee! *Click*

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Dear Fuubaar,

I apologize for not fully appreciating your clever ruse of stealing the throbbing organ that normally resides in my chest. A warlock like me can certainly appreciate the lengths you must have went to to nick it from me unnoticed. However, I'm noticing that it's absence is causing me some measure of distress.

I have rather enjoyed fighting by your side in the recent weeks. Your plate armor is oh-so-shiny in the light of my fire. It rather does compliment your exquisite form. I can't say that I normally meet with members of the raid team outside of the various dungeons we assault, but the fluidity of your combat prowess leaves me breathless. Perhaps we could meet in The Slaughtered Lamb the next time you're in Stormwind and share a drink, or even in a private dungeon of your choosing.

Anxiously awaiting your response,
Fulguralis

P.S. - Please bring the heart.

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Dear Fulguralis,

I'm a little curious as to why you, sir, feel that I have stolen such a precious object from you. A soldier of the Light would never steal! Rest assured that my own heart, however, is in its rightful place and presently racing out of its cage. Fortunately, I may have an idea of where we might find your Heart and I should be able to aid in that endeavor.

Let us meet one week hence in The Slaughtered Lamb and I shall assist you with locating your missing Heart.

With Hope,
Fuu

Flame Leviathan Hard Mode Tips and Tricks

I think it's common knowledge that Flame Leviathan, in its purest form, is a pretty simple encounter. However, adding a few towers up can step up the difficulty dramatically. Some nights, when we've been short on healers and are our "off nights" as far as the alliance 25-man push is concerned, we've been just taking a random ten players to do Flame Lev with towers up. We've got one tower down, but struggle with two.

For one tower, we leave the Tower of Storms up. This tower means that the big L will periodically activate some shafts of white light that appear around the boss chamber during the fight. The light does damage if you sit in it, plus has a small area of AOE around it. The goal with these is just to avoid them. It's probably the simplest to leave up.

For two towers, we leave storms and add the Tower of Frost to that. The frost tower up means that Mr. Lev will also have a light blue (hard to discern from white) pillar of light that will move around, eventually settling on top of one player vehicle. Obviously, you can tell the difference between the two, if not by the slight color difference, then by the fact that it's moving around. When this pillar stops on top of you, you need to get the hell away from it. It's going to launch a frost ball that will entomb you if you and anyone near if you don't get away. We leave this one up because the directive "avoid all pillars of light" is a pretty easy one to keep in mind.

The other two towers are fire and life. Fire adds to the boss' damage by 50% as well as creating a shower of fireballs that marches around the room. Life creates four spawn points in the corners of the room for plant adds that will annoy you and do damage. All towers add to the overall health of the boss. Feel free to choose other towers, we just thought the two we chose were the simplest.

With that in mind, I thought I'd relate some tips and tricks we've learned along the way. Feel free to add to my list if you know of any.

1. Siege drivers must interrupt Flame Vents - Look for the cast bar, get it done. This is a must.
2. Run in a straight line away - Don't perpetually circle, as he'll catch up faster by cutting off your path. The shortest path between two points is always a straight line, remember this. Don't get yourself caught in a corner, but try to minimize your turning.
3. Run him over the oil slicks - Duh! Extra damage is good, but don't get yourself rammed or in a shaft of light in the process. Remember he takes the shortest path to you... if you turn immediate after going over a slick, he's not going to hit it! He follows you in a line. If you've ever gone water skiing... think of it like that: he's tethered to you with a line at that point.
   
4. The 10 stacks of pyrite from your demolishers are your best source of damage, keep them fueled and up at all costs. There are a couple of tricks to do this, since you'll lose one gunner by launching them up top (on 10 man, and which you should still do!). You can run with one less motorbike (or even less a siege gunner), and have them hop into the demo gunner spot after launch. Or, you can have the driver swap spots in the vehicle after parking it near pyrite to pick it up. Both strategies have their obvious risks. We haven't really tried either of these yet, but there is a handy macro for switch your seat: /script VehicleNextSeat().
   
5. If you're leaving the Frost Tower up, recall that a shot from the gunner will break the ice tomb if you mess up and get iced.
6. Use your speed boosts and shields! Gunners can't be asleep at the wheel here. If you're cornered, remember you CAN go THROUGH him. Hit your speed burst and get to the other side.
   
7. Get yourself ready to run BEFORE he chooses you. If you're using a DBM-like addon, you'll know when he's about to change targets. Anticipate he's going to choose you and give yourself a few seconds head start. Get yourself pointed and positioned. If he doesn't end up coming after you, you can always return to what you were doing. This especially important if you're already close to him (Siege Drivers), as he'll flip pretty quick and then you'll take some ram damage... no bueno! This is a bigger tip for 10 man (where it's more likely he'll choose you), but good to keep in mind for everyone.
   
8. If you're on a motorbike: don't leave your paratrooper hanging. When he goes "offline" drop some oil under him, then spend your time finding your brave extravehicular group mate. Nothing sucks more than getting cut down by artillery fire as you're hoofing it back towards the demo that's three leagues away.
   
9. If you're a demo driver: pause a moment when the bike drops off your brave gunner. If something sucks more that #8, it's when you get dropped off and have your demo driver pull away from you and you get shelled trying to run him down while furiously clicking on your screen. Dying at the wheel of your vehicle is just cruel. (Edit: you should be able to go straight from the bike to the demolisher by clicking the arrow. I supposed I'd just always assumed that wouldn't work...)
   
10. If you're a siege gunner, use the shield when he's about to ram you. Don't freak out and use it when he targets you but is still 10 yards away. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a shield wasted because the gunner apparently doesn't watch the screen. The only time this should be right away is if your driver didn't follow tip number 7.

And that's my top ten. I can't think of any more right now, but I'm sure there are plenty. Feel free to add to this in comments. Also, in theory it's great to have a kite path. If you can keep him on one axis (preferably between two corners), you can drop oil a lot easier. However, this is a lot harder to achieve in practice than it is to write on paper. The oil slickers really just need to pay attention to who he's following and keep the tether analogy from tip 3 in mind. Tip 7 is essential if you want to keep him on a kite path.

Have fun with this too. Hard modes have been a great thing for our alliance. We're not achievement chasers, but I have seen marked improvement in players by attempting hard modes. It's amazing how much smoother the "easy" modes go when you spend a few wipes on a hard mode before switching. I think players like the challenge, as long as you don't waste too much time banging your head against a wall. It's been great to switch it up a couple short nights a week with a hard mode try. Then, if you win when you don't expect to, that's a great feeling for everyone.

(Special thanks to our Alliance members Sniffit and Hopbounce who discussed this fight with me at some length last night and unknowingly contributed to my posting material)

The WoW Killer

There seems to be a lot of unrest going around the WoW community right now. Perhaps it's just some pre-patch blues, but I think there's more to it than that. I feel like a lot of the player WoW player base are ready for a new challenge, and, lets face it, WoW is an old game. Blizz can tweak classes and other things all they want, but the bottom line is that, as a community, we've pretty much figured out their game. I mean, after every patch it takes what, a week, for new strategies to be posted and new rotations to be ironed out. (Maybe less with the number of people getting in on the PTR and such).

The time is ripe for the fabled "WoW Killer". It's been talked about for years now... what game is going to come along and dethrone WoW from it's dominating perch atop the MMO genre? Several have tried, none have really succeeded.

Now, before y'all go fatalistic on me, I want to point out three common misconceptions about what may or may not happen at the end of the WoW era, and what we really should expect to see:

A mass exodus of players will occur.
People seem to expect that some new game is going to pop up, and then all 11-12 million WoW players are just going to migrate en masse to this new game. I have news for you: not gonna happen. That's just not how people work. We gravitated to WoW over time because it had something for everyone. 11 million people didn't just wake up one morning and say: "hey, I think I'd like to integrate an MMO into my life and this WoW just came out..."

It's far more likely that we've all learned something over the years about what we enjoy in an MMO. A lot of people were introduced to MMO's through WoW. Therefore, before people are willing to jump ship on what, for many, is the only MMO world they've ever known, they're going to want to make damn sure their needs are covered by the new game. 11 million people just aren't going to jump ship and go to some new, shiny, unproven game.

This leads one to believe that it may not be just one "WoW Killer", but dozens of small, collective WoW killers that attract a certain sect of the player base. Thus, it is more likely to happen gradually as new games are introduced. We're not going to go from vibrant community one day to ghost town the next.

Yet, last I checked, WoW subscriptions are still growing. Why is that if there is such unrest in the community? Let's look at misconceptions two and three to shed some light on this.

Due to aforementioned "mass exodus", WoW will die.
There seems to be this common belief that, some day (perhaps sooner rather than later), WoW is going to die. Now, I guess all good things must come to an end at some point, but I think it's a lot further out than fatalists would have you believe. People have invested years of their lives into this game. We're not just going to bail on all that "work" because of some unfavorable changes or whatever.

Besides, many of us have friends that we play with. Don't underestimate the value of relationships on gaming. Whole families play together. You're not just going to ditch your family. I'd argue that the first people to go will be the people with the fewest ties in-game. For the rest of us, leaving WoW would be a big change in our lives, similar to moving to a different location. It would mean starting over on many of the relationships we've worked hard cultivate, and that's not something to be taken lightly.

Notice, I'm focusing on relationships and NOT gear/items. Sure the "things" we've accumulated may have sentimental value and may contribute to hanging on mentality, but I don't think that's the main reason people will stick it out. When it comes down to it, we can weather a lot of crazy Blizz changes if we're stuck here because of our friends and family. If you think about it that way, it's sort of easy to be Blizz since they can really do nothing wrong. You've already hooked the people we care about, nerf us to the ground and we'll stick around if only just to chat. Granted there's a limit to this, but I think its a big reason why we hang around in the face of unfavorable patches.

So, as long as WoW remains a family and friend place, I don't think it will ever really die. People may greatly decrease their play time and pick up other games to explore and get involved in, but until they are able to generate a new circle of trust in the new games, there will always be a reason to come back to WoW, even if you're just stopping by. Realistically, to re-create these circles of trust, it'll probably take a year or two. That's a year or two where 11 million people are playing WoW AND another game. It's not one or the other, and Blizz is sort of facilitating this by making things more "casual".

And since we've said that everyone isn't just going to up and leave at once, we're looking at at least a few more years of a healthy WoW community. It may fade, but it's going to be over the course of years, not days or even months. Which brings us to misconception 3...

The "new WoW" will be WoW-like.
I'm not talking about game mechanics here. I think people generally agree that any WoW-killer would have to bring something special to the table. I'm talking about the feeling of community, the craze, the newness of it all. This sort of goes back to misconceptions #1 and #2. It seems to me like people assume everyone is going to move to some new game leaving WoW playerless, and set up shop in this new game as if nothing ever happened.

It may be that this sort of community and world-wide appeal is a one time thing. Perhaps we'll all go our separate ways, finding games that do what we've enjoyed in the game well. All the PvP folks will go to one game, while the raiders go to another, while the explorers go to yet a third. It's so rare to have a game where so many different kinds of players and meet in one world, why do we assume it even IS going to happen again? Isn't it just as likely that we just find games that cater to us better as individuals or groups, and that those might be different games?

There are so many different types of communities out there, who's to say it's all going to happen in this way again? Well, it's not. Things very rarely work like that. We can never unlearn what we've learned with WoW as individuals, groups, and gamers. Why would we even want to? Therefore, whatever we build next will start a lot further down the road than we did with WoW. Sure, there will be new trails to blaze, but they're going to be different.

Let's wrap this up...
Okay, so I've babbled enough today, trying to quell the feeling of unrest that's in me. Writing is a cathartic process, right, but what is the point in sharing it? Well, I'm hoping that we stop looking for "the end" as a community. Stop looking at things in black and white, and start seeing that we'll be just fine in shades of gray. WoW isn't just going to up and end, surprising us all and leaving us lonely and empty feeling. On the other hand, we don't have to force ourselves to do things that we don't enjoy just to "keep it alive". People are going to come and go as situations change. The game is evolving, not dying, and even if it was, it wouldn't overnight.

We need to be flexible with it, and not so fatalistic. Patches aren't the end of the world... of warcraft. They're just different. Don't be afraid to try other games, it doesn't mean you have to choose one or the other. Focus on your relationships and get back to basics. Take breaks. But most of all... stop bitching! Stop trying to force WoW into your square box of understanding. Change is scary, but lets try to discuss this constructively as a community and take the good with the bad in stride. All this fatalistic crap is getting on my nerves and sucking the fun out of it. :-(

(Aside: Personally, I'm focusing on getting married... less than a month to go. Plus I play a bit of EvE and I'm looking forward to Aion as described by Samoden and the new Star Wars MMO that's in the works. I've been getting outside and playing some sports, plus football season is coming up, so coaching responsibilities are cropping up. I should probably pick up a console game some time soon too or my thumbs will begin to get jealous of my other fingers. There's plenty to do!)

Unusual Activity & the Frozen Reject: Fuubaar's Guide to the Fiery Festivities

Hey Gang!

How's it going?

....

Ow that bad huh? Well, I'm sorry to hear that :(

Anyways... *cough

Midsummer Bonfire Bonanza is here! Bust out your Marshmallows & Smash some horde! If you're like me, you're most likely already finished "Honoring your Flames" & "Desecrated" (urinated freely) on Horde Fires. If you haven't, on J-Bizzle's blog, she talks about the new thing that Blizz is doing to Hot fix the shenanigans from last year.

Are we noticing a trend here? Has there yet to be a holiday that they didn't royally screw up? GG Blizz HIGH FIVE! Up high! Down low. Too slow....

On a better note, if you haven't done the chain quest that starts in your Major cities, it's mighty fun :D The beginning quest is called "Unusual Activity". They give you a totem (or Tawtum if you will) and you must fly out to Ashenvale to place this item in the Naga Camp to the north-west. Zoham or what ever the name is. Once up there, you will see a slew of people that aren't normally there. Humanoids & Tauren around lvl 25ish to thwart your plans. You must kill these humanoids & Tauren for a drop. Once you have received this drop, place your totem near one of the fires. It will summon a cute little Spirit Wolf (very similar to the Child in Children's Week) & you can turn in your item for the next quest.

Once you accept this next quest, the cutesy little wolfy will give you an item to use to disguise you from the Evil Humanoids & Tauren to spy. What is the most nonchalant looking critter to spy on evil-doers? HA! A Crab! That can hop :) Turn yourself into the crustacean & head north along the coast. You will see some odd groupings of people so you sit in the middle & listen to their conversation.

"Tom, why is this stupid Crab sitting here smiling at us and hopping?"
"I'm not sure Bill, but lets keep talking about our Evil Plans."
"Ok Tom"

Back to live action!

So, you've completed your task as a crustacean and now you need to call that cutesy little wolfy back to turn in your quest. Once you have done so, you can go back to the nearest (or the furthest if you so choose) Major City to turn in this quest & pick up that last quests.

This next part is adjusted by your current lvl. As a lvl 65 (I'm not sure where the cut offs where but my little pally friend was a 65 & he got this quest so yeah... wanna fight about it?) you receive two quests. As a lvl 80, you only receive one. The lower lvl quest takes you to the Dark Portal in Hellfire to summon a Rock Man. He's soloable at 65.

The main event quest takes you into the Depths of Slave Pens in Zangermarsh. Once you dive in to the tube & come out the other side, Slave Pens is the instance all the way to the Left. You'll know right away if you're in the correct instance if you walk in & see a lady Tauren with Totems around her with a big "?" on her head. Accept the next quest, and work your way down the tunnel. Kill the lobster trio & bring butter dipping sauce. Great appetizer before the big fight :D

Once you exit the tunnel, you will see another Tauren. Make sure to clear out at least the front part of this room because you will need the space for the fight. Accept this quest & buff up. Now, I knew that this guy was a lvl 70 elite so I didn't think anything of it but I wanted to be sure so I slipped on my Full tanking gear & half heartedly buffed up. I brought a lvl 65 Paladin & a lvl 80 Ulduar ready MM Hunter with me. I was thinking that this was going to be a short fight with some lootz at the end. Funny jokes on me...

This was how our fight went:

Once our little group was ready, our Hunter clicked on the big Crystal off to the left. It started some crazy streams flowing into the center crystal. I was thinking to myself, LOL cute it's trying to get pissed. I told our little pally to stand back because I knew that there were adds. Our hunter sent his pet in (poor poor Mefesto didn't even see it coming) and died on the floor. Elemental Adds spawned out of the Bosses body in pairs & in groups of threes. I rounded them up while the Hunter unloaded on the boss. The boss is stationary so our little hunter had fun. This was where things got a little interesting. Random spikes will shoot from the ground & throw you into the air (just like Anub'rekahn) and give everyone Falling Damage. I ran OOM pretty quickly from Consecrate & trying to DPS the adds down. After this first phase, the Boss stops spawning adds & goes into a Defensive Phase where he just sits there. This is a great time to heal up and try to get some mana back. The hunter whaled on the boss until it came out of the Defensive phase and started spawning adds & spiking us. Slowly our health had depleted & I had squeaked all of the mana I could out of cool downs. I stopped attacking & Started healing the hunter for what I had left in me because I knew that he could down him. The Boss went into his Defensive phase once more so I pulled out the ol' trusty band aids & started going to town on both of us.

Then, our little Achievement popped into our windows! HURAA! We got it. I was dying laughing from how exciting it actually was. We had almost died quite a few times but we pulled through. A chest was left from the dead boss (just like Four Horsemen in Naxx) and you get some mad lootz (for a lvl 70) and Shard for the quest.

Turn around & that little good for nothing Tauren stands there. Lazy bum... I WAS DYING & you could have at least spot healed you crazy cow! If NPC's could laugh at you, this lady would have been rolling on the ground. She accepts our Shard for 20 Blossoms & a Tabard of your choice! I got the Blue one because it matches my plate :)

This Concludes my Guide to the Fiery Festivities. So what should you learn from this encounter of mine? BRING A HEALER!!!!11!!!1!!!

WARNING: If you do though... it's not quite as exciting :WARNING

Affliction Warlock Update And Addon Suggestion

I realize it's been a while since I've talked about anything that's truly afflicted. Between alliance politics and DK PvP'ing, I've pretty much only been raiding on my 'lock. I've been doing a lot of raiding, but there hasn't really been anything to report. I'm still using the same specs, glyphs, and rotations that I have bookmarked over there on the right of my page.

A lot of warlocks have switched over to Destro, and for good reason, but that's never been my bag. I'll sometimes swap over to my Demo spec on add wave heavy fights (like Gothik), but even then I miss my affliction. I've gotten a little better at leading off with a life tap to make sure to get that free buff up early, but otherwise just weave it in as needed. I don't play cleanly enough to insert it in at a specific point in the rotation; just have to be flexible with it.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of Ulduar, even though we've started the first few bosses as I evidenced in pictures last week. I can offer one trick for Loot Leviathon: If you're the one being launched up there, pull out your phase-shifted imp before the fight. He won't die when you're doing your superman thing, and he follows you on the ground giving your cyclists a good indication of where you're going to land. Sometimes it's easier to look for the grounded imp than the flying warlock. Hell, you can even mark him. I'm sure he'll love that feeling of importance. Other than that I haven't found anything too tricky yet.

I am playing around with a new warlock-targeted addon called ForteXorcist (or Fortex for short). Lodur over at World of Matticus wrote a post recently about it that brought it to my attention. I figured I'd give it a whirl.

I have to say, there are some really nice features in it. The best is that each feature can be independently disabled and enabled based on what you want. This allows me to slowly work some of the features into my play without overwhelming me right off the bat. It also is nice that I can turn off stuff that is covered by my other warlock addons like Necrosis. I think the most helpful thing it does for me right now is provide a summoning helper that lists all the folks in the raid that aren't near you. This can be useful for warlocks and raid leaders a like.

It also has a fairly easy to use buff/debuff timer that is great to use as a backup to X-perl. I've always like the large, number inscribed debuffs that are part of X-perl, but sometimes they seem to wig out and disappear or stack on top of each other, making it really hard to see. The built-in necrosis timer doesn't really work for me either (it always seems slow). Fortex's timer is pretty good. I'm also finding it helpful that it shows the duration of my self buffs. This is a great tool for watching your life tap spell power bonus.

The cooldown timer is nice to have as well. I find that I use it on both my DK and my Warlock, and there are some benefits to each. So, if you're looking for another addon to play with, I'd definitely recommend it. It seems highly customizable and helpful for anyone who uses spells with durations or cooldowns (who doesn't?).

That's about it from here. Are there any Warlock issues/questions out there that I'm unaware of at this time? From what I read, the Warlock community seems pretty quiet and content right now. We may get a couple of changes with the new patch, but I'll wait 'till it goes live to speculate, and there will always be a few QQ's. However, as a class on the whole, I think we're pretty solid right now. In any case, Blizz seems to be pretty focused elsewhere.