The Retributer's Path

Enter World

2009-09-19T16:06:00.002+02:00

Vaadren has a new home. It's called Enter World.

And you're all invited to visit me there.

The Retributer’s Path is a mainly Retribution Paladin themed weblog, talking about my personal experiences while playing one. Recent developments and an overall change in writing style led me to the decision to start over with something brand-new. Enter World is exactly this, and I hope it'll turn out to be as big a success (or even bigger) as this blog.

See you on the flip side.

Calm Before The Storm

2009-09-06T12:39:00.003+02:00

Many may have given up on this blog, with its average of 1 post a month lately.

My personal life is changing. My in-game life is changing. The blogging me is changing. I've decided to kick back a notch and ride it all out before committing myself to frequent writing again.

As soon as the fresh start will be made, you'll see this blog pop up in your blogroll again. Until then, I'll see you in-game.

Back From Gone - Sunny In Sunwell

2009-08-03T00:33:00.003+02:00

Good things are never meant to last, and neither was this. Unfortunately for me, my vacation is over and I'm back home. Ontario has been very nice to us (the weather a bit less so, but still very enjoyable) and me and my family can look back on a very successful getaway. Visiting Toronto and Ottawa, White water rafting, camping in Algonquin National Park, visiting Niagara Falls (of course), etc. We packed our trip with lots of activities, and it was great fun.

With my sister off to university in a few weeks, and me doing God knows what, this could very well have been our last summer vacation together. I'm glad we could "go out with a bang".

Back from gone though, and for almost a week already. Naturally I've been spreading the love in Azeroth again, and I immediately decided to sign up for some raids. It's really been a while since I'd been in Ulduar, and with my friends on vacation now I might actually have time for it...

Sunday night we went retro-raiding, and headed for the Isle of Quel-Danas. Naturally the trash went down really quick, and in no time at all we were at Kalecgos and Brutallus, who met their demise in a rapid tempo. The dragon Felmyst proves quite a bit harder, as it was hard to pinpoint exactly where she'd fly off to and spread her deadly toxic gas. As people started to get online we got a bit more DPS in (note: we had maybe 16 raiders in Sunwell before that time) and we got her down.... technically. She was stuck at 1 hp because she was airborne, and we had to ride out the entire air phase before she could be killed. It was manic, but a lot of fun when we finally got her. Smooth sailing from there on. The Eredar Twins proved a bit of a nuisance, but M'uru was down before we knew it.

Kil'Jaeden left.

I remembered the chamber from when I once got in on another guilds raid save. I remembered a few of us running into the Sunwell room, bubbling and attacking whatever we could. We got molested, of course, but now we were 10 levels higher, much stronger and ready for revenge.

Oh, we got it. It was one amazing fight, watching Kil'Jaeden pop up was incredible on it's own. The absolute top had to be the event at the end, with Velen and Lady Liandrin. The Sunwell exploded back to life, and it was a magnificent sight.

I always knew that Sunwell Plateau was very important to Blood Elves lore-wise, and I'm glad I got to witness it. The role-player in me got his feast.

I also went into Ulduar again, on saturday. Our follow-up is on tuesday, so I'll make a full report on the entire run afterwards.

Aloha!

2009-07-04T16:50:00.012+02:00

Today's been a day mostly filled with getting stuff together, packing suitcases and generally stressing out trying to get everything sorted. Well, not for me, for my mother actually. I'm not that susceptible to stress, so even though I'm getting everything sorted for tomorrow, it's all been very laid-back so far.

Yep, tomorrow morning I'll be leaving for Canada. I'll be making a tour through Ontario, visiting places like Toronto and Ottawa, going river rafting and going on a multi-day wilderness trip in Algonquin Nat. Park.

It'll be a blast, no doubt.

July 27 marks my return flight, so arrival will undoubtedly be a day later. See you all then.

Until then I wish everyone lots of fun, good raiding, and a nice vacation yourselves!

Enjoy the peace and quiet without this crazy Paladin!

Flame On!

2009-06-24T01:05:00.004+02:00

Summertime is just 'round the corner again, and it's reflected in everything around us. The temperature is rising, the sun is shining bright and the amount of outdoor activities increase.

In World of Warcraft, this mainly means one thing: Midsummer!

The fires have appeared again all over Azeroth and Outland, and Ahune is in the Slave Pens once again. Everyone's running around, juggling torches or dancing around the Midsummer Poles, and it's great. Midsummer has always been my favorite festival, and I'm excited now that it's here again. I spent the better part of the evening visiting every single fire, either to extinguish or honor it, and smacked Ahune for good measure.

Result: the Flame Keeper title is mine! The one thing I've been wanting out of the achievement system ever since it was introduced, so naturally I spent some time and made an effort to get it. There's still plenty of days left, but with my current busy schedule I figured it'd be better to have it sooner than later. I got the pet today as well, and I'm 80 flowers short of the brazier, so I should be able to get that as well this year.

As an advanced warning, I'd like to say that July 5 - July 27 will be scheduled radio silence due to vacation. I'll be terrorizing Ontario, Canada in that time, and thus unable to play WoW or post anything here. I might be able to check in once or so with my Nintendo DS (gotta love the browser on there), but I'm not planning on writing entire essays on that thing.

Keep the fire alive!

WoW vs Real Life: Combining Fact With Fiction

2009-06-01T15:22:00.000+02:00

“It’s only a game.” Many a discussion (and blogpost) has started with this phrase. While this is essentially true, it’s not “only” a game for everyone. The difference lies in priorities.

Samsara has always held on to the phrase “Real life goes before WoW”. It reflects in every aspect of what we do as a guild: from questing to instances, from social get-togethers to raiding. This is mainly because of our player demographic, consisting of a lot of parents who need to keep an eye on their children, or people who may get urgent calls for whatever other reason. These people can’t put their life on hold during a raid, so if the kids wake up crying while mommy is smacking Razuvious around the room, then Razuvious will have to wait.

Yes, it can be disappointing if you have to stop a raid this way. Because someone has to drop out in this way and there’s no replacement available. Does it matter? No, not so much. Everyone in Samsara knows that this can happen, and has accepted it as a fact. More hardcore guilds might argue that such behavior is detrimental to the overall progress of a guild. They might be right, and I fully understand their point of view, but they are clearly a different type of guild with different values. They put World of Warcraft on a higher priority than Samsara, obviously. And that’s fine, because last time I checked everyone was still free to play the game however they want to.

Is there a place where we have to draw the line though?

One of the longest lasting debates in video game history ever is the question whether or not they are addicting, and how to “control” that. I’ve always been of opinion that the video game itself is never to blame, but the person in question. Addiction is a “state of mind”, crudely worded. The video games are merely the medium, and if you’d take that medium away another would take its place. And because most people who jump on the “OMG video games are bad” bandwagon are scared and uninformed, you get silly things like video game bans and lawsuits against developer companies.

However, putting the bad solutions aside, it can’t be denied that there are people who take it too far. And perhaps you know someone in your environment that you think plays a bit too much. Is this merely because you have different views of how to play the game, or can you really call it an addiction?

In my group of friends, World of Warcraft has developed a bad name. It started with one of my friends, who was completely dragged into the game. Before long, we never saw him again. He stopped showing up at our weekly Magic night, and turned down almost every invitation for a social event that came his way. This lasted for about a year or so, until he “came back to us”. He stopped playing, and got back into the social scene with his friends and family.

Then, a while later, another friend of mine became hooked as well. This was different however. He didn’t go into seclusion, but did show up a lot less. Whenever he was around, WoW would be his main subject, even though no one else played. He’d turn down social events because he was raiding, and in one case he even invited us over to watch a movie, but went into SSC himself, leaving us alone with the movie while he was on his way to Vashj. The ending to this story is the same as the first, thankfully, but does leave you thinking.

It’s up to you to decide which of these two stories you think is worse. For me, a lot of the details regarding their current affairs, situations and feelings became clear some time after the events, and has led me to believe that the first was unavoidable, whereas the second was not. Had WoW not come along, the person in the first story would have gone into seclusion anyway, but with something else. Person two mostly just got his priorities mixed up.

Defining these priorities is very hard, however. If you want to draw a line, you’ll find it becomes more of a grey zone. Will you turn down an impulsive invitation for a drink at the pub for a raid that’s been confirmed for five days? Real life goes before WoW, doesn’t it?

My group of friends has a lot of impulsive get-togethers. Movie here, grabbing a drink there, there’s always something going on and you never know until a few hours in advance. For me, if there’s a raid planned and I’m attending, I’ll kindly turn down the invitation and tell them I have other plans. I only raid 2-3 days a week (assuming I’m picked every single week and/or decide to sign up), which leaves plenty of opportunities for something fun in the real world. Also, I’ve designated Friday as my official WoW-night off, as that’s our weekly Magic night (the only day we actually plan on getting together). Nothing, not even an Ulduar25 progression raid will make me give that up. And should anything urgent come up, I’ll kindly explain to the raid leader that I won’t be able to attend/continue the raid, quickly find a replacement if time permits, and be off. These are the boundaries I’ve created for myself, the priorities I’ve set.

As with everything, there is no single correct answer. People tend to think in extremes, thinking it’s either one or the other. It’s not. Every situation is different, and it’s up to you to make the right decision.

As long as you stay in touch with what’s important, you will.

Meme: Blast from the Past

2009-05-29T11:45:00.002+02:00

Lance tagged me with an interesting meme. A blast from the past, so to speak. The question is: “What do you remember about being a newbie?” Quite a lot, so let’s get the show on the road…

I started playing WoW from a 10-day free trial disc I had in my Warcraft 3 box. It was European, but I was in the US at the time. Therefore, for the first few months of my WoW career it was always nighttime when I was on.
I used to buy every piece of equipment from vendors. If it had more armor, I’d equip it. I was oblivious to stats, so greens were usually sold.
At some point I wanted to equip a weapon I didn’t have the skill for. I had to go from Darnassus to Stormwind, so I went to Menethil Harbor. However, instead of running through the Wetlands and Loch Modan to take the Deeprun Tram in Ironforge, I decided it was safer to swim along the coast. I swam all the way to Westfall, hugging the high cliffs to prevent getting fatigued.
I already felt noobish by doing that, but to my surprise, I was caught up by a Druid in aquatic form! Apparently there was someone as crazy as me...
My Night Elf newbie (my first char ever) was only level 20 when I got the expansion. As soon as I got it, I started playing Blood Elf and Vaadren was born. Burning Crusade has been a big part of my playing.
Vaadren has always been my main, and always Retribution. I only respecced once for the first year, and only to optimize my DPS spec.
Sword & Board has never interested me. I tried it out for the first few levels, but as soon as I got a badass claymore from one of the early on Blood Elf quests, the sword and shield were discarded.
My first ever instance was Shadowfang Keep. I was asked to tank it, even though I was Ret. I had no idea what a tank was at the time, but did so anyway, and did well. Later on I’d realize it was only because I was a lvl 33 Paladin in a lvl 20-ish instance.
My first guild was called Guardians of Kalimdor, a social guild that just invited everyone who wanted in. I met a lot of good people there, and a fair bit of those people are current guildies even. We really stuck together…
Back then, Paladins still had the old Seal System. 30 second seals that were transferred to the enemy upon judging. A lot more buttons to press.
My primary goal back then was to reach level 40 and get a mount. I never expected to get any further than that. Then, all of a sudden, I was standing in front of the Dark Portal, ready to pass through it. Go figure.
I used to hear my old GoK guildies talk about Karazhan and its attunement. “I’ll never get there.” I thought. A few months later I cleared Karazhan on a weekly basis with Samsara, and we’re up to Ulduar now.
My epic mount took ages. I insisted on getting the Charger, and didn’t want to waste gold on the riding skill if I’d get it along with the Charger anyway. It cost me all my gold and a trip to Stratholme, but I got it in the end. I still see the Charger quest as a “Rite of Passage” for Paladins.
The level cap never changed anything about my noobish actions. Using Seal of Blood on Prince Malchezaar, trying to tank Arcatraz in Ret spec (I thought he meant Auchenai Crypts, but still…), pulling an entire army of ghosts from the Opera stage in Karazhan, the list goes on…

My WoW life has been a long, strange trip on its own. Where’s my Violet Proto Drake?

I won’t tag anyone, it’s up to all of you if you want to pick this up or not. Either post them in a reply, or post the link to your blogpost in a reply. If you do, I’ll be sure to read them.

I can’t wait!

Still Here

2009-05-26T15:27:00.001+02:00

Three weeks without updates, incredible. I do apologize, but what can I say? It’s been slow.

Everything’s still going great on the raiding front. I’ve been into Ulduar twice again, and both times we did quite well. I still haven’t seen Ignus fall, unfortunately, but I’ve seen a few other neat bosses. Flame Leviathan is going smoothly now, to the point where I can navigate through the trash mobs without taking much more than a scratch. Too bad the no repair achievement counts for the entire raid. I might go for a motorcycle next, or perhaps be a passenger. So far I’ve only driven a demolisher, but I like it. Razorscale and XT are going fine, and last week we made our way into the Antechamber.

The Antechamber was a very good experience in my opinion. As I said before, the trash mobs are not to be taken lightly, and I enjoy that. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but during our fight with one of the giants (before the stairs leading up to Kologarn), we lost a few raid members, including healers. The versatility and raiding experience of Samsara really showed there, as the remaining people instantly adjusted their roles to the current situation, taking over healing or adjusting positions. I was impressed and proud of the way we handled it. This was raiding at its best.

With a nice momentum building up, we went for Kologarn. A boss rising up from the depths, who you only get to see him from the waist up. His two arms can be targeted separately, and at least one has to be killed in order to keep him under control. He reminded me of the bosses in those classic Snes RPG’s, and I loved it. The fight itself required a bit of practice, but as soon as we got the right setup and a few practice runs in, he went down nice and clean. We were done for the night at that point, tired but satisfied. We might not have the speed yet to clear Ulduar in one or two nights (as some guilds do), but we’ll get there. And in the meantime, we’ll be having a lot of fun.

A group went into Ulduar again last night, but without me this week. I completely missed the sign-ups, but I would have declined anyway. I’ve had my fun, others can have theirs as well.

My priest is doing fine as well. He’s up to lvl 71, and has enough quests to do. I’m thinking of respeccing to Holy around lvl 75 and start healing instances. It’s ultimately my goal to heal raids with him, so I need to get some practice in. Paladin healing isn’t too hard, as you only have a few healing spells, and it’s quite clear which spell you have to use in what situation. On Myczil I have around 6 healing spells already, and I have no clue when to use what. Good thing we have a Priest class leader. Time to ask him some questions!

By the way Lance, I caught your tag, it'll be up in a day or two.

Moralizing

2009-05-05T13:18:00.001+02:00

Last post was a bit negative. A baby post created in the spur of the moment. And wrong.

I was genuinely worried that the Ulduar Team I was drafted in wouldn’t go beyond Flame Leviathan. I was annoyed at the fact that I would finally be in Ulduar, and then had turn back as soon as we kicked down its front doors. But I should have known better, and (as always) I realize that in hindsight.

Because Ulduar was just amazing, and however far we would have gotten, it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

After a few cancellations, we got some replacements for the raid group, including another healer. We started a bit later than planned, but that couldn’t spoil the fun. I chose to drive a Demolisher, and with a fellow Paladin in the catapult seat, the raid set out for carnage.

Can it even be explained? The fun we had while plowing through the legion of Dark Iron Dwarves, demolishing towers and destroying buildings. It’s hard, but I can tell you that everyone was having the time of their lives.

And then we arrived at Flame Leviathan. Being a Demolisher, I steered clear of the boss and hurled boulders at him from a safe distance. The random pursuit of Leviathan is something I still have to get used to. The first time I got caught off guard, but still managed to stay in front of him. The second time I was very close to him, and got shoved once. I hadn’t gotten my Projectile Pally back yet after hurling him onto Leviathan, so I was without a speed boost. It didn’t matter though, as he went down amazingly fast. It was a great piece of teamwork, and we were proud of ourselves.

With two healers in the group now, we decided to see how far we could go. It would be a shame to stop now! We headed off to XT-002 Deconstructor, the “Yoga Boss”. We set out to clear the trash first, and we were smacked hard on the floor the first time. There’s no underestimating this trash, that’s for sure! After countless Naxx raids, you could say everyone’s become a bit complacent, so it was refreshing to have such a wake-up call. It’s Ulduar saying “get up and pay attention, this ain’t a walk in the park.” We defended our honor the second time around, and got ready for XT.

Upon first aggroing, it quickly became clear why this boss had wiped many a raid group by laughter. Its high-pitched children’s voice is both hilarious and annoying, but XT is nothing like a child. Scrapbots, Boombots, Gravity Bombs, it can become quite a hectic fight if you don’t pay attention. During a ground pound we lost one of our healers, and were forced to wipe at 50%. We adapted, however, and on our second go we paid a bit more attention to the health bars, and we got him down in style. It was an unexpected turn of events for the evening, and we celebrated with loud cheers all over Vent. This was not planned for tonight, but very welcome nonetheless!

With a slight momentum building up, we tried to reach Ignis, but his two Flame Colossi proved a bit tricky. In the end we had to leave them, and we called it a night.

There was a peculiar taste in my mouth afterwards. It made me hungry. Hungry for more.

A good taste.

Demoralizing

2009-05-04T01:35:00.004+02:00

The teams heading into Ulduar on Monday have only just been posted, and already it's demoralizing.

Team One has a well-balanced group setup, and is clearly the progression team. Goal: go in there and get as far as possible, while gaining valuable experience.

Team Two has two tanks, one healer and the rest DPS. Goal: get Flame Leviathan down. No further goals to be achieved, and quite hard anyway with only one healer.

Yes, I'm in Team Two. But taking that out of the equation, having a group with only one boss as a goal is utterly devastating. The message it carries is either "it'll take you all night to down Leviathan" or "you're not supposed to do more at this point". And even if both are false (which it most likely is), it can't be denied that it sucks heavily if you have to leave after just one boss, with the taste for more still fresh in your mouth.

At this rate, I'm starting to hope Ulduar tastes bad.

What do YOU find important?

2009-04-29T02:58:00.002+02:00

A while ago you could read about Samsara’s efforts in Naxx25 with a raiding coalition. In the end it didn’t work out, so 25-mans were out the window for a while. But now we’re back, this time with a full Samsaran force.

However, as we make our first steps into 25-man content, it's become apparent that some aspects of raiding have to be looked at, perhaps even revised. After all, 25-man content is very different from 10-man content, even if the dungeon is the same. Several aspects of raiding are under discussion right now, and it has made me think:

What do I find important in raiding?

Every person is different, and thus everyone has a different view of how things should go and what is important. I’ve always been one of the middle road, seeking balance between both extremes. If I had to classify myself, I’d have to say I’m a fun-seeking progression raider. I want to progress, I want to see new things, I want to beat the bosses. But it’s still a game, not a job. If I can’t have fun, count me out.

Ever since I’ve started raiding, I’ve been aching to see more. I set a personal goal for myself: to be a part of the progression team without sacrificing my life outside WoW. It’s a hard goal to reach, and even harder to maintain.

Keeping that “profile” in mind, I can sum up things that are important to me while raiding.

Professionalism would be the major one. I love a joke as much as the next guy (and more often than not I’m one of the people making them), but when starting a raid I set my mind to the goal at hand: clearing the raid instance, and doing my utmost best as a member of the raid group. Preparation is a big part of that. It’s my belief that, as soon as the raid starts:

- You’ve repaired your gear
- You’ve bought all your buff food, flasks, scrolls, reagents and whatever else you need.
- You’ve read up on boss tactics if you haven’t quite gotten the hang of the fight yet.
- You’ve been around for a few minutes already (if real life allows it, as is not always the case)

Also, during a raid:

- Should the raid wipe, don’t wait for a rez but corpse run if everyone else does as well.
- Let the Raid Leader speak when he’s explaining something, interrupting and/or publicly disagreeing with a Raid Leader is rude and disrespectful.

I’ve seen many of these things happen while raiding, more often than not in PuG raids (why I still bother with them, I sometimes wonder). Of course there’s no pure right or wrong in these things. Warcraft should never become more important than real life, and if real life issues require you to leave mid-raid, then so be it. People might be late because they were held up by something, no problem. And everyone is “guilty” of these things every now and then, including myself. But when you see people consistently showing up un(der)prepared and acting that way during a raid, the will to group up with that person quickly diminishes. I vowed never to become that way myself. I have always played with the goal to be viewed as a respectful, dependable, valuable player and person. This carries on into every aspect of the game, as I’m not only upholding my own reputation as a respected player, but also the reputation of the guild.

As controversial as it is, and perhaps a bit unexpected for the people that know me well, loot is also important. As I said, it’s my goal to be a progression raider, seeing the content that is offered to us. And while experience and class knowledge is a very important factor, you will also need the gear to back it up. I don’t care for gear because I want to be the best of the best, I find it important because I don’t want to fall behind. I want to keep up with my goal, and my fellow guildmates and friends.

The most important factor of all is the fun factor. This game is for relaxation, entertainment. I play it because I want to forget about the worries of the world for a bit and just enjoy myself with my friends online. If at some point any aspect of the game isn’t fun anymore, I’ll stop doing it. I enjoy my fair share of PvP every now and then, although Arena doesn’t interest me at all. Result? I hop into a Battleground once every full moon, and avoid Arena. Same goes for raiding. If it ever loses the fun factor (and I hope with all my heart won’t ever), I’ll stop raiding. As much as I like progression, I equally enjoy the many Naxx10 runs that have gotten me nothing but a great evening with friends. I don't just raid to progress, I raid because I love it. So let me crack my jokes, as terrible as they might be. Because if I can’t have a good time with my friends while raiding, I might as well call it quits.

As hard or elaborate as the answer might be, it’s always a good idea to ask yourself the question:

What do you find important?

New Day, New World

2009-04-20T01:06:00.001+02:00

Patch 3.1 has hit, and everyone’s busy getting used to all the changes. Dual Specs, the Argent Tournament, revised talents and of course Ulduar, it’s been one helluva patch. In the past half week I’ve been quite busy myself.

I managed to get a working spec together. Honestly, as long as you have the “core talents” there’s no way you can go wrong, but even after my first spec I felt like it needed some changes. Those are done now, and it’s working like a charm. I chose a 0/13/58 spec, taking a few slightly PvP talents, since I do go in there every now and then. I was a bit skeptical about Divine Sacrifice, but Josh from Eye For An Eye made some good points about the spell. And after trying it, I do agree that it has its uses, so thank you Josh.

I also activated my Dual Spec, since I have ambitions in healing as well. I have to say that it’s really easy to switch back and forth between specs, increasing my flexibility and sense of freedom. I’m no longer stuck in one spec. However, I think the freedom has gone a bit overboard. I was a supporter of the idea or needing a Lexicon of Power to be able to change your spec (or your class trainer, that makes sense too). However, they took that out and just made it possible to “respec” everywhere you want, with certain minor restrictions (during combat, battlegrounds, arena). I can DPS one boss, and heal the second, and all I need to do is click one button. I don’t know, it seems…… too easy. Still, I’m enjoying my healing escapades every now and then, and I sincerely hope my guildies do as well. I have the gear, but the experience is a bit of a learning curve...

And of course I’ve taken a gander over at the Argent Tournament. It reminds me of the Isle of Quel’danas, as a place with all kinds of daily quests. It’s a good money maker, and I’m diligently doing them every day. The mounted combat has been done very well, and there’s some nice rewards to be had from the vendors all around. The Coliseum is still under construction, so I’m excited to see how this will unfold.

And tomorrow (Monday), Samsara is taking its first steps into Ulduar! We’re taking the 10 finest people into Ulduar for the all-important experience. It’ll undoubtedly be a wipe-fest, getting to learn all the fights, but all in the name of progress! The team is not entirely clear yet, so we’ll have to see tomorrow. Fingers crossed for a spot!

Priestly Progress

2009-04-13T21:41:00.004+02:00

Look at this.

I’ve been faithfully leveling my Priest Myczil again, after what you could call an alt hiatus, and the result is starting to show. Level 65 with only Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh done (although Armory isn't showing the last few levels at the time of this blogpost). I know I’ve still got a long way to go, but I like my overall progress.

Quite honestly, it’s hard for me to focus on an alt. The level ranges that just take forever, the utterly annoying quests that you are faced with again, the overall squishiness that you suddenly have again, it’s too easy for me to just give it up and go do a heroic on my Paladin.

But I stuck to it this time and got him up there. After clearing most of Hellfire and Zangarmarsh I went to Nagrand and picked up most of the quests there. I’m torn, however. I loved questing the first time around, and I love the zone in general, as I’ve mentioned earlier. However, I just can’t bring myself to doing it again. Of course I also quested there on my Alliance Death Knight, which might explain the reluctance to go there again.

I think Terokkar Forest is a better choice, and it should get me another level or two. By then I can either go for Nagrand anyway or move on to the higher zones.

Either way, I’m definitely staying in Outland until I hit 70. I don’t want to waste half of the Howling Fjord quests on the 68-70 mark, I’m planning on taking full advantage of the nice exp that Northrend gives.

I have no schedule for him, no planned date on when he should hit 80. I’ll just see where it goes, and get there eventually.

Sometime this year would be nice.

Shared Topic - Does Your Toon Have A Soul?

2009-04-11T17:00:00.001+02:00

Over at Blog Azeroth there’s a thing called the Shared Topic. A helpful tool for bloggers who are having trouble finding something to write about. Each week, it gives you a specific topic to write about, in the form of a question. More often than not, these topics are pretty cool, making you view your game from a new perspective. Therefore, I’ve decided to follow these Shared Topics for a while. This week’s question: Does your toon have a soul?

“Even if you’re not a role-player, you may have noticed your toons having their own personalities and preferences. Has any of your toons developed their own personality?”

As I play on a Normal PvE server, I don’t experience much of role-playing while running about. There’s the usual people with stupid names, Chuck Norris jokes and guild names (or rather sentences) that make you /facepalm, and in such a degree that you’ll never find on an RP server. I was pleasantly surprised at the general atmosphere when I visited Steamwheedle Cartel EU. RPing conversations between players, people walking around in matching gear sets, not something I see on a daily basis. But constant role-playing isn’t my cup of tea, so I know I’d be happier on Lightbringer EU at the end of the day. However, as I still enjoy my fair share of role-playing every now and then, and that shows in the background I give to each of my serious characters.

The serious characters being Vaadren and Myczil.

I’ve recently discovered that Vaadren and Myczil are, in fact, brothers. Both Blood Elves, Myczil was the older brother, looking after his baby brother Vaadren. Myczil quickly learned the ways of the Holy Priest, and set out into the world to help others. However, he fell to the Scourge and was buried in Tirisfal Glades as a Nameless Hero of the Horde. Shocked by the news, Vaadren mourned the death of his big brother, and vowed to avenge his death. He devoted his life to the Light, but as a powerful Paladin instead of a Priest. When he was old enough, Vaadren ventured out into the world, following his brothers footsteps. He exacted Holy Retribution upon many Scourge, fighting for the Horde, his brothers memory and a bit of revenge. Years later, Myczil was revived by the followers of Sylvanas, and joined the ranks of the Forsaken. Remembering nothing but his name, he continued to follow the ways of the Priest, but found new power in Shadow. However, as time passes, Myczils memory is slowly returning, and who knows: perhaps someday, the brothers will fight alongside each other again.

As for personal traits, the two are quite different. Despite the many comments flying around, Vaadren is, in fact, not a stereotypical “gay Belf”. He doesn’t spend hours in front of the mirror, enemies won’t go easy on you just because you look good. Gear doesn’t have to match, as long as it does what it’s supposed to do. He does, however, have a phobia for small and mid-length cloaks, and refuses to wear them, even if it’s an upgrade stat-wise. He’s not a merciless fighter though, he’s made lots of friends in his current guild, and gladly jumps in to help them in times of need. He’s also a bit of a flirt, running around Northrend bare-chested and dancing with the pretty girls while yelling “Hey baby, your guild or mine?”. These actions have gotten him into a slightly questionable love triangle with two female Tauren of the guild, and he now bears the nickname “Moo loving tart” as a result. Oh, and he’ll smack anyone who says that hawkstriders are chickens.

Myczil, on the other hand, is more of a loner. He mostly rolls on his own, and will party only when necessary. Furthermore, he hates his boney legs, and will do anything to cover them up. That’s why he spends most of his time in shadowform, hiding his features in shadows. However, that’s not always enough, so he’s on a constant quest for robes that will cover his legs. He hates vestments and tunics, but he’ll wear them if necessary. Just as long as there’s something better on the horizon… He also abuses Mind Vision like no tomorrow.

Join in on the Shared Topics, they’re fun!

Taking A Look Around: Burning Crusade

2009-04-08T22:12:00.005+02:00

Nope, not Outland. Burning Crusade. I decided to divide the posts by expansion, so here’s the Burning Crusade post.

Who didn’t get the wow-factor when stepping through the Dark Portal for the first time? It’s a decent size already in the Blasted Lands, but in Hellfire it’s just HUGE! Maybe not the prettiest sight, but awe-inspiring nonetheless.

Without a doubt my favorite zone in all of Outland. The fresh colors, flying plateaus, many waterfalls make it the only place in Outland that actually looks peaceful. It was definitely a welcome change from the hostile environments I was questing in before Nagrand.

I love the Blood Elf architecture, and Eversong Woods was a very enjoyable starting zone in my opinion. A zone in the same style, completely attuned to level 70 players and with a cool faction (with equal awesome tabard) really made it for me. I grinded all the way up to exalted, spending hours and hours on the many dailies to get there. The only thing I haven’t experienced yet is Sunwell, but I’m determined to clear that place someday. I just have to!

And again, let me know your favorite places brought to you by The Burning Crusade!

Northrend’s pretty places will be featured next time, in the final chapter of “Taking a look around”.

Personal Projects

2009-04-07T12:08:00.002+02:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been out of commission for the past few days, unable to post. I’m back though, so let’s get cracking!

Recently, I introduced an initiative from all our Deathbringers (read: Officer’s pets) into the guild. This initiative, called “Deathbringers will help YOU into raids!”, basically consists of us Deathbringers to help fresh 80s gear up and get ready for Naxx. 10-man content is cool, but quite frankly also getting boring. And with Ulduar around the corner, getting a 25-man team ready is important for our progress as a guild. So we’ve been helping guildies run heroics and get their gear together, and a few of them are already raiding Naxx with success, so it’s definitely paying off.

I’ve taken on my own personal project, so to speak. My Hunter-turned-Pally friend (whom I shall name Cara, as I have a feeling this won’t be the last time she’ll pop up in my posts) introduced a friend of hers to WoW a while back, and the poor guy has been hooked ever since. After starting a Warlock, he quickly decided that necromantic spellcaster wasn’t what he wanted his business card to show, and he switched to Death Knight as soon as he hit 55. It’s been his main ever since, and he recently dinged to 80! It has always been his intent to tank, so while leveling up we’ve let him tank some normal instances. So now, at level 80, he’s getting used to keeping aggro, marking mobs, boss strategies and whatnot. And seeing as he’s become such a good friend, I really want to see him succeed and successfully tank Naxxramas (honestly, I’d love to be there for his first time). And so we’re getting him through high-end normals, and pretty soon also heroics, for the necessary gear upgrades and all-important experience.

It also shows that it doesn’t matter where you go, as long as you bring some good company. I’m done with normals on Vaadren, and there are some heroics that I’ve seen too often as well, but good company plus Ventrilo always equals good times, even if you add bothersome instance into the equation.

On another note, the poll has ended, and here are the results:

Question: Which layout do you like better?
Answer 1: The old layout was better: 0 votes (0%)
Answer 2: The new layout is better: 8 votes (80%)
Answer 3: They’re both just as good: 2 votes (20%)

Not that I'd immediately change the new layout if you hated it (although it'd make me think about it), but it's cool to know that you like it as much as I do. There’s a new poll up, so ahead and vote again.

The “Taking a look around” post for Outland is almost done, it should be up tomorrow. After that, Northrend of course!

Taking A Look Around: Classic WoW

2009-03-29T03:59:00.009+02:00

The last article was certainly an interesting one. It was a new way of writing for me, the content was heavier and made you think more (I hope). I’ve received some good responses, so I’m glad about that.

As a way to start today’s post, I’d like to quote a comment made by Anonymous: “Sometimes in the heat of Wowing we forget why we rolled Class X and why it stuck on us like it did.” An excellent summary of what I intended to say in that particular post, and I thank you for that, Anonymous. However, it got me thinking, and I came to the conclusion that it was much broader than just that. I dare to say that “sometimes in the heat of Wowing, we forget why we initially fell in love with the game and why it stuck on us like it did.”

Exploration has always been a passion of mine. Even before I reached level 70 in TBC, I went out and explored every part of Azeroth and Outland. It was my goal to have seen the best places the World had to offer, to have filled all the maps. When the achievement system was introduced I pretty much already had the Explorer tabard and title, as I had already seen most places long before that (with the exception of Northrend, of course).

Today, most people run around Azeroth without even glancing at their surroundings anymore. I know, as I find myself doing it as well. And it’s perfectly understandable. All the hours of idling in Dalaran or Shattrath, questing in the starting areas or Hellfire Peninsula, farming the same dungeons over and over, at some point it becomes “been there, seen that”. But when you think about it, it’s a shame. A shame that such beautiful places are taken for granted, because we’ve all seen them 100 times before.

And so, as a tribute to all those beautiful places, I’d like to share with you some of the places that have literally made me “WOW”. Out of my Azeroth collection and in no particular order:

I find the Loch a beautiful zone, and unfortunately I’ve never had the pleasure of questing in it. Its main attraction for me is the Stonewrought Dam though, and not so much the view from below (as depicted on the screenshot), but the view from the top looking down. Needless to say, I bubbled and jumped down.

Maraudon was one of my more recent ventures, and while it’s an extremely long and annoying instance, you can’t deny its beauty. Huge waterfalls, magnificent stone bridges, blooming flowers, and vibrant colors make for an awesome place to be (if only you could say the same about its Princess). Any screenshots taken really don’t do it justice, the only way is to see it for yourself and walk through it.

Maybe a slightly confusing choice, but I have to say that I absolutely love the design of Stranglethorn Vale, and Booty Bay in particular. It’s not just the visuals, it’s the entire feel of it. Out of all my favorite places, Booty Bay is the one place I actually visit regularly. I’ll sit down for some fishing, run around dressed as a pirate, or try to seduce Catelyn the Blade. Without success so far, I should say. I’m missing some important Catelyn/Blackwater Raiders rep.

I visited all those places today, and I enjoyed it very much. It brought back some good memories. My advice to all of you: take the time to visit your favorite places again. And then show me what they are.

Next up: Pretty places in Outland!

Someone Post Meters

2009-03-26T17:37:00.002+01:00

“Someone post meters plz”. I used to cringe whenever I read it. These days, I merely sigh. Not because I hate statistics. I run the Recount addon as well, and check the results after a raid. No, I sigh because I know what's coming. In between all the random chatter, one inevitable sentence stands out:

“I deserve that item, cause I was highest.”

I always pug VoA-25 and OS-25, and I regularly see the aforementioned situation unfold before my very eyes. Sure, you were highest DPS, Mister X. But you also followed Archavon around after his jumps, ending up in his dust cloud. You came dangerously close to the stairs, as well, at some point. And you never even tried to dodge the rock shards targeted at you, even though there were a few other people right on top of you. All in all, you may have done the most damage, but you unnecessarily stressed the rest of the raid in the process. And that’s something the meters won’t tell you.

The upcoming Patch 3.1 is, of course, accompanied by class changes, some more severe than others. And while it’s still under development, “buff X, nerf Y” and comparison topics are popular. The most recent popular one being “Hybrids vs Pures”.

The main point of the debate is whether or not hybrid classes (Shamans, Warriors, Druids, Priests, Death Knights and Paladins) should be able to do just as much DPS as the “pure” classes (Rogues, Hunters, Mages and Warlocks). After all, the Pures can only DPS, whereas Hybrids can respec and perform as another role if DPS isn’t needed. So, in return, because the Pures can only DPS, they should be the best at it.

In one of these Hybrids vs Pures topics on the official forums, Ghostcrawler fought the urge to reply and lost. One of the things he said was this: “We don't think there would be many pure DPS players unless they knew that it was theoretically possible for them to "win the meters." The risk of being useless would be too great.”*

That sentence perfectly states what's important to players these days. Damage meters. I can’t help wondering: is that really what the game is all about, some statistics monitor that keeps track of your damage output? And what if your name doesn’t come up on the top (or below a certain someone who you don’t want to be below), all hell breaks loose? If the answer is yes for you, then please answer the following question: when did you stop loving your class?

Back when I started playing, I rolled a Warrior as my first toon. I leveled him to 20, but during that time I never really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the game, but didn’t like the class. I started experimenting with other classes, and ended up rolling a Paladin. It instantly felt good. The Paladin was the perfect embodiment of the melee fighter with some spellcasting capabilities that I envisioned. The seal system, which gave you a buff when activated, but turned into a debuff when judged onto an enemy, was intriguing and ingenious. It fit my style perfectly, and if anyone would ask me what class I played, I could proudly say “Paladin”. And during my entire playing time, that hasn’t changed.

Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? Do you play a Rogue because you were promised to be the best of the raid, or because of the kick-ass backstabbing, mutilating, shadowstepping sneakyness that your class has? I certainly hope the latter.

There’s too much focus on statistics meters these days. Granted, it’s a nice way to keep track of your performance, and might help you improve your playing style. I even encourage that behavior. But it’s often taken to extremes, becoming “meter madness”. The meters become the only thing that counts, and people feel that they deserve things because of their high DPS.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the flexibility. Stopping a broken loose mob in its tracks before it reaches the healer, interrupting a spell, dispelling a debuff as a DPS. Anything outside your main function that saves the raid from a wipe or brings back order to a chaotic fight is worth more than a high number on the DPS meter. I regularly commend fellow raiders whose on-the-fly acting has saved the day.

Disable that Recount addon for a change. Raid without it, and just focus on completing the task at hand. I’m sure that you’ll enjoy yourself much more.

*Although a very interesting topic, the Hybrids vs. Pure debate isn’t the focus of this post. It might prove interesting enough for a future post, but I’m letting it play out a bit more for now.

Soul Searching

2009-03-24T12:07:00.004+01:00

As a (relatively) new blogger, I am always searching for new ways to improve my blog. The new layout was one of them, and even though it's still not exactly what I want, I find it an improvement. Chances are I'll only be able to get the exact look I want if I start self-hosting, and right now that is not an option, so the next best thing is good enough for now.

The other point of improvement is obvious: content. Right now, most of the content is "I did X, raided Y, achieved Z", which is all good, of course. After all, it's my blog and I talk about whatever I want. But therein lies the trick: even though I enjoy writing about those things, it's not enough. When progress comes to a halt, there's nothing interesting to say. "Well, we cleared Naxx-10....again. Nothing special." That's not fun to say, that's almost like writing for the sake of writing. And as soon as blogging becomes a chore, you should stop. But seriously, I don't want to stop blogging, so the only other option is to expand my horizon.

So, in my search for inspiration, I spent a while reading blogposts and articles on several different blogs. I ended up with a revelation while reading some articles on World of Matticus. Naturally, some piqued my interest more than others. A post about Northrend faction reputation was enjoyable to read, for instance, while a post focused on the usefulness of certain Priest abilities didn't really interest me that much (most likely it'll interest me more as soon as my Priest becomes a more important character).

Then I stumbled upon something that made me sit on the edge of my seat: Matt's view on guilds. A full explanation on how he runs his guild, why he chose that particular path and what he does to make sure he doesn't stray from that path. Over the years I've been second in rank in several guilds, spread out over several MMO's. When I started playing WoW, I decided I didn't need that anymore. I like to have some level of responsibility, but I decided I'd always remain a "care-free member". However, guild mechanics still interest me to this day, and I enjoy observing Samsara as its Officers make decisions, and how its members react to them.

And while reading that, my revelation occurred. I'm a social player. I love raiding, and I wouldn't give that up. I, too, feel the need of progress. But the social aspect of the game intrigues me a lot. How do players act around new members? What happens when a new loot system is introduced? How do people interact with something every guild has: the Guild Joker? Those are the questions I ask myself, and I come up with the answers by my observances.

I found my niche, I think. Instead of just talking about what I do, I should talk about what I see as well. And about what I think of those things. Theorycrafting isn't my thing, nor is talking about upcoming patch info. I'll leave those things to the people who are good at it, and maybe branch out into it myself if I ever feel the need. Like, as often as a solar eclipse.

So that is what's going to happen from now on. It'll take some effort to flip the switch from "I see what's going on" to "I see what's going on, let's write something about it", but that's all part of the learning curve.

The most interesting thing of all? You may think you know yourself in and out, but you can learn something new about yourself every single day.

For lack of anything better

2009-03-23T00:38:00.002+01:00

Some random ramblings to sum up last week:

The raiding coalition didn't work out in the end. I'm not quite sure what went wrong, but it did, and I don't really feel the need to keep asking questions. It's a shame for the 25-mans, since those are out the window again. There's still some 10-man stuff I can get, but most of the upgrades are from 25-mans now. And I like the new challenge of 25-mans, having a bigger raid, stronger bosses, more trash, etc. Of course there's still Sarth as our challenge, which we can still improve to two and three drakes, and Malygos, who we haven't downed yet. But with Ulduar coming, getting ready for 25-mans is becoming increasingly important.

My Priest hit Outlands and is lvl 59 now. Time to charge through that place and into Northrend.

Naxx-10 again yesterday and today. I seem to get picked every week lately (I sign up every week for the lack of better things to do in the weekend), shortage of DPS perhaps? I don't know. The proof is there that we've got Naxx on farm now, with a consistent full clear in two nights each week for the last month or so. It's still fun to do (apart from Construct), and each weeks raid composition makes the raid interesting. This week we had an all-melee group (the ranged couldn't come, and no other ranged were available at the time to replace them), which made fights like Kel'thuzad very interesting. It's that little twist that keeps you sharp, forcing you to adapt to the situation and step out of your routine.

I also went into Molten Core today, for some retro raiding. Unfortunately it wasn't as fun as I'd hoped because of the idiot PuG me and a few guildies were in. Loot whores who were nagging for gear, consistently rolling on gear that wasn't for their class and sulking when they didn't get the T1 that dropped. Seriously, don't say you need it, cause you don't. If you're leveling up, you'll get better gear in no time, and if you're lvl 80 you already have better gear. The classic Tier sets are novelty items now, so treat them as such. Ah well, I got to see Molten Core, kill Ragnaros and get the achievement.

My healing gear is done. Almost all pieces are enchanted, everything is gemmed and the only thing left is experience. I'm eagerly waiting for the dual specs, since it's hard to say goodbye to my DPS spec for long. I know exactly what I'm doing as Ret, and people have come to expect a certain level of performance from me in that role. A big part of me wants to immediately do a good job at healing, but I know that isn't possible. I'll need to dive in and accept the learning curve.

And as a final brain wave, maybe I should start writing some insightful posts to fill the gaps when there's nothing much happening otherwise. I still have that Retribution guide I can post...

Track marbles, track dust bunnies, track...

2009-03-16T00:30:00.004+01:00

Not much under the horizon for the past few days since my last post. Friday is always a non-WoW day for me, and a pleasant day out made today the same.

I did go into Naxx again on saturday, though. And it's going better and better, because we cleared three quarters in one night again. Tuesday's follow-up day as usual, and I have no doubts Kel'Thuzad will die once again.

In other news, I rolled a Hunter. A very good friend / guildie of mine dared me to level a Hunter (more specifically, a TAUREN Hunter), for a reason I can't remember anymore. Maybe cause she's a Hunter-turned-Paladin, and felt like I should do the same. And since I can't say no to her anyway, I rolled that Hunter. I doubt it'll get far, but as long as I'm enjoying the companion of my wolf pet, I'll probably spend some time on him every now and then. And change his name. Molgar of Mulgore, what was I thinking?

By the way, have you ever rolled a Hunter? They have a tracking ability for, like, EVERYTHING. Beasts, okay. I understand that. Humanoids, fair enough. But Demons, Undead (without a handy glyph thankfully), Dragonkin, Elementals, Critters, NPC's, GM's, Enemy Players, Foliage, etc... You get the idea, it's pretty extensive.

Aaaaand, I guess I could talk PTR/3.1/Ulduar/SA loss/talent tree revamp stuff, but I'm not really that kind of guy. I'll gladly answer any questions regarding those matters, maybe even make a post out of it if there's enough questions to fill a post with (then again, that would require readers in the first place to ask those questions), but I don't really want to go really in-depth on it. My short opinion on all this stuff is simple: It's the PTR. I don't believe anything until I'm reading it in the official patch notes on release day.

Now, go out and track some undead. Or wait, SENSE Undead. What are we, Hunters?

It's all fun and games...

2009-03-13T02:24:00.003+01:00

...until someone loses an eye. At least that's what they say. So, was mondays Eye of Eternity fun and games?

Yes it was, but no one lost an eye. It being my first time up against Malygos, the fight was a learning curve. It took a while before we got phase 1 down, positioning right and making sure we all survive the vortex. However, sometimes it ticked for the expected 2000, and sometimes for a "mere" 1400. And as soon as we hit phase 2, the Nexus Lords just hit the crap out of us. It was incredible, the amount of damage we got, even inside the bubbles. It made me think Eye of Eternity was bugged for the night or something. More so because I had trouble seeing (and targeting) people until they moved, and our tank was seeing people up to their waist in the floor. All in all very strange. So, in the end we had to give in and let Malygos life for another night.

The Naxx10 follow-up was on tuesday, and it was a blast! We quickly cleared the Military Quarter, the only one left, and went on to Sapphiron, who we one-shotted without too much trouble. On to Kel'Thuzad! Last time I was in Naxx I got this far, but couldn't get him down. So needless to say, it was time to set things right! We made sure we were fully prepared, and headed in. Phase 1 is always a bore in my opinion, it takes quite long and doesn't get interesting until KT himself joins the fight. The problem of him joining the fight though, is the obvious and inevitable increase in raid damage. It proved too much for us on our first attempt, and the second try as well. On our third attempt we nailed it, and the achievements for downing KT and clearing Naxx filled the screen. That's one more for the record! One step closer to Champion of the Frozen Wastes.

And then Naxx25 the following day, with our raiding coalition! It was very enjoyable running with people I've never raided with before. All good people as well, both in skill and personality. Still, I didn't enjoy myself as much as I'd hoped I would. Maybe it was because we started (and finished) in the Construct Quarter, my least favorite wing. I'd rather see Military or Plague, those are the fun ones. We got to Thaddius and tried him a few times, but it just wasn't meant to be. So we went off to the Military Quarter and tried our hand on Razuvious, but it proved too late already for some people, so we had to call it.

It was 0.20 server time and we were done. Quite honestly, I don't have a problem with finishing early (0.20 is early for me, I'm a real night owl), but you can't combine it with starting late. If you start at 22.00, you can't finish at midnight. I know that we have a lot of people who just can't log on earlier or have to go before it's too late. They have children, they have jobs, they have various other obligations. And I respect that, because we all do. But quite honestly, two hours just isn't enough for a decent raid. Sartharion and Malygos don't need nearly that much time, provided everyone has experience with the fight and you only need two, maybe three attempts. But Naxxramas does. And especially in a 25-man, two hours just isn't going to cut it. Maybe when you've got it on farm, but not in the earliest stages of 25-manning.

Then again, maybe it's just me, and I just have too much time for this stuff.

Ain't that place empty yet?

2009-03-09T01:13:00.003+01:00

Hooray for late night posts, it's becoming standard issue lately.

Lots of Naxxramas! First, a guild run in Naxx10 where we plowed through three wings in one night without wiping. We have Military left to do, and then it's off to Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad! The follow-up is on tuesday, as usual, and I'm very confident we'll clear it.

And remember that Naxx25 from the day before, that I couldn't attend? Their follow-up was tonight, and at some point during the evening they asked me to fill in for a lost DPS. I ended up in the 25-man strong raid group with our raiding coalition guild, and together we went through Construct Quarter. We got as far as Gluth, but too many people called it a night after him, so Thaddius was a no-go. Still, I had a lot of fun and got a taste of how our coalition raids go. I'm definately looking forward to more raids with them.

My Death Knight is also getting a bit of love again, and I'm almost up to the Wrathgate again. It'll be interesting to see the upcoming events from the Alliance perspective. Lore-wise you only get the full information if you play both sides, I've noticed. Things I didn't get to know when playing through Northrend as Vaadren, got explained in detail while questing with Rhyl. Pieces start to fall together, and you really get a view of the whole picture.

Malygos tomorrow, I hope I'm drafted for the team!

What's the deal with friday?

2009-03-06T00:05:00.004+01:00

I'm sure you all noticed the change to the layout. I was in need of something new and fresh, and I quite liked the look of it. I set up a poll to ask you what you think about it, so don't hesitate to voice your opinion.

Nothing much under the horizon WoW-wise, it's like spring break for me or something. The Malygos raid went through on monday, but unfortunately they didn't get her down. Oh well, better luck next time, and more chances for me to join the raid. I'm itching to see some content again.

As far as 25-mans go, we're not up to scratch yet. Lots of people are itching, but it's proving impossible to get 25 people online at the same time for any decent amount of time. So our officers decided to take a different approach on the matter. They contacted another guild we have good connections with, and set up a raiding coalition. Both guilds will provide half of the people needed, and together we'll rock the house. It sounds like an awesome idea, and apart from a few things that'll have to be sorted out really well to prevent discontent (raid leaders, loot rules, etc.), I'm quite sure that this will work out. But with seven days in a week, I do have to ask the question:

Why always on the one night I can't come?

Up the Ladder

2009-03-02T01:41:00.004+01:00

Not much time spent in WoW the last couple of days. This odd thing called "Real Life" took a bit more of my time than anticipated.

One fun thing though: my guild has decided to appoint so-called Class Leaders for each class, mainly so people have a designated person to turn to with questions. I was appointed as the Paladin class leader together with a good Paladin friend of mine. Since he knows a lot about Protection, I about Retribution and us both combined a lot about Holy, this is the perfect combination.

The first assignment was to liven up the class boards on our forum a little, so I spent the better part of today visiting theorycrafting sites, collecting data and combining that data with my own knowledge into a Retribution guide. It was time consuming, yes, but also very fun to do. After typing it all out in Word, it was a good five pages long, and is now on our forum, waiting to be read. I'm still debating whether or not to put it up here.

On another note, Samsara's first Malygos raid is scheduled for tomorrow night. Of course the Sods Law dictates that I have other stuff to do that evening, so I won't be joining them yet again on their first adventures. But hey, there's always next time!

EDIT: Darn it! I had hoped to keep up the thursday-sunday updating schedule, but the newest post registered as monday already!

Tagged

2009-02-26T18:14:00.007+01:00

It's been going 'round and 'round for about a week now I think, the screenshot meme. The digital chain letter for screenshots, with the usual "years of bad luck" threat if you don't pass it on, and so forth. Well, okay, not that. This particular chain letter asks the recipients for the sixth screenshot in their sixth screenshot folder. It kinda reminded me of Iron Maiden's "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son", but that could just be me.

It caught my attention during my regular read up at Banana Shoulders, and quite unexpectedly saw it end up at MY little 'ere blog. Go figure. Anyway, since I only have like three sub-folders in my screenshots folder (all WoW, by the way), I'll just take the sixth one in my main folder:

This one was made not too long ago. Five of us decided to do a bit of retroraiding and went into Karazhan. I ended up tanking in my Ret gear, we had a freshly dinged lvl 80 healer and a Death Knight alt who we "boosted" through. Yes, it was easy, but also very fun. It brought back memories of all the Karazhan raids, and was more a nostalgia run than anything else I like to think. This particular screenshot was taken just after clearing the Chess event, which actually requires some strategy with only half a raid. Challenging but fun!

And one more, see if you can guess where this one was made. Shouldn't be too hard:

Seeing as I haven't manifested myself in the immense blogging community yet(!), I haven't got too many people to pass this on to. I'll forward it to my good friend and guildie Thrashalot and see what he can dig up.

Constructs Deconstructed

2009-02-22T12:23:00.002+01:00

With a full clear of Naxxramas last week, it was up to this weeks teams to keep the momentum. I don't know what the friday team did, but we, the saturday team, did very well last night.

Our raid leader decided to go for the Construct Quarter first instead of Spider Wing, which was a very welcome change. We've been starting on Spider Wing week after week, and by now I've seen all the ins and outs there. If only my upgrades would drop from Faerlina and Maexxna, but that's another story.

Anyway, Construct Quarter. We headed in there, and immediately it seemed apparent that this would be a good night. The trash was falling quicker than usual, so much that a raid member actually SAID it in Vent. A few people jinxed it, hoping that would be the end of it (I knocked it off on my wooden desk as an extra precaution, it's a Dutch thing I think). On to Patchwerk, and we were in business. The standard routine: let tanks take aggro, then go all out and have fun. I devised a way to start nuking early: cast Salvation on yourself, and then Avenging Wrath + nuking. This will prevent overaggroing even in the earliest stages of the fight, since Salvation eats away a significant portion of your threat. It hasn't failed me so far, who knows it might be of some use for you Pallies who read this.

With Patchwerk down we headed for Grobbulus, the real troublemaker of the Quarter. Melee was assigned to the adds, a slightly odd choice if you ask me, but fair enough. Usually, the Grobbulus fight is very hectic, but oddly enough that wasn't the case this time. I got an early nuke off Grobb, and kept switching from him to the slimes from that point on, slipping in an exorcism to the bad boy every now and then. After a bit more than a full circle he went face-down on the floor, and amazingly I was still alive. More amazingly, I was at full health. MORE amazingly, everyone was still alive! Cheers went up to signify a very good fight, from me especially since I've never seen him flat on his face before.

Gluth up next, a completely new fight for me. We went in, had one of our holy paladins kite the zombies around, assisted by the frost traps of our hunter. I was able to focus on Gluth himself, getting a general feel of the fight. The kiter was unable to keep all the adds busy though, and too many were devoured each time. We had to admit defeat, and suited up for another attempt. With a good idea of the fight now, I volunteered to kite the zombies, with the previous kiter free to heal again (and focus a bit on me, lol). It went better this time, but there was still a slight lack of coordination, and the zombies were all over the place and the fight in chaos. At 35% we had to admit defeat once again, but we would not be bested. Third time's a charm, as they say, so we tried again. This time, everything just went perfect. The frost traps were laid down perfectly (kudos to the hunter, it was absolutely spot on), our warlocks voidwalker picked up all the strays and directed them back to me, and I kept running around, keeping them busy. During the feeding round all the zombies were so close together that a massive AoE nuke took them all down at once, and no zombies ever saw the inside of Gluth's maw. He went down without a problem this time, and it was off to Thaddius.

The two pre-bosses at Thaddius went down pretty fast, TOO fast even. One went down way faster than the other, so some of us had to go back to auto-attacks to slow down the DPS and let the other one catch up. With the two down, though, we jumped to Thaddius and started the polarity fight. I stayed back a bit, afraid I might be too close to opposite polarities (being a melee fighter), but Thads hit box was big enough, so it wasn't a problem. With a four stack of polarity damage increase I started nuking Thaddius with all I had, and he went down pretty fast.

Our hunter had to go after Thaddius, but we managed to find a replacement and cleared the Spider Wing after that without any problems. Of course my drops wouldn't show up on the loot table, leaving me to get them yet another week.

Upcoming tuesday will be the follow-up run, with Military Quarter and Plague Quarter yet to go. Both shouldn't be a problem, so I'm hoping to see Sapphiron at least. Fingers crossed!

Sarth1D

2009-02-19T02:21:00.002+01:00

Just a quick post on updates this week so far.

First off, I've been doing all the quests in Northrend and Outland for the Loremaster achievements. Northrend is done, but Outland is bugging me, BEM in particular. I only need one more quest there, and I can't find any more! I even did and redid the Ogri'la quests, which helped a bit, but not enough. There's supposed to be 128 quests in total there, 50 for Horde and 78 for both factions. Give or take a few, of course, but it should be well enough to get the mere 86 quests you need. Ah well, I'll get it sooner or later.

Another thing of this week is OS 10. We got kind of bored with fighting Sartharion on his own, so we decided to leave one drake alive tonight, Tenebron to be exact. Our DPS was well high enough, but it still proved quite a challenge, mainly to get the coordination and tactics right. It took 5-6 tries, but eventually we got the two drakes down, and we left the Obsidian Sanctum with pride. We'll try to keep this momentum going, and eventually leave two drakes a live once we have gotten used to the Sarth1D fight.

There might be a Naxxramas coming up this weekend, but it all depends if I get picked for the team. I'll try to get into Naxx 25 as well, most likely by pugging it. I feel I'm ready for it, but it's hard to get 25 people online at the same time for an extended period of time, so the guild isn't doing 25 man content yet.

Apart from that there's not much to do at the moment. I can level my fishing and cooking (I should, really), I can grind rep and quests for Loremaster / Seeker / 25 Tabards, and I can collect holy gear for the set I'm getting together. But not much on the DPS front. I might just spend a bit more time on my Death Knight again, venture back into the RP server. That's been fun so far, although it takes a bit of adjusting. The atmosphere is slightly different than I'm used to, although it won't be a problem in time. I've also had the pleasure of running into Firelight, and we had a quick chat before he had to go again. I'm looking forward to seeing him around more often, perhaps partying with him on some occasion, although it'd be a while before I'd be ready for any content he's mastering with his guild right now.

Oh well, all in due time!

On Dual Speccing

2009-02-14T12:47:00.004+01:00

A link on the WoW Launcher caught my attention today, posting some conclusive information on the long awaited and long debated Dual Specs. A person named Nethaera managed to get an interview out of Ghostcrawler, where he reveals some interesting things about the upcoming feature.

Some snippets:

Nethaera: What is dual speccing?
Ghostcrawler: Dual speccing is the ability to save two separate talent specs, glyphs, and action bars.

Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.

Nethaera: How do you switch between specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec.

Nethaera: Is there a way for players to choose their talents without them being saved? Currently, once you spend your talent point, it’s spent unless you pay the respec cost again.
Ghostcrawler: With the dual spec feature, we are going to allow players who respec to configure all their talents before they get saved.

[Source: WoW Interview]

Pretty neat. Not only do you have the ability to switch between entire specs, but you can also glyph yourself accordingly, and even the action bars will be saved! And no more planning ahead on your talent tree. Fiddle with it all you like, and as soon as you're happy with the end result, save it and that's your spec.

I can see the Dual Specs opening up a lot of possibilities without unbalancing the game. It has little to no effect on PvP, a spec is a spec after all, and you can't change it mid-battle anyway. PvE can only benefit from it, allowing that DPS to switch to a healing spec because the fight needs an extra healer.

I've been messing around with Holy lately, getting a gear set together in case I might be needed as a healer. As soon as the Dual Specs come out, I might just get Holy as my second spec. What combination would any of you take?

The Fall of Naxxramas

2009-02-12T13:10:00.002+01:00

I wasn't there unfortunately, but that doesn't make the victory less sweet. On tuesday night, 10 February 2009 by Earthen years, Kel'thuzad has been beaten senseless, slapped silly and violated in the pursuit of "phat lewtz". This is the first full clear of Naxxramas for Samsara, so we were all very excited when the achievements sprang up in guild chat. Now, if we can keep this up, we might be ready to move up to the big boys soon!

My love for 25-mans has been rekindled since last sunday, when I joined OS heroic. My last post was about that, but oddly enough the evening didn't end there. Late at night, a won Wintergrasp match led us into heroic VoA, and then split up into two teams for normal VoA afterwards. Archavon is, of course, quite a pushover, assuming everyone follows the basic tactics and stay off the stairs and out of any AoE he does. And most people still run blindly after Archie when he jumps and creates his AoE smoke. Yes folks, it's apparently a very hard fight. I can only imagine how those people will ever do fights like Grobbulus, Anub'Rekahn or, God forbid, Heigan.

Anyway, before I get off track here, we did manage to get him down easily, and one of the drops was this: Valorous Redemption Gauntlets! I rolled, two other pallies in the group rolled less than me. A guildie Paladin and good friend of mine rolled and rolled higher. Earlier in the day, though, we were talking about gear on Vent, and I happened to mention that I really needed some new gloves since mine were still from a Northrend quest reward some time ago. And next thing you know, he shouts "WAIT" to the loot master, and cancels his roll in favor of me. I couldn't thank him enough! Heroic T7! The loot master was unable to loot Archavon, as he was bugged again, but the next day I found it in the mail, and instantly put an extra socket in it, filled the sockets and slapped on the best enchant possible at this point. This one will last for a while!

And the guildie Paladin? I owe his alts a lifetime supply of boosts through TBC instances now...

On tuesday night we had our own Naxxramas follow-up run (a different group than the ones that cleared it that same night), and did pretty well. We left the Four Horsemen on our first night, so we went back to get them down this time. Due to a lack of self-healing capable ranged dps I was nominated to tank one of the ranged Riders in the back. I anticipated this, so I already brought along my (quite decent) healing set and put it on. The switches were a bit messy in the back, as the marks kept stacking at irregular intervals, but me and the Holy Paladin easily outhealed everything Blaumaux and Zeliek could throw at us, and up front everything went smoothly as well. The Riders went down on the first try, with everyone still alive and the spirits high.

After having cleared the Military Wing, it was time for the next one. Lately we've been focusing a lot on Construct, since Grobbulus has been giving us a hard time and we wanted practice. Plague had been greatly ignored lately, though, so me and several others voted to go there. We cleared through the trash and got Noth down easily, as we've grown used to doing. The real challenge was Heigan! Ever since the patch that fixed the "safe corner" we haven't done Heigan, so it was crucial that everyone got the dance down to perfection. It took a few tries, but eventually everyone got a feel for the four lava areas, and at the 6th try we got him down. By then everyone was getting fed up with Heigan, so everyone was overjoyed when he fell face-down on the cold stone. That definitely was the biggest achievement of the night! After Heigan, Loatheb was easy cake, and after a quick detour via Patchwerk we called it a night and a successful raid.

I was pretty pleased with myself that night. I've been carrying a mediocre weapon around for a long time, hoping that Maexxna might drop her Wraith Spear for me, but I haven't had the luck as of yet. I decided it was time for something new though, so I spent the night before farming mats for the Titansteel Destroyer and hogging all the titansteel cooldowns from my guildies. Being the good guys and girls that they all are, they managed to get me enough titansteel to craft the mace just before the Naxx run on tuesday, and the effects were noticeable. 2.8k dps on Loatheb, and at Patchwerk (the "dps check") I got up to 3k dps even. Seeing as I usually hovered around 2k overall dps and 2.4k on the aforementioned bosses, I was pretty pleased to see the significant increase. DPS isn't everything, of course, but it's nice to know that you're not keeping the raid from progressing because you're falling behind. As soon as the Wraith Spear drops from Maexxna in future raids (or, dare I dream, Death's Bite one day...) I'll gladly upgrade again, but until then I'm quite happy with my face smasher.

Besting the Black Dragonflight

2009-02-08T22:13:00.002+01:00

By now a lot of people have already seen, defeated and farmed Sartharion. However, I've never been able to do so because real life interefered with the guilds OS raiding times. I managed to join last night though, and it was fun.

Sarth3D is still a bit ambitious, so we just took the three drakes down and went for Sartharion himself. The fight itself is fairly straightforward, and you only have to watch out for the lava walls that he spawns every now and then. We managed to get him down first try, so with a few more tries we can start upping the stakes and leave one drake alive.

Naxx came after that, where we cleared Spider Wing and Military Wing in one night, all except the Four Horsemen. We started a bit late, so we only managed to get one try before we had to call it for the night. Still, it was a very good run in all, and we had a lot of fun.

After last nights Sartharion, I got invited for a pugged OS heroic tonight, and happily came along. It took a few tries, but we got him down, and again it was very fun. The DPS meter went up, and in the end it stuck at fourth place around 2850, so I was pretty satisfied.

The Naxx follow up is coming up tuesday, so we'll see how that goes. I'm looking forward to it!

Sods Law

2009-02-01T12:55:00.002+01:00

I've been running heroic Drak'Tharon Keep for a while now, hoping to get the Breastplate of Undeath, but I was never lucky.

Yesterday morning I had finally saved up 80 emblems, and went to the vendor to trade them in for my T7 chest, which I immediately gemmed and enchanted.

A guild run was short on one DPS for heroic DtK, and I offered to tag along.

Guess what Novos the Summoner dropped...

Across the Multiverse

2009-01-25T03:52:00.002+01:00

Blizzard recently opened Death Knight creation on all realms, even the ones you don't have a lvl 55 character on. Since I never really got into my Troll Death Knight, I figured I'd go to the PvP server a friend of mine was playing on and roll Alliance for a change. I made it two steps out of Honor Hold, managed to get maybe two quests done before I was completely done with the whole PvP server thing. I must have spent more time corpse running than actually playing, and thus called it quits. I expected to get a sudden attack every now and then from a hostile player, but not so often. And apparently that friend of mine doesn't really play that much anymore, so there wasn't really any reason for me to stay.

So now I'm playing on an RP server, non-PvP of course, and I'm liking it much better. I can actually do quests, and the roleplaying theme appeals to me. I landed on the Steamwheedle Cartel server, as a Human Death Knight. Firelight, whose blog I have been following for quite some time now with great interest, also has his home here, so who knows we might run into each other someday.

Firelight, in case you might be reading this: if you ever see a Human Death Knight called Rhyl running around aimlessly, don't be afraid to /wave and say hello or something. There's a nice guy behind the glowy blue eyes, I assure you.

That's the way!

2009-01-19T10:56:00.007+01:00

Another Naxxramas run last weekend, and all in all a very good run.

As usual we started in the Arachnid Quarter, where we got into the groove of things and easily put down Anub'Rekahn and followers. I got some offspec healing gloves from Faerlina, and after a bad start at Maexxna (half the raid was locked out of the fight when Maexxna was pulled) we downed her nice and quick. No Wraith Spear unfortunately, as I really need the upgrade, but better luck next time.

Plague Quarter next as usual, providing some interesting situations. Noth was easy, but Heigan still proves to be a challenge. Personally, I've got the "Heigan Dance" covered now, and I'm sure I'll be able to stay alive from now on. Not everyone was quite there yet though, so we ended up doing the corner cheat in order to defeat him. At the first "dance", however, everyone except me, a tank and two healers died, and one of the remaining healers soon after. With just three people left and Heigan still at 80%, we started the long road to victory. Slowly but surely Heigan's health was going down, and 18 minutes, 7 wings and 3 close calls later he bit the dust. Needless to say, we didn't get the Heigan Dance achievement, but I considered this an off-the-record achievement anyway. After Heigan, Loatheb looked like a sissy, and he went down in likewise fashion.

The follow up run on sunday got us deep into the Military Quarter. After a quick warmup on Patchwerk we said hello to the Death Knights, where it became apparent that Samsara reigned supreme there as well. Instructor Razuvious proved to be quite annoying, mostly because of the bug in the fight. The crystals used to mind control the Insctructors underlings are not as reliable as you'd hope, giving the fight an interesting twist when it takes a few tries to gain back control of the underlings. I had the questionable honor of recieving aggro from one of the underlings at a bad time, reducing me to a floor decoration for the rest of the fight. We got him down anyway though, and moved on to Gothik. Now Gothik is just a fun fight. With the playing field divided in a "living side" and "undead side", waves of mobs appear on the living side, and a small group of the raid has to kill those, after which they appear as ghostly versions on the undead side to be killed again by the second group. We plowed through the waves, and needless to say I was happy at the undead side. Gothik came down before we knew it, and he went face down after recieving a heavy beating from the raid group. As this was a guild first (our first venture into the Military Quarter), we screened it, and hopefully it'll decorate the front page of our website soon. Here's the screen I took:

And then off to the Four Horsemen! A very interesting fight, to say the least. The true difficulty here lies in the tactics, not the strength of the Horsemen themselves. We assigned a ranged DPS and a healer to the stationary Riders, and split the remaining group up for the other two. Several seconds into the first fight we all started getting his with massive AOE, the ability that triggers when the ranged isn't close enough to the Riders. On the second attempt the healer fell and AOE knocked us down again. Luckily we had two ranged DPS in our ranks, so we assigned the second DPS to the ranged Rider, and along with the healer they managed to keep the attention of the Riders. Meanwhile, on the melee side, we were getting stacking debuffs that tick for damage, increasing with each tick. At every three stacks the two teams had to switch Horsemen to allow these "marks" to wear off. It's an interesting dance, but we executed it very well, knocking down close to 25% each switch on both Riders. With the two Horsemen down, the combined force headed for the ranged Riders and knocked both down before the marks were even able to stack. With everyone alive and kicking, the Four Horsemen bit the dust, and Samsara was victorious once again! We called it a night after that, tired but proud to have cleared the Military Quarter on our first serious attempt.

The entire run wasn't too bad for me gear-wise. Apart from the offspec gloves, I also managed to get some nice onspec gear. I could claim the Cloak of Darkening as my own, and since there were no other pallys, priests or warlocks present, I got the T7 shoulders from Loatheb by default, giving me the Heroes' Redemption Shoulderplates to run around with.

Oh, and I also changed my hair color. I wanted to give Vaadren the look as if he's grown and aged during his travels, so his hair color has changed from brown to silvery white. He instantly feels as a different character, which is quite strange in a way, but also quite cool. I guess I am a bit of a sucker for RPing every now and then.

Biting the....ehh....poison.

2009-01-15T11:36:00.002+01:00

After a good Naxx run on saturday, the follow-up was disappointing to say the least. With high spirits we headed for the Abomination Quarter and started clearing the trash. The rivers of poison hit quite hard, but nothing out of the ordinary, and after some connection issues with one of our tanks we were ready to engage Patchwerk. He is indeed as straightforward as I've heard, just a basic tank and spank for us DPS. I had a lot of fun unleashing my full arsenal of spells on him, utilizing every global cooldown and pushing my damage output to the max. Eventually Patchwerk fell, signifying a good start of the raid night.

So we thought. Everything went downhill from there. The "frogger slimes" were being really annoying, frequently killing people for no apparent reason other than latency (the known lag issue with Wintergrasp probably). Grobbulus didn't go much better. After a try or two I got the hang of the fight (experience is still better than reading up on tactics), but to no avail. It's hard to say what went wrong, as I've been in the midst of the fight all the time, being melee. However, it could very well be only a matter of practice and coordination, which will get better over time. We called it eventually, sick and tired of the multiple failures.

The downside for me that night was my mediocre DPS on Grobbulus, a lousy 1750 where I normally do a minimum of 2000 these days. I guess I can shove it off on the fact that I was killing slime adds half the time, but I'll have to look into some improvements soon. I'm not interested in topping charts, but I do want to function properly in a raid.

On another note, a small guild group went into Obsidian Sanctum yesterday, and they killed Sartharion in there. Gratz to all those involved! I didn't really feel like going yet, there will be plenty of opportunities to come and I prefer the quiet evenings a bit more these days.

I did get stuck in heroic Oculus for a few hours yesterday, eventually calling it quits after several failed attempts to down Ley-Guardian Eregos. Is he that hard, or is it just me? I still desperately want the gloves he drops, but he's quite tough. It could be lag, but sometimes he kills my dragon with one blast when I should still have enough health to survive. And always just before I want to activate my Evasive Actions (being the Ruby Drake).

To end with a positive note, I'm doing a solid level a day with Myczil these days, and he's up to 50 now. Only a few more levels to go till Outland, and then Northrend is almost in sight already! Apparently the guild is in need of a Priest (not sure what spec yet, I think Holy), so I'm doing my best to get him up and geared fast enough to contribute a bit more. I'd still prefer doing the content with Vaadren, but I'd rather help out the raid by switching and going back with Vaadren another time.

Spark

2009-01-12T00:56:00.003+01:00

The holiday season changed something for me. Somehow I didn't really feel like playing anymore, I kept wondering why I was logging on. There's nothing much to do anyway, I kept thinking to myself. But luckily I was wrong. I found that spark again, the spark that keeps me going. And I found it in Naxxramas.

Yesterday was my first night in Naxxramas ever. Being a Burning Crusade raider, I've hardly ever set foot in any of the Old World raid environments, so this was my first taste of the necropolis of Kel'Thuzad. And I have to say, it was the most fun I've had in a while.

We started in the Arachnid Quarter, working our way through the hordes of spiders to the bosses. The trash was cleared easily, and the bosses went quite smoothly as well. Anub'Rekahn went down easily, as did Maexxna. We wiped once on Faerlina, but the second try was already much more controlled, and she went down hard second time around.

After a quick break we headed for the Plague Quarter, ravaging that place as well. The Noth fight was very controlled, and it felt really good. Heigan was a tricky fellow, it took us a few times to get the dancing under control. It's not that hard, but it takes a few times to get a feel for it. I'm sure I'll do much better next time I'm in Naxx, it's all practice. Loatheb went down quite easily, although I had to watch myself. The 3 second healing window is doable, but not when you're pumping out Seal of Blood crits like crazy. After a few close calls I switched to Seal of Command and did much better. It might be a tad less DPS, but I won't do any DPS when I've killed myself with backfire damage anyway.

After those two quarters we called it a night and headed out again. Follow up is on monday, so we'll see how the rest of Naxx goes. As a paladin, it's really fun. Almost everything is undead, so I get to use my full arsenal of spells. At certain bosses I even have a spell to cast after every clobal cooldown, and that's usually not the case.

Yes, I've certainly enjoyed myself in there. It reminded me of the good times while raiding Karazhan, Gruul's Lair and more. The teamwork, the fun in Vent, the overall good times had by everyone. It's what I've truly missed. Leveling was fun, by all means. It was great to discover a new continent, level up to 80, do heroics and everything. But only for a while. And now I've rediscovered the spark I lost, making it all fun once again.

I've been leveling Myczil again lately, and he's happily at 47 now. Questing is going nicely, although his gear could use an upgrade (come on, still using Odo's Ley Staff from Shadowfang Keep?). Nevertheless, I'm really enjoying myself and I can't wait until he's ready to go to Outlands. I'm hoping to have him ready for Northrend raiding one day, but who knows how long that'll take. I'm taking it slow and steady, enjoying myself along the way. Like I should.

Back (In Black)

2009-01-04T11:50:00.002+01:00

The holiday season is over with, and while my last two weeks were hectic, they were fantastic as well. I want to wish everyone a great 2009, that it may be the year that make all your dreams come true. My 2009 has been great so far, and we're only at day 4....

The good old routine has set in again, putting some regularity back into my life and enabling me to play and progress again. I did manage to play a little bit during the holidays, do a heroic or two. I got my Mirror of Truth from badges, and got revered with the Sons of Hodir, so the Spaulders of the Giant Lords is also mine. Apart from that, I've loafed around mostly. Or just haven't played at all.

Meanwhile, the guild has done Naxxramas 10-man for the second time last night. They managed to clear the Spider Wing and Plague Wing, so congratulations to all those involved. I wasn't able to join them, but I'll be sure to sign up for the next run.

I hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays, and see you in-game!

'Tis the season...

2008-12-24T09:45:00.002+01:00

Winter's Veil has arrived again, and half of Azeroth is searching for Metzen the reindeer. Meanwhile, in the real world, Christmas is closing in fast as well. It's a busy time for the retail sector, coincidentally the sector I'm working in, and it's overtime galore.

This hasn't stopped me from playing though, and I managed to get some nice upgrades in the ast few days. I got to make the Vengeance Bindings and Spiked Titansteel Helm, gathered enough rep and emblems for the boots and neck I wanted, and even got the legs from heroic Utgarde Keep a few days ago. I tried Oculus and Halls of Lightning as well, got the cape from Volkhan in HoL, but wasn't able to down the final boss in both heroics unfortunately. I'll try again later, as I really need their drops. That, and it's just fun to do.

I'm halfway into honored with Sons of Hodir as well, and it's going quite fast. I have 5 dailies now, giving a total of about 1600 rep a day I believe. Not too bad, especially since they're fun to do as well (killing the wyrm, anyone?).

Having said that, I might take a break from writing until the holiday season is over. I'm completely packed with work and other plans the next two weeks, so I wonder if I even have the time to play. This time is about being around your loved ones anyway, so it's not too strange to spend some extra time with them. WoW will still be there when I return.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thirteen in a dozen

2008-12-11T21:29:00.002+01:00

I mentioned this a few times in guild chat, and the trend seems to continue all the way into heroics: gear that looks the same.

While leveling up, you come across a lot of quests that give you new gear (as usual), and while the stats may be very different, that's pretty much where the differences end. I've noticed in my travels that there are about three different plate shoulder models, and about three different color schemes with each model. And that's about it. The result is that every plate wearer will look about the same, especially since Paladins share gear with Warriors and now also Death Knights.

That's only part of the problem though. At the moment the guilds arsenal of lvl 80s isn't too high yet, so you end up with a lot of the same groups for heroics. On several occasions I've been in the "2-warrior, 3-paladin" setup, which makes loot all the more interesting. Pretty much all the gear I want is also high on the list of the other DPS in the group. I did heroic Utgarde Keep today, for instance, and all three of us wanted the plate legs that the final boss drops. Same goes for Ebon Blade rep grinding (boots), Halls of Lightning heroic (axe) and so on.

This got me thinking, and worrying: will all the plate melee DPS end up looking the same? We're all aiming for the same gear since it's obviously the best. There is less customization than there was in Burning Crusade, as I feel it. And even if you do stray to another piece of gear, you'll still look the same anyway. I, for one, know I won't feel unique if there's 6 others running around in exactly the same gear as me in a 25 man. And let's face it, we all want to be unique.

Apart from that, it also annoys me that there's so many people rolling for the same stuff. It may be a tad selfish, but it takes the fun out if you're competing with all the other DPS for the same gear. I can't say "hey, look at this item" since 4 others will say "got that 2 weeks ago, man you're late", and again, I don't want people to be exactly like me (or me exactly like them). This "thirteen in a dozen" thing isn't really fun.

Although I guess you won't notice it at some point when there's more people ready for heroics. At least then there will be a good balance between melee and ranged dps again.

Anyway, here's the list I promised. The things I'm going for:

Head: Spiked Titansteel Helm
Neck: Pendant of the Outcast Hero
Shoulders: Spaulders of the Giant Lords (ideally, but will probably settle with Mantle of Volkan)
Chest: Breastplate of Undeath
Back: Cloak of Bloodied Waters (or Shroud of Reverberation)
Waist: Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle
Hands: Gauntlets of Dragon Wrath (quite hard, but no alternative found yet)
Wrist: Vengeance Bindings
Legs: Staggering Legplates
Feet: Death-Inured Sabatons
Rings: Hemorrhaging Circle + Mobius Band
Trinkets: Mirror of Truth + Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood
Weapon: Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver
Libram: Venture Co. Libram of Retribution + Libram of Divine Judgement (depending on situation)

These are all relatively easy items to get, in my opinion. A few heroics for both gear and emblems, some blacksmithing, a bit of rep grinding and you're set. Of course there's better out there, but the question is: is it worth it? At some point you'll go into Naxxramas and replace all that gear. It's not worth it to spend a few thousand gold on that one cape which you will replace in 10-man Naxx anyway.

On another note, Utgarde Pinnacle is pure evil on heroic. I've tried to clear it with a good geared group on several occasions, and even though we slaughter the first two bosses, that Skadi crushes us every time with his gauntlet. It could be me, but I'm not supposed to die after 1 hit from a trash mob + 1 tick from his ice breath, that's just rediculous. It doesn't help that the trash traps you in nets either. We Paladins may have Hand of Freedom, but that's not quick enough to get out of the ice breath in time. I don't care how much our tank wants that sword from King Ymiron, I'm not going there anymore...

Going heroic

2008-12-07T23:18:00.003+01:00

Wih the level cap hit again, it's back to the gearing up to get better. I've been using Atlasloot to list all the DPS plate gear and then compare them through Wowhead to make up a "wanted" list. So far I've hardly replaced any gear, and I'm wondering why. I think I still have to change my mindset a bit when it comes to stats. I feel I'm losing out on too much other stats like agility and intellect, even though I know that intellect will be gone anyway. The lack of agility still bugs me, nothing on the Tier armor even. And it does have haste rating, which is now unimportant.

Anyway, I did some heroics to get some gear together, but no luck as of yet. I did get better legs and a better weapon, but not the things I wanted. I'll use them, but it's all in-between armor, really. Maybe it's lucky I didn't get anything yet, I checked MaxDPS today and changed a few items on my list already. Turns out I forgot crafted items, mainly the helmet and bracers. Time to go mining and get that blacksmithing up! I'm going for Spiked Titansteel Helm and Vengeance Bindings, and quite honestly it's rediculous how cheap the mats are for such quality items. The frozen orb is the hardest part, and that's only a lucky roll in a heroic away (or a few badges, if you're really unlucky).

While I didn't get any items from heroics, at least I got some rep. I've been wearing the Ebon Blade tabard for a while now, and I'm halfway into revered. Only 8k rep to go until I can get those epic boots! Combined with the 1500 rep you can get each day from the Ebon Blade dailys it shouldn't take too long for me to get them. And as soon as I've got that helm made, I can buy their head enchant and not worry about that slot for a long time.

On another note: I finally got my epic flyer! I had to save up from Zul'Drak all the way through Icecrown to Storm Peaks, but I finally got the 5k together for the skill, and even a few hundred gold for the flyer itself. I was left with 9g afterwards, but I'm already up to 1k again, so I can pay repair bills again.

The guild as a whole is leveling quite nicely. I was one of the first to hit 80, but now there's more people getting up there, making it easier to do heroics too. All the lvl 80's are eager to do heroics, and I only have to ask to get a few positive reponses already. The healers and tanks have the busiest jobs at the moment, since we don't have as many of those at higher levels yet. It's fun to see the tug-o-war between two teams needing a healer, and I bet they like the attention themselves as well.

I'll post the gear list here later. I'm interested to see what people think of the list, and if they possibly have other ideas.

Making it to the top!

2008-11-29T19:20:00.002+01:00

The past week has been really busy. Apart from work I've also had a few other real life obligations, cutting my WoW time short. Nevertheless, I've done quite a lot and really enjoyed myself as usual.

Since my last post I finished up Grizzly Hills and got the Grizzly Hills quest achievement. After that I went for Zul'Drak and did a lot there. I made first contact with the Knights of the Ebon Blade there and have been questing for them ever since. The quest chain where you have to infiltrate a flying stronghold was really cool, leading to a satisfying end which is lore-heavy once again. After doing the major quests in Zul'Drak I hit lvl 77 and decided to head to other grounds. With my newly acquired cold weather flying I was ready to hit the big stuff! I took a flight to Icecrown and soon got reunited with the Ebon Blade once again. After a lot of questing I unlocked a few dailys for the Ebon Blade, and I'm doing those every day now. There's some sweet boots at exalted so I want to get the rep as fast as possible.

I ended up at lvl 79 last thursday, and today I had the chance to finish up that last level. I said my goodbyes to Icecrown for now and headed to Storm Peaks. The first few quests weren't too interesting, until I had to deal with a tribe of Nordic Amazon warriors. I ended up infiltrating into their tribe and questing for them (disguised of course), and it's been a blast ever since. I blasted through the quests with great pleasure, and the experience bar positively flew up. I ended my day neutral with the Sons of Hodin which hated me earlier today ("You have gained 22000 reputation with Sons of Hodin") and more importantly: at level 80! Yep, I made it to level 80. Not nearly as fast as some others, but still at quite a pace. It never felt like a rush though, and I've enjoyed myself a lot. I know there's still a lot to see, so now I'm going to finish up as much quests as I can to get some nice gear and gold. I'm still 1500g away from my epic flying mount, but I'm determined to get it this time around. I might finish up Nothrend exploration while I'm at it, so I can get the Explorer tabard and title, just for fun. Level 80 has opened up a lot of options, so I'll see what the game shoots my way.

As a finisher, here's me dinging to 80:

Halfway there

2008-11-20T18:47:00.007+01:00

I've been questing along nice 'n easy for the last week or so, and things are going nicely. I managed to hit 75 earlier today, marking the halfway point. So far I've seen all of Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills, although I haven't done all quests in any of those places. I'm currently questing in Grizzly Hills, going through some nice quest chains. I even had the pleasure of being reacquainted with my favorite dungeon boss: Arugal! Gotta love him and his Worgen.

I've seen Dalaran and set my hearthstone there. Honestly, that place is amazing. Shattrath was pretty nice as well, but it had its negative sides. Dalaran just has it all and looks nice to boot. All the profession trainers in their own little quarter, Horde and Alliance quarters complete with inns, portals to all major cities (including Shattrath) and a spiffy new Battleground Chamber, and of course the sewers. The Dalaran Arena is situated there (quite appropriately), and also a Black Market, giving the sewers a real "underworld" feeling. And for a miner/blacksmith the Forge of Fate is just awesome. It's a normal forge, but smithing in it really feels good. Not some third-rate anvil in some small village, this baby's a class A forge. I expect there will be some items you can only craft at the Forge of Fate, so I'm merrily skilling up until that day comes.

The only setbacks to Dalaran I've found so far are the size (I can't imagine how crowded it'll be when the realm has leveled enough to maximize capacity) and the fact that you can't access it legally until 74. Shattrath was nice in the fact that you could get there as soon as you hit Outland, Dalaran takes a bit more work, and it feels more like a restriction than an achievement for hitting 74.

Money has always been an issue for me, which is mainly the reason why I don't have my epic flyer yet. However, I'm up to 3k gold at the moment, halfway there to both epic flyer and cold weather flying. Cold weather flying will be top priority (only 2 more levels!), epic flyer after that. I also want that brown bear mount, partly because it really fits with the environment. I'm riding on my trusted Hawkstrider now (as always), which feels a bit out of place at times. I'd much rather have an epic flyer though, so the bear will have to wait for now. The gold income is going fast enough anyway. The quest money is nice, and so is the income from quest rewards. Lots of gear that I don't really need, so off to the vendor. I haven't replaced a single item yet, although it's bound to happen sooner or later. So far I can solo a 2 or 3 man group quest every now and then, so I think I'm fine for now.

I got the idea from Firelight to screenshot all my level ups, but I won't show them all. As usual I'm really bad at making pictures (both in-game and in real life), so I don't have much apart from those. Here's me dinging to 75 though, I'll leave it at that:

See you in Northrend!

Happy Birthday Samsara!

2008-11-16T23:29:00.002+01:00

Exactly one year ago, a group of people from the guild Mutinymamas split off from the rest and formed a new guild. Seven Voices were appointed to keep the balance, and they called themselves Samsara. Over the months many people joined and the guild got larger and larger. And at some point, the Council of Elderly joined forces with Samsara and together they strode on under the Samsaran banner. It is there where I got in.

We tackled Karazhan, we tackled Gruul. Magtheridon was slain by Samsaran spells and blades, and even the Serpentshrine Cavern wasn't safe. And now we're battling Scourge in Northrend, preparing for that final battle with the Lich King himself.

But not just that, we also had a lot of fun. Birthday parties, dodgeball games, and the usual good times in guild chat. A lot has happened, and we've had a lot of fun so far.

And today marks the first anniversary of all that. Today is the first birthday of Samsara as a guild! Whoo us! I would like to thank all the people in the guild for all the good times I've had, all the laughs and the serious business. It's been a blast so far, and let it be so for another year to come!

For Samsara!

The first day of Northrend...

2008-11-14T02:38:00.005+01:00

WARNING: Contains spoilers (obviously). If you do not want to know what's going on in Northrend and with Death Knights, I suggest you stop reading here.

An e-mail last night confirmed it: my copy of Wrath of the Lich King has been shipped and should arrive in the mail today. And being the good postal service as they are, I got it today indeed! After about an hour of installing, upgrading and patching, it was time to enjoy the wonders of Northrend. It was my day off from work today, so I had all day to explore, quest and level!

First up was creating my Death Knight. I had a female troll already made, so with a quick delete and remake, I had Ryll the Death Knight. A beautiful female Troll, truly a woman not to take lightly. No time to start the Death Knight though, it would be crowded anyway and I wanted to see Northrend.

I hurried onto Vaadren, and my first thought was "holy crap, an exp bar"! It's not like I forgot what it looked like, since I'm still leveling Myczil, but it takes getting used to seeing it on your main. After taking a look at the Atlas maps I decided to start in Howling Fjord because it was greener there, and I like green. I took a portal to Orgrimmar, and found out that I could only go to Borean Tundra from Org. Oh well, off to the Tundra then! I ended up in Warsong Hold, a relatively small stronghold but with a boatload of trainers, vendors and other things. Compared to Warsong Hold, Thrallmar bites the dust as a "first town in a new area", this place has it all! After upgrading all my professions and getting some new consumables I went questing. It was quite hard sometimes, with 6 people going for the same mob, but not as bad as I expected. I positively blasted through the quests, taking on 3 or 4 at a time. Riding the new vehicles is fun, with the new interfaces. I wonder if they only did that for the new ones, or if the existing ones have been overhauled as well. Chess Event in Kara, anyone?

I took a small break from my (highly enjoyable and ass-kicking!) Paladin, and went exploring with Ryll. The Death Knight quests are very well set up, with the starting area changing with the events you're currently experiencing. In the same spot you were killing farmers 10 minutes ago, everything is now ablaze and you're killing hordes of soldiers! Buildings that are under enemy control at first, and suddenly burning and overrun with Scourge when you visit it for another quest further down the line. It's amazing how they managed to do it, and I can't figure out for the life of me how they pull it off. Are they phasing me into a different dimension every time I complete a special quest? I guess that's the closest I can get. Kudos to Blizzard for that anyway. Apart from that it's just very enjoyable to follow the path from serving the Lich King to breaking free and going back to the Horde. Very lore-heavy, which is a real treat for a lore junkie like me. The class itself works like a charm, the runic power and runes you have at your disposal allow for a lot of flexibility and fun. I decided to take the Blood tree since I felt it fit my style most, and it plays great. If I ever get Ryll close to 80 I'll make her tank probably, but for now I'm enjoying the DPS, still my favorite role in WoW. I ended Ryll at lvl 58, now a Knight of the Ebon Blade (Death Knights free from the Lich King) and parked in Shattrath. We'll see how much time I'll spend on her. I've had my taste of the Death Knight, so I'm happy for now. Quite frankly, Vaadren is my #1 priority, so I want to get him to 80 before even considering another project. Even Myczil will have to take a step back for a bit.

Back to Vaadren, and back to questing. I spent an hour exploring because I wanted to go to Dalaran, but we can't get in yet unfortunately. Instead I went collecting flight paths, and now I have about 8 of them already. One or two more and I can go from the Tundra to Howling Fjord, but that's not too important. Since friday is always a non-WoW day for me, I was determined to reach lvl 71 at least, and it proved quite a struggle. Was leveling always this hard? I must have done most of Borean Tundra already. The Taunka still have a few things for me, but apart from that.... I don't know. I did reach 71 in the end though, and I'll probably visit Howling Fjord after I'm completely done with the Tundra. It should give me enough exp to get to 72 at least. No planning far ahead for me, I'm taking it one level at a time. A madman's race to lvl 80 isn't really my thing, and luckily we can still all play the game as we want to. Of course I'll try to keep up with the rest of the guild so we can do instances together and get ready for raiding again, but I'm certainly not going to rush.

I may play tomorrow, not sure yet. It kinda depends on how the day goes. But if not, I'll have the entire weekend anyway. Plenty of time!

I hope everyone is enjoying themselves in Northrend. See you there!

Northrend in sight! And PvP madness?

2008-11-10T20:39:00.002+01:00

Achievements have changed a lot in World of Warcraft, as you all have noticed probably. Suddenly everyone is fishing, doing low level instances and jumping from high places. It's interesting how such a (mostly) non-profitable concept can make such an impact.

It has change world PvP as well. Lightbringer's best guild, Carpe Noctem, has already downed Tyrande and Velen, and will be going for Stormwind and Ironforge at some point in the near future. A few days ago a raid group of the best guilds on Alliance side downed the Silvermoon boss (and a well deserved congratulations to them), but overestimated their abilities by going for Sylvanas next. Me and a few guildmates teamed up to try and stop them, but the Horde counterforce was too small, so we decided against it in the end. Defending your home is one thing, but stepping into the fight with those odds is just asking to be nuked down.

We went PvPing instead, something I had never done before. We started off in Warsong Gulch, and I just followed a guildie to get the hang of things. Soon enough I was killing players left and right, and quite enjoyed it as well! We did an Arathi Basin as well, which was enjoyable but not as much as the Gulch. I've been trying out Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm as well the last few days, and some more Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. It's more enjoyable in a group, but still quite enjoyable solo. I like Warsong Gulch and Eye of the Storm the most, Alterac Valley the least so far, and Arathi Basin somewhere in between. I've never been against PvP, but never cared for it either. However, I think I'll be doing some more of it in the future, especially with that Strand of the Ancients battleground coming up. It could turn out to be completely evil, but just the name sounds so cool already! The mounts will be my PvP goal, a bit of work but I accept the challenge. It'll at least give me something to strive for.

PvP is only one of the things I've started doing. These last few days before Lich King have made me do more quest lines (the Greatmother chain in Nagrand atm, I'm aiming for lore-filled quest chains), and grinding rep for various random factions. I never paid attention to the Sha'tari Skyguard, but now I find myself killing Skettis for them. And I still don't know why, but I am. And it's not stopping me either. Odd.

So yeah, only a few more days. I already pre-ordered my copy, but somehow I doubt it'll arrive on thursday. Friday probably, but my fridays are always filled with work and friends, so it'll probably be saturday before Vaadren will set foot on the snowy fields of Northrend. I'll immediately make my Death Knight so I have her ready to play in a few weeks, when the initial madness has died a little. I already reserved a name for her. Ryll the Female Troll Death Knight. I always wanted a female Troll Warrior, but Warriors are a pain to level in my opinion, so I never made one. The Death Knight should provide me with the armored, ass-kicking blademistress I envisioned long ago. I'm already looking forward to the entire experience called Wrath of the Lich King!

The good, the bad and the shiny

2008-11-02T02:14:00.004+01:00

It was a good day today in most respects, slightly less in another. First up, the bad news:

As the (now-infamous) Ghostcrawler has informed in this thread on the Beta forums:

We are looking at some way of making Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield mutually exclusive. This may be through Forbearance, if we can reduce the Forbearance duration through a hotfix. The bubble is intended as a defensive measure. Yet bubble+wings currently is used a lot in BGs and Arenas and helps contribute to the feeling of being destroyed by a Retribution paladin while you are unable to respond.

In summary, this comes down to Avenging Wrath being tied to Forbearance again, and Forbearance having been cut back to 2 minutes. This is basically a step back from TBC even, since the "Wings" gave a higher percentage of damage boost then, and Forbearance was only 1 minute. I've already had a few ffs-moments with that, and it's amazing why Blizzard did this of all things, with numerous better solutions flying around on the beta forums.

Oh well, we'll see how it turns out. On to the better news.

I started today with a heroic Magister's Terrace, in hope of the Netherforce Breastplate. It didn't drop unfortunately, but I did get the Shard of Contempt, so I'm a happy camper. I initially decided to swap out my Darkmoon Card: Crusade in favor of Bloodlust Brooch, but after tweaking and trying each combination out, I found that the Brooch was the one needing to go.

Lots of loafing around later, and I got asked for a ZA guild run (another DPS backed out or something). No real loot from there, I got some mail healing shoulders that are nice, but not overly special. No one else needed them anyway, so it's not like it mattered. Shortly after the run a guildie asked around for a few people for a Gruul & Maggy PuG. I happily went along with a few other guildmates, and ended up at Magtheridon's doorstep first. He went down easily, and I managed to get a whopping 1400 DPS off him, topping the charts! He dropped one pally T4 token, and with a bit of luck I rolled 91 and won. Whoohoo, a new chestpiece! Time to get rid of that mail ZA chest I was wearing.

Off to Gruul next, and with a bit of a sloppy start of the Maulgar pull, we managed to get them down one by one. No one cared too much, as it was all fun and games in Vent, which made it a very good PuG, especially for a raid. Maulgar wasn't so kind as to drop the long-wanted wristbands I so crave, but he did drop two pally shoulders. I rolled 13 for the first, the second highest number. I silently hoped they'd just go for first and second places, but they treated them individually. I rolled a mediocre 51 on the second one, which surprisingly didn't get topped. Then, another person rolled a 54 and I thought I had lost again. However, the person rolling was a warlock who had no use for the token (and most likely was a tad disoriented), so the shoulders went my way anyway. Off to Gruul himself, and time to smack him around. It went very fast, getting im down during hit 5th growth. Only two shatters were executed, and I lived through both easily.

A very enjoyable raid with people from several highly respected guilds of our server. I got to know a few, and they were all nice people. True good players, not just achievement freaks but enjoyable people who enjoy a laugh. Good times.

After the raid I went to get my new gear, waved my mail chestpiece and Ragesteel Shoulders goodbye, and put on my new shiny stuff! I'm sporting full T4 now, and it looks awesome. Let's see about those things getting enchanted tomorrow!

In other news, I've been trying out my DPS on the training dummies, and managed to get a solid 1250-1300 when going all out. Very respectable, don't you think? Also, somehow I'm not going OOM in 4 minutes anymore when going all out. I tried it before when Blizzard announced the JotW nerf, and I believe it happened then. Now, not anymore. Well, you don't hear me complaining!

So everyone, remember your Forbearance when you want to use your Wings or Bubble. Apart from that, enjoy the last few weeks before Wrath of the Lich King comes out. I know I will!

Another one for the Holy Light.... sorta

2008-10-30T15:55:00.005+01:00

My love for underdogs or anti-heroes is getting apparent now, as well my knack of picking classes that have several roles, the major role being the one I don't intend to play.

You may have seen him on the right side of my blog, but it's time for a formal introduction: Myczil the Forsaken Shadow Priest. At lvl 40 at the moment of this blogpost, he is my highest alt and current focal point of my WoW time. He's taken up Tailoring and Enchanting as his professions, and with a little monetary aid of Vaadren every now and then, he's happily skilling up. In the meantime he's also running around in Dustwallow Marsh, questing away in his just acquired Shadowform.

Why introduce a second character? Have I lost interest in my Paladin, like so many others with recent changes/nerfs/uncertainty regarding the class? No, not at all. Despite the hard times as a Retribution Paladin (finding groups, being laughed at, you know), I've always loved Vaadren a lot. And I will certainly continue playing him, going on adventures with him and writing about him here. But quite honestly, I don't do much with him at the moment instead of some raiding and the occasional heroic (and lately enjoying the Scourge invasion and grinding some rep). And since I've always wanted an alt, I decided to invest some time in one.

So while you can still expect your frequent Paladin news from Vaadren, expect some Priestly talk about Myczil every now and then as well.

Vaadren as my Crusader of the Light, and Myczil as Shadowweaver.

I say the opposites make for a good balance.

For the Light!

2008-10-26T13:21:00.002+01:00

With all the negative news lately, I should mention that I'm still enjoying the game a lot. Sure, things might not look good, but all the more reason to have fun now. So.....

For the last few days, there have been people infected by the Scourge and turning into Ghouls. Unfortunately, those people could not be saved and thus had to be exorcised. After the first few incidents, it remained relatively peaceful and everyone thought it was over.

Guess again!

Necropoli have appeared all over Azeroth, sending down devastating unholy bolts and spawning more ghouls than you can imagine. Even Shattrath City is littered with corpses, showing that the Lich Kings reach is very far indeed. The Argent Dawn has appeared everywhere, trying to battle the Scourge and asking for your aid. And as the Paladin that I am, I answered that call.

In normal terms, Phase 2 of the pre-Wrath event kicked off last night. Infection timers have been reduced from 10 minutes to 2 minutes, and it takes about 10 Cleanses to dispel it. It's getting really hard to combat the Scourge now! I've been doing some of the quests, and having a blast so far. I started playing last year, so I never experienced the pre-Burning Crusade event. I'm very excited to be a part of this now. Killing undead is my specialty even, so I'm enjoying my complete arsenal of spells to its fullest.

Stand strong, fellow Crusaders of the Light. Consecrate the earth around you, keep your holy-imbued blade at the ready, and strike with unparalleled vengeance. For the Light!

Clipped wings in 3.0.3

2008-10-25T12:14:00.003+02:00

It's time to talk about the hot topic again, time to jump on the bandwagon. The hot topic? Why, the "overpoweredness" of Retribution Paladins. Or just Paladins in general, I'm not sure anymore.

Anger, sadness and disappointment galore in Paladin land (not to mention total confusion) with the latest Wrath Beta Build, number [9138] this time. The changes for Paladins, not just Retribution:

Skills
Holy

- Seal of Wisdom now deal [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage)
- Seal of Light now has a chance to heal for [ 15% of AP + 15% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 28% of AP + 28% of Spell Power ])
- Seal of Light now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] (down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ]) holy damage when unleashed.
- Seal of Righteousness now grants each melee attack [ 2.2% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 4.4% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ] additional Holy damage. (Down from [ 2.8% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 5.5% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ])

Protection

- Seal of Justice now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ])

Retribution

- Judgement of Command Holy damage reduced from 56% to 45%.
- Blessing of Might (Rank 8 ) and Greater Blessing of Might (Rank 3) now increase AP by 306. (Up from 305)
- Seal of Corruption now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ]
additional holy damage over 15 seconds. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
- Seal of Corruption now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
- Seal of the Martyr now make all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
- Seal of the Martyr now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old: [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
- Seal of Blood now make all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
- Seal of Blood now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old: [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
- Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional Holy damage over 15 sec. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
- Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
- Judgement of Wisdom now restores 1% of the attacker's maximum mana. (Down from 2%)
- Judgement of Light now has a chance to heal the attacker for [ 10% of AP + 10% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 18% of AP + 18% of Spell Power ])
- Hammer of Wrath can now only be used when the target is below 20% (was 35%)

Talents
Retribution

- Divine Storm doesn't deal Holy damage anymore. Now heals up to 3 party or raid members for 25% of the damage caused. (Up from 20%)
- Righteous Vengeance changed to - When your Judgement and Divine Storm spells deal a critical strike, your target will take 8/16/24/32/40% additional damage over 8 sec.
- The Art of War now increases the damage of Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm by 5/10%. (Old: Increased critical strike damage only, by 10/20%)
- Judgement of the Wise now grants the paladin 15% of his base mana. (Down from 33%)
- Seal of Command now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 24% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 24% of MW ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 30% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 30% of MW ])

(Source: MMO Champion)

Suicidal Zebra has made a good post about it, as well as Rohan at Blessing of Kings. Be sure to read those if you're interested in theorycrafting, as well as participate in some serious discussions.

Lots of these changes are nerfs, of course, and not understandable at all. Where we once had raid viability, good DPS and were actually an addition to the group, we pretty much lost it all with this Beta patch. We're reduced to the level we were during all of TBC, making us unfavorable once again.

Thank god Samsara sees my added value in raids, otherwise I wouldn't ever see the inside of any WotLK raid environment.

Let's hope this will change before it hits live. I fear the return of "lolret" already.

/shudder

Goodbye to a challenge

2008-10-24T11:36:00.003+02:00

Raiding has gone to the backburner a bit, unfortunately because of the, in my eyes unnecessary, nerf of raid environments. Only the bosses, you say? Nay, I've noticed a change in the trash mobs as well.

The guild was supposed to go into SSC last saturday, but with some technical difficulties haunting our raid leader, and a lack of sufficient interest, it was called off. Instead, ten of us formed a group and headed for Zul'Aman. I've never been there before, since I always considered myself not strong enough yet, but with the recent changes I decided to give it a go anyway. And we blasted through Zul'Aman like no tomorrow. Bear boss, Lynx boss, Dragonhawk boss, they all went down extremely fast. Samsara "only" managed to get 4 our of 6 bosses down before the patch. We cleared it all without wipes, and quite easily I have to say. I did get killed once, but that was my fault for aggroing a group of whelplings during the Dragonhawk(?) boss. We got three chests out of the timed event, not bad at all apparently. Next time I want to do it at a slower pace. We literally rushed through it, and that seriously lowered the fun factor for me, being a first-timer. Hardly any boss strategies were given, leaving me to whack the boss and see what happened. Half of the time I was just going with the flow, following the kill order on the trash and pumping out maximum DPS and rotation efficiency during bosses. Downing Zul'Jin was gratifying though, as well as the festive jungle music that preceded it. All in all still a good time, and I got myself the 20 slot bag.

We got a guild group together on sunday to venture into the new Karazhan. We had one or two people going offspec (our best Resto Shaman went Enhancement), and we had two rogues who had never seen the insides of Karazhan before. It's safe to say that Karazhan is in EZ-Mode now. We kept chain pulling the trash, and boss after boss went down like nothing. We started getting lax, overconfident. Our raid leader accidentally pulled Maiden on his lock, and we still got her down easily (and the Warlock survived). We accidentally pulled Curator, and even though it took 10 seconds for us to decide to kill him anyway in favor of running, we got him down during his first evocate. For the first time in my Karazhan career (and mind you, I'm already fully exalted with the Violet Eye) we got Romulo and Julianne during the Opera event, which only proved a minor nuisance when they kept respawning because Julianne managed to get in a heal JUST before she was supposed to die. One Demon Chain on Illhoof, then downed. Aran went down faster than you can say "Flame Wreath, don't move!", he's reduced to a Shade of Shade o Aran now. Nightbane one-shotted. For the first time I was main pickup for the blue beam at Netherspite instead of backup and one-shotted. Prince went down after three enfeebles (the rogues died here cause they got enfeebled and didn't move out of the blast wave, but forgivable since Prince is a fight you must learn), I never even saw an infernal during the fight. Chess was the most enjoyable event, me taking a priest instead of the usual wolf. It was refreshing to play a new piece on the board. After everyone else had left for the night, four of us even cleared the animal boss for fun.

We managed to get the rogues geared up quite a lot, but apart from that it wasn't really a useful run. Being so immensely powerful was fun for a bit, but it lost its charm quickly. I know I won't sign up for many Karazhan runs anymore, mainly because it's so dead easy now. Wiping repeatedly on a boss can be annoying, but then the sense of achievement is much greater when you actually get him down. I'll still go to Gruul for the T4 shoulders and some bracers I need from Maulgar, SSC from there. But very little Karazhan.

Goodbye, my dearest Karazhan. It has been a pleasure to raid in your environment, but I fear must move on. Love, Vaadren.

Echoes of Doom..... or are they?

2008-10-17T00:26:00.002+02:00

Patch 3.0.2 has hit the live servers, and with a day off I've had the opportunity to fully explore the new features. Of course I already saw a lot of it on the PTR, but that's never the same, especially because you have a guild to share everything with on Live.

I came home late on wednesday, already eager to start. Patching went very easy, and my download speed went through the roof when hauling in the 1.6 Gigabyte file, almost encouraging me to play in a way. I got online, admired the new splash screens, and started enjoying. First up, the talent tree. I can make a perfect build for lvl 80, but 70 requires a sacrifice or two. In the end I went for a 0/5/56 build, leaving Kings for someone else, as I could use the 5 talent points better somewhere else. After clearing my bags of any mounts and vanity pets, I was ready to go do some achievements, mainly exploration. While I was running around in Azeroth, it rained achievements in guild chat, including the 65 yard drop, /hugging a dead enemy and even "Leeeeeeeeroy!" I finished Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor that night, and signed off for the night.

Today I went for Outlands exploration, and completed that soon enough. After that I decided to go for the Classic instances. I already did a lot of them, but still had a few to go. I did Wailing Caverns, Blackfathom Deeps and Maraudon. Maraudon is extremely annoying (never been in there before tonight), and at the same time amazingly beautiful. The place is a huge maze, and finding the way towards Princess Theradras was a pain. In the end I finally made it, and as a true anticlimax, the "Princess" turned out to be a toad, so to speak. It looked like a Boulderfist Ogre and Undead Abomination (the UC guards) mated, and this was the result. I decided to make the world a better place and killed her in a few fell swipes.

One of my guildmates is a sucker for new professions, so she already got Inscription up to 350 by this afternoon! She's been making free glyphs for guildies all day, so I got a major glyph of Judgment from her, and the minor glyph for Blessing of Might. Judgment is pretty much a no-brainer (10% more damage off judgments, and spamming judgments is still our job), and with Kings gone, BoM is something I'll use a lot. It's certainly not bad as a minor glyph. Crusader Strike and Spiritual Attunement look nice as well, but apparently the CS glyph is being changed, and I've yet to see if I actually NEED the extra few % of the Spiritual Attunement glyph, with the new mana regen I have.

Tonight was Kara night as well, but I passed cause I wasn't feeling too well, caused by a headache that crept up during the evening. The group that went was tearing the place down to its foundations, according to the latest update just before I logged for the night. I'm looking forward to a raid myself, or a heroic. I'm eager to try out my new skills in a challenging environment.

Overall I'm in a really good mood. Not only because Retribution got improved (which is what most people assume is the source of my happiness), but because of all the changes. From achievements to the group calendar. From the new BG (which I might even try out, it's really cool apparently) to the barber shop. And most of all, because it brought a fresh breeze into the game. There's lots of excitement in guild chat, there's so much new things to do. People are sharing new stuff, more than ever. Samsara has always been a good community to me, the guild chats were always full of laughter and good times, and grouping was always a blast. But now I have something extra. Instead of just laughing at the jokes in chat, I now have a content smile when I hear people talking excitedly over something. Now, more than ever.

It's funny that the patch carries the name "Echoes of Doom". I see a lot of people complaining about trivial things that came, went or changed in the patch, voicing those echoes in a way. But for me, I don't hear any Echoes of Doom. Quite the opposite.

Getting ready for 3.0.2

2008-10-14T12:25:00.002+02:00

Patch day is swiftly approaching, bringing along the overhauled Paladin fighting mechanics. Now, it's not that hard to find a nice playing style, but it will take some getting used to. And with some significant changes in each talent tree, you might get a "wtf"-moment or two while getting acquainted with your class again.

Luckily, instead of just posting the extremely long list of patch notes, here's something else. A video explaining all the new mechanics and going a bit in-depth into the improved talent trees, thus preparing you, at least slightly, for the changes about to come.

Thanks go to Suicidal Zebra for bringing this to my attention.

Score!

2008-10-12T20:36:00.002+02:00

Last week has been painstaking. Heroics that can't be finished due to time issues or server crashes, a Karazhan run that managed to wipe on one trash mob, and all that while only needing a few more badges.

It took a while, but last night I finally got down to needing only 5 badges. And today, after a round of Shattered Halls, I managed to get the remaining 5.

Which means that I finally got my 150 badges together! After the heroic I immediately went to the Shattered Sun vendor, and got myself that beautiful Blade of Harbingers that's been lurking at me for weeks now. I managed to find an enchanter within a minute of my purchase, and 2 minutes later I had it enhanced with a Mongoose. Whoo!

Time to test this baby out. Magtheridon is scheduled for tonight, and I'll be there. Magtheridon, you will die by my Blade, here or there!

Another one bites the dust

2008-10-05T11:19:00.003+02:00

Last night was a good night for Samsara. Maulgar and Gruul were already in the bag, but they've had to scoot over a bit to make room for Magtheridon. Yes folks, last night Samsara killed Magtheridon for the first time! Kel'idan the Breaker, who was standing on his platform above Maggy's Lair (also known as the Blood Furnace), saw it all happening, and was reported crying after the Pit Lord was slain.

I wasn't there to participate in the killing, due to other obligations that evening. However, Thrashalot, a guildie who was in the raid, wrote a post about it. Be sure to read it if you want to know how the night went!

I'll definately be attending next weeks run. I found out I have the time, and the officers had no objections to promising me a spot, given the circumstances. I think it was my turn in the raid rotation anyway.

Diary of an Undead Horse Rider

2008-10-03T01:58:00.003+02:00

"Dear Diary, it's me again, Attumen.

Today was horrible. I wiped on Samsara yet again, 14 times tonight! Midnight will have to wait for his Epic Felsteed Armor yet another week until Samsara is reset.
I'm starting to think I'm still undergeared, even though all the guides say otherwise. Did I get nerfed overnight? That would suck. Moroes and Aran keep laughing at me for wiping so often, but tonight they were bested as well. That should keep them quiet for a while.

Better luck next week."

Gettin' There

2008-10-01T12:19:00.003+02:00

First time I fully cleared Karazhan last night! In every Kara run I went to, we always skipped Illhoof (and sometimes Maiden as well), but not last night. We got them all, and we got them good.

Illhoof is an easy enough fight, but you have to flip that mental switch as a Paladin to keep spamming Consecration, which is annoying to put into your spell rotation if you ask me (not to mention a mana drainer). With no warlock present and 4 Paladins, mass Consecration was the way to deal with the imps. It worked though, and Illhoof coughed up a few badges before he knew what hit him.

Problem with 4 Paladins in the raid group is that as a DPS you get little to no chances at nice loot. Gorehowl didn't drop again, but I don't care anymore. I already have Garona's Signet Ring, Ironstriders of Urgency and both T4 tokens, which pretty much leaves me to collecting offspec gear. And with 2 Paladin healers (one still gearing up), and a Paladin tank (also gearing up) all the loot passes to them. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to Gruul's Lair again, who at least has some bracers for me, and the T4 shoulders. As soon as I have those, I'll feel like a balanced Paladin again. So far I've felt like a loose cannon, doing either a lot of damage and having to hold back, or doing subpar DPS.

I won't be able to attend the Gruul run scheduled for this saturday though. Every saturday for the next few weeks is already scheduled full, with a possible exception next week, I'll have to look into that. If so, I'll ask if I can get some kind of preference above other applicants because I won't be able to attend other dates, leaving a space for others. It sounds reasonable.

I'm also slowly getting my badges together. Last night got me 11 more, putting my total at 98 now. It's going slower than I'd hoped, but there's nothing to do about that. I'm doing my best. If I get into the next two Karazhan groups I'll be only a few short, and in that time I'll undoubtedly do a heroic or two.

Fingers crossed!

Rampaging through Outlands like a Divine Storm

2008-09-20T17:57:00.004+02:00

It took a while, but Vaadren has been copied to the PTR realm. Of course I went straight to it and started checking out all the new stuff. New talent trees, new spells, new mechanics, it's all there and looking good! I know I was sceptical before (and honestly, looking at the notes it was hard not to), but I've made a 180 here. Like I said in an earlier post, Firelight was pretty psyched about how Retribution worked now. And after trying it myself, I have to fully agree with him.

The talent tree looks really nice, for starters. It's too bad that the WotLK trees are different (unless the WoW Europe site hasn't updated their talent trees yet), because I see some really good things in there. I wasn't sure about Sheath of Light at first (you get spell power to a certain percentage of your AP, and crit heals regenerate health for 12 secs to the target) because of the return of spell power, but it's more to give some spells a bit of a holy damage bonus, and to increase healing power (good for soloing and in case you need to throw in an emergency heal in a raid), so I welcome that talent now. The disappearance of Sanctity Aura is apparent, it being replaced by Retribution Aura now I think. There's some talents in the tree to increase Ret Aura damage, and add raid wide haste rating (from weapons to spells, from melee to ranged) to the Aura effect. We'll see how that goes. Judgements of the Wise is possibly the best talent Retribution could have gotten, with a raid wide mana regen AND instant mana reimbursement (20% of max mana) upon judging!! We used to have problems with mana, seeing as our mana pool is usually quite low and we spam our seals and Crusader Strike. With JotW we have gotten a mana regen when doing what we're supposed to do in raids (spamming seals) without our DPS output having to suffer. After several intense fights, giving it all I had, I still had a significant amount of mana left, making me wonder how the hell I can get rid of it! Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we've just become mana batteries. Raid viability, here we come!

The new mechanics take some getting used to, but overall it's really nice. The one Judgement spell has made way for three varieties: Light, Wisdom and Justice. These Judgements do exactly what their corresponding seals already did (health regen, mana regen and a "flee-lock"), but now upon judging. The corresponding seals still exist with their seal abilities, but instead of their "old" judge abilities, they now deal holy damage instead. Active seals on an opponent (Light, Wisdom, Justice, Crusader) aren't possible anymore, but I'm not too sad about that. Overall the system has a lot of flexibility, enabling you to deal damage plus gain mana / gain health / slightly incapacitate your target with each judgement, whichever you need most at the time. And that's without Crusader Strike and Divine Storm, which allow you to customize your battle routine even more.

The spell departement has recieved both good and bad changes. A few spells have been removed, including Blessing of Light + its Greater version, and also Greater Blessing of Salvation has gone. I never used Light anyway, only when there were enough other Paladins available to cover the other Blessings. Salvation is a typical choice though, seeing as it's a popular Blessing and widely used in raids. Divine Protection has had its effect changed. It now provides 50% damage absorption at a cost of 50% slower attack speed. It's like half a Divine Shield, quite strange. The main additions have to be the Judgements: Light, Wisdom and Justice like I mentioned earlier. And then there's the spell buried deep within the Retribution Tree: Divine Storm. Divine Storm has to be the coolest addition to the Paladin's arsenal. It hits up to 4 targets in a 8 yard radius, damaging them with holy damage and healing 20% of that damage done to up to 10 party/raid members. With the new JotW it's pretty hard to run out of mana, so mana cost isn't even an issue anymore. Spam away with your new Divine Storm, and enjoy your melee AoE spell, useable every 10 seconds.

It'll still take a while before the patch hits the live servers, but if the end product is anything like it is now, I'll be a happy Paladin!

The Blues speak!

2008-09-20T13:13:00.002+02:00

More Paladin news on the Beta forums, including some nice comments from the Developers (aka Blues). In this post, written by Suicidal Zebra, he wraps up all the information and feeds it to you in bitesize chunks. There's a lot of good stuff to be read there, so make sure you do!

Patch Notes & PTR

2008-09-16T15:23:00.003+02:00

The patch notes for the Public Test Realm (PTR) came out, and I have mixed feelings about them. There's some better scaling for certain spells, some spells have been buffed, which is all good. However, also a lot about Retribution has been overhauled, including some (in my eyes) serious nerfs. Have a look yourself at https://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/testrealm.html and tell me what you think.

Things I like:

All Auras now affect all party and raid members within the area of effect. (Naturally)
Divine Intervention cooldown reduced to 20 minutes. (Useable more often than once or twice in raids/heroics)
Divine Strength (Holy) moved to tier 1 in the Protection tree. (Easier delving into prot tree for BoK)

Things I dislike:

Forbearance duration increased to 3 minutes. (Not THAT bad, but still)
Precision has been removed. (The worst thing Blizzard could do, with itemization as it is for Retribution. Getting hit capped while maintaining decent power will be hell)
Sanctity Aura (Retribution) removed. (Our main aura is gone. We'll have to put up retribution aura + 5 different ret aura buff talents to get the same effect...)
Vengeance (Retribution) now stacks up to 2 times, reduced from 3. (Weren't we putting out mediocre DPS as it was? Don't take away 5% of our damage then...)

So far I'm not too happy, but we'll see how it turns out. I downloaded the PTR and took a peek at what has been added. There's a huge queue for character copying, so I'll have to wait a bit till I can transfer Vaadren over and can fully explore the talent trees and such. Firelight at http://retribution-paladin.blogspot.com is pretty enthusiastic about how Ret turned out, so I hope I'm wrong and I'll still be able to play my class decently.

On the flipside, I did check out the barber shop, which is considered godlike I think. Everyone speaks highly of it, even though it's just a minor visual tweak to your char. The calendar is pretty nice as well, with all the in-game events already in there. It's easy to make any kind of event, and it looks good. I'll have to explore that a bit further with Vaadren.

Finally, the Achievements. I'm not too sure why they put that in, but I'm very excited about that. With achievements in every category you can think of (professions, reputation, PvP, questing) you will always have something to strive for. Bored of heroic grinding? Go do some PvP achievements to change the scenery. I know I'll be going for the Exploration Achievements, I've always loved exploring! (I used to be the Guild Cartographer in my old guild before everyone got the Cartographer addon)

That's it for now. I'll be dividing my attention between WoW and the PTR for a bit, so be sure to expect some more about both in the future!

Teatime at the Castle

2008-09-10T11:37:00.004+02:00

Just a short post today, after last nights follow-up Kara run. Aran's been bugging us this week for no apparent reason, but we finally got revenge tonight. Chess went easy as usual, I can't remember a single time we lost there. Is it even possible without leaving your computer? I got some healy pants from Chess, the start of collecting a healy set (I already have full tank set, holy seems obvious now). It's quite low priority though, so I won't go to great lengths just to get an item, like I'd do for Ret.

Prince went really well tonight. Usually we have trouble with the infernals, or rather bad luck. The first few drop quite far away, one a bit closer on a spot where you don't really want it but still okay, and then one right on top of you and the tank! This time was no different, but it went very smoothly. Prince went down like sugar in a teacup, and soon he was down on the ground. No Gorehowl again unfortunately, that axe has been eluding me for a long time now. I did get the T4 helmet though, so now I can replace that aweful Crusaders Scaled Helm with resilience on it for a nice Justicar Crown. It does push back my HR to below the cap again, which keeps aggravating me. Especially since I only need like 3 or 4 HR.

After Prince we got Nightbane down, by my request. After Gruul on saturday, I only needed Nightbane to finish the Cudgel of Kar'desh quest in Slave Pens (SSC attunement I believe), so I definately didn't want to miss out on that beasty. We got him down nice and easy, earning another batch of badges. We finished there with an early night, giving people the opportunity to go to sleep or just muck around until the server check started at 3 AM.

The badges are a blessing these days, as I made up my mind about my new weapon. The Blade of Harbingers is my choice, for a whopping 150 badges. Get a Mongoose enchant on that one and I won't be swapping weapons anytime soon. I've got around 90 to go, so I should really get working!

Big 'n Ugly

2008-09-07T00:58:00.006+02:00

Gruul's Lair was on the schedule tonight. Samsara is doing really well in Karazhan, you could almost say we've got it on farm, so it was time to take it up a notch. And so we ended up on Gruul's doorstep, 25 Samsarans strong.

Man, what a night! After buffing everyone up (PallyPower makes it so much easier with 25 people to buff, and 4 pallies to divide the blessings amongst) we headed for the trash mobs. Surprisingly, the trash mobs went down without any problems, and we were already glad about that. Maulgar and his gang next. After going over the tactics, we spread out and initiated the fight. We got Blindeye the Seer down surprisingly fast, and soon Olm the Summoner went down as well. At that point we lost a tank though, cutting a mob loose (don't know which one, it was kinda hectic) and going rampage. Wipe 1. We went in again for the second and third tries, but someone pulled Maulgar too soon both times, ensuing utter chaos. The fourth try started smoothly again, and again the Blindeye went down fast, closely followed by Olm again. We were onto High King Maulgar himself in no time, and before the raid leader could say "Phase 2 coming up" the High King was dead on the ground! Two pally shoulder tokens dropped, nothing else interesting for paladins. With 4 paladins in the raid, plus a few shamans and a rogue, my chances were quite small to get one of the tokens. And indeed, I rolled 37 against a 87 and 72. Too bad!

After a quick break we went on to the big man himself. The trash up to Gruul was taken care of in sheer elegance. Perfect teamwork there. And then Gruul! After going over the tactics again, we ran in for the showdown. Here goes nothing! It was quite hectic, people running all over the place, trying to stay out of range of others as much as possible. Around 60% I got one-shotted by a Shatter (at full health!), and I was lying dead on the floor. A mage fell soon after, and I told the healers to battle rez the mage instead of me. Slowly but surely Gruul's health bar went down, and a few more people fell. And then it happened: with around 20 people still standing, Gruul bit the dust! A one-shotter!! We couldn't believe it, and the Vent channel went berserk with cheers. After a rez I got a look at the loot. Yet two more pally tokens, legs this time. It sure was a paladin friendly night! The people who got T4 shoulder tokens at Maulgar couldn't roll again for the legs, making the odds a bit more favorable. A well placed roll of 68 made me the highest roller for one of the tokens, our other Ret paladin got the other one. Justicar Greaves for me, baby! Whoohooo!

It was Samsara's first night EVER in Gruul's Lair. Most of us had never even seen it from the inside yet, let alone kill its inhabitants. And here we are now. After our first night, we cleared Gruul's Lair, one-shotting its master in the process. I'm not saying that we've put Gruul's Lair on farm after our first night, but it certainly looks promising!

Maggy, you've been warned. You're next!

I want!

2008-09-05T14:54:00.007+02:00

Gear upgrades. It never seems to stop, does it? Last week I finally got my T4 gloves (Justicar Gauntlets), which I immediately enchanted of course. Compared to the Ragesteel Gloves I had before them, the stat increase is quite nice. The strength increase is quite minimal. +3 Str or so, good for +7 AP. Not much, but extra AP is extra AP. The stamina and intelligence buffs are really nice, something I can always use. I've been focusing mainly on strength on gear, and my intelligence (and mana pool!) has been suffering cause of that. Time for a little love in that direction. I'm also looking forward to the 2 set bonus of the Justicar set. A 15% damage increase for JotC is always nice. After all, it's judged on mobs 90% of the time.

There's a major catch to the Justicar Gauntlets though. With the Ragesteel Gloves I had the Ragesteel Set hit rating bonus, something I really need. Without the gloves I'm suddenly down 20 HR, and that hurts. Luckily I was slightly overcapped already, so that softened the blow, but I'm still 11 HR short of capping it, and I really want it too. I don't want to be the one that misses a blow when everyone else is dead and Gruul at 1%. No use if you can crit for 3-4k if the blow won't land.

And so, in the quest for more HR, I started looking for gear upgrades. I still have some blues which I want desperately replaced (Crusader's Scaled Chestpiece and Helm, resilience yuck!), but haven't gotten around to yet. I decided I need to replace 6 things: helm, chest, shoulders, bracers, weapon and libram. Since itemization is quite a pain, it was hard finding suitable items for some slots, but in the end I made my shopping list.

I really need to get rid of that Crusader's Scaled Helm. It's not bad, but the resilience is such a waste. Prince should help me off that with a T4 helm drop.

Same goes for the Crusader's Scaled Chestpiece. I'll need to spam some MgT Heroic (gotta do normal first as well....can't get in otherwise) for the Netherforce Breastplate from Kael'Thas. I think that'll be my main objective for now, since it's the one I've been wanting to replace for a while.

Ragesteel Shoulders are nice for now, but without the set bonus not too special. T4 shoulders from High King Maulgar? We'll see, Gruul is just around the corner for the guild.

Bracers next. Sha'tari Wrought Armguards? With defense rating on it? The other stats aren't too bad, but there are better bracers around, and the defense raiting is just a waste. I was looking at the Eternium Rage-Shackles from the BoJ vendor, which are an improvement, but I'd rather have the "Ignore 150 of opponent's armor" stat in another form, like crit rating or AP. The other choice is Bladespire Warbands from HKM, but the chance of that dropping on the first time ever we're in Gruul's Lair, I'd say it's quite low. The crit rating is a nice feature of the Warbands, but all other stats are lower. Significantly. I'm not sure yet what to do, I might pose the dilemma to the guild and see what they think.

On to the weapon then. Prince has yet another drop for me, this time in the form of Grom Hellscream's axe Gorehowl. With my BS at 365, I probably should level it up to 375 and craft Stormherald, but I'm having doubts about the benefits of it in the end. I think Gorehowl will do just fine.

Lastly, the libram. I really think I'm using a crap libram now, and there's only one way to fix that: farm The Maker in heroic Blood Furnace. Libram of Avengement is THE libram, no questions asked.

It'll be hard probably, but I'll just go for it and see how it goes. Gruul's Lair on saturday evening, our first ever guild run. Really looking forward to that one!

Maulgar, Gruul, you'd better watch out. Samsarans are coming!

Opening Sequence

2008-09-05T11:13:00.006+02:00

So here we go, my first post on my first blog. It's all kinda new to me, so I guess I'll just have to see how it goes. I've been following some blogs about Retribution Paladins for a bit, and decided I wanted to go the same way, if nothing else than to promote Retribution. I'll be sure to link them pretty soon so you can check those out as well, they're pretty nice. Anyway, on to business!

Since this is a blog about a Retribution Paladin, let me introduce myself and the paladin in question:

My name is Martijn, with my Ret Paladin Vaadren. He's on the Lightbringer EU server, and in the casual raiding guild Samsara, Horde side (yup, I play a Blood Elf!). PvP is something I never got into (except the occasional Xroads skirmish for fun), I'm a pure PvE junkie.

Samsara's progress is mainly Karazhan oriented right now, with a small path into Zul'Aman and Gruul's Lair pretty soon. There's two Karazhan runs a week (two teams who each have their own starting day and follow up day), and one ZA run a week for the well-geared people.

As for an Armory link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Vaadren

I think that about sums up the first post. Stay posted for any blogposts about my WoW experiences in the future. Raid experiences, gear upgrades, paladin news or whatever I feel like putting in here.

As a final note, feel free to make any comments or suggestions regarding my blogposts or Vaadren (talents, gear, etc). I'll take all criticisms and suggestions!