First Raids

So we went on our first two raids this weekend. Both were alot of fun and successful.

Naxxramas

Patchwerk was owned. We essentially one shot him, he was pulled in error first without knowing all of the trash would blast us back into the Outlands. We learned the hard way that all of the trash comes with Patchwerk, so we cleared the trash and put down the ugly construct.

Grobbulus was also beat down. It took us 4 or so tries to really get it down. He is a very interesting and fun fight. This instantly became one of my top 5 boss fights in the game.

We failed on the 3rd boss in the construct wing, the dog. He really was not too ridiculously hard, it is going to come down to our kiters learning the fight and getting their timing down on the zombies.

Obsidian Sanctum

What a fun, quick raid. This was by far one of the easiest raids I have been on. Sartharion was a joke, just run away from the flame wall and tank and spank him and the adds. Grats on t7 gloves. Beautiful raid environment to boot.

More success and interesting encounters to come!

Updated Heroic Hatred

After running more heroics I thought it was valid to update my hate list. Thus far it includes the Snake boss in Gundrak, Loken in Halls of Lightning, and lets not forget Blackhaus in the Old Kingdom.

I have an update, I now HATE Arthas in the Culling of Stratholme. We are plugging along relatively nicely for the shot at the additional boss.. we down the second boss with 7 minutes left, and boom.. we wait over 2 minutes for Arthas to arrive at the next point. Then he blows at least another minute or longer on his bullshit dialogue. Without his ridiculous timing we would have had an excellent shot at smoking that optional boss and getting a bronze drake.

Heroic Hate List:

• Sladran in Gundrak
• Loken in Halls of Lightning
• Blackhaus in the Old Kingdom (Spec shadow next time? mmk??)
• Arthas in the Culling of Strat (Hurry your soon to be epic incarnation of death ass up!)

Staring at My Coffee Mug

I believe things will all workout in Heroes, Inc. People will hit the level cap and run instances with other people, these things tend to happen in an MMO. Some people may have to spec differently for a while (like me probably going resto).

I understand the goals in Heroes are focused more on the "journey" and not the end of the line, more on community than min/maxing a raid to conquer a particular encounter. All of that is fine, its great, in fact I would not want it any other way.

With that said, some people have expectations that are very very streamlined and in my opinion unrealistic. Wanting a group for every quest and every xp point is the same for me as others have issues with "hand holding" in instances. I like the challenge of busting out levels, sure I read the major storyline, I follow the quests. But I like grouping, and in my opinion the real grouping truly starts at 80.

One issue with me is the whole "instance challenge" situation. I understand wanting a challenging encounter. And trust me, at this stage and the forseeable future, EVERY other heroic boss is a definite challenge regardless of who is in the group. Most of the achievements in heroics are very challenging, in fact some are outright ridiculous and will require months of raiding to get properly geared to complete them. If it is a challenge that is being sought, believe me, for a casual guild like Heroes it could take 8 months to a YEAR, yes a year to get them done.

I will say this, I am very excited to group with all of heroes. I even plan on speccing resto so I can get in as many groups with my friends as possible.

As for raiding, I believe Lakini is exactly right, no matter when raiding starts, stops, blows up, vanishes, or whatever, not everyone will be happy. Bottom line as I see it, no one is in a ridiculous rush to get into Naxx, but everyone is ready and excited to group together! See ya in-game.

Heroic Blue

So far we have ran almost every heroic encounter in the game. Here are just a few snippets from my heroic experiences, pardon my spelling on the instance titles.

Drak Theron-Last boss is a major gimmick fight and difficult.

Utgarde-Easiest heroic thus far.

Gundrak-Several bosses have difficult mechanics (I hate you now Snake man!)

Halls of Stone- Easy except for the "event," this is a hectic mad dash to save a smack talking dwarf.

Halls of Lightning- Not too bad, except for the last boss (I hate you LOKEN, HATE!) which I nubbed it up on twice in a row.

Azerol Nerub- Probably the most difficult heroic thus far, the last boss literally seemed impossible for us, this will be an interesting challenge.

Ahnkatet The Old Kingdom- Alot of fun along with alot of challenge. Three of the four bosses are really tough. I will add another name to the hate list BLACKHAUS, he was impossible to down.

Violet Hold- Somewhat challenging every time since you never really know what boss your going to get, but this is probably the "Badge Farm" instance due to its duration and being right in Dalaran.

The Nexus-TBA

The Occulus-TBA

Utgarde Pinnacle-TBA

Culling of Strat-TBA

Favorite Encounter- Probably Halls of Stone "Event" or the final boss in the Old Kingdom.

Updated Hate list for Heroic instances:

• The snake boss in Gundrak
• Loken in Halls of Lightning
• Blackhaus in the Old Kingdom

Lots of fun with friends and interesting places.

It is all a process

Character progression in WOTLK is a steping stone process for most of us. I am trying to make these initial steps to increasing my character's effectivness in 5 mans/heroics and eventually raids.

First, and most obvious is getting to the level cap.

Second, for most it is finishing off quests and especially those group quest that reward solid starting gear. I am probably half way finished with this.

Third, is the step I am primarily on at this time is levelling my crafting professions. I can obtain some very valuable gear via leatherworking, and make some good money with my alchemy profession. The downfall for me is I have to level my warrior in order to obtain the materials for my two production professions, or pay out the wazzou for them on the auction house. I will be levelling the warrior.

So, fortunately for me, Donk, my good RL buddy is in the same boat as I am. He has a mage that he will be levelling with me for pretty much most of the same reasons, although he could end up in a raid group with his mage due to the range dps shortage in our guild. Overall I expect this process to be pretty painless since most of the quests and zones are fresh on our minds from blasting balls to the wall to 80 on our mains.

Overall as far as the guild goes, I do see some dissatisfied people, which I think is somewhat natural as some people seem to individualize the levelling process while others make it a group affair. Hopefully, once the majority reaches 80 things will start to shake out and everyone gets at least some of their group goals met.

80

So I hit 80 last night. Definitely stayed up too late, I am a dog today at work. I was able to ding with at least 3/4 of Stormpeaks remaining, and all of Icecrown. Now it is time to get some PVP in as well as work on the warrior for my shaman's production professions. Honestly, if you just steadily quest it should not take more than 3 weeks maybe 3 and a half to get to max level. The questing really picked up after Borean Tundra and the first half of Howling Fjord. Quests in the second half of Howling Fjord and Dragonblight really start to weave together and you are able to complete alot of them together. The lore in the Dragonblight was sensational. One cutscene dealing with several in-game heroes was just incredible.

My plan for the weekend and some next week is to both level my warrior and try and knock out any instance quests for as much blue gear as I can get. I hope to help any guildmates with that or any other group quests.

A Whole New World

Northrend.

What a beautiful and emotion driven continent.

Everywhere there is death, destruction, beauty, humor, and a feeling of epic doom or conquest. It is not perfect, but I am impressed. The graphics have quite a few more particle effects among other improvements.

My good friend and native Muleshoean, Tonkadonk and I are level 77. We really pushed it hard right after release. I will say this, the comfort of having a flying mount again is wonderful. Being able to fly from quest to quest, especially on an epic mount, is dramatically better and more satisfying than ground running from place to place.

The gear reset has been minimal thus far. Just a few things have really been upgrades. Trinkets were the first to go. Other gear slots really have not been changed, I have replaced my bracers and cloak, with a few other debateable items in my bags.

I am excited to get some good, solid instance groups together in the coming weeks once more people get levelled. Learning new instaces is a great part of the game and one I certainly look forward to.

Almost Here

With WOTLK right around the corner I have been fairly inactive. Like Bacon, I too have had a nasty bout with a cold that has really sucked.

I am really looking forward to the levelling experience and all of the things that come with that (skills, new factions, quest rewards, gold..). I am actually looking forward to some of the instancing involved too, during BC most of my levelling was strictly solo or duo.

Obviously I am going to be levelling my shaman first, followed then by my warrior. It will be nice to have a pair of classes capable of everything in the game, tank, healing, cc, dps, utility, etc..
There was some exciting news regarding shaman scaling, seems there will be some sort of stat that will scale with damage, most likely intellect. This is something Elemental Shaman have been clamoring for, since the beginning of time. Seeing a Boomkin bring the majority of our buffs to a raid now and spank the living hell out of us in dps was somewhat depressing (not saying this was a scaling issue but scaling will help narrow the gap some.) Being a utility/dps caster it was rewarding getting whispers from mages and others saying "omg i love you in this raid," "WOW look at my spelldamage!" That feeling has been somewhat nullyfied with overlapping buffs that blot out what my totems do for the raid, to add injury to insult we also still lag behind some in damage. Oh, well, I still have a confident feeling everything will be ok, we lag behind now and I still hold my own.

Raiding in Wrath will be exciting and definitely a solid experience with a pretty much set group of people who know their classes well. The sooner we get started the better IMO. Getting a constant stream of heroics in will also be welcome. There really is little I enjoy more than getting a fun group of friends and knocking out some heroics on a Saturday night.

3.0

Well patch day came and went. Interesting talents and abilities discovered, a raid formed and blew through the majority of ZA. Every raid and instance in the game is broken now, with "Instance not Found" errors.

Two things jumped out at me with our ZA raid, 1. Tank threat generation is exponentially higher. (I am not in beta so I have no clue if it still feels this way at 80). 2. AOE Dps/healing clearly rules the day. AOE encounters are most definitely going to be bigger, badder, and more intense, its clear due to blizzards focus on talents, abilities and changes that effect aoe.

Class specific points:

• I was concerned about my dps as elemental. I ended up bouncing from 4th to (very briefly) 1st and staying mainly 3rd behind our arms warrior and balance druid. There were 4 dps that consistently stayed above 1300. I probably do really really well on 2 and 3 mob pulls due to chain lightning hitting all of the mobs, anything more than 3 and im no where near the others. Fortunately there was a blue post stating shaman aoe is going to be looked at and will be changed to increase shaman aoe effectivness.
  

• Efficiency: in BC this was my main downfall. Getting dangerously close to OOM too often on boss fights was often times unavoidable. This has dramatically changed. Elemental is now highly effecient both on live and according to multiple sources, on beta. With blizzard constantly pushing haste as an important shaman stat this was inevitable since +haste = OOM. My strategy for now and probably while leveling is to glyph for effeciency (+30% to watershield passive mana regen and -10% cost to lightning bolt) and gear for haste.
  

Things are good, and I am frothing at the mouth for my first venture into Northrend.

Ducks in a Row

Like most of you I have been working on lining everything up for the upcoming expansion. Mostly this involves professions. I have settled on levelling my warrior second and will do mostly pvp with him. I am a leatherworker and alchemist on my main toon, the shaman. So to compliment those two professions I am levelling skinning and herbalism on the warrior. This should provide some added side benefits in pvp for the warrior which will get an increase in crit and a self-hot.

I believe patch 3.0 is close to coming live. The pre-bc patch that was released prior to BC was six weeks in advance, I feel like the same timeframe will probably be employed here, save a week or two. I am very interested in trying out the new talents. I hope others are as well. Getting a za run together in heroes has been hard for quite some time now, understandably so. Maybe the new patch will provide some much needed incentive to do that. Have a great week.

Its Freezing up here!

My last several days in game have been spent in the frigid lands of Winterspring. I am grinding out the last bit of reputation for my Frostsaber. This has been a slow and somewhat grueling task. At least for the most part I have good people to talk to on vent or a good show to listen to on the tube.

Overall I have really come to terms with my class and how useful it truly is within PVE raiding. Our totems going raidwide will be a huge buff to shaman utility, in my opinion. As well as the change to "spell power" rather than damage vs. healing pieces. This will allow me to heal effectively as well. There is a chance I will be going enhancement to maximize our raid setup. I was asked if I were open to this idea and I most certainly was (provided enh shamans in beta are corrected). Windfury numbers are just plain fun to see explode over an npc's head. However I do still enjoy the shaman pew pew and caster utility elemental brings to the raid. But I am totally commited to seeing all the content possible in the next expansion.

On the pvp front, I still would like to get involved a little more in the coming weeks, especially in the arena. I will probably grind out honor on my warrior and shaman both.

Decisions

Well, I have had alot of decisions to make both personally, professionally and in game! 

On the personal/professional side of things. I sold a farm that my family has owned since 1954. That was a tough decision, I essentially grew up there, learned to drive, farm, cuss, even have a dip or two, (which I hated and still do!).  Keeping it was just slowly causing it to depreciate so selling it was really my best option. 

Onto the game! 

I will be staying a shaman, nature is my calling!  Lightning bolts are where its at! 

This may even be my pvp choice if things are improved. Otherwise it will be my warrior or priest. 

See everyone in game! 

Hypocrite

On to Hunter.

Pros:

• Great DPS.
• Improved utility. Especially in the Survival tree.
  
• Solid CC

Cons:

• Not quite as "in-demand" as other dps classes. (Based on BC influences)
• Only fill one job, I have played a hybrid for most of my WoW career. (What a conundrum of hypocrisy playing a hybrid is. "I no longer want to heal..." "I like my hybrid because he can heal!..." )
• Pet Management
  

I am such a hypocrite when it comes to this game. I look and say, "Hey, dps is a fun time, you get to see big numbers and talk about meters and actually watch bosses die." But what is most fun is ACTUALLY raiding and enjoying myself doing so. Picking a class such as hunter could really diminish raid status. I have been spoiled with my shaman, especially when I am resto. It is funny, the very aspect of the shaman that I am getting burned out on..is the very reason shaman remain most apealing to me.

Crossroads

My wow career has been such a roller coaster.

One thing I have learned throughout all of my ups and downs with this game is the fact that I CANNOT stand screaming idiotic people who take this game too seriously.

A second thing is that I hate over protective cliques who cower in a shell within their smaller group and do not outreach to allow other like minded people join up with them and enjoy the game on a more casual note.

Hopefully the 10 man system will allow people to bridge that gap that so many find themselves unable to cross.

As far as Wrath of the Lich King is concerned, I am at a crossroads. I know for sure I will be a part of a great 10 man raid guild, how much of a part is really not for me to decide, however what class I choose to be could really help me in that regard. As it stands, range dps and healing is the point of contention. I have healed for the majority of my wow life and no longer wish to do this full time. This leaves me with three choices, Elemental Shaman, Hunter, or Warlock. I could reroll mage but the group as it stands has a solid mage.

Elemental Shaman

Pros:

• Nice utility.
  
• Good DPS, early on in progression. (Totem of Wrath , ftw.)
  
• Can toss out effective heals.

Cons:

• One button spamalot.
  
• Can lag behind in DPS compared to pure DPS classes in later high end raids. (Not confirmed in WotLK)
  
• Could end up healing more than doing damage.
  

We will talk about the hunter pros/cons next week.