Thursday, June 30, 2011

Remember to Eagle Eye!

If you've been farming the new Firelands raid for rep - or even actually trying the bosses, if your guild is more organized than ours - remember that you can use:

/cast !Eagle Eye

...and you can chain cast Eagle Eye all the way down to the other end of the raid... meaning that merely standing at the start of the zone can get you pretty pics like this:


Now that's one cool-lookin' boss :)

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Can't believe it's come to this

Naxxramas used to be the ultimate raiding experience.

40 people, top of the range computers to counteract the lag, split second timing, zero mistakes... if you weren't the most coordinated team, you weren't capable of doing it.

A few days ago, I joined an 8man PuG, supposedly to do Achievements.

We ended up failing (some people *really* can't handle Heigan or Thaddius), but a few of us continued on anyway. Someone DCed, someone left...

...and 6 of us ended up doing the entire of the Naxx military wing with no healer class.

No, not even a pally or druid tank - both tanks were warriors.

It's a little sad, killing the 4 horsemen without a healer. That encounter used to take 4 tanks and some epic timed swapping.

Then again... I suppose it's even sadder that we didn't manage to get any Achievements done with all 85s except Spore Loser, because someone (different!) failed each time. Seriously... who fails at Thaddius charges with only 7 people, Heigan dancing *before* the second phase, and controlling DPS on the 4 Horsemen?!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Catching up with old content



Among the list of things I've always meant to do and never got around to finishing are the Argent Tournament dailies for mounts and the Winterspring grind.

Yes, I do realize it's a lot less of a trial than it used to be, but anything that involves repetitive easy work in WoW doesn't tend to motivate me much.

With Firelands coming in soon however, any free time I'd usually have would be eaten up with Firelands content, so I thought I'd better do this stuff whilst I still can!

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Can Haz Chromaggus

I went into Blackwing Lair recently with a guildie and came out with a new skin colour for Cerberus:


I have to say, duoing BWL with a boomkin is pretty easy - Razorgore gave us the most trouble, but the rest is pretty much a faceroll.

Some tips:

Razorgore: if your partner is controlling Razorgore, keep Mend Pet up to help grab aggro on all the mobs and stand just below the platform so that you can quickly pick up any mobs running towards the orb. I found using a tenacity pet in MM spec the most helpful; if you get low you can hit Chimera, but I mostly relied on traps. Staying in Aspect of the Fox helps to keep your Focus up - you don't really need the extra DPS Hawk provides.

Everything in between: Tank n spank. If you want to tame Chromaggus, just stand at max range and go for it; no tricks required.

Nefarian: Using an heirloom ranged weapon will completely negate Nef's hunter class call, so you won't have to worry about your bow breaking. In phase 1, it's easiest to let the mobs come to you and kill them all in a pile rather than picking them off quickly, so that in phase 3 they'll all rez in the one spot. Being in BM spec can be helpful for breaking you out of fears occasionally. Be mindful what each of your raid member's class calls are and act accordingly.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Now that's what I call a great raid

My guild, like many casual-friendly guilds that don't have a set 10 people for every raid, occasionally has trouble with consistency.

Even though we may have most bosses on farm status, we'll still wipe repeatedly to them some weeks, which seriously hampers our progression time.

Tonight, however, was the first time in awhile that I've felt we had a brilliant run - 5 bosses down in Blackwing Descent (including Atramedes, a new one for me because I missed our first kill), with most of those a one-shot.

I'm definitely looking forward to tomorrow night's raid - the Ascendant Council will hopefully go down, meaning we'd just have Cho'gall and Nefarian to go... and I'd really like to clear them before Firelands hits, just to say we did it before the nerfs kick in.

(And before anyone says "Sinestra", I think it'll be pretty difficult to get through an entire raid's worth of heroic mode progression to get to her before Firelands hits :P)