Friday, May 21, 2010

What topics do you want to see discussed?

So, I have a ton of topics that I'm happy to post about, but I don't want to just post flood people.

What would you like me to post on, or to discuss? Here's some ideas that I'd like your feedback on, but please feel free to add your own in the comments below for me to consider as well. :)

Building/joining a successful guild, and how to tell if they will be.
Discussions about addons (offer me a few you'd like to hear about, beyond just a "mandatory list").
Discuss strats for being a successful while fighting .
Gearing a , from fresh 80 to progression raider, and why this is done this way.
This will not be a simple gear list for people to choose from, but an educational discussion on why one would choose given pieces, and in what order.
Random funny in game stories.

And the beat goes on...

...to the tune of 4 HM's down in ICC 25. We also managed to do this without taking longer than we did for normal modes the week before. Progression is going well, we now have Heroic down for Marrowgar, Lootship, Dreamwalker, and Rotface. We expect to add at least 2 more to that list next week from the ranks of: Saurfang, Festergut, Princes, Bloodqueen.

Thanks to the 25 man going so smoothly and quickly, we also ran 10 man tonight, took about 3.5 hours to do every boss HM except for LK, and to go for the LK achievement for the meta. Unfortunately, while the stacks hit 32, and 30 stacks are required, the achievement didn't trigger for those of us that didn't have it already. We've put in GM tickets for it, but we doubt we'll get them. But, now just achievements for the meta drakes...the hard stuff is out of the way. :)

Needless to say, I'm excited to be making progress, and making it quickly.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

...and another one bites the dust

The king is dead, long live the king!

The guild killed LK in 25 man this week. I'm very happy to get the achievement, and head into hard modes, but we went in with the expectation that we could, and would, get the LK kill...and we did it after only 6 pulls in total..with some people never having had seen it.

So, what does it take to kill LK in 25 man? Well, it's pretty simple actually. stack up, stack up, stack up, run for defile, switch targets quick...rinse and repeat, don't run into orbs. As long as people are raid aware, it becomes a fairly easy fight with this sort of mechanic. I love the rng of the valks picking up random people...despite that we would've killed him on our 3rd attempt if it wasn't a pal healer while the other pal heal dc'd. It keeps the fight from being 100% the same every time.

The thing I really like about the LK fight is that it is NOT a "gear it and win it" fight. Yes, you will need a minimum level of output or survivability, but anybody with some 10 man gear, a piece or 2 of 25 gear, and even some 25 toc gear should have plenty of that at this point, thanks to the 15% buff. What is nice is that this is a fight about awareness and skill of execution. There aren't too many of those left in the game these days.

Here's looking forward to HMs with the guild...some of which are jokes (gunship), and some of which have a gear and skill attribute to them. I have some experience in them from before I joined, but this should be a great time now for us to shine and push our way up the guild ladder quickly. :)

Not bad, considering it became a full 25 man guild just last week, so 1 week of progression is a full clear of available content to us.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Cataclysm - Will it suck?

By now, I'm sure everybody has heard a bunch of rumors and "blue posts" and random factoids about Cataclysm.

Here are my brief thoughts, with a couple reasons:

Druid changes:
1) Druid tank: New AoE bleed sounds really cool, I look forward to seeing how this works in combination with swipe.
2) Druid ability: BRING ON THE SHROOMS! Seriously, this new spell has a lot of potential to be amusing and useful, so long as it isn't abysmally underpowered or way overpowered.
3) Druid Tree: WTF? No more trees? GIMME MY FOREST! Druids are all about forms, if we wanted to stand around in caster form, we'd play....ANYTHING ELSE. We like our forms, don't take them away because you want to show off armor...make armor mold to our forms if you want to show the armor off. Don't be lazy Bliz.

Mark/Honor/etc changes:
This makes sense, but really doesn't change anything other than making bookkeeping (and explanations to new players) easier. 2 tiers of tokens/points...ignore the names and just think arena/honor and progression/prior-tier, and you're set.

Raiding:
WTF? Seriously, everything on 1 lockout? They clearly don't want people like me to play this game, when the only thing I enjoy is raiding. 10 man has the small charm to it, and I love running 10 mans with friends, either to help them out or to bust up an achievement. Then I run the 25's for gear and an actual skill check. Now, don't get me wrong, if Blizz can actually get 10 and 25 man raids to be the same...which they COMPLETELY failed at in WotLK (and let's face it, just scaling the fights means 25 mans can't be as interesting with as many things going on at once), then I'm on board for making 10 and 25 man gear the same types of drops. However, if you're making it so I have to choose to raid with friends vs raid with a guild of great players that I get along with...don't expect me to just go level another alt (which I can't do because I already have max number of chars on the server)...expect me to play less, which will lead to less fun with the game, which will lead to a canceled subscription. On top of that, now we'd be limited to only ever trying one mode and one type, so expect progression guilds to drop to 10 man mode for one boss, go to 25 man for the next, etc...and the whole system is just going to piss people off.

Artwork/Graphics:
The concept art looks amazing in most aspects, and the screenshots look pretty good that have been shown so far. Here's hoping it'll look great, but not make everybody have to get a brand new computer to run it...that's always been one of the nice things about WoW is that you didn't have to have a hardcore gaming system to run it, even if you wanted to be mostly hardcore about playing it. Now, I doubt they can come out with something that won't run on one of my systems acceptably, but I know many people with systems just keeping up with acceptable play levels in WotLK...so let's hope they won't all just stop playing WoW since they have no reason to get a newer computer otherwise, not being hard core gamers.