Friday, May 8, 2009

Gold flows - Grinding spots (Small Eggs)

Just wanted to give a quick tip for a great grinding spot on Small Eggs. Them eggs are needed for some event achis and can during those events earn ya a bunch load of goldz.

There is a place in Westfall where the birds that drop these eggs actually have a force spawn. This means that there will always be at least one bird around, no matter how dang fast you kill em. (Disclaimer: They might of course have changed this since I was there, but probably not).
I grinded the Fleshrippers between Gold Coast Quarry and Jangolode Mine (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=1109) and it worked like a charm, so that's a tip for ya if you ever need to farm these little eggs.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Healing in Ulduar - Auriaya

And the guide for healing in Ulduar continues and today I thought we'd talk about one of the more boring fights in Ulduar. Although I like most of them, this boss actually feels more of a tough trash than a boss really. She ain't that easy but if you just get the pull right there isn't much you can fail on. There are more bosses in Ulduar that are quite easy (if you don't do hardmode that is) but this fight is easy and rather uneventful. As a healer there are two things to think about (on this boss too? What a coincidence), the pull and her cone dmg.

For this fight both holy and disc work altho holy Guardian Spirit can come in handy if the pull goes all wrong. But it shouldn't. And remember, this is 10man we're talking about.

First of all, the pull. It is the only thing that really can screw up, since you'll most likely wipe if you don't do it right. Think about Maulgar in Gruul's Lair and you'll have an idea about how it works, only this time you don't need something like 5 different tanks, but only two. So the MT and OT need to pull Auriaya and her cats away from eachother (well the important thing is they don't all three hit the same target) since her cats have a debuff that increases dmg taken by 50% and it stacks up to 9 times. Ouchie, in other words. As a healer you have to be ready for big dmg, but if the pull really fails there isn't much to do about it. Like I said, if you're holy you can use Guardian Spirit and hope you save some time for the OT to pick the adds up like he should.

Secondly, Auriaya does a frontal cone dmg which divides the dmg over all targets. It does approximately 80.000 dmg so this means you should never leave someone alone in front of her. The whole raid will always need to concentrate on standing in front of her to reduce dmg from the cone. She emotes it so there is a short window of time to get into positon if you just don't do it the easy way and always stand in front of her. Sounds easy enough but there are a few things that can make this really hazardous; Auriaya fears and also puts areas of death on the ground. This means the tank will have to move and Auriaya will move too. And that means there might be times where not everyone in the raid are in front of her when she cones and that is one, or the most important thing really, to be ready for.

Getting the pull right and being ready to heal whoever gets hit by her cone dmg is really what this fight is all about. And since the pull can basically either work or not, there isn't much to think about here. Imo KT with too many melee is a way harder fight.

To think about;
- Be ready for Auriaya conedmg. The less that get hit, the more to heal.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Healing in Ulduar - Hodir

Since I just downed this guy I thought I'd take my chance and write a fresh guide about healing him. You'll either love or hate this fight - in either case it's really tough. It actually resembles the Ignis fight alot, in that the raid regularly take massive amounts of aoe-dmg (Deconstructor is like this too) whereas the rest of the healing isn't that hard. Come to think of it most fights in Ulduar have some sort of massive aoe-dmg coming in phases. And altho I like simple and non-fuzzy things irl, I enjoy these intense fights in WoW the most. The ones where you have to be on your edge all the time and actually have to use every dang spell in the spellbook to make it work. You know that success is a great deal thanks to you. But you will also bang your head against the boss many times before downing this one (or maybe perhaps we just aren't that good ;). There are alot of things to keep track of, sorta like the Sarth 3d fight, and alot of dmg coming in. One moments of distraction could be fatal. They way it should be! So this would be one of my favourite fights in Ulduar so far and this is how you should heal and what to think about.

First of all, for Hodir I actually recommend holy. Yes I've been yapping about disc for a while, but there are still some areas where holy will make it a little further, and Hodir is definitely one of them. If everyone in the raid knows what to do and where not to stand, i.e the evil stuff falling from the ceiling, you'll mostly be healing two things - Frozen Blows and MT. One tank is enough on this fight, we had to have three healers tho. Two druids and me, the holy priest. The Frozen Blows aoe is the real issue in this fight - a really massive aoe dmg that needs at least three prayer of healing per group to be dealt with. We shared the burden so that I healed one group and the druids another (this is 10man as you've figured). Divine Hymn really does it in this fight and effectively heals the entire raid during one channel, tho it might needed to be topped of in the end (the aoe has slightly longer duration that the channeling). Start casting PoH on your groups as soon as you see that Hodir is doing his aoe, there is really no time to loose. Throw out a PoM on someone low and a CoH inbetween casts. Like I said, about three PoH should do it. Place a Lightwell and tell people to use it or they will die.

The next thing to think about is the blows on the tank. He won't take all that much dmg most of the fight (nothing a renew and a flash heal can't fix) but during the Frozen Blows he will start taking some nasty frost dmg. We did this another night with a warrior who had no frost gear. He was basically oneshotted. Today we had a frost capped (that's what he said he was, dunno if you can cap resistance?) druid tank and it went alot easier. So not only will you have to spam heal the raid, keep the cooldowns for the tank taking the big hits. Be ready for it.

As you might understand this is an extremely mana consuming fight. When downing Hodir I had used two innervate, a mana pot and my shadowfiend and was utterly oom when he died. I've told ya before my casting regen isn't all that (this time it was about 420 mp5 raid buffed) so having better stats than that will of course make a difference. You will oom.

To think about (assuming the raid steps out of dmg and use Lightwell):
- Start the PoH-healing as soon as Hodir starts his aoe, there is really no cast-time to waste.
- Be ready for the tank taking big blows during the aoe and dipping really low, keeping Guardian Spirit for this is ideal.

Have fun healing a really tough fight!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Children's Week & Hearthstones

The title of this post is to reflect that I'm going to bring up two very different subjects, but they actually have something incommon (except for both being part of WoW), so read along and you'll see where it'll lead ya!
First of all, Children's Week is upon us. One might think it odd that I bring this up and not any other world event. Well the simple reason is that I don't care for the world events much, and I don't think I have done any of the achis included, except for the Winterveil one where you get to open presents! But there is something special about Children's Week and you've surely heard about it alot already - School of Hard Knocks achi. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not planning to do this achi either (I am however planning to get the third children's week companion for the "Nanny" achi) but I'm still affected since Love do all these achievements. When something bothers him, he makes sure I know about it. And when something bothers him extra much I might take an extra look at it to form my own opinion - is he being oversensitive or is there something really bothersome about what he is doing?
And for this achievement I concluded that he actually has some reason to QQ. The real cry isn't really from him tho, it's on the forums all over the internet and people state different reason for this achi having to be one of the worst so far. Some say they, as pve'rs, shouldn't have to do pvp-things for an achievement or that they don't stand a fair chance due to their lack of pvp-skill and gear.
I don't agree with this. The achievement being about pvp isn't what bothers me about it. Remember the Love Fool meta achi? You had to get some candies from a bag and it was all about luck. You could farm those bag the entire event through and still not get it. Blizzard said they wanted to remove the luck factor from the achievements and removed that candy-achievement from the meta-achievement requirements. And now they implement this. Some people on the forums say "oh it was so easy, I got it on my third try" and some say "I have done this for hours and still not completed it". No one has a good idea on how to accomplish it, even the "guide" at wowinsider.com only says "run and take the flag". Wow, I don't think anyone would've thought of that.
Yes, you only need to go get the flag, and it sounds simple enough. But everyone else doing the achi also "only needs to take it" and they're facing a bunch of people who think they're getting free HK's from players who're not even there to pvp. Whether you're gonna be the one getting the flag or not is not due to skill, but luck. The skill involved disappears in so many luck factors that they won't do much difference.
And all the pvpers get cranky because no one cares about defending bases in the BG's anymore and "noob!" is thrown all around for no benefit. Who is supposed to enjoy this achi? It is born from bad planning and ruins gameplay.

So where does the hearthstone fit into all this?
Well, some patches ago Blizzard decided to fix the "ghetto hsing" that people were doing. People went haywire since alot of game content takes place in totally different areas and travelling hither and dither is not what people are paying for. So Blizzard agreed to lower the cooldown on the HS from 60 min to 30 min and people were a little happier. But I thought to myself, why do Hearthstones even have cooldowns? It can only take you to one designated place in the world anyway, how imba can it be? Ghostcrawler said we should be happy with 30 min, but why? Why can't we have no cd? Would it make the game too simple? Would it make some aspects too easy? The only good reason I could see was that Blizzard simply don't want things to be time effective. We would be able to move "too fast" through the world if we could HS at any time. Much travel time aka wasted money for the players aka gained money for Blizzard would be gone. Think about it? This game might not cost much per hour, but how many of them hours have you spent not doing anything but trying to get from place A to B and back again?

Both these things stand to show that Blizzard often and in ways more obvious than other game developers actively work against the players. The time sink-holes in this game are sometimes so obvious it makes me laugh. Some are optional, like grinding exalted with some faction, but most aren't.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Reminiscing vanilla WoW - Part 2

The list to convince everyone that Vanilla WoW in many aspects was pure horror (especially when compared to today) continues. Today, let's think back and talk about;
Respecs:
Remember when the fee for respeccing stacked indefinitely? If you look at most other RPG's and MMORPGS the possibility to change your talents after chosing them isn't even there. Blizzard had thought one extra step and thought that you could respec if you really wanted to, but it should be something special and out of the ordinary. They didn't foresee the potential opening up for people when being able to change their skills and play-style entirely (especially for hybrids being able to go from ex. healing to tanking). As I noted last time, changing roles wasn't even something Blizzard had thought of. But it turns out role-changing is one of the major aspects of WoW that keeps people playing it, year after year.
Mounts:
Remember when you got the mount at level 40? Had to run to Badlands (if you're horde) by foot which took like half an hour, unless you waited till level 40 like I did everytime. No one can say getting the mounts at 30 is a drawback. The old areas and quests still require alot of travelling where you will enjoy the pretty scenery plenty. And speaking of travelling, that makes me think of...
Graveyards:
This is something they still change, or add, continously. But back up a couple of years and you often had the corpse-run from hell waiting for you if you died. Especially memorable to me are Southern Barrens one, Maraudon one and Stranglethorn Vale one (since you're killed there alot if you're unlucky). Remember any else?
Mana-regen:
And last for today, but definitely not least - the lowbie mana-regen buffs. Although level 80's have recently got a medium-sized mana-regen nerf the lowbies got a much longed for mana-regen buff some months ago (with Wotlk perhaps?). This means classes like Shamans, Mages and Hunters got their Water Shield, Evocation and Aspect of the Viper at level 20 instead of like 62/36/70 (don't remember the old levels exactly). This makes a huge difference for the possibility to play elemental shaman and mage at low levels without it taking ages due to downtime drinking (hunters are easy-mode in any case). Imo one of the best changes to WoW recently.