“Odd groups go left…and, ahhh whatever, just AoE it all.”

So everyone is rather abuzz about the return of Onyxia in an upcoming patch 3.22. (Why not go ahead and make it 3.3? Seems like a new raid is worth enough to tick the next number. Just make Icecrown Citadel and its 31 indeterminate number of bosses patch 3.5. Seems fancier.)

However, this line from Zarhym did jump out at me:

We will also be updating the encounter mechanics to be more fitting for modern raiding

So you’re saying that we’ll just be able to AoE the whole thing (including Ony) down and it’ll be a faceroll for bad raiders? Sweet. Sign me up.

Have You Hugged Your Holy Paladin Today?

So, it’s Patch 3.2. You may have many friends and guildies excited about certain aspects of this patch, but you may have noticed your Holy paladin acting a little differently. They might not be as bubbly as they used to. As everyone is excited to do heroics for Emblems of Conquest, they might just be shrugging it off. Something is bothering them.

You see, with Patch 3.2, the party’s over for Holy. Since 3.0, we’ve been able to heal with nearly unlimited amounts of mana. Oh, they tried to stop us before, with a change to Divine Plea in 3.09 that reduced healing by 50% while active. This hurt a little, but we still had mana to spare if Divine Plea was used correctly. We still laughed at the idea of mana potions. It was intellect gems all around. Innervates? Save that for the priests.

Then, with 3.2, Illumination got nerfed. Again.

You see, when Holy finally got properly itemized gear in The Burning Crusade, it became immediately obvious that paladins were the best healers. In fact, the bleeding edge raiding guilds early on in BC were only using paladins due to the fact that when they crit with a heal, they got the mana cost of the spell refunded, so stacking crit gear meant unlimited mana. So patch 2.1 nerfed the talent to refund on 60% of the mana back. We cried about it (well, I did, anyway) but we moved on and settled into our proper healing role for the rest of the expansion.

Then came 3.0 and the Era of the Big Heal. Holy Light has become the key spell for paladins in Wrath, being able to get a majority of the mana back from that big casting cost spell was a large part of our close to limitless mana. Add in a libram that reduced the cost by 113 mana (but did not affect mana refunded on a crit) and the ability to still come out ahead on mana with Divine Illumination and paladins did not really have to worry about anything until the latest patch.

Five points in Illumination now only refunds 30% of the mana cost of a healing spell crit. It’s almost not worth having. In fact, I would gladly put the points elsewhere if they weren’t required for Holy Shock. I’ve already noticed a huge impact on my mana just from doing heroics and it makes me sad.

So pass the Runic Mana Potions, hook me up with some Lustrous Majestic Zircon and yeah druids, that IS a paladin asking for an Innervate. And hug your Holy paladin today, because it will make them feel a little better about finally running out of mana.

Whoops!

So I accidentially joined a hardcore regression guild. It was a pretty interesting experience. The first night we went into Ulduar, we one shot the entire thing, cleared all hard modes including Yogg-Saron with zero watchers. The following week we called it after we wiped on Flame Leviathan with no towers up.  With our mission complete, the guild was disbanded shortly thereafter.

3.2: The Head Explosion Patch

Okay, let me get a few things here straight.

# Construction of the Crusaders’ Coliseum is complete. Testing not yet available. New raid normal and heroic modes for the Crusaders’ Coliseum can be toggled using the Dungeon Difficulty setting. This applies to 10 and 25 player versions. 10 player (normal), 25 player (normal), 10 player (heroic) and 25 player (heroic) all share separate raid lockout timers.

* Trial of the Champion
o 5 player (normal and heroic mode) dungeon.
o Daily quest added to the heroic daily dungeon quest giver.
* Trial of the Crusader
o 10 and 25 player (normal mode) raid dungeon.
* Trial of the Grand Crusader
o 10 and 25 player (heroic mode) raid dungeon.
o Crusaders’ Tribute: Active on heroic difficulty only, the tribute system will limit players on the number of attempts the raid is allotted each week. Additional rewards can be earned depending on the number of attempts left in the tribute run each week when the final boss is defeated.

Okay, so there’s a 5-man dungeon that can be done on normal or heroic. Then there’s a 10-man raid and 25-man raid. These can also be done on normal or heroic. While a heroic raid used to be the 25-man version of the 10-man normal raid, you can choose to do a 25-man raid on normal mode or 10-man raid on heroic mode.

Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar – both located near the Battlemasters in either city – and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold.

Behsten and Slahtz. Behsten…Slahtz. Best in…slots…

*head explosion*

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75): Can now be learned at level 20 for 4 gold

*head explosion*

# Emblem System Changes

* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders’ Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
* The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
* New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

Okay, so we’re now getting Emblems of Conquest from stuff that would normally give Emblems of Heroism and Valor. There will be no way to earn Emblems of Heroism or Valor except from redeeming Emblems of Conquest for them. Many items will still be purchasable via Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as the new epic gems (*mild head explosion*) but they will no longer drop in dungeons or raids and are no longer the reward for doing the heroic daily quest. Instead, there will now be Emblems of Triumph (FOR ME TO POOP..oops, sorry) as a reward for this quest and there currently is no other way to earn Emblems of Triumph that is known at this time and what Emblems of Triumph will be redeemable for is also currently unknown right now and FOR GOD’S SAKE WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-03vYYAjA

Anyone got a couple aspirin?

The Ulduar Drinking Game

After much thought, I’ve come up with the following drinking game to be used whenever raiding Ulduar.

Whenever someone asks which part of Ulduar to teleport to, take a drink.

That’s all you need in here, really, because you’re going to die from alcohol poisoning.

RIP Naxxramas (11/13/08-4/14/09)

With the release of Patch 3.1 of World of Warcraft, entry level raid Naxxramas passed on into obsolescence Tuesday. It was five months old.

“It had a good run,” Blizzard “blue” poster and game designer Ghostcrawler said late Monday evening as official word of the patch reached the various World of Warcraft news sites and trade chat channels in game. “Five months is an extremely long life span for content these days and our players are clearly ready for something new.”

What was at one time the bleeding edge of endgame content in WoW, Naxxramas was rapidly pwned hardcore by players of all types during its lifespam. First in three days by Ensidia, one of the world’s top guilds, and then more gradually by other guilds around the world, until end boss Kel’Thuzad was being soundly defeated by players that many would consider “noobs.”

“Some claim that Naxxramas was made to be too easy,” Ghostcrawler added. “And that it shouldn’t have taken us five months to come up with more content to replace the old content that was cleared in a month. I say, look at all those epics, man!”

Indeed, during Naxxramas’ lifespam multiple players were able to take multiple Warcraft characters into Naxxramas on both 10 and 25-man raids and gotten their share of phat loot much faster, speeding up the process of no longer needing to go anywhere near the raid once newer content had been released.

Because Naxxramas has been described by much of the player base as “easysauce” and players had five months to kill in between the release of The Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack and the first official patch containing the next level of endgame content, the raid has now joined the category of “nostalgia raiding.” The breakneck pace that a raid went from cutting-edge to nostalgia does not appear to concern Blizzard.

“We expect some Retro Raiding nights to visit Naxxramas to pick up those last couple achievements,” Ghostcrawler continued. “You know, to break up the soon-to-come monotony of Ulduar.”

Naxxramas is survived by that god damned Eye of Eternity on Heroic and Sartharion with three drakes up. Passing on into the realm of the obsolete before Naxxramas were Sunwell Plateau, Black Temple, Mount Hyjal, Tempest Keep, Serpentshrine Cavern, Magtheridon’s Lair and Gruul’s Lair.

Wrong Toon, Dummy!

So there I was on my shaman, waiting for some slacker pugs to get closer to the stone so we could do some summons for Utgarde Keep. Nobody seemed to be in a big hurry to get there so I was going to level some herbalism. All your goldclover are belong to me.

I near a yellow dot on my minimap and suddenly I see a vykrul mob riding around on something. A quick click shows me that it is none other than Vigdis the War Maiden. It’s a rare spawn ZOMG. I’m specced Resto at the moment so I wonder if it’ll be a tough kill like the rare spawns in Burning Crusade. But it’s not. Ding! Northern Exposure! I think at the time that it’s a little silly that my shaman of all toons found one, but hey, what can you do.

A week or two later I’m herbing again in Zul’Drak and draw some aggro and it’s a mob I don’t recognize. Hello there, Griegen! I’ve now killed two mobs on my way to the most insane achievement evar, Frostbitten.

Just the other day, I got to take the mage along to a Naxx 10. Which we’re totally sick of, by the way, but that’s another post. Anyway, two achievements were obtained without even attempting to try. The first was Arachnophobia. We weren’t rushing it, we just calmly and with precision destroyed Faerlina and Maexxna and it didn’t take an hour to hand out two pieces of loot. The second was Make Quick Werk of Him. Patchy went down in style in 2:52.

So for those keeping score at home, that’s an achievement (and two rare mobs) killed on Doffy the Shaman and two achievements earned on Sherm the Mage. Take a moment and guess how many of those Doofy the Paladin has.

If you said none, you win! Please e-mail me for your prize. (Note: prizes void where prohibited. Which is wherever you are reading this.)

On my paladin I’ve done 3,000 quests, gotten exalted with over 20 factions (on the way to 25), spent 1,200 gold on a 22-slot bag, took 10 minutes hitting a level 80 elite barehanded, spent way too much money on mounts and pets and gotten a few other pretty darn ridiculous achievements. But I’ve never seen a rare mob and certain achievements will just elude him forever. Despite being Guy Who Never Dies On Heigan (four months and counting since the last DanceFAIL), I am just not allowed to have The Safety Dance achievement.

What achievements have you gotten on the wrong toons?

March Sadness

The last four days are probably my favorite time of year. It’s the NCAA college basketball tournament, where 64 teams battle in a single elimination tournament to determine that year’s champion. The true highlight is the first round, when 32 games are played in two days. It’s an insane amount of basketball jammed into ~12 hours on Thursday and Friday.

It’s a heck of a lot more exciting than what’s going on in WoW at the moment.

While we wait for Ulduar to get datamined and farmed to hell on the PTR so that it’s a faceroll on day one (and it will be, trust me), Brade Frurry progression has stormed to a halt. Three weeks ago we finally got Sartharion with two drakes down. Two weeks ago we one shot it. We wanted to try three drakes this week and found that 18 people signed up. Two drakes was a disaster with that number but we managed to get one. We’ve got the Dedicated Few achievement in heroic Naxxramas and it’s certainly not because we were shooting for it. That was all we could manage.

We’ve had a couple of unfortunate RL issues that prevented some people from attending raids and that’s fine. But there’s also a rather large “I’m geared up, see ya next patch!” mentality that hit a couple of members. It’s frustrating for those who want to raid that we either have to do less than we planned or, worse, dive into the PuG pool to fill the raid. I was running Friday Night Naxx 10 for alts and the bored and I used to have to kick DPS out. Last week I could only manage 8 signups. I didn’t do it this week and decided to watch basketball instead. It’ll probably return come Ulduar since we’re heading straight into 25s.

Blizzard has seriously dropped the ball on endgame here by providing so few raids to do and also making them too easy. I’ve never seen such massive content burnout before and I’m nearing three years since I started up my first toon (ye gods). We’re not finished with our progression (yet) and some folks have seen it okay to just stop showing up without any notice. They’ll probably be back and ready to rock the day 3.1 goes live which hardly seems fair. Have other guilds dealt with this?

3.1 Changes: Sacred Shield Ner…wait, what?

Oh look, some Holy Paladin nerfs changes were announced. Let’s see what we’ve got today!

Sacred Shield – Cannot be on more than one target at any time.

Wait, what? Sacred Shield could be on more than one target? Since when? Why was I not informed of this? I would actually have used this spell way more often than I do if I had known this to be the case.

Infusion of Light – No longer has a chance to reduce the casting time of Holy Light, but increases the the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead.

No, really: SACRED SHIELD CAN BE CAST ON MORE THAN ONE TARGET? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS IS AWESOME. I AM GOING TO CAST THIS ON THE WHOLE RAID NEXT TIME AND LET SOMEONE DIE BECAUSE I WON’T BE HEALING THEM, JUST CASTING THIS SPELL. But my Flash of Light crits will be awesome.

Er, I mean, I’m torn. This is clearly a PvP change, which I hate. But it doesn’t completely suck for PvE. I’m not reliant on Holy Shock crits proccing this so my next Holy Light is uber-fast. It’s just kind of a bonus. Now it’s got an extra chance to crit for massive heals and a mana refund. Yay, I suppose.

Tagged! The Screenshot Meme

So I’ve been tagged by a couple of people since I am officially one of the worst bloggers in blogging history. Thank you to Dann and HolyWarrior at The Good, The Bad and the Downright Evil for tagging me.

What you’re supposed to do is check the 6th item in the 6th folder of your screenshots folder. I…don’t have six folders in my screenshot folder so I just went with the 6th image. And behold!

lolswordofdoom

I meant to do an entry on it (fail blogger,remember) but it didn’t happen. Remember that Enti’s Quenched Sword, the gray sword that dropped in Northrend and didn’t have a level requirement on it? The text says it does next to no damage, but hand it to a level one toon and they just slaughtered everything in sight. And when you got Rend, things got even more fun. You could run up to something, Rend it and then go to the next mob because it ticked for well over 100, which was more than enough to kill everything in Elwynn Forest. I leveled Grayitems the warrior to level 10 in about an hour that way. My goal was met when Hogger died. And then the sword received a level requirement so poor Grayitems met the DELETE feature.

I’d post something else from the screenshot folder but it’s a whole bunch of fail, largely accidential key hits (how? I have no idea). I do want to post the screenshot of dinging 62 off of Onyxia, but it’s on my parents’ computer I do believe.

Real content coming, someday.