Lux Legis

Guess who is back.... back again

2010-02-03T18:02:00.003+03:00

Almaster is back... TELL SOME FRIENDS!

I'm back, playing wow for the past 2 months, on the EU servers as a shaman, so i am not a paladin anymore, but i am still a paladin in spirit!

I'm now on Auchindoun EU server, playing as a shaman with the same name, Almaster!

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Auchindoun&cn=Almaster

i will be posting some stuff about paladins and shamans if i have enough time in the future, so spread the word out! i am back!

congrats to blood region on thier world first Arthas 10 man kill!
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/lich-king-us-first-10-man-kill-icecrown-citadel-weeklies/msg2099187/?topicseen#new

Farewell.

2009-12-05T19:27:00.004+03:00

Well, the time came for me to say goodbye, and farewell.
I am having a lot of stuff in real life that made me make a decision to stop playing this game, and stop blogging about it.

i will keep this short, thanks for all the readers and fellow bloggers that i had fun with, talking and blogging together.

My advice to anyone that wants a good paladin blogs, to keep watching:
1- A touch of arcane
2- Bossy Pally

i know i will keep my eyes on those 2, they know how to play a paladin and they know how to blog about it, much better than me.

for ret paladins, Forbearance is what you need to check every day, Jong is a wonderful person, funny and skilled at playing a facerolling class :P

if you are interested in the best blog i have ever seen and read, This gnome 's blog is what you need to read, although its not a healing blog (sometimes it is) its one of the most enjoyable blogs you'd ever see.

Farewell my friends, i know i will miss you all, i will keep watching those blogs, but sadly i would not have the time to blog about paladins now a days, unless someone takes me for some guest posting somewhere, which i doubt.

Thanks for all the fish, and farewell.

Holy light builds VS Flash light builds.

2009-11-24T19:30:00.007+03:00

Inspired by Ophelie of The Bossy Pally i am going to post the long time due HOL VS FOL+SS builds.

I've been a FOL+SS fan from the start of this expansion, thats how i rolled in TBC, my first Heroic dungon, and thats how i started doing TOC 10.
Untill i got into the guild that i am currently in, Lets Go Burgling.

I've done a couple of TOC 25 man pugs before, i saw the need of HOL spam in some fights, but the first time i stepped into TOGC 10 or 25, i knew that FOL+SS spec won't work, thankfully, i had my stand by Holy build spec and gear, so i equiped them.

qouting from Ophelie, because she can spell better than me:

So, um, what are these Builds you speak of?

As the names imply, a Holy Light build revolves around using Holy Light (HL, big heal) as your primary spell and a Flash of Light revolves around using Flash of Light (FoL, little heal) as your primary spell. The Holy Light build is what you’ll see most often in PvE, with Int Gems in every socket save one to activate the meta gem. The key is to this build is to have enough mana to pump out a lot of strong, toe-curling, in yo’ face heals for the whole fight. You’ll still use the Flash of Light spell, but your gear is tuned towards using Holy Light as much as you need to. The Flash of Light build is one you’ll see occasionally, but not as often. Spell Power gems all over with some haste and mp5 gems to get every ounce of Spell Power socket bonuses. The point is to make Flash of Light a powerful, nearly instacast spell. It also gives Sacred Shield some extra oomph, although never having seen an FoL pally in action, I couldn’t tell you exactly how much oomph that is.

Are there talent builds that are connected to each type?

Not exactly. There are two common specs for PvE as a paladin, the “crit spec” (holy/ret to get Conviction and sometimes Sanctity of Battle) and the “bubble spec” (holy/prot to get Divine Sacrifice). The crit spec has advantages for both types of play, maximum mana return due to crit (always good) and extra output for a FoL spec. Bubble spec, however, gives you the glorious Divine Sacrifice and delightful reduction on the hand of protection CD. Utility is important as a paladin, if you’re not making yourself useful, you fall into the paladin cliché who does nothing but spam 1-2 spells the entire time. Whats the fun in that?

Many holy paladins actually have both specs and swap between them depending on the fight. If you don’t have an offspec you frequently use, this is a great option.

Glyphs, on the other hand, change depending on whether you want to go FoL or HL:

Holy Light Glyphs
1- Glyph of Holy Light
2- Glyph of Seal of Wisdom
3- Glyph of Divinity, Glyph of Flash of Light, Glyph of Beacon of Light or Glyph of Holy Shock (all depending on your style and raid environment)

Flash of Light Glyphs
1- Glyph of Flash of Light
2- Glyph of Seal of Light
3- Personal Choice

After reading all about ICC instance, and the ''Chill of the throne'' debuff that everyone will be having, i am advicing EVERY Paladin to go HOL spam, tanks will have less dodge, and thats less avoidance, not to mention that bosses hit harder, you'll have to consider your mana though, if you are below 31k unbuffed, you'll have some troubles with getting mana back, even with Divine Plea.
Gem int, and keep some haste and most importantly, crit.
forget about the MP5 that Blizz is fooling us with, its not worth it.
feel free to check my armory, Almaster of Arthas, i am usually using holy light build with crit from Ret tree.

Feel free to throw a comment, if you need more explination.

Shared Topic: Best Change to the Game

2009-11-20T17:53:00.004+03:00

The new shared Topic i picked for my readers today, is this one from Bloz Azeroth

Many things have changed and improved within the game between Vanilla, BC & Wrath. Which change that Blizzard released, made a fundamental difference to your gaming experience?

A possible expansion to this topic would be what really irritates you that they still haven't gotten around to fixing?

Best Change to the game?
Dual spec, hands down.

nothing effected players in all aspects of the game like dual spec, all hybards were reqired to respec mostly every day, sometimes twice a day, it was a major loss in gold, and the reason people used to farm so much.

Is dual spec the only good change to the game? no way, is it perfect? hell no.
I have 3 holy specs (1 PVP, 1 holy bubble spec holy/prot, 1 holy crit spec holy/ret)
1 tanking spec, and when i need to farm rep or something, i have a ret spec.

a shout out for Blizz, Gimmme 5 dual specs. kkthnxbai.

I would like to mention all the changes that i liked in this game, changes from Vanilla to TBC to WOTLK.

First change everyone noticed in this game, going from 40 man raids to 25 man raids, this was so sweet, that when i heared about it i started doing my victory dance and shouting Fuck yeah!
carrying many bads, starting the fights with 40 man and ending with only 20 that knows how to play, and just the thought of 40 people talking in vent. bad.
waiting for 40 people to log online for a raid. bad.

2nd change that i really liked, professions being actually helpful for people, on my warrior in vanilla wow, i had enchanting and blacksmithing, enchanting for d/eing items only, with a skill of 25 (back then, at skill of 25, you can disenchant everything from greens to epics) and blacksmithing, just because of my thoughts of the warrior being able to craft plate items.
in TBC, i changed enchanting to mining, since they fixed enchanting to actually increase your skill to be able to disenchant items, blacksmithing was really helpful.
the 2h and 1h weapons you could craft was awesome, and you can upgrade then while you progress, that was a really cool idea from blizz.

3rd change i liked? BOA items, with the 20% xp from killing monsters and completing quests, its awesome, the reason i didn't have many alts back in TBC and vanilla was because i hate doing 1 million quests in 1 area, i like to change areas every now and then.

4th change, Haste, for both melee and casters, the haste stat is wonderfull, and i am pretty sure everyone loved it.

the things that should have changed, chinese farmers, wait, i am not racist, i just dont like to see a lvl 80 BE going underground or flying and getting my mining nod, i just hate it.
and when you make a ticket or e-mail Blizz about it, they'll tell you that they are invistegating about it, and ofcourse, the next day you will find the same BE getting your nods! damn them farmers!

Now, the best changes that i liked for a paladin, from Vanilla to TBC to WoTlK.

1- Sacred shield, plus the effect of SS with FOL, the hot, its really HOT!
2- Beacon of light we really needed it, especially in WOTLK where you will need 2 tanks for a boss, or 2 tanks for 2 bosses, heal one to heal the other = win!
3- Blessing of kings not being in talent, i loved it!

I'd really love to see MP5 really working for Holy paladins, and would love to see Ret paladins with skills other than Jong.

that would be the end of my post today, i know i've been slacking with the posts recently, but as Gnomergaddon said in his post, Palading blogs are boring, they only have 2 healing spells!

The voices in my head

2009-11-15T17:44:00.003+03:00

Are telling me to post!

so i am going to talk about something that has been bothering me the most.
My helm!

Right now, i am using Valorous Aegis Headpiece, for the people who are too lazy to check the link, its T8 helm.
Conqueror's Aegis Headpiece is an upgrade, however, its not that big upgrade, i can easily get it, i have like 200 badges.
I've been running Ony 10 and 25 for a chance of getting Judgement Cover from 10 man or Judgement Crown from 25 and today i will get enough emblems to get Heaume of the Restless Watch.

I'm really disappointed with my choices, the only major upgrades that i'd take is Heaume of the Restless Watch and Judgement Crown.

thinking i will be getting Heaume of the Restless Watch, my guild is at Anubarak TOTGC 25, and i am the less geared holy paladin in the guild, now don't get me wrong, i am trying to upgrade what is needed to upgrade, but still i dont upgrade something that is not a major upgrade, i am not cheap i have around 30k gold on all of my chars, but i just don't like to take a piece of gear if its not a major upgrade for me, i just dont.

Almaster and out!

Faction Champs Secrets Uncovered

2009-11-10T18:29:00.003+03:00

A new day at work means to search websites and blogs that i am following for something new or interesting.

Today, I've found something both new and interesting on The Bossy Pally blog a post about Faction Champions fight in TOC and how it works.

Althought Oph wasn't the one making that project, Maintankadin did.

Please have a look on both Oph's post and Joanadark's post.

Announcement: World of Warcraft Raid for the Cure!

2009-11-07T17:10:00.002+03:00

Read the full article at big bear buff blog.

Paladin T10 / Season 8

2009-11-06T18:03:00.004+03:00

Just saw those pictures on MMO-Champion.

the pics are huge, so clicky for full version.

Paladin T10.

I actually think its cool, IF IT CAME WITH PANTS AND NOT A GOD DAMN KILT.

Season 8.

Finally some big shoulder animation, i am loving it!

Soon, i will post about the new set bonus and item bonus.

A Questionnaire?

2009-11-02T00:58:00.005+03:00

I had comments on my last post from Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon, so i decided to check out her blog.
Something caught my eyes very quickly, A Questionnaire? (my first thought was WTH does that even mean? :P)

This post called ''My first meme-that-is-not-a-meme!''
and i wanted to get in!
So here how it goes.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Almaster, Paladin, Holy.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Mostly raiding, daily heroic and such, wanted to PVP but i was never a big fan of it.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

FOL, or flash of light, i love the numbers it heals, plus the HOT from FOL and SS.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Divine Favor. Why? Because i crit half of the time already!

no seriously, i rarely use it, i don't know why, i have it keybinded already, but rarely find the chance to use it for a critical setuation.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Burst healing, the ability to keep tanks alive during all the fight, and finishing with more than half of your mana bar remaining. also waering plate with a shield is awesome.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

the lack of raid healing spells, and being not able to move casting holy light, some setuations you are casting the big holy light cast, the tank is low on health, and the boss thinks that it would be awesome to throw a big fire under your feet, so its either you stay there and take damage from that fire and you might die, or move and cast holy light again just as the tank dies.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Healing tanks, DUH!

beacon of light and SS are very powerful tools, you can heal both of the OT and the MT with no stress at all.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I'd say resto druid or disc priest, i tried resto druid before, but my gear and skill was lacking so i didn't have much fun.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Shamans, i had a 70 shaman back when i was playing horde, a TROLL shaman! but all i did was Chain heal, Chain heal, chain heal, chain heal.

i remember one time i was watching House, and chain pressing 1 untill i heared the raid leader calling my name saying that the boss died and i didnt have to chain heal anymore.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

I like challenges, sometimes in heroics, i leave the tank or the dps health to go too low and then start healing them, just to get the thrill of doing something rather than just using FOL every 5 secs.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

I'd say for all healers its - I really hate when people say “so and so needs heals!” over vent.

i agree with Oph and Jes here.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

As i said, the lack of raid heals might cause a problem for some pallys, although i enjoy it.

beacon the tank, cast FOL on the raid = full healed raid and tank.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

As long as my target or anyone that i am assigned for healing is still alive, i am FUCKING PRO!

last time i went to TOC 25 man, someone thought it would be funny to die from Icehowl's charge, and the boss went enraged, i remembered one spell that i didn't use since the time me and Headstab were doing arena in last season, so i used it.

Hand of sacrifise, its awesome with a bubble, mitigates a lot of damage, also i use hand of freedom a little bit too much, since i made a macro when i use it, i yell the phrase from Braveheart movie.

''They might take our lifes, but what they'll never take, OUR BLESSING OF
FREEDOM!''

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

I don't believe there is any misconceptions people have about holy paladins, we are very OP'ed :P

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

Timing thier heals, big or small heals needs some timing, but i learned fast, as i learned healing when i was doing Illidan lol.

i was port before i switched to healing, i had SSC/Tk gear and was healing Illidan fight hehe.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

Well, it depends on the fight, so i don't see this as a valid question for paladins, in TOTGC with major damage for tanks, i usually be the first on healing meters, in lest say TOC 25 faction champion fight, i am usually the last in healing, with 184 dispells lol.

but anyhow, if you for example check my healing for 1 fight, it will depend on the fight itself, otherwise check my overall preformace, and you'll be happy of what you'll see :D

i'll make sure to post a screenshot of my recount sometimes soon.

Haste or Crit and why?

both, i'd say, crit was the major mana regen for paladins, but not anymore, it still get us mana back, but not that much, also too much haste can get a paladin OOM fast.

so a mix of them both will be good.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Shamans, hands down.

I've failed on my troll shammy before, but i can see Shamans in my guild owning the healing meters.

i need to understand them more.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

I don't have that many macros, addons, i have many, check out my post about my addons.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

Right now, i am stacking Int, i didn't want to at the start, as i said before SP is gets your SS OP'ed but sadly with nerfs hitting us, i decided to go for Int, be a good pally is better than QQing all the time :P

Now is the hard part, i need to tag another healing class blog.

Armaggedon isn't a new blogger, and he isn't even a healer, but then came Squidly! his alt shammy that from reading his blog, i see he is enjoying playing him a lot.

A Touch of Arcane, also not a new blogger, but one of my favorites, he really knows what he is talking about!

The original post by Jess from Miss Medicina

Jes Miss Medicina's Circle of healing

Ophelie's POV

Nerfed to the ground

2009-11-01T02:03:00.003+03:00

I knew this day would come, the nerf hammer just hit us!

We interrupt our regular programming to bring you a square kick in the balls:

Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (Up from 6 sec)
Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.
Infusion of Light now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield by 12/24 sec.
Aura Mastery now lasts 6 sec. (Down from 10 sec)

4 Nerfs in 1 patch notes, OUCH!

Sacred Shield can now only occur every 30 sec. (Up from 6 sec)

Sacared Shield nerf is critical to paladins that focused on SP more than Int stacking, like i used to do, since the absorb effect stacks with SP.

to avoid this, i started mindlessly stacking Int like other pallys, and guess what?

i fucking hate it.

Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.

This sucks too, its one of our most used to survive during PVP or even PVE with a shit load of damage happening to both of you and the tank, its also a major spell to regenerate mana, i use it most of the time on myself to get mana back, its awesome, and they broke it! damn Blizz

Infusion of Light now also reduces the cooldown on the effect of Sacred Shield
by 12/24 sec.

Oh yeah? i want it back to 6 secs kkthnxbai.

Aura Mastery now lasts 6 sec. (Down from 10 sec)

This is a big nerf, i used to use Aura Mastery at hodir for the frozen blows, If i used it on the first one,the cooldown would finish right after Hodir uses his frozen blows for the 3rd time, thats half of the healing for 2 frozen blows and maximum healing at the 2nd, its not that big nerf, but still its a nerf.

Well, maybe my LVL 63 hunter will get some lvling and loving now.

No i am not quiting because of some nerfs that hit us, i just dont want to QQ anymore :P

Talisman of Resurgence

2009-10-29T02:43:00.001+03:00

First of all, I tend to use a very simple calculation to turn a given mana PPM into Mp5. Any mana return happening every minute is included, and Divine Plea is exactly like this. 60/5 = 12. So simply divide the mana PPM by 12 and you'll have it on an exact Mp5 value.Secondly, Paladins need to clearly include their stat buffs (or spell it out if they aren't).
We have Divine Intellect (2%/4%/6%/8%/10% talents, all five traditionally used) along with Kings (10%), making up a full 20% buff to any and all Intellect we have. So if we multiply it by 1.2 we instantly figure out the actual total Intellect an item gives to Paladins and this would always be calculated first and be kept in mind.
For example, a 20 Intellect gem "is" actually a 24 Intellect gem.These easy numbers will make it more natural for you to know what you're actually getting and also not to do the same mistakes again.
Therefore, this trinket's passive Intellect is worth in an average boss fight:

153.6 Intellect
2304 mana
68.736 Mp5
0.93% Crit (Illumination regen for this not included above)
30.72 Spellpower128 Intellect on this trinket ammounts to 153.6 Intellect which is 2304 mana (1 Int = 15 mana). Divine Plea restores 25% (*0.25) or 1/4 (/4) of that every minute, so 2304 / 4 / 12 = 48 Mp5. 1% Crit takes "around" 166 Intellect each, meaning "around" 0.93 Crit. You could also add how much average mana return you expect from your crits for that ammount, however it involves more intricate calculations involving for example how much Crit you're already stacking.Replenishment is essentially 1% of your mana pool as Mp5 and it should be up nearly always, however you may want to calculate it as 90% due to change of targets, movement and other oddities in fights. 2304 * 0.009 = 20.736 Mp5As for Spellpower, 153.6 Intellect gives, with Holy Guidance (4%/8%/12%/16%/20% talents), 30.72.
You can use the trinket's effect when casting Divine Plea every other minute (just like you would with Avenging Wrath) so as to be able to heal for more during the duration even as you keep regening a good chunk of mana.I might also add that the debate over the usefulness of Spellpower for Paladins as of 3.2.2 is essentially about how much you prefer and are able to successfully keep using FoL as your main heal, maxing out its performance.
At a higher gear level, buffing FoL rather than simply your Intellect is actually a very good alternative to the spending of HL's hefty mana cost and its overhealing (even if it all gets transferred to the beaconed target now, it also mostly overheals him too).
We actually have been offered very good new tools to do this, like the HoT from SS. It should also be noted both of these spells have high coefficients with SP, namely 100% for FoL and 75% on SS.

How to raid ANYTHING. By Mortigan the lock.

2009-10-21T02:36:00.002+03:00

Found this post while i was surfin' the interwebz, found it extremely funny.

Mortigan the lock said:

I find it terribly hard to remember all the nuances of each boss fight. Sorry, but I'm just not hard-core enough to memorize who casts what, and I really don't care if Pixie McNixie in the bottom of some hole is planning to fear me, sheep me, or chop me in half with a big heavy axe. Why? Because overall things are pretty much the same from one boss to the next, so I figured I could come up with a single set of rules on how to raid ANYTHING. I've appropriately named these rules "A Single Set Of Rules On How To Raid ANYTHING."

Getting Ready:
Many people go to YouTube and watch Tankspot videos to familiarize themselves with the fights. This is a waste of time, because all you really need are my simple rules. Not 100% sure? Here are some additional reasons for skipping the videos:1. Those people in the videos are ELITE WIZARDS and your raid team is not going to do anywhere near as well as them. It's like watching an Olympic gold medalist do the ski jump and then trying it yourself. Forget about it.2. There are less steps to preparing your taxes than there are to fights like Freya. Watching Tankspot explain it on YouTube will only give you a headache. Your guild is going to wipe on it anyway, so no need to give yourself a migraine. Skip the video and use my rules below!

Let's Raid!
Ok, so here is my Single Set Of Rules On How To Raid ANYTHING:
1. DO NOT stand in anything that wasn't there before the fight started, if it visually looks dangerous. This includes fire, black steaming circles of nastiness, green slimy stuff, purple ooze, etc. If you are not sure, stand in it for a second and see if your health goes down. If it does, MOVE.
2. DEFINITELY DO stand in anything that wasn't there before the fight started, if it visually looks beneficial. This includes pleasant rays of fairy moonlight, air with lightning bug / glittery things in it, shiny sparkly spots on the floor, or anything else that a 3 year old girl might want to color. If you are not sure, stand in it for a second. If nothing bad happens, definitely keep standing it it because it MUST be doing something good.
3. Do the following based on your function:

Tank: Attack the boss with everything you got. Keep doing this and don't stop until your healer drags you away screaming at you, "STOP! STOP! HE'S DEAD ALREADY!"
Heal: Keep healing until everyone is either dead and blaming you, or the boss is dead. In the latter case, it is your job to drag the tank away from the bloody corpse.
DPS: Do the same as the tank, but wait a fraction of a second before doing so. This way, if you get aggro, you can blame the Tank. Otherwise, he will blame you. That fraction of a second makes all the difference on who gets blamed for the wipe. Use it wisely. Now this next part is important: If adds arrive, you need to make a visual check of how dangerous they look. If they look like they can be ignored, stay on the boss. If they look really nasty, switch to the add. Simple! Or you can always fall back on the "watch what everyone else is doing and copy them" strategy, but I'm training you to be a trailblazer, so get in there and blaze that trail!
Off Tank: You're on the adds. Someday, if you ever become cool enough or geared enough, the guild might let you be a REAL tank. But probably not anytime soon. So stick to adds. And if you run like a madman all over the map with a trail of adds behind you, creating a hellish conga-line of death, all the DPSers are going to HATE YOU. So keep your butt in one spot, take your beating, and suck it up.
4. DO NOT stand in a Boss' AOE. The crap raining down on your head should be an obvious sign that it's time to pack up and move.
5. Should a boss fight require you to operate some sort of vehicle, land mount, or drake, randomly mash buttons as fast as the cool-downs allow. Generally, Button 1 is the biggie one to mash, so mash it more than the others. No one's really going to notice if you did well or not, so just mash, mash, mash! You're a pro!
6. If you get aggro, run TOWARD your teammates, not away from them. It's the surest way to get rid of that unwanted boss who's taken serious notice of you. Ideally, run toward (and right through) a mage. Mages are a big, big help with getting rid of aggro. If you're cool enough to be a warlock like me, you can even strategically position yourself right next to a mage throughout the fight, and Soulshatter as needed. Be sure to turn toward the mage when Soulshattering, so that you can watch the look on his face when the boss 1-shots him. If you're a mage, disregard everything I've just said, and take one for the team.
7. The laws of the universe that govern comic books, video games, and science fiction in general require that twins ALWAYS have some sort of symbiotic relationship, and a special power will CERTAINLY exist between them. Therefore, any time there are twin bosses (or even twin adds if they're extremely dangerous looking), they MUST be killed simultaneously. Very bad things happen when one twin witnesses the death of the other. Heed my warning, and kill any and all twins at the same time. Further, they cannot be allowed to touch each other or send each other any kind of glowing orb, ray beam, soothing rainbow, etc. You don't want the wonder-twins activating ANYTHING. So keep them apart, kill them apart, and do it at the same time.

If you follow these simple rules, you're sure to be a success at your next raid. I advise you to print this out and keep it handy. Review it during the boring buff periods before raiding, or when the tank if off in Dalaran begging for another healer. And be sure to stop back by and let me know how it went! Happy raiding!Your buddy,
Mortigan the Lock .

Almaster approves.

Waiting for ICC

2009-10-19T01:56:00.003+03:00

DISCLAIMER:
This post was on A Touch of Arcane, i liked it and copied it because god knowss that is what exactly i am feeling.

I don't know about you but I'm seriously waiting for Icecrown Citadel. Not that I've finished
all the content, I've yet to see Yog Sarron die, but that requires several evenings on Udluar and most people don't spend that amount of time on this raid anymore. Too much "free loot" on ToC (normal) or Onyxia or Lolaron to motivate much people about Ulduar.

I still think Ulduar is the best raid from WotLK up to now, despite it being too big, it should have been split in two raids as it was done all along BC. I still have some friends motivated by Ulduar hard modes and we're trying them from time to time, usually one or two nights a week when we are lucky enough to make our suicidal squad (Auriaya with all cats is a crazy fun mess of a fight to heal). If I find ToC hard mode mostly a "gear check", Ulduar hard modes are, at least for some of them, very entertaining.

The first news from the next raid Blizzard is giving us are starting to appear, and the first boss was tested on the PTR these last days (report on Mmo Champion). It doesn't seem super hard, as least on paper, I hope the normal/hard mode gap will be lower then ToC, and my wish is for hard modes to contain more abilities, more strategy than just be a gear check put over a normal difficulty boss.

I guess we'll all see that in IC, hopefully not too long from now, but even more hopefully nicely tested and balanced.

Post part 2
Paladin T10:
I guess i have to post something about it, but i don't see the need to.
since there is only the set pieces bonus that is out there, and i find them good enough.

Going to make a full topic about it when i get more info

Paladins and the stacking of Intellect.

2009-10-10T01:13:00.002+03:00

I've been posting of how good stacking intellect is for Paladins.
and I think i have something else to say this time.

I have 21979 unbuffed mana, and i never get out of it, also, i've topped the healing meters twice yesterday with 2 druids, 2 priests and another holy paladin in both 25 OS 3 drake (old school way, no zerg) and TOTC 25 man, and guess what? my mana never dropped below 75%.

Yeah!

So I'll say this, Intellect is no more the first stat I would be searching for.
I have 2363 unbuffed spell power, 33.05 crit.

Whats helping me get all that mana i'm using back?

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond and Tears of the Vanquished.
and i fucking love it.

I also tried to have some Royal Dreadstone in my gear, and i'm also loving it.

So for now, i'm going to keep stacking on items that returns mana, and i'm going to try it, for the next couple of boss.

Don't get me wrong, i love having infinite number of mana, but i see its not important when i never drop below 50% of mana, divine plea is wonderful, i usually pop my wings when i use it and i dont lost much of my healing.

i just wish i've got a WWS of last night's healing to show you, sadly i forgot all about it.

Almaster and out!.

Better late than never?

2009-10-10T00:44:00.003+03:00

I've seen many guilds say that, but i second that statement.

I'll give you as example, something i always dreamed of doing, since the start of WOTLK raiding.

I wanted to be a Twilight Vanquisher.

and i'm finally

As getting something i always wanted, i should feel good, and i am not.
It felt like Obama wining the Nobel prize.

Damn that kayne west.

So in my opinion, its never better be late than never.

yeah i've said it.

and i don't care what wonder woman has to say about it!

I just hope that in the next patch of ICC, i can do some of the things i want to do.

So Blizz,

Almaster and out!

Will the real Lich King please stand up?

2009-10-07T00:35:00.002+03:00

New news about ICC came out, you can find them all on MMO-Champion : Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen Throne.

As i said like 100 times on this blog, I've been playing this game since vanilla wow, and to be honest, I've never seen so much media news about it.

Wherever i surf in this Interwebz, i find a new news about ICC or Cata, every where i go, i find a picture of Arthas, or a rumor about the destiny of Garrosh, Thrall or Craine blood hoof (the leader of Thunder-bluff).

And to be honest.... its getting me sick and bored.

I just hope Arthas wouldn't be an easy boss to kill, I've played on a server named after him, because i loved his story in World of Warcraft.

If Blizz made him as easy as TOTGC Anubarak (in 10 man), i will be disappointed.

Shared Topic:WoW Where You'd Least Expect It..

2009-10-06T00:40:00.002+03:00

This week, the Shared topic of Blog Azeroth is : Wow Where You'd Least Expect It.

In our Middle eastern culture, once a month (sometimes more) we go to a local cafe, where you can smoke Sheesha (AKA:Hookah).

I've been going around once a week, since i turned 20 and started working, at 20 i also just started playing WOW and was still a low lvl troll warrior who knows nothing about this game, my English was a little poor, so i didn't know how to play and i didn't know how to talk to people in-game.

So i had my laptop on, smoking some Hookah, and tanking in WC, needing all the green loot that was dropping, just because i didn't know what greed is

when suddenly a guy came to me and started talking to me about how i should greed everything that is not mail, since warriors only wear mail till lvl 40, then they wear plate.
i listened to him talking about his shaman, and for my surprise he was in the same server i was in, we started lvling together and we became friends.

of course when we both hit 60, he was lucky and got into a guild that was running MC, and i slowed down a bit trying to gear myself before i applied to a guild that was raiding.

Till now we occasionally talk with each others. :D

The future of paladins

2009-10-05T04:20:00.003+03:00

Dear Paladins everywhere.

I really love playing a paladin, I've been playing one for over 2 years now, and I'm loving every second of it, Paladins are like my heroes.

I always ask my self, whats the meaning of being a paladin, being so infused with light, killing all sorts of evil everywhere.

Sadly, there are some people playing paladins just like me, who make us look really bad

and i keep thinking that we are having some bad reputation from all of them nerd raging.

To all the people who changed spec to ret back in late TBC days, and suck at it till now.

You are not.

I don't think it really is that awesome, however people who has been playing a holy paladin since the start of this game, and still doing so.

Signed: a nerd raged Holy paladin.

This rant has been brought to you by:holy paladin who got his ass given to him by a ret paladins face-rolling in arena.

the story of this post is:
I played a game of arena with my buddy headstab, a 2 ret pally team came to me, and got me down in 0.5 seconds.

sorry for posting while still under nerd rage >_<

This just in!

2009-10-02T08:39:00.004+03:00

Blizzard has already released new details about the upcoming five-player dungeon in the Icecrown Citadel. It will supposedly be the biggest one in a "long time", they are also mentioning epic quest lines and 232 ilvl loot from the Heroic mode.

Icecrown Citadel will feature a massive five-player dungeon sprawling across three wings of the citadel's foundation. While the Lich King's attention is focused on the Argent Crusade and the Knights of the Ebon Blade ripping through the front gates, players will be tested as they assist Jaina Proudmoore (Alliance) and Sylvanas Windrunner (Horde) in infiltrating the citadel through an alternate entrance.

An epic quest line will present adventurers with the task of weakening Icecrown Citadel's forces, requiring that players defeat the challenges in each dungeon wing before venturing into the next one. Normal and Heroic versions of the dungeon will be accessible to players, although each wing will be considered a separate instance; therefore, on Heroic difficulty, each wing will have its own separate lockout timer. All-new rewards -- including item level 219 (normal) and level 232 (Heroic) loot -- will be offered to those who destroy some of the Lich King's most formidable allies.

The Forge of Souls

Serving as the first wing in this expansive dungeon, the Forge of Souls will quickly put players to the test of carving through the Scourge stronghold into deeper, more treacherous locations. Jaina will command Alliance forces, and Sylvanas will direct Horde forces. The goal is to ruin the twisted engines known as soul grinders found in this portion of the citadel, and then players can advance -- that is, if the Horde and Alliance forces can overcome the foes who confront them.

Bosses

* Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls: An instrument of reckoning, Bronjahm watches over the engines in the Forge of Souls. He must be killed if the soul grinders are to be destroyed.

* The Devourer of Souls: As the chief operator of the engines found in this wing, the Devourer stands guard over the souls stolen by the Lich King.

Pit of Saron

Accessible only to those who have laid waste to the Forge of Souls' unholy operations, the Pit of Saron will bring Horde and Alliance forces deeper into the Lich King's domain. Players who venture here will immediately be confronted by the lord of this lair, Scourgelord Tyrannus. But defeating him will not be as easy as it seems. Before they can present a threat to Tyrannus, the adventurers, instructed by their leaders, will need to free enslaved allies who have been trapped by the Scourge. Until that happens, Tyrannus will leave all adversaries to his minions, workers of the citadel's mines. Perhaps the challenges here will lend clues as to the whereabouts of the Lich King's private chambers outside of the Frozen Throne, deep within the Halls of Reflection.

Bosses

* Forgemaster Garfrost: A master of Scourge weaponry, the forgemaster hauls stocks of saronite ore and other precious materials to the cold forges where the mechanisms of death are born. With a host of rime weapons and exotic alloys at his disposal, it could get cold in here.

* Krick and Ick: Zombies serve as mindless muscle in the Pit of Saron's mines, stockpiling metals for Forgemaster Garfrost, and Krick -- a devious leper gnome -- supervises the operations from atop Ick, Krick's ghastly means of transportation.

* Scourgelord Tyrannus: Tyrannus is a terrible force who will no doubt demonstrate his powers to those brave enough to enter the Pit of Saron. The scourgelord must die if players hope to make their way into the third and final wing of this dungeon.

Halls of Reflection

With Jaina and Sylvanas leading the way, adventurers who make it as far as these frigid halls will quickly recognize the weapon that lies ahead: Frostmourne, the corruptive, legendary device of the Lich King himself. The Lich King's private chambers are within reach, although they may be the death of anyone who ventures there.

Bosses

* Falric and Marwyn: Captains for Arthas Menethil in life, Scourge commanders for the Lich King in death, Falric and Marwyn will be summoned to the Halls of Reflection for one purpose: destroying all intruders.

* The Lich King: Sylvanas, thirsty for vengeance against the corrupted prince who sentenced her to an existence as an undead monstrosity, and Jaina, eager to find a flicker of Arthas's soul locked somewhere within the Lich King, have brought their hand-picked allies to this final confrontation. Arthas's true power may only now be discovered. Is there any hope in this mission, or does only death await.

Source

what i think?
Fight with lich king - take 1:
At 1 % - bubble and HS.

New UI + introducing, Teh Evilcandy!

2009-10-02T08:14:00.006+03:00

I promised to post my new UI, so here it is!

here it is if you cant see the full sized picture, i uploaded it on image shack, click on it for the full screen

I'll have to remove the 2 chat boxes to where they're supposed to be =)

What I am using is Spartan UI with bartender, Bagnon2, ForteXorcist, Prat, Pally power, quick mark, recount and SexyMap.

post part 2: Introducing the Evilcandwe!

Evilcandwe is my DK alt.
You might ask me, how did i get that name?
Well, lets see, i am not that creative when it comes to getting names for my characters, back at horde i had: Almaster, Elmaster and Zemaster.
When i switched to Alliance, i now have: Almaster, Zemaster (my hunter) Stuusx (my newly made priest, i named him after a priest (Stuus) that was guilded with us, i have a lot of respect to that person, he used to top damage meters at almost every fight :P and i always said that he is my elder brother that i never had) and Evilcandwe.
Candwe was my best friend on the horde side, a resto druid that knows how to play her class at PVE, in PVP, she sucks :P
back to the story, i wanted to lvl a DK and stand with her in Dlaran, as Candwe and her Evil self, but it didnt work out since Candwe server x-fered about 2 months ago.

using the same UI, adding Facesmasher, since i fail at the DK rotation, facesmasher tells me what to use and when to use it :P

FAQs and need some help!

2009-09-30T09:44:00.002+03:00

Hello everyone,

1- I'm going to start a FAQ post every start of the month, so if you have any questions related to me/Holy Paladins/Ret Paladins/Protection Paladins that you'd like me to answer for it, please send me an e-mail at Halqato@gmail.com.
2- I'm looking for someone to help me out with this blog, Paladin preferably or any healing class, I'd consider any DPS class that has the will and the energy to keep posting in this blog.
if you are interested, please send me an e-mail, my e-mail is mentioned above.
3- I'd love to get my blog on other bloggers blog roll, If you add me to your blog roll, I'll add you to mine!.

Cheers,

I used to be, for the horde!

2009-09-28T11:01:00.004+03:00

when I started the game, I knew I wanted to be on the Horde side. Being an avid Warcraft fan, I always enjoyed everything about the faction and was a huge Thrall fan. Going on my third year of playing the game, I found myself playing less and less till finally I stopped playing all together. Was it that I hit a plateau in my enthusiasm for the game or was it simply I’ve run my course? Probably both to be honest.
Being on a PVP server for 3 years will bring disdain towards the other faction like no other. I hated gnomes and I squirmed in BRD just hearing the dwarfs laughing in the bar. Nonetheless, I decided I was going to level a character to 80 and see things from the other side. Funny enough, as of now, its been the most enjoyable time I’ve had playing the game.

To really appreciate the game, you have to see it from both sides and to really appreciate the work Blizzard has done, experience it.

always believed that sentiment that the Horde was where the Adults played and the Alliance was simply filled with children. I always expressed that I could never join the faction due to it and at my own remission, I don’t know why I believed that.

I met up with a group of nobles, if i may say, the guild of Lux Legis, from their Guild leader/Co-leaders, to the newest recruit, they were all kind and welcoming, i've never felt any kind of a stranger that never played this faction before.

now, I'm... For the Alliance!

Now the Alliance is no change from the horde, shapes and names had changed, but nothing else, I have this feeling that i am going to reroll again...
I already started a Death knight over Arygos, which is a server a lot of my horde friends transferred into, but every day i see my paladin after the logging screen, i stop thinking of rerolling, and log into Arthas, with my pride of being Alliance, better yet, a paladin of the Alliance... duh! who wants to be a Blood Elf? =P

Your guide to healing TOTC: Anub'arak

2009-09-25T09:36:00.003+03:00

In 10 man, this is a very easy fight when you compare it with 25 man version or any of the heroic versions.
there are simple things to avoid/do, do them right, and you will have no problems downing this boss from try one.

PS: if you are pugging this, the first 3-4 bosses will show you if you are having any nubcakes in your raid, get rid of them before this boss, or if you prefer carrying people then that's your problem :P

for this fight you need at least 1 ranged DPS, 2 tanks, 3 or 2 healers (i did it as 2 healers and got it just fine, although i was on my toes half of the time)

Phase one:
1- 1 ranged DPS to shoot permafrost orbs.
2- 1 tank for Nerubian Burrower, those adds have an expose armor debuff, the tank needs to make sure that he is tanking them on permafrost.
Don't DPS the Nerubian Burrowers at this time, and wait till phase 2, since most of your dps will have nothing to do in that phase.
Phase Two:
Anub'arak will burrow approximately every 90 seconds, starting phase 2. He will pursue a random target with spikes throughout the phase and when he reaches them he will cast Impale. The spikes will gradually speed up until they hit the target, or hit a patch of permafrost. Standing on the permafrost (or being on the other side of permafrost from the spikes) will enable you to avoid the impale, but the permafrost will despawn. After a few seconds, he will select another target.

Swarm Scarabs will spawn rapidly, scarabs have little hp, seem to ignore most threat but stack the same stacking nature damage debuff on their targets, should be range kited and killed, or killed by melee not being chased by them. It is also possible to drag them across permafrost to gain more distance. After about one minute Anub'arak will surface and begin phase one again. He keeps threat from phase one.

Phase Three: It is advisable to kill off any adds currently active before pushing Anub'arak over 30%. He will not submerge or summon any more adds at this point. Anub'arak needs to die very quickly after hitting 30% as you will not last long under the effects of leeching swarm. It is not ideal to top off raid members as they will then be taking full damage from the leeching swarm, healing Anub'arak and prolonging the phase. Instead you will want to keep people at ~5,000 HP, so that they do not get gibbed by penetrating cold while also minimizing the amount Anub'arak heals.

Anub'arak does not have any other tricks and will die upon reaching 0% HP.

congratulations, you can now lewt your pixels.

Shared Topic: Fail.

2009-09-22T11:34:00.005+03:00

I've been wanting to post something about this for a long time now, you see, even if you are the best player that have been playing WOW ever, you will still have your fail moments.

Shared Topic: Fail

One of my fail moments when me and my guild went to Naxx 10 to get the Undying title, i was the raid leader and made sure we don't have anyone who have a connection problem/old comp/ retardness to prevent us from earning the title.

3 wings went smooth, until we got into Grobbulus room, got him to 15% before our Elemental shammy disconnected.
I've been guilded with this shammy for over 2 years now, he never disconnects, but because our luck is awesome! he did.

I was 1 man healing the instance, so i went back to Evee (the shammy) and kept healing him since he d/c ed in a poison cloud, i had to walk back and forth to heal the tank and melee and in the same time heal the shammy, until he disappeared, and then went back and healed the raid.
on vent, i was going crazy, cursing at him and asking him to get back in right now or i am going to go to his house kill his family in front of him, then kill him.
he logged back in after we killed the boss, i flamed him all the way until we reached kel'thuzad, everything was going smooth for a 1 healer 10 man group, until...

i got in a void zone and died.

All of my guildies never fail to make me remember that day, every time i try to do something and someone helping me fails, i get reminded of it.
it was fun though, so close to get it, and i failed :(

I R excited!

2009-09-22T10:21:00.006+03:00

Hello dear readers!

I'm really excited today, although it has been a long day at work.
Why? you might ask?

1- I just read Ferrro's post about Paladin Schmaladin blog is hiring, and i apped for it.
I know that i deserve to post on such a successful blog, I've been a holy Paladin for a long time now, I've been playing a druid, a rogue, a DK, a Warlock, and a hunter. so i am familiar with most aspects of the game.
I mentioned before that i got my strategy form for the first strategies i posted from ferraro, i really liked the way it was done.
To be honest, although F is offering money for people posting for her, i am not interested at all in it, i have the will to be posting on a paladin blog, and help others, for free! and since this blog is not attracting much readers (sorry), i am a very active, i love to post alot, on my guild website, i think i am the only one posting paladin stuff in the paladin forums, also i am the only one posting raid strats or strats for officers and guild leaders.
I'm also always checking whats new with WOW, i check wowhead, mmo-champion, blog azeroth and much more helpful websites at least 4-5 times a day.
so i hope i get accepted :D

2- i just read gnomeaggedon's post about Azeroth united.
i registered and hope i can help with the community!

3- i got this achievement

25 more mounts for my 100 mounts achievement.

2 years of trying to get this mount, and finally!

4- I made a new UI, i know all of you will love it, i will be posting another topic about it tomorrow hopefully!
yay!

Your guide to healing TOTC: The Val'kyr twins

2009-09-12T13:15:00.002+03:00

To begin with, split the raid in half (as well as you can for having 25 people) and start opposite the large entry doors. Those tanking/attacking/healing the white Val'kyr (Fjola Lightbane) should have dark auras, and those tanking/attacking/healing the black Val'kyr (Eydis Darkbane) should have light auras. At the beginning, like most fights, the only one who should need healing is the tank you are assigned to (though there are no penalties for scooting near the middle and being able to hit both tanks). Make sure each tank has their focus in between the portals of the right or left side.

The only time the fight becomes healing intensive is during the "bullet hell time" and that is only if you and your raid members are not careful to avoid balls of light/dark, as you only absorb those of your own type and those of the wrong type cause damage. As a healer, you should avoid all balls as they are much more beneficial to the DPS than you, and they will need them for the shield portion of the fight.

Otherwise, your only other job is to watch for Vortexes and change your color if it is appropriate. Blizzard has generously provided a warning for you, all you have to do is read it. If you are "dark" and light is being channeled, you need to click a light portal, and vice-versa. There is no healing through this. If someone is wrong, they are dead.

Since you're a healer, you don't have to worry about shields other than to know that once a shield is up, the DPS needs to burn it down so they can interrupt the heal. If you have the spare time and can pop up some damage on it, it wouldn't hurt. As was mentioned before, this fight is very undemanding of healers so long as everyone avoids the wrong color orbs.

Your guide to healing TOTC: the faction champions

2009-09-12T09:17:00.001+03:00

I would kid myself if I thought this was a truly proper healing guide, but this is not a "proper" fight. There are no aggro tables, so you will, most likely, be being focused by one of your enemies at one point or another. You need to be mobile, adaptive, and have a fast reaction time. It's time to start loving PvP, because that is what this fight is; one extremely long arena fight. I personally find this to be the most enjoyable and exciting fight so far!

What I can provide are tips on what to do when facing these champions.

Communication is key.

First of all, make sure you start facing the right way. The champions do NOT enter from the double doors. They jump directly down from the stands where their faction leader is located. If you are Alliance, then you will be facing Horde Champions, and if you are Horde, then you will be facing Alliance Champions.

Communication is key.

Be prepared to break out of your intended role. When CC is needed, don't be afraid to add a couple Cyclones to the mix. Pop Nature's Grasp when someone is on you. This is a perfectly acceptable use of your role. Be careful with your Cyclone, though. Cycloning someone that your raid is about to unload on can be disastrous. So, no pressure, right?

Communication is key.

Be aware of your surroundings. You have to know what's going on. When there's a warrior near you, you have to run away. You have to know who is focusing you and who is being focused. This requires a large amount of focus for the important things. There is a lot to keep track of. If you waste your time thinking about your Recount meters or what have you, you or somebody else will die.

Communication is key.

Okay, why do I keep repeating that? Because IT IS IMPORTANT. You cannot win in this fight if you do not report that which is pertinent, and nothing else. People will get focused down and will need Rebirths. CC will break, and even if it doesn't it's on PvP lengths and will be less effective each time you chain it. You have to communicate. You just have to.

If you keep this all in mind, you should kill them. Not the first time, but soon. And if you do kill them on the first pull, I salute you.

For a list of all Champions, go to this post from MMO Champion . Note that, in the case of the Champions of the same class, the one listed first is a healing spec, and the one listed second is the DPS spec. The exception is the Druids; the first is Moonkin and the second is Resto.

Good luck!

Your guide to healing TOTC: Lord Jaraxxus

2009-09-12T09:13:00.002+03:00

This fight may seem complicated due to the randomness of it. However, with a bit of coordination and communication, it's very controllable and doable.

To begin, my raid arranged itself in a circle around the middle, using the points of the star as markers. The areas directly in front of the instance door and directly in front of the boss entrance were left open. After that, two ranged each sat on points of a star to minimize spreading damage, like the chain lightning ability or the fire drops. Every person who became affected by Legion Flame then had an area to run straight backwards to drop their fire (Legion Flame does a DoT and causes you to drop patches of fire where you are standing that do heavy damage once every second for six seconds). We kept the spread of healers even, and monitored people for Incinerate Flesh.

Incinerate Flesh is a little bit of a weird mechanic in that your target will not noticeably be taking damage. The debuff absorbs 60k healing and decreases attack speed by 50%, and persists either until 60k healing is absorbed or fifteen seconds pass. If you don't heal enough, then the person will gain a raid-wide DoT for 3K+ every second for five seconds. And while this may not seem too bad, there is a lot of incidental damage going out, and this is so completely avoidable as to have no excuse for the person not to gain heals.

During the encounter, Jaraxxus will summon an infernal volcano. You should have one or two OT's responsible for managing these brutes. They have an AoE just for standing near them, so ranged should nuke them down and you should get out of their way. Try to recover quickly from any charges they get off and heal any people affected.

Jaraxxus will also summon Mistresses of Pain during the encounter. When he opens the Nether Portal, he'll gain Nether Power, a 20-stack buff that needs to be dispelled and purged and spell-stolen as quickly as possible, and at this time you need to watch the tank as he'll be taking more damage. The Mistresses of Pain need to be controlled as well as possible and kept away from melee. Ranged should power her down, as they can keep clear of her armor-ignoring attacks. The reason she is so hard to control, however, is the Spinning Pain Spike. This causes her to leap upon a player (kind of like the snobolds in the first part of the Beasts) and, well, hurt them. These people need to be called out quickly, as she'll pick them up and slam them into the ground for a percentage of their maximum health.

It certainly sounds like a chaotic fight, and it certainly can be. However, with a little bit of coordination, the chaotic, random side of the encounter is diminished greatly, and a win is much easier to obtain.

Good Luck!

Your guide to healing TOTC: The Beasts of Northrend

2009-09-05T09:12:00.002+03:00

1- Gormok the Impaler

an easy fight, not even worth to say something about it, beacon the tank, heal the melee when they gt stunned, heal the person with the snobold on his head, stay away from his stun because it silence you for 8 sec, and stay away from fire.

WIN!

2- Acidmaw and Dreadscale

This fight is like a tease to all who can remove poison. There's two poison types, a burning and a paralyzing, and the only thing that can remove the paralyzing is someone running past who is afflicted with burning to "burn" it off, or they'll be stuck in place, unable to move or act and taking ticking damage for quite a while. Since you can still move some while afflicted with the paralyzing poison, my guild had everyone afflicted run into the center.
Keep relatively spread out to avoid too many people being affected by the poison at once, and the rest of the fight is a snap.
nothing special here, heal heal heal, I'm usually out of mana at the time this ends, i usually beacon the tank with acidmaw and heal the tank tanking dreadscale.

3- Icehowl

This fight is pretty unique, yet still intensely simple. This is another fight you want to stay spread out for, since his breath attack can freeze whole sections of raiders in place. You can't control the direction, it's just something that happens. It doesn't hit too hard, so you should be fine. Keep people topped off from Whirl, and when he knocks everyone to the side of the ring and stuns them, look at the boss model. See where he is facing, and when your stun wears off, run away from that area. You'll have a speed boost, so for no reason should you not be able to get out of the way. If you don't, you die, simple as that. When he charges into the wall, he becomes stunned, so use this time wisely to top everyone off. Other than that, just keep people up from incidental damage and you should win this one easy. Also, watch out for Frothing Rage, though your hunters should smash that off right quick. If not, just heal, heal, heal the main tank!

Congrats, you are now illegible for some phat lewtz

apology

2009-09-04T14:41:00.000+03:00

I apologize for posting all those guides pretty fast, the problem is i have been lazy enough not to post any of them, and i already made the TOC guides so i needed to post those lol.

promise wont do it again!

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Yogg

2009-09-04T14:35:00.001+03:00

Like Mimiron this is another “Phase” fight so I will separate it accordingly. Like Mimiron, to me this is another “Communication” fight. People have to talk on vent. They have to ask for buffs to be cleansed and they have to let you know when they are getting squeezed. If you have people that do not communicate on vent this fight will be exponentially harder.

Phase 1

For phase one you need to focus on two things:

#1 – Staying in range of the tanks and keeping Beacon and Sacred Shield up on one of them. This first phase you and the tanks will be running around like crazy WHILE having to avoid the clouds. They take spike damage when the adds blow up so you will have to really be watching. Without the MCing that used to be in this phase, the only really challening thing is to:

#2 – Avoid the clouds. We found that triggering 1-2 of them in the beginning actually helped us get through this phase. Any more and you will wipe. The first 2-3 spawn far enough apart that a few extra adds are not hard to deal with. The best way for me to heal was to run around on my own and stay in range of the tanks. The strats vary greatly for this fight.

Phase 2

#1 – Cleanse your face off. Especially if you are the only paladin in the group. There are two things that cause more frustration than anything: Apathy and Black Plague. These cause movement impairing affects and for a movement heavy fight you’ve got to be johnny on the spot with cleanses. There were a few attempts I spent 75% of the time cleansing. Your melee’s abilities at keeping the Corrupter tentacles down will help lower the number of cleanses needed.

#2 – Being squeezed. At some point you will get grabbed by a Constrictor tentacle. You can bubble out of the first one but then the next couple you will have to be DPS’d out of. The positive: You can keep healing as normal while it has you grabbed.

#3 – Sanity. Some fights, I never have to worry about my sanity. Some fights, I am at <20>

#4 – Brain link. Not a huge problem usually unless it gets thrown on one of the people going into Yogg’s brain and they come out and are like 1000 feet away from you and they are taking mega damage/losing sanity. Just run towards the person and heal them.

Phase 2 is more in the hands of the dps than yours. Just keep people alive and cleansed and you’ve done your job.

Phase 3

Get ready for the wildest boss fight that you won’t get to see (unless you are one of those people that have figured out how to turn your character and still be able to see behind him etc. i’m not that cool)

#1 – Face away from Yogg. None of your heals are LoS so just turn around and face away from the boss and pray the tanks are quick at picking up the adds. Heal your ass off. That’s really it in this part. You don’t have to move just heal and keep beacon up on the tank. Use all your cooldowns etc. This phase is NOTHING like phase 4 of mimiron. It is a stand there, FACE AWAY FROM THE BOSS and heal. The tanks do take big hits, and the adds will one shot everyone in raid except a tank when they first come out. So just heal, heal, heal with Holy light and every cooldown you have.

Do that and your done!

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: General Vezax

2009-09-04T14:33:00.003+03:00

I was reading around about the hard mode for Vezax this week and I stumbled across a couple of hidden posts that reccomended Holy Paladins to heal this fight in their Holy gear but spec’d prot. I did some casual Theorycrafting and realized that for this fight only 4 of my Holy tree talents really helped me heal this fight more effectively and there were about 7 Prot tree talents that improved healing for this fight. I tried this tactic last night, and for the first time at the end of this fight I actually had mana left over (even with a brand new healer).

Lets look at the specific talents that make the Prot tree worth using.

#1 – Touched by the Light . first and foremost this is the talent you are spec’ing for. You don’t really need anything beyond. Since I spend about 95% of the fight casting FoL on the MT I was amazed at how much this improved healing. I went from criting for about 6k even to hitting him for 7.5k a crit. And with Sacred Shield up my crit rating was around 85% for FoL. The additional spell power also makes it nice as several other talents in the prot tree increase stamina.

#2 – Divine Guardian – 1 minute Sacred Shields are amazing. So much so that if I felt FoL was worth using in any other fight I would totally spec into this for raid. Not just longer shields though it also will stay up a bit longer since it absorb’s a bit more damage. The combo of these two talents alone changes the dynamic of this fight. Instead of consistently needing green pools to keep my mana up I was much less dependent on them. To the point that I used them twice and only did the 6th stack method and I still had about 6k mana left when Vezax died.

The rest of the talents in my opinion don’t matter. In the prot tree just pick anything that increases healing/crit/stamina and your golden. Then you can either spec into the Holy tree (remember Illumination doesn’t work so don’t waste the talents) to increase your amount healed or you can go into the Ret tree to get some more crit. I found that my crit rating was exactly the same in prot as it is in holy.

Tried and true it made healing this fight about 60% easier. Not EZ-mode, but considerably easier. Factor this into the strategies listed below.

Another very difficult fight to heal through. Where Mimiron was all about avoiding damage and moving cleanly, Vezax is about healer communication. We read all the strats on this one and we only found one that really works well.

Abilities that effect healing -

1. Aura of Despair – No mana regen whatsover… No Divine Plea, no Blessing of Wisdom procs, no Illumination crits, mana pots, innervate etc…. for a paladin you truly will not be gaining any mana back on your own at all. Sucks to be a healer on this fight.

2. Shadow Crash – There are 3 examples of this in the trash pulls right before Vezax (the big faceless ones). A huge arcing shadow bolt starts from the boss and targets one raid member and arcs to the place where they are standing. If you don’t move it hits for around 7k and knocks you out of range. Since this fight is all about maximizing heals for mana, then you or other raid members being hit by this is not good. Just strafe left or right, or run towards the boss. Because of the nature of the arc, understand that the closer you are the faster it will get to you. DO NOT STAND IN THE BLACK MARKS LEFT BY THIS.

3. Mark of the Faceless – A life leech debuff that leaches 5k hit points from raid members within 15-20 yards. It does not do damage to the person who has it. Also, for every tick that it hits for 5k, Vezax is healed for 100k health. So 10 ticks of this debuff will heal for 1 Million health. This ability is maddenly frustrating because you will watch your least experieinced raid members heal the boss for a ton in seconds…

4. Surge of Darkness – This is where our strat differed from everything else we read. We did not have the tank kite the boss until towards the end of the fight to help us conserve mana. We had a DK stand there and rotate cooldowns and never move the boss unless to get in range of a downed saraonite vapor. When he surge’s he will be taking extra damage and will require close concentration by healers.

5. Saronite Vapors – your mana regen method. When one of these green gasses dies, it leaves a large pool on the ground that you gain 1 stack of a debuff for every second you stay in it. It is shadow damage, BUT DO NOT USE SHADOW AURA. (I will explain*) As you take damage from the debuff you will gain mana. You can take 6 stacks (wait for the stack to actually say “6″) without much in healing. But the key is to get to that 7th stack without dieing (you will need a heal at the 5th and 6th stack). Taking 7 stacks will give you plenty of mana back. There are only 8 of these so using them in a timely and orderly fashion is key. This takes a higher level of healer communication than most guilds are used to.

*Shadow aura seems to give you a greater chance of FULLY RESISTING the tick of the debuff. If you FULLY RESIST it, you will not get the mana from it. You want to make sure you get the mana.

Primary Objectives

If you have a good group of people that can avoid shadow crashes and can manage to not hit people with Mark of the Faceless, then congrats! Your job is way easier, you ONLY HAVE TO HEAL THE TANK (and maybe yourself depending on how you do the green stuff)

1. Heal the tank – if you don’t kite him, he will need extra heals during surge. If you do kite him, then pay attention to distance. We stopped kiting cause the tank would always get hit on the run and then we’d be running to catch up and heal and by the time we would start casting something BAM, he’s dead.

2. Use Sacred Shield and Flash of Light – with this combo i was criting almost 75% of the time on FoL, which fully raid buffed was hitting for almost 6.5k a heal. This along with other heals was plenty to keep him alive. I used Holy Light about 20 times in the fight during Surge’s and when I had my Divine Illumination on. I got in the habit of popping Divine Illumination, then casting my wings (Avenging Wrath) and then hitting the tank with Sacred Shield. That way the costs of those abilities were lower. I think in a 9 minute fight if I used it during the first surge I could use it 3 times.

3. Regen Mana on a Healer Rotation – with three healers we would have two healers on tank at start of fight with the third healer doing nothing. Not healing ANYBODY. When one of the two healers would get close to 60% mana, we would call out “Need green goo soon”. A dps would find an appropriately placed vapor and then tell us he was downing it. The lower mana healer would then go and refill. The off healer that was sitting doing nothing, now steps in and main heals the tank. Once a healer got full mana, then a dps would down another green goo. We frowned heavily upon casters using up our mana*, and tried to have only the minimum of 4 ranged during the fight (which is only 1 dps beyond the healers)

*The reason we don’t want more than one person in a green thing is two-fold. If a close by raid member gets Mark’d or Crash’d then the healer would have to adjust, run away or who know what totally negating their ability to regen mana. Its better to just any caster dps fend for themselves and keep your big dps in the melee.

4. Decide on 6 or 7 stacks – hotly debated by our guildies, but getting 7 stacks is the best way to regen mana. It is also though the riskiest. At the 6th stack you take 6,400 damage which at that point will be a total of 12,600 damage up to that point. Totally easy, and it won’t kill you (unless you get crash’d or someone ticks your health with a mark). Now here is where it gets tricky… the 7th stack will do 12,800 damage, so without a heal you will probably die. That will be a cumulative total of 25,400 damage if you don’t get a single heal. If you heal on the 5th, 6th and 7th stack, you will be fine. The way I started doing this with ease, was to jump into the goo and beacon the tank and then just spam FoL myself after the 5th stack. It might seem like a waste, but that 7th stack will give you 6,400 mana. It is SO worth the time saved of jumping out after 6 stacks and then repeating, but IT IS VERY RISKY.

5. Don’t save cooldowns – no really, be liberal with them here, use Aura mastery whenever its up, pop your auto-crit every time its up, pop trinkets every time they are up, bubble yourself and put hand of sacrifice on the tank during surge. Anything that potentially saves you mana, is worth using. I also got used to “queuing” heals. If you don’t have a ton of haste, it is easy to start casting a heal, and then staring at the tank to see if he gets hit, if he doesn’t, then move real quick and recast. By doing this you won’t overheal as much, but if your haste is too high, you will have a hard time stopping before the heal gets off.

6. Don’t use Judgements or Holy Shock (unless in emergency) - While I love holy shock and constantly scream at fellow pally healers when I see them spamming 75 FoL’s in ignis, during this fight it is best to not use. It is horribly mana efficent, and my FoL crits were very close in total amount healed, and you save 350 mana. I had to literally take this off my bar so I would stop twitch casting it. And the extra haste from Judgements if you read #5 and try to do that will actually hurt you more than help.

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Mimiron

2009-09-04T14:28:00.003+03:00

Let me just start out by saying this so far has been the most difficult fight for me to heal. I thought Hodir was bad, but Mimiron is a whole new level of healing pain. With that said, killing him was probably the most rewarding experince thus far for me in Ulduar. The first time we downed him was after 3 days/50 wipes. Because of the complexity of this fight I am going to separate everything into phases.

>> Phase One <<

Abilities that affect healing -

1. Plasma Blast – Healing the MT through this without him using a cooldown is possible, but seems to come down to luck. Use anything and everything you have at your dispolsal. I was popping Fire Aura with Aura mastery on one of his blasts and Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Shield on another, especially if your tank is out of cooldowns. If you want to be consistently successful on Phase One, you have to be using cooldowns. (FYI – for this fight we used 2 tanks that took turns using cooldowns. So far it seems in Ulduar, “When in doubt, add another tank.”)

2. Napalm Shell – Random raid member gets shot

3, Landmines – Although avoidable, depending on the number of melee you have the odds are someone will run over a few.

Primary Objectives (Phase One)

- Keep MT up through the Plasma Blast

- Stay spread out so Napalm doesn’t hit more than one person (Mimiron is another type of “avoidance” fight, like Hodir a lot of damage can be avoided by the dps/heals)

- Keep your mana high by using Divine Plea AFTER a plasma blast, but save big cooldowns for phase

>> Phase Two <<

Abilities that effect healing -

1. Heat Wave – the hardest thing to heal through. It is raid-wide fire damage considerable to Frozen Blows on Hodir. It hurts a lot and is mana intensive to heal through and there is no way to avoid it. Bubbleing/Aura Mastery will help if you have it. Paladin OT’s or DPS with Divine Sacrifice are very nice to have here.

2. Rocket Strike and Laser Barrage – both life ending abilities. You get hit by either you die. You will not get past this boss if you have raid members that can’t see the rockets coming.

3. Rapid Burst – this is his basic attack that he will do the entire fight except during Laser Barrage. It shoots out in a cone effect so the closer to him you are and spread out around him the less damage everyone will take. Set up right there really should only be 1 person getting hit by this at a time.

Primary Objectives (Phase Two)

- Heat Wave healing – beacon yourself and Sacred Shield someone. Use your bubble during one of the waves and then Aura Mastery during another. At the first Heat Wave is when I also pop Divine Illumination (your 50% mana CD)

- Don’t go OOM – When he starts to spool up Laser Barrage pop Divine Plea once you are caught up on heals and then click it off if its not done yet when he is done. If someone gets hit by barrage you won’t be able to heal them anyway. This phase is hugely mana intensive and your group needs to kill him fast but you need to conserve mana for the next phases as well. If you keep going OOM during these phases, don’t worry you will get better. After 40 wipes our healers were reaching phase 3 with full mana.

>> Phase Three <<

Abilities that affect healing -

1. Bomb Bots. Bomb bots, bomb bots, bomb bots. Having trouble on this part of the fight? Its the bomb bots. Once we got into a good rhythm of snaring and killing them this phase is a total breeze. These drop out of the head while it is flying around and target somebody and blow up for crazy damage.

2. Plasma Ball – whoever is tanking the head (usually a ranged dps) will take about 8k damage every 2-3 seconds from this ability.

3. All other adds – the tanks will be taking mild damage from the various adds. Nothing too major.

Primary Objectives (Phase Three)

- Stay away from Bomb bots

- Keep the head tank at max health as much as you can.

- Use Divine Plea during this phase to regen as much mana as you can. With 3 healers no one should be getting terribly hard. I usually beacon the MT and then just holy shock/FoL the head tank the whole fight.

>> Phase 4 <<

So bring it all together then. Mimiron keeps several different abilities from each phase. The healing intensive ones are the Plasma ball from the head and then the main attack from phase 2 (hand pulse). Everything else is pretty avoidable and is what makes this fight so tough (land mines, missiles, laser barrage, shock blast – your raid members health is in THEIR OWN hands more than yours…) As a healer if you have made it this far than the tough part for you is over and now just pray the DPS is smart enough to stay alive…

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Hodir

2009-09-04T14:23:00.003+03:00

Positioning: 7 ► Healing Intensity: 6 ► MT/OT Damage: 3 ► Raid Damage: 6

Difficulty: Medium

1. Frozen Blows – raid wide damage…like OMG damage. This is really a pain to heal through because during this, all his other abilities are still going on and do EVEN MORE damage. Put on Frost Aura and if you have it pop Aura Mastery when he starts this attack – it will up your resistance to 260. I have to believe this attack is why some guilds make everyone have “some” resist.

2. Frost Nova (Cleanse-able) – the frost novas shoot out of Hodir and then AOE an area. The nova’s don’t do huge damage, but they root people.

3. Avalanche’s – you will see it snowing in random areas. Get out of the snow. Yell at people to get out of the snow so you don’t have to heal them.

4. Flash Freeze – if someone gets caught in it they will need mild heals.

5. Biting cold – Keristraza type aura. Keep moving and jumping. During Frozen Blows you might think “I will just stand still and take the damage.” Don’t do that. The damage of Biting cold is worse when Hodir is doing Frozen Blows. (If you see a fire on the ground, stand next to it. It is another “helper” and it stops Biting Cold from happening to you.

6. Starlight – one of the “helpers” casts a spotlight in random areas. Standing in the light gives you 100% haste to casting. With all buffs up, my Holy Lights were taking .8 seconds to cast. If you can safely stand in one and heal during Frozen Blows, it helps a ton.

RECAP:

- Avoid damage: this is one of the only encounters your primary goal is to stay out of damage. The tank (in frost resist gear) never gets hit terribly hard. This fight is about keeping moving and NOT TAKING DAMAGE.

- Heal the tank

- Use Aura Mastery during Frozen Blows. BELIEVE ME IT HELPS. If you have more than one pally, have both of them put Frost Resist Aura on and alternate casts of mastery. If you have a pally off tank who is DPSing during this fight, have him bubble and use his raid wide damage decrease. Anything that can decrease raid damage here is a plus.

- Bubble during a Frozen Blow to catch up: Normally I would use Aura Mastery in the first Frozen Blows and then bubble in the second one if i needed to. While bubbled, stand in a spotlight and cast like crazy.

- Cleanse the frost nova’s: it always seemed that at least one person would be frost nova’d while in the “snow” of an upcoming avalanche. Cleansing them helped them get out of that before it kills.

- Keeping Beacon and Sacred Shield always up on the MT. Get a timer or something to help you remember to refresh these. I use Grid and a couple addons to pull this off.

Would you change factions?

2009-09-01T11:46:00.004+03:00

A shared topic on Blog Azeroth caught my eyes, since i was a former Horde warrior, and now a paladin of the Alliance, its kinda concerns me.
Not really.

See, I am not a RP player, nor that i am very interested in WoW lore.
yes i am little interested, i won't lie, but not that much.

For me, I already gave away my horde warrior, with reputations and gear from T0.5 to T6 (including T1, T2, T3, T4, T5). so do i really want to switch again to horde? no.
do i miss my friends on the horde side? hell yes, but most of them were kind enough to make alliance characters (mostly DKs) and i invited them to the guild i am in, we talk a lot, i help them lvl faster. nothing more.

In my opinion, the whole thing will NOT work, i really doubt that the employees in blizz will be smart enough to figure out a way to change reputations, mounts, or any other aspect of the game.

I was thinking a bit of how many people will be faction changing if it DID work, some people with high population servers might, i had the chance to log on magtheradon (or whoever its spelled like) on the EU servers, the server who used to have the first guilds to clear everything in TBC (now called Ensedia).
they had like 100 horde for each alliance, my friend had a mage on that server, in wintergrasp he had like 15 of the buff increasing HP for more than 200% and damage taken by something like that too, there was like 10 people in WG raid while horde had at least 4 or 5.
without talking too much about that, i felt like he was Onyxia with all the dots he had on him, and a raid of horde were trying to kill him, he only was aoeing to wipe them all, it was fun to watch.

So yeah, people on that server might think of faction changing, and i wont blame them.

I keep thinking about it, do i really want to change factions, no.
Will i consider it if i was in a another situation? maybe, but most likely i would have stopped playing this game if i wasn't in this perfect guild with those awesome people. i actually played this paladin so i can play with them, and i am very happy, i cant say that i will be going to any other guild, although we stopped raiding, if the guild disbanded, i will be cancelling my account, the only reason that kept me going is this guild, and this server that i am in, if anything in it changed, i will automatically cancel my account.

To do list

2009-08-27T05:22:00.002+03:00

i keep saying that I will get back to playing my alts (including my very neglected 80 DK) just as soon as I have finished the game on my main. So the current things on the to do list that I am working on:

Loremaster – I am trying to finish off outlands and vanilla wow and stuck with some very annoying zones where am one or two quests short – then it is off to Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor for the rest of the grind
Exalted Oracles – I went with the puppy men first and have just started opening eggs with Oracles – mainly I am after the mount, but also wanting the Mercenary achievement from hitting exalted (then back to the Wolvar because oracles are creepy)
PVP – for the Of the Alliance title.
PVP mounts – nuff said.
My mount count is 66/100 – a quick reckoning of those I am still working towards leaves me a way short unless I manage to farm several rare drops. But I remain confident that Blizz will work on adding more mounts for me by the time I get there.
Exalted Kurenai - for the mounts, duh!

Phew, that is a lot to be occupied with on a very small amount of game time every week.

Cataclysm

2009-08-27T05:20:00.001+03:00

too lazy to post all the updates, go to mmo-champion.com and stop slacking.

PS:

Paladin
Protection

Righteous Fury now increases the threat generated by your Holy spells by 80%. (Down from 90%)
Judgements of the Just now reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 5/10 sec. (Down from 10/20 sec)
Touched by the Light now increases your spell power by an amount equal to 20/40/60% of your Strength. (Old - 10/20/30% of your Stamina)

HIDDEN NERFS.

Blessing of Sanctuary now increases strength and stamina by 10% instead of just increasing stamina.

ummm, ok.

A wow leak?

2009-08-20T01:02:00.002+03:00

A new comic from world of warcraft, might be a new leak of the new expansion.

Pretty much spells it out, Jaina and the others are reforming the Council, with the need for including a more expansive collection of various magic users, not simply arcane magi like before, but those of nature and divine, specifically, priests, paladins, druids, and Shamans.

Those considered thus far, Marad, Khadgar, Broll, and yes, Thrall.

It seems that the magi have weakened due to Malygos' activity in Northrend. Therefore the new council needs to be formed of more then just magi, but of Druid, shaman, priest and paladin due to their powers not being affected by Malygos. Last page also has Jaina talking about asking Khadgar and Thrall to join the new council.

Looks like we can confirm at least one portion of the Cataclysm leaks.

On another note it also appears that A'dal has rubbed off on Khadgar as Jaina breifly mentions that he has been dealing with "diciples of divine magic." Good chance we'll be seeing some hybrid mage/shaman/priest caster types in expansion. Makes me wonder if a new class couldnt form from this?

A good read!

2009-08-19T03:40:00.002+03:00

I found a good read at MMO-Champion, an explanation of the new wow expansion.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=92919.1440

adly, I felt the need to respond to this thread after reading several of the comments. First, this website is, and has always been, fairly accurate with the upcoming content changes for the World of Warcraft, e.g. patches and expansions. Second, everyone will know whether these changes are, in fact, occuring in the upcoming expansion, The World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, after Blizzcon. Third, I've been an avid player of this game since late 2004 and Blizzard has always exceeded my expectations for this game with only a few hiccups along the way. Fourth, at the moment, I'm fairly bored and have decided to add my own opinion to the various changes proposed in the upcoming expansion, as well as, attempting to possibly answer several people's posts on this matter:

1. The Cataclysm: Yes, this event will occur within the game. In fact, about a month prior to the release of the upcoming expansion, Blizzard will release the 4.0 patch into the game. This patch will contain the majority of the new content, e.g. zones, classes, talent trees, and a revamped Azeroth.

2. How will the Cataclysm work? Upon the release of the 4.0 patch, people will download the majority of the new content and log into the game with the new content installed. In fact, this has always been the case with every prior expansion. Upon entering the game world, players will be taken to a cinematic event in which we will experience a video showing Deathwing and Azshara initiating the Cataclysm event and the subsequent destruction of Azeroth. Players will then be phased into the new Azeroth to begin their adventures.

3. Why is Thrall the new Guardian of Tirisfal? Thrall will become the new Guardian of Tirisfal to help coordinate the two factions in their struggle to overcome Deathwing and Azshara. Thrall is chosen because of his personal nature and close ties with Jaina. He can control the Horde and work with the reasonable Alliance leaders in combating this threat. In short, he will become the reasonable advisor able to gently push both factions into a combined goal.

4. Why is Garrosh the new Warchief? Garrosh is the chieftain of the Maghar in the Outlands, as well as, the chieftain of the Warsong Clan, the most powerful clan remaining in the New Horde, and the Commander of the Horde Forces in Northrend. He is being groomed for this position by Thrall and Saurfang, and he is the logical choice to become the new warchief. To pick another would divide the current Horde since Garrosh commands such a large base.

5. Why is Cairne assassinated? Cairne is assassinated to develop discord within the ranks of the Horde and to force them into an open war with the Alliance. He is in fact killed by Deathwing and Azshara to force the only two factions capable of destroying their plans to fight amongst themselves. After all, a combined Alliance/Horde war machine just took down the Lich King. After Cairne's death, Garrosh is led to believe that the Alliance had him assassinated while members of the Horde believe that Garrosh was the real force behind the act. Or, Garrosh actually had Cairne killed so that he would have a precursor to declare war on the Alliance by laying the blame at their feet. Another option could center around Deathwing transforming into an orc form of Garrosh and killing Cairne. Either way war is declared between the two factions. Remember, the best way to win a fight is to divide and conquer your enemy.

6. The new Orgrimmar: Orgrimmar will be rebuilt in Ashenvale at the current location of the eastern Warsong Camp. In fact, the city will be built over time in the game through the use of dailies, much like the retaking of the Isle of Quel'danis. The city will be phased in as the server completes a certain percentage of dailies.

7. What about the trolls and gnomes? The gnomes will finally retake their capital city and the previos instance will be abolished. On the other side, Durotar is destroyed and all that remains is a series of islands. The trolls relocate to these islands and build their new capital on what remains of Durotar. The remaining portion of Durotar will become the new starting area for the troll faction and the orcs will be moved to the Northern Barrens. The Southern Barrens will be the second leveling location for the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls. Perfect.

8. Why is Azeroth revamped? The original content is out of date, plain and simple. There has to be an overhaul of the zones to go along with technology and the current plot of the game. Zones that are barely used will simply be destroyed and revamped. Questing will become easier and streamlined. Phasing will occur to allow a sense of progression and development in game. The Scourge will be defeated. Plaguelands gone? Redisigned zones and towns. We get to fly. If the Sunwell is actually restored then why isn't it restored in game? Why do we still have the Burning Legion on Quel'danis? They're revamping the zones to deal with stagnation and lack of development and in-game use. In short, times are good.

9. Why redo the old instances and raids? The old raids are merely there collecting dust. In fact, they're a great place to farm gold. You can clear Molten Core with three to five people and make a ton of money along the way. In short, the revamp is there to allow players a better selection of raids to attend, reduce gold inflation on the servers by preventing farming, and allowing new players to experience the raid like it was originally designed to do. Also, I'd rather have a non-stagnant Azeroth with the raid portals there only for the hell of it.

10. There will be new content and zones. Its not just a revamp of the old content. For example, Hyjal, Gilneas, Kul Tiras, Grim Batol, Kezan, Tel'Abim, The Broken Islands, and The Maelstrom will all be added to the game.

11. Goblins: The Goblins are under the control of Deathwing. A faction/cartel escapes and decides to ally with the Horde after Thrall invites them to the Horde for saving his life. They join to retake their home, free the other Goblins, and kill Deathwing. Think the Forsaken redux. In fact, at some point the Horde/Alliance will assault Kezan and slowly retake The Undermine. Think dailies and phasing. Perhaps, The Undermine becomes the new sanctuary for the Alliance and the Horde after they retake the city? However, the current faction/cartel decides to remain with the Horde while the freed goblins return to a neutral faction. Good plot? I think so. Presto! A new sanctuary for the battle against the remaining forces of Deathwing and Azshara. The Horde Goblins slowly build a new capital through the use of dailies and phasing. Damn!

12. Worgen: The Greymane Wall is broken and access to Gilneas is finally available. The Alliance find their cousins have all been turned to Worgen and enlist the aid of the Kirin Tor. The Kirin Tor develop an elixir to give to the population that slightly cures their curse enabling them to think like humans and a seperate faction. Think the Forsaken and their break from the Lich King. They naturally ally with the Alliance. Damn! That was hard to understand. Gilneas is the new racial capital and their surrounding area will be the starting zone. They'll use phasing to show them slowly retaking their humanity and their home. Damn!

13. Why are we getting new race/class combinations? Because we can. They're already tied into the game lore, and, if they're not, then Blizzard can just change the lore and retcon it to fit into the game. Please shut the fuck up about it. They're already doing this. Look at Blood Elf Paladins in The Burning Crusade. It's a nice change to the game. More class options for the races and factions.

14. Will there be a hero class? No. Who gives a shit? No one. Death Knights are so fucked up at the moment that blizzard doesn't need to add another class until they fix this one. Also, the lore doesn't exist for a new hero class in this particular expansion. Wait till the next one.

15. Why is the level cap at 85? Because leveling sucks ass and Blizzard doesn't want to go above the level 100. In short, they're slowly down the level numbers per expansion and will only be doing five levels. At some point this game will die. Think level 100. We kill Sargeras. Damn! The experience required to even level to 81 will still be so damn high that going from level 80 to level 85 will be like going from level 70 to level 80. Please shut the fuck up about it.

16. Blizzard will lose so many players over this expansion: Actually, no they won't. You can bitch and moan all you want. In fact, Blizzard doesn't give a shit what you want or do. It's their game. They can do whatever the hell they to with it. If you don't like it then stop playing. They may listen to what people say and take it into consideration, but at the end of the day they decide what happens. In fact, this game won't die out until Blizzard decides to kill the game. Think level 100.

Finally, in conclusion, please shut the fuck up. Blizzard doesn't give a damn what you think about their game. In fact, they've already decided what this expansion will be like, and at this point they've invested so much capital into the expansion that it won't change. So, in short, you're going to take it up the ass whether you like it or not. If you don't like the changes then quit. If you do then continue to play. Sorry about the wall of text.

P.S. How about some damn Guild Housing? Simple solution. Put an instance in each capital that leads to the guild house and design some decent items to go in it that the guild buys. Why? Gold inflation.

also at http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=95337.0
a good explanation of Garrosh killing Craine

The Globe Explanation:

I believe almost every one has seen the ulduar globes and how did shows most of central kalimdor is flooded. But some has also noticed that durotar only says wrecked and why is thousand needles the only zone flooded when theres places that are lower.

But the ulduar globe only sensed something thats about to happen not what will permanently happen.

My idea is that the opening event will be 1 week of the world starting to flood like the how there was 1 week of the of the zombie event.

Once most of central kalimdor has been flooded the water will slowly pour out of central kalimdor.

After all this is done the really low places of the world are the only onces flooded and thousand needles and parts of ferals would be flooded or half flooded since in that area there isnt any place for the water to escape.

Areas that are also low will remain flooded due to the "left" overs of the big tidal wave, these areas are dustwallow marsh, swamps of sorrows and the wetlands.

My conclusion is the flooding of central kalimdor is only an opening event, after the flood is gone ruins of durotar and barrens will appear. So the new face of azeroth isnt accurate at all.

Orc Starting Areas:

This would also means the barrens might not be a level 1-20 zone because if the horde settlements are gone and and water actually got in the barrens will regrow wild life could bloom and who knows whats going on in the wailing caverns, gate way to the nightmare?

So if the new horde city is in ashenvale half of ashenvale could be a new orc 1-10 and making azhara 10-20 make more sense

Why Thrall is Gaurdian:

Because of the huge flood, malfurion had to return and he saw a vision of the new gaurdian thrall. u]Thrall being a wise leader and a powerful shaman, the new council of trisfal decides to make him the new gaurdian and shared there powers to thrall (which they do to all gaurdians). Thrall becoming extemely powerful brings back most of the water back to the great sea.

[/u]

Cairnes Death:

After all this has happen there will be 1 more week until the cataclysm start and garrosh will build the new city in ashenvale to honor his father and cairne will try to stop him cause the night elves will get pissed.

And so Garrosh didnt listen, so Cairne went to the night elves to try and negotiate, but he didnt reallized Garrosh and a band of horde warriors followed him and thus he gets marked "Traitor", the night elves flee and Garrosh kills Cairne there.

Update- with Cairnes "betrayal" being a mystery, Baine Bloodhoof will prolly be the Anti-Garrosh in the horde (on the way of saurfang)

The Open War: Varian did it and so did Garrosh, this doesn't necessarily means that the 2 faction will fight for conquest. This basicly means if you see an enemy kill them, they on the way, kill them.

But the horde wont be going the dark ways like every one is expecting. Ofcourse there will be people like Baine, Saurfang, Vol'jin, and Drek'tar who will balance the opinions in the horde and those people cant be killed with a lucky situation and simple manipulation.

So no, no,no blizz wont ruin the horde like that ofcourse they will but thrilling story lines like wotlk.

Also there prolly wont be any bg in the great sea with thrall around.

Ending?:

Remember the Kil'jaeden prelude? Im guesing this xpac will have one and since its the end of the azeroth storyline it will prolly be this:

After looting , the 25/10 players was "whited out" and found them selves on a boat with the council and a captured orc, and a human.

These 2 are none other than Hellscream and Wrynn finally caught. They learn there lessons and peace has finally been made. Of course the peace wont actually be playable by players ingame cause its instanced and its gonna kill the pvp.

So that will remain that way until level 85's can get to the new expansion pack, presumably emerald dream.

TLDR, well, you need to read it lawl.

till next post, i am wtf out!

For a change

2009-08-19T01:20:00.005+03:00

Hello and Welcome to my first Protection based post!
but i am not going to be talking about how protection paladins are functioning now in 3.2, i am going to talk about my DS (Dual spec) protection experience.
i think i've mentioned in the first posts that i've been a protection paladin after i gave up my Troll protection warrior, my love Old Almaster.
back when protection paladins were the ultimate AOE tanks.
i am not going to get deep in that, i just wanted to show you something i saw last night while i was in 10 man Ulduar.
Now my last guild raid was like 2 months ago, and after that i didnt get myself into any raids but TOC Heroic 10 man, and that was just to see whats in there.
i was bored last night, and saw a late night guild LF1M Healer for Ulduar 10 man, so i said WTH, i will go, i miss raiding.

So we ran a smooth Ulduar, we killed the keepers then called it a day since it was 7 am server time when we are done, and people had to sleep/go to work.

we got Heartbreaker for 10 man, i tried to get this achievement before 3.2 and it was kinda easy, but we didnt get it when we did tried it, so i am proud to say that i got it now.

i also got T8 protection pants, and after i gemmed it and enchanted it, i noticed something...

my gear is weird, way too weird.

if you noticed, i still use my T6 helm, i enchanted it and gemmed it with WOTLK enchants and gems.

i also have T7.5 shoulders

and a T8 pants

so lets see, T6, 7.5 and 8, what else is weird?

well lets see, i still use my trinket from Hydross, SSC

and the other trinket is from H-AN

i have a rare tanking axe and shield from naxx 25, back when i was leading naxx and no one needed them, i scooped them in-case i wanted to go prot again.

and have nothing to fear, i have a tanking chest from 10 man naxx

all i need now is something from OS, and i will have a single piece from every instance in WOTLK, and 2 pieces of gear from TBC.
my hp is kinda good, with buffs i can hit 33k HP which is kinda good

and my stats aren't bad either,

now i know how people Like ensidia and top raiding guilds were able to do raiding while they were in T6, you only need to socket them with WOTLK gems, and enchant them properly, and you can get an almost T7 quality items.

Holy paladin, and out!

NO FREAGING WAY!

2009-08-16T06:11:00.002+03:00

A lot of people were talking about The Cataclysm, the so-called new expansion of world of warcraft.

but according to MMO- Champion: None of the information below has been officially announced by Blizzard, this is only a compilation of information gathered from reliable sources. Just keep in mind that it takes a LOT to make me post something on the front page and I'm definitely not speculating here.

Other sites started it, I'll try to finish it. Think twice before you read this post, we have a lot of spoilers here.

Most of this stuff will be announced at the Blizzcon anyway, if you didn't take the time to order the live stream you might want to consider doing it. We will probably see a lot of interesting things here.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

This year, for the first time, you'll have the opportunity to enjoy a live Internet stream of BlizzCon coverage from the comfort of your own home. The stream includes the same content as the DIRECTV pay-per-view event, but you do not have to be a DIRECTV subscriber to purchase it. It consists of over 16 hours of video, including interviews and commentary, main stage presentations, and tournament coverage. It’s now available to order for $39.95, and purchasers will also receive the BlizzCon 2009-exclusive in-game pet, Grunty the Murloc Marine (not available in all regions). Head over to the BlizzCon 2009 Live Stream website to get more information, to test video playback on your system, or to place an order.

http://blizzcon.rayv.com/

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Dark and forgotten threats that have long stayed out of sight have finally arrived on our shores, unleashing a cataclysmic event upon Azeroth and now preparing more nefarius plans to take it back.

Level Cap
The level cap in the next expansion will be slightly lower than expected this time around; 85.

This suggests Blizzard wants more room for expansions before hitting the level 100 cap. With less leveling to do (along with the revamped leveling listed below likely to increase the speed and ease of leveling), leveling a new race remains appealing for new and existing players alike.

Leveling from 80-85 should be a much bigger deal, the idea is to make sure that gaining a level really means something and doesn't make you feel like you just have 4 more levels to go.

New Classes
Cataclysm doesn't introduce any new classes to the game. Instead, Blizzard have offered more race and classes combinations to players. The Some of these have alreadly been datamined from the 3.2.2 Test Realms. The An Injured Colleague quest and it's new Night Elf counter-part help to introduce the lore for these new race and class combinations, so we can probably expect to see more of these for some of the less traditional ones.

New Races
The events of the cataclysm has caused two new races to seek new allies. The Goblins for the Horde and the Worgen for the Alliance.

Goblins
Deathwing once again sought the services of the goblins, as slaves. Unable to refuse such an offer, the goblins were enslaved by him. A large group have resisted however. With their previous homes devastated by the cataclysm, they escaping to an island off the coast of The Barrens. As they strive to recover, they come across an Orc captured on an Alliance ship and rescue him. The Orc turns out to be none other than Thrall himself, and in return offers the Goblins a place within the Horde. These events are carried out in a quest line, allowing players to experience first-hand the reasons behind the Goblins' shift from neutrality.

Worgen
The cataclysm has cracked open the Greymane Wall, finally revealing what has happened to the kingdom of Gilneas and its citizens. With the Worgen curse taken hold, they have found a partial cure, allowing thme to retain their Human minds even when transformed. Venturing forth from Gilneas and seeking help from the Alliance, they have decided to join them, to combat the new threats of Cataclysm.

Gilneas will make extensive use of the phasing system (much like the Death Knight starting area), to show what happened while the kingdom was cut off from the rest of the world and lead up to present day.

Worgens will have two forms, a Worgen form and a Human form. Players will be able to customise the look of both forms.

New Content
Cataclysm will be the first expansion not to introduce a new continent, instead making use of previously unreleased zones and revamping existing ones.

Classic Azeroth Revamp
A cataclysmic event caused by Deathwing and Azshara will change the face of Azeroth as we know it. Most of the new content for Cataclysm will take the form of a revamped Azeroth, taking advantage of newer additions to WoW such as phasing and daily quests. Most of the quests and mobs in the classic zones will also be redesigned to make leveling less painful. With the revamp, a greater narritive and sense progression will be offered to players. Some zones and dungeons will change drastically to fit this, e.g.,

The Barrens will be split into two separate zones of two different level bands.
Azshara will become a low level (~10-20) zone.
Some of the zones like the Thousand Needles will be flooded.
Durotar is wrecked and apparently Orgrimmar could be destroyed. A new Orc city is rebuilt over the course of the expansion.
Gnomeregan will be part of the expansion as well and gnomes might be able to reclaim their capital. (The last part is still unconfirmed)
Wailing Caverns will be become a lush tropical area as a result of the druid's magic.
The Blackrock Spire will erupt and a new version of Blackrock Mountains will be available, apparently Ragnaros will be back too.

In the aftermath of the cataclysm, and the new conflicts on the horizon relief efforts can be found in many zones and new open PvP areas similar to Lake Wintergrasp.

Flying in Azeroth
Part of the redesign of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is the introduction of flying to the two continents, allowing access to many new areas and quicker travelling across the large continents.

Classic Dungeon Revamp
Redesigning Onyxia's Lair in Patch 3.2.2 was just the first step. As most of the leveling will take place in revamped areas of Azeroth, so too will the dungeons, allowing players to use them to level from 80 to 85.

Unreleased Zones & Dungeons
With the addition of flying mounts to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms and the redesign of many zones, most of the previously unreachable or incomplete zones will now be made available to players. This is where most of the new content from 80 to 85 will take place. Some of these are,

Hyjal (present)
Gilneas - The Worgen starting Zone.
Uldum

It is unclear if the old Goblin locations such as Kezan and Undermine will be included in Cataclyms with the revelation of the goblins' plight, but several new islands have also been risen from the seas by the events of Cataclysm, some on the backs of giant sea turtles and whales, with the addition of several underwater zones.

Characters and Events

Deathwing
Deathwing the Destroyer / Neltharion the Earth-Warder will play a major role in Cataclysm. Having been driven mad by Old God whisperings and turning against his own kind only to be fail in his attempts, Deathwing has sunk into the shadows. While the Horde and the Alliance were busy fighting back the Burning Legion only to then be beset with the Scourge, he has been lurking and moving things into place. After Lady Sinestra's failed attempts to create a Twilight Dragonflight, he again retreated to Grim Batol and succeeded where she failed. With his results seen in the Obsidian Sanctum, he has finally created the supreme Dragonflight he sought and plans to unleash it upon the world. But what of the Old Gods' sway over him?

Azshara
Queen Azshara will also play a major part in Cataclysm. Unknown to many mortal races, long forgotten by others, and believe to be dead by her own kind, she has not been dormant in depths of the Maelstrom. Having those around her transformed by the Old Gods into Naga after her failure in the War of the Ancients, she has become far more powerful and a greater threat than she once was. Not content with just Nazjatar and the depths of the sea, Azshara seeks to reclaim power and reign once again. With the true plan behind Lady Vashj's support of Illidan remaining a mystery we do not know what hand Azshara has yet played. The big question remains, is she now serving her "saviors", the Old Gods?

The Cataclysm
I'm still not sure who is the true end boss of Cataclysm is, but the cataclysm appears to have been caused by attempts to incantation to summon extremely powerful beings using an ancient incantation by Deathwing and Azshara. They're both very powerful, but the cataclysm itself suggests something more powerful is behind it, perhaps their shared past of Old God influence?

The Guardian of Tirisfal
Malfurion Stormrage will be returning to Azeroth to aid in the creation of the new Guardian of Tirisfal - Thrall! Med'an's role in these events is currently unknown.

The New (New) Horde
Thrall will hand over the leadership of the Horde to Garrosh Hellscream, while he serves as a coordinator for both the Horde and Alliance forces in and effort to combat the new threat of the Naga and Black Dragonflight. Without Thrall to keep Garrosh in check, he declares open war on the Alliance. In the political upheaval Cairne Bloodhoof is implicated as a traitor to the Horde and murdered by Garrosh. Cairne's son Baine takes over as the new Tauren chieftan. This could explain why Baine was removed from the game in Patch 3.2.2, you can find more information about this in Ahmo Thunderhorn - replacement for Baine Bloodhoof?

now i have said back pre-TBC, that the game will never be the same when TBC is out, TBC was good, WOTLK was ok, but it seems that the new expansion will destroy everything..

seriously, a Tauren paladin? lol

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=93922.0
I noticed there was a lot of confusion surrounding the lore of these new additions, but, rest assured, that if properly investigated it can be shown that these additions do indeed make sense!

Yes, these do contain some amount of speculation in to how they will fit into the lore, but I trust you are all smart enough people to tell when I wander into the realm of speculation and guesswork!

* Human Hunter
Humans have long been proficient in the art of hunting and trapping wildlife, and while it was their Elven allies that wielded the bow and arrow in wars past, many humans have been shown to be quite adept at the art, one even managed to achieve the rank of Ranger Lord before being turned the Scourge. He is more commonly known as Nathanos Blightcaller. And in Northrend, much of the Grizzly Hills is occupied by human hunters and trappers.

Early concept art has been unearthed of Human Hunters, perhaps showing they were an originally intended class.
Human Hunter:
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/6910/warcraftsamwise005c.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9759/warcraftsamwise066b.jpg
Thanks to Kanaru for putting these images on Imageshack!

Sources: http://www.wowwiki.com/Ranger
http://www.wowwiki.com/Amberpine_Lodge

* Orc Mage
Orc mages are quite frankly not that far of a stretch, seeing as Thrall condemns warlock magic, perhaps he has begun to offer magic wielders amongst the orcs training in the art of the magi. There really is a fine line between mages and warlocks, the difference usually being the employment of shadow magic instead of the arcane.

EDIT: A new theory has been suggested that Med'an, who's story is so long winded that I will not repeat but provide a link to, will return to the Orcs since he is a half-orc, and bring with him his amazing mage powers passed down from his father, Medivh, to impress the Orcs and perhaps even begin to teach him the arcane arts.
Credit goes to Envojus for the theory!

Sources: http://www.wowwiki.com/Mage
http://www.wowwiki.com/Med%27an

* Night Elf Mage
Many people struggle with this one, but I will seek to perhaps even give a quite plausible explanation for the return of the Highborne that is seen in this screenshot (http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/highbornes.jpg). While many people believe that all the Highborne left to become High Elves or Blood Elves, that is not a true. There are many remnants of Highborn, most notably that of the Shendralar, who dwell within Dire Maul. I speculate that since Immol'thar and their Prince Tothreldrin have been slain by adventurers, they have found themselves without a source of power or immortality, leaving them vulnerable to the dangers the demons and ogres pose. So, they send an envoy to Tyrande in order to ask for re-admittance into Night Elven culture but with the catch of being able to practice their magics as long as they do not consume sources of power like Moonwells.

Sources: mmo-champion.com
http://www.wowwiki.com/Dire_Maul
http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest:The_Madness_Within

* Dwarf Mage
It is a little known fact to those who were not involved in the beta that Dwarves could in fact be mages until a last minute change was made by Blizzard. If you look in your manual you received with your copy of vanilla WoW, you will see that Dwarves are listed as having mage as a playable class, showing how last minute a change this was. Quite frankly, there's no reason why they could not be mages, in fact there are famous magi amongst the dwarves, such as Thaurissan. And with such close contact to humans and gnomes, both races with magnificent mages, it seems a small miracle they have to have mages themselves.

Sources: http://www.wowwiki.com/Sorcerer-thane_Thaurissan
World of Warcraft Manual

* Blood Elf Warrior
Every race has meat shields, and blood elves are shown they are no light weights when it comes to melee combat. It is not implausible for there to be warriors who are not Blood Knights.

Sources: Unrequired.

* Dwarf Shaman
They already exist in the form of the Wildhammer Clan. And, while some may argue that this is a lore lol because Alliance players roll Ironforge dwarves, one would notice that while the Wildhammer Clan once had the distinction of being a seperate, neutral, faction, that is no longer true and they are merely designated as Alliance members.

Sources: http://www.wowwiki.com/Wildhammer_Clan

* Undead Hunter
Once again, there are many humans who proved themselves quite able hunters in life, that could very well carry over into death, as in the case of Nathanos Blightcaller. Perhaps the Blightcaller provides training and acts as the leader for up and coming undead hunters?

Sources: See Human Hunter

* Tauren Paladin
Personally, I believe the Taurens gaining usage of the Light is perhaps the biggest stretch out of all of these. But perhaps the Tauren do not tap into the Light as Humans and Blood Elves do, but rather through their "sun god". There is already evidence of some druids beginning to experiment in the usage of the Light, and with proper training applied, an eight foot tall cow-man clad in armor and the power of the light would be a formidable force indeed.

Sources: http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/august/injuredcolleagues.jpg

* Tauren Priest
Tauren Priests could be those who did not posses the physical strength to become Paladins, yet still heard the calling of the Light. And of course, when there is Light, there will always be those who embrace the shadow.

EDIT: There are sketches in the Collector's Edition Artbook that came with vanilla WoW that do depict Tauren priests. This could be another case like the Dwarf Mage. I will attempt to find copies of this art and post them soon. (8/15 4:54 CST)

Pictures have been found and can be viewed below, credit once again to Kanaru.
Tauren Priest: http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/4788/warcraftsamwise065b.jpg
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2986/warcraftsamwise007c.jpg

Sources: See Tauren Paladin.

* Gnome Priest
Gnome Priests may seem an odd decision at first, but take a moment to consider the mindset of the gnomes. They are curious beings who wish to understand everything around them, and what surrounds them is the Light. Every other race besides the Gnomes in the Alliance has priests, it is no wonder that they have not sought to study the art of healing through the Light sooner. I could see them perhaps taking a much more methodical approach, rather than the religious approach of the other races.

Sources: http://www.wowwiki.com/Gnomes

* Troll Druid
Once again, seemingly another "WTF?!" choice, but this one is even simpler to apply and understand. Essentially every troll raid and almost every troll instances involves cases of trolls taking on the forms of animals or the essence of the animal. Usually this is attributed the Loas. It seems likely that the trolls will learn to shapeshift in a controlled manner into a select number of species by invoking the name of these "Loas". Under sources you can find a list of every troll themed instance with a case of troll transformation!

Sources: http://www.wowwiki.com/Loa
http://www.wowwiki.com/Zul%27Gurub
http://www.wowwiki.com/Zul%27Aman
http://www.wowwiki.com/Gundrak
http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Prophet_Tharon%27ja

i guess we will wait for blizzcon..

Heroics all day long, is that all what you do?

2009-08-16T03:55:00.004+03:00

I liked the post from A touch of arcane blog, sadly, i disagree with most of what he said.

so i am going to post this:

I hate WotLK heroic dungeons, and I liked TBC ones. They're difficulty level is bad, and you can master all the fights in heroic dungeons as soon as you lvl 80, i remember being in 1 T6 left on me when i got champion of the frozen wastes (with only 10 man Malygos down).
In BC Heroics, it was hard to master an instance unless you have been working hard on your gear, enchanting and socketing the gear properly, and picking up items with the stats that you need, not only because the item has crit and its plate you should need it, look at the other stats too.
I had the chance to run BC Heroics with 3 Characters, one of them was my dear Troll warrior, the second was my Shaman, Shamanezem,the third was my lock Elmaster, and the forth was this paladin, and on each character i had some strong points and weak points in those instances, healing in a pally is different than healing in a shaman thats for sure, but the instances overall were hard, when you kill a boss, you'd feel the joy of killing it, i had champion of the naruu for the warrior, the lock and the shaman, i have to say that there were a lot of tears to get this done for the three characters, but i had it done anyways, it took me like 3 months of just doing heroics.
i had to wait a day or 2 just to make a group go to heroic shattred halls, and it would fall apart before 2nd or 3rd boss, that place was hell, but for me, the harder the instance is, the better.

the following is the things i agree with Dreaming (the owner of that blog) so i will be keeping it the same with no changes.

Ok, so I love heroics. But I don't like the badge change of patch 3.2 ... why? It has sent everyone (and their 3 years old sister) into heroics again! So why would I be upset of it?
The reason is simple: we nearly don't raid anymore. People don't see any interest into going in a raid to wipe a few times (at least) during the night and down at most 5 bosses (if we're lucky as it's harder and harder to get people to play, even more good people) for 10 badges and a chance to get one epic. During that same time they could run at least 5 heroics, with no wipe, no repair bill, no flasks to buy, two times the number of badges and 3 triumph ones through quests.
I'm sad, I hate it, but I can understand them ... raiding has just lost most of its gearing interest, at least until players will have all got their 2 pieces of T9 and all they can get with emblems of conquest.
If you add the fact that doing an heroic in T7.25 full gear is just way too easy and boring ... I'm not really enjoying the game these days :(
It's rerolling time, again.
time to lvl my DK, and my shaman!

Best in slot Holy Paladin in 3.2

2009-08-13T00:45:00.006+03:00

I've been researching since i came back from my vacation for the new BIS items for holy paladins, and what my researches proved was that the best way to calculate BIS items is this way:

Gear is chosen based on the following statistics in the current patch along with subjective reasoning.

1. Intellect
2. Mana Per 5
3. Haste Rating
4. Critical Strike Rating
5. Spellpower

my researches were based on Alliance items, but i am pretty sure that there are the same items with the same stats but with different names for horde, i will try to post horde item names later.

1- Head:
Alliance: Turalyon's Headpiece of Triumph
Horde: Liadrin's Headpiece of Triumph
Coliseum 25 (H)

2- Neck:
Alliance: Wail of the Valkyr
Horde: Cry of the Valkyr
Coliseum 25 (H) (Twin Valkyrs)

3- Shoulder:
Alliance: Turalyon's Spaulders of Triumph
Horde: Liadrin's Spaulders of Triumph
Coliseum 25 (H)

4- Back:
Alliance: Jaina's Radiance
Horde: Aethas' Intensity
Coliseum 25 (H) (Tribute Chest)

5- Chest:
Alliance: Breastplate of the Frozen Lake
Horde: Chestplate of the Frozen Lake
Coliseum 25 (H) (Twin Valkyrs)

6- Wrist:
Alliance: Vambraces of the Broken Bond
Horde: Bracers of the Broken Bond
Coliseum 25 (H) (Faction Champions)

7- Weapon:
Alliance: Blade of the Unbroken Covenant
Horde: Mortalis
Coliseum 25 (H) (Tribute Chest)

8- Shield:
Alliance: Bastion of Purity
Horde: Bastion of Resolve
Coliseum 25 (H) (Faction Champions)

9- Libram:
when it comes to Librams, it really depends on the way you play, some people prefer Libram of Renewal, others prefer Libram of Tolerance, or even Libram of Veracity, but if its up to me i'd take Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Justice since we are using so much FOL these days.
i'd take Libram of Renewal as the best 2nd best thing, and after that, Libram of Veracity.
Edited: thanks Sederin for reminding me.

10- Hands:
Alliance: Turalyon's Gloves of Triumph
Horde: Liadrin's Gloves of Triumph
Coliseum 25 (H)

11- Waist:
Alliance: Belt of the Forgotten Martyr
Horde: Girdle of the Forgotten Martyr
Coliseum 25 (H)

12- Legs:
Alliance: Legplates of Failing Light
Horde: Leggings of Failing Light
Coliseum 25 (H) (Lord Jaraxxus)

13- Feet:
Alliance: Boots of the Courageous
Horde: Sabatons of the Courageous
Coliseum 25 (H) (Northrend Beasts)

14- 1st ring:
Alliance: Ring of the Darkmender
Horde: Circle of the Darkmender
Coliseum 25 (H) (Lord Jaraxxus)

15- 2nd ring:
Starshine Circle
Ulduar 25 (Algalon)

16- 1st trinket:
Meteorite Crystal
Ulduar 10 (Algalon)

17- 2nd trinket:
Alliance: Solace of the Defeated
Horde: Solace of the Fallen
Coliseum 25 (H) (Lord Jaraxxus)

Kindly note that all of those items are from Hard mode only.

this list is from the information that i gathered from Wowhead and mmo-champion, i know some other bosses will be released soon, and i will try to update this as much as i can.
updated with horde item names.

Healing experiences in Patch 3.2

2009-08-12T02:49:00.002+03:00

First, i'd like to mention that i was bored around 2 months ago, and went to Naxx 10 and OS 10, as a solo healer, and it worked well untill sapph and Kelthuzad where i needed a backup healer.

now i can honestly say that solo healing any 10 man instance would be super easy, with so many HOTs that i got.

1st, the HOT from the Sacred Shield and the FOL.
2nd is the HOT from my 2 T8.5 gear.
3rd is the HOT from my Forethought Talisman.
4th is the HOT from my Judgment of light.

counting all those hots on the main tank, the sacared shield hot heals for minimum of 420, t8.5 holy shock crit heals for around 400-600, the talisman heals for around 900, and the judgment heals for around 400.
a total of around 2120 healing per 3 sec to the tank, if its a geared tank, that would be more than enough of keeping him up for around 12 secs, in 5 mans, i am holy dpsing in those 12 secs, in raids, i am mostly alt tabbed to check my facebook, and replying to me retarded friends comments.
Beacon of lights 60 yards is the awesomeness, i can be lazy, get knocked back to the back of the instance, heal myself with a holy shock and get the tank healed.

i managed to get myself in a 10 man normal and heroic TOC, i managed to be the 1st in healing meters, above a full 8.5 healing shaman and a priest, also i had 10% overhealing, i was thrilled to see those numbers, my way of healing didnt change, back in the days when paladins were saying ''spam holy light is the only way'' i was healing with FOL and holy shock and rarely using holy light. and i was always in the top 3 healers on the meters, with the minimum over healing i could do.

Mana issues?
never, i never ran out of mana pre- 3.2 and i never ran out of mana now, i was worried about this issue before 3.2 came out, i have to admit though, i am using Tears of the Vanquished and i am loving it, i am getting a free 500 mana when i summon my mount, when i cast Sacred Shield and i am getting a free 500 mana when i give a buff.
now 500 mana from this trinket, and 600 from the meta socket in my helm, thats a free 1100 mana every now and then, i've never seen my mana below 50% in whats out in TOC till now, and i am hoping i won't.

My gear.
i got alot of spell power and crit , maybe way too much, i still focus on intellect and a small focus on mp5, no focus at all on haste, it comes with the gear and i think it would be enough.
you can see my armory, this is the link:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Arthas&n=Almaster

Summery:
All I can say is that the new patch is really fun. I know a lot of people threatened to abandon their Holy Paladin because of the new patch and re-roll another healer. Its true that we don’t just main tank heal anymore. But then, neither do the other healers (unless you re-rolled a discipline priest). If you’re raid healing anyway, why not come back and try raid healing on your Holy Paladin? I think you might be surprised how powerful it is. With Flash of Light critting very often and instant Flash of Lights with every Holy shock crit, you can pump out a ton of heals.

Readers are welcome

2009-08-12T02:02:00.003+03:00

I've been noticing that there are alot of readers reading my posts, but sadly none of them are posting anything in comments.

so i am going to ask you guys, if you have any questions, e-mail it to me at HAlqato@gmail.com and i will be posting your questions and answering them, if you think you have a comment or 2 about how i post or how i can improve my way of posting or the site itself, your comments are welcomed.
your feedback would be really appreciated.

Lux legis's fall

2009-08-12T01:27:00.004+03:00

I was thinking about posting something since last night, but alot of things happened while i was gone on my vacation, and my guild is not what it used to be before.

4 months ago, our GM Auriel (holy Priest), our Raid leader Juggernot (protection warrior), and our Co-leader Throa (Disc priest) stopped playing this game all in the same time, and promoted me (holy paladin), Stuus (most dedicated shadow priest) and Benkenobi (most dedicated and only frost death knight) to be the officers of the guild.
everything went smooth in the first days, yes we suffered from the lose of our main tank and 2 of our dedicated healers that never missed a raid, but everything went ok while we continued to farm Naxx 25, OS 25.
but when it came to Malygos, something happened every single time that made us wipe in phase 3, every time someone forgets to do something, someone gets hit by something, you know, the usual retardation.
each day, someone would quit playing, re-roll or don't want to raid anymore, we, the 3 officers, managed to recruit some people from here and there, recruited so much that 10 of the original Lux Legis people will be in the raid, and the other 15 are all new people, at that time, Naxx and OS was so easy that it didn't matter.
then, Ulduar came out, people were afraid, we managed to pull exactly 2 heroic raids, and managed to kill 3 bosses, not enough, but its kinda good.
then and what i think was the mistake, we (the 3 officers) started caring about 10 man Ulduar, '' if we want to kill bosses in 25 man, we need to know the strats from 10 man'', maybe we focused too much on 10 man, we managed to get to General V, and get him to 25%ish but we still didnt kill him.
at that time, surprisingly, the 3 officers had RL to take care of, i had to go to Iraq for a month, Benkenobi had to do a trip somewhere, and i dont remember what Stuus had to do, but we all had stuff to do, we had our fearless raid leader Thanquall and his girlfriend Eleuthera to handle raids, and they did a perfect job doing it.
something lead to the other, and the start of Lux's fall was when i left to my vacation, you see, i Stuus and Benkenobi were like the 2 positive ends of a magnet, they shouldn't be left alone without someone to direct them away from each others, i've been told that i am this guy when i got told that i will be an officer, and i tried my best.
i came back from my vacation to see that they fought, and one of them left the guild, and alot of our core-raiders left with him, the new recruits left to see a new guild for them, and the rest we remained like 6 people online everyday.
Lux is still there, and i made a promise to myself, not to leave Lux Legis untill i quit the game, i am still having fun with who are left in the guild, thats what lux always been to me, having fun, the people in Lux who made me play Alliance on this realm, and i wont leave them what-so-ever.

on another news, some real life friends made me play on the EU servers, i think the server name is darkspeer or something like that, i have a 66 shaman there now, and a 39 priest.
not thinking of playing them for raids or anything, i only leveled them for my friends.

I R back!

2009-08-11T00:53:00.001+03:00

Hello peeps, I am back from my vacation, it was a bit long, fun and wonderful.

I should be back in posting stuff when i play 3.2, i only logged on once after i came back, ran the new dungeon in 5 man, 5 man heroic and 10 man.
there is alot to say, and i will be posting new things soon.

Wedding Vacation

2009-07-08T18:18:00.001+03:00

Is going to start next Thursday, I wont be able to post anything untill August 13th-ish

wish me a good luck!

Heirloom Cold Weather Flying, OMG!

2009-07-08T18:14:00.001+03:00

Zarhym on Just discovered: cold weather flying at 68! (Source )

''Just to confirm, Tome of Cold Weather Flight is actually a new heirloom item planned to go into patch 3.2. At level 80 players can buy this heirloom item from the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran for 1,000 gold and send it to an alt of the same realm, faction and account. The tome can be used to learn Cold Weather Flying at level 68, consuming the tome in the process.

Please note this feature is not yet in the newest version of the public test realm patch notes updated today. The item and its functionality are subject to change during the testing process.''

Its unbelievable the rate at which the game is getting easier by the hands of Blizzard. Flying or not being able to fly till lvl 77 is very much a huge deal in Northrend. Leveling and not being able to fly is a huge deal till lvl 77+. So its about to get easier and possible coming really really soon like in patch 3.2 as a purchasable BOA "Heirloom Item" for Tome of Cold Weather Flying from the trainer. You can then send it to a alt on the same account/realm/faction. You can only purchase it as a lvl 80 like on your main and do so for the Heirloom. Once used by a alt the Heirloom Tome is consumed. This is all subject to change before patch 3.2 goes live. But the idea is sub lvl 77 flying in Northrend is going to get easier.

You may not feel so well if you have all your alts at 80 already and have to slave your way through all of Northrend with no personal wing. If you have a few alts yet to head into Northrend you probably get allot excited as well you can skip lots of it. How one can feel about that goes both ways. Blizzard makes the rules. Your alt journey just got easier to get to 80. I know all my alts are close to or below 70 or Northrend so would greatly benefit from this change.

Is this the summer of Altism?

sources:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=s29ur79eb2eakpb7056q402cb5&topic=72596.0
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9941996792&sid=1
http://ardentdefender.blogspot.com/

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Thorim

2009-07-03T19:15:00.003+03:00

Positioning: 3 ► Healing Intensity: 2 ► MT/OT Damage: 3 ► Raid Damage: 3

Difficulty: Easy

The fight against Thorim is split between two phases. The first one requires you to fight your way to Thorim by fighting multiple types of trash mobs in the Arena, the second one will let you face Thorim himself.

The first part of the fight is split in 3 mini-phases (Jormungar > Iron Dwarves > Hallway). Thorim will use a few abilities during the arena event, do not bother attacking him because he is protected by Sheath of Lightning.

You will first encounter a Jormungar Behemoth and a few NPCs from the opposite faction fighting in the Arena.

Once the NPCs and the Jormungar are dead, a lot of constructs (melee, casters, and healers) will jump into the arena from the stands and you will have to take care of them with only one part of your raid while the other part runs through the hallway on the left to reach Thorim.

As soon as you reach Thorim at the end of the hallway, he will jump in the Arena where the first part of your raid is and will engage them.

RECAP:
1.) Cast a couple of FOL every now and then.
2.) stay away from the 4 electric generators.
3.) profit
4.) Rinse and repeat.

Edit: since i went to the tunnel in last nights raid, and first time experianced the fights in it, its pretty much easy, but the healer and the tank needs to be on the toe for the heal/taunt
the first encounter in the tunnel is a walkway, and in the end of it is a mini boss, his strategy is just like the boss in UP (Skadi), he starts casting with his right hand, you need to stay in the left side of the tunnel, when he casts with his left hand go to the right side of the tunnel, its that easy.
after killing this Mini boss, another tunnel will be opened, and you can see 3 adds coming to you, the tank will pull them up and as many adds that comes while you are going up on the stairs, he must pull the boss so he will stop pulling adds, everyone there should stay away from each others, tank must have his back to the wall, and dps should use all their threat decreasing abilities as much as possible since the adds reset aggro every now and then, kill adds then kill the mini boss.
mini boss does a knock back every 10 secs, it will stun you, then you'll explode, if you are near someone else, you'll kill him.

after killing that one, run to Thorim, WALK ON THE EDGE OF THE WAY, there is some big bad circles on the ground.
after you pull Thorim, he will jump and the fight will start.

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Freya

2009-07-01T04:59:00.002+03:00

Positioning: 9 ► Healing Intensity: 5 ► MT/OT Damage: 5 ► Raid Damage: 5

Difficulty: Easy

Freya starts off with 150 stacks of her "Attuned to Nature" buff, making it impossible to out DPS her constant self-healing ability. Killing all the adds that periodically spawn throughout the fight remove stacks of this buff.

Adds:

-Ancient Protector (a large add with over 1mil HP in 10 man. The raid must be stacked under the mushrooms that spawn in order to avoid his silence aura.) He also throws out a debuff which works similar to that of phase1 of Lady Vashj, if you have it, move away from raid members.

- Detonating Lashers (a bunch of small adds, they do not have a lot of HP and are untankable. When they die they explode for a solid amount of damage, so be careful when dealing with these).

- Snaplasher, Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Elemental (Three adds who must be killed within ~12 seconds of each other, or they will come back to life. The Snaplasher becomes stronger and slower over time, the Storm Lasher does AoE lightning abilities, and the ancient water elemental does a frontal AoE attack). Note: On 25 man, I strongly reccomend having your tank kite snaplasher when he begins reaching ~40 stacks of his debuff (assuming elder ironbranch is dead).

Healing this watcher is not hard at all, just keep sure you notice everything of your surrondings, get under a mushroom when a big raid warning comes, and everything will be alright.
For Paladins, Beacon of light on your MT, and have a flash of light feast on the OT untill there are some adds kicking your OT's butt, give him a holy shock and a couple of flash of lights, then go back to flah of light healing, this fight has some AOE damage to the raid, however, its not that big, if you have a druid or a priest healer with you, they can take care of it while you are having fun (not really) spamming flash of light.

note that the fight is super easy on 10 man, but its a little bit harder on 25, or so i heard.

RECAP:
1.) Keep the MT and the OT topped off (beacon of light is very helpful for both of them)
2.) Run under the big mushrooms when the big warning appears on your screen
3.) Spread out.
4.) Rinse and repeat.

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Auriaya

2009-07-01T04:56:00.001+03:00

Positioning: 10 ► Healing Intensity: 7 ► MT/OT Damage: 7 ► Raid Damage: 8

Difficulty: Moderate

Basically the hardest part of this fight is the pull. In a nutshell, the 4 adds will pounce straight on top of the first person to have aggro, killing them instantly.
Our solution was to hide out of line of sight and have a Shaman drop a totem on her way while she is coming, Our deathknights put down D+D on the corner, so that the adds had a small amount of aggro and don't just hit the healers. Then misdirects were put on to ensure they weren't all attacking the same tank. Timing on this is all-important, basically misdirecting as soon as they're in LoS. It's VERY important to have cooldowns up on the tanks as they do this; pain suppression, guardian spirit, and so forth. Otherwise the tanks will die in seconds. Additionally, it helps to hit heroism as soon as the adds arrive, this helps with the healing, and you want to make the adds dead as soon as possible.

While killing the adds, the boss will begin fearing. Fear ward on an add tank, otherwise the adds can go a bit crazy. Tremor totems too. The first wave of small cats (these can be AoEd) and the big cat will then arrive. The big cat mostly runs around randomly like crazy. You can heal through it, even against cloth-wearing classes although sometimes you'll get unlucky and it'll go for the same healer time and again. You can kill the big cat, but it'll leave a void zone where it dies, and then come back after 30 seconds or so. Each time it dies it gets weaker, it has 9 lives in total. The damage is healable anyway so you don't need to kill it.

Like this all we had to put up with is fear and getting back to the original position and the low raid damage of the Feral Defender dashing from player to player. The interrupts were an annoyance we had to put up with but it was still easier for us this way, by far.

RECAP:
1.) Keep the MT and the OT topped off (beacon of light is very helpful for both of them)
2.) Run out of the big, bad, Void zones.
3.) DONT Spread out, and watch the sonic screech.
4.) Rinse and repeat.

Blizzard announces plans to release FACTION CHANGES

2009-06-30T05:38:00.001+03:00

Quote from Nethaera :

''We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we?re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There?s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we?re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won?t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We?ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.''

Wow. Just, wow. That is massive. Does this mean they’ll also allow race changes of the same faction? E.g. If I rolled a Troll priest and I decide I want an Undead priest instead?

Thinking about some of the outcry from racials in arena, I can see this being pretty interesting, depending on the cooldown.

Pretty much speechless at this point.

Your guide to healing Ulduar (Healer, Holy Paladin POV)

2009-06-27T03:22:00.004+03:00

I will start posting this strats for paladins only, as i am not familiar with other that shamans and paladins healing.

The original post was from Ferrero blogspot, which she stopped posting, and i took her format and way of explaining things, and started doing it on my own.

Your Guide to Healing Ulduar: Kologran

Positioning: 9 ► Healing Intensity: 7 ► MT/OT Damage: 9/4/6 ► Raid Damage: 6

Difficulty: Moderate

This fight is a little bit hard for Paladins since it requires alot of changing positions due to people getting hit with his mighty eye beam (BEW BEW).

MT: Target and attack the main body. He will do an Overhead Smash on you, reducing armor by 25%. He casts it about every 15 seconds and it can be dodged/parried.

OT: Back up the MT and taunt off if they get 2 stacks of Crunch Armor until their stacks fade. Tank the 5 rubble that spawn when the Arms die.

DPS: Kill Kologarn's Right Arm. Kill the Rubble that spawns after it dies. Then DPS the body until the Right Arm respawns. Repeat by killing Kologarn's Right Arm again. After the Right Arm dies 3 times, you may consider killing the Left Arm to help finish off Kologarn if it's low from AoE. Note that his Arms' hit-boxes are centered around his main body. Example: you can be facing the body with the Right Arm behind you and still hit his the Right Arm, but if you stand with the body to your back or side and face the arm, you will have trouble attacking it.

Healers: Heal Kologarn's tank at all times. Heal the person who is gripped by the Right Arm (when you hear "I will squeeze the life from you"). Heal the raid from Shockwave damage (when you hear "Oblivion"). Heal the tank who is picking up the pack of 5 rubble (when you hear "Just a flesh wound" or "Only a scratch").

RECAP:
1.) Keep the MT and the OT topped off (beacon of light is very helpful for both of them), keep your eyes on raid warnings for the people getting squished in his arms.;
2.) Run out of the big, bad, eye beams.
3.) Spread out.
4.) Rinse and repeat.

3.2 And me

2009-06-25T04:52:00.003+03:00

3.2 news was all over the Paladin blogging world, a lot of people were saying that it’s bringing a big nerf to us; some of them said it’s a huge buff.
I have to disagree with both, I don’t see us getting nerfed at all, yes Illumination will get nerfed big time, but we are going to have more MP5.
Now I know that Paladins say to MP5 to go kill itself, since we depend on our crits to get mana back, stacking int for Divine plea, that’s true, but its something that most of you people need to think about for a little bit of time, we brought this to ourselves, more like forum trolls brought it to us, but we believed them, we stacked int too much, therefore we had an insane amount of mana pool (I saw one guy on Darkspeer-EU with 32k mana)
That’s too much even for holy light spamming for half an hour, with all of the raid buffs and mana regeneration, it’s just too much, he had like 1900 spell power, but he was able to heal all of the fights in 25 Ulduar. including 2 hard modes.
Divine Intellect will get a nerf too, yep, we brought this to ourselves too.

What I think will happen to my playing style in 3.2? Nothing.
Yes, nothing, well other than healing the tank with a single FOL every 11 secs to get the hot work on him when its almost over, that’s pretty much it.
Beacon of light change is a big buff, not only for PVE, also for PVP, in fact, also sacred shield with the FOL hot thingy is a big buff to PVP.

I managed to have 21k unbuffed mana pool, I managed to get 10k HPS (heal per second) at Instructor Razuvious once before, I always managed to be the 1st of the 2nd at healing in both 10 and 25 man Ulduar, knowing when to use your Divine Plea is a major help, I don’t remember running out of mana since I was under geared for Patchwerk, except the first time I did Hodir on 10 man ( man I was afraid in that fight, ZOMG FROZEN BLOW ZOMGWTFBBQ).

IMHO, nothing will change for my play style, a paladin is a paladin, and I don’t think that Blizz will change us to anything near Priests or Druids with their mighty HOTS, if you have a problem with healing as a paladin, in raids or instances, something is wrong, you might need to look at your rotation or your spec/glyphs.

The “fun factor” has always been my biggest motivator when choosing to raid heal as a Holy Paladin. If the game isn’t fun for me, then why play? That’s the main reason I’ve been in support of the changes in Patch 3.2. We can argue all we want that the changes are a nerf or that the content will be too difficult now. But its difficult to argue that playing a Holy Paladin in Patch 3.2 won’t be more involved, require more decision-making (which targets to heal and what heal to use)… and yes… be more fun.

How to: Midsummer Fire Festival 2009

2009-06-23T00:13:00.011+03:00

So i logged on today and i was bored, i decided to go through Azeroth and pay my respect to the fires.

i ended up like this.

In 4 hours, almost 750g richer!

You want to be that cool too? here is a how to guide:

The main Midsummer Festival bonfire camps can be found at the following locations:

1- Alliance:

Darnassus, Ironforge, Stormwind or The Exodar

2- Horde:

Orgrimmar, Silvermoon City, Thunder Bluff or Undercity

I will start with the bonfires that you need to extinguish and the other bonfires that you need to pay your respect for.
It goes like this:

First, make sure you are in Dalaran, with your hearthstone not on cooldown, and you have to empty most of your pags from the gear, since you are going to get to Major Horde citys you will most likely be killed, and whenever you are killed, you need to spirit rez, it will save you much time, and having many kind of gear in the bags will get you a big repair bill, you can avoid that and get the gold you get from those things to be your own! not for a weakling NPC!.
here it goes:
go to the Exodar and walk out of the City to Azuremyst Isle, head to Azure watch, then walk up to Bloodmyst Isle, Blood watch, port to Dalaran, go to Darnasus, Teldrassil: Dolanar.
Go back to Darnasus, take the flight to Darkshore, Auberdine.

Fly to Ashenvale, Astranaar, and while you are there, extinguish the fire in Splinter tree post, and finish up the quest you take from the quest camp in a Major city Earthren ring elder, The Elder will offers a short quest chain starting with Unusual activity, for which you must travel to the Zoram Strand of Ashenvale and slay level 20+ Twilight Firesworn until the Twilight Correspondence drops. Once you receive it, use the Totemic beacon to summon an Earthen Ring Guide to complete the quest.
The Guide will then give you the next part of the quest, An Innocent Disguise for which you are given an orb that changes you into a Crawler for three minutes. In your new disguise, you must travel northwest of the entrance of Blackfathom Deeps - you will know you're going the right way if you periodically find blue-flamed torches, and eventually a small encampment on the shore. While disguised, witness the exchange between the naga and the Ice Caller Briatha until the quest completes. When it is finished, you can move out of range of the mobs and cancel the disguise, and summon the Earthen Ring Guide once again. This time, upon relaying the information, the guide will give you the quest Inform the Elder, and report your findings.
(when you finish that quest, talk to the NPC again, Make sure you have track low lvl quests because you will take that quest to Kill Ahune in Slave Pens later)

Once you have returned to an Earthen Ring Elder, the quest chain will complete and either one or two quests will become available, depending on your level. For characters level 22 and above, a repeatable daily quest will open up. The quest is called Striking Back, and depending on your level range you will be given a single objective at a location in Azeroth or Outland.

after you've done that quest, you get back to the bonfire fun, get back to the camp, and fly to wintergrasp, you can easily find the 2 tents at Everlook.

Now there is a trickey part here, you need to fly back to stonetalon Mountain, to Sun Rock Retreat. walk to The Barrens Crossroads, then to Durotar Razor Hill, walk all the way to Orgrimmar, and steal the fire, walk all the way to Mulgore Bloodhoof Village, get Thunderbluff's fire, and walk to Dustwallow Marsh Theramore, and Brackenwall Village.
Then you'll have to fly to Desolace Nijel's Point, and Shadowprey Village, fly to Ferales Fearthermoon Stronghold, walk to Camp Mojache, then you'll have to walk to Thousand Needles Freewind post, walk to Tanaris where you can easily find the 2 flames at Gadageztan almost around the horde flight master and the Alliance flight master.
Fly to Silithis where you also can find the 2 flames just east and west of Cenarion Hold.

Congrats, you stole 2 of the Horde's Major city flames, and finished 2 the flame warden of Kalimdor.

Port back to Dalaran, and go through the portal to The Outlands, fires are easy to see in the Outland, and you can easily spot them outside of the Horde/Alliance camps, start with Terokkar forest at Allerian Stronghold and Stonebreaker Hold.
go to Shadowmoon vally, right outside of Wildhummer and Shadowmoon Village you can find your fires.
Fly to Nagrand, at Telaar and Garadar.
Fly to Zangarmarsh, at Zabra'jin and Telredor.
Go into Slave Pens, you cant solo this unless you are a geared holy Paladin (Like me =P) or a geared DK (Like my alt =P) otherwise you need 2/3 people including a healer, Ahune himself isn't hard, its his adds that makes the problem.
The quest i said you needed to take from the Loremaster in the Major city is Ahune, The frost lord, you need to enter SP and talk to a tauren inside, She will give you another quest to go to another Tauren Druid inside the instance, Ahune is here, is the quest you need to summon him, i'll quote from Wow head his strat:
''his boss consists of two phases. You should clear most of the area around him so you don't aggro Nagas. You can do this on non-heroic. The NPCs that start the quest are right after zone in, then in the cavern area before the double Defender pull.

During both phases, he'll create a frost animation on the ground and after 3 a spike will be made, shooting the player into the air for a few seconds. Its important to move if this spawns. Also, the ice around him will cause people to slip and be stunned for 2-3.
Phase 1:

He will spawn an elite with an aura that does a debuff causing frost damage every 2-3s, I believe 500 damage, that stacks and can not be dispelled. This has to be tanked by the tank. He'll also spawn a lot of low health non-elites every few seconds (~2000 health) that shoots a frost spell at people. He'll spawn maybe 20-30 of these elites, and 2 of the large elites before he'll switch to phase two. This phase lasts around 1 minute. He'll also summon cyclones after the first phase 1 which has a pull ability, but are also weak.

Phase 2:

After all the adds are dead you can safely focus dps on the Frozen Core. According to my ui, this has about 125k health, and you have about 20s (rough estimate) to dps him. You should be able to get him to under 60%. With a full tier 6 group, we got him to 33% the first time.

Repeat phase 1 and 2 until he dies. Its very important to control all the adds and avoid the ice spikes.''

its a straight forward fight, easy with more people at lvl 80, so you might want to have them all, when you kill him, he will drop Shards of Ahune , that will begin a quest you give back to the Tauren, and will get you one of the two awesome tabards, Tabard of Summer Skies, and Tabard of Summer Flames.
you get your 2nd achievement, Ice the Frost Lord.

back to your fire grinding, time is for Blade Edge's Mountains, you will get your flame east of Sylvanaar and south of Evergrove.
Fly to Area 52, and you'll find the 2 fires easily.

Then Hellfire,Thrallamar and Honor Hold,just outside of the camps.

Gongrats, you got your Outland Achievements.

now is the easiest thing from all of those achievements, Go through the Dark portal to the blasted lands Nethergarde Keep, Fly to STV, you'll find the 2 fires right outside of Booty bay, after you go out of the tunnel, go straight forward to the sea, and you will find the 2 tents at your left and your right.
Fly back to Nethergrade keep in Blasted lands, and walk to Swamp of Sorrows at Stonard, bacl to Nethergrade keep, and fly to Darkshire in Duskwood.

When you are done, Fly to Westfall, Sentinel Hill.
Then its up to you, if you want to walk to Goldshire in Elwynn Forest, or you can fly to stormwind and go there.
When you are don with goldshire, mount up and go to Stormwind, fly to Lakshire in Redridge Mountains.
Then Fly to Morgan's Vigil and Flame Crest in the Burning steps.
Fly to Searing Gorge and walk to the Kargath in the badlands, and walk all the way to Thelsamar in Loch Modan.
Fly to Menethil Harbor in the wetlands (PS: i left the Kharanos one till later, since you have other quests to finish there).
Fly to Refuge point in Arathi Highlands and mount up to get to Hammerfall.
Here were it gets a little trickey, you can either Fly to The hinterlands or to Hillsbrad.
I went to Hillsbrad Foothills Southshore, and Tarren mell (where the real PVP happened back in Vanilla wow).
Then i took the flight to the Hinterlands where its really annoying since the 2 camps of the horde and the Alliance are really, really, really far apart.
Aerie Peak, and Revantusk Village.
Fly back to Hillsbrad and mount up for the long ride, you'll have to go to Silverpine Forest Sepulcher, then go all the way to Brill in Tirisfal Glades, go into Undercity, right infront of the gates you'll find the flame you need to steal, get them and go back to the road to Chillwind Camp in Western Plaguelands, and fly all the way to ZA, mount up and go to Tranquillien of the ghost lands, and at the gates of Ruins of Silvertmoon you'll find the fire.
get in Silvermoon and get te capital city fire there.
port to Dalaran, then to IF, in Kharanos you'll find the last one.

Congrats!

you got 4 achievements in the same time! you must be really good!

Now, the easy simple achievements to finish this is

which is easy, buy 15, i repeat, 15 torches from the NPC in any major city, (not Dalaran or Shatt) and bind them to your 1 key, spam 1 with your other hand out of your pants and on your mouse, throw them and make sure you are collecting them too, you can throw them just at your self, and you'll get this part in like 6 secs.

is also easy, with all the blossoms you got from all of the fires areound Azeroth, buy the 3 pieces of the set from the vendors in the major city, and dance at the ribbon pole for 60 secs (i went and made me some Vodka while my char showed them how to dance!)

Edit: as my awesome guild mate said:
''Just a heads up, today all the honor the flame, exinguish the flame quests reset. So anyone that did them last year and needs the blossoms can do them, and if you have already done them this year, you can do them again too. MORE MONIES!'' - Cocoknutt of Lux Legis!

Edit2: it appears that there are also some fires to respect and steal in Northrend, you might want to do them to access the pets.

Borean Tundra: fizzcrank airstrip, and bor'gorok outpost
Dragonblight: wintergrade keep, and agmar's hammer
Crystalsong Forest: windrunner's overlook and sunreaver's command
Grizzly Hills: Amberpine lodge and conquest hold
Howling Fjord: fort wildervar and camp winterhoof
Sholazar Basin: river's heart for both factions
Storm Peaks: K3 for both factions
Zul'Drak: The argent stand

Items you can get from all of this:

1-Mantle of the Fire Festival for 100 Burning Blossom
2- Vestment of Summer for 100 Burning Blossom
3- Sandals of Summer for 200 Burning Blossom
4- Brazier of Dancing Flames for 350 Burning Blossom
5- Captured Flame for 350 Burning Blossom

i hope this helps people out.

Happy achievement haunting!

Argent Tournament Updates for Patch 3.2

2009-06-17T01:47:00.002+03:00

Blizzard has updated their Under Development page to highlight some of the additional updates they’ll be making to the Argent Tournament in Patch 3.2. It sounds like there’s going to be a ton of new content with even more prizes to spend our Champion’s Seals on. Those Champion’s Seals are hard to come by. I know for me with raiding and pvp, finding time to complete these quests is difficult. I’d like to be able to collect all the pets and mounts, but there’s just so much to buy! I love it when Blizzard forces us to make these decisions to customize our character because there’s no possible way you could achieve everything by yourself (although I’m sure some people will).

There’s a lot of exciting new things coming out that I’d like to purchase. Some of the most exciting developments:

* A new Paladin-only charger!
* A portal bank, mail-box or vendor that you can spawn once every 8 hours and costs 150 Champion’s Seals. Blizzard says the squire will only offer one of the three services. I wonder how you choose which one the squire is… bank, mail-box or vendor… and can it be different with each spawn? The portable bank is definitely the most appealing.
* A new tabard that will port you directly to the tournament grounds. This would save me a lot of time and make doing these quests a lot easier.
* New dailies to help us earn those seals, including 2 new quest hubs and dailies exclusively for people with the Crusader title.
* Other new tabards, pets, and mounts for people Exalted with their Argent Tournament faction.
* Return of the Black Night.

Sounds like I need to start saving up those Champion’s Seals. No more new pets for me!

Wordpress > blogspot

2009-06-16T06:02:00.002+03:00

Going to transfer to Wordpress tomorrow when i am back at work, wish me luck!

WTH, how did i die?

2009-06-16T04:40:00.005+03:00

An awesome Topic was opened on blog Azertoh.

When it comes to me, first thing i'd think of is UI and your screen, if you had too much things in the sides of your screens, you won't see the lava walls coming your way, even though DBM yells at you ''Run away little girl, run away!'', and you won't see the big void zone under your feet.

As a former tank, i learned to be aware of my surroundings since Magmadar days back in Vanilla wow Molten Core, he used to put a Conflagrate on the ground, and i used to get away from it so neither me or the melee could get into it if we got feared.

As a healer now, everything is deferant, I'm no more looking at the legs on the dragons and nothing else, my eyes are just going right and left trying to see those damn health bars going up and down, my main focus is this, and nothing else, especially when I'm healing the main tanks, i found myself dead a couple of times on OS+ drakes before i figured that i should have 100% awareness of whats happening around me plus the 100% watching those health bars.
It took me a while to get used to it, and when i became an officer i started doing all of this plus watching for other people to make sure they aren't on fire, void zones or anything else.

As a DPS, when i am using my 2nd spec, sometimes i feel that i need to break the 4.5K dps mark, and i focus on my spells and rotation, just to find myself dead, them void zones are a PITA!

For me, its all about the UI, if you fixed your UI the right way, you'd have the time to see everything around you, and of course, you need to want to see those things, you need to care about dieing to them, and most likely avoid the screaming on vent ''WTF, WHY TEH HELL DO YOU DIE EVERYTIME?!?!''

So here are some tips that you might need:

1- Don't fill your UI with Junk, fill it with things that you REALLY need, and nothing else.
2- Zone out your camera as far as you can, get used to it, because that's the best way to monitor everything going around you.
3- If you are a healer, use Grid, and forget about Healbot, its lame!, plus Healbot gives you the mini health bars, so it clears some space in your screen.
4- When the pull is done, place yourself in a place that you can see everything around you.
5- Try to either A) move every once and a while, or B) check out what is happening behind you every now and then, it really helps.

I wanted to make a screenshot of my current UI, since i worked hard on it for the last 2 weeks, but i'm at work, and i'm stuck with this UI SS that i made like 3 months ago, my raid health bars are covered with my friends list, yeah i dont have many friends!

press on the pic to get the full sized one.
please ignore the whispers, i only brought it up to take the SS of a young guy who was a guildie and we were teasing him for being so young, i told him on vent if he has hair in his private parts, and he didn't talk back in vent, he whispered me instead, BIG MISTAKE! LOL.

anyhow, back to the topic, a lot of wipes happens for even the best people who watch their surroundings, mistakes happens, we are only humans, so dont make it a big deal when its not, enjoy your gaming!

The Not So Useless Little Spell, After All!

2009-06-14T04:01:00.004+03:00

In the past few weeks, i remembered a spell that most of the paladins have forgotten, i didn't actually think much to remember it, i was in an arena game with my best RL friend Headstab and there was a team of a ret paladin and a DK, they were both is PVE gear, but once they see my rogue friend, they pop everything on him and kill him before i can cast a spell, BOP him, or even say what the f...

I remembered back in the days when we were in Kara, on my troll warrior, just started that place, and we were stuck at Maiden of Virtue when we had our first Paladin to hit 70, he was asked by the GM to put Hand of Sacrifice on me before she do her Repentance.
so the next game we faced those 2 guys, i used it on Headstab before he jumps in, and WOW, alot of changes, while Headstab kills the ret Paladin, i was able to keep him up, of course with a big help of my Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light, healing him and i'm getting healed so i wont die from the Hand of Sacrifice.

After that, i started using it much more, on bosses who hits like a truck, either using it and using beacon of light, or using it and bubble, and it worked perfetly, so my advice to all those Holy Paladins out there, don't be a nub and forget all about it, i swear i didn't even have it on my UI, i had to search for it for 1 min to find it :(.

Maexxna's enrage at 30% is a good example for it, throw Hand of Sacrifice on the tank before the web spray and bubble = insta win!
Also it works perfectly with Mr. Patchwerk at 10%, but you need to be fast with the bubble becasue those hatefuls hit for a shit ton of damage.

the spell in Protection tree, Divine Sacrifice, is also usable as a way to mitigate raid damage, and can be put in a castsequence macro as well. While I think that it's a great way to mitigate dmg in 5 and 10 mans, it diminishes in a 25 man aoe raid situation due to the number of players taking damage. It does, however, beat Hand of Sacrifice if the tank is the only one taking damage at the time.

Mountin o' mounts

2009-06-13T06:48:00.003+03:00

Leading the Cavalry

This is a fairly easy achievement. The reward is the Albino Drake, it requires you to obtain and learn 50 mounts. One possible way to obtain 50 mounts would be:

32 standard mounts from the Horde / Alliance races
7 standard flying mounts from Shadowmoon Valley
5 cheap mounts from the Argent Tournament
6 PVP mounts bought with Mark of Honor

This list is debatable, if someone prefers daily quests over PVP, the Netherwing and the Sha'tari Skyguard are a good choice. If someone prefers getting this achievement done quickly instead of easily, farming Kurenai / Mag'har reputation is a good choice.

Mountain o' Mounts

This achievement is considerably harder than the previous, though with each patch it will get easier. The reward is a Red Dragonhawk for horde players and a Blue Dragonhawk for alliance players.

To complete this achievement, you need to obtain and learn 100 mounts. Ok, technically 99 because at 50 you receive the Albino Drake via mail for completing Leading the Cavalry. So to get those 99 mounts, some classes have an advantage because of class specific mounts, others have to work extra hard to overcome this.

This is the list of all the factions you will need gain exalted reputation with:

Kirin Tor - equip the Tabard of Kirin Tor and do WotLK heroics and level 80 normal dungeons. Reputation gain ranges from 1000 to 3000 in these dungeons.
Cenarion Expedition - do all their quests in Zangarmarsh, Blade's Edge Mountains, Hellfire Peninsula and Borean Tundra. After that a couple of Coilfang Reservoir: Steamvaults run will be required. It can be soloed easily, one run takes 20 minutes and gives about 2000 reputation if you turn in the Coilfang Armaments. It will take roughly 10 clears to reach exalted.
The Sons of Hodir - daily quests in The Storm Peaks for 27 days
Netherwing - daily quests in Shadowmoon Valley for 29 days, but now that almost noone plays in SMV, it can be extremely easy to farm Netherwing Eggs as well. There's a good video with a path you can patrol to find eggs on Youtube
Sha'tari Skyguard - daily quests in Terokkar Forest and Blade's Edge Mountains for 37 days, but with summonning Terokk and the minibosses, you can gain 2500 reputation in 25 minutes
Wyrmrest Accord - equip the Tabard of Wyrmrest Accord and do WotLK heroics and level 80 normal dungeons
Mag'har / Kurenai - farm Obsidian Warbeads in Nagrand. Laughing Skull Ruins and the Warmaul Hill are a good place. The whole ordeal shouldn't take more than a day
Horde / Alliance - all the starting zones and the Argent Tournament's daily quests

It is also recommended to raise The Oracles to revered because the Mysterious Egg (available at their Quartermaster) requires no extra work and it has a chance to drop the mount once every 7 days.

In addition to these factions, you will need:

a considerable amount of gold - over 50000g
525 Champion's Seal - 5 seals a day or on average 6 if you choose the Champion's Purses instead of the Champion's Writ as questrewards. Until you no longer need reputation for any of the Horde factions, you should choose the Writs.
300 Stone Keeper's Shard - 40 shards every week with the weekly WG quests, though you can do heroic dungeons (for the Kirin Tor and Wyrmrest Accord reputation you have to do that anyway) and obtain extra Shards while your faction controls the Wintergrasp.
200 Emblem of Heroism - the heroic daily quest rewards 2, raids drop a lot more (and don't forget that Emblem of Valor and Emblem of Conquest can be exchanged 1:1)
200 AV Mark of Honor
150 WSG Mark of Honor
150 AB Mark of Honor
170 Halaa Battle Token - these can be generated by partying up with a Warlock who left all his gear in the bank, going to Halaa when it is controlled by your faction, going to the Spirit Healer and having the warlock constantly kill himself with Hellfire and instantly resurrecting.
35 Halaa Research Token - very painful to farm them thanks to the 8% droprate, but you should get 20% of the required 350 Oshu'hun Crystal Powder Samples while farming the Kurenai / Mag'har reputation, after that Sunspring Post seems like a good way to finish the work.

If you have all of these funds and have the above factions completed, you can buy 86 mounts. You also got the Albino Drake, so 87. You can buy the Chopper, that's the 88th. The last 12 will get harder. You will need to work your way through a bunch of achievements and get your hands on random drop mounts as well, there's no way around them.

20 minute CoT: Stratholme run, Glory of the Ulduar Raider, For the Horde / For the Alliance, 10 man Sartharion hard mode should be easy to get for anyone. The more of the Achievement mounts you can obtain the better, but sadly, it still won't be enough.

There are a bunch of random drop mounts that are easy to get, despite being... random.

the 4 AQ mounts can be obtained by pulling the first 4-pack in AQ40, killing 3 of them, looting them for the mounts and running out of the instance. When you go back in, the pack is reset and you can kill 3 of them again for a chance to drop the mounts.
Kael'thas has a 2% chance to drop the white chicken and by now MGT can be soloed by a lot of classes, if you're not one of them, ask a friend to help out with the tougher trashpacks
even though the ZG mounts have a low chance to drop, there's 2 of them and it takes only a half an hour to kill Bloodlord Mandokir and High Priest Thekal every 3 days (and you can skip every other trashmob and boss in the instance). Again, it can be soloed by a lot of classes, if you're not one of them, ask a friend to help.
both bosses in the Vault of Archavon have a chance to drop the Grand Black War Mammoth in the 10 and 25 man version as well. If you're in Wintergrasp for the weekly quests (which you are doing anyway because you need 300 Stone Keeper's Shards) kill them with as few players as possible, it takes almost no time.
the first couple of weeks you probably won't have free daily quests, but as soon as you do, you should start doing the Brunnhildar daily quests in The Storm Peaks for a chance to get the White Polar Bear

If at this point you still don't have 100 mounts, the next easiest would be to drop one of your professions and raise Tailoring for the 2 flying carpets and after drop it for Engineering to craft the 2 helicopters. You probably don't have any trouble raising a lot of money for chopper and the 40000 golds worth of other mounts, so these are good choices.

After that, you should head straight to Stratholme for the Deathcharger's Reins.

Good luck!

New Battleground - Isle of Conquest details

2009-06-13T06:46:00.001+03:00

Blizzard Poster Vaneras on 12/06 The Isle of Conquest Preview

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. But as insignificant as it may seem, this is no ordinary place. A sound of thunder as waves crash endlessly against rocky cliffs; a sound of fury as swords clash on the blood-stained fields of this island on the edge of forever.

Welcome to the Isle of Conquest.

The ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance has turned many once peaceful (and some not-so peaceful) places into theaters of constant war. The Isle of Conquest is the latest such place, set to be the location of a battle of epic proportions over the island's precious resources.

An Alliance and a Horde general are fighting for dominance, overseeing the action from the safety of their keeps. Whichever side manages to eliminate the enemy general first will triumph on the island; failure to protect your leader will bring shame, dishonor, and defeat. There is no peace accord here, and it’s an all-out war between the factions.

Once More into the breach...

Isle of Conquest, a new battleground scheduled to make its debut in the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, will pitch teams of up to 40 players against each other in a massive battle over this small island off Northrend's northern coast. To win, your team will need to make use of the island's unique strategic locations including an oil derrick, a siege workshop, and a fully equipped airship hangar. You will deploy devastating siege weaponry on the field; Light have mercy on anyone caught between you and your ultimate target, the general holed up in the enemy keep.

There are five points of interest on the Isle of Conquest for the factions to battle over. Each one offers its own benefits and strategic value. Which one will you claim for your side, and will it be enough to ensure victory?

Capture Locations

Consider your options before storming out of your keep to confront the enemy head-on. Spread throughout the Isle of Conquest are several capturable locations (as seen on the map), each granting a unique strategic advantage to your team.

The Oil Derrick: Located on the northwestern end of the island, this smudge in the Frozen Sea produces enough black gold to run a thousand siege engines. Taking this resource garners precious reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Cobalt Mine: This snow-covered assembly, located on the southeastern end of the island, hides untapped supplies that must be harvested. Taking this resource grants reinforcements and a continuous flow of honor to the side that controls it.

The Docks: The western shore's docks will further expand your selection of siege weapons with the devastating new Glaive Thrower and the Catapult. Unleash the destruction of the Glaive Thrower upon the walls of the keep, or launch your invading party over the walls to assault the keep from within.

The Airship Hangar: This sturdy steel structure stands on the peak of Mt. Conquest overlooking the eastern side of the island, allowing players to board the airship docked there. This devastating weapon of war is capable of raining death upon the heads of your enemies and destroying enemy defenses. Once onboard the airship, players will find it comes equipped with parachutes enabling a strike team to drop into the enemy keep from above.

The Siege Workshop: Situated right between the Alliance base and the Horde base, this siege workshop occupies a strategic hot spot. Seizing it grants the controlling party the ability to utilize an arsenal of siege vehicles perfectly suited to reducing the enemy keep’s walls to dust and ashes.

Graveyards: There are five graveyards in the Isle of Conquest that are attached to different points of interest on the map: the Horde base, the Alliance base, an oil spill island in the center of the map (attached to the siege workshop), the northeast corner (attached to the airship hangar), and the southwest corner (attached to the docks).

Main Objectives

The Keeps: The Horde and Alliance keeps sit at opposite ends of the island. These citadels host four easily accessible defensive cannons set on the ramparts, capable of unleashing hot fury onto oncoming attackers. Additional explosives sit safely stowed in the base of the keep along the back wall. At least, they’re safe as long as they don’t fall into enemy hands. If they do, though, they can be employed to bring the stone walls down from within.

The General: Holed up behind the keeps' massive walls, the generals command their forces from a position of relative safety. Should the keep fall and the general be slain, the Isle of Conquest will fall to the victor.

Reinforcements: Isle of Conquest uses a reinforcements system similar to that of Alterac Valley. The clock is ticking and every individual counts. If too many of your comrades fall to the enemy the battle will end in defeat. Killing enemy players will reduce their reinforcements by one for each kill, Once your faction’s reinforcements reach their limit, so too does your bid for control of the island and the wealth of resources you’ve fought so hard over.

An island somewhere off the shores of Northrend. A rock, hardly worth a second look. A test of strength. A chance to prove your might, to crush your enemies, to make a difference, a chance for endless glory and conquest.

Will you seize it?

seems like fun! , but 40 man battles are gone after Blizz missed up with AV, it might be fun after all, who knows?

World-first Val'anyr formed by Avant Garde

2009-06-13T01:57:00.003+03:00

If you're a raiding healer, you almost certainly know this already: Ulduar-25 contains a legendary healer mace, called Val'anyr. To craft it, you have to gather 30 Fragments of Val'anyr, which drop from both normal and hard-mode 25-man Ulduar fights (though they always drop on hard-mode, and only have a chance to drop on normal). You then have to throw the combined collection of fragments at Yogg'Saron while fighting him when he uses the "Deafening Roar" ability, which he only uses on hard mode. After that, defeat Yogg, and Val'anyr is yours.

Well, someone has now completed all of the above steps: Snuggleme, a resto druid of Avant Garde on Kil'jaeden. Congratulations on what appears to be the world-first Val'anyr! We know exactly what it does already, but I'm still curious what it feels like to use it in a real raid

here is a close SS of that sexy mace

Upcoming mount changes

2009-06-13T01:56:00.002+03:00

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17730154175&sid=1

A very big announcement this evening from Zarhym. In the "next major content patch" (which means Patch 3.2) the mount system in WoW will be having some significant changes to it. The highlights are as follows:

* Regular land mounts trainable at level 20 (was 30)
* Epic land mounts trainable at level 40 (was 60)
* Regular flying mounts trainable at level 60 (was 70)
* Regular flying mounts speed increased to a 150% gain (was 60%)

The costs for all the training and mount purchases has been decreased outright, with the exception of the artisan riding skill (epic flying mounts). For all mount costs, faction discounts now apply.

This means that when you hit 60 you'll be able to fly around Hellfire and finish all those quests. Leveling from 60 to 68 is going to become easier and more relaxed. You'll hit Northrend much sooner with this change.

The full details after the break.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

* 60% land mount speed
* Requires level 20
* Cost: 4 gold
* Mount cost: 1 gold
* Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

* 100% land mount speed
* Requires level 40
* Cost: 50 gold
* Mount cost: 10 gold
* Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

* 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
* Requires level 60
* Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
* Mount Cost: 50 gold
* Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)

* 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
* Requires level 70
* Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
* Mount Cost: 100 gold

Call me an achievement whore!

2009-06-13T01:25:00.009+03:00

Yeah, I don't know whats happening to me, i'm searching for any fast getting achievements just to get my e-peen points up.
Last night, after a fast 10 man Ulduar raiding day, i bought about 10 mounts, why? you may ask? just to get to 100 mounts achievement, i know the mount reward isnt that good, but i am doing it anyways.

almost there.

i got 5125 e-peen points now, and i keep thinking that i need more, MOAR!!
NOM NOMNOM

most of the general achievments i got already, half of raidings, all of exploring, half of World events, not so many from the PVP since we suck at it, working hard on the cooking and the fishings, also working hard on the rep rewards (since there are many mounts there), and still need to get the loremaster, i know it will be hard, but i am almost a loremaster of Northrend, the only problem is finding easy 500 quests to do in Kalimador.
Won't rest untill i get them all, i know myself very well (YARLY!) and i won't stop till i catch them all! errr.

First day in Heroic Ulduar, and 2nd week in normal.

2009-06-11T06:45:00.004+03:00

Is 10 dead Bosses in normal and 3 on Heroic, had so much fun in there, the design is awesome.

those were in the Heroic 25 man, i always forget to take screenies of our kills, thanks Eleuth for taking Rezor's SS :P

I got my first item from there http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45252 i was excited.

Regarding 10 man Ulduar, we've been there for a while, got a bracers before, a chest piece that i dont use anymore because i still want my T7.5 2 pieces set bonus a lovely shield that got nerfed 3 days after i got it QQ.

got all keepers down, other than Mimiron, the fight is rediculously hard

stay tuned for more progression!

Class Roles: How superior are Hybrids?

2009-05-24T14:08:00.001+03:00

i have to admit, i stole this from another blog about WOW, but its so damn good.

A question that's been haunting my mind. All of the full fledged, one role classes are able to do only 1 thing; DPS, while the rest of the player base are able to either tank, heal, or do all three roles. As I paid attention to the damage meters during my raids I never really saw a Hybrid do any great amount of DPS higher than a full fledged DPSer such as a Hunter, or a Mage, and vice versa. A Ret Paladin or a Fury Warrior are able to push out just as much damage as a Warlock or Rogue, but they're able to switch to a different role as they please.

Being a Tank, DPSer, and soon to be Healer, I didn't benefit nearly as much on my Hunter as I did on my Paladin, and he isn't even 80 yet. I didn't even bother dual speccing on my Hunter because either way I'll be doing the same thing. There seems to be no point other than switching between PvP and PvE specs, and I don't PvP. I could switch between two PvE specs but one will push out more damage than the other and it just doesn't make sense to switch to the lesser of the two.

Dual specs aren't the only thing that make Hybrids superior, as I stated above I don't really see a damage difference between the 2 class types. This means that a Druid with 2 sets of epic gear that's dual specced for DPS and Healing could likely be more useful than a Mage whom can either DPS or.. DPS.

Some complain that there seems to be nothing that makes up for the fact that one role classes have no advantage in that certain role over Hybrids, which can excel in everything. Every class has it's strength and weaknesses. For instance, you aren't going to get the CC with a Shadow Priest as you are with a Mage, and with Ulduar you can't just faceroll AoE everything anymore. Though you can argue that Hybrid DPS trees have their advantages as well, replenishment in the Retribution tree for instance. In the end I think everything 'somewhat' balances out.

I believe that right now Hybrids have an advantage over one role classes, and I'm sure it's challenging to balance this all out. It's more than just "Make this class hit more". It's complex mathematics and a lot of hard work. We've seen Blizzard Reps state that there won't be many more major class changes in wrath and I'm happy for that. I don't like having to replace all my talents every time a patch that changes them comes along.

Ending note: Make Ret Paladins take more than a quarter of the brain to play Blizz :)

~Aenorn of Unholy hands blog

Hello :)

2009-05-24T11:19:00.005+03:00

Hello,

This post I'll try to make it an Introduction.

My real name is Hadi, i live in Kuwait city, Kuwait, i play World of Warcraft since release,
I used to be known as Almaster, a protection Troll warrior on the horde side (the one and only protection troll warrior on the server) from Vanilla days of Wow, back in the days when BRD was hard, UBRS was ran by guilds only.
I raided everything back at the pre-TBC, ZG, AQ20, MC, BWL, AQ40, and 3 wings of old Naxx.
Then TBC-came out, i lvled as a protection warrior, had fun, Raided Kara (is sewiuz buzznizz), Gruuls, Mags, SSC and TK (back when no one was able to down Vashj and Kael, we killed Kael as the 4th guild on the server), MH and a couple of bosses in BT, before my guild which was named DC disbanded due to Officers getting RL issues.
I had 2 alts, Elmaster (BE Warlock) and Zemaster (orc hunter) '' yeah i know i am bad with picking Char names''
Then, i had to go on a vacation and i was out of money, which made me sell my account ( i still regret it) and i took an account of a dear Romanian friend and i played his Shaman (Shamanizim) through the rest of BT.
I stopped playing shortly after, for about 2 months, when another dear friend gave me his Paladin, his name was AJ, and the char name was Zyclonejr, i renamed it to Almaster, and here i am.
I joined Lux Legis, as i had been trolling their forums at the time i was playing horde, i didnt think that I'd join them in the allays side, i was with them the first time they downed Illidan, i was happy, so i continued playing.

WOTLK ame out, lvled as a shockadin from 70-80, went to Naxx again, cleared it on 25 man before 10 man (lol), OS 10 and 25 man with 1 drake up.

With Ulduar coming out, i slacked a little, had some serious problems with the company i work in, resigned from my work, and started looking for a new one, and i got one, the problem is, at this moment, the work time doesn't let me raid much unless its my day off, so i am back at casual raiding, 1 day a week.

i'll ry to keep posting stuff here, for holy paladins, ret paladins (its my 2nd spec, dual spec FTW!) and for healers in General in Ulduar, heroics, raids, etc..