The Heroes of Ironforge

WoW is a massive time sink, designed to give the player incremental increases in power or status over time so as to maximize revenue. When you reach the level cap (currently 80), you no longer need to worry about gaining experience to advance, and so you turn to the end game. A lot of players will roll another toon, or focus on gearing up for raiding. Some will concentrate on gaining gold, while others maximize their trade skills. Then, we have those players I like to call "The Heroes of Ironforge".

The Heroes of Ironforge (or HoIF) are those players that stand around in IF sitting on one of the rarer epic mounts or just standing in the middle of the bridge in cool epix. Of course it's not just IF that is infected by these posers, Dalaran is now a lag-fest of mammoths, war bears and other assorted riding mounts, with plenty of proto-drakes and flying carpets stacked in the flight master area. Even the Naxx summoning stone gets blocked by people /flex-ing their epicness of mount. I understand that in general, it takes a fair amount of work to get the gold together for epic flying skill, and even more effort for some of the rarer mounts that can be obtained. Good job, well done, now please stop blocking the flight master you fool.

Everybody plays the game differently, and everybody pays the same amount of cash each month (except Asia ...). I have the attitude of "Hey, it's your dime, play it how you want to", but sometimes I can't help but shake my head ...

DK Progress

it's been a while since I've posted about my DK progress, so I thought I'd post an update. I'm in a raiding guild, Oceanic Raiders Inc., and we raid from 10pm-Midnight Server Time on Ama'Thul Oceanic server, 6 nights a week (we'd raid Tuesday but thats maintenance). We are making fairly good progress through content, having last night downed Kel'Thuzad for the first time in the 10-man version of Naxx. We also run 25 mans, and have cleared Plague, Spider, and a bit of Construct wing (up to Thaddius).

My toon is progressing well, as you can see here. I still don't have my professions up, nor do I have my epic flying mount. But now that I'm fairly well geared and raiding, I have pretty much pent what I have to on gear so can start saving. I still have some expenses for consumables, but luckily I can farm all the mats for the buff food I need (my mage can cook it), so it's just battle elixirs, and on my server Mighty Strength only costs around 10-15g for 10. So, next stop epic flying skill (hopefully).

WoW News has launched

A new website has been added to the DKayed stable: WoW News. It's aim is to aggregate WoW news and stories from around the web into one place, where users can also vote and comment on them. It is a "soft" launch however, so I am asking you, the readers of this blog, to please have a look and provide any feedback for improvement. Though my readership is small, the quality of the comments gives me confidence that will all give it a good beta test. It has been seeded with some stories voted highly, however moving forward this will not be the case, and these early stories will drop off in time. It is also "version 1", as I have a few features I want to add in time.

Hopefully this will be the first in a long line of useful WoW related websites added to the dkayed domain.

The Core

No, this isn't a post about MC. This is a post about raiding status. Core Raider is a term I've seen used in a few guilds now, referring to those players that are better geared and more experienced than other guild members. I don't have any problem with this per se, in fact I am a core raider in my current guild, however I don't think it automatically means "better player".

Raiding requires a couple of things to succeed. It needs gear, obviously, as well as knowledge of the encounter (move here, run away if you are the bomb, etc.). It also needs the player to be able to play their class. There Is no point being a fully epic'd hunter if you only use auto shot and have a crap pet. This is where the problem lies.

A lot of people track stats in game. There's even a website (WoW Web Stats). It is possible to do decent dps if you have top gear without really maximizing your output. The same with healing, and you can be an awesomely geared tank that gets the job done but doesn't position mobs well (which generally goes unnoticed). The stats don't show the little things.

So people who top meters and show up every raid tend to get promoted to core raiders. No problems there, they should be rewarded for their effort. However, this does not automatically make them better players than people who are just beginning to gear up. Unfortunately, core raiders usually look down on other players as inferior.

I don't think the best players are those that are better geared, the best players are those that make others better. It's the same with sports; LeBron James is a great basketball player not only because he can do amazing things on court, but because he makes his team mates better by encouraging them, having confidence in their ability, and giving them easy shots.

To be a great WoW player you need to not only know the game, but share that knowledge. You need to have patience as others learn encounters, even if they wipe you ten times, and confidence in their ability to get it sooner or later. You need to be prepared to run an instance over and over again to help gear up others even though there is nothing that will upgrade you. You need to ignore dps numbers (most of the time) and offer advice and tips to improve. You need to listen to othersconcetns and issues and offer solutions if possible. You need to keep spirits up with encouragement and jokes (it is just a game after all). Basically, you need to be in it for more than just the epix.

10 man vs 25 man

Once your faction control's Wintergrasp, a raid instance is available called the Vault of Archavon. This is a very simple raid encounter, with 4 trash mobs and then the boss Archavon. The boss is a dps race, as he goes berserk after 6 minutes and it's a wipe.

This reset, our guild did both the 10 man and 25 man raid. First up we tried 25, but because we don't yet have a full complement we had to get in about 5 PuGs. I know I've moaned about PuGs before, and that 25 man is more difficult, but this is an easy raid instance that a decently geared group can easily clear. As you can probably guess by now, we had a few wipes before we downed him, the main cause being some pretty poor dps (one mage wasn't even doing 1k). 

After the 25 man, we formed a guild group to do 10 man and rolled him with a fair bit of time to spare. What's the lesson here? I think that players tend to have more responsibility to their guild than when pugged, and so don't put there name forward in guild chat for instances they are not geared for, but when it's a PuG some players feel no responsibility towards the group and so tend to underperform.

Leveling Weapon Skill

Here's an easy way to level weapon skill without the hassle of actual combat. All that's required is level 80 (may be possible with lower levels) and the key to the Shadow Labs instance.

Once you enter, hug the left wall all the way to the tunnel. Go behind the tents and crates you see, and jump over the braziers. When you get to the first tunnel go along it then exit hugging the left wall again and go behind the tent. When you get to the opening to the second boss, just make sure there are no mobs patrolling through then run across and keep hugging the left wall all the way along. 

You should come to the tunnel that leads to the prisoner, and right in front of it is the first boss, Ambassador Hellmaw. As he is banished, you can simply stand behind him and swing away until you level up any and all weapon skills. Enjoy!!

Edit:

Claz says:

'Same idea, but easier to get to: the banished demon on top of the southern wing of the outside of BT. Got this from Ratshag:
http://needmorerage.blogspot.com/2008/12/wait-tell-me-again-why-im-naked.html'

SW says:

'Another option, for anyone that's not yet level 80 is "Rothin the Decaying" in Dragonblight (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=27355). This is a quest mob that is shielded - essentially the same as banished. You can attack and he won't do anything. '  (I have tried this one - note that the guy is inside the cave in the Obsidian Dragonshrine)

Thanks for the comments guys :)

More Naxx Thoughts

We completed the Abomination Quarter of Naxx last night. It was a fun run, especially as we 2 shotted both Gluth and Thaddius. While Grobbulus took us a few attempts the previous night (all ending in frustration), we only took a few attempts to down him as well (I think 3). The amazing thing was that very few had ever seen that far into Naxx, so for us to make such great progress was awesome.

The Gluth fight was a tough one for me personally. Our first attempt we used our Blood DK to tank the adds, but it didn't end well, so I decided to do it next go, as I had tank gear and could use more unholy AoE than him. My strategy was to lay Death and Decay down near the raid constantly so that any zombies running in would aggro to me, and have Unholy Blight up constantly to keep the zombies following me. A hunter had a frost trap down too, but I was still running around like mad because they stack +100 dmg a debuff up to 99 times (I had it 99 times). So the trick was to keep aggro but not get hit too much. When Gluth did a Decimate, our mage frost nova'd and we AoE'd them down successfully, and after 3 of those, and just before the fourth, we downed him. The token for my t7 chest dropped also, but seeing as I already got an epic chest drop earlier in the week, I passed up, even though I felt that on that fight I had earned it :)

We then moved on to Thaddius. This is a tricky fight, as he has 2 adds that need to be killed within 5 seconds of each other or else they rez with full health. Once they are dead, everyone drops down onto Thaddius platform (it's a tough jump that can be missed), he aggro's and phase 2 begins. Phase 2's main gotcha is a polarity debuff, where everyone with -ve needs to move to one side, and +ve the other. It takes a fair bit of co-ordination and everyone needs to be switched on. I didn't hold out any hopes of getting it done, but amazingly we downed him on our second attempt (first was a disaster with everyone blowing each other up lol). Thaddius is a tough fight (he also has an enrage timer) so it was a great effort by the guys.

Impressions of Naxx

I've now been to Naxx with my guild twice. The first time, when I thought I was going to be tanking, I was under geared for DPS, but we still managed to kill Noth (1 shot). It was the first time many of the guild had seen Naxx, and so we had a lot of wipes on Heigan as he requires a bit of co ordination. We also had a few tries at Anub but again our co-ordination was off. I was using Unholy stance and my best DPS gear, but I was only doing around 1300dps.

So, a few heroics and (at least) 2.5k gold later and I'm much better geared for DPSing Naxx. I missed the next run while I was gearing, and the guild cleared Spider Wing and Plague Wing. I did get into a 10 man and a 25 man VoA which was good. It's fairly easy, and on the 25 man I had some upgrades and was using Blood stance and I saw a difference up to over 2kdps.

Last night, I got in again as I had done enough work gear-wise. We went into the Construct Quarter and took down Patchwerk. He is seen as a 'gear check' for the raid, as although he is a basic tank and spank, he has a hard enrage that wipes the raid, so he requires a high amount of dps to kill him in time. On this fight, my dps passed 3k which was nice (I came in second to a warrior), so even though there are a couple of pieces I still want to improve, I'm ready. Of course I still need to learn the fights, but generally it only takes a read of WowWiki and one visual experience to get it in my head what I need to do. 

I used a few tools to sort out my gear, and I'll create pages on my main site (www.dkayed.com) explaining my approach. I'll post when it's there.

Strategy and the PuG

I've generally been doing PuD instances as I've leveled and once I have reached 80. The original guild I was with never had enough level 80s to instance, so it was PuG or nothing. Generally though, most of these runs were successful, even when PuG'ing a Heroic.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a pattern forming. Some instances require nothing more than tank and spank on bosses and mobs, and these are the ones where I've had the most success. However, once any kind of strategy is required, there tends to be problems. A classic example of this is when I had a PuG H Halls of Lightning.

This instance can be difficult on normal setting, and it's identical on H with the mobs just having more health and hitting harder. There are trash mobs that whirlwind, some have heal debuffs, others explode. Then, the bosses each require different strategies. The first has 2 adds which need to be killed first, plus he switches forms and has a whirlwind. The second has adds, but it is possible to dps him down while ignoring the adds. The third continually breaks up into sparks which must be avoided and has a few other abilities to watch out for. The last boss, Loken, is the toughest of all.

The PuG I was with had plenty of wipes, finally giving up on Loken after a few tries where no one could get their positioning correct. The worst culprit was the "DPS" warrior. I put DPS in quotes, because he was only doing 750dps. This is way to low for a Heroic. Besides this, he was continually getting killed by whirlwind from trash, and always died in the first nova from Loken. We had a very competent hunter, the lock was good (but needs a bit of aggro management help), and the healer struggled a bit, especially on Loken. 

What's the lesson in all of this? Well, for starters, if you are going to a Heroic, please make sure you are decently geared. If you are DPS, at least 1200dps is required, plus as much health as you can muster. If you are healz, well I'm not sure what the spell power number required would be but I'd guess it would be in the range of 2k. Tanks? I think 335 def is uncrittable (I'll need to verify this) and you should have over 20k hp unbuffed. It's not hard to hit these numbers gearing from normal mode instances. I know that the loot looks awesome on the Heroic loot tables, but patience is a virtue and you need to work up to it. The warrior in the PuG was hoping for the epic Axe to drop off Loken, but really he should've identified something in between that and what he had as a stepping stone because he was hopelessly under-geared (classic line from my guild when I posted the run's dps chart "OMG replace replace!!").

The other thing you should do is read up on the instance before you run it. WoWWiki is an awesome place for strategies (I'm sure there are others). Even if you've no idea what is being talked about, at least this will give you something to start with. 

Everyday tasks

One of the things about WoW that I love is that there's always stuff to do. Some of it isn't as fun as other stuff, but it all has some sort of rewarding payoff at the end. At the moment, I'm leveling my mining and jewelcrafting when I don't feel like instancing. The mining can be a bit of a drudge, though it is relaxing just looping around in circles watching the minimap for yellow dots. I am really enjoying leveling jewelcrafting as it's something completely new to me. The other great thing is that jc has the promise of some nice bop gear at high levels.

One thing I try to do religiously every day are some daily quests that give rep. The quests for the Sons of Hodir are the most important because of the shoulder enchant, and I do the daily for the Kal'uk as I want to get exhalted for the Pengu egg. I'm still doing the Wyrmrest one even though I'm revered, I guess just because it's on the way to the other daily.

At this stage I'm relying on tabard rep to get me up with the Argent Crusade as it can be a bit of a pain to do the Icecrown dailies and I haven't ventured into Zul'drak yet as I'm waiting for Jame to release his guide for there.