Any US Alliance Death Knights out there want to beat up Arthas (for the first time or again?)
Sunday 5 May at 10:00 pm EDT, I'm hoping to clear ICC with 24 of my newest DK buddies. Interested? Check out OpenRaid!
oneCof5#1879
Showing posts with label wrath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wrath. Show all posts
30 April 2013
19 February 2013
Godmode in ICC
Years ago, I was playing Diablo II quite a bit. I know, I know, that was a decade ago. That's not my point. The point is that D2 had an Easter Egg or cheat depending upon your perspective that allowed your character to become invincible and unable to be killed. I remember having a ton of fun blowing through content knowing I was unable to die.
But this is a WoW blog, and there are no cheats within Azeroth!
Ah, true. But, tell me.... have you taken a raid to Icecrown Citadel lately? I've set up some weekly meta runs (we've done Glory of the Ulduar Raider and now working on Glory of the Icecrown Raider) for the old drake achievements.
At level 90, the fights, even at Heroic mode, are trivial. However, I would not say they are all brainless. Actually, the largest challenge on some fights is to not to too much damage! Consider our guild fun run Sunday night...
But then, dealing with Lady Deathwisper's Full House proved to be a bit more of a challenge. We had to wipe the first attempt because we pushed her into phase II before we had enough of the cultists up to qualify for the achievement. The act of wiping required the enrage timer to actually incur enough damage to offset our warrior's regen (thanks to Second Wind)! The second attempt on Lady D went as follows: a single hunter dropped her shield to 20% and stopped. Nobody else did ANYTHING but get wailed on by adds. After three rounds of adds spawned (we didn't count the individual adds, just the number of waves), then we opened up on Lady D and got the achievement.
The gunship battle went as follows: a warlock and a hunter jumped across and stayed across. The pets fought Saurfang for aggro. Pretty much cakewalk for I'm on a Boat.
Same for Saurfang himself. I think we killed him before he could even summon blood beasts, so I've Gone and Made a Mess should be a done deal.
We did hit a challenge on Blood Queen Lana'thel, however. There were 4 people that needed to be bitten for the Once Bitten, Twice Shy achievement. We almost had to wipe because we dropped the boss to 20% before the second vampire bite. It doesn't sound hard, but it is difficult to resist hitting back and just letting a boss wail on you, but that is exactly what we had to do. We're coming back for the 2nd kill needed for those that don't want to be bitten, but that should be a bit easier to do.
I was personally missing All You Can Eat, but at 90 this one's also a no-brainer. Just DPS. You'll kill Sindragosa before the stacks even have a chance to reach that high.
We failed because we had two plagues active, one at 14 stacks and one at 18 stacks, but that didnt count. However, we did earn Neck-Deep in Vile because we pushed the encounter directly from Phase I / Transition to the end. Huh? Yeah... Ranged stood in the Remorseless Winter and kept beating on Lich King, getting him to 10% and the insta-death before we even saw Phase II with Valks or Phase III with Vile Spirits.
I know this content is old. I know the Lich King has been solod. But you know what? It was a TON of fun to casually go back and farm achievements for guildies that had never seen the content. I still love Icecrown and it remains one of my favorite raids in the game.
But this is a WoW blog, and there are no cheats within Azeroth!
Ah, true. But, tell me.... have you taken a raid to Icecrown Citadel lately? I've set up some weekly meta runs (we've done Glory of the Ulduar Raider and now working on Glory of the Icecrown Raider) for the old drake achievements.
At level 90, the fights, even at Heroic mode, are trivial. However, I would not say they are all brainless. Actually, the largest challenge on some fights is to not to too much damage! Consider our guild fun run Sunday night...
The Lower Spire
Getting Boned by Lord Marrowgar was pretty much a given. All you have to do is DPS the boss. At level 90, he dropped before he could cast a single bonespike.But then, dealing with Lady Deathwisper's Full House proved to be a bit more of a challenge. We had to wipe the first attempt because we pushed her into phase II before we had enough of the cultists up to qualify for the achievement. The act of wiping required the enrage timer to actually incur enough damage to offset our warrior's regen (thanks to Second Wind)! The second attempt on Lady D went as follows: a single hunter dropped her shield to 20% and stopped. Nobody else did ANYTHING but get wailed on by adds. After three rounds of adds spawned (we didn't count the individual adds, just the number of waves), then we opened up on Lady D and got the achievement.
The gunship battle went as follows: a warlock and a hunter jumped across and stayed across. The pets fought Saurfang for aggro. Pretty much cakewalk for I'm on a Boat.
Same for Saurfang himself. I think we killed him before he could even summon blood beasts, so I've Gone and Made a Mess should be a done deal.
The Plagueworks
For Rotface's Dances with Ooozes and Festergut's Flu Shot Shortage, all you do is burn the boss. On Professor Putricide, whoever drives the Abomination should just slurp up slimes. Again, the Professor was only able to summon one ooze before he died, so this one is pretty straight-forward and you'll easily get Nausea, Heartburn, Indegestion....The Crimson Hall
On the blood council, The Orb Whisperer is a DPS race. Instead of using the intended mechanics of collecting blueberry adds and taunting, keeping the beach balls up in the air.... Pssh. Just nuke Prince Keleseth. The encounter will be over before another prince activates!We did hit a challenge on Blood Queen Lana'thel, however. There were 4 people that needed to be bitten for the Once Bitten, Twice Shy achievement. We almost had to wipe because we dropped the boss to 20% before the second vampire bite. It doesn't sound hard, but it is difficult to resist hitting back and just letting a boss wail on you, but that is exactly what we had to do. We're coming back for the 2nd kill needed for those that don't want to be bitten, but that should be a bit easier to do.
The Frostwing Halls
We failed the Portal Jockey achievement because we missed a portal. Next time, we'll have a dedicated healer take the portals and then back up DPS jump in so that we get each portal as it pops. The adds outside are trivial, so DPS just unleash and it should be cake. Meh, live and learn.I was personally missing All You Can Eat, but at 90 this one's also a no-brainer. Just DPS. You'll kill Sindragosa before the stacks even have a chance to reach that high.
The Frozen Throne
Finally, the Lich King. We were going for Been Waiting a Long Time for This and too just concentrate on the Meta instead of also dealing with shadow traps from heroic mode, but we still failed the meta even though we killed the King. After reading up, the approach we'll take next week is as follows:- Use 2 dedicated tanks (we used a DPS warrior, and while health wasn't an issue, aggro was).
- One tank is on the Lich King (solo taunt). Second tank targets all the ghouls (little ones and big ones).
- When Necrotic Plague is cast the first two times, those raid members run away from the entire raid to be dispelled -- so that the Plague disappears. When the third plague is cast, that raid member runs to the growing pile of ghouls to be dispelled (so that the Plague jumps to a ghoul).
- Each remaining Plague that is cast needs to run out of the raid and get dispelled so there is only only Plague active.
- Wait... well for a Long Time. The achievement is named appropriately.
- Don't rely on the Lich King buff from Plague to monitor the number of stacks --- try to monitor on the actual impacted ghouls (this is where we failed!)
- One Plague hits 30, then burn Lich King.
We failed because we had two plagues active, one at 14 stacks and one at 18 stacks, but that didnt count. However, we did earn Neck-Deep in Vile because we pushed the encounter directly from Phase I / Transition to the end. Huh? Yeah... Ranged stood in the Remorseless Winter and kept beating on Lich King, getting him to 10% and the insta-death before we even saw Phase II with Valks or Phase III with Vile Spirits.
I know this content is old. I know the Lich King has been solod. But you know what? It was a TON of fun to casually go back and farm achievements for guildies that had never seen the content. I still love Icecrown and it remains one of my favorite raids in the game.
24 August 2012
Shared Topic: Flavors of WoW
The weekly Blog Azeroth Shared Topic comes from Cymre:
First of all, I have to admit I'm partial to vanilla. Both in WoW and in ice cream. And, if I'm buying ice cream, I'm partial to Breyer's brand, so shameless liberation of images from breyers.com.
I really enjoyed the vanilla expansion set before it got 'remodeled' in Cataclysm. I leveled both Horde and Alliance characters, and I hung out in the Plaguelands all through my late 50's because that lore with the Argent Crusade was so cool.
My point? There's absolutely nothing wrong with vanilla. It's perfect all by itself.
So what happens next? Well, there's a new threat of the Burning Legion and a long lost space continent of the Outland.
Blizzard added some new races: Dranei and Blood Elves. These races led to additional enemies (Sunwell in particular for the Elves).
In my frozen dessert analogy, we've got a baseline of vanilla, and now we're adding some chunks to it.
Who doesn't like chunks in their ice cream?
That formula of Burning Crusade worked; you could level up in Azeroth and then hit the Outland for end game. Well, why not do it again?
I view Wrath as the same formula: Blizzard took the existing game, and mixed it up some more by adding a frozen continent back in Azeroth and a repackaging of the Plaguelands factions to battle the scourge.
This isn't a bad thing. If I'm not picking up Vanilla at the market, I'm grabbing Mint Chocolate Chip. It's still damn tasty.
Wrath was FUN! I like the factions based on tabards. I liked daily raid and instance quests. There was a lot of good stuff to do in Wrath.
It's like Chocolate Chip, cooled with Mint. Get it?
For whatever reason, someone thinks vanilla is boring. So Blizzard tries to reinvent vanilla. We get a new talent structure. We get flooding of old zones. We remodel some capital cities.
It's vanilla, repackaged, but the final product isn't any better than the original.
Think back to the eighties (those of you around then). Remember "New Coke"? What a flop that was? The back-pedaling the Coca-Cola company had to do once they realized that New Coke sucked?
That's Cata in a nutshell for me.
So let's get back to basics and add to the elements that work.
Enter MoP.
If I'm a marketing guy at Breyers, I know that French vanilla bombed. Back to the old drawing board.
So what do people like?
They like vanilla. Well, lets add in both chocolate and strawberry to that mix. We have always had Alliance and Horde. The've fought.
Put them back into confrontation on those classic lines; Chocolate is flavored vanilla. It's still a simple flavor, but it's a new twist.
Now, add some Pandas that don't know which side they're going to take and offer a disinterested position (the Strawberry).
We have an upheaval. A cleansing. (Seriously - take a bite of vanilla or chocolate, and then take a bite of strawberry. The berry washes away the others!)
Now, here's where it gets fun... When I eat a bowl of mixed flavor ice cream, sometimes I'll eat up all the vanilla, then the chocolate, then the strawberry. Other times, I'll mix 'em all up into one flavor and enjoy the soup. MoP will give me that option! It looks to have flexibility to essentially do what you want to do.
It would not be uncommon to hear about the initial release of World of Warcraft as Vanilla or Classic. In terms of ice cream or gelato (which is my preference), Vanilla was once considered the most popular flavour of it’s time. So if Vanilla represents Classic WoW, what flavours could represent the following expansions?Really?!? A post topic combining ice cream and Warcraft? Epic win!
Original
Flavor: Vanilla
 |
| Vanilla |
I really enjoyed the vanilla expansion set before it got 'remodeled' in Cataclysm. I leveled both Horde and Alliance characters, and I hung out in the Plaguelands all through my late 50's because that lore with the Argent Crusade was so cool.
My point? There's absolutely nothing wrong with vanilla. It's perfect all by itself.
Burning Crusade
Flavor: Chocolate Chip
 |
| Chocolate Chip |
Blizzard added some new races: Dranei and Blood Elves. These races led to additional enemies (Sunwell in particular for the Elves).
In my frozen dessert analogy, we've got a baseline of vanilla, and now we're adding some chunks to it.
Who doesn't like chunks in their ice cream?
Wrath of the Lich King
Flavor: Mint Chocolate Chip
 |
| Mint Chocolate Chip |
I view Wrath as the same formula: Blizzard took the existing game, and mixed it up some more by adding a frozen continent back in Azeroth and a repackaging of the Plaguelands factions to battle the scourge.
This isn't a bad thing. If I'm not picking up Vanilla at the market, I'm grabbing Mint Chocolate Chip. It's still damn tasty.
Wrath was FUN! I like the factions based on tabards. I liked daily raid and instance quests. There was a lot of good stuff to do in Wrath.
It's like Chocolate Chip, cooled with Mint. Get it?
Cataclysm
Flavor: French Vanilla
 |
| French Vanilla |
It's vanilla, repackaged, but the final product isn't any better than the original.
Think back to the eighties (those of you around then). Remember "New Coke"? What a flop that was? The back-pedaling the Coca-Cola company had to do once they realized that New Coke sucked?
That's Cata in a nutshell for me.
So let's get back to basics and add to the elements that work.
Mists of Pandaria
Flavor: Neopolitan (Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry)
 |
| Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry |
If I'm a marketing guy at Breyers, I know that French vanilla bombed. Back to the old drawing board.
So what do people like?
They like vanilla. Well, lets add in both chocolate and strawberry to that mix. We have always had Alliance and Horde. The've fought.
Put them back into confrontation on those classic lines; Chocolate is flavored vanilla. It's still a simple flavor, but it's a new twist.
Now, add some Pandas that don't know which side they're going to take and offer a disinterested position (the Strawberry).
We have an upheaval. A cleansing. (Seriously - take a bite of vanilla or chocolate, and then take a bite of strawberry. The berry washes away the others!)
Now, here's where it gets fun... When I eat a bowl of mixed flavor ice cream, sometimes I'll eat up all the vanilla, then the chocolate, then the strawberry. Other times, I'll mix 'em all up into one flavor and enjoy the soup. MoP will give me that option! It looks to have flexibility to essentially do what you want to do.
Conclusion
Not only can't I wait for MoP, I need to make a run to the store for some frozen desserts.30 July 2012
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck
Unless you're oblivious, Blizzard made a small official announcement last week that the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, will be released on September 25, 2012. With that announcement, Deathwing is officially a Lame Duck, joining other has-beens like Arthas - The Lich King and Illidan Stormrage. According to Wikipedia, a Lame Duck is:
Well, almost a lame duck. Deathwing wasn't really elected; he sort of proclaimed himself as the new bad ass on the block and melted a few towers in Stormwind to prove his superiority. The comparison falters further when you consider that his successor is not really known, either. With MoP, we know that Deathwing will fade into past-expansion obscurity, but what we don't know is who (or what) will replace him as the end-game bad guy. The character development of that end-game bad guy will dramatically impact my enjoyment of the game during MoP.
my addiction playing WoW, it was just after the release of TBC. I leveled up in Vanilla zones when most of the veterans were already going after 60+ content. Sadly, by the time I dinged 60, nobody was running older instances. I had heard all about Ragnaros and C'Thun, but I never got to fight them. As a result, my experience in Vanilla zones has just been about leveling.
Instead, I jumped into the Outland kept on chugging. But, with all the lore that I saw in Outland, it all pointed to Illidan. The trailers told me I wasn't worthy. The majority of Shadowmoon Valley quests pointed me towards an ultimate encounter with him in the Black Temple. Sure, there were other raid bosses, but Illidan was the star. After I finally dinged 70, the goal became to get into a raid group to actually work towards the final progression of fighting Illidan. There was a clear end goal to reach with the expansion, and that goal was reinforced as the primary story line.
Fast forward to November of 2008 and Wrath is released. I loved how in Wrath, every single Northrend zone had an element of foreshadowing the ultimate encounter with Arthas. Not only was he the star in the trailer, but you saw him as a character element to quests everywhere in Northrend. Arthas' fall from grace even had an instance dedicated to it (The Culling of Stratholme). Similar to the BC expansion, in Wrath you knew exactly who the end boss was. But unlike BC, you actually saw that end boss in your leveling experience before raiding was even a possibility.
Part of my ambivalence in Cata has been that it lacked, in my view, that in your face reinforcement of Deathwing's superiority and why he's the end dude. Cataclysm totally changed the environment of the old world, and you know that Deathwing is the end boss because he's on your login screen and the star of some cool trailers. Also, you can get crispified if you're lucky and get an achievement for your death at his 'hands', but other than that the only time I really saw Deathwing was by going back and leveling alts. The quests in the Badlands with Rhea and the hysterical variations of The Day that Deathwing Came are awesome. But I never saw Deathwing on my level 80 as he was going through the 'newer' level appropriate content except on a brief tour of Mount Hyjal when Ragnaros rose.
In cata, I did know that Deathwing was the boss, but I rarely saw him the way I did with Arthas in Wrath. It lessend his importance to me as an end boss.By the time LFR was introduced and the final encounter with Deathwing released, I just didn't care.
I'm really hoping that Mists expands the best elements of Wrath; questlines and lore that diverge but yet all lead up to a worthy villain. As far as possibilities at this point on who (or what) the end boss will be? From teasers and press, it looks like Garrosh Hellscream will fill at least a minor role, and I can't wait to see how that develops. I've never liked Garrosh. He's a bit over the top, even for an Orc.
... an elected official who is approaching the end of his or her tenure, and especially an official whose successor has already been elected.
 |
| Cyron on Flickr via everystockphoto |
Bosses are Goals
When I startedInstead, I jumped into the Outland kept on chugging. But, with all the lore that I saw in Outland, it all pointed to Illidan. The trailers told me I wasn't worthy. The majority of Shadowmoon Valley quests pointed me towards an ultimate encounter with him in the Black Temple. Sure, there were other raid bosses, but Illidan was the star. After I finally dinged 70, the goal became to get into a raid group to actually work towards the final progression of fighting Illidan. There was a clear end goal to reach with the expansion, and that goal was reinforced as the primary story line.
Fast forward to November of 2008 and Wrath is released. I loved how in Wrath, every single Northrend zone had an element of foreshadowing the ultimate encounter with Arthas. Not only was he the star in the trailer, but you saw him as a character element to quests everywhere in Northrend. Arthas' fall from grace even had an instance dedicated to it (The Culling of Stratholme). Similar to the BC expansion, in Wrath you knew exactly who the end boss was. But unlike BC, you actually saw that end boss in your leveling experience before raiding was even a possibility.
Part of my ambivalence in Cata has been that it lacked, in my view, that in your face reinforcement of Deathwing's superiority and why he's the end dude. Cataclysm totally changed the environment of the old world, and you know that Deathwing is the end boss because he's on your login screen and the star of some cool trailers. Also, you can get crispified if you're lucky and get an achievement for your death at his 'hands', but other than that the only time I really saw Deathwing was by going back and leveling alts. The quests in the Badlands with Rhea and the hysterical variations of The Day that Deathwing Came are awesome. But I never saw Deathwing on my level 80 as he was going through the 'newer' level appropriate content except on a brief tour of Mount Hyjal when Ragnaros rose.
In cata, I did know that Deathwing was the boss, but I rarely saw him the way I did with Arthas in Wrath. It lessend his importance to me as an end boss.By the time LFR was introduced and the final encounter with Deathwing released, I just didn't care.
Hopes for MoP
So I'm looking forward to MoP and a new end game target. I'm really hoping to see Blizzard develop a worthy villain and that my questing experience introduces me to that villain's rise to power -- as well as provides justification on why he needs to be dealt with. I'm taking encouragement from the direction of zone-based questing -- I won't have to complete an single quest line story within the zone, but I'll complete multiple (smaller) quest line stories within the zones.I'm really hoping that Mists expands the best elements of Wrath; questlines and lore that diverge but yet all lead up to a worthy villain. As far as possibilities at this point on who (or what) the end boss will be? From teasers and press, it looks like Garrosh Hellscream will fill at least a minor role, and I can't wait to see how that develops. I've never liked Garrosh. He's a bit over the top, even for an Orc.
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