Category: general

Ow, my face.

Kurn / / gear, general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

What a week it’s been in Ulduar. We one-shotted Flame Leviathan, spent the majority of the rest of that raid (Tuesday) wiping on Razorscale. Wednesday, we got Razorscale and went on to XT-002. We spent an hour and a half wiping on XT on Wednesday, 4 hours on Thursday and 3 hours on Saturday. Then we spent an hour wiping on Ignis trash and Ignis himself. Then we said screw that, and went to Council, where we spent an hour and got them down. Monday, we walked in and worked on Kologarn, eventually getting him down.

Kologarn down

That’s me, the pally with the wings, on top of the head. I felt like sing-songing “I’m the king of the caaaaaaastle”. That was pretty darn cool, even if I did die on the kill. Actually, I got killed, then got a BR, and then instantly killed again. Way to go, AOE damage, way to go.

And then we came to Auriaya.

She can kiss my ass.

We finally got some semblance of a pull working, after a ton of wipes. Really, it’s the coordination of the Maulgar pull, with the randomness of Archimonde’s fire/etc pulled in, because if all four of her adds hit the same tank, guess what? That’s right. You don’t have that tank anymore. But we finally got the pull mostly down (it involved, two death and decays, a zombie pet and a consecration, plus liberal use of Guardian Spirit) and then, after a couple of attempts, I mis-timed my heal.

Auriaya Pull

Oh God, my face. 22363 Physical, 31779 Overkill, Critical. OW. I was VERY careful in timing my heals thereafter. :P

So, with regards to my new bracers, what I ended up doing was plugging in a +27 intellect gem in there, replacing the +27 intellect in my shoulders with a regular +16 intellect gem since it’s a yellow socket, after all, compared to the blue socket on the bracers. I gained about 800 mana, a bit of haste, lost just a smidgen of spellpower and lost about half a percentage of crit. So I now have 23249 mana, unbuffed, along with 2168 spellpower, 29.07% crit (34.07% holy, 40.07% holy light/holy shock) and 520 haste (20.62%).  Which, you know, is pretty sweet. I’m also casting 1.3-1.4 second Holy Lights or something ludicrous like that.

That is, as long as we have a damn ret pally in the raid and I can manage to keep JotP up. Not gonna lie, it’s really hard to do on Auriaya. I feel like I never stopped casting except when I was feared.

Other stats of the night:

– Raid length: 4h

– Number of times I died: 35

– Number of times I died through my own stupidity: 2 (mistimed heal on Auriaya and I got hit by eyebeams and failed to notice on Kologarn)

– Symbols of kings gone through: 394. I remember when I’d bring 300 to each raid in BC and would go through MAYBE 180 at most. (I tend to bless kings on 10 classes now. on. each. pull. Thankfully, I’m glyphed for it!)

– Imperial Manta Steaks eaten: 35

– Flasks of the Frost Wyrm taken: 2 (I love mixology)

Anonymous WWS, and PRAISE JESUS, they’ve started splitting bosses again! I’m Gemini again, BTW. How I managed to do 3.5 million more healing than the other holy paladin, I don’t know. How I managed to beat any priests, I don’t know. Must be all that haste? Heh.

Anyways, small patch coming out today, we’ll all need to respec once again. BE CAREFUL where you assign your points and check your glyphs FIRST to make sure you’re matching the right points with the right glyphs.

Then tonight, back to Ulduar. Hopefully we’ll get FL and Razorscale down quickly and be able to work on XT-002. It would be excellent to down them ALL on Tuesday and then work on perfecting Council and Kologarn before spending the rest of the raid nights working on Auriaya, Thorim, Hodir, Freya and the others.

Ugh.

Kurn / / gear, general, raiding, ulduar

Working on Kologarn.

Habs lose their third playoff game.

Makes me miss the days of wiping on Vashj while the Habs beat the Bruins last year.

Even if we did just down Kologarn and I just got loot. Yay for Unfaltering Armguards? More haste and more spellpower than my last bracers, off Razuvious (which are mail), but less crit. Which makes me cranky. Maybe a nice +27 crit rating gem in there? Hm.

/faceplant

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings

What I miss most about being GM of my own guild: Setting the hours.

Tonight, we raided from 7pm-9pm on the PTR and then raided on live from 9-11:30pm. I was on standby during the PTR raid on Iron Council because we couldn’t get 25 people to show up (it’s a PST server so a lot of people are on the West Coast), and I’d already seen the fight, so I didn’t need to see it again to gain experience.

Staying awake for 2 hours of basically doing nothing is not easy. ;)

And then, after that, getting thrown into Construct, Spider, Sapph and KT, short healers (we did basically everything with 4 healers), the adrenaline’s going and all… and I could honestly just collapse right this instant, if I didn’t have crap to do.

Four and a half hours of raiding or at least paying attention to vent and not randomly going AFK or whatever… it’s a little much for me. But it’s a lot better than the alternative of not raiding at all. I’m not really complaining, I’m just commenting.

And Patch FINALLY dropped his damn belt for me, thus allowing me to get the Epic achievement. Wootage.

Also, I’m really frighteningly close to getting 1s GCD in a full raid buff situation. No wonder I actually manage to go OOM if I’m not careful.

Okay, enough talk. Stuff to do, sleep to get.

Today's Edition of Kurn is a Shammy Noob

Kurn / / general, ramblings, shamans

Around level 65, I soloed Banthar, Bach’lor, Gutripper and Tusker, with no issues.

I received the Totem of the Plains as my reward from good ol’ Hemet Nesingwary.

Now, I’ve been master looter of more than my fair shair of raids.  I saw the Totem of Healing Rains drop a dozen times, easily, watched as the Totem of the Maelstrom got DEed every time it dropped…

Never once did I pay any attention to the flavour text that says “Counts as an Air, Earth, Fire, and Water totem.” Nope. Not once. Not even when I got my own Totem of the Plains, my first relic item on my shammy.

Until I was chatting with a friend back on Eldre’Thalas who was like “you’re not still carrying your four totems around with you, are you?”

“… why wouldn’t I be? Don’t I need them in my inventory to be able to drop, you know, totems?”

“Do you have a relic?”

“Yes…”

“Kurn, read the relic.”

“Huh.”

So I put my totems in my bank (rather than destroying them on my friend’s advice) and proceeded to drop all my totems as if I still had all four in my inventory.

I love (and also hate) that this game is so vast that I still learn things about it three and a half years in. Like, things that aren’t even new. Relics were introduced when, pre-2.0? Way to go, me. Way to go.

Dang.

Kurn / / general, ramblings, shamans

Just dinged level 67 on the shaman. I have soloed all the Nesingwary quests and just now freed Corki for what is hopefully the very last time ever.

I really hate that guy.

Can’t wait to get Steve at level 68 after having gotten Josh at 66.

What’s that? You don’t know who Steve and Josh are?

Josh is the earth elemental shammies get at 66. A former guildie decided to name his Josh when he got him, as his brother had named his mage’s water elemental Billy. This guildie pondered for a while what to name the fire elemental.

After much discussion, he settled on Steve, in honour of pre-BC-era fire mage extraordinaire, Tandrace. Tan was a female toon but didn’t have a microphone so we always teased her about being some dude named Steve. To this day, Tan’s true gender remains a secret…

But instead of naming my earth and fire elementals something different (my mage’s water elemental, for example, is named Clyde), I elected to stick with Josh and Steve, if for no other reason than I <3 Tan and wish to pay her tribute. :)

Flasks and Elixir Mastery

Kurn / / alchemy, general, ptr

My paladin is an alchemist (and a jewelcrafter). Given that we can only use one potion during any encounter, I switched from potion mastery to elixir mastery right after 3.0 came out. It seemed pointless to proc mana potions that I could no longer chug.

The latest build of the PTR, build 9722, changed how flasks were made, and their effect.

All flasks recipes will now create 2 flasks for the same

amount of ingredients but now last 1 hour instead of 2.

Now, that seems a little weird. Two flasks for 1 hour each instead of one flask for two hours. Gone are the days of popping one flask for the whole night’s raid, thought I! Not only that, but anyone who’s been stockpiling flasks is screwed over. :(

Anyways, as an alchemist, I wanted to check that I still get the double-length on Flasks of the Frost Wyrm, so instead of a 1-hour duration, as per the tooltip, I get a 2-hour duration. I do. Sweet.

But, a friend and I worried, what does this mean for elixir masters and flask procs? Since every flask creation is essentially a 2-proc, does this mean our procs are gone?

I decided to try it out on the PTR. I don’t have an herbalist who’s over level 66, at the moment, so I transferred a toon over who brought herbs with him straight from the live AH. I brought 20 Lichbloom, 20 Icethorn and 4 Frost Lotuses, the ingredients for four combines of Flask of the Frost Wyrm, which should get me 8 flasks, according to the new 2-for-1.

So, I made a flask.

You create: Flask of the Frost Wyrm x10.

You think I’m kidding. I don’t blame you. I didn’t believe it at first myself. So I screenshotted it.

10flasks

I think what happened there was an old-school 5-proc, which is the original flask I was making and then 4 extras. But since you now make 2 every time you make 1, the 4 extras turned into 8. And then I made 3 more flasks, each granting 2, which is not an extra proc.

That’s okay. 8 extra flasks at once is just fine for me, thanks. ;)

Now, whether or not this will go live… I’m unsure. I would think it would ruin alchemy. Flask prices would tumble because they’re so common, and they’d be worth less than the cost of the herbs to make them. At the same time, everyone would flask up for content, even the cheap people, if flasks were 10g apiece or something ridiculous.

I was honestly expecting procs to be 2-6, which means 0 extras to 4 extras, which is how it currently works on live.

So… I guess we’ll see what happens. :)

Edited to add:

They stack! Check out this stack of 16 flasks. (Other flasks in my bags have not been stacked together, this stack of 16 is the result of my 16 flasks made.)

stackflasks

So overpowered…

Kurn / / general, ramblings, shamans

Back in Burning Crusade, when warlocks were something to be feared, a guildie rolled a warlock alt and called it “Imop”.

“Imop?” I said.

“No, no,” he replied, “that’s I’m OP.”

I laughed.

On Sunday night, I seriously considered renaming my shaman alt “Imop”. Because she really, really is. How so?

I nearly soloed Overlord a couple of weeks ago. That was my first big hint.

The Jump-a-Tron quest in Nagrand? Well, I shocked myself by landing on the nest on the first attempt. And then hauled out the ol’ spirit wolves after the momma bird came looking for me.

12 seconds later, the ol’ momma bird was dead.

That was my second big hint.

What convinced me, though, was going out there at level 65 and soloing Banthar, a level 67 elite. 25 thousand health? So not a problem. Not with spirit wolves, Maelstrom… I didn’t even have to blow Shamanistic Rage.

I suspect that I’ll be able to get Bach’lor and the windroc elite (whose name escapes me at the moment) about as easily, and I now have an Earth Elemental Totem so I’m thinking Tusker will be pretty easy, too.

If all else fails, I have FROSTSHOCK and can kite her over to Telaar. ;)

I’m sure that shaman aren’t quite this OP in raid situations and stuff, but while levelling, putting out this kind of damage, while surviving? The only thing I’ve seen as OP as an enhancement shammy thus far is a ret paladin. (Soloing 3-man group quests in Dragonblight as a ret paladin in holy gear is hilarious.)

Good times!

Strange Sundays.

Kurn / / apotheosis, general, ramblings

It used to be that, back in my old guild, I’d have Sundays basically dedicated to guild stuff. From 3-4:30 (and later, 4-5:30), I’d have office hours, where people could chat with me, one-on-one about their concerns about the guild. I was also always available through private messages on our forum, but my office hours meant instant dialogue between me and the person or people in question. And through in-game chat or on Vent.

From 6-7:30 or so was our officer meeting. These meetings MOSTLY petered out after about an hour, but we’d chat a bit after that about lineups and swapping people in and out and stuff like that. By 7:30, most of that was done, people had been promoted or demoted, ginvited or whatever… and it would be time for invites for our raid at 7:45.

The raid would take place from 7:45-11:30, sometimes pushing on towards midnight. After the raid, I’d upload the combat log to WWS to parse, then haul ass to the corner store for a few minutes while it parsed, before it closed at midnight, then would sit for an hour or so going over the parse, either by myself or with other officers.

So basically, from 4pm until about 12:30 or 1am on Sundays, I was all guild, all the time, with a half-hour allocated for dinner between office hours and the officer meeting, which I usually didn’t even make use of for food.

Today, I woke up, worked from 2pm-4pm, sent my supervisor an email, played some WoW, talked on the phone, had dinner, watched TV and played a bit more WoW.

I’m not used to all this time to myself on Sundays. At one point, I was on the phone and went to myself “oh CRAP, I missed the officer– wait. There’s no more officer meetings for me. Huh.”

For the last 3 weeks or so, Sundays have been my own again. The last time Sundays were wholly mine, without the spectre of officer meetings and raids to come was probably in May of 2007.

I have a feeling it’ll take more than three weeks to break myself of the feeling that Sundays aren’t supposed to be mine.

Alts in the old world.

Kurn / / general, ramblings

It’s been a very long time since I first fell over the edge of the cliff that denotes the zone change between Tanaris and Un’Goro. Yes, I fell over the cliff. I figured there had to be a better way to get there somehow, but I didn’t particularly care. It was sometime back in early 2006 that I stumbled through Un’Goro for the first time and skinned the crap out of dinosaurs there, got chased down by elite dinosaurs I couldn’t feign through because of the fear and did that stupid escort quest, getting that goblin back to Marshall’s Refuge.

I even remember a time when there wasn’t a flight point at the Refuge.

I’ve been through Un’Goro on basically every toon I’ve levelled. That’s my hunter, my pally, my mage, my priest and now I’m going through there on my shaman, who is probably the highest level toon of them all who has ever spent time here. She’s currently 54.

It’s at this point that I really can realize and appreciate just how much solo content there was in the old world. My shammy has done exactly two instances — a quick ZF run-through and a much more painful Sunken Temple pug. I haven’t touched any of EPL, Felwood, Winterspring or Silithus. I haven’t been to Azshara or Burning Steppes. I’ve just quested through STV and Searing Gorge and Tanaris and now I’m in the Crater.

I realized how much content I hadn’t touched when I picked up the Linken questline down here in Un’Goro last night. I’ve never actually completed it on any of my characters, I don’t think, though I believe each of them started it. So I was at the raft, then back to Marshall’s Refuge, and Linken tells me to go to Donova Snowden in Winterspring. I was like, cool, no problem… and then realized, wait. I haven’t been to Felwood. I haven’t repped up with the Timbermaw to run through their tunnel. And by haven’t been to Felwood, I mean that. Completely undiscovered on this toon.

/facepalm

There’s just so much to DO, so much old school stuff that I enjoyed doing in the past or never quite got around to finishing. I honestly think I’m going to chill out in the old world well beyond level 58. Screw the Outlands, I’m going to work on Timbermaw to get to Winterspring, I’m going to quest my ass off in EPL, I’m going to finally finish Linken’s quest chain and I’m going to do all those grinding quests down in Burning Steppes. I wonder if Dragonkin Menace and ALL the subsequent quests leading to the Onyxia attunement have been removed. As much as I’ve cursed Marshall Windsor over the years, which is a lot, I think I’d be sad if they removed all those quests.

So onward I go, to do the Silithid quests in Un’Goro for the very first time. Bugs freak me out, so I’ve never really done much with that chain.

Kind of nifty that, despite playing for three and a half years, I’m still finding new content, even in the old world.