Category: general

Gutted.

Kurn / / facepalm, gear, general, paladins, ramblings

I am absolutely gutted by some of the paladin changes coming up for 3.2. Like, just ruined.

  • Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
  • Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

30%?! THIRTY PERCENT?! Are you KIDDING me?! I was playing a paladin when Illumination was at 100%. I was there when they nerfed it to 50% and then reconsidered and buffed it back to 60%. I am STILL bitter about THAT nerf and that was two years ago! And now they’re halving THAT number?!

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

Honestly, I know a lot of people complain about stuff like this, but this is proof that no one at Blizzard plays a holy paladin in Ulduar. If they did, this wouldn’t happen.

I feel like we, the players, are being punished because Blizzard itemized us TOO WELL in tier 7, which is why we’re looking at T8 and going “hah, as IF,” and all kinds of plate Mp5 gear is getting DEed. The answer, Blizzard, is NOT to nerf the living shit out of the class. The answer is to ITEMIZE BETTER for T9. Give up T8 as not remotely worth our time and have Tier 9 be *awesome* for us so we WILL give up Tier 7.

5% less intellect, half the mana regen I normally get… do you REALLY think that’s the way to get me to let go of my T7 4-piece bonus? NO. 5% off the cost of Holy Light? I’m going to cling to that even MORE tightly now.

Oh my God, the sheer rage and disappointment is just… wow.

… in good news, Yogg to 5% last night.

But OH MY GOD, Illumination to 30%?!?!?!

Must breathe and later compose a forum post to post on the cesspool that is any official Blizzard forum, in the hopes that this madness can be stopped.

Bet you $10 that they revert it to 45% or so and everyone takes it as a victory, too. Everyone except me, that is. Fuckers.

Woot. (Ulduar Reset 6, Night 2)

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

Went in, did Hodir (1-shot), Thorim (3-shot — with a new tanking tunnel situation) and Freya (1-shot) and then worked on General Vezax.

Got him DOWN.

Most hilarious part of the raid: someone asked if I’d gotten a GM to hack my account and add more mana to my mana pool. Why? I had 30989 mana while raid buffed with:

Flask of Distilled Wisdom, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild and Arcane Intellect.

Then I switched my gear around: T8 chest, 4-pc T7.5, Greaves of the Rockmender, plus my Figurine – Sapphire Owl (with 2×16 int) and… the pièce de resistance… the Pendant of the Violet Eye. That’s right. From my very first Aran kill. Of course, I’m also a JC, so I have 3×27 int gems in various spots in my gear and I’m an alchemist so instead of 65 int from the flask, I get about 98 intellect, with help from Mixology AND Divine Intellect.

Hawt.

So that’s two new bosses in two nights. Things are going well, progression-wise. Yogg-Saron next. It’ll be nice to get Sara to shut the hell up. She’s more annoying than Jaina was.

In other news, some old friends from Apotheosis have made alts on my new server and so I’m transferring my shammy over before she’s hit 77. She’s, uh, still 70. /sigh

But she brings with her a ton of Northern Spices, some gems, a frozen orb, some odds and ends, and 1400g. Not that my pally really needs more money, but it’ll go towards getting the shammy epic flying and cold-weather flying at 77.

Ulduar, Reset 5, Night 1

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

So, Mimiron didn’t die on Monday. Still not entirely sure what the reason for the suckage was, but there was definite suckage going on.

That said, they made me an officer. My friend Majik tells me that I fail at being mediocre. I blame my all-girls, private school education, which had a focus on leadership. I had no idea I had leadership skills until a few years ago, but hey, apparently I do and apparently they’re not all that rusty.

“While we wait, I have a quick announcement. I’m happy to welcome a new person to our Officer corp. She has exhibited exemplary skills and will be a strong asset to the Guild leadership.”

Anyways, that was Monday.

Tuesday, the RL decided to go after FL with towers up — hard mode. So we spent about an hour and a half or so working on +2 towers (Mimiron’s and Thorim’s) before just ruining Mimiron’s tower and doing +1. And I did it in a siege engine, completing my 3-car garage achievement. Woot!

heroic-3car

Then we tried 4-minute Ignis, also known as Heroic: Stokin’ the Furnace, without a ton of success. So we just killed him after about 8 or 9 attempts and then went across to kill Razorscale. After that 1-shot, we had a couple tries on XT before getting him down and called it there.

And then, one of my old healers from my old guild got an invite to my new guild. He’d applied a couple days ago and we’d had the interview on Monday evening, and he transferred over last night. I cannot describe the awesomeness of  having another healer there that I know I can trust. Healing is definitely a weak spot in my current guild and I hope to help fix that… but having this particular healer with us will make a huge difference to my own personal attitude, primarily because he is AWESOME and also because I know how he heals and he knows how I heal. That familiarity is going to be nice — I won’t have to watch his targets out of the corner of my eye, nor will I worry about him missing Pain Suppression.

In fairness to the healers in my current guild, I trust two of the priests a lot, but it’s just not been the same as my old group 4 from Apotheosis. I mean, there was me, this priest, a resto shammy, another paladin (usually) and sometimes a resto druid or another priest. Group 4 was the healer group, usually. And it was fun! We bonded. Group 4 represent! Never mind that this priest is the ONLY member of Group 4 I still speak to… It’s nice to have an actual friend over there.

I feel moderately bad that he’s come over to my new server, though. I left behind a lot of friends on ET, people I’d played with for years. I really needed a fresh start and to establish myself as a healer, not as a raid leader or officer or GM. And I still feel bad about leaving the server and all those people. So that my guild is an opportunity for this priest makes me feel like I poached him, although I didn’t. He told me he wasn’t happy in his current raiding guild and wanted a place that approached it a little more like a job, and was my guild recruiting?

Given that our weak spot is DEFINITELY the healers, I asked him if he was sure, then told the recruitment officer about the possibility. Then he apped and the members were like “interview immediately” and “not sure why he’s got spirit when he’s disc, but other than that, looks good” and stuff. We had his interview and he was offered a spot and that was that.

Hopefully he’ll get into the raid tonight. I’d love to heal with him as soon as tonight. I imagine he’d be on the Steelbreaker tank with me, on the active Kologarn tank with me and I might see if we can get him to run the tunnel on Thorim, although he’s never done it before. Well, that might be a little mean. ;) Really, a holy priest would be ideal for the tunnel with all the prayer of mending, renew, shield, CoH goodness. But I don’t have that many issues, personally, and even a disc priest would have more mobility than me.

Anyways, I ramble, therefore I am.

OH, and at least ONE of my guildies has discovered this blog. I’m kind of glad I’ve left all kinds of names out of my various bitchings. ;) /wave to M. ;)

Ulduar Reset 3, Nights 2-3; Noble Garden & Orphan's Week

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar, world events

Dear Lord, so much to catch up on.

Basically, nothing happened in Ulduar on Wednesday. Except that we died. A lot. On Thorim. What a bitch that guy is.

Thursday, we got Thorim down after about 2 hours, after some practice with a slight change in our strategy that involved me, a holy paladin, being the sole healer in the tunnel. As opposed to Wednesday night. When a holy priest and a resto druid were in there. Or as opposed to earlier Thursday night, when just the one holy priest was in there.

<drums fingers on desk>

Right, so you substitute the LEAST MOBILE healer in the entire game for the two MOST mobile healers in the game for a portion of the fight that includes a lot of running around.

<drums fingers on desk>

I had a couple of hairy moments in general, sure. And one pull, I lost my tunnel tank entirely — looks like it’s because he had two adds on him at once. Maybe a mage screwed up?

Anyways, in the span of 3.5 seconds, he took 45000+ damage and was only healed for 5519 from a non-crit Holy Shock, about halfway through. Nothing I could do, I was still casting.

But apart from that, it worked really well.

So here’s my question: Am I really that awesome or do the TWO healers who did the job on Wednesday truly suck? Because, really, there is no WAY I should have done better in the tunnel than either of them. But I kept the group up pretty much the whole evening. Lost the tank once, lost one mage once. Aaaaaand that was it.

I mean… priests just have way too many tools to not get through that. Prayer of Mending. Renew. Power Word: Shield. Seriously. Just… so many tools. Meanwhile, a druid may have fewer tools, but they have the mobility that I lack. While strafing left and right, they can use Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Rejuvenation… I have Holy Shock followed by an instant Flash of Light IF Holy Shock crits.

So, really. I don’t get it.

Anyways, due to the fact that I was in the tunnel group (and will likely be stuck in the tunnel healing forever, now), I got an achievement.

heroic-takeyouallon

Of course, our Thorim kill was extremely messy. How messy? Four people standing, that’s how messy.

heroic-thorimdead

1 elemental shammy, 1 enhancement shammy, 1 warlock and 1 disc priest.

This is how I died:

Thorim Chain Lightning hits Madrana for 52531 Nature. (23927 Resisted)

Yeah, he kind of enraged, too.

Due to various circumstances, I had to log at that point for over an hour, came back and they just had killed Ignis and then called the raid. No raid Saturday this week or next, so my next raid is Monday.

Which is good, because hi, Noble Garden and Orphan’s Week, you pieces of crap.

Like I said in a previous entry, Kurn gets the world events and their titles, Madrana gets raid stuff.

Thank God, because no WAY was I going to do Noble Garden on Madrana after doing it on Kurn. NO WAY.

Camping/running around for eggs? Dumbest thing in the entire universe.

Laying an egg in Un’Goro when you can only turn into a bunny when a friend casts it on you? Also dumb.

I managed to get it all done, but WOW, did it suck.

kurn-ng

Last achievement was Desert Rose, dropping a flower just across the border from Tanaris in Thousand Needles.

Which meant that I was now free to focus on Orphan’s Week. Oh, the joy.

It’s actually not a hard bunch of achievements… just do some dailies with your orphan, eat some food… and do some battlegrounds. Oh, God, the pain.

First of all, Arathi Basin’s assault a flag is stupidly easy.

1) Get into a fresh AB.

2) Run like hell for Stables, make sure you’re mounted and have your Orphan out.

3) Cap Stables.

Seriously, it was that easy. Not so bad, right? Well, not yet.

WSG’s return the flag sucked. I played like, four games (I know, I know, but remember that I hate to PVP and that four WSG games is equivalent to 100 matches for anyone normal!) and finally got that portion of the achievement while clicking so furiously on the horde PROT WARRIOR with 45k health that I didn’t even realize I’d gotten it when I saw the flag vanish.

kurn-flag-wsg

Woot!

Incidentally, since I don’t BG much (read: at all), I was amused to get:

kurn-damagecontrol

300,000 damage or healing in a single BG on players. Sweet. I always thought I’d get this on Madrana, since I have been known to go in and healbot through things on very rare occasions, but nope, she doesn’t have it yet and Kurn got it tonight.

AV took me three turtles to get the achievement. I did that by miraculously getting Crusader Aura and jumping ahead to Iceblood Tower, hauling out my orphan on the way up and being the first to assult the flag by literally a second. Thank you, goodbye, /afk.

That means all I have left is the flag in EotS (uggggggh, I hate that place, but at least there are many, many flags in the course of one match) and Utgarde Pinnacle. Then I can actually finish the quests with my Draenei Orphan (already did the Human one) and then be done with this accursed holiday.

Probably doing a Naxx 25 tonight (Sunday) for fun — maybe I can actually get an upgraded ring or trinket, maybe my 7.5 chest?

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. :)