Monday, July 1, 2013

My strange pet battle addiction

I finally succumbed to pet battle. It all began when I did the achievement Raiding with leashes. I farmed the old raids for a couple of week but Chrominius wouldn't drop. I was tired of running Blackwing lair so I bought it on the AH. The problem is that he was level 15 and I couldn't learn him. So I decided to level a team.

I did the pet battle tamer quests and tried to collect as many different pets as I could. My team consisted of three rares: a black rat, an ash spiderling and Chrominius when I got access to it. Having a critter in my team wasn't the optimal choice tough because I was often faced against beast opponents.

A typical battle would be my spider attacking first: web, leech, poison, leech, web and so on, slowly draining my opponent health. My rat would then go, hopefully against another critter since he had an attack that was strong against his own kind. He would poison then stampede them wich leaves a powerful debuff on the ennemy that would double the damage of the following attacks. The only drawback was that to apply the debuff you had to do three round of swarm wich do rather weak damage. I tried to apply it just before dying, so my next pet could benefit from it. Chrominius was my secret weapon for two reason: he could apply the same debuff with Howl and he had a magic nuke that could do up to 2k damage but that would leave him powerless for three round, so I would use it as a finisher, hope it connects and cheese most of the fight with it.

I managed to beat all pet battle tamer up to Northrend but then they became too much to handle so I leveled my pets to 25 before coming back. After this I managed to beat every pet battle tamer including Chi in Pandaria. I then moved on to the achievement Pandaren Spirit Tamer and Fabled Pandaren tamer. But here was a couple of fights that I couldn't beat with my group composition, such as Ti'un the Wanderer and the Thundering pandaren spirit. So I decided to level different family of pet with a method called "Haul em up". This method consist of attacking with the pet you are leveling then switching with max level pet to finish the battle. As long as your pet can survive one round you can match him against way higher level pet then him and get bonus experiences due to difficulty.  I leveled an aquatic pet this way so I could add a healer to my team and a flying amber moth, who was strong against aquatic and resistant against beast. With these two new members I managed to beat all the spirit tamers and all the elite beasts.

With patch 5.3, there is a new achievement called Raiding with leashes II: Attunement edition. So it  it will give me a reason to visit Kara again. All those raids can be soloed including Kara chess event, the red riding hood and Lady Vashj. Mileage may vary depending on your class tough, good luck!

Friday, May 3, 2013

A test of valor (points!)

Hey guys, it's been a while since I've posted but it doesn't mean I've stopped playing WoW. My pally is pretty busy crafting a bunch of new pieces at the thunder forge, like the Lionheart Executioner, while my druid finally got the mats to craft the Inscribed crane staff, wich is Bind on account.

But since I'm a little behind in Wrathion legendary quest line, I've spent most of the time capping my valor point on my DK for the quest A test of valor. To mix things up I dusted off my tanking set and started doing heroics. The dungeons are very forgiving now and I can chain pull tons of thrash without deplenishing healer mana. With this newfound confidence I started tanking Mogushan Vault raid finder using walkthrough from the blog No life at 90. It wasn't as tough as I tought and it made capping my valor points more fun. I did get the gear to tank Heart of fear but full clear might have to wait because I have now collected my 6000 valor points.

So I picked out my two new quest and I immediately started to do the The Lion Roars one. I had a couple of ilvl 450 PvP piece that my pally had crafted, so decked out in a mix of PvP and dps gear I went into Silvershard mine.We roflstomped the Horde, I didn't died once and I personally killed a couple of bad guy myself including some seemingly squishy blood DK. The temple was another story. I tried to carry the orb but I wasn't that good even in blood spec and when feral druid or other baddies focused on me I was dying pretty quickly. So I let more experienced pvp'ers carry orbs and I tried to protect them and kill opposing healer. After my fourth game I finally got a win. So I only had one quest left.

I did A change of command with a bunch of guildies who had done it before. We had a standard group with one tank, one healer and three dps and it was a piece of cake. So for now I've started collecting Secrets of the empire in the Throne of thunder  raids. This raid is challenging enough in raid finder, particularly bosses like Dorrumu and Lei Shen.

Later and have fun!

Monday, March 25, 2013

Rise of the Thunder King

It's been a couple of weeks since patch 5.2 came out and there is plenty of new contents. One of the thing I was most excited to see was the new raid. The sixth first bosses of this new raid are challenging enough for raid finder, like the infamous Zandalari council. The new determination buff is a welcome addition, with 5% more health, healing and damage everytime the raid wipe. It helps to learn new fights, encourages people to persist and allows Blizzard to make the raid finder a little bit more difficult at start.  After a couple of weeks people will get geared and the average group will probably one-shot most of these bosses.

There is plenty of new dailies to keep you busy and two new reputation to grind, Shadopan assault and either Sunreaver Onslaught or Kirin Tor Offensive depending on your faction. If you happened to see a rare that has been spotted in general chat, try to get there to participate in the fight. If you manage to down the rare, even if you are not in a group, you can loot it. There is a chance for a key to drop that will allow you to unlock Trove of the treasure king, wich is a one person timed scenario.

While you are doing dailies, you are participating in a server effort to unlock more zones on the Isle of Thunder. At first the Horde and the Alliance are stoming the beach of the island. But after a week or so, you can enter a single person scenario to establis a base of operation. From there, you can choose a set of dailies PvE or PvP that will gives you extra reward. Others zones will be unlocked each week that will have more rewards, like the fabled Anvil of thunder.

I think that the difficulty have been raised slightly in this patch and it's fun!

Pro-tip: Get your necklace from the Shado-pan assault faction, available at neutral reputation.

Monday, February 25, 2013

How to be raid geared in less then a month

It's been more then a month since my last post, so I owe you some explanations of what I've been doing during those times. I played a lot with my Horde hunter and I joined a new guild.  They were constantly looking for people to fill raid spots so I couldn't wait to get geared up. Here is how I did it with only a limited amount of gold and no alt to craft me gear (since all my other high level toons are alliance).

Week 1: I ran a lot of heroics and I finished up the quest line in Dread waste to fill gaps in my gear.

Week 2: I was a little short on unlocking raid finder (ilvl 460), so I looked what I could buy with my valor point. This is when I realised that I had to gain rep with the various faction to unlock the valor point gear. I've done em all with my DK alliance side but now I had to do them again. Hopefully since patch 5.1 you could get recommendation and get rep at twice the rate. I unlocked the justice point trinket from Operation Dominance and I bought some cheap epics pants from the AH. After this I barely reached the minimum ilvl to enter raid finder. I was fortunate enough to get invited by the guild to a normal MSV run were we managed to down five bosses and I got a couple of drops. I also got a pattern. At first I was puzzled, what were some of the mats needed? Turned out you have to DE epic, so it might have to wait before I craft some. Instead I polished up my leatherworking skills and crafted myself a chest piece. It pushed me over the 470 ilvl threshold and I unlocked the other tier of raid finder.

Week 3: I continued doing the raid finder and I got another invite from the guild where we did the first five bosses in MSV.

Week 4: I got  lucky with the Sha of anger and I got the first tier set bonus. I also reached 480 ilvl. My dps have start to pick up and I fully cleared MSV on normal. While my dps are still on the low side, about 60 k overall, I was  finally able to carry my load. I had fun raiding normal mode and it has shed a new light on the encounters in Raid finder.

One piece of gear I'd like to get my hands on before the new raids open is a Sha touched weapon, wich could be a big boost to my dps since I'm still sporting an heroic bow. Plus I'd like to finish the legendary quest to get my gem, I still have a couple of sigil of power to get. Valor point piece will also cost less so I'm looking for some bargains when patch day drop. If you got extra valor to spend before patch day, you could also upgrade your weapon or trinket. Those upgrades won't be available when 5.2 launch.

Have fun with the new contents!


Sunday, January 20, 2013

Pug from hell

Finally, I decided to level my hunter on the Horde side. I'm a bit bored of questing but I took the time to do those that were Horde specific to see the other side of the story. So I quested as little as possible, leveled my profession and did as much dungeons as I could. Even tough it's always the same four instances, I had fun collecting pieces of the Azure Serpent Set wich is pretty cool looking.



Even tough the majority of those instances run went smoothly, one stand out from the others. I joined a pug (Pick Up Group) in Temple of the Jade Serpent, there is me, a pally tank, another random dps and two guildies, an healer and a shadow priest. The priest started pulling, berating the tank and started the first boss without waiting for anyone so I got locked out of the room. The party managed to down the boss even without the help of my awesome hunter dps (*cough cough). Face pull and thrash talk continued until we reached the main hall with the third boss. The tank pulled all the room and quit so we wiped. While we were waiting for a tank replacement, the two guildies decided to kick the other dps because he wasn't performing has well as a level 87 should (we were all 86). Other tank and a dps replacement comes and we killed the third boss. The priest was now bottom dps and maybe ashamed of all he did because he leaved the group (at least that's the only thing I could think of). His guildmate healer coincidentally went offline a short time after. We kicked him and promptly finished the instance.

After this I was wondering: what push people to be such jerks? Those two guildies were competent people and the tank they harassed was doing a good enough job. The only wipe we had was because of the tank rage quitting during a fight. If those two had only kept to themselves we would have cleared the instance way faster and they would have a chance to get more loot and XP. I guess, like the Sha, those two feeds on the negative emotions of the people unlucky enough to have them in there group.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

More old contents

A couple of weeks ago I had soloed Black Temple, wich was difficult before because of the first boss Naj'entus. He would stun a random person in the raid and if you were alone nobody could remove the debuff and he would heal himself up to full.  Now because of a combination of higher dps and the nerf from 5.1, he didn't gave me any difficulty neither the other boss after. I also had soloed Tempest Keep and I got a lucky drop as a reward for my effort.

So during his vacation my Death knight decided to go through some more old contents. First stop was Outland, my death knight headed to Sunwell Plateau, a raid I hadn't the chance to see much. I wasnt sure if I would be able to go far in there, I remembered going in there with level 80 pug and wiping against Felmyst. I entered and got killed by one of the first group of adds I encountered. Turns out Sunblade Slayer gives you a debuff that remove 25% health every 2 seconds for 8 seconds. Humbled, I slowly cleared my way up to the first boss. For this boss you need to split the raid in two.. Oh wait I'm alone! Turns out you can skip him by running through the area and he will despawn after you leave the room. Second boss, Brutallus, went down the first time, even tough I had a huge stack of Meteor slash on me. Felmyst was more difficult as I had not much experience with this fight. You need to watch where the drake is positionning and move away so you dont get one shot by his trail of flame. After a couple of wipe, I got the hang of it and down him. After this, Sunwell was a cake walk. Turns out I didn't finish this raid on my DK before so I got the Outland raider achievement as well.

Back in Northrend, I was in Naxxramas trying to get some transmog drop when I got an achievement I tought I already had: Shocking. Looking it up, I saw that the only other achievement I was missing for Glory of the raider was A poke in the eye wich is killing Malygos with less then 9 player. I wasn't a fan of vehicle combat back in Wrath so I was a little reluctant to head there. One of my friend came along and we nailed the encounter after a couple of attempts. Drake vehicle scale with gear so you can mostly ignore Surge of power but since there is only two of us, it's important to keep both the self heal buff and the debuff up. So we basically used the 1-3-1-1-2 rotation.

Next, my friend helped me get the red proto drake from Glory of the hero. One of the achievement was Experienced Drake Rider and it needed multiple run in the Occulus. I was skeptical we could two man it but we cheesed it the worst way. My friend just disembarked from his mount and dpsed the last boss, while I just tried to hang on to my drake. The last achievement I needed was Zombiefest, wich we run a couple of time before we pulled it correctly. You need to kill 100 zombie in one minute and there is only 85 zombies in the first part of the dungeon. The zombies won't respawn if you kill the second boss. So you need to kite the second boss in the first building, wait that all zombies respawn then kill him. After that you clear the building, get back in the first part of the dungeon to get all the zombies and bring them to the second part so you can finally got enough zombie to get the achievement.  I don't quite understand why they would make an achievement that felt so unnatural but anyway I got my red proto drake.

My death knight found another special place in Northrend. I had ventured into Ulduar a couple of weeks ago up to the crazy cat lady. So I reactivated my raid lockout and ventured into Freya Conservatory of life. In there I killed the three ancients but kept Freya alive while picking every flowers in there. Every day or so the flower respawn so I just go there and pick them up. It's like my private garden.

During my death knight vacation, my druid got some love and leveled to 90. I've leveled as bomkin but I still struggle with the rotation. I'd like to get this toon revered with the August Celestial so I can unlock the new enchants but first I must go back to grinding Golden Lotus reputation. I'm also doing Tillers dailies so I can start farming Mote of harmony wich I would like to craft some inscription BoA staff. With the commendation, the reputation goes up fast so it's not so bad.

Next I would be leveling my hunter. Have a happy new year 2013!