Wednesday, November 19, 2008

WotLK Recap : Day 6 (I think)

Is it 6 days since WotLK came out I'm just not sure anymore.

Anyway today when I logged on I did the daily cooking quest and farmed some kooking mats just for a change of pace.

After that I got stuck into the last of the quests I needed to get the Zul'Drak achievement and dinged to 78. An epic flying mount makes so much of a difference it's not funny, I don't know how I did without one for so long.

Anyway with Zul'Drak out of the way I went into Sholazar Basin again, but this time I had a flying mount, Yeah Baby! Can't get me now you damn nasty crocolisks!

But I digress, of I went on the epic creature grind that is the Nessinwary quest line, yes that crazy dwarf hunter is back, and I don't mean Bigredkitty.

This zone was by far the easiest of the zones to quest in that I've been in so far (the epic flier has something to do with it I'm sure). I stormed through that place pwning everything in sight, as usual. Unusually this turned out to be a good thing, since just about everything I saw was part of a quest I was on making my normal progression through a zone an effective leveling strategy for once.

But whats this? He's here again!?! And he's calling me the stalker. Yes thats right I ran into the warrior Khir several times again today and he's starting to get quite paranoid about it.

Here's me stalking my pray.

After that I went and got a meal and chilled out in Dalaran for a while. Then the panic set in. It's weekly maintainance tonight and I'm only 400k away from and I have only an hour left!

I blitzed over to Storm Peaks and started popping off quests as fast as I could. Then I hit a wall I was rushing and that meant I wasn't reading the quests too well, which meant I was screaming things at the monitor like "Where the hell is that bomb dispenser so I can blow up the damn mammoth!!" and "Who thought a quest in the middle of a F###### mine field was a F####### good idea!!". That mine field quest turned out ot be great fun as you had to step on a mine to blow yourself to the quest item, this took several attempts with bandaging and eating along the way as you can imagine. You then had to step on a mine to blow yourself back out of the mine field.

Why wasn't I using my new fangled epic flier?

Because some damn wise ass decided that that would be too easy and put little turrets around the mine field that shoot you down 280% flight speed or no.

Anyway with all my getting lost and discovering places It turned out that I needed less quests to finish the level that I thought and I dinged to 79 with 9 minutes before server shut down, I even had time to go and train my new skills, and Stunty is parked and getting rested xp in Ironforge as we speak.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

WotLK Recap : Days 4 & 5

I've added these together because I forgot to post because I became so wrapped up in the Lich King experience. The things I will share are in ne particular order as everything has run into one big blur.

One of the most memorable moments was when I get a quest at level 76 to go to Sholazar Basin, took the quest, got put on a little flying machine then got shot down in the middle of nowhere while flying over the new zone with my Hearth Stone on cooldown. I thought I'd share the G-chat that followed my question on how the hell I get out of there. Please excuse my spelling as I was tired and frustrated.

As it turns out you have to complete a quest chain in nessingway base camp that activates the flight master.

I've done various dungeons, all very late at night, but they are all fantastic, I don't know if this seems that way because they are or if because I'm just please to be doing new instances instead of running The mechanar or slave pens for the millionth time.

While questing I keep running into the warrior Khir. After about 20 encounters in one day he started refering to me as a stalker, and I started taking screenshots. Here are a few of us doing the more interesting quests in Zul'Drak.


I dinged to level 77 and got my cold weather training so I can fly again, then I borrowed 5k gold off friends and bought my epic flying mount and training. Thats right I didn't have one and now I wonder how I ever did without it. The only down side is that I now owe 5000 gold :(

Respecced into Titans grip for leveling ... just because it looks cool. There's something about wielding not one but two bis ass weapons that just appeals to me. I know at the moment I could do higher dps as deep arms both using a 2- hander and dual wielding ... but hey I'm leveling what does it matter.

I have started replacing my gear finally, so far I'm waring about 5 blue quest reward and dungeon drop Items.

Well that about wraps it up for days 4 & 5.

So until next time this is stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

WotLK Recap : Day 3

Day 3.

Ok so I overslept again, instead of the 5 hour extended nap I had planned to take I had a nice 9 hour slumber. Not going to sleep today so that I stop going to bed in the morning, otherwise I start getting drowsy in natural light and god only knows what kaind of weird situations that could lead to.

Anyway after grabbing a coffee I got stuck into the last part of level 74, dinged grabbed more coffee, quested, more coffee, quested, changed things up with a cup of tea, quested, more coffee, rinse and repeat.

Did The most epic quest ever devised by blizzard. If your on the alliance side you absolutely have to do the "Battle for Undercity" quest it's made of pure win.

Visited Dalaran and boy did they ever go to town on that town. Get there ASAP and take in the sights people.

Learned how to make an engineering parachute lining for cloaks, which I'm going to make the moment I log in again after suffering one too many death's by cliff. Pretty soon I'm going to be able to make the turbo boosters for me boots as well, giving me a "Get me the hell out of here" button.

Did Uthguard Keep today or however the heck you spell it and I'm loving going into dungeons not knowing whats going in. It's all new and it's all interesting, and best of all it all looks fantastic.

Finished all but 2 group quests in the Dragonblight and moved on to Zul'drak. People kept asking me why I didn't head to the Grizzly Hills and the reason is that I don't decide where I'm going next I just follow the quests and I had a quest in Zul'Drak and not in Grizzly Hills.

Ran randomly around Zul'Drak doing random quests and killing interesting (but unnecessary) mobs until I hit level 75. Realized that I couldn't understand the quests I had even with the help of 3 addons and decided to take a break and do anything at all but play wow for a few hours.

That about covers it for day 3.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

WotLK Recap : Day 2

Day 2

Having never made it back on after the server restart I got a bit of sleep, I over slept, then a friend called round, but after that I went back to the confusion that is me leveling in a new zone.

Having finished ALL the quests in Borean Tundra I moved on to The Dragonblight where if anything my leveling confusion became even greater, so I downloaded yet another quest addon making 3 of them in total and between the three I can now just about make sense of the quests.

Learned an important lesson about group quests, when it says "suggested players 2" thats only a suggestion, but when it says "suggested players 5" you'd damn well better bring some back up. Oh well at least I got to lie face down in a new spot.

I learned another important lesson about reading the quest when after 2 attempts I realized that I wasn't supposed to solo the level 74 elite and all the non elites, apparently what I was supposed to do was to get the NPC's involved then hit bladestorm.

Bladestorm Does not save you when you pull 10 level 73-74's at once ... I was a bit disappointed when I found this out :(

Got to level 73.6 before server restart then wrote this post. And that just about wraps it up for day 2.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, November 14, 2008

WotLK Recap : Day 1

I haven't posted lately due to a severe case of the Xpac blues. We trounced bosses in BT but there was no real pleasure in it. I got my Hand of the A'dal Title but I was ashamed to ware it. But all that is over now and I shall be giving you day by day updates on my experience in the new expansion.

Day 1.

Day 1 started with me standing outside my local gaming store waiting for the doors to open at midnight (along with the two other wow players I live with and about 60 other people). We get back to the house in record time and have a race to install the game. I lose due to having to restart my PC after every patch or it has a fit at me.

Anyway I log on and Stuntyone is ready and waiting at the boat to take him to Northrend, with 3 and 1/2 empty bags and empty quest log and an almost empty bank. I take the boat over with a couple of people I know and we are screaming at each other, "Where's this trainer?", "where's the flight master?", "Where do I pick up that quest?" and "Where the hell am I?", that last one from me. We train up in our professions and start to make a mess of northrend's leveling areas.

I soon split off from the others as my normal style of leveling is to grab every quest I can find and head off in a random direction killing things along the way until one of my quest counters starts ticking, and occasionally actually reading a quest when this becomes boring.

Several hours later (I really don't know how many but it was light outside) I was within spitting distance of level 71 but I was so tired that no matter how many times I read the quests I still couldn't figure out what the hell they were about, I kept getting lost and I seemed to have an aggro radius 10 miles wide. So I decided to call it a night, or a morning, or whatever.

Several hours later (again I'm not sure how many) I'm back online and making short work of my paltry rested XP. I ding to level 71 in short order now that I know what those guys with the ! over their heads actually wanted me to do. Questing continues until half way to level 72 I get an invite to run the Nexus instance with a few buddies ... we spend 2 hours getting lost in that place but managed to one shot every boss but the last since we didn't know you had to move or jump to remove the stacking chill debuff. From the quest I had to read a book in that place (read or pick up I can't remember the haze of leveling has clouded my mind) I got a reward of some tanking shoulders that are better than T4. This leaves me wondering how much longer my T6 level gear will actually last.

That over and it's back to my unique style of questing which gets me to level 72 shortly before the server goes through it's restart. Which continued for so long it gave me the opportunity to write this post. It's 715 in the morning and the realm is still not up so thats about all I have for you at the moment.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Patch Day Blues and New Spec Loving

I was going to write this post yesterday but yesterday was patch day, and as some of you may know I'm addicted to addons.

Patch day + 155 addons = headache of massive proportions.

So no post got done.

Anyway after busting my B###s getting my UI sorted, yes I know you can play perfectly well with 0 addons, but I look at it this way, you can live on bread and water, but I'd rather have a steak with all the trimmings.

Anyway after getting my steak back in working order I went looking at specs for the new talents we had just got. My first build was so so and lag of 1200 didn't really help my get a feel for the build. But after a bit of experimentation on the target dummies, damn but I love those things, they just stand there and take abuse while I sit at my PC, screaming "STUNY SMASH!!1!" at the monitor.

Whoops back on track again, after beating on the practice dummies for a while this was the build I settled on. I'm still not convinced about using Rend even in combination with Trauma but further experimentation may prove me wrong, but It's definitely not worth it in heroics as the fights are over so fast it's not funny. Also Sudden Death didn't turn out to be the massive rage dump I thought it would be as Endless Rage leaves you with more rage than god. As it turns out I love Bladestorm. It is simply sexy and I want to have it's babies ... did I just type that last bit out loud?

Today I got my butt into a few heroics and was shocked at the result. Here see for yourself.

This is the report for the entire run in heroic Hellfire Ramparts. The poor rouge missed out since he's all single target dps and I was hitting EVERYTHING and loving it.

On single target fights I was still pulling over 1000 dps, but I guess the true test of the build will come when I get to run it in a raid environment.

Oh and before I forget, monday we went into Black Temple for our last pre patch run and downed Naj'entus, Supremus and Akama. For my first Shade of akama fight we had the strange situation where both akamas died so I didn't get to see the bit where all the broken come out and chat with Akama ... and I didn't get any loot /sulk.

On the Plus side i did find a new patch of floor to inspect.

Oh and after a visit to the barber shop stunty's got a brand new look.


So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Stunty's Back!

I have returned!

My enforced wow and Internet hiatus has ended. My apologies at my long absence but RL kicked in with a vengeance and didn't really give me much choice in the matter, don't ask. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies, or at least, Ask me no questions and I wont ignore you and send you dirty looks for asking me questions.

Anyway back to wow. It turns out that my guild can kill new bosses without me. This came as a bit of a shock considering that since the day I got my "Raider" rank in the guild I have been at every guild first kill. Hydross, Karatherass, Vashj, Rage, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Naj'entus, Supremus, I was there for them all the first time we killed them. The few times I could not raid on a progression night either due to being left out due to player rotation or just not being able to make it, things tended to go poorly for the raid, sometimes just not making the final few percent, sometimes bringing a "Bucket'o'Fail" with them (something that has been known to happen even when I'm there) or in one famous case, an unscheduled server shut down. Even though they were suffering from the lack of stunty they managed to down the Shade of Akama in BT. Now that I have returned just think of what we can accomplish.

At the moment my internet connection is just not stable enough to raid, or even do heroics properly due to having to use this piece of #### USB wireless adapter, I wont mention brand names that not how I roll. But tonight this should be by passed through the use of one long ass Ethernet cable and I will be back in tip top shape.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, September 19, 2008

apologies

My ISP hates me.



Back as soon as I can

Saturday, September 6, 2008

You Know That Feeling.

In my last post I talked to you about how the next day we were going to go back into Mount Hjyal and finish off the fourth boss then move on to Black Temple.

Well that was the plan, but unfortunately we were reminded forcefully that "Boss Downed" does not mean "Boss on Farm". We spent a couple of hours wiping before finally downing Azgalor and getting more T6 gloves into the guild. One person summed up our feeling nicely in his congratulations to the recipients of the gloves, and I quote, "Congratulations, you lucky sons of bitches."

With not enough raid time left to have a proper go in Black Temple we went and wiped a few times on Archimond, and wow what a fight this is going to be. We are all going to have to be in top shape to get this guy down since seemingly one death starts a chain reaction wiping the raid. Also a note to melee dps in this fight, DO ... NOT ... STAND ... NEAR ... THE ... TANK. We had one wipe caused by melee getting air bursted while too close to the tank, welcome to Finger Of Death city, population us.

Anyway the next day we move on to BT to kill Mr. shrimp guy and have a go at Supremus. Again that was the plan, and again it didn't quite turn out that way. We spent the entire raid night wiping on this guy until we had respawns on the trash and called it a night.

We also had the undeniable return of the Incompetent Warrior as I was the direct cause of one of our wipes, no buts no maybes, I wiped the raid in true Incompetent Warrior fashion.

Now I had done my homework and was prepared for the fight that night, I had the macro, I had reread the strat guides and re-watched the how to vids and I had been there on our guilds first down night.

So no room for error there right? Wrong!

You see no amount of preparation can ever eliminate the chance of me screwing up. This time it was a simple case of macro placement. How can where you put your macro wipe a raid? Well thats an easy question to answer, you wipe a raid by putting the macro to burst the bubble on the key bound slot and put your frost protection potion on the unbound slot you thought you put the macro in. This means that when you go to take your potion while the raid is healing up you actually burst the bubble killing two thirds of the raid in one horrific moment of incompetence.

This brings me nicely round to the title, when you screw up so monumentally you get this unmistakable sinking feeling. You'll know the one I'm talking about if you've ever body pulled High King Mulgar before the raid is ready, fallen off the platform while tanking Al'ar (or jumped off the platform too late), accidentally targeted and healed someone other than the tank at a crucial moment, or burst the bubble to early on High Warlord Naj'entus.

Can anyone guess which one of the listed things was the one I haven't done? Here's a clue ... I can't heal. As for the rest, been there, done that, bought the " I wiped the raid" T-shirt, and every time the feeling is the same. If you haven't felt that feeling yet then your not reading the right blog. I like to list my more horrendous mistakes here so that you don't have to make the same mistake. Oh no I want you to go out there and make new and interesting mistakes.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Bringing The Pain

Last night we went back into Mount Hyjal, and again I went in as dps. We had already killed Rage Winterchill the week before so we moved right on to Anetheron, the site of my previous dps record where I finally broke 1000 dps on a single target boss fight.

Yet again we had a good melee group with an Enhancement Shaman 2 rogues an arms warrior (me) and a Ret Pally (Yes a Ret Pally, we really brought a retlol to MH). During the trash I had a whale of a time beating down the Shadowy Necromancer then hitting everything in sight. In my exuberance I occasionally ended up over aggroing on some of the trash, but since I was finally in full plate again for the first time in I don't know how long (no more Mail or Leather for me) I had decent armor and over 12k buffed health (14k with a shout) so even if I over aggroed on an Abomination I could survive with a bit of healing. This also meant that I could pull mobs off the ranged and healers without dieing, something I never dared to do before.

Anyway my fun with the trash over out comes Anetheron. Now as melee my job here is very simple I find a spot where I wont catch too many swarms and Dee Pee Ess. As melee you cant dps the infernals cuz you'll die so the only thing to do is lay the smack down on the boss. And the fight was going great ... until the infernal tank dies that is, then all hell broke loose and a wipe happened.

So I get to have fun with the trash all over again and it's boss time ... again. This time everything goes great and we down him with little problem and what little problem we did have didn't involve me since my job is so damn easy. After cooling down and distributing the loot P mentioned to me that he had read on my blog that I was over joyed at breaking 1000 dps on this boss last time, I told him that this was correct.

P: "So you would be happy to learn that you did over 1300 dps this time?"

Me: "Your kidding right?"

P: "Nope you did over 1300 dps."

Me: "Wow"

Me: "I think I'm having a little moment." My voice quite choked with emotion.

El: "I think he's actually crying."

Now while I wasn't crying I was rendered speechless as I'd set myself a goal of breaking 1100 dps and this was just so far over the mark. I can finally say that when I go as dps to a raid I'm Bringing the Pain, Muhahahahahahaha!!!

This time when we talked to Lady Jaina we all knew where to run instead of standing around like idiots and then running in random directions, and one of our lucky miners managed to get 6 epic and 2 blue gems (lucky bugger).

This time in the horde encampment we wiped on the trash a couple of times both Big Wigs and DBM both wigged out on us and stopped announcing the composition of the trash waves which caught us by surprise and since we hadn't bothered to learn the composition of each wave by heart caused a wipe. 2 more wipes happened on wave 5 due to shackles breaking early and mobs getting caught in consecration which then caused the pally tank to go down under the weight of Abominations. But we persevered and adapted and got to Kaz'rogal.

Kaz'rogal was going great until both the pally tank and the ret pally exploded simultaneously destroying half the melee group and killing the main tank.

Fortunately one of the off tanks, El managed to pick him up and we got him down to below 20% where we had to yet again rely on Thrall to finish the job for us again while one of our druids hid in kitty form, I'm telling you that guy is hard as nails.

I also think that this fight is designed to make every pally in the raid into a living bomb ... maybe we should give them their own little corner to go explode in, because it will happen.

Anyway tonight we go back to MH to get more T6 gloves from Azgalor then we move on to BT to kill the big shrimp and have a go at Supremus .


Oh and when I learned that the raid leaders had forgotten to record the combat log for last nights raid I had another little moment :(

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Responsible Raiding

/RANT

I've talked to you before about how tanking is all about controlling each pull, well this goes double for those leading a group or raid. I doesn't however stop at knowing exactly what should happen and what you should do. Oh no if your leading the group whatever the size it's important that you make sure the everyone knows what should be going on.

I was prompted to write this post after being in a couple of 10 man raids where those who were supposedly in charge of the raid did not do this. It is essential that everyone know their role.

Did I stress that enough? Lets try again with bold writing this time.

You have to make sure that everyone knows what the hell is going on and what they are supposed to do! If your not prepared to do this then for the love of god don't wonder around with the little raid leader crown like your doing something.

Yes I know I may be stressing the point a little too much but it's something that I feel strongly about, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't organize a raid if your not going to lead it. Organize it then pass leadership onto someone else and make sure they know they are supposed to be leading. This happens in 5 man group all the time. I lost count of the times I've been invited as the last spot in a party to tank it then had leader passed to me. This also goes the other way, I have on many occasions tanked an instance while not being the leader because I was not 100% comfortable with the instance or I thought that someone else would do a better job. I mean there's not point in me wondering around marking things and asking the party to do stuff if I don't know what the hell I'm doing or if there is someone else in the group who could do it better.

Even when leading a group I will always ask if everyone is familiar with each boss and some of the more difficult pulls. If there are multiple ways to do a pull or a boss I will ask the group which way the want to do it and then give a very brief recap so that everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing. I mean OMG I just wasted 30-40 seconds going over a boss fight, however will we make up the lost time ... oh thats right we make it up by not wiping and having to run back and rebuff (damn I think my brain just had a sarcastic fit there).

It's not a lot I expect from whoever is leading the group. It's simple little things, going over the raid markings and kill order, healing assignments if necessary, special CC duties. Also if you ask someone to do something get an acknowledgment from them. Don't just say it and expect them to do it without confirming it. Did they fully understand what you want them to do?, were they afk for a short bit?, did their doorbell just ring?, did they simply miss the chat or didn't hear you? Waiting for a simple "Ok", "np" or "sure" eliminates all the factors.

So in conclusion to my rant I would like to say that if you don't do the above mentioned things don't go around pretending to lead the group, cuz your just not doing it.

/RANT OFF

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior Ranting off.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

I Lead a Raid o.O

First off, it's not relevent to the title but has to be mentioned ... SoL got our first kill in Black Temple, Yeah Baby! and for the first time ever I broke 1000 dps on a single target boss fight, YEAH BABY!!!

And just look at all those funky costumes, the guild is really coming along in this regards.

Anyway on to the title topic.

This Thursday a cooperative Magtheridon run was organized between SoL and my old guild, who were having problems getting enough people together for a 25 man raid. The project was proposed and organized by Lady B, who while gathering the people together dropped this bombshell on me. Her reasoning was since she had organized the raid she sure as hell wasn't going to lead it and decided to stick me with the job :(

Having gotten the raid of the ground Lady B decided her work was done and took a back seat for the rest of the night. She promptly handed over the job of organizing the groups to Kitty the new GM of my old guild who did a decent job of it, I didn't do this as I was still finishing a speed heroic Underbog run.

My speed run finished I get a summon and start organizing healing and tanking assignments. I've had the benefit of watching and learning from some very competent raid leader over the past while so I just did my best to emulate them.

The trash on the led up to maggy when smoothly, right up until the point when while dealing with the patrol we somehow managed to pull another group of adds. Being the 4th tank and generally unnecessary I was in a good position and managed to puck them up with a quick thunderclap, the dps stuck to the kill order and the tanks came and picked mobs off me. Due to everyone keeping their heads we managed to avoid a wipe.

Next came big n' ugly himself. Most of us knew that this would be no walk over since the majority of the raid had never been here before, and we only had two warlocks. I started giving a brief explanation of the fight and picking the people to be cube clickers. I picked people be their reliability rather than any other reason. I also didn't pick tanks to be clickers because I wasn't sure what our dps was like and could not guarantee that all the adds would be down before the first blast waves were cast.

The first couple of attempts went as I expected with the raid dieing to blast waves and everyone learned their role in the encounter. What surprised me was how well we did on the channelers,the warlocks did the best that could be expected of them on the infernals as there were only two and the tanks picked up the slack often tanking their channeler and up to two infernals for a short time before the warlocks could get to them.

Then everything clicked, with the clickers anyway. i guess all my shouting of "Clickers to your positions" and "CLICK, CLICK, CLICK" payed off and on our 3rd attempt we got him down to 27%. Only 27% because people had to learn about the falling debris and getting rockshotted.

Then the most entertaining event of the night happened. Our fury warrior had to go to work so we picked up a friend of lady B's a hunter to fill his spot for our last attempt. he was in the neighborhood so he got an invite and made his way down ... and wiped the raid.

Thats right he gets pugged into a 25 man raid is there for all of 3 seconds and wipes it.

How you ask?

He had been doing some PvP and had forgotten to take his pet off aggressive. So upon entering maggy's chamber his pet promptly lays into the first channeler it sees starting the encounter with the raid half buffed and nobody ready or in position. The entire raid started roaring their heads off with laughter. made all the more funny because scant minutes before we had been jokingly bad mouthing the "huntards" and explaining why all blame, no matter the situation should be appropriated to them. Truly it was a classic moment that I will remember for a long time to come.

Anyway we recover from our wipe and set into our final, final attempt. we only get maggy to about 50% this time due to one of the clickers dieing at an untimely moment. In the end almost everyone had a great time, and I want to give my heart felt thanks to those who did not need maggy for their title or gear but still came along anyway.

... oh and next time get some other poor sucker to be the RL.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Monday, August 18, 2008

I's Been Doin Some PvP

First off I should talk about why I've been doing a lot of PvP lately. It's because I wanted a sword. In this case the Merciless Gladiators Greatsword to replace my axe.

For a long time I've been told that the best weapon for arms dps is a two hander sword, but I'm one of those strange people that just cant take something at face value. Oh no, I'm one of those annoying people that wants to know why something is better before I change. Also is a seeming downgrade in weapon really going to increase my dps?

So I sat down and did a little comparison of the bonus for using axes and the bonus for using swords.

Axes: 5/5 In Poleaxe Specialization gives you a bonus 5% critical strike chance. With 2/2 Impale this is the same as saying it gives you a 5% chance to do an additional 120% damage and with my meta gem this is increased to 123%. Pretty cool eh?

But lets take a look at swords.

Swords: 5/5 in Sword Specialization gives you a 5% chance to make an extra attack. This is the same as saying it has a 5% chance to do 100% extra damage.

But thats not all, these bonus attacks also has a 30% chance (my unbuffed crit) of doing an extra 123% damage. You do the math and you'll find that this already puts swords ahead of axes.

But yet again thats not all, this added bonus actually scales with raid buffs. In a raid my crit is ~5% higher meaning these bonus attacks have an increased chance of doing 223% damage instead of 100% damage. Pretty spiffy right?

But whats this? Theres more?

Darn tootin' theres more. This ability procs off any attack you make, this includes Pummel and Hamstring. These low damage attack also benefit from axes ... but seeing Pummel crit just makes me sad (Oh yay I just hit an 80 damage crit /cry), but with swords you just made at the very least another 100% weapon damage.

This is really cool because there are times you will be asked to interrupt spells and if you play a raiding arms warrior you will know that there is that spare rotation where both Mortal Strike and Whirlwind are on cooldown. Normally you would use this to refresh your Battle, Commanding or Demoralizing Shout. But what if these still have plenty of time on them? Throw in a hamstring for good measure, it costs bugger all rage and your doing nothing better with that time so why not chance an extra attack.

I don't know if it procs off intercept, but it would be really really cool if it did :)

There is just one problem with using swords that I'm having big problems getting used to.

Image.

Before I was all like "STUNTY SMASH!!1!1!eleven".

Now I'm all like "STUNTY ..... slice ??? o.O".

I'm telling you it's just not the same and I don't know if I'll ever recover.


Anyway back to PvP.

It all started a while back when a warrior on my server Khir found out about my blog and has been pestering me into being a better warrior ever since. In fact just today he found the one + attack power gem on my gear that I had somehow forgotten to replace with + strength.

Anyway a while back he found out that I suck at PvP, and very kindly took me into a few battle grounds to show me the right way to do it and later on he led a few premades for my guild (who for the most part only PvP when necessary). Ever since then every time I go into a battle ground I'm starting to enjoy it more and more (mage's still scare the pant off me though). Infact I started enjoying it so much that when I had my think about swords and decided I really wanted one I went out and ground twice as much honor as I ever have in one day.


I'm telling you my brain nearly exploded. And do people you ignore on other servers stay in your ignore list? If so mine must be damn near full ... again.

The thing is I'm starting to enjoy PvP so much I might even start taking arena seriously.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Lots of Stuff.

First I want to start with an apology for my lack of posting. It just seems that every time I sit down to write a new post it all comes out as gibberish .... I mean more so than usual. The past week has contained a few firsts for me.

The first first, if that makes any sense at all, was a full clear of Zul'Aman. Before this I had only ever killed 3 bosses in ZA and wiped on the fourth. This meant that for most of the raid I was winging it. I barely know the trash up to the fourth boss and nothing about anything after that, and to make matters worse every time we got to a boss, it was always "Ok Stunty is going to tank the boss" and every time I heard that phrase I got this "what the hell is going on" feeling.

In the end we got a full clear with only two wipes, one being on the third boss, meaning we only got two of the timed chests, and once on the last boss. Here is a quick pis of the group standing victorious over the corpse of Zul'Jin.


The second first was SoL going 3/5 in Mount Hyjal. On the trash waves before Kaz'rogal I was running around like mad picking up loose mobs and chasing down Gargoyles and generally having a great time. Then came the big guy himself. For this I just switched into my dps gear and had at him. Near the end of the fight everything started going to pot, caster were blowing up while standing too close to other caster and blowing them up too, the main tank went down, and it looked like a wipe as he went around one shotting almost everyone.

But whats this? Thrall is still in the fight and at almost 100% health, a couple of our druids have gone into cat mode and are hiding at the back somewhere, and Kaz'rogal is at 8%....

Go Thrall GO!!

Thrall and his NPC buddies manage to kill the big bugger for us. At one point it looked bad but Kaz managed to kite himself over to some of the Tauren NPC's and our victory was assured.


So then it was decided to make Thrall an honorary member of SoL, and we threw a bit of a party for him.


The third first was the very next day (yesterday) when SoL went 4/5 in Mount Hyjal. I think the trash waves for this fight have rekindled my flagging love of tanking. It's pure unadulterated seat of your pant tanking. Running after infernals and gargoyles and tanking 2,3,4 mobs at a time, you just grab anything nearby and get it to hit you instead of anything else. Fun fun fun.

As for Azgalor himself, this is one of the only bosses I've found where it's actually fun to be an off tank. He casts that doom spell on people and they come running over to you and die leaving a Doom Guard in their place that you have to tank we ended the fight with each of the three off tanks tanking two doom guards each. What makes it interesting is the fact that the off tanks can get the mark of doom themselves. This meant that at one point I was tanking my Doom Guard, the two doom guards K was tanking and a fourth that spawned when K died, not that easy picking them all up :)

Fortunately K got a Battle Rez and took a couple off me. In the end everything went well and another demon bit the dust, and the first 3 T6 glove entered the guild. One was taken by the happy Boomkin you see below.


In conclusion I will try to post more often over the next week, if for no other reason that to avoid writing such a long post.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

SoL 2/5 In Mount Hyjal.

So this wednesday we stepped into our rotation on T6 content. From now on It will be one week Tier 5 and one week Tier 6, and for the first time ever I stepped into Mount Hyjal as melee dps ... and I loved it.

Mount Hyjal is like a dps warrior dream some true. The trash is mainly pally tanked and the bosses rarely do anything to make you stop hitting them. On the trash I achieved over 1000 dps, a personal record for me on Rage Winterchill I only achieved 850 dps due to him constantly casting Death and Decay right under himself and getting frostbolted for a second time 12 seconds ... 12 seconds, before my trinket cooldown was up and dieing. I'm telling you this guy hates me. On Anetheron I pulled off 960 dps, another personal record for me on single target dps. Now if only I could get a damn Enhancement Shaman and a decent Sword.

Anyway it took us two attempts but the second boss in MH finally bit the dust.

As you can see the Boomkin was late to the party.

After we celebrated for a while someone went and talked to lady Jaina, and she gave some speech about having bought time and pulling back. she then started casting a mass teleport spell, and this being our first time getting this far we all thought "oh cool I wonder where she's taking us" so we all gathered up near her.


As it turns out she just teleported the npc's and left us standing there like fools. Then the trash came.


With cries of "Flee", "Run for it!!", and "F### this I'm porting to shatt" we scattered, eventually the undead cornered me high up in the hills and rather than let them have the satisfaction of killing me I jumped to my death with a cry of "You''ll never take me aliiiiiiiiveeeeeeee!!!". If anyone out there can tell me the correct way to deal with this part of the fight I would be most appreciative. Although the comedy factor of our first time doing it was something I will remember for a long time.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Our first taste of Kael.

Tonight we went and had our first attemp at Kael'thas in the Eye. This is a fight I had been waiting and waiting for. When I first hit level 70 and spent a bit of time learning about the raids that could be done and the bosses that we could face, this was the guy I set my eye's on. I never dreamed of getting any further than him ... In fact I never even expected to see him before the expansion.

You can have your Illidan and your Sunwell. This is the guy I dreamed of facing and I fear that it may be my last real goal before the expansion. Thats not to say that the guild won't progress further, and thats not to say that I won't enjoy raiding anymore, but it may be the last fight I get truly and utterly excited about.

Here he is


I learned that the latest patch had nerfed the health of the advisor's and I feared that this would make the fight far too easy and spoil my epic fight. These fears was soon proved to be groundless as time and again we wiped going into phase 3. Those damn weapons of his just won't die fast enough. With each and every wipe we got better and better, but then we had respawns on the trash and we called it for the night.

I went away from the raid feeling great, not because we had an easy night, but because we had a hard night of learning a new and difficult boss. It was great and I can't wait for more.

Oh, and as for my incompetent warrior moment. When tanking Lord Sanguinar in phase 3, do not what ever you do, mix up your stance dance (for Berserker Rage) and Shield block key bindings. This can result in you taking two 6k crushing blows and ending up face down on the ground. It happened to me so I know :)

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Who re you People?

First off,

10,000 hits ?!?!? Who are you people and why do you read this drivel.


Secondly,

Sorry for my late silence on the blog but I have spent my time finally getting my little gnome warlock to level 70 and sorting out some RL problems.

Thirdly,

A little pic from after last nights raid where 5 of us went and farmed the hat. When Em heard about it he nearly had a fit as he collects in game pets.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

We Wiped On Gruul

Last night we had an epic raid, with everyone bringing their A-game. It started off with us aiming to kill Karathress and Morogrim in SSC, and we did in 1 hour and 20 minutes. And I didn't die.

What should we do now?

Ok lets go kill Rage Winterchill in Mount Hyjal. Apparently he had been buffed, but it didn't really seem that way as we tore through the trash and then him. Although I must say I was a bit peeved at him. A while ago I finally got my Medallion of the Alliance to replace my Insignia of the Alliance just for this fight, and what does he do? For the first time ever he shoots me more than once with his frostbolt thingy ... Three times all in the space of my trinkets new and improves 2 min cooldown ... the bastard *shakes fist*. Fortunately I was still in my prot gear so I had a huge stack of health to soak up the damage and I didn't die.

Ok we just one shot him, now what do we do?

Lets go test out the trash in Black Temple. This was where the real fun of the night began, thats not to say that we weren't having fun before. In fact we had a new guild member along with us and he commented that he had never heard so many people laughing in any raid he's ever been on.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time running around like headless chickens with shouts of "What the hell does this mob do?", "Which way are we going again?" and "I'm dead!". I was starting to get a little worried though since we were nearly at High Warlord Whatshisface and I had yet to die that night, it would be breaking a long standing tradition if we were to have a 25 man raid and I was to survive the entire night.

Then it happened, just two pulls away from the boss ... a wipe!! And Stunty goes down!!!

But it did not end there, we killed the group that did this, and on the very next pull I was to die again ... this was embarrassing since I was a tank and I was the only one to die on that pull :(

Then we got our first real look at High warlord Whatshisface.


And this is us after engaging him.

I'm somewhere in the pile in the center of the pic. I think we did alright considering 90% of us knew nothing about the fight and when we popped the first bubble half of the raid exploded. That little episode brings me nicely on to the next part of my post.

Before we start getting overconfident I would like to take us back a day to sunday where, like the title say, we wiped on gruul. And here's the screenie to prove it :)


Ok so we had a lot of people new to the fight along with us and this was the result of Half the raid exploding on the first shatter, I was quite in awe of the damage that could be wreaked on a raid .... by itself /Epic Fail

We downed him on the second try and I was pleased to see that nobody died in the first few shatters, although i almost killed our MT when I Intercepted at Gruul to get away from a bunch of people only to realize that the MT had feral charged at him also, resulting in us slooooowly trying to run away from each other, and fortunately we made it far enough away for a wipe not to happen,

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.



Oh and in a show of solidarity (even though I'm not a druid) against BRKWWA .... *Clears throat* "FOSHIZZEL"

Saturday, July 19, 2008

A Long Rambling Post On Arms

First off I did my first ever Karazhan one shot today, and killed Netherspite for the very first time ever. Thats right I've killed Maggy, Gruul, 6/6 in SSC, 3/4 in TK, and one boss in MH... but never killed Netherspite until today. What was amazing in my mind was that we did the entire run with the exception of Netherspite with only one tank.


And while I only managed to achieve second place on the Damage Done, just take a look at the list I did top .... can you tell what it is?


Thats right I topped the death list. It's a running joke in raids that I die the most, and while this is not always true it's close enough as makes no difference. It was during this run that I stopped to ask myself why this is. Well some of it is just plain bad luck and there's nothing I can do about that, but as for the rest ...

The fist answer that came to mind was in fact another question. What does an arms warrior bring to the raid?

So I started to list things off in my mind. The most obvious is that they bring the Blood Frenzy buff increasing physical damage for the entire raid by 4%. The other obvious one was good melee dps. Yet another was the shout buffs. But none of these helped me reach a conclusive answer. So what else does an Arms Warrior bring to the raid?

The answer lies in the question. He's a warrior, and warriors have plate, which is admittedly a very minor advantage in end game, but they also have a large stack of health to go with it, and this is not a minor advantage, it's a bloody great big advantage if you know how to use it.

Yes yes, I know that a dps warrior will almost exclusively be in Berserker Stance and will consequently be taking 10% extra damage, but stop to think for a second, look at the mage, the priest, the shaman and the rogue. They, at the same gearing level as my dps gear, will be running around with ~7k health unbuffed, where as I am running around with 9.5-10k unbuffed. thats a damn slight more than a 10% increase. Don't get me wrong I can and have been one shotted by raid bosses and understand that if anything seriously sets it's eyes on me instead of a tank I'm a goner, but that doesn't mean there is no damage to be taken elsewhere.

Ok, so you have more health than the average dps, how does this explain you dieing so often?


This is because I use my health bar as a weapon and a resource.

Use your health bar as a weapon? Than make no sense Stunty.

Ok let me try and explain. If your a regular reader of my blog, you will have by now seen some screen shots of my UI. I have it all arranged by order of importance and set it out so it's easy to read. I have incoming damage scrolling up at the left of my character, incoming heals scrolling down to the left, and Out going damage floating around at the top of the screen since it's the least important. I have large unit frames for both myself and my target just above my action bars, compact but easy to read raid frames to the top left, and Buffs and Debuffs to the top right.

Why did I go to all this trouble with my UI when blizzard provides you with a workable and functional one? It's because I wanted more information readily available in an easy to process format. This allows me to look at the amount of incoming damage, incoming heals, state of the raid, and then make an informed decision as to whether or not I should allow myself to take more damage to increase my dps time. I can instantly tell if I'm going to be putting too much pressure on the healers, or if the damage I will take will kill me and how much damage I will do in return for this health pay off. And the better you know the fight and the players in your raid the harder you can push this health resource.

25 man raids are filled with AoE damage, and from judging rage, health, heals, incoming damage, position in my dps rotation, my brain is constantly running estimates on whether taking a couple of thousand more damage will provide a significant bonus in dps out put. Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes yes, I just go with my gut instincts on it and it rarely lets me down.

This is the reason why even with my sub par gear (mostly crafted and karazhan/gruuls gear) I can still provide good dps in most fights. But this comes at the price of the "always dead" reputation. Because I push so hard one small mistake is often all it takes to kill me, and I am the Incompetent Warrior after all. Also there are times, usually in the last few percent of a boss fight, where I feel that the extra damage I can do in the time it takes for me to die is actually more than the damage I would do if I were to play it safe and survive, and a quick study of the combat log and the situation after I died have proved me to be right more often than not. There are also times where I know I'm going to die whatever I do, and getting in one last damage rotation has got to be better than running away and dieing anyway.

Told you it was a long ramble about arms, and for the life of me I don't know why I wrote it ... but I'm sure as hell not going to throw it away after spending so long on it.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, July 18, 2008

I Gots Me T5 Glove YAY

Hurray!!!

I got my first piece of Tier 5 gear ... and it was completely undeserved. I was having a completely crap night that night, I mean seriously I stank. The only saving grace was that I was running as dps and not as a tank where having such a bad night would have let everyone down even more.

I had picked up some kind of virus that kept trying to open Internet Explorer, but having banned it from making any kind of Internet connection all this resulted in was it periodically minimizing WoW repeatedly for about 20-30 seconds. I spent most of yesterday tracking it down and eradicating it from my pc, but that night I just couldn't find it. Maybe it was having this happen which threw me off my game so much, but whatever the reason I just didn't bring my A-Game.

On the Lurker Below I was completely mistiming my movements to escape being hit by his whirl which eventually lead to my death close to the end of the fight. At one point I was so low on health that I couldn't risk jumping into the water to escape his Spout and had to run around behind him as he spouted hoping a healer could throw a heal on me as I did so. Fortunately one did, which was lucks since after his spout I misjudged whirls range again and was knocked into the water.

On Leo I kept messing up my damage rotation and misclicking abilities which crushed my dps output in an already melee unfriendly fight. Although on a plus note I did manage to survive for the longest I ever have in phase three. In fact according to the WWS report it was after he died ... if only by a fraction of a second.

Anyway hopefully I can get over this funk and bring my A-Game for the next raid. And to lighten the mood here are a couple of fun events that happened.

My Epic DPS fail on the trash in heroic black morass broadcast over Guild chat.

Click to enlarge
Proof that no one can resist my dwarfish charms. Here is Lady B obviously overcome by my Fiendishly handsome dwarven features, and also my apparently charming voice on vent (or so I've been told, personally I can't stand to hear recordings of my voice and I don't know how other people can).


We had to restrain her for her own good after that.


So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A Server First ... I Think.

Did I suddenly shoot forward in progression to get a server first in the Sunwell Plateau?

This is the Incompetent Warrior here so of course I didn't. Oh no I went retro for the server first. As Ghostlands EU was created with the release of the burning crusades it turns out Ragnaros had never been killed (at least as far as I know). Also a Ghostlandian is trying to craft some legendary item involving the Bindings of Whatshisname and some quest item that drops off Raggy and apparently crafting this item will cause some kind of world event. I, being one of the Burning Crusade noob invasion, haven't really got a clue whats going on so I kept my mouth shut when this sort of thing was mentioned so as not to seem like too much of a noob. But hey the people involved read this blog so the cats out of the bag now :)

Anyway, I hadn't the faintest notion that raggy was going to be killed on sunday until the person organizing the event whispered me asking how many of my guild were going to it since at least two of them said they would. I got an invite and with 24 other poeple the adventure began.

All through the Instance I hadn't the faintest notion of what the hell was going on. We pul mobs I hit mobs, people ninjapull more mobs I hit them too. There was some deal with dousing runes and what not. At one point we almost wiped with 25 level 70's when about 4 packs of mobs were pulled all at once due to a seemingly infectious bout of general incompetence. Yet being over stacked on healers we pulled through.

Only Majordomo and raggy were left to kill when we went in so we killed all of Majordomos adds which counts as beating him. Then looted his chest for some retro epics ... of which I got none :(


Then it was time for Ragnaros himself, I can only imagine what it would have been like to struggle all the way through at level 60 with 40 people in the raid and finaly be greated by this sight.



Even during the fight I hadn't the faintest notion of what was going on except the a couple of times I was sent flying through the air and into lava. I would just intercept back at him and all was good it seems, and it was great fun flying backwards through the air :)

After what seemed to be far too short a time Raggy was down and we were celebrating.

In conclusion I would like to give a big Incompetent thank you to K for organizing this and for inviting me along.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Tips For New Tanks - Part 1

After running as dps behind a couple of "new tanks", players who are new to the tanking role, I thought I'd do a little write up on some tips and tricks for players new to tanking.

Yes it's true I'm going to pretend to be all wise and knowledgeable again, but please remember that I'm only pretending and that you could probably get better advice from hundreds of different sources. Also note that I am not very knowledgeable about the paladin class in regards to tanking.

Tips and Tricks.

1) Let your group know your new to the role: This is a big one since you are likely to be under geared if you're just starting tanking and this will significantly affect your TPS (threat per second). Letting your group know your new will give them the heads up that they may need to adjust their damage or healing out put.

2) Use your highest threat hit on the pull, and use it on your secondary target:
Non-Tanks tend to be trigger happy during the pull, casting unnecessary heals, dotting up mobs, sheeping just before you pull and generally making your life as a tank a living nightmare. So use a big threat hit to start the pull, and if you have two tank two mobs use it on the second on the kill order. This means that when that priest throws the heal before you hit your mobs your already targeting the one that's likely to run after him. If you have to tank three use it on the third on the kill order as this one will be getting the least of your attention during the fight. Warriors are limited to their ranged weapon, but I would recommend feral druids use Moonfire whenever possible to start a pull, and of course pally's have their holly Frisbee

3) Be Aware: Keep an eye on all cc'd mobs in case they break out and need to be brought under control again. A quick taunt on that mob and then switching back to your primary target usually allows the CC'er to do their job without getting squished, or worse your healer getting squished. Also keep an eye on loose casters as they just stand there even when attacking different targets. Is that frostbolt he just cast heading for you? If not then you need to get his attention again. Has someone in your party just died? If so do you need to pick up another mob that they were cc'ing? These are just some of the things you have to keep an eye on while tanking, so the more information you can have your UI show you the better.

4) Set you camera distance to maximum, and use it properly: This is all part of Being Aware. Setting your camera angle to maximum allows you to see as much of the fight as possible. By "use it properly" I mean turn your camera angle to where you can see as many of the mobs as possible, or where you can see the mobs most likely to cause trouble (these would include freeze trapped mobs and seduced mobs). If you have to back yourself into a corner for any reason, move your camera to directly above you. This will ensure that you have the best view possible in this difficult situation.

5) Share the love: When tanking multiple mobs it's very important that you don't leave any unattended for very long. One good way to do this is to move the tanked mobs away from the CC'd mobs and liberally use any multi target damaging ability you have, this would include cleave, Thunder Clap, Swipe, Consecration, and anything else that will hit more than one mob close to you. When tanking only two mobs a focus macro is very useful. To use this select your secondary target and type "/focus". This will set that mob as your focus. Then you select your primary target and every so often use this macro.

Warning: My macros are an ugly affair, please do better if possible.

/target focus
/cast Devastate
/targetlasttarget

This will target the mob you set as your focus, cast devastate on it then return you to your main target. You can replace "devastate" with the name of any spell, Mangle for example. This just makes it easy to maintain threat on two mobs without losing track of your main target, something which is very easy to do

Thats all for this issue of "Tips for new tanks" stay tuned for the next edition where I will be covering Line of Sight Pulls, Moving Casters, Making Use of a Good Hunter (the rare beast that they are), The Time and Place For Thunderclap, and I might even throw in a couple more of my ugly macros especially the one for "on the fly" tanking.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

I Will Not Stand For This!!!

A while ago I read a post by Big Bear Butt on how great the new PvP gear available for honor points was for PvE. My last post states my belief in using every advantage available to me, so I got all excited and started grinding some honor in late night BG's. Today I logged on and decided to check what I should aim for now that I was amassing a few honor points. So I took a trip to Stormwind to see what the biggest upgrade for me would be.

I was shocked, I was appalled, I was more than a little miffed.

Do you know what blizzard expects of me to get any of the gear that is actually an upgrade for me?

They want me to be good at PvP. This is so totally unfair because I suck at PvP. All I wanted was free upgrades and what do they do?

They demand at least a minimal level of competence at PvP. The stuff I can get without having an above starting arena rating is over stacked in stamina, and under stacked in hit rating and attack power, although it does seem to retain an almost equivelent level of critical strike rating.

But you know what makes it worse?

The stuff that is an honest to goodness "I looked at more than the item level" upgrade, needs me to be really really good at PvP. /sulk

Oh well I may as well give arena another go and hope like hell that I get match after match populated with noob opponents ... preferably blind and arthritic noobs just to give me a fighting chance.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, July 11, 2008

If You Ain't Cheetin', You Ain't Tryin' Hard Enough.

This post is in response to the new trend of thinking that T5 boss downs are not worth as much as they used to.

In a way this is true, you can now get T6 equivalent gear and epic gems from the new vendors, and the removal of attunement means that you can skip into the easier early bosses in Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, and many of the older guilds seem to think that this is cheating ... and they are right ... and they are wrong.

Haven't they been cheating too though?

Haven't they taken every possible advantage they could get to down a new boss?

Didn't they get T4 equivalent gear from they old badge vendor to enter T5?

Didn't they use strategies developed by those who got the world first kills?

If you start disregard kills based on the fact that people were useing every possible advantage they could get where does it end?

Taking this line of thought to the extreme, you could say that a boss kill only counts if you go in using only only the gear you had earned through PvE, no bought buff food, potions, or weapon enhancements and no reading up on the encounter before going.

Well I say that if you don't have the best possible gear you can lay your hands on at the time and working on the rest, and you don't have every consumable you can nab, grab, beg, borrow or steal, and if you haven't read strats and alternate strats. Well then I don't think you deserved to down the boss in the first place.

If you ain't cheating, you ain't bloody trying hard enough!

Sorry about the rant, but that attitude just pissed me off. Yes it may have been easier for us than it was for them, but we would have been bloody idiots not to take every advantage we could and continue to do so. The day we stop doing so is the day we should stop downing bosses... or at least deserve to stop downing bosses.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Vashj Down!!

Yesterday we took our biggest step as a raiding guild, yes the title says it all we downed Vashj. SoL is now 6/6 in SSC.


This was it, this was what I had been waiting for. When I decided that raiding was what I wanted from this game this was the feeling I was looking for.

Have you ever seen one of those world first videos where at the end when the boss goes down the voice chat explodes with screaming and cheering?

Well it's not only on world firsts that this happens. As the lady hit the deck vent exploded with screaming, cheering and laughter that lasted at least a full minute. To date I have never experienced anything quite like that feeling ingame. 25 people all cheering and screaming their heads off after trying so hard on the most difficult fight fight we have had to date. It made the previous 27 wipes on her worthwhile ... and then some.

We had 9 previous attempts on her that night and it was our last try as we had gone way over our raid time already. Wipe number 8 was a 2% wipe and I took a screenie thinking that I would be making another "We almost had her" post, this was reinforced with the abortive 9th attempt, which went so wrong when the MT paused right at the edge of her aggro zone and a couple of people ran right on by him causing 3 early death's. This made the victory all the sweeter when it happened.

It took me a good half an hour to calm down afterwards, and the warrior class leader was almost in tears with joy.

Was I blameless for all those wipe we had?

This is the Incompetent Warrior here, of course I caused some of them. They were not directly attributed to me but I played my part in our downfall.

How you ask?

Well it's simple. In this fight everyone has to play their part or the whole thing falls to pieces. I was stationed on the western steps for phase 2 and with a mage and a healer we could keep that side covered ... but if either one of the dps died the other could not handle all the elementals and get the tainted ones as well. I know that when the mage helping me died I would after a short while be forced over the top of the steps onto the outer ring just to stop them reaching Vashj. At that point I could not even see when a tainted elemental had spawned, let alone get to it in time.

One indirect wipe I caused was when my healer had let his healing instincts get the better of him and had started healing everyone in range, I got poisoned by a tainted elemental and died before priesty boy could get to me.

How is that my fault?

I'm a dwarf, my racial is Stoneform, Stoneform removes poison effects ... and I had forgotten I had it :(

Another one was a particularly ill timed Whirlwind on my part. I was at the bottom of the steps attacking an elemental when I tapped to WW button at the exact moment that a Naga spawned directly behind me. Then, where once I saw a dwarf attacking one of those pacifist elementals, all I could see was Naga ... and it was Angry. Needless to say I did not survive long there after.


Anyway thats about all I can say on the subject at the moment, I still get excited just thinking about it. Onwards to Kale'Thas and his cronies /charge

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I Was Livid. Grrrrrrr!!

Just to reassure you and put you at ease, this is not a drama post.

Last night we went to SSC to do The Lurker Below and Leotheras The Blind. Lurker's adds bugged on our first attemp, I was fine with that. We wiped on our first attempt on leo at a low percentage, I was fine with that.

What really ticked me off was that on our second attempt at Leo all three of the adds at the start turned around and Mind Blasted me ... Within 3 seconds!

I spent that entire fight face down on the ground :(

I died so fast I didn't even register on that attempt on Leo.

Now I don't mind dieing if I make a mistake but dieing that fast to something I have no control over just ticked me off.

It's a conspiracy I tells ya Prince has been talking to the higher up bosses and letting them know to look out for the crazy dwarf warrior. Exacting your revenge through other bosses, Prince thats just low. Shame, shame on you /DisapprovingWarriorFace

Anyway I munched a Savory Delight and in my disguise as a Pirate I lasted until 10% and we downed him. Prince must have forgotten to let the other bosses know I sometimes masquerade as a pirate, Muhahahahaha!!

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Some Warriorz Is Not For ... Warriorz?? o.O

Sorry about the title I've just read a few to many lolcatz lately.

Anyway the point of this post is that even though I go on and on about warriors, I know that they are not for everyone.

I have a RL friend that played a warrior basically from beta until he rerolled a druid on my server ... and he loves it. He specced feral and never looked back. He loves the versatility that comes with the spec. The ability to switch gear and provide great dps, ability to off-heal, innervates and battle rez's, he loves all these things that a feral druid brings to the party and I don't think he will ever go back.

I know another guy that plays a warrior and rolled a rogue, and he is a much better player as a rogue than he ever was as a warrior, even though he had played as a warrior for a much longer time.

Conversely I have a holy pally friend that rolled a fury warrior alt, and is reveling in the focused sustained dps that this guy brings, and again is a better player as a fury warrior than he was as a paladin.

This has made me feel very lucky in the fact that I first rolled a class that I love, and I do love it. I love tanking, I love the complex damage rotation of raiding arms, and lately I have come to love the self contained good dps that comes with fury spec.

So my advice would be to experiment with different classes if your a warrior, and if your not a warrior give it a go, you never know you might like it :)

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Raid Progression As Seen By Stuntyone.

I finally figured out why my Editing software was crashing. Turns out that my buggy AVI codec was somehow managing to crash even that, darn that codec, darn it to heck

Click to enlarge


So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.