World of Warcraft

[TristorTrucido]

Bah, can't connect. Guess they still messing around with the servers for the patch. Took me 3 hrs to get that patch done, good old dial-up.

The Tuesday maintanece time is extended a few hours longer than normal. Will be going on till 11 am PST.

[suzumebachi]

time to start levelling my druid..

anyways like i said they stopped coming in waves after a minute or so. once we killed the first 3 waves it was just a full on endless rush of friggen trolls. and no, none of us were on the staircase. there were probably 10 guys on each of the NPCs.

i'll try again with a protection specced tank though (last time we had an Arms junkie).

anyone know how big the patch is yet? i knew i should have brought my USB drive to school today...

Anyone considered forming an OCR guild?

no. and the reason for that is everyone is on different servers. I'm horde on Smolderthorn, Rama is horde on Illidan/Archimonde, Zircon is horde on Gorefiend, Russ is.. somewhere... and Wingless is playing in the Forest of Feelings.

[Shhteve]

At level 60, it's all about PVP and doing high end instances. It's either good or bad depending upon what kind of associates you're working with. At that point, the community is what makes the game.

[Russell Cox]

no. and the reason for that is everyone is on different servers. I'm horde on Smolderthorn, Rama is horde on Illidan/Archimonde, Zircon is horde on Gorefiend, Russ is.. somewhere... and Wingless is playing in the Forest of Feelings.

Horde, Stormscale

[The wingless]

Wingless is playing in the Forest of Feelings.

PVP-RP is a healthy mix of the anal-retentive Dragonlance nerd and the malicious, ritalin-deprived pre-teen

[suzumebachi]

yeah so umm... anyone else having problems getting on tonight? there's a message at the login screen that links to the forums... the forums are down too.. sigh.

[Being]

All my friends are all like "BUY AN UPPERLEVEL CHARACTER FROM EBAY BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN THE REAL FUN BEGINS!"

I be all like "what the hell are you talking about?"

As you can tell, I don't play WoW.

[suzumebachi]

this is wonderful. i finally get on illidan, i'm on for a total of 2 minutes then i get disconnected and the server goes down.

but does blizzard update the realm status page to show which servers are down? hell no. that would require effort.

[Russell Cox]

yeah so umm... anyone else having problems getting on tonight? there's a message at the login screen that links to the forums... the forums are down too.. sigh.

Same, it's patch time. I'll start getting back into playing sometime Wednesday.

[Ramaniscence]

this is wonderful. i finally get on illidan, i'm on for a total of 2 minutes then i get disconnected and the server goes down.

but does blizzard update the realm status page to show which servers are down? hell no. that would require effort.

Good, so it WASN'T just me.

[Russell Cox]

this is wonderful. i finally get on illidan, i'm on for a total of 2 minutes then i get disconnected and the server goes down.

but does blizzard update the realm status page to show which servers are down? hell no. that would require effort.

That's because your server isn't down. The login servers are fucking up, not the realm servers. It happens every patch on most MMOs, just relax.

[Arek the Absolute]

Hmm, it seems as though Blizzard had a little joke up on their main page. There were supposed to be links to images to "plumbers" entering their world. If you check the url link, it says "mario__", which obviously shows who is involved. The thing is, is that the links are dead. Anyone see the pictures and save them before the link went down?

[p1x13]

Hmm, it seems as though Blizzard had a little joke up on their main page. There were supposed to be links to images to "plumbers" entering their world. If you check the url link, it says "mario__", which obviously shows who is involved. The thing is, is that the links are dead. Anyone see the pictures and save them before the link went down?

The italians are always involved.... not really but no I didn't get to =\

[zircon]

Last night, we tried rag for the 4th and 5th time - serious attempts using greater fire pots and other consummables. The first time, we got him to about 65%, and barely got through the Sons. The second time, we got him to 46% - the sons went pretty well, but they took down a bunch of healers and rogues, and people were relatively drained by the time Rag came up. I think personally that we had way too much FR. I had 85 unbuffed with no Shaman totem giving me more, and I had NO trouble managing the fire damage (in fact, I used mana potions more). Some other casters had anywhere from 150 to over 250 unbuffed with IMO is completely ridiculous.

[Russell Cox]

Last night, we tried rag for the 4th and 5th time - serious attempts using greater fire pots and other consummables. The first time, we got him to about 65%, and barely got through the Sons. The second time, we got him to 46% - the sons went pretty well, but they took down a bunch of healers and rogues, and people were relatively drained by the time Rag came up. I think personally that we had way too much FR. I had 85 unbuffed with no Shaman totem giving me more, and I had NO trouble managing the fire damage (in fact, I used mana potions more). Some other casters had anywhere from 150 to over 250 unbuffed with IMO is completely ridiculous.

Right!

Grats on your progression, though. Usually I reccommend AMAP for tanks, 150ish for melee, and 80ish for casters/ranged DPS. 46% is *VERY* good for a starting point upon entering your first Sons phase.

As for the Sons, what I'd reccommend is enforcing everyone to have the newest CTRA installed; period. On the MT list, put slot 1 as the MT (i.e. Ragnaros's slot) and on MT list 4 or 5 put a non-tanking Warrior. The Warrior's job is to focus on one target during Sons of the Flame and *everyone* in the raid burns them down; each Son should be dying within 7-8 seconds. Use fear bombs, freezing traps if Hunters can get it done, but don't use Banish; you're under a time limit and you can't wait for that to run its course.

While this is going on, the MTs should NOT be engaging unless they get the aggro of a Son. Their job is to stand near Ragnaros so that when he emerges they can quickly get aggro again. If no one is in melee range of Ragnaros, he does his 1-2 shot move, going down the hate list, so it's imperative that the MT (and their healers) are ready when he comes back.

If you've got 1 Son left when Ragnaros is back, don't sweat it, just get the damn thing killed. Any more (unless he's down to 20% when he emerges) and you probably won't have enough mana/people alive to burn him down.

[zircon]

Yeah, we do use an assist chain (I think a Rogue is the MA) to get the sons down. It's just a matter of practicing gathering them up so they CAN be CCed.

[suzumebachi]

god damn the princess of maraudon is one ugly ho.

also i realized how much of a DPS machine hunters really are. i had the highest DPS of the group, even though I was the lowest level guy there, level 48. there was even a 56 warrior and 51 mage. i actually had to cut back a bit at parts because i was pulling mobs off the tank. but we had an excellent healer who knew how to handle those situations quite admirably.

[Russell Cox]

god damn the princess of maraudon is one ugly ho.

also i realized how much of a DPS machine hunters really are. i had the highest DPS of the group, even though I was the lowest level guy there, level 48. there was even a 56 warrior and 51 mage. i actually had to cut back a bit at parts because i was pulling mobs off the tank. but we had an excellent healer who knew how to handle those situations quite admirably.

Yeah, people don't give Hunters enough credit. A properly specced and geared Hunter and rival and even surpass a Rogue or Mage DPS if they know how to dance the aggro threshold perfectly. Usually, unless a specific encounter calls for a certain class to go apeshit with damage (Rogues for Kazzak/Ragnaros, etc.) Hunters are almost always near the top in our guild.

On a side note, FLJOPDH)@(Y@)($&)(*&EU)@E& I HATE BROODLORD LASHLAYER IN BLACKWING LAIR! Jesus fucking CHRIST that is a bullshit encounter. If any of you have ever been to the Lycieum in Blackrock Depths, you'll KNOW what constant instant spawn of 10+ monsters is like. It's like that in the suppression chamber in Blackwing Lair....

...except there's no torches to turn off spawns like there is in BRD, there's no place to stop and rest at the end, and there's also the added bonus of the Suppressors; they're traps basically Rogues have to disable. If a Suppressor goes off, Attack speed is reduced by 80%, casting speed by 80%, and walking speed by 80% -- in short, if you let this stay on longer than 5 seconds you're almost guarranteed a wipe.

Sound fun yet? It gets better. The 'trash' mobs are whelps, which have 4K HP each, and come in groups of 5-20. There are also Blackwing Taskmasters, which are like a Warrior/Mage hybrid -- they hit fucking hard and their Flamestrikes can do well over 2K, with 500 a tick additional. PLUS, there are Dragonkin casters that give off an aura doing 50 damage a second for 5 seconds -- this can stack unlimiited times and I've seen it get up to 1,500 a second damge.

WAIT! It gets better... because...

YOU HAVE TO FIGHT THE BOSS WHILE ALL OF THIS SHIT IS GOING ON!

That's right! Broodlord can one-shot a Protection specced, Molten Core geared, 8K+ HP wearing Warrior with his Mortal Strikes. Fun shit. Plus, he has not one, but TWO knockback abilities that COMPLETELY reset hate on the tank -- the AoE is blastwave and reduces movement speed to 50% and does around 3K damage, the single KB does about 2K + fall damage if you go high enough. So, what essentially happens is the gap from healing to tanking aggro is very narrow, and WILL eventually tip the other way.

Now, because hate is so tricky, Mages are literally demoted to AoE bitches on the constantly spawning whelps and/or wanding Broodlord -- but watch it, because you CAN pull hate via wanding on this guy. It's a race against the clock to down him via DoT tactics, surviving the respawns, Rogues being on top of the Suppressors, and trying to survive without pulling healing aggro.

So yeah, fucking goods times are after the first two bosses.

[Arek the Absolute]

Just started playing the horde side on the new server Gurubashi. If anyone is interested, pm me and we will party up or something.

Character: Mumbo - Troll Warrior

[zircon]

Russ: ouch. I heard Broodlord isn't as hard as Vael though. Vael apparently is a huge bitch of a fight.. everyone else seems to breeze past the next few encounters up to Chromaggus.

[Russell Cox]

Russ: ouch. I heard Broodlord isn't as hard as Vael though. Vael apparently is a huge bitch of a fight.. everyone else seems to breeze past the next few encounters up to Chromaggus.

Lies! lol...

Seriously, Vael is merely a matter of control like Onyxia. You never have to worry about running out of Rage, Mana, or Energy because you get 20/500/20 every second on him. Plus, once you get him down to 19 percent (he starts at 30) Warriors take over and Execute his ass into the ground.

People that breezed through Broodlord did so because his Mortal Strikes were only hitting 1K max. When BWL came out and people got to him, they were cock-blocked by the 7-9K MSs. When they hotfixed Vael and Razorgore the last time, they messed with his damage table and it shrunk to 1K. Now it's back where it originally was and he's NOT SO EZ.

To be honest, I find the Razorgore fight harder than the Vael. Razorgore's an encounter where one person's fuck up will screw up the entire raid. It has to be done nearly perfectly to get past the puzzle part. On Vael, it's just a matter of aggro control and tank switching when one gets hit with Burning Adrenaline.

[suzumebachi]

i hit 50 yesterday. also if there's anybody on Skullcrusher feel free to join me on Smolderthorn once the transfers are up on thursday!

and man, halloween WoW style = fun. world PvP has officially returned as tons upon tons of horde try to throw stink bombs and place rotten eggs in southshore. and the variety of strange buffs and items you get make for an interesting time. i managed to get the buff that makes you big and orange.. and then stack it with Winterfall Firewater...

let's say the results were.. quite amusing. [2] [3]

i probably made a few lowbies in STV shit themselves as they were promptly run down by a 30 foot tauren.

the other buffs were kinda fun, too.

[Rodin]

Yeah, I discovered that having a dwarf take the big orange buff from the candy and then use a world enlarger makes them ~gnome sized, which was rather amusing.

The best combo I've gotten so far though was the candy that makes you floating and ghostlike and the world enlarger. You basically become a little floating pixie, and can run around making "OoOOooOHhH!" noises at everybody

Also, the stink bombs from Southshore are fricking HARD to remove. Improved Mend Pet can scrape just about everything off, but failed in the case of this stuff.

[tefnek]

Yeah, I'm a badass.

[Russell Cox]

and man, halloween WoW style = fun.

Yeah, almost all of WoW's events are nice; we were doing Ragnaros last night due to lack of healers being on Saturday and our MTs tanked him as a bat and a Leper Gnome. I really like the Children's Week with the orphans, though.

FFXI's Halloween consisted of creating a trade macro, spending shittons of money buying fruit/juice/food from vendors, finding an NPC that participates in the event, and then spamming the macro. You either got one of the 8 ridiculously fucking rare items (that did absolutely nothing and looked like the same items every year), or you got a costume that you had to manually remove to be able to talk to the NPC again (so it became trade, take off costume, trade, take off costume, etc.). I know some people that spent millions of gil just to try to get these items, with one person I personally know spent over 5 million gil (before the massive inflation 7 months ago of FFXI currency, that was easily 200-300 gold).