Wednesday, 8 July 2009

FOR THE HORDE!

Yesterday, I went on an Alliance city raid with Bonemane, our server's greatest Horde PvPer. Needless to say, the guy is awesome. I've got some screens, but I wish I had taken more.

Moar facepalming

After doing the terrible Halls of Stone run, I went to look for a group to the Obsidian Sanctum. After a while, I found a group for the ten-man version (OS10), but we went for an achievement: [Less is More]. Nice. We had a decent group, but someone decided that we should leave one drake up for another achievement and better loot. With eight players, including two tanks and two healers, only leaving four damage dealers, our DPS was way too low for [Twilight Assist]. So we died horribly a few times.

Luckily, the other players came to their senses and we slew the last drake, leaving only Sartharion alive. We nuked him down and the achievement unlocked. But later, I wanted to go to Utgarde Pinnacle. It was the daily Heroic, which would net me a few extra badges. And the tank I had on OS10 was looking for DPS. So I joined and all we need was one DPS and a healer. The tank went to look for those and he found them. The guildleader of my pallyfriend's guild and the druid officer. I hate both, but the druid more. I won't get into details about it, but I really dislike them.

Anyhow, we went inside and started clearing the 'trash' (term used for enemies between bosses). First boss went down easily and somewhere around the second boss, the guildleader and his officer got an idea: Let's get achievements. Usually, this is not a problem. However, the third boss is a gauntlet, in which some of the enemies drop harpoons, which need to be fired at the boss when he is in range of the launchers. When you kill his drake, he comes down. Easy. Not so easy if you want to get both [Lodi Dodi We Loves The Skadi] and [My Girl Loves To Skadi All The Time]. Meaning that we have to run up to him, get him down in a single pass and kill him in three minutes. Ain't gonna work.

Still, they had a plan. Bugging the encounter. The tank would run to the boss, which sends the boss into the air on his mount and enemies come running at you. He would then run back inside, forcing the enemies to despawn, to disappear, allowing us to run to the back. There we could farm harpoons and run back inside when we have enough. Easy said, not that easily done.
After we got our harpoons, I asked if I should use my harpoons on the boss's first pass. They answered that I should. So we started the encounter and on the first pass, I used my harpoons. The other DPS, however, didn't. This would screw us over on the achievement, so we had to reset.

New harpoons, another chance. This time we all used the harpoons, getting him down in one pass. ...And the boss went straight for the Druid healer. Although I enjoyed watching him die, we can't kill the boss without the healer. That, and the tank was supposed to pull the boss to him as he landed. The next couple of attempts were Deja Vu's. Meanwhile, the other shaman began to moan about getting the achievement the normal way and that he did it normally and if we didn't think that it could be done and so on and so on and so on. That sentence was made like that on purpose to reflect just how annoying that was. The tank on the other hand, began to complain that DPS should know about cornerpulling (a technique to break the line of sight to force an enemy to move towards you) and that we should do the boss in the tiny hallway where the enemies spawn. Idiot. The boss does a 'whirlwind', which damages everyone in range and you can't outheal that.

After wiping some more, we decided to get it over with and kill him normally, without achievements. Atleast the last boss went down without any problems. And the druid? He offered to leave the group when I was in one. That just might be an offer I cannot refuse.

P.S.: No screens were taken, I usually forget to take them unless I get achievements. :S

Monday, 6 July 2009

./facepalm

Sometimes, you just have day in which nothing can seem to go right. That day was yesterday. It started with a Heroic Halls of Stone run. Besides me there was a Rogue, a Warrior, my DK brother and my Pally friend. After waiting for ages to get in (Blizzard needs to build more instance servers), everything went smooth. Until Krystallus, the first boss. Krystallus is a boss that has borrowed all of his mechanics from an older boss: Gruul, from, well, Gruul's Lair. He does a knockback, which sends you flying only to give you a debuff afterwards that reduces your movement speed with increments of 20%. Once it hits the 100% reduction mark, you are turned to stone and he casts a spell called Shatter. Shatter deals damage to each player, but that damage only gets lethal when you are standing too close to another party member. The two people that we got randomly, the Rogue and the Warrior, died because they ran straight back in. Lucklily, all of the people needed to finish a fight (Tanks, Healers and some DPS) were still alive, so he went down quickly.

After getting those two back on their feet, we went on, deeper into the instance. As we pulled the first group in the corridor we had to take, the tank just about pulled them all. Needless to say, we all died. We also died on the constructs later on, because they cast a huge area of effect spell when they start to die. Unfortunately, our tank didn't have his best day. Or better yet, he had a fail-day. When you have 3 melee DPS in a group, you need to pay attention to where you drag the boss to. This particular boss, Maiden of Grief (yes, made after Maiden of Virtue from Karazhan), places a big black disc on the floor that hurts. So don't stand in them.

But the boss places multiple zones like that during the encounter and at a point, we were standing in the middle of them. So what does the tank do? He moves the boss. However, instead of moving her towards the open space in the front, in range of the healer, he moves her through all of the zones to the back. This left the melee peoples wondering why. that way we either had to take massive damage and die to reach the boss or walk around and drastically lower the DPS that way. Because the tank left the healer's range, he died and we finished the encounter with two men standing. Needless to say, we didn't get [Good Grief].
At this point I already was yelling at the tank in the next room. That's the advantage of being family. You know where to find them. Still we had two bosses to go. The constructs wiped us a few more times on the way there. But the third boss isn't a boss. It's an event in which waves of enemies keep coming. After a while, you survived long enough and you get free loot. But we wanted an achievement aswell: [Brann Spankin' New]. It actually went quite well, but the tank managed to let one enemy slip past to take a shot at the NPC. And seriously, ten seconds after the NPC was hit, the event was over. If the tank had seen the mob and pulled it, we all would have had an achievement. Great.

So we finally moved on to the last boss, which casts a debuff that makes you and everyone close to you take heavy damage. This is even bigger when you stand in his Lightning Ring, which causes that damage to be even bigger. And there is a machine, operated by the NPC from the third boss, that spewes enemies. He's just trying to help. Which kind of enemy comes out is linked to the boss' health. For an achievement we had to kill 5 Iron Sludges during the encounter. At about 50%, the machine makes Malformed Oozes, which were mistaken for Iron Sludges by the Warrior and the Rogue. The Iron Sludges didn't come and I had an idea: It had something to do with the oozes.

So I yelled: Leave the oozes alone for a bit. And indeed, the Sludges began to form. Unfortunately, we got too many of them and we wiped. And I got an angry healer, yelling at me that I should never say something like that again. Okay, but we know how we get sludges now.
In the next attempt, the tank decided to tank the boss right on top of the healer. We wiped. Then the rogue had to go, as he chartered a group to another Heroic instance. Instead of looking for another player, we just nuked the boss down and went home, without any achievements.

Later, I went to the Obsidian Sanctum and Utgarde Keep, which also failed miserably, but that's another story.

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

M10 Product Site is up!

The product site for M10 is up, along with the visual spoiler, ofcourse. You can check it out here.

Monday, 22 June 2009

Flame Keeper Obunaji

Yeah, that's my Shaman's new title. I started running around in Eastern Kingdoms, both exploring and honouring/desecrating the fires there, but I forgot about Western Plaguelands and the Hinterlands. So as soon as I completed Stranglethorn Vale, I had to go back up there for the achievement.

After that, Kalimdor. Luckily I only had a few undiscovered nooks here, so I didn't have to walk for ages to get everywhere. Flightpaths for the win. But in Darnassus, at the landing I saw a fire, thinking that that was Teldrassil's fire, so I took it. Then I remembered that those are for the [King of the Fire Festival] achievement. So later, I had to go back all the way to Stormwind, Exodar and Ironforge to sneak in and get it. The Exodar and Ironforge were easy! Run in, get the item, corpse run out. Stormwind had the most annoying rogue ever. He would sap me, wait until it faded, wait until I mounted and then he would stab me. Three times in a row this happened, until I went afk for dinner and he got bored. Then I could just run to the bonfire, get killed there, make a corpse run for it and flee into the Stockades for another achievement.

then after defeating a Ragnaros clone, throwing torches at myself and dancing merrily around a pole, I got the [Flame Keeper] achievement and the title. All in one day.

Sunday, 21 June 2009

It's sunday tomorrow and although the Midsummer Fire Festival is starting tomorrow in WoW, I hope I manage to get the review on Duels of the Planeswalkers done by then.

Thursday, 18 June 2009

The downloads on XBLA for Duels of the Planeswalkers are working now and I am downloading as we speak.