Life After 60

So I know I haven't updated this much. Mainly because my guild hasn't done anything of note. We supposedly have a Molten Core run this week.

Other than that, it's interesting to see what my game experience has become after months of being level 60. Essentially it's boiled down to two things: raiding and PvP battlegrounds.

The RPG aspect of the content has ceased to exist. No sense in doing quests when the experience you get from them advances you to nowhere. So this essentially means raiding the PvE content in order to get awesome weapons and armor in order to be better equipped for the even more difficult raiding instances.

Then there is the PvP battlegrounds. This fucking rank system can get to you. Especially given the fact that ranks can "deteriorate" if you do nothing at all PvP-wise for a while. The early ranks were trivial. Who gives a shit if you drop from Master Sergeant back down to Private.

But then you get the rank of Knight-Lieutenant and you get access to the officers-only quarters in Stormwind and suddenly things change. Suddenly you want people to notice your rank. You want to keep that rank. You want access to the Knights-and-above club. And then you say, "Well, shit, I've got the PvP gauntlets and boots, I should go ahead and get the chest and legs."

Then after that you figure you want to shoulders and the belt, and eventually the helm and weapon. Let me tell you, a Hunter decked out in full PvP gear looks pretty fuckin' awesome. Add to the fact that you can purchase an epic-speed mount for achieving Commander's rank and, well, you tend to stay in the battlegrounds a lot.

Last night I managed to get 243 honorable kills against the Horde opposition in Arathi Basin. I had 514 HKs coming into Monday night and I thought that surely 500 kills would rank me up. Unfortunately it didn't seem like it would happen and so I attempted a mad rush for 500 more HKs in one night. No way I could have done it. I had to cut myself off at 2 AM, but a hefty 757 honorable kills last week should get me pretty damn close to Knight-Captain and the PvP chest and leg armor.

The more I play against incredibly awesome Horde players, the better my own PvP skills become. I used to loathe going up against the Shaman class. Now it is one that I hungrily target first. Sure, more than likely I'll get my ass handed to me, but it's fun as hell to smack those bitches with a mana-draining viper sting and interrupt their healing with scatter shot. And if they cleanse the viper sting, I slap them with another one immediately.

You may beat me, but I will do as much damage to you as I can before I go down. Let somebody else finish you off.

I did, actually, finally become Honored with the League of Arathor and was able to buy a cool little trinket that bubble-shields and absorbs up to 600 physical damage, which is pretty cool. (Everytime I pop my protective bubble I think of Big Steak.)

Ranks get updated after weekly maintenance which is bound to end within the hour so I'll check my ranking then. Hope against hope, bitches.

Update:

Just barely squeaked up to Knight-Captain. Got the gear to prove it.



(Yes, I now want the shoulders and helm. *sigh*)

Tiger Boss, Hakkar Down!

ZOMG, why doe we pwn so fucking HARD!????

Compared to MC bosses, Tiger Boss was teh noob, and got owned like one, too. After that guy went down I thought, "Why did we have so much trouble with this guy anyway?"

Then we decided to attempt Hakkar, the final boss of Zul'Gurub. We went in with the attitude that, hey, whatever happens we'll learn about how the engagement goes and experience is always good.

The first engagement was, well, we got stomped. Ten seconds in and Hakkar had obliterated the twenty-man raid.

The second time, however, after a rough start, we found the pattern and kept up the strategy until that biatch came down. So we were all very surprised that we killed him, when we were expecting merely experience out of it.

I was the sole Hunter in the group and stepped up to ensure that critical parts of the strategy were implemented like clockwork. It was the first time I had ever fought Hakkar, but what I was doing was working, and worked pretty fucking well.

Epic plate legs dropped, but I didn't care about phat lewtz. I'm just fucking happy that we downed Tiger and Hakkar. Wow, those guys had been plaguing us for months.

Good game.

Gehennas, Garr Down

Last Sunday Trinity went into the Molten Core once more to confront Gehennas and Garr, two bosses found deeper within the underground caverns.

What ensued was absolute sexy pwnage. One explanation before each fight. First try ownz0rs on Gehennas and Garr each. They got owned like noobs.

Favorite line of that night: "Don't worry about Garr. He hits like a pussy."

Trinity owns the motherfucking house. The next boss on the list is Baron Gedon.

I won't be able to join the MC raid this Friday night since I'll be busy cooking shit for the ultimate tournament Saturday night. So much for my getting Tranquil Shot. Oh well, next time.

It's Not Just A Game Anymore

Sure, if you're just starting out, killing rats for a quest, and buying your noob weapons and armor, it's just a game. Sure running five- or even ten-man instances is a relative breeze. As long as you don't have absolute morons in your group you can get to these low-tier bosses.

But it's when you start raiding content that requires the presence, coordination, and cooperation of 40 different people when you start getting to the most challenging aspect of the game. And it's not because the bosses are insanely difficult. No, the challenge is getting a group together who will listen to direction and execute when the time comes to get it done.

Case in point: Onyxia. This dragon, like any other high-end boss, has tricks to its defeat. Once these tricks are learned it's about performing the correct actions in the correct order at the correct time. Then it's just a matter of how long the fight takes before you down her.

These encounters have to be practiced. You've gotta get owned the first, second, third, or even fifth or sixth times before you finally start to 1) get it, and 2) gel as a group for the encounter.

Granted, the going is slower when there are still morons who still get tail-whipped into dragon whelp eggs despite being told hundreds of times to not be anywhere near the vicinity of her tail.

There are also the egos to contend with. People joining our guild who have been in bigger guilds that have downed all these high-level bosses. Trying to give direction. Speaking over the guild master. Sorry, dude, you left your guild so now it's time for you to shut your bitch-ass mouth up and listen to our leader. I don't care how epic-ed out you are, I don't care what big dogs you used to run with. You're in our house now and you are the smallest fish.

That's the most challenging part of World of Warcraft: dealing with other people.

As it is with real life, wouldn't you say?

479 Agility. Unbuffed.

That's right, bitches. Last night I finally slapped two +15 Agility enchantments on my Bone Slicing Hatchets, giving me a monstrous +56 Agility boost (given the +13 Agility bonuses BSH comes with already) to my character stats.

I went into Arathi Basin to introduce the Horde scum to my new pair of buds and was pwning left and right, up and down. I have boosted my overall damage-per-second and the agility boost gives me a very very slight critical percentage advantage over my Barbarous Blade. In addition, the agility increases my chances to dodge and parry, and gives me a huge (+112) ranged attack power upgrade.

Base DPS (unbuffed) is 149.2. With my Devilsaur Eye and Rapid Fire both activated, I'm doing 226.0 ranged DPS with the Ancient Bone Bow.

I sure hope my dual-wield weapons will be viable for many months, because it was a pain in the ass to farm the materials for these enchantments. That and it cost me about 60 gold to buy the last Large Brilliant Shards and Greater Eternal Essences from the guild bank that I needed. Expensive and time-consuming. Thank goodness for a lack of social life.

ZG Panther Boss Strategy

Due to a request to post the strategy Trinity uses to down the Panther Boss in Zul'Gurub, I will go ahead and do so.

Priestess Arlokk (i.e., the panther boss), when summoned, has two primary gimmicks.

The first one is that she summons packs of level 60 non-elite panthers. Arlokk then begins to place a type of Hunter's Mark on one person in the raid. This mark draws the summoned panthers to attack the marked individual.

The second gimmick is that she vanishes a couple of times during the engagement for about fifteen seconds. When she reappears in a giant panther form, she immediately performs an AoE cleave attack.

The main problem Trinity found ourselves dealing with during our first attempts was what to do with the summoned panthers. The other problem was how to avoid the cleave attack that rips into members like a son of a bitch.

First of all, don't kill the summoned panthers. If you kill these panthers, Arlokk will summon more, and these will be elite mobs. You don't want that. So essentially you've gotta figure out a way to crowd-control these panthers to keep them manageable.

Also, we haven't yet figured out how she chooses which person in the raid to mark at the onset of the engagement. We think it may have something to do with aggro list order, but for all we know it could be entirely random. Nonetheless, if one of the first people to get marked is a cloth-wearer, or, God-forbid, a Priest, you've got problems. This is why before we summon her, we keep all our cloth-wearers behind the pen fences (no line of sight, maybe?) and we let those who we are comfortable being marked unload on her or, in the case of Paladins and Druids, spam heals on our main tank. Ideally we want a Pally to get marked first since they wear plate and can heal themselves (Concentration Aura is very useful). Others who can handle the panthers are Hunters (mail armor, Aspect of the Monkey, high dodge from Agility) and Druids (bear form with their insane amount of damage mitigation).

So what happens when someone gets marked? Their job is to run around and collect panthers. Since they are marked, the panthers will automatically be drawn to them and start attacking. We have the marked individual collect all the panthers and bring them to a corner near the gong. If some other member of the raid has one or two panthers attacking them, have them run towards the marked player to peel those panthers off. The more concentrated and collected you have these panthers in one area, the better. Even if another person gets marked, it won't really matter since the panthers are all collected around one person way off in a corner.

You need to keep the marked person alive. If they die, the panthers will scatter again and probably start attacking several members of the raid. That being said, assign a dedicated healer (Pally or Druid) to the marked individual. Sometimes you may need two healers on him because one may become overwhelmed.

Here's a trick Trinity uses: Green Whelp Armor. Have everybody that can wear this armor put it on. The first time we tried this approach we were blown away by how fucking effective this low-level piece of armor was. Dozens of panthers were being put to sleep for about thirty seconds. So it helps mitigate damage on the marked person. But if you're going to do this, don't even touch the panthers with frost nova or any type of damage-dealing AoE, since it will break the sleep.

The Green Whelp Armor isn't necessary if you're geared up real well. The last time we killed her our Pally who got marked forgot to bring his armor, but still survived ok.

Now, to avoid the cleave. Once Arlokk vanishes, you should use this time to heal yourself if you've got bandages. Do nothing with the panthers. It is very important, though, to keep your raid spread about with your main tank in the center of the room. She reappears in random locations and when she pops that cleave, you don't want to be all huddled around the same area or else very bad things happen.

Other than that, you just have to nuke that bitch while she's out and keep your main tank good and healed. Arlokk usually only disappears three times for us before we bring her down.

Once Arlokk goes down, blow those panthers away.

Point And Laugh

So we're waiting for the rest of our party to show up to run DM Tribute when all of a sudden I find myself polymorphed by some Hordeling nubcake Mage. My two other friends start nuking the Mage while his Druid friend gets sheeped himself.

I pop out of poly and finish off the Mage. Druid is still wandering around as a sheep when a pack of dogs start to approach it. Oh, the timing was beautiful. Sheep pops just as the Horde druid gets attacked by the dogs. He starts to run but I anticipate that and fire a concussive shot at him, slowing him down while another guildie casts root.

And the three of us sit there spamming the /point /laugh emotes while he gets owned by the pack of dogs. ROFL!!11

You don't fuck with this shit, yo.

The Monotony

Fucking Rattlegore and the Gordok Ogre King won't drop my shit. Fuck you, fuck all of you bitches. I want my armor, so drop the shoulders and chest pieces you bitch-ass bitches.

So at least last weekend wasn't a complete bust, I guess. I farmed my last necessary Essence of Air - which took longer than it took to get the previous three combined - and acquired one Large Brilliant Shard. Eleven more of those shards, and 12 Greater Eternal Essences and I can finally - sigh - slap some agility on my dual-wielded axes.

I also auctioned some shit (a Dark Phantom Cape that dropped from an Air Elemental during a previous farming session) and made about 35 gold total. I'm up to 168 gold with 632 left for an epic mount. Double sigh.

Brought my leatherworking skills up and embarked upon the route of Dragonscale leatherworker, even though I realized how fucking useless leatherworking actually is. I should have gone engineering. Dammit.

So Dire Maul Tribute and Scholomance runs are still on the menu.

Farming Goals

My shopping list:

1. Bone Golem Shoulders. Drop from Rattlegore in Scholomance.
2. Ogre Forged Hauberk. Drops from Dire Maul Tribute. It would be nice to get the keys to DM so I can run noobs through it who will fight for me so I can get the phat lewtz, but until then I'm at the mercy of my guildmates.
3. Essence of Air. Oh my God, these fucking things take so damn long to get. It's getting to about 1 hour to farm one from those fucking air elementals in Sillithus. I have two, but need two more.
4. Large Brilliant Shards. Have 1, need 11 more.

I better fucking own all I survey with the +15 agility enchants to my dual Bone Slicing Hatchets, for all the grief gathering the materials for the enchant has cost me.