Dragon Soul

All posts tagged Dragon Soul

Ahead of the Curve: Lei Shen

Posted by Peter (Devee) on August 9, 2013
Posted in: Achievements, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Cataclysm, Devee, Journal, Mists of Pandaria, Raiding, Videos, World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Lei Shen

We did it! Two weeks after first having killed the Twin Consorts, we attempted Lei Shen for the first time. After seventeen wipes, we managed to kill him! I’m very excited and extremely relieved. I still want to repeat it for the people who weren’t there, get more gear, and maybe push some heroic bosses for gear, but this was the big moment. Especially considering that there’s no way we’re going to finish heroic mode by the next patch, this was the big “end game” goal for us for this tier.

It’s also special for me. I’ve been raiding this tier with the guild, Carpe Flux Capacitor, since the beginning, and now it’s completed. During tier 14, we finished Mogu’shan Vaults, but we didn’t complete the other two raids. In tier 13, we raided Dragon Soul, but we stopped raiding long before the end. I did manage to complete the raid before Mists of Pandaria was released, but it wasn’t with the guild.

I was taking a break from WoW for much of tier 12. In my first time in the Firelands, I joined a PUG at the request of a guildie. They needed a healer for Ragnaros. I pointed out that not only had I never killed him, I had never entered the raid. They discussed it and let me join. I pulled him by accident before we were all ready. They didn’t kick me. We killed him, and I won loot. The next week, we finished Firelands as a guild. At the time, the guild hadn’t yet killed Ragnaros. When we killed the previous boss, my achievement suddenly popped for finishing the raid. While I completed the raid, I didn’t work for it all tier.

In tier 11 I was with a different guild, Playground Brigade, made of friends I knew from out of WoW just for that tier. We fell apart in the middle of the tier. We were 5/6 Blackwing Descent, 2/4 Bastion of Twilight, and 1/2 Throne of the Four Winds.

Tier 10 was my first current-tier raid. I had just hit level 80 and joined Carpe Flux Capacitor. I was an alternate, and my first boss was Deathbringer Saurfang. Maybe I wasn’t there from the absolute very beginning, but we pushed the entire tier, and yes, we finished the raid (as well as Ruby Sanctum).

I mention all this because it means this is only the second raid tier for which I worked the entire tier with my guild and still completed. Carpe, thanks for being a great guild (and taking me back after my one-tier stint with another guild). Here’s hoping next tier goes smoothly well. Let’s take back Orgrimmar!

 

Bye, Cataclysm

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 24, 2012
Posted in: Game Mechanics, Mists of Pandaria, PVP, Raiding, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Today is the last day of Cataclysm. I thought it’d be a good time to look back over the expansion a bit. I hit my first level cap during Wrath of the Lich King, giving Dalaran and Northrend a sort of homie and familiar feel. Cataclysm was the first expansion to be released while I was actively part of the endgame, so it was a new experience for me.

As Cataclysm was released, I left Carpe Flux Capacitor to make a guild with friends, Playground Brigade. It was fun to play with them, and I’ll happily remember working with my friend Elizabeth on the Conclave of Wind. And by working, I mean joking around in whispers when we screwed up. I really like that memory!

We didn’t complete any of the three T12 raids, and the guild began to fall apart. I rejoined Carpe Flux Capacitor in, I think, 4.1. Unfortunately, my computer went down, and I didn’t get it back up until the end of 4.2. I managed to catch up on the troll heroics and jump into Firelands, killing Ragnaros before killing any other boss. I don’t regret my time with Playground Brigade, but I really regret leaving Carpe Flux Capacitor. That seems contradictory, but I still feel bad for leaving.

Love you, Carpe!

I enjoyed the zones for the most part, and the linearity didn’t bother me. Of course, I don’t have alts either. Vashj’ir was really fun in my opinion. I loved the story and the feeling of loneliness in the zone. I wish the story had continued! Hyjal was pretty cool, but I know I forgot a lot of the plot points as they were happening. Deepholm was fun, but I wish Therazane the Stone Mother would have showed up against Deathwing. Uldum was interesting, but the cutscenes screwed up on my computer all the time and would just show me the ground. I might have liked it more if it worked! Twilight Highlands was fun, and I enjoyed it while I did it. Most of it wasn’t memorable, but I enjoyed surfing on the drakes, exploring, and noticing the fun names of areas and NPCs.

The Zandalari patch was very fun. I’d like to see Blizzard use the option of a content patch without raids in the future. It’s not that I don’t enjoy raids, but Blizzard shouldn’t feel obligated. The raid finder sort of killed Carpe’s drive to raid, but I still think it’s a great tool. I’m thankful that in the future, I’ll always get to see all the content even if I can’t devote all the time.

Cataclysm also brought about void storage, reforging, and transmogrification. I filled my void storage on the first night, and would love to see more. Reforging is actually a bit annoying to me. It just adds an extra puzzle that I don’t enjoy. (Well, I just use Ask Mr. Robot.) Transmogrification, on the other hand, is one of the best features Blizzard has added in a long time. I already collected cool gear that I could only wear in town. Now I can be seen in it!

I love PVP, but I didn’t enjoy the two new Battlegrounds very much. Twin Peaks is just Warsong Gulch 2, and Warsong Gulch is much better. The Battle for Gilneas is decent, but I enjoy Arathi Basin a bit better. I’ll still play and enjoy Battle for Glineas as well, but I don’t know what it is about Twin Peaks that I dislike so much.

It’s been too long since Tier 12 for me to do an analysis really without revisiting. I enjoyed them for the most part though. As a healer, Chimaeron was an interesting fight. Atramedes the blind dragon was also very cool, although his sonar pulse didn’t show up right on my screen! I’m not really qualified to talk about most of the Firelands bosses either since I came late. The zone design was great though, and the Molten Front ties were fantastic. I’d love to see more of that. Ragnaros felt pretty epic. Honestly, it felt more epic than the Madness of Deathwing!

Dragon Soul was enjoyable but flawed. Morchok was a nice introduction to the raid. War’sahj the Unsleeping and Warlord Zon’ozz had interesting mechanics, but I feel like only one of them should have been in the raid. Hagara seemed a little odd, but it really did fit with the story, and I like visiting old locations (and using old artifacts). Ultraxion was cool and fit well, and Deathwing running for it after he saw us defeat his creation was great. Warmaster Blackhorn felt like a step backwards. The fight was odd and anti-climatic, and it seemed to go against the rising tension. Fought a bunch of minions, fought a powerful dragon, went after Deathwing, fought a tauren, and then jumped on Deathwing himself! Which one of those seems out of place? The Spine of Deathwing was very cool. It was so different than other fights, and we’ve never fought a boss while standing on him previously! The Madness of Deathwing sounded good in theory, but it was flawed as well. First, it didn’t look like we were fighting Deathwing. The camera doesn’t go back far enough (without some tinkering) to get a good look. It was also, as far as I know, never really explained why he was full of tentacles. And then there are the Aspects. They’re mortal now? What powers did they lose? Ah, whatever.

Soon it will be time for Mists of Pandaria. I’m already loving account-wide achievements, pets, and mounts. The new continent looks fun, pandaren seem interesting, and monks look pretty cool. I’m actually very excited about pet battles and farming! The character development should be excellent as well. It looks like Blizzard is developing Varian to be more heroic. This is very cool even as a Horde player. This will be a nice juxtaposition to Garrosh’s corruption. I’m looking forward to taking him down at the end of Mists of Pandaria!

 

Dragon Soul and Destroyer’s End

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 4, 2012
Posted in: Achievements, Carpe Flux Capacitor, Devee, Journal, Raiding, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

I was previously only 5/8 in Dragon Soul because my guild stopped raiding. When a guildie asked me if I wanted to run a normal mode Dragon Soul last night, I was excited. It’d be a chance to do it on normal mode even if it is super nerfed now, and it would also be a chance to practice after the patch. Nate took a little convincing, but when he realized that not being set up after the patch wasn’t a good enough excuse, he swapped over and joined us.

I don’t care if it’s late. I’m still taking a killshot. Here’s Blackhorn dead. I had never actually got to do any attempts on him previously. While I had studied the fight, the mechanics still confused me. (Consider that it’s also been many months since I studied the fight too.)

Then gem had to ride Nate around. I think she really liked being able to do that. Shhh, don’t tell his wife that he let gem ride him.

Spine of Deathwing was an absolute blast. While I do feel like it’s anti-climatic in that it’s the same process repeated, I still find it really cool. Rather than being in a room fighting a raid boss, the location is the actual boss. This isn’t the first game to do it, but it’s definitely fun.

While Mooglegem didn’t make it to the end of the fight, we did successfully put down the Madness of Deathwing. I also won the Maw of the Dragonlord! Someone offered me 500g for it, but I wanted to keep the mace. How exciting! Now I can be Devee, Destroyer’s End.

 

 

 

Breakfast Topic: Does the Call to Arms bag affect how you queue?

Posted by Peter (Devee) on June 17, 2012
Posted in: World of Warcraft, WoW Insider Breakfast Topic. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Everyday WoW Insider offers a Breakfast Topic for discussion. Here’s today’s topic by Matthew Rossi

Have I been trained by the Call to Arms rewards? Am I a Pavlovian tank, demanding my bribe bag before I sign up to do my job? Have any of you tanks or healers felt yourself acting this way, refusing to queue unless fabulous prizes await?

In short, yes, of course.

Things were different when the Valor Points were my primary goal. At that time, I’d try to queue when there was a Call to Arms for healers active, but if I was short on time and needed my VP, I’d queue anyways. Now Valor Points are worthless. Very rarely do I do any actual endgame. If I do play WoW, I’m doing battlegrounds or working on loremaster. If I happen to see the Call to Arms, I might do a heroic – perhaps one every three weeks. I definitely wouldn’t waste my time on a heroic if there wasn’t a bag offered.

On the other hand, I’ve never received anything of value from a bag either.

On a similar note, I’ve run LFR just for fun a couple times since the guild stopped raiding. Sometimes I give Madness one try, but often I drop group when we get there. I’m doing it for fun. Madness is no fun with people who can’t succeed. Dropping group solves that problem.

Bastion of Twilight, Rolls, and Giants

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 22, 2012
Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

We might be a few patches too late, but Mooglegem and I finally did Bastion of Twilight this weekend. There was a group doing a transmog run, and we joined mainly to finish Bastion of Twilight. As you can see, we proudly took over Cho’gall’s throne!

Surprisingly, Valiona and Theralion seemed to be the hardest fight in the raid. I guess this must be due to interesting mechanics since we all out-geared the entire raid. Cho’gall was significantly easier than the Twilight Ascendants also.

I also fulfilled a patch-long dream of flying off Deathwing after getting him to roll! In normal and heroic mode, you have to make Deathwing roll to succeed in the encounter. In LFR, you don’t need to make him roll, so by extension, you  should not make him roll. I always hope he’ll roll just to see it. It was kind of a let down. I expected the camera to stay fixed so I could actually watch him roll.

Oh my god! What’s that on the other island?! Giant Devee and Mooglegem!

Love is in the Air

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 14, 2012
Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Happy Love is in the Air! And happy Valentine’s Day for those of you keeping track in the real world. Mooglegem decided to put down her Romantic Picnic Basket on the deck of the Skyfire before we chased Deathwing this week. Quite a few people decided to join!

I hope everyone’s spending the day with a loved one!

Grinding in LFR

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 13, 2012
Posted in: Game Mechanics, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This weekend I did LFR as I always do. It was terrible. I enjoyed having the opportunity to see Dragon Soul at first, but I stopped having fun in LFR a while ago.

Why?

The trash is incredibly boring. The bosses are not challenging. We only wipe if a large portion of the group has no idea what they’re doing. There’s very little I need (two rings). The upgrades I do need aren’t even that helpful. (And of course, my computer can’t handle 25s very well.)

It seems to me that there’s two reasons to do anything in World of Warcraft. The biggest reason to do anything is that you enjoy it. The secondary reason is the reason on which Blizzard depends to keep us all paying; we do things we don’t enjoy because it will help us do the things we do enjoy. This is called “grinding.”

I like raiding. I like the increasing challenge of pushing ahead, and I like experiencing new content for the design, story, and lore. Doing LFR was great because it was a way to see Dragon Soul. However, there’s no challenge in it. Yes, there are still wipes, but they’re never because of me. The only reason to do LFR is for equipment upgrades and Valor Points. But upgrades are only important because they help you to do better. Grinding for upgrades falls into the second category of why we play World of Warcraft. However, I’m not raiding normal Dragon Soul at all. I’m not in a raid group currently, and PuGs all seem to want the full achievement. I suppose I could try talking a PuG into taking me, but it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble. The most Dragon Soul I’m seeing is LFR, and I’m obviously able to complete that easily every week. If that’s the case, why try for upgrades? Upgrades aren’t going to help me in normal mode because I’m not doing normal mode, and they’re not going to help me in LFR because it’s already not a problem.

Why even do LFR then? Well, that’s exactly what I’m wondering. I’m going to try to stop doing things that I don’t enjoy. Some small grinds might be worth it. For example, I’ll continue doing the Love is in the Air holiday boss for the chance at the mount. However, I’m not going to make a big deal about working LFR and other heroics into my week. I don’t even need Valor Points anymore, so is it really worth stressing over LFR for two rings that I don’t even really need?

There’s a part of me that wants to be as best equipped as possible, but is being “BiS LFR” really worth saying?

Taking a Break

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 6, 2012
Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

It looks like Carpe Flux Capacitor is taking a break from raiding. The last few weeks we’ve been unable to raid due to lack of attendance. Our guild leader took a vote to see if we wanted officially to take a break. The idea is that if we don’t do this officially, we’ll continue to waste our time showing up, and then the people who have been showing up will get tired and quit. While I want to raid, I agree with her thinking; I voted in favor of the break as well.

There’s a lot of joking that The Old Republic killed us, but the people who are playing ToR all login for raids. We’ve just been dwindling, and not everyone makes it every week. I think LFR is contributing. There are three reasons to raid.

  • Gear for the next raid
  • Experience the fights and lore
  • The actual “game” of achieving progressive challenges

Being that Dragon Soul is the last raid of the expansion, there’s no reason to use it to gear up. We will not this gear to be able to do the next raid because Mists of Pandaria’s greens will be better than what we can get here. I don’t agree with this point because it seems to me that if we only raided to be able to do proceeding raids, then why raid at all? Still, I believe this is one of the reasons people raid, and one of the reasons why we don’t have the attendance now.

As for experiencing the fights and lore, LFR killed this. We’ve all experienced Dragon Soul already. Yeah, there are obviously mechanical differences (and I’d really love to see Deathwing roll), but the story is the same. We’ve seen it. There goes that incentive.

What’s left is pure game. Doing normal mode solely for the challenge of pushing ourselves. This is all that’s left. Even if we finished normal mode, this would push us to do heroic as well. It doesn’t look like this reason is enough.

In general, I like LFR, but I think it contributed to this. Regardless, it’s done it for me as well. I like the idea of raiding, but the break is nice too!

Dragon Soul 3/8

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 17, 2011
Posted in: Raiding, Videos. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I realized I never posted kill shots! Oh no! Here we are after having killed Morchok.

And now you get to see an off-center kill shot of Yor’sahj the Unsleeping. He must have been tired.

This is our newest kill shot from Tuesday! We killed that dumb Warlord Zon’ozz!

And another video from Zaghar! Woo!

LFR, Dungeons, Dailies, and the Darkmoon Faire

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 16, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I thought I’d share some screenshots of my activities. Here Mooglegem and I are hanging out with Thrall and the Aspects. That jerk Deathwing is in the shot too.

We had to borrow some power from the Burning Legion in order to fight them in the Well of Eternity.

I finally finished all my cooking and fishing dailies!

I got on this stupid ride and couldn’t get off of it again. Every once in a while, custom interfaces fail me. I took a guess and typed /exitvehicle. Luckily, that’s the correct command.

I  got into a group for the Darkmoon Faire arena and we totally kicked butt. It was a lot of fun!

Week and a Half into 4.3

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 9, 2011
Posted in: Game Mechanics, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

We’re now into the second week of 4.3, and I’m extremely happy with it so far. It packed a bunch of features – void storage, transmogrification, three new 5-mans, Dragon Soul, the LFR, the Darkmoon Faire, epic gems, and more!

The first thing I did was look at the simple additions of void storage and transmogrification. I immediately filled my entire void storage. It has 80 slots, and in my opinion is pretty cheap. It’s 100 gold to unlock and 25 gold per item deposit. That’s 2100 gold for 80 slots. What a deal! Next, it was time to transmogrify my gear. I have to be honest; I’ve never been as good as I was in Icecrown Citadel. And I know why! It’s because of my gear of course. To solve this, I transmogrified my gear to look T10. (And actually I’ve been doing well this patch, so it must be working!)

The three 5-mans are very fun although very easy. Nozdormu informs us that we need the Dragon Soul to defeat Deathwing, but we’d need to go back in time to get it. Unfortunately, access to that time period is blocked to him, and the disturbance is in the future. In the first heroic, Nozdormu travels with us into the future in End Time. There we defeat shadows of past heroes in a dark future in which Deathwing succeeded in killing everyone. In the end, we fight Murozond, leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and formerly Nozdormu. This fight is most likely what drives Nozdormu insane and pushes him to become Murozond. Of course, this is also the first time Nozdormu decides to change the timeline, which most likely contributes as well. The fight itself is amazingly cool. Nozdormu gives us the ability to set back time. Our mana and CDs are reset, but Murozond’s health does not reset. It’s pretty cool.

Next up we’re sent back in time to the War of the Ancients where a young kaldorei named Illidan helps to fight the Burning Legion. We even get to fight Azshara (by the way, she’s hot). In the end we’re able to snatch the Dragon Soul. In the final 5-man, Thrall now has the Dragon Soul, and we escort him through Dragonblight to Wyrmrest Temple where the raid begins.

In the raid, we first fight an elemental giant who’s turning the earth against us. Next we fight two faceless ones in the spawn of the Old Gods. I won’t go into the rest of the details because I don’t want to spoil anything. However, we do revisit the Eye of Eternity, board an airship, fight on Deathwing’s back, and then fight Deathwing a second time. The Spine of Deathwing is an especially awesome fight. You cause adds to explode, knocking pieces of armor partially off Deathwing’s back. Then you break tendons holding them in place, sending them flying. Wow, how awesome.

Some people in my guild are annoyed at the difficulty already of 10-man normal, but I’m quite content. It’s the second week, and we’re 2/8. A boss per week is good progress in my opinion. One boss per two weeks would be fine with me even. However, when we add this to the fact that LFR is incredibly easy, I’m not annoyed at all. LFR is broken into two raids of four bosses each. The first is a complete faceroll. The second is a bit harder, and tanks especially will want to read about the fights before entering. Still, I’ve already completed the entire raid in LFR. While it’s easier, it’s very cool to be able to see the entire story. I imagine there are a ton of players out there who never raided previously but can now at least see all the assets. This is fantastic. And if they want to learn to truly raid, they can enter normal (which is easier than it was previously in my opinion). Then, if they want to be challenged as a raider, they start heroic progression. This is a cool way to segment things.

Enough about raiding. Isn’t there an even more casual form of PVE than LFR? There is – the Darkmoon Faire! Again, this is a big success. The coolest thing about it is the ambiance. I love being there. It really feels like a faire. It offers five dailies that are all carnival games. These gives tickets that can be spent on mounts (dancing bear!), pets, heirlooms, and transmogrification gear. There are also quests that can be done once per month for each profession (primary and secondary). There’s also a quest that tasks you with collecting 250 grisly trophies. These appear in your inventory randomly when killing players or PVE enemies that are in your level range. However, they don’t appear every time, and I wish they appeared more. The only annoying aspect is that there are also items that start quests that can drop in battlegrounds and heroics once you get the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. There are nine of these, and they can be turned in once per month each. You can trade them, which is nice, and more importantly, you can find them even when the faire isn’t around. That’ll be great next month, but I really want to maximize my tickets, and I haven’t found them all for this month yet!

tl;dr, right? Well, I’m loving the patch!