firelands

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Memories of Azeroth

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 27, 2020
Posted in: Battle for Azeroth, Cataclysm, Devee, Holidays, Journal, Mounts, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Memories of Azeroth, the special raid celebrating the 15th anniversary of WoW, was quite different than the LFR version of Molten Core that was part of the 10th anniversary celebration. Having three wings instead of one long instance is huge in opening it up to more players, and I think that’s a good thing. Molten Core LFR was tuned too difficult in my opinion: casual players should be able to experience an anniversary celebration. The tuning on Memories of Azeroth felt very much in line with LFR. There were wipes, but groups could consistently finish it.

The idea behind the raid was pretty fantastic. Three wings, each featuring one of the first three expansions in World of Warcraft. As far as I know, this is the first time WoW has had a sort of boss rush too. In each wing, all three bosses had to be downed without wiping. However, you only see certain phases of the bosses and not all. Between bosses, all CDs are reset, and anyone who died is rezzed.

What seemed off to me was that some fights were so boring and easy that I never saw a wipe on them.

Memories of Fel / The Burning Crusade: Lady Vashj, Kael’thas, Archimonde. This was the easiest wing. I’m not sure I saw a wipe on Lady Vashj or Kael’thas. If so, I didn’t see many.

Memories of Frost / Wrath of the Lich King: Heigan, Anub’arak, The Lich King. This was the weirdest difficulty. Heigan should be incredibly simple. The “dance” of the fight is to simply stand in the one safe quadrant, moving with the group. The safe quadrant shifts in order. But there were wipes. Then there’s Anub’arak. Not only were there definitely no wipes, but there was no challenge at all. That fight is incredibly boring. And then we get to The Lich King, with many, many wipes to defile. Aw, the memories. Wiping is frustrating, but adding some challenge made it fun, and calling out defiles and teaching people was satisfying. Anub’arak was the worst part of this wing. It felt like a waste of time.

Memories of Fire / Cataclysm: Cho’gall, Nefarian, Ragnaros. This wing mirrored the last one pretty closely, except Cho’gall is much easier than Heigan. I’m not sure if we had wipes on him or not. But Nefarian… I don’t even think I saw any mechanics because it was so simple. However, the room filling with lava and later draining made a fun sort of timer so we could be in a DPS race with out past selves in an effort to do better than last time. Ragnaros was challenging for some people, and I don’t mind some wipes as people learn an encounter.

It was a nice stroll through past memories and it makes me long to see full versions of some of those fights. Complex, multi-phase fights felt gutted. I miss the rest of Arthas! Memories of Azeroth makes me with we had more timewalking raids – but broken into wings so I don’t have to do them in one go like Black Temple or Ulduar.

And for my trouble – an Obsidian Worldbreaker! Who wouldn’t love a Deathwing mount of their own? It’s pretty cool!

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!

 

Leading the Cavalry

Posted by earthwormgem on November 12, 2011
Posted in: Journal, Mooglegem. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

In the last few weeks, I’ve been bombarded with mounts and pets! I’ve become exalted with the guild and finished the Firelands, which I guess only means that I’ve gained 3 mounts, but I swear it feels like a lot when I don’t know which ones to put on my bars. When I learned the Flameward Hippogryph, I was pleasantly surprised with Leading the Cavalry! Hooray!

I never went out of my way to purchase all the faction mounts – I mean, I really don’t know what I’d do with seven skeletal horses. Maybe I’ll start collecting them now to work up to the Red Dragonhawk!

Hallow’s End Weekend

Posted by Peter (Devee) on November 1, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal. Tagged: , , , , . 1 Comment

I had a great weekend in WoW! First, I bought some new valor point gear. Then, as you can see in the screenshot above, I acquired my conquest helm and shoulders. Awesome! Mooglegem and I also racked up a bunch of conquest points from doing 2s. It went really well, too!

Because it was Warsong Gulch weekend (and we’re trying to gain reputation), we played a lot of WSG! We also took it upon ourselves to turn everyone into Leper Gnomes.

We filled the Moonwell in the Molten Front, leaving only one more group to add to the offensive. Then, while deep in the Molten Front battling Leyara, Hamuul came to help us! He’s alive and okay!

Look! See how awesome Hamuul is?

LOOK, LOOK!

Lastly, we finished the questline for Leyara’s locket. Mooglegem and I make pretty good Druids of the Flame.

Ragnaros Still Stands

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 19, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Last night was a particularly fun raid night! I don’t really know what does it always. I suppose it’s just the company primarily. I feel like naming people is kind of mean because it excludes others, but playing with Darth, Nate, and Lang is just so fun. Also, there was that Moogle girl. She finally made it to the first night! That means she went from 0/7 to 6/7!

Anyways, I was in a particular good raiding mood. Drinking that beer pre-raid might have helped! I also got to up top on the Beth’tilac fight, which was really exciting. We got in some Ragnaros attempts, but we didn’t make much progress. We can’t seem to get all the adds down. I can’t really say what’s going wrong. But Alysrazor gave me a delicious trinket! I was a happy priest.

In other news, after the raid I found that the Horde was holding Tol Barad! That’s rare on our server. I found a 25-man Baradin Hold and was the only priest in the entire raid! Of course, no PVE gear dropped for me, and only one piece of PVP gear. I didn’t win. I was so excited about being the only priest.

The best news though? Well, Hallow’s End started, of course! I love the entire holiday so much, but the Headless Horseman is just the best.

Horseman rise… Your time is nigh… You felt death once… Now, know demise!

It is over, your search is done. Let fate choose now, the righteous one.

Ragnaros Attempts

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 29, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Wednesday night was a continuation of our raid from the previous night. I wasn’t expecting to come, but we didn’t have enough healers. Hooray for me then! We were a DPS short for a while because he was stuck in traffic, so we cleared up to old Ragz and discussed strategy. A little over an hour later our DPS made it home, so it was off we went!

Things went decently enough, and we changed things up a few times to see if we could improve. Harley would call out when to set off traps, but we realized that sometimes she’d call it out when DBM gave the announcement, a few seconds later it would actually spawn on the floor, people would have taken damage, and then Moogle would hit it. At first I started interjecting to let Moogle know current conditions. Easy for us to communicate when we’re playing next to each other. Then I told Harley what I was doing, and I just took over for her. That was fun!

There were multiple times in which a tank fell over, and I feel terrible about that. I guess my throughput still sucks sometimes! I was asked to go Discipline, so I hearth’ed to Orgrimmar and respec’d. I think I’ll start doing that before every raid. It’s only 66 gold to respec, so 132 gold per week to bring Holy and Discipline to my raids, assuming I don’t want to PVP between the two raid nights. As long as the raid nights are adjacent, I can’t imagine wanting to PVP after the first night when I’m sure I’ll just be wanting to sleep. Still – feel bad about the tank deaths!

We struggled a couple times with downing adds before they got to the hammer, and we also struggled with the stacking phases. At firsts we tried stacking in the middle, but we swapped strategies to the switching sides method. At the end of the night I realized that we’d spread on the right and stack on the left every time. I wonder if it’d be better if we just stayed on the side we were? Spread on the right, stack on the left, stay on the left and spread, stack on the right. I don’t know if that’s viable. There might be aspects of the fight I don’t fully grasp.

Leap of Faith! I used it correctly! On the trash pull someone shot into the air from the lava, and I pulled him back down. Amazing! I love finding uses for it!

I could tell poor Harley was stressed out. I feel bad for her because I can only imagine how much work it is to lead a guild. Hopefully she knows how much we appreciate what she does. She even gave me BoE wrists that are BiS! I’m not even sure why, but it was super nice.

Anyways, we didn’t down Ragnaros, but we got some good practice done. I’m sure we’ll down him soon!

Firelands Complete!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 28, 2011
Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Achievement Earned: Firelands

Last night I killed the last of the Firelands bosses! I went about my progression strangely this patch; first I killed Ragnaros, and then I made my way in order through the first six. It’s odd to get the completion achievement on a boss that’s not the final. On my first night in Firelands, I did attempts on Alysrazor but didn’t down her. On my second night, which was the next week, I put in attempts only on Ragnaros. Again, no kill. Later that week I joined a PUG for Ragnaros and killed him. And this week, my third week in the Firelands, I saw the other five bosses for the first time and killed the six bosses besides Ragnaros for  the first time!

Shannox

Shannox

We started with Shannox. He puts has two adds, flame-dog-things, and throws down a bunch of traps. It was interesting fighting a boss that’s clearly a hunter. As most people know, you have to avoid the traps and get the dogs to hit them. We did wipe once because people pushed him into his enrage, but it was easy fight. Luckily I didn’t hit any traps!

He dropped the Crystal Prison Band, a ring that is technically an upgrade for me. However, our mage needed it, and it didn’t have spirit on it. I didn’t really want the spirit drop, plus my best-in-slot rings are from the Valor Point vendor and the Avengers of Hyjal quartermaster. I didn’t roll on it.

Beth’tilac

Next up we did Beth’tilac, the spider boss. I hated this fight. Terrible. Some people have to go up into her web to engage her while others stay below, fighting adds. Nothing complicated really. Why do I hate it? The people in the above area are within my healing range, so they are not grayed out on Grid. However, I can’t heal them due to line of sight. Most my clicks on Grid were on players I couldn’t actually heal! Angry! He dropped cloth chest armor, but my T12 chest from Valor Points is non-heroic BiS.

Baleroc

Third on the list – Baleroc! More interesting mechanics. Baleroc summons crystals. Each time a crystal appears, two DPS are assigned to standing near it. First one, for half of the time, then the second DPS. The next time a shard comes, it’ll be a second pair. These two pairs of DPS continually swap. The person near the crystal needs to be healed by a designated healer, and we had three healers swapping. What happens if no one stacks near a shard? I have no idea. But I guess I got some buff that’s good from healing them while they were there.

Lord Rhyolith

Rhyolith in Second Phase

Image from Me and My Epic Wood.

This boss doesn’t know how to turn, and we can’t hurt him. He summons volcanoes, and we DPS attack his legs to cause him to turn. They use this mechanic to get him to walk over volcanoes. The volcanoes do occassionally erupt, shooting five lines of lava out. Luckily, the game has been out for years, so the idea of “don’t stand in the fire” is pretty simple. When he walks into enough of them, he enters a second phase where he looks like a magma version of Megaman’s Yellow Devil.

Yellow Devil

Image from Mega Man Knowledge Base.

Alysrazor

Moving on to Alysrazor, I got to come back to a boss that I had actually attempted previously. This is a very fun fight except it ruins the rest of the game. It sure feels great to cast while moving!

Two stupid birds.

Also, does anyone else think that watching the two fire-birds spit at each other is hilarious?

Majordomo Staghelm

Finally we reached what was the last boss for me. Incredibly easy fight at this point. I wonder what it was like before the nerf. Stack up and heal. Spread out and heal. Repeat. Oh, sometimes I get a debuff, and when it reaches 5 seconds remaining, I run out. Not very complicated.

He dropped a shoulder token, and I won the roll. He also dropped wrists that I wanted, but of course I didn’t roll on them because I won the token. But then I was asked to let someone else have the shoulders. We ended up discussing it, and I decided it was better for him to have the shoulders anyways (mainly because I haven’t put much time into this tier). However, I would have rolled on the damn wrists if I had known I wasn’t going to keep the shoulders! My BiS wrists are from the Valor Point vendor anyways, so in the long run, it won’t matter.

Achievement Earned: Firelands

And that’s my tale of the Firelands! It was a cool raid, and I look forward to farming the place and hopefully moving on to heroic mode and achievements. That’s not usually how we do things in my guild, because it prefers to gear up other people and our alts (of which I have none!), but I still hope to get some more progression done. The game’s all about progression! I’m still pretty sad I didn’t get into the Firelands earlier, pre-nerf. I’m just happy I have enough free time to raid again!