Patch 3.3: Fall of the Lich King, first impressions pt. 01. Ice Crown Citadel.

So, patch 3.3 has finally arrived. All I can say is that I think is great. The new instances and the new raid is really well done and the new dungeon finder kicks ass.

I’ve been able to accomplish a lot the past two days. One thing I haven’t accomplish though is making more money as I’ve been getting gear on my Shaman and Warrior that need enchants and gems. Yesterday my guild went into Icecrown Citadel and we managed to take a look at the four bosses that are in there at the moment.

The hardest boss feels like Lord Marrowgar since it demands that your tanks are well-coordinated with each other and that the rest of the raid are able to move out of fire and dps spikes when they appear. Healers will also have something do to all the time so there aint no time at all to slack. Every 1.5 seconds Marrowgar cleaves the two tanks for about 30k damage split between the two. From the first boss you can really feel the hard sting of the “Chill of the throne”-debuff which decreases your chance to dodge by 20%. For me personally I go from 28% down to 8 that is a lot.

After some tries though and getting our tactic correct we managed to bring him down. The second boss is Lady Deathwhisper and she was kind of weak. At the start of the fight, she puts up a mana shield which dps has to burn down while alternating to dpsing adds that spawn after that it’s a tank and spank fight really. She puts a debuff on tanks which decreases threat generated by 100% once it reaches five stacks when that happens you just switch tanks. I can’t really tell since I’m a tank but it feels like healing was much more intensive at the first boss.

We needed one try to figure out how the adds she spawned would act and at the second try she went down with no problems.

The third fight in the instance was really awesome. Mainly because everyone in the raid gets a couple of jetpacks to jump around with.

This is the gunship battle, in which, as horde you are fighting the alliance gunship. You know, the ones that fly around in Icecrown. On this fight two people will man cannons which they use to nuke down the other ship while one group of people are fighting on the alliance ship and another group is fighting adds that spawn on our own ship. The tank that’s on the alliance ship will mainly tank the commander. He puts a buff on himself that increases damage so every once in a while the group on the alliance ship will have to jump back to the hordeship waiting for the buff to fall off. Every 25% of the alliance ships health a mob will spawn that freezes up the horde cannons this mob needs to be nuked down fairly fast so that the two people manning the cannons can keep dpsing the ship.

On the horde ship where I was stationed during the fight you just tank and nuke down adds that spawn on the ship with the help from Saurfang. Nothing really hard there. It took us about five tries I think before we got everything right.

The last fight in this wing is Saurfang’s son. This fight is basically about him generating blood points and is pretty much a dps race seeing as he gets more dangerous the more blood points he generates so the faster he dies the better. Hmm, I wonder which boss in any raid you can’t apply that logic to though. Anyway, he puts a debuff on one tank which makes him generate blood points every time he hits that tank so when the debuff is up, tank switch. He also has some AoE-damage which generates blood points which means people should not be standing to close to each other.

Adds will spawn during the fight which should be kited around and killed by range as fast as possible because if they hit anyone they will generate blood points for Saurfang. When Saurfangs pool of blood points reaches a 100. He will put a Mark of the Fallen champion on a random player in the raid which is basically a dot and blood point generator. This is why you wanna burn him down fast, because more marks means more stress on healing and more blood points which means more marks coming out faster.

We only had time for two tries on this encounter but I’m sure we will take him down on sunday.

So what do I think? Well, the fights was a whole lot of fun and had some really exciting mechanics. I don’t know about the gating though, for guilds that aren’t maybe as good as mine is it won’t probably matter. But if we clear the whole thing in one lookout and there’s no hard modes to try I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I don’t think that I will grow tired of this instance as fast as I did with Trial of the crusader anyways, since this one is so much more beautiful.

In fact, this is blizzard at it’s best. The only thing I have to complain about in this first wing was that the shipfight bugged, so when it was finished the ones that took care of the adds on the horde ship couldn’t leave it. And our Master looter couldn’t get to the loot which was on the horde ship but that will get fixed.

Sadly, I took no screenshots at all. So that will have to wait until next week.

Sometime during this weekend or next week I’ll have a post up about my opinions on the Dungeon Finder and the new 5-mans.

Plans for the week: Patch 3.3 and Making Gold.

Hopefully, this week patch 3.3 will drop. If that does happen, i will probably start working on unlocking the 5-man instances for my Warrior and Shaman. It will probably be fun since me and my guildies now all have alts that like to stomp trough the heroics. Doing the quel’delar quest on both of them. Of course, if it drops on thursday my guild will enter the Icecrown Citadel and raise som hell. I’m looking forward to it, toc10 and ulduar has become pretty boring.

I’ve also been slacking with my goldmaking, sitting steadily at around 23-25,000 gold. Hopefully this week I’ll manage to reach 30,000 again. Ever since I leveled JC on my warrior I haven’t had the will to get up there, but this week I’m going for it. Yesterday I stocked up on about 1000 Ink of the sea hopefully, by the end of this week I’ve used up everything to make glyphs and that would also mean that I would have a lot of cash incoming for myself.

I haven’t really noticed any changes in the market though after my two week long absence. Right now it feels like we are about four or five people trying to make money off of glyphs and I think all of us is doing pretty good. One thing I’ve noticed in the last day or so though is that Icethorn prices are crashing hard, I don’t know why. But this morning I was able to get 37 stacks for the price of 12g/stack which is really a find. I mean I can sell snowfall inks for 13g so all the money I make from glyphs is pure profit.

I will keep you updated on the gold making and if 3.3 will drop I will also give you thoughts on the new 5 mans and the first part of ice crown citadel. I’m really excited about this patch.

Trusting Simulated DPS.

When I started to play my enhancement Shaman for real about a week ago, I had a hard time knowing what kind of DPS I was able to put out in a heroic. Seening the DPS on recount just wouldn’t let me know if I did fine or bad DPS since I didn’t have any references.

I decided to test Enhsim, which I had heard a lot about to see what kind of dps I would be able to put out.  So I fired up WoW to get my stats from Shock and Awe, which I then imported to enhsim. The result was as follows.

As you can see, my simulated dps would be 3037.47. This is under optimal conditions though, which would never ever work in the actual game since with a simulator you would have no response time for your rotation. I.e when Stormstrike is on cooldown the simulation will fire it off right away, with no latency. Where it would take a human atleast some time to react to the whole thing. Which is why it can be hard to trust this dps. But atleast you have something to go on, so with these numbers in mind I went to the lvl ?? training dummy in thunder bluff to see what numbers I actually could get.

As you can see here to the right. My recount shows 2930.1 damage per second which is about a 100 dps less than what the simulator gave us as a result. This is all fine though and you shouldn’t worry about it. Since as I said the simulator dont take into account latency and human responsetimes. What it shows us though is that the numbers from the simulator is fairly accurate and this is really good. Now we can play around in the simulator with different rotations and different buffs to see what would increase our dps and what would decrease it. Keep in mind though that beating on a training dummy is still dpsing in an optimal condition since there is no moving around no fire that will come from nowhere and try to kill you, no spells that needs interrupting and no stupid adds that will come along halfway trough the fight and fuck things up. But it still gives us a pretty good idea on what kind of dps we should be able to put out. This is also of course without any buffs from other players. But in enhsim you can easily add those buffs to see what kind of dps you would do along with for example a druid or paladin.

How do I import my stats from WoW into Enhsim?

This is really easy. Fire up World of Warcraft, press escape and click the interface button. Press the addon tab and find Shock and Awe. Click the image to the left to get a bigger picture. As you can see, there is a button that says, export to sim, press that one. And another small window will appear above your interface window.

This one is easy, just press ctrl + c when the window appears and you will have copied all the data you need for enhsim. Now, when that is done start up enhsim. In the column to your left you will see a big button which says “Copy from Clipboard” press that one and you’ve got your data from WoW into enhsim. Happy simulating everyone.

Here are a couple of more links about the simulator if you want to read more about it.

Enhsim homepage.

Elitist Jerks Enhsim Thread.

Big Hit Box, this is basically a blog for all DPS-classes, but Stoney, which is in charge of the enhancement department is one of the most active bloggers on that site and there is plenty of stuff to read if you’re new or old in the enhancement game.

My Characters.

Hello Friends.

I’ve been really trying to get my blogging going for a while. But I haven’t really had any idea what to write about. So I thought I would give you a rundown on what characters I’m currently playing and which I’m leveling up and what I plan on doing.

My main right now is a Protection Warrior, I’ve raided most content that’s available for 10 man with this one except Naxx and Malygos since I got it to 80 late in Wotlk. Been trying to tank Algalon and Anub HC with it but it feels like it’s struggling a little in the gear department for those encounters. Mainly a new shield is on the wish list, I’m hoping 3.3 will take care of that since Anub won’t drop the shield on normal.

The one character that has had most of my attention the last week though, is my Shaman, which is almost my oldest character, a priest is the oldest but he has retired since long ago. I really like the Shaman now when I get to play as enhancement I was mostly stuck healing with it trough TBC and that wasn’t really something I wanted to do with him in the first place. I’ve always liked melee more than casting and the enhancement playstyle really fits me well.

But don’t get me wrong I really enjoy healing, but resto shamans aren’t in the same place as they used to be back in TBC and I don’t really like how they work now for some reason. But since a lot of my friends av gone from pure dpsing to choosing hybrid classes there’s much more room for me to do other stuff than healing and tanking which I feel is a nice change of pace. I’m mainly gearing the shaman now through heroic and badge gear but we will see where it all ends up.

To fulfill my pvping needs, I have my Death Knight, which I also used to tank PvE-content in the beginning of Wotlk but tanking as a prot warrior is so much more fun. It’s lacking in gear since I don’t PvP a lot only the occasional BG now and then. Arena really isn’t for me. I’m much more fond of the large-scale war that Battlegrounds bring.

In the leveling department I have a rogue at level 75 which I plan to get to 80 at some point. My warlock and my hunter sits silently at level 71 and 73 and are now mainly used as bank characters. I have a druid at lvl 43 which I would really like to get up to level 80 to see how it is to tank with one.

Well that’s all for now! Take Care.

Shamanistic Endgame Tools

So I’ve recently started gearing for enhancement on my little(?) Tauren Shaman and all I can say is that I really enjoy it. I’ve been mostly doing heroics with my friends and that’s okay because I really like doing heroics.

So I thought I’d share with you the tools I use to make the best of my shaman.

The first one is an addon that is called Shock and Awe. It’s basically a timer and priority addon. It let’s you set up a priority list for what spells you want to cast in what order and will show you with timers and a button when an ability comes off cooldown or if you forget to apply your flame shock when it runs out, it will remind you to do that.

It’s really handy in the beginning when you’re learning your rotation. Because, since level 60 the rotation has drastically changed, you no longer fire off a stormstrike then earthshock and wait for windfury to proc. The enhancement shaman is now a full-fledged melee caster which is what I love about the class.

Another nifty tool that we enhancement shamans have at our disposal is Enhsim. Which is basically a combat simulator. It lets you enter your stats, buffs and so on and then simulates combat for you to let you know where your dps should be around. It can be really overwhelming at the first look though since there is a whole lot of info for you to enter. Lucky for us, Stoney, the king of shaman-blogging(at least, I think so), has put up a post on Big Hit Box where he tells you what to do. So after you’ve downloaded it, you might wanna check that post out. Link is here.

Shock and Awe also has a function for exporting data into Enhsim, haven’t really tried that out though so I don’t know how well it works.

OH MY GOD! WoW has microtransactions now?

Well, since this seems to be all the rage these days. I figured I’d give my two cents. Well, if you’ve missed it, I’ll give you the quick rundown. Blizzard now, in there store has two non combat pets you can buy for 10$ each.

One of them is a Pandaren Brewmaster, which is awesome, cause he is a Panda, but he also likes to drink beer and unleash Kung Fu magic upon his foes. The other one is a mini-version of Kel’Thuzad, you know, the guy in Naxxramas that always insists on us kicking his ass.

There’s been quite the different reactions from people around the world. Saying that it’s wrong because some people wont be able to afford it etc etc.

Well, I was hoping that maybe blizzard would give us more utility instead of just non combat pets. This is nothing new in the world of item mall mmo’s but I think it would be nice if you could by flasks that would give you an EXP boost and stuff like that. I would probably spend my money on that since I’m a little bit of an altoholic. Non-combat pet feels like, meh? I don’t know, sure it would be cool to have a pandaren pet, but it’s not anywhere near how cool it would be to have actual Pandaren NPC’s in Azeroth.

Conclusion, more utility micro transactions! Not utility like screwing up the end game, but to help me level faster and stuff like that. Maybe heirloom items or something like that, since it wouldn’t be really gamebreaking if you couldn’t afford them.

Arms Warrior Guide and some other stuff.

So I’ve made a little guide for all you dps’ing warriors out there. Check it out!

I have decided to focus the blog more around world of warcraft instead of mmo’s in general since that’s mainly the game I play. Just so you know! It’s been slow posting the last month but I will try to get better.

Five World of Warcraft Addons I can’t live without.

One of the things I like the most with World of Warcraft is that you have the ability to customize your interface a whole lot! I used to sit for hours with various unit frame-addons and alter my interface completely. But nowadays, my interface is pretty much standard, but there are some addons that I always keep up to date. Here is a list of my five favourites.

1. Bagnon.

What this does, well it merges your bags kind of, so instead of having five different bags to look at, you have a giant one. It may not seem like much, but it is indeed great. But the greatest function of this addon is that it lets you search your bags.

Bagnon @ Wowinterface.

2. Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text.

This one alters the damage text that hover over your mobs heads when you hit them. It also show’s you stuff like incoming heals, outgoing heals, trinket proccs, ability proccs. Why do i prefer this over the built-in battle text? Well, you can customize it until your eyes start to bleed.

Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text @ Wowinterface

3. ForteXorcist.

This is an addon that contains a lot of stuff. Mainly a spell and cooldown timer. Thanks to this addon, keeping thunderclap up at all times much easier(as if I wasn’t able to do that without it?). It also has a cooldown timer so you’ll always know when you’ll be able to use your favourite attacks again. And the bonus, this addon is puuure  eye candy. It’s really neatly done and very pleasant for the eye to watch.

If you’re a warlock it comes with a lot of other stuff to, like for instance, when you’re in a raid, you can see who needs a summon, a timer for your soulstone and who has the soulstone. Check it out!

ForteXorcist @ Wowinterface.

4. Cartographer.

A map addon. Does a lot with the world map. For instance, you can scale it. So it doesn’t cover your whole screen, need I say more? No, thought so.

Cartographer @ Wowinterface.

5. Postal

The main function of this addon is that it lets you open all the mail in your mailbox with one click. Without this, getting back unsold Glyphs from the AH is a real pain.

Postal @ Wowinterface.

If you want more, check these two sites. As they have almost everything.

Wowinterface.

Curse-gaming.

I’ve been slow on posting this month, since I’ve had a little bit of a burnout but my love for the game is coming back and with it more things I need to rant about.

Battlefield Heroes, Wonderking, Earth Eternal, World of Warcraft.

I’ve not been posting for a while, mainly because I haven’t had a clue about what to write. Tried dealing with my WoW-burnout. Which is a strange burnout, because I feel that I wanna play WoW but I dont wanna play on any of the characters that I have.

I’ve been leveling a mage lately which is really fun, even though it’s only about lvl 22. The other day I helped my little sister get som gear from normal ToC as she now is playing a feral druid tank.

I’ve also been trying out Battlefield Heroes which I found to be a whole lot of fun. I was a really big fan of BF 1942 way back when and it’s really the only fps I’ve bothered playing more than a couple of hours. I have a problem with newer FPS games for some reason they make me feel sick and dizzy. Probably, when I need my PvP fix I will head to this game instead of the PvP in WoW which of course has its fun but I often find the PvP side of the game to be poorly planned and unbalanced.

Wonderking is heading into it’s third closed beta phase so I will probably log into that to check it out since it’s my 2D-mmo of choice. Earth Eternal is a browser based game which I talked about before which is heading into open beta and it has over 20 playable races. So probably gonna check that out to.

Last but not least I will try to get some more guides up since they are my main way of getting visitors. I will probably do something rather easy soon, like a Death Knight guide. I also have a rough idea on a post about raiding in Wrath of the Lich King.

Dragonica? Fun!

Have you ever played MapleStory? Have you ever wondered what would happen if MapleStory smoked PCP? Chances are you would come up with Dragonica. A fast-paced side scrolling arcade mmorpg.

Dragonica with one word is fun. This is the one mmo I have stuck with, together with WoW, since I started playing it in June. I nearly don’t play with it as much as I did then do, since WoW is taking up a whole lot of my time. If someone asked me to recommend and mmorpg. I would ask them if they want fast-paced fun arcade like combat or a little deeper more tactical combat. If they wanted the first I would recommend Dragonica and for the second I would recommend Atlantica.

I mean one of the first skills you acquire as a Warrior in Dragonica is a giant hammer to smash your foes to oblivion with. And it’s all done in a neat little package with really nice visuals, the only bad thing about the graphics is that engine seems poorly optimized.

But it is indeed a fun game and if you try it chances are you’ll be staring at the combo meter to your left trying to pull off a big one as possible. One fun litte thing with the combo meter is that you can get up to 1.5 more experience from killing mobs by pulling big combos.

As for the item shop I haven’t tried that one out. I’ve played up to level 31 and I still haven’t felt the need to go for the item mall anything but I guess you could get some xp-potions from there or just fashion items like in every other f2p+item mall games.

There are four classes you can choose from in dragonica, Warrior, Magician, Thief and Archer. At level 20 you get to specialize the classes similar to Maplestory. Your warrior can chose to go the knight-route which is the tank and gladiator which is more of a dps-type class. Magicians becomes either monk or battlemage. Monks will serve as the healing class and battlemage is your standard dps-nuker.

Archers can chose to be either an arbalist or pathfinder. If grenades, machine guns, missile launchers and crossbows is your coup of tea I would suggest the arbalist. Whereas the pathfinder is more of a traditional fantasy mmo ranger. Thiefs will evolve into Jester’s or Assassins.

Jesters uses claws as  a weapon and Assassins is the more stealthy class of the two as I understand it.

It should also be mentioned that your class evolves further when you hit level 40. One more thing is that I played my mage to level 31 soloing a lot of the mission maps you can do so they are not that hard to do. In all of the mission maps you get a grade ranging from F to S. S is the best followed by ABCDEF. In the early levels its pretty easy to get good grades solo but it becomes harder as you go deeper into the game. So to get a good grade you would probably want a party. By the way good grades means better loot and experience.

Another nice thing about leveling in Dragonica is that when you group with people that you also have on your friend-list you accumulate friend points which you can turn in later on at an NPC for even more experience.

All-in-all a very fun game that I would recommend you to try out!

Dragonica Europe.