Warcraft Experience

Just finished running Molten Core as Bolicious instead of Funktea! He won the Ony head on Monday night’s run, and had to work tonite, so he asked if I’d take his mage through instead of mine. What the heck right? I have all my pieces so why not.
We ran a bit late on getting organized but Burthona had issues with his CTMod and finally had to ditch it altogether. 15 min late we started the run but still managed to kick-some butt and finished Shazzrah before 11pm.

It was interesting playing someone else’s character thou let me tell you. None of my buttons were there or anything else. Everyone made fun of me and said I was down in healer camp on the damage meter but screw them! I had fun and it made me contemplate switching to ice/arcane spec. But I’m really attached to my spec.

I’m tired so I’ll post the loot tomorrow.

I’m baaaaaccckkkk….

As usual we had a f-ton of druid and rogue stuff drop and, as usual, none of the Arcanist pieces dropped so I didn’t win Bo anything.

We had an off night last night and fumbled our way through the first part of MC. We had aggro pulls, multiple dog pulls when we weren’t ready, imps, imps and o! did I mention imps…

Lucifron

• [item]Cenarion Boots[/item] – went to a greed roll for a nexus shard. Paganos and Hurtu tied on their first roll with 99s, so a re-roll ensued and Paganos won with a 59. Normally I hold the items for DE’in in 1.9 but since I was on Bolicious, Smokinjoe got them.
• [item]Crimson Shocker[/item] – Saileen with a 97
• [item]Plans: Elemental Sharpening Stone[/item] – Galvar with a 89
• Tranq shot Tome – Galvar

Magmadar

• [item]Medallion of Steadfast Might[/item] – Static with a 83
• [item]Felheart Pants[/item] – Farkhat won with a 89
• [item]Aged Core Leather Gloves[/item] – Deflickshew with a 65
• [item]Schematic: Force Reactive Disk[/item] – Gwadraw won it with a 98

Some mighty interesting things dropped that normally don’t for us. Wonder if Blizz is shaking it up a bit or what the deal is. Is this happening for anyone else?

A quick portal to IF, repair, get some more coffee/BIO and off we went for round two.
Firelord

• [item]>Nightslayer Belt[/item] – Deflickshew with a 1. WOOT – Nice roll

Gehennas

• [item]Nightslayer Gloves[/item] – Deflickshew won by default. Nice night for him, huh?
• [item]Wristguards of Stability[/item] – these are really for Feral Druids and Ryjaek wasn’t there so nexus crystal! Wendra won the roll with a 98 and it headed off to Smokin’s bags for 1.9

Garr

• [item]Circlet of Prophecy[/item] – Chriara won with a 85
• [item]Giantstalker’s Helm[/item] – nexus crystal. Poor Gerty didn’t get to go last night and this would have completed his set. But luckily we made room for someone so they could potentially get an ornage that will quest will get completed in about 2007. Galvar won the roll with a 96
• [item]Obsidian Edged Blade[/item] – went one round with Jose Cuervo.. o wait .. and was on the way to a greed roll when Theseus stepped up to the plate and said he would use it and be glad of it too. Even manned up and said he would take it as his MC weapon instead of greeding it.

Baron Geddon

• [item]Cenarion Spaulders[/item] – Moonwinna with a 41
• [item]Seal of Archmagus[/item] – Alyna with a 98

Shazzrah

• [item]Cenarion Gloves[/item] – Badfun with a 57
• [item]Nightslayer Boots[/item] – Chuckers with a 66

We killed Shazz in 6-7 minutes and finished the run two minutes early. Congrats everyone! Cheers to one more step to completing your sets!

Yea, I know…I’m running a bit late posting this. Since Sunday was Christmas we post-poned our normal MC run to Monday and added Ony to the list. We started a tad late but we finished it all!

MC

Lava Annihilator – [item]Giantstalker’s Belt[/item] – Kurosawa with a 66

Lava Elemental - [item]Lawbringer Belt[/item] – Gern won with a 17! Great pally rolls guys!

Lava Elemental – [item]Gianstalker’s Belt[/item] – Asterioidea

Sulfuron Priest – [item]Nightslayer Belt[/item] that Chuckers ninja’d with a 97. Welcome back!

Sulfuron
- [item]Pauldrons of Might[/item] – Kobort won with a 25. Personally I think he should have removed his roll and given it to Static or Hurtu. Unforunately it only seems to be the officers that do that. I like how people go on and on about how they are only there for the friendship but have a piece of loot drop that they need and the truth comes out. Try another story guys.
- [item]Shadowstrike[/item] – We didn’t even bother trying to greed roll this polearm and went straight to nexus crystal roll. Viitanus won it with a 100.

Firelord - [item]Cenarion Belt[/item] – Moonwinna with a 89

Golemagg
- [item]Lawbringer Chestguard[/item] – Alahn with a 98
- [item]Arcanist Robes[/item] – Quisver with a 86
- [item]Azuresong Mageblade[/item] – Gwadraw with a 61. WOOOOT No more b*tching from him.
- [item]Sulfuron Ingot[/item] – Bank

Majordomo
- [item]Wild Growth Spaulders[/item] – Moonwinna with a 13
- [item]Gloves of the Hypnotic Flame[/item] – Espinoza with a 37. Dammit I really want those but you could only roll if you didn’t have purple gloves. Well F U too.
- [item]Ancient Petrified Leaf[/item] – Schnitzel

Ya know different stuff than what we normally get on Sunday’s dropped. I wonder if it has anything to with it being a Monday night or just dumb luck. What do you guys think? I’d be interested in giving it another shot and see if there are different drops “assigned” to different nights. Interesting….

Onyxia
- [item]Head of Onyxia[/item] – Bolicious with a 99
- [item]Onyxia Hide Backpack[/item] – Mez with a 100
- [item]Sapphiron Drape[/item] – Rapunzel with a 97
- [item]Halo of Transcendence[/item] – Medikman with a 45
- [item]Dragonstalker’s Helm[/item] with a 96 went to Jadzia

Congrats Everyone!

DUH! Sorry gang I forgot to post our phat loot from the Sunday run. And BTW you did a great job leading Hurtu!!

Sulfuron
* [item]Mantle of Prophecy[/item] – Medikman with a 80
* [item]Nightslayer Shoulder Pads[/item] – Mez with a 100. Congrats on all 8 of your pieces!!!!!

Lava Annihilator
* [item]Belt of Might[/item] – Druela with a 98. Apparently Dru was spaced out because we mentioned it going to the bank about 5 times before he said he didn’t have it. Geez.

Golemagg
* [item]Sulfuron Ingot[/item] – Bank for Rag’s hammer
* [item]Giantstalker’s Breastplate[/item] – Bahouth with a 86
* [item]Robes of Prophecy[/item] – Phifer with a 77 (he gets his first set piece bonus now – woot)
* [item]Blastershot Launcher[/item] – Jadzia with a 79

Majordomo – which I might add was our best attempt EVER without Burthona and Static. Great tanking everyone!
* [item]Ancient Petrified Leaf[/item] – Jadzia
* [item]Fireproof Cloak[/item] – Aveliana with a 100
* [item]Sash of Whispered Secrets[/item] was passed on by all warlocks and was opened up to shadow specced priests and locks for a greed roll. Aveliana had some hot dice and won with a 75. You go girl!

We tried a couple attempts at Rags and ran out of stoned souls so we quit for the night. Great run everyone!

So I just realized going back through my blog that I didn’t finish the Mage MC strategy. Sorry about that!

Ok I ended with the Gehennas fight, so …..

Garr
This boss is really easy for casters as long as you stay out of the way exploding adds and away from the banished adds. The MT will target Garr and the locks with hunter pets will be set to the different adds to keep them banished. One healer – normally a druid – will hang out with the locks on the right side of Garr’s area.

Tanks will be assigned to the 4 adds that will be killed before we head off to Garr. Targeting will be through 1 main tank (normally Static in our case). Once the add gets down to around 10% back away if you are close. They will explode and send you flying. Our squishee little buts will be kaput at that point and no help to the raid. Continue through this until all 4 adds are down. Basically – as soon as your targetting tank targets the add, just unload on it. They will pull it away from the main group (typically to to the left) so the explosions don’t kill others inadvertantly.

Garr removes your buffs BUT it is still good to buff up before this fight. You had several adds to kill before Garr and they will assist you.

Once the call goes out “all on Garr” unload all you have on him. When your mana is out, use your wand while you regen. After he is dead, head back to the banished adds and kill them. Easy.

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Thanks Burthona for writing this up!

MC Strat, Part 1: Initial Bosses

Lucifron
Boss Abilities
Massive DoT shadow curse, mind control.

The Battle
Position your groups such that the MT tanks Lucifron where the first pack of hounds spawn. Two hunters, one attached to each off tank, use their distracting shot ability to pull the adds away from Lucrifon. The off tanks are ready with taunt, pulling the aggro off of the hunters and bringing the adds to the rear of the cave. We allow around 20 seconds for the off tanks to gather aggro. We have our odd numbered groups attack one add, while our even numbered groups attack the other. The adds go down quickly, then we move to Lucifron and essentially used sustained dps to bring him down. Positioning isn’t terribly important once the adds are down, although it is a good habit for casters to attack from maximum range.

Keys for Success
There are several important factors to this battle. One is that Lucifron has a NASTY mind control spell that will quickly spell disaster for even an experienced raid party. This must be cleansed immediately from either the tank or the off tanks. The other is that the west cave door (where you enter Magmadar’s cavern) is in close proximity to the battle. We recommend that hunter pets be dismissed and that all party members stay away from this cave entrance. In our initial encounters in MC, we wiped several times because a caster or hunter backed into the mouth of the cave and pulled the imps onto us.

Magmadar
Boss Abilities
Magmadar has two uber abilities – a massive AOE fear and “Frenzy,” in which the dps given to the MT approximately quadruples. These abilities are on a timer that ranges from 27-35 seconds. He also has a nasty ability called “Magma Spit,” which creates a pool of fire in a small, contained area. This fire will kill cloth wearers in appoximately three to five seconds.

The Battle
Many of us in the Surf’n'Turf alliance feel that this is one of the toughest battles in MC. We start by casting fear ward on our MT, our backup tanks, and our primary healers. Our tank approaches Magmadar and holds aggro in the center of the cavern, with his back to us. Casters stand at maximum range (thirty meters) to avoid being feared. Generally, I place all of our hunters in one group with a druid. Their sole duty is stay together and spam tranq shot when Magmadar enters Frenzy (announced both by a mod and our raid leader). We give the MT a full cycle of frenzy/fear in order to cement aggro before we attack. Once the initial fear ward is gone, one of our dwarf priests does NOTHING but keep Fear Ward on our MT. This is simply an endurance fight. We use a heal chain (we usually staff six priests on an MC raid) that is comprised of two groups of three priests, with two priests healing our MT at any given time. We have our hunters organized into a Tranq Shot rotation to provide a means of breaking Magmadar’s frenzy. Provided our MT stays alive, we win the battle. We have successfully beaten Magmadar twice when our MT died, but this will take an experienced group that is used to working together.

Keys for Success
Heal chains, heal chains, heal chains! Priests must have enough mana to keep the MT alive throughout the entire fight. The MT should have fear ward at all times. Other warriors should fight in ‘zerker stance (unless they are fury specced with Death Wish) to keep ‘Zerker Rage on during the fear cycles. This has saved our necks on two occasions when the MT went down and we had a warrior there ready to pick up the aggro and keep plugging along. Curse of Shadows is free dps, and with the 16 debuff slots, it is a no brainer to have this on him at all times. The only things on Magmadar’s debuff list should be taunt (if necessary), sunder armor, a curse of shadows from every warlock, and you most effective dps DoTs given your class composition in your raid.

Read more… »

Ok so the snowballs put a serious damper on trying to be productive but damn are they fun! Ok, also annoying but still….. By the time we got the Ony head buff, threw a f-ton of snowballs and made our way to MC we were running late. Then trading water was a pain bc snowballs cancel the trade.

So….20 min late we started our run a little lighter in the bags than when we started. Poor Muridis didn’t realize they came in stacks of 5 (he thought they were singles – don’t ask I don’t get it either) so he had 600 of them. He spent a lot of time unloading them on me. Yea, we’ll see what this Aunt buys your for Christmas now!

Lots of mages last night – we had 6, so it made buffing groups easy. But damn decurse people! I shouldn’t ever have to hear that whiny b*tching like I did last night with 6 mages and how ever many druids we had. I got tired of it so I set up a /rs macro that says “decursing bitches!” so I can fire that one off on the first decurse then go back to the normal one.

Anywho….onto the loot.

Luci
- Tranq shot (suprise, suprise) – ML (Master Looter) /random 40
- [item]Cenarion Boots[/item] – Aylna with a 60
- [item]Gauntlets of Might[/item] – Alyna with a 96 for a nexxus shard in the next patch. You go girl!

Magmadar
- [item]Cenarion Leggings[/item] – Alyna. Grrrl is cleaning up She was the only one left that didn’t have this piece.
- [item]Pants of Prophecy[/item] – Lorick with a 74
- [item]Talisman of Ephemeral Power[/item] – Daalny with a 93. I thought Babba was going to have a heart attack when that dropped, he has wanted it for sooooooo long. Poor thing didn’t win but he did roll higher than me (he rolled a 25 and I rolled a 19)
- [item]Pattern: Flarecore Wraps[/item] – Bolicious with a 86.

Lava Annihilator
- [item]Belt of Might[/item] – Bank, everyone already has it

Gehennas
- [item]Gloves of Prophecy[/item] – Muridis with a 14. WOOOT.
- [item]Sorcerous Dagger[/item] – Lemorte with a 45. Nice way to come back into the game after a break. Grats dude.

Garr
- [item]Drillborer Disk[/item] – Kizvaar with a 52
- [item]Flamewalker Leggings[/item] – Theseus with a 82. <3 to Burthona for giving up his kick-ass roll of 99 in favor of Theseus and his blue drawers.
- [item]Formula: SpellPower[/item] – Hexperiment with a 57
- DRUM ROLL………. [item]Arcanist Crown[/item] – MEMEEMEMEMEMEMEMEME with a 89. I’m still in shock. I WONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!! That is ALL 8 set pieces b*tches! First time for me and first one in the entire alliance.

Ok….so I’m still excited over it…..

Baron Geddon
- [item]Cenarion Spaulders[/item] – Daalny with a 40
- [item]Seal of the Archmagus[/item] – Ahnvil with a 98..NOT..Phifer with a 99..NOT…LORICK with a 100! Talk about some hot dice action.

There were a coupla people that wanted to quit after this boss and I could have gone either way. BUT our rules say “either 11pm CST or Shazzrah – whichever comes first” and someone had to bust that one out. So off we went to kill another boss.

We wiped. Yup I said it. Kuro has hunter macros set to his mouse keys and he took a drink and set the glass down on the mouse. And of course! hit a key, fired a shot off on Shazz and wiped us all. We rezzed and took him out. But boy was that first pull interesting. I died so much on this fight that I had rez timers. Don’t ask, I dunno why.

Shazzrah
- [item]Cenarion Gloves[/item] – Paganos with 86
- [item]Boots of Prophecy[/item] – Chriara with a 68

Congrats to all the druids and priests. Quit complainin’ that your stuff doesn’t drop! It’s been all about you for the last couple of runs. And most of all – congrats to ME! I don’t *have* to go on the Thursday runs anymore. YIPPPPPPPIE

I missed the last night of MC since I was actually out and about in RL. That RL instance is fun somethings

I was on ventrilo with the guys just to hear how it went and learn strategies and they did pretty well.

1st attempt: ~59%
2nd attempt: ~54%

Things we’ve discovered:
* We need better communication to the melee. We are on the exact opposite side of the MTs and have no clue what’s happening over there. So something happens to the MT, then Rags turns around and squashes 2-3 of us. If we knew something happened, we could all leave melee range and Rags will automatically target the other MT. (Thanks Wendra!)

* From a ranged perspective, I treated this fight in a similar manner as Mags. I would move one step into attack range and let loose on him. When I would get a warning about AE knockback, I would fire a shot then step back out of range. I only got knocked back once and that was likely due to some slow fingers on my part. This is a pretty simple fight for us.

The transition from phase 1 to phase 2 is going to be the making or breaking factor. I think we had too many different ideas as to what we should be doing during the Sons of Flame phase. AOE is going to be the way to go no doubt but collapsing the group is going to be the key. Trapping may help but I’m not sure how much.

FWIW that mana burn killed me very very quick so keeping the Son’s isolated away from mana-folk(TM) is going to be key. (Thanks Schnitzel!)

* For the phase 1 to phase 2 move we might want to sacrifice a little DPS and keep a warrior in caster camp then when the sons pop that warrior can get them faster without swimming. That would also let us know which warrior would be taking the beating. (Thanks Galvar!)

* Here is my idea, at the 1 min mark for sons of flame have all mages quit DPS’ing and mana regen. Have all hunters feign death, and set traps at predetermined location. Have 1 mage and 1 warrior stand on the traps. Once Sons pop, have warrior AoE Taunt, and once in range Mage Frost Nova, we might lose the mage. Warlocks spam, CoE (Curse of Elements) and mages, hunters and hell even warriors (whirlwind) AoE the shit out of them. Then once they are down, back to rags. (Thanks Wardawg!)

Not too bad for our first SERIOUS attempt! We’ll take Ragnaros down in no time. Woot!

So….. against our better judgement we started listening to other guilds on the server for the requirements for Rags. These are the same guilds that told us we couldn’t run an alliance and make it work and various other advice that we kicked to the curb. Not sure who the culprit was but someone said we need 150 for ranged DPS, 300 for tanks and tank healers.

Seems do-able right? Yea right! Hell, I originally supported 150 – it didn’t SEEM like a huge amount. Well…I have all my arcanist pieces except my head (have the [item]Eye of Flame[/item] right now), 2 rings with FR, Onyxia necklace and [item]Dragonrider boots[/item] I change out with my set boots, mage armor and had 161 with no Mark of the Wild. I found the [item]Torch of Austen[/item] on the AH the other night for a low BO of 39g. THANKS DUDE whoever you were! So, as you can imagine, I bought that.

So now I’m up to 171. Blood, sweat and tears I tell you. THEN! I found out from Bolicious last night they are lowering the FR on my set pieces. WTF. That is just wrong. I can’t wait to see how I’m screwed after the patch. I might transfer over to the test server just to find out.

Well that is just my scenario. And mine is actually good compared to 80% of the rest of the group. Everyone is complaining they can’t afford it, want the flarecore stuff (not worth it IMO) so still need fiery or lava cores and various other reasons. So a huge hooopla came about in the past week or so and everyone started having a hissy. I can see why. I agree with them. 150 didn’t seem like a huge amount until I realized I barely squeak through and I FR on most of my stuff. (need it on my weapon and my shoulders< --which you can get a +7 enchant for if you are exaulted with the Argent Dawn in the Plaguelands)

The other piece of the puzzle we didn't consider is how much DPS you lose when you change out your gear. Most of the FR stuff you can get is greens or blues (depending on class) so that hurts the raid overall.

Yea, it frustrates people to have the “rules” change but that is what WoW is all about. It is not a constant, never changing game. If it was, we wouldn’t want to play it, right? So we have to adapt to the new situations as they present themselves. I don’t know why people can’t get that thru their heads. I guess maybe it’s because their guild leaders/officers aren’t passing it down the wire?!? Mmmm… now that is a thought. Just realized that. Duh!

After much debate for the first 150, continuing debate constantly in the forums and more talk than I ever care about on FR, new proposals and some more debate. Ooo yea politicians have nothing on us. We changed our guidelines to reflect that ranged DPS (warlocks, mages, druids, hunters) need a minimum of 100 FR and more where allowable without sacrificing too much DPS ability.

WOOT! Go us! Now I can change out some of my gear again for mana. I was not looking forward to those little fiery spawns coming after me when I can’t AOE bc I have no mana. Something tanks sometimes forget about. You can’t DPS if you don’t have the gear especially with no mana. LOL