I remember when I was young, when we walked bare-footed over the Burning Stepped to fish for epics in a pool of lava known as the Molten Core. Back in those days, lava really did hurt. If you were stupid enough to fall into the lava, you were most likely going to die.
As we increased in levels and hit points, the lava really didn’t do its part. It’s still kinda level 60 and hasn’t done much to level up these 5 years. As a result the damage it deals is pitiful, trying to die in a pool of lava as a level 80 is a very slow death, just imagine how it’s going to be when the player’s hit level 85 and the health pools will be measured in 6 digits.
They really need to spice up the lava. A good thing would be to let lava be instant death, you fall in the lava, you die, game over, finito, time to corpse run. Just imagine how nasty that would be, it would sure cause players to be afraid of the lava, and it would actually make the Cataclysm seem a little dangerous.
They probably won’t do something like that though, but at least make it deal damage based on a percentage of your total health, possibly ignoring fire resistance. Say a third of your health every second, which gives you 3 seconds to get up from the lava, sounds fair right? I mean its friggin lava, it’s pretty darn hot.
At least that would be nice, as it is now, the lava in World of Warcraft resembles a cozy, hot bubble-bath.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Hellscream's Warsong, now makes people 15% more retarded!
Today the buff in ICC went up to 15% and people are excited because they think we will finally have a chance to down Lich King. The fact is we’re not going to down Lich King, not if people believe we need the buff in order to do so.
Do you know what we have died on every single time on the Arthas encounter? Defile, defile and more defile. People don’t walk out of defile because the use eyes are obviously considered an exploit. A 15% damage buff won’t make us move out of defile faster, it will make people pay 15% less attention to other things.
When the 5% buff hit our guild took a dive into the trash can. We wiped on Deathwhisper normal mode, people died on trash, we wiped on places we had never wiped before. If anything the ICC buff makes people more retarded, even if they’re not aware of it.
The buff itself is a horrible, horrible idea. Why is it even there in the first place? Aren’t we supposed to get better as our gear and knowledge improves? Thus making encounters easier to beat? Why on earth do we need a stupid, scaling buff that makes people more retarded? So that ICC can be pugged? To hell with that, every god damn instance in WotLK can be pugged already, let ICC be!
Blizzard made a nice gesture by allowing us to turn it off, but they could have at least added an achivement or a title for people choosing to do so that we could have som reason for doing it. The problem is, people always walk the path of least resistance. I was one of the few raiders who suggested the buff be turned off; the response I got was “Why?”
I don’t blame people for raiding with the buff, it’s only retarded to not use what’s been given to you, but the main problem is that it does not prevent lethal boss mechanics, and lethal boss mechanics wipe the raid regardless. What the buff does remove however is focus, and that makes lethal boss mechanics more lethal.
Explain to me why we spent an entire night wiping on Blood Prince Council hardmode with the 15% buff active when we almost one-shotted the encounter the first time with the 5% buff. Because people didn’t run after the flame orb, they didn’t need to; they had a 15% damage buff!
Do you know what we have died on every single time on the Arthas encounter? Defile, defile and more defile. People don’t walk out of defile because the use eyes are obviously considered an exploit. A 15% damage buff won’t make us move out of defile faster, it will make people pay 15% less attention to other things.
When the 5% buff hit our guild took a dive into the trash can. We wiped on Deathwhisper normal mode, people died on trash, we wiped on places we had never wiped before. If anything the ICC buff makes people more retarded, even if they’re not aware of it.
The buff itself is a horrible, horrible idea. Why is it even there in the first place? Aren’t we supposed to get better as our gear and knowledge improves? Thus making encounters easier to beat? Why on earth do we need a stupid, scaling buff that makes people more retarded? So that ICC can be pugged? To hell with that, every god damn instance in WotLK can be pugged already, let ICC be!
Blizzard made a nice gesture by allowing us to turn it off, but they could have at least added an achivement or a title for people choosing to do so that we could have som reason for doing it. The problem is, people always walk the path of least resistance. I was one of the few raiders who suggested the buff be turned off; the response I got was “Why?”
I don’t blame people for raiding with the buff, it’s only retarded to not use what’s been given to you, but the main problem is that it does not prevent lethal boss mechanics, and lethal boss mechanics wipe the raid regardless. What the buff does remove however is focus, and that makes lethal boss mechanics more lethal.
Explain to me why we spent an entire night wiping on Blood Prince Council hardmode with the 15% buff active when we almost one-shotted the encounter the first time with the 5% buff. Because people didn’t run after the flame orb, they didn’t need to; they had a 15% damage buff!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
One instance per tier?
I proposed a suggestion to my guild yesterday that wasn’t actually endorsed by the masses. To put it simple, I wanted my guild to cut down from two days a week to one day a week when it comes to raiding. Why did I do this? Two days of raiding is already very little, but when there’s only once instance to raid even that gets too much.
Burnout is closing in as it always has been doing at the end of a raid. People are getting tired of farming the same instance over and over, especially when we got nowhere else to go. In TBC we could change between Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine, Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, and Sunwell was not within reach for most of us until the expanison hit.
Today we got one instance to go to and that’s Icecrown. We’re so overgeared that no place else offers a vague challenge. That’s why I think we should raid one day a week instead of two, because people will get tired, they will get sick of the game, they will be burned out and we will lose them before the new raid is released.
However, most people seem to think that the amount of time you spend playing is not proportional to the amount of time you use to get burned out. I can certainly understand why some people are reacting to this, they are not sick of the game and they already think two times a week is little, so of course they’re against this, but I only want to prevent the same disaster that’s been taking place every single time we come to this place in time. At the end of Naxxramas we nearly lost all our raiders from TBC, at the end of Ulduar we had trouble filling a raid with barely 20 people, at the end of ToTC people were so damn tired of WoW that some left to never return, all because we insisted on over-farming those instances.
I think we’ve reached a point in WotLK that makes me say I’m really looking forward to Cataclysm. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and not repeat this failure of an expanison.
Burnout is closing in as it always has been doing at the end of a raid. People are getting tired of farming the same instance over and over, especially when we got nowhere else to go. In TBC we could change between Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine, Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, and Sunwell was not within reach for most of us until the expanison hit.
Today we got one instance to go to and that’s Icecrown. We’re so overgeared that no place else offers a vague challenge. That’s why I think we should raid one day a week instead of two, because people will get tired, they will get sick of the game, they will be burned out and we will lose them before the new raid is released.
However, most people seem to think that the amount of time you spend playing is not proportional to the amount of time you use to get burned out. I can certainly understand why some people are reacting to this, they are not sick of the game and they already think two times a week is little, so of course they’re against this, but I only want to prevent the same disaster that’s been taking place every single time we come to this place in time. At the end of Naxxramas we nearly lost all our raiders from TBC, at the end of Ulduar we had trouble filling a raid with barely 20 people, at the end of ToTC people were so damn tired of WoW that some left to never return, all because we insisted on over-farming those instances.
I think we’ve reached a point in WotLK that makes me say I’m really looking forward to Cataclysm. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and not repeat this failure of an expanison.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Life Grip lol!
Information about priests in Cataclysm was revealed recently and it seems like us priests are getting a friendly version of the Death Knight’s death grip. It’s called Leap of Faith, but everyone will call it life grip, it’s inevitable.
For those who don’t know, this spell allows you to pull friendly party or raid member from their position towards you. The range and cooldown is unknown, but I’ll bet it will be somewhere between 30 to 40 yards. Either way it’s going to be a hilarious spell and I can’t stop hating Blizzard enough if they decide to remove it before Cataclysm goes live.
This spell will not only be a source of great humor, but we will now finally have the ability to pull those retards away from the fire they aren’t supposed to stand in. As a priest, I’ve always felt like a babysitter in a good way and I take enjoyment in knowing I save my friends asses from time to time, but now I can do it much more directly then previously.
Myself and one of my priest friends also discussed many ways of using this spell to piss of raid leaders and such. For example, I jump off a cliff and in the air I use life grip on another raid member, pulling him/her down with me while my priest friend stands on the edge of the cliff and life grips me up again to his position, we are so going to get demoted for this, but it will be worth it.
But enough about life grip. After the eastern vacation from raiding, my guild cleared some more ICC hardmodes and I must say that buff is starting to get ridiculous. 10% increase in health, damage and healing/absorption has a huge impact on the encounters, and I still don’t understand why this buff is present in hardmodes. If it were up to me I would raid without it, but without a proper argument this isn’t happening, seeing as there’s no rewards whatsoever to raid without it.
We downed Rotface, Festergut, Blood Princes, Lana’Thel and Valithria and got Sindragosa to 35% in one night and I think Lich King will go down soon enough. Again I am confused about the varying difficulty in the bosses. We struggled like hell on Blood Princes, but we almost one-shotted Lana’Thel. Festergut and Rotface went down easily as well, but I’ve heard Putricide is a living nightmare, so I’m looking forward to that fight.
There is one thing in particular that is a great source of concern for me and that is burnout. It’s starting to kick in, even for me and I’m afraid I’ll be tired of ICC soon. I guess it’s inevitable when Blizzard only decides to release one instance per tier. Don’t get me wrong, both Ulduar and ICC have been great instances, but they’re still only the only content we had to raid for months (I won’t even mention the grand failure that ToTC was) and that wears you out, even with different difficulties to choose between.
I’m looking forward to this new raid that’s supposed to come out soon, and I hope Blizzard decides to pull a Sunwell and make it bloody hard, TBC style. With all the easy content and seeing now as ICC is being pugged on a regular basis, not to mention the increasing amount of Kingslayers appearing every day, I hope that this instance will be different.
For those who don’t know, this spell allows you to pull friendly party or raid member from their position towards you. The range and cooldown is unknown, but I’ll bet it will be somewhere between 30 to 40 yards. Either way it’s going to be a hilarious spell and I can’t stop hating Blizzard enough if they decide to remove it before Cataclysm goes live.
This spell will not only be a source of great humor, but we will now finally have the ability to pull those retards away from the fire they aren’t supposed to stand in. As a priest, I’ve always felt like a babysitter in a good way and I take enjoyment in knowing I save my friends asses from time to time, but now I can do it much more directly then previously.
Myself and one of my priest friends also discussed many ways of using this spell to piss of raid leaders and such. For example, I jump off a cliff and in the air I use life grip on another raid member, pulling him/her down with me while my priest friend stands on the edge of the cliff and life grips me up again to his position, we are so going to get demoted for this, but it will be worth it.
But enough about life grip. After the eastern vacation from raiding, my guild cleared some more ICC hardmodes and I must say that buff is starting to get ridiculous. 10% increase in health, damage and healing/absorption has a huge impact on the encounters, and I still don’t understand why this buff is present in hardmodes. If it were up to me I would raid without it, but without a proper argument this isn’t happening, seeing as there’s no rewards whatsoever to raid without it.
We downed Rotface, Festergut, Blood Princes, Lana’Thel and Valithria and got Sindragosa to 35% in one night and I think Lich King will go down soon enough. Again I am confused about the varying difficulty in the bosses. We struggled like hell on Blood Princes, but we almost one-shotted Lana’Thel. Festergut and Rotface went down easily as well, but I’ve heard Putricide is a living nightmare, so I’m looking forward to that fight.
There is one thing in particular that is a great source of concern for me and that is burnout. It’s starting to kick in, even for me and I’m afraid I’ll be tired of ICC soon. I guess it’s inevitable when Blizzard only decides to release one instance per tier. Don’t get me wrong, both Ulduar and ICC have been great instances, but they’re still only the only content we had to raid for months (I won’t even mention the grand failure that ToTC was) and that wears you out, even with different difficulties to choose between.
I’m looking forward to this new raid that’s supposed to come out soon, and I hope Blizzard decides to pull a Sunwell and make it bloody hard, TBC style. With all the easy content and seeing now as ICC is being pugged on a regular basis, not to mention the increasing amount of Kingslayers appearing every day, I hope that this instance will be different.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
You DARE trespass upon this hallowed ground?
I said in my last post that I would talk about the Lady Deathwhisper encounter on heroic mode. Well I’m also going to talk about the gunship battle encounter, simply because it doesn’t deserve a post on its own, you’ll see why in a moment.
First of I just want to ask you guys a question: Am I the only one who feel like WotLK is full of unused potential? I mean they have all of these great new resources available which they didn’t have in TBC or vanilla, yet they don’t even use them to even a fracture of their full extent.
Phased content and hardmodes are perhaps the two biggest features in WoW in my opinion and the ones that has been the most game-changing. I’ve always felt like the phased content was not used properly in WotLK, but it seems like they will get it right in Cataclysm, at least I hope so.
The hardmodes however is something I simply cannot understand, the only explanation I have is Blizzard being utterly lazy about it. When Ulduar first came out, the hardmodes were brilliant. Mimiron, Freya, Thorim, Yog’Saron, there was so many cool hardmodes that really changed the battles completely and they were all different in terms of how they were activated and executed.
Now that my guild’s been progressing into the Icecrown hardmodes, I’ve been getting a good look on the four first bosses.
In my last post I talked about Lord Marrowgar, and while the encounter wasn’t the best I’ve experienced, it sure was hard as hell. However, when we engaged Lady Deathwhisper, I was simply shocked to find at that she wasn’t all that difficult. In fact, we only had a few wipes due to people one-shotting each other while mind controlled. After a few attempts we downed her with relative ease and I was simply scratching my head wondering if we were getting better, or the encounters getting easier.
The big shock of the night came when we engaged the gunship battle. It started of with a lot of confusion since none of us could find any proper tactics other than lose forum posts and rumors. We couldn’t understand why tankspot hadn’t uploaded a video about this as they had with all the other hardmodes.
The answer was simple, the battle had hardly changed. In fact, it was so similar that if someone were to accidentally enable heroic mode in a pug, I believe no one would have felt the difference. The only change to this battle is a slight increase in the opposite ships hit points, a small damage buff to Muradin, and a 7 yard knock-back effect to people who gets hit by the mortars, and since people are now being teleported back up on the ship if they fall down, this is hardly a difference maker at all. When we downed this encounter at the first try with zero deaths I was really starting to wonder if this was a joke or not.
The gunship battle in itself is a genius idea, and this comes from someone who is generally opposed to vehicle-fights. I love the fact that you have to use jump-packs to board the other ship, and it really gives me a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sort of feeling when Saurfang yells “all hands on deck!”
This encounter has so much unused potential. With the mechanics implemented into the game Blizzard could have pulled something really epic here. How about moving to the enemy ships lower deck and plant bombs in their engines? How about aiming at strategic points to deal more damage with the cannons?
I can understand why they wanted the easy-mode to be bearable and not so chaotic, but they could have done more work on the hardmode. A 7 yard knockback, that’s it? How much time do you think they put into this? It makes me wonder about what the Blizzard design team is actually spending their time on.
Now, there certainly has been a lot of ranting and it may get tiresome to read. I will finish this post by confirming that Saurfang did indeed stomp us into the ground. We also decided to sneak past him on normal mode to experience the Rotface encounter on heroic mode and that was pretty much like running into a brick wall as well, so I still have a lot of faith in the hardmodes to come. I do however; wish that they would have taken more time with the lower spire.
First of I just want to ask you guys a question: Am I the only one who feel like WotLK is full of unused potential? I mean they have all of these great new resources available which they didn’t have in TBC or vanilla, yet they don’t even use them to even a fracture of their full extent.
Phased content and hardmodes are perhaps the two biggest features in WoW in my opinion and the ones that has been the most game-changing. I’ve always felt like the phased content was not used properly in WotLK, but it seems like they will get it right in Cataclysm, at least I hope so.
The hardmodes however is something I simply cannot understand, the only explanation I have is Blizzard being utterly lazy about it. When Ulduar first came out, the hardmodes were brilliant. Mimiron, Freya, Thorim, Yog’Saron, there was so many cool hardmodes that really changed the battles completely and they were all different in terms of how they were activated and executed.
Now that my guild’s been progressing into the Icecrown hardmodes, I’ve been getting a good look on the four first bosses.
In my last post I talked about Lord Marrowgar, and while the encounter wasn’t the best I’ve experienced, it sure was hard as hell. However, when we engaged Lady Deathwhisper, I was simply shocked to find at that she wasn’t all that difficult. In fact, we only had a few wipes due to people one-shotting each other while mind controlled. After a few attempts we downed her with relative ease and I was simply scratching my head wondering if we were getting better, or the encounters getting easier.
The big shock of the night came when we engaged the gunship battle. It started of with a lot of confusion since none of us could find any proper tactics other than lose forum posts and rumors. We couldn’t understand why tankspot hadn’t uploaded a video about this as they had with all the other hardmodes.
The answer was simple, the battle had hardly changed. In fact, it was so similar that if someone were to accidentally enable heroic mode in a pug, I believe no one would have felt the difference. The only change to this battle is a slight increase in the opposite ships hit points, a small damage buff to Muradin, and a 7 yard knock-back effect to people who gets hit by the mortars, and since people are now being teleported back up on the ship if they fall down, this is hardly a difference maker at all. When we downed this encounter at the first try with zero deaths I was really starting to wonder if this was a joke or not.
The gunship battle in itself is a genius idea, and this comes from someone who is generally opposed to vehicle-fights. I love the fact that you have to use jump-packs to board the other ship, and it really gives me a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sort of feeling when Saurfang yells “all hands on deck!”
This encounter has so much unused potential. With the mechanics implemented into the game Blizzard could have pulled something really epic here. How about moving to the enemy ships lower deck and plant bombs in their engines? How about aiming at strategic points to deal more damage with the cannons?
I can understand why they wanted the easy-mode to be bearable and not so chaotic, but they could have done more work on the hardmode. A 7 yard knockback, that’s it? How much time do you think they put into this? It makes me wonder about what the Blizzard design team is actually spending their time on.
Now, there certainly has been a lot of ranting and it may get tiresome to read. I will finish this post by confirming that Saurfang did indeed stomp us into the ground. We also decided to sneak past him on normal mode to experience the Rotface encounter on heroic mode and that was pretty much like running into a brick wall as well, so I still have a lot of faith in the hardmodes to come. I do however; wish that they would have taken more time with the lower spire.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Icecrown Hardmodes, good or bad?
My guild finally managed to beat Lich King on 10-man normal difficulty and thus allowing us to progress into the 10-man heroic version. In a single night we managed to get to Saurfang and I’m not sure if I’m pleased or not.
As far as difficulty goes, I can’t say I have much to complain about. I like my content difficult, and the Icecrown hardmodes offered much in that department.
I was happy that they didn’t decide to make the heroic version of ICC a separate instance. They did that with ToTC and it was an absolute nightmare for me. Farming an instance in four different ways burns you out quicker than a match-stick. However I was disappointed that the trash remained the same. I would really like to see some difficult trash that keeps the raid on their toes, trash that demands CC in order to get through.
Marrowgar literally tore us apart and we did not at all expect him to be that difficult. The amount of damage he deals out to the raid is huge and very unpredictable and I found the encounter to be more based on luck than actual skill.
The problem I have with this encounter is that it can go wrong, and when it goes wrong there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. If you get placed in a bone spike during bone storm and he decides to do a little dance on top of your head then there is no amount of healing that can save you, you will die unless someone has life-saving cooldowns. Difficulty is good, random elements which you do not have control of and cannot prevent is not good, it makes for a frustrating encounter and is in my opinion poor design on the part of Blizzard.
Also, according to Blizzard, hardmodes were supposed to have “elements that make them different”. I can hardly say that placing bone spikes during bone storm is a very big difference-maker. If you compare this to the first hardmodes when Ulduar was released, it seems like Blizzard are getting lazy. Making a boss hit harder and have more health is not my idea of a different encounter. Since we only have one instance per tier, can’t they at least take their time to make the hardmodes different? They obviously know how to, Yog’Saron and the four keepers was completely genius.
We eventually downed Marrowgar. We came to the conclusion that the raid took less damage with two healers then three, because getting people of out bone spikes were crucial. I do feel like it was mostly luck that made us down him, and I can’t say I liked the encounter much. What I did like was the fact that I haven’t been healing that hard since fighting High Warlord Najentus in Black Temple and that definitely was refreshing.
I will save the other bosses for later segments, as I don’t want each one to be extremely long. For the next segment I will talk about the Lady Deathwhisper encounter.
As far as difficulty goes, I can’t say I have much to complain about. I like my content difficult, and the Icecrown hardmodes offered much in that department.
I was happy that they didn’t decide to make the heroic version of ICC a separate instance. They did that with ToTC and it was an absolute nightmare for me. Farming an instance in four different ways burns you out quicker than a match-stick. However I was disappointed that the trash remained the same. I would really like to see some difficult trash that keeps the raid on their toes, trash that demands CC in order to get through.
Marrowgar literally tore us apart and we did not at all expect him to be that difficult. The amount of damage he deals out to the raid is huge and very unpredictable and I found the encounter to be more based on luck than actual skill.
The problem I have with this encounter is that it can go wrong, and when it goes wrong there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. If you get placed in a bone spike during bone storm and he decides to do a little dance on top of your head then there is no amount of healing that can save you, you will die unless someone has life-saving cooldowns. Difficulty is good, random elements which you do not have control of and cannot prevent is not good, it makes for a frustrating encounter and is in my opinion poor design on the part of Blizzard.
Also, according to Blizzard, hardmodes were supposed to have “elements that make them different”. I can hardly say that placing bone spikes during bone storm is a very big difference-maker. If you compare this to the first hardmodes when Ulduar was released, it seems like Blizzard are getting lazy. Making a boss hit harder and have more health is not my idea of a different encounter. Since we only have one instance per tier, can’t they at least take their time to make the hardmodes different? They obviously know how to, Yog’Saron and the four keepers was completely genius.
We eventually downed Marrowgar. We came to the conclusion that the raid took less damage with two healers then three, because getting people of out bone spikes were crucial. I do feel like it was mostly luck that made us down him, and I can’t say I liked the encounter much. What I did like was the fact that I haven’t been healing that hard since fighting High Warlord Najentus in Black Temple and that definitely was refreshing.
I will save the other bosses for later segments, as I don’t want each one to be extremely long. For the next segment I will talk about the Lady Deathwhisper encounter.
Introduction!
Hello there! Let me start this off by introducing myself. I’m a 21 year old guy who’s been playing WoW since shortly after launch. I’m a pretty average guy with geeky interests such as D&D, Warhammer and other fantasy-related things. In short, I’m a gamer, and I spend many hours each day in front of the computer.
This blog will be a World of Warcraft related blog with focus on PvE raiding. The reason I want to write a blog like this is because I have been reading such blogs for many years and also listened to podcasts attached to WoW. I find myself sitting on lots of opinions and I thought writing a WoW related blog myself would be a nice thing to do. If I can get some people to read and comment on it was well that would be swell.
I’ve raided for over 4 years, from first entering Onyxia’s Lair to raiding Icecrown hardmodes today. I have throughout this entire time been playing the very same character, an undead priest named Hargrim. I’ve always been a healer, I can’t really explain why, but it’s just the path I’ve taken.
Now I won’t take up too much more time talking about me, but before starting I just wanted to say that this is a blog about my opinions, I’m not stating facts, I’m simply talking about things from my perspective. If you don’t agree with me, that’s completely fine.
I hope you will enjoy this blog as much as I will enjoy writing it. Any comments, good or bad, are always appreciated. Trolls are welcome to flame; I find it only humorous ;)
This blog will be a World of Warcraft related blog with focus on PvE raiding. The reason I want to write a blog like this is because I have been reading such blogs for many years and also listened to podcasts attached to WoW. I find myself sitting on lots of opinions and I thought writing a WoW related blog myself would be a nice thing to do. If I can get some people to read and comment on it was well that would be swell.
I’ve raided for over 4 years, from first entering Onyxia’s Lair to raiding Icecrown hardmodes today. I have throughout this entire time been playing the very same character, an undead priest named Hargrim. I’ve always been a healer, I can’t really explain why, but it’s just the path I’ve taken.
Now I won’t take up too much more time talking about me, but before starting I just wanted to say that this is a blog about my opinions, I’m not stating facts, I’m simply talking about things from my perspective. If you don’t agree with me, that’s completely fine.
I hope you will enjoy this blog as much as I will enjoy writing it. Any comments, good or bad, are always appreciated. Trolls are welcome to flame; I find it only humorous ;)
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