Karazhan

Last night was Kara night for yours truly. I farmed enough honor to get the Gladiator's War Staff from PVP, then put the 40 spell damage enchant on it. I'm now at over 600 spell damage which is a huge upgrade from the 465 I was prior to the upgrade. On Tuesday we downed Moroes, Attumen, then I dc'd and they finished up with Curator and Opera event without me. . So last night was Nighbane, Netherspite, and Prince himself. We started with Nightbane.

Nightbane as far as I'm concerned is the hardest fight in Kara. The enrage timer is 8:00 minutes and the beams have to be picked up in order to be successful. For those of you that don't know this fight, Nightbane is a huge Dragon that hits like a truck and there's three different colored beams that hit him and give him buffs. The blue beam gives attack power, the green gives him life back and the red beam gives a bigger hp pool. The trick to the fight is to have certain people stand in certain beams. If you stand in the red beam, you get aggro from Netherspite, but your hp is upped to around 30k, so you have your tank stand in the red beam and the off tank stand next to him. They alternate in the beam. The green beam is best to have 2 Rogues alternate, and the blue beam is the "caster" beam. Mostly for people that cast such as a firemage. So I was assigned to the Blue beam, but I screwed it up and accidentally went in to the green beam and got killed, then we wiped. I noted to the raid that it was my mistake, and wouldn't happen again. The raid leader and mt was understanding because I had never been here before and let it go. The next fight I did alot better. After the fight starts, the beams come, then the next phase is he kind of vanishes, runs around and does a nasty aoe, then goes back to using the beams again. If you stand in the beams too long it starts to tick life away instead of giving you a buff anymore. The trick is to get 20 stacks of the buff, do as much damage as you can, step out and let the next guy in line take over the beam. It should only take two people per beam phase for each beam. After you come out of the beam, your exhausted so you can't stand in it again for 2 mins. You need four people for one beam so they can alternate each phase. We did this very well I thought. We were getting close to the enrage timer, so when he went into his banish phase, we were instucted to continue dps to beat the enrage timer. I unleashed fireballs of fury, every cooldown I had, Netherspite goes back to beam phase, I picked up my beam, delivered all I could and somehow I got hit and died. There's only 30 secs on the enrage timer and Netherspite is at 5 %. We're not going to make it. Makapuno (MT/Raid leader) calls for all dps to go all out, I wish I could have, but I was dead. They dps and dps, seconds are ticking on the enrage timer, down to 10secs, 5 secs, 1 sec, enrage, but it's too late for Netherspite and down he goes. YAY!!!!! Netherspite down. Wow what a fight. I loved every second of it that I was alive. He drops a spell damage cape....I'm excited because it's so much better than the one I have. Raid leader links the cape to chat and says roll for cape. I roll a 34. Damn it! I wait, I look for the next roll, it doesn't come! The cape is mine. YAY! Another piece of epic gear. Now my spell damage is at 624.

Raid leader asks which fight we would like to do next......Everyone in the raid votes Prince.
So we head up the stairs to where Prince is. We clear all the trash, and run up this long winding stairway. I've never been to this part of Kara, and at the doorway at the top of the stairs I peak through and there he is. Biggest Baddest dude in Kara. I'm excited, I get to prove my worth as a firemage. I will dps like I never have before, I will lead the dps charts against far more experienced players, I will show my raid leader that I deserve to be here. The fight starts when Maka pulls him over to the ledge with his back against the wall. Roune (the epic hunter that's out dpsed me by 22k so far) pops a misdirect and we go to work. I'm letting the spells fly, cooldowns be damned. I stagger my trinket cooldowns so they are up as soon as humanely possible, and think I am doing a good job. One of our healers misses a heal on himself and dies....He's the MT healer...Maka goes down, we wipe at 50%. That's ok, it was just a mistake in judgement and it happens. We all do it, and it's not that big of a deal. So we reload, this time I use every spell damage buff I have along with my spell damage food, and wizard oil. I'm ready. Roune pops misdirect, Maka pulls, I let him get about a 6k lead on me and start my dps. I'm rockin' again, dpsing my little firemage heart out. Infernals are incoming, and one lands directly on our mt. He begins to move Prince out of the infernal and drags him very close to the group. Nothing is said on vent about where he's going, he's got his hands full. I try to move to avoid and contact with the big bad guy, oops, wrong time, wrong place, he shadow novas as I'm trying to get out of the way and bam! I'm dead. Prince is at 48% and I'm dead....This is very dissapointing. So I don't release, I just stand helplessly and watch the fight. I'm thinking any second they're going to run into some back luck with those stupid infernals and I'll get another shot, but wait. Our healers are doing a great job and the MT is handling prince. Infernals are dropping, but in places that they're not a problem. Dps is keeping up the good work. People are positioning, Prince's life is ticking away. 20%, 10%, 3%, 1%, Down....Prince is down! I was in a group that took down Prince! YAY!!!!! He drops some stuff that I don't want and can't use. I did get two more badges though.
Next up is Nightbane...oh what fun.

So we head out to the ledge to summon nightbane and on the way pick up some nifty little books.
Our MT summons the big bad undead dragon. He looks more like the skeleton of a dragon, but he doesn't hit like one. There are a couple of tricks to this fight as well. When he's on the ground the tank has to position him in such a way that all dps is on the side of him. If you're in the front or the back of him you'll take huge amounts of damage so you have to stay on the sides. While he's on the ground he also puts these scorched things down that burn the ground and anyone standing in them, so it's best to just avoid them as well as you can. When he flies up in the air everyone has to run to the tank's position and kill these guys that he spawns. No big deal, but it's best to have a prot pally in your group to consecrate to hold them while they're dpsed down. Then he lands, mt picks him back up and dps starts again while he does the ground scorch thing. I was doing a pretty good job of mana management and holding my own at damage. I'm standing next to one of the healers so as to make sure that I'm not in the wrong place. I'm unleashing every now and then, I'm second on the aggro list which tells me I'm really puting out the damage. Then I get the worst run of luck, I have to move because I get a scorched ground under my feet, and as soon as I move out of it, another one lands right under me. As I'm moving out of it I'm not paying attention, somehow I get the attention of the big stupid dragon.....Did I mention earlier that he hits pretty hard? Well he does, and my cloth gear found out first hand that I can't take a single hit from anything in Kara, including the likes of nightbane. I died again on a boss fight. Not fun. I don't like dying when I'm trying to prove that I can run with the big boys that I can do my job without anyone having to worry about me. This is not good for my reputation. The good thing is that nightbane is at 3% when I die and I was there for most of the fight. I watch as the rest of the group finishes him off and he drops something else I don't need, some kind of spell damage off hand that I'll never use, so I pass it to the shadow priest in the group and he gladly takes it and is thankful that I didn't roll on it even though I could have. I've been working with the shadow priest the whole night and he's been a fun partner in dps. I'm happy he got an epic he could use. Two hours, the three hardest bosses down, and one more epic. What fun. All in all it was alot of fun playing with all the people that were in the raid.

Tuesday we'll be going back for another run through Kara. The Raid leader is very interested in getting me as geared as possible to start taking me on progression through Gruul's and Mag. So I'll keep you posted on the upgrades as they fall from Kara. I think next week if everything goes really well on Tuesday, we might take a shot at ZA.......

Too Much Wow

With the help of my wife, I've discovered that I've been playing too much world of warcraft. It's taken a toll on my life by taking away time from other things. I didn't really realize how much I've been playing until my wife bravely pointed it out to me yesterday. I've neglected far too many other things that I should be doing. I'm not going to completely stop playing, but I've designated certain times for playing. The rest of the week I need to be spending more time with my family and taking care of things that need to be taken care of. I got caught up in trying to do too much in the game, and started treating it like a job. The problem with wow is, there's no end to it. The accomplishments in the game are completely meaningless outside of the game. I was getting a little too caught up in trying to be the best Bobmage in the game. This game thrives on one ups, and being better than the guy next to you. I'm a very competetive person at everything I do, and had I kept it casual (playing only when it was really convenient) I couldn't be great. At first when she pointed it out, I got a little defensive, but after that passed I began to really look at how much of my life it was interfereing with. I've spent almost 456 hours playing this game. I have lots of friends that invest far more hours in a week than I do, and I wonder if I didn't have a family would I do the same thing? Would even more of my life be consumed with getting that next piece of epic gear, or that next progression kill, or higher pvp rankings? At the end of the day, all those accomplishments amount to exactly zero if they cost you too much in other areas of your life. My wife had held back a little about how much of a distaste for the time I spent doing it she really had. She tried to bend a little and point out only the times I neglected other things to play and negociate with me. The problem with that was, I didn't really see the problem. Other people spend just as much time watching TV, or maybe even more, but those same people will turn the TV off, or walk away from it if something else needs to be done. I, as a wow player was getting caught up in whatever task I was trying to undertake. If I was in a group for a dungeon run, I wouldn't log off until either 1) The run was complete, or 2) We got to a place that we couldn't get past and we gave up. I would shun everything else, including sleep. That's not healthy, and it's a bad thing. I took that same attitude with almost all the other accomplishments in the game. Prior to reaching lvl 70, I would set a level goal for a particular day, and I wouldn't stop until I got there. If I had dedicated that much time to anything else in my life, I would be great at it. My golf game has suffered tremendously. The time I would normally try to spend at the practice range took a back seat to whatever was going on in wow. Can you imagine how all of this looks to an outsider who's never created a wow account, or spent a second in the game? We try to justify their lack of understanding by saying "if they played it, they would understand". No, they wouldn't. Because they choose other things in their lives over a silly game. At the end of the day, that's all it is. It feels like more because of the false sense of accomplishment that comes with it, and the fact that it is indeed a "World" in which you can do things that make it feel more realistic than other games. When you get that first piece of epic gear, you get borderline ecstatic, feeling like you just conquered a big goal. The reality is, you're playing a game. The reason other games don't consume so much of our time is they have endings, there's a finality to them. If you play Halo 3, once you've completed every mission in the game, it ends with a cut scene and the story is over. With wow, the story is never over, the accomplishments are never ending. I must admit that it's alot of fun playing wow with friends, but there has to be a line. You have to decide in your own mind that it's just a game. You don't owe the people in your group the time you spend trying to clear a dungeon. If something comes up in real life, and you're clearing trash to the last boss of a heroic dungeon, you don't owe the people in the group more than you owe the people in your life. If real life is happening while your stuck in a game, you're playing way too much wow. I didn't truly understand this, until I was forced to. Addiction? I don't think so, as much as immersion. Addiction is defined as being powerless over something. I have the power to determine how much of my time I spend playing wow and my attitude towards playing it. I now take this quite a bit more seriously. If I find myself not satisfied with playing only two days a week, I'll quit all together. No game is worth more than my life outside of that game. If you find yourself in a similiar situation, give all that I've said here some serious thought. Why are you playing the game? Is it still fun? Do you get mad at other people in the game because they aren't "as good" as you are? That's a tell tale sign that you're playing too much, and taking it way too seriously.

The Smallest Guild

My guild, and by "my" I mean I'm basically the gm, is probably the smallest guild out there. We currently have 4 active players, and about 45 inactives. I'm trying to do everything I can to make it a fun place to level and play, but right now the other lvl 70 in our guild, Azshanas, is saying that we need to start recruiting. She's right, we do. I just don't know how to go about getting good players that are like minded. I basically have nothing to offer them except help with leveling, and a promise of progress in the future. Now I need to figure out what I'm going to do about this. A good friend here at work runs a guild that is currently farming Kara and has asked me more than once to join his guild. I can't do that, I can't leave the only player in my guild that has been there from the begining. I won't do it. I want to see end game content one day, and I want to do it with Azshanas. So you see my conundrum? I have to recruit like minded players and I have to do it quick. I don't want players that don't know how to play entirely, but I don't want someone that thinks they know everything about all the classes and tells people how to play their toons. So what to do now?

Magister's Grand Terrace

I pugged a group with one of my guildies (Azshanas) over the weekend for MGT. We got in a really good group with a paladin tank and druid healer. This is the best combination of tank/healer for this instance as I soon found out. The reason is, some of the pulls are 5man pulls with maybe two cc. That leaves three more elites to tank. That can be very intense at some points.

The first boss is tank and spank basically with a nasty AOE that he does a couple of times after charging from one of the crystals. If you have enough dps you don't have to worry about the crystals as you can down him before he wipes the group, which is exactly what we did. The second boss is the third hardest fight in the instance. He's something like a giant elemental and he spawns energy sparks that have to be killed. If they get to a member of the group that member is going to be hit very hard. If you kill them, they put a debuff on you that ticks for 300 damage and increases your damage output by 50%. Being the only mage in the group I killed the first two that spawned, iceblocked off the debuff and killed the next two as well to get the debuff back. You have to have the debuff for when he gets to 20%. At 20% he spams a chain lightning like spell that hits everyone in the group and must be killed asap or he will wipe the raid. So having that extra 100% damage output is necessary to be successful. Me being the big bad dpser that I am, we got him down first try, and I died right at the end...darn. The boss was down and everyone else was still alive so it was cool.

All of the pulls leading up to the next boss encounter are 4 and 5 mob pulls with at least one caster type and one paladin type. This can be fun as the order of kill must be laid out correctly unless you like your healer dying. There's a witch in a couple of the groups that goes straight for the healer, so she must be sheeped or cc'd. The next boss fight is a fight against five elites with no aggro table. It's basically a pvp type fight against 1 of each of the classes of character. You just have to stay alive and down them as quick as you can. I used every cooldown/trinket I had and only one part member died. The best strategy is to keep moving and stay out of melee range of any of the melee class elites. Be sure to clear the mobs in the two libraries on the sides of the encounter area. Up next is the second hardest pull in the instance. It's a six mob pull that has one of each type of mob in the instance and is very intense.

So we clear up to Kael'thas Sunstriders sanctum, and this is where the six mob pull is. There's a consortium looking mob in the pull that does an aoe that can kill the entire group. It's best to try and kill him first. If you have a priest with you, you can mc the witch and have that group kill her, then cc the consortium guy and the healer, then go after the paladin guy first. It sounds easy, but there's nothing easy about this pull. I can see why they call this the hardest regular 5 man in the game. It takes a good plan and good players to get to Kael'thas. We finally cleared the last pull, btw if you wipe on the pull they respawn immediately so you don't get credit for any of the kills, it's all or nothing.

There stands Kael'thas Sunstrider...the baddest mage in the game. This is a very tricky fight if you've never done it before. The first phase is dps maddness. Ranged dps is essential here. During this phase he spawned fire phoenixes that must be killed by ranged dps. We did it with a hunter+me (firemage). They are immune to fire, so I had to use up alot of mana downing the big birds and the eggs they leave behind. After phase one is done he casts an anti-gravity spell that puts you all up in the air, and three purple orbs float around and follow players doing a huge amount of damage if they get close to you. So you have to continue to dps the hell out of him, and avoid the purple orbs. I had a hard time in this phase as it seems like I was always letting the orbs get too close to me trying to cast fireballs and keep my dps up. We wiped 3 times on him, and time was against us as one of our members had to leave to do guild raids. The last attempt we were doing really well and killing him quickly, then the anti-gravity came and those big stupid orbs start floating around....I was doing a good job avoiding them, then the anti-gravity goes away and we're back on the ground getting back into position, dps is steady, then he casts the anti-gravity thing again and shoots us all back up in the air. Well, I'm still casting and doing everything I can...next thing I know an orb is directly to my left and I have no where to go....dead, next our hunter drops from the same orb, it's down to three and Kael'thas is at 4%. They do the dps job of a lifetime and big props must be given to my lovely guildie Azshanas. Without her going all out the way she did that 4% would have been enough to wipe us. She kicked the crap out of him for that last bit of life.....Kael'tha down, dungeon run success! He dropped the one thing that I was there for...the staff. It turns out Azshanas was there for the same thing. We rolled, she won. Now I have to go back again....but I don't mind too much, I did complete the quest for the epic gem and now have a +12 spell damage gem to put into my fist piece of epic gear....Yay me!!! If you're going to try this instance, try everything you can to get a Tankadin to go along, they are essential to making a few of the fights alot easier!

Karazhan

Notice the title? Yup, Kara....Well a couple of bosses anyway. I was in BGs farming honor working toward getting the pvp staff when a friend of mine that has a guild that's been farming Kara for a couple of months now (and also does ZA) whispers to ask me if I'd like to "run with the big boys". Of course I would. I was the least geared member of the raid. I don't own a single level 70 epic, and I still have a couple of green pieces of armor. Since this group has Kara on farm it really wasn't that big of a deal to take me along to down a couple of bosses. I was summoned to the stone by Makapuno, (raid leader and MT) I had to stop and take a look around for a second as this was my first trip. Very cool place, looks kinda spooky... So I follow the two that summoned me to my first boss fight in Kara. The Opera event is what I get to see first. Very cool! We get the big bad wolf boss. For those of you that don't know about the opera event, you can get several different boss encounters for this fight. We got the big bad wolf, which would have been fun, except this is my first time to ever do this fight and I didn't exactly know what was going to happen. I got turned into little red riding hood and the wolf killed me, immediately. I didn't even get to cast one fireball...darn it. So I sat there dead watching the rest of the raid kill the wolf without me. Oh well...nothing drops of significance, but I did pickup my first two badges of justice. Yay! It was decided by the raid leader that we would do Curator next. We go through some stuff, out of Kara, and up to another door and enter. We clear all the trash that leads up to Opera and it's fun. I'm having a great time firing off my best spell rotations, managing my mana, and just doing all that I can to help the raid. We get to the room where Curator is. We clear all the trash that leads up to him. The raid leader puts me on adds with a couple of other ranged dps and casters. He makes the pull on Curator, I wait for the adds, we DPS down the adds fairly quickly as they come out. Then I'm instructed to unleash the fire fury on Curator himself. So I do....now I haven't read too much about this fight, so what flashed on my screen after popping combustion, my insta-damage trinket, and downing a damage elixr blew my mind! I just crit Curator for 11k. No way, I couldn't have. So I stack a couple of scorches and load another fireball....bam! 11.2K. Can I possibly do it again? Stack another scorch, pop my other trinket, loaded fireball....bam 10k. I didn't know it right then, because I didn't know much about the fight, but when he phases to his shadow like form he takes wayyyy more damage. I realized this as my next spell cast only hits for 1400...It was still very cool to see those numbers though. I was told before I entered the raid that the only way I would get a drop is if no one in the guild needed it...turns out that was a lie because I wasn't told that by the raid leader, just some jerk that's in the guild. Nothing dropped for me, but I was told that no other clothies in the raid needed anything that dropped off of the two bosses we fought. That's just my luck. I did however get to DE and roll for a void crystal, and I won! What I'm going to do with this void crystal I have no idea, but I've got one. Maybe I'll start leveling my enchanting and use it on something cool....?? Well...that's about it for now. I'm supposed to go back to Kara if they don't have a full group tonight. That's going to be alot of fun. Can't do Prince because I'm not geared enough...but I can do everything up to him (so Maka says). I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Hit 70

Hit 70 over the weekend and got my flying mount. Yay! Now I'm stuck with making a decision about what to do next. I need to farm honor to get the pvp staff, but I also need alot of rep with different factions. I went over the Caverns of Time to do the Dark Portal quest and ended up running Black Morass 4 times. I'm now honored with Keepers of time and was able to get the enchanting recipes that I wanted. Yay me! Now I'm trying to run Shattered Halls and Shadow Labs to start building rep with all the factions that I can. In between all of this I'll be doing bgs to get that staff. Wish me luck as I try to get the gear together to do my first Kara run.....

68 YAY!!

Hit 68 over the weekend and parked bobmage up at blade's edge. I like Blade's Edge for the kill quest(s) I've done so far. I like quest that require a certain amount of killing intead of drops. It always takes too long to get the drops done. The quests I've done in Blade's Edge have mostly included killing the big ogres. I like killing them, it makes me feel like my mage is very powerful to down such a big dumb enemy. Though most of the quest I've done so far are below my level I'm still getting decent exp and will continue in Blade's Edge until I reach 69, then I'll decide what I'm going to do next.....Bobpally hit 35 this morning in Arathi Highlands. I'm going to try to stay in the Eastern Kingdoms all the way to 68 with him. I don't like the Kalimdor stuff very much. I'll keep you posted on the cool new abilities I get from leveling my awesome pally....

67 and Counting

Hit level 67 over the weekend by doing Mana Tombs again. I got a nice pair of boots out of there from the last boss as well. I don't think I'll have them very long, but they're cool for now. I guess it's time to go up to Blade's Edge which I'm not looking forward to. It seems like every time I have an area figured out I've leveled out of it and have to move on. Oh well....Bobpally will be getting alot of playtime this week as I am resting bobmage to get that coveted double exp. Bobpally is 32 right now and on the cusp of 33. I'll try to run him through SM as many times as I can to get the crusader mail set even though I'll be changing to plate at aroung 40 or 41 by doing as many ZF runs as possible. Several of the guild members are in Outlands now which is really cool. I like helping my fellow guildies and getting some help in return.....I'll post Bobpally's progress tomorrow....

Ring Of Blood

There's a quest in Nagrand up north called "Ring Of Blood" where you have to fight 5 elites in a row to complete. I got whispered by someone I've never played with before asking if I wanted to do the quest. I wasn't doing anything of importance so I said "sure". So I met up with the group of 4 (which is basically required to complete the quest) and accepted the first fight for the quest. The first elite is basically a tank and spank fight. Fairly easy, the second fight isn't too much harder. Two elite "twins" spawn and you tank and spank again. The third fight is against something that looks like a void spawn who hits hard but doesn't have much hp. I don't remember the fourth fight very well except that it wasn't much harder. The last fight however is a tough one if you're not paying attention. It's against the shaman ogre standing next to the quest giver and he puts totems down as well as heals himself. The trick to the fight is dps never pulling aggro and downing totems quickly. He heals himself several times in the first phase, and he also hits pretty hard. It's best to have a tank stay down in the pit with him and make sure they're always in melee range. The second phase starts after you kill him the first time. He is rezzed and it starts all over again with him enraged. Dps has to work quickly to down him before your healer runs oom, the first time we fought him I didn't expect the rez and was caught a little off guard as were we all. The second fight went alot smoother and we were able to take him down. The reason I made a post about this is for mages the quest yields a very cool staff that you will probably keep until lvl 70, so if you can put a group together for the quest make it a point to do so....