Sindragosa and Lich King

Went to Vegas, came back and didn't really feel like playing WoW therefore didnt feel like blogging about it, plus have some uni crap to catch up with. Excuses out of the way, here are a couple videos.





It's amazing the quality between how crap our first time kills are and our subsequent farming kills.

Crimson Hall Cleared!

We didn't get too far into Bloodwing on Wednesday, due to the Blood Princes doing damage that were practically unhealable by the two main healers and yours truly the offspec healer, with some stating that they were doing more damage than was experienced in the 25man version of the fight. Needless to say we felt that there would be a quick fix later in the week like Rotface, and we got it!

Nothing remarkable about the Blood Prince fight aside from a lot of damage being dealt across the raid, and with the positional awareness required at the same time it led to.. more damage being done than should've been done. We screwed up the last leg of the fight and finished with three people barely remaining.

Blood Queen in contrast felt like a really easy fight to get used to. The positional awareness was simple and the raidmods did their job at marking who had what. We spent the first few tries with me healing and made pretty decent headway into the encounter, before we realised we had more than enough damage to meet the enrage requirements. So they made me go mainspec damage.

The theory was that with Essence of the Blood Queen I would be able to do enough healing for the ranged group and let the healers concentrate on the melee. It didn't go perfectly executed but they managed without my healing and we were able to kill her relatively quickly. So now we wait for the Frostwing.. Wing.

Err.. Rotface got nerfed quite a bit..

This week, being plagued by sickness and other mishaps ourselves, we mustered up a short half-raid after Plagueworks 10 was bug-fixed (or nerfed, depending on your views). We ended with Rotface and Festergut cleared, and used up a couple tries on Professor Putricide. This time we decided to do Festergut first. He seemed pretty easy, not that I noticed since I died almost as soon as the fight started, but it seemed like they had it under control.. I think. Anyway we one-shot him and that's what counts!

After few tries into Rotface a member had to leave our near-midnight raid so we drafted up a casual member of our guild.. who unfortunately disconnected just after we started and spent the remainder of the time eating dirt, but his spirit was with us. As for the fight, let's just say that the % health deduction hotfix earlier this week seemed to help quite a lot! We didn't really see much chaos with the oozes, which were the key part to the fight. Everyone seemed to have it under control and the the oozes didn't have trouble merging compared to Wednesday's attempts, which we'll chalk it down to patchday lag. Aside from the occasional movement there isn't all that much to the fight bar the numbers:


Fight lasted 4 minute 23 seconds, which was probably quicker than our attempts on Wednesday. I also did pretty average DPS for that fight, definitely could've done better given proper DOT management but hey - tomorrow is the start of another week!

Making a Turkey out of the New Wing!

We didn't make much progress past Saurfang last night, partly due to undergeared people, partly due to how we went in almost completely blind on Rotface and spent 2-3 hours slapping away at him. I suspect the main reason was underestimating how hard everything was after the Trial of the Crusader loot pinata and the relatively forgiving first wing.

Rotface has several gimmicks which can take out a raid pretty quickly, and the one we need to get a hang of is the ooze management. As the fight drags on the more diseases he applies to people, not completely sure if it's a soft-enrage timer or a %-health thing. If its the former then the whole thing is a DPS and idiot check which can be dealt with buffs and more gear, the latter then it means we need to accelerate the damage towards the end. Our best attempt last night was 2%, and it felt like we were bruteforcing it with myself as the third healer and didn't feel like it was under control. Our next attempt will be on Monday, which gives us more time to see more detailed tactics hopefully.

Currently 28 badges away from my next tier piece, the shoulders. After I get that I can wear my robe as well for the 2 pc T10 bonus. I also got Icecrown Spire Sandals which were socketed with Reckless Ametrine and Runed Cardinal Ruby. I will lose my one of my meta requirement blue gems when I replace the robe so I will regem for the bonus on those.

PTR 3.3: Reflectin' on the Halls of Reflection [Spoilers]

Halls of Reflection is finally out! It has been delayed on the PTR for weeks now, and only just came out during Thursday's early morning update. I went on shortly afterwards and used the Dungeon Finder tool to join for Pit of Saron, and happened to join for Heroic. Some of us were first timers and we wiped a few times, but eventually made it. At the end an event occurs and you follow Jaina (or Sylvanas if you're Horde) through a portal to Halls of Reflection. Here comes the nitty gritty of the dungeon experience, and how to handle it as a holy priest - spoilers abound!



You step into the instance, into a corridor looking directly at Frostmourne. If your group happens to have the Quel'dalar quest, then the blade with have a reaction to Frostmourne and will attack the group. Once it's been subdued, Uther appears and tells you to take it to the Sunwell. Otherwise, the instance starts with Jaina/Sylvanas attempting to communicate with the blade, which causes Uther to appear as an apparition and starts a minor cutscene that lasts several minutes. At the end the Lich King appears and takes his blade back, summoning his two commanders, Falric and Marwyn, as the first encounter of the instance.



There are ten wave of adds during the fight, and they can end up very nasty. In addition to the traditional Priest (Fear and SW:P dispels!) and Warrior adds, you also get Mages who can single target frost nova and multiply themselves, Rogues which do stacking poison damage and Hunters who will set Frost Traps, slowing down the tank and making his job harder than it is already. They spawn around the Frostmourne chamber, so the party should probably fight in the corridors which are easy to line-of-sight the ranged. The adds are shackable.

I found it pretty challenging to heal the trash waves since our tank was inexperienced and the whole party seemed to be taking a large chunk of damage at times as well. There was also little time to recover inbetween, with adds spawning as soon as the last of the prior was finished. Blizzard seems to be wanting more CC rather than 'WotLKing' (AoE zerging) the new heroics. I suspect priests and paladin groups will be popular for this encounter, Shackle Undead, Turn Evil and Holy Wrath will all be extremely useful to control the trash. We wiped a few times, once on the boss itself. The trash waves only stop after the boss dies, so if you wipe on the boss, be prepared to do those five waves all over again!

Falric will fight as soon as the last of the fifth wave is down, and Marwyn after the tenth. Falric was pretty easy, with only the tough part being Defiling Horror, which did damage during an undispellable fear (Every Man for Himself worked). You get a short break after killing him before the sixth wave appears. Marwyn randomly gives a party member a debuff which does 40,000 damage over time unless dispelled. Dispelling it splits the damage amongst the party, so group heals should be prepared.

After that you fight a lone Frostsworn General who isn't tough to take down, he also has reflections of your party to help him. I assume they are CCable but they all went down easily so it wasn't worth bothering to check. Then its up the ramp to see a low hp Jaina/Sylvanas battling the almost untouched Lich King. He is then disabled and you speak to the heroine to start a chase sequence.

During the chase sequence, the Lich King brings down walls of ice to temporarily stall the party, summoning waves of ghouls, Ymirjar Witch Doctors and Abominations. Abominations were immune to shackles, so should probably be brought down first, whereas Shackle Undead could be used to stall the Witch Doctor's AoE casts. You have to break through around four ice walls with one wave of undead each time, although their numbers steadily ramp up. The Lich King during this sequence will slowly approach the party, with an aura that does damage over time, and if in range, he will oneshot you! In my experience, when he reached the wall he killed only killed one person in my party, but I suspect it was a bug and you are supposed to wipe.

Once the last wall breaks you reach a dead end and the Lich King strangulating the last breaths of your faction's heroine... only to find your factions airship arrive in the nick of time, blasting away at the rock tunnels and trapping the Lich King. The rocks quickly disappear with the Lich King nowhere to be found, and you ascend the steps to the airship and find the loot in a chest at the end.

Overall it's a short and fun event filled instance, similar to ones such as those in Caverns of Time, notably Old Hillsbrad. But it doesn't really give total closure for people who don't raid, since you never really do anything to Lich King other than run away. Unfortunately it seems to get your real chance for retribution at Arthas, you will have to do one of Icecrown Citadel raids. The three 5-man instances altogether have been a great treat though, the music and speeches provide a great atmosphere to them all.

My first and only time in the instance so far has been in heroic mode, which offers the higher end geared raiders a decent challenge. It did seem a little too difficult for the ilvl 232 rewards it gives, although I'm underestimating how the new Dungeon Finder will shower you in T9. Maybe it was the premade tank with no experience, maybe the lack of CC we used, we ended up wiping half a dozen times. Nonetheless, with the trash in there dropping Quel'delar Hilt amongst other random BoP epics, it will end up rewarding for most. During the initial release, at least!

Video: Lord Jaraxxus

I have been a bit lazy these past few days, having given up on the markets for now. However I finally got round to finishing my Lord Jaraxxus video, and although I would've preferred a few more sessions to grab some more angles to the fights, I am reasonably happy with how it turned out. The film itself took two sessions to film, the first of which was used for the intro and the second for the fight itself.

The stripper platform was created by having four layers - alexstraza, blood elf, draenei, scene - and rendering it. Then have the rendered video and greenscreened Wilfred in two layers, which was the same way I did the other walking videos.


I experimented with a panorama tool to have more smoother panning in my videos, and it worked out pretty well. In the same scene I used a gaussian blur to artificially create a depth of field, although since I didn't use the effect in the other pimpwalk scenes it feels a bit out of place.

Originally planned to use a Pink Floyd for the music track but it didn't really mesh up well, so I decided to use something from the Evangelion 2.0 soundtrack instead. The ending of the video offers a cooler take on Wilfred rather than leaving him as just another disposable redshirt gnome.

Video: Wilfred Fizzlebang

Video test of the intro to the last of my TotGC videos, Lord Jaraxxus. Since after that I won't really have boss kill movies to make anymore, I'm gonna try my hand at making a snazzy intro.

How To: Shadowpriest

So I made the video, around 1-2 hours of work. I wrote everything else beforehand and had to use the stop and record buttons of Sound Recorder a ton, but the amateurness still shows through. I hope it helps people though. Based on the responses from my brewfest how to ram ride video, people certainly like and appreciate the help, and I like to see that.

It's all too easy to say to a person doing 2k dps that he's a noob and tell him to read Elitist Jerks, but if you think back to when you started - or to any new game for that matter - to read a huge essay on the intricacies of coefficients and how to play, would you still be interested? I don't think I would be. Some people like to find things out for themselves. Some people like to read on how to improve. I think good how to videos are a good way to introduce a new level 80 on how to play end game. I'm not saying my video is the best; I'm saying it's a start.

For my UI, I never really commented on how it works since I doubt people really cared. Although I specifically crafted my UI for making videos, it still works the way I want to. The UI is like the mirrors of a car, they are there on the screen, functional and unobtrusive. You don't need to glance at the damage meters all the time, much like you dont stare at the side mirror when driving. The only UI you need close to the screen is party healthbars (as a healer) or the DoT timers. These are analogic to the speedometer, or the rear view mirror. Put them close, but not too close.

Since we're on the topic of videos, Xephos has released a new YoGScast. He's gone back the style similar to my videos, where we have a song and compress the action to scale to it. It's a pretty good video and I love the song.

The problem with humour in videos is that when you're editing the video, you already know the punchline. So when you finally see the finished product and you're not laughing at your own jokes.. well.. it's a horrible feeling.

UPDATE: Revised second edition of the video.

Video: Onyxia

I don't think anyone had too much of a problem with Onyxia. It was never a hard fight to begin with, other than getting 39 other people to comprehend and move around. It has had some minor updates to make it work and feel in touch with the feeling of a WotLK instance - I especially liked Blizzard's cheek of retaining the Rugged Leather from skinning the trash mobs, you just get more of it now.

Last night as we heard of the upcoming 3.2.2 patch we did one last retro raid, one where I help a guildmate get his lvl 60 Onyxia achievement and also a random lvl 60 rogue, another where I join my old guild, Goon Squad Sporeggar. It was a fun and relaxing night.



Sometimes you just can't get enough Onyxia.

Video: Anub'arak

So we cleared ToGC10 last night, earning Tribute to Skill in the process. We were 5 tries off from Mad Skill. Through the tribute system we can see where our mistakes were in the amount of tries we took to finish it - NRB (1), Twin Val'kyr (4), Anub'arak (5). I like the tribute system since you get a feeling of progression each time you clear the instance, it lets most guilds experience the 'true' fight instead of sticking to the usual normal modes that you see in Ulduar. All in all, both systems are pretty good and work well in their enviroments.

Last night out of the haul I got a couple sweet items to add to my shadow set. Vestments of the Sleepless, taking up a potential set piece location, and the curiously named Heartcrusher. The latter looks odd, like a clockwork key with gears and a random lightbulb attached to the end. I have the intense urge to stick it into one of Mimiron's mechanical creations and use it for my own dastardly deeds.

I'm really happy with my recent videos. Anub'arak continues where my Twin Valkyr video left off, props to Pinkhair on #machinima who suggested a Kanye parody while I was halfway through rendering Anub'arak. The idea was too fantastic to save it for later. He also suggested using a voice actor but I guess he doesn't realise my turnover for boss kill movies, besides, the whole butchery of it all gives off a meme template to it which works well. I couldn't find Tirion's sound file when he congratulates the raid so I threw in a mix of ToC5 and Ulduar voices to make up for it, turns out it worked well.

I also made a NRB video which uses a Dissidia song, one that was used to promote the game in adverts. The song is great for an introduction to a raid, evoking a feeling only describable as GAR.

I only have Heroic Jaraxxus left to do, only ideas I have so far is a pimp intro for the unfortunate gnome who summons him and using Lord Malchezzar voices instead of his usual stuff.

How To: Ram Race

I made this video yesterday for brewfest.



Here is the optimal route for both the Alliance and the Horde, with the apple barrels marked. Despite minor changes to the positioning this year, Horde still have the other end of the stick when it comes to maximizing token gain. However it should be simple enough to get tokens for everything you want so it's not a game breaking concern.


UPDATE: It turns out you can just jump over the barrels. The removal of fatigue isn't detected through collision, so jumping over them will reduce chance of getting stuck in an apple barrel, and will improve your time as a result.

Also it turns out I helped a guild member through the video, he didn't know about the apple barrels at all. I'm really glad to get feedback like this.

UPDATE (2): I managed 18 laps now, probably room for one more. I've changed my route slightly, and ignored barrel 3 on the return trip and just make a beeline over the hill to barrel 2. Fastest lap was around 40 seconds.



UPDATE (3): How To: Ram Racing v2.0!