Cataclysm Dungeons/Raids and You!

So...I'd like to start out by apologizing to all of my faithful blog readers for the long, long, long absence. Work has been beating me up so hard that by the time I get home I usually make it to my chair before falling asleep and when I do wake up I barely have the energy to even log on to WoW let alone to write a blog post. :( But anyway I am able to write something now so enjoy!

So by now everyone has heard how hard heroics are in the cataclysm beta and how cc will be king and all that. Well there are more changes to running heroics at 85 then just that so I figured I would write a little for you guys who aren't in the beta or aren't as in the know as others. In the current expansion you ding 80 and start running heroics right off the bat for badges and maybe a piece or two of gear so that you can start raiding. After you hit 80 you don't ever queue for a regular instance because the gear is not as great as anything that drops from heroics and you don't get any justice points/badges in them after doing the daily regular dungeon.

In cataclysm things are not like this at all. Yes the gear from heroics is still better then what you are going to be getting from regulars and it'll be tons better then what you are wearing at 85. So what's different you may ask? Well first off each instance has a minimum average gear level requirement and if you aren't at or above that number then you can't queue for those dungeons. The first two dungeons that you can actually queue for at 80 are going to be Throne of Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Neither of these has a minimum gear requirement so you can start queuing for them after you run to each instance entrance and "discover" the entrance area. Each instance in cata requires you to have run to the entrance and discover it before you can queue for it. I guess blizz got tired of people complaining about others who would die in an instance and release just to get lost trying to get back to the instance. Anyway back on topic, since these two dungeons have no gear level requirement you can run them over and over until you ding.

At 81 you can keep on queueing for these two instances and you unlock two new ones, the Vortex Pinnacle and the Stonecore. Now these two instances require you to have an average gear level. At 80 in full ICC10 gear you'll be sitting in the 251ish range and in full ICC25 gear you'll be around 270ish. You can check out what your gear level is now ingame since they added it on to your character screen in 4.0.1 so you don't need an addon to find out what your average gear ilevel is. If I remember correctly VP and Stonecore require a 272 score so you will have to start replacing at least a few pieces of gear with new cata gear to get in to these. Why the hell did they do this average ilevel crap? Well I guess it is because they don't want people to have grinded up to 85 and then attempt to run heroics in ICC gear that they started the expansion with.

When you unlock the next set of instances, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City of the Tol'vir, they require 305 ilevel score. There is no way that you can get to 305 with all of your level 80 gear so expect to either run a lot of instances before this or to do A LOT of quests for gear rewards. Now if you do nothing but run intances...you have a chance of getting your gear level score to where it needs to be but I recommend mixing in some questing for gear as well as money.

Now you hit 85 and you are ready to queue for heroics...well just wait a second there. Heroics also have a minimum gear level...329. Now to get your gear level to this number you will have to farm regular instances to up your score. When raids were first opened on the beta servers new premades were released as well. The gear level for those premades was 350. This means that after running heroics and full heroic gear you will have a 350 gear level. You can probably start running raids slightly before this I am sure so I would say that mid 340s would probably be passable for raids. Once Cata comes along we'll know for sure what we'll need to raid. I hope this post helps at least one person prepare for Cata instancing. I am pretty sure my math is right but if someone has correct information please feel free to post it. =D

It's about time

So today Blizzard has officially announced that The Cataclysm will launch on the 7th of December...WOOOOOOOOOTS! It's about time that we have heard something official from them about a date. I honestly figured that they would just let us know at Blizzcon as part of their show or something but hey this works too. I know that everyone and their mother had made a guess about when the game would launch and that there were several people who said that blizzard hid clues in the game about when it would launch so having a final date means no more crazies making guesses!

Now this does mean that the 4.0.1 patch will drop soon so everyone has less time to get their achievements done before Azeroth is changed. MMO-Champion is claiming next week, which if true will give me a week before I have to relearn how to play my classes. This means that I am going to be farming the living daylights out of ZG for rep and a chance at a mount that is sadly disappearing with the patch. Seems I will also need to farm up more badges so I can buy my gnome priest some boa gears as I already bought the rogue stuff for my worgen rogue and my dwarf shaman is already covered boa wise. So much to do and so little time!

So what are you going to be doing before the Cata patch goes live in a week or so?

A brief history of my guild or how I learned to stop worrying and love my guild

Not that long ago a guildee asked me "Is it worth it to lead a guild?" At the time it took me a few minutes to come up with some pros and cons to that question. Most of the cons were pretty obvious: lots of work, huge time sink, gotta be able to take a lot of flak from people and the pros were also equally obvious: chance of succeeding and seeing your hard work pay off, doing things your way, and you get to see things from a different perspective. Now this seemed to be enough for the guildee so they thanked me for answering their question and went off to do something else. I have been thinking about it for a while now and I have been asking myself...how the hell does a lazy, anti-social, unmotivated slacker such as myself end up in charge...and how has it not all unraveled at any time in the last 5 years?

Well...I think that I've lasted as long as I have because I like to do things my way. It also helps that I'm a stubborn bastard who doesn't like to back down. Both of which cause my fiance several headaches when it comes time to pick a movie to watch. ;-) But how have I managed to not only gather people to my banner but also to succeed and grow? Well that is a good question to which I still have no answer to. I have been in two guilds in two other MMO's Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy 11. Due to the amount of text I will be breaking this post into two parts with the first one posted today and the second part later. So prepare yourself to step back into the wayback machine and read on if you dare! Lot of text incoming, you've been warned...

More thoughts on Cataclysm

Last night I managed to ding 81 on both my mage and my premade shaman. The funny thing is while my mage got most of his xp in Vashj'ir and just a little bit in Hyjal, my premade shaman got 80% from one quest chain...in Northrend. Even though he is a premade character and transferred with exalted Northrend factions...I had to do the Sons of Hodir chain to unlock them so I could get my shoulder enchants. I got one million xp from the sons of Hodir chain and that is only counting non daily quests. I stopped doing quests for the sons after I got Thorim his hammer and I decided to make my way to a new zone to explore a little bit.

Now my mage has been questing with my fiancee, who was playing her shadow priest. We dominated every quest we had and I love my mage even more! We only played the last two nights on these alts and each session was around 2 hours or less. Now if you are questing by yourself you will of course get more xp and move quicker so if  xp rewards stay the same you should be able relatively quickly, at least to level 81/82. After that I don't know how much xp is required. So with it being relatively easy to level my mage should be 85 pretty quick, followed by my pally. After that I am am going to be forced to decide who I want to level! I haven't tried out healing on my shaman yet but I plan on it tonight and if it goes well maybe my shammy will be next up. I still plan on leveling a Gnome priest, Worgen rogue, AND a Dwarf shaman. Yes...I like to level. The new quests and areas are pretty cool so far so I don't think that I will have any issues leveling quickly. Gonna be fun times ahead that's for sure.

I'll probably post tomorrow how tonight's beta adventure went and hopefully I'll have some fun adventures to share. By the way, for you readers out there, is there anything you guys would like to know about the beta? I don't mind checking stuff out on the beta server. I don't plan on posting spoilers or anything but testing out game mechanics and so on is fine. Please post a comment with your questions.

Impressions of the Beta

*This is will not be a spoiler filled post! This will be about my experience on the beta so far! I will do my best to avoid spoilers!* 


So...I got in the Beta about two weeks ago...and only a few gnomes were lit on fire and launched at the Blizzard offices. I actually got in not through Blizzards random key handout but through a website contest that was giving out keys to the beta as the prize! Now I rarely win things and for me to win a beta key...I was so shocked. It sadly made for a LONG day at work on the day I won since I got the email with the key in the morning before I left for work. Being the huge geek that I am I left it downloading so that when I got home it would be ready to play.

These are a few of my favorite things

This week's shared topic over at Blog Azeroth asks what mementos you have kept and why? Well I thought long and hard about that and figured I would answer from my mage's viewpoint. My mage has a full bank with all bank slots purchased and open space in his bank is rare. Why you may ask? Well...he is my oldest character and therefore has the most mementos that I have picked up along the way and can't force myself to part with. From my collection of epicly sexy tabards to my favorite holiday items, even my collection of ZG coins that I am slowly turning in for rep, I tend to hold on to things that mean some thing to me.

The biggest collection that I have in my bank is my collection of epic gear. I still have every single piece of epic gear that I have won from a raid. This collection also includes gear from this expansion that I have ultimately replaced with upgrades from ToC and ICC. as well as gear from Vanilla and TBC. The set that is my favorite and that I think makes my mage looks awesome is my raiding set from Vanilla. My mage is decked out in 6/8 T1, T2 helm, PvP gloves, a sorcerous dagger, and therazanes grip. No matter what happens I will never give up these pieces because I seriously busted my butt in MC, Ony, and even AV to get each item. They will always hold a special spot in my heart.

So...what have you held on to that means a lot to you?

Signs that your instance run is going to fail

So I've been running a lot of randoms lately and I've come across a lot of bad instance groups. Most of the bad groups have very distinct characteristics that point to them being bad and that you should run for the hills if you end up in these groups:

1. If your healer has more health then your tank and both are in the proper spec/gear.

2. If your tank has more spell power then your healer...and your tank isn't a paladin.

3. If your healer disconnects after a pull, your tank pulls anyway and wipes but still insists on continuing without a healer.

4. If your tank insists that they know the instance and has run it countless times...yet they keep pulling unnecessary mobs and/or they get lost and lead the group into a dead end.

5. If your tank dies on the first pull and then states that they weren't in the right gear/spec which is why they died. They then proceed to switch into the right gear/spec...and die even faster on the exact same pull.

6. If your tank keeps needing on all the gear that drops and claims that it's an upgrade then upon inspecting them you realize that they are actually wearing the gear...even if the drops are cloth/leather.

7. If your tank/healer repeatedly rolls dench/pass on greens that are obvious upgrades and when you bring it up to them they get mad at you for "telling them how to play their class."

8. If your group is doing so bad that a hunter mentions that their pet can tank, your tank/healer agree wholeheartedly and want to try it out...even though the hunter isn't BM and they don't even have a tanking pet.

9. If your healer dies every trash pull and your tank yells at any cloth wearing class for not stepping up and healing when the healer died...even though the group consists of a lock and a mage.

10. If your healer is out dpsing everyone in the group without actually attempting to dps. For example: thorns, ret aura, or disc priests reflective damage.

If you've had one or more of the above...then I hope your repair bill was not too high. If anyone has some more signs that your group is doomed to fail please post them. The better prepared you are to recognize a fail group, the better your chances are of avoiding them.