WTFlux

I got a chance to wander into the PTR yesterday, and got a group for Magister’s Terrace (normal). The MT (as I will refer to it from now on) is in the northeast portion of the zone. In the PTR - if you go to the flightmaster in Ironforge, you will see that you automatically have a flight path out to the island. The first thing I noticed was the barrage of blue exclamation points. There are daily quests EVERYWHERE! This might be a gold mine for all you aspiring daily quest doers. I hit the map, joined the queue and had a group in about 2 minutes from touchdown.

The instance itself is typical blood elf in the look and feel. You are faced with a ton of those “O” corridors throughout the instance that are familiar with Blood elf construction. You can reach the first two bosses amazingly fast. The first boss, Selin Fireheart is guarded on both sides by groups of summoning blood elves, and in the front 2 undead guys who look like they are cannibalizing a poor little green orb. They keep saying things like “I’ll never stop”. It’s kind of eerie. Once cleared, (we LoS pulled the groups of summoners into the hallway and aoe/focus fired them down. And just nuked the 2 undead guys) the boss is elevated on a platform in front of you. I recommend that you go from the hallway entrance around him on either side and engage him “from behind”. The reason is, once engaged, he puts up this magic ward that prevents people in the opening of the hallway from moving into the actual chamber. Make sure you are completely in the room before you engage.

I wasn’t able to tell what kind of melee damage he did, but he does periodically do a decent amount of AoE/drain life debuff damage- I’m still trying to figure out what it was called, and what it actually does - but I was taking about 1-2k damage every other second for about 10 seconds it seemed. If you can heal yourself through this as a priest, pally, druid- I think you would be fine. Oddly enough, you can cast spells through the ward, and we ended up killing him with 3 people on the wrong side of it. He dropped a healing cloak - Cloak of Swift Mending.

You clear a few hallways - and then all the sudden you face a large corridor with about 1 million of the little Brightscale Wyrms. Paladins and mages are great here, cutting the large groups down extremely quickly. The next boss is Vexallus. Apparently he is very similar to The Curator in Kharazan. He spawns something that zaps certain people with electricity bolts. For a brief second I was able to target the spawned thing, and I thought I would be able to burn it down, but right after it zapped someone it disappeared and we could not target it. There was no perceivable warning to when they hit. He targeted our mage with these (see the video) what seemed like every time. It visually enlarged the mage, and seemed like he was taking a large amount of damage even after the lighting bolts hit. Somewhere around 15% he “Overloads” and starts shooting the electric bolts all over the place. We kinda just stood there and took it, and actually this is what killed me in the fight. He pulses the bursts at about 1.5k and it seems like the range for the bursts is very long - over 30 yards. I would love to try to spread out somehow, and see if that range is finite or not the next time. He dropped a dps cloak - Cloak of the Coming Night. The video:

Then things get a bit tougher. You wind back down around, beat up some of the big sentinels, and get to a courtyard where there are 6 mobs per pull. I guess I should back up and explain some of the trash mobs you’ll encounter. Sunblade Blood Knights will hit like a 70 elite should, but this guy also heals - so he’s often a priority to kill first. The Sunblade Mage Guards drop this sphere thing that looks exactly like the bubble shield from Halo 3. It isn’t. It reduces spell damage and healing done by the target (whoever is in it) by 75%. I don’t think that Rogues or Warriors will have any problems if they are targeted - I’m pretty sure it only applies to healing THEY do - not healing done to them. The Sunblade Magisters get a spell haste bonus every cast, so kill them quickly. Sunblade Physicians heal, so you need to CC or kill them quick. The Sisters of Torment do a seduce type curse that takes you out of the fight, so stunlock, or crowd control them as well. FYI - the Sunblade guy that I tried to mind control - was IMMUNE. Yes that resulted in a wipe.

There were 3 in our group that weren’t focused and always leaving for something, so the run we had was plagued with AFK’s and looong pauses between pulls. We did not get to the third boss.

Overall, I liked the instance. You can get the first two bosses REALLY quickly. If you have a complete group with good CC and everyone is on the ball, this seemed like it could be an extremely fast instance. Chalk another one up for the casual players.

Link Dump:
http://www.wegame.com/user/wrathofgod/
http://www.wowwiki.com

HOKAY. I am a sucker for anything beta. Just so you know.

I ran across a new social gaming sight called The Ugame network. Normally, I would just watch it with passive interest- but I saw a World of Warcraft character hiding behind the login. It’s a closed beta, so you will need to submit your email address. If I get in, I’ll dutifully report if this is cool, or dumb. Has anyone been able to get in and fool around with this???

Link Dump:
http://www.ugame.net

I love addons. I really enjoy how Blizzard embraces the technical community and invites them to make addons to help the game get better. I snicker when Blizzard steals the addons and incorporates them into the UI. There are TONS of incredibly useful addons I consider absolute must have addons.

This post is not about them. Well, kinda. This post is for all you hunters out there. There are 3 different addons that I think EVERY hunter should have, no questions asked. The first that I will cover is Kharthus’s Hunter Timers.

KHT gives you a movable bar that will automatically display timers on hunter abilities. If you drop a trap, a countdown starts to let you know how long the trap will last. If you mend your pet, a countdown begins as well. Basically everything a hunter does is comes up in a timer that is easily viewable and understandable.

Personally I got the addon just for tracking traps. Once I installed it, I was really impressed with all that it can do. You can pick which things to time, how the bars look, how they inform you once a timer is up, etc. It also gives you a small grey box (anchor) to grab onto and move around your UI anywhere you want it.

Go check it out!

Link Dump:
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/4803/
http://www.curse.com

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Last night, I graduated from my kindergarten PvP class. There was cake, a nice ceremony, and I got some honor.

I killed 2 horde my level, at the same time.

I was questing in Zeth’Gor - outside of Thrallmar in Hellfire Penn., trying to get some tokens for a quest. I saw a mage sitting there, not doing anything and a LOT of dead mobs everywhere. /target mage - send kitteh for snacks!

Now earlier yesterday I was reading somewhere that when a mage starts to cast the big ol pyro blast, you can feign death and he will stop the looong cast, and loose his target.

Sure enough - the fire mage has the pyro started, and my kitteh is tickling him. The pyro was ALMOST cast, and I hit feign death. The mage just stood there, not really sure what to do. Meanwhile my kitteh was nearly done with his clothie snack, and POW, a rogue pops up and tries to stunlock me. I’m not sure how, but I got loose, laid a frost trap and got away, hit my /pet attack/mark macro and started running for the hills, getting off a serpent sting and a concussive shot to slow him down. I turn around, hit him with arcane shot, multishot, and renew the serpent sting when a warlock arrives. He dots me up and as I’m going down - the serpent sting kills the rogue.

It was great.  My heart was pounding, adrenaline was flowing through my viens.  There’s just something about World PvP that gets me going.  It seems more dangerous somehow, unorganized, chaotic and scary.

Now, I’m in PvP 1rst grade.  Time to learn new things and become stronger, more systematic PvPer.  I need to get betterVS Rogues, and warriors.  I need to get that iwin button on my G15 made, and start testing it out.  The tough part will be knowing that I’m “free”.  If I’m still stunlocked, then the macro won’t really work right, but I guess it won’t exactly HURT.

oh yeah.  I just got this ->

Ok, this is my last post about RSS, I SWEAR. I did some world PvP with my hunter last night and I’ve got a post coming soon.

I recently searched for my site in Google reader with the following 4 different RSS/atom feeds:
http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=rss
http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=rss2
http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=atom
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wtflux

They all have subscribers. I have no idea if they are all getting my posts, but I can guarantee you that http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wtflux is the correct feed. This lets you get the full, formatted, RSS feed from my blog. If you don’t have that as your feed, you might want to switch to it.

As you can tell if you come see the blog, it’s coming back together slowly. Thank you all for your patience.

I have a logitech G15 Gaming keyboard and I completely endorse it’s use with World of Warcraft. It natively supports the WoW LCD stats, has a cool blue back-light with all the buttons, you can plug your mouse into the keyboard and route the cord underneath they keyboard as well, and it has 18 macro buttons with 3 sets freeing up 54 buttons to assign macros to.

Plus it has those little legs that you can stand up to make the keyboard tilt.

It comes with software that lets you assign keystrokes to a macro to handle some things for you - down to the amount of time you wait for cooldowns, etc.

And I haven’t been using it.

Well, I use it for 1 thing, which is pretty stupid - to feed my pet. I use a mod that I’ll be going over soon that helps me do this with 1 button press, but I really shouldn’t be using it for that. I should be using it to perform those perfectly timed cast sequences, PvP dominance, and Boss killing madness. The great thing about it is you aren’t confined by the macro rules in-game. You can chain cast everything you want if you allow ample time between the keystrokes for the global cooldowns associated with them.

Here are a few things I’ve thought about to actually make use of this great tool:

PvP Kiting escape (Iwin button)- cast Aspect of the monkey, cast wing clip, pet attack, cast bestial wrath*, cast intimidation, cast concussion shot, cast aspect of the cheetah**
This would allow me to hopefully escape an attack and get some ground on my attacker. First of all, my aspect should prevent me from getting dazed, the wing clip should slow them down - and if that misses, my pet is sent in to do the job and be unfearable. Hopefully at this point, I’m free of my enemy, and they are locked down or slowed and starting to get hit. I have a few options at that point - I could drop a frost trap, hit them with a sting, and possibly get more distance or hit them with a aim shot/steady shot, etc.

*I’ll add The beast within to that when I get it

**this would be bad if the target resists wing clip, intimidation, and the concussion shot, or you couldn’t get them off in time before you get stunned (this macro leaves you in aspect of the cheetah = more stunnage) - or they are a hunter themselves and hit me with a ranged shot to stun me…perhaps I would change this to aspect of the hawk. Otherwise, against a rogue or warrior, etc. I think it would be pretty good.

Save the clothie, save the world.- pet attack, cast intimidation, cast distracting shot, cast ice trap
I could probably add bestial wrath in there, but I just want to get something attacking the free mob as fast as I can, get it back to me, and trap it. Perhaps add a cower in there, or just recall your pet when it gets aggro to trap it away from the clothie.

Anybody have any other great ideas for hunters (or any other class for that matter) ? I’ll leave you with a sweet mount/dismount macro I got from wowwiki.

#showtooltip Ebon Gryphon

/cast Aspect of the Monkey

/stopcasting

/use [button:2] Ebon Gryphon; Reins of the Swift Stormsaber

/cast [mounted] Aspect of the Hawk

What this does is casts Aspect of the monkey before you mount, giving you a better chance at not being dismounted, then when hit again - will dismount you and cast aspect of the hawk so you kin get to yer massive amounts of sustained, ranged DPS.

The G15 will not get you banned from WoW. This is confirmed. It will let you pwn n00bs though.

This is going to probably be a long series, having not much to do about WoW at all- rather WoW blogs. I read a few design blogs, but I am no expert. I do love looking at blog design, and feel a bit sad when people concentrate on feed readers instead of visiting the actual blogs. However, I use a feed reader, and I understand why people use them. Because of this, I wanted to bring light to some of my fellow bloggers’ designs. I know of at least a few that have completely changed their design in the last year or so- something you would have missed unless you visit their actual blog.

This is by no means a complete or ultimate list, it’s just a list of the blogs that I like the design of. I’m a sucker for simple, clean designs, with great imagery and colors. Here is a list and a small summary of each site and its design.

Egotistical Priest -
General look: I love the great contrast with the black and white of the page- the broken lines framing each section add a great deal to the sections themselves. I’m also a complete sucker for the dark charcoal grey used as the background for each section.

Banner: The banner is among the best I’ve seen. The priest looks like she BELONGS in the clouds doing priestly things. Perfect blending, great font, and the search box contrast even adds to the banner.

Complexity: Very low- very easy on the eyes.

Go see for yourself:
http://egotisticalpriest.omen-guild.net

tell em I sent ya!

(I’m not going to write these every day, but hopefully sprinkle them in amongst other, more WoW centered posts.)

ME:OMG GUYS I DINGED 60 with mah hunter! SCREENSHOTZ!! LOL LOOK AT ME, A SECOND LVL 60 TOON!!! OMG!
ME: Hello? Guys, come ON. 60! It’s great!
Guys: L2 lvl70 n00b.
ME: Hell.

60 is a big DEAL. IT’s 60! The level cap of Azeroth! You can kill anything in Azeroth, go anywhere without mortal fear! You strike fear in the hearts of the other faction at lvl 60! That is, until they log off their alt, and roflpwn you with their lvl 70 in T4 gear.

Isn’t level 60 important to anyone anymore? I was going to video the event, take screenshots like mad, and announce to the world that Carterpants is now “of age”. Except I really didn’t care. I had fel iron to mine, Honor hold quests to complete, more levels to gain. I mean, I kinda cared. It’s neat passing 60 for the second time, but it’s obviously not the same. I’ll tell you what does suck badly - is the 60 gold I dropped at my trainer. What’d I get besides a bit higher ranks of everything? FREAKING Tranq shot. Great. Thanks. Ok fine, I don’t care.

Level 60 sucks.

Bloodlord Mandokir is the best raid boss evar.

Ok.  Here’s the deal.  I’m dumb.

I’ve been trying to figure out this RSS stuff for awhile and apparently I’ve been doing it wrong.  Actually I read the Feedburner stuff wrong.  I had my RSS feed button linking to this:

http://wowguildbank.com/wtf/?feed=rss

INSTEAD OF THIS:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wtflux

So, if you were nice enough to subscribe to my RSS feed, check to make sure you have the CORRECT feed which again, is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wtflux

Thanks, and sorry.