Drama is alliance. We're on Korgath. We were originally on Shattered Hand. To brag a little, you've probably heard of us because we have the distinction of having the world first Nef kill-and only alliance first kill of an end of instance boss. We're looking to hit top 10 KT kills worldwide and we were top 20 worldwide on C'thun. I'm very proud to be a member. We have our ups and downs like every guild, but overall it's an amazing group of people who bust their ass and take care of business.

Here's my hunter's CT profile: http://ctprofiles.net/205635 The resist sets aren't entirely up to date, but they're close enough for government work.

What's the deal with EJ, anyway? Where did they come from and what's their deal to have the whole no recruiting anyone ever mentality? Are they dicks on the server or do they do their own thing and everyone goes along with it?

Yeah I did a little research and found out why I'd heard about Drama. World firsts are f'in awesome. No one can ever take that away from you, that's for sure. Man I know that's a competitive market though - heard all about DnT's transfers and FrR rune farming. It's great that you get to be a part of that.

EJ is, to my best of knowledge, a break off of a guild that formed during the closed and open betas. I'm unaware of the original beta guild names, but Goon Squad formed when Mal'ganis opened from the guys they played with, but they decided to make the typical splinter guild of a majority of the hardcore members. They're actually really cool guys in my opinion. They're quite elusive in that they keep pretty damn quiet in the general public view. They have quite limited drama and have pretty serious alliances set up with the alliance guilds when it comes to things like non-pvp during world bosses. If I had to label them at all, I'd personally just call them classy. Yeah they're exclusive and somewhat elitist, but it's well deserved imo and definitely doesn't spawn from anything bad like self-righteousness and such. Have you ever been to their website? They're a little behind on the cutting-edge of raiding recently, however what they do have going is one of the best wow forums available as far as being a knowledge-sink and being extremely well administrated by Praetorian (Gurgthok in wow)

Http://www.elitistjerks.com

Yea, I post on the EJ forums fairly regularily (character name Hashimoto) - it's definitely one of my favorite places to hang out. I really like the no-bullshit attitude that they have towards the boards.

http://ctprofiles.net/2832726

This week I've been running Scholo like mad to get AD rep. I was friendly with AD but now am halfway to Revered. My guild is starting Naxx very soon so I have to be prepared for the attunement.

I just had the weirdest conversation with a GM. I had a problem with a quest item and they took care of it and then they asked if there was something else they could help me with. There was. There has been something annoying me since I started my warrior and doing AB there is nothing for a warrior in the 30-39 bracket. There are belts labeled hunter/shaman or a Plate belt which I cant use for another lvl. I told him/her either put something in there for warriors or take away the stuff thats inappropriate for that bracket. I asked her can I wear the plate belt or can I wear the shaman/hunter belt and they laid a "We cannot give out gametips" spiel which leads me to believe that it was a "Wink, Wink, Nudge Nudge" type of deal. I can wear one of those belts and I am guessing the shaman/hunter. I know there are a few highlevel/accomplished warriors who frequent this thread and I was wondering if they had heard anything on the grapevine or knew anything from personal experience. Many thanks!

Unfortunately, Mahler, it's not a wink wink nudge nudge thing, they're just being coy. They inexplicably set up various level requirements for the rewards, so you just have to hang out and grind up another level to get the goods. It sucks, but this is blizzard we're talking about. So it goes.

Thank you for the info Frosstbyte. Let me phrase my response thusly: That sucks balls!

We just had our first real night of Twin Emps fights last night. Wow. I think 85% was our best attempt. I think our biggest problem is melee running in too soon and the healers not getting away from the exploding bugs and blizzard. We were having major trouble with the transitions and initial pull at first but I think we overcame that at the end.

85% is about where we're getting Kel'Thuzad, so I feel your mid-80s woes. There's a reason Twin Emps are so often referred to as a threshold fight in terms of end game difficulty. Takes a fairly unprecendented level of raid coordination to get everyone doing the same thing.

Invaluable learning tip: have your healers bring major fire and frost protection potions and pop them before the fight. Helps a lot mitigating a stray bug or a bad blizzard.

As always...noob question...

What does the 85% refer to?

It means we're getting the boss's total HP down to 85%. Raid bosses have TONS of H, so the easiest way to measure and compare progress is to go by what % of health people are getting them down to.

My guild is so screwed. I'm currently applying cross-realms to other guilds who appear to have their heads screwed on right.

at least now I don't feel so alone in this...

I've been trying to figure out just what to do, but to just somewhat accept it as it is. I've not thought about cross realm....

You literally do mean TONS. I can't imagine...considering that raids consists of 40 high level players.

As a side question, what are the pros/cons of joining a guild. I am up to level 32 with my character, but I have yet to consider joining a guild. I play maybe 3/4 nights a week, but I don't play for more than two hours most of the time, plus I'm usually on after 10:00 pm (PST), so there's already less people on the server.

Even though I think $25 is a ripoff to transfer your character, I transfered my main (a mage) to a MST server this past summer. I was lucky as there was kind've a lull over the summer and a lot of guilds were looking. I got on with one of the best Alliance guilds on the server. I would suggest moving now so that you can find a guild because when the expansion comes out a lot of people will be returning and looking for guilds. Just a thought

Just as an FWI for boom:

Ony has ~1M HP
Most MC bosses have between 500k and 1M HP
Most BWL bosses have about 1M HP, Chrom and Nef have closer to 2M
Most AQ bosses have 1-1.5M HP, Emps+ have 2M
Naxx bosses start at 1.5M. Thaddius has around 7M and Loatheb has 5M, but they both have gimmicks that make it possible to get through that much health in 5 minutes. Sapphiron and KT have around 3M.

I didn't join any guild until I was level 52. I didn't join a raiding guild until I had about 40 days /played on my character. You don't need them to enjoy the game (particularly the leveling up aspect of it) and not being in one certainly avoids a lot of drama.

In addition to what Frosstbyte said, joining a raiding guild while being sub-60 is REALLY not a fun part of the game. We had so much bitching that we recently kicked out all of the sub-60 people in our guild, just because come raiding time, the 40 of us would all dive into AQ40/Naxx/BWL and go raid, and there'd be one or two people spamming guild chat with "Anyone wanna do SM? Anyone wanna do Mara?" and then get pissed off. They're better off being guildless or in a non-raiding guild.

KT dead. World 13th, US 6th. Got warrior and mage rings, the healing 1-handed mace and the offhand/tanking sword.

Feels good to finally be done so we can get into a routine of clearing it faster and have some time off.

Congrats on the KT kill, from the videos of it I've seen it looks pretty wild. That's impresive :)

Why are DnT, Nihilum Horde, and Risen Alliance so good?

Guilds at the bleeding edge are good because we spend a lot of time together and work hard. We've spent a lot of time learning to work as a team, we've spent a lot of time gearing ourselves up and we spend a lot of time making sure everyone in the raid is prepared for whatever meets us in an encounter. From the release of Naxx until our kill this weekend, we spent hundreds and hundreds of hours raiding and thousands and thousands of gold in consumeables. Additionally, every high end guild has 2-3 strategists and 2-3 solid mod writers.

DnT and Nihilum, in particular, also benefited from LOTS of cream of the crop cross server applicants that allowed them to flesh out their ranks with people in superb gear with extensive Naxx experience.

Skill certainly helps, but most of WoW is time spent on the mob and spent preparing for the mob. The guilds who get the first kills have spent the most time gearing up and the most time learning the encounters, it's pretty simple.

Congrats on the kill!

That's hardcore.

By the way, Southpark tonight is doing a special on WoW :D

http://www.southparkstudios.com/

The Southpark was hilarious by the way. A lot of the stuff they put in wasn't really true to the game (Kenny is a human hunter) but most of it only makes it funnier. There's an encore tomorrow or if you're impatient, it's probably on BT.

It was hysterical.

"I am socializing r tard. I'm logged onto a M M O R P G with people from all over the the world and getting XP with my party using TeamSpeak."

I am transferring my warrior to Cenarius this weekend. I'm gonna miss playing my favorite toon with my friends on Silvermoon, but I want to see end game progression. The guild Encore will try me and my girlfriend out and hopefully we make the cut.

As an aside, I've recently taken up engineering on my warrior. After watching several PvP videos in which thorium grenades were used very efficiently to stun and interrupt people, I just had to make the switch. Now, to practice the placement.

My warrior has been an engineer for months now and I love it. Stock up on iron grenades, they're cheaper than thorium grenades and have the same stun effect. Items like the gnomish cloaking device, gnomish death ray, parachute cloak, etc. make it the perfect PVP profession. You don't realize how often those grenades come in handy until you have them. I map them to my F key for easy access. Oh, and those grenades will reach to Golemagg from the bridge above him. ;)

Yea the grenades are extremely useful is ABa nd AV to stop clickers from a distance. Great if you're a paladin and dont really ahve any other range. I've found that there are rockets from goblin engineering (i think) that are instant cast. They dont ahve the stun effect (atleast not the ones i've seen) and you still ahve to target the area they'll attack.. but you dont have to wait for them to fly throught he air like you do with grenades. they'll just ezplode on target the second you click where you want them to go. :P But thats just really useful to stop flag clickers. THey have a longer range than the grenades too iirc.

I love hunters. Seriously.

http://www.beautifulproject.com/WoWS...806_223538.jpg
http://www.beautifulproject.com/WoWS...806_223557.jpg

Damn kiter...lol

what are those grey and white stones on your map? (may be a comon mod but i try not to play with mods.. just ctra and wow reader to update my profile.. oh.. and anzac texas holdem :p )

Looks like Gather-er... or something like that, it's a mod that keeps track of the stuff you gather, like mineral nodes, or herbs. Most stuff spawns in the same place everyday, so if you know where to look, you can be more effective at mining/herb-picking. The white stone is maybe silver or tin, and the gray is Iron. I thnk. :)

Ya thats Gatherer.. and those are iron and mithril nodes. Its a very useful mod.

I'm impressed you had enough mana to get him down. Were you tagging with rank 1 arcane and reapplying serpent sting only once it ran out?

No, I went through 3 mana pots. I was tagging him with serpent sting, but as you can see from the SS, it did very little damage. I did the most damage when I hit him with concussive shot and stood still for long enough to get 2 auto-shots off. That didnt happen very often.. I forgot how long it took, but it was pretty fun.

You've graduated novice level.

Level 2 is doing the kiting demon for the hunter epic quest.

Then kite Teremus the Devourer to Undercity.

Alliance gets to kite him to SW and IF, but I don't think that'd work so well for horde.

Yea, Teremus is a hell of a lot of fun to kite. I can get him to IF fairly easily, I've been trying to get people to help me work him all of the way up to UC, but my computer's developed an annoying habit of glitching for 5-10 seconds randomly, which makes kiting damn near impossible.

You gotta kite for quests?

Yup. One of the four hunter demons for the bow quest requires you to stay outside of 31 yards or he puts a nasty curse on you so you have to kite him halfway across Winterspring.

Hunters fall into two primary breeds: kiter/runners or jouster/tanks. Kiters learn to kite right from the start and love every second of it. Hal is apparently of that variety. Jousters like to run in, melee a mob, wing clip it and run away. When we pull aggro and FD resists, we throw up deterrance and aspect of the monkey and pray for heals and smack the damn mob in the face so he doesn't go after clothies. I am of the latter type. I tanked a bunch of trash in naxx tonight. I've gotten quite good at it.

Anyway, that demon was the bane of my existance because I'd never really learned to kite. But damn if it didn't teach me how. I don't often kite out of need, but I do it for fun fairly regularly.

On another note, I finally got 6 piece tier 3 tonight. BEST SET BONUS EVER. 50 mana on every ranged crit. With just over 25% crit, that works out to be around 33 mana/5. So awesome. I also look pretty cool.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b3...106_010439.jpg

Sweet, congrats on the 6-piece CS. That looks pretty awesome. Still using a Zin'rokh though? My hunter was at 8/8DS plus a Zin'rokh before I retired him, now I'm playing a mage and a druid instead.

One of the things I really like about the Cryptstalker set is how it includes things that the previous sets never thought of, like mp5. Makes it that much better for long fights.

I was always one of the kiter type hunters, although I've done my share of the other. Once on broodlord, I had a string of 3 FD resists, so I was just sitting on my hands, hoping not to pull aggro, when all of a sudden the three tanks ahead of me on the threat meter died. Deterrence + monkey + run to position and I ended up tanking broodlord with the Zin'rokh for about 20 seconds while one of the tanks got combat rezzed and sent in. Then I ate an 8k mortal strike and died. :)

That would be the Claymore of Unholy Might ... something I am drooling over with my warrior.

Ah okay, hard to tell from that angle, plus the glow threw me off. Such a nice weapon in either case.

Yeah, it's the claymore. That's my pvp weapon. 1.1k raptor crits are a delicious thing indeed. My pve weapons are a blessed qiraji war axe and blessed qiraji pugio with 15 agi enchants, but they look pretty retarded, so I opted to post a SS with a more impressive weapon. The fact that its purple-y glow matches CS doesn't hurt either.

H=Gratz on the gear...Im still working on my T1 and T2 for my mage.

T1
4/8

T2
1/8
hope to get bracer tonight in BWL

So how exactly do you kite? Once a mob comes my way I never seem to be able to get away. Is the pet used to kite, or just the hunter. Also, any particular area were I can practice this skill (lvl 35)?

To kite effectively you need either to be able to increase your speed so you can move faster than the mob or you need to slow it down so your normal run speed is faster than its.

Hunters can do both. We can wing clip or concussive shot to slow the mob and we can aspect of the cheetah to increase our speed. Mages can frostbolt/blink kite with some success and warlocks can kite using curse of exhaustion to some extent. That being said, hunters are by far the most adept at kiting.

P.S. WTS my 60 UD Mage, can be transferred anywhere. PM me. :P

The way I learned how to kite was years of playing Quake/etc. with jump-shotting. Running along in a straight line, jump, spin the camera 180 degrees, shoot, spin back forwards, land, and keep running. It sounds a little complicated, but almost any FPS gamer should be able to instinctively pick up the mechanisms.

After that, the only thing you need to worry about is repeatedly hitting the mob every 8-10 seconds so that it doesn't deaggro - rank 1 distracting/arcane shot is pretty good for that as you can do it all day long and never run out of mana.

Whenever I kite, I hit aspect of the cheetah, stand at max range, and tend to open with an aimed/multi combo and then serpent sting -> start running away. From there, it's just a hideously long chase.

Kiting depends on the speed of the mob and its abilities.. if the mob runs too fast, it probably cant be kited. If it has ranged attacks, its probably a bad idea too. i basicly you're able to run forward while shooting your "shots" behind you if you strafe just right. What also works is running forward, jumping, turning, shooting, turning back and continuing on, but that is susceptible to graphic card lag that can get you killed. Use concussive shot to create distance if its catching up.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Twin Emps down to 25% on our second night of attempts. I think we'll kill them this Sunday since I'm gonna MT it (I respecced prot).

Should I respec disc/holy. I am about to get 60 and am am Shadow/disc now. I know it would be good for raids which I want to do, but damnit I love shadow.

Ask your guild.

Does anyone have a firm date for the release of TBC? I havent heard anything from Bliz and I have seen at least 3 different dates from varying websites (Best Buy, IGN, Gamespot). Just wondering and thanks

They're just now starting the closed beta (guildie got an invite), so I'd imagine probably mid to late November for the release. That'll give them enough time to do some testing while ensuring it's out before Christmas.

Not much use for a Shadow priest at lvl 60 unless your PvP only. You will have to be holy spec to survive a MC or BWL run

We have one shadow priest in our guild (we just downed Patchwerk). We had so many priests (an odd situation, I know) that he specced shadow to DPS. He is the top caster dpser on most raids (he cant outdo rogues but then no one can). I could be wrong (as my priest toon is only 42) but you wont be a better healer if you respec you will simply be a more efficient.

I would say TBC will be a Thanksgiving release short of something unexpected going horribly wrong, in which case it'll be delayed until Q1 2007, though that'd be catastrophically bad for blizzard. There's not much left in the game at this point and there are no new content patches to carry people forward if TBC meets with serious delays. There's still plenty of testing to be done, but I'd think it's very safe to guess that the game is about 2 months out.

ya I know I would be an efficient healer in disc/holy, but it seems to me that a raid could actually benefit from a shadow priest. Shadow Weaving will add 15% to all shadow damage (which would make locks happy) and the upcoming 41 point talent which gives 15% mana back to your party of shadow dmg you do seems like it would be helpful.

Bah, I will probably end up respeccing anyways. :(

About 2/3 of the priests in my guild are shadow at the moment and it causes no end of trouble between them and the disc/holy priests. You'll be a much more efficient healer as disc/holy and so I'd spec to that and if your guild happens to have a surplus of healy-priests and doesn't mind you swapping back to shadow, go for it.

Our problem is that one of our priests decided he was going to go for Grand Marshal while raiding and so he specced shadow, and then about half of the priests decided "Well, if he can spec shadow and still raid, so can I" and it's just gotten messy. Still making progress through AQ40, it's just a massive pain to deal with them.

Paladins got crusader strike, game over horde, game over.

muwahaha.

Ummmm...not to burst your bubble but The Horde get Pallys come Xpac

so I hit 60 and respecced 21disc/30holy and so far I like it, except I miss Spirit Tap for soloing.

Anyone feel like discussing tank mechanics? I was just on a BWL run and I got sorta yelled at for letting the Elementium Threaded Cloak get DE'd when I run with an Overlord's Embrace from ZG.

The basics: ETC - 2% dodge, OE - 7 defense, 1% block

Here is my reasoning: As a non-protection warrior, it is hard for me to generate a lot of aggro, hence I need to generate a lot of rage. While the ETC is excellent for a protection warrior to completely avoid all damage on a swing, a non-protection warrior actually NEEDS to get hit. Simply put, if I dont get hit, I dont generate rage, I cant generate aggro, I cant tank. So, I want to get hit, but I want to mitigate the damage, not the hit all together.

This is why defense (reduced chance of getting crit, as well as small increases to dodge, parry) and block% (when an attack is blocked, it cannot crit or be a crushing blow) is favorable for a non-protection warrior.

Protection warriors are built for overall mitigation, because even if they totally avoid damage, their 5/5 defiance and 1-handed specialization will still allow them to grab a lot of hate and generate more rage because they are hitting harder.

I wouldn't say it's the end of the world to let the cloak get DE'd, but it wouldn't (in my opinion) have been a bad idea to pick it up and keep it around in case you ever did happen to spec protect or wanted a good dodge cloak, especially since it's a rare drop. I think we've had one in four months? Zero shields off Chromaggus, and none of the Qiraji turnins for shields either, so our warriors are getting a little unhappy with ZG/MC loot for shields.

You're correct about the reasoning behind why non-protection warriors don't like dodge though, at least from everything I've read. Our non-protection tanks don't wear a lot of dodge if they can help it for exactly the same reasons as you listed.

:( That's sad

On a lighter note, I got an invite to the closed beta and have been playing the past day or so. Let me put it this way: It's going to knock your f'ing socks off :D

so how do you get invited? is it just random or they select certain people?

ETC is a really lame cloak for anyone but a full prot warrior. Overlord's Embrace and Sandstorm Cloak are comparable (and they both look a lot better). If they really wanted you to take it, they should've given it to you for free and/or lowered the min, as I'd guess it's probably overpriced in your DKP system if you passed on it.

At this point, a guild like yours shouldn't be worrying about BWL loot. You're in Naxx. No one cares. Tanking mechanics aside, they're being silly. Don't worry about it and collect other epics.

The ETC is a great cloak. Dodge is the best tanking stat due to the fact that it completely mitigates the entire attack if dodged. It's not a super overpowered must-have cloak, but it is good, regardless of spec.

Warriors want damage mitigation regardless of their spec. Prot warriors want damage mitigation, non-prot warriors want damage mitigation. 1-Handed spec does not help with anything but offtanking, and while offtanking, damage mitigation doesn't matter while you're actually attacking, so it's a tanking paradox. :thumbsup: When main tanking, you'll have enough rage to do whatever you want in any situation with any ability unless it's a heavy resist fight and your resists are too high (IE Ragnaros with 315 FR and 8k HP). Never, ever think that any type of warrior doesn't need mitigation for rage generation because even the most prot-deep warriors with the most mitigated damage still have plenty of rage. Not going for tanking/mitigation gear in the name of more rage simply doesn't work, no matter your spec.

I've tanked every boss in MC, every boss in ZG, AQ 20, BWL, up to C'Thun in AQ 40 and have been MS spec and Prot spec depending on the guild's need. I can say with 100% confidence that you'll never have a lack of rage unless you're OTing, and again, OTing doesn't actually involve you being hit until the OT's time comes, so the mitigation doesn't even impact the fight. Get that dodge up!!!!!!!

*EDIT* BTW I've tanked all of those bosses without a single point in defiance. Knowing your class > spec no matter what anyone says. Hal, do you have a macro that combines Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor? I know it's a dumb question, but many warriors brush the macro off like it's not needed even though it's the best tanking "ability" in the game.

Also, anyone have any thoughts on the new BC gear? The BC gear is pretty absurd. There's 1-handed craftable mace in BC (level 65 I believe) that's better than the Kel'Thuzad 1-hander. That's right, you can CHINA BUY a 1-hander crafted BoE in BC that is better than the Kel'Thuzad sword. Level 66 greens are better than ZG blues/entry MC epics. You can get grand marshal quality weapons through a level 65 quest reward. A breastplate drops off of a boss in Hellfire Citadel that, with sockets, is BETTER than the warrior breastplate off of C'thun. Hellfire Citadel can be 4-manned.

Why are we raiding? I feel like stopping raiding until BC comes out, especially anything but Naxx because it's just useless. Level 65 blues are better than BWL gear and can be obtained in 5-man instances. Why do a 40-man raid every week for gear that can be replaced in a 5-man come BC? I have full tier 2 and spent almost a year helping my guild put every instance up until AQ 40 on farm and now I'm finding out that my gear is gonna be obtainable in a 4-mannable level 64 dungeon. Is anyone else pissed about this? People are saying "stop whining, you raided for the experience, not the loot." Bullshit. I raided to help my guild and see us progress, but the other half of it was for the fucking badass loot that raiders got. My warrior has over 50 epics and now they're gonna be nexus crystals at 65. Why is Blizzard making BC have such hugely overpowered gear that is *easily* obtainable/buyable?

I'm a little frustrated by how quickly blizzard decided to outshine raid loot from WoW classic, but I suppose that's the name of the game. Gear inflation is not a new concept in MMOs and WoW has (in my opinion) been particularly bad about keeping it under control. This just goes along with that whole process.

My biggest complaint is what a waste of resources Naxx was/is. Being generous, there's probably going to be around 100 guilds who can kill KT by the time BC comes out, give or take. I don't know what BC holds in store, but Naxx is a stunning achievement of game design. It's cool, it's creepy, it's hard, it's beautiful. It is BY FAR the best thing blizzard did in all of WoW classic, particularly after the huge mess than was AQ40.

And the ridiculous vast majority of players will never see it. Hell, the vast majority of raiding players will never see it, forget all the people who don't raid to begin with. It's weird how resources get used to create something like this and then have it all disappear so fast. The crown jewel of WoW classic is a raid instance that almost no one (around 5000 people) will see through to completion and whose loot will be obsolete less than a month into the expansion.

GG blizz.

I find I have a big problem generating enough rage to sustain HS/sunder if my gear outmatches the mobs I'm tanking. If the mob is hitting me nicely, I can do whatever I want with it. Now I know the aggro game, I know the mechanics and I know how to tank, but the simple fact is - if I'm not getting hit, there is fuck all that I can do to generate hate fast enough to keep a mob off Naxx geared DPS.

My thoughts EXACTLY. My guild is a semi-hardcore raiding guild (we're on C'thun) and we've only been into Naxx once (Razuvious). BC is coming out so soon after Naxx has been conquered that we simply don't have enough time to do it. Naxx gear is being replaced in BC fairly quickly. There is literally no reason to do MC, BWL, AQ 40, or Naxxramas after BC comes out, and Blizzard has caused the problem directly. WoW has had pretty understandable gear inflation so far. I wouldn't even say there's anything wrong with it. Naxxramas is hard as hell, and the gear you get is good from it. But BC is different...BC has basically scooped up all the gear from 40-man raid instances and put it through a meat grinder, laughing the whole time. I just saw screenshots of CRAFTABLE 525 max damage 2-handers and 310 max damage 1-handers. No raiding required. Jesus.............

Can you elaborate? I'd like to know what you're tanking. I've never had a problem holding aggro as MS spec, but half of holding aggro is your part and half is the DPS...if rogues or hunters pull aggro, it's 100% their fault considering they have 100% threat dumps.

It doesn't really matter what I'm tanking, if the DPS has itchy fingers and I dodge/parry 3 swings in a row, I'm running around chasing the mob down. I don't necessarily consider it their fault for pulling aggro.. its usually only trash, but it doesn't reflect well on me for letting a mob run away.

So this guild I've been running with has been working on Heigan the Unclean for the last few raids. We got him down to 39% on our best attempt. Its a real fun fight, but the whole concept of 'dancing' seems to be lost on a lot of people. Half the raid is dead after the first dance. We tell people to learn the cracks in the floor to know exactly where to be and where to run to, but people still seem to get their asses worked. I'm glad I wasn't the dead weight 'cause I was up there DPSing until the end.

Thaddius is the same kinda fight... its kinda cool to think that you can get 40 people on the same page with the same reflexes. Well, right now wer have about 7, but hopefully that increases soon.

Those fights that require moving are gonna be my guild's downfall. We have too many players in the guild who know their class and are good at healing and DPSing, but suck at playing WoW in general because they're just not fast. We even have a few full tier 2 players who don't strafe and never will strafe. They turn around 180 degrees with their arrow keys before moving. :(

Turning with arrow keys instead of strafing makes me cry. Seriously. That's really really bad.

Heigan is one of those fights where you just have to wipe a lot as people learn to DDR. I think it took us about 3 nights. First there were 5 people, then 10 or 15, then when we got about 20 people staying up for most of the fight is when we started killing him. As long as the MT, a few good healers, a cleanser and several good DPS can keep themselves up, you can kill him, as he has dick all for HP (1.6M or so). After a month or so of farming him, we're finally getting 30+ to survive to the end, but it's been a long process. One of my guildmates on a 1% wipe where he was the only person up on the dance made a video showing all the splash zones and where to run. I'd be happy to host it if you'd like.

When done right, movement fights are really the coolest-looking and most fun fights in the game, in my opinion. The first time we downed Thaddius I remember being amazed at how cool it looked to have waves of people moving back and forth. Heigan has always been one of my favorite fights in the zone, too. The eyestalk port tube is really the only poorly designed part of the encounter, but I quite enjoy the dancing aspect of the fight.

I just gotta share this with everyone, Its a week late but are guild has finally taken down Chromaggus :D



http://home.cogeco.ca/~tylerdonlon/pics/wow_040.jpg

hes Next:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~tylerdonlon/pics/wow_039.jpg
nevermind the Warrior sitting next to him.



Oh and this Sword dropped off Chromaggus:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~tylerdonlon/pics/wow_041.jpg

Congrats on getting the big dragondog down. He's a pain in the butt, and congrats to the rogue who picked up CTS. He'll be using it for a good long time. Those are amazingly good loots from Chrom, as his loot table has some of the best items in the zone and also has some of the worst.

Also, since you mentioned it in raid chat, the model for Sword of 1000 Truths is actually the same model as The Hungering Cold, which you can see here: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53954

Our guild has killed Chromaggus every week since...like May? And we haven't had a single CTS drop. Lucky bastards. :)

So I've tried kiting a little with limited success. I was able to get the guy to follow me, except that I wasn't paying attention to where I was taking him and just aggroed a bunch of beasts causing me to have to run away. Is there a particular area that is good for kiting and/or learning to kite?

Also, as I level up and get more abilities/powers with my Hunter, how should I organize my action bars? Even though I'm lvl 37 at the moment, I still feel rather inexperienced when it comes to things like that. I have a routine that I go through when in combat, but I guess I just don't know if it's effecient/effective.

Lastly, is there any particular macro that is useful for a hunter?

Those are some nice screenshots...I hope to someday get to kill a boss like that.

for my hunter, this is my favorite macro:

/script PetAttack();CastSpellByName("Auto Shot");
/cast Hunter's Mark

It does 3 things all at once: Sends pet, starts auto shot, and marks the mob. Its literally the only button you need to press.

As far as kiting goes, if kiting is your only option, you can probably afford to skip it. I've managed to level my hunter up super duper fast, doing as many quests as I can possibly do, and if the quest is too hard (ie, is elite) I usually just pass it up for a non-elite grinding quest.

When you get to lvl 45 or around there be sure to try and solo the Stranglethorn Fever quest. Its a good test of personal ability 'cause you get zerged and you have to really manage you and your pet nicely.

Is there any advantage of starting off with auto shot, instead of an aimed shot? Since the aimed shot takes a while, that is the time I prefer to use it; afterwards, I usually let the auto shot go 2/3 times before I do a multi-shot or so.

Well, yeah, you do more damage, but you gotta take into consideration that you're leveling, not ambushing some mage. Send your pet in, auto shot, let the pet get and KEEP the aggro, and just burn the mob down and move on to the next. There is no hassle, no running around, no feigning death. You just point, click, wait, loot. I always throw in a serpent sting to help it go faster, but anything more isn't worth the mana. Thats my formula for grinding quickly with almost no down time.

Its very simple, and it sounds boring, but the simplicity of it actually lets me get creative with the fights I get into. You'll see what I mean when you do Stranglethorn Fever. You're not gonna win that one with aimed shot and multi shot.

and one more thing... if you don't do it already, learn how to sacrifice your pet. Some quests may seem impossible because you have to fight through legions of elite mobs that are higher level than you. Well, I've found that many times, just sending in my pet to draw their attention (and eventually just die) will buy me enough time to run in and loot whatever quest objective I'm looking for. Even better than sending your pet in to die is kiting mobs with it... just make your pet aggro the mobs and jump off a nearby ledge. Now thats what kiting is all about.

and finally... I want to brag.

New computer: AMD Athlon X2 2800+, 2GB DDR2 RAM on Dual-Channel, eVGA Geforce 7950GT 512mb GDDR3.

To illustrate how badass this thing is... I was just standing in IF, running the game at 1600x1200, and I was getting 42fps.

I can't remember who got the sword I think it was a warrior but not sure.

Like Halx said, for leveling you don't want to do burst damage, you want your pet to hold aggro so you can efficiently kill the mob. When you hit 60 and are just mowing through things, your pet will be less useful (especially the more gear you pick up) and generally I start fights with an aimed/multi/auto combination, and then Concussive if necessary. By then, my cat will have at least swatted the mob, so I can FD and dump aggro on to it.

WOW the Draenei starting zone is incredible. It is truly breathtaking.

I saw laz. But the blood elf zone is pretty amazing too, I can't wait to play a shaman pally duo.

:eek: :eek: :eek:
I'm somewhat jealous of you, Hal. I hope you guys do a lot better in your new guild. :thumbsup:

Also, here's that charge macro that I kept mistyping for you:
/script local i; CastShapeshiftForm(1); Cast SpellByName("BloodRage"); CastSpellByName("Charge"); for i = 0,15 do if (GetPlayerBuffTexture(i) == "Interface\\Icons\\Ability_Racial_BloodRage") then CancelPlayerBuff(i); end; end

This supposedly lets you charge while in combat. I hope I got it right this time.

P.S. Hi...this is my first post.

I tried that macro a couple of months ago and I could never get it to work. I know that in a beta patch they disabled a "bug allowing warriors to charge in combat" so that's probably the exact macro they disabled. I could still never get it to work before they disabled it though. :( I rammed on it and it never did shit.

Sup Pham. We killed Heigan the other day. I got a raw deal though 'cause I died midway through as I was exiting the grub tunnel and the dance was already going on. I had no chance of survival.

i'm gonna start recording some videos 'cause my computer is definitely equipped to handle it. There's gotta be someone who wants to watch videos of an undergeared MS warrior fighting encounters that are no longer mysteries and critting 3-figures on cloth in battlegrounds.

Well took down the doggy again and the Rouge shoulders dropped so the same rouige that got the sword now has a 3 peice bonus of T2 so sexy

http://home.cogeco.ca/~tylerdonlon/pics/wow_042.jpg

TBC = January 2007. Its offical now. That sucks beyond belief.

Wow. I guessed totally wrong. That could hurt blizzard.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...38244050&sid=1

Sorry, I should have done that to begin with!

Hurt Blizzard? They are on target for $1B for WoW alone...

I think what would hurt them more than anything would be putting out an expansion that was problematic or required lots of post patches... I'd rather see it come out later than earlier if that's the case.

I just got WoW (yes, I know I'm behind) and started playing.

Does anyone have any suggestions of anything I should do, places to meet friendly people, guilds to look at, etc?

Ooh, someone in my boat! Although my newbness is misleading, I'm at level 29 after 9 days or so of playing. Alliance or Horde, Kaliena?

So last night my guild finally took down Neferian after 2 weeks of trying(ya only 2 weeks)

http://home.cogeco.ca/~tylerdonlon/pics/wow_044.jpg

And I got lucky and had the highest DKP to get the Cloak of the Brood Lord :D
http://home.cogeco.ca/~tylerdonlon/pics/wow_046.jpg

http://www.spbfb.com


I did a quick Baron run after with a pug and omg every damn hit was a crit almost. I also don't always wear that robe I got the epic pink one from AQ20 just that robe looks better with the cloak

Word up! I finally got the /ginvite to the guild I was trying out for. Ironic. I am heavily considering quitting the game.

Sorry, gonna cram about 3 different lines of thought into one post:

Congrats on Nef and on the cloak, Pain. That's a sweet cloak. A few of our mages and warlocks are toting it around and are quite pleased by it.

Why are you considering quitting, if I may ask, Halx? Something to do with the expansion or just burnt out on it?

I'm actually a bit glad that the expansion got pushed back, it'll give my guild more time to progress in Naxx before the expansion. We had a fair number of people moaning doom&gloom about how it was worthless to raid Naxxramas, we'd never see it or our fancy purples would be replaced a week or two after we got them by greens from TBC, etc. Now that it's three months (or more!) away, suddenly people are a lot more interested in raiding again, because there's more time to enjoy things.

WoW has been a huge part of my life for the last year and a half. It sorta filled in the cracks where there was previously nothing to do. Well, its also displaced things that I'd rather be doing. Like, I wanna go see my friends gigs this weekend, but I'm required to raid. I've actually missed days of school becasuse I "needed" to get the next PvP rank. I hate to admit it, but I don't want to get a night/evening job (the only hours I have available because of school) because then I wouldn't be able to play WoW. This little addiction of mine has really screwed up my priorities. I will admit that it is a bit pathetic, but others may sympathize - WoW isn't just a video game, its a social world. And not only that, the game is designed to take up as much of your time as possible.

WoW lends itself nicely to my life right now. I live in a really boring neighborhood, far away from all sources of entertainment. Why travel an hour just to hang out at a cafe or something when you could just roll out of bed and play WoW? Hell, why travel an hour each way for a 90 minute class? Well, my lease is up and I'm going to move - ideally to a neighborhood with more entertainment options than I have now, as well as closer to school. Not only will the process of looking for a new place require more time than I have now with WoW, but as you can tell, the game itself is just not healthy for someone who has a lot of time on their hands.

But we killed so many people...

But really, it's good to hear that you might be quitting. As much as I love the game, it really took a toll on my life. I have a lot of work to do to catch up in school because of the game. WoW doesn't need to be a top on the priority list.