Raiding the Firelands

So, we are on our second week into patch 4.2 and the Firelands raid instance. I wanted to write this article sooner but by the end of the first week, we had not yet progressed to the half way point of the dungeon, so I felt it was not quite the time to write up my thoughts. As I am writing this, we are putting some serious attempts on Alysrazor, the 4th boss encounter and I feel more comfortable looking back and summing up the experience so far.

Firelands is definitely easier, than what T11 dungeons, such as Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent were. This is a personal observation ofc and I am not basing this on just how quickly the top guilds in the world cleared the normal modes. I think that kind of comparison is inherently flawed because people forget that those guilds, not only overgeared the content to begin with, by going in in full BiS items from hard modes in T11, but also because they also had months and months of practice for the content back in the PTR. The rest of us are going in with more the type of gear that the instance was balanced for and with very little, if any, information about the encounters themselves.

But still, it is not like I have still not been enjoying the raiding in Firelands. On the contrary, I have enjoyed the encounters immensely because Blizzard did indeed succeed in making designing very unique and interesting mechanics. The Rhyolith encounter is a perfect example of this; where in you cannot actually hurt the boss himself but you apply dps on his legs to steer him around the area and try to get him to walk over small volcanoes. As such, there are no Patchwork type encounters where you just pull, and go pew pew as much as possible to kill the boss before the healers run out of mana. In a way, these are exactly the type of encounters I like because they are execution based, rather than gear based.  Naturally having awesome gear helps a lot but you need to follow a very strict set of strategies of you will still end up wiping horribly.

Another interesting factor is how the trash functions in Firelands. Only a small portion of the instance is actually indoors and otherwise is an open-sky dungeon, with a lot of space and not linear at all. The entire space is literally riddled with trash pack, some patrolling and some remaining stationary. You can choose to remove only the necessary or more for reputation gained, as the dungeon is associated with a new faction, the Avengers of Hyjal and the reputation gained from killing bosses or trash allows you to purchase pretty good pieces of gear from their quartermaster. In this way, it is very similar to the Ashen Verdict, except there is more gear choices available.

The trash was a bit controversial for the first week though because it followed the same respawn timer as normal raid trash. However, Blizzard had to tweak it, so that it only respawned once every four hours. The reasons were that you had to clear quite a lot of the trash before you could actually engage the first boss. Shannox is a natural first choice since he is fought geographically closer to the entrance and he would only spawn after you had cleared that specific area. But the rub was, you only had two hours to practice the encounter before you would have to clear the same, huge bunch of trash again. You could get away with less trash by going to Beth’tilac before Shannox but it still amounted to an hour’s worth of trash, meaning a normal four hour raid night is easily cut short. Luckily, it is now fixed.

So what are the bosses themselves like?

Beth’tilac

Beth’tilac is a fiery spider and the encounter takes place both on the ground and up high, above her thick webs. I enjoyed it a lot, as you need to split your raid into two groups. A smaller group takes threads of web from adds and climbs to fight Beth’tilac herself, while most of your raid stays below and deals with a lot of add control.

Against tanks, Beth’tilac is bit of challenge to control because even through blocked attacks her physical attacks can deal between 30-40k damage. On itself that is not so bad, but every 4-5 seconds she will also deal around 20k fire damage to everyone above the web. This makes it quite healing intensive and tanks need to rotate cooldowns wisely to help their healer along. The team above needs to also jump down from time to time, to avoid a high damage AoE and then get back up quickly before she wipes the raid below.

The second phase, which is a burn phase, can only be successful if the team above the webs was able to do enough damage to Beth’tilac before the third Smoldering Devastation and it her stacking damage buff acts as a soft enrage timer. Eventually she will deal too much damage for the healers to keep up.

In essence, a fairly simple fight but one I enjoyed.

Shannox

Shannox is basically a hunter and follows a paradigm similar to the hunter class. He will lay traps, which need to both be avoided and utilized by the players. He also travels with two hell hound pets, which need to be dealt separately. The initial word we got was that tanks Shannox and his first hound, Riplimb but we found it to be unnecessarily cumbersome because both the hound and the boss are immune to taunts.

So we deviced a strategy where Shannox and Riplimb are tanked separately and as far from each other as possible. The distance cannot be too long because it will cause Shannox to enrage but it is still long enough that when Shannox throws his spear near Riplimb, the off-tank will quickly either kite him to a crystal trap or simply as far from it as possible. DPS are then tasked with slowing Riplimb down, so that the distance it takes for him to fetch the spear and return it to Shannox is long enough for the Jagged Tear stacks to fall off both tanks.

It is a simple strategy and much more straight forward to execute than tanks over-aggroing each other on two different targets. From there on, it simple comes down to killing the pets and then finally Shannox, while trying to kite the hounds to as many Immolation Traps as possible to ease the work load of the damage dealers, while avoiding the traps ourselves.

Lord Rhyolith

We originally figured that would need two tanks for this encounter, because while some damage dealers are directing Rhyolith over the volcanoes, by hacking at his feet, there are two types of adds spawning and indeed we did originally complete the encounter in this manner. However, there are several draw backs to this strategy. Firstly, the raid becomes very scattered around the platform, increasing the chance of getting throwbacks from Rhyolith’s stomps and getting caught in lava flows, the later which can easily kill a player from just couple of tics of damage.

Secondly, because we were scattered, getting enough damage on both add types was something of a chore. It worked but it was very cumbersome. On our second week, we changed it around and had our paladin tank switch to retribution and help out on the legs. We did this because, for some reason, turning the boss was a lot harder this time around and required more damage to make him turn in time, as we with only two DPS we kept having him walk into the lava pools and just wipe us.

With more melee on the legs, we stationed rest of the raid on the entrance and had just one tank pick up all the adds. We were skeptical at first but it turned out really well, because this way we had a much easier time of it to dodge the lava stream, as we were only exposed to a small portion of them. Also, the adds died just timely enough so we could transition from one type to the other. The only trick is that you need to kill Sparks before the Fragments spawn, and ofc visa versa.

All and all, I think this is one of my favorite encounters so far. It is very unique and fun to execute. You are fine as long as you keep concentrate and especially as a warrior tank I can really shine on this fight. Our mobility and good AoE threat really makes us a tank of choice for add control.

I would say that, if rest of the encounters in Firelands follow a similar success curve in design, the instance as a whole looks to be a very successful piece of content. The only concern I have, at this time, is that it only has seven boss encounters. Compared to ten or the twelve in T11, it is seems very few and if Blizzard follows their usual release rate, then we will quickly run out of content to play. Or will we? The top progression guilds are ofc going to clear all 7/7 bosses on heroic but looking at a lot of the other “lesser” raiding guilds (that also make up most of the raiding community) they were not able to get 13/13 HMs in T11. Our guild, Pro Finlandia, which can be counted as a relatively skilled and successful raiding guild only got 5/13 HMs in T11. So it might be just that only having seven bosses in this tier is the right amount.

We will just have to wait and see. For now though, the instance looks to be very successful from my point of view.

The Journey Continues

Fellow greetings again Internet. I know I have not been very active on this blog and I do apologize for the inconvenience. As it currently stands, I have taken up the duty of keeping up with writing raid tactics and our Guild’s insider blog on tankspot.com, which sadly eats most of the time I have for writing blogs. However, I currently find myself sitting in Dalaran and having plenty of time to spare before our next raid so I decided to start up my Writer and and put some words down.

First, for those who are interested you can check our Increment Insider blog at our tankspot. For those who insisted on screenies of our progression should find plenty in there. Progression-wise we are currently holding at 9/12 in ICC25 HMs. A fact we are very proud of and have had several experimental goes at three different HMs; Professor Putricide, Sindragosa, and Halion just to see which we would like to commit our time to.

A lot of news filter in about Cataclysm almost every day. Many times I’ve gazed upon them and thought to myself “that deserves a mention in my blog” but there are so many that it is impossible to keep up and in the end, this blog isn’t really about publishing latest news. Just what seems important to me. On that note, details about the new Tier 11 gear sets have been released, with a couple of screenshots.

The part that strikes me about these sets is the fact that tanks might again care about the Tier bonuses, which we clearly did not need to do towards the end of Wrath. Sure, they were a nice addition but was somewhat mellowed by the fact that Blizzard decided to add much more sexier gear pieces to both the frost vendor and drops from ICC. Looking at the Tier 11 bonuses I feel a certain excitement as a tank, a feeling that these might almost be a must-have thing.

Warrior’s Earthen Battleplate:

2pc - Increases the damage done by your Shield Slam ability by 5%.

4pc - Increases the duration of your Shield Wall ability by 50%.

Death Knight’s Magma Plated Battle Armor:

2pc - Increases the damage done by your Death Strike ability by 5%.

4pc - Increases the duration of your Icebound Fortitude ability by 50%.

I do wish Blizzard would get out of their habit of adding a threat boost to our tanking sets and more complicated elements, like added health regenerated by our Death Strike. The whole concept of threat has a very controversial feel for me. I wouldn’t want to make it trivial but nor do I want to generally worry about it. Some tanks have whispered about the return to TBC’s type aggro where tanks where holding aggro was the single-most hardest thing to do in the game.

That’s ridiculous in my opinion and I’m glad to report Blizzard has officially agreed with me on numerous occasions. Tanks should have all the tools they need for holding aggro, if they use all their respected abilities properly. If you’re only spamming one button through the entire encounter you deserve to lose aggro but otherwise, for players who know what they are doing, it shouldn’t be an issue and not warrant threat bonuses in Tier sets. To me the pleasure of tanking is in pulling, positioning, taking the hit and surviving it so rest of the raid can do their jobs.

Likewise, for me  Tier sets represent an addition to your abilities, not their completion. Seeing that Shield Wall’s duration goes up by 50% is awesome and means I can survive for much longer. Seeing a threat modifier in the sets just means threat would be partially gimped prior to getting the set. That type of sets also inevitably lead situation during the next upgrade process, when you will not have that ability, thus making your performance rather poor until you get the two new pieces, or worse the next set will not have it at all and you run on half power for the rest of the patch.

Glance at Heroic Modes

So the Lich King is dead and understandably, come next lockdown and we were all eager to sink our teeth into the heroic modes of Icecrown Citadel. But even with a lot of research on the previous days, I do not think any of us were quite prepared for them. After all, we knew they would be harder, but would they really be that much harder? In a word, yes, the heroic modes are an incredibly refreshing experience after the easy normal modes and we were really taken back just by the Lord Marrowgar encounter. I am going to go through the first wing of bosses, just reviewing some of our experiences and the changes to the bosses.

Lord Marrowgar

In a twisted way, for me, this is actually the hardest of the first four encounters. In simplest terms, the damage that the raid takes has gone up and is by no means trivial anymore. Both the bonestorm and fires are big killers, and the fight is actually all about avoiding as much as possible of it. Just on a plate tank, we recorded over 10k ticks from the whirlwind and our resto shaman reported that he can at best take 2-3 ticks of it before quickly dying.

We eventually went with a 1 tank, 4 healers, and 5 dps setup. One tank should be quite capable of tanking Marrowgar alone, and in fact, it simplifies the tank’s job when he avoids the fires. When bonestorms were imminent (5 seconds or so) the raid would quickly spread, healers divided between the two sides. This is so that when Marrowgar charges someone, he will only hit max 1-2 people, who quickly move out of the way. If you have good ranged dps, they will absolutely shine on this fight, because they are able to break spikes even from middle of fire.

Lady Deathwhisper

After Lord Marrowgar, we were suddenly taken back at just how much simpler Deathwhisper is. Essentially, the big change is during the last phase. The only change to the first phase seems to be a bigger mana pool and she will CC a random person, like on 25-man normal mode. It might have been just me, but also seemed that there were also a lot more martyrs among the adds. In several cases, we had easily three risen martyrs to deal with and dps really need to watch for them.

The second phase, unlike normal mode is tanked by the stairs, at the entrance because Deathwhisper continues to periodically summon one add. She will also summon one vile spirit, which must be avoided at all cost because it explodes with an 20 yard AoE and hits really hard. It always goes for a specific person, so that person should kite it around for a few seconds.

For tanks, Deathwhisper is more of a challenge because she is immune to taunts. We sort of went heads first into it and had no defining tactics for it. Because our stacks grew so high, the person tanking the boss, would also have to tank the add and once the stacks fell off, the second tank had to get tricks in order to catch up quickly. We got her down, but I am thinking there must be an easier way to control the stacks and get a much more cleaner kill.

The Gunship Battle

Out of all the encounters, this one really is a joke. There is a little bit more damage from missiles and axes, but in general, you will hardly notice that it is on heroic mode. Like always we sent two hardcore melee dps over to the other ship, along with a tank and the mage, even with a bigger health pool, went down like a rock. The only hiccup we had was apparently an axe thrower, who for some strange, unforeseeable reason, enraged and started hitting really hard, causing our resto shaman to die total of three times, giving us a whole lot of hilarity once we finally docked.

Deathbringer Saurfang

We actually did not get many good tries on this boss because we were running out of time at this point, causing us to miss the kill but I am fairly confident we unlocked the necessary mechanic to get him down as soon as we get our next attempts. The trick with Saurfang is controlling the adds. There is a lot more damage during the encounter, but it is still doable with just two healers. Make sure you have one holy paladin and one raid healer; priest, druid, or shaman, all are good choices. The healers need to pay good attention to the marks of the fallen, for there will be more of them (thanks to Saurfang’s bigger health pool) and none of the targets are allowed to die, or the boss will heal 20%.

But with competent players, the real challenge of the fight lies with the beasts. When they spawn, they move wicked fast and basically one-shot any nontank. You need to device a strategy to keep them in control, which is why you need really good ranged dps to kill them out. Melee dps can help out, but only if they do not pull aggro on them and the beast is not rooted. A rooted beast hits anything within melee range, which is usually an eager melee dps.

Death knights are ideal for using chain of ice and I found the best tactic is to actually spam roots on one beast, while the second is slowed and zerged down by the combined ranged dps. Once the first one dies, they finish the second one off and the ideally, neither of the two beasts never get far from the boss to begin with.

All and all, we had a lot of fun doing these heroic modes and if you’re any like us, finding the normal modes boring, you should enjoy the heroics a lot more also. The changes aren’t truly severe, but there are more actual mechanics to overcome and the margin for poor performance has been almost completely removed. If you are focused, the encounters should not be overwhelming but wipe fest starts the minute you lose your concentration.

Good luck everyone.

Toravon the Icewatcher

Battle for Wintergrasp sure did not lack excitement this evening, when literally half the realm descended onto the snowy plains and attacked the horde fortification. Lag was so bad that no one could possibly even think of any proper strategies or tactics. Got our 2 2nd lieutenant ranks before we had even finished taking all the quests.

The lieu of sieges machines that left the first workshop was just staggering and breaking the walls was just simply about driving up the hill and bashing on the fortress. Targeting, much less actually killing anything was a gamble of cards due to the sick lag, with the game mostly just yelling that your target was not in LOS or range, although to your eyes, seemed like the blood elf paladin-kind-of-thing was still standing calmly in front of you.

Getting a VoA group afterwards took exactly two microseconds and the general consensus was to immediately go for Toravon, the new boss of the instance. The mechanics themselves are extremely simple, but at least during my 25-man group, seemed like the dps could not focus on the simple matter of killing the adds quick enough.

As a tank, your job is extremely simple; stand on top of the other tank and you switch between three stacks of Frostbite debuff. This is essentially just a debuff from the boss’s Frozen Mallet strike that deals periodic frost damage. The latest DBM has already been updated for the fight and each time a stack is applied to a tank, the addon notifies you of it. Occasionally, since the debuff is a Chance-on-hit ability for the boss, the stacks appear irregularly; they may come quickly or slow, but just make sure that your old stacks have faded, before you taunt or you will most certainly die. If you notice that you are building stacks and your partner cannot taunt yet, blow a useful cooldown.

The boss also has a soft enrage timer, in the form of another stacking debuff, Whiteout that is cast over the entire raid every 45 seconds. Each stack increases all frost damage taken by 25%. Eventually, becomes impossible to heal through.

The real tick of the encounter is dealing with the Frozen Orbs that the boss summons every 30 seconds. There are always three at a time and each deals periodic frost damage to everyone within 8 yard radius. It is imperative that all DPS switch to quickly kill the orbs, though might be enough if you just have all your ranged switch. Again, latest DBM has a timer that shows when the orbs are about to spawn.

The only other mechanic is Freezing Ground that freezes and roots the target and those close to him on the floor. This needs to be dispelled away and a sharp disc priest is very good for this job.

The fight is really about controlling the orbs and the debuff on the tanks. If your group can master both tasks, you will likely not have a problem with the encounter.

Run! Forest! Run!

I had my first come back to my death knight character last night, after a long break doing other things, and there is no place like Icecrown Citadel to have you wake up call. My first Rotface (tankspot vid) encounter was a fun experience, particularly since our MT was a warrior, thus falling on me to kite the oozes.

Usually when you’re the less experienced in the bunch, you tend to be given the safe assignments, but mine was pleasantly enjoyable.

For those of you who do not know the encounter, essentially the idea is that while the MT tanks the boss in the middle of the room, the OT stays on the room’s edges. The reason for this is that periodically the boss will drop Mutated Infection on a random person. When it is removed, it drops a small ooze, which cannot be tanked or taunted.

The idea is to get two removed at the same spot, so that in close proximity, they unite into one big ooze. This ooze is tauntable, which is the OT’s job. It will one shot you dead if it catches you, so you need to move and keep kiting it around the room. More small oozes will drop and they must be dragged in front of the big ooze, so it will swallow them and eventually, after five small ones, explode.

It required a few takes, but eventually, we got it and was just, simply a whole lot of fun.

The challenge is basically just the fact that a) quarter of the room is constantly flooded with slime that slows you down and b) towards the end of the fight, smaller oozes will show up at an accelerated rate. We had an extra big ooze on the floor total of three times. It can be bad, since the OT needs to then out run them both, but if you can get them to collide, one of them will instantly explode, since they still act like smaller oozes.

Welcome back to Azeroth Durithim :)

Death Knight Tier 10 Review

Odds are I was the only person in the world who was clinging to the hope that we would not have to joggle yet another set of tier gear. Small hope I agree, but I believe justified because as a progression raider most of your game actually revolves around those blasted pieces and not sooner than you actually have managed to gather a set, you are already shopping for a new one next week.

But enough ranting and lets have a look what nice things we are getting this week.

The new death knight art actually looks very nice this time around. Tier 9 was fine but seemed a bit too contained, too neat and polished for someone who is essentially a warrior with a permanent bad temper. The new look is a return to tier 8; death motifs and rustic. Definitely a nice job by the designer.

The tier bonuses look slightly more dubious. Since I a tank night and day, I always look at those set bonuses first and I am getting mixed feelings this time:

2P Bonus: Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay ability by 20%.

4P Bonus: When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 seconds.

As always, the first set bonus is a threat amplifier but I am worried that the target this time is Death And Decay. True, it is my default opener to any fight, so a good choice, but the problem is integrating it neatly into your rotation. You will of course try to recast it during an encounter but odds are you will not be able to, at least not as often as you would prefer because it actually takes three different runes to use and getting all three refreshed at the same time is not an easy feat.

Also for highly mobile bosses e.g. Hodir, Ignis, and Dreadscale it is particularly difficult because you are then stuck tanking the boss within the confines of the spell.

The second set bonus does make me raise my eyebrows equally. Is this meant as an extra tank cooldown? Seems improbable because blood tap already plays a pivotal role as part of my normal rotation to get extra hits out on the boss. To be forced to save it as a damage mitigator seems out of this world to me.

I am thinking it might provide a nice respite to heavy damage during a fight though. Remember damage of Ulduar hard modes or ToTGC bosses like Gormak and Anub'arak? Using blood tap like I do, whenever possible to make use of a death rune will provide some amount of mitigation just randomly during a fight, and if available, as an emergency cooldown but there is a downside also; random damage mitigation means spiky damage and we all know how healers hate spiky damage.

Sure, you can use Ora2 to announce cooldowns and that way healers can know when you're using it but to me spells hard times for healers though.

Shadowmourne

I consider myself fairly up to date on what goes on in the World of Warcraft workshop and was, among, without a doubt, millions who were reading the news from last Blizzcon, as they were flooding the internet. Yet I still completely missed news of this new legendary weapon. For me, it came completely out of the blue as I stumbled upon it by just sheer accident.

So what is this sword exactly? Information is very scarce at the moment. No stats have been released yet but we do know that it is a two-hander axe, aimed at melee classes. This means primarily warriors, paladins, and death knights (both dps and tanks). While it could possibly be wielded by other classes, Ghostcrawler has iterated (source) that the stats will favor the above classes.

It will be available in the Icecrown Citadel, the same way that Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings was available from Ulduar. Myself, I wonder about the name of the weapon. It sustains a striking resemblance to the Lich King's signature weapon, Frostmourne. I hope there is some rational lore attached to the name, for otherwise it is an uncomfortable recycling of ideas. By all means, I am thrilled that there is a legendary melee weapon coming out, as the last one was clearly a caster weapon, but will feel like a slight cheat if it is just a makeshift version of the real thing.

Some people point out strongly that the legendary weapon from Icecrown Citadel should have been Frostmourne itself, but I strongly disagree, as do most who care at least a tiny bit about the game's lore aspects. To allow it to be fallen into player hands would mean that it would have to be defined into logical parameters would only demean and weaken it, reducing it to "just another legendary" since it obviously could not corrupt the player character the same way it was responsible for creating the most iconic villain in the game.

No, no, no I say. Frostmourne is unique because it is undefined and its powers a mystery to us. It belongs in the possession of the Lich King, where it maintains its power and provides us with an unforgettable gaming experience.

Tribute to Skill

There are moments when you are allowed to feel good about yourself and this is definitely one of mine; having completed the Tribute to Skill achievement on 10-man totgc instance this evening, with an awesome crew. It was particularly satisfying after having endlessly farmed both 10- and 25-man normal modes with little to no challenge of feeling of accomplishment.

Grand crusader however, was quite a struggle. The encounters we found the hardest were the Faction Champions and Anub'arak. The first severely more than the last, where the champions just simply kept wiping the floor with us. Anub'arak proved mainly a performance challenge, as it has a lot more in-built difficulty than the normal modes.

Firstly, you only have six grounds of frost to use, the burrowers now cast Shadow Strike that needs to be interrupted, and the damage is a lot more severe. The two primary obstacles are performing successful interrupts and keeping them from burrowing. We used a shaman, though a rogue would probably be a lot more optimal, with a focus kick macro as the adds and boss are tanked side by side.

It also comes to a bit of luck, when Anub'arak himself burrows, the OT will most likely still have two adds on his hands. Because the proximity to the boss, the spikes will probably hit the ice he is standing, breaking it, possibly even killing the OT if he is not maxed out. The OT must vacate the patch of ice before the spikes hit it and kite the adds to a new one without letting them burrow themselves. Since this ability is on a timer, it is has a lot to do with luck.

However, if you can master these two aspects, the fight should go through fairly easily. The only crunch is when phase 3 starts and the OT is not only taking the constant aoe damage from the boss but also melee hits from the adds.

But the fight is well worth it, even if you have to struggle. I had the luck of getting Lothar's Edge, hitch hiking my stats up a notch once more. So for now, I could not be happier but am already looking for the next peak to climb.

Return of the PTR

If you are anything like me, you have been following the 3.3 patch news with great anticipation and interest, as they have began to flood through from wow.com and mmo-champion - people hard at work data mining and exploring what is currently available in the test realms.

So far, the most interesting news have come from both Blizzard themselves, in the form a Frozen Halls info page, and mmo-champion data miners, whom have been able to discover some very interesting updates. The first and foremost of course, is the Icecrown Citadel. Anyone who has flown around it a few times realized a long time ago that it will be very expansive. The structure alone is impressive and massive.

So far we know that the citadel with not only host the new raid, with the Lich King as the final boss, but will also contain a new dungeon, with both normal and heroic version, and a total of three different wings; in order the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection. You must complete them in sequence to gain access to the last one and contain a lot of interesting new aspects.

So naturally when I saw people on general channel, looking for likeminded adventurers and explorers I just had to jump at the chance. We entered the Pit of Saron, whether or not because they had already done the first wing or if it was the only one currently enabled, I cannot say. But the first time stepping inside the citadel was very exciting. Essentially, we have two objectives; free as many slaves as possible and also kill the bosses.

The second boss Ick, which after falling to us gave up a startling revelation, Frostmourne currently resides alone, in the Halls of Reflection. Whether it will be just an event or possible a boss encounter, remains to be seen but opens the possibility that the way to defeat the Lich King is by taking away his most dangerous weapon.

Like all dungeons, normal and heroic alike, tanking the instance was heavy on the aoe side. You can switch to blood on bosses if you prefer but all and all, was a very standard issue tankwise. The bosses themselves do a lot of burst damage and had very little actual technicalities to overcome. Tyrannus at the very end had some twists to provide, but seems we encounter either a bug or another disabled feature, because once we quickly downed him, the first was suddenly over.

Why is this odd? Because Tyrannus first presents himself on the back of a frostwyrm and on such an occasion, you would expect to fight both the two-legged and four-legged counterparts. Our encounter however started with Tyrannus coming down and ended when he fell.

We had no luck investigating any possible loot because nothing was dropped, but odds are high this will change quickly, once the loot tables are finished and enabled. Mmo-champions did report an interesting set of new daily quests though, or rather, weekly quests. I managed to confirm them with the usual daily quest giver. Exactly like the old Wintergrasp quests, these can be completed only once a week, but instead provide x10 Emblems of Frost.

Also, instead of heroics, the quests are completed in raid instances. These range from Naxxramas to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader. Basically just like the previous heroic dailies, you have to kill a boss to complete the quest. I could not locate a vendor that currently accepts the new emblems but I am prepared to speculate they have to do with new gear. A new set of tier gear?

Personally, I am voting against a new tier set. It takes our all the fun out of, the otherwise exciting gear, when you have to struggle to change it every damn patch. But time will tell. For now, will continue to follow the blogsphere and explore the PTR. Will keep my readers informed.

Onyxia is Back!

Like so many other things that are reinvented, Onyxia seems to divide the World of Warcraft demography. As always, the most vocal side are the ones not happy with Onyxia's reincarnation, finding a long list of faults in her new forms but personally I am delighted from the update.

The very first reason to like her is the fact that a huge portion of us never got to fight her in vanilla WoW and have only seen her, mainly lying on her back after being zerged by a bunch of level 80s. I, myself took her down with just the three of us, and even from our tiny group two of us were tanks. To make it further ridiculous, the paladin tank also functioned as our healer, who is the same paladin who I know 1-manned her.

This is the case with all old raids and for my life cannot see what the point would be to not redesign them, so they can provide a logical function in the game - instead of just being the occasional punching bag for nostalgic old timers.

The second reason is that now Onyxia is a lot more approachable, instead of feeling like teeth being pulled. Naturally, for some this is a bad thing. Of course, I bet it was a blast to spend over 40 minutes fighting one raid boss. With luck, someone screwed you over because of their teenage angst and you would be starting all over again.

Third but not last, with Naxxramas, Sartharion, and Malygos becoming obsolete we desperately needed a new raid into the game. Granted, it is only one boss but it is better than nothing while we wait for the release of Icecrown. Of course, I do not mean that in condescending, but rather pointing out the fact that those of us who have completed Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader only provides so much entertainment.

So what is Onyxia like these days. After research (and listening to old timers whining), I do not see how the fight is so much different; you go through three distinct phases and a lot of moving around is required to get through them.

Phase 1 is a simple spank phase. Your main tank should tank her against the back of the cave, so the push back does not blow him away and everyone else should stay around or behind Onyxia, to avoid the frontal cleave that can easily turn a clothie into some shredded wallpaper.

Phase 2 begins when she walks back across the cave and takes off into the air. As in the vanilla version, everyone should group up in the middle of the cave, where the floor declines into. Whelps will fly from both sides and your (preferably an aoe capable) tank grabs them while dps aoes them down.

There is an elite type of add that also comes from the entrance, which must be tanked and killed as quick as possible, for they hit rather hard and will overwhelm the tanks if not taken care of. Most notably have your cloth wearers dispel the Ignite Weapon as quickly as possible, for it adds 25k extra damage to their attacks for five seconds.

This phase ends when the ranged dps succeed in bringing Onyxia to 40%, after which your main tank must quickly grab aggro and place himself against a wall, or she makes wind chimes of your raid.

From there the fight continues much like phase 1, except for an occasional inconsequential whelp, fear, and fire cracking from the floor. If you get her this far, you should be able to nail her, as long as you healers do not run out of mana.

All and all, a very enjoyable raid in my opinion.

Crusader's Evaluation

3.2 has been out for a good long while now and we are soon to be taken into 3.2.2, along with the newly realized Onyxia's lair. However, it took some good while to get all of the new encounters released so I have been saving some of my thoughts until now.

Personally, it is one of my favorite raid instances in the game, as of this time. Ulduar was not bad but it could never really rise to point where I was excited about it, at least the same way I was about Naxxramas and now Trial of the Crusader. Oddly, it is the very nature of the instance that I like so much, which is, it has minimum of the fuss that most raids have. Of course, I am talking about trash.

Ulduar was particularly painful at times because trash itself often had to merit their own tactics. There were a large variety of them and while the challenge was welcome, after it became a routine, the tactics became tiresome and not at all satisfying. On the contrary, whole group would sigh when being held from reaching Vezax, Auriaya, or Mimiron because you had to stop to mark mobs and focus on taking them down with the care often only associated with the bosses themselves.

When it comes to TotC, I was never one to hold back my skepticism about the four tier difficulties; 10-man, 10-man hc, 25-man, and 25-man hc. Seemed overly complex to me but then again, it seems to work very well for this instance. Once your group gets the hang of it, if decently geared, it should have no trouble clearing the normal modes. The instance itself has no trash so this can even done as a side note, if your guild still wants to focus on clearing some of Ulduar's hard modes.

Also, because the five encounters can each be cleared under a decent time, you can even do two in one day, which not only helps gearing up but also collecting of emblems, a large quantity which you will in fact need to get a full tier 9 set. The encounters themselves are successful in my opinion, as so far, I have not once been bored by them. They have a nice balance that you have to pay attention but not overwhelming to a point where you need to have a degree in high WoW science to complete them.

Northrend Beasts is a three phase fight where you fight three completely different encounters in quick succession, each with their various strategies. It is also a fight that seems to set the tone for the whole instance, which is good coordination within your group. The fight is not difficult if you are coming properly geared from Ulduar, but every does have their job to do and if they are not carried out, the fight will inevitably turn against you.

Lord Jaraxxus is one of those fights that is extremely simple for the MT and just won't leave the OT alone. Once against it has various aspects, like add tanking, random flames to mind, and abilities interrupt, so the whole group has to coordinate to get through the fight successfully. A well aoe capable tank is preferred for the role of an OT, since you will be dealing with several adds, all which the dps needs to burn down.

Faction Champions is one I have never before seen in the game, which is a pvp encounter. It follows most of the rules for pvp and is unlike you will find anywhere in Northrend. For tanks, you will not actually tank anything. Rather your duty is to keep one of the major dps on you as much as possible. For a death knight, this provides numerous tools in the form of Chain of Ice, Dark Command, and Death Grip. You cannot get real aggro, so be prepared to use the following powers the second they come out of cooldown.

For DPS and healers, it offers all the pvp elements; use abilities to snare others enemies and burst damage down one target at a time. Healers need to run and heal almost constantly as the enemy dps will try to go for them nearly constantly, se be prepared. The fight does not actually require pvp gear, which equal resilience, but a pvp trinket would not hurt if you find yourself constantly as a target of CC abilities.

The Twin Val'kyrs are one of those mind games, which essentially means the whole fight is one big prank. The whole fight revolves around the idea that you have to have the opposite colour aura to the color of the boss you are fighting. Joggling and changing to the right aura plays a crucial role in realizing just when to change aura and when to go for which boss. It takes time to get used to but is essentially a very simple fight.

The last fight is against Anub'arak, a boss everyone should find familiar from Naxxramas. Basically, it is both a challenge for both tanks and healers. The OT who deals with the tanks will be taking a lot of damage, especially on 25-man where cooldowns are necessary to survive the debuff stacks applies by the adds. The boss also does a load of constant raid wide damage so healers need their best game to get through it.

All and all, both the encounters and loot has something for everyone and is every bit worth battling through and farming for the best tier gear. As an added bonus, the trophy emblems that are needed to cash anything but the easiest set of gear are universal for everyone. So there are five trophies per run to be shared by everyone, instead of getting annoyed when a murphy's law designates that only half the raid gets the badges they need and the rest spend the evening grinding their teeth.

All and all, a very enjoyable raid for myself.

Avoidance vs Stamina

This is one of the hot topics of tanking and has been for a very long time now; essentially an argument, with one side arguing for the supremacy of their choice of tanking style, based on either avoidance or stamina. This means that one side prefers to stack gear that increases their dodge and parry, allowing them to avoid most of the hits that a raid boss throws at you. Stamina based tanking still has a lot of avoidance, but relies instead on a large health pool, letting more hits land and survives because he can take the hits.

Reading discussions like mmo-champion forum threads, gives me a strange sense that we have entire culture of tanks clashing, with avoidance tanks carrying themselves a lot like french nobility, sophisticated and demure, believing in supremacy through class. Their attitude towards stamina tanks seems very much like talking to hicks and hillbillies. Of course, this is not true but the general attitudes are fascinating :)

So, which side is right, which is better?

I would like to say that everyone are born equal but this is not true. Sadly, stamina tanks are just more reliable than avoidance tanks. The answer lies in studying current raid design, with bosses that hit massive. Anyone who has been tanking Ulduar hard modes know how much damage is flies around with bosses like Freya or the Assembly of Iron.

The general rule is that you have to be able to survive at least two boss hits without a heal. Shrewed but so is life. With Freya's hard mode, the hits that she lands on you are consistently around 18k. That means that as a tank, you much have more than 36k health after all the raid buffs, along with a healthy sortment of cooldowns because extra damage from ground tremors.

A tank with 39k health can survive this no problem. An avoidance tank, with 35k health will dodge most of the hits, but that is like playing russian rulet. Eventually the minority occurs and he will take two hits in a row, quickly dying, taking rest of the raid with him. This is what it essentially comes down to and each time the stamina tank is simply more reliable.

From a healer's point of view, this is even more desirable because healers like predictability. As a death knights, I'm no strange to healer-rage about taking heavy spike damage, so this is especially important for me. Avoidance tanks are prone for a lot more, big spikes of damage that can lead to unnecessary wipes, even in easier raids or even heroic dungeons, if a healer is unable to react quick enough.

And before you spam my mailbox, shouting that it doesn't happen with good healers, do not bother. I have been tanking with healers of all shapes and colors, so I know it happens more often than some like to admit. The same story is told by many avoidance tanks, feeling unfairly treated when they are removed from raids because of low health pools, even if they have the achievements to proove they can do it.

However, you cannot blame this on raid leaders. An experience raid leader wants reliable tanks. Running with an unreliable one is like driving a car with nitroglycerin for gas; could blow up at anytime and even more with pugs, can blow your raid up along with it. In the end it also just comes down to raid design and Ulduar is a prime example of this; an encounter's difficulty curve is not so much in the mechanics, but just in surviving the massive damage.

Take the hard mode of the Iron Council; once only Steelbreaker is left, it comes down to a dps race. The tanks literally sacrifice themselves to buy that time for them, with the first tank blowing his cooldowns until he blows up and then the second tank does the same thing. There, if you do not have the health to survive, you are useless and this is true for most Ulduar encounters.

Missed Opportunities

One thing I always had to lament, is the fact that I came to the raid scene behind most people that I now spend my time raiding with. Actually, when I began to play World of Warcraft, I did not even care about raiding; just too many bad stories and stupid people that you have to deal with, if you wish to do good on that field. But then, as often happens, circumstances change and I found myself gearing up, but now, I was seriously behind.

As Ulduar came out, I was still doing casual raids in Naxxramas and while that was a whole load of fun, it did mean that I began to miss on a lot of content. Now I have made it to Ulduar, in a guild I like very much, that raids often and does so with some amazing people. However, I still have not done all that they have and naturally, it is really difficult to persuade them come along for "old" content.

One such is Sartharion, which I can happily report, went down with the one drake just the other. Most of you who have done, know it as a very easy fight, which it is but surprisingly a lot do not succeed at it. Many casual guilds, despite being able to run most of 25-man Naxxramas, cannot succeed at bringing Sartharion down with any additional drakes and the same goes for PuGs. So imagine my joy when I ended in one, extremely proficient group that brought the wyrms down with the first, flawless go.

The only real tactical difference to dealing with the drakes, is the position of Sartharion and having an extra tank. Yes, it can be done with two tanks, but in my opinion, it is simply less grief if you go with three tanks; one tanks Sartharion, one tanks the drake, and the third keeps the adds in check, while the dps burns the drake down. As always, all should the fire walls and burn cooldowns as quick as possible, for healing three tanks does take its toll on the healers.

The drake should go down fairly quickly, after which dps should move to kill the adds and then continue the encounter as ever before. If you can bring the drake down and control the small drakes, you are home free. There is nothing else to the encounter.

Another encounter, a real boogyman for many, is Emalon in the Vault of Archavon, perceived to many as a difficult fight, when in actuality the battle is extremely simple. Long story short, the tanks pull the mobs and Emalon himself apart from each other. One to the right and the other to the left side of the room. Initially DPS should head for the boss and wait for two primary abilities; Lightning Nova and Overcharge.

When he begins casting lightning nova, DPS should head out of range. On 10-man version, only has an effective 20-yard range. On 25-man it cannot be outranged, but distance mitigates the damage done. If you are melee, you will probably only barely make it back to the boss, hit a couple of times before Overcharge comes and at that point, you should head to the adds. If you have DBM, the addon will mark the add that has been overcharged and it needs to be killed in 20 seconds or the raid will wipe.

From there the encounter just goes around and around until the boss dies. However, you need good dps to bring the add down in 20 seconds and it is often the part that scares people. However, last night on 25-man, we beat it easily with only a handful of dps between 3k and rest below, so the encounter is a lot less merciless than given credit. Most DPS who can do 25-man Naxxramas, or has even good 10-man gear from the same instance, should be able to do it.

Get Started with Gear

It isn't a rare case when I meet people who are stuck in their gearing phase, desperate to make a break into raiding but are hindered by others when they do not have whatever achievement or are not all glad in sexy purples. It is a vicious cycle, there is no doubt about it, since you cannot get the gear and achievements without raiding,and cannot get into the raids without the goods.

Those of you who read my blog regularly (yes, amazing isn't it? *grin*) know how I feel about this so I will not bother to reiterate my disgust, but instead of ranting I decided to put together a small guide of how I personally solved the issue.

First of all, do not bother with progression guilds. Yes, they might take you in and might even gear you up, but personally I would feel like a bag and most still will not bother with you. This is understandable, so don't take it personally; a player with such outstandard gear and experience just simply does not bring anything to a guild so far ahead.

Casual guilds however, they should be your first home. You will find other people in very similar situations and a lot more opportunities to evolve than you would anywhere else. Yes, it is not sexy the way progression guilds are, but if you're poor, can't drive a jaguar. Casual guilds are good places to make friends and get people, who are willing to over-look your lack of awesomeness, and get into doing heroics.

Start from the easiest and work your way up, developing your skills and getting experience. It may not feel like it now, but some heroics are in fact harder than a full naxx10 clear. Also, get yourself the Atlasloot addon and browse all possible drops. I did this back in the day, with the help of notepad to remember what pieces I wanted from whichever boss.

While on it, you will have a chance to earn a lot of emblems and also reputation with various factions and these are actually extremely important. You should aim to get exalted with all major factions in northrend, for they all sell valuable gear and enchants that you will continue to use, even after heroics. So visit the emblem vendors in dalaran, write down the pieces you need and get the tabards for the faction you wish to start with.

Here are a list of the faction quartermasters and the respected list of goods they offer:

• Argent Crusade
• Kirin Tor
• Knights of the Ebon Blade
• Sons of Hodir
• Wyrmrest Accord

Rules for grinding reputation are very simple; a) always wear their tabard (if available) to heroic dungeons, b) do all normal quests associated with that faction, and c) continue with any daily quests that become available. It takes a lot of hard work and you will be doing the dailies once a day, everyday, but it pays off.

Another good place to find good gear is the Argent Tournament. Get in there, earn the rank of a Champion and you will be able to use your racial quartermaster, on site, for some exciting blues, or even purples. Plus the Crusader titles look good on anyone *wink*

Next place to get good gear, is to actually craft it. Here again the presence of a good guild pays off, because your guildies will likely have the designs and plans needed, so you only need to get the materials. To find available pieces, ask and look around what the various armor pieces have; titansteel for plate armor, arctic fur for leather, and frostweave for tailors. There are craftables for everyone, so look them up.

At this point, a lot of people tell me they cannot afford to craft the items, costs too much. While it is true that a frozen orb can cost up 80g, a titansteel bar up to 100g, making gold at max level is extremely easy. The best gold comes from quests, so you should make a nice buck just by grinding your reputation. Next off, search for daily quests. Doing 20 or more of then a day, can earn you an easy 300g a day. Practice selling the materials you collect on the way, or go out of your way to farm them, can make you two or three times that.

But it all takes the effort and you will not find anything for free. World of Warcraft is a game you need to spend time playing and there are very few short cuts along the way. The more you spend earning your success, the more people will infact respect you. It is a mark of a good and dedicated player when they know how to enchant and gem their gear, when they have factions on exalted, and display the experience of working through content and not just jump from first heroic to Naxxramas.

The Essence of a Guild

People who know me are aware that I expect a lot out of my guilds and I have a strict criteria of what kind of a guild I want to a part of. If a guild is unable to live up to my par, after repeated attempts of trying to improve it, I will usually leave for elsewhere. However, I do not really think of myself as a knit picker, and so I decided to put together a small view of what a guild means to me in the World of Warcraft.

Well, of course, has to do raiding, on the level of progression that I myself am at that moment in time. This is obvious, since I love to raid. It does not necessarily have to be a progression guild, but will not hurt. I have so much experience with casual guilds and watching them struggle with putting good raids together.

But the two most defining elements of any guild, in my opinion, are the guild leader and the raid leader, in my mind, two distinct people. These are two guild members who have the most impact into the nature and success of a guild. They set the tone and atmosphere in their respected repartments and are responsible for the most essential functions. Usually, the raid leader is also the guild's main tank, though this is not always the case.

I believe in a guild with a clear vision of what it wants to do and the guild's leader should embody this aspect. He should know exactly how many and what kind of members are apart of the guild, with a healthy firmness of rules. Does not mean rules have to be absolute or so strict you choke on them, but make sure everybody follows them and no one should get preferential treatment.

For the raid leader, the responsibility is to schedule and make sure the raids run smoothly. Same rules apply, to make sure bad apples are weeded out and everyone comes both prepared and follows the set rules. If either of the above mentioned, is a bastard, unqualified or unable to follow (or even set proper rules), it quickly reflects on the guild's performance and will eventually break it apart.

One huge mistake I see many new guilds do, particularly casual guilds that are based largely around close-friends, is at the beginning, reward seniorship by making their friends officers, as somehow as a sign of prestige or priviledge. I have seen it so many times and it is never anything but a recipe for disaster. This might work when the guild only has 15 members, but once they push to 30 and 40, it ends up with 10 arrogant officers who do nothing to contribute to their position as leaders, but simply reap the benefits, often getting priority on raid spots, what they are allowed from the guild vault, and distributed loot.

"There are no bad crews, only bad leaders."

Essentially, the guild simply continues to revolve around the senior members, with the rest viewed mainly as a space holding force to fill the gaps for 25-man raids, and worse, have no voice at all in anything that the guild does. Understandibly, the leadership makes the final calls, but it is the most common and obvious sign of a bad leader, if they are incapable of taking input from other members without referring to their status for confirmation about their qualifications.

For me, I don't see how a guild ever needs more than a couple of officers. Even a guild doing 25-man raids, only need a 2-3. If it is a particularly large guild, signing officers for various subgroups, tank, dps, and healers is appropriate. But still it is no sign that they are more "important" than anyone else. They simply are there to manage their departments.

If you now find yourself thinking to yourself that as an officer, of course you deserve more than non-officers, think about this; without those "lesser beings" you would be managing empty air, you would not have full raid groups, and if you truly and honestly feel you you deserve better rewards then they, does that sound like you're thinking about the guild's best interest, or your personal greed?

Because so far, I have not found evidence of a single guild that succeeded in good progression by only looking after a select elite and leaving others behind. The more division in gear and skill there is between members of a guild, the worse the it will do on the long run.

Server Cultures

I have done my share of server hopping, on a variety of characters, and although I do not mostly like to do it, it is an eyeopening experience. One does not automatically consider it, until you have experienced it, but servers across the World of Warcraft space are very culture driven. Many vary greatly from each other, in both the nature and level of players. They have their unique habits and odd quirks.

For one, the EU server of Blade's Edge, has a strange habit to promote the use of PvP gear, in PvE playing. I have written about this before and I still cannot understand where that comes from, but they do it a lot. It was never an odd sight to go into a heroic dungeon, have a look at your fellow gamers' gear and see just stacks of useless PvP gear.

On the Aerie Peak server, the current realm that I occupy, has shown me another extremely strange habit; the PuG demanding to show your achievements before you can join up, and today reading on wow.com I realized this is not just an Aerie Peak quirk, but a habit that spans a lot of different servers.

The authors at wow.com, and the subsequent bloggers that they read upon, are just as baffled by this rediculous trend as I am. What they demand is that, e.g. to join a Naxx10 group, you have to link your [Epic] or [Fall of Naxxramas] achievements. The same is for even stupidly easy raids like Vault of Archavon. In essence, you are asking that you only want people who are stupidly outgeared for the instance, in hopes for a quick and smooth run.

This sort of behaviour only truly makes sense if you are PuG'ing particularly difficult encounters, like Emalon or Sartharion with drakes on board. In fact, it is a sound theory that this is where it all started from, but has since grown out of control. Monkey see, monkey do, usually only leading to its own downfall because any experienced player (with a head to draw sense from) knows that achievements can be completed and epics acquired, without actually having any skill.

And skill is the key. I have witnessed, time and time again that the people you want on your side, are the people who can get really good results, even in the worst gear. Completing Naxxramas in blue gear, enduring obstacles and performing against all odds, can only be accomplished by having the skill to play. Yes, achievements and gear are good indicators towards it, but are far from reliable.

All you, really, end up doing is recycling the same dirty laundry, since you are recruiting people with the achievements and/or gear over those without it, ending up with the same bad apples as last time, and the time before that. How many times do you see people die on silly mistakes, doing e.g. Heigan or Thaddius? The answer is, everytime, whether they have completed it before or not.

Union of the Three Towers

It is no secret that summer is a bane for raiding guilds, for most of a guild's roster will not be available for majority of the raids and they rather go on holidays, camping, out and just generally spend their time with family and friends. However, this is no reason to stop a guild's progress. you can get away with a lot, even under difficult circumstances.

We almost did not get a raid together last night, but what first started as a walk in the park, just killing time, taking down easy bosses like Malygos, actually turned into a progression. Naturally, I was happy as a cucumber because I finally got my Malygos kill. From there, we were just suppose to take down Flame Leviathan on easy mode and call it the night.

Thanks to Maaki, our resident imbalanced mage, the suggestion circulated that we should go wild and try it with three towers. I had never done it with more than one and the guild had never done it with more than two. But heck, browse some wowwiki.com and after a 15 minutes of talking tactics, we were ready.

What we did was settle on simplified tactics. We only had one choppa for the encounter and my demolisher was the only one dedicated to throwing dps on the boss. Usually tactics say you need two on the boss, but we only needed one at a time. The first dps loaded into my catapult just before the fight started and my first button was #6.

We would then rotate the two in my demolisher; open up with pyros before first overload, reload before it came and again open up with everything once the overload came. As the choppa picked the dps up, my second passanger got on the catapult and the moment overload ended, he was already on the boss.

For the towers, we chose to leave out Life, for it has to be the hardest one, mitigating damage that the boss take and constantly summoning adds that you have to deal with. So keeping storm, flame, and frost we had to constantly dodge the various light pillars and constantly moving fire aoe but it was all surprisingly easy. The trick is to a) always empty you pyros on the boss when an overload comes b) do not take unnecessary damage from the elements, and c) do not let the boss hit you.

When driving a demolisher, always try to move to a vicinity of the falling pyros that both demolisher should be constantly shooting down. Your passanger should give you a boost for a quick getaway, if and when the Flame Leviathan chooses to come after you.

In the end, you will get a glowing achievement bar for your trouble and believe me, it feels really good ;-)

Ulduar Breakdown

Ulduar is, in every way, a step up from Naxxramas. Of course, your gear has to be much better than what you could venture into Naxxramas. It is designed for full naxx10 gear, but having bits from the 25-man instance helps a lot. The fights are now much more complex, and in my opinion, more unforgiving. I remember people complaining about the nuances of defeating the Four Horsemen or Kel'Thuzad, but I think it is safe to say, Ulduar takes it all much further.

Looking at the first four bosses, they are by far the simplest on the complexity scale, on par with the toughest in Naxxramas, but if you are geared and know the tactics, they should not constitute a huge problem. In fact, the same way that arachnid- and plague quarters in Naxxramas, the first four of Ulduar can easily become the farm bosses for most guilds that venture in.

From there, the fights quickly begin to get tougher. From the antechamber, both Kologarn and Hodir were quite fun for me. True, the new guys (me being one of them) struggled a bit on Hodir but after a couple of takes, dodging the flash freeze and falling rock became quite fun. The one annoying boss, was Auriaya and her two cats. I am by nature a tank, even if I spend most of my time as DPS, and as such I like fights that I can control. If there is chaos on the battlefield, it puts me off and the two cats are an epitome of chaos. The quicker you take them down, the better you will be off.

When you get to the keepers, you are truly inside Ulduar. Tougher than anything you have seen in WotLK, by far (not counting Sartharion with three drakes). We took down Thorim fairly easily, thanks to the fact that we had some experienced people on board but both Mimiron and especially Freya, were a bane. Both bosses share the fact that there are a lot of things to keep track of on the screen and it takes quite a lot out of you, whether it is avoiding mines, dodging shotgun shots, looking for the healing tree, or coordinating to kill lashers. And in middle of all that, you should also do some decent dps.

It is difficult to explain how hard we tried to take Freya down. We did it eventually, with a near flawless performance in the end but I have to say, it was an undertaking. People say that many of the fights in Ulduar are strictly a gear check, like XT-002. While that might be true, Freya on the other hand, is a check on team work. Everyone has to pitch in; to kill the trees, aoe the plants, kill the three children at the same time, and free rooted compared. After my experience, I am a firm believer that until your group can really work as a team, you will fail on Freya.

From there, the next two bosses are naturally only General Vezax and the old god himself, Yogg-Saron. I could not make the last raid so I was only there for two attempts on Vezax but the fights do continue quite complicated. For me, as a death knight, Vezax is very easy because I am unaffected by his most frustrating ability; Aura of Despair which prevents almost all mana regeneration. Healers especially however are at the receiving end of that fight though, without a doubt always running out of mana and having to dodge in and out of green puddles.

Yogg-Saron will be an interesting fight and I cannot wait to get a chance to face him on next lockdown. Research has promised an interesting battle of wills; as another fight with multiple phases and many small nuances. As a whole, I have come to enjoy Ulduar very much. The fights are interesting and very colorful. There are a myriad of challenges and there is much to look forward to, and not not in only killing Yogg-Saron but gearing up for the hard modes and beginning a spree for a bucket load of achievements.

Next Generation Emblems

The next 3.2 patch continues to raise a lot of emotion and debate about its new features and most notably, changes. I have already given my personal and quite hot opinion on the changes to my favorite class, the death knights. If you wish to read on it, check the article Latest on Death Knights. This time, I am going to briefly touch on the changes to the emblem system, as it has generated a lot of discussion in my own guild.

The main conclusion was that the patch is very much an update for the benefit of casual players and I have to agree. This is true especially when you read the blue post on the emblem system. In simplest terms, the various emblems become mostly worthless. The only emblem that continues to have significance, is the emblem of conquest. To accompany this, Blizzard is releasing a new emblem, called Emblem of Triumph.

Any instance that now drops emblems of heroism or valor, will in the future drop emblems of conquest instead. Emblems of triumph will be available from the daily dungeon quests, both heroic and normal, and from the new instances in the upcoming Crusaders' Coliseum. Exactly what you can buy with the new EoT, nobody knows but all and all, this is a welcome update.

To me, the idea of having 3-4 different emblems is not practical by any stretch of the imagination. It creates a long road of progression, where people have to climb through all three to get to the latest gear and content. While many point out that we all had to do it, it is not quite that simple.

Yes, for anyone in a quality raiding guild, getting through the ladder is not a big issue but it is most difficult for players inhabiting the casual guilds. We have to remember, not all of us play this game like a second job and some just cannot keep up with the demands of a hard core raiding guild. Instead, they will be stuck doing the same instances over and over again, trying to get the emblems and gear to advance into the next tier and usually will be sabotaged by rest of their guild. After all, progression is a team effort and many casual guild will never advance beyond Naxx10 and perhaps Eye of Eternity.

True, it is not very fair to those who actually made that journey but life is not always fair and I would point out, the game has changed quite a bit since WotLK first came out. Those who started progression then, had it, in my eyes, easier than those who are only now getting into the raid scene and playing catch up.

In the end, I feel advanced players are only complaining about this because they feel casual gamers are getting off easy, preferring if they would be put through the same hoops as themselves when they made their progression. But me, I still continue to support my matra that the more people that experience all the content, the better. It does not burst any of my bubbles that someone will less game time gets through the same content as I did.

And also, I would remind everyone, the gear that you can get with emblems barely touches the surface of what you need to successfully navigate encounters like the last bosses of ulduar. It will still require as much dedication, practice and skill to finish them off.

Tournament Review

Blizzard has once again graced us with a small sneak peak at some of the new content from the coming patches. The latest is a more detailed description of what the completed Crusader's Coliseum, promised to come out in the upcoming 3.2 Patch, something many of us tournament grinders have been waiting a long time for. These include the following:

"New epic 10- and 25-player raid dungeon with five encounters, with each encounter being unlocked one week at a time."

"New 5-player dungeon with three encounters that will include Champion’s Seals as each one is defeated."

"A more intuitive structure for harder encounters. This raid dungeon will have four different versions: 10-player, 25-player, 10-player Heroic, and 25-player Heroic, with each one using a separate lockout."

"New tier of armor and weapons that are modeled with Alliance- or Horde-specific themes."

There is nothing like cheering your players with a new coming up raid dungeon, however where in the difficulty scale will it be? My hope is that not above Ulduar the least, since though lots of people have been doing Ulduar, it is still a fresh raid dungeon for a lot of raiders. Another dungeon that holds challenges on the difficulty to Ulduar is much more desirable in my mind, rather than upping the encounters once again.

Anyone remembering playing some of the many Star Wars games? The common theme in the jedi games was always to give the player an option to be either good or bad, thus having two possible endings for the game. My first reaction to the "more intuitive structure for harder encounters" was a pleasing smile, but having now mulled the thought I am not so sure anymore. Like in the old Star Wars games, all this really does is forces you to complete the same content more than once - in fact, four times this time.

Aye, it is a nice thought that we have two versions, 10- and 25-man so the more casual guilds can go with the easier content but it is soon going too far. Anyone who has played 25-man Naxxramas knows that the encounters have only few aspects in difference to the 10-man versions and if the same paradigm continues here, all Blizzard is doing is making us complete the same instance four times.

Just so this review does not seem too harsh, let me finish by saying I am still pleased by the update and excited for its release. The idea that we will be getting new gear with special, new looks is especially welcome. It is hard to describe the disappointment in starting your death knight from level 55 with good looking pieces, only to end up in level 80 with identical pieces, and this pattern repeats throughout the WotLK content.

So for this piece of news, Blizzard takes the points home I think.