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Was a ton of fun getting this down. Overall a pretty enjoyable fight.

We are now 2/8 in 25 man Heroic DS and will definitely get to 3/8 or 4/8 this week.

We are still looking for a couple of DPS, Healers, and a Tank/DPS…. probably looking for 3-5 more players to make sure we can keep progression rolling and avoid a night where 1-2 missing raiders pushes us back… again…

Anyone interested in joining a strong, fun 25 man raiding guild APPLY

Although I have yet to do an LFR I am looking forward to taking my Alt Hunter through at some point.

A lot of people sound happy about the new found ability to down and see endgame content they previously didn’t have the time or ability to see.
A few people sound upset about making what is supposed to be a very Powerful Dragon easy to defeat essentially killing the soul and RP portion of the game.

Personally I like the job Blizzard has done here.

My guild was able to go in and kill the boss on normal in the first week. It was surprising but I know a lot of other guilds that couldn’t do it so yes it was easier than I expected but not super easy. We had seen a lot of the content in the PTR and that is what contributed to such a fast and early clear. Now we look forward to spending time clearing everything on heroic and working on the achievements for our mounts. (We killed the first boss on Heroic Tue night).

What is nice is you now have 3 levels of difficulty to please 3 different cross sections of players.

LFR – Super Easy mode for the less skilled or players without the time to commit to full time raiding.
Normal – Medium mode for those with the time and decent skill. This rewards achievements so other people in the game will know the type of player you are skill and time wise.
Heroic – Very difficult mode. This takes a large time commitment and a lot of skill. These rewards and achievements also let others in the game know your level of involvement playing.

All in all, raiding now offers something for everyone. It honestly does not bother me that the LFR offers a faceroll option to see more content in the game. It also might be a gateway for players that would never even get to participate in a raid interested in trying it on some of the harder levels. I don’t know if people wanting to move on to harder versions would have the skill needed but at the very least they would have some understanding of the fight mechanics so they could at least give it a shot if the opportunity presented itself.

Anyway, there is a pretty long thread going over at the forums about the whole thing HERE

Feel free to chime in with your opinion, I think it is good for Blizzard to get feedback of how this is effecting their player base, or at least the cross-section of it that goes and posts on the forums.

As easy as that makes this final raid of an expansion sound our guild is pretty darn good, however I will say the normal content in this raid is easier than I would have expected. I am going to assume Heroic is going to be extremely tough.

It seems to me more than ever that Heroics are the new normals, normals are the new easy, and LFR is just a loot pinata or as another guildy put it, a fancy target dummy. I have yet to do a LFR but it sounds like they are pretty successful so I hope to get my Alt Hunter in one soon.

Right now I am working on my Alt Hunters transmorg set. She is a blood elf so I can have some fun there. It is not much fun doing a Transmorg on a druid cow… but I can fire kitty so whatever.

The new Darkmoon Faire is… well… disappointing. Maybe I am missing something but it seems to me that was a complete waste of dev time. Sorry Dev’s, sometimes you lay an egg and well I call it as I see it. The local is neat as well it’s design but the games and the whole concept seems lame to me.

As a side note for those kitties that have not done the last fight in Dragon Soul, everything can be shred from the front. Don’t know why it was so easy to do this for this fight but not for some of the previous but whatever… probably needed time to work on the faire

A lot of gamers I know are going to be playing SWTOR. Not sure if I am going to have time for that while raiding Heroic DS and farming my hunters last fer transmorg items but I will prob get into it before the MoP expansion.

A note on Transmorg, it can be fun and addicting. Download the WOW Model Viewer and start making sets. It is interesting to see how easy and hard making a nice matching set can be. The one I am working on now had only one option in the pant slot from a quest back in Northrend. Lucky for me I had not done it before. I recommend starting with a favorite weapon or weapons and moving on to a set that compliments it/them.

Hopefully we find some time for Heroic Throne of the Four Winds, which sounds possible as the RL and Co GM makes it sound like the last thing we want to do is spend too much time on Heroic Rags.

I have been fortunate with gear and all I have left outside of Heroic Rag drops…

• Widow’s Kiss
• Obsidian Arborweave Grips
• Choker of the Vanquished Lord
• Flickering Wristbands
• Upgrading Idol and Belt to Heroic.

Basically right now I am running a 4T12 set with non Heroic gloves and using Heroic Helm offset item. Because of running 4T12 I am reforging into Hit/Expertise to the cap and Haste above all else. Technically this is the way to go running 4T12, if you are not in 4T12 it’s best to maximize Mastery in reforge wherever possible and ignore Hit/Expertise caps just like the old days.

Scored big time last night getting Corrupted Egg of Millagazor!

I am totally loving Requiem. Great group of people all very good at the game, relaxed and laid back atmosphere, willing to work at achievements and progression… I can’t say enough of how nice it is when you find a guild that is just the right fit of personalities, play style, ability, commitment, hours, days, etc.

I consider myself lucky that I have been part of quite a few guilds during my WOW days that fit this description but even more so now especially with how many people continue to leave the game.

We had 4 achievements last night to get. The hardest was getting Do a Barrel Roll! We were able to get all 4 pieces, on 25 man no less, but it took some tries. Not an Ambi-Turner was a one shot, just kept turning him Right. Bucket List took a few as we kinda lost a little discipline (Reads kiting tank pulled turtles – <3 U Hewty!). Death from Above we one shot, not hard at all really.

We also got in a Heroic Majordomo Staghelm kill which has ended up on Video…

It has the ability to watch full screen in 1080p no less where you can see my name in the raid frame and my flaming kitty butt jumping around.

We also downed Ragnaros in Regular 25′s

Supposedly the nerfs have really made it all a lot easier though but since I have not raided with these folks or in 25′s it was hard for me to really know since they are all very good to begin with. We one shot Heroic Domo and Normal Rags and the Raid leader sounded pretty happy with that considering a bunch of new raiders in the raid.

I was lucky and scored some new upgrades… Sandals of Leaping Coals, Widow’s Kiss, and Shoulderpads of the Forgotten Gate.

I didn’t die to anything stupid and managed not to wipe the raid so hopefully I get to see some more action this evening, will update as my new adventure as a Horde player unfolds.

On that note, just an FYI…. If you transfer to Horde you have to go and get your portals to Vash and Twilight Highlands again…. was kinda a pain in the arse.

I am not sure the boost in AP is worth switching out better gear. I am not taking into account keeping an eye on the buff and re-applying mangle because there are add-ons that will make that trivial. I am going off just my numbers from one night of raiding and the overall feel. I won’t give it a thumbs down just yet as I had also reforged in the Haste direction and switched out a trinket for testing. I will report back next week, but I am thinking it is more of a break even after taking off better stat gear. My guess is if you can rock non tier Heroic items you are just fine breaking the 4T11 bonus to do so… of course, that is probably an understood anyway.

I started working toward the 100 mounts achievement and it looks like I will get there pretty easy. It takes coin, that is for sure but is not too expensive if you have been lucky and gotten a few rare mounts here or there. I believe I am going to make it to 100 with only getting the cheaper of the Argent Tournament mounts (the ones for 5 badges + gold), the PvP mounts, All possible faction mounts, both guild mounts, Brewfest mount, headless horseman, Violet Proto, and then just a smattering of dungeon mounts (Bronze Drake, Wrath 5 man hero, Rusted and Iron Drakes, 10 man ICC mount). Farming for old 5 man mounts could not be any easier so that is an option as well. A great site to figure it all out: http://www.warcraftmounts.com. Once I get my database of what I have totally updated I will toss up a link to give people an idea of how easy this achievement is now without trying too hard.

Things that contributed to our success…

1. We stopped kiting Nef in phase 3. We held her in place along the east wall and everyone (except the adds tank and healer) stood between her and the wall.
2. We pushed a pre phase 2 crackle. Not easy but needed to reduce fire in phase 3.
3. We did not push a phase 2 crackle. With only 2 ranged it’s not the easiest thing to do anyway.
4. We didn’t fail at interrupts in phase 2.
5. We staggered cooldowns very well after phase 3 crackles.

The fight had been nerfed in 10′s as phase 2 damage is greatly reduced but ultimately since we didn’t push a crackle in phase 2 it really didn’t help us much.

Our guild is now 2nd in 10′s progression on server and a big Congo Rats goes out to Team Synergy for their Heroic progression this last week. Team Heraldz hopes to get some catching up done but alias we have a main healer out for the month of May so not sure how that is going to go… ugh.

4.1 has made swipe downright silly. I will be surprised if it doesn’t get nerfed soon but we can always hope it stays. Multiple 20K+ crits from swipe is pretty funny though. I pulled 72K DPS on the Sindragosa trash as we ran into ICC to knock out the LK Heroic achieve we still needed for the guild. This was using swipe and berserk.

I am liking the new 5 man encounters released this patch. It is a great way to gear up for an alternate spec and the gear level prereq’s make for less failed runs. ZA is WAY too easy IMHO if you ran it back in the BC days. The fights are the same but have been watered down for 5 mans. I was lucky and got a couple boom upgrades right away. (Helm and Shoulders, raiding has been cruel for casting leather). ZG is harder but fun.

Now that I have personally cleared all T11 normal content I can safely say the only fight where ranged vs melee balance can be an issue is on Cho. I still switch to Balance for that fight. As far as Heroics go we will see. In Heroic Hal I am a tank for drakes for the first half of the fight and we do fine with only 2 ranged. As we push forward now in BWD Heroics I will report back our success with only 2 ranged and myself as kitty and whether or not I have to run balance for us to have success.

Al’Akir down!

We typically only raid 5-6 hours per week and although we can get through all our farm content in that time we found it difficult to get over the hump on both Al’Akir and Nef. We finally got Nef down too it seems (<20% wipe) and we will most likely extend the lockout to assure it happens before our MT goes on vacation.

Al’Akir is not a horrible fight it just takes 100% perfection from everyone in all phases… lol.

P.S. Start phase 3 at the top and work your way down, it made all the difference in the world… I mean a change to that way and on the 2nd try have no one die and kill the boss difference.

A big congratulations to the crew that was there, especially our uber DPSing Pally that healed the fight while hating every minute of it.

On that note, I had someone “in game” mail me about our tank opening. Sent you back a mail, read it if you get a chance… and by the way, can you tank for us Tue night 7:45 server to show the group what you can do? Oh, and yeah, you will be tanking Nef. Oh, and if you know a healer and some DPS that would like to do some successful raiding let me know… oh, I kinda have a plan… it’s in the game mail.

Some kitty Al’kir tips…

• Go crazy in phase 1 because you most likely won’t get to use shred in phase 2. Personally I will push to move some DPS to his backside with a healer but I don’t think we are doing this fight again until we do it on heroic.
• In phase 2 just do whatever you are told and don’t die.
• In phase 3 just do what DPS you can while mangle spamming.

Honestly this fight sucks as kitty and as soon as my boom gear is up to snuff I will be changing DPS specs for this fight.

You will not hear me talk in the video but you will hear some of my guild mates as mumble was giving me issues (mumble is hic version of vent running on a Ti99 somewhere in the south )