Alright so we're about to hit the end of week 2 of all the new content that came out in 3.1 Overall I have to say I am happy with what Blizzard has done with its content. Going in I was probably most excited about Ulduar and Dual specs but there are a lot of other things that was added that I have really enjoyed. I love the new fishing changes. The addition of a fishing dailies, fishing in wintergrasp for fish feast mats, and the reduced fishing time make fishing worthwhile again. Also the Argent Tournament is pretty fun. With all the money being spent on flasks and repairs its nice to have some new dailies to complete that will recoup some of those losses. Wintergrasp is also a bit more fun. Even when on defense you can take the offensive and push south into the zone and take out the 3 towers for an instant win. Also adding the timer on the Wintergrasp map makes for a really welcome addition.
PVP
Going into the patch I was pretty much capped out when it came to honor. Compared to pre Wotlk there really wasn't that many choices when ti came to paladins and PVP. You had holy which didn't terribly suck but was extremely limited and then everything else which really wasn't viable. Come 3.0 and the entire face of PVP changed. Holy has new toys to play with in PVP, mostly revolving around sacred shield and holy shock being great ways to keep up people while being Mobile and giving you some wiggle room to nuke heals. Protection which really isn't considered a PVP spec but still a lot of fun. With descent Block Value we could have insane burst potential with Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield, and Hammer of the Righteous we had some powerful tools to use. Couple that with the nice changed they added in 3.1 such as unlimited Divine Plea when attacking and a silence on Avenger's Shield it has become even more viable.
Thought when it comes to PVP my heart is defiantly in Retribution. I wouldn't touch retribution with a 10 foot pole back in BC. Crusader Strike was nice but it still didn't feel like it was where it should be to be really wanted in raids or have the ancillary abilities to make it useful in PVP. With 3.1 all that changed. We have a way to keep going without going OOM in judgement of the wise and we have more attacks to use when it came to actually dealing damage, and a few abilities to use to time to make the different between a win or a death.
During the first week of 3.1 they were calculating Arena points so there wasn't really anything to do during week 1. Also the new items weren't ready to purchase. During the second week they had given us back the our Arena teams but with the rating set back to zero. This is different from previous seasons where they start us off with 1500 and depending on win/loss you would go up and down accordingly. The main problem with that is that if you are an average player or even a bit above average you are going to loose about half your battles. Also depending on what teams you get paired up with it can get downright frustrating to just loose. During the first couple of seasons it didn't matter because as long as you played your 10 games you would get your gear but just a bit slower if you sucked. Last season it was horrible due to the fact that to get anything half descent would require a pretty descent rating and depending on the gear you have, your luck, and how good your partner was it was a tough goal to hit. After playing a lot of games that season I had 3700 arena points that went to waste due to not having anything I could spend on ti that would be better use then my naxx epics.
I love what they did this season. I decided to run a dual pally team for this season and we switch off from either ret/holy for survivability or ret/prot for extra burst potential. With them having everyone start off at 0 gives everyone something to work towards. getting at least 40 points per win makes you feel like you are constantly moving up and getting closer to the point of acquiring some descent loot. Our team did really well and we hit about 1540 after 150 games played before we ran into some bad luck and dropped a little bit. I did have more then enough rating to pick up some sweet 226 furious bracers which could even potentially beat out my pve bracers for raiding.
Raiding
We had cleared all the way up Iron Council last week and we were all excited to continue to get back in there and see how well we could do this week. Since Flame Leviathan was such as joke last week we decided to try and give hard move up with 1 tower. We had tried this with 10 man last week and we kept getting close but something always happened and we would get close but couldn't bring him down. The same thing happened again this week. We spent about 2 hours wiping on the boss with so many close calls. We got him as low as 2% but this being a fight where your health is constantly dropping with no way to recover but to avoid what you can.
We all really wanted to get to new bosses so we dropped the tower and collected our loot. After having a descent amount of trouble with Razerscale and Ignis last week we were all proud of ourselves when we basically one shotted both of them. They had put XT's trash back in and I have no idea what they were thinking with these packs. We wiped probably about 8-10 times trying to get it right and we just ended up brute force killing them with no idea of how we can get a clean kill. We had a few new people on XT so after a few tried he went down easy as well.
We decided to give another hard mode a try this time with the Iron Council. We kept Runemaster as our last target and again things didn't go to well. The beginning of the fight will always be the same spending about 6 minutes burning down the first 2 bosses easy but when it came to getting runemaster down he has a new ability that usually wipes about 70% of the raid. He puts a rune of summoning out randomly in the room and about 20 seconds a bunch of elements will spawn randomly going in different directions then blowing up for 16k each. Get 2 incoming at you at a time and you were basically dead. We had a couple of ideas about how to deal with these but having to wait almost 7 minutes to get to that point then wiping in seconds was pretty demoralizing. Again after a few hours of wiping we ended up killing Stormcaller last.
When it came to doing hard modes its defiantly possible to achieve with the group that we were going with. The problem is many peoples goals are different. We know we can do it but at this point we still haven't even learned the 4 watchers in 25 man yet. I think most people wanted to just move on and try to get as many bosses down normally before we try and go for any hard modes. We moved onto Kolgran which is where we had stopped last week. I don't understand where people get it into their heads that we're going to be 1 shotting these bosses. Sure the 10 man was a lot easier compared to the 25 mans but the heroic version is a different monster. The basic mechanics are the same but you have to deal with the increased damage going around and managing 24 other people as opposed to 10. There is just a shit ton of damage going around in that battle but we got into our groove and ended up defeating the boss after a few hours of learning.
We still have a major problem when it comes to the guild and that is attendance. We have quality raiders but on almost every night this week we were running 1-4 short to begin with. We were constantly bringing in people who had no right being in there. When dealing with a group of people that are working together morale is definitely a huge issue. A lot of people are excited to get in there but when people are constantly not showing up it affects the way we play. If we're constantly dieing to a boss with very little hope of beating the encounter it stops being fun. This is a game that we play and we choose to be here if we want to be here. The moment it starts becoming a game and a job people will stop showing up. There is definitely a delicate balance to pushing forward vs throwing yourself at a brick wall.
We hit the recruitment hard and we have gotten some promising people so I'm hoping in the following week we will get in there with a full group and have some bosses meet there end. We had also tried Auriya this week as well. Again a lot of people went in there expecting to just steamroll through her with little thought after it being so easy in 10 mans. While the basic concept is the same the mechanics are less forgiving. The pull alone takes a lot of coordination. We had to use line of sight just right with building threat and moving adds into the correct position. This definitely took a lot of attempts to get right. Once we did end up getting it right the next time we came in we changed the way it worked. After not getting it right we went back to the original strategy which worked pretty well. The bosses in Ulduar definitely require a lot more coordination and individual responsibilities. With Auriya you have to deal with 4 adds with stacking buffs, a raid wide aoe fear, a aoe damage component that needs to be interrupted during said fear, an add that spawns that pounces all over the place, void zones that spawn throughout the fight, a pack of 20 adds, and a sonic screech that has to have its damage split through the members of the raid. All this on top of the relatively hard physical damage she deals. While definitely doable it will take a lot of tries to get it right. While close to getting it this week we still haven't gotten it especially due to not having a full raid to split the damage component.
10 mans vs 25 mans
On one of the nights we didn't have enough people to raid we decided to do some 10 mans while waiting for people to show up. We split off into 2 even groups. Group A decided to try Flame Leviathan with 1 tower up while Group B had learned its lessen from last week and plow through the first couple of bosses. After doing the 25 man versions of these fights the 10 mans were very easy to deal with especially having higher level gear. Our 10 man group wanted to come back in on Friday considering that was our off night but we ran into the same problem we had hit the previous week where we have a few from Group A and a few from Group B but not the right make up to get a quality run going. Fortunately for us Group A never did get Flame Leviathan down so no one from that group had been saved. We asked and everyone agreed that it was BS that people hadn't been logging on to get 10 mans done and that we should just get 1 group together instead of hoping for enough people to show up for both teams. It usually ends up that our tanks always show up so we ended up pulling both tanks from Group A but one went holy while the other wen fury for our team. This eventually became an issue for Group A if they were going to run they would have to have one of their other toons respec.
Our newly formed Group had some issues in the beginning. We had a hard time with Iron Council so we skipped him and went to Kologran but he was also giving us problems. We had 2 paladins healing so we switched one of them out for a holy priest and the added aoe healing ended up being what we needed to get all the way to Freya. It was definatly more exciting for our group in 10 mans because we all knew that we were very running with a powerful group. Mimiron is next on our hit list and hopefully we can down him tonight.
When it comes to raiding guilds there is definitely a competition that goes on to see who can get the bosses down first. We have been up there on the progression forum being one of the few guilds who could do Sarth 3d. We take that same energy moving into Ulduar. That's is one of the reasons that we push so hard and try certain hard modes. But then the question becomes why are we here in Ulduar. Most of us enjoy being here but we're really here to gear up. You need that carrot dangling in front of you. The possibilities of getting a cool item that is going to help you beat the next guy keeps us going. Sometimes the desire to be number 1 and the desire for loot don't cross perfectly. There are a ton of upgrades in the 10 man that will help us clear the 25 man content. But do we take time out of our 25 mans to get the gear from 10 man and fall behind on the progression curve. Also do we do split off into 2 equal groups that may or may not raid and get 6-8 bosses down or push 1 super group to work on the 12th boss of the instance but gear up half the people.
We all have our goals and are enjoying the content for the most part even if we're not where we want to be. I get frustrated at the end of the night but when I wake up in the morning I go through the events in my head and try to figure out ways to improve for the following raid. I still rush home when my shift is over to jump on and meet up with my social network and take on another challenge together.
PVP
Going into the patch I was pretty much capped out when it came to honor. Compared to pre Wotlk there really wasn't that many choices when ti came to paladins and PVP. You had holy which didn't terribly suck but was extremely limited and then everything else which really wasn't viable. Come 3.0 and the entire face of PVP changed. Holy has new toys to play with in PVP, mostly revolving around sacred shield and holy shock being great ways to keep up people while being Mobile and giving you some wiggle room to nuke heals. Protection which really isn't considered a PVP spec but still a lot of fun. With descent Block Value we could have insane burst potential with Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield, and Hammer of the Righteous we had some powerful tools to use. Couple that with the nice changed they added in 3.1 such as unlimited Divine Plea when attacking and a silence on Avenger's Shield it has become even more viable.
Thought when it comes to PVP my heart is defiantly in Retribution. I wouldn't touch retribution with a 10 foot pole back in BC. Crusader Strike was nice but it still didn't feel like it was where it should be to be really wanted in raids or have the ancillary abilities to make it useful in PVP. With 3.1 all that changed. We have a way to keep going without going OOM in judgement of the wise and we have more attacks to use when it came to actually dealing damage, and a few abilities to use to time to make the different between a win or a death.
During the first week of 3.1 they were calculating Arena points so there wasn't really anything to do during week 1. Also the new items weren't ready to purchase. During the second week they had given us back the our Arena teams but with the rating set back to zero. This is different from previous seasons where they start us off with 1500 and depending on win/loss you would go up and down accordingly. The main problem with that is that if you are an average player or even a bit above average you are going to loose about half your battles. Also depending on what teams you get paired up with it can get downright frustrating to just loose. During the first couple of seasons it didn't matter because as long as you played your 10 games you would get your gear but just a bit slower if you sucked. Last season it was horrible due to the fact that to get anything half descent would require a pretty descent rating and depending on the gear you have, your luck, and how good your partner was it was a tough goal to hit. After playing a lot of games that season I had 3700 arena points that went to waste due to not having anything I could spend on ti that would be better use then my naxx epics.
I love what they did this season. I decided to run a dual pally team for this season and we switch off from either ret/holy for survivability or ret/prot for extra burst potential. With them having everyone start off at 0 gives everyone something to work towards. getting at least 40 points per win makes you feel like you are constantly moving up and getting closer to the point of acquiring some descent loot. Our team did really well and we hit about 1540 after 150 games played before we ran into some bad luck and dropped a little bit. I did have more then enough rating to pick up some sweet 226 furious bracers which could even potentially beat out my pve bracers for raiding.
Raiding
We had cleared all the way up Iron Council last week and we were all excited to continue to get back in there and see how well we could do this week. Since Flame Leviathan was such as joke last week we decided to try and give hard move up with 1 tower. We had tried this with 10 man last week and we kept getting close but something always happened and we would get close but couldn't bring him down. The same thing happened again this week. We spent about 2 hours wiping on the boss with so many close calls. We got him as low as 2% but this being a fight where your health is constantly dropping with no way to recover but to avoid what you can.
We all really wanted to get to new bosses so we dropped the tower and collected our loot. After having a descent amount of trouble with Razerscale and Ignis last week we were all proud of ourselves when we basically one shotted both of them. They had put XT's trash back in and I have no idea what they were thinking with these packs. We wiped probably about 8-10 times trying to get it right and we just ended up brute force killing them with no idea of how we can get a clean kill. We had a few new people on XT so after a few tried he went down easy as well.
We decided to give another hard mode a try this time with the Iron Council. We kept Runemaster as our last target and again things didn't go to well. The beginning of the fight will always be the same spending about 6 minutes burning down the first 2 bosses easy but when it came to getting runemaster down he has a new ability that usually wipes about 70% of the raid. He puts a rune of summoning out randomly in the room and about 20 seconds a bunch of elements will spawn randomly going in different directions then blowing up for 16k each. Get 2 incoming at you at a time and you were basically dead. We had a couple of ideas about how to deal with these but having to wait almost 7 minutes to get to that point then wiping in seconds was pretty demoralizing. Again after a few hours of wiping we ended up killing Stormcaller last.
When it came to doing hard modes its defiantly possible to achieve with the group that we were going with. The problem is many peoples goals are different. We know we can do it but at this point we still haven't even learned the 4 watchers in 25 man yet. I think most people wanted to just move on and try to get as many bosses down normally before we try and go for any hard modes. We moved onto Kolgran which is where we had stopped last week. I don't understand where people get it into their heads that we're going to be 1 shotting these bosses. Sure the 10 man was a lot easier compared to the 25 mans but the heroic version is a different monster. The basic mechanics are the same but you have to deal with the increased damage going around and managing 24 other people as opposed to 10. There is just a shit ton of damage going around in that battle but we got into our groove and ended up defeating the boss after a few hours of learning.
We still have a major problem when it comes to the guild and that is attendance. We have quality raiders but on almost every night this week we were running 1-4 short to begin with. We were constantly bringing in people who had no right being in there. When dealing with a group of people that are working together morale is definitely a huge issue. A lot of people are excited to get in there but when people are constantly not showing up it affects the way we play. If we're constantly dieing to a boss with very little hope of beating the encounter it stops being fun. This is a game that we play and we choose to be here if we want to be here. The moment it starts becoming a game and a job people will stop showing up. There is definitely a delicate balance to pushing forward vs throwing yourself at a brick wall.
We hit the recruitment hard and we have gotten some promising people so I'm hoping in the following week we will get in there with a full group and have some bosses meet there end. We had also tried Auriya this week as well. Again a lot of people went in there expecting to just steamroll through her with little thought after it being so easy in 10 mans. While the basic concept is the same the mechanics are less forgiving. The pull alone takes a lot of coordination. We had to use line of sight just right with building threat and moving adds into the correct position. This definitely took a lot of attempts to get right. Once we did end up getting it right the next time we came in we changed the way it worked. After not getting it right we went back to the original strategy which worked pretty well. The bosses in Ulduar definitely require a lot more coordination and individual responsibilities. With Auriya you have to deal with 4 adds with stacking buffs, a raid wide aoe fear, a aoe damage component that needs to be interrupted during said fear, an add that spawns that pounces all over the place, void zones that spawn throughout the fight, a pack of 20 adds, and a sonic screech that has to have its damage split through the members of the raid. All this on top of the relatively hard physical damage she deals. While definitely doable it will take a lot of tries to get it right. While close to getting it this week we still haven't gotten it especially due to not having a full raid to split the damage component.
10 mans vs 25 mans
On one of the nights we didn't have enough people to raid we decided to do some 10 mans while waiting for people to show up. We split off into 2 even groups. Group A decided to try Flame Leviathan with 1 tower up while Group B had learned its lessen from last week and plow through the first couple of bosses. After doing the 25 man versions of these fights the 10 mans were very easy to deal with especially having higher level gear. Our 10 man group wanted to come back in on Friday considering that was our off night but we ran into the same problem we had hit the previous week where we have a few from Group A and a few from Group B but not the right make up to get a quality run going. Fortunately for us Group A never did get Flame Leviathan down so no one from that group had been saved. We asked and everyone agreed that it was BS that people hadn't been logging on to get 10 mans done and that we should just get 1 group together instead of hoping for enough people to show up for both teams. It usually ends up that our tanks always show up so we ended up pulling both tanks from Group A but one went holy while the other wen fury for our team. This eventually became an issue for Group A if they were going to run they would have to have one of their other toons respec.
Our newly formed Group had some issues in the beginning. We had a hard time with Iron Council so we skipped him and went to Kologran but he was also giving us problems. We had 2 paladins healing so we switched one of them out for a holy priest and the added aoe healing ended up being what we needed to get all the way to Freya. It was definatly more exciting for our group in 10 mans because we all knew that we were very running with a powerful group. Mimiron is next on our hit list and hopefully we can down him tonight.
When it comes to raiding guilds there is definitely a competition that goes on to see who can get the bosses down first. We have been up there on the progression forum being one of the few guilds who could do Sarth 3d. We take that same energy moving into Ulduar. That's is one of the reasons that we push so hard and try certain hard modes. But then the question becomes why are we here in Ulduar. Most of us enjoy being here but we're really here to gear up. You need that carrot dangling in front of you. The possibilities of getting a cool item that is going to help you beat the next guy keeps us going. Sometimes the desire to be number 1 and the desire for loot don't cross perfectly. There are a ton of upgrades in the 10 man that will help us clear the 25 man content. But do we take time out of our 25 mans to get the gear from 10 man and fall behind on the progression curve. Also do we do split off into 2 equal groups that may or may not raid and get 6-8 bosses down or push 1 super group to work on the 12th boss of the instance but gear up half the people.
We all have our goals and are enjoying the content for the most part even if we're not where we want to be. I get frustrated at the end of the night but when I wake up in the morning I go through the events in my head and try to figure out ways to improve for the following raid. I still rush home when my shift is over to jump on and meet up with my social network and take on another challenge together.
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