Patch 3.0, the New Bear, the guild

The title is slightly inaccurate, I'm not a new bear. This old bear decided to try a new trick tho.

The way things were going bear tanking was getting to be sort of a drag. Then I got sorta bored one day and realized I probably had enough crap in my bank to try Boomkin spec, something I'd always intended to do but with leveling 10 alts I got a little sidetracked. Well, the pally got to 70, got all his new toys and could effortlessly tank KZ and the early 25s, I even did okay in TK, though I felt like a newb the first few times I did Alar.

I got my lock up to 70, got his gear going, mage as well. I even dusted off the huntard for a few runs, but really I was hitting the skids in terms of interest in the game. Then 3.0 hit and I won the game. Literally.

With the new changes to 3.0 KZ takes an hour now, rather than 2-3. SSC is 90 mins and any heroic is super easy to clear in 20-30 mins. It feels like cheating, but the badges are nice.

But I digress. Ever try AoE grinding dailies? That was the single reason I leveled a mage, I may have to delete that toon cause boomkin grinding with starfall is Teh Shit!

But everyone knows the patch is fun. The other news is the guild, Absolution. We took on the 40-man Naxx before it went bye bye forever. Fully pugged and usually cleared - tho not always. We went back to our regular routine once the patch hit and naxx left. Now we're actively recruiting for the expac, tho not in the usual method.

We recruit via reputation, not by asking ppl to join. So far it's been fairly good. I think we've picked up something like 15 members this week. Time will tell if they turn out to be decent raiders - I have confidence they'll be fine.

Anyway - that's it for the moment. I'll post updates as we go. :D

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The Decline and Fall of the Empire

It’s a good title. Taken of course from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire but still, it conveys the sense that something doth smell most foul in the state of Denmark.

Titles are important. Labeling has become such a negative thing but I say if we don’t mark our passage through events then we have no reference points. I only say this because it seems relevant to what I see in-game, at least recently. The infrastructure of many raiding guilds and established raids is crumbling. I don’t know what life is like on other servers but Feathermoon seems to be showing signs of wear and tear.

I’ve heard of the disbanding of several world leading raiding guilds – even more are closing down around me. I’m sure pre-TBC the same happened but then I was insulated from the changes due to my membership in a quiet little casual guild. I’m still there but even we are feeling the effects of boredom, routine, grinding etc.

I’ve been challenging myself to find alternatives to being bored, leveling several alts at once etc. I’ve seen others do this as well. I know of at least 3 players who are taking multi-boxing to new limits – mostly they are shaman with 5 accts – running around with extremely similar names vivsi, vivsa, vivsw etc. It’s impressive and just a little crazy, which only makes it more impressive. But aside from that I’ve also noticed a sharp decline in quality of players, but that might be elitism on my part.

I pug a lot of instances when I’m leveling. When I was first leveling up I didn’t notice quality so much but I do remember what it was like – it wasn’t THAT long ago. Lately I’m surrounded by people who not only don’t know their classes (not uncommon) but refuse to listen, even to gentle advice. And I do mean gentle. I’ve been around long enough to know how not to rub the fur the wrong way – but man, what a mess I’ve seen. Tanks that won’t listen to the correct pull order even after wiping 3-4 times, gearing selections for hunters, stuff like that. The other day, I ran across a hunter wearing green cloth …. Come on folks, there’s plenty of gear out there that you don’t have to be running around in another classes clothes.

But again, that’s me and I’ve been somewhat spoiled since I started taking raiding more seriously. I’m used to tanks that can perform outright miracles, holding aggro on 5 mobs, pally tanks that can sweep up 30 mobs at once and simply laugh as they kill themselves hitting him, healers that can single-handedly bring a T6 tank from 2 hp to full health, etc. Yes there are a lot of great players, and sooo many people who want to be great but are missing the basics. I just wanna help ‘em all, ya know? Then again, there’re plenty of people who think they are God’s gift and make pugging even harder. I’ve seen a lot of this recently as well.

There’s a great lesson there for anyone looking. I ran with a geared MM hunter the other day. He was mid-60s and kept reminding the group that he had to go to Black Temple soon (presumably on an alt). But his style of play in a 5-man was terrible. He tried to tank everything in the Mana Tombs, leaving our tank – nice player but still learning – with the unhappy job of trying to keep up and control errant mobs. As luck would have it we had another hunter in the group – slightly lower in gear, less confident in his abilities, but thankfully quieter … or so I thought. Some friends and I run pre-BC raids on Sat nights, BWL, MC etc. We take everyone on a pug basis and use our own well geared tanks, healers and DPS for key spots and to lead the group. The lower hunter found us, we pugged him in (since I was on the same character presumably he noticed me), and he was as obnoxious as the other we’d been with earlier in the day. I think he figured since my toon was lower than his I must not be as good as he was.

Constantly questioning why we did things one way vs another, clearly had never been to any raids before, complaining about loot rules – (open loot by class, legendaries reserved for those working the quest chains) yelling and QQing because he lost a roll to a higher player etc. I put him on the ban list. Maybe I was wrong to do so, maybe I should have at least offered to help him out, quietly spoken to him or something.

But, to me anyway, it seemed pretty evident I was one of the 4 ppl leading a 40-man raid, helping to explain fights, pulls etc. My thought is that if you can’t even take the time to show common courtesy, then you’re probably not worth my time/effort. I don’t ask for a lot, you don’t have to be in epics, or even blues, maybe you don’t know your class well. Heck, I play one of almost every class and I’m ALWAYS learning about them, but one thing I need – I need good manners. The rest is gravy. But then again, I’m probably being elitist.

I saw him the next day too – he was in LFG, lvl 65 looking for a higher level raid. By the way, on the miniscule chance the player I’m talking about is reading this, the offer of help stands. I may not be the best on the server, but I know enough to pass along to those willing to learn.

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Neglected but not forgotten

I’ve been somewhat neglecting my blog as of late. Not through disinterest but merely due to an increasingly busy schedule. That and I have been focusing on a few in-game goals. Since I’m bored and have an hour to kill I’ll tell you about a couple of them.

I earned my epic flyer for my druid, not nearly as hard to do as I thought. And since I had the same question everyone is now asking me I’ll just tell you – I earned my money in two ways. Because my bags were always full, and my mail was insane, I finally dropped a 37 lowbie from guild and made a bank alt with him and a friend’s lowbie.

We bought ourselves a couple guild bank tabs and I started storing anything I thought would earn money at the AH. Packrat that I am I still have no room.

I had about 2500g – over the course of a few days. In addition, I have two 70s, so I started doing daily quests on each toon. With what I already had on hand, it took a week to get the needed amount.

I chose to make the expensive purchase for my druid for the simple reason that I mine with him, my hunter is a skinner. The epic flapper has made farming a far more pleasant experience now.

Other goals include leveling at least 2 more characters to 70 – currently 64 mage and 64 pally tank. I’ve been attuning a few alts for some of the raids we do and formalizing some of the raid leader tasks for our legacy raids.

Also there’s recently been a couple of people from a high-end raiding guild who are pug farming the first couple of mobpacks in Sunwell for loot, patterns etc. That’s given me a chance at a couple of nice epic gems for my gear.

I get the feeling WoW is in a kind of holding pattern. The scuttlebutt says the expansion will be out between late Oct and the end of the year so I figure I have time to work most of my remaining alts to 70 so I can chose the one I like the best to make the first run to 80. I’m guessing right now it’ll be a mage. I love tanking but the pew pew is irresistible and there are already enough T4/5 druids running around. We’ll see, 80 is still a long ways off and I’m not as fond of leveling now as I once was.

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A long time ago I found a lore posting on the forums and after reading it I discovered not only a renewed interest in the game, but a sense of completeness. Since then I've directed several newer players to the forum post as a means of enlightening them on certain aspects of their characters or the world around them. However I recently discovered that someone pulled the entire post. I looked about and couldn't find any references to it. Now it may be that Blizz saw this and decided it wasn't good, or perhaps it was inaccurate. It was certainly irreverant but it was a neat way to tie up a lot of loose ends and gave me the chance to understand who some of the guys I was fighting were. Click the link to see the complete post as it appeared on the forums ( yeah - I saved a copy )

Simplified WoW Lore

For all those just starting out, and those who just wonder from time to time what all these quests are about!

(Original Post: By Dawnbow)

Basic storylines:

1. Creation of Azeroth (that's the planet you start on)

~ First there were a bunch of big ugly dudes. By big and ugly, I mean think of lobsters doing it with crabs, centipedes and eyeballs. And add some goo, bugs, snakes, tentacles and acid. They were the "Old Gods" and they had 4 generals, one for each element. They basically rolled around this planet making everyone really miserable. (This is who the Twilight's Hammer worship!)
~ Then came the Titans. They're basically sexy good-looking guys. They killed all the old gods threw all their generals into the ground and made everything pretty and nice. Some bits of the old Gods couldn't be destroyed. Same with the generals. So they were sealed up in the earth and the generals were banished to the elemental plane. (note: This is where Ragnaros from Molten Core comes from! He's the Fire General!)
~ The titans Blessed 5 dragons (one of each color) each with a unique magic and charged them with keeping the peace on Azeroth. This is where the "Aspects" come from. Ysera (green - dreams), Alexstraza (red - life), Nozdormu (bronze - time), Malgyos (blue - magic), Neltharion (black - earth/matter).
~ They also created Earthen to reshape the world. After the Earthen were done they went to sleep underground. (These are precursors to dwarves! The places they slept? Uldur, Uldum, Uldaman and Ironforge!)
~ The titans then left to do other stuff. (There are a few Titan-like creatures still in Azeroth, though, like Maiden of Virtue, Ironaya and Myzrael - that's how we know they were sexy. XD)

2. Trolls
~ The first bunch of humanoids to walk on Azeroth were the Trolls. No one knows where they came from, but they are the oldest race on the planet (next to Murlocs, who don't count).
~ The old gods, it turns out, still had influence over the planet from their trapped locations, and they started a huge war using the Qiraj, a bunch of ugly insects.
~ The Trolls managed to force the Qiraj to the ends of Azeroth, sealing them in two places: Ahn'Qiraj, in Silithus, and Azjol-Nerub, in Northrend.
~ The Trolls had several internal wars, and spread out all over Azeroth. There were 4 major factions at this point: The Jungle, Forest, Zandalar and the "Lost" Tribe that went deep into the mainland.
~ The Lost Tribe ended up in the middle of the major landmass - called Azeroth at this point, where a fountain of pure energy (The Well of Eternity) was. It mutated them into what we know as Night Elves.


3. Sargeras and the Burning Legion
~ The titans charged one of their members with wiping out everything that was evil in the universe. His name was Sargeras.
~ He became upset because evil seemed to be everywhere.
~ He was tricked by some of the people he was trying to save into thinking that evil was SUPPOSED to be everywhere. Or he just got so pissed off at his impossible task, that he just gave up and started to think that Evil was the natural order of things. (When people complain about this piece of lore, it's because Blizzard changed it in TBC in order to make the Draenei)
~ He then decided that he was just going to corrupt everything with evil, and destroy all the good everywhere.
~ He made himself an army of demons (beings that are fully corrupted by dark magic) and called it the Burning Legion.

4. Nelfs and the Well of Eternity
~ The newly created Night elves (after fighting off the Trolls to protect the Well) worshipped the moon, believing she was the source of the power in the well. Others worshipped nature. They became Priests and Druids, respectively - this took some time to sort itself out, naturally. XD
~ The power of the Well fed them and extended their magic and knowledge. It may also have mutated quite a few of them into Moonkin/Dryads/Harpies, etc. (There are many myths about this that you run into, if you're very curious, check out WoWwiki's bestiary)
~ One of their queens (Azshara) realized that some of their people had strong gifts for Arcane magic. She called those Night elves "Highborne".
~ Azshara began to experiment with the powers of the well, and in doing so caught the attention of Sargeras - who began to whisper to her through a portal she had opened using the well's power.
~ Sargeras tricked Azshara into trying to summon him to Azeroth using the powers of the Well.

5. The Corruption of The Black Dragonflight
~ Basically after helping create the world with the Earthen, the various Dragons had gone to rest all over Azeroth. In the case of the Earth Dragon, Neltharion, he went deep underground.
~ While he was underground, the pieces Old Gods began talking to the great black dragon, convincing him slowly that he was the mightiest of all the dragons and he should take the powers of the other dragons for himself.
~ When Azshara began her spell, it roused his attention, because the very earth groaned with the horror if it - it shattered the single landmass of Azeroth into the word you see on your worldmap today!

6. Illidan The Betrayer
~ Illidan wasn't a Highborne, but wanted to train in Arcane magic anyways. This was probably to catch the attention of Tyrande (current leader of the Nelf priests), who was and is in love with his Brother, Malfurion (current leader of the nelf druids).
~ When Azshara began to summon Sargaras, Malfurion summoned forces to stop her.
~ When Illidan realized that Malfurion was going to destroy the Well (the source of all elf magic!!) he turned sides and told Azshara what was going to happen.
~ Malfurion was only just able to stop the ceremony in time, but much damage was done - demons were flooding Azeroth and the whole world was torn into large pieces - literally, the well exploded and created the Maelstrom (that huge whirlpool you can see on your world map).
~ Illidan managed to save some of the water from the Well, and attempted to make a new well in order to preserve magic on Azeroth.
~ His brother caught him and stuck him in a cave.
~ The Highborne who were caught by the blast of the Well were mutated into Naga. No one knows why they took that form, exactly, but there is some theory that when the Well exploded it allowed Neptulon, (the water general!) to escape his prison, and it was his magic that mutated the elves.

7. The Creation of the World Tree and Deathwing
~ When Neltharion came out of the earth, he convinced the other 4 "aspects" (leader dragons with magical powers) to give him all their power (into an item called the Demon soul) so he could seal the portal/slay the demon horde.
~ Naturally he tried to kill them all instead.
~ Now called Deathwing, Neltherion basically obliterated nearly all of the flights - they were barely able to scrap enough magic together to protect themselves and a scant few eggs.
~ Malfurion managed to steal the Demon soul with Ysera's help and eventually it was hidden in some undisclosed location - possibly the Emerald Dream (which is why it's now corrupted in the Wailing Caverns and the 4 green world dragons).
~ Deathwing trashed the planet in his rage, and Malygos, horrified that he had helped convince the other dragons into his brother's trap, went to Northrend in a sort of self-exile.
~ The other three dragon-aspects realized what Illidan had done, and headed to Hyjal.
~ The well that Illidan had created was corrupt - so in order to seal it, 3 of the dragons, Alexstraza (the red dragon of life), Nozdormu (the bronze dragon of time) and Ysera (the green dragon of dreams) planted and grew a magical tree over top of the corrupt well.
~ The three dragons blessed and charged the Night Elves to protect the tree from invasion and to destroy any demons they found, as well, they had to send druids to spend time with Ysera in the Emerald Dream. In return they would become immortal.
~ This tree was called Nordrassil, the World Tree. Teldrassil (the Nelf Starting area) is actually a SECOND world tree.

8. Draenei/Eredar/Orcs/Legion
~ As Sargeras found more things to corrupt he ran into a group of magic users who were very powerful. They were called the Eredar. Two thirds of them were hungry for power, and were corrupted.
~ The final third, led by Velan ran away from Sargeras, aided by the Naaru.
~ They traveled to many worlds but were always found.
~ Finally they landed on a world inhabited by peaceful shamanic tribes of a simple people called Orcs. They had found a new home, and called it Draenor, and themselves Draenei.
~ They were found here as well, by Archimonde.
~ Kil'jaeden (one of the Eredar leaders) tried to trick the leader of the orcs, Ner'zhul into tying his people to the Legion - promising him wealth and power. While Ner'zhul refused to submit, Kil'jaeden convinced his second in command, Gul'dan to drink Mannoroth's blood.
~ Gul'dan then used the blood to enslave the whole Orc race to the Legion.
~ The Orcs turned on the Draenei and waged a massive war with them.

9. High Elves and Humans
~ The Remaining Highborne, refusing to remain with their backwater cousins who had ruined their source of magic, traveled across the sea to make their own path.
~ So far away from the World Tree, they began to starve and die, their bodies becoming tiny and frail.
~ Their first king created the Sunwell, using a great magic to feed his people. This power saved them and they built a land around it to protect it (Quel'Thalas) - from the Forest Trolls (Zul'Aman).
~ Humans (who knows where they came from, but whatever) ran into the elves due to their lands being so close, and were shocked at the magic the elves had at their command.
~ The Elves thought the humans were amusing and began to teach them simple magic at a neutral ground called Dalaran.
~ Due to this magic use, demons were attracted to Azeroth, so the Elves and humans convened to create a guardian who would have an extended life and magical powers to destroy all demons that came into Azeroth.

10. Medivh
~ After a long line of guardians a simple human woman was made guardian, and in her task of destroying demons, she accidentally ran into a portal that led to Sargeras.
~ the will of Sargeras possessed her and convinced her that only her child would do for the next guardian.
~ She refused to give up her powers when her time came, and bestowed them on her son, Medivh - who was then possessed by the will of Sargeras.
~ Medivh grew up to be the most powerful wizard in all of Azeroth, led by Sargeras to open the portal to Outland, and thus start the war between the Legion and Azeroth anew!


11. (Warcraft 1) The First War
~ The Orcs came pouring through the portal en masse and tried to destroy everything in their path by cleverly building barracks and mining gold and building farms. Seriously.
~ The humans saw this clever strategy, and did the same thing. Sadly, they kinda sucked at it.
~ the Orcs torched Stormwind and Garona (a half-orc Rogue) killed King Llane (who you can kill in the Chess event in Kara!) who was the leader of the humans at the time.
~ The humans managed to trap and kill Medivh.

12. (Warcraft 2)The Second War
~ The Orcs, now led by Doomhammer, thought "hey, let's try the same thing, only make allies this time!"
~ Sadly, they were thwarted, due to the humans doing the same thing.
~ Gul'dan attempted to summon Sargeras to Azeroth, and Doomhammer turned on him (and killed him). This divided their forces and the Alliance kicked the snot out of the Horde.
~ Ner'zhul decided to take the orcs back to Draenor. So he gathered a bunch of artifacts to open the portal back up. One of these items was the Skull of Gul'dan (this is important later)
~ Ner'zhul opened the Dark Portal back up and he and the orcs all went through.
~ The humans decided that the Dark Portal being open again was bad, so they sent an army through to close it and kill the orcs. The army was led by Khadgar - that guy you see in the middle of Shat!
~ Ner'zhul tried opening a bunch of other portals on Draenor so the orcs could conquer other worlds. Unfortunately, the portals went ker-splodie instead.
~The human armies realized that this meant the entire planet would blow up, so they closed the Dark Portal from the other side so it wouldn't blow up Azeroth too.

13. The Corruption of Ner'Zhul
~ Ner'zhul and his followers ran through a random un-exploded portal into the Twisted Nether, and right into Kil'jaeden. Oops. ~ Draenor exploded (this is where Outland comes from; it's what's left of Draenor!)
~ Kil'jaeden tortured Ner'zhul and his followers for a very long time.
~ After a long period of time, Kil'jaeden drew Ner'zhul back out of the nether when he needed a commander for a new mission to destroy Azeroth - using a plague of undeath!
~ Kil'jaeden sealed his soul into a helm and a sword and encased them both in a throne of ice, which he then placed in the deepest part of Northrend.

14. (Warcraft 3) Fate of the Orcs
~ The humans took the rest of the orcs, cast spells on them to make them docile slaves and went about their business.
~ Thrall was taken as a young child and raised as a pet of a General (who taught him about being a leader of an army!). He eventually escaped due to his 'friendship' with a human girl, and realizing it wasn't nice what the humans had done to his people. (CoT: Escape from Durnholde)
~ Thrall starts setting his people free, becomes a Shammy - by training with the Frostwolf clan leader (Drek from AV), and joins forces with Grom Hellscream and Orgrim Doomhammer.
~ Doomhammer dies at Hammerfall, and Thrall gets his weapon, the Doomhammer, which he weilds to this day. In his honor, Thrall will name Orgrimmar after him.
~ Medivh (no longer possessed by Sargeras and randomly back from the dead) tells Thrall he needs to take his people and get out of the Eastern Kingdoms because a great evil is coming.
~ Thrall listens to him and takes what forces he can muster across the ocean.
~ Thrall meets up with a Troll tribe on an island near the Maelstrom, being overrun my murlocs. He convinces the Trolls to come with him to Kalimdor. They do so. (this is the Darkspear tribe - all Troll players in WoW belong to this tribe)

15. (Warcraft 3) Fate of the Humans
~ In the human side of things, a young prince named Arthas is told by Medivh that he also needs to run across the sea to Kalimdor. He disagrees (as did his father in an earlier scene!).
~ The undead plague begins to kill most of Lordaeron. Arthas goes mad with grief, trying to stymie the plague by even killing people ahead of time. He also kills a Necromancer (Kel'thuzad) who is leading some of the Undead. But it isn't enough.
~ Arthas opts to go to the source of the issue - Northrend.
~ While there he hears of a magical, powerful sword beyond all imagining - he figures that this sword may be the only way to save his people. (The sword is called Frostmourne)
~ Arthas takes up the sword, and is posessed by Ner'zhul, who had cleverly laid the sword out hoping to capture someone to become his new body.
~ Arthas goes back to Lordaeron and kills his father and overruns the whole land with the undead.
~ A human mage named Jaiyna Proudmoore was with Arthas as he began his decent into madness and upon hearing Medivh's warning, left for Kalimdor with a bunch of warriors, hoping to find a safe haven.

16. Orcs in Kalimdor
~ When Thrall lands on Kalimdor, he soon finds a group of people known as Tauren, who are struggling to survive in the Barrens due to Centaurs driving them out. He aids his new allies and they become good friends.
~ It turns out that The Legion knows where they are, and Mannoroth comes to collect what is his due. That is, he wants to take the orcs who were trapped on Azeroth back under his control.
~ The Warsong Clan (an orc clan led by Grom Hellscream) comes up against the Night Elves, who don't take too kindly to their trees being messed with, but both forces are blown away by the Legion coming and suddenly attacking. (the Warsong Clan does briefly make a pact with the Legion in order to overcome the Nelfs)

17. The Legion in Kalimdor
~ Tyrande, upon seeing what the demons are doing to her people, knows that Illidan might be the only one with enough magical power and knowledge to drive them back.
~ Illidan was eager to prove himself, and ran up against Arthas only to find they were evenly matched. Arthas tells Illidan about the Skull of Gul'dan and its immense power, knowing this will bring Illidan into the Legion's forces.
~ Illidan runs off to find the skull, eats it, and slaughters a demon army. He mutates into a demony thing, but still retains his personality.
~ When he returns, his brother freaks out and banishes him from Night Elf lands.

18. Arthas, the Sunwell, and Sylvanas
~ After Arthas killed his dad, he decided to bring Kel'thuzad back to life as a lich. To do that, he needed a sacred urn and some magic water.
~ The sacred urn was held by Uther Lightbringer, so Arthas killed him.
~ The magic water was the Sunwell of Quel'thalas.
~ Arthas and the undead marched through Quel'thalas, but an annoying high elf named Sylvanas kept trying to stop him. So he killed her and brought her back as an undead.
~ Then he corrupted the Sunwell and brough Kel'thuzad back to life.
~ Kel'thuzad went to Dalaran, got the Book of Medivh, and summoned Archimonde, Mannoroth, and most of the rest of the Burning Legion to Azeroth.
~ Archimonde destroyed Dalaran for sh*ts and giggles - what is left of it is in that big purple bubble.
~ Sylvanas repossesses her body, and takes part in the Legion. She eventually finds that Arthas' hold on her is weakening and plots to kill him (with the help of the Dreadlords). She fails.
~ Sylvanas takes some of Arthas' army with her, and they become the beginnings of the Forsaken.

19. Archimonde and the World Tree
~ Thrall and one of his Commanders, Grom Hellscream, run into Mannoroth.
~ Grom Kills Mannoroth and dies in the process, but in doing so he frees all orcs from the Blood Debt.
~ Jaina arrives in Kalimdor. Desperate for help, she turns to the Orcs and the Elves and helps drive back the Legion's forces.
~ They then realize that Archimonde is after the World Tree - they gather their forces, and try to hold him back but he is too powerful.
~ Archimonde grows about 1000ft tall and rips the tree partly out of the ground, while Malfurion summons a giant ball of wisps who basically make the tree grow into him, and eat him alive.
~ The tree is now ruined due to Archimonde's corruption and Night Elves become mortal.
~ Jaina and Thrall shake hands and call it a day.


20. Illidan, Kael'thas and Outland
~ Kael'thas, prince of the decimated High Elves, knows that it won't be long before the undead have completely destroyed his people, and now they are beginning to starve again (because the Sunwell has been destroyed - it turns out they were addicted to its magic).
~ Kael goes to his human allies, who basically treat him like garbage and put his failing army on the front lines to spare their own forces.
~ Kael is approached by Illidan and Lady Vashj who promise him a new hope - to go to Outland and take over there, since the Legion has lost so much it won't be able to control the place anymore.
~ Kael, Illidan and Vashj march to Outland to find salvation for their people.
~ Kil'jaeden is unwilling to give up on his world just yet, and kicks the crap out of Illidan, giving him a single chance to live. Go kick the crap out of Arthas.

21. Northrend
~ Arthas/Ner'zhul realize that their plans are about to foiled as the pesky Dreadlords are aiming to destory the Frozen Throne where Ner'zhul's spirit is.
~ Arthas rushes back to the Frozen Throne, knowing that the Dreadlords will head there to destroy Ner'zhul's weakened soul.
~ Arthas makes allies with the Nerubians along the way mostly by killing them and turning them into his servants, but whatever. It's friendship. XD They lead him through their old city where he finds and kills an Old God (or part of one).
~ Arthas is nearly there when Illidan shows up and he stomps the snot out of Illidan.
~ Arthas trots up to the Frozen Throne, puts on his shiny new Helmet and becomes the Lich King.

22. Alliance Resolutions Since the Last War (before WoW)
~ The king was kidnapped by the people who rebuilt Stormwind.
~ The humans who were far enough south to escape the full effects of the Plague are now recovering.
~ Dalaran is still in "protection" mode.
~ the Dwarves/gnomes have built a Tram from the Dwarf main city to the Human main city.
~ the Gnomes Blew up their home of Gnomeregan to stop a Trogg invasion. Oops.
~ The High Elves, for the most part have withdrawn from human lands.
~ the Night Elves have become a new group of allies, and attempted to grow a new World Tree.
~ Jaina has settled in Kalimdor, in Dustwallow.

23. Horde Resolutions since the last war (before WoW)
~ The remnants of the Old Horde escaped to Blackrock Mountain and the surrounding area under Warchief Rend Blackhand - the son of the guy who led the army in the first war.
~ The Orcs and Trolls have settled in Durotar.
~ the Trolls had an issue with a Dark Magic user, who forced them off their islands the Horde gave to them, so now they live with the Orcs.
~ The Taurens have gained control of their old lands, and have forced a Druidic alliance with the Night Elves through the Cenerion Circle.
~ The Undead who fled with Sylvannas have awoken to the life of the Forsaken - knowing who they were yet turned away for what they are. They joined the horde, though no one knows when or why that happened, exactly.

24. Dwarf History
~ Around the time the humans showed up, the Earthen began to awaken in their chambers deep underground. They had lost most of their original powers, but not their desire to craft things.
~ They called themselves Dwarves...or the humans did. No one knows for sure.
~ At some point in time, the Dwarves divided into three clans, that eventually went to war with each other.
~ The Dark Iron Clan leader, Thaurissan wanted to take control of the Clans, and in his digging in Blackrock Mountain, he dug so deep he came close to Ragnaros (the old general of the Old Gods) - who told him if he could be freed, he would send an army of fire to consume his enemies.
~ The resulting explosion destroyed everything near Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes.
~ The Wildhammer and Bronzebeard clans stood against the Dark Irons and managed to force them back into the mountain, where they wait to strike again, enthralled to Ragnaros.

25. Deathwing/Outland/Netherdrakes/Black Flight
~ After being chased relentlessly for his crimes for hundreds of years, when the Dark Portal opened up Deathwing took some of his flight and dozens of eggs and opted to hide in Outland/Draenor.
~ Gruul destroyed nearly all of the Black Dragonflight, but ignored the eggs.
~ These eggs became corrupted by the Free energy of the Nether, and that is where the Netherdrakes come from.
~ Deathwing's whereabouts is still unknown.
~ Without Deathwing's leadership, the Black Flight is being run by two of Deathwing's Children, Nefarion and Onyxia.
~ Nefarion is trying to create super-dragons by combining the bloodlines of various dragonflights.
~ Nefarion has also made a pact with Rend Blackhand, using his orcs to keep his secret plans of super-dragons safely guarded (BWL/BRS).
~ Onyxia is trying to take over Stormwind by subterfuge and disguising herself as a human - Lady Katrina Prestor.

26. Non-Horde Troll History
~ The Trolls that remained in the three groups - the Forest, the Jungle and the Zandalar (governing) Tribes were further seperated over time.
~ The Forest Trolls that ended up going into the Mountains became furry and became Ice Trolls.
~ The Jungle Trolls who were guarding the lands against the Qiraj when the world exploded (due to the Well of Eternity exploding) were trapped in a desert land, and became Sand Trolls.
~ Some of the Jungle Trolls (the Atal'ai) came in contact with a malevolent force which called itself Hakkar - it pretended to be the "Great Serpent" that all Trolls worshipped.
~ The Jungle Trolls began sacrificing each other to Hakkar.
~ The Zandalari Tribe didn't condone this behavior and banished the Atal'ai Trolls from Stranglethorn.
~ The Atal'ai made a new temple and began their rituals anew, convinced they would summon Hakkar into this world, and Ysera caught wind of it. She smashed the temple deep into the depths of the swamp, killing all the Trolls within, but she didn't count on some resourceful Trolls who were practicing nercomancy to save themselves by becoming the undead. (Sunken Temple)
~ Some of the survivors returned with renewed fervor to Stranglethorn and convinced the main tribes to start worshipping Hakkar.
~ Hakkar has been summoned and now resides in Zul'Gurub.

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Changing times/Seasons

I’ve noticed a certain lethargy when it comes to WoW lately. At first I thought it was just me, but then I started noticing that there are others who appear to exhibit the same attitude I have.

I read on WowInsider today about the pre-expansion blues, raid guilds stop raiding, teams fall apart, ppl leave on extended breaks etc – all because in a couple of months a new version of this game will be avail and all your purples will be toast.

Eh, so what.

Maybe it's just the new moon, but I’m not bored with the content. I’m bored with the people I know. Sorry you guys but it’s true – even married couples sometimes need a little space, ya know?

But more importantly, I’m not the same player I was 3 months ago. Six months ago I was a noob raider, then I got into a ton of raid ops and I think I got pretty good at it. I’m not great – or even better than most. But I think I’m a decent raider. Face facts folks, if you can show up on time, listen, follow basic instructions and treat your team mates with respect – you’ll make an okay raider.

Within 3 months of beginning I’d had my first guild meltdown, first raid meltdown and the first time I melted down on ANYONE. I went off - the one and only time I did so face to face with my fellow raiders. Since then I stepped back – dropped some aspects of Wow and picked up a few others. Right now I’m sorta learning healing as a tree (hey, I had a near complete offspec set) for an alt raid and I’ve left my huntard parked out on the isle.

But to tell you the truth – I like taking a break from WoW even more than I like playing anything right now. Maybe it’s just me after all. My fav thing to do in-game these days is the legacy raids – molten core in 2 hours rocks when you’re a 62 mage. But other than that it’s spring and I smell the rich loamy wet earth outside my window. The all-day rain soakers and the bright crisp sunshiny mornings have awakened this old bear from his winter’s slumber under the piles of Wowdom. No worries, though – soon I’ll be back to my old bearish self and we’ll go kick some butts. In the meantime I might work on leveling my profs and getting another alt to 70.

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Kara wrap - finally!

I’ve been promising this for months but every time I turn around I have yet another RL demand. So here – in it’s short and sweet format – is the breakdown on the rest of Kara.

Since it’s something of a moot point right now I’m not going into a great deal of detail – there are numerous sources on this and if you’re in the market for one – check WowWiki.

We need to wrap up 3 bosses, Nightbane, Netherspite and Prince.

Nightbane begins on a terrace near the side entrance to Kara. In fact, you need to clear some of the bosses (Opera I think) in order to gain access thru the side door. There’s some trash in here – follow my notes from Kara Part 5 for the clear to Curator for this. In a nutshell you have to fight a dead dragon. Yep, dead. As in skeletalbutstillabletoflyandbreathingfirewithteensylittlepalsthatwillkickyourbehindifyoucomeunprepared.

That’s Nightbane. You can only “summon” him if you’ve completed the quests for this – and it only takes one person to call the bugger out. The basic fight is a tank n spank with 2 unique characteristics. One is Charred Earth – a stationary flame ground aoe affect – don’t stand in it. Easily avoidable – however keep your raid casters/ranged DPS grouped or it may spawn all over – no idea if this is theory or fact – but it seems to work.

Also he flies at 75% 50% and 25% health – during this phase the group halts DPS and huddles – you get a shared AOE attack and some skeletons spawn – burn em QUICK – mark em if you need to but do it – NB only is in the air for 30 secs or so. The one other annoying thing NB does is fear. Ranged DPS and healers can EASILY Avoid this by standing at max range – but when coupled with the aoe ground affects it makes for a fluid fight – flask up – Salv everyone needing it and bring out your heaviest hitters.

Netherspite is a huge pain – at first. All you have to do is learn the Beams – there’s tons of great guides on this and you should read them for the fights cause there are multiple ways of doing this fight.

And finally is Prince. Which prior to 2.4 was easy – if you’re healers could last and if your DPS could dodge and IF your hunters had mana pots. Because Prince packs a wallop and he calls down staionary flaming elementals that do a massive aoe ground fire attack for about 3 mins. No you cant stand in it and he has a thing he likes to call Enfeeble that drops you to 1 hp for a set period of time – no if’s and’s or but’s – which coupled with AOEs sorta bites.

But in 2.3 you could stand in a certain spot and avoid the fire dmg – you had to know where to be.

In 2.4 ….. in the newest patch I think the fire actively looks for you. Blizz removed the safe spots and now whenever my ZA geared raid goes in there we wipe cause the fire dudes ALWAYS drop in a circle around Prince. I’m not saying they do it on purpose – but I think we’re pretty much done with prince. I cant see our wasting more time on him – it’s too random of a fight. But if you’re really interested in trying it out hit up WoWWiki for pointers.

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The Name of the Toon

Of all the things that gets me jazzed about World of Warcraft I think one of the most fun things to do is to create a new character. The feeling of making a new avatar, coloring the hair, choosing the facial features etc – all sorta make my bear heart warm n fuzzy inside. True, there aren’t many options so chances are you’ll end up looking like Butters standing next to Cartman sometimes, but the one defining convention of any RP game is the name you choose.

We’ve all seen and chuckled, or grimaced, at the names of characters running around capitol cities. I’ve seen some downright offensive names and have promptly reported such. I refer to those specifically racist or sexist in nature. I’m not a person who goes about telling people their business but I was taught to stand up against injustice and intolerance so when I see someone running around with a moniker that would make my old platoon sergeant wince, I am not shy about calling in the ban hammers from the GMs.

But that simply illustrates the less inventive or less creative side of the game. I’ve seen innocuous, forgettable names that spark no interest and often I wonder why didn’t they spend a few minutes racking their brains, or maybe hunting down some good references online before choosing Pallytankie as a name?

Before I launch into my ideas on where to get ideas, I’ve got to say that I’m more or less guilty of the offense of innocuousness in naming my toon. Agro isn’t very creative and while I do enjoy the name recognition, I wish I’d spent as much time as I had on my horde-side druid Ursal. But for all that Agro is a great name recognition tool – a lot of other people seem to think so too cause there’s at least one guy named Agro on most of the servers I checked on Armory.

Ursal is a common reference in the historical record. It refers back to many ancient civilizations’ deities – but I liked it because it seemed somewhat common in English – translating roughly into Bear from the Latin “Ursa.” English is based on Latin and we still use a great many Latin words in everyday language.

I often use dead languages to name my characters, or after the deities of dead civilizations – don’t use names from modern deities since you can get into trouble using some of them. I would imagine Native Americans won’t look too highly on anyone usurping the names of sacred lore or rituals for a game. You can argue all you want about freedom of speech et al ad nauseum, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a game and if you do something intentionally to annoy someone then you’re really only detracting from your fun playing the game – Old Goblin saying, don’t borrow trouble, it’s always paid with compounded interest.

But you can find numerous references on ancient languages or peoples whose everyday common words can fit the bill of needs. The Aether Rays in Blade’s Edge mountains are named for Aether, ether, æther – Greek, roughly meaning or referring to a fifth element in alchemy, that which we now call “space” or “heaven,” once thought to be the medium through which light moved rather than simply a vacuum.

There are common references in the game to such things. All are taken from ancient history or languages or even proper names for long-dead people. Uther the Lightbringer … sorta sounds a bit like the Arthurian legend doesn’t it? Possibly loosely coupled with Judeo-Christian roots as well but you get the idea. Writers often borrow from such sources for inspiration.

When making a new character I often try to imagine a bit of a back story – it’s the RP in me I think that does this. I don’t normally RP when playing the game, but I do often think of this while I’m playing. What would Agro the Bear do when confronted by superior odds defending the body of a wounded comrade, while engaged in exploring the halls of an ancient castle tower, rife with deadly enemies? Why, attack of course! As if Agro had ever run from a fight … pfft.

What would Paladin Defender Thorney, so named because his bleary-eyed father ran smack into a thorn bush when rushing to summon the mid-wife for Thorn’s birth, do upon being confronted by 3 of the evil Horde, after flagging himself blessing a fellow of the Alliance? Stun, Bless, Judge, Consecrate and swing, until they or he dropped. It’s not so hard to do really, the imagination part I mean. (3:1 odds against the horde can be a bit of a pain). Imagination is what you want it to be.

So the next time you roll, take a minute to think of what you’d like people to see. I’ve seen some rather silly ones that really don’t make sense to me, a night elf who RPs as a paladin, uhm… might wanna stick to stuff you can actually do there bud… sorta helps to stay within the confines of the game. But hey – if you wanna go nuts and use the crayons totally outside the lines that’s the great thing about WoW, I don’t have to listen to ya.

If you’re looking for some good reference material then you could start by looking for lists of words in foreign or dead languages. Greek and Latin are great for starters, though you may not wish to stop there. I also read though old histories sometimes – you can find short, down and dirty descriptions on Wikipedia, not the most accurate of encyclopedia reference tools but it doesn’t matter too much when you’re not writing a thesis.

Biblical references work too – though I generally stick to historical names. I used Biblical names for my hunter’s pets. Ancient Egyptian, Eastern or European cultures all have proper nouns or names you can use, the limit is your gut instinct and the amount of effort you wanna put into it.

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Legacy Raids and why we do them

Legacy Raid refers to the old level 60, 40-man raids that were the rage before Burning Crusade hit the shelves. Things like Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Onyxia, AQ20/40 and Naxx. You may or may not be surprised to learn that those raids are still quite challenging, even if you bring in your level 70 buddies.

The reason is that raiding at any level requires coordination, leadership, listening and no small amount of individual player knowledge regarding their class and abilities and how to use them in conjunction with others.

Let’s take Molten Core for example. It’s a relatively easy raid, can be run comfortably in a couple of hours now- pre-BC raid guilds were doing this in 5-8 hours after weeks of working at it. But I’ve seen uncoordinated groups of level 70s wipe REPEATEDLY on these due to inattention and lack of skill.

I never raided pre-BC. I was on the game for about a year before the expansion hit but I was in a guild that wasn’t into raiding and consequently, I didn’t’. But when Kara came out and I capped my second toon, I felt the need to find something new. So while stealthing the LFG channel one Sat night I ran across a group of pre-BCers who were going to run Molten Core. I grabbed my 70 and headed for Searing Gorge. The rest is history. It was so much fun I specifically leveled a paladin to 55 so I could join that raid and get my Tier 1 set, aka my Bananadin set.

But why do it? I mean Tier 1 gear may be nice for a 55 but for a 70? Why bother? Well, I guess it goes back to a combination of things. Nostalgia is def part of it, RP, and training new raiders is always a good thing – remember there are lots of folks out there who don’t know how to. Also, you find good people from small guilds who want to learn and can be an asset to the ‘real raids’ later on. So it’s sort of a recruitment tool as well.

But I just figured something else out too. Some of the best content written for this game has roots deep within those legacy raids. Ultra-long quest chains that can only be accomplished through the nitpicky world of repeat raids in places like BWL or AQ40. Boring? Perhaps to some, but the essence of getting the full value of the money you spent on this game is getting into the details of what came before Karazhan and ZA – it not only helps you flesh out the lore, it gives you some unique content that most people don’t get to do, and frankly, most will never see.

These quest chains can take months to complete but the end result is fun – world events involving massive raids – up to 100 players defending a village from invasion, while downing a massive dragon and fighting alongside legendary NPCs. Don’t think that happens? We did that last weekend on Feathermoon.

I main tanked a giant shark - 100ft long in the waters off Azshara. I got to take on a wicked Satyr in Duskwood of all places. And if you think it was easy, well, to a degree it was, but if anyone died the Twilight Corrupter gained LEVELS, not hp or powers but LEVELS. I’ve read that bad attempts resulted in a level 90 bad guy – yeah – 90.

There are others too – rewards for these can be Legendary items – you know, the Orange ones. Who cares if it’s for a level 60 player – it still looks cool as hell and will turn heads no matter where you go. Even the top raid guilds won’t have many people who have those items.

So now you have bragging rights. And if you find a group running those instances you can usually bring your level 60. Getting epics for a level 60 is pretty cool. Sure the outlands gear is better suited to leveling – in most cases, but don’t sell the tier items short. If you can ever get into Naxx before they pull it the tier 3 items can be used all the way to Kara, yeah they’re that good.

So next time you’re wandering around Feathermoon on a Saturday night, right about 6:30 or so, pop into the LFG channel and see if we’re hiring for the night. Anyone can come - based on the raid we’re doing. MC is 55+, BWL and AQ tends to 60+. If there is an attunement requirement we often run that for folks that need it before the raid starts.

Look for Agro, Firac, Teur, Chirax or Thorney. I won’t give out the raid leader’s name ‘cause he’s a high-end raider who spends a lot of time in Hyjal and BT – I’m sure he’d appreciate the enthusiasm but would rather I or one of my counterparts dealt with the details.

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Welcome Back

The last few weeks have been crappy in terms of demands on my time. I've been able to get on WoW a few times but so much has happened that I'm barely on - just keeping up my commitments.

Which brings me to a retroactive announcement. I pulled out of my Friday Kara group. There was a whole lotta drama behind that one but for the most part it's history. A quick recap should suffice. I was on the verge of pulling out, sorta hemming and hawing over it when I got into the last run I did with them 3 weeks ago.

During the run our main tank was continuing her BS attitude, publicly calling out mistakes, deriding people and generally being rude as hell. Some of the other raid members were as annoyed with her as I was and a few started answering back. Things quickly spiraled out of control. I'd had a long day, hadn't really wanted to spend the night in a raid that wasn't fun and was tired - yes you can guess where this is going.

This old bear Laid Down the Paw. That's right. Papa Bear got up on his hind legs and knocked the entire raid on its ass, threatened to call the raid right then and there if that nonsense continued and further called out ACTIONS (not people but those doing the actions knew what I meant) that were reprehensible (ya I used that word too - seriously, don't piss off a pissy old bear).

I ended by saying that this was nonsense and that they could find themselves a new OT beacuse I didn't feel like wasting a Friday night I could be spending with my son.

Things sorta got quiet after that. A few of the people privately messaged me with /cheer and a few others I haven't spoken to since. But that was the catalyst for me. I contacted the rest of the officers the following Monday and told them I was done. I didn't have time for juevenile antics and I needed more time to myself anyway. Since then the raid has died. They tried to pug a few people in - 7 last I heard - but their issues with the MT caused that to end in a mess.

I'm happily raiding with my hunter's group - we're moving into ZA tonight for a more serious run than we've done previously. They really want me for Sat nights but I can't commit more than every other week. I've taken to spending every other weekend with my little one exclusively now so that sorta hurts them, but I was always upfront that Sat nights were too difficult for me to do much more than AH or farm mats.

Oh, I manage to get into a legacy raid as a pug - we run them every weekend, but more often than not I end up putting someone on follow for part of the run since my little one will wake up and needs his papa for a bit. Gruuls and Mags would be really nice- but I just can't give up daddy time.

Which brings me to another reason I've been absent - daddy time plus family time. We lost a grandpa recently - sadly we'd seen it coming for a while (inoperable cancer) but still, one needs to take time to care for the things and people that need caring for so WoW definitely took a back seat.

And one other fun thing - I hate my job. Okay, I know I'm in the club now, it's called Everybody and we all meet at the bar on Tuesdays, but I really hate my job mostly because of my inept boss. So I've been spending more time looking for a replacement (job not boss.. well.. boss too I suppose).

But I've set goals and am working on them so I feel that with not raiding as a bear, and with getting my family stuff taken care of I'm ready to get back into playing a bit more.

See you out there! Look for my Paladin Thorney - lvl 62 on Feathermoon!

Pally tanking is serious bidness and man is it fun!

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Well howdy all, Life's been a bit nutso lately so I've taken a short break from posting on a regular basis. It's the standard fare, work, family etc. But I owe you all a continuation on Karazhan and I haven't forgotten, I just haven't had time to write it lately. In fact, things have gotten so tight on time lately that I've given up my Friday night raid in order to spend more time in the real world. So it shouldn't be much longer before I get the next few bosses up here. One other thing that may interest you is that I've started my journey to Zul'Aman on my hunter, and have even gotten a few invites as a bear. So dear readers, look forward to a run down of those bosses in the weeks to come!

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hard to post now

Work and life caught up with me about 10 days ago - I'll get back to updating when I figure out what that big yellow thing in the sky is doing there and why I only see it for a few minutes in the morning.

Type rest of the post here

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Kara - Chess Event

Last time I blogged a bit about Kara bosses I touched on the Chess Event and I mentioned I’d cover the that and perhaps Prince Malchezzar. Well here ya go.

Chess is easy peasy. After you leave the Shade’s room you go down the ramp then up to the left. Your locks need to pop Detect Invis on everyone (locks, get in the habit of doing so without being asked – you’ll find it’s a huge time saver) and your tank will mark up the first of two, 4-mob pulls. These are ghosts, without DI you’ll risk losing LOS on them in the middle of combat unless they are hitting you.

Clear these mobs, then the ones that follow them – pick up the books lying around and move on up the next ramp at the far end of the room. More ghosts here, and once cleared you’re gonna see a new mob – they look like the dudes up in Netherstorm and they are linked to Netherspite, who is actually very close to you now.

These guys can be taken one at a time – there aren’t too many here and they have an agil debuff, but they go down easy enough.

Moving through this room and down the right side ramp (up the left side one leads to Nether) and you’ll have one final room to clear before heading down into a room with a repair guy. You need friendly rep with the Violet Eye to use him, and he also sells reagents – so get em while you can!

After topping off you go through the double doors and down a small ramp into the Gamesman’s Hall – where you see a large chess board and two sets of chess pieces – horde and alliance.

Your side is whatever faction you are aligned with – makes sense eh? Since I’m an alliance player I head to the right side and pick a piece to stand behind. You get the option here of Elemental (rook), Horse (knight) Healer (bishop), Mage (queen), King Lane (King) or one of the pawns. The pieces move as one would expect with some slight cheating as compared to real chess. Once someone talks to the King all players can then talk to their piece and you ‘enter’ them as a player. This means you are now controlling a chess piece on the board and you have a ‘pet bar’ your action bar icons should now reflect a few new choices (check the lower left side of the screen where your attack button and your hot bar items 1-4 are located).

Knights can move I think 3 spaces, everything else is limited to 1 at a time. You’ll want someone to move the pawn in front of the king so he can get out on the board – everyone else should be able to make their own way.The way to win is to kill the king on the opposing team, some folks try to take down the casters or healers first – I’ve done both and have never lost at chess. Seriously, if you lose at chess then you need to rework your strategy because it’s simply the easiest epics you’ll ever get.

Once you win DO NOT, under any circumstances, talk to anyone in the room – not Medivh or the chess pieces. If you do you’ll place a silence debuff on the raid that lasts a very long time. You can let your raid leader or loot master open the chest at the end of the hall, let them dish the goods then everyone takes a turn opening it for their badges – Free Lootz.

Once done gather on the center of the chess board. I’ll take you up to Prince then we’ll halt for the day – but in reality – you’d want to drive on to Prince and clear that fight, if you can.

At the far end of the hall is a double stair similar to the one you entered through, there are a total of 5 mobs in there, have your MT pull the single pat back to the board – you all DPS him down – MT and OT get the next two, same drill, then you all move on up and into the room they were in to pull the last two from what should be the right side, as you entered the room.

Once cleared there’s a spiral stairs leading up – your choice here – the raid goes all the way up, hugging the inside of the stairs to avoid the hidden mob that’s near the door on one of the landings OR

To be completely safe you can have your tank run up the stairs a bit and get that mob and bring him all the way down into the main room so you can work with some space.

If you elected to pull the odd add, you can stand at the top of the stairs and let your tank take the guy at the very top while you do stand-off attacks, or you can have the tank take him in the top central room and the raid can bum-rush him. Your call, if you didn’t kill the extra add then you have to bring the entire raid into the top room or you’ll pull the loner from below.

Once they are down/bypassed go out the next hall and stop by the door. Your opponent is now Prince Malchezzar – and he’s tied with Nightbane as the hardest boss in Kara.

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Cogitations on Cat Gear/Stats for Kara

One of the readers of this blog posited a question for me regarding my interpretation of the table I posted on Karazhan minimum requirements. He asked why I didn’t post a set of stats for feral kitty and since I’ve seen this question a few times I thought I’d write up a formal post in lieu of replying directly in the comments.




There are a number of good items you can get for feral cats and I think when I see this question posed, most people tend to answer it in terms of what gear to get, not what stats you should have. To that end I’ll post a couple of links I ran across from the forums, but later on I’m going to digress deeply into my thoughts on cat gear.

Here are a couple of links I’ve found that can perhaps help out Link 1 & Link 2 .

I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is a good target starting place for cats. The basic gear choices for kitty are (one bear’s opinion here) – epic crafted chest from LW, hourglass trinket from BM, Abacus trinket from Arc, The clefthoof hide leggings, the elekk leggings or the x-52 pilot leggings from a quest in Netherstorm, the staff from Bot regular OR the Staff of Beasts from Nagrand, which is easier to get. Some folks like the hammer from PVP better than the staff Illhoof drops – but I hate PVP. I only did it to get my bear shoulders. The rogue gloves from Shattered Halls, Helm of the Claw was my DPS hat for a while (with the +12 agil meta), any decent DPS leather bracers – any of the nice DPS capes – there are several in the dungeon sets. I think I had cloak of the inciter but that wasn’t highly recommended for cats.

Mmm, If you don’t want to waste a lot of time getting gear – get the assassination set – rogue dungeon set 3a. That’s not a bad set to start with you could prob get one in a week or two. Other people will wax philosophically on the virtues of various gearing choices as a start, but I was always more focused on the tanking aspects. I gambled on picking up kitty gear as I went along, and I did.

My Digression
The KZ table I published was based on one I found on TenTonHammer, I freely admit I absconded with their table and I even noted why, because I was annoyed that I couldn’t deep link you directly to it, which in my opinion made their version all but useless – since it was hard to tell people how to find it, Go to this site, search for these words, click the third link, sacrifice a small mammal at the dark of the moon … BAH!

In all fairness I’ve even updated their chart, added color to make it easier to read and a few tweaks of my own and have since altered it based on suggestions from readers, friends and knowledgeable guild mates.

The KZ minimums table is lacking in two notable areas, Survival Hunters and Feral Kitties. I think there’s a reason for the lack of each. I know the survival hunter is a neat spec, you get exposed weakness which is a really nice boss debuff, and you get a solid trap option for CC, but in my experience, the overall consistent DPS output for BM hunters is more desirable than better traps. I know very little of MM, other than it is still a viable spec for KZ.

For feral cats, most of the time I’m in Kara, even when in cat form, I tend to stay in my tanking gear. The reason for this is that I can easily pick up a mob if the tank gets in trouble or if someone decides to pew pew the wrong target by accident. This sort of thing happens a lot to new groups – hell it happens a lot to me and both the KZ groups I run with are experienced raids.

I think the reason it's not on this chart is that you're not going to get into Kara as a kitty - you're going to go as a bear, who happens to have a cat set. A limited point of view to be sure, but perhaps the original was written by someone who wasn't into cats. However, we can correct this through a few modifications to our chart. (ohhhh, my first use of the Royal 'We')

A feral’s strength is “versatility” – it's hard to replace a rogue or lock that knows the job and does it well, but you are perhaps the most versatile class in the game. So yes, I think it's a vaild point to raise and I should make some changes.

But let’s get back to the issue of stats – as I‘ve said, I’ve read 2.2k AP with 30% Crit is the target to start. I don’t know about health pools but I’m guessing if you get the other two, the health pool your left with will be on the order of a geared pre-kara rogue. If anyone has solid info lemme know and I'll tweak it.

From what I’ve seen you’re looking to make your cat set similar to a rogues set – which only makes sense now doesn’t it? I mean, you’re a melee DPSer wearing leather … so sure, rogue sets are among your friends.

Mine wasn’t even close to that when I started, but my tank set was the best a raider could start with – and I had all the right gems and enchants. Both sets improved drastically since I was picking up both cat and bear gear as I went through the first month. I had to wait (and you may have to as well) on some of the kitty gear because our rogue got dibs on DPS leathers. Perhaps this explains the shortcomings on the chart - I was able to run kara in bear gear - almost all the time, perhaps the authors did as well, but that's still no excuse for not doing better.

We’ve all seen a lot of people with narrow minds in this game. So it will be no surprise if someone comes along and trashes my opinion, but I’d like to point out that this is simply that – my opinion. And in “My Opinion” there is no “set in stone” answer to the choice of gear/stats, only a set of guidelines and some general knowledge you can use to improve yourself.

Raiding is more about knowing your class and spec well than it is about what your gear will allow you to do. Any good raider will tell you that good raiders can make up for shortcomings in gear through skill and spec choices – at least until the gear they need drops.

I hope that helps.

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Weekend Raider – Kara, the Shade

Well, it turns out I ended up doing a Kara raid this weekend on my bear, though not with my regular group since I was busy with my son during our regular raid. I managed to pick up a couple of items – new cat shoes, belt from badges etc, which was nice because it means no more green items. (yes you can raid KZ with one or two green items depending on what they are – bears get Manimal’s Belt as a quest reward that should last them until they get enough badges of justice to replace it or run heroic Ramparts for the belt off the last guy.)

But, the real winner this weekend was my hunter. We hit Kara last night and I was practically falling asleep. My little boy spent the weekend running around my house getting into absolutely everything so I was somewhat drained by the time I got back from dropping him off at his mom’s.

But I pressed on, by this time our fights are easy because our gear lets us plow through boss after boss. We soon found ourselves outside Netherspite’s hall. Nether is the only boss in the place that hadn’t fallen to us yet. It took several tries to get everyone in their groove, but we managed to get him down after several attempts. And low and behold what should drop but hunter pants – literally 2/3 of the bosses dropped something I could use or needed, including my T4 helm. That’s going to really make a huge difference when it comes to next week’s run. Now I need to spend some time making money so I can afford to gem those out nicely. If only work would cooperate.

Last time we talked I owed you a run down on the Shade of Aran. You can find a good explanation of the fight over at Wowwiki, which should give you the basics of Shade. I’ve mentioned this in the past but it’s worth repeating. Your Raid leader or assist needs Deadly Boss Mods and/or Bigwigs. Shade has a few different phases and both of those mods can help.

The other noteworthy item to know about the Shade is he likes taking down your weakest player – so your healers need to try to keep everyone topped off. Since it’s not an aggro fight it’s a sort of loosely controlled chaos the MT/OT are mostly DPS/Stunning through the fight. As mentioned, there are a number of phases Shade likes to pull, he alternates fire and frost bolts – which you need to constantly interrupt, as well as arcane missiles (which you don’t interrupt) and an arcance explosion which will one-shot you if you’re within it’s detonation radius. There’s a blizzard affect that roams the room, some elementals that come out at one point and the most significant of all – Flame Wreath. FW is a big pain because due to a number of factors, your graphics card, latency etc – you may not even see it. But if anyone in the raid moves, even so much as turns in place (even if you don’t think it’s affecting you) the entire raid will wipe. When it hits you’re stuck in place. You can auto attack, i.e. shoot, wands, bows, guns, melle can auto attack, casters auto cast, but you cannot change your position in any way or the raid will literally get burned. Melee – if you’re out on the edges, then you need to hold in position until it passes.

Other than that the only thing to clearly watch for is that his mana pool stays above his HP – if it goes under his HP at about 10% or so he’ll polymorph the raid (even those immune to it) and when you come out he’ll blast you. The only way to survive is to have everyone topped off and to use healthstones, pots, bandages etc. as soon as you come out of sheep form.

My last word on Shade is that it’s not that hard of a fight, but it is yet another gear check – your DPS really needs to shine here and your raid leader needs complete command and control throughout the fight. It’s not uncommon for well geared raids to wipe a few times on him, it’s definitely one of those encounters that you need to practice a few times before mastering it.

Next time: we’ll move on to the easiest fight of all – Chess and perhaps discuss the Prince event and the last bosses, Terestrian, Nether and the skeletal dragon, Nightbane.

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Sic transit gloria mundi

It is a Latin phrase that means "Thus passes the glory of the world". It has been interpreted as "Fame is fleeting." One of the more famous versions exists at the end of the film "Patton" and was attributed to the famous WWII general.

"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."- Gen. George C. Patton

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Teacher says she’s just tired of tryin….

That’s one of my favorite Ralph Wiggum quotes. For today, rather than go into a boring diatribe on the Shade of Aran, I’d like to talk about my experiences with casual players and how I think they could fit in a raid structure.

Let’s start with my RP guild. I call it that for lack of a better term but they really aren’t into role playing, they are simply casual players who log in when they have time to kill – like every night. Most of the guild have 70 mains and at least one 70 alt – several of them are working toward their third and fourth 70. There are a variety of players among them, teenagers, college students, mothers, fathers from all walks of life, cops, professionals, students, retirees etc.

It’s an interesting mix and a fun one, but after a while I got bored with just leveling my alts. So I started raiding a bit, found I liked it, then found it was very time consuming and very expensive. So I got an idea, casual raiding? I've heard it can work if you're not into progression, if you like gear and seeing new sights but aren't worried about full clears. So I gave it some cogitation.

But taking the casual player and getting them to understand the needs of a raid isn’t so easy. I have a warrior friend who thought playing his warrior was the coolest thing – though he always said he found it really hard to level up.

I was amazed. I have a 51 fury warrior and I buzz through mobs my own level constantly. About the only breaks I ever take are to wrap a band-aid around my owies and drive on. Then I looked over his spec. UGH. He had points in all three talent trees, and nothing heavily invested in any of them. So I pulled a good DPS spec off the web and sent it to him, along with a list of gearing options for DPS warriors. A week later I checked him again and found he was protection – with all the wrong talents chosen. I mean, if a guy could pick every talent incorrectly – he did it. Instinctively I think. He said he wanted to try tanking and had read up on uncritability, but he was still getting mauled in 5-mans – non heroics. Gosh, I wonder why.

HE’s playing a mage now and says it’s so much easier to level, but he can’t do 5-mans, because he runs out of mana in the boss fights ….

I asked what his mp5 was, (mana regen per 5 secs) he hadn’t heard of it. I asked what his bonus spell dmg was at lvl 70 – it was 289, ‘why, isn’t that good?’

/sigh

Now to be fair, he’s tried. But he just doesn’t “get it.” He’s read some things, he’s tried gearing a little, but he has some blues and some just silly choices for gear, stats and spec and he can’t figure out why he’s not doing better. I’ve done what I can to help him, but I’m done trying

But I’ve gone from the idea of casual players in raid settings to harping on one gearing and talent choice. There are many like this guy, they aren’t theorycrafters and don’t get the game – but it’s really not that hard and you don’t have to get into the details of theorycrafting in order to start something like kara. You just need someone who knows raids, and the bosses to be the leader, someone who can help out to be the assist and someone who can follow the basics of loot rules to parcel out the good stuff. The leader simply needs to be someone who understands what each class does, and how to use the talents available.

I used to think leading a raid would be hard. And admittedly it can be difficult, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. It’s like so many other choices in life, it is what you make of it. Be a hard case and you’ll have to deal with resentment issues, be too lax and you’ll have a rowdy unruly bunch who wipe a bit more. Be of even keel and keep your mind in the middle and you might just get by.

I think if my self imposed breaks extend for any real length of time I’ll look forward to pulling together my own KZ raid, just to see if I can get a group of casual players to work out or not. I’ve tried this with the legacy raids, it’s not the same. There’s no incentive for them, no real reward. Maybe KZ is the place to test this out. I’ll let you know.

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Burned out by the real world

Man, have I been lazy this week. I’ve been busy with the real world so I haven’t been giving this as much attention lately. I owe you a run down of the bosses following Curator but to tell you the truth, I’m a little burned out this week. :-)

My son and I started early childhood development classes on Wednesday of last week (organized playtime with other dad’s and their kids) and I’m also shifting my weekends around so I’m able to spend more time with him than with WoW and my raid buddies.

Given how irritating and chatty our Friday night raid has gotten lately I’m not all that sorry to be taking a break. If they find themselves in dire need of a Dire Bear I can join them next week, but we’ve had an abundance of people willing to come so I think they’ll be fine.

I talked it over with my raid leader last week and mentioned that as my son grows up I’ll be shifting my schedule to meet his needs. And let’s be honest – a boy needs his dad more than this dad needs World of Warcraft.

But make no mistake, this is a break, a well deserved one I think for all the nonsense I’ve managed with this group over the course of the last two months. I also intend to resume my work here – even if no one reads it I can’t leave a project unfinished.

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Weekend Recap

I got a bit lazy this weekend. I don’t know if it was lack of sleep (dang neighbors) or the sloth of a Sunday induced football game but I didn’t get a lot done. I hardly bothered watching the ‘big game’ either. Maybe it’s the weather that causes this apathy.

I did manage to get my Tier 4 gear for my bear on Friday, but the run was tough. I hate chatty vent servers – it’s annoying. Of course we have a lot of chatty people and after 4 hours it’s beyond annoying. I usually turn the volume down completely.

But we did manage to clear KZ in 4 hours – so that’s something.

I got an in-game note from my hunter’s raid that Sunday’s KZ run was being moved to today, apparently the raid leader is a Pats fan. I thought it was a lame excuse for moving a raid, but eh – I liked the break.

So this weekend, instead of running up to 58 on my pally, which I should have done, I instead got on my lock. He was 51 on Sat and is sitting nicely at 54 this morning. Three toons headed to the outlands at the same time? Huh, I guess I could do it easily enough.

I really need to work on better gear though. My paladin in particular needs better armor and spell dmg. I had forgotten how much fun a lock can be … DoTs ftw. I was busting down tons of mobs a lot higher than I was too. The fights tend to be a bit mana intensive, but for all that it’s not so hard. Life tap works well when you have a tank, but my healer buddy kept trying to heal me, even after I announced I was life tapping /sigh.

As for the rest, I spent a lot of time going through mailboxes and bags, putting stuff up for AH and trying to clear some space. After a couple of months my bags get so disorganized and I have to spend a day cleaning house. I still have a ton of items to DE and sell. Need to get back to work on that.

I’ll put the next Kara boss up soon, but it may not be today. I wrote everything up but I need to spend some tweak time on it yet.

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Kara Part 5

The Curator
When we last parted ways I left you working your way toward the first boss that drops a Tier 4 token, the Curator. Every Kara raider will let you know that the big machine is a gear check, meaning that if your group can bring him down, you stand a reasonable chance at downing the rest of the bosses in Karazhan. The exceptions are Prince Malchezzar and Nightbane. The rest should be doable.

Should be doable … well, you will most likely wipe a few times while you figure out the fights but lets see if I can help when we get that far.

For now what you need to do is what I mentioned last time, either clear the mobs on the far side of the Opera Hall or run back out the front door and cross the river to the side entrance.

Going to the side entrance presents you with an additional opportunity, since Nightbane is summoned on the master’s terrace and if you go in the side door you’re about 50 yds from the place. But it also presents a small challenge. There are ghost mobs sitting on the other side of the door. They aren’t too close, but if you run in and move to either side of the door you can pull one or both. Since your raid is likely setting up at this time it’s usually a wipe – at minimum it’s a few deaths. So the trick here is to open the inner door and run straight ahead to the far wall – all raiders stack on top of each other. You shouldn’t pull anything that way. Alternatively you can assemble between the entrance and the door before opening it.

Once you get set up – crack the door if you chose that option and run to the left, tanks out in front. Take out the ghost mob (only one) and make sure your mage decurses the affected party members. This first mob is purple. Later ones are green. The green ones cannot be taunted so keep that in mind when pulling.

Now you begin a long climb up to the back entrance to the Menagerie. There’s a bunch of ghosts along the way and when you reach the top there’s 2 arcane protectors inside the first room. They should be taken at the same time – MT/OT with attention paid to the debuff one of them tosses out. It affects one party member and while it’s active – that person discharges an arcane blast for 1-2k every couple of seconds – so make the person who has it run away from the raid.

After these are down move up the stairs into the small ante-chamber and gather. Through the only other door is the Menagerie and Curator, and about 7 groups of mobs. These smaller groups have to be taken out first – MT pulls one into the antechamber while curator is on the far side of his patrol. The raid focuses on the giant arcane anomaly first. It will look as if you’re doing no dmg to him but he has a mana shield and your shots deplete his mana – once it’s gone he goes down like a .,. well you get the idea.

Drop his mana worm palls, rinse and repeat for the other mobs. Pull them all into the antechamber. I know raids that do the last 1-2 in Curator’s room but that is a huge risk for a new raid as Curator has a massive aggro range. Use your hunters and mages to pull the mobs, MD, blink etc.

The boss fight can be done two ways. Both ways require the raid to assemble in the boss’ room on the far right wall, line abreast and don’t get off the wall while he’s nearby. Once he moves away you can set up.

The tank will take the boss (boss’ back to raid) at the third diamond shaped pattern on the carpet. In the first method all raiders will spread out in a U shape, with the base of the U on the wall right of the door you came through. Ranged DPS can deal with his add (astral flares) and have to get them down fast. In the second method your melee can help the ranged by following them around.

The first method is less damage intensive as the flares can cast chain lightning for arcane dmg. But if your healers are good you can do it the other way. See the strategy notes on fighting Curator. If your gear is good and your team is well prepped, he can go down in about 4-5 mins.

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Outlands Bound … this time on a paladin

Last night I was helping one of my guild leaders level his paladin. He had a series of quests in Maraudon and was having trouble finding a team. Sheesh I wonder why – it’s only a freakin nightmare of an instance. I have only done parts of Mara a few times in the past, I’d forgotten how screwy that place is. An entire clear would take a level appropriate team a long time.

So, Chirax and I hit Mara for some ‘fun.’ I guess it wasn’t all that long – maybe 90 mins or so, but even on my 70 hunter it was a pain. Those stupid knockdown effects from the Thrashers got on my nerves.

While underground one of our feral buddies got on and said he was bored and could he please run us through something.

Never one to turn down such an offer Chirax and I both said we’d be happy with a BRD run.

So I jumped on my tankadin, dumped my bags and headed for Burning Steppes. PL runs are fun once in a while, so long as you don’t beg for them or get constantly asked to run someone. An open invitation is too good to pass up. The funny thing is, I never really enjoyed playing a paladin. I was a horrible healer and I could not figure out the ret combos. Everything seemed to take forever when comparing it to my mage or druid. So I had left this toon parked for a long time. But not so long ago I started taking an interest in him again and recently spent some time leveling him up a bit more.

In this case I was sitting at 55 on my pally and I’ve been trying to hurry up to 58 so I can use him as a teammate with Cam – my shadow priest friend from TSS. That mana regen is awesome for tankadins. I really should have thought ahead when I chose my mage instead of my pally.

The end result of our little excursion was a full level and a half of xp – I’m sitting nicely on the positive side of 57 and have the first set of quests done for BRD. I need to hit Burning Steppes quick to start my Ony attunement chain, but I’m not too worried and besides, I love killing dragons. Our main tank from Kara even showed up on her mage for a bit, though she DC’d after the bar and never came back. Sad, she missed a ton of good cloth gear.

I totally hosed up a quest for the shadow key, I forgot you have to talk to the dead guy twice. Oh well, I can always do it the hard way. The good news is I’m attuned for MC this weekend. Can you say epic pally gear?

The only downside from last night was that I ran out of rested XP. Since my mage has only been parked for a week he hasn’t save up enough of his own yet, so I’m left with a choice.

Chirax and Mageblast (MT’s mage) are both at 47-49. Mageblast has 251 spell damage, un-freakin-real. She farmed up two epic rings in Winterspring on her own and you can’t believe the DPS that girl puts out. But since they are sitting under 50 I suppose I could grab my own shadow priest and bust him up from 44 to meet them. That would give Chirax a nice mana pool to tank with while us clothies pound the mobs. Alternatively I could pull out my warlock. I love playing him in groups but I pull so dang much aggro I was getting frustrated playing him.

Decisions, decisions.

Wouldn’t that be a trip, three characters sitting in Honor Hold awaiting my free time? I’d be beside myself. I think I’d have to give up sleeping for a while.

Tonight is Kara, so no PLing for me. Our tank is coming back (if she doesn’t DC) and we’ll get yet another chance to see the same T4 tokens drop. Maybe my boots will drop tonight.

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KZ Minimums (by talent tree)

I had a difficult time getting this information when I first I went looking for it. What I needed was a general set of guidelines as to what constituted "entry level" requirements for the end-game level 70 raids. Well, I still haven't found one for the 25-mans but I mentioned previously that TTH had a nice little table for Karazhan.

The only problem is I can't link you directly to it. Also, I didn't think it was as accurate as it could have been so I've updated it. I also added a line for survival spec'd hunters since there wasn't one in the original, however I don't know the spec that well so anyone who does please feel free to comment and I'll change it.

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Kara Part 4

When last we left our series on the opening moves of Karazhan we had cleared the Maiden and the trash along the way to the Opera Event. Now that my posts aren’t taking the entire freaking page (unless you clicky the little Read More button) I think we can pick up where we left off and describe one of the more interesting fights in this instance.

As we parted ways the other day I left you standing on the ramp leading up from the orchestra pit aka Opera pit, below the stage. You may not have realized that was where you were, because there isn’t an orchestra there, but that’s where you were moving through.

Once on the ramp you’ll want your ranged casters and healers standing about a third of the way up on the stairs, and your melee closer to the top. The tanks can move out into the open area head. This is the backstage part of the Opera Hall and there’s a few mobs to clear. The first is a 2-pull pat(rol) that can be easily face pulled (letting them get close enough to you that you aggro simply by letting them see you). Many groups will inadvertently face pull these and if not done properly, you can pull one of the stationary mobs nearby as well. These guys hit hard and have debuffs that will mess you up. So please, let your tanks be the only ones out in the open and the rest of you stay on the ramp.

Each tank takes a target and once engaged the raid should focus fire on the kill order. At some point each of the bad guys will pop a column of white light, it’s very important to move the mobs out of the light or Very Bad Things result. So for you folks in the ranged department, be aware that the tanks will be deliberately moving the mobs around a few feet when the light shows up, and you’ll need to adjust accordingly.

The mobs in this area aren’t too hard to defeat. Once you clear your way to the immediate backstage area you’ll see an NPC named Barnes, the Stage Manager ahead. Don’t go to him yet. There’s a wooden stairs off to your left, send a tank up and pull the mobs back down (sometimes they like to pat back down and can nail your raid while your prepping for the boss fight. There’s a couple on either side at the top of the stairs. NOTE: it’s not a necessity, just a safety precaution.

Once cleared take a short break to call for full raid buffs. Include food buffs, lock cookies but you shouldn’t need flasks for this next part.

The Opera Event is a unique fight in which one of three “plays” is selected for you randomly. Your choices are Hood, Oz and Romulo & Julianne. Each is handled very differently. A lot of raids will send in one person stripped of gear who will begin the event by speaking to Barnes and then run through the side door out onto the stage in front of the curtain. The rest of the raid waits, either in the pit below or simply in the room you cleared before you got to Barnes.

I’ve been in several raids that just position themselves out on the stage and take whatever comes without doing this. New raids should use the first method as it increases your opportunity to explain what will happen next and minimizes confusion and deaths.

Hood is basically Little Red Riding Hood and the boss is the Big Bad Wolf, linked above. He turns a random raid member into Little Read Riding Hood and chases her around the room til he kills her. He also has a fear and stun capability and cannot be aggro’d off Red during this phase, but DPS and tanks can and NEED to keep building threat on him or when Red goes down or fades he’ll turn on whoever is highest on the threat table. It’s best to tank him left rear stage away from the raid when possible. The Red Riding Hood debuff turns you into a little girl with zero armor. To stay alive you need to run the perimeter of the stage in a SQUARE, not an oval or a circle. BBW chases a spot just in front of the runner and if you don’t run in straight lines he can catch you.

Oz is the Wizard of Oz – there’s Dorethy, Tito, Roar, Tinhead and Strawman – see the wowwiki notes on strategy – easy fight – bring a lock and a mage for it. Kill order Dorethy, Tito, Roar/Strawman, Tinhead. Keep the straw guy feared and fire DoT’d and he’ll go down fast.

R&J – strangely enough I rarely see this fight. I know Blizz has said the events are random, but I don’t think I believe that. I think they are more likely to happen on certain days of the week, but then that’s just my subjective opinion. The unique thing on R&J is that you kill one, then the other then you fight both and they have to die within 10 secs of each other or they rez again. She’s a caster and he’s a DPS warrior. Good Luck!

Once you clear whatever Opera Event you get you now have an interesting option. You can either head through the door leading to the area ahead, which is the noble’s balcony. In there you can clear the mobs for some phat gold. I’ve been told each raider can get as much as 20g in there. You have to clear the area all the way up to the door that leads to the back of Kara, out on the Master’s Terrace.

If you don’t feel like risking it you can head back down and out the front door go to your left diagonally, crossing the foundation of the ruined house, across the river, up the bank and to the stairs leading up to the side entrance. It’s a long climb and you end up on a narrow bridge in front of the side door. I think you have to clear Opera to use it but I’m not sure. Here endeth Kara Part 4. Your next fight is another gear check and your first chance at a Tier 4 token.

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Woot! Figured it out!

Many furry thanks to the Big Bear Butted one John P. for the tip on making my blog more readable. I've debated going back and changing older posts so everythign lines up nice and neat, call it the OCD part of me. But I've decided to let the previous ones stand since the comments would be lost. However going forward I'll be using a new method that links to the main pages of each post and should make this mess a little easier to read.

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Kara - part 3

The Maiden of Virtue

Okay, you’ve handed Attumen his head, crashed the party in the banquet hall and silenced about half the people doing the Hokey Pokey in the dance hall (no lie, they really do the HP).

You’re back on the stairs and ready to drive on. Depending on whether or not you pulled the AOE non-elite pack on the right side of the top of the stairs, you need to clear it – so if you didn’t yet do so now – same drill as last time. Pull to stairs, AOE em down, focus heal the cloth cannons. One of your tanks will hug the right wall heading down to the far right corner of the dance hall to whack the mob standing there. Once engaged the raid should follow. There’s another non-elite AOE pack in the center-right of the dance hall – they die too. Watch for the elite mobs sitting along the walls – sometimes they come along with the larger pulls – just mark them for death first and hold the mob.

Clear the singles on either side of the door on the opposite side of the room, watch for any patrols that might pop through and send in your stealth to verify the area is clear.

Head into the next area – its an open space with many of the same mobs as the dance hall – AOE packs, both elite and non-elite. As well as single elite mobs. Use basic tanking procedures here – Line of Sight on the bigger mobs as they are needed. Leave the elite AOE pack over there alone – you can move without aggroing them, but take down all pats and the big non-elite pack in the middle of the room – tank hint: tank runs up to them and kites them away from the elite pack, then back to the raid while hugging the wall farthest from the elites and lets them stack on him, use a corner to hide in so they bunch up before DPS sets in.

Ahead on the far side of the room is another doorway with pillars, on the right wall is a single small doorway – head for the small one. Stealthies can peek to see where the pats are in there, if clear the raid can go in.

The raid moves in and to the left – there’s a long narrow hallway here and the raid should stack in there for the next pulls. There’s a few guards close by in the main hall, and some wandering hookers patrolling the halls. The respawn time is 1 hour in the hall – do not go into the side rooms. Those spawn on a 20 min timer. We’ll come back to that in a moment. Clear the halls 1 set of mobs at a time. There’s a 5 pull off to the right – leave them until both the pat and left side guards are down – but if the pat is a ways off you can pull the guards on the left, just do so that they run along the left wall.

On the pat – our raid calls it the whore (whoor) pack, I forget if there's one or two - think it's only one set. It’s a demon and an undead. Banish the demon if you can, or shackle the undead. Take only one at a time. One of them will try to charm the melee, the other will use a banshee howl – burn em down.

Note: everything here until you get the 5-pull gets pulled into the hall and burned there. The guards summon dogs so melee, watch your casters. Now, the 5-pull. You need MT and OT for this, shackle banish, etc. Clear those and there’s 2 guards at the end of the hall – shackle or OT one and burn them down.

Stop

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.

Ahead of you is the Maiden of Virtue, your next boss encounter. I asked you not to go into the side rooms, which probably sounds reasonable unless you need to for one of the quests for Kara. Well, it’s still reasonable even if you need to ‘cause you can simply wait 5 hours for the packs to despawn once the boss is dead. That's right Snoopy, once a boss dies, all mobs associated with that boss despawn in 5 hours - since the raid resets only once a week - you can come back another day and freely wander the areas you've cleared. How? Form a group with another player and convert it to a raid, then walk in – by this time the dance hall and stables and the whoor’s quarters are all empty IF you killed the bosses.) Besides – no need to make the raid wait for you. There’s killin ta be dun.

Maiden isn’t hard, but she sure seems so at first. The link to Wowwiki describes the fight and the abilities she has. But the most important thing to know is that positioning is key. One SUPER important thing to know is her aggro radius is quite large. So hug that outside wall!

So here’s how it all goes. She’s in a circular room (she’s a mini-Titan btw) and there’s pillars surrounding her – she’s in the center on a slightly raised platform. Your raid leader will mark out or walk you to your spot. You’ll be hugging the outside wall AT ALL TIMES – hunters put your pets on passive and MAKE SURE THEY STAY WITH YOU. I’ve seen pets pull Maiden = insta wipe.

The raid leader will generally split the raid up so the healers are evenly spaced with DPS. Melee and tanks will stay put at the entrance and well outside aggro range.

Maiden does a few unique abilities, holy fire, repentance (stuns the raid for 12 secs – dmg breaks this). The key element here is to get your melee into a max-range triangle or square around her as soon as the tank picks her up – no OT needed here – go full out DPS.

As soon as the fight starts you can do one of two things, everyone can stand in the center of the space between the pillars AND on the edge of the dias (raised part), or can stand in front of the pillar they are on. However you all need to pick the same stance or she’ll holy chain fire you down because you'll be too close together to avoid it. She drops holy ground (holy dmg in the 300s every 3 secs – its not too bad) and she Holy Fires random people – that has a DoT that needs to be dispelled – make sure your clothies are removing it quickly. Keep melee alive and kicking and the rest of the fight is gravy.

Just make sure when you go back to the hallway you hug the side away from the whoor’s rooms. Make your way back out into the larger open room and to the door (now on your right) with the pillars, don’t get too close now – there’s baddies there.

There’re two skeletal guards here, both the MT and OT need to take on the same target – CC the other. ALL DPS holds for a moment because the guard will Ice Tomb the person highest on the threat table (Get OMEN, Seriously) and will go for the second person on the threat table. Now that had better damn well be a tank or your health monkey is gonna be eating floor. Once the Ice Tomb hits and your tank is safely encased – DPS opens the floodgates and down he goes.

Same deal for the CC’d mob and the next 3 guys – including the one pat – wait for him and burn him the same, then there’s 2 up ahead – you can skip if you want, but we always burn em to be safe. Now you’ll see that you’re in the theater area (stage not screen). Go up to your right – hug the wall and head backstage and down into the pit, across and then up the ramp – stop before you get to the top. I’ll leave it here cause the next part leads into opera – however you wouldn’t stop a raid here normally. But this is getting long.

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