Thursday, January 29, 2009

Cleared All 4 Wings in 3 hours... Nice!

Well, we meandered our way back into Naxx last night and just breezed through. Only 1 wipe, and that was due to our tanks not being in position at the right time on Patchwerk.

I managed to pick up 2 new upgrades though, which is a nice change of pace considering I havent replaced any gear in over a month /sulk. So now I have my 4 piece bonus for T7/7.5 (I have 2 of each) and I'm thinking my dps is going to sky rocket with Loatheb's trinket and a 7 second judgement :D. Judgements are now going to give me a bit more of a fluid rotation since it tends to give me just enough time to judge again before I end up using another cooldown. It will end up fitting itself in during those "down" times in our rotations whilst we wait for our cooldowns to expire lol.

The only hitch is that I replaced my pants that had 80 hit rating on them.. Now i'm about 1.8% off of the hit cap last I checked. Hopefully that won't hinder my performance too much, but there's only one way to find out ;).

So, come Sunday it looks like we'll make quick work of Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad, then take a few hours to make attempts on Malygos! I'm hoping we don't spend too much time in there learning the fight and more so just getting him down and out of the way XD.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Resolution clears Naxxramas!

Well, I wasn't there for the guild first -- but I'm happy they finished it off.

I decided to take the night off from raiding last night (I'm sure I'll hear all about it from the raid lead and guild leader tonight). I just felt like I needed some time to myself to clear my head and take care of some RL stuff instead. Definitely was a nice change of pace than what I'm used to on a Sunday evening.

So they went in and cleared Naxx for the first time as a guild, woohoo. I'm not enthralled with the pace we've took getting into raiding again in the first place, so its nice to see it cleared now. Personally I felt like it should have been cleared at least a month ago.

Although I am more excited about our first encounter with Malygos considering I've only assisted in attempts at him before and have yet to see him down. Lately I've just had a lack of desire to raid or play the game nearly as much as I have before, but this is due to the fact that I have a special woman in my life :).

I can definitely see why a few of my friends stopped playing over time -- WoW can interfere with more important life events! So yeah, WoW is / was a placeholder for me. It takes time out of my day to "accomplish" things that are trivial, its a fun escape from life and in some cases loneliness. I do have to admit that it is fun to grab your s.o. and run an instance with her when you both have time ;).

So, Cheers to Reso on clearing Naxx and cheers to getting outside every once in a while lol.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Green Proto Drake Madness!


Woot! Behold the mighty Green Proto-Drake!

I forgot to open my egg right away today and ended up opening it about 2 or so hours later than when it hatched and BAM I got my first proto-drake! It took 4 Weeks of eggs for it to finally drop for me and I couldn't be happier! Just the tip of the iceberg of greatness for me this week.

Take a peek!


Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A Weekend to Remember

Wow. That is all I can say about this past weekend. I don't think I've ever been this happy before (not pertaining to the game at all really).

While attempting to think through all of the great things that happened this weekend I did manage to get a lot of achievements.

Achievements completed this past weekend:
The Fall of Naxxramas
World Explorer (woo hoo title :P) << This took me about 8 hours to complete baring that I had completed both Northrend and Outlands prior
Old World Raider - Had to finish AQ20 and AQ40 for this

As for guild raiding...
We progressed through every wing with ease in our first raid week (2 day raid week) and ran out of time when we got to 4 horsemen. So in our first week we got through everything in Naxx except 3 bosses. Not bad for a first attempt in there as a guild.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

My Armory Page

At the request of a few bloggers, here is my armory link:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Vek%27nilash&n=Nightknight

My spec is a pvp /pve hybrid that has been rocking the house lately. I've got everything I want for raiding and everything I need for arena. I didnt pick up the 3% haste due to the shaman in my raid group having a 20% haste buff. This allowed me to pick up on the improved hand of freedom (100% chance to break snare). Check it out!

Friday, January 16, 2009

What a week so far..

Just stopping in for a quick thought. This week has been crazy (in a good way). It's probably been one of the best weeks I've had in quite a while really (minus the work stress). I received a promotion at work, started raiding with the guild finally and a beautiful soul has found her way into my life. So much good and it just doesnt seem like I've had the time to really appreciate it all. Hopefully this weekend will be a good time to just sit back and soak it all in.

Sunday is our next raid night, so I'm sure you'll see an update on Monday about our adventure (or misadventures) back into Naxx for more progression.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Raid Night 1: Success!

So last night we walked into Naxxramas for the first time as a guild. We were unsure as to our expectations of the guild being that we havent raided since last summer. Another kicker was that we lacked a 3rd healer.

Well we walked our way over to the Arachnid quarter... cleared and one shot every boss. Loots abound for our rogue and resto druid :).

Made our way over to the Construct quarter... Patchwerk down in 1 shot. Struggled with Grobbulus due to the lack of heals, so we headed on to the Plague quarter. Noth the Plaguebringer down in one shot. Raid leader didnt want to bother with the Heigan dance last night lol. Headed over to the DK quarter.. Instructor Razuvious down in 2 shots (first shot needed the tanks to coordinate better with taunts / reapply the MC).

We then had made it to our cut off time for raiding (3 hours for the first night), but we all agreed to walk in for some easy gear from Archevon. Rogue and Mage gear lol. Our first night was very nice to our Mage, Rogue and Druid which will help boost their dps and help us take down the bosses faster, so its all good!

Overall I was very pleased with our progress and can really see that blizzard made this expansion truly easy. In the last expansion it usually took my guild a couple shots at each boss to get it down and it seemed more challenging. We were used to the 25 man content pushing through in TBC and it was cool getting to learn the fights and finally get that boss down with all the coordination.

I can also see people getting burnt out on the content even faster than in previous expansions due to the lack of anything to look forward to. Being able to clear the entry raids (sartharion, vault of archevon and naxx) in your first week of raiding is pretty sad. We're a casual raiding guild (2 nights a week) and we still managed to get to BT and Hyjal in TBC.. we thought that was a good fit really. I would have liked to see more of BT and get into Sunwell, but it was something to strive for.

The main thing keeping me playing is the people. I have a lot of friends in my guild (both RL and met in game) and I could see myself quitting the game if it wasnt for them being around or if I was in a different guild. I lack seeing the challenge in the game. Yes they have 1, 2 or 3 drakes up in Sartharion, but that doesn't make the experience any different. I see leaving the extra drakes up just as a pure boredom run or if you're an achievement whore lol. It really doesnt take away that you're seeing the same content over and over each week. I agree wholeheartedly with others that have posted about this that I believe that blizzard may have gone a little too easy on bringing the pure casuals in to see all of the content.

The only encounter I've seen that does bring a challenge is Malygos. Not because it takes a lot of skill to do, but because people don't understand the mechanics of the drake's abilities (this is also why people almost never run heroic Occulus).

Depending on how long it takes to get the T8 content into the game, I can see many guilds taking a raiding break until then.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Raiding Starts for Resolution of Vek'nilash!

It's finally that time everyone. The guild I belong to (Resolution) is finally headed into raiding once again. Once a 25 man raiding guild, we are now progressing through 10 man content. At our current status we're not going to be headed into 25 man content for a while, at least from the impressions I got from our Raid and Guild leaders. Myself having been through all of Naxx in 10 man and most in 25 man, I'll be the main source of knowledge for our progression. Most of our players have had a chance in Naxxramas at least once before, as well as having formed a couple Vault of Archevon and Obsidian Sanctum runs in the past weeks.

Most of us are ready to go and blow through the content as we've seen other guilds do already. Our core raid members are suited for the job and we should accomplish a lot in our first raid week this week.

Wednesday is our first official raid night of our raid schedule for WotLK. I've already had the chance to play with both of our tanks and even at my gear level in comparison with theirs, they are both capable of keeping threat up enough to keep it off any of our dps (considering I can pump out 4k+ at any given time lol).

I've also continued with my ventures of 2v2 and recently joined a 3v3 with a few members from the top guilds on the server. We've broken the 1600 barrier on both! I'm slowly picking up more pvp gear, but I've mostly tried relying on the PvE burst damage capacity to blow down my opponents fast enough. If I wear my pvp gear, it makes for somewhat of a challenge of taking down healers (disc priests, resto shamans and holy paladins).

As a side note of news, I picked up the exalted plate boots from the Ebon Hold peeps and gemmed it up with +16 str gems and the hit / crit enchant. Pushed me up +.7% crit and 4 AP, as well as the new cloak I picked up from the Valor emblem vendor gave me an additional +.9% crit! After these upgrades I checked my stats and I'm up to 34.1% crit and close to 3200 AP unbuffed!

So we'll see what tomorrow night brings us raidwise. Should be fun!

-NightKnight