A weeks worth of reformats

gaaaaah - in the last week i have reformatted (and reinstalled ALL of warcraft + tbc) 3 times, warcraft itself takes the better part of 3 hours to install and patch that means 9 hours of staring at that installer -.-, this was due to a rather nasty piece of malware that i somehow picked up, but hurray the problem seems to now be sorted

Vashj
Vashj went well, better than i expected to honestly tell you the truth, although we haven't downed her all the attempts so far have looked promising, each time we seem to be gaining more control over that damn crazy second phase - we spent 3 nights in there wiping on her this week, Completely ignoring Mount Hyjal (despite some planned raids there). So far we haven't got passed the second phase we are working hard trying out different strategies all the time, we will eventually find one that works for us.

For those of you that know the Vashj fight ill explain briefly what we are trying at the moment if you don't know the fight then i suggest you go read up on it here, we are welcoming suggestions, hints and criticism here, i don't care i just want her down :P

time to bust out old Mspaint
Now this may look like a rainbow cookie...hmmm I'm hungry....But! this is actually a pretty simple dulled down version of our tactics. lets go over the legend..
Brown Circle = Steps
Gray circle = Middle ground
Sickly green circle = Inner circle
Bright blue dot is Vashj, she is immune to damage at this point but deals out a fir bit of raid damage.
Red dots are generators

Purple=Warlock
Green = Hunter
white = Healers
yellow = Melee
Blue= Mages
Orange= tanks

Basic really - we have the warlocks and hunters on primary elemental duty as well as killing the tainted core - these groups are split up into 3 sections covering the NE NW and South, they also are backed by a healer who stays on top of the stairs at all times.

In the middle we have the Tanks, Mages and the melee, this is to deal with 3 things, the Melee and the tanks are on generator and Elite duty, at all times there must be at least one melee stood next to a generator whenever there is a tainted core being thrown around. We (the melee) are usually only 4 people, but we seem to be killing the elites in plenty of time anyway, we have also been given the duty of elemental clean up, this is very simply any elementals that get past the warlocks and the hunters for any reason (for example they are busy with a tainted core) then we destroy them. Not a problem for the super fantastic awesome melee group(he he).

Lastly also in the middle we have the mages, this is to deal with the last type of add, and pretty much where we are falling down at the moment. Originally we had the mages at the top of the stairs helping with the elementals but this approach didn't work because the strider's just didn't die fast enough, so we have shifted the Mages from their spot at the top of the stairs to the middle so they can Nuke the strider (while controlling aggro with the kite, of course).

Ah yes the kiter i almost forgot him, we currently have an elemental shaman by the name of Oblivio Kiting the strider's around Middle ground, this keeps his fear away from harms way. Oblivio, being the aggro hungry whore that he is (love ya really man :P ) has no problems keeping aggro on the beasts, but he cannot handle having 2 on him, hence where we are currently failing.

the strider's, are just no dying fast enough, we had one *almost* success full try when we moved the mages where it died just as the next strider was coming up, but this was at the expense of a lot of elementals pounding through, more than even the overly imba melee group could deal with. leading us to a wipe.

SO any suggestions on how to deal with strider's without sacrificing dps on the elementals that leads us to a kill will win the chance to write an article for this blog on any wow subject you want (within reason of course)**

Right, next topic, the Arena server - this has been the focus point for much QQ praise and whine threads.

well i love it, from both aspects, PvE and PvP, let me explain. ever since the launch of the burning crusade The people who PvE have been whining about class changes that have followed that have affected how PvP was balanced and therefore changed the class in PvE, this is the perfect solution! keep the class (I'm changing the word changes for "tweaks") tweaks can be applied only on the arena realm, a realm with no mobs, no leveling, a server that is there for the sole purpose of doing arena content with friends - that way the pve'rs are happy because they don't have to deal with the changes to their classes and the pvpers are all on the same realm, meaning much shorter ques than before.

I personally have entered the arena tournament, not with high hopes for winning anything, but because it gives me a chance to play with friends from other realms.

But of course with it being a good thing for one person, another has to complain about it being unfair for them. this time they are complaining about the lack of leveling and gear gathering. But let me get this message through to you - Leveling, and gathering gear is PVE content - Some people don't want this so they go onto a PVP realm or in this case the ARENA realm, and we pay for the privilege.

The practise season ends today when the maintenance is over and the real tournament begins, I'm looking forward to smashing some shadow priest's face in, and i hope to see some of you there

(for anyone on the realm I'm a human rogue called tied, my Quincey was taken :( )


**I reserve the right to not post anything racist, offensive or containing excessive swearing, topics are not limited to wow but a post about wow would fit best in with the theme of the blog.
Any strategies can either be left in comments or forwarded to my email phoenixquincey@gmail.com