Progress!

Unfortunately not on Vashj, but in the other direction, We are now one step further into mount Hyjal with a (relatively) smooth Anetheron (took me 10 attempts to spell that correctly) Kill, taking us to the respectable total of 2/6 bosses down in mount Hyjal. A big grats to my Guild, and to Moofasa and Revert for their shiny lewt drops.

All in all its been a crazy few days, we cleared up SSC (with the exception of Vashj, ma bitch, of course) and i managed to obtain myself a shiny new trinket the tsunami talisman, i have paired that up with the shard of contempt (from heroic MGT)

Now with both these trinkets and both my mongoose enchants i have:-

• Chance on hit to increase my AP by 230 for 20 seconds
• Chance on hit to Procc mongoose, 120 Agi and increased attack speed x2
• Chance on CRIT to increase my attack power by 340 for 10 seconds
  

as you can guess that's a lot of chances to procc something that increases my stats, in fact id say every mob without fail and usually more than one, so all is good on the trinket front for a while :)

Other, Even better, good news.
The Blizzard gods have finally taken action, i received this email in the week

Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that, after a careful investigation of your account warning, we have agreed to remove the warning and suspension of your account from the World of War craft servers.

This change has already been put into effect, and your account should again be available for play.

Should you have other questions or concerns, feel free to contact us again, via our web form: http://wow-europe.com/support/securitywebform/securitywebform.html?lan=en

We hope you continue to enjoy your experience in World of War craft!

If you wish to review our current Rules and Policies, they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Kyhral
Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
http://www.wow-europe.com/en

What a silly name to sign a official email from, but whatever

YaaaaaaY, with this i have also gotten all my gold, gear and items back, so your reading the words of one happy energizer bunny, with all this Ive had an excellent couple of days in the world of war craft i can only hope that this good streak ends soon with the downing of Vashj (or me winning the lottery tonight, either one is good).

P.S - i have assignments due in Monday morning so don't expect any more post from me until at least Tuesday night, probably later as this is my final piece of coursework in my college life, I'm looking forward to getting drunk to celebrate.

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

First Look at Mount Hyjal

And What a night! Rage Winterchill, the first boss of tier 6 content (and arguably the easiest boss of tier 6 content) Down not just first night. but very first try! WOOOOO! and evan better we have new loots!

Deadly Cuffs (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=30863)

Yay - also the choker of serrated blades dropped twice, but that has gone to other melee DPS (and to be honest im not sure if it is that much of an upgrade to the wogen claw necklace from attunmen).

Other big news in the loot department - Quincey is now running around azeroth on a brand new shiny mount from Attunmen the huntsman, thats right, he is riding Nightmare himself! Won on a roll of 99/100 this is an awesome new mount that fits my character well :) I think i might create a new banner for the page (since wall walking is no longer allowed the banner seems a little out of place :( )using the new shiny mount.

Fiery Warhorse Riegns (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=30480)

Wallwalking! before i forget - R.I.P wallwalking :( you were one of the most fun aspects of the game and i sure as hell hate losing you just becuase some retards used you to exploit :( talk about the minority ruining it for...err the minority that could do it :P

SSO offensive news - Over the weekend i had myself a repding Exalted with the SSO offensive, the same day as the new Anvil was made ready on Eonar, I havn't seen so many people in one place since the launch of the burning crusade, actually finding the vendor under a pile of corpses and Taurens on kodo's took a good 20 minutes. but when i finnally did manage to get there i bought myself a new set of weapons...

Blade of serration (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=34894)
Swift blade of uncertainty (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=34949)

So all in all its been a good week for Raids and loot, we are off to take a look at Vashj tonight, (i need to go re-read tatics i guess :P ) and we are headed back to Mount Hyjal on monday for more freeloot *ahem* i mean Rage winterchill and hopefully beyond :)


P.S - if anyone has Large pristmatic shards they dont want on Eonar i'm open to donations, them buggers are 40g a pop now and im in need of 20 :(

A New Era Dawns!

He he - didn't think id be posting here again.

Ni Hao, Welcome back to Backstab, Lets start with what has been happening in the last month and 3 days.

First off you need to read This Post , this was me quitting, including all my reasons for quitting. I lasted a grand total of 27 days and 16 hours before coming back, turns out all i needed was a break. It didn't take long at all for me to remember what i did love and enjoy ( and miss in the end) about this game.

Now my timing on my break actually has timed fairly well with what has been happening in my guild. Since i left my guild has barely raided at all, the slump they were in dipped into an all time low, they just couldn't get the numbers needed for 25 man raiding, so as i took my break so did they, from 25 man content. Now that i am back however 25 man content is up and running again (coincidence? I THINK NOT!), Big changes have come for the guild that i love in the form of the absorption of a smaller guild from our Realm. Kamadan are now proud members (at least i hope they are proud :P) of Phoenix legion, they are great people just a little bit less geared than us, but with the same Fun raiding attitude, and they are learning quickly too, this week they have fought along side us to clear TK, SSC, Karazhan, Gruul and Magtheridon (no Vashj or Kael tho) they have picked up tactics (and a fair amount of loot!) well, all in all a very successful merge that has left us with more than enough raiders to go around.

"Why!", i hear you cry, "Why are you still raiding T5 content?" That's a very good question, Our Guild leader feels (and i happen to agree) due to our slump before the break, the new(ish) members we have acquired and the time off we had, we needed to get back into content slowly instead of dive bombing straight into Mount Hyjal. Its a very good point, and we have happily accepted not going to Mount Hyjal straight away just for the return of proper raids.

So why am i back, well for one i missed my guild just that damn much, in particular my guild leader (Creamcheese) his partner (Softcheese) and a number of other people (Rogir, Rile, Thundervoice, Grimroy, Kaszaam, Zoidy-COME BACK!, the list goes on a long time). The truth is people are what this game what it is, you have to really take a step back from the game to notice it, too notice that your epics wouldn't Even be there and really nothing compares to raiding with friends.

Note! GM's are EVIL- there is a story to this btw.
A Few days after i decided to quit my Account was broken into presumably from the script that was found on wowhead, (wowhead is clean now btw - no need to boycott or anything) These bastards sold my tier 1, and a lot of the items from my bank, although curiously they didn't sell anything my character was wearing apart from my trinkets. (we assume they were going to try and sell the rogue on), And then used my bank alt to start trading on the auction house (sending gold to people who had bought it, THAT'S RIGHT I KNOW WHO HAS BOUGHT GOLD ON EONAR EU - AND THE GMS DO KNOW ;) *ahem*, now i had no idea that this was going on, i was at college when a buddy of mine who plays a warlock on my realm called me and asked if it was me on my account or someone else. They could have been at this a number of hours!. When i got home from college i went around to a friends and we posted a ticket to a GM telling them what had happened, who they had been sending gold to (via the AH) etc, etc. And i carried on my wow break.

I later received this email

Account Name: GEZZA03
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 10/03/2008
Consequences for Account: Account suspended for 72 hours, Password Reset and Final Warning issued.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money, and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and account sharing is against our Terms of Use (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html). Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself (the account owner) has committed this violation of the Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

What they are basically saying is that "we know it isn't you, but here's your final warning anyway" fair? No, but why does this make GM's gits? well they wont give me my gear back that was vendored. That's why they are gits, Full stop.

Right- talked about that that AND that- Oh yes.

In my last post before the "break" the comments left all seemed to think that i am solely obsessed with loot, maybe i worded the post wrong when i went on my rant against badge loot, I'm all for raiding for fun and what not - hell that's why I'm with the legion and not some jumped up military style hardcore guild, I dislike badge loot because it feels to me that people are cheating, like skipping levels in sonic or something - they haven't needed to see the old content, and clearly don't want to either - they are the ones raiding for loots - not myself, Ive worked from ground up and seen everything (many times :P) on the way, don't get me confused with the loot whores please - i find it rather offensive.


So - I'm back, Did ya miss me? :) Hopefully ill get back into the routine and find a creative new use for spellchecker by my next post ^.^