Archimonde 2.4

2.4 has hit the servers and a day later Archimonde is a fetid corpse for us. Feeding the plants, pushing up daisies, you name it, he's dead.

Third evening of "real" tries. And he went down in a single try, go figure. We even had 3 people dead before 60% but somehow managed to survive and push him all the way to 10%. After that it was pretty much a done deal and he grudgingly handed us some shiny purple items.

There have been several changes noted to archimonde with the release of 2.4. Invisible walls now block off the mountains around the area, doomfires seem more mobile and spawn more often and closer to melee. He's been somewhat buffed in essence. Our shaman's tremor totem now ticks every 3 seconds instead of every 4 however, which made the fear a lot easier to handle.

So, we've got all the rest of the week for BT, but the reliquary is bugged and doesn't cast it's deaden spell. So.... yeah... We did manage to kill the first three bosses in BT last night, so we're on schedule so far. Supremus is a "lot" bigger than he was but the fight itself seems pretty much unchanged, easier if anything.

Edit: Reliquary has been Hotfixed.


Guild tools

If you're like our guild and are using e107 for your forum, then you are probably aware of the Itemstats plugin as well. Also, you'll be aware that it links to allakhazam or thottbot, both of which suck especially around and before patch day.

Wowhead support "exists" but the quality of those plugins is poor at best. There is however a working alternative which you should definitely check out. It's the latest version of itemstats 1.5.5 modified to work with wowhead. It's a custom project but it works great!


Blog

I'm giving this plugin a try for a bit. You can see it in action in the middle column of the blog. At the bottom currently but that may change later. Basically it looks for people who link to this blog, then automatically creates a linkback for them. Meaning you get a free linkback, and some traffic to go with it. It's an experiment for now, give it a try.

2.4 is here!

MMOC lists that there's a patch today if you're from the USA, or tomorrow in the EU.
Apparently Gamespot has the full version download available. Size: 945.9MB

For mirrors see Wowwiki for a nice list.
a.Wirebrain is always insanely fast as well.


So what can we expect from the patch?


2.4

Some highlights

* The sunwell, obviously. A 25 man raid.
* Magister's terrace 5 man instance.
* New high end profession patterns dropping from the sunwell.
* New faction associated with the sunwell
* Daily quest cap increased to 25 per day (up from 10)
* Preparation for Season 4. It's not actually active yet, but some of the stuff and models are inside the patch.
* New Badge of Justice rewards at the sunwell entrance.
* New blue pvp armor added.
* New pvp daily quests.
* Epic gems, Primal Nether, Primal vortex buyable for badges of justice at the sunwell vendors.
* All the BT / Hyjal gem patterns available from the same vendors.
* Combat log improvements
* Global arena tournament servers
* New daily fishing quests added


And a huge list of Patch notes

* Resilience now affects mana drain
* Spirit affecting mana regeneration changed
* Non self haste % spells such as the drums and bloodlust / heroism no longer stack.
* Spell haste affects global cooldown
* Keepers of time teleport from Shattrath
* Secondary attacks should no longer target crowd controlled targets, for many classes.
* Honor calculation is now instant.
* Ghosts, machines and several elemental type creatures can now be affected by bleed and poisons.


Classes

Druids
* Lifebloom coefficient nerfed by 20%
* Regrowth mana cost reduced

Mages
* Arcane explosion buffed
* Arcane fortitude buffed
* Several spells mana cost lowered
* Icy veins changed to interrupt effects rather than extra chill effects

Paladins
* Turn undead now works on demons

Priests
* Fear ward useable in shadow form
* Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5. Both friendly and non friendly.

Rogues
* Puncturing Wounds (Improved backstab) increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
* Sap will now work on more mobs

Shamans
* Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
* Earth shield, cheaper but less charges
* Ghost wolf cast time reduced by 1 sec
* Global cooldown of all totems reduced by 0.5 sec
* Shamanistic rage nerfed

Warlocks
* You can now summon players from inside an instance

Warriors
* Several fixes to critical attacks, rage generation and extra attacks.


Instances

All raid bosses now drop Badges of Justice. I don't foresee a shortage on these things any time soon. All 25-man raid bosses also drop more cash now.

* BT and Hyjal attunements removed. Like was done with SSC and TK in the past you can now gain a title for completing the quest instead.
* Karazhan attunement removed. You just need one person with the key.
* Epic gems from heroics are no longer unique-equipped. Farm away !

And so many more changes. I'd be mad to list em all.
Check the full list with clickable links on Wowwiki


New daily quests

Source wowhead.

From the very beginning, there are five Outlands dailies that can be done for the Offensive. Those dailies should always be available. I don't know if they assist in reclaiming the various areas in Sun's Reach.
* Gaining the Advantage
* Sunfury Attack Plans
* The Multiphase Survey
* Blood for Blood
* Blast the Gateway

For the actual reclamation project and the dailies associated with each phase. Note that some of the dailies can still be completed after they finish, replacements are marked with a ---

Phase 1 - Recovering Sun's Reach Sanctum
* Erratic Behavior
* The Sanctum Wards

Phase 2 - Recovering Sun's Reach Armory
* Further Conversions (Replacing Erratic Behavior)
* Arm the Wards (Replacing The Sanctum Wards)
* Distraction at the Dead Scar
* The Battle of the Sun's Reach Armory

Phase 2a - Building the portal to the Sunwell from Shattrath
* Intercepting the Mana Cells
--- Maintaining the Sunwell Portal
--- Know Your Ley Lines - This is logically where the quest would go, but it is unknown at the moment.

Phase 3 - Recovering the Sun's Reach Harbor (All of this is speculation)
* The Air Strikes Must Continue (Replacing Distraction at the Dead Scar)
* The Battle Must Go On (Replacing The Battle of the Sun's Reach Armory)
* Intercepting the Reinforcements
* Taking the Harbor
* Making Ready - Creates the blacksmith and armor/weapons vendor.
--- Don't Stop Now

Phase 4 - Finishing the City
* Keeping the Enemy at Bay (Replaces Intercepting the Reinforcements)
* Crush the Dawnblade (Replaces Taking the Harbor)
* Discovering Your Roots - Creates a reagent/special items vendor
--- Rediscovering your Roots
* Open for Business - Is unlocked when Discovering Your Roots is completed
* Disrupt the Greengill Coast
* A Charitable Donation - Helps build a monument
--- Your Continued Support

A Magnanimous Benefactor can only be done during the A Charitable Donation portion. For a 1000 gold, and probably an Exalted reputation requirement, the "of the Shattered Sun" title can be obtained.

Troll feet

You ever wondered why troll feet are naked? Sure taurens are also, but they are cows, it makes sense that they don't actually need boots. Troll feet are naked, and we can run over hot lava, sharp stones and icky swamp like any other race.

Q: Maybe our feet are too big for boots?
A: Then make bigger boots.

Q: Perhaps Trolls love the feel of sand between their toes?
A: Sand maybe, but hot lava, sharp stones and that swamp goo surely isn't.

Q: Perhaps it's for that "in touch with nature" feeling?
A: If that were the case, we'd be able to make druids.

Q: Maybe Troll feet are more stealthy than any boot with soles?
A: Then why don't we have a racial like night elves? And surely the padding of boots like The master's treads are more stealthy.

Q: Perhaps Troll feet produce such a horrifying stench when they are kept inside boots that they all decided not to wear them?
A: OK, now this i can agree on.


Awesome

Trolls are also more awesome than you, even without boots.
I can point you to this post on the wow forums which is pretty funny. I'll quote some parts, in case time deletes it.

* If two Trolls cheer at the same time anywhere in the world, the world shakes twice and the ground where the two shakes meet spawns Skittles Rainbows.
** If two Trolls cheer at the same time in the same place, that entire area will be showered in Skittles.
** If two Trolls cheer at the same time in the same place at each other, they both explode into Skittles. There was clearly too much awesome in that one area.

* Trolls don't wear shoes.
** If a Troll wore shoes, the ground he walked on would burn forever. Water can't put this fire out. It can't rain either. To prevent global warming, Trolls do their part by not wearing shoes.
** They wear shinguards instead. It makes them really good at soccer. Refs can't give them red flags at all. Its like against the rules.

* When a male troll flexes, a female of any race has a 3.48% chance to orgasm randomly. Anywhere, anytime.
* When a female troll flexes, a guy will get a boner. Same percentage etc.

* If trolls were druids they wouldn't need to shift into bear form. Their mohawks would show in all animal forms, including aquatic.


Azeroth is very Troll unfriendly

When walking upright, Trolls are the tallest race in Azeroth.
But, due to doors everywhere being too low, and our ancestors constantly hitting their head we started walking bent.

Everywhere, you kill our brothers and family !
In the hinterlands, in Zul'Aman and the Ghostlands, in Zul'Gurub and Stranglethorn, in Zul'Farrak and Tanaris. In Dun moroch, Sunken Temple and the Eastern Plague lands.

The only place you haven't gone killing us yet is in the current day Hyjal. I don't doubt there will come a day where even there we will be pursued.

You even name the biggest forum retards after us, why?! What have trolls ever done to receive such resentment? No respect these days for your elder races.


Also interesting

Have you ever heard of this? It's not really a new technology, but still pretty cool if it can be more widely utilized into computers. What? It's a replacement for the default fans you have inside your computer or on top of your CPU. It produces less (no) sound, cools more efficiently, uses less power and doesn't attract nearly as much dust as regular components do. Quite interesting no?


Aszune weekly

This is a fanmade e-zine originating from the Aszune forums. It's a kind of newspaper for the aszune realm. Perhaps interesting to check out.

Download :
* Week 1
* Week 2
* Week 3


Comics

Just one today, but i guarantee you it's fun as heck.
It's called Factual authentic real true stories (farts). Go check it out.

Not in my fridge!

Fridge Pals

A few months ago I took up drawing, just some doodles mind you nothing professional. And i suck at it, i can freely admit that much. But still, the result is funny enough to share. If you don't know the comic Fridge Pals yet, then have a look. It's basically about the life of a can of coke and other fridge residents. I did some drawing for the heck of it, and ended up with this.

Maybe you'll think twice about stacking cans in your fridge now. Click below for larger version.


Near future

Aside some posts about hunter pets the site is going to get a spring cleaning. I'm planning to grab the current CSS and Divs then strip it down to a minimalistic sort and give it a seperate CSS document. This will reduce the CSS total size, and allow your browser to cache the CSS rather than load it afresh for each page, hopefuly this should improve page load times a little.

That was some pretty heavy html talk which hopefully didn't fly too far above your heads. But just to make sure you get the message, here's the short version : I'm going to make the site faster, fix alignments, and make it easier for myself to customize the layout. See it's a pretty neat thing when I put it like that.

Sadly I can't fix everything that's broken due to blogger having it's own set of code running a rampage straight trough the design as well, but it'll be an improvement at least. Don't worry about the blog breaking down, i'll do the first bits of research trough the google pages and the test blog i've been abusing as well.

The banner should hopefully be improved somewhat as well, soon(tm).
Edit : Uploaded edited version by Gnomestomper (Rampage).


Also awesome

Anime fever is a free anime host. If you don't have an account yet, go and make one.
I can highly recommend you look for the following :

Series
* Berserk
* Bubblegum crisis
* Claymore
* Death Note
* Neo Genesis Evangelion
* Full Metal Alchemist
* FLCL
* Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex
* Hellsing
* Witchblade

Movies
* Armitage III
* Akira
* Blood the last vampire
* Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
* Howl's Moving Castle
* Read or Die
* Spirited Away
* The Ninja scroll
* Vampire hunter D

My tastes may vary from yours, but heck. Go watch them anyway. There's also a post on the Blog Azeroth forums with a bigger list I posted, but you need to be registered there to see it. I got a bigger list up there.

Elsewhere

The post about hunter pet theorycraft is making steady progress, but is still lacking some important parts. It'll be done when it's done. Hopefully sooner rather than later, but I'm on about 8 pages of text so far (the earlier one about survival was about 10 pages). In order to keep you busy until then i give you... something to read!

A whole big load of links.


Elsewhere in Azeroth

In no particular order:

Parry Dodge Spin gives you a list of blue Pre Karazhan Rogue gear.
Sweet flag is spending way too much time away from wow.
A view from behind looks at an article from yahoo about gamers and their relationships.
Big red kitty is having some trouble with morogrim...
Mania is asking for some help to name a pet.
the pugnacious priest looks at vampiric embrace
Ready aim trap wants to kill al'ar before 2.4
Of teeth and claws looks at some of the 2.4 badge gear for druids.
4haelz looks at cloth for druids.
Resto4life is celebrating their first year of existence! Hope over and say hi.
Dark spot in the corner is gone twinking.
Enhancement shaman flashes out some damage meters from Zul'aman.
The game dame wants your votes on a tauren icon.
Girls don't game are looking for another writer.
Need more rage is socializing in the hinterlands.
Temerity jane has a LOT of work to do.
Lienna's log is going to london.
Wow Jones writes about the world's oldest profession, yes that one. Well, in theory anyway.


Useful

Be imba character auditor.
wowrankings.eu, an alternative european player ranking based on ilvl.
Gankbank an armory alternative.
Armory lite as the name implies.
Warcrafter armory alternative.
wow bash, like bash.org funny quotes.
Patch timer, how long since the last patch? 125 days so far.


Comics

Shakes and fidget, some of the translated comics of the german originals.
Wapsi square, nothing like some magic 8-balls.
Chugworth academy, it's back
Lowroad75, harmless juvenile fun. Or.. ?
Xylia, faeries and talking dogs.
Bigger than cheese, really it's bigger.
Mine's bigger, not as big as mine tho.
Grim tales from down below. Reaper.
Girl Genius, amazing comic.

Frostmourne

You like cutting stuff up? Slice it to pieces so small that they are almost transparent? A master chef can do it to cucumber. Arthas can do it to your brain. Arthas? Arthas menethil you mean? Yeah, that evil lich king incarnate that you'll be fighting as the last boss in Wrath of the Lich king.

But, so can you.

What? We can too?

That's right, aparently some company called "Epic Weapons is selling real life copies of Frostmourne. Go check it out.

Before you go crazy and order one of these things though, make sure you got the cash for it. Each blade will cost you an estimate of $379. Dollars? bwhahah, we europeans laugh at your dollars!! That means it'll cost you only 250E, excluding shipping and handling fees however. On top of that spiffy steel sword you also get:
* Collector's display mount (e.g. stand, not a creature, sorry guys)
* Limited edition poster
* Certificate of authenticity
* Game 2 Gear Handheld authenticity reader

Not bad for 250 Euros.

The sword itself will be about 47 inch, or about 119.4 cm long. The blade of the sword will be 28 inch, or 71.1 cm long. The grip of the sword is bound black leather. There's also a Game 2 Gear RFID (radio frequency ID tag) embedded in the weapon somewhere, so you can use the handheld reader to ensure it's the actual thing and not some fake copy. Not that it'll be easy to copy in the first place.

Although the sword is sold by the Epic Weapons site, it's actually crafted by a group called Weapon Masters.


Caution

Now, before you happily tread along and buy any of these things, a word of caution. Frostmourne is not an "actual" battle ready swords. Sure they are made of metal, perhaps even actual steel, and you can probably stab somebody to death with it if you really wanted to. But these are swords made specifically for display purposes. That means you can unfortunately only hang them on your wall, and have them look pretty for all your friends to see. Which is all cool and all, but not all that.

If you're like me and you get your hands on a big steel weapon like this, you will not be able to resist the urge to go into your back yard and swing it at some fruit and vegetables, and watch it break in half. Sadly this is the grim reality of display swords.

So, before buying swords online, i'd like you to read this website. It is an online sword buyers guide which contains several links and examples to bad and good swords. Before you decide to buy any kind of sword from an online store, check and double check the quality.

A fully functional, high quality katana can cost you anywhere between $500 - $2000, even as crazy as $30.000 for a genuine Japanese forged Nihonto. But you will know you are dealing with quality if you can chop stuff with it without breaking, as a good sword should. You think that's crazy though? There are even genuine antique swords available at prices ranging up to $80.000. All i'm saying is, don't expect to go on a killing spree with a simple $400 steel display quality sword.

There's also the interesting legend of damascus steel, some stores sell it like it's the real thing, at least their prices seem to indicate it is. But true damascus steel is a lost technique, perhaps someday...

And there's the ditch bottom of $25 for a sword like this. Don't expect that to last long in combat, but it does look nice on your wall.

I don't doubt that the sword offered at Epic Weapons is made of decent quality, it's sponsored by blizzard after all. But I can assure you that you do NOT want to try cutting any kind of material with a display quality sword (See the FAQ). Amazing as it might look, don't be surprised if it breaks in half if you swing it at a tree.

Another poll

Ending the other polls a bit early as well, for the most important question ever asked.
In a fight to the death, who would win?
High Overlord Saurfang or Chuck Norris

I know! it's a dilemma. Possibly the biggest one ever to face Warcraft Kind. More so than the Buttered toast paradox. And what if Saurfang actually "is" Chuck norris? It would answer so many questsions, yet raise so many more.

On a side note Chuck doesn't like moonfire, perhaps he'll fare little better to cleave shooting wands.


Previous poll results

MMOC vs WoR

A poll to the result of the earlier post about MMOC vs WoR.
Looks like the majority of you prefer MMOC for the moment.
* MMOC - 155 (79%)
* WoR - 40 (20%)

Judging from the compete analysis MMOC is drawing more visitors, so this is not too suprising. WoR is working on something however. Time will tell how the public responds to this.


Classes

What class is your main?
* Rogue - 102 (17%)
* Mage - 73 (12%)
* Druid - 66 (11%)
* Priest - 59 (10%)
* Hunter - 56 (9%)
* Warlock - 56 (9%)
* Warrior - 53 (9%)
* Paladin - 48 (8%)
* Shaman - 44 (7%)
* Deathknight? - 31 (5%)

How on earth can 31 of you already be playing a Death Knight ? Cheat !

As expected there's a decent number of rogues reading the blog. Paladins and shaman low, much like the player cencus might show. Curiously there's not many hunters, while those are one of the most played classes on census. Asian gold farmers don't read the blog i guess...


Saurfang image from Dan Dos Santos

Survival hunter gear

Ok, so as i mentioned earlier in a comment on chain trap, i made a post on the EJ forums with a big list of survival hunter gear. This blog post took a while longer than i expected but it just turned out massive! So i hope you can see why it took so long.


Why would you want a survival hunter in the raid?

Well, survival hunters are very undervalued, but contribute (if geared properly) a huge number to a raid. A good spec would be 5/20/36 though some may disagree. Alternatively you could go for something like 0/20/41 or 0/20/41 or 27/34 which will reduce your haste clippings, and increase overall crit and buff uptime. You should probably communicate with the other hunter to ensure at least one of you has 5/5 improved mark. As BM hunters have less mana ussues it's generally a wise idea to have the BM hunter take this talent, so you can take efficiency.


Raid setup

So, let's take a token raid for example. Hardly optimal I'm sure but this is pretty nicely varied.
* 3 Tanks : 1 Feral tank, 1 Paladin tank, 1 Warrior tank
* 7 Healers : 2 Priests, 1 Druid, 2 Shamans, 2 Paladins
* 10 Ranged : 1 BM Hunter, 1 Survival Hunter, 2 Shadow priests, 3 Warlocks, 2 Mages, 1 Moonkin Druid
* 5 Melee DPS : 2 Rogues, 1 MS Warrior, 1 Enh Shaman, 1 Ret Paladin

Notice that there's quite a few physical DPS in this example raid. 5 melee players, 3 tanks, 2 hunters + 2 pets. Perhaps one of the warlocks might even have a pet out. But let's assume 12 for now. Let's assume (you don't seriously expect me to calculate each player's potential DPS do you?) that the average DPS of each player is ~1000, mid range Tier 5. Some might be higher, some lower.


Hit rating

Depending on your gear, you may want to take or skip the surefooted talent, which adds up to 3% hit chance to your attacks and will lower your regular hit rating cap from 142 to 127, 111 or 95. Most likely you'll want to take it to 3/3.
As our example raid also hosts a moonkin druid with improved Faery fire, he lowers the hit cap by another 3%, which would put the hit cap to a base 95 or 80, 64, 48 with the surefooted talent. You'll quickly see why hunters have so much trouble keeping their hit rating below the cap.

Trinkets with hit rating listed below, Spicy Hot Talbuk, or gems such as Glinting Pyrestone, Glinting Noble Topaz and Glinting Fire Opal can be used to ensure you are as close to the Hit cap as possible.


Beast Master DPS Buff

If the BM hunter were put in a group with the survival hunter, 2 warlocks and 1 of the healing shamans. (I'd give him a shadow priest, but the mages and healers will need them for this fight) The group's unmodified DPS output would be 4*1000 = 4000 DPS. 5000 is more likely, but remember this is just an example.

The BM hunter has an aura called ferocious inspiration, which increases the damage done by 3% of all party members for 10 seconds whenever your pet scores a critical hit. Estimated uptime is between 80-90% depending on the fight. Lets assume 100% for now, though in reality it will be lower.

4000 DPS * 0.03 * 1.00 = 120 DPS added to the group in total.

A good BM hunter's personal DPS will also be higher than that of a survival one. Judging from some of the WWS logs from the same thread it would appear a difference of 100-200 DPS is about average. Your mileage may vary however.


Survival DPS buff

Now, in order to properly analyze the survival hunter's effect on the raid, you need to know his total agility and buff up time. Huh, what buff? Well, survival hunters have a talent called Expose Weakness which applies a debuff on his target whenever the hunter scores a critical hit. The debuff increases the attack power of all physical attacks on the target by 25% of the hunter's agility for 7 seconds. If you have 2 survival hunters the highest one overwrites the lower one, hence there's no point bringing more than one survival hunter along.

So, let's make a little list. You can look at this list for a complete overview. I'm not going to update this blog post every time a new item comes out, but the list on the EJ forum will be updated when i have time for it.


Gear

The difficult part of equipping yourself is to find a balance between maxing agility and keeping your personal DPS high. I'll give you a few suggestions with the below list. It's quite likely your personal preference will vary from this list and that's good, just don't look at it as some kind of holy grail for survival.

For Tier 4 + 5 gear I used +8 agi Delicate Living Ruby and the +12 agi Relentless Earthstorm Diamond for meta sockets.
For Tier 6 + Sunwell I assumed +10 agi Delicate Crimson Spinel.
If you are a Jewelcrafter you could even fill one socket with a Delicate Fire Ruby
Just use the wow gem finder to find some nice agility gems.


Meta Gem

In order to activate the meta gem (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond) you need 2 red gems which should be easy enough, but also 2 blue and 2 yellow. Basically this means you have to sacrifice 4x4 or 4x5 agility to gain 12 agility and 3% crit damage. Since your crit chance will be fairly high as a survival hunter getting this meta gem is highly recommended.

Some gems you could use for this
* Glinting Noble Topaz Red / Yellow
* Glinting Fire Opal Red / Yellow
* Glinting Pyrestone Red / Yellow
* Shifting Nightseye Red / Blue
* Shifting Tanzanite Red / Blue
* Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst Red / Blue

If you socket these gems in items such as the Ranger-General's Chestguard or Void Reaver Greaves, then you'll receive back 2x 4 agility. This should reduce the effect of losing agility from the other gems. At tier 6 there is the Gronnstalker's Chestguard and Cobra-Lash Boots which can be used for the same effect.


Trinkets

As stated trinkets are not include in the below list. Depending on geat and hit rating balance however here's a few options.
* Madness of the Betrayer (T6) +20 Hit
* Tsunami Talisman (T5) +10 Hit
* Berserker's Call (T5)
* Romulo's Poison Vial (T4) +35 Hit
* Dragonspine Trophy (T4)
* Bloodlust Brooch
* Hourglass of the Unraveller
* Abacus of Violent Odds
* badge of tenacity +25 Agi average
* Alchemist's Stone +15 Agi
* Dark Iron Scorpid +9 Agi


Tier 4

40 : Legacy (Karazhan - Opera)
55 : 35+8+12 Demon Stalker Greathelm (Karazhan - Prince)
37 : 21+16 Necklace of the Deep (Crafted)
48 : 32+16 Merciless Gladiator's Chain Spaulders (PvP)
24 : Drape of the Dark Reavers (KZ - Aran)
55 : 31+24 Merciless Gladiator's Chain Armor (pvp)
31 : 23+8 Vindicator's Chain Bracers (pvp)
51 : 35+16 Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation (KZ)
37 : 18+16+3 Girdle of Treachery (KZ)
65 : 37+24+4 Scaled Greaves of the Marksman (Kazzak BoE)
45 : 29+16 Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots (Badge vendor)
20 : Garona's Signet Ring (KZ - Curator)
21 : Truestrike Ring (World drop)
19 : Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix (Karazhan)

Total : 548 Agi, 73 Hit


Tier 5

21 : Dagger of Bad Mojo (ZA)
21 : Dagger of Bad Mojo (ZA)
60 : 40+12+8 Rift Stalker Helm (Serpentshrine Cavern - Vashj)
27 : Telonicus's Pendant of Mayhem (TK)
48 : 32+16 Merciless Gladiator's Chain Spaulders (pvp)
28 : Thalassian Wildercloak (TK - Kael)
60 : 36+24 Ranger-General's Chestguard (SSC - Hydross)
32 : 24+8 Vambraces of Ending (TKE - Solarian)
36 : 20+16 Gauntlets of Sniping (Badge Vendor)
48 : 32+16 Belt of Deep Shadow (Crafted)
61 : 37+24 Void Reaver Greaves (TKE - VR)
49 : 33+16 Cobra-Lash Boots (SSC - Vashj)
24 : Ring of Lethality (SSC - Hydross)
28 : Signet of Primal Wrath (ZA)
20 : Arcanite Steam-Pistol (The Eye)

Tsunami Talisman (SSC Leotheras) +10 Hit

Total : 563 Agi, 85 Hit


Tier 6

21 : Dagger of Bad Mojo (ZA)
21 : Dagger of Bad Mojo (ZA)
67 : 45+10+12 Gronnstalker's Helmet (Hyjal)
27 : Telonicus's Pendant of Mayhem (TK)
54 : 34+20 Gronnstalker's Spaulders (BT - Shaz)
28 : Thalassian Wildercloak (TK - Kael)
70 : 40+30 Gronnstalker's Chestguard (BT - illidan)
38 : 28+10 Insidious Bands (BT - Teron gorefiend)
45 : 35+10 Gronnstalker's Gloves (Hy)
49 : 29+20 Don Alejandro's Money Belt (Hyjal)
72 : 42+30 Bow-stitched Leggings (Hyjal)
48 : 28+20 Quickstrider Moccasins (Hyjal)
27 : Band of the Eternal Champion (Hy Rep)
28 : Signet of Primal Wrath (ZA)
21 : Legionkiller (BT - Supremus)

Madness of the Betrayer (BT Council) +20 Hit
Tsunami Talisman (SSC Leotheras) +10 Hit

Total : 625 Agi, 57 Hit


Sunwell

25 : Shiv of Exsanguination (Sunwell)
25 : Shiv of Exsanguination (Sunwell)
67 : 45+10+12 Gronnstalker's Helmet (Hyjal)
27 : Telonicus's Pendant of Mayhem (TK)
63 : 40+20+3 Mantle of the Golden Forest (Sunwell)
28 : Thalassian Wildercloak (TK - Kael)
72 : 42+30 Bladed Chaos Tunic (Sunwell)
35 : 22+10+2 Gronnstalker's Bracers (Sunwell)
50 : 30+20 Gloves of Immortal Dusk (Crafted)
39 : 29+10 Gronnstalker's Belt (Sunwell)
87 : 57+30 Starstalker Legguards (Sunwell)
40 : 30+10 Gronnstalker's Boots (Sunwell)
28 : Signet of Primal Wrath (ZA)
29 : Angelista's Revenge (Sunwell badge vendor)
17 : Thori'dal, the stars' fury (Sunwell)

Madness of the Betrayer (BT Council) +20 Hit
Tsunami Talisman (SSC Leotheras) +10 Hit

Total : 642 Agi, 88 Hit
Also : 1554 Armor ignore, 4 piece T6 set bonus.


Enchants

With enchants you can get up to +117 agility, however the head, wrist and leg enchant should probably not be used as these would reduce your personal DPS too much. This would put your agility from enchants on +93 instead.

1h melee : +40 : +20+20 : +20 Major Agility -or- 2h melee : +35 Greater Agiity
Legs : +12 Nethercleft Leg Armor
Feet : +12 Formula: Enchant Boots - Dexterity
Fingers : +8 : +4+4 Formula: Enchant Ring - Stats
Hands : +15 Formula: Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility
Cloak : +12 Enchant Cloak - Greater Agility
Chest : +6 Formula: Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats
Wrist : +4 Enchant Bracer - Stats
Head : +8 Lesser Arcanum of Voracity


Buffs

Buff : +89 : Improved Agility Totem (Shaman)
Buff : +19 : Improved Mark of the Wild (Druid)
Buff : +15 : Songflower Serenade (Felwood)
Buff : +50 : Spirit of Zandalar (Zone buff)
Potion : +35 : Elixir of Major Agility (Battle Elixir)
Food : +20 : Warp Burger / Grilled Mudfish
Scroll : +20 : Scroll of Agility V

Max Buffs total : 248

There are also some Modifier buffs
+15% : Lightning Reflexess (*1.15) (Talent)
+10% : Blessing of Kings (*1.10) (Paladin)
+10% : Sayge's Dark Fortune of Agility (*1.10) (Darkmoon Faire)

Realistically you won't likely be using the songflower, spirit or sayge's fortune however, so buff estimate would be +183 +15% +10%


Totals

Base agility at lvl 70 : ~150 (varies slightly per race)

Every 4 agi that you gain will provide 1 extra AP for every physical dps class or pet in the raid. So 800 would give 200, 1000 would give 250, and so on.

Tier 4 : (548 Agi +88 from enchants +150 base +183 from buffs) = 969 * 1.15 from talents * 1.10 kings buff = 1225,785 Agi
Tier 5 : (563 Agi +93 +150 +183) * 1.15 * 1.10 = 1251,085 Agi
Tier 6 : (625 Agi +93 +150 +183) * 1.15 * 1.10 = 1329,515 Agi
Sunwell : (642 Agi +93 +150 +183) * 1.15 * 1.10 = 1351,02 Agi

If you were to go completely crazy and ignore all personal DPS limitations you could go for a grand total of :
(765 + 117 + 150 + 248) * 1.15 * 1.10 * 1.10 = ~1781,12 Agility
I can assure you, neither you nor your guild would want that though.


Armor penetration

There are a number of topics on this at the EJ forums. Basically the effect increases as the target gets lower armor. A tank will put 5x Sunder armor on a mob for a total of -2600 Armor. Faerie fire reduces it by another -610.

Most bosses have either 6600 or 7700 armor, so they would in effect have only 3390 - 4490 by default. This can not be reduced below zero. If you then add ~1500 armor penetration to that, you'll increase your DPS by 5-10%.


Buff Uptime

The uptime of your Expose Weakness debuff is determined by your hit, crit, talents and number of shots per minute. On average you should be aiming for 90% uptime as is described at several points in the EJ Survival thread.

There is a boat of math involved to calculate the buff uptime, so i'll keep it short with a quote from lactose. Improved aspect of the hawk, haste, higher crit rating, master tactician will all affect the buff uptime. In the end you should be looking at about 90% for EW and 35-45% for MT. As long as you don't have 100% crit chance you won't see a 100% uptime on EW, you can get pretty close however.

Uptime = 1 - (ChanceNotToProc^Attacks)
Uptime = Value between 0 and 1, ratio of how much it's up. Uptime*100 = Uptime in percentage.
Attacks = Number of attacks you make in 7 seconds. Most likely this is not an integer, i.e. you might have 5.5 shots each 7 second cycle. If so, averaging out the uptime for 5 and 6 should be a close enough approximation.

With 3/3, ChanceNotToProc = 1-Crit%
With 2/3, ChanceNotToProc = 1-( Crit% * (2/3) )
With 1/3, ChanceNotToProc = 1-( Crit% * (1/3) )


Effective buff

Tier 4 : (1225,785 Agi / 4) * 90% Uptime = 306,44625 AP * 0.9 = 275,801625 AP
Tier 5 : (1251,085 Agi / 4) * 90% Uptime = 312,77125 AP * 0.9 = 281,494125 AP
Tier 6 : (1329,515 Agi / 4) * 90% Uptime = 332,37875 AP * 0.9 = 299,140875 AP
Sunwell : (1351,02 Agi / 4) * 90% Uptime = 337,755 AP * 0.9 = 303,9795 AP

Using the Rogue DPS spreadsheet you can see what such a buff does for rogues. 300 AP provides us with about 107 effective DPS.
So, if you were to compare this to the earlier example, (120 DPS added to the group) you'll clearly see the benefit that a survival hunter will give a raid. Even if the example group's DPS was as high as 8000, a single survival hunter in the raid would still provide the raid with a much larger buff than a single BM hunter could give.

300 AP / 14 = 21,428 DPS, which is the base DPS you'll get for just using autoattacks. Any class using instant attacks such as rogues, warriors, hunters will gain extra benefit off this added damage. Hence rogues gain over 100 DPS from 300 AP extra.

Two rogues, each 100 DPS.
A DPS warrior, ~75 DPS
A ret paladin, ~75 DPS
An enhancement shaman ~75 DPS
Three tanks, each ~50 DPS
Two hunters, each ~75 DPS
Two hunter pets, eaach ~25 DPS

These are pretty rough numbers, but if you add it all up, you'll come to a nice value of 775 DPS added. That's a pretty big difference from 120 DPS that a single BM hunter would do. Of course you have to measure in the difference in personal DPS that a Survival hunter loses, but if you assume (as mentioned earlier) that the difference would be no more than 300 DPS, then you'll see that you end up with : 775 - 120 - 300 = 355 DPS gained for the raid. On a fight of 5 minutes that's 355 * 60 * 5 = 106500 damage done.

From this we can roughly calculate the value of each agility point in your gear.
775/1330 = 0,5827 DPS, meaning every 10 Agility would increase the raid's total DPS by about 5.8 DPS
Keep in mind this is a very rough estimate, the actual DPS gain will depend on the number of melee in the raid, each member's current crit, class, spec, and even latency. It's possible to calculate the exact value based on those parameters, but I'm not a masochist i fear. You'll have to do with the wet finger math for now.

So, if you have 2 BM hunters in the raid and none of them are survival, I highly recommend you have one of them respec. Survival is a great benefit to the raid's total DPS, not to mention the tank's threat. Which in turn increases the threat-cap for the rest of the raid.


Hunter links

* EJ Forum Survival Thread
* EJ DPS Spreadsheet
* Hunter Theorycraft wiki
* TKA Something


Relevant Blogs

* Artanis' Hunter Guide
* Aspect of the Hare
* Big Red Kitty
* Chain Trap
* Gun Loving Dwarf Chick
* Mania's Arcadia
* Ready, Aim, Trap
* Survival Hunters Anonymous (Discontinued)
* The Hunter's Mark

Instant messenging

Closing the IM poll for now. Yeah i know it had 9 days to go, but i felt like closing it, because i can.

The results :
* MSN 139 (58%) : As expected really.
* None 44 (18%) : Nothing at all?
* Skype 42 (17%) : Wasn't expecting this.
* Other 34 (14%) : GTalk, or what?
* AIM 28 (11%) : Aol instant messenger, all americans i guess?
* ICQ 25 (10%) : See Previous post
* Yahoo 19 (8%) : Uninstall that junk.
* IMVU 1 (0%) : Curious
* Jabber 1 (0%) : Huh?

About 44 people who don't use any IM at all? Curious. Quite a lof of MSN users visiting this site. Heh, only a single person using Imvu, even with all the advertisements you see everywhere that thing just doesn't really take off. Same for jabber, though i somewhat expected that one to be more widely used.

What "other" IM are there? 34 is not a number that's easily ignored, I doubt all those people are using Google talk, or are you?

Poor item design

Poor item design. Poor stat distribution on purpose or accidental? It's hard to say, but I'm sure many people have wondered why some items just suck so badly that nobody in the raid wants the item when it drops. Or some items with a vastly superior item level are such minor upgrades compared to other items.

Am i going too fast? I suppose i am, let's start from the beginning. World of Warcraft uses a specific formula to determine the height and quality of each item. These are the major factors :
* Height of stats : An item with 40 agility will have less of a budget for other stats than an item with 20 agi and 20 strength.
* Item Quality : Uncommon, Rare, Epic, etc
* Itemlevel : Internal value, you can show this value by getting RatingBuster.

Also
* Slot modifier : Chest items will have higher values than rings of bracers.
* Stat modifier : Attack power is worth half as much as Str or Agi.

These modifiers are explained in great detail at the Formulas:Item Values page at wowwiki. Also, there are certain tools that you can use to manually experiment with slots and ilvl.

It all boils down to the simple fact that most epic items will be better than rare items, and epics from endgame raiding (ilvl 141+) will be better than epics found inside heroics (ilvl 110). In some rare cases however some items won't be clear upgrades.


Budget

Items are designed by people, but are made to fit within a certain budget which is determined by the ilvl and other factors I just mentioned.

Basically you start with a naked item with no stats. Each stat point costs a certain value. You can add 1 Agi, and it'll cost you 1 point of this value. (it's actually more complex than that, just look at this page) Next you can add 1 Str, also for 1 point. If you however wished to add a second point of Agi, it'll cost 1.05 points to add to it.

So higher stats will cost increasingly more on your budget. The result to this is that you could waste your entire item budget with two very high stats, or spread the budget into three or more stat types and come up with a lower individual value, but a much higher "total" value. Which is what most DPS classes will be aiming for.


Some examples

The left item is generally inferior to the item on the right. With the exception of the Thalassian wildercloak all the items on the right are lower or equal in ilvl.

* Farstrider Wildercloak vs Drape of the Dark Reavers
* Saberclaw Talisman vs Worgen Claw Necklace
* Rapscallion Boots vs Edgewalker Longboots
* Deadly Cuffs vs Insidious Bands
* Don Alejandro's Money Belt vs Belt of One-Hundred Deaths
* Drape of the Dark Reavers vs Thalassian Wildercloak
* Talon of Azshara vs Blade of Infamy

Not all are perfect example, mainly the ones from Karazhan are quite distinguishable from each other. Look at the first example Farstrider Wildercloak(ilvl 128) vs Drape of the Dark Reavers(ilvl 115) a difference of 13 ilvls. Meaning the wildercloak "could" have a far superior number of stats on it.

But, Blizzard decided to waste all it's stats on only two things, stamina and attack power. Compared to the Drape which uses four different stats, the conclusion is quite simple. Even with 13 ilvls lower, the Drape is a vastly superior item. This seems strange, as the drape is from Aran, and the Wildercloak drops from a later boss in Karazhan (Prince). If you are not a rogue the Royal Cloak of Arathi Kings is also better.

Why would blizzard do this? You'd think higher level bosses would drop better items. And though they do, due to poor itemization the resulting item is actually worse.


Weapons

Weapons are another category upon themselves. With the availability of arena gear this category is even more stressed than the others. Obviously the Talon of Azshara will be "slightly" better than the S2 sword, however the S3 sword is slightly better than the Blade of Infamy from Hyjal. Which is rather weird.

This means you'd actually have to do pvp arena to get competitive weapons to use in PvE. Most won't mind, but it's still a strange design as blizzard has stated in the past that the arena items would be best for PvP, while the PvE items would be best for PvE. This means that either the items in PvE were poorly designed, or the items in PvP a lot better.

I'll opt for the second option. So let's look at the sword in question, why is it so poor?

Blade of Infamy (ilvl 141)
182 - 339 Damage, Speed 2.60 (100.2 damage per second)
+28 Agility
+56 Attack power

Talon of Azshara (ilvl 134)
182 - 339 Damage, Speed 2.70 (96.5 damage per second)
+168 Armor
+15 Agility
+20 Hit rating
+40 Attack power

The damage range of 182-339 is identical between the two, meaning each hit will do the same damage. It's got slightly more DPS as it hits faster but it has less stats which will result in weaker hits.


Improving what is broken : Stats

As you hopefully know, rogues rely on slow weapons to do bigger hits with their instant attacks. A small difference as small as 0.1 second attack speed could result in a difference of nearly 10 effective DPS. This is one reason why the Merciless S2 sword with 2.6 attack speed and 97.7 DPS is actually inferior to the Talon with 96.5 DPS. The min+max damage on the Talon is better, and it's got a few more stats. Even so, it's a pretty minor upgrade.

As you can see in the above example, the Blade of Infamy has more DPS than the Talon, but it's faster and has less total stats. The resulting effective dps makes it only a mere 5 DPS better than the Talon. While with better stat distribution, it could give as much as 10 or 20 DPS extra.


Blade of Infamy Improved (ilvl 141)
182 - 339 Damage, Speed 2.60 (100.2 damage per second)
+18 Agility
+18 hit rating
+18 crit rating
+35 Attack power

Difference from original : -10 Agi, -21 AP, +18 Hit, +18 Crit
Net gain : 15,5 stat points.


Improving what is broken : Weapon Speed

Alternatively, the sword could be made slower. This won't affect it's ilvl at all, but will increase the DPS for instant attacks by a huge amount.

Speed 2.70 : 192 - 349 Damage (100,185 DPS)
Speed 2.60 : 182 - 339 Damage (100,192 DPS)

10 min and 10 max damage per instant attack extra.

This is also why many rogues shed loads of drool over the Warglaives, with 2.8 sec attack speed, 109.3 DPS and a load of stats they're the clearly superior weapon choice for any raiding rogue.


So why?

Why would Blizzard intentionally make some items worse than others? It doesn't really make sense. Not to me anyway. Of course they could be just creating diversity in items to give people a choice on items, but when one item is just clearly superior to another item, do we really have a choice?

Trojans, oh boy

Seems even after verbal confirmation of having found the perpetrator a week ago, wowhead, thott and alakhazam are still affected by a trojan in their advertisements.

If you haven't gotten firefox and/or noscript by now, i highly recommend you add the following lines to your hosts file :
127.0.0.1 xpantivirus.com
127.0.0.1 ad.yieldmanager.com
That's it. Best i can do for you for now other than telling you to find a different browser or database site.

The wowhead team is hard at work trying to find and remove the offending banner, however it seems to be a difficult nut to crack and they might remove advertisements completely until the issue is found.

Quote :
I've been tearing my hair out trying to find this ad and get it pulled. The trouble is that the redirect code is hidden in a banner ad that, unless loaded in an actual webpage, looks completely innocuous. Not even our ad serving providers know which banner it's located in--if they did, it would be blocked by them on their end, they don't allow this kind of thing either. I promise we're trying. If we can't track this ad down soon we may have to pull all advertisement from the site entirely.


Paint

Good thing i'm wearing old pants, as they're covered in paint. Actual paint, white, blue, etc. Not that silly windows application. No doubt i'll get them even dirtier tomorrow afternoon as i'm far from done with the apartment. Ugh, arms hurt in places they never did before. Ah well, i'll add some pictures later for those interested. Plenty left to do.

Also seems i got a gas leak in the kitchen, which is less funny as the previous owner did not bother to mention this...


Onyxia

Someone asked me today, how many people you need to kill onyxia.

It took me a bit to recover from the stun, but aparently some people actually have NO idea about this boss and have only seen her on movies where obviously there'll be 30-40 people pounding away at her. It's not really surpsising when you think about it, as after 2.4 she'll the only raid boss left with any attunement worth mentioning.

Anyway she's bugged currently in 2.3.2 as i'm sure some of you will be able to verify. She doesn't seem to properly aggro the tank, and just runs around her eggs. Quite weird. If she were fixed though, (no she won't do deep breath more often) she should be doable with 3 people, maybe even 2 if you're really crazy. 4 should be a nice and smooth kill however.

If you don't have the drake fire amulet yet, i highly recommend you look it up and try to get yourself attuned. A quick 4 man kill of onyxia is a 15 minute job, and awards you with a good 35g per person.

Progression

I'll have to give you a short summary for today, the next few days are a bit busy so the average posts per day may go down a bit. Or it might not. There's always something to write after all ;)

The guild killed Gurtogg Bloodboil last night. Simply put we're quite happy with the achievement and will be focusing on the Reliquary of Souls next.


RL Stuff

That's not what'll keep me too busy however.
I did in fact get a set of keys today. (11 in total wtf?) Keys to the block, keys to my apartment, keys to the storage room, keys to my private box. Plus about two copies of each. So yeah, I got a mortgage running and everything. The place will need sanding, painting, new carpet, furniture, electricity, water, gas, and quite improtantly TV and Internet! and plenty more.

The location? It's quite good actually, all kinds of shops less than 500 meters away (easily walkable) two bus stops to choose from, and well, a big major road behind the building... Headphones on and you don't hear a thing. The road will be removed over a period of 5 years after which it either becomes a grassy field or a bus lane. Either which are better than the truck loaded crap it is now. Property value should increase once it's gone, so it's a decent investment.


Elsewhere in wow

On the PTR a couple of new items have been uncovered (datamined) which are related to arena season 4. One such items is the Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword, ain't she a beauty? Sporting 144.4 DPS that's a pretty heavy hitting Two-hander. Hopefully some one-handed weapons will be found soon... sigh. Curious however, is that the item isn't listed to require 1850 rating, like Season 3 currently does. This will probably be added later however, so don't get your hopes up too much.
You'll be able to find the other new arena items on both MMOC and WoR.

A small update on that. When the new season is released S4 will have the same rating requirement as S3 has now, but S3 will not have it's rating requirement removed unlike was previously assumed, instead it'll be lowered from the current value. By how much is unknown so far.


Preciousss...

Oh, and before I forget. Epic level gems (you know the ones from BT and HY?) will be available for the lowly price of 15 Heroic badges a piece. Much like the Nether Vortexes, only without added gold cost. Start saving those badges!

Old content - BWL

I finally managed to get a group together for Blackwing Lair and finish both the quest for the [red crystal shard] and the last of the 8 sections of [Draconic for Dummies] which is part of the blue shard's quest line. This meant the other 7 sections i have could finally be bound into a book and save me a good 8 slots of space in my bank. These were filled soon after...


How it started

A few months ago i got the silly notion to grind my [brood of nozdormu] reputation up to neutral. It was saturday, i was bored, you get the idea.

Once that was achieved, three quest lines opened themselves up and i got started on progressing those. At some point in the blue crystal's line you are sent into Molten Core, which we did. Unfortunately we had to kill ragnaros twice because loot mode indeed had to be on free for all to pick up the draconic section.

Good thing the crystal shards didn't require loot to be on FFA, or i'd have to go into BWL again...

The draconic for dummies was split up in 8 sections. The first 4 could be soloed, another needed a bit of help to grind. The last three were in the hands of ragnaros, onyxia, and a table somewhere in BWL. So, in the end the first seven have been sitting in my bank for about two months. Something had to be done.


Blackwing lair

I started inviting at around 19.45, and it was a painfully slow half hour before we finally got 20 people together. Soon we had another few people join every so and then but in the end we didn't get started until 20.30 or there abouts due to summons.

At 20.45 Razorgore was the first to fall. I'll leave out the obvious swearing words aimed at blizzard, but even 2 months after first reporting this bug the fucking encounter is still bugged !!

Once Razorgore dies, for some reason phase 1 started again, and indeed kept spawning, and spawning, and so on. Since some of us have seen this problem before we knew of only a single way to fix it... Spend 35 minutes in Molten Core to force the instance to soft-reset.


Molten Core

Lucifron

We went in and got up to lucifron with about five of the 25 players AFK. Due to some miscommunication or plain stupidity i'm not sure, but we pulled a pack of dogs and lucifron at the same time. I suppose i should have explained before starting that all the dogs have to be killed at the same time, or they will start resurrecting each other.
People were being mindcontrolled at random, cursed, and general panic ensued. We just decided to kill lucifron's adds, then lucifron and offtank the dogs until then.
Suprisingly nobody died, it was almost impressive. 21.10 lucifron was dead, onward to Maggy.


Magmadar

The dog packs up to magmadar have always been messy, again so today, for obvious reasons. I won't bother too much with the details on that, but 9 minutes after lucifron was enough for Magmadar to take a long nap.


Gehennas

We were getting warmed up now, and started chain pulling the rest of the way down.
Gehennas went down at 21.28 so we were up to our 35 minute shedule. Time to head back to BWL.

A Minute or few before we went up, i got a GM reply about my notification of Razorgore in BWL being bugged. Biggest waste of time ever, the guy basically stated :
* We're aware of the issue and it'll be fixed asap. (Thats the same thing you guys said 2 months ago... and it's not fixed yet, go figure.)
* Anything else i can help you with? (No, obviously you're not having a very good saturday evening or feeling very helpful, so not going to bother.)
* [insert bullshit roleplaying farewell here] (Whatever.)


Blackwing lair - part 2

Indeed the Razorgore encounter had reset on it's own. Half a frigging hour later, but oh well. Also, people ran into Vaelastrasz' room and scared the goblins away, as usual.


Vaelastrasz

Nobody talked to tbe boss without being asked, so i was able to start the [Red crystal shard] quest at least. I don't really expect to see the green crystal at least until WotLK, but it won't hurt to have the red crystal if i can get it today.

We didn't wipe, but somebody didn't move and blew up half the raid when his health reached zero! Also, Rogues can tank, they just need to rotate the boss faster so he doesn't breathe flame on all the rest of us poor melee --_--


Broodlord lashlayer

So, it was 21.44, the timer is ticking and we got all night. With the dps that we've gained in TBC clearing the room was pretty easy. A short explanation on where to tank the boss and we were off.

A quick warning for whoever intends to do this boss in the near future, the head is bugged. Make sure you put loot on free for all. I've already done the quest, so i couldn't see the head, but loot was on ML-epic and those who could see the head reported that they could not loot it.


Firemaw

We cleared two packs, then pulled the boss into the proper location. Tank went down at around 80%, boss killed the melee, and wiped the raid. What went wrong? Everyone sort of forgot that tanks need the [Onyxia scale cloak] for this fight. We spent a bit of time clearing the rest of the hallway where the boss patrols while some people went to get their cloak. Poor planning I know, but we were here to have fun, it's impossible to think of everything up front.

The second try went much smoother, the aoe fire aura was pretty much non existant and the boss dropped some neat purple shiny items that some lucky players could show off when they are in town.

Draconic for dummies, right there on the table in the corner to the left after the three large dragon kin. /cheer


Ebonroc

Before pulling the boss, we got a few people the [Smelt elementium] recipe. We were here anyway.

The boss himself was a pushover, even if a tank got the debuff, the combined dps that we had running took him down at 22.45


Flamegor

As you may remember, without at least two hunters this fight is pretty much impossible. Not so in TBC gear. We had a single hunter, so he had a big job, but even so the boss managed to enrage quite a bit. Aparently, even though the boss is considered level 73, his spell is not and you'll resist most of it.


Chromaggus

Incinerate and Timelapse. /glee

We gave the hourglass sand to the tanks and tanked the big puppy in the doorway. There was some confusion about dispelling which almost had a nasty side effect, but that was soon taken care of. However, the tanks died. Positioning problem most likely.

Oh no! Would we wipe on Chromaggus? One of the surviving DPS warriors pulled out a shield and saved the day by tanking the boss from about 40 - 3% before dying to a lack of heals. The boss then rampaged trough the raid killing everything and everyone as his health dropped agonizingly slowly down to 1% ...

With only about 4-5 hybrids left standing, the boss dropped to his knees at 23.02 and the crowd went wild !


Nefarian

Rather than splitting up the raid and wasting precious time explaining more than the basics we all bunched up near the throne's base. Plenty of time left for the red crystal quest. We did a quick count, and came up with a grand total of... about 10 cloaks out of the 28 people in the raid. We pulled anyway.

A number of people got behind the throne before the boss unleashed shadowflame on the raid. We figured we'd try outhealing it, hah! Only a token 12 or so players stayed alive, but it was enough.

A druid ended up tanking the boss, in catform during one of the phases even. The priests were very well organised and even with getting a priest class call twice they managed to stop healing in good time to avoid the debuff.

The boss also did two or three rogue class calls, each time either directly after a fear or trough pure skill of the tank, but we didn't get stuck to the ground a single time.

I disenchanted the stuff that we didn't take along and distributed those items of interest to others. Shards were handed out by rolling 1-28 and a good few people got something useful out of the night. The head was looted at 23.22 and placed on a stake in Orgrimmar shortly after.

Sadly we don't receive a buff from it above level 60 anymore...


Shards

* Red : Obtained.
* Blue : On "the good and the bad news". Need 7 more elementium ore, ouch.
* Green : Haven't started yet. You need to farm green dragonkin around each of the world tree portals. Rumors go you can spend 2-4 hours on this for each portal, and respawns are dreadfully slow. Hopefully this will be soloable at level 80. I don't think i'll bother with it until then.