Black Temple

LF 1 more DPS for BT. Must be geared.

umm hello? Hi im Zupa. Lets roll.

And so it began, more firsts for me, this time in the form of 3 new BT bosses. Last night Vision cleared High Warlord Naj'entus, Supremus and the Shade of Akama. We had a couple of wipes on Supremus but aside from that there were no real dramas. Took about 3 hours from start to finish.

I'd have to say Supremus was the most fun. It's one of those fights where 25 people have to be on the ball and focused for the duration of the fight for a successful outcome.

However, First things First.

High Warlord Whassisnameagain?

When the guild leaders started explaining the fight for the 3 or so of us who hadn't been before, I heard them talking about spines and bubbles and bubble popping macros. Ah-ha! Tuan over at SpicyTunas did a write up of this fight the other day, so i quickly brought it up on screen to see if there was anything extra I should know as a frost mage. Not rly. Don't screw up the macro.

Ok so how it works is, everyone stands around the boss. Look at who's standing next to you, if you hear that person has a spine in them you know to get it out. Every once in a while the boss throws a spine at someone and they are paralized until someone grabs it out of them. That person is then responsible for bursting the bosses bubble (with said spine)

If you dont bust his bubble with one of these spines then he will heal and not die. We did, he didn't, and he did. Bam moving on to....

Supremus!

What a cool name. He's also massive, and you have plenty of time to contemplate his massiveness while clearing trash around his feet. For this fight you will be requiring - your brain, your strafe key. Other gear optional.

So there are two phases in the fight. Each lasts for a minute and when one finishes the other starts. There is the kite phase and the tank and spank phase.

That pretty much explains the fight. The thing is anybody might have to kite him for any length of time, he randomly switches targets and chases you during this phase.

He also randomly creates volcanoes. They kill you, and require you to avoid their AoE which is rather easy as its blue and on fire and the volcano is erupting etc. He also has some blue flame earth split thing as well. Once again don't stand in the way or you die, otherwise just run around it and no problems. If you have managed to land yourself a spot in a BT raid but don't understand instinctively that standing in any kind of fire is a bad idea... well I suspect that wouldn't happen...

So what could possibly go wrong? Well in our case people kept dying during the kite phase. You will die if you fail at kiting him. Unfortunately there are a few different ways to fail when kiting and newbies and old school raiders alike demonstrated all of them last night.

mistake 1: you are too close to Supremus during kite phase when he switches aggro to you.
result 1: You go splat

mistake 2: you are too far away from supremus during kite phase when he switches aggro to you. he charges you.
Result 2: You probably go splat.

mistake 3: He was chasing you, distance was good, you ran into a wall.
result 3: He catches you. You go splat.

misake 4: He was chasing you, distance was good, you ran into a corner and suddenly no where to run
result 4: .... you go splat.

mistake 5: He was chasing you, and you ran way too far away from the raid. he charged you and you went splat... OR you ran him so far from the rest of the raid that when he swiches aggro... he charged someone else and they go splat. Of course they should have been keeping up to prevent this from happening but you made that difficult by blinking down the other side of the map, and there were about 4 volcanoes in the way that the raid had to avoid.
result 5: ... someone gets splatted... maybe 2 people.

See whats happening here? We were losing 2 - 5 people every kite phase. I think the most common mistake was being too far away and getting charged. This is understandable I guess. He's a big bastard. He's all intimidating and scary and casters dont like getting too close to him.

Eventually we got him down, I managed to stay up for all of the first two fights until the RL called wipe it, then on the third and successful attempt I was too close to him when he got down to about 20% and see mistake number 1.... I went splatz! I was absolutely spanking him too (fire mages are a bit gimped in this fight) I expected to see another wipe but thankfully nobody else went down and it was on to the easiest fight in BT...

Shade of Akama!

This fight was almost a non-event. Adds come out of the sides, have to kill the dudes with the purple beams to release the boss. Then everyone spanks the boss. Some ghost NPC fella helps out.

Thats about the extent of it from my perspective. I was assigned to one of the doors along with another mage, a warlock and a pally tank. We killed the adds. They were soft. I turn around when the time comes to spank the boss, press number 3 a few times. Game over.

And that concludes my first venture in to Black Temple. Hopefully I get to go back tomorrow to have a crack at the next bosses, and if we get one of them down I believe it will be a first for Vision. I might not get a spot coz its progression and I'm not a "core raider" in Vision (yet)... Then again, I helped clear the trash, my gear is up to scratch....

Time will tell....

Undead Flying Mount

Today in my travels at Aurdon's blog I came across this little gem. An undead flying mount. Looks the business, I have no information at all.

But who needs info when I have a video (thx Aurdon)


New Undead Drake Mount from Kenzi on Vimeo.

Al'ar and Void Reaver Vanquished!

Last night saw two more first kills for Zupa of Frostmourne. Both fights were fun, challenging in different ways, and successful with the Vision raid. Not too many core raiders were present, which meant there was plenty of room for new recruits such as myself.

Thanks to the leadership of Camaddar and Mircs, we had few issues with these bosses.

Al'ar is a giant version of my phoenix pet from H MgT. Like totally big. Not gonna put Onyxia to shame or anything, but like its a big bird made of fire. Fun fight, I won't go into details, but we took her down and moved on to....

Void Reaver!

Dodgeball!

wait... what? oh. So its like playing dodge ball with a boss! Theres a big circle, a big robot fella in the middle, and he throws electric balls of death at random people in the raid every second or two. If you see a ball coming at you, you need to turn around and run the hell backwards. This way the ball of death (BoD for short) will follow you and explode safely and not hurt the raid. Maybe will hurt you, but not others which will be fine.

When it hit me I would just bandage up then get back into the fight. If I was quick enough at moving back I found they wouldnt hurt me at all. All in all quite a long fight, allowing you to focus on pumping out DPS most of the time as long as there isnt a giant scary BoD heading at your face!

So a couple more bosses are now ticked off, TK has been sussed out, and I look forward to finishing it off next time (hopefully)

Ok this time I really am going home!

Brutal Season has landed!

After 30 long weeks of season 3, Arena season 4 finally started on the 24th of this month. Gratz to the winners who got titles and cool mounts, Gratz to the hoarders who bought up a storm with their saved honor and arena points on Wednesday, and thanks to that guy who got over 1000 gold worth of enchants from me.

Nothing like a fresh season to get the enchanting market happening again! Executioner, savagery, +6 stats, +15 res on chest, spell power, healing, strength, attack power... there something for everyone at zupa's enchanting emporium!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any new shineys with saved up honor, but I did cave and spend 60 badges on the +crit cloak. Not the greatest item but it was my last blue, and lets face it I don't have much else I can spend badges on, and its got 35 stam and some resilience, so im almost up to 9k unbuffed.

I will be happy when im 10k unbuffed in my pvp gear. Actually im happy now!

Anyway for a complete rundown of the season 4 gear, including costs and rating requirements, pop over to wow insider!

Well its friday afternoon and im outta here to get my PvP on!

Vision for the future

Things have been changing for Zupa lately! It seems as though a lot of hard work is going to pay off for me in this game. And no, I haven't been grinding timbermaw rep, just doing what comes naturally and gearing up as fast as possible! I find myself not rolling on all manner of very nice loots because, well, I have something better. Something I got myself the hard way. No sitting around waiting for a handout here.

So my 100 badge pants, my vindicators cuffs, my heroic magister's terrace robe, my normal magister's terrace gloves, the frozen shadoweave gear, the badge belt.... they all add up to a pretty powerful frost mage with 999 damage unbuffed.

Respectable! Rdy for 25 mans, been there done that in ZA, waiting for SSC tonight which is another first for me! Vision are looking at taking some non-core DPS classes along to their progression raid tonight in SSC, although there are 5 bosses to clear before lady Vash which Vision has yet to kill, so i'll be along for the ride, mebbe get some loots, definitely see some cool new big bad guys as usual, enjoy being a valuable and effective member of a skilled team.

All this fancy gear also means I can hold my own with anyone except the best geared T6 dps classes going around. On a good boss fight my dps is up around 1400. Still a long way to go to reach 2200 say, that Utata of Spicytunas.com has managed during the Brutalis fight, but i've come a long way since hitting 70 and wow is as fun as ever.

more news after tonight's raid!

Young Talent Time

10/0/51

^^ That's where I'm at people. According to my own figurings, this should be the best raid spec for me at this point in my career.

Now talents come and go, specs change, Blizzard changes the rules frequently, people whine, things get nerfed... people whine, things get buffed. It can be a bit much to keep up with sometimes.

It's fairly easy to go research the best spec for x and then just copy it and away you go. This of course doesn't take into account your playstyle, your skill level or your gear. So how do you know when you have it "right" ?

I don't think it's ever 100% right, the game is too varied for one spec to be ideal. Something that can help, however, is Lhierva's Theorycraft-o-Matic. This tool will actually give you a simulated DPS, DPM, etc for any particular spec, based on your current gear.

That is freaking awesome. Costing anything up to 50g, a respec isn't something you want to screw up. I should know, I'm on my 4th spec since I started playing again, and none of them have even been radically different from one another. Just a little tweak here and there.

Up until just recently, mana was not an issue. There is no fight in any 5 man that will put me all the way out of mana under reasonable circumstances. You know as long as someone else is doing some damage as well and I remembered to conjure a mana emerald and perhaps maybe I'll use evocation during a fight.

But never was I standing there fresh out of cooldowns and been forced to bust out [The Black Stalk] on some hard to kill mofo, until the other day in kara when I was a little bit slow on creating my gems and found myself wanding the boss for the final 5%. Dunno which boss. Some big dragon fella as I recall.

The point being I decided to respec for clear casting, hence the spec above. This means I lose frostbite and improved blizzard, some of the swappable talents I've been playing around with during my recent respecs. This is no big deal in a raid or instance situation, as you don't have much opportunity to bust shatter combos on frostbitten enemies because someone else usually breaks the snare before you can wind up a frostbolt. Also imp blizzard isn't really helpful unless you are AoE grinding or PvP grinding. Neither of which I am planning to do a lot of.

So I have clearcasting instead.

balls.

Frostbite and Improved Blizzard are totally useful talents at certain times, while clearcasting gives me a mana-free spell cast 10% of the time. Thats super awesome when I need to cast 10% more spells without a break, but super useless the rest of the time.

To be honest I don't like it, but will stick with it for now as I try to squeeze out every last smidgen of DPS when in raid situations with the new guild. One must do one's best when one is the new guy don't you agree?

At least the theorycraft-o-matic confirmed that I had indeed chosen the ideal raiding spec and nobody can tell me I need to respec until I'm bloody well ready. right?

right.

One thing that is interesting, and you should try this when you plug in your own mage and do some talent comparisons. Which is better brilliant wizard oil or superior wizard oil?

36dmg & 14crit vs 42dmg.

Well the simulator actually tells me that the less damage but more crit will yeild a higher return in terms of DPS over the course of a decent fight. Damn I have about 20 jars of Superior Wizard Oil. I think it's actually cheaper to make than the Brilliant stuff because Large Brilliant Shards are rather pricey these days.

So. Kara this weekend guys? maybe? kinda? perhaps? If you aren't all too busy on your mains in that big ass guild doing some end game 25 man content that I will one day maybe get a look at.

HMMMM having your main in an alt guild isn't always the greatest.

be imba!

Have you ever been a bit lost in WoW?

Not the type of lost where you have taken a wrong turn in Kara and suddenly you are surrounded by mobs, weird staircases, and have to ask someone to come back and get you.

No... Today I'm talking about the type of lost where you log in, and just don't know what to do. This tends to happen after you hit the level cap, exhaust the immediately available fun stuff, have either finished levelling or are sick of levelling tradeskills, or perhaps you are WELL AND TRULY FED UP with running normal MGT in the hope that the bloody [Gloves of Arcane Acuity] will finally drop and the bloody holy priest wont roll on them.

So inspiration you need? Guidance you seek? Trust me getting your Cenarion Expedition rep up to exalted can wait. It's not important. Clearly this game is all about gear and getting more of it, so why not have a tool that tells you what you need to upgrade, what you need to regem, and then suggests items you might like to upgrade to and where to find them.

enter be imba!

Well I can't show you an up to date output from this site as the armory is down right now, but suffice to say it tells me some stuff that I need to know. It also tells me some stuff which I suppose is correct but ... meh.

So lets have a look at what it has to say about good old Zupa of Frostmourne shall we? What have I done wrong?

First of all its telling me I have unenchanted items = 1. This is my legs. My legs aren't worth enchanting at this stage, so stuff that.

Then its telling me I have 2 misenchanted items. Misenchanted. How dare you etc. Lets have a quick look at what it's gripes are. Apparently +7 stam isnt good enough for my [Frozen Shadoweave Boots] Apparently I should have Fortitude, Boar's Speed, Vitality or a Magister's Armor Kit.

Well screw you buddy, I'm keeping my +7 stam for now. The rest sound either expensive a la boars speed or gay a la magister's armor kit. Hmmm maybe this isn't as imba as it wants me to think it is.

So next up it has a gripe with my cloak. It doesn't like spell penetration for an enchant, and to be fair its useless for PvE and that's exactly what ive been gearing my mage up for, so fair play. Subtlety instead it reckons. Fine fine. I'll get right onto that. Might wait for a better cloak first although this one doesn't suck.

... and so on and so fizzle. You can also look at your "low level items" and check the armory for upgrades. Which link to wowhead and allow you to get all the info you require to outfit your mage correctly. All in all its a nice little way to plan your next gear upgrade or enchant or gem or whatever, and it gives you nice breakdowns of you gems and your enchants and the bonuses they are giving you.

Now I could include a link to my be.imba page or a screen shot of it, but thats hardly as interesting as what it has to say about YOUR mage. So go on, plug yourself in, dont forget to tell it to get a fresh copy of your data from the armory, and see what YOU have done wrong. Who knows you might have put the wrong gem in your new helm. I almost did.

Guilding for Dummies

So those unnamed beautiful souls who convinced me to join them in their cycle of addiction, they had a guild...

In a moment of weakness I promised to join their guild. Seemed like the right thing to do, you know. Playing with IRL friends makes it less of an awful thing to do in your spare (and often not-so-spare) time.

It wasn't until later that it started sounding like less of a great idea. By then I was renamed, rehomed, reguilded and the most insanely decked out lv 60 on Frostmourne by far. Not that being a decked out lv 60 gets you anywhere, but there were a lot of "whoa's and OMGWTF's" from the noobies and a lot of "hey, pre-bc raider. respect" from the pros, or the old timers. It amounts to much the same thing in WoW.

So what, exactly, was the issue? Well the very nature of the guild I was in was the issue. See guilds are born for different reasons and serve different purposes.

There are the obvious ones, like the "we r teh leetsauce end game raiders, all applicants must have 8/8 t6 gear k thx" and the "we r teh leetsauce arena and PVP legends, PVE is for noobs, all applicants must eat red meat, drink beer and grind battlegrounds for fun"

There's the hopefuls: "we are looking for more priests/druids/shamans/warriors/rogues/warlocks AND mages to start raiding Kara! (pallies can GTFO we have one of those)"

... and then there's the hopeless.... "we are a social levelling guild of mature fun people who like romantic walks on the beach and picnics in the sun. All classes welcome, must be FUN and blah blah insert hearts and flowers nonsense here"

See guilds serve different purposes to different players. PVP guilds organise premades and arena teams. PVE guilds have organised raids and push new content and get fat lootz. Levelling guilds I suppose are good if people are levelling or something..... and social noobcake guilds are kinda there for the people who want to play the game without playing the game. You know what I mean? Don't really like anything where they might die.

I hear herbalism is fun this time of year.

So. What type of guild did I find my way into? Another type I didn't even know about. This is the type of guild that is created by people who have no guild, for the purpose of having a guild. That way you can design a tabard and choose a cool guild name!

Sweet... I don't have an issue with people not being right into the game. I don't care that a lot of people dont know, and probably aren't interested in the mechanics of spell haste and spell hit. Guild chat is still a social thing, and being the guy in the guild who knows stuff isn't so bad I guess.

I guess my problem was I've been there, and I've done that. its done. meaning finished. meaning other stuff is the doings of happening now. Sure you can PuG every 5 man instance in the game given enough time. I know. I did. Then I got sick of it.

I was level 70 damn it. I should be doing something decent with my WoW time. Not running some shitty 5 man in the hope that some shitty blue will drop, the bloody holy priest won't roll on it, and I will be able to upgrade by a monster +5 spell damage and +2 crit at the cost of only 4 spirit and 1 stamina.

WHOOPIE FUCKING DOO! I needed more. I needed bigger. I needed better.

I should have just quit the stupid game again.

But nooooo. I accepted an invite to Bunny Slippers. Ok so original guild called Walk the Gank Plank. New guild called Bunny Slippers.

Can't say im a fan of either name but you know. Would a bunch of nerds by any other name, still be as geeky? errr. Right.

At least these guys did Kara and stuff.... So I told the old guys the score, I wanted to raid. I used to do nothing BUT raid for months before I quit. 5 mans and quests are boring and im not fkn interested. So its basically this or quit wow ok guys?

What about PVP? Bah pvp is more of a grind than "go kill 25 rats and bring me their tails" and ill give you 2g58s.

GET YER OWN FREAKING RATS YOU LAZY BITCH NPC!

OK sorry. I blew up there.

So it was kinda weird. Kinda awkward, and TBH I miss the guild chat.

So far shiny count from new guild is on 3. tier 4 head, some fancy dagger that Im not using yet coz no offhand, and some ring which was one of those kinda almost sidegrades but for my particular playstyle infintisimal upgrades that people congratulate you on, even tho the only real upgrade is the color of the item text.

Im happy with the head tho. Have a look, it's pimp. Other goodies on there as well. -> -> -> Blood Guard Zupa

More guild drama as it unfolds...

Who you calling Scub?

To anyone who doesn't or hasn't played wow you may not know that reaching the highest level in the game really means you have finally started. Akin to graduating from high school, hitting level 70 you are no longer bigger and tougher than almost everybody else.

Suddenly you are the scrub. You don't know shit. You don't got shit. You can't do shit. Shut up pls and watch your freaking aggro. Scrub.

Yes people called me a scrub. 75 days played and they call me scrub. Can't you see I'm a Blood Guard? Don't you know what that means?

DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

apparently not.

As it turns out, just because someone has reached the lv 70 pinnacle of wowingness (for now at least), doesn't mean they know how to play. It does not prevent them from being a complete freaking moron.

This is an easy assumption for rookies to make. All those big bad lv 70s who are doing weird stuff we don't understand like badge farming and dailys... they know what's what.

NEWSFLASH !

Stupid people get to level 70 too. They they run around the virtual world hurting people with their stupidity. It's like an AOE dot of some kind and the only way to remove the debuff is to leave the group and hearth.

So I might have a section in the blog. Stupid shit that stupid people did at stupid times that made me laugh, or cry.

I'm Baaack!

Blood Guard Zupa

... and so it begins again. It's just like old days. Getting by on absolute minimum sleep, spending half the day thinking about which instances to run and which gear to farm, reading forums, raiding, getting purples and wasting solid blocks of my precious life chasing a bigger carrot.

You know I kicked the habit a while ago. I was officially a burnt-out raider. They announced BC, all my epics were destined to become worthless, rading became pointless and my guildies at the time started talking about downsizing as there would be no more 40 mans.

I wasn't likely to make the A-Team in AlterElectus as they had a gaggle of geared mages already. The writing was on the wall, I hung up my Dragonrider Boots. Darkhorse the mage went on permanent smoko. Cya bitches, have fun wiping on new content without me, ill be out having a life, going to parties, picking up chicks, getting some sun. You know that stuff that normal people without epix addition do in their spare time.....

yeah sure.

So why would I start again? How stupid can I get?

Well like any reformed junkie I guess I was always going to have a weak spot, and while I managed to resist for months, colleagues at work convinced me to re-actiavte, transfer to Frostmourne, and join their guild. Level to 70 with us they said, we will make a good group... they said.

And so I took Blizzard up on their free BC trial, (and paid character transfer... ) and ten days later I was at lv 70, hiding behind a new name, and devouring the new outland instances like they were about to have their loot tables nerfed. I sharded epic after epic, cried when I equipped green items, laughed when the first frostbolt critted for 4k, and pondered how much things have changed, but how the people stay the same.

But what makes this game great is the people right?

more on them later...

Automagica?

hello world!

Not that you needed another blog or anything, but with 18 new ones spawning every 0.007 seconds, nobody's gonna mind one more? especially if its just a little one with no political content...

Anyway. I warn you. This blog will have lots of Gaming stuff, lots of WoW stuff, lots of random stuff, some ramblings, probably some rants, but hopefully -something- that justifies its existence. It will serve as my own personal favourites list via the links page (making the WWW work since 1989) It will be a diary of sorts when stuff worth recording happens, and hopefully will not be used against me in a court of law.

For now your best bet is to check out some of my links, since I've got SFA content of my own at this stage. Links are guaranteed* not to be lame, so run along now and I'll see you next time you should be doing something productive, yet for reasons best known to yourself, aren't.

- Zupa

* what I really mean is just trust me on this one ok?