Hardmode Mania!!!! (And 3.3)

And you thought that a Tribute to Insanity was our last stop until ICC? Our 10 man team continues to steamroll the hardest available 10 man content, by one-shotting all the hardmodes in Ulduar 10 man needed for the Proto-Drake, outside of Firefighter and the General/Yogg ones. We also skipped Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare for the time being since it was quite "time consuming" compared to knocking out the other ones.

Also, 3.3 hit live servers today. Nothing much changes in the Ret PvE depot, except for patching issues that are preventing me from even getting to the log-on screen- Looks like another "uninstall/install WoW entirely" night.

~Ron

Preparing for 3.3, Part 2

Well it is evident that 3.3 is due up on servers by December 8th, 2009. In this patch we see only a few Paladin changes:

• Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion or Sated from a target if the recipient is out of combat when the effect ends. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
  
• Flash of Light: This spell no longer causes a heal-over-time effect unless the player has the Infusion of Light talent.
  
• Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.
  
• Talents
  • Holy
    • Aura Mastery: This effect of this talent has been reduced in duration to 6 seconds.
      
    
    
  • Protection
    • Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.
      
    • Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases. Finally, Damage which reduces the paladin’s health below 20% now cancels the effect early.
    
    
  • Retribution
    • Repentance: This crowd control effect will no longer break early from the damage done by Righteous Vengeance.

The change to RV is nice, since I could actually pick up RV should I ever go back to Ret PvP (since Prot PvP is better nowadays). The big changes, however, are in Divine Sacrifice and Aura Mastery.

Aura Mastery recieved a slight nerf, however I might considering picking it up- The problem is, I am the only one who (besides the Warrior) can toss up Imp Demo shout, and at no cost to boot. The Divine Sacrifice changes would mean that I can could use it every 2 minutes without having to kill myself in the process. However, with the way our Trees are set up, there is no way I can afford to get Divine Guardian without sacrificing personal DPS.

All in all, my spec will probably not chance. Looking at the content for 3.3, I hope to have a Quel’Delar/Shadow's Edge soon. :)

~Ron

Insanely Skilled

With our cleanup from the previous week, we knew that A Tribute to Insanity was just a week away. On November 29, we managed to takes some names and kick ass with our Server's 13th Anub kill with 50 attempts remaining. Although I did not snag any personal loot, it is still a grand achievement to obtain, and shows just what we are capable with when we focus and work coherently.

Now we just need to repeat this so I can snag my cloak :P


~Ron

Preparing for 3.3, Part 1

So we all know that 3.3 is due in either this Tuesday or within the next 21 days. So today, I decided to start preparing for 3.3

First and foremost, Transmute: Titanium is loosing its cooldown. This can mean either:

• A drop in Titanium/Titansteel Bars, in which case I need less money for Titansteel cooldowns and gear for Alts
• A rise in Saronite Ore/Bars, of which I already 200+ of each to re-sell.

Outside of that, the only other preparation I have done besides PTR work is.... well, nothing. :)

I did accomplish somethings, though, including soloing
Thrym, The Hope Ender:



As well as doing over 1,000,000 damage in a battleground:


Until next time!

~Ron

BiS make my Tenticles Wiggle

Had a wonderful loot night from TotC 25! Last Tuesday, I was able to sweep house with my brand new Justicebringer (it took long enough) as well as the Executioner's Malice neckpiece. Finally, in the Onyxia run (which we somehow managed to wipe twice in?) I picked up a Judgement Crown to replace my helm from TotC 10 man.

In addition, I completed the achievements Chef de Cuisine, Mowed Down, and the requirements for the meta Pilgrim. All in all, I am getting closer to the Tabard of Conquest, which I hope to have within my grasp soon.

As always, here is the dataz.


~Ron

Mad Skills, baby!

A Tribute to Mad Skill!
We came, we saw, and we kicked some ass! Out of our 50 attempts, we managed to get to Anub on Heroic TotGC 10 man with ALL of our attempts! We did have a bit of trouble, though, on Anub himself- However, I see that fight as being so needy and tedious that there are many factors that can go wrong.

With downing Anub with 47/50 attempts remaining, I can honestly say that we are setting the bar higher for next week to obtain some new cloaks.


Composition for tonight's raid is as follows:

Tanks:
Eibrocan
Vires

DPS:
Ronark
Remmanak
Minicthur
Jam
Toranch

Healers:
Sondog
Moonsinnah
Chuckmurloc

As always, the data can be found here.


And as a side Victory, I'm past 7000 achievement points (yay)!

Until next time,

~Ron

New week, New loots

Tuesday came and went. Had Justicebringer drop from Faction Champs, but a DK guildie had priority over me. Good news is, that the next weapon that drops I have overall priority over.

Here is the data for the run.

Was also able to get some quick PvP action in and snag both Isle of Conquest All-Star and Demolition Derby (IoC).

Finally, I bought my Pony for my Squire. Hopefully it will make farming things easier in the future.

~Ron

Is it Tuesday yet?

Restarts are tomorrow, so a quick recap of what my guild's been doing:

- Still on NRB for TotGC : /
- Downed TotCG 10 man with 22 attempts remaining
- Still waiting for that sword from Onyxia :P
- Yogg practice on Ulda 25 man. Here is the data.

~Ron

Tier 11 (or 12) ideas.

I got around to drawing up some rough sketches of my vision of future tier gear, as well as 2 weapons that I would like to see in Cataclysm. The link to the post with the pictures can be found below:

Here

I hope to have them modeled in Autodesk Maya soon, but that takes a considerable amount of time to do.

~Ron

Goal: 100k, and some IoC madness

So, as everyone knows, I am an Achievement Point whore- I have the most in my guild currently, at almost 7k. After waiting for a raid to start the other day, I started to add up all the gold items linked to achievements (mounts, etc) and came to a grand total of: 43,000 gold or so, plus or minus a few hundred.

I find the best way to make money (outside of the 200 or so from IC dailies and the Tourny dailies) is playing the Auction House like its my hoe- Most of the time, it is just earning honor and buying/cutting epic gems and posting them. But most of the time, I am able to craft gold- As in, I buy the materials to craft a Nightmare Tear for 115 gold, and then sell the Nightmare Tear for 170. My goal is to make 100k gold by the beginning of Cata- Ideally, 50k gold going into the expansion, and 50k for my mounts/pets/etc.

Also on a side note, I entered Island of Conquest the other day for the first time, and I have to say, it is pretty amusing. So far I have 6 of the 14 possible achievements, and I hope to have that tabard for my Arena set.

~Ron


P.S. Going into 10 man TotC and maybe 10 man TotGC tonight, lets hope for phat loots!