Apparently this is not my expansion

So I'm having a terrible time with Guilds this expansion! I can't seem to really find a place where I "Fit in". I thought I had it made for a few weeks. I was in a guild with a bunch of friends who had split from another big guild. There were like 7 guildies that raided, and it felt like Memento Mori from WotLK. (A guild my friends and I had created and governed).

This guild pugged people for the last few spots, and had cleared Ragnaros and was working on some hardmodes. I got to see what it was like to heal Heroic Shannox and Majordomo Staghelm. The guys welcomed me in, and I was enjoying myself. I got to heal, I got to DPS, It was fun all around.

Until last week. I logged on, and one of the members that was newer than me, mentioned that the gold in the Guild Bank was looking awfully low. Now the guild I was in was brand new, only been around for about 3 weeks, so It's not like 250K gold went missing. This guildie looked at the tab, and noted that one officer pulled out 20K and another officer pulled out 17.5K spread out on about 4 of his toons. I thought "This might not be a big deal, they could be using it for crafting epics or something."

A day or two passed, and I hadn't seen either of the two Officers, or the GM, so I looked at the guild Info to see if the two officers left with the gold. Nope. The only thing that Happened was that the GM had transferred ownership from one of his toons to another. The next day rolls around and I see in the Info that the GM and 3 of our officers have server transferred.

4 of the 7 people that regularly got on to raid had server transferred without even saying a word to me, or the other people in the guild. I was blindsided. I know they were talking about how they were unhappy with our server (our server is pretty far back in terms of progression), but I never expected them to just leave without saying anything. The worst part is, when any of those officers logged on to their alts, I tried to talk to them in chat, and I just got ignored.

So I left. I whined about being homeless (only Guildwise, but my poor Asherrylie felt like she was homeless) for a while on Twitter (I'm sure a few of you heard it). I was stuck. I didn't PUG raids. I really didn't do anything but Loremaster for a while.

Eventually I joined the guild that Askevar and her husband Venoym had joined, under the understanding that their progression raid team was full, and that I would be allowed to raid in the Alt raids if I chose to do so.

I've only been there for a few days, so it'll take a while to get to know people, I'm sure I'll have some fun (I always manage to). The thing is I felt like I *needed* to be in a guild, because I don't like doing things solo without someone to at least chat with.

Hopefully I'll have some better news for you in the next post.

--Ashe

The month in which I tackle a Novel

So, I've decided, like many other bloggers (and WoW Players.. and a gazillion other people through the world) that I will be taking the challenge to Write 50K words in 30 days. I know, I'm crazy, just like all these other people, but here's what else I'm going to attempt to do. I'm going to publish, to the internets, everything that I've written, each day. (With the help from the lovely Marariel as my editor) You'll be able to find me at http://writingonaprayer.blogspot.com/

Wish me luck!

--Ashe

Thoughts on Leveling

So I just finished leveling another toon to 85, my dear Holy Paladin, Katilea.
Mostly, Katilea leveled through Dungeoning. I started out as a Protection Paladin, but seeing that the guild she was in had 21545321 Paladin Tanks, I decided to respec to Holy.

It's been a lot of fun, and certainly interesting coming from healing on a Priest, to healing on a Pally. Now, I've leveled every healing class, (My Shaman and Druid are only about level 50) but There is an absolute difference in healing on each of these classes... I've learned that it really sucks to not have a hot to keep rolling on the tank (Even though renew is REALLY BAD for mana during End Game, that doesn't mean I don't use it occasionally anyways)

Since Katilea dungeoned so much, it took me 10 levels (68-78) to get through all of the quests in Howling Fjord. From there, I skipped all of the other zones and went straight to Icecrown, I banged out the last two levels of that expansion very quickly, leaving more to be desired of the 78-80 grind. When I leveled toons throughout Wrath, I enjoyed all of the quests in Icecrown, the different factions, the fantastic storylines, all of it. Katilea didn’t even get to the part where the Arthas quests start. I contemplated staying in Icecrown till I finished, but I decided to move along.

For my 80 questing zone, I started in Vashj’ir. The last time I did Vashj was on Ashe, at the beginning of the expansion… Actually, it was on Day 1. It was gross; there were a thousand people all fighting for the same nodes and quest mobs all in the same place. I’d leveled two toons through Hyjal since then, and there are 4 good pieces of Holy Pally Gear that come from the vendors in Vashj, so that’s where I decided to start. It surprised me how much I’d actually enjoyed leveling there on Katilea. I worked through all the quest lines, finishing the zone about halfway through 83.

By far, my favorite part about Vashj was the Battlemaiden quests. I loved going “back in time” and learning about some of the different things that had been happening. It was a refreshing change of pace from the quests that I had been doing. My other favorite part about Vashj’ir is that all of the questgivers and NPC’s are the same people throughout the zone, making it feel as you’re actually working towards something as a whole. Thank you Capt. Taylor for sticking with me the whole time :)

Next came the time to level in Deepholm. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I knew that it needed to be done so that I could eventually get my shoulder enchant. I got about a bar away from 85 when I’d completed all of the quests out there, and so I jumped in a dungeon to finish up my leveling process. I’d dungeoned enough through the Wrath and Cata Content, that I had enough JP to purchase an item from the Vendors. I’d just picked up a 346 chest piece from Rep, so I decided to get new pants (I’d still been wearing greens at that point, I believe)

I am so lucky to have such good friends! Askevar sent me over the Justice Points boots, while Elennar helped me craft the 346 Relic, and Orvillus helped me craft the 359 Plate belt. By the time all was said and done, I’d dinged 85, put on all of my new shiny gear and walked into Heroics with an average item level of 335.

My “goal” is to get Katilea ready to heal T11 dungeons so that she can join along for VP farming BWD/BoT Runs, So I decided I’d do the Thrall quest line to get the shiny 365 Cloak. Boy, was I mistaken! I’d remembered that it was pretty easy to do on Ashe, but there were probably always 20 other people with me in a zone as I was working on those quests. Katilea got to Uldum to do the Air elementals quest (as ret!), and got her face smashed in. I’d pull one thing, and try to kill it (Stood by Aggra and everything) and I’d suddenly have 3 or 4 more elementals that had decided to gang up on me. I attempted this a few times, not using any AoE abilities, and being very careful to pull only one at a time, but it never did work out. I suppose I’ll go back out there after I have better gear?

From that failure, I went to Hyjal to quest enough to get me to the Molten Front zone, so that I could start out there. The Hyjal quests were easy (as expected), but as soon as I got the quest to go into the Molten Front, and kill the giant elemental dude, I soon realized that I was going to get my face smashed in. There was an elemental with 750K+ Health, and I was the only soul in that Phase, save a few NPC’s. I did manage to complete the quest and kill the elemental, but it probably took me 15 minutes or so!

So that’s where Katilea is now. Able to Start dailies for Molten Front, and able to Heal heroics (but for right now I’ll probably only go with friends). I looked at my screen, and pondered what to do at this particular point, and what did I come up with? Roll another toon.

I’m such an Alt-o-holic.

More Blackwing Descent Raid Strats

Magmaw and Omnitron Raid Strats

These next three bosses can be completed in any order.
Maloriak is a fight about standing in the right place and Dpsing adds at the correct time.
Atramedes is a fight about not standing in bad.
Chimaeron is a fight where it sucks to be a healer.
(I’m only going to cover Maloriak and Atramedes during this post. Tune in next time for Chimaeron and Nefarian!)

Maloriak
This fight is pretty easy really once you get the hang of things. You’ll need 2 tanks, and a DPS class that has a short interrupt (the tank will be interrupting other things)
There are three “Color phases” during Phase 1, Red, Blue and Green. The phase is denoted by whichever color mix Maloriak throws into his huge cauldron.

• Arcane Storm - Is the ability you want your melee dps interrupting. It has a short cast time followed by a channel. It does AoE Damage to the entire raid, so you’ll want it to stop as soon as possible. Your healers will thank you for it J
• Release Aberrations - Maloriak will release 3 aberrations at a time, each time this is cast. You’ll want to send out 2 or 3 sets of adds before each green phase, so that you don’t end up with a huge amount of adds when Phase 2 starts. Tanks should let enough sets of adds go, then interrupt all the other casts of Release Aberrations. Off tank picks up the adds and keeps them till Green Phase
• Both of these abilities are used throughout each “color” phase.
• Remedy - Maloriak heals himself, applies a stacking HoT, and gains mana back every second. Let a mage spell-steal this if possible. If not, have an offensive dispeller on hand.

During each color phase, Maloriak gains 2 abilities that he doesn’t have in other phases.
Red Phase: “Stack Phase”

• Consuming Flames - Puts a DoT on a random raid member. Being hit by “Scorching Blast” Causes this dot to hit for much harder.
• Scorching Blast - Maloriak breathes fire! It’s a frontal cone ability and all of the damage is *split* between the raid members. Everyone (Except the off tank, and anyone with Scorching Blast) should be stacked on the main tank here.

Blue Phase: “Spread out”

• Biting Chill - Maloriak targets a random player with a ring of frost, which will damage raid members within 3 yards.
• Flash Freeze - Maloriak freezes someone in ice. It will do about 56-63K damage to that person and anyone within 5 yards. It will encase them in a block of ice. Raid members who are frozen can still be healed and should be topped off before they are broken out of ice. Being broken out of ice will cause 45-50K damage to that person and everyone within 5 yards.

Green Phase: “Adds Phase”

• So you don’t want to be dpsing the adds during the other two phases because the adds all buff each other with Growth Catalyst making them nearly impossible to kill. During this phase, Slime will spew from the cauldron, tossing everyone across the room, and coating everything in the room (boss, adds, raid members alike) with
• Debilitating Slime - The Slime increases all damage taken by 100% and suppresses any Growth Catalyst.
• During this time you should turn and AoE down all of the adds! Arcane storm will still need to be interrupted during this phase, so make sure your interrupter takes notice.
• Maloriak will start with either Red or Blue, then choose the other. The third phase will always be Green. It will rotate until you get Maloriak to 25% health.

Phase 2: Once Maloriak hits 25% Health, all of the colors stop, he will hit your tanks harder and will release all of the adds that are left out of the test chambers.
He also gains 3 new abilities, and spawns some new adds.

• Prime Subject - These adds suck. They “Fixate” on the target with the most amount of threat after a few seconds. This should be the off tank. They cannot be taunted after they fixate. The off tank should just kite them around until Maloriak is dead
• Magma Jets - Maloriak shoots fire in front of him. He should be tanked facing a wall so this fire does not spread out through the whole room.
• Absolute Zero - A frozen sphere will spawn near a random raid member, there’s a glowy floor thing to show you where the bad will be. Get away from it.  It will explode and do a lot of damage and knock back anyone within 5 yards.
• Acid Nova - Raid Wide AoE damage.

This phase is simply about burning Maloriak down before the room fills with fire. The Tank will need to kite him around the room so that no one including himself stands in the Magma Jets.

Recap:
Tanks: One tank gets Maloriak and one Kites the adds all fight long
Healers: Heal stuff. Assign a healer to the off tank. Things will start to get hairy depending on how many adds get released
DPS: Don’t stand in bad. Stack for red phase, Spread out for blue phase. Remove yourself from the Red Phase Stack if you have the debuff. AoE ALL THE THINGS in Green Phase. That’s it!


Atramedes
This fight is about not standing in bad, running fast, and confusing a blind dragon. Sounds like fun, right?
Once you start the fight, you’ll notice a new thing on your interface. It’ll be round and (eventually) start to fill up with blue stuff. This is sound. It’s how Atramedes tracks you, and if you get to 100 sound, he will turn and burn your face in. Ancient Dwarven Shields (gongs) can be hit throughout the fight to interrupt Atramedes, and reset the sound on all players. This causes Atramedes to have Vertigo (He stands still to get the sound fixed in his brain). Once Atramedes recovers from vertigo, he destroys the shield that you just hit.
There are two phases to this fight. Ground Phase and Air Phase.
Ground Phase:

• Sonar Pulse - Atramedes sends out discs of sound. Being hit by these rings will cause you to gain 3 sound
• Modulation - AoE Shadow Damage
• Sonic Breath - Atramedes tracks a random player. Designate which way the tracked person will run before the fight starts  Raiders getting caught in the breath will gain 20 sound.
• Searing Flames - This is a channeled effect that causes large amounts of damage, which increases for each point of sound you have. This should be interrupted by whoever is designated to do “Ground phase gongs”

Air Phase:
This phase is all about running around not standing in stuff while trying not to get sound :D

• Roaring Flame Breath - Atramedes breathes flame that follows a random player around the room. The Roaring Flame Breath inflicts Fire damage and leaves a trail of Roaring Flames. A Resonating Clash from a gong will temporarily halt the progress of breath, but Atramedes then retargets the flames on a player that used the Ancient Dwarven Shield. (this person should be someone with fast movement speed, rogue, kitty, Priests can use Leap of Faith on this target, ect.
• Sonar Bomb - Does Damage and Increases sound by 20
• This fight is all rinse and repeat while dodging things that cause sound, and using gongs at appropriate times.

Tanks: Only one tank is necessary for this fight. And only during Ground Phase
Healers: Keep everyone alive. Watch out for those being targeted by fire breaths
DPS: Please don’t stand in bad!
Good luck!

This is to all the Newbie (cata) Raiders

Let me guess, you just hit level 85, switched from a guild that never raided, or your guild just started to raid because you were last to get on the bandwagon. You plan on raiding T11, but no guides have come out since the Big Ole Nerf Bat hit T11 Content. Here are a few things you should know about all of the Tier 11 Encounters.
This guide is for anyone venturing into T11 fights, in 10 man mode. Some raids will do things differently than I have explained them, all the basics will be here though!
(As a note, if anyone reads this, please let me know if something is incorrect! I'll fix it right away)


Blackwing Descent
These first two bosses can be killed in any order that you (Aka your raid leader) chooses.
Magmaw:
He is a big freaking worm. He is stationary. This fight has 2 phases.

·         Phase 1: He beats the tank in the face.

·         EVERYONE except an Off-tank (or a kiter) stands opposite the tank on the boss. (Yes, that's in Melee range) DPS the crap out of him all the time.

·         Wherever the off tank is standing (Out in the room) Lava parasites will spawn. (Lava Parasites are gross! If one gets you, then it spawns more on your head. Use knockback abilities to get them away from you)

·          You can 1) Have everyone turn and AoE them down, or you can 2) ignore them and just have the off tank/kiter kite the adds around. It's not too terribad to heal them through it.

·         (Alternatively, the DPS can alternate between two points out in the middle of the room where the pillar of flame will spawn. All DPS Have to AoE down the adds if you use this method. It's the method that EtI uses)

·         Sometimes half of the floor will "light up" (It looks like smoke dots) so you need to run quickly to the other side.

·         "Mangle" will eat a tank (omnomnom) and healers + tanks will need to use some cool downs because it's a lot of damage.

·         Magmaw will "Slump" forward and 2 people (designated at the beginning) will Jump on his back (with a vehicle cursor and action bar) and shoot chains down onto the spike below. These chains have to go down around the same time or Magmaw will break chains if only one is applied at a time.

·         Phase two:

·         After 2 chains have been attached to him, his head will be forced down on to the spike! Healers get to use this time to regen mana if necessary, as no healing is required in this phase. You also do 100% more damage to him when he's spiked, so it's a perfect time to use Hero/Lust/TW/Ancient Hysteria.

·         2 tanks are not necessary for beating on Magmaw. DPS just have to be careful of aggro so that the tank can taunt after he gets spit back out. Then continue with DPS as usual.

·         Rinse. Repeat. Win

Recap:
DPS: Blow cooldowns during Phase 2 for MAX EPEEN DPS MODE! Don’t stand in bad. Kill parasites if your raid doesn’t have someone kiting them.
Healers: Mangle hurts. Alternate cooldown use with your tanks. Don’t forget to heal the kiter if you have one.
Tanks: Mangle hurts. Alternate cooldown use with Healers if you are tanking Magmaw. Kite Parasites if your raid does this (try really hard not to let them touch you)

Omnitron Defense System (AKA OmNom!)
This is a council fight; there are 4 constructs that have a shared health pool. Only 2 constructs are active at one time. Their original order is "random" and every activation rotation will be the same throughout your fight.
Their activation time runs on "energy" that depletes over time. Each construct starts active with 100 Energy, puts up a shield at 50 energy, then goes inactive at 0 energy.
You'll be DPSing the constructs between 100 and 50 energy. From 50-0 energy they will need to be tanked and their special abilities will need to be watched out for.
At 50 energy, each construct puts up some sort of barrier and you need to be quick to not break it or else bad things will happen! (See details on each construct) Constructs continue to attack their targets from 50-0 health, and will continue to cast all of their special abilities

Arcanotron:

·         Power Generator - Blue swirls on the floor. Very noticeable. The field increases the damage dealt by 50% for all units within 5 yards and restores 250 mana every 0.5 seconds. Move Arcanotron out of this, and anyone wanting to do more damage or get free mana should stand here if possible. When Chain Lightning comes out from Electron, Healers should get first dibs to stand in it.

·         Arcane Annihilator - Should be interrupted. It blasts bad arcane damage at a target. It hurts a lot. Please melee/tanks interrupt this! (Even during "shield phase")

·         Power Conversion (Shield) - All damage Arcanotron takes will give him a stacking buff of increased haste and damage done. This will squish your tank if you keep attacking. So switch to the next target!

Electron:

·         Lightning Conductor - This is a debuff that causes you to damage other players around you. Run somewhere safe (8 yards away from everyone).

·         Electrical Discharge - It's Chain Lightning on crack. Everyone should be spread out when this construct is active.

·         Unstable Shield - Causes damage to players within 6 yards when hit. Switch to next target when this is up.

Magmatron:

·         Incineration Security Measure - Massive raid wide AoE. You can't get out of it. Please try to stand in good Healy circles or click the light-well during this part.

·         Acquiring Target: Magmaw will target someone, and the entire raid needs to Move out of the red line of death. After 4 seconds fire will come barreling out of his hand and onto the targeted person. This cannot be avoided, but must be healed through. Try to use defensive cool-downs to help out your healers during this part.

·         Barrier - If you break this shield, he will blow up your raid (well he'll do 75k damage or so to the entire raid, and we don't want that)

Toxitron

·         Poison Protocol - Toxitron will release 3 oozes out of the palm of his hand. They will fixate on a random player (Except Toxi’s tank) and they need to be dpsed down as soon as possible, If they reach their fixated target, they will explode doing damage to all around the ooze, plus leaving a pool of bad on the floor that everyone has to watch out for

·         Chemical bomb - Toxitron will release a poisonous cloud at the feet of a random player. Anything standing in this cloud will take 50% more damage. Don’t stand in it. (It also has a small damage over time effect added to it for any raider caught standing in it)

·         Poison Soaked Shell (Shield) - If you attack Toxitron when this shell is up, you will get a debuff called “Soaked in poison” dealing 5k nature damage per 2 seconds for every stack you have up.
Recap:
DPS:Only kill bosses that are at more than 50 energy. Try not to stand next to people when you have bad debuffs.
Healers: Magmatron and Electron have AoE abilities, be careful
Tanks: Beat your assigned constructs in the face.

That’s it for these two bosses! You’re now on your way to killing ALL the bad internet bosses. Also, from here, don’t die to the elevator boss!

But I don't want to share!

Let me start this post off by saying Marariel, I love you, I really do.

Anyways, Guess what I found out this week? Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests share almost the exact same BiS loot table.
I kid you not, Everything that is a drop (Including Tier tokens, damn you Blizzard) that is BiS for my shadow priest spec, is also BiS for Mara. The only exception here is the weapon. Apparently This Stick is better for a warlock instead of a MH/OH combo. (Granted, my BiS Weapon is a hammer, and my OH probably has spirit on it, neither of which are good for warlocks)

Lucky for us, our guild uses Suicide Kings loot system, which basically means that Mara and I (and the other two priests) will take turns getting the loot we want.. Even though 6 of our pieces come from Majordomo and Rag. /sigh

Casting Resurrection on Blog!!

So Blogging? I haven't blogged since the end of Wrath. And I tell myself that every time I hit a large milestone that I'm gong to start blogging again. So here's attempt number... 3?

Meet Ashe. Resident of Team Heals over at Eff the Ineffable. She didn't start over there though, once, she was a lowly alt over on Hydraxis, rolled because trying to raid (or even dungeon) with 3 core ranged DPS (and that's about it at the time) was not going to happen!

When the cataclysm hit, her guild went through a lot of changes, and then it was decided to transfer over to another guild.. Then another.. Until Finally, she found a home with her old guild mates Takk, Sen and Mara over at EtI. So she packed up all of her things, brought over some heirlooms with her just in case, and she was sucked up through the Internets (Probably the 4th or 5th dimension) and landed on US-Azuremyst.

Now, Ashe is not only a healer, but a face melting shadow priest when she is needed, which is what she was called on to do tonight! Our Blackwing Descent cleanup was tonight, and through Atramedies, she was happily melting as many faces of as many bad guys as she could.

Then, one of our healers stepped out so that a DPS could come in and get achievement from Chimaeron, so if we gain a DPS,and lose a healer, Ashe is the one who gets to switch, being raid ready in both her heal and shadow specs.

So Chimaeron went by smoothly, Ashe healed the Double Attack tank, (And was sad because that fight is not good for smite-healing). We went to Nef, and then it got messy.

The first attempt, There was only a Tank with Ashe at her pillar. Now Lol-smiting can do some dps.. but only around 4k usually. Needless to say that attempt didn't go well. Then a few more wipes happened for silly reasons here or there (also for caster dps with instants, don't cast as you're falling into the pit with Ony to get your dots or whatever up on her asap. You get aggro pretty quickly, and Ashe even got hollered at for doing this in previous guilds, Whoops!)

Then, I don't know how we did it, but the Effers managed to break Vent. Then we broke BWD. Not like we won, but Nefarian actually forgot that he was supposed to attack the target with the most threat. Orv had tons of threat, and all of the healers faces kept getting nommed on, Nef wouldn't move from the middle, and he just decided he was going to do whatever he felt like instead of paying attention to things like Threat. Whoops.

Good job Eff the Ineffable, we broke Nefarian.