Lost Vale Round 2

The same group from Thursday hit Lost vale for the remaining bosses in wing 2.  Little did we know what a problem Gorak was going to be.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind bosses which take some thinking to down, but this is really not a well thought out boss.

 

For those who don’t know, Gorak is a giant Dragon Ogre and as such, hits like a truck.  He also has an UNDEFENDABLE frontal cleave, as well as casting lightning bolts on party members in phase 2.

The problem herein lies with that cleave.  On the initial pull both his normal swing timer and his cleave timer are off of cooldown, which pretty much means he will blow both at once. Im 5/5 Greater Wards but would still die from this burst.  My defensive stats aren’t shabby, im at 30% block and 16% parry (before Suppression and Mixed Defences) and over 10k hits but I would still go down.

The only way anyone has figured out to get passed him is to use your rank 2 morale, Shield Wall (100% block for 10 seconds) on the pull!!!  Now even this is problematic, if there are no mobs around to “charge up” on.

But why should it have to be done this way?  Surely this isn’t good game mechanics.

Well Gorak kicked our ass all over the shop, eventually downing 2 hours after starting.  ZERO loot for our group though….. fucking system.

 

We then moved onto the final boss, the big tree thing.  This was a lot easier, we simply ironed out some teething problems with positioning and on the 4^th pull he was dead.  No loot once again, I believe it was Black Orc and Squig Herder shoulders.

So we all got our update and are now ready for the 3^rd and final wing.  Ive done some reading up and there are a couple of interesting fights, im sure our group will get them done its just a case of working out the kinks of them as usual.

 

Fingers crossed for tonight.

 

 

I also did something I didn’t think id do, I resubbed to Warcraft!  I know, I know why did I go and do that?  Well to be honest I know the reason, WoW isn’t an inherent bad game, just the old raid system didn’t fit my playstyle so I got fed up.  But ive owned WotLK since release and barely played it, now I can get my PvE on again to level.

I transferred my Warlock from Twisting Nether to Wildhammer (reasons may get revealed in a later post) which is a PvE server and I managed to make level 71.

Who knows whats in store for me there.

The Lost Vale Adventure

Since it had been started three weeks ago, my Lost Vale runs never got further than the last boss of the first wing due to people dropping offline when we were ready to turn in for our torches and also a bug which only gave us 9 shards one week.

Well this week was going to be THE week!

 

It started well, with everyone online in good time, even our Magus who said he was going to be 15 mins late was only off by 2!

 

We zoned in and got down to it, the Darkpromise Beast deciding to crit me for 5k on the first hit wasn’t nice but we got past him and proceeded to bitch slap everything we had been clearing for the last two weeks.

 

First boss down and its……. DoK loot and a nice 2 hander for our Choppa (He was the only one able to use, so may as well)

 

We carried on, had a freak wipe on a pack when I managed to pull 2 packs instead of 1 but got to the second boss.

 

As usual our Choppa died when he kept standing in the pink clouds, I let him tank for a bit when this happens as I don’t want to constantly be taking stacks of the cloud myself.  Anyway dead boss and its…… DoK loot.

 

Speeding through the spiders to the third boss we drop her/him/it without incident! And to cap it all off it was……… DoK loot…. Im seeing a trend here……

 

Now we got to the point of no return and we start using crystals, “Bobs offline” someone pipes up,  “STOP USING CRYSTALS!!!” I yell in party, Bob was lucky, we had used 8 of them before we noticed his crash.  Soon he was back and we all had our quest update.

 

The spider boss took 3 tries to learn, 1 to re-adjust tanking position, 2 to tweak a tactic and 3^rd to down em.  No DoK loot this time, but we did get Shaman. Grats to our Shammy on that one.

 

Finally we had progressed further than we had before, into the second wing.  It felt good that I had managed to lead us into here.  Now this was the wing I was most worried about as some of the bosses I have read and they sound solid.

 

First up, the boss who “throws you down the cliff” I was worried about this one as I didn’t know the layout of the tanking area and didn’t know if I could safely tank it near the cliff and ranged still get LOS if they get thrown off.

Well it proved to not matter as our dps shredded him before he threw anyone down..  Score one for us.  The loot? DoK all the way and a nice 1 hander for our Choppa!

 

Next up was the optional boss, Larg the Devourer, the only reason I remember his name is he can drop my shield.  He didn’t, he dead. Moving on.

 

Two words… BUTCHER GUTBEATER.  Holy crap I had seen so much whine about this guy, about how you need two tanks, or a good kiter, move out of the spew.

Well I must admit we wiped 6 times on this guy, trying a combination of what people recommended,  in the end we did it our way?  How was this then?

Well basically I tank everything and don’t move.  Our supreme dps burn the butcher, when the gnoblar dies, he dies doesn’t matter when.

YAY!  DoK loot!

 

I caused another silly wipe on the stone bridge after this fight as I didn’t bother taunting and was typing tells… sorry!  

 

Finally we were confronted with Galvoth, I had read he hits like a truck, he does, I took the 4.5k cleave no sweat, but failed to block/parry the melee hit and got smished in half a second.  It was late so I had to call it there but I did check some videos out about tanking this and im confident we can drop him.

 

The next run on Lost Vale is on Sunday night, tonight our Zealot is away and tomorrow both me and Mrs B aren’t here.

 

So grats to us

 

Chosen – Borgeo

Zealot – Bobcki

Shaman – Zugzig

Sorceress – Mrs B

Magus – Raizen

Choppa – Fermenpattat

 

(Can you say AOE heavy!)

Marauder Ding 33

Again sorry for the lack of updates, I had two weeks off of work which meant a lot less being written.  Why should that happen I hear you ask?  Well I write my updates AT work as my time at home is for gaming.

Ive been mostly working on my Marauder as one of our Lost Vale group was moving house and was without internet.  I must say I really wanted to like the Marauder but at lower levels its horrible, it really is bad I was struggling with mobs like there was no tomorrow.

This all changed around the time I hit rank 30…. A long time to play a class before it starts to become viable I know but finally it feels good.

There is a lot of whine on the marauder boards about how broken they are and I can agree on some levels but they aren’t as borked as people make out.

Sure the brutality tree is useless (and it’s the main look of the marauder too) but there is some use there.

PvE wise, I feel like I really am rocking the damage, I feel my role as a melee dpser is safe with a marauder.

RvR wise it’s a little harder as you are a LOT squishier but both Monstrosity and Savagery have their uses.

Ive been levelling as Monstro (flail is monstro) which means it’s the better tree for levelling and for RvR it was the natural choice…. Demolition spam… its boring, doesn’t do amazing damage but does something!  Once I got Wrecking Ball I was having even more fun, even if it doesn’t really do a lot.

However last night at 33 I respecced to Savagery and picked up Cutting Claw…. WOW How did I ever fight tanks without this!  It was literally amazing.  I also had two healers in my group, Mrs B on her Zealot and a DoK who was simply AMAZING!

I didn’t die!!!!! AT ALL! In a Battle for Praag!!  Ill upload the scoresheet at the end when I get home but I had loads of fun.  Ive found my niche though…. Caster killer, mainly healers but casters too.

Silence, Knockdown and Seeping Wound (if its called that, the heal debuff anyway) make me a healer smacking machine. Not to mention Flanking giving me bonus damage when they inevitably try to run!

Still wondering about making the marauder my “main” but with the lack of LV capable tanks I don’t see the point right now.

Speaking of LV, we head in again tonight, 5 of 6 spots are sorted from our usual crew, will need to see if our Choppa is on as I don’t think he reads the forums.

Fingers crossed we can get in much further than last two times, the bug wont stop us this time!  Cant wait!

I am a Master of the Air

Well there we go then, current live event completed by me.  I was a little dubious about this one as Mrs B complained about the fuel pump in the Reikland Factory scenario.  

“There is only one and you gotta get there first and everyone wants it!” she told me.

Well I ran Reikland Factory a bunch of times and found out her mistake.  Someone taking it will cap it for everyone on your side.  Happy days.

 

I had finished the PQ the night we ran BWE so that was ticked off, leaving the PVE chain and a few random things (2000 points)

 

Well Mrs B and I hammered out the chain and got our Prison Warden titles (haha cool) then we ground the respawning chests for the 2000 points.

 

I don’t know what has happened on Norn with the update but Order are pouring out of the woodwork, as usual they are putting up a fight during the day when destruction are at work, but in the evenings now they are holding us steady, even launching fort takes themselves.

I do think that destruction has gone soft and have stopped co-ordinating attacks and just zerging zones and getting cut down,  or maybe it has something to do with the 100’s of BW bomb groups.

On that matter itself its annoying, Mrs B and I tried it together to see how it worked on Destro and its not as effective, I was guarding she was bombing and I was AOE knockdowning.  But we were getting shredded, with or without a healer.

Disastrous Cascade just does not have the synergy that the BW spell does.  I think I will try it again with Mrs B and swap around her tactics to see how it fares.

 

Im off all week next week so my hope is to hit RR43 (im 41 atm) so I can wear my Conq shoulders.  I am also aiming on getting some more of the Ruin set so I can hit 5% block.  

 

I took a trip into Lost Vale with Mrs B yesterday to test my defences on the first boss.  He hit me for 4k, which is actually ok, I parry parry block him for the next three, take a 300 attack, then parry some more.  Eventually I died.  This is doable!

 

Not much else happened, so plans for tonight and the weekend are pretty much as written above,.  Ill be running BWE and BB on the reset for alliance peeps and maybe look at a LV run.

 

Keep on trucking

1.3 Has arrived: Some Impressions

Ok so 1.3 is in and I managed to run BWE and BB last night, with a less than optimal group but with the changes to wards I was interested in how my tanking suit (which was built without wards) would stand up to these city instances.

 

Before we get on to that though I just want to say a couple of things which I like about the patch.  First thing is that I now have 5/5 Greater Wards due to having my Conqueror Shoulders in my pack when the patch was implemented. Bonus!

Second thing is that talismans have become permanent, however the fact you can only have one type in a piece sort of stunts my 2 hander which I wanted to put two strength gems in.

 

On to the runs then, my tanking suit was built when I was tanking hard PQs in a duo.  It is basically a TON of armour as that seemed to give the best bang for your buck on damage mitigation.  
Well BWE was as fast as ever, I was taking minimal damage, even the final boss was thwarted by the thickness of my armour.  Excellent.

 

Oh group for BWE was: Chosen(Me), Sorceress, Shaman, Blackguard, Black Orc, Magus

Its basically the guys I always run with other than our regular Squig Herder was on his BO as a shot at getting some loot.

First thing is that Guard minimises a TON of damage, but even without it I was never in danger.

 

We were a little dubious about BB with a solo healer, and justifiably so, normally even with 5/5 you can get shredded by certain things.  Well we managed to kill everything up to the boss which summons the Nurglings.  He kept kerb stomping us over and over again. 
As soon as we decided to call it a day and I posted up another run for the next day we tried a new tactic…. And BOOM! Boss dead J

 

The final boss was the same as ever, apart from the annoying decision he made to keep gobbling our shaman up last… this led to him dying from the adds multiple times before I gave up guarding him (and taking his aggro) and guarded the Sorc instead.

Well that try was the killing try, but from 30% to 0% it was myself and Zugzig (Shaman) alive, so we dinked him to death.

 

Bad things about 1.3…… My UI is BORKED!  Cant wait for Yak do update, he reckons the weekend so im stoked for that.

 

I think I may organise a LV run, ive never been but would like to see it as I now have the gear to do it.  I also have a few pieces of gear to aim at to round out my tanking set.  The next couple of pieces will give me another 5% block…. That’s awesome!

 

Hope you all have a good day.

Patch 1.3 Today!

Well patch 1.3 hits europe today, and in anticipation of its arrivals I bought my Conqueror shoulders.  I still cant use them for another 3 renown levels but if I get the unlock when the patch hits im a happy camper.

I didn’t manage to get much gaming done yesterday due to the massive amount of lag I had, I have NO idea where it came from but it was unplayable.

Im running Blood and Bile again today for the alliance.  If anything it’s a shot at my sentinel shoulders, and for everyone else who HASN’T got their drops, it will be one stage of the sigil unlock for the bosses with them.

That will be my main focus when I get home tonight, instead of exploring the content ill simply be running those dungeons for the guys.
Oh and with the sigil changes ill need to test out my tanking suit.  I had an awesome boss tanking suit which I could never wear for anything after Bastion Stair.  Well if my tests come out well then ill have to look at tweaking it for the later dungeons.

We shall see!

Cartouches

As any player of Warhammer online is aware,  Mythic (and GOA in my case) are running a competition “Treasure Hunt” to win exclusive in game items for WAR.

This involves visiting Blogs about warhammer to find the old alphabet then discovering a cartouche on another random website and deciphering the name.

Well I managed to get my arse in gear and spend some time at work (sue me) looking around for what I needed , I soon found the alphabet and also a cartouche that was only announced an hour before!! I was in with a shot!

Since the WAR-Europe site is blocked from work I called Mrs B at home and got her to register my answer and she read out the congratulations message!

Yay for my detective skills! Now both Mrs B and I have it cracked.

Big shout out to War Of Alts for the alphabet… see Flim you are good for something….

EDIT:  As for the cartouch itself, I dunno, maybe try here?

Wardz, I haz them!

<Insert Generic Lolcats picture here>

Sorry for lack of updates the past week or so.  Its not that ive been overly busy ive just really had much to talk about, but now I do!

 

I finally bought my chest and shoulders giving me 5/5 for city dungeons (3 LW, 2 GW) so I arranged a Blood and Bile run.

 

The group consisted of Me(Chosen), Sorceress, Squid Herder, Zealot, Shaman and Blackguard.  Now im not a “newbie” to Blood or Bile but this was to be the first time I had maintanked Bile.  The dungeon itself actually isn’t hard, its just the damn dogs!

 

Anyway BWE went as usual, crazy boss reset a couple of times on the final boss but he went down.  Mrs B got her Sorceress boots so now she is happy with 3 wards (and finally useful in dungeons)

 

Bile was smooth… enough, for my first time.  Dogs were a pain but we got the strat down in the end and they all died.  I got my Chosen Gloves (Yay!) and final boss gave Zugzig our Shaman the chestpiece.

 

We were getting weird resets on the final boss where we would drop him to 50% then he would reset, this happened 4 or 5 times before we managed to get into his stomach, v weird.  I was trying to replicate it during some pulls but I couldn’t nail down what it was.  

 

So Blood and Bile cleared,  I only need two more greater wards (Chest and shoulder) before im 5/5 GW and can go into Lost Vale which is what ive been waiting for.  Im tempted right now to save up medals and buy Conqueror shoulders / chest but in the meantime running Bile as much as possible to try to get my drops.  More drops means less to buy!

 

We are getting a new sofa this weekend so might not game as much as I could, have fun everyone else who is chilling!

My First Proper Fortress Defence

The usual happened on Karak Norn when I logged in after work.  Order were on the push towards IC again.
What normally seems to happen is Order push all day then in the evenings destro hold them off and push them back.

Well last night I joined a warband in the elf lands and tried to stem the tide of order trying to lock the zone, as soon as it looked unlikely I left the warband and legged it to the fortress and joined the warband there.

 

I grabbed the oil on the outer door but noticed nobody else was around… it seems the other door FLEW off its hinges, I just about managed to get into the inner keep and managed to also pile on my tank gear and set myself up in the tank wall on the stairs.

Well all I did was rotate three auras, hit hold the line and fire off Sprout Carapace.
I did this for as long as it took for us to defend (I think it was an hour).  Then came the roll off for loot.  In short I didn’t win, but I got one Invader crest…… come on Mythic at least make this worth it, 5 measly officer medals for standing in one spot for an hour is not just rewards.  2 Invader crests would have been better.

 

After that I joined in hitting the other zones but I wasn’t overly in the mood to wait for zone locks so I didn’t spend much more time in game, that and Littlest B decided to not go to sleep so I spent the rest of the evening with her on my lap watching TV.

 

Tonight is a Bastion Stair run, since its Friday ill see about running all of the wings for people starting with the left.

 

However I have to work tomorrow…. Not a happy bunny.

I got confusticated!!

I said yesterday that it was a Bilerot Run that I was intending to go on last night, well I kinda got my knickers in a twist and it was actually a scheduled Bloodwrought run.  Now I don’t mind BWE, it’s a fast instance with only two bosses, however I got both of the drops from there the first time I ran it.

 

But im getting ahead of myself, the night actually started with some mad RvR keeptake and zonelock action, so much so that I actually won a gold bag!!! However I was thwarted by the loot gods when out popped the Annihilator Helm (I have my Sentinel) so I took the two medals bah! 
I did however get enough medals to buy my Anni shoulders so now ive got 4 wards!  This is a godsend since it now means I can (almost) safely tank the city dungeons!

 

Ok now we are up to date.  Upon the allotted time for the run we all grouped up, there was 13 of us.  BWE is a 6 man instance meaning we could get two groups in but one poor sod will have to sit out.  My place was pretty secure as I was one of three tanks, and the only one with 4 wards.  Mrs B was sweating as she only has 1 ward however she got a place in group 2.

 

Our group consisted of: Chosen (me), Zealot, Blackguard(1ward), Squig Herder, Magus and Choppa.

 

The second group was: BO, Shaman, Sorc(1ward), Choppa, Squig Herder, Squig Herder (I think it was two of them)

 

Well the race was on, Gruntled (GM of Humberton Blackguard and a good friend) marshalled group 2, whilst I took command of group 1.  Last one to drop the Godslayer loses!

Group 2 made it into the instance first as we were waiting on one person to make it to the instance and then we dived in.

The good thing about me and Mrs B being in different groups is that I can see how they are getting on, they wiped on the first trash pack which gave us time to catch up.

We weren’t safe from the deaths either, far from it, I would constantly go down on the packs but there was enough damage to drop them.

 

Eventually we got to the first boss, the big dragon ogre git a couple of packs BEFORE group 2.

This is fairly easy for me as a tank,  grab aggro on him and hold it, easy!  Our dps started burning and dropped one add as I held everything else, then the boss ran off to enrage, well sever blessing seemed to take care of that and soon he was down, followed by the second add.

I cant honestly remember the loot but I think it was stuff everyone could use.

 

We carried on plowing through the adds with me dying every pull, meanwhile group 2 downed the first boss (no Sorc loot BOO!) and started chasing us.  Eventually we were at the godslayer.  After explaining how I tank it we started.

We wipe!!!!  The issue was fairly easy to fix.  Our zealoth started to throw down his ritual on my tank spot (which is fine, the zealot was rocking) but in those few seconds I missed all my blocks and parrys, took a double hit then got crit by a spell and I was down.

The next pull… WIPE!

I forgot to guard the healer… oops LOL!

 

Third time and he was down. Choppa and Magus loot, YAY for something everyone can use.  So yeah group 1 “wins”  however the glee was shortlived as group 2 was having a very hard time of it and could not drop the godslayer, I noticed a few “problems” with how their tank was doing it so ill offer my advice on how I tank this fight.

 

As you look into the boss room from the door you have a raised platform with the boss on it and two staircases right and left.  Ranged stand on either stair, makes no difference who is on what side.  I will tank the boss with him at the bottom of his platform, me on the stairs of the platform.  The reason for this is that the boss does a knockback and when he does you will fly behind his platform meaning he has further to run to get to you.

 

Now the key about tanking anything is generating aggro to keep the boss on you, this boss is a bit of a dick that he randomly charges those on the stairs, he cant be taunted off he will eventually come back after swiping someone ONCE. AS LONG AS YOU HAVE BUILT ENOUGH THREAT!

Key things for this fight are as follows, keep him snared, this is so that when he does do a knockback he is running very slowly giving you time to kite.  Also if you lose aggro it gives you more time to taunt him back
Next thing is to use challenge, and use it a lot.  Taunts keep the mob on you for the duration they are up, using challenge as your main taunt means less damage when he does those gay charge moves and gives you your single target for the next situation.

 

When he does the knockback, HIT YOUR SINGLE TAUNT!  This will keep the boss on you and all you need to do is one lap of the platform and the debuff is gone and you can continue tanking.

Now that’s really it.  Ive never been a BO past level 5 so im not sure how their defences are compared to my chosen but that’s the way I roll.  Im on about 26% block, 40% parry (suppression = tehsex) 800 tough, 4800 armour (AND THIS WAS DPS SPECCED!)

If I was tank specced I would have taken less damage but would my threat generation be higher?  I didn’t use my threat attack once!

 

So there we are, BWE tanked, shoulders gained, all I really need now are gloves, chest and shoulders with GW on them and I can tank lost vale, if I get them then ill gladly respect tank spec and do it for the alliance, all that sexy loot in there makes me wanna do bad things to myself.

 

On another note I jumped onto test to see land of the dead but it was order controlled, maybe next time then.