Monday, February 28, 2011

[WoW IC] Elementals Attack

Hooff focused on channeling the light into the bruised body of the blood elf warlock in front of him. Having just cleaved an elemental in two, he was still in the retribution mindset. Just a few seconds ago his hands glowed with the white hot fury of the light, but now they had a softer, healing glow. Because his mind was not in a state attuned to the healing side of the light, a simple healing spell strained him more than it should. It would only take a few minutes to calm his mind and reattune but those minutes, the warlock did not have. Besides, there are bound to be more crazed elementals about, no use being a healer in a fight with no one to deal damage.

The felguard stood near the warlock, eyeing the paladin warely. Most people would assume that a demon would take this oppurtunity to run, or possibly kill the warlock and sever the ties of servitude that bind the demon. Hooff has quite a bit of experience with warlock demons, and was not surprised at the concern the felguard showed for the young warlock. The felguard had done its best to slow the onslaught of the elemental, but it wasn't powerful enough.

Hooff looked at the armor and robes of the young lock, Nuiitari was her name? They were high quality, but well worn. Definetly handed down as an heirloom. In fact the robes looked very familiar. They should look familiar, the armor he gave to a priest a few months back.In fact when Hooff was fighting, the robes is what caught his eye. As the elemental was bairing down on the young warlock, Hooff thought it was the priest he had saved back in Tarren Mill. Looking at the face of the young warlock, Hooff could see the family resemblance.

Unfortunately he wasn't able to get to her in time, and she was struck down by the elemental. The felguard did its best to shield the warlock, but it was just not powerful enough. The bruised and broken bodies of orcs, trolls, tauren and blood elves littered the grand courtyard of Orgrimmar. These are the bodies of those who had no business fighting such powerful elementals. Many were evacuated by mages shortly before the elementals attacked, but they couldn't get everyone. Those of the lowest rank were evacuated first, since they were the most vulnerable. These are bodies of those who were high enough rank not to be on the first few groups evacuated, but not high enough to protect themselves. This blood elf was surely low enough rank to have gone with the second, if not first group to be evacuated. Why did she stay?

Still they didn't sit idly by. Many took to putting out fires caused by the fire elementals, much more of Orgrimmar wouldn't be standing if it weren't for these Experts, or Artisans. Only those of Grand Masters rank could reasonably face even single elementals, and only the highest of Grand Masters could face more than one. Hooff was facing three at once when he saw Nuiitari being overrun. Her felguard faced the oncoming elemental but it was no match and was swept aside easily. The blood elf was struck and severely wounded before Hooff got to her.

Nuiitari wasn't doing well, his holy spells were able to heal her most critical wounds, but she was still very weak. The felguard phased in and out, obviously the warlock was losing her connection to the demon.

"Maybe I can solve both these problems at once" Hooff thought to himself.

"Demon, come here." Hooff motioned towards the felguard.

The demon looked at him, but didn't move. Obviously it doesn't take orders from anyone other than this warlock. Hooff would have to get the demon's attention another way.

"Felguard, I require your assistance to save your mistess" Hooff said, this time in demonic. The felguard snapped to attention. The grunts and clerics tending to the injured stopped and stared at Hooff. Not every day that you hear demonic speech come from the mouth of a Paladin. A few grunts instinctively grasped their weapons, waiting to see what happens next.

"Jhuutom." replied the felguard as he moved closer to the paladin. "Jhuutom is my name".

"I am Hooff, and I will bind you to your mistress, with a Soul Link spell. Are you familiar with it". Hooff said, still in demonic, as he placed one hand on Nuiitari's forehead.

"I am, Mistress has only successfully cast it thrice before." Jhuutom said. Hooff placed his other hand on the Felguards chest.

Hooff cast the spell quickly. It was a low level spell, learned at Journeyman level by warlocks specializing in the Demonology. It has unexpected results when a warlock of another specialization tries to cast the spell. The fact that Hooff can cast the spell was almost impossible.

Hooff finished casting the spell, it was a short spell, but required an extreme amount of effort on Hooff's part. Spent, Hooff leaned against a wall to gather his wits.

Color returned to Nuiitari's skin, and she seemed to be stable. The spell linked her mind and body with the felguard. They could now share each other's strength.

"How are you able to cast this spell Paladin?" questioned the felguard. The felguard no longer needed to speak, since a side effect of the spell was that now all three of their minds were linked, in a manner.

"My people are ... adept ... at manipulating fel energy, and I was taught this spell by an old Warlock." answered Hooff with a thought. No need to cause more of a scene by speaking.

"You are not an elf." Jhuutom stated.

"No, I'm not." Hooff answered.

"You are an Eradar?" Jhuutom questioned.

"Hold your tongue Demon." Hooff scowled.

"A Draenei then." Jhuutom concluded.

"Yes, from ... very far away. Keep that to yourself" commanded Hooff.

"I shall not repeat it to any mortal" Jhuutom promised.

Satisfied that Nuii was stable for now, he waved over an Orgrimmar Cleric to finish the healing. Though the scene was horrific, Orgrimmar had powerful clerics and many of these heroes will live. All but the most lifeless of corspes can be brought back with the power of the light.
Hooff then picked up his mace and took a contingent of Grunts to finish the job of driving the elementals out of the city.

Monday, February 07, 2011

[WoW] State of MyWoW

This weekend saw quite a bit of playing. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had quite a bit of time to play. This let me knock out a few of the things on my todo list:

Hooff



Finally hit exalted with Therazene faction. I will no longer have to do those daillies. I bought the shoulder enchants, and bid them a fond farewell. The sheer number of daillies, plus the fact that you start out past honored after questing in Deepholm made this pretty quick.

I'm still doing the Dragonmaw daillies. They're quite a bit more annoying, mainly because you have to gather/destroy things, competing with both Horde and Alliance players. That plus there is a high possibility of getting jumped by mobs makes one or two corpse runs common. Just bad enough to be annoying, but not enough to make me stop doing the daillies.

We two-healed Baradin Hold again over the weekend also. This time it was Hooff and Raenna, a holy-priest in the guild. We got him on our second attempt. The first attempt, the priest's side started getting overwhelmed with damage. We adjusted a bit and were able to down him no problem.

We then attempted to do a REAL raid. Blackwing Descent. We got as far as the mobs before Magmar. The twin mobs that charge the most distant mob from each other. The healing required was intense. We brought in a third healer, a Disc Priest. But she was PVP specced, and the high amount of healing required made her OOM quickly. I myself had to spam my fastest/hardest hitting heal also.

If we have to constantly spam heals like that, I think we must be doing the encounter wrong. We looked up the strategy, and when we applied it ( tanks at opposite ends of the room, DPS clumped together in the middle to the side) it went much better. Unfortunately, we still couldn't get the trash down. Maybe it was just not enough healing, or our tanks weren't geared enough. Either way we need to gear up and practice some more.

Solinari



My priest hit 80 over the weekend. Then hit 81 on Sunday while questing in Hyjal. I was afraid that Hyjal would be a repeat of the PITA that Tedrassil was. So far its not bad. There's only been 1-2 quests in a cave, and the lore is rich. I've already met Malfurion Stormrage (woot) and Ysera ( hott ). I bet my druid would get a kick out of it.

I'm not sure if the mobs just don't hit as hard in Hyjal or if its because I expect them to hit really hard, but my priest isn't having near as much trouble killing things as my paladin did. Right now I can kill 2-3 cataclysm mobs no problem. It could also be that the spellpower of my heals are high, and my health is low enough that a cast of Flash of Light can heal me to almost full.

I've already replaced my heirloom shoulders and chest. They stop functioning at level 80, so I've replaced them with Cataclysm greens. Its a bit annoying because that effectively cuts my +XP bonus by more than half. I now only have the +10% from guild and +5% from cloak. Guess I should shelve the priest for a few days to get some rested XP back. My trinket has also stopped scaling, but I haven't found a better replacement so I'm still using it for the time being. So far I've replaced 7 pieces of armor, and my mana and Health is already double what it when I hit 80. My iLvl is still too low to queue for a the LFD, but i'm hoping to change that in the next few days.

Nuiitari



My Warlock has languished at 53. Her tailoring is already maxed out for her level (350). She's been a steady money maker. Buying Netherweave Cloth from the AH when its cheap, and creating Netherweave Bags to sell. Its not a huge amount of profit, but its steady. Something to keep her occupied until she can level again. I still haven't chosen her other profession. I'm still thinking of bringing my druid over, so that takes care of Alchemy and Inscription. Blacksmith, Jewelcrafting, and Engineering all really require a miner to fund the leveling, or else it is very expensive. I could do leatherworking, but again, I don't have a stockpile of leather to help her level. My skinner is Hooff, and while he could probably farm stuff pretty quickly, the prospect of going back to lower level zones to get the leather sounds horrible.

Friday, February 04, 2011

[WoW] Baradin Hold ... or Holy Pally Heaven

Baradin Hold


Baradin hold currently only has one boss ( A'la Vault of Archavon when it first came out). Just like Archavon, the first boss Argaloth is pretty straight forward. The mechanics to the fight lend very well to Paladin healing. Another paladin and I were able to 2-heal this in 10-man normal. The tank mechanic is normal 2-tank swap. Its really a DPS race. The enrage timer is 5 minutes, with his health being roughly 21Million, all DPS need to average 10k DPS at least to be able to get him down in time.

The strategy for the boss is available in better detail on other sites so I won't go into here. Summary is, the raid splits into 2 equal groups. One tank, 3 DPS and a healer on each side. The boss does a meteor slash that is shared between everyone that gets hit and puts a fire damage debuff. The tanks taunt of each other after so that only half the raid gets hit and the debuff doesn't stack. At 66% and 33% the boss casts Fel Firestorm, it leaves fire on the ground that everyone has runaway from. This goes on for a bit, everyone running and DPS as best they can. Afterwards you go back to original positions and repeat.

Pally Love



This style encounter is great for paladins. All our healing targets are stacked together, with predictable damage patterns. This makes our Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn especially effective. All this healing gets funneled to our Beaconed Tank, so they're getting constantly healed. As an added bonus, because we get to stand in Melee range, we can Crusader Strike the boss to build Holy Power. That gives us free Light of Dawn healing goodness. Heck if you position yourself correctly you might be able to heal your group and the other group as well.

Even during the Fel Firestorm phase, our Holy Radiance gives us the increased run speed, making sure we can both get out of the bad, and reach injured teammates quickly. I like to spot heal with Holy Shock + Light of Dawn partway through the Fel Firestorm, and then when returning to positions hit Holy Radiance. That ensures I'm there quickly, and that I'm healing everyone plus the tank as they get in range. There's also a debuff that we can cleanse that the boss puts onto random people.

This dungeon almost seems tailored made for the Pally healing style. I've yet to try healing this on another class, or with another class. I'm not sure if its because of the synergy between the fight mechanics and pally heal style, but 2 pallies were able to heal this dungeon in ilvl avg 340 gear. Thats technically high enough for heroics, but I certainly wouldn't try any of the entry level raids with it.

Enjoy.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

[WoW non-IC] What happened to Hooff?

This is my first crack at writing a story, but not in first-person point of view. Lately it was difficult for me to have an "exciting" story, told in the past tense, so I thought I'd give this a shot.

"We have news of Hooff" exclaimed Rohan.

"How?" Questioned Hotplate.

Hotplate looked around the room, taking in the strange scene in front of her. The concern in her voice seemed out place on her normally stoic and, understandably cold expression.
While not particularly close, she did deeply respect the old Draenei. When they first met, they were already at odds. Hooff's draenei roots and training with the light gave him an automatic aversion to Hotplate's unholy ways. None of the "family" accepted her easily. She was only allowed to stay in the manor by decree of Bob. While Hooff mistrusted Hotplate a great deal, he trusted in Bob's judgement more. Strange to hear that a Paladin would trust the judgement of a Warlock in regards to a Death Knight, but these are strange times. How Hooff came to judge Bob's judgement so completely, is a story only Bob and Hooff seem to know, and neither are considered "chatty".
Eventually in battle, Hooff came to respect Hotplate. Many times Hotplate would charge in, standing toe to toe against a hulking monster, adeptly dodging and parrying its attacks while simultaneously keeping its attention. Hooff would be behind her, calling upon the healing powers of the Light to mend whatever strikes Hotplate was not able to dodge. They made a good team, eventually developing a deep mutual respect. Hooff came to think of her as younger sister.
In the room was Rohan, the archmage that had cast the spell to send Hooff off, a few other nameless mages, and Waash the night-elf druid. Zoee was understandably absent, her and Waash had had a falling out, and she left the manor shortly after. Even if Hotplate wanted to contact her, it'd be next to impossible. The only thing harder to find than a druid that didn't want to be found, is a Rogue that does't want to be found. A glowing eye wandered around the room on occasion, Hotplate recognized it as Bob's Eye of Kilrogg. The old warlock was rarely ever seen in person. Any time his presence was required someplace, either the Eye or sometimes one of his minions would go in his stead.

"As you all know the teleportation spell I cast worked, too well." explained Rohan.

"Instead of sending Hooff to the future, I sent him to another dimension. The dimensions seem to be linked by the twisting nether. There's still quite a bit about the twisting nether that we know nothing about".

"How did you find him? How's he doing?" Hotplate asked again, with more concern in her voice than she meant to show.

A blink of light and Thantomm ( or Tom as he's called around the manor) appeared next to the Eye. He was Bob's Felguard minion, his Axe still had the blood of whatever he had last killed.
"A felguard mentioned his name to me, in the twisting nether" Tom said.

"How would another felguard know about Hooff" replied Hotplate.

"Apparently, he was summoned by a young Warlock. During an elemental attack, they were saved by a Paladin. The Paladin had a strange accent, and his eyes looked strange", continued Tom.

"None of what you said makes me think that it was Hooff" Hotplate replied, clearly loosing patience.

"The felguard and the warlock were stil very young. The Warlock, Nuiitari is her name, was still just an Apprentice, and thus her connection to the felguard wasn't fully established. Normally an Apprentice Warlock does not have the power to call upon a felguard. Imps and Voidwalkers are considerably less... straining. Nuiitari was losing the connection because of her injuries, the paladin cast the Soul-link spell that kept the connection and allowed Warlock and Felguard to share each other's strength".

"I didn't know paladins had such a spell" remarked Waash.

"They don't." answered Tom.

The Eye of Kilrogg moved and settled nex to Tom.
"An Apprentice Warlock can cast that spell, but only to herself and her minion. To cast the spell to bind another Warlock, to its minion, requires a fairly higher level Warlock. To have a paladin cast the spell is very rare". an eerie voice, seemingly out of nowhere explained. Some of the nameless mages looked around, trying to find the source of the voice. Hotplate and Waash simply listened, they were used to hearing from Bob in this way.

"I've only known a handful of Paladins with enough power to cast the spell, enough knowledge about shadow magic to invoke the spell, and enough familiarity with demons to attempt the spell. Hooff was one of those paladins." Rohan added.

"We've known that Hooff was a powerful paladin, but I never knew he knew so much about shadow and demons". Waash said.

"He learned from me." said the voice.

"Indeed, a side effect of the third-party Soul Link is that the demon has access to the caster's mind, if only bried glimpses" Tom said, continuing his story.

"Within the paladin's mind the felguard so images of a human warlock, a human death knight, a night-elf priest, and twin draenei, a shaman and a hunter. He tracked me down when he saw an image of me in the Paladin's mind"

"Ok, thats more convincing" Hotplate finally said.

"How'd he know it was you? All of you felguards look the same to me" asked Waash.

"We can tell" retorted Tom.

"Well there is a bit of a problem... all this happened in Orgrimmar". Tom added.

"What would Hooff be doing in Orgrimmar, helping a Horde Warlock?" asked Waash.

"The Paladin, was a Blood Elf" Tom said.

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

[WoW] Back to the minors...(normals) with you.

Remi (Goblin Mage) and I tried to run a Heroic PUG a few nights ago. That did not go well. We got Throne of Tides. The group was doing ok on the trash. We got to the first boss and everything went to blazes. We wiped once or twice before the tank dropped. We got another tank, he tried 2-3 times and then dropped as well. This gave us yet another tank.

Each attempt got progressively better ( except for a few where an interrupt didn't get done), but the enchancement shaman would get progressively more ... vocal... about his displeasure. After the 10th or so wipe, I dropped. If the group was having that much issues, I don't even want to imagine how bad the next few bosses would be.

Last night we decided to go back to the minors. We queued up for normals. This time we got Grim Batol. The tank was very good. He marked and asked for CC. He didn't know some of the fights, but we got through it fine. Halfway through the run, I noticed he only had about 94k health. This seemed strange because as a healer, I had about 109k health. Then I looked at his level ... 84. That was like he just earned +150 rep with me. He was tanking very well, on a non-max level character, and doing it with the poise and maturity of a seasoned vet. Bravo goblin warrior who's name I can't remember from a realm I also can't remember.

Bravo.