woensdag 27 januari 2010

Good news, everyone! I've fixed the poison slime pipes!

After a rather uneventfull trip fast the first 4 bosses in ICC last thursday (aside from our short venture into the new wing), Vintage was planning to go into the plaguequarter for real last night. Since almost half our raidteam was running late, we started a full hour later than normal, only leaving 2 hours left to raid. Stinky and Precious were no problem this time, and we managed to get to Festergut rather quick.

While we had tried him once already with 9 man, after losing our maintank halfway through the trash last time, this was our first real attempt at him. Quite to everyone's suprise, we roflstomped him with about 20 seconds left on the enragetimer on our first go. The lot proved to be huntard loot once again, which has me wondering if this instance drops anything else.

While Festergut is a real gearcheck fight, his brother Rotface is more a control fight, with a rather steep learning curve. While the time we had left for him wasn't enough to really master the fight, our last attempt (which ended in a 30% wipe) leaves me confident we'll get him next week.

In other news, I'm still doing the argent tournament dailes, and almost got enough for yet another mount. And while the dailies give me quite a nice income of gold, since last night, I'm pretty much broke again. How come? Well, I got fed up with running Pit of Saron heroic and Forge of Souls heroic, and when I saw a battered hilt for "only" 10k on the AH, I pretty much clicked buyout before I had time to have second doubts. While I don't have the weapon yet, I'm sure I will after tonight. I'm quite positive this weapon will aid my adventures in arena aswell, but we'll have to see about that when the new arena season starts.

zaterdag 23 januari 2010

Because my printscreenbutton really is too far away from my hands when I'm gaming..

I did not, in fact, take screenshots of the Vintage-exploration-run into the new wing of ICC, also known as "'What do these bosses do?' 'I don't care, just hit them and find out!'". Pity, really, because it was hilarious. Or, as Jen put it, probably the fastest wipe in the history of Vintage.

Here's when all was fine and dandy and we were positive that we could just down those mobs and oneshot the vampire princies (don't know if they sparkle).




Exciting, innit? We were all BOOMPOWTAKETHATFILTYSCOURGESCUM! And then those vamps woke up and went BOOMPOWTAKETHATYOUSTUPIDVINTAGESCUM!.

No big deal, though. We'll get them next time.


In other news, I decided a couple of weeks ago to go and level a DK to use as a mining/jewelcrafting tool. She's a troll, she's called Proboscidea, she's covered in heirlooms, and I have already figured out that I will NOT be using her to actually play with after she's dinged 80 and has all the recipes needed. Why? Well, because DK's are annoying! My rotation doesn't make sense, the voice is godawful, and those freakishly icky worms that crawl out of.. where, exactly? irk me to no end.

But oh well. Who knows. I think I said almost exactly the same thing about PVP a couple of months ago.

Except maybe that part about the worms.

maandag 18 januari 2010

Goldfever

Monday again, don't feel like working (as seems to be the general feeling here at the office) so time for a weekend recap.

My weekend was mostly about earning gold. Besides doing the argent tournament dailies (getting quite good at soloing chillmaw), I started questing with my death knight again. Since he's levelcapped, that's earning a fair bit of gold aswell. The fact that the quests are rather fun helps a lot too.

Ofcourse, questing isn't the only way to make money. I reinstated my bank alt this week so I can play the AH again. What Am I selling? Well, if you're a bit like me, you have been doing a few heroics lately, and have earned a lot of emblems you don't really need anymore. Well, you can turn those into Epic gems, which go on the AH for quite a bit. Won't go into specific values, as they will be different on every server, but I made about 1.5K gold from auctions alone.

So now for the big question: Why am I saving up? Well.. In the new heroic dungeons, there is a random questitem called the Battered Hilt. After a long questchain, it will eventually give you a choice between a few weapons, of which Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful would be an obvious choice for a Ret pally. That baby would singlehanded (or twohanded, since it's a twohanded weapon) increase my dps by 500 (about 8%). I've been running those dungeons for quite a lot lately, and I've yet to see one drop, let alone win it. Luckily the questitem is BoE, so it's on the AH quite frequently.

Karma dictates that it will drop for me the very first time I run one of the heroics after I bought it, but I'll leanr to live with that.

In other news, the weekly raid quest this week was noth in Naxxramas. We have sunday planned for these raidquests, and even though a few of our regulars were unavailable, we went with 8 people(including a maintank who had never tanked it before and a healer who had never even been inside a raid before). Since we were doing alright, we figured we might aswell try for a full clear. Besides one healer dying on saphhiron and a wipe on kel'thuzad (due to me and Tec disconnecting on the pull) we pretty much steamrolled the place (even 8 manned the 4 horseman) and managed not only to get the dedicated few achievement, but also (for those who hadn't done it already) the safety dance, the hundred club, momma said knock you out, arachnaphobia, substraction and make quick werk of him. All in all not a bad night, and we had fun doing it, which is the most important part ofcourse.

Oh, and since all the cool kids are doing it, here is my armory

zaterdag 16 januari 2010

OMG, what's that on your back?!

Oh, nothing. It's nothing, really! Just a giant Cleaver, that's all.

*hysterical laughter* It's HUGE! it's ON MY BACK! It's THE FROST GIANT'S CLEAVER!
I have got to say, when Bliz first introduced the one-handed axe as a rogue weapon, I was sceptical. I mean, a rogue, a creature of the night, a thief, a sneaking assassin, a wearer of.. black.. things.., wouldn't go around swinging a giant axe, would they? I mean, how ridiculous does that sound?! Yet here I am, swinging my axes, and loving it. And it actually looks really cool when you see Tec waving that axe around like she knows what she's doing.

In other news, the Armory now has a 3d model viewer option which allows you all sorts of cool stuff. I'm not going to explain it all here, just go and check it out yourselves, but here's an option that was too awesome not to use: you can link the 3d model viewer! Here's Tec in her full glory.


vrijdag 15 januari 2010

Get Kraken!

As I stated in my last blogpost, the 100 mounts achievement is not too far off now, So I started looking into which mounts I'm missing. Not counting the mounts that will cost me more than 2000 gold, I narrowed the list down to:

  • 3 PVP mounts that will cost me 30 marks form the 3 "original" battlegrounds
  • 7 mounts that will cost me 100 champion seals each
  • 2 mounts that will cost me 150 champion seals eahh
  • 3 mounts that will cost me 5 champion seals and 400 gold each
  • 1 mount for 1600 gold
  • 1 red proto drage for the glory of the hero achievement (missing 1 achievement)
  • 1 violet proto drake for the What a long strange trip it's been achievement
  • 1 green proto drake from the oracles egg
  • 1 blue drake from the occulus
  • And the fiery horse from kara

As I need 14 more mounts, and I really can't count on the random drop ones (as I don't have much luck with drops. See my adventures in Stratholm). I'm faily certain I'll get both proto drakes from the achievement, so that will mean I have to get 12 more. No matter how I look at it, the fact of the matter is that I'll be doing the argent tournament dailies again.. Probably untill somewhere in februari..

On the bright side, that will give me some cashflow.

maandag 11 januari 2010

Welcome to the twilight zone

Vintage returns to Icecrown Citadel! And wipes twice on Marrowgar.. After which we woke up, focused and oneshotted Deathwhisper, the gunship battle and the heart of Dreanor (or Deathbringer Saurfang). We've yet to face any of the bosses of the new wing, so can't really comment on their "hardness", But I'm quite confident we'll be able to do those in the near future.

As sunday is our weekly raid quest and loose ends night, we had a short trip into Ulduar, and headed into Obsidian Sanctum afterwards to try it with three drakes up. We had done one drake up successfully in the past and had some goes at 3 drakes before, but failed miserably on those occasions. Not this time though. Although most people just "zerg" this encounter nowadays, we didn't have the right group markup to do so. We settled for the "old" tactic of having 3 tanks and 2 healers. A few wipes later, Kavash is stuck with making the decision whetever he likes “the undying” or “of the nightfall” better.

On the other hand, this run made choosing which mount I’m going to use for the next few weeks a bit easier. As on every OS+3 kill, the black drake dropped, and yours truly happened to have the highest roll (after reroll, since tony got a 99 on the first go aswell). That takes my total amount of mounts to 86. Only 14 more to go until I can get my red dragonhawk mount..

Oh and thes small victory's ensured that vintage is now back in the top 10 10 man strict progress on turalyon EU

donderdag 7 januari 2010

Storming the gates

First of all, to all a happy new year. I hope you have all your fingers still. You might need them.

After Vintage had some time struggling in december (due to people not being available) we started storming the gates of icecrown citadel last week. Lots of fun was to be had. Lord marrowgar went down rather quickly, even though AoE damage works like a magnet some people. Lady Deathwhisper (of which I'm sure is just Kel'thuzad in drag) provided a bit more of a challenge, but was put to rest when we figured out the trick.

Onwards to the airship. Which was a bit too much fun. WTB permanend jetpack. When the alliance schip was brought down, we encountered Deathbringer saurfang. Did you know his name meant heart of dreanor? Cause we all know now. Unfortunatly we weren't able to take him down further than 16%. I'm pretty sure He'll go down tonight though.