Yesterday, I visited the new Isle (along with about 8 million others, it seems), and did a couple of the new daily quests.

Then, nothing would do but to go ahead and pull together a group to go try the new 5 man instance, Magisters’ Terrace.

We went in there with;

1. Windshadow the feral tank
2. Elystia the mage for ranged DPS and Sheep
3. Jalard the moonkin druid for ranged DPS and Cyclone
4. Cassieann the combat sword rogue for melee DPS and Sap
5. Nali the resto druid

All of us are high end Kara geared, except perhaps for Cassie, and frankly I think her paired Blinkstrike and Latros’ swords with mongoose enchants, and the rest of her gear places her pretty strongly in center Kara gear herself.

So forgive me if I think that we were pretty well geared for the instance, but it was my original impression that the 5 man instance on normal mode was intended to be on par with Shadow Labyrynth or Shattered Halls.

Well, it’s true that none of us had studied before going in. That was a mistake. We went on in intending to explore, arrogant in our ability to master the instance with no wipes first try.

HAH! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahh! *&%* ($%(* $&*(-$^)*&%*&-ing instance run.

So, there are 4 bosses. The trash leading up to and in between the bosses are pretty simple and standard, except for one thing; they start in 4 man pulls, go up to 5 man pulls with imps, and end with a single 6 man (plus imp) pull immediately before the final boss, Kael’thas.

And the majority of these mobs are casters.

Now, let me tell you, I have never felt as incompetent as a tank as I did on that 6 man pull.

The first three bosses; easy.

Even though we didn’t know what the hell we were doing, I went to WoWWiki and quickly read the strats aloud for bosses 1 - 3, and we did it on the first shot (except for boss 1, which we accidentally kicked off early, and activated the barred door, locking 3 members of the party outside as me and Cassie got burnt down. Slowly. Very irritating. Word to the wise; make sure everyone is IN the damn room before aggroing him. Damn it. And watch LOS issues between melee DPS and healers if fighting on the stairs near the handrails).

Anyway, no, all of our problems really came from the damn trash. I definitely recommend making sure you study each mob to know who does what.

We finally nailed things down by having Cassie sap one, Ely sheep one, Jalard cyclone one, and then I took the last two LOS around a corner to make them come to melee range as ranged DPS burnt down the imps. Then we had seconds to bust the two I held before the cyclone came running for Jalard, then we had seconds before sap came running in for the healer, and then we could take down sheep at our leisure.

It seemed a mite tight, kept me nervous as hell as CC broke loose with previous mobs still alive and making me have to run like hell to pick up without breaking sheep or sap in the middle, basically very exciting, but working our asses off we got it done, and I think we all enjoyed the tension and the challenge.

And then we got past the third boss, the Priestess, and faced the single 6 mob pull prior to downing Kael’thas.

We. Were. Not. F%^*ing. Prepared.

Now, right before the third boss, our resto druid healer went offline and never came back, either to Teamspeak or to the game. Just gone. So we needed a replacement to down the Priestess, and Gerolan the master healing godlike Paladin I’ve mentioned in previous articles before agreed to come in. So we HAD heals.

So we were good to go. We went after the 6 mob pull. We died. We remarked, discussed CC. Tried again. Died.

I think we attempted the 6 mob (plus f&*#ing imp) pull 6 times. I honestly lost count. And we failed.

Gerolan had just been in a 5 man party that took this down with zero blips, so all I can say is, I obviously am NOT prepared, and I feel incompetent to do this run. I really do.

The pull consisted of a lot of casters, a lot of magic damage output, and if you fail the entire group respawns so you can’t whittle em down. It is clearly a gut check before they hand you Kael’thas.

And no matter how we tackled it last night, we COULD NOT down enough of the mobs I was tanking for me to be prepared to pick up the Demon succubi thing that Gerolan was fearing, or the Magister that was sapped, when they came loose.

I just COULD NOT git er done.

Sucked. Big time.

We finally gave up, to see if maybe a night of rest and stepping back a bit could bring a fresh perspective the next time.

Today, I’ve been reading the flow of chat from others that have gone in there… and overall, every single other person I’ve seen so far in forums talking about it has discussed difficulties in PUGs with downing Kael’thas… but not one other person seems to have had an issue with the 6 mob pull. No one has even mentioned it, as though it is beneath everyone else’s notice.

Granted, I don’t get to read my blog feeds and see what other bloggers are saying until I get home tonight. Maybe some other folks had a hangup too.

But holy shit WTF, am I really the only bad f&^%ing tank in the instance?

I mean, shit!

Yes, feral druids are susceptible to magic damage. I didn’t have stamina food, only Warp Burgers, so that didn’t help. I took my Earthen Elixir though.

That is still no excuse for not getting the job done. Not when I had some of the best players in the game in there with me. 

And not when it happened the same way each time… oops, too many mobs loose, oops mobs on the healer, oops healer dead, oops I’m dead, oops party wipe.

Anyone else? Anybody got a “I kicked it’s ass, it’s easy noob” story to share?

Patch 2.4 is here. Yeah, yeah, I know. No shit, Sherlock, what gave me the first clue? Maybe the 261MB download?

Anyway, one thing everyone agrees on is that we have accessibility to new gear. New badge rewards, new crafted recipes, new instances, the whole dealio.

Everyone I know is at different levels of gear or progression. Some of you are raiding BT and now the Sunwell, and come along here to lolzers at me or help guide us with your insight, others are at about the same level, and others are still enjoying leveling your druids up through the game.

So the challenge I have is to decide how to help folks see where their current gear may rank compared to the new stuff, and assist everyone in finding upgrades.

And I mean everyone. Not just druids, but as many folks as possible.

Well, there is a tool I’m using that seems like a brilliant, godlike tool for fine tuning your needs and finding new gear.

The website is Loot Rank.

What Loot Rank has done, and it’s brilliant, is they have set up a search form that you can personally customize by individual item characteristics, and then search for how items rank up by YOUR importance.

It uses the idea that is the foundation behind item ranking systems such as the Agility Equivalency Point system as shown so well for rogue gear on Shadowpanther.net, or the ranking system Emmerald has used for Feral kitty and bear druid gear comparisons.

And the beauty of it is that it is a blank canvas for you to use. You can configure the rankings to tweak it towards whatever class and spec you prefer, and save that as a template for your own needs, and refer to it frequently as you level.

Now, you can create your own template this way, but for the ‘get it and go’ user, there are already some templates that have been submitted in the forums by users for most classes.

I am going to link the templates here that I am going to personally find the most useful, and I hope they help you as well. But  encourage you to explore the forums, check out the other templates, and examine the math and concepts behind these templates so you can decide on your own whether the importance they give to certain stats matches your own opinion.

Feral Kitty DPS Druid

Feral Bear Tank Druid

Sword Spec Combat Rogue

Shadow Priest

Again… it may not be perfect, but as far as I know, right now it is the best I can find in a ranking system that includes the new gear. I hope you find it useful.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Don’t forget that not only are Primal Nethers able to be purchased for 10 Badges of Justice each, but Nether Vortexes are able to be purchased for 15 Badges. And they are Bind on Equip, not BOP. So now you can look through all that awesome crafted gear you used to think was forever beyond your reach, like the Belt of Blasting or the Belt of Natural Power, and be able to gather ALL of the mats for it, and ask a higher progressed crafter from another guild to make it for you for a flat fee. No more trying to find a guild that has loose Nether Vortexes to make non-guildies items.

A very big B^3 thank you to Ribeye for pointing that out. 

I wanted to make sure everyone had the chance to see this great guide to the entire unlocking of the Sunwell quests and stages, from Dirt Dog Gaming.

I know that, as someone that did not go into the PTR, I wandered around last night doing what I could find, unsure of whether or not I was doing everything I could.

Thanks to Dirt Dog, I could start with part 1 and see what is open at the very beginning, what I’m suppsoed to do in each quest, and I can get the feel of how things will grow as each stage unlocks. And, frankly, what the hell the ’stages’ are anyway.

But the prize is on part 9, where he creates an awesome chart showing all available quests, by stage, so you can see just what you can do. Everywhere.

Rock on.

For those of you that cannot see the big gaming news sites from work, yes, Patch 2.4 is going live. Now. Downloader and installer is cranking it out now, and I have for you, below, the new live patch notes.

The full, unedited patch notes are after the jump. Enjoy!

(more…)

Ok, BBB is having a horrible day at work today, so he asked (ok, made) me write the post for today.   Last night, we went back into Kara for part 2 with our group from last Wednesday (minus 1 player and the addition of a new mage).  It was a very successful and smooth run (at least that’s what they all said and since it’s only my 2nd time in there, I’m going to believe them).

We started out doing Maiden.  We had skipped her last week while doing Attumen, Moroes, Opera and Curator.  We downed Maiden the first time with no issues at all.  Very smooth and fast fight.

Then killed all the trash on the way to Illhoof.  Again, downed him the first time with BBB tanking BOTH Illhoof and Kil’rek on his own.  Our mages kept getting sacrified and were excellent at using ice block to quickly stop that and get back to the fighting.  And yay, Illhoof dropped the Xavian Stilleto that only I could use (which was an upgrade from my Felsteel Whisper Knives.

Then it was on to Shade of Aran.  I personally hate this fight because there’s so much to remember (and the pressure of not moving during flame wreath which would lead to never-ending ribbing from the rest of the party is terrible) and instead, I died within the first arcane explosion.  Almost made it to the wall when I exploded. :-(  However, a few moments later, BBB took a quick pause from fighting to rez me. Yay, I was back in the fight and ready to take him down.  Got him to about 50% when suddenly BBB said “oh shit” and was dead himself.  The rest of us kept up the fight and we were down to 1% when Gerolan and I saw another arcane explosion coming and both made the unannounced decision to just keep whaling away on him instead of running for the walls.  And he went down!  He did not drop any rogue loot, but I did get Medivh’s Journal which I needed for my quest.

On we went to more trash and then the Chess event.  Now I have to say, I played Chess a long time ago (but don’t remember much), but as Teysa said when explaining it to our new mage - “do you know how to play chess?  Well, this is nothing like that.”  lol  I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.  This time I was a horsie and had finally gotten within range of the Warchief when I got killed and moved a few times with a new pawn when the rest of the team got the win.  And yay, more rogue loot.  I got the Girdle of Treachery to replace a horrible old green belt that I was still wearing (my last green piece).  BBB generously let me have it when it would have been a really big upgrade for his kitty set.  Thanks dear!

Since we had no offtank, we decided to bypass Netherspite completely (and the guild always bypasses Nightbane - however, I’ll have that quest soon so they’ll have to give in for one night and do it) :-)  So it was off to Prince.  Remember, how I said above that I hate the Shade of Aran fight?  Well, I really hate the Prince fight.  As with last time, I quickly died when I got enfeebled.  I ran and ran and my poor corpse showed my sword hand literally almost touching Gerolan’s foot.  I was this close to safety when I died with my back to Prince.  Turned my view and watched as the team took him down on the first try (and I have to admit, I did feel slightly better when Teysa, the other melee DPS, died a short time after I did).  However, after being rezzed by BBB at the end of the fight, I watched with glee as the Ring of a Thousand Marks dropped and I was the only one who could use it (that didn’t already have it).  Yay, again the rogue got lovin!  3 epics in one night!   Woohoo!

BBB then escorted me to the library to turn Medivh’s journal in since the instance would be resetting tomorrow.  We got down there and ran in only to find out that there was one anomaly with the 3 mana worms (can’t remember the technical term for those guys) that we had bypassed before and they were standing right next to the NPC that I had to turn my quest in to.  First, BBB said it just wasn’t going to happen for me to turn my quest in and then a devious plan sprung to his mind.   So I stealthed over to the NPC and BBB taunted the anomaly the group over to him (preparing to take the fall so I could turn my quest in).  However, the mana worms decided to stay right where they were.  I did manage to turn my quest in just as all three of them ganged up and killed me.

Ran back from the graveyard and then it was off to read the journal at the master’s terrace.  Teysa still had that quest in his log, so we all watched the dialogue between Medivh and the dragon (forget his name too) and got our quests complete together.  BBB and I headed outside to turn my quest in, ran and got the bone from behind the summoning stone and then realized the next part of the chain, after a quick stop in Netherstorm, would be to do a heroic Shattered Halls and heroic Setthek Halls run.  Decided that will probably sit in my quest log for a bit, especially with the patch coming out soon and lots of new stuff to do.

But overall, a wonderfully successful evening.  I got lots of loot (which is always nice for an undergeared person), and a few other teammates got pieces they had either been wanting for awhile or could really use (as newer Kara players like myself).  And even better, I’m starting to get a much better sense of all the different bosses and what abilities work better with some than others.  I’ll definitely be back to Kara again (esp as I still have a helm, gloves, a chestpiece, boots, and a trinket on my wish list of rogue goodies).

Anyone else have a successful raid in the last week that they want to share or make others jealous with the cool loot that dropped for them?

Cassieann