Running a Sunwell Trash Farm Group

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Sometimes you just need to unplug for a while. Right now, I’m sitting outside Starbucks having one of their new Vivanno drinks (opt for the banana chocolate if you can). That will explain the lateness of this post. I know most of my other blogging colleagues don’t do this, but there’s a certain pleasure one takes from just writing on a pad with a pen. There’s no emails to answer, no forums to supervise, or items to enchant. It’s a relaxing environment without a care in the world.

Sunwell trash is the latest trend among many 70’s and is labelled as the thing to do in the summer holidays. School is out for most people or they’re on summer vacation. Guilds are getting bored of the same rut that is Black Temple, Hyjal, Serpentshrine, and Tempest Keep’s Eye.

Why do it?

The potential for epic drops doing Sunwell Trash is enormous. There is a lot of money to be had. I’ve heard of instances where individuals can make over  900 gold from 2 hours of trash work. More on this later.

A items of note in terms of epic trash loot that Priests might be interested in:

  • Ring of Harmonic Beauty
  • Wand of Cleansing Light
  • Pattern: Robe of Eternal Light
  • Pattern: Hands of Eternal Light

Sunmotes will also sell for a nice sum as they’re the new Heart of Darkness.

Setting the Guild Rules

As with any kind of 25 man pickup raid, loot rules must be established first. I participated in a Sunwell trash group yesterday and here’s an example of how loot was handled.

BoP items could be rolled upon by anyone
BoEs are generally auctioned off

  • Crimson Spinel x 3 (100 // 10)
  • Sunmote x 1 (500 // 10)
  • Schematic: Powerheal 9000 Lens (2500 // 250)

I’ve noticed selling gems in stacks tend to go slightly higher then they would individually. Try selling them in packs of 3 or so if you get a sizeable quantity of one type.

How it works

There is no hard instance resetting of any kind. It does involve plenty of running in and out, however. The first robot patroller gets demolished followed by the two set of Blood Elves guarding the gates. There is a Dragonhawk that must stay alive. It needs to be repeatedly chain sheeped. A Druid is typically tasked with sheeping sleeping the Dragonhawk for the duration of the entire pull. The Elves get taken down, then the party makes a run for the door with the Dragonhawk CC’d as long as possible. Seconds later, the Dragonhawk wakes up and will respawn a set of Blood Elves.

Rinse and repeat.

I cannot stress the value of CCing enough times. I’ve died around 9 times in an hour because Mages and Druids failed at controlling their mobs. If you are a Mage or a Druid, you don’t have to DPS. All you need to do is stand there and spam your CC button.

Potential Risks

The nature of a pickup raid runs the risk that you can potentially get screwed. Another Sunwell Trash run I participated in the other night ended disappointingly when the raid leader and loot master disappeared offline after the 2 hours were up. You can’t exactly file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. There’s always going to be a chance that you will get screwed over (A shame too, because the Pattern: Robe of Eternal Light dropped).

There are ways to minimize the risk.

Ask around in the raid. See if anyone has run with the raid leader before. Establish how the individual’s reputation is. While you can’t always be sure about the legitimacy and honor of other players, information goes a long way. The more you know the better informed a decision you can make. With any luck, you won’t experience the same ordeal that I went through.

The Golden Rule of Invading Capital Cities

The various factions in the World of Warcraft have their own respective Capital cities. Some of them are easier to breach than others. On some PvP servers, raids are organized almost weekly to storm into an opposing city and take out their leader.

Why would you do that?

Bolvar doesn’t drop any loot, gold or massive honor points. Killing Thrall doesn’t offer you a quest reward or access to Stormwind’s coffers.

So why do these raids happen? Because they just want to have some fun! Sometimes its nice to simply let yourself go and team up with other players to level towns and kill NPCs.

So what’s the golden rule?

When invading a capital city, don’t just bring a raid group. Bring a damn army. See below:

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Horde forces struck early in the evening. We had no warning at all. We returned to Stormwind after a successful win in Alterac Valley when the alarm sounded. The portals were activated and an advance group of Rogues and Druids went ahead to scout what we were up against.

We didn’t hear anything from them since because they lagged out. One by one, I watched their raid frames wink “offline”. An organized and well equipped AV premade should’ve been enough to rout these challengers since we had home field advantage.

Assuming it was only 1 Horde raid.

But there were 3.

When I emerged out from the Mystic Ward, it seemed we were too late. Skeletons littered the bank and the auction house. It seems an advance group came in and caught the city with their pants down and knocked out the 3 auctioneers without hesitation.

Figured that Horde forces would try to pick apart our economy first.

As our counter offensive streamed out of Ironforge, we looked down the road.

For the first time, I was shocked and awed.

Never had so many come to destroy so few.

I tried to throw what Lightning Bolts I could. But 7 second cast times made it impossible for me to do anything. Playing with that many characters around you in an open area was like trying to swim with your hands and feet bound. We could do nothing but watch as they strolled in and headed for the King’s Throne.

With that, the retreat was sounded and those of us with hearthstones available withdrew back to Darnassus. It didn’t take a Gnomish Rocket Scientist to figure out that once they were done with Ironforge, Stormwind would fall next. To even try and raise an army that could come close to challenging a unit of that size would have been inconceivable.

AddOn: Dispel Announcer for Raiding and PvP

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I finally found me a mod that I think will benefit all Priests regardless of their purpose or style of healing. Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do with healing at all. What it does is it announces Dispels in a chat channel of your preference. It’s fairly flexible in the the settings (see below screenshots). I do believe it works with Mass Dispel as it announced me taking off a Paladin’s bubble and it works on offensive and defensive dispels. The Ace 2 framework is required for you to modify any settings.

More importantly,This addon has been fully tested on a Hunter dispelling enemy buffs with Arcane Shot and with a Druid dispelling poisons but it should also work perfectly when dispelling with any other skill.

Get Dispel Announcer from Curse.

It also announces when debuffs on yourself fall off such as Shouts and such.

Works in:

  • Say chat
  • Party chat
  • Raid warning
  • UI error frame
  • Default frame

Locations:

  • Outside
  • 5-man
  • Raid
  • Battleground
  • Arena

Anyway,  have a gander at the shots below and you’ll get a rough idea.

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Announcing Plusheal dot com

A blog can only do so much. A blog is a virtual canvas for an author to paint their thoughts onto. A few weeks ago, I asked if you were interested in taking part in a community with other like minded healers. An overwhelming number of you said yes.
Today, I’d like to introduce Plusheal as a new place for you to get acquainted with other healers and healing bloggers, with the goal of sharing information to make us all better healers.

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You might wonder why I’m starting a healing community when I already have this blog?

Well, a blog:
* Presents topics guided by the original author
* Is an outlet for one voice

Whereas a forum forum:
* Empowers readers to create and participate in their own discussions
* Is a potential outlet for multiple voices

conversashun

At Plusheal, we’re hoping to foster discussions among groups of players, beyond the scope of the limits offered by blog conversations. I’ll be joined there by other healing bloggers like Anna, Siha, Auzara, Lume, Pat, and of course, Wyn who’ll be helping me with the community as it grows and sharing their expertise with the rest of us. I hope to see a lot of you over there, too.

Special thanks to my speechwriter. You know who you are!

In Five Hours, the World Will End. What Will You Do?

I’ve inadvertently inspired several bloggers when I interviewed Phaelia many months ago. Herein lies the scenario:

Let’s hypothetically assume Blizzard goes out of business and decides to shut down their servers and WoW for good. You have 5 hours before the server shutdown is permanent. What would you do in 5 hours?

It’s reached the shared topic of the week for Blog Azeroth and I’ve inkling it might be discussed in this weeks Twisted Nether Blogcast.

What others have said:

(Don’t mind if I borrow the list from the TNB post, Fim ;))

What would Matt do?

Simple. I’d make like Madonna and try to save it. Matt ain’t no quitter.

EDIT: In pure blogging irresponsibility, I forgot to link to the original post by Larisa.