Turtle Hate

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I thought the turtles in Firelands were bad. Nope! The Tortos ones are even worse. It took us forever the first time we got there to get him. Between the stalactites, the spinning turtles, and the earthquakes, it was a huge chaotic mess.

Biggest pressure point?

Me.

My effectiveness on this fight is practically zero. The majority of my time is spent marking turtles and assigning kickers at the right times. Leading and coordinating Tortos is a big nightmare and I start panicking whenever we get to him because I end up second guessing stuff throughout the fight. Thank goodness we 2 shot it the other night (our first wipe was due to an errant Hunter Barrage that went off when we were clearing bat trash, so it didn’t count as a one shot). It’s not always smooth sailing.

We’re now at week 4 and I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with it. The DPS has gone up leading to additional breathing room with turtles. The punters already know when to expect calls before I even make them and have started calling their turtles. But out of the encounters here so far, this is by far the most draining. I suppose it’s possible that I can eventually wean myself from marking turtles. Not quite there yet though because I’m concerned that two sets of turtle shells will go flying in and we miss out on a breath interrupt.

I hate turtles.

Hearthstone: Why the Disappointment?

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Because people got their expectations too high.

I’ll admit, I was one of them. I already knew it wasn’t going to be a game. I knew it wasn’t going to be an expansion or a new IP or anything like that. Blizzard would only save important news their own BlizzCon (or maybe E3). I’m a little amazed at some of the hate for it. They already said was going to be something small.

We can’t get hyped up for stuff like this because then we set ourselves up for a huge let down when it’s not an epic cinematic announcement or a title of sorts. In the announcement video, Blizzard mentioned they had a small team working on it. It’s meant to help you kill time. Add Hearthstone to another list of things you can do during Tuesday patch mornings.

And it’s free!

Granted, I thought it was going to be an announcement related to Blizzard All Stars, so I’m just as guilty of that. Once I heard about the announcement, everything clicked and actually made sense.

I was a huge Magic player back in the day. You can classify me as the Spike player, always looking for the power cards and investing amazing resources into it.

There are two problems that I foresee in my ability to enjoy Hearthstone:

  1. It’s a free 2 play game. League of Legends is also a free 2 play game. I’ve invested somewhere to the tune of $1200 in League of Legends in the form of boosts, champions, skins, and gifts. If there’s any cash options, I’m so screwed Sad smile.
  2. My dad has my iPad 3. Like all the time. I haven’t seen it since January. Actually, come to think of it he probably knows how to use it more than I do. When’s the last time any father knew more about current technology than their son? I am slacking.

Depending on guild interest, perhaps a Friday Night Hearthstone is in order. I remember playing FNM and having a blast. Despite playing the overpowered Jace-Eldrazi Bant deck, I only won a handful of FNMs (I hated Jund).

It looks like it’ll be a great entry level card game for those who want to try their hand at CCGs. No word on whether cards can be traded/sold, however.

The Heart of the Swarm

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Patch 5.2 last week.

Heart of the Swarm this week.

It’s a wonder that I got any sleep at all. Actually, I managed to beat the single player campaign on hard (I’ll give brutal a run later on). Blizzard’s story team made me feel absolutely depressed halfway through the campaign but by the end of the game I was eager to see what they had planned for the next expansion. Speaking of other games, last week Sim City came out and there was all sorts of issues with the game. Certain features were removed. Amazon had to pull the title from the store for some time due to server issues.

Blizzard learned much from it’s Diablo 3 launch last year. They staggered the launch times around the world to ensure that they wouldn’t get overwhelmed. I’m sure their networking teams learned much.

But they’re not quite off the hook.

I have to replay certain missions again. Why? Because the achievement servers were offline robbing me of precious achievements!

In the Warcraft front, we’re up to Magaera this week. Got to the 7th head. A kill should be coming in fairly soon. I’m a little anxious on Ji-Kun though because I’m still not 100% sure what to really expect when I get there. I want to get my thoughts together on Tortos though. Warmed up to the fight the first few times I did it on the beta, but after two kills on him so far, I’ve already grown weary.

Here’s My Nerdy Guild Trying to be Funny

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My guild has a peculiar sense of humour. After we killed Jin’Rokh last night, we move up to the bridge of doom. There’s all these ghostly adds floating on the sides and the wind just blows people off in different directions off the bridge. It’s a complete gong show but eventually we figured out how to do it. The trick is to grab each ghostly add from each side and tank them at the beginning. A raider noticed something about the wind textures.

One of my players remarks, “ Doesn’t that wind pattern look like the sine symbol?”

An officer responds, “Or the cosine symbol.”

Another player shoots back, “It’s certainly integral to what we’re doing.”

Not to be outdone, a different player pipes up, “I don’t think it’s a major factor.”

At this point, I rolled my eyes and flatly stated, “You’re all being irrational.”

Sigh.

Apparently, that’s my guild on a patch night. We were able to take down Horridon and put in some shots on the Council fight before we called it a night. I don’t know about you, but I’m already getting tired of the trash.

How was your patch day and what do you think of the new raid?

Challenge Gold: Scarlet Monastary

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We’re down to one.

After several heartbreaking nights, my group managed to get Scarlet Monastary down on gold and went back to help finish out Scarlet Halls for me. The Monastary is arguably the hardest challenge mode in the game!

We’ll see though as we still have Stormstout Brewery to blast through before we collect our full suite of Challenge Mode rewards.

The main issues with Scarlet Monastary isn’t the bosses. It’s actually the insane trash pulls. Cooldown and ability usage must be pinpoint. We actually screwed up slightly on Whitemane and pulled extra trash when we didn’t have to but finished 7 seconds away from the Silver mark.

There’s a few pressure points in Scarlet Monastary, so I’ll walk you through the toughest ones. Make sure you come into Scarlet Monastary prepared with the 18 second Invisibility Potion. You’ll need it. The most frustrating part is that if you wipe shortly in the cathedral area, you’ll have to wait several punishing minutes until your potion cooldowns are available for usage.

Right as the Challenge Mode timer finishes counting down, you can activate your Spirit Shell to grant your party additional shi elds as they get through that first pull. Spirit Shell should be off cooldown around the time you pull the Frenzied Spirits before the boss.

cm-sm-fs

You’ll want to have a Death Knight handy. You can charm one of the Frenzied Spirits as it it gradually builds up a buff (also called Frenzied Spirit). Our Death Knight rounded them all up and applied a slow and gradually kited them around while our Shaman and Monk chained AoE stuns back to back. Now the buff increases the Spirit’s damage and attack speed by 15% and it stacks. Our fastest kill on Thalnos the Soulrender was around 31 seconds. I think the Spirit had around 40+ stacks coupled with Heroism.

In the first pull in the hallway shortly after taking down that first boss, I suggest yanking the two yellow mobs and taking them out. Odds are you’ll pull them and the big pack around the corner. As a healer, try to be the first one in so you can start drinking before the rest of your group initiates. Light off and chain your AoE stuns one after the other. You can use a Barrier here if you’re struggling, but it’s not quite necessary.

cm-sm-hall

Burn the Invisibility Potion and break out into a run across the courtyard. Go up the right stair case and hop onto the fountain walls. Make sure you don’t come out of stealth near the 3 monks sitting on the right part of that fountain. Our tank pulled Brother Korloff when he was in the middle of patrolling between the 6 monks that flank that entrance to the monastary.

Brother Korloff will charge the furthest player and unload Firestorm Kick. Be really wary of where you stand. You want to position yourself just in the area in front of the fountain so that you don’t pull the aforementioned trio of monks. As the healer, don’t be the furthest one away. Shouldn’t have too many problems with this one at all. It’s just a little long.

Once you defeat the Monk, your next task is to try to penetrate the Monastary without pulling the monks on either side. The margin of error here is extremely small. Even a quarter step in either direction is enough to pull the pack and destroy your group. Now if you pay close attention to the positioning of the monks, you’ll notice they’re not exactly lined up perpendicular to the entrance. They’re actually angled inwards. What we ended up doing was using a hard CC (like Hex) on the back right Monk. This helped increase our margin just large enough that we could get through safely.

We tried CCing both the back Monks but the back left Monk managed to aggro on to us while we were inside the Cathedral so we ended up CCing the back right one only.

Anyway, take a hard left when you’re inside the Cathedral and start working on the pulls. There’s three major multi-mob pulls that can annihilate your group. Space out your stun cooldowns and healing cooldowns. For example, our Monk and Shaman used their stuns on the first pack. I used a Barrier and our Death Knight used Army of the Dead on the second. Use the pillars to line of sight pull them. Your interrupters should just pick a Purifier and lock them down while AoEing.

If you can get within striking range of Whitemane and Durand with 4:30 left, you should be in good shape. Stay close to each other so that Durand doesn’t get too far off. Assign specific interrupts for Mass Resurrection and Dominate Mind for Whitemane. You can let Smite go off unchecked as it’s easily healable. We screwed up here and accidentally pulled a Scarlet Zealot in addition to Durand. Use your AoE cleaves and single target abilities to get rid of that Zealot fast. Make sure he doesn’t cast Heal on the boss.

Good luck! I know I made it sound easier than it actually was. Scarlet Monastary will end up being one of the longer ones your group is working on just due to the difficulty of the trash and the potion cooldowns.