Trash

Save 10 Minutes on Mimiron Trash by Skipping it Entirely

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I just discovered this pro tip yesterday from a Resto Druid app. He mentioned to me as we were clearing out Mimiron trash.

If you want to shave some time off in your raid, work the first trash pull and secure a Spider bot as quickly as you can. Then have that player power jump over the rest of the mobs all the way to the tram. He activates the tram, heads over to Mimiron, and then starts the encounter. That player has to die.

At that point, the teleport at the Spark of Imagination should now be active enabling the rest of your raid to enter in.

Some of you guys probably know this. But for the rest of us that didn’t, it’s a neat trick that should shave some time in your raids. We used this method in the last trash pull to gauge exactly how much space was needed. It might take you a trash pull or two to get used to the range. But it can be done.

On a side note, you’ll notice things have been slightly shaky around here. The server move has been complete. A very special thanks to our sponsors (and hosting partner) Byte Me Gaming. The contact forms are not working at the moment and I’m trying to resolve that. So I apologize in advance if you’ve sent in anything recently. Use my personal email for the time being in order to get in touch.

Fixed.

Running a Sunwell Trash Farm Group

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sunwell

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 Most Important Rule in Mount Hyjal

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If you ever get to experience the pain of Mount Hyjal, just make sure you follow this very important rule:

Go to the bathroom BEFORE engaging trash.

Oh, and I forgot to include this awesome screenshot:

Anetheron

Yes, we killed Anetheron. We’re sitting at 2/5 Hyjal.

Phat loots? You bet!

Archbishop’s Slippers
Bastion of Light

I picked me up a pair of slippers to replace my Boots of the Long Road.

A Tuesday Story and Trash Blows

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I stumbled upon this touching story today. Everyone needs to go read it. Sometimes we all need a reminder to slow down just a little bit even in WoW.

Fate wrote a nice piece the other day about the hassles of trash mobs. One of his Guildies complained about them and Fate took it upon his hands to write about why trash is good and not bad. His main argument? Trash helps to build up the suspense and the pleasure when the boss in charge of them gets taken down. Otherwise, you’d be blowing through Karazhan, SSC, and TK within time frames of an hour.

Personally, I’d love to see more instances akin to Mag and Gruul (Ony style). We’re on a limited raiding schedule. Every wipe, every trash kill, every rebuff eats into the precious time we have. Our 25 mans are capped at exactly 11 hours of raiding per week. Let me first say that I’m proud of the Guild that I’m in and the discipline that they show during crunch time. We may fool around and crack jokes, but when we get down to business we do whatever it takes to get the job done. The clutch Al’ar kill is a testament to that (5 hours of sunday wiping, one more respawn kill, followed by an Al’ar first down). Sometimes, I just wish we had more time to do it.

Trash is nice to have sometimes. I do agree with Fate that it’s something to do in between bosses. Players need to have a little bit of a downtime. It’s not possible to ask 25 players to maintain a 110% focus and concentration. They would burn out too quickly. I know I can’t remain that tense for such a period of time.

But on the other hand, I don’t want to spend time to reclear trash repeatedly. Nothing kills momentum faster then getting a boss down to 10% and knowing you’re able to kill him only to get stopped by the Wall of Trash (0/*, Creature – Wall, Tap: Piss off target raid).

Ah M:TG. Sometimes I miss playing. But it’s either that or WoW.

Anyways, the trash respawns, you look at the time and you realize that your raid is over as people have to work or go to school on the east coast. Trash respawns just kills that level of energy and anticipation. With all the trash removed in SSC, we’d be able to one shot all the bosses and have time left over to do other things (Like Cartman says, now we can all enjoy the game)!

Fate’s point is excellent though. We DO need that trash. Where else are we going to get our Primal Nethers from? Or random BoE/BoP recipes?

Here’s a thought.

We’ve all sniggered at one point when our raid leader forgot to downgrade a raid instance from Heroic to Normal difficulty.

What if Blizzard implemented it and made Heroic raids? Give Raiders a choice in how they want to go through SSC. They can do it normally, or they can do it the Heroic way. Reduce trash by 80% but increase boss difficulty by 20%. Keep loot tables roughly the same and throw in some badges. Maybe the health of Hydross will increase a little bit so the raid needs to ice and poison dance for an extra minute. Think of it as an express raid. I’m not going to try and develop that concept any further. It would probably get defeated in a manner of minutes. But at least it’s something to think about. I sure as hell am not a game developer.

Sadly, I don’t get to go into Zul’Aman today. Our 25 schedules stay the same throughout. With the reset timer nearly twice as fast as Karazhan, it means we can do it any time we want. I’ll probably run through it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, snoozing through trash is the order of the day.