It’s not that I haven’t been playing WoW (oh believe me, I’ve been playing a lot of WoW, tee-hee), it’s just that I haven’t had the time to actually blog about what I’ve been doing in WoW. (Too many distractions! Other more important blog back logs, social media work, and books to read!)

Yada, yada, yada.

To make the story short, my guild has cleared normal 10-man content of Cataclysm. We already have normal Deathwing on farm status and the Reins of the Blazing Drake has actually dropped for us… TWICE!

If I’m not mistaken, we MIGHT just be Server-First AND Server-Second on our realm (US-Suramar) to own these mounts! :)

We’re actually just waiting on the new expansion, Mist of Pandaria. (A not-so welcomed expansion and most people think it’s a joke and actually quit playing the game. But hey, I like pandas!)

So while we’re waiting for the new expansion, we’re trying to clear Heroic 10 man. But not in a hardcore gamer way. Whatever we can do until the expansion comes out.

So, anyway, this is just a random World of Warcraft post, haha!

Random World of Warcraft stuff #1: I just finished leveling another alt to 85. Meet Quisha, my mage!

Geek Girl Trivia: “Quisha” was my Game Master name when I used to work for a certain gaming company before :P

She’s the first DPS class I actually enjoyed playing, simply because mages (arcane specced, specifically) are soooo easy to play. Can I say 111111111111111111111? Haha!

Random World of Warcraft stuff #2: I finally look like my toons again! :P Hello, full bangs!

Last year, I actually had the same hair color as my toons! :P (See hair tips.) Now I’m back to shiny black :)

Random World of Warcraft stuff #3: The hubby gave me a geeky Valentine’s gift: a limited edition World of Warcraft in-game mount, the Heart of the Aspects. Love! Shiny dragon for my shiny, Blood Elf. Yay!

Well, that’s it! How goes your online/virtual life? ;)

Photo taken by Lester Guevara

And to top it of, it has a geeky dedication: “Have an EPIC birthday Killstrike & Wiegraff” (that’s their toon name, by the way!)

Such an awesome, geek-licious cake! More crappy close up photos taken with my HTC Chacha.

Wiegraff, our Tauren druid healer/tank and raid leader ;)

Killstrike, one of our uber Troll hunters.

And yes, this is a birthday cake for 2 adult men :P

Cake by Kink Cakes.

Al’Akir’s model reminds me of Ragnaros, but prettier :)

Good bye, Wind Lord!

The Al’Akir fight is probably one of the most fun fight I’ve encountered. Similar to the Conclave of Winds, it requires a lot of movement and precise positioning of the raid.

Our raid was divide into 5 groups, with the following positions at the start of the fight:

image c/o JadedAlt.com

This positioning will help mitigate the damage of Lightning Strike, a spell which is casted in a frontal cone.

The second phase is the easiest phase. All that has to be done is avoid the tornado walls, while DPSing the boss and managing the Stormling adds.

The third phase is similar to the last phase of the Malygos fight in the Eye of Eternity. You won’t be riding any vehicles or dragons, but you will be lifted up in the air. You then have to fly down and then up while DPSing, tanking or healing.

Our raid was composed of 1 tank, 2 range DPS, 4 melee DPS and 3 healers.

Al’Akir 10-Man Boss Fight Strategy
Phase 1:
1. Stay spread out and stay out of the ice and blizzard.
2. Run in between the gaps in the tornado wall.
3. Run towards the boss before Wind Burst

Phase 2:
1. Burn Al’Akir down to 25% as fast as possible to avoid getting too many debuff stacks.
2. Killing the stormling adds will cause a debuff on the boss. Try to kill about 3 at a time to maximize the damage. (Tip: Before you bring down Al’Akir to Phase 3, try to get 5 stacks of debuff by killing 5 Stormlings. This will help your DPS in Phase 3. When we brought down Al’Akir, we had 7 stacks!)

Phase 3:
1. Stay 5 yards apart but on the same level as the boss (start at the boss’ feet but above the lightning). When the raid is knocked back, move back into position quickly.
2. When lightning cloud spawns, the whole raid must move slightly up to avoid it.
3. Stay away from the player with Lightning Rod.

-text from iPwn app (Free download from iTunes App Store, must-have for all WoW players! Requires iOS 4.2.1)

Al’Akir TankSpot Video:

Next stop, Nefarian!

Link: Terracotta Guild – US Suramar

Now you see him…

Now you don’t!

The downfall of Cho’Gall marks the clearing of Bastion of Twilight. Among the 3 final bosses in each Cataclysm raid, Cho’Gall is probably the easiest final boss encounter.

The Cho’Gall fight is a 2 phase-fight that relies mainly on Corrupted Blood debuff management, interruption of mind-controlled raid members and additional mobs management.

During the fight, Cho’Gall will summon Corrupting Adherents to aid him. These mobs will cast the following spells: Sprayed Corruption, Depravity (interruptible with 1.5 second cast), Corrupting Crash and Spilled Blood of the Old God (slimes come out when the Corrupting Adherents die).

When you get hit by these abilities, your Corrupted Blood debuff stack will increase. At the following number of stacks, the effects are as follows:

25 Corrupted Blood – Corruption: Accelerated – Your Corrupted Blood has gone to your heart and is accelerating, causing 2 stacks of Corrupted Blood for one minute. Magic dispellable.
50 Corrupted Blood – Corruption: Sickness – Your Corrupted Blood has made you sick, causing you to vomit and inflict 39000 – 41000 Shadow damage to friends in a 5 yard frontal cone. Also causes Corrupted Blood.
75 Corrupted Blood – Corruption: Malformation – A Malformation has grown out of your back which casts Shadow Bolts at nearby friendly players.
100 Corrupted Blood – Corruption: Absolute – You are transformed into a Faceless One, receiving 100% less healing but inflicting 100% additional damage and all your spells become instant casts. – MMO Site

It is absolutely imperative (tee hee!) that each raid member manage their Corrupted Blood stack. Avoid getting hit by anything!

We managed to kill Cho’Gall when our raid had only 3 people with Corrupted Blood. Two people had 10 stacks, while one had 20 stacks by the time we brought him down to Phase 2.

Phase 2 starts when Cho’Gall’s life goes down to 25%. Cho’Gall will be summoning 4 tentacles that must be killed as soon as possible. These tentacles will be channeling beams and those that get hit by the beams will have reduced healing and damage done by 75%. These beams are interruptible.

See. Pretty easy fight!

In a nutshell, the Cho’Gall fight goes like this:

Phase 1:
1. When your Corrupted Blood debuff reaches 25 stacks, the Accelerated Corruption debuff must be dispelled. When it hits 50 stacks, you must face away from the other raid members to avoid vomiting on them.
2. When a tank is afflicted with Fury, the other tank should taunt the boss.
3. Any mind-controlled raid member should be CC’ed, stunned, feared, etcetera as soon as possible.
4. Stay out of fire, shadow and black areas on the ground.
5. Stay spread while the Corrupted Adherents are active. Kill them in a designated area as far from Cho’Gall as possible. Interrupt its Depravity ability and burn it down as quickly as possible.
6. Slow down the slimes and kill them quickly. Do not get hit by slimes.

Phase 2:
1. When the boss hits 25%, he must be burned down quickly – pop all your cooldowns and trinkets.
2. He will occasionally spawn four tentacles, which must be burned down immediately.

-text from iPwn app (Free download from iTunes App Store, must-have for all WoW players! Requires iOS 4.2.1)

The fight might look complicated at first, but once everyone gets the hang of moving around and doing what they’re supposed to do, it’s a pretty easy and fun fight.

Cho’Gall Tankspot video:

Link: Terracotta Guild – US Suramar

But this week, we came back more prepared and very determined to bring him down. And brought him down, we did! :)

We came with our secret weapon: a druid healer.

The success of the Chimaeron fight will rely heavily on how good your healing team is. While some say the fight is healing intensive, I beg to differ.

‘Healing intensive’ would mean healers pushing their limits and exhausting their mana. I personally find it a fight where healers have to control themselves from overhealing to be able to efficiently heal this fight. Or else they will run out of mana.

I do agree, however, that the Chimaeron fight is definitely a healer’s fight. It’s actually a very simple fight but a lot will depend on everyone’s reaction time, especially the healers.

Chimaeron raid composition: 2 tanks, 3 melee, 2 range, 3 healers.

Having a druid would be a WIN, but if you don’t have a druid available, make sure you have atleast 2 healers who have HoT/AoE healing capabilities.

Chimaeron Strategy:
1. While the Bile-O-Tron is ONLINE, the raid should stay spread out, atleast 6 yards apart. Only keep raid members above 10,000HP, except the tank which should be healed normally.

2. While the Bile-O-Tron is OFFLINE, the raid should all move and stack on top of each other. Top off raid members during this time. Best time to cast AoE heals.

3. Tanks should taunt off each other every three stacks. The off-tank should taunt when Chimaeron casts Double Attack and the main tank should taunt back after.

4. At 20%, the boss must be burned quickly as possible because healing is severely reduced. (In fact, I suggest that healers barely heal at all during this phase. Better to help DPS Chimaeron down.)

-text from iPwn app (Free download from iTunes App Store, must-have for all WoW players! Requires iOS 4.2.1)

Chimaeron Tankspot video:

Link: Terracotta Guild – US Suramar

That makes our raid progression 6 out of 12 for Cataclysm Raiding. That’s pretty great, considering we’re a casual raiding guild who raid 2 hours a night every Wednesday, Thursday and Monday.

Tonight’s raid was pretty awesome as we managed to kill the twin dragons in just 3 pulls. Hurray.

Last week was another story though. I think we spent around an hour just on the Valiona and Theralion. I guess practice does make perfect!

Last week’s raid. Valiona and Theralion happily chomping on my guildmates while I get my beauty sleep ;)

The Valiona and Theralion fight is pretty easy. but you will be needing a whole lot of coordination from the raid. Each member has to know when to stack and when to spread out.

You will be engaging each dragons separately, one will be on the ground while the other will be up in the air. So while DPSing the dragon currently on the ground and avoiding its special abilities, you will have to avoid the special abilities of the dragon up in the air.

Our raid had the following composition: 1 Tank, 3 Healers, 3 Melee and 3 Range

Valiona Ground Phase
1. Attack Valiona first. Raid should stay atleast 8 yards apart until Valiona casts Blackout, at which point all the raid members should group up on Valiona’s tail and the Blackout debuff should be dispelled. Then spread back out. (When Blackout is dispelled it will cause an AOE damage divided by the people in the raid, hence the need for stacking)
2. Run away from Valiona’s head when she casts Devouring Flames (breath).
3. When Theralion casts Dazzling Destruction, quickly run away from the void zones. If you find yourself in the Twilight Zone, avoid the pink orbs and click on a portal.

Theralion Ground Phase
4. When Theralion lands, ranged and melee stack up in separate groups.
5. When Theralion casts Fabulous Flames at a group (normally the range group), the group must run together out of the void zone that spawns
6. If you get the buff/debuff Engulfing Magic, run atleast 10 yards away from the raid and continue your spells and abilities until the debuff wears off.
7. Run away from Valiona’s Deep Breath and do not get hit by it.

-text from iPwn app (Free download from iTunes App Store, must-have for all WoW players! Requires iOS 4.2.1)

And the Tankspot video: (I LOL-ed at the dragon scribbles. They look like unicorns!)

Links: Terracotta Guild – US Suramar

I’ve traded in my little black dress, heels and my martini glasses for my ratty shirt, comfy pink bedroom slippers and mouse. You see, every Wednesday, Thursday and Monday is raid night in WoW. Raid night means, I go in a virtual world and I kill pixel monsters with my pixel friends. I officially have no social life, haha ;)

For those of you non-geeks, WoW stands for World of Warcraft. It’s an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, meaning millions of people play it online) based on the game, Warcraft.

I play an adorable red-haired Blood Elf priestess named Veexie and I’m healer.

“OMG! It looks like you!”

*phew* I feel so free!

For my ‘cool’ friends, you can disown me now. Haha.

Anyway, I’m just happy to say that our guild managed to bring down another boss!

My guild, Terracotta of Suramar US, officially started raiding last January 15 and so far we’ve managed to kill the following bosses: Magmaw, Omnitron Defense System, Maloriak of Blackwing Descent; Halfus Wyrmbreaker of Bastion of Twilight; and just tonight, the Conclave of Wind in Throne of the Four Winds!

I’m going to share with you the strategy on how to kill the Conclave of Wind.

1. Each boss must ALWAYS have someone on their platform
2. The bosses must die within 1 minute of each other or they will resurrect.
3. The east (Rohash) platform should have a healer or ranged DPS who can heal themselves. The west (Anshal) platform should have a tank and a healer. The north (Nezir) platform should have a tank and a healer.
4. The DPS should switch between Nezir and Anshal. Move to Nezir just before Sleet Storm. Move to Anshal wherever there are adds.
5. Do not stand in frost or get hit by cyclones.
6. Keep Anshal out of the middle and out of any healing spots (green shiny circle on ground)
7. The tank and healers should switch between Anshal’s and Nezir’s as necessary to drop their debuffs.
8. When the bosses are near death, kill Anshal first, followed by Nezir, and finally Rohash.
- text from iPwn app (Free download from iTunes App Store, must-have for all WoW players! Requires iOS 4.2.1)

And to help you visualize, here’s a video from TankSpot:

Suprisingly, it was a very easy fight. We managed to get it done in around 5-6 pulls. Like what our raid leader said, the key to this fight is communication and focus :) *OMG, how geeky is that, haha*

By the way, our guild is recruiting for our Asian 10 man team and we need healers! :) If you’re a WoW player and a healer playing on an Asian time zone UTC/GMT +8 (9PM to 11PM, Mondays, Wednesday and Thursdays) , and you’re looking for a home online, we want you!

Four years later, I have two level 80 Priests (Undead and a Blood Elf, I re-rolled to a BE because I wanted a prettier toon and race change wasn’t available yet, hehe), a level 80 Blood Elf Paladin, a level 80 Tauren Druid, and a Blood Elf Hunter that is stuck at level 77 plainly because I’m too sick and tired to level her up.

Suffice to say, with those many Horde alts, I pretty much have all the Horde quests memorized to a ‘T’, and I will probably jump of a cliff if I have to go thru the Wrath of the Lich King quest for the Horde side AGAIN for the nth time.

However, since things are becoming slightly boring and routinary in WoW, with people just waiting for the Cataclysm Expansion, the only thing to spice up your WoW life is to level another alt. But since the thought of leveling another horde makes me want to puke, I had this great idea of leveling up an Alliance toon!

Hence the birth of Zeexie, my pretty Draenei Shaman! I’ll eventually transfer her to Horde when I reach level 80, though. But for now, I’m appreciating the Alliance scenery and slowly enjoying leveling her to 80.

Some thoughts about playing for the Alliance side:

1. Alliance player aren’t all the bad. I had this misconception that Alliance had more annoying players since there was this misnomer that more kids play Alliance. I’ve beginning to think that’s not entirely true ever since Horde got the Blood Elf race and all the kids transferred to Horde side. So far, the Alliance Trade Chat has been quite friendly and actually made more sense than Horde Trade Chat.

2. Blizzard definitely spent more time on designing major Alliance towns. I don’t know if its the novelty of a new experience, but I personally think that Alliance towns are waaaaay prettier than Horde towns. Definitely way bigger, too. And I don’t know about you, but the mere fact that Alliance has the Tram trumps any mode of Horde transportation! I’m so envious! Horde zeppelins are cool, but I prefer the pretty Alliance boats.

3. Gnome and Dwarf Tanks are annoying. They’re just so tiny!

4. The prices for items in Alliance Auction House seem to be cheaper. Probably because there are more Alliance players? More supply, so cheaper prices?

So far, that’s my life as an Alliance player! I still yet have to fully experience being an Alliance, like in PVP and in raiding so I can’t really say I’m an expert on Alliance life yet. But so far, I’m having a great time.

How about you? Have you ever switched from Horde to Alliance, or vice versa? Which “community” did you like more?

[ Repost from Forever Geek ]

Admit it, like most people, you probably drop from your daily dungeon group when you see the Oculus loading screen come up after you get teleported to a dungeon via the new LFG system. And this will result in the annoying 15 minute dungeon cooldown, preventing you from queuing for the next 15 minutes.

I’m occasionally guilty of this, especially when I’m in a hurry and I just want to do the random daily dungeon for the Emblem of Frost quickly. I do the Random Heroic Dungeon on three toons everyday so sometimes I just want to get it done and over so I can do other things.

You know, when you really think about it, Heroic Oculus isn’t exactly that hard anymore, unlike before. It’s been extremely nerfed and it’s actually really quite easy if everyone knows what to do. But the idea of summoning and dismissing your drake to get around a dungeon gives you this really uncomfortable feeling that just makes you want to avoid the dungeon altogether, hehe!

As for me, the first time we did Heroic Oculus during its earlier months, we spent a total of 3 hours inside the dungeon and spent hundreds of gold for repair bills. That pretty much left a bad taste in our mouth, and every time we see or hear Oculus, we kind of remember how it was.

But anyway, Blizzard has decided to give a little incentive to people who decide to brave Heroic Oculus when they get it from a random heroic dungeon queue. After you’ve killed Ley Guardian Eregos, each player will get a loot bag as a special reward. The loot bag will contain the following: Emblems of Triumph x 2, rare gems and a chance to get the Reins of the Azure Drake. (You can also get the Reins of the Azure Drake from Malygos in the Eye of Eternity as well, for both 10 and 25 mans)

So how’s that for a bribe? Is it enough to make you go in and raid Heroic Oculus? Maybe, maybe not!

Official Blizzard News: Oculus Loot Improvements

[ Image courtesy of WoW Head / Re-post from Forever Geek ]

Hello Icecrown Citadel!

I wonder when Blizzard will activate this patch. I’m guessing next week. I think they’re just providing early downloads so their network won’t get clogged up by a million subscribers downloading the patch all at the same time.

Anyway, yahoo!

Just in time for my incoming bumhood days! (My social life is doooommeedddd.. but wait, what social life, haha!)

Read: Patch 3.3.0 – MMO Champion