When one is months behind, it means they’re doing something like clearing Black Temple four weeks after Wrath shipped, or finally clearing Naxxramas once most guilds have cleared out all the Ulduar hard mode content.
Such is the case with me, having just now started to raid Ulduar, on the very cusp of patch 3.2.
And it’s fun as hell.
A quick rundown of past events (for those of you who don’t stalk me):
Stay Frosty, as a guild, kinda fell apart over the course of about a day. No blow up, no massive drama, just about 90% of the raiders deciding it would be more fun to join Shai Hulud, Duskwood’s premiere raiding guild.
Those that didn’t /gquit for Shai either left for other guilds, or quit the game altogether. Nearly overnight, one of Duskwood’s top raiding guilds became a complete ghost town.
This means that every guild I have ever joined has collapsed within nine months of me signing on.
Not that I’m superstitious or anything, but seriously… what the carp is going on here.
But anyway, I’m now sporting the banner of For Whom The Bell Tolls, which is basically the people from Anathema, Anathema being the guild I raided with in BC.
Hopefully I don’t kill their guild somehow this time. Though two people have quit since I joined, which was last goddamn week…
Ulduar, then.
I’m arcane, and at this point it would be very hard to convince me to spec otherwise. As I suspected, using Incanter’s Absorption and Frost Warding together is extremely potent on the fights where it can be used.
Oh yeah, did I mention one of the guild’s primary healers is a Discipline priest? Incanter’s Absorption is an absolutely amazing talent if there’s a Disc priest kicking around. Raid buffed I’m usually at around 2100+ spellpower, but with IA randomly proccing I’ve seen that go as high as 3100.
Oh yeah, and having infinite mana on some fights thanks to Frost Warding is pretty cool too.
And yet… I’ve noticed myself developing a rather bad habit.
Because I get such a large boost to either spellpower or my mana pool, I find myself intentionally “standing in the fire” for a tick or two, just to proc one of the two (or both!). I have yet to decide if this is bad or not.
I’ll let you know when I consider a 30% chance good enough odds and stand in a rocket strike.
I’ve also ran a ton of Heroics, bought enough BtA stuff to last me and my alts a couple expansions, and even built myself a modest PvP set.
Oh yeah, and I got a job, for those who aren’t obsessed enough to follow my twitter, too.
But through this all, I’ve only ever had two goals:
- Get pants that don’t suck
- Kill Kel’motherfracking’thuzad
I’m still, to this day, wearing Hateful Glad pants. Plenty of upgrades have dropped in, say, Naxx, but I’ve always lost the roll. I’ve also been obsessively running Halls of Lightning in the faint hopes that maybe, some day, my pants will drop…
But nope. That goddamn axe keeps dropping and getting sharded. I hate you Loken. I hate you so much.
But, on the bright side, I’ve finally been in a raid that managed to get Kel’Thuzad down. It’s taken this long to get Champion of the Frozen Wastes, but shazam, I am finally there.
I’ve even been in raids that quit on Sapph, by the way. KT just refused to die for me. And then of course I killed him effortlessly on alts, but never my main.
BUT NOW HE’S DEAD. WHERE IS YOUR PRECIOUS CAT NOW, LICH?
Oh yeah, and I got Flame Keeper too. Not that it was hard. I did everything (except kill Ahune) last year, so all I had to do was wait for Blizzard to fix it’s crap, and then I was fine.
If only I had any plans to go back to fire…
Oh yeah, been doing a bunch of PTR stuff too. Did you know frost mages have a mini-mortal strike now? They totally do!
If only they put KT at the beginning of Naxx occasionally… I could handle that…
Zone in…
WTF!?!
OK, guys, we got to take KT down before we can farm the epics this week…
Grats on Ulduar… I will get there sometime soon.. maybe once I have run 1,000 heroics to get a T8… in a about 3 years…
Grats on the job… hope it isn’t an early start…
hehe Gnomeeagg ^^ i like your sense of humor:P
@Euri ”
Oh yeah, been doing a bunch of PTR stuff too. Did you know frost mages have a mini-mortal strike now? They totally do!
”
What is it !! make a post about it cause im curious 😛
“Permafrost: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also causes the mage’s Chill effects to reduce healing received by the victim by 7/13/20%.”
Side note:
“Empowered Frostbolt: Instead of increasing critical strike chance by 2/4%, this talent now reduces the cast time of Frostbolt by 0.1/0.2 seconds.”
Is that a Frost PvE buff I smell? Wow, I never thought I’d see the day…
Last I heard mages could LB more than 1 target at once too. Not sure if this is a perm feature or just a test. Would be very good though 😀
Based on my reading of your blog, it’s you that’s causing this breakup.
Now that you know your power, you must use it wisely. The dark side is very powerful indeed, but in the wrong hands….
Start advertising with folks telling them you guarantee their guild will implode with no real feelings hurt and they can go on to bigger and more advanced guilds.
Chaaachingg…
I still keep bouncing back and forth on leveling frost or arcane…or maybe fire.
Need advice, please blog…kthanxbai. 😉
Talk about being behind, I still haven’t cleared all of Naxx either. I’ve been locked out of the last 2 weeks of Naxx and I’ve only downed 1 boss. I don’t want to talk about it (but it’s on my blog already)
As a (former?) level 80 mage, I enjoy all your posts and hope that they could come with a little more frequency =)
How come nobody ever told me about the 4 piece Hero/Valourus bonus?! 5% Crit damage on top of my Meta gem 3% for my Frostfire mage and nobody lets me know?! Outragous…
Heehee. Pants drop. Heehee.
@Underbridge
Cuz that bonus sucks. It doesnt stack the way the metagem bonus does… its just
.05 (set bonus) x .50 (normal spell crit bonus)
= 2.5% more crit damage
Tier 7 4 piece set isnt worth holding on to.
Whereas I’m pretty freaking close to 4 piece tier 8 bonus. I’d have it now, cept I’ve been blowin conquest tokens fer runed orbs. Tier 8 4 piece is insane for fire mages.
Ripper… I have so been thinking of messing with arcane in uld… incanter + frost warding in hodir would be ungodly. Or Ignis, or razorscale. Or hard mode thorim.
Uld fights are so much freaking fun. My guild is tryin hodir and thorim hard modes tonight… got FL +4 and XT-2 HM last night.
Of course, we still farming Iron Council Medium mode, which means my freaking off-spec is Imp Blizzard frost.
On the plus side, I get to scream at the warlocks when their f@cking imps wipe the raid. Good times!
“…most guilds have cleared out all the Ulduar hard mode content.” Other than a ban-inducing exploit utilized by Exodus, NO ONE has cleared all the hard mode content (unless Ensidia finished off “No Lights in the Darkness” over the weekend). Months behind? No.
OMG I remember when I cleared Naxx (on like my second or third toon) and you were wishing just to get the wings down. Total congrats on the title! Juna has everything except Maly. I’ve never even set foot in EoE. /cry
As if the change to 2v2 wasn’t bad enough…now this Permafrost crap? They are doing their damnedest to get me to respec frost, aren’t they? It is NOT gonna happen. I am one pissed off troll right about now, though. >.<
w….t….f….
I’m going to write a QQ post befitting of Critical QQ.
WTF is this with handing everyone a mortal strike now? Just who the hell does blizzard think they are? First hunters now mages? Why not warlocks or DK’s too? Hell just have it be a passive racial that all races get.
As a warrior I’m appalled. First I couldn’t catch you blinky bastards now I gotta deal with reduced healing too? Where is the justice? It’s official warriors have NOTHING useful that is JUST a warrior skill. First person to say Titan’s Grip gets Mortal Struck (show me just one talent on your talent tree that requires you to spend a point to get a nerf…what’s that you can’t? I got two of them)
[Sarcasm]But hey I got a 3.2 buff coming in of 200ap so that makes up for it[/sarcasm]
http://warrior-guides.blogspot.com/2009/06/32-ptr-patch-notes.html
Congrats on your nax completion. Sadly i’m working backwards in there. I had KT down a long time ago…just havn’t finishe da few of the wings.
LOL I’m MORE than months behind. I dinged 70 in TBC like 3 months before WotLK released, I was always just more motivated to level alts and switch servers than level one character to the cap and play “endgame”. That trait continues to this day where although I raid, I do it because my guildies want to, not because I enjoy it.
I feel your pain about pants !!! I am in all epic 200-226, except for my freaking BLUE pants ! I never win a roll either 😦
have finished Naxx 10/25, but my guild is struggling with Uld …. seems summer is tough on raiding, too many other fun activities. Things outside of the basement, in the light….
Welcome to Ulduar! IA Arcane is well fun, but I’ve abandoned it as my offspec for Frost PvP, and spec back and forth to FFB for General Vezax. Arcane is gimmicky and relies on pretty random mechanics (although I found the cuonter-intuitiveness of standing in the fire quite refreshing), and on some fights, when you can’t get the full force of the gimmick going, you will underperform. With rogues smacking out 5k DPS without as much breaking a sweat and not having any particual melee unfriendly fight, you’ll soon become jaded.
But thats awesome, cause it means more QQ. 🙂