Wednesday 30 January 2008

Blog Azeroth: Shared Topic


If you haven't already been on Blog Azeroth, it is basically a forum for WoW bloggers, to advertise your blog as well as to pick up tips on improving blogs. It is also where the few people who have visited my blog would have come from. Thanks Blog Azeroth!

Anyway, one of the posters Siha came up with the idea of shared topics for bloggers to write about. Everyone agreed it was a great idea, which lead to the first question posed to WoW bloggers everywhere.

What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

Obviously the class I play most is the mage, but what about them makes me tick?

I ended up with a mage as my main after levelling a dwarf Paladin to about 15 or 16, followed by a nelf Hunter to level 26. After that I didn't play any other class till a while after reaching 70 on my mage. I'm not entirely sure what was right about the class that allowed me to stick with it from 1-70 without ever feeling I should reroll.

My main focus with Fuzzbip is raiding at the moment, so what I enjoy most is optimising my dps. I enjoy improving my gear, every slight increase in crit or spell damage I can get while staying hit capped makes me happy. I enjoy running around in raids trying to get as many fireballs off as I can, making sure my scorch debuff is up, managing my mana and trinkets/cooldowns, all to do the best I can and help the raid towards it's goal. I realise I could do something similar to this with any class, but I know my mage well, I know what I'm doing, it feels right and most of all, it feels good.

I enjoy never having to worry about running out of water or food, I like the freedom of being a mage, not being governed by the cooldown on my hearthstone, being able to go to any major city whenever I feel the need to. I enjoy slowfalling whenever the need arises, slowfall has a relaxing feeling to it. I like being valuable to a group, bringing reliable CC and buffs that make the class in demand for heroic runs, making it easy to get a group for one if I desire.

So that's what I enjoy about my class most at the moment. Sometimes I wish I'd rolled a class that was able perform more than one role, but I'm happy to leave that to my druid now (Still stuck at 64)

Fuzz

Zeppellins > Boats


Tonight I took my first ever zeppelin ride, much more exciting than boats. I like the fact that they are run by goblins and the look of the goblin engineering, would be cool if the Alliance got some sort of Gnomish flight system, boats are boring.

I went from Orgrimmar to the Undercity, but more on that visit later.

Fuzz

Tuesday 29 January 2008

Loot Reaver?

I am currently trying to progress through the PvE content with a guild called Gambit, it could be going better, but things are looking up. It was formed by a member of my old guild who was frustrated at the lack of progress and he is now our main tank and raid leader. I felt the time was right to move on because I felt like I had a better chance with raid progress with this new guild. So far the only advance in content has been downing the 2nd Zul'Aman boss Jan'alai but I am happy with that for now. As you know attempts have been made at The Lurker Below.

My previous guild was called The Scarlet Knights who are all great people and players. I try to keep in contact with many of them and I wish them all the best with whatever they do. My time there was a lot more stress free than in Gambit, the guild was much more settled. Gambit is only about 3 weeks old and there is a lot of movement of players in and out of the guild, it doesn't have the friendly family atmosphere I enjoyed in SK.

Anyway, on with the news, after the recruitment of a new tank who was saved in SSC with the guild he came from, we decided to venture into new territory, The Eye. It was nice to have a break from wiping on Lurker and good to be able to start breaking into the stacks of Free Mana Pots i'd been hoarding in my bank. The trash went ok, lots of deaths and a wipe on the groups before Void Reaver and our resto druid got lucky with some new gloves dropping from a random mob. No such luck for me.

Onto Void Reaver, we had 4 or 5 attempts, my performance wasn't great, a couple of early deaths on the first runs. The ranged dps and healers were stood in groups around the boss and if an Arcane Orb was incoming we were to move backwards until it was safe. On a couple of goes I tried moving from side to side so I was still in range to dps but was having trouble seeing and avoiding the orbs. Dps was dieing early and he was reset a few times because we weren't going to make the enrage limit of 10 minutes. I finally got round to installing a new addon to allow me to increase how far I can zoom out, which is extremely handy on a cluttered screen and helped a lot with being able to see where the Arcane Orbs were going. All moving back as a group worked well and on our final attempt all went smoothly... until our elemental shaman pulled aggro and VR ran about causing havoc, making it hard for everyone to avoid the Arcane Orbs and heal or dps. There was also a Pain Suppression thrown in on one of the tanks somewhere from one of our holy priests who was keeping quiet about being specced for PvP and didn't realise it had a threat reduction effect. I was happy with my dps on the runs where I survived for more than a couple of minutes and I have the Arcane Orb avoiding sorted now.

I enjoyed our time in The Eye and on our best run we managed to get him to 4%! A little dissapointing but very promising, we now have two bosses that we know we are capable of getting down soon, I think Void Reaver will be our focus for now seeing as we came so close, which is ok by me, the loot is nicer :)

Watch out Void Reaver! You are going down!

Fuzz


Look how far I can zoom out now!

Monday 28 January 2008

Hordeville: Zuff's First Guild

I rolled my new mage on Hellfire, a normal EU server with a medium population. So far it's not looking too great. There seems to be a smaller percentage of level 70 players than on my main's server and after spending about half an hour in Orgrimmar inspecting most of the 70s I passed by I didn't see anyone with particularly good gear, I didn't see any tier 5 or 6. After looking on WoWWiki I found that the server only opened when TBC came out which would explain my findings, there are a few guilds with good progress but they must have been hiding.

At level 11 while posting some herbs in the auction house I got a guild invite out of the blue, normally I'd reject, but seeing as I know nobody on this server I thought I'd see what it was like. It wasn't the best guild I've ever been in, I was told the server was one of the oldest there was when I asked how old it was. It consisted of people from level 5 to level 65 and was named 'Empire From Heaven' hmmm... Next I asked about raid progression and was met by the response in the screenshot below, needless to say I didn't remain in the guild for very long. (Excuse my very basic UI, I use a lot more add-ons on my main but I haven't played around with unit frames or action bars at all, I couldn't be bothered to config X-Perl and Bongos 2 made my screen a lot cleaner but caused me problems that I couldn't be bothered to work around, I'm lazy with addons)

I am currently sitting in the Crossroads ready to start on my Barrens quests and looking forward to my first taste of Barrens chat, I'll keep you updated, hopefully I'll be raiding Auberdine soon!

Fuzz

Hordeville: Heroes of the Horde


This feature is the other side to my levelling experience, just documenting what I get up to while levelling and what I find interesting about levelling on the Horde side of things. I'll probably tend to keep them short and sweet.

At level 10 I made my first visit to Orgrimmar, which I have so far only seen while messing around on the PTRs, it's big, very big and tricky to get around. I prefer trusty Ironforge with it's simple circular layout, but from what I've heard UC is similar to it.

I went straight to visit two of the big guys in the world of the horde. Thrall, The Warchief and Vol'jin. Thrall was one of my favourite characters from WCIII so it was cool to get up close to these guys. Out of the Alliance heroes I'm only really impressed by Jaina, but that might just be the mage in me. There are also two graves/monuments in WOW that I take the time to /kneel at, the grave of Uther Lightbringer the Alliance Paladin hero and the monument marking the place where Grom Hellscream fell in battle. Grom is clearly the cooler of the two.

I will shortly be making visits to the Undercity and Thunder Bluff to meet the other Horde bosses.

Fuzz

Sunday 27 January 2008

So you just rolled a mage?

After levelling my mage from one to ten and taking notes, here is my guide on mages from level 1 to level 10. I'm not going to go into detail on how to level, I will be overviewing the spells and abilities you will gain and use on your new mage.

Level 1-4
At first you begin in your relevant starting zone with just the robe on your back and your staff in hand. The only mage abilities you begin with are Frost Armor and Fireball, as well as the standard attack and any racial abilities you may have. You are also able to learn Arcane Intellect as soon as you can afford the 9 copper fee. Frost Armor and Arcane Intellect should be kept up at all times for the extra mana and armor they provide. To defeat your enemies simply cast fireball from max range, followed up by 1 or 2 more fireballs and maybe whack them with your staff a few times if they get into melee range. You may also want to melee while regaining mana if you are low.

Level 4-6
When you reach level 4 you get two new spell; Rank 1 Vending Machine and Frostbolt. One thing I love about my mages is never having to buy water or food, but it can be annoying if you get a large amount of whispers pestering you for some. Frostbolt can be used instead of Fireball if you like, or you can start with a Frostbolt to slow the enemy before proceeding to throw balls of fire at them.

Level 6-8
At level 6 you gain access to food conjuring which is always handy, as well as a new higher damage but slightly longer cast Fireball and Fire Blast. I suggest you use Fireballs once you are able to use rank 2 for the higher damage and speedier kills, you may want to begin with a Frostbolt to slow the mob. Fire Blast is an instant cast nuke on a cooldown, less mana efficient than fireballs but should be used once the enemy has closed to melee range whenever it's cooldown is up.

8-10
At level 8 you gain your crowd control ability that makes mages in high demand for instance runs. Polymorph is a renewable form of crowd control that is incredibly useful for soloing and grouping. At this level it is best used when getting an unexpected add while fighting. Sheep the mob while you kill your current target before moving on to it. If you find yourself low on mana and health while fighting you can polymorph the mob and renew it when necessary to regen mana as well as giving you a chance to bandage. All in all an incredibly useful skill to have.

You gain a new rank of Frostbolt and you may want to replace fireball as your main nuke. It doesn't make a great deal of difference which you use, mostly down to personal preference.

Arcane Missiles is a high damage, high mana cost, channeled spell. This shouldn't be used at this level when there is any chance to receive damage, damage will cause spell pushback reducing the number of missiles you are able to fire and wasting mana. Mana is used upfront as you begin channeling the spell. I tend not to use arcane missiles at all at this level.

Level 10
At level 10 you get a new rank of Conjure Water and rank 2 of Frost Armor with an increase in armor bonus.

You also get Frost Nova which allows you to root attackers in place when they are up close to you. You can then move away and begin casting again to avoid taking damage. It is an AOE (area of effect) attack that roots all nearby enemies in place for 8 seconds allowing it to be used as an escape mechanism, giving you time to make your getaway in the event of danger.

Reaching level ten gives you your first talent point to spend, i'll go into more detail on talent points in the next stage of my guide. Hopefully you've managed to make it this far, there's a long way to go...

Saturday 26 January 2008

2nd Lurker Attempt


Today our guild had a second go at the Lurker below.

My job was to stay on one of the platforms and dps the boss, then sheep one of the adds that appear when the boss submerges. I managed to do this successfully on all the of the 3 or 4 attempts. I got hit once by spout but apart from that I think I have the boss sussed.

Our best attempt was a meager 47% :( People were dieing from spouts and adds, not a fun raid all in all. We did have Wildfury Greatstaff drop from trash for a second time in two runs, our best druid tank gladly recieved it. We should be able to get the Lurker down next time we go, but I'm not too hopeful. The guild is only a few weeks old and it's not quite stable at the minute.

Fuzz

Servant's Quarters: Spotlight on Karazhan



This is my first in what I expect to be a series of posts on Karazhan from the point of view of a mage, it won't be very helpful for people healing or tanking the encounters. But if you are a mage I hope to tell you everything you need to know.

Karazhan is a 10 man raid and the starting point of TBC raiding for most players, it can be entered after a short attunement quest chain, although it is recommended you have reasonable gear. (7k hp, 8k mana, 600 spell damage and as much spell hit you can get to get you towards the hit cap, as well as some spell crit depending on spec). There will usually be a spot for a mage or two in the raid so get yourself in there.

One thing of note in Karazhan is that unlike any of the 5-man instances you may have been running, you won't be relied upon to help with CC. You may see this as a nice change allowing you to relax and enjoy yourself or go full out on dps! On the other hand it could mean feeling less important and less inclined to focus on the task in hand, I know at times I find myself paying too little attention and tapping my Fireball key every 3 seconds or so. There aren't any sheepable mobs in Karazhan so if you want you can take Polymorph off your bars for a while. There are however lots of other things (like making water) for a mage to be doing as you find your way around the twisting towers of Karazhan (I still manage to get lost in there!).

I won't go into detail on all the various trash mobs that need to be taken care of, hopefully your raid leader will know what to do :)

There are a couple of pieces of mage loot that have a small chance to drop from trash mobs. Grasp of the Dead for Frost mages and Inferno Waist Cord for Fire mages, although I have yet to see the latter drop in my many runs of Karazhan. Both of these are nice for their relative specs if you are still wearing greenies or blues in these slots.

I will be going into detail on each of the main bosses found in Karazhan and how to overcome these encounters. I also plan on making a short guide to getting yourself ready for Karazhan.

There are two add-ons every raiding mage should have, firstly Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs Boss Mods, these provide on screen announcements that give warnings about certain events that occur in boss fights to help coordinate the raid and avoid mistakes. Secondly a threat meter such as KTM or Omen to prevent you taking aggro from the tank.

Fuzz

Friday 25 January 2008

For The Horde!

Who's that handsome chap? Meet Zuff, he is my latest project, my new mage. I created him for the purpose of levelling him and being able to blog about my experiences while doing so.

When I came to World of Warcraft I joined the Alliance on a PvP server because that was where a few people I know in real life were playing, however since I started they have all stopped playing. From playing Warcraft II and III I knew about the various races in game and I always preferred the Horde races. My favourite race is Taurens, followed by Orcs then Gnomes and Dwarfs. I don't care much for Human, Night Elf, Undead or Belf characters. I decided to roll a male Troll mage on EU-Hellfire a non PvP server. I picked a simple looking bald and tusked Troll, that I thought was going to be a dark greenish colour from the character creation screen. However when I got into the game he turned out bright blue! I didn't realise this till at least level 5, at which point I didn't feel like starting again, so he is blue... very blue.

This will allow me to get a very different experience from when I levelled my Gnome. I'll get to see the Horde side of the game and not have to worry about being ganked. I can get ganked whenever I want on Kor'gall so I don't think I'll miss playing on a PvP server at all. I levelled my first mage to 70 with most of my talent points spent in the fire tree, but I plan on broadening my view of mages by levelling frost and possibly experimenting with arcane/fire or arcane/frost builds while I level.

I chose a Troll because I prefer them to Blood Elves and Undead, even though many people believe the Undead have superior racials, I look forward to trying out the Berserking Troll racial. Which I imagine to be similar to the Icy Veins talent I have recently been enjoying on my gnome.

I have so far levelled him to 10 and will be posting about my experience doing so shortly.

Fuzz

Welcome to my blog

Hello, I play a mage called Fuzzbip (silly gnome name) on EU-Kor'gall and I created this blog because I have been unable to find many good mage blogs. My mage has always been my main but I spend more time reading blogs on most other classes.

I started playing WOW in February '07 so I am relatively new to the game and have little experience of the pre-TBC content, so far I have raided Karazhan, Gruul's, some of Zul'Aman and am just starting on SSC with The Lurker Below and I hope to progress as far as I can.
I also have a druid who is currently at level 64 and I plan on going resto with and a currently inactive level 61 warrior.

My main interest is progressing with PVE, I have little interest in PVP but I occasionally dabble in it. I enjoy my professions and have 375 engineering and enchanting currently. I also enjoy a spot of fishing from time to time.
That's all I have to say for now and I will be posting soon.

Fuzz