It's time to come clean...

The first step is admitting you have a problem. I...was addicted to arcane specialization. I called myself an Arcanist and was proud of it, even if I was met with derision for not being frost. However, my tenure as an Arcanist has now come to end.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was afraid of fire specialization. Back in the day, if you were raiding Molten Core, it was either frost or GTFO. I rebelled against frost almost entirely for that reason, and fire didn't look exactly appealing either. Arcane was a pretty easy choice for me to make. However, yesterday I unlearned all my talents on a whim and tried out fire.

I discovered I had a higher calling as a Fire Mage. For some reason, didn't think I'd be able to control it. Specialization for a mage doesn't exactly turn the class mechanics upside down. Looking back on it, it seems silly of me to have been fearful of the power a fire mage wields. I've fully embraced the specialization now, maybe I'll even work up enough courage to play with fire.

The Level Seventy Arms Race

So now my mage has reached the level cap. I even respecced to frost (arcane is still my true passion) just to play around. Now everyone in our guild's main group has a seventy alt, the race is over.

...

So now what?

Well as any seasoned World of Warcraft player knows, the game doesn't end at level seventy. In fact one could say that it actually begins there. Alot of content opens up for a level seventy player; like dailies, heroics, and raids. Dailies bring an extra spice to the game and allow you to complete quests even if you done just about ever quest imaginable in Outland. On top of that, they can be completed again every day. Heroics are Outland dungeons that have been scaled up in difficulty. Monsters inside will hit harder, dish out more damage, and bosses might even have a new trick.

Raids, however, is a different story. Our guild is rather small and insular. I can see eight players being online at the same time, but even then the stars have to align. The problem is that the starting raid instance, Karazhan, requires ten people. Not only that, but some people just aren't cut out for the challenge raids provide. Raids are long, difficult, and tend to make people cranky after dieing for the umpteenth time. I'm looking forward to the day my guild throws their hat into the ring, but I guess for now we'll be running heroics and getting some nice purples.

But all work and no play make Jack a dull kid. WoW isn't the only game I want to play. I deserve a little "me" time now right?

A Most Epic Encounter

So the Midsummer Fire Festival began yesterday. I was up early that day so I was able to take advantage of being one of the first people to take down the new summer boss, Lord Ahune, the imposing frost elemental pictured above.

We entered Slave Pens with a party consisting of my hunter, a mage, a druid, a paladin, and a rogue. Our first crack at him went horrifically wrong. We only barely made it to the second wave. The basic idea of the fight is to have the tank hold aggro on a big ice elemental while the DPS attack the smaller ones that attempt to kill the healer. Meanwhile Ahune is laughing in the background and causing icicles to jut out of the ground that pop you up into the air.

Getting back to that encounter, now we're on our fourth try. We've been getting progressively better at fighting him. Every time the big ice elemental minion is down for awhile, his core is exposed. It happens a few times during the fight and you have to burn him down as much as possible. Because Lord Ahune can't be tanked, it's okay to blow everything you have on him. Unfortunately we weren't able to kill him. We were close to leaving when we found out we still had one more chance. The healer was able to summon him once more so everyone prepared for the fight. A few people needed repairs and some enterprising players brought potions and I brought food consumables and Mana Oils.

We were ready.

My job this time was to kill all the little elementals while everyone attacked the bigger one. Once the core was exposed we burned him down about 35%! On the second wave of elementals, we knew that I couldn't handle them alone so now the mage assists me in protecting the druid. At this point we understood our roles and it was just a matter of doing it. The core is exposed again and chip off another solid block of his health. The third wave has the same results but he has a little too much health left to kill at this wave. We leverage our full might but at 10% we can see that Lord Ahune will surface once again. 3%...2%...1%...0! Lord Ahune is destroyed and Azeroth is safe once again.

Well not quite because it seems we were so close to the fourth wave that Lord Ahune actually summoned another big ice elemental to kill us. One of my party members remarked that it was "One for the road" and we all took that to heart and killed him together. While I may not have gotten anything other than a new tabard, I had alot of fun. It was a great feeling being able to be the one who explain the fight to someone who's like "WTF just happened?!" and experiencing new content before anyone else.

P.S. Crypt is doing fine. He even joined in on the festivities.

All For One And One For All

My guildmates and I tried out some 3v3 arena. I've been curious about it for awhile now. We lost just about every game we played, not that we thought we could win anyway. The biggest problem our team is facing is gear discrepancy.

That aside, we don't have enough experience working as a team yet. We don't have any strategies like that sacrificial warlock that ran in dotting everyone. Healers are hard to shut down and end up enabling others to crush our team.

It was defintely a learning experience for me and I can't wait to try it again.

What is this i don't even...

Why so mad?

Some people take this game way too seriously. Sure we were down 700 points in Eye of the Storm, but you didn't have to lash out at everyone playing the damn game. If we lost it's because you didn't bother contributing because the Alliance built up a sizable lead on us. I don't understand the mentality of people demanding that we just bend over and lose the game. I've never seen that happen and I highly doubt it will ever happen anyway. Players are way more likely to rally than to just give up.

Of course we lost, but that didn't stop the guy from mouthing off about how he is right and how everyone else was a loser. Man, fuck that guy.

Polymorph: Turtle!

So yesterday we tried to kill a boss in Zul'Gurub in order to get the Polymorph: Turtle book for my mage. While we failed to actually kill the boss, we did get first hand experience with what the boss does and what we need to actually kill him. After it resets, I hope to try again with the priest who egged me on for level 70 and the usual Kung Fu Scientists crew.