Well what can I say about Black Temple these days?
Only that it's so easy to face roll these days! For those who don't know about Black Temple, it was a level 70 endgame raid for The Burning Crusade expansion. These days it is a prime source of Transmogrification equipment and of course the infamous Warglaives of Illidian Stormrage! Of course only certain classes can weild these legendary Glaives, however just to have them sitting in your collection is enough for some people. At any rate this instance was originally designed to be tackled in either one of two modes; 10 player or 25 player. We tackled it in 25 player. But who is we you might ask?
The group I led was made up of my level 85 Undead Warlock, a level 84 Priest on healing duties, a level 85 Death Knight Tank, a level 85 Mage and a level 83 Rogue. Yup, 5 players. Back in the day we would have been slaughtered but since Cataclysm hit the servers even lowly clothies like myself can solo what was previously impossible! Though the only one who died was our healer during the second phase of the reliquary of souls encounter the raid was essentially a cakewalk! Not one Boss gave us any trouble what-so-ever, I only ever dropped below 90% health when I life tapped to gain back some mana.
Onto the drops. Out of the whole instance I only walked away with a Transmog Staff, a blue BOE, which is now sitting pretty on the Auction House, and a fistful of cloth. Others were more fortunate with Token Drops for armour sets and the like but I paid little attention to anything that wasn't what I was after. Although dissapointing from a RNG point of view, my point of view being that it hates me, I enjoyed reliving what used to be my favourite Raid even if it was somewhat like having turned on 'GOD MODE'!
I'll more thank likely revisit again in an attempt to collect some more Token Drops, however I probably won't hold my breath as even something like 'Foul Gift of the Demon Lord' trinket with a 25-30% drop rate still remains elusive to me, the one time I've seen it drop on this character it was needed on by a mage and a priest who only wanted it for his offspec. Needless to say, I lost out. :: Fist to Sky :: Why RNG? Why?
This evening I'll be doing my second run of Battle for Mount Hyjal, as I really want a transmog sword off of Archimonde. The sword in question is the Tempest of Chaos and it matches the Tier 5 raid set perfectly! Tier 5 just happens to be my favourite Warlock set i've seen so far. Although i'm rather fond of the Tier 2 PVP set which looks pretty much the same with a recolour. I've not started collecting the T5 peices yet and am thinking i'll probably buy the Honor set instead as it will cost only around 4500 honor points, and about 650 Justice Points for the extras like the belt. May be less time consuming than farming tokens from old raids thanks for the weekly lock out.
Wish me luck in obtaining my Tempest of Chaos!
Friday, 13 July 2012
Deck builders Toolkit 2012
Today I got my first of two preordered toolkits! The artwork on the box is in my opinion better than the last edition. Upon sifting through the cards received in this box I noticed a fair amount of 'exalted' abilities.
'Exalted' allows a creature to bestow +1/+1 to a lone attacker for those who don't know the mechanic. I will be doing some research on this particular mechanic as at this stage I'm not sure if this ability will stack in multiples for power housing a single creature! If indeed it works the way I think it will then it may be worth digging out some old cards with flanking to further the gap between attack and defence! But I'll post my findings at a later date.
Back to the subject! The standard 100 lands were included, a playset of evolving winds was in there too, which works much like Terramorphic Expanse. I got a fair amount of white cards with a wide variety of mana costings. Although in contrast I only received two artifacts. Can't have everything I suppose!
All in all I'm quite happy with what I got as it expanded my growing collection in places where it was weak i.e. green and red cards. I mention red cards because as you know I've been experiencing problems with my Dragons deck. I got a nice goblin token creation card which will find its way into the deck! I'll have a further sift through the reds see if there is something else as well, but on initial sort nothing really stood out as exceptional!
The booster packs were pretty run of the mill and I only netted one foil. I got 1x Innistrad, 1x Dark Ascension, 1x Avacyn Restored and 1x 2013 Core Set. All in all I'm pleased with my purchase and eagerly await my second toolkit in the hopes I find something really effective in boosting my dragon deck!
'Exalted' allows a creature to bestow +1/+1 to a lone attacker for those who don't know the mechanic. I will be doing some research on this particular mechanic as at this stage I'm not sure if this ability will stack in multiples for power housing a single creature! If indeed it works the way I think it will then it may be worth digging out some old cards with flanking to further the gap between attack and defence! But I'll post my findings at a later date.
Back to the subject! The standard 100 lands were included, a playset of evolving winds was in there too, which works much like Terramorphic Expanse. I got a fair amount of white cards with a wide variety of mana costings. Although in contrast I only received two artifacts. Can't have everything I suppose!
All in all I'm quite happy with what I got as it expanded my growing collection in places where it was weak i.e. green and red cards. I mention red cards because as you know I've been experiencing problems with my Dragons deck. I got a nice goblin token creation card which will find its way into the deck! I'll have a further sift through the reds see if there is something else as well, but on initial sort nothing really stood out as exceptional!
The booster packs were pretty run of the mill and I only netted one foil. I got 1x Innistrad, 1x Dark Ascension, 1x Avacyn Restored and 1x 2013 Core Set. All in all I'm pleased with my purchase and eagerly await my second toolkit in the hopes I find something really effective in boosting my dragon deck!
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Dragon fail!
Well it's another week gone by and another magic night gone, this week I only won 2 games and to be honest it was sheer luck! I played my dragon deck repeatedly and repeatedly found myself respectively short on mana! Though seven mana would be sufficient in my other decks, it isn't in this deck! Most of my dragons are 6 or more mana, and I wasn't drawing my little 1/1 1cmc cards until late in each game, nor did I see Kuldotha Rebirth!
This needs addressing!
I think I will be looking at rethinking the deck and maybe splashing some mana ramping cards as the two main non land mana sources weren't viable during the games Infernal Plunge was useless as I didn't have a creature to sac and battle hymn was pointless spending 2 mana for only 1 in return!
So all in all Dragons needs more work!
On the other hand South of Heaven. My white and blue deck had me bring Chris to a standstill which led him to finally concede. However I would say that although I found the going tough this evening and competition from james was as consistent as ever, I have learnt more and more from them just where my decks flaws are! However even in the face of almost certain defeat South of Heaven really pulled through for me and at this time I'm still happy with the deck in general!
That's it for now! Happy reading!
This needs addressing!
I think I will be looking at rethinking the deck and maybe splashing some mana ramping cards as the two main non land mana sources weren't viable during the games Infernal Plunge was useless as I didn't have a creature to sac and battle hymn was pointless spending 2 mana for only 1 in return!
So all in all Dragons needs more work!
On the other hand South of Heaven. My white and blue deck had me bring Chris to a standstill which led him to finally concede. However I would say that although I found the going tough this evening and competition from james was as consistent as ever, I have learnt more and more from them just where my decks flaws are! However even in the face of almost certain defeat South of Heaven really pulled through for me and at this time I'm still happy with the deck in general!
That's it for now! Happy reading!
Monday, 9 July 2012
A Tribute to Sabbath!
Well, in keeping with the theme of this blog, I'm going to take a moment to share one of my other interests with you all, guitar. It all started last Sunday evening on BBC Four, believe it or not, they were showing a series of tv shows at first focusing on Black Sabbath then branching off into the new wave of British heavy metal. What really interested me was the interviews with Tony Iommi! While watching him play some of those iconic riffs and explaining how he'd come up with them, in some circumstances almost on the spot! Now to some of you out there you may think 'why would you wanna listen to Black Sabbath? Surely it's a bit dated now?'
Well in answer to that all I will say is without sabbath there would be no Metallica, Iron Maiden, or any other metal band! Simply put they were the guys that started it all!
Back to the point! As a guitar player myself I decided to do my own tribute to sabbath so have been working on a medley of songs from their vast back catalogue. So far I want to include:
Children of the Grave
Iron Man
Paranoid
Electric Funeral
Zero the Hero
Any suggestions of tracks you'd like to hear on it then by all means add to the comments below! So far I have worked out the transitions between the first three tracks and want to aim at doing a medley of around 9 mins! Once I have it down I'm planning to do a recording and will subsequently put it somewhere online for linking to the blog. Supposing of course I ever get round to it!
Any way I'm bored now and will leave it at that! Feel free to make suggestions and make any input as you'd like! Thanks for reading!
Well in answer to that all I will say is without sabbath there would be no Metallica, Iron Maiden, or any other metal band! Simply put they were the guys that started it all!
Back to the point! As a guitar player myself I decided to do my own tribute to sabbath so have been working on a medley of songs from their vast back catalogue. So far I want to include:
Children of the Grave
Iron Man
Paranoid
Electric Funeral
Zero the Hero
Any suggestions of tracks you'd like to hear on it then by all means add to the comments below! So far I have worked out the transitions between the first three tracks and want to aim at doing a medley of around 9 mins! Once I have it down I'm planning to do a recording and will subsequently put it somewhere online for linking to the blog. Supposing of course I ever get round to it!
Any way I'm bored now and will leave it at that! Feel free to make suggestions and make any input as you'd like! Thanks for reading!
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Affliction Guide
*edit: this is now obsolete with patch 5.0.4*
So, I thought i'd post up a guide to playing affliction warlock in World of Warcraft! It's my favoured build out of the three available!
Affliction currently reigns highest in DPS over bothe Demonology (by around 2%) and Destruction (by around 5-7%) Which is why I am aiming my first guide at this spec. After all it is my favoured spec. There are several popular builds however the one I feel most effective is a 32/3/6 build however the most popular build is a 31/7/3 build.
The Builds:
32/3/6: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#Vc00!hkhajVkVT!Y!P!bXThjn
This is my favoured build, it swaps out the support for Drain Life in favour of beefing up Shadow Bolt as the filler. Drain Life is no longer as viable as a filler as Shadow Bolt. Glyphs as shown, there are however no DPS increases for minor Glyphs so feel free to choose as you wish.
31/7/3: http://http//www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGroGsMcdhrZc
This build omits the AOE spell Seed of Corruption's soulburn empowerment. This I feel is to great a DPS loss when taking into account that all enemies recieve the Corruption DoT and suffer the explosion of Seed of Corruption, then as if that's not enough, your Soulshard is refunded upon successful detonation. Glyphs are however given the same priority as in my prefered spec.
The Affliction Stat Priority:
Stat priorities are as follows:
Intellect ; Hit ; Haste ; Crit ; Mastery.
Intellect is by far the most important stat for Warlocks as it also doubles as Spellpower. Hit should be stacked until you have it capped (17% hit 1742 hit rating). Haste is the next priority which allows more ticks based on several thresholds (ex. Corruption benefits at these thresholds 1 extra tick at 8.3% 21 Haste Rating / 2 extra ticks at 25% 1993 haste rating). Crit allows your spells to hit for critical strikes, and so is better than mastery. Mastery is one of those stats that although is useful, there isn't enough of it on gear to fully take advantage yet. However perhaps soon mastery will come into its own and the increase to damage will outweigh other stats, for now it is at the bottom end of the table.
The Rotation:
Priority of Spells:
Curse of Elements
Corruption
Bane Of Doom
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Soul Fire
Demonsoul
Shadow bolt
Opening Salvo should consist of Shadow Bolt ; Haunt ; Unstable Affliction ; Corruption ; Bane of Doom ; Soulburn + Soul Fire ; Shadow Bolt. Then follow the above priority.
AoE:
Select a main target to Soulburn ; Seed of Corruption as this afflicts all nearby targets with corruption. Then continue to dot your main target, select a secondary target in which to soulswap from main target and exhale onto your new target afflicting both with the dots (assuming you took my advice to glyph Soul Swap)
Cooldowns:
Single target use Doomguard.
Multi target use Infernal.
Remember that they only target enemies with active banes on them, so pop this cooldown after popping your bane.
Gems:
Meta Slot: Burning Shadowspirit Diamond
Red Slot : Brilliant Inferno Ruby (Item)
Blue Slot: Veiled Demonseye
Yellow Slot: Reckless Ember Topaz
Prismatic: Brilliant Inferno Ruby (Item)
Consumable Buffs:
Flask: [Flask of the Draconic Mind] or a [Cauldron of Battle]
Food: [Severed Sagefish Head] or [Seafood Magnifique Feast]
I've decided to omit enchants for this guide as there is a wealth of information around the web for enchanting equipment.
Feedback:
Feedback is welcome. Discussion is welcome. Trolling is not. If you dispute with my findings feel free to comment and offer an explaination.
So, I thought i'd post up a guide to playing affliction warlock in World of Warcraft! It's my favoured build out of the three available!
Affliction currently reigns highest in DPS over bothe Demonology (by around 2%) and Destruction (by around 5-7%) Which is why I am aiming my first guide at this spec. After all it is my favoured spec. There are several popular builds however the one I feel most effective is a 32/3/6 build however the most popular build is a 31/7/3 build.
The Builds:
32/3/6: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#Vc00!hkhajVkVT!Y!P!bXThjn
This is my favoured build, it swaps out the support for Drain Life in favour of beefing up Shadow Bolt as the filler. Drain Life is no longer as viable as a filler as Shadow Bolt. Glyphs as shown, there are however no DPS increases for minor Glyphs so feel free to choose as you wish.
31/7/3: http://http//www.wowhead.com/talent#IrGroGsMcdhrZc
This build omits the AOE spell Seed of Corruption's soulburn empowerment. This I feel is to great a DPS loss when taking into account that all enemies recieve the Corruption DoT and suffer the explosion of Seed of Corruption, then as if that's not enough, your Soulshard is refunded upon successful detonation. Glyphs are however given the same priority as in my prefered spec.
The Affliction Stat Priority:
Stat priorities are as follows:
Intellect ; Hit ; Haste ; Crit ; Mastery.
Intellect is by far the most important stat for Warlocks as it also doubles as Spellpower. Hit should be stacked until you have it capped (17% hit 1742 hit rating). Haste is the next priority which allows more ticks based on several thresholds (ex. Corruption benefits at these thresholds 1 extra tick at 8.3% 21 Haste Rating / 2 extra ticks at 25% 1993 haste rating). Crit allows your spells to hit for critical strikes, and so is better than mastery. Mastery is one of those stats that although is useful, there isn't enough of it on gear to fully take advantage yet. However perhaps soon mastery will come into its own and the increase to damage will outweigh other stats, for now it is at the bottom end of the table.
The Rotation:
Priority of Spells:
Curse of Elements
Corruption
Bane Of Doom
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Soul Fire
Demonsoul
Shadow bolt
Opening Salvo should consist of Shadow Bolt ; Haunt ; Unstable Affliction ; Corruption ; Bane of Doom ; Soulburn + Soul Fire ; Shadow Bolt. Then follow the above priority.
AoE:
Select a main target to Soulburn ; Seed of Corruption as this afflicts all nearby targets with corruption. Then continue to dot your main target, select a secondary target in which to soulswap from main target and exhale onto your new target afflicting both with the dots (assuming you took my advice to glyph Soul Swap)
Cooldowns:
Single target use Doomguard.
Multi target use Infernal.
Remember that they only target enemies with active banes on them, so pop this cooldown after popping your bane.
Gems:
Meta Slot: Burning Shadowspirit Diamond
Red Slot : Brilliant Inferno Ruby (Item)
Blue Slot: Veiled Demonseye
Yellow Slot: Reckless Ember Topaz
Prismatic: Brilliant Inferno Ruby (Item)
Consumable Buffs:
Flask: [Flask of the Draconic Mind] or a [Cauldron of Battle]
Food: [Severed Sagefish Head] or [Seafood Magnifique Feast]
I've decided to omit enchants for this guide as there is a wealth of information around the web for enchanting equipment.
Feedback:
Feedback is welcome. Discussion is welcome. Trolling is not. If you dispute with my findings feel free to comment and offer an explaination.
Friday, 6 July 2012
Not just The Gathering...
Among my many other interests, I play world of warcraft. So those of you who also play may be interested in what I've been up to with my Warlock main.
I got a bit bored the other night, and decided I'd run old Burning Crusade heroics! Well, let's just put it this way, it's a gold mine! After running each dungeon solo just once, there's 16 in total, and auctioning everything I came across in the way of mats, reputation items, green gear and vendoring all the trash I have made 7500G and still counting!
That's right Goldmine!!!
It's pretty simple a concept, one I hadn't thought of as a money spinner, but it's damn right effective and was a bit more fun than farming with a gathering profession! In the course of a few hours not only had I been able to finish the achievements for those dungeons but also had enough in the way of auctions to literally flood my inbox repeatedly! So far I've sold all but circa 60 items not bad considering each dungeon yielded enough loot to fill my bags! Some dungeons were more profitable than others, an example would be shattered halls and the steam vault. But I also acquired a nice Phoenix pet from kael'thas in magister's terrace! Seriously worth a look into doing, as it's never going to hurt your wallet!
As a side note my warlock is 85 with an ilvl of 370 and running affliction spec. I use my felhunter as my pet and the best way of downing mobs is to send in the puppy and gather up a room, soulburn and seed of corruption, kite til they are dead!
Hope this gives you guys something to do during the last part of cataclysm.
Happy looting!
I got a bit bored the other night, and decided I'd run old Burning Crusade heroics! Well, let's just put it this way, it's a gold mine! After running each dungeon solo just once, there's 16 in total, and auctioning everything I came across in the way of mats, reputation items, green gear and vendoring all the trash I have made 7500G and still counting!
That's right Goldmine!!!
It's pretty simple a concept, one I hadn't thought of as a money spinner, but it's damn right effective and was a bit more fun than farming with a gathering profession! In the course of a few hours not only had I been able to finish the achievements for those dungeons but also had enough in the way of auctions to literally flood my inbox repeatedly! So far I've sold all but circa 60 items not bad considering each dungeon yielded enough loot to fill my bags! Some dungeons were more profitable than others, an example would be shattered halls and the steam vault. But I also acquired a nice Phoenix pet from kael'thas in magister's terrace! Seriously worth a look into doing, as it's never going to hurt your wallet!
As a side note my warlock is 85 with an ilvl of 370 and running affliction spec. I use my felhunter as my pet and the best way of downing mobs is to send in the puppy and gather up a room, soulburn and seed of corruption, kite til they are dead!
Hope this gives you guys something to do during the last part of cataclysm.
Happy looting!
There be Dragons down there...
So Wednesday this week saw the rise of one of my new decks, a mono red dragon based deck. I also used the opportunity to try out my green and white deck, my white and artifact deck and my red and green anti-curse /combo deck. Yes that's right anti-curse! One of the players in our group plays a particularly nasty deck filled with curses, so I built this deck to counteract his decks mechanics.
But on to the main event! The deck simply called dragons saw two victories out of three games, in the first game I was pretty much mana and creature screwed, the second game was a one on one against a black deck which lasted all but 7 turns. And the final one saw my utvara scalpers snatch a victory as sheoldred came into play on my opponents side of the field. All in all I was very happy with the way it worked after it had been shuffled properly!
The main purpose of the deck is to throw out a high powered dragon around turn 4/5 and create havoc for opposing players. Balefire Dragon is particually useful for this as it'll destroy all creatures a player has as long as it has dealt combat damage to that player. Assuming of course they don't have a 6/6 flyer/reach equiped creature with which to deal with it or indeed anything with 7 toughness or greater as it only deals out 6 damage to each creature.
Another Dragon which comes in handy is Hellkite Charger. 6 mana to get out and 7 mana to use its ability which allows you to untap all creatures and gain a second combat phase, a nice game changer. The obvious draw back is the fact that it is expensive, but thats what Infernal Plunge and Battle Hymn are for, extra mana generation. But all isn't lost, there are some 4 cmc cards in the mix in the form of Whelps and some Goblins for fodder!
Meet the Utvara Scalper, providing a good base of continual damage dealing throughout the early turns, this is down to the fact it attacks if able every turn and has flying! What more can you possibly want. Oh, perhaps throwing a Fencer's Magemark onto the card to make it just that little bit more threatening! At least that's what I did!
Working through this deck during its construction stage, I was seriously concerned with the mana costings and didn't think I could make it work, however after the playtests I will definately be leaving it as is and throw it up against a larger multiplayer game to see how it holds out! Perhaps this time next week i'll be saying something different, but for now i'm pretty happy with the results.
Deck List:
Land:
20 x Mountain
Artifacts:
Obelisk of Jund x2
Dragon Claw x2
Creatures:
Ancient Hellkite x1
Archwing Dragon x1
Balefire Dragon x1
Flameblast Dragon x1
Hoard-Smelter Dragon x1
Hellkite Igniter x1
Hellkite Charger x1
Furnace Whelp x2
Volcanic Dragon x2
Goblin Fireslinger x2
Goblin Piker x1
Goblin Tunneler x1
Utvara Scalper x2
Grotag Seige-Runner x1
Spells:
Hostile Realm x2
Battle Hymn x4
Mana Geyser x1
Infernal Plunge x3
Thunderbolt x1
Fencer's Magemark x2
Fatal Attraction x2
Soul's Fire x1
Lust For War x1
Kuldotha Rebirth x1
Well, feel free to comment on the deck and any suggestions to strengthen it would be obviously welcome! I'm always open to suggestions, and look forward to anything that anyone may like to contribute, if you think its a rubbish deck please say so, but take the time to at least say why you think so.
That's it for now!
But on to the main event! The deck simply called dragons saw two victories out of three games, in the first game I was pretty much mana and creature screwed, the second game was a one on one against a black deck which lasted all but 7 turns. And the final one saw my utvara scalpers snatch a victory as sheoldred came into play on my opponents side of the field. All in all I was very happy with the way it worked after it had been shuffled properly!
The main purpose of the deck is to throw out a high powered dragon around turn 4/5 and create havoc for opposing players. Balefire Dragon is particually useful for this as it'll destroy all creatures a player has as long as it has dealt combat damage to that player. Assuming of course they don't have a 6/6 flyer/reach equiped creature with which to deal with it or indeed anything with 7 toughness or greater as it only deals out 6 damage to each creature.
Another Dragon which comes in handy is Hellkite Charger. 6 mana to get out and 7 mana to use its ability which allows you to untap all creatures and gain a second combat phase, a nice game changer. The obvious draw back is the fact that it is expensive, but thats what Infernal Plunge and Battle Hymn are for, extra mana generation. But all isn't lost, there are some 4 cmc cards in the mix in the form of Whelps and some Goblins for fodder!
Meet the Utvara Scalper, providing a good base of continual damage dealing throughout the early turns, this is down to the fact it attacks if able every turn and has flying! What more can you possibly want. Oh, perhaps throwing a Fencer's Magemark onto the card to make it just that little bit more threatening! At least that's what I did!
Working through this deck during its construction stage, I was seriously concerned with the mana costings and didn't think I could make it work, however after the playtests I will definately be leaving it as is and throw it up against a larger multiplayer game to see how it holds out! Perhaps this time next week i'll be saying something different, but for now i'm pretty happy with the results.
Deck List:
Land:
20 x Mountain
Artifacts:
Obelisk of Jund x2
Dragon Claw x2
Creatures:
Ancient Hellkite x1
Archwing Dragon x1
Balefire Dragon x1
Flameblast Dragon x1
Hoard-Smelter Dragon x1
Hellkite Igniter x1
Hellkite Charger x1
Furnace Whelp x2
Volcanic Dragon x2
Goblin Fireslinger x2
Goblin Piker x1
Goblin Tunneler x1
Utvara Scalper x2
Grotag Seige-Runner x1
Spells:
Hostile Realm x2
Battle Hymn x4
Mana Geyser x1
Infernal Plunge x3
Thunderbolt x1
Fencer's Magemark x2
Fatal Attraction x2
Soul's Fire x1
Lust For War x1
Kuldotha Rebirth x1
Well, feel free to comment on the deck and any suggestions to strengthen it would be obviously welcome! I'm always open to suggestions, and look forward to anything that anyone may like to contribute, if you think its a rubbish deck please say so, but take the time to at least say why you think so.
That's it for now!
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