Cataclysm Dungeons: Healing Hour Of Twilight

Welcome to the third and final guide to the new 5 man dungeons in 4.3. The Hour of Twilight is a 3 boss instance which is also another Thrall escort quest instance just like Old Hillsbrad, will this guy ever do something without me there to help? This time we take Thrall to Dragonblight.

Even if you're not a healer you can get some benefit from reading as you'll understand how you can help out your healer at key times during the encounters.

Cataclysm Dungeons: Healing the Well of Eternity

Welcome to my second guide to the new 5 man dungeons in 4.3, The Well of Eternity a short NPC led dungeon with 4 bosses and 3 encounters and during the instance you'll be transformed into a Night Elf. As you'd expect with it being centred around a major lore event you'll get to meet and assist major lore figures.

Even if you're not a healer you can get some benefit from reading as you'll understand how you can help out your healer at key times during the encounters.

Cataclysm Dungeons: Healing End Time

Welcome to the first of my guides to the new 5 man dungeons in 4.3, End Time. a 3 boss dungeon with a twist as the first 2 encounters are selected from a possible 4 scenarios based around heroes/heroine of the Alliance and Horde, namely Jaina Proudmoore, Tyrande Whisperwind, Sylvanas Windrunner and Baine Bloodhoof and each takes place in one of the Drgaonshrines found in Dragonblight.

Even if you're not a healer you can get some benefit from reading as you'll understand how you can help out your healer at key times during the encounters.

Raiding Lockout

Just a quick post to say right now I'm on a major WoW downer.I play WoW to raid and right now that is a real difficult thing for me to do because of the my shifts I work (0800-2000)  and my guild's raid times (2000-2300) just are not compatible as I can only make  raid 1 in 3 raids and due to rotation I'll probably be benched every 3rd available raid meaning I'm only getting to attend 22% of raids. I have tried pulling a "late night" team together but there simply isn't any interest in this in guild. 

This leaves me with a game and guild I love and not being able to play it with the people I want to play it with and as 4.3 gets closer Dragon Soul is imminent and that means getting new people will be hard because of a lack of progress. 

This means that I'm stuck with 4 options and right now the order of preference is: 

• Quit WoW and hope SWTOR/LoTRO can fill the void (even though I have 5 months subs left); 
• Join a different raid group outside my present guild that raids at or after 21:30 (which isnt something I've seen often in 6 years); 
• Be carried through content and not enjoy the raiding as I have the 2nd half of Firelands (which I hated with a passion); 
• Hit up the looking for raid version that will simply offer no challenge;

So it seems that after 6 years my schedule will finally force me out of WoW rather than boredom or a dislike of changes. I'll keep you posted on my ultimate decision.

Working Hard to Keep Myself Happy

Real life can be a harsh mistress at times. Family life and work place demands on us all and can cause us to change our habits.

For the past 6 years, I have managed to fit raiding in around family life and fortunately found guilds that started at 20:00 my time (21:00 server) and when my son grew older and that restriction was removed I was able to join friends and raid with them at 19:00 (20:00 server) despite this being a tight squeeze as the I like spending time with the wife to eat meals and stuff before she settles in to watch the plethora of soaps she pollute her mind with.

But recent events have caused me much pain and suffering. Firstly, I went through hell in my job, I'll not bore you with the details here but long story short I suffered broken promises, no pay rises, no hope of promotion and no professional development over 3 years before I had to quit or get signed off with depression. Neither option was good but the medical route wasn't really compatible with getting a new job so I quit and took a 2 month summer break to look for a new job. After hundreds of applications and dozens of interviews I landed myself a nice job with a 8 day shift pattern. 

Stood In The Fire

To avoid upsetting anyone with PTR/beta information I hide it by adding all the juicy stuff below the "read more" link. So if you want to have content spoiled you will need to click the "read more" link further down the page. The only clue will be from the title of the post but these will, I promise, always be vague enough to not give anything away.

Resurrection Fixes

It is great to see that changes are happening as a direct result of the feedback people like myself posted on the forums. One of my pet peeves, as mentioned in my Class Feedback Post, seems to have been addressed in the latest 4.3 PTR Build with the introduction of a 40 yard range on Resurrection although as Shaman and Paladins also received this fix it seems that I was wrong on us priests being the only victims.

All that remains to improve the quality of life for all res capable classes now is for the standard out of combat res to become mana efficient to allow feral druids, prot/ret pallies and enhancement shaman to res a friend out of combat without having to drink.

Funniest Mistakes in Warcraft or OMFG You Nubcaek!

Raiding is a serious side of Warcraft, in fact any MMORPG you are part of a team and your 9-39 collegues are depending on you not to waste their time. We expect, nay demand that people show up on time, come prepared by having food, potions, elixirs, and any other buffs. We expect people to have their best gear equipped, enchanted, gemmed and fully repaired. We all hope that others have learned the strategies before seeing the boss encounters "live". 

We all play our game for fun, relaxation and a break from the realities of life but sometimes we forget this fact and tempers flare when people make silly mistakes and occasionally this leads to a bit of drama when we should be having a laugh about it and use them as tension breaker during stressful periods in game.

Leveling Experiment: A new Mage

I was bored, the guild were closing in on "Stay Classy" I had ££s in my wallet and a 10 level 85s on Shadowsong. A lethal mix for an altaholic with a weird ass shift pattern (2 days 0700-1900, 2 nights 1900-0700 and 4 days off) that gives me too much time home alone.

I decided to ship an alt out to Agamaggan to join my other 85 alt, a warrior so that I could roll a new toon. The guild needed a Night Elf or Dwarven mage, a Night Elf death knight or a gnome warrior. The warrior was a non starter as I had 2x85 warriors already, the death knight was removed from the list as I really wanted to see some of the new revamped zones in Azeroth and that left me the mage options. Both races were new to the class and after as I already had done the dwarven starting areas since 4.0.3 I decided the NElf was the one for me.

I wanted to name my mage Evian,as it's a play on the name Evlyxx and Ian my IRL name and with Evian being a brand of bottled water I thought it went well with the class. Sadly some paladin had already laid claim to the name but not seen fit to level it past level 3 I couldn't have it, but a cunning plan to feminise it into Eviana was hatched and a female Night Elf became the the chosen one.