Good bye

So, my wife and I have made a hard choice.

Life in WoW has been great for us - and this blog has really been a window on that time spent with friends, but life also has other needs - in particular family.

It is a really hard decision to make but I've made it. I'll not be raiding in WoW for the future and I'll not be playing much WoW either. To all the great readers out there - thank you for your time, I hope dearly that I added something to your internet entertainment as this was always my desire.

This won't be a surprise to many long term followers because I've spoken about my frustration with the server stability and Activisions poor take over of Blizzard leading to a softening of the content and really terrible raid instances like ToC. For those that discover this blog in the near future - there is a complete and interesting story here of an online gamer discovering an MMO and then the trials and tribulations of being in an end-game guild. Sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy a peek into an MMO'ers life.

I'll leave this blog content here for as long as google let me, but there will be no more content created here or on my youtube account.

Take care everyone, and I'll miss you all - particularly those long term posters here on this site.

cheers for one last time,

Redmist and Draiza.

1 Million but do I desire more?

My combined views of youtube and warcraft movies hit 1 million last night.

Thanks everyone - pretty intense that so many find this content and information interesting - ok I've had a fair share of l2p and you are a noob comments together with some threats and such, but the majority of humans are nice, civil and friendly. I've learned a lot with the experience.

It has been difficult sometimes in the early stages as I was learning to play and make movies with this character that would entertain, because the first time you get seriously negative comments it is crushing. But after exactly 5059 comments across all my videos I have learned to ignore the crap and return the nice posts with as much care as one person can deliver as a hobby.

As a celebration of this time and this blog for the 22 thousand people that read these pages at an average of over 800 per day - here is a very private and personal video just for you:

http://www.megavideo.com/?d=YZEZ69MT

That video (you need to press the play button twice due to adverts) shows some of the characters that I have played over the last few years in WoW - all at either rank 12 pvp or end-game raiding.

My wife and I are at this time evaluating what we want from the game or whether the game holds the appeal that it used to. We both dislike the way Activision has taken this game and we both are disappointed with the current raid content in the form of ToC.

The changes to the classes we play are poorly thought out and the stability of the servers we play on has decreased significantly over the last few months to the point where the game is no longer reliable and you spend as much time fighting lag and disconnections as you do virtual monsters.

We have not made a clear choice yet about our future in the World of Warcraft, but we are evaluating things carefully right now. We will either carry on and see what happens or we are going to quit playing and its 50:50 right now.

Thanks for all the support over the years everyone - and we hope you understand our feelings about WoW right now.

cheers,

Red

Shaman class update

So, there have been a lot of changes with shaman over the last couple months. I thought it was time I discussed the changes a bit and what I think of them.

PVP:

One of the big changes as far as I am concerned for pvp is the removal of the snare immunity on the earthen power talent. The totem now removes one snare per tick - this is every 3 seconds or so. 3 seconds is an eternity in pvp and means really that you can use it for 1 ham string or 1 chains of ice or 1 mage slow before you are pretty much kited out of the range of the totem.

This is very annoying in pvp and is a pretty horrible nerf to us. I would have been ok if this change was for the party but still gave us freedom. But Blizzard didn't like shaman having a similar ability to paladins so it was taken away. This makes enhancement shaman a free kill to good hunters - no point fighting it. Unless you out gear and out skill the hunter you will not get close.

Against most other classes you will be ok. Frost mages now can't be beaten without popping wolves whereas before they were pretty ok to kill. This really is a direct nerf to us vs hunters.

The next nerf was with the cleansing totem that ticked the moment you dropped it - this meant that you could effectively spam the totem and cleanse every global cooldown. Now the totem is mostly useless as you get kited away from totems by any good pvp person or team anyway. However, I don't feel as hurt by this change as the others because I've just placed cleanse toxins on my bar and key bound it to Shift+cleaning totem so I use this on myself. I have also installed grid and clique and bound shit+left click to grid as cast cleanse toxins. This has meant I have more to deal with but I can still manage ok, just with more globals spent.

Next up, the changes to elemental. I tried these out yesterday and I still don't get on well with ranged classes - I do like the change to flameshock and lava burst no longer consuming. It makes elemental more simple that is for sure. But you still have to stand still to do anything significant as an elemental shaman and I like mobile classes more.

PVE:

The change to the totem of quaking earth is welcome but really just a bug fix to bring it in line with all the other class stuff available for druids and paladins.

The other changes don't really effect pve although I have noticed that as I gear up I am scaling much worse than the other dps in the guild, although my healing output during harder fights has scaled better than I expected. It is entirely possible to maintain about 1.1k heal per second and also do about 5k dps at the same time.

Enhancement Shaman continue to be both the best and worst class I've ever played. They delight in pve but where as with a paladin, rogue, hunter or priest you can use the gear you gain in pve to great effect in pvp - this is just not the same for enhancement shaman. I am as effective in pvp with pvp gear as I am in pve gear now with the changes to resilience. I still get killed in 3 globals by destruction locks - but I think pretty much everyone does at the moment.

Shaman remain an enigma, both the most versatile class and the most frustrating at the same time.

I'm struggling with this, do I re-roll with the next expansion to paladin, hunter or warrior - or do I stick with the shaman in the futile hope that Blizzard will realise what is wrong with the class. I thought totems would be fun when I rolled Redmist, but they are a ball and chain.

If you really love pve, then shaman are totally cool. Pvp - they are extremely frustrating unless you have a healer behind you - a paladin healer in particular. Put a pro paladin healer behind you, give you 30 seconds to get your flurry up and they are like a freight train on heat.

I guess re-reading this it sounds a bit negative, but then that's the class right now - I hope for some postive changes for pvp in the future. PVE is great - pretty much perfect I would say - if you love pve, then enhancement shaman doesn't come much better.

cheers everyone!

Red

Back with a BANG!

Amazing return from the US and my business trip. So, yesterday morning I landed in the UK after an over night flight and I needed something yesterday evening to keep me awake to try and beat the jet lag.

I logged in and got a wonderful Orbis welcome home - thanks guys and gals. Chatted a bit and was asked if I would like to try and do heroic Trial of the Crusader. Of course I do!

We gathered up outside the instance and spent a while fighting with the in-game chat because our vent server was down (and stayed down for the whole instance) So co-ordination was a bit harder with a lack of good quality voice chat.

The team was: (and there is a reason I'm listing them out)

Toxín - mage
Syphér - rogue
Rhila - druid (boomkin)
Wisqa - resto/elemental shaman
Artfool - mage
Azybubbles - paladin tank
Onck - warrior tank
Arcenium - paladin healer
Redmist - enhancement shaman
Lipsill - priest healer

The Northred Beasts dropped in record time, the Lord Jaraxxus was flawless and by the time we got to the Faction Champoins someone pointed out that "hey, we are still on 50 tries, cool" - but to be honest we didn't really think much about the number of tries at this point.

We utterly destroyed the faction champions with Onck's perfect opening on the NPCs and our nuke strategy.

Next up, the Twin Val'kyr's Fiola and Eydis, again with a slightly different strategy we managed, one shield very nearly didn't go down but a rapid bloodlust pulled it off at the last half second.

Now we take a break, some new enchants are done on new gear won - we need all the health we can get on Azy and Onck. Wisqa leaves to re-spec and re-glyph as elemental for more dps leaving just the amazing Lipsill and Arcenium as the only two healers. We take another break and again realise that, hey, we haven't wiped yet... close a couple times, but we are on fire here.

Anub'arak... He waits for us, I've never tried this boss on heroic before, and neither had many in this raid. Toxin goes through the tactics we are going to try, Azy explains to me the idea with the kite (thank goodness he did and helped me as I was running because I was targetted first!)

We make a start - 50 tries left...

Flawless raid communication, Onck and Azy are amazing tanks. I'm throwing out chain heals left and right in phase 2. The dps zips out fot the team slamming into this giant crab-like beast.

Prayer of mending jumps around and our holy beacon shines in the frosty air...

Last phase guys! NUKE...

Onck's health dips, oh no.. boss is at 4%... Our brave warrior falls, our rogue spins through the icy air and kisses the floor 2 seconds later I pop an earth elemental, all this gives enough time for Azy to grab the boss. 2% - NUKE, screw the adds, go go GO!!!!!!!!!

Server first baby!

Grats Orbis and what an amazing team... thanks for rather an amazing return from the US...

Red

Away on business

I hope everyone has a great week - I'll be away for all of next week starting Sunday - so will not be posting until I'm back.

Have a great week everyone and take care - check back soon!

Red

The state of battlegrounds

I just had to take this screenshot today - There was me and a priest - EVERYONE else was...

FOTM?

25 man hard modes

With a few attempts behind us on heroic mode ToC we decided that we should start going through the hard modes on 25 man in Ulduar and improve the overall guild dps. It is interesting, often many people do not think a guild can pull itself forward and increase the dps numbers so much even with only a very few upgrades in items.

Well, after getting the tactic to XT-002 much better last time and nearly killing him with heartbreaker we went in again last night. We were failing due to the enrage timer because we were pretty much always loosing someone when they had a lifespark and the ground tremor happened at the same time. Zamee (paladin - dps) suggested that he should taunt the lifesparks giving the spark team that extra few seconds to burn them down - so setting up again (and I think we have almost solved the random afk problem - thanks guild!) we tried 1 more time.

The heart died perfectly with Sypher and Hexter out-shining most on the dps and swiftly we moved into the now practiced routing of sparks and gravity bombs. Only 1 or 2 mistakes were made and virtually everyone stayed up until the very last. I decided to play my hybrid roll and heal as much as possible and still dps. Pulling 5.5k dps and 1.1k heal per second sustained for the fight showing people out there the utility of an enhancement shaman.

The enrage timer crept closer and closer - no one forgot what they were doing near the end and no mistakes led to a 1% wipe. Positioning is key as is great healing and very very good dps. If we want to get heroic mode ToC started, we'll need some rather impressive dps out of the ranged and melee teams!

Grats on the achievement - some pretty serious dps needed for this one - if your top 5 dps can't pull 7k dps during the heart phase you'll probably not achieve this, its a tough one.

cheers!

Red

Anub'arak 25 man

Some serious server stability problems last night meant that our learning on the hard mode 25 man was struggling, althought the dps output on the beasts went up dramatically - I was pleased to see.

On the normal mode before we did the heroic mode we took down the last boss with relative ease - healers did a splendid job at keeping the raid at or below 50% health as required.

Nice to see another acheivement - we need to improve our overall dps for the team but the rest seems pretty ok.

Nice raid really apart from the server problems and I was lucky enough to get a new main hand to replace the old 10 man hard mode Ulduar weapon I was using.

Looks totally pimp on a Tauren shaman as well.... Hellscream Slicer

cheers!

Red

To avoid confusion

I've not stopped playing my shaman.

I will still be playing in PVE as an enhancement shaman because it is more fun than any other class I've played.

BUT - for pvp I will be spending more time on my old rogue again.

Shaman pvp with anything other than resto is broken in too many ways to mention in detail. Anyone claiming otherwise is being carried by an awesome healer. I will still pvp on my shaman to get honor for gems (rather than gear) - but competitive pvp with him is not going to happen for a while.

Thanks for all your emails, whispers and comments.

/hugs

Red

After 34 thousand honor kills on my Shaman - it's time... Red is back...