Texture Painting

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Yashima
on January 20, 2010
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Here are a couple of screens of last nights “work” on my UI. Ever since I stopped using Tukui – which is great but I rather do like fiddling around and it does everything for you already – I’ve been back to changing around my interface. Last night I believe I spent nearly 3 hours creating the background texture – in gimp! – that you can see in the pictures below.

UI in Solo Mode fighting

UI in group mode healing

Visible Addons

  • Actionbar: Dominos
  • UnitFrames: oUF (einmal Caellian Layout, einmal Phanx Layout)
  • Healer-Frames: Vuhdo
  • Infobar: Databroker + Fortress + Diverse
  • Cooldownbar: ForteExorcist
  • Buffs/Debuffs: SatrinaBuffFrames + DebuffFilter
  • PvP: Capping
  • DPS-Meter: Recount
  • Map: pMinimap + Mapster
  • Tooltip: TipTop + Ghost Recon
  • NamePlates: TidyPlates + Clean Plates Layout
  • Combat Text: MikScrollingCombatText
  • Chat: Prat
  • TextureDisplay: DelusionsAddon (my own code and not for download because it sucks, using BTex or kgPanels felt like a bit too much for just a couple of textures)

I am not yet where I want to be with my latest layout. It should be cleaner I feel. There is too much going on but after Tukui I really wanted more buttons. I think the minimap is too small and the chat windows too high, the placement of the unit frames random. What I really need is to do my own oUF Layout.

All I do is less rabi

Published
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Yashima
on January 19, 2010
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So what have I been up to in the game? Besides PUGs there were a few things … the guild is doing good! We had a couple of additions both old time players from our server coming back. Our server was also the target of free transfers and at least on Alliance side it looks like a couple of raiding guilds transferred over just when others left. So maybe the influx of new players will bring a little life to the server ‘community’ (yes /2 is always very lively and we do win Wintergrasp …). One of the new guilds already organized a nice city raid which yielded me a Black Bear. There were also some loot dramz on /2 involving the same guild but apologies were issued and all seems nice so far.

I am slowly working my way through the reputations. In Wrath I am only missing the Frenzyheart and the new raiding faction. In Burning Crusade I am on my last 2 days of “Ramparts final 2 bosses & some trash for 1000 rep” for Honor Hold which is the last faction I will do in Outland – the left-overs are the Scryers and 2 higher-tiered raiding factions. After Honor Hold I will farm some more on the Timbermaw which should bring me to 35 exalted reputations. I think I am not going to 40 just yet – though I have some ideas how to get there ;)

The other achievements I am currently “farming” are the Glory of the Hero dungeon achievements for the fast mount. We are doing quite well (several guildies have joined me in the effort, though we play with ever changing groups).

So yesterday we finally did “Less Rabi”. I think this is one of the harder achievements out there. While there are tons of comments on Wowhead and the web, I want to do a quick write up of all that I found out about the encounter.

For the achievement you need to defeat Moorabi in heroic mode without him transforming into a huge mammut. So when does this happen?

  1. The transform has a cast time that scales down with his hitpoints and starts at about 4 seconds at a 100% life. At 50% he is at 2 seconds. The last cast that you will be able to interrupt with any surety is at 30% beyond that it’s just luck
  2. The cooldown of this transform ability also scales down with hitpoints. The cooldown seems to start at 10 seconds. Below 50% the cooldown is between 4 and 6 seconds.
  3. The boss is immune against stuns, silences and casting slows like Curse of Tongues.
  4. The cast can be interrupted by the following skills: “Hammer of Justice (Pala), Mind Freeze (DK), Spell Lock (Felhunter), Counterspell (Mage), Kick (Rogue), Shield Bash (Warrior), Pummel (?), Windshear (Shaman), Maim (Feral), Silencing Shot(Hunter). The list may not be complete.
  5. The cast is announced as boss emote and interrupting right then should be fine unless you have horrible lag

So from this information you must derive your tactic. Here’s what we did:

  • go to the back entrance because you need to kill only 10 trash mobs or so before the boss.
  • bring no healer just 4 dps, 1 tank and 2 interrupts
  • remember to reset the encounter – quickly stop dps! – if he transforms
  • we had just over 20k dps in the group I think
  • assign the interrupts for example: mage counterspells the first and druid maims on the second
  • the mage interrupts the first cast as late as possible while the rest of the group keeps dpsing
  • the druid concentrates on the second cast which is harder to interrupt (and since I am horrible dps anyway it was much more important to hit the Maim button on time)
  • don’t dps too hard before 50%, you need to really burn him down fast beyond that! Use your cooldowns then
  • try 2 times like we did – I even survived the first try by dashing out of the instance – and get the achievement on the second
  • (forget that you tried this with 2 different groups before and thought it was impossible)

Notes: Using a felhunter to automatically interrupt is a nice idea. Except, that he will interrupt the first cast the boss does, whatever it is. Since you would want to use him on a later interrupt – the first is so easy and should be done by a player – you would have to turn on auto-casting on the spell-lock after the first cast. It does seem like all 3 warlocks I saw try this, failed in this endeavour. Maybe a macro would help here.

I can’t think of any other hints … I am just glad it worked out, since I do not have the time to keep trying this every evening or so. The reset of the encounter is definitely hard because if he transforms at very low life it is possible you just kill him without any chance of a reset.

After this we decided to keep going and also do the “Share the Love“. This achievement was much easier – much less luck involved. Here’s the details:

  • You need to wait to kill the boss until he has “Impaled” all party members.
  • Impale seems to go to a random member of the group which is not on top of the aggro list.
  • Impale is announced as boss emote for ease of keeping track
  • one group member said the achievement fails if anybody dies, so do not let anybody die!
  • impale does quite a lot of damage on the impaled target, be prepared to heal a lot, bring healthstones or use cooldowns etc.
  • You need a good healer able to concentrate and heal for quite some time, two tanks and patience.
  • The first tank simply tanks the boss, the healer heals and the rest of the group watches.
  • The boss will start impaling party members, he may impale the same person over and over and over, be patient.
  • once the second tank is impaled he taunts the boss off the first tank
  • keep going until everyone has been impaled, then burn down the boss

Notes: we actually needed 3 tries. The boss as well as the impale sometimes does a huge burst of damage and on the first try it seems the healer (paladin) was not quite prepared for that. On the 2nd try it was just bad luck that the boss kind of one shotted the mage during impale (15k damage is a little much). The third try went smoother still the amount of damage dished out is quite insane and the healer has a lot of work to do in this encounter. The healer and the mage are fully raid equipped … but in this setup nothing matters except the tanks and the healer.

So two nice achievements in one go!

Only 5 more to go for me until I get glory of the hero. Maybe these days I’ll find the time to write up how we did a couple of the other non-trivial achievements.

The nice PuG

Published
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Yashima
on January 8, 2010
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The other day I went back to another really random heroic with 4 unknown players. I ended up in Azjol Nerub which I was relieved to see, since the last few groups I had been in were pure guild groups – despite LFG – and I had heard nightmare stories from others once again (h The healer who didn’t heal 2 dpsers in the final fight of Halls of Stone, let them die and left the group after the fight, letting them run back in … and my all time favorite the over equipped tanks posting dps meters )

Since I am pretty much beyond worries for Azjol Nerub having been there enough times already I was sure I would be getting my marks without anybody insulting me, my playstyle or my equipment.

Everyone got in, the mage placed a table (thx!) and we started. The fights on the first boss were harder to heal than I remembered – lots of poison. But nobody died, I didn’t have aggro. The dps DK pops the “25 Dungeon & Raid emblems” achievement. I congratulate him, rest of group follow suit and he confesses he only turned 80 that morning at 4 a.m.. A friendly bantering about not sleeping, working and holidays kept us busy while we made our way to the second boss, which we downed just as nicely as the first one.

All of a sudden we are standing in front of final boss. The fight took some time. We were quite slow – guessing low dps? – but I managed to keep everyone alive. Boss goes down. I thank everyone for the nice group, the others do the same and I leave.

I am guessing that most of these players were equipped much worse than my guildmates or myself or whatever I am used to. I had to heal a lot more than most heroics I run. It was fun, however the instance not being so trivial for me! We may have been a bit slower than some other runs, yet we still made it in about 20 minutes without much of a problem.

My point is: maybe these people were still needing some items from the heroics they run and they were not totally facerolling the instance and maybe we took a couple minutes longer than some overequipped group but they were nice and courteous and were not making disparaging remarks about each other or their equipment. I have much more fun when I am not continously made to feel bad … I actually had more fun healing with a little bit of a challenge! I enjoyed the thought of being able to get my marks and actually help others.

I read so many posts and comments about people being elitist and commenting on the terrible gear of others and how much DPS they do or don’t do and generally being asshats. Does it really have to be that way? After all the title given out for pugging is called “the Patient” … so maybe it would be nice if more people would live up to that title they often wear while they are everything but …

Bored Healers

Published
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Yashima
on January 4, 2010
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So I am reading this post in our guildforum where somebody is ranting (just a bit) about LFG. I know I know so do I.

I quote what I found among other complaints: “… resto druids who have specced tree form but don’t use it …”

Well for a few days I was healing in a Dreamstate spec ( I am back to a full resto / full cat spec combination ) and of course while having specced Treeform I wasn’t using it most of the time: it was a) not necessary because the additional healing was not needed and b) while not in Tree I can cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm and Wrath while healing … which is much less boring than Wild Growth + Lifebloom + Rejuvenation on the tank and “yawwwnn”

So just because some people do stupid things that are stupid, don’t assume everything to be stupid just because it is not what you expected!

Glory of the Winter Veil Holidays

Published
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Yashima
on December 30, 2009
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So while we had no time to play during the actual Holidays we’re now on vacation and had some fun. We had been talking about doing “Glory of the Hero” and got off to a very slow start with that.

But of those few achievements we tried we managed to get a pretty good number done for example “Better off Dredd” in Gundrak. Quite easy you just have to kill all the adds you keep getting feared into during the fight (actually there is one add too many in the pen which you can pull before the boss fight). The fight is a bit longer of course so it puts a bit of strain on the healer but if you’ve been running a lot of heroics with the new LFG you should be well enough equipped to handle it. I did have to Innervate however ;)

We also managed to do “Split Personality” in the Nexus. We chose to simply AoE the mirror images (I think one of them is channeling a spell, interrupt that to kill it timely!) and so it was super easy.

Not quite so easy was the “Chaos Theory” achievement also in the Nexus. The rifts spawn lots of mobs when not killed, cause tons of chain lightning damage and the boss becomes stronger. But you cannot kill the rifts when getting the achievement. We had cleared lots of space around the boss to be able to kite him all over the place. We did it but I would advise to get some better strat than ours which was to just kite and burn him down! We were quite close to failing when at some point a player died and someone yelled on Teamspeak: “He’s healed himself” meaning the boss. I nearly let us wipe then. Reminds me to always but the boss on focus in such fights!

For us druids “Intense Cold” is stupidly easy: just jump all the time and shift when she freezes you. I had already done it but our druid tank got it during this run.

Yesterday I finally completed the 3rd and last of the new instances in Heroic mode with the promised guild group. Actually we completed a wipe-free run of all three of the Ice Crown 5-man instances on heroic and even managed to snag the “We’re advancing in a different direction” achievement (and probably by a long margin, too, or so it felt). The final fight (some Tyrannus guy) in the second one turned out to be tricky as I was killed pretty early on in the fight by an add shooting at me which we did not notice and so they had to complete the fight without a healer – believe me: listening to them do the fight on Teamspeak was … quite nerve-wracking. Now the next time someone tries to tell me I am not geared well enough for Halls of Reflection I can tell them to … whatever. Of course since that first LFG encounter with the instance my gear has improved by at least 15 iLvls.

After Icecrown we got together a guild group – 13 people online! – and quickly cleared out Archavon & his friends. Not a single wipe!

But just for another jab at LFG: we used the tool yesterday to fill in a missing tank and dps and landed in Utgarde Pinnacle. I used my new Dreamstate spec to DPS a bit on the side and managed to not let anyone die because of that :) The run went fast and smooth. In the end however the Paladin tank had to post is Recount stats which showed he had done the most damage and while I was still thanking people for the nice group he left without a word. Could he just NOT have posted the stupid stats? What did he gain? I am a healer I am not offended by only doing 5% of the damage … but after a smooth run it just leaves a bad taste which was completely not necessary. Not everybody is raid-equipped … and we still did not complete the gauntlet fast enough for the achievement ;)

LFG Impressions

Published
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Yashima
on December 16, 2009
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So far I did not have much time to use the new tool. Here’s my rundown so far.

1) Needed 1 more dps for a run through the new instances on normal difficulty. Got one fast, was not overly competent and my hunter complained loudly (to me) about the random rogue also needing the epic gun that dropped and getting it – oh well, he can use it … to pull? Otherwise friendly player who seemed happy to find a group doing the initial quest through the instances with him. As for the instances: I enjoyed them a lot and I am happy there are a couple of new boss mechanics – especially the finale with Arthas …

2) 2 randoms including tank for random instance which turned out to be Nexus. Competent and friendly players who even laughed about my hunter always pulling adds because he is having trouble with tabbing and auto-attack, they could have complained but they did not! The random dps even thanked tank and heal (that was me!) for doing a good job!

3) me and 4 randoms (3 knew each other I think) got dropped into Violet Hold, the tank complained he didn’t get any rage and I complained about not needing to do much. Nice group, nothing to complain, instance quick and way too easy.

4) me and 4 random players. I got into Heroic Halls of Reflection and immediately knew I was in for trouble because I had only been there once (see 1) on normal. I had no idea about the bosses on heroic. The trouble started much earlier than I had anticipated. We went into the first room with the ghost waves and the tank orders us into a corner. I manage to keep up everyone during the first wave … second wave wipe- no idea what happened. I – always ready to take the blame?! – say: “Sorry guys never been here on heroic!” Tank: “Well I already saw your equipment isn’t good enough for this anyway.” I offered to leave before they decided to kick me.

If a group thinks like that there is no way I am trying to finish that instance that late into the night. I complained in guildchat about it because I just felt terrible after that. What made it even worse in a weird way was that they kept assuming I was a guy and kept referring to me as “him”.

Ironically 2 of the people were wearing a title “the Patient” and I have no idea where it comes from.

I know once more why I hate to do PUGs.

So I asked the guildies if my equipment was really that bad. As a tree I have self-buffed 2250 healing power which is enough to heal Ulduar (10), any other heroic 5-man and Ony (10). Sure my equipment is not that of a regular raider and healing this instance was not going to be trivial, but surely not impossible.

I am used to my über-competent and patient guildmates … the answer in guildchat was soothing: “Oh your gear is good enough for us, you’re a good healer! We’ll go with you sometime soon!” Made me feel better to hear that :)

Still – that group … I guess this is happening to players all over the place … it’s the same as before when people were dissing you for doing to little DPS … sometimes I really miss the good old times running instances without everybody watching Recount/Recap/etc like a hawk. I wonder if there are addons that shout “Alert! Alert! You’re grouped with a low-equip person … provoke a wipe blame them and kick them!” ?! I really hope they did not find a healer too fast!

On another note: I am planning on hitting the 6k achievement points before Christmas. It is not going to be easy however getting the Merry Maker. I got all of 5 kills before losing my costume … just like it worked last year. 23 down, 27 to go, so … hopefully only 5 more battlegrounds :P

Oldschool Night

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Yashima
on November 25, 2009
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Last Friday I went to see Ulduar 10 for the second time with the guild. We didn’t proceed quite as fast as the last time. This time it really was an all guild run, so that counts for something and we still downed quite a few bosses – just too bad that Ignis downed us when he had only 20k life left. We gave up on him after half a dozen wipes.

Saturday I logged on planning on doing some achievements, maybe finish the remaining BC heroics. Instead I saw someone asking in our guild-friends channel wether we wanted to come and do Blackwing Lair … another achievement I was missing. So we joined a raid of about a dozen people and proceeded to pwn Nefarian. We even ported our – fresh 80 after 4.5 years of leveling – warlock who didn’t complete the BWL prequest :)

After Nefarian was down someone wanted to down Kael so we went to Outland and jumped into Tempest Keep. By now we were about 10 people left in the raid. Luckily the raid leader knew all the bosses and patiently explained to all us non-raiders what we had to do as he had done in BWL and would do the rest of the evening.

Kael was quickly downed another achievement done!

“So what do we do now?”
“I still have Magtheridon and Gruul open.”
“Oh those are fast, let’s go!”

Two raid instances later …. “How about Lady Vashj?”

We actually wiped once on her … it was still an interesting fight to do and with Level 80s far from trivial. I am glad we did all these raids and it was a very nice evening with friendly people from all over the server.

We made about 350 or 400 gold each and I got 5 raid achievements I was missing!

What I appreciated most was the patience of the raid leader and the explanations given without any hint of arrogance for those of us who wanted to see the old school raids now because we never had the chance to do so before!

Playing the AH on a tiny server

Published
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Yashima
on November 15, 2009
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These days I log on to my 3 auctioneers most days and to my professionals with lucrative cooldowns. The results are in and it is looking good. Just a week ago my Shaman hit level 70 and I went and bought her epic flying and cold weather flying. Before that I was at 15k and now I am already back at 13k plus I did invest more, finished leveling Jewelcrafting and have managed to stockpile more epic gems for the day that I get my first recipe ;)

My glyph business is not doing so good I thought but then I collected about 300gold this morning from one of my glyph characters which on our tiny server. I think there are about 500 active acounts left on alliance side, just heard yesterday that one major guild and another well-known minor raiding guild left the server in the last month or so. When I scan the AH there are never more than 6k auctions in there – now imagine that about 25-30% of that are glyphs … There are still 3 other major players in the glyph market right now so it is not easy earning money that way. I am thinking of reducing my time spent on that part and hoping that Blizzard will provide a solution for servers like ours in the future.

We cannot just transfer. Not as a guild. Too many people have too many high level alts and since we’re a small guild we need those alts for crafting, raiding and generally that is what we do: leveling alts. We also have lots of friends outside the guild on which we rely a lot to get our 10-mans going. We have good relations to several guilds still here and to what remains of the server community. I think the guild would just die out if we transfered somewhere. We need some other solution … like a free transfer to a bigger server.

A very long trip

Published
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Yashima
on October 31, 2009
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Since achievements came out they have been a major focus for my in-game activities. Oh yes this is a whine post.

I am whining. Because I have spent a lot of time this year on getting “Yashima The Hallowed” – I finished everything but the stinkbomb quest and the Sinister Squashling last year. I made the Brewmaster, the Flame Warden … the Love Fool. And now I was hoping I could finish the Long Strange Trip next year when it’s Children’s Week.

I guess not. I finished my final event boss run – it was the first time I ever saw the Squashling drop there. Actually it dropped twice and I didn’t win – both times. I made time for the eventboss as often as was possible and I trick or treated like I had no life – I even did it at times when I should not. 2 of my alts got the Squashling. My main still doesn’t have it and I am angry now. I am angry that this big huge meta achievement contains pieces that are so random that with all the effort I made it was not possible to get the stupid pet.

Remove the pet from the Meta-Achievement like you did with the Love Fool!

I have lots of pets and I would like one more. It is not the pet that makes me act like an idiot: it is the stupid Meta-Achievement that makes me do this. I hate randomness.

People complain about the “GNERD Rage” or the “With a Little Help from my Friends” being hard on people because they involve doing PvP. But you can try, recruit friends and give your best … all I could give for this one was time and more time and still more time.

This drop rate messes with people so they have to log on every hour for two weeks … ? What kind of fucked up design is that? I know I do not have to do achievements but what is the design goal behind this? What does this accomplish for anyone? It just makes the Meta-Achievement random …

I am pissed and I will probably still try to get the pet because I am scared that next year around this time I will try again and have 2 fucked up weeks trying to get a couple of pixels to do this.

I am actually thinking about taking a nice long break from the game and canceling my account and be childish about all this. I like the game. I hate this Meta-Achievement and I still cannot let go of it.

And that is the reason why I go off on people talking about the addictive nature of the game. Because deep down I know it is very much so.

PS: I wrote a ticket demanding to take the pet out of the trip!

Dragon Slayer Day

Published
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Yashima
on October 19, 2009
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( Note: when talking about any raid instances I always mean the 10-man version. We don’t do 25-mans as guild runs. )


When Wrath was young I never thought I could obtain the “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” title. I am not much into instances or raiding or whatever. A couple months ago I commented on a guildmate having the title and he said “What are you missing? It is not that hard!” I was still missing the final bosses of Naxxramas at that point, heroic Oculus, Sartharion and Malygos. I still didn’t think the title would be mine because I thought that I would never complete Naxx. We did – actually I did it twice so far.

After we finished that he asked again “So what are you missing for the title?” I had also completed the Oculus by then – just barely however which shows that I am not that “skilled” ;) I think I learned a couple of things along the way and could now manage the Oculus more easily. So my answer was “Just Sartharion and Malygos”.

Mysteriously – not at all – guild events for Sartharion and Malygos started appearing on our event planer ;) We managed to down Sartharion easily – with some weird randoms along the way – the first time I was there for such an event. Malygos however we tried and tried. We managed to get the first phase after a couple of tries. Then we managed to learn the second phase easily … the third … I was to be a healer and I just died all the time.

We gave up after getting to the 3rd phase about 3 times and failing miserably. Another night another Malygos event. More failure.

This Saturday some ambitious guildie had scheduled “Ony, Sartharion and Malygos – let’s kill all the dragons!” Tenobaal and I had no other plans so we joined in the raid. So far I had not been to the “new Onyxia” and I was rather curious if we could down her as a guild since I remembered the guild failing on the first night after the patch.

We managed to invite a random and a couple of guild-friends to fill the raid – Saturday rarely is a day with lots of guildies online and on to Onyxia we went. We wiped – due to some chaotic assignments and several people not knowing the new encounter yet (including Tenobaal and me). We wiped again I think and then on the third try we downed her easily. I have no idea why I survived the Deep Breath – must have gotten lucky. She dropped us 2 priest helmets and there was only one priest there … I was impressed with us, I had thought we might get stuck here.

Next up was Sartharion. After a short discussion we said to try him with one of his cronies up. Luckily there were 3 druids in the raid lots of battlerezzes were needed but we made the “Twilight Assist”. (I can’t remember if we wiped, I was too excited we made it).

Somebody noticed that the Alliance was controlling Wintergrasp and suggested we go down the 3 bosses there. First up: Archavon (the one with the Meteor Fists, don’t know if the name is right). After a really lame wipe – due to several people not knowing the encounter yet – someone relogged to another healer character and we downed him. The other two were quite easy.

Then it was Malygos time, finally. We had already spent two hours raiding and I was sure we would fail again on Malygos just like the last two times. It started out quite nicely on our first try we easily got to the third phase where we failed as usual. After that however we had a couple of awful tries with bad pulls in the beginning and people were starting to bash the tank in teamspeak. I think I figured out the first two phases as a druid healer quite nicely and concentrated on getting to try the third but we never got there. Wipe in phase one, wipe in phase two. Phase three with several people dead at start. I think we wiped at least 5 times on Malygos without getting to phase 3.

I was already thinking about calling it quits for the night when we manage a clean try until phase 3. Everybody alive and still some time to go before enrage hit. I targeted the one person supposed to be good at this encounter and hit /follow and then I hit the heal buttons as fast as I could. The trick really is to follow someone so you don’t have to worry about managing the skills and staying in range. A couple people died but we downed him!

It felt really wonderful knowing I will not have to down him again to get that achievement ;) Now I might go there again to try and perfect phase 3 without much pressure.

So we downed them all and in good time: just over 3 hours for Ony, Sartharion, the Wintergrasp bosses and Malygos. For us that is pretty awesome.