Merry Christmas from Emblem of Conquest!

Well, there hasn't been a post for a while, and for that I apologise, but the nature of the season has drawn me away from blogging temporarily.

But I'm back now, and as my Christmas present to you all, I'll be delivering (within the next few days), the Raid Guide Brigade entries to the first four bosses of Icecrown!

Until then, from me and the entire team at Emblem of Conquest, Merry Christmas!

~P

Dungeon Finder is too random, fix please

I don't know if it's just me or if everyone has as bad luck as I do, but the "Random Dungeon System" is actually completely random. So far, we've had 11 days since the patch, I've had Oculus once, HoL once, ToC once, Nexus once, UK once, UP once, AN once, OK once, DTK once, and Gundrak once. What really set me off was today, I didn't want to do HoS for the first time, dropped out came back later and got Forge of Souls! Can we PLEASE do something to make the system a little less random!

Just for thought, I do my one dungeon a day because you (Blizzard) feels end game raiders need to run dungeons and we do it since we don't have much of a choice to max our characters out. Assuming there are all 16 dungeons available for me to queue, the probability that I would get these dungeons in the order I have is 1 in 780,903,145.

During the time it took me to write this post, I queued up again, got Violet Hold, which makes it 1 in 6 billion (6,247,225,158) odds to get the dungeons in this order! It's obviously too random!

The large majority of players have no interest in doing several different dungeons, we would just like to do Oculus over and over again every day because that's such a fun and quick instance.

Introducing Project Bad Player

So I just noticed all of my holy PvP gear sitting in the bank from when I actually gave half a shit about PvP, and I decided rather than have it waste away, I'd put it to some use.

I'm going to re-gem those with awful gems and flesh the rest of my gear out with random greens of spirit, queuee up for heroics, and win.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of the reactions I get from players. Especially when I link DPS and still out DPS everyone by miles.

~P~

Icecrown Raiding Update

I am happy to announce that, with the help of 2 rogues who came and cleared the trash up to Lord Marrowgar with us for 1000g each, we have been able to face Lord Marrowgar. We have, however, been wiping to him for quite some time. We are struggling to deal with the frankly ridiculous damage output that he does to our tank and this is what is wiping us (tank keeps dying).

This is on 10 man, of course.

~P~

Icecrown's ridiculous class requirements

Good job Blizzard, making a joke of an instance that we can't do because we don't have a rogue.

For hours now we have been wiping to the trash before Lord Marrowgar, which we have as of yet been unsuccessful in attempting because we don't have a rogue.

So we'll be clearing one of the trash packs when somebody steps on an unseen trap which issues forth the Deathbound Ward, which cleaves, silences and spells instant doom for the raid. We'll run back and rebuff, only to have another Deathbound Ward spawn and wipe us again. This goes on for many hours.

It's completely preposterous that we have to be cruelly denied progression in Icecrown because we don't have a rogue available to us. Whatever happened to bring the player, not the class? I just want to see the content, but I can't because I don't have a rogue in my guild.

It's time that you either removed the traps and associated Deathbound Ward spawns entirely or gave the ability to disarm traps to another class/spec (like BM hunters).

DXE: Because BigWigs is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

This is an angry post that was sparked by some general idiocy and ignorance in the community (mainly from Drumstick).

If you're at all concerned about raiding, then you're probably going to be using a boss mod of some sorts. I'd wager that most of you reading this will be using Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs. If this is you, stop reading now and go do this:

1. Open your World of Warcraft folder.
2. Click through to Interface\Addons.
3. Find your DBM/BigWigs folders.
4. Delete them. All of them.
5. Install Deus Vox Encounters.

I've just done you a huge favour. DXE is by far superior to the pieces of crap that are DBM and BW. Let me rattle you off a few reasons as to why.

1. DXE looks good. The bars are eye-catching and are pleasant to look at, unlike DBM and BW's offerings, which will lead to you missing important information because you were too busy steering your eye clear of an ugly bar.

2. DXE is completely customisable. If you don't want bars on your screen telling you the timer of X ability, or you don't want to be told who has Y debuff, you don't need to. This leads to DXE being more streamlined and less spammy than alternatives. In addition, you can configure DXE to block raid warning messages from other boss mods, which also helps to cut down on spam.

3. DXE has a proximity display that isn't dogshit. Instead of merely arbitrarily telling you who is within 10 yards of you, DXE displays the exact distance and direction that a player is from you in a real-time window. This is amazing on any fight that requires people to spread out (e.g. NB, Saurfang).

If you're still not convinced, then be aware that DXE was instrumental in allowing Fallen Chapter to kill heroic Anub'arak, and had I not switched to it from BigWigs, who knows what would be happening today. Controlling the Nerubian Burrowers' Shadow Strike is vital, and BigWigs' timer for it is wrong and gets desynchronised as you progress through the fight. DXE doesn't suffer from this problem, and since I installed DXE, I haven't let a single person die to Shadow Strike.

One more thing: It's pretty well known now that DBM is owned by gold-selling companies. If you are actually stupid enough to support these scumbags, then you are a stupid piece of shit, and I sincerely hope that the next time you go to open a carton of milk to pour on your cereal, you find that the milk has been removed and replaced with ape cum. You deserve it, fuckface.

~P~

First Impressions

So, after two days of being able to experience 3.3, I have to conclude that I am very, very pleased with the way it has turned out. Despite the tyrannical onslaught of the blue bar boss and "instance not found" messages, both of which are pretty much resolved now, nothing about the patch has provoked my ire.

The dungeon finder tool is great, makes finding groups for anything a breeze. Tanks and healers will find an almost instant queue, while DPSers need to wait a whole, oh, 2-3 minutes. It's wonderful.

Although I complained vehemently in the past about the emblem changes, I don't mind them now, taking solace (or rather, dual solace) in the fact that Slime Pool McGee and his Band of Bads will not be able to access the best 258/264/277 loot.

As for the new content, the new 5 mans are excellent and offer something that's been lacking from 5 mans this expansion: replayability. Their loot and fun encounters will keep players wanting to go back.

The Icecrown raid itself is shaping up to be a cracker. Although the first four encounters seem quite undertuned, bear in mind that it is normal mode and they are showing a lot of promise to be hard encounters on hard mode. All of the encounters, especially Deathwhisper and the Gunship Battle are pretty fun and offer something new. The look and feel of the place is great and I'm looking forward to experiencing the rest of it. I have a great deal of confidence that the rest of Icecrown will be equally great.

You can expect some guides to Icecrown encounters in the near future.

~P~

New Features

To complement all the new features that have been released in Patch 3.3, there is now a new feature available on my blog. You may now click on the 'Raid Guide Brigade' icon in the right sidebar to view posts that are part of the Raid Guide Brigade.

I'd love to discuss some of the new features of the game, but the servers aren't making that possible at the moment.

~P~

The Day is Finally Upon Us

Nothing official has been posted yet, but BB is adamant that it's today, so of course, I'll believe him.

For comments: What are you looking forward to most in 3.3?

~P~

Raid Guide Brigade: Preparing for Icecrown

With 3 days to go until Icecrown, it's perfectly understandable that you and the rest of your bad guild want to be as ready as possible when it launches, so you can spend less time discussing strategy and more time wiping to Deathbringer Saurfang.

Icecrown is a winged instance, and only one of its 4 wings will be accessible upon launch. This wing contains Lord Marrowgore, Kel'Thuzad's wife, some stupid vehicle battle and the aforementioned Saurfang.

Something that appears in Icecrown but you would not be familiar with as a result of your exciting adventures in the Trial of the Crusader is the trash mob. Trash has historically proved to be a fun, dynamic pacing mechanism (as seen in Naxxramas and Ulduar) and Icecrown's trash should prove to be no different.The best part of fighting trash mobs, however, is the loot. Loot from trash mobs is some of the best in the game and the fact that it is never guaranteed to drop helps to keep you engaged and interested when fighting trash. Trash will be difficult to get your head around for those players who are coming fresh out of Trial of the Crusader into Icecrown, but if you remain positive about it then you will have the most fun anyone could have in this game.

The trash up to Lord Marrowgore is quite difficult and will present a challenge to raids that have healers and tanks in greens. Once you finally beat this trash though, you will be able to fight a slightly larger trash mob that looks like a flying skull with an axe. Ignore what you've learnt about running out of whirlwinds from Trial of the Crusader, because it hits for about 200.

There are 3 more raid encounters that will be available, but you, the reader, won't be able to get past the Marrowgore trash anyway so it is pointless to discuss them at this stage. You will have to wait until the first round of major nerfs, I'm afraid.

Check back here for more updates on Icecrown soon, and never forget that the Emblem of Conquest Raid Guide Brigade™ is always at the forefront of releasing guides to new content.

Counting Down The Days

It's a busy time for me, with 3.3 and Icecrown less than a week now. There'll be lots of interesting things to cover, so stay tuned.

I'm happy to announce that my Anub'arak guide was extremely well received in the community, achieving critical acclaim on the WoW forums and especially the MMO-Champion forums, where the moderators clearly weren't hugged enough as a child.

Coming up in the next few days is a look at Patch 3.2 in review, as well as a special Raid Guide Brigade™ entry to make sure you are ready for Icecrown when it hits.

Hello Mr Patch!

So it looks like 3.3 will be next week, December 8.

Let's get ready to enjoy 2-3 months of stagnated progression before we actually see some content that is meaningful.

Yay!

~P~