Good news everyone!

Great news everyone!

I was recently selected to be the Ret Paladin writer over at Paladin Schmaladin. It's a great site and I've been reading it for well over eighteen months now and I hope I'm able to bring something new to the table over there.

So what does this mean for Emblem of Conquest? Well, my updates here will become slightly more infrequent (if that's even possible). I'll be aiming for one or two a week here in addition to what I'm writing at Paladin Schmaladin. Either way, you haven't heard the last from me...

Please head over to Paladin Schmaladin and check it out even if you're not a paladin - it's a great resource to all players.

~P

Welcome to the Icecrown Restaurant!

If there was such a thing as the Icecrown Restaurant, your head chef would be none other than Sindragosa, who serves up for your raid a Mystic Buffet, with a side order of RNG.

Seriously, who the fuck thought this achievement in its current state would be a good idea? There's way too many variables and having even one of these fall out of line by a fraction of a second will cause you miss the train on the achievement and have to endure nine minutes of hell all over again.

Let's look at all the things that can go wrong:

You can have your tanks get Ice Tombed, a Taunt resist, among a host of potential RNG issues. Not to mention that every member of your raid needs to be absolutely perfect at all times, which are extremely lofty expectations to set for a gimmick achievement - and often the tanks can do everything correctly and still fail the achievement.

I wouldn't mind it so much if the rest of the fight was actually enjoyable and wasn't absolute hell to do. Oh, and they replaced Sindragosa's voice actor with someone that has some talent at voice acting.

~P

I probably should have mentioned this

As people that have flooded my inbox over the past two days asking why the WoW forums script I mentioned didn't work will attest to, you need an addon called Greasemonkey in order to work, if you're running Firefox.

I have no idea what you do if you're running Google Chrome, and frankly, I pity you.

Download Greasemonkey for Firefox here.

A Must-Have Addon

Okay, so it's not a WoW addon, but it's an absolute gem and a must have if you're at all serious about hardcore forum posting or trolling.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/70501 for Firefox users
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jbcebflkmekofoenbmnmijepaedcpigi for Google Chrome users

This little baby will display characters' WoWProgress rankings on the forums, conveniently located under their guild name when they post.


So now, there is no longer any need to create a new tab for WoWProgress when you want to look someone up to bash their progression. One glance at their post does the trick.


~P

I feel dirty.

I've been bad. So very bad.

So my guild killed Deathbringer Saurfang (heroic, of course, taking us to 8/12 total) this week. I should probably be happy for this, but the kill was rather hollow because each member of the raid was doing 5% more damage and healing and had 5% more health.

Perhaps I'm being facetious, but I personally don't think we'd have killed it without the buff, and that's sad. Either way, we'll never find out if we could have killed it or not. Yes, the option's there to turn the buff off, but let's be serious here - with absolutely zero incentive to do so, do you really think this option is going to be exercised?

On the upside though, I was able to break 12000 DPS on this fight for the first time thanks to the buff. Awesome.

~P

Taking Things Too Far

Blizzard's degeneration of raiding has really gone too far. Seven of the twelve hardmodes in ICC 25 are an absolute joke and will die within 5 pulls. There's another two that will take you only a few more attempts.

The remaining three are slightly more difficult and will last most guilds a few more weeks yet - but that's because attempts on them are limited.

Even the easier hardmodes of Ulduar were a considerable step up from this rubbish - prior to them being nerfed into the ground of course.

And it looks like Blizzard won't even have to nerf Icecrown, it will nerf itself in the form of a stacking HP, damage and healing buff for everyone - stacking up to 30%. Not that you'll need it of course, as everyone except the worst of the worst guilds out there will be 11/12 ICC Hardmode by the time the buff kicks up to 30%.

~P

New Spec for Season 8 PvP

Hello guys,

In the search for a new spec to take Season 8 by storm in the way Protribution took Season 7 by storm, I stumbled upon the following gem:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sfcbGGrZx0xA0uxZE0Mzrh

I call it the trifecta. Try it, you'll be amazed.

~P

On Ensidia

In case you've recently been living under a rock, in a shoe, or on one of the moons of Jupiter, you should know that Ensidia recently got banned for exploiting the Lich King encounter by using Saronite Bombs to rebuild the platform, trivialising a certain aspect of the fight. This was the world first kill, but they had their titles, loot, achievement, and credit stripped with the ban.

I'm not naive enough to take a side and defend them vehemently, but it's hard not to feel sorry for Ensidia. They've essentially been beta-testing on live and discovered a broken encounter and been punished for it. There's no excuse for content going live with fatal bugs such as this.

That said, Ensidia haven't had the best record of clean kills in the past (C'Thun, Hodir, Mimiron, etc) and their official statements should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. I personally wasn't sure whether I could trust them when they said they didn't know what was causing the bug.

With that said, banning them is a bit harsh, and they should have been given the benefit of the doubt from Blizzard. Next time this happens (really, you're kidding yourself if you think no boss will ever be bugged again), fix the bug and take away their kill, sure, but at least give the guild another shot at it for the week.

It would appear that Blizzard opted for the easiest way out when dealing with this issue. Respawning the Lich King in Ensidia's instance would have been extra effort, and not to mention the effort Blizzard would have to go to when dealing with the bleeding hearts on the US forums crying out "BUT YOU BANNED EXODUS YOU OBVIOUSLY FAVOUR ENSIDIA".

~P

Blizzard gets one thing right

And that one thing is removing limited attempts on normal modes in Icecrown.

Now, let's see if they're sensible enough to do the same for heroic mode.

Actually, scratch that, Cataclysm isn't anywhere near ready yet, need to keep people playing (and paying) a bit longer.

~P

New Stat Required: Resilience Penetration

With the recent resilience buff in PvP, resilience and healing has become far too powerful in PvP. The new debuff that reduces healing done in battlegrounds and arena does not go far enough to solve the problem. This is why I am proposing that Cataclysm takes the following measure to reduce the effects of resilience on PvP:

Resilience penetration. Each point of resilience on gear also grants one point of resilience penetration. This reduces the enemy's resilience by a percentage equal to to the amount of damage reduction you take from your own resilience rating.

Doing this will cause Cataclysm PvP to become far less ridiculous and much more balanced for classes that are gimped against high resilience targets.

~P

Enter the Lich King

Patch 3.3.2 is here, and with it we'll see a few changes and new features. Let's look at the good and the bad:

The good:
Lich King and the Frostwing Halls are here, and you'll now be able to slay Sindragosa and the Lich King for some shiny new purples!
Arena Season 8 is here with some minor PvP changes. I look forward to watching Larxy struggling to break 1500. Also means we have a new boss moving into the Vault of Archavon, giving you 264 tier pieces for something the same difficulty as Ingvar the Plunderer. Nice.

The bad:
We have a new boss moving into the Vault of Archavon, giving you 264 tier pieces for something the same difficulty as Ingvar the Plunderer. Nice.

Other than that there's not really much to talk about. A new cinematic for the death of the Lich King is out, and we'll be able to see it in time thanks to the stacking HP/damage buff!

~P

How to: Blood Princes 25

As my Professor Putricide strategy brought in great feedback, I've decided to continue with the picture strategy format for now.

I present to you all: The Emblem of Conquest Raid Guide Brigade strategy for the Blood Prince Council on 25 man! A guide to the Queen herself, Lana'thel, will be up shortly.

Happy raiding!

~P

Limited attempts are stupid and need to go.

Tonight in Icecrown I was confronted with a small problem that would never have arisen were it not for the archaic, stupid limited attempt system.

On one of our wipes a paladin in the raid cast Divine Intervention on another player so that they would be spared the 10% durability loss. However, most of the raid had already started to run back and one of the raid members had duly noted that trash had respawned.

The normal procedure that we would have followed in this situation is for the person that got DI'ed (and anyone that they may have ressurected) to run into the boss so that they could die, release, run back and return to the front of the instance so they could regroup with the raid.

However, thanks to the limited attempts system, this is no longer possible as it would be foolish to waste an attempt for something as silly as trash respawns.

Blizzard, can the limited attempts system now so that we can be free to wipe without fear of only having half our raid available to clear trash respawns. 

~P

New Ashen Rings Required

As a hardcore PvPer, I ground my way up to Ashen Verdict exalted by farming Marrowgar trash so I could get the 277 ring, which is best in slot due to the proc.

However, this ring has no resilience on it, making it less viable for PvP. I have found that since I started PvPing with this ring equipped, I have been dying a lot easier and more frequently.

Please Blizzard, can you make alternative versions of all 5 rings, exchanging the garbage hit (or MP5 in the healer ring's case) for resilience? Such a change would be widely appreciated by PvPers everywhere.

Ashen Strength Rings are complete garbage

Blizzard continues their trend of extremely poor strength itemisation. But then again, I wasn't expecting this to be better than the Agi version thanks to one and a half expansions of wearing leather. Although it is fun to watch all the people crying about it because they thought Blizzard might buck the trend after three years.


~P

Update

Blood Queen ten-man down, it seemed really undertuned. We killed it in about three minutes, well short of both the hard and soft enrages, and although we're using 25 man gear, I can't imagine it being too difficult for strict 10 man guilds either.

The hardmode of this is probably going to just be a tighter DPS check, I can't imagine it being too difficult either.

Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be talking about that DevChat - I'll get right on it.

The Blood Prince Fight

So far I've been able to experience this fight, as we're yet to attempt Blood Queen Lana'thel.

On 25 man normal mode it's an absolute joke, and it's probably easier if you kick half your raid before you attempt it.

Stay tuned for some great posts over the next few days. Tomorrow I'll be providing my analysis on the Blizzard DevChat and on Saturday you'll be able to access the Raid Guide Brigade for this encounter.

Also, resilience is getting buffed. PvP and arena becomes even more retarded. I'm glad I don't bother anymore.

~P

The Crimson Hall Opens!

Yay, we have been drip-fed two more bosses. And from what early reports are saying, they're rather unchallenging.

But I'm positive that there will be people out who are going to struggle with them, so the Emblem of Conquest Raid Guide Brigade will be providing you with guides to both the Blood Prince Council and Blood Queen Lana'thel.

Look for them in the next few days.

~P

How to: Professor Putricide (25 man)

Professor Putricide, as I have previously stated, is a very easy boss, so writing a full-blown text guide to this boss is unnecessary and boring for the vast majority of players.

Instead, I have created a helpful flow chart for players attempting this encounter, which still manages to explain all of the specifics of the fight in detail so that players will understand where they are going wrong.

                                      (Click to enlarge)

~P

Some threads worth reading.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418949911&sid=1

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418636100&sid=1

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418707801&sid=1

I'll update this in the coming days, the forums are at the moment (surprisingly) providing us with a wealth of interesting and funny threads.

~P

Don't you just love idiots?

Well done to the idiots of Blackrock who have made me slightly richer.

Question 1: What do you do when someone spams trade with "WTB uncut epic gems, 110g for purple/orange"?

Answer: Buy two stacks of Dreadstones from the AH for 85-90g each.

Question 2: What do you do you when someone spam trade with "WTB Star Wood x20"?

Answer: Head over to an enchanting supplies vendor and buy some, selling them to this guy for a moderate (1300%) profit.

Anyway, this was just some fun I've had of late while I've been trying to think of actual meaningful content to post. There's some pretty interesting discussion going on in the forums with regards to what I posted on Wednesday.

Additionally, Blizzard have also done a developer chat on Twitter again, which will surely give me plenty of things to tear my hair out at.

Stop breaking game mechanics!

Blizzard's attitude and tendency to hotfix seemingly minor changes to items is wreaking serious havoc upon some core mechanics of the game.

This whole dirty business started when Blizzard stated that Bryntroll was too powerful for certain classes/specs and decided to bring it back into line by removing the chance for it to proc off certain abilities. This has resulted in a more-or-less complete overhaul in proc/PPM mechanisms which has drastically affected some enchants (such as Blade Ward), as well as certain trinkets.

Why is this being done in the middle of a patch? I can understand hotfixing why you'd want to hotfix Bryntroll, but a complete overhaul should have been saved for the next minor patch, so it could have been correctly tested on PTRs and received player feedback before changes happen, rather than sending the playerbase into a state of frenzy regarding proc items as is the case now.

Changing or nerfing an item or two isn't going to break the game, but changing the mechanics behind the items has further reaching consequences and isn't something you want to be doing in the middle of a patch. So stop messing around with things on live and use the test realms for some actual testing. All the testing is being done on live at the moment, and that is not a good thing.

~P

How to: Rotface (25 man)

Rotface is another boss in the Plagueworks and he represents a considerable step up in difficulty from Festergut. However, with this guide, you should have no problems.

First of all, as this guide is quite difficult to understand without visual aids, you can find them attached at the bottom of this post.

As always, let's discuss group setup:

Five tanks are required. It can also be done with six, but we think this is a little extreme.
Eight healers is a good number, two of each class. If you're running with six tanks then drop down to seven healers.
The remaining twelve spots will be fleshed out with DPS. Bring anything. Really. It doesn't matter.

The Fight:

Rotface should be tanked as centrally as possible. Have your entire raid stack up behind him on the melee, as he occasionally will deal AoE damage to the entire raid, and this makes healing the raid easier. This also counteracts the slime pools that he will drop during the fight - if your raid is in melee, they won't ever be hit by slime pools.

While your Main Tank tanks Rotface, your other 4 tanks should be waiting in the corners of the room as displayed below. Periodically, a member of your raid will be hit with a debuff called Mutating Injection and they must run out of the raid to one of their tanks to drop their slime pool...I mean add. The first person to receive this debuff runs to "Tank 1" in the image and waits for the second person to receive the debuff. They will then also drop an add at the tank. Once both people have dropped their adds, they will merge to form a Big Ooze which must be tanked by the tank at their position. This occurs 3 more times, with the only difference being that the raid members will now be running to different tanks. Once all 4 off-tanks are tanking a Big Ooze, the next two people to receive the Injection will run to the main tank to drop their add. The main tank must then pick up and tank the fifth Big Ooze^. Your main tank will take lots of damage at this point, so big heals and cooldowns are a must! At this point, your 4 off-tanks need to run their Big Oozes to the main tank. All 5 will then merge together and start to explode*, so your raid needs to move away from the Really Really Big Ooze. By this point he should be at like 5% anyway because of the HP nerf, so assuming your entire raid doesn't get exploded on, you will win.

^ Note: If you are using the six tank strategy, have your fifth off-tank pick up the fifth Big Ooze. You should still tank him on the main tank as you really have nowhere else to go.

* Note: You can not tank the Big Oozes once they have merged together, as they gain a stacking damage buff after they merge. Although it is fine to tank a normal Big Ooze (without any buffs), having your tanks try to tank a Bigger Ooze will have them be one-shot, so your tanks need to be careful.

New Banner!

By popular demand a new banner is here!

Dedicated to the welfare heroes of Blackrock (from left to right) - Hunky, loyal reader and frequent commenter of this very blog; Drumstick, the original welfare hero; Andviaxoxo, my amazing alt; Durzha, PvE superstar and best rogue on the server; and Indurable, some shitbad mage.

~P

How To: Festergut (25 man)

Festergut is one of the bosses in the Plagueworks wing of Icecrown Citadel, and the easiest boss of this wing. As part of Emblem of Conquest's Raid Guide Brigade, you will be instructed on how to defeat this encounter as well as the other encounters in this wing. Guides to these encounters will be posted shortly.

First of all, let's talk about Festergut's group set-up:

One tank and 5 healers are required, the remaining spots are to be filled with DPS. Festergut has 40.4 million health and he enrages after two minutes and fifteen seconds into the fight, so this means your 19 DPSers have to put out an average of 15750 DPS each. This will be easily achievable if your raid is stacked with the top DPS classes and specs such as moonkins, elemental shamans and warlocks. You also NEED one non-tanking paladin (for reasons that will be discussed later).

Your 5 healers can be anything, but try to maintain a good balance. Both the tanks and the raid is hit very hard, so having 1 holy paladin, 1 resto shaman, 1 resto druid and a priest of each healing spec is ideal.

Every so often, 3 random players in the raid will receive a debuff called Gas Spore, identifiable by a giant spore floating over the players' heads. When this debuff runs out, the player and any targets near them will be afflicted by a very powerful DoT. For this reason, anyone targeted with Gas Spore must immediately run out of the raid, being mindful not to run out of range of healers as they must be healed up.

Meanwhile, your tank will be hit with a debuff that increases his damage by 10% per stack. Once it gets to 9 stacks, approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds into the fight, the tank needs to have Divine Intervention cast on him, or else he will explode. Some strategies use 2 tanks to deal with this, however this greatly increases the DPS requirement needed to down Festergut, so it's (obviously) an inferior method. Your tank must click off the DI straight away before Festergut murders anyone.

Keep in mind that through all this time Festergut himself will be gaining a buff that increases his damage and attack speed. If you have not killed him by 2:15 into the fight, he will go berserk and cast a spell called Pungent Blight that will instantly wipe the raid, so your DPS needs to be on top of their game! You are also very reliant on your tank clicking off DI in time. Pray that Festergut doesn't go for someone that the tank dislikes when the tank gets DI'ed.

Festergut is a very challenging fight that will require every raider to put in their A-game. Follow this strategy and it should fall over!

Icecrown Tuning Review

Putricide is too easy.

As for the other two bosses in the Plagueworks, also a touch undertuned on 25 man, and right about where they should be on 10 man.

Deathwhisper got nerfed on 25, which is sort of understandable as an entry-level boss, but it wasn't exactly hard to begin with.

Let's hope the next wing provides more of a challenge.

~P

Icecrown Raiding Update, Take Two

We have become stuck on the Deathspeaker High Priest. For those of you that don’t know, this is the most overpowered mob in the game. When we initially encountered it (running with our 4 healers that we needed to defeat Lord Marrowgar), we noticed that the raid was taking too much damage and dying very quickly. So we made the switch to 5 healers and although the raid isn’t dying as quickly anymore, we are still struggling a lot. These mobs heal up about 25-30% of their HP every 10-15 seconds or so, and we can’t dps them down fast enough before our healers go OOM and our tank goes splat. Our 4 DPS (we run 1 tank for Marrowgar and probably will for Deathwhisper once we get there) just aren’t getting it down quickly enough.

We don’t have an MS effect, our only warrior is prot, our only hunter is BM, and we have no rogues, which some of you who actively peruse these forums may have already noted in an earlier thread. Is this what is hurting us, the lack of MS effect? I hope it isn’t, we already had to pay a rogue from another guild to come in and help us clear Marrowgar trash, and I don’t want to have to do the same thing again. Or is there another issue at hand that I am missing?

"Oh crap, I didn't get Oculus"

Is going to be the new standard phrase when running random heroics.

Blizzard has decided to offer more loot to people who complete Oculus runs using the random dungeon system, and let me be the first person to say I'm going to start dropping Oculus runs out of spite now. Especially when I'm tanking or healing.

If you stick around long enough to hopefully not be wiped by a warrior doing 37 DPS and a DK tank who's wearing full DPS gear, is in Blood Presence and has 18k HP, then you'll receive rare gems, 2 more Triumph badges and a chance at a mount.

And if that wasn't enough, Oculus has been nerfed even further, despite the fact that it was never hard to begin with. But if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that people will still find new and innovative ways to screw it all up, and the whining on the forums will only continue.

~P

2010. A new year, but this number is also Larxy's DPS.

As we stand at the beginning of a new year, we have a lot to look forward to, it's shaping up to be the best year of WoW yet.

The secrets of Icecrown will continue to be revealed, as we explore beyond Deathbringer Saurfang and soon, get to experience Arthas and hardmodes.
A possible new raid in the Chamber of Aspects to bridge the gap between Icecrown and Cataclysm. This was hinted at some time ago.
Cataclysm will be released. It's almost definitely this year, my bet is on August/September.

Happy new year, and happy hunting.

~P