I’m pretty sure I have bitched about this before, most likely in a throw away line in a throw away post.

The thing is with my increased playtime, the increased gear availability, overgeared alts, the ROLFSTOMPA heroics and the LFG Naxx10 must have 5,000 GS and ICC achievement mentality that seems to permeate the game right now, it just seems that every time I enter a raid I am surrounded by…

One Wipe Pansies.

What is a One Wipe Pansy?

Maybe the most common example of their occurrence is the best way to answer that question.

Very Overgeared Arseholes!

Err, I mean VoA. 10 or 25, it makes no difference, although the effect is more pronounced in VoA25.

Wintergrasp is won, again (I think the Alliance take pity on the Horde and offer it up for few hours each day on Aman’Thul… mmm did we just lose it… everyone must be raiding).

There is a flurry of

LFM VoA

Invites are sent out real fast if anyone responds. Bodies to fill VoA are always hot property.

Summons follow the same model, no sooner have you accepted the raid invite than the summon request hits you.

Raid chat is filled with

1 if you are heals, 2 if you are tank. OK, GTG, zone in!

9/10 I don’t have to zone in because the summon came from a Lock inside the instance.

Most of the time these guys seem very professional.

Koralon, here we come.

Easy one shot with the occasional death. I swear sometimes the fire appears under my corpse a second after I drop, but it’s a rarity that I go down, I know fire burns… I am the master of Fire 50% of the time!

Off to Emalon.

We all know it’s a reasonably simple fight.

• Don’t stack up
• Run like buggery from the explosion
• DPS the boss like you life depends on it.
• DPS the Overcharged Minionbe cause your life DOES depend on it.

All being well, 3-4 target swaps and it’s all over.

Now I say “we all know this”, but obviously there are people that don’t. More now than ever. The LFD/Weekly Raid/Emblems of Everything changes mean that some people that were previously happy slaughtering Hogger during their 3 hours of playtime each week can now enter (and theoretically perform fine) in an entry level raid instance.

Entry Level?

Hell yeah! Realistically the bosses have become easier as time has gone along (or gear flowed from the heavens), so this is now a 15 minute entry level raid.

20 minutes if someone took the time to explain the encounter…

What, no one does?

Of course not, everyone knows how to do VoA right! Right?

Let the drama begin…

So the Minion overcharges, “everyone” swaps targets and after 1,2,3 overcharges we wipe.

FFS NOOBS!!!!!

Douchebag1 leaves the raid.

Cocksure the Arrogant leaves the raid.

Ican’tbelieveit’snotbutter leaves the raid.

Ummmm, guys… Did we just lockdown a raid ID after killing one boss out of three, then toss the other two bosses to the wind?

Seriously guys, that was most likely the last wipe we will have, so why not stick around, complete the raid ID, get our emblems then chuck a hussy fit?

Give me a show of hands (behind closed doors)

Maybe even explain the fight 1st, no need to ask for a show of hands, just explain the fight so that those that haven’t done the fight before don’t have to embarrass themselves owning up to their ignorance.

The other night I went in with Gnomeaggedon. Being the good little Gnome I am, I switched targets, I even kept my instant pyroblast as my opener on the Minions.

We get the 2nd Overcharged add down and then silence… Well apart from the /raidquits and accusations of DPS ARE FUCKING NOOBS THAT DON’T SWITCH TARGETS.

But here’s the thing. I saw him go down, as did a few others and we shared that knowledge. I checked recount, yes 2nd one looks the same as the 1st, and that didn’t kill us.

I saw the DPS bolting across the floor to DPS the overcharged… Something went wrong, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

The strange thing this time around was that the rest of the raid stayed put and we went on to do the bosses sans pansies.

How Embarrassment!

When the last boss fell, about 10 achievements popped up on the screen. There were a few groans, lols and one

How embarrassing!

What? Hunh?

Since when did a 1st boss kill become a source of embarrassment?

The guy that uttered those words was one of the achievers (Gnomeaggedon was another one FYI, I guess the pansies have been around for a while, or I haven’t raided much on Gnomeaggedon).

I checked him out… I’m hoping he was a healer because there was no damage on the board. Still as a healer he was barely above those that popped health stones on the meters.

Still, at this point in the game, when tanks are pulling 3k DPS and many DPS are pulling 7.5 in crappy heroics, there is no great loss in a few of the overwhelmed, under-informed newbies “underperforming”

Blame the Overachievers

I actually question the underperforming bit because experience has shown when you have Overachievers they tend to suck the opportunities to hit the meters. Shaman do this naturally with chain heals.

Anyway, if you are a One Shot Pansy, pull your head in a /raidquit 10 minutes later… at least after the 2nd or 3rd wipe.

I think from now one I am going to ask people that don’t know the fight to join my private channel (xxxSquidlyDoesGnomereganxxx) where I will explain the fights to the newbies out of the glaring veiw of the Uber Pansies.

Why start with the boss the One Shot Pansies are happy to leave after?

Ever done For the Alliance or For the Horde.

General principle is do Thrall last.. that’s the only one people want!

Likewise I would suggest that raid leaders start the bosses from the bottom up. A lot of these raid pansies are intending to drop group as soon as the best boss is dropped… they just need an excuse. So make them wait for it, make them stay if they don’t want to waste the raid ID.

I know the old strategy was to start on the hard boss, if the raid couldn’t down that, then no one got saved and nothing was lost. But times have changed, and so have attitudes.

As BBB says (god I love BBB, and I know I’m not alone), it’s time to bring out the stick, there are already too many carrots!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/01/15/dear-healers-do-your-freakin-job/

A friend looked me up while he snowman danced with me, otherwise I would have no idea.

I did some Ulduar

Off tangent for a moment, I’ll bring it back on course I promise.

Back a day or so before appearing on TNB, I did a couple of bosses in Ulduar. We only got Flame Leviathan and XT down, wiped on Razorscale and chucked it in. It was a late night, spur of the moment thing so no wucking furries.

Can you heal Ulduar10 hardmode?

I was in LookingForRaid when I got the whisper. I said I doubted it, but if it was normal I’d be ok.

He asked for GearScore and Achievements and I foolishly said yes.

• Foolishly because I passed up 3 other raid offers waiting for their invite.
• Foolishly because… Well I’ll get to that…

My issue with GearScore and Achievement Checking.

The person demanding it is covering their butt, not yours. They want to make sure their run is successful, not gaurantee yours.

I guess I’m going down with the sinking ship…

Finally I get an invite and we head to FL. I get told to get away from the chopper, they it’s use is explained in detail like it’s the most important vehicle in the joint… No word on the others.

We got FL down… Thanks largely to me. The others were hardly on the meters… Whatever, I guess people can screw up… Somehow… Don’t know how, but they must be able to.

Maybe they didn’t throw Pyrite… We certainly never shot any down…

Deconstructing!

On to XT, my 1st real opportunity to see what this uber GearScore and Achievement needing raid was like…

After 15 odd minutes of terrible instructions the tank charged in…

STOP, STOP, STOP!

Luckily the one comment he read of mine was to stop.

Everyone had ignored my comments about the adds on either side of the room, but now the tank listened and charged off. The OT nearly ran in the opposite direction, stopping just before body pulling…

Mmm not a good sign.

We engaged XT

We wiped.

Pretty dismally really. Apparently the DPS didn’t want to be troubled with bursting down the bomb bots because the boss was bigger or something…

The Heals just aren’t good enough…

It was the healers fault of course, well not the MT healer cause she managed to keep the tank at 20% the whole time… Mmmm

Healers reassigned. I am no longer solely on the OT (who didn’t take any damage until the non-dps’d bomb bot exploded in his face. I had been raid healing because the 3rd healer would have let everyone die.

So the new healing assignment is well, same as before except now I am officially healing the raid and 75% of the off tank.

They couldn’t tell me which 75%, so I decided I’d look after the top 75% of his health bar… After that it was the other healers problem.

We did much better this time, it was another wipe… but quicker and less painful.

Taking out the raid rubbish

The raid leader steps up and announces that he’s kicking the crap DPS, which draws my attention to Recount.

I was a bit confused… There was no DPS above 2,500 and only two above 2,000. The raid leader wasn’t one of them!

So what was he going to do, kick everyone including himself?

Someone left, or was kicked, and while they looked for another DPS the raid leader said something smart in vent about how disappointed he would be if they didn’t get it this time… My response:

If this fails I will be reasonably pissed… get gear checked and can’t even down 2nd boss…

The response…

Don’t get pissed at us. Get pissed at our stupid 10 year old main tank, who left cuz her sister wanted to play hello kitty

I wonder why?

Sensible Raid member selection

They got their replacement, an apparently awesomely geared and experienced healer…

HEALER?!?!

WTF!

• 2 tanks,
• 4 healers, and
• 4 DPS that can’t crack 2,500 DPS

Squidly the Patient

Now I’m a patient guy, so I stuck around. I just had to see how 4 healers were going to save the raid.

• We engaged…
• We wiped…
• I said Thanks for the invite!
• I dropped group…

What a bunch of tossers!

Straight after this fail group I joined a quick Noth job for the weekly raid quest… it was the complete opposite, quick professional lots of DPS.

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/01/07/you-can-shove-your-gearscore-right-up-your-gnomehole/

• 10 Regulars tackling Naxx?
• 8 Regulars + 2 PuGs tackling Naxx?
• 8 Regulars only tackling Naxx?

Crazy Thinking

I had this crazy idea mid-last-week, why lose 1/2 hour to 1 hour LF2M Normal Naxx, when the 8 of us could just give it a go by ourselves. Let’s face it, more often than not, 2 people go down in the 1st 15 seconds of any fight, so what’s going to be the difference…

Hey, there’s even an achievement for it, The Dedicated Few.

It was put to a ReadyCheck vote and 6 out of 8 were prepared to give it a go, after all, worst case we could advertise later… let’s face it, there usually comes a point in the night where we lose one and have to go hunting.

Early Regrets

Pretty soon I was regretting this decision. I just didn’t have the mojo this night, everything felt wrong. It wasn’t just that my pocket Healer was playing LaserChicken (I’m not going to look that 5% crit in the mouth!), but I was just unsettled… my DPS was low, I couldn’t find my targets, not even with AoE… it just all felt wrong.

We got to Instructor Razuvious and my worst fears were confirmed… this wasn’t going to be our 8 man night. I still don’t know what it is about Razuvious, but we never one-shot him, there always has to be at least one fail. My heart sunk as the Tank apologized, saying he wasn’t warmed up yet… but then he’s never warm enough for Razuvious.

Gosick the Harvester

We got Razuvious 2nd time around, easily, so it was time for Gothik the Harvester. We realized at this point that this would be the make or break fight for us, we only had 3 full time DPS, with Mr.Tree being Mr.Bird for the night… the question was, would we have enough.

Mr. Tree got the honors for starting the fight this time around and we did… we took Gothik down. It was at this point that we were all filled with a new sense of possibility, if we could take out Gothik with our underGnomed group split in half, maybe we could take out most of Naxx.

8 Men / 4 Horsemen = 2 each

The Four Horsemen brought new doubts of course… now we were split in 4 parts. Mr Offspec and Mr Tree got the back of the room, they can look after their own healing, while the remaining 2 DPS look after the front Horsemen… not really sounding all that promising on paper.

In practice it didn’t appear to be going all that well either.

Thane was going down, slowly down, as was Rivendare…

Then Blaumeux made a mess of Mr Offspec and the raid wide pain began…

… or not.

Thane dropped…

One tank ran to the back to take care of business there, we switched to and slaughtered Rivendare, and as soon as it looked like a wipe it was over….

Not a wipe, but a stunning victory!

One quarter and 3 bosses down… maybe, just maybe we can do this…

Mini-Patchwerk

Next Boss of the rank was Patchwerk.

We were concerned about Patchwerk, you see he has this enrage timer thing, and we had chosen to demote Mr. Tree to healing for this fight, which meant that were were left with only 3 DPS.

I took the initiative, and brought Patchwerk down to our size.. if only temporarily… sure Baby Spice does nothing more than make him look smaller… Sure he hits just as hard… but I figured that if he looked smaller we would have a psychological advantage.

Won with a roll of One!

Must have worked as we one shot him before he enraged, and our tank used his best roll on Hatestrike… luckily he had no competition!

Infection Central

Grobbulus was an interesting fight. When you basically have 2 toons out of action at any one time running off with their Mutagen Injection (one running off, one running back), plus only one spare DPS to help with the slimes, things can get very interesting.

Add the accidental cleansing of the 1st Mutagen Injection while the infected toon was in the middle of the room and you have a recipe for disaster… No?

No!

One shot… nothing can stop us now… can it?

Zombie Block

Well nothing but Gluth…

The key to Gluth is a competent kiter… WTB competent kiter… No Hunter, No DK, just one Pathetic Mage that can’t kite to save himself, let alone 7 other mates…

Mr. Z! admitted defeat before we even began.

He also admitted defeat after our 1st failed attempt where the pathetic Mage couldn’t kite the Zombies.

He also admitted defeat after out “PuG” Tree Druid respeced to Bear to Offtank…

Now I call him a PuG, but he has been pugging with us for as long as we have been running Naxx10, so he is really a regular… but although he has Bear as his Dual Spec he never uses it… literally! Mr. Offspec (who has a Druid Alt) was giving tips on how to tank as we started the encounter.

So after that wipe Mr. Z! was adamant that our 8 man attempt had come to an end… but Mr. Gloom, our Going-To-Give-This-A-Go-Bear-Tank thought it was worth one more go.. and promised not to taunt as often. I focused more on Gluth, while our Tankadin was left alone with the Zombies.. My only input was going to be a Frost Nova and AoE during Decimate phase.

Mr. Z! was amazed when Gluth went down… he wasn’t alone of course, we were all amazed… looking good baby!

More Positive, Less Negative

Which left Thaddius to complete the quarter.

Thaddius  and his two mates before him.

Considering we normally struggle on Thaddius, we were doubtful that we would succeed. Normally we struggle to keep the DPS balanced on his mates, but there was no time to ponder the likely chances of failure.

We all knew the fight, all that needed to be done was execute it perfectly…

His mates went down perfectly, never more than one percent difference in health.

Thaddius himself was no match for us. Perfect charge swapping, all bunched up as required… It was all Pew Pew Pew…

Thaddius says:

Thank you…

To which I say:

No, Thank you!

What’s this, 2 men short and a new Thaddius record… Geez, something is really broken here…

Ohh and Thaddius gave me a new Hat!

How long I have dreamed of a hat that wasn’t blue… now I have one!

2/4 Quarters down… can we keep this up?

Noth the Plaguebringer – One Shot!

Heigan the Unclean – Two Shot!

The 1st one was just an unlucky break, but the 2nd one was perfect, we even all danced perfectly.

Hallway of Full Health

Every week when we do the run from Heigan to Loatheb we lose one or two in the hallway.. we ALWAYS do!

I should point out, I am always one of them, and have to Invis run back through to join the others…

Do I need to tell you how we went with only 8 bodies…

Perfect…

Spore Loser

Apart from Mr. Bird hugging all Loatheb’s spores (being a healer, he never realized it was important for DPS to hug the spores, he just saw them as another opponent and Moonfired then ASAP, Loatheb just went down like a pile of Zombie excrement.

3/4 Quarters down… into the home stretch…

Anub’Rekhan… One shot…

I think we were now so confident that we were leaving the room before his corpse had settled on the floor.

Mommas going to knock US out!

Grand Widow Faerlina… Do we go for the Momma Said Knock you Out achievement…

The wipe says no!

The 2nd wipe says we just aren’t going to do it…

Back to the usual strategy…

I warm up the adds with a bit of FrostFire, then we take them down when she enrages… actually, there wasn’t much left to take down, I was cooking!

Web Wrapping it up

That just leaves Maexxna, but Mr. Tree was now healing with his forehead… We needed to shout at him through vent to keep him awake… it had been a long night. We convince him to stay with us for Maexxna, while we tee up a Priest to fill in if we get Maexxna down.

We get Maexxna down… bid Mr. Tree farewell, welcome in the Priest and rock up to Sapphiron.

Ice cold dead

Now we know we are pushing it. We normally lose more than 2 in this fight, so starting the fight 2 behind is going to make it all that much harder. Worse yet, the priest is unfamiliar with the fight.

3 of us go down during the fight, the priest twice, but against the odds, Sapphiron is returned to a big pile of bones.

You and what army?

Final Boss…. Kel’Thuzad

I have to admit, I am feeling pretty freaked about this fight. We are normally stretched to the limit. I normally have assistance with the banshees, but I am the sole ranged this week. There is no margin for error on this fight, ok well maybe a little, but not much.

Mmm and I was the one that took out his kitty before we began.. I hope he doesn’t hold grudges…

We didn’t fail… You Failed KT!

When this flashed up on the screen, Vent erupted… against the odds we had done two things:

• A full clear of Naxx in one night
• We did it with only 8 raid members

We were left wondering why we ever bother losing time at the beginning of the night looking for 2 more… Ultimately we lose at least 2 people each fight, usually lose at least 1 PuG as the night goes on. I was reminded of the night we failed on Sapp twice and a PuG left calling us losers, only for us to take Sapp the next attempt… this time, we didn’t have to entertain fools or puggers, we just did it ourselves.

Looking for Boost

One little thing wiped the smile off my face, only momentarily, but after the awesome efforts that my mates and I had put in to clearing Naxx underGnomed, the last thing I wanted was a random tell asking for a boost.

For one thing I am in Dalaran, not in Westfall, or even Stormwind.

For another thing, No! means No!

After my knockback he started whispering my mates… I hope he managed to find someone, eventually, but it wasn’t going to be one of us.

A Small Feast

I’m still working on my cooking achievements. Only a few until I have conquered the Northrend cooking, and only 11 recipes to learn before I’ve knocked that achievement over too. One that I had left to do was cooking a Small Feast.

So I cooked it.

Then I thought… I haven’t got much chance of selling it anywhere, so I might as well eat it.

Before I ate the feast I was a big BIG Gnome…

Once I ate it, I was small…

How small…

Small enough that I could barely see myself over the top of the feast.

Small enough that I gave some Hordies a bit of a scare…

• What you think I’m Gnome poop?
• You think that other Gnome just gave birth to me?

Lucky I didn’t pop any other shrinking consumables…

Riding my strider was a bit difficult… I could barely see over the handle bars!

Hat Trick

I don’t often display my helm, I sort of figure it messes up my hair too much… well you can’t see my hair, which is worse than it being messed up, because my hair is as much of my identity as the Fonz’s leather jacket was to him.

Still, whenever I get a new one, I have a quick look… and I have to say, I thought twice about turning this helm display off… I look much more fearsome with it on!

Crawling for Chicks

So I have spent a bit of time lately buttering Marcia up. I knew things were going well, as the little gifts she has been giving me have been getting better the more I chat with her… A jeweled rod has to be a symbol of something and I assume the reason she gave me the compass was so I would find my way back to her.

On my next to last visit to Marcia, she had a couple more gifts for me…

You know a girl’s got the hots for a Gnome when she starts giving clothes as a present… obviously she doesn’t want to be seen in public with me wearing my gladiator’s helm. I guess it will keep the sun from my eyes while we throw the rods together… At least it isn’t a purple pimp hat!

As for giving pets… I’m guessing the next step is she is going to want to leave a toothbrush at my place… She better not want closet space, because I have none to spare!

Luckily the pet is smaller than me.. almost big enough to ride mind you, maybe a Gnome wake board? Maybe if I keep it out while strolling the streets of Dalaran she will realize how much it means to me.

I guess there are some other things I can do to catch her eye…

Get my fishing up to what she probably considers the bare minimum for Northrend… Not that it helped me avoid the trash catches…

Maybe catch the eye of a marine creature, or ten.

Tell the world how much I love critters and glitter.

Prepare a great feast and share it in danger zones… well prepare the feasts at least…

Marcia has a question just for me…?

• Is this the moment I’ve been waiting for?
• I did just lather myself in blood just to draw some delicious fish to woo her with…

Maybe wearing Mammoth Blood has paid off!

Ohh yes, success!

She is mine…!

Keep your filthy fishy hands off her… she is a one-Gnome woman!

What to do on our first real date?

Maybe share a Velociraptor…

and a Snapper or two…

I know she’s a busy woman and all, wont even leave her post by the fountain, but did she have to give me the dinner scraps to dispose of? Couldn’t she have handed them out to a lesser mortal to use on their next fishing trip?

Me thinks that since this is the extent of her gifts on the consummation of our relationship, that the next words I will hear from here are:

It’s not you, It’s me!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/14/gnome-weekend-that-was-undergnomed-is-over-powered/

Last week was Old World night and it was pretty much a flip of the coin… AQ40 or Black Wing Lair (BWL).  Thanks to Prelimar, we knew it wasn’t going to be a cake walk, so really it just came down to which we thought we could do before 1am when one of our Tanks had to log.  We chose BWL because one of our crew had done it the hard way, uphill both ways in the snow back at level 60… so someone knew which corner to turn and when.

There were only 7 of us as Zupa was otherwise disposed, so off we trotted to the zone.

Of course 1/2 of us had no idea where we were going… memory is a fragile thing, especially after so long, but soon enough we had found the orb, clicked on it and all 5 of us where in BWL…

Mmmm, hang on, there are meant to be 7 of us…

Damn, 2 people are attuned, we will have to run UBRS…

Hey, where did all those Mobs come from… who pulled the room….

WTF Mr. Tree!?!

Clearing the unending trash just wont work!  It isn’t trash in the traditional sense, and even with your feathers of uberness be struggling to solo it… Ohh dead… hope this isn’t setting the tone for the night

UBRS the slow way….

OK, so we need a quick run through UBRS.. go go go… no leave the trash… OK take out the trash… but do it on your own…

Everything was going fine until we got to Gyth & Rend Blackhand, then it was time for comedy of errors…

Error 1: You can’t skip the event, don’t jump the other way… Ohh you are behind a closed grate… great!

Comedy 1: Take Gyth down slowly until Rend Blackhand dismounts then finish it off… all good in theory.. it’s slow at 60 and at 70 you can get a couple of shots off before Rend dismounts…  At 80, we had 1 shot both of them before they were in the room… Event failed due to uberness.

Error 2: Wait for the mobs to come out of the grates… don’t run behind it… nevermind…

Comedy 2: Tank kites Gyth… no DPS at all… still scared that tank may accidentally fail event due to doing too much damage.. Ohh there’s Rend, ohh Rend’s dead… all done.

Comedy 3: General Drakkisath.. remember when he was hard, there was all sort of planning, strategy etc… I wish I had the time to get more than 3 spells off… and that was only because most people were asleep I think.

Back to BWL

Razorgore the Untamed

What. A. Blast!

Seriously awesome fun.. I was doing AoE coverage for the Mr Z! while he mind controlled Razorgore.  I was burning mana like there was no tomorrow, but seriously, that is one awesome fight.  if you have never done it before you want to grabs a 1/2 dozen of your mates and give it a go.

Just remember your objective is to MC Razorgore and protect the chaneller while you use Razorgore to kill the eggs.

This would have been an insane fight at 60 with 40 people stretched to the limit.

He did drop me 1st piece of the Netherwind set… Happy Mage. But MP5???

Vaelastrasz the Corrupt

This was a fun fight… it’s already pretty clear that Dragons are the order of the day.. nothing special to report on this one, but it’s fun to see a big one like this drop before you’ve had the chance to wind up any sort of rotation.

I haven’t mentioned much loot yet.. there was lots of loot, but of course it is all relative… 3 pieces of loot between 40 people would make people sad these days…

That said, there would have been one happy Hunter with this drop… Oh well, time to flex the DE finger…

Broodlord Lashlayer

Lashlayer was no challenge, but then not much was, except that someone kept pulling extra trash mobs… No it wasn’t me, sure I didn’t want an easy run, but I was being a good little Gnome on Friday.

Where was the Hunter?

Well that was a mistake

We clove through the trash like butter… it was fun, but slow going.. if only there was a way to speed the process up…

Mmmm maybe pulling entire rooms (unexpectedly) wasn’t the way to speed things up.

Maybe that was a mistake… even TomTom (I think it’s TomTom giving the commentary near my portrait) thinks so…

Mr. Tree… you will need to settle down or be disowned by your friends… not sure why the other 5 are so uptight tonight though…

Firemaw

Firemaw was fun.. lots of fun… because people died.. yeah I know that’s sad…

For the last 50% it appeared that there was only a healer and I alive, turned out there was a tank in there somewhere too, but it was a buzz thinking we were actually going to wipe, then pulling the rabbit out of the hat.

Ebonroc & Flamegor

Don’t remember anything special about Ebonroc or Flamegor… another dragon… another dead dragon… or two

Chromaggus

Chromaggus on the other hand was fun.

We wiped once, but it wasn’t Chromaggus per se that did the deed… although it was his debuffs that caused my mates to turn on the raid.

The thing that struck me about this fight, was that you needed to use an exploit (the funny pillar) to avoid the damage.  Mr Offspec told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t an exploit to drag the dog 1/2 way through the instance to a specific spot on a ramp where most of the raid could hide from it’s effects… in fact, it was working as intended… Blizzard designed the encounter this way.

WTF!?! So here’s an “exploit” built by Blizzard as the only way of defeating the encounter… but hey, don’t use things that may or may not be an exploit in the game… seriously, there needs to be a pop-up…

This exploit is working as intended

Yes, yes, I know all loot is hunter loot…. but how much Hunter loot is going to drop?  Seriously!

Ohh what’s that… mmm this naughty Gnome is going to roll need on those Nemesis Spaulders.. just to DE them, then tell all my Warlock readers about it….

Dear Warlocks.  I rolled need on a lock set piece, purely so I could disenchant it!

BWL (Black Wing Love)

Apart from the over abundance of Dragons, BWL is a beautiful place.  The view from Nefarian’s balcony is stunning, taking in 2 zones.

As we were approaching Nefarius (for the 2nd time from memory), Zupa came online.  I just had to tell him what an amazing place this was.  The encounters in here are fantastic, lots of crazy variables to take into account.  Sure it was a breeze as an 80, but every one of the encounters was interesting.. probably would have been more interesting if the bosses lasted longer, but I still had a great time.

Foolsss…Kill the one in the dress!

Lord Victor Nefarius

So we had reached Lord Victor Nefarius without any major problems.

Once again the dynamics of this fight are great and we were challenged… 3 times we were challenged, before we threw out hands up and admitted defeat.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sure we could have taken him down, we just got unlucky.

We have decided to take the luck out of the experience next time by crafting a few of the cloaks that are specifically designed for this fight (and one other from memory).  Of course for that I needed the Cindercloth Cloak pattern, which I promptly went and ground out before heading back to town.

So we will be back to BWL, probably next month, equipped with crappy cloaks that will get a single use.. but it will be worth it.

Gnomeaggedon’s BWL Review

My BWL experience 10/10

We lost a couple of people then.  It was an early night due to other commitments… but my night wasn’t over yet…

There are naughtier Gnomes out there than me!

Popped into Ironforge for a quick repair, restock and bag drop, and what do I see…

A very naughty Gnome…

Two things struck me…

1. It’s a female Gnome letting it all hang out… you think there are a bunch of teenage Gnome lovers out there that are more likely to buy from her? (It’s OK Kriz.. I know you aren’t a teenager, but it’s still ok to admit your liking for Gnomette cleavage).
2. She looks like she’s a Rogue… now tell me, would you trust a Rogue with your RL money?

Killing time and Achievements, one fish at a time

We had lost all of our tanks, so while I waited till an interested tank rolled up, I got in a spot of fishing…

1,000 fish caught since Achievements came into being…

I seriously need to get a life…

One serve of Ahune to take away please

Our Tankadin came back online, so I was going to get a crack at that Scorchling, “one” more time.

Zupa even came and joined us…

Zupa even got an upgrade… you wouldn’t believe what it was…

Yep, one of those 3g Vendor Cloaks… well at least someone found a use for them!

Unfortunately there were no Scorchlings about… another year goes by without a sighting by Gnomeaggedon.

Consolation Prize

I did pickup something to turn Krizzlybear’s heart to Ice.

It was kind of by accident… you see as our resident Disenchanting Enchanter, I just roll Greed on everything in 5 mans.  It’s just what I have been doing for ages… it’s what my mates want me to do… So I do.

Unfortunately for Mr. Offspec, he threw up a message in /party chat asking only people that WANTED it roll for it.  Why he didn’t SPEAK up sooner I will never know… what’s the point of being on Vent if you can’t get urgent messages out.

Anyway, end result was I won the roll… he was very disappointed

I however, had a consolation prize…

Now I just need to find some bag space.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/10/gnome-weekend-that-was-bwl/

It was our Non-Naxx, Non-Old World night…

The night that we take on VoA, OS and a little bit of Naxx (OK, so I lied about it being a non-Naxx night… but what else can we do?)

I put in a special request with my mates that we take on CoT Culling of Stratholme, for purely selfish reasons.  I couldn’t bare the thought that a fellow blogger might have a Bronze Drake while I didn’t.  Can’t have a Troll one-upping a Gnome now can we? They agreed, but it was going to be tight, so I made sure I was on early, ready and waiting…

Cookery Failery

Waiting… yeah, what to do while waiting… Cooking Achievements!

I had placed some pre-orders at the AH, so I grabbed nearly everything I would need from the mailbox, and got to it…

I had been gloating to Prelimar about how I had the recipe, so it was 1st cab off the rank...

Then I knocked out a few Northrend recipes, so I could grab the next level of achievement…

That was when I hit my 1st failure… only a minor obstacle, one that was quickly overcome… I didn’t know enough recipes…

Time to do the final level of the achievement… Mmm or not.

Seems I shouldn’t have stopped doing the dailies when I hit exalted with the Kirin’Tor… apparently you need the Dalaran Cooking awards to buy the recipes… silly Gnome.

Ohh well, only a minor fail… I will just finish off the Outland Gourmet Achievement.

Mmmm seems this is a more major fail… Looks like I have to go back and do Outland cooking dailies.  I will shelve this for now…

Just to put a dint in what will later be known as Successful Sunday, I did grab my rod and go fishing for these recipes….

Wait, did I say fishing for these recipes…

Yep, 20 minutes down the track it occurs to me that I need to do cooking dailies, not fishing dailies… serious /gnomefail

Anyway, back to /FailFest Friday

A Special Failquest

Enough of my mates are online to hit CoS, so off we go…

Things seem to be ticking along quite nicely… Seem to be… Are we in the Caverns of Time, or the Caverns of “where did the Time go”?

One minute we are ticking along, next minute we only have 7 minutes to go….

Rush… Rush… Rush…

Gnome Down!

Gnome Up!

Boss Engaged…

Gnome Still coming…

10 seconds left….

5 seconds left…

1 second and 2% health left…

Where did he go?

Damn… Pffft…. Grrr…

/FailVoA

Rush off to Wintergrasp, picking up troops along the way…

Someone calls out:

Only got 17 minutes till next battle…

Someone else (a Pugger) says:

No worries will take it down in 17 minutes

At which point I say:

Assuming we are all here and ready in 17 minutes… I figure we have about 10 minutes by the time everyone is here…

OK guys.. let’s forget it… no sense in screwing this over… let’s go to OS.

Sorry guys… that was my fault… if we hadn’t being failing on my behalf in CoS, we would have cleaned VoA up 1st…

/FailOS+1

We loose one on the way to OS, pick another up as we zone in.

We have done OS with no drakes, and it was a walk in the park, so we decide we will  go for OS+1… how much harder can it be?

2 demoralizing wipes later, and 2 Puggers (and a smart arse parting crack from one pugger) down, we accept that we aren’t going to do it tonight.

Actually, I don’t know that we really accept that, but agree that we will do OS+0 just to get the job done for the night.

Seriously you have to hate the fact that 8 players can totally destroy that silly dragon, where 10 couldn’t take out the Dragon and one buddy…. but destroy it we did.

Don’t recall that anything really exciting dropped, though I did pick up a new GnomeBag.

Unfortunately we lost our main Tankadin as he wasn’t feeling that well.

This set the stage for the rest of the night.

Hell, I wasn’t feeling at that well later either…

/NaxxFail

In hindsight, we did OK with the bosses.  Sure, 3 attempts on Grand Widow Faerlina and 2 attempts on Grobbulus, but otherwise we one shot the other bosses.

But, that’s only if you look at the boss kills… it was everything in between that was pure fail.

3 hours and 52 minutes to get from Anub’Rekhan to Grobbulus.

Only 8 bosses down.

Deaths… so many deaths…

Faerlina was an orgy of death, just unfortunately, more ours than theirs.

It always sucks when there is one player that isn’t on Vent… especially when that player is a Pugger… especially when it’s their first run with us and doesn’t know how we run, and we forget to type every word into /raid.

1st attempt, Faerlina’s companions weren’t going down… DK offtank does though… wipe.

2nd attempt, Faerlina’s were going down… focus fired by the pug shadow priest, 1, 2, 3, 4… unfortunately, he was meant to be on Faerlina and the companions were not meant to be going down… wipe.

So after Grobbulus the night was called, we were starting to leak raid members, the mood was glum.

My Personal Arachnid Quarters

Moving along now…

Sunday I finally got around to dragging the network cable under our house… I have been meaning to do this for about 6 months, but always find an excuse not to do it.

My excuses ran out though, so under the house I went.

About 2 minutes later I came scurrying back out.

I suffer a little from Claustrophobia, but not much from Arachnophobia.  I live in Australia.. it’s hard to live here and not like spiders (well, at least not coexist with spiders)… A lot of people I have know have had pet spiders… not in tanks or cages, but roaming the house.  There’s a lot of flies here too, so it pays to have your own fly catchers.. at least one.

Still, a couple of months of leveling the Arachnid quarter didn’t prepare me for squeezing my body through dirt and cobwebs… lots of cobwebs… so many cobwebs.

I’m glad Blizzard doesn’t overdo the cobwebs in Naxx… they are very unsettling, especially when your are in cramped confines…

Anyway, this is Sunday… so this was a /Successful Sunday venture, and cable is now strung under the house, and I am now above the house, no spider bites and only a little bruised from squeezing through the tiny gaps under the house (They must employ kids to do the under house stuff… seriously, I am not a big guy, but it was tight…).

/Successful Exploring

My wife took her mate home on Sunday night, so I got a bit of play time once I got Odin down in bed.

I joined up LFG for CoT, then scratched my head… wasn’t there something I had to do…

Oh yeah…

I had to venture back to Outland to try out the RNG on those recipes from the cooking quests.  I got that one that sends you up to Blades Edge Mountains.  I quickly knocked that over, and had no bites on LFG, but noticed 3 unexplored areas of Bladge Edge.  So while the carpet was up in the sky, I kept on flying

Apart from dodging a few Horde attacks, it was all clear skies… until this popped up…

Of course that’s a good thing… Sure it’s only a minor achievement, but the good news is that only leaves 4 parts of Netherstorm and I have completely explored Outland… I might have only done 50-60% of the Outland quests, but I will have cleared all the cobwebs off the map.

Unfortunately no recipe dropped from the barrel of fish.

/Successful Sunday, the finale

Not long after this achievement pinged on my screen, I got an invite.  At first I thought it was one of those random, no chat invites, but it turns out that they had tried to communicate.. I just didn’t respond (I mean see the pst), but I got the invite anyway… thankfully.

I recognized the name, can’t remember where from, but it must have been from some other pug run.

For a moment I had one of those sinking feelings when one of the party g2g as we were entering the instance.  Luckily 30 seconds later we were full again… 3 Pallies, 1 DK and a Gnome Mage.

We rocked through the place, even though the DK was concerned that we didn’t have the DPS, as it seemed to be taking forever (still 15 minutes on my timer… but whatever…).

Nothing to worry about though and before we knew it, we were engaged with the Infinite Corruptor, and before I knew it, I was staring at:

It’s that this point, where I sat back, took a deep breath, took another deep breath.  Checked the rolls… yep sure enough someone else was rolling, the question was, who was going to roll the 1?

Turns out that the guy that invited me was being run through by his mates, just as mine had on Friday night, just so he would get the drake, of course I didn’t realize that… not until he rolled a 1, and I didn’t!

I did offer to run anything he wanted, any time I was on in future…

So, another pet that I have to feed… or is that sweep the stables after…

Still, I will get over the colossal poop…

After all, I look better than any ol’ Troll, any ol’ day…

PS: Thanks to Eury, Jong, Rip, Rhii, Larisa, Theerivs, Prelimar and Cathy for all the submissions to my blogday gifts. I just have to put them all together now… wont be long, within the week we you will start to see some results…

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/06/23/failfest-friday/

Onyxia was our objective

Maybe you recognize my friend’s name

The job was done before I could even get into range.

I was put to shame by this level 72 Death Knight.. maybe next time I will take less time taking screen shots, and more time firing Fireballs…

Hang on, that’s where I went wrong.

On my way there I was thinking:

Must respec Arcane,, Must respec Arcane, Must respec Arcane.

When I got there I was thinking

Must take screen shots, must take screen shots.

Never Mind… I am using FrostFire Bolt spec… at least the Frost will stick… shame that the big DPS components (Living Bomb and PyroBlast) are fire based.. and resisted…

Make it harder!

I was so disappointed that I expressed my hope it would get harder… maybe a wipe or two was in order.

Zupa seemed to think that the likelihood was high.

I think he was just reminiscing…

Maybe he was just scared I was going to take him down with a 3k bomb…

The new Mr. Z?

Still, I wasn’t the only one shamed…

AQ20 was going down, but the one going up was Zupa… hell, he even beat Mr. DPS himself… Mr. Z!, you should be ashamed too!

Got myself one of those old world enchants that I was never going to get…

I guess I now have one of those old world enchants I am never going to use…

Don’t know how the other races feel, but AQ makes me feel…. small.

Still the bigger they come, the harder they fall!

2 Old world instances done…

In the time it takes to clear one Naxx Quater…

No wipes… but a lot of fun.

I realized we were down to one healer…

Even Mr. Tree was pulling out the DPS for the night…

Mr. Tree was Mr. Beak the Boomkin

Cursing through MC

Into Molten Core… I remembered to Spec Arcane for this fun run!

Apparently Mr. Tree was having the night off from Decurse Duty…

Which I guess means that I need to be Mr. Decursive for the night…

Well, Zupa thought so…

But I am sticking by my DPS meter beating strategy…

If you can’t beat them, kill them..

No tips for me on the next boss… like which one?

We seem to be taking on 2 at a time anyway!

I am sure those Core Hounds were fearsome at some point in the past…

Our Tankadin however decided it was time to round them up… and pile them up.

He cackles…. vent gasps… Core Hounds Smolder

I’m sure if we had a Hunter in the party they would have cried… while I giggled…

OK, so maybe all the trash in the room, plus two bosses might be pushing it…

Possibly not if we were knew that was the strategy…

Hunh?  What strategy?

At least I got my (dying) wish

And to this smoldering pile of ash…

I give you 15 seconds when we get back buddy… maybe only 10…

Ohh you poor fool… you really shouldn’t come and tell the boss what a failure you are…

If there is one rule of all bad guy bosses, it’s punish the failed underling before you punish the enemy…

Usually there is a soliloquy in there as well, about how you will tear us limb from limb, how you will go on to rule the world…

Blah Blah Blah

Gotcha…

I used the arcane extinguisher on you, and you are no more…

Didn’t even get a chance to use my killing blow on you… maybe next time!

Zupa and Gnomeaggedon bid farewell to Ragnaros

Gnomeaggedon needs a Name change… it’s nearly impossible to get a screenshot of Zupa, Gnomeaggedon and Gnomeaggedon’s name!

That makes the set of 3 old world achievements for the night… but the night is still young.

Teh Epics!

I got me some epic loot…

The kind of epic loot a guild would have spilt over a couple of expansions back if one Mage picked it all up in one session.

My 1st ever piece of Tier 1 Mage gear… Hooly Dooly!

My 2nd ever piece of Tier 1 Mage gear…

Damn, I don’t even get a set bonus yet… Need another piece.

I guess I need to run some more instances to pick up those epic bonuses:

• 3: Increases spell power by 18.
• 5: Increases your spell penetration by 38.
• 8: Decreases the threat generated by your spells by 15%.

Ohh and an Uber weapon…

Look how it compares to my current walking stick!

Only two more to go before I can call myself a classic raider… for what that’s worth.

So I guess that’s it for the night…

An achievement filled night if nothing else…

But wait, there’s more?

What’s that? You guys are running of to Heroic Naxx with your guild, and there’s a spot for me too…

Sure, why not, I need them Emblems of Valor.. if I get a few more, I might actually be able to buy something.

Four Horseman…

Great, I love that fight!

And the meter’s loved me too

What, no one wants that staff?

Well, I’m building up a collection of staves… mind if I add that big stick to my collection?

Nice to be rewarded for my DPS effort rather than my Arcane baking skills!

Oohhhh it’s cool too!

Patchwerk’s Next…

How about we fail a few times 1st…

I don’t think I have even been in a raid that failed on Patchwerk before, but apparently the usual tanks weren’t on.

Edit: Mr. Z! pointed out I posted the wrong Patchwerk stats… so now we have the correct ones…

But that’s it for Naxx, which is fine by me, time to branch out and try something else.

Heroically Instanced

The night was still young, so we went for a quick clear of Heroic Culling of Stratholme.

Well, it turned into Epic Fail, but I still picked up my 10oth Heroic Emblem along the way

Epic Enchanting Fail

While running HCoS, Zupa pointed out that my new stick was a little under enchanted…

Of course I protested strenuously, because I would never make such a big mistake…

I have checked through the Weapon enchants, and the 2 handed weapon enchants, and there was nothing better.

Of course, the DK shot me down again…

He was right, there was an STAFF enchant that was better.

In my defense (as poor as it is), how many staff enchants exist…?

Well, lets have a look.

Two enchants… Only two!

Why did Blizzard change the natural flow of things?

I stopped enchanting with that when it went grey…

Ohh well. A better enchant is a better enchant, no matter what it’s name.

Good looking stick don’t you think?

I like it so much I am going to show you lots of different angles

Scary isn’t it….

Scary aren’t I?

Moar Heroics!

I ended up taking screenshots for a while, then did a Heroic UK run.

It was fun enough… nothing to write about… I wanted something more, something new.

So I signed myself up for a couple of instances in the LFG interface.

I ended up taking more screenshots for a while, waiting for someone to pick me out of LFG.

I waited…

and waited…

and gave up…

I was just about to log out, when I got asked to Heroic Halls of Stone.

Awesome, I haven’t been there, and I wanted to go…

It was a bit of a fail run.

We had a Druid tank, that seemed to know all the moves, pulled well, LoS well, but for some reason, couldn’t generated threat well.

We also had a Ret paladin along that made me feel good about my DPS (and would have made Jong cry)

I even managed to blitz on one fight… I was pretty happy with that.

On top of it all, I picked up this achievement…

Defeat the Tribunal of Ages encounter in the Halls of Stone on Heroic Difficulty without allowing Brann Bronzebeard to take any damage.

Which was made all the more spectacular, as this was a wipe… yep, last party body dropped, followed by the Achievement ding…

Don’t know how,

Don’t know why,

but I’m going to keep it!

Awesome Weekend

I think that I had an awesome weekend.

• Cleared some Old World…
• Cleared some Heroic Naxx…
• Cleared some Heroic Instances…

But most importantly…

Ran with my Heroic Mate Zupa!

I am sure there will be many more stories to come about this DeathKnight…

Probably the only thing that disturbs me is he looks remarkably like another Gnome you may be familiar with..

Sure he has grey hair, and glowing eyes…

But, if I didn’t know better, I would swear it was Gnomeaggedon back from the grave!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/06/09/a-tale-of-two-buddies/

There was only one reason for doing so, and it had nothing to do with the reported excellent quest line, daily gold gains, or even the quiet chuckle at the innuendo that surrounds the Sons of Hodir… Thrusting Hodir’s spear… seriously…

No, it was all about one thing, and one thing only, increasing my performance.

I am not a big fan of dailies.  I am still not exalted at Sunwell, even though every man and their 2nd Alt is.  Argent Tournament is one of those things to kill time.  The idea of doing 40 days worth of dailies, probably 1 or 2 a week, just sent shivers down my spine.  I had heard that you can “glitch” the quest line, so you can repeat a couple of one-off quests, over and over again.  That will only nett you 150 rep… but if you are like me, and have more large blocks of time than frequent short blocks of time, then that could be appealing…

Always talk to the Innkeeper before embarking on a long journey!

Well, it would have been, if not for my savior… Larisa!

I note she has had her own moment of clarity about dailies, of the Argent Tournament variety at least.

What is a Gnome to do with his stockpile of TBC gold?

BUY favor with my faction of choice…. Ohh lordy, that’s just so easy.

So a couple of grand down the local Auction House, and I am exactly 0/999 Exalted with Hodir.

As an added bonus, I notched up my 15th exalted reputation.

I was getting pretty bored pressing Accept quest…. Complete Quest, so I thought I would put my Arcane, Magely powers to good use… Why do one hand in at a time, when you can do FOUR!

Ohhh, just because they may be 20% less stupid, but those Mirror Images can’t be trusted to complete a quest.

They also got bored real quick with nothing to attack…

So I let them go.. global recession and all that stuff.. I can’t maintain them AND Me.

So just as I got myself some new thread in my shoulders when the call went out…

Let’s take Naxx down!

While I am sure it wasn’t

Let’s literally take Naxx down

That was what happened…

But taking a step back… our goal

20 minute Spider wing

No screwing up guys, if we get one wipe we will call it.  No need to rush, just to stay alive.

Boss 1, Wipe 1…

Well at least we can relax now, we aren’t going for the timed run.

Therefore of course we got it easily…

On to Grand Widow Faerlina.

Arrgghh.. luckily we weren’t chasing the timed achievement.

It was while Mr. Tree (as Tree Hugger Dave wants to be known as…) was looting and distributing the goodies, that we realized just how overpowered we were.

Mr. Tree: Need rolls on Watchful Eye

Gnomeaggedon: Rolls 72

PuggyPriest: pass

Mr. Tree: The winner is PuggyPriest with a roll of CRASH BOOM!

Yep, we downed Naxx.. the whole place… gone!

Actually we downed the Instance server… Yep, why get a killing blow on a single raid, when you can Overkill and take out all raids?

I realize in hindsight, it was the Loot Gods that were angry…

How angry?

Very very angry!

Proof?

Everyone (after a bit of stuffing about, and being ported randomly around Azeroth) managed to get back into Naxx….

Hell, I discovered via twitter that even Pugnacious Priest (no relation to PuggyPriest) was suffering from the Loot God tirade… even though she is far far away in another realmiverse.

Everyone…

With one exception…

Mr. Tree.

Mr. Tree was not only without an Instance server… but without an Authentication Server.

When he FINALLY rejoined us, I shot him whisper…

Gnomeaggedon: You got my off-hand?

Mr. Tree: What off hand?

Gnomeaggedon: Ohhh… we need to petition the Loot Gods!

Screw You!

At that moment in time I felt a little antsy… I was reminded of how much I have wanted to capture that one expression that Gnomeaggedon could fill 50% of his posts with.  That expression alledgedly created by the French to taunt the English bowmen (OK, I knew I would get this wrong… next time must take the 2 minutes to confirm my suspicion.  It was the English taunting French… see Drazmor’s comment below).

We ended up moving on without Mr. Tree for a while, listening merrily to his screams of frustration over Vent, while he copied addons, deleted directories, repaired WoW, replaced addons…

I know it was painful for him and really the only thing I can say to Mr. Tree is…

IN FUTURE, DON’T PISS OFF THE LOOT GODS!

Moving on…

So yeah, anyway we moved on, and I want to tell you how from that point onwards it was smooth sailing…

• Maexxna – One Shot!
• Instructor Razuvious – 3 shot!

Hang on, that’s not the way the story is meant to go…

• Gothik the Harvester – 2 shot!

Definitely not the way I like to tell a Naxx story…

• The Four Horsemen – 3 shot!

OK, I need to stop here for a moment…

• Once again, we needed someone to tank the back horsemen.
• Once again, I was the best candidate for the job!?!
• I did have some help in the form of a female Gnome warrior
• The PuggyPriest had many, many reservations about the chances of us doing this with only 3 healers…
• We said… like we always do… it’s will be cool.  Mr. Tree can handle the back.

Have you ever watched a female Gnome warrior?  I did… well actually, at 1st I couldn’t even see her… Gnomes are small you know!  Still, I found it quite disturbing that a) we had a Gnome warrior (some would suggest that that is an oxymoron), and b) that she was female.  It just didn’t sit right. Nothing sexist you understand… maybe it was just the sight of a scantily clad Gnome female that had me all distracted.

Anyway..

Attempt 1: I go down like a bag of spuds.

Attempt 2: I can’t remember what happened attempt 2.  After attempt 2, said scantily clad female Gnome warrior called it a night…

Call it!

Down to a 9 humanoid raid, why not… just stay… for one more attempt…

Attempt 3: So we had to get the New-to-Naxx Hunter to tank the back with me… actually, I think this is the same hunter than caused the 2nd wipe… but whatever.  Once we explain again the concept of swapping when charges hit 3, and I set up /yell and /whisper macros and make sure he can actually hear me on vent, we begin.

Faster that you can say…

I am going to do more damage than you this fight Mr. Z!

… Mr.Z! was down, as was Mr Offspec.

In fact the only people left at the front are the Tankadin, the Tank (WildMan) and PuggyPriest.

Vent is filled with…

Call it!

It’s over!

Wipe it up folks!

But… we just didn’t give up…

At one point, when doing my swap, I find WildMan on my Horseman.  before I can get to the Horseman he is gone.. charging back into the fray at the front of the room.

What I didn’t know, was that in the seconds prior to his charge, the Tankadin was going down… 100%, 81%, 61%, 41%, 21%, 1%

Taunt!

WildMan has saved the day!

IWIN!

Meanwhile, at the back of the room, I am pumping my IWIN! button… pumping it…

I was FFB spec for the fight, I didn’t want to risk mana issues.

As soon as the fight started, my 3 Gnomish friends joined me to start the slaughter… IWIN!

As soon as I hear the call to wipe, IWIN!

IWIN!

IWIN!

IWIN!

IWIN!

Last things I remember, on my last swap, was I had my initial horseman down to 10%.  As I turned, I see bodies arriving from the front of the room.

One Horseman left… IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN!

Loot rolls..

IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! Charmed Cierge (as shown earlier in this post)

For once I have both earned my keep and been rewarded for it… usually I just get rewarded for my conjured goods!

63% of the damage on Sir Zeliek and another 48% on Lady Blaumeux

Naxx Breaker

Noth went down without any major event… well, l except that Gnomeaggedon went down on about the 3rd or 4th bunch of mobs…

How Embarrassment!

Heigan the Raid breaker finished us off… we didn’t get him, but we were all tired.. tired of Instance server crashes, and the 30-60 minutes lost trying to get the raid going again. Tired of wiping… Just tired!

The only thing left to do before logging, was to petition the GM’s… well actually I already had… but they hadn’t shown.. and no matter how much I watched the ticket, it didn’t change… no GM whispers, no expected resolution time.. but let’s face it…

They would have been busy!

Experiments in the Arcane

I decided I would give Arcane a run for it’s money, and I thought I would start safe.. just those 3-4 minute fights.  That way if I cock up my mana management it wouldn’t matter.  In fact, I made sure I put in a call to raidside support (Mr. Tree) before the raid began.  He would dedicate his Innervate to me, he was even prepared to name a Macro after me… I felt honored.

I made up my IWIN! Arcane macro.. placed it carefully on my tool bar.

I took some screenshots of the previous 2 weeks worth of my WWS reports… just so I wouldn’t loose them (which I don’t have on me, but I did have a quick look), and a comparison of how Arcane was comparing to FFB.

I went hard… Mana wasn’t an issue, so I guess I could have just Arcane Blasted the whole time (and maybe that would have made a difference).  Arcane barrage wasn’t exactly procing every 3rd cast… but…

End result…

The jury (of one) is still out.

From memory there was only 1 boss fight where I reached 3k DPS.. the rest were either the same, or a mirror image of my FFB stats (One fight FFB better, next fight Arcane better etc.)  I was definitely leaving piles of corpses on the trash.. quite insane piles really… but, I don’t know if that is enough to convert me.  Admittedly I loved my PoM FlameStrike, followed by Blizzard… I always get itchy in that 1st 3 seconds of trash, knowing that Mr. Z! is already racking up the kills.

Ticket Time

This is the 3rd time in many years I have raised a ticket… I am yet to be online when a GM handles my ticket.  Not sure if they check who it’s from and think…

This guy is only on for a few hours each week, if we wait a little longer we can handle it at our leisure

Or they are just really busy with important stuff like dancing and singing.

Of course to be fair, I expect there were a pile of servers that dropped dead the other night, so one little Gnome’s cries for assistance would have been drowned out by the unwashed majority.

I got the usual, stocko standard in game email & also real world email.  But that was cool.  It prompted me to refine my ticket a little.

Then, while I was slaughtering my Alien foes in Space Crusade, I got an email from Mr. Tree, which included this…

I wanted to say the response i received from Styrend this morning was excellent.  He had a great sense of humor.  Had read the ticket in full before talking with me and had dealt with the ticket with efficiency, politeness and a laugh.

Well done. I realize these guys are busy and to deal with it in a quick and respectful way made my day.

It was his Blizzard customer service survey response…

That sounds good… Commandeer WildMan’s PC, check my ingame mail…

Problem sorted… and Mr. Tree had some fun to boot…

Thanks Rovorril, Hanthor & Styrend!

I want a visit from a GM… I can dance too you know!

Gnome Superiority

So I had a bit of a quick mess about with my items, just to see how much I gained/lost when combined with my Flameheart Spell Scalpel.

Seems I equipped the right combination of gear… I haven’t event thought about this, it just happened..

Still, it looks like I need a new Main Hand… not quite sure where I will get one from though…

Them Gnomes are Tasty

Don’t go spreading the word to those staving Hordes on the streets of Dalaran, but apparently I might be a tasty & nutritious snack…  I will be keeping my eyes on them next time I am crawling around in the filthy sewers looking for mushrooms.

Argent Tournament Revisited (or I need a new keyboard)

I was sitting on 24 Valiant’s tokens, and 24 Champion’s tokens.

It has been a big struggle to collect them.  The only time I have beaten a champion before the enemies gates is when one or two others hit my champion rather than their own.

Still, when you are that close, you just have to go for one more… (it’s always just one more…)

I have developed a new strategy now….  ensure 3 shields, Spam 3 (like really madly spam 3), turn & Spam 2 (like really madly spam 2), engage & Spam 1 (like really madly spam 1), then rinse and repeat.

I actually took down everything in my path.

Then I took my tokens back to the snooty Elves, and apparently they were impressed!

Leeet’s Gooooo Shopppping…

I have an offhand without a (worthwhile) Mainhand… I have 25 Champions tokens burning a hole in my Character Currency screen.

They are flogging off cheap (Last one in stock apparently) this beautiful pile of metal, that just suits me to the ground.

Gnomeaggedon of Gnomeregan and his Gnomeregan Bonechopper!

Seriously, how beautiful is that weapon?

Gnomish Engineering at it’s finest!

Sure the stats are OK…

But, that isn’t why I bought it.

In fact all the calculators seem to tell me the same thing…

Give it back and ask for a refund!

But, to me, it’s worth 25 champions seals to have this sitting in the bank.

That’s a wrap for this week…

Tonight we tackle a bit of the Old World.

If Mr Z! is to be believed, I will be sporting achievements for Onyxia, AQ20 and MC come Monday.

A level 80 Mage and his 7 mates (Mmm did that number just creep up by one) take on 3 level 60 raids…

That will really be something to GnomEpeen about!

Gnomer and Out!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/06/05/the-weekly-gnomepeen/

Dear Ambassador Gnomeaggedon of Gnomeregan, Master of the meters, Carpeter of raid floors and all round good Gnome.

Long time reader, never a commenter with a question.

My ragtag bunch of almost a 10 man raid have decided to declare one Friday a month as Old World night.

There are only 7 of us, but we can usually pick up a few more to clear Naxx10, so I think we can grab a few more if required.

In our bunch of stormtroopers we have.

• Me: DPS meter champion rogue, top them all, no matter how many slackers are in the party (4,9,24). I can and will log and bring on my healy Priest which is pretty competent as well.
• Mr. Offspec: You may have heard of him earlier today. 2nd best DPS as shaman, can heal in a pinch. Also rolls with Druid, well geared for all specs.
• UberGnome: he gets by OK, only tops meters if he takes me or the Shaman out 1st, but looks good naked, especially with his 3 mirror images. Great green beard btw.
• ConfusedIdentity: Hunter, Holy Paladin or DPS warrior. More Pally than anything lately, only new to the role but doing a great job.
• WildMan: Tank. Savior of our 4 horseman run the other night.
• DualPersonalityPally: Tankadin, DPS machine, he loves them both and cackles like a pubescent boy that just found his Dad’s porno collection when he’s DPSing.
• TreeHuggerDrunk: yes he’s from Queensland, so he wakes up drunk, but is a Tree healer to be watched. He tops the healing meters no matter what size the party is. Only downside is he seems to have recently macroed all his abilities to focus on the dying, or dead Gnome.
• ThreatWhore: there are rumors we may be picking up a DK as our 8th member, but he is only mid 70′s at the moment, assuming he comes at all.

Anyway, my big question is which of the Vanilla and TBC raids we can take out. We took out ZG already, so it’s just the rest of them… Yeah all of them…

If need be we will try and PuG some more people, in which case, what classes should we grab?

PS: when are you going to challenge me agin on the meters, you slack green haired leprechaun?

PPS: next time you hit the floor I am going to skin you and use you as a Gnome drop rug.

Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

As you haven’t bothered to comment, or even give me a name to use, I will call you Mr.Z!

Mr.Z!,

I don’t know the answer to your question, although I would suggest that with that UberGnome at your side, you should be able to 2 man everything up to and including Ulduar 25.

However I have an ego way beyond a normal Gnome, too big to fill a Tauren’s carcass. My only ego rival would be Jong, but then he is THE DPS machine.

I will throw this out to my readers, they will know what old content can be chain cleared, and what content may deserve a wipe night or a few extra bodies.

PS: I will challenge you on the meters when you play fair. Take off all that 25 man gear, cut your legs off at your knees and then we will have a competition.

PPS: Gnome rug hunh? Well when you have cut your legs off, and come down to my size, you will look pretty cute. Still, I am always concerned about a guy watching his female avatar while his wife sleeps at the other end of the house.

PPPS: I seem to remember wiping the floor with your marines on Saturday night while playing Space Crusaders… You were such good mob fodder until I turned up and took the loot! But that’s a story for another day…

So what do you think folks?

• Which old raid content can we 7 man?
• Will we need to mix up our group composition, or grab some extra bodies for any of them?

Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms raids

10-man:

• Upper Blackrock Spire
• Karazhan – Done
• Zul’Aman – Done

20-man:

• Zul’Gurub – Done
• Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj

25-man:

• Caverns of Time: Battle for Mount Hyjal
• Sunwell Plateau

40-man:

• Molten Core
• Onyxia’s Lair
• Blackwing Lair
• Temple of Ahn’Qiraj
• Naxxramas

Outland raids

25-man:

• Gruul’s Lair
• Magtheridon’s Lair
• Serpentshrine Cavern
• The Eye
• Black Temple

Gnomer and Out!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/06/01/what-old-world-raids-can-we-do/

It was close, and maybe if we had been just a little bit more settled, or maybe all of us on Vent, we would have done it.

What really struck me though, was the way that knowing there was a timer and an achievement at the end of that same timer, really gelled the raid into fast action.

Beating the AFK timer

I can be a bit of an afker at times, but only when the party is fritzing about.

The timed runs really encourage that the party keeps moving. I just wish there was more of it.

Not in the way of Violet Hold.

The waiting between phases when you are nailing it are as painful as they are welcome when little things go wrong.

No I think every instance should have a timed achievement. What’s more I think their should be multiples of them. 30 min, 25 min, 20 min, 15 min.

Sure you might knock one over, but don’t let that slow you down, beat the next timer.

Suddenly every Naxx quarter is a half hour run, every pug instance is a quick heroic.

LFG Timers

Hell, you should get achievements for pug formation speed. Imagine getting an achievement ding because you puulled a group in 1 minute using LFG.

So not like this post is a speed post or anything, but I would love a few more encouragements to get those instance and raid runs over quickly.

Gnomer and Out!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/05/29/time-achievements/

I think it’s time to hit the AH and buy a whole bunch of worthless junk in the hope that the RNG smiles on me twice per boss, once on the drop and once on the roll.

But before I get into that, let me bring you up to speed on by week.

As you know I had been contemplating chucking it in, but I got news through the week that a couple of mates might be rejoining us. Admittedly one won’t be clear of his other obligations for a couple of months, but there is light at the end of his tunnel.

So that spurred me on to starting the Sons of Hodir rep grind.

Hang on what’s this, a chain quest before I can open up the dailies? What, not one chain, but 3? 20-30 quests?

Jeepers, oh well head down, fireballs up.

One of the things I am enjoying about being a bit slow (in the content progression sense folks), is that bloggers will mention something, then enough time will go by that I am pleasantly surprised when I reach that same point.

So, Tunas introduced me to this disguise…

And the crazy mount scaling that occurs when doing these questlines, but I was cackling quietly away while I was riding about. I also love it when I am riding and I hear the dismount sound.

I haven’t really dismounted, but I have changed back to my Gnomish self and back again. Coolio!

There are some great quests in there, even for those of us that don’t really like using vehicles in WoW, including Bear back riding…

Not to mentioning jumping mounts miles above the ground to do duels on drake back!

Grabbing prisoners by the scruff of their neck while on a drakes back… bring it on!

At one point I had to see a man about a quest…

Popped in on Hodir.

No, not to slay him, rather for tea and cakes.

He was even happy enough when he discovered I was a Gnome!

Still, if I remember right it’s something like 40 days of dailies to hit exalted, and the shoulder enchants, which is the only reason I am even bothering with Sons of Hodir, which is the majority if a year for me… Unless I cheat… I’ll get back to you on that one.

Speaking of painful grinds, I have pretty much given up on the Argent Crusade. I am only doing the kill 10 chickens quest (or whatever it is), cause I can’t be bothered dealing with the lag-jousts, an I don’t want to trouble my mates to baby sit me on the job.

Lootless Friday.

Anyway, let’s get to Footless Friday, lootless – yes, achievement less – no.

Dual Spec. Yep I did it, decided I would take it for a spin. Starting with Arcane. I was/am petty disappointed with it so far, but then I didn’t know I had any new spells, haven’t worked out a rotation, whether I have better gear for the spec, or even tried to kill something that can handle more than 3 hits.

But it’s crap so far. My evidence is as follows

• I have to count their nose hairs before I can cast.
• I get hit… They aren’t lying in a smoldering pile 10 yards from me.
• It takes mana to cast? WTF?
• There are all these new spells and skills lurking in my spell book.. wish I knew how to find them!
• There’s no fire!?!

Still, I will do some reading, and maybe find a couple of quick boss encounters to get myself sorted out.

Changing it up a bit

I have been asking if we can switch it up a bit, and the boys agreed this week, so it was off to see more raids.

Vault of illusionary loot.

Had my first go at Vault of Archavon.

Archavon: 0/ raid 1. Easy McPeasy

Closest I came to a piece of loot was from Archavon… stupid Priest gear!

Emalon: 7/ Raid 1. Yeah it took us a few goes, but he bit the dust

Obsidian Suckdom 0D

We did OS0D, because a few of us hadn’t done the fight before.

Two down, forgot to screenshot the 3rd.

I enjoyed the fight, but not the loot table, I was even standing at the end.

Black Dragonflight bested… One shot in fact…

Maybe next time we will take 1 dragon into the fight with us.

What now? Naxx here we come.

Well, just outside Naxx for the moment… remember a while back I had issues with dead Horde releasing before I could /hug them?

I just read about someone that hesitated to take an flagged opposition player down the other day, well until his raid mate solved that dilemma.

Well we had something weird happening all Friday night… we were PvP flagged all night, so I guess was everyone else on the server… including that poor cow sitting outside Naxx…

I hesitated, my (PvP hating) mates didn’t…

I didn’t hesitate to /hug though…

Back to Naxx

Arachnoquickier was the objective. Maexxna down in 20 minutes. Of course none of us started a timer, but we think we got close.

Would have been closer, or even success if we didn’t try to mix the trash pulls up.

• Some without DPS,
• Some without Heals,
• Too many with Rezs

It really was shame, cause the bosses went down without issue.

OK, one issue, when Gnome is on web wrap duty, that includes getting the pally out of wrap after the fights over… He will still die…

Dom, Dom, Dom goes the soldiers drum

Military quarter was a piece of piss too.

Dom, Dom, Dom.

The sound of 3 bosses dropping. They could at least put up a fight!

I got to tank in the 4 horseman again.

Apart from TreeHuggerDave being shocked and amazed by my 3 mirror image gnome mates, it went pretty well.

One /fail practice attempt, then watch the melee dance from boss to boss.

GNoLootForggedon

Loot wise, it was raining loot…

Mail, plate, mail, plate, mail, plate (do you get the picture).

The only roll I won was for the solitary piece of cloth that dropped. Priest cloth! Cant vendor it, can’t DE it, gotta delete it.

There were a few shards, didn’t win them either.

No my solitary loot drop for the week was a green…

At least I could DE that, so the sum total of 3 raids worth of loot was 2 dusts!

Our raid’s Mr Offpec (I have a post in the works about Mr Offspec) pointed out that I wasn’t the only one not to get loot, but then he is still dreaming of that 1dps increase for his offspec, considering both of his specs are better geared than my main spec I say… Whatever…

That’s it for this weeks adventures in Gnomerlife, more next week!

Blogday Gifts start rolling in!

Thanks to Jong for sending me the 1st of my blog day gifts… A multiple choice question that will end up with an essay as an answer…

GnoLootForgeddon and Out!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/05/28/gnolootforggedon/