Mar 7, 2009

Tiddlywinks the Seer

Just a week ago, I predicted:
I'm fairly certain they'll remove the 12 month requirement for the Brewmaster title, instead replacing it with an achievement to just buy the brew of the month membership rather than sampling all 12 brews. God knows people have qq'ed enough about it.

And what do I read today?
Achievement Changes

* Brew of the Year is no longer required for the Brewmaster meta-achievement.
* New achievement: Brew of the Month - Join the Brew of the Month Club - Required for Brewmaster.

Thanks Blizzard. Just keep on giving in to those that cry and whine on the forums. How many times have you stated since achievements came out that the Brew of the Year achievement WOULD NOT be removed from the Brewmaster meta-achievement? Yet you get enough people bitching about it and you just give in. Keep it up. How absurdly stupid. By the way, I think Sartharion with 3 drakes in 10 man mode is too hard. Can you just give me the achievement, the title, and the mount now? KK thx.

Hey, how about you make it easier to get the Chef title by adding a bunch of new recipes? Oh what? You're going to?
Professions Changes
Cooking

* A lot (20+) of cooking recipes have been changed to allow players to skill up to 450 with them.

Gee, thanks. Now that achievement will be easy as cake to get and will require very little work. How wonderful.

Mar 6, 2009

Noblegarden Achievements

With patch 3.1, there's a lot more Noblegarden achievements that are going to be integrated into the game. To make up for the increased amount of achievements, they're extending Noblegarden to a one week event. That's a very nice change for us achievement collectors. The one thing I wonder about is - are we going to get 3.1 by the time Noblegarden hits this year? That's a pretty aggressive schedule, since even though the PTR is up, they have been constantly tweaking things and Ulduar still seems far from complete. The Noblegarden change would be welcome this year, but I just hope they don't push out 3.1 before it's ready.

Last night we quickly hit up 10 man Sartharion and Naxxramas and basically tore it up until we hit the Military quarter. Our hunter fell asleep during our 10 minute break so we pushed on without him and we used our 10 man group last night to prepare our priests for the 25 man mind controlling tonight on Instructor Razuvious. After we had to run away and reset the instructor a few times, we got him down and our new priest, Pilar should be able to have fun mind controlling tonight. We ran into problems on the Four Horsemen though, due to group composition and lack of players, so we had to call it a night there and we should be able to clean up the rest on Saturday.

Tonight, we venture into 25 man Naxxramas and I'll have a new job as master looter tonight. My spreadsheet is ready to go, my addons have been updated, and I think I've got it down, but it should be interesting to see what happens tonight when there's real loot to be distributed as last night, during my test run, very few pieces were needed by anyone, so most of it ended up going to me and getting DE'd. Hopefully it goes smoothly, it'll probably take me a wing or so to get the hang of it.

Mar 3, 2009

The 500th Achievement...

I set up a poll over to the side --> to let you guess what my 500th achievement will be. I have no idea, so take your best guess. If you don't see it there, leave a comment.

Sartharion, Maly, and More

This weekend, while adventuring with young Tozz, Tiddly was invited to go to the Obsidian Sanctum with 24 other adventurers to attempt to kill Sartharion with one of his drakes still alive. After one quick wipe due to some people still not understanding the lava wall and void zones, we quickly reformed, and took him out. Our group then semi-disbanded, but those left decided to go play around in Mount Hyjal. We quickly worked our way to the end, had some problems with a few bad apples deciding to pull the boss when we weren't ready, and then took out Archimonde with ease.

And then last night, after our first few attempts last Monday, we went back to try to bring down Malygos. After a couple of attempts as our death knights perfected their spark grabbing, and a few more wipes due to Malygos glitching right before the vortex (we put hunter pets away and had no issues - seems the bug is back), we took Malygos down after two more attempts. In our first attempt, during the third phase, I was not targeted at all by Malygos and successfully stacked 22 or 23 flame engulfs, but we had too many down to take him out before he enraged. On our next try, we knew we had him where we wanted him. We stacked the sparks perfectly, we took the scions out quickly, and we had over four minutes of the third phase to work him down. Unfortunately, Malygos remembered me this time around and constantly targeted me so I was unable to get past 10 stacks on him. But I survived quite a few until he hit me as I had just added to the stacks and had no energy to work with.

But the rest of our group performed admirably and we took him down. Here's my newly redesigned UI as we gather around to distribute loot:



My new UI builds on the UI I had a while ago prior to Wrath. Fubar lines the top with relevant information, my raid is down the left side which always allows a quick view of our status during a fight and I have tanks and cooldowns right there next to the raid. In the upper-right, I have XLoot and Elkano's Buff Bars and Omen3 (clear) in the middle on the right side.

Above the main black area in the middle, I am using Pitbull for my unit frames (they still need a little customizing), Decursive is above my name and there's more targeting and pet bars over on the right side. I'm still working on it all and will try and get a better shot during a normal battle.

Oh yeah, you've got MalygosCP right there in the middle - an amazing mod. Always gives me a very quick view of Combo Poitns, Energy and Engulf in Flames stacks. If only it could blink if you were targeted or something.

On the bottom panel we have (left to right): chat, map, bartender bars (hidden due to the fact I'm on a "vehicle"), and recount.



Other recent achievements, Heroic: Construct Quarter (last Friday - along with 50 emblems of valor), a Heroic: Twilight Assist on Saturday along with Hyjal, and then of course, last night (not pictured): Heroic: The Spellweaver's Downfall. I now sit at 495 achievements. Wonder what will be #500?

Mar 1, 2009

Tozz 40

Time to 40: 1 day, 20 hours, 38 minutes.

1-10: 2 hours, 39 minutes, 42 seconds.
11-20: 8 hours, 3 minutes, 58 seconds.
21-30: 15 hours, 20 minutes, 56 seconds.
31-40: 18 hours, 7 minutes, 30 seconds.

First Aid: 213, Herbalism: 244, Inscription: 170.