Well I've been pretty bad at keeping this blog updated, when I first started this blog it was because there was little information out there in regards to stealth running. I wanted to post information which was little known or non published out there for the masses.
Now when interesting news comes up, it's up on half a dozen sites already.
This is a good thing! It means an increase in the number of people sharing info, and hopefully an increase in the size of our community (meaning stealthers... well ok i mean druids :)
So 3.3 is out, as others have stated, wiseclipse is broken, squawk and awe is broken, in fact a whole bunch of things are broken.
People on the wow forums are bitching about log load screens and disconnects on the new 5 man instances.
And i've experienced the Onyxia being unkillable, she gets to 1 hp, doesn't come down for Phase 3 and laughs as the adds eventually overwhelm you (ok she doesn't laugh, but you get my meaning)
I forsee Blizz doing a lot of reboots this week as they try to fix problem.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Anzu soloed as Moonkin!
Well I finally managed to get Anzu down as Moonkin spec, and I have to say it is a lot harder as Moonkin then Bear.
Seeing Morrid on the forums downing Anzu as Moonkin inspired me to try this again, and following some of the tips from Moomuerto I adjusted my strat and tried it again, finally I got Anzu down after over an hour of trying and 100g in repairs.
I tried again a couple days later, and it still took me a few attempts, but this time only 30 minutes and 50g repairs, hopefully I'll be able to one shot it soon enough.
Here are some things I have taken away from my many attempts as I tried different gear, and I tried between my 2 Moonkin specs (1 raid moonkin, the other is a restokin pvp spec)
Stand against the wall as Moomuerto said at the start, hot the falcon spirit totem to increase your dps, then thrown a regrowth and rejuv on yourself and go to town on Anzu.
I found i usually opened with a starfire, moonfire, faerie fire, and wrathed till eclipse. Then proc eclipse and Anzu should faze out as he reaches 66%.
Run across to the other side of the room, thrown hots on yourself and get ready for the birds, make sure you get into Moonkin form before the birds swarm you as you get your heavy armor and 15% damage reduction while stunned. Anzu occasionally stuns you while he's phased out, wait out the stun, then hurricane the birds down.
Unfortunately my raid spec I don't have gale winds so it takes me 2 x hurricane, to get them down, with them bashing on you it may reduce the effectiveness of your hurricane due to pushback so you may have to do this twice
I generally find it easy getting past this first phase, but because my raid spec has no mana regen talents, I need to pop my innervate at this point.
Anzu comes out of his phased mode when all birds are down or 1 minute passes.
I've found it to be effective if only a few birds remain up, and Anzu still has some time left in phased out mode to shift out and throw on your regrowth and rejuv hots, since the birds won't hit you for much and Anzu hits like a truck when your in caster.
Finish the birds then dps Anzu again, once again I find it all about proccing eclipse to get him down quickly before your hots run out, if you spend too much trying to kite and dot your just wasting valuable dps time and your heals won't keep up, I throw the moonfire up as i have both the moonfire idol and t9 bonus, if I didn't i would probably just wrath to proc starfire (or the other way around) as this brings him down fast.
Enter the last bird phase and kite over and heal up again, same strategy as before, when Anzu phases back in burn all your CD's and finish him off.
I usually save my DPS CD's because it's much more heart breaking to fail when he's at 10k HP, then at the start. Also they give you a bit of leeway if you do make a mistake heading into the last bird phase or don't get lucky procs for eclipse.
The trinkets I've found the most helpful are my 2 PVP trinkets, battlemaster's bravery and titan forged rune of audacity.
I save them for the last phase to get out of a stun and to give me that extra 3k life boost to finish him off.
Due to my raid spec I find mana an issue so I do use a mana pot on my non fail attempts (ok sometimes i take a pot and still fail :( )
If you find your falling behind heading into the bird phase, or eclipse just won't proc at the start and you know your losing the DPS race, you can kite out of the room to reset Anzu, this saves you a repair bill, and the long run back.
If your dying a lot, it is worth clearing out the adds in the first hallway, and in the middle of the first room as you enter the instance to increase your running back speed.
I don't bother hotting the totems besides the start as I find i just don't have the time (or mana)
Removing the curse is the most important aspect of this fight, not only does the curse do significant damage, but the GCD knockdown and mana it burns really set me back.
I was wearing 2 x T8 and 2 x T9 for my attempts with PVP off pieces and gear in my other slots to make me as tankie as possible without losing too much dps.
In the end i ran with around 21.5k HP, 2.6k SP in Moonkin.
Good luck!
Seeing Morrid on the forums downing Anzu as Moonkin inspired me to try this again, and following some of the tips from Moomuerto I adjusted my strat and tried it again, finally I got Anzu down after over an hour of trying and 100g in repairs.
I tried again a couple days later, and it still took me a few attempts, but this time only 30 minutes and 50g repairs, hopefully I'll be able to one shot it soon enough.
Here are some things I have taken away from my many attempts as I tried different gear, and I tried between my 2 Moonkin specs (1 raid moonkin, the other is a restokin pvp spec)
Stand against the wall as Moomuerto said at the start, hot the falcon spirit totem to increase your dps, then thrown a regrowth and rejuv on yourself and go to town on Anzu.
I found i usually opened with a starfire, moonfire, faerie fire, and wrathed till eclipse. Then proc eclipse and Anzu should faze out as he reaches 66%.
Run across to the other side of the room, thrown hots on yourself and get ready for the birds, make sure you get into Moonkin form before the birds swarm you as you get your heavy armor and 15% damage reduction while stunned. Anzu occasionally stuns you while he's phased out, wait out the stun, then hurricane the birds down.
Unfortunately my raid spec I don't have gale winds so it takes me 2 x hurricane, to get them down, with them bashing on you it may reduce the effectiveness of your hurricane due to pushback so you may have to do this twice
I generally find it easy getting past this first phase, but because my raid spec has no mana regen talents, I need to pop my innervate at this point.
Anzu comes out of his phased mode when all birds are down or 1 minute passes.
I've found it to be effective if only a few birds remain up, and Anzu still has some time left in phased out mode to shift out and throw on your regrowth and rejuv hots, since the birds won't hit you for much and Anzu hits like a truck when your in caster.
Finish the birds then dps Anzu again, once again I find it all about proccing eclipse to get him down quickly before your hots run out, if you spend too much trying to kite and dot your just wasting valuable dps time and your heals won't keep up, I throw the moonfire up as i have both the moonfire idol and t9 bonus, if I didn't i would probably just wrath to proc starfire (or the other way around) as this brings him down fast.
Enter the last bird phase and kite over and heal up again, same strategy as before, when Anzu phases back in burn all your CD's and finish him off.
I usually save my DPS CD's because it's much more heart breaking to fail when he's at 10k HP, then at the start. Also they give you a bit of leeway if you do make a mistake heading into the last bird phase or don't get lucky procs for eclipse.
The trinkets I've found the most helpful are my 2 PVP trinkets, battlemaster's bravery and titan forged rune of audacity.
I save them for the last phase to get out of a stun and to give me that extra 3k life boost to finish him off.
Due to my raid spec I find mana an issue so I do use a mana pot on my non fail attempts (ok sometimes i take a pot and still fail :( )
If you find your falling behind heading into the bird phase, or eclipse just won't proc at the start and you know your losing the DPS race, you can kite out of the room to reset Anzu, this saves you a repair bill, and the long run back.
If your dying a lot, it is worth clearing out the adds in the first hallway, and in the middle of the first room as you enter the instance to increase your running back speed.
I don't bother hotting the totems besides the start as I find i just don't have the time (or mana)
Removing the curse is the most important aspect of this fight, not only does the curse do significant damage, but the GCD knockdown and mana it burns really set me back.
I was wearing 2 x T8 and 2 x T9 for my attempts with PVP off pieces and gear in my other slots to make me as tankie as possible without losing too much dps.
In the end i ran with around 21.5k HP, 2.6k SP in Moonkin.
Good luck!
Friday, November 6, 2009
Random Thoughts
Since stealthruns are so rare with the current state of the game (rare for the lack of need for them now) I will start blogging about my random activities playing the game.
In wanting to write more, I will post about playing my druid in various aspects of the game, possibly my rogue, if I'm not too lazy to level him.
As a casual player, I don't have access to all the latest and greatest instances or loot, but that doesn't mean I don't want to maximise my character as much as possible.
I will attempt to post more, as I do enjoy writing for this blog, but I guess pigeon holing myself into a blog named stealthruns, I felt I had to write about stealthing instances.
I guess more consistant writing will (hopefully) garner me a stronger readership and improve my writing, and one day if stealthing does become an attractive option again, I will explore it.
In wanting to write more, I will post about playing my druid in various aspects of the game, possibly my rogue, if I'm not too lazy to level him.
As a casual player, I don't have access to all the latest and greatest instances or loot, but that doesn't mean I don't want to maximise my character as much as possible.
I will attempt to post more, as I do enjoy writing for this blog, but I guess pigeon holing myself into a blog named stealthruns, I felt I had to write about stealthing instances.
I guess more consistant writing will (hopefully) garner me a stronger readership and improve my writing, and one day if stealthing does become an attractive option again, I will explore it.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Soloing Anzu as a Moonkin
Morrid and Moomuerto on the official WoW forums claim to have soloed Anzu as a moonkin!
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677582412&sid=1
Hearing of these success's has inspired me to keep trying (yes I've been failing at this, although I've found a proper feral tank spec with average gear quite easy)
Morrid's stats are quite decent compared to the average chicken.
2753 spell power
26.31% crit
15.07% haste
21067 hp
24711 mana
He says he feels it is really important to keep the eagle totem up (the one that reduces dmg by 500)
Moomuerto has posted a short guide which I will copy here, since we know how the WoW forums like to eat posts
Moomuerto feels it's not necessary to use the totems.
Here's the way to do the fight as moonkin, although it might take some practice to get down.
1.) If you enter the room, the wall on the left is one i engaged him from. Stand as close to the wall as you can.
2.)throw a regrowth on the eagle and...hawk i think (not needed but helps) and then regrowth, rejuv yourself, moonkin form and charge up a starfire on him, dot him up and barkskin once he gets in melee range, he never put the curse on me in this first phase so just nuke him down with barkskin on until he shifts into his ghosty form.
3.) as soon as he shifts start running to the opposite wall of the room and hot yourself to full, shouldn't need much, be mindful of the curse while running as this is when he starts using it. Get ready for the birds.
4.) He will generally cast his long 5 second stun on you while youre at the opposite wall, wait for the stun before you hurricane the birds down. Also, dont hurricane the birds down until you see your barkskin will be off cooldown in around 10 seconds or so. Anzu will charge you as soon as they die.
5.) once the birds are dead, he will start running towards you from the opposite wall (where you first pulled him) now is the time to regrowth, rejuv, lifebloom yourself before he reaches you. make sure you are not casting if he puts the curse on you, cancel your cast and decurse yourself. 6.) now your barkskin should be up again so you should be able to nuke him with full hots on yourself. use treants / starfall / innervate if needed. The only thing different about this time is that he will randomly put the curse on you while you're casting wrath / starfire....its very important to be ready to cancel cast and decurse yourself because you will take too much damage otherwise. Nuke him down to a certain % and he will ghost form again... 7
.) repeat steps 3-6, kill and loot. Equipping a pvp trinket helps a lot for his 5 sec stun, especially when first learning how to solo this as a moonkin. I used mostly 226-232-245 pve gear.
The biggest challenge I've found when doing this is making sure you get the de-curse off in time, unfortunately I do get cursed during the first stage of the fight, and sometimes he puts it on you just before your cast gets off, also I'm probably getting old and losing a bit of reaction time, but i will endeavor.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677582412&sid=1
Hearing of these success's has inspired me to keep trying (yes I've been failing at this, although I've found a proper feral tank spec with average gear quite easy)
Morrid's stats are quite decent compared to the average chicken.
2753 spell power
26.31% crit
15.07% haste
21067 hp
24711 mana
He says he feels it is really important to keep the eagle totem up (the one that reduces dmg by 500)
Moomuerto has posted a short guide which I will copy here, since we know how the WoW forums like to eat posts
Moomuerto feels it's not necessary to use the totems.
Here's the way to do the fight as moonkin, although it might take some practice to get down.
1.) If you enter the room, the wall on the left is one i engaged him from. Stand as close to the wall as you can.
2.)throw a regrowth on the eagle and...hawk i think (not needed but helps) and then regrowth, rejuv yourself, moonkin form and charge up a starfire on him, dot him up and barkskin once he gets in melee range, he never put the curse on me in this first phase so just nuke him down with barkskin on until he shifts into his ghosty form.
3.) as soon as he shifts start running to the opposite wall of the room and hot yourself to full, shouldn't need much, be mindful of the curse while running as this is when he starts using it. Get ready for the birds.
4.) He will generally cast his long 5 second stun on you while youre at the opposite wall, wait for the stun before you hurricane the birds down. Also, dont hurricane the birds down until you see your barkskin will be off cooldown in around 10 seconds or so. Anzu will charge you as soon as they die.
5.) once the birds are dead, he will start running towards you from the opposite wall (where you first pulled him) now is the time to regrowth, rejuv, lifebloom yourself before he reaches you. make sure you are not casting if he puts the curse on you, cancel your cast and decurse yourself. 6.) now your barkskin should be up again so you should be able to nuke him with full hots on yourself. use treants / starfall / innervate if needed. The only thing different about this time is that he will randomly put the curse on you while you're casting wrath / starfire....its very important to be ready to cancel cast and decurse yourself because you will take too much damage otherwise. Nuke him down to a certain % and he will ghost form again... 7
.) repeat steps 3-6, kill and loot. Equipping a pvp trinket helps a lot for his 5 sec stun, especially when first learning how to solo this as a moonkin. I used mostly 226-232-245 pve gear.
The biggest challenge I've found when doing this is making sure you get the de-curse off in time, unfortunately I do get cursed during the first stage of the fight, and sometimes he puts it on you just before your cast gets off, also I'm probably getting old and losing a bit of reaction time, but i will endeavor.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
3.2.2 is here
3.2.2 went live last night and the changes for druids in the patch notes are
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
Druids
Talents
Balance
Moonkin Form: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%.
Typhoon: The daze duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.
Feral Combat
Infected Wounds: The debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application.
Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.
What this means for us.
For PVE it doesn't look like much of a different, the change to the talent infected wounds was a slight buff as it get's applied with 1 hit, now i haven't played much feral this expansion, but honestly, i expect this pretty much does nothing for PVE
For PVP however, although at first it looks like a buff (get's applied on 1 stack) the elite PVPers over at Arena Junkies have been calling it a nerf, 1 stack means it's easier to remove.
Ferals have received a huge PVP buff with predatory strikes this lets them cast an instant nature spell after a 5 point combo, instant HT and Regrowth for heals, and instant cyclones are already being called op and getting complained about. I remember back when T5 was around, and ferals would wear 2 piece for instant regrowths. Now it's a built in talent that will be extremely strong in PVP especially arena.
For PVE, i don't think it will be so game breaking, if a feral kitty has to heal themselves the raid is not really doing it's job, although it may help those kitties that like to solo things.
Regrowth over HT will give you a slighter increase in healing due to the catform giving a 20% buff to healing spells, so the ticks will hit for a greater amount.
For Moonkin, we had a buff to a Typhoon, all the talk of increased knockback, as far as i can tell, never came to fruition.
I guess all the complaints from various forums, about shortening the distance on Typhoon caused Blizz to rethink the change, keeping typhoon at 30 yards with a 15 yard knockback would of been extremely good.
It seems the final change that has hit live servers has been to increase the dazed portion to 6s from 3, this is obviously a PVP buff, although i guess it does help Moonkins that like to solo a few mobs (they'd be using root and cyclone on single mobs)
The change to 15% dmg reduction while stunned is nice, once again this is a PVP buff, and we'll see if these 2 changes alone are enough to fix moonkin pvp (doubtful)
Typhoon glyph change is a meh, i guess a buff is better than a nerf, but who actually uses this?
The Typhoon glyph is purely for PVE, since the knockback on typhoon is the most important aspect of this ability in PVP.
Serious raiding glyphs are moonfire, insect swarm and starfire
Although some people have been saying the starfall glyphs are viable now.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/
Druids
Talents
Balance
Moonkin Form: This form now also reduces the damage the druid takes while stunned by 15%.
Typhoon: The daze duration has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.
Feral Combat
Infected Wounds: The debuff generated by this talent no longer stacks and instead causes the full effect with a single application.
Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.
What this means for us.
For PVE it doesn't look like much of a different, the change to the talent infected wounds was a slight buff as it get's applied with 1 hit, now i haven't played much feral this expansion, but honestly, i expect this pretty much does nothing for PVE
For PVP however, although at first it looks like a buff (get's applied on 1 stack) the elite PVPers over at Arena Junkies have been calling it a nerf, 1 stack means it's easier to remove.
Ferals have received a huge PVP buff with predatory strikes this lets them cast an instant nature spell after a 5 point combo, instant HT and Regrowth for heals, and instant cyclones are already being called op and getting complained about. I remember back when T5 was around, and ferals would wear 2 piece for instant regrowths. Now it's a built in talent that will be extremely strong in PVP especially arena.
For PVE, i don't think it will be so game breaking, if a feral kitty has to heal themselves the raid is not really doing it's job, although it may help those kitties that like to solo things.
Regrowth over HT will give you a slighter increase in healing due to the catform giving a 20% buff to healing spells, so the ticks will hit for a greater amount.
For Moonkin, we had a buff to a Typhoon, all the talk of increased knockback, as far as i can tell, never came to fruition.
I guess all the complaints from various forums, about shortening the distance on Typhoon caused Blizz to rethink the change, keeping typhoon at 30 yards with a 15 yard knockback would of been extremely good.
It seems the final change that has hit live servers has been to increase the dazed portion to 6s from 3, this is obviously a PVP buff, although i guess it does help Moonkins that like to solo a few mobs (they'd be using root and cyclone on single mobs)
The change to 15% dmg reduction while stunned is nice, once again this is a PVP buff, and we'll see if these 2 changes alone are enough to fix moonkin pvp (doubtful)
Typhoon glyph change is a meh, i guess a buff is better than a nerf, but who actually uses this?
The Typhoon glyph is purely for PVE, since the knockback on typhoon is the most important aspect of this ability in PVP.
Serious raiding glyphs are moonfire, insect swarm and starfire
Although some people have been saying the starfall glyphs are viable now.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Arena Season 7 is here
One of the easiest ways to gear up a noob casual like me is by collecting honor points and buying the latest available PVP gear.
I have friends that play this game that are even more noob then a casual like me, they like to do things on their own, they don't seem to enjoy the social aspect of the game (getting groups and making friends) and seem to be happy to just do quests and BG's, however they want the best gear...
So the best way for them to gear up is farm the honor system.
Since i always have to google gear requirements, i thought i would post a list of the gear and rating requirements for the current season.
It also appears the 213 level battlemaster trinkets have been removed from the vendors, not sure if this is an oversight or not, but i do know some of my friends who had been farming honor are bummed over this.
No Rating Requirements
Deadly Gloves 31,600 or 7,200 honor 200 arena
Deadly Chest 49,600 or 12,000 honor 350 arena
Deadly Shoulders 31,600 or 9,600 honor 275 arena
Deadly Pants 49,600 12,000 honor 350 arena
Deadly Hat 49,600 or 12,000 honor 350 arena
(other lists have the deadly off pieces but i didn't see them on my quick scout of the vendors)
Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape 38,000 honor
Deadly Trinket 15300 honor
Furious Bracer 31,600 honor
Furious Belt 49,600 honor
Furious Boots 49,600
Furious Neck 38,0000 honor
Furious Ring 38,000 honor
Furious Cape 38,0000 honor
Furious Trinket 49,600 honor
Ratings Required
700+: Furious Relics 6400 honor 250 arena
800+: Furious Gloves 7200 honor 400 arena
900+: Furious Legs 12000 honor 700 arena
1000+: Furious Chest 12000 honor 700 arena
1100+: Furious Helm 12000 honor 700 arena
1200+: Relentless Bracer 39,400 (honor)
1250+: Relentless Belt 62,000 (honor)
1300+: Relentless Boots 62,000 (honor)
1350+: Furious Shoulders 9600 honor 550 arena
1400+: Relentless Gloves 1300 arena
1450+: Relentless Neck 47,400 (honor)
1500+: Relentless Ring 47,400 (honor)
1550+: Relentless Legs 2150 arena
1600+: Relentless Chest 2150 arena
1650+: Relentless Trinket 62,000 (honor)
1700+: Relentless Wands/Relics/etc 1150 arena
1750+: Relentless Cape 47,400 (honor)
1800+: Relentless Weapon - lvl245
1900+: Relentless Helm 2150 arena
2000+: Relentless Shoulders 1750 arena
2200+: Relentless Weapon - lvl258 35000 honor 1200 arena points
2300+: Relentless Tabard
I have friends that play this game that are even more noob then a casual like me, they like to do things on their own, they don't seem to enjoy the social aspect of the game (getting groups and making friends) and seem to be happy to just do quests and BG's, however they want the best gear...
So the best way for them to gear up is farm the honor system.
Since i always have to google gear requirements, i thought i would post a list of the gear and rating requirements for the current season.
It also appears the 213 level battlemaster trinkets have been removed from the vendors, not sure if this is an oversight or not, but i do know some of my friends who had been farming honor are bummed over this.
No Rating Requirements
Deadly Gloves 31,600 or 7,200 honor 200 arena
Deadly Chest 49,600 or 12,000 honor 350 arena
Deadly Shoulders 31,600 or 9,600 honor 275 arena
Deadly Pants 49,600 12,000 honor 350 arena
Deadly Hat 49,600 or 12,000 honor 350 arena
(other lists have the deadly off pieces but i didn't see them on my quick scout of the vendors)
Deadly Bracer
Deadly Belt
Deadly Boots
Deadly Neck
Deadly Ring
Deadly Cape 38,000 honor
Deadly Trinket 15300 honor
Furious Bracer 31,600 honor
Furious Belt 49,600 honor
Furious Boots 49,600
Furious Neck 38,0000 honor
Furious Ring 38,000 honor
Furious Cape 38,0000 honor
Furious Trinket 49,600 honor
Ratings Required
700+: Furious Relics 6400 honor 250 arena
800+: Furious Gloves 7200 honor 400 arena
900+: Furious Legs 12000 honor 700 arena
1000+: Furious Chest 12000 honor 700 arena
1100+: Furious Helm 12000 honor 700 arena
1200+: Relentless Bracer 39,400 (honor)
1250+: Relentless Belt 62,000 (honor)
1300+: Relentless Boots 62,000 (honor)
1350+: Furious Shoulders 9600 honor 550 arena
1400+: Relentless Gloves 1300 arena
1450+: Relentless Neck 47,400 (honor)
1500+: Relentless Ring 47,400 (honor)
1550+: Relentless Legs 2150 arena
1600+: Relentless Chest 2150 arena
1650+: Relentless Trinket 62,000 (honor)
1700+: Relentless Wands/Relics/etc 1150 arena
1750+: Relentless Cape 47,400 (honor)
1800+: Relentless Weapon - lvl245
1900+: Relentless Helm 2150 arena
2000+: Relentless Shoulders 1750 arena
2200+: Relentless Weapon - lvl258 35000 honor 1200 arena points
2300+: Relentless Tabard
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Minimum Gear Required for Anzu
Well its seems my blog gets the most hits for my Anzu posts, so i thought i would revisit it.
The druid mount is considered to be one of the most exclusive mounts due to the fact you need a druid to farm it, and it looks so different from everything else.
Since a lot of people are doing this on their alt druids they don't have the greatest gear, so they are wondering what the minimum gear requirement is. My friend who has a feral druid with 36k hp was laughing at how easy this is, i myself found this difficult when i started soloing this, I only have about 25k hp in bear.
I've been playing mainly Moonkin in WOTLK and some Resto, so i've attempted to do Anzu as a Moonkin, and although my gear isn't great it's not the worst either, and i found it really really hard.
Feral has 2 specs now and i've been playing with feral kitty as my offspec, however i found i just didn't have the dps in cat and i didn't have the survivability in bear to do this.
So just to be able to solo Anzu i've respecced as a feral bear, i took all the tanking talents and things that would reduce damage, i've found heals in feral gear are absolute crap, and against Anzu, you don't want to shift out of bear that much as you can get stunned shifting and take damage in caster form.
So how much gear do you need? Well my bear tank is only in a few purples, 3 from PVP a few from instances, but then i am also wearing blue items from questing, and even a trinket from TBC.
All up i have 25k HP, 20000 armour, and 6k attack power. And i would say this is probably around the minimum limit at what you would want your stats to be.
I still advocate clearing the last boss Ikiss first while your learning this, as stealthing through the back door will make it much quicker after wipes, also clearing mobs from the Ikiss's room reduces the risk of getting feared into another group of mobs.
Fighting Ikiss as feral is quite easy, just go in as cat and dps him quickly until he does his AoE, run behind a pillar heal up and rinse and repeat.
Clearing out the mobs is a bit tougher, make sure you throw 2 hots on yourself, sleep the bird, go bear then use your CD's and burst as many mobs down as possible, you want to focus fire if possible as burning a mob down reduces the incoming damage, swipe just doesn't do enough damage to get the groups down in time before they beat the crap out of you.
On the larger groups you may want to wait for your savage roar cooldown.
On Anzu, hot yourself then just go in and tank him, i find improved leader of the pack is enough to keep you healed up going into the first bird phase.
When the birds drop you can just AoE swipe them down, if you have AP trinkets you may want to activate these.
I always find this the breaking point of if you can do this or not, Anzu pops out of his phaze after a set amount of time, so you need to get the birds down as quickly as possible having Anzu on you as well as a bunch of birds just puts you behind further.
Once the birds are down you will be back on Anzu again, you will need to get up to full health before the next bird phase, there are a few ways to do this, use a pot, a healthstone, bear heal.
DPS Anzu down until he phazes out again, if you really need a heal, as soon as he phazes out walk away and try to get a regrowth off on yourself (i've had him hit before when he's phazed out... go figure), just be careful as there's been a few times he drops a stun on me as i shift out, or he debuffs you so you take damage on casts anyway. I try not to shift if possible so i use trinkets for maximum survivability.
Take out the second round of birds, and if you can survive that with enough HP, you should be able to finish Anzu off.
Just a few tips that have worked for me.
I save barkskin for the birds phase to reduce dmg.
I use trinkets for survivability
I use the eng trinket Noise Machine, i know it doesn't help my dps at all, but the fight takes me about 6 minutes, so it will proc 5-6 times saving me 5500-6600 worth of damage.
I use the TBC trinket Argussian Compass which drops from the Black Stalker in Heroic Underbog, yes it's an old trinket, but i can activate it during the bird phase to save me 1150 damage each time.
I find getting to the bird phase is relatively easy, it's surviving the bird phase with enough HP that was causing me problems.
If you have the Bear Heal Glyph, it will also give you 20% more from a pot.
Take a pot and hit up a Warlock for a healthstone, they are on different cooldowns.
You can pot and healthstone in bear form.
This is just a guide to help you if your in crap gear, this fight becomes relatively easy once you gear up.
Yes i have crap crap feral gear, this is my off off spec.
Good luck with the mount dropping! I've done this over 100 times and haven't seen it once yet.
The druid mount is considered to be one of the most exclusive mounts due to the fact you need a druid to farm it, and it looks so different from everything else.
Since a lot of people are doing this on their alt druids they don't have the greatest gear, so they are wondering what the minimum gear requirement is. My friend who has a feral druid with 36k hp was laughing at how easy this is, i myself found this difficult when i started soloing this, I only have about 25k hp in bear.
I've been playing mainly Moonkin in WOTLK and some Resto, so i've attempted to do Anzu as a Moonkin, and although my gear isn't great it's not the worst either, and i found it really really hard.
Feral has 2 specs now and i've been playing with feral kitty as my offspec, however i found i just didn't have the dps in cat and i didn't have the survivability in bear to do this.
So just to be able to solo Anzu i've respecced as a feral bear, i took all the tanking talents and things that would reduce damage, i've found heals in feral gear are absolute crap, and against Anzu, you don't want to shift out of bear that much as you can get stunned shifting and take damage in caster form.
So how much gear do you need? Well my bear tank is only in a few purples, 3 from PVP a few from instances, but then i am also wearing blue items from questing, and even a trinket from TBC.
All up i have 25k HP, 20000 armour, and 6k attack power. And i would say this is probably around the minimum limit at what you would want your stats to be.
I still advocate clearing the last boss Ikiss first while your learning this, as stealthing through the back door will make it much quicker after wipes, also clearing mobs from the Ikiss's room reduces the risk of getting feared into another group of mobs.
Fighting Ikiss as feral is quite easy, just go in as cat and dps him quickly until he does his AoE, run behind a pillar heal up and rinse and repeat.
Clearing out the mobs is a bit tougher, make sure you throw 2 hots on yourself, sleep the bird, go bear then use your CD's and burst as many mobs down as possible, you want to focus fire if possible as burning a mob down reduces the incoming damage, swipe just doesn't do enough damage to get the groups down in time before they beat the crap out of you.
On the larger groups you may want to wait for your savage roar cooldown.
On Anzu, hot yourself then just go in and tank him, i find improved leader of the pack is enough to keep you healed up going into the first bird phase.
When the birds drop you can just AoE swipe them down, if you have AP trinkets you may want to activate these.
I always find this the breaking point of if you can do this or not, Anzu pops out of his phaze after a set amount of time, so you need to get the birds down as quickly as possible having Anzu on you as well as a bunch of birds just puts you behind further.
Once the birds are down you will be back on Anzu again, you will need to get up to full health before the next bird phase, there are a few ways to do this, use a pot, a healthstone, bear heal.
DPS Anzu down until he phazes out again, if you really need a heal, as soon as he phazes out walk away and try to get a regrowth off on yourself (i've had him hit before when he's phazed out... go figure), just be careful as there's been a few times he drops a stun on me as i shift out, or he debuffs you so you take damage on casts anyway. I try not to shift if possible so i use trinkets for maximum survivability.
Take out the second round of birds, and if you can survive that with enough HP, you should be able to finish Anzu off.
Just a few tips that have worked for me.
I save barkskin for the birds phase to reduce dmg.
I use trinkets for survivability
I use the eng trinket Noise Machine, i know it doesn't help my dps at all, but the fight takes me about 6 minutes, so it will proc 5-6 times saving me 5500-6600 worth of damage.
I use the TBC trinket Argussian Compass which drops from the Black Stalker in Heroic Underbog, yes it's an old trinket, but i can activate it during the bird phase to save me 1150 damage each time.
I find getting to the bird phase is relatively easy, it's surviving the bird phase with enough HP that was causing me problems.
If you have the Bear Heal Glyph, it will also give you 20% more from a pot.
Take a pot and hit up a Warlock for a healthstone, they are on different cooldowns.
You can pot and healthstone in bear form.
This is just a guide to help you if your in crap gear, this fight becomes relatively easy once you gear up.
Yes i have crap crap feral gear, this is my off off spec.
Good luck with the mount dropping! I've done this over 100 times and haven't seen it once yet.
Not Children's Week...
Well having a matron in Dalaran telling me to adopt an orphan is not children's week....
After not doing any of the special event achievements ever, i'd finally decided to attempt to do the ones from last week. I thought it was children's week, after all why else would you tote an orphan around town and show them the sites, but after logging a ticket and saying, why the hell is making my totem caps flags in PVP and showing them the sites not getting me achievements, they replied, because your and idiot and it's not chicldrens week. Ok they didn't say idiot, but i can say that's what they were thinking...
Good luck to all of you that actually do all your achievements for your mount!
After not doing any of the special event achievements ever, i'd finally decided to attempt to do the ones from last week. I thought it was children's week, after all why else would you tote an orphan around town and show them the sites, but after logging a ticket and saying, why the hell is making my totem caps flags in PVP and showing them the sites not getting me achievements, they replied, because your and idiot and it's not chicldrens week. Ok they didn't say idiot, but i can say that's what they were thinking...
Good luck to all of you that actually do all your achievements for your mount!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Children's Week!
Well it's Children's Week, i must admit i've never been that hot on the World Events, doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff, e.g. getting achievements has never really appealed to me, after all, it doesn't improve my character, doesn't get me better gear, make my character stronger, or give me extra abilities that would help my poor game skills.
But... achievements that give you extra items i'd actually use? I'm up for that, so finally after thinking about getting a 310% flying mount i had to look up how to actually get one.
Let's see the options.
Top 0.5% PVP Arena
Top raiding achievements
Holiday Achievement
Hmm as a casual gamer it doesn't seem like i have many options. So Children's week started up this week, and i thought, well i have some new friends playing, why not do some crappy achievements with them. So we started the Children's Week quest line and took little orphan Annie on a tour of Azeroth and completed the quests.
Before completing the last quest and taking little orphan Annie back to the orphanage, i tried to do a couple of the achievements. Well the easy ones, like have orphan out while hearthing, i did it, no achievement, my friend did it no achievement, so i figured we'd have to finish the quest line and get one of the permanent pets before doing it.
So maybe i'm dumb, ignorant or naive or all of the above. Handed my quest back, got a new pet that is NOT an orphan, and this dude won't let me do achievements either.
So i'm guessing the quests are a bit bugged, i've heard you can get another orphan from Shattrah, i may try that out, but a 1 year quest line to get a flying mount? And can you imagine if the achievements bug out and you have to wait for one more year.....
But... achievements that give you extra items i'd actually use? I'm up for that, so finally after thinking about getting a 310% flying mount i had to look up how to actually get one.
Let's see the options.
Top 0.5% PVP Arena
Top raiding achievements
Holiday Achievement
Hmm as a casual gamer it doesn't seem like i have many options. So Children's week started up this week, and i thought, well i have some new friends playing, why not do some crappy achievements with them. So we started the Children's Week quest line and took little orphan Annie on a tour of Azeroth and completed the quests.
Before completing the last quest and taking little orphan Annie back to the orphanage, i tried to do a couple of the achievements. Well the easy ones, like have orphan out while hearthing, i did it, no achievement, my friend did it no achievement, so i figured we'd have to finish the quest line and get one of the permanent pets before doing it.
So maybe i'm dumb, ignorant or naive or all of the above. Handed my quest back, got a new pet that is NOT an orphan, and this dude won't let me do achievements either.
So i'm guessing the quests are a bit bugged, i've heard you can get another orphan from Shattrah, i may try that out, but a 1 year quest line to get a flying mount? And can you imagine if the achievements bug out and you have to wait for one more year.....
Riding Skills in 3.2!!
Well i finally got my rogue to level 60 last weekend, I'd heard riding skills were going to be cheaper in 3.2, how cheap? Well 50g down from 600g, a significant saving and something i was wiling to wait 2 days for, after all it's probably taken me a year to get my rogue to level 60 so what's to more days!
What the exciting news was, is that flying mounts are now available for level 60's. They flying training was 600g and the mount was about 50g.
What the exciting news was, is that flying mounts are now available for level 60's. They flying training was 600g and the mount was about 50g.
So where to buy mounts and skills? Well if your 60, i would say you've made your way over into TBC already.
Alliance can purchase the epic ground mount riding skill from the Honor Hold trainer, as well as the flying skills and mount. I thought i would have to hotfoot it back to Elwynn forrest for the riding skills but with the player base now not even wanting to spend 10g on repairs let alone 10 minutes to travel, Blizz have made picking up the riding stuff more convenient.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Nerf to Stealth Detection items
Well i'm about 2 months late, but better late than never right?
Whole bunch of stealth detection items have been nerfed as they have been deemed to OP for PVP.
Here's the link
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17163476972&sid=1
Here's a copy of the post from Bornakk
We recently made some changes to items that grant stealth detection. We felt these items provided a necessary advantage in competitive PVP and forced players to use lower level equipment even when more powerful items were available to them. This item can no longer be used in the Arena:
Ultra-Spectropic Detection GogglesWe have removed stealth detection from the following items:
All epic engineering gogglesWe have reduced the stealth detection of the following items:
Catseye Ultra Goggles
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Gauntlets
Marshal's Dragonhide Gauntlets
Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Gloves
General's Dragonhide Gloves
Bloodvine Lens
Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Grips
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Grips
The Night WatchmanAll of these changes are already active and the tooltips will be updated with the next minor patch.
Whole bunch of stealth detection items have been nerfed as they have been deemed to OP for PVP.
Here's the link
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17163476972&sid=1
Here's a copy of the post from Bornakk
We recently made some changes to items that grant stealth detection. We felt these items provided a necessary advantage in competitive PVP and forced players to use lower level equipment even when more powerful items were available to them. This item can no longer be used in the Arena:
Ultra-Spectropic Detection GogglesWe have removed stealth detection from the following items:
All epic engineering gogglesWe have reduced the stealth detection of the following items:
Catseye Ultra Goggles
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Gauntlets
Marshal's Dragonhide Gauntlets
Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Gloves
General's Dragonhide Gloves
Bloodvine Lens
Knight-Lieutenant's Dragonhide Grips
Blood Guard's Dragonhide Grips
The Night WatchmanAll of these changes are already active and the tooltips will be updated with the next minor patch.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Casual Gamer
Well WoW has been out a long time, and the longer we play it the more you can see how the game is being catered more for the casual gamer as opposed to the hard core.
Back in the day when MMO's first came out, they were pretty hard core, my guildies tell me of epic war stories in the day's of playing EQ (Everquest) and camping mobs for 10 hours, 2 hour ghost runs to pick up your body only to die as soon as you rez and the list goes on.
Well Blizzard must be doing something right as the number of WoW subscribers is still over 12 million people.
So why the change?
Hardcore gamers are said to make up less than 5% of the population, which means the majority of subscribers are casual gamers. Hardcore gamers are on for longer hours which means they are using up Blizz's resources on their servers, hardcore gamers pay the same amount as the casual gamer, see where this is going?
If you were running a business, which gamer would you want to have as the majority of your customers?
Because of this, the game has been catered more for the casual gamer, now more than ever. Although i myself am a casual gamer (hence the lack of posts these last few months) I consider myself a "hardcore" casual gamer, that is i don't want the content so easy it's a breeze through.
It seems in the days of post WOTLK the game has become too dumbed down. I applauded Blizz when they brought in the badge system in TBC they made high quality items available for the casual player, they were not as good as the top tier items from raiding, but they were good, and they took a while to obtain.
Instances were hard in TBC, you had to use the right mix of CC, tanking and healing to finish an instance, and it still took 1.5 hrs. Heroic mode felt impossible at first! Even with experienced guildies in Karazan gear, i remember a heroic slave pens taking 5 hours! The game was a challenge and fun! The casual gamer could get good gear but it took time.
Then WOTLK came, i did my first instance, and the entire instance was multi mob tank and spank, i hit 80 and was scared to go into my first heroic as i was still in purple 70 gear with quest blues, yet it was easy! It was more of the same multi mob tank and spank. The game had been dumbed down to the point where it felt too easy...
Due to the ease of instances and multi mob tanking and spanking, i didn't even attempt stealth runs, i mentally noted mobs before a boss, and it seems they had taken out the need for stealth running, 2 groups of mobs before a boss that could easily be tanked with no cc... this helped me lose interest in running instances and pretty soon i was just running BG's for some gear. Back in those days i had no chance at soloing the old instances, being a moonkin spec with average gear, i wasn't willing to respec every other week.
Although the game is still a dumbed down version of it's former self, a few things have changed. 3.1 has introduced multi specs and new gear. Making it easier for the casual gamer to gear up, and go do some "fun" stuff.
"Fun" stuff being, i've heard of people attempting to solo old 40 man instances like MC and AQ.
Or solo mount farming in old instances like ZG or Magister's terrace.
I'm looking forward to getting some better gear, having a second spec that's good for soloing (or duoing) and having a look at old instances i haven't been to for years.
I know there are a lot of new players in the game, and it's also a great opportunity for them to look at some old content that helped make this game so popular.
Back in the day when MMO's first came out, they were pretty hard core, my guildies tell me of epic war stories in the day's of playing EQ (Everquest) and camping mobs for 10 hours, 2 hour ghost runs to pick up your body only to die as soon as you rez and the list goes on.
Well Blizzard must be doing something right as the number of WoW subscribers is still over 12 million people.
So why the change?
Hardcore gamers are said to make up less than 5% of the population, which means the majority of subscribers are casual gamers. Hardcore gamers are on for longer hours which means they are using up Blizz's resources on their servers, hardcore gamers pay the same amount as the casual gamer, see where this is going?
If you were running a business, which gamer would you want to have as the majority of your customers?
Because of this, the game has been catered more for the casual gamer, now more than ever. Although i myself am a casual gamer (hence the lack of posts these last few months) I consider myself a "hardcore" casual gamer, that is i don't want the content so easy it's a breeze through.
It seems in the days of post WOTLK the game has become too dumbed down. I applauded Blizz when they brought in the badge system in TBC they made high quality items available for the casual player, they were not as good as the top tier items from raiding, but they were good, and they took a while to obtain.
Instances were hard in TBC, you had to use the right mix of CC, tanking and healing to finish an instance, and it still took 1.5 hrs. Heroic mode felt impossible at first! Even with experienced guildies in Karazan gear, i remember a heroic slave pens taking 5 hours! The game was a challenge and fun! The casual gamer could get good gear but it took time.
Then WOTLK came, i did my first instance, and the entire instance was multi mob tank and spank, i hit 80 and was scared to go into my first heroic as i was still in purple 70 gear with quest blues, yet it was easy! It was more of the same multi mob tank and spank. The game had been dumbed down to the point where it felt too easy...
Due to the ease of instances and multi mob tanking and spanking, i didn't even attempt stealth runs, i mentally noted mobs before a boss, and it seems they had taken out the need for stealth running, 2 groups of mobs before a boss that could easily be tanked with no cc... this helped me lose interest in running instances and pretty soon i was just running BG's for some gear. Back in those days i had no chance at soloing the old instances, being a moonkin spec with average gear, i wasn't willing to respec every other week.
Although the game is still a dumbed down version of it's former self, a few things have changed. 3.1 has introduced multi specs and new gear. Making it easier for the casual gamer to gear up, and go do some "fun" stuff.
"Fun" stuff being, i've heard of people attempting to solo old 40 man instances like MC and AQ.
Or solo mount farming in old instances like ZG or Magister's terrace.
I'm looking forward to getting some better gear, having a second spec that's good for soloing (or duoing) and having a look at old instances i haven't been to for years.
I know there are a lot of new players in the game, and it's also a great opportunity for them to look at some old content that helped make this game so popular.
Monday, February 16, 2009
OMG WTF I BEEN HAXORED!
I'm going to talk about a topic that can unfortunately affect any one of us, and that is how to recover a hacked account.
Shortly after getting home from my trip i found my account had been hacked. It's depressing to try and logon and receive a message your account has been banned, and for those of us that it happens to for the first time, it can be frustrating and a bit bewildering.
I've heard of other people being hacked, and had guildies been hacked, but in the back of my mind, i've always have the thought, i'm careful and it won't be me. With the proliferation of kiddie scripts, and "how to" guides, hacked accounts are becoming more and more common.
At first i was pretty depressed, the quickest recovery i had heard of was 2 weeks, and that person lost all of his gold and most of his gear and Blizz weren't able to recover it! I've heard of nightmare stories of people not being able to recover accounts at all! And thinking of how many hours we put into this game, you do get emotional attachments to your characters. Enough to make people just plain quit.
Now i enjoy this game a lot, and i was considering what would i do if my account was not recoverable, i enjoy the Druid class very much (much more than my rogue, hence my rogue is still in the 50's....) But would it be time to reroll?
So of course when i was at work, i was very productive, and looked up how to recover my account.
Some of the help topics on this out there on the net are unfortuantely outdated or just not correct.
So i will share with you my experience, so if unfortuantely it does ever happen to you, at least you will have some idea of what to expect.
Most accounts are compromised by the following ways.
A friend who's got your account details and has just decided to sell you out.
A Trojan on your computer that's keylogging your account details.
A Trojan on a computer you've played WoW on (Netcafe, friends house)
A hacker that has gotten into your email and been able to get your password from there
First off if you find your account is compromised, make sure it's not your email account that was compromised, otherwise once you recover your account, it will be hacked again.
Log onto the Blizzard website http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ and reset your password from a computer that is not compromised! (Very important to know the answer to your secret question)
If your account has been banned in the duration it was hacked, you will need to get Blizz to unban your account, thankfully in today's day and age, Blizz are now accepting electronic submissions (in the past they only accepted faxes and snail mail)
To unban your account you will need to download a form
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/other/Account-Recovery.pdf, fill it out, and also scan some form of ID (drivers license being the popular choice)
The email submission must be under 3mb, and the scan must be clear enough for them to read it.
Email the submission to wowaccountrecovery@blizzard.com
You will receive an email from Blizzard resetting your password.
So now you can log into your account, and see how much damage the hacker has done.
Most hacking is done by thieves who are mainly after gold so they can on sell it for real cash. So after logging on, of course i found all my characters naked, well almost naked, surprisingly, the hacker must of been in a hurry, as he left me 50g, and missed 1 bag with some blue gear in it in the bank. If your character is an enchanter (as mine is) the hacker will DE all your BOP items, as shards are still worth a bit of gold.
Luckily none of my characters were transferred across servers (at least i haven't noticed yet since i only have one main) hackers do this to sell gold across different realms.
Once i had my account back (it only took them 1 day to unban my account, and this was done over the weekend, great job Blizz!) i logged a call with a GM, admittedly the GM took a while to respond about 4-6 hours, and honestly there's not a lot you can do with a semi naked character (luckily i had some PVP gear that could neither be DE'd or sold).
Once the GM responded to my ticket, he referred my ticket to a "character specialist" and it only took Blizz less than 1 day to restore the majority of my stuff. The majority being all of my gear, i was short on a lot of consumables like pots and water, and missing gold and enchanting dust.
I was quite happy with the turnaround time, my character was once again "playable". The restore of gold took a little longer, i received an email about 2 days later saying they had finished their investigation and restored 90g.... i was :( since i had over 8k gold.
I wrote them an email politely asking them to investigate further and to investigate if i could get my enchanting dust back, as i had a lot, then a couple days after that i received another email stating they had returned a lot more gold and enchanting dust.
I was very happy with the service i received and the speed of the turnaround, approximately 1 week, i pretty much had everything back to normal, i was still missing some miscellansous consumables like pots, buff food, but that was very minor in relation to everything i got back, so i was one happy camper.
Now i understand not everryone is going to have as smooth an experience as me, and although i was frustrated i did remain calm throughout the whole affair, after all it's not Blizz's fault my account got comprosmised, and i'm sure screaming or swearing at a GM is not going to get you very far.
So moving forward, what can be done to protect your account?
Well i must admit for me, i'm still not sure how i was compromised, but i can put it down to one of 2 things. I was in a netcafe recently when i went on my holiday and played WoW, so it might of been compromised there, my home computer was being a little strange when i got back, so it might of gotten a trojan.
I've since reinstalled my entire OS, and have also installed a Virus Scanner (supposedly most of the WoW trojans are easily caught by a decent up to date Virus Scanner) and i've also installed a personal firewall, Sunbelt offer a free firewall that's easy to use.
I've also been lucky enough to receive a gift of a Blizzard authenticator off a good friend who sent me one from Europe after hearing my woes (ones purchased in the Europe store work with US servers, so i'm pretty sure the authenticator's are not region specific) and for the price of $6.50 USD i would say it's a very cheap investment to protect your character. What's a Blizzard Authenticator you ask? It's a small electronic token that you can hang off your keychain, you press a button, it flashes up a number, that you need to input when you log onto your WoW account, the downside is, if you lose your token, you will need to contact Blizz to get back into your account, the upside is, it provides a lot more protection. (similiar to VPN tokens from work, or some banks have tokens to login to your online banking account)
Blizzard Authenticator FAQ
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24660.
Make sure you keep your OS up to date with the latest patches (Microsoft make it very easy to update your PC, not sure about Mac or Linux)
Don't share your password!
Only download mods from reputable sites, manually extract the zips into the addon folders and check for .exe files
Stay Safe!
Shortly after getting home from my trip i found my account had been hacked. It's depressing to try and logon and receive a message your account has been banned, and for those of us that it happens to for the first time, it can be frustrating and a bit bewildering.
I've heard of other people being hacked, and had guildies been hacked, but in the back of my mind, i've always have the thought, i'm careful and it won't be me. With the proliferation of kiddie scripts, and "how to" guides, hacked accounts are becoming more and more common.
At first i was pretty depressed, the quickest recovery i had heard of was 2 weeks, and that person lost all of his gold and most of his gear and Blizz weren't able to recover it! I've heard of nightmare stories of people not being able to recover accounts at all! And thinking of how many hours we put into this game, you do get emotional attachments to your characters. Enough to make people just plain quit.
Now i enjoy this game a lot, and i was considering what would i do if my account was not recoverable, i enjoy the Druid class very much (much more than my rogue, hence my rogue is still in the 50's....) But would it be time to reroll?
So of course when i was at work, i was very productive, and looked up how to recover my account.
Some of the help topics on this out there on the net are unfortuantely outdated or just not correct.
So i will share with you my experience, so if unfortuantely it does ever happen to you, at least you will have some idea of what to expect.
Most accounts are compromised by the following ways.
A friend who's got your account details and has just decided to sell you out.
A Trojan on your computer that's keylogging your account details.
A Trojan on a computer you've played WoW on (Netcafe, friends house)
A hacker that has gotten into your email and been able to get your password from there
First off if you find your account is compromised, make sure it's not your email account that was compromised, otherwise once you recover your account, it will be hacked again.
Log onto the Blizzard website http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ and reset your password from a computer that is not compromised! (Very important to know the answer to your secret question)
If your account has been banned in the duration it was hacked, you will need to get Blizz to unban your account, thankfully in today's day and age, Blizz are now accepting electronic submissions (in the past they only accepted faxes and snail mail)
To unban your account you will need to download a form
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/other/Account-Recovery.pdf, fill it out, and also scan some form of ID (drivers license being the popular choice)
The email submission must be under 3mb, and the scan must be clear enough for them to read it.
Email the submission to wowaccountrecovery@blizzard.com
You will receive an email from Blizzard resetting your password.
So now you can log into your account, and see how much damage the hacker has done.
Most hacking is done by thieves who are mainly after gold so they can on sell it for real cash. So after logging on, of course i found all my characters naked, well almost naked, surprisingly, the hacker must of been in a hurry, as he left me 50g, and missed 1 bag with some blue gear in it in the bank. If your character is an enchanter (as mine is) the hacker will DE all your BOP items, as shards are still worth a bit of gold.
Luckily none of my characters were transferred across servers (at least i haven't noticed yet since i only have one main) hackers do this to sell gold across different realms.
Once i had my account back (it only took them 1 day to unban my account, and this was done over the weekend, great job Blizz!) i logged a call with a GM, admittedly the GM took a while to respond about 4-6 hours, and honestly there's not a lot you can do with a semi naked character (luckily i had some PVP gear that could neither be DE'd or sold).
Once the GM responded to my ticket, he referred my ticket to a "character specialist" and it only took Blizz less than 1 day to restore the majority of my stuff. The majority being all of my gear, i was short on a lot of consumables like pots and water, and missing gold and enchanting dust.
I was quite happy with the turnaround time, my character was once again "playable". The restore of gold took a little longer, i received an email about 2 days later saying they had finished their investigation and restored 90g.... i was :( since i had over 8k gold.
I wrote them an email politely asking them to investigate further and to investigate if i could get my enchanting dust back, as i had a lot, then a couple days after that i received another email stating they had returned a lot more gold and enchanting dust.
I was very happy with the service i received and the speed of the turnaround, approximately 1 week, i pretty much had everything back to normal, i was still missing some miscellansous consumables like pots, buff food, but that was very minor in relation to everything i got back, so i was one happy camper.
Now i understand not everryone is going to have as smooth an experience as me, and although i was frustrated i did remain calm throughout the whole affair, after all it's not Blizz's fault my account got comprosmised, and i'm sure screaming or swearing at a GM is not going to get you very far.
So moving forward, what can be done to protect your account?
Well i must admit for me, i'm still not sure how i was compromised, but i can put it down to one of 2 things. I was in a netcafe recently when i went on my holiday and played WoW, so it might of been compromised there, my home computer was being a little strange when i got back, so it might of gotten a trojan.
I've since reinstalled my entire OS, and have also installed a Virus Scanner (supposedly most of the WoW trojans are easily caught by a decent up to date Virus Scanner) and i've also installed a personal firewall, Sunbelt offer a free firewall that's easy to use.
I've also been lucky enough to receive a gift of a Blizzard authenticator off a good friend who sent me one from Europe after hearing my woes (ones purchased in the Europe store work with US servers, so i'm pretty sure the authenticator's are not region specific) and for the price of $6.50 USD i would say it's a very cheap investment to protect your character. What's a Blizzard Authenticator you ask? It's a small electronic token that you can hang off your keychain, you press a button, it flashes up a number, that you need to input when you log onto your WoW account, the downside is, if you lose your token, you will need to contact Blizz to get back into your account, the upside is, it provides a lot more protection. (similiar to VPN tokens from work, or some banks have tokens to login to your online banking account)
Blizzard Authenticator FAQ
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24660.
Make sure you keep your OS up to date with the latest patches (Microsoft make it very easy to update your PC, not sure about Mac or Linux)
Don't share your password!
Only download mods from reputable sites, manually extract the zips into the addon folders and check for .exe files
Stay Safe!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Stealthing Elders in Northrend Dungeons
I know i said my next post would be about recovering hacked accounts, but i saw an interesting thread on stealthing to the Elders in Northrend Dungeons. I thought i should get this info up sooner rather than later, since Lunar festival is only on for a short amount of time, and people are working through their achievements.
It seems a bunch of Druids are stealthing to the Elders in the Northrend Dungeons, I'm sure if Druids can do this Rogues should be able to as well.
I'm too lazy to do achievements, so i probably won't be attempting this, but there is a forum topic about this on the official WoW forums.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14637453802&sid=1
Here's a summary, as we all know how forum threads can be eaten by the internet.
Drak'Tharon Keep
From all reports, it looks easily stealthable to the Elder
Halls of Stone
Reports say this is also an easily stealthable instance to the Elder
Nexus
Some people say you must kill the first mob as he see's through stealth, however it has been reported you can just throw out a trusty Sooth Animal and be able to stealth past.
Utgarde Keep
2 sets of mobs near the flame walls must be cleared, each set is a group of 3, when these mobs are cleared, you can stealth on to the Elder.
Azjol Nerub
The first boss must be killed in order to get to the Elder. Some people have claimed to solo this, but you may want to do this in a group.
Utgarde Pinnacle
Reports say a full group is needed for this instance.
Gundrak
Must be compeleted in Heroic Mode in order to get to the Elder. Moorabi the Mammoth boss must be killed, if Moorabi is dead you can stealth your way past the Gorlok mobs to the Elder
Just remember, if someone has cleaned out these instances in heroic, you can borrow that empty instance and get to the Elders fairly easily, just remember, you'll get yourself locked into that instance.
It seems a bunch of Druids are stealthing to the Elders in the Northrend Dungeons, I'm sure if Druids can do this Rogues should be able to as well.
I'm too lazy to do achievements, so i probably won't be attempting this, but there is a forum topic about this on the official WoW forums.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14637453802&sid=1
Here's a summary, as we all know how forum threads can be eaten by the internet.
Drak'Tharon Keep
From all reports, it looks easily stealthable to the Elder
Halls of Stone
Reports say this is also an easily stealthable instance to the Elder
Nexus
Some people say you must kill the first mob as he see's through stealth, however it has been reported you can just throw out a trusty Sooth Animal and be able to stealth past.
Utgarde Keep
2 sets of mobs near the flame walls must be cleared, each set is a group of 3, when these mobs are cleared, you can stealth on to the Elder.
Azjol Nerub
The first boss must be killed in order to get to the Elder. Some people have claimed to solo this, but you may want to do this in a group.
Utgarde Pinnacle
Reports say a full group is needed for this instance.
Gundrak
Must be compeleted in Heroic Mode in order to get to the Elder. Moorabi the Mammoth boss must be killed, if Moorabi is dead you can stealth your way past the Gorlok mobs to the Elder
Just remember, if someone has cleaned out these instances in heroic, you can borrow that empty instance and get to the Elders fairly easily, just remember, you'll get yourself locked into that instance.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Nitro Boosts nerfed in 3.0.8
Hi All
Well it's been a little while since i've written, being able to travel away for Christmas and New Years is a nice thing, although it has cut into my WoW time.
Well the topic i have been thinking of writing about for the last while is how the WoTLK expansion has affected stealth runs, well not just stealth runs but gameplay as well due to the way current content has changed.
However, shortly after returning home from my holidays my account was hacked, so i've been on a short hiatus, and my next article will be about what to do in that horrible situation you wouldn't wish against your worst WoW ganker (well you probably would)
In the meantime i just wanted to say 3.0.8 was released last Tuesday, and the Engineering tinker Nitro Boosts has been stealth nerfed!
To be honest i'm not sure why people say it was "stealth" nerfed, nerfed yes, stealth nerfed well it depends on your definition of the term.
People say there was no mention in the patch notes that this item was nerfed, however i've known about this before the patch as it has been reported on other sites and forums.
The nitro boosts tinker before the patch gave you 150% speed for 5 seconds, with a cooldown of 5 minutes. With a possible backfire of throwing you high up into the air, and possibly falling to your death.
The nerf has reduced the 150% speed boost to 2 seconds, however the cooldown has been reported to have been lowered 3 minutes (even though the tooltip still says 5 minutes.) People that have used this extensively after the patch have said that they may have removed the backfire, as noone has been shot up like a rocket yet.
I must admit the first time i played with these, i was pleasantly surprised at the distance that could be attained in 5 seconds, however after playing with these after the 3.0.8 patch, i feel the reduction in boost time is a pretty big nerf. I think 3 seconds would of been a lot fairer.
As it is now a 2 second 150% speed boost with a 3 min cd, i think this tinker is still useable, Druids/Rogues, chaining a sprint/dash after using this item for a quick flag escape or for chasing down prey down could mean the different in a PvP battle. Being the first to tag that NPC for farming or questing can also be useful.
It's also been reported that the use of this item no longer breaks stealth. I haven't had the chance to test this myself, but it may be helpful for a Rogue/Druid sneaking up on their opponents trying to avoid that aoe blast, or just getting yourself through a stealth run quicker.
Well it's been a little while since i've written, being able to travel away for Christmas and New Years is a nice thing, although it has cut into my WoW time.
Well the topic i have been thinking of writing about for the last while is how the WoTLK expansion has affected stealth runs, well not just stealth runs but gameplay as well due to the way current content has changed.
However, shortly after returning home from my holidays my account was hacked, so i've been on a short hiatus, and my next article will be about what to do in that horrible situation you wouldn't wish against your worst WoW ganker (well you probably would)
In the meantime i just wanted to say 3.0.8 was released last Tuesday, and the Engineering tinker Nitro Boosts has been stealth nerfed!
To be honest i'm not sure why people say it was "stealth" nerfed, nerfed yes, stealth nerfed well it depends on your definition of the term.
People say there was no mention in the patch notes that this item was nerfed, however i've known about this before the patch as it has been reported on other sites and forums.
The nitro boosts tinker before the patch gave you 150% speed for 5 seconds, with a cooldown of 5 minutes. With a possible backfire of throwing you high up into the air, and possibly falling to your death.
The nerf has reduced the 150% speed boost to 2 seconds, however the cooldown has been reported to have been lowered 3 minutes (even though the tooltip still says 5 minutes.) People that have used this extensively after the patch have said that they may have removed the backfire, as noone has been shot up like a rocket yet.
I must admit the first time i played with these, i was pleasantly surprised at the distance that could be attained in 5 seconds, however after playing with these after the 3.0.8 patch, i feel the reduction in boost time is a pretty big nerf. I think 3 seconds would of been a lot fairer.
As it is now a 2 second 150% speed boost with a 3 min cd, i think this tinker is still useable, Druids/Rogues, chaining a sprint/dash after using this item for a quick flag escape or for chasing down prey down could mean the different in a PvP battle. Being the first to tag that NPC for farming or questing can also be useful.
It's also been reported that the use of this item no longer breaks stealth. I haven't had the chance to test this myself, but it may be helpful for a Rogue/Druid sneaking up on their opponents trying to avoid that aoe blast, or just getting yourself through a stealth run quicker.
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