Not one, but TWO.. Val'kyr?

I thought I'd hate raidleading, I really did.

To be fair, one large part of it didn't exactly tickle my fancy; the bit where you tell people to sit out. That's never fun. However, bossing people around during a fight is just, you know, awesome. It's almost like having 24 Belfips that you need to micro-manage. The first time I didn't think much of it, but yesterday I realized I was starting to enjoy it.

We stepped back into the Crusaders' Coliseum again last night for the new boss: The Twin Val'kyr, Fjola Lightbane and Edyis Darkbane. It's probably my favourite fight so far in the new raid. The mechanics are interesting, and it's a very technical fight, which means you're not just standing there pushing the same four buttons. I love it.

It's very tough to explain the tactics without having you see it for yourself, but I'll do my best. There's four portals, two light and two dark. Right clicking either will give you either a Light Essence buff, or a Dark Essence one respectively. With the Light Essence, you deal increased damage to dark targets (Edyis Darkbane) and less damage to light targets (Fjola Lightbane). You also absorb light damage done by Fjola. The Dark Essence does the opposite.

Apart from the portals, there will also be little orbs of concentrated light and dark floating around. Collecting the dark orbs with the Dark Essence buff gives you stacks of a Powering Up buff. Once you reach 100 stacks you start dealing 100% more damage, however collecting any light orbs with the Dark Essence buff blows them up, dealing damage to people in a small radius. Again, the opposite happens for people with Light Essence.

It all sounds easy so far, split the raid into the two essences, collect and avoid orbs, and pewpew. Fortunately, it's not just that. Every 45 seconds they use an ability which requires all the raid to think on its feet and react accordingly.

The first is an aoe pulse, dealing light or dark damage every couple of seconds. The raid needs to see which of the twins is casting it, and change their Essence accordingly. If Fjola Lightbane is casting it, for example, you switch to Light Essence.

The second ability is a massive heal. It's interruptible, sure, but you need to crack the shield first. Depending on which twin has the shield the raid again needs to change their essence to maximize damage and break the shield, which takes 250k damage to get rid of.

Some little tips from what I've seen:

Even though the twins share their health pool, you still need to split the raid, mainly for the shield. It takes a couple of seconds to switch essence and get in range of the twin, so you want to balance out the dps.

You're best of staying next to a portal of your opposite essence, so that you don't need to run too much to change if needed.

Healers don't really need an essence except for the aoe pusle ability. They can, instead, take the essence opposite of what the rest of their group is and help get rid of the opposite essence orbs.

Warlocks in Cataclysm.. instant fear what?

So I've been tuning in to the live stream, and I see they decided to bring up warlocks first in the class panel.

Soul shards are GONE.. from bags!

Instead we're gonna have three soul shards on cooldown per battle, which seems pretty neat. They're gonna be part of our interface, much like the death knight runes, but they only refresh out of combat.

These shards are gonna be used for a single, 30 second cooldown ability that's off the GCD. All other spells that had a soul shard cost no longer need a shard. Once you use this, currently dubbed 'Soul Burn' spell it will power up your next spell. These are the spells it affects so far:

Fear - Makes it instant

Death Coil - Longer horror time, and a larger heal

Summoning - Instant

Soul Fire - Instant

Searing Pain - Next three will crit

These look very neat, and will definitely make soul shards fun. I'm definitely looking forward to whatever comes out from the class panels.

With regards to itemization, they've also made some rather drastic changes. For one, spellpower is gone. Instead, intellect will provide spellpower, along with mana of course. We also won't be needing spirit anymore, which in a way I wasn't too happy about. I enjoy juggling many different stats.

That's all I've heard for warlocks so far. I'll stay tuned tomorrow and post anything new I hear.

Belfip keeps getting in the way!

It's come to my attention that some readers running on smaller resolutions are having some clipping issues with Belfip in the top left. Most notable of these are people that check their bloglines from their Blackbird or Iphone. I'll work a bit on the layout this weekend and try and get some stuff sorted. Apologies for any inconvenience Belfip may have caused, he's never been a good imp.

The raptor hunt

So far 3.2 has given us some awesome new stuff, the largest obviously being the new raid. However there's something else in the latest patch that few people seem to have noticed; the new raptor pets.

Sure not everyone is a pet collector, but I enjoy the company of a little anything when soloing, especially something that randomly darts off into the distance, or leaps towards you with a ferocious battle shriek.

The patch has introduced eight of these awesome pets, of which so far I've obtained six. Even as I'm typing this post the seventh raptor is eluding me. Here are some screenshots of the ones I've gotten so far, along with where you can get them.

Darting Hatchling

From Dart, a rare mob in the north part of Dustwallow Marsh

Randomly darts around the area when idle

Deviate Hatchling

From the raptors inside Wailing Caverns

Leaping Hatchling

From Takk the Leaper, a rare mob in the northeastern part of The Barrens

Occasionally runs off and fiercely leaps back to you

Obsidian Hatchling

From Breanni in Dalaran for 40g with faction discount

Ravasaur Hatchling

From Ravasaur Matriarch, a rare spawn in southeastern Un'Goro Crater

Razormaw Hatchling

From Razormaw Matriarch, a rare mob found in the cave in northeastern Wetlands

Now I only need two more to have all the raptor pets. One is the Gundrak Hatchling, which has a very low droprate from the raptors in Zul'Drak. I've killed about 500 so far and still nothing. The last pet is the Razzashi Hatchling, another rare drop from the raptors inside Zul'Gurub. So far I didn't manage to kill a single raptor without getting killed first, as they come in packs of ten or so. I will however go in with my Death Knight once I get the Gundrak Hatchling and farm without dying!

Dear Wilfred

Yes you, Wilfred Fizzlebang. You really did fizzle out this time.

You're a disgrace to warlocks, and to gnomes. You enter the arena acting all high and mighty with your large ego. You tell us about the large fearsome doomguard you're going to summon, but use the wrong spell. Go back to level 60 and do the proper quests.

But you weren't done there were you? Nope. Not only did you get the spell wrong, but you couldn't even control the Eredar Lord you summoned. Honestly now, Belfip would've been a harder raid boss than Lord Jaraxxus, and I've been controlling Belfip since level 1.

On the other hand, this over sized pimple you summoned did drop some good loot for me and my friends, and for that I must thank you. At least your life wasn't a complete waste.

The UI revamp; Part 2

I've been working at at for most of the day. Some elements still resemble the package I was using, but so far I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out.

Pitbull4 was really the most annoying to configure. I preferred the simple config layout of Pitbull3 much more. I was going to use the cast bar addon itself to show target auras, but it didn't have a proper filtering system and showed stuff like Aftermath, which is useless for raiding. I ended up going with a separate addon and get it looking as close as possible to the cast bar.

Next thing I'll work on is the stuff on the sides; minimap, chat, omen.. that stuff. Did I mention recount? When I'm done with everything, I'll start the fine tuning the colours, which will probably take months.