When you’re at the flightmaster, go through the entrance closest to the flightmaster and turn right. You’ll see some blue banners in front of three portals.
Grats on the dings, gear, and whatnot, everybody! Looks like it was a productive weekend. 
Me, I found a new guild: Progression on Stormrage. They seem like a good bunch; I just transferred over, so our first raid will probably be tonight. Fingers crossed!
Victory Rush is unlocked by getting a Killing Blow on an enemy (a mob or another player), as long as that enemy would give you XP or Honor (i.e., its level doesn’t show up gray to you). It costs no Rage to use. So, you generally want to use it as soon as it’s available, assuming you’re fighting something else at the time. However, it’s only usable in Battle or Berserker stance, and as a Protection Warrior, you want to stay in Defensive stance, so you probably won’t use it very much.
I’ll try to take a look by the end of the week! Hopefully sooner.
Vigilance is a tool you can only use when you’re in a party. To use it, you target another player in your party and then click Vigilance. (You can also click Vigilance and then use your glowing glove pointer to click on the person you want to give it to.)
When Vigilance is active on a player, 10% of the threat they create is sent back to you. Let’s say you generate 100 threat and they generate 100 threat. If you have Vigilance on them, it will be like you generated 110 threat and they generated 90. Basically, it’s a tanking tool to help keep enemies focused on you, instead of the DPS or healers.
The other thing that Vigilance does is lower the damage taken by the person it’s applied to by 3%. So, if they would have taken 100 damage, instead they’ll only take 97.
I have this happen sometimes, mostly when I’m first logging in, if I reset my UI, or if I move between areas with a loading screen. Usually it fixes itself–it’s just the system lagging behind because it’s got too much information to process all at once.
You can’t kick anyone from the group for the duration of the random dungeon debuff (possibly a bit shorter, but at least 10 minutes), unless they are disconnected. (I think there’s also a small timer after someone disconnects, but a shorter one–certainly no longer than a minute or two.) Being the party leader has nothing to do with it.
It’s not gold farmers–it’s badge farmers. People who want the benefits without the work. Kick them as soon as you can, or drop group. IMO, also look up their GM if they’re in a guild and inform that person, by rolling a level 1 alt on the server if necessary. (I’ve done that for a ninja–gear, not a Frozen Orb–and the GM was very apologetic and glad I’d informed her.)
Could be an alt, or could be a friend. A lot of high-end raiding guilds will have a “friend” or “casual” rank for people who are either old members who’ve retired from raiding but want to stay in contact, or who want to be in the same guild as a raiding member but don’t want to raid themselves.
This stuff just glitches out sometimes. Checking what problems other people are having is always a good idea. Looks like you had the exact right idea of how to do it, too–the game just wasn’t cooperating.
Rule of thumb: To use an item, right-click it if it’s in your bags, but left-click it if it’s dragged onto your action bar or linked in a quest tracker.
My guess is that it’s a function of what other people are locked into. Presumably, people are actively seeking out the higher-end content and actively avoiding the lower-end Heroics and/or ones they hate. The matcher generally tries to avoid assigning people to instances they’re already saved to, so you’ll be disproportionately assigned to those instances that people avoid running.
As has been mentioned, it’s entirely possible to solo these “capture a PvP objective” quests. On some servers, Horde and Alliance players will actually cooperate–standing politely by while one captures, then moving out so someone can cap it back and get credit. On others, high-level players will camp the area, waiting for a lowbie to flag so they can endlessly gank them. Or you’ll get either, depending on the time of day.
The actual mechanics are simple. Flag for PvP and go stand in one of the areas you need to capture, when it isn’t currently flagged for your faction. So, as Alliance, you want the tower/flag to be red (Horde) or gray (Neutral), because otherwise you won’t get any credit for capturing it. After standing in the right area for a few seconds, you’ll see a bar pop up, with red or blue on each side and gray in the middle. Whichever faction has the most players standing (alive) in that area will have the indicator move toward their end of the scale. So, if you’re the only person there, you’ll see an arrow indicating that it’s moving toward the Alliance side (unless it’s already all the way at the Alliance end of the bar).
Really, the only reason to do this quest is to get Honor Hold rep. There’s a nice ring reward at Revered, but IMO it’s not worth the pain in the ass that it is to get all the captures you need, since people don’t spend very long in HFP now that Wrath is out. I’d say, skip it.
Ah, Fel Reavers, striking fear into the hearts of nublings everywhere. I can easily solo one these days, and the sound of one **still **makes me jump, somewhere deep inside.
Side note: Deaths from other players don’t cost you anything to repair from. However, a player has to actually land the killing blow: if a player gets you very low, and then you fall to your death or are killed by a mob/NPC, you’ll still take the normal durability hit.
The portals in Shatt are all in the very center. Look for the big beam of light coming up from the middle of the city. The room that that comes from is where the portals are. There will be four sets of portals: one to Alliance Vanilla capitals, one to Horde Vanilla capitals, one to the TBC faction capitals (Exodar for Alliance and Silvermoon for Horde), and one to the Island of Quel’Danas (a level 70 zone from late in TBC). To get back to Stormwind, you’ll want the Alliance Vanilla capitals: look for a set of three portals with a blue Alliance (lion) banner in front of them. Mousing over each portal will tell you where it leads–make sure not to click the wrong one! (I’ve done that way too many times…)
Forgot to mention … I added two more Northrend rare spawns to my “killed” list in the last few days: High Thane Jorfus and Hildana Deathstealer. Makes me just a hair closer to completing Frostbitten! (Okay, I’m only at 4 of 23, but still …)
ETA: Also Champion of Darnassus yesterday, starting on Exodar today. By later this week I’ll be “Exalted Champion” with all 5 factions, which I guess means I’ll have my Crusader title.
My Heroic Oculus story:
All 5 of us originally assigned to HO actually stayed, which was a good sign…at first. This was my 5th run in Oculus ever and I was used to everyone referring to the drakes as red, yellow, and green…NOT Tank, DPS and Healer Drakes. So the group healer is stressing the fact that we NEED to have 2 Tanks, 1 DPS, and 2 Healers to go up against Eregos. Having gone 4 other times through this instance, the exact number of each type drakes didn’t matter as much…couple of times we’ve gone against Eregos without a certain type of drake to get the <Color> Void achievement. So IMHO, it doesn’t really matter what the exact numbers are, I think it matters what drake you’re most comfortable with or what exact achievement everyone agrees to shoot for that matters. I wanted the Amber Void achievement, but since the leader was calling for all 3 drakes, I decided to just grab an amber drake. We weren’t shooting for any achievement, so it should really come down to what you’re most comfortable with.
Anyways, I was being hassled for getting an amber drake which I was most familiar with since I have used it probably 3 times out of the last four…spam Temp Rift and then Time Stop in a cycle with the other amber drakes…works like a charm. But in this group, I was being told to switch to the “Healer” (which was confusing to me since the other 4 times I ran this instance, they were called by color) which was one I never have used and told them as such. While all of this texting was going back and forth, it resulted in me missing a blessing (or a wrong blessing) on a particular player. That player started giving me shit about being a “Fail Pally” and “tard”, etc. even though I was knocking the crap out of the mobs on the way to Eregos. My response: “Really, my life isn’t centered around this game, let alone being here solely to please you…if you really dislike the way I play, initiate a votekick…just go ahead and do it.” He did. It failed. Just like I thought it would.
So, just before we went to face Eregos, I went back to the pen to switch the amber for an emerald drake (when I found out that that was the “healer” drake) and more drama ensued. When I flew back, a stray ley guardian was attacking me and followed me all the way back to the pen. I had thought he would return to his original position after a while, but instead he seemed to stop near the end of his range, BUT this bolt attack would stay focused on me even though he was now out of my range of sight! So now having already dismounted my drake and I was trying to get the emerald drake (which now I could not get because I was “In combat” with a mob that was unseen), I was stuck on the “pen island”
and I had already gotten rid of my amber drake. Had to call out to the group for help and a couple of them came over…(at this point I should have been votekicked), one them drew the ley guardian away from me so I could get the emerald drake and get into the air…but then he lands his drake on pen island and is now getting attacked and couldn’t mount and another member does the same thing. Now it’s getting ridiculous. The good news is that I saw where the bolts were coming from and I followed them back to that fricken ley dragon and I attacked him and the group leader who was picking his butt the whole time finally figured out what was going on and he came in to assist in the kill.
I think all of us were pretty pissed off at just about everyone else, me being targeto primero uno, but we were so close in finishing this wonderful group. So with great trepidation, I prompted…“So, how does this drake work? Is there an attack that I should spam or a certain pattern of attacks?..This is my first time on a green.” Somebody actually was thoughtful at responding almost as if they knew the light was at the end of the tunnel which overrode any other temptation of blurting out any other insults. “Spam #1 to keep 3 stacks on Eregos, and then #3 to heal anyone who is low…make sure to click on the player first before the heal.”
“Thanks.”…I really meant it too.
Eregos went down quickly without much insult from him or us. I got the Experienced Drake Rider Achievement. I actually kept the healing rotation intact along with the other healer. While rolling for gear, I thanked the group for putting up with me and that I learned something new today. Hopefully, they did too.
Grrrr … I said “Frostbitten” but linked to “Northern Exposure”. Correct link.
I gotta say I’m starting to get a little burnt out on WoW. I log in and nothing seems terribly appealing. I do the fishing and cooking dailies in Dalaran, but after that:
Dungeons? Meh, I’ve kind of gotten tired of PUGs that are either silent but deadly or headache-inducing levels of stupidity. I got through two decent dungeon runs yesterday because I wanted to hit 30 badges for a Tier 9 headpiece, only to learn it costs 50 instead. That’s a bit of a morale-killer.
Dailies? Ehhhh, the repetition’s kinda putting me off now, even though I need more money.
Leveling my Mage? That sounds okay, so I load him up…and then get bored of spamming Frostbolt over and over and slogging through hordes of enemies who can kill me in five seconds if I let them. But I don’t especially want challenges; I want a smooth ride up to 60 so I can join in on the weekly dungeon runs. (Although I just hit 44 the other night and got upgrades to Blizzard and Frostbolt, so maybe things will be smoother now.) I could run dungeons, but right now my random dungeons include Maraudon, and I’m not eager to return there, especially not with a ditzy group.
I think the main problem is that the BDL is just too danged quiet much of the time. No offense to you all, and I enjoy it when folks are on, but that’s a real rarity. I like active chat channels. It makes me feel like I’m playing the game for a reason. Without that, though, I start asking myself why I’m forcing my way through a forest of stinky ogre legs, and I lose interest in playing.
I dunno. Could be the ennui will pass, but I think I might go looking for a more active guild, maybe with my Ally Pally so I don’t have to yank any of my Hordelings out of BDL.
Hey Boss, if you ever want to gueue up your mage with my warlock Kenna just let me know. She got put in Mara last night (orange wing) but it went pretty well. We’ve actually got several guildies in the 38-44 range now (you, me, Woeg, and a new guy who joined the guild yesterday - Nashuul or something).
Interesting. I must be on at peak times more often, or something, because I find BDL reasonably chatty. (Kind of unmotivated myself, though, for whatever reason. Maybe because I’ve pretty much been there & done that aside from raids at the moment, and raids still take too much of a time commitment for my playing style.)
Good to know which are which, because obviously it’s the roles that are important: the colors just indicate the role. Red (Ruby) is the tank, because it has mitigation abilities and generates a lot of threat. Yellow (Amber) is DPS, because it does the most damage and has an ability to buff everyone else’s damage (also has the time-stop). Green (Emerald) is the healer, because it has a life-drain and a heal ability.
When using all three drakes, I’ve never seen anyone go with only one Amber drake. It’s always R-A-A-A-E or R-A-A-E-E. With only one Amber, you won’t be able to time-stop every enrage; with two, you can trade off and hit them all. The Ery fight isn’t hard, as long as (a) you stay stacked together, (b) people use their specials when they’re supposed to, and (c) you move quickly together when Ery phases and summons the orbs (personally, I find it works best to just fly in a group to the right, i.e., counter-clockwise, until the end of the phasing, which will often end up with you right back where you started).
It happens. If you’re really burnt out, and not just wanted more socializing, there’s nothing wrong with taking a break. Otherwise, having a goal to work toward with a character is always helpful. For instance, you could start tracking down all the recipes for one of your professions, or grinding rep with an old faction to get a cool mount.
It’s an MMO–if you wanted to be playing by yourself all the time, you’d be playing something like Dragon Age. Nothing wrong with spending more time in a more-active guild.
Oh, and Boss–don’t forget that you can get XP from Battlegrounds now. So you can always try grinding your way past the Mara levels with some good ol’ fashioned PvP.
I hear you. That’s why I think getting back into the 10 man instances will definitely help…we just need to get a solid group of 12-15 80s and a decent day and time to get together. I would hate to us splinter again when we are getting close.
This has happened to me several times since I started playing. You log in, sit there for 15 minutes switching between toons in the character selection screen, trying to decide if you really want to bother doing anything tonight, finally decide “no” and then feel weirdly unfulfilled by the experience.
Taking a break is a good idea for this. I’ve been playing WoW for about 4 1/2 years, and I’ve taken those breaks at least three times. They’re not usually too long (a couple of weeks or so), and I just play other games (I’m a big fan of casual games, so I rarely lack for something to play). Then I’m usually refreshed and able to come back to WoW with some enthusiasm.
Well, I played a fair bit with my level 80 Pally (Kalathan) over the weekend, and it didn’t seem like many BDL folks were on. I don’t know if it was the timing (I tend to play on weekend mornings and weekday evenings after work), but there were usually just me and at most 1-2 more guildies on at the time.
Had some pleasant conversations, mind you, but yeah, it was kind of quiet. Of course, I’ve just started running PUGs for dungeons, and since it was my first time for many of them, I was trying to focus as much as possible on what was going on. Didn’t want to get the dreaded “Learn 2Play Noob!” messages. 
- rather than engaging in chit-chat.
I’ve made it thru several instances now - probably about 20 or so - and I’m at least remembering how they run after the first time. But so far, everyone’s been helpful when I admit that it’s my first run, and will usually tell me what is going to happen (“Stay out of the purple puddles” “Guard the stairs from the undead that’ll be coming”, etc.)
Don’t forget about the excellent online resources out there like Wowhead and WoWWiki. If you’ve been out of the game for a while or just hit 80, it’s probably not a bad idea to at least give a skim through the articles or pages for each dungeon/boss. With the new random matcher, though, it can be kind of overwhelming to read all of it at once, since you don’t know what will be coming up. (As opposed to before, where you’d know what instance you wanted to get into and could specifically read up on that one.)
The most important thing, though, is to **tell people **you don’t know the fights. The standard assumption is that if you don’t say anything, you know what you’re doing–don’t expect anyone to even ask. It’ll be your responsibility to say before a boss (or, preferably, at the start of an instance, since you won’t even know when a boss is coming up and the tank is likely to just run straight in) that you don’t know the mechanics for the fights.
Personally, I have never minded explaining fights to people–I only hate it when someone tries to pass it off like they know what they’re doing when they clearly don’t, and we figure out that they were clueless in the end anyway when they get everyone else killed.
Though if you’re DPS in a five-man, you’re really basically only going to get yourself killed. Probably multiple times. And annoy the healer.
ETA unless you’re actively idiotic and, say, pull extra groups of mobs before the tank’s got the first group under control.
Depends on the fight. Right off the top of my head, I can think of a few situations where ignorant DPS could kill everyone:
1.) UK: Kill Skar before Dal. Skar goes untankable and kills the healer and DPS before Dal can be finished off.
2.) Oc: Don’t use time stops on Ery, healer drake(s) can’t keep up with the damage, everybody dies.
3.) FoS and PoS: DPSing when a “damage transfer” debuff is up.
4.) HoR: AOEing the trash waves for the first two bosses, or focus-firing in the wrong order.
Umm… I don’t know the boss fights.
In Forge of Souls, I assume you mean when you are fighting the floaty head thingy.
How do I know when I have the debuff on me? (I think I know the PoS one.)
Correct. You get a big raid warning (orange text popping up in the middle of your screen) that he has cast Mirrored Soul. Unless your healer can keep up with it, everyone should stop their DPS at these points; even if you keep DPSing, make sure to watch your party’s health to be sure you don’t over-do it.
ETA: In PoS, you stop DPSing when you, personally, have the debuff, because any damage you do is mirrored to the tank. In FoS, everyone stops DPSing when someone has the debuff, because all damage anyone does is mirrored (at a percentage, not the total) to the person with the debuff.
SFG, I have learned to go to google first because neither wiki nor thott use fuzzy logic and if you enter something wrong on thott you get a smart-ass answer (although I DO usually wind up there from google anyway;)).
Also on thott, I have learned how to estimate cooordinates (which I no longer need 'cause the WoW quest helper numbers those quests and tells you where you need to land), just 0-100 at the bottom and 0-100 at the top, then just go where those figures lie on the map.
Since I’m no good at macros, that seems to serve me pretty well.
I have to say, however, that thott’s contributors have been pretty much on the mark, and what I don’t like about wiki, is all the ads slowing down the page.
Thanks
Q
:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: (in honor of my friend jayjay).
For months (months, I tell ya’:smack:), I have had all 3 pieces necessary to make her doll and take it to her.
Last night, just for s&g’s I went over to Eastern Plaguelands and decided to do some “clean up”) and noticed that.
Went to thottbot and learned that all you have to do when you have all the necessary pieces is right-click on one and the doll puts itself together!
[R.Lee Ermey] Jesus H Christ, Quasi! Did your mother have any children that lived!!! [/RLE]:rolleyes:
Thanks
Q