torsdag 11. desember 2008

Wow multiboxing on hold.

I've decided to Singlebox WotLK, and just mainly do raids with my Deathknight.

I have taken up Eve Online, where i box 3 accounts for now. It's an interesting game with alot of potential. I needed something new, and Eve has provided me with that. This blog will no longer be updated frequently. It's been fun though, and well worth the time invested.

onsdag 24. september 2008

Instances in WotLK Expansion: Drak'Tharon Keep

Drak'tharon Keep is a Troll stronghold between the Grizzly Hills and Zul'Drak zones. Recommended level is 74-76 or anywhere around there. For multiboxing it will be fairly easy I think. A couple of thrash mobs have a void zone ability that hurts alot, but these mobs can be nuked down pretty fast. Other than that you have some thrash towards the end that will constantly fear one character at a time. Final thrash pack is 2 of these mobs, and dealing with the constant fears could be tricky for non-shammy teams.

The instance has 4 bosses in normal. Trollgore is the first boss. A very simple tank & spank fight. Possibly retuned since I was last there. He will occationally call 2 adds to his side (I cant remember if we killed them, or the boss himself killed them) but they die rather fast and the boss will do a Corpse Explotion spell on them. When I grinded the instance this encounter was trivial and we never even got close to wiping.

Novos the Summoner AKA "Undead Aran" is the second boss. When you approach him you'll start an event and alot of adds will come swarming in. They are easily killed and only a few of them are elites. The boss has no aggro-list, but he was tauntable when I did the instance so I was able to absorb alot of his spells (Deathknights are great at absorbing magic damage). This could have made the encounter feel easier than it really was. Again, we were nowhere near wiping in any of our kills, so a simple nuke strategy is probably the answer. I would compare him to Omor the Unscarred, final boss of Hellfire Ramparts.

Edit: I hear they have changed this fight since I was in there, so I'll have to redo this boss to see whats different.

King Dred, the 3rd boss, is a T-Rex which to me felt alittle out of place in this instance. It's a simple tank & spank fight with aoe fears.

Final boss is interesting. A 2 phased fight. The Prophet Tharon'ja phase 1 is a tank & spank phase. When he's taken some damage (20% if I recall correct) he will change form and change all players into skeletons. In skeleton from you're basically a melee unit with some skills. Taunt, heal, shield, and you can rotate tanking him. Since all skills will be the same on all characters he should be easy for a boxer. You might wanna use the taunt skill individually on your characters.

Overall Multiboxing rating: Easy.

lørdag 20. september 2008

Instances in WotLK Expansion: Azjol Nerub

First a couple of words on the status of Deathknigts and tanking. In recent patchest DK's damage, and particularly aoe damage, has been severely nerfed. Overall aoe damage is down by 60-70%, and main skills (Blood strike, Scourge Strike, Obliterate etc) have been nerfed as well. It's a good change, but right now the DK feels alittle underpowered. Frost aura have been buffed though and you get a nice 10% hp bonus as well now. Right now my DK is level 79, and has 20.000 hp and just over 18.000 armor unbuffed. Gonna start checking out heroics alittle later, but I don't have much time to play beta at the moment.

Right. Azjol Nerub aka "The Spiderkingdom", home of the Nerubians. This is a huge underground complex, and the first instance is only part of the experience this world has to offer. None of the thrash mobs are anything to talk about, although some spiders will web one character, and you have to "kill" the web to free the trapped character. This first instance, which is suitable for characters of level 73-75, has 3 bosses. One of them our good-old friend from Warcraft 3: Anub'arak.

The first boss is called Krik'thir the Gatewatcher, and has 3 groups of guardians before him, which when aggroed, will come at the party one group at a time. No need to pull anything beyond the first pack you wish to kill, since this initiates an event, and the 2 remaining waves will come at you, one by one, after the first one is dead. One of the 3 thrash mobs in the packs have an annoying aoe-fear/horror spell, but most boxers should be well trained in dealing with fear effects. The boss itself is a straight forward tank & spank fight, with alot of small bugadds coming in waves. Consecrate, death and decay, or even holy nova will take care of those adds fast, and they're mainly designed to annoy your healer. An easy fight for most groups once you got the sequence of events sorted out.

The second boss is a huge spider called Hadronox. This boss also has an event to it. 3 packs of thrash needs to be killed, and each pack has 3 mobs. 2 weak spiders and 1 stronger unit. The large unit can knock the tank into the air, but it's nothing serious as long as you have disengaged follow on your tank (if you have one). You will have to deal with some more adds that continue to come at you, while killing these 3 packs, but they are easy. After they are dead the main boss will come up, while a number of smaller spiders will try to kill the boss (civil war inside Azjol-Nerub?). The boss will need to kill all the smaller spiders before you engage it, since it will heal itself whenever one of the smaller spiders die. If you pull the boss and get the adds as well, you're in for a long fight. First time I was there I just steamrolled down and aggroed everything (hey...DK's were supermen back then). We managed to hold out for about 10 minutes while the boss just kept healing itself when the smaller adds died, but then the healer was out of mana and we wiped. Lately they have reduced the amount of adds in the fight, so you can engage the boss much faster. Once again, a simple tank & spank fight.

Anub'arak is the 3rd and final boss of this instance. He is the hardest challenge, and the encounter will probably be tough for new and/or poorly geared boxers. This could be a very hard fight as well in heroic. The encounter is split in 2 phases. A tank & spank phase, with some movement, and an add-killing phase with Anub'arak burrowed underground. Throughout the encounter you will sometimes see the ground ripple, and then an impale type attack will come on that area, throwing any caught characters into the air and doing decent damage. Movement will be important, or the healers mana will be drained fast. When the boss burrows different types of adds will spawn, some ranged, some melee. This makes it hard to gather and tank all of them, while having to dodge impale attacks. The adds should just be nuked down as fast as possible, to prevent being overwhelmed when the boss resurfaces.

Overall multiboxing rating: Medium (Mainly because of Anub'arak).

fredag 5. september 2008

Instances in WotLK Expansion: The Nexus

The Nexus is a level 70-72 (recommended) instance located on the island of Coldarra in the Borean Tundra area of Northrend. The instance has 4 bosses, and the it's themed around Malygos and his Blue Dragonflight.

The fastest route is to take the left path from the start. None of the mobs feel especially hard, and there's little challenge beyond aoe-tank & spank style. It will probably be somewhat more difficult at retail when classes and instances are properly balanced.

The first boss on this route will be Grand Magus Telestra. This boss could prove quite tough for an inexperienced multiboxer, and will require alot of individual character control. The boss will occationally use physics against the group and bounce everybody around, similar to what Omor the Unscarred (final boss of Hellfire Ramparts) will do with the tank. Organizing your group after this spell will reduce dpstime on the boss somewhat. When the boss is at 50% health it will despawn and spawn 3 clones of itself. They are easily focus-dps'ed down (or you could go for option 2 and just aoe them down together) and grounding totems will probably be very valuable in this phase, since all are mage-types. When the adds are killed the boss respawns and it's the same as phase1.

Second boss is Anomalus. He is set in an area of primarily magical elementals and the boss itself is similar to Vexallus in The Magisters Terrace. The fight has 2 phases, when the boss is at 75%, 50% and 25% it will spawn an add you will have to kill, while the boss itself is invulnerable. The encounter is trivial in the beta on normal difficulty, and the boss feels very weak and is easily killed.

Third boss is Omorok the Tree-shaper. An ice/stone giant similar to the second boss in Mana Tomb. It's a tank & spank encounter. The boss hits fairly hard and enrages around 20%, your tank will need steady healing at that point. He has one ability to watch out for. Ice spikes will form on the ground and shoot up in the air. If your group doesn't move away from the shards, you will most likely wipe. Feels like a well balanced boss.

Keristrasza, the final boss of The Nexus, is a dragon who has been captured by Malygos to be his new consort. She is quite happy with your arrival, and even taunts you into "Finishing her" when she's close to death. This is by far the hardest encounter in the instance, and feels well balanced to me. First off the tank will take decent damage, so it will need quite alot of healing. The boss also enrages towards the end and does additional damage. The catch with this fight is that everyone have to keep moving. If you stand still you will get a debuff on you that stacks higher and higher until you die. You'll take damage from this debuff which is applied every second, and a stack beyond 5-6 will spell major problems for your healer. Jumping or moving in any direction will remove the debuff. A priest with circle of healing and hots on tank is the optimal healer, but it's quite doable with a paladin as well, if he knows the encounter. After a few wipes 2-3 days ago with a pug, I just spelled out to our paladin "Heal, heal, move. Heal, heal, move." and the next try was an instant success. The boss will randomly do an ice-breath type of ability with aoe damage in a cone in front of it, it can target random party members for this, so spreading out is advicable. You can spread out before the fight starts and just macro dps and heals while doing the occational jump to remove the debuff. An easy encounter if you know what you're doing, and have good enough healing to keep the tank up, with some gcd's lost due to jumping.

Overall multiboxing rating: Medium.

torsdag 28. august 2008

Instances in WotLK Expansion: Uthgarde Keep

I've only done a few of the instances in the Expansion, but I thought I should start writing about them with a multiboxing perspective.

Uthgarde Keep is the first instance you get to do in the expansion. Level 67 and up is advisable. This is a very easy instance, I would say alot easier than Hellfire Ramparts was as the intro-instance in The Burning Crusade. Location is Howling Fjort and the instance is set in one of the areas of the Viking-like race "The Vrykul". The instance consists of wide open halls, and there's not much of a gear check involved. I tanked it on multiple occations with a level 70 Death Knight in predominantly "uncommon" gear. As of writing this I have not tested any of the instances in Heroic mode, I'm not sure that its even possible at this point in the beta.

The instance has only 1 mob that can challenge the group beyond the tank'n spank level, and that mob is the Vrykul Runecaster. This unit is a melee-caster type which can cast a flameshield on itself with tremendous aoe damage. Sort of like the Astromancers in Mechanar. This is spellstealable, dispellable etc, but a multiboxer would probably just opt for nuking this mob down fast or crowdcontrol it.

There are 3 bosses in here, all should be pretty easy for multiboxers. When you kill the 4 mobs in the first boss' room, the boss aggros. He can cast an ice trap/tomb on any of the party members that is afaik not dispelable. The challenge here is to be able to take care of the boss and it's relatively weak but continuously selfressing skeleton adds, with one of the team (possibly even the tank or the healer) indisposed in Ice Tomb for 15 seconds at a time. 2nd boss is 2 npcs, one caster and one melee dps. You nuke one down, he respawns as an unkillable ghost, but when you nuke down the other one they both die. Doesn't matter which one you kill first, but a shaman team would probably just nuke down the melee guy while grounding totems absorbed all incoming damage from the caster. 3rd boss is a tank'n spank fight with one significant spell being a shadow aoespell which also silences for 3 seconds. With a 60 yard range, this spell is virtually inescapable, and needs to be planned for. Some incoming damage on the tank, but shouldn't be a problem unless you're really badly geared or underleveled.

Overall multiboxing rating: Easy.

mandag 25. august 2008

WotLK Beta.

Multiboxing is on hold for now. I'm doing 2 ZA runs pr week for gold (boxing 4 shammies and selling bearmounts). I've been betatesting Wrath of the Lich King for about 3 weeks now. Currently leveling a Death Knight (level 73 as we speak), and I've tested out some of the other classes, and the new talents and spells that are coming. There are certainly exiting times to come, and multiboxing will not be dead after the expansion, but I predict PVP is gonna be much harder than it is today, due to the implementation of physics in certain spells. Classes with new knockback spells and skills are going to be difficult to deal with.

In Wrath of the Lich King I will start out as a singleplayer. I will reroll from Warlock as a raiding character, and I'm not sure I will continue to multibox, time will tell. For now, or at least until all WotLK raid content has been cleared, I'm quite happy with singleboxing.

onsdag 30. juli 2008

Summer almost over

I've been predominantly PVE specced lately. I'm running a ZA bearmount selling team with my shammies. Pretty decent money to be had. Still playing some arena matches, but since season 4 started there's pretty rough competition already in the 1600-1700 rating brackets. Top team on the battlegroup has just over 2000 rating. Plan is to keep playing for a few more weeks, then try to kick it up a notch and go for 1850 rating first, then 2000.