Imperator Mar'gok Heroic

 

Difficulty: 7/10
Attempts: 37
World rank: 955
          Good fight! For the last boss of raid instance this encounter is very well made. Four phases, several different mechanics, bright dynamic abilities - this was as good as fight with Garrosh. Difficulty is just in place where it needs to be - hard enough for last boss, but not impossible. And again - well done! Now the real challenges begin - Mythic mode! :)

          Also, few word about current state of mages. We are in quite bad place right now. Check Simcraft - all three our specs are near the bottom. Today only Frost can provide some competition, but even Frost is relatively weak compared to, say, monks. Mages were top1 for almost two expansions, and I understand Blizzard want to give other classes this place, but why to put us into the barrel?
          And our talents are so clunky - I remember mages were complained about level 90 talents being terrible - and what we got now? Even worse talents! TV passive is very "fun" gameplay. PC mechanic is just great - once you put it on the ground and pop your cooldowns on - tank moves the boss LoL - welcome to 0 DPS world! I even don't want to say anything about "10k damage per 24 sec" CS. I hope mages will receive some serious buffs in incoming hotfixes, especially Fire, because atm this is a joke.
          Again - this is only my opinion.
         
#worldofwarcraft #warlordsofdraenor #warlords #wow #margok #heroic #imperator #highmaul

Highmaul Heroic. Still the first week :)

 

          We have cleared Highmaul Normal in 2 raid days. First day was Kargath - Ko'ragh and few wipes on Imperator. Second day was Imperator and 3 heroic bosses. Two more heroic bosses on 3rd raid day and Ko'ragh on last one.
          As you may know, Heroic have no difference from Normal in terms of mechanics - same abilities, same strategy, only amount of bosses\adds HP\damage is greater. I cant say Heroic bosses are significantly harder, but they are definitely harder. More HP usually means longer fights = bigger chance someone fails thus wiping the raid. Here is my estimation:
 1) Kargath Bladefist - 1st try - 3/10 - Same with Normal, but hits harder.

 2) The Butcher - 5th try - 4/10 - Significantly harder than Normal version. This boss actually has an enrage timer, and since this is first week and people are mostly in blues this can be a cockblock for those who didn't get many BOE epics and\or farmed challenge modes.

 3) Brackenspore - 9th try - 5/10 - Same as The Butcher - significantly harder than Normal version. Boss has much more HP, every add has much more HP, when you kill one add another spawns, you cant dps the boss at all or adds will overwhelm you. One mistake with healing green mushroom leads to wipe.

  4) Tectus - 13th try - 5/10 - This one is the same with Normal - fire still hurts, earthen spike still kills. Tectus has less DPS or HPS requirements than other bosses so far, but more demanding to the positioning. If you move wrong way - huge chance you wipe the raid.

  5) Twin Ogron - 7th try - 4/10 - same as normal, but the fight lasts longer.

  6) Ko'ragh - 31th try - 5/10 - I have no idea why it took us so long to defeat this. First 10 wipes we were teaching melee guys to stay away from center on phase change. Second 10 wipes we were teaching guys with debuff to catch falling spheres. And the last 10 wipes people were learning not to die in different shit.

          That was all for the first week. We didn't defeat Imperator, but still 7\7N and 6\7H progress is great for me so far. This week was awesome - many new bosses, many new kills. Now I'm going to sleep to prepare myself to long Mythic wipes :) See you! :P

First week of Highmaul. Highmaul Normal.

 

          Finally, a new raid! How long I have waited for this! First days of new raid are always awesome - new bosses, new areas, new mechanics. I remember my Cataclysm experience when I rushed to level 85 gathered best equipment I could to fight for server firsts! You know this feeling when you kill new boss - and there are even seven new ones! And this is normal so you can beat them quite fast. This is like having an orgasm seven times in row :)
          I even managed to be first in my guild by item level

 

though I didn't make it that high I made it in Cataclysm - getting old probably :)

          But nevermind this, I was really happy and excited anyways! Seven new bosses, seven new challenges! And as I like to measure all things I will measure boss difficulty and will track our statistics on wipes and kills. Of course my marks are very subjective - this is only my point of view :) Lets say 10\10 - is Garrosh Heroic pre-6.0 and 0\10 is current LFR difficulty level. This will be in boss - attempts - difficulty - comment format.

 1) Kargath Bladefist - 1st try - 1/10 - First boss is first boss. Mechanics are forgivable and easy to avoid.
 2) The Butcher - 1st try - 1/10 - This one has DPS requirements, but for my guild there was no challenge at all.
 3) Brackenspore - 2nd try - 2/10 - We were totally clueless about mushrooms :)
 4) Tectus - 4th try - 3/10 - For the first kill this one is harder than previous bosses. Mechanics are old - void zone + don't stay in fire + kite debuff away, but when the boss splits into 4 amount of fire and void zones is a bit overwhelming. Good aoe required.
 5) Twin Ogron - 2nd try - 2/10 - easy one-phase boss. Same thing - don't stay in fire.
 6) Ko'ragh - 4th try - 3/10 - interesting idea to make the boss immune to magic :)
 7) Imperator Mar'gok - 7th try - 5/10 - Significantly harder than previous bosses. While other bosses have 1-2 phases, Mar'gok is 10m+ 4-phased encounter. I believe it can be serious challenge for weak guilds.

          Overall I'm very happy with Highmaul, see you in Heroic mode :)

Level 100!

          YEAH, FINALLY!
          The way was long and hard, but I finally made it. It was damn fun :D Yeah, I didn't have this very feeling since Cata! Now I need some time to sleep, I will edit this post later and tell about my adventures during leveling!

          Added later: Now after short rest I am ready to tell about what did I do in last 2 days ^^ Leveling took me 30 hours including 6 hours sleep. Actually it could be completed in 1\2 time probably, but our server was lagging terribly. This is 5th addon for World of Warcraft and still Blizzard cant fix lag at the start. Quite sad. Most terrible addition to the game is Garrison which lags even more bad. There just was no instance - hundreds of people running around in non-instanced zone. Worse, if you use Hearthstone it does nothing, only starts its cooldown, but if you use flight path you are getting stuck for good several hours. Terrible. All our way to level 100 was long fight with lag. We tried everything - questing in one half of zone since 2nd half was lagging (lol), asked for an invite to another server through Battle.net. - nothing was working - looting a mob took us 30 seconds. But in final - Blizzard:We - 0:1 :D Anyway, even despite terrible lags I liked the process, Draenor itself is very beautiful, though we didn't have much time to focus on environment :)
          Now it is time to Heroics and then Challenges
 

Warlords of Draenor inc!

          I didn't plan to powerlevel my mage once addon comes. But I would lie if I say I don't want to. I still remember my Cataclysm powerleveling with my m8's several years ago on the far realm of EU-Ravencrest. I was 7th level 85 on server, though I don't remember correctly, I remember it took me no less than 20 hours. And it was awesome! Yeah, ol'good times, maybe someday I will even write down my memories about Vanilla, TBC, etc.
          Few days ago I got an invite from my guildies to rush to level 100 with them. Now how could I resist? :D I've accepted an invite. I didn't play on Beta this time, so I don't have a plan how to level, but I hope my mates have.
          So, it is time to claim some server firsts :P See you on level 100!

#worldofwarcraft #warlordsofdraenor #warlords #wow

Heroic Garrosh

          After patch all bosses become much easier including Garrosh. We defeated him in about 10 tries - this is nothing for the hardest boss of current content. I didn't play SoO for almost an year. The last boss I've stopped on was HC Immerseus and as I remember it was even harder than this nerfed Garrosh. I don't complant, nope :) I'm actually happy Blizzard allowed everyone to see this heroic only phase.

P.S. By saying "everyone" I actually mean everyone skilled enough, since even this nerfed version provides some challenge :)

P.P.S. I was laughing out loud when I saw new DPS numbers - from 250k to 14k - that was funny ^^

World of Warcraft

          After almost an year of absence I decided to return to World of Warcraft.
          I started to play this game back in 2004 from US beta. And for long 10 years I've played WoW with different people, under different raid times, played hardcore and casually. I don't want to look nerdy - I didn't spend my life in WoW :) Its just the game with social basis, where you can relax with your friends, same as Counter-Strike, same as DOTA or League of Legends. I started to play WoW, I liked it ... and stuck to it till now :)
          If you want to be the first in this game you need to play a lot (in addition to fast reaction and smart brain) - I think this is the case almost for every game - more you play - more you get. That was the reason I was leaving the game. When you are student it is ok to play all night long, but when you have a job, a wife, responsibilities you just cant waste 20-30-40 hours per week online.
          Not everyone is so lucky to get happy, interesting and cloudless life. Even those people need to relax sometimes. Someone getting stick to the brothel, someone to the bottle, I stuck to WoW :) In my humble opinion this is the lesser of all evils - less damage for health, less for wealth. I play with my friends, getting fun, there is nothing wrong with me :)

          Oh, forgive my long monologs - getting old probably :) Let me tell you why I decided to come back again. When I was leaving last time (about an year ago) I thought this was the last time I play WoW, because it ate too much time. But after a while I relalized I spend the same time in other games - Dark Souls, Hearthstone, etc. Then why should I play alone when I can play with friends, as long as it don't interfere with my real life?
          Accidently I saw a thread on Russian forum with the post from one of my mates, once guild master of top guild that he is gathering people under his banner once again :) And with his positive answer on my question "Do you need a mage?" I came back to the game :) I don't know how long will it last, probably not long, but since new addon is coming soon I hope to see new content! See you in Warlords of Draenor :>

#worldofwarcraft #warlordsofdraenor #warlords #wow