Did em both, got 1 item out of the 15 or so to drop was of any use to our group.
Beats me over the head with a phonebooth on why Mythic just didn’t use PQ bags or tokens, really. Hell, even the old sets which were taken out of the game were better than the damn sets you get from the IC instances, and probably easier obtain too, considering I still have 4 tokens in my inventory.
I mean, why would you get rid of the items, they were awesome with their triple talisman slots. Hell even if they didn’t actually have stats but just the talisman slots they would be better than half the stuff you get from instances.
Sigh @ Mythic.
Went and did Lost Vale today. Managed to get the first two bosses down Asahaxak or something and Malgor Greathorn were the first two bosses of the West wing.
Intresting instance, not as hard as Bilerot, but the boss fights are highly challenging. The trash would be filed under more ‘annoying’ than actually difficult. The first boss was substantially harder than the second boss, due to the difference in the encounters; both of which I’ll detail in further in.
The trash pulls in LV consist of lots of mobs, normally 2+, generally ~3-4. Off the top of my head the worst trash mobs were Pleasuresomethings which had a range attack and Shamans which heal. The melee mobs are pretty weak.
The first boss; some lizard beginning with A, was probably the hardest encounter of the night. There were eggs in the pond in which she sits, and if you destroy one it enrages her. She gains an enchantment which bolsters her defences by a large chunk, so it is worth using shatter enchantment to make the encounter easier. At ~50% she hatches all the eggs and spawn a bunch of little lizards which hurt alot, but are non champions. For us we had two sorcs pop their t4 with stuns and then a DoK pop theirs. Mopped them up no worries.
At 25% she spawns another lizard which is identical to herself, however if you burn her hard enough this lizard doesn’t spawn, theres like a 15/20 second window to do so.
She dropped a Darkpromise cape, 30 wounds 30 toughness + resists and an Orc Choppa, 1h which had some insane stats, eg + to physical damage, toughness, initiative, strength and a socket.
The second boss is alot easier, though he is untauntable and un detauntable, meaning its really a control of aggro will win the fight. There are mists on the ground that seem to do nothing apart from give the tank instant aggro, though I would advise them only being used in place of a taunt. Really its just a tank and spank encounter. Dropped a Darkpromise Staff for Sorcs, 84/84 Toughness & Int, plus a hot Magus staff, 40 Willpower, 17 Initiative, 54 int, 6% crit and two socket slots.
Called it after that, since it was getting late. 5d lockout too.
Wooo Blackguard. Now Destruction get another awesome looking tanking class which looks like it will be able to dish the DPS to attract even more players to Destruction! Awesome! That said, since everyone and their cat is talking about the new classes – the Blackguard does seem pretty badass.
They are the mirror of the IB, but there is one key difference from what I could gather, hatred increases through each attack the BG does. This has its own set of pros and cons; such as an IB could theoretically build Grudge / Hate faster than a BG could, but honestly who targets an IB first. I’ve only toyed with an IB in PvP, so I really can’t be one to comment on their Grudge building, but regardless in a PvP sense, if BG get an Oathfriend/brother/whatever type of ability, they will more than likely be a force to be reckoned with.
They seem to be a damage oriented type tank from what I’ve gathered from whats been released on them, though I could as usual just be miles off. Either way, they look sexy, and I (along with every other destruction player) will be rolling one for an alt.
The KotBS are also getting introduced, but since they are a Chosen mirror and focus on buffing their allies it seems intresting, but being destruction it doesn’t really intrest me too much. (Pffft Order).
In other news we see the first of the Live Events, assuming that there will probably be a ton coming around since it is that time of year – Halloween, Promotional ‘Heavy Metal’, Christmas, New Years and maybe Chinese New Year, all within a few months of each other. Lets just hope they don’t go too overboard with them and trivialize them.
What really counts in my books though, is the PQs in the RvR lakes. It is rather amazing at how a little bit of carebeary incentive will bring the PvE only players (shocking isn’t it) and lower levels into the RvR zones for a good scrap and stunty bashing. It is a step in the right direction, though which ever brainiac at Mythic decided to have a set loot table in the PQ rewards and not just give everyone a worthy reward deserves a good boggin’ on the noggin. Having to get a Gold bag against 200 other players is a bit ridicilous. Especially when the PQ table caps out at 60 people.
Its a step in the right direction, but it really does require some refinement.
Cleared Bloodwrought tonight in about an hour and a half. No Shaman loot as usual :p Beats me why Mythic didn’t implement a token system or something so where theres a guarenteed drop for those who are actually at the instance. Barakus dropped two WE helms and a DoK one.
Lots of ORvR again as its a Sunday. 4 Sorcs + Triumphant blasting > Order zerg in a keep. 12 guildies managed to hold out ~50 for a good 30 minutes, and then managed to recap the keep back anyway. Though thanks to the way renown works most kills only give 1RP. Though order have begun to have a good whinge about Chaotic Rift, blaming it solely as the cause for them to die so much. Its kind of amazing how much some players can QQ about anything if it gets them killed or does not ensure a 100% chance of victory.
Managed to get them both to 200, with 15s left in my wallet. I’m now stuck in the IC. Wooo go me. Late night crafting while having drunk is bad, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise – drinking and crafting and AHing is bad.
It took me about 300g to get from 1-200 on both Salvaging and Talisman Making, and the crafting buff in Dragonwake was a lifesaver. Those 10 extra levels make a huge difference in the chance to succeed and fail a Salvaging – though I never failed a Talismaking session apart from once when it bugged and it said ‘You have made something Awesome!’ followed by ‘Attempt Failed’ and ‘Not enough space in your backpack’ when there was atleast 10 spots open.
Now comes the challenge of making permament 19+ to something other than Wounds. Which only happens from getting a crit off salvaging an epic. Hmm.
Further note: Anyone that is planning on doing Salvaging and Talisman making; make sure you have lots of gold spare, or plenty of patience, the last 5 levels of both have an insane chance to not grant levels even using 200 mats.
Epic night tonight. Barakus the Godslayer down! :>
We managed to clear the entirety of Bloodwrought Enclave in 2 hours give or take about 10 minutes. A tanking specced Chosen makes a hell of alot of difference. Chosen replaced IBs as my percieved best tank in the game now. Out of the Sentinel pieces we had drop we got DoK, BO and WE boots, with a BO belt off the Ragedrunk Centigor fellow; name still eludes me. Our lucky off-tank who is a BO got all the bits, same with the second healer getting their DoK boots. Unfortunately there was no Witch Elf in our group, and the boots were sharded.
The two other non set piece bosses dropped quite frankly, nothing good. Nifty trinkets which are comparable to previous ones from Chapter 22 quests, eg a DoK one with 27 Str and 18 Willpower. Very nice, but nothing special – though the same can be said about most of the set gear. Got a Shaman staff, sexy stats, but it has Intelligence (44 Toughness, 59 Wounds, 44 Intelligence). Same as all the other Shaman super staffs, apart from good ole Hatred (53 Willpower, 40 Toughness, 40 Wounds, 1 Talisman socket).
Kudos to Euphoria of Ironfist for giving us an inkling on how to tackle the boss and modify our strat, embedded is a video of our downing of Barakus the Godslayer, last boss of Bloodwrought Enclave, he dropped the BO helm and two Chosen helms.
I hope the vid, while I know its probably hard to see what goes down, will give you a good idea of what to do, and what we did in it.
Vid contains swearing 
Great Sunday today.
Today our guild ; Southern Cross; made our first run into Bloodwrought Enclave, a City 3 (or 4) 6 man instance which happens to drop the Sentinel set, the first of the PVE R40 sets. The instance itself is great, apart from the long reset timer (4320 minutes – ~3 days) There happens to be very little trash between a boss and the start of the instance, first few pulls were <10 pulls to the boss.
The first boss on the left side of Bloodwrought was fairly simple and straightforward, kill the adds which are rather squishy and tank and spank the boss. The bosses name eludes me now (42 Hero), but he had two Ragedrunk musicians as adds. Something to note throughout the encounter are various beer / ale barrels which the musician adds and the boss tend to randomly drink from. Theres Altdorf Ale, which increases their damage by 10%, Tilean Ale which reduces their strength and initiative by 50ish, and Bugmans XXXXXX which we didn’t see in use. We don’t know if this is a bug or not but the adds came seperately to the boss, and we were able to kill them without pulling / aggroing the boss.
The Ragedrunk fellow went down on the 3rd try, the first real solid attempt and dropped Sentinel Magus and Sentinel Squig Herder boots, which I both won since we didn’t have either in the party, and a Chosen Sentinel belt which went to our MT and GM. We went over to the second and third parts of Bloodwrought but failed to aquire any other loot. The trash leading up to the last boss in Bloodwrought seems to be alot easier than the trash leading up to the right wing, since we managed to give the final boss in Bloodwrought, Barakus the Godslayer, a 44 Hero – which is an extremely challenging and fun boss fight which I look very forward to getting down pat.
The strat for Barakus is intresting since it is using his knockback on the tank against him, since once he knocks back the tank, his speed is reduced to a speed similar to that of a players, and every player recieves a hex debuff which increases damage against them by 400%, and he gets a buff of his own for another damage increase (ie 15k hits, when the stat cap is 1167) . Once he knocks back the tank, the tank needs to taunt him and kite him around for 10 seconds until the debuff is gone. Really rinse lather and repeat, though we didn’t down him, I have no doubt that unless ORVR really picks up in speed and momentum we will be there quite a bit.
So to trash my earlier post today, atleast there was a good solid 6 hours of ORvR today in Dragonwake started by the ‘top’ Order guild TRF. Now while it isn’t in its dying stages it has degenerated into zerg and counter zerging after a few hours of multiple gank squads and smaller 6v6 skirmishes. Unfortunately most of destruction still seem to be rather spineless, unlike the true Zerg. Slightest chance of something going wrong they’ll turn tail and bugger off rather than selflessly throwing their life down because they can.
So for the 3 or so hours we ran a guild gank squad around ramming the back of the Order zerg, or locking down postern doors in keeps which they took, finally, earned about 30K Renown through kills. Not too shabby, definately better than farming scens, and a TON more fun.
One thing that is intresting though is that when you get an organized group rolling, you happen to see many ‘rookie errors’ where other players are drawn into an obvious trap, or follow you around without the benefit of being on comms and getting caught plus killed by Order, who then proceed to flood you with tells raging at you for not healing or for a res.
Sometimes a facepalm just is not suffecient.
