Alterac Volley » Heroic Dungeons

Please Farm Trial of the Champion

Nance — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:23:32 +0000

I’ve been really busy gearing up my Priest the last few weeks and, friends, let me stress that if you aren’t running Regular Trial of the Champion several times a day you are missing out. This instance is far and away the simplest and fastest way to level your alts with more than respectable gear.

When I made the switch from my Hunter to my Priest I was rolling deep with Hateful PvP gear. I managed to heal a few Heroics with that Hateful gear but things were sketchy at best. Luckily, the awesome guild I joined was more than willing to run Regular ToC on a loop for me over the course of several days.

By the time we were beyond exhausted with it I had a more than decent set of gear to heal Heroics with. Using that new gear I was able to go on multiple chains of Heroic runs and now I’ve put together a pretty decent set of gear and Heroic experiences. In addition to healing gear, I’ve put together a very nice set for Shadow DPS as well.

The beauty of ToC, both Heroic and Regular, is that you can gear up an alt with multiple specs very quickly. Trial of the Champion is a must play for anyone looking to snag loot for alts at this point. If you have some 80s on our account that you’ve let go stagnant try logging on and running some ToC and I bet you’ll find renewed interest in the characters right away.

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The Spoils Of Patch 3.2

Nance — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:25:04 +0000

Since the day Patch 3.2 was released I’ve been diving head first into running as many Heroics as I can fit into my schedule each day. The number of Emblems of Conquest I’ve managed to rack up since that day is right around 150. Not only was I hitting the older Heroics hard but I’ve also made daily trips into the Trial of Champions as well.

Anyway, since the patch I’ve managed to snag the following gear upgrades on my Hunter through Emblem purchases, lucky drops or cold hard cash:

As you can probably imagine, I’ve seen a pretty significant DPS increase from all of these upgrades. Aside from the gear I’ve also completed a lot of achievements I was missing out on. Oh yeah, and I finally had a good roll on the Reins of the Bronze Drake. It’s been a wild time since the Patch and I apologize for the lack of updates around here but I was too busy playing the game to spend a lot of time writing about it.

Coming up I’m going to do a Daily Quest Guide for the new Argent Tournament quests and maybe give some brief strategy posts on the Isle of Conquest and the Trial of Champions (particularly how ToC operates for Hunters).

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Quick Impressions Of Patch 3.2

Nance — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:44:56 +0000

I managed to get the patch yesterday on my Mac with little difficulty so I was able to jump right in as soon as Greymane was up and check things out. Here are my impressions of Patch 3.2 after a few hours of play.

Champion’s Seal Loot

There’s some decent loot to be purchased with Champion’s Seals now. I immediately blew most of my stockpile of 300 Seals by buying the fantastic Sunreaver Dragonhawk mount (pictured above), the Argent Crusader’s Tabard for quick teleporting to the Tournament area and last, but not least, the Bind on Account Polished Breastplate of Valor to complete my BoA Plate set.

New Argent Tournament Dailies

The new Argent Tournament Dailies, which I believe you need the Crusader title to do, are relatively simple. They all involve a bit of travel but it didn’t seem as awful as the original four Champion dailies feel with the exception of one daily that is all the way in Storm Peaks and might not be worth the effort for some.

The amount of Seals and gold you can earn by consistently doing these quests is going to be pretty impressive. They don’t appear to require groups either so those of you, like myself, with an allergy to playing with strangers should be pleased.

Isle of Conquest

I tried the new battleground, the Isle of Conquest, a few times but I want to hold off my impressions for awhile. It was insanely laggy and the map is so huge, with so much going on, that it was hard to get a good grip on what it will really be like in the future. I think once Patch Mania simmers down and we all have a time to figure this battleground out it’s going to be one of my favorites though.

Trial of the Champion

I managed to give the new 5 man, Trial of the Champion (or ToC as the cool kids call it), a shot on both Regular and Heroic. We didn’t quite have the heals to live through the Heroic version and we quit after several wipes on the second encounter. The Regular version, minus one “Oops” wipe, was much smoother and gave me a good look at what this new 5 man has to offer.

Some people are going to white hot hate the opening fight that requires jousting. But it’s relatively simple and compares well with the Battle Before The Citadel quest. The next two encounters reminded me heavily of Violet Hold. Actually, the whole Trial of the Champion is kind of like Violet Hold on acid. It’s just small trash and then boss time. If you like Violet Hold’s gameplay then you’ll probably love ToC as well.

Emblem Changes

The switch from Emblems of Heroism to Emblems of Conquest in Heroics is great. Now I can gear up a bit without having to bite the bullet and join a raiding guild. Also, this should make interest in my small stable of alts increase as the odds of getting them in good gear just drastically rose with the Emblem change.

Early Verdict

I have to say that even after just a few hours that I like this patch a lot so far. The new battleground, while confusing at first and very laggy, shows some promise as well. The Emblem changes, new dailies and the new 5 man should help keep my interest in the game going strong.

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PUG Checker

Nance — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:41:34 +0000

As some of you may already know, I’ve been working off and on over the last week or so on a new WoW-related site I’m calling PUG Checker.

With PUG Checker, you can type in the name of a player and the server they are on and get a quick “scorecard” style display of their boss kills in all of the instances in Wrath of the Lich King. This is a quick and simple way to get some kind of an idea about the experience level of the player you’re about to group up with.

I’ve been personally using PUG Checker before every PUG I’ve ran over the last week and it’s been pretty useful for me so far. I’ve seen some stuff, when scanning players before a PUG, that made me a leery of going forward from the start that were proven correct. One particular Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle run looked like trouble according to PUG Checker and after about an hour later and several wipes it was proven to be correct.

Of course, everyone’s mileage with the site will vary and it’s by no means advertised or intended to be a ruling body on PUG worth. If you find it useful though, please bookmark it and visit often. If you don’t think it’s fair or a valid representation of your character I understand completely but the data I’m using is freely available from the WoW Armory already. I’m just displaying it in a more useful and accessible manner.

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An Overachieving Weekend with the Lunar Festival

Nance — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:25:04 +0000

I went in to this weekend with a lot of holes to fill in my experience running Heroics. There were some instances, like Gundrak, that I’d run on regular but hadn’t on Heroic yet. Then there were several I’d never seen the inside of at all like Azjol-Nerub and the Halls of Stone.

The Motivation

I decided to jump in and finish these Heroics because I suddenly became swept up in the To Honor One’s Elders achievement for the ongoing Lunar Festival world event. Wrapping up that achievement grants you the title of Elder. I thought that was kind of cool and two of the required achievements, Elders of the Dungeons and Elders of the Alliance, seemed like interesting challenges for a lazy weekend.

As of this morning, I’ve made serious dents in the Lunar Festival achievements. I think I’ll have them all wrapped up by the middle of the week as a matter of fact. Then I’ll run around for a few months as Elder Nance until I get tired of it and switch to something else.

If you haven’t checked out the Lunar Festival yet and you are a big achievement nerd like I’m becoming than I highly recommend you give it a shot. Some of the achievements can be done in seconds while others will take you hours of traveling and solo dungeon clearing to complete. It’s also a great opportunity for players like myself that missed out on some of the old dungeons or have never take the initiative yet to see all of the Heroics that Wrath has to offer.

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My First Wrath Heroic and My First Wrath Epic

Nance — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:20:35 +0000

This weekend I decided to take the plunge and start actively trying to join PUGs to run some 5-mans. In all my previous WoWing, I’ve never once joined a PUG or ran an instance that was at my level. When I hit 80, the first thing I did was go to Hellfire Peninsula and run Hellfire Ramparts and the Blood Furnace solo but that hardly counts as adequate experience for what I went through over the weekend.

After two successful runs through Drak’Tharon Keep and Gundrak on normal difficulty I felt like I had a good grip on the ropes so I hopped in with a group running Utgarde Keep on Heroic. Right out of the gate things were rough when they questioned my level 70 PvP gear. In the end, while I wasn’t near the top of the damage charts, I held my own all the way through the end.

The best part of the whole run was the final boss drop: the Drake-Mounted Crossbow. This ended my brief affair with guns as I ran back to crossbows in a heartbeat.

For the rest of the weekend, I kept running 5-mans as often as I could. I ran normal versions first to get the lay of the land before trying them on Heroic. While I didn’t see any more quality drops like I did during that first Utgarde Keep run I did get a ton of reputation with the Wyrmrest Accord. I’m about a quarter of the way to hitting Exalted and snagging my own Red Drake.

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