I don't care what you say...

Pullin' Agro!

So this may be my final post as a hardcore raider, maybe as an EQ2 player. I would hate to say it, as much love as I have for this game, it might be over.

If you've read my twitter posts lately, you may have noticed my anger at SOE due to the upcoming nerfs to Avatar gear. I am not really happy at all and the hardcore raiding community is in pretty much agreement, I have yet to find a hardcore raider say that these changes are even close to acceptable. You can find these raider rants on the official boards and on flames, I don't feel like linking the 50+ page posts because they would just put me in a worse off mood. Maybe later.

Why am I so angry? Avatar gear on test has been nerfed, some of it by 75%! This gear is earned by defeating Avatars, which are aspects of some of the most powerful beings (gods) in Norrath. These fights are generally the hardest, most scripted and take the most concentration to win.

The community mod lady, Kiara seems to think that the gear is still the best gear in the game, as she said to me via Twitter, she's either ignorant or just misinformed. I would hope that she is just misinformed, because there is no way anyone can be this retarded.

To give you an idea how bad this nerf is, I will be replacing some of my current TSO Avatar gear with pieces form past expansions. 2 pieces from ROK and 1 peice from EOF, it's quite sad that I am going as far back as two years and a half years to get items that will get somewhat near the same qulity of what I have now. I am glad I am kind of a pack rat. One item will be replaced by a collection quest another by a drop from a heroic instance. And this is just my "healing" stance set. This does not include my dps sets and variations! That's only if I decide to stay, but I wouldn't be surprised if you end up seeing my toons up on The Bazaar after GU #53 goes live.

What a joke, if you wanted to push your most dedicated raiders away from the game, this is the best way, if you wanted to turn EQ2 in to a causal raiding game, this will probably do it.

Honestly, right now in this part of the expansion, how does our Avatar gear hurt the game? I could understand if this was the beginning of a new expansion, where gear simply gets degraded because new gear comes out. Also there is degradation system in the works for the next expansion. These items will probably will be worth jack at 90 anyway if I understand it, but to gut them right now seems idiotic...

Oh Yeah, we killed Avatar of Valor and Flames last night. There was no excitement in the bids as there usually is when it comes to our Avatar kills, Items were going to almost minimum bids except for one item simply because the nerfs on it will be unknown.

And Boom goes the raid!

So tonight we killed Avatar of Health, Flame and Hate. On Health we had a comical kill! At 2% of Grummus's health I cast Verdict an Inquisitor spell, which an Epic mob down to 1hp, Grummus died and at the same time, the faliure effect triggered and killed most of the raid. We also cleared Ykesha's Inner Stronghold, killed Zarrakon and killed half of Palace of the Ancient One, which we will finish tommorow. At this pace we'll have a couple days off this week!

Did I spew that? I mean spawn that?

Shenanigans!

So Friday, July 10th was my birthday, I turned 30, ugh. We had a party at my house that involved lots of vodka, Redbull and beer (pong), and then hit last call at two bars (Not quite sure how that happened!). It was a black out drunk that night, and even a week after, I am still hearing stories of that night...

EQ2 Stuff

Since my last post, we've killed Avatar of War, Disease, Flame and Growth.

Health, Disease and Flame down, Ykesha drops loot!

Last night we killed Avatars of Health, Disease and Flame! We then cleared YIS, the Crazzel won the Band of Mreeptahp's Fury off Ykesha, with his massive dkp and 100% attendance. Seven people bid max on it, I don't think I will be seeing this ring for a while. :)


Alts:
I wanted to experiment, I used a chunk of my plat split to power level my new alt Pali, Grumbly with collections, from 27, to 57. With a little bit of adventuring I got him to 62 and 35aa last night and bought a full set of master crafted armor and jewelry. I had probably spent over 500plat , buying roughly 150 collections and the armor. I have not bought spells or ca's yet.
I was a little upset that it the power level expiriment didn't level him higher, but I guess I can deal, now I just need to figure out how to play the character, casting order and all that wonderful stuff. :P

One interesting thing I found out about paladins is they have about as many heals as my Inquisitor, save emergancy heals, I could be wrong, but it seems that if you make a gear set more in the line of a traditional healers set, they could fill in as a back up healer.

I should have spent that plat on buying the remaining collections needed for Grump, since he's only a few AA from being from cap and Grouser could use a couple masters. Oh well, 8 more plat splits to go, before the next expansion. :)

Grouser, got his mythical! I know I said in the past that buying updates was cheesy, but since DA will never go back to the hell hole, piece of shit that is Veshan's Peak, ever, ever again. I snagged an update for cheap from a guild that is still progressing from VP.

Avatar of Flame Down! Rune Etched Helm FTW!

Flame burns out!
Finally, the Avatar of Flame falls! We killed the Avatar of Flame for a server 1st after two nights of pulling this time, we finally got a lucky pull in at at lucky hour! Grats Ubah & Reddevil on your sever disco's!

Rune Etched Helm!
WOOHOO! I finally got it! One of the best items in the game for a healer! Crazzel, Reddevil, Gerrod, Seijakuri and myself went in and we killed Dreadlord D'Somni. After a year of waiting it's finally mine! I am so happy =). Yes, I know there is a new one from Munzok's Material Bastion, which is way better, but our fury and warden can wear it. If it's a common item, I guess we'll all eventually "upgrade", but I doubt it is common at all.

No Vega NO! :(

Avatar of Flame, toasted!

Avatar of Flame popped this morning, we killed him with less than three groups and boxed characters. The loot went to an alt as it is the 4th time we have looted it.

I will be putting up my screen shots of the former Prime healer, Anashti Sul a little bit later after I get it cropped.

Avatar of Flame is a wuss.

AoF dead, again! This makes 74th consecutive avatar killed by Dracos Argent!

Recruitment
Dracos Argent will be recruiting some folks in preperation to the new expansion. If you think you can be a part of the best guild on Butcherblock head over to the Dracos Argent's website and app!

Avatar of Flames Down.

So we killed Avatar of Flames this morning, with a less than optimal raid force, which makes Avatar kills really challenging and fun, Still getting lots of duplicate loot, 68 Avatar kills and still 10+ items on the loot table not discovered is kinda irritating, I hope they fix the loot in TSO so it is a little more evenly spread out.

I am going to go through and tag all of my blog posts today. I am not a wiz with blogs but one of my friends said that tagging my posts will allow better placement in some search engines, while I don't really care how many visitors I get, it would be cool to see if I get in to search engines.

Avatar of Flame Down, New toy & Post #50!

Avatar of Flame went down this morning, #60th Avatar killed! Immortalis showed up with some new folks on their roster some long time members of Aftermath. After a couple of failed pulls on their part, we killed the AoF and I got myself a new toy.