Alive and Kicking

Don't worry. I'm still here. I'm still playing the game. I've just had loads to do at work, which have made it almost impossible to do anything WoW-related (except raiding) lately.

I've joined another guild, and we are currently working on Lich King on 25-man. We have one 10-man team doing hardmodes, while the 10-man team I'm running with are pushing Lich King slightly below the 30%-mark of his health bar.

In addition to that, I'm also running a casual 10-man with some friends once a week. I usually go on my resto shammy on these runs, but I might use my death knight sometimes depending on the raid setup.

So there's a lot of Icecrown raiding going on.

Now when I have seen all the fights in ICC, I can finally have an opinion on the entire raid instance.

The Good
The Lich King fight is awesomesauce.
Most of the boss fights are well-designed.

The Bad
Professor Putricide is the most boring and annoying fight in the instance.

The "meh"
Gunship Battle is wearing thin, just like I expected from the first time we did it. It's a cool fight the first handful of times you do it. After that, it's just a time sink and free epics. It is truly the "Chess Event" of ICC.

After the horrible ToC, Blizzard promised us trash. Well, the trash in ICC is underwhelming. I might be an endangered species, but I enjoy trash. I liked the challenge of the trash in TBC raids. Trash pulls require a different set of skills than boss fights, and it was cool to get to use them on trash that actually could wipe the raid.

In ICC, we start with promising trash before Marrowgar, but then it kinda dwindles down to trash packs of a few mobs at a time which can easily be AoEd down. After the Lower Spire, it's mostly running up some stairs, kill five mobs, then run up some more stairs, kill five mobs, and then you are at a new boss. With the exception of two dogs and two val'kyrs, there are no patrols.

And the fact that there was no trash at all before the Frozen Throne was a big let-down.

But it's probably just me being old-fashioned. Trash and respawns are probably considered "annoying" by a majority of players.


Other things that have happened since my last post:

• Lots of Cataclysm info, which I will ignore on this blog until we are closer to release.
• Lots of patch 3.3.3 info, which so far includes nothing regarding paladins (but my frost death knight will be buffed!).
• Paladin AoE threat will be nerfed. Bummer. Ridach, over at Righteous Defense says exactly what I feel here.
  

But the most important blue post the last week:

Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice!

Or not.