http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Rogues

* Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.



In a nutshell, it not only got nerfed with the absorb, but now pve rogues will still get raped through cheat, thumbs up.

p.s. super secret info coming soon in a future article~

Calling it because I'm a prophet. Will edit later when I'm right.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=7102930387&sid=1

We’re currently planning to end the third Arena season and begin Arena Season 4 on June 24, 2008. This exciting Arena season will introduce the Brutal Gladiator set, and will also allow players to purchase Arena Season 2 items using the honor system. Please note that we will be resetting all Arena team and personal ratings. Players will still retain their Arena points and teams with this reset. The team and personal rating will simply be reset to the default 1500, allowing all teams to once again compete for top honors with a fresh start.

Also, with the end of the third season, players on the top teams from each battlegroup will receive their end-of-season rewards. These include Arena-specific titles that they can display proudly until the end of the new season, and, for the best of the best, an Armored Nether Drake. Please also be aware that with the end of the current season, all previous end-of-season titles will be removed.

Called.

Firstly, I'll be sorely disappointed if this doesn't attain at least 200 replies.

That said, this is a short little tale about a sad individual named Ons. This individual happened to be the guild leader of Vanquish on Cho'gall. At first appearance, he comes off as a person that seems to be mellow and chill, but the more you raid with him, the more ******* idiotic you realize he is.

If you arn't an officer or raid leader in the guild, and make one mistake during a raid, you will get verbally ASS RAPED by this man. Acceptable in a competitive raiding guild, right? Maybe, if he wern't so god damn bad at PvE himself. He says time and time again that shadow priests top out at like 1200dps when other guilds have priests easily pushing 1500 on fights like Brutallus. Although also coming from a shadow priest that claims, "there's no such thing as a rotation, you just hit things as they come up" I'm not too suprised.

Even before I started raiding with them, I had heard the stories of how much Ons ****** up, which wouldn't be all too bad if not for how much he *****es at other people when they mess up. The greatest irony of all is how much incessant trash he talks about Jydlen, a shadow priest from Death Wish, and how bad he is at PvE dps, when all you have to do is watch Ons' Eredar Twins video to see the epitome of fail. Drop more mass dispel circles please.

Oh, but after I started raiding, it got even better. I got to see the man fumble at the keyboard in person. I think I lost count of how many times we wiped during M'uru progression because he fat fingered his mass dispel. But of course no one said anything, because he had an excuse, he was watching the void sentinel spawn locations, of course. Because that's really important for him to know. No, really. In the words of Grandpa Simpson, "Too much pie, that's your problem."

How many times did Ons die to a trash mob's cleave because he was sitting there with his thumb up his ass while doing 300dps? How many times did we wipe to Entropius because he can't get his target/dispel macro working properly and had a dark fiend wipe us? How many times did he die like a complete ******* idiot to P1 Kil'Jaeden adds by standing there like a retard in shadowbolt volley range? I'm pretty sure I lost count of all of them.

I think, after the fact, Metin and Kronos described the situation best:



Truth be told, he really doesn't have respect for anyone that isn't surgically attached to his scrotum (you know who you are). I can't count how many times I had to listen to quotes like these during a raid:

"Smokestomp, you ******* IDIOT. You will be BANNED FROM ALL VQ EVENTS if you pull aggro one more time."

"THE NEXT PERSON THAT PULLS AGGRO WON'T RAID FOR A WEEK"

"If one of you dumb ******* rogues aggro's early again, you'll be looking for a new guild"

"This is why we recruited this new person. This is why you get sat for raids, because you do stupid **** like this all the ******* time."

"You dumb ******* n-----, why the **** would you do that?"

"No, you ******* failed because you didn't react instantly, it has to be ******* instant" (refer to how many times we wiped on M'uru due to MD).

Hopefully you get the idea. So how did this kick even happen? He can say all he wants about how it was "built up" but he and I both know it mostly all came down to me calling him out on his bull**** Tuesday night. Basically we do M'uru, as usual, then when we start clearing to KJ we figure out what raid comp we want to use. I suggested 2 melee groups like all of the KJ killing guilds had run so far to min/max our damage output. I was told to sit for it so they could bring in more casters; whatever. We talk about it in rogue chat and all the rogues agreed that we could easily run 2 melee groups and that it would be ideal. I message exactly that to Ons and Ons proceeds to message me with:

"dont ******* lie to me. I don't know how things were in your last guild but you dont ******* lie to me to manipulate my decisions"

I said I'm not ******* lying, pasted rogue chat to him (via Prat), and he promptly shut the hell up for the rest of the night until the kick. All of the reasons he gave were pretty vague and speaking in generalistics, constantly referring to me as an old guild member that I knew nothing about. Regardless, after this happened, some people were happy (mostly the pve nerds that felt like their toes were being stepped on more than anyone), while many opposed to it.

Ons made a forum thread on the member forum simply stating that I was removed and put a copy of the vague PM that he sent me on the thread. The thread eventually turned into several people (Metin, Kronos, Lobomos, Killars, and Errodine off memory) defending me. Ons lashed out at most of them, insulting one in particular, and basically had no counter-arguements to any of it other than "I'm right, you're wrong." When I saw what was stated by Ons and how much he was lying his ass off, I asked Errodine to relay my response to it all. After seeing that the thread had been leaked to me, Ons immediately locked the thread and moved it to a "special dump" that only he and Vanyr (another officer friend of his) can read, and no one else. Real classy, suppressing the truth.

I can't copy any text from that thread anymore obviously, but I do have copies of PM's sent by guild members to Ons regarding the issue. I apologize in advance for breeching potential privacy on these, but I feel they need to be shared.

This PM was sent to Ons from Rem, our main tank:

"He was a good tank and a great player. He brought fairly good ideas to a lot of fights "a lot of ****ty ones too tho, not gonna lie". If you really want my opinion on why progress is not up to the point me and you feel it should be is because when we are learning fights, brainstorming ideas and wanting to put them into attempts we always hear the same people on vent of like Me, Serennia, Atea, Rammyz, Rokub and a few others. Serennia really got into progressing and he wanted to be part of what you me and him feel is the greatest guild in the world, OURS. I feel that a lot of people just do not get into the game and think just because there job is spamming 2 "shadowbolt key etc etc" then they arnt really part of the progress so they sit there and spam 2 2 2 2 2 2 2. Serennia was the exact opposite and he had a lot of spirit and excitement, the guy put our guilds name on the front of WorldofRaids multiple times and created videos drawing positive attention to us. Also I feel that it is going to be a ***** to get a new tank that does his job for Muru at least, it takes more than the average raider to do his job, my job or Rokubs job.

He wants another chance and we all know that your the only one that has the power to do it. Even from what I saw of the worste, him babbling on and on about 2 melee dps groups is a form of him trying to get what he truely feels is the best for the progression of not himself but of his guild and all the rest of us as well. The private chat that he sent me I feel you need to read "...I really think a lot of this has to do with misunderstandings and confusion on multiple parties, and I also feel that I could have changed a lot of things if needed if I had ever been requested to..." If it was his attitude then talk to him about it. There are multiple people in this guild who have a worse attitude than him and just sit there complaining with no reasons or ways to fix the problems we are having. They just complain about it when Serennia at least trys to help out.

Ons if it came down to you putting a gmute on that man every time we raided than I'm fine with that and I'm prettysure he would be too. He was a great player and he did have good ideas, GREAT raiding mindset and great attendance. He wanted **** to get done and he produced reasons and ways for **** to get done. He researched fights, constantly talking to others and using whatever he could to benefit this guild.

Ons if you do remember I was the first to say "no do not let Serennia join this guild" from the very begining ideas about his recruitment and I was completely wrong. I feel he was a great player and overall a brilliant guy.

I recognize my position in this guild as a member and not an officer of any sort, the final decision must come from you but these are my thoughts as a member of his class/spec/mindset. I realize that because I am not an officer of the guild there may be parts of the story that I was not presented with. I did not spill the word yesterday about what you told me but I only ask you to make sure the decision you made in this circumstance was the right one."

This one from Rammyz, the hunter Class Officer:

"I knew you were thinking about it for a while but I don't believe the kick was a good idea. Serennia is an amazing player, he knows his stuff, he knows WoW, I really do respect the guy. And to be honest he doesn't whine nearly as much as I do in terms of progression nights. The poor guy has been sat for every single fight except some kalecgos, all of muru and some KJ attempts. He's dedicated, he gets this guild known, he works for this guild. He's helped mang get arena points each week, helping alot of this guild get glad etc.

Now that being said at times he can be really ******* ****y, I've played with him, I've arena'd with him and he will rage if you **** up, it's fine I like that. I want people who don't accept anything but the best, it's what is needed in a high end guild. The only time his attitude was bad was when people would make stupid ******* mistakes and I believe people need to know about them. You may also say "arena is stupid and it means nothing" but it does mean alot to alot of people ons, the title, the mount etc etc all make your character look that much better, people look up to you, you become more known, it IS something.

With all my cards on the table I honestly think we should review this subject and have an officer vote, not just you saying OK kick Serennia."

This one from Anjeliq, another hunter veteran in the guild:

"Ons,

I know you said "the topic is over" and that there is nothing left to discuss, but I truly think that booting Serennia is the wrong decision. As you saw by the thread, and by other people talking to you about it / messeges etc. you can see that I am not alone in this mind-set.


Yes, there are some that disagree, but look at Serennia's benefits that he brings to the guild. He constantly gives us exposure to sites like WoR & brings plenty of traffic to our forums (as you can see by all the randoms posting on the public boards about his Ony video, and all the people that saw the "OMG I'M A DRAGON video) which I believe, in turn, helps a lot with publicity & our recruitment income. A guild that is well-known will definitely get more recruits than one that isn't.


Serennia is a HUGE source of our theory-crafting. I believe it was Metin who said this, but there have been times when Atea was not around and Serennia was the ONLY one giving new suggestions. Sure, some might not have been good, but don't you think that dumb suggestions > no suggestions? Him, and a few others such as Atea or Rammyz are one of the few people that come up with new ideas and I think that is a really valueable thing to lose.


He is a really great example of the type of player we want in this guild. He is focused, shows up EVERY day regardless of whether he is needed or not, he stays in vent and helps with suggestions/theory even when he is not in the raid. You say it is because he is trying to manipulate the situation so that he can get back in the raid, but how can that be if his suggestions are valid? He has amazing talent, and yes, is quite ****y at times because of that, but do you honestly believe he has the worst attitude problem in the entire guild? Also, there are veterans who are not showing up as often as him, and people in the guild long enough to know they should post an AFK post in the forums and still don't do that and don't show up.


I KNOW you say he has an attitude problem. But I can honestly say I don't think he has the worst in-guild. There are people who instigate him, and a lot of the time he will sit there and take it rather than lash back to avoid fights (which sometimes he does defend himself, but don't you think he has right to?)


With all this, and all the support that Serennia has, do you not feel that you owe it to him to give him a second chance? I am very sure that IF his attitude is what caused this gremoval, something like this would definitely set him straight and he'd be much more careful about the lines he crosses in the future. I know you gave him a warning before, but this couldn't this be his last (and most severe) warning?


Also I heard some rumours that a large reason he was kicked tonight instead of a different time was because we needed him for M'uru and it would have been troublesome to teach a new tank to do Sentinels tonight. If that is true (which I don't know if it is or not -- I am not accusing anyone of anything) I think that is realllllllllllllllly shady morally, and looks bad upon us as a guild.


I know you didn't talk to him last night because you didn't want him interupting you or "manipulating" the situation, but I also don't believe that it is right to ban him from vent and not give him a simple conversation like he had asked.


I really do think that losing Serennia would be a big loss to the guild. Dedicated, talented, hard-working people like him are pretty hard to find, and I think that he will be a very large asset to us not only with killing Kil'Jaeden but into WotLK.



I hope you reconsider. Thanks for your time.

~Anjie"

This being from Metin, a paladin in the guild:

"I am a little flustered after finding out this news, so I hope I am collected enough to get my point across. Sorry if the ideas here turn out to be a little scattered.

As is normally the disclaimer for posts I make in this vein, if any moderators/officers/Ons feel that this post causes too much drama, feel free to delete/lock/whatever.

I am in pretty stark opposition to the decision that's been made here by the officers. I think there has been some misunderstanding toward Serennia and his attitude. Here's how I understand it; if people don't see eye-to-eye with this view, please post here so I can gain a better understanding of what's happening in peoples' heads. But yeah here's how I understand it.

Serennia is sort of Type A and plays to win. Though (as I have mentioned before in another thread) I feel that I am one of the least "hardcore" players in this guild, I can relate in a big way to that attitude. I want to keep pushing, and push hard, until we win. This is why I made the unpopular thread about staying late for raids and how I wish we would have a few days where we raided until the sun came up.

When somebody is trying to get their point across (usually with an audible degree of passion) on vent, like I personally feel Serennia does, it can come off as callous, brash, arrogant... I get that. But I think the DESIRE TO WIN, to be an amazing player, is what births that kind of speech. I think that Serennia's insight, skill and knowledge (I'm talking PvE here, not PvP in the LEAST, so please don't take this conversation there in regard to his skill or fame) are a serious asset to our guild.

It is true that he may butt heads with officers or raid leaders from time to time, but I think it's done with good intentions. There have been times in the past few days when Atea wasn't around, that I felt the best (and almost only good) ideas for Kil'jaeden came from Serennia. I think that even if there's some tension or conflict caused by Serennia's ideas, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I feel that he's made a positive impact on our raiding since he started raiding with us. Am I totally off here? Does anyone else see it this way?

Here is something else to consider. Is it possible that some of the tension that's been felt in our raiding the past couple of weeks is being taken out on Serennia? I ask because I don't think removing a single person is going to instantly fix the yelling, the biting sarcasm, and sometimes outright insults.

In Ons' post to Serennia, he mentioned the part of the VQ recruitment policy that mentions bad attitudes towards other players. I think I, and several of you, if we're being honest here, could come up with tons of examples where that attitude is being displayed by many people in our raid. I'm not pointing fingers, but this kind of thing does happen, frequently, and I would go so far as to say that of the people that perpetuate this kind of behavior, Serennia is among the least of the offenders.

That said, one thing that I really like about this guild is how people sometimes are brashly called out on vent for mistakes. I even sort of like that sometimes the "corrective comments" degenerate into belittling or insulting people. I think that kind of treatment is a good thing sometimes, and I think it's one of the keys to this guild's focus, I really do, as crazy as that might sound to some. But as I see it, that's an obvious violation of this guild's policy, and 9/10 times, it goes unpunished. Serennia's conduct on vent is now coming under fire for violating this policy? Again, I am in stark opposition with that view.

Finally, what is with the timing of all of this? After we killed M'uru tonight? Come on... Isn't that underhanded? "

And finally, this one from Dimethyl, a veteran warlock in the guild:

"I don't know all of what happened, if there was something behind the scenes that happened and wasn't brought to light, let it be known I wasn't aware. But, I'm confused as to what Serennia did that was so bad it warranted GRemoval mid-progression like this.

I didn't notice anything over the top that he did besides drawing attention to the guild through forum posts and videos, which I thought was a GOOD thing. The only thing I can think of that might have contributed to this is the shifting of blame, which he seemed to have given up on ever working. I say this because I remember at first he kind of pawned off blame to other people, but he would get called out on it regardless and had to accept it... but for instance on Brutallus yesterday, when he ****** up he apologized immediately.

Serennia is the first person I've seen get recruited since I've been here who's gone "Balls Out" in terms of that raiding persona. He fraps'es EVERYTHING to try and find ways to improve, he talks to all sorts of different people to get new ideas, and he just seems like he's really in the "In it to Win it" mindset. He's a good player, and he's really enthusiastic about everything.

Basically, I know that he was a pain, and I think he knows he was too, and he seems willing to fix it; but I can't understand what exactly he did that would cause this kind of repercussion. Maybe post to clarify why exactly this happened to him and not any others?"

And if you're not someone who enjoys reading long walls of text, here's a slightly illustrated version of similar sentiments:

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/2596/ons2zc7.jpg

And finally, I'll leave you with the biting irony of this statement Ons sent me in a PM a few weeks back:

"And lastly, I really don't approve of you asking people to ***** out their accounts for your PvP garbage. I know It's totally their decision and I know it's impossible for me to trust anyone, but the only thing I can think about is their account welfare. I know, I know, if anything happens to any of their accounts we can just page a GM and have it restored in a month or a couple weeks. But what happens to our raids when a vital member of our raiding team is disabled by some guy they didn't know ******* their account up?"

This is comedy gold considering this idiot got his account suspended for 3 days for LOLWINTRADING during our M'uru progression. We had very low % wipes on the days that he and 3 other core raiders were suspended for this.

Grats Ons, grats. It's really unfortunate that such an otherwise great guild is run by such a complete failure.

 

http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=76343

My WCM description:

As the movie title indicates, this is a video showing what most thought to be as impossible: Soloing Onyxia. Before watching it, please keep in mind that the feat is not anywhere as easy as most might think. In fact, our group of 3 was the one to set the record for the lowest amount of people to kill Onyxia before Burning Crusade started. That video can be found here if you're interested in reminiscing:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=34385

The record was not broken until a paladin and warlock eventually 2-manned her months after BC came out. Knowing this, I recently found myself plagued with boredome bewteen raiding offdays and arena monotony, so I sought out the challenge to break the 2-man record, and thus, I present this video.

I was attempting this for a bit now (long before Ted from EU released his solo attempt) playing as a guildmate's restoration druid, thinking it would be a fairly straight-forward fight; however, it was far from it. I had to form the perfect gear outfit to sustain the healing, the perfect strategy for phase two and three, and of course, the perfect execution to make it all happen. Thus, after finishing Sunwell one night, I decided to give it another shot and it turns out all I needed was one shot.

As anyone that has ever done Onyxia with a low amount of people knows, there is a bug in the encounter that existed even pre-BC that causes one of her warder patrols to aggro during the second phase if she happens to be flying over the south end of her lair at the same time that the patrol is there. To combat this bug, and to allow a guildmate to spectate, I brought in a hunter from our guild that would immediately suicide at the start and remain dead unless this bug happened to occur. In the event that the warder would aggro, I would combat rez him so that he would help kill the warder, and then immediately die again without any further assistance in the fight. Most would agree that this is still considered a solo feat despite having to do this to combat Blizzard's design flaw.

If you watched Ted's solo attempt movie, he states that fire resistance gear and certain talents/strategies are required, which as you can see from this, that it is not. The only real requirement to do this is to make sure you have -5.6% crit reduction, which is around 226 resilience. This should hopefully encourage other people seeking a challenge to attempt a solo Onyxia. Ted also stated in his movie description the following:

"If this never gets patched - and chances are good it never will - then this is as close as you will ever get to see One Man vs Onyxia - pre WotLK"

Well Ted, this one is for you! As usual, I highly recommend downloading the full, high-quality, version rather than streaming it for better immersion. That said, I hope everyone enjoys it and all feedback is welcome.

Please note that I am aware of the "barkskin" typo in the movie and there is also one part where it loops for a few seconds to a previous point during phase one out of a mistake in editing. Time stamps and game clock can be used to establish legitimacy if it were needed for some reason. I also didn't realize I was using the wrong weapon oil until Phase 3

Talents and gear used (unbuffed stats):
35/0/26
233 resilience
557 mp5 not casting, 277 while casting
2172 healing

-Serennia of VANQUISH
www.vqguild.net





Shout outs to the original 3-man crew for setting the pre-bc record and still showing that you're among the best this game has to offer:

Malican of Dissonance on Ner'zhul server
Tsuaxesis of Deus Vox on Laughing Skull server

And to my arena partner that will never let me forget how bad PvE is:

Neilyo of Merciless on Tichondrius server

Because the WCM movie uploader is a heaping pile of **** sometimes (aka tonight) and I'd rather not wait on it to finish, I decided on releasing the Kil'Jaeden preview here first on Gameriot.

I won't make this longer than it needs to be, so here is the WCM description for it:

This is a recording of one of our guild's early attempts on Kil'Jaeden from May 20, 2008. I intentionally used an attempt where not too much about the encounter was shown so it wouldn't be spoiled, but enough to give people a good idea of how cool the fight is so far. Props to Blizzard for making their final two raid encounters of TBC so epic.

-Serennia
www.vqguild.net

P.S. Shout out to Neilyo because I know he loves when I PvE!

That said, you can download the video here:

http://files.filefront.com/VQ+KJ+Previewwmv/;10287016;/fileinfo.html

All feedback and questions are welcome in PM form here on Gameriot, in the comments to this article, or you can find me at a convenient time on Cho'gall Alliance if nothing else. Hope everyone enjoys it.

Best of luck to the guilds working on him. I couldn't guess who will get him down first but we'll definitely try to make up for a lackluster M'uru placement.

To close, I'll leave you with one screenshot I took tonight: