Guilds, EoE, and 3.1

Guild changes

After much thought and debate, I changed guilds last week. My original guild was created by my RL friends and myself, so this was not an easy choice. The core group is still in regular contact, and in fact more may join me in my new guild; it's a guild who we've been collaborating with already so it's a natural move.

It's still a culture shock. My old guild was down to 4 or 5 regulars who I'd see most nights, and sometimes less than that. The new guild has 150ish toons and 20-25 online most nights, with more on the weekends when we run Heroic raids. They're good people and I'm enjoying it so far.

Eye of Eternity

I got into my first EoE run last weekend, on normal. It was interesting even though we didn't get Malygos down. It's pretty hard to learn and I made my share of mistakes. We had a couple of early wipes, but mostly ran into the enrage timer, probably because we were slow to get through the first two phases.

You can find complete descriptions of the Malygos fight but I'll give a quick outline. The first phase is mostly a normal dragon fight, with two complications. One are the sparks that show up; if they reach Malygos they buff him, but if you kill them they leave a static patch on the floor that gives you a (stacking) buff. Also, Malygos will toss you in the air at times, which gives you a significant DOT and eventually falling damage. This phase lasts until you get Maly to 50%.

The second phase sees Malygos take off and adds show up on floating discs. Your DPS has to kill the adds, who drop their discs. Melee DPS will grab the discs, and fly up to engage more adds. Meanwhile, Malygos spits out shield bubbles that you have to use for protection. The bubbles shrink over time so you have to run from bubble to bubble. This phase lasts until you kill the adds.

The third phase puts you onto dragons, vaguely similar to the beloved end of Oculus. It's a cool concept but stressful because you have to learn different movement and fighting controls and techniques. The good news is that you can practice this. There's a daily quest near the Nexus that uses the same dragon controls. You can pick up the feeder quest Corastrasza right by the flight point at Transitus Shield. From there you mount and fly waaaaay up above the Nexus. There's a platform there where you meet Corastrasza and pick up Aces High. I would definitely recommend running that at least a few times before trying EoE.

So, it's a complex fight. Not everyone likes it! It's a frustrating fight to learn; don't be surprised if you wipe a lot at first. I'm still interested enough in it to keep trying.

Patch 3.1

We've seen fewer and fewer PTR changes in the last week, and we haven't had a new build in a few days. So 3.1 would appear to be close to completion. There's a tentative date for Noblegarden, starting on 26 April. So my best guess is still that 3.1 will arrive 14 April, with 21 April the backup date if issues pop up.

Obviously Ulduar is the major new content in 3.1, but there's also the whole Argent Tournament concept, an almost-new holiday with Nobelgarden, dual spec capability, multiple new interface features, and a host of class changes. I'm looking forward to it; here's hoping it comes off without major glitches!