First Wing Cleared on Heroic

Only a month after we've killed Garrosh for the first time, the Iron Edge 25-man Raid has cleared the first wing on heroic difficulty! The last boss on this wing (Sha of Pride) was considered one of the hardest bosses in the entire instance, and so a lot of guilds have opted to skip him, and kill other bosses on heroic difficulty first. However, we didn't care and killed it anyway, because we're just that fucking awesome. The above screenshot should be sufficient evidence to support that statement.

Small Iron Edge Meetup for Blizzcon 2013

A couple of brits in the guild, and me, decided to do a small meetup in London to watch Blizzcon 2013 together at a barcraft. Not much of Blizzcon ended up being watched, but we all got to meet each other and it was lots of fun. Here are some pictures that Ben "Abyiss" Wright made on his phone, as well as some pictures that were taken by the guys from ReadyCheck Podcast. Large shoutout to them for hosting this event!


Dan "Narcotics" Macdonald doing his Deckard Lame, and winning a Diablo 3 copy for Playstation 3 in the process. You might have guessed, but he was completely wasted in this picture.



From left to right: Tina "Safire" Karlsson, Ben "Abyiss" Wright and Gareth "Aretum" Wilkins



From left to right: Maarten "Rashkebab" Snijder, Joseph "Doomslay" Hayter and Dan "Narcotics" Macdonald. I am fully aware that I look like a 14-year-old in this picture.

And some more random pics

Yet another bad guy has been killed by the mighty Iron Edge!

I want to thank and congratulate everyone on a job well done. This was one of the fastest full clears in the history of the Casual Raid. Some people might say Lei Shen was the hardest finalboss in this expansion, but I'm convinced it's Garrosh. It was the first boss in a long time where I felt that there were multiple tactics that you could use to kill him, and we finally managed to do it by using a combination of different tactics.

The mighty raiders of Iron Edge will now begin progress on heroic difficulty. Bumbiana will be blamed for many more wipes to come, Rödhake's list has plenty of space left for complaints, Daave will be told to shut up, there will not be enough Jägermeister in the world to quench Narcotics' thirst and hopefully Hugmans perpetual barbecue will end eventually.

Until the next update!

Rashkebab

Iron Edge Flex Raiding

Iron Edge will be doing flex raiding in the Siege of Orgrimmar every Sunday evening.

What was formerly known as the Alt-raid wil now be the Iron Edge Flex raid. Attending these raids is not mandatory, but definitely advised. The gear will be better than LFR, and all the mechanics in the flex raid will also be in normal mode, so it's great practise. But for this reason, pugging it might not be a good idea

Keep in mind that there are limited spots on a flex raid, so make sure you're on time and ready to go at 20:00. Make sure you know tactics, so we can do it as smoothly as possible. The raid will end around 24:00, or when everything is down.

The raid leader will be Safire, and of course I will be in the raid as well for the foreseeable future. You will be allowed to bring alts to the Flex raiding, but keep in mind that it might also be worth doing on your main. Social members and PvPers are also allowed to attend. except for cojche

If you have any questions about the raid or Flex raiding in general, you can post them in this thread, or talk to Graxlos, Doomslay, Safire, Aretum, Auja or myself.

Hope to see many of you there!

The fourth expansion of World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria will be released on September 25th and the prepatch is arriving next week.
So I think it is about time to have an overlook of what I think are the most important changes to the game. Many of the changes will be coming next week like the achievement system and talents.


The new class - Monk:
The new class in Mists of Pandaria is the Monk. The monk has the same three roles as the Paladin: Melee DPS, Tanking and Healing. Monks wear leather and seems to be fighting with druids and rogues for their gear.
Monks have a new resource system which seems like a combination of the existing resource systems.  You have Chi points which are earned similarly to combo points for rogues and cats, but you can spend them differently since different skills require different amounts of Chi points.
Healing seems somewhat different from existing classes but can be compared to Paladins who use holy power points, but monks seem to be relying more on channeling heals (at least at lower levels).
All races except Worgen and Goblin can play monks.

The new race - Pandaren:
The Pandaren race has existed since warcraft 3 where it had a minor role(easter egg) in the singleplayer campaign. The model was also used for the  pandaren brewmaster in the very popular Custom map Dota.
They come from the mysterious Pandaria which have not had contact with the other parts of Azeroth before.
Pandarens can play Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage and Monk.

Pandaren racials are:
Gourmand: 15 bonus skill levels to Cooking,
Epicurean:Double stat gains from well fed buffs.
Bouncy: Half falling damage.
Inner Peace: Your rested bonus lasts twice as long.
Quaking Palm: Melee strike that incapacitates the target for four seconds (2 minute cd)

Crossrealm Zones
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/222520-cross-realm-zones-introduced/
In MOP leveling zones will be like crossrealm instances which means that they will bundle up players so you will no longer be alone in those deserted leveling zones, a really nice fix in general, but it will probably make getting those bloody rare mobs killed, so get that done now if you haven't already :-)
You can party and quest with people from other realms just like in crossrealm dungeons.

Big Stat changes - No more resistance and resilience changes
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4544194
Blizzard is simplifying the stat systems removing stuff like resistance and spell penetration and they are changing resilience in to something called pvp power. The pvp stats will reduce damage from players and increase damage to players, the items will be lower itemlevel than same-tier pvp gear, but will be far superior in pvp.

Changing the resource Rage:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/28/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-rage-forever-changes-in-the-mi/
Rage has always been a strange resource since it was very random and usually had a point where it was  unreliable and a point where it was just infinite. Rage has now been normalized so you have skills that generate a specific amount of rage and skills that use a specific amount of rage, making it a reliable resource. Much like in Diablo 3.

New Talent system and training spells:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4055148/Seeing_the_Forest_for_the_Talent_Trees-12_8_2011#blog
The talent system has been changed massively, now you have 5 tiers of talents(6 at lvl 90). Each talent is either a passive buff or and active skill. Each tier gives you a choice between similar talents. Like a tier with movement/cc skills, a tier with dps buffs, a tier with damage reduction etc. Most of the passive cookiecutter talents from each spec has been baked in to the specs themselves so when you choose your spec you automatically get those talents you would have chosen anyway. To me it seems like an improvement but we will see, it looks a lot like a goldsink since lots of the talents have specific advantages, like being aoe oriented or singletarget, which means that hardcore raiders will be respeccing a lot.
And as always it seems blizzard loves druids. As the only class druids get 4 specs instead of three. Restoration, Feral, Balance and Guardian!
Check out your new talents here:
http://mop.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandaria-talent-calculator

Simplification of Glyphs:
There is now only two categories of Glyphs, Major and Minor. In Cataclysm every spec had its cookie-cutter glyphs. in MOP, blizzard is trying to make it up to the individual player which glyphs he prefers. The minor glyphs still have pretty much no impact on game play they are almost purely cosmetic.


Challenge mode:
The challenge mode is a new way of running dungeons, where your group is timed and you get rewards  based on how fast you can complete the chosen dungeon. You will be able to see the ranking on your realm and your own ranking. It seems there will be some kind of ladder on the battle.net website to see how you are doing internationally.
The rewards currently appear to be mostly cosmetic as well giving you cool transmogriphication items to show off your skills.


Scenarios:
Scenarios is a new group activity alternative to running dungeons. You run a scripted scenario including  both helpful and enemy npcs in a group og three players of any class setup. This means that the difficulty is not based on having a tank and a healer but is mostly based on reactions and movement. Scenarios will contain bosses as usual that will reward loot. How well balanced they will be for different setups is yet to be seen.

Accountwide Achievements, Titles, Pets and Mounts:
This is one of the cooler changes for an altoholic like myself. In MOP achievements, Titles, Pets and Mounts will be accountwide(except for certain mounts so far). This means that you can still brag about killing deathwing heroic even though you are currently playing your green geared alt. It also means that you dont have to farm for that rare mount you really wanted on more than one character. The shared pets also mean that when you level your battle pets they are the same levels across the account, but more on that later when I describe pet battles.


Looting rules, AOE looting and LFR:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/219630-dev-watercooler-mists-of-pandaria-looting-explained/
In cataclysm there has been much frustration over the ways that Looking For Raid looting could be exploited, the looting system was improved during the expansion but is fully reformed in MOP.
There is a new loot interface and now the rolls decide who is to receive an item and then the game randomly decides which class and spec relevant item the player is to receive. This item is not tradable. This means that there will be no items dropping that no player can use and it will be impossible to abuse the system by joining as a group and trading items to eachother. A very nice solution in my opinion.
Furthermore aoe looting will be possible, which will be quite handy.

No more Reputation tabards:
A thing that many players have raged about on the forums is that blizzard has decided to remove the faction tabards as the way to earn reputation. This means that reputation is gained by doing quests and daily quests and dungeon farming is done to earn gear. Blue posts has described the TBC system of rep farming as too much and the implementation of the faction tabards of too much of a nerf, they hope this will be more balanced and give people something more to play for. (Luckily they have also removed the faction specific enchants like head and shoulder enchants now).

Currency conversions: Valor, Justice, Conquest and Honor.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/7029341
Next week all Valor points will be converted to justice points and it will no longer be possible to earn valor points until the release of MOP. The same goes for Conquest points changing to Honor. It seems you will be able to keep your justice points for MOP, so having your characters on the JP cap might be useful.

Justice and Valor point rewards combined with Reputation rewards:
The current justice and valor point vendors are faction specific and all the current rewards requires certain levels of specific faction rep. Again it seems blizzard is moving away from the raidlogging expansion Cataclysm, now you will not be able to gain items by just running dungeons and raiding, you will have to go out in the world and complete questlines and dailyquests to get those items you want. Furthermore you can now earn Valor points from daily quests, although it seems that it will be slower than doing dungeons.
Another new concept is that you will be using your justice and valor points to upgrade your existing gear, so there will be more of a gear progression than there was in Cataclysm. So you can get an blue item that you can then upgrade again and again to higher and higher Ilvl.



Valor of the ancients:
New system that gives 50% bonus to valor points on alts if you have already capped valor points on one character. This will make it a lot easier for people wanting to cap points on alts, since it will be 50% faster on the second character. It is not very clear if the buff stacks which would mean that it would be even faster on the third or fourth alts.



Pet Battles:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/229940-pet-battles-faq/
Blizzard finally activated the pet battle system on the beta and it looks to be a good timewaster for those achievement hunting completionists out there.

The system is based on Pokemon where you start a battle with up to 3 pets with different skills and advantages and disadvantages against certain races.


Your pets gain xp by fighting wild pets that can be found around Azeroth, with more levels you gain access to more spells for your pets, although they can never join a battle with more than three available spells (Much like Diablo 3).


The levels of the pets scale with the level of the zones. Durotar has mainly lvl 1-2 pets, the barrens have lvl 3-6 pets, southern barrens have lvl 9+ pets and desolace has mostly lvl 10 pets.

The system is still not very well balanced and is still very buggy on beta, but my best advice to you if you want to try it is to just relog when something weird happens, it works for me.

In the early zones near orgrimmar you will meet  mainly critters and beast, so choosing a battle pet to start leveling with advantages against them makes it easier. If you decide to start leveling near undercity you will meet mostly undead in the beginning which means you might want a pet with advantage against those. Starting in Tirisfal glades turned out to be a big advantage in beta because Durotar was horrible crowded, which meant that you had to fight for the pet spawns. In tirisfal glades you just flew from pet to pet and could continue down through the forest, after gaining sufficient levels.


Since pets are accountwide in MOP luckily you level the same pets no matter what char you are playing on, so you dont have to start over from scratch when playing a different alt.

The battle pet questlines are also accountwide,(the first accountwide quests in the game I think) so you can only do them once between all your alts, this is good since they give your pets a big XP boost and this would be quite imbalanced for people with many alts.

Choosing your first pet:
The pet system in its current state favours selfhealing pets greatly, since there is a 15 minute cd on healing your pets, having a pet that can heal it self gives a massive advantage. I started with the mimiron pet, that has bonus damage to beasts and a big self heal and the obsidian hatchling from archaeology that has bonus damage to critters and a big heal when it gets killing blow.
The next two challenges are aquatic and flying pets. for those I leveled my tarecgosa pet that has bonus against flying and I captured a forest moth with bonus against aquatic.

Generally you can level pets by fighting mobs, but also the pets you capture, keep the level they are captured with, so if you have 3 lvl 10 pets and you catch a level 10 pet you have 4 lvl 10 pets instead of having to level up a fourth from scratch, this is very nice.

Trading pets:
A new feature in MOP is that you can put your pet in a cage and then trade it to other players, it was recently changed so this does not apply to wild pets. But it means that you might be able to sell off that rare ooze, you spent months farming, for a good stack of gold coins.

PVP  and New Battlegrounds
Honestly I dont care much for PVP in world of warcraft. But the changes to resilience seem good and there will be two new battlegrounds for lvl 90.

Not many of you follow Brood War, nevertheless it's the biggest esport the world has ever known, on just about every quantifiable scale. But it's legacy is basically coming to a definite end with it's iconic starleague in it's final season. Even if you don't follow competitive starcraft, there is a very good reason to wake up and tune in 11am on saturday morning.

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In a pretty cool storyline the same players are facing off in the finals as last season, so if anyone is interested enough in the competition to try to get familiar with the players, there's an epic series between the two last brood war heroes in the form of the previous OSL

Here's the first game in that series, the entire thing is very much worth watching, you should find the following games in the related section or on nukethestars's page.


nukethestars is the commentator, he's entertaining!

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Jangbi is a protoss player for Samsung Khan, easily their best player at the moment. He rose to fame early as one of the six dragons, an era where six protoss players rose above all their peers and dominated the brood war scene for a while. Most notable of those players is Bisu, who's for time now been considered the best protoss player in the world.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/JangBi

The wiki article on him is well worth reading.

Jangbi beat the zerg player Zero in the semi-finals, who is a very strong Zerg, and the series between them is something for the ages. It may be one of the most dramatic series I've ever seen. Some of the translations from the Korean commentators from the legendary game 4 as Jangbi pushed desperately out of his base against all odds include things like "This is it... one last push for Aiur, the protoss always have one last push!" If you never watch any Brood War at all, and have no interest in it's legacy... watch this game.


The backstory is that Jangbi is down 1:2 and facing elimination should he lose again, and Zero plays very well early on.

The korean commentary is just too good even if you have no idea what they're saying.

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Fantasy, the challenger, is also the one who lost his throne to Jangbi. As Fantasy was the reigning champion since the 2010-2011 OSL. Fantasy is an excellent player but playing terran has put him permanently in the shadow of Flash. Incidentally Fantasy made Flash look like a damn chobo in the semi-finals. The series was nowhere near as exciting as the other semi-final series, but taking down Flash, the ultimate weapon, in such a convincing way is just a great example of Fantasy's skill.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Fantasy_(Player)

His nickname is "the terrorist", mostly because of his excellent harass throughout the games, his signature unit is the terran vulture.

Fantasy has a knack for coming in second, but he has tasted victory in the past and seems very confident for the finals. He is a very mechanically skilled player, and this finals Jangbi won't have the Legend of the Fall backing him up.

So, who's going to wake up and watch this stuff! It's your last chance at the greatest game!

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Another end boss, another server first, and the end of another expansion.

Congratulations to Daekesh and his mob of angry (mostly) Serbian raiders. I'm sure one of them will comment with the loot drops...!

Now that i have you attention, i would like to all invite you to sign up for the upcoming mafia game with Iron Edge, themed Lord of the Rings. The game promises trickery, drama and emotional outburst. It requires you to be active on the forum as much as atleast post once a day.

Me and Graxlos are hosting the game.

More after the link:
http://www.iron-edge.co.uk/index.php?topic=6858

TL;DR = It's awesome and sneaky.

What is Mafia?
To put very simply, Mafia is a game of lying. There is a group of people, some of them are lying and some are telling the truth. Your job is to figure out who is lying, or if you are lying to convince the rest of the group that you are telling the truth.

To elaborate, the game is divided into two teams: the town and mafia. Mafia know who each other are and can coordinate their actions privately. Townies on the other hand don't know anything other than their own role. To compensate, there are many more townies than mafia; usually the ratio is 1 mafia for every 4 townies. In other words, Mafia is a game of an informed minority against an uninformed majority. Can the mafia use its superior organization and knowledge to lead the town astray? Or can the town figure out the mafia and kill them before their numbers advantage runs out?

At the beginning of the game you are PM'ed your role. The game is divided into two repeating phases: day and night. Days last 48 hours and revolve around deciding a lynch target by means of voting. Every player in the game gets one vote, and each player must argue and convince the others to lynch their target. At the end of the day the person with the most votes is lynched; their alignment and role are revealed and they are removed from the game. The majority of the action in the game takes place during the day phase.

Night is 24 hours long and is reserved for private actions. Any player in the game that has an ability (such as mafia kills, detective checks, medic protections, etc.) can use their power in this phase. Usually during the night everyone discusses the results of the lynch and makes plans for the next day. It serves as downtime from the emotionally charged days. After the night ends, a day post comes up with the results of who dies. After the day post, the discussion for lynch begins anew.

Once there is a winner, everyone will typically weigh in on the game with their thought process and advice. Many times the hosts or observers will contribute their thoughts as well.


Why play Mafia? What is required to play?

Mafia is a game of logic, intuition, persuasiveness, reading ability, emotion, and will. In short, its a thinking man's game. There are many different ways to approach the game and every game is a very different experience. Whether you are looking to test and improve your intelligence or have a unique, fun experience, Mafia is the right game for you.

Be warned: Mafia requires a time commitment. This generally depends on the player, but at minimum 1 to 2 hours a day of solid effort is required. Some players spend as much as 8 or 10 hours a day playing Mafia. More time spent gives you a better chance at making the right decisions, but you can do a very acceptable job with just 1 to 2 hours a day. Mafia games typically last between 1 and 2 weeks, but usually you will die at some point before it ends.

As part of the time commitment, mafia requires a great deal of reading. Most people actually are very poor at reading comprehension and playing Mafia is a great way at improving your reading ability. As you also must be posting each cycle, Mafia is a good way to improve your writing and ability to think and argue logically.

In addition, mafia is not for the faint-hearted or overly emotional. While not occurring every game, sometimes people can get into very heated arguments with one another. People can get very emotional playing Mafia, as it is a high-intensity endeavour. That being said, playing Mafia is an excellent way for developing thick skin, improving your patience, and making yourself a stronger person mentally. In addition, there's an unspoken rule that arguments are kept in the game. After the game is over and everyone cools down, there is rarely any bad blood. Some people may be harsher than others, but almost everyone is here to help each other learn and improve.

The band of grunting, drooling Serbian raiders led by Hid -- otherwise known as the H-Raid -- has slain Ragnaros on heroic mode! Apparently we are now the 175th-ranked English-speaking EU guild.

All of our raid groups are currently recruiting. The H-Raid is especially interested in a DPS DK, or an outstanding protection warrior. You must be able to speak English, but Serbian is a bonus.

Loots:
[item]i/69167[/item] for Zenath
[item]i/71797[/item] for Jola
[item]i/69224[/item] for Figl

Iron Edge is recruiting for Patch 4.3, Dragon Soul, and the inevitable fall of Deathwing.

We now have three hardcore 10-man raids in total: Two on Dunemaul (one mainly Serbian, one mainly Turkish), and one group on Ravencrest (International). We also have a 25-man raid group on Dunemaul (International).

All four raids would always welcome exceptional raiders, though you are encouraged to join IRC (or whisper someone in-game on Dunemaul or Ravencrest) and ask about specific class requirements.

Head on over to our application form when you're ready to apply.

Got the Barrel Roll achievement this weekend, but couldn't do the Majordomo achievement without killing Baleroc!  So, we cheated a bit with out alts' normal Firelands save and went in to get it (without getting saved!)


We're currently looking for a lot.  We will consider any decent application!