It looks like Onyxia is making a triumphant return to the game in patch 3.2.2 in honor of WoW’s 5th anniversary. She’s going to be a 10/25 man-raid instance, updated to current raid mechanics with loot matching the Tier 2 items! ZOMFG, a 310% flying mount modeled after Onyxia.

Here’s the thread:

She has lurked in her lair and done battle with the many brave adventurers who travelled to that familiar location over the years. Now, in honor of the World of Warcraft 5-year anniversary, the dreaded brood mother Onyxia is being revamped to make a return to the forefront of Azeroth, as part of our big plans for the upcoming 3.2.2 content patch.

This permanent update to Onyxia will convert the dungeon into 10- and 25-player modes. We will be adding new items to Onyxia’s loot table that have the same model as some of the classic loot from this dungeon, like Tier 2 helms, with stats updated to match the current level of content. There will be a special new item too: a normal drake-sized 310% speed flying mount modeled after Onyxia herself called Brood of Onyxia. We will also be updating the encounter mechanics to be more fitting for modern raiding, but we can guarantee players will get to experience the frightening horror of deep breaths once again.

Then for a limited time, after the 5-year anniversary event officially begins in November, anybody who logs in will receive an Onyxia Brood Whelpling pet.

We’re very excited to bring this classic encounter back to provide a fun new experience for both new and veteran players. Further details will be available in the near future, and we will be setting up the Public Test Realms soon to help test out this fight along with all the new content we have planned for the patch. Keep an eye on the forums for updates!

I’m personally looking forward to wearing my Judgement hoodie once again :P. Oh edit: I never really noticed this before (I don’t frequent the WoW forums much at all nowadays), but apparently the WoW forums have their own blue tracker, RSS enabled and everything. Neat!

Why did the paladin tier-8 chest graphic change? I was really looking foward to badge farming the booby chest token when 3.2 went live. You see, it has been a long time since I last wore a battle bra; Pre-Molten Core I think. The Karazhan chest showed a bit of midriff if I recall correctly, but it wasn’t true slut awesome like some of the pre-60 pieces (nothing beats this). QQ.

Oh and, it’s quite possible that I might be going to BlizzCon this year 😉

Time for another monthly general WoW update! I went with 5/11/55 for my new 3.2 Retribution build (more or less copypasta’d off of Elitist Jerks). Essentially the same core talents as the old build except for the five additional points in Seals of the Pure to boost Seal of Vengeance’s damage output. Slight different extra point distribution as well.

I had a chance to run the new raid instance this week. It’s a coliseum event similar to Ring of Blood or any of those from the Outlands and Northrend party quests. It’s fun and different than any of the other raid instances. Got the first part of encounter one down (Gormok), not so much luck on the Two Jormungar.  It was kind of fun doing the encounters without minimal external strategies and no boss timers.

WTB more heroic badge farming. I did some heroics with guild members the other night for the first time in ages. I like the changes, it’s nice that heroics are once again “useful” to characters other than my gimpy alts. oh and you know…I kind of miss having aninsta-cast Exorcism.

Got a new headset because my other one finally broke: Razer Carcharias. I’ll post a small review after I return from weekend activities.

The random one or two minute site outages are me by the way, being a doofus playing with the nginx configuration file. I’m used to Apache servers so I’m having a bit of trouble getting it to dynamically subdomains in an intelligent manner without borking something.

But anyway, I’m a little late to the game in posting this: An official Blizzard armory application is finally out in the wild up on the iTunes store for both the iPhone and iPod Touch. I figured that one would eventually be released, given the market for one and Blizzard’s crackdown on similar applications a couple of months ago.

The app itself is really pretty awesome, it does a lot more than I would have expected it to. I really like the calendar, which displays and tracks both official game events and guild events. It doesn’t allow you, as far as I know, to add or modify events, but it does display all information as well as the invite status of anyone invited.

The application does require you to login to your account in order to access any of it. There is a preview video, more screenshots and a full feature list over at the official app page on the World of Warcraft site. Oh, it’s FREE by the way.

MMO-Champion has as preview of most of the Tier-9 sets up, along with set bonuses. Paladin Tier-9 is apparently called Turalyon‘s Battlegear, Garb and Plate for Retribution, Holy and Protection respectively. I don’t know how final any of these are, since they are being pulled off of the test servers.

The new paladin sets kind of remind me of the old school PVP sets minus the tacky yellow color. I like the blue, white and bronze/gold color scheme, it’s very regal looking. The helm is also “wearable”, unlike Tier-8’s weird burka mask. Does anybody actually have the helm graphic on for that item? Many of the tiered sets look nice conceptually, but don’t translate very well into the game. Crystalforge for example: Very swank and pretty in the collector’s edition artbook, but way too purple and…floaty in the Burning Crusade.

I am also glad that Blizzard is adding different horde and alliance models for Tier-9; Can’t have those dirty horde fakadins looking like me. But, if variety is what they are shooting for, why do the Death Knight and Warrior sets use the exact same model? Seriously, exactly the same just recolored. Really Blizzard?

But on the other hand: HAHAHAHAHA horde paladins. I am so sorry that you all are going to look like psychedelic crack shaman. Go go alliance!

Before I babble: I’m not sure if the contact forms on this site or any of my domain emails are functioning properly, I switched them over Google apps and haven’t really tested them. Sooo if anyone’s email has bounced back within the last week, whoops sorry. Also, yay I tweaked the theme so that it’s a little prettier.

I’m majorly slacking on the WoW posts lately. Kind of behind on everything related to patch 3.2. In fact, I haven’t even read all of the patch notes or class changes as I am busyish attending to other things. WoW lull period! I am also sadly slacking off on all of the Argent Tournament dailies. I have a total of 50 at the moment QQ, not enough to buy the new mount when 3.2 goes live. I could have totally had a ginormous stack if I had bothered spending a half hour doing them every day. Shame on me!

Our raid was called off last night because half of our guild was unable to login for most of the evening. It turns out that the authentication problems were only affecting people who have not yet converted their account over to battle.net. So if anyone is still having issues, it might be time to do so. I have a feeling that at some point in the future, folks will probably be forced to convert their accounts anways.

I feel compelled to post something useful and have been meaning to update my macro list. So, here is a small list of macros that I use frequently on my paladin. You know, I’m certain that one or two of these were copypasta’d and modified from WoWWiki or something, so apologies…

Auto mount selector
One press of this macro will summon your flying mount if you are in a flyable zone, otherwise it will select your ground mount. A second press will dismount you. Replace ’21’ with the number corresponding to your ground mount and replace ’12’ with the number corresponding to your flying mount.

/script if (((GetZoneText()==”Dalaran”) and (GetSubZoneText() ~=”Krasus’ Landing”)) or (GetZoneText()==”Wintergrasp”) or not IsFlyableArea()) then CallCompanion(“MOUNT”,21) else CallCompanion(“MOUNT”,12) end
/dismount [mounted]

Fish and Cleanse
/Shrug. I have fishing cast and cleanse both bound to a single macro on my middle click button. If a fishing pole is equipped it will attempt to cast it, otherwise it will cleanse.
#showtooltip

/cast [equipped:Fishing Pole] Fishing
/cast [ noequipped:Fishing Pole] Cleanse

Crusader Strike + Trinkets
When I was protection, I manually enabled trinkets so that I can time them according to healing and incoming damage. As retribution, there’s really no need to do that. This macro will use any trinkets if the cooldowns are up.

#showtooltip Crusader Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide();
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show();
/startattack
/cast Crusader Strike

Divine Sacrifice
Because using Divine Sacrifice without Divine Shield can be ummm…bad for your health.

/castsequence reset=5 Divine Shield, Divine Sacrifice

Mouseover Cleanse
No need to manually click on raid frames and lose your current target: Mouseover the person you want to cleanse and press this macro. Very handy as ret since it allows you to continue DPSing while cleansing if the other classes need help.
/cast

[target=mouseover,exists] Cleanse

Hmm, I have hunter macros somewhere. The umm screenshot in this post isn’t related to anything, I just thought that the front page looked kind of plain since I haven’t posted any images in a while.

This is a complete babble entry, not going to bother editing this out of general laziness.

I found my twin in Ulduar :P. Years ago, there used to be another paladin of a similar level with the exact same face model, hairstyle and color running around the server. I don’t see too many Keiya doppelgangers (though its not like I actively look).

The Midsummer achievements started today. I just need to complete those as well as the Brewfest achievement set for my lovely violet drake. There are lots of interesting retribution changes upcoming in patch 3.2. Umm, I was going to pick through the paladin portion of the patch notes, but I’m a little late and don’t really have anything to add that hasn’t been posted several times over.

A few things: I am though looking forward to the deep sixing of Seal of Blood/the Martyr, no more being a healing drain! The Exorcism change is a little odd, but it should screw up my DPS rotation, since AoW should proc before it cools down. I don’t have an opinion on any of the other changes because I haven’t read much of the theorycrafting.

Everything else is business as usual with the guild, raiding and all that jazz. Ulduar progress is a little slow because our attendance fluctuates. I think some of it is flakiness, some of it is raid burnout and some of it is real life happening. We are serious raiders in the sense that I expect all members to be competent players willing to show up prepared and ready to try their best. We’re not really hardcore though, or even close to it by standard definitions.

We raid twice a week, thrice if you count 10-man Wednesday because it allows people to maintain a healthy balance between their real lives and their gaming hobby. Friday and Saturday evenings are also our only viable 25-man raid evenings since we have always traditionally had a fairly large representation of Oceanic players.

But despite attendance, we are a good group of folks who enjoy each other’s company (Hell, I’ve been guilded and playing with some folks for 3 to 4 years or so). I’ve always been somewhat picky in regards to recruiting people and maintaining the guild atmosphere. I really don’t appreciate drama. Grown adults should know better o_O

I started running again. In college I used to go to the gym and run/lift weights for 2 to 3 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week. That sort of dropped as I got busy during my final quarters of my senior year and well, dropped off altogether after I had graduated (no more free University gym). Does anyone use the Nike iPod gadget? The statistical nerd in me kind of wants one…

Oh one more thing: Happy Father’s day 🙂