Dragon Colours Matter and Pewter revisits RealID

Is Halion Pink or Purple? That’s what I want to know! The argument has kept my guild busy between pulls. The purple and pink factions get very passionate about their debate matter, it gets quite heated and there is blood, tears and broken gear before bed time.

I enjoyed the fight. I know a lot of people are /yawning at it, and it has already been beaten by many people, but in my guild we’ve learned to take things at our own pace. We’re a large bunch of friends having fun doing content together, and while we have some very talented players, we’re never going to be competing for even server firsts again. Also the heat on Thursday night probably didn’t help. Apparently one of our tanks was sweating so much his fingers were slipping on the keyboard.

Now there’s an image for you!

We actually started the attempts pretty well, but after 22:00 server time our group concentration dropped like a stone, and we started effing up (or over-thinking) Phase 2. It’s always demoralising when you start messing up a part of the fight that you thought you had in the bag. The trouble with heat is that apparently many of us Europeans just can’t handle it – and thus we have an extra distraction and all our individual capacities for error increase. Which means, for the entire 25 man raid, there is an even greater chance of someone dropping a Mark in the middle of the raid.

Yeah whatever Pewter, what about Halion?

A few brief points for Elemental Shaman

1. Ghost Wolf is your friend on the pull (if your raid leader won’t let you use mounts) as it allows you to get in tight to Halion so that Searing Totem doesn’t bug out. (And it seriously needs to stop bugging out now.)
2. Coordinate with other shamans in your raid about totems (and if you don’t do this already GET WITH THE COMMUNICATION) – in Phase 3 melee is likely to be in the Twilight realm, so it is preferable to have a shaman healer (or enhancement shaman) dropping melee totems, while you stick with WoA to buff the caster group in the Physical realm. This should be obvious, but of course we didn’t initially realise that the Resto Shaman was spending Phase 3 in the Twilight Realm.
3. Don’t rely on one marked person to save your ass from the Twilight Cutters. It will make you (and the raid) lazy and you will all die when the marked person gets a little tired.

Real ID happened and Pewter’s world did not end

I am using the system, and only with a few people I trust (including some bloggers I respect). My scepticism and disappointment in the system still stand. The implementation is non-intrusive, which I am very happy about, and the much derided ‘Friend of Friends’ list is not obvious to open.

I still don’t like

• No ‘friends only’ setting i.e. no way to hide your name from friends of friends, although of course they don’t get the extra information about status, character and broadcasts.
• Having to give out a battle.net login in order to use the feature
• Why can I see some folk that are able to use clearly false names on their accounts, when I cannot remove mine?
• Why can’t I filter some characters (while still showing my online status) so that they aren’t visible.

I’m using it, but only after being fully informed of what information is given out to other players, and I’m being cautious about who I add. If you’re going to use this feature, please be aware of what it does. I’m still angry that the implementation means giving up some privacy to use a relatively (imho) basic feature, especially for those who are dealing with serious harassment, trans-folk, or those who just value the security of their online life.

Like this? You might enjoy:

• Ruby Sanctum – 3.3.5 Loot for Elemental Shaman
• 3.3.5 Hits the PTR and I’m getting intimate with defile
• RealID Saga Part One: Silencing Voices

Tags: Halion, online safety, patch 3.3.5, Real ID, Ruby Sanctum