Monday, November 30, 2009

Weekend (29 Nov) - Mish Mash and Mighty Beasts

Weekend (29 Nov) - Mish Mash and Mighty Beasts

It was mostly Philly this weekend, and mostly about raising her skills in jewelcrafting. With help from Melasahnd on grinding mining nodes for ore and gems, and help from JB on scouring Family member banks for odds and ends needed for various recipes, and more help from Happy on purchasing those things that we could not find or farm, Philly became a Master Jewelcrafter with a skill of 360. Now it gets even harder. The JC trainers are out of new recipes up to the current max of 375, and the only recipes available that yield skill increases from 355-375 are drops from various dungeons. Many of these recipes are available on the AH, but at very high prices in the 200-300 gold range. Philly is weighing which recipes to get, depending not so much on the value of the cut gem, but how cheaply she can buy the uncut gems or the ore to prospect the needed gems.

At skill 350 Philly had the skill level to talk to the Grand Master trainer for the 375-450 skill grind, but when she went visiting Philly was reminded that she needed to be level 65 before they would grant that wish. So Philly went back to levelling, enough to get to level 64, but until she can get those new recipes (and reach level 65) jewelcrafting will have to wait a bit.

JB and DER had some incredible fun in pvp on Friday night. JB managed to miss Wintergrasp, but DER introduced JB to the wonders of level 80 pvp in the familiar Warsong Gulch (WSG), and new adventures with visits to Alterac Valley (AV) and a first visit to Strand of the Ancients (SoA). JB still needs to learn her way around AV, but those matches, even when we lost, were a lot of fun. JB even somehow managed to finish 5th in total damage (out of about 25 raiders) in the first AV match. How she did that I don't know, but she'll take it. That didn't stop her from getting killed by every rogue and death knight that bothered to notice her. SoA, which is sort of like WG in that there is a fortress to defend and attack, and siege vehicles, still baffles JB, but she's only seen the battleground twice - so more practice is in order! JB has gotten most of the better gear from WG already, and there are some nice things JB wants to work for in AV and SoA. More fun to come, I'm sure.

As this is being written late Sunday afternoon, Wild is waiting to find out if he'll get an invite to the guild 25 man ToC raid scheduled for a 6pm start. After missing last week's inaugural guild Sunday 25 man, and unsure whether Wild would be available this Sunday, Wild did not sign up. There are 21 confirmed raiders on the raid calendar, and there may already be some non-guildies invited as well, so Wild will have to wait and see if there's a spot. I hope the turn out is a good one, as I want our guild's 25 man raiding to succeed, even if it means missing the raid this week.

Sunday Night - When the guild raid leader logged on, Wild quickly whispered him, letting him know that while he wasn't signed up, he was available for the raid if there was a spot open. The raid leader, Rh, said he would gladly add Wild to the raid list. Then he laughed and said that he'd assumed Wild would show up and had already included me in the raid. Laughing, I told him that was great (good thing I decided to come).

We didn't have enough guildies, but even so the turn out was pretty good, with 20 guildies joining the raid. We filled in with five non-guildies (three of which were complete strangers drawn from players who were using the "Looking For Group" tool). By the time we got started, however, one of our guildie healers had gone offline, apparently with computer problems. We went ahead and started with 24 raiders, seven of us healers, including three druids. The non-guildie druid was impressively geared and was in a well established raiding guild. Wild wondered why he would need to LFG for a raid spot with another guild with that kind of resume.

The 25 man version of Trial of the Crusader is very like the 10 man version. The ToC Coliseum is a single, round chamber with one large door from which the deadly champions we are pitted against emerge. Wild's experience with 10 man ToC has been primarily with the Alt-10 group, and our success - well, it's been fun and a good learning experience, but we had yet to complete even the first encounter (at least when Wild was present). That first encounter is called the Northrend Beasts, and soon after we assembled, the first of those beasts, Gormok the Impaler, trotted through the gates and engaged.

Gormok is half-man, half-beast - a four footed, two handed behemoth. In addition to his normal attacks on the tank, he likes to throw snobolds - no, not snowballs, snobolds - creatures that latch on to a raider at the shoulders and try to eat their face, while dropping fireballs at their feet. Wild feared those snobolds, until I learned that he only throws them at DPSers, never healers. Hah! Wild got a lot braver after learning that.

We brought Gormok down, and without pause two frostwyrms slivered through the doors. The large, prickly wyrms infect raiders with two different kinds of toxins that can only be removed by getting two raiders with opposite toxins close together, which cancels out both. Calls in raid chat from those infected shared an urgency as those toxins ate away at them. The frostwyrms periodically submerge beneath the floor, and then re-emerge at random locations. Wild and the rest of the raid scattered at the first submerge, so that fewer would be caught in a wyrm's clutches when it emerged. The tanks rounded up the wyrms and we went through several iterations of that before the frostwyrms died.

The third and final champion of Northrend Beasts, Icehowl, thundered in. The great whooly mammoth-like beast, with elaborate, curling horns, is an easy fight IF - (1) the raid was still in good shape after beating the first two encounters, and (2) if the raid could survive Icehowl's Massive Crash and the immediate Charge that follows it. We had come through the first two encounters very much intact. Icehowl was corraled, and we got our first taste of Massive Crash as every raider was tossed up against the walls of the Coliseum, temporarily stunning us all. Icehowl chose a target, and the great muscles of the his legs bunched to Charge. The raid leader called out who that target was. Icehowl Charged a spare instant after our stun wore off, and 25 raiders hurtled away from the point where Icehowl was aiming. Everyone got out of the way, and Icehowl slammed his head into the wall at the spot vacated by the targeted raider. Icehowl was now stunned, and the DPS went back to work. Icehowl Charged many times. He was nearly dead when a raider got tangled in a Charge. That raider was Wild. I had misjudged the direction I needed to go and got hit with a glancing blow. Glancing blow or not, it was instant death. Worse, it meant that Icehowl was not stunned. Even worse than that, hitting a raider sent him into Frothing Rage, which is essentially a raid destroying Enrage.

Luckily for Wild, Icehowl died an instant later, saving Wild from having to explain to the tank and the raid leader how I got the whole raid killed. Wild had been soulstoned, so I quickly rezzed and pretended innocence, whistling merrily as everybody gathered to get a gander at the loot.

We could now take a break to repair and buff up for the next encounter, Lord Jaraxxus. Wild has seen this fight only a couple of times, with guild runs before we had stopped doing 25 mans. I don't like this big red guy, and there are a lot of moving parts to this fight.

Wild was raid healing and also tasked with keeping a stack of Hots on the main tank, who also had two other full time healers. Juraxxus hits very hard and the tank is under constant assault. Jaraxxus has at least two raid wide affecting spells that other raiders try to interrupt before he can cast them. One, called Incinerate Flesh, is like a Shield around a raider. Instead of absorbing damage, however, it absorbs healing, and if that shield doesn't get enough healing absorbed, it starts to spread Legion Flame across the raid, a deadly fire damage AoE that not only affects those around you, it leaves a trail of fire wherever you go.

Wild was busy dealing with all of that when a nether portal opened up, and spilled out a Mistress of Pain. She throws high damage spikes at random raiders. If that raider also happens to have Incinerate Flesh or Legion Flame, it is likely fatal. I think that's what got Wild the first time. Wild got a rez, though, and was soon back in the fight. The Mistress was quickly killed, but she was followed by an erupting volcano that spewed out three felflame infernals. The raid scattered away from the volcanoes as the off tank tried to gather the infernals. The volcano also erupts for some heavy damage to those around it. Wild died a second time, not from a volcano, but I believe from Fel Lightning, which is one of those spells that was supposed to get interrupted.

The savior for this fight was the fact that there were five druids (3 healers, 2 DPS) in the raid, and we made full use of all of our battle rezzes to keep people alive. Wild really didn't see how we could win this fight.

But we did. It was Wild's first kill of Jaraxxus.

Wild was ready to call the night a success. Not. We still had time plenty of time to go after the next encounter, which Wild had never seen.

The Faction Champions are horde and alliance npcs. Obviously, a horde raid will fight the alliance npcs and visa versa. In 25 man we will be facing ten of them. Ten? You bet. There are fourteen total, so other than knowing that there will be three healers, we won't know who we'll be facing until they arrive. All four healing classes are represented (druid, shaman, paladin, and priest) and those classes also have DPS specced npcs as well.

This is like a 10 vs 25 arena match, only don't let the numbers fool you, because the npcs have a couple of advantages. First is that they are all level 83 raid elites versus us poor level 80s. Second, although their own AoE classes (such as mage, warlock) can fully use their AoE abilities, the faction champions have a built in immunity to AoE, taking 75% LESS damage than normal. Raider AoE is mostly worthless in this fight. Tanking is mostly worthless, too. Who would we tank, with ten to choose from?

The instructions for the fight took some time. There was an awful lot of taunt him, don't taunt her, crowd control this other one, kill this guy fast, etc. The short summary is that there was a kill order list, with the healers mostly the first to be taken out, although the "must kill fast" list was depressingly long. Since there are no tanks to focus healing on, every healer is a raid healer for this fight. Healers were assigned to heal their own groups. Just do whatever you had to to keep them alive.

It was actually a fun fight. Wild poured out the healing pretty much non-stop, and small battles between raiders and npcs went on all around him. The npcs even coordinate and focus fire on individual raiders. Wild was a target for a moment, but other healers helped Wild heal through it. Another time a hunter's lion pet latched on to Wild, so I kited it around until the hunter died and the pet vanished with his vanquished master.

The battle had entered it's eighth minute when the tenth and final npc fell. We had won another encounter.

And we still weren't done. Following the Faction Champions are the Twin Val'kyr, Fjola Lightbane and Eydis Darkbane. They are winged humanoids - angels fit only for nightmares. Here is where last week's raid had faltered and failed, and a new strategy was going to be tried. I'd explain the strat to you, but it had a lot to do with dark DPSing light, and changing colors from light to dark and dark to light, and staying away from the pretty light and dark balls, and, well, it didn't make much sense - until Wild experienced it firsthand.

Even after the long explanation of the fight, as we prepared to start Wild had to whisper to the healing leader, "now which color am I supposed to be when we start?" He whispered back that "it doesn't matter at the start, but listen for the raid calls and follow them once we engage." Ok. I think.

When the fight started the two winged bosses sailed in, and at four points swirling vortexes formed, two light colored and two dark colored. Following the majority of the raid, Wild trotted up to a light vortex, clicked on it, and was rewarded with a glowing white light at Wild's feet. A smaller number of raiders chose a dark vortex, and received a dark light at their feet (kind of purple colored, actually). Wild was again raid healing and HoT healing one of the two tanks, and the start of the fight was fairly straightforward. Then little melon sized white and dark balls popped right out of the walls all around the entire chamber, and began floating toward the center. They move at slightly less than running speed, so they could be outrun, but there were a LOT of them. Wild tried to avoid the dark balls, but one got him, burst, and did heavy damage.

The raid leader called out "DPS dark!" which meant that all DPS that were now "light" needed to rush to a dark vortex and switch. DPSers had to be the opposite color of the boss they were attacking, so when the target boss changed, they had to switch colors. Boss targets changed when the non-target boss puts up his Shield. That shield has to be destroyed fast or it will heal the boss up to 50% of it's total health. Another raid call, "RAID Dark! (or light)" meant that everyone except for tanks and specifically assigned raiders had to switch to the designated color. Those special raiders were always the opposite color, and their job was to burst as many balls as they could of the color that would hurt the raid. Make sense? Not to Wild, at least not at first.

Breaking the boss shield proved to be a problem and despite initially getting the two down to 17% health, they kept healing themselves and we eventually wiped. Oh, I probably forgot to mention that the twins share the same health pool, so damage or healing to either one affects them both.

It took us four tries before everything started to sink in. Wild learned the hard way that taking too long to get to a vortex to change color was instantly fatal, so Wild started hanging out near an opposite color vortex so that he could switch quickly when it was called. Of course, that wasn't always possible if Wild was trying to stay out of the way of opposite color balls.

But still, on our fourth attempt, the twins died. And Wild had another first kill.

So, we are done? Well, yes and no. Yes, we were out of time, and the raid was ending. No, we did not clear the encounter, because there was still one more boss left - Anub'arak. Maybe next week.

About the loot. ToC drops a LOT of loot. On every encounter a Trophy of the Crusade drops. How to use this item is so complicated I hesitate even to explain it. Let's just say that it is used to buy T9 gear, but that the calibre of T9 (T9.0, T9.25, T9.5) determines whether the trophy alone is good enough to get the gear, or if additional emblems (highest level triumph emblems) must also be used. Only one trophy is awarded per encounter, and Wild did not win any of the four that dropped, but I need to get more information on what they buy and with what other tokens. Why do they have to make these things so complicated?

The regular loot drops, summarized for all four victories (note that all gear was free rolled on, and priority was given to "same gear type", ie, Wild had priority on leather items, but had to defer to cloth wearers on cloth items):

1 leather item, but it was for DPS, and a rogue got it
1 dagger - also for DPS
1 mail item - Wild can't wear mail
5 plate items - sigh, Wild can't wear plate
4 cloth items - all were DPS items, two items the druids actually got to roll on, but one went to a main spec DPS/moonkin, and the other one Wild lost the roll on to another druid healer.

So, out of 12 items, Wild got to roll on just one. A very lucky paladin, the only plate wearing healer in the raid, got three of the plate items since they were healing gear.

Wild was very, very happy that he'd gotten that new idol to improve his healing. The impact of that idol was significant and without it Wild would have lagged behind the other healers by a lot. Also affecting the totals was that it was a 25 man raid, which requires a higher level of healing than the 10 mans.

There were seven healers:

#1: Pad (non guildie druid) - 3945 hps, 20.2% of all healing
#2: Rz (guild shaman) - 3025/14.2%
#3: Sp (guild druid) - 2840/13.7%
#4: Wild - 2718/11.7%
#5: p-Sb (guild priest) - 2686/10.9%
#6: Hd (guild paladin) - 1862/6.1%
#7: Hpriest (guild priest) - 1757/4.8%

I can't recall for sure, but I believe that Wild's overall 2718 hps was his best healing number, like, ever. Also, on the very healing intensive Twin Val'kyr fight, Wild broke into the top three with some amazing healing numbers: pad (5.6k hps), Rz (4.2k), and Wild (4.1k) - over 4,000 hps for Wild!

Now that Wild has a taste of what 25 man ToC is all about, Sunday night is going to be a regular raid night for sure.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tuesday (24 Nov) - Philly and DER Push Forward

Tuesday (24 Nov) - Philly and DER Push Forward

A special GRATZ! to DER for reaching the magic max level of 80 on Tuesday night. At various times during the evening Philly and JB were in game, and at the last count DER reported he was 91% of the way there. JB had already gone to bed and Philly later followed her, thinking that DER was done for the evening. But that last 9% must have called to him, because he returned to again terrorize the alliance in Alterac Valley pvp until he DINGED to level 80. Gratz again!

Just a reminder that if readers check out the Comments below the blog entries, you would already know about DER's level 80 march from his comments in yesterday's post. So check those Comments out and post your own!

Philly finished the evening 79% of the way to level 64. She hopes to get at least that far before the Family totally goes offline for the holiday.

Now that JB and Wild have a level 80 partner in crime the world of PUG Heroics and challenges such as the 5 man version of Trial of the Champion (ToC) are more open to us. Wild won't get much gear he could use from Heroics farming, but the Conquest emblems would be very nice to have, for the things that can be purchased with them. And when patch 3.3 comes out, Heroics will yield Triumph emblems instead of Conquest, and those will buy T9 gear.

Wild has not seen much of ToC since his initial exposure when the instance was first introduced. It's an interesting event which takes place in a single room. The first part requires jousting with a random selection of named npc "Champions." Wild is not very good at that part, but he is hoping that he's soaked up some of JB's experience. JB hasn't spent much time jousting lately, but has a lot more time in the saddle than Wild. Once past that part, the players retire their mounts for the usual on foot battles, starting with one of two possible bosses, and then followed by final boss, the Black Knight.

It's a pretty straightforward fight and pretty easy in normal mode for even modestly geared players. Wild has limited experience with the 5 man ToC in Heroic mode, but one trip did get him a mace that he still uses with his moonkin spec. Of course, the loot is a lot nicer in Heroic, and DER already has his eye on a two handed axe called the [Edge of Ruin]. What a perfect name for the weapon of a death knight. The Heroic ToC gear is ilevel 219, and even Wild could still find things he could use in there.

On a real life note, the Wild Family will be largely out of action for the rest of the week and for as long as our various visitors stick around. We're looking forward to Thanksgiving and to seeing a lot of friends and family.

We are staying close to home, but for those travelling, be careful out there and come home safe. Have a joyous Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Monday (23 Nov) - Idol of Flaring Growth

Monday (23 Nov) - Idol of Flaring Growth

Early, early Monday morning Happy was just getting settled in at the Auction House when Wild interrupted him. A Wintergrasp battle was about to start and Wild wanted in on it. For the second time in his long life, Wild joined a pvp battle. It was another great battle. Wild fought as a moonkin and helped cull out the allie defenders on the outer wall. Once the big siege engines could be built, Wild raced to a nearby armory, requisitioned a vehicle, and motored toward the fortress with two other vehicles. Wild picked up a gunner for the big cannon that rested atop the tank, and along with the two other vehicles we Boomed out long range explosive shot, clearing the way. There was a fierce foot soldier battle going on at the outer wall. Wild had a good gunner, who took out one of the enemy cannons on the wall as Wild maneuvered the big vehicle to the wall itself and began ramming it over and over. One of the siege vehicles had already been destroyed by the allie defenders, but Wild and the other vehicle driver kept hammering away. Both vehicles were taking damage, but we broke through to the courtyard on the other side of the wall. The two tanks plowed into the midst of the defenders inside, and a flood of horde on foot followed, trying to protect the tanks. Halfway across the courtyard the second tank blew apart, leaving only Wild's vehicle still intact but down to under 50%. The battle raged all around Wild, but Wild reached the inner wall and began ramming away. With the siege engine at 10% Wild broke through the inner wall to the central courtyard. The allies had been holding horde pvpers at bay at the front entrance, which had not yet been breached. But Wild's breach allowed the horde in from the side and once we were in the allies couldn't stop us. Wild's tank was destroyed, but that only gave Wild the chance to toss his AoEs around on foot. The horde won.

Shortly after the battle a VoA 25 started to form up, and Wild immediately asked to join in. The invite in chat was a bit misleading, as it asked for "an OT healer and a tank," which made it sound like the raid was almost full. Nope, there were only ten in the raid when Wild joined. There was another player in chat asking for VoA 25 players that was actually for this same raid. A little trickery going on, but maybe that helped get healers and tanks to sign up quickly. It certainly snagged Wild.

It was still early in the morning, so it took a little while to get a full raid together. Some of those invited to the raid Wild was a little leary of, having heard some not so nice things about them. Well, the worst thing that could happen is we fail, or some loot gets ninjaed. Wild wanted the two triumph emblems that a Koralon kill would give him. Nothing else mattered.

The raid leader had obviously done this many times. We had five healers, and one healer was placed into each of the five groups. Healers were responsible for keeping their own group alive and for helping with tank healing. There were two tanks, placed in groups one and two. Of the three druid healers and two priest healers, the raid leader opted to put what was clearly the top geared healer in the raid (I know because Wild always looks up the gear for every druid healer he works with) to group one for main tank healing. Wild got the nod for group two and off tank healing.

We worked through the trash mobs with no problem. At Koralon there was very little discussion. The raid leader made sure everyone knew who the two tanks were, made sure all the healers knew their duties, and made one raid check to make sure no one had gone afk and that everyone was buffed.

We engaged. Wild focused his healing on his group, with most of his attention on the off tank. Wild also dropped Hots on the main tank. Wild could tell from his display that the other druids were likewise tossing Hots on the off tank. So the druid healers at least knew what they were doing. Five raiders died during the fight, none in either group one or two, and Koralon went down. Wild had his triumph emblems.

Wild also had a chance at [Runetotem's Gloves of Triumph], the ilevel 245 T9 gloves, but was competing with two other druid healers and did not win the roll. It was the first T9 set piece Wild had had a chance for, and it wetted Wild's whistle for more. Wild hopes to get into a VoA 25 each week. This raid took the time to kill both of the other bosses in VoA, Emalon and Archavon, with the raid leader doing a good job of keeping the raid together after Koralon went down.

With 26 triumph emblems in his sweating cow mittens, Wild headed for the triumph emblem vendor in Dalaran. There Wild spent 25 of those emblems on [Idol of Flaring Growth], the top druid healing idol currently in game.

Wild's current idol reduces the mana cost of the rejuv spell, a very nice idol that Wild has had for a long time. Without it Wild's rejuv mana cost will go up, and Wild will to watch that. The new idol doesn't help that, but what it does do is amazing. The new idol does affect rejuv, but in a different way. Every time Wild casts rejuv, there is a 70% chance to proc nine seconds of +234 spell power (that is a ton of spell power). The 70% proc rate can be triggered every three seconds, and when you do the math, steady use of rejuv during a fight results in having that extra +234 spell power nearly 95% of the time. Wild has always wondered if the difference in Wild's healing numbers compared with other druids came significantly from Wild not having that idol. For example, in the VoA raid Wild knew he was clearly out geared by one of the druids, but the other druid had stats very similar to Wild's, but he had the Flaring Growth idol. Here is how the numbers stacked up:

#1: ace druid: 4128 hps (wow!) and 33.2% of the healing
#2: 2nd druid: 2361 hps/18.1% with Flaring Growth
#3: Wild: 2246 hps/14.8% without Flaring Growth

The two priests came in 4th and 5th. Now, since Wild was tank healing and the 2nd druid was raid healing, that would account for some of the difference in healing even without the idol, but I do think the idol was still a strong factor. Looking at the ace druid, Wild could only drool at what he could do with a full set of T9 gear, which is what this guy had.

Philly got in some considerable level grinding time. She did quests all over Hellfire Peninsula and started in on quests in Zangarmarsh next door as well. The quests were very familiar, since both Wild and then JB had also done them. Philly did crack a smile at the quest series regarding the wife who's husband has a dalliance with another woman. The "other woman" was turned into, literally, a rat at the end. The wronged wife, Carinda, gifts a very nice ring at the end of the quest chain. Philly remembered how much Wild wanted that ring, and how infatuated he became with Carinda while carrying out her bidding. For Philly, though, the ring was nice and an upgrade, but she really didn't get what Wild had seen in the vindictive Carinda.

Philly DINGED through level 62 and all the way to level 63, passing level 62 Melasahnd and making her the third highest level in the Wild family behind Wild and JB. That is, if the black sheep of the family, Naithipe, is excluded. Philly also improved her Jewelcrafting skill to 270, but that is likely to slow down as getting the mats for skill ups are tougher to get.

There were rolling restarts on all servers on Monday, and the Tuesday maintenance, while quick, resulted in broken servers and trouble getting logged on. I still think patch 3.3 is some weeks away yet, but the tinkering on the live servers is in full swing and the lag in Wintergrasp and Dalaran is only going to get worse.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Friday/Weekend (22 Nov) - Wild Goes Boomkin on Alliance

Friday/Weekend (22 Nov) - Wild Goes Boomkin on Alliance

Wild was smart enough to hang around in Dalaran until the destination for our Friday ten man raid was certain. But I was pretty sure that, with Wintergrasp Fortress in Horde control, we would be heading there first. Sure enough, as soon as we were all assembled he told us to pack our bags and make haste to Vault of Archovan (VoA) in Wintergrasp.

We started one raider short of ten, but decided to clear trash and attempt the #2 boss, Emalon, while waiting on our tenth. Given our predeliction to use two healers, Wild kept silent when it became clear the healers would be Wild and another druid, with the priest in our group going shadow spec for the extra DPS. We managed well enough, and Emalon went down on our first try.

We got our tenth raider, and we went after the big guy, Koralon. We actually did quite well on our first attempt, but the raid damage was too much for the healers to keep up while still keeping two tanks alive. Two healers would not be enough. Wild said as much to the raid leader, who surprised Wild by being surprised that we had only two raiders healing. Sometimes it's hard to fathom what this raid wants from their healers. Wild asked the priest to switch to healing spec as our third healer. We made two more attempts on Koralon, but couldn't bring him down. Wintergrasp was resetting for the next battle, and we had to leave.

On to Ulduar. We were breaking in another rookie tank as our off tank, and we were starting with the very difficult Cat Lady. The opening pull is the nastiest part of the fight, and it took four tries before the tanks worked out the kinks. The fifth attempt was near epic, as the fight seemed to go on forever, with all three druids in the raid using their battle rezzes to keep the fight going. When one of the tanks finally died, we were on the verge of wiping, but nobody gave up and seconds later Cat Lady went down. It was a troubling sign, though, that we had to ask our rogue to switch to his shaman main to help with the DPS. We were just not getting enough damage on the boss. On his shaman, he led the DPSers with over 4k DPS on the final fight. When I checked the DPS for the previous attempts, his rogue was also the lead DPSer, with over 3k DPS. Only one other raider had over 2k DPS. Under 2k DPS in Ulduar is not good, and it greatly extended the fights.

Between the Cat Lady and Iron Council attempts we had a long wait as the raid leader/main tank got a call from work and had to step away to handle it.

We were feeling a bit rushed by the time we were all ready to go again. We made four attempts on the three bosses of the Iron Council encounter, but never managed to kill even one of them. There were a lot of mistakes; even Wild cost us one of the attempts. One of the bosses has a very high damage explosion type attack that is easy to avoid by moving away from from him when he starts to cast it. Wild had measured the safe range on the first two attempts, and when I set up for the third attempt Wild went back to the same spot. I didn't notice that the tank handling that boss had positioned him closer than before. When the blast went off, it caught Wild and I died.

Four tries were all we had time for, and we had to call it a night.

Wild wasn't ready to give up on the night, however. Wild has 24 triumph emblems, and needed just one more to be able to buy the druid relic that he desperately wanted. Triumph emblems can only be earned in 25 man raids or in the daily Heroic. A new Wintergrasp battle was about to start, and often 25 man VoA raids are formed after the battle - assuming the Horde won.

Wild decided to go to Wintergrasp. It was his first ever trip into the zone for anything other than doing the fishing daily. And he went as a moonkin so that he could kill things.

Wild had a pretty good time. With three AoE spells Wild could really light up a battlefield. Add two DoTs from Moonfire and Insect Swarm, and lots of allie raiders were running around with ticking death on them. And with Wrath as his six shooter, Wild got pretty good at burning down enemy cannon as well. Running around in a chicken suit attracted a lot of unwanted attention, though, and Wild died quite a bit from focus fire attacks. Moonkin have a lot of defensive ways to stay alive, I just wasn't very good at them. I did like to drop my treants whenever I could. Having three trees running around bashing things helped confuse things a bit more. It was a longer battle than I normally see with JB, and the longer an attack goes the less likely the victory. But we got the win!

Wild started the battle with 41 lifetime kills. He ended the battle with 148. Sweet. :-)

Unfortunately, no VoA 25s formed up. Wild wanted to get a guild daily Heroic run going, but there were so few guildies around that didn't work out, either. Wild waited around hoping to catch on with a PUG group, but my luck stayed rotten and Wild finally called it a night. Maybe over the weekend Wild could get it done.

However, there was very little action over the weekend from anyone in the Wild Family. With Thanksgiving coming and several friends and relatives coming to stay with us, most of the weekend was tied up with preparations. Wild even had to bow out of the new 25 man raid scheduled for Sunday, which I really hated to do. Wild isn't sure about Monday night's old school raid, either, but maybe we'll get enough done so that Wild can get there.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Thursday (19 Nov) - Farming and Professions

Thursday (19 Nov) - Farming and Professions

Philly's efforts to improve on her Jewelcrafting profession took up much of Thursday night, broken only by JB whenever a Wintergrasp battle was starting.

Much of the materials that Philly needs are gotten from mining ore. Death Knight Melasahnd is the family miner, and she has also been skilling up her mining profession while helping out Philly. Mel scoured the Arathi Highlands for iron, gold, silver, and mithril ore, making circuit after circuit of the large area. She would later move on to Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes to collect even more mithril and adding truesilver and thorium to her list of ores that Philly needed. Occasionally gems would also come from the nodes of ore, but not nearly enough to meet the insatiable needs of the Jewelcrafting profession. Philly needed jade, moss agate, aquamarine, citrine, and many other gems to improve her craft. Tons of stone also went into making small statues, emptying stores of stone Mel had on hand and sending her back out to mine more.

Philly pushed her skill up to 210, but still has a long way to go. The shortage of gems is going to slow her down. Pure ore can be "prospected" for gems, but it takes 5 ore to prospect one gem, and it is time consuming. Philly asked Happy to check on AH gem prices, but as could be expected the key gems that jewelcrafters need to level are very costly due to the difficulty of farming them and the high demand by JCs skilling up.

Melasahnd has improved her own skills as a miner to 248, so she is also getting value by helping out Philly. She also took a moment to travel to Thrallmar in Outland and getting her flying skill and mount.

All this profession skilling has curbed Philly's levelling (since Mel has needed all the game time for mining), but she may get some levelling in over the weekend.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Wednesday (18 Nov) - From ToC to Onyxia to Ulduar

Wednesday (18 Nov) - From ToC to Onyxia to Ulduar

The new Trial of the Crusader (ToC) MM guild raid kicked off at 3pm on Wednesday - with three raiders. Even the raid leader, feraldruid, was running a little late. I must admit that if nothing else, this was a patient bunch. We eventually got the raid to a full ten, with our first pull at 4:25pm, nearly an hour and a half late. There were some familiar faces - Bd, the warrior tank and raid leader for the regular MM guild Ulduar run, feraldruid of course, and a shaman that used to come to Lady Hunter's raids. Wild also met a lot of new friends, some in the MM guild, a couple that were real life friends of feraldruid, and other friends of friends. Wild decided to try this raid because with just the one raid per week (the guild Alt-10), Wild was missing out on other raids that the group didn't get to. Ideally, Wild should be doing ten man raids in Ulduar, ToC, Onyxia, and VoA. Of those four, ToC was the raid that Alt-10 spent the least time on, so to Wild it made sense to "guarantee" doing that raid with a group in which it was their main focus.

Bd and a lady pally was assigned to tank, and we started with two druids doing all of the healing, Wild and Bw. Bw's gear was pretty impressive. He has the full five piece set of Runetotem's Regalia, which is the Tier 9 set, the best Tier set you can get without doing the really hard modes. The set is bought with emblems of Triumph from doing 25 man raids. Bw had to have spent 210 triumph emblems to get the full set. By comparison, Wild has never spent one triumph emblem on anything, and he has a grand total of 21.

We made two attempts on the first boss encounter, called Northrend Beasts, which is actually a wave of three boss encounters with no breaks in between. The first boss, Gormok, we were able to kill, but could not beat the second encounter, which is a pair of frostwyrms. With just two healers, both of us druids, the healing pace was frenetic, and both of us topped over 3k healing: Bw at 3.4k and Wild at 3.1k. I guess Wild can now brag at being a "3k healer" although that is very dependant on the type of fight and the role. Even at that healing rate we could not keep the tanks alive due to the spiking type damage in which, sa druids, we quickly ran out of emergency heals.

For the next two attempts we used three healers, asking the shaman to switch from DPS to healing. That was marginally better, but we still did not get past the first two encounters. And with the very late start, we were out of time. This is a new group, so there will be growing pains as we get used to each other and get more experience with the encounters. It was certainly fun and Wild will try to make that raid each week. And hopefully we'll begin closer to our start time.

From the MM ToC raid Wild rolled right into the Alt-10 raid. This group believes in "just in time" arrival. At 5:50pm there were two of us in game. At 6:05pm we had our full ten of mostly regulars. One note - it looks like surveydrood has bowed out of the Alt-10 on a permanent basis. It was partly due to friction with another guildy that initiated the small firestorm about the problems with guild raiding, but it was also because he had offered to help get the Alt-10 going, but had never intended to be a long term participant. Surveydrood was our second tank on his pally alt, so with him gone we have had several different raiders filling that role depending on who was available. For this night's raid hpriest (one of our regular healers) was asked to switch to his paladin and tank.

Wild had just arrived at Ulduar when the raid leader told us we were going to start at Onyxia. Several raiders got a chuckle at that as they, too, were at Ulduar or were on their way there. So off we went to Onyxia.

Raiders enter Onyxia's Lair through a spiked gate that in vanilla WoW required a key. Anyone can open it now. Inside is a dark, narrow passage that winds around to a small alcove in the rocks. No one takes that passage, though, as a short way in we can jump down from a ledge to that same alcove. From there is a wider passage with a few trash mobs that can be a little tricky if more than one is pulled at a time, but is otherwise pretty easy to manage. The raid leader let hpriest (on his pally) tank the trash mobs as he was very new to tanking. One purpose of the Alt-10 is to get raiders experience, so this was good.

Once through the trash mobs, the passage opens up into a large, circular cavern. A sleeping Onyxia lies at the opposite end. On either side of the cavern are two smaller spaces full of whelp eggs.

We started with three healers, two druids and a pally that was new to the group. We also had a priest that was new to the group as well, but he was asked to go shadow spec. Wild loves shadow priests, because they have skills which increase and extend mana. Hpriest got to tank Onyxia.

The fight starts with Wild pre-HoTing up the tank. We have to run all the way across the cavern to engage Onyxia, and the tank always took some big hits in the initial going. The HoTs kept him alive long enough for us to get into position. Once engaged the tank turned Onyxia toward the back wall of the cavern to keep him pointed away from the raid and so that Onyxia's knock back would only throw the tank up against the wall instead of across the room. The battle went on for a bit like this. The tank took heavy damage but raid damage is light and all healers are focusing on the tank.

Onyxia started thinking about taking wing, and at that point the tank started kiting the dragon across the room and out of the way of the next phase of the fight. Onyxia leaped into the air and starting raining fireballs down on the raid. Whelps poured out of both sides of the cavern, and from another direction a large, nasty dragonoid came pouncing at us as well. With Onyxia in the air, main tank duties changed to grabbing and killing the large dragonoids. The off tank gathered up the dozens of whelps, getting them all together so that the AoE DPSers could burn them down. Healing can get dangerous at this stage, as both tanks and raiders need healing help, but overdo it and you'll have whelps in your face.

"Flame Breath!" The raid leader called out this deadly frontal attack. Wild still hasn't mastered the trick of being able to see where Onyxia is and what direction she's facing when she started to cast that Breath, so Wild sees where is neighbors are running and high tails it with them. That doesn't always work. Wild followed a tank once - they can survive a Breath, and so don't always get out of the way. Wild can't. Ouch. And then sometimes Wild follows someone who has no idea which way to run either. Then we both usually die. But Wild was guessing right most of the time and hanging in there.

Onyxia descended to the ground and the process repeated itself. The second time Onyxia took wing is the hardest. We have been fighting her awhile, there were a couple of dead raiders sprawled on the ground, and the packs of the whelps never seem to pack together as well as the first time. Wild kept up the healing, swatting at whelps that kept harrying him. The pally tank found two of the dragonoids running about and it was touch and go keeping him alive while they were killed. Flame Breath seared raiders caught (luckily) only on it's fringes. Onyxia dropped down again, and the tank fought to get her positioned away from the raid, but not before her tail sweep sent raiders, including Wild, soaring across the room. That tail sweep, or her wing buffet, which is the frontal knockback, kept slapping raiders all over the cavern as we struggled to contain her movement. With all that going on the fires that erupted through cracks in the floor were no more than one more deadly nuisance to avoid.

It took us four tries. The first two were with three healers. We weren't getting enough damage on her, though, so the other druid went moonkin and Wild and the pally healed. On our fourth attempt Onyxia died.

Onyxia dropped three pieces of gear, none of it usable by a druid. She also dropped a bag of jewels and a 22 slot bag that Wild did not roll on. Why? Because Wild had rolled a 98 out of 100 and won the one item Wild really wanted, the [Head of Onyxia]. Turning in Onyxia's head offers a choice of three items, two of which Wild has no need of. The one he took, though, is a magnificent one: [Polished Dragonslayer's Signet]. Calling it just a ring doesn't do it justice. This is an ilevel 245 ring, which is higher level gear than the ilevel 232 Tier 9 set Bw has. Ok, so it's only one piece of gear. But it's now the highest level gear Wild has ever attained.

After Onyxia the raid leader asked if anyone was saved to ToC (being saved to an instance means you can't join a different raid to that instance until it resets on Tuesdays). Wild raised his hand. I was the only one. So we didn't go to ToC, we headed for Ulduar.

We destroyed the first boss, Flame Leviathon, so fast we won the Achievement for the speed kill. We had done so well with just two healers on Onyxia, we decided to stay with that for the bosses in Ulduar, too. Down went Razorscale and XT-02 on our first try. I was particularly proud of the XT kill with just two healers, as this is a very healing intensive fight. Kologarn was a different matter, as Kologarn's Grip took a healer out of action. We added a third healer, and Kologarn fell as well.

Two people had to leave and we ended the night there. Had we stayed, I'm sure the Cat lady would have fallen as well. Ah, well, she'll wait until Friday.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Weekend (15 Nov) - Big Raid Week - Maybe

Weekend (15 Nov) - Big Raid Week - Maybe

On Sunday morning Philly got word from a Game Master on her request to fix the problem with her unusable heirloom shoulder gear. The GM agreed to replace the item with an equal that she could actually use. Philly checked her in game mail, and sure enough she had a new shoulder heirloom for cloth wearers. Now Philly can get to work questing while getting an additional 10% experience over what she would normally get just by equipping those shoulders. But don't expect miracles of levelling; it is still going to take a very long time, and she didn't get much chance to do any levelling over the weekend. Philly did work on her Jewelcrafting, increasing her skill from 136 to 156.

On the guild front this week is shaping up into an interesting week of raiding.

Monday - no scheduled raid, but JB and DER could get into mischief.
Tuesday - Bd's MM Raid (Ony/VoA), Wild may sign up for this
Wednesday - a new ToC MM raid led by another Wild friend, feraldruid. This is an afternoon raid (3-6pm). Wild will be signing up.
Wednesday - the usual guild Alt-10 Ulduar run, Wild will sign up
Thursday - Bd's MM raid, 2nd night. Passing on this one, since this is an Ulduar raid.
Friday - Alt-10 guild raid, 2nd night. Wild will sign up.
Saturday - no raid
Sunday - Wild's guild is planning a ToC 25 raid (6-9pm). Yea! Wild will sign up.
Next Monday - Monday again? Yes, the guild is planning an Old School raid - Blackwing Lair (6-9pm).

erik, if you are interested and available, I could probably get you invited to the BWL raid next Monday.

If all of the above come to pass, Wild will be one very busy raider.

JB jumped on a few Wintergrasp battles over the weekend, and used up some honor points to get her pvp head gear. That three pieces of gear earned through pvp, not including the two heirloom pieces she's passed on to Ezuh and Philly.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Friday (13 Nov) - Raid Bouncing

Friday (13 Nov) - Raid Bouncing

Wild was in game at the usual time Friday night for the guild ten man. Wild had missed the Wednesday raid, but was signed up for Friday. Ten man ToC was on the agenda, but once we had enough raiders the consensus was to go after Onyxia first. Mxpally, hpriest, and Wild were the healers, which is the combo I like best. We were going with two bear tanks, one of which, EC, is more often in the raid as a druid healer, and has also brought his shaman as well. Flexible fellow, and this was his first time in the group as a tank.

Wild likes the Onyxia fight, but there is one aspect that gets Wild in trouble almost every time. It's her Breath. Wild wants to lobby Bliz for a bad breath trinket that would cure Onyxia of that abominable Breath that almost always, sooner or later, gets Wild killed. Slightly more seriously, Wild is considering wearing his level 60 Onyxia Scale Cloak from the old school days as it provides some protection from that Breath. In truth, Wild should do what everyone else does, and that's look at Onyxia when she starts her Breath, and then get the heck out of the way (moving to one side of her). Of course, she is airborne when she does it, and Wild can't seem to crane his neck skyward at the right angle fast enough to see which way she's facing. Got to be a trick to it Wild doesn't know about. Mostly Wild sticks close to raiders that know what they are doing and then runs screaming in the same direction they are going when Breath starts.

That said, Wild managed to get hit by Onyxia's Breath only three times over the course of the fight, and those were fleeting touches as Wild pounded hooves out of the line of attack in time to lose "only" 90% of his health - which is still better than being dead. If it were just the sulfurous odor, a clothespin on the nose (a big one for a big nose) would suffice, but alas, it also has to be filled with fire.

A little confusion between the tanks during a transition when Onyxia lands and there are whelps still about got Wild killed and the raid wiped on our first attempt. Those whelps are such cute little baby dragons, and they have such teensy teeth - and such a big appetite. They come out of their caves in swarms, and when a healer draws aggro - well, the whelps feed.

On our second attempt we brought Onyxia to ground and killed her. It was Wild's first Onyxia kill since old school days. Onyxia drops a lot of loot. Only one of the four pieces of gear (mostly plate stuff that Wild couldn't wear) were usable by Wild. The one piece he wanted was a +hit trinket that would have shined brightly in his moonkin gear, but a warlock won it. Wild was also out rolled on Onyxia's head, which can be turned in for one of a selection of very nice gear. Then there was the 22 slot gear bag (22 slots being the largest bag in the game), but no, Wild didn't win that either. Finally there was a bag of jewels - two jewels, to be exact - that Wild did win. Wild sent them to the family's new jewel crafter, Philly. They would be useful, but wouldn't help Wild in any tangible way. The best loot, though, was the three triumph badges Onyxia awards, which gets Wild closer to the relic he MUST HAVE! :P

So, are we going to ToC now? No, wait, horde has just won Wintergrasp. Let's go do VoA! And off we went.

Earlier in the week Wild had been in a 25 man VoA PUG that cleared the place. This time Wild was going with his guild for a 10 man VoA. I think the success Wild had with the PUG bouyed Wild's confidence. We mowed through VoA, not overpowering it by any means, but not allowing anything to slow us down, either. The new tank had never seen VoA as a tank, so he was learning as we went, but we got past the rough spots. We killed the main boss, Koralon. We spent a long time on Emalon, but still brought him down on our first attempt. Nobody wanted to do Archavon since he doesn't drop anything they'd be interested in, but Wild likes to finish things. It would take time away from other, better fights, though, so we moved on. Wild saw the rare mount drop for the second time, but didn't win it.

Well, ToC was not in the cards tonight as we moved on to Ulduar instead. The Wednesday raid had gotten up to the Cat Lady, so that's where we started. We brought her down pretty easily on our first try.

It seems that this group, even with the shifting attendance of this or those alts, pretty much has the first half of Ulduar on farm. Flame Leviathon, XT-002, Razorscale, Iron Council, Ignis (when we have the right makeup), Kologarn, and Cat Lady are going down almost every week.

It's after the Cat Lady that we run into trouble. I've mentioned the first seven bosses, who reside in the areas of Ulduar called "The Siege of Ulduar" and "The Antechamber of ulduar." Once Cat Lady is down we enter the area called "The Keepers of Ulduar." Wild has seen (and killed) two of the bosses in this area, Hodir and Freya. Wild has attempted but not killed a third boss, Thorim. The other boss in this area, Mimiron, remains a mystery to Wild. Then there is a fourth area, "The Descent Into Madness," with two more really bad-azz bosses that Wild has never seen, either. We still have a long way to go.

Wild does not have fond memories of Hodir. I've helped him die just once. Too many times on too many nights we try and try and just can't bring him down. Wild and the other healers wrestled with why we couldn't keep tanks and raiders alive, and it didn't seem to matter what healers we had or what assignments we made. Wild is no uber healer, but Mxpally and hpriest are dam good. It's not the healing. We've also used about four different combinations of tanks, with the one constant being that the tanks are not surviving a deadly attack called Frozen Blows. Frozen Blows happen often in the fight, and it's an attack that switches from physical damage (which tanks are well built to withstand) to non-physical frost damage, doing both a massive up front hit and then more damage over a 20 second DoT. All of our tanks are alts, and don't have the gear of a tank that does that for a living. They can survive some Frozen Blows, with drastic healing help and using their "oh sh1t!" emergency spells, but sooner or later they basically get one shot. And in this fight when the main tank dies there is no recovery and we wipe.

We started with the new tank as the main tank so he could get experience with the encounter. We wiped three times, but we counted that as a success since the new tank was learning the fight. We then switched to the other, more experienced (but still an alt) tank, and wiped three more times. No joy, and Hodir mocked us as we retired for the evening. We just gotta figure out how to get this guy!

By the way, prior to the start of the evening another former guildie and friend who has moved over to the MM guild got hold of Wild and invited him to join his new ten man ToC raid that starts on Wednesday afternoon before the evening run. It's early for Wild to be raiding (3pm start) but I can probably swing that, at least some of the time. Assuming Wild also goes to his evening guild raid on the same day, that would make for a long day of raiding (3pm - 9pm). I told him to sign me up. :-)

Friday, November 13, 2009

Thursday (12 Nov) - Philly's Free Again!

Thursday (12 Nov) - Philly's Free Again!

Wild got into a 25 man Vault of Archovan (VoA) on Thursday night. The Horde had just won Wintergrasp and several PUGs were trying to get raids together. It was around 6pm and Wild was in Dalaran hoping to catch on with the MM guild run. That didn't pan out as they ended up getting off to a very late start (close to 7pm) and would only be running Ulduar, which Wild wouldn't attend because I expected Ulduar would be the destination for the guild run on Friday. Anyway, the only other guildies in game were surveydrood's ten man (currently in Onyxia) and one other shaman friend. Wild and he have jumped on 25 man PUGs a couple of times before, so we asked for invites.

It was hard to tell if there was anyone actually in charge. The raider who handled the invites answered most questions with little more than a "lol guys." He got two volunteers to tank and asked whoever wanted to heal to say "1" in raid chat. That's actually a pretty common way for PUG leaders to see who can do what. Five of us admitted to being healers, but it was left to us what role to take. "Someone heal the two tanks" was the closest we got to direction. So the healers volunteered for roles. Wild raid healed and kept Hots on the two tanks.

Raiders were still filing into VoA when a clump of raiders already in the instance started down the ramp and engaged the first trash mob. It was lucky Wild had already self-buffed and was in tree form as I was the only healer inside at the time. "Wait for the rest of us!" someone called out (actually, everything said was typed in raid chat as we were not using vent). We downed the mob and we kept moving. Raiders joined us along the way and we did eventually get to a full 25.

It was pretty chaotic but fun. Mobs and the occasional raider died, but I have to admit we moved fast. We all arrived at Koralon more or less together. As Wild was learning, for most PUGs there is no discussion of strategy. If you don't know what to do you shouldn't be here, is the assumption. Once everyone was hanging around Koralon's chamber, someone did a raid check to make sure no one was afk, and we charged in. The battle went surprisingly smoothly. The tanks did a good job of holding aggro and maintaining positioning, and Wild danced out of the fires Koralon dropped while blanketing the raid with instant heals. It takes time to bring Koralon down, and it's easy to lose focus and make mistakes the deeper into the fight we go. This raid held together very well, and with the five healers doing their part we only lost a couple of raiders who dallied too long in the fires. Koralon went down. No druid gear dropped, but Wild did get two more triumph badges, bringing his total to 16. Wild needs 25 to get his druid healing relic, but it's been slow going.

While the loot was being sorted out by the loot master the rest of us kept moving, engaging and bringing down the trash on the way to Emalon and his four protectors. While Emalon himself is a much easier boss than Koralon, the fight mechanics to keep the four protectors from exploding and wiping the raid can be tricky. The loot master was still handing out gear when we engaged. Despite the late stragglers, Emalon went down.

There was even less waiting for loot to be distributed after Emalon. A quarter of the raid didn't even slow down and were already headed for Archavon. Ok, so Archavon is a bit of a pushover (or is supposed to be), you'd still like to have more than a third of your raid present when you engage him. "Come on guys, slow down!" a harried loot master asked. Way too late. We were already engaged. The early attack didn't really speed anything up, because until more raiders got there we could do very little other than to try and keep the tank alive. The DPS was on their own until reinforcements showed up. Wild laughed through half of it, as some raiders even went the wrong way and had to double back to get into the action. We finally reached the tipping point in numbers and Archavon fell.

It was the first time Wild has been in a group that got through a full clear of VoA. Wild got no loot (sigh), and I wouldn't recommend doing it that way, but it was definitely entertaining.

Wild was second to a priest in healing. The other druid healer in the raid came in 5th.

Philly, meanwhile was enjoying her new freedom. The ticket Philly sent to a GM (game master) on her heirloom issue has not been answered yet. Erik, saw your note about that. I guess I assumed that if it is an heirloom item and it's bound to your account, then any character in that account should be able to use it. I thought that was the whole point! I also thought the only differences in the selection was role/spec based (ie, caster, tank, melee, etc). I'm sure you are right, though, that this is not really the case, which totally sours me on the concept. I'm hoping the GM will allow me to swap what I have with a cloth item so that Philly can wear it to level. But really, it makes no sense to me.

Philly just shrugged, however, too excited to wait for a resolution. She hopped a flight to Silithus, a high 50s level area of vanilla WoW, where she had a couple of quests laying around. Killing a few sand worms and finding a lost satchel was enough get from being a level 59, 91% of the way to level 60, and DING! Level 60.

Then it was off to Hellfire Peninsula in Outland and the fort of Thrallmar, where Philly paid for her expert riding skill and leaped skyward on her new flying mount! Philly was in heaven.

She did come back to earth eventually, grounding herself in Silvermoon City where she had access to the guild bank, the Auction House, and the Jewel crafter trainer. All three were tucked away in the same location where Happy makes his home as well.

First, Philly took her entire collection of herbs and "milled" them for mats to use in her inscription profession. Any herbs left over were then sent to Melasahnd, who will be handling that from now on and will have to get some game time to skill up.

Melasahnd still had a lot of junk - rocks, gems, wire, etc, from mining and from her short stint as a JC, so she sent all those goodies to Philly. By the end of an afternoon's work Philly had reached skill 136 in jewel crafting, using mostly materials that the family already had in hand. From here on out it will get expensive, but also profitable down the road.

Philly also wanted to start skilling up Inscription again, but she'll have to find a way to get into Dalaran (where the Grand Master trainer is) before she can go any further. Wild will have to talk a warlock friend into helping her out with a Summons.

Still, I'd say Philly was off to a pretty good start.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Wednesday (11 Nov) - Wild Family Shakeup

Wednesday (11 Nov) - Wild Family Shakeup

I guess you can blame JB for this. As Wild's guild problems mount, and his raiding nights dwindle to just two, JB has stepped in to fill the vacuum with conquests of vanilla WoW instances, lots of Wintergrasp battles, the Argent Tournament, and two manning anything JB and DER can get into.

Another core guildie and good friend if Wild's, Lady Hunter, has left the guild. A large part of that decision had to do with real life issues that have taken a heavy toll on her game time. Another factor was that many of the players from her raiding group are now raiding with the MM guild, and on nights when she can raid (which is still not often) she will likely run with them. Wild still holds out hope for his own guild's raiding, even though Wild has a standing invitation to the MM ten man raids. Wild's guild did run ten man Ulduar Wednesday night, but I had a real life commitment and couldn't make it. Sadly, I realized I didn't miss it that much. Wild is not giving up on the guild, though, and has signed up for Friday's run. In addition, though, Wild is going to check with MM raid leader Bd and see if he has a spot for his Thursday night raid if they are doing something other than Ulduar.

JB achieved her goal of winning over 200 Stone Keeper Shards, and purchased the heirloom shoulder piece [Aged Pauldrons of the Five Thunders]. Heirloom items are account bound and can be shared between all characters on the same account. Wildshard was the first in the family to earn an heirloom item, a trinket, which eventually went to EZ. EZ wasn't on the same account as Wild, but Level 10 Dulcetruin volunteered to do an account transfer. Dulcetruin got the heirloom trinket from Wild, then transferred to the account EZ was on, and sent the trinket to her. Everything worked just fine.

The shoulder heirloom item was also destined for the other account, but things were a little more complicated this time. The account was at it's max of ten characters. Someone would have to go. Two of those toons were low level Alliance toons, and normally Wild would have no reservations about deep sixing an allie toon. However, one of them happened to be Mrs. Wild's toon, and even though it has been months since she's played, she still has to be reassured periodically that all is well with her and her pet (she's a hunter). The other allie is an important go between in cross faction transactions when I need to do that, and so he earns his keep as well. It seemed unfair to give Dulcetruin her walking papers right after spending hard cash to switch accounts. Plus she wasn't the lowest level horde toon on the account.

Wild turned to Rheebah. Rheebah is the family's second oldest toon, after Wild. Rheebah introduced Mrs Wild to the joys of Warcraft. She picked a druid to play because she liked the shape-shifting idea, and because a very young Wild didn't know anything about playing anything but a druid at the time. Mrs Wild made it to level 6, and went no further. Stranded and asked to leave her home starting area before she was completely trained or ready, Rheebah was asked to embark on what was then a long, perilous journey to Orgrimmar. Since her arrival, Rheebah has been anchored in Orgrimmar, doing duty as a bank alt for stuff that no one else wanted to store or carry around. It's a quiet, somewhat lonely life, but she has been content in her own way, padding around Org in her pretty black dress, a modest staff slung across her back.

Wild left the final decision to Rheebah, who revealed that what she really wanted was to return to Bloodhoof Village, the starting area where she was born. So the decision was made.

The account transfer took barely an hour, moving a rogue from Wild's account to what had once been Rheebah's. Everything looked good. All money, items, and gear transferred as well.

It was only when the heirloom shoulders were sent to Philly that a problem developed. The shoulders were originally worn by JB and it equipped properly as mail gear. Sent to the leather wearing rogue, it appeared correctly as leather gear. Sent to Philly, who wears cloth, it stubbornly insisted it was mail gear, and Philly could not equip it. I had to put a ticket in to a GM for resolution.

Meanwhile, JB was discovering some new alchemy transmutes that she had not known existed. She has the max skill of 450 in Alchemy, and thought she had every trainable spell. But a quest giver in Dalaran showed JB a quest that when completed would allow JB to create a cardinal ruby out of lesser materials. Cardinal rubies are a highly sought after gem, that when properly cut by a jewelcrafter provides the highest spell power gem (+23) in the game. Every caster needs this gem, and even uncut it sells for around 150g each. What really excited JB was that in order to learn this spell, she had to transmute several other gems, and lo and behold, there was a trainer next to the quest giver that sold the transmute spells. JB had no idea alchemists could get transmutes that created high level gems. Happy wanted to bonk her on the head, because he'd been having to BUY the gems every time JB or Wild needed them. JB will be in Happy's doghouse until she finishes the quest and starts producing cardinal rubies (one a day max).

That got Wild to thinking. Wouldn't it be great if the Wild family had a high level jewelcrafter (JC) as well? Melasahnd was the lone JC in the family, but she had only gotten to skill 123 (out of 450). To really get full benefit from the JC profession, not only would the skill need to be greatly increased, but someone would have to level up.

A while back Wild faced a similar question, and had to decide between JB, Philly, and Melasahnd on who would get a chance to level. JB, of course, won that debate, and is now level 80. Philly had gotten a lot of consideration at the time, but she was still fairly active in level 59 bracket pvp, and levelling past that would, of course, end that. Things have changed since then. There is EZ, Ando, and Lao for level 19 pvp. And with DER closing in on level 80, DER and JB (and Wild) have a lot of options for pvp at it's highest levels.

So the decision has been made. Philly gets the nod to level past 59. Thursday morning she paid the 1,000 gold (out of her inscription money) for dual specs in DISC and Shadow. She will keep her Inscription profession, and once she hits level 60 will be able to start skilling up again. Philly will have to give up herbalism in order to take Jewelcrafting. Most of the mats she needs to get to the same level that Melasahnd is at now are already available, so she'll get off to a good start. Melasahnd will switch from JC to picking flowers, which she can combine with the mining profession she already has to become the family's super gatherer. Melasahnd did a modest talent respec to get "On a Pale Horse" which is a talent that gives death knights the fastest ground mount in the game, which will speed up her ore and herb gathering.

So there it is. Philly gets to start levelling as she skills up in both inscription and jewelcrafting. Melasahnd does the main work of gathering. JB gets to push forward in pvp and in group/raids.

And Wildshard - well, Wild isn't going away. But he does have a few things to think about.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Monday (9 Nov) - Violet Hold

Monday (9 Nov) - Violet Hold

Violet Hold is a level 75-77 dungeon beneath the city streets of Dalaran. Dragon soldiers of the Blue Dragonflight have set up a series of portals underneath the city which they are using to invade Dalaran. The mission - keep them from breaking out of the underground warren and gaining access to the city. VH is one modest sized circular chamber with several portals located in alcoves cut into the walls.

DER and JB, after participating in a victorious Wintergrasp battle, were looking for mischief and found it in Violet Hold. DER lobbied for players to join the two using the Looking For Group tool, and surprisingly quickly we had three volunteers. Joining level 77 DER and 80 JB were a level 79 shaman, a level 77 paladin, and a level 73 shaman. Three shaman in the five man group. The youngest shaman immediately announced that he was the healer.

The three that joined DER and JB were not in Dalaran and for some reason seemed to have trouble finding their way back. One didn't know where VH was, and the young shaman was too low level to have found his way to the floating city yet, which requires a quest. Someone had a warlock toon, so we asked if he'd swap toons long enough to summon the young shaman to Dalaran. Sure, he said, but you'll have to tell me how to do a Summons. Huh? A warlock who doesn't know how to do a Summons? That had to be a first, since it is a primary ability of a warlock.

So here we were, DER, JB, the warlock, and the 79 shaman standing in a busy hallway outside VH. Nothing is happening. The warlock asks what he should do. The 79 shaman tells him to look through his spellbook. None of us know what the name of the Summons spell is. For a few moments more nothing happens. He starts casting spells, and JB starts to giggle under her breath as none of the spells are the Summons spell. This guy really doesn't know the spell. Most of the spells JB doesn't recognize, but then he hits on the "candy" spell. Warlocks can make healthstones, which are like an emergency heal. The spell graphics are very like that of the Summons, so we cheer him on and tell him he's getting closer. Plus we all got "candy," a plus for the group.

Finally, he finds the right spell and the warlock creates the head height, black, tombstone looking edifice that is a warlock's Summoning Stone. We summon in the young shaman, but we have to do it twice before he thinks to click on the request for summons. We are still waiting for the paladin, but three of us (the 79 shaman, DER, and JB) go into VH. Well, two of us did. DER found that the closed stone door through which we must pass won't open for him. DER apparently hasn't done whatever quest or event is needed to be able to open those gates. [Note - I looked this up after the run. The quest DER needs is "Discretion is Key" which can be acquired from Rhonin in the Violet Citadel right in Dalaran]. Any time we needed to leave and come back into VH, JB had to let DER in. Hmm, JB is a troll. Maybe she should have been charging a gate fee. ;-)

The three of us were standing inside VH, watching a scripted battle play out for us while we waited for the other two. There is also a friendly npc nearby, so gregarious DER chatted her up. And she obligingly started the dungeon for us. Oops. Portals started opening, and elite mobs spilled out. The door behind us would no longer open. We killed through three waves, I think, and then a group of elites finally overwhelmed us. We didn't put too much effort into it, knowing we would just reset so that the other two could join us. If we had been serious enough about it, and if JB had gone to full healing, I think the three of us could have challenged the instance.

After what amounted to the usual delays and settling in of a PUG, we were at last all together in VH and ready to go. We started the event.

The battle starts with six waves of mobs, mostly dragonkin. Singly and in groups, they appear out of random portals. The pally was tanking, and he chased down the mobs when they appeared while the rest of us moved in. By the time the six waves were down, the 73 shaman was already telling everyone - several times - you guys rock! You don't even need any healing! Which wasn't totally true, but it was true the trash mobs weren't much of a challenge.

The seventh wave is one of six possible bosses randomly chosen. JB didn't pay that much attention to which boss it was. She simply targeted off the tank, blazing away at the boss with her spells. The 79 shaman was enhancement so he would always drop totems and then wade into the fray. JB also dropped totems, but stood at range to cast her spells. DER also went toe to toe with the boss. The boss went down without a lot of fuss.

Were we done already? Nope, another six waves started spawning, and we went through it again. A second boss spawned, and again we brought him down. Then a third wave, and the final boss, which is always Cyanigosa, a large blue dragon. Cyanigosa is a little more interesting, with an AoE and an aggro wipe and flame breath and tail swipe, but in the end she was no more dangerous than the other bosses. Now we were done.

Wow, I think we are a bit over levelled for this dungeon, noted the paladin. Yea, said DER, want to do it again? We all did. After all, everyone but JB was still earning xp, and DER even picked up some loot, as did a couple of others. It was a pretty good group, although the young shaman didn't seem to know much. JB and the 79 shaman whispered to each other about him (shaman gossiping about another shaman) and we decided that he was either very young, very drunk, or both.

On our second run through DER volunteered to tank and the pally wanted to heal, so with that new arrangement we crashed our way through again. Only once did we get into trouble, when on the boss Xevozz we wiped. Wiped? No! Apparently the young shaman, who was supposed to be DPSing instead of healing, had been healing, so the pally switched to DPS. But when we got to Xevozz the young shaman decided to stop healing. No one realized it until we started dying. I think he got bored with how little healing there was to do, and decided that we were such an uber group that we really didn't need any healing at all. It was pretty funny, actually.

We all rezzed at the nearby graveyard right in the city. All but the young shaman. He wanted a rez. He probably didn't know where the graveyard was, which was ok. As a shaman he could also have used his reincarnation spell, but whatever. JB rezzed him when she got back in (after letting DER in the door. :P ).

We cleared the dungeon a second time. We had a good time with a pretty decent group. DER tried to get them to move on to another dungeon, but two had to leave and we broke up.

There was also some Wintergrasp battles, and DER picked up some loot from the marks of honor he's been earning. JB was also in the WG battles. She's been trying different things, learning more about it, and for this battle settled in as a cannon gunner. There are several gun emplacements along the outer walls of the fortress (we were defending) but the popular ones along the front are quickly taken when the battle begins. So JB found an unoccupied one along the eastern wall. I knew that alliance passed this way from one of their graveyards, but I didn't know how much action she would see. No problem, JB just wanted to play with her cannon.

The cannon can swivel and elevate, but it can't move. It can also be targeted and attacked, and the cannon are prime targets early in the battle because they can do a lot of damage to the siege engines that must come in range of them to batter down the walls.

Things were pretty quiet on JB's side of the fortress, though. She experimented with the cannon, discovering that it has considerable range. When an alliance workshop started churning out vehicles, JB could see them chortling along the roadway (chortling? I think I meant trundling) far from her position, yet still in range of bombs lobbed at them on a long, high arc. That kept her busy enough, and when the occasional mounted allie came galloping by, JB hammered them at close range while they dashed this way and that, killing about every other one. There was another gunner off to JB's left, even farther from the action up front, and a third on the top floor of the front corner that had a good view of both the front and JB's area.

Things quieted down even further, and JB started wondering how the main battle was going. She considered leaving the cannon and rushing into the fray, eager to gets some hands on action. But another group of allie vehicles came pouring out of the workshop, so JB tossed her high lobs at them, expecting them, like all the others she'd seen, to shortly move out of sight as they headed for the front.

These, however, turned in a different direction. JB kept lobbing bombs at them, and in a few moments it became apparent where they were headed. The allies were trying a flanking movement and were headed right for JB's position, probably intending to take the vehicle workshop on JB's side of the fortress. The big engines powered closer and closer, looming larger and larger, as JB and the other two gunners ripped into them. Alliance on foot and mount were also among the vehicles, trying to protect them from any horde players. There were only a couple of badly outnumbered horde out on that field. For now JB couldn't help them - she was trained on the siege engines, as they must be brought down to keep them from breaching the walls. For several minutes the firefight was intense. Engine after engines exploded and broke apart. Two reached the walls, partially breaching them, but we held as the last of the attacking vehicles crumpled under the barrage of cannon. The alliance in the vehicles were now on foot, and JB mercilessly gunned them down.

The battle was ticking down to it's final seconds. JB didn't know how close the allies were to breaking through at the front, but if this was a normal battle the heat of the fight would be at the control room, the ultimate goal of the attackers. JB was about to jump from her cannon when she was suddenly attacked - from within the fortress! Apparently the allies were deep enough inside that they discovered JB at her post. It was a short fight and JB lost. While she was rezzing, though, the horde held, the timer ticked to zero and we still owned Wintergrasp fortress. JB loves WG.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Friday/Weekend (8 Nov) - Busy Busy Weekend 2

Friday/Weekend (8 Nov) - Busy Busy Weekend 2

This is a quick wrap-up of the weekend. Friday's Ulduar raid started off by taking down the three bosses in the Iron Council. To do that one of our raiders ended up being three people before all was said and done. He started off on his druid healer alt, to bring our healer group to two druids and a priest. When the druid had trouble keeping the off tank alive he switched to his shaman alt for off tank healing, which worked. But then the main tank on Steelbreaker died because he was getting hammered by Fusion Punch and we had no one who could interrupt that high damage spell. So he swapped out again to his main, a paladin, who could do interrupts on himself. We shifted him to main tank healing, Wild to off tank, and we finally won.

We moved on to Hodir, and here we bogged down big time, unable to shovel our way out the deep hole we dug for ourselves. We made nine attempts. We tried a lot of different things. But us healers couldn't keep people alive, and DPSers couldn't seem to stay away from things that would kill them. We had three decent healers, two solid DK tanks, and enough DPS to win it, but we could never get all the pieces working at the same time.

The raid ran out of time and energy, and Wild retired to give JB some game time, which she is getting more and more of lately. DER and JB got together, took out some trash inside the Northrend dungeon of Utguard Keep, and when the first boss proved he could encase both of us in Frost Tombs long enough for both of us to die, we said the heck with that and went to clear the level 60 dungeon of Stratholme. It took awhile as there are mountains of mobs to kill and twelve bosses to find and dispatch. The killing part was pretty easy, but the finding part was a challenge, as was the looting part. Tons of stuff were left to rot as neither of us had any bag space left halfway through the clear. The two intrepid adventurers got the Achievement for clearing the dungeon. The number of beautiful, level 60 blue gear drops was amazing to see. We could have brought a couple of our level 59s to grab some of that gear, but its a sad fact that it was really pretty useless even to them. Around level 58 levelling players now go directly to Outlands, where even green quest gear is better than anything Stratholme and the other level 60 vanilla WoW dungeons have. Those dungeons languish, forgotten and haunted by players past. Wild hopes the next expansion, Cataclysm, addresses that.

Much of the rest of the weekend JB spent in Wintergrasp. A new battle begins roughly 2 1/2 hours after the prior one finishes, so Wintergrasp is "Up" for battle about every three hours. On Friday JB got into 5 WG battles, winning thee and losing two. On Saturday it was three battles (all losses :( ) and then on Sunday it was two wins and a loss. Winning is more fun, but even losing grants Honor points, Stone Keeper Shards, and Marks of Honor.

The shards come from completing quests. JB had all kinds of trouble getting the quests, until she learned they are on an odd cycle of every four days except the four day cycle resets on Tuesdays. It's crazy but if JB plays often enough she usually gets the quests when they're available. JB has 151 shards, and needs 200 to get the heirloom shoulder piece she wants. Maybe another week, or a bit longer. The marks of honor are awarded according to wins and losses like other pvp zones - 3 for a win, 1 for a loss. JB has already earned a +hit trinket for the marks she has collected, and has 18 now toward the 40 she needs for her next acquisition.

As for honor points, JB pretty much ignored them. Pause for effect - yep, erik's entire WoW family just fell over, stunned and laughing hysterically at the same time. The Hall of Legends (I think that's the name) in Orgrimmar is where those honor points can be spent, but JB was so totally focused on the marks and shards she never thought about the honor points. She might still be ignoring them except for the fact that on Friday or so she noted her total honor points were at the nice round number of 75,000. Neat. Then she forgot about it again until Sunday, when she happened to glance at honor points after the latest WG battle to see be sure she'd gotten her marks, and the total honor points were - 75,000. Huh? What gives? JB has killed literally hundreds of alliance between Friday and Sunday, all of which should have earned honor points. Well, back in some patch a long time ago a limit was placed on how many honor points you could have. Care to guess what that number is? The worst part about that is JB has no idea how many honor points she lost as she has no clue when she maxed out to 75,000.

Well, JB couldn't earn any more until she burned some of those honor points, and so off to Orgrimmar she went. An impressed JB was greedily pleased at how much nice gear was in here! After much indecision on what to start with, JB purchased [Furious Gladiator's Waistguard of Dominance], JB's first piece of ilevel 226 gear, and her first true pvp gear as it came with a stat called Resilience. That cost nearly 50,000 honor points, so JB will be back in WG grinding out more.

JB typically looks like this, wrapped in all that deadly gear -


In her latest visit to WG, however, she went upscale. You think the new look will help or hurt when facing down an Alliance opponent on the battlefields of Wintergrasp?


JB also has her whimsical side - you remember the bunny ears, I'm sure.

She also had a halloween costume:

Happy Monday!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Friday/Weekend (8 Nov) - Busy Busy Weekend

Friday/Weekend (8 Nov) - Busy Busy Weekend

It was a pretty busy weekend, and the process usually is to take things in chronological order - but JB was too excited to wait her turn.

On Sunday morning JB participated in her first Wintergrasp battle of the day around 8am. The Horde was on the attack against the defending Alliance. We came very close to losing it. Too many Horde raiders took the Allie bait and descended on the west walls of the fortress. Short of raiders, they stacked all their people on the west side. Only late did the raid leader start YELLING in raid chat to abandon the west wall and get to the east wall, which was mostly undefended. With time running out, we crashed through the east wall and won back the fortress. JB picked up her three WG Marks of Honor and headed back to Dalaran. After every victory there is a mass Looking For Group going on in local chat as the victors form up 10 and 25 man Vault of Archovan (VoA) raids. JB does not advertise herself as she is still pretty under-geared, and everyone is asking for healers, tanks and 3k+ DPS raiders, of which JB is none of those. Often they even require proof that you've already succeeded in VoA (no rookies), or require a gear score so high those guys probaby don't need anything out of VoA other than the rare mount. That's ok, it's their raid, but it leaves JB out.

After the first rush of groups died down, another request for raiders for VoA 25 appeared in trade chat, along with a specific request for shaman. Hmmm. JB sent a whisper back to the raid leader, being honest about her gear: "elemental shaman hit capped but average gear, let me know if you need me." JB got an invite.

It took about 15 minutes more, but the raid leader put a full 25 man raid together with two tanks and five healers. JB was the only shaman.

There are three bosses in VoA - Archovan, Emalon, and Koralon, in the order of easiest to hardest. The boss everyone wants is Koralon, and that is who we started with. There were a few trash pulls first, single bosses which gave JB some good practice in getting her totems down, and rolling through her spell priority rotation. One thing that no one with a heal button can help, though, is that JB kept one eye on her health. Her DPS was no where high enough to draw aggro on the trash mobs, though, so she could fire away pretty much full bore without worrying about getting the bad guy's attention.

We got to Koralon quickly. JB knew the dangers of this fight through Wild, which was to immediately get out of the fire when it forms under her feet. Three seconds was long enough to kill JB, so she had to react fast. It was nice not having to look at the 25 boxes of the raid screen (when healing), and focus only on blasting away and watching for those fires. We got Koralon to 22% before we wiped, which is better than some of the guild Koralon attempts Wild has been involved in lately.

On our second attempt we again got Koralon down under 25% and were still in the fight. JB cast Bloodlust, speeding up the spell/melee attacks of the raid. Three times JB jumped away from the fires, and helped her healers by tossing on some self healing before going back to the attack. With a third of the raid dead, Koralon fell. JB had her first VoA kill.

Once Koralon went down the raid started losing raiders. The raid leader shored up the raid and we made two attempts on Emalon, getting him to under 50% both times, but not killing him. This "easier" fight includes four other mobs that have to be killed while still tanking Emalon. Which mob the DPSers attack depends on which one receives Emalon's Overcharge, which increases the mobs damage dealing. If the isn't killed before reaching ten stacks, he explodes, wiping the raid. JB struggled to keep the right mob targeted, the only indication being the mob will start to grow larger. Wild never even looked at them when healing, and JB, dazzled by the lights of Chain Lightning and Lightning Novas from Emalon, was often late switching targets. We wiped on Overcharge on our first attempt, and with more raiders bailing we came up short on our second attempt as well. Abandoning Emalon, the raid leader tried to hold things together for what should have been a really easy fight against Archavon, to at least get badges (and for JB, hopefully loot, too). But more raiders left, and nobody else would come since Koralon had already been killed. The raid broke up. Raiders can be so impatient.

Still, it was an incredible first experience for JB. Koralon dropped four items, two were plate and one was druid only (none of which JB can use). The fourth - well, there were a lot of salivating raiders. Koralon dropped the extremely rare [Reins of the Grand Black Mammoth]. This is a huge ground mount that can carry two passengers in addition to the rider. Five races were eligible, including troll JB. There were 12 rolls. JB rolled an 84. Not bad, will it hold up?

Sorry, no. Three (that's 3) raiders rolled perfect 100s. The three rolled again, and two of them tied with a pair of 98s. Amazing. Those two rolled for the third time - one rolled a 71, and the other a 93. The winner rolled a 100, then a 98, and then a 93 to win the Black Mammoth mount. That guy had better go out and buy a lottery ticket.

The raid DPSers were very good at the top, with two pushing 5k DPS and three others also over 4k. Any numbers under 3k started to look pretty weak. Anyone in that "weak" range? JB, raise your hand.

JB wasn't the worst DPSer. Matter of fact, when after the second Emalon wipe a raider mentioned that there were three raiders doing under 2k DPS, JB was NOT one of them. JB had to be in hard +hit cap gear because there were no moonkin or shadow priests in the raid which would have allowed JB to lower his +hit gear for more damage dealing. JB never missed on a single spell cast, which is what I wanted so I could evaluate JB's DPS in a raid setting.

Ok, so here are the numbers (I missed the first Koralon #s, so they are shown only in the overall DPS):

Koralon Kill: 2660 DPS (3.3% of total DPS), 17th place out of 20 (minus healers)
1st Emalon: 1976 DPS, 3.1%, 17th again
2nd Emalon: 2556 DPS, 4.3%, 12th

For those really, really interested, here is more. These are the four main spells JB uses for dealing damage:

Overall: 2238 DPS
Lightning Bolt (36.8% of damage, 35% crit, 2785-7189 range of damage per hit)
Lava Burst (28.9%, 100% crit, 7735-9616 damage)
Chain Lightning (20.5%, 30% crit, 2305-6901 damage)
Flame Shock (13.9%, 32% crit, 1316-2993 damage)

The rest of the Friday/Weekend goings on will come in the next post.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Tuesday/Thursday (5 Nov) - Cataclysmic Thoughts

Tuesday/Thursday (5 Nov) - Cataclysmic Thoughts

Note - I started this post on Tuesday, but got sidetracked and just got back to it.

The Wild Family played hooky Tuesday night and stayed pretty much away from the game. Now that JB has her +hit gear from the Argent Tournament and Wild has no raid to go to on Tuesday, the Family is somewhat at a loss as to what to do with that night.

The comments keep coming in on the guild website regarding our future raiding plans. The tug of war continues between the guildies who's primary focus is raiding and the guildies who's primary focus is social. If that were our only issue I think the guild would survive just fine, as we have long been able to bring both camps to common ground, and most of us in this guild want to see and participate in both. Being able to balance that has been a major strength of the guild that I think we still have.

That said, our raiding situation is not good. Some excellent reasoning has been put forth as to why that is:

The Guild
* Lack of good communication - a major issue, but one that can be fixed
* An unusually large number of key guildies with real life issues - this can't be helped, but it contributed to the slippage in both raiding and in maintaining social contacts across the guild.
* I hate you. I hate you more! Sometimes some folks just don't get along. There is some of that going on and it's spilled over into a public fight. These things will run their course - either things cool off or eventually someone(s) leave.

The Game
* Raids are more complex than ever, requiring a higher level of skill and concentration to master. Some raiders shy from tough content until it can be beaten with regularity; some raiders get frustrated at lack of progress and move to other guilds. Both scenarios mean fewer people signing up.
* The current content is boring. Complexity aside, Ulduar got old fast for a lot of folks, and ToC is nothing more than an arena match swaddled in trickery to try to make it interesting. Neither are particularly necessary or important, since Chain heroics can be run by just about anyone for badges/emblems as an alternate source of quality gear. Chain heroics are also the height of mindless farming (when you succeed), and the worst kind of useless time sink when you struggle. Result - loss of interest in playing, switching to playing alts, getting interested in other games, rediscovering there is a "real life" out there.

I looked at our server forum and virtually every post is about guilds looking for raiders, so I don't think the lack of raiders is only a problem with our guild, but affects a lot (or even most) guilds right now. The problem with that is recruiting new raiders is doubly hard - there is a lot of demand for raiders, and right now our guild can't offer a prospective raider much since we aren't running 25 mans.

Which brings me to the next patch (3.3) and the next expansion, Cataclysm.

First, the patch. Patch 3.3 will bring us another dungeon called Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen Throne, the first dungeon where raid leaders can select normal or heroic mode on a boss by boss basis, and where we will at last get to battle the greatest of heroes/villains in Warcraft, the Lich King himself. There are three 5 man dungeons that have to be completed in a certain order to unlock the later ones. Then there is a 10/25 man raid. Icecrown Citadel will keep hard core raiders intrigued for about a week, and the rest of the raiding community for a month or two. It does look interesting, though, and hopes for re-invigorating our guild raids depends in part on how fun IC is.

For those lovers of grinding dungeons, Patch 3.3 makes significant, even radical, changes in how players group up to do dungeons and raids. It is going to be something like chain heroics on massive steroids. I haven't made up my mind yet on whether it will be so game changing that asking for LFG (looking for group) in the city trade chat channels will become extinct. For those who don't get the magnitude of that, Blizzard has been trying since they first released WoW to figure out a way to get 5, 10, 20, 25, or 40 peopled together to do a dungeon, raid, or event. All have been complete failures. The primary means has always been, and still is, to advertise in the trade channel, which can only be viewed in major cities.

Patch 3.3 is another attempt by Blizzard to fix this, and it's a doozy. First is what they do away with:
1) The old LFG tool is retired.
2) Daily dungeon and daily Heroic quests are eliminated. This is important because completing these dailies earn badges/emblems, and is the most sought after dungeons for groups each and every day.

Now, what will change? The new tool is called the "Dungeon System" (DS) and at it's simplest operates the same way the LFG tool worked - add your name to the tool, select the dungeons you are interested in, and wait for someone to get back to you. If you are looking for more people for a group that is forming, you can look for candidates who have put their names in.

Now for the changes. The new tool opens things up to include all players on every server. So, JB on Silvermoon could find herself in a group with a player on the Frostmourne server. How can that work? Dungeons and raids are "instances" that are really independant of the world servers, so it is irrelevant to the instance what server you came from. The first thought that comes to mind is WOW, there is going to be a whole lot more choices available when forming groups and raids. This is good. Then comes the second thought - you are not going to know who any of these folks are, they'll disappear back to their own server when the run is over, and the odds of winding up with a scammer/hacker/ninja go way up. Still, opening up dungeons/raids across a population of 11 million or so players is certainly an interesting idea - but I can't help thinking that if it is actually popular and used, then most of the time it will probably be crashed and unavailable. Not cynical or anything, am I? Frankly, Blizzard already does this with battlegrounds, assigning multiple servers to a "battlegroup" where players are drawn from. But BGs and dungeon runs are whole different animals.

The second major change is that the new tool will allow players to sign up for "random" dungeons and raids if you don't care what dungeon you go to. The tool assembles a group and randomly assigns a dungeon to them. So now you can get grouped with complete strangers who you might never see again after one run and most certainly won't see running around on your home server, and you'll also be doing a completely randomly assigned dungeon. That takes dungeon runs down to the very lowest common denominator, but it certainly helps Blizzard manage traffic and lag in their dungeon instances.

But who would want to do that? Now, this is where Blizzard gets diabolical. Remember that they are removing the two dailies from assigned dungeons. Well, you can still get dailies for a normal and heroic run, but only when you sign up for and complete the dungeons using the random option of the Dungeon System. In one fell swoop Blizzard will now FORCE players to use the random option of the new dungeon system to form groups in order to get the daily badge/emblem rewards.

For pick up groups, which this mostly applies to (but not completely, as I'll explain in a minute) the tool will use some kind of matchmaking system similar to battlegrounds matchups and will also do a "gear check" and attunement check. Dungeons and raids will be greyed out and unavailable to those who don't make minimum requirements.

Here are some more interesting rules. Don't like one of the members of the group? There is a voting system that can get him kicked out. Want to leave early? You'll be tagged a "deserter" (just as in BGs) and will be denied access to the Dungeon System for 15 minutes. Want to keep a player away? - put him on Ignore, and never will you be assigned to a group he's in, or will he be invited to a group you are already in.

The tool allows groups to sign up together, so that JB and DER could group and then sign up for a dungeon as a group. There is also a separate Looking for Raid (LFR) section of the tool which looks pretty much like the old/current LFG tool with a few bells and whistles added. I won't even go into all the special rules that are required due to the cross-server nature of the tool - Blizzard doesn't want any trading or money handling going on across servers.

That's a lot of preamble to the discussion of the next expansion, Cataclysm. It's still too early to go into all of the details and ramifications. The main change, though, is that all of the original world of Azeroth, what we often call Vanilla WoW, will be totally transformed by a world changing, well, cataclysm. When the old world gets to be too familiar and boring, then change it. Wish we could do that in real life, sometimes. For us original players of WoW in particular, this has a real attraction. Wild's earliest experiences are his fondest. Cataclysm is, in some ways, a path to relive those earliest days in the original world we grew up in, but in an utterly changed environment that turns the vanilla world into a fresh, new world that will hopefully be worth exploring.

I'm pretty sure that I will be rolling a new character or two just to experience the changes wrought by Cataclysm. I can see the possibility of even retiring (or semi-retiring) my high level toons - once they reach level 85 (which will be the new max), of course. I am considering making another effort to pull together a group of players who want to grow and learn this remade world together - like Philly started out doing with the Grunt Foundation. We'll see.