Thursday (28 Jan) - Shiver me Timbers!

Thursday (28 Jan) - Shiver me Timbers!

Unfazed by a less than satisfactory failed run in ToC on Wednesday night, the MM raid assembled at Icecrown Citadel prepared to take on even deadly foes. We only had one new face in the raid, a pally healer who stood in for our regular pally healer. The raid leader likes druid/pally healing pairs as the healing styles of the two classes complement each other well. We had our regular shaman healer as well, but for most of the night Wild and the pally would be the only healers.

We did not have a rogue to disarm the traps that spring the hidden ward mobs, so we moved cautiously in clearing the trash. We also didn't have a shadow priest to provide the juicy mana buff, so Wild and the other casters would have to be a little more aware of mana use throughout the evening. The raid leader, who is the best tank in the group, opted to DPS, as he has the last couple of raids. I'm sure the point is to build experience with the other tanking players, but it certainly makes things a little more challenging for the healers.

We did not set off any traps clearing the trash mobs and were soon standing outside the chamber to Marrowgar. We all knew this fight now, and had one kill under our belt. We did not even think about Wednesday night as we set up, buffed up, and engaged.

Our first attempt was a near instant wipe when the two tanks got too separated on their initial rush into combat. Marrowgar Cleaved the first tank, killing him instantly, and then, unprotected, Cleaved the second tank. We laughed it off; the two tanks hadn't worked together on this fight before. Learning the fight was the whole point.

Our second attempt didn't go much better, as we had to re-learn a lesson some players hadn't been around to learn the first time we'd faced Marrowgar. We were using three healers on this fight, and the new pally healer stood too far back. When the tanks engaged, he was still out of range of the tank he was healing and boom! the tank went down. We got in some practice, but it was another early wipe.

Things came together on the third attempt and we got Marrowgar down to 22%. I can't say that Wild has gotten comfortable with the fight yet, but at least it doesn't seem quite as insane as it was initially. The margin between success and failure is still very tight. Small mistakes that get a tank or a healer killed are almost certain wipes. Wild still danced a dangerous line trying to keep the critical constant flow of healing coming while dodging lines of coldflame.

On our fourth attempt we had gone through three rounds of "Bone Storm!" marking the shift back and forth between the two phases. Wild got into one of those bad luck situations where coldflame chased Wild from his marginally safe pocket, and then no matter which direction Wild moved to escape, another line of flame seemed to track him down. The combination forced Wild further and further from the raid, and my health dwindled despite Wild's desperate attempts to stay alive. Wild ran out of room, cornered by a wall and by the cold flames . . . and was saved when Marrowgar died.

Bringing down Marrowgar erased all our worries from the previous night. Our death knight won a beautiful sword she was so happy over she had to have it gemmed and enchanted right away. We agreed, and she ported back to Dalaran to take care of it while the rest took a break. When it was time, Wild and the raid leader went outside the instance to Summon her back - only we were not in phase, so we couldn't see each other. Very irritating. A third raider was asked to come out, hoping that he would be in phase with one of us. Wild waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, Wild asked, "Um, should I still be out here?"

Ooops! The raid leader and the third player were in phase and had done the Summons and gone back into the raid, totally forgetting that Wild was still out at the Summoning stone. Wild hustled back in and we got ready for Lady Deathwhisper.

There are four sets of trash mobs in a large pavilion like area at the bottom of a set of room length stairs. Two are mob groupings, and the other two are single spiders with a nasty bite. Past those mobs Lady Deathwhisper waits, and she is one talkative lich. Throughout practically the entire strategy discussion of the trash mob fight, Lady Deathwhisper droned on about what failures we were and how badly she was going take us apart. Talk about giving us an incentive for the fight, we really wanted to just shut her up.

We cleared the trash mobs much more easily than we anticipated. We were ready for the loud mouthed lich.

We had several raiders who had never seen this fight, and as a group we were facing her for the first time. The raid leader, Bd, finished his instructions and Wild realized that he had only covered phase 1 of the fight. There is a phase 2, which Wild knew because I've helped kill her in the guild ICC25 raid. I mentioned that to him and he sort of grinned and said, yea, I know, but I don't think we'll get there on our first attempt and don't want to confuse things.

We were using only two healers for this fight because the hardest tasks were on the DPS. Our shaman healer switched to elemental spec and joined the caster group. We had three raiders designated as casters, three as melee (the hunter was declared melee for the purposes of this fight), two tanks, and two healers. You want to talk complicated, this one will make your eyeballs pop out. Deathwhisper (DW) is enshrouded in a mana shield and can't be hurt as long as it's up. Raiders assigned to attack the shield have to divide their attention between the shield and the mobs that spawn. Three mobs spawn on alternate sides of the room, one group at a time, and keep spawning until the shield goes down.

Here's where is gets trickier. The caster mobs are immune to magical damage (ie, immune to spell casters) and have to be killed using the physical attacks of the melee raiders. The melee mobs are immune to all physical attacks and so have to be killed by the caster raiders. It gets worse. DW periodically enhances a mob, making it much deadlier than the others, and that becomes a focus target to quickly get it down. It gets worse. Sometimes the killed mobs don't stay dead, as DW resurrects them.

The battle started when we started attacking DW's mana shield. Three mobs spawned on one side of the room and the rest of us engaged. While Wild was keeping folks healed, I had to dance out of the way of pools of death and decay DW tossed out into the room, as well as decurse a nasty debuff that slowed all raider functions (movement, casting, swinging a weapon, everything) by 75%. And let's not forget about the shadow bolts she casts against raiders as well - she likes to target raiders with the least amount of health.

We were busy trying to remember everything we were supposed to do, killing the things that came at us, getting two of the enhanced mobs down, yelling in frustration when DW would resurrect a mob we'd just killed, and suddenly one of the raiders hammering the mana shield called out, "Shield down!"

Enter phase 2. Which we hadn't talked about. The raid leader was spam talking the strat for phase 2 while it unfolded around us. Bd talks very fast even when he's calm. Under fire, the stream of words were so swift and tightly packed we wondered if Bd would pass out for lack of breath.

With the shield down, the mobs stopped coming, but now DW directly attacked the raid. A tank managed to get hold of her, but two raiders died who happened to be too close to her when she came gliding into our ranks. Wild knew that shades would also be spawning, mobs which can't be killed but can kill a raider with a touch. We held together surprisingly well despite the initial chaos when we entered phase 2, and got DW down to 39% before wiping. A very good first attempt.

Our second attempt was also a wipe due simply to bad timing when we hit phase 2. Wild was hit with the slowing curse and then immediately socked inside a circle of death and decay. No way Wild could get out of the DnD slowed down, so I had to take two seconds to decurse first. A tank had also gotten the curse, and Wild was the only raider who could do the decursing. The other healer was too far away to help as Wild tried to get out of the dnd, and I didn't make it. Slowed to a crawl, and with no one to decurse, the tank died as well.

On our third attempt we shut the lich up.

Two bosses down now in ICC10. It was about 8:30pm and we wanted to take a shot at the third encounter, the Gunship Battle. However, one raider had to leave, and there were some other delays. We had ten minutes left in our night by the time we cleared trash to the ship and were ready to go.

As I've said before, this is a fun fight. In the 25 man ICC raid, only four of the 25 raiders were given jetpacks, and Wild thought that was all there were. Not so. The raid leader pointed out the npc on the ship that issued jetpacks, and told everybody to don one and have some fun with it. What a blast! The most hilarious thing was watching our druid tank in bear form. The jetpack was anchored at the bear's haunches, and firing off the rockets sent a blast of flame shooting out his . . . well, you just had to see it. Poor Wild's jetpack was broken (meaning I never did figure out how to do any more than light off the jets, but couldn't get airborne). The pack didn't work at all in tree form, either. Oh well, we didn't have time for Wild to experiment anymore, and we set sail.

Wild's jetpack

We had fun with the battle, even deciding to go past 9pm to get in a second try when we fell short in the first one. We wiped again, primarily due to problems with the boarding party, but this is a very doable fight.

Wild didn't get any gear this time, although two cloth items dropped that would have been upgrades. The clothies needed them, darn those guys and gals. :)

Wild and the pally paired up extremely well as the two healers, and our stats pretty much mirrored that.

Wild: 2704 hps and 38.3% healing
Upally: 2721 hps and 36.0% healing

With a little faster kill of Marrowgar we could reasonably expect to get to the fourth and final boss in the first wing of ICC next week.

Wednesday (27 Jan) - Can This be Happening?

Wednesday (27 Jan) - Can This be Happening?

Wild was in game around 5:30pm and the lag in Dalaran seemed a bit more bearable than yesterday. Still, Wild got his business done quickly and then flew to Icecrown Citadel, ready for the evening ICC10 run with the MM raid.

Wild noted that there were only three of his own guild's healers in game, including Wild, so I whispered one to see if maybe Wild had already missed the healing discussion that was supposed to happen. Nope, I found out, there hasn't been one, and since so few healers were around we wound up not having one. Healers became an issue for the guild's ICC25 run as well, and all I could think to say was, already? Wednesday is the second raid night now and one the guild calls "training night" since a lot of the time is usually spent learning a new boss and wiping a lot. Some raiders shy away from those nights, and unfortunately it looked like this was already happening with the new raid schedule. The raid leader even whispered Wild, knowing I had declined the invite, just to double check in case I might have become available, Sorry, I had to tell him, Wednesday night is my ten man raid night.

After considering doing a badge run in ToC25 instead, the raid leader managed to get six healers and went ahead with the ICC25 run. They spent most of the evening wiping on Deathbringer Saurfang. It's not clear whether they actually killed him, but they did move on to the second wing of ICC to try their hand at the first boss there, Festergut. I haven't had a chance to check that out.

In the ToC10 run, we took down the first encounter, NRB, without any trouble. We were looking to clear the place in an hour so we could get over to ICC10. However, we wiped on our first attempt at Jaraxxus, the second encounter. Wild was getting some lag, as were others. Not nearly as bad as the night before, but it was there. The healing might have been able to overcome the lag, but a critical element of the Jaraxxus fight is interrupts of high damage abilities, and both tanks and DPS complained they could not get them off quickly enough. We wiped four times on Jaraxxus before we managed to kill him, and that took an awful lot of time.

A leather caster belt dropped, and Wild lost the roll to a moonkin shaman who was with MM but hadn't raided with us before. However, he passed on it so that Wild could have it. That was very nice of him. He whispered Wild that he had four level 80s, all ToC geared, so passing on a piece of gear didn't bother him a bit. When he told me who his other toons were, I had to laugh because three of them Wild had run with before, including in this group. "Well," I told him, "looks like a know a lot of you."

The Factions Champions were up next, and we simply could not make it work. We wiped three times with no visible progress. It was 8:30pm, and rather than bang our heads fruitlessly, we called it a night. We have cleared this place multiple times before, so it was really frustrating that we would stall on this night, but the old adage still applies that just because we've done it before doesn't mean we can do it every time. Thursday night we are going directly to ICC. If we are going to wipe, let's do it on bosses we are still learning.

I promised a post about druid healing based on Tuesday's ICC25 run. That post turned out to be a fairly dry dissertation so I am not going to post it on the forums. If you really want to read it, you'll find it on the blog at:

Tuesday Part 2 (27 Jan) - Druid Healing

Tuesday Part 2 (27 Jan) - Druid Healing

Healing ICC25 with two other druids gave Wild a chance to compare how we heal across a range of encounters in the most difficult dungeon in the game right now. Our roles were different. Wild was primarily raid healing, although as I always do I watch the tanks and get heals and Hots on them whenever possible. The other two druids were tank healers, but I'm sure they tossed a fair amount of raid healing out there, particularly on encounters where raiders are Marked or otherwise targeted and need extra help.

Here is how the final numbers came out:

#1: DC (pally), 4438 hps and 16.8% of the healing
#2: Mg (druid), 3861/16.2%
#3: Pd (druid), 3107/13.0%
#4: r-shaman, 3200/10.9%
#5: Wild, 2140/8.8%
#6: Cy (pally), 2435/7.4%

There was a part time 7th healer who didn't get enough chances to be included.

There's a pretty wide range of hps (healing per second). The two top healers got in almost twice as much healing as Wild did. Again, that is partly due to the roles, but it's still a pretty wide disparity.

So I decided to compare the three druid healers. First was in raw output, getting a look at what spells were used, how often and how much. The stat haste is important, as would be mana if healing had to be slowed down to preserve mana. Druids in a 25 man with innervate and a shadow priest (we had one) should never, ever run out of mana, so I'll assume that wasn't an issue.

Here is the breakdown by spell. Spreadsheet like tables are beyond the feeble ability of the TSN forums, so if you want to see the numbers nicely arranged go to the blog site.

Spells --> Rejuv WG LB Reg Nour SM Total Casts
Pd 2364 1413 599 673 0 36 3954
Mg 2053 1282 1524 422 59 45 3360
Wild 1201 2838 1178 283 120 0 3349

The first three spells (rejuvenation, wild growth, and lifebloom) are all instant cast spells. As a raid healer I was spamming WG whenever it was available to me (which is every 6 seconds) so that explains the large number there and in part the smaller rejuv number, since WG replaced a rejuv I would have otherwise cast. Longer cast spells regrowth and nourish are more often used by tank healers, and that is clear when looking at the reg numbers being higher for Pd and Mg. Nourish is a special case, as it is a matter of debate and preference whether nourish is better than regrowth. I like nourish and as you can see Wild used it liberally, mostly on raiders who needed more healing help than an instant cast HoT could do. Also, on marked raiders, once a regrowth has been cast Wild would switch to nourish to keep him alive. Obviously Pd does not like using nourish. Then we come to SM (swiftmend). This is a nice spell that can be instantly cast for considerable healing, but also must have a HoT on the target for it work. It is often used as an emergency heal. Spells with conditions give Wild fits and so I often forget to use it.

Total casts simply adds up the number of casts, with one exception. WG hits multiple targets (up to 6 if glyphed for it, which most druids are). I used 5 as the average so divided the WG numbers by 5 to get an idea of the number of casts. Pd got a lot more casts than the other two druids, including more longer cast spells, which is another thing to look at further.

What all this says is that there are valid reasons why the raw healing numbers fall out the way they do. But what does it say about the amount of healing being done? For that we also have to look at gear and at set bonuses.

Wild has the T9 two piece set bonus which buffs Nourish (Wild also glyphs nourish so one can see why I use it). Mg has both the T9 two piece set bonus and the four piece bonus, which adds a +crit chance to every rejuv that is cast. On average Mg's rejuv's will do more healing than Wild's or Pd's. Pd doesn't have any T9 bonuses, but he does have the T10 two piece set bonus. This bonus increases the healing of wild growth, so on average his WGs will heal for more than Wild's will. So, we have Mg and Pd with set bonuses that improve their healing over Wild's.

Now let's look at gear numbers:

Stats --> Health/Mana SP/Crit Regen/IC Haste
Pd 18757/20931 2623/17.02% 642/347 749
Mg 18972/22641 2610/20.77% 742/433 315
Wild 18227/19746 2270/14.52% 680/388 606

There are two big numbers that just jump out here, which is Wild's spell power (SP) and his crit (crit % determines how often a spell will crit, which greatly increases the amount of healing for that spell cast). A deficit of more than 300 in spell power compared to the other two is a major reason Wild's heals will heal less, and low crit means Wild will get fewer crit enhanced casts. A partial equalizer is haste. Pd's extremely high haste allowed him to cast faster, and that is clearly evident in the total number of casts. Mg has the better overall stats and finished ahead of Pd in total healing, but Pd was able to get close by being able to cast more often. Wild has double the haste of Mg, but in this case it didn't seem to help Wild as Mg had a slightly higher cast rate even with the lower haste. This might be something Wild should look into from a technique perspective.

I hate to say it's a gear thing - but it's a gear thing. I hope the two druids will be involved in the healing discussion, because I'd also want to discuss techniques that might help Wild heal better.

One more thing. All the stars have aligned and Wild has made a major investment in gear. You know about the new boots. You remember that Wild also got a Crusader token, and with that and 75 triumph badges (knocking Wild down to zero) Wild purchased the T9 helm, giving Wild 3 pieces of T9 gear. Then, after feverish internal consideration, Wild decided to spend 50 of his 77 valuable frost emblems on a new cape. Wild was wearing an ilevel 213 cape, and rather than wait to reach 95 frost for the big ticket items, I felt it better to get something that Wild will use for the distant forseeable future. [Drape of the Violet Tower] is an ilevel 264 cape that blows away the old one. Wild now has two pieces of i264 gear. Wild drove Happy crazy collecting the five gems Wild needed, and then had to make two trips to Dragonblight to get the head enchant and to make the mats to embroider the cape. Total outlay for gems and enchants was over 1300 gold. Let's replay the stats now:

Stats --> Health/Mana SP/Crit Regen/IC Haste
Pd 18757/20931 2623/17.02% 642/347 749
Mg 18972/22641 2610/20.77% 742/433 315
Wild 18227/19746 2270/14.52% 680/388 606
Da New Wild 18927/20916 2361/18.60% 720/423 506

The stats are still well short of the other druids, but for Wild that is one sweet upgrade, and one that will at least get him into the ballpark with the big boys.

PS - Wild's ToC10 run will be reported in the next post, but to wrap up the above discussion Wild won another item from that run (a belt). It was a small upgrade, and like many small upgrades Wild lost some stats and gained some stats. Another 400 gold in gems and mats later, here are Wild's latest stat numbers:

Stats --> Health/Mana SP/Crit Regen/IC Haste
Pd 18757/20931 2623/17.02% 642/347 749
Mg 18972/22641 2610/20.77% 742/433 315
Wild 18227/19746 2270/14.52% 680/388 606
Da New Wild 18927/20916 2361/18.60% 720/423 506
New Wild #2 18827/20976 2375/19.67% 723/424 446

Wild improved on mana, SP, and crit, all good. The loss came in +haste, which will have an affect on Wild's longer cast spells. It won't affect the speed of Wild's instants, though, as Wild is still above the cap for haste that would affect instants, which is 440 haste.

Tuesday (26 Jan) - Going Deep in ICC25

Tuesday (26 Jan) - Going Deep in ICC25

There was a moment of pure panic when Wild logged in Tuesday night. Wild came in game in Dalaran at one of the armor shops where Wild usually repairs his gear. The world formed around him, the comforting signs of a bustling city all about. But as the instant of joining the world stretched into seconds, and Wild's gear failed materialize to enfold him, a stab of panic struck - No! Have I been hacked?! Will I find the bank looted and all Wild's worldy goods sold off?

Thankfully, no. The Tuesday maintenance was a nasty one, and the world of WoW was moving veeerrryy sloooooowly. It took more than twenty seconds for Wild to get his clothes on. The lag was so bad Wild gave up trying to use the mailbox, and the raid leader for the night's run was telling everyone as they came in game - get out of Dalaran and get to Icecrown Citadel as early as possible or risk getting stuck trying to log in or travel. The lag was so bad that players in Dalaran on an alt would log out and log back in on their main - and their alt would still be standing there. The joke was "It could be worse. You could log back in on your main and find your alt looting your bank." One reason why many guilds do not schedule raids on Tuesdays.

But we were now raiding on Tuesday, so Wild hightailed it in slow motion to Icecrown Citadel. Or, he almost did. Wild had not quite gotten out of Dalaran when a guildie friend whispered Wild, asking if I wanted to get the frost random dungeon done. Well, thought Wild, I really like to have more time to get mentally ready for the raid . . . but, I did need to get that daily done, and no better way to do it than with guildies. Wild said sure, and a few minutes later we found out where we were headed - Culling of Stratholme (CoS). Sigh. This is one of the longer dungeon runs, with tons of trash mobs and a scenario where an npc (Arthas, no less) controls the pace of our progress (meaning that there was a lot of waiting around for the npc). It was well after 5pm by the time we finished, and when Wild reappeared back in Dalaran, the lag was even worse.

Wild did get to Icecrown Citadel this time. Soon came the first announcement from the raid leader, letting us know that there were 35 players signed up for the 25 spots in the raid. The nasty lag had also reached into and choked the raid calendar tool, and the raid leader was having a heck of a time getting players assigned to the raid. In the process he goofed and actually sent out raid invites before he was ready. Hmm, thought Wild, I didn't see a raid invite. Wild hoped that wasn't a bad sign.

As the raid start time approached the raid leader asked all those who had been confirmed to come on vent to discuss filling the final spots. Wild checked the raid calendar, but it wasn't talking. There was no way to tell if Wild was confirmed or not. So I got on vent anyway. Even with all that raid invites still managed to get out (the real invites) by 6:10pm, and Wild was in.

The troubles weren't over, though. Two raiders found that they could not enter ICC. In fact, the instance portal did not even appear for them. Attempts by a warlock to Summon them directly inside also failed. In desperation the two relogged, wondering when they did so how long it would take to get logged back in. Eventually, finally, and ultimately, we were all inside and ready to go.

We started with six healers, including three druids, although not the same three as last week. Our old uber druid, who I was surprised to find out had switched to another guild, was running with us, in addition to the heir apparent uber druid in the guild (no, that's not Wild, I'm not heir apparent to anything :P ).

We worked through the trash mobs with no problems and arrived at Lord Marrowgar. Wild knows this fight from the ten man raid, but I wondered if the same strategy would be used in 25 man. Fortunately for Wild, it was, and I was glad that at least for the first boss I felt comfortable with the fight. Wild was raid healing and tank HoTing. My main concern was to keep the heals flowing, and not to die. Wild achieved both, and Lord Marrowgar went down.

He dropped [Frozen Bonespike], and Wild's jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the stats on this ilevel 264 main hand dagger. If Wild had not been anchored by the roots of his tree form I think he might have fainted with desire as well. He certainly swooned. Among other juicy stats, the dagger added close to +200 spell power over his current weapon, an increase of such magnitude it would leap frog Wild to a whole new gear level. Wild got the shakes when he rolled an 88 out of 100. Mg, the other guild druid in the raid, rolled a 93. Wild sagged.

Wild put himself back together and prepared for the next encounter. Coming up was Lady Deathwhisper. And of course a chance at more of the insane loot in ICC25.

Lady Deathwhisper is a DPS fight. The boss starts with a large mana shield that she hides behind and can't be hit. Over the course of the fight the DPS hammer that shield to break it down. In the meantime waves of mobs attack from both sides of the room. The raid is divided into three groups, a tank group to attack the shield, a melee group to handle melee mobs, and a ranged group to handle caster mobs. The trash mobs can also reanimate themselves and that has to be watched out for. That's Phase 1.

Wild was aligned with the ranged group as well as assisting with heals on the tank in that group. The main thing Wild had to look out for was getting aggro from incoming mobs and the circle of Death and Decay the mobs cast around themselves. We made it through phase 1, bringing down all of the mobs and then breaking down the Lady's mana shield. Lady Deathwhisper then brought out her own big guns and the battle redoubled as she attacked. Phase two puts great pressure on the tanks and the tank healers, while she still lashes out at the raid with one shot kill Frostbolts. Unkillable Shades also glide through the raid dealing death with a touch. Staying out of their reach is our only defense.

Frostbolts can be interrupted before they are cast, but some were getting through, and one got Wild, killing me instantly with the Lady at 49%. Three others were already dead by that time. The raid fought on, and brought her down. It was Wild's first kill. Wild did not have a chance to swoon at any loot this time, which was probably good for the sake of his heart.

The third encounter in the Lower Spire wing of ICC is the Gunship Battle. Every now and then Blizz throws in fun encounters that are not that difficult just to provide a change of pace. The gunships in this encounter are the horde and allie air ships Orgrim's Hammer and Skybreaker which ply the skies of Icecrown. The two ships come at each other like ships of the line from the days of sail. Captaining the enemy ship is Deathbringer Saurfang.

Getting to the pier where our ship waits requires taking an open elevator platform to the top level of the Citadel. Wild didn't know this, having never gotten past the Lady Deathwhisper fight. I got left behind. Sigh. Not to worry, though, I found the danged thing and got to the pier in plenty of time to board the ship.

I had read about this encounter and knew that the raid would break up into two groups, one which would stay on the ship, and the other which would storm the enemy ship. The raid leader was just starting to explain, and no assignments had been made, when the ship began moving. Someone had started the encounter.

We tried to ride it out, the raid leader calling out instructions and trying to get us organized as the two ships came into view of each other. Raiders jumped on the four cannon at the sides of the ship and began hammering the enemy ship. We closed to grappling range. Raiders started jumping to the other ship. Other raiders, equipped with jetpacks (yes, I said jetpacks!) took flight to the other ship as well.

Cannon from the enemy ship started raining shells down on our ship. Ranged mobs fired off clouds of arrows at us as well. The air hummed with activity. And the lag struck.

Wild's "instant" spells suddenly took upwards of ten seconds to cast. The whole raid was hit with it. Even the cannon fire went into slow motion. Wild could see raiders die and then see their health bar light up from Wild's heal - after the raider was already dead. Raiders who jumped to the other ship discovered the enemy ship had swung out of reach while the lag held them, and they fell to their death. Things went from barely under control to out of control, and after a few minutes of this the raid leader called a wipe.

For the second attempt no one was allowed to board the ship until the strategy had been talked out and roles assigned. Wild was originally assigned to the boarding party (that storms the enemy ship), but when they learned I hadn't done this fight before, they switched me to ship defense, which would give me a better feel for the fight.

Starting the encounter requires talking to an npc, and we placed a raider next to him to keep anyone from starting things early. That was halfway in fun, but just to put a point on it that talking to npcs when you didn't know what would happen was generally a bad idea.

We started again. Things went very well - until the lag struck again, and we simply couldn't cast spells. We tried to fight through it, but we finally had to call a wipe for the second time. We decided to take a long break - ten minutes - to see if the lag would go away. The raid leader was really chomping at the bit to get to the fourth boss, which we have yet to kill, and the lag was costing us precious time against an encounter they knew we could beat.

Following the break we went at it a third time. There were periods of lag, but for most of the fight we were able to cast. I loved the fight! There are enemy mages that freeze our cannon, enemy boarders we have to repel, our own teams storming the enemy ship, retreating when Saurfang's Battle Fury reaches untankable levels, and then returning once that wears off. And seeing all the fun the jetpack players were having. Wild danced around the deck, avoiding the enemy cannon fire, healing through multiple arrow shots, and generally having a whale of a time. We won!

One of the drops was [Boots of Unnatural Growth], the finest pair of ilevel 264 leather caster boots Wild had ever seen. Wild rolled a 59. That was the highest roll until the other non-guildie druid in the raid rolled a - 55. Wild won the roll! Wild's first ilevel 264 gear.

From there we stepped off the boat to the pier and the battle with Deathbringer Saurfang, who it appears survived the gunship battle.

Wild happened on this fight in last Friday's ICC25 when we spent the whole evening wiping on this boss. We didn't get close that night.

On Tuesday the strategy discussion began with a major debate over how to handle a Saurfang ability called Mark of the Fallen Champion. Raiders with the Mark get "splash damage" with every hit Saurfang gets on the tank. The Marked raider requires massive healing for as long as the Mark is active, but while getting healed it increases another ability, Blood Boil, that is used to cast more Marks. If the raider dies Saurfang gains back 5% of his health. When your health is in the millions, 5% is a lot.

The discussion was about whether to let raiders with the Mark die or to try to keep them healed. Depending on how fast Saurfang gains Blood Boils, there could be more than one raider with the Mark, making healing even more desperate. We didn't really know what would work until we tried, so after a bit of confusion we healers decided we wanted to try to keep folks alive.

Saurfang has many other nasty things to worry about, putting even more pressure on healers, and of course no boss fight would be complete unless there were other mobs running amok; in this case they were called blood beasts. And if we ever managed to get Saurfang to 25% health, that's when he gets REALLY mad. About the only good thing about this fight is that it does not require much movement from the healers. Wild could pretty much stand in one spot the whole fight, as long as I was careful to keep a reasonable distance from other raiders to avoid an attack that jumps to nearby raiders.

On our first attempt we got Saurfang to 44% before wiping, by far our best attempt since we started pounding on this orcish boss.

On our second attempt we got him all the way down to 22%, getting a little ways into the "really mad" phase where he Frenzies. Our problem was still with the Marks, however. By the time we wiped there were six raiders with Marks, and we just couldn't keep everyone healed. We only had about ten minutes left, not enough time to set up a strategy change. We were close, too, and thought that maybe one more try might get us there. We'd hit a wall, though. On our third attempt we stalled again, with a raid best 21%.

We had to call it, having still not downed this boss. But confidence was growing, and we were starting to see that we could indeed take this guy.

Wild was not very high on the healing meters, and I'm going to do some comparisons between Wild and the other two druids in the raid, which I'll report separately. The healing leader for the raid also sent Wild an email later on saying there would be a meeting of healers before the Wednesday run. Wild will be running with MM, but I should have time before the raid to join in the discussion.

Wild took a peek at the DPS for the evening, and wow was I impressed! A rogue led in damage dealing with 6672 DPS. Over 6k! Wild can barely do 3k DPS in moonkin form, and I was feeling a little smug as Wild generally leads the DPS in the 5 man heroic runs.

In fact, five raiders topped the 6k DPS mark in the raid. Five more topped 5k DPS, and three more broke 4k. Our raid leader and the sole moonkin in the raid came in with 4454 DPS. Far above where Wild is now, but at least that looks more achievable than the 6k others are reaching.

I also looked at who was getting those numbers. Six of the top seven DPSers were transfer guildies. The best DPSer among the rest of the guildies was the melee shaman who generally leads all our DPS - he was over 6k, but finished 4th. There's no question that the transfer guildies provide a massive influx of powerful DPS to the guild.

Monday (25 Jan) - Guild Notes

Monday (25 Jan) - Guild Notes

A new guild 25 man schedule was posted on Sunday, changing our wed/fri to tues/wed. Wild will be available for the Tuesday run but will still be running with the MM raid on Wed/Thurs. In the short term this should help Wild as the guild has been able to down the first three bosses in ICC so far on their first night. Wild has at least a passing familiarity with the first two (Marrowgar and Deathwhisper), so I won't be totally out of my element. That, of course, assumes that Wild gets an invite. Winning gear could get harder, though, as the guild intends to establish a DKP system again to control how gear is distributed.

Raid nights were changed partly because the second night on Friday was not well attended, with numerous folks saying they had conflicts. I also believe the new transfer guildies requested the change. The first night of a raid is generally the more popular. Wild can only sign up for the first night, but the guild is encouraging folks who can only make one night to still sign up. What will be interesting to watch is whether Wednesday, which as the first raid night had better and growing attendance than Friday, will stay that way after a few of nights of wiping on new bosses, which is typically what the second night is about.

There is also the spectre of the guild going more and more toward hardcore raiding, as there are really no high visibility "social guild" type players around anymore to balance things. Wild is something of a remnant of the days of "casual raiders" and some already disenfranchised friends have warned Wild privately that my days of raiding with the guild may be numbered. All I can say is that I've been through this cycle numberless times, and Wild is still here and still raiding. The way I see it is that the raid either still sees value in having Wild in the raid, or they can't figure out how to fill a raid without having Wild along. I know I'm not the best player and never have been. But I hope that Wild's reliable attendance, positive attitude, and willingness to pound my head against new bosses for as long as it takes carries some weight.

Oh, and what this new schedule also does is open up Friday night for some pvp play time. :-)

Speaking of pvp, EZ did intend to get in game Monday night for some EZ, Ando, and Lao action. However, Wild had messed around all week without getting the weekly raid badge run done. Monday night was his last chance, and when a former guildie friend started up a raid to Ulduar for the badge run, Wild had to get in on that. It had been quite a few weeks since Wild last entered Ulduar. For the badge run the kill quest was XT-002, but we had to go through Flame Leviathon first to get to the girly screaming robot. Wild and a pally were healing. Although Wild goes moonkin for the five man heroic runs, I still prefer to heal in raids, even with PUGs.

Flame Leviathon was an easy kill, even if the driver of the siege engine that Wild was the gunner for didn't know where to go and kept attacking things that didn't need to be attacked. We then killed the two sets of trash in front of XT. Those mobs can be tricky, but we simply overpowered them.

The fight with XT, which Wild had all kinds of problems with in the early days of Ulduar, was laughingly simple. If you recall XT has a combat phase and a phase where he exposes his heart where we do most of the damage to him. Usually there are long periods of combat and short periods with his heart exposed. Poor XT got hit so hard that no sooner would he enter combat that he'd "get tired" and expose his heart. And he did it over and over again. We put the robot out of it's misery quickly. Wild has never seen all of Ulduar. Maybe Wild can convince his ten man to run it some night so I can get that experience.

Ando and Lao were pvping while Wild did the Ulduar run, but by the time Wild finished it was 10pm and Lao had already had to leave. Before Wild retired for the evening I noticed that the guild was running ICC10. I took a look at the names and nine of the ten were transfer guildies. So this is the new, third ten man. The one original guildie in their raid was a druid healer. Their group did seem to be light on healing type players, so that part of our guild makeup hasn't changed much even with the new infusion of players.

Anyway, Wild retired for the night and EZ and Ando got in three WSG matches. The first two were grimly frustrating. On the first match, whether the horde group was that bad or the allie team that good, we really could do nothing against them. It got to the point where the allies were able to take over and occupy the horde base, something I'd never seen happen before. And we couldn't take it back. In the second battle we got into a situation where the best we could do was to defend our base. We were pretty good at that, but we were losing 1-0 at the time, and there is a time limit on the match. Unable to do anything else, time ran out and the allies won since they were ahead. We got a little redemption on the third match, finally getting a win.

Wild is looking forward to the Tuesday night 25 man raid, but is also a little anxious. I'm fairly confident that Wild will get an invite, but a little worried about Wild's rookie status in a raid full of ICC experienced and better geared players.

Weekend (24 Jan) - Trial of the Crusader 25 Man Style

Weekend (24 Jan) - Trial of the Crusader 25 Man Style

Wild got to meet a lot of new guildies on Friday night as the transfer players that either already joined our guild or joined as they checked in for the raid added their numbers to current guild members.

The raid leader, surveydrood, had an ambitious agenda of clearing ToC25 in an hour and then hitting it a second time in hard mode (Heroic). All but one raider had at least some experience with ToC, and most of the new guildies had cleared it on their old server, so we looked ready for the challenge. We had only five healers, though, so one DPS, a pally, volunteered to heal, giving us six, although seven healers are typical. Druids dominated the healing ranks, with three of us, plus the pally, a holy priest, and a shaman. Even though the ranks of healers were tight, there was no lack of guildies wanting into the raid, and many in game standbys who either signed up late or did not sign up at all did not get invited.

Since there was a raider getting his first look, a quick discussion of strategy was needed for each fight, something that weighed against us making our one hour target for the clear. However, as long as we could keep the kills coming, I doubted anyone would care.

We slammed through the first encounter, Northrend Beasts, and took the three waves down on our first try. It was not without it's losses, though, with Wild dying along with a number of others. Wild found himself behind in the healing, 5th out of 6. A T9 token, [Trophy of the Crusade], drops in each encounter in ToC25. A hunter won the roll, with Wild coming in second.

Lord Jaraxxus fell next, followed by the Faction Champions. In ToC25 there are 10 Champions. We downed them all on our first attempt, a feat which the whole raid universally said none of us had ever done before. The loot chest for the Faction Champions dropped a leather healing chest piece [Robes of the Shattered Fellowship] and Wild won it! This i245 piece was good enough for Wild to equip on the spot even without an enchant and without gems in the two sockets. Prior to the next encounter the hunter that had won the T9 trinket whispered Wild and said that after thinking it over he could not use the token and traded it to Wild. Wow. Two drops for Wild.

We pushed on, bringing down the Twins and then facing off against the final boss, Anub'erak. It was a bit messy, but we killed the bug, earning a clear of ToC25, Wild's first.

We had started the run at 6:15pm and finished it at 7:47pm, about a half hour late, but we teasingly blamed that on the raider that was new to ToC.

We departed ToC25 and then re-entered with it set to Hard Mode. We were warned at the beginning that everything happened a lot faster in hard mode, that bosses hit harder, had a lot more health, and that everyone had to be on their toes. Healers in particular were told that if we weren't taxed to the limit something was wrong.

There is really no way to describe our effort as anything but forgettable. After three attempts where we could not get past the wyrms (the second wave of NRB), a seventh healer was added. The two attempts that followed were even worse. We took a break and thought about it. Some folks offered that we should just head over to Onyxia (which had been suggested after the last wipe) and get that done with the time we had left. In the end, we decided to make one more attempt in ToC hard mode. It failed.

So we all trooped over to Onyxia. Wild remembered to wear his Onyxia cloak this time, and that must have made Wild a lot smarter because I never got hit with a Deep Breath, the ability that kept getting Wild killed in other Onyxia fights. More likely I was saved because I picked smarter raiders to run away with when Ony started that Breath.

The raid, which had gotten a bit subdued during the ToC hard mode effort, rebounded and took the frustration out on Onyxia, killing the dragon easily. Wild almost won a couple of items from Ony, but lost close rolls both times. That was ok, Wild already had those two drops.

Over the course of the evening Wild's position in the healing ranks steadily improved. The druids came in 1-2-3.

#1: Mg, 3432 hps, 18.6% of the healing
#2: Wild, 2584/12.9%
#3: Sp, 2526/12.8%
#4: cy-pally, 3086/12.3%
#5: Rz (shaman), 2208/11.0%
#6: pally2, 1860/8.9%
#7: pally3, 1401/7.9%

Afterward Wild got his new chest piece enchanted and gemmed up, and it looks mighty fine. The T9 token will take a little more time, as Wild must have triumph emblems in addition to the token to buy any gear. The token is generic, which means I can buy any one of the five tier pieces (the older tokens usually were for a specific type of gear and often a specific class). Wild will likely purchase the helm, as that would be his best upgrade, but needs to earn another 18 badges to get to the 75 needed to buy it.

Wild also has enough frost emblems to buy ilevel 251/264 gear, but I cannot make up my mind on how to spend it yet. The key question is do I spend them as I get enough, or should I save up for the bigger purchases? Wild can buy a single trinket, relic, or a pair of gloves with the 60 frost he has now. But the really good stuff, and the higher need stuff, costs 95 frost. Decisions.

The Toc/Ony raids weren't the only action going on Friday night, either. Narcissus ("Sis"), played babysitter to Ando and EZ on a trip through the mid-20s level dungeon Gnomeregan. EZ went from level 23 to 24 on the run, and Ando popped two levels, going from 26 to 28.

Thursday (21 Jan) - Banging Our Heads in ICC10

Thursday (21 Jan) - Banging Our Heads in ICC10

The MM raid group is really gaining momentum. The raid leader mentioned to Wild that he now has more players signing up for his raid than he has spots for. Wild remains the only non-MM guildie in the raid, but as something of a founding member Wild isn't worried about his place with the raid.

We got off to a bit of a late start Thursday night due to some real life issues, but we were hard at it by 6:30pm. Clearing the trash was a simple matter and we managed not to trip a single trap that would release one of the nastier mobs. Having a rogue in the raid could stealth forward ahead of us and detect the location of those traps was a nice benefit.

It wasn't long before we were ready to engage Lord Marrowgar, the first boss in ICC, once again. Bd was tanking, and we had a new pally as the off tank. The pally was familiar with the fight but had not tanked Lord Marrowgar before. We also had a mage who was getting his first look at ICC.

The battle started with Bd charging Lord Marrowgar with the rest of the raid rushing in and taking up positions within the center circle very close to the boss. We had learned that in Phase 1 of the fight the line of flames that lance out from Lord Marrowgar start a few feet away from him, and standing inside that radius kept those flames off of us. That phase went very smoothly. Wild was raid healing but had plenty of time to keep up HoTs and support heal both tanks. We were also getting practiced at handling the bone spikes that impaled random raiders on a regular basis. All but one DPSer was in close with the rest of the raid, making it easy to turn and fire on anyone who got the spike. A lone hunter was held out of melee range and helped target raiders who got spiked. Healers were quick to get heals to spiked raiders as well, and we did not lose any raiders.

Lord Marrowgar called out "Bone Storm!" in a loud, threatening voice and began a whirlwind maneuver, entering phase 2. The boss targeted random raiders and chased them about the room. Lord Marrowgar also began more lines of flame, creating deadly zones that became harder and harder to avoid. This is the hardest part of the fight, but we weathered it. Lord Marrowgar ended his bone storm and the tanks rushed in to re-establish aggro and bring the boss back to the center of the room as he returned to phase 1. Something went wrong, and the boss Cleaved a tank, killing him almost instantly. The battle began to unravel and we finally wiped.

Attempt #2: Our best attempt yet since we started banging our heads against Lord Marrowgar, we got the boss down to 31% health before wiping. As we prepared for the next attempt, Wild and t-pally, one of the other healers, were discussing healing strategy and found that we had both discovered a key change to that strategy at the same time. Instead of running to the outside when bone storm starts, which is what we were supposed to do, we both independently decided to stay right where we were, at the center. The main advantage of that was that we could still heal everyone in the raid from there. A secondary, but critical, advantage was that it gave us a chance to watch where the lines of flame were going and gave us precious extra seconds before needing to move.

Attempt #3: We'll blame this one on the tanks still getting used to moving together. Wipe.

Attempt #4: We'll blame this one on the healers. Sometimes the odds are not in our favor and healers get hit multiple times by spikes. That is a double whammy for the raid. One, the healer hit can't heal, and two, a healer that has other duties has to stop and heal the spiked healer. That makes four healing requirements (two tanks, the raid, and the spiked healer) and only two healers to meet all those requirements. Most of the time we manage it, but this time a healer died, Wild immediately rezzed him, we stumbled forward but the healer just rezzed got spiked and died again, a tank died and, well - Wipe.

Attempt #5: Wild went down on this one where we got the boss to 47%. Wild was the only druid, so Wild couldn't be rezzed. That put even more pressure on the remaining healers, and on Wild to stay alive.

Attempt #6: Can we just skip this one? This one was entirely Wild's fault, and to make it worse Wild was moved to main tank healer on this one to give the shaman healer a break. As we entered our first phase 2 the lines of flame skewered Wild. That was one risk of staying in place - sooner or later one of those flames would intersect where Wild was standing. I got out of that one, with health down by half, and was still getting heals on myself and on the tank when another line of flame bracketed Wild and threatened to squeeze him from both sides. Wild had two things on his mind at that instant - get out from between the closing lines of flame, and get heals on the tank, who was taking damage. Wild moved and healed. Too late I noticed where I had moved to - I was standing next to the two tanks. Oh crap, that also meant I was standing IN FRONT of Lord Marrowgar. Friends, I don't recommend that. Sincerely. Lord Marrowgar Cleaved Wild, and I don't think there was enough left to make hamburger out of.

It was still very early in the fight, and I felt both worse and worse and happier and happier (if you can even imagine that) as the two healers left put forth a titanic effort and refused to give in. It was our best attempt yet, getting Lord Marrowgar down to 19% before the raid grudgingly gave way and finally wiped. If only . . .

Attempt #7: We needed a break after the 6th attempt, and I think there was a small letdown when we came back. We wiped early.

Attempt #8: Another long, long battle, full of desperate effort, rezzing a dead healer, and just refusing to let this skeletal nightmare torture us anymore. The raid rose up as Marrowgar's health dropped below 5% and finally brought him down.

We had our first kill of an Icecrown Citadel boss. Lord Marrowgar was Lord no more.

It was an epic battle, and hopefully just the beginning of our assault on ICC. And Wild was very relieved that the 19% wipe was not what would be remembered on this night.

The loot was a wonderful axe and mail healing gear. They found welcome homes, and Wild didn't care that the dearth of raid drops Wild could use extended beyond ToC to ICC.

t-pally stepped to the top of the healing on the kill:
#1: t-pally, 3922 hps, 36.2% healing
#2: Wild, 3034/30.0%
#3: Fl-priest, 3351/27.8% (our shadow priest went holy for the latter attempts, freeing Sh to DPS)

Changing the subject, Wild learned this morning (Friday) that the group of raiders that have been participating in guild 25 mans have decided to join the guild. This is a block of 10 players that also have their own ten man which they will continue to run. As I've noted before, there are risks in taking this move, as it may alienate some current guildies. In particular, after some drama around the inability of the guild to get a third ten man raid going, having an intact ten man raid join the guild is going to create some flack. Personally, I understand why the guild is making this move. If we want to raid 25 mans, we had to find players who would come to the raids, something our own guildies were not doing.

Break break one more time.

After complaining at the lack of raid gear drops for Wild, I figured I'd better go look and see just what Wild's chances are for gear in ToC10. So Wild went through all of the gear available. In one sense it was sobering in that there is actually very little left in there Wild can use. I guess the silver lining is that means that Wild is pretty well geared already for that level of raid.

There are only three pieces of gear in ToC10 that Wild would reasonably be able to roll on and would be upgrades:

Waist - [Belt of Bloodhoof Emissaries] is a slight upgrade.
Trinket - [Binding Stone] would fill a niche for his trinkets. It is a +mp5 trinket that Wild would have situational use for.
Head - [Helm of the High Mesa] is a small upgrade to the T8 piece Wild will eventually replace with a T10 helm. I'd take it if it dropped, but it wouldn't add much.

There is also a very nice off-hand, [Lightbane Focus] that moonkin Wild would like, but I see that going to the DPS folks the first few times we see it.

Beyond that, there really isn't anything in there that Wild could reasonably expect to roll on worth getting. Sadly, the final boss, Anub, drops nothing at all that Wild needs. Equally sad is that other than the trinket, none of Wild's biggest needs can be improved on from ToC - back, chest (T9/10 eventually), wrist, and feet. Sigh.

There is another source of ilevel 232 gear equal to what drops in ToC10, and this is the three five man dungeons in Icecrown Citadel. Wild has done those dungeons before, and has at least four pieces already from there. Wild can use the Dungeon Finder to get groups to do those dungeons, too. Would it be worth it? Is there anything left in there Wild could use?

1st - Forge of Souls
Chest - [Mord'rethar Robes] is a surprisingly good cloth piece that in a five man Wild might actually win.

2nd- Pit of Saron
Feet - [Prelate's Snowshoes] are cloth boots that would be a sidegrade. Some stats are better, but Wild's current crafted boots have two sockets to none for these. Not worth a special trip.
Trinket - [Nevermelting Ice Crystal] has fans as one of the better spell power/crit trinkets. Wild would like it, but I'm not sure I'd farm this place to get it, and it wouldn't replace a healing trinket anyway.

3rd - Halls of Reflection
Chest - [Chestguard of Broken Branches] is a leather piece that Wild definitely could use.
Trinket - [Ephemeral Snowflake] is a better pure mp5 trinket than [Binding Stone], so maybe this is the one I should be after.

Edit: Trinkets are hard to compare, with Equip stats and Use stats and all kinds of gimmicks. After a more thorough review, I am convinced that in the world of mp5/mana gain trinkets, neither [Ephemeral Snowflake] or [Binding Stone] beat out Wild's current +mana trinket, [Spark of Hope]. That's even though Spark is an ilevel 219 from Ulduar, to the others i232. A second mana regen trinket still has it's situational uses, but it's not a priority.

Well, it seems that if Wild is going anywhere, it would be the Halls of Reflection. How many runs would it take to see that chest drop, and win the roll for it?

And as an oh by the way, I just learned that because of the influx of new raiders, we are doing something of a restart on our 25 mans next week. The new guildies are locked on ICC25 this week (they ran with another guild before deciding on us), so our Friday raid this week will be ToC25. Hmm, another source of gear and T9. I hope. :-)

Wednesday (20 Jan) - Make it Three for ToC10

Wednesday (20 Jan) - Make it Three for ToC10

The Wednesday MM raid began a little differently than usual this night. Bd, the raid leader for the MM raid, invited all his healers and tanks into the raid ahead of the rest of the group. He wanted to get our opinion on an idea. The raid has cleared ToC10 two weeks in a row, with remarkably improving swiftness. Our first clear two weeks ago took two full nights (over 5 hours). Our second clear last week took one full night and about half the time as the week before. This week, Bd wanted to clear ToC10 in an hour. He asked, did we think that was doable? I can imagine the big grins on everyone's faces as we all agreed that it was worth going after.

The rest of the raid also agreed. By pushing the time to clear ToC, that would leave more time available to battle the infinitely more difficult Icecrown Citadel.

Our official raid start time is 6pm. Generally, though, it was closer to 6:30pm before we actually started our run. We didn't dawdle on this night, and everyone was in game very close to the start time.

6:10pm : The raid began. The following times are when an encounter was defeated.

6:23pm : The first encounter, Northrend Beasts (NRB), with it's three waves of monsters, fell on the first attempt.

6:47pm : Bd was DPSing this night instead of tanking, and we had one experienced tank and one that was getting his first chance at tanking ToC. On the second encounter, Jaraxxus, there was some confusion between the two tanks and Jaraxxus turned them both into minced meat. On our second try Jaraxxus went down.

7:01pm : For the first time, the raid took down the Faction Champions on our first attempt. We were awesome! I also have to make a correction. In past posts I've told you that it's a 5 on 10 pvp-like battle. All of that is true, except that Wild can't count (not having toes might have something to do with that). There are six Faction Champions, not five. And we pwned them.

7:24pm : We were doing well, so Bd decided to speed things up some more. We had been using three healers - Wild, t-pally, and Sh. To kill things faster Bd asked Sh, the shaman, to switch to elemental spec for additional caster damage on the fourth encounter, the Twins Darkbane and Lightbane. But there wasn't enough healing no matter how much Wild and the pally healer tried to stretch things, and we wiped on our first attempt. Back to three healers, and the Twins died on the next attempt.

7:41pm : The final boss, Anub'arak, fell.

Well, we didn't make it in an hour, but an hour and a half (1 hr, 31 min) was still pretty darn good. We had two wipes, and cutting those out would have trimmed that time even more. And it was our third straight clear of ToC10.

Wild was elated with the run, but disappointed by the complete lack of drops that Wild could use. Every leather piece that dropped (and there weren't many) were melee based (for feral druids and rogues), and the two usable cloth pieces went to the clothies that needed them. Wild also passed on a nice dagger that would have been a slight upgrade, passing to the mage who would get a lot more benefit from it. We've fully cleared ToC three times now without Wild getting a single piece of gear, and not even seeing a piece of gear that a healing druid could roll on. But it is definitely good for badges, and after dropping to just 12 triumph emblems after Wild's last purchase almost two weeks ago, the number is back up to 39.

Wild was pretty pleased with his healing numbers.

#1: Wild, 2740 hps, 39.1% healing
#2: t-pally, 2414/24.7%
#3: Sh, 1730/20.0% (Sh had some duty as DPS that lowered his numbers a bit)

With more than an hour left in our evening, we definitely had time to reassemble at Icecrown Citadel for some shots at Lord Marrowgar.

We wasted no time. As soon as we all arrived, we started working through the trash mobs, cautious of the traps that release the giant ward mobs. Bd was still DPSing, and we had to laugh when the only raider to die on the trash run was Bd, who readily admitted that he got so excited DPSing that he over-aggroed and pulled an extra group of mobs into our midst.

We had a couple of raiders who had not seen Lord Marrowgar yet, so we went through the strategy, which included a new wrinkle having the whole raid stand very, very close to the boss to avoid the blue flames that have eaten us up on prior attempts. On our first attempt Wild didn't get close enough to avoid the flames. I got caught in the first blast, tried to move forward but got hit with a Spike that immobilized Wild, and then was struck a second time by another wave of flame. Wild died. Wild eventually got a rez and we practiced until we wiped. On our second attempt the tanks got their footwork tangled up, both getting Cleaved by Lord Marrowgar, which is virtual single shot death. We wiped again. We gave it a third try, and this time we did mostly everything right, getting Lord Marrowgar down to 62% health before wiping a third time. I did say "mostly" right. We'll get better.

We were out of time, but on Thursday we have another whole evening to see if we can get Lord Marrowgar down.

Tuesday (19 Jan) - This and That

Tuesday (19 Jan) - This and That

It was a rough night Monday on the pvp front. We warmed up with EZ, Ando, and Lao taking on Warsong Gulch in a level 20s bracket battle, which we won handily.

Looking for more of a challenge, we raised the stakes and swapped to the level 70s bracket with Philly, Sin, and Narc. The three girls are quite low in the bracket, which covers 70-79 level pvpers, so we knew we would be targets, but at least Philly had no idea just how big a target she would be.

In our first match in Warsong Gulch the allies pretty much slaughtered the horde team, and when it became obvious the horde couldn't win the Allies started hunting down us low levels and farming kills. Even with Sin healing at max rate Philly only lasted seconds in any battle where a melee to could catch her. Worse, Philly could not even heal through the DoTs from the high level warlocks and shadow priests that would just cast the DoTs and then laugh as Philly basically bled to death. It wasn't a pretty sight, although we got in our licks when we could.

Narc had to leave after two hours. Sin and Philly decided to try Alterac Valley (AV), which involves much larger numbers of players and lessens the danger a bit of being a low level in this bracket. That worked out somewhat better. We were still crushed in our first battle. Philly wasn't that happy with her DPS in shadow spec, and for our second foray into AV she switched to DISC spec for healing. The second AV match was more evenly matched and Philly enjoyed the pitched battles that stretched across half of the large map. The horde managed twice to push the allies to the brink of defeat, but the allies made a number of rallies and held on to win in a very long match. We did enjoy one win, back in WSG, with both Sin and Philly healing. Sin took top honors as the #1 healer, and Philly came in a somewhat distant second behind him.

Philly was hoping to be able to level up through pvp much of the time, but was pretty disappointed with the amount of experience gained for the three hours effort. Winning matches greatly improves the xp, and the horde lost most of the matches, but still, Philly added only 3% to his xp. Philly had a great time despite the losses, but at that rate it will take a lot more than pvping to get her to level 80.

On Tuesday Philly headed for the Isle of Kel'danas, the level 70 hub of some nine daily quests that greatly aided JB in her trek to level 80. For less than an hour's work Philly added 12% xp and is now 15% of the way to level 71. The Isle will be on Philly's calendar every day.

Wild did his dailies for Kalu'ak rep (yes, Wild is back at that again) and after a couple of days off is signing up for the random daily dungeons again as well. Just as an aside, the Dungeon Finder has had some ramifications for Happy. Before the patch the enchanting material Dream Shards were a big part of Happy's profits. Not any more. Most of the gear that drops in those random dungeon runs are sharded, and a lot the result is dream shards. Happy used to sell them for 25-30 gold apiece. Now they sell for 5g each and the price is still dropping as the AH is constantly flooded with them. The silver lining is that Wild still has to buy a number of enchanting recipes that cost 10 dream shards each, something Happy wouldn't entertain until now while they are so cheap.

Wild also did a rather crazy quest. During Wintergrasp matches Wild and JB both would sometimes see quests pop up when another member of the raid would share them. Mostly they were related to the WG battle, but one kept coming up that baffled 'em both. It was called "Cluck!"

Seemingly unrelated to that quest, the MM raid that Wild is part of sometimes called out "Westfall chicken!" before a fight, and sure enough several raiders would bring out a pet chicken. It was a sort of good luck charm for the group. Wild didn't have a chicken, and my frog, or crab, or any of several other non-combat pets didn't seem to fit in with the chicken theme. So Wild decided to check it out.

Initially Wild learned that the quest "Cluck!" was an Alliance only quest, and that there was considerable trickery involved in a horde being able to acquire the quest and even more machinations to actually get the chicken from it. The quest is done in the low level alliance zone of Westfall, hence the chicken became known as the Westfall chicken.

I was busy planning how I was gong to manage getting that chicken from Westfall when, digging further, I discovered that in the last patch the same quest had been made available to horde in the low level town of Brill near the Undercity. So late Tuesday night Wild headed over there. It was near midnight when Wild got there, but the sleepy little town still had a couple of low levels doing stuff there. Wild buffed them, and then hoped they would ignore the craziness that was about to ensue.

Wild picked up the quest from the quest giver, an npc trainer that hangs out at the edge of town. Wild located a chicken, targeted it, and then started doing the chicken dance. Yes, there is such a thing as a chicken dance, which anyone can do by entering the slash command /chicken. The dance involves strutting around, waving ones arms like a chicken, and loudly clucking. It's funny when there are several doing it. Wild felt pretty foolish doing it all by his lonesome. The dance has to be done over and over until the chicken decides to notice how stupid looking you are. After a lot of foolish dancing, the chicken deigned to notice Wild, and "looked quizzically at Wild." Wild had bought some chicken feed from that same npc that gives the quest. With the chicken paying attention, Wild then Cheered the chicken with the /cheer command. The yellow "?" appeared over the chicken. Wild opened the quest, gave the chicken the chicken feed, and completed the quest.

The chicken laid an egg, and then walked away. Opening the egg, Wild got his Westfall chicken pet.

I'd recommend to anyone wanting that pet to hold on to the "Cluck!" quest if it's ever offered for share. If you already have the quest you do not have to do the chicken dance to get the chicken's attention. Unless you really like to chicken dance, that is.

Monday (18 Jan) - They Took Our Men!

Monday (18 Jan) - They Took Our Men!

So begins the first quest for the Sons of Hodir faction. Although you could not tell that from anything in the quest. The task at hand - rescue the goblin menfolk of a village that had been attacked by an army of women. Called the Silfreden, these women look like vikings, except that they are blue hued. Any resemblance to the Na'vi, you wonder? Oh come on, everyone knows who the Na'vi are, right? Blue giants living on Pandora. Pandora, the planet. Avatar, the movie. Well, no, they really don't look much alike. But those floating islands on Pandora sure do look an awful lot like the floating islands in the land of Nagrand in Outland. Hmm, I wonder where James Cameron gets his ideas from? But I digress.

The goblins live on their mountaintop retreat called K3, a sleepy little snow covered pair of igloos with a fence that obvious did not keep the Silferden out.

The town of K3

Wild flew to the Silfreden village and rescued the goblins, and in a second quest returned to discover more trouble in the Forlorn Mines operated by another race of uglies called the Hyld. Wild finds Lok'lira, an old crone held captive in the mine. She tells him there is another goblin being held captive there, and that she'll help him if Wild will help her. She's no looker, that's for sure, buy hey, Wild's here, why not help? Wild goes looking for a named Overseer to kill, noticing that there are two other players apparently on the same quest chain. One is alliance, and he thought it great fun to slaughter the Overseer each time she spawned, although he was obviously farther along in the chain. Wild was too fast for him, though, as I tagged the mob first and got my kill for the Crone.

Tucked away and half hidden from view in the mines was a level 79 elite hostile named Mildred the Cruel. The Crone wanted Wild to go talk to her. Should I kill her before or after I talk to her, Wild wanted to know. Ahh, but she had a different plan. She disguised Wild in the form of the mine overseers, so that 'ole Mildred would be fooled. Wild's disguise looked better than the Crone, but I'd still be the last pickup at the local tavern on free ale night.

Wild's Disguise

Disguises are typically fraught with problems, from losing them when shapeshifting to simply having them break at not so good moments. This was a heavy duty disguise, though, which Wild spent a lot of time in and never failed him, even when he shifted to flight form and even when I used weapons my disguise obviously didn't have, like druid spells. That was a pleasant surprise.

Thinking Wild was an Overseer, Mildred set Wild to doing Overseer stuff - punishing exhausted miners, killing some as an example to others, and other less savory duties. Wild's reward was to go kill a special prisoner that had tried to beat Mildred at her own game by taking part in their sacred competition. That prisoner was the Crone, and with the key Mildred gave Wild, he freed her.

The scene shifted to Brunnhildar Village with the Crone in disguise in the heart of the enemy village. Wild, also still in disguise, is talked into signing up for the sacred competition. Isn't that why you were put in chains, Crone? Wild asked. Yea, she said, but remember that goblin fellow you were supposed to save? He's in the competition already - and you can save him by taking his place. Wild's not sure he cares whether the goblin is saved or not, but the competition did sound like fun.

Seems the best way to get into the competition is to kill the organizer of the event, which Wild does. What followed was a series of challenges to get ready for the main event. Wild had one on one fights with a few npc challengers (they had no chance against Wild), became a bear rider in a couple of easy events, and rode the bear mount to defeat a chained elite used as target practice. The elite was a little tougher trial, but still no match.

Then it started getting really interesting. In the quest Cold Hearted, Wild flew to an iron giant controlled city called Dun Niffelem, where proto-drakes (dragon mounts) had been captured by the giants. Wild had to mount a captured dragon, freeing it from its chains, and then rescue enemy sisters. Don't forget that Wild is still in disguise, doing the bidding of the Crone.

At this point Wild has completed all 16 quests in the chain and he still has no rep at all with Sons of Hodir. This chain then led Wild to another quest chain that was unobtainable until the last one had been completed.

Starting with the quest The Last of her Kind, Wild is set more challenges having to do with competing in that sacred competition, and yes, still in disguise. One of the more challenging tests required getting on a bear mount and jousting with other bear mounted npcs. Now Wild knows where Blizz got the idea of the Argent Tournament. I had no idea that there was jousting going on before that tournament was introduced. Wild is a poor jouster, and in a small enclosed ring with several hostile npcs, Wild did get himself killed once when I got ganged up on. Wild did get the six kills he needed, and that led to The Drakkensryd, which was the most fun of all.

At the start of this quest Wild was handed a harpoon, and given a dragon to ride. The dragon flew to the Temple of Storms, one of the tallest towers in the game. The dragon mount only has a couple of commands, one to hurl the harpoon and one to dismount. Unlike many flying mounts used in quests, there is no parachute if you dismount while airborne, and it's a very, very, long way down. The dragon mount can't be guided, either; it circles the temple at varying altitudes, along with a number of other npc ridden dragons. The task Wild was set was to defeat ten of those hostile npc riders.

Wild had to fool around in flight for awhile to figure all the above out. I tried casting the harpoon a few times and got out of range messages and other nonsense, and then finally Wild's harpoon struck a dragon. A large chain was attached to the harpoon, and Wild was pulled off his mount and into the backseat of the hostile dragon rider. Wild was momentarily surprised, and the hostile attacked. The battle that ensued was a short one, and the npc lost. The npc, dislodged from his seat, was sent screaming to his death. Wow, was that fun! Wild went after more riders.

Wild was probably halfway to his ten kills when something different happened. Wild launched his harpoon, snagged a dragon, and was pulled to the dragon like every other time. Only this time Wild was not deposited in the back seat, but in the driver's seat, dislodging the rider and sending him screaming to his death without a fight. Whoa, now that was really cool! I wonder how I did that? It happened a couple more times before Wild got his ten kills, but I also noticed that I didn't get a kill credit when that happened. Well, no matter, Wild had another problem to figure out. Such as how to get off this thing and turn in the quest.

Wild's dragon circled and circled. The quest had to be turned in to a fellow named Thorim at the top of the temple. Quick, where have you seen Thorim before? He is an ice giant and one of the bosses in Ulduar.

Wild eventually remembered that the harpoon could be used to strike certain points on the temple itself. Wild tried several times to hit one of those but the dragon he was on never got close enough. Wild thought about dismounting the dragon and then popping into flight form while falling. I think that would have worked, but I was concerned that doing that might cause the quest to fail. So Wild had to use the harpoon to get onto a dragon closer to the top, where Wild was finally able to snag a temple post and wound up clinging to the temple ledge. Wild got his quest done.

Oh, and what about those dislodged riders that Wild didn't have to fight? Welllll . . . it seems that if you fire your harpoon at a dragon that has another player riding it, well, ahem, well, you sort of knock them off their dragon. And if you aren't a druid with flying form, it's a long way down. Oops. :D

There is considerable lore associated with Thorim having to do with his brother killing Thorim's beloved, and the whole thing is pulled from Norse mythology. Blizz did a good job with this.

Thorim tasked Wild with ridding Dun Niffelem of the iron giants that have taken over by picking up boulders and hurling them at the level 79/80 elites, which spawn dwarves to help Wild kill the elite. Lots of fun. Even more fun is using snowballs to kill a number of fire based mobs that move about around the giants. Eventually Wild killed the leader of the iron giants to complete the quest.

That ended the second quest chain of eight quests. If you are keeping count, that's 24 quests total. So far. And still nothing about the Sons of Hodir.

Now comes three more quests, Forging an Alliance, The Refiner's Fire, and Spark of Hope. Actually, Forging an Alliance is when Wild did the snowball throwing. I was getting a bit confused at this point. Up to that point the iron giants had still controlled Dun Niffelem, but after that quest the area "phased" and the frost giants had again taken control, and the town was friendly. Now, at last, Wild had a Sons of Hodir faction listed in his list of faction reps. Wild was neutral with Hodir. Neutral!? Neutral!! That's all, after all that!?

Well, Wild was mollified when he did the latter two quests, both easy. Each quest rewarded Wild with 22,000 rep with Hodir. That is a HUGE amount of rep. When those two quests were done Wild's rep with Hodir had catapulted past Friendly and deep into Honored.

There were still more quests Wild could do to further earn rep, as well as several dailies that is another way to add rep. Rep gains for these quests were greatly increased in patch 3.3, making it an even faster grind. But Wild had an even better shortcut. An item called Relic of Ulduar drops off of almost every mob in Storm Peaks. Those relics can be turned in for Hodir rep. They are so common they sell cheap on the AH. Wild bought about 400 relics, spent 15 minutes feeding relics into the quartermaster giant at Dun Niffelem, and reached the top level of Exalted with Sons of Hodir.

The shoulder enchants are superb, and some of them are Bind on Account, which means they can be bought and sent to other players on the same account without them having to have the rep. The quartermaster also sells two mammoth mounts. Wild bought the cheaper one (the expensive one costs 8,000 gold). Ain't it cool?

Wild's Mammoth Mount

Weekend (17 Jan) - Here Come the Floods

Weekend (17 Jan) - Here Come the Floods

The SoCal weathermen and women are reporting that there is going to be real weather to report all this week. If their dire (and smilingly gleeful) predictions are true then we are getting more rain this week than we've seen in the past decade. We had light mist on Sunday (that counts for rain here in southern California) and cloudy skies with occasional sprinkles so far today (Monday). But we're told a lot more is coming.

We have suffered our own sort of flooding at the house this weekend as we discovered on Saturday what is likely a slab leak from our hot water system. Nothing like having a nasty plumbing problem over a holiday weekend with an NFL playoff game here in San Diego on Sunday (which was a miserable event all on it's own, so it's starting to look like the biblical plagues around here). The insurance company should have someone here today.

The Wild Family took a back seat to football for most of the weekend but a few things did get done, not the least of which is that Philly DINGED! to level 70. She got her first 21% of experience getting there doing Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley pvp. The even bigger news, though, was that Philly had a surprise visitor for the last AV battle. The now legendary Sinstar, the one and only original toon in the family of DER, Ando, and others, made an exciting dual crossover - from her original server to Silvermoon server, and from the Alliance faction to the Horde. For the Horde! Our leader, Thrall, cheered at getting a new convert, and of course Sinstar was welcomed into the guild. We now have a team of level 70+ toons: Sinstar (druid healer/moonkin); Philly (undead priest healer/shadow priest); and Narcissus (warlock). The pvp battlegrounds will never be the same again.

Philly got the rest of her xp getting to level 70 in the Howling Fjord area of Northrend, and later picked up her swift flight form (paying a 5,000 gold bill) from the Flight Master in Warsong Hold. Philly can only use her new swift flying mount in Outland, not in Northrend. She will have to wait until level 78 to be able to fly in Northrend. There is an accounting trick that can be used so she can fly in Northrend immediately, but for right now I'm leaving things as they are. It involves moving a toon between accounts, and I have done that twice already and don't really want to do it again.

And yes, Wild did get invited to the guild's second night ICC25 raid on Friday night. Wild was impressed with the progress they'd made on Wednesday - I thought they had only killed the first boss, Lord Marrowgar, which was a nice accomplishment all it's own. But they also killed the second boss, Lady Deathwhisper, and then defeated the third encounter as well, called Gunship Battle, which sounded really fun.

That meant that Wild joined a group that was about to engage the fourth and final boss in the Lower Spire wing of ICC. That boss was Deathbringer Saurfang.

We got a late start, and it took a long time to lay out the strategy for the fight, with a lot of changes and instructions in between attempts. It was a lot to assimilate, and we struggled learn our roles and assignments and positioning. Not wanting to confuse anyone with inaccurate advice, I'll hold off on the specifics until we get a better feel for the fight. We made three attempts, showing slight improvements each time, and then called it when it looked like we couldn't get any further, at least not on this night. Our best attempt was our final one, getting Saurfang to 63%. There was also some tension between the raid leader managing the strategy and the hunters, who couldn't seem to satisfy the raid leader on the positioning of the hunter traps that were a key element of the plan. Wild's now seen three of four encounters in the first wing of ICC now in either 10 or 25 man, leaving only the Gunship Battle as an unknown, so I'm getting at least a little practice on those bosses.

Wild also detoured from his Kalua'ak rep grinding to another faction grind called Sons of Hodir. Shoulder enchants have been a special problem for Wild, since he has to rely on faction rep to get them. Frankly, what he can get sucks (it's from pre WotLK). The faction Sons of Hodir has very nice shoulder enchants, but that faction was one of the most difficult of them all to earn rep for. When WotLK came out Wild took one look at what it would take, and said never mind. That changed with one of the recent patches, and on Sunday night Wild embarked on a mission to grind rep for Hodir. The long, involved quest line was a huge amount of fun and I'll recount that in another post. Wild still has a couple more steps to take, but I'd recommend going after rep for this faction as it's both fun and profitable for the rewards. Note that the quests take place in the highest level zone of Northrend, Storm Peaks, and the mobs there are in the 78-80 level range. A flying mount is also a must.

Ok, that may be the plumber guy at the door. And I think the rain has arrived.

Thursday (14 Jan) - ICC, The Kalu'ak and VoA

Thursday (14 Jan) - ICC, The Kalu'ak and VoA

Wild got his second look at the newest dungeon, Icecrown Citadel, on Thursday night. Wild's first trip inside had been with his guild as a guest of one of the guild's ten mans. This time it was with the MM raid. Wild had signed up for the raid, and got the invite without being asked if I was available. Wild is signing up for their raids, but I think the raid leader has been careful not to assume too much. Wild has made it clear that I'm not changing guilds, so now I'm making it clear that the MM raid is my first choice for Wed/Thurs raiding, even when it conflicts with guild events, so they don't have to consider whether I will make it or not each week.

The area around ICC is what Blizz refers to as a "phased" area. Phased areas were introduced awhile back as a way to add more richness to the storyline and lore of the game. What a player sees, and who he can interact with, is dependant on where the player is in his progression on quests and other tasks. For example, an area might look deserted, with only mobs around, for the player who has not done any quests in the area. Another player who has done the quests might find a friendly town at that same spot because his quests helped clear the area and get the town established. Those two players could be standing next to each other, but they would not see each other because they were out of phase with each other.

ICC is set up differently than most dungeons. Entering the instance portal of most dungeons takes one from a common area into the special zone that only the players in the raid can enter, and where the mission/battle begins. In ICC, there is a small outpost inside the instance portal where there are npc merchants and such, and there is no division or demarcation between this outpost and the rest of the dungeon. Meander a few feet away and you will aggro mobs and engage the raid. I'm guessing they do it this way so that there are no complications with the phased area immediately outside the instance. But Blizz forgot one thing - there is a Summoning Stone outside the instance in the phased area, and it is both frustrating and funny to use it. Players in the same raid often can't see each other outside by the Summoning Stone because they are out of phase, so it becomes a guessing game to find two raiders who are in phase with each other to summon someone. And if the person you summon is out of phase with you, you can't see him when he arrives. It's just weird.

Anyway, this was the MM raid's first foray as a group into ICC10. The raider leader, Bd, was tanking this night, and assigned Wild as his healer. No raid healing for Wild this time. Cv, a very good holy priest, was the off tank healer, with the shaman, Sh, handling raid healing. There were a couple of new faces, but Wild knew most of the raiders now.

We engaged the first mobs cautiously, and Wild massively overhealed at first while I gauged how much healing would be needed to keep the tank up. Bd is very good, and Wild quickly found the right levels. We moved down a decent sized passage, picking off small groups of mobs and staying alert for the traps. Encased in the walls of the passageway are very deadly mobs that are activated by tripping unseen traps at random spots. We made a point to stay to one side of the passage, as we would use that same route each time. We were doing fine. Even when we had two mob groups pulled accidentally, the healing kept up and only the mage died. Mages die if you breathe hard on them - at least that was the healer's excuse. :)

The adrenaline spiked when we tripped the first trap, and the large nasty stepped out from the wall with the words, "I am awakened!" We were in the middle of a battle with a group of mobs, but the tank picked up the new bad guy and we brought the whole gaggle down without any deaths - except for the mage, who died again.

More mobs were engaged, and more mobs died, and the mage died again of course, and we made it to the first boss. The mage asked if someone would post the "Death List" from recount, the addon that counts such things. We got the giggles as he solemnly pointed out that the list had one line: "Deaths - 3 - mage."

The first boss in ICC is a multi-limbed and multi-headed skeletal monstrosity called Lord Marrowgar. He's the gatekeeper to the rest of the instance, and something of a raid check to see if we are ready for this place. By all accounts (probably written by hard core raiders) he's not supposed to be that hard to beat. Yea, right. Check out the 27 Dec '09 post for Wild's first look at the place. Wild's comment at the time - "Lord Marrowgar may be the toughest boss fight Wild has ever had to learn." That December raid, over two nights, made 17 failed attempts and took more than six hours before finally bringing Lord Marrowgar down on our 18th try. Yep, he's easy all right.

This night there would be no cheering a first try kill against Lord Marrowgar, who deserves to have his full name and title used - until we can kill him. Our first two attempts were pretty good, though, from the standpoint that we had a semblance of an idea what to do. After that, though, there were positioning issues that the tanks had to work through. Two tanks are needed for this fight, and coordination between them is critical. Small mistakes meant massive damage and multiple strikes beyond the ability of a healer to match. Things got worse as we started trying different things, learning what works better, and what didn't work at all, looking for something to jell into a successful strategy. The healers had no wriggle room at all. For the tank healers, nearly our entire focus had to be on keeping our tank alive, and we had to do it almost constantly on the move due to several raid wide attacks Lord Marrowgar harrassed us with. Worse, the boss routinely skewered random raiders with a large spike. That immobilized the raider struck, and the spike had to be destroyed quickly. The raid healer had to get heals to those spiked raiders until the spike could be destroyed, but was not always in range, and precious tank healing time had to be risked to get a heal to the spiked raider. Even worse than that was when a tank healer got spiked. That caused a double problem. Someone had to heal the spiked raider, and someone had to heal the tank that the spiked healer couldn't heal. With no margin for error, the death of either a healer or a tank meant a wipe.

We made nine attempts, with our best attempt being our last one, getting Lord Marrowgar down to 65% after nearly three hours effort.

There was no discouragement. If it was easy we would have gotten bored with this game a long time ago, and this group is very much up to the challenge. The back and forth playful taunting and off color innuendos may have been a bit muted as we focused on the fight, but it didn't disappear entirely. To help in positioning, one of the raiders, Cv, the lady priest, was given the triangle mark so that we could see where she was standing. That triangle mark is near universally called "panties" for obvious reasons. Cv was good at positioning, so we were using her to help the rest of us get where we needed to be. One problem was that the mark would fall off when she got spiked. Another lady raider noticed that and informed the raid in vent: "When Cv gets spiked she loses her panties." You can guess where the conversation went after that.

Wild took the healing honors on the night, but it was close.

#1: Wild - 2367 hps, 35% healing
#2: Cv (priest) - 2181/30%
#3: Sh (shaman) - 2291/26%

Next week we will go after ToC10, hopefully clearing it in one night like we did this week, and then going back to ICC10 for more learning.

On to other things.

Wild is on his mission to win Exalted rep with the Kalu'ak so that he can get the nifty fishing pole these seashore abiding folk offer. He was barely Honored with them when he started, and a single daily quest to gain rep with them were all that he was aware of. Recently, though, Wild uncovered new quest threads that pushed his rep into Revered, as well as two more daily quests. Each of the three daily quests are of the "cute" variety.

The easiest is in Kasgala, which is a frozen waste of a town in the Borean Tundra. The kalu'ak are at war with the invading kvaldir (vikings and viking ships), and the quest is to take boxes of supplies away from the invaders. In flight form Wild can do this quest in under a minute.

Kasgala is far to the west on the continent of Northrend, and the second quest is far to the east, in Kamagua, Howling Fjord. The height of cuteness, Wild must catch special fish and then use the fish to entice a sea lion bull to cross a wide, shallow stream to the female sea lions on the other side. One can do it the hard way, feeding the bull handsful of fish as it makes it's timid way across. Or one can take the simplest approach - attack the bull, make it mad enough to chase you across the stream, and then toss it a fish when it reaches the sea lion female. Sweet love is the result of either approach, and gets the quest done.

In between, at Moaki Harbor in Dragonblight, there are wolvar pups that need saving. The message is a bit mixed here. The wolvar are being hunted by the kalu'ak, but they are afraid of wiping out the whole wolvar race. So instead of not hunting them, they send out folks like Wild to kill wolvar mothers and steal their children so that their race will survive. Huh?

The practical aspect of this is that Wild can earn 1500 rep each day by doing all three quests. Wild is banking on getting that pole in the next two weeks.

And speaking of fishing, the Kalu'ak also have a weekly fishing tournament. The tournament is as dumb as anything I've seen Blizz do. Basically, between the hours of 2pm - 3pm on Saturdays, one simply fishes in the fishing pools anywhere in Northrend. If you catch a special fish and are the first to bring it back to the quest giver in Dalaran, you win. Most of the time it takes less than 15 minutes for a winner to be announced. No skill is required, just blind luck and being able to come to Dalaran. It may be dumb, but one of the prizes is a Bind on account ring that has a +5% experience bonus. Wild wants it, and so when possible he'll be perched next to a fishing hole at 2pm on Saturdays.

Wild was puttering about in Dalaran after finishing up his dailies, and a guildie asked if anyone would like to join him in VoA 25. I looked at the guild roster, and there were only three of us in game. The other guildie said he wanted to go. What the heck, why not? I said sure. The guildie gave me the name of the player who was organizing it, I whispered him that I wanted to go and was a healer, and viola! Wild was in.

The organizing player did a good job, and already had most of the raid filled. We tackled Koralon, who drops T9 level gear, wiping on him once and then taking him down. Koralon is the boss everyone wants to get, so I thought there would be a lot of defections once he went down. But apparently we did so well on Koralon most stayed around to try Emalon. In theory Emalon is a lesser boss than Koralon, but in reality it is a much harder fight for a PUG because DPS have to change targets, adds have to be killed quickly, or the whole raid goes boom. It's not hard if DPS do what they are supposed to do, but hard to do in a PUG. We wiped on our first try, and there would be no second try as players started bailing out.

The WoW gods deigned to favor Wild, however. On the Koralon kill [Runetotem's Gloves of Triumph] dropped, ilevel 245 Tier 9 gear. Two druids rolled on it (there were three of us in the raid). Wild's competition rolled an 88 - Wild rolled 97. This drop totally rewired Wild's gear progression plans, because how could I predict these gloves falling into Wild's hands? Gloves were high on Wild's priority to purchase with triumph emblems, and now I had to rethink what to spend them on. Even more interesting (and I didn't notice this until later) is that this T9 piece is for moonkin spec, not healing spec. I was trying to figure out whether to spend hard earned emblems on moonkin gear, and here one just drops out of the sky for me. And since I have one piece, now I need two pieces in order to get the two piece set bonus. Now I knew what to buy with my triumph emblems - the T9 i232 chest piece for moonkin. The VoA gear is good enough for Wild to wear with his healing set, too, so lots of good news for Wild on the gear front.