I know you've been waiting anxiously to find out how Wild's cunilingu . . . uh, culinary arts are coming along. Wild was disappointed on Tuesday when the daily cooking quest was once again "Soup For The Soul" - for the fifth straight day. Wild did not bother to do the quest. Wild checked again early Wednesday morning, and finally, Finally! received the quest "Revenge is tasty." The story behind this quest is that a guest in Skettis was knocked down and got his leg broken by a Monstrous Kaliri bird. His friends were giving him a cheering up party, and what better way to cheer him up than by serving some kaliri stew. For that, Wild needed a wing from one of the giant birds. Skettis is home not only to the kaliri birds, but also to a number of elite mobs. Before Northrend, level 70 players hunted those elites for a number of rep quests, and at that level Skettis was always a somewhat dangerous place to hang around at. The kaliri birds were not elite, but killing one took a little creativity. Why? Because they're birds, and birds fly, and these birds never land, or come close enough to be hit from the ground. They have to be attacked in the air. And you can't actually attack them from the air. The trick is to fly after one of the birds and badger it until it attacks first. One thing to remember is that when a flying player is attacked, he can be knocked off his mount. The fall can hurt - a lot - plus where you fall could make things interesting as well if there were elites around. Nothing a level 80 couldn't handle, but why make things too complicated. Wild has the advantage of flying form, so I wasn't manhandling a big flying mount around. Wild also made sure that I was over water (there's a large lake there) when I made a kaliri bird angry at me.
Wild got his wing on this third kill. Back in Shattrath he completed the quest and got his Chef title. Wild dressed up for the official photo, wearing his tuxedo shirt, festival shoulders, and, of course, his Chef's hat.
On Tuesday night Wild also got in his daily emblem quest, and for the first time had some trouble with getting a group together through the Dungeon Finder. It took about ten minutes before Wild got his first invite to a random heroic, but one of the DPS waited five minutes after the invites came out and then declined. A rather vocal hunter in the group kept us entertained while we waited that first five minutes. We went back into the queue. It was only a couple of minutes before we filled again. The dungeon was Utgarde Pinnacle, a pretty easy dungeon with four bosses. We were starting to buff up when our tank checked out, leaving the group. Ok, so that hunter was a bit annoying, but really, this won't take twenty minutes. With the tank gone, though, the group leader, of all people, who was also our healer, checked out as well. Wild became the group leader. Now we're really in trouble. Wild reset the queue so that we could get a tank and healer, and that took another ten minutes of waiting around, listening to the hunter. We did finally get a group, and we cleared UP easily. As I mentioned, UP has four bosses, and Wild was able to get some good data on his DPS for each of the boss fights. Overall, Wild's DPS was a modest 2112, but on the boss fights Wild did considerably better:
1st boss (Svala) - 2248 DPS (1st)
2nd boss (Gortok) - 3306 DPS (2nd to mage)
3rd boss (Skadi) - 3277 DPS (1st)
4th boss (Ymiron) - 2070 DPS (1st)
King Ymiron Fears the entire raid several times during that battle, and the chunks of time where no damage is done lowered the DPS for everyone. Wild is less effective on trash mobs, because of target changing as well as the fact that the main druid AoE, Hurricane, is not really as good as other cast AoE. Still, Wild will take good DPS on bosses over good trash DPS any time.
Later, Wild was researching something on wowhead and came across one of those posts where a player asks the community why his DPS was so low, what was he doing wrong, etc. There were a couple of talent change suggestions, and I realized how long it had been since I thought about Wild's moonkin talent spec. I knew for sure that I had not made any changes since long before I started actively bringing Wild into heroics as a moonkin, which is much different than solo questing/grinding, which is what I would have originally set my talents for. The short answer is that yes, Wild needed to make some changes. Without boring you with the details, the gist of what Wild did was reduce my in combat mana regen (by quite a lot) to get higher spell power and crit - in other words, I sacrificed mana (the fuel for Wild's spells) in order to do higher damage. In heroics (pre-talent change) Wild has had absolutely no mana problems, never dropping below 80% even when furiously firing off my highest mana eating spells. Still, I'll need to watch that on future fights to see if I run into mana issues.
Next up is Wild's guild raiding review.
For the past two Tuesday's over the holiday there was no maintenance interfering with in game time. This Tuesday things were back to normal, with a long (3am to 11am) maintenance period. Wild took the time to take stock of the guild's raiding situation, and Wild's own plans and desires for raiding and gearing up.
With an expectation that we are now ready to begin scheduling raids again, Wild's guild has a 25 man raid on the calendar for Wednesday. The target is ToC25, as the guild still needs the last boss to earn a clear of that raid dungeon, and certainly there are raiders that need the i245 gear and the T9+ tier sets that drop in there. Wild could certainly use plenty of gear from there.
The guild website had a short announcement that 25 man raids were being started up again. In regard to 10 man raids, it was mentioned that those raids were focused on Icecrown Citadel (ICC). Raids, plural, likely means that the two senior raid leaders would continue their two 10 mans with essentially the same raid makeup as they've had for many months. Those are good groups, and pretty stable, and that's a good thing for them and the guild. Wild knows firsthand, though, that while fill ins are welcome and encouraged when they are short raiders, most of the time there is no room for anyone but the regulars.
So what about other guildies who want to raid ten mans? The obvious answer for a guild as large as ours is to form another 10 man or two. Our recent history has not been kind to a third ten man, and not much has changed to make Wild believe that one will be created, or if created, a stable group of raiders would emerge to fill it. There just aren't enough of us with the time and the desire to raise ten man guild raiding to thirty people plus fill ins.
Also this week, the MM guild has restarted a second (or third) 10 man that is initially focused on ToC10. ToC10 rewards i232 gear and the i232 level T9 gear. Wild would have a greater chance at gear in a ten man, plus, there is the opportunity for as many as 15 triumph emblems for clearing it. I like the raid leader for this group, a former guildie, there are some good raiders in the group already, and running with these folk is always fun. The names still change more often than is healthy for a stable group, and they are aiming at ToC10 because the raid isn't ready for ICC. Wild has no problem with that, and admits up front that he stills needs ToC10 level gear to be more ready for ICC, too, but to be fair I have to wonder how stable the raid makeup will be. This group meets on Wednesday and Thursday night. Earlier in the week the raid leader got hold of Wild to let Wild know that his open invitation to join his raid still stood, and added Wild to his raid calendar in case I decided to come along.
So, Wild has gone from little or no raiding to a conflict on Wednesday, our first planned raid night of 2010. I want to commit, one way or the other. Wild has always been doggedly faithful to his guild, and in the case of the larger guild raids Wild has always cleared his calendar to be available for them. I've never regretted that. But I think that Wild will lose his opportunity for not only 10 man raiding in ToC, but 10 man raiding in ICC as well down the road, unless Wild can get settled, soon, in an established group. Wild needs a ten man home. Assuming Wild does get an invite to the MM 10 man on Wednesday (and Wild will sign up for it), he will miss the guild ToC25 run. Making one more assumption, assuming the Wednesday ToC25 is a success, there will likely be a second day added, probably Friday. Wild could be available for that Friday raid as an alternate, and again, based on our recent past, there will likely be spots open. So the plan is to raid ten mans on Wed/Thurs with the MM guild, and try to get into the 25 man guild raid each Friday.
There, that wasn't so hard, was it?
You know, this whole post evolved when Wild started going over all the options and opportunities for gearing up ultimately for ICC25. I may numb you all with those machinations at some point, but suffice it to say now that lots of triumph and frost emblem farming are in Wild's immediate present and future to get there.
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