Tuesday (30 Mar) - Talking with an old Friend
As usual Wild signed up for the Tuesday night guild 25 man raid. As usual Wild was in game and on time. As usual the horde have captured the Wintergrasp Fortress and the raid would begin in VoA. As usual Wild made his way to WG in hopes of getting an invite. As usual Wild was assigned as a standby. As usual Wild did not get an invite, and as usual the raid leader failed to let the rest of the guild know when invites had been completed - until Wild asked about it.
What wasn't usual is that an old friend and guildie who had left the game for more than a year had come back, and we had time to chat. The friend, Bf, is a shaman, and for the last week he's been working on getting into shape.
It started when Wild decided to join a PUG VoA once it was clear that I wouldn't be getting into the guild raid. Bf was already in the PUG and saw Wild join it. He whispered me, asking if I was taking the night off, assuming that I would otherwise have been in the guild raid. I explained that Wild wasn't a regular anymore, and joked that they only needed Wild on their wipe runs now against new or still unmastered bosses.
Bf and Wild go way back, before either of us had reached level 60. We grew with the guild and mastered the greatest of the level 60 dungeons in what was the heyday of our guild. Bf could be a bit of a flake, going afk and being late to come back for the next pull, not the least bit punctual, and prone to relax when the challenge was light. But when you needed the best out of him, he always delivered, and he was an awesome anchor in our level 60 raiding.
Bf asked about our old guild leader, Jo. Had Wild seen her or talked with her recently? Sadly, the answer was no. Her and her husband were rarely in game, and when I thought back it had been weeks and weeks since she'd last popped in game while Wild was around.
We reminisced a bit, and then he asked, "What what has become of the guild?" It was unrecognizable to him. Of course, a lot has happened. In short, though, I told him that the guild was now focused mostly on raiding, and had brought in new guildies who likewise put raiding first. The guild is far from being a hard core raiding guild. However, the family/casual element that once balanced our raiding is gone, because all those who had kept it alive had left the guild.
Things are what they are. The PUG we had joined downed both Toravon and Koralon, and it was a good night for mail wearers. Bf picked up two nice pieces. And Wild got some badges.
Wild also got the weekly frost raid completed, against Noth in Naxxramas. DER would be ok on this one and should give it a try. It's a relatively easy boss. Noth is tanked normally, but periodically ports out of combat range while a number of mobs spawn that must be killed. Usually an off tank sweeps up the adds to be AoEed down, but this group just zerged 'em all, throwing aggro management to the winds. Wild pulled aggro a couple of times healing all those idiots, but I could heal through it, and Noth went down. If DER gets into a 25 man and just assists one or both of the tanks on the target they are actively tanking, he should do fine.
Philly was in and out of action, looking to catch a couple of WG battles. On one battle, Philly did not get an invite to WG. There is a limit to how many players the system will admit into the raid, but that was the first time a Wild family toon had every not gotten the automated invite. I guess it had to happen at some point. Philly did get into a later WG, successfully defending the fortress and going over 70k honor. The max honor that can be carried is 75k, so Philly needs to spend some of it, and soon. She's trying to decide whether it would be better to buy two pieces of ilevel 245 gear, or one of the more expensive ilevel 264 pieces.
EZ, even in her very uneven set of gear, is liking her face bashing spec. She spent some time in Stonetalon Mountains and then moved on to Thousand Needles, questing from level 28 to level 29, and then into level 30, and getting 11% of the way to level 31. The Wild family again has a 30s bracket pvper.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday (29 Mar) - The Kids Come out to Play
Monday (29 Mar) - The Kids Come out to Play
Javajoo was bored. The once all but forgotten Alliance paladin had resurrected his career, hooked up with partner Chaitee again, took a perilous journey away from his home on Bloodmyst Isle, and resettled in the relatively big city of the Exodar. He joined a guild, enjoyed the ceremony of donning his new guild tabard, and made new friends. He spent days exploring the city. It was all so exciting and new. And then . . . nothing.
After days and days with nothing to do, Java simply walked out of the Inn where he'd been staying, trod up the the wide, winding corkscrew of the exit hallway, and found the Flight Master outside the city. He asked the Flight Master to carry him home, back to Bloodmyst Isle.
Had he given up? Was he ready to return to his old life, and obscurity? Not a chance. On Bloodmyst Isle he entered Blood Watch, a small but busy town who could well use a young Draenei willing to work hard. There were no end of challenges and tasks available there.
Java took on every task the city could throw at him. From simple clearing of the area around the town of dangerous beasts, to helping townsfolk find lost relatives, to hunting down and killing a marauding bear terrified farmers called Deathclaw, Java did it all. Java took on ever more important, dangerous missions as his reputation grew. He received a strange message in the mail that ultimately drew him to another, much smaller island, Wrymscar Island, where he met with the apparition of sea Captain Edward Hanes. His ship, along with many others, had been sunk, destroyed on Bloodcursed Reef just offshore. The spirits of many sailors lay trapped there. Java fought through the naga that had taken up residence in the waters and broken hulls, rescued the souls and gave peace to many sailors beneath those waters. Java then ended the Curse by destroying the naga shrine and slaying the naga leader.
Java had left the Exodar as a level 14. After his work at Blood Watch, Java returned to the Exodar as a level 18.
That night Java and Staar, Java's friend and level 19 hunter, entered Warsong Gulch to battle the horde. It was a hard fought match, and even though they lost, they gave it everything they had, with Staar and Java finishing #1 and #2 in kills and damage. After Staar had to leave, Java signed up for a second match so that he could continue to improve his skills in battle. It was another loss. The learning continues. But more importantly, Java is back.
The tale of the children continued with EZ. The young shaman had completely lost her way. In her teen years she was sure she would walk in JB's footsteps and become a feared melee shaman, taking the fight right into the faces of her enemy. She worked hard and built up her gear with that in mind. Her early attempts in Warsong Gulch were, well, forgettable. She discovered that her chosen set of skills, that of an enhancement shaman, were a poor choice in these matches. JB, who used her enhancement skills to quest, and who did not set foot into a match like WSG until she was far, far, older, empathized with EZ's troubles but could offer little help, knowing that EZ must find her way on her own.
EZ learned that she would need to completely change her approach, and somewhat reluctantly set aside her enhancement skills and deadly gear. She retrained herself as an elemental shaman, a ranged caster instead of a skull basher. She dutifully worked at her skills, and added a new gear set to match them. That gear was never as complete or powerful as that first set, although that wasn't the full reason that she did no better in the matches that followed the change. Her heart just wasn't in it.
She wouldn't admit that she had yet again made a mistake, however. Figuring it would get better if she herself grew stronger, she lobbied for help from her older kin and razed dungeon after dungeon. She advanced rapidly, but became obsessed with it to the point of collecting an incredible assortment of gear, much of which was either too low level or too high level for her to use. She had grown from level 19 to level 28, but she was no closer to knowing what she wanted to be.
Every now and then JB would check in on EZ. They would look over all that accumulated gear clogging every bag and bank slot, they would talk, and then they'd both throw up their hands in defeat and promise to try again later. Other members of Wild's and DER's family would occasionally try to draw EZ out. But when you are a level 28 still wearing mostly level 19 gear, and unsure who you are . . . well. EZ remained a hermit.
Come forward to today. Mery, the long time stalwart as the 30s bracket representative of the Wild family in the battlegrounds, decided it was time to move forward. Mery had delayed this decision for a long time, time she'd spent waiting for EZ to join her in that bracket. Mery could wait no longer, though, and became a level 40. That left a void. The family turned to EZ. We need you, she was told. We need you to become our 30s bracket representative. We know you can do this.
EZ woke on Monday morning at the Inn in Thunder Bluff, where she lived. Her quarters were cluttered with unkempt loot. Gear of every description. Bottles and flasks of potions from her teen days lay scattered about. Various items from incomplete tasks, piles of random junk never sorted out, and greasy uncounted coins littered her room. It had come to this.
But her family needed her. She had purpose again. She gave her room one last long look. She sighed. Time to get to work.
EZ had long known what she wanted to be, but had had to go far from that in order to find her way back again. She wanted to be what she had started out to be - an enhancement shaman. She realized that it didn't matter, at least not to EZ, that it wasn't the "best" skill set for her chosen life in battleground competition. It was what she wanted to be, and what she wanted to do.
It took a good part of the day to sort through all that junk, and with the heavy pang of a near compulsive hoarder, EZ started selling it all away. She kept the higher end gear, those items she could not yet wear. It served to remind her of what she was escaping, and also served as an incentive and a goal for growth. She took the best of the gear she could wear and gave it a frank assessment. It was awesome stuff - for a level 19. All those greasy coins, though, added up to a considerable sum of gold. For the first time in a long time, EZ went shopping, feeling something close to happiness at last. There wasn't a great deal she could afford, even with the heavy sack of gold. She got what she could, though. The set of gear she ended with was still laughably dated. But it was hers, and it would suit for now, and would get better over time.
With her room tidied up, and her new gear creaking as she moved, EZ collected the small bit of belongings she still owned and left the Thunder Bluff Inn for the Flight Master. Arriving in Orgrimmar, she visited the Shaman Trainer, and became, once again, an enhancement shaman.
EZ can now be found at Sun Rock Retreat in the Stonetalon Mountains, working on quests. She's happy and content, and she's 50% of the way to level 29.
Javajoo was bored. The once all but forgotten Alliance paladin had resurrected his career, hooked up with partner Chaitee again, took a perilous journey away from his home on Bloodmyst Isle, and resettled in the relatively big city of the Exodar. He joined a guild, enjoyed the ceremony of donning his new guild tabard, and made new friends. He spent days exploring the city. It was all so exciting and new. And then . . . nothing.
After days and days with nothing to do, Java simply walked out of the Inn where he'd been staying, trod up the the wide, winding corkscrew of the exit hallway, and found the Flight Master outside the city. He asked the Flight Master to carry him home, back to Bloodmyst Isle.
Had he given up? Was he ready to return to his old life, and obscurity? Not a chance. On Bloodmyst Isle he entered Blood Watch, a small but busy town who could well use a young Draenei willing to work hard. There were no end of challenges and tasks available there.
Java took on every task the city could throw at him. From simple clearing of the area around the town of dangerous beasts, to helping townsfolk find lost relatives, to hunting down and killing a marauding bear terrified farmers called Deathclaw, Java did it all. Java took on ever more important, dangerous missions as his reputation grew. He received a strange message in the mail that ultimately drew him to another, much smaller island, Wrymscar Island, where he met with the apparition of sea Captain Edward Hanes. His ship, along with many others, had been sunk, destroyed on Bloodcursed Reef just offshore. The spirits of many sailors lay trapped there. Java fought through the naga that had taken up residence in the waters and broken hulls, rescued the souls and gave peace to many sailors beneath those waters. Java then ended the Curse by destroying the naga shrine and slaying the naga leader.
Java had left the Exodar as a level 14. After his work at Blood Watch, Java returned to the Exodar as a level 18.
That night Java and Staar, Java's friend and level 19 hunter, entered Warsong Gulch to battle the horde. It was a hard fought match, and even though they lost, they gave it everything they had, with Staar and Java finishing #1 and #2 in kills and damage. After Staar had to leave, Java signed up for a second match so that he could continue to improve his skills in battle. It was another loss. The learning continues. But more importantly, Java is back.
The tale of the children continued with EZ. The young shaman had completely lost her way. In her teen years she was sure she would walk in JB's footsteps and become a feared melee shaman, taking the fight right into the faces of her enemy. She worked hard and built up her gear with that in mind. Her early attempts in Warsong Gulch were, well, forgettable. She discovered that her chosen set of skills, that of an enhancement shaman, were a poor choice in these matches. JB, who used her enhancement skills to quest, and who did not set foot into a match like WSG until she was far, far, older, empathized with EZ's troubles but could offer little help, knowing that EZ must find her way on her own.
EZ learned that she would need to completely change her approach, and somewhat reluctantly set aside her enhancement skills and deadly gear. She retrained herself as an elemental shaman, a ranged caster instead of a skull basher. She dutifully worked at her skills, and added a new gear set to match them. That gear was never as complete or powerful as that first set, although that wasn't the full reason that she did no better in the matches that followed the change. Her heart just wasn't in it.
She wouldn't admit that she had yet again made a mistake, however. Figuring it would get better if she herself grew stronger, she lobbied for help from her older kin and razed dungeon after dungeon. She advanced rapidly, but became obsessed with it to the point of collecting an incredible assortment of gear, much of which was either too low level or too high level for her to use. She had grown from level 19 to level 28, but she was no closer to knowing what she wanted to be.
Every now and then JB would check in on EZ. They would look over all that accumulated gear clogging every bag and bank slot, they would talk, and then they'd both throw up their hands in defeat and promise to try again later. Other members of Wild's and DER's family would occasionally try to draw EZ out. But when you are a level 28 still wearing mostly level 19 gear, and unsure who you are . . . well. EZ remained a hermit.
Come forward to today. Mery, the long time stalwart as the 30s bracket representative of the Wild family in the battlegrounds, decided it was time to move forward. Mery had delayed this decision for a long time, time she'd spent waiting for EZ to join her in that bracket. Mery could wait no longer, though, and became a level 40. That left a void. The family turned to EZ. We need you, she was told. We need you to become our 30s bracket representative. We know you can do this.
EZ woke on Monday morning at the Inn in Thunder Bluff, where she lived. Her quarters were cluttered with unkempt loot. Gear of every description. Bottles and flasks of potions from her teen days lay scattered about. Various items from incomplete tasks, piles of random junk never sorted out, and greasy uncounted coins littered her room. It had come to this.
But her family needed her. She had purpose again. She gave her room one last long look. She sighed. Time to get to work.
EZ had long known what she wanted to be, but had had to go far from that in order to find her way back again. She wanted to be what she had started out to be - an enhancement shaman. She realized that it didn't matter, at least not to EZ, that it wasn't the "best" skill set for her chosen life in battleground competition. It was what she wanted to be, and what she wanted to do.
It took a good part of the day to sort through all that junk, and with the heavy pang of a near compulsive hoarder, EZ started selling it all away. She kept the higher end gear, those items she could not yet wear. It served to remind her of what she was escaping, and also served as an incentive and a goal for growth. She took the best of the gear she could wear and gave it a frank assessment. It was awesome stuff - for a level 19. All those greasy coins, though, added up to a considerable sum of gold. For the first time in a long time, EZ went shopping, feeling something close to happiness at last. There wasn't a great deal she could afford, even with the heavy sack of gold. She got what she could, though. The set of gear she ended with was still laughably dated. But it was hers, and it would suit for now, and would get better over time.
With her room tidied up, and her new gear creaking as she moved, EZ collected the small bit of belongings she still owned and left the Thunder Bluff Inn for the Flight Master. Arriving in Orgrimmar, she visited the Shaman Trainer, and became, once again, an enhancement shaman.
EZ can now be found at Sun Rock Retreat in the Stonetalon Mountains, working on quests. She's happy and content, and she's 50% of the way to level 29.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Weekend (28 Mar) - A Trip to the Sunwell
Weekend (28 Mar) - A Trip to the Sunwell
With all that pvping going on Wild finally had to force his way back into the lineup. A group of players were getting a Sunwell Plateau raid together that Wild just had to get in on. Sunwell Plateau is a level 70 25 man raid on the Isle of Quel'danas. It was the last and greatest of the level 70 dungeons, the last before Wrath of the Lich King. At the time it offered loot better than that of the Black Temple as well as offering the newest Tier 6 gear sets. And Wild had never set foot inside it; well, except for that one time solo, but we won't go into that.
The organizer, who would also main tank it, was surprisingly able to gather a full 25 level 80s for the run, which was really overkill for a level 70 dungeon. However, the fight mechanics against the SWP bosses (and there are nine in six encounters) was known to be tricky, and even level 80s can fail if you don't know the fights.
Wild had hoped to DPS it to wring out the bugs in my new system, but they wanted Wild to heal. We had five healers, but could have done it easily with four, or even three. The tank healer (a priest) and Wild did the bulk of the healing. The fifth healer just seemed to be along for the ride. It was really a blast and I thought I'd share it in pictures this time.
There is no attunement for SWP and raiders filtered into the instance as they arrived at the Isle of Quel'danas and rode the short distance to the dungeon. Just inside there is a clear zone where there are npcs, like there is in Icecrown Citadel, so SWP might be where they got the idea to do it with ICC.
The Sunwell is the source of power and energy for the elves. Guarded by dragons and other powerful forces, there is an ongoing battle with the Scourge to keep the Sunwell safe.
The first boss, the blue dragon Kalecgos, has been corrupted and must be stopped. He appears in both dragon form and elven form during the fight, which involves portals. The raid leader took the time to explain the fight, which helped a lot in minimizing the stupidity that seems almost inevitable in an old school dungeon run. An ice shield holds us back while a battle rages on the other side. Then the ice breaks and we can enter.
The next boss, pit lord Brutallus, can also be found making mayhem on the far side of the Isle as part of the daily quest bombing run, when he isn't causing trouble in SWP. Brutallus can't be damaged on the bombing run, but you can shoot at him and he'll yell back that such puny beings as we should gather together and come at him in force. Sure, Brutallus, and here we are, in SWP. There is a huge wall of fire that the raid cannot pass until Brutallus is killed.
The third boss is a fel dragon, Felmyst, born from the corpse of the great dragon Madrigosa, who was defeated by Brutallus.
The fourth encounter is against two demons, fire demon Alythess and his female twin, shadow demon Sacrolash. This is rated as the most difficult encounter in SWP, even for level 80s. There is a high damage AoE that hits a random player called Conflagration, and it can kill if raiders are not aware of what it is and how to handle it. Wish I'd gotten a pic of the after battle result. Ten raiders died. We basically overwhelmed the twins by pure numbers. A smaller group of level 80 raiders might have wiped.
Next up we fought a tainted naaru named M'uru, who in the second phase transforms into a void wraith named Entropius.
The final encounter is against a famous demon, Kil'jaeden, who became the leader of the Burning Crusade after several former leaders were defeated or killed. His real claim to fame, though, is that he's the demon that created the Lich King. Kil'jaeden is trying to enter and take over the Sunwell, and we arrive while he is still being Summoned into SWP, and while the Sunwell's protector, Anveena, is held at bay behind an arcane barrier.
We succeed in stopping Kil'jaeden, but Anveena sacrifices herself to aid us, and the Sunwell loses it's power.
Following Kil'jaeden's defeat, the blood elves are able to re-ignite the Sunwell during a cool post fight set piece. The raid leader, who has done SWP a number of times, seemed just as excited this time, as well. "Get ready for the light show," he told us. Most of the raid even stuck around, even though we'd finished.
It was definitely worth waiting around to see. Once the Sunwell was in full fury again Wild walked into the center. The whole screen goes brilliant white. Very cool, and a lot of fun.
The rest of the weekend was a bit more mundane, but more important to Wild's and Philly's progression.
Wild ran Halls of Lightning, a 5 man heroic, to work on his DPS. There was definitely improvement. Wild usually averages around 2500-2600 DPS on a heroic run. In HoL Wild did 2864 DPS, second to a rogue with 3240 dps. The tank was in a great hurry, and Wild did over aggro a number of times as he pulled multiple mobs constantly. The healer was fine, but struggled with all the aggro being generated, and Wild backed off on some of DPS at times to give the healer a break. Going full out I think Wild could have gotten over 3k. Not goose pimple level, but it's progress.
Wild also did the weekly, which was Ignis in Ulduar, getting his five frost badges. Philly continued to crunch out xp and honor, doing a WG as well as the daily Call to Arms Alterac Valley run, both losses, though. Philly is 40% of the way to level 79.
And last but not least, Mery went dragonling hunting in Dustwallow Marsh for some thick leather and DINGED! to level 40. Her new bow and high powered shells sure came in handy. It also helped to get her tanking pet, the gorilla Sassy, from level 37 to 39. Mery can now start wearing mail armor instead of the leather she was limited to before. Mery already had a few items tucked away for this day, and will be adding more. Mery also made the trip to Bloodhoof Village to buy the faster ground mount. Mery's promotion to the 40s bracket is going to put pressure on EZ, currently level 28, to get to level 30, as there is no Wild family member in that bracket anymore. EZ is still one very conflicted shaman, who needs to get her act together.
I've been having login problems throughout the weekend. It began on Friday when I started the game and Patch 3.3.3 reinstalled itself. Reinstalls for no apparent reason are never a good thing. Since patches autoload, there wasn't any warning, so I let it finish, as stopping it midstream would have been even worse. I then started getting an "unable to validate game version" error message when I attempted to login. Computer reboots and various other checks later, I was able to login sometimes but not every time. Blizzard has a repair program that can be run, but from what I've read there are only two results by doing that - it fixes the problem, or it utterly screws you and you have to re-install the game from scratch. I wasn't going that route other than as a last resort. I had a new problem, too. The login sometimes started hanging at the blue bar, and I would have to ctrl-alt-del out of the game and try again, which usually worked the second time. Blizz has been running rolling restarts throughout the weekend, and so far today (Sunday) I haven't had any login problems, but we'll see.
Another issue has to do with the Auction House. Items for sale can be set at several time limits, the most common being 48 hours and 24 hours. Happy always places his items for 48 hours. For several days now the AH items have been expiring at 24 hours even when 48 hours is selected. It's extremely annoying to have hundreds of expired items in the mail every morning to sort through and re-post. Blizzard and the addon author for Auctioneer are pointing fingers at each other, and I hope they figure it out and get it fixed.
With all that pvping going on Wild finally had to force his way back into the lineup. A group of players were getting a Sunwell Plateau raid together that Wild just had to get in on. Sunwell Plateau is a level 70 25 man raid on the Isle of Quel'danas. It was the last and greatest of the level 70 dungeons, the last before Wrath of the Lich King. At the time it offered loot better than that of the Black Temple as well as offering the newest Tier 6 gear sets. And Wild had never set foot inside it; well, except for that one time solo, but we won't go into that.
The organizer, who would also main tank it, was surprisingly able to gather a full 25 level 80s for the run, which was really overkill for a level 70 dungeon. However, the fight mechanics against the SWP bosses (and there are nine in six encounters) was known to be tricky, and even level 80s can fail if you don't know the fights.
Wild had hoped to DPS it to wring out the bugs in my new system, but they wanted Wild to heal. We had five healers, but could have done it easily with four, or even three. The tank healer (a priest) and Wild did the bulk of the healing. The fifth healer just seemed to be along for the ride. It was really a blast and I thought I'd share it in pictures this time.
There is no attunement for SWP and raiders filtered into the instance as they arrived at the Isle of Quel'danas and rode the short distance to the dungeon. Just inside there is a clear zone where there are npcs, like there is in Icecrown Citadel, so SWP might be where they got the idea to do it with ICC.
The Sunwell is the source of power and energy for the elves. Guarded by dragons and other powerful forces, there is an ongoing battle with the Scourge to keep the Sunwell safe.
Waiting to get started
The first boss, the blue dragon Kalecgos, has been corrupted and must be stopped. He appears in both dragon form and elven form during the fight, which involves portals. The raid leader took the time to explain the fight, which helped a lot in minimizing the stupidity that seems almost inevitable in an old school dungeon run. An ice shield holds us back while a battle rages on the other side. Then the ice breaks and we can enter.
Kalcgos Behind the Ice Shield
The next boss, pit lord Brutallus, can also be found making mayhem on the far side of the Isle as part of the daily quest bombing run, when he isn't causing trouble in SWP. Brutallus can't be damaged on the bombing run, but you can shoot at him and he'll yell back that such puny beings as we should gather together and come at him in force. Sure, Brutallus, and here we are, in SWP. There is a huge wall of fire that the raid cannot pass until Brutallus is killed.
Brutallus
The third boss is a fel dragon, Felmyst, born from the corpse of the great dragon Madrigosa, who was defeated by Brutallus.
Felmyst Dies
The fourth encounter is against two demons, fire demon Alythess and his female twin, shadow demon Sacrolash. This is rated as the most difficult encounter in SWP, even for level 80s. There is a high damage AoE that hits a random player called Conflagration, and it can kill if raiders are not aware of what it is and how to handle it. Wish I'd gotten a pic of the after battle result. Ten raiders died. We basically overwhelmed the twins by pure numbers. A smaller group of level 80 raiders might have wiped.
Alythess and Sacrolash before the Fight
Next up we fought a tainted naaru named M'uru, who in the second phase transforms into a void wraith named Entropius.
The final encounter is against a famous demon, Kil'jaeden, who became the leader of the Burning Crusade after several former leaders were defeated or killed. His real claim to fame, though, is that he's the demon that created the Lich King. Kil'jaeden is trying to enter and take over the Sunwell, and we arrive while he is still being Summoned into SWP, and while the Sunwell's protector, Anveena, is held at bay behind an arcane barrier.
We succeed in stopping Kil'jaeden, but Anveena sacrifices herself to aid us, and the Sunwell loses it's power.
Victory with a heavy price
Following Kil'jaeden's defeat, the blood elves are able to re-ignite the Sunwell during a cool post fight set piece. The raid leader, who has done SWP a number of times, seemed just as excited this time, as well. "Get ready for the light show," he told us. Most of the raid even stuck around, even though we'd finished.
Sunwell Ignited
It was definitely worth waiting around to see. Once the Sunwell was in full fury again Wild walked into the center. The whole screen goes brilliant white. Very cool, and a lot of fun.
The rest of the weekend was a bit more mundane, but more important to Wild's and Philly's progression.
Wild ran Halls of Lightning, a 5 man heroic, to work on his DPS. There was definitely improvement. Wild usually averages around 2500-2600 DPS on a heroic run. In HoL Wild did 2864 DPS, second to a rogue with 3240 dps. The tank was in a great hurry, and Wild did over aggro a number of times as he pulled multiple mobs constantly. The healer was fine, but struggled with all the aggro being generated, and Wild backed off on some of DPS at times to give the healer a break. Going full out I think Wild could have gotten over 3k. Not goose pimple level, but it's progress.
Wild also did the weekly, which was Ignis in Ulduar, getting his five frost badges. Philly continued to crunch out xp and honor, doing a WG as well as the daily Call to Arms Alterac Valley run, both losses, though. Philly is 40% of the way to level 79.
And last but not least, Mery went dragonling hunting in Dustwallow Marsh for some thick leather and DINGED! to level 40. Her new bow and high powered shells sure came in handy. It also helped to get her tanking pet, the gorilla Sassy, from level 37 to 39. Mery can now start wearing mail armor instead of the leather she was limited to before. Mery already had a few items tucked away for this day, and will be adding more. Mery also made the trip to Bloodhoof Village to buy the faster ground mount. Mery's promotion to the 40s bracket is going to put pressure on EZ, currently level 28, to get to level 30, as there is no Wild family member in that bracket anymore. EZ is still one very conflicted shaman, who needs to get her act together.
I've been having login problems throughout the weekend. It began on Friday when I started the game and Patch 3.3.3 reinstalled itself. Reinstalls for no apparent reason are never a good thing. Since patches autoload, there wasn't any warning, so I let it finish, as stopping it midstream would have been even worse. I then started getting an "unable to validate game version" error message when I attempted to login. Computer reboots and various other checks later, I was able to login sometimes but not every time. Blizzard has a repair program that can be run, but from what I've read there are only two results by doing that - it fixes the problem, or it utterly screws you and you have to re-install the game from scratch. I wasn't going that route other than as a last resort. I had a new problem, too. The login sometimes started hanging at the blue bar, and I would have to ctrl-alt-del out of the game and try again, which usually worked the second time. Blizz has been running rolling restarts throughout the weekend, and so far today (Sunday) I haven't had any login problems, but we'll see.
Another issue has to do with the Auction House. Items for sale can be set at several time limits, the most common being 48 hours and 24 hours. Happy always places his items for 48 hours. For several days now the AH items have been expiring at 24 hours even when 48 hours is selected. It's extremely annoying to have hundreds of expired items in the mail every morning to sort through and re-post. Blizzard and the addon author for Auctioneer are pointing fingers at each other, and I hope they figure it out and get it fixed.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday (26 Mar) - Friday Night Fights
Friday (26 Mar) - Friday Night Fights
After all the brain twisting, eye numbing discussions of healing and DPS mechanics, it was nice to forget all about that and just go kill the enemy in the battlegrounds. Since our pvp team now has players on both horde and alliance side, sometimes it was hard to keep track of who the enemy was on any given battlefield. The fun stretched across more than just factions, encompassing Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch with pvpers from three different brackets.
It was Sin, Sis, and Philly in the 70s bracket, rockin' to 70s disco while rockin' heads against the alliance. It started with Philly, who got into a WSG battle that Sin and Sis missed the invite for. Philly was in pvp healing spec on a team that couldn't get it's act together. The allies congregated at the bottom of the ledge below the horde base and slaughtered everyone that came at them. It was clear the allies intended to farm kills and was in no hurry to cap any flags. Other horde players noted that, and some left. We had as few as 7 pvpers at times, against the 10 on the allie side. Since no one on the horde side was making any attempt to go after the allie flag, Philly decided to go for it, evading the knot of allies and heading for their base. Philly made it inside, where one defender found himself Feared away. Philly grabbed the flag and made a run for it.
Outside the allie base two more allies arrived but they couldn't bring Philly down as she kept up her Shield and self healed as she made it to the ledge on the allie side and jumped down. As she went she DoTed up the allies around her; not likely to kill anyone, but I bet it was annoying. Philly was getting hit with delaying tactics, but still fended off what was now three allies, getting halfway across the field toward her base. None of her horde team mates helped out, though, and they finally brought her down. Heck of a fun run, though. The horde rallied a bit at the end, but it was too little too late and we lost.
Sin and Sis, in the meantime, got into an AB match that was the complete opposite. They won the match and a special achievement for winning it in less than six minutes. That's fast!
Later we all switched to the 30s bracket (Mery, Lao, and Ando) and banged away at a different group of allies. The allie team we faced in AB had an interesting strategy of grouping and attacking objectives enmasse. They were usually able to eventually overwhelm us, but the strat left them vulnerable in other areas. The battles were awesome at the contested areas; the horde lost a few battles, but won the war and the match because we held more bases, and could recapture a base as soon as their main group left to attack somewhere else. In between BGs Lao wooed Mery with gifts - a nice high powered gun which she crafted herself and some amazing home made shells (the kind that put big holes in enemy players, not the ones you pick up on the beach). Mery offered to pay for the largesse, but I think the two girls worked out some other (private) arrangement. A day later Mery received a bouquet of more high powered shells, something Mery appreciated a lot more than a bouquet of flowers. Lao knows what Mery likes.
Then we switched to the alliance side and hit up the teens running around in Warsong Gulch. Neeky (druid, level 11), Java (paladin, 14) and Staar (hunter, 17) had a blast, even if we did occasionally forget which side we were on. I really didn't know how to pvp with a paladin, but over the course of three matches or so I started to get a feel for it. Pallies at that level basically have one sort of useful heal spell, one good melee attack, and two "save myself!" spells that can only be used once every two minutes. And a stun. That stun is important, as Java learned every time he forgot to use it - and died.
It was a great night of pvp, and for forgetting about all that pve strategy stuff.
After all the brain twisting, eye numbing discussions of healing and DPS mechanics, it was nice to forget all about that and just go kill the enemy in the battlegrounds. Since our pvp team now has players on both horde and alliance side, sometimes it was hard to keep track of who the enemy was on any given battlefield. The fun stretched across more than just factions, encompassing Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch with pvpers from three different brackets.
It was Sin, Sis, and Philly in the 70s bracket, rockin' to 70s disco while rockin' heads against the alliance. It started with Philly, who got into a WSG battle that Sin and Sis missed the invite for. Philly was in pvp healing spec on a team that couldn't get it's act together. The allies congregated at the bottom of the ledge below the horde base and slaughtered everyone that came at them. It was clear the allies intended to farm kills and was in no hurry to cap any flags. Other horde players noted that, and some left. We had as few as 7 pvpers at times, against the 10 on the allie side. Since no one on the horde side was making any attempt to go after the allie flag, Philly decided to go for it, evading the knot of allies and heading for their base. Philly made it inside, where one defender found himself Feared away. Philly grabbed the flag and made a run for it.
Outside the allie base two more allies arrived but they couldn't bring Philly down as she kept up her Shield and self healed as she made it to the ledge on the allie side and jumped down. As she went she DoTed up the allies around her; not likely to kill anyone, but I bet it was annoying. Philly was getting hit with delaying tactics, but still fended off what was now three allies, getting halfway across the field toward her base. None of her horde team mates helped out, though, and they finally brought her down. Heck of a fun run, though. The horde rallied a bit at the end, but it was too little too late and we lost.
Sin and Sis, in the meantime, got into an AB match that was the complete opposite. They won the match and a special achievement for winning it in less than six minutes. That's fast!
Later we all switched to the 30s bracket (Mery, Lao, and Ando) and banged away at a different group of allies. The allie team we faced in AB had an interesting strategy of grouping and attacking objectives enmasse. They were usually able to eventually overwhelm us, but the strat left them vulnerable in other areas. The battles were awesome at the contested areas; the horde lost a few battles, but won the war and the match because we held more bases, and could recapture a base as soon as their main group left to attack somewhere else. In between BGs Lao wooed Mery with gifts - a nice high powered gun which she crafted herself and some amazing home made shells (the kind that put big holes in enemy players, not the ones you pick up on the beach). Mery offered to pay for the largesse, but I think the two girls worked out some other (private) arrangement. A day later Mery received a bouquet of more high powered shells, something Mery appreciated a lot more than a bouquet of flowers. Lao knows what Mery likes.
Then we switched to the alliance side and hit up the teens running around in Warsong Gulch. Neeky (druid, level 11), Java (paladin, 14) and Staar (hunter, 17) had a blast, even if we did occasionally forget which side we were on. I really didn't know how to pvp with a paladin, but over the course of three matches or so I started to get a feel for it. Pallies at that level basically have one sort of useful heal spell, one good melee attack, and two "save myself!" spells that can only be used once every two minutes. And a stun. That stun is important, as Java learned every time he forgot to use it - and died.
It was a great night of pvp, and for forgetting about all that pve strategy stuff.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday (25 Mar) -The Mechanics of DPSing
Thursday (25 Mar) -The Mechanics of DPSing
Wild is in a rut. As a healer his gear is good but unbalanced, overstacked in some stats and lacking in others. As a DPS it's the mechanics of targeting that is holding him back.
This is a self-assessment on where Wild is with his healing and DPS. There was no actual in game play on Thursday. I'll try to make that up to ya'll over the weekend.
Yesterday I did an analysis of Wild's healing compared to the other druid healer in the raid (Mg). I surmised that Wild's lack of +haste on his gear was a major factor keeping Wild from reaching that next level of healing. However, I wasn't completely satisfied with that result, so I also dove under the hood and looked hard at the healing numbers put up by Wild and Mg, spell by spell. The numbers were a bit startling, and slightly disheartening in that Wild is even farther behind than I thought.
Heal over time (HoT) spells are the bread and butter spells of a druid healer. So I took a look at how much healing each HoT did, on average, over the course of the raid on Wednesday night. I also looked at how many "tics" each spell got off to further assess just how much affect the haste difference was making. Note that "tics" are the number of times a HoT dropped a heal on a target over the course of the time from cast to when the spell expired or was over-written.
Rejuv:
Wild: 1781 tics, averaging 2305 healing per tic
Mg: 2227 tics, 2590 healing per tic
Wild Growth (AoE healing up to 6 raiders)
Wild: 2728 tics, 897 hpt
Mg: 2694 tics, 968 hpt
Lifebloom (HoT part only):
Wild: 773 tics, 761 hpt
Mg: 1924 tics, 1645 hpt
Regrowth (HoT part only):
Wild: 175 tics, 1351 hpt
Mg: 283 tics, 2333 hpt
Some of the count/tic differences come from Mg doing mostly tank healing (which will increase the lifebloom counts) and Wild doing mostly raid healing (which should raise his wild growth counts). But while Mg did way outheal Wild with lifebloom as expected, Wild was only barely able to outcast Mg with wild growth. The rejuv numbers were also telling because Wild pretty much spammed rejuv continuously the whole night and still couldn't overtake Mg. Note, also, that on every single spell, on each tic of the HoT, Mg's spells healed for more than Wild's (largely due to Mg's higher spell power). Even if Wild had the same +haste as Mg, and got off as many casts, Wild would still fall behind Mg in total healing.
Wild's main hand/off hand combination severely hurts Wild's spell power numbers, and Wild has had to make the decision to go back to his staff for healing until I can get a main hand weapon that does not further gimp Wild. That nice i264 off hand is going to sit in the bank until then. I have a solution for that, but Wild is going to need a little guild help to get it done. Since Wild finds it hard to ask his guild for help, I'm saying that here so ya'll will bug me about it. :-)
Changing the subject to DPS, I'm trying an experiment with Wild to see if I can improve on his DPS in moonkin form. There are a lot of factors that go into DPS, from gear to type of boss encounter, to what other non-DPS things a player has to do, etc. Druid moonkin DPS has an additional factor in that a lot of our damage is subject to randomness, which causes that DPS number to fluctuate quite a bit, even on multiple tries against the same boss where most of the conditions are exactly the same. That said, I think Wild's DPS is too low for the level of gear he has, and I think it's because I'm too slow getting those spells to the target(s).
Moonkin follow a basic boss encounter attack pattern that starts with two instant spells, Moonfire and Insect Swarm. These two spells are DoTs (damage over time) that tic for 14-15 seconds, and must always be refreshed, ideally right at the point the tics stop from the last cast. With those two spells active, a moonkin then starts spamming either Wrath or Starfire until Eclipse procs. Eclipse is an odd thing. If Wild is spamming Wrath, Eclipse buffs Starfire for 15 seconds with additional spell power. Obviously, Wild immediately switches to Starfire to take advantage of the buff. If Eclipse procs while casting Starfire, then it buffs Wrath for 15 seconds with a better crit percentage. So, moonkin spams the one spell until Eclipse procs, then switches to the other spell until the next proc. It sounds simple and it pretty much is.
The randomness is that Eclipse only procs if a hit creates a critical hit, which is a random event itself. Also note that the increased crit percent of an Eclipse Wrath is just an "opportunity" for more damage, as the crit might not even occur. If Wild gets a lot of crits, proccing Eclipse, then his DPS will be much higher than if he is unlucky and gets fewer procs of Eclipse.
Wild can't do anything about the randomness of his major source of damage, but I'm hoping I can do something about how quickly I get those spells on the target, increasing my chances of getting an Eclipse proc and also raising the base level of damage I'm doing when it doesn't.
Oddly enough, the best place to do Wild's experiment is not in a raid, but in heroic dungeons, where Wild pretty much ignores both Eclipse and the spell Starfire. There are three reasons for this: bosses die fast in heroics; wrath does more damage than starfire in shorter fights where mana isn't an issue; and starfire takes too long to cast to be effective in shorter fights. So Wild spams wrath full time (in addition to his DoTs, of course). When Wild does take advantage of Eclipse, Wild is pretty quick about switching spells, so I'm not worried about that part, anyway.
What I am worried about is getting faster at targeting and getting spells off. Sinstar, and expert moonkin, would probably be appalled at how Wild operates as a moonkin.
Wild first sets the tank as his focus. What this does is it lets Wild see who the tank is targeting, and that then becomes Wild's target. I use the mouse to click on the tank's target, and when the fight starts Wild starts his spell rotation. Wild actually clicks on each spell with the mouse to cast it, a process that is slower than button casting and prone to error if the mouse gets out of line while I'm looking elsewhere or moving. Not only might I miss a spell cast, I have more than once accidentally untargeted the mob and had to target him again. It gets worse after that first mob goes down, because Wild waits for the tank to pick up the next target, and the process begins again. Sometimes clicking the target fails, and Wild loses spell casts while re-targeting. Some tanks stay on one target until dead, others tab through targets (when there are more than one). If a tank changes targets mid-stream, Wild might find himself pounding a mob the tank is not focusing on, and Wild will draw aggro from that mob, irritating the tank and forcing Wild to react, again costing him spell casts. On boss encounters where there are adds that must be switched to depending on the situation, targeting and downing them takes a lot more time than it should. Those situations are a little harder to deal with, and so Wild needs a different approach for that as well.
So. The first priority is for Wild to force himself to become a button pushing spell caster instead of a mouse clicking spell caster. I've tried that before, but since I was still mouse clicking the target first, it didn't help much, plus my heart just wasn't in it (it's that healer mentality). So the second thing I needed to do was eliminate as much of the mouse targeting as I could.
I set Wild up with a small 3x3 button grid, the same grid Wild uses for healing, but obviously with DPS spells instead of healing ones. I made a macro command with the line "/assist focus." What this does is automatically target the tank's target without Wild having to click on it. I originally thought that even if the tank changes his target, Wild's spells with hit whatever his current target is. But I asked that question on the wowhead forums, and had an excellent discussion of that macro in particular and about DPS targeting in general. The macro sets the target when the macro is run. If the tank, or Wild, changes targets, the macro would have to be run again to target the tank's target again. That actually works better for Wild.
Using the assist tank macro should address about 70% of Wild's problems with targeting. Once Wild forces himself to become proficient at bashing buttons to cast spells (so that it is second nature, like his healing), it will also speed up his casting.
The two situations where tank assist targeting doesn't help is when Wild has to switch to a target the tank isn't targeting, such as to kill an add, or in the case where a tank might mark a target to be killed first and which might not be his main target.
Sinstar is raising his hand and yelling at Wild, "TAB targeting!" Yep, DPSers use the Tab key to switch hostile targets. It's essential for DPSers who DoT up multiple targets as part of their routine. If/when Philly goes into a dungeon as a shadow priest, that's exactly what she should be doing. Wild complained that Tabbing was awkward because, as a left-handed mouse user, I couldn't use the Tab key effectively, since it was on the left side of the keyboard. I solved that by binding the tab command to a key on the right side of the keyboard.
But Wild is a fail at using tab targeting. Hitting the tab key targets the nearest enemy, and every time you hit tab again it targets the next nearest target, cycling through however many hostile mobs are in range. But for Wild this is fraught with peril. Sometimes nothing seems to happen (ie, tabbing didn't change the target), and other times it may target a mob we haven't even attacked yet. Want to make a group really mad at you? Target and a hit a mob that draws aggro from mobs we aren't ready for yet. And why does it fail to target the mob right in front of you more times than not? It's so frustrating it takes me less total time to use mouse targeting, as bad as that is.
How do DPSers know what the heck they're hitting when they tab target? Do you just get really quick at identifying the mob or something? I wish Wild could have a "raid screen" that showed all of the in range enemy mobs, similar to the raid screen Wild uses to target raiders to be healed. But there is no such thing. I checked, again on the wowhead forums, and confirmed that all DPSers were in the same boat. Blizzard does not want us to be able click target enemy mobs from a raid screen, and therefore it can't be done. The reason has more to do with pvp, though, in my opinion. Imagine being in Wintergrasp and being able to tell an entire raid to target and focus fire on a single enemy player from a raid screen. Devastating.
Sometimes I think I should set focus to one of the other DPSers in the group, and follow the lead of that one. Two problems with that. One, there is a longer delay in picking up the target, as in most situations the tank targets first, then DPS targets his target. Wild would have to wait through both those actions before he picked up the target from the DPSer. The second problem is that the DPSer I pick might be worse off than Wild. Although maybe that would be a stretch.
I got one other bit of advice from the forum folks. There is a setting that makes the nameplate of mobs visible. Where there are a lot of mobs this can get very confusing and crowd the screen, blocking the view of the fight. But it's a lot easier to find and click on a nameplate than it is to click on the body of a mob. I just might try that.
Any advice?
I'll let ya'll know how Wild's "70% solution" works out.
Wild is in a rut. As a healer his gear is good but unbalanced, overstacked in some stats and lacking in others. As a DPS it's the mechanics of targeting that is holding him back.
This is a self-assessment on where Wild is with his healing and DPS. There was no actual in game play on Thursday. I'll try to make that up to ya'll over the weekend.
Yesterday I did an analysis of Wild's healing compared to the other druid healer in the raid (Mg). I surmised that Wild's lack of +haste on his gear was a major factor keeping Wild from reaching that next level of healing. However, I wasn't completely satisfied with that result, so I also dove under the hood and looked hard at the healing numbers put up by Wild and Mg, spell by spell. The numbers were a bit startling, and slightly disheartening in that Wild is even farther behind than I thought.
Heal over time (HoT) spells are the bread and butter spells of a druid healer. So I took a look at how much healing each HoT did, on average, over the course of the raid on Wednesday night. I also looked at how many "tics" each spell got off to further assess just how much affect the haste difference was making. Note that "tics" are the number of times a HoT dropped a heal on a target over the course of the time from cast to when the spell expired or was over-written.
Rejuv:
Wild: 1781 tics, averaging 2305 healing per tic
Mg: 2227 tics, 2590 healing per tic
Wild Growth (AoE healing up to 6 raiders)
Wild: 2728 tics, 897 hpt
Mg: 2694 tics, 968 hpt
Lifebloom (HoT part only):
Wild: 773 tics, 761 hpt
Mg: 1924 tics, 1645 hpt
Regrowth (HoT part only):
Wild: 175 tics, 1351 hpt
Mg: 283 tics, 2333 hpt
Some of the count/tic differences come from Mg doing mostly tank healing (which will increase the lifebloom counts) and Wild doing mostly raid healing (which should raise his wild growth counts). But while Mg did way outheal Wild with lifebloom as expected, Wild was only barely able to outcast Mg with wild growth. The rejuv numbers were also telling because Wild pretty much spammed rejuv continuously the whole night and still couldn't overtake Mg. Note, also, that on every single spell, on each tic of the HoT, Mg's spells healed for more than Wild's (largely due to Mg's higher spell power). Even if Wild had the same +haste as Mg, and got off as many casts, Wild would still fall behind Mg in total healing.
Wild's main hand/off hand combination severely hurts Wild's spell power numbers, and Wild has had to make the decision to go back to his staff for healing until I can get a main hand weapon that does not further gimp Wild. That nice i264 off hand is going to sit in the bank until then. I have a solution for that, but Wild is going to need a little guild help to get it done. Since Wild finds it hard to ask his guild for help, I'm saying that here so ya'll will bug me about it. :-)
Changing the subject to DPS, I'm trying an experiment with Wild to see if I can improve on his DPS in moonkin form. There are a lot of factors that go into DPS, from gear to type of boss encounter, to what other non-DPS things a player has to do, etc. Druid moonkin DPS has an additional factor in that a lot of our damage is subject to randomness, which causes that DPS number to fluctuate quite a bit, even on multiple tries against the same boss where most of the conditions are exactly the same. That said, I think Wild's DPS is too low for the level of gear he has, and I think it's because I'm too slow getting those spells to the target(s).
Moonkin follow a basic boss encounter attack pattern that starts with two instant spells, Moonfire and Insect Swarm. These two spells are DoTs (damage over time) that tic for 14-15 seconds, and must always be refreshed, ideally right at the point the tics stop from the last cast. With those two spells active, a moonkin then starts spamming either Wrath or Starfire until Eclipse procs. Eclipse is an odd thing. If Wild is spamming Wrath, Eclipse buffs Starfire for 15 seconds with additional spell power. Obviously, Wild immediately switches to Starfire to take advantage of the buff. If Eclipse procs while casting Starfire, then it buffs Wrath for 15 seconds with a better crit percentage. So, moonkin spams the one spell until Eclipse procs, then switches to the other spell until the next proc. It sounds simple and it pretty much is.
The randomness is that Eclipse only procs if a hit creates a critical hit, which is a random event itself. Also note that the increased crit percent of an Eclipse Wrath is just an "opportunity" for more damage, as the crit might not even occur. If Wild gets a lot of crits, proccing Eclipse, then his DPS will be much higher than if he is unlucky and gets fewer procs of Eclipse.
Wild can't do anything about the randomness of his major source of damage, but I'm hoping I can do something about how quickly I get those spells on the target, increasing my chances of getting an Eclipse proc and also raising the base level of damage I'm doing when it doesn't.
Oddly enough, the best place to do Wild's experiment is not in a raid, but in heroic dungeons, where Wild pretty much ignores both Eclipse and the spell Starfire. There are three reasons for this: bosses die fast in heroics; wrath does more damage than starfire in shorter fights where mana isn't an issue; and starfire takes too long to cast to be effective in shorter fights. So Wild spams wrath full time (in addition to his DoTs, of course). When Wild does take advantage of Eclipse, Wild is pretty quick about switching spells, so I'm not worried about that part, anyway.
What I am worried about is getting faster at targeting and getting spells off. Sinstar, and expert moonkin, would probably be appalled at how Wild operates as a moonkin.
Wild first sets the tank as his focus. What this does is it lets Wild see who the tank is targeting, and that then becomes Wild's target. I use the mouse to click on the tank's target, and when the fight starts Wild starts his spell rotation. Wild actually clicks on each spell with the mouse to cast it, a process that is slower than button casting and prone to error if the mouse gets out of line while I'm looking elsewhere or moving. Not only might I miss a spell cast, I have more than once accidentally untargeted the mob and had to target him again. It gets worse after that first mob goes down, because Wild waits for the tank to pick up the next target, and the process begins again. Sometimes clicking the target fails, and Wild loses spell casts while re-targeting. Some tanks stay on one target until dead, others tab through targets (when there are more than one). If a tank changes targets mid-stream, Wild might find himself pounding a mob the tank is not focusing on, and Wild will draw aggro from that mob, irritating the tank and forcing Wild to react, again costing him spell casts. On boss encounters where there are adds that must be switched to depending on the situation, targeting and downing them takes a lot more time than it should. Those situations are a little harder to deal with, and so Wild needs a different approach for that as well.
So. The first priority is for Wild to force himself to become a button pushing spell caster instead of a mouse clicking spell caster. I've tried that before, but since I was still mouse clicking the target first, it didn't help much, plus my heart just wasn't in it (it's that healer mentality). So the second thing I needed to do was eliminate as much of the mouse targeting as I could.
I set Wild up with a small 3x3 button grid, the same grid Wild uses for healing, but obviously with DPS spells instead of healing ones. I made a macro command with the line "/assist focus." What this does is automatically target the tank's target without Wild having to click on it. I originally thought that even if the tank changes his target, Wild's spells with hit whatever his current target is. But I asked that question on the wowhead forums, and had an excellent discussion of that macro in particular and about DPS targeting in general. The macro sets the target when the macro is run. If the tank, or Wild, changes targets, the macro would have to be run again to target the tank's target again. That actually works better for Wild.
Using the assist tank macro should address about 70% of Wild's problems with targeting. Once Wild forces himself to become proficient at bashing buttons to cast spells (so that it is second nature, like his healing), it will also speed up his casting.
The two situations where tank assist targeting doesn't help is when Wild has to switch to a target the tank isn't targeting, such as to kill an add, or in the case where a tank might mark a target to be killed first and which might not be his main target.
Sinstar is raising his hand and yelling at Wild, "TAB targeting!" Yep, DPSers use the Tab key to switch hostile targets. It's essential for DPSers who DoT up multiple targets as part of their routine. If/when Philly goes into a dungeon as a shadow priest, that's exactly what she should be doing. Wild complained that Tabbing was awkward because, as a left-handed mouse user, I couldn't use the Tab key effectively, since it was on the left side of the keyboard. I solved that by binding the tab command to a key on the right side of the keyboard.
But Wild is a fail at using tab targeting. Hitting the tab key targets the nearest enemy, and every time you hit tab again it targets the next nearest target, cycling through however many hostile mobs are in range. But for Wild this is fraught with peril. Sometimes nothing seems to happen (ie, tabbing didn't change the target), and other times it may target a mob we haven't even attacked yet. Want to make a group really mad at you? Target and a hit a mob that draws aggro from mobs we aren't ready for yet. And why does it fail to target the mob right in front of you more times than not? It's so frustrating it takes me less total time to use mouse targeting, as bad as that is.
How do DPSers know what the heck they're hitting when they tab target? Do you just get really quick at identifying the mob or something? I wish Wild could have a "raid screen" that showed all of the in range enemy mobs, similar to the raid screen Wild uses to target raiders to be healed. But there is no such thing. I checked, again on the wowhead forums, and confirmed that all DPSers were in the same boat. Blizzard does not want us to be able click target enemy mobs from a raid screen, and therefore it can't be done. The reason has more to do with pvp, though, in my opinion. Imagine being in Wintergrasp and being able to tell an entire raid to target and focus fire on a single enemy player from a raid screen. Devastating.
Sometimes I think I should set focus to one of the other DPSers in the group, and follow the lead of that one. Two problems with that. One, there is a longer delay in picking up the target, as in most situations the tank targets first, then DPS targets his target. Wild would have to wait through both those actions before he picked up the target from the DPSer. The second problem is that the DPSer I pick might be worse off than Wild. Although maybe that would be a stretch.
I got one other bit of advice from the forum folks. There is a setting that makes the nameplate of mobs visible. Where there are a lot of mobs this can get very confusing and crowd the screen, blocking the view of the fight. But it's a lot easier to find and click on a nameplate than it is to click on the body of a mob. I just might try that.
Any advice?
I'll let ya'll know how Wild's "70% solution" works out.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday (24 Mar) - A Surprise in Every Box
Wednesday (24 Mar) - A Surprise in Every Box
The guild 25 man raid is starting to sort itself out into consistent groups. Just as a reminder, invitations to the raid are priority based - raiders who are considered Tier 1, and particularly those who are considered the better raiders within the Tier 1 group, always have priority for invites. Loot from the early bosses in Icecrown Citadel must still be flowing, since the Tier 1 raiders are still showing up on Tuesday nights enmasse to get their 4-6 farmed bosses. Wild will not likely start to crack into that group until the current group doesn't need anything from those bosses anymore.
The Wednesday night group is also starting to look much the same each week as well. There are, of course, many of the same raiders from Tuesday, but I would guess that number runs around 15, with the rest being raiders that weren't invited or couldn't make it on Tuesday. Among the healers, there is usually 3-4 from Tuesday, which leaves 2-3 spots for what I think the guild rates as Tier 2 healers - Wild, a shaman, and a paladin. The three of us are almost always ready to play on Tuesdays, but as I've noted each week, neither Wild nor the other two get invited. But they do need at least two of us on Wednesday.
Wild and the shaman got a confirmed invite for the Wednesday raid. This is the night we typically bang our heads against new bosses, or bosses that we may have killed before, but still have a lot of difficulty with. To me, I think the guild has things backward. The best raiders (according to the guild leadership) come to the farming run, but fewer of them show up for the more difficult encounters, where they would be most needed. And then they send in what they clearly think is their second string team against the newer content.
In any event Wild was just happy to have a spot. Wild never knows what encounters the raid will be facing on Wednesday. Sure, I could just ask, but it's become kind of a game for Wild to try to deduce where we're headed. The best clue is when entering Icecrown Citadel. A warning always comes up letting raiders know that they are entering a raid that is already in progress, in case that is not what they want to be doing. The warning also says how many bosses are already down, but not who they are. Almost every Wednesday that number is 6, which means that we are likely going to get just one boss down and then start pounding our head on a nasty boss like Putricide. This Wednesday night, however, that number was 4. On Tuesday, our #1 team of raiders decided to take some extra time to take on a boss encounter we haven't defeated yet - Blood Queen Lana'thel. They failed.
It was obvious that the four downed bosses were the four easiest in the first wing, the Lower Spire. From there the guild could go to the Plagueworks wing, or the Crimson Hall wing. The Tuesday group had come up short against the Queen in the Crimson Hall, so I was sure it was going to be the Plagueworks tonight, and it was.
Festergut was our first target, and while he is not an easy boss, Wild is starting to feel like he knows the fight and can handle it. Still, it's a tough boss to start the night on, but we got him on our first try.
We moved on to Rotface, and he made things a tad more difficult for us. We wiped on our first attempt, although we got him down to 6%. Now that I'm comfortable with this fight as well, he's actually starting to become fun. Wild even felt comfortable handing the oozes which had so vexed him last week. All of the bosses in this wing are rather talkative, and if one takes the time to listen to what they say it's really pretty funny. Those bosses do seem to enjoy the fight as much as we do.
Wild has been shut out of loot for the past several raids, but in the Rotface loot there were not just one, but two items that Wild could use. One was an ilevel 264 leather healing shoulder. Wild already has an ilevel 251 shoulder that is part of the T9 set. Since I only have the two pieces of T9, I would lose the set bonus if I replaced it. The other item was an off hand that I wanted a lot more than those shoulders, but so, probably, would a lot of other raiders. The shoulders came up first, though, and I decided to bid on it, but I bid it as a minor upgrade, not as main spec. That meant that if I won it it would cost me less in dkp (or EP, as our system labels the loot points we get). The other druid healer won it. Checking his gear, he had three pieces of T9, so he could afford to upgrade his shoulders without losing the set bonus. Good for him. I bid main spec on the off hand - and won it. Surprise!
The third boss in the Plagueworks is Putricide, but the raid leader surprised me by changing direction and turning us into the Crimson Hall. There are only two encounters in this wing, and they are both challenging.
The first encounter we call "the Princes." The full name is Blood Prince Council. There are three Princes, and they share the same health pool. All three have to be fought at the same time, but only one of them will take damage at any given time. Wild has done this fight before, as the healer for the tank on one of the three Princes. On this encounter Wild was assigned raid healing. It's an interesting fight where one tank has to collect purple balloons to stay alive, and the others have various explosively fun things to do. As a raid healer, Wild healed about half the room while the other raid healer took the other half. Every now and then Wild would intercept a swirling green ball that came his way, trying to intercept it at an angle so that Wild would take a little damage, but not too much damage. Those green balls have a target, and can be fatal if it reaches the target at full strength, So raiders try to deflect it, absorbing a little damage as it goes by. Wild was a target once himself, and I kited it around long enough to survive the inevitable impact.
We wiped on our first try because someone was shooting the purple balloons and the tank that needed them died. That called for some explanations before the next attempt. The Princes went down on our second try.
Wild was one of three raiders that had never seen the next boss, Blood-Queen Lana'thel. Many of the raiders had seen her only once, the night before. We have never beaten this encounter in 25 man. I read up on the fight, and learned that players get bitten and turned into vampires during this fight. That sounds like fun.
There was a pretty long conversation about the strategy. This is a fight where part of the raid has to enter a portal to fight the Queen, while the rest of the raid remains outside fighting the many mobs that spawn. Wild was in the group outside the portal, and so I can't really say what went on inside the portal, but apparently that is where the real action was.
Wild researched this fight before the battle started, but what I saw was very different from the strat guides at wowhead and (later, after the raid was over) at other websites, all of which were written while the encounter was still only on the test realm. In these strats there is no mention of portals.
The guild strategy that was tried on Tuesday had the outside group on the east and west sides of the room north of the Queen. But scatter damage by the mobs the tanks on each side were fighting had the nasty side effect of getting the healers killed. For this night's attempt, we decided to try placing healers on the north and south sides, centering them and getting them out of any chance of scatter fire from the mobs, but still in range to heal our fellow raiders.
We started the fight, and Wild watched mobs like abominations, skeletons, worms, etc, pour into the room. DPS brought them down and Wild kept up the healing. Sections of the raid would go out of range (into the portal). That part of the action I never saw. Healers weren't supposed to get bitten and turned into a vampire, but if there was any of that going on I couldn't see it. Certainly nothing tried to turn me into a vampire :( and Wild did not get any of the other nasty attacks - not the "aura of despair" or the "pack of the darkfallen" or "swarming shadows." There was even an "air phase" when the Queen takes flight. Didn't see that, either.
But everyone was certainly ecstatic when the Queen died and we won. It was the guild's first kill. And we second stringers did it, on our first attempt, and after the first stringers had failed the night before. I have to admit that it felt pretty good.
We had time for one shot at Putricide, and while it was a good attempt we didn't kill him. I'm still not really comfortable with this fight, and apparently neither are others.
Wild's healing was sufficient, but I wasn't happy with it. I know what's wrong, though, but I am going to have to make some gear decisions to fix it.
Here is the numbers:
#1: Mg, our best druid healer, 5213 hps, 20.4% healing
#2: priest, 5131/19.6%
#3: paladin, 5884/18.2%
#4: shaman, 3011/10.7%
#5: Wild, 2700/9.5%
#6, the other shaman, 2597/8.9%
Wild has good gear. Not as good as Mg's, but not that far off, either. The problem is speed. Haste is a stat that reduces the global cooldown that determines how quickly the next spell can be cast. The more haste you have, the faster you can cast, and the more heals you can get on targets. Wild went into ICC Wednesday night with 322 haste. Mg has 860. Mg also has a lot more spell power, which makes his spells stronger, but the key issue is that Wild cannot cast anywhere near as fast as Mg. Druid HoTs are often over-written by other healer spells, so we always have a lot of overhealing. Mg had 54% overhealing, for example. He's fast, and his spells have time to tic before being over-written. Wild gets his heals off later, and runs the greater risk of getting over-written (getting even fewer tics) or even landing after another healer has gotten off his heal. Wild's overhealing was 70%. That's the highest overheal number I've ever seen with Wild. Think of that - 70% of Wild's heals did no healing. Lots of room for improvement there.
Wild now has an awesome off hand, called [Shadow Silk Spindle]. It has +haste, and would immediately bump up Wild's haste to 382, which is at least a start. There is a catch, though. Wild currently wields a two-hand staff. It's a DPS staff, but it's so good that Wild uses it to heal as well. I can't use the two-hand with an off hand. To use the Spindle, I need a one handed weapon to go with it. Wild has one, of course, the one he was using before he got the staff, called [Wraith Strike]. That one hand is an ilevel 219 weapon, though, hardly a match for Wild's current gear level. Combining the stats of the one hand and off hand and comparing them to the staff - well, Wild is going to have to make a tough choice.
Overall, every stat but one is better using the Wraith/Spindle combo than the staff. The one stat that takes a hit is spell power. With the staff Wild's spell power is 2719 (compared to Mg's 2995). With the combo Wild's spell power is 2507, a loss of over 200.
Wild has his work cut out for him.
The guild 25 man raid is starting to sort itself out into consistent groups. Just as a reminder, invitations to the raid are priority based - raiders who are considered Tier 1, and particularly those who are considered the better raiders within the Tier 1 group, always have priority for invites. Loot from the early bosses in Icecrown Citadel must still be flowing, since the Tier 1 raiders are still showing up on Tuesday nights enmasse to get their 4-6 farmed bosses. Wild will not likely start to crack into that group until the current group doesn't need anything from those bosses anymore.
The Wednesday night group is also starting to look much the same each week as well. There are, of course, many of the same raiders from Tuesday, but I would guess that number runs around 15, with the rest being raiders that weren't invited or couldn't make it on Tuesday. Among the healers, there is usually 3-4 from Tuesday, which leaves 2-3 spots for what I think the guild rates as Tier 2 healers - Wild, a shaman, and a paladin. The three of us are almost always ready to play on Tuesdays, but as I've noted each week, neither Wild nor the other two get invited. But they do need at least two of us on Wednesday.
Wild and the shaman got a confirmed invite for the Wednesday raid. This is the night we typically bang our heads against new bosses, or bosses that we may have killed before, but still have a lot of difficulty with. To me, I think the guild has things backward. The best raiders (according to the guild leadership) come to the farming run, but fewer of them show up for the more difficult encounters, where they would be most needed. And then they send in what they clearly think is their second string team against the newer content.
In any event Wild was just happy to have a spot. Wild never knows what encounters the raid will be facing on Wednesday. Sure, I could just ask, but it's become kind of a game for Wild to try to deduce where we're headed. The best clue is when entering Icecrown Citadel. A warning always comes up letting raiders know that they are entering a raid that is already in progress, in case that is not what they want to be doing. The warning also says how many bosses are already down, but not who they are. Almost every Wednesday that number is 6, which means that we are likely going to get just one boss down and then start pounding our head on a nasty boss like Putricide. This Wednesday night, however, that number was 4. On Tuesday, our #1 team of raiders decided to take some extra time to take on a boss encounter we haven't defeated yet - Blood Queen Lana'thel. They failed.
It was obvious that the four downed bosses were the four easiest in the first wing, the Lower Spire. From there the guild could go to the Plagueworks wing, or the Crimson Hall wing. The Tuesday group had come up short against the Queen in the Crimson Hall, so I was sure it was going to be the Plagueworks tonight, and it was.
Festergut was our first target, and while he is not an easy boss, Wild is starting to feel like he knows the fight and can handle it. Still, it's a tough boss to start the night on, but we got him on our first try.
We moved on to Rotface, and he made things a tad more difficult for us. We wiped on our first attempt, although we got him down to 6%. Now that I'm comfortable with this fight as well, he's actually starting to become fun. Wild even felt comfortable handing the oozes which had so vexed him last week. All of the bosses in this wing are rather talkative, and if one takes the time to listen to what they say it's really pretty funny. Those bosses do seem to enjoy the fight as much as we do.
Wild has been shut out of loot for the past several raids, but in the Rotface loot there were not just one, but two items that Wild could use. One was an ilevel 264 leather healing shoulder. Wild already has an ilevel 251 shoulder that is part of the T9 set. Since I only have the two pieces of T9, I would lose the set bonus if I replaced it. The other item was an off hand that I wanted a lot more than those shoulders, but so, probably, would a lot of other raiders. The shoulders came up first, though, and I decided to bid on it, but I bid it as a minor upgrade, not as main spec. That meant that if I won it it would cost me less in dkp (or EP, as our system labels the loot points we get). The other druid healer won it. Checking his gear, he had three pieces of T9, so he could afford to upgrade his shoulders without losing the set bonus. Good for him. I bid main spec on the off hand - and won it. Surprise!
The third boss in the Plagueworks is Putricide, but the raid leader surprised me by changing direction and turning us into the Crimson Hall. There are only two encounters in this wing, and they are both challenging.
The first encounter we call "the Princes." The full name is Blood Prince Council. There are three Princes, and they share the same health pool. All three have to be fought at the same time, but only one of them will take damage at any given time. Wild has done this fight before, as the healer for the tank on one of the three Princes. On this encounter Wild was assigned raid healing. It's an interesting fight where one tank has to collect purple balloons to stay alive, and the others have various explosively fun things to do. As a raid healer, Wild healed about half the room while the other raid healer took the other half. Every now and then Wild would intercept a swirling green ball that came his way, trying to intercept it at an angle so that Wild would take a little damage, but not too much damage. Those green balls have a target, and can be fatal if it reaches the target at full strength, So raiders try to deflect it, absorbing a little damage as it goes by. Wild was a target once himself, and I kited it around long enough to survive the inevitable impact.
We wiped on our first try because someone was shooting the purple balloons and the tank that needed them died. That called for some explanations before the next attempt. The Princes went down on our second try.
Wild was one of three raiders that had never seen the next boss, Blood-Queen Lana'thel. Many of the raiders had seen her only once, the night before. We have never beaten this encounter in 25 man. I read up on the fight, and learned that players get bitten and turned into vampires during this fight. That sounds like fun.
The somewhat rectangular room looks like this:
There was a pretty long conversation about the strategy. This is a fight where part of the raid has to enter a portal to fight the Queen, while the rest of the raid remains outside fighting the many mobs that spawn. Wild was in the group outside the portal, and so I can't really say what went on inside the portal, but apparently that is where the real action was.
Wild researched this fight before the battle started, but what I saw was very different from the strat guides at wowhead and (later, after the raid was over) at other websites, all of which were written while the encounter was still only on the test realm. In these strats there is no mention of portals.
The guild strategy that was tried on Tuesday had the outside group on the east and west sides of the room north of the Queen. But scatter damage by the mobs the tanks on each side were fighting had the nasty side effect of getting the healers killed. For this night's attempt, we decided to try placing healers on the north and south sides, centering them and getting them out of any chance of scatter fire from the mobs, but still in range to heal our fellow raiders.
We started the fight, and Wild watched mobs like abominations, skeletons, worms, etc, pour into the room. DPS brought them down and Wild kept up the healing. Sections of the raid would go out of range (into the portal). That part of the action I never saw. Healers weren't supposed to get bitten and turned into a vampire, but if there was any of that going on I couldn't see it. Certainly nothing tried to turn me into a vampire :( and Wild did not get any of the other nasty attacks - not the "aura of despair" or the "pack of the darkfallen" or "swarming shadows." There was even an "air phase" when the Queen takes flight. Didn't see that, either.
But everyone was certainly ecstatic when the Queen died and we won. It was the guild's first kill. And we second stringers did it, on our first attempt, and after the first stringers had failed the night before. I have to admit that it felt pretty good.
We had time for one shot at Putricide, and while it was a good attempt we didn't kill him. I'm still not really comfortable with this fight, and apparently neither are others.
Wild's healing was sufficient, but I wasn't happy with it. I know what's wrong, though, but I am going to have to make some gear decisions to fix it.
Here is the numbers:
#1: Mg, our best druid healer, 5213 hps, 20.4% healing
#2: priest, 5131/19.6%
#3: paladin, 5884/18.2%
#4: shaman, 3011/10.7%
#5: Wild, 2700/9.5%
#6, the other shaman, 2597/8.9%
Wild has good gear. Not as good as Mg's, but not that far off, either. The problem is speed. Haste is a stat that reduces the global cooldown that determines how quickly the next spell can be cast. The more haste you have, the faster you can cast, and the more heals you can get on targets. Wild went into ICC Wednesday night with 322 haste. Mg has 860. Mg also has a lot more spell power, which makes his spells stronger, but the key issue is that Wild cannot cast anywhere near as fast as Mg. Druid HoTs are often over-written by other healer spells, so we always have a lot of overhealing. Mg had 54% overhealing, for example. He's fast, and his spells have time to tic before being over-written. Wild gets his heals off later, and runs the greater risk of getting over-written (getting even fewer tics) or even landing after another healer has gotten off his heal. Wild's overhealing was 70%. That's the highest overheal number I've ever seen with Wild. Think of that - 70% of Wild's heals did no healing. Lots of room for improvement there.
Wild now has an awesome off hand, called [Shadow Silk Spindle]. It has +haste, and would immediately bump up Wild's haste to 382, which is at least a start. There is a catch, though. Wild currently wields a two-hand staff. It's a DPS staff, but it's so good that Wild uses it to heal as well. I can't use the two-hand with an off hand. To use the Spindle, I need a one handed weapon to go with it. Wild has one, of course, the one he was using before he got the staff, called [Wraith Strike]. That one hand is an ilevel 219 weapon, though, hardly a match for Wild's current gear level. Combining the stats of the one hand and off hand and comparing them to the staff - well, Wild is going to have to make a tough choice.
Overall, every stat but one is better using the Wraith/Spindle combo than the staff. The one stat that takes a hit is spell power. With the staff Wild's spell power is 2719 (compared to Mg's 2995). With the combo Wild's spell power is 2507, a loss of over 200.
Wild has his work cut out for him.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday (23 Mar) - Patch 3.3.3
Tuesday (23 Mar) - Patch 3.3.3
Wild was left at the altar again, Tuesday night, standing by but not needed as the guild 25 man started at VoA in Wintergrasp for the evening raid. They finished off Koralon so fast they were back out of VoA and streaming past Wild before they even announced that raid invites had been completed. I'd had a small hope that they would bring Wild just for the VoA run because a couple of invited guildies were running a little late, but they made it to the party just in time. As usual the Tuesday farming run was well attended with 32 raiders signed up. Wild will have to wait and see what Wednesday brings. The proposed restart of the MM group for a ten man has not materialized. Wild's raiding situation sucks.
Before Wild checked out for the evening I did note that the Dungeon Finder now has an option for random level 80 pvp battlegrounds. That part of the new patch looks to be in place.
I didn't have any trouble loading the patch, although some of Wild's guildies did. Wild's troubles only started after he logged in, although I would have to say they were pretty minor compared to other patches. The first time Wild logged in nothing worked - he couldn't open mail, get on his mount, etc. Couldn't even leave Dalaran as the flight master wouldn't talk to him and even the portal to the surface failed to respond. Later in the day I tried again, and although it was laggy things appeared back to normal. Philly had a couple of disconnects as well, but the servers stayed up.
One the first day of the patch I intentionally stayed away from the quartermasters for the turn in of the pvp marks (which are no longer being used) as I figured there would be a crowd and it would be overly laggy, if it worked at all. I'll try it on Wednesday.
I rolled Philly out of bed, though. She was able to get dailies done and even got into a Wintergrasp match after Wild logged out. Philly has had good luck with WG since she made level 78. She's won both matches she's been part of, including the one Tuesday night, one on offense and one on defense. The new WG rules mean that the advantage will stay with defenders for two consecutive victories instead of one as was the previous rule. In order to assure parity between the two factions, Blizzard rigs the WG battle so that the offense eventually gets a decided advantage, in order that one faction doesn't hog the fortress for long periods (they call that rigging their "internal balance system"). The advantage turned to the offense after just one win before the patch; now it doesn't change until there are two consecutive victorious defenses.
Philly can't use the pvp battleground finder yet as it is only for level 80s for this first release. With the dailies and the WG match, though, she's now 18% of the way to level 79. Another enhancement to the dungeon finder tool is that now world bosses and seasonal bosses can be assaulted year round instead of what used to be just a limited time. Rare drops from these bosses are about to become ho hum routine as players farm those bosses.
For those who don't use addons, there are quite a few changes to the default user interface in the patch for the Auction House, quest tracking, and other areas. The rest of the patch is the usual tweaks and adjustments, but I didn't see anything major in any of those.
On the home improvement front, we were renters for many years when we first got married. We moved a lot and that, plus financial issues, kept us from buying. Once we settled for a bit - six years renting once we moved to California - we made the plunge, bought a home, and never regretted it. We even had to move away for two years, rented the house while we were gone, and then moved back. The one thing we did regret was paying rent those first six years, when we could have had our own home. With today's low fixed rates and home availability, it's a good time to consider buying.
I fixed the electrical issue with the bedroom wall unit yesterday, and even did some shoring up of the troublesome mirror centerpiece, and the Mrs seems a bit happier. I'll try to post a picture or two when I get a chance. Then she told me she wanted to drywall and paint the garage. I wonder if that is before or after we dive into the bedroom closet upgrade.
Wild was left at the altar again, Tuesday night, standing by but not needed as the guild 25 man started at VoA in Wintergrasp for the evening raid. They finished off Koralon so fast they were back out of VoA and streaming past Wild before they even announced that raid invites had been completed. I'd had a small hope that they would bring Wild just for the VoA run because a couple of invited guildies were running a little late, but they made it to the party just in time. As usual the Tuesday farming run was well attended with 32 raiders signed up. Wild will have to wait and see what Wednesday brings. The proposed restart of the MM group for a ten man has not materialized. Wild's raiding situation sucks.
Before Wild checked out for the evening I did note that the Dungeon Finder now has an option for random level 80 pvp battlegrounds. That part of the new patch looks to be in place.
I didn't have any trouble loading the patch, although some of Wild's guildies did. Wild's troubles only started after he logged in, although I would have to say they were pretty minor compared to other patches. The first time Wild logged in nothing worked - he couldn't open mail, get on his mount, etc. Couldn't even leave Dalaran as the flight master wouldn't talk to him and even the portal to the surface failed to respond. Later in the day I tried again, and although it was laggy things appeared back to normal. Philly had a couple of disconnects as well, but the servers stayed up.
One the first day of the patch I intentionally stayed away from the quartermasters for the turn in of the pvp marks (which are no longer being used) as I figured there would be a crowd and it would be overly laggy, if it worked at all. I'll try it on Wednesday.
I rolled Philly out of bed, though. She was able to get dailies done and even got into a Wintergrasp match after Wild logged out. Philly has had good luck with WG since she made level 78. She's won both matches she's been part of, including the one Tuesday night, one on offense and one on defense. The new WG rules mean that the advantage will stay with defenders for two consecutive victories instead of one as was the previous rule. In order to assure parity between the two factions, Blizzard rigs the WG battle so that the offense eventually gets a decided advantage, in order that one faction doesn't hog the fortress for long periods (they call that rigging their "internal balance system"). The advantage turned to the offense after just one win before the patch; now it doesn't change until there are two consecutive victorious defenses.
Philly can't use the pvp battleground finder yet as it is only for level 80s for this first release. With the dailies and the WG match, though, she's now 18% of the way to level 79. Another enhancement to the dungeon finder tool is that now world bosses and seasonal bosses can be assaulted year round instead of what used to be just a limited time. Rare drops from these bosses are about to become ho hum routine as players farm those bosses.
For those who don't use addons, there are quite a few changes to the default user interface in the patch for the Auction House, quest tracking, and other areas. The rest of the patch is the usual tweaks and adjustments, but I didn't see anything major in any of those.
On the home improvement front, we were renters for many years when we first got married. We moved a lot and that, plus financial issues, kept us from buying. Once we settled for a bit - six years renting once we moved to California - we made the plunge, bought a home, and never regretted it. We even had to move away for two years, rented the house while we were gone, and then moved back. The one thing we did regret was paying rent those first six years, when we could have had our own home. With today's low fixed rates and home availability, it's a good time to consider buying.
I fixed the electrical issue with the bedroom wall unit yesterday, and even did some shoring up of the troublesome mirror centerpiece, and the Mrs seems a bit happier. I'll try to post a picture or two when I get a chance. Then she told me she wanted to drywall and paint the garage. I wonder if that is before or after we dive into the bedroom closet upgrade.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Weekend (21 Mar) - A Good Night's Sleep
Weekend (21 Mar) - A Good Night's Sleep
The Mrs and I have been obsessed with the bedroom the past week and particularly this weekend (think what you want about that :P ), so you are about to be regaled with our bedroom set story, like it or not. There will be some Warcraft at the end, though, so skip down to that if you want. :-)
Our bedroom set was 18 years old and had seen the inside of moving vans six times. It was solid Pennsylvania wood, the wood stained to a very dark shine. The set included a poster bed with both headboard and footboard, a tall amoire, a night stand, and a long, two piece chest of drawers with a massive mirror. The set wore a fine tracery of scars with pride - evidence of years of sharing the bedroom with our cats. Otherwise, the set was in full working order. The mattress was only six years old but was showing evidence of the inevitable sagging that was starting to manifest in aching backs.
We wanted a change, and decided we wanted the bookcase headboard style this time, a wall unit with matching shelves on either side. We wanted to go with a lighter wood this time, too, as we were into painting mode and intended to paint in between moving furniture in and out.
The bookcase headboard style is out of fashion right now (at least it is here), and the local furniture stores did not have much in the way of selection. The one set we liked would have broken the bank, so we took another tack and looked online for used furniture. It took some time, but a beautiful, real wood set turned up on Craig's List. It sounded too good to be true. These wall units go for $2200 plus when new, and the lady was selling it for $200.
The seller lived about an hour from our house. The Mrs got a chance to go up there and check it out, and came back with a glowing report. It was in superb condition, in four easy to set up sections, including a very nice lighted mirror and even electrical outlets built in. The lady also had an amoire type dresser that matched the wall unit, and the Mrs couldn't help herself. She bought them both. The now $450 total cost was still a very good bargain.
We were further fortunate that the seller was in no rush to have us pick it up, and we told her we wanted a few days to sell our existing set. A week went buy with no bidders, though, and we adjusted the price and broke the set into components for individual sale. At last we got some interest, and arranged for a couple to come by and see it. They only lived two miles from us, and were only interested in our chest of drawers with the mirror. We'd originally offered the whole set for $475, but had reduced that, and were selling the chest/mirror for $150.
The couple came by. The lady of the house was a tiny oriental woman and the husband a former sailor, both in their late 50s, early 60s. The lady oohed and awed over the set while the husband, arms tightly crossed across his chest, stood like a stone in front of the chest/mirror. "This is what we're here to look at," he grumbled to his wife. But his wife wanted more, asking about the night stand. We talked some more. The husband, who fancied himself as someone who could restore furniture, even showed some interest when he saw the quality of wood construction. The bait was hooked. The husband was still wiggling on the line, but it was clear his Mrs would be making the final call. "How much for the whole set?" she asked. The husband paled. He looked at me. I opened my mouth. My wife said, "$300." I think my mouth was still open when my eyes locked onto the husband's. He looked like he was holding a lottery ticket, and was looking at me to confirm that he had the winning number. I sort of shrugged. The number was already out there, and could not be retrieved. I also knew who made the final call in my family, too. We sold the whole set, and threw in the mattress and boxspring.
Arrangements got a bit tangled as we manuevered to get everything in and out of the house. The couple could not pick up the furniture until the following Friday, and had only their van to use, so it would take several trips. The husband didn't look strong enough to handle such large furniture, but he had two sons. We hoped that would work. We had hired a local mover to get the furniture we had bought, and we had it picked up on Thursday night, with the mover agreeing to deliver it late Friday. Our hope was that our old furniture would be out by then. A new mattress and boxspring would be delivered on Saturday. We arrived at the seller's house on Thursday a little late, but the mover was already there and had all but two pieces already loaded. So I didn't get to see the assembled unit.
Friday morning the husband arrived at our house around 10:30am. He was alone. No sons. They were still asleep. He just wanted to take small stuff. So we loaded the night stand and stuffed the van with all of the drawers. He came back around noon, this time with one of his sons, and we started making progress. We had one delay, when the door to the back of his van jammed. But he knew what the problem was, and got it fixed. A tire went flat, as well, but not a problem, he said, it does that every week. It was too flat to drive with it, in my estimation, even just the two miles to his house, so I got out my air compressor and filled it for him. We were expecting an all day event, but by 3pm they had gotten their final load and were gone.
We cleaned up in the bedroom, getting things ready for the new furniture. We thought about painting while the room was all but empty, then decided to wait. The unit was in several sections, so it should be easy to move for painting. The mover arrived Friday evening right on time, and got to work moving in and setting up our new bedroom set. I got my first look at it all together, and it was very nice. The wall unit was about 15 feet long when completely assembled, larger than I expected, but still taking up less room than the combination of furniture we'd just sold.
The one problem, though, was the mirror centerpiece. It was not a stand alone piece as we were told, but six pieces that had to be supported by the rest of the unit. It was not easy to put together, and once assembled, we no longer had separate pieces that could be moved independently - it was all one 15 foot piece. We didn't like that so much. Painting had just gotten a bit more complicated. We had gotten an estimate of $155 for the move, but on Thursday that went up to $180 due to the number of pieces and the complexity of disassembly and re-assembly. Our price tag now stood at $630.
The second thing we didn't like was that the bed frame was too low, and rather flimsy at that. We stored stuff under the bed, and in a household that accommodated our four footed children, they needed room to be able to hide under the bed. On Saturday morning, when the mattresses were delivered and put in place, the lack of space under the bed was even more obvious. I called the mattress store and asked about bed frames. Yes, they had what we needed. And on Sunday we changed out the bed frame. Total price for the bedroom furniture was now $810.
The new mattress is great. It was the most expensive part of project at $1800, but we had already planned for that. The $610 difference between our "$200" furniture and real cost of $810 just goes to show what happens with projects like this. Not to mention our hope of $475 for our old furniture and the $300 reality. But had we bought the same set with dresser from the local furniture store, the price would have been triple that $810. It's still a bargain. So far. We celebrated with a couple of bottles of champagne, and I'm feeling the effects this morning.
So now our bedroom is complete. Well, maybe. The mirror centerpiece still concerns us. It may have to go. I don't know what that's gonna cost me.
After all the excitement in the bedroom, the rest of the post is probably going to seem boring. But here goes, anyway.
In the last post, it was Friday night and DER and Philly had just finished up two random dungeon runs, putting Philly at 78% of the way to level 78.
Then we settled into some late evening pvp, Philly staying and DER swapping out for Sin. We got into a Warsong Gulch match and then an Isle of Conquest (I think) match. We lost both, and the queue times were very long. Not a good night for pvp, at least in the 70s bracket.
DER still needed some badges in order to buy an heirloom bow for his new hunter, so Philly gave way to Wild, and DER returned. Wild, in moonkin spec, and DER, joined the heroic random dungeon queue. We did Nexus and Violet Hold, and a third that I can no longer remember. I do remember whispering to DER after a boss kill in the third dungeon, telling him I was done for the night. He reminded me that we'd only just killed the first boss, and had three more to go. I was that tired. Wild kept it together and we finished the third dungeon around 1:30am. Doing these dungeons is a lot more fun with DER. And he keeps me awake. :)
DER got the badges he needed for his bow. Wild got enough new badges to buy an extra +int trinket to help with his moonkin mana. Even that was a stretch buy, though, and Wild has no need of further triumph badges, other than using them to downgrade to badges he can use for more heirloom gear.
DER and Wild came very close in total DPS on the night. I let the recount addon run through all three dungeons. Wild averaged 2579 DPS and DER averaged 2429 DPS, close enough to be a virtual tie. DER's top DPS on a single boss fight was 3382 DPS against Omorokk in Nexus. Wild's top total of 3518 DPS came against Telestra, also in Nexus.
Philly went back into action the following day, getting in her dozen or so dailies and DINGING to level 78. With that Philly equipped six pieces of Frostsavage pvp gear, and got into her first Wintergrasp battle where she could take the weekly quests and start earning some serious honor points. The horde even won the match. Philly earned over 5k honor, her shard total jumped from 2 to 22, and she now has 20 WG marks for more honor or gear purchases. As of the end of the weekend Philly is 8% of the way to level 79. She also upgraded gear for pvp, pve healing, and pve shadow DPS. Life is looking pretty good to Philly.
The Mrs and I have been obsessed with the bedroom the past week and particularly this weekend (think what you want about that :P ), so you are about to be regaled with our bedroom set story, like it or not. There will be some Warcraft at the end, though, so skip down to that if you want. :-)
Our bedroom set was 18 years old and had seen the inside of moving vans six times. It was solid Pennsylvania wood, the wood stained to a very dark shine. The set included a poster bed with both headboard and footboard, a tall amoire, a night stand, and a long, two piece chest of drawers with a massive mirror. The set wore a fine tracery of scars with pride - evidence of years of sharing the bedroom with our cats. Otherwise, the set was in full working order. The mattress was only six years old but was showing evidence of the inevitable sagging that was starting to manifest in aching backs.
We wanted a change, and decided we wanted the bookcase headboard style this time, a wall unit with matching shelves on either side. We wanted to go with a lighter wood this time, too, as we were into painting mode and intended to paint in between moving furniture in and out.
The bookcase headboard style is out of fashion right now (at least it is here), and the local furniture stores did not have much in the way of selection. The one set we liked would have broken the bank, so we took another tack and looked online for used furniture. It took some time, but a beautiful, real wood set turned up on Craig's List. It sounded too good to be true. These wall units go for $2200 plus when new, and the lady was selling it for $200.
The seller lived about an hour from our house. The Mrs got a chance to go up there and check it out, and came back with a glowing report. It was in superb condition, in four easy to set up sections, including a very nice lighted mirror and even electrical outlets built in. The lady also had an amoire type dresser that matched the wall unit, and the Mrs couldn't help herself. She bought them both. The now $450 total cost was still a very good bargain.
We were further fortunate that the seller was in no rush to have us pick it up, and we told her we wanted a few days to sell our existing set. A week went buy with no bidders, though, and we adjusted the price and broke the set into components for individual sale. At last we got some interest, and arranged for a couple to come by and see it. They only lived two miles from us, and were only interested in our chest of drawers with the mirror. We'd originally offered the whole set for $475, but had reduced that, and were selling the chest/mirror for $150.
The couple came by. The lady of the house was a tiny oriental woman and the husband a former sailor, both in their late 50s, early 60s. The lady oohed and awed over the set while the husband, arms tightly crossed across his chest, stood like a stone in front of the chest/mirror. "This is what we're here to look at," he grumbled to his wife. But his wife wanted more, asking about the night stand. We talked some more. The husband, who fancied himself as someone who could restore furniture, even showed some interest when he saw the quality of wood construction. The bait was hooked. The husband was still wiggling on the line, but it was clear his Mrs would be making the final call. "How much for the whole set?" she asked. The husband paled. He looked at me. I opened my mouth. My wife said, "$300." I think my mouth was still open when my eyes locked onto the husband's. He looked like he was holding a lottery ticket, and was looking at me to confirm that he had the winning number. I sort of shrugged. The number was already out there, and could not be retrieved. I also knew who made the final call in my family, too. We sold the whole set, and threw in the mattress and boxspring.
Arrangements got a bit tangled as we manuevered to get everything in and out of the house. The couple could not pick up the furniture until the following Friday, and had only their van to use, so it would take several trips. The husband didn't look strong enough to handle such large furniture, but he had two sons. We hoped that would work. We had hired a local mover to get the furniture we had bought, and we had it picked up on Thursday night, with the mover agreeing to deliver it late Friday. Our hope was that our old furniture would be out by then. A new mattress and boxspring would be delivered on Saturday. We arrived at the seller's house on Thursday a little late, but the mover was already there and had all but two pieces already loaded. So I didn't get to see the assembled unit.
Friday morning the husband arrived at our house around 10:30am. He was alone. No sons. They were still asleep. He just wanted to take small stuff. So we loaded the night stand and stuffed the van with all of the drawers. He came back around noon, this time with one of his sons, and we started making progress. We had one delay, when the door to the back of his van jammed. But he knew what the problem was, and got it fixed. A tire went flat, as well, but not a problem, he said, it does that every week. It was too flat to drive with it, in my estimation, even just the two miles to his house, so I got out my air compressor and filled it for him. We were expecting an all day event, but by 3pm they had gotten their final load and were gone.
We cleaned up in the bedroom, getting things ready for the new furniture. We thought about painting while the room was all but empty, then decided to wait. The unit was in several sections, so it should be easy to move for painting. The mover arrived Friday evening right on time, and got to work moving in and setting up our new bedroom set. I got my first look at it all together, and it was very nice. The wall unit was about 15 feet long when completely assembled, larger than I expected, but still taking up less room than the combination of furniture we'd just sold.
The one problem, though, was the mirror centerpiece. It was not a stand alone piece as we were told, but six pieces that had to be supported by the rest of the unit. It was not easy to put together, and once assembled, we no longer had separate pieces that could be moved independently - it was all one 15 foot piece. We didn't like that so much. Painting had just gotten a bit more complicated. We had gotten an estimate of $155 for the move, but on Thursday that went up to $180 due to the number of pieces and the complexity of disassembly and re-assembly. Our price tag now stood at $630.
The second thing we didn't like was that the bed frame was too low, and rather flimsy at that. We stored stuff under the bed, and in a household that accommodated our four footed children, they needed room to be able to hide under the bed. On Saturday morning, when the mattresses were delivered and put in place, the lack of space under the bed was even more obvious. I called the mattress store and asked about bed frames. Yes, they had what we needed. And on Sunday we changed out the bed frame. Total price for the bedroom furniture was now $810.
The new mattress is great. It was the most expensive part of project at $1800, but we had already planned for that. The $610 difference between our "$200" furniture and real cost of $810 just goes to show what happens with projects like this. Not to mention our hope of $475 for our old furniture and the $300 reality. But had we bought the same set with dresser from the local furniture store, the price would have been triple that $810. It's still a bargain. So far. We celebrated with a couple of bottles of champagne, and I'm feeling the effects this morning.
So now our bedroom is complete. Well, maybe. The mirror centerpiece still concerns us. It may have to go. I don't know what that's gonna cost me.
After all the excitement in the bedroom, the rest of the post is probably going to seem boring. But here goes, anyway.
In the last post, it was Friday night and DER and Philly had just finished up two random dungeon runs, putting Philly at 78% of the way to level 78.
Then we settled into some late evening pvp, Philly staying and DER swapping out for Sin. We got into a Warsong Gulch match and then an Isle of Conquest (I think) match. We lost both, and the queue times were very long. Not a good night for pvp, at least in the 70s bracket.
DER still needed some badges in order to buy an heirloom bow for his new hunter, so Philly gave way to Wild, and DER returned. Wild, in moonkin spec, and DER, joined the heroic random dungeon queue. We did Nexus and Violet Hold, and a third that I can no longer remember. I do remember whispering to DER after a boss kill in the third dungeon, telling him I was done for the night. He reminded me that we'd only just killed the first boss, and had three more to go. I was that tired. Wild kept it together and we finished the third dungeon around 1:30am. Doing these dungeons is a lot more fun with DER. And he keeps me awake. :)
DER got the badges he needed for his bow. Wild got enough new badges to buy an extra +int trinket to help with his moonkin mana. Even that was a stretch buy, though, and Wild has no need of further triumph badges, other than using them to downgrade to badges he can use for more heirloom gear.
DER and Wild came very close in total DPS on the night. I let the recount addon run through all three dungeons. Wild averaged 2579 DPS and DER averaged 2429 DPS, close enough to be a virtual tie. DER's top DPS on a single boss fight was 3382 DPS against Omorokk in Nexus. Wild's top total of 3518 DPS came against Telestra, also in Nexus.
Philly went back into action the following day, getting in her dozen or so dailies and DINGING to level 78. With that Philly equipped six pieces of Frostsavage pvp gear, and got into her first Wintergrasp battle where she could take the weekly quests and start earning some serious honor points. The horde even won the match. Philly earned over 5k honor, her shard total jumped from 2 to 22, and she now has 20 WG marks for more honor or gear purchases. As of the end of the weekend Philly is 8% of the way to level 79. She also upgraded gear for pvp, pve healing, and pve shadow DPS. Life is looking pretty good to Philly.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday (21 Mar) - Under Pressure
Friday (21 Mar) - Under Pressure
Level 77 Philly had completed her dailies on Friday, putting her 47% of the way to level 78. It had been a slow week for her and the rest of the Wild family, and everyone was looking forward for some evening pvp action.
Philly was still in game when DER joined her a little before 10pm. We talked about what pvp bracket to start out in, and DER also asked if Philly wanted to do some random dungeon runs with DER to help her level. Despite all of the improvements Philly had made to her gear (to improve her mana regen) and user interface (to organize all the new spells that she had to know when and how to use), she was still pretty nervous about making that final leap into a real 5 man dungeon with four others, and being responsible for keeping everyone alive. So Philly thought she was being clever when she countered that she really needed to get a run in Violet Hold with DER and Sis to really tell how much of an improvement the changes would make. The three of them had done VH before, but it had been a tough evening for Philly, and that would be her point of comparison. "Sis is going to be here tonight, right?" Philly asked.
"Nope," DER said, "she's out of town. But we can two man it to get you some practice." Philly couldn't think of any reason to say no to that, but she did drag her feet a bit more before agreeing. Philly puttered about a bit, but soon joined DER in VH. VH is rated for level 75-77, so DER at level 80 was over qualified, but then there were only two of us, instead of five. We did not plow through the whole dungeon, but Philly did enough to prove to herself that she could indeed maintain Shields full time on the tank (DER) and herself without fear of going out of mana. Although there was little need for heavy healing, Philly still cast a lot of heals, pretending heavy damage was being done, and still she managed fine with her mana.
Critiquing herself aftward, Philly felt that she was still pretty awkward at casting spells, had trouble finding lesser used spells (and remembering to use them), and that the "feeling" was not yet natural and automatic.
"Ready for a random dungeon?" DER asked.
"Uh, just a sec, need to make some adjustments." Philly stared at the collection of bars and buttons on her screen. Her head hurt. With a hand over the number pad, she ticked off each spell under her fingers. The pattern roughly resembled the number pad arrangement that Wild has, with similar spells in the same locations. She tweaked a couple of things that had not worked well.
"Ready now?" DER persisted.
"Gotta repair." Philly got her repairs done. She studied her spell sets again, brow furrowed in concentration.
"Ok, I'm putting us in the queue," DER said, not waiting for Philly to come up with another excuse.
The Dungeon Finder (DF) screen popped up. Healer or DPS? it asked. Philly took a deep breath, selected healer, and pressed ok.
INSTANTLY the DF came right back to tell Philly and DER that a group had been found and to please click to enter the dungeon. I mean, it was immediate. Can't back out now.
The dungeon selected was Gundrak. Philly prayed that Wild's memory of the dungeon would fill her mind as we started off. This is a place of ice trolls and mammoths, among other denizens. There are four bosses, but Philly would be hard pressed to point them out as the group of mostly high level 70s (plus DER's 80) worked through the level 76-78 dungeon in normal mode.
Philly broke her healing down to the basics - keep a Shield up on the tank. POM him before a boss fight. Hit the tank with Penance if he takes more than modest damage. Flash heal anyone needing some healing. Shield anyone having trouble. Don't forget to check Philly's own health. And after all that try to use your other spells, too.
Random dungeon runs usually move fast, and this group was no exception. Twice Philly called for a mana break so she could drink to restore a mana bar down under 30%. She didn't get one either time, as the tank kept moving forward, but they managed without her until I could get back into action. I could have avoided even those two delays had Philly remembered that she has mana regen Use trinkets that she could have popped.
Another hard habit to break was immediately tossing a heal at the first sign someone was taking damage. That is so automatic to Wild that brain and muscle memory respond without thinking about it. But disc healers have that big shield, and Philly has to learn to use it correctly. Don't bother with the little stuff, if the damage grows to the size of a flash heal, then hit the player with a flash heal, but not before. If the damage spikes or rises fast, Shield FIRST, not after a heal. For too long it's been "I see damage" so HEAL IT! Disc priests STOP the damage with Shield, then heal the damage already done, not the other way around. And most importantly, that rule applies to Philly herself! When taking incoming damage, Shield first. To add one more thing to this, with Shield Glyphed (and Philly has the glyph) Shield also pops a heal when cast, so it's sort of like an instant heal anyway. At least that's how Philly views it.
Philly also needs to figure out how to get a better view of a specific debuff called Weakened Soul. It's very important to know when it's active and when it's not, and while it's timer is displayed, it's buried in a bunch of other information on the screen.
Oh, and one last thing. If Philly does happen to draw aggro, as did happen sometimes, try not to forget the spell Fade, which makes the nasty thing in your face forget who you are and it goes off to find someone else to torment. Philly has never cast that spell in a live situation with a mob beating on me. Bad priest, bad.
We did beat the dungeon Gundrak. Nobody died, to Philly's surprise and relief. I don't think anyone could tell it was Philly's very first time healing a dungeon, other than DER, of course. Philly got two triumph emblems, the first of many more to come, hopefully. The victory also brought a tear to Wild's eye. It was Philly's first high level dungeon victory, and the only family member following Wild's footsteps as a healer. Wild has high hopes for this young lady.
"How'd it feel?" DER asked.
"Awesome and terrifying at the same time," was her honest reply.
"Again?" DER asked Philly and rest of the group of players that had just finished Gundrak. We all said yes, and Philly, still dazed by Gundrak, was dropped into another dungeon. She caught a break, though. The dungeon was Violet Hold. If there is any dungeon in WoW that Philly felt confident in, it was VH. We got what might be the worst mix of bosses (two of five possibles are randomly picked, with the dragon Cyanigosa always the third and final boss). It didn't matter. We pounded through it quickly, and Philly actually relaxed a bit and played around with her spells. And again nobody died. Maybe Philly really will make it as a healer. Philly didn't do it alone, though. DER most definitely helped, dealing #1 DPS that none of the other players could match and rarely needing any healing help, which shortened fights and allowed Philly to focus on the rest of the group.
When it was all tallied up, Philly was 78% of the way to level 78. She won two items she'll put to use and completed a quest that got her a third useful piece. She averaged 910 hps in Gundrak, where the healing requirements were much higher than in VH. So that set the bar for her to work upward from. DER offered another dungeon run to get her closer to level 78, but Philly wanted time to bask in her current success. Level 78 will come in time. Enjoying her first two dungeon successes should be savored right away.
Neither were ready to call it an evening, though. It was time to hit the battlegrounds, and maybe grab a Wintergrasp match. Stay tuned.
Level 77 Philly had completed her dailies on Friday, putting her 47% of the way to level 78. It had been a slow week for her and the rest of the Wild family, and everyone was looking forward for some evening pvp action.
Philly was still in game when DER joined her a little before 10pm. We talked about what pvp bracket to start out in, and DER also asked if Philly wanted to do some random dungeon runs with DER to help her level. Despite all of the improvements Philly had made to her gear (to improve her mana regen) and user interface (to organize all the new spells that she had to know when and how to use), she was still pretty nervous about making that final leap into a real 5 man dungeon with four others, and being responsible for keeping everyone alive. So Philly thought she was being clever when she countered that she really needed to get a run in Violet Hold with DER and Sis to really tell how much of an improvement the changes would make. The three of them had done VH before, but it had been a tough evening for Philly, and that would be her point of comparison. "Sis is going to be here tonight, right?" Philly asked.
"Nope," DER said, "she's out of town. But we can two man it to get you some practice." Philly couldn't think of any reason to say no to that, but she did drag her feet a bit more before agreeing. Philly puttered about a bit, but soon joined DER in VH. VH is rated for level 75-77, so DER at level 80 was over qualified, but then there were only two of us, instead of five. We did not plow through the whole dungeon, but Philly did enough to prove to herself that she could indeed maintain Shields full time on the tank (DER) and herself without fear of going out of mana. Although there was little need for heavy healing, Philly still cast a lot of heals, pretending heavy damage was being done, and still she managed fine with her mana.
Critiquing herself aftward, Philly felt that she was still pretty awkward at casting spells, had trouble finding lesser used spells (and remembering to use them), and that the "feeling" was not yet natural and automatic.
"Ready for a random dungeon?" DER asked.
"Uh, just a sec, need to make some adjustments." Philly stared at the collection of bars and buttons on her screen. Her head hurt. With a hand over the number pad, she ticked off each spell under her fingers. The pattern roughly resembled the number pad arrangement that Wild has, with similar spells in the same locations. She tweaked a couple of things that had not worked well.
"Ready now?" DER persisted.
"Gotta repair." Philly got her repairs done. She studied her spell sets again, brow furrowed in concentration.
"Ok, I'm putting us in the queue," DER said, not waiting for Philly to come up with another excuse.
The Dungeon Finder (DF) screen popped up. Healer or DPS? it asked. Philly took a deep breath, selected healer, and pressed ok.
INSTANTLY the DF came right back to tell Philly and DER that a group had been found and to please click to enter the dungeon. I mean, it was immediate. Can't back out now.
The dungeon selected was Gundrak. Philly prayed that Wild's memory of the dungeon would fill her mind as we started off. This is a place of ice trolls and mammoths, among other denizens. There are four bosses, but Philly would be hard pressed to point them out as the group of mostly high level 70s (plus DER's 80) worked through the level 76-78 dungeon in normal mode.
Philly broke her healing down to the basics - keep a Shield up on the tank. POM him before a boss fight. Hit the tank with Penance if he takes more than modest damage. Flash heal anyone needing some healing. Shield anyone having trouble. Don't forget to check Philly's own health. And after all that try to use your other spells, too.
Random dungeon runs usually move fast, and this group was no exception. Twice Philly called for a mana break so she could drink to restore a mana bar down under 30%. She didn't get one either time, as the tank kept moving forward, but they managed without her until I could get back into action. I could have avoided even those two delays had Philly remembered that she has mana regen Use trinkets that she could have popped.
Another hard habit to break was immediately tossing a heal at the first sign someone was taking damage. That is so automatic to Wild that brain and muscle memory respond without thinking about it. But disc healers have that big shield, and Philly has to learn to use it correctly. Don't bother with the little stuff, if the damage grows to the size of a flash heal, then hit the player with a flash heal, but not before. If the damage spikes or rises fast, Shield FIRST, not after a heal. For too long it's been "I see damage" so HEAL IT! Disc priests STOP the damage with Shield, then heal the damage already done, not the other way around. And most importantly, that rule applies to Philly herself! When taking incoming damage, Shield first. To add one more thing to this, with Shield Glyphed (and Philly has the glyph) Shield also pops a heal when cast, so it's sort of like an instant heal anyway. At least that's how Philly views it.
Philly also needs to figure out how to get a better view of a specific debuff called Weakened Soul. It's very important to know when it's active and when it's not, and while it's timer is displayed, it's buried in a bunch of other information on the screen.
Oh, and one last thing. If Philly does happen to draw aggro, as did happen sometimes, try not to forget the spell Fade, which makes the nasty thing in your face forget who you are and it goes off to find someone else to torment. Philly has never cast that spell in a live situation with a mob beating on me. Bad priest, bad.
We did beat the dungeon Gundrak. Nobody died, to Philly's surprise and relief. I don't think anyone could tell it was Philly's very first time healing a dungeon, other than DER, of course. Philly got two triumph emblems, the first of many more to come, hopefully. The victory also brought a tear to Wild's eye. It was Philly's first high level dungeon victory, and the only family member following Wild's footsteps as a healer. Wild has high hopes for this young lady.
"How'd it feel?" DER asked.
"Awesome and terrifying at the same time," was her honest reply.
"Again?" DER asked Philly and rest of the group of players that had just finished Gundrak. We all said yes, and Philly, still dazed by Gundrak, was dropped into another dungeon. She caught a break, though. The dungeon was Violet Hold. If there is any dungeon in WoW that Philly felt confident in, it was VH. We got what might be the worst mix of bosses (two of five possibles are randomly picked, with the dragon Cyanigosa always the third and final boss). It didn't matter. We pounded through it quickly, and Philly actually relaxed a bit and played around with her spells. And again nobody died. Maybe Philly really will make it as a healer. Philly didn't do it alone, though. DER most definitely helped, dealing #1 DPS that none of the other players could match and rarely needing any healing help, which shortened fights and allowed Philly to focus on the rest of the group.
When it was all tallied up, Philly was 78% of the way to level 78. She won two items she'll put to use and completed a quest that got her a third useful piece. She averaged 910 hps in Gundrak, where the healing requirements were much higher than in VH. So that set the bar for her to work upward from. DER offered another dungeon run to get her closer to level 78, but Philly wanted time to bask in her current success. Level 78 will come in time. Enjoying her first two dungeon successes should be savored right away.
Neither were ready to call it an evening, though. It was time to hit the battlegrounds, and maybe grab a Wintergrasp match. Stay tuned.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Wednesday (17 Mar) - Man I Hate Oozes
Wednesday (17 Mar) - Man I Hate Oozes
I expected to spend the evening with Philly Wednesday night, since there were plenty of raiders signed up for the guild 25 man and Wild was listed as a Standby. At 5:50pm, though, only 22 raiders were confirmed to be in the raid, and that included an invite for Wild. Tuesday night is farm night, when the guild raid typically downs six bosses that have been killed many times before. On Tuesday this week that was their tally - six. Wednesday night is when we bang our heads against bosses we aren't so good at - we call it wipe night, and as is typical of every raid, some raiders always have something more important to do on those nights. Wild will take what he can get. The guild scrambled to fill the last spots. Wild saw that some of his mayhem friends were on and I asked whether they were available and interested. A DK, who Wild knows from the MM group, offered to come on his rogue. Wild forwarded his name, and he was invited into the raid.
Wild was busy buffing and reading over the bosses we would be after, and I didn't notice that a few minutes later the rogue left the raid. Actually, he didn't leave, he was kicked out. Wild learned about it when the shaman raid leader for MM whispered Wild, telling me that our guild raid leader was in hot water with him for kicking his guildie and friend and according to him being quite rude and hostile about it.
I tried to get some specifics, and was told that all the rogue did was ask a question about the raid and got kicked for asking. We were in the middle of clearing trash mobs and setting up for Festergut and I knew I'd never get to the bottom of it during the raid. I whispered the shaman and told him I'd figure it out after the raid and get back to him. We went a man short on the evening, never filling that 25th spot.
Festergut is maybe 50% on farm. We had a quick wipe on our first attempt when Wild's group of four healers and a DPS all "misunderstood" the positioning and failed to find a spore to keep from blowing ourselves up. Well, we blew ourselves up, scattering pieces of ourselves all over the room. The second time Festergut went down like he was supposed to.
Then it came time to face Rotface. Wild has seen him before, and killed him before. I'm sure the raid leaders felt that we would bring this guy down and then go after the real challenge of the night, and one we have yet to conquer, which is Professor Putricide. It was not to be.
We spent the rest of the evening and most of our three hours of raiding trying to kill Rotface. Let me explain this fight from Wild's point of view.
When the tank engages Rotface, the rest of the raid moves right under the arms of Rotface, close enough to smell the fact that he isn't wearing any deodorant. Wild stands with his nose up Rotface's butt, because as long as I'm behind him I'm not getting vomited on by him, which he does often. When Rotface turns, Wild turns with him. Slime pours from spigots on the walls, which Wild watches for and adjusts his position to be out of the way of, while still paying attention to the direction in which Rotface is projectile vomiting. On top of that, every few seconds Rotface tags a raider with Mutated Infection, which spawns a small ooze that lovingly follows the raider around doing damage to the raider and other raiders in the vicinity. While watching for vomit, and for slime pools, Wild is also looking for the raid warning that an ooze has spawned and who it has spawned on. Oh yea, Wild is HoT healing the tank, helping raid heal, and dropping HoTs on the raiders with oozes on them along with everything else.
It really gets interesting when the little ooze spawns and cuddles up to Wild. Because we attempted this fight like 15 times, we had 15 different directions about what to do when "you" have the ooze. The standard, guild approved answer is this: when you get the Infection, you have twelve seconds before the ooze spawns on you. Stand where you are and continue to heal or DPS as normal for 8 seconds. Then look around the room to find the ooze kiter. The ooze kiter is the off tank that collects the little oozes. He usually has a mark over his head so we can see him, although that mark falls off often and the kiter can be a little too busy to re-mark himself sometimes. Once you see the ooze kiter, run toward him and kite your little ooze between him and the BIG ooze that the ooze kiter is kiting. The BIG ooze is BIG because it absorbs the little oozes. Once six small oozes have merged together, there is short wait and then an explosion of ooze missiles. To avoid that all raiders run to the outside edge of the room because the explosion will be aimed at where we were standing when the sixth ooze merged.
Got it? Oh yea, one more thing. If you screw up merging your little ooze with the big ooze that's being kited, the little ooze will eventually find another ooze to merge with. Little oozes don't hurt that much, but two little oozes make a BIG one, and they are deadly dangerous. As time passes the little ooze spawning gets faster and faster. Too many little oozes merging into big ones is what killed us practically every time.
This fight is a pain.
We did, eventually, kill him. By then there was less than twenty minutes left of the evening, and with trash mobs having respawned there was little reason to try to get to Putricide.
Wild didn't get any goodies, which was mostly leather melee gear that made rogues and cat druids happy. As the rest of the raid hearthed back to Dalaran, Wild discovered that the bag that held his hearthstone was the bag that he swapped from his bank when he was crafting Philly's pvp gear. So Wild didn't have his hearthstone on him. Sigh. He waited for the sixty second instance timer to expire, and was automatically dumped at the nearest graveyard, and Wild flew home from there. The perfect cap to Wild's evening.
Rotface is not a hard fight to heal. The problems all stem from kiting and merging the oozes. So all the healer numbers were down. Wild finished 4th out of six at 2561 hps and getting 11.5% of the healing. The leader was the pally that always leads in healing, with 4684 hps and 22.2%. Wild's best fight was the Festergut kill, where Wild hit over 4800 hps.
Wild contacted the guild raid leader after the raid was over and asked about what happened with the MM rogue. The short answer, which Wild shared with the MM shaman raid leader in somewhat more detail than here, was that there was a screw up on our side. With Wild as the go between, apologies were extended and we got things smoothed out.
The shaman, doing his part to mend fences, asked how we did in our raid. Wild, trying to be funny and lighthearted, responded that if it made him feel any better we didn't do well, killing only Festergut and Rotface. He replied that his 25 man had yet to kill Festergut. Sigh.
I'm tired. Night!
I expected to spend the evening with Philly Wednesday night, since there were plenty of raiders signed up for the guild 25 man and Wild was listed as a Standby. At 5:50pm, though, only 22 raiders were confirmed to be in the raid, and that included an invite for Wild. Tuesday night is farm night, when the guild raid typically downs six bosses that have been killed many times before. On Tuesday this week that was their tally - six. Wednesday night is when we bang our heads against bosses we aren't so good at - we call it wipe night, and as is typical of every raid, some raiders always have something more important to do on those nights. Wild will take what he can get. The guild scrambled to fill the last spots. Wild saw that some of his mayhem friends were on and I asked whether they were available and interested. A DK, who Wild knows from the MM group, offered to come on his rogue. Wild forwarded his name, and he was invited into the raid.
Wild was busy buffing and reading over the bosses we would be after, and I didn't notice that a few minutes later the rogue left the raid. Actually, he didn't leave, he was kicked out. Wild learned about it when the shaman raid leader for MM whispered Wild, telling me that our guild raid leader was in hot water with him for kicking his guildie and friend and according to him being quite rude and hostile about it.
I tried to get some specifics, and was told that all the rogue did was ask a question about the raid and got kicked for asking. We were in the middle of clearing trash mobs and setting up for Festergut and I knew I'd never get to the bottom of it during the raid. I whispered the shaman and told him I'd figure it out after the raid and get back to him. We went a man short on the evening, never filling that 25th spot.
Festergut is maybe 50% on farm. We had a quick wipe on our first attempt when Wild's group of four healers and a DPS all "misunderstood" the positioning and failed to find a spore to keep from blowing ourselves up. Well, we blew ourselves up, scattering pieces of ourselves all over the room. The second time Festergut went down like he was supposed to.
Then it came time to face Rotface. Wild has seen him before, and killed him before. I'm sure the raid leaders felt that we would bring this guy down and then go after the real challenge of the night, and one we have yet to conquer, which is Professor Putricide. It was not to be.
We spent the rest of the evening and most of our three hours of raiding trying to kill Rotface. Let me explain this fight from Wild's point of view.
When the tank engages Rotface, the rest of the raid moves right under the arms of Rotface, close enough to smell the fact that he isn't wearing any deodorant. Wild stands with his nose up Rotface's butt, because as long as I'm behind him I'm not getting vomited on by him, which he does often. When Rotface turns, Wild turns with him. Slime pours from spigots on the walls, which Wild watches for and adjusts his position to be out of the way of, while still paying attention to the direction in which Rotface is projectile vomiting. On top of that, every few seconds Rotface tags a raider with Mutated Infection, which spawns a small ooze that lovingly follows the raider around doing damage to the raider and other raiders in the vicinity. While watching for vomit, and for slime pools, Wild is also looking for the raid warning that an ooze has spawned and who it has spawned on. Oh yea, Wild is HoT healing the tank, helping raid heal, and dropping HoTs on the raiders with oozes on them along with everything else.
It really gets interesting when the little ooze spawns and cuddles up to Wild. Because we attempted this fight like 15 times, we had 15 different directions about what to do when "you" have the ooze. The standard, guild approved answer is this: when you get the Infection, you have twelve seconds before the ooze spawns on you. Stand where you are and continue to heal or DPS as normal for 8 seconds. Then look around the room to find the ooze kiter. The ooze kiter is the off tank that collects the little oozes. He usually has a mark over his head so we can see him, although that mark falls off often and the kiter can be a little too busy to re-mark himself sometimes. Once you see the ooze kiter, run toward him and kite your little ooze between him and the BIG ooze that the ooze kiter is kiting. The BIG ooze is BIG because it absorbs the little oozes. Once six small oozes have merged together, there is short wait and then an explosion of ooze missiles. To avoid that all raiders run to the outside edge of the room because the explosion will be aimed at where we were standing when the sixth ooze merged.
Got it? Oh yea, one more thing. If you screw up merging your little ooze with the big ooze that's being kited, the little ooze will eventually find another ooze to merge with. Little oozes don't hurt that much, but two little oozes make a BIG one, and they are deadly dangerous. As time passes the little ooze spawning gets faster and faster. Too many little oozes merging into big ones is what killed us practically every time.
This fight is a pain.
We did, eventually, kill him. By then there was less than twenty minutes left of the evening, and with trash mobs having respawned there was little reason to try to get to Putricide.
Wild didn't get any goodies, which was mostly leather melee gear that made rogues and cat druids happy. As the rest of the raid hearthed back to Dalaran, Wild discovered that the bag that held his hearthstone was the bag that he swapped from his bank when he was crafting Philly's pvp gear. So Wild didn't have his hearthstone on him. Sigh. He waited for the sixty second instance timer to expire, and was automatically dumped at the nearest graveyard, and Wild flew home from there. The perfect cap to Wild's evening.
Rotface is not a hard fight to heal. The problems all stem from kiting and merging the oozes. So all the healer numbers were down. Wild finished 4th out of six at 2561 hps and getting 11.5% of the healing. The leader was the pally that always leads in healing, with 4684 hps and 22.2%. Wild's best fight was the Festergut kill, where Wild hit over 4800 hps.
Wild contacted the guild raid leader after the raid was over and asked about what happened with the MM rogue. The short answer, which Wild shared with the MM shaman raid leader in somewhat more detail than here, was that there was a screw up on our side. With Wild as the go between, apologies were extended and we got things smoothed out.
The shaman, doing his part to mend fences, asked how we did in our raid. Wild, trying to be funny and lighthearted, responded that if it made him feel any better we didn't do well, killing only Festergut and Rotface. He replied that his 25 man had yet to kill Festergut. Sigh.
I'm tired. Night!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday (16 Mar) - Still Catching Up
Tuesday (16 Mar) - Still Catching Up
Just because Rakta dominated the weekend does not mean that there was nothing else going on.
Philly tinkered about, getting 23% of the way to level 78. Wildshard has promised her that he is going to craft a set of Frostsavage gear for her, but he better get cracking. The gear is an excellent starter set for pvp, and Philly can start wearing it at level 78. Philly noticed Sis wearing that set, and she immediately wanted it.
JB has been playing almost exclusively in elemental spec over the past months, and has enjoyed the ranged DPS role. Yet JB was raised as an in-your-face melee enhancement shaman, and she recently broke out her set of enhancement gear for sentimental reasons. While the gear had been well cared for, the set was very dated, and not something she would dare wear around at level 80. Bringing that gear up to present standards was a daunting proposition. JB thought long and hard about what she wanted. First and foremost she was now a near full time pvp player. Her best gear was pvp based, gear that many pve groups looking for raiders would frown on. And to be honest, dungeons and raiding were more to Wild's and Phillie's liking than JBs. JB wanted grab DER in a headlock and tell him, "You did this to me, buddy. . . and I like it!" Pvp is now in JB's blood.
In pvp the next best thing to lighting up opposing raiders with Chain Lightning and Lava Burst is laying down the heals to keep the pew pewers going. So JB made the break from her enhancement roots, replacing that spec with a healing spec targeted to pvp. She can't wait to try it out.
Wild finally got around to working on his mouldering Tailoring profession. In recent days he's taken the profession from skill 425 up to 444. Wild just needs a lucky skill up on a frostweave bag to hit the max 450. Those skill ups burned up all of the frostweave and lots of other mats, but it also got Philly a ton of cloth gear she can wear from level 78-80. Oh, and that included the Frostsavage pvp set Philly was drooling over, so now all she needs to do is get to level 78.
As for the guild 25 man raid Tuesday night, there were thirty raiders signed up. Wild was back on the Standby list, and did not get an invite. That was expected, though, since Wild got to run on Wednesday last week.
The better news is that Bd, the warrior raid leader for the MM group, is back! His job situation has changed again, giving him hope that he may be able to start running the wed/thurs ten man again. Wild is already signed up for the guild 25 man for Wednesday, but if not invited, perhaps BD will be able to get a ten man going.
Just because Rakta dominated the weekend does not mean that there was nothing else going on.
Philly tinkered about, getting 23% of the way to level 78. Wildshard has promised her that he is going to craft a set of Frostsavage gear for her, but he better get cracking. The gear is an excellent starter set for pvp, and Philly can start wearing it at level 78. Philly noticed Sis wearing that set, and she immediately wanted it.
JB has been playing almost exclusively in elemental spec over the past months, and has enjoyed the ranged DPS role. Yet JB was raised as an in-your-face melee enhancement shaman, and she recently broke out her set of enhancement gear for sentimental reasons. While the gear had been well cared for, the set was very dated, and not something she would dare wear around at level 80. Bringing that gear up to present standards was a daunting proposition. JB thought long and hard about what she wanted. First and foremost she was now a near full time pvp player. Her best gear was pvp based, gear that many pve groups looking for raiders would frown on. And to be honest, dungeons and raiding were more to Wild's and Phillie's liking than JBs. JB wanted grab DER in a headlock and tell him, "You did this to me, buddy. . . and I like it!" Pvp is now in JB's blood.
In pvp the next best thing to lighting up opposing raiders with Chain Lightning and Lava Burst is laying down the heals to keep the pew pewers going. So JB made the break from her enhancement roots, replacing that spec with a healing spec targeted to pvp. She can't wait to try it out.
Wild finally got around to working on his mouldering Tailoring profession. In recent days he's taken the profession from skill 425 up to 444. Wild just needs a lucky skill up on a frostweave bag to hit the max 450. Those skill ups burned up all of the frostweave and lots of other mats, but it also got Philly a ton of cloth gear she can wear from level 78-80. Oh, and that included the Frostsavage pvp set Philly was drooling over, so now all she needs to do is get to level 78.
As for the guild 25 man raid Tuesday night, there were thirty raiders signed up. Wild was back on the Standby list, and did not get an invite. That was expected, though, since Wild got to run on Wednesday last week.
The better news is that Bd, the warrior raid leader for the MM group, is back! His job situation has changed again, giving him hope that he may be able to start running the wed/thurs ten man again. Wild is already signed up for the guild 25 man for Wednesday, but if not invited, perhaps BD will be able to get a ten man going.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monday (15 Mar) - But There's More
Monday (15 Mar) - But There's More
When last we heard from Rakta, she had made it to the city of Stormwind, in Ellwyn Forest, and liked what she saw. She could easily have settled in and stayed, but her journey wasn't yet complete. The goal was Booty Bay, and so she struck out once more, leaving the thriving city behind. She travelled light, but kept a few of her favorite pictures.
Rakta headed south, marvelling at the tilled fields, the farms, the cows. There were cows everywhere! She passed through the hamlet of Goldshire, taking the time to help clear out a warren of kobolds that harassed the citizenry there. From Goldshire she turned westward, and crossed the border into the zone of Westfall. The beautifully maintained fields of Ellwyn Forest gave way to open fields that were mostly neglected and farms that had long fallen into ruin. Rakta turned south again, always south, where Booty Bay waited at the very southern tip of the continent.
The morning turned to afternoon, and she came upon the "town" of Sentinel Hill. Sentinel Hill was a shell of a place, but it had a garrison and a flight path. Rakta and Dargh rested for a bit, but there was nothing to hold them there and they moved on. Further south Rakta began seeing the great Fleshripper birds in the wilds of Westfall. She could see why Mery had wanted one for a pet, as the birds had a deadly beauty in this all but abandoned land.
At a crossroads she had her choice of heading west again, toward the coast, or east, toward the river and the land of Duskwood. To the west was also the hostile area of Moonbrook, and area best avoided. Rakta went east. As soon as she crossed the border into Duskwood, the words "You're not in Kansas anymore," came unbidden to mind. If Ellwyn Forest was the shining jewel, and Westfall it's neglected and faded neighbor, Duskwood was even darker and more malevolent. The skies turned dark, even though the day was not done. The ground became uneven, and twisted trees began crowding the roadway. Rakta began tracking significant movement hidden in the trees and hills around her.
Rakta was tense and cautious. A nervous Dargh ranged back and forth, trying to defend Rakta on all sides but succeeding only in frustrating Rakta as she tried to keep the bird from flushing out things best left hidden. They passed a sign to Raven Hill and hurried past, continuing to the east.
Trouble came late in the day. Wolves had been tracking the pair for some time, and Rakta had had to go off road several times to avoid them. The wolves grew braver, and in one narrow section of road banked on both sides, one of the wolves attacked. The wolf was ?? to Rakta, meaning it was at least level 21 versus Rakta's level 11. Dargh would make a nice morsel, with Rakta the main course. Rakta ran while Dargh peeled off and engaged. Dargh sacrified himself to allow Rakta to get some distance on the wolf, but Rakta had to avoid other wolves stalking both sides of the road and the wolf on her tail drew close. The wolf would be on her in seconds. At her young age Rakta lacked many of the hunter's best avoidance weapons, such as traps to slow the wolf down, or Feign Death, to get them off her scent. But she did have one trick up her sleeve. In desperation Rakta turned, drawing her bow in one swift motion, and launched a Concussive shot at the wolf. At that large difference in level the odds were high that Rakta would miss and the wolf would pounce. The shot struck home, however, and did it's work, stunning and slowing down the wolf. Rakta raced away, and the wolf gave up the chase.
Once Rakta was safe, she revived Dargh and they moved on, managing to avoid the still ever present wolves until they made the relative safety of Darkshire, a mournful town in this dark wood that also bordered the blighted Deadwind Pass. She rested for the evening, and considered her options.
On the road to Darkshire Rakta had passed the southern pointing sign to Stranglethorn Vale (STV). The plan was to take that road, and to travel the long length of STV to Booty Bay at it's southern tip. However, Rakta had barely survived an encounter with level 21 or so wolves in a land mostly barren. STV was rich jungle, with a thriving mix of every kind of beast imaginable. And the denizens of that region were levels 30-45. Rakta knew her odds of surviving were not good. There must be another way.
In the end Rakta retraced her steps back to Sentinel Hill. Yes, she was twice chased by wolves, which both she and Dargh survived this time, and the extra time it cost galled her, but she had her reasons. At Sentinel Hill Rakta took the flight path back to Stormwind. And from there she took the boat to Auberdine. Auberdine is a seaport town in Darkshore. Darkshore is in Kalimdor, not the Eastern Continent. Rakta had decided that getting to Booty Bay through STV was too risky, and that her chances were better going the Kalimdor route with a goal of reaching Ratchet in the Barrens, where a boat could take her directly to Booty Bay. The level of hostile creatures she would face was more manageable, and the route had the added advantage that once she got out of Darkshore she would be in territory Wildshard had explored and therefore Rakta knew.
Darkshore proved easy enough to traverse, and Rakta soon found herself in Ashenvale. Rakta's shared memories with Wild helped her reach Astranaar, the alliance town in this zone. The city that had once tried to kill Wild was Rakta's sanctuary. She didn't stay long, though, striking out for the split in the road that led south toward The Barrens.
After the wolves of Duskwood, Rakta had no trouble with the level 20ish denizens of Ashenvale. Perhaps sensing her growing confidence, they let her be. There was a tense moment on the border between Ashenvale and the Barrens. The Barrens was horde territory, and the border was guarded by horde. Rakta found a break in the wooden stockade walls, and slipped through without incident. From there Rakta travelled undisturbed all the way to the horde hub town of The Crossroads, worked her way around it, and then headed to the coast, arriving safely at Ratchet. Rakta fished at the pier until the boat arrived, boarded, and stepped onto the pier at Booty Bay minutes later.
The journey was done.
PS - Rakta is promising pictures. Coming up in the next post.
When last we heard from Rakta, she had made it to the city of Stormwind, in Ellwyn Forest, and liked what she saw. She could easily have settled in and stayed, but her journey wasn't yet complete. The goal was Booty Bay, and so she struck out once more, leaving the thriving city behind. She travelled light, but kept a few of her favorite pictures.
Rakta headed south, marvelling at the tilled fields, the farms, the cows. There were cows everywhere! She passed through the hamlet of Goldshire, taking the time to help clear out a warren of kobolds that harassed the citizenry there. From Goldshire she turned westward, and crossed the border into the zone of Westfall. The beautifully maintained fields of Ellwyn Forest gave way to open fields that were mostly neglected and farms that had long fallen into ruin. Rakta turned south again, always south, where Booty Bay waited at the very southern tip of the continent.
The morning turned to afternoon, and she came upon the "town" of Sentinel Hill. Sentinel Hill was a shell of a place, but it had a garrison and a flight path. Rakta and Dargh rested for a bit, but there was nothing to hold them there and they moved on. Further south Rakta began seeing the great Fleshripper birds in the wilds of Westfall. She could see why Mery had wanted one for a pet, as the birds had a deadly beauty in this all but abandoned land.
At a crossroads she had her choice of heading west again, toward the coast, or east, toward the river and the land of Duskwood. To the west was also the hostile area of Moonbrook, and area best avoided. Rakta went east. As soon as she crossed the border into Duskwood, the words "You're not in Kansas anymore," came unbidden to mind. If Ellwyn Forest was the shining jewel, and Westfall it's neglected and faded neighbor, Duskwood was even darker and more malevolent. The skies turned dark, even though the day was not done. The ground became uneven, and twisted trees began crowding the roadway. Rakta began tracking significant movement hidden in the trees and hills around her.
Rakta was tense and cautious. A nervous Dargh ranged back and forth, trying to defend Rakta on all sides but succeeding only in frustrating Rakta as she tried to keep the bird from flushing out things best left hidden. They passed a sign to Raven Hill and hurried past, continuing to the east.
Trouble came late in the day. Wolves had been tracking the pair for some time, and Rakta had had to go off road several times to avoid them. The wolves grew braver, and in one narrow section of road banked on both sides, one of the wolves attacked. The wolf was ?? to Rakta, meaning it was at least level 21 versus Rakta's level 11. Dargh would make a nice morsel, with Rakta the main course. Rakta ran while Dargh peeled off and engaged. Dargh sacrified himself to allow Rakta to get some distance on the wolf, but Rakta had to avoid other wolves stalking both sides of the road and the wolf on her tail drew close. The wolf would be on her in seconds. At her young age Rakta lacked many of the hunter's best avoidance weapons, such as traps to slow the wolf down, or Feign Death, to get them off her scent. But she did have one trick up her sleeve. In desperation Rakta turned, drawing her bow in one swift motion, and launched a Concussive shot at the wolf. At that large difference in level the odds were high that Rakta would miss and the wolf would pounce. The shot struck home, however, and did it's work, stunning and slowing down the wolf. Rakta raced away, and the wolf gave up the chase.
Once Rakta was safe, she revived Dargh and they moved on, managing to avoid the still ever present wolves until they made the relative safety of Darkshire, a mournful town in this dark wood that also bordered the blighted Deadwind Pass. She rested for the evening, and considered her options.
On the road to Darkshire Rakta had passed the southern pointing sign to Stranglethorn Vale (STV). The plan was to take that road, and to travel the long length of STV to Booty Bay at it's southern tip. However, Rakta had barely survived an encounter with level 21 or so wolves in a land mostly barren. STV was rich jungle, with a thriving mix of every kind of beast imaginable. And the denizens of that region were levels 30-45. Rakta knew her odds of surviving were not good. There must be another way.
In the end Rakta retraced her steps back to Sentinel Hill. Yes, she was twice chased by wolves, which both she and Dargh survived this time, and the extra time it cost galled her, but she had her reasons. At Sentinel Hill Rakta took the flight path back to Stormwind. And from there she took the boat to Auberdine. Auberdine is a seaport town in Darkshore. Darkshore is in Kalimdor, not the Eastern Continent. Rakta had decided that getting to Booty Bay through STV was too risky, and that her chances were better going the Kalimdor route with a goal of reaching Ratchet in the Barrens, where a boat could take her directly to Booty Bay. The level of hostile creatures she would face was more manageable, and the route had the added advantage that once she got out of Darkshore she would be in territory Wildshard had explored and therefore Rakta knew.
Darkshore proved easy enough to traverse, and Rakta soon found herself in Ashenvale. Rakta's shared memories with Wild helped her reach Astranaar, the alliance town in this zone. The city that had once tried to kill Wild was Rakta's sanctuary. She didn't stay long, though, striking out for the split in the road that led south toward The Barrens.
After the wolves of Duskwood, Rakta had no trouble with the level 20ish denizens of Ashenvale. Perhaps sensing her growing confidence, they let her be. There was a tense moment on the border between Ashenvale and the Barrens. The Barrens was horde territory, and the border was guarded by horde. Rakta found a break in the wooden stockade walls, and slipped through without incident. From there Rakta travelled undisturbed all the way to the horde hub town of The Crossroads, worked her way around it, and then headed to the coast, arriving safely at Ratchet. Rakta fished at the pier until the boat arrived, boarded, and stepped onto the pier at Booty Bay minutes later.
The journey was done.
PS - Rakta is promising pictures. Coming up in the next post.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Weekend (14 Mar) The Rest of the Story
Weekend (14 Mar) The Rest of the Story
With all of the new blood running around, Wild and JB made a decision to spend a bunch of accumulated Wintergrasp stone keeper shards to buy heirloom items for the children. With over 900 shards between the two of them, they were able to acquire:
Inherited Insignia of the Horde (JB scarfed this one up for herself)
Stengthened Stockade Pauldrons (for plate wearing melee DKs, paladins)
Prized Beastmaster's Mantle (for mail wearing melee/hunters)
Aged Pauldrons of the Five Thunders (for mail wearing casters, shaman)
These items did not come without some spilled blood. Both JB and Wild had to fend off alliance pvpers who just loved to ambush horde players who were only in Wintergrasp to buy items from the Quartermaster there. JB managed to work around them (after dying twice). Wild, though, was harried constantly by a trio of alliance that parked inside the main courtyard, apparently intending to stay all day. Wild ended up coming back just before the start of the next battle when the courtyard was more crowded with other horde.
The proud recipients of two of the heirlooms were Java and Rakta, as they don't have access to the other heirloom gear that Philly maintains custody of. The third piece (the Five Thunders) is still with JB, waiting for a home.
Meanwhile, Slash and Rakta were working on their part of the plan. Slash had the easiest task. He was already comfortably ensconced in Orgrimmar. Before he could start his journey to Booty Bay, however, he had one urgent task to attend to first. As a level 10, Slash could now tame pets, and no hunter is complete without a pet. The quest chain is in three parts, each time to find, tame, and return with a particular pet. After completing those quests, Slash returned to the Hunter trainer to become a full fledged pet tamer. As his "starter" pet, Slash chose one of the many crabs along the coast near Orgrimmar that have a distinctive set of miss-matched pincers. Slash named him Scissors. The chain dinged Slash to level 11 as well, and he immediately began his trek.
Slash left Orgrimmar through the back gate and headed south along the river toward the neutral town of Ratchet. There were a couple of nervous moments when passing through an area of level 15-16 lions and wild dogs. Slash had to sacrifice Scissors once to escape, but made it to Ratchet otherwise unscathed. After that it was easy. Ratchet is on the coast, and has a pier. Slash waited for the boat to arrive, jumped aboard, and a few minutes later the boat pulled into Booty Bay. Slash made his introductions to the Auctioneer (discreetly, of course) and then settled in at the Inn. Slash's half of the plan was complete.
Things were far more complicated for Rakta.
Rakta was born in the zone of Teldrassil, an island off the northern coast of the continent of Kalimdor. All night elves begin their lives in the small, protected enclave of Shadowglen, and then progress to the equally small town of Dolanaar. To some degree, levelling Rakta through her first six levels was like playing the game again for the first time. Rakta did not have the racial memories of her horde cousins, who were born knowing everything that Wild and JB knew. No Wild relation had ever set foot in Teldrassil. Rakta had to learn everything herself.
There were things that were amazingly similar, though, and a pattern emerged that somewhat mirrored the Horde land of Durator and the levelling path of the orcs. Not the environment, no. Durator is an arid land, while Teldressil is lush and green. But the same small creatures, boars and scorpions, are the first targets of both orc and night elf; Razor Hill in Durator is much the same as Dolanaar; and both enjoy a very short trek to a major city. Orcs have easy access to Orgrimmar, and night elves have easy access to Darnassus. However, the quests are very different, and the terrain was a complete mystery.
Another hard to accept reality was that Rakta had no help. There were no sugar daddies to feed her gold and goodies. It was through her effort that the gravy chain could get moving, but right now it didn't exist. That came home very hard the first time she visited her Hunter trainer to get some desperately needed talents. She went away empty handed, because she did not have enough copper to buy them.
Rakta had fun, though, steadily moving up in level, taking whatever gear she could get and, once she got her talents paid for, saving up for a better bow and a few more arrows, which was her bread and butter attack. Rakta didn't want this picture shown, but it truly shows what fashionista Rakta was willing to put up with to stay alive.
Once she made it to Dolanaar around level 6, she finally had access to a mailbox, and JB was able to mail her the Beastmaster's heirloom shoulders to help her out. There was still no way to get anything else to her, though. Rakta kept at it, though, and at level 8 the whole picture changed.
Rakta was skipping along the road - well, night elves don't actually skip, but - they can do somersaults, and they have what is quickly becoming a most irritating affectation. When standing still, they sometimes put their feet together, bounce up and down on the balls of their feet (drawing the eye of every male within miles), and finish with a final touchdown, feet slightly apart. Maybe I'll get used to it.
Anyway, to get off the subject of bouncing female night elves and on to more important things, Rakta caught the attention of a passing alliance, who might have ridden right past her on his ground mount had she not been doing that bounce thing at that particular moment. The rider, male of course, hopped off his horse, dropped a buff on Rakta (which got him a sweet "ty" in chat), and then, with a flourish, he opened a large scroll and asked Rakta if she would please, please sign it.
It was a guild charter, and the gentleman was trolling the starting zone area to get newbies to sign up. Well, why not? It's just to help him get his guild started. Rakta signed the charter, and got an even sweeter surprise. The allie opened a trade window and paid Rakta 5 gold. As he rode off I saw in trade chat that he had been asking for sigs, and that he was paying 3 gold. True story - Rakta so flustered him he paid her two more gold than he was offering. And Rakta was suddenly rich. And went shopping.
Later, when the allie got his guild, he didn't immediately kick us, which was expected, but allowed signees to stay on if they cared to. Rakta thought the name was kind of cute to carry around for awhile, so she stayed with it - at least until one of us can get her a guild invite to Tea Green.
Rakta's interim guild is called "Exalted with your Sister".
Rakta eventually made the three minute walk to the city of Darnassus. It's a nice looking city, a little too spread out for my tastes, but pretty well laid out. Rakta found the Inn and made it her home, using it as her base as she worked her way to level 10. Then it was back to Dolanaar and to the Hunter trainer there to teach her to tame pets. There is a 15 minute time limit on taming and returning with each of the three pets, and out in the unknown wilderness of Teldressil, Rakta had a chore sometimes in finding the silly creatures and getting them back before they slipped away. She got it done, though, and chose an owl as her first true pet. The sturgid owl is a common bird of prey in the area, but Rakta wanted a bird, and I wanted a pet that would eat fish, which is the easiest pet food to get hold of. Rakta named him Dargh. Yes, you've seen that word before. It's the Klingon word for tea.
Rakta knew that all that had come before was just preparation for her real task. The real journey was about to begin, and it was fraught with peril for a level 11.
A long, long time ago, a young JB took Mery under her wing to help with a special gift. Mery wanted a Greater Fleshripper bird of prey as her pet, a bird found only in the alliance zone of Duskwood, a level 18-20 area far above Mery's level 13 at the time. That adventure was successful, and is recounted elsewhere, but the point was that Mery could not have survived the trip without JB's help.
Rakta intended to make her journey on her own, if at all possible, and without the benefit of full knowledge of the best way to get from Darnassus to Booty Bay. Rakta wished for a Yellow Brick Road, but she wound up settling for a purple pavilion.
Rakta was exploring a bit of Darnassus, on her way to the Hunter trainer, when she stepped into a purplish, glowing pavilion. The pavilion, it turned out, was a portal, and it deposited Rakta on the outskirts of Darnassus next to a Flight path. More importantly, next to the flight path was a pier. Hmm, I'd heard that alliance liked to take to the sea, and that they used more boats than the horde did. Rakta went to the end of the pier to see if a boat would show up. And one did.
It took her to Auberdine. Rakta didn't know where Auberdine was, but she could tell it was a major shipping zone, unique to the alliance. Multiple piers offered destinations: back to Darnassus, of course, or to Azuremyst Isle, or to Stormwind, the home of the humans. Rakta had heard of Stormwind. She wasn't sure of it's exact location, but she knew it was on the Eastern Continent. Booty Bay was on the Eastern Continent. Rakta took the boat to Stormwind.
Rakta was awed and impressed with Stormwind. She wandered the city, staring at the sites and taking pictures like a tourist. In the main square, arranged very much like the central area of Orgrimmar, she even played catch with other allies tossing around a large leather ball. She checked in at the Inn, setting her hearth there, and checked out the Auction House. The prices were too rich for the 4g she had left in her bags, but that was ok. Rakta felt very much at home.
Rakta has more to tell, but that will have to wait until after she gets herself a real city meal and takes a long nap. It's been an exciting journey journey so far.
With all of the new blood running around, Wild and JB made a decision to spend a bunch of accumulated Wintergrasp stone keeper shards to buy heirloom items for the children. With over 900 shards between the two of them, they were able to acquire:
Inherited Insignia of the Horde (JB scarfed this one up for herself)
Stengthened Stockade Pauldrons (for plate wearing melee DKs, paladins)
Prized Beastmaster's Mantle (for mail wearing melee/hunters)
Aged Pauldrons of the Five Thunders (for mail wearing casters, shaman)
These items did not come without some spilled blood. Both JB and Wild had to fend off alliance pvpers who just loved to ambush horde players who were only in Wintergrasp to buy items from the Quartermaster there. JB managed to work around them (after dying twice). Wild, though, was harried constantly by a trio of alliance that parked inside the main courtyard, apparently intending to stay all day. Wild ended up coming back just before the start of the next battle when the courtyard was more crowded with other horde.
The proud recipients of two of the heirlooms were Java and Rakta, as they don't have access to the other heirloom gear that Philly maintains custody of. The third piece (the Five Thunders) is still with JB, waiting for a home.
Meanwhile, Slash and Rakta were working on their part of the plan. Slash had the easiest task. He was already comfortably ensconced in Orgrimmar. Before he could start his journey to Booty Bay, however, he had one urgent task to attend to first. As a level 10, Slash could now tame pets, and no hunter is complete without a pet. The quest chain is in three parts, each time to find, tame, and return with a particular pet. After completing those quests, Slash returned to the Hunter trainer to become a full fledged pet tamer. As his "starter" pet, Slash chose one of the many crabs along the coast near Orgrimmar that have a distinctive set of miss-matched pincers. Slash named him Scissors. The chain dinged Slash to level 11 as well, and he immediately began his trek.
Slash left Orgrimmar through the back gate and headed south along the river toward the neutral town of Ratchet. There were a couple of nervous moments when passing through an area of level 15-16 lions and wild dogs. Slash had to sacrifice Scissors once to escape, but made it to Ratchet otherwise unscathed. After that it was easy. Ratchet is on the coast, and has a pier. Slash waited for the boat to arrive, jumped aboard, and a few minutes later the boat pulled into Booty Bay. Slash made his introductions to the Auctioneer (discreetly, of course) and then settled in at the Inn. Slash's half of the plan was complete.
Things were far more complicated for Rakta.
Rakta was born in the zone of Teldrassil, an island off the northern coast of the continent of Kalimdor. All night elves begin their lives in the small, protected enclave of Shadowglen, and then progress to the equally small town of Dolanaar. To some degree, levelling Rakta through her first six levels was like playing the game again for the first time. Rakta did not have the racial memories of her horde cousins, who were born knowing everything that Wild and JB knew. No Wild relation had ever set foot in Teldrassil. Rakta had to learn everything herself.
There were things that were amazingly similar, though, and a pattern emerged that somewhat mirrored the Horde land of Durator and the levelling path of the orcs. Not the environment, no. Durator is an arid land, while Teldressil is lush and green. But the same small creatures, boars and scorpions, are the first targets of both orc and night elf; Razor Hill in Durator is much the same as Dolanaar; and both enjoy a very short trek to a major city. Orcs have easy access to Orgrimmar, and night elves have easy access to Darnassus. However, the quests are very different, and the terrain was a complete mystery.
Another hard to accept reality was that Rakta had no help. There were no sugar daddies to feed her gold and goodies. It was through her effort that the gravy chain could get moving, but right now it didn't exist. That came home very hard the first time she visited her Hunter trainer to get some desperately needed talents. She went away empty handed, because she did not have enough copper to buy them.
Rakta had fun, though, steadily moving up in level, taking whatever gear she could get and, once she got her talents paid for, saving up for a better bow and a few more arrows, which was her bread and butter attack. Rakta didn't want this picture shown, but it truly shows what fashionista Rakta was willing to put up with to stay alive.
OMG, Knickers? I'm Gonna Die of Shame
Once she made it to Dolanaar around level 6, she finally had access to a mailbox, and JB was able to mail her the Beastmaster's heirloom shoulders to help her out. There was still no way to get anything else to her, though. Rakta kept at it, though, and at level 8 the whole picture changed.
Rakta was skipping along the road - well, night elves don't actually skip, but - they can do somersaults, and they have what is quickly becoming a most irritating affectation. When standing still, they sometimes put their feet together, bounce up and down on the balls of their feet (drawing the eye of every male within miles), and finish with a final touchdown, feet slightly apart. Maybe I'll get used to it.
Anyway, to get off the subject of bouncing female night elves and on to more important things, Rakta caught the attention of a passing alliance, who might have ridden right past her on his ground mount had she not been doing that bounce thing at that particular moment. The rider, male of course, hopped off his horse, dropped a buff on Rakta (which got him a sweet "ty" in chat), and then, with a flourish, he opened a large scroll and asked Rakta if she would please, please sign it.
It was a guild charter, and the gentleman was trolling the starting zone area to get newbies to sign up. Well, why not? It's just to help him get his guild started. Rakta signed the charter, and got an even sweeter surprise. The allie opened a trade window and paid Rakta 5 gold. As he rode off I saw in trade chat that he had been asking for sigs, and that he was paying 3 gold. True story - Rakta so flustered him he paid her two more gold than he was offering. And Rakta was suddenly rich. And went shopping.
Rakta asked it she could show off her new wardrobe
It isn't much for stats, but Rakta thinks it's a good look for her:
It isn't much for stats, but Rakta thinks it's a good look for her:
Later, when the allie got his guild, he didn't immediately kick us, which was expected, but allowed signees to stay on if they cared to. Rakta thought the name was kind of cute to carry around for awhile, so she stayed with it - at least until one of us can get her a guild invite to Tea Green.
Rakta's interim guild is called "Exalted with your Sister".
Rakta eventually made the three minute walk to the city of Darnassus. It's a nice looking city, a little too spread out for my tastes, but pretty well laid out. Rakta found the Inn and made it her home, using it as her base as she worked her way to level 10. Then it was back to Dolanaar and to the Hunter trainer there to teach her to tame pets. There is a 15 minute time limit on taming and returning with each of the three pets, and out in the unknown wilderness of Teldressil, Rakta had a chore sometimes in finding the silly creatures and getting them back before they slipped away. She got it done, though, and chose an owl as her first true pet. The sturgid owl is a common bird of prey in the area, but Rakta wanted a bird, and I wanted a pet that would eat fish, which is the easiest pet food to get hold of. Rakta named him Dargh. Yes, you've seen that word before. It's the Klingon word for tea.
Rakta knew that all that had come before was just preparation for her real task. The real journey was about to begin, and it was fraught with peril for a level 11.
A long, long time ago, a young JB took Mery under her wing to help with a special gift. Mery wanted a Greater Fleshripper bird of prey as her pet, a bird found only in the alliance zone of Duskwood, a level 18-20 area far above Mery's level 13 at the time. That adventure was successful, and is recounted elsewhere, but the point was that Mery could not have survived the trip without JB's help.
Rakta intended to make her journey on her own, if at all possible, and without the benefit of full knowledge of the best way to get from Darnassus to Booty Bay. Rakta wished for a Yellow Brick Road, but she wound up settling for a purple pavilion.
Rakta was exploring a bit of Darnassus, on her way to the Hunter trainer, when she stepped into a purplish, glowing pavilion. The pavilion, it turned out, was a portal, and it deposited Rakta on the outskirts of Darnassus next to a Flight path. More importantly, next to the flight path was a pier. Hmm, I'd heard that alliance liked to take to the sea, and that they used more boats than the horde did. Rakta went to the end of the pier to see if a boat would show up. And one did.
It took her to Auberdine. Rakta didn't know where Auberdine was, but she could tell it was a major shipping zone, unique to the alliance. Multiple piers offered destinations: back to Darnassus, of course, or to Azuremyst Isle, or to Stormwind, the home of the humans. Rakta had heard of Stormwind. She wasn't sure of it's exact location, but she knew it was on the Eastern Continent. Booty Bay was on the Eastern Continent. Rakta took the boat to Stormwind.
Rakta was awed and impressed with Stormwind. She wandered the city, staring at the sites and taking pictures like a tourist. In the main square, arranged very much like the central area of Orgrimmar, she even played catch with other allies tossing around a large leather ball. She checked in at the Inn, setting her hearth there, and checked out the Auction House. The prices were too rich for the 4g she had left in her bags, but that was ok. Rakta felt very much at home.
Rakta has more to tell, but that will have to wait until after she gets herself a real city meal and takes a long nap. It's been an exciting journey journey so far.
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