Thursday (29 Apr)- My Cataclysm List, and Something About a Lich King?

Thursday (29 Apr)- My Cataclysm List, and Something About a Lich King?

There was no ten man ICC raid on Thursday. The MM guild raid leader, Bd, let Wild know that he was still embroiled in some real life issues, but hoped he would be able to get a raid together next week. One can hope.

Wild was in game Thursday looking to get the weekly frost raid done (didn't happen) and chatting with Sis when the guild announced some incredible news.

The FS guild ten man ICC raid killed the Lich King! The Lich King is the final boss in ICC, and killing him makes it an official clear of ICC, the highest end raid in the game. Prior to last night's kill, FS was rated #37 out of 174 guilds working 10 man ICC on our server, according to the progression site guildox.com. The LK kill should jump them up a few spots in the rankings.

When I talked to the raid leader, he said their group had spent 18 hours preparing for the fight (working on strategies, individual assignments, positioning, etc), not counting the many hours wiping on him. He said the Lich King was the toughest boss he'd ever faced.

I wonder if our ten man is going to consider Heroic/hardmode 10 man now. There are only 14 guilds on the server who've been able to kill even the first boss, Marrowgar, in heroic mode. No guild on Silvermoon has killed the Lich King in Heroic mode, although two horde guilds have downed the other eleven bosses and are now trying to kill him. To give you an idea of how tough Heroic mode Lich King is, only 16 guilds in the entire World of Warcraft (every server) have killed him. That's sixteen kills out of nearly 50,000 guilds in ICC 10. It's even harder and more rare in ICC 25.

The Kingslayers

As for Cataclysm, there are already posts on various forums in response to the age old question: What should I be doing to get ready for the expansion?

Here are my favorites so far:

* Complete 25 pre-Cataclysm quests but don't turn them in until after launch (power leveling tip)
* set hearth to a city less likely to have high lag - suggestions are Shattrath (neutral), Silvermoon City (horde) or Exodar (alliance)
* Obtain every heirloom item to speed level new toons/alts
* Saving gold is debatable - some say the costs will ratchet up to make what can be saved pre-launch trivial, to others who say the changes, including goblin racial discounts, will make things so cheap saving gold won't be necessary - take your pick

And my current #1:
* take a two week vacation away from WoW at launch - the game won't be playable anyway

Wednesday (28 Apr) - Icecrown Citadel Once Again

Wednesday (28 Apr) - Icecrown Citadel Once Again

With 24 guild raiders signed up and confirmed for the Wednesday raid, Wild could be pretty sure we would be raiding ICC 25. Wild was invited, and I accepted. The MM guild 10 man ICC was also on the ticket to start 45 minutes later, but no one Wild knew from the MM guild were on to talk to about that, so Wild went with his own guild.

Even with 24 confirmed raiders, once invites went out we were able to muster up only 22 raiders, which amounted to every level 80 guildie in game. Our struggles to fill a raid continue. We decided to start anyway, figuring that we should be able to handle at least the first three bosses, and maybe a fourth, even short on raiders.

As you know it's been weeks and weeks since Wild has seen the early encounters in the first wing of ICC. Lord Marrowgar, who's he? Oh yea, he's that skeletal boss with the many arms and heads that floats around in his chamber, visible from the entrance just inside ICC. The first boss. Yea, that one, I remember now. How about the strat? Strat, I don't need no stinking strat! Oh yes I do. Wild raked through his memory - ok, close up to melee range on the boss, when he started running around be sure to stay out of the lines of white fire, heal raiders that get hit with Spike.

For Wild, it looked like an easy kill. Marrowgar went down on our first attempt, even short three DPS raiders. The raid leader called it sloppy, though, and it took longer than usual to kill him. We were already behind schedule.

Marrowgar holds more loot that Wild wants than any two bosses in ICC. He has four items that are upgrades to Wild's healing spec, and a +hit ring that would be marvelous for his moonkin spec. Did any of that drop? Well, the DPS ring dropped, and Wild bid on it as an offspec item. But it went to a mainspec warlock. Oh, and a little thing called [Frozen Bonespike] dropped as well. Remember the Quel'delar quest chain that Wild went through to get that very special mace, [Hammer of Purified Flame]? The one Wild worked so hard to get so that he could replace his very undergeared old weapon, because Wild was for sure never going to get the weapon he really wanted out of ICC? Well, [Frozen Bonespike] is the ICC weapon that Wild figured he would never get. And Wild won the bid for it. How good is this weapon? Wild will still be wearing it when Cataclysm comes. There isn't anything better short of Heroic level ICC 25, which Wild will never see (there, I said it again). Even so, after all that effort, Wild was a little sad to be putting away his Hammer so soon after I'd gotten it. It served Wild well, and will have an honored spot in Wild's bank bags, along with other treasured weapons of the past.

After Marrowgar was Lady Deathwhisper. We'd gained another raider and were at 23 strong when we brought her down on our first attempt as well. Wild was having fun, even as the raid leader groused about how long it was taking. If this was a slow, sloppy run, I can see how on "better" full runs with all the regulars how they could sweep through 6-8 bosses in a single night. Wild got to roll on another item, but it went to someone else.

The Gunship battle came next, and it was as fun and easy as Wild remembered. It had been easy fight even the few times Wild had done it in the past, and this was no exception. There were no druid specific drops this time, but a "handy" pair of cloth DPS caster gloves dropped. Before we put the EPGP loot system in place to determine who won gear, it was courteous to pass on gear once you had already won something. Wild did that only once under the new system, and the gear I'd passed on got sharded. Wild doesn't do that anymore, letting the system make the determination. Wild bid on the gloves as an offspec. If anyone in the raid bid on it as mainspec that would trump Wild's bid. No one did, and Wild got the gloves. The icing on the cake is that Wild uses the same i245 gloves for both healing and moonkin, and the new i264 gloves, even with the +hit on it, was better healing gloves than Wild already had. Offspec, yes, but still worthy for Wild's mainspec, too. I liked the name, too: [Gunship Captain's Mittens].

The fourth and final boss in the first wing is Deathbringer Saurfang. The last time Wild saw this Orc boss, he was not yet on farm and was still giving us trouble. Wild was also in moonkin form for that previous fight. On this night I sort of remembered the fight, but didn't get positioned right. The raid leader reminded Wild where to stand. Once the fight started things went far smoother than Wild had ever seen it, and Saurfang died. Just like that, we had cleared a full wing of ICC, Wild had gotten two new pieces of gear, and we still had a lot of time on the clock. This is what Wild has been missing every Tuesday night in the past.

We moved on, clearing trash to Festergut in the second wing, the Plagueworks. We had a raider die on the trash, which oddly enough became a repeated theme the rest of the night. The raider claimed a bonespike had killed him, according to his combat log. Bonespikes, of course, are an ability of Marrowgar, who was dead and even if alive was no where near us. Interesting.

On our first pull of Festergut the tank died and we wiped. Not immediately, though. We tried to recover and fought a losing battle for a few more minutes before it became obvious we were going down. We had the best healer in our guild main healing that tank, so a perplexed raid leader took some time to try to figure out what went wrong. You don't second guess your best healer, though. All she could figure out was that she must not have gotten off a heal in time. Wild also screwed up, although that wasn't the reason for the wipe. In this fight spores form on random raiders, and those who get spores have to move to pre-selected spots where other raiders can converge on the spores to get a buff. I hate it when Wild gets a spore the first time they spawn. We were at the point of the fight when raiders were moving in toward the tank, and Wild was late remembering that when I got a spore I was to move in the other direction. Wild did a 180 and raced toward the rim of the room, but too late and several raiders took some heavy damage. No one died, though.

On our second attempt the raid leader repositioned Wild at a spot where I didn't need to move at all. See, I'm finally getting our raid leader trained on how to best use Wild. ;-) Festergut died.

A different raider died on trash getting to Rotface, our next target. Truly weird, as the raider said he'd not gotten aggro on anything.

The Rotface fight went well. Wild danced around Rotface, successfully avoiding every Vomit he cast at him, and twice got an ooze that he successfully kited over to the ooze tank like I was supposed to. Rotface fell on our first attempt.

Six bosses were now down and we had a choice - we could continue to farm by taking on the Princes next, or we could go pay Professor Putricide a visit, who was definitely not on farm. The raid was given a choice. Wild voted for Putricide. Not that I like this fight - it sucks - but I'd gotten some good advice about how to manage the battle that I really wanted to try out and practice. The raid decided to take one shot at Putricide.

We started as we always did, with the whole raid crowded on top of each other in the center of the room. Putricide had his back to us, working at his lab on the west side of the room. The tank aggroed him, brought him to the center, and when Putricide dropped his first slime pool we all broke from the center and headed for our positions. For healers, that position was the south corner. I'd always thought of it that way, as a way to remember how to get back to it when positioning changed. Wild's new thinking, though, also knew that part of the room as the orange tank area, something that had never been clear to me in prior fights. The "orange tank" had nothing to do with our tanks. It had nothing to do with the fact that one of our tanks was a raider who had been purposely transformed into an abomination to eat the slime that Putricide drops. I knew it had something to do with an orange beam and experiments that Putricide repeats throughout the fight. And now I knew that the "orange tank" was exactly that - on the southern side of the room a large tank hung on the wall full of orange goo. So why do we go to the south side of the room, where the orange tank is, when told to go our green positions?

Let me explain further. The first "unstable experiment" that Putricide does produces an ooze (a mob) from the green tank on the north side of the room. That ooze shoots a green beam that impales a random raider and does significant DoT damage while also immobilizing the raider. The ooze moves toward the raider and if it reaches the raider it explodes, doing damage and a knockback to everyone nearby. The DPS do their best to kill the ooze before it reaches it's target, and so we stand on the opposite side of the room from where the ooze starts from to give the DPS as much time as possible to kill it.

Once the ooze has been killed, the raid leader calls out the kill and then calls out "orange positions!" That's the signal to change positions and move to the north and near the green tank. The ooze that then comes out of the orange tank is a bit nastier than the one from the green tank. This ooze also does damage to the targeted raider, but the raider can move and in fact has to move, kiting the ooze away from other raiders but in the direction of the ranged DPS so that they can target and kill it. If the orange ooze reaches it's target, the explosion is much worse and could wipe the raid. The orange ooze can also change targets, which is another reason to keep it kited away from other raiders.

Then we do it all over again. And again. And again. If you understood all that on your first read through you are a better man/woman than me. I think I finally understand it, but it will take Wild a few more battles to be able to react without having to think through it.

And all of that doesn't even cover the fact that all of this goes on through three phases that add even more challenges.

Although Wild was pretty pleased with how he did, as a whole we didn't do very well on our one try against Putricide. After the wipe we headed for the third wing, Crimson Hall, and the Princes. The only trash on the way occurs in a hallway between the central zone of ICC and the Crimson Hall wing. Once we enter that area a swarm of mobs descend that are AoEed down. It's not too difficult, unless stragglers don't make it into the hall before the mobs start coming.

We had another guildie come in game and our warlock was getting ready to Summon him. Four or five of us were with the lock and the raid leader to help start the Summon. Everybody else filtered into the hall and the mob swarm started. Huge doors immediately slammed shut, splitting the raid into two groups. The raiders inside the hall had to face down an kill the mobs. Luckily most of the healers had gone into the hall, and could keep folks alive. On the other side of the door all five of the raiders started taking AoE damage that would continue to tick until we left the hall - which we couldn't do until the fight on the other side of the door ended and the doors opened again. This had happened once before in an earlier raid. Only one player got caught on the wrong side of the doors, and he wasn't a healer. Despite a healing potion and bandages, he still died.

Luckily our little lost group had Wild, and I kept everyone healed. The raider we summoned was a shaman, and he helped with the healing once we got him in. Not a big issue, but still one of those things raid leaders hate to see, particularly on a "farming" run.

We wiped on our first attempt at the Princes when a tank again inexplicably died. Despite that we got the tank battle rezzed and made a real fight of it, getting the Princes to 3%. We killed them on our second attempt. We were down to just twenty minutes now, and the hope that we would be able to take some shots at the Blood Queen were gone as it would take that long to clear the trash. That was pretty disappointing, as Wild has not even seen Blood Queen yet. We trooped back to the Plagueworks and took on Putricide one more time. Nope, we didn't beat him that time, either.

Perhaps it wasn't the best raid of the month for the guild, but our fortunes on Wednesday night were certainly better than our non-raid of the night before. On the whole it was a great night for Wild, getting two excellent i264 upgrades, downing seven boss encounters on a single night, and even gaining some confidence against Putricide. It also showed what Wild was missing every time Wild ended up as a Standby on those nights. Those seven boss encounters are seven extra frost badges, and there is even a quest (I think its a weekly) that gives 5 more frost badges. That adds up pretty quickly.

Wild's healing numbers were also much improved and more consistent, which could be expected given that Wild wasn't beating his head over and over against bosses like Putricide. Aided by Wild's healing spams on trash Wild did real well in the overall healing numbers and even came in pretty high in the boss fights as well, ranging from 2nd to 4th among the six healers.

Here were the overall numbers:
#1: Queen Priest, 4097 hps, 19.6% of the healing
#2: Wild, 2957/14.3%
#3: zshaman, 3089/14.2%
#4: hlshaman, 2897/13.6%
#5: hgpriest, 2718/12.8%
#6: bshaman, 2653/10.0%

When we took a five minute break at about 7:45pm Wild checked to see how things were going with the MM 10 man ICC. If they had been able to get started they should still be playing. However, no one from the MM guild were in game, so I would have to conclude that either the raid leader wasn't able to make it, or he couldn't get enough raiders to start. Wild is signed up for the MM guild Thursday night run starting at 6:45pm. I hope we get a chance to run.

Tuesday (27 Apr) - No Joy in ICC

Tuesday (27 Apr) - No Joy in ICC

The Tuesday night ICC 25 man raid never got off the ground. There were only 18 sign ups and we never came close to getting 25 raiders for what amounted to a farming run. The gods of WoW are determined to keep Wild out of the first wing of ICC, where there are NINE items that Wild would dearly love to have. Compare that to the second wing, which Wild has tackled numerous times and already gotten several drops, where there are only two items left on Wild's wish list. There are three parts to the problem: (1) we're unlucky that several regular raiders had real life issues at the same time; (2) the raid leader also reported that as many as five regular raiders have either left the guild or have stopped coming in frustration with our progress; and (3) the next expansion, Cataclysm, has been officially announced for a November 2010 release.

Not much we can do about the real life issues. The attrition of guildies is much more serious. I suspect that most if not all of those who have left the guild and/or the raid are from the raiders that joined as a collective group not too long ago. They joined specifically to raid ICC 25, and despite the fact that the guild has made huge progress, with their help of course, apparently their expectations were even higher. There were some regulars that did not even bother to respond to the raid calendar invites.

A frustrated raid leader asked everyone to help recruit players so that we can keep the raid alive, saying that he would rather get lesser geared folks who really wanted to be here over highly geared raiders who could not be depended on. I sense an opening for Sis and DER if ya'll are interested.

Underneath all that is Cataclysm. It happens to guilds every time a new expansion is announced - players start looking toward the "next thing" and begin losing interest in the current game. Players spend less time in game, they try other games, they fiddle with their alts, that next piece of gear in ICC doesn't seem so important anymore, and they stop showing up for raids. Wild keeps his raid commitments, but even I have to admit that Wild spends a lot less time in game than he used to.

Raiding isn't over for the guild. I think we'll still be able to get 25 mans together. But it really looks like a step backward, and that is very hard to recover from, since it becomes almost self fulfilling. Raiders stop showing up because they figure there won't be enough to raid. Ironically, the solution could be an easy one, but is pretty much an impossible dream for Wild. The MM guild no longer raids 25 man ICC due to lack of numbers. Between the two guilds, though, I'd bet there would be plenty to fill the raid. But there are some very hard feelings between individuals in both guilds, and that is not likely to be even considered.

Monday (26 Apr) - Killing and Healing Stuff

Monday (26 Apr) - Killing and Healing Stuff

Wild is going to have some interesting decisions to make this week. At long last, the MM guild is starting up the Wed/Thurs ICC ten man again. The raid leader, Bd, posted the new schedule, with the raid kickoff at 6:45pm. Wild got an invite. Wild signed up for the FS 25 man ICC for Tuesday, which will be a fresh run. Sign ups are surprisingly light so far (20 signed up) so perhaps Wild will actually get an invite.

The conflict, though, is on Wednesday. Generally Wild is very much needed on Wednesdays for the ICC 25 progression run. Without Wild there are only three healers currently signed up. I decided to hedge my bets and signed up for both Wednesday raids as "Tentative." If Wild is not needed for the ICC 25, then I'll run the 10 man. If the 25 man has trouble filling and it looks like it might not happen, then Wild can also switch to the 10 man as it starts 45 minutes later than the 25 man. Of course, not committing to the 10 man might mean that it fills without Wild, but that would be ok. We'll see how it plays out.

It was an otherwise quiet weekend, with the exception of the For The Horde! raid, which has already been posted. The rest of this is a long, technical discussion of healing addon comparisons that I had to wade through to see if there were better healing tools I could be using. It had been awhile since I looked at the alternatives, plus with Philly now level 80 I wanted to make sure she had all the right healing tools as well.

Once upon a time Wild was the only level 80. He had a popular raid frame addon called CTRA and used a popular healer addon, the name of which I've long forgotten (and which no longer exists). In those early days addons came and went; authors got bored and stopped updating them, and new authors came out with new addons. Changing a raid frame or a healer addon was a big deal. Learning how it worked, figuring out the settings, and then testing the results could take weeks of fiddling - assuming the addon even worked like it was supposed to. Wild held on grimly to a favored addon even after it was abandoned by the author, until it was so broke he had no choice but to go through the process of finding and learning a new one.

Wild thought he had settled the issue of raid frames and healer addons. Wild has been using xperl for his raid frames AND for healing for many months. It works well enough and it's reliable. The author keeps it updated and fixes whatever minor bugs crop up, although it's strictly maintenance. There are no efforts to improve it or add new features. It's not broken, though, so why would Wild be looking at alternatives?

Wild's guild, trying to squeeze the best out of the raid, has been reviewing user interfaces and spell strategies and rotations for healers. One deficiency in Wild's addons has come out of that which Wild would like to correct and improve on, one that apparently xperl can't provide.

Druid healers have a lot of heal over time (HoT) spells, more than any other class of healer. Xperl can show Wild how many HoTs are on the target from all healers, and can show how many of Wild's own HoTs are on a target. What it can't do is tell Wild what specific HoT it is. That didn't use to be a problem. Wild has another addon called Dotimer that displays all of Wild's Hots on every target in a separate display from xperl. Back when Wild rarely had more than four or five raiders with his Hots on them, it was not a problem to glance at the Dotimer display to see who had what HoTs. In this new frenetic world of raiding, Wild's HoTs could be ticking on a dozen raiders at a time, and the Dotimer info becomes overwhelming and useless to Wild. I need a better way.

Doing some research, the two most popular addons which can do what I want are Healbot and Grid.

Grid is the swiss army knife of raid frames addons. It can do absolutely anything, I kid you not. It has more options and settings than the cockpit of a fighter jet. Which is part of it's problem. It's so complex even experts at getting it to do what they want have trouble explaining how they got there. Documentation is nil, and like most addons you just have to tinker with it until it sort of does what you want. What's even worse for me is that it relies heavily on color in it's crowded displays, and anything past a few very loud, primary colors simply won't work for my color deficient eyes. It's so powerful that I've attempted to use it twice, abandoning it both times, but I find myself thinking I'll try it a third time.

But first, I decided to give healbot a try. In addition to doing everything that xperl does, it does two additional things that I want. It can display what Hots are active on a target, which was the main thing I was looking for. It also does one more thing that is strictly cosmetic, but which I would really like to have. Healbot can hide the party interface, even when not in a raid. One of the most irritating things about xperl and many other UIs with raid frames is that when you are not in a raid, you are stuck with a set of party frames (for 5 mans) that looks completely different from your raid frames. With healbot both the look and feel of the UI is the same for both party and raid. I like that.

For the past three days I have been using Philly as my guinea pig to determine if healbot can do the job.

Asthetically, I hate the way it looks. From a screen space perspective, it is very inefficient and klutzy, wasting a lot of real estate. I got past a lot of that through interminable tinkering, but some things . . . well, here's one example. Healbot displays the icon of active Hots, just like I need it to. It will also show remaining time until it expires, also a good thing. There is even a setting where I can choose where in the raid frame box the icons will appear. Perfect! Except it's not even close to perfect. If the icons are placed inside the box, it hides the heal bar, which is the most important thing I'm looking at. When selecting a location outside of the box, healbot reserves a whole gob of space, making the box a lot larger than I want it be. The best location, with the least waste, is outside and below the box. That would work for me, except that the placement is off center, with half the icon inside the box covering up the mana bar. Not a showstopper, but it leaves half of the space below the box unused but reserved. Again, cluttered, hard to decipher, and wasteful of screen space.

Another issue that may really start to drive me nuts is that healbot does not support profiles. Profiles are used to save a configuration, which can be used not only by the original toon, but other toons as well. Assuming I use healbot, I would have to set it up manually for each of my healer toons, and if I change something, I'll have to go to each toon and make each change. If there is some problem or update and I have to re-install, I might have to re-set up everything again from scratch. Even worse, I can't set up separate configurations for say, pvp healing vs raid healing. I'd have to manually set it up each time. Profiles can save me from a lot of that effort, but healbot doesn't have it.

I do like things about healbot. Not needing a separate party frame is a big plus. It also has a click healing feature. Wild is a mouseover healer, not a click healer, but in testing with Philly it was pretty convenient (in pvp primarily) to be able to left-click a raider to Shield him, and right-click to cast a Penance spell on him. Nifty and quick. It does show healing and mana bars in a usable way. Not as flexible as xperl with that, but acceptable.

Bottom line is that to use healbot I would have to give up more screen space than what xperl uses now, and I would have to train my eyes to recognize small icons that crowd and clutter up the heal bar. I'm just not sure if I want to go through all this, but I'm going to push Philly into some battlegrounds to see if I can learn to like it. I really want to be able to see those HoTs.

Addendum: Philly tried out Healbot, and was left pretty frustrated with it. Part of it is just learning something new. However, I did find one other irritating issue. Healbot frames are intended to be clicked on to cast heals. However, when Philly (or Wild for that matter) are in DPS spec (shadow or moonkin, respectively) I want to be able to click on them for targeting purposes. But I can't, because clicking them casts heals. I can turn that off, but that means remembering to do that every time I switch specs. I haven't totally given up on healbot, but . . .

Wild did get into a VoA 25 raid Monday night. Monday being the last night before the reset, it took awhile to find enough raiders that hadn't already done VoA this week. While we were waiting to get the raid filled I got a whisper from my nephew. I hadn't seen him in game in a very long time, and didn't think he played anymore. He still plays regularly, though, but mostly on the alliance side. We got caught up on family news and then he signed off. He lives back east so our time zones don't match up too well.

Our first target in VoA, of course, was Toravon. Toravon drops the T10 trousers and gloves. Wild has the trousers, so the only reasons to do VoA was for the gloves and the badges. We began the fight, and it was immediately apparent that our makeshift raid was a pretty ragged bunch. Toravon does a lot of raid damage, spawns adds that have to be killed quickly, and continues to increase his level of damage the longer he is alive. If the DPS is strong, he's not a hard boss to kill. Our DPS wavered, and Wild found himself throwing out the heals as fast as he could. We had five healers, three of us druids. The other druids had gear equal to or better than Wild's. One of the druids died three quarters of the way into the fight, and more raiders started dying as Toravon's damage ratcheted up.

We lost a third of the raid, and came close to losing him, but a last push by the remaining DPS brought him down. The loot was plate and mail, so no gloves for Wild. However, Wild broke the 5k mark in healing, finishing first with 5236 hps. A priest came in second with about 4900 hps. Of course a lot of things had to go right to put up a number like that, but it was still a nice confidence builder for Wild after all the issues with the many Putricide fights.

Saturday (24 Jul) - For The Horde!

Saturday (24 Jul) - For The Horde!

For The Horde! is not a quest. It's an Achievement. Achievements can be laughably easy to get, or nearly impossible. Many can be done alone, while others require dozens of players to succeed. Each achievement carries a score, and for those who like earning achievements, the game is to get as many done as possible and get that score as high as possible. Very few achievements offer tangible rewards; most players are only after a sense of accomplishment. For The Horde! however, does have a tangible reward, a good one, and it would follow that completing it might be a bit challenging.

The challenge? Invade the four largest cities of the Alliance, and kill the alliance leader in each of those cities.

On Saturday morning, Philly made a fateful decision to ask for an invite to a For The Horde! raid. It was 11:10am. Philly was in Dalaran, having just finished her dailies. The next Wintergrasp battle was over an hour away, and Philly figured that trying to get the achievement would be a good way to while away the time, in between doing around the house real life honey-do's.

None of the Wild family had ever even attempted, much less completed the achievement. I know that DER has been in on some alliance city raids, although I'm not sure if he completed the achievement or not. Anyway, I didn't really know what to expect or how the thing was done.

I do know that as we approached noon we only had 12 raiders signed up. This small force was asked by the raid leader to assemble at what I understood to be the "secret" hide out for the horde on the outskirts of of the alliance city of Ironforge in Dun Morogh on the Eastern Continent. An advance party had a warlock there and Philly was Summoned there by the lock.

The location is a small building called the Misty Pines Refuge. A single neutral npc stands outside the cozy little building. Inside there's a nice warm fire, a table ready for hosting a meal, and a comfortable looking bed. Not to mention the slightly racy painting on the wall. A hunter's cabin, perhaps. This is just my opinion, but I bet the horde always assemble here for an IF raid, and I bet every allie over level 10 knows about this "secret" spot.


At around 12:25pm we were discovered by a level 10 allie. True. He wasn't flagged, but he left in a hurry. Since we were only 19 strong at that point, a few folks figured the alliance would sally forth from IF to come kill us. One even went so far as to say, "We are so dead." A lot of us, Philly included, were hoping the alliance would come out in force because we wanted SOMETHING to happen, instead of just hanging around. At least I had time to keep doing chores around the house while I waited. No one came to kill us.

At 12:40 we had 25 raiders. Until this point Philly was the only healer that had joined, and I had mentioned to the raid that they'd better stock up on bandages to heal themselves, as yours truly was good, but not that good. We worked our way up to three healers. We also lost our raid leader, and a raider named Yessuh took over. He immediately let us know that he would not start the raid until it was full, and that included having three tanks and seven healers. "We can't lose," he said, once we have a full raid.

At 1pm we had 27 raiders but still not a single tank. The raid leader worked for recruits. We did lose raiders who quit the raid, getting bored or impatient or who ran out of time, but I was surprised at how many stuck around. The raid leader called for patience.

At 1:15pm Philly told the raid leader I was leaving the raid to run Wintergrasp, and that I would return if he was still taking invites when I was done. The horde lost the WG battle, and then Philly got invited back into the raid. There had been some more progress.

At 1:40pm we had 37 raiders including five healers. And two tanks. At long last the raid leader decided that was sufficient, and warlocks started a massive Summoning effort to get everyone into the tiny cabin in the mountains outside Ironforge.

The alliance didn't seem to notice or care that there were nearly forty horde raiders, mostly level 80, prepping for an assault right under their noses. We got everyone assembled, mounted up, and were on our way.


Ironforge is one alliance city I had never been in. The entrance is a hole in the mountain with the city inside. We flooded into the opening and were told not to stop until we reached the room of King Bronzebeard, our target.

Racing with a bunch of horde through an alliance city was an awesome feeling. Something akin to army ants on the march, no one wanted to get in our way. A number of alliance did set up a defense for their King, who is an elite boss target with more than 5 million health. We figured that on a Saturday the city would be packed, but the allies could not match our numbers. We focused everything on their King and brought Bronzebeard down, and then cleaned up any allies that had been foolish enough to flag.

The race out of the city, hounded by alliance and city guards, was a ragged affair, and Philly nearly got lost. She found her way out, though, along with a few other stragglers, and we fought our way through a crowd of npcs and allies that flowed out of the city after us. Philly made her escape, but missed the tram, which was our escape route. The raid leader was prepared for that, however, letting us know that we could hearth out of enemy territory and we would all be Summoned to our next gathering point.

The only thing Philly was sorry about was she forgot to snap a pic of Bronzebeard's kill.

The raid leader asked for everyone re-assemble at the tiny outpost of Zom'Goram on the coast at the far north of Ashenvale. There is a Summoning Stone there, intended for players heading for the dungeon Blackfathom Deeps. I thought that was clever, taking advantage of a Stone so that we didn't have to use a warlock. With the raid assembled again, we hoofed it up the coast to a lone pier. An alliance boat docks there. We shanghied the boat, killed the crew, and took it to Auberdine, which is the boat hub of the Alliance.

Hijacking another boat, we sailed to the shores of Azuremyst Isle, home of the great alliance city of Exodar. This newer city, home of the space faring Draenei, has yet to find popularity among the alliance. It was nearly deserted, and we plundered it quickly, killing the Prophet Velen. Javajoo, who was staying at the Inn, was close enough to hear his screams.


At 2:10pm we headed back to the sea once again. We were down to thirty raiders, and had replaced one of the tanks. We lost a raider overboard, too, but our patient raid leader held us on the pier until he could swim back to us.

We sailed to the piers of Darnassus, and stormed into the city. Our target was Arch Druid Fandral Staghelm, and the path to him wound all over the city. At one point Philly found herself actually leading a group of raiders after we lost sight of those in front of us through the curving, narrow streets. I'm sure the raid would have quailed in fear had they known that the "Lost Girl" was leading a troop in the enemy city. But they didn't know that, and Philly caught sight of the back end of a horse making the next turn and we stayed on course.

We met our stiffest resistance yet against the spell casting druid Staghelm and a swarm of allies, who were waking up to the horde invasion. Staghelm also fell, and with three leaders of the Alliance slain, we marched out of the city virtually unscathed.


Last but not least was Stormwind. The Alliance might want to re-think the convenience of their boat system, as hijacking those boats makes access to three of their key cities quick and easy. King Varian Wrynn was the final leader to fall under our assault, leaving the Alliance leaderless.



It took a little over three hours total, but we had earned the achievement For The Horde!

A lot of credit goes to the raid leader, Yessuh. He was a bit of a braggart, and he tested the patience of a lot of raiders with the time it took to put a full raid together, but he got the needed tanks and healers, and kept it together to get all four leaders down in a single run. Pretty impressive, actually.

Ok, the proof of the deed (for you, martin. :P )


If you're still with me at this point you may be wondering, well, what was the prize for taking up a whole Saturday afternoon? Philly is riding it proudly.

Thursday (22 Apr) - PvP and Voice Chat

Thursday (22 Apr) - PvP and Voice Chat

One of the things I wanted to try out before the Friday night pvp fest was the Blizzard voice chat feature. What it is supposed to do is provide a way in game for players to talk to each other with a microphone instead of text only chat. The feature has been around since patch 2.2 or so, but you never hear about it being used. Guilds that need a voice chat capability almost always use a third party product, either teamspeak or ventrilo (which is what Wild's guild uses). Someone has to set up the third party software, though, through some kind of server arrangement, and I believe there is a cost involved with that (although not sure). Anyway, the WoW voice chat feature would seem to be a simple solution for a small group that wanted to talk to each other while playing.

Why am I even bothering with voice chat? Wild certainly never uses the guild's vent service for talking. Wild only listens. Well, it seems that being able to talk to other players is something that the Mrs would be interested in trying; ie, being able to talk in game might get her in game sooner. With our third project (and last project for awhile) completed, we have a window of opportunity here.

So I set out to set up and test out voice chat between my two computers. I read up on all the information out there, and while there are a lot of settings, it seemed simple enough. Oh boy was I ever wrong about that.

After more than an hour of laying out every combination of settings I could think of, I still could not get it to work. Let's call the two computers the Chaitee computer and the Javajoo computer (those were the toons I was testing with).

Here's what would work. I could run the microphone test on both computers and it worked. But in live testing no sound would come out of the speakers on either computer. It didn't seem to matter which computer the mike was connected to, either. The only odd thing is that on the Chaitee computer the "party" display on the chat channel had an "enable voice" selection while on the Javajoo computer that selection was not there.

After a lot of tinkering I got a small display on Chaitee's screen with a little speaker icon. I started to hear all of the sound coming from Javajoo's computer from Chaitee's speakers - but still nothing from the mike. When I disconnected the mike completely, I could still hear Javajoo sounds coming from Chaitee's speakers. Weird.

So, perhaps there is some problem with the Javajoo computer's mike settings or drivers, even though internal testing showed everything working fine. Until I can think of something else to try I'm stuck.

Wednesday (21 Apr) - Progression Wins

Wednesday (21 Apr) - Progression Wins

The guild 25 man ICC raid did happen on Wednesday night, and it was a successful run - for only the second time, the guild felled Professor Putricide, and then took some shots at Blood Queen Lana'thel, getting in a lot of good practice.

Wild was not there. Real life project #3 consumed all of my time into the late evening Wednesday night. We actually got the entire flooring job done in one day/night, which was good for the Mrs and bad for Wild. It was great to learn that the guild had downed Putricide, though. Next week will be a normal schedule week, with Tuesday being the farming run.

During the day on Wednesday Mery managed to sneak in a little time to hunt dragons in Dustwallow Marsh for their thick leather. Mery is trying to level up her leatherworking skills, and she needs hundreds of thick leather to get there. In the process she levelled from level 40 to 42. That should help in the 40's pvp bracket a bit.

Since this is such a short entry, the Wild family thought we'd throw in a family portrait. This was just a practice session for the more formal "official" photo, to see if we could all actually get together somewhere at the same time. Everyone came in their usual travelling combat gear. The more formal setting will be a lot more interesting. Anyway, here it is:

Wild Family (practice) "Portrait In Arms"

Tuesday (20 Apr) - The Laws of Progression and Farming

Tuesday - The Laws of Progression and Farming

Like the laws of Physics in the real world, WoW has it's own immutable laws, documented in theories as thoroughly defined as physic's theory of relativity.

Wild's guild raids on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, as everyone knows. We start with a fresh run on Tuesday. While the guild does not like to call it a farming run, this is exactly what it is. We now have as many as eight bosses on farm, out of the 12 encounters in Icecrown Citadel. We almost always have a very strong turn out for the Tuesday run, and since guild raiding rules give priority to our Tier 1 raiders, the best geared and (subjectively) the best raiders will almost always fill the Tuesday raid.

On Wednesday raiders tackle bosses that Tuesdays raid didn't get to or couldn't kill. Again, the guild does not want to name this night as Progression night, but again that is exactly what it is. The bosses faced on Wednesday are tougher and in many cases have yet to be defeated. This raid wipes a lot, and kills few bosses. Many Tier 1 raiders do come on both Tuesday and Wednesday night, but many don't, and the guild has a hard time filling the Wednesday night raid.

The guild recognizes the disparity in the two nights, and proposed a plan to even things out. That plan went into effect this week. Last night (Tuesday) the guild did a "lockout" on ICC, so that it would not reset to a fresh a run. Instead of facing farm content, the raid would be facing Putricide as their first boss (which we wiped on like 9 times last week) and maybe even the Blood Queen, an even tougher encounter. Most Tuesday nights the guild gets 30+ sign ups for Tuesday. On this particular Tuesday night, 19 signed up.

Despite every effort of the guild short of PUGing the raid (asking strangers to fill in), we could field no more than 21 raiders. Note that last Wednesday we butted heads against Putricide with 23 raiders for most of the night, and you know how that worked out. It was useless to try with 21.

For the sake of completeness, I will add here that we are entering into the spring break and college finals period, and some raiders participation may be affected by that. One would think that it would affect both nights, though, so we'll see if that is a factor.

A suggestion was made to drop the lockout and start a fresh run. Even with only 21 we could probably beat at least the first four encounters. The down side of doing that was that it would mean more clearing on Wednesday night and less time practicing against the tougher bosses. The positive side was that at least we'd get a few bosses down, and the Wednesday group, even though they wouldn't see a fresh raid, might get shots at bosses we haven't seen lately. Over several objections, the raid leaders opted to drop the lockout and do a fresh run with 21 raiders.

The night turned into a learning experience, however, when the locked out raid was unlocked. Due to the timing of when raiders entered the instance, we ended up with part of the raid in one instance, and part of the raid in another. Without getting technical, it meant we would not be able to raid ICC this night. We think that we were able to re-lock ICC so that on Wednesday we will now be facing Putricide instead of seeing a fresh instance.

Now comes the test of the theoretical laws of progression and farming. Remember that this Tuesday we had only 19 raiders sign up. For Wednesday night, the night we have trouble filling, there are 24 signed up as of this morning, which is a good number for a usual Wednesday. But this is not a usual Wednesday, since when most folks signed up this was to be a farming run instead of the usual progression run. Now, however, because of the dearth of raiders on Tuesday and the lockout problem, Wednesday is again a progression night with Putricide first on the agenda. So, at raid start on Wednesday how many will actually show up to raid? Those theoretical WoW scientists will surely get some good data to prove or disprove the theory of progression and farming.

We didn't ditch the raid completely. The weekly frost raid was Sartherion in Obsidium Sanctum. We took our 21 raiders to OS and slaughtered poor Sartherion. We did it in an interesting way, too. There are three mini-bosses (drakes), that when left alive to fight alongside Sartherion make the fight harder, but increases the loot. We decided to "zerg" the encounter, which means we intended to go all out on DPS against Sartherion, and ignore everything else - the three drakes, the elemental adds, everything. The strategy was simply to kill Sartherion before the whole raid died. That was a riot! And it worked.

Philly has been building up her pvp gear, getting into several WG battles and even winning a random pvp dungeon daily in Eye of the Storm. Philly is starting to replace her Frostsavage gear (mostly ilevel 187 stuff) with i232 and i245 stuff. She also now has over 200 WG shards and will be able to buy her first heirloom item by next week. Until then, only Wild and JB could get heirloom gear, and getting that gear from their account to the account Philly is on was a pain and a cost in real life dollars. Now Philly will be able to rectify that over time.

Weekend (19 Apr) - Phillyperdue

Weekend (19 Apr) - Phillyperdue

With Project #2 now winding down (#2 was the garage, #1 the master bedroom), Project #3 has gotten underway. Our family room is getting new flooring. We've slowly been replacing the carpeting in that very large room (over 400 sqft) with laminate flooring over the past few years, and this will be our final push to finish it. The Mrs, who loves to paint, is repainting the whole room first. My job over the weekend was packing away ten years of accumulated knicknacks so that I could wrestle the furniture away from the walls. The actually floor work starts this coming Wednesday.

Wild was all but absent over the weekend. On Friday night EZ, Ando, and Lao made mincemeat out of the alliance in two WSG battles, both handily won by the horde. EZ was more than just bait when she and Lao teamed up outside the alliance base and slaughtered nearly all who came after us. Lao, laying down her shadow priest spells, drew immediate attention. EZ would get ignored and so EZ kept heals on Lao while weighing in with her own modest DPS. When the allies caught on and came after EZ, Lao would keep the DoTs on them and heal EZ. The allies rarely caught on to the trap. Ando did the heavy lifting behind the scenes, keeping the flag team healed up and capping flags. In between and after the WSG battles we hung around outside Orgrimmar and dueled each other and others. It was a short Friday night, but lots of fun.

Philly stuck with her dailies, which now included the Argent Tournament dailies as well as the others she's been doing. After completing the last daily for Saturday night, Philly was 94% of the way to level 80. It was already late, but she considered getting into a random dungeon. However, both her and Wild were very low on stocks of chilled meat and Philly decided to farm for them until she got too tired. The best place to farm for chilled meat is the lion seals in Howling Fjord. But they were too low level for Philly to get any xp from. Her next best choice were the level 75-77 gorillas in Sholozar Basin. Both Wild and JB would have approved, since both of them reached level 80 in the Basin, and we had the makings of a tradition. Philly had already done the quests in the Basin that both Wild and JB had used to reach level 80, so those were out. However, there was a quest for killing the gorillas that would help the grind, so Philly went in search of it. As expected, there were pre-requisite quests before getting the one Philly wanted.

When Philly had pulled the thread far enough, she learned that she had to find and steal the catch from some other hunters out in the wilds of the Basin jungle. The target was a big cat. Once Philly killed the cat, she got a quest to go to the local village as a "slave" for stealing the kill from the local village hunters. From there Philly got the quest to kill the gorillas as well as a second quest to kill the gorilla matriarch.

At fifteen minutes past midnight, Philly turned in both quests and DINGED! to level 80. She had begun her march to level 80 on 12 Nov, 2009, as a level 59. Twenty-one levels and 163 real life days later, she made it. Philly averaged a week per level.


On Sunday Philly laid out all of her current gear and the level 80 gear she'd been accumulating and went to work getting all of her gear sets together. She has the most gear requirements of any toon in the family. Philly is not abandoning her pvp career, so she needed to maintain and improve on her pvp gear set. She also needed to raise her DISC healing gear set to level 80 standards as she was now eligible for random dungeon Heroics. Then there was her shadow priest spec. Philly needed both a "normal" set for every day slaughter, and a "+hit" set that was critical for the elite bosses of ICC and other elite boss dungeons.

Wild had to struggle to build a +hit set for his moonkin spec. He'd never envisioned using moonkin for anything more than solo grinding and had never bothered to get or keep the +hit gear that came his way. Philly, however, planned well in advance to have a capable +hit gear set. Even so, I was surprised at how well it came together. The set is still a bit of a mish mash of caster DPS gear, healing gear, and pvp gear, but it's plenty good enough to start with. At least Philly hopes so.

There is also some related guild news, with perhaps a surprise announcement. First, I don't think anyone will be surprised that Wild has decided to stay with the FS guild. Wild and the other druid healers have had a series of excellent conversations over the past few days and that has done a lot to clear the air and get us all on the same track. And, at least from the point of view of the healers and raid leaders, Wild is very much wanted and needed in guild 25 man raiding. And Wild wants very much to remain a part of it.

Wild also wants to get into an ICC ten man raid, which is currently not an option with his guild. Bd's MM ten man ICC raid will hopefully be up and running again in the next week or two, hopefully on days Wild can participate in.

Meanwhile, Philly has also made a raiding decision. First, she has decided that she does want to raid. As reported before, Lady Hunter (also in the MM guild with Bd) has asked Philly to join the MM guild. Philly has decided to give Lady Hunter a conditional Yes to joining. The condition is not so much a condition as a determination on whether the timing of the various raids works out so that Philly will be available to raid with MM. I have hopes that it will be possible because while Lady Hunter intends to lead her own ICC ten man raid, she also has an alt she wants to run in Bd's raid.

We'll see how this all falls out, but my expectation is that Philly will take the plunge and join MM soon. Just think, if everything lines up a certain way I could be looking at six days of raiding a week. Uh . . . no. Just no.

Don't worry, Philly won't forget her friends and family. Philly is looking forward to tearing up Heroics (and ICC 5 mans) with DER and Sis (once she hits 80). And of course the pvping will continue!

Wednesday Part 2 (14 Apr) - The Battered Hilt, Quel'delar

Wednesday Part 2 (14 Apr) - The Battered Hilt, Quel'delar

Within the confines of the 5 man Icecrown Citadel, those lucky enough to survive the place might be even more fortuitous to stumble across the hilt of a broken sword. Such artifacts of war litter the world, but this one seemed somehow different, or so thought Wild when he picked it up many weeks ago. It was on his very first trip into the three part ICC of Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, and Halls of Reflection. Wild didn't know how lucky he was on that day, to pick up the battered hilt.

The markings on the hilt suggested silver covenant origination, so Wild brought the artifact to Caladis Brightspear, who holds court at a circle of power not far to the south of the Argent Tournament grounds in Icecrown. Brightspear couldn't identify it, but sent Wild to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. Wild learned from Krasus at the temple that the hilt is from a weapon. Duh. An ancient and powerful weapon. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. But then there have been many ancient and powerful weapons from the long history of the world's conflicts. Which one this one might be may never be known. So Krasus sent Wild to the Silver Enclave in Dalaran to talk to yet another supposed expert. Wild was getting the feeling all these experts are clueless and just don't want to admit it. Either that or they're tired of excited explorers showing up with pieces of broken junk and wanting to believe they've found something valuable.

But Wild dutifully brought the broken hunk of steel to Arcanist Tybalin at the Silver Enclave. Krasus had mumbled something about a book, or, rather, a Tome, that seemed connected somehow. Arcanist Tybalin was even more sure that the Tome was significant. He thought it was part of plot by the Alliance allies and Silver Enclave enemy, the Sunreaver's. In fact, he had been tracking a suspicious Sunreaver agent who was currently dealing with shady agents in Dalaran's unsavory sewer district.

Wild was sent to find out what the Sunreaver agent knew. Wild knew the sewers well (of course Wild would know it, there's a bar and an Inn down there), and found the agent in the Inn. Wild only wanted to grill him for information, but things turned ugly and Wild ended up killing him. A search of the body revealed a set of orders, which Wild carried back to Tybalin. Those orders mentioned the Wyrmrest Tome, and Tybalin was keen to get his hands on it.

Well, this was getting a little more complicated than Wild expected. Wild got drawn into the intrigue, though. Wild needed to get into the Sunreaver's Sanctuary in Dalaran. But a big cow walking into that enemy stronghold would get Wild attacked immediately. He needed a disguise. He got one by doing laundry. Wish it were something more exciting than that, but it did give Wild a chance to pick up a Sunreaver tabard. That tabard was like the key to their Sanctuary. Can't say much for their security. Letting a Tauren walk into their sanctuary with nothing more than one of their tabards for ID is like a terrorist walking into the Pentagon and being allowed inside because he had on a T-shirt with an American flag on the front. But it worked. Not only did Wild get inside the sanctuary, he was able to obtain the Wrymrest Tome. I think Wild told them he needed some light reading at bedtime.

Wild brought the book back to Caladis Brightspear outside the Argent Tournament grounds. Brightspear examined the Tome. Yes, it is part of an ancient, powerful weapon. But apparently ancient, powerful weapons are a dime a dozen and he can't determine which one the hilt was a part of. Funny, the name of the Stonehenge like spot where Brightspear resides is called Quel'delar's Rest. Might that be a clue? Naw, no way. But Myralion Sunblaze, also at Quel'delar's Rest, makes the obvious connection. Oh my, this hilt really is a piece of the ancient dragon forged blade called Quel'delar.

Myralion tasks Wild with reforging the sword. It's a sacred trust. But it meant going back into Icecrown Citadel 5 mans, and Wild got busy, and before you know it had forgotten all about it.

Wild never completely forgot about it, though. Like an itch he couldn't scratch, the hilt worried at him. Wild was also tired of waving around his current blade, Surgeon's Needle, a puny dagger that once looked so cool and now . . . well, Wild started wondering what reward might be offered if he could, in fact, return Quel'delar to it's former glory.

Wild took up the task once again, and all week had been querying guildies hoping to get some help. Wild was not getting any takers, however. Wild had gone so far as to sneak into the Pit of Saron to collect infused saronite bars, the first part of the quest. The next step involved killing the Forgemaster in there, though, something Wild could not do alone. He called up the random dungeon finder, and chose normal mode Pit of Saron. Wild also signed up to heal. In a few minutes Wild had a group of strangers to help him, none of them knowing Wild was there for the sake of a quest.

The Forgemaster is the first boss in PoS, and we wasted no time getting to him. He's a tricky boss on heroic mode, but on normal both Wild and the DK tank pretty much overwhelmed him. Wild stopped the group from proceeding after the kill by asking for a moment to complete the quest. "Oh, ok," came from the tank. I could guess what was going through their minds - that I was only here to do the quest and would abandon them when I was done. Or I guess they could have been thinking, you lucky SOB you got the battered hilt drop. One of the reasons I elected to come as a healer is that had I been DPS they might have kicked me from the group, thinking I was going to screw them over. It's easy to get another DPS, but not so easy replacing a healer. They waited.

Wild took the blade of Quel'delar from the Forgemaster, and used blade, hilt, and saronite at the Forgemaster's own anvil to reforge the sword. Quest completed. Wild did not abandon the group, and it turned into a very interesting adventure. One of the DPS left the group shortly after we got going again, and then another one fell off some platform where I couldn't get close enough to rez him, and he took forever to get back to us. For some reason the dungeon finder took it's own time finding us another DPS, and for a huge chunk of the instance we three manned it, including the second boss. Wild stayed to the end.

Wild wasn't finished with Icecrown Citadel, however. Wild next must head into the Forge of Souls. After not getting any guild takers, and in between bouts of real life, Wild used dungeon finder to get into FoS. Wild had to kill the final boss for this part of the quest line, so we just did a full clear. They tried to talk Wild into continuing on to the Halls of Reflection. Three of the players were making their first run through ICC 5 man and they really wanted Wild to stay. In retrospect, I should have, but I declined. Once the final boss was down, Wild used a powerful crucible behind the boss area to temper the sword.

The reason Wild was cautious about continuing with the group into HoR is that I wasn't sure how that would work into the quest line. In HoR the first encounter is a multi-wave assault. However, according to the quest, Wild must fight the sword Frostmourne at that same spot where the waves form. Plus I didn't really want to do the whole HoR since I just needed to do the one fight at the beginning.

Wild kept trying to get guildies to come help with the quest throughout the afternoon, but even though I only needed two to help out, it was no go. A bit frustrated, Wild attempted to solo the quest. The good news is that Wild learned how the quest worked. As soon as Wild entered HoR and started moving toward the center area where Frostmourne was held suspended in the air, an npc rushed forward yelling "No! No! Don't bring the sword any closer!" Wild kept coming, and when I got close enough Wild's sword leaped from my bags. Frostmourne moved, flying about the room doing whirlwinds. And then it attacked.

The bad news is that it only took four hits for Frostmourne to kill Wild.

Wild tried to get the quest done right up to just before invites to the raid. Wild's hope of getting everything done in time for the raid was dashed. Oh well, Wild had Putricide to look forward to. Uh huh.

The night could have ended with those nine failed attempts on Putricide. But after the raid ended Wild whispered his friend Rh, one of the raid leaders and a very well geared tank. Want to help? I asked him. Of course I do, he responded. I needed at least one DPS, and our Guild Master volunteered his death knight. So Wild and two of the three most senior raiders in the guild headed back to Icecrown Citadel and turned Frostmourne into a pile of melted ore. Another crucial part of the quest chain was completed. Both of Wild's guildie friends congratulated Wild, knowing what waited at the end of the chain. The hardest parts of the quest chain were done. Wild still has good friends in the guild.

The final steps took Wild to the Sunwell, inside the Sunwell Plateau raid instance on the Isle of Quel'Danas. Wild had to prove his claim that I held the real Quel'delar by seeking the blessing of a ghost. I thought that all of these final steps were just "talk to me" type quests, so I was a pretty surprised when the blessing came with a catch - fighting several waves of mobs. Wild was in healing spec and gear. Wild basically Hurricaned each wave down, healing in between each channeled cast.

Wild's second surprise came when, after getting my blessing, the guards outside the Sunwell Plateau still refused Wild entry. It took a moment before the light came on - this is a raid instance. Wild has to be in a raid to enter. Wild called on Philly to help out, the two of them formed a raid, and Wild was allowed to enter.

Wild followed a circular hall, descending to the floor below where the Sunwell shone in all it's majesty. Wild knew what it was, having seen it's rebirth when Wild actually cleared Sunwell Plateau not too long ago.

Wild threw the sword into the Sunwell, which is where the sword had been leading Wild to do all this time. There it stuck, slightly protruding from the brilliant light.


The Sunwell's guardian was astonished at this, and took Wild for an enemy. Wild was shackled in ice, and Grand Magister Rommath tried to pull out the sword. He was blasted backward.

Wild was allowed to go forward, and pulled the sword free. Quel'Delar was reborn.

Wild's last act was to return to Quel'delar's Rest, where it was confirmed to be the true, reforged sword Quel'delar. Wild delivered the sword to the Sunreavers in Dalaran for safe keeping. As Wild's reward, Wild chose his own special weapon, [Hammer of Purified Flame].


One final note. The Isle of Quel'Danas that Wild visited for the quest chain was very different from the one I normally saw. In this special instance of the Isle the great war that rages there has been won. The Isle is peaceful and quiet. I thought that was a really nice touch. Wild arrived on the Isle via the flight path from Silvermoon City, but after landing the Flight Master on the Isle was no longer there. It was a one way trip. After finishing the Isle part of the chain Wild had to hearth back.

Ok, one more note. There are two parallel quest lines, one for horde and one for alliance. The two get mixed together in spots and so I admit that I may have confused allie and horde pieces in terms of the names and alliances of the various npcs. It was too much of a pain to sort it all out and correct it. I've got to get back to the garage.

Wednesday (14 Apr) - So When's He Going To Post Something?!

Wednesday (14 Apr) - So When's He Going To Post Something?!

Real life keeps catching up with me and smacking me around. Our garage drywalling, ceiling work, and painting is finally done. All the stuff we had before the work that we had carted out and into a Uhaul truck is now back in the garage. The Mrs first comment was, "It looks just as jammed packed as it did before!" Sigh.

But we're getting there. It's "almost" the way we want it, but I'll be at it again for most of tomorrow re-arranging large, heavy objects. I did get a very nice free standing tool chest out of all this, and I'm pretty happy about that.

I wasn't so happy to hear from the mechanic getting some maintenance done of the RV. That "work" thing keeps sniffing around and I may have to pay attention to it if this keeps up.

Wild missed the raid on Tuesday all together. Just didn't have time and didn't even sign up. Felt a little bad about that, but it turned out they had more than enough folks and instead of downing the usual six bosses, they killed eight. What did that leave the Wednesday raid? Say hello to Professor Putricide once again.

We couldn't get 25 raiders, so we went with 23 for most of the evening. We were overstocked with healers, too, so a couple of them were pressed into service as DPSers. Wild didn't get the DPS call this time as we already had two moonkin in the raid.

Wild keeps learning things every time we bash ourselves against Putricide. One day I might actually figure it out. What kept frustrating me is that the healer positions would be explained for the fight, and then two minutes into the battle the healers wouldn't be where the instructions said we were supposed to be. I mean, it sounds pretty simple - green slime go south, orange slime come to the middle. Well, sort of south, and no, not actually in the middle, but sort of in the middle but toward the edge. Wild still found himself standing alone. Oh, but of course if this or that is occurring you need to be standing somewhere else entirely. I could go nuts.

The raid leader decided to mark a raid healer and a tank healer so that the rest of the healers could follow along where they went. That worked pretty well at first, and Wild did pick up some nuances in positioning while tank healing. But guessing which way to move and where to stop was still kind of hit or miss. Ok, why did he go there? I'd wonder, following dutifully. But the marks would disappear and the raiders would forget to refresh them. It's much harder to pick out individual raiders when they aren't marked in some way. One of the newer shaman had been assigned as a tank healer late in the evening, and Wild decided to follow along with him. That probably helped Wild the most. First, his movements and positioning made sense, and I could usually predict and move with him instead of waiting until after he made a move. It also helped Wild's confidence that the other healer had even more trouble tangling with nasty things we were supposed to be avoiding, and Wild healed him a whole lot more than he had to heal me.

Wild had one major screwup. The tension had gotten pretty high as we plowed through attempt after attempt, mostly not even getting out of phase 2 and into phase 3. But this time we had gotten into phase 3 and we were desperately trying to hang in there and end this thing. Wild got hit with the orange beam - the kind that requires the target to run for his life. Wild ran the wrong way, running into trouble instead of away from it. We wiped at 7%. On the surface it was, well, things happen, etc, but beneath the surface I'll bet the two raid leaders were getting their chat logs filled with whispers. But you know, I was doing my best, and in reality overall Wild was doing fine. Wild didn't die any more often than anyone else, and stayed alive deep into most of the attempts. Wild's healing held up well, too.

We spent the whole evening on Putricide. Nine attempts total. On our best shot we got him to 3%, and Wild was around 'till the end on that one. Eight bosses killed on Tuesday, zero on Wednesday. I just love ole Putricide.

This is the week that the guild is going to start their lockout strategy to hopefully start to balance the two nights better. So next Tuesday, instead of having a fresh ICC, that raid will be starting on - Putricide. The fresh run will start on Wednesday. I just have to wonder how many raiders will suddenly discover that Tuesday is a bad day for them and sign up on Wednesday instead.

Here's how things fell out healing-wise:

#1: shaman, 4120 hps, 10.2% of the healing
#2: shaman, 3957 hps, 9.5%
#3: Wild, 3397 hps, 8.5%
#4: shaman, 3314 hps, 8.0%
#5: visiting druid, 2786 hps, 6.4%
#6: shared as two healers also took on some DPS as well

The visiting druid was one of two PUG raiders we picked up to fill the raid. We didn't get to 25 raiders until the sixth attempt.

Wild also made some progress on a little thing called the Quel'delar quest chain. You know, the one with the very cool mace called [Hammer of Purified Flame] at the end. But it's late and I'm tired, so that will have to wait for the next post.

Oh, and Philly keeps sneaking up on level 80 - 79% of the way.

Weekend (11 Apr) - Heroics and Perky Pug

Weekend (11 Apr) - Heroics and Perky Pug

Wild spent a boring Thursday evening going over his gear and agonizing over whether to spend the 60 frost badges he'd laboriously collected. There are three types of gear frost badges are used for: The i251 Lasherweave set; the i264 Sanctified Lasherweave set, which don't directly cost badges, but require a turn in of the Lasherweave i251 in order to get the Sanctified (along with a drop from ICC); and then there are select non-set items of i264 calibre.

Wild has two pieces of the Sanctified (shoulder and legs), which gets me the two piece set bonus. Druids are not all that impressed with the Sanctified set, which is sad because this is the Tier 10 set. Wild spent most of his badges on non-Tier gear once I had the two piece set bonus. The four piece set bonus is fairly nice, too, but the gear itself is sort of ho hum. So, while there are some i251 Lasherweave gear Wild could buy one of with his 60 frost badges, none of it is much of an improvement over non-set gear Wild already has. When Wild finished his assessment, there were three gear slot priorities, two of which cost 60 badges and one that cost 95.

The only Lasherweave piece Wild still wanted were the gloves. However, my best bet there is to wait until Wild gets a Sanctified drop in ICC before buying them. The other 60 badge item is the trinket [Purified Lunar Dust]. Wild is wearing a +98 spell power trinket, and the new one has +179 spell power. Kind of a no-brainer there, but the older trinket also had a chance to increase +haste. The large spell power upgrade outweighed that and Wild ended up buying the trinket.

Wild will now be saving up 95 frost badges to buy an i264 chest piece that is far better than the Sanctified chest equivalent. Slow but steady, Wild is getting there gear-wise.

On the moonkin side, Wild is building up his triumph badges to buy the higher end +hit trinket, which will allow him to use more crit gear instead of all the +hit gear he has to wear now. Wild can break over 3k in base spell power on his gear and over 20% base crit, but that is only for Heroics basically. Trying to hit a level 83+ elite in ICC, however, requires a lot of +hit in order not to miss, and when that is taken into account Wild drops to around 2900 spell power, but, more importantly, his crit falls down to under 14%, not good for a DPS class that is heavily dependant on crits.

Friday night was our pvp night, of course, and it was a good night to be horde.

We started with the 30s bracket team of Ando (level 39), Lao (38), and EZ (31). We make a pretty balanced team, with Ando doing the druid healing thing, Lao dealing ranged caster death as a shadow priest, and EZ mixing it up in close quarters as a melee shaman.

Our first match was in Warsong Gulch. EZ quickly became the favorite player on the team - the enemy alliance team, that is. At level 31 they just couldn't resist her, and one rogue in particular made it his sole task to lurk in stealth, waiting on EZ so he could backstab her and then slice her to shreds. We did kill that rogue a few times, but he spilled EZ's blood all over the field. It was a bit of a frustrating match in other ways, too, as the allies did what's called "turtle-ing" for much of the battle. "Turtle-ing" means keeping almost all of their team in or close to their own base, and basically playing only defense. It is almost always a fail strategy, since attacking and capping flags is what wins matches, and we did eventually win the match, 2-0, when time ran out.

An Arathi Basin match followed. When the match started a knot of horde headed for the nearby farm to capture that while our team, along with several others, made for the mine. Both are nearer to the horde starting point than the alliance. The battle at the farm went quickly in our favor, but the mine . . . Well, the alliance team hit it in force. It was one of the largest pitted battles I've seen in an AB match. Friend and foe mixing it up in a huge firefight. It was awesome! We lost the skirmish and the mine, but the team that had grabbed the farm also took the stables while the allies were busy at the mine. AB is all about holding on to resource areas, and we were one up on them.

There was another series of pitched battles at the blacksmith that raged over most of the latter half of the match. The allies were determined to take it, and the horde, with more resources ticking us toward victory, were determined to take a stand and stop them. EZ again shined as the favored player, this time by the horde. Why? Because EZ became the bait. Like WSG, the allies could not resist the "easy" kill of a level 31. However, EZ (with Ando's healing help) did not make it easy. EZ would drop a set of four totems, which included totems designed to slow the allies down and exploding totems to irritate them. The allies would charge us and EZ would wade in at the front, taking on all comers. EZ would die, of course, but not before the rest of the horde defenders had started decimating the distracted allie attackers. EZ led in deaths (ie, dying) and even healer Ando put up better DPS numbers, but it was good strategy and EZ loved it. We won.

With a Wintergrasp battle coming up, we switched to the team of DER (level 80), Philly (79) and Sis (78). Since patch 3.3.3 WG seems to have become even more popular than before as it can give a good chunk of honor - honor points are now even more important than before in pvp. I'd never been denied entry into WG because the raid was full, even one already in progress - until recently when Philly experienced that for the first (and so far only) time. All three of us got into the WG battle, but a few minutes into it Philly and then Sis were kicked out of our raid group to make way for level 80s. We got to stay in WG and continued to fight, but not being in a raid meant that we were not sharing in the spoils from kills or to meet quest requirements. I didn't even realize that's what had happened until DER explained it.

After WG Sis called it an evening. DER was after a new heirloom weapon and still needed some triumph badges to get it. Time for some Heroics. Philly went to bed and Wildshard joined DER. By the way, Philly is 37% of the way to level 80.

Wild usually does Heroics in moonkin form, and I was itching to see what that new +179 spell power trinket would do for Wild's DPS numbers, but it would be a lot quicker getting a group if Wild were healing. So Wild signed up as a healer, and we only had to wait a couple minutes for our first group.

The pally tank kept things moving a little too well. After our first boss kill Wild got distracted and his group left him behind. Now, I know Wild is easily distracted, but most groups figure out by this point in their lives that leaving the healer behind is not a good idea. They all died, and when they got back from the graveyard they made sure Wild got to where we were supposed to be. Wild apologized for getting lost, and one of the DPS left, but DPS are easy to get and we had a new one almost instantly. The pally still tended to over-aggro things, and Wild's detour didn't seem to phase him as the pally still managed to get too far ahead of everyone else, so Wild was constantly catching up on the healing. But that made things interesting, and it was a pretty fun run.

Wild and DER did one more Heroic. The tank in this one wanted to get an achievement, don't ask me which one, and it took us a bit longer to do than our usual rush through. Wild did die once when I got hammered during one of the boss fights. It was my fault completely for not getting out of the line of attack soon enough. The rest of the group were pretty amazing, though, hanging in there brilliantly. Only two were standing at the end, but we didn't wipe.

We called it an evening, and DER had his dagger. Wild also had is own surprise. In his mail was a new vanity pet, a little dog called Perky Pug. DER, I learned, already had one, which you win once you have done Heroics with at least one hundred different players. Pretty cool.

Philly's grind continued on Sunday - now 59% of the way to level 80.

Wednesday Part 2 (7 Apr) - The (Sort of) Fun Stuff

Wednesday Part 2 (7 Apr) - The (Sort of) Fun Stuff

There really was a raid Wednesday night, and Wild was a part of it. At raid time we had only 24 signed up, and when the clock struck 6pm only 19 of those had made it in game. More raiders filtered in, and we took out the trash with 23 raiders. By 6:15pm or so, we were at full strength. Still, the raid is supposed to be in place and ready to go at 6pm for invites, and to ensure that, the invite time may be moved back, to possibly 5:50pm. Our healer group wasn't exactly balanced among the classes, either. There was Wild (druid) and Sb, one of three priests who most often heals, and then there were four shaman. At least there will be no lack of totems (a shaman specialty).

The Tuesday raid had taken down the four bosses in the Lower Spire, of course, as well as both the Princes and the Blood-Queen in the Crimson Halls. Six kills. We would be starting in the Plagueworks.

Wild had made some changes in both his healing and moonkin specs earlier in the day. Specifically for healing, Wild moved talent points around in order to get two talents called Celestial Focus and Nature's Grace. Both of these talents improve Wild's +haste, which I am getting a bit desperate to improve on. Wild also paid a staggering price for a belt [Professor's Bloodied Smock], an i264 drop in ICC that was for sale on the AH. It's the most expensive thing Wild has every purchased, but it was a huge upgrade and usually sells for a lot more. And it came with +80 haste (+90 haste after Wild socketed three gems).

On the trash mobs there was a noticeable improvement in the speed of Wild's spell casting. It is no where near equal with the other guild druid healers, but it made a difference. Wild put out over 4700 hps on the trash.

The addon that tracks dps and hps was a bit flaky on the night, and Wild had to reset it after each encounter. That made it a little more difficult to assess Wild's progress.

The first boss was Festergut. Wild got a new assignment for this fight. Usually Wild is assigned to one of two ranged groups that stand on the outer circle. A critical element of the fight is to get to a Spore when they spawn, which happens many times over the course of the fight. There are two spots on the outer circle where we gather around a spore, as well as a third spot at the center of the chamber where the tanks and melee are. This time Wild was assigned to position in the center with the melee and the tanks. I knew that spores could spawn on any raider, but I also assumed that spores spawning in the center should be held there so the raiders there could group around it. On the very first spore spawn, Wild got tagged with a spore. I held position, and then the raid leader started yelling at Wild to move. To be honest, I still don't fully understand under what conditions the center raiders must move with a spore to the outer circle. Three spores always spawn, but not always where each of our three positions can take advantage of them. I suppose that if I happen to get a spore, I need to look around and see which spot doesn't have one. Hard to see if a second spore is in the tightly packed center, though, with my own spore in my face. Nonetheless, Wild was supposed to bring his spore to the outer circle, with all the melee following. I tried to get to them, but I was too late. The explosion from the spores is not a problem, and in fact is essential. Exploding spores inoculate raiders from a stacking shadow damage debuff. The raiders Wild failed to reach would need a lot of extra healing until new spores spawned.

We were able to heal through it, no one died, and Festergut proved to be no match for the raid. Festergut went down.

Rotface was up next, and proved no better challenge. Rotface went down. Wild's hps on those two bosses put him in the bottom half of the healers, but the numbers were improving as Wild got used to the new casting speed.

From there, we had only two choices - Putricide (ugh), or Dreamwalker (please). We headed for Putricide.

Wild has gone over this fight more than a few times. It is gruelingly difficult. A single mistake is a near sure wipe. We've fought this maniac dozens of time - and killed him only once. It is the worst kind of fight for Wild. Almost constant movement, not just away from stuff, but toward stuff as well. Bad positioning won't necessarily kill you, but it will kill others, because being out of position puts other raiders at risk. It is an absolute nightmare. Wild certainly wasn't the only raider making mistakes, but I was cringingly aware of every one that Wild made.

Things actually started well, surprisingly. On our first attempt we got Putricide down to 14% health and Wild finished third in healing with 3891 hps.

One of those single mistakes (not Wild's) brought the raid down early on our second attempt. And we went at him again. And again. There are three phases to this fight. We were good enough to get to the third phase nearly every time, spending our blood over and over again in the extended battle, and then falling short.

We had single digit near kills of 8% and 6%, but we could not finish him off. After eight attempts we had to call it a night.

Wild averaged around 3200 hps over the course of those eight attempts, staying in the 3rd or 4th positions in healing each time. Given the nature of the fight, I was well pleased with Wild's healing. I still suck at positioning, though, and I certainly inflicted more than my share of pain on the raid. It was a rough night. But you know what the real irony is? [Professor's Bloodied Smock] drops from the Putricide fight. I can't kill him, but I did buy his belt. :-)

There was no announcement regarding using the lockout option to balance the encounters between two raid nights, but these things tend to move slowly. Getting input and making a final decision is subject to the availability of the raid officers, and getting a consensus takes time.

Wednesday (7 Apr) - A Change of Heart

Wednesday (7 Apr) - A Change of Heart

It was said in all sincerity, but I couldn't really explain what emotions ran through me when I heard it. "She only stays in FS because Wild is still there."

Lady Hunter and Wild managed to find ourselves in game at the same time for the first time in many days, even weeks. The subject always leads back, eventually, to enticing Wild to come over to the MM guild. As I've said many times in the past, it's nice to be wanted. At one point she asked Wild if the reason I stayed in FS was because our once Guild Leader, P-Jo, had stayed when many of her close friends, including her husband, had left FS. Jo is certainly a main reason Wild has stuck with FS for so long, as I'm as fond of Jo as anyone can be of someone I've never met in person. Lady Hunter, who I'm pretty fond of as well, told me that Jo remained in the guild at least in part because Wild was still there. I didn't really have an answer for that. We all make our own decisions, for our own reasons.

It was a strange confluence that Lady Hunter chose this night to say Hi, and ask after Wild. I am coming close to making a decision about whether I want Wild to continue raiding 25 man ICC. I'm a very laid back kind of person, but there isn't really much room left in guild raiding for folks like me. Raid progression has gotten to be pretty serious business in FS; it's not a hard core raiding guild, but it is far, far from the more laid back raiding mindset that FS was previously known for. That is neither a good thing or a bad thing. FS raid progression has never been better, and we (Wild included) can be proud of how far we've come in 25 man ICC, the toughest dungeon in the game. There are twelve boss encounters in ICC, and FS has beaten ten of them at least once. The eleventh boss, Sindragosa, is all that stands between the guild and the Lich King himself.

That said, much of the pure fun is missing from the raid. Wild is a good raider, but I'm the first to admit that lots of raiders are better, and make fewer mistakes. Wild at times can be quite a frustration to a raid leader. Once, Wild's gaffes were cause to chide and joke about it, help figure out what went wrong, and move on. Now it's analyze, assess, and correct. It's all deadly serious business. And it's getting harder to convince myself that Wild and FS are still a good fit.

Back to the question at hand, which is should Wild change guilds, things may look pretty clear cut, but they aren't. That other guild, MM, that Lady Hunter moved to many months ago now, does not sound like the same guild they were when Wild was happily running ten man Ulduar and ICC with them. Lady Hunter told Wild that the MM guild no longer has a 25 man ICC raid. When Wild asked about the status of MM's ten mans, she said that both she and Bd had ten mans going again. That was encouraging, but after discussing it a bit more I learned that both raids were still in the forming stage and weren't yet sure about when they would run.

So, there is no clear cut choice. What does Wild want? I want to see the Lich King, before ICC gets nerfed to kindergarten status with the coming of Cataclysm. I don't care whether it's in 25 man or ten man, I just want to see it. Right now it appears that staying with FS is the best path to get there, but that is only if the guild truly wants Wild to stay.

Wild's other priority is to find a way to spend more time with such great friends as P-Jo, Lady Hunter, Bd, and others. One way or the other.

I plan on talking to raid leadership as soon as I can catch one in game this week. Essentially, the question for the guild is: If Wild decided to remove himself from 25 man raiding, would that be a problem? Or a gift? In either case, stay or go, Wild will pursue getting into one of MM's ten mans.

Lady Hunter had another surprise up her sleeve. She some how learned that Wild had a shadow priest alt. I don't know how she learned about Philly, but she's good at that sort of thing. She does have access to these posts, so maybe she's been peeking in now and again. Anyway, she flat out asked Wild if my shadow priest could be convinced to join MM, even if she couldn't get Wild to join. Philly was very intrigued with the idea. She would be giving up some freedom, perhaps, but it would also be a way to see how things were with MM from the inside. Wild knows a dozen or more MM guildies, half of which once were part of FS.

So there you have it, a lot of rambling on and on. Lady Hunter is going to get back to Wild on the how the two ten man groups are shaping up, and Philly is going to work on getting to level 80, and possibly striking out on her own with MM.

Wild got his invite to the Wednesday 25 man ICC raid, by the way. Coming up in the next post.