Memorial Day Weekend (30 May) - Ruffling Feathers
Normally we stay close to home and look forward to a quiet three days over the Memorial Day weekend. Didn't quite work out that way this time. On Friday we took the dog, Sheila, out hiking. We are planning a trip out to Arizona in a few weeks and plan to hit some hiking trails that we haven't been to in a long time. Sheila loves hiking, but tends to tire and we've been working on building up her stamina for longer hikes. We went out to a favorite wilderness park of ours up in the "mountains" a couple of hours east of where we live. We hooked up with a piece of the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs for literally thousands of miles, from Mexico to Canada. We did about seven of those miles on Friday, on a pretty warm day cut with brisk cool air, under a surprisingly clear sky for what we call the May Grey time of year. On Saturday our cul-de-sac decided to stage an impromptu block party. On Sunday we were back to painting for the first part of the day (we've got to run out of rooms to paint pretty soon), and then had our own private BBQ on another super nice day.
In another world a suddenly re-appearing Naithipe turned the Wild family weekend upside down. Rumors that Naithipe had surfaced in Orgrimmar were confirmed by Mery, who caught a glimpse of the glowing red embers and surrounding black cloud of that two hand weapon Naithipe always has at the ready, conducting who knows what business at the Auction House.
Later, Melashand, who was on safari, saw a dust covered and grimy Naithipe skulking about the fringes of the ogre infested mountains of Nagrand. Hoping to learn what Naithipe was about, Melasahnd got more than she bargained for when Naithipe accosted her and demanded she turn over whatever ore she still had laying around. Melasahnd was once a miner, but had long lost interest in the cobwebbed pile of rocks leftover from those days. Naithipe held a badly used and worn mining pick in one hand and seized Melashand's vest with the other. That raised Melashand's hackles and her hand reached for her own greatsword. Melasahnd hissed a warning, but Naithipe pushed her aside and began taking great swings at a node of fel iron with the mining pick. Shaking her head, Melasahnd told Naithipe to take whatever rocks she had left and told herself she'd give Naithipe a wide berth while this new obsession possessed the crazy undead.
More Wild family members were drawn into Naithipe's single minded mission. Bearing newly acquired gear from who know's where and under who knows what circumstances, Naithipe dumped the gear at Wild's feet, curtly told Wild what enchants were needed, and stalked off without another word. Happy was relieved of a rather large pot of gold, and Philly was put to work making gems and glyphs. JB, who perhaps Naithipe trusted somewhat, as much trust as was possible from Naithipe, anyway, huddled with Naithipe for a time, but did not reveal what task or favor Naithipe asked of her. When Wild returned the enchanted gear, though, he delivered it to a calmer (and freshly bathed) Naithipe.
Naithipe then disappeared into the wild country again, and it was assumed she was out there mining rocks somewhere, for purposes still unknown.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday (26 May) - Cantrips and Crows
Wednesday (26 May) - Cantrips and Crows
Wouldn't it be nice if Wild was part of a raid that was somewhere in between having to punch a time clock and ignoring the clock all together? The thing Wild always liked about the FS raids is that start times were set and raiders were expected to be on time (and most of the time were). The single-minded focus on progression was a bit overbearing at times, which tended to stuff out the shenanigans that are a welcome part of the MM raid. I like the shenanigans, but when a raid is planned for 6pm start and doesn't get off the ground until 7pm, and when there are 5-10 minute breaks in the action seemingly between every boss . . . well, that can get a little tiresome, even knowing and understanding why it's like that in the MM raid.
For the first time in memory I actually dozed off waiting for the MM raid to form up Wednesday night. Wild had been in game since 530pm (his own anal retentive personality insisted he be in game 30 minutes before start time), and after doing some dailies, cleaning out his bank, trimming his hooves, and giving his mammoth mount a good brushing, he mounted up atop the big whooly beast and waited ... and waited. Some time later I noticed that Lady Hunter had been /poking Wild for a couple of minutes and the MM raid leader had sent a whisper "icc Wild?" Clearing the cobwebs, I announced that I was conscious again and got my invite to the raid.
It was a bit after 7pm by the time we got down to business. Bd, our regular raid leader, never made it in game, so Mf took the reins. Mf has a number of level 80s and plays whichever seems to be needed on any given night. He's also the second youngest raider in the guild, a teenager slightly older than the 13 year old druid moonkin that was also a compatriot of Wild's who moved from FS to MM. Just thought I'd share that tidbit of random information that flows steadily in vent during the raid.
We were all inside ICC, and all buffed up, but the raid leader/tank was having a bit of a problem getting everyone's attention to get started. So he just started attacking the first set of trash mobs. Wild, who was his healer, half suspected that was going to happen given similar incidences in the past, and followed after him to heal. The rest of the raid shifted from idle to drive and came after us. We had cleared two sets of trash when someone noticed that our buff was gone. The buff, "Hellscream's" something or other, is a raid buff that we get automatically upon entering the dungeon, but can be removed if a raider talks to one of the npcs inside. Someone had, probably not realizing that would remove the buff. We all had to troop out of ICC to reset it, return, and start the trash mob pull all over again.
Even without a rogue with us, we were able to clear trash to Marrowgar with no problems and without tripping a trap. We had three healers, with Wild as the main tank healer, Lady Hunter on her paladin as the off tank healer, and a shaman for raid healing. I must say it was an exciting fight. We were a little rough around the edges, and Wild found himself taking risks with his tank in order to help keep the other tank alive and to spray some raid healing around. We survived, though, and Marrowgar fell. Our group is still at that point where a first attempt kill is still pretty exciting, so we were jazzed up moving on to Deathwhisper.
Marrowgar healing:
#1: Wild, 4614 hps/46.9% healing
#2: Pally, 2659/22%
#3: shaman, 2199/21%
One of the raiders was having serious UI problems and needed to reload. He ended up having to reboot his computer as well, and that lowered the jazz level a bit as we waited for more than ten minutes. Not that the conversations weren't entertaining, although the Mrs gave me strict directions there would be no further talk of "bacon" from Wild. But I do plan to tell her about the "num num num" joke. ;-)
Deathwhisper was a bit of a scary ride as well, but she fared no better than Marrowgar, falling on the first attempt.
Deathwhisper healing (forgot to note the % healing):
#1: Wild, 3039 hps
#2: shaman: 2517 hps
#3: pally, 2087 hps
Wild won a cloth bracers drop from Deathwhisper on a roll of "3" (no one else wanted it, a good time to get such a lousy roll). [Bracers of Dark Blessing] is a small upgrade i251 item that will likely only be used in Wild's moonkin set because it lacks the +haste Wild would lose in his healing set. Still, Wild was happy to get it.
We moved on to the Gunship. I like the raid leader's summary of the fight: "This is an easy battle. The only hard part is living through all of the glitches this thing has." The raid leader set up the groups, one to stay on the defending ship, and the other to jump over to the enemy ship whenever needed. Group 1 was the jump group with the main tank, but when he set up the group he kept the pally healer in group 1 and put Wild in with the second group. Shouldn't matter, as the tank planned to stay close to the rails on the enemy ship so he could be healed without the healer having to jump over as well. On the first jump the tank immediately had problems and died.
Wild, who was keeping the off tank alive on the defending ship, saw it and rushed to the rail. The dead tank was in range, splayed out half off the rail, and Wild battle rezzed him. Wild and the pally got him back to full health, but in spite of that two massive hits killed him a second time. We wiped. That shouldn't happen with the kind of healing we were dishing out, and the tank confirmed that it was glitches that killed him. I think Blizzard should add "glitches" to the list of hostile abilities for this encounter.
Our second attempt went very long. Twice we thought we were close enough to finish off the fight without having to board the enemy ship again, and both times we were wrong. The fight is won when the enemy ship is destroyed, and it just took us longer to get that done than I'd experienced before. But a win is a win is a win. We had taken down the first three encounters.
Gunship healing:
#1: Wild, 3477 hps/46.7% healing
#2: shaman, 2077/26.7%
#3: pally, 2093/16.9%
Only half of our group had ever seen the Deathbringer Saurfang fight, which was our next stop. It would be the first time tanking him for both of our tanks, I believe, and the first time healing for the shaman. There is a lot of things to remember, and after going through them once the best thing to do is just try it, to be able to visualize what you'd just been told.
On our first attempt we made a surprisingly strong effort, getting Saurfang down to 20% before we hit the enrage timer and wiped. We had run out of time and there would be no second attempt, but we were overall pleased with the effort. Lady Hunter said that she might try to get the raid together one more time before the reset so we could take a crack at Saurfang again.
Wild returned to Dalaran to enchant and gem his new bracers. I also sent Wild off on a recon mission. Beneath the wide avenues and tall spires of the floating in air city of Dalaran is what is called the Underbelly. The Underbelly is the sewer system of Dalaran, and yet there is also a thriving community down there that has carved out a way of life. Wild has been down there many times. Players congregate in an open area where horde and allie duels are in play almost constantly. There is even an Inn, called Cantrips and Crows. Wild has been to the Inn many times, to complete cooking quests or passing through to fish the dank, tepid waters which cover all of the lower reaches of the Underbelly. There is also a hostile alliance npc that sits morosely at the bar near the barkeep. He's there for a specific quest, but many a horde has started a fight with him accidentally when the intent was to talk to the barkeep.
Wild had gotten a tip that there was more to that Inn than I realized. Supposedly, the Inn featured all of the same benefits of both the topside inn and the separately located topside banks. And sure enough, tucked away in a tiny cubbyhole to the right of the bar, was a mailbox and access to both personal and guild banks. The lag when logging into the topside inn can be very brutal. But players can set their hearthstone to the Underbelly inn, too, where the lag is perceptibly less brutal. All the comforts in a compact space and less lag to boot. Wild set his hearthstone to Cantrips and Crows.
Philly, too, set her hearthstone there and discovered yet another marvel of the Underbelly. Catching a flight from the flight master still requires that players go topside. However, if the plan is to use a flying mount from Dalaran instead of the flight master, Philly discovered that there is a tunnel near the bank area that leads directly to the open air and sky of Dalaran's Crystalsong Forest. Now how convenient is that!
Wouldn't it be nice if Wild was part of a raid that was somewhere in between having to punch a time clock and ignoring the clock all together? The thing Wild always liked about the FS raids is that start times were set and raiders were expected to be on time (and most of the time were). The single-minded focus on progression was a bit overbearing at times, which tended to stuff out the shenanigans that are a welcome part of the MM raid. I like the shenanigans, but when a raid is planned for 6pm start and doesn't get off the ground until 7pm, and when there are 5-10 minute breaks in the action seemingly between every boss . . . well, that can get a little tiresome, even knowing and understanding why it's like that in the MM raid.
For the first time in memory I actually dozed off waiting for the MM raid to form up Wednesday night. Wild had been in game since 530pm (his own anal retentive personality insisted he be in game 30 minutes before start time), and after doing some dailies, cleaning out his bank, trimming his hooves, and giving his mammoth mount a good brushing, he mounted up atop the big whooly beast and waited ... and waited. Some time later I noticed that Lady Hunter had been /poking Wild for a couple of minutes and the MM raid leader had sent a whisper "icc Wild?" Clearing the cobwebs, I announced that I was conscious again and got my invite to the raid.
It was a bit after 7pm by the time we got down to business. Bd, our regular raid leader, never made it in game, so Mf took the reins. Mf has a number of level 80s and plays whichever seems to be needed on any given night. He's also the second youngest raider in the guild, a teenager slightly older than the 13 year old druid moonkin that was also a compatriot of Wild's who moved from FS to MM. Just thought I'd share that tidbit of random information that flows steadily in vent during the raid.
We were all inside ICC, and all buffed up, but the raid leader/tank was having a bit of a problem getting everyone's attention to get started. So he just started attacking the first set of trash mobs. Wild, who was his healer, half suspected that was going to happen given similar incidences in the past, and followed after him to heal. The rest of the raid shifted from idle to drive and came after us. We had cleared two sets of trash when someone noticed that our buff was gone. The buff, "Hellscream's" something or other, is a raid buff that we get automatically upon entering the dungeon, but can be removed if a raider talks to one of the npcs inside. Someone had, probably not realizing that would remove the buff. We all had to troop out of ICC to reset it, return, and start the trash mob pull all over again.
Even without a rogue with us, we were able to clear trash to Marrowgar with no problems and without tripping a trap. We had three healers, with Wild as the main tank healer, Lady Hunter on her paladin as the off tank healer, and a shaman for raid healing. I must say it was an exciting fight. We were a little rough around the edges, and Wild found himself taking risks with his tank in order to help keep the other tank alive and to spray some raid healing around. We survived, though, and Marrowgar fell. Our group is still at that point where a first attempt kill is still pretty exciting, so we were jazzed up moving on to Deathwhisper.
Marrowgar healing:
#1: Wild, 4614 hps/46.9% healing
#2: Pally, 2659/22%
#3: shaman, 2199/21%
One of the raiders was having serious UI problems and needed to reload. He ended up having to reboot his computer as well, and that lowered the jazz level a bit as we waited for more than ten minutes. Not that the conversations weren't entertaining, although the Mrs gave me strict directions there would be no further talk of "bacon" from Wild. But I do plan to tell her about the "num num num" joke. ;-)
Deathwhisper was a bit of a scary ride as well, but she fared no better than Marrowgar, falling on the first attempt.
Deathwhisper healing (forgot to note the % healing):
#1: Wild, 3039 hps
#2: shaman: 2517 hps
#3: pally, 2087 hps
Wild won a cloth bracers drop from Deathwhisper on a roll of "3" (no one else wanted it, a good time to get such a lousy roll). [Bracers of Dark Blessing] is a small upgrade i251 item that will likely only be used in Wild's moonkin set because it lacks the +haste Wild would lose in his healing set. Still, Wild was happy to get it.
We moved on to the Gunship. I like the raid leader's summary of the fight: "This is an easy battle. The only hard part is living through all of the glitches this thing has." The raid leader set up the groups, one to stay on the defending ship, and the other to jump over to the enemy ship whenever needed. Group 1 was the jump group with the main tank, but when he set up the group he kept the pally healer in group 1 and put Wild in with the second group. Shouldn't matter, as the tank planned to stay close to the rails on the enemy ship so he could be healed without the healer having to jump over as well. On the first jump the tank immediately had problems and died.
Wild, who was keeping the off tank alive on the defending ship, saw it and rushed to the rail. The dead tank was in range, splayed out half off the rail, and Wild battle rezzed him. Wild and the pally got him back to full health, but in spite of that two massive hits killed him a second time. We wiped. That shouldn't happen with the kind of healing we were dishing out, and the tank confirmed that it was glitches that killed him. I think Blizzard should add "glitches" to the list of hostile abilities for this encounter.
Our second attempt went very long. Twice we thought we were close enough to finish off the fight without having to board the enemy ship again, and both times we were wrong. The fight is won when the enemy ship is destroyed, and it just took us longer to get that done than I'd experienced before. But a win is a win is a win. We had taken down the first three encounters.
Gunship healing:
#1: Wild, 3477 hps/46.7% healing
#2: shaman, 2077/26.7%
#3: pally, 2093/16.9%
Only half of our group had ever seen the Deathbringer Saurfang fight, which was our next stop. It would be the first time tanking him for both of our tanks, I believe, and the first time healing for the shaman. There is a lot of things to remember, and after going through them once the best thing to do is just try it, to be able to visualize what you'd just been told.
On our first attempt we made a surprisingly strong effort, getting Saurfang down to 20% before we hit the enrage timer and wiped. We had run out of time and there would be no second attempt, but we were overall pleased with the effort. Lady Hunter said that she might try to get the raid together one more time before the reset so we could take a crack at Saurfang again.
Wild returned to Dalaran to enchant and gem his new bracers. I also sent Wild off on a recon mission. Beneath the wide avenues and tall spires of the floating in air city of Dalaran is what is called the Underbelly. The Underbelly is the sewer system of Dalaran, and yet there is also a thriving community down there that has carved out a way of life. Wild has been down there many times. Players congregate in an open area where horde and allie duels are in play almost constantly. There is even an Inn, called Cantrips and Crows. Wild has been to the Inn many times, to complete cooking quests or passing through to fish the dank, tepid waters which cover all of the lower reaches of the Underbelly. There is also a hostile alliance npc that sits morosely at the bar near the barkeep. He's there for a specific quest, but many a horde has started a fight with him accidentally when the intent was to talk to the barkeep.
Wild had gotten a tip that there was more to that Inn than I realized. Supposedly, the Inn featured all of the same benefits of both the topside inn and the separately located topside banks. And sure enough, tucked away in a tiny cubbyhole to the right of the bar, was a mailbox and access to both personal and guild banks. The lag when logging into the topside inn can be very brutal. But players can set their hearthstone to the Underbelly inn, too, where the lag is perceptibly less brutal. All the comforts in a compact space and less lag to boot. Wild set his hearthstone to Cantrips and Crows.
Philly, too, set her hearthstone there and discovered yet another marvel of the Underbelly. Catching a flight from the flight master still requires that players go topside. However, if the plan is to use a flying mount from Dalaran instead of the flight master, Philly discovered that there is a tunnel near the bank area that leads directly to the open air and sky of Dalaran's Crystalsong Forest. Now how convenient is that!
Perching just inside the Underbelly tunnel
The Underbelly tunnel seen from Philly's flying mount
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday (25 May) - The Women Win
Tuesday (25 May) - The Women Win
Philly/Wild talk fairly regularly with an old friend who started with and still has a toon in FS while also having a toon in MM, like I do. It's fun talking about old times, but the topic always comes back to discussing the changes in the FS guild. As mentioned before, ICC25 raids were suspended indefinitely when too many guild raiders either left the guild or stopped coming to the raids. The two ICC10 mans continued with a select group of raiders who have raided together for a very long time. They are all close friends and have worked hard to conquer each new dungeon has it comes out. They've earned their rewards. The knock on these two raid groups, though, have always been that they have been unwilling to open their raids to other guildies to help them learn the encounters and help them gear up. "Start a new ten man" is the common response, and when that fails the guild is again left in kind of a haves and have nots situation. Efforts to convince the two raid groups to rotate in one or two guildies each week to build up enough geared raiders to ensure a successful 25 man was resisted under the rationale that it would slow down the progress of the ten mans. So I guess it was really no surprise that when we reached the tougher wings of ICC25 and struggled, and we had raiders who were not geared well enough or experienced enough because of lack of exposure to the ten mans, the more experienced raiders grew frustrated and stopped coming.
Well, on Tuesday the guild leader for FS announced that he was testing the waters again for a possible third ICC ten man. Frankly, I think that is doomed to failure, just as every other attempt to maintain a third ICC10 has eventually failed. Nothing has changed in the guild to make a third raid any more likely than before. No one in either of the established ICC10s wants to help a third team get on their feet. The explanation seems to be along the lines of why shouldn't the new team go through the learning curve like they did? Why should they sacrifice time and badges and progression? So, we were talking about that, and my friend, who is an alternate and part time raider in the ICC10 man that was still working on downing the Lich King, told me that the raid leader had informed him that he wasn't really good enough for their raid and that he would no longer be invited. It's just sad.
Of course, the subject of leaving the guild came up again, with the major factor seeming to be that we are still here because some of our oldest friends are still here. That begs the question of well, why don't we all just leave together? Here's the bottom line - of all of Wild's oldest friends in the guild, none of them play much anymore. Even my friend only recently started playing again after leaving the game for months, and may decide to stop playing again. Wild is the only truly active player. If Wild had left FS any of the previous times that we had gone through this, Wild would have missed out of opportunities to raid the best 25 man dungeons in the game, from Mount Hyjal to Naxxramas to Ulduar to Icecrown Citadel. The 25 man raiding will return, even if it goes dormant until Cataclysm. And Wild doesn't want to miss that. FS has survived longer than any other guild Wild would have jumped to, and despite it's problems is still a strong guild. I like MM, and have invested Philly in their future, but there is no overriding reason for Wild to join MM, and every reason to believe that FS will rise to the challenge of the 25 mans when the time comes.
Moving forward to the Tuesday evening raid with MM, we had an interesting problem. There were so many MM guildies wanting to raid that the raid leader started looking at whether we could field a 25 man raid instead. While we were working through that Wild got a whisper from one of the FS guild ten man raid leaders. He asked if Wild was interested in joining a ten man Ulduar run. Wild had never finished Ulduar, clearing two wings and part of a third, defeating ten of 13 encounters. So it would have been interesting to do a complete a clear with the kind of firepower we could bring to that older dungeon. However, there is nothing in Ulduar that Wild could use. Even the legendary main hand mace that can be obtained only through defeating the last boss, Algalon, and doing another series of quests, is not as good as the mace Wild is currently wearing, which dropped from the very first boss in ICC25. He mentioned that they were doing a "mount run." I didn't remember there being a mount reward in Ulduar, and didn't find any information about it when I checked, but regardless I wasn't much interested in a mount anyway. I declined, saying "thanks, but I am running ICC10 with MM on tues/wed now." I got a "have fun" back from him and that was that.
Back to the MM raid, we had more than enough to field two ten man raids, but that would then leave a couple of folks out, so we pushed the time out a little later and we were able to pull together a full 25 man raid without having to bring in PUGs. We had two very solid tanks, even with Bd, who usually tanks, going on his druid healer instead. We had six healers: THREE druids, two holy priests, and a paladin. Two healers were assigned to the main tank, and Wild was assigned as the sole off tank healer. The other three raid healed.
I admit to being a bit worried when we finally got started. Afterall, Wild had been in on an MM ICC25 last friday that self-destructed when we couldn't properly pull the trash mobs. That raid had needed PUGs to fill it, and we didn't have that issue this time, but then this guild has very little experience in ICC25. The raid leader acknowledged that this was his first time leading an ICC25 raid. That part I wasn't worried about at all; he was a good raid leader, had tanked in ICC25 raids, and knew the fights.
We started on the trash, and worked through it efficiently and professionally. We had a rogue, and were able to avoid all of the traps as we killed our way to the first boss, Marrowgar. We had only one miss-step, when we aggroed a second mob group before we had finished up the one we were working on. A few raiders died, but we fought through it, killing all of the mobs and saving a wipe.
We set up for Lord Marrowgar. The positioning strategy was different than either of two other strategies I had seen before, but the basics were still the same. For this strategy, the main raid set up to the right of the entrance with the tanks standing at the door. This is the opposite of what I was used to. The tanks would pull Marrowgar to the door, and the rest of the raid would then run up behind Marrowgar, settling in well within melee range to avoid the lines of cold fire that would start spilling out as soon as the battle started.
This is a two tank fight, with both tanks needing to be properly positioned at all times so that the huge damage of Marrowgar's Cleave is shared across both tanks. We opted to go with three tanks to further spread out the damage being done by Cleave. Wild was the only healer asked to solo heal one of the tanks, which I've done before in ten man but never had to do in 25 man. The other two tanks had two healers assigned, although two of them were asked to raid heal as well.
We made two attempts. On both attempts Wild was hard pressed to keep his tank alive, and we failed to get to phase 2 of the battle before wiping. The tanks were struggling to coordinate their movements, which are absolutely critical to this fight. Out of position tanks were taking the full brunt of Cleaves and despite extraordinary efforts by the healers it was inevitable that tanks would start dying.
On our third attempt Wild kept his tank alive into the second phase, where Marrowgar wanders around attacking random raiders. We were able to rez the two dead tanks but shortly after Marrowgar returned to Cleaving his way into the tanks, their positioning slipped and they started dying again.
Maybe I should say something about what was going on while we were raiding. There were at least five lovely - and very vocal - ladies in the raid, and egged on by the rest of the raid, the one liners and running commentary on vent had us all in stitches. On the mild side were comments that it was a good thing that the healers weren't playing the drinking game where we took a shot whenever a raider died. That got an immediate response from the healers, Wild chiming in with "what makes you think we're not playing that game?" and another healer with "what, I'm not supposed to be drinking after each death? Oops."
On the subject of sex (of course, sex was a topic of even more import than booze) there were eye popping depictions - from the ladies! - of boobies:
( . )Y( . ) anyone?
And then someone had to say something about bacon being a better flavor than au naturale and the pronouncement from one young gentleman that he intended become rich as the inventor of the bacon flavored douche. "I'm the bacon douche king!"
And then there was this:
It was a long time before we even thought about running another attempt on Marrowgar, which at some point we tried and wiped a fourth time. Nobody was much bothered by that by then.
So, we didn't really get anywhere, but it was a heckova lot of fun, and one of those rare chances to bring a lot of friends together.
If it mattered, Wild led in healing with 3195 hps and 19.5% of the healing. Wild was out hpsed by our main priest healer with 3699 hps, but she came in second to Wild in total healing with 18%. Bd, on his druid, got 3rd place honors with 3049 hps/16% healing. The other druid, who was also an alt of a tank, finished last (6th) with 1738/9.3%.
For Wednesday we plan to switch back to ICC10 for a more serious raid, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss Tuesday night for anything.
Philly/Wild talk fairly regularly with an old friend who started with and still has a toon in FS while also having a toon in MM, like I do. It's fun talking about old times, but the topic always comes back to discussing the changes in the FS guild. As mentioned before, ICC25 raids were suspended indefinitely when too many guild raiders either left the guild or stopped coming to the raids. The two ICC10 mans continued with a select group of raiders who have raided together for a very long time. They are all close friends and have worked hard to conquer each new dungeon has it comes out. They've earned their rewards. The knock on these two raid groups, though, have always been that they have been unwilling to open their raids to other guildies to help them learn the encounters and help them gear up. "Start a new ten man" is the common response, and when that fails the guild is again left in kind of a haves and have nots situation. Efforts to convince the two raid groups to rotate in one or two guildies each week to build up enough geared raiders to ensure a successful 25 man was resisted under the rationale that it would slow down the progress of the ten mans. So I guess it was really no surprise that when we reached the tougher wings of ICC25 and struggled, and we had raiders who were not geared well enough or experienced enough because of lack of exposure to the ten mans, the more experienced raiders grew frustrated and stopped coming.
Well, on Tuesday the guild leader for FS announced that he was testing the waters again for a possible third ICC ten man. Frankly, I think that is doomed to failure, just as every other attempt to maintain a third ICC10 has eventually failed. Nothing has changed in the guild to make a third raid any more likely than before. No one in either of the established ICC10s wants to help a third team get on their feet. The explanation seems to be along the lines of why shouldn't the new team go through the learning curve like they did? Why should they sacrifice time and badges and progression? So, we were talking about that, and my friend, who is an alternate and part time raider in the ICC10 man that was still working on downing the Lich King, told me that the raid leader had informed him that he wasn't really good enough for their raid and that he would no longer be invited. It's just sad.
Of course, the subject of leaving the guild came up again, with the major factor seeming to be that we are still here because some of our oldest friends are still here. That begs the question of well, why don't we all just leave together? Here's the bottom line - of all of Wild's oldest friends in the guild, none of them play much anymore. Even my friend only recently started playing again after leaving the game for months, and may decide to stop playing again. Wild is the only truly active player. If Wild had left FS any of the previous times that we had gone through this, Wild would have missed out of opportunities to raid the best 25 man dungeons in the game, from Mount Hyjal to Naxxramas to Ulduar to Icecrown Citadel. The 25 man raiding will return, even if it goes dormant until Cataclysm. And Wild doesn't want to miss that. FS has survived longer than any other guild Wild would have jumped to, and despite it's problems is still a strong guild. I like MM, and have invested Philly in their future, but there is no overriding reason for Wild to join MM, and every reason to believe that FS will rise to the challenge of the 25 mans when the time comes.
Moving forward to the Tuesday evening raid with MM, we had an interesting problem. There were so many MM guildies wanting to raid that the raid leader started looking at whether we could field a 25 man raid instead. While we were working through that Wild got a whisper from one of the FS guild ten man raid leaders. He asked if Wild was interested in joining a ten man Ulduar run. Wild had never finished Ulduar, clearing two wings and part of a third, defeating ten of 13 encounters. So it would have been interesting to do a complete a clear with the kind of firepower we could bring to that older dungeon. However, there is nothing in Ulduar that Wild could use. Even the legendary main hand mace that can be obtained only through defeating the last boss, Algalon, and doing another series of quests, is not as good as the mace Wild is currently wearing, which dropped from the very first boss in ICC25. He mentioned that they were doing a "mount run." I didn't remember there being a mount reward in Ulduar, and didn't find any information about it when I checked, but regardless I wasn't much interested in a mount anyway. I declined, saying "thanks, but I am running ICC10 with MM on tues/wed now." I got a "have fun" back from him and that was that.
Back to the MM raid, we had more than enough to field two ten man raids, but that would then leave a couple of folks out, so we pushed the time out a little later and we were able to pull together a full 25 man raid without having to bring in PUGs. We had two very solid tanks, even with Bd, who usually tanks, going on his druid healer instead. We had six healers: THREE druids, two holy priests, and a paladin. Two healers were assigned to the main tank, and Wild was assigned as the sole off tank healer. The other three raid healed.
I admit to being a bit worried when we finally got started. Afterall, Wild had been in on an MM ICC25 last friday that self-destructed when we couldn't properly pull the trash mobs. That raid had needed PUGs to fill it, and we didn't have that issue this time, but then this guild has very little experience in ICC25. The raid leader acknowledged that this was his first time leading an ICC25 raid. That part I wasn't worried about at all; he was a good raid leader, had tanked in ICC25 raids, and knew the fights.
We started on the trash, and worked through it efficiently and professionally. We had a rogue, and were able to avoid all of the traps as we killed our way to the first boss, Marrowgar. We had only one miss-step, when we aggroed a second mob group before we had finished up the one we were working on. A few raiders died, but we fought through it, killing all of the mobs and saving a wipe.
We set up for Lord Marrowgar. The positioning strategy was different than either of two other strategies I had seen before, but the basics were still the same. For this strategy, the main raid set up to the right of the entrance with the tanks standing at the door. This is the opposite of what I was used to. The tanks would pull Marrowgar to the door, and the rest of the raid would then run up behind Marrowgar, settling in well within melee range to avoid the lines of cold fire that would start spilling out as soon as the battle started.
This is a two tank fight, with both tanks needing to be properly positioned at all times so that the huge damage of Marrowgar's Cleave is shared across both tanks. We opted to go with three tanks to further spread out the damage being done by Cleave. Wild was the only healer asked to solo heal one of the tanks, which I've done before in ten man but never had to do in 25 man. The other two tanks had two healers assigned, although two of them were asked to raid heal as well.
We made two attempts. On both attempts Wild was hard pressed to keep his tank alive, and we failed to get to phase 2 of the battle before wiping. The tanks were struggling to coordinate their movements, which are absolutely critical to this fight. Out of position tanks were taking the full brunt of Cleaves and despite extraordinary efforts by the healers it was inevitable that tanks would start dying.
On our third attempt Wild kept his tank alive into the second phase, where Marrowgar wanders around attacking random raiders. We were able to rez the two dead tanks but shortly after Marrowgar returned to Cleaving his way into the tanks, their positioning slipped and they started dying again.
Maybe I should say something about what was going on while we were raiding. There were at least five lovely - and very vocal - ladies in the raid, and egged on by the rest of the raid, the one liners and running commentary on vent had us all in stitches. On the mild side were comments that it was a good thing that the healers weren't playing the drinking game where we took a shot whenever a raider died. That got an immediate response from the healers, Wild chiming in with "what makes you think we're not playing that game?" and another healer with "what, I'm not supposed to be drinking after each death? Oops."
On the subject of sex (of course, sex was a topic of even more import than booze) there were eye popping depictions - from the ladies! - of boobies:
( . )Y( . ) anyone?
And then someone had to say something about bacon being a better flavor than au naturale and the pronouncement from one young gentleman that he intended become rich as the inventor of the bacon flavored douche. "I'm the bacon douche king!"
And then there was this:
It was a long time before we even thought about running another attempt on Marrowgar, which at some point we tried and wiped a fourth time. Nobody was much bothered by that by then.
So, we didn't really get anywhere, but it was a heckova lot of fun, and one of those rare chances to bring a lot of friends together.
If it mattered, Wild led in healing with 3195 hps and 19.5% of the healing. Wild was out hpsed by our main priest healer with 3699 hps, but she came in second to Wild in total healing with 18%. Bd, on his druid, got 3rd place honors with 3049 hps/16% healing. The other druid, who was also an alt of a tank, finished last (6th) with 1738/9.3%.
For Wednesday we plan to switch back to ICC10 for a more serious raid, but I wouldn't have wanted to miss Tuesday night for anything.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday - (24 May) PvP Rises Again
Monday - (24 May) PvP Rises Again
Last week we changed our pvp night from Friday's to Monday's due to travel schedules and other real life considerations. We are also trying out a start time closer to 9pm than our usual 10pm to get in more matches with less bleary eyes the next morning.
It had been awhile since all three of us were able to pvp together and we were excited about getting back into action. We called on our level 30s team of Ando, Lao, and EZ. Ando keeps us alive with his healing, pesters the allies with moonfire and other damaging attacks, and specializes in running off with the alliance flag. Lao is a devastating shadow priest that leaves piles of corpses in her wake. Both are level 39s in the level 30-39 bracket, and over the course of the evening set the standard for high end healing and damage dealing. EZ . . . well, EZ makes for great bait. Alliance pvpers anxious to get horde kills quickly pick out level 31 EZ as easy bait. But EZ has a range of tricks to stay alive, and between Ando's support healing and Lao's deadly assault that allie, and often the allie's friends, wind up dead while EZ moves on to tempt another allie into the trap.
We got off to a slow start in Warsong Gulch with a horde team that couldn't get organized and spent most of the battle farming kills at midfield instead of capping flags. We lost. From there we won two out of our next three WSG matches in very convincing fashion, and with Lao and Ando leading the teams in damage and healing respectively. The second loss was a heartbreaker as the two teams were very evenly matched and very strong on defense. The allies managed to cap the horde flag only once. We successfully defended every subsequent attempt, and managed to grab their flag a couple of times, but could not hold it. As time was ticking down we had one last chance, taking their flag and getting all the way the entrance to our hold before time ran out and we lost 1-0.
We also had a spirited battle in the Arathi Basin, where winning requires taking and holding various key bases. The alliance seemed to forget this, massing their forces in one or two spots. They ignored the fact that we had captured one more base than they had and were accumulating resources faster than they were. That resulted in large, running, pitched battles, which was exciting and challenging. A couple of times Ando led EZ slipped way from the main battles and charged into alliance held bases intentionally as a diversion. The first time we did that, putting up a tough but eventually futile assault before getting killed, EZ lamented "that that didn't go so well," to which Ando responded, "it accomplished what we were after," which was to keep the allies on the defensive and maintain our advantage in the number of bases we held. We won. Actual strategy in a pvp match? It works. Will wonders never cease.
EZ was 96% of the way to level 32 when we called it an evening. EZ hung around and signed up for another match in order to get that last 4%, but forty minutes later and still no match and she also called it a night. I'm certain she'll get herself to level 32 before next week's adventures.
Last week we changed our pvp night from Friday's to Monday's due to travel schedules and other real life considerations. We are also trying out a start time closer to 9pm than our usual 10pm to get in more matches with less bleary eyes the next morning.
It had been awhile since all three of us were able to pvp together and we were excited about getting back into action. We called on our level 30s team of Ando, Lao, and EZ. Ando keeps us alive with his healing, pesters the allies with moonfire and other damaging attacks, and specializes in running off with the alliance flag. Lao is a devastating shadow priest that leaves piles of corpses in her wake. Both are level 39s in the level 30-39 bracket, and over the course of the evening set the standard for high end healing and damage dealing. EZ . . . well, EZ makes for great bait. Alliance pvpers anxious to get horde kills quickly pick out level 31 EZ as easy bait. But EZ has a range of tricks to stay alive, and between Ando's support healing and Lao's deadly assault that allie, and often the allie's friends, wind up dead while EZ moves on to tempt another allie into the trap.
We got off to a slow start in Warsong Gulch with a horde team that couldn't get organized and spent most of the battle farming kills at midfield instead of capping flags. We lost. From there we won two out of our next three WSG matches in very convincing fashion, and with Lao and Ando leading the teams in damage and healing respectively. The second loss was a heartbreaker as the two teams were very evenly matched and very strong on defense. The allies managed to cap the horde flag only once. We successfully defended every subsequent attempt, and managed to grab their flag a couple of times, but could not hold it. As time was ticking down we had one last chance, taking their flag and getting all the way the entrance to our hold before time ran out and we lost 1-0.
We also had a spirited battle in the Arathi Basin, where winning requires taking and holding various key bases. The alliance seemed to forget this, massing their forces in one or two spots. They ignored the fact that we had captured one more base than they had and were accumulating resources faster than they were. That resulted in large, running, pitched battles, which was exciting and challenging. A couple of times Ando led EZ slipped way from the main battles and charged into alliance held bases intentionally as a diversion. The first time we did that, putting up a tough but eventually futile assault before getting killed, EZ lamented "that that didn't go so well," to which Ando responded, "it accomplished what we were after," which was to keep the allies on the defensive and maintain our advantage in the number of bases we held. We won. Actual strategy in a pvp match? It works. Will wonders never cease.
EZ was 96% of the way to level 32 when we called it an evening. EZ hung around and signed up for another match in order to get that last 4%, but forty minutes later and still no match and she also called it a night. I'm certain she'll get herself to level 32 before next week's adventures.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday (23 May) - Farming the Coldarra
Sunday (23 May) - Farming the Coldarra
Strange coincidences keep cropping up where the Dungeon Finder is concerned.
Philly had recently reached Exalted with the Kirin Tor faction, and wanted to start working on faction rep for the Wyrmrest Accord. That led her to spend a couple of hours doing quests in the Coldarra area of Borean Tundra. The early quests are low 70s level that don't even show up on the map unless Philly turned on the special setting to see them, which she did. Most of those quests are tied to a starter quest that's dropped by the Spellbinder humanoids in that area. Philly got lucky and picked up the starter quest on her first mob kill. Eventually the easy questing led her to the Nexus, where the five man dungeon of the same name is located. Philly's only trip inside the Nexus was the aborted random dungeon run of the other day (the one where the healer wouldn't heal). Philly poked her head inside anyway, and then left to finish her questing.
Philly got to Friendly with the Wyrmrest Accord, and that enabled her to buy their tabard, which grants higher reputation points when worn during heroics. That task completed, Philly signed up for her first random heroic of the day. Want to guess where it was? Yep, the Nexus. Like I said, strange coincidences.
The Nexus group was a potent one - three paladins, Philly the priest, and a druid healer. I don't know what Philly's problem with healers are, because our druid quit the group after taking down just one boss. We certainly weren't having any problems, and how easy is it to heal a group in which every player can heal? Perhaps he had mother aggro or something. Anyway, one of the paladins healed until we got a new healer, and we finished the run. Philly did 2193 DPS and made liberal use of her AoE spell on the trash as Philly would never be able to pull aggro off of three paladins.
Back in Dalaran, a Wintergrasp battle was nearing so Philly hung around for that. We won handily. At this point Philly always heads back to Dalaran to work on her dailies or grab another random heroic. Also as usual, raiders were spamming the general chat around WG asking for VoA raids. A VOA25 was forming. No gear score requirement was mentioned. Philly's own WHGS in shadow was an underwhelming 2297, and even lower (2121) as a healer. Funny, but the only reason Philly "looks" better geared in shadow is that she uses higher ilevel pvp gear in that spec, which most raid leaders would rather I not be wearing into a pve raid. Coupled with that and the fact that healers are in greater demand than DPS, Philly whispered the raid leader, "DISC priest lf voa25". There wasn't an immediate response, not unusual if the raid leader was checking Philly's gear score or looking at her gear on the Armory.
Philly was prepared to head back to Dalaran, but surprise of surprises, Philly got an invite. It took about fifteen minutes to form up the raid, and while waiting I felt like an underage teenager that had slipped into an "R" rated movie. I figured Philly would get booted at any minute. But the raid filled with Philly still in it, and she was joined by four other healers (a holy priest, a shaman, a pally, and a druid - wow, one of everything!). There were no healing assignments made. Philly, in her first appearance in any raid whatsoever, decided she'd be best off doing "shield spam" duty. This is what disc priests do when assigned to raid heal. Or so I've read.
We started on the trash. I was using a special addon to Recount that attempts to calculate how much healing was "saved" by having a Shield on someone that was taking damage. It's not perfect, but it gives disc priests a better sense of how well they compare to other healers. I was also very interested in what Philly's numbers would be in a full raid like VoA with all of the buffs raiders get. And of course, I was hoping that Philly wouldn't get killed too quickly or too often.
Philly did fine on the trash, and soon we were in front of Toravon, who drops i264 gear. Philly was in the big time, now. Philly figured she had two main worries - one, would she run out of mana spamming Shields across the raid, and two, would she get eaten alive by the first Spark that elected to spawn close to me. Philly's healing priorities included ensuring that there was a Shield on both tanks, that Philly always had an active Prayer of Mending (POM) in play, use her Prayer of Healing AoE on every AoE attack by Toravon, and firing off a Penance on the tank or anyone else taking damage as often as it was available. All that activity did draw Philly's mana down to around 55% midway through the fight, and when a shaman cast Bloodlust to speed up the DPS, Philly loosed her shadowfiend pet on Toravon, which does a little damage but more importantly also regens Philly's mana over 15 seconds. Philly got a few spark tickles, but Philly was also keeping a Shield on herself (clever girl) and was never in any serious trouble.
Toravon died. Among the three drops there was a cloth item that Philly rolled on, but she rolled low (24 out of 100) and didn't get it. But Philly was dam proud of getting her first Toravon kill.
We then went and killed Koravon as well, with only 22 raiders. A beautiful DPS cloak dropped, but then Philly realized it was for Mages only. Sigh.
There was considerable interest in getting to Emalon as well. Although Emalon is a "lesser" boss, the fight mechanics require a lot of coordination. We were grouping up to see if we'd have enough after those that wanted to leave had left, but it became a moot point because someone aggroed a trash mob with no tank in sight. We ran for our lives. Philly had a bit of a head start, and made it as far as the foot of the long, high set of stairs up to the exit, listening to the death screams of raiders behind him all the way. The screams gave way to the aggro warning that the mob had targeted Philly. It was moving much faster than Philly could go. As it came up behind me Philly cast Fade, temporarily dropping all aggro. It went to kill someone behind me that it had missed, and then came back after me - and ran straight past Philly and after the one raider that was farther up the stairs than Philly was. Philly was under no illusion of safety, though. It didn't matter whether that raider escaped or died. Either way, the mob would be coming back for Philly. Sure enough, the mob killed the raider and set it's sights back on Philly. With Fade still on cooldown, all Philly could do was gain a few seconds with Dispersion, which greatly reduces damage for a few seconds. Not enough seconds to reach the exit, though, and Philly died.
The raid broke up and Philly didn't get a chance at Emalon.
I'm still a little astonished that Philly was able to sneak into a VoA run. She now has the Achievement to prove she's done it, too.
On the Toravon fight Philly's health per second (hps) was 4415, and she contributed 12.5% of the healing, good for 5th (ie, last) among the healers. The others did around 5k, with the pally at the top with 5652, also aided by his Bubbles (the pally version of a shield).
Philly's hps was lower on Koralon, but she contributed more total healing: 4282 hps, 17.9% healing. Philly moved up to 4th in total healing, but surprised herself by leading in hps. The shaman came in second with 4147 hps.
Overall, Philly's numbers were 3780 hps/13.7% healing, counting bosses and trash mobs. She was second in hps, and beat the druid in total healing for 4th. Philly did a lot better than I expected.
Philly proudly displays her Toravon and Koravon kills:
Strange coincidences keep cropping up where the Dungeon Finder is concerned.
Philly had recently reached Exalted with the Kirin Tor faction, and wanted to start working on faction rep for the Wyrmrest Accord. That led her to spend a couple of hours doing quests in the Coldarra area of Borean Tundra. The early quests are low 70s level that don't even show up on the map unless Philly turned on the special setting to see them, which she did. Most of those quests are tied to a starter quest that's dropped by the Spellbinder humanoids in that area. Philly got lucky and picked up the starter quest on her first mob kill. Eventually the easy questing led her to the Nexus, where the five man dungeon of the same name is located. Philly's only trip inside the Nexus was the aborted random dungeon run of the other day (the one where the healer wouldn't heal). Philly poked her head inside anyway, and then left to finish her questing.
Philly got to Friendly with the Wyrmrest Accord, and that enabled her to buy their tabard, which grants higher reputation points when worn during heroics. That task completed, Philly signed up for her first random heroic of the day. Want to guess where it was? Yep, the Nexus. Like I said, strange coincidences.
The Nexus group was a potent one - three paladins, Philly the priest, and a druid healer. I don't know what Philly's problem with healers are, because our druid quit the group after taking down just one boss. We certainly weren't having any problems, and how easy is it to heal a group in which every player can heal? Perhaps he had mother aggro or something. Anyway, one of the paladins healed until we got a new healer, and we finished the run. Philly did 2193 DPS and made liberal use of her AoE spell on the trash as Philly would never be able to pull aggro off of three paladins.
Back in Dalaran, a Wintergrasp battle was nearing so Philly hung around for that. We won handily. At this point Philly always heads back to Dalaran to work on her dailies or grab another random heroic. Also as usual, raiders were spamming the general chat around WG asking for VoA raids. A VOA25 was forming. No gear score requirement was mentioned. Philly's own WHGS in shadow was an underwhelming 2297, and even lower (2121) as a healer. Funny, but the only reason Philly "looks" better geared in shadow is that she uses higher ilevel pvp gear in that spec, which most raid leaders would rather I not be wearing into a pve raid. Coupled with that and the fact that healers are in greater demand than DPS, Philly whispered the raid leader, "DISC priest lf voa25". There wasn't an immediate response, not unusual if the raid leader was checking Philly's gear score or looking at her gear on the Armory.
Philly was prepared to head back to Dalaran, but surprise of surprises, Philly got an invite. It took about fifteen minutes to form up the raid, and while waiting I felt like an underage teenager that had slipped into an "R" rated movie. I figured Philly would get booted at any minute. But the raid filled with Philly still in it, and she was joined by four other healers (a holy priest, a shaman, a pally, and a druid - wow, one of everything!). There were no healing assignments made. Philly, in her first appearance in any raid whatsoever, decided she'd be best off doing "shield spam" duty. This is what disc priests do when assigned to raid heal. Or so I've read.
We started on the trash. I was using a special addon to Recount that attempts to calculate how much healing was "saved" by having a Shield on someone that was taking damage. It's not perfect, but it gives disc priests a better sense of how well they compare to other healers. I was also very interested in what Philly's numbers would be in a full raid like VoA with all of the buffs raiders get. And of course, I was hoping that Philly wouldn't get killed too quickly or too often.
Philly did fine on the trash, and soon we were in front of Toravon, who drops i264 gear. Philly was in the big time, now. Philly figured she had two main worries - one, would she run out of mana spamming Shields across the raid, and two, would she get eaten alive by the first Spark that elected to spawn close to me. Philly's healing priorities included ensuring that there was a Shield on both tanks, that Philly always had an active Prayer of Mending (POM) in play, use her Prayer of Healing AoE on every AoE attack by Toravon, and firing off a Penance on the tank or anyone else taking damage as often as it was available. All that activity did draw Philly's mana down to around 55% midway through the fight, and when a shaman cast Bloodlust to speed up the DPS, Philly loosed her shadowfiend pet on Toravon, which does a little damage but more importantly also regens Philly's mana over 15 seconds. Philly got a few spark tickles, but Philly was also keeping a Shield on herself (clever girl) and was never in any serious trouble.
Toravon died. Among the three drops there was a cloth item that Philly rolled on, but she rolled low (24 out of 100) and didn't get it. But Philly was dam proud of getting her first Toravon kill.
We then went and killed Koravon as well, with only 22 raiders. A beautiful DPS cloak dropped, but then Philly realized it was for Mages only. Sigh.
There was considerable interest in getting to Emalon as well. Although Emalon is a "lesser" boss, the fight mechanics require a lot of coordination. We were grouping up to see if we'd have enough after those that wanted to leave had left, but it became a moot point because someone aggroed a trash mob with no tank in sight. We ran for our lives. Philly had a bit of a head start, and made it as far as the foot of the long, high set of stairs up to the exit, listening to the death screams of raiders behind him all the way. The screams gave way to the aggro warning that the mob had targeted Philly. It was moving much faster than Philly could go. As it came up behind me Philly cast Fade, temporarily dropping all aggro. It went to kill someone behind me that it had missed, and then came back after me - and ran straight past Philly and after the one raider that was farther up the stairs than Philly was. Philly was under no illusion of safety, though. It didn't matter whether that raider escaped or died. Either way, the mob would be coming back for Philly. Sure enough, the mob killed the raider and set it's sights back on Philly. With Fade still on cooldown, all Philly could do was gain a few seconds with Dispersion, which greatly reduces damage for a few seconds. Not enough seconds to reach the exit, though, and Philly died.
The raid broke up and Philly didn't get a chance at Emalon.
I'm still a little astonished that Philly was able to sneak into a VoA run. She now has the Achievement to prove she's done it, too.
On the Toravon fight Philly's health per second (hps) was 4415, and she contributed 12.5% of the healing, good for 5th (ie, last) among the healers. The others did around 5k, with the pally at the top with 5652, also aided by his Bubbles (the pally version of a shield).
Philly's hps was lower on Koralon, but she contributed more total healing: 4282 hps, 17.9% healing. Philly moved up to 4th in total healing, but surprised herself by leading in hps. The shaman came in second with 4147 hps.
Overall, Philly's numbers were 3780 hps/13.7% healing, counting bosses and trash mobs. She was second in hps, and beat the druid in total healing for 4th. Philly did a lot better than I expected.
Philly proudly displays her Toravon and Koravon kills:
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Weekend (23 May) - Texas Hold'em
Weekend (23 May) - Texas Hold'em
It was a weekend of numbers. I considered naming this post "Happy takes a Dump" due to the sudden reluctance of buyers to spend any gold on the Auction House this weekend. Friday's "take" set a new low and Saturday didn't start off very well, either. Still, Philly wasn't shy about spending Happy's money, what with the revolving door of new gear needing enchants and gems, but those modest expenditures (after all, Philly can craft her own gems) still took a bite out of what little cash was coming in. JB's high profit flasks and a windfall by selling two high end herb bags saved Sunday from an otherwise poor take as well. The spell power flasks that JB makes via her Alchemy profession are excruciatingly expensive to make, but careful buying of materials and selective selling make it Happy's most profitable product at the moment. The Fiery Weapon enchant is one of those feast or famine items. The enchant is very cheap to make, although only a relatively few enchanters have the recipe. There is no consistent demand for the enchant - but when someone wants it, they generally want it RIGHT NOW; otherwise, it languishes on the AH with no interest. The "RIGHT NOW" aspect is where the gold can be made, setting a high price and betting a customer will not be able to wait for a cheaper price. That means Happy holds his stock off the AH when silly enchanters get into a bidding war and drop the price down to what is nominally still profitable, but far less than what is possible. Happy has sold the enchants for as low as 40 gold, to a high of 72g.
I also got into a debate with myself over gear scores (hey, if I can have two accounts and multiple toons I'm certainly capable of debating myself - I'm just never sure who won). Gear score is a statistic developed by the site Web-Heroes. It takes a lot of data about a character's gear (ilevel, gems, enchants, etc), crunches some numbers, and then comes up with a score that can be compared to other characters and also used to get a sense of what level of dungeon/raid that character is geared for. The heaviest weight in the score is the ilevel of the gear. The scoring makes no effort to assess whether that gear is the right gear, or how good or bad the character is as a player. Used correctly, it can help assess a character's progression, and can be an aid in determining whether a character is adequately geared for a dungeon/raid. In PUG raids it can be abused, refusing to allow good players into a raid only because of some perceived flaw in their gear. It is also used to deny players from being accepted into guilds that insist on a certain minimum gear score.
However, none of the above was what got me talking to myself. What confused me was a forum thread that started with the question: "What would my gear score be if I was decked out in all ilevel 232 gear?" Taking into account that entire gear sets all at the same exact level is, from a practical perspective, both nearly impossible and unwanted, since there is a high likelihood that the player would have to refuse gear better than i232 to achieve it. But I think the idea was to get a feel for whether someone who's ilevel average hovered around i232 was good enough for, say, ICC10.
The general answer was that an ilevel gear set that averaged around i232 would result in a gear score of around 4500-5000. This stunned me. Wild's "average" ilevel of his gear is well into the i250+ area. Wild has only one i232 piece of gear; the rest are i245 or better, mostly better with 9 i264 pieces out of 17 total pieces. Wild's gear score is 3111.
The more I read the more confused I got. I checked the gear scores of a few friends who I knew were among the best decked out raiders in the two guilds - raiders who have downed the final boss in ICC10. You don't get any better gear than that short of hard mode ICC. None of them had gear scores beyond the 3000's.
The answer to the riddle was a simple one once I found it, as is the case with most riddles. There is an addon that players use in game to calculate gear scores on themselves and anyone else they want to. I made an assumption that the in game gear score addon was based on the same algorithm used by the wow-heroes site. It isn't. In fact, the in game addon gear scores are in general nearly twice as high as the wow-heroes number. So, Wild's 3k plus WHGS (wow-heroes gear score) equates to something like 6k on the in game addon. Mystery solved.
Then there was Saturday night, when I was doing a different kind of number crunching and gaming - Texas Hold'em poker. Our cul-de-sac, and other friends around the neighborhood, get together to play cards on a very irregular basis. If we're lucky (ie, when we're not broke) we play about once a month. There's no schedule, and it's usually pretty last minute, and half the time not enough folks show up. It was a very chilly Saturday evening and we had a good turnout with seven players. Chilly evenings are important because we play in a garage in which we refuse to close the door in order to allow the cigar smoke to escape. Plus, the colder it is the more beer we drink. Chilly is good. ;-)
I won't go into all the rules other than to say it's based on regular poker rules, and that a "hand" is based on two down cards for each player and five community cards which each player uses to build the best possible five card hand.
We have two blinds of 2 and 4 dollars, and a bet limit of 10 dollars, fairly high stakes when you figure the buy in is 60 dollars. For me that's a good bit of money to lose, which is why we don't play that often, and why I often go home early or just hang around and chat (it doesn't take long to lose that 60 dollars). The first night I was invited to play more than a year ago I walked away over $300 richer. I've been paying it back and then some ever since. Playing cards with friends is fun, but rarely profitable.
We usually play from around 7pm to around midnight, or when the number of players falls below four. The longer the weeks between games, the higher I can set my own stake, so I brought $100 on Saturday (we haven't played in about three months).
On a bad night I'm usually home by 10pm, so the Mrs feared to ask what happened when I came home shortly after 10pm. Even for me, losing a $100 that quick would mean both extremely bad luck and even worse play. When I started this post, I didn't know if I would be in the Mrs doghouse or taking her out for a Sunday breakfast - fortunately, it was the latter. The card game finished early because three players burned up their stakes early and, down to four, with two holding very small piles of chips, they opted to get out while they still had some cash to lose. I won the pot on the night, winning $182 of other people's money. Of course, I'm sure I'll spend the next few Texas Hold'em nights losing it all back.
Philly got herself a surprising first kill on Sunday; more about that in the next post.
It was a weekend of numbers. I considered naming this post "Happy takes a Dump" due to the sudden reluctance of buyers to spend any gold on the Auction House this weekend. Friday's "take" set a new low and Saturday didn't start off very well, either. Still, Philly wasn't shy about spending Happy's money, what with the revolving door of new gear needing enchants and gems, but those modest expenditures (after all, Philly can craft her own gems) still took a bite out of what little cash was coming in. JB's high profit flasks and a windfall by selling two high end herb bags saved Sunday from an otherwise poor take as well. The spell power flasks that JB makes via her Alchemy profession are excruciatingly expensive to make, but careful buying of materials and selective selling make it Happy's most profitable product at the moment. The Fiery Weapon enchant is one of those feast or famine items. The enchant is very cheap to make, although only a relatively few enchanters have the recipe. There is no consistent demand for the enchant - but when someone wants it, they generally want it RIGHT NOW; otherwise, it languishes on the AH with no interest. The "RIGHT NOW" aspect is where the gold can be made, setting a high price and betting a customer will not be able to wait for a cheaper price. That means Happy holds his stock off the AH when silly enchanters get into a bidding war and drop the price down to what is nominally still profitable, but far less than what is possible. Happy has sold the enchants for as low as 40 gold, to a high of 72g.
I also got into a debate with myself over gear scores (hey, if I can have two accounts and multiple toons I'm certainly capable of debating myself - I'm just never sure who won). Gear score is a statistic developed by the site Web-Heroes. It takes a lot of data about a character's gear (ilevel, gems, enchants, etc), crunches some numbers, and then comes up with a score that can be compared to other characters and also used to get a sense of what level of dungeon/raid that character is geared for. The heaviest weight in the score is the ilevel of the gear. The scoring makes no effort to assess whether that gear is the right gear, or how good or bad the character is as a player. Used correctly, it can help assess a character's progression, and can be an aid in determining whether a character is adequately geared for a dungeon/raid. In PUG raids it can be abused, refusing to allow good players into a raid only because of some perceived flaw in their gear. It is also used to deny players from being accepted into guilds that insist on a certain minimum gear score.
However, none of the above was what got me talking to myself. What confused me was a forum thread that started with the question: "What would my gear score be if I was decked out in all ilevel 232 gear?" Taking into account that entire gear sets all at the same exact level is, from a practical perspective, both nearly impossible and unwanted, since there is a high likelihood that the player would have to refuse gear better than i232 to achieve it. But I think the idea was to get a feel for whether someone who's ilevel average hovered around i232 was good enough for, say, ICC10.
The general answer was that an ilevel gear set that averaged around i232 would result in a gear score of around 4500-5000. This stunned me. Wild's "average" ilevel of his gear is well into the i250+ area. Wild has only one i232 piece of gear; the rest are i245 or better, mostly better with 9 i264 pieces out of 17 total pieces. Wild's gear score is 3111.
The more I read the more confused I got. I checked the gear scores of a few friends who I knew were among the best decked out raiders in the two guilds - raiders who have downed the final boss in ICC10. You don't get any better gear than that short of hard mode ICC. None of them had gear scores beyond the 3000's.
The answer to the riddle was a simple one once I found it, as is the case with most riddles. There is an addon that players use in game to calculate gear scores on themselves and anyone else they want to. I made an assumption that the in game gear score addon was based on the same algorithm used by the wow-heroes site. It isn't. In fact, the in game addon gear scores are in general nearly twice as high as the wow-heroes number. So, Wild's 3k plus WHGS (wow-heroes gear score) equates to something like 6k on the in game addon. Mystery solved.
Then there was Saturday night, when I was doing a different kind of number crunching and gaming - Texas Hold'em poker. Our cul-de-sac, and other friends around the neighborhood, get together to play cards on a very irregular basis. If we're lucky (ie, when we're not broke) we play about once a month. There's no schedule, and it's usually pretty last minute, and half the time not enough folks show up. It was a very chilly Saturday evening and we had a good turnout with seven players. Chilly evenings are important because we play in a garage in which we refuse to close the door in order to allow the cigar smoke to escape. Plus, the colder it is the more beer we drink. Chilly is good. ;-)
I won't go into all the rules other than to say it's based on regular poker rules, and that a "hand" is based on two down cards for each player and five community cards which each player uses to build the best possible five card hand.
We have two blinds of 2 and 4 dollars, and a bet limit of 10 dollars, fairly high stakes when you figure the buy in is 60 dollars. For me that's a good bit of money to lose, which is why we don't play that often, and why I often go home early or just hang around and chat (it doesn't take long to lose that 60 dollars). The first night I was invited to play more than a year ago I walked away over $300 richer. I've been paying it back and then some ever since. Playing cards with friends is fun, but rarely profitable.
We usually play from around 7pm to around midnight, or when the number of players falls below four. The longer the weeks between games, the higher I can set my own stake, so I brought $100 on Saturday (we haven't played in about three months).
On a bad night I'm usually home by 10pm, so the Mrs feared to ask what happened when I came home shortly after 10pm. Even for me, losing a $100 that quick would mean both extremely bad luck and even worse play. When I started this post, I didn't know if I would be in the Mrs doghouse or taking her out for a Sunday breakfast - fortunately, it was the latter. The card game finished early because three players burned up their stakes early and, down to four, with two holding very small piles of chips, they opted to get out while they still had some cash to lose. I won the pot on the night, winning $182 of other people's money. Of course, I'm sure I'll spend the next few Texas Hold'em nights losing it all back.
Philly got herself a surprising first kill on Sunday; more about that in the next post.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday (20 May) - Welcome Back Party
Thursday (20 May) - Welcome Back Party
[Note: Somewhere in between picking up the dog at the kennel, getting our cat Toby's teeth cleaned, and getting the rest of our four footed family settled back into a more normal chaos after getting back from Palm Springs, I forgot to post this. See, it wasn't my fault! :P ]
It wasn't exactly a planned party, but when the MM raid leader, Bd, saw Philly login around 10pm Thursday night, he immediately lassoed her into a five man heroic. Bd was running on his druid alt as the healer. Philly had the added pleasure of having Lady Hunter also in the group on her paladin alt. She would be tanking. The other two DDSers were from MM and were also alts looking to improve their gear and have some fun. The MM guild is very active with alts, and grouping up with them for random heroics is becoming a daily pleasure for Philly.
The random dungeon choice of UP was a bit of deja vu for Philly, as she had done UP with a random (non-guildie) group earlier in the day. I didn't know we could get the same dungeon more than once a day, but apparently so. It was a pretty straightforward run with no surprises. Philly pulled 1825 dps, which wasn't bad, and at least beat the DK (1492 dps) but came in behind the fury warrior (1984 dps).
After UP players then switched alts around, and Bd played his own DK, becoming the tank while Lady Hunter's paladin moved from tanking to healing. It was a strange combination. Lady Hunter said it felt so weird that "Wild" wasn't healing and she was (she's usually a DPS). Bd and Lady Hunter were both still learning their specs and we had some fun in the next dungeon, Violet Hold. VH has a set of randomly selected bosses, and we got the toughest of them, the one with all the X's and Z's in his name. Most groups simply overpower him, but we weren't geared well enough to do that. We wiped on the first try. Also in VH, if you wipe you start over from the beginning. On our second run through VH we followed the strategy of kiting the difficult boss on a "run and shoot" kind of approach, and although it took a little longer than a heavier geared group would have taken, we killed him. Killing him with finesse instead of muscle seemed all more sweet.
In between the boss fights in VH we had to fight waves of adds, and we somehow managed to dally too long and got multiple waves. Both the healer and the tank died before we could get ourselves organized, but with three mobs still alive the elemental shaman in the group essentially tanked them while Philly switched to healing to keep the last three of us alive long enough to kill them. We are a versatile bunch. The tank also died on the final boss (even with Philly sneaking in some Shields and tossing in Prayer of Mending - I can't help healing even as a DPS), but we we brought him down anyway. It was riotuss fun.
From VH we decided to up the ante and go for a more difficult challenge, heroic five man Trial of the Champion (ToC). The random dungeon finder wouldn't let our full group of five port into ToC, however, stating that two of our DPS were not geared well enough. Philly was a bit gratified, though, to learn that she met the gear requirements. All that work building her gear set was starting to pay off. The two DPS alts were willing to switch to their mains, but we quickly decided that we weren't going to let the opinion of the dungeon finder change our plans. Casting caution to the winds, we ignored the dungeon finder, flew to the Argent Tournament grounds (where ToC is located) and entered the dungeon the old fashioned way - we walked in.
This was Philly's first introduction to ToC. She had planned on doing normal mode ToC first, to see how difficult that would be, but what the heck, we went for it in heroic mode. Heroic ToC drops i219 gear, so Philly might get a chance at an upgrade.
The first encounter in five man ToC is a joust with a wave of three groups of mounted mobs, followed by jousts against the Grand Champions, the three bosses. Philly is the most practiced in the Wild family at jousting on horseback, and she acquitted herself well in what for most is a pretty easy opening battle. The keys to making this battle easy are: (1) always keep up a full three stack of defensive shields; (2) if the health of your mount gets low, grab another mount as there are several lined up along the wall; (3) when a boss goes down keep him down by running over him or he'll run and re-mount; and (4) if you die during this part of the encounter you can run back from the graveyard and re-enter and re-mount (something that most dungeons don't allow and I often forget).
After the jousting we all dismounted to face the three bosses again, this time on foot. Just don't forget to replace your lance with your regular weapon. We downed all three of them on our first try, and we were feeling pretty good about our decision to tackle ToC in heroic mode.
The second encounter is against either Eadric or Paletress. I prefer Eadric as his only "trick" is to blind and damage players that are looking at him when he casts Radiance (so don't look at him!). Of course, we got Paletress.
Paletress entered the arena with her three groups of adds, which we killed efficiently to set up the showdown with Paletress. We hammered away at her and quickly pounded her down to 25%. Paletress then cast Confess, and a shadowy mob formed. Philly quickly noticed that her DPS casts at Paletress were now being reflected back. Philly wasn't planning on killing herself, so she stopped attacked Paletress and targeted the new mob, which was in fact stronger and more deadly than Paletress herself. I think all the DPS took some heavy hits before we switched targets, though, and in the end we wiped. On our second try, though, we hung in there through the Fears, kept our DPS firmly on the Summoned boss when it appeared, killed it, and then finished off Paletress.
The third and final encounter is against the Black Knight, and we have to fight him three times: as an undead, as a skeleton, and then as a ghost. If we were going to have real trouble, this is where it would be. Amazingly, we killed him all three times on our first attempt.
After our heroic victory over ToC, we decided to farm Toc a couple more times on normal mode as a couple of folks wanted the stone keeper's shards and frozen orbs that drop. Normal ToC only drops i200 gear, but that didn't stop Philly from getting lucky.
Philly did quite well in the gear department, as a matter of fact. She picked up two i200 trinkets, one with +hit and the other with +int. While their use is pretty situational, they give Philly some flexibility in gear choices depending on what she needs. Philly also won [Gaze of the Unknown] from the Black Knight, an i219 helm with a lot of +hit that immediately found a home on Philly's hit capped set. She also won [Embrace of Madness], an i219 chest piece that was a solid upgrade for both her healing and DPS sets. All in all a very good evening that ended well after 1am.
[Note: Somewhere in between picking up the dog at the kennel, getting our cat Toby's teeth cleaned, and getting the rest of our four footed family settled back into a more normal chaos after getting back from Palm Springs, I forgot to post this. See, it wasn't my fault! :P ]
It wasn't exactly a planned party, but when the MM raid leader, Bd, saw Philly login around 10pm Thursday night, he immediately lassoed her into a five man heroic. Bd was running on his druid alt as the healer. Philly had the added pleasure of having Lady Hunter also in the group on her paladin alt. She would be tanking. The other two DDSers were from MM and were also alts looking to improve their gear and have some fun. The MM guild is very active with alts, and grouping up with them for random heroics is becoming a daily pleasure for Philly.
The random dungeon choice of UP was a bit of deja vu for Philly, as she had done UP with a random (non-guildie) group earlier in the day. I didn't know we could get the same dungeon more than once a day, but apparently so. It was a pretty straightforward run with no surprises. Philly pulled 1825 dps, which wasn't bad, and at least beat the DK (1492 dps) but came in behind the fury warrior (1984 dps).
After UP players then switched alts around, and Bd played his own DK, becoming the tank while Lady Hunter's paladin moved from tanking to healing. It was a strange combination. Lady Hunter said it felt so weird that "Wild" wasn't healing and she was (she's usually a DPS). Bd and Lady Hunter were both still learning their specs and we had some fun in the next dungeon, Violet Hold. VH has a set of randomly selected bosses, and we got the toughest of them, the one with all the X's and Z's in his name. Most groups simply overpower him, but we weren't geared well enough to do that. We wiped on the first try. Also in VH, if you wipe you start over from the beginning. On our second run through VH we followed the strategy of kiting the difficult boss on a "run and shoot" kind of approach, and although it took a little longer than a heavier geared group would have taken, we killed him. Killing him with finesse instead of muscle seemed all more sweet.
In between the boss fights in VH we had to fight waves of adds, and we somehow managed to dally too long and got multiple waves. Both the healer and the tank died before we could get ourselves organized, but with three mobs still alive the elemental shaman in the group essentially tanked them while Philly switched to healing to keep the last three of us alive long enough to kill them. We are a versatile bunch. The tank also died on the final boss (even with Philly sneaking in some Shields and tossing in Prayer of Mending - I can't help healing even as a DPS), but we we brought him down anyway. It was riotuss fun.
From VH we decided to up the ante and go for a more difficult challenge, heroic five man Trial of the Champion (ToC). The random dungeon finder wouldn't let our full group of five port into ToC, however, stating that two of our DPS were not geared well enough. Philly was a bit gratified, though, to learn that she met the gear requirements. All that work building her gear set was starting to pay off. The two DPS alts were willing to switch to their mains, but we quickly decided that we weren't going to let the opinion of the dungeon finder change our plans. Casting caution to the winds, we ignored the dungeon finder, flew to the Argent Tournament grounds (where ToC is located) and entered the dungeon the old fashioned way - we walked in.
This was Philly's first introduction to ToC. She had planned on doing normal mode ToC first, to see how difficult that would be, but what the heck, we went for it in heroic mode. Heroic ToC drops i219 gear, so Philly might get a chance at an upgrade.
The first encounter in five man ToC is a joust with a wave of three groups of mounted mobs, followed by jousts against the Grand Champions, the three bosses. Philly is the most practiced in the Wild family at jousting on horseback, and she acquitted herself well in what for most is a pretty easy opening battle. The keys to making this battle easy are: (1) always keep up a full three stack of defensive shields; (2) if the health of your mount gets low, grab another mount as there are several lined up along the wall; (3) when a boss goes down keep him down by running over him or he'll run and re-mount; and (4) if you die during this part of the encounter you can run back from the graveyard and re-enter and re-mount (something that most dungeons don't allow and I often forget).
After the jousting we all dismounted to face the three bosses again, this time on foot. Just don't forget to replace your lance with your regular weapon. We downed all three of them on our first try, and we were feeling pretty good about our decision to tackle ToC in heroic mode.
The second encounter is against either Eadric or Paletress. I prefer Eadric as his only "trick" is to blind and damage players that are looking at him when he casts Radiance (so don't look at him!). Of course, we got Paletress.
Paletress entered the arena with her three groups of adds, which we killed efficiently to set up the showdown with Paletress. We hammered away at her and quickly pounded her down to 25%. Paletress then cast Confess, and a shadowy mob formed. Philly quickly noticed that her DPS casts at Paletress were now being reflected back. Philly wasn't planning on killing herself, so she stopped attacked Paletress and targeted the new mob, which was in fact stronger and more deadly than Paletress herself. I think all the DPS took some heavy hits before we switched targets, though, and in the end we wiped. On our second try, though, we hung in there through the Fears, kept our DPS firmly on the Summoned boss when it appeared, killed it, and then finished off Paletress.
The third and final encounter is against the Black Knight, and we have to fight him three times: as an undead, as a skeleton, and then as a ghost. If we were going to have real trouble, this is where it would be. Amazingly, we killed him all three times on our first attempt.
After our heroic victory over ToC, we decided to farm Toc a couple more times on normal mode as a couple of folks wanted the stone keeper's shards and frozen orbs that drop. Normal ToC only drops i200 gear, but that didn't stop Philly from getting lucky.
Philly did quite well in the gear department, as a matter of fact. She picked up two i200 trinkets, one with +hit and the other with +int. While their use is pretty situational, they give Philly some flexibility in gear choices depending on what she needs. Philly also won [Gaze of the Unknown] from the Black Knight, an i219 helm with a lot of +hit that immediately found a home on Philly's hit capped set. She also won [Embrace of Madness], an i219 chest piece that was a solid upgrade for both her healing and DPS sets. All in all a very good evening that ended well after 1am.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Monday (18 May) - Old School Raids
Monday (18 May) - Old School Raids
There is a player on Silvermoon who has become something of a one man show where old school raids are concerned. Almost every day he promotes and runs at least one raid, mostly level 70 raids, allowing players from levels 70-80 to participate. It's a chance to see places that many players may have never had a chance to run, and of course it's good for getting Achievements completed. Philly's first encounter with this raid leader, Yessuh, was when Philly joined his successful Sunwell Plateau raid. Much later, Philly hooked up with him again for the For the Horde raid. He's pretty hard core about getting the right mix of raiders together, and is willing to take a long time to get it. He also pays close attention to the tanks and healers he invites. Once assembled he assigns and marks the tanks, as well as setting out the healing assignments. Yessuh knows the instance and bosses as well, giving quick instructions for any special abilities that we need reminding of. Once the raid starts, it moves very fast. Players that have the patience to stick around during invites are rewarded in the end with a fast, thorough raid with no wipes and few deaths. Wipes are the death knell of runs like this, as players start bailing if there is any trouble, so his raids are usually worth the wait because the chance of success is so good.
So, on Monday Yessuh was looking for level 70-80 raiders for Magtheridon's Lair, to be followed by Serpentshrine Cavern. Philly signed on as a shadowpriest. Apparently a lot of time had already passed and folks were getting a bit antsy. Two raiders at the Summoning Stone for Magtheridon kept wanting to start summoning folks, and Yessuh kept saying no, we still needed a couple of healers, and the second tank was in a dungeon and would be ready shortly. The raid was a small one, only 14 raiders for a 25 man raid, but with mostly all of us level 80s that should not be a problem. We finally got started with the Summons, and the raid leader made a point to tell everyone not to enter the instance until everyone was ready. Again, this is how he operates. No stragglers allowed, and no one going ahead of anyone else.
We had one raider who was afk that the raid leader wanted to give five minutes to get back, and that really irritated a few folks. Everyone else was just outside the entrance. "Let's get started on the trash at least!"
The answer was no. A couple of folks entered the instance anyway. Yessuh warned them to leave or they'd be kicked from the raid. This was getting a little crazy. The raiders inside the instance refused to leave. The raid leader gave them a one minute countdown. They didn't leave and were kicked. That started a flood of raiders quitting the raid, and Philly left when we were down to four players.
As the organizer and raid leader, Yessuh can run his raid any way he likes. Like I said, once they get started they are usually successful. This one, unfortunately, came unglued. Too bad, Wild liked Serpentshrine Cavern and was looking forward to giving Philly the grand tour. I was even going to Fraps it for video.
With no old school dungeon run, Philly switched over to the random dungeons. Utgarde Pinnacle (UP) was fun. Philly topped out at 2023 DPS and finished 2nd in total damage behind a mage who did most of the damage at 3145 DPS. Philly ratcheted up her use of the AoE spell Mind Sear in this mob heavy dungeon. The spell started pulling aggro, but she is fast learning to hit Fade when that happens, dropping aggro and sending the attacking mob back to the tank. Plus Philly can Shield herself or even use Dispersion to reduce damage if a mob actually gets to her. Philly is starting to feel a bit more fearless in these fights.
On the complete opposite side of things was a comical disaster in the Nexus. Nexus should have been an easy stroll. Everything went normally (zoning in, buffing up, figuring out who our tank was (a DK), etc) right up to when we faced our first trash mob, a lonely single baby dragon. The tank engaged, and Philly lit into the mob. The mob didn't stay aggroed to the tank, though, meandering about trying to attack the other players. Poor thing seemed almost as confused as we were. It finally died, but not before the tank did. A hunter in our group, who'd asked for a minute to finish his cigarette, kept typing HEALZ! in party chat. Our shaman healer didn't do any healing. Philly rezzed the tank. Before we could figure out what the issue was with the shaman, the tank started off for a pair of mobs further down the corridor. He had like 10% health, but the tank didn't seem to pay any attention to that. He aggroed the mobs and died instantly. There was one of those pregnant pauses, then all three DPS players, Philly included, fled the dungeon and bailed on the group. What a mess that was. A shaman healer apparently afk and a DK tank apparently clueless.
Sorry that this is what I have to leave you with for the next couple of days. But not too sorry. :P
There is a player on Silvermoon who has become something of a one man show where old school raids are concerned. Almost every day he promotes and runs at least one raid, mostly level 70 raids, allowing players from levels 70-80 to participate. It's a chance to see places that many players may have never had a chance to run, and of course it's good for getting Achievements completed. Philly's first encounter with this raid leader, Yessuh, was when Philly joined his successful Sunwell Plateau raid. Much later, Philly hooked up with him again for the For the Horde raid. He's pretty hard core about getting the right mix of raiders together, and is willing to take a long time to get it. He also pays close attention to the tanks and healers he invites. Once assembled he assigns and marks the tanks, as well as setting out the healing assignments. Yessuh knows the instance and bosses as well, giving quick instructions for any special abilities that we need reminding of. Once the raid starts, it moves very fast. Players that have the patience to stick around during invites are rewarded in the end with a fast, thorough raid with no wipes and few deaths. Wipes are the death knell of runs like this, as players start bailing if there is any trouble, so his raids are usually worth the wait because the chance of success is so good.
So, on Monday Yessuh was looking for level 70-80 raiders for Magtheridon's Lair, to be followed by Serpentshrine Cavern. Philly signed on as a shadowpriest. Apparently a lot of time had already passed and folks were getting a bit antsy. Two raiders at the Summoning Stone for Magtheridon kept wanting to start summoning folks, and Yessuh kept saying no, we still needed a couple of healers, and the second tank was in a dungeon and would be ready shortly. The raid was a small one, only 14 raiders for a 25 man raid, but with mostly all of us level 80s that should not be a problem. We finally got started with the Summons, and the raid leader made a point to tell everyone not to enter the instance until everyone was ready. Again, this is how he operates. No stragglers allowed, and no one going ahead of anyone else.
We had one raider who was afk that the raid leader wanted to give five minutes to get back, and that really irritated a few folks. Everyone else was just outside the entrance. "Let's get started on the trash at least!"
The answer was no. A couple of folks entered the instance anyway. Yessuh warned them to leave or they'd be kicked from the raid. This was getting a little crazy. The raiders inside the instance refused to leave. The raid leader gave them a one minute countdown. They didn't leave and were kicked. That started a flood of raiders quitting the raid, and Philly left when we were down to four players.
As the organizer and raid leader, Yessuh can run his raid any way he likes. Like I said, once they get started they are usually successful. This one, unfortunately, came unglued. Too bad, Wild liked Serpentshrine Cavern and was looking forward to giving Philly the grand tour. I was even going to Fraps it for video.
With no old school dungeon run, Philly switched over to the random dungeons. Utgarde Pinnacle (UP) was fun. Philly topped out at 2023 DPS and finished 2nd in total damage behind a mage who did most of the damage at 3145 DPS. Philly ratcheted up her use of the AoE spell Mind Sear in this mob heavy dungeon. The spell started pulling aggro, but she is fast learning to hit Fade when that happens, dropping aggro and sending the attacking mob back to the tank. Plus Philly can Shield herself or even use Dispersion to reduce damage if a mob actually gets to her. Philly is starting to feel a bit more fearless in these fights.
On the complete opposite side of things was a comical disaster in the Nexus. Nexus should have been an easy stroll. Everything went normally (zoning in, buffing up, figuring out who our tank was (a DK), etc) right up to when we faced our first trash mob, a lonely single baby dragon. The tank engaged, and Philly lit into the mob. The mob didn't stay aggroed to the tank, though, meandering about trying to attack the other players. Poor thing seemed almost as confused as we were. It finally died, but not before the tank did. A hunter in our group, who'd asked for a minute to finish his cigarette, kept typing HEALZ! in party chat. Our shaman healer didn't do any healing. Philly rezzed the tank. Before we could figure out what the issue was with the shaman, the tank started off for a pair of mobs further down the corridor. He had like 10% health, but the tank didn't seem to pay any attention to that. He aggroed the mobs and died instantly. There was one of those pregnant pauses, then all three DPS players, Philly included, fled the dungeon and bailed on the group. What a mess that was. A shaman healer apparently afk and a DK tank apparently clueless.
Sorry that this is what I have to leave you with for the next couple of days. But not too sorry. :P
Weekend (16 May) - A Short Week
Weekend (16 May) - A Short Week
We had a great time at the RV park over the weekend. It was pretty full since they had a half price promotion going, but it's a great park and we really enjoyed it - as did our dog and the three cats we took with us. :-)
We are going to be on the road again this week (Tues-Thurs), heading to Palm Springs for a couple of days to visit friends who used to live in San Diego. We're not taking the RV this time, though. We will be kenneling our dog for the first time since we got her from the shelter. She'll be well cared for. We kenneled our previous dog there for years, and the owners are good friends. We brought our dog by the kennel last week just to visit and get her used to the place and the people.
Game time has been pretty light. Happy had to get his business done, of course. The deal with the player who wanted to buy all of Happy's small radiant shards ended after only three sales. He didn't like my pricing and frankly I was making more gold competing with him on the one product he was making with those shards - the Fiery Weapon enchant. I like how Happy thinks.
Philly was able to squeeze in one random Battlegrounds run in Alterac Valley, which we won. She also got in two random dungeons for the badges. Gear-wise the pickings have been very slim from the dungeon runs, so Happy has been keeping an eye out for under-priced gear on the Auction House. Even i219/i226 gear is running at over 1,000 gold each, though. The i245 stuff runs 5k+ and the i264 runs as high as 20k gold, well out of Happy's price range. The MM guild had an Ulduar run planned for Sunday, which Philly logged in to check on, but there weren't enough guildies around to run it. I checked out the MM guild website, but no one had posted there in more than two weeks. Obviously not used much. The FS guild website isn't exactly full of new posts, either.
I signed up my account to try an get into the closed beta test realm for Cataclysm once that is available. I hope I get into that, which would give me an early look at the expansion. I was in on the beta test realm for Burning Crusade once they opened it up to everyone, and that was really cool.
We had a great time at the RV park over the weekend. It was pretty full since they had a half price promotion going, but it's a great park and we really enjoyed it - as did our dog and the three cats we took with us. :-)
We are going to be on the road again this week (Tues-Thurs), heading to Palm Springs for a couple of days to visit friends who used to live in San Diego. We're not taking the RV this time, though. We will be kenneling our dog for the first time since we got her from the shelter. She'll be well cared for. We kenneled our previous dog there for years, and the owners are good friends. We brought our dog by the kennel last week just to visit and get her used to the place and the people.
Game time has been pretty light. Happy had to get his business done, of course. The deal with the player who wanted to buy all of Happy's small radiant shards ended after only three sales. He didn't like my pricing and frankly I was making more gold competing with him on the one product he was making with those shards - the Fiery Weapon enchant. I like how Happy thinks.
Philly was able to squeeze in one random Battlegrounds run in Alterac Valley, which we won. She also got in two random dungeons for the badges. Gear-wise the pickings have been very slim from the dungeon runs, so Happy has been keeping an eye out for under-priced gear on the Auction House. Even i219/i226 gear is running at over 1,000 gold each, though. The i245 stuff runs 5k+ and the i264 runs as high as 20k gold, well out of Happy's price range. The MM guild had an Ulduar run planned for Sunday, which Philly logged in to check on, but there weren't enough guildies around to run it. I checked out the MM guild website, but no one had posted there in more than two weeks. Obviously not used much. The FS guild website isn't exactly full of new posts, either.
I signed up my account to try an get into the closed beta test realm for Cataclysm once that is available. I hope I get into that, which would give me an early look at the expansion. I was in on the beta test realm for Burning Crusade once they opened it up to everyone, and that was really cool.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday (13 May) - What Did I Say about ICC25?
Thursday (13 May) - What Did I Say about ICC25?
Philly picked up a pair of bracers and a new belt from the Auction House Thursday afternoon which will help with her DPS and healing specs. Later, she logged on around 6pm, determined to get in a couple of heroics while the Mrs was out with the girls.
Ok, remember what Wild said about the death of the ICC 25 raids? Well ...
Lady Hunter was in game and immediately asked if Wild could come to ICC 25. Hmm, the Mrs wouldn't be gone THAT long, and Thursday wasn't a raid night anymore. Plus, MM doesn't have an ICC 25 raid group, or any raid group doing any 25s that I was aware of. Philly could see that there weren't many MM guildies in game.
However, if there is one thing Lady Hunter can do, its get people to come to her raids. I told her I couldn't be sure I could stay for the whole run, but if there was going to be an ICC25 raid Wild wanted in on it.
By around 6:30pm we had 13 MM guildies and 2 FS guildies in the raid. Lady Hunter then started filling the raid with friends and friends of friends and out and out PUGs. At 6:55pm we were at 21 raiders, but then Lady Hunter disappeared for awhile on RL issues.
At 7:15pm Lady Hunter was back and we got started on the trash mobs with 23 raiders. Except - most of the raid didn't know we got started. Wild didn't know we got started. The main tank just opened up on the trash. No raid check, no raid warning, no healer assignments, nothing at all. We scrambled, and on some pretty easy trash three raiders died before we brought them down. The tank moved on to the next group of mobs, not waiting for rezzes. The left side chamber was pulled, but something went wrong and the center group of mobs also came as well. An established raid that knew how to handle such things probably could have survived the double group pull. Our pasted together group couldn't, and didn't. We wiped on ICC trash.
On our second attempt on the trash there was another large over pull and we wiped a second time.
A third attempt. Remember that there are traps set in this area that unleash extra nasty mini-bosses. We had two rogues who could detect and disarm those traps. They said they only found one trap, which was odd because there can be as many as four or five. We engaged the trash mobs again, and were finally starting to put it together, bringing down one group of mobs and just about finishing up another group when traps started popping. A total of four mini-bosses spawned from the traps - really, really, nasty mobs - and we wiped a third time. That was probably a game bug, since we had two rogues swearing they'd detected no other traps, but one of the PUG rogues felt dissed or something and left the raid. Things weren't going very well.
On our fourth attempt we managed to clear the trash and the now roaming mini-bosses and finally arrived at the first boss, Lord Marrowgar. We now even had a full 25 raiders, with five healers and three tanks. Wild made some healing suggestions in raid chat, but Lady Hunter didn't see it. The main tank was anxious to get moving again, and sent out a raid check. I didn't even have a chance to click yes or no. "Inc" was announced in raid chat ("inc" meaning "Incoming" meaning the tank was engaging Marrowgar). "What a sec," Lady Hunter called out. That's when we remembered that the main tank wasn't in vent and couldn't hear us. The healers had seen Wild's suggestion, so I think we all just went with the flow. I missed making an assignment for the third tank, though, since we don't use three tanks in the FS 25 man. Wild found himself frantically trying to heal two tanks. It didn't much matter. A lot of raiders were out of position and a quarter of them at least were surprised that we had started, and we wiped rather ignominiously.
We battled Marrowgar four more times. There were moments when things went well, but there were just too many players with varying experiences and different levels of gear. The place was buggy, too, something that more and more players are complaining about, but even if the night were bug free we'd have had troubles. Wild never settled in, and we never really properly sorted out the healing assignments. The DPS had trouble bringing down Spiked raiders, and when those spiked raiders were healers, who can't heal when spiked, tanks died. Every player in the raid had at least some experience with Marrowgar before, but the evening felt like we were all just now learning the fight, without the anticipation of getting a first kill, because we'd all already done that before.
We did not bring down Marrowgar. The good news for some was that since we didn't kill any bosses, nobody was locked to the raid and they could get into another ICC25 if they got the opportunity. But our raid was done.
It's just another reminder how perilous a PUG raid can be, even one that starts with a good core of raiders. Wild sees ICC25 PUG raids forming all the time and asking for raiders in trade chat. I can only guess at how they do in ICC, but many, if not most, probably don't get very far.
And to think just two weeks ago Wild was part of an ICC25 raid that downed seven bosses in a single night.
One extra bit of FS guild news: with the demise of the ICC 25 raid, due to "a number of recent departures of formerly dedicated raiders, coupled with a generally diminished guild-wide enthusiasm to actively participate in larger raid content" the guild is considering starting a third ICC 10 group. Volunteers were solicited to start and run one. I don't see that happening, given our past inability to maintain three ten man groups. I hope it works out, though, but in any event Wild will be staying with the MM ICC10 man group.
We're headed off to the RV park Friday morning and won't be back until Sunday. Ya'll have a great weekend!
Philly picked up a pair of bracers and a new belt from the Auction House Thursday afternoon which will help with her DPS and healing specs. Later, she logged on around 6pm, determined to get in a couple of heroics while the Mrs was out with the girls.
Ok, remember what Wild said about the death of the ICC 25 raids? Well ...
Lady Hunter was in game and immediately asked if Wild could come to ICC 25. Hmm, the Mrs wouldn't be gone THAT long, and Thursday wasn't a raid night anymore. Plus, MM doesn't have an ICC 25 raid group, or any raid group doing any 25s that I was aware of. Philly could see that there weren't many MM guildies in game.
However, if there is one thing Lady Hunter can do, its get people to come to her raids. I told her I couldn't be sure I could stay for the whole run, but if there was going to be an ICC25 raid Wild wanted in on it.
By around 6:30pm we had 13 MM guildies and 2 FS guildies in the raid. Lady Hunter then started filling the raid with friends and friends of friends and out and out PUGs. At 6:55pm we were at 21 raiders, but then Lady Hunter disappeared for awhile on RL issues.
At 7:15pm Lady Hunter was back and we got started on the trash mobs with 23 raiders. Except - most of the raid didn't know we got started. Wild didn't know we got started. The main tank just opened up on the trash. No raid check, no raid warning, no healer assignments, nothing at all. We scrambled, and on some pretty easy trash three raiders died before we brought them down. The tank moved on to the next group of mobs, not waiting for rezzes. The left side chamber was pulled, but something went wrong and the center group of mobs also came as well. An established raid that knew how to handle such things probably could have survived the double group pull. Our pasted together group couldn't, and didn't. We wiped on ICC trash.
On our second attempt on the trash there was another large over pull and we wiped a second time.
A third attempt. Remember that there are traps set in this area that unleash extra nasty mini-bosses. We had two rogues who could detect and disarm those traps. They said they only found one trap, which was odd because there can be as many as four or five. We engaged the trash mobs again, and were finally starting to put it together, bringing down one group of mobs and just about finishing up another group when traps started popping. A total of four mini-bosses spawned from the traps - really, really, nasty mobs - and we wiped a third time. That was probably a game bug, since we had two rogues swearing they'd detected no other traps, but one of the PUG rogues felt dissed or something and left the raid. Things weren't going very well.
On our fourth attempt we managed to clear the trash and the now roaming mini-bosses and finally arrived at the first boss, Lord Marrowgar. We now even had a full 25 raiders, with five healers and three tanks. Wild made some healing suggestions in raid chat, but Lady Hunter didn't see it. The main tank was anxious to get moving again, and sent out a raid check. I didn't even have a chance to click yes or no. "Inc" was announced in raid chat ("inc" meaning "Incoming" meaning the tank was engaging Marrowgar). "What a sec," Lady Hunter called out. That's when we remembered that the main tank wasn't in vent and couldn't hear us. The healers had seen Wild's suggestion, so I think we all just went with the flow. I missed making an assignment for the third tank, though, since we don't use three tanks in the FS 25 man. Wild found himself frantically trying to heal two tanks. It didn't much matter. A lot of raiders were out of position and a quarter of them at least were surprised that we had started, and we wiped rather ignominiously.
We battled Marrowgar four more times. There were moments when things went well, but there were just too many players with varying experiences and different levels of gear. The place was buggy, too, something that more and more players are complaining about, but even if the night were bug free we'd have had troubles. Wild never settled in, and we never really properly sorted out the healing assignments. The DPS had trouble bringing down Spiked raiders, and when those spiked raiders were healers, who can't heal when spiked, tanks died. Every player in the raid had at least some experience with Marrowgar before, but the evening felt like we were all just now learning the fight, without the anticipation of getting a first kill, because we'd all already done that before.
We did not bring down Marrowgar. The good news for some was that since we didn't kill any bosses, nobody was locked to the raid and they could get into another ICC25 if they got the opportunity. But our raid was done.
It's just another reminder how perilous a PUG raid can be, even one that starts with a good core of raiders. Wild sees ICC25 PUG raids forming all the time and asking for raiders in trade chat. I can only guess at how they do in ICC, but many, if not most, probably don't get very far.
And to think just two weeks ago Wild was part of an ICC25 raid that downed seven bosses in a single night.
One extra bit of FS guild news: with the demise of the ICC 25 raid, due to "a number of recent departures of formerly dedicated raiders, coupled with a generally diminished guild-wide enthusiasm to actively participate in larger raid content" the guild is considering starting a third ICC 10 group. Volunteers were solicited to start and run one. I don't see that happening, given our past inability to maintain three ten man groups. I hope it works out, though, but in any event Wild will be staying with the MM ICC10 man group.
We're headed off to the RV park Friday morning and won't be back until Sunday. Ya'll have a great weekend!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday (11 May) - Icecrown Citadel 25 is no More
Tuesday (11 May) - Icecrown Citadel 25 is no More
The FS ICC25 raid began Tuesday morning with 16 guildies signed up. When Wild logged in at 5:50pm Tuesday evening that number had actually fallen, to 15 sign ups. At 6pm, the raid start time, there were nine guildies in game.
It became official a few minutes later. Guild leadership posted the following on the guild message of the day: "Due to lack of participation, 25 man raiding is currently suspended." Suspended, not just for this night, but for the foreseeable future. FS is not the only guild having issues. Nearly every raiding guild is looking for raiders, and are having trouble filling 25 man raids other than quick shots like VoA or the weekly frost raids. The specter of the xpac, Cataclysm, has players looking toward what is coming down the road, and there is growing lethargy about ICC25.
Fortunately for Wild, ICC10 man is still alive and well. And with the demise of the FS ICC25, Wild's Tuesday and Wednesday nights are now clear to run ICC10. In the MM guild, ICC10 is flourishing. In addition to visitor Wild, there were 17 MM guildies in game wanting to do ICC10. They are considering starting back up a second group. MM has no ICC25 man raid, and currently has no plans for one, so they face the same issues on that front as FS.
Our raid leader, Bd, was in game around 6:15pm. Invites went out, and by 6:30pm we were on our way. I feel I need to point out that Wild is the most experienced ICC raider in the group. Even Bd, a very well geared and experienced tank with two other level 80 alts, defeated the 4th boss in ICC, Saurfang, for the first time last week. Some of these raiders had never seen the first boss in ICC until last week. Wild is loving this group. ICC is new and fresh for them, and that excitement is contagious.
We started with three healers with Wild as the main tank healer. We had a paladin healer tonight who would handle off tank healing, and our priesty was assigned raid healing. We plowed through the trash quickly enough, and then engaged Lord Marrowgar. Wild remembers that when he first started doing ICC25, we wiped again and again before we finally could kill him consistently. Last week in ICC10 we had surprised ourselves by killing Marrowgar on our first attempt. Was that just a fluke? No. On this night Marrowgar again went down on our first try after a long, well fought battle, and all ten of us were still standing.
Wild decided to monitor his boss healing in addition to overall healing this time, as I was interested in seeing what that looked like as a tank healer (Wild generally was a raid healer in ICC25). Wild led in healing on Marrowgar with 4392 hps.
Next in line was Lady Deathwhisper. Last week several raiders died on this fight, but we still took her down on our first try. This week, the Lady fell and we had no deaths at all. We were rockin'. Wild again led in healing with 3099 hps.
The third encounter was the Gunship, and last week we had trouble getting a good feel for the fight, wiping several times before finally winning. We felt we were ready for it this time. If you recall from last week, this is a ship battle in which we have to storm the enemy ship several times. Since these are airships, rocketpacks are used to launch raiders to the other ship, and then launch back to the home ship. Half the raid rockets to the enemy ship, while the other half stays behind to defend our own ship. Wild is the healer for the group that rockets to the other ship, but Wild stays behind, standing on the home ship railing so that I can heal the raiders on both ships. That only works if the raiders on the enemy ship stay close to the enemy ship rail - stray too far, and Wild can't heal them.
We had all kinds of problems with the attacks on the enemy ship. On our first attempt the encounter bugged and the tank found himself unable to move, and out of range of Wild's healing. There were other issues as well, and we cut the attempt short, intentionally wiping to get a fresh start.
We were almost unable to even start the second attempt. The gunship battle would not reset, and we all stayed in combat, even though there was no one on the ship to fight. We all trooped off the ship, but that didn't help. Then we noticed a lone trash mob that had no business being there, since we had killed the mobs in that spot to get to the ship. We shrugged, and killed the mob. That reset the gunship, and we were able to start again. Weird.
However, we wiped again on our second attempt. The tank was having a hard time with the rocketpack, and our moonkin druid was having UI problems. Twice the tank died trying to rocket back to the home ship from the enemy ship. Wild was going crazy, trying to understand how he could keep dying despite stacking every heal I had on him. My fault, my fault! the tank would say. Wild even launched over to the enemy ship and rezzed him the first time. But I didn't have a rez available the second time and we wiped again.
The third attempt didn't start any better. The moonkin locked up while on the enemy ship and died there. Short one raider, we sent one of our defending raiders over with the storming group on the next run. He forgot to stay near the rail, and Wild was busy saving the off tank and couldn't jump over. That raider died on the enemy ship as well. Wild followed the tank to the enemy ship on the next attack, intending to battle rez the moonkin so he could battle rez the other DPSer that had died. But Wild's battle rez wouldn't work on the moonkin, who was apparently still bugged, and so I rezzed the other DPSer.
Back on the home ship the defender's had lost another raider and we started to get behind. Wild was throwing heals every which way. We made a final assault on the enemy ship, succeeded without losing anyone, but in the process Wild got himself killed. Fortunately, Wild was soulstoned and I was able to use that to rez and get back into the fight. The off tank died. We were down to six raiders, but we could focus on the one ship now and managed to clear the decks of bad guys. Finally, we had won. That was a lot of activity, even though the level of total damage being dealt was less than in the earlier two boss fights. Wild led with 49% of the healing at 2583 hps.
Despite the three attempts needed to down the Gunship, we arrived at the fourth boss, Saurfang, with a full hour left of our evening. Wild even picked up a +crit trinket that he'll be able to use in moonkin spec. So we were feeling pretty good about our chances against this boss. Until we remembered that last week it took us nine tries before Saurfang died. Let's try to do better this time.
There's better, and then there's better. On our first attempt we got Saurfang to 15% before we wiped. And we only wiped because just when we thought we had him (he was at 25% and going down fast) Saurfang gleefully cast Mark of the Fallen Champion on Wild. We were using only two healers because it takes a lot of DPS to bring that bad boy down. The Mark does massive, continuous damage, and if the Marked target dies Saurfang gets a big heal. Wild not only had to heal the main tank, I had to heal myself as well. The other healer, the pally, had to keep heals on the off tank and also help Wild heal himself. This is not just normal healing, this is crazy fast and constant healing. It was amazing we held on as long as we did, but Wild finally fell.
We rezzed, buffed back up, and tweaked strategies, while our mischevious moonkin dropped some toys called foam swords. Several raiders started sword fighting and the rest of us were cheering them on. We were laughing and clapping and just having fun. Someone eventually ventured to ask, are we waiting for something? A slightly sheepish raid leader, who was among those wielding a foam sword, admitted that no, everyone was ready. There are few raids where one can just stop in the middle of a run and have some innocent fun for no other reason than - it was fun!
On our second attempt we killed Saurfang. The pally outhealed Wild on that one, getting 3436 hps and picking up 48.6% of the healing. Wild got to 3015 hps and 43.9%. Great job by the pally!
Our priest had gotten one modest drop earlier in the evening. She had also passed on that +crit trinket earlier so that Wild could get it. Surfang dropped cloth bracers that were an upgrade for Wild, one of the few he could use in ICC10. The priest rolled on it, and then said that since she had already won an item she would pass to anyone else that wanted it. It was a large upgrade for her, though, and we knew how badly she wanted it. After teasing her with some fake rolls against her, she won it.
We all stood around for a minute after the loot was distributed. The raid leader finally said, "Well, this is as far as I've ever been in ICC, and frankly I haven't looked at the strats for what comes next. Anybody even know what boss we should going after now?" When we sorted out who knew what, Wild and the off tank warrior were the only two who had ever been beyond this point. The other eight were entering entirely uncharted waters.
Wild said that Festergut would be our next target, but that there was an awful lot of trash mobs between us and him. Luckily the off tank was familiar with the trash mobs from a tanking perspective and so became our guide for our next steps. An excited group of raiders passed through the portal that took us out of the Lower Spire wing we had just defeated, and into the Plagueworks, home of Festergut, Rotface, and crazy Professor Putricide.
We handled the trash mobs cautiously, learning as we went, but managed that well. The raid group's first encounter with Stinky and Precious was, well, precious! These are mini-bosses that use a massive AoE called Decimate that drops every raider down to single digit health. The two fights take a serious toll on the healers, and we went back to three healers for those fights. The raid leader was so impressed with the healing on the Stinky fight he posted the results in raid chat:
Stinky Healing:
#1: Wild, 6652 hps
#2: priest, 5663 hps
#3: pally, 5028 hps
Now that is some heavy healing. And no one died.
Oh, and here is what Stinky looks like:
The excitement level went up another magnitude when Festergut came into view. Said the raid leader: "Man oh man, that is one UGLY SOB." Festergut let us know what he thought of us by snorting snot from his nose and then farting in our direction.
We were already half an hour past our 9pm end time, but we all wanted to take one shot at Festergut. Wild and the off tank laid out the strategy, and we gave it a try. Like many first attempts, the strategy may make sense when you hear it, but until you see the fight in action it doesn't really sink in. Everybody knew to run to the spores when they spawn, and in ten man there are only two of them. Wild had his usual bad luck and was one of those who got spored the first time they spawned. Wild has made some bad decisions in ICC25 when he'd been first to get spored, but Wild was learning from his mistakes and it paid off now. Wild realized that there was no spore in the center where the tank, off tank, and melee were at work of Festergut. Wild rushed to the center so that they would get the benefit of the spore debuff. The rest of the raid was confused, though, and few of them managed to get to the other spore out on the edge of the room. Without the debuff, they all died. And we wiped.
In was an incredible evening, though, and my prediction is that Festergut will fall on Wednesday night, and maybe even Rotface. Sadly, Wild won't be there. I have a real life commitment that evening and won't be home. But I'll certainly get the details from Bd on Thursday.
And now, I have a honey do to accomplish - empty our upstairs walk-in closet so that the Mrs can paint it. Will she never finish that can of paint?! If she runs out of walls before she runs out of paint the cats may be next.
The FS ICC25 raid began Tuesday morning with 16 guildies signed up. When Wild logged in at 5:50pm Tuesday evening that number had actually fallen, to 15 sign ups. At 6pm, the raid start time, there were nine guildies in game.
It became official a few minutes later. Guild leadership posted the following on the guild message of the day: "Due to lack of participation, 25 man raiding is currently suspended." Suspended, not just for this night, but for the foreseeable future. FS is not the only guild having issues. Nearly every raiding guild is looking for raiders, and are having trouble filling 25 man raids other than quick shots like VoA or the weekly frost raids. The specter of the xpac, Cataclysm, has players looking toward what is coming down the road, and there is growing lethargy about ICC25.
Fortunately for Wild, ICC10 man is still alive and well. And with the demise of the FS ICC25, Wild's Tuesday and Wednesday nights are now clear to run ICC10. In the MM guild, ICC10 is flourishing. In addition to visitor Wild, there were 17 MM guildies in game wanting to do ICC10. They are considering starting back up a second group. MM has no ICC25 man raid, and currently has no plans for one, so they face the same issues on that front as FS.
Our raid leader, Bd, was in game around 6:15pm. Invites went out, and by 6:30pm we were on our way. I feel I need to point out that Wild is the most experienced ICC raider in the group. Even Bd, a very well geared and experienced tank with two other level 80 alts, defeated the 4th boss in ICC, Saurfang, for the first time last week. Some of these raiders had never seen the first boss in ICC until last week. Wild is loving this group. ICC is new and fresh for them, and that excitement is contagious.
We started with three healers with Wild as the main tank healer. We had a paladin healer tonight who would handle off tank healing, and our priesty was assigned raid healing. We plowed through the trash quickly enough, and then engaged Lord Marrowgar. Wild remembers that when he first started doing ICC25, we wiped again and again before we finally could kill him consistently. Last week in ICC10 we had surprised ourselves by killing Marrowgar on our first attempt. Was that just a fluke? No. On this night Marrowgar again went down on our first try after a long, well fought battle, and all ten of us were still standing.
Wild decided to monitor his boss healing in addition to overall healing this time, as I was interested in seeing what that looked like as a tank healer (Wild generally was a raid healer in ICC25). Wild led in healing on Marrowgar with 4392 hps.
Next in line was Lady Deathwhisper. Last week several raiders died on this fight, but we still took her down on our first try. This week, the Lady fell and we had no deaths at all. We were rockin'. Wild again led in healing with 3099 hps.
The third encounter was the Gunship, and last week we had trouble getting a good feel for the fight, wiping several times before finally winning. We felt we were ready for it this time. If you recall from last week, this is a ship battle in which we have to storm the enemy ship several times. Since these are airships, rocketpacks are used to launch raiders to the other ship, and then launch back to the home ship. Half the raid rockets to the enemy ship, while the other half stays behind to defend our own ship. Wild is the healer for the group that rockets to the other ship, but Wild stays behind, standing on the home ship railing so that I can heal the raiders on both ships. That only works if the raiders on the enemy ship stay close to the enemy ship rail - stray too far, and Wild can't heal them.
We had all kinds of problems with the attacks on the enemy ship. On our first attempt the encounter bugged and the tank found himself unable to move, and out of range of Wild's healing. There were other issues as well, and we cut the attempt short, intentionally wiping to get a fresh start.
We were almost unable to even start the second attempt. The gunship battle would not reset, and we all stayed in combat, even though there was no one on the ship to fight. We all trooped off the ship, but that didn't help. Then we noticed a lone trash mob that had no business being there, since we had killed the mobs in that spot to get to the ship. We shrugged, and killed the mob. That reset the gunship, and we were able to start again. Weird.
However, we wiped again on our second attempt. The tank was having a hard time with the rocketpack, and our moonkin druid was having UI problems. Twice the tank died trying to rocket back to the home ship from the enemy ship. Wild was going crazy, trying to understand how he could keep dying despite stacking every heal I had on him. My fault, my fault! the tank would say. Wild even launched over to the enemy ship and rezzed him the first time. But I didn't have a rez available the second time and we wiped again.
The third attempt didn't start any better. The moonkin locked up while on the enemy ship and died there. Short one raider, we sent one of our defending raiders over with the storming group on the next run. He forgot to stay near the rail, and Wild was busy saving the off tank and couldn't jump over. That raider died on the enemy ship as well. Wild followed the tank to the enemy ship on the next attack, intending to battle rez the moonkin so he could battle rez the other DPSer that had died. But Wild's battle rez wouldn't work on the moonkin, who was apparently still bugged, and so I rezzed the other DPSer.
Back on the home ship the defender's had lost another raider and we started to get behind. Wild was throwing heals every which way. We made a final assault on the enemy ship, succeeded without losing anyone, but in the process Wild got himself killed. Fortunately, Wild was soulstoned and I was able to use that to rez and get back into the fight. The off tank died. We were down to six raiders, but we could focus on the one ship now and managed to clear the decks of bad guys. Finally, we had won. That was a lot of activity, even though the level of total damage being dealt was less than in the earlier two boss fights. Wild led with 49% of the healing at 2583 hps.
Despite the three attempts needed to down the Gunship, we arrived at the fourth boss, Saurfang, with a full hour left of our evening. Wild even picked up a +crit trinket that he'll be able to use in moonkin spec. So we were feeling pretty good about our chances against this boss. Until we remembered that last week it took us nine tries before Saurfang died. Let's try to do better this time.
There's better, and then there's better. On our first attempt we got Saurfang to 15% before we wiped. And we only wiped because just when we thought we had him (he was at 25% and going down fast) Saurfang gleefully cast Mark of the Fallen Champion on Wild. We were using only two healers because it takes a lot of DPS to bring that bad boy down. The Mark does massive, continuous damage, and if the Marked target dies Saurfang gets a big heal. Wild not only had to heal the main tank, I had to heal myself as well. The other healer, the pally, had to keep heals on the off tank and also help Wild heal himself. This is not just normal healing, this is crazy fast and constant healing. It was amazing we held on as long as we did, but Wild finally fell.
We rezzed, buffed back up, and tweaked strategies, while our mischevious moonkin dropped some toys called foam swords. Several raiders started sword fighting and the rest of us were cheering them on. We were laughing and clapping and just having fun. Someone eventually ventured to ask, are we waiting for something? A slightly sheepish raid leader, who was among those wielding a foam sword, admitted that no, everyone was ready. There are few raids where one can just stop in the middle of a run and have some innocent fun for no other reason than - it was fun!
On our second attempt we killed Saurfang. The pally outhealed Wild on that one, getting 3436 hps and picking up 48.6% of the healing. Wild got to 3015 hps and 43.9%. Great job by the pally!
Our priest had gotten one modest drop earlier in the evening. She had also passed on that +crit trinket earlier so that Wild could get it. Surfang dropped cloth bracers that were an upgrade for Wild, one of the few he could use in ICC10. The priest rolled on it, and then said that since she had already won an item she would pass to anyone else that wanted it. It was a large upgrade for her, though, and we knew how badly she wanted it. After teasing her with some fake rolls against her, she won it.
We all stood around for a minute after the loot was distributed. The raid leader finally said, "Well, this is as far as I've ever been in ICC, and frankly I haven't looked at the strats for what comes next. Anybody even know what boss we should going after now?" When we sorted out who knew what, Wild and the off tank warrior were the only two who had ever been beyond this point. The other eight were entering entirely uncharted waters.
Wild said that Festergut would be our next target, but that there was an awful lot of trash mobs between us and him. Luckily the off tank was familiar with the trash mobs from a tanking perspective and so became our guide for our next steps. An excited group of raiders passed through the portal that took us out of the Lower Spire wing we had just defeated, and into the Plagueworks, home of Festergut, Rotface, and crazy Professor Putricide.
We handled the trash mobs cautiously, learning as we went, but managed that well. The raid group's first encounter with Stinky and Precious was, well, precious! These are mini-bosses that use a massive AoE called Decimate that drops every raider down to single digit health. The two fights take a serious toll on the healers, and we went back to three healers for those fights. The raid leader was so impressed with the healing on the Stinky fight he posted the results in raid chat:
Stinky Healing:
#1: Wild, 6652 hps
#2: priest, 5663 hps
#3: pally, 5028 hps
Now that is some heavy healing. And no one died.
Oh, and here is what Stinky looks like:
The excitement level went up another magnitude when Festergut came into view. Said the raid leader: "Man oh man, that is one UGLY SOB." Festergut let us know what he thought of us by snorting snot from his nose and then farting in our direction.We were already half an hour past our 9pm end time, but we all wanted to take one shot at Festergut. Wild and the off tank laid out the strategy, and we gave it a try. Like many first attempts, the strategy may make sense when you hear it, but until you see the fight in action it doesn't really sink in. Everybody knew to run to the spores when they spawn, and in ten man there are only two of them. Wild had his usual bad luck and was one of those who got spored the first time they spawned. Wild has made some bad decisions in ICC25 when he'd been first to get spored, but Wild was learning from his mistakes and it paid off now. Wild realized that there was no spore in the center where the tank, off tank, and melee were at work of Festergut. Wild rushed to the center so that they would get the benefit of the spore debuff. The rest of the raid was confused, though, and few of them managed to get to the other spore out on the edge of the room. Without the debuff, they all died. And we wiped.
In was an incredible evening, though, and my prediction is that Festergut will fall on Wednesday night, and maybe even Rotface. Sadly, Wild won't be there. I have a real life commitment that evening and won't be home. But I'll certainly get the details from Bd on Thursday.
And now, I have a honey do to accomplish - empty our upstairs walk-in closet so that the Mrs can paint it. Will she never finish that can of paint?! If she runs out of walls before she runs out of paint the cats may be next.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday (10 May) - No, Not Forge of Souls
Monday (10 May) - No, Not Forge of Souls
First of all, the generator on our RV went out on us on Monday and we spent a good part of the day getting to and from the RV place. It's a long drive but they are very good, and we got it back the same day.
In and around that Philly got in a couple of WGs (one win) and a couple of random battlegrounds (both embarrassing losses). Philly is starting to get BG-aphobia. Every time she enters a random BG on her own the horde gets obliterated. Ah well, Philly still gets honor points.
Philly had yet to do her daily heroic dungeon, and Monday night she was back in game to get at least that done. Frankly, she wasn't all that excited about her chances to win something worthwhile in heroics with it's ilevel 200 gear, and thought she might force the issue and get in on a normal mode Forge of Souls dungeon, which is the first of three ICC 5 man dungeons Philly needs to do. The normal mode offers upgraded gear at ilevel 219. I went so far as to sign her up in Dungeon Finder for that specific run.
Time went by and the run didn't pop up. Bd came in game and asked if anyone wanted to do a heroic - Bd is our ICC10 main tank and would make quick work of a heroic, so Philly switched gears and volunteered. Philly unchecked FoS on dungeon finder. We added a mage and a death knight from the MM guild to our group, but we didn't have anyone else available, so we let the Dungeon Finder pick our healer.
We quickly got our random dungeon - Forge of Souls. Heroic mode. What are the odds of FoS being the random heroic? However, that is the second time this has happened to me (ie, randomly getting a dungeon I'd selected, and then de-selected), once to Wild, and now to Philly. Very strange. FoS drops i232 gear and Philly might be out of her element in this dungeon, which is much more difficult than the run of the mill heroics Philly had been doing. The healer we got, a priest, was a really good sport. The only non-guildie in the group, she was a superb healer and had to wonder what she was doing in a group like this. She stayed because Bd was such a great tank, that's my guess, because us three DPSers weren't packing much wallop in there. After wading - slowly - through a considerable number of trash mobs, we made it to the first boss, Bronjahm. Philly, in shadow form, had to remember to run away when the boss channels me, and to stay close during phase 2 when a whirlwind surrounds the boss and straying into it was near certain death. The healer, having seen our DPS, suggested that she go shadow as well for the extras DPS, and heal when needed. "Otherwise, this is going to take us all night," were her exact words. Then we had our mage go afk on us do to a family thing, and we ended up tackling Bronjahm with just four of us.
Yes, it did take a long time. Both the DK and then, very late in the fight, Philly, died. Bd and the healer finished him off by themselves. He dropped a very nice axe. Philly can't use axes.
We got our mage back and worked our way to the second and final boss, Devourer of Souls. I started getting the giggles as Philly was running around, trying to keep all her spells working while avoiding the purple pools of death, staying out of reach of unkillable mobs that spawn all over the place, and remembering NOT to attack the boss when he did his mirror thing and reflected damage dealt to another player. The mage died this time, too, but the healer did a remarkable job and kept the rest of us alive. There were two boss drops this time, a coveted sword (that Philly can't use) and a plate pair of boots that Philly can't wear.
But Philly had completed her first ICC 5 man heroic, and that is one heck of an accomplishment. She'd also gotten her first dungeon run with her new guild, another nice first. Half jokingly, Philly suggested "Dare we try Pit of Saron?" PoS is the 2nd ICC 5 man. The mage had to leave, however, and the priest healer just laughed and said, "I'm actually tempted, you guys are fun, but I don't think so." Then she thought about the 3rd ICC 5 man that would follow PoS, and added with another laugh (which might have covered up a shudder), "And definitely NOT HoR. No way." HoR, or Halls of Reflection, is not a battle even Philly would recommend we try, as the first encounter is truly, truly nasty.
The Tuesday maintenance this morning was limited to only certain servers, and Silvermoon was not one of them. Things were very quiet, though, as most players likely assumed the server would be down and didn't even try to login. Wild was in game for a bit to see what the new frost weekly was (Sartherion in Obsidium Sanctum). Wild also checked on the progress of sign ups for the Tuesday night ICC25. We have 16 signed up, far too few, and that is not looking good. The MM guild ICC10 still plans to run as well, and that may be where Wild ends up Tuesday night.
First of all, the generator on our RV went out on us on Monday and we spent a good part of the day getting to and from the RV place. It's a long drive but they are very good, and we got it back the same day.
In and around that Philly got in a couple of WGs (one win) and a couple of random battlegrounds (both embarrassing losses). Philly is starting to get BG-aphobia. Every time she enters a random BG on her own the horde gets obliterated. Ah well, Philly still gets honor points.
Philly had yet to do her daily heroic dungeon, and Monday night she was back in game to get at least that done. Frankly, she wasn't all that excited about her chances to win something worthwhile in heroics with it's ilevel 200 gear, and thought she might force the issue and get in on a normal mode Forge of Souls dungeon, which is the first of three ICC 5 man dungeons Philly needs to do. The normal mode offers upgraded gear at ilevel 219. I went so far as to sign her up in Dungeon Finder for that specific run.
Time went by and the run didn't pop up. Bd came in game and asked if anyone wanted to do a heroic - Bd is our ICC10 main tank and would make quick work of a heroic, so Philly switched gears and volunteered. Philly unchecked FoS on dungeon finder. We added a mage and a death knight from the MM guild to our group, but we didn't have anyone else available, so we let the Dungeon Finder pick our healer.
We quickly got our random dungeon - Forge of Souls. Heroic mode. What are the odds of FoS being the random heroic? However, that is the second time this has happened to me (ie, randomly getting a dungeon I'd selected, and then de-selected), once to Wild, and now to Philly. Very strange. FoS drops i232 gear and Philly might be out of her element in this dungeon, which is much more difficult than the run of the mill heroics Philly had been doing. The healer we got, a priest, was a really good sport. The only non-guildie in the group, she was a superb healer and had to wonder what she was doing in a group like this. She stayed because Bd was such a great tank, that's my guess, because us three DPSers weren't packing much wallop in there. After wading - slowly - through a considerable number of trash mobs, we made it to the first boss, Bronjahm. Philly, in shadow form, had to remember to run away when the boss channels me, and to stay close during phase 2 when a whirlwind surrounds the boss and straying into it was near certain death. The healer, having seen our DPS, suggested that she go shadow as well for the extras DPS, and heal when needed. "Otherwise, this is going to take us all night," were her exact words. Then we had our mage go afk on us do to a family thing, and we ended up tackling Bronjahm with just four of us.
Yes, it did take a long time. Both the DK and then, very late in the fight, Philly, died. Bd and the healer finished him off by themselves. He dropped a very nice axe. Philly can't use axes.
We got our mage back and worked our way to the second and final boss, Devourer of Souls. I started getting the giggles as Philly was running around, trying to keep all her spells working while avoiding the purple pools of death, staying out of reach of unkillable mobs that spawn all over the place, and remembering NOT to attack the boss when he did his mirror thing and reflected damage dealt to another player. The mage died this time, too, but the healer did a remarkable job and kept the rest of us alive. There were two boss drops this time, a coveted sword (that Philly can't use) and a plate pair of boots that Philly can't wear.
But Philly had completed her first ICC 5 man heroic, and that is one heck of an accomplishment. She'd also gotten her first dungeon run with her new guild, another nice first. Half jokingly, Philly suggested "Dare we try Pit of Saron?" PoS is the 2nd ICC 5 man. The mage had to leave, however, and the priest healer just laughed and said, "I'm actually tempted, you guys are fun, but I don't think so." Then she thought about the 3rd ICC 5 man that would follow PoS, and added with another laugh (which might have covered up a shudder), "And definitely NOT HoR. No way." HoR, or Halls of Reflection, is not a battle even Philly would recommend we try, as the first encounter is truly, truly nasty.
The Tuesday maintenance this morning was limited to only certain servers, and Silvermoon was not one of them. Things were very quiet, though, as most players likely assumed the server would be down and didn't even try to login. Wild was in game for a bit to see what the new frost weekly was (Sartherion in Obsidium Sanctum). Wild also checked on the progress of sign ups for the Tuesday night ICC25. We have 16 signed up, far too few, and that is not looking good. The MM guild ICC10 still plans to run as well, and that may be where Wild ends up Tuesday night.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Weekend 2 (9 May) - Show me the Gold
Weekend 2 (9 May) - Show me the Gold
Sometime on Sunday Sis popped in game to catch a Wintergrasp battle. She saw that Happy was in game, knew he'd be busy on the Auction House, and so sent him a simple message - "15 minutes." That was shorthand for, "get off the AH so Philly can come run WG with me." Happy didn't want to leave the AH. The buying was furious, and the buyers were plain crazy.
Let's start with large brilliant shards. They sell for around 5-6g usually, in modest but not large numbers. This weekend there was an unusually large demand for them, though, and the price had pushed upward to close to 10g each. One of the AH hounds decided to capture the market, and dropped about 40 shards on the AH at 9g88s. That was the lowest price, so the AH hound figured he'd rake in the gold due to the spike in demand. So Happy dropped 10 shards on the AH at 9g87s, just to get a little of that action, and moved on to check his other items. A minute or so later Happy's shards started getting bought. All of them. Curious, Happy checked on who the buyer was. It was the AH hound, buying up my shards so that he'd still have the lowest price. Happy put ten more up, under bidding him by that one slim silver. He bought them all again. Let me restate something - large brilliant shards sell for under 6g most of the time, and Happy can make a 2g profit on them even at that price. It was crazy, ie stupid, for this AH hound to buy up stock at a price only 1 silver different than what he was selling them for. He loses money every time he does that. Happy put another 10 shards up. He bought them again. Happy is now making 4g for every one this guy buys. Another 10 shards. He buys them again. Maybe he thinks Happy will run out of shards. Happy has a LOT of shards. Another ten shards. He finally gave up. On Monday morning he still had more than thirty shards for sale at 9g88s, but the prices on the AH come down to a more reasonable 6g. Happy posted ten shards for 5g98s, which will net a nice profit, while the AH hound's shards will lay around until they expire. Happy loves his work.
Another example is small radiant shards. Few people farm these shards as it is inconvenient, and turning a profit is chancey. There really is only one reason for buying these shards, and that's by enchanters who have the rare recipe for [Fiery Weapon], which uses these shards. Pvp twinks like this enchant because it can be cast on low level weapons, and since it is a relatively rare recipe to have, the enchant can be sold for a good profit. The outcome of all that is that the price of small radiant shards can vary wildly. Happy keeps an eye of them and buys them up when there is price dumping down to around 1g each. Then Happy waits for a spike in demand and sells them for 2-3g each, depending on how hot the market is. On Friday Happy got an in game mail from an enchanter, who basically said he'd been buying up all Happy's small radiant shards and wanted to cut out the AH all together. He wanted to buy Happy's shards directly, COD through the mail. Happy was a little suspicious, but selling that way avoids the cut the AH takes on every sale, so Happy was willing to give that a try. What the enchanter didn't seem to realize was that all his prior buying had driven up the price, temporarily of course, to almost 7g each. So Happy has now sold thirty shards to him at 6g each (so far), even though the price on the AH has dropped back down to around 2g. I don't think he even looks at the AH price anymore. Wild also has the fiery weapon recipe. Happy checked the selling price, and this enchanter was selling them at 40-50 gold each. Happy had an idea. He got Wild to make a few fiery weapon enchants, and asked another toon (other than Happy) to post them at 40g. So far one has sold, which more than paid for the mats to make them and still netted a nice profit. Happy never lets an opportunity go by.
Then there was this other other AH player . . . shut up, Happy.
And yes, Happy did give up the reins so that Philly could get her Wintergrasp battle.
Philly was in and out of game all weekend, getting in WGs and BGs to build up her honor points. She finally decided, on the advice of Sis, to go after the i264/i245 gear instead of buying into the i232 set and getting the set bonuses. So Sunday night Philly replaced her i200 necklace with an i264 one.
The next two weeks are going to be lean ones for Wild family raiding. I have an evening engagement on Wednesday and will miss that raid. I will also not be making the Friday pvp night as we are taking the RV out for the weekend. We are working up to our big RV trip coming in August. The following week I will be out of town 18-20 May (visiting friends in Palm Springs) and will miss both raid nights, although I think I'll be back in time for that Friday night.
Oh, and remember all that work we've been doing in the house? I finally got around to putting some pictures together.
We pretty much replaced our 20 year old bedroom set with a headboard/bookcase set. We had misgivings about it when we first set it up, but it's grown on us and we like it.
The garage was completely unfinished, including the open attic which showed the nails coming through from the roofing tiles. We drywalled everything and added a real ceiling with access the attic. My next chore will be to lay additional flooring in the attic.
Still need to take some pics of all that painting and flooring work we did on the family room. I'll get around to it - eventually.
Sometime on Sunday Sis popped in game to catch a Wintergrasp battle. She saw that Happy was in game, knew he'd be busy on the Auction House, and so sent him a simple message - "15 minutes." That was shorthand for, "get off the AH so Philly can come run WG with me." Happy didn't want to leave the AH. The buying was furious, and the buyers were plain crazy.
Let's start with large brilliant shards. They sell for around 5-6g usually, in modest but not large numbers. This weekend there was an unusually large demand for them, though, and the price had pushed upward to close to 10g each. One of the AH hounds decided to capture the market, and dropped about 40 shards on the AH at 9g88s. That was the lowest price, so the AH hound figured he'd rake in the gold due to the spike in demand. So Happy dropped 10 shards on the AH at 9g87s, just to get a little of that action, and moved on to check his other items. A minute or so later Happy's shards started getting bought. All of them. Curious, Happy checked on who the buyer was. It was the AH hound, buying up my shards so that he'd still have the lowest price. Happy put ten more up, under bidding him by that one slim silver. He bought them all again. Let me restate something - large brilliant shards sell for under 6g most of the time, and Happy can make a 2g profit on them even at that price. It was crazy, ie stupid, for this AH hound to buy up stock at a price only 1 silver different than what he was selling them for. He loses money every time he does that. Happy put another 10 shards up. He bought them again. Happy is now making 4g for every one this guy buys. Another 10 shards. He buys them again. Maybe he thinks Happy will run out of shards. Happy has a LOT of shards. Another ten shards. He finally gave up. On Monday morning he still had more than thirty shards for sale at 9g88s, but the prices on the AH come down to a more reasonable 6g. Happy posted ten shards for 5g98s, which will net a nice profit, while the AH hound's shards will lay around until they expire. Happy loves his work.
Another example is small radiant shards. Few people farm these shards as it is inconvenient, and turning a profit is chancey. There really is only one reason for buying these shards, and that's by enchanters who have the rare recipe for [Fiery Weapon], which uses these shards. Pvp twinks like this enchant because it can be cast on low level weapons, and since it is a relatively rare recipe to have, the enchant can be sold for a good profit. The outcome of all that is that the price of small radiant shards can vary wildly. Happy keeps an eye of them and buys them up when there is price dumping down to around 1g each. Then Happy waits for a spike in demand and sells them for 2-3g each, depending on how hot the market is. On Friday Happy got an in game mail from an enchanter, who basically said he'd been buying up all Happy's small radiant shards and wanted to cut out the AH all together. He wanted to buy Happy's shards directly, COD through the mail. Happy was a little suspicious, but selling that way avoids the cut the AH takes on every sale, so Happy was willing to give that a try. What the enchanter didn't seem to realize was that all his prior buying had driven up the price, temporarily of course, to almost 7g each. So Happy has now sold thirty shards to him at 6g each (so far), even though the price on the AH has dropped back down to around 2g. I don't think he even looks at the AH price anymore. Wild also has the fiery weapon recipe. Happy checked the selling price, and this enchanter was selling them at 40-50 gold each. Happy had an idea. He got Wild to make a few fiery weapon enchants, and asked another toon (other than Happy) to post them at 40g. So far one has sold, which more than paid for the mats to make them and still netted a nice profit. Happy never lets an opportunity go by.
Then there was this other other AH player . . . shut up, Happy.
And yes, Happy did give up the reins so that Philly could get her Wintergrasp battle.
Philly was in and out of game all weekend, getting in WGs and BGs to build up her honor points. She finally decided, on the advice of Sis, to go after the i264/i245 gear instead of buying into the i232 set and getting the set bonuses. So Sunday night Philly replaced her i200 necklace with an i264 one.
The next two weeks are going to be lean ones for Wild family raiding. I have an evening engagement on Wednesday and will miss that raid. I will also not be making the Friday pvp night as we are taking the RV out for the weekend. We are working up to our big RV trip coming in August. The following week I will be out of town 18-20 May (visiting friends in Palm Springs) and will miss both raid nights, although I think I'll be back in time for that Friday night.
Oh, and remember all that work we've been doing in the house? I finally got around to putting some pictures together.
We pretty much replaced our 20 year old bedroom set with a headboard/bookcase set. We had misgivings about it when we first set it up, but it's grown on us and we like it.
The old bed (and Sheila)
The new bed (and Jason)
The garage was completely unfinished, including the open attic which showed the nails coming through from the roofing tiles. We drywalled everything and added a real ceiling with access the attic. My next chore will be to lay additional flooring in the attic.
The Unfinished Garage
The Finished Garage
Still need to take some pics of all that painting and flooring work we did on the family room. I'll get around to it - eventually.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Weekend (9 May) - Can you Hear me Now?
Weekend (9 May) - Can you Hear me Now?
The Friday night pvp wrecking crew was missing our "you're already dead you just don't know it yet" warlock, Sis, so DER and Philly had to step it up to keep the pressure against our alliance foes.
Just as we both got logged in we heard about an Alliance raiding party heading for Orgrimmar. It was the alliance version of the For The Horde! achievement run to bring down the Horde leaders of our four main cities - Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon City, and the Undercity.
DER was already in Orgrimmar, while Philly was in Dalaran. Philly raced to a portal and popped into Orgrimmar, then galloped as fast as she could to the Valley of Wisdom where the horde king, Thrall, held court. The alliance had telegraphed their intentions with no attempt at stealth, and it was a Friday night, and Orgrimmar was rockin' with players. The alliance raid stormed into the city, and although I wasn't sure whether they came in through the back gate or the front, they managed to battle their way into Thrall's personal chambers. That's where Philly found the battle, along with DER, and Philly was very gratified to see that the chamber was filled to overflowing with horde players defending their King. Thrall himself must have slaughtered dozens of allies on his own as the allie tanks could not hold him, and the combined might of the King and his defending subjects obliterated the alliance. Philly only got in on the tail end of that, as well as the clean up as alliance raiders tried to rez, and, once they realized the battle was lost, trying to sneak out without being corpse camped. There would be no achievement for the Alliance on this night.
With that success already under our belt, we hit up Wintergrasp, attacking the Fortress, bringing down it's towers and sweeping through the defending alliance almost without pause to take back the fortress. Perhaps the alliance defeat at Orgrimmar had disheartened the alliance defenders in WG.
From there DER and Philly let the random battlegroup finder pick our next area to conquer. But first, we decided to see if we could get our voice chat system working. As Philly had done with Sis, we tinkered with our settings, relogged to ensure the settings took, and tested various setups. Our first success was DER being able to hear Philly, and after some more tinkering, we had voice chat on both ends. It looked like that at last, the Wild family would no longer be able to claim they did not have a working mic.
Or so I thought.
We got our invite to a random battleground, and when the zone in screen appeared . . . well, that's where it hung. It looked like Philly had been disconnected, but it was even worse than that. The computer had crashed. I had to reboot the computer and relog in.
We got everything set up again, and again, when Philly tried to zone in to a battleground, the computer crashed.
Well. I disconnected the mic before rebooting the second time. Strangely, DER could still hear the Warcraft background music coming from my computer even with my mic disconnected. I had to un-enable the voice chat check box in the Sound and Voice settings in order to completely shut it down.
After that I had no further problems zoning into the Eye of Storm and Arathi Basin battlegrounds, as well as one of either the Strand of the Ancients or Isle of Conquest, I get those two confused because I don't see them very often. Or maybe Philly did the Eye before DER rolled in game. It all got kind of fuzzy by the end of the day, but I do know that between Philly's battlegrounds earlier in the day and the bunch DER and Philly did Friday night, Philly did every battleground except Warsong Gulch that day. Philly earned enough honor points to pick up another piece of pvp gear, but it's getting harder to decide what to get. I think she is going to go after the four piece set bonus of her i232 pvp set, but then she is very tempted to buy an i264 piece she covets. Decisions decisions.
The Friday night pvp wrecking crew was missing our "you're already dead you just don't know it yet" warlock, Sis, so DER and Philly had to step it up to keep the pressure against our alliance foes.
Just as we both got logged in we heard about an Alliance raiding party heading for Orgrimmar. It was the alliance version of the For The Horde! achievement run to bring down the Horde leaders of our four main cities - Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon City, and the Undercity.
DER was already in Orgrimmar, while Philly was in Dalaran. Philly raced to a portal and popped into Orgrimmar, then galloped as fast as she could to the Valley of Wisdom where the horde king, Thrall, held court. The alliance had telegraphed their intentions with no attempt at stealth, and it was a Friday night, and Orgrimmar was rockin' with players. The alliance raid stormed into the city, and although I wasn't sure whether they came in through the back gate or the front, they managed to battle their way into Thrall's personal chambers. That's where Philly found the battle, along with DER, and Philly was very gratified to see that the chamber was filled to overflowing with horde players defending their King. Thrall himself must have slaughtered dozens of allies on his own as the allie tanks could not hold him, and the combined might of the King and his defending subjects obliterated the alliance. Philly only got in on the tail end of that, as well as the clean up as alliance raiders tried to rez, and, once they realized the battle was lost, trying to sneak out without being corpse camped. There would be no achievement for the Alliance on this night.
With that success already under our belt, we hit up Wintergrasp, attacking the Fortress, bringing down it's towers and sweeping through the defending alliance almost without pause to take back the fortress. Perhaps the alliance defeat at Orgrimmar had disheartened the alliance defenders in WG.
From there DER and Philly let the random battlegroup finder pick our next area to conquer. But first, we decided to see if we could get our voice chat system working. As Philly had done with Sis, we tinkered with our settings, relogged to ensure the settings took, and tested various setups. Our first success was DER being able to hear Philly, and after some more tinkering, we had voice chat on both ends. It looked like that at last, the Wild family would no longer be able to claim they did not have a working mic.
Or so I thought.
We got our invite to a random battleground, and when the zone in screen appeared . . . well, that's where it hung. It looked like Philly had been disconnected, but it was even worse than that. The computer had crashed. I had to reboot the computer and relog in.
We got everything set up again, and again, when Philly tried to zone in to a battleground, the computer crashed.
Well. I disconnected the mic before rebooting the second time. Strangely, DER could still hear the Warcraft background music coming from my computer even with my mic disconnected. I had to un-enable the voice chat check box in the Sound and Voice settings in order to completely shut it down.
After that I had no further problems zoning into the Eye of Storm and Arathi Basin battlegrounds, as well as one of either the Strand of the Ancients or Isle of Conquest, I get those two confused because I don't see them very often. Or maybe Philly did the Eye before DER rolled in game. It all got kind of fuzzy by the end of the day, but I do know that between Philly's battlegrounds earlier in the day and the bunch DER and Philly did Friday night, Philly did every battleground except Warsong Gulch that day. Philly earned enough honor points to pick up another piece of pvp gear, but it's getting harder to decide what to get. I think she is going to go after the four piece set bonus of her i232 pvp set, but then she is very tempted to buy an i264 piece she covets. Decisions decisions.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Thursday (6 May) - Heroics Can be Fun - Really
Thursday (6 May) - Heroics Can be Fun - Really
After yesterday's less than stellar results from heroics and the weekly, Philly had to wonder what would be in store for her today.
The random dungeon finder's first pick for Philly was the Azjul-Nerub Old Kingdom, or OK for short. We plowed through trash and the four bosses with little difficulty, despite the reputation of OK as a difficult dungeon because all of the bosses have unusual abilities. I like to go back and look at the strats for bosses after the heroic is over. There is never any time to check them once the run started, so an after the fact check is the best I can do to help remember important things for the next time that dungeon turns up. Mostly its a litany of things that Philly forgot about. For example, on the first boss (Nadox) Philly didn't know that the boss became immune to damage when the Guardian add appears, but that's no problem since I can see with one hit that he is immune and can stop casting. The second boss, Taldaram, does a vanish thing, but that's pretty easy to figure out on the fly as well. The third boss I always recognize, but also always forget to stand up close to the boss. I usually die in those situations, but we had a good healer who kept Philly alive and didn't complain that I was out of position. The final boss I did remember, because it's fun and interesting. Harold makes us all go insane periodically, forcing each player into our own private instance where we have to battle images of the other players. Wild usually justs heals through it until help arrives. Philly Shielded and DoTed everyone up, healing when she needed to but also doing her part in killing the images. Finally, Philly also got her first cloth drop, bracers called [Flame Sphere Bindings] that would not do for shadow spec, but were usable in disc/healing spec. At last, Philly had something worth the effort.
Philly was also tickled that she finally did a whole dungeon, and actually out-DPSed someone other than the healer. She was still third, ahead of only the tank and healer, but hey, we're sending out pats on the back whenever we can here. Her DPS was a pedestrian 1384 DPS, but it got the job done.
Feeling frisky, Philly ordered up a second helping of heroics. The main course this time was the Culling of Stratholme (CoS). All right! Wild loves this dungeon, and hoped that Philly would, too. The tank, a druid bear, was awesome. The healer, also a druid, did super fine as well - at first. The three DPS probably wouldn't get invited to ICC anytime soon, but we did fine. Philly is starting to get that intuitive feel for casting the right spells at the right time. And with a heavy tank like we had, Philly could also Mind Sear (AoE) with little worry that she'd pull aggro on packs of mobs.
We pounded down the first boss, Meathook, and kept moving. The tank asked in party chat if we wanted to try the "Zombiefest" achievement. I guarantee no one in that party other than the tank (and maybe the healer) knew what that achievement entailed, but of course we all said "Sure!"
The idea was to collect a whole bunch of zombies without killing them. Rounding up the zombies required engaging the second boss, Salramm, and we were advised not to attack the boss until the roundup was finished. That seemed kind of crazy from several angles, and the plan unravelled pretty quickly. It took a long time to kill Salramm because we were all confused about when or if to DPS him. I think the healer got pretty annoyed as well because he was having to heal through a lot of damage and not seeing much killing going on. We did finally kill him.
For our second try at the achievement, the three DPS were asked to stand at the start of what would be our next battle with zombies and other mobs, while the tank and healer went the other way to collect more zombie mobs and kite them back to us. There was a considerable wait, but sure enough, eventually the two came running back, a thick black cloud of angry zombies hot on their heels. That angry mob merged with the other mobs already in the area and it was AoE or die time. We got the Zombiefest achievement for killing over 100 zombies in less than a minute.
We started up again, but the tank bugged and couldn't move. The tank died before anyone knew what was happening, and without a tank we wiped after fighting wave after wave of mobs. One of the DPS quit the group.
The tank let us know what had happened, and said everything was working again.
We moved on and killed Chrono-Lord. Philly was out of position for not moving close to the boss, who does a Charge at ranged players, but then again all of the ranged players, healer included, stood at range. It didn't seem to much matter. Our DPS replacement made it to us shortly after we started the fight. Philly was pleased to see she managed to reach 2362 DPS on the Chrono-Lord fight.
The tank had started the next series of trash pulls, and suddenly started losing health and getting no healing. Philly had no time to wonder what was happening. Philly Shielded the tank and fired off a Prayer of Mending to get him some immediate health. That knocked Philly out of shadowform, but that was ok, Philly was a healer now. Casting renew exhausted all of Philly's instant heal spells, and since Philly was shadow specced she was missing some critical healing spells. It didn't help that the tank kept moving and aggroing more mobs, as almost all of Philly's healing has to be done while standing, not running. Philly managed to keep him alive until more mobs found Philly and killed her. By that time everyone else was dead as well.
So, what happened? In the middle of the pull, the healer left the group. What a crappy thing to do. After we died, instead of showing up at the graveyard, Philly found herself ported back to Dalaran, completely out of CoS. At first I thought Philly had been kicked from the group, but no, we were all still grouped, and we had all been dumped out of CoS. Don't know why that happened, but we were all able to port directly back in. We got a pally to heal, made the long walk back to where we died, and moved on to the final boss, Mal'Ganis. Thankfully, Mal'Ganis played nice and died when we wanted him to. Actually, he escapes, which is part of the lore of CoS, but we won the encounter. Somewhere among the loot from bosses Philly won a nice healing ring and an even nicer cloth helm. It doesn't look or sound as cool as Philly's Wintry Hat of Doom, but it'll work just fine with Philly's healing set.
Philly felt like a real DPSer on this fight. Oddly enough, the tank actually led all the DPS with 3021 DPS. Either he was very, very overgeared, or perhaps he was tanking in DPS gear? Which might explain how he managed to die even with Philly's wrong spec healing. The mage came in second with 2538 DPS, and Philly was next in line with 2035 DPS. On the Mal'Ganis fight Philly turned in her best performance, getting 2942 DPS on the boss. Philly is getting her technique down. Now she needs to keep improving her gear.
After yesterday's less than stellar results from heroics and the weekly, Philly had to wonder what would be in store for her today.
The random dungeon finder's first pick for Philly was the Azjul-Nerub Old Kingdom, or OK for short. We plowed through trash and the four bosses with little difficulty, despite the reputation of OK as a difficult dungeon because all of the bosses have unusual abilities. I like to go back and look at the strats for bosses after the heroic is over. There is never any time to check them once the run started, so an after the fact check is the best I can do to help remember important things for the next time that dungeon turns up. Mostly its a litany of things that Philly forgot about. For example, on the first boss (Nadox) Philly didn't know that the boss became immune to damage when the Guardian add appears, but that's no problem since I can see with one hit that he is immune and can stop casting. The second boss, Taldaram, does a vanish thing, but that's pretty easy to figure out on the fly as well. The third boss I always recognize, but also always forget to stand up close to the boss. I usually die in those situations, but we had a good healer who kept Philly alive and didn't complain that I was out of position. The final boss I did remember, because it's fun and interesting. Harold makes us all go insane periodically, forcing each player into our own private instance where we have to battle images of the other players. Wild usually justs heals through it until help arrives. Philly Shielded and DoTed everyone up, healing when she needed to but also doing her part in killing the images. Finally, Philly also got her first cloth drop, bracers called [Flame Sphere Bindings] that would not do for shadow spec, but were usable in disc/healing spec. At last, Philly had something worth the effort.
Philly was also tickled that she finally did a whole dungeon, and actually out-DPSed someone other than the healer. She was still third, ahead of only the tank and healer, but hey, we're sending out pats on the back whenever we can here. Her DPS was a pedestrian 1384 DPS, but it got the job done.
Feeling frisky, Philly ordered up a second helping of heroics. The main course this time was the Culling of Stratholme (CoS). All right! Wild loves this dungeon, and hoped that Philly would, too. The tank, a druid bear, was awesome. The healer, also a druid, did super fine as well - at first. The three DPS probably wouldn't get invited to ICC anytime soon, but we did fine. Philly is starting to get that intuitive feel for casting the right spells at the right time. And with a heavy tank like we had, Philly could also Mind Sear (AoE) with little worry that she'd pull aggro on packs of mobs.
We pounded down the first boss, Meathook, and kept moving. The tank asked in party chat if we wanted to try the "Zombiefest" achievement. I guarantee no one in that party other than the tank (and maybe the healer) knew what that achievement entailed, but of course we all said "Sure!"
The idea was to collect a whole bunch of zombies without killing them. Rounding up the zombies required engaging the second boss, Salramm, and we were advised not to attack the boss until the roundup was finished. That seemed kind of crazy from several angles, and the plan unravelled pretty quickly. It took a long time to kill Salramm because we were all confused about when or if to DPS him. I think the healer got pretty annoyed as well because he was having to heal through a lot of damage and not seeing much killing going on. We did finally kill him.
For our second try at the achievement, the three DPS were asked to stand at the start of what would be our next battle with zombies and other mobs, while the tank and healer went the other way to collect more zombie mobs and kite them back to us. There was a considerable wait, but sure enough, eventually the two came running back, a thick black cloud of angry zombies hot on their heels. That angry mob merged with the other mobs already in the area and it was AoE or die time. We got the Zombiefest achievement for killing over 100 zombies in less than a minute.
We started up again, but the tank bugged and couldn't move. The tank died before anyone knew what was happening, and without a tank we wiped after fighting wave after wave of mobs. One of the DPS quit the group.
The tank let us know what had happened, and said everything was working again.
We moved on and killed Chrono-Lord. Philly was out of position for not moving close to the boss, who does a Charge at ranged players, but then again all of the ranged players, healer included, stood at range. It didn't seem to much matter. Our DPS replacement made it to us shortly after we started the fight. Philly was pleased to see she managed to reach 2362 DPS on the Chrono-Lord fight.
The tank had started the next series of trash pulls, and suddenly started losing health and getting no healing. Philly had no time to wonder what was happening. Philly Shielded the tank and fired off a Prayer of Mending to get him some immediate health. That knocked Philly out of shadowform, but that was ok, Philly was a healer now. Casting renew exhausted all of Philly's instant heal spells, and since Philly was shadow specced she was missing some critical healing spells. It didn't help that the tank kept moving and aggroing more mobs, as almost all of Philly's healing has to be done while standing, not running. Philly managed to keep him alive until more mobs found Philly and killed her. By that time everyone else was dead as well.
So, what happened? In the middle of the pull, the healer left the group. What a crappy thing to do. After we died, instead of showing up at the graveyard, Philly found herself ported back to Dalaran, completely out of CoS. At first I thought Philly had been kicked from the group, but no, we were all still grouped, and we had all been dumped out of CoS. Don't know why that happened, but we were all able to port directly back in. We got a pally to heal, made the long walk back to where we died, and moved on to the final boss, Mal'Ganis. Thankfully, Mal'Ganis played nice and died when we wanted him to. Actually, he escapes, which is part of the lore of CoS, but we won the encounter. Somewhere among the loot from bosses Philly won a nice healing ring and an even nicer cloth helm. It doesn't look or sound as cool as Philly's Wintry Hat of Doom, but it'll work just fine with Philly's healing set.
Philly felt like a real DPSer on this fight. Oddly enough, the tank actually led all the DPS with 3021 DPS. Either he was very, very overgeared, or perhaps he was tanking in DPS gear? Which might explain how he managed to die even with Philly's wrong spec healing. The mage came in second with 2538 DPS, and Philly was next in line with 2035 DPS. On the Mal'Ganis fight Philly turned in her best performance, getting 2942 DPS on the boss. Philly is getting her technique down. Now she needs to keep improving her gear.
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