Thursday, September 30, 2010

Tuesday (29 Sep) - Silly Java 2

Tuesday (29 Sep) - Silly Java 2

Continuing his travels from yesterday, Java figured he could get to Astranaar via the boat from Exodar to Auberdine. Once at Auberdine Java rode south through Darkshore and into Ashenvale. Java took a quick shortcut to taunt the Horde's Zoram'gor Outpost (near Blackfathom Deeps) and then took the road directly into the small town of Astranaar. Java collected the flight path there, and then had to do a little exploring. Wolves and spiders make up a good percentage of the denizens of this area, but they were right around Java's level and did not pose much of a problem. Java finally located Silverwing Outpost, and then took another path from there to Silverwing Grove, home of the entrance to the Alliance side of Warsong Gulch. There Java found the gear merchant and acquired a trinket and a ring with the honor points that he had. Mission accomplished.

Java took a flight back to Auberdine and thought about going home, but couldn't bring himself to do so until his search was completely fulfilled. He caught a boat to Stormwind City, and then the Tram to Ironforge. Then it was back to his trusty elekk ground mount for the rest of the journey. Java needed to go north into the Wetlands, but mountainous peaks kept him from heading that way directly. Instead, Java got to see a great deal of the wintry countryside of Dun Morogh (where Ironforge rests) as he rode east, eventually into Loch Modan. Here a series of tunnels carved into the heart of the mountains by dwarves led Java safely through the range and into the Wetlands. Java was collecting lots of credit for visiting new areas, and that raised an interesting thought. Java was basically making the same journey that nearly every Wild toon has had to make on the Eastern Continent to link flight paths between the northern half of the continent with the southern half - only in reverse. Wild's toon generally made the journey starting in the Arathi Highlands and going south, whereas Java was starting in the south (Westfall) and heading north. Even more striking was the sudden realization that Wild's horde family has seen more of the alliance territory along that route than his Alliance cousins. Almost every step of Java's journey was new to him.

Java made another detour in the Wetlands, heading to the western coastline to visit Menethil, a port city with a flight path that Java needed to add to his chain of flight paths. Menethil also has a ship route to Theremore, yet another city new to Java along the coast of Dustwallow Marsh on the continent of Kalimdor. Well, that was something to remember.

Java eventually crossed the impressive but badly deteriorated span of stone bridgework that links the Wetlands to the Arathi Highlands. Here Java had to be extra careful, as the spiders and dinosaurs here were in their level 30s and would eat Java alive if they caught him. Java was looking for Refuge Point, but had only a vague idea whereabouts it was located in the Highlands. Java came very close to tangling in the webs of at least two large spiders, but his elekk mount outran them before they could close and cast their net. Java had to reverse direction a number of times before finally finding the signpost pointing to Refuge Point.

Java located the gear merchant and another flight path. He was a bit disappointed, though, to find that he was not high enough level to buy any of the gear for sale. Level 28 looked to be the minimum. Oh well, at least the place has been found and a flight path established to get there. Next time, maybe.

Java hearthed home to Exodar. It was a fun and challenging adventure. Maybe he should take Chaitee along with him the next time.

Wednesday Evening

Wild was already resigned to the fact that we would start a fresh ICC10 on Wednesday night. And after Philly's less than stellar showing as a healer in Halls of Lightning I didn't feel comfortable sending her in in place of Wild. Not to mention that they decided to run with just two healers instead of our usual three.

It was actually a pretty fun run, and despite the goofing around we got pretty serious about the boss encounters themselves. Wild liked two healing it - it kept me a lot busier and engaged. Wild discovered he had to get those heals out there faster, and even had to use his innervate to buff up his mana and keep the heals coming. Cr had her alt paladin as the second healer, and she was really having to press to support Wild. She said later in the evening that she was going to bring her better geared priest healer next week. We'll make a powerful two-some.

The bosses went down - Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship, and Saurfang in the first wing - and then Festergut and Rotface in the second wing. We had just enough time to take one shot at Dreamwalker as well. For that fight our raid leader hunter swapped to her paladin healer as Dreamwalker needs a third healer. Cr and Wild went into the portal as usual. We came very close, getting the dragon to 95% health, but did not save her. Wild did a respectable 16,177 hps. Although it was still a little off from Wild's best performance, I was much more comfortable this week than last. Wild was asked to provide the healing data on the fight so the raid leaders could review it. Cr came in with 7441 hps despite trying some new things to improve her portal healing. Something is still not right somewhere, as she should be putting up numbers near what Wild is doing.

In overall healing on the entire night Wild led with 4779 hps and 52.7% healing with Cr at 4011/37.3%. Our best performance was against Festergut: Wild at 8181 hps/54.6% and Cr at 6084/37.6%.

I'm praying we make some real progress Thursday night. Putricide, Dreamwalker, and the Princes all need to go down.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tuesday (28 Sep) - Silly Java

Tuesday (28 Sep) - Silly Java

Java got a lot of time in game on Tuesday, but wasn't able to accomplish much. After growing up in the Draenie starting area and then leaving Bloodmyst Isle for the big city of Exodar, Java stopped exploring. Instead, he mostly hung around Exodar and used the dungeon finder and pvp battleground battlemaster to teleport instantly to those areas and then back to Exodar. Java was travel savvy enough to find Auberdine and the main shipping port, which gave Java access to most of the Alliance major cities. That came in handy when he needed to find a weapons trainer to teach Java how to use the fine new axe he got from Blackfathom Deeps.

Java's gear set is coming along nicely courtesy of those BFD runs Monday night, but he had one major hole in his gear - Java had no trinkets. Low level trinkets are fairly rare and generally have to be acquired via questing or purchased with pvp honor points. Since Java had a few hundred honor points gathering fuzz in his bags, that seemed to be his best bet. The problem was that he didn't know where to go or who to see to buy them from.

Of course, all the Wild family knows where to get pvp gear for the Horde. The Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar is the primary location. However, that services only the higher level players. Lower level players that want to buy gear from battlegrounds like Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin must actually go to the entrance to those battlegrounds and talk to the gear merchants there. Again, for Horde, that would be a small outpost near the border between the Barrens and Ashenvale (for WSG), and the outpost of Hammerfall in the Arathi Highlands (for AB).

Researching where the pvp gear merchants for the Alliance are located was pretty frustrating. Even posts where that specific question was posed talked all around it and never provided a clear answer. Eventually Java made the trip from Exodar to Stormwind City to visit the Alliance equivalent of the Halls of Legend. Unfortunately it was TOO much like the Horde counterpart, as only higher level gear was available.

The first glimmer of hope actually came from another Horde player posting on an alliance thread. Supposedly the location of the WSG and AB entrances for the Alliance can be found somewhere near Astranaar (a small town in Ashenvale) and at the Alliance town of Refuge Point in the Arathi Highlands. I say again that Java got this information from a Horde player. Ok, I will admit that Java could just ask the question in trade chat, but that seemed a bit like cheating; plus, Java didn't want to deal with all the grief and dis-information he'd probably get from the parasites that spend their day dissing people who post there.

Java will attempt to search those places out, but will have to do that on foot and ground mount since he has not yet learned the many flight path points required to connect to those areas. All that time cloistered in Exodar has really limited his options.

Java figures he can get to Astranaar via Auberdine, so that will be his next step. More to follow.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Monday (27 Sep) - Desperate Measures

Monday (27 Sep) - Desperate Measures

Philly talked herself into signing up on the Random Dungeon Finder as a healer. She felt she was as prepared as she could be. She knew that priest healing was nothing like druid healing and that she would have to practice to get priest healing patterns ingrained. The best place to practice is in the five man randoms where mistakes can be made without costing us a wipe.

At least that was the idea.

Philly's first random of the day was Halls of Lightning (HoL). This is an Ulduar five man. We had a warrior tank and a mix of DPS including a paladin. Philly was happy to see the paladin, who was quite capable of healing himself if Philly had any trouble.

We worked our way through the trash mobs to the first boss with no problem. The tank was holding aggro fine and the rest of us were not taking much damage. Shields and Flash Heals were pretty much all Philly needed to keep folks going. The first boss, General Bjarngrim, has just one trick, and it can be run away from. Philly used his Prayer of Mending and his more powerful Penance spell to maintain the tank's health and again, Philly had no real trouble.

The second boss is a kind of gauntlet that can be trouble if too many players get Feared. We didn't have a shaman to take care of that with a totem, but Philly put Fear Ward on the tank to keep him in the action. We had no problems bringing down the second boss, Volkhan.

The third boss, Ionar, I don't remember so I think we skipped him. But we ran into our first real trouble working through mobs on the way to the final boss. The tank over-aggroed a bunch of mobs and couldn't keep control of them. Philly went into emergency healing mode, but I felt completely inadequate to the task without all those instant spells that Wild has at his disposal. Philly got Shields on everyone, used all my other spells and spammed flash heal while holding Penance for the tank. DPSers started dying because I had no time to keep anyone alive but the tank and yours truly. There were too many mobs left alive, however, and we wiped.

The coward tank quit the group. The other players said that the tank had taken on too many mobs on a bad pull. No one was mad at him for the bad pull, but we were extremely annoyed that he quit the group. With Wild I can tell whether I made a mistake or if I'd done everything possible to avoid a wipe. With Philly I'm not sure.

We were lucky (well, lucky was a relative term in this case) and got another tank fairly quickly. All we had were some trash mobs and the final boss to deal with. The tank was a death knight named Lichking (with an odd spelling). Takes an ego to name your toon after the most powerful and famous death knight in the game.

We had all just gotten back from the graveyard and Philly had healed and buffed everyone up. I called for a mana break before we started, so I could get a full mana bar, but I didn't get it. The DK tank trotted off and started on the mobs. Philly jumped up with a quarter of my mana and rushed after the tank, but he had gotten so far from us I didn't get there before he died. The pally stepped in and with Philly's help we avoided a wipe.

Philly rezzed the tank and asked him pointedly in party chat to wait for me when I called for mana. We started again, and Philly miscued on a Shield to the tank, drawing aggro. Two mobs that frankly the tank should have picked up turned and attacked Philly instead. I Shielded, Faded and healed, moving toward the tank, who ignored the mobs on me. Philly died. Dang cloth armored squishy. That would be me.

Not two pulls later, the DK tank drew mobs he couldn't maintain aggro on and DPSers started dying. Philly tried to keep up the DK tank but the paladin seemed to be handling the mobs better than the tank. I let the DK die and the pally and Philly finished off the mobs on our own.

The pally had had enough, though. He abandoned the group, and Philly felt like she'd lost her only friend. Another DPSer also quit the group.

The DK tank was still full of energy and raring to go, and after Philly had rezzed him and the one DPS foolish enough to stick around (and what does that say about Philly? Glutton for punishment comes to mind) we gathered two more DPSers and started where we left off.

The final boss was Loken. He has a dastardly ability where he maintains an AoE that does more damage the farther away from him you are. BUT, he also casts Lightning Nova regularly throughout the fight, which does more damage the closer you are to him. For well geared players you can stand close and survive the Lightning Nova. If you aren't that well geared, you have to run in and out to avoid the Nova while staying close to mitigate the AoE. We really sucked at doing that. Everyone in the raid was taking all kinds of damage and Philly could not keep up. We wiped.

As we rezzed and flew back from the graveyard, Philly asked if her healing just sucked or if there was some other issue. Healers usually do get blamed, but no one thought I should have been able to heal through that barrage. The DPSers needed to do a better job of positioning and moving to reduce the incoming damage. For Philly, the cast time of her "fast" spell, Flash Heal, was so frustratingly long she wanted to scream. Our tank irritated Philly further when he waited to be rezzed instead of releasing to the graveyard like the rest of us did. Ego.

We tried a second time. All three DPSers eventually died. There was a moment when Philly thought, here we go again, but then decided that if she was going down she was going down swinging. She kept up the healing, daring that DK to finish the job. Loken died.

Philly got her badges. Two frost badges for the first random of the day, and four triumph badges for boss kills. She needs thirteen more triumph badges to buy that bow.

It was a painful start as a healer in random dungeons. Philly did 1446 hps, and I have no idea whether that is good or bad in a five man.

One last tidbit from the HoL run. After we had downed Loken Philly again asked about her healing. One of the two hunters in the group said, "You were fine. We just thought you hated hunters." That got a laugh and raised Philly's spirits.

Monday Night

Our Monday night crew was at full power and then some. We got started earlier than usual, and we also had a guest join the regulars. The regulars - Ando, Lao, and EZ - decided that it was time to give our Alliance cousins a night of fun. We switched toons, bringing Sin (warlock), UB (priest), and Java (paladin). Sin and Java were level 20 and UB level 25. Ideally, our team would have sorted out with Sin DPSing, UB healing, and Java tanking. But the Wild family and our alliance cousins have never, ever, tanked on any toon on any class. It's a role we always run screaming from. That was the case with Java as well. Don't know how, don't want to know how, hate the idea kind of a thing. Java would DPS.

The three of us grouped up and joined the dungeon finder. We waited probably ten minutes and still no dungeon. Java felt a little bad that because I can't tank we had to wait so long for a tank. We caught a break, though, when a friend who has a toon in our allie guild had time to join us. She brought her own paladin, a level 26 who could tank, Esor.

Esor joined our group and we again turned to the dungeon finder. While this was going on Java was walking through his spells, buffs, etc, re-remembering what a paladin is supposed to do. There's been too many toons in too short a time. In addition to druid Wild, priest Philly is trying to improve her healing spec, hunter Mery has gotten a lot of time the past couple weeks, shaman JB wanted time to learn to heal, the other shaman EZ got some dungeon action, and now paladin Java was front and center. And I am still being plagued with user interface problems from that terrible and lamented decision to use Blizzard's repair tool.

The UI issue manifested itself for Java by refusing to show what buffs he cast on himself and the group. It was hard enough getting Java's three buffs - Wisdom, Might, and Kings - straight in his head. Sin gently reminded Java that the attack power from Might (which is what Java cast on him) wouldn't help him much and could he please have the Wisdom buff instead. With another pally in the raid I wasn't sure what buffs I should be doing, either. Paladin buffs only last ten minutes, and with my UI problems I couldn't see when they expired.

I've also been taking time to establish better keyboard shortcuts for melee DPS toons. Mouseover keys for healing and in part even for ranged DPS have worked well for me, but for melee toons I really need to be using the keyboard to cast spells and abilities in order to maneuver fast in close quarters combat. EZ has a setup now that I like and that she's gotten enough game time to practice and tweak. I hadn't gotten to Java, yet, so for the most part I was clicking on buttons to cast spells and abilities, and it just doesn't work as well.

Ok, so all of the above is my lame excuse for Java's less than stellar performance when the dungeon finder offered our group Blackfathom Deeps (BFD), a mid-level 20s dungeon with an extensive, partially submerged cave system.

Esor led the way, and at level 25 she was higher level than anything else in BFD. With healing help from UB Esor was rarely in trouble no matter how many mobs ganged up on her. Java followed on her heels and helped kill whatever she was targeting, with Sin laying on the warlocky AoEs and DoTs. The one outsider DPS who joined us to get us to five was pretty much just along for the ride, although the shaman we had was pretty good.

We battered our way through BFD three times, and collected an immense amount of varying gear and junk. There was so much we had to break after the first two runs so we could hearth back to a city and clear our bags. At the end of BFD there is an npc that will teleport players to Darnassus. Java took that teleport; but once there, I realized that I had no idea where anything was in Darnassus. Java took longer than everyone else to clear his bags, get his talents updated (from leveling) and turn in a quest. Java would have preferred Exodar, which while confusing, he has a passing familiarity with.

Despite all of Java's mostly self inflicted issues the night was a resounding success. Both Java and Sin leveled four times, from level 20 to level 24. UB leveled at least once, maybe twice. Even Esor leveled to 26.

The DPS went like this (overall for all three runs):
Esor - 84 DPS, 24.7% damage
Sin - 82 DPS, 24.2%
Java - 46 DPS, 13.4% (Sigh)

Gear-wise, Java was so awash with stuff it took half an hour to sort it all out. It was hard to know what to "need" versus "greed" when I quickly lost track of what I'd already won. I may have missed an item or two that Java could have used, but Java had plenty of upgrades to be thankful for. I hope Sin and the others got some loot as well.

Javagot upgrades to his belt, gloves, and cape from BFD. Java also wound up with FIVE weapons from BFD, some one handed and some two-handed. The best of the bunch were two two-handed weapons, a sword and an axe. The sword [Strike of the Hydra] from the final boss, requires level 25 to equip, so Java will have to hold on to that for one more level. The axe [Reef Axe] was Java's best upgrade on the night, and Java is anxious to get it enchanted and ready to wield. Java will have to learn how to use an axe, though, and for that he'll have to make a trip to Ironforge where the trainer is.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Weekend (26 Sep) - So It's Monday

Weekend (26 Sep) - So It's Monday

The wedding the Mrs and I went to on Saturday was really nice. The couple is Catholic and Filipino and it was a very traditional wedding with all the trappings. Relatives from both sides of the family filled half of the huge church. We had a good time.

Back in WoW-ville things did not go well for the ICC25 coop run Saturday night. Wild was not in attendance, but learned later that the two regular raid leaders from the BH guild that hosts the raid were not there. The alternate raid leaders - well, they just weren't very prepared, and one of them admitted that he had been pressed into service and didn't really know what to do. The raid was a continuation from Friday, but they added no new bosses to their kills. Wild didn't miss anything.

Philly, who hordes her gold worse than Happy, and who has been quietly accumulating it for a long time, spent a good bit of it over the weekend. As Cata approaches, prices on items that are seen as short-lived are starting to see reductions in price. Two huge bargains popped up over the weekend that Philly was able to snag before someone else grabbed them. Sure, they will soon be replaced once Cata comes, but Philly hopes to get in a few more ICC runs before that happens, and the improved gear makes her feel a whole lot better when asking for invites to raids.

The first item Philly acquired was [Gloves of False Gestures]. The ilevel 264 gloves replaced an i219 pair, so it was a major upgrade. The second piece [Stiffened Corpse Shoulderpads] is an i264 BOE drop in ICC that is almost always on sale in the Auction House. The price is generally around 5000-6000 gold, so when Philly found one for sale for 2400 gold she grabbed it to replace her i245 T9 shoulders. Philly is a happy girl. Happy is Happy, too, since it didn't cost him anything.

All three of the Wild Family level 80s got the weekly frost quest done this weekend, even JB, who usually doesn't show up for those things. However, JB had a few badges that would go to waste if not used, and the weekly raid was a great way to add ten badges, just enough for what Wild had in mind.

The state of JB's specs and gear leaves a lot to be desired. The only spec she's really comfortable with is Enhancement (melee DPS), but I'd taken that away from her and dual specced her for Elemental and Restoration (ranged DPS and healing). I had a passing familiarity with the elemental spec, but really no clue how to heal with a shaman. Her button and bar setup was a mess as well. The weekly frost raid was Noth, though, a numbingly easy battle. Even the poor state of JB's gear (most of it pvp gear) was acceptable for a Naxx run, and she got her invite. I sent her as a DPS and while she didn't wow anyone, she did an acceptable job, Noth died, and JB got her badges. She spent those badges on the dagger [Balanced Heartseeker], one of the last two heirlooms Wild is acquiring.

That leaves only one heirloom left on Wild's list of "I want its." That would be [Charmed Ancient Bone Bow]. Mery, Chaitee, and Rakta are all clamoring for it. Since all of the Wild Family hunters are on Philly's account, getting that bow is going to be up to Philly to acquire. It takes 65 badges to purchase the bow, and Philly has exactly that many. However, 17 of those badges are frost badges, and Philly thinks she might get enough frost badges to buy a gear upgrade or two for herself. Whether that is worth doing this close to Cata is a good question. Wild says that Philly should just go farm triumph badges using the random dungeon finder. "You should practice your healing, girl!" Wild told her. Philly doesn't like being told what to do, so ... we'll see how that all turns out.

As an aside in regard to heirloom gear, it seems that death knights and paladins get the short end of the stick when if comes to weapons. Weapons, stick - hey, that's supposed to be funny! The two classes can't use daggers, staffs, or bows, so there are no heirloom weapons with +hit on it that they can use. Java may be forced to use the leather +hit heirloom gear. Paladins and death knights wear plate, and leather feels, well, substandard to them.

That's all I got for today. Hope our pvp team gets to rock out Monday night!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Friday (24 Sep) - Double The Raid Fun

Friday (24 Sep) - Double The Raid Fun

Friday - Yes, it's Friday but I still have to get to the Thursday G2 ICC10 raid. It won't take long. Yes, there was a raid, and yes, Wild got an invite even though I wasn't able to make it on Wednesday.

We started on Professor Putricide and did pretty well, getting him into the third phase twice. But after four tries we hadn't killed him, and decided to switch to Dreamwalker so we could at least get one boss down on the night.

Strange things were happening in the Dreamwalker fight, though. Several raiders complained of lag. The adds which spawn numerous times during the fight were not following the pattern we were all used to. Inside the portal, there did not seem to be as many orbs as I usually see and they seemed frustratingly harder to fly through. It was Wild's worst outing trying to heal the dragon. Wild usually gets up into the 17-19k hps range, but never got higher than 15.5k on five attempts. Poor Cr, playing her paladin, never cracked 10k. We got close to saving the dragon twice, even with all the strange problems, but when the night ended we'd beaten no encounters.

We'll go at it again next week. Wild is hoping the raid will be locked, but we'll likely start fresh once again.

Moving on to Friday, Wild doubted he'd get an invite to the ICC25 co-op raid. I'd let the raid leader know on Thursday that Wild would not likely be able to make it to the second night on Saturday. A friend of ours is getting married Saturday and I am under orders from the Mrs to attend. In a suit, no less. At least I hear that the food will be good. Anyway, the raid leader gave priority to raiders who could be there both nights. However, there were not enough healers, and Wild got his invite to the Friday raid.

There were only five MM guildies in the raid, three of us healers. We were going with six healers since we would be doing some Heroic Mode fights. Four of the six healers were druids - we were a walking forest of trees.

The BH guild that runs this does an admiral job of keeping things moving, and we had last week's experience to build on as well. Wild likes the larger raids, anyway, and is really enjoying it.

Marrowgar - We set Heroic Mode (HM) for this first boss. We wiped once and then killed him. The i277 upgrade for Wild's mace dropped, but Wild lost the roll. That's two week's in a row Wild had a chance at that mace. Wild's friend and MM guild leader won it.

Deathwhisper - Normal mode and down she went.

The Gunship (HM) had some scary moments, but we avoided embarrassing ourselves and won the battle.

Back to Normal mode again for Saurfang, and there was no trouble taking him out. A Mark of Sanctification dropped, which Wild could have used to get his T10 gloves, but he lost that roll, too. Not doing so well with those dice.

Festergut (NM) heard us coming, but couldn't get out of our way or find a place to hide, and he died next.

Rotface (NM) thought he could take us, but he proved no match for us. Wild actually won something, cloth bracers that would have looked good on his moonkin set. But like last week, Wild again offered it to cloth wearers, and wouldn't you know it that same shadow priest from last week that asked for it. That's two pieces of gear Wild has given up to that guy. No more.

We had time for two tries against Professor Putricide. We'd taken him down last week, but it wasn't to be this time. We played well, but it wasn't enough.

On the healing side Wild only led in healing on one fight, Festergut. But Wild was close enough over the course of the evening to finish first overall in total healing.

#1: Wild, 3930 hps, 13.3% total healing
#2: JC priest, 4711/12.0%
#3: BH druid, 4077/12.0% <-- missed the Putricide fight
#4: BH priest, 3687/11.0% <-- replaced the BH druid on Putricide
#5: MM Bd druid, 3486/10.8%
#6: shaman, 3513/10.1%
#7: BH druid 2, 2886/9.2%

One would think I'd be tired of raiding after a 5-8pm run on Friday. Well, some time after 9pm on Friday night Philly heeded the call for a PUG ICC25 raid and got herself an invite.

Philly hasn't seen much of Icecrown Citadel, although she did clear the first wing the one time she got into ICC25 with the MM guild. She wasn't a complete novice anymore, and she was now bringing her two-handed staff Nibelung to the raid (which she won in her prior ICC25 run).

This ICC25 wasn't a guild run, it was a pure PUG. They had a temporary vent set up, and many of the raiders invited knew each other from other PUG raids. Philly didn't know anyone at all. A quick gear comparison also showed the PUG nature of the raid. There were many raiders at Philly's gear level or even a little worse; but there were also some very well geared raiders in the raid who were looking for specific items. Class balance was less important than finding 25 people, and we ended up with five priests in the raid, three healers and two DPS. That meant Philly would have a lot of competition for gear. Philly also needed the run to improve her reputation with the Ashen Verdict, which she could use to acquire a very nice ring that can be upgraded as rep improves. Philly hoped to get enough rep to earn that ring.

It took a long time to fill the raid, but the raid leader was persistent and apparently the invited raiders didn't have anything better to do on a Friday night. We finally got started at 10:30pm.

We worked through the trash to Lord Marrowgar. Out of 17 DPSers in the raid, Philly was 15th in trash mob damage with 4383 DPS. So, Philly's a slow starter. ;-)

Somewhat to Philly's surprise, we killed Lord Marrowgar, the first boss, on our first attempt. There's more talent here than I first thought. The battle was well organized and the raid leader kept up a running commentary in vent on who should be doing what. The mace that Wild uses, [Frozen Bonespike], dropped. Philly rolled on it but didn't win it. Ah well, Philly still had her Nibelung. Philly finished 9th in DPS with 5108 DPS, which was a pleasant surprise as well. She didn't fare too well in dealing damage on Spiked raiders, though, an issue she had in her last ICC raid and something she needs to work harder on.

We downed Deathwhisper on our first attempt as well. Philly ws greatly encouraged at how well we were doing. Philly was 11th with 4888 DPS. One of the best caster trinkets in the game dropped, [Althor's Abacus]. It would be a monstrous upgrade for Philly - but she lost the roll.

Then there was the weekly ICC quest which we wiped on once when we attempted a new strategy that most of us had never heard of. We got the quest done on our second attempt and moved on to the Gunship. We wanted to do Gunship in Heroic mode, but we didn't have any raiders with the ICC25 Kingslayer title, so we had to stay at Normal. We breezed through that fight.

One thing Philly learned about the Gunship that not even Wild knew was that the rocket pack that we use to jump between the ships can be used to reach the catwalk far above our heads. It's a tricky maneuver that can get the careless killed. While dealing with a couple of raiders with disconnect problems, several raiders tried to reach the catwalk. Cheering and/or boo's erupted from the raid with each attempt, depending on how successful they were or how spectacularly they died trying. Philly couldn't even get close, but at least she didn't die. The raid leader finally corralled us and we got ready for Saurfang.

We had taken a five minute break before starting on Saurfang, and during that interlude had one of funnier and more bizarre episodes of "I'm so lost I can't find my own butt." Thankfully it wasn't Philly. A very talkative shaman had already told us that he had transferred to our server this very day because on his low population server he could never get a raid. He was overjoyed to be in ICC25 and told us that over and over and over and over again. The raid leader was Australian and the shaman just gushed over him, telling him he'd been there once and about how the women there just threw themselves at him. Everyone was back from break - except for him. He had died and was still in ghost form. It took some effort to get him to shut up long enough to ask him to get back in the raid.

"Oh, duude, I'm sooooo sry but I am soooooooo lost!" He told us. That's when I realized that he was soooooo drunk as well.

I could sympathize with him a bit on the being lost thing. There are no real landmarks to direct players to the instance portal of Icecrown Citadel. The whole area has this dark and forbidding bluish grey color. The Citadel is huge - tall spires and many ramparts surround the center at several levels of the mountain it clings to, and it all looks pretty much the same from any angle or elevation. The shaman had released when he'd died, appeared at the graveyard (which is outside the Citadel and on the tip of a slice of rock below and off to the side of the rampart where the instance portal is). Wild has gotten lost trying to get back from the graveyard many times - fortunately not recently, though.

We tried to explain how to get there, but the raid leader, showing a lot of patience (because the shaman was healing, and he didn't want to have to look for another healer), portalled back to the entrance, went outside, and guided him in. That sounds simple, but we were all in stitches by the time the directions soaked through his alcohol sodden brain and he finally made it to the entrance.

But it didn't end there. With his shaman healer now safely inside, the raid leader trotted to the interior main portal and used it to return to the rest of the raid. There are several of these interior portals, and anyone who has ever been inside ICC knows what they are for and how to use them. A minute passed and we realized that the shaman hadn't joined us. Then we got a raid warning, and the shaman died. Apparently he had ignored the interior portal and tried to walk to us. He aggroed mobs we had bypassed and was killed. He was real excited on vent, telling us in detail what had happened. "Dude, I was just walking back to you guys and a booming voice yelled at me and this HUGE mob came right out of the wall and just mashed me!" He also said "I'm Sorry" a lot, as well as "I feel like a dumbazz."

The raid leader had to go back down and outside the instance, guide him back to the entrance, and then practically hogtie him so he wouldn't move. He explained what the interior portals were for, but didn't trust him to get safely back to the group. He had a warlock open a portal and wisked him directly to us. It was hilarious, but it ate up a lot of time. My theory about this shaman? He bought the toon that someone else had leveled for him and despite what his gear might show, the person now running that toon had never set foot inside Icecrown Citadel. And the most amazing thing of all? The whole raid stayed put; no one quit.

Saurfang went down on our first try. I was seriously impressed that a PUG swept through the first wing like that. Saurfang dropped a Greatcloak that had Philly drooling over it. But guess what? She lost the roll on that, too.

It was getting very, very late, and a couple of raiders had to leave. Others left, and a few new faces got invited in. The raid leader tried for more than thirty minutes to get a workable raid back together, but when we fell to just three healers it became impossible. At just short of 1am we called it quits.

Philly was pretty pleased with her performance. I was hoping for a top ten place in overall DPS, but had to settle for 11th out of 17. Here is a summary breakdown:

#1: death knight, 10881 DPS and 8.9% of all damage
9k+ damage: 2 raiders
8k+: none
7k+: 5 raiders
6k+: 1
5k+: 4 (Philly: 5330 DPS, 4.4% of all damage)
4k+: 2
3k+: 2

We had good healers for the most part and Philly felt very well protected. A paladin led with over 7k hps, and everyone else was at 5k or better with one exception - the shaman healer (yes, that one), who did under 3k hps.

It was disappointing that Philly didn't win any of the three fine pieces of gear she rolled on. The run was a lot of fun, though, and Philly may have earned enough badges to get Mery that heirloom bow she wants so badly.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Wednesday (22 Sep) - Half A Raid

Wednesday (22 Sep) - Half A Raid

New complications with our cancer patient cat on Wednesday afternoon took us back to the vet for a few hours. Before we left I got a message to one of the raiders for the G2 ICC10 that Wild might be late, and that if they needed to replace me that would be ok. Wild has pushed to get our raids started on time, and in recent weeks there has been enough improvement that I stopped commenting on it. That came back to bite Wild. Invites usually go out at 6:20pm, with the raid scheduled to start at 6:30pm. In the past it could take until 7pm or so before we got started. Wild logged in game at 6:40pm. The raid was already underway. The raid leader, Lady Hunter, whispered Wild and apologized for not waiting longer before filling Wild's spot, but I had no idea when I would get there and I wouldn't have wanted them to wait around anyway.

Later in the evening after the raid was over Bd whispered Wild and said the raid was pretty rocky, but that they did finally get as far as Rotface. "Sounds like a typical night to me, then," I whispered back, adding a wink. Bd thought they might have a spot open on Thursday night. I won't take someone's spot who came on Wednesday, but Wild will be in game in case there is an opening. Last week we had agreed to lock the raid and start at the Princes, but they changed their mind and started fresh. Wild would have sent Philly in that case anyway. I'm disappointed, though, that unless Wild is there to argue otherwise, we end up starting fresh each week, and so our progression toward the Lich King is coming at a snail's pace. Hopefully we will get past the Princes on Thursday, but that is wishing for a lot. By contrast, the G1 group has decided to stay locked each week. They are currently working on Sindragosa, the last boss before the Lich King. I wish . . . oh nvm. Sigh.

Wild did get the weekly frost raid completed. It was Noth, and it took longer to fly to Naxx than it took to kill him. Wild also got in a VoA25, but the Mark to get the T10 gloves did not drop. Wild would like to get it, but if not it's no big deal, and Wild only gets a shot at it once a week.

Philly has kept up her WG battles, getting in two and winning them both. She had amassed over three hundred WG shards, and used them to purchase the heirloom staff [Grand Staff of Jordan]. This is a powerful caster staff with +hit on it, which for young, leveling toons is a great bonus. It has somewhat limited use, though, and will likely stay in the hands of the worgen druid planned for Cata. EZ has it right now, as the centerpiece of her healing set - a set that really doesn't exist yet. Happy is also balking at paying over 330 gold for the +30 spellpower enchant for the staff, hoping to find a better deal. I wish the dang enchant recipe had dropped for Wild back in the Molten Core days - that's the only place where that enchant can be found, and even then it's a rare drop. Wild gave Happy a week to get his bargain; otherwise, Happy will have to eat that cost.

Wild does now have a strategy for heirloom purchases leading into Cata. Lower level gear with +hit on it is hard to get, but is very important when taking on higher level mobs. With that in mind, Wild is focusing on getting as many heirlooms as he can that have +hit on them. His two highest priority purchases are now [Balanced Heartseeker], a dagger that many of Wild's family can use; and [Charmed Ancient Bone Bow], which will be lovingly cared for by Mery and probably Chaitee as well. Philly and/or Wild will have to scrape together 105 badges to get the two items. Depending on whether Wild gets his T10 gloves (which would use up his frost badges) Wild could buy both or might need Philly's help for one of them. Between both accounts the Wild family currently has twelve heirlooms spread across all armor types - cloth, leather, mail, and plate - with a mix of melee and caster stats. Hopefully, with sharing, there is something for everyone.

Thursday night's ICC action, if there is any, will follow in the next post.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Monday (20 Sep) - Before Cata There is Patch 4.0x

Monday (20 Sep) - Before Cata There is Patch 4.0x

Coming up below is a look at what's in the next patch. But there is team action with Lao, Ando, and EZ in there, too, so don't miss that!

Note that this will be posted Tuesday morning, which is the regular maintenance day, and regular maintenance (5-11am) is what the schedule says. So it's unlikely the patch will come this Tuesday.

It's a good thing I finally got the Blizzard background downloader working again, because on Sunday morning another huge chunk of patch changes started trickling in. I'm hearing that the patch is now at over 4GB.

I'm talking about Patch 4.0x, not the Cataclysm expansion, although both are currently in testing, something that had me perpetually confused for awhile. I kept hearing tidbits about what was going to happen in Patch 4.0x, and I finally went in search of the facts.

Here are some of the major changes (in no particular order) that are going to hit us probably much sooner than we are ready for. Ok, there are also a growing number of players for which it can't get here soon enough.

* Ammo has been removed from the game - for some engineers a profitable business is about to die, so sell that ammo while you still can.

* Talent trees overhauled - it's forward to the past; after two expansions in which the talent trees grew larger, this time the trees shrink back to the size they were at in vanilla WoW with 41 points. Hybrid specs get nerfed because players MUST use 31 points in a single tree (instead of being able to spread them out in the three trees any way they wanted), leaving only ten points to put elsewhere.

* Spells and abilities overhauled - the biggest change is that "spell ranks" have been eliminated and instead spells will automatically scale with player level.

* Death knights still confused - DK tanking has been a confusing mix of talent trees, but officially the Frost tree was the tanking tree. Blizz has decided that the Blood tree is now for tanking and the two trees have had their talents switched around.

* Hunters happy - Hunters can now have five pets with them at all times (no, you can't use them all at once). Oh, and instead of a stable with a max of four pets, hunters can now store 20 pets. Yep, 20.

* Glyph profession overhauled - Most say it still sucks, though.

* Durability changed - Currently the costs to fix damaged gear was different depending on the type of gear (cloth, plate, etc) based on the number of durability points the item had. Now all like gear (belt, gloves, etc) will have the same amount of durability points. Clothies beware, your repair costs are going to skyrocket.

* User Interface changes - as usual with each major release, Blizz steals ideas from third party addon authors and inserts less capable versions of them into the interface that no one will use. Here's one:
* Spell alerts added to show procs. I doubt anyone will stop using ClassTimer, DoTimer, Quartz, or any other spell alert addon we already have.
* BUT WAIT! Could there be something good here? Raid Frames can now be used in place of the standard group frames. WOW. If this feature can be used with third party raid frames like Xperl, Grid, etc, this would be HUGE. Raid frames are much more compact than party/group frames and would make party/group frames and raid frames have a consistent look. I WANT THIS.
* Lots of cosmetic changes - this includes viewing panes such as character page, professions, pvp, spellbook, etc, that actually look to be an improvement.

* Reforging - This is very interesting. Players will be able to convert 40% of one stat on a piece of gear and convert it to another stat that's not present on the gear. For example, Wild's old cloak had 60 crit on it, but Wild wanted haste and the cloak didn't have any. Using reforging, Wild could convert 24 points of crit (40%) and convert it to haste. The cloak would then have 36 crit and 24 haste. I'm really liking this new feature.

* Launcher Update - the most "fun" change has been the Launcher and the related background downloader. Boy, has this one worked out well. NOT.

So that's it so far. The biggest challenge will be rebuilding all our talent trees with a new system and completely revamped talents. We will all be spending gold redoing our talent trees multiple times until we figure out what works best.

The impact of the changes to the talent trees has another, possibly dramatic impact. Blizz has stated that it is a goal of Cata to make playing (questing, dungeons, raids) more challenging. Players running the beta have reported that with the talent changes tanking has become tougher, particularly against multiple mobs where AoE is used. Crowd control, once a staple of groups and raids, but virtually ignored since the Burning Crusade expansion, is now important again.

Another major change - one that you won't find in the patch notes - is how badges/emblems and pvp honor will be handled.

First, about badges/emblems: The new badge/emblem system starts with Justice Points. Sigh - first we had badges, then emblems, and now they will be called Points. Just name the thing once and stick with it, will ya? Well, that's what they say they are doing. The two active badges/emblems, Triumph and Frost, are going to be converted to Justice points in the patch. Older legacy badges that players might still have will be converted to gold. That's good news for Wild, who still has 98 older badges that can't be used for anything at all. At least I'll get a little gold for them. Ironically, those old badges were called Badges of Justice. More moving forward to the past.

On the pvp side, all arena, honor, and battleground points/marks (including the Wintergrasp Stonekeeper shards) will be converted to Honor Points and will be used to purchase items you used to use those other things to buy with. PvP honor earned before the patch is going to be heavily nerfed at patch time, so the gurus say spend that stuff down or essentially lose it.

There's no limit to how much honor or justice points you can have when they are first converted, but a hard cap will be set at a later time restricting the total you can have at any given time. But there's a catch - if you are over the cap you can't earn any new points until you spend down to the cap. This begs an interesting question:

Should I spend my pve badges and pvp currency now, or should I stockpile the old stuff to maximize the points I'll have at conversion?

Consider this - frost badges are harder to get than triumph badges, but both will be converted 1:1 to justice points. This effectively makes triumph badges just as valuable as Frost. Another way to look at it is that Frost badges will become half as valuable after the patch. If you are farming badges for conversion to justice points, farm the easier triumph badges. One other thing to consider. Justice points canNOT be used to buy the gear from Cata dungeons and raids. Just as in the past, there will be another point system for that, called Valor Points. In other words, if you still need stuff that is available now before the patch, and you think it will still be useful after the patch, then farming triumph is the best way to accumulate the points you need to buy it. If you need gear that will be useful after the patch that are bought with Frost badges, you should probably buy them before the patch. But don't forget this final point - nobody knows what things we can buy today will cost after the patch. See below.

For the Wild Family, I think heirlooms of every stripe are the most important purchases right now. Wild keeps eyeing the Tier 10s, but without the very hard to get "Sanctified" marks from the ICC25/VoA25 raids to upgrade the i251 "starter gear" to i264, those T10s are useless to Wild beyond the two pieces he already has. So let's say Wild wants to buy an heirloom that costs 50 badges. Wild can farm the badges and buy it, or I can farm the badges and hold them for conversion to justice points, and then buy it. The question is, will that heirloom cost 50 justice points? Or maybe it will cost 100 justice points? We don't know. But I can bet you one thing - it won't cost LESS than 50 points. Which means I'll buy what I can before the patch.

CHANGE - I just learned that the conversion is now:
Justice=(Frost+Triumph)x2.75.

That tells me that the cost of each item will go up. If it goes up by exactly the 2.75 multiplier, then the price is essentially the same. I'm still betting it won't be less than 2.75, so I'm still buying early. I do wish I had a real need to use those Frost badges now, instead of them losing half their value come the patch.

Patch 4.0x is not Cata. But it is a MAJOR alteration to the game.

Our Monday night foray got back underway after several weeks of real life interference. Even so, Ando was not expected to be in game, so it was a real treat for EZ to find that both Ando and Lao were in game when EZ logged in around 9:15pm. Our scheduled start time is 10pm, but all three of us attempt to get in as early as 9pm when we can.

We wanted to get started right away to maximize our game time, so EZ quickly grabbed the family heirlooms from Mery and we got started. It was EZ's first time in game since the disaster with the downloader and the repair tool that wiped out so many of the settings each toon had laboriously built. Unfortunately that was the case with EZ, too. While EZ was playable on Monday night, there were some critical user interface issues that reduced her effectiveness. The biggest issue was that her totems were missing. A shaman is defined by her totems - it's the main thing that distinguishes her from other classes. EZ has three defined sets of totems, each on their own bar for quick casting. EZ didn't have them. What EZ did have were a few totems that were probably left over from an earlier UI setup that EZ hadn't gotten around to consolidating. That was a good thing in this case because EZ had access to them for the night's run. We had already entered a random dungeon and were engaged in combat when EZ realized her totem bars were missing.

Had the missing totems caused severe problems in the dungeon run EZ would have called a halt and spent the time to fix them. But the dungeon we were in was Maraudon, in a section we were very, very familiar with, and our five man crew swept through it without any trouble and with EZ still coming in second in DPS even without many of her totems.

Mana regen continued to be a problem for EZ, as it has been on every dungeon run she's been on. Her primary means of regen is her Water Shield, but that shield has to be hit by a mob in order for the regen to occur. Ando's tanking is so good few mobs felt inclined to attack EZ directly, despite her best efforts to steal aggro from Ando. That's a good problem to have, but it still meant EZ struggling for mana to use her most powerful abilities and spells. Lao was awesome as our healer. For long stretches EZ forgot to even check her health bar, so good was Lao at keeping EZ, Ando, and the rest of the group fully topped off with health.

We cleared Mara quickly, and all of us, including the two random DPSers that joined us, agreed to run again. And again. When ran three random dungeons in a row, and each time we got Maraudon. When that third Mara popped up, Lao quipped, "Oooh! I haven't seen this one before!"

The three of us then ordered up a fourth random dungeon with time getting tight for Lao. Mara just takes a few minutes, though, so ... we got Zul'Farak instead. ZF is a much longer dungeon, with a couple of large scale battles that "back in the day" made ZF one of the most exciting (and difficult) dungeons in the game for that level (mid level 40s). Lao was a trooper and stayed for the whole run. EZ had as much fun taking on ZF as Wild did back when he first stepped into that amazing warren of trolls and beasts and special characters. It was loads and loads of fun, and I wish the dungeon finder would select it more often. The loot is pretty good, too.

Lao had to leave after the ZF run, but Ando and EZ wanted to run one more, hoping for another ZF. We got Mara instead and swept it clean quickly even though the healer we got wasn't nearly as good as Lao.

EZ got a stack of gear she still needs to sort through, but there's some nice stuff that will be solid improvements. EZ also leveled up TWICE on the night, going from level 42 to level 44. Many thanks to Lao and Ando for grinding through those dungeons with EZ!

Monday, September 20, 2010

Friday/Saturday (19 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 2)

Friday/Saturday (19 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 2)

And speaking of Saturday night - Wild fixed his problem with the BH guild vent. As expected, it was problem on my end, and a simple one to fix when I finally figured it out. I then encountered another problem that was not so easy. Before there will be a Cataclysm, there is going to be a Patch 4.0. That patch has been in beta testing for awhile. I need to repeat that this is NOT Cataclysm, which I and a lot of others were assuming. However, many of the changes in the game associated with Cata will be implemented with this patch. The patch is huge, 1.5GB and still growing. As always, it is set to download in the background well ahead of it going live. This time, the auto downloader failed on my computer. Not only did it fail, it refused me access to the game, running me in a circle every time I tried to work around it. I was in the middle of watching a tight game between the Padres and Cards and it was two hours to game time, and neither game was going my way.

Long story short, I ended up having to run the Blizzard repair tool, something I swore I'd never do because it essentially resets the game to it's defaults and wipes out all of the third party addons I depend on. The reset worked, but it took me right up to game time to get everything put back in it's place and where Wild felt ready to raid.

As for the Padres, they broke a 4-4 tie in the 9th and won it 8-4. Let's hope Wild's game goes as well.

The Saturday raid was a continuance from Friday, but not every raider could make both nights. There were some new faces, and the MM guild was able to bring seven raiders. The tanks and healers were the same crew, though, and one could make the case that the tanks and healers were all that really mattered. I don't think that, given the strong DPS I saw on display Saturday night.

We started with Professor Putricide. I didn't know at the start that the BH guild had really struggled with this fight. They expected to spend a lot of time on it, and never even considered trying it in Heroic mode. On our first attempt we got Putricide into the second phase, and even though we wiped it was clear we were doing a lot of the right things. Wild was very happy to be able to hear the ongoing directions on vent, which really helped Wild stay in sink with the rest of the raid.

On our second attempt Putricide went down. There was an incredible cheer from the BH folks, and the BH raid leader made a point of congratulating everyone for bringing him down. Wild knew how he felt, having just killed Putricide in our own G2 ten man a few days before. It was a big deal.

We decided to go after the princes next. We stayed in normal mode because the raid leaders were a little wary of this fight, although apparently they've killed the three princes before. We made it look easy, taking them out on our first attempt. Wow, two bosses down already. An emboldened raid talked about dealing with the Blood Queen (BQ) and then maybe taking some shots at Sindragosa. Might we even get to the Lich King tonight?

The BH guild knew BQ, have beaten her. Twenty-three of twenty-five raiders have seen and participated in one or more BQ battles before now. Wild was one of the two who had not. BQ has one very unique element on which the whole fight rests. It's a mechanic that exists in no other dungeon or boss, which makes the Blood Queen a very unique encounter.

What is it? Not long after the fight starts, the Blood Queen will bite a nearby raider. That bites turns that raider into a vampire. The bitten raider then has fifty seconds to bite another raider and turn that raider into a vampire. And then those two raiders have to bite a raider. To be honest I don't exactly know how it all turns out, but I do know that failing to maintain that doubling of vampire bites will wipe the raid. Vampires that fail to bite a victim within 50 seconds will become mind controlled by the BQ and we would shortly learn just how bad that would be. Wild and the other healers caught a small break. Healers are supposed to be the last raiders to get bitten. If all goes well BQ will be killed before the vampires have to resort to biting healers.

Of course, there were also the usual things to deal with. Constant AoE damage to the whole raid, a linked attack that forced three raiders to rush into each others arms or all three will die, a purple flame that can only be doused by running while leaving deadly trail in the wake of your passing, and, well, you get the picture.

We started our first attempt, in Heroic Mode. It was crazy, and it was thrilling. Wild didn't get bit, being a healer. That and the fact that a raider failed to bit a victim within fifty seconds, got mind controlled, and started killing other raiders. We wiped with BQ at 57%. Not bad, considering it was in Heroic Mode.

We tried again. We wiped again. Oh, I forgot to mention that there is a flying phase when the blood queen Fears everyone, flies up in the air, and drops realy nasty bombs on us. That was what got Wild killed on this attempt.

One of the BH raiders DC'ed during the second attempt and was never able to get back in game. We spent the rest of the evening with 24 raiders.

Ok, so maybe we aren't quite ready for HM yet. We switched back to normal, and went at BQ again. We got really excited on this attempt, getting BQ to 14%. By the time we wiped we had not one, but two mind controlled players and the healers were running on mana fumes. We got this!

So we thought. We wiped some more times - three more times, in fact, making it six attempts.

On our seventh attempt - we wiped again, at 17%.

Given where we thought we could end up tonight, we could have been discouraged. But spirits were very high. Who knew how this co-op deal would work out. For the BH guild, Wild learned that half their raiders got their first Putricide 25 kill on this night. We swept through the Princes and though we didn't kill BQ, we certainly made her nervous. Wild learned on other thing, too. The BH guild has tried this co-op thing once before. With that other guild (not identified) the raid leader said it took them six weeks to get to the same point we had reached in two nights.

Wild's MM guild may have provided only seven raiders, but we made up half of the six healers and provided that crucial extra bit of DPS as well. Our best DPSer in the raid, a DK, finished 7th out of 16 DPSers and pulled a little over 7k DPS. The DPs leader from BH, though, had over 11k and there were three other DPSers with over 10k. Our DPSers provided dependable damage to complement the big hitters in BH.

Both Wild and Bd really raised the bar on our performance compared to the first night. Now, to be fair, I have to say that the BQ fight is the type of fight made for druid style healing, and it showed. Wild, for his own part, could feel the improved quickness of his spell casting with the increased +haste from the cloak he'd won on Friday.

Wild topped all healers on the 6th attempt, a long battle where a lot went wrong and the healers were worked to exhaustion. Wild led with 9578 hps, a new record, while his druid counterpart in BH got 9788. We did exactly the same amount of healing, 17.3% each.

When the night was done, the three druid healers owned the three top spots on the healing charts. The BH druid finished at the top, but Wild came in second, where on Friday night Wild had finished fourth.

Healing numbers averaged over the entire evening:
#1: BH druid, 6247/16.0%
#2: Wild, 6160/14.9%
#3: Bd, 5076/12.7%

Maybe, just maybe, Wild might get to see the Lich King. I just never thought it might happen with an ICC25 group. Wild can't wait for next week to get here.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Friday/Saturday (18 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 1)

Friday/Saturday (18 Sep) - The Co-Op Caper (Part 1)

Before getting into the weekend raiding, the Wild family has demanded that I get caught up on some recent leveling progress. Almost everyone earned at least experience points for completing the Cata pre-launch events last week, but there were a couple who actually gained a level. Rakta, on the alliance side, DINGED! to level 13. That made sister Chaitee a little nervous, since she's at level 14 and they are both hunters. Java promised Chaitee that she will get some leveling love in the near future to maintain her status as the senior hunter. The semi-retired Jocelyne DINGED! to level 22. Despite her semi-retired status, she is now the highest level paladin in the family. Now it's level 20 paladin Java's turn to get antsy for some leveling. Finally, there is Mery. Mery is the family's leatherworker, but her skill has been somewhat stagnant at skill 225. The leatherworking profession is going to be changed significantly with Cata. The guidance leans toward recommending waiting to level professions until after Cata arrives. The crafting recipes are better, and the materials required are changing to make skilling up quicker. Mery can afford to wait. However, there are going to be a lot of players planning to do the same thing, and materials for gaining profession skills will likely be hard to come by and expensive. In preparation, Mery has been farming materials that she will then have on hand when the profession changes are implemented (primarily thick leather and rugged leather). Before she could farm, though, she had to clear a bank that was chock full of lesser skins and other junk she'd accumulated. Her entire stock of light leather was crafted into medium leather, medium was crafted into heavy leather, and heavy was crafted into thick leather. If I recall the numbers, it took the equivalent of 17 light leather to craft a single thick leather.

Then Mery went farming. Mery spent a lot of time in Felwood killing wolves and bears and skinning them for thick leather and rugged leather. She'll probably wind up with more thick leather than she needs, but that can be crafted into rugged leather. Mery still needs a boatload of rugged leather. After that it will be knothide leather she'll be after (I think).

Mery needs one more thing, too. She needs to get to Outland and find the Leatherworking trainer there. Mery is not high enough level to go there on her own. She needs a warlock to Summon her there. Hey Sis! Maybe on Monday she can get Mery a portal to Outland!

Oh, by the way, when Mery started her farming she was level 48. She's now level 50.

ICC25 Part 1 (Part 2 will be in a separate post as this was getting pretty long)

On Friday and Saturday Wild accepted invites to an ICC25 co-op raid. The raid was run by the guild BH, with support from Wild's guild, MM. Raiders who committed to coming on both nights received priority for invites. The raids were scheduled for a 5pm start, and those late by more than fifteen minutes could be replaced. Wild wondered what the rules were if more than 25 players signed up. Would preference go to the BH guildies, or would it be balanced between the two guilds? As it turned out it was a moot point. Wild's guild had only seven raiders sign up who could make both nights, and two did not show up. The rest of the raid came from BH. That seemed to Wild to be a pretty poor showing from our guild, but then Friday night has always been an unpopular raid night for MM for some reason. The point was that this was a BH led raid, with support from MM.

Wild got his invite right at 4:45pm, when invites were scheduled to start. I watched the raid fill long enough to see the "healer" group fill with five raiders. Wild wasn't in that group, so I whispered the BH raid leader to let him know that Wild was a healer. I got a quick response, thanking Wild for letting him know.

The raid was nearly full and most of us were already in Icecrown Citadel when the raid leader posted the vent info. We were using BH's vent, so Wild had to set up and enter the vent information. When I tried to login, however, there was no connection. I tried several times, whispered some MM guildies but they weren't having any trouble, talked with the raid leader, and nothing worked. I even rebooted to no avail. Wild was the only raider who could not get into vent. I have set up numerous other vent sites, and when I tested them they all still worked just fine. But not BH's. It was very frustrating. Here I am with a new group of folks and I will not be able to hear what is going on! I half-way expected the raid leader to tell me that I would have to leave the raid if I could not get vent to work. We had six healers, and ICC25 only requires five. There were three druid healers, more than necessary. I really thought Wild was toast, and I would have understood if they dropped me from the raid.

Wild wasn't asked to leave, however. Perhaps Wild's own Guild Leader, who was in the raid, weighed in privately. After all, Wild was one of only five MM guildies in the raid. I'll never know, but Wild got to stay.

Wild hooked up with good friend Bd, who was also in the raid on his druid (one of those three druid healers), and asked him if he'd keep Wild up to speed on whatever was being talked about in vent. Bd, bless him, not only passed along everything that was said, but we also exchanged tips and advice on druid healing and boss strats throughout the night. Bd is truly one of Wild's best friends in game.

While all this was going on, raid leadership decided to start us out in Heroic Mode. Wow, that came as a surprise to Wild. Wild has seen one fight in Heroic mode - the Gunship - and that was in ten man, not 25. It was pretty exciting, though. Everything would be harder, and there would be curves thrown at us Wild had never seen before, and it was going to be oh so cool!

On our first exposure to the Heroic Mode (HM, also called Hard Mode) trash mobs, they very nearly ate us alive. Despite the best efforts of five healers (the sixth went DPS at the start) raiders were dropping all around us. The graveyard wasn't far away, and until we got to Marrowgar we could rez and rejoin the fight in progress, so as raiders died they'd release, rez at the graveyard, and rush back in. The raid never stopped moving. Wild died once and made the graveyard run back into the action.

We made it to Lord Marrowgar. It was pretty thrilling to get even that far. We stayed with HM and engaged. The fight was close to the same as normal mode, but there was more damage and more bone spikes on more raiders. The lines of fire hit much harder, and staying away from them was extremely critical. Raid damage was through the roof and Wild and the other healers had their hands full. We wiped, but the attempt was good enough for us to give it a second try in HM. We added the sixth healer for additional healing help and went at Marrowgar again. It was tight, and right at the end Marrowgar blasted us, killing ten raiders including Wild. But Marrowgar was already going down. Wild had his first Heroic Mode ICC25 kill.

Wild's eyes bugged out when Marrowgar dropped [Frozen Bonespike] the HM, i277 version of the same i264 dagger that Wild was wearing. Wild rolled on it, but finished second, losing to a shadow priest. That would have been a monstrous upgrade for Wild, alas. In addition to the dagger, an i277 cloth caster belt also dropped. Wild rolled on it as offspec, but also stated that he would pass to cloth wearers. Wild won the roll, which would be a marked improvement for his moonkin spec. That same shadow priest that beat Wild out on the dagger asked for the belt. Wild gave it a few seconds thought, but since I'd already offered to pass the item to cloth wearers I went ahead and let him have it (the belt, not the point of my now inferior dagger ;-) ). But not without teasing him that he should pass me that dagger in return. Of course, no way was he doing that.

We moved on to Deathwhisper, and man did that fight give us trouble. The problem was that Deathwhisper mind controls three raiders at certain points in the fight, and those of us mind controlled watch helplessly as we attack and kill our fellow raiders. The raid was having so much trouble keeping them under control they asked that the three druid healers break off healing and use our Cyclone spell on the mind controlled players to keep them from killing people.

We made two attempts in heroic mode and then decided we weren't ready for that. After switching back to normal mode, Deathwhisper went down easily.

We again turned on HM for the Gunship battle, and that was fun and exciting and successful. Another heroic boss encounter down.

Saurfang came next. Time was getting to be an issue, and raid leadership determined that we would stay in normal mode for the rest of the evening. The RL wanted to get at least six bosses down on our first night.

Saurfang went down on our first attempt. Saurfang dropped [Greatcloak of the Turned Champion]. This is an i264 caster piece similar to the i264 cloak Wild already has - but the Greatcloak had +haste on it and Wild's current cloak did not. Wild wanted that cloak, and rolled on it. Wild finished second again. Sigh. But a few minutes later Wild got a whisper from the winner, offering to pass the cloak to Wild. He figured Wild needed it more than he did, and he wanted to save his mainspec roll for other gear he was interested in. The fact that Wild had already passed along gear earlier in the evening might have been a factor as well. What goes around comes around, and sometimes that's a good thing. Wild got the cloak, and was a very happy camper.

Despite saying we would stay in normal mode, when we got to Festergut we tried him - twice - in heroic mode. It wasn't working for us and we went back to normal and brought him down.

Rotface stepped up to the plate, and although Wild got himself killed in this fight the first time an ooze attached itself to me, the raid brought Rotface down on our first try. In normal mode, of course.

There was considerable interest in going past the 8pm stop time to take on Putricide, but it wasn't unanimous and we called it an evening. We had our six boss kills, though, two of them in Heroic mode.

I didn't do a very good job of monitoring the healing meters on the night. Things were moving fast, I had to keep up with strategies with a new group, and learn changes for Heroic modes, and without vent everything was that much harder. I did get a read on the overall healing. Of the six healers, the top three were all from BH, including their druid healer who was just a monster, finishing first well ahead of the rest of us. His gear included a lot of Tier 10 pieces and several i277 Heroic pieces. It was more than gear, though, he was just really good. Wild was fourth in healing, leading our guild, with Bd's druid and our raid leader shaman providing good support as well. If we'd had our two top priest healers in the raid, MM could have given the BH healers a run for it. As it is, us MM guildies should step it up against the tougher bosses we'll be facing Saturday night.

Stay tuned for the Saturday night run in Part 2.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Thursday (16 Sep) - Second Night Roundup

Thursday (16 Sep) - Second Night Roundup

The afterglow from Wednesday night's successful victories over seven boss encounters was still with us Thursday night. However, we were all aware that the stubbornly cheerful Professor Putricide still stood in our way.

There were still trash mobs to get through, and we had to get everyone invited into the raid, and buffed up, etc etc. We also had a bit of raid leader business to attend to. Our scheduled start and end times for both Wed/Thurs is 6:30pm - 9:30pm (PST). One of our regular raiders can only stay until 9pm on Thursdays, which cuts our raid time a little short. The RL asked the group if it would be feasible to move the Thursday times to 6pm-9pm. The short answer was no, there were several raiders who could not commit to getting logged in by 6pm. Wild had a slightly different take on the question, which got some laughs and knowing nods: "I can make it at 6pm, but really, we hardly ever get started at 6:30pm, so ... " We didn't change the times.

Back to the task at hand, we were so worried about Putricide that the suggestion was made that we start with the Princes fight instead. Here the raid leader, Lady Hunter, was adamant. "We can't avoid him, and we need to build on the practice we've had while it's fresh in our minds." Of course, Lady Hunter was a bit more succinct, something like "F-NO! We're going to kill this b-tard!"

Lady Hunter then totally surprised Wild: "Wild, I need you to boomkin for this fight." I had to read the line in raid chat three times before it sank in. Cool!

Wild was delighted to be able to get in some boomkin raiding, but why the change? It certainly wasn't because of Wild's magnificent damage dealing abilities, since they'd never seen Wild strutting about in his chicken suit, much less seeing him in live combat. The change in strategy actually had more to do with the healing than with the DPS. Most successful Putricide fights use only two healers, primarily so that the extra DPS raider can spped up killing the slimes that spawn. The green slimes in particular can explode several times if they aren't destroyed quickly, and that is often the reason for wipes. Ranged DPS is best for this task, and boomkin is a ranged DPS spec, ergo - Wild's chicken suit.

We began. From Wild's perspective, doing DPS is a lot harder than healing. I know that's because of the large gulf in practice and experience between the two, because 99% of players will say that DPSing is much, much easier than healing or tanking. Wild's primary target was, of course, Putricide. But whenever a green slime spawned, Wild had to immediately switch and help destroy it as fast as possible. If we are good, the slime will only explode once. If we are very, very good, they die before they can explode. At the same time Wild has to be moving, avoiding all kinds of dangers.

On our first two attempts Wild was still getting settled in, but it was clear we were killing the green slimes faster and getting enough damage on Putricide to get into the second phase faster. But that second phase was killing us - literally. We might have started to get uptight, but our third wipe actually got us all giggling helplessly. We had barely gotten started on the first phase when Putricide suddenly turned to Lady Hunter and killed her before she could even think about doing her Feign Death trick. Putricide then ran amok, killing everyone around him. What happened?! No way the tank could have lost aggro. Well, yes he could, since he had a system failure and got disconnected. Putricide was certainly delighted that there was suddenly no one tanking him, and proceeded to help us all into the graveyard.

Wild had his best moonkin moment on the fourth attempt. Wild delivered 5098 DPS, which isn't bad for ranged DPS on this fight, but is far from really good. Wild was 4th in DPS on that one attempt, but frankly Wild was usually 5th among the six DPSers. Wild was helping, but was it enough?

The bad news, though, was that we were still not getting very far into the second phase. Raiders kept dying. The question on everyone's mind that was finally voiced on vent was, "We got Putricide into the third phase and down to 28% or so last week using three healers. Why did we change things?" The short answer to that was that nearly every successful kill of Putricide was done using two healers in order to have that one extra DPSer. "It's a two healer fight, and that's what we should be doing." The group went back and forth, talking about it, while Wild stayed out of it, waiting for the right opportunity to weigh in. I didn't want to undermine the raid leader, but I also had a suggestion when the time was right.

Eventually the talk came around to the healers. Pl offered that because many of her holy spells are longer cast, she has to be stationary while she casts them. That's fine when single target healing, but she also had to switch to heal raiders attacked by slimes in addition to her tank healing role - when both tank and raider were in trouble at the same time, someone lost. The other healer, the paladin, had slightly less of an issue with longer casts, but it was still an issue. Wild weighed in. "I'm fine with either DPS or healing, but I should point out that the druids are the most mobile of all healers as I have a lot of instants I can cast while still moving." That prompted the main tank to add, "I have to say, and nothing against the healers at all, but I was using my O-sh.t! save me spells early and often, the healing is just not getting us there. To be honest, we need Wild in there healing. " After a bit more discussion, there was a compromise. We would stay with a two healer strategy, but Wild would move back to healing and the pally healer would switch to melee DPS. The pally healer was Cr, in case I forgot to mention that. She usually DPS's with the pally, and isn't as experienced at pally healing. Still, she was annoyed and suspicious that she was switched because of her "bad" healing, and thought that Pl should have been made to switch. I disagreed, knowing Cr would do a lot better DPSing than Pl.

After all that, we finally got started once more. As expected, we burst through phase one very quickly, taking light damage that Wild and Pl could easily handle. Wild had three roles - keeping HoTs on the main tank, raid healing, helping Pl with slime healing as needed, and keeping an eye on the off tank, who was "in disguise" so to speak, doing a special role in the fight. Ok, so four roles.

The second phase started well. The ranged raiders (DPS and heals) have to stay close to each other to mitigate damage from exploding slimes, and also to maneuver together to avoid the malignant goo that Putricide throws at us in phases two and three. Things started to unravel, and Wild got very, very busy. We were all still alive, though, and making progress. Wild had been tossing HoTs on the off tank regularly, and his health bar remained at full, so Wild was shocked when the off tank called out in vent that he was down to 20% health! What the ... ! Wild looked again at the off tank. Full health bar. Then I got a sinking feeling. Instead of looking at the health bar on my raid screen, I targeted the off tank directly an looked at him in his disguise - Gah! 15% health! Wild cast all three of his HoT spells directly on the off tank instead of on the raid bars, and quickly got him up full health. In all the time Wild has been doing this fight I never knew until now that I had to directly target the raider doing that special role.

Shortly after that we got Putricide to 35% and shifted into phase three. The slimes stop coming in this phase, but the malignant goo kept flying at us and there was still those exploding bottles dropped on the floor by Putricide starting in phase two. In addition to that was a new threat. The off tank's special role was to "eat" the puddles of yellow acid stuff that kept spreading around the room. Once in phase three, those puddles can't be controlled and keep they spreading until Putricide is killed or we are overwhelmed by it. The puddles act like an enrage timer, so we only had a limited time to finish Putricide off.

Wild was frantically healing and moving, moving and healing, desperately helping Pl with main tank healing while trying not to let anyone die. The acid pools grew larger and larger, and the main task other than staying alive was to weave in between pools and avoid getting trapped with no safe place to run to. Wild, who is not the best at maneuvering through all this mess, did an expert job twisting and turning between acid pools and staying both in range of the main tank and keeping an open, safe lane of travel in front of me.

And then, lo and behold, and at long last, we finally heard the words we longed to hear from the Professor:

"Bad news everyone.... I don't think I'm going to make it..."

It almost makes one sad. Almost. No raider died. There was a lot of cheering.

In the end the raid leader was right. This is best done as a two healer fight.

[Note: Professor Putricide has some pretty funny lines. To hear some of them, take a listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PStC-LNZ2s

After all that, perhaps it was time to rest on our laurels for the week. No, we were energized by the victory and still had time on the clock.

We went after the Blood Prince Council, or "the princes" for short.

There are three princes, each one with different abilities, but all sharing the same health pool. Each prince had a tank assigned, and each tank had a healer assigned. Wild had asked Bd, who was making the tank assignments, if he wanted a healer for each tank. He said yes, so Wild made the assignments, making Bd the tank Wild would heal since his job is the diciest and requires the most movement. Bd didn't see my post and made different healing assignments. Wild went with it, stating in vent, "Ok, what Bd said for healing assignments." Bd did see that, and laughed.

We took a shot at the princes, and was doing pretty well when Bd suddenly died. Bd has a crucial role in gathering up and controlling large, nasty balls of purplish stuff that if out of control will wipe the raid. If Bd dies, we fail. We failed.

For the second attempt we changed healing around to what Wild had initially decided on, which allowed Wild to run around with Bd and keep him healed. That worked great, but then the same thing happened again. Bd suddenly went from "I'm fine" to "I'm dead."

We were all perplexed - until the pally healer asked a question. "Umm, how important is it that I decurse all these debuffs on Bd? Because it's affecting my healing."

Bd started laughing so hard he was snorting into his mike. Healing wasn't the problem. It was essential to the fight that no one decurse the debuffs on Bd. He NEEDS those debuffs to stay alive. And the pally was stripping them off him every chance she got. Now it all made sense. Just like Wild not knowing about the direct healing on the off tank with Putricide, these little "I didn't know that!" moments do happen.

Prior to our next attempt, Wild teased Bd with this comment in raid chat, where everyone would see it: "Cr, don't tell Bd, but on the next attempt I'll do the decursing." Druids can decurse, too, and I was basically saying I'd be the one to get Bd killed the next time.

We made two more attempts on the Princes (no, we didn't do any decursing), getting better each time, with our best being 27%. We've got this one figured out. It's only a matter of practice, now.

"Practice" led to the post raid discussion about whether to engage the lock or not on the raid. The question was whether to start with Princes next week or start over again from the beginning. I admit I was a little surprised that as many as four raiders wanted to start over from the beginning. They were on quests and needed the badges and gear. Wild was adamantly opposed to that. "I want us to get to the Lich King, and that's the goal we should be aiming at." If this raid becomes a farming run on bosses we've already mastered, I'll stop bringing Wild and try to find another raid Wild can get into. They can fill Wild's spot with someone else, or I can bring Philly if they want me in there. But my goal is LK, not badges. The raid leader agreed that the raid would be locked. So I'll wait and see what happens when next week rolls around.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday (15 Sep) - Sister Svalna's Stampede

Wednesday (15 Sep) - Sister Svalna's Stampede

Wild was a bit ambivalent about the Wednesday night G2 ICC10 raid. As reported before, we seemed stuck at one boss and seemed to be losing focus on our ultimate goal, the Lich King. It was great to see that Bd was back from his hiatus. He joined the raid when invites when out, but when one of the tanks asked if he would be tanking with us, Bd said no, he was not in the raid to take anyone's place. Our two regular tanks were already in the raid. Bd also has a druid that he could use for healing, but we already had our three healers in place as well. It looked like Bd would hang around to see us off but would not be raiding with us.

This was also the second ICC10 night for the G1 group, so it was surprising that Bd was even available. The G1 was running late, even later than our G2 group, and when we got started toward 7pm Bd was still in the raid with us. He's a warrior and for the first time in a long time, he was able to switch to his melee Fury spec and kill things instead of tanking or healing. Bd was a very happy raider. It made for an interesting raid makeup, though. We had no DPS casters (mage, warlock, shadow priest, moonkin, etc) and our only ranged DPS were two hunters. Cr did not bring her holy priest on this run; instead, she brought an alt, a holy paladin.

We got started. Were were playing pretty sloppy. Pulls with raiders not ready, raiders dying and the group moving on, leaving healers behind trying to rez the dead, just in general half sleep-walking through it. We finally stumbled to Lord Marrowgar and started to pay better attention. With a little more focus, Marrowgar turned into an easy kill, and we moved on.

Deathwhisper - dead
Gunship - sunk
Saurfang - killed
Festergut - Wild died, I still don't know how I missed a spore. They killed
Festergut without me.
Rotface - He can give us trouble. Cr died and Wild rezzed her. Wild then
died. And they still killed Rotface despite losing two healers.
Dreamwalker - Saved! Our 1st attempt! 1st time we didn't wipe at least once.

Then there was Putricide. We lobbied to go to the Princes. Nope, we were told, let's take one shot at Putricide. The night's almost over. Our best attempt on Putricide in past raids was 44%. We need to get to 35% to get Putricide to the third and final phase. We took only one shot at Putricide, and it was the cleanest fight yet. Everyone was doing what they were supposed to do. We fought Putricide down to the 35% mark and entered the third phase. We had trouble with that phase, since it was the first time seeing it, but we got Putricide down to 28% before wiping. If we play like that Thursday night we'll bring that bad boy down.

Overall it was a heck of a night. We stampeded downed seven bosses in a single night and came closer than ever to our eighth. One of the drops on the night was [Sister Svalna's Aether Staff]. It's a two-hand staff with a lot of +hit on it, intended for DPS casters. Did I mention that we didn't have any DPS casters in the raid? Wild rolled on it for offspec and no one else wanted it. Wild wasn't sure he could use it in his moonkin set, but it was worth picking up. Wild could always shard it later and pass it to the raid leader.

The healing numbers were interesting. Wild was curious how Cr would do on her paladin, and how Pl (the other holy priest) was improving with the gear she'd been picking up. Here is a quick and dirty run down: W= Wild, C=Cr, and P=Pl. The order is by total healing, although the numbers are hps.

MG: W-4761, P-3686, C-3684
DW: W-2895, P-2513, C-2508
GS: W-2308, P-2006, C-1725
SF: C-3267, W-2650, P-2730
FG: C-5831, P-4126, W-5441 (Wild died 1/2 way through fight)
RF: P-4431, C-3424, W-3884 (Wild died again. Sigh)
DW: C-13729, W-13491 : Special heals, Wild was ecstatic that both of us were able to top 13k healing, which is why we were able to one shot this fight for the first time.
PC: C-4420, W-4140, P-4476 (P died twice, Wild once)

After the raid Wild played around with his moonkin gear set, trying to determine if the new staff fit in. The main advantage of swapping out Wild's current main hand/offhand pair of gear for the single two-hand staff is that Wild would give up around 200 spell power. That is a huge amount. The advantage that "might" mitigate that loss is that by adding the staff and it's 163 +hit, Wild could replace some of his lower ilevel +hit gear with higher ilevel non-hit gear. But would it be enough to offset the loss of spell power?

When Wild was finally done moving gear around, he found a combination of gear that he was really happy with. He enchanted the staff and added gems to the two slots, and was able to replace three older pieces of +hit gear with much better gear from his healing set, all of it while staying above the minimum level of +hit Wild needed to be effective as a moonkin in raids. In the final tally the only thing Wild had to give up was +haste. It would mean that Wild's spells would take longer to cast, but haste is not as crucial to a moonkin as spell power, crit, and intelligence are. Wild was surprised that he actually increased his spell power, from 3069 to 3106. His mana went up, as did his health, and his crit got a very nice buff up, from 22.27% to 25.41%. Wild loves the new staff.

Wild was getting ready to log when he decided to check mail. There was a note from Ando, asking Wild if he had a couple of enchants. They were older enchants, and neither were part of Wild's trained spells. One required some heavy farming, hoping to get the recipe, which was a rare drop. Wild had farmed for that recipe many times in his younger days, but it had never dropped for him. The other recipe could be purchased, provided Wild had Revered reputation with the Cenarion Expedition. Wild did not have that rep, but he was surprised to find that he was pretty close to getting it. Revered rep required 12,000 rep points. Wild had 10,535. There was only one place Wild could feasibly go to get that 1,465 rep (without having to get help) - and that was the Steamvaults, a five man level 70 dungeon in Coilfang Reservoir.

Wild has soloed several of the level 70 dungeons, but not the Steamvaults. Wild has attempted it, though, a couple of times, a great many days and weeks and months ago when his gear was far from where it is today. The effort didn't seem worth it at the time, so Wild just forgot about it. It was time to try it again. It didn't hurt that Wild was also anxious to try out his new moonkin gear set and that staff.

In the Steamvaults there are a lot of mobs, and they come in packs of 3-5 at a time. Wild knew enough to target and kill the casters first, particularly if they could heal, and that he could heal through just about anything that beat on him in melee range. Wild went back and forth between moonkin and caster form, and level 70 elite mobs died by the dozens.

Wild did not really know his way around, but all I was doing was killing things for rep, so it didn't much matter. If it breathed, Wild killed it. Eventually he stumbled over a boss, Mekgineer Steamrigger. The strategy called for watching out for the adds, for a sawblade, and being immobilized by an electric net. Wild killed the boss in seconds, and used Hurricane to turn the stunned adds into mush. Steamrigger was technically the second boss, but Wild soon ran across the first boss, Hydromancer Thespia. She had lots of interesting abilities, but they didn't do her much good against Wild. She died. Killing bosses was easier than the crowds of adds. At least Wild didn't have to re-target all the time against bosses. Well, except for the third and last boss, Warlord Kalithresh.

The Warlord fight was irritating because of a mechanic that required Wild to target and destroy clear, fluid filled tanks in the room whenever the Warlord channeled one of them. Just before he does that, he casts a spell reflect that bounces Wild's attacks back at Wild. Wild wanted to avoid that at all costs, as Wild could hurt himself a lot worse than the boss could hurt him.

Wild's strategy was to kill the Warlord before he cast spell reflect the first time. Unfortunately, I didn't think much beyond that, so when he was still standing when he cast spell reflect I was a bit at a loss. Wild had a couple of spells reflected back before Wild could stop casting. They hurt. A lot. The boss started channeling a tank. Wild knew he should target and destroy the tank quickly. Wild wasn't quick enough, though, and the Warlord enraged. Wild shrugged. How bad could his enrage be? I'll just heal through it.

His enrage was bad - very bad. He hit Wild so fast so many times Wild could not get off any heals except for his instants, and they didn't help enough. The boss was immune to Stomp and to Cyclone and entangling roots failed. Coupled with the damage Wild had already done to himself, things went from bad to worse.

Wild died.

Well, that was kind of embarrassing. But Wild had already gotten enough rep to make Revered, and Wild was out of time. Wild gave Warlord Kalithresh a salute. Next time we meet, Wild promised him, you'll die.

Wild swung by the Cenarion Refuge and got the enchant recipe that Ando needed. Wild hates grinding rep and farming mobs for rare recipes and such, unless it's because someone actually needs it. Then the effort has a purpose behind it and Wild is much happier going after it. Wild will get Ando his enchant, and perhaps the next time Wild heads for the Stemvaults, Naithipe will come along to video it.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Monday (13 Sep) - The Coming Week

Monday (13 Sep) - The Coming Week

The MM guild likes to send out a weekly reminder of all the guild functions scheduled for the week. It's a pretty full plate.

Two raids that Wild won't have time for is a scheduled run to get the weekly frost raid done and a pvp raid. The weekly frost raid is a good idea, but it starts at 4:30pm, which is a very bad time for real life reasons. The PVP night is also new to the schedule, but that, too, is at an inconvenient time.

The G2 ICC10 raids on Wed/Thur are still on and Wild is signed up for them, for whatever good that will do. The most interesting raid, scheduled for the first time this week, is a co-op ICC25 raid on Fri/Sat. The Guild Leader is running that one. BH is the guild we are partnering with. I'm not sure of the full name of the guild or the spelling and haven't been able to find them on the Armory. So I don't really know anything about them, although I would have to assume that the Guild Leader knows people in that guild that he trusts. There is no MM sign for this raid up on the calendar. Wild had to contact the GL to let him know I was interested. The GL told Wild I would get an invite. I am under the possibly incorrect assumption that this is a BH raid that MM is providing fill-ins for, so it will be interesting to see how this goes.

Aha! It took awhile but I finally figured out the guild name. It has one of those special characters in it's name (I hate those things!) and the WoW Armory search feature is so lame it only searches for the exact name. There are 188 characters in the guild, 123 of which are level 80. That includes alts, of course. Wild pays attention to the druid healers he runs across, so the first thing he did after figuring out the guild is to see if he knew any of the druid healers in the guild. There are twelve level 80 druids in BH, and Wild did know one of them. Wild has run with her before and she's pretty good. She was in moonkin gear when she logged out so I don't know what her healing gear is like, but she's killed the princes six times in ICC25, and has numerous Heroic kills in ICC10. Impressive, although there are no Putricide or Dreamwalker kills listed for ICC25. Only one other druid in BH can match Wild's healing gear, and that player has a Kingslayer title. Looking at the entire list of level 80s in the guild, only two other names were even vaguely familiar. If this works out Wild is going to be making a lot of new friends.

Sorry that EZ and friends had to miss the Monday PvP night. I had a double whammy of a Padres game against the Rockies and the opening night Chargers football game against our arch rival KC Chiefs. The Padres are battling to hold on to first place in the NL West and pulled off a 6-4 victory, breaking the Rockies string of ten straight wins and pushing them 2 1/2 games back. The win also gave the Pads another 1/2 game cushion against the second place Giants, who were idle. The Chargers game went south early, with the Chief's special teams twice blowing away the Chargers with touchdowns off of kick-offs. Down 21-7, the Chargers came back but fell six yards short of the tying touchdown as time ran out, losing 21-14. It rained, and rained hard, throughout the game, affecting footing and seemingly even bothering quarterback Rivers, who usually doesn't even notice the weather. The local sportswriters will be merciless, and it was definitely a shaky start to the season, but the kinks I saw seemed mostly in the special teams and a rare disconnect between Rivers and his very good center, Hartwick. That can be fixed, but the special teams? They were bad on both the kicking and receiving side. Had they been on the ball the Chargers would have won it even with all the other issues.