Thursday, December 29, 2011

Wednesday (28 Dec) - Raid Moggers

Wednesday (28 Dec) - Raid Moggers

Wild's druid healing partner in Bd's Wed/Thurs raid has mogged her outfit into quite the sexy troll with a [Wicked Leather Headband] and [Raptor Hide Harness]. She shows she means business with a mogged [Staff of the Plaguehound]. Wild needs to get crackin' on his own set, and spent part of the day setting up his own mogged gear, but still has some work to do on it.

Wild wasn't sure if we could rustle together enough raiders to make a run into Dragon Soul, and waited anxiously for the raid to fill. We had eight sign up, but that doesn't mean much. While we waited I made some small but significant adjustments to my user interface (UI). I've been using an addon called Class Timer to monitor some of Wild's buff cooldowns, but over time those reminders got buried behind other things. It hasn't mattered much with the LFR or the Twilight Heroics, but in a real ten man raid they are very important. I've been testing an alternate addon to Class Timer called Needtoknow, and I liked it enough to retire Class Timer. Wild specifically monitors his Lifebloom stacks, Harmony, and Replenishment, all of which have to be refreshed regularly in order to maximize healing throughput and, even more importantly, mana regen for the whole raid. Needtoknow provides that in a simple and easy to read way, and Wild has it positioned directly under his raid screen so that it's always at hand.

We had an afternoon movie to go to today, "Warhorse," but made it back in time for Wild to jump into the 3pm guild planned DS LFR. Well, it was Wild's intention to get into that raid, but it had already been canceled when Wild logged in.

At the 6:30pm raid start time we had a pretty good group ... however, both of our raid leaders were detained and could not make the raid. One raid leader was our main tank, and our off tank never showed. We tried until close to 7:30pm to get a raid going, but it didn't happen. Frustrated with his guild, Wild jumped into a random DS LFR to get the first four bosses done for the week. On the first boss, Morchok, Wild won the roll on the i384 [Petrified Fungal Heart]. This necklace retires an i365 necklace, and with that gone Wild's gear is all i378 or higher. Overall, Wild is now at i384 gear level. I might have gotten a second piece - the Tier 13 gloves - but we had another one of those loot glitches. The gloves token was never awarded to anyone. Someone in the raid had a theory that seemed to make sense. What he said was happening is that loot winners must stand near the slain boss until the loot is passed. Leaving the area early mucks things up. Sometimes you can go back to a boss where loot failed to be awarded, and still win it if not a lot of time had gone by. I suspect Wild won the gloves, left too soon, and then it was too late once I had a chance to slip back and check. The boss that "would" have given me the loot was Warlord Zon'ozz:

Here Lies the Murdered Warlord





Wild also got a one on one shot of the last boss of the Siege, Hagara the Stormbinder, and got his picture, too:

Here Lies the Slain Hagara
 


I didn't get pics of the other two as their corpses were gone when I checked on them. It was actually kind of cool wandering through the portals to all the bosses after everyone else in the raid had already left. Wish Wild had gotten those tier gloves, though.

Hunter Fortress has been on vacation for a good bit, but hopefully we will all be able to get together after the New Year.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Monday (26 Dec)- Crunch Time is Coming

Monday (26 Dec)- Crunch Time is Coming

Ok, we've all been enjoying our Christmas holidays, I hope. Happy has been exceedingly busy raking in the gold even as prices on items such as maelstrom crystals, heavenly shards, and celestial essences go through the roof. Happy wasn't as fast on his feet as he should have been in regard to the volatiles market, however. Prices crashed and Happy was left with a lot of stock he couldn't sell. But prices should creep back up once the fire sale is over, and Happy will have plenty on hand to feed the new demand.

Wild did a good job this past week getting his two Dragon Soul LFR raids completed as well as doing the Heroics. Wild almost maxed his valor points for the week (950 out of the 1,000 max) and was able to use those points to purchase the i397 cape, [Woundlicker Cover]. Wild also upgraded his i365 trinket for an i378 trinket called [Foul Gift of the Demon Lord], which he won from Well of Eternity. Wild pushed his gear score up to i383.

Wild's guild is attempting to raid this week. Monday's Mf raid didn't get off the ground, though. Wild is signed up for Bd's Wed/Thurs DS 10 man and I really hope we get that one moving. What's the good of all this nice gear if I don't get to slay bosses!?

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Christmas Eve - Merry Christmas All!

Christmas Eve - Merry Christmas All!

I'm busy putting together the annual recap of all the going's on of the past year. I've got most of it done, but there is still another week to go.

In the meantime, the entire Wild Family wants to wish everyone a very merry Christmas. And an equally enthusiastic Merry Christmas! from me personally and all my own family; The Mrs, the dog, and our house full of cats.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Weekend - (18 Dec) Covering the Bases

Weekend - (18 Dec) Covering the Bases

Covering the bases includes both in game and in the ballpark!

Many players in Wild's guild are heavy into the transmogrification thing. I've explained "mogging" before, but basically it means collecting old gear for it's looks and then "mogging" your real gear to look like the old gear without changing the stats. It's a neat idea. As a result there has been a lot of interest in running old dungeons to get gear for mogging. Wild's guild has been making mog runs several times a week, and on Friday night they ran both Naxrammas and ICC. Wild wasn't able to make those raids, but more are planned over the weekend. Wild's mog set will be based on the Tier 1 Cenarion set from Molten Core, but Wild is also looking at other gear to complement/replace some of that set. Wild currently has the leg and chest from the set and has set aside a few other pieces that may become part of his mogged set.

Anyway, it's Saturday morning as I write this and the weekend is shaping up into a busy one in real life and in WoW. I'll be adding entries as I go.

To start, Wild got in the two dungeon runs needed for his VP boots, but got screwed over when Wild was not awarded the 150 points for the second run. I don't know what happened there, but Wild was royally T-ed off about it. I doubt the GM ticket sent will do any good. The dungeon was Well of Eternity, the middle dungeon of the three dungeon chain. With the Well done, players can move on to Hour of Twilight or leave the dungeon finder if they don't want to proceed further. When the final boss falls players generally wait to see what loot drops, rolls on them if they want anything, and then leave. Based on the several runs Wild has made now, it seems that if players leave group too soon, it's possible for loot distribution to have problems.

Wild's group killed the final boss, Mannaroth, and someone opened the cache for the loot. There was nothing Wild wanted, but I always roll on each piece anyway, even if I'm only going to Pass. That way there are no delays because someone failed to roll. Wild did leave before all the loot was distributed, and perhaps that caused the glitch. I don't know, but Wild was still 150 VPs short of getting his i397 boots. Wild is always going to check his VP totals before quitting group from now on to make sure he gets his VPs.

On the RL front, we're going to Petco Park (home of the San Diego Padres baseball team) today. We were invited by the team to come by - they are inviting everyone who attended games last season, and I'm sure it'll be a pitch to buy season tickets, but that's fine, we just thought it would be fun to go down to the stadium. The report on what we did is at the bottom of the post. It was fun!

At 3pm Wild went back to work. There are two guild raids planned for Saturday, a 25 man DS LFR run and then a another 25 man run at 6:30PM with the raid to be determined based on attendance and quality of gear.

There were ten of us in game for the DS LFR, so we queued up in our own raid group and let the LFR fill in the rest of the spots. We had two good tanks from our guild and one healer - Wild. We cleared through the trash and downed the first boss, Morchok, without any issues. On to the next boss, Ozz, where we had to clear the eyeball and Claw trash. While pounding through that, one of our tanks, Bd, DCed. The raid leader for the LFR Kicked Bd from the raid while we were telling him to give us a minute. I know that Bd had told the raid leader he had a guild group, but it apparently didn't make any difference that almost half the raid was from the same guild. I know that in these raids many raid leaders have a very fast trigger on dumping raiders who have any kind of problem, simply because that spot will be filled almost instantly. Then, someone aggroed Ozz and started the fight prematurely. Seeing the coming disaster, and pissed at the raid leader, the rest of our guild quit the raid. I hope that raid leader enjoyed the fight with no tanks and only 15 raiders.

We tried a second time, losing two guildies, including one tank, who bowed out. With this group we cleared the first four bosses with no significant trouble. There were more issues with the raid loot, however. A player DEed during the loot rolls and when that player never came back the tanking trinket that was being rolled on disappeared, screwing over our tank. Wild got his first T13 token, but unfortunately it was for the leg slot - the one slot where he already HAS the i397 T13 pants. It didn't really matter, though, because the token disappeared from Wild's bag when the raid broke up after killing the final boss. Sigh. Bottom line is that Wild didn't get any loot drops, but the valor points earned were enough for Wild to get his i397 boots. Wild's gear score is now i380.

Wild never made it to the second raid of the evening. On Sunday, though, after the San Diego Chargers kicked butt against the Ravens, Wild was charged up for some raiding. Wild queued up for the final four boss segment (The Fall of Deathwing). Wild entered the raid on the boat, which is the second boss in this segment. I almost pulled out to wait for one that started at the beginning, but hey, if I get the last three the first one will be easy to get later. We won the ship battle, followed by the battle on the back of Deathwing, and then the Madness to wrap things up. For the first time Wild actually led a DS LFR raid in healing, but it was still only around 15k hps. Wild really wants to see what numbers he gets/needs in a ten man because I'm just not sure what impact all this new gear will have on real ten man raiding. That won't likely be until after Christmas as no raids are scheduled for next week.

Wild did win a loot drop from the last encounter, Madness of Deathwing. It was [Maw of the Dragonlord], an i390 healing mace. Wild usually gets ecstatic over weapon upgrades, and this is a pretty big jump from Wild's current i378 dagger. However, it has no secondary stats. Instead, it has a gimmick equip buff that heals all players in front of wild on a 15 second cooldown. I've researched this mace and it seems that it does provide considerable healing in situations where players are grouped up, but Wild has no control over when it procs and will miss the +crit and +mastery on his dagger. Wild decided to give it a try, though, and see how it works out.

Oh, Wild waited around after the fight and then checked his VPs. I thought that killing all four bosses was required to get the 250 VPs for completing the raid, but Wild still got his VPs despite missing one boss. I guess the only boss that matters for the VPs is the last one. Also, for the first time in memory, Wild maxed out his points for the week, earning his full 1000 points. I'm going to try to keep that up and let that gear keep coming. And eventually Wild is going to have to start winning those tier tokens.

Back in real life, we went to Petco Park for our appointment with the Padres rep. We were there about two hours and it was a blast! The rep gave us a tour of the park - and not just the areas open to everyone, either. We got to go into the press box, into areas for players only (but not the locker room itself), the luxury boxes, and the private lounge/restaurant/bar for season ticket holders. We also got to go down on the field and into the dugout. That was truly cool.

For those not familiar with the Padres financial state, this is a small market team with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. You might think that in a city of two million, and with a still new and wonderful ballpark, we would have no trouble filling the park. However, year round sunshine, lots of other fun distractions, and a significant transient population that usually has other home team preferences (ie, the military), makes selling tickets is a challenge. In 2010 the team surprised everyone by winning 90 games, and despite going back to our usual losing season in 2011, attendance was still up. With little hope for a winning team in 2012, though, attendance will be a problem. It didn't help us when the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to the north of us bought two big free agents recently - the salary of just those two players (starting pitcher CJ Wilson and super star slugger Albert Pujols) would fund the entire payroll of the Padres - for six years.

The sales pitch was smooth but without any pressure. The rep started with the royal treatment, though, letting us sit behind home plate where the premiere season holders get seats. These folks get most everything for free - concessions, in seat service, valet parking, private lounge, etc, including entering the park in the same area where the players enter. The private lounge has one way windows that look directly into the bullpen. Now that is truly cool. All of that could be ours for the cut rate price of just $56,000 - yep, fifty-six THOUSAND dollars. We were impressed but declined.

We then moved around the park, checking out various seating and progressively bringing down the price. Honestly, I didn't think we would find anything that was cheap enough to buy season tickets for ... but the Padres are pretty desperate for butts in seats, and in turn I was surprised at the quality seats that were available on the aisle, no less, for the price. The team also has an exchange system where we can change our seats if we wanted or place them for someone else to buy when we aren't using them. My wife is as much a fan as I am, and you have probably guessed by now that we bought in.

The cost averages out to about $13 per seat (81 games, two seats per game). I love baseball. It's still hard to believe that we are season ticket holders. Oh, and I have a picture of me in the Padres dugout on the phone to the bullpen.  I'll send that along when I get it off my phone.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Thursday (15 Dec) - Loot Rule Updates

Thursday (15 Dec) - Loot Rule Updates

Blizzard hot patched the Looking for Raid (LFR) loot system on Wednesday. The key change is that many of the items that drop in LFR raids have been reclassified with "class only" tags. For example, Wildshard won the trinket [Seal of the Seven Signs] in a DS LFR raid. Before this recent change, any class that used +int had a chance to win the trinket, including classes such as warlocks, who could rightly make a case that they use both the +int and +haste buff stats on it. Now, that trinket can only be won by a healer class: druid, paladin, priest, shaman. Wild of course can still use this trinket. However, if a warlock had this trinket, won fair and square according to the loot rules at the time, that warlock will no longer be able to equip it. Blizzard doesn't seem to be offering players an equivalent, usable item. However, players that find they have LFR gear that they can no longer equip can petition to get back the item that was replaced.

I went through the complete list of gear that have loot restrictions that changed. Some of those restrictions favor Wild, giving him a better chance of winning them. The even better news is that no items that Wild could want are denied to druids.

Blizzard hopes this will result in better loot placement and less frustration among players trying to make good decisions on loot drops as well as players frustrated at any delay in their march through the raid.

This is one step of many they are trying to implement to make loot awards more appropriate to class and role - and eventually spec as well.

Oh, the changes are now being called the LFR Need Plus system. We have to have a name for everything.

All of these rules apply only to LFR raids, not to normal or heroic raids.

Wild is doing more than talking about loot rules. On Thursday Wild ran two more random dungeon runs. The runs went pretty fast with some DPSers that were rolling out insane numbers, like over 40k DPS. It was funny when the lowest DPSer complained a little that his numbers were so low because the other DPS had like i390 gear scores. We all laughed. Don't you want us to go all out? they asked him. Of course we did. 

Wild got one drop, i378 pants that would have been a serious upgrade if Wild didn't already have the i397 T13 pants. Wild will end up disenchanting them for the maelstrom crystal. Happy is making a lot of money from Wild cracking maelstrom crystals into two heavenly shards, but as more and more gear gets DE'ed with all these dungeon runs, that price is likely to fall pretty far.

Wild is two random dungeon runs away from being able to buy his i397 boots (1650 VPs), which should happen sometime Friday. Wild was a little torn, since he will be upgrading an i378 piece while still having four i365 items to replace. Wild came very close to buying an i397 relic for 700 VPs as it would be upgrade his current i365 relic. The stats didn't fit well, however, and the overall benefit was better by waiting to get the boots. Wild had a miniature epiphany, though, when it occurred to him that he could buy the i378 relic with Justice Points, which Wild had little need for.

Wild now has a new relic, which has upped his gear score to i379. He was so proud he just had to check the gear on the player that has the gear level Wild aspires to: Silver. Gulp. Silver's equipped gear score is i387. Ok, back to work.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Wednesday (14 Dec) - Hour of Twilight, the Full Experience

Wednesday (14 Dec) - Hour of Twilight, the Full Experience

[Note - this is very long because it covers all three dungeons; loot information is summarized at the end (tip - Wild is very happy) ]

The fall of the Lich King brought the great dragon Deathwing to full power. Deathwing brought about the Cataclysm, which forever changed the very contours of the world of Azeroth. Deathwing commands the diminished but still potent Twilight's Hammer cult and many evil cohorts among the elemental lords and others. The battle is far from over.

The Old Gods have stirred and resumed their ages old feuds, creating more mayhem that only helps Deathwing in it's single minded pursuit of the total destruction of the world.

On our side are the Dragon Aspects that oppose Deathwing, Nozdormu in particular. Thrall also plays a prominent role, leading both Horde and Alliance in the battle against the dragon (Horde rejoices, Alliance say wtf, where's our own leader? - :P). The forces of good need a weapon great enough to defeat Deathwing. The only weapon powerful enough is one created by Deathwing itself - the Dragon Soul. That weapon no longer exists - in the present. We must go into the past to retrieve it.

The Caverns of Time provide the gateway to the past and sets the path we must follow. The five man dungeon "End Time" begins the newest chapter in the war with Deathwing. Many of Deathwing's servants have already fallen - Cho'gal, Lady Sinestra, Al'akir, and even Ragnaros.

On Tuesday, after the weekly maintenance and reset, and at the beginning of the third week of patch 4.3, Wild finally queued up for Hour of Twilight Heroics for the first time. Wild was Summoned into the past, and then thrust into a far future where Deathwing was victorious. It's a desolate world. All that is left standing is Wyrmrest Temple, the heart of where the great dragons once reigned.

The goal of End Time is to unblock the past so that we can go after the Dragon Soul. Something in the future is blocking access to the past, and here we were, Wild and four other adventurers, taking up the task. There are quite a number of mob groups to kill and a large landscape to travel across while clearing them. I don't think Thrall came with us on this part, but we were carried to the future by Nozdormu. The trash isn't that hard, but it wasn't a pure cakewalk, either. Being stupid still got a DPS killed occasionally. I imagine players not in raiding gear could have some difficulty.

Once through the trash mobs, we had to face two foes from a random list of four. These bosses are mere echoes of what were once great leaders. Now, defeated and forlorn, they stood in the way of our goal. Each of these echoes have their own trash mobs, and they are also not pushovers. Wild was fortunate that the tank had been here before and knew the strats for taking out the trash. I don't recall now which two Echoes we faced. I was very busy keeping the tank alive and trying not to die.

With the Echoes defeated, we traveled to the Bronze Dragonshrine. Wild was the only one in the group that was doing this dungeon for the first time. There is a lot of traveling around that includes entering portals with multiple choices to pick from. Wild had to ask several times which choice to take and was relieved that the group just answered the questions without any fuss. They were also patient with Wild getting his quests completed, which wasn't hard but did slow us down a little.

The final boss in End Time was Murozond. The name is an anagram of Nozdormu. Yes, we must defeat an evil, future version of Nozdormu. For a dungeon boss he is pretty deadly. In particular, Wild had trouble with Distortion Bomb. This is a launched explosive that leaves a circle of destruction on the floor it's best not to stand in. Everything moves in quick time as the real Nozdormu helps us by speeding up time. However, the room fills with those deadly circles pretty fast, and it's hard to both avoid the launched explosives and keep away from the circles. Wild had to heal like crazy. There is no way to survive this encounter except for one thing. Murozond has the Hourglass of Time. When the floor becomes too littered with death circles the tank activated the Hourglass - time sped backward, returning us to our starting positions and clearing all of the circles. It does not restore damage done (so Murozond doesn't get his health back), and it can only be used a maximum of five times. It was touch and go sometimes, but we killed him.

With Murozond dispatched and End Time completed, the tank and one DPS left. Wild received a message asking if I wanted to add more players to continue. Wild said yes, and our revised group entered the second dungeon, Well of Eternity.

Access to the past was now possible, and Nozdormu flung our group 10,000 years into the past. We were in the night elf city Zin-Azshari, home of Azshara, the Highborne Elven Queen. Here is where the Dragon Soul rested. The city was alive with activity and large, elite armies stormed about in a near constant flow. We got a little help from an appearance by Illidan, who gave the group a stealth affect that helped us avoid the large armies of mobs and also added crit bonuses when we did encounter mob groups we couldn't sneak past. Our goal was to destroy a series of crystals, each defended by trash, of course. Illidan guided us to each area and there was a lot of traveling. Sometimes players got ahead of Illidan, since they already knew where to head next. Wild tried to stay with the tank, as he never slowed down, attacking the instant he got to the next mob group. That posed a constant challenge for Wild, but I accepted it and the tank never died. It was close a few times, though.

After a considerable amount of effort, we cleared all the trash and faced our first boss, Peroth'arn. Wild truly hates this boss. I will admit that hatred comes from not knowing the specifics of the fight, which wage a heavy toll on the healer. First, there was Fel Decay. This ability is cast on a random player and causes significant initial damage as well as a ten second DoT up to around 140k total damage. That could kill some players. Healing the suffering player does additional damage equal to the amount healed - to the healer! Wild didn't know this, but it wasn't hard to put two and two together when every time I healed the marked player Wild took damage as well. Wild compromised and kept the player healed to half health, which meant Wild's health also shrunk down by half. Nasty. Peroth'arn has another nasty ability called Drain Essence. It started with a group AoE followed by the group being forced into stealth again. Peroth'arn, also now stealthed, then sent green eyes out searching for us. If you got caught, Peroth'arn attacked that player and the tank had to taunt the boss away (sending the boss back into stealth). Eventually, if no one got caught for awhile, the boss came out of stealth his own. We didn't do it that way. The impatient tank forced Peroth'arn out of stealth, getting hit with massive damage in the process, which Wild had not anticipated and could not overcome. The tank died, but Wild immediately battle rezzed him, and the fight continued. Peroth'arn went down.

After recovering from that fight, we moved on, killing many more mobs on the way, including more of those green eyes, which added lightning strikes and firebreath to their repertoire.

We arrived at the top of a long staircase, and there stood Queen Azshara. It was a little disappointing that Azshara does not fight us herself. Instead, she sent six magi against us, two at a time, each pair with differing abilities. The most I can say about this is that it was confusing and Wild was never sure when to stack up or run away. Wild relied on the most basic of rules - don't stand in the fire, avoid what comes at you, and run away from anything that looked dangerous. We also did this fight with one DPS missing for most of it. The magi were killed, but that did not end the dungeon. We received a cache of loot, and then we were transported by dragons to a new area.

Illidan, Tyrande, and Malfurion were there when we arrived. When we were ready, there were two massive, and I mean massive, attacks started first by by Illidan and then Tyrande. Stack on them! Both of them provide buffs that you must be inside of or die. Otherwise, the rest of the mobs aren't too bad.

The battle with the pair of bosses that followed was something of a grey cloud to Wild. One boss was Varo'then, the personal guard of Azshara; the other boss was Mannoroth, a pit lord capable of corrupting the entire orc race. There was a sword that the DPS must throw back at one boss, a buff to get at a certain point, and mobs to kill by killing the mobs that spawn them. This is one fight where the strategy MUST be clear because failing that leads to a battle that never ends. Wild didn't know the strategy at all and was lucky that the tank and maybe one DPS did. The fight still took a long time, long enough for Wild to innervate and even use a mana pot at one point. One player died and did not respond to Wild's battle rez. We finished the fight with just four. From what Wild could tell, the healing got easier with one DPS gone and we still downed the boss. And recovered the Dragon Soul.

After distributing loot, Wild had two quests to deal with, and a cache that refused to give up it's crystal to either Wild or the remaining player still in group. While fooling around with that, the quest giver despawned and Wild had to go in search of her, first across the large area left vacant by the battle, and then through portals until the danged quest giver respawned. Wild was now alone, the other player having left the group. Wild completed his quests and didn't quite know what to do. Is it over? Well of Eternity certainly was, but what about the last dungeon?

I'm not sure what Wild did, but he wound up in a tunnel carved into ice. Thrall was there. Wild talked to him, and learned that Wild was supposed to escort him somewhere. Wild walked deeper into the tunnel, but Thrall didn't follow. Wild came back and talked to him a second time, and this time Thrall moved into action. Almost immediately, two high level elites appeared. Thrall attacked them. Thrall was very capable of tanking and killing the two elites. Wild kept himself healed and made sure not to grab aggro away from Thrall. The two mobs went down.

We moved deeper into the tunnel, and we were ambushed by five elite mobs. Surrounded, Wild aggroed two mobs just by standing there. Wild died. Once Wild rezzed and returned to the tunnel, I got a message asking if Wild would like to invite more players to assist. Would I ever! Wild went into the queue and reappeared in the tunnel with a full group. I guess Wild wasn't expected to solo the final dungeon, Hour of Twilight. Hehe, grinned Wild sheepishly, nursing his wounds and his pride.

Our group started down the tunnel with Thrall (who carried the Dragon Soul), dealing with many mobs on the way, and finally reaching present-day Wyrmrest Temple. It was a long way.

There are three bosses to defeat: Arcurion (water elemental), Asira Dawnslayer (an assassin for hire who fell under the power of Twilight's Hammer, and Archbishop Benedictus (an Alliance traitor secretly allied with Deathwing).

By now Wild's brain has esploded and he can't really remember much about these boss fights. I promise to give a more thorough report in a subsequent run. We did kill all the bosses and finished the final dungeon.

With all of that behind me, I quote: "This is the beginning of the last stand against Deathwing." From here, players move on to the raid Dragon Soul.

And Then There Was Loot

The loot could have been astounding. Between the boss kills, random drops, and quest turn-ins Wild acquired EIGHT i378 items. Seven of the items were equipable. One was a soulbound cloth piece and Wild disenchanted it.

Four of the remaining items fit slots that already had i378 gear equipped. None of new pieces were good enough to replace what Wild already has, but the stats differed enough that Wild will hang on to them to give him some flexibility as new gear comes along. One of those four is a BoE cloak, and Wild will likely send that along to JB if she ever decides to get to 85.

So far, Wild hasn't seen anything that he could actually add to his working gear. The last three items made up for that. Wild picked up three rings.

If you waded through Wild's Tier 13 Loot post you know that Wild's biggest need is rings. Wild picked the two best, both carrying haste, and replaced his beat up i346 ring and his "I wish I didn't have to use it" pvp ring with true i378 pve rings. The third ring is a +hit ring that can be reforged to spirit for Wild's moonkin set.

The additions raised Wild's equipped gear score to i377.

Maybe it really was an astounding haul, at that.

Update: On Wednesday morning Happy found an early present resting in the Auction House. An i397 [Girdle of Fungal Dreams] was offered up for 15k gold. This is a BoE drop from normal Dragon Soul. Yes, I know, a belt was supposed to be the first item Wild bought with his VPs. And yes, the VP belt is better. But the Fungal Dreams is a solid upgrade and one Wild could not turn down. Wild did need to adjust some stats, and swapped out his current cloak with [Drapes of the Dragonshrine], the cloak he won in his magnificent dungeon run. So sorry, JB, you won't be getting that cloak.

Wild's gear score rose to i378. Wild will now focus his VPs on a pair of boots.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Monday (12 Dec) - Tier 13 Loot

Monday (12 Dec) - Tier 13 Loot

Wildshard has never been a grinder for Tier gear, which are theoretically the best gear in the game, slot for slot, plus the addition of set bonuses. Sure, there is plenty of debate when making item by item comparisons, but the bottom line is that the more tier gear the better. Up until 4.3, there were generally two levels of Tier gear, one for normal and a higher level for Heroic. Usually, set bonuses are specific to the set, but lately set bonuses have been allowed for same tier sets at different levels. This is the case with the Tier 13 set, which actually has three levels: an i384 LFR tier, an i397 normal tier, and an awesome i410 level for Heroic.

Wild's resto Tier 13 set is Deep Earth Vestments. It's a five piece set:

Deep Earth Legwraps (Wild has this one, i397 too)
Deep Earth Handwraps
Deep Earth Robes
Deep Earth Mantle
Deep Earth Helm

Blizzard can't seem to settle on how Tier gear is purchased, however, and change the rules with virtually every new tier. That is one excuse Wild uses for not chasing tier gear - it's just too confusing to deal with.

Cata introduced Tier 11/12 gear. I "think" the process with these tiers was that T11 could be purchased with VPs. To get T12 gear, the player had to win a gear token from a raid boss and would then turn in the token and the T11 piece to receive the T12. I do remember buying at least one T11 piece with points, but never won a T12 token.

With 4.3, the Tier 13 pieces can only be acquired by winning gear tokens in raids. The only exception I'm aware of is the T13 pants, which Wild won straight up (no token) from Baradon Hold. BH is a raid so technically all gear still has to be won in a raid.

Well, tokens suck, say Wild, not to put too fine a point on it. Wild can finally farm VPs by raiding without having to suffer through Heroic 5-mans if that's what I want to do. So far Wild has earned 1,000 VPs in two weeks work. Sure, it's only half of what Wild could have earned if he had been around the first week, and had he been farming the three 4.3 dungeons (players can earn a max of 1,000 VPs per week). Still, it's far more points than Wild has ever gotten in a two week period.

BUT - Wild can't buy T13 gear with Valor Points. So, what's the point?

Blizzard says that they have made things better in two ways - token drops in 10 man DS have been increased "slightly" (their word, not mine) so more should drop. The other improvement, says Blizzard, is that all three tiers share the same set bonuses, and we can mix and match the sets and still get the bonuses. Wild can get eight chances at tier gear each week from DS LFR kills, plus whatever the guild manages to take down in ten man.

That sounds pretty good, except for one thing. From what I'm reading, it appears that the set bonuses, at least for druids, pretty much either sucks or, at best, is pretty ho hum. Nobody cares that much whether they have them or not.

So Wild also looked at what VPs can actually buy him. If his luck fails him and tier tokens don't drop, he'll still earn enough VPs to buy other non-Tier gear. Wild wasn't impressed when he took his first look at that gear, but on second look, well ... let's see what could be bought. Note that the VP gear is all i397, one level higher than the i384 Tier gear Wild would get from the LFR.

I'm starting with gear slots that are not included in the tier set:

Neck (1250 VP): Only one neck has haste on it, but it also has hit, useless for both druid healing and moonkin. The only option for Wild is [Threadlinked Chain], with spi/crit. Wild's current i365 neck has both haste and mastery. Not spending money on that for awhile.

Cloak (1250): [Woundlicker Cover] is nicely outfitted and has a socket, which is a nice but not major upgrade to his i378 cloak.

Relic (700): Relics are comparatively cheap, but their stats are smaller than other pieces of gear and so the upgrades are comparably smaller, too. There is actually a very good selection to choose from here to replace Wild's i365 that would be a big gear score jump but only a modest stat increase.

Ring (1250): I wish rings were only 700; Wild is rather desperate for rings (using an i346 for the haste and an i377 pvp for the int), although I'll not likely spend that many VPs for one. There are only four, two with useless +hit, and two others that are just eh. Wild will hope for raid and dungeon loot to upgrade those two spots.

Belt (1650): one choice, [Belt of Universal Curing], but a good one with two sockets. This may be my first VP buy.

Feet (1650): one choice, [Boots of Fungoid Growth] is also pretty nice and a very solid upgrade.

Wrist (1250): The VP wrist choice is BoE gear. Players with extra VPs they don't want to use on themselves can acquire the VP bracers and then legally sell them in game for gold. The going price is about 6500 gold and Wild seriously considered buying them. However, Wild recently won i384 bracers which include a socket and int bonus for +50 extra int that the i397 VP bracers don't have. In sum, Wild likes what he has better than the VP bracers.

Summary - Need 650 VPs to buy the belt. Followed by boots, relic and cloak. That should keep Wild busy for some time.

The next three slots are tier slots which could also be filled with non-tier VP gear. I'm listing them here, but I wont burn VPs on these any time soon in the hope of getting the token first. They are also the most expensive, too.

Hands (1650): [Fungus-Born Gloves] is the only tier slot I would consider buying with VPs - the gloves are clearly superior to Wild's i378 gloves and the price might be worth spending. In fact, the T13 gloves are identical to these with the exception that the VP gloves have a superior red socket vs the T13's blue socket, making the VP gloves better overall.

Head (2200): [Helmet of Perpetual Rebirth] is nice but would be a challenge to replace stats from his current i378 and it provides no extra sockets.

Chest (2200): [Decaying Herbalist Robes] - same issue as Head.

Summary - Work to get the tier tokens and if Wild has 1650 VPs laying around after buying everything else, buy the gloves, too.

Wild is feeling a lot better organized in regard to chasing gear than his normal "just take what drops and buy BoEs from the AH" approach, which still sorta works but keeps Happy very busy making stacks of gold.

Wild has to do his part - get those DS LFRs done each week, and max the VP runs in the three 4.3 Heroics. Wild has yet to set foot in the Heroics, something he had better fix. Wild has no excuses, but he'll whine anyway - Christmas shopping and tree trimming and foster kittens and an inconvenient summons to juror duty is messing with my game time!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Sunday (11 Dec)- Looking For Raid Loot System fails

Sunday (11 Dec)- Looking For Raid Loot System fails

One of the major features of the LFR is the loot system that was designed specifically for raids. The well intentioned purpose was to have the loot system dole out whatever loot dropped to those in the raid who could best use it. They did NOT implement anything that checks whether the raider already had better gear, but that would be prohibitively difficult and I understand that. Of course, the system would have to take into account class and specialization - but, alas, it doesn't. Well, it should at minimum ensure that loot is distributed where possible so that one raider does not receive more than one item that could have been used by someone else. Sorry, it can't do that, either. Situations that commonly occur, for example, include hunters being awarded strength gear (they get almost no benefit from strength), and when more than one of the same item drops, the same raider could get all of them.

So, if it doesn't do any of the above, what does it actually do? Basically, all it does is distribute loot based on role. If you're a healer, you get priority on gear with spirit; if you're a tank, you get priority on gear with tank based specs; and if you're a DPS - well, you could get anything and everything else. Wild, as a healer, does use a lot of spirit gear, but right now I already have more spirit than I really need. I reforge what I can to mastery, but I'd really like access to gear that has lots of mastery than lots of spirit. But Wild is unlikely to meet the loot system requirements to get it. When Wild is in moonkin spec, it's even worse. Spirit is converted to hit rating for moonkin, but as a DPS, that spirit gear will be priority for the healer, not the DPS.

Blizzard "is aware of the problem." They should trademark that line. For the foreseeable I don't see then them changing anything.

Sunday night at the DS LFR was kind of hit or miss. Players are getting smarter. Once a player downs a boss, they can't get any loot from subsequent kills of the same boss, so players simply quit the raid when they come on a boss that they've already killed for the week. When queuing for the LFR, it tells you how many bosses are down, so you know what boss you will be starting with. If it's not a boss you need, you just decline, wait a bit, and try again. Because players are getting picky about the bosses, and even with the huge pools of players from several servers, raids are attacking bosses short raiders. Usually it's only 1-2, but I've been on attempts with as many as four missing.

Here is how things stacked up for Wild on Sunday. Wild has already completed the last four bosses in DS LFR, which collectively is called Fall of Deathwing. Wild needed all four bosses in first half raid, called The Siege of Wyrmrest Temple.

Wild queued up Sunday evening, seeing that the raid being offered was at 2/8, meaning they were on the third boss in the Siege half of the raid. Wild could have declined and waited around until he could a 0/8 raid that was starting from the beginning. Wild was impatient to get going, though, and accepted the invite. The third boss is Yor'sahj, with the multi-colored oozes. From a healer perspective it's pretty straightforward, but that's only if the DPS know what they are doing (ie, killing oozes in the right order based on color). If the DPS doesn't know what they're doing, no amount of healing will likely save us.

It took us a couple of tries, but we downed the third boss, Yor'sahj.

We moved on to the final boss, Hagara. I like this fight. There's plenty to do, including getting to race around the outside of the platform being chased by ice spikes. We wiped on the first attempt, but a few raiders kept the fight going a good five minutes past the point where we knew it was a wipe simply by running around the edge of the platform and not dying. It was funny and irritating at the same time.

Wild DCed on the second attempt. I was having trouble getting back, with a lot of lag, and raiders were calling to Kick Wild from the raid. So I saved them the trouble and quit the raid myself. Getting disconnected seems to happen more often since the patch.

Anyway, Wild took the opportunity to build back up his store of food buffs, which were getting eaten down a lot faster now that Wild was killing bosses and wiping a lot. Wild was down to just six of his favorite buff food, Severed Sagefish Head, and I decided to let Wild cool off with a little fishing. He stuck around to catch enough fish for two stacks, and then started checking the LFR again. The first few times Wild tried, the LFR kept showing 2/8 bosses, meaning the raid group was on the third boss, which Wild had already killed. Wild was patient, and eventually he got a 0/8 raid and grabbed it.

Killing the first two bosses, Morchok, and Ozz, went smoothly, and after killing them Wild quit the group as I didn't want to have to kill Yor'sahj all over again. There was more patient waiting from Wild as he chatted with guildies and checked on enchants and gems. Yes, Wild finally won something. But that's for later.

Finally, Wild was able to get an LFR raid at 3/8 done, so Wild could go after the final boss, Hagara. That particular group did not start well. The first attempt served to show - or remind - raiders what to do, such as run from the ice spikes, kill the icicles, and don't get too close to the melee. The second attempt was a non-attempt when a druid healer - not Wild, silly - meandered too close to Hagara and started the fight prematurely. Neither one of our tanks returned for a third attempt, and we lost healers, too. The new group had new tanks and four of five healers were druids. Oh boy, a room full of raid healers. I hoped we could keep the tanks up.

It took us three tries, but Hagara went down. Wild was disappointed he only came in third in healing among fellow druids. Perhaps the results of this night will help in future raids.

Wild did not win one loot drop -


. . .  wait for it . . .


. . . he won two! :P

His first Dragon Soul loot was [Mycosynth Wristguards]. The i384 bracers  replace Wild's i378 bracers, but there was a challenge. Wild's current bracers have 148 haste. The new bracers have none. Wild was determined to keep a minimum 2005 haste, so I had to do some reforging to be able to equip it. I managed to get it done, but had to compromise a bit, giving up a +50 int enchant for a +50 spi enchant on the bracers to shore up the loss of spirit that was reforged to haste. Wild's overall spirit still dropped a bit, but that shouldn't be an issue.

The second piece wild won was an easy swap. Wild won [Seal of the Seven Signs] an i384 trinket with +408 int that replaces the i359 Tsunami trinket (with +321 int) Wild has worn for a very long time.

Wild's equipped gear score is now i374.

Wild also now has 1000 Valor Points (VP) and is considering a relic upgrade (700 vps). I think I will wait on that, though. What to do with VPs is going to be the subject of another post, as getting VP gear and Tier gear doesn't appear to work like I thought it did.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Weekend (10 Dec) - The Rest of Dragon Soul

Weekend (10 Dec) - The Rest of Dragon Soul

Wild had not run an LFR DS since the raid reset on Tuesday. The guild was running a Blackwing Descent raid for alts on Friday night. It looked like a good time to raid Dragon Soul. Wild queued up, and was instantly accepted. Ya just gotta love how responsive Looking for Raid is.

Wild popped into the raid on a platform full of raiders and npcs. The air crackled with energy beams. No where could he see a familiar enemy form - no Morchok, no Ozz, no Yor'sahj or Hagara. Wild didn't know this place.




Wild had entered the second half of the line up of deadly foes in Dragon Soul. Like Wild's first time facing the bosses in the first half of DS, Wild had no idea what these fights would be like or what the strategies were. Some groups had raid leaders willing to spell out the highlights of a fight; others, like the group Wild was in, led us in blind. It was only when we had trouble did someone bother to mention a pertinent fact or two. LFR groups typically morph between every attempt on a boss, players coming and going at all times. This group was different. Over the course of the evening I would guess that 20 of the 25 raiders that started the run were still with us at the end. And of the five that left, three were kicked out of the raid (one for being afk for an entire fight, and two who couldn't DPS their sock size). We were well into the night before the raid leader made the call to drop the low performing DPS, though.

The first boss we faced was Ultraxion. Ultra is a dragon that eats dragon souls. Prior to the fight both Thrall and Noxdormu make an appearance, giving buffs to the tank and raid. There are also three crystals that healers can pick specific buffs to use in the battle.

[Note - as I'm writing this Saturday morning all three of our foster kittens are clambering around in my room. They're now 12 weeks old and full of endless energy. Their mother is headed to a new home today. We'll be sad to see her go, but happy that she'll be going to her forever home. The tabby kitten, Cody, will be leaving us for a new home next week. The two white females go up for adoption once they're spayed next week. Fostering kittens is both joy and sadness, since we can't keep them ourselves.]

Now where was I? Oh, Wild didn't know anything about those crystals until I read up about it after all was said and done. Sure, I should have checked on that beforehand, but all these new boss encounters get all confused together until I've had a chance to see the fights a couple of times. Wild will certainly make use of this experience the next time around. Ultraxion is considered a gear check as the last two minutes of the fight are very intense and escalate to the point where the healers will be unable to keep up if the DPS doesn't bring Ultra down quickly.

Our 25 man LFR needed seven attempts to kill Ultra. I thought it pretty amazing that the raid didn't fall apart given the number of failed attempts.

The next boss was Warmaster Blackhorn.


I wish I could describe the feel of the battles better, since they really did feel very epic and powerful. Dragon Soul is well designed and the lore lives up to the ultimate goal, which is the killing of Deathwing. There are short cut scenes between each fight that add to the epic feel. In ten man I think I will be able to give a better sense of that, but in a 25 man raid full of strangers it was all rush rush and get it done. That's the only major drawback to using the LFR.

The Blackhorn fight, who is a Twilight dragon with a group of Twilight army survivors, takes place on a flying boat and is pretty fun and easy. We only needed two tries to take him down.

After those two fights the battle gets very personal as we start the engagement with Deathwing itself. Our raid is parachuted onto the back of Deathwing, and we found ourselves on a forced march to either succeed for die.


I have a hard time even distinguishing between the third and fourth battles, but somewhere in there the physical Deathwing must be killed and our final challenge becomes a formless monstrosity called the Madness of Deathwing. The battle begins with Thrall's blessing, and the fight will spread across four platforms that we we have to jump to, with each succeeding battle getting more and more difficult.


After taking apart Deathwing's armor during the air battle on his back, Deathwing plunged to earth on our second attempt. Against the final encounter, we had one learning attempt, got the Madness to 4.8% on our second attempt, and won it all on our third attempt!

Wild earned the achievement for completing all of the bosses in Dragon Soul. Wild is very eager to take them on in ten man as well. I just have to get the guild out of Firelands!

Wild was happy with his healing, and to be honest in the LFR I never had any mana problems at all. Wild main healed one of the tanks as well as raid healed heavily, but always had plenty of mana. There were well placed pauses in the battles where we could take a breath or two, and that made a big difference if players took advantage of it. There were also special buffs that could be used to reduce incoming damage that also helped the healers - when the raiders remembered to use them. I have to admit, though, that there were healers in this raid that put Wild's healing to shame, putting up some eye-popping numbers.

Overall, I am really happy with Dragon Soul. Still no DS loot, though. Sigh.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Wednesday/Thursday (8 Dec) - That Transmogrification Thing

Wednesday/Thursday (8 Dec) - That Transmogrification Thing

When Wild got his new T13 pants enchanted, socketed (3 red sockets!), and equipped, there was no room in his gear bag for the old pair of pants. Wild tried to disenchant them, but they couldn't be DEed. I was out of room in the bank, too. I hated to just throw them away.

Then Wild remembered that we now had Void Storage, which was a new place to store things. Wild couldn't find void storage on any of his bars or buttons, so I went to the Reforging guy on Org. He told Wild that he was no longer in business, but that a new crew had set up shop in the Drag.

Wild wandered over that way, and sure enough there was a flashy new store front with vendors for Reforging, Void Storage, and Transmogrification (or "mogging" for short). The first thing Wild learned was that it cost 100 gold to activate void storage. Ok, Wild can afford that. VS acts like a bank. You can't carry it around - to use it you have to go to it. To store an item, it costs 25g for each item. To withdraw an item, it costs another 25g.

Wild then checked with the Mogging guy. Equipping an item to change the appearance of your gear is easy. I'm not sure what that costs, but I've heard that the cost is based on the vendor price of the item you want to mog. There are ten gear slots that can used for mogging (head, shoulders, chest, back, wrist, hands, legs, feet, weapon, off hand). Gear slots that are invisible can't be mogged - rings, necklaces, trinkets, and relics. Tabards are visible in game but can't be mogged.

Wild wanted to know what the full cost for a mogged outfit would be. If I assume each aspect costs 25g each, that works out to 25g times ten items times three actions (store, withdraw, mog), for a total of 750g.

Ok, on to the business of raiding. The Lady Hunter Wed/Thurs raid had 12 guildies signed up on Wednesday night, including four healers. We got that sorted out, with one healer switching to DPS. As much as Wild would like to get a guild clear of the Firelands, I thought it was a bit silly to stay with that raid given all the new toys that the DS raids offered. That didn't stop the Mf raid on Monday from going into Firelands, and Lady Hunter's raid did the same on Wednesday night. Last week, while Wild was unavailable, they had a good run, downing four bosses. It was no joy this week, however. We sucked on the Beth'tilac fight, spending the whole evening with the icky sticky spider.

The silver lining is that after trying two other healers to go up in the web, Bd (who was tanking) tapped Wild for the chore that I most definitely didn't want. It was a trial by fire, but Wild actually learned how to handle the role of healing the group up in the web. Wild is no longer leery of that role. Wild made an unintentional funny in an early attempt trying to heal the web group. My color challenged eyes have trouble seeing the holes in the web that are opened up by the falling meteors. On one attempt when it was time to run to the center and drop down to the floor, Wild made his dash for the hole, not seeing a meteor hole very close to the center hole. Wild fell through the wrong hole and I missed the button to shift into cat form (which would have saved Wild from fall damage) - Wild died. The tank, who thought Wild was right behind him, asked what happened. Wild innocently explained that Wild was heading for the right hole, but missed and entered the wrong hole instead. There was a moment of silence in vent, and then hoots of laughter when the tank asked if Wild often filled the wrong hole, and suggested that in some situations that might be a good thing.

We never did kill that stupid spider.

Better than the silver lining, Lady Hunter announced at the end of the raid that we would be headed into Dragon Soul on Thursday. Yay!

Hunter Fortress made an appearance Wednesday night as well. See, Speak, and Shevils fought a good first half battle in Arathi Basin and then our group fell to pieces and we lost. Shevils and her pet Poo had to break out the manuals to refresh how to be a hunter and hunter pet. It has been awhile. See had to leave after the AB, but Speak and Shevils rolled over the Alliance in a Warsong Gulch match that we won. Despite being only level 30s in a level 30-34 bracket, all of us finished near the top in both damage and kills.

Thursday Night - Wild's mood took a decidedly downward spiral when Lady Hunter announced that we would start the evening in the Firelands. All ten of the raiders from Wednesday were back, and Lady Hunter felt that we had made a lot of progress on Wednesday and wanted to capitalize on that the second night. Wild, who had visions of i397 gear dancing in his head, had to reorient to climbing back up into that spiderweb.

We made three attempts on Beth'tilac - and we KILLED HER! Wild managed not to fall into wrong holes this time and the DPS seemed to have found a higher level of performance. Wild fell to second in healing to our priest healer Pl, in part because Wild could not add raid healing to his numbers while up in the web, but also because she had collected some new gear from the new dungeons. In fact, Wild ended up winning an off-spec roll on an i378 staff called [Funeral Pyre] because she had a better staff from the Hour of Twilight dungeon. Wild really wanted to use that staff, but Wild already has an i378 dagger and off hand that added up to better overall stats. Wild will likely use it for his moonkin spec due to the high crit and mastery on it.

We then made three attempts on Shannox, which should have been an easy kill. We didn't bring him down, primarily because the DPS could not come together to break raiders out when the dog Rageface got to them. It really hurt that the dog fell in love with our tank healer and she died from that attack in every single attempt.

Wild has a lot of silver linings this week. After an hour and a half in the Firelands, we shifted over to Dragon Soul. There were only four raiders who had seen DS. That made Wild a DS guild veteran since Wild has been in four DS raids already. We cleared the trash easily enough, and started on Morchok, the first boss. Since most of the raid was unfamiliar with the fight, we had our three hunters manage the crystal bombs and Wild was assigned to lead raiders to the safety of the black crystals when Morchok started up the black ooze stuff.

We made four attempts, but came up short. Our priest healer changed her UI in between the Firelands and Dungeon Soul attempts (using a new mouse with lots of new buttons) and frankly didn't really know how to use it well. She was tank healing and Wild spent as much effort and mana trying to help heal her tank as Wild was healing his own. Her tank died on every attempt. We broke up at our usual end time of 9pm, and Wild hoped to get at least a few guildies to join in an LFR run, but got no takers.

Wild wouldn't count this as one of his good weeks of raiding. But then Wild counts ALL raiding as good, since the alternative is not raiding.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Monday (5 Dec) - Hour of Twilight (Part 2)

Monday (5 Dec) - Hour of Twilight (Part 2)

When we left off Wild had just entered Dragon Soul. We were in a large, open field completely surrounded by mobs. That was a little unnerving until Wild realized that many of those mobs were on our side. As we studied the layout it became clear that the enemy mobs were arrayed in a path meant to defend the entrance to Wyrmrest Temple. We prepared for battle.

Quick aside - I was going to whine/rant about the increasing erosion of good strategy information about bosses and trash mobs that seems to have reached it's nadir with DS, but I'd much rather go kill things, so ...

We killed things. A few raiders died while we learned what the trash mobs were capable of, but we were very pleased when it took us just three trash pulls to arrive at the entrance to Wyrmrest Temple. We did have one teensy obstacle, though. That would be Morchok, an elemental doing it's best to tear down the Temple. Currently, Morchok was pulling great dragons out of the air and flinging them to the ground with bone crushing force.



We engaged. Things went pretty smoothly - at first. In the first phase it's pretty much tank and spank. Raiders stayed close enough to Morchok to minimize damage from Stomp. Periodically a crystal formed and lines arched out of it, tagging three random raiders. Wild was tagged by the first crystal and Wild ran to it with the other two who had been tagged. Wild cast barkskin on himself and HOTed up us tag-ees, and after a few seconds the crystal exploded and knocked us all back a few feet. This happened several times.

We made it through that phase and entered Phase 2. The tanks had some special requirements to deal with in this phase, but Wild and the other healers weren't having any trouble keeping heals up. Morchok then pulled the whole raid to him and became immune. Morchok released us, large fragments of crystal formed, and a thick black ooze began pouring out from around Morchok. The ooze was deadly, and could only be avoided by hiding behind those crystal fragments. Wild had limited sight lines for healing from behind that fragment. We had been warned that standing too close to the fragment would also cause damage. The black ooze sluiced it's way around the fragment Wild was behind, but not close enough to deal damage. Others weren't so fortunate and three died.

We wiped at 55% on our first attempt. The mechanics didn't seem all that tough, though, and we went at Morchok again. This time we got him past 20%, where he did a soft enrage that increased damage and speed of attack. We came within a hair of killing him on our second attempt, getting him to 0.2%!

On our third attempt Morchok went down.

We were elated at getting our first DS mob down. Morchok dropped [Petrified Fungal Heart] an i397 healer necklace that Wild dearly wanted. His putrid roll of 15, though, fell far short and our shaman healer won it. B-tard!  Oops, I mean Gratz!

We had intended only to try the first boss, but with the quick success we still had time to go further.

With Morchok down we were able to enter Wyrmrest Temple. Inside were many npcs that we would normally see at the Temple. There were also dragons stationed inside, ready to fly us to our next encounter.



We repaired our gear at the Temple and then chose a dragon to fly us to the next boss, Warlord Zon'ozz. He is some kind of famous faceless warrior from the wars of the Old Gods. I mean, this dude is OLD. I'll just call him Ozz.

Wild's temporary mount flew Wild over a great maw of moist tentacles - and dropped me! It was a long fall, but eventually a parachute opened and guided Wild down to the floor of a large, circular cavern.





Ozz stood in the middle of the cavern. Arrayed around him were four sets of mobs. These mobs do require a little finesse to take down, finesse we learned on the fly. We wiped twice, but eventually figured out that for us the best method was to target and kill the Eye (one of the mobs) first while keeping the Claw (another mob) busy so that it wouldn't Flail us to death. Once we had that figured out the mobs went down smoothly.

Ozz was another matter. The key to this fight involves tossing a deadly ball of energy between tanks and the ranged group. It's not dodge ball - we want to get hit by it. We never quite figured out how to do that successfully. We wiped all three times we tried. 

That ended our first guild run in Dragon Soul. We did down a boss, which we couldn't do on our first (or second, or fifth) attempt in the Firelands. Only seven more DS bosses to go.  :-)

Bd encouraged everyone to give the LFR a try. The LFR DS has only the first four bosses. You must be at least i372, so we don't have to deal with badly undergeared players, and it's 25 man only, so there is some wiggle room for mistakes and the occasional idiots. Boss kills only drop four items instead of the usual six, however, so the chances of coming home with loot are pretty low.

Wild signed up as a healer, and IMMEDIATELY got an invite. Wild was jazzed - but confused. When he was portalled in it was not at the beginning of the raid. Wild realized he had been brought into a raid in progress, and had no idea who this boss was or what Wild should be doing. No one seemed to care, though. They had apparently just wiped, and were buffing up for another attempt. Wild picked a healer in the raid, and just followed him as the raid attacked, doing raid healing and keeping HoTs on one of the tanks. It was fun with virtually no pressure other than personal pride in doing a good job and not screwing anything up. And the boss went down. There was a whole list of gear drops, two of which were druid/healer loot, but Wild did not win either of them.

I later looked up the boss we had killed. It was Hagara the Stormbinder, the fourth and final boss in that DS LFR. So, Wild could now lay claim to killing the first and fourth bosses in Dragon Soul. Wild would have a hard time explaining the fight, though, since I didn't really understand much of what was going on.

Wild felt a little cheated that he was still missing the 2nd and 3rd bosses. Wild dove into the LFR again, and this time it was a group starting with the first boss. The LFR exclusion rules are a little different from normal raids. In a normal raid Wild would have been locked out of the raid and wouldn't be allowed to join until after the first boss was killed (since Wild already had a 1st boss kill that week). In the LFR, though, Wild could still join and fight the 1st boss, but Wild would be locked out on loot rolls for that boss, again, since Wild had already gotten a chance at the 1st boss loot on the prior kill. We did kill the second boss this time as the tanks had a much better idea how to manage the ball tossing thing. Wild only had to stay stacked up with the ranged raiders and stay alive.

That took us to the third boss, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. Good ole Yor tends to squirt out multi-colored oozes throughout the fight that the DPS have to kill in a certain order. The tanks have a tough job managing tank switches, but their most important roll is yelling as loud as you can possibly yell in raid chat when the DPS target the wrong mobs. PURPLE!!!!! YOU IDIOT! KILL PURPLE!  is one excellent example of raid leadership. I don't know if Wild was following a proper raid strategy, but I found that healing the tanks/raid in between ooze parades was easy, and that when the oozes did form up Wild would saunter around behind the DPS and follow them and the oozes back to the tanks (where they hopefully would be dead by that time - the oozes, not the tanks). Wild had a couple of uncomfortable moments before I learned the follow trick when I was watching one ooze and nearly walked right into another one. I know I know, the combinations of colors all have meaning and some are more deadly than others. Apparently we didn't get anything too dastardly because no one died except for Yor. No, Wild didn't get any loot on this one, either.

After the kill we again had to portal back to the Temple and take flight with another dragon. I can see how all this going and coming could get irritating after awhile. It didn't help when Wild DCed while flying to the next boss location. It was even more annoying when Wild was deposited at the graveyard. Which was strange, because Wild wasn't dead.

Wild's guild came to the rescue. Specifically, Bd came to the rescue. Bd hollered out in guild chat: "Starting up a DS LFR. Who wants in on it!" It was a no brainer for Wild. Wild quit the LFR he was already in, ported to Org, and threw things at Bd until he invited me into the group he was forming. Actually, Bd asked Wild to join him - Wild just likes to throw things.

We only got five guildies to sign up - they have to have i372 gear, which kept some from being able to come - but that was fine. We could talk on vent (well, Wild could listen) and Bd could give us tips about the bosses. It was pretty hilarious, though, when the raid leader for the LFR tried to boot Bd from the raid. The raid leader and Bd were the two tanks for the raid, and apparently the raid leader for some reason wanted a different tank. With four guildies to back Bd up, we snuffed that idea right off the bat.

Running DS in 25 man with a group of guildies was the most fun Wild had all evening. We slew all four bosses and Wild got his achievement for the clear. No, Wild didn't get any loot from the one boss that offered Wild loot, but it was still a blast. Two guildies did get loot, though, and that helps our raiding.

I know this is going long, but I couldn't help but add one more raid to the mix. On Tuesday afternoon Happy was at the Auction House (of course) when he saw a trade chat request for a Baradin Hold run. The new patch added a third boss to that raid, Alizabal, Mistress of Hate. They needed just three more to fill a 25 man raid, and they needed healers. Wild wasted no time tossing Happy and jumping in game. Wild got his invite.

I am embarrassed to say how long it's been since Wild was in Baradin Hold. I just couldn't work up enough interest to bother, even though Wild could have benefited from the Tier drops each boss drops. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.

The Ali fight in 25 man was a piece of cake. There are really only two things to remember - stack up on the tank, and when this one ability is used by Ali (I can't tell you what that is because Wowhead won't tell me - dang thing has been giving me trouble all day) - anyway, the raid leader will know what it is, and DBM announces it - anyway, just run away when that ability pops and then stack back up again.

Wild was so busy patting himself on the back for getting his BH kill I didn't see the first loot drop. The three drops after it were cloth and mail gear, which of course didn't interest Wild. Wild hung around because I thought they might need to DE some items that no one rolled on. Then this popped up in raid chat: "It's so sad that druid pants drop and we have no druid healers in the raid."

"Huh?" Wild said to himself.

Raid leader - "We DO have a druid healer, and only one. Wild?"

"Huh?" Maybe Wild said that aloud this time.

"You want to roll on those pants or not?"

"YES. OF COURSE!" Wild rolled, not really having a good idea what it was he was rolling on.

Wild will be saying prayers of thanks to the WoW gods and that raid leader for many weeks of BH runs. The drop Wild almost let get away was [Deep Earth Legwraps], the first of five pieces of Wild's Tier 13 set. Oh, the ilevel? i397. WOOT!  By the way, I love the look of this set - the designers called the look "phosphorescent mushrooms" with writhing plant roots and clusters of fungi. Mmmm, Mmmmm, good. I just wish we didn't have to wear a dress. Oh well, Transmorgrification will take care of that.

Monday (5 Dec) - Hour of Twilight Part 1

Monday (5 Dec) - Hour of Twilight Part 1

Wildshard missed the first week of Hour of Twilight (Patch 4.3). This extension of Cataclysm continues the battle with Deathwing and the dragon's minions, taking adventurers into the Caverns of Time. Three linked dungeons set the stage: End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight. The final battles take place within a warped bubble of Time around Wyrmrest Temple called Dragon Soul.

Wild planned to immerse himself in the three new dungeons come Monday. Real life conspired to keep Wild away, however, for the better part of the morning. There was also a bit of raid scheduling confusion that ultimately worked out in Wild's favor. Originally, the only raid scheduled was Mf's Mon/Tues raid. Since there was no Wed/Thurs raid on the schedule, and since Mf's raid was scheduled for the new Dragon Soul (DS) raid, Wild overcame his misgivings about this raid group and signed up for the 6pm raid. That would also give Wild time to get the three dungeons done before the raid. I was under the impression that the dungeons, which had to be done in order the first time they were run, had to be completed before Wild could run DS, since the events in DS were based on what happened in the three dungeons.

That plan went out the window when three things happened - Mf changed his DS raid to a Firelands raid; Lady Hunter put up her raid schedule for Wed/Thurs night (also Firelands), and Bd made a guild call for a DS run at noon on Monday. Talking with Bd, I learned that running DS did not require completing the new dungeons first. Long story short, Wild switched raids from Mf's to Lady Hunter's, and told Bd Wild would be there for the noon DS raid. Since we would not be using the new Looking for Raid (LFR) tool for the noon DS raid, Wild didn't need to do anything but be there. There is a minimum gear requirement, but it's only i365, and Wild's gear level is i371. However, Wild also wanted to try out the LFR at some point, and for that the minimum gear level is i372. Wild fixed that easily by adding to his gear one of the new i378 pvp rings that were flooding the Auction House, bringing Wild's gear score up to the minimum i372.

Wild showed up at noon and Bd was already at work getting the raid ready. Given the time of day, we knew it would take some time, but I was pleasantly surprised that at 1:15pm we not only had a full raid, we had a well balanced raid that included many of our better raiders as well. That said, our overall gear level was closer to the i365 minimum than the LFR i372 requirement.

As previously mentioned, DS is located in the Caverns of Time deep in the Tanaris desert. We had guildies already out there who Summoned the rest of us to the Caverns; otherwise, Wild would likely have portaled from Org to Uldum and then flew into Tanaris from there.

We entered the nearby instance portal and Wild got his first view of Dragon Soul.


Stay tuned for Part 2.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Sunday (4 Dec) - Coming Home

Sunday (4 Dec) - Coming Home

We made it home from Las Vegas without losing our shirts and had a great time even though the weather turned sour on us, with temperatures dropping into the thirties at night plus a couple of days of rain. Of course, it was warm and dry in the casinos. Our large brood of furry friends were happy to have us home again, and we were happy they hadn't destroyed the house while we were gone.

I was never able to get WoW up and running in Vegas, so Happy practically dragged me up to the computer as soon as the cats got bored with the homecoming. Downloading and installing the Patch 4.3 did not take long, but updating all the addons I use took almost an hour. Then Happy went to work.

Happy was shocked at the state of the Auction House. Many items that Happy routinely buys and sells were completely out of stock. Happy made killings on some other items that had been discounted down to under 5% of their value. Happy does sell a lot of stuff, but it was almost as if his absence caused the market to dry up completely. In reality, the likely reason is that everyone is immersed in the content of the new patch and ignoring the AH for the time being. Whatever the reason, Happy made over 6k gold in a couple of hours and restocked a lot of items to sell later.

Once Happy got his work done, Wild checked in with the guild. There were no guild dungeon runs forming, and guildies told Wild that they were mostly using the dungeon finder to run the dungeons as it was faster than trying to put guild runs together. I was too tired to try to run a dungeon, anyway. I am hoping that Wild will be able to get at least one successful run in all three of the new dungeons on Monday. I'd like to have those completed by the time Wild checks in for the guild's first raid on Dragon Soul, the new raid, on Monday night. So, expect to get a full report on Tuesday! 

Thursday, December 1, 2011

All The Tech in the World ...

All The Tech in the World ...

If you are reading this then you figured out what I forgot when I ran into trouble getting access to the web while on vacation in Las Vegas. Read on ...

I thought I was prepared to be without my home computer for our seven day stay at a timeshare in Las Vegas. We arrived on Sunday, 27 Nov with a laptop and our still new smart phones. In addition, the resort offered free wireless service.

Warcraft wasn't an immediate priority, of course, but I did want to ensure that Happyface would be able to conduct business on the Auction House, The gold must continue to flow.

The resort's wireless service was capable of handling routine things, but choked on trying to load WoW. It kept timing out. Plus, the resort wireless was unprotected. Our Sprint smartphone service has unlimited data service, but it did not come with one feature that I hadn't thought about - a secure Hotspot wireless connection between the phone and the laptop. Interested in how well that would work, I ordered the service for use during our stay.

Success! I got a very good connection and we were in business. What I hadn't expected was that after successfully logging in, battle.net didn't like me logging in from this strange computer and locked my account. Sigh. I got an email message, though, through my smartphone, telling me how to log back in and validate that it was my account so I could access WoW from the laptop. Ok, no big deal, I'd do that later on, and we went off to do other things. That was on Monday.

On Tuesday I tried to reactivate the account - but of course battle.net was down for maintenance. Uh oh, now I'm worried that patch 4.3 was dropping - this was Tuesday, a maintenance day. I logged into WoW and sure enough there was an 800 MB file to download. Sigh again.

It's just my luck - in the city of luck - that the patch would drop when I was away from home. Maybe I should send an email to my WoW friends and ask? Strangely, I could not access my email. There was no error messages, just a failed connection. I could access any other site on the web I could think of, but not my email. Not giving up, I went to my webmail account through the smartphone, That worked fine, which made the failed connection email connection from the laptop all that more baffling. However, I don't maintain a contact list on my webmail, and did not have any email addresses of my WoW friends.

I'm getting mad, now. Ok, I'm an anti-social networking guy, but I still have facebook. I get on my smartphone - sorry, facebook says, I don't recognize the device and you need to validate your identity. Well, trying to deal with those weird characters I was required to re-type in for "validation" proved impossible over the phone, so I switched back to the laptop.

As I depressingly expected, facebook didn't recognize the laptop, either. I managed to navigate through the squiggly line alphabet soup tests - and then facebook demanded that I identify the faces of several of my friends. I was given a test in which 3 or 4 images were shown with boxes bracketing the face they wanted me to identify - the problem was that the boxes weren't placed very well and sometimes identified different people as the same person. I got at four right, but that wasn't good enough. Facebook gave me a failing grade and wouldn't let me login. Facebook is now locked until I can get on my home computer.

What was even more galling was that every time Silver updated her facebook I would get a facebook notification on my phone, but facebook would not let me respond to it. By the way, I hope you are getting things straightened out with the car, Silver!

Update Wednesday - As all of you already know, Patch 4.3, the Hour of Twilight, dropped Tuesday morning. Wildshard is going to be a week behind everyone else. That means that Wild will be learning the new dungeons with players who have already likely mastered those three new dungeons. The absolute most fun for me is doing dungeons with a group that is seeing it for the first time. I am missing that chance. I am also missing out on earning points for tier gear, and getting into the the new Looking for Raid opportunities. Not to mention the new BG system for earning conquest points. Wild is one sad cow.

I know, a month from now it won't matter. I do plan to spend a lot of time in the new dungeons working on tier gear along with the new LF Raid. I have high hopes for the new raid system. Using LFR, the new raid is divided into two halves so you only do half a raid at a time. The loot rules are very restrictive but should work well for Wild as a healer. Between the dungeons and the raids Wild should be able to catch up.

Thursday Update - I was eventually able to get the patch downloaded and installed on the laptop. However, it appears something went wrong during the process and now WoW won't load at all. Happy is grinding his teeth at the loss of gold opportunities every day. I'm grinding my teeth at being unable to get even a glimpse of the new content.

All that aside, though, we are having fun in Las Vegas! Today the rest of our relatives arrive and we'll be hitting the town pretty hard from now until we leave on Sunday.
PS - if you send me an email to charliewb@cox.net I'll get it on my smartphone. Let me know what you think about the patch!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Monday (21 Nov) - A Lazy Week

Monday (21 Nov) - A Lazy Week

Mf's Mon/Tues raid is on this week, and they had their regular crew running Firelands Monday night. Wild didn't pay much attention, but Beth'tilac remains unbeaten. Bd's Wed/Thurs raid is not scheduled so there will be no raiding for Wild unless I decide to help out with "Amateur Nights" planned for Fri/Sat/Sun to help guildies with alts and gear in BoT and BWD.

Wild thought he was pretty well done with getting gear until Patch 4.3. Happy, however, came across an i378 Chelley's main hand dagger on the Auction House. Normally the dagger costs around 20-25k gold, but the upcoming patch is forcing gear prices down and it was up for sale at 14k gold. Wild has an i365 one hand mace. Comparing stats, not only is the dagger a higher ilvl (it has better sta/int stats) the rest of the stats on the dagger is a better fit than the mace, increasing mastery and crit without giving up any haste. The only thing that made Wild cringe was that enchanting the dagger with Power Torrent cost him 1500 gold. That's one expensive enchant. Wild's gear is now officially i370 equipped. Wild is as ready as he's going to be for the new dungeons and raids in the patch.

I guess I should congratulate World of Warcraft for it's SEVENTH birthday this past week. I'm not sure what that says about those of us who have been there since the beginning and are still playing the game. Blizzard thought so highly of the accomplishment they've given every player a 7% increase in experience and reputation leveling. That would be pretty impressive - except that the xp/rep gain is only good for one hour.

I might be able to make Wednesday's Hunter Fortress if there is interest. And have a great Thanksgiving!

Wild and all the Wild family will be out of action next week. We are leaving for Las Vegas on Sunday, 27 Nov, and will return the following Sunday.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Thursday (17 Nov) - Spider Work

Thursday (17 Nov) - Spider Work

[Note - must be getting old, forgot to post this!]

When Bd announced that he was raising the dead - ie, his guild raid - I was curious as to who in the guild would join us. As far as I knew there was only Wild, Bd, and Lady Hunter on his short list, but I figured he would be calling in favors with many of the old guard who were still in the guild. What can still amaze me is that after two guild splits - from FateSealed to Mayhem and then from Mayhem to Meitha - it seems we still have two distinct groups in our guild. One group is led by Mf along with Pk, both of whom have at some point held at least a co-guild leader spot. I couldn't tell you whether they are still co-leaders or only officers. It isn't very clear. The second group is led by the named guild leader, Bd, and Lady Hunter. I still sense that these two groups, while not actively opposing each other, don't generally mingle. We seem to have brought all of our baggage with us each time we broke up and formed new guilds. Wow.

Back to Bd's raid and who would come to it, Wild waded through the guild roster and came up with a larger number than expected - I put the names of 12 guildies on my list, including our starting three. Most were old guard, ie, part of the "cabal" that I thought had finally dissolved with the long absences of Bd and Lady Hunter. But there were some new faces, too, those that I knew were active in the guild but not raiding with Mf's group.

On Wednesday night the raid Bd fielded included eight players I had predicted would be in the raid. The only two surprises were both newer guildies bringing an alt to the raid - resto druid Fu and mage Sen, both of whom were guildies I knew, but didn't know they had alts they wanted to raid with. 

On Thursday night, we had eight raiders from Wednesday return for the second night. Two raiders did not show and did not inform Bd they would not make it. One was our third healer, Fu, and he likely gets the benefit of the doubt as he has proven to be pretty good guildie. The other was Bf, a long time cabal member who has a long history of uneven attendance. Bf also had the highest DPS in the raid on Wednesday night.

It took us until about 7:15pm to get replacements. The healer, Pr, another cabal member and wife of one of the other raiders in the group, brought her priest. She's a good healer but the least geared even including the missing Fu. We also snitched a newer guildie who normally runs with Mf, but he had a warlock alt he could bring. This guy, Gm, has like four raid level toons and is pretty good.

The focus of the night was on Beth'tilac, and I'd like to say that we killed her, but ...

But ... we didn't have the DPS to take her out on Wednesday, and our overall DPS dropped on Thursday. We did go back to the normal strategy of sending raiders up into the web. Bd, who was obviously a bit rusty still, struggled up in the web and some of our attempts fell short due to mistakes up in the web. Overall, the ground troops have this thing down, but we just can't deal enough damage. We did improve, though. On Wednesday we got Beth down to 40%. On Thursday we moved the bar to 33%, making ten attempts. Wild and Fu pretty much matched up heal for heal on Wednesday, but Pr (as good as she is) didn't have the AoE throughput Fu had. On average Wild doled out 15.8k hps with Pl at 11k and Pr at 9.5k. It wasn't the healing that sunk us, though. No DPSer reached 14k DPS on the night.

Next week is Thanksgiving. Bd plans to set raid nights for Wednesday and Friday, but ... you know how holiday periods are. And Wild will miss the following week as well. It's likely going to be December before Wild sees his next raid.

There is a little news about Patch 4.3. MMO Champions are predicting that 4.3 will drop in two weeks, and they are usually a pretty good predictor. That would mean that I'll be out of town when it happens. That, more than anything, tells me that 4.3 will arrive on 6 Dec 2011. Count on it.  :-)

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Wednesday - (16 Nov) This Just Might Work

Wednesday - (16 Nov) This Just Might Work

[Note - Sorry for missing Hunter Fortress night! Our raid ran late and I totally forgot]

The newly reconstituted Bd/Lady Hunter Wed/Thurs guild raid was officially launched on Wednesday night. It only took us about a half hour to fill, but that was partly because we allowed the raid to carry four hunters in with us. Warrior Bd and death knight Cth were our tanks, both veterans of Lady Hunter raids. Wild and paladin Pl were also Lady Hunter vets in the healing department. The third healer was another druid, Fu, and alt of a warrior guildie. Wild checked on Fu and was delighted to see his gear was i374 - then I noticed that his "equipped" gear score was i364 and he was wearing three pieces of pvp gear (although one was his staff, perfectly acceptable in a raid). Wild's equipped gear score is i369, with one piece of pvp gear (ring).

Bd made the call that we were going after Beth'tilac because none of our guild raids had brought the spider down, yet. Bd wanted us to be the first. We took care of the trash without any issues, going directly to the spider boss. It quickly and smoothly. Bd, who had not seen the inside of Firelands since the early days when it was first released, was excited and having a blast.

For our assault on Beth Wild would have sent Cth and Pl up into the web as they have done those roles before. Bd wanted to do it, though, and tapped Fu to be his healer. The rest of us stayed on the ground, Pl tending to Cth's healing and Wild raid healing.

We made two attempts on the spider. The work at ground level went very well. The four hunters did the best job at taking out the spiderlings and other nasty's Wild had seen in any of the guild's raids. Bd and Fu, on the other hand, learned first hand the tricky nature of the battle up in the web and Bd died before the first Smoldering Devastation on both attempts.

We were doing so well at ground level, though, that Bd hatched a new plan. That's one of the things I like about Bd, he is always thinking and he is willing to try different things. He wondered aloud, what if we ignored Beth up in her web and just concentrated on downing the trash on the ground? The advantage is that we don't have to worry about Beth healing herself since she'll already be at full health. The disadvantage, of course, is that she'll enter phase 2 at full health and would have to be killed very fast - before the spider's slow enrage becomes too powerful to survive.

On our first attempt using the new strategy we cleared all the trash in phase one and, after her three Smoldering Devastations, Beth'tilac dropped down from her web to begin phase 2. We weren't in the best of shape by that time, and only got the spider to 98% before wiping, but hallelujah! we at least made it to phase 2.

After that it was a matter of refinement. Wild and Fu laid out how to maximize our Tranquilities and Tree of Life cooldowns. We tried to remain near a central point where the hunters could still do their thing and our AoE heals could be most effective. On our second attempt we got to 68%, a marked improvement. Then 54%. Then 40%. We made one more attempt but I didn't get the percentage as Wild disconnected near the end. That was the second DC of the night for Wild, and two other raiders also had a DC. I have to believe this is due to the maintenance being done to prepare for patch 4.3.

We will be focusing on Beth'tilac all evening on Thursday night. It remains to be seen if our healing and DPS can stretch far enough to bring that spider down.