Wednesday (26 Jan) - Raids and Heroics Oh My

Wednesday (26 Jan) - Raids and Heroics Oh My

On a RL note - I'm slowly losing all track of time. Yes, retirement has a way of losing track of the days, but even the little conveniences that help me keep track have started to fail me.

We went to a cat show/convention last Sunday. I'd never been to one and it wasn't what I expected. There were, of course, lots of booths selling everything you could possibly think of that was cat related. Many of the city and private shelters were represented as well, looking for donations and to adopt out the many cats they brought. What I wasn't prepared for was an entire convention floor with wall to wall, row after row sets of tables where every inch was covered with the most elaborate and amazing cat carriers! "Cat carrier" doesn't even begin to describe these mobile homes for cats. They were often multi-roomed, with one area set aside for the litter box. Some were multi-level, so their precious kitty could climb up into his/her bunk. There were screened sections where they could be viewed, and "private" areas so that their precious could get out of the limelight. The carriers were decorated with ribbons from past shows, and all kinds of other knickknacks related to the type of cat or just to show off the cat's personality (or the fetishes of the owner). It was kind of astonishing to see. I'd say that 75% of these cats were for sale. The "show" was divided into at least a dozen small areas where owners would display their cats and win awards based on (as best I could tell) the applause from whoever happened to sit down in the dozen or so chairs around the show areas. I was a little disappointed when it became obvious that this was not much different than one of those convention gun shows, or comic-con, or any other collector/hobbyist gathering. I'm sure many of the owners loved their cats, and you could tell by the way they talked about them and fussed over them. We also saw some truly amazing cats, from the giant main coons to grown cats that could sit in the palm of my hand, to hairless breeds, to domestic cats in the spots and stripes of the wild big cats that could have fooled a zoo keeper. There was also an orange tabby there that was one of only two cats in the US that came from a special breed in China. The breed developed from natural selection, not forced breeding like most others, and until recently was not allowed out of China (like the pandas). Honestly, it was just a cat, and a rather timid one, but it was a fascinating rarity.

All in all, though, I think the cat lovers were greatly outnumbered by cat breeders and wanna-be cat breeders who were there to make a buck. Which made me feel a bit sad for those cats who were more like merchandise than loved pets.

What has that to do with what I started with? Well, it reminded me of a lady that was next to us at a stall where she was buying a trinket, and not only could she not remember the date, she didn't know what month it was! Now, I haven't gotten that bad, yet. However, I am used to having a watch that I can refer to whenever I get a little fuzzy about the date. But my favorite watch has been under siege by Casio (another long story) and I've been wearing - for weeks now - a cheap watch that I picked up thinking I'd have my good one back soon. The cheap watch is supposed to show the date, but it has defeated all my efforts to get it to actually display it. Then, yesterday we had the cable guy in making some box changes so that the Mrs can watch her DVR shows on any of the three TVs we have. It also upgraded us to HDTV (which is my ultimate goal - if I can figure out how to kill our non-HD TVs without getting caught). But I'm digressing - again. The new box, one of which I have next to my computer, does not show the time. The old one did. I've gotten very used to using that to note the time and now that's gone, too. Pretty soon I might start forgetting where I live. My main clue is looking out the window - its not snowing, so this must be California.

Ok, I've gotten far afield from the topic. Let's talk about Wednesday night.

We lost Tol Barad Wednesday night, so Baradin Hold wasn't available to us. I say "we" meaning the guildies that participated in the TB pvp battle. Wild hasn't tried that yet. Maybe when Lao and JB get to 85 they'll tackle that new pvp zone. We had more than twenty guildies sign up for the BH raid, but since we didn't win TB the backup plan was to go to the Bastion of Twilight (BoT) again to clear trash and perhaps pick up a piece of gear or two. Funny how the number of guildies that signed up to raid dissipated when BH was taken off the table. I thought we would field two ten man teams, but we only had enough for one.

If you remember from last week, BoT has a large number of trash mobs all located in one large chamber. They sometimes drop nice BoE gear, and that was what we were after - plus just getting our cata raid group some practice with each other. Those guildies that opted out of coming to the raid are not getting the bigger picture. A raid is not ten individuals, it is a group of ten players who work as a unit. What we were doing in BoT was forging a unit.

We cleared the trash four times, resetting the instance after each clear so we could do it again. We had a wipe or two, but discovered better ways to position and pull. By the time we elected to stop everyone in the raid knew we had these mobs down pat. Only one BoE dropped, and it was a plate thing that of course didn't interest Wild. I was happy for the healing practice, too. On our third run one of our three healers DCed. The raid leader asked the other two of us if we could two heal until the third came back. Yes we could, and we did, with no problems at all.

After the raid we pulled a five man together for a heroic. This was only Wild's second heroic dungeon run and I was very nervous. It was a good group, with very decent DPS, and our best guild tank, Bd, doing the tanking honors.

We used the DF to pick the dungeon for us. Wild recognized the dungeon, but couldn't place the name. I had to look it up later - the Vortex Pinnacle (VP). The first time Wild entered a heroic dungeon, the group wiped on the first set of trash mobs, and the rest of the dungeon didn't get any easier, although we did, eventually, complete it.

In heroic VP Wild was also asked to help with crowd control, using entangling roots whenever my mark (a star) was placed over one of the mobs. Wild used to cc as a matter of course, most often in BWL, but it was a little harder both keeping a mob rooted and move and heal as well. I'd give Wild a grade of "C" on how he managed that, as occasionally the mob would break roots and get into our faces before I could root it again.

The trash mobs went down much smoother on this run, to Wild's great relief. Wild's gear was a bit better, but good DPS and a great tank made a big difference, too.

We arrived at our first boss, Grand Vizier Ertan. I love bosses like this. They don't move at all. During the fight numerous tornadoes form that move around the room, but the boss has no melee range attack so we could all just crowd up close to the boss. Several times during the fight the tornadoes would all close in on the boss. Ranged players, including Wild, simply backed out, stepping between the incoming tornadoes and kept doing what we were doing. Wild stayed in for one of those to see what it was like. I took some additional damage, and had my spell casting slowed, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. The boss went down.

Ertan dropped [Biting Wind]. This is an i346 main hand caster dagger. Theoretically that was an upgrade to Wild's two-handed i333 staff, but I noted that it didn't have any spirit on it, plus I didn't have an off-hand piece to equip with it. We were moving on so Wild just "greeded" it so if he got it he could DE it for enchanting mats.

We worked through some more trash. There is an interesting passage where there are several orbs with winds swirling around them. You can get caught in those winds and thrown off the passage (this is an outdoor dungeon, by the way) unless you damage the orbs to stop the winds. Some of us, Wild included, who have abilities to speed us up for short periods, played chicken with the orbs to see if we could get past them without getting tossed about. Wild's cat form with Dash usually worked. It was fun.

Altairus is the second of the three bosses in VP. Altairus is a dragon. The open air chamber he's in is quite small, with a low roof held up by four stanchions. After some quick direction we engaged.

The tank gathered up the dragon as numerous tornadoes formed around us, moving slowly. There are tornadoes everywhere in this place. These tornadoes were much nastier than the ones in the Ertan fight. The knockback does a lot more damage, and if flung far enough to actually leave the chamber, Altairus will one shot the unlucky player with a lightning bolt. Wild had other things to worry about as well. The tank has to maneuver the dragon based on the direction of the wind. The side and tail of the dragon are safe, but Altairus has a frontal cone attack that is very deadly and also slows movement and spell casting by a lot more than Ertan did. Altairus aims that cone at a player, so it's almost impossible to avoid completely. We made two attempts without much success and took a moment to regroup.

There seemed to be no way to avoid the tornadoes, and once you are tossed that first time the odds were high that you would land in range of another tornado and get tossed about like a hot potato until cooked. We had to stay away from each to ensure that only one player at a time was hit by that cone (called "Chilling Breath"). We were also unsure about this "wind thing."

Altairus can change the direction of the wind - either Upwind or Downwind. Players are supposed to be able to tell by watching particles in the air. If those particles are blowing at Wild's back, he is upwind. If they're blowing in his face, he's downwind. Upwind is very good, increasing basically everything - attack speed, movement, spell casting, etc. Downwind is just the opposite - very bad, particularly for the healer.

Wild couldn't see the particles. I had no idea where the wind was coming from. Supposedly there is a "boot" icon that shows up in the debuff icons that is green when upwind and yellow when downwind. I didn't seem to have that indicator, either. The tank wanted wild to move from one side of the dragon to the other depending on the wind direction, while he turned the dragon to face a certain way. It was a nightmare, and we wiped a couple more times. It wasn't all Wild. The tank struggled to get his positioning correct as well, and was once caught in a tornado, flung off the chamber, and one shot. The DPSers were complaining that no matter what they did those tornadoes kept catching them. Most of the challenge fell to Wild, though. I had to get this right or we just wouldn't kill this boss.

We tried twice more, but really didn't get any further and called it quits. Apparently there are a lot of complaints about this fight and it will likely be "adjusted" in the coming patch. But other groups have killed Altairus, so we were pretty disappointed that we could not clear heroic VP.

I went back to the strategy guides for this fight and learned that instead of maneuvering around, it was best if the healer stood in one place and simply turned his body in the direction required to be upwind, moving only enough to avoid tornadoes. Another recommendation was to pan the camera from above to get a better view of the tornado movements, which is a good idea if Wild doesn't have to move. Others said that the view from above was bad because the tornadoes have a hollow center and are hard to see from above. Of course all of those things sound impossible to do for Wild given his struggles with the wind, but perhaps standing in one place would greatly improve my odds of figuring out how to do the rest of it. And if Altairus hits Wild with Chilling Breath there should be no one around me and I can heal through it. I think.

Oh - I just learned one more thing about this fight that seems to kill the idea of the healer standing in one place - if Altairus is between the healer and wind, he blocks the wind and you are then effectively downwind. Sigh. I hate this boss. Seems "upwind" and "downwind" mean diddly. The idea is that Wild has to be in position for the wind to hit him before it hits the dragon - or something like that. Posters explaining strategies contradict themselves in the same post! It's maddening.

As Wild had said after our 4th or 5th attempt: "i r still confuzed." I hope the "fix" in the coming patch addresses some the really frustrating aspects of this fight that have nothing to do with how competent the group is.

A disappointed Wild returned to Orgrimmar to repair and check mail. In his bags Wild discovered that [Biting Wind] had wound up with him. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising. With a warrior, hunter, and rogue in the group Wild and the mage were the only two who had any possible use for it. Wild might have just DEed it, but it had that Heroic tag so Wild had to take a closer look. Oh boy. Wild's staff has 1533 spell power on it. The i346 dagger has 1729. Ok, this is a keeper. But Wild still didn't have an off-hand for it, and in previous looks at the AH Wild never saw a caster piece that he'd want to buy. Wild checked again, though, and this time he came across [Bone-Inlaid Sarcophagus Key]. This i333 off-hand had the spirit the dagger was missing, and with a little reforging would be a nice overall upgrade. And it was far cheaper than Wild would have thought it would be. He bought it.

With an i346 weapon, Wild felt it was time to give it a cata level enchant. The staff had gotten a Wrath +81 spell power enchant, but Wild now had the Heartsong enchant. Heartsong is a proc based enchant. I usually stay away from those since the proc is random and therefore the buff isn't consistently available. Nearly all of the cata level weapon enchants are proc-based, however, so Wild didn't have any choice. Heartsong is spirit based, so it's main benefit is to provide temporary increases in mana regen, which is useful to Wild but not really very sexy. The best overall caster enchant is Power Torrent, which procs increases in spell power. Now that's sexy. Getting the recipe for this spell costs five maelstrom crystals. To make the enchant costs four more crystals. These crystals come from disenchanting i359 and higher gear. Who is DEing i359 gear? Not many, not yet anyway. It was way out of Wild's price range. For now. Wild's gear score is still i338, but Wild now has one more piece of i346 gear. It's progress.