Sunday (28 May) - Back On The Road (Almost)
Our week in Virginia is about over, and we'll soon be heading to South Carolina. We've had to add a couple of days to our return trip in order to make a second visit to Mississippi. We are looking at 15/16 Jun as our arrival date home now. The details are available on our trip blog as usual:
http://tazzydbell.blogspot.com/
I just wanted to add a quick Warcraft update. Since the trip started Happy and Lost have tried hard to get a few minutes in game each day to keep up with Auction House progress. That has been going well for Happy, who is very close to having the gold needed for Wild to get the special mount he wants : [Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth]. This mount can carry two people in addition to the rider. Those seats can also be used to carry an npc repair vendor, which is the main reason Wild wants it. With this mount Wild can repair his gear whenever he needs to, making him pretty much self-sufficient in raids. Of course, it'll also be fun to carry around other toons, too! Too bad it's just a ground mount. Maybe we'll see a flying mount with extra seats some day. Wild will likely wait to buy the mount when his guild reaches ilevel 24, when he'll get an additional 10% discount. The MM guild is about 75% there. The mount is a Kirin Tor Faction item, and it happens to be one of those rare factions that Wild is actually Exalted with. Being Exalted drops the base price for the mount from 20,000 gold to 16k gold. With the 10% discount the price goes down to 14,400 gold.
Speaking of guilds, MM guild raiding appears to have gone dormant. The Friday raid still appears on the schedule, but Wild has never seen more than four guildies signed up for it. No new bosses have be defeated since we started our vacation. It's summer, and there are certainly other guildies taking vacation, so that is likely the reason. However, MM2 has been raiding, and often. Wild has seen his friends running the Four Winds still, as well as Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent. One way or the other Wild will be raiding when he gets back.
In other news Wild and level 85 Lao had a chance to talk a couple of times. She's reached the minimum ilevel now to do the five man Heroics. Like Wild, she doesn't much like the random nature of the dungeon finder because we prefer to know ahead of time what dungeon we are going to be in to be prepared for the fights. Hopefully we will be able to hook up to run some together once Wild is back in action - at least we can make sure nobody can vote to kick us out of a group lol. Lao is planning to join MM once Wild gets back, and Wild is hoping to get Lao into the guild raids as soon as possible.
Lost, the alliance side Auction House toon, hasn't had as much in game time as Happy, but has still had enough activity to keep things moving. The allie bank hasn't seen much progress, though, because Happy keeps stealing the low cost materials that Lost is buying. Allie AH prices have been well below Horde side AH on many items, and that has helped pad Happy's bank account at the expense of Lost's. These things run in cycles, however, and Happy will find himself having to send stuff he buys to Lost for sale I'm sure.
JB even got a tiny bit of in game time, getting in some herb farming and fishing. The guild is trying to get the guild fishing achievement done - which is to fish 10,000 fishing holes - and JB needed to raise her fishing skills, anyway. Fishing is slow work, though.
Lastly, I was talking with my brother and online games came up. Long story short, he seemed intrigued with WoW. He may try the free trial to see if he likes it and I offered to help him learn the game. The monthly fee could be an issue, though, even if he likes the free trial.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Monday (9 May) - Hitting The Road
Monday (9 May) - Hitting The Road
The Trip is finally here. We hope to be on the road early Tuesday morning. I was able to squeeze WoW into our laptop, but that is only so that Happy and Lost can continue to work their magic on the Auction House. There may be a chance to do something more during the week we're at my Mom's house, but I can never be sure what the state of her computer will be when we visit.
I'll keep adding bits and pieces to this over the weekend.
Friday Night - No MM raid, for the third straight week. It was disappointing, to say the least. Wild's other cabal partner who is still in MM, Rs, had also signed up for the raid, so he missed out as well. We had only four show up for the raid. Wild could have run BT with MM2 on Thursday, but waited for the Friday MM raid. Wild talked to Bd Friday night, and Wild has an invite to the MM2 Saturday BWD run, but the weekend will be pretty frantic tying up all the loose ends before we head out. The MM raid problems stem from the raid leader, Fn, being very sick the past couple of weeks. That should be a temporary issue. More seriously, though, is that many of the core raiders in our group have stopped signing up for the raid, and are seen less and less in game. Wild spoke with Fn Friday and he said he was hunting down our regulars to find out what the issues are. Of course, who knows what the situation will be by the time we get back from the trip.
About two weeks ago Happy bored us all to tears with a dissertation on the Cataclysm economy, specifically the new Cata enchanting mats. Happy summed it up like this: "... am I becoming too conservative? Happy's profits are down, and the times when he pulls in over 1,000 gold a day have grown fewer."
Happy would now like to report that as a result of that research he began actively trading those new cata enchanting mats he'd been leery about before - volatiles, celestial essences, heavenly shards, and hypnotic dust. To Happy's great joy, there is profit to be made, and sales are going very well. Wild may get his Repair NPC equipped Mammoth mount after all. Lost planned the same thing for the alliance side, but those cagey alliance traders maintain pretty tight pricing and so far Lost has not found an opening. Of course, it didn't hurt that Happy made 3,000 gold selling an Ace of Waves card (bought it Alliance side for 900g and sold it Horde side for 4k gold). Happy is still holding three waves cards with about 2,500 gold invested in them he may never be able to sell. Another Horde side trader posted an ace card for 3100 gold after Happy sold his - it's still sitting there after two days, un-bought. It's really an expensive crap shoot.
Oh, by the way, Did Lao ever sell that second chest piece she was waving about on the Auction House? Or did she, [[Horrors!]] end up equipping it? Lao is still Happy's Heroine for that prior monster sale.
With all of Hunter Fortress getting to level 20 and being able to dual wield two weapons, Wild asked Mery to go do some farming in Silithus for Essence of Air. The intent was to make the +15 Agility enchants for weapons. The recipe calls for four large brilliant shards and four Essence of Air per enchant. The shards are expensive but plentiful on the AH. The Essence of Air, though, rarely show up on the AH and have to be farmed. Happy knows, he and Lost have been checking for Essence of Air for the past week on both the Horde and Alliance Auction Houses and haven't found a single one. Wild and Wild family members have farmed the Dust Stormers in the northwest corner of Silithus for those essences for years. But, after nearly an hour of farming dozens and dozens of Dust Stormers, Mery collected just one Essence of Air. I would have expected 4-6 easily. Checking with Wowhead, it seems that since the Cataclysm the drop rate of essences have been severely nerfed. No wonder the few +15 agi scrolls that get to the AH are so expensive now.
Sunday night Wild had an unexpected pleasure. Lady Hunter was in game. Wild hasn't seen her around it quite some time. Her work schedule had changed and there were was some other RL issues going on as well. Wild chatted with her for quite awhile. She has a lot of catching up to do. Of course, she asked Wild to join MM2. Wild said no, but that things could still be like old times - Wild in one guild with Lady Hunter in another, but Wild running raids with both guilds.
The big push to get everything packed up and ready to go started Sunday. It was exhausting and we ran out of gas around 9:30pm and went to bed. We are usually go to bed a lot later than that. We were both awake and up this morning (Monday) at 4am. There are plenty of final things to do and a couple of new challenges that popped up. The latch to the side door of the RV broke on Sunday. That's a must fix issue, but RV shops don't work on Sundays. I hope they carry the same type of latch we have. Otherwise it will be harder to fix. We did a trial run a few days ago with our three cats and dog. The cats did fine, although our newest (his first time in a moving RV) got pretty excited. We made a mistake with our dog. We were trying out a soft-side kennel under the table in the RV to keep the big galoot out of the cab when we're on the road. She kennels fine in the car, and did fine in the RV as well. That is, until we got home and left her in the kennel while we took the cats back inside. She panicked, thinking we were leaving her, I guess, and tore a hole in the front of the kennel. Judi got that patched up on Sunday.
Our neighbor is going to be taking care of the six cats that are not going on the trip. The two "beach boys" and our semi-feral female will be staying in the garage, which is their usual haunt. The other three girls (Mom and her two daughters, none of which get along with each other) will have the whole house to themselves. We're hoping that's enough space to keep things civil.
Who knows what fun and challenging puzzles will come our way today as we finish up.
I doubt that I will be posting anything on the WoW blog while we're gone, but Judi will be posting a daily report of our trip on her blog. If you'd like to follow along, here is the URL:
http://tazzydbell.blogspot.com/
The Trip is finally here. We hope to be on the road early Tuesday morning. I was able to squeeze WoW into our laptop, but that is only so that Happy and Lost can continue to work their magic on the Auction House. There may be a chance to do something more during the week we're at my Mom's house, but I can never be sure what the state of her computer will be when we visit.
I'll keep adding bits and pieces to this over the weekend.
Friday Night - No MM raid, for the third straight week. It was disappointing, to say the least. Wild's other cabal partner who is still in MM, Rs, had also signed up for the raid, so he missed out as well. We had only four show up for the raid. Wild could have run BT with MM2 on Thursday, but waited for the Friday MM raid. Wild talked to Bd Friday night, and Wild has an invite to the MM2 Saturday BWD run, but the weekend will be pretty frantic tying up all the loose ends before we head out. The MM raid problems stem from the raid leader, Fn, being very sick the past couple of weeks. That should be a temporary issue. More seriously, though, is that many of the core raiders in our group have stopped signing up for the raid, and are seen less and less in game. Wild spoke with Fn Friday and he said he was hunting down our regulars to find out what the issues are. Of course, who knows what the situation will be by the time we get back from the trip.
About two weeks ago Happy bored us all to tears with a dissertation on the Cataclysm economy, specifically the new Cata enchanting mats. Happy summed it up like this: "... am I becoming too conservative? Happy's profits are down, and the times when he pulls in over 1,000 gold a day have grown fewer."
Happy would now like to report that as a result of that research he began actively trading those new cata enchanting mats he'd been leery about before - volatiles, celestial essences, heavenly shards, and hypnotic dust. To Happy's great joy, there is profit to be made, and sales are going very well. Wild may get his Repair NPC equipped Mammoth mount after all. Lost planned the same thing for the alliance side, but those cagey alliance traders maintain pretty tight pricing and so far Lost has not found an opening. Of course, it didn't hurt that Happy made 3,000 gold selling an Ace of Waves card (bought it Alliance side for 900g and sold it Horde side for 4k gold). Happy is still holding three waves cards with about 2,500 gold invested in them he may never be able to sell. Another Horde side trader posted an ace card for 3100 gold after Happy sold his - it's still sitting there after two days, un-bought. It's really an expensive crap shoot.
Oh, by the way, Did Lao ever sell that second chest piece she was waving about on the Auction House? Or did she, [[Horrors!]] end up equipping it? Lao is still Happy's Heroine for that prior monster sale.
With all of Hunter Fortress getting to level 20 and being able to dual wield two weapons, Wild asked Mery to go do some farming in Silithus for Essence of Air. The intent was to make the +15 Agility enchants for weapons. The recipe calls for four large brilliant shards and four Essence of Air per enchant. The shards are expensive but plentiful on the AH. The Essence of Air, though, rarely show up on the AH and have to be farmed. Happy knows, he and Lost have been checking for Essence of Air for the past week on both the Horde and Alliance Auction Houses and haven't found a single one. Wild and Wild family members have farmed the Dust Stormers in the northwest corner of Silithus for those essences for years. But, after nearly an hour of farming dozens and dozens of Dust Stormers, Mery collected just one Essence of Air. I would have expected 4-6 easily. Checking with Wowhead, it seems that since the Cataclysm the drop rate of essences have been severely nerfed. No wonder the few +15 agi scrolls that get to the AH are so expensive now.
Sunday night Wild had an unexpected pleasure. Lady Hunter was in game. Wild hasn't seen her around it quite some time. Her work schedule had changed and there were was some other RL issues going on as well. Wild chatted with her for quite awhile. She has a lot of catching up to do. Of course, she asked Wild to join MM2. Wild said no, but that things could still be like old times - Wild in one guild with Lady Hunter in another, but Wild running raids with both guilds.
The big push to get everything packed up and ready to go started Sunday. It was exhausting and we ran out of gas around 9:30pm and went to bed. We are usually go to bed a lot later than that. We were both awake and up this morning (Monday) at 4am. There are plenty of final things to do and a couple of new challenges that popped up. The latch to the side door of the RV broke on Sunday. That's a must fix issue, but RV shops don't work on Sundays. I hope they carry the same type of latch we have. Otherwise it will be harder to fix. We did a trial run a few days ago with our three cats and dog. The cats did fine, although our newest (his first time in a moving RV) got pretty excited. We made a mistake with our dog. We were trying out a soft-side kennel under the table in the RV to keep the big galoot out of the cab when we're on the road. She kennels fine in the car, and did fine in the RV as well. That is, until we got home and left her in the kennel while we took the cats back inside. She panicked, thinking we were leaving her, I guess, and tore a hole in the front of the kennel. Judi got that patched up on Sunday.
Our neighbor is going to be taking care of the six cats that are not going on the trip. The two "beach boys" and our semi-feral female will be staying in the garage, which is their usual haunt. The other three girls (Mom and her two daughters, none of which get along with each other) will have the whole house to themselves. We're hoping that's enough space to keep things civil.
Who knows what fun and challenging puzzles will come our way today as we finish up.
I doubt that I will be posting anything on the WoW blog while we're gone, but Judi will be posting a daily report of our trip on her blog. If you'd like to follow along, here is the URL:
http://tazzydbell.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Tuesday (3 May) - Grab Bag
Tuesday (3 May) - Grab Bag
The Wild family had to do the great heirloom shuffle on Tuesday. It's been awhile since that many family members saw action on the same day. As already mentioned, JB and EZ got game time. Add Philly, Shevils, Bean, Mery, and Java to the list as well.
Hunter Fortress was in full force Tuesday night, so of course we had trouble with the random battlegroup system. Not sure what changes were made as part of the 4.1 patch, but ever since that went live getting a BG going got much, much harder. In a nutshell, when the invite to a BG appears on the screen it immediately starts playing hide and seek. The pop up window will display for a second and then go away, and it would do that multiple times. No matter how fast you try to click on it, you never seem to get it just right, and after a few seconds either nothing will happen or we get a message that we "have left the battleground." A battleground we never got into. BG queues are long enough as it is, and now it's twice the trouble. They've tried to get a fix in place each week, but whatever they've tried is obviously not working.
Despite all that, the team did get into a Warsong Gulch battle after more than a 45 minute wait. We knew we were in trouble from the start. The Fortress entered a new bracket, for level 20-24. All four of us were level 20, which meant that at least 40% of the Horde team were at the lowest level allowed for this bracket. The Alliance team was full of hunters as well, and they were mostly level 24. The Fortress acquitted ourselves well. We lost (a foregone conclusion, really) but the team did finish with the top four horde scores in damage despite being at the bottom rung of the bracket. Speak even came in second overall, including the Alliance team.
It was already bedtime for See and Bean, but we all decided to hang on a bit longer to see if we got lucky. After close to 20 minutes of further inactivity, See called it a night. Bean waited a few more minutes, and then decided she would call it, as well. Before she could log off, though, we again got the flickering BG invite, this time for Arathi Basin. And we got in! Of course, Speak's first thought was, "See was jinxing us!" :P
We did well in AB. We tried to stay together but that rarely works for long, and we all ended up in different places. The battle went back and forth, with a lot of bases changing hands - more than usual. We won the match, so we'll be going into the May break on a winning streak. :-)
Hunter Fortress retired for the evening. Daeth (level 55 mage) and Mery (level 57 hunter) hooked up for some random dungeons and/or battlegroups. We ran into the same kinds of trouble with the flickering invite popups, but eventually was able to get into Arathi Basin. Daeth and Mery got separated early, and Mery found herself having to defend the Blacksmiths, which remained mostly in Horde hands. A very persistent alliance cat druid attacked Mery over and over. I think we killed each other about the same number of times in those one on ones. Mery's strafing buttons weren't working and that made staying away from that cat darn near impossible. When killed, Mery was always back in the druid's face before he could flip the base, so I think he only managed to turn it over to the alliance once in something like six attempts.
[Aside: All my toons have been having UI/keyboard settings problems that are likely the result of the patch and the corresponding upgrades to the addons that make those settings possible. I didn't realize how bad it was until I started playing some of those lesser used toons. Fixing all of that is likely going to have to wait until we get back from vacation, unfortunately.]
We then switched teams again, going to Kire and Java. Java's user interface, which was set to display the correct spells depending on his spec, had stopped working and would only show Java his healing spells, which wasn't what Java wanted. It took several minutes to manually readjust things.
Once Java was ready, we decided not to go to the random dungeon, but request a specific dungeon - Sunken Temple. We have not been back to ST since Cata (at least Java hadn't) and Java wanted to see it. It went much more quickly than the pre-Cata run, but it was a lot of fun. We then went the random route, but it was not a surprise that we got BRD, that endless place of the dozen plus bosses. At our level, BRD is one of the few places we'd be sent to.
We had a rather goofy group. Two players charged off, leaving Kire (our tank) and Java behind. The fifth player wandered about and then left the group. The dungeon was already partially done, which meant that one of us at least had started but not finished an earlier BRD. Java was pretty confused from the get-go, to say the least. Which might be why Java managed to get himself separated from Kire, and why Java got to fight a number of mob groups single-handedly in places he shouldn't have been blundering into. Eventually that got him killed, and Kire came and rescued him.
It seemed to take a long time, but we eventually had four players all in the same place at the same time. We never got another fifth. That didn't slow us down, though, and we completed the rest of the dungeon.
A week from today our real life Family will be on the road. Wild still has three raids to attend this week, but that will likely wrap up most of the activity before we go. Wish Wild luck that we'll down those pesky Djinn in Throne of the Four Winds Wednesday night!
The Wild family had to do the great heirloom shuffle on Tuesday. It's been awhile since that many family members saw action on the same day. As already mentioned, JB and EZ got game time. Add Philly, Shevils, Bean, Mery, and Java to the list as well.
Hunter Fortress was in full force Tuesday night, so of course we had trouble with the random battlegroup system. Not sure what changes were made as part of the 4.1 patch, but ever since that went live getting a BG going got much, much harder. In a nutshell, when the invite to a BG appears on the screen it immediately starts playing hide and seek. The pop up window will display for a second and then go away, and it would do that multiple times. No matter how fast you try to click on it, you never seem to get it just right, and after a few seconds either nothing will happen or we get a message that we "have left the battleground." A battleground we never got into. BG queues are long enough as it is, and now it's twice the trouble. They've tried to get a fix in place each week, but whatever they've tried is obviously not working.
Despite all that, the team did get into a Warsong Gulch battle after more than a 45 minute wait. We knew we were in trouble from the start. The Fortress entered a new bracket, for level 20-24. All four of us were level 20, which meant that at least 40% of the Horde team were at the lowest level allowed for this bracket. The Alliance team was full of hunters as well, and they were mostly level 24. The Fortress acquitted ourselves well. We lost (a foregone conclusion, really) but the team did finish with the top four horde scores in damage despite being at the bottom rung of the bracket. Speak even came in second overall, including the Alliance team.
It was already bedtime for See and Bean, but we all decided to hang on a bit longer to see if we got lucky. After close to 20 minutes of further inactivity, See called it a night. Bean waited a few more minutes, and then decided she would call it, as well. Before she could log off, though, we again got the flickering BG invite, this time for Arathi Basin. And we got in! Of course, Speak's first thought was, "See was jinxing us!" :P
We did well in AB. We tried to stay together but that rarely works for long, and we all ended up in different places. The battle went back and forth, with a lot of bases changing hands - more than usual. We won the match, so we'll be going into the May break on a winning streak. :-)
Hunter Fortress retired for the evening. Daeth (level 55 mage) and Mery (level 57 hunter) hooked up for some random dungeons and/or battlegroups. We ran into the same kinds of trouble with the flickering invite popups, but eventually was able to get into Arathi Basin. Daeth and Mery got separated early, and Mery found herself having to defend the Blacksmiths, which remained mostly in Horde hands. A very persistent alliance cat druid attacked Mery over and over. I think we killed each other about the same number of times in those one on ones. Mery's strafing buttons weren't working and that made staying away from that cat darn near impossible. When killed, Mery was always back in the druid's face before he could flip the base, so I think he only managed to turn it over to the alliance once in something like six attempts.
[Aside: All my toons have been having UI/keyboard settings problems that are likely the result of the patch and the corresponding upgrades to the addons that make those settings possible. I didn't realize how bad it was until I started playing some of those lesser used toons. Fixing all of that is likely going to have to wait until we get back from vacation, unfortunately.]
We then switched teams again, going to Kire and Java. Java's user interface, which was set to display the correct spells depending on his spec, had stopped working and would only show Java his healing spells, which wasn't what Java wanted. It took several minutes to manually readjust things.
Once Java was ready, we decided not to go to the random dungeon, but request a specific dungeon - Sunken Temple. We have not been back to ST since Cata (at least Java hadn't) and Java wanted to see it. It went much more quickly than the pre-Cata run, but it was a lot of fun. We then went the random route, but it was not a surprise that we got BRD, that endless place of the dozen plus bosses. At our level, BRD is one of the few places we'd be sent to.
We had a rather goofy group. Two players charged off, leaving Kire (our tank) and Java behind. The fifth player wandered about and then left the group. The dungeon was already partially done, which meant that one of us at least had started but not finished an earlier BRD. Java was pretty confused from the get-go, to say the least. Which might be why Java managed to get himself separated from Kire, and why Java got to fight a number of mob groups single-handedly in places he shouldn't have been blundering into. Eventually that got him killed, and Kire came and rescued him.
It seemed to take a long time, but we eventually had four players all in the same place at the same time. We never got another fifth. That didn't slow us down, though, and we completed the rest of the dungeon.
A week from today our real life Family will be on the road. Wild still has three raids to attend this week, but that will likely wrap up most of the activity before we go. Wish Wild luck that we'll down those pesky Djinn in Throne of the Four Winds Wednesday night!
Monday (2 May) - Order of the Dragon
Monday (2 May) - Order of the Dragon
One of the changes that came with Cataclysm was a brand new mechanism where guilds could earn experience, and with experience increase the guild's level and earn bonuses for the players in the guild. No one was quite sure how that would work, or whether it would make any difference. With a few months of observing the new guild leveling system, I think it has been a very positive addition.
Guilds that have a large, active membership get the most benefit, since they level faster and get access to better and better features that everyone in the guild benefit from. Very small guilds, though, such as Happy's "Order of the Dragon," have a very tough time leveling. When such a small guild does level, it is a major, major accomplishment.
The highest level member of Order of the Dragon is Lao, a level 85 priest who has been the architect of nearly all the guild leveling accomplishments.
"Group Ding! - By Lao
Lao logged on last night with the main reason of seeing if a chest piece that she had up on the AH sold. This is the same type of chest piece that she made an 8k profit on last time. No dice. This is the third, and maybe last, time she has had it up and no biters this time around. She might just have to wear it but she loses a lot of haste (around 164) which is the number one item of desire for most any caster.
While she was on she glanced at the sun dial and realized it was not that far off until the Tol Bard (Brad?) [actually, Barad] battle. Since she still had the weekly to-win quest she decided she should head over and grind out some quests until it started. Tol Barad is nice due to each daily earning you 16-18 gold. If you own the area (meaning that your faction won the last battle) you can get up to six more quests done, on top of the six that anyone can do at any time. This means about 200g can be gotten in about an hour's time.
Lao zoned in and started to shuffle through the quests looking for fast easy ones. She liked to do one, turn it in, do another, and turn it in vs. getting them all done and all turned in, in one blow. She see's that she has the skeleton on the hill, by far the easiest. Not only is it very close to the quest giver but you only have to kill one guy (err.. skeleton) that is easy to get to.
She runs in and boom, he is dead. Lao turned that in and was off to the next, spiders. Now Lao does not tend to care for the “kill xxxx number of xxxx” type of quests, they tend to be too long for her preference, especially if there are a lot of others going for the same kills. But it was a slow day and which means she can usually just turn in a circle and pick them off as they respawn, without running around.
After killing off 12 smaller arachnids and one mother spider (that took issue with her young being picked off), she ran to turn in the quest and WOOSH! At first it startled Lao. She was pretty sure she was not that close to being exalted with Hellscream (the rep faction for this area). Then she realized she was right, it was not her becoming exalted but the guild reaching level 2! Lao was so excited that she rushed to the vendor and sold the broken spindles out of her bag to celebrate.
Okay, maybe Lao should have been more excited than that, but what level two gives you is a little bit of an experience boost to help you level. Since Lao is already 85, this means nothing to her. Next level, 10% more movement speed while mounted. Now that might matter.. so in 10 more months (assuming Lao does not move on) our guild might get there :-)
Oh, and Lao helped win the Tol Barad battle, got all her quests done (cha-ching!), and is now 50 points away from being exalted with Tol Bard.
All of the Order of the Dragon SALUTE! Lao for bringing the guild to Level 2! /CHEER!
In other news it was all quiet from Wild, but others in the family did get some business done.
The DER family has been leveling yet another member of that large family with the confusingly similar names. The mage Daethbot #? (there are so many of you!) had reached level 52 and was hoping to get some game time on Tuesday night with one of Wild's Horde side members. Canvassing the Wild family, there were two possibilities. Hunter Mery was level 57 and ready to rock and roll, but that would mean Daethbot would have to level to at least 55 in order for the two to be in the same battlegroup bracket. The other choice was the shaman EZ, who was level 46 and would have to level up to 50 in order to be in the same bracket.
Unfortunately, the shaman in Wild's family have fallen on pretty hard times. After Wild had reached level 85, JB was given the nod to follow in Wild's big hooves and level to 85. She worked hard at it, getting to level 83. After that, though, JB found it harder and harder to find time to level, and after awhile she could not even get time to do the necessary herb farming that was the source of flasks Wild needed for raiding.
Things were even worse for EZ, who became a completely forgotten member of the family. Given Daethbot's request, Wild called on EZ to find out just what her situation was. The only word for it was dismal. EZ, abandoned since Cata, had never even had her talent points restored after the reset. Her bags were clogged with junk that had never been organized. Her user interface was an unreadable and unusable disaster. EZ had reached a point where she wasn't sure even of what spells to use anymore. The poor girl was in truly sad shape.
Get it together, Wild told her, and gave her one day to get it done. EZ had a lot she wanted to say to THAT - but held her tongue. She privately told herself that Wild would get his comeuppance - after she got that day Wild had promised.
The first thing EZ did was to build back her Enhancement talent spec. Then she sorted through her gear. She was completely dismayed by the choked bags that held both valuable gear (for melee work and healing as well) along with useless stuff that had never been sold off. She got her melee gear together and into some semblance of organization, and piled the rest in a corner to be sorted out later.
She then worked on assembling a coherent spell priority and getting her totems packaged up properly. She got advice from JB, who could at least show her what spells to use and in what order. After a lot of work she was relatively satisfied. It wasn't pretty, but it was workable. Pretty would have to wait.
Next, EZ begged other family members for some heirloom gear to help make leveling go a little faster. JB, Shevils, and even Java contributed. [Wild hopes getting that stuff back to their rightful owners doesn't become a problem. Keeping track of who has what is quite a challenge]. And being in a level 2 guild also helped out with leveling.
EZ finally felt ready to test everything out. After some thought, she decided that Tanaris was the best place to start. Lots of things to kill at around the level where she could get good experience and still kill things relatively fast. EZ soon learned, though, that she had never ventured that far south before. Tanaris, at least for the moment, was out of reach. The closest she could get was the battered and flooded horde camp in Thousand Needles. Fine, EZ decided, let's start there.
Pre-Cata, Thousand Needles was a hot, dusty plain covered in tall spires of rock. Those spires are what gave the place it's name. While the beasts of that region stayed mostly on the ground, the humanoid population lived at the top of the spires, using bridges to travel between them. The Cataclysm flooded the entire zone and destroyed most of the bridge system. The result was the place was now one large lake dotted with islands that used to the tops of those spires.
EZ was soon deep into questing in the area, and enjoyed it quite thoroughly. It was new and fresh, just as she was after such a long absence. Most of the work was either out on the lake or beneath the waters. She even got her own boat to use while she was in the zone. The goblin island (that pre-Cata was a goblin town out in Shimmering Flats - which no longer exists) that EZ was based out of was a true testament to the bizarre and delightful engineering of the goblins. EZ had so much fun she got a little tipsy at the bar - and even started a bar fight among the Alliance element. Yes, there are both friendly and hostile goblins at the island - but they only get rough if you, say, accidentally hit one over the head with your mug of ale. Ok, so EZ had had a LOT of ale.
EZ reached level 47 and is close enough to level 48 to likely get there. Some of the questing had become frustratingly difficult - from the standpoint of just finding cave entrances and such - that she finally called it a day to give her aching ale induced headache a chance to clear up. Level 50 would be a long haul, though, one she's not sure she will reach.
JB, too, had finally gotten some game time prior to EZ's return. Wild, who had not missed JB's flasks too much when he was raiding only once a week, started to get desperate now that he could be in raids three times a week and needing three times as many flasks. JB could make the flasks quickly enough; the problem was getting the materials together. Happy was getting truly annoyed at how much those mats cost on the AH. JB was an herbalist, and could farm the mats, but she needed to be level 84 to get into the Twilight Highlands to get the right kind of herbs.
JB started as a pvp healer in battlegrounds to gain some experience, and that was a lot of fun, but it wasn't getting her all that much experience. JB had stopped leveling in Uldum, so it was there she turned to next. She pulled together her Enhancement gear set and headed out. There were actually a lot of quests still to be done, and she worked through them while also farming the whiptail herbs that were prevalent in the area. She had a pretty long way to go, but was successful in her mission. JB is now level 84.
One of the changes that came with Cataclysm was a brand new mechanism where guilds could earn experience, and with experience increase the guild's level and earn bonuses for the players in the guild. No one was quite sure how that would work, or whether it would make any difference. With a few months of observing the new guild leveling system, I think it has been a very positive addition.
Guilds that have a large, active membership get the most benefit, since they level faster and get access to better and better features that everyone in the guild benefit from. Very small guilds, though, such as Happy's "Order of the Dragon," have a very tough time leveling. When such a small guild does level, it is a major, major accomplishment.
The highest level member of Order of the Dragon is Lao, a level 85 priest who has been the architect of nearly all the guild leveling accomplishments.
"Group Ding! - By Lao
Lao logged on last night with the main reason of seeing if a chest piece that she had up on the AH sold. This is the same type of chest piece that she made an 8k profit on last time. No dice. This is the third, and maybe last, time she has had it up and no biters this time around. She might just have to wear it but she loses a lot of haste (around 164) which is the number one item of desire for most any caster.
While she was on she glanced at the sun dial and realized it was not that far off until the Tol Bard (Brad?) [actually, Barad] battle. Since she still had the weekly to-win quest she decided she should head over and grind out some quests until it started. Tol Barad is nice due to each daily earning you 16-18 gold. If you own the area (meaning that your faction won the last battle) you can get up to six more quests done, on top of the six that anyone can do at any time. This means about 200g can be gotten in about an hour's time.
Lao zoned in and started to shuffle through the quests looking for fast easy ones. She liked to do one, turn it in, do another, and turn it in vs. getting them all done and all turned in, in one blow. She see's that she has the skeleton on the hill, by far the easiest. Not only is it very close to the quest giver but you only have to kill one guy (err.. skeleton) that is easy to get to.
She runs in and boom, he is dead. Lao turned that in and was off to the next, spiders. Now Lao does not tend to care for the “kill xxxx number of xxxx” type of quests, they tend to be too long for her preference, especially if there are a lot of others going for the same kills. But it was a slow day and which means she can usually just turn in a circle and pick them off as they respawn, without running around.
After killing off 12 smaller arachnids and one mother spider (that took issue with her young being picked off), she ran to turn in the quest and WOOSH! At first it startled Lao. She was pretty sure she was not that close to being exalted with Hellscream (the rep faction for this area). Then she realized she was right, it was not her becoming exalted but the guild reaching level 2! Lao was so excited that she rushed to the vendor and sold the broken spindles out of her bag to celebrate.
Okay, maybe Lao should have been more excited than that, but what level two gives you is a little bit of an experience boost to help you level. Since Lao is already 85, this means nothing to her. Next level, 10% more movement speed while mounted. Now that might matter.. so in 10 more months (assuming Lao does not move on) our guild might get there :-)
Oh, and Lao helped win the Tol Barad battle, got all her quests done (cha-ching!), and is now 50 points away from being exalted with Tol Bard.
All of the Order of the Dragon SALUTE! Lao for bringing the guild to Level 2! /CHEER!
In other news it was all quiet from Wild, but others in the family did get some business done.
The DER family has been leveling yet another member of that large family with the confusingly similar names. The mage Daethbot #? (there are so many of you!) had reached level 52 and was hoping to get some game time on Tuesday night with one of Wild's Horde side members. Canvassing the Wild family, there were two possibilities. Hunter Mery was level 57 and ready to rock and roll, but that would mean Daethbot would have to level to at least 55 in order for the two to be in the same battlegroup bracket. The other choice was the shaman EZ, who was level 46 and would have to level up to 50 in order to be in the same bracket.
Unfortunately, the shaman in Wild's family have fallen on pretty hard times. After Wild had reached level 85, JB was given the nod to follow in Wild's big hooves and level to 85. She worked hard at it, getting to level 83. After that, though, JB found it harder and harder to find time to level, and after awhile she could not even get time to do the necessary herb farming that was the source of flasks Wild needed for raiding.
Things were even worse for EZ, who became a completely forgotten member of the family. Given Daethbot's request, Wild called on EZ to find out just what her situation was. The only word for it was dismal. EZ, abandoned since Cata, had never even had her talent points restored after the reset. Her bags were clogged with junk that had never been organized. Her user interface was an unreadable and unusable disaster. EZ had reached a point where she wasn't sure even of what spells to use anymore. The poor girl was in truly sad shape.
Get it together, Wild told her, and gave her one day to get it done. EZ had a lot she wanted to say to THAT - but held her tongue. She privately told herself that Wild would get his comeuppance - after she got that day Wild had promised.
The first thing EZ did was to build back her Enhancement talent spec. Then she sorted through her gear. She was completely dismayed by the choked bags that held both valuable gear (for melee work and healing as well) along with useless stuff that had never been sold off. She got her melee gear together and into some semblance of organization, and piled the rest in a corner to be sorted out later.
She then worked on assembling a coherent spell priority and getting her totems packaged up properly. She got advice from JB, who could at least show her what spells to use and in what order. After a lot of work she was relatively satisfied. It wasn't pretty, but it was workable. Pretty would have to wait.
Next, EZ begged other family members for some heirloom gear to help make leveling go a little faster. JB, Shevils, and even Java contributed. [Wild hopes getting that stuff back to their rightful owners doesn't become a problem. Keeping track of who has what is quite a challenge]. And being in a level 2 guild also helped out with leveling.
EZ finally felt ready to test everything out. After some thought, she decided that Tanaris was the best place to start. Lots of things to kill at around the level where she could get good experience and still kill things relatively fast. EZ soon learned, though, that she had never ventured that far south before. Tanaris, at least for the moment, was out of reach. The closest she could get was the battered and flooded horde camp in Thousand Needles. Fine, EZ decided, let's start there.
Pre-Cata, Thousand Needles was a hot, dusty plain covered in tall spires of rock. Those spires are what gave the place it's name. While the beasts of that region stayed mostly on the ground, the humanoid population lived at the top of the spires, using bridges to travel between them. The Cataclysm flooded the entire zone and destroyed most of the bridge system. The result was the place was now one large lake dotted with islands that used to the tops of those spires.
EZ was soon deep into questing in the area, and enjoyed it quite thoroughly. It was new and fresh, just as she was after such a long absence. Most of the work was either out on the lake or beneath the waters. She even got her own boat to use while she was in the zone. The goblin island (that pre-Cata was a goblin town out in Shimmering Flats - which no longer exists) that EZ was based out of was a true testament to the bizarre and delightful engineering of the goblins. EZ had so much fun she got a little tipsy at the bar - and even started a bar fight among the Alliance element. Yes, there are both friendly and hostile goblins at the island - but they only get rough if you, say, accidentally hit one over the head with your mug of ale. Ok, so EZ had had a LOT of ale.
EZ reached level 47 and is close enough to level 48 to likely get there. Some of the questing had become frustratingly difficult - from the standpoint of just finding cave entrances and such - that she finally called it a day to give her aching ale induced headache a chance to clear up. Level 50 would be a long haul, though, one she's not sure she will reach.
JB, too, had finally gotten some game time prior to EZ's return. Wild, who had not missed JB's flasks too much when he was raiding only once a week, started to get desperate now that he could be in raids three times a week and needing three times as many flasks. JB could make the flasks quickly enough; the problem was getting the materials together. Happy was getting truly annoyed at how much those mats cost on the AH. JB was an herbalist, and could farm the mats, but she needed to be level 84 to get into the Twilight Highlands to get the right kind of herbs.
JB started as a pvp healer in battlegrounds to gain some experience, and that was a lot of fun, but it wasn't getting her all that much experience. JB had stopped leveling in Uldum, so it was there she turned to next. She pulled together her Enhancement gear set and headed out. There were actually a lot of quests still to be done, and she worked through them while also farming the whiptail herbs that were prevalent in the area. She had a pretty long way to go, but was successful in her mission. JB is now level 84.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Flashback: Zul'Aman Raiding Circa 2007
Flashback: Zul'Aman Raiding Circa 2007
This is a special entry that dates back to a completely different era in the Warcraft land of Azeroth. The following is a selection of clips from past entries that chronicle Wild's earliest experiences with Zul'Aman, as well as the guild drama that surrounded that rather turbulent time for Wild. JB was actively leveling during this period, and Philly was still an active participant in the Grunt Foundation on the faraway server of The Scryers. Wild did not yet have his Kara attunement. It was a busy, challenging, and frustrating time for Wild.
Note: Quoted clips from past entries are in italics, while the comments I insert are not.
2007, Nov 12th: "There is some decent news on the raiding front for Wild. Patch 2.3 is widely believed to be coming on tuesday, 13 Nov, barring any last minute problems on the test realm. That patch will introduce a new 10 man raid called Zul'Aman (ZA). I was honestly pretty depressed about that, since there was talk of ending Gruul's runs and cutting back on kara runs to do ZA, and Wild is far enough behind as it is. The guild plans to have ZA runs two nights a week, since the dungeon is on only a 3 day timer, allowing players to do two different runs each week. And the guild will run as many raid groups for ZA as there are players interested. Note that ZA is only on the test realm right now, so everything will have to be evaluated again when it goes live, but it looks like Wild will be able to get in on the ground floor with ZA. I will find a way around work so that Wild can be on at least one of those weekly runs. Wild is putting 14 Nov on his calendar as ZA Day 1."
Oh, and here's something even I forgot. At the time ZA came out, Wild was talent specced as a "hybrid." Back in 2007 you could only have one talent spec, unlike the two specs we can have now. One of Wild's big decisions, driven by the high difficulty of ZA, was whether to stay a hybrid (part DPS/moonkin, part healer/tree) or to respec as full healer.
2007, 15 Nov - "As the hour approaches the early evening, the high cackle of trolls and the bellows, screeches, growls, and roars of the animal gods of Zul'Aman grow ever louder. And so does the frenzy among the guildies hoping to get into a ZA run to face this new adventure."
Wild did respec to full Restoration spec for healing. Here is the reaction from a friend: "Sinstar is very sad that she lost her future husband to the resto world. She is actually heartbroken... <!--3 She will keep representing the boomkin world for Wild though and hope he eventually comes back for good."
This is a regular raid night for the guild, the first raid night since ZA became available, but there is all kinds of confusion about what raid (or raids) will be done and who will be invited. Not to mention the many bugs and addon problems that are plaguing players back in a time when a major patch could disrupt the game for days on end. Let's pick up on Wild as raid time approaches.
"5:30pm - Raid leader for group 1 arrives on the scene. Wild figures it would be best to be hanging around ZA when invites go out. Makes the trip. Hangs around.
6pm - Group 1 fills without Wild. To be expected. This is the super group. Wild fidgets while the Mrs provides dinner.
6:30pm - Group 2 raid leader has been on the scene since 6pm, asking for volunteers. Gets plenty, including Wild. But, we have no tanks. Two tanks are already in group 1. We have - one - other warrior on, who declines an invite - fury warrior, he says, I don't tank anymore. We wait, we cajole. Where are the guild warriors? We have 11 level 70 warriors. Oh, but 4 of them are alts of raiders in group 1. That's 7. Oh, two more of them have been out of the game for at least a month. Then there's that fury warrior. That makes - four tanks. FOUR!? In the whole guild? This is bad.
Wild gives his hunter friend in the Feral's guild a holler. We chat. They will be heading into ZA in the next hour. He'll check on whether Wild can get in if things don't pan out with my own guild. Starting to yawn. Wild's already collected his ZA starter quest and completed it. The easy talk to me quest is the first ZA quest you need to get before entering.
7pm - A "real" tank arrives. But one tank won't do it in ZA. We wait. Wild takes a nap.
7:30pm - Wild hear's back from hunter friend. Sorry, we have a full group and won't be able to get another one started. Dead end there. Wild wished them luck.
7:45pm - Group 2 raid leader gives up. Guildies left standing around get a kara group going. Wild waves as they leave, kicks the Summoning Stone outside ZA.
8pm - It's been three hours. Wild goes fishing."
In January, 2008, Wild finally got his Kara attunement, but he then went through a long stretch where the guild was so disorganized, and Wild's real life schedule so crazy, that he did not find a Kara group. He did not get in ZA, either, as the guild never formed more than the original super group. That group had downed 3 of 6 bosses in ZA. Wild had yet to set foot in ZA or Kara. Wild was doing 25 man raiding, though, in SSC mostly, and eventually Hyjal. By March of 2008, however, Wild was not only in a Kara group, he was running it every week. Originally, the group was going to do ZA, using Kara just to gear up for it, but ... Wild was still a virgin as far as ZA went. By that time Wild really wasn't thinking much about ZA anymore.
2008, 26 Apr - So, it wasn't until a month later that at last, Wild's Kara group made their first foray into Zul'Aman, five months after it opened.
"For our kara group's first foray into ZA, we had the exact same ten raiders that we had in our wednesday run the day before - with the exception that our shadow priest is actually playing her shadow priest and not her new level 70 hunter. We had a raider who let us know he would be late getting off work, so for about a half hour the other nine of us hung around near the Summoning Stone outside ZA chatting and getting excited about doing the run. Of the ten raiders, eight have never been inside. The other two have only worked on the initial trash before the first boss, so none of us have a boss kill under our belt.
Finally, we were ready. We all mounted up and rode up the large outer staircase to the instance portal. Inside is a large, donut shaped chamber.
http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/3796/zadonut01ml9.jpg
We explored the donut ring, which was empty of mobs and anything else interesting except for a single npc and the huge, heavy wooden door at the opoosite end from the entrance.
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/7739/zadoorway02el7.jpg
Looking at the image above, note the big gong in the lower left corner. There is an npc who wanders around the donut area. When we were ready, the raid leader talked to him. The npc directed us to bang the gong to make the doors open. The tank stood near the doors while the rest of us pounded away on the gong. It took like thirty seconds of hammering before the center seam cracked open and the doors swung ponderously inward, revealing the interior of ZA.
We stared as four trolls passed by the opening, saw us all gaping at them, and attacked. Welcome to ZA.
The raid quickly got down to business and we killed the trolls. Ok, that wasn't too hard. We moved cautiously through the doors.
ZA is an oudoor instance, very like Zul'Gurub, the twenty man raid in Stranglethorn Vale. The buildings, paths, and artifacts of the place are mostly made of stone, with heavy foilage everywhere. If you want to get an idea of the place, consider that the name of the npc we encountered just inside is named Harrison Jones. Get it? Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones.
We cleared a few more trolls from our path and then came upon two bears. Trolls and bears make up most of the trash mobs in ZA. Since this is an outdoor instance, Wild's crowd control spells were actually usable. Wild used Hibernate to sleep one of the bears while we killed the other one. They were pretty easy to take down.
Past that area we got our first look at the Boss we were after - Nalorakk.
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/2281/zanalorakk03fz2.jpg
Nalorakk is the lord of the bears, one of four animal bosses in ZA. He's considered the easiest of the bosses to kill, although Wild remembers when the first ZA group began that it took several trips into ZA before they got their first kill.
We set up in a small area fronting a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs was Nalorakk, flanked by two trolls each on either side of him. When we engaged, Nalorakk sent the trolls down the stairs after us while he retreated, expecting his trolls to take care of our intrusion. We killed the trolls and moved up the steps to a long landing fronting more stairs. Here we got to fight the first of the more unusual mobs in ZA - trolls mounted on bears.
There were a pair of them, and what makes them unusual is that they begin the fight mounted, and then the troll dismounts and instead of fighting two mobs we were now fighting four.
We fought and cleared more mobs, gaining the top of the stairs, and then killed more to clear another open area fronting Nalorakk's new position. None of this was easy, and we did not get through many of these mob groups without someone dying. But it wasn't impossibly hard, either, and our confidence grew as mobs continued to fall.
We now faced Nalorakk once again, and again he had minions with him we would have to defeat first before he would engage. There were two mounted trolls and two troll medicine men. The medicine men can heal and can cast a protective totem that must be destroyed quickly as it makes mobs within its range immune to all damage. The bears, once separated from the trolls, have an attack that when stacked can decimate the tank. They need to be kept separated from each other.
We assembled at the top of the stairs and discussed strategy. The raid leader moved further in to pick out a good tanking position. He didn't even come halfway toward the waiting mobs when Nalorakk aggroed and sent the four mobs at us. Wow, that's a large aggro radius. Run! We tried, and we wiped.
We then returned and made four "more organized" attacks on those four mobs, that of course became six mobs shortly into the fight. We tried trapping the medicine men, we tried mind controlling one of them, we tried, oh, all kinds of things. We could not take them down.
The raid leader asked a guildie vet of ZA to come on vent to see if he could add some advice. He looked at the four mobs we were facing and told us we were facing the absolute hardest set we could have gotten. You mean those four mobs are not always the same? Nope, they are a random set. Great, our first foray and we get the toughest grouping.
With the verbal help of the guildie, we tried several more times. On our best effort, we killed both trolls and one troll/bear combo. But that still left a dismounted troll and his bear, and we wiped again.
We were a little disappointed that we did not get a chance at Nalorakk, but it wasn't a bad effort for our first try. We were getting ready to pack it in for the night when someone asked about the first ZA quest, which most of us needed to complete. Called [Promises Promises], it required that we retrieve a map . That map is near Nalorakk, in a side area to the right of the raid as we faced the mobs. Could we get to it without aggroing them? Here's what the area looks like:
http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/1550/zanarlokkagain04hl6.jpg
The rogue talked about trying to stealth to it, and some of us wanted to stay and others wanted to repair, and as usual with our talkative group it looked like we would be at this awhile. So Wild went cat form, stealthed, and slinked around the outer edges of the area toward where the map would be found.
There goes Wild, someone said. And the talking stopped while they watched Wild to see what would happen.
Wild got as far as where the stone path starts to rise when the hollering started and the mobs came after me. Wild broke stealth to get a little extra speed and covered the last few steps to the map. I clicked on it, and waited the long few seconds for it to complete. Got it! And then the mobs arrived and Wild died.
The other raiders that had hung around had all abandoned the top of the stairs when the mobs aggroed. The mobs reset without killing anyone else.
Wild had to die to get that map, but heck, I died more times than I can count already tonight. What's one more? And I had my quest map.
Several other raiders now wanted to try. In order to give folks more time to collect the map, the raid leader said he would aggro the mobs and kite them as far away as possible, clearing the way to get the map. Wild volunteered to keep heals on the tank so that he could keep the mobs away longer.
The warrior aggroed the mobs and made his dash, and Wild stacked HoTs on him, even staying long enough to get a longer cast regrowth going. Then Wild raced along behind the warrior, spamming Lifebloom on him (and me) as we ran.
Since Wild had stayed behind an extra couple of seconds, the warrior had a pretty good lead on me. And at some point in our little race, Wild's heals became more interesting to the mobs than the furry back of our escaping warrior. Wild died while the warrior slipped out of aggro range, and the mobs returned to their position. All of the raiders needing the map got it and got safely away before the mobs returned. Mission accomplished. The warrior even thanked Wild, noting that he saw me hang back to get that extra heal on him, which probably saved him and allowed him to escape. There is that old adage when being chased by a bear - you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the person next to you.
The quest turn in got everyone 10g and a 20 slot bag, which is the largest general purpose bag in the game. In Wild's world the two extra slots over the 18 slot bag I have makes a difference, so it was truly a nice quest reward. Wild paid 10g in repair bills. There went my gold. The warrior tank, who died two less times than Wild but who took a horrific beating throughout the night, paid 46 gold in repair bills. That's one good reason Wild has no desire to tank.
Wild finished second in healing, but it was very close between Wild, the priest, and the pally. We were pretty much constantly casting heals the entire evening.
No boss kill, but our "kara group" now has our first ZA attempt under our belt. We should consider giving our group a name. All the other ZA groups have names.
So there you have it. It took five months for Wild to get into Zul'Aman for the first time. I guess you'd call it progress that it took Wild less than a week to get into the new, re-visited ZA. And pwned it!
This is a special entry that dates back to a completely different era in the Warcraft land of Azeroth. The following is a selection of clips from past entries that chronicle Wild's earliest experiences with Zul'Aman, as well as the guild drama that surrounded that rather turbulent time for Wild. JB was actively leveling during this period, and Philly was still an active participant in the Grunt Foundation on the faraway server of The Scryers. Wild did not yet have his Kara attunement. It was a busy, challenging, and frustrating time for Wild.
Note: Quoted clips from past entries are in italics, while the comments I insert are not.
2007, Nov 12th: "There is some decent news on the raiding front for Wild. Patch 2.3 is widely believed to be coming on tuesday, 13 Nov, barring any last minute problems on the test realm. That patch will introduce a new 10 man raid called Zul'Aman (ZA). I was honestly pretty depressed about that, since there was talk of ending Gruul's runs and cutting back on kara runs to do ZA, and Wild is far enough behind as it is. The guild plans to have ZA runs two nights a week, since the dungeon is on only a 3 day timer, allowing players to do two different runs each week. And the guild will run as many raid groups for ZA as there are players interested. Note that ZA is only on the test realm right now, so everything will have to be evaluated again when it goes live, but it looks like Wild will be able to get in on the ground floor with ZA. I will find a way around work so that Wild can be on at least one of those weekly runs. Wild is putting 14 Nov on his calendar as ZA Day 1."
Oh, and here's something even I forgot. At the time ZA came out, Wild was talent specced as a "hybrid." Back in 2007 you could only have one talent spec, unlike the two specs we can have now. One of Wild's big decisions, driven by the high difficulty of ZA, was whether to stay a hybrid (part DPS/moonkin, part healer/tree) or to respec as full healer.
2007, 15 Nov - "As the hour approaches the early evening, the high cackle of trolls and the bellows, screeches, growls, and roars of the animal gods of Zul'Aman grow ever louder. And so does the frenzy among the guildies hoping to get into a ZA run to face this new adventure."
Wild did respec to full Restoration spec for healing. Here is the reaction from a friend: "Sinstar is very sad that she lost her future husband to the resto world. She is actually heartbroken... <!--3 She will keep representing the boomkin world for Wild though and hope he eventually comes back for good."
This is a regular raid night for the guild, the first raid night since ZA became available, but there is all kinds of confusion about what raid (or raids) will be done and who will be invited. Not to mention the many bugs and addon problems that are plaguing players back in a time when a major patch could disrupt the game for days on end. Let's pick up on Wild as raid time approaches.
"5:30pm - Raid leader for group 1 arrives on the scene. Wild figures it would be best to be hanging around ZA when invites go out. Makes the trip. Hangs around.
6pm - Group 1 fills without Wild. To be expected. This is the super group. Wild fidgets while the Mrs provides dinner.
6:30pm - Group 2 raid leader has been on the scene since 6pm, asking for volunteers. Gets plenty, including Wild. But, we have no tanks. Two tanks are already in group 1. We have - one - other warrior on, who declines an invite - fury warrior, he says, I don't tank anymore. We wait, we cajole. Where are the guild warriors? We have 11 level 70 warriors. Oh, but 4 of them are alts of raiders in group 1. That's 7. Oh, two more of them have been out of the game for at least a month. Then there's that fury warrior. That makes - four tanks. FOUR!? In the whole guild? This is bad.
Wild gives his hunter friend in the Feral's guild a holler. We chat. They will be heading into ZA in the next hour. He'll check on whether Wild can get in if things don't pan out with my own guild. Starting to yawn. Wild's already collected his ZA starter quest and completed it. The easy talk to me quest is the first ZA quest you need to get before entering.
7pm - A "real" tank arrives. But one tank won't do it in ZA. We wait. Wild takes a nap.
7:30pm - Wild hear's back from hunter friend. Sorry, we have a full group and won't be able to get another one started. Dead end there. Wild wished them luck.
7:45pm - Group 2 raid leader gives up. Guildies left standing around get a kara group going. Wild waves as they leave, kicks the Summoning Stone outside ZA.
8pm - It's been three hours. Wild goes fishing."
In January, 2008, Wild finally got his Kara attunement, but he then went through a long stretch where the guild was so disorganized, and Wild's real life schedule so crazy, that he did not find a Kara group. He did not get in ZA, either, as the guild never formed more than the original super group. That group had downed 3 of 6 bosses in ZA. Wild had yet to set foot in ZA or Kara. Wild was doing 25 man raiding, though, in SSC mostly, and eventually Hyjal. By March of 2008, however, Wild was not only in a Kara group, he was running it every week. Originally, the group was going to do ZA, using Kara just to gear up for it, but ... Wild was still a virgin as far as ZA went. By that time Wild really wasn't thinking much about ZA anymore.
2008, 26 Apr - So, it wasn't until a month later that at last, Wild's Kara group made their first foray into Zul'Aman, five months after it opened.
"For our kara group's first foray into ZA, we had the exact same ten raiders that we had in our wednesday run the day before - with the exception that our shadow priest is actually playing her shadow priest and not her new level 70 hunter. We had a raider who let us know he would be late getting off work, so for about a half hour the other nine of us hung around near the Summoning Stone outside ZA chatting and getting excited about doing the run. Of the ten raiders, eight have never been inside. The other two have only worked on the initial trash before the first boss, so none of us have a boss kill under our belt.
Finally, we were ready. We all mounted up and rode up the large outer staircase to the instance portal. Inside is a large, donut shaped chamber.
http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/3796/zadonut01ml9.jpg
We explored the donut ring, which was empty of mobs and anything else interesting except for a single npc and the huge, heavy wooden door at the opoosite end from the entrance.
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/7739/zadoorway02el7.jpg
Looking at the image above, note the big gong in the lower left corner. There is an npc who wanders around the donut area. When we were ready, the raid leader talked to him. The npc directed us to bang the gong to make the doors open. The tank stood near the doors while the rest of us pounded away on the gong. It took like thirty seconds of hammering before the center seam cracked open and the doors swung ponderously inward, revealing the interior of ZA.
We stared as four trolls passed by the opening, saw us all gaping at them, and attacked. Welcome to ZA.
The raid quickly got down to business and we killed the trolls. Ok, that wasn't too hard. We moved cautiously through the doors.
ZA is an oudoor instance, very like Zul'Gurub, the twenty man raid in Stranglethorn Vale. The buildings, paths, and artifacts of the place are mostly made of stone, with heavy foilage everywhere. If you want to get an idea of the place, consider that the name of the npc we encountered just inside is named Harrison Jones. Get it? Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones.
We cleared a few more trolls from our path and then came upon two bears. Trolls and bears make up most of the trash mobs in ZA. Since this is an outdoor instance, Wild's crowd control spells were actually usable. Wild used Hibernate to sleep one of the bears while we killed the other one. They were pretty easy to take down.
Past that area we got our first look at the Boss we were after - Nalorakk.
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/2281/zanalorakk03fz2.jpg
Nalorakk is the lord of the bears, one of four animal bosses in ZA. He's considered the easiest of the bosses to kill, although Wild remembers when the first ZA group began that it took several trips into ZA before they got their first kill.
We set up in a small area fronting a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs was Nalorakk, flanked by two trolls each on either side of him. When we engaged, Nalorakk sent the trolls down the stairs after us while he retreated, expecting his trolls to take care of our intrusion. We killed the trolls and moved up the steps to a long landing fronting more stairs. Here we got to fight the first of the more unusual mobs in ZA - trolls mounted on bears.
There were a pair of them, and what makes them unusual is that they begin the fight mounted, and then the troll dismounts and instead of fighting two mobs we were now fighting four.
We fought and cleared more mobs, gaining the top of the stairs, and then killed more to clear another open area fronting Nalorakk's new position. None of this was easy, and we did not get through many of these mob groups without someone dying. But it wasn't impossibly hard, either, and our confidence grew as mobs continued to fall.
We now faced Nalorakk once again, and again he had minions with him we would have to defeat first before he would engage. There were two mounted trolls and two troll medicine men. The medicine men can heal and can cast a protective totem that must be destroyed quickly as it makes mobs within its range immune to all damage. The bears, once separated from the trolls, have an attack that when stacked can decimate the tank. They need to be kept separated from each other.
We assembled at the top of the stairs and discussed strategy. The raid leader moved further in to pick out a good tanking position. He didn't even come halfway toward the waiting mobs when Nalorakk aggroed and sent the four mobs at us. Wow, that's a large aggro radius. Run! We tried, and we wiped.
We then returned and made four "more organized" attacks on those four mobs, that of course became six mobs shortly into the fight. We tried trapping the medicine men, we tried mind controlling one of them, we tried, oh, all kinds of things. We could not take them down.
The raid leader asked a guildie vet of ZA to come on vent to see if he could add some advice. He looked at the four mobs we were facing and told us we were facing the absolute hardest set we could have gotten. You mean those four mobs are not always the same? Nope, they are a random set. Great, our first foray and we get the toughest grouping.
With the verbal help of the guildie, we tried several more times. On our best effort, we killed both trolls and one troll/bear combo. But that still left a dismounted troll and his bear, and we wiped again.
We were a little disappointed that we did not get a chance at Nalorakk, but it wasn't a bad effort for our first try. We were getting ready to pack it in for the night when someone asked about the first ZA quest, which most of us needed to complete. Called [Promises Promises], it required that we retrieve a map . That map is near Nalorakk, in a side area to the right of the raid as we faced the mobs. Could we get to it without aggroing them? Here's what the area looks like:
http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/1550/zanarlokkagain04hl6.jpg
The rogue talked about trying to stealth to it, and some of us wanted to stay and others wanted to repair, and as usual with our talkative group it looked like we would be at this awhile. So Wild went cat form, stealthed, and slinked around the outer edges of the area toward where the map would be found.
There goes Wild, someone said. And the talking stopped while they watched Wild to see what would happen.
Wild got as far as where the stone path starts to rise when the hollering started and the mobs came after me. Wild broke stealth to get a little extra speed and covered the last few steps to the map. I clicked on it, and waited the long few seconds for it to complete. Got it! And then the mobs arrived and Wild died.
The other raiders that had hung around had all abandoned the top of the stairs when the mobs aggroed. The mobs reset without killing anyone else.
Wild had to die to get that map, but heck, I died more times than I can count already tonight. What's one more? And I had my quest map.
Several other raiders now wanted to try. In order to give folks more time to collect the map, the raid leader said he would aggro the mobs and kite them as far away as possible, clearing the way to get the map. Wild volunteered to keep heals on the tank so that he could keep the mobs away longer.
The warrior aggroed the mobs and made his dash, and Wild stacked HoTs on him, even staying long enough to get a longer cast regrowth going. Then Wild raced along behind the warrior, spamming Lifebloom on him (and me) as we ran.
Since Wild had stayed behind an extra couple of seconds, the warrior had a pretty good lead on me. And at some point in our little race, Wild's heals became more interesting to the mobs than the furry back of our escaping warrior. Wild died while the warrior slipped out of aggro range, and the mobs returned to their position. All of the raiders needing the map got it and got safely away before the mobs returned. Mission accomplished. The warrior even thanked Wild, noting that he saw me hang back to get that extra heal on him, which probably saved him and allowed him to escape. There is that old adage when being chased by a bear - you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the person next to you.
The quest turn in got everyone 10g and a 20 slot bag, which is the largest general purpose bag in the game. In Wild's world the two extra slots over the 18 slot bag I have makes a difference, so it was truly a nice quest reward. Wild paid 10g in repair bills. There went my gold. The warrior tank, who died two less times than Wild but who took a horrific beating throughout the night, paid 46 gold in repair bills. That's one good reason Wild has no desire to tank.
Wild finished second in healing, but it was very close between Wild, the priest, and the pally. We were pretty much constantly casting heals the entire evening.
No boss kill, but our "kara group" now has our first ZA attempt under our belt. We should consider giving our group a name. All the other ZA groups have names.
So there you have it. It took five months for Wild to get into Zul'Aman for the first time. I guess you'd call it progress that it took Wild less than a week to get into the new, re-visited ZA. And pwned it!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Weekend (30 Apr) - The Zandalari Tribe
Weekend (30 Apr) - The Zandalari Tribe
For the second week in a row the MM guild was unable to field a raid on Friday night. We had six signed up for the raid and all six showed up, but there were no other guildies in game. The raid was called after about 45 minutes. That did give us an opportunity to attempt the new 5 man heroics, known collectively as the Zandalari Tribe: Zul'Aman (ZA) and/or Zul'Gurub (ZG). There was only one problem - there were six of us. The raid leader and tank announced up front that he would tank (of course) and that he, Fl (our pally healer), and a rogue were "going to run a heroic." Of the three of us left, there were two DPS and Wild. Obviously, Wild was not going to be the healer. Wild said he had a moonkin off-spec. No one said anything further. Much as I wanted to get in on the run, it was clear how things stood. After a couple of awkward, silent minutes, Wild offered that if Fn had five for his group, then Wild could find something else to do. Fn thanked Wild for understanding and they went off on their Heroic. Sigh. Wild is going to end up PUGing those dungeons. Maybe Wild and Lao will catch each other in game this weekend and get in a run together.
Saturday morning - Wild was in game around 10am on Saturday. He was the only guildie in game. Wild scratched the hard bristles on his head and wondered where everyone was. Well, it's going to be a beautiful day outside, and I had plenty to do besides WoW. Yet ... it was still early. Wild got in the queue for a random Zandalari dungeon. While waiting in the queue Wild was going to do the two daily quests available in Orgrimmar, and if he was still waiting when those were done, well, Happy wanted to horn in and get some AH work done.
Happy would have to wait. Within five minutes the dungeon finder collected Wild up and deposited him in Zul'Aman. ZA was once a level 70 raid requiring ten players. With Patch 4.1 it was redesigned as a Heroic level five player dungeon for level 85s. It was challenging and fun as a level 70; Wild was about to find out just how hard it will be as a Heroic 5 man.
When Wild zoned in to ZA he was not where he thought he should be. ZA starts with a set of King Kong sized doors protected by elite guards, and a circular antechamber where the quest givers are. At least that is what it looked like many moons ago when Wild last ran this place.
Three players were already inside on a large platform. A fifth player zoned in right on Wild's heels. He immediately asked, "Which boss u on?" Ok, so this is a dungeon run already in progress. Seems they lost two players, including the healer, for some reason. Not good from that standpoint. And Wild wondered at how difficult the healing would be if one healer had already failed. However, they had killed the first three of six bosses, so they were doing something right. The tank was a paladin. We started on a group of trolls. The healing was pretty intense, with a fury warrior pulling aggro and taking as much damage as the tank. We got through that and worked deeper into ZA. ZA is an outdoor dungeon and is quite beautifully laid out. There is jungle, and swamp, and every kind of Indiana Jones style ruins. It is also not linear (ie, with one path to boss A, then another to boss B, etc). There are the obvious paths stretching through the zone, but also not so clear shortcuts going every which way depending on where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do when and in what order. The best paths were those meandering right through the jungle and off of the safer, but more roundabout, roads. Wild knew if he got behind or separated, he would be instantly lost. It's dangerous country, with mobs in groups, and hidden in the foliage, and in some cases, stealthed until we stumbled into their midst. In other words, it was scary and delightful.
As we killed through several more mob groups Wild started getting a feel for what was needed. He was putting out close to 9k healing, which is raid level healing, with a lot of damage being done to the group. Wild was getting it done, but Wild had yet to face a boss.
The first boss Wild came to (which is the fourth boss in ZA), was Halazzi, also known as Lord of lynxes. Wild remembered this fight - kill totems and stack when Halazzi summons his lynx spirit, which he does twice. There was a discussion about whether to focus on killing Halazzi, or kill the lynx spirit before Halazzi. The strat guide says kill the spirit first, then Halazzi. The tank wanted Halazzi focused on, and forget the lynx.
We did it the tank's way. Wild lost one player, the warrior, killed by the lynx spirit. Wild thought later that we were lucky it was the warrior the lynx spirit attacked. If the lynx had gone for Wild it would have been all over. The fight went very long, since Halazzi heals back to full health twice during the battle. Wild was too busy to rez the warrior for a long stretch, but was finally able to get him back into action. We brought down Halazzi. Wild was elated. It had been two weeks since he'd last killed a boss.
There was more trash to kill, and we got a little careless with a large group of stealthed panthers. Wild well remembers how easy it was to aggro multiple groups since they are hard to see and even harder to figure out how the groups are divided up. We fought and fought, but there always seemed to be more of them attacking all the time. They wore us down, but couldn't put us away, and we eventually cleared our way to Hex Lord Malacrass.
Wild remembers the witch doctor Malacrass,too. He has two adds that are usually crowd controlled throughout the fight. Malacrass steals the abilities of other players, and then uses them on us. Our warrior had his Mortal Strike taken and used on another player, for example. It's an awesome fight because you just don't know what kind of attack you could be facing minute by minute. This was also a long, battle of attrition fight as Malacrass gets stronger over time while the rest of us grow weaker. If the scale tipped too far in his favor, we were doomed. Which we were, wiping on our first attempt.
We came back strong (Wild managed not to get "too" lost coming back from being rezzed at the graveyard) - and beat Malacrass on our second attempt.
There was more trash mobs to kill, and we arrived at - drum roll -
Daakara The Invincible, Warlord of the Amani trolls, Chieftain of the Amani tribe and the final boss in Zul'Aman.
Wild had never seen Daakara before. Daakara took over Zul'Aman after the previous leader of the trolls, Zul'jin, was killed in the level 70 version. Nonetheless, Blizz didn't stray too far from the Zul'jin script in setting the encounter with Daakara. It is very much like the original, and even shortens things a bit by giving us only three phases instead of the five in the original.
We got ready, and engaged. The battle started as a straight up fight with Daakara. Wild's biggest worry at the beginning was getting heals on every player to rid them of nasty bleed damage that had the whole group down to half health within seconds. We survived that as well as the whirlwinds, and Daakara transformed himself into a bear for phase 2. This was not the worst of four possible forms he could take (bear, eagle, dragonhawk, lynx), but was the one form that was the most danger to the tank. Wild earned his keep keeping the tank alive for that phase.
Daakara then transformed again, this time into a dragonhawk, for phase 3. I couldn't remember what this form did, but I knew enough to stay out of the column of fire he tossed out and getting out of spitting range of his flame whirls. Too many of the DPS stood in the fire, making Wild's job a lot harder. One player died, but Wild got him rezzed pretty quickly. After getting off the battle rez, Wild turned to heal the tank - and caught a Flame Breath right in the face. Wild went down instantly. But it was our lucky day - Daakara went down at the same time.
Wild was in on only the final three bosses, but we all got our credit for clearing Zul'Aman. Daakara dropped [Amani Headdress], an ilevel 353 leather helm. Wild's helm was i346, and Wild got the Headdress. It is truly, truly cool looking. Who needs a guild run, anyway. :-)
Bonus Entry - I went searching through my archives to find those old level 70 ZA runs. Here is what I found - see next post.
For the second week in a row the MM guild was unable to field a raid on Friday night. We had six signed up for the raid and all six showed up, but there were no other guildies in game. The raid was called after about 45 minutes. That did give us an opportunity to attempt the new 5 man heroics, known collectively as the Zandalari Tribe: Zul'Aman (ZA) and/or Zul'Gurub (ZG). There was only one problem - there were six of us. The raid leader and tank announced up front that he would tank (of course) and that he, Fl (our pally healer), and a rogue were "going to run a heroic." Of the three of us left, there were two DPS and Wild. Obviously, Wild was not going to be the healer. Wild said he had a moonkin off-spec. No one said anything further. Much as I wanted to get in on the run, it was clear how things stood. After a couple of awkward, silent minutes, Wild offered that if Fn had five for his group, then Wild could find something else to do. Fn thanked Wild for understanding and they went off on their Heroic. Sigh. Wild is going to end up PUGing those dungeons. Maybe Wild and Lao will catch each other in game this weekend and get in a run together.
Saturday morning - Wild was in game around 10am on Saturday. He was the only guildie in game. Wild scratched the hard bristles on his head and wondered where everyone was. Well, it's going to be a beautiful day outside, and I had plenty to do besides WoW. Yet ... it was still early. Wild got in the queue for a random Zandalari dungeon. While waiting in the queue Wild was going to do the two daily quests available in Orgrimmar, and if he was still waiting when those were done, well, Happy wanted to horn in and get some AH work done.
Happy would have to wait. Within five minutes the dungeon finder collected Wild up and deposited him in Zul'Aman. ZA was once a level 70 raid requiring ten players. With Patch 4.1 it was redesigned as a Heroic level five player dungeon for level 85s. It was challenging and fun as a level 70; Wild was about to find out just how hard it will be as a Heroic 5 man.
When Wild zoned in to ZA he was not where he thought he should be. ZA starts with a set of King Kong sized doors protected by elite guards, and a circular antechamber where the quest givers are. At least that is what it looked like many moons ago when Wild last ran this place.
Three players were already inside on a large platform. A fifth player zoned in right on Wild's heels. He immediately asked, "Which boss u on?" Ok, so this is a dungeon run already in progress. Seems they lost two players, including the healer, for some reason. Not good from that standpoint. And Wild wondered at how difficult the healing would be if one healer had already failed. However, they had killed the first three of six bosses, so they were doing something right. The tank was a paladin. We started on a group of trolls. The healing was pretty intense, with a fury warrior pulling aggro and taking as much damage as the tank. We got through that and worked deeper into ZA. ZA is an outdoor dungeon and is quite beautifully laid out. There is jungle, and swamp, and every kind of Indiana Jones style ruins. It is also not linear (ie, with one path to boss A, then another to boss B, etc). There are the obvious paths stretching through the zone, but also not so clear shortcuts going every which way depending on where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do when and in what order. The best paths were those meandering right through the jungle and off of the safer, but more roundabout, roads. Wild knew if he got behind or separated, he would be instantly lost. It's dangerous country, with mobs in groups, and hidden in the foliage, and in some cases, stealthed until we stumbled into their midst. In other words, it was scary and delightful.
As we killed through several more mob groups Wild started getting a feel for what was needed. He was putting out close to 9k healing, which is raid level healing, with a lot of damage being done to the group. Wild was getting it done, but Wild had yet to face a boss.
The first boss Wild came to (which is the fourth boss in ZA), was Halazzi, also known as Lord of lynxes. Wild remembered this fight - kill totems and stack when Halazzi summons his lynx spirit, which he does twice. There was a discussion about whether to focus on killing Halazzi, or kill the lynx spirit before Halazzi. The strat guide says kill the spirit first, then Halazzi. The tank wanted Halazzi focused on, and forget the lynx.
We did it the tank's way. Wild lost one player, the warrior, killed by the lynx spirit. Wild thought later that we were lucky it was the warrior the lynx spirit attacked. If the lynx had gone for Wild it would have been all over. The fight went very long, since Halazzi heals back to full health twice during the battle. Wild was too busy to rez the warrior for a long stretch, but was finally able to get him back into action. We brought down Halazzi. Wild was elated. It had been two weeks since he'd last killed a boss.
There was more trash to kill, and we got a little careless with a large group of stealthed panthers. Wild well remembers how easy it was to aggro multiple groups since they are hard to see and even harder to figure out how the groups are divided up. We fought and fought, but there always seemed to be more of them attacking all the time. They wore us down, but couldn't put us away, and we eventually cleared our way to Hex Lord Malacrass.
Wild remembers the witch doctor Malacrass,too. He has two adds that are usually crowd controlled throughout the fight. Malacrass steals the abilities of other players, and then uses them on us. Our warrior had his Mortal Strike taken and used on another player, for example. It's an awesome fight because you just don't know what kind of attack you could be facing minute by minute. This was also a long, battle of attrition fight as Malacrass gets stronger over time while the rest of us grow weaker. If the scale tipped too far in his favor, we were doomed. Which we were, wiping on our first attempt.
We came back strong (Wild managed not to get "too" lost coming back from being rezzed at the graveyard) - and beat Malacrass on our second attempt.
There was more trash mobs to kill, and we arrived at - drum roll -
Daakara The Invincible, Warlord of the Amani trolls, Chieftain of the Amani tribe and the final boss in Zul'Aman.
Wild had never seen Daakara before. Daakara took over Zul'Aman after the previous leader of the trolls, Zul'jin, was killed in the level 70 version. Nonetheless, Blizz didn't stray too far from the Zul'jin script in setting the encounter with Daakara. It is very much like the original, and even shortens things a bit by giving us only three phases instead of the five in the original.
We got ready, and engaged. The battle started as a straight up fight with Daakara. Wild's biggest worry at the beginning was getting heals on every player to rid them of nasty bleed damage that had the whole group down to half health within seconds. We survived that as well as the whirlwinds, and Daakara transformed himself into a bear for phase 2. This was not the worst of four possible forms he could take (bear, eagle, dragonhawk, lynx), but was the one form that was the most danger to the tank. Wild earned his keep keeping the tank alive for that phase.
Daakara then transformed again, this time into a dragonhawk, for phase 3. I couldn't remember what this form did, but I knew enough to stay out of the column of fire he tossed out and getting out of spitting range of his flame whirls. Too many of the DPS stood in the fire, making Wild's job a lot harder. One player died, but Wild got him rezzed pretty quickly. After getting off the battle rez, Wild turned to heal the tank - and caught a Flame Breath right in the face. Wild went down instantly. But it was our lucky day - Daakara went down at the same time.
Wild was in on only the final three bosses, but we all got our credit for clearing Zul'Aman. Daakara dropped [Amani Headdress], an ilevel 353 leather helm. Wild's helm was i346, and Wild got the Headdress. It is truly, truly cool looking. Who needs a guild run, anyway. :-)
Wild Struts in his new Headdress
Bonus Entry - I went searching through my archives to find those old level 70 ZA runs. Here is what I found - see next post.
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