Sunday, July 31, 2011

Friday (31 Jul) - Cowboys and Aliens and Bosses Oh My!

Friday (31 Jul) - Cowboys and Aliens and Bosses Oh My!

The good news is that the new Harrison Ford/Daniel Craig movie "Cowboys and Aliens" is a much better movie than you might think from the title. I really like Craig and Ford, and those two convinced me to give the movie a shot. Craig is the wanted gunslinger sporting an alien bracelet with no memory of what it is or how it got there. Ford is the cattle baron running roughshod over a town long past it's glory days. Add in a town trying to save itself, a bandit army, and Indians, mix in an alien encampment of District 9 like creepies bent on irradicating the human vermin in their way, and you have a wide prairie of action, fun, and even a little scary horror. Yes, there is a bit of silliness at times, but on the whole this is a great action flick with not only good leading actors but a very good supporting cast as well. There are even a couple of memorable lines.

The bad news is that the Friday night assault on Bastion of Twilight was a completely forgettable event. We could have used a few good gunslingers. We fell short in two areas - our pally healer wasn't feeling well, and we had to substitute him with a modestly gear shaman to complete our healing team of Wild and another shaman, who was pretty decent. The healing team was good enough, but we would have been a lot better with the pally. Not that it made much difference in the end. Where we really came up short was on DPS. We had one warrior DPS, and all the rest of the DPS were rogues and hunters. So, 7 of our 10 raiders were comprised of shaman, rogues, and hunters. Not really an issue in itself, but over the course of the night it was obvious we didn't have the DPS to make any headway. Only two DPSers could barely get over 10K DPS, and not consistently at that. The rest ranged down to around 7k healing. We started with the Ascendant Council, made five attempts, and never got closer than 10% despite some agonizingly long fights because we would go into phase 3 with far more than the 25-28% health we should have had on the P3 boss. When the evening began Wild was certain we would be taking shots at and perhaps killing Cho'gal Friday night - but it just wasn't our night.

On Saturday I rescued my computer from the shop and took it home. The good news was that there appears to be absolutely nothing wrong with the hardware - they even put it through a 24 hour high stress burn in period and it never failed. Their guess is that it's a manufacturer driver issue, but they also said that sometines the "sleep mode" is the culprit, and so that is now disabled. Bottom line - if it happens again the computer will have to be sent back to Acer, as I have now exhausted every other option. Keep your fingers crossed.

Happy's paychecks to his family have taken a serious dive in the past week plus. The Horde Auction House has been eerily quiet with very little buying going on. Usually that means sellers are dumping prices, which is when Happy swoops in and grabs the under priced items. That isn't happening, at least not yet. Wild has spent a large chunk of change, too, on those i365 items and toys from the dailies along with the enchants and gems that went with them. Happy is starting to feel a bit squeezed.

What that means in part is that Wild is going to be doing the Dailies again. The Marks don't mean much anymore, but what Wild forgot to take into account is that all those Dailies pay cash gold, and it adds up to some pretty nice walking around money.

The Alliance AH, by contrast, is hot right now. The arbiter of that success, Lost, has done a wonderful job riding that wave of buying and returning her cash reserves to it's highest level so far, quite an accomplishment considering her horde cousins nearly wiped out that cash on a big order Wild needed some time back.

On the Hunter Fortress front, Jocelyne is itching for some action and is close to level 25. I'm holding her back, but we should think about when we want to roll our toons over to level 25 and the next bracket.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Thursday (28 Jul) - Waiting For Something to Happen

Thursday (28 Jul) - Waiting For Something to Happen

When Hunter Fortress is in full force it is a murderous team that is very hard to stop. When we are at less than full strength we remain dangerous, but more vulnerable, particularly from healing supported enemies. As an option, I wonder if having a healer available would be worth considering. I even have a volunteer. Jocelyne is a level 23 paladin. She agreed to respec from Retribuition to Holy and back up the Fortress with healing when needed. Her Holy gear is still somewhat lacking, given that she selected retribution gear for the first 23 levels of her life. But that gear is coming along, and with a little effort I think she can be very effective. Just a thought.

Well, this has been a week of just hanging around for Wild. Wild did not sign up for the Mon/Tues Blackwing Descent raids, but ended up downing four BWD bosses on Tuesday night in a scratched together guild raid. As late as Thursday afternoon there was no sign up for the Thurs/Fri Bastion of Twilight raid, and the raid leader/main tank was confirmed as "on vacation" and not available to raid. Still, Wild "hung around" on Thursday evening, waiting to see what would come up. Around 6:30pm a few guildies asked if there was going to be a raid. One guildie counted noses and determined that there were at least enough bodies for a raid. Do we have healers? another guildie asked. Wild raised his hand. The pally healer, Fl, from our regular BoT raid group was on and raised his hand as well. We'd just need a third. Then one of our guild officers said he could come on his shaman alt as the third healer, and if no one objected he'd lead the effort to get a raid going. We quickly had one tank offer to come, but neither of our regular raid tanks were in game. The now raid leader asked for volunteers for DPS, and we got three right away. But two other guildies had just entered Zul'Gurub and that would take an hour or more. Apparently the other DPS players in game couldn't or didn't want to come. Another 15 minutes went by and we scraped up another DPS, a friend of the guild, and a little later that friend of the guild convinced another of his guildies to come. We then filled the raid with a death knight guildie who logged in and was ninjaed into our raid as the second tank. I'm sure he's an alt of someone, I just don't know who. I love his name - cathair.

It was a bit of a rabble, particularly with the DPS. We had a solid main tank and a second tank with good gear but no BoT experience. We had two DPSers making their first trip to BoT as well. Two of the three healers were vets of BoT, so that helped. Our raid leader, who most of us had not raided with before (at least with him as the raid leader) assured us that he new the fights and that he would lay out the strats for the newcomers.

We had less than two hours of raid time given the time it took to get everyone together. And instead of going over the blow by blow of each encounter, I thought I'd mention only the out of the ordinary stuff.

First, the initial set of multiple trash mob pulls was flat easy. I mean, Wild had time to scrape, mold, and shine his hooves during the fight so little healing was needed. I'd say that guild raiders are reaching a gear level where the trash, at least, is insignificant. Even with something of a pick up guild raid.

We got one of the more difficult sets of dragons for the Halfus fight, but Halfus and the dragons went down without a fuss. Wild didn't even need to shift into Tree form at all. Smooth as butter.

Things went sideways on the trash mobs right after the gauntlet. We followed our normal pull scenario, intending to clear through the center, leaving the mobs to either side alone. A mistake was made on the pull, and we drew far more mobs than we expected. It wasn't a complete wipe, but most of us died. That left us with one solo ogre mob still standing, and farther back, the next mob group. No big deal. The death knight tank pulled the single ogre - and the group behind the ogre came with him. What!? No crowd control had been set on that other group and they should never have aggroed. This time we did wipe. That darn ogre survived, too, standing all by his lonesome. Still not sure what had happened, we had our hunter misdirect the ogre to the tank - and again we had mobs from all over the place descent on us. Another wipe. This was getting pretty frustrating, but at least this time we made sure to kill that ogre.

We moved forward to set crowd control for that next mob group, and we noticed something very odd. I took a screenshot (below). Not only were there the expected mob group, there was another mob group standing right next to them! We'd never seen this before. Blizzard must have been dickering with BoT in the latest maintenance and mucked up the trash mobs. Or maybe it was just our instance that had come unglued.

Note the two ogres and the dragonid to the right of the center group of mobs. They shouldn't be there.


So, it was with some trepidation we marked and pulled that group of mobs, wondering if it we would pull the others, too. Strangely enough, only the marked group of mobs aggroed on the pull, and we killed them easily. We still weren't too sure about this other group, which was slightly off to the side and quite close to the large group of mobs that we usually leave alone. We tried to simply stroll past them. And it worked. The mobs never moved. Weird.

The Twins behaved themselves, and we downed them without any trouble - except that Wild died. I had an excuse, though. We were down to the last 5% on the boss when Wild got Engulfing flames (which means get away from other raiders) and at the same time the raid was hit with Blackout. Wild needed to collapse on the tank with everyone else for the Blackout, but if Wild did that his Flames buff would add more damage to the raid over and above Blackout. Wild was the dispeller. With the raid so close to taking down the Twins, Wild decided not to collapse on the tank. As soon as everyone else had collapsed together, Wild cleared Blackout and of course Wild was instantly killed. The rest of the raid was saved. The Twins went down, and we had our kill.

We only had time for two attempts on the Ascendant Council, and we nearly got them on our second try, but too many raiders weren't familiar with this fight and we came up a little short.

I have to say, though, that despite the pug-like group and some new raiders, BoT seemed noticeably easier than in the past. There has been no new nerf (at least none announced), so I'd have to say it's more a matter of gear progression catching up with the raid difficulty. I know that Wild's gear is markedly improved from just a couple of weeks ago.

Everyone in the raid said they could come Friday night for another round of BoT. I hope so. I'd really like to see Cho'gal go down so we could officially complete a guild clear of BoT.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Wednesday (27 Jul) - Done With Dailies

Wednesday (27 Jul) - Done With Dailies

Now that Wild has opened up his primary vendor from the series of Dailies in Hyjal, Molten Front, and Molten Flow, I was all ready to send him back out to collect another 125 marks to unlock another vendor. There are three vendors total. One item that Wild was after was the [Fireplume Girdle], an i365 belt from Damek Bloombeard. However, when Wild made Honored with the Avenger's of Hyjal faction, he was able to acquire an even better belt, the i378 [Firescar Sash]. Wild needed nothing else from that vendor. The third vendor, Varlan Highbough, didn't have many items Wild needed, either. The i365 [Spirit Fragment Band] one would think was a better deal than Wild's current rings. Both rings are pvp rings, lacking key stats at ilevels of 358 and 365. But the vendor ring has no +spi or +haste. Reforging the crit to spi = only 48 spi. The two pvp rings have 134 and 76 spi on them. No matter how I tried, the vendor ring was so poor even the i358 pvp ring was, overall, better. The vendor also sold a companion and some kind of horn, but collecting another 125 Marks for just toys didn't much interest Wild. It looks like Wild's Dailies days are done.

That leaves Wild with the question - What time sink does he invest in now?

The Hunter Fortress was operating last night on two cylinders. See and Shevils created the usual fear and panic among the Alliance, although in the first round of Warsong Gulch the rest of the Horde team failed us and we lost. We were more clever in the second match, capping our one flag after the Allies had gotten their one cap. See and Shevils then took up residence in our home base and dared the Alliance to root us out. When that failed, it appeared that the Allies were going to let time run out. However, they staged a desperate, full strength assault on our base with a minute to go. That battle was the most fun Shevils had all night. The Allies captured our flag and made for their base, the battle raging all the way across mid-field. See murdered enough of them for Shevils to break free and charge the Allie base. On the very steps of the entrance to the Allie base Shevils caught up with the flag carrier and took him out. Time expired and the Horde were victorious!

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tuesday (26 July 2011) - Guild Updates and BWD

Tuesday (26 July 2011) - Guild Updates and BWD

[Note: With one computer out of action Bean will not be making Wednesday night. Shevils is available, though. Just wanted to check on who is going to be on for Hunter Fortress.]

Tuesday's maintenance was a full eight hours (3am - 11am) despite a half day of maintenance a couple days ago to fix errors in the Honor point system. With nothing better to do, I figured I'd see how each of Wild's current and former guilds are doing.

MM2 - Wild's current guild: max level 25, 310 members, 148 level 85s. Three 10 man raid groups. Raid accomplishments: 10/13 bosses (BH, BWD, Thrones, BoT), 0/7 Firelands

MM - Wild's former guild: max level 25, 188 members, 81 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 4/13, 0/7 Firelands

FS - Wild's first raiding guild: level 24, 128 members, 60 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 13/13, 2/7 Firelands

WC - FS spin off guild: level 24, 74 members, 54 level 85s. Raid accomplishments: 13/13, 1/7 Firelands

It's still a shame that MM and MM2 did not stay together as a single guild.That would have made our MM2 raid groups stronger, but the personal issues were too much to overcome. MM lost most of the raiding members to MM2, and do not seem to have recovered from that. Had Wild stayed with MM, he would have missed out on a lot of raid accomplishments. However, they are not totally out of raiding. The Firelands trash run that Wild ran with last sunday was an MM led raid, and Wild was glad to be able to help them out. The funny thing, though, is that had Wild stayed with MM he would still be geared the same as he is now. Despite downing 10 Cata bosses with MM and MM2, some of them mulitple times, not a single piece of gear has come from Cata boss kills. I find that kind of amazing.

FS was like MM2 before hard core raiders took over the guild and chased away the casual raiders to become a pure raiding guild. WC was a spin off from the FS raiding guild when the two remaining raid leaders could not work together. Their numbers are lean and their accomplishments greater due to their raiding focus - neither guild takes in casual raiders.

You're still reading? I didn't think I'd be doing anything Tuesday night, but I was surprised to find that not only was the BWD raid leader trying again to get his raid off the ground, another guildie, Lady Hunter, was forning up her own BWD raid. Wild was confused. Both raids had trouble filling. Lady Hunter filled hers first (that woman knows everyone and no one says no to her when she wants ya in her raid). Had I known she was raiding Tuesday, and had she known I was going to be available, I know where Wild would have been. As it was, though, Monday's raid leader got to Wild first. Our raid ended up pugging two players, a shadow priest and a moonkin.

Wild knows almost nothing about BWD. I've seen the first boss, Magmaw, way back in the first week of Cata. No kills, though. Then last week Wild got in on the 5th boss, Atramedes, but still got no BWD kill.

At least this time Wild was starting a fresh BWD raid. We elected to start with Magmaw, which Wild at least had seen a time or two. Wild also recalled that the pair of trash mobs in front of Magmaw were a real pain in the early days of Cata. We did actually wipe on those mobs the first time we tried, but that was because the pug moonkin attacked before the tanks had aggro and we were not able to get things back under control. The moonkin apologized, and on our second attempt we cleared the trash easily.

The magmaw fight unfolded just as Wild remembered with one exception - Magmaw died. Wild had his first BWD kill. The moonkin topped 20k DPS, so we forgave him the earlier aggro.

We moved on to the Omnotron Defense System. Wild had no clue what this fight was about, and I scrambled to read what I could from the Dungeon Guide. The Dungeon Guide is a great source of in game info about fight mechanics, adds, and abilities, but it does not cover strategy. With my main computer still in the shop, alt-tabbing back and forth to try and read up on the strats was a real pain, too. The raid leader was not the type that goes over the strat in any detail - Wild got a "very" general description of the strat, and we plowed right in.

As best I recall this encounter has four robots, of which a max of two are active at any given time, and the robots activate and deactivate randomly. Each robot has it's own set of abilities. In general, Wild has seen enough boss fights to react almost instinctively to most things - get away from things that hurt, collapse into a pile when he sees others doing that, and of course, heal! We had some trouble with DPSers attacking robots when they were shielded (I learned that was a very bad no no). Wild was never told to stand in Arcanotron's "puddle," so Wild avoided it as something potentially bad. It would have helped Wild's mana regen (I learned later) but Wild did without. The four robots fell on our first attempt, and Wild now had two encounters down.

Maloriak was to be our next boss fight, but two players, a tank and a healer, went offline as we were setting up for the fight. They lived in the same area and had let us know that the weather was bad and often knocked out their internet connection. Obviously that had happened. There was a long delay waiting for them to -hopefully - come back. I was a little surprised that the two pugs stayed with us. But they did. The shadow priest (our only cloth wearer in the raid, which when I thought about that was pretty odd) had already won one item, so maybe he hoped for more.

We finally got our raid back together and started on Maloriak. The raid leader did set up color beacons so that we knew where to stand at each part of the fight. There is a lot going on in this fight, but a lot of the activity belongs to the tanks. From Wild's perspective as a healer, this was a pretty simple encounter. We wiped on our first attempt when the tank went down instantly just a few seconds into the fight. We thought that maybe the raid was not positioned correctly at the red beacon. We wiped a second time - same thing. The main tank did a little checking. He then told us that he usually tanks the adds in this fight and it was his first time as main tank. He had been turning the boss away from the raid - and taking the full brunt of whatever ability was getting him killed. On our third atetmpt he turned the boss toward the raid so that we would share the damage, and now that we had that down we killed Maloriak. Three bosses down.

Chimaeron was the fourth boss on our plate, the one Wild had actually prepared for last week and then was thrown off track by finding out they were doing Atramedes instead. So, Wild was up to speed on this boss. However, and it's a big however, this fight is unlike any other fight. Frankly - I hated it.

The fight is simple enough on the surface. There are three phases, and Wild need only move between two points during the course of the battle. The gimmick of this fight is that for most of the first two phases, our health bar is forced down to 1%, and healers have to keep raising that, but only to about 10%. Anything much above 10% is wasted mana that healers will wish they had back at the other end of the fight. Do you know how hard it is for a healer NOT to heal someone, particularly someone down to 10% health? It's torture!

Wild's healing spells aren't the best for this encounter, either. The instant rejuv tics too slowly, and while it "usually" is good enough, Wild lost a raider or two at times when they got hit too soon. Nourish, another low mana cost spell, provides plenty of health, but it takes two seconds to cast. I couldn't find a happy medium, and Wild's attention span was so wholely focused on keeping my group above 10% Wild missed movement periods - and was killed instantly. I really hate this fight.

Wild managed to die on all of our first three attempts. I did sort of get my act together on the fourth attempt, but even though we reached the third phase we had too many dead. Even with Wild helping on DPS, we wiped at 2%.

The third phase is the only fun phase for Wild. Reaching that phase essentially shuts down all healing, and the whole raid DPSes the boss in a kill the boss before the boss kills us scenario. On our fifth attempt we again reached the third phase with an already once resurrected Wild still in the fight. Wild blasted away with everyone else - and Chimaeron fell. I still hate this fight. Four bosses down.

We were out of time. Wild got no drops. The shadow priest got three. What was funny and weird is that his rolls for the items had no competition (being the only cloth wearer) and went like this:
1st piece: Rolled 18
2nd piece: Rolled 19
3rd piece: Rolled 20

It doesn't get any luckier than that.

Wild did get a good look at his mana regen over the course of the four boss fights. Taken objectively, Wild never needed his innervate and never saw his mana fall below 50% (except against Chimaeron, which is part of the fight mechanic and can't be helped). Wild's 1,897 spirit seems to be "good enough" so far. However, I did feel like I was holding back on the healing a little out of worry that I might have mana trouble. It never affected the fight, and Wild still led the other two healers (pally and shaman) in both hps and total healing (again, minus Chimaeron, where "normal" healing doesn't apply). Even so, I'm considering reforging out of a little haste and mastery to get up to 2,000 spirit. The "right amount" of mana regen is very dependant on healing style, and Wild is not fully comfortable yet.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Monday (25 Jul) - Raiding with Strangers

Monday (25 Jul) - Raiding with Strangers

Our BoT raid leader is out this week, so there will be no scheduled Thurs/Fri night raid. So Wild checked in with the BWD raid group on Monday night to see if they might have a spot for me. Yes, they did. The raid was scheduled to start at 6pm. At 6:30pm we were still short three DPS raiders. I don't really understand how a guild of this size can't find three DPS guildies who want to raid. The BoT group is well established with regulars compared to the BWD group. We continued to wait, finding one more DPS. Then a healer had computer problems, went offline, and never came back. The raid leader called it after waiting almost an hour, not wanting to PUG a healer. At least Wild was able to fish up more than two stacks of raid food while he waited. Sigh.

Wild didn't waste anymore time. After the raid was called Wild started checking trade chat and volunteered for a PUG Firelands trash run. They had eight already when Wild joined them, but Wild was the only healer. Wild was asked if I was ok with two healing it instead of the normal three healers. Wild already had experience doing the trash run with two healers, plus I didn't want to wait around for a third healer, so I said sure. They found a priest healer who could only stay an hour. Good enough.

Thirty minutes into the run I had a pretty good idea what we had. The raid leader did no leading. Tank roles were defined but the tanks did not work out who did what and tended to run after the next mob with little thought to the state of the raiders behind them. DPSers blundered into patrols while we were fighting other mobs. Despite all that we were still killing things, and had wiped only once. Wild stuck with them as I wanted to build up rep with the Avengers of Hyjal faction. We did a decent clear and then reset. Our second healer had to leave, and Wild was very disappointed when they grabbed a resto druid to replace the priest. Dang, now Wild had competition should leather healing gear drop. Two DPS left as well, but they were quickly replaced.

Wild need not have worried. No gear at all dropped. The other druid healer kept pace with Wild on the healing meters, but the tank he was supposed to be healing died five times. Wild's tank died only on the two wipes. Not to mention that the raid leader went offline right as we started the second run and never returned. We nine manned the entire second run.

After the second run four players dropped out, so we called it quits. Wild got no goodies, but he got something just as good. Wild reached Honored with the Avengers of Hyjal. His reward was the i378 belt [Firescar Sash], replacing his i359 belt. Wild loses more spirit/mana regen with the new belt, but gains gobs more +int. I just hope Wild's staying power under real raid conditions against real bosses holds up - assuming I get a chance to do that any time soon.

Wild's gear is now ilevel 363.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Weekend (24 Jul) - Wildshard The Avenger

Weekend (24 Jul) - Wildshard The Avenger

I went to see Captain America: The First Avenger with our visiting friends this weekend. It was pretty good, a decent action film, even if it was pretty predictable. I think "predictable" is what most fans of comic book heroes want, anyway. The ending was a bit of a surprise, if only because it seems to skip several decades of possible sequels and left me scratching my head on a couple of other things. Don't want to spoil anything by being specific, though.

Wildshard underwent his own transformation this weekend. Sunday morning Wild accumulated enough Marks (125) to open up the first, and most important, vendor for the Avengers of Hyjal. Her name is Ayla Shadowstorm. [Hmm, I wonder if they named her after the heroine of the book Clan of the Cave Bear?]. But first, let me back up a bit.

Late last week Wild bought the i365 elementium Hammer that can now be crafted. The guild is crafting at least two of the new weapons, but I don't think they'll be caster weapons. Even if they were, Wild had the gold to buy his own without having to make demands on the guild. I'd rather the guild weapons go to raiders who can then make Wild's healing job easier. The Hammer is a very modest upgrade to the i359 two-hand staff Wild has been using since he started raiding Cata. Wild enchanted the Hammer with Power Torrent, a much more powerful enchant than what Wild was using before, Heartsong, since Power Torrent procs +int instead of Heartsong's +spi. It will lower Wild's mana regen, but it's worth that.

Wild couldn't really use the Hammer yet, because I didn't have a good enough off-hand to go with it. With the 2-hand Wild didn't need an off-hand, so the best he had was an i346 that undid what little stats upgrading the Hammer got me. Wild had to wait until he could get the goodies from Ayla.

When Wild turned in his 125 Marks, it was not without a small amount of concern. I was "pretty sure" that it would open up the vendor, but the quest chain was just vague enough that I thought I might be required to do the Armaments quest (another 125 Marks) as well before the vendor would sell to Wild. Armaments wasn't needed, though, as that one opens up a different vendor. Wild also thought he'd have to do a boss kill quest, but that also wasn't necessary. He did get a boss kill quest, but didn't have to complete it to open the vendor.

So, on to the goodies. The first thing Wild picked up was [Globe of Moonlight], an i365 off-hand. It's not the perfect off-hand, but hey no complaints from Wild. It was far better than what he had in his bags. He then picked up an upgrade to his relic, replacing his i359 with the i365 [Relic of Elune's Light]. Wild had the +40 int gem ready to go into it's socket. Finally, Wild picked up the biggest upgrade of them all, [Moonwell Chalice]. The Chalice is a trinket with +340 int. It replaces Wild's i359 +spi trinket and gives Wild a very large increase in mana and spell power.

With that accomplished, Wild next had to do some reforging. Both +haste and +spi took some significant hits due to the type of stats on the new gear - all that extra +int does come at a cost, you know. Once that was done, Wild's haste was back where I wanted it, while I was able to keep +mastery above where it was before the gear change. The one thing Wild needs to watch carefully during next week's raids is his mana regen. There was no way to replace the over 200 spi just from dropping that +spi trinket, much less the other +spi losses on the gear. The rule of thumb for druids is a minimum 2000 spirit. Wild is at 1963 spirit now, a large drop from the over 2200 he had before (plus the additional loss of the +spi proc from Heartsong). Wild is hoping it will be good enough. Otherwise, more reforging will have to be done at the cost of haste and/or mastery.

Here are a couple of screenshots of Wild in his new gear. Note the changing color surrounding the Hammer - that comes from Power Torrent. Pretty cool.



Oh, Wild also picked up some fun stuff. He bought the Crimson Lasher, a companion pet that periodically shoots off a fireball. Wild also got erik's favorite pick, the Mushroom Chair. Frankly, it was a little disappointing - it's a pretty small, ordinary mushroom. But it does provide a nice place to sit. :-)

By the way, Wild's gear score is now i362.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Friday (22 Jul) - Taking the Week Off

Friday (22 Jul) - Taking the Week Off

With our friends staying with us all week, the Wild family has pretty much taken the whole week off. Wild is still finding ways to get his Dailies done, grinding away for those goodies. His next 125 marks might get him to the vendor, but that is a bit fuzzy. All Wild knows is that he'll have to pay someone 125 Marks, and then he'll see what comes next (he has 65 at present). If Wild calculated it correctly, he's already gathered and spent over 400 Marks so far. Players that started early (or started right after they increased the Marks that the beginning quests gave) have already reached their vendors and started buying things.

Those same vendors sell more than gear. They also sell patterns, and one of those patterns is an i365 main hand caster mace. There are also crafted weapons for melee players, but as always the caster stuff is the most expensive. In general, it seems the melee stuff (+agi, +str stuff) is always 5-10k gold less than the equivalent caster gear. Prices have been better on the Alliance side, too, but not so good that Wild can afford the 15% surcharge for moving gold over there (18k gold on the Alliance AH, 25g on the Horde AH). The mats are expensive but easily obtained - except for the Chaos Orbs, which are bind on pickup and collectible only by those with the right professions. Wild's guild is working on how to prioritize the gear that is crafted by the guild. Wild will likely buy his own, though, either off the AH or by commissioning one of the many sellers advertising on the trade channel. Wild was really helped with this when his Tsunami trinket finally sold on Thursday. Wild spent about 9k making it, and it took two weeks to sell it for about 12.5k. That price is after the AH took a whopping 600g as it's take.

Back to the i365 main hand mace. Wild did some math, and changing out his i359 2-hand staff for the mace and an i359 off-hand is definitely an upgrade, but a relatively modest one. Wild needs to find himself an i365 off-hand (or get lucky with an i378) to really make this change worthwhile. The real upgrade might be the enchant. Wild currently has Heartsong enchanted on his staff. With the i365 weapon, Wild may pay the 2k gold or so it takes to enchant it with Power Torrent, the top of the line healer weapon enchant.

Meanwhile, Wild's BoT raid did run on Thursday night. They downed Halfus and the Twins, but couldn't put away the Ascendant Council. I doubt Wild will make the Friday run, either.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Monday (18 Jul) - Bait and Switch

Monday (18 Jul) - Bait and Switch

There usually isn't much to post about on a Tuesday. The activity over the weekend is over and there are no raids or events scheduled for Monday that involve Wild. Happy spends his Monday morning counting gold pieces from the weekend "take," and all the Wild family lines up to get the stipend Happy doles out. That's really it for excitement.

Wild did his usual run of dailies, of course, and was finally successful on the two quests that had been stymieing him. The first was the "Wisp" daily which requiring killing numerous adds while an npc did something with a portal - a "keep the npc alive" quest. Wild finally used a combination of Hurricane and moonfire spam to complete the quest. The other quest was in the Molten Flow. It was a rescue quest, and as I've mentioned before there seemed no way to complete it. Well, there is a trick to it, that if I'd paid attention to what the npc was actually saying, I would have figured it out sooner.

On Fireplume Ridge there are air shafts that players can use to jump to higher levels on that craggy chunk of rock. What I didn't know was that there are similar air shafts inside the Molten Flow. Wild and other players kept trying to escort the npc on foot through the Molten Flow to save him, and it never worked. Usually Wild starts killing things around him when he starts the quest, but this last time I simply watched and followed where the npc went. He starts on a small chunk of rock in the middle of a lava flow, so Wild has to rock jump to him and then back to the path. Once on the path, the npc strode over to what looked to Wild like a wall of rock. The npc bounced on his heels, and then jumped into the air. The air shaft, which Wild had not even noticed was there, picked up the npc and carried him to a higher spot. Wild followed. The rest of the run was easy - a series of air shaft jumps, and Wild completed the quest. It turns out that quest isn't a daily, so it can only be done once. But completing it does open a new daily that Wild can add to his list of daily chores.

Wild also had a scheduled dungeon run planned for Monday night, which was unusual for him. The scheduled run went through a number of alterations over the weekend, though. I mentioned before that it was being run by the second guild raid group that does BWD, not Wild's group that is doing BoT. Originally the plan was do put together a 25 man raid into the Firelands (FL). Wild was way up for that! Then it changed to a 25 man BWD/FL. I got the idea that the raid leader wanted a shot at the final BWD boss, Nefarion, in 25 man where it's supposed to be easier to do than in ten man. Then it changed again, back to a ten man, and then that they would first go to BWD to work on the "last two bosses" and then go to FL. Wild was getting dizzy from all the changes.

Still, hoping for that elusive FL run, Wild showed up on Monday night. He whispered the raid leader, letting him know that Wild had originally expected an FL run. The raid leader said they would be doing BWD, not FL. So, Wild wanted to make sure the raid leader knew that Wild had almost no experience in BWD, as the MM guild BWD run that Wild was formerly part of was very early in Cata and we never got past the first boss before the guild split. So, if the raid leader had his regular group then he should feel free not to invite Wild.

We gave it some time to see who would show up. This was originally going to be a 25 man so I expected a larger crowd to show up, even though there hadn't been much interest shown on the calendar. There were just the normal gaggle of folks, though. The 25 man had been abandoned, and in fact, the raid leader was having trouble filling his own regular ten man. He whispered Wild and said that he could really use him if I wanted to go on the run. Of course Wild said yes. It's not FL, but it's still a raid.

Wild quickly did some reading up on the second to last boss, Chimaeron, so that I would at least be partly prepared for the fight. The 6pm start wound up starting at about 6:45pm. The two tanks were well known to Wild, particularly one of them who Wild main healed for in our Thrones raid group with MM. The other two healers were a pally that often goes DPS/retribution when there are enough healers, and a shaman who led the exodus from MM and formed up MM2. He was still a co-guild leader, but Bd does most of the guild leader functions now. Anyway, Wild knew most everyone, and we got started.

Our first encounter was a patrolling dragon. Just a single mob, so Wild wasn't expecting the fireworks that ensued when we engaged it. We brought it down, but wow, if that is what the trash is like in here the bosses are really going to be something. We had two raiders die, and the fight was really chaotic. "That went better than last week," the raid leader noted. It did? Oh my.

We worked through the rest of the trash with more confidence, though - small groups of moving mobs and eventually one more of the dragons. So, not as hard as that first encounter intimated.

We reached the chamber of the boss, and the raid leader talked through some of the mechanics, which kind of confused me because it wasn't matching up with what I had read. When I didn't hear anything about the healing (which is unusual in this encounter and critical to the fight) Wild whispered the shaman and asked about it. He whispered back that he had never healed this fight, either. Uh oh, something's not right here. Wild whispered the raid leader, wanting to make sure Wild knew his healing role.

At the same time the tank sent a ready check to see if we were ready to start the fight. Wild was waiting for an answer from the raid leader. It was one of those rare times when Wild said no, I'm not ready.

The answer I got confused me even further. "This IS the Chimaeron fight, right?" Wild finally asked him. No, it wasn't. It was Atramedes. Ok, now, Wild can count. There are six bosses in BWD, and the "last two" are Chimaeron and Nefarian. Oh, said the raid leader, he meant we were on the last two bosses "before Nefarian." Good grief, here I thought this raid group had actually gotten as far as Nef, when in fact they were still two bosses short of that. Then I learned that they had only reached Atramedes just last week and had made only one shot at him. Oh my, indeed.

We made eight attempts on Atramedes. It's actually a fun fight with a neat twist - the dragon is blind, and uses sonar to locate raiders. It's fun, that is, except when the dragon Atramedes goes airborne and targeted Wild with it's laser beam flame breath thing. Wild died every single time (except those times Wild could drop into cat form when his speed ability was up). The dragon really liked targeting the healers, and we spent a lot of time dead.

On our best attempt we got Atramedes down to 5% health, but we couldn't drop him. Not bad, but we got to figure out the flame breath thing (and yes, we know about the gongs, but I don't think we are practiced in using them effectively).

Anyway, I'm not sure Wild will be running with them as their raid nights are Monday and Tuesday. I'd like to, but I know they have regular healers, plus I'm not sure I could get away with four nights of raiding plus Hunter Fortress every week.

The sad thing, though, really, is that we still haven't formed up a guild run into Firelands. I just don't get it.

PS - I just had to make a comment about Atramedes using "sonar." By definition sonar is a system that detects objects UNDER WATER. We were definitely not underwater. However, there is an explanation. The dragon is like a bat, using sound pulses to locate raiders. This is sometimes referred to as sonar, but it's actually a biological trait called echolocation. Maybe that was too big of a word for Blizz to use. Or maybe they just didn't know or care.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Weekend Part 2 (18 Jul 2011) - Cho'gal the Ogre-Magi

Weekend Part 2 (18 Jul 2011) - Cho'gal the Ogre-Magi

Cho'gal is an ogre-magi, but then I guess you already knew that from the title. Bet you didn't know he has two heads, and at least one of those heads is quite insane. He was the leader of the Twilight Hammer clan, and those were some really crazy folks. He's a big sucker with an "X" across his chest. That's because Cho'gal is supposed to be dead, killed by Rend and Maim Blackhand for his traitorous acts. Cho'gal also had a lot to do with the creation of the death knights. I asked Naithipe for some information on that, but she wasn't interested in talking. Naithipe rarely is.

Cho'gal, who in reality escaped, went into hiding in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. While all the rest of us were wrestling with the Lich King, Cho'gal got crazier and crazier, intentionally deforming an already nasty profile. A number of heroes went after Cho'gal and defeated him by bringing the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj down on top of him. So he's been supposedly killed twice now ... but wait! There's more!

No one knows how Cho'gal survived a second time, but he did, showing up in the early days of the Cataclysm. His forces were attacked in the Twilight Highlands and he was driven into the Bastion of Twilight - where he now waits for intrepid raiders to test their strength against him.

Intrepid Wild and nine other raiders got their first look at him on Friday night.


Cho'gal reminds Wild of Icecrown Citadel's Rotface - just a little. They are both ugly as sin, and in both fights there is a lot of puking going on. Cho'gal has more slimes than Rotface, though, and he has a neat gimmick called Corruption which can be quite annoying.

It's a two phase fight, and I'm going to jump right into it.

Everyone in the raid set up close to each other at the center of the chamber. Not packed tightly together, but still close enough so that all of the many abilities that Cho'gal and his adds throw at us can be managed without having to run all over the place. Da, our regular druid tank, drew the short straw and engaged Cho'gal first, drawing the ogre close to the circle where the rest of the raid was positioned. The two tanks swap with each throughout the fight.

Wild had dispel duty on this fight as well. Every raider is subject to getting Corruption from various attacks, some of which are avoidable and some of which are not. In addition to healing, Wild's job was to clear a debuff from raiders when the amount of Corruption they had reached 25. Wild could not remove the Corruption itself, only it's effects.

The first seconds of the fight were pretty light on the healers. We then got our first add, called a Corrupting Adherent. This thing is not all that dangerous itself; it does do some shadow damage and adds to the Corruption of unlucky raiders unless it's quickly pulled away from the raid and killed. It's main danger is what Cho'gal does to it thirty seconds after it spawns - five oozes form and begin slowly moving toward raiders. This is another reason why the raid clings together. DPS HAS to focus fire those oozes down before they reach the raid, and we don't want the oozes wandering off after raiders who are far away.

Cho'gal also mind controls two raiders at a time who will begin channeling a damage enhancing ability. Raiders have to interrupt that channeling quickly using just about any interrupt we have. Wild used Stomp on one raider to break the mind control.

To this point in the fight things were going quite well from Wild's perspective. Wild had been assigned as the swing man healer. The pally was main healing whichever tank was currently engaged against Cho'gal (tanks take enormous and spikey damage, requiring very close attention by their healer) while the priest was raid healing. Wild had to help the pally tank heal during periods when the damage became insane and then had to help raid heal when Cho'gal started throwing out AoEs. All the while not forgetting his dispel duties. Wild was really having fun.

Things started to get dicey with each new adherent add that spawned. The adherents themselves could be handled but with each new one five new oozes spawned. Let me be clear - after the first adherent spawns, we get five oozes. After the second one spawns, we get TEN oozes (five from each). When the third adherent spawned and we had FIFTEEN oozes to kill, some of them started to reach the raid.

We didn't get to Phase 2 on our first attempt, but did get Cho'gal down to 42%. Overall, we were pretty pleased with that first try.

On our second attempt we pushed Cho'gal to 25% to enter phase 2. We didn't see much of that phase because by that time we'd had four adherents spawn and we weren't dealing with those 20 oozes very well. We wiped with Cho'gal at 24%.

We made one more attempt, trimming the percentage to 23%. The oozes are our problem; everything else we handled well.

But wait a minute! What about the puking? I know that is what everyone was waiting to hear about. Well, Wild kept waiting to start hawking up his dinner, which starts happening when a raider gets to 50 Corruption. The tanks, poor souls, were doing some of that throwing up, attempting to aim it away other raiders as it is quite caustic, but in the three attempts it was only in the last attempt and during phase 2 that Wild hit that 50 mark and starting soiling his shoes. Messy, very messy.

After the raid the raid leader called in the healers and the tanks for a private conversation. He asked if there were periods when things slackened up and for any other observations on what may be affecting our success. Wild, as the swing healer, got to see both tank healing and raid healing. Frankly, Wild had to admit, raiders were doing pretty well avoiding the things they could and that, even the times Wild got mind controlled, the healing was pretty much under control. The pally healer chimed in that there were a few close calls tank healing, but it wasn't until the tanks started to get a heavy dose of Corruption that things started to get out of hand. That was one of the things the tanks wanted to work on - how to reduce the amount of Corruption they were picking up. What it all boiled down to, really though, was killing the oozes before they started infiltrating the raid. Sometimes the raid got a little too spread out, which reduced the effectiveness of AoE damage since the oozes would spread out, too. We were getting a good handle on that, though, yet oozes were still get through.

The two obvious solutions were 1) kill the oozes faster with more DPS or better control (ie, slow them down); and or 2) DPS Cho'gal down to 25% faster to avoid that fourth ooze spawn. The adherents stop coming when we enter phase 2. In fact, if we enter phase 2 after the fourth adherent has spawned but before the oozes come, the add will despawn without any oozes forming. Going with just two healers instead of three was doable except for one thing - mind control. Healers getting mind contolled, even for a short time, could be deadly, particularly if Cho'gal happens to pick both healers at the same time.

Wild will help himself more next time. Wild typically just kited the oozes around when he got targeted, going in circles and trying to stay close to the rest of the raid who were still trying to kill them. Wild has three ways to slow those thing down, though, and intends to use them next time - roots, stomp, and cyclone. I don't know if they'll all work on those oozes, but Wild is going to try.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Weekend (16 Jul 2011) - Bastion of Twilight Double Shot

Weekend (16 Jul 2011) - Bastion of Twilight Double Shot

Thursday and Friday are the BoT raid nights. The raid group is well established with nearly all the same folks each week. For the past two weeks, though, we've had healer absences for real life reasons. Our pally healer, Gn, missed last Friday and was unable to make it for either night this week. We were also missing our priest healer, Pl, this week was well. The fill ins have been Fl, a really superb pally healer, and Sd, a holy priest alt of one of our regulars.

On Thursday night we took down Halfus and the Twins, single shotting both of them. We had gotten a very late start (at least two raiders had work related delays), so we were making up some lost time. Wild has been totally shut out of gear drops in BoT, not seeing a single thing - ever - that he could use. But on Thursday was one item that the Twins dropped that Wild would love to have, and that was [Therelion's Mirror], an i359 +int trinket. Wild uses the +spi i359 trinket, but would really like to swap that out with the +int one. Wild and a DPS rolled on it. Wild lost. Not even close. Sigh.

We banged on the Ascendant Council for awhile, but when we struggled early I think it took some wind out of our sails. We had come to within 2% of beating these guys three times last week, so we had high hopes for a quick kill that were just as quickly dashed. We never got close this time around.

We still had Friday, though. We again got off to a late start, late enough that Wild had gone to Hyjal to do his dailies while he waited. Wild was able to complete the Hyjal dailies and the Molten Front dailies before getting the call that the raid was about to start - with just nine raiders.

We nine manned the trash mobs and quickly set up for the Ascendant Council. We had a dearth of regulars on Friday - the two absent healers, of course, but also two DPSers who were new to BoT, but at least we got to ten raiders.

The Council, just as a reminder, is a three phase fight that engages five total Bosses. Wild, who the raid leader seems to have decided is always going to be doing dispel duties, was one of the two dispellers assigned in addition to tank healing and raid backup. We weren't happy with our performance Thursday night, and we had some new raiders as well. Maybe we could blame those things when, on our first attempt, we wiped before we even got out of the first phase. We could be in for a long night.

The raid leader, Bd, was undaunted. He went over some issues with the raid, and I'm sure he was whispering some raiders as well. Wild has been on the receiving end of Bd's whispers in the past. Getting that whisper means he saw something that he wanted clarification about or, more often, felt needed correcting, which he always does privately. Wild always came out of those discussions better informed and prepared, and it's always a positive experience. That said, Wild always feels a bit relieved when he's NOT one of those given special attention. Wild did not get a whisper.

We started our second attempt. Wild was getting Waterlogged way more than usual, and it was pure irritation having to run through the fire every time. Wild, who was dispelling Heart of Ice, actually got it himself, so Wild had to run into the melee to give them the buff before clearing it. Wild usually doesn't have to run around that much in the first phase, but he was plenty busy this time around.

We slipped into phase two, the tanks picking up the two new Bosses smoothly. We knew we would have some trouble with the new raiders in phase 2. Raiders are constantly on the move in this phase, trying to get to a tornado or a gravity well before the BIG AoE hits while hoping they don't get a Lightning Rod, which forces them to run away from the raid, hopefully not without the buff they need.

A raider did go down, and Wild battle rezzed him, not really even noticing who it was. The two raiders monitoring the health of the two Bosses were calling out DPS switches so that the damage to both would be even, a critical issue leading into phase 3. The bosses reached 25% at the same time, and phase 3 began with the Monstrosity opening up on the raid. At this point it's a DPS race and much of the damage this boss does can't be avoided and only gets worse as the fight goes on. Kill it or die, and do it fast.

On every fight where we've reached this point, we battled gamely and ferociously, but the longer it went the more Wild could see we were losing the race. Eventually healers would run dry, unable to heal past the rising damage, and DPSers just not able to push enough damage on the boss.

On this fight Wild did not get that feeling. The first two phases had gone well enough that Wild had an innervate available for phase 3, which helped his own mana situation as the fight went on. We also had, for the first time against this encounter, a Bloodlust to use at the start of the phase. It made a significant difference in the damage being done. The lightning bolts that could jump between raiders was an issue, but we were able to keep raider health steady as we were spread out much better than we've been in the past. We were only just beginning to feel some pressure when Wild checked the Boss's health and saw it was already at 5%. Wild still had half his mana and the raid was not yet in extremis. We just needed to finish this up without any last minute mistakes.

We did, and we had our first kill of the Ascendant Council.


There was some new trash to learn leading up to the final boss, Cho'gal. Most of those mobs were in the same room as Cho'gal, who sits on a raised throne and glowered at us as we killed off his minions. The mobs were easier than the ones we faced leading to the Council. We were ready for the big guy. Coming up in Part 2.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Thursday (15 Jul 2011) - The Dailies Grind in Mind Numbing Detail

Thursday (15 Jul 2011) - The Dailies Grind in Mind Numbing Detail

Things are getting complicated and time consuming for the Firelands Dailies. It started with Stage 1, which is a set of dailies that take place around the Sanctuary of Malorne in Mount Hyjal. Wild was able to collect the 20 Marks of the World Tree to complete Calling For Reinforcements, which gave Wild access to Stage 2.

In Stage 2 most of the quests take Wild through a portal north of the Sanctuary and into the forward base called Molten Front. Here there is another set of dailies to do. So now, Wild must do Stage 1 dailies to open up and do the Stage 2 dailies. The next stage after these is to pick one of two choices of special forces. To get to that Wild had to collect 150 Marks for the quest Druids of the Talon, which is the force that he chose to go with. He got that done, finally, early this week. That opened up yet another set of dailies that Wild is still getting familiar with. So far each of the new quests have been fun and challenging to do. As with all dailies, though, having to do them every day sort of kills the pleasure, particularly if they are a pain to do, as a couple of them are.

To recap so far, Wild must complete Stage 1 dailies to unlock the Stage 2 dailies. Wild sometimes skips one of the Stage 2 dailies because it's one of those "protect the idiot npc trying to do something non-sensical and don't let him die" quests that I'd rather forego the 1 Mark than complete. However, Wild has to do ALL the stage two dailies in order to unlock the Druid of the Talon ones. Sigh. These dailies, which I'll just call Stage 3, are something of a pain. The first one requires Wild to protect a druid npc who clears the fire away from the entrance to the Molten Flow, which is where all of the Stage 3 quests are. Several mobs attack while doing this, but if Wild strays too far from the constantly moving npc, the flames will sweep back with deadly results. When Wild tried to solo this he died - either stay to kill the adds and let the fire get him, or stay with the npc and let the mobs kill him, seemed to be his only choices. Wild has only done this twice so far, but it appears that the quest may have a built in way to complete it. When Wild died, he was able to rez close to the npc druid and was then able to get into the Molten Flow. So, dying seems to be the quickest way to complete that quest unless there are several players around helping to kill the adds.

Another silly quest requires players to jump across a series of flat rocks that cross a deep, deep, molten crevasse to get to Fireplume Ridge, where most of the quests have to be completed. Those rocks tend to break apart, too, so it's an interesting challenge, at least at first. If you fall, a druid flyer will sweep in and save you, depositing you on Fireplume Ridge. I can tell you Wild will soon be just jumping into the crevasse and letting the flyer take him where he wants to go anyway and just forget the rock hopping.

Finally, there's the thing that really bugs Wild. On Fireplume Ridge and in Molten Flow, if you die, there is no way to get back to your corpse. There seems to be a phasing problem. Note that to get this deep Wild has to first go through the portal in Mount Hyjal into the phased Molten Front. Then there is a second phase inside the first to get to Molten Flow. Then go from Molten Flow to Fireplume Ridge and die, and well, the game wasn't able to figure out where Wild's corpse was laying. Wild only got out of it when a player inside Molten Flow resurrected Wild. What a nice guy! Wild made sure to thank him profusely, and something Wild will remember to do for others.

Finally, Wild has to do the rock jumping thing to get back to the quest givers once he completes the quests. The flyer won't save you if you fall on the way back. Wild fell to his death and his corpse was deposited back on Fireplume Ridge. You have to make it across those rocks safely or you can't turn in the quests.

On Thursday it took Wild an hour to complete all of the daily quests in the three stages. It's going to get really old.

Even then, it's not over. There are three more quests that Wild can unlock if he does an escort quest. Wild tried it once, failed, and since it was my first time inside Molten Flow I didn't get a chance to finish it. That will take up more time, once Wild unlocks those three quests.

Now, here is where things start to really annoy me. Even though Wild went with the Druids instead of the Wardens, Wild can't progress into later stages until he recruits that other group, the Shadow Wardens. So, Wild has to collect another 150 Marks to recruit these bozos so that he can get to what he's really after. This is what Wild is doing now.

When does it get to the good stuff? As best as I can determine, Wild will need to unlock three more quests after doing the above. Each of those quests costs 125 Marks. Yes, EACH of them - that's 375 more Marks. Each quest opens access to a vendor, but it seems there is a boss kill quest Wild will still have to complete before he can actually BUY anything from that vendor.

At minimum, Wild needs to collect 275 more Marks and complete a boss kill quest in order to get access to the first and most important of the vendors (for Wild). Assuming Wild ever gets that far in his lifetime, here are the things he intends to buy:

From Ava Shadowstorm: These are all ilevel 365 gear:
[Moonwell Chalice] - the #1 item on Wild's list, it's a +340 int trinket
[Relic of Elune's Light] - the #2 item, a fancy new relic
[Globe of Moonlight] - off-hand should Wild be using a one-hand, Meh
A companion pet called Crimson Lasher and a mushroom chair just for fun (2kg)
Pattern: Luxurious Silk Gem Bag - Gem bags have never been upgraded, the largest of which is a 24 slot bag. All other professions have bags with up to 36 slots. The Silk Gem bag is a 36 slot gem bag, which Wild will be able to make as he's a tailor.

The second vendor Wild will unlock is Varlan Highbough (after collecting another 125 Marks):
[Spirit Fragment Band] - ring
Hyjal bear cub companion and a Mylune's Call for fun (about 1200g)

The third and final vendor Wild will unlock is Damek Bloombeard (after collecting another 125 Marks):
[Fireplume Girdle] - leather healing belt; it's possible Wild may have the BoE i378 belt from Firelands before Wild gets this far. If Wild still needs the belt after buying out Ava he'll come here next.

There you have it. The whole chain is worth it just for the trinket and the relic. The rest is nice to have, but we'll see how up to it Wild is at that point.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Tuesday(13 Jul) - Dungeons and Firelands - I prefer Firelands

Tuesday(13 Jul) - Dungeons and Firelands - I prefer Firelands

Maintenance started at 1am server on Tuesday this week. It was supposed to be over by 7am, but it is still down as of 8am. I was going to avoid talking about Wild's miss-adventures on Monday, but, sigh, I have time to confess some more sins.

Wild ran a Blackrock Caverns (BRC) Heroic 5-man on Monday. It was a guild run and Wild was pressed into service by the guild leader who needed a healer. It was early in the morning and Wild had nothing in mind other than to get his Hyjal dailies done, which he could do while I was still half asleep. Yet here Wild was, deep in the bowels of Blackrock Mountain doing a Heroic. Wild can never remember what individual bosses do, and rarely (even guild runs) does anyone go over strats in a Heroic. That worked fine in Wrath, where a million mistakes could be made and we could still plow through the place. Not so in Cata, at least not the Heroics Wild has done. Here, you still have to understand the mechanics of a fight. On the first boss, Earthquake killed Wild because he failed to run away from it at the right moment. Our tank (the guild leader Bd on his druid) is an amazing player, and he stayed in the fight while Wild rezzed and ran back in. On a later fight (Corla) Wild was asked to "take the Star" which I took to mean that Wild was to root the Star assigned mob. I know, those familiar with the fight are slapping their foreheads. In a PUG Wild would probably have been kicked out of the run. Wild was "supposed" to stand in the purple beam, collect a buff, step away, and rinse and repeat. What we did was kill the boss with Wild not doing any of that, which was the hard way to get that done, and it was quite a mess. Wild whispered his suffering tank, apologized, and told him it would be best to assume that I knew nothing about the strategies on these bosses. Bd is a good guy. Thereafter he summarized each boss fight before we engaged.

We finished the run without any further major gaffs on Wild's part. Wild got his 70 Valor Points, which is about 3% of what Wild needs to buy his first T12 piece of gear.

If the guild needs Wild to heal for a guild Heroic, Wild is going to say ok. However, Wild is going to try DPSing Heroics as a moonkin whenever possible from now on. Wild will still make mistakes, but a DPS dying or screwing up is not as damaging as a healer doing so. Wild is a very good raid healer. I see the same bosses every week, know what I'm going to face ahead of time, and get to practice until we all have the strats down. Wild can do none of that in Heroics, which are blind chance.

Anyway, I wanted to see what Wild could do DPS-wise, and did some testing on the raid target dummy. Wild was buffed with just Mark of the Wild and a food buff. I started with the basic rotation of DoTs and going between Wrath and Starfire depending on what Eclipse proc Wild was on. That modest rotation averaged about 9850 DPS, which in a Heroic (from what little I've seen) is respectable.

I then ramped things up. I'd forgotten about the Trees, so they were added to the mix, and I added Starfall as well (assuming a Boss where I didn't have to worry about aggroing other mobs). That test averaged out to around 11,500 DPS. Again, I believe that's a respectable number. Of course, in a real fight movement will cut those numbers down, but then buffs from other players should add some of that back. Wild is going to give DPSing a try, anyway, to see if that helps him click that Dungeon Finder button more often.

Late Tuesday night Wild got into another Firelands trash/rep run. They were looking for two healers and it was late, so Wild almost decided not to volunteer. But, knowing it was going to take some time to get from Friendly to Revered with the Avenger's of Hyjal, Wild raised his hand and got an invite. Once in the raid I saw that it was an almost true PUG. There were four from the same guild (The Illuminati) while the rest of us were just nocturnal raiders looking for our fix. If the guild name seems a little familiar, then you've been around Silvermoon awhile. The guild isn't famous, but it does have a famous - or, better, infamous - member. The name is Xire.

Xire has been around a number of years and has a reputation as a bad raid leader and a poor player. He's been accused uncountable times as a ninja looter. He has an inner circle of friends who defend him against the almost constant stream of vitriol sent his way whenever he is on. And Xire is in game almost all of the time, is always forming a raid of some kind, and is always looking for raiders.

Given the drama that always surrounds Xire, Wild has never joined a raid that I knew he was running, as probably a lot of players avoid him. So he often uses his lieutenants to ask for raiders in trade chat. Wild knows many of those names, too, but he fooled Wild this time with someone who I didn't know was associated with him.

All that said, I've never seen anything concrete about Xire's ninja accusations and now that Wild was in the raid, I decided to see what would happen.

Once invited, Wild asked for the loot rules. They were stated in raid chat, and Wild made sure to take a screenshot of the rules in case there was some issue with loot later on. Standard PUG loot rules were in effect: Main spec over off spec, must be able to use and equip on the spot, nothing reserved, and there was a loot master. So far so good.

Xire even whispered a "Hi" to Wild, which Wild returned, and he made sure that Wild was healing spec since I was obviously someone he hadn't raided with before. There was a small disruption when whoever was checking gear missed a check and a raider was invited who's gear level was too low to get into the Firelands. It took a few minutes to find a replacement, who turned out to be the third healer we needed.

There was no other preparation of any kind. The raid screen showed a death knight as the main tank, with no second tank assigned (every other Firelands raid Wild has been in had two assigned tanks). It wasn't obvious who the healers were - in addition to Wild, there were three priests (which included Xire) and a paladin in the raid who could be healing. Xire dropped the top end food buff for the raid at the start. But only the one. Those needing food buffs after that first drop had to fend for themselves. Wild had no problem with that. It's a PUG, after all. There was no vent offered for the raid, although I'm sure Xire was on vent with his guildies.

There was a ready check, and we began. We killed the first trash mob and then wiped on the second mob, a dog. Someone complained that the tank failed to turn the dog away from the raid and the tank argued back at him. We rezzed and reassembled, although it took awhile since we had to wait for Xire, who took almost five minutes to return to the raid. While we were waiting one raider said "So long" and left the raid. It was another few minutes to fill the spot.

We went back into action, successfully taking down a few mobs, during which Wild realized they had changed the main tank, although it was never changed in the raid frames. Most of the raid went pretty much like the above - kill a few mobs, at least one death on every battle, and waiting for Xire to be ready between every encounter. Xire had to go find replacements three times. But we made progress, killing most of the mobs that I had seen killed in other runs, although they sought out the big mobs and dogs and left a few scorpion packs alone. We wiped three times total, which isn't too bad, considering.

Wild would have stayed for a second run, even when two raiders left. But a few minutes waiting and two more left, and Wild joined the general exodus as it was well after midnight.

There were no BoE drops. I know that Blizzard nerfed the BoE drops, but I didn't know they nerfed it this badly. I know what will happen - so far Wild has been the only druid on these runs. The first run where Wild has a druid competito,r druid resto gear will drop - which Wild will lose the roll on to the other druid. Just wait. But Wild is still happy getting his rep.

Oh. I'd join a Xire raid again on things like the trash run. It was a messily run raid, though, and I wouldn't want to try to actually kill a raid boss in that kind of raid. Those Wild will skip.

On the Daily front Wild finally collected the first batch of 150 Marks he needed to hire the Druids of the Talon for the next stage of the elaborate quest chain. That opened up another bunch of Dailies that are going to take Wild even longer to do every day. If I counted right, Wild is up to 14 dailies. just for this one quest chain. Wild still has to collect hundreds more marks.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Weekend Part 3 of 3 - Inside the Firelands

Weekend Part 3 of 3 - Inside the Firelands

Let's start with Sulfuron Spire. It's located in Mount Hyjal to the south.


The Summoning Stone and instance portal are located at near ground level of the Spire. Here's a peek at the portal from the outside. Once inside, there is an Avenger's of Hyjal Quartermaster and an npc who can repair gear. Having a repair npc just inside the portal is very convenient, and the arrangement is similar to that of the Lich King, although less elaborate.


Turning around, this is the first real look at what is waiting for us inside. The small platform drops down a few short steps to the blackened ground. Farther down the hill is one of the Molten Core type mobs, prepped and ready for the likes of us. Every run Wild has been on so far has killed this mob first.


After felling the first mob, the raid moved deeper into open ground. There are single giants and groups of naga-like creatures, colonies of scorpions, and fast moving single mobs that can tangle a raid at any time.


After cutting a swath across the plain, the raid focuses on the giant mob that has been captured by spiders. The ground crawls with small eight-legged horrors while larger spiders spin their webs, keeping the hostile brute from breaking free.


Deeper into the hills we came across a phoenix which had also been caught by the spiders. We wiped on this one. Wave at Wild's murderer in the second shot.



At this stage the raid leader led us even deeper, between high rocks that left the spiders behind. At it's end the raid leader noted that this was the end of the road. Their guild had not been able get past this point. I believe it marked a passage into another area of the Firelands.


We didn't attempt it, though. The raid leader called it night.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Weekend Part 2 of 3 - Yes, Wild, There IS a Firelands!

Weekend Part 2 of 3 - Yes, Wild, There IS a Firelands!

Wild had blindly answered a random trade channel request for a healer to run Firelands. The raider making the offer likely checked Wild's gear in the Armory, and then offered Wild an invite. It was a guild run, Wild would quickly learn, and I spent a couple minutes getting access to their vent. The raid Summoned Wild from the Summoning stone outside the instance portal. Wild barely slowed down coming out of the Stone, flying from the base of Sulfuron Spire and right into the instance portal. Wild wanted IN THERE right now.

Once inside, Wild had a few minutes to look around while waiting for a last hunter to arrive. Inside the portal is - another world. The Firelands battle is not fought inside the Spire, not really. It's actually part of the Elemental Plane. It's a zone all it's own with outdoor and indoor areas. There really is a Molten Core feel to it - waiting on a modest platform, watching angry monstrosities roam blackened earth under a bloody, fire racked sky. All that was missing from Molten Core image was the giant, steeply canted and swinging chain that had to be danced down to get to the portal - every week it seemed someone would miss-step and fall far to their death into the lava pools. Wild knows.

The guild that was running the raid had seven members plus a guild friend filling eight spots. Wild and the hunter were the only PUGs. The raid leader and main tank talked quietly in vent, sorting out roles but not making any healing assignments. I believe they intended Wild to be the raid healer, since the other two healers were guildies they probably had more trust in. However, that would change.

We took on a gargantuan mob like those that guard the entrance to Molten Core, and Wild's first exposure to Firelands trash mobs went well. The mob died, and we didn't.

We would soon face packs of mobs, however. Wild tried the raid healing thing, but tanks in trouble kept drawing Wild's attention. I settled on the main tank, and thrust Wild into the main tank healing role. Someone else took up raid healing without a word.

What made Wild nervous was that there are no real paths across this devastated terrain. Mobs roam all over the place, pathing in circuits that I am not familiar with yet. The chance at aggroing unintended mobs was ever present. Stay sharp, know where you are and what's around you. I got the impression that this guild's experience in here was just good enough for them to be confident, but still new enough that it took time to lay out the next target(s) and position the raid to take them on. As we progressed, Wild gained more confidence that he matched up well with the other healers in the raid. In fact, Wild would finish a close second to the lead healer when we finally called it a night. Our last attempt was going to against a grouping of mobs the guild had yet to figure out how to beat. They talked for several minutes, and considered resetting and going again, but ultimately decided to call it a night. Wild was loving every minute of it and would have stayed for a second round if they had offered it.

There were no gear drops on the run, which is probably a more realistic outcome than all the claims of as many as five dropping on a single run. Wild did get halfway to Friendly rep on that one run, and with a couple more runs might well be getting a new cape.

At this point Wild was going to break out the slide show projector and regale his audience with his photography skills. However, this is already getting long and it's already Part 2. So, Wild will have to wait for Part 3 to show off his pics.

Finally, Wild has some good news on the gear front to wrap up this post.

Wild got into another PUG run by a guild (Lancermane Family) on Saturday night, clearing the trash twice before calling it a night. Wild thought he'd hit the jackpot when a leather healer piece dropped (Wild was the only druid in the raid at the time). Wild snapped it up, and then had to laugh when I saw that it was i325, not the i378 Wild was expecting. Later, another i325 item dropped. So, after three sweeps of Firelands trash, Wild has not seen a single i378 BoE drop. However, the runs did raise Wild's reputation with Avenger's of Hyjal from neutral to Friendly, and at Friendly Wild was able to purchase a very nice cape [Flowing Flamewrath Cape]. Wild now has his first i378 piece of gear - and then he doubled that number thanks to Lost. Wild's alliance AH toon, Lost, saw [Smolderskull Bindings], i378 leather healing bracers, for under 19k gold on the AH. Wild has seen these bracers just once before, and passed on the 28k price tag. Lost did not hesitate. She bought the bracers, completely wiping out her entire stake.

Now those bracers had to make their way from Lost, across the neutral Auction House, and into Wild's hands. Wild fretted and worried, demanding to be kept apprised each step of the way. Wild made wild promises to Lost that Happy would flood Lost's bags with mats she could sell to recoup the cost. One can imagine what Happy though about that, even as he grimly gave up two stacks of Large Brilliant Shards that he had planned to make his own tidy profit on. The first payment of many Lost will be receiving from Happy.

Lost carefully wrapped up the bracers and placed them in the guild bank. Rakta, the family's alliance contact for the neutral AH, drew the bracers out of the bank. On the horde side, Melasahnd took up her position near the neutral AH auctioneer, her own bags stuffed with additional goodies from Happy and headed for Lost.

Melasahnd and Rakta did a couple of test exchanges to make sure no one was around to pounce on the transactions. The two Auctioneers at Booty Bay were alone, excepting Rakta and Melasahnd. Rakta posted the bracers for the nominal price of one silver piece. If the bracers were going to be swiped, this is when it would happen. Melasahnd swiftly called up the bracers on the AH and made the buy. Wild dithered and worried until word finally came back - Melashand has the bracers, and it's on it's way to Wild.

Wild rushed to the mailbox outside the bank in Org. He opened his mail, tossing mats every which way that JB had been trying to get Wild to craft into bags, and finally found his prize. It took only seconds to reforge, enchant and snap them into place on his wrists. Wild now has two i378 pieces and his gear level is i359.

Weekend Part 1 of 3 - Will Wildshard Ever Raid the Firelands?

Weekend Part 1 of 3 - Will Wildshard Ever Raid the Firelands?

After the Friday raid Wild had hoped to get a Firelands raid going, but we lacked tanks and enough raiders with the minimum required ilevel. Disappointed, and pretty wrung out from the Bastion of Twilight raid, Wild still stayed in game to get his Dailies done.

As Wild worked killing mobs, saving baby bears (yes, that old Hyjal quest has found it's way into the Molten Front Dailies) and howling at the moon (a new quest where after slaying a mob Wild turns into a wolf and howls - ok, guess you had to be there). Our raid leader is completely focused on BoT. He will not entertain starting up a regular Firelands run until we have cleared BoT. I know we are not ready for the Bosses in the Firelands, but the wealth of BoE drops from the trash mobs offers a pretty good chance at gear that is far better than what drops in BoT. That's assuming we could handle the trash mobs, which Wild has yet to see.

Finished with the Dailies, Wild headed back to Orgrimmar. The talk in the Trade channel was lively. Wild almost missed the "lf FL healer, rep run". Which is tradespeak for "Looking for a healer for the Firelands raid and we'll be killing trash mobs for reputation and BoEs."

Ok, what the heck, I'll bite. I didn't know the person or his guild (Dirty Horde). "Still looking for a healer?" Wild whispered to him. There was a pause while I'm sure he was checking the Armory.

Before all this happened, however, there was a BoT run. In a way it was one of the most exciting nights of raiding in some time - but excruciating as well.

We had defeated Halfus and the Twins on Thursday night. The trash mobs between us and the Ascendant Council can still cause us some heartache, but none of them survived our assault. We've seen enough of the first and second (of three) phases of this fight to start to get a feel for it. Wild knew the strat, had seen the fight a few times, and had gone back over the abilities of all of the bosses and phases - things were starting to make sense.

Our pally healer, Gn, did not show on Friday night, but she was replaced by another pally healer who used to be a regular on the MM raid with Wild. I hadn't seen him in awhile so we chatted a bit. The rest of the group were regulars except for one warlock who joined us for the first time on Thursday night, and was back for Friday's raid.

Wild usually heals the warrior tank on Fel, but tonight Wild was assigned heals for the druid tank on Ig. There are different things to look out for for each tank, but Wild was familiar with both. The battle started. We had modified the strategy slightly regarding clearing debuffs by assigning specific raiders that responsibility. Wild watched for the Burning Blood debuf. When it hit a player, that player was supposed to run to the ranged group because it gives the ranged DPSers additional damage against the Bossses. Wild then has to clear the buff before it kills the player that has it. Wild is also looking out for Heart of Ice, which the affected player has to run to the melee for the same reason. The pally healer had that debuff responsibility. Wild also had to watch for Waterlogged. Anyone getting this must cleanse it with fire, or it's near instantly fatal when Glaciate is cast. There is a lot of moving around. When we got the bosses down to 25% and shifted into Phase 2, things got even more frantic.

Phase 2 is a frantic chase. Fel and Ig retire, and we get Arion and Terrestra. Their abilities are a little bit easier to deal with, provided you have chased down a tornado or a gravity well, and you got the right one in the right order. The tornados move faster than most and tend to disappear and reappear elsewhere. It's hugely frustrating to locate and chase them down in the limited time we have, all the while still trying to heal and DPS. The gravity wells are slightly easier, but are still a pain to find in the midst of everything that is going on. Get the wrong one, or miss getting one at all, and you'll suffer massive damage from either Quake or Thundershock. Wild knows from experience that he can survive that hit, but not by much. I'd much rather catch that hurricane or find that well. We wiped during the second phase.

We shocked ourselves on our second attempt, flying past Phase 1, taking down Arion and Terrestra in P2, and entering the third phase for the first time. In Phase three the four bosses merge into a single entity called Elementium Monstrosity. This is really a DPS race to kill the Boss before we all die from the heavy fireworks that get worse every second - ice patches which keep growing, fire balls dropped around the room in ever greater numbers, a chain lightning cast that damages anyone within ten yards, and our favorite, gravity crush, which grabs a one or more players and crushes them. We got "EM" down to 15% before wiping.

On our third attempt we got into the third phase and took EM down to 2%! We just couldn't quite get enough DPS on him.

On our 4th attempt we started to tire, failing to get out of P2. We started making mistakes, and failed again on attempts 5, 6 and 7. We were past our stop time, but the raid leader wanted one more try. Show me what you can do, he challenged us.

We started, took Fel and Ig down to 25% and moved into P2. Raiders had trouble getting to the right safe spots, and Wild burned up a lot of healing, forced to go Tree of Life to keep things in hand. We pushed into P3. We pushed our limits and EM fell to 15%. Another round of chase the hurricane and the gravity wells, and EM was at 10%. Wild rezzed a dead DPSer. Wild was also on his second innervate.

We fought on. EM fell to 5%, then to 4% ... Wild kept glancing at the dwindling number. We reached 2%, equal to our best attempt.

The incoming damage had reached a crescendo, and despite all three healers efforts, health bars kept falling and raiders were dying.

We wrung out every ounce of DPS we could muster - and wiped with EM at 0.7%.

GAH!

We were done. And we will be back to do it all over again next week.

Wild was pretty happy on Thursday at his healing in comparison with the other two. But our visiting pally healer, Fl, on Friday showed Wild what could REALLY be done:

Final healing tally on the night:

#1: Fl, 10847 hps, 36.6% of all healing
#2: Wild, 7313 hps, 28.3%
#3: Pl, 6051 hps, 23.3%

I couldn't help checking Fl's gear - nothing under i353, and with three i378 pieces. Very, very nice.

Part 2 of the night is coming up.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Thursday (7 Jul 2011) - Making Progress

Thursday (7 Jul 2011) - Making Progress

Wild has been pretty dedicated in getting the nine daily quests done for the Firelands progression. It's a long slog, but the rewards are very significant. Where his luck has failed is in getting into a Firelands raid to farm trash mobs for reputation and a chance for ilevel 378 drops. Not only would Wild love to get his hands on that i378 weapon (unlikely), but there are two (TWO!) leather healing items that are BoE which Wild would dearly love to have (shoulders and bracers). Both are for sale on the AH (at excruciatingly high prices), but Wild knows that he has a decent chance at getting them for free - if he can get into the rep/BoE raids. The guild has yet to actually schedule the raids, and it's been Wild's bad luck to have been logged out the three or four times the guild as done an impromptu run. I'd like to do one run with the guild to get some familiarity with Firelands before jumping into PUGs, but Wild may not have that luxury if getting a guild run takes much longer.

On the Bastion of Twilight raiding front, we made further progress on Thursday night. Honestly, I wish our pace was faster and that we made better progress, but I shouldn't complain. The raids are fun and Wild is running with in game friends I've been with for quite awhile. We're certainly not elite raiders, but we make the most of what we have.

On Thursday we wiped once on Halfus when our whelps tank got a little confused. The second attempt went smoothly and Halfus went down with little fuss. This fight is not quite on farm, yet, but it's getting close.

The Twins were next. Last week, it took us three attempts to take down the Twins for the first time. On this night the two dragons fell - on our very first attempt. We were a bit stunned at our sudden good fortune, but we danced on their corpses and then pushed on through the trash to the next encounter. Wild has yet to see any drops off of bosses that could be used by a druid healer, and that dry spell continued. But others were getting upgrades, including our priest and pally healers, and that was helping the raid overall.


The third encounter is the Ascendant Council. Before we started, the raid leader went through a lengthy discussion of the fight mechanics. Our raid leader's explanation of fights is one of the things we all love about him. Nobody ever goes into a battle without knowing what they are up against and what their role and responsibilities are. That said, he does have a tendency to reach a point where our heads are about to explode and we just want to start killing stuff.

He was going over some specific tips with the melee raiders when the off-tank, a druid, called the other druids over to the center of the room to compare bear fur coloring. There were three druids in the raid, and we lined up in bear form, sat down, and discussed the various shades of fur, lamenting that we didn't have a troll druid (which has very distinctive markings different from other bears). We all munched on some candy, enjoying a little bear picnic while the raid leader droned on ... uh, gave us fight directions.

Wild decided to float his balloon. Now don't get the wrong idea, I'm talking about balloons here - real balloons. Balloons are something new that started showing up in raids when we got back from our trip. I believe it started with Patch 4.2 but I can't be sure. Anyway, there is a young urchin in Orgrimmar's Valley of Wisdom that holds a quest. There is no quest mark over his head, but he is pretty easy to find. His name escapes me at the moment. Talking to the little fellow grants a quest to go find some wayward balloons. Return with the balloons, and the boy delightfully floats away with his handful of balloons, but not before bestowing a special balloon as a reward. The balloon is a companion pet, and can be called just like any other non-combat pet. When called, an admittedly dull colored balloon forms and floats around, held in place by a string. Ok, big deal - but it's THE THING TO HAVE at the moment. Everyone has to have one.

The raid leader, though, has no love of balloons, poor fellow. They drive him batty in a fun sort of way. When the raid leader finally finished his earnest discussion with the melee, he looked up from his notes and saw a sea of balloons floating in his raid. Seven of us had balloons, and we all had them out. "WTF is with all these balloons!" cried our dismayed raid leader. We refused to tuck them away until he was finished with his instructions and let us have some real action. The raid leader hastily wrapped things up and we got down to business. We were still giggling when we opened up on Ig and Fel.


We made four attempts before our time ran out, getting the first pair of bosses down to 50% on our best attempt. It was progress, but remember, there are three phases to the fight and this is only the first phase. We have a ways to go yet. The good news is that we have the whole night to work on Ascendant Council Friday night.

Wild was very pleased with his healing on Thursday night. The pally healer, Gn, is getting stronger each week and is keeping Wild on his toes. She formally joined the guild last night and is now a regular. The priest, Pl, is a very solid raid healer and steps it up when needed. She is able to do a number of things that don't really help her healing stats but certainly help the raid. I really like the healing combination of druid, paladin, and priest.

Wild is also considering reforging some of his spirit stats into mastery. Wild has not had to use Innervate much on the first two fights, so his mana regeneration could be reduced to get the extra tank heals that mastery would give Wild. I'm still not fully sold on the mastery stat, though, so we'll see.

Anyway, here is what the healing looked like on the evening:

Halfus Healing

Twins Healing

Overall Healing

Finally, I wanted to show what the healers can do when we are going all out trying to keep the raid alive with four elemental trash mobs terrorizing the raid (these are the mobs between us and the Ascendant Council).