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.