Weekend (31 Jan) - Got The Blues
Ever have one of those periods of time when you just can't seem to get in gear (pun sort of intended)? Wild is in one of those funks and it's spread to the rest of his clan. Wild has seven daily quests that he has been pretty good about getting done every day. Two are the cooking and fishing quests; the other five are to earn Dragonmaw rep. Wild will reach Revered with Dragonmaw with one more daily, which he'll get on Monday. An i346 ring awaits Wild at the Dragonmaw vendor. But these dailies are about the only thing I can convince Wild to do.
Wild can also get an i359 necklace and i359 leg gear once he reaches Exalted with Dragonmaw. That takes 21,000 rep. At roughly 1400 rep per day, it will take Wild about 15 more days to get there. Wild can shorten that considerably if he would just do two dungeons a day - the regular/normal and a Heroic. Wild can get extra rep (quite a lot) by doing those dungeons. Not only that, Wild could upgrade an i333 off-hand to i346 with 950 justice points. Wild can earn 70 JPs each day by doing a random normal dungeon. Wild has a few JPs left over, too, so it would take only 9 days of one normal dungeon per day to get enough JPs for that off-hand upgrade.
When Wild is in game he'll answer the call if there is a guild run getting started. If there isn't, and if Wild has gotten his dailies done, then he'll likely logout and disappear for several hours. JB and Sista both want game time, but since Wild "should" be looking for dungeon work, there's a reluctance to bring in any other toon. Been through this before, and it's mostly self inflicted, and in part it's because raiding is still somewhat iffy and without progress right now, and that's what usually keeps Wild going. Anyway, I'm hoping that dangling all that gear in front of Wild will draw him back into the hunt.
Wild was still trotting out excuses, though, blaming RL distractions. My aging Linksys cable modem was starting to have drop out issues. They were rare (a couple of times a day) and short (just a few seconds) but it was enough to DC me in WoW when it happened. The Mrs noticed the drop outs as well. We also have a shared drive where we keep things like our image folders and backups. That drive went belly up recently and I needed to get that back into working order as well. Third, we upgraded our cable TV system this past week so that the Mrs can watch her DVRed shows in any of the three rooms where we have a TV. It also coincidentally upgraded us to full HDTV, even though only one of our TVs is Hi-Def (the one in my office). Does this sound familiar to anyone? I'm thinking I already mentioned this but I don't see it in the blog. Oh well.
So, all of that took time. The Linksys modem is now gone, replaced by a wired/wireless combo cable modem from Motorola. I was also able to get rid of the separate wireless router I was using, as well as eliminate a router extender that was also hooked in. Not bad, replacing three boxes with one. And the signal has been clean and steady.
Then I tackled getting a new external hard drive connected into the network for our shared drive, and the time it took to reload all the stuff we'd had on the old defunct drive.
See, I've been busy!
JB did manage to break into the game for a little while on Sunday night. A little research had turned up a trinket as a quest reward in the very area she was in, Mount Hyjal. So, in addition to making her usual herb run through the zone, she did a little questing as well. When she made level 81 a few days ago she received the spell Unleashed Elements. This one spell (plus the boost to level 81) upped her DPS by nearly a 1,000! UE is an instant, ranged spell, so JB uses that as her opener when she is closing to melee distance, and follows that with flame shock (another ranged instant spell) which gets a huge buff from UE. Now in melee range, JB delivers Stormstrike, her ace melee attack, follows with lava lash, and by that time flame shock is off cooldown and JB can strike with earth shock. JB is a heckova lot of fun. She did have a period where her UE stopped working, and that baffled and frustrated her until she noticed that her weapon buffs had expired. JB dual wields two weapons. She buffs her main hand with Windfury and her off-hand with Flametongue. UE requires Flametongue to be active or it won't work. Once JB fixed that she was back on the attack.
JB got her tinket, too, i272 with +143 agi. It replaced the last pre-cata gear she was wearing. JB is fully cata geared now, at least for her melee set. The healing set is still a meager concoction of mostly bad gear, but quest rewards will help improve on that over time.
Druids seem to be taking over Wild's guild. On Saturday afternoon there were 13 level 85 guildies in game - six of them were druids. Three of them Wild doesn't know.
Happy was getting worried that he was running out of felcloth, a key ingredient in Satchel of Cenarius, an herb bag that sells quite well for a 24 slot bag, because the larger herb bags sell for double to triple what Happy sells the Satchel for. All that could change if he can't get felcloth.
Normally Happy can buy felcloth on a regular basis for around a gold each. There's never been a lot for sale, but Happy got enough to keep Wild in mats to make the Satchels. A particular group of mobs in Azshara account for most of the felcloth. Farming them was easy, but it was slow work as there weren't that many mobs and the drop rates were low. Happy kept watching as the prices for felcloth continued to climb up to as high as 8g each, and the quantity available got smaller and smaller.
The pickins' got bad enough that I did some research and was going to assign some lucky toon to farm the stuff to get stocks back up. What I learned, though, is that the mobs in Azshara changed with Cata and felcloth no longer drops there. The only other place where felcloth could be found was in Dire Maul. Dire Maul has also changed, as it is a lower level dungeon now in Cata. It's been confirmed that felcloth does still drop there, but a full clear only nets a half-dozen or fewer. That's a lot of work/time for very little payback. As long as Satchels sell, Happy will pay what he has to to get felcloth. I doubt Blizz cares enough to make drop adjustments, so its unlikely to change.
Wild's guild continues to grind guild rep. Early Sunday morning Wild was in game when the guild achieved level 14. The main effort right now is to complete the achievement to craft 1,000 cata level flasks. We are just under halfway there. Once we get the achievement the guild will be able to make Cauldrons of Battle, which raiders can use to gain the benefit of a flask. I suppose it's convenient, but I wonder at it's true usefulness. The 10 man raid version has 7 uses, so that means at least three raiders have to provide their own. It takes four flasks to make the cauldron, so in effect there are only three flasks worth of benefit. However, this gets better as guild level increases - at level 10 cauldron flasks last 50% longer; at level 20 you get 10 uses instead of 7; and at level 22 flasks last twice as long.
Wild continues to follow his former guild, FS, as well as the guild offshoot of FS, WC, formed by a top FS raid leader. Wild's MM guild has the upper hand in terms of guild leveling. MM is at level 14; FS is level 12, and WC is level 11. In terms of raid progress it's hard to tell. MM has yet to defeat the Baradin Hold boss, which both FS and WC have downed. None of the three guilds have cleared any of the other raid dungeons, but I can't tell if any individual bosses have been brought down.
In MM there was a small tiff after last week's raid on Bastion of Twilight (BoT). We have two guildies, Fn and Bd, who do the raid leading and tanking for the raids. Bd is focused on Baradin Hold and on the trash in BoT as the means to improve on gear. Fn felt that we should start putting emphasis on Blackwing Descent (BWD), which is the multiple boss raid dungeon that most raiding guilds are starting with. We've made one quick look inside BWD, wiped on the trash, and haven't been back. One answer would be to start a second raid group and do both, but we lack the extra two tanks we'd need. It's not that we don't have other tanks, but none have stepped forward to join the raids. If only Sin or DER ... oh well. ;-) I also suspect that, given the numbers that sign up for raids (other than Baradin Hold) we simply don't have the interest to establish two raid groups. At least not until our first group starts killing bosses.
On a personal level Wild's former guild leader and friend, P-Jo, has returned to the game after leaving for some months due to serious real life issues. She's worked her way to level 85 and Wild sees her in game now and then. She stayed with the FS guild despite an offer to come to MM. It's kind of ironic that when Wild was still with FS he was often told that P-Jo remained in FS only because Wild was still there. Wild isn't in FS anymore, but P-Jo is. Lady Hunter, another friend who was the most persistent in recruiting Wild to join MM, is having RL issues of her own and has not been around for weeks. Wild is happy with MM, and knows he has a raid spot, where with FS Wild would have been a fill in at best. Though Wild has always preferred the 25 mans, the loot is now the same for both 25 and 10 mans, and few guilds are likely to raid 25 man unless they have bosses they feel can be farmed for the higher percentage of drops.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday (27 Jan) - Gear and You
Thursday (27 Jan) - Gear and You
There was no raid Thursday night as our raid leader had a real life issue to take care of. We are short on tanks for the five mans and while they try to help out, I know there is a burn out factor. Wild may have to take his chances with a heroic DF PUG, but that is a scary proposition. Wild did get his dailies done, and is closing in on Dragonmaw Revered rep, where there is an i346 waiting for Wild. At Exalted there are two i359s Wild covets.
There has been an interesting side conversation about gearing up for the level 80-84 pvp bracket. This bracket can be entered by cata level 80 players as well as non-cata level 80s. As Lao has discovered in the lower 75-79 bracket, doing pvp battlegrounds in pre-cata gear is a quick way to get killed - over and over. She related one incident where she and two other mostly pre-cata geared pvpers encountered a cata geared rogue who proceeded to kill all three of them over and over until they finally brought him down through repeated and continuous graveyard runs. There really is a gulf of a difference between pre-cata and cata level gear.
We recently got into a discussion about player health. In pvp the single most important factor is how much health the player has, because that largely decides how long that player will survive in combat. Stamina is the single most important stat for increasing health.
Wild has an accountants eye toward his own gear and has tracked that information for a long time. Just to give a sense of how that has changed over time, I went back a year and tracked Wild's gear progress from pre-cata level 80 to cata level 85. Note that as a healer Wild does not need and can't achieve the kind of health numbers that bear tanks and other tanking classes can achieve, but is more similar to healer/caster types.
Wild's health
Jan 2010 - 18,827
Feb 2010 - 19,897
Mar 2010 - 19,717 (changed weapons adding spell power but lacking stamina)
Apr 2010 - 20,487
May 2010 - no change
Jun 2010 - 20,787
Jul 2010 - 20,977
Aug 2010 - no change
Sep 2010 - no change (pre-cata, pre patch 4.0)
Oct 2010 - 31,987 (base patch 4.0)
Nov 2010 - 32,037
Dec 2010 - 43,370 (Cata launch, made level 81, 8 Dec)
Dec 2010 - 44,124 (level 82, 9 Dec)
Dec 2010 - 52,175 (level 83, 10 Dec)
Dec 2010 - 69,164 (level 84, 23 Dec - I was out of town for a week)
Dec 2010 - 78,259 (level 85, 26 Dec - there was this Christmas thing)
Dec 2010 - 94,379 (four high level items added over a four day period)
Jan 2010 - 99,531 (first week of Jan)
Jan 2010 - 103,745 (current)
In 2010 pre-cata, Wild's health went up from 18,827 to 20,977, slightly more than 2,000 health. That extra health helped Wild survive and defeat the Lich King.
Wild's health went up 11,000 on patch 4.0 day, which was essentially the adjustment of pre-cata stats to cata stats. Since this was still pre-expansion, all players received it.
Wild's health was up another 11,000 on cata launch day, which included a lot of leveling and a ding to level 81. And a whole slew of new cata level gear.
Less than three weeks later Wild's health was up another 35,000 - to 78,259.
And on Christmas eve it had risen again by 16,000 - to 94,379.
The pace has slowed as Wild is having to work harder for gear upgrades. Even so, in the three weeks since the beginning of 2011 Wild's health has risen by more than 4,000 - twice the increase for the entire year of 2010.
You want to join a pvp battle in pre-cata gear? That's what you're facing.
There was no raid Thursday night as our raid leader had a real life issue to take care of. We are short on tanks for the five mans and while they try to help out, I know there is a burn out factor. Wild may have to take his chances with a heroic DF PUG, but that is a scary proposition. Wild did get his dailies done, and is closing in on Dragonmaw Revered rep, where there is an i346 waiting for Wild. At Exalted there are two i359s Wild covets.
There has been an interesting side conversation about gearing up for the level 80-84 pvp bracket. This bracket can be entered by cata level 80 players as well as non-cata level 80s. As Lao has discovered in the lower 75-79 bracket, doing pvp battlegrounds in pre-cata gear is a quick way to get killed - over and over. She related one incident where she and two other mostly pre-cata geared pvpers encountered a cata geared rogue who proceeded to kill all three of them over and over until they finally brought him down through repeated and continuous graveyard runs. There really is a gulf of a difference between pre-cata and cata level gear.
We recently got into a discussion about player health. In pvp the single most important factor is how much health the player has, because that largely decides how long that player will survive in combat. Stamina is the single most important stat for increasing health.
Wild has an accountants eye toward his own gear and has tracked that information for a long time. Just to give a sense of how that has changed over time, I went back a year and tracked Wild's gear progress from pre-cata level 80 to cata level 85. Note that as a healer Wild does not need and can't achieve the kind of health numbers that bear tanks and other tanking classes can achieve, but is more similar to healer/caster types.
Wild's health
Jan 2010 - 18,827
Feb 2010 - 19,897
Mar 2010 - 19,717 (changed weapons adding spell power but lacking stamina)
Apr 2010 - 20,487
May 2010 - no change
Jun 2010 - 20,787
Jul 2010 - 20,977
Aug 2010 - no change
Sep 2010 - no change (pre-cata, pre patch 4.0)
Oct 2010 - 31,987 (base patch 4.0)
Nov 2010 - 32,037
Dec 2010 - 43,370 (Cata launch, made level 81, 8 Dec)
Dec 2010 - 44,124 (level 82, 9 Dec)
Dec 2010 - 52,175 (level 83, 10 Dec)
Dec 2010 - 69,164 (level 84, 23 Dec - I was out of town for a week)
Dec 2010 - 78,259 (level 85, 26 Dec - there was this Christmas thing)
Dec 2010 - 94,379 (four high level items added over a four day period)
Jan 2010 - 99,531 (first week of Jan)
Jan 2010 - 103,745 (current)
In 2010 pre-cata, Wild's health went up from 18,827 to 20,977, slightly more than 2,000 health. That extra health helped Wild survive and defeat the Lich King.
Wild's health went up 11,000 on patch 4.0 day, which was essentially the adjustment of pre-cata stats to cata stats. Since this was still pre-expansion, all players received it.
Wild's health was up another 11,000 on cata launch day, which included a lot of leveling and a ding to level 81. And a whole slew of new cata level gear.
Less than three weeks later Wild's health was up another 35,000 - to 78,259.
And on Christmas eve it had risen again by 16,000 - to 94,379.
The pace has slowed as Wild is having to work harder for gear upgrades. Even so, in the three weeks since the beginning of 2011 Wild's health has risen by more than 4,000 - twice the increase for the entire year of 2010.
You want to join a pvp battle in pre-cata gear? That's what you're facing.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday (26 Jan) - Raids and Heroics Oh My
Wednesday (26 Jan) - Raids and Heroics Oh My
On a RL note - I'm slowly losing all track of time. Yes, retirement has a way of losing track of the days, but even the little conveniences that help me keep track have started to fail me.
We went to a cat show/convention last Sunday. I'd never been to one and it wasn't what I expected. There were, of course, lots of booths selling everything you could possibly think of that was cat related. Many of the city and private shelters were represented as well, looking for donations and to adopt out the many cats they brought. What I wasn't prepared for was an entire convention floor with wall to wall, row after row sets of tables where every inch was covered with the most elaborate and amazing cat carriers! "Cat carrier" doesn't even begin to describe these mobile homes for cats. They were often multi-roomed, with one area set aside for the litter box. Some were multi-level, so their precious kitty could climb up into his/her bunk. There were screened sections where they could be viewed, and "private" areas so that their precious could get out of the limelight. The carriers were decorated with ribbons from past shows, and all kinds of other knickknacks related to the type of cat or just to show off the cat's personality (or the fetishes of the owner). It was kind of astonishing to see. I'd say that 75% of these cats were for sale. The "show" was divided into at least a dozen small areas where owners would display their cats and win awards based on (as best I could tell) the applause from whoever happened to sit down in the dozen or so chairs around the show areas. I was a little disappointed when it became obvious that this was not much different than one of those convention gun shows, or comic-con, or any other collector/hobbyist gathering. I'm sure many of the owners loved their cats, and you could tell by the way they talked about them and fussed over them. We also saw some truly amazing cats, from the giant main coons to grown cats that could sit in the palm of my hand, to hairless breeds, to domestic cats in the spots and stripes of the wild big cats that could have fooled a zoo keeper. There was also an orange tabby there that was one of only two cats in the US that came from a special breed in China. The breed developed from natural selection, not forced breeding like most others, and until recently was not allowed out of China (like the pandas). Honestly, it was just a cat, and a rather timid one, but it was a fascinating rarity.
All in all, though, I think the cat lovers were greatly outnumbered by cat breeders and wanna-be cat breeders who were there to make a buck. Which made me feel a bit sad for those cats who were more like merchandise than loved pets.
What has that to do with what I started with? Well, it reminded me of a lady that was next to us at a stall where she was buying a trinket, and not only could she not remember the date, she didn't know what month it was! Now, I haven't gotten that bad, yet. However, I am used to having a watch that I can refer to whenever I get a little fuzzy about the date. But my favorite watch has been under siege by Casio (another long story) and I've been wearing - for weeks now - a cheap watch that I picked up thinking I'd have my good one back soon. The cheap watch is supposed to show the date, but it has defeated all my efforts to get it to actually display it. Then, yesterday we had the cable guy in making some box changes so that the Mrs can watch her DVR shows on any of the three TVs we have. It also upgraded us to HDTV (which is my ultimate goal - if I can figure out how to kill our non-HD TVs without getting caught). But I'm digressing - again. The new box, one of which I have next to my computer, does not show the time. The old one did. I've gotten very used to using that to note the time and now that's gone, too. Pretty soon I might start forgetting where I live. My main clue is looking out the window - its not snowing, so this must be California.
Ok, I've gotten far afield from the topic. Let's talk about Wednesday night.
We lost Tol Barad Wednesday night, so Baradin Hold wasn't available to us. I say "we" meaning the guildies that participated in the TB pvp battle. Wild hasn't tried that yet. Maybe when Lao and JB get to 85 they'll tackle that new pvp zone. We had more than twenty guildies sign up for the BH raid, but since we didn't win TB the backup plan was to go to the Bastion of Twilight (BoT) again to clear trash and perhaps pick up a piece of gear or two. Funny how the number of guildies that signed up to raid dissipated when BH was taken off the table. I thought we would field two ten man teams, but we only had enough for one.
If you remember from last week, BoT has a large number of trash mobs all located in one large chamber. They sometimes drop nice BoE gear, and that was what we were after - plus just getting our cata raid group some practice with each other. Those guildies that opted out of coming to the raid are not getting the bigger picture. A raid is not ten individuals, it is a group of ten players who work as a unit. What we were doing in BoT was forging a unit.
We cleared the trash four times, resetting the instance after each clear so we could do it again. We had a wipe or two, but discovered better ways to position and pull. By the time we elected to stop everyone in the raid knew we had these mobs down pat. Only one BoE dropped, and it was a plate thing that of course didn't interest Wild. I was happy for the healing practice, too. On our third run one of our three healers DCed. The raid leader asked the other two of us if we could two heal until the third came back. Yes we could, and we did, with no problems at all.
After the raid we pulled a five man together for a heroic. This was only Wild's second heroic dungeon run and I was very nervous. It was a good group, with very decent DPS, and our best guild tank, Bd, doing the tanking honors.
We used the DF to pick the dungeon for us. Wild recognized the dungeon, but couldn't place the name. I had to look it up later - the Vortex Pinnacle (VP). The first time Wild entered a heroic dungeon, the group wiped on the first set of trash mobs, and the rest of the dungeon didn't get any easier, although we did, eventually, complete it.
In heroic VP Wild was also asked to help with crowd control, using entangling roots whenever my mark (a star) was placed over one of the mobs. Wild used to cc as a matter of course, most often in BWL, but it was a little harder both keeping a mob rooted and move and heal as well. I'd give Wild a grade of "C" on how he managed that, as occasionally the mob would break roots and get into our faces before I could root it again.
The trash mobs went down much smoother on this run, to Wild's great relief. Wild's gear was a bit better, but good DPS and a great tank made a big difference, too.
We arrived at our first boss, Grand Vizier Ertan. I love bosses like this. They don't move at all. During the fight numerous tornadoes form that move around the room, but the boss has no melee range attack so we could all just crowd up close to the boss. Several times during the fight the tornadoes would all close in on the boss. Ranged players, including Wild, simply backed out, stepping between the incoming tornadoes and kept doing what we were doing. Wild stayed in for one of those to see what it was like. I took some additional damage, and had my spell casting slowed, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. The boss went down.
Ertan dropped [Biting Wind]. This is an i346 main hand caster dagger. Theoretically that was an upgrade to Wild's two-handed i333 staff, but I noted that it didn't have any spirit on it, plus I didn't have an off-hand piece to equip with it. We were moving on so Wild just "greeded" it so if he got it he could DE it for enchanting mats.
We worked through some more trash. There is an interesting passage where there are several orbs with winds swirling around them. You can get caught in those winds and thrown off the passage (this is an outdoor dungeon, by the way) unless you damage the orbs to stop the winds. Some of us, Wild included, who have abilities to speed us up for short periods, played chicken with the orbs to see if we could get past them without getting tossed about. Wild's cat form with Dash usually worked. It was fun.
Altairus is the second of the three bosses in VP. Altairus is a dragon. The open air chamber he's in is quite small, with a low roof held up by four stanchions. After some quick direction we engaged.
The tank gathered up the dragon as numerous tornadoes formed around us, moving slowly. There are tornadoes everywhere in this place. These tornadoes were much nastier than the ones in the Ertan fight. The knockback does a lot more damage, and if flung far enough to actually leave the chamber, Altairus will one shot the unlucky player with a lightning bolt. Wild had other things to worry about as well. The tank has to maneuver the dragon based on the direction of the wind. The side and tail of the dragon are safe, but Altairus has a frontal cone attack that is very deadly and also slows movement and spell casting by a lot more than Ertan did. Altairus aims that cone at a player, so it's almost impossible to avoid completely. We made two attempts without much success and took a moment to regroup.
There seemed to be no way to avoid the tornadoes, and once you are tossed that first time the odds were high that you would land in range of another tornado and get tossed about like a hot potato until cooked. We had to stay away from each to ensure that only one player at a time was hit by that cone (called "Chilling Breath"). We were also unsure about this "wind thing."
Altairus can change the direction of the wind - either Upwind or Downwind. Players are supposed to be able to tell by watching particles in the air. If those particles are blowing at Wild's back, he is upwind. If they're blowing in his face, he's downwind. Upwind is very good, increasing basically everything - attack speed, movement, spell casting, etc. Downwind is just the opposite - very bad, particularly for the healer.
Wild couldn't see the particles. I had no idea where the wind was coming from. Supposedly there is a "boot" icon that shows up in the debuff icons that is green when upwind and yellow when downwind. I didn't seem to have that indicator, either. The tank wanted wild to move from one side of the dragon to the other depending on the wind direction, while he turned the dragon to face a certain way. It was a nightmare, and we wiped a couple more times. It wasn't all Wild. The tank struggled to get his positioning correct as well, and was once caught in a tornado, flung off the chamber, and one shot. The DPSers were complaining that no matter what they did those tornadoes kept catching them. Most of the challenge fell to Wild, though. I had to get this right or we just wouldn't kill this boss.
We tried twice more, but really didn't get any further and called it quits. Apparently there are a lot of complaints about this fight and it will likely be "adjusted" in the coming patch. But other groups have killed Altairus, so we were pretty disappointed that we could not clear heroic VP.
I went back to the strategy guides for this fight and learned that instead of maneuvering around, it was best if the healer stood in one place and simply turned his body in the direction required to be upwind, moving only enough to avoid tornadoes. Another recommendation was to pan the camera from above to get a better view of the tornado movements, which is a good idea if Wild doesn't have to move. Others said that the view from above was bad because the tornadoes have a hollow center and are hard to see from above. Of course all of those things sound impossible to do for Wild given his struggles with the wind, but perhaps standing in one place would greatly improve my odds of figuring out how to do the rest of it. And if Altairus hits Wild with Chilling Breath there should be no one around me and I can heal through it. I think.
Oh - I just learned one more thing about this fight that seems to kill the idea of the healer standing in one place - if Altairus is between the healer and wind, he blocks the wind and you are then effectively downwind. Sigh. I hate this boss. Seems "upwind" and "downwind" mean diddly. The idea is that Wild has to be in position for the wind to hit him before it hits the dragon - or something like that. Posters explaining strategies contradict themselves in the same post! It's maddening.
As Wild had said after our 4th or 5th attempt: "i r still confuzed." I hope the "fix" in the coming patch addresses some the really frustrating aspects of this fight that have nothing to do with how competent the group is.
A disappointed Wild returned to Orgrimmar to repair and check mail. In his bags Wild discovered that [Biting Wind] had wound up with him. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising. With a warrior, hunter, and rogue in the group Wild and the mage were the only two who had any possible use for it. Wild might have just DEed it, but it had that Heroic tag so Wild had to take a closer look. Oh boy. Wild's staff has 1533 spell power on it. The i346 dagger has 1729. Ok, this is a keeper. But Wild still didn't have an off-hand for it, and in previous looks at the AH Wild never saw a caster piece that he'd want to buy. Wild checked again, though, and this time he came across [Bone-Inlaid Sarcophagus Key]. This i333 off-hand had the spirit the dagger was missing, and with a little reforging would be a nice overall upgrade. And it was far cheaper than Wild would have thought it would be. He bought it.
With an i346 weapon, Wild felt it was time to give it a cata level enchant. The staff had gotten a Wrath +81 spell power enchant, but Wild now had the Heartsong enchant. Heartsong is a proc based enchant. I usually stay away from those since the proc is random and therefore the buff isn't consistently available. Nearly all of the cata level weapon enchants are proc-based, however, so Wild didn't have any choice. Heartsong is spirit based, so it's main benefit is to provide temporary increases in mana regen, which is useful to Wild but not really very sexy. The best overall caster enchant is Power Torrent, which procs increases in spell power. Now that's sexy. Getting the recipe for this spell costs five maelstrom crystals. To make the enchant costs four more crystals. These crystals come from disenchanting i359 and higher gear. Who is DEing i359 gear? Not many, not yet anyway. It was way out of Wild's price range. For now. Wild's gear score is still i338, but Wild now has one more piece of i346 gear. It's progress.
On a RL note - I'm slowly losing all track of time. Yes, retirement has a way of losing track of the days, but even the little conveniences that help me keep track have started to fail me.
We went to a cat show/convention last Sunday. I'd never been to one and it wasn't what I expected. There were, of course, lots of booths selling everything you could possibly think of that was cat related. Many of the city and private shelters were represented as well, looking for donations and to adopt out the many cats they brought. What I wasn't prepared for was an entire convention floor with wall to wall, row after row sets of tables where every inch was covered with the most elaborate and amazing cat carriers! "Cat carrier" doesn't even begin to describe these mobile homes for cats. They were often multi-roomed, with one area set aside for the litter box. Some were multi-level, so their precious kitty could climb up into his/her bunk. There were screened sections where they could be viewed, and "private" areas so that their precious could get out of the limelight. The carriers were decorated with ribbons from past shows, and all kinds of other knickknacks related to the type of cat or just to show off the cat's personality (or the fetishes of the owner). It was kind of astonishing to see. I'd say that 75% of these cats were for sale. The "show" was divided into at least a dozen small areas where owners would display their cats and win awards based on (as best I could tell) the applause from whoever happened to sit down in the dozen or so chairs around the show areas. I was a little disappointed when it became obvious that this was not much different than one of those convention gun shows, or comic-con, or any other collector/hobbyist gathering. I'm sure many of the owners loved their cats, and you could tell by the way they talked about them and fussed over them. We also saw some truly amazing cats, from the giant main coons to grown cats that could sit in the palm of my hand, to hairless breeds, to domestic cats in the spots and stripes of the wild big cats that could have fooled a zoo keeper. There was also an orange tabby there that was one of only two cats in the US that came from a special breed in China. The breed developed from natural selection, not forced breeding like most others, and until recently was not allowed out of China (like the pandas). Honestly, it was just a cat, and a rather timid one, but it was a fascinating rarity.
All in all, though, I think the cat lovers were greatly outnumbered by cat breeders and wanna-be cat breeders who were there to make a buck. Which made me feel a bit sad for those cats who were more like merchandise than loved pets.
What has that to do with what I started with? Well, it reminded me of a lady that was next to us at a stall where she was buying a trinket, and not only could she not remember the date, she didn't know what month it was! Now, I haven't gotten that bad, yet. However, I am used to having a watch that I can refer to whenever I get a little fuzzy about the date. But my favorite watch has been under siege by Casio (another long story) and I've been wearing - for weeks now - a cheap watch that I picked up thinking I'd have my good one back soon. The cheap watch is supposed to show the date, but it has defeated all my efforts to get it to actually display it. Then, yesterday we had the cable guy in making some box changes so that the Mrs can watch her DVR shows on any of the three TVs we have. It also upgraded us to HDTV (which is my ultimate goal - if I can figure out how to kill our non-HD TVs without getting caught). But I'm digressing - again. The new box, one of which I have next to my computer, does not show the time. The old one did. I've gotten very used to using that to note the time and now that's gone, too. Pretty soon I might start forgetting where I live. My main clue is looking out the window - its not snowing, so this must be California.
Ok, I've gotten far afield from the topic. Let's talk about Wednesday night.
We lost Tol Barad Wednesday night, so Baradin Hold wasn't available to us. I say "we" meaning the guildies that participated in the TB pvp battle. Wild hasn't tried that yet. Maybe when Lao and JB get to 85 they'll tackle that new pvp zone. We had more than twenty guildies sign up for the BH raid, but since we didn't win TB the backup plan was to go to the Bastion of Twilight (BoT) again to clear trash and perhaps pick up a piece of gear or two. Funny how the number of guildies that signed up to raid dissipated when BH was taken off the table. I thought we would field two ten man teams, but we only had enough for one.
If you remember from last week, BoT has a large number of trash mobs all located in one large chamber. They sometimes drop nice BoE gear, and that was what we were after - plus just getting our cata raid group some practice with each other. Those guildies that opted out of coming to the raid are not getting the bigger picture. A raid is not ten individuals, it is a group of ten players who work as a unit. What we were doing in BoT was forging a unit.
We cleared the trash four times, resetting the instance after each clear so we could do it again. We had a wipe or two, but discovered better ways to position and pull. By the time we elected to stop everyone in the raid knew we had these mobs down pat. Only one BoE dropped, and it was a plate thing that of course didn't interest Wild. I was happy for the healing practice, too. On our third run one of our three healers DCed. The raid leader asked the other two of us if we could two heal until the third came back. Yes we could, and we did, with no problems at all.
After the raid we pulled a five man together for a heroic. This was only Wild's second heroic dungeon run and I was very nervous. It was a good group, with very decent DPS, and our best guild tank, Bd, doing the tanking honors.
We used the DF to pick the dungeon for us. Wild recognized the dungeon, but couldn't place the name. I had to look it up later - the Vortex Pinnacle (VP). The first time Wild entered a heroic dungeon, the group wiped on the first set of trash mobs, and the rest of the dungeon didn't get any easier, although we did, eventually, complete it.
In heroic VP Wild was also asked to help with crowd control, using entangling roots whenever my mark (a star) was placed over one of the mobs. Wild used to cc as a matter of course, most often in BWL, but it was a little harder both keeping a mob rooted and move and heal as well. I'd give Wild a grade of "C" on how he managed that, as occasionally the mob would break roots and get into our faces before I could root it again.
The trash mobs went down much smoother on this run, to Wild's great relief. Wild's gear was a bit better, but good DPS and a great tank made a big difference, too.
We arrived at our first boss, Grand Vizier Ertan. I love bosses like this. They don't move at all. During the fight numerous tornadoes form that move around the room, but the boss has no melee range attack so we could all just crowd up close to the boss. Several times during the fight the tornadoes would all close in on the boss. Ranged players, including Wild, simply backed out, stepping between the incoming tornadoes and kept doing what we were doing. Wild stayed in for one of those to see what it was like. I took some additional damage, and had my spell casting slowed, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. The boss went down.
Ertan dropped [Biting Wind]. This is an i346 main hand caster dagger. Theoretically that was an upgrade to Wild's two-handed i333 staff, but I noted that it didn't have any spirit on it, plus I didn't have an off-hand piece to equip with it. We were moving on so Wild just "greeded" it so if he got it he could DE it for enchanting mats.
We worked through some more trash. There is an interesting passage where there are several orbs with winds swirling around them. You can get caught in those winds and thrown off the passage (this is an outdoor dungeon, by the way) unless you damage the orbs to stop the winds. Some of us, Wild included, who have abilities to speed us up for short periods, played chicken with the orbs to see if we could get past them without getting tossed about. Wild's cat form with Dash usually worked. It was fun.
Altairus is the second of the three bosses in VP. Altairus is a dragon. The open air chamber he's in is quite small, with a low roof held up by four stanchions. After some quick direction we engaged.
The tank gathered up the dragon as numerous tornadoes formed around us, moving slowly. There are tornadoes everywhere in this place. These tornadoes were much nastier than the ones in the Ertan fight. The knockback does a lot more damage, and if flung far enough to actually leave the chamber, Altairus will one shot the unlucky player with a lightning bolt. Wild had other things to worry about as well. The tank has to maneuver the dragon based on the direction of the wind. The side and tail of the dragon are safe, but Altairus has a frontal cone attack that is very deadly and also slows movement and spell casting by a lot more than Ertan did. Altairus aims that cone at a player, so it's almost impossible to avoid completely. We made two attempts without much success and took a moment to regroup.
There seemed to be no way to avoid the tornadoes, and once you are tossed that first time the odds were high that you would land in range of another tornado and get tossed about like a hot potato until cooked. We had to stay away from each to ensure that only one player at a time was hit by that cone (called "Chilling Breath"). We were also unsure about this "wind thing."
Altairus can change the direction of the wind - either Upwind or Downwind. Players are supposed to be able to tell by watching particles in the air. If those particles are blowing at Wild's back, he is upwind. If they're blowing in his face, he's downwind. Upwind is very good, increasing basically everything - attack speed, movement, spell casting, etc. Downwind is just the opposite - very bad, particularly for the healer.
Wild couldn't see the particles. I had no idea where the wind was coming from. Supposedly there is a "boot" icon that shows up in the debuff icons that is green when upwind and yellow when downwind. I didn't seem to have that indicator, either. The tank wanted wild to move from one side of the dragon to the other depending on the wind direction, while he turned the dragon to face a certain way. It was a nightmare, and we wiped a couple more times. It wasn't all Wild. The tank struggled to get his positioning correct as well, and was once caught in a tornado, flung off the chamber, and one shot. The DPSers were complaining that no matter what they did those tornadoes kept catching them. Most of the challenge fell to Wild, though. I had to get this right or we just wouldn't kill this boss.
We tried twice more, but really didn't get any further and called it quits. Apparently there are a lot of complaints about this fight and it will likely be "adjusted" in the coming patch. But other groups have killed Altairus, so we were pretty disappointed that we could not clear heroic VP.
I went back to the strategy guides for this fight and learned that instead of maneuvering around, it was best if the healer stood in one place and simply turned his body in the direction required to be upwind, moving only enough to avoid tornadoes. Another recommendation was to pan the camera from above to get a better view of the tornado movements, which is a good idea if Wild doesn't have to move. Others said that the view from above was bad because the tornadoes have a hollow center and are hard to see from above. Of course all of those things sound impossible to do for Wild given his struggles with the wind, but perhaps standing in one place would greatly improve my odds of figuring out how to do the rest of it. And if Altairus hits Wild with Chilling Breath there should be no one around me and I can heal through it. I think.
Oh - I just learned one more thing about this fight that seems to kill the idea of the healer standing in one place - if Altairus is between the healer and wind, he blocks the wind and you are then effectively downwind. Sigh. I hate this boss. Seems "upwind" and "downwind" mean diddly. The idea is that Wild has to be in position for the wind to hit him before it hits the dragon - or something like that. Posters explaining strategies contradict themselves in the same post! It's maddening.
As Wild had said after our 4th or 5th attempt: "i r still confuzed." I hope the "fix" in the coming patch addresses some the really frustrating aspects of this fight that have nothing to do with how competent the group is.
A disappointed Wild returned to Orgrimmar to repair and check mail. In his bags Wild discovered that [Biting Wind] had wound up with him. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising. With a warrior, hunter, and rogue in the group Wild and the mage were the only two who had any possible use for it. Wild might have just DEed it, but it had that Heroic tag so Wild had to take a closer look. Oh boy. Wild's staff has 1533 spell power on it. The i346 dagger has 1729. Ok, this is a keeper. But Wild still didn't have an off-hand for it, and in previous looks at the AH Wild never saw a caster piece that he'd want to buy. Wild checked again, though, and this time he came across [Bone-Inlaid Sarcophagus Key]. This i333 off-hand had the spirit the dagger was missing, and with a little reforging would be a nice overall upgrade. And it was far cheaper than Wild would have thought it would be. He bought it.
With an i346 weapon, Wild felt it was time to give it a cata level enchant. The staff had gotten a Wrath +81 spell power enchant, but Wild now had the Heartsong enchant. Heartsong is a proc based enchant. I usually stay away from those since the proc is random and therefore the buff isn't consistently available. Nearly all of the cata level weapon enchants are proc-based, however, so Wild didn't have any choice. Heartsong is spirit based, so it's main benefit is to provide temporary increases in mana regen, which is useful to Wild but not really very sexy. The best overall caster enchant is Power Torrent, which procs increases in spell power. Now that's sexy. Getting the recipe for this spell costs five maelstrom crystals. To make the enchant costs four more crystals. These crystals come from disenchanting i359 and higher gear. Who is DEing i359 gear? Not many, not yet anyway. It was way out of Wild's price range. For now. Wild's gear score is still i338, but Wild now has one more piece of i346 gear. It's progress.
Tuesday (25 Jun) - Dungeon Drums
Tuesday (25 Jun) - Dungeon Drums
Paladin tank Kiren and cat fancier Sista took a bulldozer to the dungeons of Azeroth on Tuesday night. Three other random players joined us from the dungeon finder on each assault, but they were mostly just along for the ride. Who we had with us didn't seem to make much difference in the outcome. Kiren was tank, DPS, and healer all rolled into one. When a healer had severe lag problems and couldn't heal we just kept pounding forward, Sista taking up some of the healing slack until the healer could pick it back up. A couple of times players left the group mid-run. I couldn't imagine why, unless they were shell shocked by the speed of our advance. It didn't seem to matter, and the DF always found us a replacement. The only time we died was during a Gnomeregan run when we all jumped down a floor, and only Kiren was wearing a parachute. Kiren engaged and told the rest of us to hang back. We didn't, and Sista tried to help heal, and all of us died except Kiren. Kiren led in DPS from beginning to end, with Sista behind him in second place except for one run (RFK I think) when she slipped to third.
The places and the numbers got kinda fuzzy after awhile, but I think we ran Scarlet Monastery (SM) Graveyard twice, SM Library once (we were hoping to get that more often, but were at the whim of the DF), Razorfen Kraul once (with a really good group), Gnomeregan once, and Mauradon once - don't recall which side. Kiren, I really want to know how to get that parachute in Gnomeregan. Kitties can survive the fall damage, by why should I have to?
Sista picked up some gear upgrades and leveled from 30 to 33. Kiren leveled from 32 to 34 and got his cat mount by earning Exalted rep with Darnassus. Sista is working on that, too. Sista had also hoped to get a caster weapon for her healing gear set, but despite several opportunities didn't win one. When she hit level 30 Sista dual specced healing, but needs that caster weapon. Oh, and Philly needs to get her some glyphs!
Paladin tank Kiren and cat fancier Sista took a bulldozer to the dungeons of Azeroth on Tuesday night. Three other random players joined us from the dungeon finder on each assault, but they were mostly just along for the ride. Who we had with us didn't seem to make much difference in the outcome. Kiren was tank, DPS, and healer all rolled into one. When a healer had severe lag problems and couldn't heal we just kept pounding forward, Sista taking up some of the healing slack until the healer could pick it back up. A couple of times players left the group mid-run. I couldn't imagine why, unless they were shell shocked by the speed of our advance. It didn't seem to matter, and the DF always found us a replacement. The only time we died was during a Gnomeregan run when we all jumped down a floor, and only Kiren was wearing a parachute. Kiren engaged and told the rest of us to hang back. We didn't, and Sista tried to help heal, and all of us died except Kiren. Kiren led in DPS from beginning to end, with Sista behind him in second place except for one run (RFK I think) when she slipped to third.
The places and the numbers got kinda fuzzy after awhile, but I think we ran Scarlet Monastery (SM) Graveyard twice, SM Library once (we were hoping to get that more often, but were at the whim of the DF), Razorfen Kraul once (with a really good group), Gnomeregan once, and Mauradon once - don't recall which side. Kiren, I really want to know how to get that parachute in Gnomeregan. Kitties can survive the fall damage, by why should I have to?
Sista picked up some gear upgrades and leveled from 30 to 33. Kiren leveled from 32 to 34 and got his cat mount by earning Exalted rep with Darnassus. Sista is working on that, too. Sista had also hoped to get a caster weapon for her healing gear set, but despite several opportunities didn't win one. When she hit level 30 Sista dual specced healing, but needs that caster weapon. Oh, and Philly needs to get her some glyphs!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Weekend (24 Jan) - It's a Quiet One
Weekend (24 Jan) - It's a Quiet One
I was going through some posts on the blog recently when I noticed a couple of comments to them that I had missed. My bad for not responding! After so many years using a forum thread where posts and comments are linear and visible at all times, I still forget that comments to blog posts are tied to a specific post. I gotta work on that.
It's been a quiet weekend for the Wild family. Lots of real life stuff going on. JB has had the most in game time. In fact, JB has fallen in love with her enhancement spec again and picking flowers in Mount Hyjal just isn't doing it for her anymore. JB started taking the long way to herb nodes - the long way being the path that took her through the most mobs she could carve and pummel to death. She also started picking up quests. JB plans to clear Mount Hyjal first, and then hit up Vash'jir.
Early Monday JB DINGED! to level 81.
JB and Lao crossed paths a couple of times over the weekend. At level 77, Lao's pace should have her catching up with JB by next weekend. Then it'll be party time! for the gurrls. On Saturday JB still had three pieces of pre-Cata gear to replace - relic, ring, and trinket. As of now she is down to just one - she needs one more cata trinket. JB prefers to be in full cata gear when she signs up for her first random dungeon. She has the gear score already - ilevel 293 - but doesn't want any Pugger jawing at her for her gear. The main thing that JB needs to get smart about is totem use in dungeons. I know there is a sort of stock four that's used, but there are a lot of buffs that can do what some totems do and shaman need to know all that and adjust totem use as necessary.
Mery was in game for a good while, but only to try and sort out what has become a mess of junk in her bags, and gear that would look old on a level 40. She's level 56. There's no quick fix to that, though. Happy almost swallowed his abacus when he saw what plain green gear cost on the AH. The prices are completely insane. She won't get much in game time, though, not with Wild, JB, and Sista sucking up the hours. Maybe I should just say Wild and JB, since Sista hasn't seen action since last week.
Wild has his new cata-level enchanting rod, [Runed Elementium Rod] and is at 520/525 skill. Almost maxed out. And then Wild will start working on his tailoring. Although, Wild may be re-thinking that profession. Since we now have that new ability which makes wearing cloth a no-no for leather wearing Wild, Wild can't take advantage of all that nice cloth gear he could make. On the other hand it's nice to be able to make the spellthread enchants for his leg gear, and the big enchants on his rings are nice as well.
Things should start to get a little more exciting as the week gets going good.
Oh, but there was a little pvp news over the weekend, courtesy of the DER and Lao families:
"Kire was in game, Unbleached came in game, we tried to pvp together, Kire queued up, but only for myself but didn’t figure that out until I was already in WSG alone. Then Unbleached invited me to a group and queued us for AB, but only so I could take it then she could requeue us for WSG. It took about 10 minutes of getting pounded in WSG to get AB to pop, then joined AB and were rolling it over when we WSG popped. I joined the new WSG which was supposed to be with Unbleached only to discover she wasn’t there as she got DC’ed in the process of accepting the bg. I ended up running in the WSG alone again with the horde just steam rolling alliance then had to log. It was a crappy time! We were in game together trying to pvp for 30+ minutes and never actually got to play together… Unbleached lucked out though as horde were owning WSG."
And gratz to Daethbot who has gone leveling crazy, ripping his way from level 42 to level 56 in just a few days. Over-powered 'locks! :P
I was going through some posts on the blog recently when I noticed a couple of comments to them that I had missed. My bad for not responding! After so many years using a forum thread where posts and comments are linear and visible at all times, I still forget that comments to blog posts are tied to a specific post. I gotta work on that.
It's been a quiet weekend for the Wild family. Lots of real life stuff going on. JB has had the most in game time. In fact, JB has fallen in love with her enhancement spec again and picking flowers in Mount Hyjal just isn't doing it for her anymore. JB started taking the long way to herb nodes - the long way being the path that took her through the most mobs she could carve and pummel to death. She also started picking up quests. JB plans to clear Mount Hyjal first, and then hit up Vash'jir.
Early Monday JB DINGED! to level 81.
JB and Lao crossed paths a couple of times over the weekend. At level 77, Lao's pace should have her catching up with JB by next weekend. Then it'll be party time! for the gurrls. On Saturday JB still had three pieces of pre-Cata gear to replace - relic, ring, and trinket. As of now she is down to just one - she needs one more cata trinket. JB prefers to be in full cata gear when she signs up for her first random dungeon. She has the gear score already - ilevel 293 - but doesn't want any Pugger jawing at her for her gear. The main thing that JB needs to get smart about is totem use in dungeons. I know there is a sort of stock four that's used, but there are a lot of buffs that can do what some totems do and shaman need to know all that and adjust totem use as necessary.
Mery was in game for a good while, but only to try and sort out what has become a mess of junk in her bags, and gear that would look old on a level 40. She's level 56. There's no quick fix to that, though. Happy almost swallowed his abacus when he saw what plain green gear cost on the AH. The prices are completely insane. She won't get much in game time, though, not with Wild, JB, and Sista sucking up the hours. Maybe I should just say Wild and JB, since Sista hasn't seen action since last week.
Wild has his new cata-level enchanting rod, [Runed Elementium Rod] and is at 520/525 skill. Almost maxed out. And then Wild will start working on his tailoring. Although, Wild may be re-thinking that profession. Since we now have that new ability which makes wearing cloth a no-no for leather wearing Wild, Wild can't take advantage of all that nice cloth gear he could make. On the other hand it's nice to be able to make the spellthread enchants for his leg gear, and the big enchants on his rings are nice as well.
Things should start to get a little more exciting as the week gets going good.
Oh, but there was a little pvp news over the weekend, courtesy of the DER and Lao families:
"Kire was in game, Unbleached came in game, we tried to pvp together, Kire queued up, but only for myself but didn’t figure that out until I was already in WSG alone. Then Unbleached invited me to a group and queued us for AB, but only so I could take it then she could requeue us for WSG. It took about 10 minutes of getting pounded in WSG to get AB to pop, then joined AB and were rolling it over when we WSG popped. I joined the new WSG which was supposed to be with Unbleached only to discover she wasn’t there as she got DC’ed in the process of accepting the bg. I ended up running in the WSG alone again with the horde just steam rolling alliance then had to log. It was a crappy time! We were in game together trying to pvp for 30+ minutes and never actually got to play together… Unbleached lucked out though as horde were owning WSG."
And gratz to Daethbot who has gone leveling crazy, ripping his way from level 42 to level 56 in just a few days. Over-powered 'locks! :P
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday (20 Jan) - The Bastion of Twilight
Thursday (20 Jan) - The Bastion of Twilight
Wow - I forgot all about this post!
On Thursday afternoon the raid leader for G2 decided to make Wed/Thurs the G2 raid nights each week. He put up a calendar event for the same day, which Wild was lucky enough to see and sign up for. Not many others did, though. When Wild logged in at about 5:50pm there were only six guildies signed up for the run.
It was closer to 7pm than 6pm when we finally got a full raid together. We had Wild as the main healer backed by two healers with below recommended gear scores. One was Ch, the priest denied a spot in the BH raid the night before but pressed into service for tonight's run. She was ecstatic. The other healer was a druid, Sb, I haven't run with before. She has a bubbly personality and if she raids regularly is going to add a lot of flare to our already eccentric group of raiders. Her gear score was even lower than Ch's.
Gear score didn't matter so much, since the plan was to see how we did against trash mobs, not bosses. The destination was the Bastion of Twilight (BT) in Uldum. Bd assured us that there were a lot of trash mobs, and that they sometimes dropped BOE gear (i359 gear!). The longest wait was to find a second tank. When Fn popped in game "for just a moment" he was ninja invited into our raid. He didn't mind.
Wild was teleported directly into BT by the warlock in the raid, but I would learn that the instance portal for BT is at the very top of a very high, slender tower.
Our first view of the inside of the place was the main chamber, which was large enough to host a major league baseball game. In front of us stood five mobs guarding against further intrusion. Behind that phalanx of mobs - 4 level 85 elites and a massive level 87 elite - were three more ranks of marching mobs. To the left and to the right were two additional raised platforms (4 total), each of which were surrounded by eight more elites. The mobs at the platforms were channeling into a fiery ball that floated in the air at the middle of each platform. Our group was stunned into silence. Wild thought about the Blackwing Descent raid we attempted last week, and couldn't survive two trash mobs. And we are going to take on this army? For any army is what it was.
The raid leader assigned crowd control - we had a mage, a hunter, and a shadow priest, so Wild wasn't needed for cc. We had to wait for the marching ranks of mobs to be on the farther side of the chamber before we started the pull.
When we pulled the hunter trap didn't trip and we had three mobs on us instead of two. The big level 87 was Iced, though, as was one of the casters. At least we thought it was a caster - we weren't sure. It was a spirited fight. When it was over two raiders were dead, but so were all five mobs. "Hey, we got this!" someone said, relief in his voice.
The next pull was a lot trickier. The three marching rows of mobs stopped and turned at different times and most of the time we could not pull without aggroing at least two rows. Ten mobs seemed a little out of our league, so we just stood and studied the pattern of movement for a few minutes. Sure enough, a pattern emerged and we saw that there were short moments when we could pull a single group of five.
That pull self destructed when the three CCers miss-timed the pull and we got two rows of mobs.
"Out! Out!" called the raid leader. Wild didn't wait for the second "Out!" Wild shifted to cat form, hit Dash, and raced out of the instance, just ahead of a small armada of angry trash mobs. Four raiders died.
We rezzed, buffed, and then watched the pattern some more. There are only a very few seconds to engage when only one row of mobs are in aggro range. The CCers were ordered forward, and this time only one group of mobs aggroed. We brought all five down this time without a death. A BOE agility dagger dropped. Someone got a nice prize.
We had another "run away" pull when we successfully pulled one marching group, but also aggroed the nearest platform (with the 8 additional mobs) on our left. Nobody had to be told a second time to evac and all escaped out of the instance that time. So we had a "Hmmm" moment, reassessed, and decided to pull the platform mobs first, since the marching mobs came too close to the platform.
To set up the platform pull, I have to explain that our warlock, Es, is a crazy fellow who enjoys tempting death and often gets exactly that. He'd already fallen off a platform into a lava pit - just to see if he could survive it. He didn't. He pushed the limits of closeness to mobs to understand when they would aggro. He discovered that if he got too close to a platform the fiery ball over that platform would nail him with an arching beam of fire. That beam stayed on him until he got all the way back to the raid. He survived it, so in between attempts he would literally play with the beam, engaging it and then escaping it. He never died doing it, either.
So, for our platform pull we had the lock run up to the targeted platform and pull all eight mobs back to us. It worked. There was a scary moment to think - 8 mobs! But the mobs were all casters and fairly squishy. They went down so fast no cc was necessary.
Now that we had the measure of the trash mobs, we made short work of the rest of the mobs in the chamber. This wasn't so bad after all. We moved to the opposite side of the main chamber, made a right turn, and got our first look at an even larger open air platform. The boss here is Halfus Wyrmbreaker, an ettin whose job is to enslave dragons. He has his own dragon companion, and three additional dragons with special abilities that we have some control over how they are engaged.
We weren't planning on doing a raid boss, but since we're here ... after more than ten minutes of reading and discussing, we still had only the vaguest idea how to do this fight. At a very low level of understanding, the concept of a strat was to tank Halfus and his pet dragon. Talk to one of the three other dragons to gain special abilities (and add some abilities to Halfus). Then kill the dragon. Move on to another dragon. Then . . . well, who cares? We never got past the "talk to one of the three other dragons." We wiped six times in less than 45 seconds each and every time. Our "best" attempt, which I use loosely, was to get the one dragon we talked to down to 74% health. We had raid wide damage from a Halfus Roar of more than 28k damage that included a knockback. Halfus Roared every second. Yes, it could be interrupted, but not easily. Bottom line - we couldn't stop the Roar consistently, so we consistently died.
Welcome once again to Cata raiding. We'll be killing ourselves twice weekly now. And of course Wild loved every minute.
As an after thought, Wild is having to reassess how he views the recount healing meters in raids.
In Baradin Hold the three healers were all decently geared, although Wild was less geared than the other two. Wild finished third in healing, which could be expected, but I wasn't just third; Wild lagged quite far behind the other two in hps and total healing. In talking with the tank Bd about it (he has a level 85 druid alt), he saw no problems with Wild's healing. "You kept me alive all the way to the enrage timer, right?" Right. "You were able to heal through the big boss AoE when it hit, right?" Right. "So, no problems." Yes, he was right that Wild healed sufficiently and efficiently. It's hard not to look at the numbers, though.
In the BT raid Wild clearly had the best healing gear. The dungeon finder would have denied both Ch and Sb access to heroics, much less a raid. The numbers told a different story. Wild and Sb had far higher healing numbers than Ch. So, maybe that's a class difference as well as a gear difference. Yet Sb, she of the ilevel 319 gear score, had a healthy lead over Wild. How could that be?
Wild compared spell usage between Wild and Sb. The reason was obvious. Sb was spamming rejuv across the raid, a raid that was taking constant and massive damage. I won't say she was ignoring the tank she was responsible for, but she certainly used a lot of GCDs raid healing that could have been used to prolong her tank's life. Ch was the raid healer, not Sb. Wild's tank, Bd, survived longer with Wild making him his first priority. This is not a good example to use since we were all in emergency healing mode from the instant we started a pull. But it does show that how you heal is more important that how much you heal. That was not really true in WotLK, but it is absolutely true in Cata.
Wow - I forgot all about this post!
On Thursday afternoon the raid leader for G2 decided to make Wed/Thurs the G2 raid nights each week. He put up a calendar event for the same day, which Wild was lucky enough to see and sign up for. Not many others did, though. When Wild logged in at about 5:50pm there were only six guildies signed up for the run.
It was closer to 7pm than 6pm when we finally got a full raid together. We had Wild as the main healer backed by two healers with below recommended gear scores. One was Ch, the priest denied a spot in the BH raid the night before but pressed into service for tonight's run. She was ecstatic. The other healer was a druid, Sb, I haven't run with before. She has a bubbly personality and if she raids regularly is going to add a lot of flare to our already eccentric group of raiders. Her gear score was even lower than Ch's.
Gear score didn't matter so much, since the plan was to see how we did against trash mobs, not bosses. The destination was the Bastion of Twilight (BT) in Uldum. Bd assured us that there were a lot of trash mobs, and that they sometimes dropped BOE gear (i359 gear!). The longest wait was to find a second tank. When Fn popped in game "for just a moment" he was ninja invited into our raid. He didn't mind.
Wild was teleported directly into BT by the warlock in the raid, but I would learn that the instance portal for BT is at the very top of a very high, slender tower.
Our first view of the inside of the place was the main chamber, which was large enough to host a major league baseball game. In front of us stood five mobs guarding against further intrusion. Behind that phalanx of mobs - 4 level 85 elites and a massive level 87 elite - were three more ranks of marching mobs. To the left and to the right were two additional raised platforms (4 total), each of which were surrounded by eight more elites. The mobs at the platforms were channeling into a fiery ball that floated in the air at the middle of each platform. Our group was stunned into silence. Wild thought about the Blackwing Descent raid we attempted last week, and couldn't survive two trash mobs. And we are going to take on this army? For any army is what it was.
The raid leader assigned crowd control - we had a mage, a hunter, and a shadow priest, so Wild wasn't needed for cc. We had to wait for the marching ranks of mobs to be on the farther side of the chamber before we started the pull.
When we pulled the hunter trap didn't trip and we had three mobs on us instead of two. The big level 87 was Iced, though, as was one of the casters. At least we thought it was a caster - we weren't sure. It was a spirited fight. When it was over two raiders were dead, but so were all five mobs. "Hey, we got this!" someone said, relief in his voice.
The next pull was a lot trickier. The three marching rows of mobs stopped and turned at different times and most of the time we could not pull without aggroing at least two rows. Ten mobs seemed a little out of our league, so we just stood and studied the pattern of movement for a few minutes. Sure enough, a pattern emerged and we saw that there were short moments when we could pull a single group of five.
That pull self destructed when the three CCers miss-timed the pull and we got two rows of mobs.
"Out! Out!" called the raid leader. Wild didn't wait for the second "Out!" Wild shifted to cat form, hit Dash, and raced out of the instance, just ahead of a small armada of angry trash mobs. Four raiders died.
We rezzed, buffed, and then watched the pattern some more. There are only a very few seconds to engage when only one row of mobs are in aggro range. The CCers were ordered forward, and this time only one group of mobs aggroed. We brought all five down this time without a death. A BOE agility dagger dropped. Someone got a nice prize.
We had another "run away" pull when we successfully pulled one marching group, but also aggroed the nearest platform (with the 8 additional mobs) on our left. Nobody had to be told a second time to evac and all escaped out of the instance that time. So we had a "Hmmm" moment, reassessed, and decided to pull the platform mobs first, since the marching mobs came too close to the platform.
To set up the platform pull, I have to explain that our warlock, Es, is a crazy fellow who enjoys tempting death and often gets exactly that. He'd already fallen off a platform into a lava pit - just to see if he could survive it. He didn't. He pushed the limits of closeness to mobs to understand when they would aggro. He discovered that if he got too close to a platform the fiery ball over that platform would nail him with an arching beam of fire. That beam stayed on him until he got all the way back to the raid. He survived it, so in between attempts he would literally play with the beam, engaging it and then escaping it. He never died doing it, either.
So, for our platform pull we had the lock run up to the targeted platform and pull all eight mobs back to us. It worked. There was a scary moment to think - 8 mobs! But the mobs were all casters and fairly squishy. They went down so fast no cc was necessary.
Now that we had the measure of the trash mobs, we made short work of the rest of the mobs in the chamber. This wasn't so bad after all. We moved to the opposite side of the main chamber, made a right turn, and got our first look at an even larger open air platform. The boss here is Halfus Wyrmbreaker, an ettin whose job is to enslave dragons. He has his own dragon companion, and three additional dragons with special abilities that we have some control over how they are engaged.
We weren't planning on doing a raid boss, but since we're here ... after more than ten minutes of reading and discussing, we still had only the vaguest idea how to do this fight. At a very low level of understanding, the concept of a strat was to tank Halfus and his pet dragon. Talk to one of the three other dragons to gain special abilities (and add some abilities to Halfus). Then kill the dragon. Move on to another dragon. Then . . . well, who cares? We never got past the "talk to one of the three other dragons." We wiped six times in less than 45 seconds each and every time. Our "best" attempt, which I use loosely, was to get the one dragon we talked to down to 74% health. We had raid wide damage from a Halfus Roar of more than 28k damage that included a knockback. Halfus Roared every second. Yes, it could be interrupted, but not easily. Bottom line - we couldn't stop the Roar consistently, so we consistently died.
Welcome once again to Cata raiding. We'll be killing ourselves twice weekly now. And of course Wild loved every minute.
As an after thought, Wild is having to reassess how he views the recount healing meters in raids.
In Baradin Hold the three healers were all decently geared, although Wild was less geared than the other two. Wild finished third in healing, which could be expected, but I wasn't just third; Wild lagged quite far behind the other two in hps and total healing. In talking with the tank Bd about it (he has a level 85 druid alt), he saw no problems with Wild's healing. "You kept me alive all the way to the enrage timer, right?" Right. "You were able to heal through the big boss AoE when it hit, right?" Right. "So, no problems." Yes, he was right that Wild healed sufficiently and efficiently. It's hard not to look at the numbers, though.
In the BT raid Wild clearly had the best healing gear. The dungeon finder would have denied both Ch and Sb access to heroics, much less a raid. The numbers told a different story. Wild and Sb had far higher healing numbers than Ch. So, maybe that's a class difference as well as a gear difference. Yet Sb, she of the ilevel 319 gear score, had a healthy lead over Wild. How could that be?
Wild compared spell usage between Wild and Sb. The reason was obvious. Sb was spamming rejuv across the raid, a raid that was taking constant and massive damage. I won't say she was ignoring the tank she was responsible for, but she certainly used a lot of GCDs raid healing that could have been used to prolong her tank's life. Ch was the raid healer, not Sb. Wild's tank, Bd, survived longer with Wild making him his first priority. This is not a good example to use since we were all in emergency healing mode from the instant we started a pull. But it does show that how you heal is more important that how much you heal. That was not really true in WotLK, but it is absolutely true in Cata.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Wednesday (19 Jan) - Baradin Hold Again
Wednesday (19 Jan) - Baradin Hold Again
This is part 2 of Wednesday night.
Before getting into the Baradin Hold run, there was a follow up dungeon run after we finished Abyssal Maw. Fn had asked if we wanted to do another heroic, but the other four of us begged off. It was already past 10:30pm and another two hours plus in a heroic - no. Wild needed to decompress.
Wild cleaned up from the run. He paid a staggering 125g for a red +40 int gem to socket his new slippers with (Philly, get cracking on that jewelcrafting!), enchanted them, and toyed with his [Sea Star] to see if I could make the +spi trinket work. I couldn't, other than add it to Wild's "spi" config when I wanted to max regen at the expense of everything else. Before Wild could slip away, though, Bd whispered Wild that he was doing a normal dungeon run to help some guildies gear up for heroics. Bd thought Philly might want to come, and was disappointed that Philly was still a level 80. Wild knows how hard it can be to get normal runs together to gear up so Wild volunteered to heal, tired as I was. Bd sent an invite.
We tried to use the DF, but discovered that the gear the death knight in our group was wearing didn't measure up to even to the minimum standards of normal dungeons - i272. That didn't stop us, though, and Bd wouldn't let the DK back out, though he tried to. I think he was worried that he would embarrass himself. We decided to give the level 85 dungeon Lost City of the Tol'vir (LCT) a try (I think just because Bd likes that place). Two guildies traveled there in person, and Summoned the rest of us, including the DK. Screw the DF, we were doing this dungeon.
We set up for our first group of mobs, and brought them down without any serious problems. This is normal mode, of course.
However, the DK, probably as worried about his performance in a normal dungeon as Wild was in his first heroic run, excitedly called out to Wild, "Wow, great healing, Wild! I'm still alive!" The Dk was sure he would be dead after every pull.
The rest of the run was actually relaxing for Wild. Of course you still have to pay attention, but in all it's a pretty easy jaunt and Wild has been here a few times already. I think all three of the DPSers got gear, and even Bd picked up a ring he'd been wanting to get. Wild knew there wasn't anything he needed in this dungeon, but since it was level 85 Wild did get Dragonmaw rep for doing it. Oh, and that DK? He finished at the top in total damage despite his gear. Gear ain't everything.
Ok, so I'm finally getting to the Baradin Hold run, which was actually the first thing we did on Wednesday night. There were a number of surprises for Wild. It was only Wild's second time in BH. The guild has not killed the lone boss yet. We were having trouble getting a third healer. Bd had wasted no time bringing Wild in, and then brought a guildie pally that Wild has healed with many times. As mentioned in the previous post, our priest Ch also wanted to go, but Bd didn't feel that she was geared well enough (i330). That gave Wild a little twinge, knowing that he had been held out of a raid for that very reason in the past.
Wild got busy getting ready and I didn't notice who our third healer was until he whispered Wild for a healing assignment. The third healer was Mg, a very good healer with FS that Wild had raided with forever when with FS. Wild knew that FS was far ahead of MM raid-wise, and that Mg (i347 and wearing 8 heroics) would be way better geared than Wild (i336 before the heroics run). Mg also has a BH kill under his belt. Wild was liking our chances in BH. Bd likes Wild to be his healer, so I assigned Mg to the other tank, Fn. The paladin would raid heal and help with the dispelling that is so critical to this battle.
It's a pretty simple fight from a mechanics perspective. We split into two groups, each with a tank and a healer, and when the fight started we took up positions on either side of the room away from each other. The group healers were also responsible for debuffing stuff in our group as well as healing. In last week's run we never got past phase 1.
We started. Fn tanked first, and then the two tanks switched off. The switch did not go well and when that happens the raid takes tremendous damage. A tank died and we wiped inside the first minute of combat.
After that wake up call, we pressed harder and things started happening. On our second attempt we got the boss down to 61%, by far our best attempt. On our third attempt we passed phase 1 and into phase 2. In Phase 1 the only nobody has to move. In phase two we get fireballs from the sky and had to stay on the move constantly to minimize the hits. We got the boss to 34%.
4th attempt: 30%
5th attempt: 22%
The raid wiped on the 4th and 5th attempts because we hit the enrage timer both times. The raid leader felt that we just didn't have the DPS yet that it would take to finish the boss before we hit enrage. It seems the tanks now have the mechanics down, and the healing was good enough for a win, but we just need some more pew pew. We called the raid, but we are now pretty confident that this boss is going to go down, and go down soon.
This is part 2 of Wednesday night.
Before getting into the Baradin Hold run, there was a follow up dungeon run after we finished Abyssal Maw. Fn had asked if we wanted to do another heroic, but the other four of us begged off. It was already past 10:30pm and another two hours plus in a heroic - no. Wild needed to decompress.
Wild cleaned up from the run. He paid a staggering 125g for a red +40 int gem to socket his new slippers with (Philly, get cracking on that jewelcrafting!), enchanted them, and toyed with his [Sea Star] to see if I could make the +spi trinket work. I couldn't, other than add it to Wild's "spi" config when I wanted to max regen at the expense of everything else. Before Wild could slip away, though, Bd whispered Wild that he was doing a normal dungeon run to help some guildies gear up for heroics. Bd thought Philly might want to come, and was disappointed that Philly was still a level 80. Wild knows how hard it can be to get normal runs together to gear up so Wild volunteered to heal, tired as I was. Bd sent an invite.
We tried to use the DF, but discovered that the gear the death knight in our group was wearing didn't measure up to even to the minimum standards of normal dungeons - i272. That didn't stop us, though, and Bd wouldn't let the DK back out, though he tried to. I think he was worried that he would embarrass himself. We decided to give the level 85 dungeon Lost City of the Tol'vir (LCT) a try (I think just because Bd likes that place). Two guildies traveled there in person, and Summoned the rest of us, including the DK. Screw the DF, we were doing this dungeon.
We set up for our first group of mobs, and brought them down without any serious problems. This is normal mode, of course.
However, the DK, probably as worried about his performance in a normal dungeon as Wild was in his first heroic run, excitedly called out to Wild, "Wow, great healing, Wild! I'm still alive!" The Dk was sure he would be dead after every pull.
The rest of the run was actually relaxing for Wild. Of course you still have to pay attention, but in all it's a pretty easy jaunt and Wild has been here a few times already. I think all three of the DPSers got gear, and even Bd picked up a ring he'd been wanting to get. Wild knew there wasn't anything he needed in this dungeon, but since it was level 85 Wild did get Dragonmaw rep for doing it. Oh, and that DK? He finished at the top in total damage despite his gear. Gear ain't everything.
Ok, so I'm finally getting to the Baradin Hold run, which was actually the first thing we did on Wednesday night. There were a number of surprises for Wild. It was only Wild's second time in BH. The guild has not killed the lone boss yet. We were having trouble getting a third healer. Bd had wasted no time bringing Wild in, and then brought a guildie pally that Wild has healed with many times. As mentioned in the previous post, our priest Ch also wanted to go, but Bd didn't feel that she was geared well enough (i330). That gave Wild a little twinge, knowing that he had been held out of a raid for that very reason in the past.
Wild got busy getting ready and I didn't notice who our third healer was until he whispered Wild for a healing assignment. The third healer was Mg, a very good healer with FS that Wild had raided with forever when with FS. Wild knew that FS was far ahead of MM raid-wise, and that Mg (i347 and wearing 8 heroics) would be way better geared than Wild (i336 before the heroics run). Mg also has a BH kill under his belt. Wild was liking our chances in BH. Bd likes Wild to be his healer, so I assigned Mg to the other tank, Fn. The paladin would raid heal and help with the dispelling that is so critical to this battle.
It's a pretty simple fight from a mechanics perspective. We split into two groups, each with a tank and a healer, and when the fight started we took up positions on either side of the room away from each other. The group healers were also responsible for debuffing stuff in our group as well as healing. In last week's run we never got past phase 1.
We started. Fn tanked first, and then the two tanks switched off. The switch did not go well and when that happens the raid takes tremendous damage. A tank died and we wiped inside the first minute of combat.
After that wake up call, we pressed harder and things started happening. On our second attempt we got the boss down to 61%, by far our best attempt. On our third attempt we passed phase 1 and into phase 2. In Phase 1 the only nobody has to move. In phase two we get fireballs from the sky and had to stay on the move constantly to minimize the hits. We got the boss to 34%.
4th attempt: 30%
5th attempt: 22%
The raid wiped on the 4th and 5th attempts because we hit the enrage timer both times. The raid leader felt that we just didn't have the DPS yet that it would take to finish the boss before we hit enrage. It seems the tanks now have the mechanics down, and the healing was good enough for a win, but we just need some more pew pew. We called the raid, but we are now pretty confident that this boss is going to go down, and go down soon.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday (19 Jan) - BRUTAL is the Word: Cata Heroics
Wednesday (19 Jan) - BRUTAL is the Word: Cata Heroics
Wildshard was beaten black and blue on Wednesday night. The assault took place in Abyssal Maw: Throne of the Tides (AM). Way back on Cata launch day, Wild, Bd, and other guildie friends had cleared normal AM. It was an awesome experience and it seemed oh so appropriate that this dungeon would mark Wild's first foray into Cata Heroics.
That said, "Awesome" is not how Wild would characterize his first exposure to Cata Heroics.
AM is part of an underground grotto deep in the sea. It's home to a large variety of naga as well as minions of the Old Gods. It's a beautiful place, actually. Plants of every description blanket the area in a riot of exuberant color. There is even a passageway where the walls are transparent and you can watch the sea life outside, just like in an aquarium. Although in this case it was us who were the exhibit.
We had just completed a run in Baradin Hold (which I'll report on later) and the two tanks from the BH run were sorting out who wanted to do heroics and how to divide up those who did. Wild has raided with both tanks extensively, but I was hoping to get my first Cata heroic exposure with Bd as the tank. That wasn't how it worked out, though. One of our regular G2 healers, the priest Ch, only recently made it to level 85 and, despite her desperate wish to join us in Baradin Hold, was held out because she just didn't have the gear to do it. So Bd promised her he'd invite her to heal heroics once we finished BH.
The other tank, Fn (a paladin), asked Wild if I wanted to heal for him, and of course Wild said yes. The other three in the group were a hunter, a mage, and a warrior. Wild only knew them vaguely and had only grouped with them a couple of times before. Once we were all grouped up, Fn asked us if we wanted to use the dungeon finder or pick a particular dungeon. The advantage of the dungeon finder is that completing the dungeon would earn us Valor points, of which Wild had exactly zero. The potential downside was that Fn had not yet tanked all of the dungeons and there was a chance we'd get a dungeon that he wasn't familiar with. We split the difference, deciding to try the dungeon finder (DF) and if we didn't get what we wanted we could back out and try again, or select a specific one. The DF is pretty fussy, and for higher ilevel groups tends to give them the level 85 dungeons; while lower ilevel groups tend to get the 80-84 level dungeons.
The DF gave us AM, which is an 80-81 level dungeon on normal. Of course, all dungeons on Heroic are 85 only, but it gave us one inkling about what the DF thought of our gear levels. Wild was at i336 and just over 100k health. The tank was at i340 and he had a bit over 133k health (unbuffed, of course). Let's just say we didn't impress the DF.
There are three boss encounters in AM, although on one of them there are two bosses, so technically there are four bosses. There are endless corridors in AM, and at every fork, and every twist and turn, there are mobs. Lots of mobs. Packs of five mobs were common.
We zoned in to AM, appearing in a circular chamber full of shallow water. A low, wide set of steps led up out of the water, inviting us into a corridor. A pack of five mobs greeted us as our first challenge once we were inside.
The tank asked another raider to do the marking because he was having UI issues with Marking. In addition to marking two mobs to be attacked first (always labeled with a "skull" for the first to be attacked, and then "X" as the second mob to be attacked after "skull" was killed) we also marked crowd control (CC). Those marks aren't as standardized, particularly since cc was little used during WotLK and players just aren't used to doing it. Wild was assigned the "Star" mark, which meant that Wild would have cc duty on any mob tagged with a star. Wild's experience with using Hibernate in BH the week before was pretty cool - even though the mob turned out to be immune to it and killed Wild for even trying it. Wild would be using Roots on his star target, and hoped it would work a lot better than Hibernate had.
Wild had buffed himself with savage sagefish (+90 int/sta food, better than the group level food the guild currently had access to, which was +60 stats) and used a pre-Cata Frost Wyrm healing flask since the Cata level flasks still cost almost 300g each (vs 15-20g each for frost wyrm, and which JB can make).
It was 8:24pm. We engaged.
It was a disaster. Ok, so Wild's Roots did work on his target. So did the Ice cc on another target. The trap set by the hunter was ignored by a third mob, so we had three mobs on us in a hurry. The tank's health dropped like he was emptying it with a fire hose. The fury warrior died while Wild was still desperately trying to save the tank. Wild's rooted target broke free, swept in and savagely attacked Wild before I could get another Roots off. It took us about 15 seconds to wipe.
"That went well," said our tank, as we were rezzing at the graveyard. Wild was having a bit of a confidence problem. I told the group that this was Wild's very first Heroic and that I wasn't sure wasn't sure if I had the gear to be in here.
Now remember that while Wild has raided with Fn many times, this was the first time I had grouped with him in a five man. I wasn't sure how he would react. What Wild got was welcoming comments from all of the other guildies and assurance from Fn that no one in the group was "experienced" in Heroics. Wiping was not an aberration - it happened all the time. Feeling much, much better, we set up and went after the group again. We had managed to kill one of the mobs on that first attempt, and with now four to deal with we took them down without anyone dying. Wild was still a bit shell shocked at how ferocious the damage against the tank was. I might need to buy me a backup keyboard given how hard and fast I was pounding on it.
We faced more mob groups, and they were no easier than the first group. Every pack required maximum crowd control. DPSers had to focus fire the Marked targets as we could not survive that many attackers for long and needed to bring at least one or two down very quickly. The tank had to pick up all loose mobs so the DPS and healers could do their job without a mob in our face, and the healer - keep the tank alive ... keep the tank alive.
We had been pushing forward in a straight line down the corridor we had entered at the entrance. We came upon a cross passage and continued past it to a circular chamber where Lady Naz'jir waited. Our first boss. I had spent some time earlier in the day jotting down a few notes on the cata bosses in each dungeon. The two pages of notes, unfortunately, weren't much use to me because I hadn't made it easy to find the information. I think I'm going to try 3x5 cards next. No one else was all that familiar with the boss mechanics, though, so one of the guildies read us the main points over vent. There were things to avoid, plus a geyser that would throw us around, and a Waterspout that pretty much makes Naz'jir un-hittable while she spawns an army of mobs to plague us. She also has a water cannon she can torment us with.
I think we wiped five times. I started counting such things, but I quickly decided that counting wipes was going to soon become pretty depressing. I decided to count boss kills, instead.
We got our first, killing Naz'jir.
After the first boss kill there is a fascinating cut scene that is kind of shocking the first time you see it. Fn assured Wild that what I was seeing was normal, which I appreciated even though I did remember it from that first normal run so many weeks ago now.
Ok, Wild is going to be giving directions, and everyone knows how that works out, so take them with a bag full of salt.
Once Naz'jir was dead we backtracked a short distance to that cross passage we had passed. The center was actually an open elevator, and it took us to an upper floor where Commander Ulthok waited. Our second boss. Had Wild not been so intense and focused on the fight, he might have even had a little fun with this fight. Ulthock's specialty is slamming players with a huge smash that not only does something like 65,000 damage (which would be more than half Wild's total health), it also leaves a void zone on the ground that is a quick death to stand in. Then, just for giggles, Ulthok will pick up random players, toss them around, and then drop them, usually into a void zone.
By now Wild had taken on the role of deciding when we were ready to go. That's because after every battle, whether a boss attempt or a trash mob group, Wild had to rez the dead, heal the survivors, rebuff, eat another savage sagefish if Wild had been among the dead that time, and drink to fill his mana bar. I've read a lot of posts about DPSers and tanks who kick healers in heroics because they have to stop and drink between fights to restore mana. Let me say that if Wild ever does a PUG heroic and I get kicked for that reason, I'd say good riddance to a bad group. Wild needed to drink between almost every fight. And our group was fine with that, and patient. They waited on Wild to give the word that he and the group was buffed, topped off, and ready.
We engaged Ulthok. It started well, and Wild was finding a bit of a rhythm - a frantic, heart-pounding rhythm, but a rhythm nonetheless. What we were surprised by was how often Ulthok did his Slam (crushing half the life out of a player that Wild had to get heals on) and how fast the pools of void zones expanded, leaving us less and less real estate to stand on safely. We were overwhelmed and wiped.
On our second attempt we went at him a long time, to the point that there was nothing left but small islands of safe places to stand, and players had to run through voids to get to those safe spots. Wild had run out of mana pots (gotta remember to buy a bunch more) and had already used his innervate. Wild likes to use the term "healing on fumes," meaning that my mana was gone and I was healing only when regen delivered enough mana to cast a spell or I got a clearcasting proc. Wild was picked up by Ulthok using Squeeze, which ate away at Wild's health and then dropped me - on the one safe spot in an ocean of void zones. Fn actually cheered when he saw that the near dead Wild hadn't been deposited somewhere that would have finished me off. Fn had survived on his cooldowns, and the six seconds in the grasp of Ulthok had regened some mana for Wild, and we held on just long enough for the DPS to finish off the boss. Wow. Two attempts. I felt like I do when we bring a raid boss down the first time in fewer attempts than we were expecting.
We went back to the lower floor and took one of the side passages to the next boss - or boss pair to be exact - Erunak Stonespeaker and Mindbender Ghur'sha. This is a two phase fight, with Erunak in play for phase one, and Ghur'sha in phase 2. This encounter gave Wild all kinds of trouble.
Wild had to remember to debuff emberstrike off the tank, which deals additional damage with each hit. Wild had to remember to stand behind the boss at all times to avoid a particularly deadly belch of fire Erunak coughs up in a frontal cone. The hardest thing, though, was to do those things while avoiding earth shards, which are spikes erupting from the ground. Wild's problem was that he was having a terrible time seeing the small line in the sand that showed the direction the spikes were heading before they erupted. It didn't help that the spikes seemed to LOVE Wild. Other players started avoiding their healer because those spikes seemed permanently aimed at Wild no matter where I was standing. All that movement would also inevitably place Wild in the line of Erunak's belches or take him out of line of sight of the tank. Of course Wild wasn't the only player having troubles, and we wiped several times.
We finally got Erunak down to 50%, and Ghur'sha dropped off of Erunak to start phase 2. Ghur'sha is a small octopus like thing. Don't underestimate it. Ghur'sha exudes an unavoidable AoE that Wild has to heal the group through constantly. Ghur'sha then enslaved a player by leaping onto his head (the graphic is quite disturbing) and began buffing them while mind controlling them to attack the rest of us. DPSers have to burn the player down to 50% health to force Ghur'sha off the player's head. If thirty seconds pass before getting the player to 50%, Ghur'sha kills him and picks another target. There a many other things to deal with such as clouds of deadly fog, and two pillars that can help on line of sight issues, but to Wild the pillars just kept getting in the way of his healing. If I had been counting wipes I would have soon lost count of them.
But after an interminable amount of time and deaths we finished them off. [Decapod Slippers] dropped. "Slippers' usually means cloth, so Wild almost missed that this was leather caster gear. Wild was the only leather wearer in the group. Wild got his first piece of Cata heroic gear. The i346 slippers replace an i333 piece. Unlike WotLK heroic gear, Wild really appreciated the effort that went into winning that "Heroic" tag on those slippers.
The final boss in AM is Ozumat. Getting to him, though, required running a gauntlet of mobs. Our fury warrior told us that the final boss was an easier fight than prior boss encounters in AM, and that as long as we kept moving we wouldn't have any trouble with the gauntlet. Wrong and wrong.
The gauntlet drove us crazy. If you stopped moving even for a second, new mobs would spawn and the number of things to kill would get larger and larger. Move too fast and an even nastier pair of mobs at the end of the passageway engaged and beat the snot out of us. Wild figured that out when on one of the attempts Wild ran to the top of the passageway to get to a place I could heal people from, only to get whacked by the pair at the top. Not to mention I dragged a hundred mobs to the top with me. We eventually found the speed of advance that allowed us to kill the mobs faster than they spawned while giving Wild moments when I could do more than toss instants around.
Ok, so maybe the warrior was right about the boss, Ozumat. There are three phases to the fight. In the first two phases, though, Ozumat isn't even present and both phases feature killing mob spawns. Wild had to scamper around avoiding the many mob spawns, but while the healing was intense it wasn't any worse than those trash mob five packs. In phase 3 Ozumat showed up, buffed us all up to giant size, and blanketed the room with an AoE that stacked until either Ozumat was dead or we were.
As soon as Ozumat entered the room Wild's already large frame grew so large I couldn't even see all of me on the screen. Moving was a waste of time and the damage would hit no matter where I stood, and Wild's heals were in range no matter where the rest of the raid was standing. The healing buff I got reminded me of healing in the ICC Dreamwalker fight - no matter how hard and fast I healed, I still had Mana! And it took hard and fast healing, too, as the AoE kept stacking and the damage got higher and higher. Wild quickly started spamming regrowth over and over on everyone, and a little later popped Tree of Life so regrowth became instant cast. It was a race to see if the DPS survived long enough to kill the boss. I knew that if I started losing DPS it would take longer to kill the boss and the bigger the AoE stack would get.
We killed Ozumat with no deaths. [Sea Star] dropped, a +285 spirit trinket. No one needed it and Wild won the greed roll. Wild would love to be able to use it - after all, it's his second Heroic piece - but Wild would lose +219 int on the trinket he would replace, and that costs too much in mana. Maybe at some point in the future it'll be worth equipping ...
The whole run took a little over two hours, although it really seemed much longer. After that wipe on the first pull, Wild did not think we would ever be able to finish AM. No PUG would have hung together through the countless wipes, either. The bottom line is to expect the wipes, keep learning, be patient, and keep a sense of humor. At one point after some frustrating wipes Fn called Wild over and said "Mount up." There is a bug in certain areas of AM that allows players to mount up on another player, also mounted, and it looks like the extra rider is standing on the head of the mounted player. Silly things like that kept us going. Fn also has a knack of constantly talking before, during, and after battles, none of which I remembered afterward, but which was a steady source of distraction from worrying about what nightmare we would face next. Maybe that jabber is a tank trait, as Bd is prone to that as well.
We also had a wipe on the second to last boss encounter that baffled us because Wild went out of mana way before I should have.
"Uh, Wild," asked the tank, "how's your gear look?" Wild looked. My durability was ZERO. All Wild's gear was broken. Wild was essentially shooting blanks. The nice thing about the new dungeons is that not only can you teleport out of the dungeon using the DF, you can teleport back into the dungeon using the DF, too. It only took a minute to repair Wild's gear - at a cost of 45g.
Wild got his valor points and also a good bit of rep for Dragonmaw faction (since I'm wearing the DM tabard). And his first clear of a Cata Heroic dungeon.
The Baradin Hold run is up next.
Wildshard was beaten black and blue on Wednesday night. The assault took place in Abyssal Maw: Throne of the Tides (AM). Way back on Cata launch day, Wild, Bd, and other guildie friends had cleared normal AM. It was an awesome experience and it seemed oh so appropriate that this dungeon would mark Wild's first foray into Cata Heroics.
That said, "Awesome" is not how Wild would characterize his first exposure to Cata Heroics.
AM is part of an underground grotto deep in the sea. It's home to a large variety of naga as well as minions of the Old Gods. It's a beautiful place, actually. Plants of every description blanket the area in a riot of exuberant color. There is even a passageway where the walls are transparent and you can watch the sea life outside, just like in an aquarium. Although in this case it was us who were the exhibit.
We had just completed a run in Baradin Hold (which I'll report on later) and the two tanks from the BH run were sorting out who wanted to do heroics and how to divide up those who did. Wild has raided with both tanks extensively, but I was hoping to get my first Cata heroic exposure with Bd as the tank. That wasn't how it worked out, though. One of our regular G2 healers, the priest Ch, only recently made it to level 85 and, despite her desperate wish to join us in Baradin Hold, was held out because she just didn't have the gear to do it. So Bd promised her he'd invite her to heal heroics once we finished BH.
The other tank, Fn (a paladin), asked Wild if I wanted to heal for him, and of course Wild said yes. The other three in the group were a hunter, a mage, and a warrior. Wild only knew them vaguely and had only grouped with them a couple of times before. Once we were all grouped up, Fn asked us if we wanted to use the dungeon finder or pick a particular dungeon. The advantage of the dungeon finder is that completing the dungeon would earn us Valor points, of which Wild had exactly zero. The potential downside was that Fn had not yet tanked all of the dungeons and there was a chance we'd get a dungeon that he wasn't familiar with. We split the difference, deciding to try the dungeon finder (DF) and if we didn't get what we wanted we could back out and try again, or select a specific one. The DF is pretty fussy, and for higher ilevel groups tends to give them the level 85 dungeons; while lower ilevel groups tend to get the 80-84 level dungeons.
The DF gave us AM, which is an 80-81 level dungeon on normal. Of course, all dungeons on Heroic are 85 only, but it gave us one inkling about what the DF thought of our gear levels. Wild was at i336 and just over 100k health. The tank was at i340 and he had a bit over 133k health (unbuffed, of course). Let's just say we didn't impress the DF.
There are three boss encounters in AM, although on one of them there are two bosses, so technically there are four bosses. There are endless corridors in AM, and at every fork, and every twist and turn, there are mobs. Lots of mobs. Packs of five mobs were common.
We zoned in to AM, appearing in a circular chamber full of shallow water. A low, wide set of steps led up out of the water, inviting us into a corridor. A pack of five mobs greeted us as our first challenge once we were inside.
The tank asked another raider to do the marking because he was having UI issues with Marking. In addition to marking two mobs to be attacked first (always labeled with a "skull" for the first to be attacked, and then "X" as the second mob to be attacked after "skull" was killed) we also marked crowd control (CC). Those marks aren't as standardized, particularly since cc was little used during WotLK and players just aren't used to doing it. Wild was assigned the "Star" mark, which meant that Wild would have cc duty on any mob tagged with a star. Wild's experience with using Hibernate in BH the week before was pretty cool - even though the mob turned out to be immune to it and killed Wild for even trying it. Wild would be using Roots on his star target, and hoped it would work a lot better than Hibernate had.
Wild had buffed himself with savage sagefish (+90 int/sta food, better than the group level food the guild currently had access to, which was +60 stats) and used a pre-Cata Frost Wyrm healing flask since the Cata level flasks still cost almost 300g each (vs 15-20g each for frost wyrm, and which JB can make).
It was 8:24pm. We engaged.
It was a disaster. Ok, so Wild's Roots did work on his target. So did the Ice cc on another target. The trap set by the hunter was ignored by a third mob, so we had three mobs on us in a hurry. The tank's health dropped like he was emptying it with a fire hose. The fury warrior died while Wild was still desperately trying to save the tank. Wild's rooted target broke free, swept in and savagely attacked Wild before I could get another Roots off. It took us about 15 seconds to wipe.
"That went well," said our tank, as we were rezzing at the graveyard. Wild was having a bit of a confidence problem. I told the group that this was Wild's very first Heroic and that I wasn't sure wasn't sure if I had the gear to be in here.
Now remember that while Wild has raided with Fn many times, this was the first time I had grouped with him in a five man. I wasn't sure how he would react. What Wild got was welcoming comments from all of the other guildies and assurance from Fn that no one in the group was "experienced" in Heroics. Wiping was not an aberration - it happened all the time. Feeling much, much better, we set up and went after the group again. We had managed to kill one of the mobs on that first attempt, and with now four to deal with we took them down without anyone dying. Wild was still a bit shell shocked at how ferocious the damage against the tank was. I might need to buy me a backup keyboard given how hard and fast I was pounding on it.
We faced more mob groups, and they were no easier than the first group. Every pack required maximum crowd control. DPSers had to focus fire the Marked targets as we could not survive that many attackers for long and needed to bring at least one or two down very quickly. The tank had to pick up all loose mobs so the DPS and healers could do their job without a mob in our face, and the healer - keep the tank alive ... keep the tank alive.
We had been pushing forward in a straight line down the corridor we had entered at the entrance. We came upon a cross passage and continued past it to a circular chamber where Lady Naz'jir waited. Our first boss. I had spent some time earlier in the day jotting down a few notes on the cata bosses in each dungeon. The two pages of notes, unfortunately, weren't much use to me because I hadn't made it easy to find the information. I think I'm going to try 3x5 cards next. No one else was all that familiar with the boss mechanics, though, so one of the guildies read us the main points over vent. There were things to avoid, plus a geyser that would throw us around, and a Waterspout that pretty much makes Naz'jir un-hittable while she spawns an army of mobs to plague us. She also has a water cannon she can torment us with.
I think we wiped five times. I started counting such things, but I quickly decided that counting wipes was going to soon become pretty depressing. I decided to count boss kills, instead.
We got our first, killing Naz'jir.
After the first boss kill there is a fascinating cut scene that is kind of shocking the first time you see it. Fn assured Wild that what I was seeing was normal, which I appreciated even though I did remember it from that first normal run so many weeks ago now.
Ok, Wild is going to be giving directions, and everyone knows how that works out, so take them with a bag full of salt.
Once Naz'jir was dead we backtracked a short distance to that cross passage we had passed. The center was actually an open elevator, and it took us to an upper floor where Commander Ulthok waited. Our second boss. Had Wild not been so intense and focused on the fight, he might have even had a little fun with this fight. Ulthock's specialty is slamming players with a huge smash that not only does something like 65,000 damage (which would be more than half Wild's total health), it also leaves a void zone on the ground that is a quick death to stand in. Then, just for giggles, Ulthok will pick up random players, toss them around, and then drop them, usually into a void zone.
By now Wild had taken on the role of deciding when we were ready to go. That's because after every battle, whether a boss attempt or a trash mob group, Wild had to rez the dead, heal the survivors, rebuff, eat another savage sagefish if Wild had been among the dead that time, and drink to fill his mana bar. I've read a lot of posts about DPSers and tanks who kick healers in heroics because they have to stop and drink between fights to restore mana. Let me say that if Wild ever does a PUG heroic and I get kicked for that reason, I'd say good riddance to a bad group. Wild needed to drink between almost every fight. And our group was fine with that, and patient. They waited on Wild to give the word that he and the group was buffed, topped off, and ready.
We engaged Ulthok. It started well, and Wild was finding a bit of a rhythm - a frantic, heart-pounding rhythm, but a rhythm nonetheless. What we were surprised by was how often Ulthok did his Slam (crushing half the life out of a player that Wild had to get heals on) and how fast the pools of void zones expanded, leaving us less and less real estate to stand on safely. We were overwhelmed and wiped.
On our second attempt we went at him a long time, to the point that there was nothing left but small islands of safe places to stand, and players had to run through voids to get to those safe spots. Wild had run out of mana pots (gotta remember to buy a bunch more) and had already used his innervate. Wild likes to use the term "healing on fumes," meaning that my mana was gone and I was healing only when regen delivered enough mana to cast a spell or I got a clearcasting proc. Wild was picked up by Ulthok using Squeeze, which ate away at Wild's health and then dropped me - on the one safe spot in an ocean of void zones. Fn actually cheered when he saw that the near dead Wild hadn't been deposited somewhere that would have finished me off. Fn had survived on his cooldowns, and the six seconds in the grasp of Ulthok had regened some mana for Wild, and we held on just long enough for the DPS to finish off the boss. Wow. Two attempts. I felt like I do when we bring a raid boss down the first time in fewer attempts than we were expecting.
We went back to the lower floor and took one of the side passages to the next boss - or boss pair to be exact - Erunak Stonespeaker and Mindbender Ghur'sha. This is a two phase fight, with Erunak in play for phase one, and Ghur'sha in phase 2. This encounter gave Wild all kinds of trouble.
Wild had to remember to debuff emberstrike off the tank, which deals additional damage with each hit. Wild had to remember to stand behind the boss at all times to avoid a particularly deadly belch of fire Erunak coughs up in a frontal cone. The hardest thing, though, was to do those things while avoiding earth shards, which are spikes erupting from the ground. Wild's problem was that he was having a terrible time seeing the small line in the sand that showed the direction the spikes were heading before they erupted. It didn't help that the spikes seemed to LOVE Wild. Other players started avoiding their healer because those spikes seemed permanently aimed at Wild no matter where I was standing. All that movement would also inevitably place Wild in the line of Erunak's belches or take him out of line of sight of the tank. Of course Wild wasn't the only player having troubles, and we wiped several times.
We finally got Erunak down to 50%, and Ghur'sha dropped off of Erunak to start phase 2. Ghur'sha is a small octopus like thing. Don't underestimate it. Ghur'sha exudes an unavoidable AoE that Wild has to heal the group through constantly. Ghur'sha then enslaved a player by leaping onto his head (the graphic is quite disturbing) and began buffing them while mind controlling them to attack the rest of us. DPSers have to burn the player down to 50% health to force Ghur'sha off the player's head. If thirty seconds pass before getting the player to 50%, Ghur'sha kills him and picks another target. There a many other things to deal with such as clouds of deadly fog, and two pillars that can help on line of sight issues, but to Wild the pillars just kept getting in the way of his healing. If I had been counting wipes I would have soon lost count of them.
But after an interminable amount of time and deaths we finished them off. [Decapod Slippers] dropped. "Slippers' usually means cloth, so Wild almost missed that this was leather caster gear. Wild was the only leather wearer in the group. Wild got his first piece of Cata heroic gear. The i346 slippers replace an i333 piece. Unlike WotLK heroic gear, Wild really appreciated the effort that went into winning that "Heroic" tag on those slippers.
The final boss in AM is Ozumat. Getting to him, though, required running a gauntlet of mobs. Our fury warrior told us that the final boss was an easier fight than prior boss encounters in AM, and that as long as we kept moving we wouldn't have any trouble with the gauntlet. Wrong and wrong.
The gauntlet drove us crazy. If you stopped moving even for a second, new mobs would spawn and the number of things to kill would get larger and larger. Move too fast and an even nastier pair of mobs at the end of the passageway engaged and beat the snot out of us. Wild figured that out when on one of the attempts Wild ran to the top of the passageway to get to a place I could heal people from, only to get whacked by the pair at the top. Not to mention I dragged a hundred mobs to the top with me. We eventually found the speed of advance that allowed us to kill the mobs faster than they spawned while giving Wild moments when I could do more than toss instants around.
Ok, so maybe the warrior was right about the boss, Ozumat. There are three phases to the fight. In the first two phases, though, Ozumat isn't even present and both phases feature killing mob spawns. Wild had to scamper around avoiding the many mob spawns, but while the healing was intense it wasn't any worse than those trash mob five packs. In phase 3 Ozumat showed up, buffed us all up to giant size, and blanketed the room with an AoE that stacked until either Ozumat was dead or we were.
As soon as Ozumat entered the room Wild's already large frame grew so large I couldn't even see all of me on the screen. Moving was a waste of time and the damage would hit no matter where I stood, and Wild's heals were in range no matter where the rest of the raid was standing. The healing buff I got reminded me of healing in the ICC Dreamwalker fight - no matter how hard and fast I healed, I still had Mana! And it took hard and fast healing, too, as the AoE kept stacking and the damage got higher and higher. Wild quickly started spamming regrowth over and over on everyone, and a little later popped Tree of Life so regrowth became instant cast. It was a race to see if the DPS survived long enough to kill the boss. I knew that if I started losing DPS it would take longer to kill the boss and the bigger the AoE stack would get.
We killed Ozumat with no deaths. [Sea Star] dropped, a +285 spirit trinket. No one needed it and Wild won the greed roll. Wild would love to be able to use it - after all, it's his second Heroic piece - but Wild would lose +219 int on the trinket he would replace, and that costs too much in mana. Maybe at some point in the future it'll be worth equipping ...
The whole run took a little over two hours, although it really seemed much longer. After that wipe on the first pull, Wild did not think we would ever be able to finish AM. No PUG would have hung together through the countless wipes, either. The bottom line is to expect the wipes, keep learning, be patient, and keep a sense of humor. At one point after some frustrating wipes Fn called Wild over and said "Mount up." There is a bug in certain areas of AM that allows players to mount up on another player, also mounted, and it looks like the extra rider is standing on the head of the mounted player. Silly things like that kept us going. Fn also has a knack of constantly talking before, during, and after battles, none of which I remembered afterward, but which was a steady source of distraction from worrying about what nightmare we would face next. Maybe that jabber is a tank trait, as Bd is prone to that as well.
We also had a wipe on the second to last boss encounter that baffled us because Wild went out of mana way before I should have.
"Uh, Wild," asked the tank, "how's your gear look?" Wild looked. My durability was ZERO. All Wild's gear was broken. Wild was essentially shooting blanks. The nice thing about the new dungeons is that not only can you teleport out of the dungeon using the DF, you can teleport back into the dungeon using the DF, too. It only took a minute to repair Wild's gear - at a cost of 45g.
Wild got his valor points and also a good bit of rep for Dragonmaw faction (since I'm wearing the DM tabard). And his first clear of a Cata Heroic dungeon.
The Baradin Hold run is up next.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Monday (17 Jan) - What Monday Brings
Monday (17 Jan) - What Monday Brings
Starting at the end of the day, I logged in around 9pm Monday night to give Sista a little more time. Well, I tried to login, anyway, but I couldn't because the server was down. After a little digging I learned that a good many servers had been taken offline due to some king of login issue. At 9:30pm Blizz was reporting that the problem had been found and fixed and that servers were being brought back up. Nice to know, but Silvermoon server was still offline. At 11pm I made one last check. All the servers were up - except for Silvermoon.
On Tuesday morning regular maintenance started at 5am - 11am.
So it was a good thing that Sista was able to get some in game time on Monday afternoon. She spent the time in Darkshore questing, collecting herbs, and skinning beasts, leveling from 22 to level 24. Darkshore is a fun place to level. There is a whole series of druid related quests to complete. The zone is one of those that was heavily impacted by Cata, turning a normal forest zone into land broken into multi-level pieces and fractured waterways. There are plenty of beasts to kill and skin, and a lot of herbs to collect. Sista did some serious skilling up of those professions.
Sista is loving her "Running Wild" ability, too. Worgen do not get a racial mount at level 20 like all other races do. Instead, she got "Running Wild,' an ability that allows her to run on all fours at the same speed as a regular mount. It uses mount mechanics, and it came with riding skill training included. Based on what I've read, worgen will be able to purchase higher level riding training at the appropriate levels to increase their running/mount speed. I couldn't find any specific information on worgen flying mounts. I doubt worgen will be flapping their arms using a "Flying Wild" ability, but they don't have a racial mount, either. My guess is that worgen will use their class flying mount. For Sista, that would be flying form since she's a druid. Picture Sista running at 200% speed on all fours and then instantly shapeshift into a bird and soar into the sky!
JB has continued to collect herbs in Mount Hyjal to feed the huge mat requirement to level alchemy. She's at skill 505/525 now. I don't know how Wild is going to afford the mat costs to make the raid caster flask, Draconic Mind, though. It takes THIRTY herbs to make ONE flask. Even with Flask/Elixir specialization, getting two flasks instead of one is not guaranteed like it was before. We're talking 300-500g PER FLASK, or hours and hours of herb gathering each week. JB's xp is at 37% now. I don't know if Wild will let her stop before she levels to 81, and she's reluctant to turn off her xp knowing that she ultimately needs to level to be able to collect more of the herbs Wild needs.
JB also had to do more research on enhancement shaman weapon use. Of course she is dual wielding, but I'm really confused over what weapons to use. Right now weapon procs are being buffed by spell power, and many shaman are using caster weapons in their main hand slot to take advantage of the weapon spell power. Blizz finally figured out how stupid that was and in 4.0.6 changes it to attack power instead. JB has a slow caster mace, a fast agi dagger, and a slow agi axe. See, she's trying to cover all her bases here. Traditionally melee shaman use two slow agi weapons, but I've seen plenty of posts that say that because of damage normalization weapon speed is not a factor anymore. And then there are posts that say slow weapons are still preferred. And more posts that say look at the DPS on the weapon and go by the higher one (assuming equivalent stats). JB is still trying to find the definitive answer. Whatever weapons she uses, she still plans to buff the main hand with Windfury and the off-hand with Flametongue.
She did find a stat priority: Hit (til cap at 17%) --> expertise (till cap at 26) --> Agi --> Mastery --> haste --> crit.
"Int" is no where in that equation, and I barely remember something about mana coming from attack power for enhancement? I know that JB has very little +int (and only from non-Cata gear she hasn't replaced yet), but in the few kills she has mana has not been an issue.
JB is already over the hit cap (she's at 24%) and expertise cap (at 30). JB should be able to reforge some of that hit for something else. JB did make a mistake in picking crit over mastery, so that is what she'll likely reforge into. Enhancement Mastery adds 20% additional damage (fire, frost, and nature damage) plus 2.5% more damage for every point of mastery. The mastery numbers can be confusing at first. JB's stats say she has 14.56 Mastery. The tooltip for mastery says that she has a mastery rating of 301, and that it's equivalent to 6.56 mastery. Here's how it works. Base mastery is 8.00. Mastery from gear adds 6.56 more mastery for a total of 14.56. I wonder if 20% plus (2.5% x 6 pts) = 20% + 30% = 50% increased damage? Wow, now I see why mastery is so good!
Update on Sista - she is level 25 now and killed a level 20 elite for her big quest in Darkshore. She should be moving on to Ashenvale pretty soon. She also belatedly realized that she has been skinning and flower pciking without getting any skill points because she forgot to visit the trainers when she maxed them out. Sigh. At least she was getting some nice xp for it.
Then there was a powerful night of dungeon runs with Unbleached (what nickname would you like?), Kiren, and Sista. The dungeon count was:
Unbleached - 1 (leveled to 30)
Sista - 3 (leveled to 27)
Kiren - 8 Eight!? (leveled to 31)
Sista will try to get to level 30 by next week's get together, but then Kiren might be 35 by then. ;-)
If Sista can't make it then Java could fill in. I don't know, though, Sista likes the idea of leveling past Java, which would make her the highest level alliance ever in the Wild family.
Wild may get his first chance at Cata Heroic dungeons Tuesday night. The guild has a raid scheduled for Baradin Hold. Afterword (or if the alliance holds Tol Barad) then we'll be doing some heroic runs. Wild has been moving deck chairs on the Titanic, trying to find the best combination of gear. He has an "int" config which maxes his mana; a "spi" config which maxes his mana regen; and a "maspi" config which maxes both spi and mastery. I'm leaning toward the "maspi" config. Wild also did a resto respec to place even more emphasis on bigger heals from nourish, healing touch, and regrowth. Wild may be using HT a lot more in heroics. I'm hoping that bigger heals (thru mastery) and more regen (thru spi) will trump the high int/mana setup I've been using. I'm pretty much resigned to running out of mana, so I'm pushing my regen up even further so that even at low mana my regen rate will keep heals on the tank if no one else.
Starting at the end of the day, I logged in around 9pm Monday night to give Sista a little more time. Well, I tried to login, anyway, but I couldn't because the server was down. After a little digging I learned that a good many servers had been taken offline due to some king of login issue. At 9:30pm Blizz was reporting that the problem had been found and fixed and that servers were being brought back up. Nice to know, but Silvermoon server was still offline. At 11pm I made one last check. All the servers were up - except for Silvermoon.
On Tuesday morning regular maintenance started at 5am - 11am.
So it was a good thing that Sista was able to get some in game time on Monday afternoon. She spent the time in Darkshore questing, collecting herbs, and skinning beasts, leveling from 22 to level 24. Darkshore is a fun place to level. There is a whole series of druid related quests to complete. The zone is one of those that was heavily impacted by Cata, turning a normal forest zone into land broken into multi-level pieces and fractured waterways. There are plenty of beasts to kill and skin, and a lot of herbs to collect. Sista did some serious skilling up of those professions.
Sista is loving her "Running Wild" ability, too. Worgen do not get a racial mount at level 20 like all other races do. Instead, she got "Running Wild,' an ability that allows her to run on all fours at the same speed as a regular mount. It uses mount mechanics, and it came with riding skill training included. Based on what I've read, worgen will be able to purchase higher level riding training at the appropriate levels to increase their running/mount speed. I couldn't find any specific information on worgen flying mounts. I doubt worgen will be flapping their arms using a "Flying Wild" ability, but they don't have a racial mount, either. My guess is that worgen will use their class flying mount. For Sista, that would be flying form since she's a druid. Picture Sista running at 200% speed on all fours and then instantly shapeshift into a bird and soar into the sky!
JB has continued to collect herbs in Mount Hyjal to feed the huge mat requirement to level alchemy. She's at skill 505/525 now. I don't know how Wild is going to afford the mat costs to make the raid caster flask, Draconic Mind, though. It takes THIRTY herbs to make ONE flask. Even with Flask/Elixir specialization, getting two flasks instead of one is not guaranteed like it was before. We're talking 300-500g PER FLASK, or hours and hours of herb gathering each week. JB's xp is at 37% now. I don't know if Wild will let her stop before she levels to 81, and she's reluctant to turn off her xp knowing that she ultimately needs to level to be able to collect more of the herbs Wild needs.
JB also had to do more research on enhancement shaman weapon use. Of course she is dual wielding, but I'm really confused over what weapons to use. Right now weapon procs are being buffed by spell power, and many shaman are using caster weapons in their main hand slot to take advantage of the weapon spell power. Blizz finally figured out how stupid that was and in 4.0.6 changes it to attack power instead. JB has a slow caster mace, a fast agi dagger, and a slow agi axe. See, she's trying to cover all her bases here. Traditionally melee shaman use two slow agi weapons, but I've seen plenty of posts that say that because of damage normalization weapon speed is not a factor anymore. And then there are posts that say slow weapons are still preferred. And more posts that say look at the DPS on the weapon and go by the higher one (assuming equivalent stats). JB is still trying to find the definitive answer. Whatever weapons she uses, she still plans to buff the main hand with Windfury and the off-hand with Flametongue.
She did find a stat priority: Hit (til cap at 17%) --> expertise (till cap at 26) --> Agi --> Mastery --> haste --> crit.
"Int" is no where in that equation, and I barely remember something about mana coming from attack power for enhancement? I know that JB has very little +int (and only from non-Cata gear she hasn't replaced yet), but in the few kills she has mana has not been an issue.
JB is already over the hit cap (she's at 24%) and expertise cap (at 30). JB should be able to reforge some of that hit for something else. JB did make a mistake in picking crit over mastery, so that is what she'll likely reforge into. Enhancement Mastery adds 20% additional damage (fire, frost, and nature damage) plus 2.5% more damage for every point of mastery. The mastery numbers can be confusing at first. JB's stats say she has 14.56 Mastery. The tooltip for mastery says that she has a mastery rating of 301, and that it's equivalent to 6.56 mastery. Here's how it works. Base mastery is 8.00. Mastery from gear adds 6.56 more mastery for a total of 14.56. I wonder if 20% plus (2.5% x 6 pts) = 20% + 30% = 50% increased damage? Wow, now I see why mastery is so good!
Update on Sista - she is level 25 now and killed a level 20 elite for her big quest in Darkshore. She should be moving on to Ashenvale pretty soon. She also belatedly realized that she has been skinning and flower pciking without getting any skill points because she forgot to visit the trainers when she maxed them out. Sigh. At least she was getting some nice xp for it.
Then there was a powerful night of dungeon runs with Unbleached (what nickname would you like?), Kiren, and Sista. The dungeon count was:
Unbleached - 1 (leveled to 30)
Sista - 3 (leveled to 27)
Kiren - 8 Eight!? (leveled to 31)
Sista will try to get to level 30 by next week's get together, but then Kiren might be 35 by then. ;-)
If Sista can't make it then Java could fill in. I don't know, though, Sista likes the idea of leveling past Java, which would make her the highest level alliance ever in the Wild family.
Wild may get his first chance at Cata Heroic dungeons Tuesday night. The guild has a raid scheduled for Baradin Hold. Afterword (or if the alliance holds Tol Barad) then we'll be doing some heroic runs. Wild has been moving deck chairs on the Titanic, trying to find the best combination of gear. He has an "int" config which maxes his mana; a "spi" config which maxes his mana regen; and a "maspi" config which maxes both spi and mastery. I'm leaning toward the "maspi" config. Wild also did a resto respec to place even more emphasis on bigger heals from nourish, healing touch, and regrowth. Wild may be using HT a lot more in heroics. I'm hoping that bigger heals (thru mastery) and more regen (thru spi) will trump the high int/mana setup I've been using. I'm pretty much resigned to running out of mana, so I'm pushing my regen up even further so that even at low mana my regen rate will keep heals on the tank if no one else.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Special Report (18 Jan) - What's in a Name?
Special Report (18 Jan) - What's in a Name?
Every character must have a name. After all, you can't just yell "Hey You!" whenever you need a character's attention (unless, of course, his name is Heyyou). I like to believe that considerable thought went into each name, and that each name has a history associated with it's creation. I will admit that on an occasion or two, perhaps a less considered approach was taken to naming a toon (ie, it was made up on the fly with no particular thought behind it).
I decided to put the above to the test. Just how many toons really had some kind of rationale behind their names? Just how many got the "I christen thee so-and-so, and thy name shall forever mean - whatever it means?" I've thought about doing this many times, but I put it off because it would take some research. I don't really know how I came up with some names, or I used to know and can't remember anymore. Almost always, though, new characters have been introduced formally in this ongoing journal, and sometimes even with an explanation of the name. The hard part is finding those references within the electronic pages of more than six years of posting. It's a LOT of digging.
The journal has evolved over time through many formats, so I also had to compile the thing into a form that was searchable, and that process helped me correct errors and find missing content. It's about as complete as it can be now, considering all the different methods I've used over the years to write it.
I started with the oldest character and worked my way forward. Wildshard is, of course, my first and oldest toon. As of this writing, Sista is my newest. There are also toons who have retired. I will try to remember them as well.
The Wildshard clan isn't the only clan represented, either. All three clans and every relative, both horde and alliance, are listed below. I call it:
The Genealogy of the Three Clans
1. The Wildshard Clan
Wildshard - Level 85 Horde Male Tauren Druid
First mention - 26 Feb 2005. "Called my character WildShard and
then named a TSN team after him."
If Memory Serves - The name "Wildshard" was a simple word association process. A number of different combinations of one syllable words were strung together until one was found that seemed to work. I still like the name and since "shard" is an enchanting term and Wild is an enchanter that may have played a role in selecting it. "Wildshard" also brings to mind a character who is daring, unpredictable, and dangerous. Poor Wild got stuck with a name that is nothing like he really is. :-)
The real Explanation - That is exactly how I came up with the name.
Jezzibael - Level 80 Horde Female Troll Shaman
First Mention - May 19, 2005. "In order to defray some of my Tailoring/enchanting costs I've decided to start a 2nd character. Decided on Shaman this time with mining and skinning skills so that I can gather the materials I need." Gives one an idea how little I understood the game at that time. I needed cloth and enchanting mats, so I started JB as a skinner and miner?
If Memory Serves - Jezzibael (or JB for short) is a respelling of the name of one of our cats.
The real Explanation - Yep, the above is correct.
A revealing fact - 12 Aug 2005. "I also have a confession to make. JB was the first character I created after Wildshard. At the time I felt a little odd toward players who had characters of the opposite gender, but at the same time wanted an opposite gender character of my own. So when I created "JB", I intentionally never mentioned and never referred to gender, creating the assumption that JB is male without saying so. I'm long over all that and JB is tired of never getting to be in any of the screenshots posted. Boys, please say hello to Jezzibael, aka JB."
Rheebah - Level 6 Female Druid, Retired
First Mention - June 14, 2005. "You want me to tell my wife I want her to be a cow? You guys are going to get me in trouble."
If Memory Serves - The Mrs tried out an undead, but couldn't stomach the cannibalization thing. Some online friends suggested a troll, which seemed marginally better than an undead. We eventually settled on rolling a Tauren druid for her and a troll warrior for me to keep her company.
The Real Explanation - I ran across a reference to the Mrs character, and the name I used was AechTee. We have no clue who that is. My best guess is that I disguised the name, as I often do when referring to someone else's toon. But how that was a reference to Rheebah, who I and the Mrs both agree was her toon's real name, I have no idea. Sometimes I'm too clever for my own good. The Mrs picked the name Rheebah because she liked the way it sounded.
Happyface - Level 22 Horde Male Troll Warrior
First Mention - June 14, 2005. "Sigh, if I'd known I would take this
practice toon and make it my AH trader I would have used a better name." Happy was level 10 at the time.
If Memory Serves - Happy was intended to be a companion for Rheebah and I never thought he would amount to anything more than that. Boy was I wrong.
The real Explanation - I chose the first thing that came to mind. :-)
Merylitlbotm - Level 56 Horde Female Tauren Hunter
First Mention - 14 Nov 2005. "Please welcome the newest addition to the WoW Silvermoon family, Merylitlbotm, and her pet, Peck." Peck was later released back into the wilds, but Mery's pretty happy with Fleshrypper, Sassy, and Blue Witch.
If Memory Serves - I like to think I must have been watching Lord of the Rings, since hobbits come to mind. There were no "little people" on the horde side (such as gnomes and dwarfs on the alliance side), so I went with the closest thing - a cow. The name does sound kinda hobbit-like, don't you think?
The Real Explanation - I liked the name Mery, and the rest of the name sort of attached itself like a caboose. But let's not rile Mery by talking about her caboose.
Dethsdoor - Level 11 Horde Female Undead Warlock
First Mention - 17 Apr 2006. "Undead begin life on the Eastern continent near the Undercity, so DD will likely call UC home. Between DD in UC, Happyface (and Rheebah) in Org, and Mery in TB, I think I have all the major horde cities covered. I just realized I now have six toons on Silvermoon. Hmm, somehow I never thought I would be one to roll up a whole bunch of toons . . ." If I only knew how much larger the family was going to get.
If Memory Serves - Like Wildshard, this was fitting two single syllable words together that sounded good and sounded like a name a warlock would have.
The real Explanation - I don't remember referring to "Deth" as "DD" but it looks like I did.
Jocelyne - Level 23 Horde Female Blood Elf Paladin
First Mention - 20 Apr 2007. "So JB and Jocelyne got some time both solo and together today. JB thought it would be fun to escort Jocelyne the long way from Silvermoon City in Eversong Woods to the Undercity in Tirisfal Glades."
If Memory Serves - This is getting embarrassing. It seems I fail to note new toons and names with depressing regularity. Jocelyne is already level 10 by the time she gets her first mention. I'm guessing that she was born shortly after blood elves were introduced, but I'm just not sure.
The real Explanation. Not a clue how Jocelyne got her name, but she is referred to as Joce and Jocy at various times.
Javajoo - Level 32 Alliance Male Draenei Paladin
Chaitee - Level 20 Alliance Female Draenei Hunter
First Mention - 13 Jun 2007. "Please welcome two newcomers to Wild's family, Javajoo and Chaitee, the new toons for Wild and Mrs Wild."
If Memory Serves - This was the second attempt to tempt the Mrs into joining in on our Warcraft fun. Rheebah and Happyface wished them luck.
The real Explanation - We went with a beverage theme. The Mrs loves Chai tea, and viola! a name was born. We know that Java is coffee, but I can't help tinkering with names and liked the sound of Javajoo (perhaps thinking "java juice"). The beverage theme took an unexpected turn when our alliance team formed a guild and named it Tea Green.
Phillyperdue - Level 80 Horde Female Undead Priest
First Mention - 04 Jan 2008. "Yes, I'm playing another healer (with distant visions of shadow priesthood). Yes, I'm playing another lady character, but she hasn't developed a personality yet."
If Memory Serves - Philly was born on The Scryers server as a guild member of "The Grunt Foundation." She's actually not the first toon to be born on a server other than Silvermoon. That honor belongs to Naji, a lvl 3 night elf hunter on Greymane born on August 25, 2005 to give me something to do when Silvermoon server was down (which was often back in those days). Naji may still be out there.
The real Explanation - Hey, for once I can tell it straight. "(1) Philly is a play on fille. (2) fille perdue is french for "lost girl". (3) Our members seem to have a penchant for using foreign languages in their names. (4) My handle on the wowhead forums is alwayslost, hence the "lost girl" reference." Funny that I didn't mention that the alwayslost name on the forums is a reference to how often Wild manages to go north when he should be going south.
Melasahnd - Level 63 Horde Female Undead Death Knight
First Mention - 13 Nov 2008. "Today marks the roll out of Wrath of the Lich King. I picked out a name for the DK that will be joining Wild's family."
If Memory Serves - Wild didn't wait long to welcome kin from the new class of death knights. I think he spent more time deciding on a name this time than he did deciding when to welcome her home.
The real Explanation - "The name is Melasahnd, from the Kushiel's Dart series of books. Melasahnd is the phonetic spelling of the name Melisande, who is the main villain throughout the series. She has terrible powers and was behind the corruption of a paladin-like people called the Cassiline Brotherhood. Seemed appropriate for a DK, a paladin-like class that has taken up the dark powers."
Naithipe - Fill in the Blanks
First Mention - 27 Mar 2009. "Happy noticed something odd when checking his mailbox very late last night. Written into one corner of the box was something like a code: s11m84h3
This morning the odd scribbling was gone, although a faintish red stain remained. It seems we have mystery."
If memory Serves - Naithipe says go away. Naithipe says there will be trouble if this is ever posted.
The real Explanation - It's no secret that Naithipe is a puzzle, an acronym and an anachronism. Naithipe is a name within a name anchored in the pages of a book Naithipe holds dear for reasons both fond and fearsome, and will say no more.
Alwayslost - Level 11 Alliance Female Draenei Paladin
First Mention - Apr 23, 2010. "I know the nameplates at the bottom are kind of hard to read, but the blue lady to the right of Naithipe is Alwayslost, and that includes her clothing. She's level 1, by the way." Lost appeared in the Wild Family portrait while still just a toddler.
If Memory Serves - Lost never liked her name, since she feels that Wild saddled her with HIS shortcoming, not hers. She takes solace that she is never lost while conducting the business of the Auction House, and has made enough gold to provide hefty stakes for the newest brace of adventurers joining the Alliance guild.
The real Explanation - "Lost completed her initial paladin training at her home village of Ammen Vale on Azuremyst Isle and then moved up to the marginally larger town of Azure Watch. Lost then made her way to the major city of Exodar on the shoreline of the island as a level 10, where the nearest Alliance Auction House was located. Lost did not come completely out of nowhere, however. While living with her birth family at Ammen Vale she became a local scholar, writing correspondence which got her notice, particularly at the major knowledge center of Wowhead. Finances had always fascinated her as well, and she was eager to try her hand at the Auction House business." Lost's dedication and contributions earned her advancement to Guild Leader of Tea Green - with gracious acknowledgement and thanks to former Guild Leaders Daethbot and Sinstar.
Ezuh - Level 46 Horde Female Orc Shaman
First Mention - Aug 10, 2009. "Ezuh pushed through her early studies at the Orc starting zone in Durator, then in Sen'jin Village, and graduated to the small town of Razor Hill. As a mere level 10 the young shaman pushed on, visiting the big city of Orgrimmar, home of the horde king Thrall."
If Memory Serves - Ezuh is a phonetically mangled miss-spelling of a character from the movie "Clan of the Cave Bear." Laugh if you must, but I actually like that movie. Iza is the mother of Daryl Hannah's character. The name sounds like Eee-Suh.
The real Explanation - I wish I had a better explanation, but it is what it is. Maybe this is why EZ always seems so conflicted. And orcs are sort of like Neanderthals, right?
Slashedhand - Level 11 Horde Male Orc Hunter
First Mention - Feb 12, 2010. "In the brightness of a clear Friday morning, the elusive Naithipe slipped into the riotous Valentine's week crowd in Orgrimmar. The fanciful displays and the decked out in hearts players held no interest. Naithipe hunted a hunter. The hunter, Slash, had arrived in Orgrimmar the night before, staying at the Inn and enjoying the revelry of the big city. The young orc sampled the perfumes and candies, eyeing the lovely women and flexing his farm bred muscles. He partied long into the night."
If Memory Serves - Slash was useful to Naithipe, which can be a terrifying thing. I'm surprised he's still both alive and sane.
The real Explanation - I severely cut my hand on a mirror I broke at a time when Naithipe had surfaced, looking baleful and wanting some help. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking up a name for that helper, or wondering what Naithipe had in mind for him, as I didn't think he would be around that long.
Raktajina - Level 13 Alliance Female Night Elf Hunter
First Mention - Mar 14, 2010. "For the first time, after more than five years of calling Azeroth home, Wild finally rolled a female night elf hunter, by far the most common combination of race, class, and sex in all of the Alliance."
If Memory Serves - Another beverage reference. Rakta is the alliance side go-between in moving stuff through the neutral Auction House.
The real Explanation - "Raktajina means Klingon coffee in the language of that race." Rakta named her first combat pet Dargh, which is Tea in the Klingon tongue. Rakta gets titters and giggles sometimes when the meaning of her name is miss-interpreted. Doesn't everyone speak Klingon these days?
Hapless - Level 16 Horde Female Troll Druid
First Mention - Jan 03, 2011. "Wild learned through Hap, a troll druid recently added to the family, that a young druid with cat form is a pretty deadly killer."
If Memory Serves - I just had to have a troll druid so I could experience the new pre-cata transition in the new troll starting zone. I even had thoughts that Hap might take over for Happy on the Auction House. Happy nixed that idea and didn't appreciate the subtle jibe of the Happyface/Hapless comparison.
The real Explanation - I actually considered changing Happy's name to Hapless. But he fooled me, not by changing his name, but by changing himself from a troll to a goblin. Happy will do anything to get a leg up on the Auction House. Plus, he just loves his new vroom vroom cycle! So, when Happy refused to be Hapless, the "honor" went to the troll druid.
Sistaphilia - Level 19 Alliance Female Worgen Druid
First Mention - Jan 03, 2011. "Sista began her life in Gilneas City. The town was near over-run by wolf-like creatures and the townsfolk were terrified, but there was still the remnants of a city guard, and Sista was drafted to help them combat the menace. "
If Memory Serves - I spent a lot of time trying to think up a good name for a worgen druid. I figured that anything with wolf, werewolf, biting, moon, et al, would be monotonous as a million new worgen were going to have names something like that.
The real Explanation - "Sista" fits the druid culture. "Philia" has a range of generally positive meanings, such as fondness and love, but it can also have a darker side. Given what a worgen is, I thought that the multiple connotations fit. I also thought about SistaCybil - but only after Sistaphilia was already born. A worgen can walk as a human, walk upright in wolf form, walk on all fours in wolf form; and as a druid can shapeshift into a fish, cat, bear, and leopard. That's seven personalities. Cybil, I think, had ten.
2. The Sis/Lao Clan
I have a story behind all my toons. Not interesting stories, but stories none the less. All and all my names have come from books, food, or looks of the toon. I am a very simple woman.
Neekia:
This was my very first toon. She was a warrior, because at the time I thought warriors were the toughest class in anything (which may show that I have never gamed before). She got the name from a sci-fi book series that I read, and like most things in my life I messed up by misspelling the name. I don’t recall the original spelling, but the way I always heard it in my head while reading was knee-kia. It was a term of endearment for this alien race, for their females. It meant beloved one, or only one, or some such mushy thing.
Neekia was and still is a black smith and miner. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for her. She is not a very good warrior, in fact her favorite past times are fishing and cooking. But she is content with her lack of ferocity and always is willing to give it a go when I drag her out for questing.
Cerulean:
This was my second toon and she never really did get far, as in she got past level 5. She was a pally I never really got into, but I choose the name because I thought it was a very pretty one and one that it sounded like it had depth to it. And depth she has, she is very much into banking. Neekia once sent her a monocle as a gift and Cerulean always wears it; helps her examine her books and goods better. But she holds down the coffers of my toons, giving them a budget and demanding them to send any excess for her to tend to.
Almond:
Well, I would like to say that there was a good back story to the name, but as it was there was a bag of Kirkland almonds on my computer desk when I started this toon. Which she was the first of many toons that started that way. But she does have one tick with her name, and that is when people call her Almond joy. Like she has not heard that a million times, poor lass. Unbleached was an ingredient in an organic scone package that I had on my desk, but that turned out well, since she was a shadow priest vs. holy. Arnica was an in ingredient in my tree hugging deodorant.
Zadist:
Zadist was created for the name. There was, again a book series I was reading, and one kick butt guy was named Zsadist. So I figured it would be the perfect name for a sneering, egotistic, antisocial warlock (on the horde side of course) who got pleasure in melting others. Thus, after having to settle for the second spelling since the first was taken, Zadist was born. She later had to become Narcissus, due to the name being taken on her new server, which ironically served to mellow her out.
Laodike:
My new main toon was created with this name to do Erik’s instance of us naming our toons out of a David Grammell, Gramell? book series that we liked. I tried several of the names, and this was one of the only ones not taken. She was a lover of the main heroine and saved her life and sacrificed her own in the process. Tragic.
Fungi and Fungal (retired):
I was Fungal, and a beau of the time was Fungi. We were both priests, or at least I was, he might have been a warlock. We looked alike, dressed alike, did the same dungeons. We almost seem to be growing on each other we were so alike *snicker* They were our fun escape hatch that no one else knew about. Loved their names.
Misc names:
Aged, undead horde, thought it was appropriate to his looks. Jabberless, again undead, and no lower jaw, so no jabbering for him. Nina: small little gnome girl (as if when are gnomes not small).
3. The DER Clan
My names are the most simple of all! Of most of these names I have had at least two characters either named the same or very similar. The most popular name I have used though has always been Sinstar or some variation thereof; at least 10 characters created through my 5 years in the game with a Sin name variation. Very original I am…
Trazom – Lvl 40 Night elf rogue - First real toon, which is Mozart backwards. The name didn’t really fit a rogue…
Sinstar – Lvl 80 Night elf/Tauren druid - A weak attempt to win my partner over to the game of warcraft as she hated it. Needless to say, naming a character after her didn’t win her over… This was my original main that I mastered pvp with and did some end game raiding with. She has been transferred over servers multiple times and been retired. She was eventually changed into a tauren (my favorite race in game) and brought over to join in on the Wild family fun.
Trazy – Lvl 26 Human pally, just a play off of Trazom.
Nagev – Lvl 15 Orc hunter - The name had something to do with a hunters friendship with animals and something that meant a lot to me at the time of creation; being vegan as Nagev is vegan backwards…
Deathbot – Lvl 15 Undead mage - Deathbot was something that was on a line of clothing that I liked at the time. A robot that spreads death. I thought it was an awesome name for an undead mage!
Erikred – Lvl 59 Orc hunter - Named after me and the Viking hero and explorer of lore Erik the Red. This is the first character I created to join up with the Wild family to play together.
Andromache – Lvl 48 Tauren druid – The name of Hector’s (from Trojan fame) wife and also the name of the main heroine in David Gemmell’s Troy trilogy. Some of the finest books ever written and one of my favorite characters ever. I really like animals and nature and I thought bestowing the name on one of my favorite characters of literature onto a cow that worships nature would be awesome. Unfortunately I got excited when creating the character and mis-typed her name and she ended up being Andomache… So tragic…
Deaderikred – Lvl 80 Undead deathknight – The dead version of me.
KireNavillus – Lvl 22 Dwarf pally - Named after me again, but this time taken from the past. My first ever DnD character was a Dwarf warrior of the same name.
Skinnemuva – Level 59 Human Deathknight – skinnemuva is skinny mover, my semi nickname since I was about 14. Has to do with being skinny and liking dance. Basically I am just a skinny guy that moves a lot. This has become my name of use on blogs, twitter, etc, and most of my fantasy sports teams are named “skinnemuvas”.
Every character must have a name. After all, you can't just yell "Hey You!" whenever you need a character's attention (unless, of course, his name is Heyyou). I like to believe that considerable thought went into each name, and that each name has a history associated with it's creation. I will admit that on an occasion or two, perhaps a less considered approach was taken to naming a toon (ie, it was made up on the fly with no particular thought behind it).
I decided to put the above to the test. Just how many toons really had some kind of rationale behind their names? Just how many got the "I christen thee so-and-so, and thy name shall forever mean - whatever it means?" I've thought about doing this many times, but I put it off because it would take some research. I don't really know how I came up with some names, or I used to know and can't remember anymore. Almost always, though, new characters have been introduced formally in this ongoing journal, and sometimes even with an explanation of the name. The hard part is finding those references within the electronic pages of more than six years of posting. It's a LOT of digging.
The journal has evolved over time through many formats, so I also had to compile the thing into a form that was searchable, and that process helped me correct errors and find missing content. It's about as complete as it can be now, considering all the different methods I've used over the years to write it.
I started with the oldest character and worked my way forward. Wildshard is, of course, my first and oldest toon. As of this writing, Sista is my newest. There are also toons who have retired. I will try to remember them as well.
The Wildshard clan isn't the only clan represented, either. All three clans and every relative, both horde and alliance, are listed below. I call it:
The Genealogy of the Three Clans
1. The Wildshard Clan
Wildshard - Level 85 Horde Male Tauren Druid
First mention - 26 Feb 2005. "Called my character WildShard and
then named a TSN team after him."
If Memory Serves - The name "Wildshard" was a simple word association process. A number of different combinations of one syllable words were strung together until one was found that seemed to work. I still like the name and since "shard" is an enchanting term and Wild is an enchanter that may have played a role in selecting it. "Wildshard" also brings to mind a character who is daring, unpredictable, and dangerous. Poor Wild got stuck with a name that is nothing like he really is. :-)
The real Explanation - That is exactly how I came up with the name.
Jezzibael - Level 80 Horde Female Troll Shaman
First Mention - May 19, 2005. "In order to defray some of my Tailoring/enchanting costs I've decided to start a 2nd character. Decided on Shaman this time with mining and skinning skills so that I can gather the materials I need." Gives one an idea how little I understood the game at that time. I needed cloth and enchanting mats, so I started JB as a skinner and miner?
If Memory Serves - Jezzibael (or JB for short) is a respelling of the name of one of our cats.
The real Explanation - Yep, the above is correct.
A revealing fact - 12 Aug 2005. "I also have a confession to make. JB was the first character I created after Wildshard. At the time I felt a little odd toward players who had characters of the opposite gender, but at the same time wanted an opposite gender character of my own. So when I created "JB", I intentionally never mentioned and never referred to gender, creating the assumption that JB is male without saying so. I'm long over all that and JB is tired of never getting to be in any of the screenshots posted. Boys, please say hello to Jezzibael, aka JB."
Rheebah - Level 6 Female Druid, Retired
First Mention - June 14, 2005. "You want me to tell my wife I want her to be a cow? You guys are going to get me in trouble."
If Memory Serves - The Mrs tried out an undead, but couldn't stomach the cannibalization thing. Some online friends suggested a troll, which seemed marginally better than an undead. We eventually settled on rolling a Tauren druid for her and a troll warrior for me to keep her company.
The Real Explanation - I ran across a reference to the Mrs character, and the name I used was AechTee. We have no clue who that is. My best guess is that I disguised the name, as I often do when referring to someone else's toon. But how that was a reference to Rheebah, who I and the Mrs both agree was her toon's real name, I have no idea. Sometimes I'm too clever for my own good. The Mrs picked the name Rheebah because she liked the way it sounded.
Happyface - Level 22 Horde Male Troll Warrior
First Mention - June 14, 2005. "Sigh, if I'd known I would take this
practice toon and make it my AH trader I would have used a better name." Happy was level 10 at the time.
If Memory Serves - Happy was intended to be a companion for Rheebah and I never thought he would amount to anything more than that. Boy was I wrong.
The real Explanation - I chose the first thing that came to mind. :-)
Merylitlbotm - Level 56 Horde Female Tauren Hunter
First Mention - 14 Nov 2005. "Please welcome the newest addition to the WoW Silvermoon family, Merylitlbotm, and her pet, Peck." Peck was later released back into the wilds, but Mery's pretty happy with Fleshrypper, Sassy, and Blue Witch.
If Memory Serves - I like to think I must have been watching Lord of the Rings, since hobbits come to mind. There were no "little people" on the horde side (such as gnomes and dwarfs on the alliance side), so I went with the closest thing - a cow. The name does sound kinda hobbit-like, don't you think?
The Real Explanation - I liked the name Mery, and the rest of the name sort of attached itself like a caboose. But let's not rile Mery by talking about her caboose.
Dethsdoor - Level 11 Horde Female Undead Warlock
First Mention - 17 Apr 2006. "Undead begin life on the Eastern continent near the Undercity, so DD will likely call UC home. Between DD in UC, Happyface (and Rheebah) in Org, and Mery in TB, I think I have all the major horde cities covered. I just realized I now have six toons on Silvermoon. Hmm, somehow I never thought I would be one to roll up a whole bunch of toons . . ." If I only knew how much larger the family was going to get.
If Memory Serves - Like Wildshard, this was fitting two single syllable words together that sounded good and sounded like a name a warlock would have.
The real Explanation - I don't remember referring to "Deth" as "DD" but it looks like I did.
Jocelyne - Level 23 Horde Female Blood Elf Paladin
First Mention - 20 Apr 2007. "So JB and Jocelyne got some time both solo and together today. JB thought it would be fun to escort Jocelyne the long way from Silvermoon City in Eversong Woods to the Undercity in Tirisfal Glades."
If Memory Serves - This is getting embarrassing. It seems I fail to note new toons and names with depressing regularity. Jocelyne is already level 10 by the time she gets her first mention. I'm guessing that she was born shortly after blood elves were introduced, but I'm just not sure.
The real Explanation. Not a clue how Jocelyne got her name, but she is referred to as Joce and Jocy at various times.
Javajoo - Level 32 Alliance Male Draenei Paladin
Chaitee - Level 20 Alliance Female Draenei Hunter
First Mention - 13 Jun 2007. "Please welcome two newcomers to Wild's family, Javajoo and Chaitee, the new toons for Wild and Mrs Wild."
If Memory Serves - This was the second attempt to tempt the Mrs into joining in on our Warcraft fun. Rheebah and Happyface wished them luck.
The real Explanation - We went with a beverage theme. The Mrs loves Chai tea, and viola! a name was born. We know that Java is coffee, but I can't help tinkering with names and liked the sound of Javajoo (perhaps thinking "java juice"). The beverage theme took an unexpected turn when our alliance team formed a guild and named it Tea Green.
Phillyperdue - Level 80 Horde Female Undead Priest
First Mention - 04 Jan 2008. "Yes, I'm playing another healer (with distant visions of shadow priesthood). Yes, I'm playing another lady character, but she hasn't developed a personality yet."
If Memory Serves - Philly was born on The Scryers server as a guild member of "The Grunt Foundation." She's actually not the first toon to be born on a server other than Silvermoon. That honor belongs to Naji, a lvl 3 night elf hunter on Greymane born on August 25, 2005 to give me something to do when Silvermoon server was down (which was often back in those days). Naji may still be out there.
The real Explanation - Hey, for once I can tell it straight. "(1) Philly is a play on fille. (2) fille perdue is french for "lost girl". (3) Our members seem to have a penchant for using foreign languages in their names. (4) My handle on the wowhead forums is alwayslost, hence the "lost girl" reference." Funny that I didn't mention that the alwayslost name on the forums is a reference to how often Wild manages to go north when he should be going south.
Melasahnd - Level 63 Horde Female Undead Death Knight
First Mention - 13 Nov 2008. "Today marks the roll out of Wrath of the Lich King. I picked out a name for the DK that will be joining Wild's family."
If Memory Serves - Wild didn't wait long to welcome kin from the new class of death knights. I think he spent more time deciding on a name this time than he did deciding when to welcome her home.
The real Explanation - "The name is Melasahnd, from the Kushiel's Dart series of books. Melasahnd is the phonetic spelling of the name Melisande, who is the main villain throughout the series. She has terrible powers and was behind the corruption of a paladin-like people called the Cassiline Brotherhood. Seemed appropriate for a DK, a paladin-like class that has taken up the dark powers."
Naithipe - Fill in the Blanks
First Mention - 27 Mar 2009. "Happy noticed something odd when checking his mailbox very late last night. Written into one corner of the box was something like a code: s11m84h3
This morning the odd scribbling was gone, although a faintish red stain remained. It seems we have mystery."
If memory Serves - Naithipe says go away. Naithipe says there will be trouble if this is ever posted.
The real Explanation - It's no secret that Naithipe is a puzzle, an acronym and an anachronism. Naithipe is a name within a name anchored in the pages of a book Naithipe holds dear for reasons both fond and fearsome, and will say no more.
Alwayslost - Level 11 Alliance Female Draenei Paladin
First Mention - Apr 23, 2010. "I know the nameplates at the bottom are kind of hard to read, but the blue lady to the right of Naithipe is Alwayslost, and that includes her clothing. She's level 1, by the way." Lost appeared in the Wild Family portrait while still just a toddler.
If Memory Serves - Lost never liked her name, since she feels that Wild saddled her with HIS shortcoming, not hers. She takes solace that she is never lost while conducting the business of the Auction House, and has made enough gold to provide hefty stakes for the newest brace of adventurers joining the Alliance guild.
The real Explanation - "Lost completed her initial paladin training at her home village of Ammen Vale on Azuremyst Isle and then moved up to the marginally larger town of Azure Watch. Lost then made her way to the major city of Exodar on the shoreline of the island as a level 10, where the nearest Alliance Auction House was located. Lost did not come completely out of nowhere, however. While living with her birth family at Ammen Vale she became a local scholar, writing correspondence which got her notice, particularly at the major knowledge center of Wowhead. Finances had always fascinated her as well, and she was eager to try her hand at the Auction House business." Lost's dedication and contributions earned her advancement to Guild Leader of Tea Green - with gracious acknowledgement and thanks to former Guild Leaders Daethbot and Sinstar.
Ezuh - Level 46 Horde Female Orc Shaman
First Mention - Aug 10, 2009. "Ezuh pushed through her early studies at the Orc starting zone in Durator, then in Sen'jin Village, and graduated to the small town of Razor Hill. As a mere level 10 the young shaman pushed on, visiting the big city of Orgrimmar, home of the horde king Thrall."
If Memory Serves - Ezuh is a phonetically mangled miss-spelling of a character from the movie "Clan of the Cave Bear." Laugh if you must, but I actually like that movie. Iza is the mother of Daryl Hannah's character. The name sounds like Eee-Suh.
The real Explanation - I wish I had a better explanation, but it is what it is. Maybe this is why EZ always seems so conflicted. And orcs are sort of like Neanderthals, right?
Slashedhand - Level 11 Horde Male Orc Hunter
First Mention - Feb 12, 2010. "In the brightness of a clear Friday morning, the elusive Naithipe slipped into the riotous Valentine's week crowd in Orgrimmar. The fanciful displays and the decked out in hearts players held no interest. Naithipe hunted a hunter. The hunter, Slash, had arrived in Orgrimmar the night before, staying at the Inn and enjoying the revelry of the big city. The young orc sampled the perfumes and candies, eyeing the lovely women and flexing his farm bred muscles. He partied long into the night."
If Memory Serves - Slash was useful to Naithipe, which can be a terrifying thing. I'm surprised he's still both alive and sane.
The real Explanation - I severely cut my hand on a mirror I broke at a time when Naithipe had surfaced, looking baleful and wanting some help. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking up a name for that helper, or wondering what Naithipe had in mind for him, as I didn't think he would be around that long.
Raktajina - Level 13 Alliance Female Night Elf Hunter
First Mention - Mar 14, 2010. "For the first time, after more than five years of calling Azeroth home, Wild finally rolled a female night elf hunter, by far the most common combination of race, class, and sex in all of the Alliance."
If Memory Serves - Another beverage reference. Rakta is the alliance side go-between in moving stuff through the neutral Auction House.
The real Explanation - "Raktajina means Klingon coffee in the language of that race." Rakta named her first combat pet Dargh, which is Tea in the Klingon tongue. Rakta gets titters and giggles sometimes when the meaning of her name is miss-interpreted. Doesn't everyone speak Klingon these days?
Hapless - Level 16 Horde Female Troll Druid
First Mention - Jan 03, 2011. "Wild learned through Hap, a troll druid recently added to the family, that a young druid with cat form is a pretty deadly killer."
If Memory Serves - I just had to have a troll druid so I could experience the new pre-cata transition in the new troll starting zone. I even had thoughts that Hap might take over for Happy on the Auction House. Happy nixed that idea and didn't appreciate the subtle jibe of the Happyface/Hapless comparison.
The real Explanation - I actually considered changing Happy's name to Hapless. But he fooled me, not by changing his name, but by changing himself from a troll to a goblin. Happy will do anything to get a leg up on the Auction House. Plus, he just loves his new vroom vroom cycle! So, when Happy refused to be Hapless, the "honor" went to the troll druid.
Sistaphilia - Level 19 Alliance Female Worgen Druid
First Mention - Jan 03, 2011. "Sista began her life in Gilneas City. The town was near over-run by wolf-like creatures and the townsfolk were terrified, but there was still the remnants of a city guard, and Sista was drafted to help them combat the menace. "
If Memory Serves - I spent a lot of time trying to think up a good name for a worgen druid. I figured that anything with wolf, werewolf, biting, moon, et al, would be monotonous as a million new worgen were going to have names something like that.
The real Explanation - "Sista" fits the druid culture. "Philia" has a range of generally positive meanings, such as fondness and love, but it can also have a darker side. Given what a worgen is, I thought that the multiple connotations fit. I also thought about SistaCybil - but only after Sistaphilia was already born. A worgen can walk as a human, walk upright in wolf form, walk on all fours in wolf form; and as a druid can shapeshift into a fish, cat, bear, and leopard. That's seven personalities. Cybil, I think, had ten.
2. The Sis/Lao Clan
I have a story behind all my toons. Not interesting stories, but stories none the less. All and all my names have come from books, food, or looks of the toon. I am a very simple woman.
Neekia:
This was my very first toon. She was a warrior, because at the time I thought warriors were the toughest class in anything (which may show that I have never gamed before). She got the name from a sci-fi book series that I read, and like most things in my life I messed up by misspelling the name. I don’t recall the original spelling, but the way I always heard it in my head while reading was knee-kia. It was a term of endearment for this alien race, for their females. It meant beloved one, or only one, or some such mushy thing.
Neekia was and still is a black smith and miner. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for her. She is not a very good warrior, in fact her favorite past times are fishing and cooking. But she is content with her lack of ferocity and always is willing to give it a go when I drag her out for questing.
Cerulean:
This was my second toon and she never really did get far, as in she got past level 5. She was a pally I never really got into, but I choose the name because I thought it was a very pretty one and one that it sounded like it had depth to it. And depth she has, she is very much into banking. Neekia once sent her a monocle as a gift and Cerulean always wears it; helps her examine her books and goods better. But she holds down the coffers of my toons, giving them a budget and demanding them to send any excess for her to tend to.
Almond:
Well, I would like to say that there was a good back story to the name, but as it was there was a bag of Kirkland almonds on my computer desk when I started this toon. Which she was the first of many toons that started that way. But she does have one tick with her name, and that is when people call her Almond joy. Like she has not heard that a million times, poor lass. Unbleached was an ingredient in an organic scone package that I had on my desk, but that turned out well, since she was a shadow priest vs. holy. Arnica was an in ingredient in my tree hugging deodorant.
Zadist:
Zadist was created for the name. There was, again a book series I was reading, and one kick butt guy was named Zsadist. So I figured it would be the perfect name for a sneering, egotistic, antisocial warlock (on the horde side of course) who got pleasure in melting others. Thus, after having to settle for the second spelling since the first was taken, Zadist was born. She later had to become Narcissus, due to the name being taken on her new server, which ironically served to mellow her out.
Laodike:
My new main toon was created with this name to do Erik’s instance of us naming our toons out of a David Grammell, Gramell? book series that we liked. I tried several of the names, and this was one of the only ones not taken. She was a lover of the main heroine and saved her life and sacrificed her own in the process. Tragic.
Fungi and Fungal (retired):
I was Fungal, and a beau of the time was Fungi. We were both priests, or at least I was, he might have been a warlock. We looked alike, dressed alike, did the same dungeons. We almost seem to be growing on each other we were so alike *snicker* They were our fun escape hatch that no one else knew about. Loved their names.
Misc names:
Aged, undead horde, thought it was appropriate to his looks. Jabberless, again undead, and no lower jaw, so no jabbering for him. Nina: small little gnome girl (as if when are gnomes not small).
3. The DER Clan
My names are the most simple of all! Of most of these names I have had at least two characters either named the same or very similar. The most popular name I have used though has always been Sinstar or some variation thereof; at least 10 characters created through my 5 years in the game with a Sin name variation. Very original I am…
Trazom – Lvl 40 Night elf rogue - First real toon, which is Mozart backwards. The name didn’t really fit a rogue…
Sinstar – Lvl 80 Night elf/Tauren druid - A weak attempt to win my partner over to the game of warcraft as she hated it. Needless to say, naming a character after her didn’t win her over… This was my original main that I mastered pvp with and did some end game raiding with. She has been transferred over servers multiple times and been retired. She was eventually changed into a tauren (my favorite race in game) and brought over to join in on the Wild family fun.
Trazy – Lvl 26 Human pally, just a play off of Trazom.
Nagev – Lvl 15 Orc hunter - The name had something to do with a hunters friendship with animals and something that meant a lot to me at the time of creation; being vegan as Nagev is vegan backwards…
Deathbot – Lvl 15 Undead mage - Deathbot was something that was on a line of clothing that I liked at the time. A robot that spreads death. I thought it was an awesome name for an undead mage!
Erikred – Lvl 59 Orc hunter - Named after me and the Viking hero and explorer of lore Erik the Red. This is the first character I created to join up with the Wild family to play together.
Andromache – Lvl 48 Tauren druid – The name of Hector’s (from Trojan fame) wife and also the name of the main heroine in David Gemmell’s Troy trilogy. Some of the finest books ever written and one of my favorite characters ever. I really like animals and nature and I thought bestowing the name on one of my favorite characters of literature onto a cow that worships nature would be awesome. Unfortunately I got excited when creating the character and mis-typed her name and she ended up being Andomache… So tragic…
Deaderikred – Lvl 80 Undead deathknight – The dead version of me.
KireNavillus – Lvl 22 Dwarf pally - Named after me again, but this time taken from the past. My first ever DnD character was a Dwarf warrior of the same name.
Skinnemuva – Level 59 Human Deathknight – skinnemuva is skinny mover, my semi nickname since I was about 14. Has to do with being skinny and liking dance. Basically I am just a skinny guy that moves a lot. This has become my name of use on blogs, twitter, etc, and most of my fantasy sports teams are named “skinnemuvas”.
Weekend (16 Jan) - The Great Gold Sink
Weekend (16 Jan) - The Great Gold Sink
[Note - this is the fourth post in a series covering Thursday through the weekend]
Saturday morning got off to a bad start. Auction House sales were light on both the alliance and horde side. Happy and Lost were not that concerned as it was about time for players to take a collective breath from the leveling and reputation grinds and dungeons and heroics and profession skilling etc etc etc. Players were taking stock and simply weren't buying at the same levels as before.
That gave Rakta and Melasahnd a chance to move some stock through the neutral AH. Strange dust was still cheap on the alliance side and very profitable on the horde side so a lot of dust was moved to where it would bring the most profit. Also going from alliance to horde were eight stacks of infinite dust. Lost got a bonanza on Thursday when all that infinite dust showed up at under a gold apiece. They sell for around five gold apiece on the horde side.
In all the months of transferring stuff through the neutral Auction House, there has never been an "accident." This time, someone was targeting infinite dust. As the eight stacks of dust appeared on the neutral AH, posted automatically by Rakta all at once, they were immediately snapped up by someone else. Melasahnd frantically tried to capture them, but managed to get only one stack. Seven stacks equal 140 dust and at 1g cost each plus a loss of 5g each from the hoped for sales, it was a total loss of 840 gold. It was probably done using an automatic setting in an AH addon, but in that case the buyer would still have had to be in game and have the Auction House window open. I'm sure there are illegal bot addons that do the same thing. Rakta could have gotten the name of the buyer, but I forgot that info is only available for an hour after the sale. But it doesn't really matter. The dust is gone.
This will change how the neutral AH transactions are handled. There will be no more weekend transactions, since there are more players in game and therefore more risk. Rakta and Melasahnd will also test transactions with a single sale to make sure they don't get picked up before sending stacks of material through. There is a slim chance that someone has figured out what Rakta and Melasahnd are doing. Booty Bay has three locations where there is a neutral AH Auctioneer. Rakta goes to the semi-hidden location in a back room on the lowest floor of the town, and has never seen anyone else in there. That's pretty safe. Melasahnd goes to the bank area. That is a trafficked area, but Melasahnd does not conduct AH transactions if there is anyone else there. It's possible, I guess, that someone could use the third location, which is on an open deck but can't be seen by either Melasahnd or Rakta, but I think that's unlikely. So, I hope that the new procedures will keep this from happening again.
Alchemy leveling Guide for Cata Alchemists
Nobody is bothering to make leveling guides for professions above 450 skill anymore and Wild is anxious to start getting better flasks for Heroics and raiding than what he has pre-Cata. That's JB's job. So, here is her tailored leveling guide, which she plans to post in Wowhead. She is at skill 464 at present.
First, burn down your pre-Cata stocks of mats to skill up using the yellow recipes you still have at 450. That will help. Also, the cost of the mats are still fluid so always check. Your mileage may vary. And don't forget your crystal vials.
451-455:
Ghost Elixir - 2 cinderbloom x 5 = 10 @ 4g each = 40g
Earthen Potion - 2 stormvine x 5 = 10 @ 5g each = 50g
456-460:
Deathblood Venom - 1 stormvine x 5 = 5 @ 5g = 25g recommended
Elixir of the Naga -1 stormvine + 1 Azhara's Veil(10g)
461-465:
Volcanic Potion - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 AV(10g) x5 = 60g recommended
Potion of Illusion - 1 cinder(4g) + 3 Vol. Life(16g)
466-470:
Elixir of the Cobra - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 AV(10g) x5 = 60g recommended
Potion of Concentration - 2 AV(1og)
471-475: Use the oil to make mysterious potions. If you fish for the cavefish yourself I'd make these recipes until they go green.
Deepstone Oil - 1 Albino Cavefish(5g) x5 = 25g
Mysterious Potion - 2 Deepstone Oil
476-480:
Elixir of Deep Earth - 2 Heartblossom(11g)
Mighty Rejuvenation Potion - 2 whiptail(9g) x5 = 90g recommended
481-485:
Elixir of Impossible Accuracy - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 heart(11g)
Prismatic Elixir - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 whiptail(9g) x5 = 65g recommended
Note: Transmute: Living Elements is learned at skill 485. It has a one day cooldown so I consider these bonus skill ups.
486-490:
Mythical Mana Potion - 1 cinder(4g) + 2 whip(9g)
Potion of the Tol'vir - 1 storm(5g) + 1 whip(9g) x5 = 70g recommended
491-495:
Elixir of Mighty Speed -
1 storm(5g) + 1 twilight jasmine(10g) x5 = 75g recommended
Golemblood Potion - 1 VL(16g) + 1 heart(11g)
496-500:
Elixir of the Master - 1 TJ(10g) + 1 heart(11g) x5 = 105g
Mythical Healing Potion - 1 VL(16g) + 2 TJ(10g)
501-505: This is where it gets expensive. Who's got a calculator?
Flask of Enchancement -
8 each of cinder(4g),storm(5g),AV(10g),whip(9g),TJ(10g) x5 = 1520g
Flask of Flowing Water -
6 VL(16g) + 12 each storm(5g), heart(11g) x5 = 1055g
Flask of Steelskin -
6 VL(16g) + 12 each cinder(4g), TJ(10g) x5 = 970g recommended
Transmute: Dream Emerald - The gem transmutes do not have a cooldown so they can be used for leveling.
506-510:
Transmute: Dream Emerald - 3 jasper(35g) + 3 storm(5g) x5 = 600g
Flask of Draconic Mind - 6/12/12 each VL(16g),AV(10g),TJ(10g) x5 = 1680g
511=515:
Transmute: Ember Topaz - 3 hessonite(21g) + 3 cinder(4g) x5 = 625g
Flask of the Winds - 6/12/12 VL(16g),AV(10g),whip(9g) x5 = 1620g
Flask of Titanic Strength - 6/12/12 VL(16g),cinder(4g),whip(9g)x5= 1260g
516-520:
Transmute: Demonseye - 3 nightstone(47g) + 3 TJ(10g) x5 = 855g
Transmute: Ocean Sapphire - ocean sapphire(19g) + 3 AV(10g) x5 = 435g
521-525:
Transmute: Amberjewel - 3 alicite(12g) + 3 whip(9g) x5 = 315g
Transmute: Pyrium Bar -
4 Elementium Bar(20g) + 4 Volatile Earth(15g) x5 = 700g
Ok, let's see if I have enough fingers and toes to give a total cost (using the least expensive mats, of course)
451-495 = 560 gold
496-525 = 3050 gold
Total = 3610 gold
JB got her in game time to start on her Alchemy skills. Under the best case scenario getting to her first target, skill 495, should cost her 560g. Happy staked her to 1000g.
JB got two breaks. First, she was already at skill 464, 14 skill points that she wouldn't have to buy mats for. Second, Wild agreed to spend some time in Deepholm fishing albino cavefish. That gave JB 10 more skill points that she didn't have to pay for.
JB did get to skill 495, but it cost her 742g to get there. Mat costs started out where they were estimated above, but the low cost mats didn't last long once the buying started. Who knows how many alchemists were looking for herbs, but JB would look at five great deals and try to buy them, but three would already be gone. Great deals became good deals became ok I really need these deals to I'm not going to pay that much decisions.
Another thing she totally missed out on were three points where she could have made one recipe and gotten multiple skill ups. I forget that this is a new feature of profession skilling. At least JB can take advantage of that from 496 on.
For Wild, it was hugely disappointing to discover that yes, JB will soon be able to make Flask of the Draconic Mind, only to learn that the mats cost over 750 gold - for ONE flask! They sell for half that on the AH (300g+ is still a LOT of gold for one flask) obviously because they farm all the mats. Until mat prices come down Wild will be at the mercy of the guild to get the flasks he needs. JB will farm some, but only those herbs available in the 80-81 zones, unless she wants to play death tag with higher level mobs.
Later ... JB, out of money to improve on her alchemy skill, decided it was time to really see what she had gear-wise. JB used to be enhancement, and used to be elemental, and used to be restoration. She used to be pve before she was pvp. She had gear from all three specs as well as pvp gear cluttering up her bags and her bank. Currently JB is dual specced in enhancement and restoration. JB has never done much healing in pve situations, but has some modest pvp healing gear which she's had fun with in Wintergrasp. A pvp based healing set was gear she would keep. She also decided that for pve purposes she would go back to her first love - enhancement. The problem there is that whatever gear she still had from that spec was old. Very old. Thanks to Wild and his DE friends JB received a few pieces of BOE Cata gear she could wear. JB was happy with what she could cobble together, but just between me and the fence post it was a pretty sad collection of gear. At least there was an i289 off-hand axe JB could dual wield with her i200 dagger. All the rest of that pile of junk was vendored, including a set of pve healing gear that pre-dated even i200 gear. If JB wants to pve heal in the future, she'll need to work for it.
JB couldn't stand just hovering around Orgrimmar, flying back and forth between the Alchemist trainer, the bank, and the Auction House. She received a letter ordering her to Moonglade and she decided to accept. At Moonglade her letter got her a trip to Mount Hyjal. From there JB took off and went flower picking. She wasn't interested in doing quests, and as long as she wasn't bothered she didn't even try to kill anything. Just picking flowers gives experience points, though, and on two occasions she had to kill random mobs that had the audacity to question JB's right to those herbs. JB's melee power is pretty good, but she's a bit squishy, falling to around 60% health against level 80/81 mobs. Good enough for collecting herbs, though, and with the herbs she was able to collect she improved her alchemy skill from 495 to 500 - at no cost, JB wanted to point out.
And don't worry, Lao, JB's xp only got up to 11%.
And here's a secret that has Wild particularly annoyed - JB is after an i359 item, and she'll get it before Wild ever sets sight of one.
Here's another secret. JB added five pieces of green mail Cata level armor to her melee set. JB gained 4,000 health, and should be a little less squishy now. Thanks, Happy! Some of it was a poor fit, such as the healing mace main hand - but at i289 it beat out the i200 dagger that was in that slot (and will help big time as a pvp healer). The under i300 gear doesn't have much specifically for enhancement shaman (ie, with both +int and +agi), at least not the BOE stuff. And unfortunately even on gear without +int on it, I can't reforge for +int.
[Note - this is the fourth post in a series covering Thursday through the weekend]
Saturday morning got off to a bad start. Auction House sales were light on both the alliance and horde side. Happy and Lost were not that concerned as it was about time for players to take a collective breath from the leveling and reputation grinds and dungeons and heroics and profession skilling etc etc etc. Players were taking stock and simply weren't buying at the same levels as before.
That gave Rakta and Melasahnd a chance to move some stock through the neutral AH. Strange dust was still cheap on the alliance side and very profitable on the horde side so a lot of dust was moved to where it would bring the most profit. Also going from alliance to horde were eight stacks of infinite dust. Lost got a bonanza on Thursday when all that infinite dust showed up at under a gold apiece. They sell for around five gold apiece on the horde side.
In all the months of transferring stuff through the neutral Auction House, there has never been an "accident." This time, someone was targeting infinite dust. As the eight stacks of dust appeared on the neutral AH, posted automatically by Rakta all at once, they were immediately snapped up by someone else. Melasahnd frantically tried to capture them, but managed to get only one stack. Seven stacks equal 140 dust and at 1g cost each plus a loss of 5g each from the hoped for sales, it was a total loss of 840 gold. It was probably done using an automatic setting in an AH addon, but in that case the buyer would still have had to be in game and have the Auction House window open. I'm sure there are illegal bot addons that do the same thing. Rakta could have gotten the name of the buyer, but I forgot that info is only available for an hour after the sale. But it doesn't really matter. The dust is gone.
This will change how the neutral AH transactions are handled. There will be no more weekend transactions, since there are more players in game and therefore more risk. Rakta and Melasahnd will also test transactions with a single sale to make sure they don't get picked up before sending stacks of material through. There is a slim chance that someone has figured out what Rakta and Melasahnd are doing. Booty Bay has three locations where there is a neutral AH Auctioneer. Rakta goes to the semi-hidden location in a back room on the lowest floor of the town, and has never seen anyone else in there. That's pretty safe. Melasahnd goes to the bank area. That is a trafficked area, but Melasahnd does not conduct AH transactions if there is anyone else there. It's possible, I guess, that someone could use the third location, which is on an open deck but can't be seen by either Melasahnd or Rakta, but I think that's unlikely. So, I hope that the new procedures will keep this from happening again.
Alchemy leveling Guide for Cata Alchemists
Nobody is bothering to make leveling guides for professions above 450 skill anymore and Wild is anxious to start getting better flasks for Heroics and raiding than what he has pre-Cata. That's JB's job. So, here is her tailored leveling guide, which she plans to post in Wowhead. She is at skill 464 at present.
First, burn down your pre-Cata stocks of mats to skill up using the yellow recipes you still have at 450. That will help. Also, the cost of the mats are still fluid so always check. Your mileage may vary. And don't forget your crystal vials.
451-455:
Ghost Elixir - 2 cinderbloom x 5 = 10 @ 4g each = 40g
Earthen Potion - 2 stormvine x 5 = 10 @ 5g each = 50g
456-460:
Deathblood Venom - 1 stormvine x 5 = 5 @ 5g = 25g recommended
Elixir of the Naga -1 stormvine + 1 Azhara's Veil(10g)
461-465:
Volcanic Potion - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 AV(10g) x5 = 60g recommended
Potion of Illusion - 1 cinder(4g) + 3 Vol. Life(16g)
466-470:
Elixir of the Cobra - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 AV(10g) x5 = 60g recommended
Potion of Concentration - 2 AV(1og)
471-475: Use the oil to make mysterious potions. If you fish for the cavefish yourself I'd make these recipes until they go green.
Deepstone Oil - 1 Albino Cavefish(5g) x5 = 25g
Mysterious Potion - 2 Deepstone Oil
476-480:
Elixir of Deep Earth - 2 Heartblossom(11g)
Mighty Rejuvenation Potion - 2 whiptail(9g) x5 = 90g recommended
481-485:
Elixir of Impossible Accuracy - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 heart(11g)
Prismatic Elixir - 1 cinder(4g) + 1 whiptail(9g) x5 = 65g recommended
Note: Transmute: Living Elements is learned at skill 485. It has a one day cooldown so I consider these bonus skill ups.
486-490:
Mythical Mana Potion - 1 cinder(4g) + 2 whip(9g)
Potion of the Tol'vir - 1 storm(5g) + 1 whip(9g) x5 = 70g recommended
491-495:
Elixir of Mighty Speed -
1 storm(5g) + 1 twilight jasmine(10g) x5 = 75g recommended
Golemblood Potion - 1 VL(16g) + 1 heart(11g)
496-500:
Elixir of the Master - 1 TJ(10g) + 1 heart(11g) x5 = 105g
Mythical Healing Potion - 1 VL(16g) + 2 TJ(10g)
501-505: This is where it gets expensive. Who's got a calculator?
Flask of Enchancement -
8 each of cinder(4g),storm(5g),AV(10g),whip(9g),TJ(10g) x5 = 1520g
Flask of Flowing Water -
6 VL(16g) + 12 each storm(5g), heart(11g) x5 = 1055g
Flask of Steelskin -
6 VL(16g) + 12 each cinder(4g), TJ(10g) x5 = 970g recommended
Transmute: Dream Emerald - The gem transmutes do not have a cooldown so they can be used for leveling.
506-510:
Transmute: Dream Emerald - 3 jasper(35g) + 3 storm(5g) x5 = 600g
Flask of Draconic Mind - 6/12/12 each VL(16g),AV(10g),TJ(10g) x5 = 1680g
511=515:
Transmute: Ember Topaz - 3 hessonite(21g) + 3 cinder(4g) x5 = 625g
Flask of the Winds - 6/12/12 VL(16g),AV(10g),whip(9g) x5 = 1620g
Flask of Titanic Strength - 6/12/12 VL(16g),cinder(4g),whip(9g)x5= 1260g
516-520:
Transmute: Demonseye - 3 nightstone(47g) + 3 TJ(10g) x5 = 855g
Transmute: Ocean Sapphire - ocean sapphire(19g) + 3 AV(10g) x5 = 435g
521-525:
Transmute: Amberjewel - 3 alicite(12g) + 3 whip(9g) x5 = 315g
Transmute: Pyrium Bar -
4 Elementium Bar(20g) + 4 Volatile Earth(15g) x5 = 700g
Ok, let's see if I have enough fingers and toes to give a total cost (using the least expensive mats, of course)
451-495 = 560 gold
496-525 = 3050 gold
Total = 3610 gold
JB got her in game time to start on her Alchemy skills. Under the best case scenario getting to her first target, skill 495, should cost her 560g. Happy staked her to 1000g.
JB got two breaks. First, she was already at skill 464, 14 skill points that she wouldn't have to buy mats for. Second, Wild agreed to spend some time in Deepholm fishing albino cavefish. That gave JB 10 more skill points that she didn't have to pay for.
JB did get to skill 495, but it cost her 742g to get there. Mat costs started out where they were estimated above, but the low cost mats didn't last long once the buying started. Who knows how many alchemists were looking for herbs, but JB would look at five great deals and try to buy them, but three would already be gone. Great deals became good deals became ok I really need these deals to I'm not going to pay that much decisions.
Another thing she totally missed out on were three points where she could have made one recipe and gotten multiple skill ups. I forget that this is a new feature of profession skilling. At least JB can take advantage of that from 496 on.
For Wild, it was hugely disappointing to discover that yes, JB will soon be able to make Flask of the Draconic Mind, only to learn that the mats cost over 750 gold - for ONE flask! They sell for half that on the AH (300g+ is still a LOT of gold for one flask) obviously because they farm all the mats. Until mat prices come down Wild will be at the mercy of the guild to get the flasks he needs. JB will farm some, but only those herbs available in the 80-81 zones, unless she wants to play death tag with higher level mobs.
Later ... JB, out of money to improve on her alchemy skill, decided it was time to really see what she had gear-wise. JB used to be enhancement, and used to be elemental, and used to be restoration. She used to be pve before she was pvp. She had gear from all three specs as well as pvp gear cluttering up her bags and her bank. Currently JB is dual specced in enhancement and restoration. JB has never done much healing in pve situations, but has some modest pvp healing gear which she's had fun with in Wintergrasp. A pvp based healing set was gear she would keep. She also decided that for pve purposes she would go back to her first love - enhancement. The problem there is that whatever gear she still had from that spec was old. Very old. Thanks to Wild and his DE friends JB received a few pieces of BOE Cata gear she could wear. JB was happy with what she could cobble together, but just between me and the fence post it was a pretty sad collection of gear. At least there was an i289 off-hand axe JB could dual wield with her i200 dagger. All the rest of that pile of junk was vendored, including a set of pve healing gear that pre-dated even i200 gear. If JB wants to pve heal in the future, she'll need to work for it.
JB couldn't stand just hovering around Orgrimmar, flying back and forth between the Alchemist trainer, the bank, and the Auction House. She received a letter ordering her to Moonglade and she decided to accept. At Moonglade her letter got her a trip to Mount Hyjal. From there JB took off and went flower picking. She wasn't interested in doing quests, and as long as she wasn't bothered she didn't even try to kill anything. Just picking flowers gives experience points, though, and on two occasions she had to kill random mobs that had the audacity to question JB's right to those herbs. JB's melee power is pretty good, but she's a bit squishy, falling to around 60% health against level 80/81 mobs. Good enough for collecting herbs, though, and with the herbs she was able to collect she improved her alchemy skill from 495 to 500 - at no cost, JB wanted to point out.
And don't worry, Lao, JB's xp only got up to 11%.
And here's a secret that has Wild particularly annoyed - JB is after an i359 item, and she'll get it before Wild ever sets sight of one.
Here's another secret. JB added five pieces of green mail Cata level armor to her melee set. JB gained 4,000 health, and should be a little less squishy now. Thanks, Happy! Some of it was a poor fit, such as the healing mace main hand - but at i289 it beat out the i200 dagger that was in that slot (and will help big time as a pvp healer). The under i300 gear doesn't have much specifically for enhancement shaman (ie, with both +int and +agi), at least not the BOE stuff. And unfortunately even on gear without +int on it, I can't reforge for +int.
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