Friday (25 Feb) - Where Have all the Cowboys Gone?
The subject above is the title of a recent post by the senior raid leader in Wild's guild, Bd. He has been out of action for nearly two weeks now and reported that he may be out another week or two before he will be able to run raids. Real life is a beech, but he's doing his best to keep us informed. In the interim there has been a lack of communication and action by the other guild officers, including the other raid leader and the guild leader.
In the few chances he's had to get in game, Bd has heard from other guildies that dissatisfaction is growing. No specifics were offered, but the general tone was one or worry that there raid progression in the guild has ground to a halt and that guild leadership has been silent about it. Bd did express that there was some urgency to the issue, suggesting that the guild leader bring guild leadership together to address the concerns this week, even if Bd himself was unable to be there.
I responded to his post and in his reply he added that he has observed that:
* players seem intimidated by Heroics, which are needed to gear for raiding
* a general lack of interest in raiding, perhaps the result of not doing Heroics
* the lack of guild officers assigned that focus on raiding and raiding preparation
As for Wild, I'm wondering where some of my friends are. Folks like Lady Hunter, and Rs, and some others were core raiders that are barely present now and not raiding at all, even when raids were scheduled. Like I started with, real life is a beech. We may be seeing a changing of the guard within the guild, as long time raiders step back and open the doors to our many new guildies. So far guild leadership - at least publicly - hasn't asked newer members to step forward, and from Wild's small corner of the world I haven't seen much interest in taking a larger role from the rank and file members, new or old. I'm hoping Bd's post on the guild website will prompt a response from the guild leader.
As far as I'm concerned, the answer is pretty simple and straightforward, but it's also one I proposed back in Wild's FS days that went nowhere. But here it is anyway. If as a guild we are timid about getting into Heroics, and if that is holding us back in getting raids together, then let's plan and organize heroic runs.
Announce that we will be running Heroics as a guild as many nights a week as we have guildie interest. Guildies would have to sign up for the Heroics just like we do for raids, and with the same criteria. If you sign up, show up. I would also add a new wrinkle - if we had enough guildies in the right composition show up then we would raid. If not, we'd do Heroics. Make it a firm time, too. No more of this waiting around an hour to see if we got enough people to show up for a raid. Track who signs up and who shows up. Those who made the effort but miss out should be rotated in so everyone gets opportunities. Mains would have priority, with alts to fill in where needed.
I would also go the extra step of personally asking every guildie main (1) are they interested in this idea and (2) what period of time is best. Generally we raid 6-9pm on weeknights. But I'm on at various times of the day and there is almost always at least a few folks around. There may be guildies who say they'd like to run at 3pm, or at 9am, or whatever, and the guild should try to bring those folks together and set up scheduled runs.
The main logistics issue would be handling the tank assignments. I think we have enough healers to go around, but we don't want to overburden the tanks. Tank availability would be the one limiting factor in how many runs are scheduled, and so there should be a special discussion - with all our tanks - to get their input on how they would like it to work. Whatever they need the guild should bend over backward to provide. I would personally chip in to pay for tank repair costs and consumables - or whatever it is that is limiting out pool of tanks.
Another issue to address is that tanks are generally assumed to be the group leader. The majority of tanks do prefer that, but there are players who like tanking, but don't like running the group. To increase our pool of tanks, I think the guild should look at pairing tanks that don't want to be group leaders with players who aren't tanks but are willing to lead groups.
The upside is that guildies will be working together, we will gain confidence in our ability to clear heroic dungeons, and along the way we will be picking up loot needed to be successful in raids.
There is no downside to this beyond lack of interest. However, every time something like this has been proposed, the response is always along the line of "getting raid ready is the responsibility of the individual, not the guild." I don't disagree, in situations where there is a base of players eager to raid. And the case could be make that if guildies are apathetic I guess we just won't be a raiding guild. But I'd also then question how committed to raiding guild leadership is, and how hard they tried to make it happen.
Wild will make that proposal to MM leadership, and I'll see where that leads. Heck, I would even organize and run it, if they wanted to give it a try.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday (24 Feb) - Hunter Fortress Represents!
Thursday (24 Feb) - Hunter Fortress Represents!
New blue lumberjack shirts and a redesigned guild tabard await guildies the next time they check the bank and pick up a guild tabard (if they don't already have one). Many thanks to the DER Clan for suggesting we make some changes and even designing the new tabard. I must say that the tabard emblem, an eight point star with the long arms signifying the four hunters and the shorter arms of the star signifying the four combat pets, is awesome - although it certainly gets stretched in interesting ways among our short (Shevils), tall (Beano) and medium build (See and Speak) pvp partyers.
On Thursday afternoon while getting guild toons their shirts and tabard, Wild came upon a massive assault in progress in the main area of Orgrimmar. Shandris Feathermoon, a super elite Alliance npc who commands the Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas, was badgered by horde players to the point she chased them all the way from Feralas and into Org. It was a titanic battle - more than 50 horde players engaged in trying to kill her. Shandris fought her way to the new Warchief's (Garrosh) building, lighting up half the city with her Starfall attack and laying waste to dozens of horde attackers in the process. Wild died twice defending the entrance to Garrosh's chamber, only to see Garrosh flee the battle without engaging Shandris. After many long minutes of battle Shandris was finally forced out of the city and she returned to Feralas. There were many shouts for Thrall, the popular Warchief before Garrosh, but Garrosh has Thrall far away from the politics of home. I miss Thrall.
On a more personal home front, in addition to battling the demons of my tax return, I have a cold as well. I've been denying it for two days, but there's no question I've got the bug.
There was no raid on Tuesday. No raids on Wednesday or Thursday, either. The guild is reassessing raiding and have asked everyone who wants to raid to make a concrete commitment to the Guild Leader. That was a week ago and there has been no further word. Wild's raid leader for G2 was expected back on Monday, but so far he hasn't been in game. PUGs now have more experience in raiding cata content than our guild does. The guild calendar is empty of events with the exception of the Friday night old school raid (where old content is slaughtered), which is the one raid that always seems to fill.
The DER Clan's top Alliance cousin, Daeth, has been seeing a lot of game time and at level 70 has become a very dangerous opponent in the battlegrounds. Daeth recounted his most recent triumph:
Yeah, he is a gnome. I am so excited to get to 70 with him. He pwns right now with just greens; when he has 1400 spell power, 12k health, 14k mana and 35%ish crit at 70, he is really going to be a nightmare. He had a game in WSG last night (his favorite) where it was a bunch of level 65 and 66 alliance vs. a team of mostly 69 horde with a few 69 twinks. He ended the game with 18 kbs, 4 deaths and a flag return. We won 1-0.
The horde pushed for a flag cap at the end with them having our flag at their base and us having their flag at our base. They returned our flag and their pally went to cap it but I killed him and returned the flag then grabbed theirs. There was only two minutes left or so and I was alone. I went ramp side with their flag and checked everything out from the hill before exiting the ramp. They had a warrior/disc twink combo team running our flag across mid, so I just wanted to try to hang onto the flag until time expired. I ran on the back side of the fence going over toward the roof above the tunnel exit when the warrior charged me from below (they can charge up hills, etc. that you can’t run up :( ). I blinked, ran to the other side of the tunnel then dropped down, but his priest friend was waiting for me. I just kept running and at some point someone landed a killing blow on me, but I have the talent cauterize that brings me to 40% health after someone deals damage to me that would normally kill me. I then take 12% of my maximum health as damage every 1.5 seconds over 6 seconds (48% of my health – will kill you if you don’t have mana shield or some other absorb up). I popped mage ward to save me from cauterize along with my mana shield (which I always try to have up) and I popped a health pot. By this point my mage ward was consumed by cauterize which triggers blazing speed (60% speed increase for 4 seconds). That along with a blink took me out of range of the priest. A hunter got on me during my blazing speed proc and used concussive shot on me, so I used by gnome racial (removes movement impairing effects) and frost nova’d the hunters pet so that I was just left with the hunters arrows vs. my remaining health and mana shield. By this point I was about halfway across mid and help started to arrive.
Long story less long, I held onto the flag until the end of the game and we won. A couple people said over BG chat that they thought I was going to die. I probably should have, but I had just enough tricks to survive long enough to make it to help. It was a great win against a team that we were completely out leveled and geared by. On paper they should have won 3-0, but we pulled out a 1-0 win, and that is why pvp is great! You can’t win that match-up in pve…
Lao also reports that she dipped into the Auction House for some insurance in surviving the quite challenging dungeons of Cataclysm. At gear level i326, she should be ready to take on any and all normal dungeons!
New blue lumberjack shirts and a redesigned guild tabard await guildies the next time they check the bank and pick up a guild tabard (if they don't already have one). Many thanks to the DER Clan for suggesting we make some changes and even designing the new tabard. I must say that the tabard emblem, an eight point star with the long arms signifying the four hunters and the shorter arms of the star signifying the four combat pets, is awesome - although it certainly gets stretched in interesting ways among our short (Shevils), tall (Beano) and medium build (See and Speak) pvp partyers.
On Thursday afternoon while getting guild toons their shirts and tabard, Wild came upon a massive assault in progress in the main area of Orgrimmar. Shandris Feathermoon, a super elite Alliance npc who commands the Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas, was badgered by horde players to the point she chased them all the way from Feralas and into Org. It was a titanic battle - more than 50 horde players engaged in trying to kill her. Shandris fought her way to the new Warchief's (Garrosh) building, lighting up half the city with her Starfall attack and laying waste to dozens of horde attackers in the process. Wild died twice defending the entrance to Garrosh's chamber, only to see Garrosh flee the battle without engaging Shandris. After many long minutes of battle Shandris was finally forced out of the city and she returned to Feralas. There were many shouts for Thrall, the popular Warchief before Garrosh, but Garrosh has Thrall far away from the politics of home. I miss Thrall.
On a more personal home front, in addition to battling the demons of my tax return, I have a cold as well. I've been denying it for two days, but there's no question I've got the bug.
There was no raid on Tuesday. No raids on Wednesday or Thursday, either. The guild is reassessing raiding and have asked everyone who wants to raid to make a concrete commitment to the Guild Leader. That was a week ago and there has been no further word. Wild's raid leader for G2 was expected back on Monday, but so far he hasn't been in game. PUGs now have more experience in raiding cata content than our guild does. The guild calendar is empty of events with the exception of the Friday night old school raid (where old content is slaughtered), which is the one raid that always seems to fill.
The DER Clan's top Alliance cousin, Daeth, has been seeing a lot of game time and at level 70 has become a very dangerous opponent in the battlegrounds. Daeth recounted his most recent triumph:
Yeah, he is a gnome. I am so excited to get to 70 with him. He pwns right now with just greens; when he has 1400 spell power, 12k health, 14k mana and 35%ish crit at 70, he is really going to be a nightmare. He had a game in WSG last night (his favorite) where it was a bunch of level 65 and 66 alliance vs. a team of mostly 69 horde with a few 69 twinks. He ended the game with 18 kbs, 4 deaths and a flag return. We won 1-0.
The horde pushed for a flag cap at the end with them having our flag at their base and us having their flag at our base. They returned our flag and their pally went to cap it but I killed him and returned the flag then grabbed theirs. There was only two minutes left or so and I was alone. I went ramp side with their flag and checked everything out from the hill before exiting the ramp. They had a warrior/disc twink combo team running our flag across mid, so I just wanted to try to hang onto the flag until time expired. I ran on the back side of the fence going over toward the roof above the tunnel exit when the warrior charged me from below (they can charge up hills, etc. that you can’t run up :( ). I blinked, ran to the other side of the tunnel then dropped down, but his priest friend was waiting for me. I just kept running and at some point someone landed a killing blow on me, but I have the talent cauterize that brings me to 40% health after someone deals damage to me that would normally kill me. I then take 12% of my maximum health as damage every 1.5 seconds over 6 seconds (48% of my health – will kill you if you don’t have mana shield or some other absorb up). I popped mage ward to save me from cauterize along with my mana shield (which I always try to have up) and I popped a health pot. By this point my mage ward was consumed by cauterize which triggers blazing speed (60% speed increase for 4 seconds). That along with a blink took me out of range of the priest. A hunter got on me during my blazing speed proc and used concussive shot on me, so I used by gnome racial (removes movement impairing effects) and frost nova’d the hunters pet so that I was just left with the hunters arrows vs. my remaining health and mana shield. By this point I was about halfway across mid and help started to arrive.
Long story less long, I held onto the flag until the end of the game and we won. A couple people said over BG chat that they thought I was going to die. I probably should have, but I had just enough tricks to survive long enough to make it to help. It was a great win against a team that we were completely out leveled and geared by. On paper they should have won 3-0, but we pulled out a 1-0 win, and that is why pvp is great! You can’t win that match-up in pve…
Lao also reports that she dipped into the Auction House for some insurance in surviving the quite challenging dungeons of Cataclysm. At gear level i326, she should be ready to take on any and all normal dungeons!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday (22 Feb) - My Kingdom for a Dagger!
Tuesday (22 Feb) - My Kingdom for a Dagger!
Sista was very disappointed with her DPS output Tuesday night when Kiren and Sista hit the dungeons. Hitting the dungeons is like hitting the bars and nightclubs, and Sista was not impressing anyone. Sista was doing half the damage Kiren was putting out, and worse, a Hunter! was killing me on the DPS meter as well. A good hunter, I'll admit, and he hung with us for our last two dungeon runs I believe. We hit Dire Maul, and we hit Razorfen Downs twice, wista snorting and growling in frustration the whole time. Kiren and Sista both leveled to 43 on the runs.
Once back at Darnassus, and after Kiren had left, Sista was cleaning out her bags and sorting through the goodies. We've about farmed those places out of anything useful. Sista may have to go as a healer a few times just to pick up some healing blues. Anyway, Sista did get a necklace upgrade.
Finished with her tidying up, Sista leaped onto her cat mount to check with the druid trainer (Sista LOVES - and I mean LOVES! - her cat mount). She happened to catch sight of her scabbard. Where her wonderful heirloom dagger rested, ready for use. Only - there was no dagger in the scabbard. Beanoevil had forgotten to send it back to Sista with the other heirlooms, and Sista didn't notice.
She had run all those dungeons - with no weapon equipped. I guess she knows now why her DPS was off by so much.
There was some good come from that missing dagger. Sista began trying some new things in an effort to bring up her DPS. She started using the command that allowed her to leap several feet, pop up behind her target, and then Ravage the target - all without having to go into stealth. Kiren made that move challenging since he tended to change his target after making the pull, and Sista found herself aggroed by the mob she'd just ripped into. Kiren quickly got back the aggro, so no worries there. Sista also followed the lead of the rogue in the group and tried stealthing to the target a few times. That allows for a good opening move, but since we were usually dealing with multiple mobs it was difficult to get into position without losing stealth.
On a much more exciting - and less embarrassing - note, Hunter Fortress was at full strength on Tuesday night. The Four Tresses won all three of our Warsong Gulch battles, all by 3-0 scores. There might have been a fourth WSG that only Speak and See got into. Beano had an issue with the battleground system not letting her leave and I think Beano and Shevils missed a call to battle.
For someone who has not played in literally years, and who had never seen a pvp battleground until a week ago, Beano is picking things up pretty fast. Moving a character around is second nature now for me, but helping Beano practice her movements using both mouse and keyboard brought back lots of memories of being stuck in corners, falling off high cliffs, and blundering into things that killed me when my toon went one way when I thought I was going another. Just getting the layout of Warsong Gulch and the flow of battle takes some getting used to as well.
For the most part us four hunters demolished the alliance, even though we got tangled into mid-field battles too often (actually closer to the alliance base) instead of focusing on capping flags. Shevils got her first flag return and acquitted herself pretty well, I thought. Shevils is so small the alliance don't always pick her up on the battlefield. Shevils, for her part, tends to lose her combat pet, Poo, because the dang monkey is so small I lose track of him.
Beano was a maniac out on the field. Last week she had problems targeting the hostile alliance, but that was more Shevils fault than Beano's. I had set up a "Target" macro to help with targeting, but it wasn't working too well for her. This week I mentioned that I often just clicked on the target and that seemed to work a lot better. We have worked on setting a focus for targeting as well, but we often get separated and that works better when we can coordinate with each other.
Speaking of coordinating, I really need to get that mike working. The things coming out of Beano's mouth during those battles are too precious not to share. :P
We both had a blast last night!
I only captured the stats from the last two battles, but here they are for your viewing pleasure.
Sista was very disappointed with her DPS output Tuesday night when Kiren and Sista hit the dungeons. Hitting the dungeons is like hitting the bars and nightclubs, and Sista was not impressing anyone. Sista was doing half the damage Kiren was putting out, and worse, a Hunter! was killing me on the DPS meter as well. A good hunter, I'll admit, and he hung with us for our last two dungeon runs I believe. We hit Dire Maul, and we hit Razorfen Downs twice, wista snorting and growling in frustration the whole time. Kiren and Sista both leveled to 43 on the runs.
Once back at Darnassus, and after Kiren had left, Sista was cleaning out her bags and sorting through the goodies. We've about farmed those places out of anything useful. Sista may have to go as a healer a few times just to pick up some healing blues. Anyway, Sista did get a necklace upgrade.
Finished with her tidying up, Sista leaped onto her cat mount to check with the druid trainer (Sista LOVES - and I mean LOVES! - her cat mount). She happened to catch sight of her scabbard. Where her wonderful heirloom dagger rested, ready for use. Only - there was no dagger in the scabbard. Beanoevil had forgotten to send it back to Sista with the other heirlooms, and Sista didn't notice.
She had run all those dungeons - with no weapon equipped. I guess she knows now why her DPS was off by so much.
There was some good come from that missing dagger. Sista began trying some new things in an effort to bring up her DPS. She started using the command that allowed her to leap several feet, pop up behind her target, and then Ravage the target - all without having to go into stealth. Kiren made that move challenging since he tended to change his target after making the pull, and Sista found herself aggroed by the mob she'd just ripped into. Kiren quickly got back the aggro, so no worries there. Sista also followed the lead of the rogue in the group and tried stealthing to the target a few times. That allows for a good opening move, but since we were usually dealing with multiple mobs it was difficult to get into position without losing stealth.
On a much more exciting - and less embarrassing - note, Hunter Fortress was at full strength on Tuesday night. The Four Tresses won all three of our Warsong Gulch battles, all by 3-0 scores. There might have been a fourth WSG that only Speak and See got into. Beano had an issue with the battleground system not letting her leave and I think Beano and Shevils missed a call to battle.
For someone who has not played in literally years, and who had never seen a pvp battleground until a week ago, Beano is picking things up pretty fast. Moving a character around is second nature now for me, but helping Beano practice her movements using both mouse and keyboard brought back lots of memories of being stuck in corners, falling off high cliffs, and blundering into things that killed me when my toon went one way when I thought I was going another. Just getting the layout of Warsong Gulch and the flow of battle takes some getting used to as well.
For the most part us four hunters demolished the alliance, even though we got tangled into mid-field battles too often (actually closer to the alliance base) instead of focusing on capping flags. Shevils got her first flag return and acquitted herself pretty well, I thought. Shevils is so small the alliance don't always pick her up on the battlefield. Shevils, for her part, tends to lose her combat pet, Poo, because the dang monkey is so small I lose track of him.
Beano was a maniac out on the field. Last week she had problems targeting the hostile alliance, but that was more Shevils fault than Beano's. I had set up a "Target" macro to help with targeting, but it wasn't working too well for her. This week I mentioned that I often just clicked on the target and that seemed to work a lot better. We have worked on setting a focus for targeting as well, but we often get separated and that works better when we can coordinate with each other.
Speaking of coordinating, I really need to get that mike working. The things coming out of Beano's mouth during those battles are too precious not to share. :P
We both had a blast last night!
I only captured the stats from the last two battles, but here they are for your viewing pleasure.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Monday (21 Feb) - Computer Tales of Woe
Monday (21 Feb) - Computer Tales of Woe
Over the weekend my main computer, having been renewed with a complete hard drive wipe and a fresh, pristine install of Windows XP, crashed three times. It crashed twice while in Warcraft, and a third time while doing nothing but copying files. Each time it took several tries to get the computer running again. I'd had enough.
This being President's Day weekend, I figured this was a good time to find a good buy on a computer. I would have thought that any good mid-range computer would be an upgrade to my current computer, which I bought in 2008. Well, what I'd forgoten was that I had been fairly diligent in upgrading the computer over the past two years plus, and the standard offerings came up short of what I already had. I had to go into gaming computer configurations to find something that would actually be an upgrade to my ailing computer. Worse for me was that I was feeling a bit desperate, having spent uncounted hours installing, uninstalling, and fixing things for the past several days with very little to show for it. I just wanted to get a replacement computer that I was happy with, get it set up, and get back to normal. We were also painting Judi's room and doing some heavy duty clean up of the walk-in closet/storage area in that room, so most of the upstairs was in complete disarray.
Saturday afternoon I rejected dozens of potential systems. Most frustrating was that stock systems nearly always skimp on the video card, and that wouldn't do. I ultimately settled on an Acer system that had all of the important components I was looking for, including a decent video card. It's a good system, far better than my old "main" computer. It's also very quiet and saves energy when idle. I probably paid too much for it, but it should last me a good long while.
I then spent the rest of the weekend installing and setting things up to suit me. I'm still not there as of Sunday afternoon, but I have email, and I have WoW. And a system that should work well with the video stuff I do (although that's not yet installed).
I even have some Wild Family news to report. Wild has a new want, and this one is not one that Wild can just tell Happy to go out and buy. There is an element of the Inscription profession that has never much interested our scribe, Philly. Scribes can create darkmoon cards. The cards come in several types, and the type of card created is random. Cards which are collected and assembled into a full deck (Ace through eight) of the same type can be used by scribes to create some pretty nice gear - trinkets, to be specific.
Now Wild enters the picture. He saw a trinket [Darkmoon Card - Tsunami] on the AH that he just had to have. It cost 30,000 gold. No way. Way. NO WAY! I'm not spending 30k gold for one piece of gear, even if there is no other trinket in WoW the equal of the Tsunami outside of a raid. You'll have noticed that the MM guild hasn't raided much. So, what to do? Anyway, Happy would go into hysterics.
The best way to attack what looks like an insurmountable problem is to tackle the challenge in pieces. First of all, the inscription recipe for the Tsunami trinket requires skill 525. Philly is currently at skill 449. First bite out the challenge, then, was to get Philly to skill 525.
Leveling inscription required collecting Cata herbs, and then "milling" those herbs for the ashen pigment that results. The ashen pigment is then crafted into blackfallow ink, which can then be used to make things. JB provided Philly with 12 stacks of cinderbloom herbs to mill. The ink from all that milling was used to make mostly scrolls, and she then graduated to off hands and relics. All that effort got Philly to skill 495.
Once Philly gets to skill 525 she will need to start assembling a card deck by making Darkmoon Cards of Destruction. Each card costs 30 volatile life and ten inferno ink, a rarer ink than blackfallow. For example, the 12 stacks of cinderbloom was milled and crafted into 59 blackfallow ink - and 15 inferno ink. But Philly won't know what kind of card will result, as it's random, with only 20% odds of getting the a card in the right suit (Waves) and even lower odds of getting one each of all eight waves cards.
Just making cards would take forever, though. To speed things up Philly will sell the cards she doesn't need and use the gold to buy cards off the AH as they come available. Cards can run around 3k gold, so they ain't cheap. But if all the gold comes from farming the mats, then all it's costing is time.
Over the weekend my main computer, having been renewed with a complete hard drive wipe and a fresh, pristine install of Windows XP, crashed three times. It crashed twice while in Warcraft, and a third time while doing nothing but copying files. Each time it took several tries to get the computer running again. I'd had enough.
This being President's Day weekend, I figured this was a good time to find a good buy on a computer. I would have thought that any good mid-range computer would be an upgrade to my current computer, which I bought in 2008. Well, what I'd forgoten was that I had been fairly diligent in upgrading the computer over the past two years plus, and the standard offerings came up short of what I already had. I had to go into gaming computer configurations to find something that would actually be an upgrade to my ailing computer. Worse for me was that I was feeling a bit desperate, having spent uncounted hours installing, uninstalling, and fixing things for the past several days with very little to show for it. I just wanted to get a replacement computer that I was happy with, get it set up, and get back to normal. We were also painting Judi's room and doing some heavy duty clean up of the walk-in closet/storage area in that room, so most of the upstairs was in complete disarray.
Saturday afternoon I rejected dozens of potential systems. Most frustrating was that stock systems nearly always skimp on the video card, and that wouldn't do. I ultimately settled on an Acer system that had all of the important components I was looking for, including a decent video card. It's a good system, far better than my old "main" computer. It's also very quiet and saves energy when idle. I probably paid too much for it, but it should last me a good long while.
I then spent the rest of the weekend installing and setting things up to suit me. I'm still not there as of Sunday afternoon, but I have email, and I have WoW. And a system that should work well with the video stuff I do (although that's not yet installed).
I even have some Wild Family news to report. Wild has a new want, and this one is not one that Wild can just tell Happy to go out and buy. There is an element of the Inscription profession that has never much interested our scribe, Philly. Scribes can create darkmoon cards. The cards come in several types, and the type of card created is random. Cards which are collected and assembled into a full deck (Ace through eight) of the same type can be used by scribes to create some pretty nice gear - trinkets, to be specific.
Now Wild enters the picture. He saw a trinket [Darkmoon Card - Tsunami] on the AH that he just had to have. It cost 30,000 gold. No way. Way. NO WAY! I'm not spending 30k gold for one piece of gear, even if there is no other trinket in WoW the equal of the Tsunami outside of a raid. You'll have noticed that the MM guild hasn't raided much. So, what to do? Anyway, Happy would go into hysterics.
The best way to attack what looks like an insurmountable problem is to tackle the challenge in pieces. First of all, the inscription recipe for the Tsunami trinket requires skill 525. Philly is currently at skill 449. First bite out the challenge, then, was to get Philly to skill 525.
Leveling inscription required collecting Cata herbs, and then "milling" those herbs for the ashen pigment that results. The ashen pigment is then crafted into blackfallow ink, which can then be used to make things. JB provided Philly with 12 stacks of cinderbloom herbs to mill. The ink from all that milling was used to make mostly scrolls, and she then graduated to off hands and relics. All that effort got Philly to skill 495.
Once Philly gets to skill 525 she will need to start assembling a card deck by making Darkmoon Cards of Destruction. Each card costs 30 volatile life and ten inferno ink, a rarer ink than blackfallow. For example, the 12 stacks of cinderbloom was milled and crafted into 59 blackfallow ink - and 15 inferno ink. But Philly won't know what kind of card will result, as it's random, with only 20% odds of getting the a card in the right suit (Waves) and even lower odds of getting one each of all eight waves cards.
Just making cards would take forever, though. To speed things up Philly will sell the cards she doesn't need and use the gold to buy cards off the AH as they come available. Cards can run around 3k gold, so they ain't cheap. But if all the gold comes from farming the mats, then all it's costing is time.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Sunday (20 Feb) - Shevils Gets a Job with Naithipe's Help
Sunday (20 Feb) - Shevils Gets a Job with Naithipe's Help
[Another computer failure has caused delays in posting - this should have been posted several days ago. Additional posts will follow to get caught up. The computer has got to go.]
During the down time between the Tuesday night battles with the Alliance Shevils decided to get a job as an Engineer. Tinkering is central to a Goblin's very nature, and what better way to tinker about than with engineering. Normally, Shevils would have to learn Mining in order to get very far in the engineering profession, since many of the most basic of materials come from the ores of Azeroth. Kiren, good cousin that he is (even if he does wear the Alliance tabard), offered such material as he had, being a miner himself. But Shevils got a visit from JB, letting Shevils know that she had made contact with Naithipe and the oft missing explorer had agreed to help.
Shevils wasn't sure how to interpret that help, having heard things about Naithipe that were pretty unsettling. "I only just recently got out of trouble with Thrall," Shevils was heard to mutter, "what am I getting into now?"
Shevils expected it to take several days for her to go from rank amateur to professional engineer. She needed rough stone and copper ore to get started, the Engineering Trainer advised her. A short time later Naithipe stopped into Nogg's Machine Shop and dropped off both. JB made introductions. Shevils got a long stare, and then a curt nod from Naithipe. The rest of the day, whenever materials were needed, Shevils relayed the requirements to JB. A short time later everything Shevils asked for arrived in the mail from Naithipe.
While Naithipe provided most of the materials, Mery, Deth, and of course JB also helped out. Soon Shevils' bags were bulging with completed and half completed projects. She got a real "bang" out of the explosives she crafted. When she saw those green tinted goggles, though ... well, that was when Shevils knew she had found her calling. By the end of the day Shevils was wearing them.
It was later in the day that word got out that Naithipe was about in Orgrimmar. A member of the Lao family heard that Naithipe had been involved in some transactions with a relative. The benign comment reached other ears. "Naithipe strikes again. She has a way of fading into the shadows even when you know she is there. Very sly lass."
DER had this to say about her. "Sneaky Naithipe. DER doesn't like her; thinks she is enslaved by the Wild family and a disgrace to all deathknights. He is out for blood. "
Surprisingly, Naithipe chose to respond. “DER has prostituted his pure level 80 form with Cata baubles. Challenge me when you, too, are wearing 23 strength socketed gems in your gear.” - Naithipe.
The back and forth got even more heated as the rest of the Three Clans listened in.
“Ooh, harsh words from a veiled figure. Accept my challenge when you have conquered a drake into a flying mount (bronze and blue) and the heads of the four leaders as trophies in your case, female.” – DER the Patient.
That was followed immediately with "Woops, DER forgot to add /flex".
The sarcastic response from Naithipe, "Ooh, titles - Naithipe the Explorer" was a bit unlike her, but no one really knows which direction her thoughts were taking her.
The response was certainly not good enough for DER. "DER wants to know if she happened to take the heads of the four alliance racial leaders while exploring?
“What’s that little Naithy? Ah, I didn’t think so. I have them on necklaces. My favorite is Tyrande Whisperwind as her beauty has never faded even once decapitated. I lick that head daily.” DER the Murderer."
The "For the Horde!" achievement for killing the four leaders of the Alliance was certainly a powerful accomplishment, and one that the Horde relish.
Naithipe was silent long enough to wonder if she had retreated back into anonymity. But as night fell she spoke once more. "I serve no one, and care nothing for such trophies, whether of Alliance or Horde. The Lich King created us both - that is the only master worthy of slaughter. Perhaps someday we will meet as equals on the field of battle against that Monster. Till such time, beware the stranger standing beside you. - Naithipe."
Here JB stepped into the conversation. "A word, please, DER. Naithipe did not fare well under the Lich King's tutelage. She is ... broken. I caution against goading her further. She is capable of terrible things. Yet she spoke of you as a future equal. It's a worthy goal - for you both. - JB."
JB was satisfied with DER's final response. “Equals we can be. Perhaps we can team up with Sylvanas to take out all of the inferior races and the undead can rule all of Azeroth. We can be monsters together.” - DER
Then it was JB's turn to smile when DER added, "JB be warned, both DER and Naithipe are out for inferior race blood!"
Said JB - "Take out your restless energy on the Lich King. Or better yet, Deathwing. I'm busy."
[Another computer failure has caused delays in posting - this should have been posted several days ago. Additional posts will follow to get caught up. The computer has got to go.]
During the down time between the Tuesday night battles with the Alliance Shevils decided to get a job as an Engineer. Tinkering is central to a Goblin's very nature, and what better way to tinker about than with engineering. Normally, Shevils would have to learn Mining in order to get very far in the engineering profession, since many of the most basic of materials come from the ores of Azeroth. Kiren, good cousin that he is (even if he does wear the Alliance tabard), offered such material as he had, being a miner himself. But Shevils got a visit from JB, letting Shevils know that she had made contact with Naithipe and the oft missing explorer had agreed to help.
Shevils wasn't sure how to interpret that help, having heard things about Naithipe that were pretty unsettling. "I only just recently got out of trouble with Thrall," Shevils was heard to mutter, "what am I getting into now?"
Shevils expected it to take several days for her to go from rank amateur to professional engineer. She needed rough stone and copper ore to get started, the Engineering Trainer advised her. A short time later Naithipe stopped into Nogg's Machine Shop and dropped off both. JB made introductions. Shevils got a long stare, and then a curt nod from Naithipe. The rest of the day, whenever materials were needed, Shevils relayed the requirements to JB. A short time later everything Shevils asked for arrived in the mail from Naithipe.
While Naithipe provided most of the materials, Mery, Deth, and of course JB also helped out. Soon Shevils' bags were bulging with completed and half completed projects. She got a real "bang" out of the explosives she crafted. When she saw those green tinted goggles, though ... well, that was when Shevils knew she had found her calling. By the end of the day Shevils was wearing them.
It was later in the day that word got out that Naithipe was about in Orgrimmar. A member of the Lao family heard that Naithipe had been involved in some transactions with a relative. The benign comment reached other ears. "Naithipe strikes again. She has a way of fading into the shadows even when you know she is there. Very sly lass."
DER had this to say about her. "Sneaky Naithipe. DER doesn't like her; thinks she is enslaved by the Wild family and a disgrace to all deathknights. He is out for blood. "
Surprisingly, Naithipe chose to respond. “DER has prostituted his pure level 80 form with Cata baubles. Challenge me when you, too, are wearing 23 strength socketed gems in your gear.” - Naithipe.
The back and forth got even more heated as the rest of the Three Clans listened in.
“Ooh, harsh words from a veiled figure. Accept my challenge when you have conquered a drake into a flying mount (bronze and blue) and the heads of the four leaders as trophies in your case, female.” – DER the Patient.
That was followed immediately with "Woops, DER forgot to add /flex".
The sarcastic response from Naithipe, "Ooh, titles - Naithipe the Explorer" was a bit unlike her, but no one really knows which direction her thoughts were taking her.
The response was certainly not good enough for DER. "DER wants to know if she happened to take the heads of the four alliance racial leaders while exploring?
“What’s that little Naithy? Ah, I didn’t think so. I have them on necklaces. My favorite is Tyrande Whisperwind as her beauty has never faded even once decapitated. I lick that head daily.” DER the Murderer."
The "For the Horde!" achievement for killing the four leaders of the Alliance was certainly a powerful accomplishment, and one that the Horde relish.
Naithipe was silent long enough to wonder if she had retreated back into anonymity. But as night fell she spoke once more. "I serve no one, and care nothing for such trophies, whether of Alliance or Horde. The Lich King created us both - that is the only master worthy of slaughter. Perhaps someday we will meet as equals on the field of battle against that Monster. Till such time, beware the stranger standing beside you. - Naithipe."
Here JB stepped into the conversation. "A word, please, DER. Naithipe did not fare well under the Lich King's tutelage. She is ... broken. I caution against goading her further. She is capable of terrible things. Yet she spoke of you as a future equal. It's a worthy goal - for you both. - JB."
JB was satisfied with DER's final response. “Equals we can be. Perhaps we can team up with Sylvanas to take out all of the inferior races and the undead can rule all of Azeroth. We can be monsters together.” - DER
Then it was JB's turn to smile when DER added, "JB be warned, both DER and Naithipe are out for inferior race blood!"
Said JB - "Take out your restless energy on the Lich King. Or better yet, Deathwing. I'm busy."
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday (15 Feb) - Wrecking Ball
Tuesday (15 Feb) - Wrecking Ball
The Three Clans were out in force on Tuesday night. The new Horde pvp team, Hunter Fortress, made their first sojourn into the pvp battleground of Warsong Gulch. Assembling and preparing the team was not without it's hiccups, however.
The very first task was to make introductions and get to know each other, since this was the first time the four hunters had met each other. Three classes were represented - Blood Elf, Troll, and Goblin. Each brought their own experiences and talents to the table.
"Welcome!" said Speaknoevil, "you must be See!"
"No, I'm Beanoevil," said Beano. "You must be Shevils!"
"No, I'm Speaknoevil," said Speak.
Beano turned to See. "So YOU must be Shevils! Hi!"
"Um, no," said Seenoevil, "I'm See."
Three hunters looked at each other. "Who are we missing?" asked See.
"Shevils!" they all chorused together.
Hearnoevils, better known as Shevils, had not arrived.
It took a few moments to sort things out. Shevils was stuck out on the Lost Isles with a commission in Thrall's army. Shevils had attempted to get time off, but when Thrall refused, she sort of, well, wandered away from the Warchief's Lookout. I think that's called AWOL (absent without leave), but Shevils figured that she intended to come back - eventually. Her traipses about the Lost Isles have already been recounted, but as a reminder she ended up stuck at the abandoned Horde Base Camp. And she was still stuck there.
The team had a plan, however. All four of them grouped up and signed on for a Warsong Gulch match. Grouped teams are all sent into the same battleground together, and it doesn't matter where individual members are physically located. While we waited for an invitation into the battlegrounds, we worked on improving our communications for the upcoming battle. All communications had been in Morse code (also known as "Chat"), but that is slow and cumbersome when in combat. Ham radio was a great improvement which provided instant communications even during battle (better known in Azeroth as "Vent"), but it does require more complicated equipment and trained operators. Unfortunately, Shevils failed the operator test and never got around to taking the remedial courses. Shevils had promised Beano that she could run Vent for them both. No such luck, Shevils could only get half of it working.
"Half is better than nothing!" Shevils announced, trying to sound confident (which is hard to do when using morse code/Chat). Beano gave Shevils "that look."
Shevils was saved from digging the hole any deeper by the invitation to Warsong Gulch. Hunter Fortress was heading into battle. Well, three of them were heading into battle.
"Shevils is still under the command of Thrall and will not be allowed to leave the Lost Isles until Thrall says so." Or words to that effect. Shevils was not allowed to join the other three in Warsong Gulch (WSG). A dejected and angry Shevils decided to stomp back to Thrall's camp and give the meanie a piece of her mind. Poo had some other bodily part in mind to toss at Thrall. But on the way back a freaking plant killed Shevils. Sigh. Thrall sent the shore patrol out to recover Shevils. Shevils is going to have to complete her tour of duty.
Meanwhile, there was a battle to be won! Each member had differing levels of experience:
Speak - veteran of many battles (two so far), but lots of experience with kinfolk
See - another veteran with experience, but his first time as a hunter
Beano - a raw recruit, eager to show her mettle
Shevils - AWOL, who knows if this girl can tie her own shoelaces
The battle started, and the alliance team never knew what hit them. Speak led the way, tearing through alliance defenses, killing those who got in the way and scattering the rest. See was a quick study, and after a few "Hmm, I wonder what this button does?" moments, turned it up several notches and began bringing down the bad guys. Beano did her best to stay with either Speak or See and learned things like focus target, pet attacks, and "Run! something is killing you!" It was chaotic and it was a blast! A bunch of level 10s running around playing capture the flag, half of them dead serious and the other half dashing here and there with no idea where they were going.
What with all the pre-battle preparations and Shevils shenanigans, our evening went by fast and See had to leave. Shevils was still a corpse, but Beano and Speak decided to head into another WSG. It may have been the deadliest WSG any Wild family member had ever experienced - for the other side. The Horde took the battle to the Alliance. Almost all of the combat went on just outside the entrance to the Alliance base. And the combat was ferocious.
Speak was her steady, deadly self. Beano was a wild woman, running all over the battlefield and shooting at anything and everything that moved. Her pet disappeared at some point, and attempts to recall Sammy failed. Sammy had died, but Beano forgot about the pet spell Revive to get him back. Pets are automatically brought back to life after each death of the master, but Beano wasn't dying. Beano was having so much fun none of the above really infiltrated her over-heated thoughts - until Speak spoke: "Beano, you are getting close to Wrecking Ball!"
Wrecking Ball - Get 20 killing blows without dying in a single battle in any battleground.
Beano didn't know how many kills she had, but now she realized that "I haven't died yet!" Which was astonishing to think about. And she immediately started worrying about dying, which is not the kind of thing to get into your head about in a battleground. No one in the Wild family had ever achieved Wrecking Ball status. And here was rookie Beano vying for that award. Beano tried to maintain her current scatter-brained assault, figuring it must be confusing the alliance. twice she got into serious trouble. First, she pursued an allie that fled into a group of friends, and barely made it out of there when they all turned their attack on Beano. having escaped that trap, she tangled with a paladin that was determined to take Beano out. She fought and swerved, she leapt and she strafed, but that allie stayed on her. Speak was after the pally, though, and with Beano at around 20% health Speak took the pally down. Shortly after that Beano got her 20th killing blow and the Wrecking Ball achievement.
The Horde team was up 2-0 and we were headed for another flag cap. Beano was mixing it up with the allies along with several other horde when all hell broke loose around Beano. "They're focus firing one you, Beano!" Speak hollered. Beano tried to escape but there were just too many of them. For the first and only time, Beano died. Beano rezzed, got Sammy back, and ran back into the fight. The horde capped the third flag for the win.
There were ten horde players on the team, but it was Speak and Beano who got almost half of the total killing blows, with Speak edging out Beano 28 to 26. The final stats follow:
After the WSG matches the Dungeon team of Kiren and Sista laid waste to three dungeons: Scarlet Monastery, Dire Maul, and one other that escapes me. Both players leveled from 40 to 41. As the two dungeon crawlers get into the higher levels, the time it takes to level gets longer. We used to level 2-3 times during a night of dungeons, but we only managed 1 1/2 levels this time.
Sista made it to Exalted reputation with Darnassus as well, which allowed the wolf girl to get a great cat for a riding mount. What a treat!
The Three Clans were out in force on Tuesday night. The new Horde pvp team, Hunter Fortress, made their first sojourn into the pvp battleground of Warsong Gulch. Assembling and preparing the team was not without it's hiccups, however.
The very first task was to make introductions and get to know each other, since this was the first time the four hunters had met each other. Three classes were represented - Blood Elf, Troll, and Goblin. Each brought their own experiences and talents to the table.
"Welcome!" said Speaknoevil, "you must be See!"
"No, I'm Beanoevil," said Beano. "You must be Shevils!"
"No, I'm Speaknoevil," said Speak.
Beano turned to See. "So YOU must be Shevils! Hi!"
"Um, no," said Seenoevil, "I'm See."
Three hunters looked at each other. "Who are we missing?" asked See.
"Shevils!" they all chorused together.
Hearnoevils, better known as Shevils, had not arrived.
It took a few moments to sort things out. Shevils was stuck out on the Lost Isles with a commission in Thrall's army. Shevils had attempted to get time off, but when Thrall refused, she sort of, well, wandered away from the Warchief's Lookout. I think that's called AWOL (absent without leave), but Shevils figured that she intended to come back - eventually. Her traipses about the Lost Isles have already been recounted, but as a reminder she ended up stuck at the abandoned Horde Base Camp. And she was still stuck there.
The team had a plan, however. All four of them grouped up and signed on for a Warsong Gulch match. Grouped teams are all sent into the same battleground together, and it doesn't matter where individual members are physically located. While we waited for an invitation into the battlegrounds, we worked on improving our communications for the upcoming battle. All communications had been in Morse code (also known as "Chat"), but that is slow and cumbersome when in combat. Ham radio was a great improvement which provided instant communications even during battle (better known in Azeroth as "Vent"), but it does require more complicated equipment and trained operators. Unfortunately, Shevils failed the operator test and never got around to taking the remedial courses. Shevils had promised Beano that she could run Vent for them both. No such luck, Shevils could only get half of it working.
"Half is better than nothing!" Shevils announced, trying to sound confident (which is hard to do when using morse code/Chat). Beano gave Shevils "that look."
Shevils was saved from digging the hole any deeper by the invitation to Warsong Gulch. Hunter Fortress was heading into battle. Well, three of them were heading into battle.
"Shevils is still under the command of Thrall and will not be allowed to leave the Lost Isles until Thrall says so." Or words to that effect. Shevils was not allowed to join the other three in Warsong Gulch (WSG). A dejected and angry Shevils decided to stomp back to Thrall's camp and give the meanie a piece of her mind. Poo had some other bodily part in mind to toss at Thrall. But on the way back a freaking plant killed Shevils. Sigh. Thrall sent the shore patrol out to recover Shevils. Shevils is going to have to complete her tour of duty.
Meanwhile, there was a battle to be won! Each member had differing levels of experience:
Speak - veteran of many battles (two so far), but lots of experience with kinfolk
See - another veteran with experience, but his first time as a hunter
Beano - a raw recruit, eager to show her mettle
Shevils - AWOL, who knows if this girl can tie her own shoelaces
The battle started, and the alliance team never knew what hit them. Speak led the way, tearing through alliance defenses, killing those who got in the way and scattering the rest. See was a quick study, and after a few "Hmm, I wonder what this button does?" moments, turned it up several notches and began bringing down the bad guys. Beano did her best to stay with either Speak or See and learned things like focus target, pet attacks, and "Run! something is killing you!" It was chaotic and it was a blast! A bunch of level 10s running around playing capture the flag, half of them dead serious and the other half dashing here and there with no idea where they were going.
What with all the pre-battle preparations and Shevils shenanigans, our evening went by fast and See had to leave. Shevils was still a corpse, but Beano and Speak decided to head into another WSG. It may have been the deadliest WSG any Wild family member had ever experienced - for the other side. The Horde took the battle to the Alliance. Almost all of the combat went on just outside the entrance to the Alliance base. And the combat was ferocious.
Speak was her steady, deadly self. Beano was a wild woman, running all over the battlefield and shooting at anything and everything that moved. Her pet disappeared at some point, and attempts to recall Sammy failed. Sammy had died, but Beano forgot about the pet spell Revive to get him back. Pets are automatically brought back to life after each death of the master, but Beano wasn't dying. Beano was having so much fun none of the above really infiltrated her over-heated thoughts - until Speak spoke: "Beano, you are getting close to Wrecking Ball!"
Wrecking Ball - Get 20 killing blows without dying in a single battle in any battleground.
Beano didn't know how many kills she had, but now she realized that "I haven't died yet!" Which was astonishing to think about. And she immediately started worrying about dying, which is not the kind of thing to get into your head about in a battleground. No one in the Wild family had ever achieved Wrecking Ball status. And here was rookie Beano vying for that award. Beano tried to maintain her current scatter-brained assault, figuring it must be confusing the alliance. twice she got into serious trouble. First, she pursued an allie that fled into a group of friends, and barely made it out of there when they all turned their attack on Beano. having escaped that trap, she tangled with a paladin that was determined to take Beano out. She fought and swerved, she leapt and she strafed, but that allie stayed on her. Speak was after the pally, though, and with Beano at around 20% health Speak took the pally down. Shortly after that Beano got her 20th killing blow and the Wrecking Ball achievement.
The Horde team was up 2-0 and we were headed for another flag cap. Beano was mixing it up with the allies along with several other horde when all hell broke loose around Beano. "They're focus firing one you, Beano!" Speak hollered. Beano tried to escape but there were just too many of them. For the first and only time, Beano died. Beano rezzed, got Sammy back, and ran back into the fight. The horde capped the third flag for the win.
There were ten horde players on the team, but it was Speak and Beano who got almost half of the total killing blows, with Speak edging out Beano 28 to 26. The final stats follow:
After the WSG matches the Dungeon team of Kiren and Sista laid waste to three dungeons: Scarlet Monastery, Dire Maul, and one other that escapes me. Both players leveled from 40 to 41. As the two dungeon crawlers get into the higher levels, the time it takes to level gets longer. We used to level 2-3 times during a night of dungeons, but we only managed 1 1/2 levels this time.
Sista made it to Exalted reputation with Darnassus as well, which allowed the wolf girl to get a great cat for a riding mount. What a treat!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Monday (14 Feb)- Hearnoevils and the Rest of the Hunter Fortress
Monday (14 Feb)- Hearnoevils and the Rest of the Hunter Fortress
The big news over the weekend was getting my computer put back together and operating semi-normally. Oh yea, and there were these four horde hunters that decided to wage war on the alliance.
The Hunter Fortess, or "Four Tresses" if one prefers, wasn't a fly by night operation. There were days of planning and preparation by Seenoevil, Hearnoevils, Speaknoevil, and Beanoevil - weapons, gear, flasks, enchants, etc, were all laid out. Each hunter had to battle through their home zones and break free from those bonds.
Wild's young upstart, Hearnoevils, was the first born goblin in the family. Shevils (what other nickname did you think she'd get?) thought she'd been born in heaven. Her first quest taught her the sage words of her mentor Sassy Hardwrench, "Profits are everything. Explosives are a close second." It was the sound of clinking coins and of bombs going off to Shevils rather large and bejeweled ears.
The town of Kezan in the Lost Isles was like Santa's toy shop. At level 2 she was given the keys to a wonderful convertible, and three new BFFs piled into it to keep her company. Roads were built like roller coasters, and goblins on foot got the most fun out being knocked in the air when Shevil's driving got out of hand and off the pavement. Shevils hardly had to get out of that car for most of the quests, and had little use for her weapons in those heady early days as most quests did not require blood to be spilled. Shevils and her "crew" drove around finding things, losing things, stealing things, and returning things stolen by others. There was even a big party with dancing, eating and drinking, and throwing up. Who could ask for anything more?
It was too good to be true, though. That naughty dragon Deathwing was causing a lot of trouble, there was a volcanice eruption, and it was time to leave. Shevils helped Sassy pack, as well as helping her blow up and burn to the ground her abode for some reason, then we robbed a bank and used the money to buy passage on a ship off our island home. Too bad it was a pirate ship. Those pirates cheated us out of the money we gave them and Shevils became a slave. Only for a short time, however, as they sailed into a sea battle between the Horde and alliance and Shevils nearly drowned. Then she was shipwrecked, and the next thing you know monkeys were throwing poo at her. Shevils was starting to feel at home again. She missed that convertible, though.
Shevils is currently sandwiched into one of those phased areas were there is no escape. She's level 11 now, her pet hates her, and there is no where to get any food for the stupid crab to eat. The hearthstone simply redeposits her right where she is, which is a camp with so few amenities even the great hunter Nessingway would be complaining. Shevils has four new talents she could learn, if only she could get to a trainer. A mailbox would also be very nice have right about now. Any hoo, she'll keep trying to figure out how to get out of this mess before Tuesday night.
The fourth member of the Hunter Fortress, Beanoevils, was born in Eversong Woods and is kin to blood elf Jocelyne. Sista was gracious enough to share her heirloom gear with Beano, so Beano sailed smoothly through her early testing and quickly arrived at and settled into Silvermoon City at level 10. The Blood Elf starting zone is still the fastest place to raise a new toon. Shevils, however, suggested the Blood Elves should invest in a convertible.
Speak and See were already prepared and ready to go, and collected the crafted leather gear Mery left for them in the bank. Speak has been the group's forward scout and already has at least two Warsong Gulch victories under her belt.
Mery still has some work to do to get Shevils and Beano ready. She ran out of light leather, but a little work in Silverpine Forest on those bears and wolves will stock her back up. We may have to start with light armor kits instead of medium, though. Medium leather takes more time farm, and that's one type of leather she currently doesn'y have any of. Wild is checking on enchants, too.
PS - Shevils took pictures from her convertible and she'll include them in the next post.
The big news over the weekend was getting my computer put back together and operating semi-normally. Oh yea, and there were these four horde hunters that decided to wage war on the alliance.
The Hunter Fortess, or "Four Tresses" if one prefers, wasn't a fly by night operation. There were days of planning and preparation by Seenoevil, Hearnoevils, Speaknoevil, and Beanoevil - weapons, gear, flasks, enchants, etc, were all laid out. Each hunter had to battle through their home zones and break free from those bonds.
Wild's young upstart, Hearnoevils, was the first born goblin in the family. Shevils (what other nickname did you think she'd get?) thought she'd been born in heaven. Her first quest taught her the sage words of her mentor Sassy Hardwrench, "Profits are everything. Explosives are a close second." It was the sound of clinking coins and of bombs going off to Shevils rather large and bejeweled ears.
The town of Kezan in the Lost Isles was like Santa's toy shop. At level 2 she was given the keys to a wonderful convertible, and three new BFFs piled into it to keep her company. Roads were built like roller coasters, and goblins on foot got the most fun out being knocked in the air when Shevil's driving got out of hand and off the pavement. Shevils hardly had to get out of that car for most of the quests, and had little use for her weapons in those heady early days as most quests did not require blood to be spilled. Shevils and her "crew" drove around finding things, losing things, stealing things, and returning things stolen by others. There was even a big party with dancing, eating and drinking, and throwing up. Who could ask for anything more?
It was too good to be true, though. That naughty dragon Deathwing was causing a lot of trouble, there was a volcanice eruption, and it was time to leave. Shevils helped Sassy pack, as well as helping her blow up and burn to the ground her abode for some reason, then we robbed a bank and used the money to buy passage on a ship off our island home. Too bad it was a pirate ship. Those pirates cheated us out of the money we gave them and Shevils became a slave. Only for a short time, however, as they sailed into a sea battle between the Horde and alliance and Shevils nearly drowned. Then she was shipwrecked, and the next thing you know monkeys were throwing poo at her. Shevils was starting to feel at home again. She missed that convertible, though.
Shevils is currently sandwiched into one of those phased areas were there is no escape. She's level 11 now, her pet hates her, and there is no where to get any food for the stupid crab to eat. The hearthstone simply redeposits her right where she is, which is a camp with so few amenities even the great hunter Nessingway would be complaining. Shevils has four new talents she could learn, if only she could get to a trainer. A mailbox would also be very nice have right about now. Any hoo, she'll keep trying to figure out how to get out of this mess before Tuesday night.
The fourth member of the Hunter Fortress, Beanoevils, was born in Eversong Woods and is kin to blood elf Jocelyne. Sista was gracious enough to share her heirloom gear with Beano, so Beano sailed smoothly through her early testing and quickly arrived at and settled into Silvermoon City at level 10. The Blood Elf starting zone is still the fastest place to raise a new toon. Shevils, however, suggested the Blood Elves should invest in a convertible.
Speak and See were already prepared and ready to go, and collected the crafted leather gear Mery left for them in the bank. Speak has been the group's forward scout and already has at least two Warsong Gulch victories under her belt.
Mery still has some work to do to get Shevils and Beano ready. She ran out of light leather, but a little work in Silverpine Forest on those bears and wolves will stock her back up. We may have to start with light armor kits instead of medium, though. Medium leather takes more time farm, and that's one type of leather she currently doesn'y have any of. Wild is checking on enchants, too.
PS - Shevils took pictures from her convertible and she'll include them in the next post.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Saturday (12 Feb) - Computer Woes
Saturday (12 Feb) - Computer Woes
Wildshard is still avoiding the dungeons, but he is going to have to face up that them sooner than later. Even so, he's made progress on his gear through the Auction House. Wild figures it's always better to let someone else farm the BOE gear and Wild can then buy them up. Why else would Happy be doing all that work earning gold?
After the G1 raid leader challenged his raiders to improve their gear at the last raid, Wild did an assessment of his own status as reported earlier. As an update to that, here is where Wild now stands:
Shoulder (i333) - Best upgrade bet is doing the daily normal random dungeon for the 1,650 JPs needd to buy one, but Heroic dungeons HOO and VP also drop one each from a boss. A shoulder upgrade HAS to come from dungeon runs. Wild cannot get around this.
Wrist (i333) - Wild's current bracers are the best he can get with one exception: the Armbands of Change in Heroic BRC. BRC would have to be farmed until the item dropped.
Ring - Wild has like five Cata level rings with varying stats. Two of them are i346, so as far as gearscore is concerned Wild gets credit for it. For healing, though, his second best ring is i333, and a better one could be obtained from drops in HOO and LCT.
Trinket - Wild's +234 int i325 trinket is unlikely to go away, even when/if Wild can get his hands on one of the +321 int trinkets that drop in SC and BRC - unless Wild is fortunate enough to get both trinkets from those dungeons. Wild also has a +285 i346 spirit trinket which Wild will have to use until he can do without the mana regen it provides, which may be never. Wild is ok with trinkets and not worried about gearscore on this slot, but the two drops would be very nice.
Neck (i333) - Wild had several avenues to upgrade his necklace. The surest upgrade was to reach Exalted with Dragonmaw to collect the i359 offered by that faction, although the stat mix on this necklace was pretty poor. Wild is still probably two weeks away from getting there. Wild got very lucky over the weekend, though. The only necklace better than the Dragonmaw rep one is [Dorian's Lost Necklace], which is a rare World drop. Wild has never seen this on the AH before, but one popped up on Friday night. My AH addon told me the going price for it was 11,000 gold. Wild bought it for 5,500 gold. Yes, it's i359, too. Wild can check neck off his list.
Relic (i316) - Obviously, this was my lowest level piece of gear. Better relics can be found in Heroic SC, DM, and VP. For about a week I'd been watching an i346 relic called [Tattooed Eyeball] on the AH. Frankly, the stats were only so-so, even compared to that i316, but it would be a significant upgrade to Wild's spell power and total mana. I was hoping for price drop, too, but the three sellers were not budging. Saturday morning Wild got impatient and told Happy to pay the 2,600 gold to get it. Happy groaned - loudly - but made the purchase. Wild can strike another slot off his list.
The two new pieces of gear raised Wild's gearscore from i342 to i345.
On the computer front things were not as far along as Wild's gear improvements. The repair shop concluded that hardware was not the problem. Everything checked out. The problem was a corrupted Windows operating system (O/S). Since the shop wanted a fortune to fix that, and even with that would leave me having to reinstall all of the drivers and programs I needed, I opted to take my baby home and nurse it back to health myself.
I had three choices: (1) I could attempt a repair of the O/S. That was the simplest method, and sometimes it even worked. The benefit is that all of my drivers and programs would still be there. More often, though, it only partially works, leaving problems that don't crop up until later. (2) Do a fresh install of the O/S. This would wipe the drive, so I would have to be VERY, VERY sure I backed up everything important. A fresh install would clean out two years worth of accumulation of small problems as well as likely improving performance. Of course, I'd still have to re-install everything. (3) Buy a new hard drive and install the O/S on that drive. The only difference between this and (2) is that I would still have the old drive available in case my backup missed something important. One downside is that my computer already has three hard drives in it and things are a bit corwded in there. Installing a new drive is also an extra step and would take longer.
One other option is to buy a new computer. However, the current computer, although two years old, still has a lot of life in it. It would benefit from a more current video card and 6GB of RAM instead of it's current 4GBs, but other than that it's as good as any mid-level computer I could buy today.
I don't feel like adding yet another hard drive to the computer as I already have three terabytes worth of space to work with. And I don't think a repair will fix a corrupted O/S that's probably been suspect since that first power spike took out my power supply. So, I'm going to make doubly sure I have everything backed up, and go with option (2). Pray for me.
Wildshard is still avoiding the dungeons, but he is going to have to face up that them sooner than later. Even so, he's made progress on his gear through the Auction House. Wild figures it's always better to let someone else farm the BOE gear and Wild can then buy them up. Why else would Happy be doing all that work earning gold?
After the G1 raid leader challenged his raiders to improve their gear at the last raid, Wild did an assessment of his own status as reported earlier. As an update to that, here is where Wild now stands:
Shoulder (i333) - Best upgrade bet is doing the daily normal random dungeon for the 1,650 JPs needd to buy one, but Heroic dungeons HOO and VP also drop one each from a boss. A shoulder upgrade HAS to come from dungeon runs. Wild cannot get around this.
Wrist (i333) - Wild's current bracers are the best he can get with one exception: the Armbands of Change in Heroic BRC. BRC would have to be farmed until the item dropped.
Ring - Wild has like five Cata level rings with varying stats. Two of them are i346, so as far as gearscore is concerned Wild gets credit for it. For healing, though, his second best ring is i333, and a better one could be obtained from drops in HOO and LCT.
Trinket - Wild's +234 int i325 trinket is unlikely to go away, even when/if Wild can get his hands on one of the +321 int trinkets that drop in SC and BRC - unless Wild is fortunate enough to get both trinkets from those dungeons. Wild also has a +285 i346 spirit trinket which Wild will have to use until he can do without the mana regen it provides, which may be never. Wild is ok with trinkets and not worried about gearscore on this slot, but the two drops would be very nice.
Neck (i333) - Wild had several avenues to upgrade his necklace. The surest upgrade was to reach Exalted with Dragonmaw to collect the i359 offered by that faction, although the stat mix on this necklace was pretty poor. Wild is still probably two weeks away from getting there. Wild got very lucky over the weekend, though. The only necklace better than the Dragonmaw rep one is [Dorian's Lost Necklace], which is a rare World drop. Wild has never seen this on the AH before, but one popped up on Friday night. My AH addon told me the going price for it was 11,000 gold. Wild bought it for 5,500 gold. Yes, it's i359, too. Wild can check neck off his list.
Relic (i316) - Obviously, this was my lowest level piece of gear. Better relics can be found in Heroic SC, DM, and VP. For about a week I'd been watching an i346 relic called [Tattooed Eyeball] on the AH. Frankly, the stats were only so-so, even compared to that i316, but it would be a significant upgrade to Wild's spell power and total mana. I was hoping for price drop, too, but the three sellers were not budging. Saturday morning Wild got impatient and told Happy to pay the 2,600 gold to get it. Happy groaned - loudly - but made the purchase. Wild can strike another slot off his list.
The two new pieces of gear raised Wild's gearscore from i342 to i345.
On the computer front things were not as far along as Wild's gear improvements. The repair shop concluded that hardware was not the problem. Everything checked out. The problem was a corrupted Windows operating system (O/S). Since the shop wanted a fortune to fix that, and even with that would leave me having to reinstall all of the drivers and programs I needed, I opted to take my baby home and nurse it back to health myself.
I had three choices: (1) I could attempt a repair of the O/S. That was the simplest method, and sometimes it even worked. The benefit is that all of my drivers and programs would still be there. More often, though, it only partially works, leaving problems that don't crop up until later. (2) Do a fresh install of the O/S. This would wipe the drive, so I would have to be VERY, VERY sure I backed up everything important. A fresh install would clean out two years worth of accumulation of small problems as well as likely improving performance. Of course, I'd still have to re-install everything. (3) Buy a new hard drive and install the O/S on that drive. The only difference between this and (2) is that I would still have the old drive available in case my backup missed something important. One downside is that my computer already has three hard drives in it and things are a bit corwded in there. Installing a new drive is also an extra step and would take longer.
One other option is to buy a new computer. However, the current computer, although two years old, still has a lot of life in it. It would benefit from a more current video card and 6GB of RAM instead of it's current 4GBs, but other than that it's as good as any mid-level computer I could buy today.
I don't feel like adding yet another hard drive to the computer as I already have three terabytes worth of space to work with. And I don't think a repair will fix a corrupted O/S that's probably been suspect since that first power spike took out my power supply. So, I'm going to make doubly sure I have everything backed up, and go with option (2). Pray for me.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday (9 Feb) - A Raid Leader Speaks Out
Wednesday (9 Feb) - A Raid Leader Speaks Out
Wild limped in game with his gimpy computer Wednesday night around 6pm. Wild had signed up as "tentative" for what was the planned second night of raiding for the G1 group led by raid leader Mf (I learned later that they didn't raid on Tuesday). The other raid leader for the G2 group, Bd, was expected back from a two week hiatus and had signed up for Mf's raid. Bd was already in game when Wild arrived, but I quickly learned that Bd was ill, under medication, and would not be raiding.
Wild was in game only a few minutes when Mf announced in guild chat, "Looking for 2 healers, 1 tank, and 3 DPS for BWD." I did the math - nine guildies had signed up for the raid (that doesn't count the three of us who signed up as tentative), so at the raid start time only three of those nine were in game. That was disappointing. Wild whispered to Mf, letting him know that I was available but that I might have lag problems. Given how few guildies that had signed up were present, Wild wasn't surprised when he got an immediate invite.
A couple more guildies trickled in that was on the sign up, and Mf added a few more who were in game and agreed to come to the raid. We got to nine raiders but could not get a second guildie tank - we had expected Bd to fill that spot but he said he just couldn't do it. Mf brought in a warrior tank from outside the guild to round out the raid. It looked like we had a raid!
Wild figured he was healing, but with a paladin and three shaman in the raid I wasn't sure who the other two would be. The paladin, Fln, who I had never seen before (although he was a guildie) was tapped to heal, and Sh, a good shaman healer Wild has run with many times, was the other. Wild knew all of the rest of the guildies in the run, some previous members of G1 and other newer members of the guild.
The pvp zone, Tol Barad, was under Alliance control at raid time so we would not be making a Baradin Hold run this time. That also meant that we couldn't use the Tol Barad portal in Orgrimmar as a jumping off point to get to Blackwing Descent (BWD), which was located in the Badlands on the opposite continent. That left taking a zep either to Tirisfal Glades or Stranglethorn Vale, and then flying to BWD. It was inconvenient, but it was also funny that going this route was now considered inconvenient. Pre-dungeon finder I would not have thought twice about making that trip. The DF and it's instant portal directly from wherever you are to where you want to be can be blamed for that. I wonder when Blizz will get around to simply eliminating dungeon/raid summoning portals and allow us to self-port to them instantly. We're halfway to that point already.
Wild arrived at the BWD Summoning Stone and helped summon the rest of the raid. We entered Blackwing Descent. This was Wild's second trip to BWD. The first was with the G2 group, which failed to get to the first boss. That was almost a month ago. Of our entire raid, the raider with the most experience in BWD was our non-guildie guest tank. Which gives one an idea of the state of our raiding.
Inside BWD there wasn't that much to see. A simple hallway with stairs to the right leading to Omnotron and stairs to the left leading to Magmaw. Either could be tackled first, but Magmaw is generally considered the first boss in BWD. That's where we headed. Magmaw's cavern is modest sized, and there are three trash mobs, one which can be singled out, and then a pair of mobs near Magmaw that must be pulled together. Magmaw is a large worm-like creature. Only the upper half of it's body is visible.
With took our time getting buffed and ready, and then pulled the single mob. A month ago it took us several tries to kill that first trash mob. On this night the mob went down right away. We were off to a good start. The pair of mobs we now faced were essentially mini-bosses that needed as much coordination and effort as a real boss encounter required. The two tanks pulled their targets, separating them from each other while the ranged DPS/healers hung back. Shortly into the fight the two mobs abruptly pulled away from their tanks. One went after the other the tank, as we wanted, but the second one plowed into the ranged raiders and we quickly wiped.
It was a matter of positioing. The two mobs periodically lose the aggro on their tank and go after the raider farthest away from them. Our ranged group apparently was farther away from one of the mobs than the opposite side tank and Boom! dead ranged. It wasn't that tricky once we had that figured out, but we still had to actually kill the two mobs, which we did on our third try. Success!
Wild took a peek at the healing numbers for the three trash mobs just to get an idea of where the healers stood. It's been widely reported that paladins currently are the hands down best raid healers right now. No other healing class can touch them. The numbers in the current raid bore that out. Our paladin healer, Fln, had over 9300 hps and 39% of the healing, easily besting Wild's 6200+ hps and 28%. The shaman, Sh, came in with around 5800 hps and 22%. The healing was intense even on the trash mobs, so Wild was sure he was putting out every ounce of healing he could muster. Wild would need a lot more than that against Magmaw.
The Magmaw fight has a number of moving parts, but is actually a simple fight with one crucial element - the parasites. There were two schools of thought about those parasites. The method first developed for this fight called for most of the raid to move back and forth in unison across the width of the room, all of us esentially kiting the parasites while ranged DPS killed them. Very bad things happened if raiders don't stay closely tucked in together as they move, and even worse things happen if a raider is caught by a parasite, so very good coordination is required. The method we used, which is now the common method used, is for the whole raid to be grouped up in melee range of Magmaw - except for one ranged DPS. That raider would then be the only raider that would have to avoid the Pillar of Flame and belch of parasites it delivers. That raider, with the help of the other ranged DPS in the group of raiders, had to kill and it necessary, kite those parasites, finishing them off before they could get into the rest of the raid. There were two Pillars, so there were two waves of parasites.
We gave it a shot, got a look at what was going on, and wiped. On our second shot Wild started checking progress - attempt #2 got Magmaw to 93%. Ok, not much there, but it was a start.
We made progress in small increments: #3, 89%; #4: 87%; #5: 85%. We were making headway, but we were still coming up short on that crucual element - killing the parasites before they infested the rest of the raid. I'm sure the DPS was going crazy on the attack, and the healers were slamming heals down as fast as possible with no regard to mana. On that 5th attempt we got a glimmer of the second part of the fight involving chains, smashing Magmaw's face, naked women (ok, so I just threw that in there, I thought you might be day dreaming), and a spike through Magmaw's head. Well, we got as far as seeing the chains come out, but by that time we were well on our way to anther wipe. We made three more tries, this time using one of the tanks as the kiter so that the two ranged DPS could stand and blast away, but we just couldn't pull it all together. The 85% was our best effort on the night. Wild was just happy to be raiding.
After the raid Mf asked us to stay on vent for a few minutes as he wanted to address some raid issues. I would have thought he would talk about raiders not showing up after signing up, but I guess that was better discussed directly with those who were missing the raids. Mf started by saying that he was very glad we were all here, and glad that the guild was back to raiding. That said, he was concerned about the level of commitment. Cata raids are nothing like Wrath raids - we have to be at our best, and we have to be prepared. He then laid down some rules.
#1) Gear - if you don't have a gear score of at least i340, you cannot be effective and won't be invited. Getting to i340 will get you in the raid, but a score of i346 is what raiders really need to have to start seeing some success, and each raider should make a concentrated effort to get to it.
#2) DPS raiders - Cata is all about dealing damage. If our DPS can't reach a minimum of 10k DPS on boss fights, we will fail. I'm not knocking anyone here tonight, but do what you have to do to get there.
#3) Mf did an Armory check on each raider, and was disappointed to find that some raiders had not even bothered to put gems in some of their gear sockets. That is sloppy and completely unnecessary. Guild JC's can provide whatever anyone needs. Period. Proper gearing, proper consummables, enchants, etc, are all part of being prepared to raid.
I agreed with all of the above, with one caveat that was also brought up by another raider. We are still struggling to get ten guildies together to raid each week. The desire to raid seems to be missing from a good portion of our guild. We may be forced to bring in under-prepared/geared guildies, or we simply won't be able to raid. There is really only one solution to that, and it's a cat chasing it's tail kind of thing. The guild will get excited about raiding when we kill a Cata raid boss and show off our new shinys. But we can't down a Cata boss without geared and prepared raiders, which we are short on. I just have to hope that we'll make a breathrough - then the floodgates will open.
Over the course of the night Wild made steady progress in moving my healing numbers into range of that pally. Here was the final tally:
#1: Pally (Fln): 9986 hps, 34.5% of the healing
#2: Druid (Wild): 8227 hps, 30.9%
#3: Shaman (Sh): 6059 hps, 20.4%
Wild's best number on a single attempt was 10007 hps - the pally topped even that with 12191 hps. Gives Wild something to shoot for.
The final tally on the DPS (a minimum 10000 dps being the goal):
#1: shaman, 10626 dps
#2: warlock, 10162 dps
#3: warrior, 9631 dps
#4: shaman, 8733 dps
#5: tank, 7455 dps
#6: DK, 5746 dps
On Wild's part, his i342 gearscore meets the requirements, but I have some work to do to get to i346. Wild has 11 pieces of gear at i346 or better, leaving six that come up short: shoulder, wrist, neck, one ring, one trinket, and the relic. No matter what plan I come up with, it's going to involve dungeons. Lots of dungeons. I hope Wild is up for that.
Wild limped in game with his gimpy computer Wednesday night around 6pm. Wild had signed up as "tentative" for what was the planned second night of raiding for the G1 group led by raid leader Mf (I learned later that they didn't raid on Tuesday). The other raid leader for the G2 group, Bd, was expected back from a two week hiatus and had signed up for Mf's raid. Bd was already in game when Wild arrived, but I quickly learned that Bd was ill, under medication, and would not be raiding.
Wild was in game only a few minutes when Mf announced in guild chat, "Looking for 2 healers, 1 tank, and 3 DPS for BWD." I did the math - nine guildies had signed up for the raid (that doesn't count the three of us who signed up as tentative), so at the raid start time only three of those nine were in game. That was disappointing. Wild whispered to Mf, letting him know that I was available but that I might have lag problems. Given how few guildies that had signed up were present, Wild wasn't surprised when he got an immediate invite.
A couple more guildies trickled in that was on the sign up, and Mf added a few more who were in game and agreed to come to the raid. We got to nine raiders but could not get a second guildie tank - we had expected Bd to fill that spot but he said he just couldn't do it. Mf brought in a warrior tank from outside the guild to round out the raid. It looked like we had a raid!
Wild figured he was healing, but with a paladin and three shaman in the raid I wasn't sure who the other two would be. The paladin, Fln, who I had never seen before (although he was a guildie) was tapped to heal, and Sh, a good shaman healer Wild has run with many times, was the other. Wild knew all of the rest of the guildies in the run, some previous members of G1 and other newer members of the guild.
The pvp zone, Tol Barad, was under Alliance control at raid time so we would not be making a Baradin Hold run this time. That also meant that we couldn't use the Tol Barad portal in Orgrimmar as a jumping off point to get to Blackwing Descent (BWD), which was located in the Badlands on the opposite continent. That left taking a zep either to Tirisfal Glades or Stranglethorn Vale, and then flying to BWD. It was inconvenient, but it was also funny that going this route was now considered inconvenient. Pre-dungeon finder I would not have thought twice about making that trip. The DF and it's instant portal directly from wherever you are to where you want to be can be blamed for that. I wonder when Blizz will get around to simply eliminating dungeon/raid summoning portals and allow us to self-port to them instantly. We're halfway to that point already.
Wild arrived at the BWD Summoning Stone and helped summon the rest of the raid. We entered Blackwing Descent. This was Wild's second trip to BWD. The first was with the G2 group, which failed to get to the first boss. That was almost a month ago. Of our entire raid, the raider with the most experience in BWD was our non-guildie guest tank. Which gives one an idea of the state of our raiding.
Inside BWD there wasn't that much to see. A simple hallway with stairs to the right leading to Omnotron and stairs to the left leading to Magmaw. Either could be tackled first, but Magmaw is generally considered the first boss in BWD. That's where we headed. Magmaw's cavern is modest sized, and there are three trash mobs, one which can be singled out, and then a pair of mobs near Magmaw that must be pulled together. Magmaw is a large worm-like creature. Only the upper half of it's body is visible.
With took our time getting buffed and ready, and then pulled the single mob. A month ago it took us several tries to kill that first trash mob. On this night the mob went down right away. We were off to a good start. The pair of mobs we now faced were essentially mini-bosses that needed as much coordination and effort as a real boss encounter required. The two tanks pulled their targets, separating them from each other while the ranged DPS/healers hung back. Shortly into the fight the two mobs abruptly pulled away from their tanks. One went after the other the tank, as we wanted, but the second one plowed into the ranged raiders and we quickly wiped.
It was a matter of positioing. The two mobs periodically lose the aggro on their tank and go after the raider farthest away from them. Our ranged group apparently was farther away from one of the mobs than the opposite side tank and Boom! dead ranged. It wasn't that tricky once we had that figured out, but we still had to actually kill the two mobs, which we did on our third try. Success!
Wild took a peek at the healing numbers for the three trash mobs just to get an idea of where the healers stood. It's been widely reported that paladins currently are the hands down best raid healers right now. No other healing class can touch them. The numbers in the current raid bore that out. Our paladin healer, Fln, had over 9300 hps and 39% of the healing, easily besting Wild's 6200+ hps and 28%. The shaman, Sh, came in with around 5800 hps and 22%. The healing was intense even on the trash mobs, so Wild was sure he was putting out every ounce of healing he could muster. Wild would need a lot more than that against Magmaw.
The Magmaw fight has a number of moving parts, but is actually a simple fight with one crucial element - the parasites. There were two schools of thought about those parasites. The method first developed for this fight called for most of the raid to move back and forth in unison across the width of the room, all of us esentially kiting the parasites while ranged DPS killed them. Very bad things happened if raiders don't stay closely tucked in together as they move, and even worse things happen if a raider is caught by a parasite, so very good coordination is required. The method we used, which is now the common method used, is for the whole raid to be grouped up in melee range of Magmaw - except for one ranged DPS. That raider would then be the only raider that would have to avoid the Pillar of Flame and belch of parasites it delivers. That raider, with the help of the other ranged DPS in the group of raiders, had to kill and it necessary, kite those parasites, finishing them off before they could get into the rest of the raid. There were two Pillars, so there were two waves of parasites.
We gave it a shot, got a look at what was going on, and wiped. On our second shot Wild started checking progress - attempt #2 got Magmaw to 93%. Ok, not much there, but it was a start.
We made progress in small increments: #3, 89%; #4: 87%; #5: 85%. We were making headway, but we were still coming up short on that crucual element - killing the parasites before they infested the rest of the raid. I'm sure the DPS was going crazy on the attack, and the healers were slamming heals down as fast as possible with no regard to mana. On that 5th attempt we got a glimmer of the second part of the fight involving chains, smashing Magmaw's face, naked women (ok, so I just threw that in there, I thought you might be day dreaming), and a spike through Magmaw's head. Well, we got as far as seeing the chains come out, but by that time we were well on our way to anther wipe. We made three more tries, this time using one of the tanks as the kiter so that the two ranged DPS could stand and blast away, but we just couldn't pull it all together. The 85% was our best effort on the night. Wild was just happy to be raiding.
After the raid Mf asked us to stay on vent for a few minutes as he wanted to address some raid issues. I would have thought he would talk about raiders not showing up after signing up, but I guess that was better discussed directly with those who were missing the raids. Mf started by saying that he was very glad we were all here, and glad that the guild was back to raiding. That said, he was concerned about the level of commitment. Cata raids are nothing like Wrath raids - we have to be at our best, and we have to be prepared. He then laid down some rules.
#1) Gear - if you don't have a gear score of at least i340, you cannot be effective and won't be invited. Getting to i340 will get you in the raid, but a score of i346 is what raiders really need to have to start seeing some success, and each raider should make a concentrated effort to get to it.
#2) DPS raiders - Cata is all about dealing damage. If our DPS can't reach a minimum of 10k DPS on boss fights, we will fail. I'm not knocking anyone here tonight, but do what you have to do to get there.
#3) Mf did an Armory check on each raider, and was disappointed to find that some raiders had not even bothered to put gems in some of their gear sockets. That is sloppy and completely unnecessary. Guild JC's can provide whatever anyone needs. Period. Proper gearing, proper consummables, enchants, etc, are all part of being prepared to raid.
I agreed with all of the above, with one caveat that was also brought up by another raider. We are still struggling to get ten guildies together to raid each week. The desire to raid seems to be missing from a good portion of our guild. We may be forced to bring in under-prepared/geared guildies, or we simply won't be able to raid. There is really only one solution to that, and it's a cat chasing it's tail kind of thing. The guild will get excited about raiding when we kill a Cata raid boss and show off our new shinys. But we can't down a Cata boss without geared and prepared raiders, which we are short on. I just have to hope that we'll make a breathrough - then the floodgates will open.
Over the course of the night Wild made steady progress in moving my healing numbers into range of that pally. Here was the final tally:
#1: Pally (Fln): 9986 hps, 34.5% of the healing
#2: Druid (Wild): 8227 hps, 30.9%
#3: Shaman (Sh): 6059 hps, 20.4%
Wild's best number on a single attempt was 10007 hps - the pally topped even that with 12191 hps. Gives Wild something to shoot for.
The final tally on the DPS (a minimum 10000 dps being the goal):
#1: shaman, 10626 dps
#2: warlock, 10162 dps
#3: warrior, 9631 dps
#4: shaman, 8733 dps
#5: tank, 7455 dps
#6: DK, 5746 dps
On Wild's part, his i342 gearscore meets the requirements, but I have some work to do to get to i346. Wild has 11 pieces of gear at i346 or better, leaving six that come up short: shoulder, wrist, neck, one ring, one trinket, and the relic. No matter what plan I come up with, it's going to involve dungeons. Lots of dungeons. I hope Wild is up for that.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Tuesday Night (8 Feb) - Hitting The Dungeons
Tuesday Night (8 Feb) - Hitting The Dungeons
The painting bug has struck the Mrs again. I knew it was only a matter of time. We've painted the entire house now, except for one bathroom and the bedroom office of the Mrs. The bathroom is mine, and I've waged a covert war to keep paintbrushes out of it. Which is why I enthusiatically agreed to help her get her room ready for painting. If she's painting her own room she won't be painting my bathroom.
Her room also has a modest walk-in closet, which is, of couse, filled floor to ceiling with boxes full of stuff we had forgotten we had. Since we want to use the closet to get her stuff out of the way of a paintbrush, my volunteer help suddenly turned into a task to clean out the closet. Oh joy. Actually, I like organizing things (my problem is that I don't much like to keep things organized), so the closet was a challenge for me. That took most of an afternoon, and then another couple of hours to pack the space I'd created with all of the stuff in her room.
We did decide to get rid of some things. We were big Star Trek Next Generation fans a few years ago and had purchased the entire seven seasons on VHS - one VHS a month. No, DVDs didn't exist at the time, and no, dinosaurs did not still roam downtown San Diego. The tapes are still in excellent condition and are now something of a collector's item. We're hoping to get a collector's price for them.
I also had a tabletop scale model of Tiger Stadium that the Mrs had bought for me a long time ago. I loved it, but it was the size of a large coffee table when assembled and there was just no where to display it. That, and about 2600 baseball cards I discovered I still had went up for sale as well. My collection of Strat-o-Matic baseball cards, which I've been collecting since the 1968 season, I defended with my life. I got to keep them, but I had to agree to let her keep years worth of National Geographic magazines. Frankly, though, a good bit of the stuff in the closet was junk we had no intention of ever using again, computer odds and ends that I kept meaning to do something with, and a lot of old paperwork that made sense to save at the time but was mostly just a fire hazard now.
The room has been scoured of stuff now, and today (Wednesday) we'll move the furniture out of the way so she can start painting. Then I get to organize her room when I cart all her stuff back in.
My main computer is still at the shop. I'm hoping to hear back from them today, at least to find out what they think is wrong. In the meantime, Sista logged in Tuesday night hoping that the lag on the older computer wouldn't be so bad as to ruin her chance at some battleground and dungeon fun.
Sista and Kiren have been leveling faster than Unbleached, primarily due to a time zone difference for Unbleached; she has to leave an hour earlier than Sista and Kiren. In that extra hour we can usually get in a couple more dungeon runs and even some pvp. As the evening started, Sista was level 37, Kiren was level 38, and Unleached was level 31. To move things along, Kiren agreed to step aside for level 63 Daeth, a mage that has been getting a lot of game time lately, to run a quick dungeon to help level Unbleached. Sista came along as well, of course. The dungeon was Razorfen Kraul (RFK), a mid-thirties level dungeon. It was a fun run, and it was awesome to watch a mage tank - well, things mostly died before they got close enough to Daeth for any tanking. Daeth then gave way to Kiren, and we dialed up the random dungeon finder and got Uldamen. Now that the patch is live, guilds can get guild experience whenever at least three guildies are in the dungeon group. So we picked up a few guild experience points for those runs. It wasn't a lot, and our guild may never get past level 1, but it was a start.
After that, Unbleached, who made it to level 33 on the evening, had to leave. Kiren and Sista hit another dungeon, and this time we got Dire Maul. Dire Maul, in Wild's day, was a level 60 five man dungeon that was quite challenging. At level 70 Wild even tested his expertise as both a bear and cat druid, looking to get some kind of mats or a quest or something - I forget what it was. I'll have to look that up sometime. Anyway, he did solo parts of Dire Maul, but that was long, long ago and not only did he not remember much about Dire Maul, it had been forever changed by Cata. Dire Maul was now rated a level 44-47 dungeon, although there are three wings, and mobs in some wings are high level 30s. I would guess that we started in the West wing, and may have wandered over to the North wing as well. I wasn't sure since it had been so long, and Kiren was getting to see it for the first time. The East wing has it's own door and can't be accessed from the other two wings. The old school dungeon is well designed, with mulitple levels and plants everywhere - both decorous and deadly. We were joined, of course, by three other adventurers. We started cautiously, but after a pull or two the healer told Kiren (who was tanking) that he could pull at will. From that point on we crashed through the place. We got lost at times, and had to backtrack more than once. There were also five quests to do, more than most dungeons offer, and getting all the pieces done for those took some time as well. It was great fun and I'd love to go back there again.
After Dire Maul Sista and Kiren did one Warsong Gulch pvp battle. It was a long wait to get a battle, and when we finally got in it started badly for us Alliance. The horde took an early 2-0 lead, and then the battle deadlocked. The allies rallied and took over mid-field, seemingly able to kill horde at will, but the horde defended their flag well. In the end we lost 2-1 when time expired.
Sista reached level 40 and Kiren is just a kill away from 40. And Sista did not experience any lag at all. Don't let the Mrs know that, though, I'm angling for a new computer.
The painting bug has struck the Mrs again. I knew it was only a matter of time. We've painted the entire house now, except for one bathroom and the bedroom office of the Mrs. The bathroom is mine, and I've waged a covert war to keep paintbrushes out of it. Which is why I enthusiatically agreed to help her get her room ready for painting. If she's painting her own room she won't be painting my bathroom.
Her room also has a modest walk-in closet, which is, of couse, filled floor to ceiling with boxes full of stuff we had forgotten we had. Since we want to use the closet to get her stuff out of the way of a paintbrush, my volunteer help suddenly turned into a task to clean out the closet. Oh joy. Actually, I like organizing things (my problem is that I don't much like to keep things organized), so the closet was a challenge for me. That took most of an afternoon, and then another couple of hours to pack the space I'd created with all of the stuff in her room.
We did decide to get rid of some things. We were big Star Trek Next Generation fans a few years ago and had purchased the entire seven seasons on VHS - one VHS a month. No, DVDs didn't exist at the time, and no, dinosaurs did not still roam downtown San Diego. The tapes are still in excellent condition and are now something of a collector's item. We're hoping to get a collector's price for them.
I also had a tabletop scale model of Tiger Stadium that the Mrs had bought for me a long time ago. I loved it, but it was the size of a large coffee table when assembled and there was just no where to display it. That, and about 2600 baseball cards I discovered I still had went up for sale as well. My collection of Strat-o-Matic baseball cards, which I've been collecting since the 1968 season, I defended with my life. I got to keep them, but I had to agree to let her keep years worth of National Geographic magazines. Frankly, though, a good bit of the stuff in the closet was junk we had no intention of ever using again, computer odds and ends that I kept meaning to do something with, and a lot of old paperwork that made sense to save at the time but was mostly just a fire hazard now.
The room has been scoured of stuff now, and today (Wednesday) we'll move the furniture out of the way so she can start painting. Then I get to organize her room when I cart all her stuff back in.
My main computer is still at the shop. I'm hoping to hear back from them today, at least to find out what they think is wrong. In the meantime, Sista logged in Tuesday night hoping that the lag on the older computer wouldn't be so bad as to ruin her chance at some battleground and dungeon fun.
Sista and Kiren have been leveling faster than Unbleached, primarily due to a time zone difference for Unbleached; she has to leave an hour earlier than Sista and Kiren. In that extra hour we can usually get in a couple more dungeon runs and even some pvp. As the evening started, Sista was level 37, Kiren was level 38, and Unleached was level 31. To move things along, Kiren agreed to step aside for level 63 Daeth, a mage that has been getting a lot of game time lately, to run a quick dungeon to help level Unbleached. Sista came along as well, of course. The dungeon was Razorfen Kraul (RFK), a mid-thirties level dungeon. It was a fun run, and it was awesome to watch a mage tank - well, things mostly died before they got close enough to Daeth for any tanking. Daeth then gave way to Kiren, and we dialed up the random dungeon finder and got Uldamen. Now that the patch is live, guilds can get guild experience whenever at least three guildies are in the dungeon group. So we picked up a few guild experience points for those runs. It wasn't a lot, and our guild may never get past level 1, but it was a start.
After that, Unbleached, who made it to level 33 on the evening, had to leave. Kiren and Sista hit another dungeon, and this time we got Dire Maul. Dire Maul, in Wild's day, was a level 60 five man dungeon that was quite challenging. At level 70 Wild even tested his expertise as both a bear and cat druid, looking to get some kind of mats or a quest or something - I forget what it was. I'll have to look that up sometime. Anyway, he did solo parts of Dire Maul, but that was long, long ago and not only did he not remember much about Dire Maul, it had been forever changed by Cata. Dire Maul was now rated a level 44-47 dungeon, although there are three wings, and mobs in some wings are high level 30s. I would guess that we started in the West wing, and may have wandered over to the North wing as well. I wasn't sure since it had been so long, and Kiren was getting to see it for the first time. The East wing has it's own door and can't be accessed from the other two wings. The old school dungeon is well designed, with mulitple levels and plants everywhere - both decorous and deadly. We were joined, of course, by three other adventurers. We started cautiously, but after a pull or two the healer told Kiren (who was tanking) that he could pull at will. From that point on we crashed through the place. We got lost at times, and had to backtrack more than once. There were also five quests to do, more than most dungeons offer, and getting all the pieces done for those took some time as well. It was great fun and I'd love to go back there again.
After Dire Maul Sista and Kiren did one Warsong Gulch pvp battle. It was a long wait to get a battle, and when we finally got in it started badly for us Alliance. The horde took an early 2-0 lead, and then the battle deadlocked. The allies rallied and took over mid-field, seemingly able to kill horde at will, but the horde defended their flag well. In the end we lost 2-1 when time expired.
Sista reached level 40 and Kiren is just a kill away from 40. And Sista did not experience any lag at all. Don't let the Mrs know that, though, I'm angling for a new computer.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Tuesday (8 Feb) - Patch 4.0.6 Has Arrived
Tuesday (8 Feb) - Patch 4.0.6 Has Arrived
The latest patch for Cata hit the download queue Tuesday morning. Around a 100MB, it was a pretty fast load. Included in the patch are a lot of adjustments to character classes as well as tuning (ie, slightly nerfing) the dungeons and raids.
For Wild and other druids in the family, there are a number of adjustments. Two healing spells have been swapped for each other. Healing Touch is a big, long cast spell that druids received very early in life. Nourish was a recently added spell in the last expansion that druids got very late in life. With the patch that has been reversed. So Sista, who had Healing Touch before the patch, will find that Healing Touch is now gone, replaced by Nourish. Sista won't get Healing Touch back until level 78. The overall affect of the change is probably minimal.
Of biggest importance to Wild is what has been done to the rejuvenation spell. Rejuv is an instant cast heal over time (HoT) spell that in wrath was spammed constantly on anyone and everyone in the raid. In Cata the mana cost of rejuv was significantly increased to the point that it's use was very situational. Coupled with the mana cost increase of another HoT, regrowth, and a change to our third HoT, lifebloom, so that it could only be used on one target at a time, and HoT healing (the druid's forte) was severely gimped.
Without admitting it, I think Blizz realized they had made a mistake. Druid healing had been turned into something that looked a whole lot like priest healing, and those wonderful HoT spells that were the signature heals of a druid had been forced to the back of the healing priority.
So, the changes - the mana cost of rejuv has been reduced to 20% of base mana (from 26%). The reduction was larger than that in the beta, but alas they tinkered with it some more and 20% is where it wound up. Wild will be able to use it a bit more; how much yet will have to be tested. In addition, Wild's AoE HoT, Wild Growth, has had it's healing increased by 30% and it's cooldown shortened so it can be cast more often. This will definitely help in the many situations where raid/group damage is hitting multiple players. A third change is even more interesting. Blizzard redesigned a talent called Nature's Bounty. This is a nice talent that increases the crit healing of regrowth. It used to also affect swiftmend, but that effect was removed in the patch. Replacing that effect is a link between rejuv and nourish. Now, Blizz is encouraging druid healers to cast rejuv on up to three targets, because doing that reduces the cast time of Nourish, which is our most mana efficient spell and one we use a lot. So, Blizz is making rejuv an important spell again, and in general is speeding up druid spell casting. All of this is good news for Wild. But it all still depends on how it addects mana usage.
Wild's off-hand enchant was nerfed from +100 int to +40 int. It was great while it lasted, but that significantly lowered Wild's mana pool. That all by itself could negate a lot of the changes made to our HoTs.
Here's one I missed. The Tailoring pattern, Illusionary Bag, is a 24 slot bag. As of the patch it's a 26 slot bag! Sis, this one bag has more slots than all four of your bags combined! :P Of course, the mats to make that bag cost over 3,000 gold (64 bolts of emberstrike and 240 volatiles) and take five days of crafting to make.
What Sis and Lao should be very interested in, though, are the level 85 BOE i359 belt and pants that Wild will be able to make. Both pieces can be crafted for 10 dreamcloth. Wild can craft up to 5 dreamcloth per week, but it costs a crap load of bolts of emberstrike and 30 each of all five volatiles. Wild can afford to buy the recipes, but would need help crafting all the dreamcloth needed. Dreamcloth is souldbound, too, so it can't be bought on the AH.
As for Sista and her feral form, they nerfed us. There are a number of pvp based changes reducing the duration of many spells such as infected wounds. Other damage spells have had their damage reduced, including pulverize, maul, rip, and rake. Ferals do get a damage increase on many spells - at level 80, but not before.
For those who want to farm normal dungeons for justice points, now is your time! JPs for the first random dungeon of the day has been doubled, from 70 to 140 JPs. In addition, every boss in the three level 85 dungeons now award 30 additional JPs when killed (it was zero prior to patch). Take HOO, for example, that has seven bosses. A full clear on the first run of the day would award 350 JPs, instead of just 70 prior to the patch. You can use JPs to buy ilevel 346 gear.
On the Clan front, our horde and alliance guilds can earn guild level points if at least three of five players from the guild are in the run. Hurray for three person guilds!
Ahh, and finally, in the worst kind of humiliation, I learned that Chromaggus can be tamed as a pet. Chromaggus is the final challenge before facing the end game boss, Nefarion, in Blackwing Lair. Killing Chromaggus was a HUGE accomplishment back in the day - now hunters can tame him as a pet. I just want to cry.
The latest patch for Cata hit the download queue Tuesday morning. Around a 100MB, it was a pretty fast load. Included in the patch are a lot of adjustments to character classes as well as tuning (ie, slightly nerfing) the dungeons and raids.
For Wild and other druids in the family, there are a number of adjustments. Two healing spells have been swapped for each other. Healing Touch is a big, long cast spell that druids received very early in life. Nourish was a recently added spell in the last expansion that druids got very late in life. With the patch that has been reversed. So Sista, who had Healing Touch before the patch, will find that Healing Touch is now gone, replaced by Nourish. Sista won't get Healing Touch back until level 78. The overall affect of the change is probably minimal.
Of biggest importance to Wild is what has been done to the rejuvenation spell. Rejuv is an instant cast heal over time (HoT) spell that in wrath was spammed constantly on anyone and everyone in the raid. In Cata the mana cost of rejuv was significantly increased to the point that it's use was very situational. Coupled with the mana cost increase of another HoT, regrowth, and a change to our third HoT, lifebloom, so that it could only be used on one target at a time, and HoT healing (the druid's forte) was severely gimped.
Without admitting it, I think Blizz realized they had made a mistake. Druid healing had been turned into something that looked a whole lot like priest healing, and those wonderful HoT spells that were the signature heals of a druid had been forced to the back of the healing priority.
So, the changes - the mana cost of rejuv has been reduced to 20% of base mana (from 26%). The reduction was larger than that in the beta, but alas they tinkered with it some more and 20% is where it wound up. Wild will be able to use it a bit more; how much yet will have to be tested. In addition, Wild's AoE HoT, Wild Growth, has had it's healing increased by 30% and it's cooldown shortened so it can be cast more often. This will definitely help in the many situations where raid/group damage is hitting multiple players. A third change is even more interesting. Blizzard redesigned a talent called Nature's Bounty. This is a nice talent that increases the crit healing of regrowth. It used to also affect swiftmend, but that effect was removed in the patch. Replacing that effect is a link between rejuv and nourish. Now, Blizz is encouraging druid healers to cast rejuv on up to three targets, because doing that reduces the cast time of Nourish, which is our most mana efficient spell and one we use a lot. So, Blizz is making rejuv an important spell again, and in general is speeding up druid spell casting. All of this is good news for Wild. But it all still depends on how it addects mana usage.
Wild's off-hand enchant was nerfed from +100 int to +40 int. It was great while it lasted, but that significantly lowered Wild's mana pool. That all by itself could negate a lot of the changes made to our HoTs.
Here's one I missed. The Tailoring pattern, Illusionary Bag, is a 24 slot bag. As of the patch it's a 26 slot bag! Sis, this one bag has more slots than all four of your bags combined! :P Of course, the mats to make that bag cost over 3,000 gold (64 bolts of emberstrike and 240 volatiles) and take five days of crafting to make.
What Sis and Lao should be very interested in, though, are the level 85 BOE i359 belt and pants that Wild will be able to make. Both pieces can be crafted for 10 dreamcloth. Wild can craft up to 5 dreamcloth per week, but it costs a crap load of bolts of emberstrike and 30 each of all five volatiles. Wild can afford to buy the recipes, but would need help crafting all the dreamcloth needed. Dreamcloth is souldbound, too, so it can't be bought on the AH.
As for Sista and her feral form, they nerfed us. There are a number of pvp based changes reducing the duration of many spells such as infected wounds. Other damage spells have had their damage reduced, including pulverize, maul, rip, and rake. Ferals do get a damage increase on many spells - at level 80, but not before.
For those who want to farm normal dungeons for justice points, now is your time! JPs for the first random dungeon of the day has been doubled, from 70 to 140 JPs. In addition, every boss in the three level 85 dungeons now award 30 additional JPs when killed (it was zero prior to patch). Take HOO, for example, that has seven bosses. A full clear on the first run of the day would award 350 JPs, instead of just 70 prior to the patch. You can use JPs to buy ilevel 346 gear.
On the Clan front, our horde and alliance guilds can earn guild level points if at least three of five players from the guild are in the run. Hurray for three person guilds!
Ahh, and finally, in the worst kind of humiliation, I learned that Chromaggus can be tamed as a pet. Chromaggus is the final challenge before facing the end game boss, Nefarion, in Blackwing Lair. Killing Chromaggus was a HUGE accomplishment back in the day - now hunters can tame him as a pet. I just want to cry.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Weekend (6 Feb) - Chaitee Destroyed My Computer
Weekend (6 Feb) - Chaitee Destroyed My Computer
It's Saturday afternoon and I am doing a check of my hard drive. That check has been in progess for most of four hours now - it's 52% complete. I'm writing this on my "old and slow" computer.
On saturday morning Chaitee was in Darkshore. When I logged on, having Chaitee in game and in Darkshore was the farthest thing from my mind. Daethbot logged in a little later and said Hi and asked how things were going.
Well, I wasn''t sure, since what I thought I was doing this morning was cleaning out and organizing the horde side bank. How that task wound up with Alliance toon Chaitee in Darkshore is a long story. So of course you know I'm going to tell it.
But first, excuse me while I go off to do a honeydo. I may not have a weekday 9-5 job, but that doesn't exempt yours truly from Saturday chores.
When I came back to the computer the disk check was at 54%. Definitely taking it's time.
Before we get to Chaitee, it was JB who was the first in game on Saturday morning (after Happy and Lost did their AH business, of course; oh, and after Melasahnd and Rakta did some neutral AH work). Ok, so JB was the fifth in game on Saturday morning.
The day before, JB, Philly, Sis, and Lao all collaborated on a project that ended with most of the pre-cata jewelcrafting mats being used to make the pre-cata purple gems. With a bunch of those gems crafted, a large chunk of old, lesser gems could be vendored off to make room for the better ones. If you've already forgotten, the plan was to clean up and organize the horde side bank. All well and good.
The disk check was up to 60%.
JB decided to take the bit of bank cleaning a little further. A rather significant number of bank slots across all four tabs were mats for the cooking profession. Just about everytjhing imaginable, from eggs and wings to meat from just about every animal that walked on Azeroth. And the fish! Gah!
Well, it was stinking up the place and something had to be done. Of course, that stuff would not be vendored. No! This was stuff that could be used. Nobody was using it, which was why it was still sitting in the bank - but that was a mere detail. It would not affect JB's plans.
JB set out to count, categorize and assign action on every piece of rotting flesh and hacked up body part. She checked the cooking abilities of every member of the Wild Clan, both Horde and Alliance. Someone had to need this stuff, and JB was determined to find out who was going to be the recipient of all this dripping largesse.
Well, all politics and behind the scene deals aside, the "winner" of JB's food bank was Sista. Sista didn't know that she was the chosen one, but again - small detail.
It was time for action. JB still had one detail to attend to, however. Nearly all of the cooking materials on hand were for recipes beginning around the 175 skill level. That was a bit of an inconvenience , since Sista was at only skill 61 in cooking. What to do, what to do?
Well, there were these crabs. They roamed all over the shores of Darkshore, and the crab meat and crab claws just happened to make pretty good cooking at the level Sista would need. Someone had to go out and kill those crabs. Sista could do it, but she was already a lofty level 35 and killing those Darkshore crabs wouldn't get her a single exerpience point. JB needed a better volunteer, one who could benefit from all that crab killin'.
Enter Chaitee. Level 20 Chaitee was at just the right level - high enough to make the killing fast, low enough to get some nice xp from the effort. When informed of JB's plans, Chaitee egerly accepted. She was monumentally bored just sitting in Stormwind. Chaitee wanted to be fully equipped for the journey, so Rakta had to give up her heirloom bow, and Mery sent over her chest, shoulder, and trinket heirlooms.
The disk check was up to 65% now. Still slow, but still chugging along.
Chaitee was ready to go. Almost. See, Chaitee had not done any cooking at all. Couldn't she take just a little time to get the basics done? Without waiting for an answeer, Chaitee headed for the tavern where the cooking trainer hung out. Well, to be perfectly accurate, she had to ask at least three guards how to find the place. But she did, and made flour and spice bread to get to 40 skill in cooking. Chaitee thought that was great fun. She loaded up on more recipes and then raided the guild bank - the Alliance guild bank - of whatever cooking mats it held. Coupled with some mats left over from her leveling days with Java, Chaitee got up to 60 skill, right up there with Sista.
Chaitee was in Stormwind City, by the way. So she had to take the ship in Stormwind harbor over to whatever that lonely coastal town is called on Teldrassil, and then talked a flight master into carting her to Darkshore. Chaitee and her combat pet Tazzy then walked the length and breadth of Darkshore, killing those crabs, and anything else that caught their attention. Chaitee DINGED! to level 21 and collected enough mats for her and Sista both to keep leveling their cooking.
Chaitee wanted to head back to Stormwind, meet up with Sista, and share the spoils. She splashed her way to the boardwalk in the little darkshore town of Lor'Danel and asked the flight master to trake her home - and that was when the computer froze, and the mouse, and the keyboard, and Windows refused to reboot or reload, and that's why I'm writing this on my old backup computer and watching chkdsk tic off the percentage completed on the likely mortally wounded hard drive.
The disk check was at 65% when I was called to dinner.
After dinner Chaitee gave the "old and slow" computer a chance to continue the project. She returned to Stormwind and Sista joined her shortly thereafter. Chaitee's excellent work provided the means for Sista to reach skill 181 in cooking. Sista quickly got into the spirit and decided to take on the next leg of the project. Even as Melasahnd and Rakta were preparing to start transferring mats such as Red Wolf Meat, Tender Wolf Meat, Bear Flanks, Small Flame Sacs, and Mystery Meat, Sista was making her way to the other continent.
After a bit more than six hours run time, chkdsk reported that everything was fine now. I was dubious that "fine" captured the state of that hard drive.
The chkdsk had been executed by using the Windows boot disk using the command line only. About all I could say about that was the core memory seemed ok. There was only one way to find out if the hard drive really was operational and sane. I rebooted the computer from the hard drive (instead of the boot disk) and asked Windows to go into Safe Mode. I was pretty shocked when the computer did boot properly into safe mode. This was too good to be true, but I wasn't wasting the good fortune. Not sure how long it would last, I started backing up files onto another drive. Once all the really important stuff was taken care of, I decided to do a full boot. And it worked. The hard drive is operational again. I don't trust it, though, and I haven't attempted to run WoW on it. Just running normal programs causes strange sounds to eminate from the computer. It's either the hard drive itself, or it could be the power supply. I'm hoping it's the power supply. I just had that replaced recently and it was still under warranty.
Since it looked like I was not going to be using my main computer for awhile, I mirrored my main computer WoW configuration on my backup computer. WoW runs slower and is prone to lag, but should be workable. Except for dungeons and raiding. Which puts Wild's Wed/Thurs raid plans in jeapardy.
I'm not complaining, though. A lot of work is still ahead. But it could have been oh so much worse.
The rest of Sista's weekend story is coming up.
It's Saturday afternoon and I am doing a check of my hard drive. That check has been in progess for most of four hours now - it's 52% complete. I'm writing this on my "old and slow" computer.
On saturday morning Chaitee was in Darkshore. When I logged on, having Chaitee in game and in Darkshore was the farthest thing from my mind. Daethbot logged in a little later and said Hi and asked how things were going.
Well, I wasn''t sure, since what I thought I was doing this morning was cleaning out and organizing the horde side bank. How that task wound up with Alliance toon Chaitee in Darkshore is a long story. So of course you know I'm going to tell it.
But first, excuse me while I go off to do a honeydo. I may not have a weekday 9-5 job, but that doesn't exempt yours truly from Saturday chores.
When I came back to the computer the disk check was at 54%. Definitely taking it's time.
Before we get to Chaitee, it was JB who was the first in game on Saturday morning (after Happy and Lost did their AH business, of course; oh, and after Melasahnd and Rakta did some neutral AH work). Ok, so JB was the fifth in game on Saturday morning.
The day before, JB, Philly, Sis, and Lao all collaborated on a project that ended with most of the pre-cata jewelcrafting mats being used to make the pre-cata purple gems. With a bunch of those gems crafted, a large chunk of old, lesser gems could be vendored off to make room for the better ones. If you've already forgotten, the plan was to clean up and organize the horde side bank. All well and good.
The disk check was up to 60%.
JB decided to take the bit of bank cleaning a little further. A rather significant number of bank slots across all four tabs were mats for the cooking profession. Just about everytjhing imaginable, from eggs and wings to meat from just about every animal that walked on Azeroth. And the fish! Gah!
Well, it was stinking up the place and something had to be done. Of course, that stuff would not be vendored. No! This was stuff that could be used. Nobody was using it, which was why it was still sitting in the bank - but that was a mere detail. It would not affect JB's plans.
JB set out to count, categorize and assign action on every piece of rotting flesh and hacked up body part. She checked the cooking abilities of every member of the Wild Clan, both Horde and Alliance. Someone had to need this stuff, and JB was determined to find out who was going to be the recipient of all this dripping largesse.
Well, all politics and behind the scene deals aside, the "winner" of JB's food bank was Sista. Sista didn't know that she was the chosen one, but again - small detail.
It was time for action. JB still had one detail to attend to, however. Nearly all of the cooking materials on hand were for recipes beginning around the 175 skill level. That was a bit of an inconvenience , since Sista was at only skill 61 in cooking. What to do, what to do?
Well, there were these crabs. They roamed all over the shores of Darkshore, and the crab meat and crab claws just happened to make pretty good cooking at the level Sista would need. Someone had to go out and kill those crabs. Sista could do it, but she was already a lofty level 35 and killing those Darkshore crabs wouldn't get her a single exerpience point. JB needed a better volunteer, one who could benefit from all that crab killin'.
Enter Chaitee. Level 20 Chaitee was at just the right level - high enough to make the killing fast, low enough to get some nice xp from the effort. When informed of JB's plans, Chaitee egerly accepted. She was monumentally bored just sitting in Stormwind. Chaitee wanted to be fully equipped for the journey, so Rakta had to give up her heirloom bow, and Mery sent over her chest, shoulder, and trinket heirlooms.
The disk check was up to 65% now. Still slow, but still chugging along.
Chaitee was ready to go. Almost. See, Chaitee had not done any cooking at all. Couldn't she take just a little time to get the basics done? Without waiting for an answeer, Chaitee headed for the tavern where the cooking trainer hung out. Well, to be perfectly accurate, she had to ask at least three guards how to find the place. But she did, and made flour and spice bread to get to 40 skill in cooking. Chaitee thought that was great fun. She loaded up on more recipes and then raided the guild bank - the Alliance guild bank - of whatever cooking mats it held. Coupled with some mats left over from her leveling days with Java, Chaitee got up to 60 skill, right up there with Sista.
Chaitee was in Stormwind City, by the way. So she had to take the ship in Stormwind harbor over to whatever that lonely coastal town is called on Teldrassil, and then talked a flight master into carting her to Darkshore. Chaitee and her combat pet Tazzy then walked the length and breadth of Darkshore, killing those crabs, and anything else that caught their attention. Chaitee DINGED! to level 21 and collected enough mats for her and Sista both to keep leveling their cooking.
Chaitee wanted to head back to Stormwind, meet up with Sista, and share the spoils. She splashed her way to the boardwalk in the little darkshore town of Lor'Danel and asked the flight master to trake her home - and that was when the computer froze, and the mouse, and the keyboard, and Windows refused to reboot or reload, and that's why I'm writing this on my old backup computer and watching chkdsk tic off the percentage completed on the likely mortally wounded hard drive.
The disk check was at 65% when I was called to dinner.
After dinner Chaitee gave the "old and slow" computer a chance to continue the project. She returned to Stormwind and Sista joined her shortly thereafter. Chaitee's excellent work provided the means for Sista to reach skill 181 in cooking. Sista quickly got into the spirit and decided to take on the next leg of the project. Even as Melasahnd and Rakta were preparing to start transferring mats such as Red Wolf Meat, Tender Wolf Meat, Bear Flanks, Small Flame Sacs, and Mystery Meat, Sista was making her way to the other continent.
After a bit more than six hours run time, chkdsk reported that everything was fine now. I was dubious that "fine" captured the state of that hard drive.
The chkdsk had been executed by using the Windows boot disk using the command line only. About all I could say about that was the core memory seemed ok. There was only one way to find out if the hard drive really was operational and sane. I rebooted the computer from the hard drive (instead of the boot disk) and asked Windows to go into Safe Mode. I was pretty shocked when the computer did boot properly into safe mode. This was too good to be true, but I wasn't wasting the good fortune. Not sure how long it would last, I started backing up files onto another drive. Once all the really important stuff was taken care of, I decided to do a full boot. And it worked. The hard drive is operational again. I don't trust it, though, and I haven't attempted to run WoW on it. Just running normal programs causes strange sounds to eminate from the computer. It's either the hard drive itself, or it could be the power supply. I'm hoping it's the power supply. I just had that replaced recently and it was still under warranty.
Since it looked like I was not going to be using my main computer for awhile, I mirrored my main computer WoW configuration on my backup computer. WoW runs slower and is prone to lag, but should be workable. Except for dungeons and raiding. Which puts Wild's Wed/Thurs raid plans in jeapardy.
I'm not complaining, though. A lot of work is still ahead. But it could have been oh so much worse.
The rest of Sista's weekend story is coming up.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Wednesday (2 Feb) - Blackwing Descent - Yes or No
Wednesday (2 Feb) - Blackwing Descent - Yes or No
The good news for Happy was that the 168g each Bag of Jewels was selling a lot more briskly than usual. The bad news was that finding materials to make it keep getting harder to come by. Happy has already talked about the problems getting felcloth. Now it seems that ironweb spidersilk, another mat required to make the gem bag, is becoming harder to get as well as more expensive. Ironweb spidersilk can be farmed off the spiders in Silithus, at least Happy believed that it could still be gotten from there since Silithus was left pretty much alone by Cata. Silithus is a mid-high level 50s zone. Happy needed a flunky - ah, an adventurer - to check things out and hopefully come back with a bunch of ironweb. That job was perfect for level 56 Mery.
Mery had never been to Silithus, and the closest she could get via the flight path was the outpost in Un'Goro Crater. Once she arrived she was surprised to learn that the base of operations in the crater had moved. The new post was near the center of the crater where the volcano is, a much more dangerous area than the old post which was up on the outer ridge. Numerous quest givers tried to entice Mery to stick around, but she headed across the heart of the crater to find the passage out of the crater and into Silithus. Finding the way out of the crater could be tricky - at least it used to be.The trail leading from Un'Goro Crater to Silithus is now well marked, even if it is only barely a trail still criss-crossed by numerous hungry beasts.
Mery made the trip without incident, and even killed a few spiders as she made her way to Cenarion Hold, the neutral city of Silithus. Not wanting to waste her time just hunting spiders, Mery picked up a couple of quests and added wyrms and scorpions to her list of things to kill.
With tanking pet, Sassy, there to hold the creatures down, Mery was a mercilous killing machine, sending Sassy off after the next beast the second the current target was dead. Mery looted and skinned while Sassy entertained the next mob. Mery spent about forty minutes out on the sand, taking a little extra time to hunt down those spiders.
Happy was pretty disappointed at the take, however. Mery collected only four ironweb, barely enough to make one gem bag. One is better than none, which was how Mery saw it. She greatly enjoyed her time out in the field and DINGED! to level 57 as well. She crafted a new pair of mail gloves for herself, but she can't level her leatherworking skills any further (375/375) until she reaches level 65. Which sucks, says Mery, knowing how far down on the list she is for in game time.
Meanwhile, Wild got his dailies done and hung out in Orgrimmar waiting to see if there would be a raid, and if Wild was going to be in it.
The good news was that Tol Barad was in the hands of the Horde, so Baradin Hold was open for business. Mf, who was the raid leader for the BWD run for Wednesday night, was looking to fill a ten man raid to get into BH while we had it. This was shaping up to be a good raid night if we could take some shots at BH and then hit BWD. The raid sign up sheet had 9 guildies on it, and there were 16 level 85 guildies in game. Only four of those 16 guildies were on the sign up sheet, though, meaning that we had five no shows. Ok, how many guildies want to raid BH? asked Mf in guild chat. We got two takers. Two. There was no raid.
It was disappointing to say the least. I know that we are a "social guild that raids" and not a "raiding guild" per se, but come on! If we can't get ten guildies to join a raid two nights a week Wild is going to start having withdrawal pains. Part of the issue is that we have a number of guildies who have been raiding regulars that don't seem to have the time right now. We have a nice influx of new guildies, but they haven't had much interest in raiding. Wild decided to do an informal poll of guildies to see where they are in terms of gear progression. I always felt that Wild was slow to gear up when major game changes occurred, but maybe this time he's actually further ahead that a lot of others.
Wild has an i342 gearscore. Anyone with at least i340 is certainly geared for raiding, although PUGs want things a bit easier and may demand i350. For guild raids, though, i340 will do fine.
From the guild Armory Wild noted nine guildies, counting himself, who have raided with Wild pre-Cata and post-Cata. Nine out of twenty weekly raiders in two groups pre-cata.
I counted 11 guildies who raided regularly pre-cata but for whatever reason are not raiding now.
I also counted eight new guildies who seem to be in game a lot but have an inconsistent raid record, all post-Cata.
We have a lot of other level 85 guildies, but they haven't been raiding with us or signing up for raids.
So, how do the gear scores work out among the above three groups?
Pre/Post Cata raiders: 8 of 9 at i342 or better, 1 at i337
Pre-cata raiders: 4 of 11 at i342 or better, the rest mostly in low i330s
Newbies not raiding: 8 of 8 at i342 or better, 2 over i350
What this seems to indicate is that more than half of the pre-cata raiders that killed the Lich King are still gearing up and may or may not be raiding any time soon. We seem to have a strong core of new guildies (whether new players or alts that are now mains), but they don't seem very interested in raiding.
The most telling thing may be that I could only come up with 28 guildies that were raiding or might raid out of the whole guild.
In one sense Wild is doing better than a lot of other guildies in getting geared up. Unfortunately, Wild may be all dressed up but have nowhere to go.
The good news for Happy was that the 168g each Bag of Jewels was selling a lot more briskly than usual. The bad news was that finding materials to make it keep getting harder to come by. Happy has already talked about the problems getting felcloth. Now it seems that ironweb spidersilk, another mat required to make the gem bag, is becoming harder to get as well as more expensive. Ironweb spidersilk can be farmed off the spiders in Silithus, at least Happy believed that it could still be gotten from there since Silithus was left pretty much alone by Cata. Silithus is a mid-high level 50s zone. Happy needed a flunky - ah, an adventurer - to check things out and hopefully come back with a bunch of ironweb. That job was perfect for level 56 Mery.
Mery had never been to Silithus, and the closest she could get via the flight path was the outpost in Un'Goro Crater. Once she arrived she was surprised to learn that the base of operations in the crater had moved. The new post was near the center of the crater where the volcano is, a much more dangerous area than the old post which was up on the outer ridge. Numerous quest givers tried to entice Mery to stick around, but she headed across the heart of the crater to find the passage out of the crater and into Silithus. Finding the way out of the crater could be tricky - at least it used to be.The trail leading from Un'Goro Crater to Silithus is now well marked, even if it is only barely a trail still criss-crossed by numerous hungry beasts.
Mery made the trip without incident, and even killed a few spiders as she made her way to Cenarion Hold, the neutral city of Silithus. Not wanting to waste her time just hunting spiders, Mery picked up a couple of quests and added wyrms and scorpions to her list of things to kill.
With tanking pet, Sassy, there to hold the creatures down, Mery was a mercilous killing machine, sending Sassy off after the next beast the second the current target was dead. Mery looted and skinned while Sassy entertained the next mob. Mery spent about forty minutes out on the sand, taking a little extra time to hunt down those spiders.
Happy was pretty disappointed at the take, however. Mery collected only four ironweb, barely enough to make one gem bag. One is better than none, which was how Mery saw it. She greatly enjoyed her time out in the field and DINGED! to level 57 as well. She crafted a new pair of mail gloves for herself, but she can't level her leatherworking skills any further (375/375) until she reaches level 65. Which sucks, says Mery, knowing how far down on the list she is for in game time.
Meanwhile, Wild got his dailies done and hung out in Orgrimmar waiting to see if there would be a raid, and if Wild was going to be in it.
The good news was that Tol Barad was in the hands of the Horde, so Baradin Hold was open for business. Mf, who was the raid leader for the BWD run for Wednesday night, was looking to fill a ten man raid to get into BH while we had it. This was shaping up to be a good raid night if we could take some shots at BH and then hit BWD. The raid sign up sheet had 9 guildies on it, and there were 16 level 85 guildies in game. Only four of those 16 guildies were on the sign up sheet, though, meaning that we had five no shows. Ok, how many guildies want to raid BH? asked Mf in guild chat. We got two takers. Two. There was no raid.
It was disappointing to say the least. I know that we are a "social guild that raids" and not a "raiding guild" per se, but come on! If we can't get ten guildies to join a raid two nights a week Wild is going to start having withdrawal pains. Part of the issue is that we have a number of guildies who have been raiding regulars that don't seem to have the time right now. We have a nice influx of new guildies, but they haven't had much interest in raiding. Wild decided to do an informal poll of guildies to see where they are in terms of gear progression. I always felt that Wild was slow to gear up when major game changes occurred, but maybe this time he's actually further ahead that a lot of others.
Wild has an i342 gearscore. Anyone with at least i340 is certainly geared for raiding, although PUGs want things a bit easier and may demand i350. For guild raids, though, i340 will do fine.
From the guild Armory Wild noted nine guildies, counting himself, who have raided with Wild pre-Cata and post-Cata. Nine out of twenty weekly raiders in two groups pre-cata.
I counted 11 guildies who raided regularly pre-cata but for whatever reason are not raiding now.
I also counted eight new guildies who seem to be in game a lot but have an inconsistent raid record, all post-Cata.
We have a lot of other level 85 guildies, but they haven't been raiding with us or signing up for raids.
So, how do the gear scores work out among the above three groups?
Pre/Post Cata raiders: 8 of 9 at i342 or better, 1 at i337
Pre-cata raiders: 4 of 11 at i342 or better, the rest mostly in low i330s
Newbies not raiding: 8 of 8 at i342 or better, 2 over i350
What this seems to indicate is that more than half of the pre-cata raiders that killed the Lich King are still gearing up and may or may not be raiding any time soon. We seem to have a strong core of new guildies (whether new players or alts that are now mains), but they don't seem very interested in raiding.
The most telling thing may be that I could only come up with 28 guildies that were raiding or might raid out of the whole guild.
In one sense Wild is doing better than a lot of other guildies in getting geared up. Unfortunately, Wild may be all dressed up but have nowhere to go.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Tuesday (31 Jan) - JB Talks Shop
Tuesday (31 Jan) - JB Talks Shop
The MM guild changed the raid schedule for this week. On Monday. Our G2 raid leader (I'm calling us G2 even though we don't really have two regular raid groups yet) had some real life issues to take care of and did not schedule our planned Wed/Thurs raid nights. Instead, Mf, another tank and raid leader that had not been raiding, scheduled a Blackwing Descent raid on Tuesday night. Wild didn't see the raid on the sked until Tuesday afternoon. Well, the Wild family already had plans for Tuesday night so Wild did not sign up. The BWD raid is up for Wednesday night, too, and Wild signed up for that. We'll see if it comes off, and if Wild gets an invite.
The Three Clans ran into some difficulty with the dungeon and pvp finders when we gathered together around 8:30pm Tuesday night. Sin, Lao, and JB had planned to group up and see how we'd do in level 80 dungeons and pvp. But the dungeon finder demanded that our gear be at least i272 to get an invite, and we could not muster up that level of gear. We tried pvp, and again were told to come back when we were better geared. Stupid rules.
So we switched to Unbleached, Kiren, and Sista on the alliance side. We started with pvp, and while waiting Kiren slaughtered Sista over and over in duels. How many was that, Kiren, nine kills? He did let Sista win one of them so she could claim the achievement. Kiren is one tough pally. Sista is learning, though, so watch out!
We finally got into a WSG match. I'll give the horde credit for working together. I think the allies might have had the better talent and gear, but we didn't really jell as a group until very late in the fight. Sista loved slipping into stealth mode and then ripping into an unsuspecting horde with her Ravage attack. Not so much fun was trying to chase a target that knew there was a stealthed cat druid in the area and who twisted this way and that to avoid letting Sista get in range. Too many times Sista came too close to other horde players and she'd lose her stealth. Sista did have her moments, though. Sista was mostly on the attack, but did find herself helping to defend our base with Unbleached and one other at one point. We'd killed one attacking horde, but two others had gone to the roof (a mage and a moonkin) and we were exchanging fire. Sista slipped into stealth and crept up to the roof. The moonkin never knew what hit him. Sista killed him in seconds. The mage was a good distance away and had time to hit Sista with spells several times before Sista could close. Still, Sista almost took him out, and although Sista died, the mage retreated from the roof. Despite outplaying us the horde could not cap our flag, capturing it nine times but then losing it. That was ultimately their undoing and we won the match.
Unbleached couldn't stay any longer so Kiren and Sista headed into the dungeons. Multiple runs in Scarlet Monastery and a run in Razorfen Kraul bumped Sista from level 33 to level 35 and I believe Kiren made it to level 37. Sista picked up some more gear and is happy with her progress, although she is still unhappy with the state of her healing gear. At the end of the RFK fight we decided to go after an optional boss. There were only three of us - Kiren, Sista, and a very good hunter (who out-DPSed Sista the whole night the rat). Kiren could mostly keep himself healed as we cleared through trash to the optional boss. When things went a little long against the boss, though, Sista figured Kiren might be out of "save me" abilities, so she popped out of cat form and healed. Healing with feral spec and full agi gear wasn't all that good, but it was good enough and we brought down the boss. Sista does want to be able to heal, and is dual specced to heal, but the gear just isn't there yet. I'm sure Unbleached would like to pew pew in shadow spec now and then, too.
Wild picked up a new i359 chest piece Wednesday morning (replacing an i325 chest), pushing up his gear score to i342. Wild at first turned his nose up at the chest piece because the stats were not the best for healing, but the wonders of reforging made the difference and Wild couldn't resist grabbing it off the AH. Wild's spell power is over 6,000 now with MoTW and he has over 92,000 mana. Even with that size mana pool, it burns away fast.
JB has continued to make modest gear upgrades, primarily through quest rewards. Her gear score is i301 and she's working her nerve up to take on some random dungeons. She has been working hard on her spell priorities and has that down pretty good. No matter what her DPS turns out to be against a real boss, she is comfortable she would be hitting on all her spells in the right priorities.
One thing that she needed to be better prepared for was her totems. While questing and killing mobs, totems are pretty much drop and forget. In a dungeon it's a little more complicated, at least if you want to do it right. There are four types of totems (fire, earth, air, and water), and shaman can have up to four active at a time - one of each type. Shaman have the ability to drop sets of four at the same time, and up to three pre-determined sets can be configured. JB uses all three sets - one for soloing, one for groups, and one for pvp. However, situations change and a shaman needs to know when he should change the totems that he drops, and when to drop them.
Totems used to buff groups are what concerned JB the most. As group buffs have changed over time, other classes were given buffs that were the equal to or better than shaman buffs. This has been intentional on the part of Blizzard, as they do not want players to be invited into groups simply because of the buffs they bring. That has been the case in the past - paladin buffs were once so important that better players of other classes were not invited because there "had" to be a pally. Shaman, too, sometimes got the name of "buffbots" where the buffs were more important the skill of the player.
So now all of a shaman's major buffs can be replaced by another class, and if the same type buff is used by two different players, the more powerful buff cancels out the other one, and if its a shaman totem that's the one inevitably canceled out. There are some shaman that don't bother to totem buff at all, dropping only a DPS totem during fights and saving their mana by not dropping three others. Most shaman, though, try to learn what classes have buffs that trump their totems, and if those classes are present, switch to different totems that would help the group. JB is working on learning that.
Another issue is that shaman have a LOT of totems, and I at least have a hard time keeping track of what they all do, what type they are, and what they look like - just finding the totem you want can be frustrating sometimes. For that JB recently picked up the addon Totemtimers. TT separates totems into their four types, making it much easier to drop a single totem of the type I want. TT also makes it easy to put a set of four totems together in a compact, space saving way. Wild's button addon, Dominos, has three totem bars to make sets with, too, but it takes up quite a bit of screen real estate. What I don't like about TT is that totem sets show only the icons, not the names, and frankly I don't have every dang totem icon memorized and probably never will.
It's a work in progress, but JB hopes to be able to adjust her totem sets depending on the group makeup, and to be able to find single totems when the situation (or the group leader) calls for it.
The MM guild changed the raid schedule for this week. On Monday. Our G2 raid leader (I'm calling us G2 even though we don't really have two regular raid groups yet) had some real life issues to take care of and did not schedule our planned Wed/Thurs raid nights. Instead, Mf, another tank and raid leader that had not been raiding, scheduled a Blackwing Descent raid on Tuesday night. Wild didn't see the raid on the sked until Tuesday afternoon. Well, the Wild family already had plans for Tuesday night so Wild did not sign up. The BWD raid is up for Wednesday night, too, and Wild signed up for that. We'll see if it comes off, and if Wild gets an invite.
The Three Clans ran into some difficulty with the dungeon and pvp finders when we gathered together around 8:30pm Tuesday night. Sin, Lao, and JB had planned to group up and see how we'd do in level 80 dungeons and pvp. But the dungeon finder demanded that our gear be at least i272 to get an invite, and we could not muster up that level of gear. We tried pvp, and again were told to come back when we were better geared. Stupid rules.
So we switched to Unbleached, Kiren, and Sista on the alliance side. We started with pvp, and while waiting Kiren slaughtered Sista over and over in duels. How many was that, Kiren, nine kills? He did let Sista win one of them so she could claim the achievement. Kiren is one tough pally. Sista is learning, though, so watch out!
We finally got into a WSG match. I'll give the horde credit for working together. I think the allies might have had the better talent and gear, but we didn't really jell as a group until very late in the fight. Sista loved slipping into stealth mode and then ripping into an unsuspecting horde with her Ravage attack. Not so much fun was trying to chase a target that knew there was a stealthed cat druid in the area and who twisted this way and that to avoid letting Sista get in range. Too many times Sista came too close to other horde players and she'd lose her stealth. Sista did have her moments, though. Sista was mostly on the attack, but did find herself helping to defend our base with Unbleached and one other at one point. We'd killed one attacking horde, but two others had gone to the roof (a mage and a moonkin) and we were exchanging fire. Sista slipped into stealth and crept up to the roof. The moonkin never knew what hit him. Sista killed him in seconds. The mage was a good distance away and had time to hit Sista with spells several times before Sista could close. Still, Sista almost took him out, and although Sista died, the mage retreated from the roof. Despite outplaying us the horde could not cap our flag, capturing it nine times but then losing it. That was ultimately their undoing and we won the match.
Here is how the stats played out:
Unbleached couldn't stay any longer so Kiren and Sista headed into the dungeons. Multiple runs in Scarlet Monastery and a run in Razorfen Kraul bumped Sista from level 33 to level 35 and I believe Kiren made it to level 37. Sista picked up some more gear and is happy with her progress, although she is still unhappy with the state of her healing gear. At the end of the RFK fight we decided to go after an optional boss. There were only three of us - Kiren, Sista, and a very good hunter (who out-DPSed Sista the whole night the rat). Kiren could mostly keep himself healed as we cleared through trash to the optional boss. When things went a little long against the boss, though, Sista figured Kiren might be out of "save me" abilities, so she popped out of cat form and healed. Healing with feral spec and full agi gear wasn't all that good, but it was good enough and we brought down the boss. Sista does want to be able to heal, and is dual specced to heal, but the gear just isn't there yet. I'm sure Unbleached would like to pew pew in shadow spec now and then, too.
Wild picked up a new i359 chest piece Wednesday morning (replacing an i325 chest), pushing up his gear score to i342. Wild at first turned his nose up at the chest piece because the stats were not the best for healing, but the wonders of reforging made the difference and Wild couldn't resist grabbing it off the AH. Wild's spell power is over 6,000 now with MoTW and he has over 92,000 mana. Even with that size mana pool, it burns away fast.
JB has continued to make modest gear upgrades, primarily through quest rewards. Her gear score is i301 and she's working her nerve up to take on some random dungeons. She has been working hard on her spell priorities and has that down pretty good. No matter what her DPS turns out to be against a real boss, she is comfortable she would be hitting on all her spells in the right priorities.
One thing that she needed to be better prepared for was her totems. While questing and killing mobs, totems are pretty much drop and forget. In a dungeon it's a little more complicated, at least if you want to do it right. There are four types of totems (fire, earth, air, and water), and shaman can have up to four active at a time - one of each type. Shaman have the ability to drop sets of four at the same time, and up to three pre-determined sets can be configured. JB uses all three sets - one for soloing, one for groups, and one for pvp. However, situations change and a shaman needs to know when he should change the totems that he drops, and when to drop them.
Totems used to buff groups are what concerned JB the most. As group buffs have changed over time, other classes were given buffs that were the equal to or better than shaman buffs. This has been intentional on the part of Blizzard, as they do not want players to be invited into groups simply because of the buffs they bring. That has been the case in the past - paladin buffs were once so important that better players of other classes were not invited because there "had" to be a pally. Shaman, too, sometimes got the name of "buffbots" where the buffs were more important the skill of the player.
So now all of a shaman's major buffs can be replaced by another class, and if the same type buff is used by two different players, the more powerful buff cancels out the other one, and if its a shaman totem that's the one inevitably canceled out. There are some shaman that don't bother to totem buff at all, dropping only a DPS totem during fights and saving their mana by not dropping three others. Most shaman, though, try to learn what classes have buffs that trump their totems, and if those classes are present, switch to different totems that would help the group. JB is working on learning that.
Another issue is that shaman have a LOT of totems, and I at least have a hard time keeping track of what they all do, what type they are, and what they look like - just finding the totem you want can be frustrating sometimes. For that JB recently picked up the addon Totemtimers. TT separates totems into their four types, making it much easier to drop a single totem of the type I want. TT also makes it easy to put a set of four totems together in a compact, space saving way. Wild's button addon, Dominos, has three totem bars to make sets with, too, but it takes up quite a bit of screen real estate. What I don't like about TT is that totem sets show only the icons, not the names, and frankly I don't have every dang totem icon memorized and probably never will.
It's a work in progress, but JB hopes to be able to adjust her totem sets depending on the group makeup, and to be able to find single totems when the situation (or the group leader) calls for it.
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