Thursday (29 Apr) - Troublesome Djinn
So, the MM2 raid did not defeat Throne of the Tides once again. But there was a lot to like about the evening. Wild has talked many times about the easy going way this raid (and past raids with MM and even FS) operated, with delays and fooling around that was fun but that sometimes (often) interfered with progress when it didn't need to. The MM2 raid leader and his cohort Lady Tala presided over those raids. With MM2 and this raid, however, raid leader Bd has done an amazing job of establishing sensible but firm rules - and even more amazing is that raiders are following the rules that have been laid out. We were late getting started on Thursday night, but nine raiders were on time and ready, while the tenth had what became insurmountable real life weather issues and could not get in game. Bd still managed to rustle up the third healer we needed, an MM2 guildie who was a little undergeared and new to the Throne, but eager to help out. What really impressed, though, was how Bd marshaled our forces between each attempt, getting us quickly back inside, buffed up, and positioned for the next attempt. Despite the weather delay we still managed to get in thirteen attempts.
I thought I would just lay out the notes that Wild jots down for each attempt as a means of summarizing how the evening went. Overall Wild was very pleased with his own performance and how dedicated the rest of the raid has been despite somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 wipes with nothing to show for it - yet.
Some explanations of Wild's shorthand:
"G1" - Group 1, Wild and Sb (tank), swaps between Anshal and Nezir
"G2" - DPS group, switches between Anshal and Nezir
"G3" - New priest and Bd (tank), swaps between Nezir and Anshal
"G4" - Pl (healer) and warlock on Rohash full time
Platform wipe - any time all of the raiders on one platform die it's a wipe because any genie left alone has a "you all die!" spell he immediately casts. Also note that just about any single mistake by any raider will cause a wipe.
Attempts -
#1: G4 down early, Wild off to good start (9360 hps), new priest 4006 hps
#2: G1 tank missed platform, Wild insta death with no tank
#3: good start, but G4 wiped
#4: flower attack, Wild overwhelmed, get closer to tank!
#5: crud, Wild stepped too far back, accidentally launched to wrong platform
#6: G4 down
#7: Strange aggro by Anshal on raider before starting fight; wipe.
First time for everything I guess.
#8: Wild in a groove! two platform swaps! Sb misses a platform jump.
#9: Close! Anshal -> Nezir -> Anshal -> Nezir -> wipe
#10: G4 down again, those same two raiders did a lot better last night
#11: going well, not sure what went wrong here
#12: another great attempt, G4 went down again
#13: another solid attempt, G4 down once more
That was it for the night. We had about 10 minutes left and could have gone once more, but we would have had to drink another flask, and Bd was aware enough and nice enough not to make us spend an extra 100g on a flask we would only get 10 minutes out of.
Wild pretty much has his role down pat. He reached 10k healing per second (hps) on one fight, and overall did 8238 hps and more than half of all healing. The other tank healer was the new priest, and did very well considering his gear and being new to the raid, averaging 5012 hps. The G4 healer has the least amount of healing to do and came in at 3678 hps.
I'm not sure what went wrong with the G4 group, since the same two raiders had been near perfect the night before. Of 19 attempts, G4 was the cause of a wipe only once. On this night they caused wipes on 6 of our 13 attempts.
Wild has also made good progress on his spell selection, too. Wild used Healing Touch as much as he used Regrowth, which is a much more efficient healing rotation, but that requires a lot closer attention. Wild is also working in Tranquility more and more as it's a powerful spell, but since it requires channeling Wild can't be moving while casting it. Wild still needs his Innervate, but is no longer worried about running out of mana (even when occasionally I hit panic mode and spam regrowth lol). Here's the numbers:
Lifebloom: 29.4%
Rejuv: 18.7%
Wild Growth: 17.5%
Regrowth: 12.5% (I was around 20% before changing spell priorities)
Healing Touch: 12.3% (up from under 5%)
Tranquility: 3.5% (up from essentially zero)
Nourish: 2.4% (would be higher, taking away from HT in other fights than this one)
I tracked Wild's repair bill on this night. It came to 113 gold. Add 200g for the two flasks Wild used. JB is going to have to make some more flasks for Wild.
Oh, and Philly has a short report. Late Thursday night she decided to give pvp another try, signing up for a random battleground. She also gathered up the cloth heirloom gear that was laying around (hunter Rakta had them because they were "pretty"), getting heirlooms for shoulders, chest, and back. Wild should probably consider getting her a cloth helm as well (1500 gold, ugh!).
Anyway, Philly ended up doing the following:
Strand of the Ancients - Win!
Warsong Gulch - Win!
Wintergrasp - Win!
Strand of the Ancients again - Win!
Even though Philly was only level 80 in an 80-85 bracket, she had no problem being productive, coming in near the top in healing every time. And it was a blast! I'd forgotten just how much fun it is healing in battlegrounds. And I'm finding I'm liking the Holy spec. I'm trying to figure out some kind of issue with Penance, though. It's not in Philly's spell book, and I can't figure out why or how to get it back. It's a very important spell not to have.
The Wintergrasp win was hilarious. There were only three horde, counting Philly, and a few alliance who put up an indifferent attack. We were on defense and won without having to do much. The only issue is that it's hard to complete the quests with so few people, so it didn't really give Philly that much honor. But it was cool to get that done in between other battlegrounds.
Philly's honor points went from 2,633 to 3,084. With a little work and some more luck with those wins and maybe Bean will get that Cannon after all.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday (27 Apr) - Playing Catch Up
Wednesday (27 Apr) - Playing Catch Up
I've gotten behind on reporting on the Wild Family, so I'll get right to it.
Full Force Hunter Fortress - For the first time in several weeks we had all four hunters in game for our weekly Tuesday night contest against the Alliance. We found ourselves in Arathi Basin. It was a good fight and we won! But that was all we had time for, as the queue times were quite long.
Kire and Java had been mostly out of action of late, so it was great to get the two paladins together for an extended dungeon tour of Blackrock Depths (BRD). We arrived in a group already in progress, which was a little odd since everyone was at the starting point. We spent a good bit of time going through and finding bosses that had not been killed. Eventually, though, we decided to reset BRD and start again from the beginning as it was just too confusing not knowing what had been done and what hadn't. Four of the five of us stayed for the reset, and we added a new fifth player. BRD, I've said before, is very long with a ton of bosses and many unique and fun encounters. I can't say we found and beat every encounter, but will did a lot of them over the course of close to three hours (as long as a typical raid). When we finally stumbled out of there - tired, worn, bloody, we were quite satisfied. Both Kire and Java picked up some gear upgrades and both leveled from 54 to 56. A good night.
With Patch 4.1 in place - yes, the patch did arrive on Tuesday morning, if I forgot to mention that yet - there was discussion about using the increased honor point gains (pvp honor points earned were doubled) to purchase more heirlooms. Wild canvassed the Family to see if anyone had enough honor points laying around to buy, say, the Dwarven Hand Cannon that Wild sorta promised Bean he would get for her. Well, Wild did not have much in the way of honor points at all. JB was better off. She had 1,633. Philly, who pvps more than anyone else in the family, had 2,608. Too bad we couldn't combine the two. Wild had Philly check the cost of the Cannon - 3,500 honor points. Sigh.
Philly, being the good girl she is, agreed to do some pvp to see how quickly she might get those 3,500 points. I must remind everyone, though, that Philly is level 80 and would be battling in the 80-85 bracket using mostly pre-Cata gear. For those in the know, she did have just over 900 resilience (a critically important stat for pvpers), which was good but likely far less than those she would be fighting. Philly's main spec is Shadow, but she queued for a random battleground in her off-spec, Holy, as a healer.
It took a very long time to get a battleground. I think when it finally popped Philly was trimming her nails and considering a trip to the stylist. The BG was Eye of the Storm, and it was already well in progress - and we were losing. Philly dived into the fray. We did eventually lose, but despite coming in so late in the battle, and dying a ton of times, Philly still finished second in total healing. Philly had a lot of fun, and plans more trips into the Battlegrounds. Unfortunately, she only gained 25 honor points, bringing her total to 2,633. At that rate it will take a very long time to get to 3,500 points.
Shevils and Bean also have some news. IRL (in real life - Bean just learned what that stood for) we've been working on getting the two outside fence gates repaired before we go on our trip. We use a company that contacts local businesses and have had great success on other projects before. They recommended a company, we met with the owner, discussed what we wanted, and expected to get a bid in a couple of days. We didn't hear back from him, and with time getting short we called to make sure we didn't miss an email or phone call from him. He said he thought he'd sent us a bid, but when he checked discovered that he hadn't. He promised a bid, but it was odd that he did not sound all that enthusiastic. We got the bid on Wednesday in email, and it was at least twice the cost of what we would consider reasonable to repair two gates. It was almost half the cost of what we paid to put fencing around our entire backyard, including the two gates! Clearly he didn't really want the job, but it was annoying, and the delays have put us in a position where we're going to have to leave the gate repair until we get back.
After getting that very unsatisfactory bid, there was only one thing to do. Go kill stuff!
Shevils and Bean decided to do some pvp, then remembered that Bean had reached level 20 and moved into the 20-24 bracket, while Shevils was still level 18 and in the 15-19 bracket. Undeterred, I said that it wouldn't take long to get Shevils to level 20, and Bean said she'd hit up a BG on her own while Shevils did that. Then I remembered another fact of life for turning 20 - Bean could now get a ground mount. Sure, Bean could join a BG without one, but she'd be at a disadvantage as everyone else in the battle was certainly going to have a mount.
We got that all sorted out pretty quickly, though. Shevils made a trip to the Northern Barrens, slaughtered a few dozen mobs out on the plains, and headed back. In Orgrimmar Shevils trained for a mount and bought his "Trike" which is the standard ground mount for the goblin race. As soon as Shevils showed off her mount to Bean, Bean just had to have a mount as well. As a blood elf, Bean had to go to Silvermoon City to get her mount. The two of us hopped on a zeppelin headed for Tirisfal Glades on the other continent. From there we grabbed the Teleporter just inside the walls of the Undercity, which took us directly to Silvermoon City. We got a little confused trying to find the Riding Trainer. We knew the Trainer and mount seller were outside the main gate of the city, but weren't quite sure where. After a little exploring, we found them. Bean got her Hawkstrider mount. Ok, so Bean actually bought all FOUR of the Hawkstrider mounts for sale, each one colored differently. She decided she liked the black one the best, but can change mounts whenever the mood strikes her.
Then, of course, we wanted to do a battleground with our new mounts. It took more than thirty minutes for us to get a Battleground. Not only that, it was bugged. The popup window for clicking "Enter" to get in played hide and seek, popping up briefly and then disappearing and reappearing. Both Warsong Gulch and Arathi basin invites would come up. Sometimes it would show long enough to click on it, but it still wouldn't let us into the battleground. Clearly Blizzard was having some problems with the patch. We played around with it for more than a minute, and came close to calling off the whole thing when we finally succeeded in getting into Warsong Gulch.
We played hard and took out our fence frustrations on the Alliance. It was good medicine, even though we eventually lost. The next project for this pair is to get each of us paired weapons. At level 20 we can dual wield - that means wielding a weapon in each hand. At level 20 we can also get a second combat pet. Bean is pouring over the Petopia web site, where everything one could ever want to know about combat pets can be found.
Somewhere around all that there was a raid. Wednesday nights are with the MM2 guild (Wild is an invited visitor, not a member). The target was Throne of the Four Winds. We had come very close last week to beating the first encounter, even killing two of the three genies. We still did not have a full win, however.
To make a long, sad story short, we made nineteen attempts, and still fell short. It was like musical chairs. It seemed like on every attempt, one of the groups would make a mistake, and it was a different group each time. Recall that there are three platforms, each with a genie on it, and our ten person group is divided up with some of us on each platform with specific roles. We had spectacular successes on individual platforms on almost every attempt, but some other group would always have some kind of trouble. Wild made his share of gaffes like everyone else. We just could not put together an attempt where all three groups played error free. And as it stands now, we are not good enough yet to survive a single mistake. It has to be perfect. I will give credit to the whole group - and in particular the raid leader, Bd - that we were able to make so many attempts because everyone in the raid was very prompt and quick to get ready for the next attempt.
Now, I know that ya'll will scoff and give Wild unbelieving stares, but Wild really WANTS to get into a Heroic dungeon. Two new dungeons (actually redesigned "classic" raid dungeons adjusted for level 85s) became available from the patch. They drop i353 gear and Wild would love to get his hands on some of that. Wild figures he would even like those dungeons because in his much younger days he raided those two dungeons many times, still remembers a good bit about them, and enjoyed doing them.
I expected there to be MM guildies around with the same hankering to get into those places and see what we could do. But there weren't. There was never anyone around, or they had not yet reached the i346 minimum gear score required to get into them. I have to say that one of our tanks that is usually available has been sick all week (which could affect the Friday raid, too), but I was very disappointed at how few people were around. It is getting to summer, and like us, there may be folks on vacation, etc. Wild hoped for a guild run all week but could not get one. I don't really want to PUG it - those Wild has talked to who've tried have said the dungeons are very tough - but that may be what I have to do.
I've gotten behind on reporting on the Wild Family, so I'll get right to it.
Full Force Hunter Fortress - For the first time in several weeks we had all four hunters in game for our weekly Tuesday night contest against the Alliance. We found ourselves in Arathi Basin. It was a good fight and we won! But that was all we had time for, as the queue times were quite long.
Kire and Java had been mostly out of action of late, so it was great to get the two paladins together for an extended dungeon tour of Blackrock Depths (BRD). We arrived in a group already in progress, which was a little odd since everyone was at the starting point. We spent a good bit of time going through and finding bosses that had not been killed. Eventually, though, we decided to reset BRD and start again from the beginning as it was just too confusing not knowing what had been done and what hadn't. Four of the five of us stayed for the reset, and we added a new fifth player. BRD, I've said before, is very long with a ton of bosses and many unique and fun encounters. I can't say we found and beat every encounter, but will did a lot of them over the course of close to three hours (as long as a typical raid). When we finally stumbled out of there - tired, worn, bloody, we were quite satisfied. Both Kire and Java picked up some gear upgrades and both leveled from 54 to 56. A good night.
With Patch 4.1 in place - yes, the patch did arrive on Tuesday morning, if I forgot to mention that yet - there was discussion about using the increased honor point gains (pvp honor points earned were doubled) to purchase more heirlooms. Wild canvassed the Family to see if anyone had enough honor points laying around to buy, say, the Dwarven Hand Cannon that Wild sorta promised Bean he would get for her. Well, Wild did not have much in the way of honor points at all. JB was better off. She had 1,633. Philly, who pvps more than anyone else in the family, had 2,608. Too bad we couldn't combine the two. Wild had Philly check the cost of the Cannon - 3,500 honor points. Sigh.
Philly, being the good girl she is, agreed to do some pvp to see how quickly she might get those 3,500 points. I must remind everyone, though, that Philly is level 80 and would be battling in the 80-85 bracket using mostly pre-Cata gear. For those in the know, she did have just over 900 resilience (a critically important stat for pvpers), which was good but likely far less than those she would be fighting. Philly's main spec is Shadow, but she queued for a random battleground in her off-spec, Holy, as a healer.
It took a very long time to get a battleground. I think when it finally popped Philly was trimming her nails and considering a trip to the stylist. The BG was Eye of the Storm, and it was already well in progress - and we were losing. Philly dived into the fray. We did eventually lose, but despite coming in so late in the battle, and dying a ton of times, Philly still finished second in total healing. Philly had a lot of fun, and plans more trips into the Battlegrounds. Unfortunately, she only gained 25 honor points, bringing her total to 2,633. At that rate it will take a very long time to get to 3,500 points.
Shevils and Bean also have some news. IRL (in real life - Bean just learned what that stood for) we've been working on getting the two outside fence gates repaired before we go on our trip. We use a company that contacts local businesses and have had great success on other projects before. They recommended a company, we met with the owner, discussed what we wanted, and expected to get a bid in a couple of days. We didn't hear back from him, and with time getting short we called to make sure we didn't miss an email or phone call from him. He said he thought he'd sent us a bid, but when he checked discovered that he hadn't. He promised a bid, but it was odd that he did not sound all that enthusiastic. We got the bid on Wednesday in email, and it was at least twice the cost of what we would consider reasonable to repair two gates. It was almost half the cost of what we paid to put fencing around our entire backyard, including the two gates! Clearly he didn't really want the job, but it was annoying, and the delays have put us in a position where we're going to have to leave the gate repair until we get back.
After getting that very unsatisfactory bid, there was only one thing to do. Go kill stuff!
Shevils and Bean decided to do some pvp, then remembered that Bean had reached level 20 and moved into the 20-24 bracket, while Shevils was still level 18 and in the 15-19 bracket. Undeterred, I said that it wouldn't take long to get Shevils to level 20, and Bean said she'd hit up a BG on her own while Shevils did that. Then I remembered another fact of life for turning 20 - Bean could now get a ground mount. Sure, Bean could join a BG without one, but she'd be at a disadvantage as everyone else in the battle was certainly going to have a mount.
We got that all sorted out pretty quickly, though. Shevils made a trip to the Northern Barrens, slaughtered a few dozen mobs out on the plains, and headed back. In Orgrimmar Shevils trained for a mount and bought his "Trike" which is the standard ground mount for the goblin race. As soon as Shevils showed off her mount to Bean, Bean just had to have a mount as well. As a blood elf, Bean had to go to Silvermoon City to get her mount. The two of us hopped on a zeppelin headed for Tirisfal Glades on the other continent. From there we grabbed the Teleporter just inside the walls of the Undercity, which took us directly to Silvermoon City. We got a little confused trying to find the Riding Trainer. We knew the Trainer and mount seller were outside the main gate of the city, but weren't quite sure where. After a little exploring, we found them. Bean got her Hawkstrider mount. Ok, so Bean actually bought all FOUR of the Hawkstrider mounts for sale, each one colored differently. She decided she liked the black one the best, but can change mounts whenever the mood strikes her.
Then, of course, we wanted to do a battleground with our new mounts. It took more than thirty minutes for us to get a Battleground. Not only that, it was bugged. The popup window for clicking "Enter" to get in played hide and seek, popping up briefly and then disappearing and reappearing. Both Warsong Gulch and Arathi basin invites would come up. Sometimes it would show long enough to click on it, but it still wouldn't let us into the battleground. Clearly Blizzard was having some problems with the patch. We played around with it for more than a minute, and came close to calling off the whole thing when we finally succeeded in getting into Warsong Gulch.
We played hard and took out our fence frustrations on the Alliance. It was good medicine, even though we eventually lost. The next project for this pair is to get each of us paired weapons. At level 20 we can dual wield - that means wielding a weapon in each hand. At level 20 we can also get a second combat pet. Bean is pouring over the Petopia web site, where everything one could ever want to know about combat pets can be found.
Somewhere around all that there was a raid. Wednesday nights are with the MM2 guild (Wild is an invited visitor, not a member). The target was Throne of the Four Winds. We had come very close last week to beating the first encounter, even killing two of the three genies. We still did not have a full win, however.
To make a long, sad story short, we made nineteen attempts, and still fell short. It was like musical chairs. It seemed like on every attempt, one of the groups would make a mistake, and it was a different group each time. Recall that there are three platforms, each with a genie on it, and our ten person group is divided up with some of us on each platform with specific roles. We had spectacular successes on individual platforms on almost every attempt, but some other group would always have some kind of trouble. Wild made his share of gaffes like everyone else. We just could not put together an attempt where all three groups played error free. And as it stands now, we are not good enough yet to survive a single mistake. It has to be perfect. I will give credit to the whole group - and in particular the raid leader, Bd - that we were able to make so many attempts because everyone in the raid was very prompt and quick to get ready for the next attempt.
Now, I know that ya'll will scoff and give Wild unbelieving stares, but Wild really WANTS to get into a Heroic dungeon. Two new dungeons (actually redesigned "classic" raid dungeons adjusted for level 85s) became available from the patch. They drop i353 gear and Wild would love to get his hands on some of that. Wild figures he would even like those dungeons because in his much younger days he raided those two dungeons many times, still remembers a good bit about them, and enjoyed doing them.
I expected there to be MM guildies around with the same hankering to get into those places and see what we could do. But there weren't. There was never anyone around, or they had not yet reached the i346 minimum gear score required to get into them. I have to say that one of our tanks that is usually available has been sick all week (which could affect the Friday raid, too), but I was very disappointed at how few people were around. It is getting to summer, and like us, there may be folks on vacation, etc. Wild hoped for a guild run all week but could not get one. I don't really want to PUG it - those Wild has talked to who've tried have said the dungeons are very tough - but that may be what I have to do.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday (25 Apr) - Is Patch 4.1 Here?
Monday (25 Apr) - Is Patch 4.1 Here?
The test realm has closed. Wowhead believes that Patch 4.1.0 could come on Tuesday. A full maintenance period (3am to 11am) has been scheduled.
The latest patch information is mostly good news for Wild, and even Sista. Much better than what things looked like early on. Oh, and there is even something for Bean in here. Read on.
Druid Healing Changes:
Lifebloom had it's bloom reduced by 20%, but that will not have much of an effect on Wild, as I don't rely on the bloom portion of that spell.
Tranquility now has 100% pushback protection, which means that damage will no longer break the spell. With Gift of Nature, the 8 minute cooldown of tranq is reduced to 3 minutes, so it can be used more often than once per encounter.
Nature's Swiftness, which makes a spell instant cast, has fallen out of favor. However, NS now has an additional perk - it increases the healing of the affected spell by 50%. A 20k Healing Touch would become a 30k heal. Wild still uses NS and this is a great change.
Efflorescence has been redesigned and Wild will have to test it out to see if it is improved or not. The graphic was also changed (I think because it looked exactly like one of the boss abilities in a raid). Then they snuck in this extra - in the current talent tree, to get Efflorescence you were forced to take Living Seed as well. That link no longer exists. Wow. For those of us (Wild) who have little use for Living Seed, that's like giving us back three talent points to put to better use!
For Sista, she gets some nice changes, too.
Sista's Swipe ability (her AoE attack) has had it's damage DOUBLED. Sista uses that ability a LOT, particularly with Kire always aggroing whole rooms full of mobs. :P Although now Sista might actually be able to pull aggro.
There is also a nice addition to Feral Swiftness, giving cats a chance to break out of movement impairing effects.
Hunter Fortress information:
Multi-shot (when we get it) has had it's damage increased by 250%. Wow.
Taming a beast now matches the hunter's level, instead of 3 levels lower. PLUS, pets are now always happy. Feeding them restores health only, and can't be used in combat.
Other Stuff:
Wailing Caverns has been altered: "The maze section has been removed to make the overall dungeon more accessible and quicker to complete. Nearby creatures and bosses have been adjusted to compensate." We should schedule a run!
Oh Wow, look at this! Many "Account Bound" heirlooms are now labeled as "Battle.net Account Bound", meaning that they can also be traded or mailed to characters that are on different World of Warcraft accounts under the same Battle.net account." I believe that this means that the Wild Family can now share heirloom items across BOTH accounts, not just the one they are in! No more having to buy heirlooms for each account, or being forced to pay for account moves to relocate gear.
There is a lot more in this patch, including many Pvp changes as well. Honor point gains will be doubled. Note that in WSG the graveyards have been dropped to a lower elevation, so that they are lower than main flag room entrances - obviously, this is to discourage graveyard camping. For Bean, who just HATES to take fall damage when jumping down from the graveyard, this just might eliminate that. :-)
I am posting and emailing this on Monday night so I can't kibitz if it turns out this is only a normal maintenance day. Here's hoping 4.1 is here.
The test realm has closed. Wowhead believes that Patch 4.1.0 could come on Tuesday. A full maintenance period (3am to 11am) has been scheduled.
The latest patch information is mostly good news for Wild, and even Sista. Much better than what things looked like early on. Oh, and there is even something for Bean in here. Read on.
Druid Healing Changes:
Lifebloom had it's bloom reduced by 20%, but that will not have much of an effect on Wild, as I don't rely on the bloom portion of that spell.
Tranquility now has 100% pushback protection, which means that damage will no longer break the spell. With Gift of Nature, the 8 minute cooldown of tranq is reduced to 3 minutes, so it can be used more often than once per encounter.
Nature's Swiftness, which makes a spell instant cast, has fallen out of favor. However, NS now has an additional perk - it increases the healing of the affected spell by 50%. A 20k Healing Touch would become a 30k heal. Wild still uses NS and this is a great change.
Efflorescence has been redesigned and Wild will have to test it out to see if it is improved or not. The graphic was also changed (I think because it looked exactly like one of the boss abilities in a raid). Then they snuck in this extra - in the current talent tree, to get Efflorescence you were forced to take Living Seed as well. That link no longer exists. Wow. For those of us (Wild) who have little use for Living Seed, that's like giving us back three talent points to put to better use!
For Sista, she gets some nice changes, too.
Sista's Swipe ability (her AoE attack) has had it's damage DOUBLED. Sista uses that ability a LOT, particularly with Kire always aggroing whole rooms full of mobs. :P Although now Sista might actually be able to pull aggro.
There is also a nice addition to Feral Swiftness, giving cats a chance to break out of movement impairing effects.
Hunter Fortress information:
Multi-shot (when we get it) has had it's damage increased by 250%. Wow.
Taming a beast now matches the hunter's level, instead of 3 levels lower. PLUS, pets are now always happy. Feeding them restores health only, and can't be used in combat.
Other Stuff:
Wailing Caverns has been altered: "The maze section has been removed to make the overall dungeon more accessible and quicker to complete. Nearby creatures and bosses have been adjusted to compensate." We should schedule a run!
Oh Wow, look at this! Many "Account Bound" heirlooms are now labeled as "Battle.net Account Bound", meaning that they can also be traded or mailed to characters that are on different World of Warcraft accounts under the same Battle.net account." I believe that this means that the Wild Family can now share heirloom items across BOTH accounts, not just the one they are in! No more having to buy heirlooms for each account, or being forced to pay for account moves to relocate gear.
There is a lot more in this patch, including many Pvp changes as well. Honor point gains will be doubled. Note that in WSG the graveyards have been dropped to a lower elevation, so that they are lower than main flag room entrances - obviously, this is to discourage graveyard camping. For Bean, who just HATES to take fall damage when jumping down from the graveyard, this just might eliminate that. :-)
I am posting and emailing this on Monday night so I can't kibitz if it turns out this is only a normal maintenance day. Here's hoping 4.1 is here.
Weekend (24 Apr) - The Cataclysm Economy
Weekend (24 Apr) - The Cataclysm Economy
The weekly Friday night MM Bastion of Twilight raid never happened. We had only five guildies in game and the raid leader reported that due to some real life bad weather he was going to be very late. We tried to rustle up some additional players, but when it became clear we would have to PUG almost half the raid we decided to call it.
With the Wild family suddenly having an evening free, Bean and Shevils decided to give the Friday night battlegrounds a shot with a pint sized Hunter Fortress. Arathi Basin was the "Call to Arms" for the weekend, which offered extra honor and experience for both winners (a lot) and losers (not as much). We signed up for both AB and Warsong Gulch, and with a wait of only about five minutes we got Arathi Basin.
As far as our 15 person Horde team went, we were not all that good. After taking the Farm, we took the Blacksmith but quickly lost it. A major battle developed at the Lumber Mill that drew in more and of the Horde team. Seeing an opportunity, Shevils and Bean, with a shaman deciding to join us, made for the Mines, which was held by the Alliance. They had four defenders, including a priest healer. I thought we had a healer, too, but the shaman was melee and did ZERO healing. He didn't even heal himself. As we approached they sent a warrior forward, Shielded of course, and we took the bait, killing him, but losing our shaman in the process. With the enemy priest Shielding and healing everyone we attempted to focus fire on the priest, and they focused fired on Shevils. Shevils went down first and our assault failed. We made a second attack, and this time Shevils tried an end around to get at the hunter that was doing most of the damage. Again, with the advantage of Shield and heals, we were stopped again.
The rest of horde army waged a fierce back and forth in the area between the Farm, Blacksmith, and Lumber Mill. The Alliance held the majority of the bases but no one else but us seemed to care. We lost 680 - 1600. The pint sized Hunter Fortress did as well as we could. Shevils led in total damage and Killing Blows and Bean was the third highest damage dealer.
It took much longer to get a second match, but eventually Arathi Basin popped again. The Horde team this time had a Jekyl and Hyde personality. The Alliance team got off to a quick start and got an edge in resources. But we fought back, gaining three bases and the upper hand and began closing on the gap in resources. Shevils and Bean opted to defend the Lumber Mill with one other player, and we successfully beat back several attacks. The Alliance weren't giving up, though, and took back the Blacksmiths. Shevils and Bean were busy down the hillside from the Mill discouraging Alliance from coming up when we saw the BG commander ask in chat - why is everyone at the Mill? Hmm, last we looked there only three of us. But no, all those players who had been killed at the Blacksmiths had joined us at the Mill.
No one wanted to leave, and we then lost the Farm. Frustrated, Shevils and Bean raced down to help. We took back the farm, but ended up losing the match 1430 - 1600, a much closer fight but one I still don't understand how we lost. Since we were on defense so much, our numbers weren't as good as the first AB battle, but we did the best we could.
After that second battle Bean had a suggestion. No more standing around defending bases, she declared, I want to kill stuff. That's my girl.
PS - the shaman from the first battle showed up in our group for the second AB fight as well. He was afk for much of the fight - Bean noticed that he stayed dead for long periods. He did 35 total damage (both Bean and Shevils had more honor KILLS than he had damage) and again did no healing. I don't know why he bothered to come.
Now that we have the exciting stuff out of the way, Happy would like to address a topic that really started with Lao - so blame her. :P
Lao and Happy were chatting a few days ago and Lao casually asked what the current "bargains" were on the Auction House. Happy reeled off a couple of good deals, but Lao replied that those items were "old" stuff that she didn't have anymore. What have you got for Cata stuff? she asked. Which sort of stymied Happy because, when he thought about it, he really was doing very little buying and selling of Cata level stuff.
Happy has been mulling over the whys and why nots ever since.
The short answer is that it doesn't look profitable, at least not to Happy. Even though Happy is not actively buying and selling the stuff, that doesn't mean he isn't paying attention to it. Happy has an entire bag filled with Cata enchanting materials, herbs, and assorted other things. He has dabbled in a few sales, testing the market, so to speak. It's a very volatile market. Price swings are pretty wide, and sales are very sporadic. Also, in general, the cost of Cata mats are higher than Happy's tried and true inventory, requiring a larger investment. In other words, Cata mats are a much riskier proposition.
So, Happy had to ask himself, am I becoming too conservative? Avoiding risk at the expense of potential greater profit? Wild practically pushed Happy into the Cards market (because Wild wanted a trinket out of it). Wild saved Happy probably 7k gold by building his own card set, but at the same time Happy will say that he still has over 5k gold invested in cards that he hasn't been able to get rid of.
But back to the matter at hand. Is it time to get into the current market? Happy's profits are down, and the times when he pulls in over 1,000 gold a day have grown fewer. Wild is going to burn a lot of gold if the three night a week raiding continues. Between 100g a pop flasks (3 per night), 10g a pop potions (about 6 per night), and repair bills topping 50g for EACH WIPE (last week - 20 wipes costing Wild in the neighborhood of 1,000 gold) Wild needs a ton of gold to maintain his habit. Wild had also hoped to get some of that gold back from the trash mobs in BT on Friday, but of course that didn't happen.
Happy decided it was time to do a more serious test of the cata enchanting mats market than he has done to date.
Let's start with celestial essences. They come in greater and lesser. Three lessers (LCE) equal a greater (GCE). The price of a GCE can run up to 60g each, or as low as 18g each. Sounds like a great way to buy low and sell high, doesn't it? The problem is that the price changes hour by hour, far faster than most other items that Happy sells. On average about half of the items Happy posts on the AH don't sell in the first 48 hours and expire ("expire" means they drop off the AH and would have to be reposted for sale). Happy would guess that as much as 90% of GCE/LCEs that he posts won't sell, primarily because of rapid underbidding by other sellers. Also, note that a week ago I would have said that the bottom line price on a GCE was about 25g - yet this morning I bought a stack of ten for 19g each. Will Happy now be able to sell those he bought at 25g for a profit? Maybe, when the price spikes up again - and if he's lucky - and his goods happen to be the cheapest when a buyer needs them - and he doesn't get underbid five minutes after he posts. Will Happy ever see an 18g price again? Who knows, but then buying them at 25g again when the price goes up doesn't look like such a good deal anymore.
All of the cata mats are like the above. Next, let's look at a group of items called volatiles. These are technically not enchanting mats, since the the cost to post them is higher than the straight one silver cost that all enchanting mats are charged for. Still, they are used by enchanters and Happy has been tracking them. Here is what things look like today (Saturday).
V. Fire: buy one and it'll cost 13g, a stack of 20 costs 6g each
V. Earth: 1 = 12g ea, 20 stk = 5g ea
V. Water: 1 = 22g ea, 20 stk = 6g ea
V. Air: 1 = 25g ea, 20 stk = 25g ea
V. Life: 1 = 10g ea, 20 stk = 9g ea
I'm using a 20 stack for comparison since for the majority of items Happy sells that's the largest stack size (and in general larger stacks have a lower cost per item). Volatiles can be stacked up to 200, though, and the stack number has a bearing on where on the list the items will appear, so that can make things kind of crazy, since the goal is to get your stuff to the front of the list.
I'm sure everyone focused in on v. water, where theoretically a 20 stack could be bought for 120g and then sold for 22g each for 440g, a 320g profit. The reality is that v. water is one of the easier volatiles to acquire (through fishing) and few buyers will pay 22g gold for a single. Loosely, v. water sells best at around 8g each. So, you say, post 20 6g singles for 8g each and take the 40g profit. You might be right to do that. However, Happy posted ten of those v. waters as singles at 19g each. In theory, if someone bought just four of those ten waters, Happy would have made all of his money back and any further sales would be pure profit. Won't someone underbid the 19g? Absolutely. But if Happy posted an 8g price, might that not also get underbid? Maybe. They could also be swept up by another seller and then posted for 10g each. Do that a few times and suddenly a 19g price might look good. It's that crazy.
Happy posted his v. waters an hour ago. He's already been underbid at 18g each. Happy had also made similar style posts for fire and earth volatiles. They've also been underbid already. Not a single volatile of Happy's has sold so far.
Here's the next test. Staying with water, Happy posted another ten singles at 12g each. That's well below the current 18g price, but still a nice profit - if they sell. Underbidding by a large amount tends to really piss off other sellers, too. Happy doesn't care about that, though, unless they do it to HIM. I'd also note that all of the stacks at 6g each have sold. Happy would now have to pay 8g apiece to buy a stack.
So, why would anyone buy singles at 12g each when they could buy several at once at 8g apiece? The logical reason is that the buyer doesn't need a large stack, just a few, and his overall cost would be less to buy exactly what he needed even though his cost per item was higher. The less rational reason is that a great many buyers only look at the first page on the Auction House and buy whatever is "cheapest" (ie, what's at the top of the list). Sellers who spend a lot of time on the AH can get very creative at ensuring that "their" product is always at the top of the list, and that usually means selling singles, which are generally more expensive than stacks. Happy rarely, rarely, sells anything but singles.
Happy checked up on his volatiles about two hours later. All ten of the v. waters had sold. Happy was also able to sell another ten waters, as well as a smaller number of earths and fires. By Sunday, however, the deals that Happy had found on Saturday were all gone. Had Happy started his experiment on Sunday, he would have seen a very different picture. There were no bargains, nor was there any chance to make a profit as singles prices had dropped too far and stack prices had gone up too much, wiping out the sale value of both.
For Happy, the experiment confirmed his assessment that the market was extremely risky. But he also learned that it is possible to make a profit from this market of cata volatiles, dusts, essences, and shards, nonetheless, and Happy will be looking a lot harder for those bargains.
The weekly Friday night MM Bastion of Twilight raid never happened. We had only five guildies in game and the raid leader reported that due to some real life bad weather he was going to be very late. We tried to rustle up some additional players, but when it became clear we would have to PUG almost half the raid we decided to call it.
With the Wild family suddenly having an evening free, Bean and Shevils decided to give the Friday night battlegrounds a shot with a pint sized Hunter Fortress. Arathi Basin was the "Call to Arms" for the weekend, which offered extra honor and experience for both winners (a lot) and losers (not as much). We signed up for both AB and Warsong Gulch, and with a wait of only about five minutes we got Arathi Basin.
As far as our 15 person Horde team went, we were not all that good. After taking the Farm, we took the Blacksmith but quickly lost it. A major battle developed at the Lumber Mill that drew in more and of the Horde team. Seeing an opportunity, Shevils and Bean, with a shaman deciding to join us, made for the Mines, which was held by the Alliance. They had four defenders, including a priest healer. I thought we had a healer, too, but the shaman was melee and did ZERO healing. He didn't even heal himself. As we approached they sent a warrior forward, Shielded of course, and we took the bait, killing him, but losing our shaman in the process. With the enemy priest Shielding and healing everyone we attempted to focus fire on the priest, and they focused fired on Shevils. Shevils went down first and our assault failed. We made a second attack, and this time Shevils tried an end around to get at the hunter that was doing most of the damage. Again, with the advantage of Shield and heals, we were stopped again.
The rest of horde army waged a fierce back and forth in the area between the Farm, Blacksmith, and Lumber Mill. The Alliance held the majority of the bases but no one else but us seemed to care. We lost 680 - 1600. The pint sized Hunter Fortress did as well as we could. Shevils led in total damage and Killing Blows and Bean was the third highest damage dealer.
It took much longer to get a second match, but eventually Arathi Basin popped again. The Horde team this time had a Jekyl and Hyde personality. The Alliance team got off to a quick start and got an edge in resources. But we fought back, gaining three bases and the upper hand and began closing on the gap in resources. Shevils and Bean opted to defend the Lumber Mill with one other player, and we successfully beat back several attacks. The Alliance weren't giving up, though, and took back the Blacksmiths. Shevils and Bean were busy down the hillside from the Mill discouraging Alliance from coming up when we saw the BG commander ask in chat - why is everyone at the Mill? Hmm, last we looked there only three of us. But no, all those players who had been killed at the Blacksmiths had joined us at the Mill.
No one wanted to leave, and we then lost the Farm. Frustrated, Shevils and Bean raced down to help. We took back the farm, but ended up losing the match 1430 - 1600, a much closer fight but one I still don't understand how we lost. Since we were on defense so much, our numbers weren't as good as the first AB battle, but we did the best we could.
After that second battle Bean had a suggestion. No more standing around defending bases, she declared, I want to kill stuff. That's my girl.
PS - the shaman from the first battle showed up in our group for the second AB fight as well. He was afk for much of the fight - Bean noticed that he stayed dead for long periods. He did 35 total damage (both Bean and Shevils had more honor KILLS than he had damage) and again did no healing. I don't know why he bothered to come.
Now that we have the exciting stuff out of the way, Happy would like to address a topic that really started with Lao - so blame her. :P
Lao and Happy were chatting a few days ago and Lao casually asked what the current "bargains" were on the Auction House. Happy reeled off a couple of good deals, but Lao replied that those items were "old" stuff that she didn't have anymore. What have you got for Cata stuff? she asked. Which sort of stymied Happy because, when he thought about it, he really was doing very little buying and selling of Cata level stuff.
Happy has been mulling over the whys and why nots ever since.
The short answer is that it doesn't look profitable, at least not to Happy. Even though Happy is not actively buying and selling the stuff, that doesn't mean he isn't paying attention to it. Happy has an entire bag filled with Cata enchanting materials, herbs, and assorted other things. He has dabbled in a few sales, testing the market, so to speak. It's a very volatile market. Price swings are pretty wide, and sales are very sporadic. Also, in general, the cost of Cata mats are higher than Happy's tried and true inventory, requiring a larger investment. In other words, Cata mats are a much riskier proposition.
So, Happy had to ask himself, am I becoming too conservative? Avoiding risk at the expense of potential greater profit? Wild practically pushed Happy into the Cards market (because Wild wanted a trinket out of it). Wild saved Happy probably 7k gold by building his own card set, but at the same time Happy will say that he still has over 5k gold invested in cards that he hasn't been able to get rid of.
But back to the matter at hand. Is it time to get into the current market? Happy's profits are down, and the times when he pulls in over 1,000 gold a day have grown fewer. Wild is going to burn a lot of gold if the three night a week raiding continues. Between 100g a pop flasks (3 per night), 10g a pop potions (about 6 per night), and repair bills topping 50g for EACH WIPE (last week - 20 wipes costing Wild in the neighborhood of 1,000 gold) Wild needs a ton of gold to maintain his habit. Wild had also hoped to get some of that gold back from the trash mobs in BT on Friday, but of course that didn't happen.
Happy decided it was time to do a more serious test of the cata enchanting mats market than he has done to date.
Let's start with celestial essences. They come in greater and lesser. Three lessers (LCE) equal a greater (GCE). The price of a GCE can run up to 60g each, or as low as 18g each. Sounds like a great way to buy low and sell high, doesn't it? The problem is that the price changes hour by hour, far faster than most other items that Happy sells. On average about half of the items Happy posts on the AH don't sell in the first 48 hours and expire ("expire" means they drop off the AH and would have to be reposted for sale). Happy would guess that as much as 90% of GCE/LCEs that he posts won't sell, primarily because of rapid underbidding by other sellers. Also, note that a week ago I would have said that the bottom line price on a GCE was about 25g - yet this morning I bought a stack of ten for 19g each. Will Happy now be able to sell those he bought at 25g for a profit? Maybe, when the price spikes up again - and if he's lucky - and his goods happen to be the cheapest when a buyer needs them - and he doesn't get underbid five minutes after he posts. Will Happy ever see an 18g price again? Who knows, but then buying them at 25g again when the price goes up doesn't look like such a good deal anymore.
All of the cata mats are like the above. Next, let's look at a group of items called volatiles. These are technically not enchanting mats, since the the cost to post them is higher than the straight one silver cost that all enchanting mats are charged for. Still, they are used by enchanters and Happy has been tracking them. Here is what things look like today (Saturday).
V. Fire: buy one and it'll cost 13g, a stack of 20 costs 6g each
V. Earth: 1 = 12g ea, 20 stk = 5g ea
V. Water: 1 = 22g ea, 20 stk = 6g ea
V. Air: 1 = 25g ea, 20 stk = 25g ea
V. Life: 1 = 10g ea, 20 stk = 9g ea
I'm using a 20 stack for comparison since for the majority of items Happy sells that's the largest stack size (and in general larger stacks have a lower cost per item). Volatiles can be stacked up to 200, though, and the stack number has a bearing on where on the list the items will appear, so that can make things kind of crazy, since the goal is to get your stuff to the front of the list.
I'm sure everyone focused in on v. water, where theoretically a 20 stack could be bought for 120g and then sold for 22g each for 440g, a 320g profit. The reality is that v. water is one of the easier volatiles to acquire (through fishing) and few buyers will pay 22g gold for a single. Loosely, v. water sells best at around 8g each. So, you say, post 20 6g singles for 8g each and take the 40g profit. You might be right to do that. However, Happy posted ten of those v. waters as singles at 19g each. In theory, if someone bought just four of those ten waters, Happy would have made all of his money back and any further sales would be pure profit. Won't someone underbid the 19g? Absolutely. But if Happy posted an 8g price, might that not also get underbid? Maybe. They could also be swept up by another seller and then posted for 10g each. Do that a few times and suddenly a 19g price might look good. It's that crazy.
Happy posted his v. waters an hour ago. He's already been underbid at 18g each. Happy had also made similar style posts for fire and earth volatiles. They've also been underbid already. Not a single volatile of Happy's has sold so far.
Here's the next test. Staying with water, Happy posted another ten singles at 12g each. That's well below the current 18g price, but still a nice profit - if they sell. Underbidding by a large amount tends to really piss off other sellers, too. Happy doesn't care about that, though, unless they do it to HIM. I'd also note that all of the stacks at 6g each have sold. Happy would now have to pay 8g apiece to buy a stack.
So, why would anyone buy singles at 12g each when they could buy several at once at 8g apiece? The logical reason is that the buyer doesn't need a large stack, just a few, and his overall cost would be less to buy exactly what he needed even though his cost per item was higher. The less rational reason is that a great many buyers only look at the first page on the Auction House and buy whatever is "cheapest" (ie, what's at the top of the list). Sellers who spend a lot of time on the AH can get very creative at ensuring that "their" product is always at the top of the list, and that usually means selling singles, which are generally more expensive than stacks. Happy rarely, rarely, sells anything but singles.
Happy checked up on his volatiles about two hours later. All ten of the v. waters had sold. Happy was also able to sell another ten waters, as well as a smaller number of earths and fires. By Sunday, however, the deals that Happy had found on Saturday were all gone. Had Happy started his experiment on Sunday, he would have seen a very different picture. There were no bargains, nor was there any chance to make a profit as singles prices had dropped too far and stack prices had gone up too much, wiping out the sale value of both.
For Happy, the experiment confirmed his assessment that the market was extremely risky. But he also learned that it is possible to make a profit from this market of cata volatiles, dusts, essences, and shards, nonetheless, and Happy will be looking a lot harder for those bargains.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Thursday (21 Apr) - A Crack in the Throne
Thursday (21 Apr) - A Crack in the Throne
After Wednesday's raid Wild wrote down four things that he felt could be areas that needed more attention and help in overcoming Wild's difficulties in healing the raid and keeping his tank alive. Not since the early days against the Lich King has Wild been so frustrated with his own performance. The raid leader, Bd, was sympathetic, but he felt that enough progress had been made overall in the raid that he did not want to make any changes on the Thursday night run.
The four things:
* Changing the pairings of tank and healer
* Wild's healing not up to the task
* Bringing the third healer in to help Wild
* Avoiding ice patches
Wild and the pally tank, Sb, took our places on the Anshal platform with four DPSers. One of those DPSers was Rs, Wild's druid friend, who finally made it into an MM2 raid. He teased Wild about it, saying "So, you got roped into this too?" We had another new face, a mage that Wild has run with a number of times, although it has been quite a long time since Wild had raided with her. Bd had a new healer joining us as well, Et, a druid like Wild, and they settled in at the Nezir platform. The final group was the same two as last night keeping Rohash busy.
Our first attempt was our get to know the fight again and we wiped pretty fast. Our second attempt went much better, although Wild was burning mana at a record pace. When we wiped after the first transition Wild had reached 8800 hps. But Wild was unhappy. It didn't matter how much he healed, raiders were still dying and Wild was still using up his mana too fast.
Still, we made progress. On our next two attempts we got farther into the fight. Wild even noted that for the first time he and Sb had dealt with Anshal, switched to Nezir, survived that, and got back to Anshal again before wiping. Sb thought he'd let Wild down when his taunt failed and Wild got tangled with the boss and died. We were already out of control and going down by that time. Wild was actually happy that we had managed to get this far, even though it still ended in death.
Bd takes his time when he is thinking things over. But when he makes up his mind he acts swiftly. Bd whispered Wild. "We're making a change, bud. You are switching with Et." That meant Wild would be Bd's healer instead of Sb's starting with our fifth attempt. The fight would be much the same, but there was a subtle difference. Instead of starting with Anshal and then moving over to Nezir, Wild would start with Nezir, and then move to Anshal. Bd did not know about the "four things," but he used one of them (change the pairings) to see if that would make a difference. Of course, his real reason was to be able to watch Wild and see if he could help with the troubles I was obviously having.
He got a good look on our 5th attempt, which we also wiped on of course, and had a suggestion. "You're healing throughput is great," Bd told Wild, "so I was baffled a bit - until I saw how close to being out of mana you were." He told Wild that I needed to back off on the use of the spell Regrowth - I knew that, but I didn't trust the slower, lesser spell Nourish and had kept using regrowth. "Use Nourish," Bd said again. "I have six different ways keep myself alive. Use Nourish. It'll work. You'll have more mana. We'll be fine."
Wild didn't immediately get a chance to fully test out what amounted to a friendly challenge from Bd. Our next two attempts were interrupted by breaks and a computer that failed (not mine, although mine did zonk out on me once, but it was before we started) and it took us time to get settled back in.
Lao poked her head in the game around this time, oohing over the battle and giving Wild sympathetic pats on the back. Wild was feeling pretty low and Lao did a great job cheering him back up.
On our 8th attempt Bd brought the DPS raider from the Rohash platform to the Nezir platform to increase the DPS there and reduce the damage spread across the raid. Wild and Bd hung in there long enough for Wild to really air out the Nourish spell. What the heck, Wild thought, it couldn't get any worse. Standing and casting a 2+ second spell can be a frustrating exercise for a druid with a large arsenal of instant cast spells. Yet it had a strangely calming effect on Wild. We had a few tense moments, but true to his word Bd used his own abilities to help get past rough spots and Wild was not forced into frantic healing. We got through two full transitions before the wipe. So another of Wild's "four things" came to pass. A raider from the Rohash platform - not the healer, but the DPS - came to help in the Nezir battle, which in effect helped Wild with the healing since the extra body spread out the AoE damage a bit more.
With all the focus on Nezir and Anshal, we were abruptly reminded on our ninth attempt that there was a third boss out there - Rohash killed the two raiders who had been doing such a great job with that boss all night. It was an unexpected wipe and that could have knocked us completely off our game. It didn't.
On our 10th attempt it all seemed to fall into place. Wild now had a healing rhythm that included Nourish over regrowth. He discovered he had a decent amount of mana available throughout the fight. Wild was trusting that the tank could and would help himself if Wild was temporarily busy with raid healing, or escaping ice patches, etc, which lessened the pressure further. In short, Bd's healing advice made it possible for Wild to heal this fight, which brought to pass the third of the "four things." By the way, we brought one genie down to 7% before wiping. Suddenly this fight went from impossible to OMG we might actually beat these guys!
For our 11th attempt Bd talked about positioning to help avoid the ice patches, which was still a frozen thorn buried in Wild's hoof. He didn't really talk about how Wild should handle it - but did walk Wild through what Bd the tank was doing so that Wild would know exactly how Bd would respond to each situation. Wild took that information and laid out a track that I would follow whenever we had Nezir engaged. Wild also used a strafing tactic (thank you, Hunter Fortress!) to maintain that line, which not by accident ran parallel to the expected track that Bd would take. It worked. Oh yes, avoiding ice patches was the fourth of the "four things."
We killed two of the three genies and came within a whisker of killing the third - but our timing was off and one of the dead bosses resurrected - another wipe.
The progress was phenomenal, though. The first major breakthru had been the DPSers finally figuring out how to drop all the adds on the Anshal platform. That meant raiders were changing platforms with higher health when moving to Nezir and those going to Anshal were not encountering left over mobs. Add the "four things" and we knew now that it was only a matter of time before we had this fight down.
It took a Warrior (Bd) to straighten Wild out. In the interest of full disclosure, though, that warrior also has a level 85 druid and he knows a bit about druid heals. More important than the tactics and healing advice, though, was that Bd took the time to encourage and help Wild without getting mad, complaining, or blaming Wild for the wipes. I don't know if the switch in pairings will remain as they are next week, but Wild is a lot more confident that whichever tank he is asked to heal, he will be up to the task.
I also wanted to share Lao's report on her magnificent manipulation of the Auction House recently that had our AH expert, Happy, both jealous and impressed!
"As Happy can attest to, the AH can involve skill and psychology, but at time it comes down to luck. Being at the right place, at the right time.
It is almost a given that as soon as I bite the bullet on a big ticket item (that has a price lower than I have seen it historically) without fail within 48 hours I will see it up for 1k+ less than what I paid. I call this the 48 hour curse. Usually that is the bad luck side of the AH, but one that you have to accept. But the other day Lao meet the very good luck side of the AH.
While Wild was getting himself spun around in Four Winds Lao was doing her usual check of 85 cloth gear on the AH. At this point there are only a few things on the AH that interest her. She could use a chest, bracers, and gloves. The gloves she is going to get shortly with rep, but she liked to window shop anyway. She was doing her usual look and she sees one (of the two) cloth chest up for 10k bid 12k buyout. She bought it out, without hesitation.
Now to back up, every time that Lao has seen this chest on the AH it goes around 20-25k, so 12k was just screaming “TAKE ME!!” But now that Lao had the chest, what would she do with it? It was more the healer chest but it would be an upgrade for her anyway. Or she could turn around and try to sell it for a higher price.
Lao decided to throw it up there for 20k bid and 25k buyout. If no one bought it she would wear it, and if someone bought it she would make a nice profit. First day, nothing. Last night, nothing. Checked this morning, Sold. She spent 12k on it and got back (after the AH cut) 20k. Nice 8k profit.
And like I mentioned before, I checked the AH, and someone had put the same chest up for 2k less than what I had it up for. This time luck was on my side, mine was bought before this one was up, no such luck for the buyer who got the 48 hour curse."
After Wednesday's raid Wild wrote down four things that he felt could be areas that needed more attention and help in overcoming Wild's difficulties in healing the raid and keeping his tank alive. Not since the early days against the Lich King has Wild been so frustrated with his own performance. The raid leader, Bd, was sympathetic, but he felt that enough progress had been made overall in the raid that he did not want to make any changes on the Thursday night run.
The four things:
* Changing the pairings of tank and healer
* Wild's healing not up to the task
* Bringing the third healer in to help Wild
* Avoiding ice patches
Wild and the pally tank, Sb, took our places on the Anshal platform with four DPSers. One of those DPSers was Rs, Wild's druid friend, who finally made it into an MM2 raid. He teased Wild about it, saying "So, you got roped into this too?" We had another new face, a mage that Wild has run with a number of times, although it has been quite a long time since Wild had raided with her. Bd had a new healer joining us as well, Et, a druid like Wild, and they settled in at the Nezir platform. The final group was the same two as last night keeping Rohash busy.
Our first attempt was our get to know the fight again and we wiped pretty fast. Our second attempt went much better, although Wild was burning mana at a record pace. When we wiped after the first transition Wild had reached 8800 hps. But Wild was unhappy. It didn't matter how much he healed, raiders were still dying and Wild was still using up his mana too fast.
Still, we made progress. On our next two attempts we got farther into the fight. Wild even noted that for the first time he and Sb had dealt with Anshal, switched to Nezir, survived that, and got back to Anshal again before wiping. Sb thought he'd let Wild down when his taunt failed and Wild got tangled with the boss and died. We were already out of control and going down by that time. Wild was actually happy that we had managed to get this far, even though it still ended in death.
Bd takes his time when he is thinking things over. But when he makes up his mind he acts swiftly. Bd whispered Wild. "We're making a change, bud. You are switching with Et." That meant Wild would be Bd's healer instead of Sb's starting with our fifth attempt. The fight would be much the same, but there was a subtle difference. Instead of starting with Anshal and then moving over to Nezir, Wild would start with Nezir, and then move to Anshal. Bd did not know about the "four things," but he used one of them (change the pairings) to see if that would make a difference. Of course, his real reason was to be able to watch Wild and see if he could help with the troubles I was obviously having.
He got a good look on our 5th attempt, which we also wiped on of course, and had a suggestion. "You're healing throughput is great," Bd told Wild, "so I was baffled a bit - until I saw how close to being out of mana you were." He told Wild that I needed to back off on the use of the spell Regrowth - I knew that, but I didn't trust the slower, lesser spell Nourish and had kept using regrowth. "Use Nourish," Bd said again. "I have six different ways keep myself alive. Use Nourish. It'll work. You'll have more mana. We'll be fine."
Wild didn't immediately get a chance to fully test out what amounted to a friendly challenge from Bd. Our next two attempts were interrupted by breaks and a computer that failed (not mine, although mine did zonk out on me once, but it was before we started) and it took us time to get settled back in.
Lao poked her head in the game around this time, oohing over the battle and giving Wild sympathetic pats on the back. Wild was feeling pretty low and Lao did a great job cheering him back up.
On our 8th attempt Bd brought the DPS raider from the Rohash platform to the Nezir platform to increase the DPS there and reduce the damage spread across the raid. Wild and Bd hung in there long enough for Wild to really air out the Nourish spell. What the heck, Wild thought, it couldn't get any worse. Standing and casting a 2+ second spell can be a frustrating exercise for a druid with a large arsenal of instant cast spells. Yet it had a strangely calming effect on Wild. We had a few tense moments, but true to his word Bd used his own abilities to help get past rough spots and Wild was not forced into frantic healing. We got through two full transitions before the wipe. So another of Wild's "four things" came to pass. A raider from the Rohash platform - not the healer, but the DPS - came to help in the Nezir battle, which in effect helped Wild with the healing since the extra body spread out the AoE damage a bit more.
With all the focus on Nezir and Anshal, we were abruptly reminded on our ninth attempt that there was a third boss out there - Rohash killed the two raiders who had been doing such a great job with that boss all night. It was an unexpected wipe and that could have knocked us completely off our game. It didn't.
On our 10th attempt it all seemed to fall into place. Wild now had a healing rhythm that included Nourish over regrowth. He discovered he had a decent amount of mana available throughout the fight. Wild was trusting that the tank could and would help himself if Wild was temporarily busy with raid healing, or escaping ice patches, etc, which lessened the pressure further. In short, Bd's healing advice made it possible for Wild to heal this fight, which brought to pass the third of the "four things." By the way, we brought one genie down to 7% before wiping. Suddenly this fight went from impossible to OMG we might actually beat these guys!
For our 11th attempt Bd talked about positioning to help avoid the ice patches, which was still a frozen thorn buried in Wild's hoof. He didn't really talk about how Wild should handle it - but did walk Wild through what Bd the tank was doing so that Wild would know exactly how Bd would respond to each situation. Wild took that information and laid out a track that I would follow whenever we had Nezir engaged. Wild also used a strafing tactic (thank you, Hunter Fortress!) to maintain that line, which not by accident ran parallel to the expected track that Bd would take. It worked. Oh yes, avoiding ice patches was the fourth of the "four things."
We killed two of the three genies and came within a whisker of killing the third - but our timing was off and one of the dead bosses resurrected - another wipe.
The progress was phenomenal, though. The first major breakthru had been the DPSers finally figuring out how to drop all the adds on the Anshal platform. That meant raiders were changing platforms with higher health when moving to Nezir and those going to Anshal were not encountering left over mobs. Add the "four things" and we knew now that it was only a matter of time before we had this fight down.
It took a Warrior (Bd) to straighten Wild out. In the interest of full disclosure, though, that warrior also has a level 85 druid and he knows a bit about druid heals. More important than the tactics and healing advice, though, was that Bd took the time to encourage and help Wild without getting mad, complaining, or blaming Wild for the wipes. I don't know if the switch in pairings will remain as they are next week, but Wild is a lot more confident that whichever tank he is asked to heal, he will be up to the task.
Wild and the genie Nezir
I also wanted to share Lao's report on her magnificent manipulation of the Auction House recently that had our AH expert, Happy, both jealous and impressed!
"As Happy can attest to, the AH can involve skill and psychology, but at time it comes down to luck. Being at the right place, at the right time.
It is almost a given that as soon as I bite the bullet on a big ticket item (that has a price lower than I have seen it historically) without fail within 48 hours I will see it up for 1k+ less than what I paid. I call this the 48 hour curse. Usually that is the bad luck side of the AH, but one that you have to accept. But the other day Lao meet the very good luck side of the AH.
While Wild was getting himself spun around in Four Winds Lao was doing her usual check of 85 cloth gear on the AH. At this point there are only a few things on the AH that interest her. She could use a chest, bracers, and gloves. The gloves she is going to get shortly with rep, but she liked to window shop anyway. She was doing her usual look and she sees one (of the two) cloth chest up for 10k bid 12k buyout. She bought it out, without hesitation.
Now to back up, every time that Lao has seen this chest on the AH it goes around 20-25k, so 12k was just screaming “TAKE ME!!” But now that Lao had the chest, what would she do with it? It was more the healer chest but it would be an upgrade for her anyway. Or she could turn around and try to sell it for a higher price.
Lao decided to throw it up there for 20k bid and 25k buyout. If no one bought it she would wear it, and if someone bought it she would make a nice profit. First day, nothing. Last night, nothing. Checked this morning, Sold. She spent 12k on it and got back (after the AH cut) 20k. Nice 8k profit.
And like I mentioned before, I checked the AH, and someone had put the same chest up for 2k less than what I had it up for. This time luck was on my side, mine was bought before this one was up, no such luck for the buyer who got the 48 hour curse."
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday (20 Apr) - A Chat with the GM
Wednesday (20 Apr) - A Chat with the GM
Last week the MM2 raid, led by Bd, was scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Wild already had a raid scheduled for Friday with MM, led by Fn, and was not able to make the second night of the MM2 raid. Bd fixed that this week, scheduling his MM2 raid for Wednesday and Thursday night. If those days hold up Wild may be back to raiding three nights a week. I had to touch base with the Mrs, However, as I would be jumping from one night of raiding to three nights. "Get your raiding in while you can," Wild was told, "there won't be much chance of that on our trip." Smart woman.
The Horde had Tol Barad on Wednesday night, and Wild was asked by Bd if I wanted in on the Baradin Hold run they were going to do before going to Throne of the Four Winds. Wild declined, in case there was a chance to run BH with the Friday raid. It took a lot longer than anyone thought to take out the one boss in BH, and it was after 7:30pm before we started making our way to "4w" as the MM2 raiders were calling it.
Wild was a lot more on top of things this week. I knew the mechanics of the fight and, with last week's 11 attempts absorbed, remembered, and reflected on, Wild made a few adjustments. Wild had tinkered with the spells keybound to his keypad keys, and while I liked the new arrangement, one of those spells just didn't feel right. Swapping the position of Healing Touch and Rejuvenation felt more comfortable and natural. The second change Wild talked over with the tank he was be healing. During the Anshal phase of the battle, the tank moves between two points. Since the distance between points was still close enough for Wild to heal without much movement, Wild stayed at range. However, the mobs that spawn when Wild was at range sometimes spawned right on top of Wild, creating problems for both Wild and the tank. Wild decided to move into melee range during the mob spawns, and that worked much better. Sometimes small changes can make a significant difference.
Even as Wild was getting more comfortable in his role, the rest of the raid seemed to take a step backwards. We had a series of miscues that we rarely make, including one where the two tanks simply forgot to make a critical swap between platforms. Raiders were off center entering the wind tunnels, which can blow raiders off course and in two cases clean off the platform they were aiming at. Twice raiders were thrown off course due to a random bug in the instance that apparently Blizz hasn't been able to fix yet. Wild, it seemed, was "too" in sync on one attempt - He hit the wind tunnel dead center right at the call of 80 energy for the swap, was wind borne to the other platform, changing shape to Tree Form while in the air, made a perfect landing, veering to the left to avoid a nasty patch of ice - and then Wild realized that he had arrived at the platform before the tank. The genie Nezir killed Wild while his tank was still airborne.
We made seven attempts, and despite the miscues made further progress in learning and mastering this encounter.
The main concern that Wild has now is his healing, which is coming up short. Even though there are three healers for this fight, the way the fight works there is only one healer on any given platform at a time. The healer on the Rohash platform never leaves that platform. The healer on the Anshal platform (Wild) and the healer on the Nezir platform switch places just before each Ulitmate phase, passing each other as we catch the wind tunnels.
Here is how the fight plays out from Wild's perspective: Wild, the tank, and four DPSers start on the Anshal platform. The tank starts the fight. The damage dealt in the early seconds is very light. Anshal will start to cast Soothing Wind, which drops a green ring on the floor that heals him and Silences us if we stand in it. Again, damage is light. At the new position Anshal casts Nurture, which spawns five flower mobs that have an aura that stacks damage on all nearby players. The tank can absorb most of that with moderate healing from Wild, and the key is to kill the mobs as quickly as possible. The damage starts slow, but ramps up very fast, particularly on the melee who have no choice but to stand inside the aura in order to attack the mobs. There was a death knight who died the first three attempts no matter how hard Wild focused on healing him. He was pulling multiple mobs and essentially trying to tank them - once we got him to stop that, Wild could keep him alive. The problem was that we just didn't kill them very fast, and when we made the platform switch there were usually one of two still alive. That meant two things - one, the incoming tank/healing (with no DPSers) would arrive with both a boss and adds to deal with. Two, Wild's group would arrive on the deadly Nezir platform in less than full health.
In theory the Wild's tank arrives at the Nezir platform ahead of or at the same time as the rest of us. He picks up Nezir while the rest of us take up positions out of the ice patches and toward the back or side of Nezir to avoid a frontal cone attack that he does. As Wild is being blown to the platform, he shifts to Tree Form to get his maximum healing. In theory Nezir drops his first ice patch slightly to the left of where we will land, allowing raiders to veer to the left to avoid the patch. In practice, Wild landed in ice patches he could not avoid in five of the seven attempts, which slows movement speed and does enough damage to kill in about five seconds. Imagine raiders standing in that stuff - deadly. Add Nezir's Wind Chill, which is a channeled AoE that hits everyone on his platform, and that's more damage to deal with. Wild can barely keep up with all that. Thinking back on how the damage was being dealt, I have to believe that raiders are getting caught in the ice patches and staying in it too long - which would match the sudden, but consistent chunks of health being lost. It gets worse, though. The reason we put as many raiders on the Nezir platform as possible during this part of the fight is because Nezir's Ultimate is Sleet Storm. Sleet storm is 15 seconds of raid wide damage. Assuming that we have all six raiders that should be on the platform still alive, Sleet Storm will hit all six raiders for about 5k damage per second. Wild has to heal 30k damage every second to keep the raid alive.
Once Sleet storm is over Wild and his tank stay on the Nezir platform while the rest head back to Anshal. In theory we keep Nezir occupied until the next platform phase when the roles are reversed. In practice we haven't gotten to that point yet as we are mostly all dead by then.
In thinking this through and putting it down on paper I can think of several things - one, getting caught in an ice patch is one reason raiders are dying; two, Wild may not have the healing throughput to cover 30K damage per second to the raid during Sleet Storm; three, maybe the Anshal and Nezir tank/healer pairs should switch starting platforms. If the other healer can heal through Nezir's attack, then it is likely an issue with Wild's healing. If the other healer has the same troubles as Wild, then we have a different kind of problem; four, it's possible for one DPSer (usually a warlock with pet) to handle Rohash by himself. That would free up the third healer to help with Nezir. Wild will talk those things over with the raid leader Thursday night.
In terms of pure numbers, Wild is outperforming the other tank healer with an average 7800+ hps (8525 hps was Wild's highest output on an attempt) versus the pally healer's average 6300+ hps. However, because of the wipes the pally healer really hasn't had to deal with the full Nezir attack yet and his numbers would certainly go up when he does.
In terms of the spells used, it was clear that Wild was going to his large, fast, expensive spells in order to try to keep up with the damage.
Regrowth: 35% of all healing used this very mana expensive spell
Lifebloom: 23% mostly on the tank but raid-wide when in Tree Form
Wild Growth: 18%, should be higher although it, too, is an expensive spell
Rejuv: 14%, instant cast and expensive
Swiftmend was not used as raiders were too spread out most of the time to make the efflorescence proc useful. Healing Touch and Nourish just took too long to cast for too little healing.
Wild has to somehow reduce the use of regrowth. I thought about reforging away some haste to get spirit and more mana regen. It would help in the 4w fight, but would hurt Wild in the BT encounters where Wild has the mana but needs the faster casting speed haste brings.
So the questions remain. Can Wild can heal the raid if his top end healing is going to be around 8K hps? Would the pally healer do better?
After we ended the MM2 4w raid, Wild's MM guild leader asked Wild how the raid went. We talked strats and whether MM should take a shot at 4w even though we have raid groups that are already doing BT and BWD. Wild was getting some crafting done while we chatted, and needed some mats that JB had. JB logged in to pass the mats along to Wild. The guild leader sent "Jezzi" a whisper, saying hi to "Jezzi" and asking her if she was a main or an alt. I thought he knew that JB was one of Wild's alts, but JB whispered him back that she was an alt of Wild's and went back to crafting. Then I thought, he can see that both JB and Wild are in game, and that probably confused him. JB sent him another whisper: "I have 2 accounts." The light came on, then. He then moved JB up to raider status in the guild, which was nice of him.
JB logged out, but since I had the guild leader's attention, Wild decided to let him know that I had a friend who might be interested in joining the guild. I gave him Lao's name and that she was a shadow priest with a disc off-spec she usually reserved for pvping. The guild leader (who has more level 85s than anyone I know) asked a few questions but basically said that the guild could always use another priest. As for raiding, we are definitely looking for more folks who want to raid. All he asked is that we get Lao some heroic runs with guildies to get to know Lao, and of course, help with gearing. No pressure and no expectations, I just wanted to lay the groundwork for if/when Lao decides what she wants to do guildwise. Just to give Lao an idea of where she is gear-wise for raiding in MM, check out the gear of Shadowlovez. She is our raiding shadow priest (who often heals) - in fact, she was in her disc healing spec when she logged out. Her overall ilevel is 353 (349 as a healer).
PS - We finally have the ransom for the RV, and we'll be picking up that costly monster today.
Last week the MM2 raid, led by Bd, was scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Wild already had a raid scheduled for Friday with MM, led by Fn, and was not able to make the second night of the MM2 raid. Bd fixed that this week, scheduling his MM2 raid for Wednesday and Thursday night. If those days hold up Wild may be back to raiding three nights a week. I had to touch base with the Mrs, However, as I would be jumping from one night of raiding to three nights. "Get your raiding in while you can," Wild was told, "there won't be much chance of that on our trip." Smart woman.
The Horde had Tol Barad on Wednesday night, and Wild was asked by Bd if I wanted in on the Baradin Hold run they were going to do before going to Throne of the Four Winds. Wild declined, in case there was a chance to run BH with the Friday raid. It took a lot longer than anyone thought to take out the one boss in BH, and it was after 7:30pm before we started making our way to "4w" as the MM2 raiders were calling it.
Wild was a lot more on top of things this week. I knew the mechanics of the fight and, with last week's 11 attempts absorbed, remembered, and reflected on, Wild made a few adjustments. Wild had tinkered with the spells keybound to his keypad keys, and while I liked the new arrangement, one of those spells just didn't feel right. Swapping the position of Healing Touch and Rejuvenation felt more comfortable and natural. The second change Wild talked over with the tank he was be healing. During the Anshal phase of the battle, the tank moves between two points. Since the distance between points was still close enough for Wild to heal without much movement, Wild stayed at range. However, the mobs that spawn when Wild was at range sometimes spawned right on top of Wild, creating problems for both Wild and the tank. Wild decided to move into melee range during the mob spawns, and that worked much better. Sometimes small changes can make a significant difference.
Even as Wild was getting more comfortable in his role, the rest of the raid seemed to take a step backwards. We had a series of miscues that we rarely make, including one where the two tanks simply forgot to make a critical swap between platforms. Raiders were off center entering the wind tunnels, which can blow raiders off course and in two cases clean off the platform they were aiming at. Twice raiders were thrown off course due to a random bug in the instance that apparently Blizz hasn't been able to fix yet. Wild, it seemed, was "too" in sync on one attempt - He hit the wind tunnel dead center right at the call of 80 energy for the swap, was wind borne to the other platform, changing shape to Tree Form while in the air, made a perfect landing, veering to the left to avoid a nasty patch of ice - and then Wild realized that he had arrived at the platform before the tank. The genie Nezir killed Wild while his tank was still airborne.
We made seven attempts, and despite the miscues made further progress in learning and mastering this encounter.
The main concern that Wild has now is his healing, which is coming up short. Even though there are three healers for this fight, the way the fight works there is only one healer on any given platform at a time. The healer on the Rohash platform never leaves that platform. The healer on the Anshal platform (Wild) and the healer on the Nezir platform switch places just before each Ulitmate phase, passing each other as we catch the wind tunnels.
Here is how the fight plays out from Wild's perspective: Wild, the tank, and four DPSers start on the Anshal platform. The tank starts the fight. The damage dealt in the early seconds is very light. Anshal will start to cast Soothing Wind, which drops a green ring on the floor that heals him and Silences us if we stand in it. Again, damage is light. At the new position Anshal casts Nurture, which spawns five flower mobs that have an aura that stacks damage on all nearby players. The tank can absorb most of that with moderate healing from Wild, and the key is to kill the mobs as quickly as possible. The damage starts slow, but ramps up very fast, particularly on the melee who have no choice but to stand inside the aura in order to attack the mobs. There was a death knight who died the first three attempts no matter how hard Wild focused on healing him. He was pulling multiple mobs and essentially trying to tank them - once we got him to stop that, Wild could keep him alive. The problem was that we just didn't kill them very fast, and when we made the platform switch there were usually one of two still alive. That meant two things - one, the incoming tank/healing (with no DPSers) would arrive with both a boss and adds to deal with. Two, Wild's group would arrive on the deadly Nezir platform in less than full health.
In theory the Wild's tank arrives at the Nezir platform ahead of or at the same time as the rest of us. He picks up Nezir while the rest of us take up positions out of the ice patches and toward the back or side of Nezir to avoid a frontal cone attack that he does. As Wild is being blown to the platform, he shifts to Tree Form to get his maximum healing. In theory Nezir drops his first ice patch slightly to the left of where we will land, allowing raiders to veer to the left to avoid the patch. In practice, Wild landed in ice patches he could not avoid in five of the seven attempts, which slows movement speed and does enough damage to kill in about five seconds. Imagine raiders standing in that stuff - deadly. Add Nezir's Wind Chill, which is a channeled AoE that hits everyone on his platform, and that's more damage to deal with. Wild can barely keep up with all that. Thinking back on how the damage was being dealt, I have to believe that raiders are getting caught in the ice patches and staying in it too long - which would match the sudden, but consistent chunks of health being lost. It gets worse, though. The reason we put as many raiders on the Nezir platform as possible during this part of the fight is because Nezir's Ultimate is Sleet Storm. Sleet storm is 15 seconds of raid wide damage. Assuming that we have all six raiders that should be on the platform still alive, Sleet Storm will hit all six raiders for about 5k damage per second. Wild has to heal 30k damage every second to keep the raid alive.
Once Sleet storm is over Wild and his tank stay on the Nezir platform while the rest head back to Anshal. In theory we keep Nezir occupied until the next platform phase when the roles are reversed. In practice we haven't gotten to that point yet as we are mostly all dead by then.
In thinking this through and putting it down on paper I can think of several things - one, getting caught in an ice patch is one reason raiders are dying; two, Wild may not have the healing throughput to cover 30K damage per second to the raid during Sleet Storm; three, maybe the Anshal and Nezir tank/healer pairs should switch starting platforms. If the other healer can heal through Nezir's attack, then it is likely an issue with Wild's healing. If the other healer has the same troubles as Wild, then we have a different kind of problem; four, it's possible for one DPSer (usually a warlock with pet) to handle Rohash by himself. That would free up the third healer to help with Nezir. Wild will talk those things over with the raid leader Thursday night.
In terms of pure numbers, Wild is outperforming the other tank healer with an average 7800+ hps (8525 hps was Wild's highest output on an attempt) versus the pally healer's average 6300+ hps. However, because of the wipes the pally healer really hasn't had to deal with the full Nezir attack yet and his numbers would certainly go up when he does.
In terms of the spells used, it was clear that Wild was going to his large, fast, expensive spells in order to try to keep up with the damage.
Regrowth: 35% of all healing used this very mana expensive spell
Lifebloom: 23% mostly on the tank but raid-wide when in Tree Form
Wild Growth: 18%, should be higher although it, too, is an expensive spell
Rejuv: 14%, instant cast and expensive
Swiftmend was not used as raiders were too spread out most of the time to make the efflorescence proc useful. Healing Touch and Nourish just took too long to cast for too little healing.
Wild has to somehow reduce the use of regrowth. I thought about reforging away some haste to get spirit and more mana regen. It would help in the 4w fight, but would hurt Wild in the BT encounters where Wild has the mana but needs the faster casting speed haste brings.
So the questions remain. Can Wild can heal the raid if his top end healing is going to be around 8K hps? Would the pally healer do better?
After we ended the MM2 4w raid, Wild's MM guild leader asked Wild how the raid went. We talked strats and whether MM should take a shot at 4w even though we have raid groups that are already doing BT and BWD. Wild was getting some crafting done while we chatted, and needed some mats that JB had. JB logged in to pass the mats along to Wild. The guild leader sent "Jezzi" a whisper, saying hi to "Jezzi" and asking her if she was a main or an alt. I thought he knew that JB was one of Wild's alts, but JB whispered him back that she was an alt of Wild's and went back to crafting. Then I thought, he can see that both JB and Wild are in game, and that probably confused him. JB sent him another whisper: "I have 2 accounts." The light came on, then. He then moved JB up to raider status in the guild, which was nice of him.
JB logged out, but since I had the guild leader's attention, Wild decided to let him know that I had a friend who might be interested in joining the guild. I gave him Lao's name and that she was a shadow priest with a disc off-spec she usually reserved for pvping. The guild leader (who has more level 85s than anyone I know) asked a few questions but basically said that the guild could always use another priest. As for raiding, we are definitely looking for more folks who want to raid. All he asked is that we get Lao some heroic runs with guildies to get to know Lao, and of course, help with gearing. No pressure and no expectations, I just wanted to lay the groundwork for if/when Lao decides what she wants to do guildwise. Just to give Lao an idea of where she is gear-wise for raiding in MM, check out the gear of Shadowlovez. She is our raiding shadow priest (who often heals) - in fact, she was in her disc healing spec when she logged out. Her overall ilevel is 353 (349 as a healer).
PS - We finally have the ransom for the RV, and we'll be picking up that costly monster today.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday (19 Apr) - One Easy Win, One Sad Defeat
Tuesday (19 Apr) - One Easy Win, One Sad Defeat
Hunter Fortress is making a habit of coming in one bow short, and so it was on this Tuesday night, as Speak was detained and never made it in game. See, Bean, and Shevils carried our banner to victory in the first Warsong Gulch match, however, with the help of two other hunters from the Uldum server. It was a bloody battle - for our Alliance opponents, anyway. They were outsmarted and out-gunned at every turn, except that they had an irritating knack for stopping us from capping their flag. Our horde flag carrier kept getting caught up in the battle and forgot that he needed to cap the darn thing, too. In the end it was a 3-0 win for the horde and Hunter Fortress. Bean led the horde team in Honor Kills with an astounding 105 HKs.
The worm turned in the second WSG match. The Alliance was well organized, stayed in a large group, and consistently overwhelmed our strung out attack. Hunter Fortress acquitted ourselves well, with all three of us in the top five in damage dealing - and for once Shevils led all comers in total damage. Shevils did have a scary couple of minutes, though. Somehow the "Run" setting got turned to the "Walk" setting and Shevils found herself taking slow strolls in the grass instead of head long runs. Poo didn't quite know what to make of it. Our lone healer offered to be Shevils personal healer, an offer I had to turn down because I figured the night would be over before I ever got to where there was any action. I vaguely recalled that there was a slash involved, but it took See to remind Shevils that the correct command was found on the number keypad.
The battle went so sour that See and Shevils spent the latter part of the fight defending our flag with the score 0-2 against us. Knowing we had no chance, the Alliance also assaulted our graveyard for some honor farming. Bean got caught in the die-rez-die-rez-die not-so-merry-go-round for a bit until she could blast her way free. See and Shevils killed all comers after the flag for a good while, but with no help arriving we, too, were eventually given our own graveyard pass. We lost 0-3.
Small consolation, but Shevils was pleased when one of the horde team whispered her, gushing over how much he loved Poo and wanted one for himself. Poo blushed and offered him a banana. Poo loves attention, if you can't tell.
Hunter Fortress is making a habit of coming in one bow short, and so it was on this Tuesday night, as Speak was detained and never made it in game. See, Bean, and Shevils carried our banner to victory in the first Warsong Gulch match, however, with the help of two other hunters from the Uldum server. It was a bloody battle - for our Alliance opponents, anyway. They were outsmarted and out-gunned at every turn, except that they had an irritating knack for stopping us from capping their flag. Our horde flag carrier kept getting caught up in the battle and forgot that he needed to cap the darn thing, too. In the end it was a 3-0 win for the horde and Hunter Fortress. Bean led the horde team in Honor Kills with an astounding 105 HKs.
The worm turned in the second WSG match. The Alliance was well organized, stayed in a large group, and consistently overwhelmed our strung out attack. Hunter Fortress acquitted ourselves well, with all three of us in the top five in damage dealing - and for once Shevils led all comers in total damage. Shevils did have a scary couple of minutes, though. Somehow the "Run" setting got turned to the "Walk" setting and Shevils found herself taking slow strolls in the grass instead of head long runs. Poo didn't quite know what to make of it. Our lone healer offered to be Shevils personal healer, an offer I had to turn down because I figured the night would be over before I ever got to where there was any action. I vaguely recalled that there was a slash involved, but it took See to remind Shevils that the correct command was found on the number keypad.
The battle went so sour that See and Shevils spent the latter part of the fight defending our flag with the score 0-2 against us. Knowing we had no chance, the Alliance also assaulted our graveyard for some honor farming. Bean got caught in the die-rez-die-rez-die not-so-merry-go-round for a bit until she could blast her way free. See and Shevils killed all comers after the flag for a good while, but with no help arriving we, too, were eventually given our own graveyard pass. We lost 0-3.
Small consolation, but Shevils was pleased when one of the horde team whispered her, gushing over how much he loved Poo and wanted one for himself. Poo blushed and offered him a banana. Poo loves attention, if you can't tell.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Friday (15 Apr) - Bastion of Twilight Rewind
Friday (15 Apr) - Bastion of Twilight Rewind
Wild got into two raids this week, the first week that has happened in quite some time. In a "back to the future" moment, Wild joined an MM2 guild raid full of members that had departed the MM guild, most of whom had previously departed the FS guild. This cabal of friends of Wild are a fun bunch and love raiding, but as Wild has noted many times that fun loving approach includes a certain ambivalence to being on time. On the Thursday night MM2 raid, we were 15 minutes late starting invites, which for this group would be considered pretty good. Our "6pm" raid got started at about 7pm, which was also par for the course. We didn't make out first pull until close to 7:30pm, two hours after Wild had logged in and 90 minutes after the official raid start time. No knock on the raid, it's just how things work, and the raid itself was a joy to be a part of.
For the MM Friday raid we are nearly always spot on in both starting invites and starting on time. In fact, last week we had more guildies wanting to raid than we had spots for, which made starting on time even easier. On this particular Friday night, though, we didn't quite live up to our normal timeliness.
At the 5:45pm start time invites went out as expected. We had nine guildies signed up for the raid, with eight of us in game when invites went out. The ninth raider had already let the raid leader know his RL job schedule had changed and that he could be late. There were no excess of guildies wanting to raid, either. The eight of us made up the list of every guildie in game. Well, our ninth raider wasn't that late, logging in at 6pm. We canvassed our friends list to find a tenth raider, but did not turn up anyone who was available. So, at 6:30pm we went looking for a PUG. We were after a ranged DPS, and came up with a mage with i355 gear. He said that he often PUGed because his guild rarely had room for him on their two raid groups. You never know what you are getting with a stranger, but he would do well in the raid, including offering his own experience and ideas without appearing pushy or superior.
Despite the delays, we still made our first pull by 6:45pm, one hour after raid invites and 45 minutes late in getting started. The Horde did not have Tol Barad this night, so we bypassed Baradin Hold and went straight to Bastion of Twilight.
We made up for some of our lost time by burning through the trash mobs in BT. It took us no time at all to reach the Halfus encounter. The trio of dragons that waited was a fairly easy set (Scion, Time Warden, Slate), especially compared with the group the raid had to face last week. We needed only the first attempt to bring Halfus down. There was another quick jaunt through more trash mobs (the raid leader letting the visiting mage know that we cleared all the mobs in order to pick up the epic drops - which the mage heartily endorsed).
At 7:10pm we faced the Twilight Enclave and the two dragons, Valiona and Therelion. The visiting mage said he'd done this fight before. All of our own group had been here last week so we knew what strategy we were following. We were ready.
I have to admit that for our first three attempts we looked pretty bad. Wild wasn't playing well. In part I was having some mouse issues, but it was also Wild having a hard time getting up to raiding speed for some reason. Wild wasn't the only one having trouble, either.
We pulled things together on our fourth pull, getting past the first phase and bringing the dragons down to 45% before wiping. It was our best attempt ever, and that stoked us up. On our 5th and 6th attempts we did even better, achieving matching progress at 34%. We seemed to have a handle on all of the mechanics except for the strafing run one of the dragons do that blankets a third of the room with fire. Too many of us were getting killed by that.
We didn't know it at the time, but we had reached our peak for the night. We kept going, making five more attempts, but we got sloppy again. It was never one thing, but on every attempt something went wrong. If there were a common issue, though, it would be how to handle the spell Blackout. Wild has talked about it before; yet after many, many, attempts we were still not quite sure how to best handle it. Done badly, raiders take a lot more damage than they should, and end up out of position, and that causes even more damage. Healers were not exempt from making those same snafus, but we also had to try to heal through all that extra damage.
We were tired and disappointed with the way the night ended, but we could take solace in the fact that we made more progress than we ever have on this encounter. We'd never gotten this pair of dragons down to even half health before, and we'd gotten them to 34% on this night.
Wild was happy with his overall healing. With the help of the new Dark Mending staff Wild was matching the pally healer's output heal for heal. However, that bump up in pure output had come with some sacrifice in mana regen. This was Wild's first real chance to compare results from last week's BT to this week's. On the longer attempts Wild was getting down to mana fumes, even after an innervate and mana pot, and even with Wild's mana pool being at it's highest level ever. I can make some adjustments as far as when Wild casts Innervate, in order to be able to get a second one in. It might be that that will correct things. But it was very obvious that Wild was regening mana much slower than before, and that may require some reforging stats on some of his gear. Wild loves the higher heals he can achieve with the extra mastery stats he was trying out, too, but the lower mana regen is a real concern. Wild passed on a necklace that has dropped two weeks in a row because they were ilevel upgrades for others. Since that necklace has +spi on it and Wild's current necklace does not, he will likely roll for it the next time it drops.
It's been a busy real life week and the rest of the Wild family has seen very little action. That has not only made Java and Sista restless, it has JB wondering if she's ever going to get the chance to reach her level 85 goal. It's affected Wild, too, who had to buy flasks and food buffs for the Friday raid because he'd not given himself time to fish or time for JB to make the flasks. Hopefully, this will change over the weekend. But we'll see.
Wild got into two raids this week, the first week that has happened in quite some time. In a "back to the future" moment, Wild joined an MM2 guild raid full of members that had departed the MM guild, most of whom had previously departed the FS guild. This cabal of friends of Wild are a fun bunch and love raiding, but as Wild has noted many times that fun loving approach includes a certain ambivalence to being on time. On the Thursday night MM2 raid, we were 15 minutes late starting invites, which for this group would be considered pretty good. Our "6pm" raid got started at about 7pm, which was also par for the course. We didn't make out first pull until close to 7:30pm, two hours after Wild had logged in and 90 minutes after the official raid start time. No knock on the raid, it's just how things work, and the raid itself was a joy to be a part of.
For the MM Friday raid we are nearly always spot on in both starting invites and starting on time. In fact, last week we had more guildies wanting to raid than we had spots for, which made starting on time even easier. On this particular Friday night, though, we didn't quite live up to our normal timeliness.
At the 5:45pm start time invites went out as expected. We had nine guildies signed up for the raid, with eight of us in game when invites went out. The ninth raider had already let the raid leader know his RL job schedule had changed and that he could be late. There were no excess of guildies wanting to raid, either. The eight of us made up the list of every guildie in game. Well, our ninth raider wasn't that late, logging in at 6pm. We canvassed our friends list to find a tenth raider, but did not turn up anyone who was available. So, at 6:30pm we went looking for a PUG. We were after a ranged DPS, and came up with a mage with i355 gear. He said that he often PUGed because his guild rarely had room for him on their two raid groups. You never know what you are getting with a stranger, but he would do well in the raid, including offering his own experience and ideas without appearing pushy or superior.
Despite the delays, we still made our first pull by 6:45pm, one hour after raid invites and 45 minutes late in getting started. The Horde did not have Tol Barad this night, so we bypassed Baradin Hold and went straight to Bastion of Twilight.
We made up for some of our lost time by burning through the trash mobs in BT. It took us no time at all to reach the Halfus encounter. The trio of dragons that waited was a fairly easy set (Scion, Time Warden, Slate), especially compared with the group the raid had to face last week. We needed only the first attempt to bring Halfus down. There was another quick jaunt through more trash mobs (the raid leader letting the visiting mage know that we cleared all the mobs in order to pick up the epic drops - which the mage heartily endorsed).
At 7:10pm we faced the Twilight Enclave and the two dragons, Valiona and Therelion. The visiting mage said he'd done this fight before. All of our own group had been here last week so we knew what strategy we were following. We were ready.
I have to admit that for our first three attempts we looked pretty bad. Wild wasn't playing well. In part I was having some mouse issues, but it was also Wild having a hard time getting up to raiding speed for some reason. Wild wasn't the only one having trouble, either.
We pulled things together on our fourth pull, getting past the first phase and bringing the dragons down to 45% before wiping. It was our best attempt ever, and that stoked us up. On our 5th and 6th attempts we did even better, achieving matching progress at 34%. We seemed to have a handle on all of the mechanics except for the strafing run one of the dragons do that blankets a third of the room with fire. Too many of us were getting killed by that.
We didn't know it at the time, but we had reached our peak for the night. We kept going, making five more attempts, but we got sloppy again. It was never one thing, but on every attempt something went wrong. If there were a common issue, though, it would be how to handle the spell Blackout. Wild has talked about it before; yet after many, many, attempts we were still not quite sure how to best handle it. Done badly, raiders take a lot more damage than they should, and end up out of position, and that causes even more damage. Healers were not exempt from making those same snafus, but we also had to try to heal through all that extra damage.
We were tired and disappointed with the way the night ended, but we could take solace in the fact that we made more progress than we ever have on this encounter. We'd never gotten this pair of dragons down to even half health before, and we'd gotten them to 34% on this night.
Wild was happy with his overall healing. With the help of the new Dark Mending staff Wild was matching the pally healer's output heal for heal. However, that bump up in pure output had come with some sacrifice in mana regen. This was Wild's first real chance to compare results from last week's BT to this week's. On the longer attempts Wild was getting down to mana fumes, even after an innervate and mana pot, and even with Wild's mana pool being at it's highest level ever. I can make some adjustments as far as when Wild casts Innervate, in order to be able to get a second one in. It might be that that will correct things. But it was very obvious that Wild was regening mana much slower than before, and that may require some reforging stats on some of his gear. Wild loves the higher heals he can achieve with the extra mastery stats he was trying out, too, but the lower mana regen is a real concern. Wild passed on a necklace that has dropped two weeks in a row because they were ilevel upgrades for others. Since that necklace has +spi on it and Wild's current necklace does not, he will likely roll for it the next time it drops.
It's been a busy real life week and the rest of the Wild family has seen very little action. That has not only made Java and Sista restless, it has JB wondering if she's ever going to get the chance to reach her level 85 goal. It's affected Wild, too, who had to buy flasks and food buffs for the Friday raid because he'd not given himself time to fish or time for JB to make the flasks. Hopefully, this will change over the weekend. But we'll see.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Thursday (14 Apr) - Wild Considers a Second Raid
Thursday (14 Apr) - Wild Considers a Second Raid
Bd, long time friend, raid leader for FS, and then raid leader for MM, and now co-Guild Leader and raid leader for MM2, invited Wild to raid with MM2 via the raid calendar. Wild saw it on Tuesday, I think, with the raid planned for Thursday night. The intended target was Throne of the Four Winds (T4W, or maybe just TW; doesn't seem like an acronym has been settled on for this one yet). Wild had already signed on for the weekly Friday night raid with MM, but our target for that raid was Bastion of Twilight (BT) so there was no conflict. From a long list of invitees, only 4 had accepted the MM2 raid invite as of Tuesday.
Wild signed up as tentative for the MM2 raid since we are getting busier with our trip preparations; plus, I wasn't sure if there would be enough folks showing up for the raid. After all, this was the first raid invite Wild had received since the new guild came into being.
Well, our RV was still in the shop (it was just in for a "check-up" but when has a repairman ever said about anything in for a check-up "It's fine, no problems!" Of course they found problems, and we couldn't bring it home yet. However, that did give Wild a chance to check out the MM2 raid.
Wild logged on around 5:30pm for the 6pm planned raid. I had time to read up on the strategy and look at the video of the encounter. Wild has prepared for the TW raid twice before with MM, but both times we ended up going somewhere else. I sorta had a feel for the fight, but that means nothing until actually getting in there. Bd almost immediately whispered Wild, "WILD!!" Bd is one of those guys who has something to say to everyone who logs on. I like that. Wild said hi back at him. Bd then asked whether MM was raiding this night. "Nope," I told him, "I'm locked on Friday for both BT and BH, but if you're heading for TW tonight I'm available if you need me."
Bd was very happy to hear that. Invites started around 6:15pm, and the number had swelled to nine raiders with Wild joining the raid. While we waited for the 10th, Wild had to go through setting up another vent access for the MM2 guild. I think Wild can enter the vent channels of four different guilds now. There were no total strangers in the raid, although there were four that I had not raided with before. Bd was the only raider that I knew well. No others of the cabal were present.
Bd was setting things up as we arrived at Throne of the Four Winds, which is located at the southwest end of Uldum. The entrance is at the top of the center (and tallest) spire. Bd divided the raid into four groups. Wild was in a group with only one other member, a warlock. As players chatted, Wild learned that this group had made one prior attempt on TW last week. They'd gotten one boss down to around 40%, and were looking to improve on that. So eight of the ten of us had seen this fight and the strategy being used. Wild and one other raider (a DPS) were the only rookies.
The Throne of the Four Winds area is made up of five platforms. The center platform holds the final boss, which we would not be dealing with, at least not yet. The raid entered the instance at the south platform.The three other platforms hold three genies:
West: Anshal
East: Rohash
North: Nezir
All of the platforms are high in the air with nothing but a long fall and death if one falls or is knocked off them. The platforms are linked together, however, by wind tunnels. There is nothing physical to stand on. Just step to the base of the current of air, and whooosh! the wind carries you to another platform.
Like every raid dungeon, there are a whole series of things to remember, kill, avoid, run to, run away from, etc. What makes this fight even more challenging is that it is actually three fights in one. All three genies have to be engaged at all times, as a genie left alone will immediately cast a raid wiping spell.
Each group of raiders is assigned a platform. The platforms are too far apart for groups to help each other, unless we use the wind tunnels. Each boss has it's own special abilities and spells, and each has an Ultimate spell that they will use several times during the fight. The three genies must all be killed within one minute of each other, so the DPSers have to coordinate to achieve that.
Since Wild was new to this Bd assigned me to the slightly less complicated East platform - Rohash. Wild and a warlock had Rohash all to ourselves. At least for a time.
It was close to 7:30pm when we made our first pull. The tank on the west platform counted down and then engaged Anshal. Of course, Wild couldn't see that happening. On Wild's platform, the warlock opened fire on Rohash. Rohash stayed at ranged distance from us and dropped AoEs on the two of us which Wild had no difficulty healing through. Three tornadoes spawned and started slowly moving in our direction. The raid leader called out "Forty energy." Wild and the lock moved around to avoid the tornadoes while Rohash kept up his Slicing Gale AoE. "Sixty energy!" Hmm, this isn't so bad - so far. Wild's worst problem was forcing himself not to try to heal raiders who were far out of range on other platforms. Healer instincts desperately wanted to help out those banged up raiders.
Rohash began casting his first Wind Blast. "Seventy energy!" Wild had been warned about the Wind Blast, but the video had not shown the actual spell being cast, so Wild wasn't sure what to look for. Wild also stupidly got his "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" mixed up. A spewing fire hose of wind erupted from Rohash and he then began turning in a clockwise direction. Wild ran right into it.
Man, did that hurt! Wild got turned around and moving away from it, but he was in serious trouble. "Eighty energy! Switch platforms!" called out the raid leader. As mentioned before, each boss has an Ultimate ability. It can only be used when they reach ninety energy. The deadliest Ultimate comes from Nezir on the North platform. It's called Sleet Storm. Since the damage from that ability is spread between all the raiders on the North platform, it is critical to have as many raiders as possible on that platform when Sleet Storm hits. No genie can be left alone, though. The warlock on Wild's platform raced to the wind tunnel and left Wild alone with Rohash. The genie's hit ninety energy. Rohash's Ultimate is Hurricane. Wild was lifted into the air by a swirling black vortex of wind. Wild's health was only at 50%, and his instant heals had no affect even as the Hurricane continued to do additional damage.
Hurricane ended and Wild began falling - a long, long way. Wild shifted form in the air, turning into cat form. Everyone knows that a cat always lands on it's feet, and that cat's can survive all kinds of falls. Even klutzy Wild couldn't mess that up. Wild landed lightly on his paws and shifted to normal form for healing just as the warlock returned to the platform. The lock was near death, having barely survived Nezir's Sleet Storm, and Wild was on the far side of the platform. We didn't make it. Wild and the lock died. Rohash, now all alone, wiped the rest of the raid.
We made four more attempts with the same strategy and group makeup. Wild gained confidence and began to feel like he could handle his end of the fight. However, the paladin healer on Anshal was having a tough time. She had been in Wild's shoes last week, so she was having to learn a new role just like Wild was. Healing, she said, wasn't her problem. But she was having a terrible time making the switch from one platform to the other.
After five tries the raid leader decided to make a change. He swapped groups with Wild and the pally healer. The pally healer went to Rohash and the role she had last week. Wild got the infinitely more difficult job of healing the Anshal group as well as healing the Nezir groups during Nezir's Ultimate. Another new role to figure out.
On attempt #6 Wild was on the Anshal platform, along with a tank and four DPSers. The tank started the attack. Healing was modest at first. Anshal cast Soothing Breeze, dropping twisting circles of green light on the floor that Wild completely forgot he should stay away from. Wild moved with the tank to a new position away from the green circles of light. Anshal then cast Nurture, which spawned pretty little flowers. So cute! Then they pulled up their roots and attacked! The tank struggled to get aggro on them all as Wild tried to both heal and get two flowers out of his face. He never saw the green twisty thing, stepped into it, and was Silenced. No healing. The tank died. Well, that was another thing to tuck away and remember for the next attempt.
Wild and his group survived the first ramp up to 80 energy on the next attempt, getting through the initial attack, the position move, the flower attack, the avoiding the green twisty things, and the return to the original position where the wind tunnel was. The raid leader called out the 80 energy and everyone on the platform took the wind tunnel to Nezir. Oh no, no one was left on the Anshal platform! Not to worry. While Wild's group was changing platforms, so were the tank and healer on the Nezir platform. Nezir has a stacking debuff that eventually kills if not removed. Changing platforms removes the debuff, so the two groups switch places at each Ultimate.
When Wild landed on the Nezir platform he landed in a pool of ice which greatly slowed him down. The tank had rushed to engage Nezir before Nezir could start whaling away on the DPS, and got out of range of Wild. As Wild struggled to process all this new information Nezir reached his Ultimate and cast Sleet Storm. Wild couldn't keep up with all that damage and we wiped.
After several more attempts, Wild was getting better. He learned to use his Barkskin for additional damage protection when jumping to Nezir's platform, and to immediately veer to the left when he hit the ground to avoid the inevitable first patch of ice. Wild also shifted to Tree Form for that initial wave of damage, and then worked hard to keep in position to heal the tank, raid heal most of the raid taking Sleet Storm damage, and not get caught in the cone of near instant death called Permafrost. We could not put it all together, however. When one platform group was doing well, another would have trouble. The timing on this fight is crucial, and we just couldn't make it work.
In total we made eleven attempts. We did not get as far as the group had done last week, so it was a bit disappointing for them. As for Wild, he got a wealth of practice in two different roles. It's now just a matter of putting all the pieces together. Wild's main concern is how to effectively heal the seven raiders on Nezir's platform during Sleet Storm. Wild needs to time getting on that wind tunnel as quickly as possible, to get those heals going sooner. He needs to get better at the dance back and forth he does with the tank to stay out of Permafrost attacks, as well. Wild was never hit by it, but lost healing chances by not moving properly.
Anyway, it was a great night for learning a new encounter. The MM2 group will go at it again Friday night, but Wild made sure Bd understood that I was committed to the MM BT raid on that night. Bd thanked Wild profusely for joining his raid, even for the one night, and couldn't help musing what it would be like for Wild to be in the MM2 guild with him. That's not going to happen. But as long as Wild is available on the nights MM2 raids, I'll try to be there if they need Wild. I don't see that working long term, though, as every raid leader prefers to have his core group there on both raid nights. How long it will take before Bd has 10 core raiders? Don't know, but Wild will happily help out until then.
Rohash
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Tuesday Night (12 Apr) - Paladin Twins
Tuesday Night (12 Apr) - Paladin Twins
Hunter Fortress was short a hunter for the weekly assault on the Alliance, but that is a temporary situation and the team should be back to full strength next week.
Speak, Bean, and Shevils continued to terrorize their opponents, as we do each week, winning both Warsong Gulch matches. Speak led both matches in killing blows and damage, but Shevils has been a little off lately and could do no better than fourth. Bean continues to gain experience, getting the fire hose treatment in learning pvp combat, something it took Wildshard literally years to figure out (and still learning). Bean is fearless and aggressive, a combination that makes her deadly when she has a target in her sights, but is still working on getting her targets tagged more quickly and consistently.
The Paladin Twins, Kire and Java, then took center stage. The pair took on Stratholme for our first dungeon, clearing through it with ease. The same group seemed to want to go again, and for our second random dungeon we got Stratholme again. Although this time, it was Stratholme Live. This was a treat for Java and the Wild family as a whole. No one in the Wild family had ever done the "Live" section of Strat. The "Live" section is just that - all of the mobs are living beings. In the other part of Strat, the part I am used to, the humanoid mobs are Undead/Scourge. Hence Strat "Live" and Strat "Dead."
We started in what looked like Strat "Dead" but Kire opened a door that led into an area that looked nothing like the dead side of strat. Instead of the dark, dingy, and dirty streets and falling apart structures of the dead side, the Live side was almost blindingly bright and clean. The look and feel and even the layout was very much like what the Scarlet Monastery looks like, up to and including the human hostiles we were facing. That makes sense, because Strat was once one of the great cities of the Humans. That changed when Arthas destroyed most of it. The scourge took over the greater part of the city (the dead side) and the Scarlet Crusade took over the smaller Live side.
Before we even got started, two of the group, including the healer, decided to leave. That left Kire, Java, and a warrior. After clearing two groups of Scarlet Crusaders, Kire felt that we could three man the place if we wanted to. Sure, we agreed, let's give it a try!
It was awesome! We plowed through that place killing everything in our path and downing bosses like they were trash mobs. Kire and Java could heal themselves, of course, and between the two of us the warrior rarely got hit as we kept aggro off him. In his excitement at seeing something new, Java forgot all about the many quests he'd picked up at the start. When we finished up Kire helped Java locate the various items I'd failed to grab on our push through the dungeon. One thing I have to keep reminding myself of is that many of these "classic" dungeons have had their maps upgraded. In vanilla WoW the dungeon maps were so convoluted as to be almost impossible to navigate (Wild's opinion). The new maps are much cleaner and easier to follow. An even better improvement is that the location of each quest requirement is placed on the map as well. Java just has to remember to look at that map!
Java's DPS showed serious improvement now that he has his new polearm. Java was previously averaging 300-350 dps. On the Tuesday night Strat runs Java averaged 497 dps. Kire, having to handle tanking duties without a healer and only three total players, had to be a little more careful, but still came in with 405 dps. The warrior breezed through behind us with 228 dps.
We weren't done, yet. Time for some battlegrounds pvp.
Alterac Valley - The random BG finder sent us to the 40 man per team AV to get us started in a big way. This was only the second time Java as been in an AV battle. Java and Kire stayed together as much as possible, but in a battle as vast as AV there were many times we got separated. With the many objectives that count toward victory it's always been a bit confusing to tell who was winning or losing. The goal is to kill the opposing npc General, but I think a team can win without that kill as well. That seems to be what happened in this match. Java was actually inside the building attacking the opposing General (along with many others) when the match ended and we lost. Kire could probably explain this better than Java. One interesting tidbit that I never knew about AV - all the Wing Commanders (npcs) in AV are named after characters in "Top Gun." For example, the character "Maverick" played by Tom Cruise has an AV npc counterpart named "Mulverick."
Eye of the Storm - Java is also still learning the ins and outs of this 15 player battleground. The alliance team was very disorganized and so spread out that half the time Java didn't know where he should be attacking or defending next. Even when Java and Kire were able to hook up together we were always out manned and outgunned. That didn't stop us from wading into battle, and the horde always paid a heavy price, but most of the time we could not dislodge them. It was another loss.
Arathi Basin - Ah, finally, a place Java knows and understands! Another 15 player battlegound, this match is a matter of controlling the most bases in order to accumulate enough resource points to win. In one match we just murdered them, winning 1600 pts to their 750. Can't remember ever seeing one so lopsided. The second match was a lot closer. The Horde gave us fits through about two-thirds of the fight. Java defended the Stables for a time, usually with just a priest and a rogue for support. The Horde launched several assaults on us with as many as six attackers. Java kept them very busy while the rogue sliced and diced and the priest kept all three of us alive. No one took the stables from us. Kire led many of the assaults on enemy positions. Every few minutes Java would see an announcement: "Kire is attacking the Mines! Kire is attacking the Blacksmiths! Kire is attacking a submarine sandwich!" Ok, maybe that last one was Java. :P
All in all a fantastic night - 2 WSGs, 2 Strat runs, 2 ABs, 1 AV, and 1 Eye. Wow. Kire is now level 52, I believe, and Java is at 54.
Hunter Fortress was short a hunter for the weekly assault on the Alliance, but that is a temporary situation and the team should be back to full strength next week.
Speak, Bean, and Shevils continued to terrorize their opponents, as we do each week, winning both Warsong Gulch matches. Speak led both matches in killing blows and damage, but Shevils has been a little off lately and could do no better than fourth. Bean continues to gain experience, getting the fire hose treatment in learning pvp combat, something it took Wildshard literally years to figure out (and still learning). Bean is fearless and aggressive, a combination that makes her deadly when she has a target in her sights, but is still working on getting her targets tagged more quickly and consistently.
The Paladin Twins, Kire and Java, then took center stage. The pair took on Stratholme for our first dungeon, clearing through it with ease. The same group seemed to want to go again, and for our second random dungeon we got Stratholme again. Although this time, it was Stratholme Live. This was a treat for Java and the Wild family as a whole. No one in the Wild family had ever done the "Live" section of Strat. The "Live" section is just that - all of the mobs are living beings. In the other part of Strat, the part I am used to, the humanoid mobs are Undead/Scourge. Hence Strat "Live" and Strat "Dead."
We started in what looked like Strat "Dead" but Kire opened a door that led into an area that looked nothing like the dead side of strat. Instead of the dark, dingy, and dirty streets and falling apart structures of the dead side, the Live side was almost blindingly bright and clean. The look and feel and even the layout was very much like what the Scarlet Monastery looks like, up to and including the human hostiles we were facing. That makes sense, because Strat was once one of the great cities of the Humans. That changed when Arthas destroyed most of it. The scourge took over the greater part of the city (the dead side) and the Scarlet Crusade took over the smaller Live side.
Before we even got started, two of the group, including the healer, decided to leave. That left Kire, Java, and a warrior. After clearing two groups of Scarlet Crusaders, Kire felt that we could three man the place if we wanted to. Sure, we agreed, let's give it a try!
It was awesome! We plowed through that place killing everything in our path and downing bosses like they were trash mobs. Kire and Java could heal themselves, of course, and between the two of us the warrior rarely got hit as we kept aggro off him. In his excitement at seeing something new, Java forgot all about the many quests he'd picked up at the start. When we finished up Kire helped Java locate the various items I'd failed to grab on our push through the dungeon. One thing I have to keep reminding myself of is that many of these "classic" dungeons have had their maps upgraded. In vanilla WoW the dungeon maps were so convoluted as to be almost impossible to navigate (Wild's opinion). The new maps are much cleaner and easier to follow. An even better improvement is that the location of each quest requirement is placed on the map as well. Java just has to remember to look at that map!
Java's DPS showed serious improvement now that he has his new polearm. Java was previously averaging 300-350 dps. On the Tuesday night Strat runs Java averaged 497 dps. Kire, having to handle tanking duties without a healer and only three total players, had to be a little more careful, but still came in with 405 dps. The warrior breezed through behind us with 228 dps.
We weren't done, yet. Time for some battlegrounds pvp.
Alterac Valley - The random BG finder sent us to the 40 man per team AV to get us started in a big way. This was only the second time Java as been in an AV battle. Java and Kire stayed together as much as possible, but in a battle as vast as AV there were many times we got separated. With the many objectives that count toward victory it's always been a bit confusing to tell who was winning or losing. The goal is to kill the opposing npc General, but I think a team can win without that kill as well. That seems to be what happened in this match. Java was actually inside the building attacking the opposing General (along with many others) when the match ended and we lost. Kire could probably explain this better than Java. One interesting tidbit that I never knew about AV - all the Wing Commanders (npcs) in AV are named after characters in "Top Gun." For example, the character "Maverick" played by Tom Cruise has an AV npc counterpart named "Mulverick."
Eye of the Storm - Java is also still learning the ins and outs of this 15 player battleground. The alliance team was very disorganized and so spread out that half the time Java didn't know where he should be attacking or defending next. Even when Java and Kire were able to hook up together we were always out manned and outgunned. That didn't stop us from wading into battle, and the horde always paid a heavy price, but most of the time we could not dislodge them. It was another loss.
Arathi Basin - Ah, finally, a place Java knows and understands! Another 15 player battlegound, this match is a matter of controlling the most bases in order to accumulate enough resource points to win. In one match we just murdered them, winning 1600 pts to their 750. Can't remember ever seeing one so lopsided. The second match was a lot closer. The Horde gave us fits through about two-thirds of the fight. Java defended the Stables for a time, usually with just a priest and a rogue for support. The Horde launched several assaults on us with as many as six attackers. Java kept them very busy while the rogue sliced and diced and the priest kept all three of us alive. No one took the stables from us. Kire led many of the assaults on enemy positions. Every few minutes Java would see an announcement: "Kire is attacking the Mines! Kire is attacking the Blacksmiths! Kire is attacking a submarine sandwich!" Ok, maybe that last one was Java. :P
All in all a fantastic night - 2 WSGs, 2 Strat runs, 2 ABs, 1 AV, and 1 Eye. Wow. Kire is now level 52, I believe, and Java is at 54.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday (11 Apr) - The Neverending Dungeon
Monday (11 Apr) - The Neverending Dungeon
A few days ago Java was trying to decide on a new weapon. There were at least two upgrades available on the Auction House at reasonable prices. Java had just changed weapons a week ago (a nice boss drop from the Scarlet Monastery). The weapon enchant for it, though, cost Java 200g, far more than the value of the weapon itsel, but essential to have. Every time Java upgrades his weapon, he's going to need another enchant for it. And based on the pace of Java's leveling, he could be changing weapons frequently. Java was getting nasty looks from Lost about the cost (Lost learned those "looks" from Happy, I'm sure). There needs to be a better way.
Kire came to the rescue. There is pair of quests that can be done in the pvp battleground of Alterac Valley, and the reward for doing those quests is the polearm [Ice Barbed Spear]. Like it's name says, a polearm is a type of spear, but instead of a pointed end it has something more dangerous - such as an axe-head - at it's tip. This weapon is good enough to last Java hopefully until he heads into Outland at level 58-60.
You have to be level 51 to get the quests for [Ice Barbed Spear]. Java was still level 50, and only barely that, being only 16% of the way to level 51. And not having anything more than a smidgen of rested experience meant it would take twice as long to get that xp (either that or wait a couple of days doing nothing to let rested xp accumulate again). Java was already getting fidgety and decided to get into a random dungeon to knock off at least a few percentage points.
Java went to the Flight Master and headed for parts north, starting in the Arathi Highlands but ultimately headed for the Plaguelands for some more questing. Java was still in the air when the call came for the random dungeon.
Java was thinking Zul'Farak again, or maybe Stratholme, but he was still thinking like a level 49. Java found himself in a dark cavern with four other players - the place was Blackrock Depths (BRD), with a suggested player level range of 53-56. BRD is huge, and takes a really, really dedicated group to clear. There are TWENTY-ONE boss encounters.
The first thing Java heard when he arrived at the beginning of BRD was, "Hey, how'd we get back to the beginning?" So, this was an dungeon already in progress, then, Java figured. Not so hard to believe given the scope of this place. Java picked up some quests, although there were some quests that Java wasn't high enough level to get. We then marched off. It took all five of us to find our way around, and we backtracked quite a bit, and we got lost more than a couple of times. Java was lost most, if not all, of the time. Every now and then, though, some memory from Wild would pop in Java's head. I think Java was the first "replacement" player in the group, but that fifth player came and went pretty regularly. Our warlock wore down and left about 30 minutes in (plus whatever time he'd put in before Java showed up), but the ones after him did not last very long at all. They'd stay for a couple of pulls, and I could sense the wheels turning in their heads. Where am I? What boss are they on? Have they even killed any bosses yet? I'm totally lost. What am I even doing in this place? Leaves dungeon. Java saw that fifth player change five times. The other four of us hung in there.
We only wiped twice, though. Once was in the Grim Guzzler. Yes, we decided to turn that place on it's ear and kill everyone in it for fun and profit. And the three optional boss encounters in there. The patrons of the place are not hostile - that is, until we started trouble. We only wanted trouble at the bar, but the whole room turned hostile and someone in our group - everybody turn and point at our tank - strayed a little too close and the whole room full of people started hitting us over the head with bottles and chairs. Sigh. All that wasted ale.
The second wipe. Do we really want to talk about wipes? We should just move on. Ok, ok. It was in the Summoning Room. That room that kinda looks like the Balrog cavern in LOTR (and if you need to know what a balrog is, or what LOTR stands for ... ) only without the bridge. The bad guys didn't come climbing down from the ceiling, but they sure blanketed the floor of the place. We had to set some torches while killing grunches of mobs, and well, Java got just a little too enthusiastic and pulled ... oh ... maybe a third of the room. Java was pretty pleased with his rather magnificent DPS at that moment - that is, until he died and the group wiped. The mage asked Java why he did it. All I could say was that it didn't look like there were that many mobs. The mage laughed and made a one letter comment: "v" (hitting "v" on the keyboard turns on the over-the-head sign on all mobs, making them much more visible).
Our group did eventually limp out of there, eyes squinting from the unaccustomed light. We did kill the final boss, too, which got our random dungeon completion. Looking at the list of encounters, Java can say definitely that he was in on fourteen of those 21 boss encounters. It was likely more than that, but those 14 were ones I was sure of. Whether we got all 21 killed Java will never know.
In the end Java did reach level 51, and 26% of the way to 52 to boot. Java also got two weapon drops that puts Java's current weapon to shame. Kire, look up [Angerforge's Battleaxe] and [Flame Wrath]. Java now has both of those, and they are just so cool. And Java can wear them right now, instead of waiting to get those quests done. I know I know, sigh, the Barbed Spear is overall better than them both. Not to mention the better enchant it can use. Wild can make the enchants, too. Too bad those other two weapons would still require the 200g enchant.
Monday Night - it was a real life girls night out, so us boys had our own party. Java couldn't help thinking about getting that new weapon, and so Java made the long journey to the Alterac Valley encampment in the Hillsbrad Foothills. Java picked up the quest "The Battle of Alterac" and then signed up for the Alterac Valley battleground. This is a 40 man BG and Java figured it would take a very long time, if at all, to get invited to it.
Java planned to head back to the Plaguelands and quest until the BG popped or until he dragged himself off to bed. Fifteen minutes after signing on for the BG, Java got his invite.
What was really cool was that this was not an "in progress" battle, which is often the case with large scale pvp battlegrounds. Java got in at the very beginning. Alterac Valley (AV) is a huge place all on it's own, fit for a battle of eighty horde and alliance, as well as each team having 600 more npcs to add to the fight as well. AV has a number of quests that can be done and many objectives players can work to achieve, including killing the main npc leader.
Java stayed with a core group whose intent was to battle the horde down the entire length of AV, gain access to their base, and kill the horde npc leader. Other groups attacked other objectives. The horde fought hard, killing off our group several times, but each time we returned we made it deeper into the horde zone. Java got very confused at one point, riding hell for leather - in the wrong direction - when Wild's memories of horde assaults popped up in Java's head. Turn around, Java my boy, he told himself, you're Alliance. The Horde base you are attacking is in the OTHER direction!
The horde had their defenders at that last stronghold, and Java had a blast charging their defenses and battling to get past them. As the horde npc defenders dwindled, the horde defense began crumbling. More alliance joined in as well, and we cleared out the horde. The group of alliance swelled further and we assaulted the horde npc leader. The fight went long enough for Java to die (along with many others) and come back to join the fight again. In the end we killed him and Java had his first AV win! Java made level 51 and got a good chunk of the way to level 52.
Java completed the AV pair of quests, and right now is wearing his [Ice Barbed Spear]. Java decided that the Massacre enchant was what he wanted on it, and Wild crafted it for him. The only tiny disappointment is that the spear is rather plain looking. But that won't really matter to all those hostiles Java will be sticking that spear into.
A few days ago Java was trying to decide on a new weapon. There were at least two upgrades available on the Auction House at reasonable prices. Java had just changed weapons a week ago (a nice boss drop from the Scarlet Monastery). The weapon enchant for it, though, cost Java 200g, far more than the value of the weapon itsel, but essential to have. Every time Java upgrades his weapon, he's going to need another enchant for it. And based on the pace of Java's leveling, he could be changing weapons frequently. Java was getting nasty looks from Lost about the cost (Lost learned those "looks" from Happy, I'm sure). There needs to be a better way.
Kire came to the rescue. There is pair of quests that can be done in the pvp battleground of Alterac Valley, and the reward for doing those quests is the polearm [Ice Barbed Spear]. Like it's name says, a polearm is a type of spear, but instead of a pointed end it has something more dangerous - such as an axe-head - at it's tip. This weapon is good enough to last Java hopefully until he heads into Outland at level 58-60.
You have to be level 51 to get the quests for [Ice Barbed Spear]. Java was still level 50, and only barely that, being only 16% of the way to level 51. And not having anything more than a smidgen of rested experience meant it would take twice as long to get that xp (either that or wait a couple of days doing nothing to let rested xp accumulate again). Java was already getting fidgety and decided to get into a random dungeon to knock off at least a few percentage points.
Java went to the Flight Master and headed for parts north, starting in the Arathi Highlands but ultimately headed for the Plaguelands for some more questing. Java was still in the air when the call came for the random dungeon.
Java was thinking Zul'Farak again, or maybe Stratholme, but he was still thinking like a level 49. Java found himself in a dark cavern with four other players - the place was Blackrock Depths (BRD), with a suggested player level range of 53-56. BRD is huge, and takes a really, really dedicated group to clear. There are TWENTY-ONE boss encounters.
The first thing Java heard when he arrived at the beginning of BRD was, "Hey, how'd we get back to the beginning?" So, this was an dungeon already in progress, then, Java figured. Not so hard to believe given the scope of this place. Java picked up some quests, although there were some quests that Java wasn't high enough level to get. We then marched off. It took all five of us to find our way around, and we backtracked quite a bit, and we got lost more than a couple of times. Java was lost most, if not all, of the time. Every now and then, though, some memory from Wild would pop in Java's head. I think Java was the first "replacement" player in the group, but that fifth player came and went pretty regularly. Our warlock wore down and left about 30 minutes in (plus whatever time he'd put in before Java showed up), but the ones after him did not last very long at all. They'd stay for a couple of pulls, and I could sense the wheels turning in their heads. Where am I? What boss are they on? Have they even killed any bosses yet? I'm totally lost. What am I even doing in this place? Leaves dungeon. Java saw that fifth player change five times. The other four of us hung in there.
We only wiped twice, though. Once was in the Grim Guzzler. Yes, we decided to turn that place on it's ear and kill everyone in it for fun and profit. And the three optional boss encounters in there. The patrons of the place are not hostile - that is, until we started trouble. We only wanted trouble at the bar, but the whole room turned hostile and someone in our group - everybody turn and point at our tank - strayed a little too close and the whole room full of people started hitting us over the head with bottles and chairs. Sigh. All that wasted ale.
The second wipe. Do we really want to talk about wipes? We should just move on. Ok, ok. It was in the Summoning Room. That room that kinda looks like the Balrog cavern in LOTR (and if you need to know what a balrog is, or what LOTR stands for ... ) only without the bridge. The bad guys didn't come climbing down from the ceiling, but they sure blanketed the floor of the place. We had to set some torches while killing grunches of mobs, and well, Java got just a little too enthusiastic and pulled ... oh ... maybe a third of the room. Java was pretty pleased with his rather magnificent DPS at that moment - that is, until he died and the group wiped. The mage asked Java why he did it. All I could say was that it didn't look like there were that many mobs. The mage laughed and made a one letter comment: "v" (hitting "v" on the keyboard turns on the over-the-head sign on all mobs, making them much more visible).
Our group did eventually limp out of there, eyes squinting from the unaccustomed light. We did kill the final boss, too, which got our random dungeon completion. Looking at the list of encounters, Java can say definitely that he was in on fourteen of those 21 boss encounters. It was likely more than that, but those 14 were ones I was sure of. Whether we got all 21 killed Java will never know.
In the end Java did reach level 51, and 26% of the way to 52 to boot. Java also got two weapon drops that puts Java's current weapon to shame. Kire, look up [Angerforge's Battleaxe] and [Flame Wrath]. Java now has both of those, and they are just so cool. And Java can wear them right now, instead of waiting to get those quests done. I know I know, sigh, the Barbed Spear is overall better than them both. Not to mention the better enchant it can use. Wild can make the enchants, too. Too bad those other two weapons would still require the 200g enchant.
Monday Night - it was a real life girls night out, so us boys had our own party. Java couldn't help thinking about getting that new weapon, and so Java made the long journey to the Alterac Valley encampment in the Hillsbrad Foothills. Java picked up the quest "The Battle of Alterac" and then signed up for the Alterac Valley battleground. This is a 40 man BG and Java figured it would take a very long time, if at all, to get invited to it.
Java planned to head back to the Plaguelands and quest until the BG popped or until he dragged himself off to bed. Fifteen minutes after signing on for the BG, Java got his invite.
What was really cool was that this was not an "in progress" battle, which is often the case with large scale pvp battlegrounds. Java got in at the very beginning. Alterac Valley (AV) is a huge place all on it's own, fit for a battle of eighty horde and alliance, as well as each team having 600 more npcs to add to the fight as well. AV has a number of quests that can be done and many objectives players can work to achieve, including killing the main npc leader.
Java stayed with a core group whose intent was to battle the horde down the entire length of AV, gain access to their base, and kill the horde npc leader. Other groups attacked other objectives. The horde fought hard, killing off our group several times, but each time we returned we made it deeper into the horde zone. Java got very confused at one point, riding hell for leather - in the wrong direction - when Wild's memories of horde assaults popped up in Java's head. Turn around, Java my boy, he told himself, you're Alliance. The Horde base you are attacking is in the OTHER direction!
The horde had their defenders at that last stronghold, and Java had a blast charging their defenses and battling to get past them. As the horde npc defenders dwindled, the horde defense began crumbling. More alliance joined in as well, and we cleared out the horde. The group of alliance swelled further and we assaulted the horde npc leader. The fight went long enough for Java to die (along with many others) and come back to join the fight again. In the end we killed him and Java had his first AV win! Java made level 51 and got a good chunk of the way to level 52.
Java completed the AV pair of quests, and right now is wearing his [Ice Barbed Spear]. Java decided that the Massacre enchant was what he wanted on it, and Wild crafted it for him. The only tiny disappointment is that the spear is rather plain looking. But that won't really matter to all those hostiles Java will be sticking that spear into.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Weekend (10 Apr) - "Tanks" For Nuttin'
Weekend (10 Apr) - "Tanks" For Nuttin'
Someone must have doctored the ale at the Inn during an all tanks party over the weekend, because both Sista and Java found themselves in dungeons with some of the flightiest (in more ways than one) tanks in recent memory.
In a Stratholme run Sista and her group lost their tank when he abruptly went offline five minutes into the run. We waited around for five minutes or so, then kicked him and got another. The second tank thought he could tank whole rooms full of mobs instead of a group or two, and Sista found herself spam healing the group to avoid wipes and not getting much DPS done. The over-wrought healer gave it a couple more pulls, but the tank couldn't be contained and the healer quit, leaving the group. The tank ignored the fact that there wasn't a healer and kept pulling. We wiped. Sista had had enough and left.
But that was nothing compared to the Zul'Farak run Java was in on Sunday. We had a good healer, and three bitchin DPSers (counting Java ;-) ). The other two DPS were a moonkin and a mage. We were lighting up the sky and the area around us with more pyrotechnics than the Washington DC 4th of July. It was crazy fun - but just a few minutes in the tank quit the group. No comment, complaint, kiss my foot, nothing.
Java took over tanking for awhile and we four manned it. It was a little slower without a fifth player, but we did fine and soon got us a new tank. We had him long enough to kill a boss, and then he abruptly left us as well. What the hell?
Java went back to tanking, and we then got a third tank. We blew up some more mobs, did a couple of bosses, and - yep, he left as well. We did the entire "stairs" event - every attack by the mobs and all three of the Bosses - with just the four of us.
We got our fourth tank. He stayed long enough to do one boss and then he, too, left. We finally finished the dungeon with our fifth tank of the night. The healer never let anyone die, the DPS did a fine job, everyone was happily doing their thing - except the tanks. I've never seen anything like it.
Java never finished the first Stratholme run he made during the weekend. We had one tank go offline part way in and never come back. The second tank was a bit slow moving, but we were making progress and no one was complaining. It's a long dungeon and we put a lot of effort into getting about 80% done. The tank then told us he had to leave, and poof! he was gone. We waited almost ten minutes and did not get another tank. The group didn't want to four man it. The healer was a little new and while he was fine keeping up the tank Java pretty much had to heal himself when there was a need. The healer then had to go as well, and that was the end of that.
The good news from all that mishmash was that both Sista and Java made level 50.
Someone must have doctored the ale at the Inn during an all tanks party over the weekend, because both Sista and Java found themselves in dungeons with some of the flightiest (in more ways than one) tanks in recent memory.
In a Stratholme run Sista and her group lost their tank when he abruptly went offline five minutes into the run. We waited around for five minutes or so, then kicked him and got another. The second tank thought he could tank whole rooms full of mobs instead of a group or two, and Sista found herself spam healing the group to avoid wipes and not getting much DPS done. The over-wrought healer gave it a couple more pulls, but the tank couldn't be contained and the healer quit, leaving the group. The tank ignored the fact that there wasn't a healer and kept pulling. We wiped. Sista had had enough and left.
But that was nothing compared to the Zul'Farak run Java was in on Sunday. We had a good healer, and three bitchin DPSers (counting Java ;-) ). The other two DPS were a moonkin and a mage. We were lighting up the sky and the area around us with more pyrotechnics than the Washington DC 4th of July. It was crazy fun - but just a few minutes in the tank quit the group. No comment, complaint, kiss my foot, nothing.
Java took over tanking for awhile and we four manned it. It was a little slower without a fifth player, but we did fine and soon got us a new tank. We had him long enough to kill a boss, and then he abruptly left us as well. What the hell?
Java went back to tanking, and we then got a third tank. We blew up some more mobs, did a couple of bosses, and - yep, he left as well. We did the entire "stairs" event - every attack by the mobs and all three of the Bosses - with just the four of us.
We got our fourth tank. He stayed long enough to do one boss and then he, too, left. We finally finished the dungeon with our fifth tank of the night. The healer never let anyone die, the DPS did a fine job, everyone was happily doing their thing - except the tanks. I've never seen anything like it.
Java never finished the first Stratholme run he made during the weekend. We had one tank go offline part way in and never come back. The second tank was a bit slow moving, but we were making progress and no one was complaining. It's a long dungeon and we put a lot of effort into getting about 80% done. The tank then told us he had to leave, and poof! he was gone. We waited almost ten minutes and did not get another tank. The group didn't want to four man it. The healer was a little new and while he was fine keeping up the tank Java pretty much had to heal himself when there was a need. The healer then had to go as well, and that was the end of that.
The good news from all that mishmash was that both Sista and Java made level 50.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Friday (8 Apr) - Presents for Dying
Friday (8 Apr) - Presents for Dying
Wild has one word to sum up the day: [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending].
Ok, that was more than one word, but it was one piece of gear - one fabulous piece of gear.
Happy and Lao happened to be in game at the same time on Friday morning. We talked shop, comparing notes on various materials and how they were selling or not selling. In the course of our conversation Lao mentioned that she'd seen the Dark Mending staff for sale on the Auction House for about 20,000 gold. That's a huge amount of gold, but that is one great staff, and it typically cost 25-30,000 gold. Happy said that Wild lusted after that staff, but that Wild had had all his credit pulled after he bought those fancy shoulders with the wings. Not to mention all those crazy Waves cards Wild talked Happy and even Lost into buying for that tsunami trinket thing. Nope, Wild's purse strings were definitely tied shut.
Wild hadn't been able to beg, whine, trick or coerce Happy into relenting on that staff by the time the Friday raid came around. Wild was really happy about how the raid was shaping up, though. Not only did we have a full group, we had to turn several guildies away, instead of the usual begging them to come. Bosses are going down, and now more players are starting to get interested in raiding. The raid leader, Fn, was so pleased he reiterated that he would be setting up a second raid night soon.
We didn't disappoint on this Friday night, either. For the third straight week the Horde held Tol Barad on our raid night, and precisely at the 6pm start time our group trooped over to Baradin Hold. And for the third week in a row the boss Argolath died by our hands.
We headed over to the Bastion of Twilight. We set a steady pace and cleared the first section of trash mobs with no trouble. An i359 healing necklace dropped from one of the mobs. Wild already has an i359 necklace, but it lacks spirit. This necklace had a lot of spirit. No one needed it as main spec, either. Wild considered it, but decided to pass. It would be a small upgrade at best, and the pally said he could use it on his off spec.
We moved to the next round of trash mobs, pressing through them even faster than last week. And we got another gear drop from one of the mobs. This drop caused quite a commotion. The drop was [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending].
Unless you are doing PvP Arena matches for the i372 weapon (which for Wild would be never), or doing Heroic mode raids for the i372 Heroic version of this staff (we're a long way off from that), this i359 staff is the very best healing weapon in the game.
I could tease you about the rolls and how that went, etc etc. I could note that Fl, our superb pally healer, is wielding [Torturer's Mercy], an i346 main hand to go along with his i359 shield. Pallies like their shields, but more importantly pallies can't use staffs. Sw, our shadow priest but often healer, wields [Modgud's Blade], an i346 main hand to go along with her i359 off-hand. Priests can use staffs. Sw was in shadow spec when I checked her gear, so perhaps she uses something different for healing (since both pieces of gear had +hit on them). Since she was healing at the time she could have rolled on that staff. She didn't. Perhaps she preferred the weapon she had. Perhaps she remembered that the very nice off-hand she was wearing now was passed to her by Wild last week after Wild had won the roll for it. Karma.
Wild was the only one that rolled for it. Wild's i346 mace went into storage, replaced by the i359 Dark Mending. There are those rare days when the gods of WoW do smile down on us.
We got to Halfus, the first boss encounter. We got the absolute worst combination of dragons that we could have gotten - Storm Rider, Slate, and Nether. Dam the bad luck.
We went with the three healer, three tank strategy that worked for us last week. Poor Sw, though. Our shadow priest was needed for healing for most of the evening. She doesn't mind, but we all know she'd rather be pew pewing, and she's good at it. At some point I hope we can get a full time third healer. But we were definitely on a roll.
It took us only three attempts to kill all three dragons and Halfus.
We pounded through some more trash mobs to get to the Twilight Enclave and the two dragons that ruled it, Valiona and Therelion. This encounter is not really very different or more difficult than many other encounters. Except for one thing - the timing of raider movement during certain segments of the fight are so touchy and particular that were are having a terrible time coordinating those moves. Only one tank is required for this fight, since only one dragon is on the ground at a time. One dragon is always in the air bombing us with meteors or strafing us with fire. The dragon in the air was mostly just a distraction we dealt with. It was on the ground where we had trouble, and more trouble. We stayed with three healers.
The main trouble spot is when the dragon on the ground casts Blackout. Blackout has a timer, but we never let it expire. When Blackout is cast, there is a short delay before it actually strikes the targeted player, doing considerable damage to that player and also doing constant AoE damage to the rest of the raid for as long as it's active. All raiders collapse into a tight pile at the dragon's tail, and as soon as we are in position a designated raider dispels Blackout. When Blackout is dispelled or expires, it does an even larger blast that is distributed among all raiders standing tightly close to the targeted player. Even being one step away from the target player increases dramatically the damage being done to the other raiders.
The real problem lies with that short pause between the cast of Blackout, and when it strikes the target. We have yet to figure out a way to make that work effectively, and we start falling farther and farther behind each time Blackout is cast.
That doesn't mean we can't get to phase 2. We can, but we're never in very good shape by that time.
Our first two attempts of the night followed the strategy we used last week. It really wasn't working, and so we shifted to different strat that other guilds have used as well. This strategy doesn't change much as far as Blackout goes, but it does help to avoid further damage from Twilight Blast, which the airborne dragon drops on a random raider, leaving a pool of quick death if you stand in it. To control where the Blast falls, all ranged raiders (DPS and healers) stack together and we moved together to avoid the pools.
The change in strategy helped, and by our fourth attempt we had the dragons down to 55% health.
In phase 2 it is simply remembering when to run away from something and when to run together, all the while avoiding numerous other nasties the dragons have at their disposal. Wild was the magnet for all of that nasty stuff on this night (this is the Dying part of the title). Wild died a lot. An awful lot. Even more than usual. A lot more than usual. Rs, the druid tank, reserved his battle rez just for Wild, because I always needed it. We made seven total attempts, and Wild got battle rezzed four times (and died soon after a second time after three of those rezzes). In Wild's defense he wasn't really doing anything differently than the other raiders. Wild claims that all that good karma from winning Dark Mending had to be balanced somehow - and Wild paid it back in spades.
On our best attempt we got the dragons to 53%. As Wild said last week, this is a doable fight. Get Blackout figured out. Get Wild's karma balanced. And we got this.
Here's the healing numbers. Wild isn't all that happy with his performance, but then again he was dead most of the time.
#1: Fl (pally), 9845 hps and 37.4% of all healing
#2: Sw (priest), 7113 hps/24.6%
#3: Wild (druid), 7013 hps/24.2%
PS - Happy heard about the Staff. He was walking around pretty smug about all that gold he saved. Then he got to thinking about all the gold he could have made if Wild had let him sell that staff on the AH. Happy turned from smug to glum. Karma, ya know.
After the official raid was finished, we decided to reset the raid instance and make another trash mob run in the hopes of getting additional gear drops. There were only eight of us available to stick around, but we had no problem taking down the mobs with just 8. The only change was that Wild, who normally isn't needed for crowd control, volunteered to use his hibernate spell to Sleep the dragon trash mobs in the mob groups that had one. The spell worked great, and kept the mob out of our hair until we were ready to kill it. It was fun, but unfortunately our luck with drops went sour and we did not get a single one.
Wild has one word to sum up the day: [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending].
Ok, that was more than one word, but it was one piece of gear - one fabulous piece of gear.
Happy and Lao happened to be in game at the same time on Friday morning. We talked shop, comparing notes on various materials and how they were selling or not selling. In the course of our conversation Lao mentioned that she'd seen the Dark Mending staff for sale on the Auction House for about 20,000 gold. That's a huge amount of gold, but that is one great staff, and it typically cost 25-30,000 gold. Happy said that Wild lusted after that staff, but that Wild had had all his credit pulled after he bought those fancy shoulders with the wings. Not to mention all those crazy Waves cards Wild talked Happy and even Lost into buying for that tsunami trinket thing. Nope, Wild's purse strings were definitely tied shut.
Wild hadn't been able to beg, whine, trick or coerce Happy into relenting on that staff by the time the Friday raid came around. Wild was really happy about how the raid was shaping up, though. Not only did we have a full group, we had to turn several guildies away, instead of the usual begging them to come. Bosses are going down, and now more players are starting to get interested in raiding. The raid leader, Fn, was so pleased he reiterated that he would be setting up a second raid night soon.
We didn't disappoint on this Friday night, either. For the third straight week the Horde held Tol Barad on our raid night, and precisely at the 6pm start time our group trooped over to Baradin Hold. And for the third week in a row the boss Argolath died by our hands.
We headed over to the Bastion of Twilight. We set a steady pace and cleared the first section of trash mobs with no trouble. An i359 healing necklace dropped from one of the mobs. Wild already has an i359 necklace, but it lacks spirit. This necklace had a lot of spirit. No one needed it as main spec, either. Wild considered it, but decided to pass. It would be a small upgrade at best, and the pally said he could use it on his off spec.
We moved to the next round of trash mobs, pressing through them even faster than last week. And we got another gear drop from one of the mobs. This drop caused quite a commotion. The drop was [Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending].
Unless you are doing PvP Arena matches for the i372 weapon (which for Wild would be never), or doing Heroic mode raids for the i372 Heroic version of this staff (we're a long way off from that), this i359 staff is the very best healing weapon in the game.
I could tease you about the rolls and how that went, etc etc. I could note that Fl, our superb pally healer, is wielding [Torturer's Mercy], an i346 main hand to go along with his i359 shield. Pallies like their shields, but more importantly pallies can't use staffs. Sw, our shadow priest but often healer, wields [Modgud's Blade], an i346 main hand to go along with her i359 off-hand. Priests can use staffs. Sw was in shadow spec when I checked her gear, so perhaps she uses something different for healing (since both pieces of gear had +hit on them). Since she was healing at the time she could have rolled on that staff. She didn't. Perhaps she preferred the weapon she had. Perhaps she remembered that the very nice off-hand she was wearing now was passed to her by Wild last week after Wild had won the roll for it. Karma.
Wild was the only one that rolled for it. Wild's i346 mace went into storage, replaced by the i359 Dark Mending. There are those rare days when the gods of WoW do smile down on us.
We got to Halfus, the first boss encounter. We got the absolute worst combination of dragons that we could have gotten - Storm Rider, Slate, and Nether. Dam the bad luck.
We went with the three healer, three tank strategy that worked for us last week. Poor Sw, though. Our shadow priest was needed for healing for most of the evening. She doesn't mind, but we all know she'd rather be pew pewing, and she's good at it. At some point I hope we can get a full time third healer. But we were definitely on a roll.
It took us only three attempts to kill all three dragons and Halfus.
We pounded through some more trash mobs to get to the Twilight Enclave and the two dragons that ruled it, Valiona and Therelion. This encounter is not really very different or more difficult than many other encounters. Except for one thing - the timing of raider movement during certain segments of the fight are so touchy and particular that were are having a terrible time coordinating those moves. Only one tank is required for this fight, since only one dragon is on the ground at a time. One dragon is always in the air bombing us with meteors or strafing us with fire. The dragon in the air was mostly just a distraction we dealt with. It was on the ground where we had trouble, and more trouble. We stayed with three healers.
The main trouble spot is when the dragon on the ground casts Blackout. Blackout has a timer, but we never let it expire. When Blackout is cast, there is a short delay before it actually strikes the targeted player, doing considerable damage to that player and also doing constant AoE damage to the rest of the raid for as long as it's active. All raiders collapse into a tight pile at the dragon's tail, and as soon as we are in position a designated raider dispels Blackout. When Blackout is dispelled or expires, it does an even larger blast that is distributed among all raiders standing tightly close to the targeted player. Even being one step away from the target player increases dramatically the damage being done to the other raiders.
The real problem lies with that short pause between the cast of Blackout, and when it strikes the target. We have yet to figure out a way to make that work effectively, and we start falling farther and farther behind each time Blackout is cast.
That doesn't mean we can't get to phase 2. We can, but we're never in very good shape by that time.
Our first two attempts of the night followed the strategy we used last week. It really wasn't working, and so we shifted to different strat that other guilds have used as well. This strategy doesn't change much as far as Blackout goes, but it does help to avoid further damage from Twilight Blast, which the airborne dragon drops on a random raider, leaving a pool of quick death if you stand in it. To control where the Blast falls, all ranged raiders (DPS and healers) stack together and we moved together to avoid the pools.
The change in strategy helped, and by our fourth attempt we had the dragons down to 55% health.
In phase 2 it is simply remembering when to run away from something and when to run together, all the while avoiding numerous other nasties the dragons have at their disposal. Wild was the magnet for all of that nasty stuff on this night (this is the Dying part of the title). Wild died a lot. An awful lot. Even more than usual. A lot more than usual. Rs, the druid tank, reserved his battle rez just for Wild, because I always needed it. We made seven total attempts, and Wild got battle rezzed four times (and died soon after a second time after three of those rezzes). In Wild's defense he wasn't really doing anything differently than the other raiders. Wild claims that all that good karma from winning Dark Mending had to be balanced somehow - and Wild paid it back in spades.
On our best attempt we got the dragons to 53%. As Wild said last week, this is a doable fight. Get Blackout figured out. Get Wild's karma balanced. And we got this.
Here's the healing numbers. Wild isn't all that happy with his performance, but then again he was dead most of the time.
#1: Fl (pally), 9845 hps and 37.4% of all healing
#2: Sw (priest), 7113 hps/24.6%
#3: Wild (druid), 7013 hps/24.2%
PS - Happy heard about the Staff. He was walking around pretty smug about all that gold he saved. Then he got to thinking about all the gold he could have made if Wild had let him sell that staff on the AH. Happy turned from smug to glum. Karma, ya know.
[Chelley's Staff of Dark Mending]
After the official raid was finished, we decided to reset the raid instance and make another trash mob run in the hopes of getting additional gear drops. There were only eight of us available to stick around, but we had no problem taking down the mobs with just 8. The only change was that Wild, who normally isn't needed for crowd control, volunteered to use his hibernate spell to Sleep the dragon trash mobs in the mob groups that had one. The spell worked great, and kept the mob out of our hair until we were ready to kill it. It was fun, but unfortunately our luck with drops went sour and we did not get a single one.
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