Special - (29 Aug) Wild and His Resto Gear
A raider with the guild recently posted on the guild website his assessment of guild raiding. He didn't paint a very pretty picture. This is a raider who has done theorycrafting for the Elitist Jerks site and counts himself an elitist player who tired of it - which is how he came to be in our guild.
He offers a wealth of knowledge about raiding, providing you are willing to put up with serious attitude issues and accepting abuse along with the advice. This is second hand knowledge, I admit, but from more than a couple of sources. This raider claims intimate familiarity with many classes and specs, including resto druid. Wild is considering getting some advice, as much to see whether he is actually being helpful to those who seek him out as I am to see if he has anything to tell me I don't already know. Wild accepts good advice no matter how it comes to me.
One good outcome of that post is that Wild knew he should take a look at all aspects of his game before coming to see that raider. Wild's first look is a gear check. Short of Firelands gear or Heroic Raids, where can Wild still upgrade? I used the Wowhead site to check out available upgrades, and this is what I came up with.
Slot - Current - Upgrade
Head- i353 Amani Headdress - i359 Stormrider's Helm (Nefarian Token)
Neck - i365 - Nightweaver's Amulet - i378 Firemind Pendant (1250 VP)
Shldr - i378 Flickering Shoulderpads - None
Back - i378 Flowing Flamewrath cape - None
Chest - i359 Scorched Worming Vest- i378 OA Robes (2200 VP)
Wrist - i378 Smolderskull Bindings - None
Hands - i359 Stormrider's Handwraps- i378 OA Gloves (1650 VP)
Also BH Occu'thar drop
Waist - i378 Firescar Sash - None
Legs - i359 Stormrider's Legwraps - i378 OA Legwraps (2200 VP)
Also BH Occu'thar drop
Feet - i359 Fading Violet Sandals - None
Ring1 - i365 VG Band of Dominance - i378 Soothing Brimstone (1250VP)
Ring2 - i359 Security Measure Alpha - i365 Spirit Fragment Band (Molten Front)
Trnk1 - i365 Moonwell Chalice - None
Trnk2 -i359 Darkmoon Card: Tsunami - not really, Brewfest
Weap - i365 Lightforged Elem. Hammer - i378 2H Spire of Scarlet Pain (maybe)
OH - i365 Globe of Moonlight - None
Relic - i365 Relic if Elune's Light - i378 Singed Plume of Aviana (700VP)
OA = Obsidium Arborweave T12 resto druid set
Ethereal Leathwerworking requires both chaos and living ember, out of reach.
VP = Valor Points
So, 17 slots. Seven of those slots are solid. The other ten can still be upgraded.
If Wild runs Baradin Hold (BH) every week, he may one day win the T12 gloves and legs. Then there are 4 items that Valor Points will buy, at a total cost of 3200 VPs. Finally, Wild has to decide if buying the 2H +hit on the AH is actually better than the Hammer/OH combo Wild already has.
Wild can earn a max of 1250 VP per week. That requires a minimum 11 Heroic runs, combining ZA/ZG and Heroic Dungeons. Wild has about 900 VPs, from raiding. In fact, Wild could buy the i378 relic right now. But I would think the Chest piece would be the more valuable buy, a week's work at minimum.
Three weeks of maxing out Heroics would give Wild more than enough VPs to buy all the T12 pieces that he cannot get any other way. Wild HATES Heroics. It's a gut deep HATRED that causes the sweats when he even thinks about signing up for one. There is NOTHING in those dungeons that Wild cares anything about except for the VPs the final boss kill offers. It's mind numbingly boring while still deadly enough for there to be wipes and problems.
I really wish we were farming raid content, because that is how I prefer to get VPs. We'll know how it goes this week.
Wild got into Mf's BWD/FL raid on Monday. Wild was happy to get a spot in the raid, but after two weeks of very good attendance, the raid was back to it's old tricks. It took us 45 minutes to fill the raid even though ten guildies had signed up that they were coming, but in order to fill we had to bring two under geared DPS into the Firelands because half the signed up raiders didn't show - including the raid leader. We two-healed it with no problems, but after clearing trash for a couple of hours and bringing Shannox out to play, we were short a healer and lacked the DPS to take on the Firelands Boss. Wild's shaman friend from FS, Bf, finally moved over to the MM2 guild. It's funny. It was Bf who first jumped guilds, and Wild who followed. Now he's following Wild. I remember Bf more as a resto shaman than a DPS, but when Wild asked if he wanted to switch to healer so we could try Shannox, he said no, that his healer gear was not good enough. That ended our raid.
Mf's raid will try again on Tuesday, but Wild is signed up for Lady Hunter's raid on that night. I have no idea who will show up or where we will be going, if anywhere. We are in that terrible place where the guild is bored with current content (BWD/BoT) but isn't good enough for the new content (Firelands). And until the guild brings down a boss in Firelands, it is going to be hard to convince guildies to raid.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Weekend (28 Aug) - Zerg Zerg Zerg Choo Choo!
Weekend (28 Aug) - Zerg Zerg Zerg Choo Choo!
A couple of notes from Friday ... I forgot to mention that the Firelands trash run on Thursday night included tackling some turtles. No Firelands raid that Wild has been on has attacked the turtles - until that run. When asked why, most raid leaders simply said that they were a huge pain and not worth the rep to kill them. Well, our raid group on Thursday seemed to become mesmerized by those turtles. Every time we'd pass by a clutch of them raiders would start chanting Turtles! Turtles! Turtles! Finally, the raid leader said - Ok, you want turtles, let's go get some turtles. Wild can now vouch for the statement that turtles are a real pain, for two reasons. One is that turtles can do a spinning move that hits anyone that gets in the way - kind of like a melee AoE. The other ability that causes trouble is that turtles can Shield, protecting itself from damage but also trapping any raiders next to it inside the shield where the turtle can still attack them but trapped raiders can't be healed. We lost a tank several times that way. We did end up killing a few turtles, but I think we got that idea out of our system.
The other note of significance is that there was a Bastion of Twilight raid on Friday night. Wild could not attend due to visiting friends. Wild did get in game about 8pm on Friday, and the raid was still in progress. What surprised me was that the raid leader, Bd, did not make the raid, either. The makeup of the raid didn't look much like Bd's raid, with most of the raiders coming from Mf's raid group. There had to be at least one of Bd's raiders in there, though, in order to be able to use the saved raid and go after Cho'gall. About a half hour after Wild logged in, the guild got our first Cho'gall kill, as I predicted would happen. Wish Wild had been there.
The "Call to Arms" battleground for the weekend was Alterac Valley (AV). Each weekend a BG gets singled out like AV and offered greater rewards/honor. AV is a 40 man per side contest that Wild remembers as a large scale battle that can take up a lot of time to win or lose. The AV battles that Wild was part of this particular weekend looked like nothing Wild had ever seen. Yes, it's been awhile.
The first set of AV's that Wild got in on used the "Zerg" strategy. Every time Wild zoned in to an AV that was the first and last thing that spilled out of BG chat - Zerg! It's a simple strategy, easily understand, and seductive because the battles are very quick. The basics are this. Each side has a home base, and each side has an enemy boss on the opposite side of Valley that wins the match when killed. Some towers and graveyards have to be destroyed/captured once to make the enemy boss kill easier, but even that part seemed somewhat arbitrary. There is a LOT of other things going on, but for the Zerg strategy 90% of those things are simply ignored. There is no defense of captured objectives, either. They are immediately abandoned as soon as taken.
When the battle started all forty pvpers burst from our base and scrambled to get to the opposite side of the valley. Occasionally, horde and alliance tangled with each other as we passed each other going in opposite directions, but mostly we just ignored each other. Graveyards/towers may or may not be taken on the way. Once we reached the enemy boss, Vann, and cleared away the hostile npcs around the area ... we waited. We wait to see if enough towers/graveyards are down, and we wait because the tanks and sometimes the healers that are supposed to lead us against Vann take their own sweet time getting there.
Meanwhile, the Alliance army is doing the same thing. Only, as was said in chat any number of times, the Alliance does not have to go quite as far to get to the horde boss, so they have a slight advantage over horde if both sides are using the Zerg strategy. The Alliance had one more thing going for them - they were less stupid than the horde. Want to know how stupid us horde were? Wild joined TEN AV's in his first set of BGs. We lost eight of them. Did we alter the strategy? No. Did we get any better at the strategy we were using? No. The Alliance did only one thing differently than the horde - after the horde abandoned objectives we had taken, they sent a couple of allies and retook it - it was easy, because there wasn't any horde there defending them. Did the horde start defending them? No. The horde bet EVERYTHING on getting to and killing Vann before those objectives started to fall back into alliance hands. It was a recipe for failure, but the horde was totally incapable of changing anything.
Now, there were some positives. The matches went very fast - 5-10 minutes max, which is fast for such a large scale BG. And, of course, even losing, there was a nice batch of honor points won since AV was the weekend special BG.
Wild did another set of ten AV's later on. There was virtually no waiting - within a minute a new one would pop after the completion of the previous one. The horde lost nine of them. Just imagine the Alliance players on the other side - these horde guys fall for the same trick EVERY SINGLE TIME! Wild got bored and wandered around trying different things and going places that I don't get to see when Zerging through. Sometimes Wild tried - unsuccessfully - to battle the Alliance at the horde base where OUR boss was being assaulted, or just slow them down, but there were never enough of us for that. Wild defended objectives sometimes, but mostly it was just Wild there, and there wasn't much Wild could do against a pair of allies beyond staying alive just long enough to irritate them a bit before I died. Once it was Wild and a feral druid defending, so we both stealthed. Three allies came to take it back, taking on the feral druid, and Wild gave them a start when I popped into view to heal the feral druid. All three allies piled on Wild, though, and Wild didn't stay alive long enough to know how the feral druid did. Not good, probably. I could have been miserable about the losses, but hey, the honor points were piling up, and that's what Wild was after.
Wild did one more set of AV's, 11 this time, and the horde lost ten of them. Final tally: 4 horde wins, 27 alliance wins. There must have been some really stupid alliance for them to have let us win four matches. Or maybe they were just too exhausted from all the victory dancing. I don't even want to think about how much honor the alliance racked up.
Anyway, Wild is trying to figure out what he plans to buy with the honor points. I wish I had figured out a long time ago how fast it was to farm honor (I know, erik, you've been telling me, I just don't listen). Wild will have to check around and see who still needs heirlooms.
Wild did his heirloom check. In fact, I reorganized it completely so that I could see what I had. We needed less than I thought. The only "important" needs were Bean's. She could use a Sharpened Scarlet Kris and the Exceptional Stormshroud Shoulders to fill out her gear. I may double up on the daggers so that both Bean and Shevils have a pair (of daggers, those two girls already have a "pair"). That will take some more pvping, though. Jocy is happy enough with her holy heirlooms, although they're more cloth and leather than anything else. I haven't decided on a whether she needs an heirloom weapon.
I had forgotten that 4,000 is the max honor I can have, so I'm spending what Wild has and will have to get some more. There's a few more hours to the weekend. :-)
A couple of notes from Friday ... I forgot to mention that the Firelands trash run on Thursday night included tackling some turtles. No Firelands raid that Wild has been on has attacked the turtles - until that run. When asked why, most raid leaders simply said that they were a huge pain and not worth the rep to kill them. Well, our raid group on Thursday seemed to become mesmerized by those turtles. Every time we'd pass by a clutch of them raiders would start chanting Turtles! Turtles! Turtles! Finally, the raid leader said - Ok, you want turtles, let's go get some turtles. Wild can now vouch for the statement that turtles are a real pain, for two reasons. One is that turtles can do a spinning move that hits anyone that gets in the way - kind of like a melee AoE. The other ability that causes trouble is that turtles can Shield, protecting itself from damage but also trapping any raiders next to it inside the shield where the turtle can still attack them but trapped raiders can't be healed. We lost a tank several times that way. We did end up killing a few turtles, but I think we got that idea out of our system.
The other note of significance is that there was a Bastion of Twilight raid on Friday night. Wild could not attend due to visiting friends. Wild did get in game about 8pm on Friday, and the raid was still in progress. What surprised me was that the raid leader, Bd, did not make the raid, either. The makeup of the raid didn't look much like Bd's raid, with most of the raiders coming from Mf's raid group. There had to be at least one of Bd's raiders in there, though, in order to be able to use the saved raid and go after Cho'gall. About a half hour after Wild logged in, the guild got our first Cho'gall kill, as I predicted would happen. Wish Wild had been there.
The "Call to Arms" battleground for the weekend was Alterac Valley (AV). Each weekend a BG gets singled out like AV and offered greater rewards/honor. AV is a 40 man per side contest that Wild remembers as a large scale battle that can take up a lot of time to win or lose. The AV battles that Wild was part of this particular weekend looked like nothing Wild had ever seen. Yes, it's been awhile.
The first set of AV's that Wild got in on used the "Zerg" strategy. Every time Wild zoned in to an AV that was the first and last thing that spilled out of BG chat - Zerg! It's a simple strategy, easily understand, and seductive because the battles are very quick. The basics are this. Each side has a home base, and each side has an enemy boss on the opposite side of Valley that wins the match when killed. Some towers and graveyards have to be destroyed/captured once to make the enemy boss kill easier, but even that part seemed somewhat arbitrary. There is a LOT of other things going on, but for the Zerg strategy 90% of those things are simply ignored. There is no defense of captured objectives, either. They are immediately abandoned as soon as taken.
When the battle started all forty pvpers burst from our base and scrambled to get to the opposite side of the valley. Occasionally, horde and alliance tangled with each other as we passed each other going in opposite directions, but mostly we just ignored each other. Graveyards/towers may or may not be taken on the way. Once we reached the enemy boss, Vann, and cleared away the hostile npcs around the area ... we waited. We wait to see if enough towers/graveyards are down, and we wait because the tanks and sometimes the healers that are supposed to lead us against Vann take their own sweet time getting there.
Meanwhile, the Alliance army is doing the same thing. Only, as was said in chat any number of times, the Alliance does not have to go quite as far to get to the horde boss, so they have a slight advantage over horde if both sides are using the Zerg strategy. The Alliance had one more thing going for them - they were less stupid than the horde. Want to know how stupid us horde were? Wild joined TEN AV's in his first set of BGs. We lost eight of them. Did we alter the strategy? No. Did we get any better at the strategy we were using? No. The Alliance did only one thing differently than the horde - after the horde abandoned objectives we had taken, they sent a couple of allies and retook it - it was easy, because there wasn't any horde there defending them. Did the horde start defending them? No. The horde bet EVERYTHING on getting to and killing Vann before those objectives started to fall back into alliance hands. It was a recipe for failure, but the horde was totally incapable of changing anything.
Now, there were some positives. The matches went very fast - 5-10 minutes max, which is fast for such a large scale BG. And, of course, even losing, there was a nice batch of honor points won since AV was the weekend special BG.
Wild did another set of ten AV's later on. There was virtually no waiting - within a minute a new one would pop after the completion of the previous one. The horde lost nine of them. Just imagine the Alliance players on the other side - these horde guys fall for the same trick EVERY SINGLE TIME! Wild got bored and wandered around trying different things and going places that I don't get to see when Zerging through. Sometimes Wild tried - unsuccessfully - to battle the Alliance at the horde base where OUR boss was being assaulted, or just slow them down, but there were never enough of us for that. Wild defended objectives sometimes, but mostly it was just Wild there, and there wasn't much Wild could do against a pair of allies beyond staying alive just long enough to irritate them a bit before I died. Once it was Wild and a feral druid defending, so we both stealthed. Three allies came to take it back, taking on the feral druid, and Wild gave them a start when I popped into view to heal the feral druid. All three allies piled on Wild, though, and Wild didn't stay alive long enough to know how the feral druid did. Not good, probably. I could have been miserable about the losses, but hey, the honor points were piling up, and that's what Wild was after.
Wild did one more set of AV's, 11 this time, and the horde lost ten of them. Final tally: 4 horde wins, 27 alliance wins. There must have been some really stupid alliance for them to have let us win four matches. Or maybe they were just too exhausted from all the victory dancing. I don't even want to think about how much honor the alliance racked up.
Anyway, Wild is trying to figure out what he plans to buy with the honor points. I wish I had figured out a long time ago how fast it was to farm honor (I know, erik, you've been telling me, I just don't listen). Wild will have to check around and see who still needs heirlooms.
Wild did his heirloom check. In fact, I reorganized it completely so that I could see what I had. We needed less than I thought. The only "important" needs were Bean's. She could use a Sharpened Scarlet Kris and the Exceptional Stormshroud Shoulders to fill out her gear. I may double up on the daggers so that both Bean and Shevils have a pair (of daggers, those two girls already have a "pair"). That will take some more pvping, though. Jocy is happy enough with her holy heirlooms, although they're more cloth and leather than anything else. I haven't decided on a whether she needs an heirloom weapon.
I had forgotten that 4,000 is the max honor I can have, so I'm spending what Wild has and will have to get some more. There's a few more hours to the weekend. :-)
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday (25 Aug) - Wildshard Does PvP
Thursday (25 Aug) - Wildshard Does PvP
So. Wild is not much of the pvp type. Yes, some of the Wild Family has come around to the idea of murdering the opposing faction. And yes, Wild has sent JB and Philly out into battlegrounds and Wintergrasp primarily to earn heirlooms. When Cata hit Wild planned to get the shaman, JB, to 85, and she would be Wild's stand-in for pvp. But JB stills sits at level 84, and doesn't appear all that interested, at least for now.
Wild has virtually no pvp gear; ie, gear with resilience. Reading up on that a bit, it seems that a resto druid can get away with healing battlegrounds in pve gear, but why go to all that trouble to pvp if not for some cool pvp gear? Wild did have SOME pvp gear, enough for about 300 resilience. Well, it was start. Wild is also a tailor, and can craft two types of cloth pvp gear, each of which have a 2-piece set bonus that awards even more resilience. Well, that was no sooner thought of than Wild made and equipped the gear. Wild also poked around on the AH looking for bargains, and when all was said and done Wild had improved his resilience from 300 to 1588.
Wild wasn't sure how long it would take to get a BG on a Thursday morning, so he queued up and then started putting together enchants and such. None of his new gear had any modifications yet. Wild didn't get a chance to do any of that as a BG popped almost right away.
The BG was the Battle For Gilneas. This is a Cata battleground. I wondered when the last time Wild had been in a BG or Wintergrasp. I went back more than a year and still couldn't find a single reference to pvp involving Wild. That's a long time.
The Gilneas fight wasn't a lot of fun. The BG is very like Arathi Basin, but Wild never got to see anymore than the first base right outside the dock we departed from. The Alliance already had that base well defended, but a group of us assaulted it auld nauseam the whole time. We controlled it maybe 20% of the time; the rest of the time Wild was mostly dead once they figured out Wild was the only healer.
Wild also got into a Warsong Gulch match and that was a LOT of fun! Wild picked out the one hunter in the group and determined to be his pocket healer. There was a warrior in the group as well who led many of the assaults, and he got a lot of Wild's attention as well. The two sides fought each other to a standstill over maybe the first ten minutes of the fight, each of us holding the other's flag. We finally took back our flag, capping theirs for a 1-0 lead. We were able to hold them at their base for the most part, but there was a small but determined group of Allies after our flag, and precious few of us trying to stop them. Wild and his hunter friend tangled with one Allie hunter that I have to give great credit to. The guy just wouldn't die. He quickly figured out he couldn't drop the horde hunter with Wild around, and came after Wild with a vengeance. Wild's hunter partner did what he could, but even with Wild DoTing the allie up and hitting back with Stomp, Entangle, and Cyclone, he just kept coming. He couldn't kill Wild, though. I'm sure the new resilience gear helped tamp down the violence being directed at Wild, but I could out heal anything he could do to me. Still, we couldn't bring him down, either. The allie hunter fought his way into a hut (can you heal in there?) and expertly used LoS to frustrate the horde hunter. When he went to ground in the hut even Wild poured DPS on him as well as the hunter. We drove him down under 20% I don't know how many times, but he somehow was able to recover some of his health and keep fighting. I'd like to be able to say we finally finished him, but Wild was ambushed by an allie rogue that distracted Wild for a bit. The allie hunter killed my hunter, and then he and the rogue killed Wild. It was one heckova fight, though! Wild also tangled with an obsessed death knight who chased Wild long enough to use his Grab (or whatever it's called) some six times on Wild, plus a few Chains. Wild healed through everything and then got bored with him and catform/sprinted away. It was good practice, though, and I hope that death knight has his own nightmares about that un-killable druid he faced. We won the WSG 1-0.
Wild doesn't have any visions of glory in pvp. He knows that when he is successful it's only because the opposition sucks even worse than Wild does. But it was definitely fun, no pressure entertainment and Wild will be doing more of it.
The BoT raid on Thursday was a mixed blessing. We are slowly moving our focus toward the Firelands, but we also want to finish off Cho'gall. I was really hoping we would go after Cho'gall Thursday night, but the raid leader decided to make our first official Firelands raid. Wild has done any number of Firelands trash runs, so this was old hat. The raid leader was experienced as well, but we had a few raiders who were getting their first look. We had no problems with the mobs, though, doing a thorough clear on our first run through. The raid leader then gave us a choice - reset and farm more rep from the trash, or take some shots at a Firelands boss. Wild strongly advocated to go after a boss - we had a really solid group and I thought we had a chance at Shannox. Sigh, the majority needed rep to pick up the gear that was available at Friendly and Honored, so we farmed some more. We did go deeper into the area where the spider boss is than Wild had gone before. Matter of fact, we cleared all the way to the boss, Beth'tilac (I think that's how it's spelled). Wild wanted to go after him, but we trooped back out and farmed some more. There were no gear drops off of any of the trash, which disappointed a lot of folks. It was fun, but Wild had hoped for more.
The raid will go after Cho'gall Friday night. Wild won't be there, though. Those friends of ours aren't leaving until Saturday and we'll be out with them on Friday night. I'm very sure this group is capable of dropping Cho'gall, given they'll have the whole evening, and I doubt that once he's down the guild will bother with BoT anymore. I love our friends, but couldn't they have decided to go home on Friday instead of Saturday? Sigh.
So. Wild is not much of the pvp type. Yes, some of the Wild Family has come around to the idea of murdering the opposing faction. And yes, Wild has sent JB and Philly out into battlegrounds and Wintergrasp primarily to earn heirlooms. When Cata hit Wild planned to get the shaman, JB, to 85, and she would be Wild's stand-in for pvp. But JB stills sits at level 84, and doesn't appear all that interested, at least for now.
Wild has virtually no pvp gear; ie, gear with resilience. Reading up on that a bit, it seems that a resto druid can get away with healing battlegrounds in pve gear, but why go to all that trouble to pvp if not for some cool pvp gear? Wild did have SOME pvp gear, enough for about 300 resilience. Well, it was start. Wild is also a tailor, and can craft two types of cloth pvp gear, each of which have a 2-piece set bonus that awards even more resilience. Well, that was no sooner thought of than Wild made and equipped the gear. Wild also poked around on the AH looking for bargains, and when all was said and done Wild had improved his resilience from 300 to 1588.
Wild wasn't sure how long it would take to get a BG on a Thursday morning, so he queued up and then started putting together enchants and such. None of his new gear had any modifications yet. Wild didn't get a chance to do any of that as a BG popped almost right away.
The BG was the Battle For Gilneas. This is a Cata battleground. I wondered when the last time Wild had been in a BG or Wintergrasp. I went back more than a year and still couldn't find a single reference to pvp involving Wild. That's a long time.
The Gilneas fight wasn't a lot of fun. The BG is very like Arathi Basin, but Wild never got to see anymore than the first base right outside the dock we departed from. The Alliance already had that base well defended, but a group of us assaulted it auld nauseam the whole time. We controlled it maybe 20% of the time; the rest of the time Wild was mostly dead once they figured out Wild was the only healer.
Wild also got into a Warsong Gulch match and that was a LOT of fun! Wild picked out the one hunter in the group and determined to be his pocket healer. There was a warrior in the group as well who led many of the assaults, and he got a lot of Wild's attention as well. The two sides fought each other to a standstill over maybe the first ten minutes of the fight, each of us holding the other's flag. We finally took back our flag, capping theirs for a 1-0 lead. We were able to hold them at their base for the most part, but there was a small but determined group of Allies after our flag, and precious few of us trying to stop them. Wild and his hunter friend tangled with one Allie hunter that I have to give great credit to. The guy just wouldn't die. He quickly figured out he couldn't drop the horde hunter with Wild around, and came after Wild with a vengeance. Wild's hunter partner did what he could, but even with Wild DoTing the allie up and hitting back with Stomp, Entangle, and Cyclone, he just kept coming. He couldn't kill Wild, though. I'm sure the new resilience gear helped tamp down the violence being directed at Wild, but I could out heal anything he could do to me. Still, we couldn't bring him down, either. The allie hunter fought his way into a hut (can you heal in there?) and expertly used LoS to frustrate the horde hunter. When he went to ground in the hut even Wild poured DPS on him as well as the hunter. We drove him down under 20% I don't know how many times, but he somehow was able to recover some of his health and keep fighting. I'd like to be able to say we finally finished him, but Wild was ambushed by an allie rogue that distracted Wild for a bit. The allie hunter killed my hunter, and then he and the rogue killed Wild. It was one heckova fight, though! Wild also tangled with an obsessed death knight who chased Wild long enough to use his Grab (or whatever it's called) some six times on Wild, plus a few Chains. Wild healed through everything and then got bored with him and catform/sprinted away. It was good practice, though, and I hope that death knight has his own nightmares about that un-killable druid he faced. We won the WSG 1-0.
Wild doesn't have any visions of glory in pvp. He knows that when he is successful it's only because the opposition sucks even worse than Wild does. But it was definitely fun, no pressure entertainment and Wild will be doing more of it.
The BoT raid on Thursday was a mixed blessing. We are slowly moving our focus toward the Firelands, but we also want to finish off Cho'gall. I was really hoping we would go after Cho'gall Thursday night, but the raid leader decided to make our first official Firelands raid. Wild has done any number of Firelands trash runs, so this was old hat. The raid leader was experienced as well, but we had a few raiders who were getting their first look. We had no problems with the mobs, though, doing a thorough clear on our first run through. The raid leader then gave us a choice - reset and farm more rep from the trash, or take some shots at a Firelands boss. Wild strongly advocated to go after a boss - we had a really solid group and I thought we had a chance at Shannox. Sigh, the majority needed rep to pick up the gear that was available at Friendly and Honored, so we farmed some more. We did go deeper into the area where the spider boss is than Wild had gone before. Matter of fact, we cleared all the way to the boss, Beth'tilac (I think that's how it's spelled). Wild wanted to go after him, but we trooped back out and farmed some more. There were no gear drops off of any of the trash, which disappointed a lot of folks. It was fun, but Wild had hoped for more.
The spider boss
The raid will go after Cho'gall Friday night. Wild won't be there, though. Those friends of ours aren't leaving until Saturday and we'll be out with them on Friday night. I'm very sure this group is capable of dropping Cho'gall, given they'll have the whole evening, and I doubt that once he's down the guild will bother with BoT anymore. I love our friends, but couldn't they have decided to go home on Friday instead of Saturday? Sigh.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Tuesday (23 Aug) - Plowing the Fields of BWD
Tuesday (23 Aug) - Plowing the Fields of BWD
Lady Hunter has returned to the fold and made a point to call on Wild for her raid Tuesday night, even though Wild had not signed up for it. When Wild joined the raid as the second healer (Fl, a superb pally healer was the other healer), Lady Hunter announced that she now had two "sick" healers and that was all she needed. "Sick" is supposed to mean "good" I guess, but I'm not up to speed on the slang these days.
We went with a two healer, two tank setup and got started only a half hour late, which is ahead of schedule for this raid. The last time this group raided we dropped Nefarian in Blackwing Descent for the first time. The plan on this night was to clear all of BWD and then start on Bastion of Twilight. Quite an ambitious plan.
The first boss, Magmaw, went down smoothly on our first attempt. Wild has been part of at least three different strategies for Magmaw, but Wild liked this one best. Wild just stood and moved with the melee near Magmaw while raid healing and providing some backup for the tank healer, who really didn't need the backup. Easy as could be. Wild also picked up [Scorched Wormling Vest]. It's an i359 chest piece and although Wild already has an i359 chest, it's a better piece with two sockets instead of the one socket chest that Wild was currently wearing. A small but nice upgrade.
The second encounter, the Omonotron Defense System (the robots) also went down on the first try.
We went to Chimaeron next. Wild had done this fight only once before, and since it had special rules involving the healers I asked for a refresher. In this fight the boss knocks raiders down to 1% health throughout the fight, and health has to be maintained at something like 10% instead of trying to heal to full. More special healing on the tanks, but Wild was asked to focus on the raid and the pally would handle both tanks (with a little help from Wild). It was a really crazy ride. We lost one of the tanks pretty early on, but with both healers going at max we kept things going. We plowed into phase two, but we were bleeding raiders as Wild was having cooldown trouble with his AoE heals as well has having to help keep the lone tank alive. The pally healer died. Wild got a rez on him, but it cost Wild his life to do it. The raid entered Phase 3 with four raiders - three pallies and a rogue. It was an awesome thing to see. The pallies stayed alive with their myriad save me spells while the rogue became a one man wrecking crew. Chimaeron went down.
Then it was Maloriak's turn. This was another fight Wild had only done once before. Once the raid leader started talking I started to remember it better. The strategy had been tweaked in Wild's favor, too. There first time Wild had done Chim there were positioning issues that worked against Wild getting to the center for the big AoE. This time Wild could stand pretty much wherever I wanted and Wild had no problems other than an occasional raider drifting out of range - but they figured out pretty quick that they needed to move when they started taking damage that wasn't being healed. Maloriak went down on the first attempt. Wild was hoping for the [Leggings of Consuming Flame] to drop, but no luck there.
Next up was Atramedes. Wild has seen this fight before, too, once, but we weren't able to bring him down on that run. This time, we had one false start that caused a wipe, and then killed him on our second try. That was Wild's first kill of Atramedes, and it triggered the Achievement for clearing BWD (since I already had a Nef kill).
We had made it to the final boss in BWD, defeating five encounters, in a single night.
We did make two attempts on Nefarian, but we had to ask our shadow priest to turn healer for the fight, since it pretty much requires three healers for the pedestal phase. We didn't too well, but the raid will have all night Wednesday to bring him down. Wild will not likely be there, as we will be visiting friends. But we'll hopefully be back in time for Hunter Fortress!
Lady Hunter has returned to the fold and made a point to call on Wild for her raid Tuesday night, even though Wild had not signed up for it. When Wild joined the raid as the second healer (Fl, a superb pally healer was the other healer), Lady Hunter announced that she now had two "sick" healers and that was all she needed. "Sick" is supposed to mean "good" I guess, but I'm not up to speed on the slang these days.
We went with a two healer, two tank setup and got started only a half hour late, which is ahead of schedule for this raid. The last time this group raided we dropped Nefarian in Blackwing Descent for the first time. The plan on this night was to clear all of BWD and then start on Bastion of Twilight. Quite an ambitious plan.
The first boss, Magmaw, went down smoothly on our first attempt. Wild has been part of at least three different strategies for Magmaw, but Wild liked this one best. Wild just stood and moved with the melee near Magmaw while raid healing and providing some backup for the tank healer, who really didn't need the backup. Easy as could be. Wild also picked up [Scorched Wormling Vest]. It's an i359 chest piece and although Wild already has an i359 chest, it's a better piece with two sockets instead of the one socket chest that Wild was currently wearing. A small but nice upgrade.
The second encounter, the Omonotron Defense System (the robots) also went down on the first try.
We went to Chimaeron next. Wild had done this fight only once before, and since it had special rules involving the healers I asked for a refresher. In this fight the boss knocks raiders down to 1% health throughout the fight, and health has to be maintained at something like 10% instead of trying to heal to full. More special healing on the tanks, but Wild was asked to focus on the raid and the pally would handle both tanks (with a little help from Wild). It was a really crazy ride. We lost one of the tanks pretty early on, but with both healers going at max we kept things going. We plowed into phase two, but we were bleeding raiders as Wild was having cooldown trouble with his AoE heals as well has having to help keep the lone tank alive. The pally healer died. Wild got a rez on him, but it cost Wild his life to do it. The raid entered Phase 3 with four raiders - three pallies and a rogue. It was an awesome thing to see. The pallies stayed alive with their myriad save me spells while the rogue became a one man wrecking crew. Chimaeron went down.
Then it was Maloriak's turn. This was another fight Wild had only done once before. Once the raid leader started talking I started to remember it better. The strategy had been tweaked in Wild's favor, too. There first time Wild had done Chim there were positioning issues that worked against Wild getting to the center for the big AoE. This time Wild could stand pretty much wherever I wanted and Wild had no problems other than an occasional raider drifting out of range - but they figured out pretty quick that they needed to move when they started taking damage that wasn't being healed. Maloriak went down on the first attempt. Wild was hoping for the [Leggings of Consuming Flame] to drop, but no luck there.
Next up was Atramedes. Wild has seen this fight before, too, once, but we weren't able to bring him down on that run. This time, we had one false start that caused a wipe, and then killed him on our second try. That was Wild's first kill of Atramedes, and it triggered the Achievement for clearing BWD (since I already had a Nef kill).
We had made it to the final boss in BWD, defeating five encounters, in a single night.
We did make two attempts on Nefarian, but we had to ask our shadow priest to turn healer for the fight, since it pretty much requires three healers for the pedestal phase. We didn't too well, but the raid will have all night Wednesday to bring him down. Wild will not likely be there, as we will be visiting friends. But we'll hopefully be back in time for Hunter Fortress!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday (22 Aug) - On A different Subject
Monday (22 Aug) - On A different Subject
The World of Warcraft has been a dull place for the last several days, with very little transpiring in Wild's world. Wild's last raid was Friday night last and we did NOT kill the final boss, Cho'gall, in Bastion of Twilight - again. We will not be starting over again this week, as the raid leader saved the raid so that we could start with Cho'gall on Thursday and spend the whole evening with him. Tea and crumpets, and then we kill him ...
Wildshard has managed to avoid pvp since he beginning of the Cataclysm, but, being bored to distraction on Monday night, Wild found himself in Tol Barad at the Horde encampment of the Hellscreamers faction. Wild did the six dailies available to him. Guildies blinked in surprise and offered limp "Gratz" when Wild made it to Friendly reputation (every other level 85 in the guild are already at the max rep of Exalted). Wild has a vague plan of collecting enough pvp honor points to exchange them for Justice Points to buy a new helm or pants, the two pieces of gear that Wild still needs to upgrade.
Now that I've caught up on what little news there is, it's time to go off on a tangent.
I don't know if anyone out there has an ereader device, like the Kindle, Sony, or Kobo. I read quite a bit, and have always loved the feel of a book in my hands. I was pretty skeptical about these ereader devices, but I was tempted by the ease in which books could be downloaded and be instantly available, not to mention that I could have hundreds of books on that one device. When I travel I usually bring 4-5 books with me to make sure I don't run out of things to read. In our one walk in closet, half the space is taken up with boxes of books I that knew I would want to read again someday.
So, a few months ago, I hinted strongly to the Mrs exactly what I wanted for my birthday - a Kobo ereader. I chose Kobo for two reasons - I wanted a basic reader that excelled at just letting me read. I didn't need a color screen, or a keypad, or 4G connectivity, or other bells and whistles like playing games - I just wanted to read books.
Oh, that second reason? My favorite bookstore was Borders, which was allied with Kobo and I could buy my books directly from Borders, even using the wireless connection to buy them online while actually in the store. Neat!
You probably know that Borders recently went out of business. Kobo didn't go under with them, though, as Kobo is it's own company (in Canada). Kobo provided a transition from the Borders site and desktop apps to the Kobo site and desktop apps. Unfortunately, that's when things went very wrong.
In a nutshell, the transition was poorly done. While I didn't lose any books, I lost all my bookmarks. Since I am often reading more than one book at a time, losing my place in all of them was pretty irritating, and there are no folded down pages to get me close to where I was. Even worse, the Kobo desktop app that I now had to use to order books for download to the Kobo is about the worst I have ever seen. No "shopping cart" to put books I might want to buy - each book must be purchased one at a time. The Search feature is so laughable I want to cry. Imagine NOT being able to search and sort by author. I can't. Kobo Support is by email only - no phone support at all. When I complained about a synching issue recently, it took three days to get a response.
Don't get me wrong, I like my Kobo ereader, even if it is slow to load and sometimes randomly changes my font. But not Kobo the company. Not long after I got my Kobo, I got the Mrs the ereader SHE wanted - a Kindle. She loves it. I love it, and I'm jealous. Christmas is a long ways off yet. Sigh.
In a final bit of news, we went to a San Diego Padres game on Sunday. Trevor Hoffman's Number 51 was being retired and we had a chance to go see it. The team did a really superb job and it was great fun. There were a lot of players, managers, and coaches all the way back to his earliest days in baseball that came to pay tribute. Both of his brothers were there, and all four of the other players who have had their numbers retired by the Padres were there as well - Steve Garvey, Randy Jones, Tony Gwynn, and Dave Winfield. They even had a clip of Trevor's father singing the National Anthem at one of Trevor's minor league games. What a treat! Trevor made a very nice speech and of course the team gave him a car - a 1958 Cadillac convertible. The only flaw in the whole ceremony was Bud Selig's taped congratulations - mind numbingly long and boring.
The game itself was against the Florida Marlins. The Padres are a pretty bad team this year (last place going into the game), but they have brought up virtually all their young talent and it was fun to watch the youngsters play. The Pads had won all three of their games against the Marlins so far in the four game set. Lead-off hitter Will Venable smacked a line drive homerun in the first and we entered the 2nd inning with a 3-0 lead. That ended Padres scoring, the Pads being so shocked at scoring three runs they remembered they weren't supposed to be able to hit. In the top of the 9th the score was 3-2 Padres, closer Heath Bell was on the mound, and he'd struck out the first two Marlins hitters. Mike Cameron, formerly a loved Padre, was in the box for the Marlins. He ripped a "no doubt about it" homerun into the left field bleachers to tie the score. Bell got the third out.
Things got really interesting in the bottom of the 9th. The first batter, catcher Nick Hundley, ripped a triple that hit the 400 foot sign in centerfield. With no outs and a runner at third we needed only a big fly to win it. With the #8 hitter at the plate, manager Jack McKeon brought in a lefty reliever and then ordered him to walk the batter. In the pitcher's spot, manager Bud Black brought in a righty to hit. McKeon ordered him walked as well. We now had the bases loaded and no outs. With lead-off left-handed hitter Will Venable waiting on deck, McKeon put a wild shift on. He moved his shortstop AND an outfielder to the right side of the infield at infield in depth. There was no one in centerfield and only the third baseman on the left side of the infield. Virtually everyone in the stands figured that Bud Black would pinch hit for Venable, who regularly platoons and starts mostly against right-hand pitchers, and who generally hits to the right side. McKeon was going all in for the double play ball.
Bud Black sent Venable to the plate. That had to be one huge confidence builder for Venable, given a chance like this. Venable fouled off the first pitch. He drilled the second pitch - to the right side - but over the heads of the infielders - AND over the head of the leaping right-fielder. Game over, Padres win 4-3! It was that much sweeter later in the day when the Dodgers lost their game, and coupled with the Padres fourth straight win, we are now out of last place. What a beautiful day for some baseball.
The World of Warcraft has been a dull place for the last several days, with very little transpiring in Wild's world. Wild's last raid was Friday night last and we did NOT kill the final boss, Cho'gall, in Bastion of Twilight - again. We will not be starting over again this week, as the raid leader saved the raid so that we could start with Cho'gall on Thursday and spend the whole evening with him. Tea and crumpets, and then we kill him ...
Wildshard has managed to avoid pvp since he beginning of the Cataclysm, but, being bored to distraction on Monday night, Wild found himself in Tol Barad at the Horde encampment of the Hellscreamers faction. Wild did the six dailies available to him. Guildies blinked in surprise and offered limp "Gratz" when Wild made it to Friendly reputation (every other level 85 in the guild are already at the max rep of Exalted). Wild has a vague plan of collecting enough pvp honor points to exchange them for Justice Points to buy a new helm or pants, the two pieces of gear that Wild still needs to upgrade.
Now that I've caught up on what little news there is, it's time to go off on a tangent.
I don't know if anyone out there has an ereader device, like the Kindle, Sony, or Kobo. I read quite a bit, and have always loved the feel of a book in my hands. I was pretty skeptical about these ereader devices, but I was tempted by the ease in which books could be downloaded and be instantly available, not to mention that I could have hundreds of books on that one device. When I travel I usually bring 4-5 books with me to make sure I don't run out of things to read. In our one walk in closet, half the space is taken up with boxes of books I that knew I would want to read again someday.
So, a few months ago, I hinted strongly to the Mrs exactly what I wanted for my birthday - a Kobo ereader. I chose Kobo for two reasons - I wanted a basic reader that excelled at just letting me read. I didn't need a color screen, or a keypad, or 4G connectivity, or other bells and whistles like playing games - I just wanted to read books.
Oh, that second reason? My favorite bookstore was Borders, which was allied with Kobo and I could buy my books directly from Borders, even using the wireless connection to buy them online while actually in the store. Neat!
You probably know that Borders recently went out of business. Kobo didn't go under with them, though, as Kobo is it's own company (in Canada). Kobo provided a transition from the Borders site and desktop apps to the Kobo site and desktop apps. Unfortunately, that's when things went very wrong.
In a nutshell, the transition was poorly done. While I didn't lose any books, I lost all my bookmarks. Since I am often reading more than one book at a time, losing my place in all of them was pretty irritating, and there are no folded down pages to get me close to where I was. Even worse, the Kobo desktop app that I now had to use to order books for download to the Kobo is about the worst I have ever seen. No "shopping cart" to put books I might want to buy - each book must be purchased one at a time. The Search feature is so laughable I want to cry. Imagine NOT being able to search and sort by author. I can't. Kobo Support is by email only - no phone support at all. When I complained about a synching issue recently, it took three days to get a response.
Don't get me wrong, I like my Kobo ereader, even if it is slow to load and sometimes randomly changes my font. But not Kobo the company. Not long after I got my Kobo, I got the Mrs the ereader SHE wanted - a Kindle. She loves it. I love it, and I'm jealous. Christmas is a long ways off yet. Sigh.
In a final bit of news, we went to a San Diego Padres game on Sunday. Trevor Hoffman's Number 51 was being retired and we had a chance to go see it. The team did a really superb job and it was great fun. There were a lot of players, managers, and coaches all the way back to his earliest days in baseball that came to pay tribute. Both of his brothers were there, and all four of the other players who have had their numbers retired by the Padres were there as well - Steve Garvey, Randy Jones, Tony Gwynn, and Dave Winfield. They even had a clip of Trevor's father singing the National Anthem at one of Trevor's minor league games. What a treat! Trevor made a very nice speech and of course the team gave him a car - a 1958 Cadillac convertible. The only flaw in the whole ceremony was Bud Selig's taped congratulations - mind numbingly long and boring.
The game itself was against the Florida Marlins. The Padres are a pretty bad team this year (last place going into the game), but they have brought up virtually all their young talent and it was fun to watch the youngsters play. The Pads had won all three of their games against the Marlins so far in the four game set. Lead-off hitter Will Venable smacked a line drive homerun in the first and we entered the 2nd inning with a 3-0 lead. That ended Padres scoring, the Pads being so shocked at scoring three runs they remembered they weren't supposed to be able to hit. In the top of the 9th the score was 3-2 Padres, closer Heath Bell was on the mound, and he'd struck out the first two Marlins hitters. Mike Cameron, formerly a loved Padre, was in the box for the Marlins. He ripped a "no doubt about it" homerun into the left field bleachers to tie the score. Bell got the third out.
Things got really interesting in the bottom of the 9th. The first batter, catcher Nick Hundley, ripped a triple that hit the 400 foot sign in centerfield. With no outs and a runner at third we needed only a big fly to win it. With the #8 hitter at the plate, manager Jack McKeon brought in a lefty reliever and then ordered him to walk the batter. In the pitcher's spot, manager Bud Black brought in a righty to hit. McKeon ordered him walked as well. We now had the bases loaded and no outs. With lead-off left-handed hitter Will Venable waiting on deck, McKeon put a wild shift on. He moved his shortstop AND an outfielder to the right side of the infield at infield in depth. There was no one in centerfield and only the third baseman on the left side of the infield. Virtually everyone in the stands figured that Bud Black would pinch hit for Venable, who regularly platoons and starts mostly against right-hand pitchers, and who generally hits to the right side. McKeon was going all in for the double play ball.
Bud Black sent Venable to the plate. That had to be one huge confidence builder for Venable, given a chance like this. Venable fouled off the first pitch. He drilled the second pitch - to the right side - but over the heads of the infielders - AND over the head of the leaping right-fielder. Game over, Padres win 4-3! It was that much sweeter later in the day when the Dodgers lost their game, and coupled with the Padres fourth straight win, we are now out of last place. What a beautiful day for some baseball.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tuesday/Wednesday (17 Aug) - Wrap Up
Tuesday/Wednesday (17 Aug) - Wrap Up
There was more to Tuesday evening than just the Singing Sunflower - but not much. The second night of the Mf raid was again full without Wild and went back into BWD, which they had started after doing Firelands trash on Monday. They got as far as Maloriak, the third boss. The Lady Hunter raid group, which runs on Tues/Wed, is having organizational problems. The raid leader, Lady Hunter, was absent without notification for the second week in a row. Her backup/main tank was clearly frustrated. We could gather just six raiders and called it off after 45 minutes of waiting. Last week Wild raided every day, Mon thru Friday. It looks like Wild's regular Thurs/Fri Bastion of Twilight raid will be his only raiding this week. Pray we knock off Cho'gall this time.
With nothing else to do on Tuesday night, Wild went fishing again. The guild was out in force on the shores of Twilight Highlands, Uldum, and even Hyjal, dipping their poles into every fishing hole they could find. Wild helped out until nearly midnight, but finally went to bed. Wild learned Wednesday morning that the guild reached the "That's a Lot of Bait!" achievement of 10,000 fish fished from pools. We can now make Seafood Magnifique, the best food buff dispenser in the game, usable by multiple players. Wild bought the recipe and will help make them for raids.
Wednesday - It was yet another quiet night. Lady Hunter was again absent, and Fn, her raid leader, told Wild that she had disappeared on a trip to somewhere. There would be no raid. Wild fussed about for a bit, looking for a PUG raid, but was a quiet night. Wild did take the time to go to Hillsbrad Foothills and get his Singing Sunflower. Wild is going to keep it in game full time, so it can sneak up on unwary players and whisper it's faint, eery, La La La tune which, as Silver knows, is bound to cause chills to run up their spine.
The Wild family poked their heads back in game around 9pm and saw that Hunter Fortress was off for the night. BB did a little AH work, making about 20g (not bad for selling nothing but low level herbs).
Wild really needs to raid Thursday night.
There was more to Tuesday evening than just the Singing Sunflower - but not much. The second night of the Mf raid was again full without Wild and went back into BWD, which they had started after doing Firelands trash on Monday. They got as far as Maloriak, the third boss. The Lady Hunter raid group, which runs on Tues/Wed, is having organizational problems. The raid leader, Lady Hunter, was absent without notification for the second week in a row. Her backup/main tank was clearly frustrated. We could gather just six raiders and called it off after 45 minutes of waiting. Last week Wild raided every day, Mon thru Friday. It looks like Wild's regular Thurs/Fri Bastion of Twilight raid will be his only raiding this week. Pray we knock off Cho'gall this time.
With nothing else to do on Tuesday night, Wild went fishing again. The guild was out in force on the shores of Twilight Highlands, Uldum, and even Hyjal, dipping their poles into every fishing hole they could find. Wild helped out until nearly midnight, but finally went to bed. Wild learned Wednesday morning that the guild reached the "That's a Lot of Bait!" achievement of 10,000 fish fished from pools. We can now make Seafood Magnifique, the best food buff dispenser in the game, usable by multiple players. Wild bought the recipe and will help make them for raids.
Wednesday - It was yet another quiet night. Lady Hunter was again absent, and Fn, her raid leader, told Wild that she had disappeared on a trip to somewhere. There would be no raid. Wild fussed about for a bit, looking for a PUG raid, but was a quiet night. Wild did take the time to go to Hillsbrad Foothills and get his Singing Sunflower. Wild is going to keep it in game full time, so it can sneak up on unwary players and whisper it's faint, eery, La La La tune which, as Silver knows, is bound to cause chills to run up their spine.
The Wild family poked their heads back in game around 9pm and saw that Hunter Fortress was off for the night. BB did a little AH work, making about 20g (not bad for selling nothing but low level herbs).
Wild really needs to raid Thursday night.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Tuesday (16 Aug) - Lawn of the Dead
Tuesday (16 Aug) - Lawn of the Dead
There is this "popcap" video game called Plants vs Zombies. Until recently I'd never heard of a popcap game, or a game called Plants vs Zombies. Yes, I'm old. Popcap Games is the company that developed Plants vs Zombies, along with their biggest selling game, Bejeweled. Sorry, I'd never heard of that game, either.
I might never have heard of or thought about any of the above until I started seeing these little flowers following players around. How cute! How do I get one? Well, apparently Blizzard designers are big fans of popcap games, and Plants vs Zombies in particular. There is a quest chain available that anyone who has reached level 20 can do, and the final reward is the Singing Sunflower companion pet.
I set out to get that flower. The guinea pig for the effort was Shevils. The beginning quest is called "Basic Botany" and is offered by Brazie the Botanist in the Hillsbrad Foothills. When looking at the map for the quest, Shevils noted that the npc was close to a place called Sludgeguard Towers. When Shevils arrived at that spot, there was no npc at the Tower. However, a short distance away is a farm, and that is where Brazie can be found.
What is interesting about the five quests in this chain is that all the action takes place in a phased area. You don't have to worry about other players being around. Once a quest is accepted, you are on your own. These quests are not like regular WoW quests, either. Blizzard constructed a mini-game of Plants vs "Undead" (instead of zombies) that plays very like the popcap game.
The point of the game is very simple. The game is played on a checkerboard lawn. I would come to think of it as a lawn with five bowling lanes. The player has to earn energy to create little plant creatures, which are placed on the board. Those plant creatures have to defend against waves of undead, who advance on your plants in the lanes that they spawn in. Kill enough undead without losing all your plants and you win. Simple rules, simple game ... but it can be very addictive fun.
The five quests are designed to help players learn the game. The early quests introduce the types of plants the player can use and what their abilities are. When Shevils first tried the game I kept trying to move her around to go pick up the little balls of yellow energy that dropped onto the lawn. Wrong. There is no player movement in the game. The yellow balls of energy should be right-clicked on, and they then fly into a jar to help fill it up with energy that is expended when you create something. There is also an action bar where plant types to use can be selected and placed on the board. As Shevils progressed through the quests she learned more and the waves of undead became more deadly and more numerous.
The game is seductively easy at first. But it gets pretty challenging in the later phases. There are several strategies on wowhead on how to beat the game, and Shevils tried a number of them. And she did get her Singing Flower. Shevils is going to tell you how she did it below, so if you want to sort it out on your own (which I think is half the fun), skip the below and go play Plants vs Undead yourself!
Warning! Spoilers below!
Shevils Victory Dance on the Corpses of the Undead!
This is the strategy that worked for Shevils. It will work with all five of the quests, although in the easier early quests you can experiment some and still beat it. If you lose (or complete a quest) you'll appear back at Grazie to start again or get the next quest.
1) Once the game starts yellow orbs fall to the lawn. Right click them to start filling your jar with energy. As soon as you have enough energy to make a sunflower, do so and put it on the board, starting at the bottom left corner square. Make three flowers in that first, left-most row before making anything else. Undead will spawn on the right side of the board. They will stay in their own lane (unless they reach the left-most row) and at first they will move very slowly. The Sunflowers placed on the board also earn energy, so the more of them you have the more energy you earn. The yellow balls will keep falling, too.
2) Undead can spawn in any lane and there can be more than one in a lane. When undead start to get close to the halfway point on the board you are going to need to kill them. If all you have is a spitter (a plant that can attack undead) then place one on the third square from the left in the lane that the undead is in. If the undead reach a plant they will try to kill it, but the spitters will be able to kill most of the early undead easily. Keep making sunflowers. Fill the back row and start on the second row. Make just enough spitters to kill incoming undead.
2a) HOWEVER, if you have been making sunflowers and collecting yellow orbs and are far enough into the chain, you will be able to make Vines. This is the MAIN TACTIC to follow. For those later quests, when things get really hairy, you should ignore most of the plant types. Don't make spitters. Make Vines instead. They last much longer and kill faster. They also cost more energy and have a fairly long cooldown.
3) At some point the game will announce "A wave of undead approaches!" At this point you should be close to having two full rows of sunflowers and one full row of Vines. Keep making vines to get two full rows of vines as there will be a second wave of undead, and later there will be bigger and badder undead coming with everything else.
4) At some point you will be able to make Bombs. If you have your four rows in place use the bombs to blast the bigger undead or clumps of smaller ones. Bombs do a LOT of AoE damage and can be placed anywhere on the board. Bombs have a long cooldown, though, so use them wisely.
5) If an undead reaches the left most row, you lose that lane and the undead will move toward the house behind it, where Brazie is - and kill him. You lose. So don't let an undead get that far.
6) Summary - Work toward making two rows of sunflowers. Use Vines in the 3rd and 4th rows to protect the sunflowers. Use bombs to deal extra damage where needed. And have fun!
Forgot to add a pic!
There is this "popcap" video game called Plants vs Zombies. Until recently I'd never heard of a popcap game, or a game called Plants vs Zombies. Yes, I'm old. Popcap Games is the company that developed Plants vs Zombies, along with their biggest selling game, Bejeweled. Sorry, I'd never heard of that game, either.
I might never have heard of or thought about any of the above until I started seeing these little flowers following players around. How cute! How do I get one? Well, apparently Blizzard designers are big fans of popcap games, and Plants vs Zombies in particular. There is a quest chain available that anyone who has reached level 20 can do, and the final reward is the Singing Sunflower companion pet.
I set out to get that flower. The guinea pig for the effort was Shevils. The beginning quest is called "Basic Botany" and is offered by Brazie the Botanist in the Hillsbrad Foothills. When looking at the map for the quest, Shevils noted that the npc was close to a place called Sludgeguard Towers. When Shevils arrived at that spot, there was no npc at the Tower. However, a short distance away is a farm, and that is where Brazie can be found.
What is interesting about the five quests in this chain is that all the action takes place in a phased area. You don't have to worry about other players being around. Once a quest is accepted, you are on your own. These quests are not like regular WoW quests, either. Blizzard constructed a mini-game of Plants vs "Undead" (instead of zombies) that plays very like the popcap game.
The point of the game is very simple. The game is played on a checkerboard lawn. I would come to think of it as a lawn with five bowling lanes. The player has to earn energy to create little plant creatures, which are placed on the board. Those plant creatures have to defend against waves of undead, who advance on your plants in the lanes that they spawn in. Kill enough undead without losing all your plants and you win. Simple rules, simple game ... but it can be very addictive fun.
The five quests are designed to help players learn the game. The early quests introduce the types of plants the player can use and what their abilities are. When Shevils first tried the game I kept trying to move her around to go pick up the little balls of yellow energy that dropped onto the lawn. Wrong. There is no player movement in the game. The yellow balls of energy should be right-clicked on, and they then fly into a jar to help fill it up with energy that is expended when you create something. There is also an action bar where plant types to use can be selected and placed on the board. As Shevils progressed through the quests she learned more and the waves of undead became more deadly and more numerous.
The game is seductively easy at first. But it gets pretty challenging in the later phases. There are several strategies on wowhead on how to beat the game, and Shevils tried a number of them. And she did get her Singing Flower. Shevils is going to tell you how she did it below, so if you want to sort it out on your own (which I think is half the fun), skip the below and go play Plants vs Undead yourself!
Warning! Spoilers below!
Shevils Victory Dance on the Corpses of the Undead!
This is the strategy that worked for Shevils. It will work with all five of the quests, although in the easier early quests you can experiment some and still beat it. If you lose (or complete a quest) you'll appear back at Grazie to start again or get the next quest.
1) Once the game starts yellow orbs fall to the lawn. Right click them to start filling your jar with energy. As soon as you have enough energy to make a sunflower, do so and put it on the board, starting at the bottom left corner square. Make three flowers in that first, left-most row before making anything else. Undead will spawn on the right side of the board. They will stay in their own lane (unless they reach the left-most row) and at first they will move very slowly. The Sunflowers placed on the board also earn energy, so the more of them you have the more energy you earn. The yellow balls will keep falling, too.
2) Undead can spawn in any lane and there can be more than one in a lane. When undead start to get close to the halfway point on the board you are going to need to kill them. If all you have is a spitter (a plant that can attack undead) then place one on the third square from the left in the lane that the undead is in. If the undead reach a plant they will try to kill it, but the spitters will be able to kill most of the early undead easily. Keep making sunflowers. Fill the back row and start on the second row. Make just enough spitters to kill incoming undead.
2a) HOWEVER, if you have been making sunflowers and collecting yellow orbs and are far enough into the chain, you will be able to make Vines. This is the MAIN TACTIC to follow. For those later quests, when things get really hairy, you should ignore most of the plant types. Don't make spitters. Make Vines instead. They last much longer and kill faster. They also cost more energy and have a fairly long cooldown.
3) At some point the game will announce "A wave of undead approaches!" At this point you should be close to having two full rows of sunflowers and one full row of Vines. Keep making vines to get two full rows of vines as there will be a second wave of undead, and later there will be bigger and badder undead coming with everything else.
4) At some point you will be able to make Bombs. If you have your four rows in place use the bombs to blast the bigger undead or clumps of smaller ones. Bombs do a LOT of AoE damage and can be placed anywhere on the board. Bombs have a long cooldown, though, so use them wisely.
5) If an undead reaches the left most row, you lose that lane and the undead will move toward the house behind it, where Brazie is - and kill him. You lose. So don't let an undead get that far.
6) Summary - Work toward making two rows of sunflowers. Use Vines in the 3rd and 4th rows to protect the sunflowers. Use bombs to deal extra damage where needed. And have fun!
Forgot to add a pic!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday (15 Aug) - For the love of Goatgirl
Monday (15 Aug) - For the love of Goatgirl
Mf's Mon/Tues raid officially starts at 6pm. Last week Mf did not schedule a raid because of low turnout, and he wanted to take some time to address that. Prior to that supposedly temporary shut down, Wild has been showing up around 6pm to see if there would be a raid, and if Mf needed Wild's help. He has always asked Wild to join his raid. Mf posted raid invites for this week, so obviously he was going to try to run a raid - the Firelands.
On Monday night Wild was in game at 6pm as usual. As usual, Wild did not sign up, but was available if needed. I don't know what Mf did last week, but whatever it was worked. Mf's raid was already full. They weren't new players, either, but guildie raiders who came back to the fold. Well, well, good for them, and kudos to Mf for doing whatever he did to get them to come. Wild was disappointed that there would be no guild Firelands raid for Wild on Monday, but happy that Mf was again fielding a raid.
The guild is working on getting the "That's a Lot of Bait" guild achievement, which requires guildies to catch a total of 10,000 fish from fishing pools. The reward, when accomplished, will be Seafood Magnifique, which dispenses the best buff food for raids. Wild decided to work on that while keeping an eye on trade chat to see if Wild could catch on with a Firelands or Baradin Hold run outside the guild. Since Wild would be have to be out of major cities to do his fishing, where he couldn't see trade chat, Wild asked Happy to hang around as well at his home base of The Undercity, and let Wild know if something came up.
Not long after that, See from Hunter Fortress came in game to do some leveling. She may have stories of her own to tell, but she ran a Stockades dungeon and leveled to 25, all the while chatting away with Happy. Wild hung around for about two hours, caught a lot of fish (some of which went to the guild, while the stuff that the guild couldn't use went to Happy to sell), but never found a raid to join.
Wild and Happy both went to bed around 8pm, but I roused Shevils at 9pm for a couple of reasons. First, I thought Speak might be around. Second, Shevils needed to talk to Philly about glyphs for Hunter Fortress, now that we were all leveling to at least level 25. We can't use glyphs until level 25. The third reason is that Shevils was still level 24 and needed to get to 25. I was sure that Shevils had already leveled to 25, but I must have confused her with Jocy (now 26) and Bean (now 25). Shevils made quick work of getting to 25. Philly, meanwhile, checked out Speak's glyphs and decided they were good enough for the rest of the Fortress. Shevils got her glyphs, and Philly sent three glyphs to See as well. Bean also got a couple of glyphs, but Philly ran out of mats for one of them. JB will have to get off her duff and go farm a bit for the likes of wild steelbloom, kingsblood, grave moss, or liferoot so that Bean can get all her glyphs. I "think" I sent Speak a Minor glyph, which he was missing, but if not let us know and Philly can make whatever Speak needs. Those glyphs can be pretty expensive.
You must be wondering by now who Goatgirl is. No, she is not another new member of the Wild family. Goatgirl is a farmer girl Happy met at the Auction House. Well, he hasn't exactly met her personally, but her signature has been all over the AH in recent days. Goatgirl has the distinction of dramatically shifting prices on the AH for a lot of the materials that Happy himself deals in.
Her activities, much to Happy's annoyance, has at least temporarily (and maybe permanently) destroyed the market for some of Happy's large quantity, medium priced mats. She's done this by pricing them so low Happy cannot make a profit from them and she posts them in huge quantities. The following items Happy has shelved for the time being as unprofitable: Arcane Dust, Dream Shards, Large Prismatic Shards, and Void Crystals. Other sellers have taken to underbidding even Goatgirl on occasion, and if they go low enough Happy will buy them up, knowing that markets change all the time, and Goatgirl could simply be gone one day, never to return. So it goes with sellers on the AH. And no, Happy hasn't put a contract out on her. Yet.
Goatgirl has also been a boon of sorts to Happy, because she makes mistakes. For example, Greater Planar Essences have an average price right at 10g each. That hasn't changed in longer than Happy can remember. So, Happy buys when the price dips to 7g or less, and sells them when I can get 12g each or more. So, on average, Happy makes about 5g for every one he sells. This very morning, Goatgirl posted almost 50 of these essences - at 3g each. What was even nicer was that sellers saw that - and underbid her! Happy bought ALL OF THEM. I mean, Happy cleaned out the market for these essences - and then reposted a number of them at 12g each. Over time Happy will make a great deal of gold on those essences. Goatgirl has made the same kind of mistake on some other mats as well. Happy buys them all up, reposts at a reasonable price, and says a silent Thank You to his Goatgirl.
Mf's Mon/Tues raid officially starts at 6pm. Last week Mf did not schedule a raid because of low turnout, and he wanted to take some time to address that. Prior to that supposedly temporary shut down, Wild has been showing up around 6pm to see if there would be a raid, and if Mf needed Wild's help. He has always asked Wild to join his raid. Mf posted raid invites for this week, so obviously he was going to try to run a raid - the Firelands.
On Monday night Wild was in game at 6pm as usual. As usual, Wild did not sign up, but was available if needed. I don't know what Mf did last week, but whatever it was worked. Mf's raid was already full. They weren't new players, either, but guildie raiders who came back to the fold. Well, well, good for them, and kudos to Mf for doing whatever he did to get them to come. Wild was disappointed that there would be no guild Firelands raid for Wild on Monday, but happy that Mf was again fielding a raid.
The guild is working on getting the "That's a Lot of Bait" guild achievement, which requires guildies to catch a total of 10,000 fish from fishing pools. The reward, when accomplished, will be Seafood Magnifique, which dispenses the best buff food for raids. Wild decided to work on that while keeping an eye on trade chat to see if Wild could catch on with a Firelands or Baradin Hold run outside the guild. Since Wild would be have to be out of major cities to do his fishing, where he couldn't see trade chat, Wild asked Happy to hang around as well at his home base of The Undercity, and let Wild know if something came up.
Not long after that, See from Hunter Fortress came in game to do some leveling. She may have stories of her own to tell, but she ran a Stockades dungeon and leveled to 25, all the while chatting away with Happy. Wild hung around for about two hours, caught a lot of fish (some of which went to the guild, while the stuff that the guild couldn't use went to Happy to sell), but never found a raid to join.
Wild and Happy both went to bed around 8pm, but I roused Shevils at 9pm for a couple of reasons. First, I thought Speak might be around. Second, Shevils needed to talk to Philly about glyphs for Hunter Fortress, now that we were all leveling to at least level 25. We can't use glyphs until level 25. The third reason is that Shevils was still level 24 and needed to get to 25. I was sure that Shevils had already leveled to 25, but I must have confused her with Jocy (now 26) and Bean (now 25). Shevils made quick work of getting to 25. Philly, meanwhile, checked out Speak's glyphs and decided they were good enough for the rest of the Fortress. Shevils got her glyphs, and Philly sent three glyphs to See as well. Bean also got a couple of glyphs, but Philly ran out of mats for one of them. JB will have to get off her duff and go farm a bit for the likes of wild steelbloom, kingsblood, grave moss, or liferoot so that Bean can get all her glyphs. I "think" I sent Speak a Minor glyph, which he was missing, but if not let us know and Philly can make whatever Speak needs. Those glyphs can be pretty expensive.
You must be wondering by now who Goatgirl is. No, she is not another new member of the Wild family. Goatgirl is a farmer girl Happy met at the Auction House. Well, he hasn't exactly met her personally, but her signature has been all over the AH in recent days. Goatgirl has the distinction of dramatically shifting prices on the AH for a lot of the materials that Happy himself deals in.
Her activities, much to Happy's annoyance, has at least temporarily (and maybe permanently) destroyed the market for some of Happy's large quantity, medium priced mats. She's done this by pricing them so low Happy cannot make a profit from them and she posts them in huge quantities. The following items Happy has shelved for the time being as unprofitable: Arcane Dust, Dream Shards, Large Prismatic Shards, and Void Crystals. Other sellers have taken to underbidding even Goatgirl on occasion, and if they go low enough Happy will buy them up, knowing that markets change all the time, and Goatgirl could simply be gone one day, never to return. So it goes with sellers on the AH. And no, Happy hasn't put a contract out on her. Yet.
Goatgirl has also been a boon of sorts to Happy, because she makes mistakes. For example, Greater Planar Essences have an average price right at 10g each. That hasn't changed in longer than Happy can remember. So, Happy buys when the price dips to 7g or less, and sells them when I can get 12g each or more. So, on average, Happy makes about 5g for every one he sells. This very morning, Goatgirl posted almost 50 of these essences - at 3g each. What was even nicer was that sellers saw that - and underbid her! Happy bought ALL OF THEM. I mean, Happy cleaned out the market for these essences - and then reposted a number of them at 12g each. Over time Happy will make a great deal of gold on those essences. Goatgirl has made the same kind of mistake on some other mats as well. Happy buys them all up, reposts at a reasonable price, and says a silent Thank You to his Goatgirl.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Weekend (14 Aug) - News From Boulderfist
Weekend (14 Aug) - News From Boulderfist
Boulderfist is the home of the GoH guild, an Alliance guild that is part of Wild's extended family of friends. Members of both the DER and Sis families have relatives on Boulderfist, and recently the Wild family added their own.
That newest member of the Wild family, death knight BB, was in game both late Friday and Saturday nights. She spent her time gathering flowers and rocks to begin building her AH business. Once she gets her professions sufficiently raised she'll likely be heading to Outlands.
While BB had little exciting news, Sis family member Tea had a full plate over the weekend and brought this report to share:
BWD Done and Done - Part 1
Well, Tea saw a bit of action this last Sunday. She was not on much due to a mother-in-law visiting but the mum was gone by Sunday morning and Tea was back in business.
She was roaming around SW, checking out the AH, when she noticed the time was almost raid time. Excited, she pulled up the guild roster and became unexcited. There were only 10 people on and not one was Silver (the usual leader of the raid). Ug.
Silver made it on, just in time, and started the raid invites. At this point there were about 12 people on in the guild. Surprisingly, the pug came together faster than Tea expected (despite spending too long finding who was already locked in the raid and had joined our group) and we were off on our 25 man. But as with any pugs it means the high chance of people who don’t know what they are doing. We saw this. One was obvious before the pug started. We had a chatter box of a DK. Then there was the inane conversations that start up when they discover a *gasp* girl in vent. One of the reasons I try not to talk in vent unless I am with people I know or absolutely have to. So Silver was stuck dealing with dumb males.
The raid was pretty uneventful; surprising due to newbies not knowing the fights and a DK not noticing when to run out when targeted. We one-shot all bosses then it came to Nef ... Sigh. The first phase went off well, despite positioning issues when people started shooting too soon at Ony. The 2nd phase is where we failed. This is the one where Ony is now dead and the room fills with lava (Wild’s favorite phase). At this point everyone is on a platform (three groups) with a baddie, while Nef flies around above us. It is the job of one or two people on the platform to interrupt a spell that the baddie does while the casters shoot at Nef.
In summary there was an extreme lack of stuns and thus wipes. Two, maybe three of them. On top of that was the comments from the DK.. “Oh, I stunned him three times!” but this did not show at all on some addon that tracks this (probably recount). This is the same DK that I mentioned earlier. One that through the whole dungeon blamed his lower damage and such on lag and mom aggro. I am skeptical about both, but the mother aggro might have been real.
To sum up the end, Nef dropped, angel’s rejoiced and life went on. No new gear from the raid, but Tea got enough points to get a new chest.
Now the next tale, which will make this an even longer email and was the bane of Tea’s night.
Part 2 - Kersplat - Trials, Turbulence, and BoT
After BWD Tea was thinking about retiring for the eve. Couple of things were stopping her. First she had to go buy her new chest and socket and enchant it up. Second, Turd was on. Turd is her pvp buddy she does not see too much. While she was chatting up with Turd, Jho started forming a 10 man BoT. Spotting Tea he cordially invited her. Tea had other things to take care of before she could go and told him she would be a bit. If he still needed a person once she was done, she would be game.
Tea came back on and Jho still had the spot open (Jho is marshmallow man where the girls are concerned) and Tea was in. Now the problem with this raid is that it was a 10 man, not 25. Ten man you need to be able to pull your weight better or have some really good people to carry you. Tea had the latter.
I can’t tell you the bosses names, because they all blended together. Ug, the fights were bad. The first few were not bombs but not great.
[Insert by Wild: Too bad the BoT fights couldn't have been explained better; it's really frustrating to try to learn on the fly, and those boss fights all have little "gotchas" in them (like standing IN the fire instead of staying away, or running TO the tornado instead of away) that raiders need to know about.
The first boss you downed was Halfus along with three dragons that the raid activated once Halfus was engaged. Given the strength of the raid the raid leader likely activated all three up front and just overpowered them, but in Wild's raids we have to selectively activate them.]
So there are two dragons. They do different things. Shoot fire on the ground (avoid that area). Open portals that you can get sucked into (Tea did this) and you should also avoid this area. You need to collapse and spread at times … Tea did that part pretty well. And you need to dps the two different dragons. Tea failed there and just focused on one, not noticing that the other was about. How she did not notice? *Shrug* Could have been due to the mind overload and constant thoughts of “what the hell is going on?” that she had through the whole raid. She died at one point during this fight but was rezed.
[Insert by Wild: The two dragons, Therelion and Valiona, we call the Twins. The key to this fight is knowing when to collapse on the tank and when to stay at range, depending on which affect the two dragons are using and which affect you are being targeted with. A key mitigation in this fight for 10 man is to always keep four raiders at range at least 10 yards away to avoid nasty stuff happening to the tank/melee. ]
Her performance went downhill from there. We come up (order might be as mixed up as Tea’s memory here) to some other bosses. Two dudes, one is fire one is water. I guess you swap dps and try to keep them about the same level in health. Also when once starts freaking out (shooting a lot more than usual) dps needs to go over and focus on the one that is freaking out. There was also something in there on not shooting at a certain time, but Tea never figured out when.
This is where it got bad. So there was the two wipes. That was fine, since they did not seem to be Tea’s fault. The third try at these guys is where it got bad for Tea. After a certain point the two original dudes went away and were replaced with air and earth dudes. Tea did NOT expect this. The fight not being explained to her. But she did her usual thing and just attacked what it seemed that everyone else was attacking. Well at some point in this fight Tea noticed people floating on clouds or something. And someone on vent going “why the hell is the priest not getting on the (insert cloud name here)” He started to tell her to get on the big giant tornados around the room. Tea usually avoids things on the ground so had been avoiding anything in the room. Tea ran at the low clouds with lighting, nothing, other than maybe getting zapped. Then she ran at the tall tornados and got pushed back.. Tea had no idea what he was talking about. So Tea, like many before her, just played dumb and pretend she was not on vent.
[Insert by Wild: The third encounter is the trickiest one, as Tea found out. You start with two bosses, one targeted by melee, the other by ranged. After they are brought down, you get two more bosses. Once THEY are defeated, they merge into one boss for the final phase. The key for DPS on this fight is to DPS down both bosses at the same time to an even 25-26%. In the second phase raiders MUST get a debuff that comes from the tornadoes and the gravity wells, which alternate - failing to get the correct debuff in time for the many big AoE casts is instant death.]
She informed Jho she was playing dumb and he did not blow her cover. She was on the “phone” rather than being in vent. She was doing what the DK was doing in the BWD earlier, playing dumb and hoping to just get through the thing. The downside about Tea playing dumb was, like I said, much more difficult for other players in a 10 man, than it is in a 25 man.
Tea decided she was off the phone and back in vent when they got to Cho’chang, or whatever the last boss is. She needed clear instructions, ones that were not always the best or non-existent on past encounters (Jho is not a RL). The instructions on him were better. We wiped on the first attempt but she was pretty good with the mechanics of it. The only areas she really had issues with were the slime adds (she does not do aoe damage well unless she can target another player) and the tentacles at the end. With the tentacles it threw her due to them saying “get in close” but the range thing on her DBM showing red, like they needed to be spread out more. We wiped with Cho at less than 1%. Next time she followed the instructions better, having had seen the fight, and we dropped him.
[Insert by Wild: Cho'gall is the final boss. The DPS has a lot of responsibility on this fight, particularly with the slime adds, which for us is what has kept us from defeating Cho'gall so far. Those slimes have to be killed quickly, as they will continue to multiple with each new spawn, and they HAVE to be kept out of the raid as being touched by them ramps up the corruption debuff and can quickly turn a raider into a hostile. All raiders have to watch for the mind controlled players, too, who have to be stunned to un-mind control them quickly. Don't know the range on killing the tentacles, but that's just one more thing the DPS have to do in this fight. Gratz on killing Cho'gall in the end, though! Wild's raid has not brought him down, yet. ]
Tea thanked Jho for the invite but told him she would stick to 25 man raids until she knows the raid well enough. She would probably have been happier if they had kicked her and moved on without her after the dragon bosses.
Once I put Tea to bed I went downstairs and poured myself both a cup of tea and a cup of wine. Double medication was definitely in order..
Boulderfist is the home of the GoH guild, an Alliance guild that is part of Wild's extended family of friends. Members of both the DER and Sis families have relatives on Boulderfist, and recently the Wild family added their own.
That newest member of the Wild family, death knight BB, was in game both late Friday and Saturday nights. She spent her time gathering flowers and rocks to begin building her AH business. Once she gets her professions sufficiently raised she'll likely be heading to Outlands.
While BB had little exciting news, Sis family member Tea had a full plate over the weekend and brought this report to share:
BWD Done and Done - Part 1
Well, Tea saw a bit of action this last Sunday. She was not on much due to a mother-in-law visiting but the mum was gone by Sunday morning and Tea was back in business.
She was roaming around SW, checking out the AH, when she noticed the time was almost raid time. Excited, she pulled up the guild roster and became unexcited. There were only 10 people on and not one was Silver (the usual leader of the raid). Ug.
Silver made it on, just in time, and started the raid invites. At this point there were about 12 people on in the guild. Surprisingly, the pug came together faster than Tea expected (despite spending too long finding who was already locked in the raid and had joined our group) and we were off on our 25 man. But as with any pugs it means the high chance of people who don’t know what they are doing. We saw this. One was obvious before the pug started. We had a chatter box of a DK. Then there was the inane conversations that start up when they discover a *gasp* girl in vent. One of the reasons I try not to talk in vent unless I am with people I know or absolutely have to. So Silver was stuck dealing with dumb males.
The raid was pretty uneventful; surprising due to newbies not knowing the fights and a DK not noticing when to run out when targeted. We one-shot all bosses then it came to Nef ... Sigh. The first phase went off well, despite positioning issues when people started shooting too soon at Ony. The 2nd phase is where we failed. This is the one where Ony is now dead and the room fills with lava (Wild’s favorite phase). At this point everyone is on a platform (three groups) with a baddie, while Nef flies around above us. It is the job of one or two people on the platform to interrupt a spell that the baddie does while the casters shoot at Nef.
In summary there was an extreme lack of stuns and thus wipes. Two, maybe three of them. On top of that was the comments from the DK.. “Oh, I stunned him three times!” but this did not show at all on some addon that tracks this (probably recount). This is the same DK that I mentioned earlier. One that through the whole dungeon blamed his lower damage and such on lag and mom aggro. I am skeptical about both, but the mother aggro might have been real.
To sum up the end, Nef dropped, angel’s rejoiced and life went on. No new gear from the raid, but Tea got enough points to get a new chest.
Now the next tale, which will make this an even longer email and was the bane of Tea’s night.
Part 2 - Kersplat - Trials, Turbulence, and BoT
After BWD Tea was thinking about retiring for the eve. Couple of things were stopping her. First she had to go buy her new chest and socket and enchant it up. Second, Turd was on. Turd is her pvp buddy she does not see too much. While she was chatting up with Turd, Jho started forming a 10 man BoT. Spotting Tea he cordially invited her. Tea had other things to take care of before she could go and told him she would be a bit. If he still needed a person once she was done, she would be game.
Tea came back on and Jho still had the spot open (Jho is marshmallow man where the girls are concerned) and Tea was in. Now the problem with this raid is that it was a 10 man, not 25. Ten man you need to be able to pull your weight better or have some really good people to carry you. Tea had the latter.
I can’t tell you the bosses names, because they all blended together. Ug, the fights were bad. The first few were not bombs but not great.
[Insert by Wild: Too bad the BoT fights couldn't have been explained better; it's really frustrating to try to learn on the fly, and those boss fights all have little "gotchas" in them (like standing IN the fire instead of staying away, or running TO the tornado instead of away) that raiders need to know about.
The first boss you downed was Halfus along with three dragons that the raid activated once Halfus was engaged. Given the strength of the raid the raid leader likely activated all three up front and just overpowered them, but in Wild's raids we have to selectively activate them.]
So there are two dragons. They do different things. Shoot fire on the ground (avoid that area). Open portals that you can get sucked into (Tea did this) and you should also avoid this area. You need to collapse and spread at times … Tea did that part pretty well. And you need to dps the two different dragons. Tea failed there and just focused on one, not noticing that the other was about. How she did not notice? *Shrug* Could have been due to the mind overload and constant thoughts of “what the hell is going on?” that she had through the whole raid. She died at one point during this fight but was rezed.
[Insert by Wild: The two dragons, Therelion and Valiona, we call the Twins. The key to this fight is knowing when to collapse on the tank and when to stay at range, depending on which affect the two dragons are using and which affect you are being targeted with. A key mitigation in this fight for 10 man is to always keep four raiders at range at least 10 yards away to avoid nasty stuff happening to the tank/melee. ]
Her performance went downhill from there. We come up (order might be as mixed up as Tea’s memory here) to some other bosses. Two dudes, one is fire one is water. I guess you swap dps and try to keep them about the same level in health. Also when once starts freaking out (shooting a lot more than usual) dps needs to go over and focus on the one that is freaking out. There was also something in there on not shooting at a certain time, but Tea never figured out when.
This is where it got bad. So there was the two wipes. That was fine, since they did not seem to be Tea’s fault. The third try at these guys is where it got bad for Tea. After a certain point the two original dudes went away and were replaced with air and earth dudes. Tea did NOT expect this. The fight not being explained to her. But she did her usual thing and just attacked what it seemed that everyone else was attacking. Well at some point in this fight Tea noticed people floating on clouds or something. And someone on vent going “why the hell is the priest not getting on the (insert cloud name here)” He started to tell her to get on the big giant tornados around the room. Tea usually avoids things on the ground so had been avoiding anything in the room. Tea ran at the low clouds with lighting, nothing, other than maybe getting zapped. Then she ran at the tall tornados and got pushed back.. Tea had no idea what he was talking about. So Tea, like many before her, just played dumb and pretend she was not on vent.
[Insert by Wild: The third encounter is the trickiest one, as Tea found out. You start with two bosses, one targeted by melee, the other by ranged. After they are brought down, you get two more bosses. Once THEY are defeated, they merge into one boss for the final phase. The key for DPS on this fight is to DPS down both bosses at the same time to an even 25-26%. In the second phase raiders MUST get a debuff that comes from the tornadoes and the gravity wells, which alternate - failing to get the correct debuff in time for the many big AoE casts is instant death.]
She informed Jho she was playing dumb and he did not blow her cover. She was on the “phone” rather than being in vent. She was doing what the DK was doing in the BWD earlier, playing dumb and hoping to just get through the thing. The downside about Tea playing dumb was, like I said, much more difficult for other players in a 10 man, than it is in a 25 man.
Tea decided she was off the phone and back in vent when they got to Cho’chang, or whatever the last boss is. She needed clear instructions, ones that were not always the best or non-existent on past encounters (Jho is not a RL). The instructions on him were better. We wiped on the first attempt but she was pretty good with the mechanics of it. The only areas she really had issues with were the slime adds (she does not do aoe damage well unless she can target another player) and the tentacles at the end. With the tentacles it threw her due to them saying “get in close” but the range thing on her DBM showing red, like they needed to be spread out more. We wiped with Cho at less than 1%. Next time she followed the instructions better, having had seen the fight, and we dropped him.
[Insert by Wild: Cho'gall is the final boss. The DPS has a lot of responsibility on this fight, particularly with the slime adds, which for us is what has kept us from defeating Cho'gall so far. Those slimes have to be killed quickly, as they will continue to multiple with each new spawn, and they HAVE to be kept out of the raid as being touched by them ramps up the corruption debuff and can quickly turn a raider into a hostile. All raiders have to watch for the mind controlled players, too, who have to be stunned to un-mind control them quickly. Don't know the range on killing the tentacles, but that's just one more thing the DPS have to do in this fight. Gratz on killing Cho'gall in the end, though! Wild's raid has not brought him down, yet. ]
Tea thanked Jho for the invite but told him she would stick to 25 man raids until she knows the raid well enough. She would probably have been happier if they had kicked her and moved on without her after the dragon bosses.
Once I put Tea to bed I went downstairs and poured myself both a cup of tea and a cup of wine. Double medication was definitely in order..
Friday (12 Aug) - Ups and Downs
Friday (12 Aug) - Ups and Downs
Wild got half of his wish for the Friday night raid.
Only half of our group from Thursday night were able to make it for Friday's raid, so our group was much different. It was still a solid group, although not as experienced in the fights as we would have liked. From Wild's perspective, though, just getting a full raid started within thirty minutes of the start time was a plus. Our raid leader and normally tank switched to his resto druid to heal along with Wild and a shaman healer. Wild likes the competition from Bd's druid. We study each other's healing patterns, compare gear, and do our best to keep up with each other in friendly rivalry.
We had downed Halfus and the Twins on Thursday. On Friday we quickly cleared through the trash to get to the Ascendant Council. We were a bit distracted by some ongoing ribaldry in guild chat. One of our more "forward" women was talking sex trash and "us guys" were having a hard time concentrating on the raid. Her hubby, not in game but listening in at home, finally promised her a private, grand performance - if she'd just shut up and quit embarrassing him! She went offline shortly after that. ;-)
We haven't had many attempts on the Ascendant Council, and never the same group twice. On our first attempt the raid leader didn't even bother explaining the second and third phases in any detail, as he just wanted to get some face time first so the raid could see what the fight looked like. Tanks and healers got their assignments for the two bosses in Phase 1, the DPS were arranged and prepared, and we got started. The first phase went quite well and we shifted into phase 2, got two new bosses to deal with, and went chasing tornadoes and gravity wells to stay alive. Phase 2 can be either or both extremely frustrating (trying to chase down a tornado, for instance, that seems to anticipate your moves to stay away) or exciting (when the constant movement of the raiders seems perfectly choreographed). So it was with Phase 2 tonight; even so, we were amazed and surprised when we moved into Phase 3. In P3 the two P2 bosses merge into one huge Monstrosity. I didn't catch what it's health was, which is a combination of the health of the two bosses that merged. In this phase Wild's biggest challenge was staying in range of the tank while avoiding fire on the floor and, more deadly, the lightning bolts that flash out and race from raider to raider.
We were stunned when the P3 Monstrosity fell. We had taken down the Ascendant Council on our first attempt.
We now had a lot of time on our hands to deal with Cho'gall. We quickly cleared the trash in the room and prepared for battle.
Then the trouble started. Bd, the raid leader, had not returned home from his vacation, yet, and was playing on his laptop where he was still visiting friends (husband/wife friends, both of which play Wow). The wife, Lady Hunter, was in our raid.
We made our first attempt on Cho'gall, feeling him out, and didn't do too badly, even though it was a wipe. Bd had several comments and adjustments to make, which he did, but just before the next attempt, he suddenly hollered in surprise on vent. He had forgotten to plug his laptop in and it was shutting down. Well, one thing led to another and it was almost twenty minutes before we were all back and ready to go again.
We got set up again, only to have Bd say suddenly that he had to go AFK for a minute. That "minute" took 15 more minutes. When he finally came back we could tell he was extremely frustrated. "I won't say anything about my host, so excuse the steam coming out of my ears." He paused, and then told us that we would have to find a replacement for Lady Hunter. Wild knows both Lady Hunter and her husband, and I know both are high energy types with very strong personalities. Obviously, something or someone had come unglued and Bd had gotten caught in the middle of it.
It didn't take long to get a replacement, but before our next attempt Bd twice had to leave the raid for several minutes at a time.
In the end we were able to make only three more attempts in the shortened time, each one an improvement on the previous attempt. On our 4th attempt we battled Cho'gall into the third and final phase, but wiped with the Boss at 21%. We were done.
Bd announced that he would not save the raid for next week, but that he expected us to down Halfus, Twins, and Council on our first night next week and then kill Cho'gall on Friday. I'm certain he wants that first night to get our raid group some more work together, which would certainly help once we get to Cho'gall again.
It was a good night, but if only we'd had that lost time back ... Wild's hope of taking down both Nefarian and Cho'gall this week came up short.
Cho'gall will go down, though, and frankly, once Cho'gall does goes down I'm not sure what Wild will be doing. I certainly want in on a regular Firelands raid. I think we're ready. Pre-Firelands, there are only two things Wild would like to get out of Cata raids (i359 gear):
[Leggings of the Consuming Flames] - BWD Maloriak Drop
[Helm of the Blind Seer] or [Stormrider's Helm - T11] - BWD Atramedes, or Nefarian/Cho'gal/Al'akir final boss drops
However, if we are seriously going to run Firelands, then Wild could focus on all the new goodies that those Bosses offer. Here is Wild's Firelands Wish List (note that most gear is i378, although Ragnaros drops are i384). Wild already has i378 gear at shoulder, cape, wrists, and waist.
List is in order of first boss to final boss
[Eye of Purification] - one-hand axe, random boss drop
[Smoldering censer of Purity] - staff, random boss drop
[Crystal Prison Band] - Shannox
[Incendic Chestguard] - Lord Ryolith
[Heartstone of Rhyolith] - neck, Lord Rhyolith
Nothing from Beth'tilac
[Phoenix-Down Treads] - Alysrazor
[Eye of Blazing Power] - trinket, Alysrazor
[Necromantic Focus] - trinket, Baleroc
[Firecat Leggings] - Staghelm
[Flowform Choker] - neck, Staghelm
[Jaws of Defeat] - trinket, Staghelm
Final Boss - Ragnaros, i384 gear
Tier 12 Helm and Shoulders
[Ko'gun, Hammer of the Firelord] - one-hand mace
[Sho'ravon, Greatstaff of Annihilation] - staff
[Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor] - trinket
Wild got half of his wish for the Friday night raid.
Only half of our group from Thursday night were able to make it for Friday's raid, so our group was much different. It was still a solid group, although not as experienced in the fights as we would have liked. From Wild's perspective, though, just getting a full raid started within thirty minutes of the start time was a plus. Our raid leader and normally tank switched to his resto druid to heal along with Wild and a shaman healer. Wild likes the competition from Bd's druid. We study each other's healing patterns, compare gear, and do our best to keep up with each other in friendly rivalry.
We had downed Halfus and the Twins on Thursday. On Friday we quickly cleared through the trash to get to the Ascendant Council. We were a bit distracted by some ongoing ribaldry in guild chat. One of our more "forward" women was talking sex trash and "us guys" were having a hard time concentrating on the raid. Her hubby, not in game but listening in at home, finally promised her a private, grand performance - if she'd just shut up and quit embarrassing him! She went offline shortly after that. ;-)
We haven't had many attempts on the Ascendant Council, and never the same group twice. On our first attempt the raid leader didn't even bother explaining the second and third phases in any detail, as he just wanted to get some face time first so the raid could see what the fight looked like. Tanks and healers got their assignments for the two bosses in Phase 1, the DPS were arranged and prepared, and we got started. The first phase went quite well and we shifted into phase 2, got two new bosses to deal with, and went chasing tornadoes and gravity wells to stay alive. Phase 2 can be either or both extremely frustrating (trying to chase down a tornado, for instance, that seems to anticipate your moves to stay away) or exciting (when the constant movement of the raiders seems perfectly choreographed). So it was with Phase 2 tonight; even so, we were amazed and surprised when we moved into Phase 3. In P3 the two P2 bosses merge into one huge Monstrosity. I didn't catch what it's health was, which is a combination of the health of the two bosses that merged. In this phase Wild's biggest challenge was staying in range of the tank while avoiding fire on the floor and, more deadly, the lightning bolts that flash out and race from raider to raider.
We were stunned when the P3 Monstrosity fell. We had taken down the Ascendant Council on our first attempt.
We now had a lot of time on our hands to deal with Cho'gall. We quickly cleared the trash in the room and prepared for battle.
Then the trouble started. Bd, the raid leader, had not returned home from his vacation, yet, and was playing on his laptop where he was still visiting friends (husband/wife friends, both of which play Wow). The wife, Lady Hunter, was in our raid.
We made our first attempt on Cho'gall, feeling him out, and didn't do too badly, even though it was a wipe. Bd had several comments and adjustments to make, which he did, but just before the next attempt, he suddenly hollered in surprise on vent. He had forgotten to plug his laptop in and it was shutting down. Well, one thing led to another and it was almost twenty minutes before we were all back and ready to go again.
We got set up again, only to have Bd say suddenly that he had to go AFK for a minute. That "minute" took 15 more minutes. When he finally came back we could tell he was extremely frustrated. "I won't say anything about my host, so excuse the steam coming out of my ears." He paused, and then told us that we would have to find a replacement for Lady Hunter. Wild knows both Lady Hunter and her husband, and I know both are high energy types with very strong personalities. Obviously, something or someone had come unglued and Bd had gotten caught in the middle of it.
It didn't take long to get a replacement, but before our next attempt Bd twice had to leave the raid for several minutes at a time.
In the end we were able to make only three more attempts in the shortened time, each one an improvement on the previous attempt. On our 4th attempt we battled Cho'gall into the third and final phase, but wiped with the Boss at 21%. We were done.
Bd announced that he would not save the raid for next week, but that he expected us to down Halfus, Twins, and Council on our first night next week and then kill Cho'gall on Friday. I'm certain he wants that first night to get our raid group some more work together, which would certainly help once we get to Cho'gall again.
It was a good night, but if only we'd had that lost time back ... Wild's hope of taking down both Nefarian and Cho'gall this week came up short.
Cho'gall will go down, though, and frankly, once Cho'gall does goes down I'm not sure what Wild will be doing. I certainly want in on a regular Firelands raid. I think we're ready. Pre-Firelands, there are only two things Wild would like to get out of Cata raids (i359 gear):
[Leggings of the Consuming Flames] - BWD Maloriak Drop
[Helm of the Blind Seer] or [Stormrider's Helm - T11] - BWD Atramedes, or Nefarian/Cho'gal/Al'akir final boss drops
However, if we are seriously going to run Firelands, then Wild could focus on all the new goodies that those Bosses offer. Here is Wild's Firelands Wish List (note that most gear is i378, although Ragnaros drops are i384). Wild already has i378 gear at shoulder, cape, wrists, and waist.
List is in order of first boss to final boss
[Eye of Purification] - one-hand axe, random boss drop
[Smoldering censer of Purity] - staff, random boss drop
[Crystal Prison Band] - Shannox
[Incendic Chestguard] - Lord Ryolith
[Heartstone of Rhyolith] - neck, Lord Rhyolith
Nothing from Beth'tilac
[Phoenix-Down Treads] - Alysrazor
[Eye of Blazing Power] - trinket, Alysrazor
[Necromantic Focus] - trinket, Baleroc
[Firecat Leggings] - Staghelm
[Flowform Choker] - neck, Staghelm
[Jaws of Defeat] - trinket, Staghelm
Final Boss - Ragnaros, i384 gear
Tier 12 Helm and Shoulders
[Ko'gun, Hammer of the Firelord] - one-hand mace
[Sho'ravon, Greatstaff of Annihilation] - staff
[Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor] - trinket
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday (11 Aug) - Five Days
Thursday (11 Aug) - Five Days
Wild raided with Mf's Firelands raid on Monday. Wild raided with Lady Hunter's BWD raid on Tues/Wed. Wild raided with Bd's BoT raid on Thursday, and is signed up for Friday. Three different raid groups in the same week and in the same guild. This is starting to look like the days of old, only then it was both 10 man and 25 man raiding that took up the whole week.
I can't do all week raiding, though, not every week. Wild is committed to the Bd BoT raid Thurs/Fri. As for the other two raids, I'll take that as it comes. If Wild is available I'll join them, but I can't commit to more than two raid nights a week. I know that Mf understands that I can't always help him out, so I don't sign up for his raids, but if I'm in game he's welcome to call on Wild if he wants some help. I need to have that same discussion with Lady Hunter (or her backup, Fn) regarding their raid. I'm not sure what direction Lady Hunter's group will take now that they've dropped Nef. She was in game listening in right at the end on Wednesday when Nef fell (although she wasn't in the raid). She mentioned possibly going to Throne of the Four Winds. Wild wouldn't be interested in that.
Our BoT raid Thursday was almost like we were starting new. The raid leader, Bd, is back raiding even if he hasn't actually returned home, yet. We had some new raiders in the group as well. Wild almost missed the raid entirely. My internet went down, just like it did last week. It went down 15 minutes before raid invites. Cox cable still hasn't been able to figure out what's happening. Luckily I got it back up, but Wild was 20 minutes late to the raid. Normally they are still struggling to find raiders, but with Bd back he had filled the raid quickly. But they had waited for Wild, keeping a spot open.
After that one interruption the internet behaved itself. We downed Halfus quickly, but took three attempts to take down the Twins as some folks just didn't know the fight very well. We banged away at the Ascendant Council a few times, just showing the newbies what went on and getting in some practice. I really hope we take down the Council and get some shots at Cho'gal Friday night. After taking out Nefarian on Wednesday, I really want to go for the double and drop Cho'gal this week, too.
Wild raided with Mf's Firelands raid on Monday. Wild raided with Lady Hunter's BWD raid on Tues/Wed. Wild raided with Bd's BoT raid on Thursday, and is signed up for Friday. Three different raid groups in the same week and in the same guild. This is starting to look like the days of old, only then it was both 10 man and 25 man raiding that took up the whole week.
I can't do all week raiding, though, not every week. Wild is committed to the Bd BoT raid Thurs/Fri. As for the other two raids, I'll take that as it comes. If Wild is available I'll join them, but I can't commit to more than two raid nights a week. I know that Mf understands that I can't always help him out, so I don't sign up for his raids, but if I'm in game he's welcome to call on Wild if he wants some help. I need to have that same discussion with Lady Hunter (or her backup, Fn) regarding their raid. I'm not sure what direction Lady Hunter's group will take now that they've dropped Nef. She was in game listening in right at the end on Wednesday when Nef fell (although she wasn't in the raid). She mentioned possibly going to Throne of the Four Winds. Wild wouldn't be interested in that.
Our BoT raid Thursday was almost like we were starting new. The raid leader, Bd, is back raiding even if he hasn't actually returned home, yet. We had some new raiders in the group as well. Wild almost missed the raid entirely. My internet went down, just like it did last week. It went down 15 minutes before raid invites. Cox cable still hasn't been able to figure out what's happening. Luckily I got it back up, but Wild was 20 minutes late to the raid. Normally they are still struggling to find raiders, but with Bd back he had filled the raid quickly. But they had waited for Wild, keeping a spot open.
After that one interruption the internet behaved itself. We downed Halfus quickly, but took three attempts to take down the Twins as some folks just didn't know the fight very well. We banged away at the Ascendant Council a few times, just showing the newbies what went on and getting in some practice. I really hope we take down the Council and get some shots at Cho'gal Friday night. After taking out Nefarian on Wednesday, I really want to go for the double and drop Cho'gal this week, too.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday (10 Aug) - Horrors and Hallelujah
Wednesday (10 Aug) - Horrors and Hallelujah
Situation: Blackwing Descent. Final Boss - Nefarian. Second week, second night of focusing only on Nefarian.
The Horrors: Probably my most embarrassing night. After struggling with the pillars the night before, Wild actually, seriously practiced jumping out of the water onto a platform so that I would be more confident about jumping from the lava pool to the pillar. It didn't help. Wild ruined at least four attempts by being unable to get onto that pillar. I was so frustrated I told them to just replace Wild as the rest of the raid was doing fine.
They wouldn't let Wild leave, though. And since they wouldn't get rid of me, I was determined to stay and take my lumps. Fortunately there were five other attempts when Wild did manage to hoist his carcass out of the lava.
The Progression: On our 6th attempt we got Nef to 38%, the first solid attempt that didn't involve Wild dying early. Wild failed on the 7th attempt, but then we had back to back attempts at 19% and 21% with Wild fully engaged. Our problem on those attempts were letting the adds recharge instead of dying.
The Hallelujah: On our 9th and final attempt of the night Nefarian fell. I felt like a shortstop who had made a grievous error in the field that was going to cost his team the win, only to come back and help pull out a victory.
After the raid the raid leader/tank, Fn, made a point to pull Wild aside for a private conversation. I've healed Fn as his main healer when we were doing Throne of the Four Winds so we know each other well. Fn told Wild he was a top notch healer, always ready and prepared to raid, and that stuff happens in raids. As the raid leader he doesn't let that sort of thing bother him at all. Fn said he couldn't ask for a better healer and Wild always had a place in the raid if he wanted one. Made me feel better. Our guild leader, who got in on the latter attempts, bolstered Wild by sending me funny stuff in between fights. "Rule #1: Don't Suck!" he sent me. And, "It's easier if you don't breath in the lava!" Or, after another death: "Steak on the Barbie!" Made me smile.
But I'm still kicking Wild's butt all the way back from BWD to Org.
The New Strategy - We did use the GoH strategy for three attempts, two of which Wild gooned up by dying, but they elected to go back to a two tank strategy. We likely didn't give the three tank strategy enough attempts to really feel it out, but in the end we still got there. At least the raid was willing to try it.
Healing (Tossing Wild a bone) - Here are the numbers for the final attempt that brought down Nefarian. Wild was tank healing first Ony (Phase 1) and then Nef (Phase 3) as well as raid healing to keep raiders from getting killed by Electrocute.
#1: Wild, 10376 hps, 33.1% of the healing
#2: Pally, 9657 hps, 27.8%
#3: Shaman, 7691, 24.1%
Situation: Blackwing Descent. Final Boss - Nefarian. Second week, second night of focusing only on Nefarian.
The Horrors: Probably my most embarrassing night. After struggling with the pillars the night before, Wild actually, seriously practiced jumping out of the water onto a platform so that I would be more confident about jumping from the lava pool to the pillar. It didn't help. Wild ruined at least four attempts by being unable to get onto that pillar. I was so frustrated I told them to just replace Wild as the rest of the raid was doing fine.
They wouldn't let Wild leave, though. And since they wouldn't get rid of me, I was determined to stay and take my lumps. Fortunately there were five other attempts when Wild did manage to hoist his carcass out of the lava.
The Progression: On our 6th attempt we got Nef to 38%, the first solid attempt that didn't involve Wild dying early. Wild failed on the 7th attempt, but then we had back to back attempts at 19% and 21% with Wild fully engaged. Our problem on those attempts were letting the adds recharge instead of dying.
The Hallelujah: On our 9th and final attempt of the night Nefarian fell. I felt like a shortstop who had made a grievous error in the field that was going to cost his team the win, only to come back and help pull out a victory.
After the raid the raid leader/tank, Fn, made a point to pull Wild aside for a private conversation. I've healed Fn as his main healer when we were doing Throne of the Four Winds so we know each other well. Fn told Wild he was a top notch healer, always ready and prepared to raid, and that stuff happens in raids. As the raid leader he doesn't let that sort of thing bother him at all. Fn said he couldn't ask for a better healer and Wild always had a place in the raid if he wanted one. Made me feel better. Our guild leader, who got in on the latter attempts, bolstered Wild by sending me funny stuff in between fights. "Rule #1: Don't Suck!" he sent me. And, "It's easier if you don't breath in the lava!" Or, after another death: "Steak on the Barbie!" Made me smile.
But I'm still kicking Wild's butt all the way back from BWD to Org.
The New Strategy - We did use the GoH strategy for three attempts, two of which Wild gooned up by dying, but they elected to go back to a two tank strategy. We likely didn't give the three tank strategy enough attempts to really feel it out, but in the end we still got there. At least the raid was willing to try it.
Healing (Tossing Wild a bone) - Here are the numbers for the final attempt that brought down Nefarian. Wild was tank healing first Ony (Phase 1) and then Nef (Phase 3) as well as raid healing to keep raiders from getting killed by Electrocute.
#1: Wild, 10376 hps, 33.1% of the healing
#2: Pally, 9657 hps, 27.8%
#3: Shaman, 7691, 24.1%
Victory Shot
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday (9 Aug) - Just Hangin' Out
Tuesday (9 Aug) - Just Hangin' Out
In California where I live, there is always a group of men hanging out around the Home Depot looking for work. This week (and it's only Tuesday) Wild is like those folks outside the Home Depot. Wild's official raid nights are Thurs/Fri. They are run by Bd, our raid leader and guild leader. He is back from his vacation - but I guess not all the way back because he has not been around and there is no sign up for the Thurs/Fri raid.
So on Monday Wild hung out in Org around raid time for Mf's Mon/Tues BWD raid. Wild had his sign ready - Out of work Healer, will raid for Food Buffs.
Mf took me into his raid, which turned out to be the Firelands. Wild covered that in yesterday's post.
Wild decided that this was good, and so Wild hung out again on Tuesday night holding his sign. The Mrs hadn't missed me yet (maybe I should worry a little at that?), but on this night Mf did not have any work for Wild. He had only four raiders sign up and he was tired of spending an hour just trying to fill his raid. He said he was shutting down his raid for the time being and planned to do some recruiting before restarting his raid.
There were a lot of cars going by that Home Depot on Tuesday night - well, I mean, guilds and PUG groups wanting players for their various raids. Since Mf had canceled his raid, Wild was free to see what else there was to offer. Wild wanted to keep his options open for BoT on Thursday, so a BoT PUG was out. There was a 25 man BH that needed healers. Wild offered to come to that one, but they didn't want any more druids. Racists! I should call the ACLU. There were some Firelands runs forming, a couple of which looked promising. Meanwhile, Wild had been hoping to see Lady Hunter in game, since Tuesday is supposed to be the first night of her raid group. She still hadn't showed by 6:30pm, and Fn, one of her tanks, started invites without her. Sooooo, there was a raid planned tonight. But think of this - out of our three raid groups, one raid leader canceled his raid, a second never showed for a scheduled raid, and a third was missing. That's our guild. Wild waited around to see how Fn's invites went. After about 15 minutes Fn put a call out on guild chat - need healers and DPS for BWD. Wild waved his Home Depot sign at Fn, and Wild got an invite. In fact, they were ecstatic to get Wild into their raid. Wild started looking for the catch, which was that there were only five of us so far. We got to eight guildies and stalled. Mf and his canceled raid then came back in game and he joined us on his shadow priest. The tenth raider we PUGed, but by chance the PUG we got was in our former guild, MM, and well known to us. We were set.
I don't know what Wednesday will bring, but I think Hunter Fortress might have to wait as Wild will be holding out his sign one more time.
Uh ...
Oh, yea, there was a raid Tuesday night. Lady Hunter's group had saved the raid from the week before. They had just reached Nefarian and had barely got him to Phase 2 (of three phases) before they had to end their night. So now we would be heading straight to Nefarian with the whole evening ahead of us (well, what was left of it after patching together a raid) to get real cozy with the dragon. In case I forgot to mention it, Nefarian is the final boss in BWD.
The first thing Wild learned is that we don't start with Nefarian. We start with a muscled up Onyxia (another dragon we have seen in various prior incarnations). We entered BWD and took the big, evil elevator down a floor (yes, that elevator is evil; it kills people. Not Wild. Not yet). Make a right turn and go down the steps and there she is - Onyxia, preening herself on a little podium thing. Wild followed some raiders past her and up the other stairs, but our rogue stopped to say hi. Fn happened by and managed to keep the rogue alive when a ruffled Onyxia did some ruffling of her own. I suppose that is necessary to the fight, as Onyxia then flew down another level and perched herself in the middle of a chamber with three round, raised stanchions located around the room. So far this has all been pretty cool. We separated into three groups. One group on Onyxia, one on Nefarian when he showed up, and another to deal with the mobs that form, which involves kiting. Wild's healing duty seemed simple enough - keep the tank that was on Nefarian alive. If only that was all there was to it. And by the way, we have to jump down into the chamber to start the fight, and it's a long way down! And does some damage.
On our first attempt Wild was sure he'd been told to help heal the Onyxia group as she was kited by her tank to the right side of the room. She has a nasty lightning storm among other things, but that was the main thing to watch for. It came from her sides (she breathed fire in front and tail swiped at her rear - despite the tail swipe raiders were told to get very comfy up under her tail if they wanted to survive the lightning. Ugh, what a smell! Wild was to move to heal the Nefarian tank once Nefarian showed up - which happened a lot faster than I expected. Wild was halfway to my tank (Nefarian is kited, of course, to the other side of the room from Onyxia) when Onyxia cast her lightning storm - Wild was too far from Onyxia to hide under her tail but not yet not far enough away to avoid the lightning. Dumb cow. Dead cow.
Wild died on our second attempt when he tried to survive Electrocute at less than full health. Electrocute can't be avoided as it is a raid-wide AoE, but at full health it can be survived. Another lesson learned, and we did get a little farther into the fight.
I don't remember what killed Wild on the third attempt. I think Wild was still groggy from the first two deaths.
On our fourth attempt Phase 1 came into focus for Wild and went smoothly. Phase 2 engaged, the dragons went airborne, and the whole chamber was instantly filled with lava right up to the height of the pillars. Wild had his instructions - jump up onto your designated pillar to get out of the nasty lava, where a nice little mob will try to knock you off the pillar back into the lava which was quickly fatal. Wild's little group on the pillar was Wild, his tank, and the rogue. The tank, a pally, was interrupting the mob's casting to stop it from knocking us off, but missed one and the rogue went flying into the lava and died. The other groups on the other pillars killed their mobs, and it was just the tank and Wild trying - slowly - to kill that third mob so we could go into Phase 3. Wild was having some serious mana trouble by that time, and when the other raiders started chanting at Wild to DPS the mob to speed things up, the tank said NO! I wants da heals!
We did eventually kill the mob and we did get into phase 3, which is an all out DPS assault. We were pretty beat up by then and only got Nef down to 72%. But we made it to phase 3, at least, a lot further than their attempts last week.
We made FIVE more attempts, with out best getting Nef to 25%. We even switched up the start a little, moving the druid tank to Nef and letting the pally tank handle the mobs in phase 3. Wild got to chase his tank around the room while he kited the mobs around and that was the attempt that got us to 25%. That was our 8th attempt and we went overtime to get in one more shot. Wild sabotaged that last attempt, unfortunately, when the klutzy cow missed his jump onto the pillar for phase 2, panicked, and killed himself in the lava.
If Wild were in GoH I'm sure he'd be getting a visit from a guild officer offering some sage advice: Get out of the lava. Don't stand where the lightning will hit you. Be at full health for the electrocute. Don't be a klutz. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, uh, no ma'am.
We'll see if Wild learned his lessons on Wednesday night.
In California where I live, there is always a group of men hanging out around the Home Depot looking for work. This week (and it's only Tuesday) Wild is like those folks outside the Home Depot. Wild's official raid nights are Thurs/Fri. They are run by Bd, our raid leader and guild leader. He is back from his vacation - but I guess not all the way back because he has not been around and there is no sign up for the Thurs/Fri raid.
So on Monday Wild hung out in Org around raid time for Mf's Mon/Tues BWD raid. Wild had his sign ready - Out of work Healer, will raid for Food Buffs.
Mf took me into his raid, which turned out to be the Firelands. Wild covered that in yesterday's post.
Wild decided that this was good, and so Wild hung out again on Tuesday night holding his sign. The Mrs hadn't missed me yet (maybe I should worry a little at that?), but on this night Mf did not have any work for Wild. He had only four raiders sign up and he was tired of spending an hour just trying to fill his raid. He said he was shutting down his raid for the time being and planned to do some recruiting before restarting his raid.
There were a lot of cars going by that Home Depot on Tuesday night - well, I mean, guilds and PUG groups wanting players for their various raids. Since Mf had canceled his raid, Wild was free to see what else there was to offer. Wild wanted to keep his options open for BoT on Thursday, so a BoT PUG was out. There was a 25 man BH that needed healers. Wild offered to come to that one, but they didn't want any more druids. Racists! I should call the ACLU. There were some Firelands runs forming, a couple of which looked promising. Meanwhile, Wild had been hoping to see Lady Hunter in game, since Tuesday is supposed to be the first night of her raid group. She still hadn't showed by 6:30pm, and Fn, one of her tanks, started invites without her. Sooooo, there was a raid planned tonight. But think of this - out of our three raid groups, one raid leader canceled his raid, a second never showed for a scheduled raid, and a third was missing. That's our guild. Wild waited around to see how Fn's invites went. After about 15 minutes Fn put a call out on guild chat - need healers and DPS for BWD. Wild waved his Home Depot sign at Fn, and Wild got an invite. In fact, they were ecstatic to get Wild into their raid. Wild started looking for the catch, which was that there were only five of us so far. We got to eight guildies and stalled. Mf and his canceled raid then came back in game and he joined us on his shadow priest. The tenth raider we PUGed, but by chance the PUG we got was in our former guild, MM, and well known to us. We were set.
I don't know what Wednesday will bring, but I think Hunter Fortress might have to wait as Wild will be holding out his sign one more time.
Uh ...
Oh, yea, there was a raid Tuesday night. Lady Hunter's group had saved the raid from the week before. They had just reached Nefarian and had barely got him to Phase 2 (of three phases) before they had to end their night. So now we would be heading straight to Nefarian with the whole evening ahead of us (well, what was left of it after patching together a raid) to get real cozy with the dragon. In case I forgot to mention it, Nefarian is the final boss in BWD.
The first thing Wild learned is that we don't start with Nefarian. We start with a muscled up Onyxia (another dragon we have seen in various prior incarnations). We entered BWD and took the big, evil elevator down a floor (yes, that elevator is evil; it kills people. Not Wild. Not yet). Make a right turn and go down the steps and there she is - Onyxia, preening herself on a little podium thing. Wild followed some raiders past her and up the other stairs, but our rogue stopped to say hi. Fn happened by and managed to keep the rogue alive when a ruffled Onyxia did some ruffling of her own. I suppose that is necessary to the fight, as Onyxia then flew down another level and perched herself in the middle of a chamber with three round, raised stanchions located around the room. So far this has all been pretty cool. We separated into three groups. One group on Onyxia, one on Nefarian when he showed up, and another to deal with the mobs that form, which involves kiting. Wild's healing duty seemed simple enough - keep the tank that was on Nefarian alive. If only that was all there was to it. And by the way, we have to jump down into the chamber to start the fight, and it's a long way down! And does some damage.
Pre-Fight View - That's Onyxia down on the floor below
On our first attempt Wild was sure he'd been told to help heal the Onyxia group as she was kited by her tank to the right side of the room. She has a nasty lightning storm among other things, but that was the main thing to watch for. It came from her sides (she breathed fire in front and tail swiped at her rear - despite the tail swipe raiders were told to get very comfy up under her tail if they wanted to survive the lightning. Ugh, what a smell! Wild was to move to heal the Nefarian tank once Nefarian showed up - which happened a lot faster than I expected. Wild was halfway to my tank (Nefarian is kited, of course, to the other side of the room from Onyxia) when Onyxia cast her lightning storm - Wild was too far from Onyxia to hide under her tail but not yet not far enough away to avoid the lightning. Dumb cow. Dead cow.
Wild died on our second attempt when he tried to survive Electrocute at less than full health. Electrocute can't be avoided as it is a raid-wide AoE, but at full health it can be survived. Another lesson learned, and we did get a little farther into the fight.
I don't remember what killed Wild on the third attempt. I think Wild was still groggy from the first two deaths.
On our fourth attempt Phase 1 came into focus for Wild and went smoothly. Phase 2 engaged, the dragons went airborne, and the whole chamber was instantly filled with lava right up to the height of the pillars. Wild had his instructions - jump up onto your designated pillar to get out of the nasty lava, where a nice little mob will try to knock you off the pillar back into the lava which was quickly fatal. Wild's little group on the pillar was Wild, his tank, and the rogue. The tank, a pally, was interrupting the mob's casting to stop it from knocking us off, but missed one and the rogue went flying into the lava and died. The other groups on the other pillars killed their mobs, and it was just the tank and Wild trying - slowly - to kill that third mob so we could go into Phase 3. Wild was having some serious mana trouble by that time, and when the other raiders started chanting at Wild to DPS the mob to speed things up, the tank said NO! I wants da heals!
We did eventually kill the mob and we did get into phase 3, which is an all out DPS assault. We were pretty beat up by then and only got Nef down to 72%. But we made it to phase 3, at least, a lot further than their attempts last week.
We made FIVE more attempts, with out best getting Nef to 25%. We even switched up the start a little, moving the druid tank to Nef and letting the pally tank handle the mobs in phase 3. Wild got to chase his tank around the room while he kited the mobs around and that was the attempt that got us to 25%. That was our 8th attempt and we went overtime to get in one more shot. Wild sabotaged that last attempt, unfortunately, when the klutzy cow missed his jump onto the pillar for phase 2, panicked, and killed himself in the lava.
Recovering after Our Best Attempt
If Wild were in GoH I'm sure he'd be getting a visit from a guild officer offering some sage advice: Get out of the lava. Don't stand where the lightning will hit you. Be at full health for the electrocute. Don't be a klutz. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Yes, uh, no ma'am.
We'll see if Wild learned his lessons on Wednesday night.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday (8 Aug) - Banging Around the Firelands
Monday (8 Aug) - Banging Around the Firelands
We were off to one our quickest starts on Monday night, being "only" thirty minutes late when we got started on Firelands trash. Wild had his recount up tracking his healing as I always do, and after a couple of trash pulls I was surprised to see that we had four players who were healing! It is truly weird that we have so many healers and so few DPS raiding. The raid leader hadn't noticed it. He rarely uses the raid setting that requires raiders to state what their role is which I wish he would use. We don't always have the same raiders and even Wild has trouble figuring out who is doing what sometimes. We really only needed two healers for Firelands trash, but we could only move one of our four to DPS.
Our march through the Firelands trash was uneven but entertaining. Our main tank raced in front of us, often pulling out of range of the healers, who were staggering after him, not to mention the DPS lagging behind the healers. We still don't have a specific route to follow, yet, so I'm never quite sure what direction we are going to head off into next. Sometimes the second tank pulls first without letting us healers know, so we always have to be ready to heal whoever decides to pull. Our pally healer, Odie, and Wild whisper each other often, trying to keep track of our tanks. Ready checks are non-existent. Be on your toes. We had taken a short break, and Odie had stepped away from the game. The main tank slipped away and pulled a molten lord with no one within 25 yards of him. Wild saw us enter combat and raced after him, leaving my own tank behind. I didn't get there in time to save him. Odie whispered me when she returned and saw we had wiped. "What did you do, try to two heal it?" No, I told her, there was just little old me healing and I wasn't able to catch up with him in time. We could only laugh and move on.
We did a mostly full clear, but apparently hadn't killed enough to get Shannox to show up. So we swept around again, finding a couple more mobs we had missed, and Shannox and his two dogs made their appearance.
We made three attempts on Shannox, and while we seemed to get worse with each attempt, I think we are actually improving, as we are trying different things to find something that works for us. Right now our key issue is getting the right distance between Shannox and the dog riplimb. As I understand it we want him far enough away that Shannox can't throw his spear but close enough so that the dog doesn't enrage. Or something like that. Wild's tank is our usual main tank on Shannox, and we started that way on our first attempt. I was pretty happy with my healing as I was able to keep him up and avoid the traps until the rest of the raid unraveled. The tanks then decided to switch off and Wild's tank took riplimb. As long as riplimb doesn't enrage Wild had a fairly easy time healing the tank and the mage that went with him to keep the dog slowed down. Each time, though, I think we got too far away and riplimb enraged, and there was no way Wild could keep the tank alive once that happened.
We spent some time marking out our battle zone to try and keep the distances correct, but we ran out of time for a fourth attempt. We are going back to Firelands Tuesday night to take some more shots at Shannox.
We were off to one our quickest starts on Monday night, being "only" thirty minutes late when we got started on Firelands trash. Wild had his recount up tracking his healing as I always do, and after a couple of trash pulls I was surprised to see that we had four players who were healing! It is truly weird that we have so many healers and so few DPS raiding. The raid leader hadn't noticed it. He rarely uses the raid setting that requires raiders to state what their role is which I wish he would use. We don't always have the same raiders and even Wild has trouble figuring out who is doing what sometimes. We really only needed two healers for Firelands trash, but we could only move one of our four to DPS.
Our march through the Firelands trash was uneven but entertaining. Our main tank raced in front of us, often pulling out of range of the healers, who were staggering after him, not to mention the DPS lagging behind the healers. We still don't have a specific route to follow, yet, so I'm never quite sure what direction we are going to head off into next. Sometimes the second tank pulls first without letting us healers know, so we always have to be ready to heal whoever decides to pull. Our pally healer, Odie, and Wild whisper each other often, trying to keep track of our tanks. Ready checks are non-existent. Be on your toes. We had taken a short break, and Odie had stepped away from the game. The main tank slipped away and pulled a molten lord with no one within 25 yards of him. Wild saw us enter combat and raced after him, leaving my own tank behind. I didn't get there in time to save him. Odie whispered me when she returned and saw we had wiped. "What did you do, try to two heal it?" No, I told her, there was just little old me healing and I wasn't able to catch up with him in time. We could only laugh and move on.
We did a mostly full clear, but apparently hadn't killed enough to get Shannox to show up. So we swept around again, finding a couple more mobs we had missed, and Shannox and his two dogs made their appearance.
We made three attempts on Shannox, and while we seemed to get worse with each attempt, I think we are actually improving, as we are trying different things to find something that works for us. Right now our key issue is getting the right distance between Shannox and the dog riplimb. As I understand it we want him far enough away that Shannox can't throw his spear but close enough so that the dog doesn't enrage. Or something like that. Wild's tank is our usual main tank on Shannox, and we started that way on our first attempt. I was pretty happy with my healing as I was able to keep him up and avoid the traps until the rest of the raid unraveled. The tanks then decided to switch off and Wild's tank took riplimb. As long as riplimb doesn't enrage Wild had a fairly easy time healing the tank and the mage that went with him to keep the dog slowed down. Each time, though, I think we got too far away and riplimb enraged, and there was no way Wild could keep the tank alive once that happened.
We spent some time marking out our battle zone to try and keep the distances correct, but we ran out of time for a fourth attempt. We are going back to Firelands Tuesday night to take some more shots at Shannox.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Weekend (7 Aug) - Outlook Dreary
Weekend (7 Aug) - Outlook Dreary
The internet problems cleared up on Friday. I may have had some internet service interruptions, but DC's (WoW disconnects) were also an element. Raiders from Thursday night told Wild on Friday that after Wild DCed for the second time, they had several more raiders DC as well and never got to the third boss. Even friends from Boulderfist reported unusually large numbers of DCs, so it affected more than one server.
We didn't have to worry about that Friday night. There was no raid. We had seven in game ready to go at the 6:30pm start time. Our tank/raid leader was in game, but left "for a quick break." He never came back. Our other tank from Thursday was a no show and that left us with Kg, rookie tank extraordinaire. He was game, but without a second tank and no raid leader we all more or less drifted away and did other things. Wild got his Therazane Dailies done. There are seven quests and they drop a ton of reputation, so Wild will only need a day or two to get to Exalted. Then he can upgrade his shoulder enchant [Note: Wild made Exalted on Sunday - Ya!]. Wild has other factions he could level up, and since he gets guild rep for that Wild will probably keep doing dailies. Wild still hasn't gotten back to Revered in guild rep since he changed guilds.
BB was in game Saturday night and completed her Death Knight indoctrination. She's now level 58 and makes her home in Stormwind. BB got four different requests for her to join a guild while she was out working on her professions - picking flowers and breaking rocks.
Posted on Guild Website Saturday - Progression and Raid Start Times
I've had an opportunity to raid with both Mort and Bk's raid groups as well as in the combined Mort/Tala 25 man raid (awesome! by the way). One thing that I've noticed about our ten mans in recent weeks is that they never - and I mean never - start on time anymore. And it isn't just a few minutes. We are easily 30-60 minutes late getting started every raid night.
In addition, few raiders are bothering to sign up for the raids, either, and our raids are starting to feel to me like a pick up group instead of a scheduled raid. I feel bad for the raid leaders who see that only 4-6 people have signed up and have to spend precious raid time pleading for guildies to join the raid, and in the end still needing to PUG spots. It's frustrating to me to lose an hour of raid time and see just two bosses go down each week with no progression.
If the issue is that guildies just can't make it by the 6pm or 6:30pm start times, we should adjust the time accordingly. If guildies want to raid they should sign up and be on time. And with the nerfs and the improving gear we are capable of doing a lot more than we are.
I'm just asking all of us to sign up for our raids and to be in game on time. Let raid leaders know if the raids times aren't good for you. We haven't downed either Nef or Cho'gal as a guild, not because we can't, but because we never get that far.
This is just a wish, but I'd also like to lobby for a weekly 25 man. We have three ten mans now. Is there any way at all to find two nights a week for a 25 man? Given how quickly bosses went down once we engaged, that would be a huge source of gear and VP to move us forward. It actually seemed easier in 25 man than in the ten mans.
The guild leader responded to Wild's post the same day. He discussed a number of things. Regarding ten man raiding the summary was that he agreed that attendance and timeliness has been an ebb and flow thing - sometimes good and sometimes not, but also said that it was time again to put some emphasis on that.
In regard to 25 man raiding, I got an answer that surprised me, but probably shouldn't have. The answer was, and I quote: "There's a number of reasons for this, but to keep it short: Past precedent has shown that if a regularly scheduled 25man is hosted more than 1-2x a month it will fall apart, and worse, all 10mans will also suffer for the next few weeks. Add into that the fact that a substantial chunk of the core Raiders are clear about not wanting to do 25mans (an anti-25man interest, you could say) and the result is we're not going to be coordinating 25man raids in the near future."
When I thought about that, I had to consider the fact that the core raiders in MM2 came from MM, who came from FS, and frankly, we've had trouble fielding 25 mans since Wrath. Never has 25 mans been so accessible (and profitable) as now, but even that doesn't seem to matter to our raiders. They just don't like 25 mans. My response to that below:
Thanks for the feedback, Bd.
I can't say that I understand "why" Meitha guildies don't like 25 mans, so I'll probably be asking around just so I'll understand that better.
Here's my take:
The 25 man raid engages more of the guild, including players that may have trouble getting the best gear or who feel that they can't contribute enough to a ten man. As you said, 25 man in Cata is a little more forgiving of mistakes and gear. The fights are almost identical, so the learning curve is small, experienced raiders can help tutor the newcomers, and we can ALL progress faster. In the 25 BWD we had a whole party of healers and carried on our own separate conversation throughout the raid. It was great and it showed with some amazing healing.
An even bigger advantage of 25 man raiding is gear. With 25 raiders, more of the drops will find raiders who need them and there are a lot fewer DEs like we get with 10 mans. In comparing the 10 man and 25 man BWD from last week, both groups killed three bosses: there were 6 gear drops in 10 man (3 of which were upgrades for someone if I recall) and 13 drops from 25 man (almost all of which were awarded to raiders as upgrades). The difference is huge.
For those who don't care about gear, 25 man raids are a lot more lively in vent and chat. It's MORE FUN with a large group! I've learned a lot of "interesting" words not in the English dictionary - or in ANY dictionary, just listening in lol.
I hope Meitha comes around to the idea. :)
One positive element of this is that MM2 raid leaders would be happy to organize and run 25 mans if there was enough interest, so that is not the issue. Wild will have to do some checking with other raiders to get at what the real issues are.
The internet problems cleared up on Friday. I may have had some internet service interruptions, but DC's (WoW disconnects) were also an element. Raiders from Thursday night told Wild on Friday that after Wild DCed for the second time, they had several more raiders DC as well and never got to the third boss. Even friends from Boulderfist reported unusually large numbers of DCs, so it affected more than one server.
We didn't have to worry about that Friday night. There was no raid. We had seven in game ready to go at the 6:30pm start time. Our tank/raid leader was in game, but left "for a quick break." He never came back. Our other tank from Thursday was a no show and that left us with Kg, rookie tank extraordinaire. He was game, but without a second tank and no raid leader we all more or less drifted away and did other things. Wild got his Therazane Dailies done. There are seven quests and they drop a ton of reputation, so Wild will only need a day or two to get to Exalted. Then he can upgrade his shoulder enchant [Note: Wild made Exalted on Sunday - Ya!]. Wild has other factions he could level up, and since he gets guild rep for that Wild will probably keep doing dailies. Wild still hasn't gotten back to Revered in guild rep since he changed guilds.
BB was in game Saturday night and completed her Death Knight indoctrination. She's now level 58 and makes her home in Stormwind. BB got four different requests for her to join a guild while she was out working on her professions - picking flowers and breaking rocks.
Posted on Guild Website Saturday - Progression and Raid Start Times
I've had an opportunity to raid with both Mort and Bk's raid groups as well as in the combined Mort/Tala 25 man raid (awesome! by the way). One thing that I've noticed about our ten mans in recent weeks is that they never - and I mean never - start on time anymore. And it isn't just a few minutes. We are easily 30-60 minutes late getting started every raid night.
In addition, few raiders are bothering to sign up for the raids, either, and our raids are starting to feel to me like a pick up group instead of a scheduled raid. I feel bad for the raid leaders who see that only 4-6 people have signed up and have to spend precious raid time pleading for guildies to join the raid, and in the end still needing to PUG spots. It's frustrating to me to lose an hour of raid time and see just two bosses go down each week with no progression.
If the issue is that guildies just can't make it by the 6pm or 6:30pm start times, we should adjust the time accordingly. If guildies want to raid they should sign up and be on time. And with the nerfs and the improving gear we are capable of doing a lot more than we are.
I'm just asking all of us to sign up for our raids and to be in game on time. Let raid leaders know if the raids times aren't good for you. We haven't downed either Nef or Cho'gal as a guild, not because we can't, but because we never get that far.
This is just a wish, but I'd also like to lobby for a weekly 25 man. We have three ten mans now. Is there any way at all to find two nights a week for a 25 man? Given how quickly bosses went down once we engaged, that would be a huge source of gear and VP to move us forward. It actually seemed easier in 25 man than in the ten mans.
The guild leader responded to Wild's post the same day. He discussed a number of things. Regarding ten man raiding the summary was that he agreed that attendance and timeliness has been an ebb and flow thing - sometimes good and sometimes not, but also said that it was time again to put some emphasis on that.
In regard to 25 man raiding, I got an answer that surprised me, but probably shouldn't have. The answer was, and I quote: "There's a number of reasons for this, but to keep it short: Past precedent has shown that if a regularly scheduled 25man is hosted more than 1-2x a month it will fall apart, and worse, all 10mans will also suffer for the next few weeks. Add into that the fact that a substantial chunk of the core Raiders are clear about not wanting to do 25mans (an anti-25man interest, you could say) and the result is we're not going to be coordinating 25man raids in the near future."
When I thought about that, I had to consider the fact that the core raiders in MM2 came from MM, who came from FS, and frankly, we've had trouble fielding 25 mans since Wrath. Never has 25 mans been so accessible (and profitable) as now, but even that doesn't seem to matter to our raiders. They just don't like 25 mans. My response to that below:
Thanks for the feedback, Bd.
I can't say that I understand "why" Meitha guildies don't like 25 mans, so I'll probably be asking around just so I'll understand that better.
Here's my take:
The 25 man raid engages more of the guild, including players that may have trouble getting the best gear or who feel that they can't contribute enough to a ten man. As you said, 25 man in Cata is a little more forgiving of mistakes and gear. The fights are almost identical, so the learning curve is small, experienced raiders can help tutor the newcomers, and we can ALL progress faster. In the 25 BWD we had a whole party of healers and carried on our own separate conversation throughout the raid. It was great and it showed with some amazing healing.
An even bigger advantage of 25 man raiding is gear. With 25 raiders, more of the drops will find raiders who need them and there are a lot fewer DEs like we get with 10 mans. In comparing the 10 man and 25 man BWD from last week, both groups killed three bosses: there were 6 gear drops in 10 man (3 of which were upgrades for someone if I recall) and 13 drops from 25 man (almost all of which were awarded to raiders as upgrades). The difference is huge.
For those who don't care about gear, 25 man raids are a lot more lively in vent and chat. It's MORE FUN with a large group! I've learned a lot of "interesting" words not in the English dictionary - or in ANY dictionary, just listening in lol.
I hope Meitha comes around to the idea. :)
One positive element of this is that MM2 raid leaders would be happy to organize and run 25 mans if there was enough interest, so that is not the issue. Wild will have to do some checking with other raiders to get at what the real issues are.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Thursday - A Failure to Communicate
If it's not one thing, it's another. The problems with my computer have been an ongoing issue for weeks. So far the latest fix has been working. So the computer gods had to come up with something new.
On Thursday Wild created a new toon, an alliance gnome named BruiserBabe (BB for short). BB is a death knight, and was born on the pvp server Boulderfist. Both the DER and Sis families of Silvermoon have relatives on Boulderfist, so, not to be left behind, the Wild family had to sow some seeds there as well.
Raising a death knight is a bit different than other races, as they begin life at level 55. There is a special starter zone for all death knights in the skies above the Plaguelands, and they must undergo rigorous and bloody tutoring before being allowed into the world at large. BB had just begun her training when strange things began happening around her. The world tilted and ...
My internet connection went down. I did the usual shut down, reboot, and reset process with computer, modem, and router, and about fifteen minutes later the connection came back up. Most probably it was some hitch with my Internet service. I got distracted by other things away from the computer and didn't get back until raid time Thursday night.
Our BoT raid leader has been on vacation, but he was back this week and, we thought, ready to rock again. But he abandoned us on Thursday night because he had - a date. Imagine, leaving his team for a woman! Couldn't he schedule a date on a non-raid night? Where are his priorities? What right ... oh, hello, Mrs Wild, what am I grumbling about? Uh, nothing dear.
Of course, the raid leader had given plenty of notice that he would be away Thursday night, and the backup raid leader had no problem getting our raid filled. We did have an interesting conundrum for a bit, though. We had too many healers. Five of the guildies invited into the raid had healers as their mains. It's a very unusual situation, but as readers have probably noticed, we are always scrambling to find DPSers to join the raid. It's just weird. So several guildies had to switch to alts in order to get a good grouping of players. There was also a player, Kg, that Wild and the cabal ran with way back in days of Karazahn who had recently come back to the game. Formerly a druid, he was now a paladin, and was on the healing team for the BWD 25 man earlier in the week, but otherwise had just been doing Heroics. With our raid leader out (who was also our main tank), we needed a second tank, and Kg was pressed into service.
So, we had healers who went to alts to play DPSers and we were substituting our out on a date main tank with a tank who has not only not seen the inside of BoT yet, but had not done any raid tanking at all. Just our usual, competent team of professionals. :)
I have to give Kg a great deal of credit. He jumped in and played his heart out while still learning how to tank with a paladin and learning the strats in a raid he's never seen before. The other tank, a druid, is a great tank but would admit he is not the best at explaining things. Directions and guidance to Kg left a lot of room for interpretation, and that resulted in some pretty outlandish situations that had us all laughing in amazement.
We made our first trash pulls without incident, but when pulling the side groups Kg didn't kite them over to where our DPS and healers were, not being told or not remembering to do that. Wild went chasing after Kg when his health started accelerating toward zero, but all that did was make Wild the next target when the tank died. We survived the pull (even Wild), but we were already giggling at the "unorthodox" approach.
Then there was the gauntlet. The gauntlet had bugged on us last week, but that was nothing compared to this week. Our druid tank is very good, but he seemed a bit distracted on this night, maybe because he was trying so hard to help out Kg. The druid tank got himself killed not once, but twice, during the gauntlet by miss-positioning himself and getting knocked off the stairs to certain death. Every raider knows NOT to get themselves into that position. Things went very crazy for a bit, but we finally completed the gauntlet and moved forward to the next set of mobs.
Another event occurred in between the two deaths by the druid tank. Wild's internet connection went down again. Wild was also deposited at the beginning of the instance when I got back in game and I had to run all the way back to the group as they waited for Wild to get there and see what they were all standing there looking at.
What we saw caused our jaws to drop. Between us and the doorway that leads to the next encounter was the usual 3-5 mobs. But to the left AND the right of them were groups of additional mobs, all packed together. They were so close to each other there seemed no way to pull one group without pulling all of them.
But that wasn't the worst. Standing in the doorway behind that small army of mobs was - I kid you not - Cho'gal. Yes, Cho'gal, the final boss in BoT. Faced with that, what could we do? We attacked, of course. We wiped twice. After the first wipe Cho'gal did not reappear, but it took another wipe before we had killed enough mobs to finish the remainder off.
See - I wasn't lying about Cho'gal.
We went on to the Twins. The druid, perhaps a little unnerved by his problems with the gauntlet, put Kg into a trial by fire by making him the tank for the Twins. It was a very rough fight and there were a lot of mistakes, not only by our learning tank. Wild got caught in the fire from the sky and died by running in the wrong direction. Not Wild's most shining moment. Three others lay dead as well when the dragons fell. Credit the kill to the rest of the raid, improving gear, and maybe another nerf? Not sure, but given all our mistakes I couldn't believe we actually took the Twins down.
We mowed down the two mobs to get to the room full of elemental mobs that are so challenging for the two tanks. Kg was about to get another trial by fire. Wild didn't get to see it, though. My internet went down again. And this time I could not get it back. Neither could my internet service, who said it was not a problem at their end. Of course. After a lot of checking this and that, I had to make an appointment for them to come out and figure out what was wrong. That won't happen until Saturday. Sigh.
By the way, right before the my internet connection died again, our on a date raid leader came back in game. Looks like Wild's replacement had arrived right on time. And just my luck - I bet they get to Cho'gal this week. And Wild won't be there.
PS - So how is it that I posted this? The internet came up on its own this morning. I still have an appointment with the techs, which I was able to move up to this afternoon, so we'll see how things go. It's been up for about an hour now.
If it's not one thing, it's another. The problems with my computer have been an ongoing issue for weeks. So far the latest fix has been working. So the computer gods had to come up with something new.
On Thursday Wild created a new toon, an alliance gnome named BruiserBabe (BB for short). BB is a death knight, and was born on the pvp server Boulderfist. Both the DER and Sis families of Silvermoon have relatives on Boulderfist, so, not to be left behind, the Wild family had to sow some seeds there as well.
Raising a death knight is a bit different than other races, as they begin life at level 55. There is a special starter zone for all death knights in the skies above the Plaguelands, and they must undergo rigorous and bloody tutoring before being allowed into the world at large. BB had just begun her training when strange things began happening around her. The world tilted and ...
My internet connection went down. I did the usual shut down, reboot, and reset process with computer, modem, and router, and about fifteen minutes later the connection came back up. Most probably it was some hitch with my Internet service. I got distracted by other things away from the computer and didn't get back until raid time Thursday night.
Our BoT raid leader has been on vacation, but he was back this week and, we thought, ready to rock again. But he abandoned us on Thursday night because he had - a date. Imagine, leaving his team for a woman! Couldn't he schedule a date on a non-raid night? Where are his priorities? What right ... oh, hello, Mrs Wild, what am I grumbling about? Uh, nothing dear.
Of course, the raid leader had given plenty of notice that he would be away Thursday night, and the backup raid leader had no problem getting our raid filled. We did have an interesting conundrum for a bit, though. We had too many healers. Five of the guildies invited into the raid had healers as their mains. It's a very unusual situation, but as readers have probably noticed, we are always scrambling to find DPSers to join the raid. It's just weird. So several guildies had to switch to alts in order to get a good grouping of players. There was also a player, Kg, that Wild and the cabal ran with way back in days of Karazahn who had recently come back to the game. Formerly a druid, he was now a paladin, and was on the healing team for the BWD 25 man earlier in the week, but otherwise had just been doing Heroics. With our raid leader out (who was also our main tank), we needed a second tank, and Kg was pressed into service.
So, we had healers who went to alts to play DPSers and we were substituting our out on a date main tank with a tank who has not only not seen the inside of BoT yet, but had not done any raid tanking at all. Just our usual, competent team of professionals. :)
I have to give Kg a great deal of credit. He jumped in and played his heart out while still learning how to tank with a paladin and learning the strats in a raid he's never seen before. The other tank, a druid, is a great tank but would admit he is not the best at explaining things. Directions and guidance to Kg left a lot of room for interpretation, and that resulted in some pretty outlandish situations that had us all laughing in amazement.
We made our first trash pulls without incident, but when pulling the side groups Kg didn't kite them over to where our DPS and healers were, not being told or not remembering to do that. Wild went chasing after Kg when his health started accelerating toward zero, but all that did was make Wild the next target when the tank died. We survived the pull (even Wild), but we were already giggling at the "unorthodox" approach.
Then there was the gauntlet. The gauntlet had bugged on us last week, but that was nothing compared to this week. Our druid tank is very good, but he seemed a bit distracted on this night, maybe because he was trying so hard to help out Kg. The druid tank got himself killed not once, but twice, during the gauntlet by miss-positioning himself and getting knocked off the stairs to certain death. Every raider knows NOT to get themselves into that position. Things went very crazy for a bit, but we finally completed the gauntlet and moved forward to the next set of mobs.
Another event occurred in between the two deaths by the druid tank. Wild's internet connection went down again. Wild was also deposited at the beginning of the instance when I got back in game and I had to run all the way back to the group as they waited for Wild to get there and see what they were all standing there looking at.
What we saw caused our jaws to drop. Between us and the doorway that leads to the next encounter was the usual 3-5 mobs. But to the left AND the right of them were groups of additional mobs, all packed together. They were so close to each other there seemed no way to pull one group without pulling all of them.
But that wasn't the worst. Standing in the doorway behind that small army of mobs was - I kid you not - Cho'gal. Yes, Cho'gal, the final boss in BoT. Faced with that, what could we do? We attacked, of course. We wiped twice. After the first wipe Cho'gal did not reappear, but it took another wipe before we had killed enough mobs to finish the remainder off.
See - I wasn't lying about Cho'gal.
We went on to the Twins. The druid, perhaps a little unnerved by his problems with the gauntlet, put Kg into a trial by fire by making him the tank for the Twins. It was a very rough fight and there were a lot of mistakes, not only by our learning tank. Wild got caught in the fire from the sky and died by running in the wrong direction. Not Wild's most shining moment. Three others lay dead as well when the dragons fell. Credit the kill to the rest of the raid, improving gear, and maybe another nerf? Not sure, but given all our mistakes I couldn't believe we actually took the Twins down.
We mowed down the two mobs to get to the room full of elemental mobs that are so challenging for the two tanks. Kg was about to get another trial by fire. Wild didn't get to see it, though. My internet went down again. And this time I could not get it back. Neither could my internet service, who said it was not a problem at their end. Of course. After a lot of checking this and that, I had to make an appointment for them to come out and figure out what was wrong. That won't happen until Saturday. Sigh.
By the way, right before the my internet connection died again, our on a date raid leader came back in game. Looks like Wild's replacement had arrived right on time. And just my luck - I bet they get to Cho'gal this week. And Wild won't be there.
PS - So how is it that I posted this? The internet came up on its own this morning. I still have an appointment with the techs, which I was able to move up to this afternoon, so we'll see how things go. It's been up for about an hour now.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Wednesday (3 Aug) - My Last Gold Piece
Wednesday (3 Aug) - My Last Gold Piece
Happy swears he's given Wild the last gold piece Wild is ever going to get from him. Wild tried to explain that he "saved" Happy 17,000 gold! He should live up to his name and be Happy! Ok, so Wild bought the [Flickering Shoulderpads of the Wavecrest], i378 gear to replace Wild's pretty but dated i359 shoulders. The guy on the AH wanted 42,000 gold for it, and Wild engineered a price of "only" 27,000 gold. What a deal! Right? Someone? Anyone?
It's really Happy's fault, ya know. Happy would never let Wild spend 42k gold on ANYTHING, much less a single piece of un-gemmed, un-enchanted gear. So Wild took matters into his own hands, talking to the seller directly when I was able to catch him in game. He told Wild he was selling the gear for his guild; since it wasn't for himself, he said he was open to negotiations. How could I know he would agree to a killer price? And just Wild's luck that he and Wild were both standing around in Orgrimmar with nothing much to do but a little haggling? It wasn't my fault, I tell you! PS - Don't mention to Happy the price, ok? I told him it was 28k (I figured I'd better get some walking around money for the gems and enchants before Happy shut Wild down completely).
The Hunter Fortress is on a small hiatus this week and next. Bean did get in some solid questing with new Hunter Fortress member, Jocelyne, a paladin healer. We took the Org zep to the Undercity and then flew to Hillsbrad Foothills. We started with murloc slaughter, added some spider feeding, and hunted down Mr. Whitestead and Citizen Wilkes. Wilkes was tricky to find, but easy to kill once we nabbed him. Working in a group with a healer was a new experience for Bean and Jocelyne both. Jocy had to remember not to get too wrapped up in DPS to heal, and Bean had to remember not to run out of range of her healer. We had a good time! Bean raised her level from 21 to 23, and Jocy bumped up from 24 to 26. Jocy will take a break, now, until more of the Hunter Fortress reaches level 25. Shevils is still 24 so there may yet be some 20-24 bracket pvp before we all reach the new bracket.
Happy swears he's given Wild the last gold piece Wild is ever going to get from him. Wild tried to explain that he "saved" Happy 17,000 gold! He should live up to his name and be Happy! Ok, so Wild bought the [Flickering Shoulderpads of the Wavecrest], i378 gear to replace Wild's pretty but dated i359 shoulders. The guy on the AH wanted 42,000 gold for it, and Wild engineered a price of "only" 27,000 gold. What a deal! Right? Someone? Anyone?
It's really Happy's fault, ya know. Happy would never let Wild spend 42k gold on ANYTHING, much less a single piece of un-gemmed, un-enchanted gear. So Wild took matters into his own hands, talking to the seller directly when I was able to catch him in game. He told Wild he was selling the gear for his guild; since it wasn't for himself, he said he was open to negotiations. How could I know he would agree to a killer price? And just Wild's luck that he and Wild were both standing around in Orgrimmar with nothing much to do but a little haggling? It wasn't my fault, I tell you! PS - Don't mention to Happy the price, ok? I told him it was 28k (I figured I'd better get some walking around money for the gems and enchants before Happy shut Wild down completely).
The Hunter Fortress is on a small hiatus this week and next. Bean did get in some solid questing with new Hunter Fortress member, Jocelyne, a paladin healer. We took the Org zep to the Undercity and then flew to Hillsbrad Foothills. We started with murloc slaughter, added some spider feeding, and hunted down Mr. Whitestead and Citizen Wilkes. Wilkes was tricky to find, but easy to kill once we nabbed him. Working in a group with a healer was a new experience for Bean and Jocelyne both. Jocy had to remember not to get too wrapped up in DPS to heal, and Bean had to remember not to run out of range of her healer. We had a good time! Bean raised her level from 21 to 23, and Jocy bumped up from 24 to 26. Jocy will take a break, now, until more of the Hunter Fortress reaches level 25. Shevils is still 24 so there may yet be some 20-24 bracket pvp before we all reach the new bracket.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday (2 Aug) - Sweet Serenite
Tuesday (2 Aug) - Sweet Serenite
It was quite amazing to see our guild blossom into a 25 man Blackwing Descent raid on Tuesday night. One ten man raid that runs on Mon/Tues plus one ten man raid that runs on Tues/Wed, both working BWD, made up the core of the raid. There were raiders from the Thurs/Fri raid that also signed on, such as Wild. There were friends from another guild that typically raid with one group or another of ours joining us. And there was Lady Serenite, one time guild leader of FS, long time online friend from the earliest days of FS, and until lately long retired from the game. She had been ill, and had restarted her WoW account to have something to do while she recovered. More than a few of her many friends asked her to come join us for the raid if a spot came open. She and Wild chatted for quite awhile and Wild kept her informed on how invites were going. She got her invite, but got lost trying to find the entrance to BWD at Blackrock Mountain. Wild guided her in.
Lady Hunter, who led the Tues/Wed raid group, was in the raid of course, and Wild felt doubly blessed being in the raid with two of his favorite Ladys.
Raid start time was 6:30pm, and actually getting started at 7pm was pretty much on time for us. Lady Ser had asked Wild when the raid was to start and I told her that it would be at least 30-60 minutes later than when it was scheduled. She laughed, noting that nothing really changed with this group of characters.
The banter between raiders while we assembled was lively and got so risque players were packing their kids off to bed to get them out of speaker range. Lady Ser made some comment about "boobies" and got a "dirty whore!" line back at her, followed by "er ... I mean you wild woman" which Wild followed up with "you mean Wild's woman don't you?" Emotes were flung back and forth, another friend from long ago raids regaling the group with Wild's more memorable (or more forgettable from Wild's view) times I got lost in Karazahn. In the press of getting everyone invited and assembled, a baffled guildie found himself ninjaed into the raid the moment he logged in and quickly Summoned to Blackrock Mountain. "Uh, guys, what am I doing here?" he asked. BWD! Several raiders hollered to him. "LOL. I'm not even 85 yet!" Oops. We even made the classic mistake of entering the raid in 10 man mode, not 25 man. Wild was actually able to enter, but a second later was summarily booted out and I ended up somewhere in the Blasted Lands. The raid leader made fun of himself for the gaffe and switched us to 25 man mode.
We didn't so much settle down carry the excitement right into Blackwing Descent. We had what seemed to me an overabundance of healers in the raid - seven in all. I don't really know what the right numbers are anymore since I never see 25 man raids. We had two paladins, a shaman, a priest, and three (three!) druids. The pallies got tank healing duty, with Wild and another druid backing them up and raid healing. We had four raiders seeing BWD for the first time, one of whom had never even raided before! Most of the raid, however, was very familiar with 10 man BWD, and the fights in 10 and 25 man are considered to be very similar, just scaled for the number of raiders.
Normally we would start with Magmaw, but one of our rogues was yammerin' for Omnotron (apparently he desperately wanted a drop from that encounter). Since it didn't much matter which fight we started with, we went after Omnotron. That battle played out smoothly and we set down all four of the robots in order. Just like that we had a 25 man kill! One of the great things about doing 25 man is that the number of boss kill drops is much higher. Normally 2 items drop in 10 man. When Omnotron went down in 25 man four items dropped. There are very few gear slots left where Wild could use an i359 item, though, but one of them is rings. Both of Wild's rings are pvp rings (i365 and i358). Wild won the ring, replacing the i358.
It was then on to Magmaw. That battle almost got away from us when one of the raiders doing the lava worm wrangling struggled to get his chains and then managed to fall off. That was somehow straightened out and Magmaw went down.
Maloriak was our next target. It may sound like we were moving right along, but that really wasn't the case. It's one thing for a raider or two to dally or need a short "brb" in a 10 man; it becomes unwieldy in 25 man, and we just weren't practiced enough at it to have the additional rigor and press needed to keep a large raid focused. There were delays and discussions, side conversations and question and answer moments, and general milling about every moment we weren't actually engaged in combat. Nobody really minded any of that, though - we were all having a blast together.
We wiped on our first attempt on Maloriak. The DPS was confused over when to DPS the boss and when to DPS the adds, and that slowed everything down. We were not in any trouble of wiping, and could have fought him darn near forever with the amount of healing we were packing, but there was one small thing we didn't think about - the Berserk timer, which is what got us wiped.
It was a straightforward fix, though, and Maloriak went down on our second attempt. We had hoped to get to another boss, but time ran out on us.
For the wrap up, the first thing that should be noted is that this is the first - the FIRST - 25 man the MM2 guild has done since the formation of the guild. If Wild had his way we would be doing 25 man every week! But that is not the plan. The time and effort to get a 25 man together is just not something our guild is prepared to take on every week, so a once per month schedule is being considered. It can only be one night, though, as we just don't have enough raiders that can be available twice in one week.
In 10 man we would have gotten six drops from the three bosses we downed. In 25 man we got 13 drops. About two-thirds of the drops found willing raiders who needed them, so it was a powerful night for gearing up raiders.
Wild did fine, finishing 3rd overall in healing on the night:
#1: pally - 10111 hps, 18.8% of all healing
#2: druid - 9320, 16.8%
#3: Wild - 8683, 15.4%
#4: priest - 6635, 12.0%
#5: druid - 7099, 11.6%
#6: pally - 7687, 11.2%
#7: shaman - 5745, 7.3%
The DPS - Our top DPSer was a hunter at 16.9k DPS who did 7.6% of all damage.
DPS # of raiders at that level
16k+ - 1 DPS
15k+ - 1 DPS
14k+ - 5 DPS
13k+ - 3 DPS
12k+ - 1 DPS
11k+ - 1 DPS
10k+ - 2 DPS
9k+ - 1 DPS
We had one DPSer who barely made 6k DPS, but you could guess who that was - Lady Ser, invited more for her company than for her DPS.
If only we could do this more often.
It was quite amazing to see our guild blossom into a 25 man Blackwing Descent raid on Tuesday night. One ten man raid that runs on Mon/Tues plus one ten man raid that runs on Tues/Wed, both working BWD, made up the core of the raid. There were raiders from the Thurs/Fri raid that also signed on, such as Wild. There were friends from another guild that typically raid with one group or another of ours joining us. And there was Lady Serenite, one time guild leader of FS, long time online friend from the earliest days of FS, and until lately long retired from the game. She had been ill, and had restarted her WoW account to have something to do while she recovered. More than a few of her many friends asked her to come join us for the raid if a spot came open. She and Wild chatted for quite awhile and Wild kept her informed on how invites were going. She got her invite, but got lost trying to find the entrance to BWD at Blackrock Mountain. Wild guided her in.
Lady Hunter, who led the Tues/Wed raid group, was in the raid of course, and Wild felt doubly blessed being in the raid with two of his favorite Ladys.
Raid start time was 6:30pm, and actually getting started at 7pm was pretty much on time for us. Lady Ser had asked Wild when the raid was to start and I told her that it would be at least 30-60 minutes later than when it was scheduled. She laughed, noting that nothing really changed with this group of characters.
The banter between raiders while we assembled was lively and got so risque players were packing their kids off to bed to get them out of speaker range. Lady Ser made some comment about "boobies" and got a "dirty whore!" line back at her, followed by "er ... I mean you wild woman" which Wild followed up with "you mean Wild's woman don't you?" Emotes were flung back and forth, another friend from long ago raids regaling the group with Wild's more memorable (or more forgettable from Wild's view) times I got lost in Karazahn. In the press of getting everyone invited and assembled, a baffled guildie found himself ninjaed into the raid the moment he logged in and quickly Summoned to Blackrock Mountain. "Uh, guys, what am I doing here?" he asked. BWD! Several raiders hollered to him. "LOL. I'm not even 85 yet!" Oops. We even made the classic mistake of entering the raid in 10 man mode, not 25 man. Wild was actually able to enter, but a second later was summarily booted out and I ended up somewhere in the Blasted Lands. The raid leader made fun of himself for the gaffe and switched us to 25 man mode.
We didn't so much settle down carry the excitement right into Blackwing Descent. We had what seemed to me an overabundance of healers in the raid - seven in all. I don't really know what the right numbers are anymore since I never see 25 man raids. We had two paladins, a shaman, a priest, and three (three!) druids. The pallies got tank healing duty, with Wild and another druid backing them up and raid healing. We had four raiders seeing BWD for the first time, one of whom had never even raided before! Most of the raid, however, was very familiar with 10 man BWD, and the fights in 10 and 25 man are considered to be very similar, just scaled for the number of raiders.
Normally we would start with Magmaw, but one of our rogues was yammerin' for Omnotron (apparently he desperately wanted a drop from that encounter). Since it didn't much matter which fight we started with, we went after Omnotron. That battle played out smoothly and we set down all four of the robots in order. Just like that we had a 25 man kill! One of the great things about doing 25 man is that the number of boss kill drops is much higher. Normally 2 items drop in 10 man. When Omnotron went down in 25 man four items dropped. There are very few gear slots left where Wild could use an i359 item, though, but one of them is rings. Both of Wild's rings are pvp rings (i365 and i358). Wild won the ring, replacing the i358.
It was then on to Magmaw. That battle almost got away from us when one of the raiders doing the lava worm wrangling struggled to get his chains and then managed to fall off. That was somehow straightened out and Magmaw went down.
Maloriak was our next target. It may sound like we were moving right along, but that really wasn't the case. It's one thing for a raider or two to dally or need a short "brb" in a 10 man; it becomes unwieldy in 25 man, and we just weren't practiced enough at it to have the additional rigor and press needed to keep a large raid focused. There were delays and discussions, side conversations and question and answer moments, and general milling about every moment we weren't actually engaged in combat. Nobody really minded any of that, though - we were all having a blast together.
We wiped on our first attempt on Maloriak. The DPS was confused over when to DPS the boss and when to DPS the adds, and that slowed everything down. We were not in any trouble of wiping, and could have fought him darn near forever with the amount of healing we were packing, but there was one small thing we didn't think about - the Berserk timer, which is what got us wiped.
It was a straightforward fix, though, and Maloriak went down on our second attempt. We had hoped to get to another boss, but time ran out on us.
For the wrap up, the first thing that should be noted is that this is the first - the FIRST - 25 man the MM2 guild has done since the formation of the guild. If Wild had his way we would be doing 25 man every week! But that is not the plan. The time and effort to get a 25 man together is just not something our guild is prepared to take on every week, so a once per month schedule is being considered. It can only be one night, though, as we just don't have enough raiders that can be available twice in one week.
In 10 man we would have gotten six drops from the three bosses we downed. In 25 man we got 13 drops. About two-thirds of the drops found willing raiders who needed them, so it was a powerful night for gearing up raiders.
Wild did fine, finishing 3rd overall in healing on the night:
#1: pally - 10111 hps, 18.8% of all healing
#2: druid - 9320, 16.8%
#3: Wild - 8683, 15.4%
#4: priest - 6635, 12.0%
#5: druid - 7099, 11.6%
#6: pally - 7687, 11.2%
#7: shaman - 5745, 7.3%
The DPS - Our top DPSer was a hunter at 16.9k DPS who did 7.6% of all damage.
DPS # of raiders at that level
16k+ - 1 DPS
15k+ - 1 DPS
14k+ - 5 DPS
13k+ - 3 DPS
12k+ - 1 DPS
11k+ - 1 DPS
10k+ - 2 DPS
9k+ - 1 DPS
We had one DPSer who barely made 6k DPS, but you could guess who that was - Lady Ser, invited more for her company than for her DPS.
If only we could do this more often.
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