Weekend (12 Feb) - Meet Bonecrusher and Gatecrasher

Weekend (12 Feb) - Meet Bonecrusher and Gatecrasher

Note: Lots of this and that's in here, but there is also some raiding. Scroll down to Saturday night for the raiding.

Friday - JB's Luck Turns

JB has been stuck at gear score i366 for the past several days. She'd burned all her valor points last week and has had ghastly luck with gear drops in Twilight and the lfr DS. JB had a few pieces of higher level gear in the bank, but the secondary stats were so bad JB could not find a way to use them without dropping below her hit and expertise caps.

On Friday night JB's luck changed. She picked up the i384 T13 chest token from the lfr and a fine i378 cape from Twilight. She already had the T13 gloves, but weren't wearing them because she was wearing two pieces of the T12 set and didn't want to lose the set bonus. Now she had two pieces of the T13, and could replace the T12s. Even that hurt as much as it helped. The T12 two-piece set bonus is quite nice, and she had to lose that in order to use the T13s. Frustrated with the hit/exp requirements, JB said to hell with the caps and filled her gear slots with the highest ilevel gear she had.

JB then set about reforging that gear, and found that she could indeed still reach her caps. She had to give up some mastery stats to do it, but overall JB was pleased with the changes. JB's equipped ilevel took a big step up, from i366 to i371. Holding her back, still, is one slot stuck at i333 - her shoulders. All in all, though, JB's gear was looking up. Wild started running normal Dragon Soul with lesser gear than JB was wearing now.

JB felt she was ready. However, the Raid Target Dummy had a different opinion. When JB tested her gear on the dummy, she could not get over 16k dps, which was lower than the 18k dps she had achieved with her old gear during the test to earn Raider rank in the guild. JB was baffled, but decided that the real test would come when she could get back into the lfr, or even some "real" raiding.

Saturday - Whining Hunters

We spent part of Saturday at the ballpark. It was Fanfest day, and fans could go down onto the field and run the bases, throw from the pitchers mound, and basically invade all of the places the players hang out - the dugout, bullpen, locker room, etc. There were scheduled autograph sessions, as well, but we're not really into that. The only annoying thing was that they had closed all of the upper level seating sections for some minor work. We had hoped to be able to go up to our seats, but we had to be content with taking pictures of them from the field. The San Diego Padres have the second lowest ticket prices in major league baseball, and that is the only way we were able to afford season tickets. I've never had season tickets to anything, and it may be only for this one season, so we'll make the most of it.

Lady Hunter was in game for awhile on Saturday. Her work schedule sounds truly grim and her game time is still pretty restricted. She was working on getting her gear up to speed and was loudly complaining about the difficulty in getting enough ranged +hit stats to meet her cap. The hunter cap for +hit is 8%. JB's hit cap is 17%. JB and Lady Hunter jawed at each other about that, and then we playfully argued over Blizz's coddling of hunters to the detriment of shaman. I think Lady Hunter won the argument when she stuck out her tongue and said - "Blizzard likes us better! Nya Nya Nya! So there!"

JB somehow got it into her head that she could buy shoulder gear from the Justice Point vendor. Shoulder pieces sold by vendors are almost always Tier pieces, and nearly always require tier tokens to get them. Still, she thought that she could buy the i378 shoulders, or if not that, she would make do with the i359. JB went so far as to grind JPs in normal dungeons. It took four runs to get her the 2200 JPs she needed. The runs were fun for JB, because she out gears the normal Cata dungeons by a lot. Her companions on those runs were delighted to have her, as JB delivered twice the dps of the other DPSers, and her insanely high stamina meant the healer need not worry about her.

All was for nought, though. JB can't buy shoulder gear using points. JB is dependant on getting a drop from some dungeon or raid. Until then, she is stuck with that ugly i333, unless she breaks down and gets the pvp i377 Vicious shoulders.

But wait - perhaps all was not completely lost. Perhaps some of those 2200+ JPs could be put to use. There is a trinket called [Fluid Death]. It's just an i359, but it has 69 more hit than her current trinket, and one of the best Equip procs of additional agility available. JB took her JPs to the vendor and paid 1650 JPs to buy [Fluid Death]. That allowed her to do some reforging to gain 66 mastery. JB's changed plan for her shoulders - (1) hope a drop falls from the lfr next week; (2) endlessly farm the Hour of Twilight Heroic until the i378 shoulders in there drops. Both are likely faint hopes.

Saturday Night - Wow, Just Wow

JB was in game Saturday night, staring at her useless JPs and contemplating spending the 1,000 gold those pvp shoulders would cost. It was close to 7pm, and the guild usually runs Firelands on Friday and Saturday night for alts and for fun. JB wasn't able to get in game in time for the raid, and when she did login there was no raid in progress. But, they were still trying to get one started.

JB got a whisper from St, a regular with the RG2 raid. St had been pressed into service as a DPS for the FL run, but he'd rather not and wanted to know if JB would like to fill in for him. What a silly question, are you kidding?

JB didn't even think to ask about where they were in the raid, how close they were to filling, etc etc. YES! she told St. A couple of minutes later JB was Summoned to the Firelands.

JB did have the Firelands in mind when it became apparent that she could meet all the requirements of gear and got her Raider status with the guild. Friday and Saturday nights were usually family nights, however, and raiding was not a priority. The way JB envisioned it, she would find a Friday night where she was available to raid, join her guild raid group, and test her raid readiness first against the mountain of mobs that have to be cleared in FL before taking on a boss.

So much for what she envisioned. The raid had cleared trash mobs on Friday night. They also brought down the first boss, Shannox, and the second, the big spider. JB wasn't exactly unhappy at not having to face the spider, but then again those two bosses were the only ones that Wild had any experience with to share with JB. JB was going in blind.

Once in the raid, JB took stock of the rest of the group. JB knew everyone, although there was a larger sprinkling of alts than we usually had in raids. That was to be expected, given that the Firelands have given way to Dragon Soul as the premier raid.

We wasted no time getting started. JB stepped into the Firelands for the first time. The raid mounted up and rode across blackened, fire blasted rocks, passing through the area where Shannox was brought down, bypassing the side passage where the corpse of the spider lay rotting, and into an area of broken rock, narrow ledges, and fifteen foot trash mobs guarding nearly every rock choked path. Raiders slowed down to maneuver into that maze. The path led up, boulders partially blocking our way. JB got stuck on an outcropping she couldn't jump over. She finally pushed around it, but her mount slipped, and JB fell. It was a short fall, but below that ledge was a deep pool of molten lava, and no way to get out of it. JB died. Not exactly an auspicious introduction to the raid for JB.

JB got a rez and gathered with the rest of the raid at an arch. Inside was a small army of tall, flame wreathed mobs. Behind them was the boss, Baleroc. Wild has killed Baleroc once, though not with the guild. He was with a PUG that was led by a Heroic level guild running alts. Wild healed, but learned little about the fight.

It would be a trial by fire for JB. The raid leader, Sb, sounded a quick Ready Check, marked targets, and gave the Go to start. It took about thirty seconds for JB to die, and another thirty seconds for the raid to wipe.

We re-grouped. JB was a bit shell-shocked. These folks already have two boss kills, so how could we wipe on trash? After a discussion, we noted that there had been no healer assignments, and there was confusion on who was doing the tank healing.

We tried again. Wy was the tank on the first mob Marked to be killed. JB followed the tank in and attacked. From JB's perspective things went well for a few seconds, and then the trash mob cast a spell unleashing a huge fire tornado. In a couple of seconds JB's health plummeted under 10% and JB beat feet away from it. JB cast ranged spells at the mob, but it was useless. Both tanks were already down and we wiped again.

Everyone was scratching their heads. Something wasn't right. As we rounded everyone up and entered FL through the portal once again, the light came on. Our raid was set to 25 man difficulty. No wonder those mobs hit so hard, and the healing couldn't keep up.

Relieved that we had a fixable problem, we went at those mobs with new energy and confidence. Even JB felt it, and hoped that this time JB would get a real feel for whether she belonged here or not. Set to ten man difficulty, the mobs fell, one after the other, and we had soon cleared the way to Baleroc. The DPS results were very encouraging for JB, as well, at least for this small sample of FL level trash mobs. Leading the six DPSers was a DK (21.5k dps). Second was a mage (13.9k). Third was JB (13.9k, missing second by one-tenth of a percentage). JB's confidence grew another notch.

JB wasn't the only player in the raid who had no experience with this boss. Baleroc had only one important trick up his sleeve, but it required careful coordination. Baleroc periodically drops a Shard. The Shard attacks the raider closest to it, and the damage stacks quickly. Get more than six stacks and it becomes fatal. The strategy required four DPSers to take turns standing closest to the Shard each time one formed. When the current target reached six stacks, the raider was to announce it in vent and get the hell away from it, while the next DPSer in line took a stance near it to pick up the debuff. Baleroc continues to drop Shards until he dies - or we do.

JB was NOT one of the four assigned to take the Shard stacks.

We started. JB got into position and was whaling away happily on Baleroc. The first Shard dropped close to JB. A tendril of purple slithered out and attached itself to JB, and JB's health started to drop. JB may not know what to do about Shards, but she does know the basic rule of dungeons and raids - stay out of the fire. JB quickly moved away from the Shard, another DPSer stepped into it's shadow and took the stacks, and the battle continued.

On the second Shard drop the raider on the Shard died and was battle rezzed. On the fourth Shard drop another DPS raider fell, and JB was tapped to fill in as we had no more battle rezzes to give out. JB has no microphone, so I couldn't call out stacks. But JB knew what to do, and when her turn came she took her spot next to the Shard. At six stacks she was at 15% health and moved quickly out of the way, typing "6 stks" in chat several times for effect. That apparently wasn't good enough, no one relieved JB, and the Shard attached itself to a tank. The tank died. We wiped.

We made two more attempts, getting Baleroc to 33% health on our third try, but we were out of time. Beyond out of time, actually, as we were already twenty minutes past our usual stop time. JB was stoked to go on. On that last attempt JB had taken second in DPS (17.8k dps vs the mage's 19.3k). The DK had dropped to third (15.5k).

The raid leader asked for a vote on whether to take one more shot. The vote was a unanimous Yes, and we went back at Baleroc one more time. Baleroc beat us down, but we hung in there, and JB was one of four still standing when we killed him.

Here are the DPS stats for the Baleroc Kill:

#1: DK, 21.0k dps, 18.9% of damage
#2: JB, 19.5k dps, 17.6%
#3: Mage, 14.8k dps, 13.4%
#4: Warlock, 13.9k dps, 12.6%
#5: Shdw priest, 10.8k dps, 9.8%

Baleroc dropped three pieces. One JB had no interest in. The other two? Oh my.

[Shattered Bonecrusher] dropped. This is an i378 one-hand mace. It was practically tailor made for an enhancement shaman.

[Gatecrasher] also dropped. This is an i378 Axe as nasty looking as the Bonecrusher. Which one should I roll on? JB was in a frenzy of indecision.

Step back a moment. Both weapons are +agi based weapons. There are three classes who could use them - enh shaman, rogues, and those foul hunters. We had no rogue. We had only JB as shaman. And - we had NO HUNTERS! 

JB won both blades. There was only one sad downside to replacing JB's pair of maces, the aptly named [Tremendous Tankard O' Terror]. JB will no longer be wielding dual beer steins in battle. JB can live with that.

Enchanting the new blades with Landslide cost Happy 4k gold, so JB is going to stay well away from Happy until Happy's temper cools. Happy doesn't much want to see JB grinning from ear-to-ear.

It was quite a night. First entry into the Firelands. Blooded on Baleroc. And a pair of new death dealers. JB's gear score is i373.