Tuesday (28 Mar) - A Funny Thing (Redux)
A funny thing happened while I was engrossed in clearing out the clutter of files in my Outlook Deleted Folder. There were, of course, thousands of files, 99% of which I really didn't need but hadn't gotten around to permanently deleting. Yes, I can be a packrat, but even packrats eventually throw stuff away. I cleared away the truly old stuff, and then sorted the remaining stack and cleared away the endless Amazon, Land's End, Wal-Mart, Broderbund, and other advertising junk I'd let bulge the folder. The very last file in that long list was an email in Chinese, which of course got the death click. The second to last email, though, was a surprise.
The email title was WoWMoPBeta.
Hmm, I never saw this email. My junk filter must have decided that I didn't really need to see this email and sent it directly into the Deleted Folder. The email was dated 12 March, 2012.
I bet that what this email says has been figured out by now. Yes, I have received a Mists of Pandaria Beta Test invitation.
My first attempt at installing it failed this morning. I will keep everyone apprised on any further progress (or lack of).
Update #1: I had to uninstall the failed Beta, which had not gotten very far, anyway. I got ready to try a second install, and then had a thought. WoW was undergoing it's Tuesday maintenance, and that could mean that the MoP Beta might also be offline. I decided to wait until maintenance was finished before trying again.
Update #2: Blizzard maintenance ended at around 11am. Happy was able to login and get his AH checks done. I then attempted to install the MoP Beta. Just like the last time, the install quickly went to 10% and then hung. Fifteen minutes later, and still at 10%, I shut it down.
Update #3: I decided to try a different strategy. I'd just upgraded my ZoneAlarm firewall and I wondered if it was unhappy with the MoP install. So I powered up the backup computer to try installing it there (without the ZA upgrade). First, I had to load two patches in order to be at the current WoW level. I then ran the setup and install programs for MoP Beta. It's working. It's taken more than half an hour to get to 15%, but I don't care if it takes all day, as long as it gets there.
Update #4: It did take all day, and then finally timed out at 38%. I'll start it up again on Wednesday and see how it goes.
Update #5: The Wednesday attempt took me backwards. Now the program simply hangs on "Updating" and dies there. This is what Mists of Pandaria is going to be like on the day this expansion goes live.
Wednesday Night - Meanwhile, There's This Thing Called a Raid
It was "roast the rogue" night in our RG2 raid. Ooh, I want to make that the name of a guild! There's this saying that I know has been mentioned before, but it's funny anyway. Rule #1 of our raid is "The rogue dies first." We took this to some distant extreme on Wednesday night, and it just got funnier and sillier as the evening wore on. The rogue is of course well liked by the guild, and probably loved all the attention. Our lady priest of the evening made it a point to talk about all the times she "didn't" heal him. And on the Warlord fight where the raid is divided into two groups, the rogue was intentionally moved by the raid leader to the group being healed by the priest, so that she would be able to "not" heal him. Calls of "Wait, the rogue didn't die!?" were normal when we finished off a boss without any deaths. Tanks would call for the pull and then wait to see if the rogue would jump the gun. It was that kind of night.
We had our regular raid leader back, he of the computer problems, and various and sundry illnesses and other real life issues. I'm glad I'm not living his life at the moment, the poor guy is just beset with issues. He's always upbeat, though, and this night was no different. Wild never knows whether he is handling the healing assignments or not. No problem, if it looks like the raid leader is occupied Wild sets up the assignments, but if they start to do it that's fine as well. There are only so many ways to set things up, and most of the time it's not how perfect the assignments are, just that there ARE assignments. We had a third healer, a druid, who was somewhat undergeared, but the nerf stick had hit Dragon Soul again this week, so perhaps it wouldn't be that big a deal.
Morchok went down easily, and Yor'sahj soon followed. Great disappointment was expressed when the rogue failed to die on either boss. No healer claimed to have healed him, but rogues are so sneaky it was more likely he just stole the heals from us. Wild was happy, though. The i397 version of the [Petrified Fungal Heart] dropped. It was the second time Wild had seen it drop. The first time he won it, Wild passed it to another raider who needed it more than Wild did. This time Wild won it again, and decided it was time to keep it.
The Warlord has become our own personal nemesis, and this night was not so different than others. Well, it was a little different. On our third attempt we were getting very close. Wild had already used our one battle rez and had blown all his healing cooldowns keeping the raid alive. We hung in there a very long time, and as raiders died things got truly hairy. Our healers really laid themselves out, but one by one they called out Out Of Mana! and then died. Wild was still in the game as the last healer standing, with a tank and one DPS left. Too many hits and the tank went down, and the one DPSer left took Warlord on a merry chase, Wild in tow trying to keep the DPS up. That last DPS was the rogue. He died, and Warlord quickly finished off Wild. We wiped with Warlord at 4.1% health.
On our fourth attempt Warlord went down. Wild did over 21k hps and over 40% of all healing, with the priest at 17k and our learning druid at 10k. And the rogue didn't die.
Somehow the song "Ring of Fire" became the topic of conversation, with one player claiming it was a Garth Brooks song while others, Wild included, claimed it was a Johnny Cash song. Of course it was both, but the lively argument went on until one raider added his own unique perspective. "You know," he said, "I sing Ring of Fire in the bathroom every time after enchilada night!" No one could top that, so we killed the fourth boss, Hagara, on our first try and with no deaths. Ok, Wild died during the trash. The rogue beat that out of me. Wild is going to stop sneaking heals to him.
We had only five minutes left of our raid time, and our expensive casket (uh, cauldron) of flasks had expired. We had a vote to see if we would stay long enough to clear the skies of all those dragons that precede the Ultraxion fight. Despite the fact that it usually takes us darn near forever to clear those dragons, everyone wanted to take one shot at them. After all, the rogue would surely die.
We were quite stunned when we actually DID clear the trash on our one and only attempt. In fact, we cleared them so fast the counter bugged on us and Ultraxion showed up, armed and ready for battle, well before he was supposed to. The raid leader told everyone to tread carefully as we set up, as Ultraxion had a large hit box and it would not take much to aggro the beast.
The rogue would get his revenge. With the raid in place and the raid leader wrapping up some final advice, the rogue hit Fan of Knives, aggroing Ultraxion. He died, of course, as did the tank short seconds later. Wild got him battle rezzed, and we made a pretty spirited fight out of it, but eventually we wiped.
Yes, the pull was accidental, and the rogue was seriously mortified. But then again ... it's not a good idea to mess with those rogues.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Weekend (25 Mar) - Raid Wars
Weekend (25 Mar) - Raid Wars
Saturday afternoon JB had a chance to get into a Baradin Hold raid. The raid leader was asking for a "class run," meaning there could be only one of each class in the raid, which maximizes the chance of a raider winning loot. Daeth and Silver were also in game, and the raid still needed a tank and a mage. Hmm, Silver is a tank. Daeth is a mage. Must be serendipity! They both got invites. It took some time to get the raid filled, but we were finally loaded up and ready to go. The raid even had two players from Wild's old guild, MM. Things then started to stray from the script.
Someone in the raid had already done BH, which locked out the rest of us from doing the only boss anyone cared about - Alizabal. We couldn't figure out who it was, and everyone was claiming it wasn't us or them. The raid leader finally had to walk his raiders through the steps to check whether they were locked out. Eventually one of the healers sheepishly admitted that he was the culprit. It was one of the MM players.
Well, now we were short a healer, and then another player left while we were working on that. These things happen, though, and we did manage to fill the raid again. We buffed up and got ready to go. Silver, who had been on hiatus before moving to Silvermoon, had not seen this latest boss in BH, and asked the raid leader, who was also the main tank, to give her a quick rundown of the fight. The raid leader then made the rather stunning statement that he had never tanked this boss, either. Ok, so let me get this straight. A player advertises that he's starting a Baradin Hold class raid as the raid leader, he's a tank, and he doesn't know the fight? Oh boy.
One of the other raiders, a rogue I believe it was, said he could explain the fight. His description of the fight helped, I'm sure, but unfortunately it was incomplete, leaving out a crucial piece of information. We made two attempts, both wipes, and raiders started bailing out of the raid. Alizabal is, I must admit, a pretty easy boss that should take us five minutes to kill. It also wasn't just because raiders weren't doing what they were supposed to. The DPS was low as well, which extended the fight and led to more mistakes. JB knew the DPS was low, because she was #3 in DPSing, and she knew her DPS wasn't the best. Daeth was the only DPSer doing potent damage.
The raid leader figured he should just call it off, and JB even left the raid for a bit. But, another attempt was made to start the raid up again. It took considerable time, but once more we had a full raid, about half and half old and new players. This time we brought Alizabal down. A pvp mail piece dropped. BH loot tends to be awarded quickly in a class run, where the winner is usually pretty clear cut. I don't know what happened, but the drop went to someone other than JB. It went to the hunter.
Well, what the hell, there was a mini-storm brewing on the RL front that needed some immediate attention, and while JB wanted the piece, it wasn't a priority. I'll give some credit to the hunter. He whispered JB to ask if I really wanted it. JB had already left the raid and hearthed back to Org. JB asked him why he took the piece, and he claimed that he had asked for it if no one else wanted it. Since he went to the trouble to contact JB, I believed him. The storm clouds on the home front were getting seriously threatening, and the hunter would probably make better use of it than JB anyway. "S'ok, don't worry about it, just use it well!" JB told him. He laughed and promised he would.
I can't say I tamed the weather, but the seas soon calmed enough for JB to give way to Wild so that the three of us - Wild, Daeth and Silver - could head into Siege of Deathwing for some Dragon Soul lfr action. That went well as we cleared all four bosses. No one got any loot, however. JB's elemental gear was already looking stale, although her DPS was slowly improving.
It wasn't until the evening that the Raid Wars began. The guild announced earlier in the week that a third Dragon Soul raid was starting (G3), with raid days on Saturday and Sunday. Few seemed to find that odd, even though both of the guild's other DS raids had been short raiders and hadn't run this week. Somewhat paradoxically, the weekend raid drew a lot of guildies which, I believe, was mostly because they hadn't been able to raid during the week. Wild had a number of reasons to be in game Saturday evening. Daeth and Silver were in game, and we hoped to get into the guild raid. I'd wanted to bring JB to this raid, but they were short healers and specifically asked if Wild would come. I also half-suspected that only a few of the many who had signed up for the raid would really show up, but on that I was wrong. We had an over-supply of DPS players, and two tanks when I thought they might be short one. The only spot they were short was one healer.
Wild gave Silver and Daeth the bad news - they would not make the raid, and Wild was already committed. There were lots of maneuvering to try and place that third healer. Meanwhile, Daeth and Silver had concocted their own plan. Silver decided to start her own PUG DS raid. Daeth then laid down a challenge to Wild - Which raid group will get the farthest, the guild raid or their PUG raid? Wild took the challenge, even though he was quite aware of the tenacity of both Daeth and Silver when they put their heads together, as compared to the normal, meandering pace of our guild raids.
The guild raid got off to a good, if late, start once we'd found our third healer. Morchok went down quickly, and the first drop was [Vagaries of Time]. This is an i397 +int mace for both healers and casters. Six raiders rolled on it. Wild, a priest, and one of the DPS all tied with an 82 roll. Wild won the roll off with a 93.
Wild was very happy to get an i397 weapon with +haste as well as reforged +mastery, but even when Wild wins gear there are downsides. According to the forums, Wild's i390 mace [Maw of the Dragon Lord] is actually better than Vagaries because of it's special healing proc called Cleansing Flames.
Wild checked his healing stats from Saturday night. Cleansing Flames was 7th on Wild's list of heals and accounted for 3.8% of his healing. That's not bad, but it's not raid saving, either. I will have to admit that in the lfr and normal 25 mans, the many raid stacking fights in DS will probably go better with the Maw. Wild is stubborn, though. For normal ten man, I'd like to try Vagaries. Wild was able to gain considerable +mastery through the reforging Wild could do with Vagaries equipped, and it has much higher spell power and a bit more +int. Wild is not a pure raid healer, and the extra mastery will help with tank healing. Wild will use Vagaries Sunday night and we'll see what we will see.
The raid wars had been in progress for a couple of hours when Daeth whispered Wild, wanting to know how far we'd gotten. Wild figured he was in trouble. Our raid leader was having a blast, talking smack and keeping the raid rolling forward. I'd never heard him talk so much. If that was all that was going on with our raid, we would have been going gangbusters. Unfortunately, our raid leader was also having unexpected disconnects, and we'd already lost time twice while battling the second boss, Warlord. We'd had one "oh so close!" attempt on Warlord even though the raid leader was DCed the whole last half of the fight, and we'd wiped with the boss at 1%. We did kill him on our next attempt, but when Daeth whispered Wild I had to admit we were just starting of the third boss, Yor. Daeth didn't disguise his delight in telling Wild the PUG raid had downed three bosses and were working on the fourth, Hagara.
The guild raid went on to kill Yor, but we ran out of time and did not get to Hagara. Daeth and Silver's raid was still in progress. Wild let them know I was going to log for a bit. When Wild returned a half hour later, the PUG was STILL in progress. Hagara had been killed, and they were battling Ultraxion, the fifth boss. Daeth was no longer in the raid, though. Much later, Wild logged out. Silver was still at it.
Regardless of when Silver's raid finished - or maybe it's STILL going on! - Daeth and Silver won their challenge. Their PUG killed at least four bosses, perhaps more, while the guild run ended at three kills.
So, Wild has his own challenge. The guild will be back at work Sunday night. Can Daeth/Silver continue their PUG and keep the challenge alive?
Sunday Night - We had another healer shortage for the G3 raid, but the wait wasn't too long. We started up where we left off, which was the fourth boss, Hagara. Hagara went down on our first attempt.
We then spent way too much time killing the dragon trash in the lead up to the Ultraxion battle. Too many raiders just don't know how to deal with this preliminary fight. It seems so simple. Let the tanks pull the dragons, kill the one that's targeted by the tanks, rinse and repeat. It took us five tries.
The rest of the evening was spent making five attempts on Ultraxion. The tanks were getting better at the taunt offs, and rarely had that problem, which had plagued us the last time we faced this boss. The third and fourth attempts were our best, but we still only got Ultraxion to 31%. It's another raid that is still feeling it's way.
Wild was using his new mace for the first time. I wanted some way to compare between this night and prior raid nights using the old Maw. I searched back to mid-Mar, the last time we'd killed Ultraxion (in the RG2 raid).
The Hagara fight involves a lot of movement and so the Maw Cleansing Fires proc doesn't really shine, so this is to give a baseline.
G3 Hagara Kill . . . .vs. . . . RG2 Hagara Kill
#1: Wild, 9.9k hps, 35.2% . . . #1: Wild, 10.9k hps, 36.2%
#2: Ag, 10.7k hps, 33.1% . . . .#2: Ag, 9.2k hps, 26.0%
#3: Ly, 8.5k hps, 21.9%. . . . .#3: Pl, 6.2k hps, 18.6%
The Ultraxion fight is perfect for Cleansing Flames. On the other hand, Wild was DPSing the first phase in the RG2 battle, lowering Wild's hps.
G3 Ultraxion Attempt. .vs . . . RG2 Hagara Kill
#1: Wild, 28.0k hps, 37.4%. . . #1: Ag, 32.5k hps, 36.8%
#2: Ag, 26.4k hps, 34.5%. . . . #2: Pl, 25.5k hps, 30.1%
#3: Ly, 22.3k hps, 23.2%. . . . #3: Wild, 23.2k hps, 28.0%
Oh well, I don't know if that really tells me anything, but Wild does like his stats.
Finally, about that raid challenge. Seems it's a tie, since the PUG raid went some 90 minutes longer than the G3 on Saturday night, and the G3 downed Hagara well within that time on Sunday night. That is, unless the PUG did kill Ultraxion? Silver was still tilting at that dragon when the Wild family went to bed Saturday.
Saturday afternoon JB had a chance to get into a Baradin Hold raid. The raid leader was asking for a "class run," meaning there could be only one of each class in the raid, which maximizes the chance of a raider winning loot. Daeth and Silver were also in game, and the raid still needed a tank and a mage. Hmm, Silver is a tank. Daeth is a mage. Must be serendipity! They both got invites. It took some time to get the raid filled, but we were finally loaded up and ready to go. The raid even had two players from Wild's old guild, MM. Things then started to stray from the script.
Someone in the raid had already done BH, which locked out the rest of us from doing the only boss anyone cared about - Alizabal. We couldn't figure out who it was, and everyone was claiming it wasn't us or them. The raid leader finally had to walk his raiders through the steps to check whether they were locked out. Eventually one of the healers sheepishly admitted that he was the culprit. It was one of the MM players.
Well, now we were short a healer, and then another player left while we were working on that. These things happen, though, and we did manage to fill the raid again. We buffed up and got ready to go. Silver, who had been on hiatus before moving to Silvermoon, had not seen this latest boss in BH, and asked the raid leader, who was also the main tank, to give her a quick rundown of the fight. The raid leader then made the rather stunning statement that he had never tanked this boss, either. Ok, so let me get this straight. A player advertises that he's starting a Baradin Hold class raid as the raid leader, he's a tank, and he doesn't know the fight? Oh boy.
One of the other raiders, a rogue I believe it was, said he could explain the fight. His description of the fight helped, I'm sure, but unfortunately it was incomplete, leaving out a crucial piece of information. We made two attempts, both wipes, and raiders started bailing out of the raid. Alizabal is, I must admit, a pretty easy boss that should take us five minutes to kill. It also wasn't just because raiders weren't doing what they were supposed to. The DPS was low as well, which extended the fight and led to more mistakes. JB knew the DPS was low, because she was #3 in DPSing, and she knew her DPS wasn't the best. Daeth was the only DPSer doing potent damage.
The raid leader figured he should just call it off, and JB even left the raid for a bit. But, another attempt was made to start the raid up again. It took considerable time, but once more we had a full raid, about half and half old and new players. This time we brought Alizabal down. A pvp mail piece dropped. BH loot tends to be awarded quickly in a class run, where the winner is usually pretty clear cut. I don't know what happened, but the drop went to someone other than JB. It went to the hunter.
Well, what the hell, there was a mini-storm brewing on the RL front that needed some immediate attention, and while JB wanted the piece, it wasn't a priority. I'll give some credit to the hunter. He whispered JB to ask if I really wanted it. JB had already left the raid and hearthed back to Org. JB asked him why he took the piece, and he claimed that he had asked for it if no one else wanted it. Since he went to the trouble to contact JB, I believed him. The storm clouds on the home front were getting seriously threatening, and the hunter would probably make better use of it than JB anyway. "S'ok, don't worry about it, just use it well!" JB told him. He laughed and promised he would.
I can't say I tamed the weather, but the seas soon calmed enough for JB to give way to Wild so that the three of us - Wild, Daeth and Silver - could head into Siege of Deathwing for some Dragon Soul lfr action. That went well as we cleared all four bosses. No one got any loot, however. JB's elemental gear was already looking stale, although her DPS was slowly improving.
It wasn't until the evening that the Raid Wars began. The guild announced earlier in the week that a third Dragon Soul raid was starting (G3), with raid days on Saturday and Sunday. Few seemed to find that odd, even though both of the guild's other DS raids had been short raiders and hadn't run this week. Somewhat paradoxically, the weekend raid drew a lot of guildies which, I believe, was mostly because they hadn't been able to raid during the week. Wild had a number of reasons to be in game Saturday evening. Daeth and Silver were in game, and we hoped to get into the guild raid. I'd wanted to bring JB to this raid, but they were short healers and specifically asked if Wild would come. I also half-suspected that only a few of the many who had signed up for the raid would really show up, but on that I was wrong. We had an over-supply of DPS players, and two tanks when I thought they might be short one. The only spot they were short was one healer.
Wild gave Silver and Daeth the bad news - they would not make the raid, and Wild was already committed. There were lots of maneuvering to try and place that third healer. Meanwhile, Daeth and Silver had concocted their own plan. Silver decided to start her own PUG DS raid. Daeth then laid down a challenge to Wild - Which raid group will get the farthest, the guild raid or their PUG raid? Wild took the challenge, even though he was quite aware of the tenacity of both Daeth and Silver when they put their heads together, as compared to the normal, meandering pace of our guild raids.
The guild raid got off to a good, if late, start once we'd found our third healer. Morchok went down quickly, and the first drop was [Vagaries of Time]. This is an i397 +int mace for both healers and casters. Six raiders rolled on it. Wild, a priest, and one of the DPS all tied with an 82 roll. Wild won the roll off with a 93.
Wild was very happy to get an i397 weapon with +haste as well as reforged +mastery, but even when Wild wins gear there are downsides. According to the forums, Wild's i390 mace [Maw of the Dragon Lord] is actually better than Vagaries because of it's special healing proc called Cleansing Flames.
Wild checked his healing stats from Saturday night. Cleansing Flames was 7th on Wild's list of heals and accounted for 3.8% of his healing. That's not bad, but it's not raid saving, either. I will have to admit that in the lfr and normal 25 mans, the many raid stacking fights in DS will probably go better with the Maw. Wild is stubborn, though. For normal ten man, I'd like to try Vagaries. Wild was able to gain considerable +mastery through the reforging Wild could do with Vagaries equipped, and it has much higher spell power and a bit more +int. Wild is not a pure raid healer, and the extra mastery will help with tank healing. Wild will use Vagaries Sunday night and we'll see what we will see.
The raid wars had been in progress for a couple of hours when Daeth whispered Wild, wanting to know how far we'd gotten. Wild figured he was in trouble. Our raid leader was having a blast, talking smack and keeping the raid rolling forward. I'd never heard him talk so much. If that was all that was going on with our raid, we would have been going gangbusters. Unfortunately, our raid leader was also having unexpected disconnects, and we'd already lost time twice while battling the second boss, Warlord. We'd had one "oh so close!" attempt on Warlord even though the raid leader was DCed the whole last half of the fight, and we'd wiped with the boss at 1%. We did kill him on our next attempt, but when Daeth whispered Wild I had to admit we were just starting of the third boss, Yor. Daeth didn't disguise his delight in telling Wild the PUG raid had downed three bosses and were working on the fourth, Hagara.
The guild raid went on to kill Yor, but we ran out of time and did not get to Hagara. Daeth and Silver's raid was still in progress. Wild let them know I was going to log for a bit. When Wild returned a half hour later, the PUG was STILL in progress. Hagara had been killed, and they were battling Ultraxion, the fifth boss. Daeth was no longer in the raid, though. Much later, Wild logged out. Silver was still at it.
Regardless of when Silver's raid finished - or maybe it's STILL going on! - Daeth and Silver won their challenge. Their PUG killed at least four bosses, perhaps more, while the guild run ended at three kills.
So, Wild has his own challenge. The guild will be back at work Sunday night. Can Daeth/Silver continue their PUG and keep the challenge alive?
Sunday Night - We had another healer shortage for the G3 raid, but the wait wasn't too long. We started up where we left off, which was the fourth boss, Hagara. Hagara went down on our first attempt.
We then spent way too much time killing the dragon trash in the lead up to the Ultraxion battle. Too many raiders just don't know how to deal with this preliminary fight. It seems so simple. Let the tanks pull the dragons, kill the one that's targeted by the tanks, rinse and repeat. It took us five tries.
The rest of the evening was spent making five attempts on Ultraxion. The tanks were getting better at the taunt offs, and rarely had that problem, which had plagued us the last time we faced this boss. The third and fourth attempts were our best, but we still only got Ultraxion to 31%. It's another raid that is still feeling it's way.
Wild was using his new mace for the first time. I wanted some way to compare between this night and prior raid nights using the old Maw. I searched back to mid-Mar, the last time we'd killed Ultraxion (in the RG2 raid).
The Hagara fight involves a lot of movement and so the Maw Cleansing Fires proc doesn't really shine, so this is to give a baseline.
G3 Hagara Kill . . . .vs. . . . RG2 Hagara Kill
#1: Wild, 9.9k hps, 35.2% . . . #1: Wild, 10.9k hps, 36.2%
#2: Ag, 10.7k hps, 33.1% . . . .#2: Ag, 9.2k hps, 26.0%
#3: Ly, 8.5k hps, 21.9%. . . . .#3: Pl, 6.2k hps, 18.6%
The Ultraxion fight is perfect for Cleansing Flames. On the other hand, Wild was DPSing the first phase in the RG2 battle, lowering Wild's hps.
G3 Ultraxion Attempt. .vs . . . RG2 Hagara Kill
#1: Wild, 28.0k hps, 37.4%. . . #1: Ag, 32.5k hps, 36.8%
#2: Ag, 26.4k hps, 34.5%. . . . #2: Pl, 25.5k hps, 30.1%
#3: Ly, 22.3k hps, 23.2%. . . . #3: Wild, 23.2k hps, 28.0%
Oh well, I don't know if that really tells me anything, but Wild does like his stats.
Finally, about that raid challenge. Seems it's a tie, since the PUG raid went some 90 minutes longer than the G3 on Saturday night, and the G3 downed Hagara well within that time on Sunday night. That is, unless the PUG did kill Ultraxion? Silver was still tilting at that dragon when the Wild family went to bed Saturday.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Wednesday (22 Mar) - Awash in Raids
Wednesday (22 Mar) - Awash in Raids
Well, raiders Wild and JB don't quite know what to make of events this week. The guild announced recently that they were standing up a third raid. Yep, another ten man raid for Dragon Soul. Apparently, there is enough interest for a weekend run on Sat/Sun nights. Perhaps there is -twelve guildies have signed up for it. On the other hand, the G1 Mon/Tues raid did not run this week due lack of attendance. On the other hand, the RG2 raid did not run on Wednesday night because the raid leader was unavailable (computer problems), and we could not get more than seven raiders to show up. Whether there will be enough raiders for Thursday night remains to be seen.
With Wild sidelined, JB wanted to run an lfr Wednesday night. The queue times were killers, though. It took twenty minutes for the first queue to pop, but three of four bosses were already down and JB passed and tried again. While she waited, JB grabbed a hand full of valor points and went to the vendor to see if she could spend some of them on her elemental spec. Her biggest need was a chest piece, as she was wearing an i377 pvp piece. She could have afforded the 2200 VPs to get the T12 i378, but she balked at paying that much for something that could instantly be replaced from the lfr or a drop from a Twilight dungeon. She'll wait. JB did decide to replace her i346 ring with an i378 ring using some extra justice points she had (thanks to those dungeon runs with DB). The upgrade brought her gear score from i375 to i377 (elemental spec).
JB waited some more, and saw a call for raiders for a Baradin Hold run. JB volunteered, but the raid leader was an idiot. JB whispered her interest with "elem shaman lf BH" as usual. She waited, but never got a response. Awhile later the same player asked for BH raiders again, this time specifically asking for "only RDPS." JB whispered the player again, changing her whisper to "RDPS shaman lf BH," figuring the player might not know what "elem" stood for. Still no response. Maybe he was just prejudiced against elemental/RDPS shaman. Sigh.
JB finally got her Siege of Dragon Soul lfr. The run went smoothly. JB had opportunities to roll on four items, including the T13 chest token - but she did not win any of them. JB's DPS is still disappointing. Maybe I'm just asking too much at her gear level. JB averaged just over 18k dps. The top 12 DPSers did at least 20k dps, with the very top over 30k. JB finished 16th out of 17 DPSers. It was no consolation that the lone DPSer who did worse than JB was also an elemental shaman - that raider barely broke 17k dps, and finished 19th (below even the two tanks). I'm going to spend some time on the forums to see what JB might be missing.
By the way - the Mists of Pandaria BETA is now up. No, I didn't get invited into the beta, but it means that we are looking more to a summer release than a fall release. It's closer than I thought.
This week a flood of new information became available when Blizzard took the muzzle off of reporters who'd been invited to a MoP press event. I'll put together a quick summary in the next post. But guess who the end game boss will be? Garrosh. Yep, our great Horde faction leader (or some would say the Usurper faction leader) is going to become a target of both factions.
Well, raiders Wild and JB don't quite know what to make of events this week. The guild announced recently that they were standing up a third raid. Yep, another ten man raid for Dragon Soul. Apparently, there is enough interest for a weekend run on Sat/Sun nights. Perhaps there is -twelve guildies have signed up for it. On the other hand, the G1 Mon/Tues raid did not run this week due lack of attendance. On the other hand, the RG2 raid did not run on Wednesday night because the raid leader was unavailable (computer problems), and we could not get more than seven raiders to show up. Whether there will be enough raiders for Thursday night remains to be seen.
With Wild sidelined, JB wanted to run an lfr Wednesday night. The queue times were killers, though. It took twenty minutes for the first queue to pop, but three of four bosses were already down and JB passed and tried again. While she waited, JB grabbed a hand full of valor points and went to the vendor to see if she could spend some of them on her elemental spec. Her biggest need was a chest piece, as she was wearing an i377 pvp piece. She could have afforded the 2200 VPs to get the T12 i378, but she balked at paying that much for something that could instantly be replaced from the lfr or a drop from a Twilight dungeon. She'll wait. JB did decide to replace her i346 ring with an i378 ring using some extra justice points she had (thanks to those dungeon runs with DB). The upgrade brought her gear score from i375 to i377 (elemental spec).
JB waited some more, and saw a call for raiders for a Baradin Hold run. JB volunteered, but the raid leader was an idiot. JB whispered her interest with "elem shaman lf BH" as usual. She waited, but never got a response. Awhile later the same player asked for BH raiders again, this time specifically asking for "only RDPS." JB whispered the player again, changing her whisper to "RDPS shaman lf BH," figuring the player might not know what "elem" stood for. Still no response. Maybe he was just prejudiced against elemental/RDPS shaman. Sigh.
JB finally got her Siege of Dragon Soul lfr. The run went smoothly. JB had opportunities to roll on four items, including the T13 chest token - but she did not win any of them. JB's DPS is still disappointing. Maybe I'm just asking too much at her gear level. JB averaged just over 18k dps. The top 12 DPSers did at least 20k dps, with the very top over 30k. JB finished 16th out of 17 DPSers. It was no consolation that the lone DPSer who did worse than JB was also an elemental shaman - that raider barely broke 17k dps, and finished 19th (below even the two tanks). I'm going to spend some time on the forums to see what JB might be missing.
By the way - the Mists of Pandaria BETA is now up. No, I didn't get invited into the beta, but it means that we are looking more to a summer release than a fall release. It's closer than I thought.
This week a flood of new information became available when Blizzard took the muzzle off of reporters who'd been invited to a MoP press event. I'll put together a quick summary in the next post. But guess who the end game boss will be? Garrosh. Yep, our great Horde faction leader (or some would say the Usurper faction leader) is going to become a target of both factions.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Weekend (16 Mar) - Tall Tales
Weekend (16 Mar) - Tall Tales
Friday First - Wild Talks?
Wild set a new personal record for talking on vent Friday morning. Wild was in game to do the couple of dailies it would take for me to reach Exalted with guild rep. I saw that Od was in game, and sent her a whisper saying hello. We got to talking and she revealed that she's decided to make a resto spec for her cat druid. Od began as a mage, and that is how Wild got to know her. Then she raised a paladin, and now she has a druid. Her cat druid is pretty good, too, but she wanted to add healing as her offspec.
She asked if Wild could give her the rundown on druid healing. I don't think either of us really knew what all that would entail. She had just set up her spec, and had a bunch of gear that added up to a quite nice equipped i384 including the two piece tier set bonus. No problems there. We started talking about stats, and that got so tangled she wished we could talk in vent instead of whispered chat. Well, Wild could do that now, so we switched over to vent.
The conversation wound from gear, to stats, to spells, and to addons. She was pretty overwhelmed. I told her that I had no idea what paladin healing was like so I'm sure I'd have been overwhelmed at learning that. She just laughed and said pallies have three heal spells she spams, and that there wasn't all that much more to it. Druid healing spells take up a whole page.
In all, we were in vent talking shop for about an hour and a half. Repeating every word Wild has ever said in vent before that conversation would take, oh, maybe thirty seconds. Given how much of that information she seemed to have retained, and how excited she was when she started playing with her spells - well, I think she'll be a pretty good druid healer.
By the way, Wild did get his dailies done, and reached Exalted rep with the guild. That changed Wild's title from "Veteran of Meitha" to "Champion of Meitha."
Weekend - DB, Malodorous King of Awesome Acquisitions
On Saturday morning Happy had finished cheating his customers ... uh, perhaps I should say "making good deals with his customers" ... and thought to check on DB's gear. Happy had been monitoring the Auction House in case a good deal on gear came up. Figuring that DB might have run some dungeons Friday night, Happy checked to see what DB was currently wearing. WOW! DB was a busy boy. Happy counted TEN new pieces of gear acquired. DB's equipped gear score was i368. DB had reached the point where he could enter normal mode Dragon Soul, and was close to the i372 needed to get into the lfr DS.
Happy doesn't have the latest word on DB's conquests, but here are two reports presented late in the week:
DB's Thursday Very Early morning run: "DB got some game time from 330 to 6 this morning before leaving for work. His objective was to run heroics and do some firelands dailies to get a trinket. He ended up getting four heroics in, two of which were new to him and me on heroic mode.
The first heroic was Blackrock Furnace or something like that (the one where you get to fly around on dragons and bomb mobs) and it started very poorly. This was new to him/me on heroic. The group cleared up to the first boss, where the healer died at the start from some fire spray move the boss has that you just need to move aside for and we then wiped. The tank dropped the group right away, and then while waiting for a second tank, the rest of the group dropped. DB was left alone waiting for new recruits and he got a whole new squad to go at the first boss again. This time started poorly too. The tank died very early on and we then wiped and the healer and a dps dropped the group. The tank was cool though (even though she was a blood elf…)and said she just made a mistake and we waited for a new healer and dps and went at it again (As a side note, DB was happy that another arcane mage joined the group so he had someone to compare his dps to. This mage had better gear but had no rotation at all and was just casting random stuff. Her dps wasn’t great, so it wasn’t good for comparisons. DB out dpsed her by 2k dps overall and as much as 6k on boss fights even though her gear was at least 10 ilvls better). It was clear early on that people weren’t sure of the mechanics on the fight and we wiped again. This time the tank explained the fight before we engaged for the second/third/fourth time. Somehow even though the tank explained what we needed to avoid and do both the mage and hunter dps died early and that left just DB, the healer and the tank to kill the boss. There were some nervy moments but the three of us brought him down and it was a ton of fun. DB had to whip out all of his tricks to get through it as did both the healer and the tank (both pallies). We moved on and cleared through the rest of the dungeon without much ado until we got to the last boss. This guy casts this purple hurricane thing that you have to get to the “eye” of or die. He also spawns adds that you have to kill before they get to eggs and birth dragons. We didn’t have much problem with the adds part, but the eye of the hurricane was elusive for some, and we ended up wiping. The tank explained the tactics and we went at it again. The huntard we had was really a fine specimen and was unable to stay alive even through the first hurricane and we ended up four manning the last boss. This again was lots of fun and we had to pull out our bag of tricks to pull it off, but we did it. DB ended up being top dps with the tank being second, so in a way we three manned the whole dungeon. J I think the reason this group was so fun is that it wasn’t massively out gearing the place so it was actually a challenge.
The group broke after that long and taxing run though and we all went our separate ways. DB queued again and really the next three heroics were boring and ordinary with players that massively outgeared the dungeons we were in and they were all just a walk in the park. DB did get to see one of the two troll dungeons for the first time, though he joined a group that was already in progress so only got to see part of the dungeon. It seems like we ended up killing just two bosses; one that summons four “pens” of cats and the final boss that does some spirit thing and gets attached to chains that you have to kill and summons ads. It was fun, but I would like to see more! He finished up his night/morning with a deadmines run that we plowed through. Two warriors were in the group (one tank, one dps) that both had insane gear and just blew out some major deeps. He was with them for both the troll run and the VC run and the dps warrior was doing 30k most of the time with the tank doing 20k. It made the dungeons fast, but not as fun!
On the gear front, he got nothing new from drops and his ilvl is still 349. He logged quickly so I didn’t get to check out new gear available for justice and valor points, but I am pretty sure he will be getting a trinket today with justice and then next week he will be getting a 397 chest with valor, plus probably one or two more pieces with justice. His lowest level gear now are his trinkets (305 & 308) chest and gloves (315) then helm and shoulders are both 333. Everything else he has is 345 or above. He was planning on getting a trinket through firelands dailies, but I discovered this morning (while doing research at work…) that it would take eons to get there. For now he will settle for the one justice ilvl 359 trinket and hope for a nice drop from a dungeon run. Everything else should be replaced over the next few weeks. After getting his new trinket today I think it should push him to ilvl 353 and the new heroics. After that it is all a glamorous ride to the lfr and maybe normal raiding with some ugly BE tank and a really stinky shaman. We shall see. J "
DB's Friday's Very Early morning run: "Last night DB got the chance to check the justice point vendor to see if he could afford the trinket upgrade he was looking for for. He could and he bought it straight away. It brought his ilvl to 352, just one short of the ilvl needed to run the 3 newest heroic dungeons. Not one to take no for an answer though, DB quickly hit the auction house to see if he could find one piece of gear that was enough of an upgrade to upgrade his ilvl. He found a pair of 353 epic bracers on sale for a price low enough to jump at (under 1000 gold). He knew he would be getting upgrades soon so he really didn’t want to spend the money, but he found out he could queue for the ilvl 353 dungeons just by having the new equipment in his bag. His new plan was to hold onto the new bracers in his bags and sell as soon as he got a replacement for free. It turned out to be a good plan.
DB queued up and after a few minutes was invited into a brand new End Time dungeon run, the first of the three “new” ones. People were already in the dungeon and were already sneaking past mobs and hopping onto islands in some lava. Not wanting to be the odd man out DB took off after everyone else but got to close to the mobs he was supposed to be sneaking by and aggroed them. He had a trick up his sleeve for that though and quickly cast disappear. It worked and the mobs reset. If it didn’t work is would have been a rough start. He got through the lava and set-up on an island just one island away from Baine Bloodhoof. The tank started the fight and aside from him breaking my island, it was a super easy fight. Nothing dropped for DB. The group moved onto the next area through a teleporter and had to run around and collect staff fragments for Jaina to summon her or something. It was quick and painless as was the fight with Jaina Proudmore. We moved onto the last fight against Murozond. This fight was a lot of fun with some rewinding of time and some stuff on the ground to avoid. Someone used bloodlust at the right time and we ended up getting it three of four times in the fight as time kept going back and forth. It was awesome. Even with all the dps we were pushing out it still took a long time to kill the dragon, but the fight was a lot of fun. There was a lot of running around to avoid aoe and stuff, but the time changing stuff was really cool. People left the group posthaste as soon as he was dropped and DB ended up in the “dungeon” alone. He got to explore a little bit and got to go turn in a few quests for stuff he finished during the run. He got two quest rewards that were ilvl 378 upgrades to his 333 helm and his 316 bracers. The bracer upgrades were very nice and a huge upgrade for him. The helm was an upgrade, but not that much of an upgrade as it is a healer piece so having the spirit almost made it a wash with the 333 blue helm he already had. Once gemmed and enchanted though it was just a little better than the 333 piece though so he went with it. He also relisted the ilvl 353 epic bracers back on the AH for 500 gold I believe. Charlie, if that seems like too low of a price please feel free to buy and relist! J
DB queued again as soon as he was out of End Time and after a few minutes got into Well of Eternity, the second of the three new dungeons. This one is a lot of fun, though DB never got to finish it as you will see below. It started out well and we mowed through the first trash mob and got to stealth around with Illidan and then mowed through the first boss. The group was doing really well and the pace at which we moved was very fast. Up to and after the first boss DB was first in DPS at just over 22k. We then parted ways with Illidan and made our way up a long staircase up to Quenn Azshara’s chambers. This evil night elf is the one that brought the burning legion into Azeroth the first time and DB was excited to see her for she was rumored to be a special beauty. This is where it all started to go wrong.
When we got up to Queen Azshara’s(QA) chamber and spotted QA, DB was very disappointed with her appearance. She was at least two feet taller than poor DB, had all of her skin, long shiny hair and smelled like flowers. DB found her repulsive and was excited to unleash some arcane blast on her, though he found out he doesn’t get that chance. Before the fight started the healer asked who was on interrupts. Not knowing what he was talking about and assuming he was talking about interrupting something that was cast often from one of the mages that we would end up fighting, DB said he couldn’t do it because of the 24 second cool down on his interrupt, counterspell. No one said anything about that and I guess we all assumed someone else would be doing it. No one else was and we all were quickly controlled by QA as puppets where we were forced to bow to her and she then killed us. It was a wipe. The tank whined and then dropped the group. We all rezzed and got back up to the area and waited for a new tank, which came quickly. This tank was quite lippy though and was complaining, etc for the rest of the time DB was with her. This tank happened to be a druid. It seems like every time DB has had a bear tank, they have been nothing but trouble and hopes to stay away from them all in the future. We started the fight again and this time a hunter volunteered to interrupt, though by this time DB had figured out what needed to be interrupted and decided he would keep a watch on QA as well to make sure we wouldn’t wipe like last time. We went through the fight this time without much trouble, but with all the running around and “hand” killing, etc. the tank ended up being the top DPS. She complained in party chat about it and let everyone know how superior she was. We all hopped on some dragons and DB was enraptured but the cut scene with the Demon Soul and all the dragon aspects. However, no one else took the time to watch the cut scene and as soon as DB got down, turned in his quest and headed to the next area he was kicked from the group. The last comment by the a-hole tank was “Hurry up hunter” before voting to kick me. She thought DB was a huntard. That was the last slap in the face from that stupid bear before unceremoniously getting him kicked from the group. The usurper had turned DBs fellow adventurers (the sheep they are) against him and got him kicked from the group. Sadly he had to sleep at this point anyway, so he never got to finish Well of Eternity. Hopefully DB can get together with his friends sometime over the weekend and run one, two or all three of these dungeons and you guys can let him watch the cut scenes unmolested. We shall see.
Overall, from what I saw from these newer heroics, they are awesome. Blizz did a stand-up job with them and I look forward to finishing them and seeing if the LFR is as well done. By the way, is anyone up for signing a petition to ban all bear tanks?"
Friday First - Wild Talks?
Wild set a new personal record for talking on vent Friday morning. Wild was in game to do the couple of dailies it would take for me to reach Exalted with guild rep. I saw that Od was in game, and sent her a whisper saying hello. We got to talking and she revealed that she's decided to make a resto spec for her cat druid. Od began as a mage, and that is how Wild got to know her. Then she raised a paladin, and now she has a druid. Her cat druid is pretty good, too, but she wanted to add healing as her offspec.
She asked if Wild could give her the rundown on druid healing. I don't think either of us really knew what all that would entail. She had just set up her spec, and had a bunch of gear that added up to a quite nice equipped i384 including the two piece tier set bonus. No problems there. We started talking about stats, and that got so tangled she wished we could talk in vent instead of whispered chat. Well, Wild could do that now, so we switched over to vent.
The conversation wound from gear, to stats, to spells, and to addons. She was pretty overwhelmed. I told her that I had no idea what paladin healing was like so I'm sure I'd have been overwhelmed at learning that. She just laughed and said pallies have three heal spells she spams, and that there wasn't all that much more to it. Druid healing spells take up a whole page.
In all, we were in vent talking shop for about an hour and a half. Repeating every word Wild has ever said in vent before that conversation would take, oh, maybe thirty seconds. Given how much of that information she seemed to have retained, and how excited she was when she started playing with her spells - well, I think she'll be a pretty good druid healer.
By the way, Wild did get his dailies done, and reached Exalted rep with the guild. That changed Wild's title from "Veteran of Meitha" to "Champion of Meitha."
Weekend - DB, Malodorous King of Awesome Acquisitions
On Saturday morning Happy had finished cheating his customers ... uh, perhaps I should say "making good deals with his customers" ... and thought to check on DB's gear. Happy had been monitoring the Auction House in case a good deal on gear came up. Figuring that DB might have run some dungeons Friday night, Happy checked to see what DB was currently wearing. WOW! DB was a busy boy. Happy counted TEN new pieces of gear acquired. DB's equipped gear score was i368. DB had reached the point where he could enter normal mode Dragon Soul, and was close to the i372 needed to get into the lfr DS.
Happy doesn't have the latest word on DB's conquests, but here are two reports presented late in the week:
DB's Thursday Very Early morning run: "DB got some game time from 330 to 6 this morning before leaving for work. His objective was to run heroics and do some firelands dailies to get a trinket. He ended up getting four heroics in, two of which were new to him and me on heroic mode.
The first heroic was Blackrock Furnace or something like that (the one where you get to fly around on dragons and bomb mobs) and it started very poorly. This was new to him/me on heroic. The group cleared up to the first boss, where the healer died at the start from some fire spray move the boss has that you just need to move aside for and we then wiped. The tank dropped the group right away, and then while waiting for a second tank, the rest of the group dropped. DB was left alone waiting for new recruits and he got a whole new squad to go at the first boss again. This time started poorly too. The tank died very early on and we then wiped and the healer and a dps dropped the group. The tank was cool though (even though she was a blood elf…)and said she just made a mistake and we waited for a new healer and dps and went at it again (As a side note, DB was happy that another arcane mage joined the group so he had someone to compare his dps to. This mage had better gear but had no rotation at all and was just casting random stuff. Her dps wasn’t great, so it wasn’t good for comparisons. DB out dpsed her by 2k dps overall and as much as 6k on boss fights even though her gear was at least 10 ilvls better). It was clear early on that people weren’t sure of the mechanics on the fight and we wiped again. This time the tank explained the fight before we engaged for the second/third/fourth time. Somehow even though the tank explained what we needed to avoid and do both the mage and hunter dps died early and that left just DB, the healer and the tank to kill the boss. There were some nervy moments but the three of us brought him down and it was a ton of fun. DB had to whip out all of his tricks to get through it as did both the healer and the tank (both pallies). We moved on and cleared through the rest of the dungeon without much ado until we got to the last boss. This guy casts this purple hurricane thing that you have to get to the “eye” of or die. He also spawns adds that you have to kill before they get to eggs and birth dragons. We didn’t have much problem with the adds part, but the eye of the hurricane was elusive for some, and we ended up wiping. The tank explained the tactics and we went at it again. The huntard we had was really a fine specimen and was unable to stay alive even through the first hurricane and we ended up four manning the last boss. This again was lots of fun and we had to pull out our bag of tricks to pull it off, but we did it. DB ended up being top dps with the tank being second, so in a way we three manned the whole dungeon. J I think the reason this group was so fun is that it wasn’t massively out gearing the place so it was actually a challenge.
The group broke after that long and taxing run though and we all went our separate ways. DB queued again and really the next three heroics were boring and ordinary with players that massively outgeared the dungeons we were in and they were all just a walk in the park. DB did get to see one of the two troll dungeons for the first time, though he joined a group that was already in progress so only got to see part of the dungeon. It seems like we ended up killing just two bosses; one that summons four “pens” of cats and the final boss that does some spirit thing and gets attached to chains that you have to kill and summons ads. It was fun, but I would like to see more! He finished up his night/morning with a deadmines run that we plowed through. Two warriors were in the group (one tank, one dps) that both had insane gear and just blew out some major deeps. He was with them for both the troll run and the VC run and the dps warrior was doing 30k most of the time with the tank doing 20k. It made the dungeons fast, but not as fun!
On the gear front, he got nothing new from drops and his ilvl is still 349. He logged quickly so I didn’t get to check out new gear available for justice and valor points, but I am pretty sure he will be getting a trinket today with justice and then next week he will be getting a 397 chest with valor, plus probably one or two more pieces with justice. His lowest level gear now are his trinkets (305 & 308) chest and gloves (315) then helm and shoulders are both 333. Everything else he has is 345 or above. He was planning on getting a trinket through firelands dailies, but I discovered this morning (while doing research at work…) that it would take eons to get there. For now he will settle for the one justice ilvl 359 trinket and hope for a nice drop from a dungeon run. Everything else should be replaced over the next few weeks. After getting his new trinket today I think it should push him to ilvl 353 and the new heroics. After that it is all a glamorous ride to the lfr and maybe normal raiding with some ugly BE tank and a really stinky shaman. We shall see. J "
DB's Friday's Very Early morning run: "Last night DB got the chance to check the justice point vendor to see if he could afford the trinket upgrade he was looking for for. He could and he bought it straight away. It brought his ilvl to 352, just one short of the ilvl needed to run the 3 newest heroic dungeons. Not one to take no for an answer though, DB quickly hit the auction house to see if he could find one piece of gear that was enough of an upgrade to upgrade his ilvl. He found a pair of 353 epic bracers on sale for a price low enough to jump at (under 1000 gold). He knew he would be getting upgrades soon so he really didn’t want to spend the money, but he found out he could queue for the ilvl 353 dungeons just by having the new equipment in his bag. His new plan was to hold onto the new bracers in his bags and sell as soon as he got a replacement for free. It turned out to be a good plan.
DB queued up and after a few minutes was invited into a brand new End Time dungeon run, the first of the three “new” ones. People were already in the dungeon and were already sneaking past mobs and hopping onto islands in some lava. Not wanting to be the odd man out DB took off after everyone else but got to close to the mobs he was supposed to be sneaking by and aggroed them. He had a trick up his sleeve for that though and quickly cast disappear. It worked and the mobs reset. If it didn’t work is would have been a rough start. He got through the lava and set-up on an island just one island away from Baine Bloodhoof. The tank started the fight and aside from him breaking my island, it was a super easy fight. Nothing dropped for DB. The group moved onto the next area through a teleporter and had to run around and collect staff fragments for Jaina to summon her or something. It was quick and painless as was the fight with Jaina Proudmore. We moved onto the last fight against Murozond. This fight was a lot of fun with some rewinding of time and some stuff on the ground to avoid. Someone used bloodlust at the right time and we ended up getting it three of four times in the fight as time kept going back and forth. It was awesome. Even with all the dps we were pushing out it still took a long time to kill the dragon, but the fight was a lot of fun. There was a lot of running around to avoid aoe and stuff, but the time changing stuff was really cool. People left the group posthaste as soon as he was dropped and DB ended up in the “dungeon” alone. He got to explore a little bit and got to go turn in a few quests for stuff he finished during the run. He got two quest rewards that were ilvl 378 upgrades to his 333 helm and his 316 bracers. The bracer upgrades were very nice and a huge upgrade for him. The helm was an upgrade, but not that much of an upgrade as it is a healer piece so having the spirit almost made it a wash with the 333 blue helm he already had. Once gemmed and enchanted though it was just a little better than the 333 piece though so he went with it. He also relisted the ilvl 353 epic bracers back on the AH for 500 gold I believe. Charlie, if that seems like too low of a price please feel free to buy and relist! J
DB queued again as soon as he was out of End Time and after a few minutes got into Well of Eternity, the second of the three new dungeons. This one is a lot of fun, though DB never got to finish it as you will see below. It started out well and we mowed through the first trash mob and got to stealth around with Illidan and then mowed through the first boss. The group was doing really well and the pace at which we moved was very fast. Up to and after the first boss DB was first in DPS at just over 22k. We then parted ways with Illidan and made our way up a long staircase up to Quenn Azshara’s chambers. This evil night elf is the one that brought the burning legion into Azeroth the first time and DB was excited to see her for she was rumored to be a special beauty. This is where it all started to go wrong.
When we got up to Queen Azshara’s(QA) chamber and spotted QA, DB was very disappointed with her appearance. She was at least two feet taller than poor DB, had all of her skin, long shiny hair and smelled like flowers. DB found her repulsive and was excited to unleash some arcane blast on her, though he found out he doesn’t get that chance. Before the fight started the healer asked who was on interrupts. Not knowing what he was talking about and assuming he was talking about interrupting something that was cast often from one of the mages that we would end up fighting, DB said he couldn’t do it because of the 24 second cool down on his interrupt, counterspell. No one said anything about that and I guess we all assumed someone else would be doing it. No one else was and we all were quickly controlled by QA as puppets where we were forced to bow to her and she then killed us. It was a wipe. The tank whined and then dropped the group. We all rezzed and got back up to the area and waited for a new tank, which came quickly. This tank was quite lippy though and was complaining, etc for the rest of the time DB was with her. This tank happened to be a druid. It seems like every time DB has had a bear tank, they have been nothing but trouble and hopes to stay away from them all in the future. We started the fight again and this time a hunter volunteered to interrupt, though by this time DB had figured out what needed to be interrupted and decided he would keep a watch on QA as well to make sure we wouldn’t wipe like last time. We went through the fight this time without much trouble, but with all the running around and “hand” killing, etc. the tank ended up being the top DPS. She complained in party chat about it and let everyone know how superior she was. We all hopped on some dragons and DB was enraptured but the cut scene with the Demon Soul and all the dragon aspects. However, no one else took the time to watch the cut scene and as soon as DB got down, turned in his quest and headed to the next area he was kicked from the group. The last comment by the a-hole tank was “Hurry up hunter” before voting to kick me. She thought DB was a huntard. That was the last slap in the face from that stupid bear before unceremoniously getting him kicked from the group. The usurper had turned DBs fellow adventurers (the sheep they are) against him and got him kicked from the group. Sadly he had to sleep at this point anyway, so he never got to finish Well of Eternity. Hopefully DB can get together with his friends sometime over the weekend and run one, two or all three of these dungeons and you guys can let him watch the cut scenes unmolested. We shall see.
Overall, from what I saw from these newer heroics, they are awesome. Blizz did a stand-up job with them and I look forward to finishing them and seeing if the LFR is as well done. By the way, is anyone up for signing a petition to ban all bear tanks?"
Friday, March 16, 2012
Wednesday/Thursday (15 Mar) - The Flu Season
Wednesday/Thursday (15 Mar) - The Flu Season
I don't know if this is officially the flu season, but this week seems to have taken out half of the RG2 raid. Add a broken arm to another raider, and we had a tough time filling the raid on Wednesday night. Wild was "this close" to giving Hearte a call on Wednesday night, but remembered she was only available until around 7pm. We did fill the raid and should have the same folks available for Thursday, but if not Hearte may get a call. :-)
Wednesday Night - We were down to our #3 raid leader, Sb, with one out with the flu and the other out with a broken arm. Even the raid leader we did have was still getting over the flu he'd gotten the week before. The raid, which we managed to cobble together, was very heavy with melee DPS (only one ranged). The two tanks were alts - good alts, but not the first string. We had two of our regular healers, Wild and Pl, and added a second priest who was also very good. Wild took over and ran the healing assignments.
Morchok gave us no trouble, not did Yor'sahj. We had a lot of dead time in between battles, though, and with the late start it was already well past eight pm when we got to the Warlord. The best we could do was swap one melee for her ranged alt, but it still left the groups unbalanced. We made three attempts in various configurations mostly requiring healers to try and heal melee at ranged depth. Melee tended to run out of healing range, though, no matter what we tried. We did get Warlord down to 27% on one attempt so we thought we still had a shot at him. A melee death knight offered to switch to tank spec, which would allow the main tank (the raid leader) for this fight to switch to a ranged alt, which would balance things a bit better. We spent so much time talking about it we would only have one more attempt, anyway. The raid leader decided not to make the swap. Unfortunately, the melee raider didn't get that message and had switched to his tanking spec. Not realizing what was about to happen, the raid leader called to start the fight. The raid leader would have started a 3-2-1 countdown before running in, but he didn't get a chance. The "new" dk tank ran in instead. It was chaos and we wiped. At least we killed two bosses.
I ran out of steam after that and finished my evening watching some episodes of Season 1 of HBO's Game of Thrones.
Thursday Night - Another raid leader succumbed to illness. Sb, who was recovering from the flu, but led the raid on Wednesday, had a relapse. Bd, who has also been sick, returned to lead the raid. Bd brought his shaman alt to help balance the melee and ranged DPS for the first fight of the night, against the Warlord Zon'ozz of the deadly bouncing ball. The rest of the raid was as the night before.
Our first attempt on the Warlord went badly. Wild, in charge of healing the melee group, heard the command to start the battle. Wild waited for the tank to take on the Warlord, but no one moved. Ten raiders breathed, shifted their feet, and patiently waited. Then, over vent, Bd commented, "Well, it looks like Wild DCed." That's how Wild discovered the battle had started without him. The raid wiped before Wild could get back in game. I wish I knew what caused the DC. It is more than coincidence that several times now the first boss encounter of the evening starts with Wild DCing - although it never happens in the lfr DS. Strange.
Our second attempt went rather better. There were deaths, but the last death was the Warlord's.
Then came Hagara's turn. Hagara did not survive the first attack.
It was time to face Ultraxion. The RG2 raid had taken Ultraxion down for the first time last week. We were determined to make it two weeks in a row.
Wild got to DPS once again at the start of the fight. It isn't really all that much damage, but two healers are more than adequate for the first phase of the fight, so why not add a couple of percentage points of extra damage. Wild even used the "On use" proc of his trinket for a little more Oomph! to Wild's Wrath spam. Wild then settled into his healer's role, standing tightly packed with the rest of the raid as Ultraxion fought to murder our tanks and blast our raid to dust. The raid had strong early attempts, getting the dragon to 18% and then to 11%. We weren't fooled. The fight gets ever more deadly the closer to it's end. That last 11% would be bloody.
Three more attempts took us farther from our goal. The tanks struggled to get into the difficult rhythm crucial to the fight. The tank with aggro is the one who must survive Hour of Twilight, to be saved by the healers once back into the shadows. Fading Light must be handled with care, for the tanks must taunt off of each other or both could die. The tanks were strong. More than once both tanks were hit, and saved. But without the rhythm it couldn't hold.
On our sixth attempt it all came together, and despite horrific damage crashing across the raid in the final moments, it was Ultraxion that fell, and not the raid. We had won another victory.
Ag has been impressive since joining the raid last week. The priest is not as well geared as Wild, but really knows his class. As the numbers show below, he has been at or near the top in healing, challenging Wild to push even harder.
Heals by Boss:
Warlord Zon'ozz
#1: Wild, 18.8k hps, 33.7% of all healing
#2: Ag, 19.1k, 30.7%
#3: Pl, 12.9k, 23.3%
Hagara
#1: Wild, 10.9k, 36.2%
#2: Ag, 9.2k, 26.0%
#3: Pl, 6.2k, 18.6%
Ultraxion
#1: Ag, 32.5k, 36.8%
#2: Pl, 25.5k, 30.1%
#3: Wild, 23.2k, 28.0%
DPSing the first phase of Ultraxion took a lot more out of Wild's healing than I thought it would.
The gods favored priests and shaman on this night, and the loot flowed into their hands. Wild was content, though. His only regret was that he fell just short of achieving a long awaited title. Wild has changed guilds twice and had to start over earning guild reputation each time. Wild has long been at Revered rep with the honored title of "Veteran of Meitha" but has one more rung to climb. At the end of the raid Wild had 20,923 guild rep points. Wild is 73 points short of reaching Exalted. By the time this report reaches other eyes, Wild expects to have achieved that goal.
On other fronts, it was good to see Hearte in game as well as Daeth. I'm sure Daeth has stories to tell of dungeon conquests and, Wild hears, his first steps into Hour of Twilight. That should make a nice additional to the report.
I don't know if this is officially the flu season, but this week seems to have taken out half of the RG2 raid. Add a broken arm to another raider, and we had a tough time filling the raid on Wednesday night. Wild was "this close" to giving Hearte a call on Wednesday night, but remembered she was only available until around 7pm. We did fill the raid and should have the same folks available for Thursday, but if not Hearte may get a call. :-)
Wednesday Night - We were down to our #3 raid leader, Sb, with one out with the flu and the other out with a broken arm. Even the raid leader we did have was still getting over the flu he'd gotten the week before. The raid, which we managed to cobble together, was very heavy with melee DPS (only one ranged). The two tanks were alts - good alts, but not the first string. We had two of our regular healers, Wild and Pl, and added a second priest who was also very good. Wild took over and ran the healing assignments.
Morchok gave us no trouble, not did Yor'sahj. We had a lot of dead time in between battles, though, and with the late start it was already well past eight pm when we got to the Warlord. The best we could do was swap one melee for her ranged alt, but it still left the groups unbalanced. We made three attempts in various configurations mostly requiring healers to try and heal melee at ranged depth. Melee tended to run out of healing range, though, no matter what we tried. We did get Warlord down to 27% on one attempt so we thought we still had a shot at him. A melee death knight offered to switch to tank spec, which would allow the main tank (the raid leader) for this fight to switch to a ranged alt, which would balance things a bit better. We spent so much time talking about it we would only have one more attempt, anyway. The raid leader decided not to make the swap. Unfortunately, the melee raider didn't get that message and had switched to his tanking spec. Not realizing what was about to happen, the raid leader called to start the fight. The raid leader would have started a 3-2-1 countdown before running in, but he didn't get a chance. The "new" dk tank ran in instead. It was chaos and we wiped. At least we killed two bosses.
I ran out of steam after that and finished my evening watching some episodes of Season 1 of HBO's Game of Thrones.
Thursday Night - Another raid leader succumbed to illness. Sb, who was recovering from the flu, but led the raid on Wednesday, had a relapse. Bd, who has also been sick, returned to lead the raid. Bd brought his shaman alt to help balance the melee and ranged DPS for the first fight of the night, against the Warlord Zon'ozz of the deadly bouncing ball. The rest of the raid was as the night before.
Our first attempt on the Warlord went badly. Wild, in charge of healing the melee group, heard the command to start the battle. Wild waited for the tank to take on the Warlord, but no one moved. Ten raiders breathed, shifted their feet, and patiently waited. Then, over vent, Bd commented, "Well, it looks like Wild DCed." That's how Wild discovered the battle had started without him. The raid wiped before Wild could get back in game. I wish I knew what caused the DC. It is more than coincidence that several times now the first boss encounter of the evening starts with Wild DCing - although it never happens in the lfr DS. Strange.
Our second attempt went rather better. There were deaths, but the last death was the Warlord's.
Then came Hagara's turn. Hagara did not survive the first attack.
It was time to face Ultraxion. The RG2 raid had taken Ultraxion down for the first time last week. We were determined to make it two weeks in a row.
Wild got to DPS once again at the start of the fight. It isn't really all that much damage, but two healers are more than adequate for the first phase of the fight, so why not add a couple of percentage points of extra damage. Wild even used the "On use" proc of his trinket for a little more Oomph! to Wild's Wrath spam. Wild then settled into his healer's role, standing tightly packed with the rest of the raid as Ultraxion fought to murder our tanks and blast our raid to dust. The raid had strong early attempts, getting the dragon to 18% and then to 11%. We weren't fooled. The fight gets ever more deadly the closer to it's end. That last 11% would be bloody.
Three more attempts took us farther from our goal. The tanks struggled to get into the difficult rhythm crucial to the fight. The tank with aggro is the one who must survive Hour of Twilight, to be saved by the healers once back into the shadows. Fading Light must be handled with care, for the tanks must taunt off of each other or both could die. The tanks were strong. More than once both tanks were hit, and saved. But without the rhythm it couldn't hold.
On our sixth attempt it all came together, and despite horrific damage crashing across the raid in the final moments, it was Ultraxion that fell, and not the raid. We had won another victory.
Ag has been impressive since joining the raid last week. The priest is not as well geared as Wild, but really knows his class. As the numbers show below, he has been at or near the top in healing, challenging Wild to push even harder.
Heals by Boss:
Warlord Zon'ozz
#1: Wild, 18.8k hps, 33.7% of all healing
#2: Ag, 19.1k, 30.7%
#3: Pl, 12.9k, 23.3%
Hagara
#1: Wild, 10.9k, 36.2%
#2: Ag, 9.2k, 26.0%
#3: Pl, 6.2k, 18.6%
Ultraxion
#1: Ag, 32.5k, 36.8%
#2: Pl, 25.5k, 30.1%
#3: Wild, 23.2k, 28.0%
DPSing the first phase of Ultraxion took a lot more out of Wild's healing than I thought it would.
The gods favored priests and shaman on this night, and the loot flowed into their hands. Wild was content, though. His only regret was that he fell just short of achieving a long awaited title. Wild has changed guilds twice and had to start over earning guild reputation each time. Wild has long been at Revered rep with the honored title of "Veteran of Meitha" but has one more rung to climb. At the end of the raid Wild had 20,923 guild rep points. Wild is 73 points short of reaching Exalted. By the time this report reaches other eyes, Wild expects to have achieved that goal.
On other fronts, it was good to see Hearte in game as well as Daeth. I'm sure Daeth has stories to tell of dungeon conquests and, Wild hears, his first steps into Hour of Twilight. That should make a nice additional to the report.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Tuesday (13 Mar) - No'Kaled, The Elements of Death
Tuesday (13 Mar) - No'Kaled, The Elements of Death
No'Kaled is the name of JB's pair of dual wielding axes. Enchanted with Landslide, the earth of Azeroth forever pours from her blades, marking her passage. Some would say she resembled Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. JB prefers the analogy of the graveyard, a sod of earth for every kill.
JB got the second blade of that pair on Monday night. On Tuesday JB put them to good use.
Daeth was there for JB's first paired blooding of the blades, in Shadowfang Keep. We had a tentative tank, but he was better than those that had vexed, frustrated, and annoyed us before. Progress was slow at first, but when Daeth, who knows more about the dungeons of Cata than he'll admit to, took the lead for more than half the fight, the shamed tank stepped up the pace. The dusty old Keep was no match for our group. JB did 19.6k DPS. Not only did the blades help, JB felt she was getting her spells off quicker, and was starting to get at least a bit of the intuitive feel of a fight that Wild lives and breathes when he heals. Daeth was second with an impressive 13.2k DPS (the 3rd DPSer did 11.2k). Daeth has commented before about the power of a mage's Arcane Blast, but it was shocking to see that 94% of all Daeth's damage came from that single spell.
Much later in the evening JB joined a Siege of Dragon Soul raid. For once JB was the only melee shaman in the raid. JB had her best night ever against Dragon Soul. Overall, JB did 23.7k DPS on the four boss kills and related trash, finishing 5th in total DPS. Her single best DPS came against the first boss, Morchok. JB did 38.3k DPS, the 4th best total in the raid. JB's worst DPS on a boss was still over 22k (Hagara).
All of that led up to the best news of the night. At long, long, long last, JB won her tier shoulders! JB came close to throwing those old i377 pvp shoulders she was wearing in the trash, she was so happy. The stats on the new Spiritwalker Spaulders were perfect for shaman, too, with both +hit and +expertise. That gave JB the flexibility to get rid of a tarnished i359 ring and replace it with a valor point purchased i397. Some reforging is still required, but JB moved up from i380 to i384 gear score. The look of those shoulders took some getting used to (they look like large brown larva with fangs), but then again it does seem to fit the graveyard look. The shoulders also give off an ethereal bluish image of wolves every now and then. JB is liking that.
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| JB's Growling Shoulders |
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| A Landslide of Graveyard earth |
JB also acquired two new mounts. During the Shadowfang Keep run JB reached Exalted with Ramkahen, which offers a mount to brown and tan colors. JB bought them both. So, what kind of mounts are they? They're camels. Here's JB on the tan one.
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| JB and her Camel |
Monday (12 Mar) - Pounding the LFR
Monday (12 Mar) - Pounding the LFR
JB ripped through all eight bosses in the two part Dragon Soul lfr on Monday night. Normally, I'd get that done earlier in the week, but this week JB had only hours before the reset and the loss of at least 500 valor points if she missed those runs. As usual, JB didn't win any Tier drops, as the drops ignored shaman needs. On the final encounter JB finally got a drop - the i390 axe that is the top end weapon short of running normal Dragon Soul. JB already has one of the them, so now she had a pair. JB was pretty happy with the dual blades, although her gear will require some reforging.
JB had a pretty pot full of valor points, so she headed over to the vendor, hoping to upgrade two gear slots. JB is still wearing an i359 ring and was ready to replace that with an i397. To JB's disgust, though, there was only one +agi ring, and the secondary stats on it were made for hunters - crit and haste. The i359 came with expertise and hit, both stats JB had to have. Even with reforging, most of the stats on that i397 would be useless to her. JB could have bought non-tier pants or helm, to replace i378 gear, but opted to hold off on that in the hopes of getting tier drops from the coming week's runs. A forlorn hope, but JB keeps trying. JB didn't buy anything at the time, but just before logging off for the night she went back to the vendor and upgraded her relic from i378 to i397. The new relic matched up well stats-wise with the new axe. The two pieces brought her gear score up from i380 to i382.
Regarding the lfr DS run, JB decided to track her DPS for each encounter, counting trash and boss kills, and clearing the data between each one. I pretty much know what level of DPS JB should be doing, but I thought it would be interesting to show how a normal DPS level would look with each encounter. The mechanics of each encounter greatly increase or decrease DPS, so there is no one DPS level appropriate - it's based on the encounter. There are 17 DPSers in an lfr 25 man raid. The top DPSer in the first four encounters was a deadly hunter. His DPS was almost 10k higher than the #2. JB isn't among the top DPSers, but she is solidly in the middle of the pack now instead of nearer the bottom (most of the time).
Siege Of Deathwing
Morchok: 20.6k dps, 8th (#1 dpser 40.7k dps)
Warlord Zon'ozz: 29.1k dps, 8th again (#1 51.1k dps)
Yor'sahj: 22.0k dps, 8th one more time (#1 45.4 dps)
Hagara: 15.4k dps, 13th (#1 45.4k dps)
Fall of Deathwing (a new group of raiders)
Ultraxion: 19.9k dps, 12th (#1 31.2k dps). JB was joined by two other DPS shaman. They did 30.6k (2nd) and 24.4k (5th). Numbers for JB to aspire to.
Skyfire: 18.5k dps, 9th (#1 28.8k dps, other shaman 26.9k, 3rd)
Spine: 16.4k dps, 8th (#1 30.0k dps, other shaman 22.0k dps)
Madness: 39.6k dps, 7th (#1 84.3k dps, other shaman 41.2k dps)
JB is improving, but she is going to need to step it up. With her gear she should be better. Her troubles with targeting is one area that is holding her back. JB also relies too much on addons to guide her spell casting. It slows her down just a little. But "just a little" can mean a significant loss of DPS.
JB and Daeth got into a Throne of the Tides heroic late Sunday night. It's the lowest level Cata dungeon, but quite challenging, particularly on heroic. On the day Cataclysm went live, Wild joined a guildie group into this place. We got slaughtered at first, but did finish it after a few wipes. It was quite an experience. Since then I think Wild has done Tides once on heroic, and that was months ago. For JB, it was her first trip, and Wild had no advice to give.
I don't know what it is when Daeth and JB run heroics together. Once again we had a tank that was even worse than the one we had the last time. The tank was so bad he once complained that the healer should be kicked. That healer deserved an award just for sticking with the run. The healer complained only once (after two players died on an intentional double pull the tank thought he could handle). Then the healer just grimly did his best to keep us alive.
JB embarrassed herself early on when the underwater elevator refused to work for her. The elevator is known to be buggy, but I didn't know it had it in for shaman. All four of the other players were able to use it, but up and down it went - without JB. JB may have delayed things for a couple of minutes at the most, but it seemed like forever.
After we had killed the official last boss, the tank wanted to kill another boss we had skipped. JB had won the greed roll for a chaos orb and he was grumbling in party chat that he REALLY needed a chaos orb. JB wasn't about to give it to him. Another boss was another shot at loot for Daeth, so we stayed. Not a good decision. The tank did not know the fight or just couldn't handle it. Some of that fight came back to me - lots of constantly spawning mobs to chase, a part where we all grow to huge size, a boss that the tank couldn't keep in one place ... we wiped. Since we had already gotten our valor points for the run, Daeth and JB decided we didn't need to stick around to kill that unnecessary boss. We booked, although the healer beat us out the door, even as the tank was asking if we wanted to do another run together.
JB can't wait until Daeth can join her in the Hour of Twilight dungeons. They're fun and the loot is far better.
JB ripped through all eight bosses in the two part Dragon Soul lfr on Monday night. Normally, I'd get that done earlier in the week, but this week JB had only hours before the reset and the loss of at least 500 valor points if she missed those runs. As usual, JB didn't win any Tier drops, as the drops ignored shaman needs. On the final encounter JB finally got a drop - the i390 axe that is the top end weapon short of running normal Dragon Soul. JB already has one of the them, so now she had a pair. JB was pretty happy with the dual blades, although her gear will require some reforging.
JB had a pretty pot full of valor points, so she headed over to the vendor, hoping to upgrade two gear slots. JB is still wearing an i359 ring and was ready to replace that with an i397. To JB's disgust, though, there was only one +agi ring, and the secondary stats on it were made for hunters - crit and haste. The i359 came with expertise and hit, both stats JB had to have. Even with reforging, most of the stats on that i397 would be useless to her. JB could have bought non-tier pants or helm, to replace i378 gear, but opted to hold off on that in the hopes of getting tier drops from the coming week's runs. A forlorn hope, but JB keeps trying. JB didn't buy anything at the time, but just before logging off for the night she went back to the vendor and upgraded her relic from i378 to i397. The new relic matched up well stats-wise with the new axe. The two pieces brought her gear score up from i380 to i382.
Regarding the lfr DS run, JB decided to track her DPS for each encounter, counting trash and boss kills, and clearing the data between each one. I pretty much know what level of DPS JB should be doing, but I thought it would be interesting to show how a normal DPS level would look with each encounter. The mechanics of each encounter greatly increase or decrease DPS, so there is no one DPS level appropriate - it's based on the encounter. There are 17 DPSers in an lfr 25 man raid. The top DPSer in the first four encounters was a deadly hunter. His DPS was almost 10k higher than the #2. JB isn't among the top DPSers, but she is solidly in the middle of the pack now instead of nearer the bottom (most of the time).
Siege Of Deathwing
Morchok: 20.6k dps, 8th (#1 dpser 40.7k dps)
Warlord Zon'ozz: 29.1k dps, 8th again (#1 51.1k dps)
Yor'sahj: 22.0k dps, 8th one more time (#1 45.4 dps)
Hagara: 15.4k dps, 13th (#1 45.4k dps)
Fall of Deathwing (a new group of raiders)
Ultraxion: 19.9k dps, 12th (#1 31.2k dps). JB was joined by two other DPS shaman. They did 30.6k (2nd) and 24.4k (5th). Numbers for JB to aspire to.
Skyfire: 18.5k dps, 9th (#1 28.8k dps, other shaman 26.9k, 3rd)
Spine: 16.4k dps, 8th (#1 30.0k dps, other shaman 22.0k dps)
Madness: 39.6k dps, 7th (#1 84.3k dps, other shaman 41.2k dps)
JB is improving, but she is going to need to step it up. With her gear she should be better. Her troubles with targeting is one area that is holding her back. JB also relies too much on addons to guide her spell casting. It slows her down just a little. But "just a little" can mean a significant loss of DPS.
JB and Daeth got into a Throne of the Tides heroic late Sunday night. It's the lowest level Cata dungeon, but quite challenging, particularly on heroic. On the day Cataclysm went live, Wild joined a guildie group into this place. We got slaughtered at first, but did finish it after a few wipes. It was quite an experience. Since then I think Wild has done Tides once on heroic, and that was months ago. For JB, it was her first trip, and Wild had no advice to give.
I don't know what it is when Daeth and JB run heroics together. Once again we had a tank that was even worse than the one we had the last time. The tank was so bad he once complained that the healer should be kicked. That healer deserved an award just for sticking with the run. The healer complained only once (after two players died on an intentional double pull the tank thought he could handle). Then the healer just grimly did his best to keep us alive.
JB embarrassed herself early on when the underwater elevator refused to work for her. The elevator is known to be buggy, but I didn't know it had it in for shaman. All four of the other players were able to use it, but up and down it went - without JB. JB may have delayed things for a couple of minutes at the most, but it seemed like forever.
After we had killed the official last boss, the tank wanted to kill another boss we had skipped. JB had won the greed roll for a chaos orb and he was grumbling in party chat that he REALLY needed a chaos orb. JB wasn't about to give it to him. Another boss was another shot at loot for Daeth, so we stayed. Not a good decision. The tank did not know the fight or just couldn't handle it. Some of that fight came back to me - lots of constantly spawning mobs to chase, a part where we all grow to huge size, a boss that the tank couldn't keep in one place ... we wiped. Since we had already gotten our valor points for the run, Daeth and JB decided we didn't need to stick around to kill that unnecessary boss. We booked, although the healer beat us out the door, even as the tank was asking if we wanted to do another run together.
JB can't wait until Daeth can join her in the Hour of Twilight dungeons. They're fun and the loot is far better.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Weekend (11 Mar) - Daeth, Dying, and Deadmines
Weekend (11 Mar) - Daeth, Dying, and Deadmines
It's been another long week of Real Life and not much Warcraft. Taxes took up a part of the week, and a great visit with our nephew from Virginia took up a chunk of the weekend. Sometimes it seems like the only time we get out to see the sights of our city is when we show it off for visitors. It was a lot of fun. Our nephew is doing the whole coast of California in a rented convertible, from San Diego to San Francisco, on the first vacation of his 26 year young life.
Last week Happy opened the Auction House to find that one of his competitors had dumped his entire stock of darkmoon cards on the AH for 100 gold each. Darkmoon cards, depending on the type, go from 100g to sometimes 1500g for a single card. Cards are bought and traded on the AH, of course, but their main use is the creating card sets that are turned in for i359 trinkets. Happy bought A LOT of them in the feeding frenzy that followed when the cards popped up. Happy is only familiar with the waves and winds cards, but bought many of the other types of cards, as well. That has proved more of a pain than a benefit, as there aren't enough to make sets, and with the dumping of all those cards they are difficult to sell as singles. The +int trinket from the waves card set are popular, though, and will sell if patient. Happy has sold two sets so far, for far more than what the cards had cost. The +agi trinket from a set of winds cards have been posted twice without selling, but it's only a matter of time. If Daeth can still use an i359 +int trinket when the Darkmoon Faire comes back around, Happy made enough profit on the other decks to afford the cards to create another full deck by then.
Neither Wild nor JB have run a single lfr DS this past week, and at least JB is going to need to get that done or she'll miss an opportunity to add another i397 piece to her gear. Hopefully that will get done on Monday. Wild will try to squeeze in some time, too, if possible.
Sunday night was the only night with some excitement. JB had just logged in to do some crafting. JB didn't know that Daeth was in game - until she saw the message in guild chat that he had just DINGED! to level 85! Congratulations!
We celebrated with a Tol'vir normal dungeon run, pounding through that one easily. Daeth picked up a helm which jumped his equipped gear score from i316 to i337, and that got us into a Heroic dungeon on our next run. The dungeon was The Deadmines. The Deadmines Wild knew was a 15-20 something level dungeon, that was as long as it was fun to do. Back in the day JB had even farmed the place solo to get a cat companion that could only be acquired from there.
That was not The Deadmnines we were headed for. The Heroic Deadmines was a tough dungeon with some creative boss encounters. Neither JB nor Wild has ever been inside Heroic Deadmines. JB was perhaps the best geared of our group when we started out. Our tank, a druid, took crazy chances, aggroing gobs of trash mobs, while being unable to keep them all from striking out at other players. JB spent as much time pulling mobs off the healer as she did banging on whatever the tank was hitting. When JB had time to stand and deliver, she tended to over-aggro because the tank couldn't focus on mobs long enough build up enough aggro of his own. That's not to say that JB wasn't a bit scatter-brained as well. JB hadn't gotten any work in almost a week and was feeling pretty bloodthirsty. JB paid for it, though, dying twice when she in effect ended up tanking groups of mobs that she'd pulled off the tank.
The boss fights, by comparison, went more smoothly. It was funny, though, when we reached the end of the mines, having cleared the first five bosses, and two of our party left, thinking they were done. Well, The Deadmines has a special, heroic mode only boss named Vanessa Vancleef. The three of us that were still in the dungeon thought about three manning the encounter, but we had no healer and JB, in her enhancement spec, did not have near the mana needed to heal the fight. It was quickly a moot point, though, as the dungeon finder sent us two replacements, and we were able to finish off Vancleef. It was a lot of fun, and JB's first run of The Deadmines.
And congratulations again on hitting level 85!
It's been another long week of Real Life and not much Warcraft. Taxes took up a part of the week, and a great visit with our nephew from Virginia took up a chunk of the weekend. Sometimes it seems like the only time we get out to see the sights of our city is when we show it off for visitors. It was a lot of fun. Our nephew is doing the whole coast of California in a rented convertible, from San Diego to San Francisco, on the first vacation of his 26 year young life.
Last week Happy opened the Auction House to find that one of his competitors had dumped his entire stock of darkmoon cards on the AH for 100 gold each. Darkmoon cards, depending on the type, go from 100g to sometimes 1500g for a single card. Cards are bought and traded on the AH, of course, but their main use is the creating card sets that are turned in for i359 trinkets. Happy bought A LOT of them in the feeding frenzy that followed when the cards popped up. Happy is only familiar with the waves and winds cards, but bought many of the other types of cards, as well. That has proved more of a pain than a benefit, as there aren't enough to make sets, and with the dumping of all those cards they are difficult to sell as singles. The +int trinket from the waves card set are popular, though, and will sell if patient. Happy has sold two sets so far, for far more than what the cards had cost. The +agi trinket from a set of winds cards have been posted twice without selling, but it's only a matter of time. If Daeth can still use an i359 +int trinket when the Darkmoon Faire comes back around, Happy made enough profit on the other decks to afford the cards to create another full deck by then.
Neither Wild nor JB have run a single lfr DS this past week, and at least JB is going to need to get that done or she'll miss an opportunity to add another i397 piece to her gear. Hopefully that will get done on Monday. Wild will try to squeeze in some time, too, if possible.
Sunday night was the only night with some excitement. JB had just logged in to do some crafting. JB didn't know that Daeth was in game - until she saw the message in guild chat that he had just DINGED! to level 85! Congratulations!
We celebrated with a Tol'vir normal dungeon run, pounding through that one easily. Daeth picked up a helm which jumped his equipped gear score from i316 to i337, and that got us into a Heroic dungeon on our next run. The dungeon was The Deadmines. The Deadmines Wild knew was a 15-20 something level dungeon, that was as long as it was fun to do. Back in the day JB had even farmed the place solo to get a cat companion that could only be acquired from there.
That was not The Deadmnines we were headed for. The Heroic Deadmines was a tough dungeon with some creative boss encounters. Neither JB nor Wild has ever been inside Heroic Deadmines. JB was perhaps the best geared of our group when we started out. Our tank, a druid, took crazy chances, aggroing gobs of trash mobs, while being unable to keep them all from striking out at other players. JB spent as much time pulling mobs off the healer as she did banging on whatever the tank was hitting. When JB had time to stand and deliver, she tended to over-aggro because the tank couldn't focus on mobs long enough build up enough aggro of his own. That's not to say that JB wasn't a bit scatter-brained as well. JB hadn't gotten any work in almost a week and was feeling pretty bloodthirsty. JB paid for it, though, dying twice when she in effect ended up tanking groups of mobs that she'd pulled off the tank.
The boss fights, by comparison, went more smoothly. It was funny, though, when we reached the end of the mines, having cleared the first five bosses, and two of our party left, thinking they were done. Well, The Deadmines has a special, heroic mode only boss named Vanessa Vancleef. The three of us that were still in the dungeon thought about three manning the encounter, but we had no healer and JB, in her enhancement spec, did not have near the mana needed to heal the fight. It was quickly a moot point, though, as the dungeon finder sent us two replacements, and we were able to finish off Vancleef. It was a lot of fun, and JB's first run of The Deadmines.
And congratulations again on hitting level 85!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Thursday (8 Mar) - Clouds of Dragons
Thursday (8 Mar) - Clouds of Dragons
I spent some time looking at youtube strategies for the Ultraxion encounter. It's one of those rare encounters where raiders barely have to move, but the fight itself has many facets. The tanks have the toughest learning curve, I believe. Most of the battle occurs inside the Twilight phase. There are regular periods where Hour of Twilight is cast by Ultraxion. Raiders have a special ability located on a large button that gets us the hell out of Twilight when that cast comes. All except the current tank, who has to stay inside and survive the huge blast. The two tanks have to carefully choreograph swapping and taunting so that they can survive and recover from those monster hits. The healers have to deal with damage that grows and grows as the fight progresses. Healers do get some help, though. Over the course of the fight three crystals form, one at a time, each with it's own special buff. Taking a crystal gives the healer that buff, which lasts the rest of the battle. For example, Wild was asked to take the Essence of Dream crystal, which doubles Wild's healing and spreads that healing across the raid.
One thing Wild didn't understand were the two times on the night before when Wild was essentially one shot. I wanted to know why. I suspected the culprit was Fading Light, a debuff that hits the current tank and one random player. I've read that Ultraxion rarely if ever puts that debuff on a healer, but then Wild isn't always a healer for this fight. Wild couldn't be sure I would see the Fading Light notice from the addon Deadly Boss Mobs, but I did know how to count it down so that whether Wild had it or not, Wild could block it by hitting the "save me" button (to get Wild out of Twilight) at the right time.
But, before all that we had to get the raid together. That went rather quickly, but there were some comings and goings which held things up a little. One of our regular healers, Vl, was out again this week, so Bd switched from his tanking toon to his healing shaman. Wild and the priest, Pl, were the other two healers. We had two paladins for tanks. Things were really hopping for a Thursday night, and at least six guildies in the raid gathered together outside the Inn in the Valley of Honor. We fired off fireworks, tossed medicine balls and paper airplanes at each other, showed off our rarest mounts, and danced around each other like Indians preparing for love or war. Wild set up his rocking horse for others to ride and rode around on his Raven Lord mount while disguised as a murloc. Such gatherings used to be a regular occurrence, and it brought back some nice memories.
While the carousing was going on, Wild got a whisper from Silver in her new guise. Silver, now known as Hearte, crossed from the pvp realm of Boulderfist to the pve realm of Silvermoon to lend a hand and sage advice to our raiding efforts. Wild got hold of a guild officer and she was welcomed into the guild. As the raid start got close, Hearte asked for luck as she cantered off to give the Dragon Soul lfr a shot. Then it was off to Dragon Soul for Wild, as well.
We assembled at the staging area for Ultraxion. First, though, we had to bring down the fourteen dragons. We botched our first attempt. Wild was mercilessly harried by dragons and every heal to save myself or someone else brought more of them down on Wild. It was all good, though, Wild lived longer than the tank, although not by much. It seemed like a Friday night all evening. Raiders were too happy or too drunk or just in a good mood. We took down all the dragons on our second attempt.
Enter Ultraxion. The big bad dragon single shot the entire raid at the beginning of the encounter. Wow. The tank said that after the fight was started every attempt to aggro Ultraxion was Evaded. And then we all died.
That didn't dampen any spirits, and back at him we went again. We were using a three healer strategy. Wild was again asked to DPS for the first phase of the fight, which Wild delighted in doing. We wiped two times as the tanks learned the tricky dance of swapping tanks with each phase while staying alive long enough for a healer to come back into the twilight to heal them.
On our next attempt we started to get the rhythm and wiped with Ultraxion at 17% health. We'd never come close to that before now. We slipped backwards on our next attempt. The raid leader worked each issue. The problem at first was the tank swaps, and that was fixed and now working fine. Then the problem became insufficient DPSing on the boss to kill him before the hard wipe at six minutes. To address that, we decided to try the two healer strategy. The extra DPS was nice, but Wild's priest healing partner did not have the mana to last long enough to get the mana regen crystal. The DPS was making good strides, though, so after three tries with two healers, we went back to three healers.
On our very next attempt, we took down Ultraxion. We were now 5/8 kills in Dragon Soul. Wild was a little taken aback that the resto shaman was out healing Wild. Not by a lot, but Wild takes that as a challenge for next week.
I like the above picture. The whole raid is present. Behind the raiders on the right you can see the large, open chest containing the loot. In the top left corner is the Skyfire, the flying boat we will be headed to next.
There were two drops. After getting those shoulders on Wednesday, Wild was not really thinking about loot. However, the first drop was the T13 chest. Wild has the i384 version - this was the i397. Wild lost the roll. The second drop was a very nice caster/healer off-hand. Again, Wild already had the i384 version. The priest rolled first - a 65. Wild delayed, checking how much of an upgrade it would be. Wild finally rolled - 98!
Wild asked the priest what weapon she had. It was an i378 staff. The off-hand was of no immediate use to her if she didn't have a one-hand to go with it. She did. She was carrying around had the same i390 mace that Wild had hoping to find an off-hand for it. So, if Wild kept the drop he would get an upgrade from i384 to i397. If the priest got it, she would swap her i378 staff for the i390/i397 mace/off-hand combo. It was a no brainer. Wild passed the off-hand to the priest in good conscience.
We all trooped over to the flying ship, the Skyfire. This is a fun fight with a bunch of mini-bosses to deal with. Wild has never seen this fight except in the lfr, though. It's an easy fight in the lfr, but once the raid leader began explaining all of the mechanics for the ten man, Wild was astonished at how little he really knew. We had time for three tries, and at least Wild felt that he learned a lot that was missing in his lfr runs.
Yes, that's Wild plastered up on the forecastle of the Skyfire. Wild was blasted up there on our final wipe of the night.
It was a great night for partying with guildies; taking down Ultraxion made it all the better, and getting some time on the Skyfire was icing on the cake. Our gear is getting better, our confidence is growing, and Dragon Soul is starting, at last, to fear us.
I spent some time looking at youtube strategies for the Ultraxion encounter. It's one of those rare encounters where raiders barely have to move, but the fight itself has many facets. The tanks have the toughest learning curve, I believe. Most of the battle occurs inside the Twilight phase. There are regular periods where Hour of Twilight is cast by Ultraxion. Raiders have a special ability located on a large button that gets us the hell out of Twilight when that cast comes. All except the current tank, who has to stay inside and survive the huge blast. The two tanks have to carefully choreograph swapping and taunting so that they can survive and recover from those monster hits. The healers have to deal with damage that grows and grows as the fight progresses. Healers do get some help, though. Over the course of the fight three crystals form, one at a time, each with it's own special buff. Taking a crystal gives the healer that buff, which lasts the rest of the battle. For example, Wild was asked to take the Essence of Dream crystal, which doubles Wild's healing and spreads that healing across the raid.
One thing Wild didn't understand were the two times on the night before when Wild was essentially one shot. I wanted to know why. I suspected the culprit was Fading Light, a debuff that hits the current tank and one random player. I've read that Ultraxion rarely if ever puts that debuff on a healer, but then Wild isn't always a healer for this fight. Wild couldn't be sure I would see the Fading Light notice from the addon Deadly Boss Mobs, but I did know how to count it down so that whether Wild had it or not, Wild could block it by hitting the "save me" button (to get Wild out of Twilight) at the right time.
But, before all that we had to get the raid together. That went rather quickly, but there were some comings and goings which held things up a little. One of our regular healers, Vl, was out again this week, so Bd switched from his tanking toon to his healing shaman. Wild and the priest, Pl, were the other two healers. We had two paladins for tanks. Things were really hopping for a Thursday night, and at least six guildies in the raid gathered together outside the Inn in the Valley of Honor. We fired off fireworks, tossed medicine balls and paper airplanes at each other, showed off our rarest mounts, and danced around each other like Indians preparing for love or war. Wild set up his rocking horse for others to ride and rode around on his Raven Lord mount while disguised as a murloc. Such gatherings used to be a regular occurrence, and it brought back some nice memories.
While the carousing was going on, Wild got a whisper from Silver in her new guise. Silver, now known as Hearte, crossed from the pvp realm of Boulderfist to the pve realm of Silvermoon to lend a hand and sage advice to our raiding efforts. Wild got hold of a guild officer and she was welcomed into the guild. As the raid start got close, Hearte asked for luck as she cantered off to give the Dragon Soul lfr a shot. Then it was off to Dragon Soul for Wild, as well.
We assembled at the staging area for Ultraxion. First, though, we had to bring down the fourteen dragons. We botched our first attempt. Wild was mercilessly harried by dragons and every heal to save myself or someone else brought more of them down on Wild. It was all good, though, Wild lived longer than the tank, although not by much. It seemed like a Friday night all evening. Raiders were too happy or too drunk or just in a good mood. We took down all the dragons on our second attempt.
Enter Ultraxion. The big bad dragon single shot the entire raid at the beginning of the encounter. Wow. The tank said that after the fight was started every attempt to aggro Ultraxion was Evaded. And then we all died.
That didn't dampen any spirits, and back at him we went again. We were using a three healer strategy. Wild was again asked to DPS for the first phase of the fight, which Wild delighted in doing. We wiped two times as the tanks learned the tricky dance of swapping tanks with each phase while staying alive long enough for a healer to come back into the twilight to heal them.
 |
| Ultraxion Leaves a Pile of Bodies |
On our next attempt we started to get the rhythm and wiped with Ultraxion at 17% health. We'd never come close to that before now. We slipped backwards on our next attempt. The raid leader worked each issue. The problem at first was the tank swaps, and that was fixed and now working fine. Then the problem became insufficient DPSing on the boss to kill him before the hard wipe at six minutes. To address that, we decided to try the two healer strategy. The extra DPS was nice, but Wild's priest healing partner did not have the mana to last long enough to get the mana regen crystal. The DPS was making good strides, though, so after three tries with two healers, we went back to three healers.
On our very next attempt, we took down Ultraxion. We were now 5/8 kills in Dragon Soul. Wild was a little taken aback that the resto shaman was out healing Wild. Not by a lot, but Wild takes that as a challenge for next week.
 |
| Ultraxion KILL! |
There were two drops. After getting those shoulders on Wednesday, Wild was not really thinking about loot. However, the first drop was the T13 chest. Wild has the i384 version - this was the i397. Wild lost the roll. The second drop was a very nice caster/healer off-hand. Again, Wild already had the i384 version. The priest rolled first - a 65. Wild delayed, checking how much of an upgrade it would be. Wild finally rolled - 98!
Wild asked the priest what weapon she had. It was an i378 staff. The off-hand was of no immediate use to her if she didn't have a one-hand to go with it. She did. She was carrying around had the same i390 mace that Wild had hoping to find an off-hand for it. So, if Wild kept the drop he would get an upgrade from i384 to i397. If the priest got it, she would swap her i378 staff for the i390/i397 mace/off-hand combo. It was a no brainer. Wild passed the off-hand to the priest in good conscience.
We all trooped over to the flying ship, the Skyfire. This is a fun fight with a bunch of mini-bosses to deal with. Wild has never seen this fight except in the lfr, though. It's an easy fight in the lfr, but once the raid leader began explaining all of the mechanics for the ten man, Wild was astonished at how little he really knew. We had time for three tries, and at least Wild felt that he learned a lot that was missing in his lfr runs.
 |
| Skyfire Corpses |
Yes, that's Wild plastered up on the forecastle of the Skyfire. Wild was blasted up there on our final wipe of the night.
It was a great night for partying with guildies; taking down Ultraxion made it all the better, and getting some time on the Skyfire was icing on the cake. Our gear is getting better, our confidence is growing, and Dragon Soul is starting, at last, to fear us.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Wednesday (7 Mar) - Deep Earth Vestments
Wednesday (7 Mar) - Deep Earth Vestments
It's been almost a week since the last post. I've been busy, but mostly there just isn't that much going on in game.
The RG2 raid is starting to look and feel like a real raid. The new rogue that started coming with us a couple of weeks ago is really dealing some nasty DPS. He also routinely violates the sacrosanct raid rule that "rogues die first." Wild likes him. We had a new main tank to test out, a paladin alt that already has a pally tank as his main. I guess some players are running out of things to do, so they keep raising up new alts. Obviously, he knew how to play the class, but there were some gear issues that slowed us down just a bit. Morchok and Yor didn't slow us down, but we did struggle a bit, as we have many times, with the ball bouncing Warlord. Wild was tank healing and we just weren't in sync with each other. It took us five tries but we did finally kill him. That makes two weeks in a row Warlord has gone down. Not on farm, yet, but getting there.
We also had a wipe on our first attempt on the fourth boss, Hagara. We got a little careless, aggroing too many mobs at one point, survived that, and then aggroed the boss before we were ready for him. We might still have beat him but for Wild. Wild was hit by an ice trap or something that caused Wild to slow to walking pace. The debuff wore off quickly, but Wild was still only able to walk. I tried the "/" key, which toggles player run/walk, but it wasn't working. Well, let me tell you, staying alive in this encounter is impossible without being able to run. Since the aggro problems had kept us in constant combat Wild could not even get a second to catch his breath and figure something out. Wild died on an ice wall that I simply could not outrun. Battle rezzed, Wild managed to survive another ice wall, but couldn't get out from under a falling ball of ice and died a second time. We wiped with Hagara at 3%.
After releasing and returning to the instance, Wild could run again. On our second attempt we easily killed Hagara.
Remember that rogue I was talking about? Well, he was a leatherworker, and three leatherworking patterns dropped over the course of the night. He got them all as the only leatherworker in the raid. The rogue also picked up drops from all of the first three bosses - two agi pieces and the tier gloves, a veritable mountain of loot. He was pleading with raiders to roll against him, but he was the only one that needed them. Then, when Hagara went down, the boss dropped the tier shoulders token.
Let me tell you a little story about shoulder gear for resto druids. I must vent a bit. Wild is royally teed off about his shoulders. He is wearing i378 shoulders from Shannox in the Firelands, his worst piece of gear. Upgrading them was proving to be difficult. In the Firelands Wild could try for his Tier 12 token, but that drops from Majordomo, the sixth boss. Not likely. Other shoulder drops are available in FL, but there are NO RESTO shoulders! None. Baradin Hold does not have any shoulders. The Hour of Twilight dungeons have just ONE resto shoulder among the gear drops of all three dungeons, but it isn't as good as what Wild already has. In Dragon Soul, the T13 shoulders drop from Hagara, the fourth boss (in both normal and lfr). DS also drops other, non-tier shoulders, but NO RESTO shoulders! What the hell! Wild can't buy shoulders of any kind with valor points, including the T12 shoulders. Wild can't buy shoulders with justice points, either. So the only way to upgrade Wild's shoulders is to win the tier token from DS. Of course, that token can be rolled on by druids, mages, death knights, and rogues. That list of classes make up at least half of the RG2 raid. It's enough to make a grown cow cry.
Did you notice that rogues can roll on those tier shoulders that dropped? No, the rogue didn't roll on them. He was so happy that someone else needed something I think he would have paid for the enchants and gems for it, too. Wild was the only taker. Given how hard those shoulders were to come by, Wild might have gotten the better deal - one shoulder tier token vs six drops for the rogue.
Wild now has all five pieces of the Tier 13 Deep Earth Vestments set. I don't think Wild has ever gotten a complete tier set since ... well, since Tier 1. Wild's gear score is i391. Wild has officially surpassed Silver's i390 with the highest equipped gear score of all Wild's family and friends.
There is very little Wild needs now other than the rest of the i397 tier pieces. Wild would settle for a clear of Dragon Soul.
On Thursday night we go after Ultraxion.
It's been almost a week since the last post. I've been busy, but mostly there just isn't that much going on in game.
The RG2 raid is starting to look and feel like a real raid. The new rogue that started coming with us a couple of weeks ago is really dealing some nasty DPS. He also routinely violates the sacrosanct raid rule that "rogues die first." Wild likes him. We had a new main tank to test out, a paladin alt that already has a pally tank as his main. I guess some players are running out of things to do, so they keep raising up new alts. Obviously, he knew how to play the class, but there were some gear issues that slowed us down just a bit. Morchok and Yor didn't slow us down, but we did struggle a bit, as we have many times, with the ball bouncing Warlord. Wild was tank healing and we just weren't in sync with each other. It took us five tries but we did finally kill him. That makes two weeks in a row Warlord has gone down. Not on farm, yet, but getting there.
We also had a wipe on our first attempt on the fourth boss, Hagara. We got a little careless, aggroing too many mobs at one point, survived that, and then aggroed the boss before we were ready for him. We might still have beat him but for Wild. Wild was hit by an ice trap or something that caused Wild to slow to walking pace. The debuff wore off quickly, but Wild was still only able to walk. I tried the "/" key, which toggles player run/walk, but it wasn't working. Well, let me tell you, staying alive in this encounter is impossible without being able to run. Since the aggro problems had kept us in constant combat Wild could not even get a second to catch his breath and figure something out. Wild died on an ice wall that I simply could not outrun. Battle rezzed, Wild managed to survive another ice wall, but couldn't get out from under a falling ball of ice and died a second time. We wiped with Hagara at 3%.
After releasing and returning to the instance, Wild could run again. On our second attempt we easily killed Hagara.
Remember that rogue I was talking about? Well, he was a leatherworker, and three leatherworking patterns dropped over the course of the night. He got them all as the only leatherworker in the raid. The rogue also picked up drops from all of the first three bosses - two agi pieces and the tier gloves, a veritable mountain of loot. He was pleading with raiders to roll against him, but he was the only one that needed them. Then, when Hagara went down, the boss dropped the tier shoulders token.
Let me tell you a little story about shoulder gear for resto druids. I must vent a bit. Wild is royally teed off about his shoulders. He is wearing i378 shoulders from Shannox in the Firelands, his worst piece of gear. Upgrading them was proving to be difficult. In the Firelands Wild could try for his Tier 12 token, but that drops from Majordomo, the sixth boss. Not likely. Other shoulder drops are available in FL, but there are NO RESTO shoulders! None. Baradin Hold does not have any shoulders. The Hour of Twilight dungeons have just ONE resto shoulder among the gear drops of all three dungeons, but it isn't as good as what Wild already has. In Dragon Soul, the T13 shoulders drop from Hagara, the fourth boss (in both normal and lfr). DS also drops other, non-tier shoulders, but NO RESTO shoulders! What the hell! Wild can't buy shoulders of any kind with valor points, including the T12 shoulders. Wild can't buy shoulders with justice points, either. So the only way to upgrade Wild's shoulders is to win the tier token from DS. Of course, that token can be rolled on by druids, mages, death knights, and rogues. That list of classes make up at least half of the RG2 raid. It's enough to make a grown cow cry.
Did you notice that rogues can roll on those tier shoulders that dropped? No, the rogue didn't roll on them. He was so happy that someone else needed something I think he would have paid for the enchants and gems for it, too. Wild was the only taker. Given how hard those shoulders were to come by, Wild might have gotten the better deal - one shoulder tier token vs six drops for the rogue.
Wild now has all five pieces of the Tier 13 Deep Earth Vestments set. I don't think Wild has ever gotten a complete tier set since ... well, since Tier 1. Wild's gear score is i391. Wild has officially surpassed Silver's i390 with the highest equipped gear score of all Wild's family and friends.
There is very little Wild needs now other than the rest of the i397 tier pieces. Wild would settle for a clear of Dragon Soul.
On Thursday night we go after Ultraxion.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday (1 Mar) - Ready For Takeoff
Thursday (1 Mar) - Ready For Takeoff
I was going to start this post with a long, scientific study of the various effects of healing styles and spell usage. I even warned readers that there were a lot of numbers involved. That it may be incomprehensible to non-druid healers. And that if decimal points or wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druids scare you, your best bet might be to skip it all together. Well, that long winded discussion is still in this post, but at the bottom, not the top. So all you fans of wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druids will have to jump down to the end of the post to get your fix.
Thursday Night Raid - There's No Crying in Dungeons
The RG2 raid was in game and on time on Thursday night. I don't think Wild had been able to say that about this raid before now. With Vl and Pl both out, Aj was enlisted to be our third healer. Aj is a priest alt of a very good pally healer from G1.
So, everyone knows the drill by now. On Thursday nights we spend the evening wiping on Warlord Zon'ozz .... well ....
Shocka-locka-BOOM! The Warlord crashed and burned on our very first attempt!
The crazy thing was that our death knight got a key stuck and trotted right into Warlord before the raid was ready or even fully buffed! Oh no! We just got here and already it's a wipe. Bd, the tank, however, rushed in, nabbed Warlord, and hollered in vent, "Just roll with it!" Roll with it we did.
Wild was tank healing. Wild was a bit befuddled, but healing doesn't require thought, the fingers know what to do. Wild battle rezzed the death knight while pouring heals into the tank. The rest of the raid found their positions. Wild, who should have been tucked up with the melee group, stayed at range for the first phase of bounces, but it didn't hurt anything, and then stacked with the melee after that. When the bounces go well things go very fast, too. The second phase came and went in a blur of battle. At the third phase we killed him. The death knight took a lot of ribbing. Not only did he die at the start of the fight, he died again near the end of the fight, too. No one else died.
After the kill there was some very relieved partying. We felt like we'd gotten a very large boulder off our backs. So, what to do now? Go after the next boss, Hagara, of course.
The Hagara fight on normal mode has many differences than the one in the lfr. The ice lances and ice blocks are significantly more deadly, and we were warned that the ice walls spin around the chamber must faster than in the lfr. Before Hagara, though, were a lot of trash. Wild was lulled into the trap of thinking this wasn't going to be hard because of the trash mobs. In the lfr, it's an uncoordinated madhouse and a lot of healing is required because raiders are running around being stupid. In our ten man, the mobs were targeted and marked. We also used crowd control to reduce the craziness of the many mobs. It was easy as it could be.
Then there was Hagara. Wild was again the tank healer. We played the game. We started with tank and spank on Hagara followed by a race around the outer edge of the platform during the lightning phase. Then another tank and spank followed by the ice wall phase. I think there may have been two lightning phases, but anyway, it felt very much like the lfr and we were all doing quite well. The DPS pounded Hagara down to 3% and Wild was racing around the outer edge with the ice wall phase just about done. Wild saw the ice wall coming his way, but hey, Wild was close enough to slip past it before it got to me. Well, Wild misjudged the speed of the wall and was caught. Instant death. Fortunately, both of the other healers were still up, the tank got his heals, and Hagara died.
We went from week after week of fruitlessly bashing our heads on Warlord, to killing both Warlord AND Hagara on our first attempts of the evening. We were truly stoked.
There was still plenty of time left of our night. We had cleared the first four bosses, which comprise the Siege of Deathwing. With the fifth boss, we were at the beginning of the Fall of Deathwing. The fifth boss is Ultraxion.
As we were setting up for this fight, the Mrs peeked into the room to give our calico her evening pill (she has asthma, and sometimes has trouble breathing). We were deep into strategy discussions so I gave her a quick wave. "Ready for takeoff!" I heard her say. What? "Flaps down? Doors sealed?" What is she talking about? Then it hit me. I was wearing headphones so I could speak on vent if I needed to. One look at me with those headphones, in a dark room behind an array of three video screens (the two computer screens plus the flat screen TV), lights blinking from the stack of computers, cable box, printer, et al completed the picture of a pilot readying for takeoff. The Mrs thought it was the funniest thing she'd seen since ... well, we won't go into that.
Unlike Hagara's trash, which turned out to be pretty simple, the trash mobs we faced before Ultraxion made his appearance were much more challenging. This is one encounter in the lfr where wipes are pretty common from both the trash and the boss. In normal DS fourteen dragons lovingly raised are turned against their master. Deathwing flies about an open platform, and there is a long set piece of bla bla bla we have to wait to finish. I do love the ending, though. When the master (I forget which famous npc it is) realizes that her dragons have been cruelly turned against her, she tells us all that they are no longer her children. In a heart rending, but steely voice she says, "Bring them down."
Bringing them down is the hardest part of this pre-boss battle. All fourteen dragons are flying above us, out of range of melee. The job of the two tanks is to aggro them, draw them down, and kill them one and two at a time. Ranged raiders were told NOT to aggro dragons that had not be targeted by the tanks, in order to control the flow of the fight. Those dragons weren't just waiting to be killed, however. They flew over us, pouring deadly dragon breath down on us, a breath that left greats swaths of the platform still burning even after they passed. We killed and we killed, but more and more of the platform was getting engulfed in flames, and there were fewer and fewer places to stand. Just a few seconds in those flames was death. With eight dragons down Wild and Bd got separated by a wall of flame. The battle took Bd away, and Wild could not follow. "Holy Sh-tballs!" proclaimed our priest, Pl, as she died.
Wild retreated from the flames, finding four others who were practically standing on top of each other - flames in front, a very long fall directly behind us. There was no where to go. The rest of the raid died. Our little group had the second tank in it, a paladin. There was a rogue, our other priest, and a death knight. There was Wild, too, but, sadly, Wild died in the killing of the 9th dragon. The remaining dragons circled the platform and, one by one, they found the little group. The priest was bone dry of mana, barely able to get off any heals. They had no ranged DPS, so the rogue would leap into the air to hit a dragon, so it would come close enough to melee. Otherwise, the dragon would just flap around breathing fire on them. Wild had a great view of events from his corpse. Pally tank heals and the healing abilities of the death knight helped keep them alive. After what seemed like an endless battle, all fourteen dragons went down. Well, that's not the best way to go about it, but it was pretty dammed glorious all the same.
Once the flames had cleared, and we were all back together, the raid leader talked Ultraxion strategy. It was nothing like the lfr. Not for Wild, anyway. In the lfr Wild simply stands in one place, healing. When the call out from Ultraxion comes, Wild presses the button that is placed at mid-screen. Rinse and repeat a few times and Ultraxion dies. Wild didn't know anything about the crystals the healers have to pick up, or the special tasks the DPS have to do, or the very detailed coordination needed between the two tanks, or the DPSing Wild was tasked to do. Wait a minute. Wild was going to DPS? Really?
The first part of the fight starts out a little slow and there isn't a lot of damage being done to the raid. It's a great time to pour the maximum amount of DPS at the big dragon, though. So all the DPS were dropping high damage cooldowns at the beginning of the fight, including a rogue spell called Time Warp, which greatly speeds up casting for the whole raid. In that first burst of DPS, Bd wanted Wild to go Tree of Life. There is an interesting twist to this healing talent. When in tree form, more than heals can be cast. Like wrath, a staple DPS spell of moonkin druids. Wild was tasked with DoTing Ultraxion with insect swarm and spamming Wrath until Time Warp ended. Very, very cool. Wild added 4-5k dps on each attempt. It wasn't a lot, but it sure was fun.
We made seven attempts on Ultraxion. Wild never got to use his crystal, but we learned a lot. Most of our issues were tank related, so the fights didn't last very long, and they will have to work those issues out for next week.
As for loot, Hagara did drop shoulders, but they were for shaman, not druids. Other raiders got nice loot from Hagara and Warlord.
The night was a blast. Our best night in a very long time.
.
.
.
.
Still here? I know, where is the promised wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druid? Next time ....
I was going to start this post with a long, scientific study of the various effects of healing styles and spell usage. I even warned readers that there were a lot of numbers involved. That it may be incomprehensible to non-druid healers. And that if decimal points or wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druids scare you, your best bet might be to skip it all together. Well, that long winded discussion is still in this post, but at the bottom, not the top. So all you fans of wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druids will have to jump down to the end of the post to get your fix.
Thursday Night Raid - There's No Crying in Dungeons
The RG2 raid was in game and on time on Thursday night. I don't think Wild had been able to say that about this raid before now. With Vl and Pl both out, Aj was enlisted to be our third healer. Aj is a priest alt of a very good pally healer from G1.
So, everyone knows the drill by now. On Thursday nights we spend the evening wiping on Warlord Zon'ozz .... well ....
Shocka-locka-BOOM! The Warlord crashed and burned on our very first attempt!
The crazy thing was that our death knight got a key stuck and trotted right into Warlord before the raid was ready or even fully buffed! Oh no! We just got here and already it's a wipe. Bd, the tank, however, rushed in, nabbed Warlord, and hollered in vent, "Just roll with it!" Roll with it we did.
Wild was tank healing. Wild was a bit befuddled, but healing doesn't require thought, the fingers know what to do. Wild battle rezzed the death knight while pouring heals into the tank. The rest of the raid found their positions. Wild, who should have been tucked up with the melee group, stayed at range for the first phase of bounces, but it didn't hurt anything, and then stacked with the melee after that. When the bounces go well things go very fast, too. The second phase came and went in a blur of battle. At the third phase we killed him. The death knight took a lot of ribbing. Not only did he die at the start of the fight, he died again near the end of the fight, too. No one else died.
 |
| Warlord Zon'ozz First Kill |
After the kill there was some very relieved partying. We felt like we'd gotten a very large boulder off our backs. So, what to do now? Go after the next boss, Hagara, of course.
The Hagara fight on normal mode has many differences than the one in the lfr. The ice lances and ice blocks are significantly more deadly, and we were warned that the ice walls spin around the chamber must faster than in the lfr. Before Hagara, though, were a lot of trash. Wild was lulled into the trap of thinking this wasn't going to be hard because of the trash mobs. In the lfr, it's an uncoordinated madhouse and a lot of healing is required because raiders are running around being stupid. In our ten man, the mobs were targeted and marked. We also used crowd control to reduce the craziness of the many mobs. It was easy as it could be.
Then there was Hagara. Wild was again the tank healer. We played the game. We started with tank and spank on Hagara followed by a race around the outer edge of the platform during the lightning phase. Then another tank and spank followed by the ice wall phase. I think there may have been two lightning phases, but anyway, it felt very much like the lfr and we were all doing quite well. The DPS pounded Hagara down to 3% and Wild was racing around the outer edge with the ice wall phase just about done. Wild saw the ice wall coming his way, but hey, Wild was close enough to slip past it before it got to me. Well, Wild misjudged the speed of the wall and was caught. Instant death. Fortunately, both of the other healers were still up, the tank got his heals, and Hagara died.
We went from week after week of fruitlessly bashing our heads on Warlord, to killing both Warlord AND Hagara on our first attempts of the evening. We were truly stoked.
There was still plenty of time left of our night. We had cleared the first four bosses, which comprise the Siege of Deathwing. With the fifth boss, we were at the beginning of the Fall of Deathwing. The fifth boss is Ultraxion.
As we were setting up for this fight, the Mrs peeked into the room to give our calico her evening pill (she has asthma, and sometimes has trouble breathing). We were deep into strategy discussions so I gave her a quick wave. "Ready for takeoff!" I heard her say. What? "Flaps down? Doors sealed?" What is she talking about? Then it hit me. I was wearing headphones so I could speak on vent if I needed to. One look at me with those headphones, in a dark room behind an array of three video screens (the two computer screens plus the flat screen TV), lights blinking from the stack of computers, cable box, printer, et al completed the picture of a pilot readying for takeoff. The Mrs thought it was the funniest thing she'd seen since ... well, we won't go into that.
Unlike Hagara's trash, which turned out to be pretty simple, the trash mobs we faced before Ultraxion made his appearance were much more challenging. This is one encounter in the lfr where wipes are pretty common from both the trash and the boss. In normal DS fourteen dragons lovingly raised are turned against their master. Deathwing flies about an open platform, and there is a long set piece of bla bla bla we have to wait to finish. I do love the ending, though. When the master (I forget which famous npc it is) realizes that her dragons have been cruelly turned against her, she tells us all that they are no longer her children. In a heart rending, but steely voice she says, "Bring them down."
Bringing them down is the hardest part of this pre-boss battle. All fourteen dragons are flying above us, out of range of melee. The job of the two tanks is to aggro them, draw them down, and kill them one and two at a time. Ranged raiders were told NOT to aggro dragons that had not be targeted by the tanks, in order to control the flow of the fight. Those dragons weren't just waiting to be killed, however. They flew over us, pouring deadly dragon breath down on us, a breath that left greats swaths of the platform still burning even after they passed. We killed and we killed, but more and more of the platform was getting engulfed in flames, and there were fewer and fewer places to stand. Just a few seconds in those flames was death. With eight dragons down Wild and Bd got separated by a wall of flame. The battle took Bd away, and Wild could not follow. "Holy Sh-tballs!" proclaimed our priest, Pl, as she died.
Wild retreated from the flames, finding four others who were practically standing on top of each other - flames in front, a very long fall directly behind us. There was no where to go. The rest of the raid died. Our little group had the second tank in it, a paladin. There was a rogue, our other priest, and a death knight. There was Wild, too, but, sadly, Wild died in the killing of the 9th dragon. The remaining dragons circled the platform and, one by one, they found the little group. The priest was bone dry of mana, barely able to get off any heals. They had no ranged DPS, so the rogue would leap into the air to hit a dragon, so it would come close enough to melee. Otherwise, the dragon would just flap around breathing fire on them. Wild had a great view of events from his corpse. Pally tank heals and the healing abilities of the death knight helped keep them alive. After what seemed like an endless battle, all fourteen dragons went down. Well, that's not the best way to go about it, but it was pretty dammed glorious all the same.
 |
| Ultraxion Trash Battle |
The first part of the fight starts out a little slow and there isn't a lot of damage being done to the raid. It's a great time to pour the maximum amount of DPS at the big dragon, though. So all the DPS were dropping high damage cooldowns at the beginning of the fight, including a rogue spell called Time Warp, which greatly speeds up casting for the whole raid. In that first burst of DPS, Bd wanted Wild to go Tree of Life. There is an interesting twist to this healing talent. When in tree form, more than heals can be cast. Like wrath, a staple DPS spell of moonkin druids. Wild was tasked with DoTing Ultraxion with insect swarm and spamming Wrath until Time Warp ended. Very, very cool. Wild added 4-5k dps on each attempt. It wasn't a lot, but it sure was fun.
We made seven attempts on Ultraxion. Wild never got to use his crystal, but we learned a lot. Most of our issues were tank related, so the fights didn't last very long, and they will have to work those issues out for next week.
As for loot, Hagara did drop shoulders, but they were for shaman, not druids. Other raiders got nice loot from Hagara and Warlord.
The night was a blast. Our best night in a very long time.
.
.
.
.
Still here? I know, where is the promised wide-butted, cloven hoofed tauren druid? Next time ....
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Wednesday (29 Feb) - Quiet before the Storm
Wednesday (29 Feb) - Quiet before the Storm
It's been a pretty quiet first half of the week. The Tuesday maintenance slapped a 5% nerf on normal Dragon Soul, which provided some modest help for the raid on Wed/Thurs.
Before that, though, JB got in both halves of the lfr DS (which doesn't get nerfed) on Wednesday. She got her 500 valor points but nothing else. JB can't remember the last time she actually won any raid loot. JB was testing out a combat log program called World of Logs (WoL), but I guess I set it up wrong. No data was created that I could find. WoL also seemed to slow the game down by quite a bit. I won't be running it for the raids this week, at least until I'm sure I'm getting data and that it won't cause in game problems.
The RG2 raid (which on the calendar is now labeled "DS Raid 2") started off a little slow. The raid leader, Vl, is out this week, with Bd filling in. We had 11 guildies signed up for the raid, although we had 13 counting Pl and Gv, who never sign up but are almost always in game for the raid. At our 6:30pm start time, however, we had only six in the raid, and one of them wasn't on the raid calendar, either. So, of 14 raiders in game or signed up, we were still short four. Six raiders that signed up to be here were not. Disappointing.
The group we finally put together was pretty solid, although our third healer would much prefer her usual retribution pally DPS role. She is a good healer, but she hates it. Wild and the priest, Pl, were the other two healers.
We plowed through Morchok and Yor'sahj on our first attempts. I think the Yor kill was our first without a wipe. In no time at all we were at our nemesis, Warlord Zon'ozz.
The best I can say is that we continued to make progress, but it was hard to tell whether that was because we were getting better or because of the 5% nerf to the health and damage dealing done to Warlord. With Bd as the raid leader, I knew he would want to set the healing assignments himself. This is a one tank fight, and Bd has been that tank each week. Tonight, though, he asked our guild leader, who was with us on his druid, to be the tank. The guild leader tanks Warlord in G1 on his warrior. Bd, in fury spec, is a great DPSer, so that sounded like a good plan. Wild started as the melee healer with the pally healer taking the tank. After four failed attempts we switched tanking back to Bd. The pally stayed as the tank healer, but Pl and Wild switched roles, with Wild taking the ranged. The ranged were a bit easier to manage and it gave Wild time to help keep the tank alive and cover any dispelling that got missed.
Our best attempt of the night came on attempt #6. We hit all our bounces pretty much on target and we did the max five bounce damage on both of the first two phases. We unraveled after that, but got Warlord to 39% health. However, we didn't improve on that in our last five attempts.
As with last week, we made a lot of changes and adjustments over the course of all those attempts, a lot of which were trying to find the optimal use of our long cooldown AoE heals. With the healer composition different than last week, we had to make changes. If we get the same group for Thursday night, and stick with one strategy, I think we have a chance at getting Warlord down.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Wild has four T13 pieces and so could be getting the four piece set bonus. For Wednesday's run Wild did not use the T13 resto gloves, because the four piece bonus isn't good enough to warrant replacing an i397 with an i384, and all the reforging that would have to done.
For Thursday night, Wild has decided to test out that set bonus. Basically, the bonus gives a 10% chance of doubling the time that Wild's rejuv and regrowth spells will tic. That could be a nice boost, or it could be worthless, depending on when the boost kicks in and whether raiders are still receiving damage over all that time. To truly make this work, though, Wild had to solve the reforging problem. That boiled down to the haste Wild lost when switching to the resto gloves. Wild has a lot of valor points right now, and very little to spend it on. So, Wild was browsing the valor vendor, not necessarily for ilevel upgrades, but gear that might have better secondary stats than what Wild had. Wild found what he was looking for. Wild had won an i397 belt from normal DS in one of the first raid kills of Morchok. That belt had mastery and crit as it's secondary stats. However, the valor vendor offered an i397 belt that had spirit and haste as it's secondary stats. The haste from that belt would make up for the loss of haste from the gloves. Even better, the valor belt had one more socket than the DS belt, and the additional +int from that almost accounted for the loss of +int of the i384 gloves.
Wild wasn't done, yet. Wild is fanatically protective of his spirit, because one can never have enough mana regen. With over 2800 spirit, though, I had to admit that Wild was being quite a bit too conservative. Wild needed more mastery, to make his spells and HoTs heal more with each cast. Bigger spells means fewer casts - hopefully. Wild's pre-T134pc spec had 14.09 mastery points. With the 4piece gear set, before the reforge, mastery dropped to 13.94. After reforging spirit down to slightly under 2500, mastery improved to 15.13. Wild will get to test out both his improved mastery, and the four piece set bonus, on Thursday night.
It's been a pretty quiet first half of the week. The Tuesday maintenance slapped a 5% nerf on normal Dragon Soul, which provided some modest help for the raid on Wed/Thurs.
Before that, though, JB got in both halves of the lfr DS (which doesn't get nerfed) on Wednesday. She got her 500 valor points but nothing else. JB can't remember the last time she actually won any raid loot. JB was testing out a combat log program called World of Logs (WoL), but I guess I set it up wrong. No data was created that I could find. WoL also seemed to slow the game down by quite a bit. I won't be running it for the raids this week, at least until I'm sure I'm getting data and that it won't cause in game problems.
The RG2 raid (which on the calendar is now labeled "DS Raid 2") started off a little slow. The raid leader, Vl, is out this week, with Bd filling in. We had 11 guildies signed up for the raid, although we had 13 counting Pl and Gv, who never sign up but are almost always in game for the raid. At our 6:30pm start time, however, we had only six in the raid, and one of them wasn't on the raid calendar, either. So, of 14 raiders in game or signed up, we were still short four. Six raiders that signed up to be here were not. Disappointing.
The group we finally put together was pretty solid, although our third healer would much prefer her usual retribution pally DPS role. She is a good healer, but she hates it. Wild and the priest, Pl, were the other two healers.
We plowed through Morchok and Yor'sahj on our first attempts. I think the Yor kill was our first without a wipe. In no time at all we were at our nemesis, Warlord Zon'ozz.
The best I can say is that we continued to make progress, but it was hard to tell whether that was because we were getting better or because of the 5% nerf to the health and damage dealing done to Warlord. With Bd as the raid leader, I knew he would want to set the healing assignments himself. This is a one tank fight, and Bd has been that tank each week. Tonight, though, he asked our guild leader, who was with us on his druid, to be the tank. The guild leader tanks Warlord in G1 on his warrior. Bd, in fury spec, is a great DPSer, so that sounded like a good plan. Wild started as the melee healer with the pally healer taking the tank. After four failed attempts we switched tanking back to Bd. The pally stayed as the tank healer, but Pl and Wild switched roles, with Wild taking the ranged. The ranged were a bit easier to manage and it gave Wild time to help keep the tank alive and cover any dispelling that got missed.
Our best attempt of the night came on attempt #6. We hit all our bounces pretty much on target and we did the max five bounce damage on both of the first two phases. We unraveled after that, but got Warlord to 39% health. However, we didn't improve on that in our last five attempts.
As with last week, we made a lot of changes and adjustments over the course of all those attempts, a lot of which were trying to find the optimal use of our long cooldown AoE heals. With the healer composition different than last week, we had to make changes. If we get the same group for Thursday night, and stick with one strategy, I think we have a chance at getting Warlord down.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Wild has four T13 pieces and so could be getting the four piece set bonus. For Wednesday's run Wild did not use the T13 resto gloves, because the four piece bonus isn't good enough to warrant replacing an i397 with an i384, and all the reforging that would have to done.
For Thursday night, Wild has decided to test out that set bonus. Basically, the bonus gives a 10% chance of doubling the time that Wild's rejuv and regrowth spells will tic. That could be a nice boost, or it could be worthless, depending on when the boost kicks in and whether raiders are still receiving damage over all that time. To truly make this work, though, Wild had to solve the reforging problem. That boiled down to the haste Wild lost when switching to the resto gloves. Wild has a lot of valor points right now, and very little to spend it on. So, Wild was browsing the valor vendor, not necessarily for ilevel upgrades, but gear that might have better secondary stats than what Wild had. Wild found what he was looking for. Wild had won an i397 belt from normal DS in one of the first raid kills of Morchok. That belt had mastery and crit as it's secondary stats. However, the valor vendor offered an i397 belt that had spirit and haste as it's secondary stats. The haste from that belt would make up for the loss of haste from the gloves. Even better, the valor belt had one more socket than the DS belt, and the additional +int from that almost accounted for the loss of +int of the i384 gloves.
Wild wasn't done, yet. Wild is fanatically protective of his spirit, because one can never have enough mana regen. With over 2800 spirit, though, I had to admit that Wild was being quite a bit too conservative. Wild needed more mastery, to make his spells and HoTs heal more with each cast. Bigger spells means fewer casts - hopefully. Wild's pre-T134pc spec had 14.09 mastery points. With the 4piece gear set, before the reforge, mastery dropped to 13.94. After reforging spirit down to slightly under 2500, mastery improved to 15.13. Wild will get to test out both his improved mastery, and the four piece set bonus, on Thursday night.
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