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.