Monday, April 30, 2012

Sunday (29 Apr) - Out to Lunch

Sunday (29 Apr) - Out to Lunch

It's been twelve days since my last post. Wild did not go to the RG2 Wednesday/Thursday raid this past week. There have been no lfr raids for either Wild or JB, nor did JB join the weekend G3 raid. Philly did no leveling. The World of Warcraft stood still for almost two weeks. I didn't really miss it all that much.

I've been busy enough, but there hasn't been any major upheavals to account for the lack of game time. The baseball season is consuming more evenings and weekends, but certainly not on a daily basis. There's the cats, the Texas Holdem poker nights, and date nights, but there has still always been time for WoW. I have to admit that the game has dropped several rungs in priority, and there has been little urge to play. But this is not my "I'm quitting WoW" speech. It is my "I'm going to be playing a lot less" speech.

Wild may still raid, but after missing last week's raid I feel no burning desire to be at this coming week's raid. Wild will likely sign up as tentative, and play it by ear. Happy's job is the only sure thing, as I don't want to get out of touch with the Auction House market, and one can never have enough gold.

I just can't get very excited about the coming expansion, Mists of Pandaria, either, which could be the biggest reason I'm finding little reason for or enjoyment in playing out the final days of Cataclysm.

Philly has been in the same doldrums as Wild. However, I am still committed to getting Philly to level 85 and getting her equipped for pvp play. I will make time to try and get that done this week. Dailies and battlegrounds will be her bread and butter. As soon as Philly gets to level 85 I hope to be able to join in pvp festivities with DB, Tea, and Silver.

Finally, I'm looking forward to trying out Diablo 3 once it arrives. If it's as good as it sounds, I might very well set WoW aside for awhile. We'll see.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Wednesday (18 Apr) - I'd Rather Be Pvping

Wednesday (18 Apr) - I'd Rather Be Pvping

[Note: As in the week before last Wednesday. For some reason it is just now making it into the blog. The reason for the delay should be apparent in the post following this catch up one].

The Wednesday night RG2 raid group was largely a bust. Every time it starts to look like our raid is coming together, we fritter away that progress. Raid leader Bd was out this week. The assistant raid leader, Sb, announced at the beginning of the raid that he was retiring from RG2 after this week because he was getting burned out. He will continue with G1 and running the G3 raid, cutting his raid nights down from 6 to 4 per week. I can certainly understand that, but it's not good news for RG2. Lady Hunter was back and will likely take back some of the raid leader role, providing she has time to make the raids. Like Bd, many real life issues get in the way of her raiding more often than not.

The one thing that has been consistent was our trio of healers, but even that took a pass on Wednesday night. Wild was the only regular available, and we brought in two new holy priests making their debuts in the raid. Both are alts and both were new to raid healing Dragon Soul. Lady Hunter had login problems in addition to the raid being short one DPS raider, and we got started 45 minutes late.

The first boss, Morchok, posed no problems. Normally, the second boss, Yor'sahj, would need no introduction, either, but we took time to go over the fight and determine the strategy, as well as to bring the new healers up to speed. In past weeks we had reached a point where we could one tank this fight and keep a DPSer full time on the boss to speed up the kill. Neither tank felt they could single tank the fight, though, and the raid leader wasn't confident we could kill incoming oozes fast enough if a DPSer were put full time on Yor. We took the safest path and two-tanked Yor with all DPSers handling the oozes. We downed Yor on our first try, but we burned up a lot of time. Wild, who needs only four things in Dragon Soul (i397 chest and helm tier pieces, and upgrades to both trinkets) had a moment of hope when Yor dropped an i397 +int trinket. It would have been a vast improvement, but it turned out to be a DPS caster trinket (the on use proc was a damage proc), and it went to a mage.

We pretty much unraveled on the third boss, Warlord Zon'ozz. The healing assignments set by the raid leader at the beginning of the night had the two priests tank healing and Wild on the raid. No big deal on the first two bosses; Wild can raid heal and still give plenty of help to the tanks. With Warlord, though, specific healing roles and duties are necessary and critical. Wild tried in the past to take the role of setting healing assignments, but more often than not had them countermanded by the raid leaders. I can't read the raid leader's mind, and stopped trying. If the raid leader asks Wild to set up the healing, I'm happy to do so. Wild wasn't asked, but we got mixed signals from the raid leader's instructions and further instructions from Lady Hunter. Wild, who hadn't been told his assignment to raid heal had changed, knew that would be trouble. Wild weighed in, asking specifically to tank heal, as the new holy priests had no idea of the kind of damage they'd be facing. This is a single tank fight, and the damage is murderously high. Wild finally got the attention of the raid leader, and got his assignment to tank heal.

We wiped on our first two attempts. Lady Hunter was leading the ranged group movement and was doing a good job of that; unfortunately, some of the ranged still got out of position, straying too close to the melee and escalating the damage from the bouncing ball. The melee healer was having a hard time, too, trying to heal the melee and dispel. Wild helped out when he could, but I didn't realize she was missing dispels until the tank died on the second attempt despite Wild blowing every cooldown and burning down half my health.

As we set up for the third attempt, Lady Hunter reminded the melee and ranged dispellers to make dispelling their first priority because of the massive, stacking damage it did. She then stunned Wild by reassigning Wild to the ranged group. The melee group healer became the tank healer, but kept her melee dispelling role, which should have gone to the new melee healer. The newly assigned melee healer would continue to dispel the ranged group. Wild was thoroughly confused and frustrated.

The third attempt was another bust, followed by wipes on our fourth and fifth attempts. Wild had no problems healing the ranged group and kept Hots up on the tank, but the priest tank healer couldn't keep up and was in constant danger of dying herself. Wild focused a lot of healing on the tank healer, but was out of range a good part of the time.

Here is the healing numbers with Wild tank healing Warlord:
#1: Wild, 20.6k hps, 42.4% of all healing
#2: priest 1, 13.0k/26.9%
#3: priest 2, 14.2k/25.6%

Here are the numbers after Wild was moved to ranged healing:
#1: Wild, 18.0k hps, 40.8%
#2: priest 1, 13.8k/31.8% (tank healer)
#3: priest 2, 11.4k/24.0%

We lost nearly 7k hps in tank healing by swapping out Wild. Wild is going to make that case on the second night, whether he's asked or not.

More fun will be had by all Thursday night, I'm sure.

It was a relief to bring in Philly and go kill alliance. Earlier in the day Philly had banged her way through two Eyes and single AB, AV, and Conquest battles, going from 66% to 92% of the way to level 84. Her honor points rose to 3218. Philly had also taken DB's advice and trashed her pvp gear in favor of better pve gear. Her mana regen went up considerably, enabling her to heal longer before running out of mana. She didn't seem to die any faster or any more often, so on the whole that has worked out well.

After the raid, Philly was back at it. She lost her first BG in Arathi Basin, but still picked up two percentage points, getting to 94%. She then ran head on into two Conquest battles. Philly dislikes this battleground. There doesn't seem to be a coherent strategy, and even if their were nobody pays any attention to it. The horde and alliance both rush out of our keeps to what is essentially the mid (where the vehicles are built) and kill each other. Every time Philly has been in a Conquest BG the horde have won that mid-field fight and taken control of the vehicle area. Then the horde all charge off to the alliance keep, where we generally get slaughtered by the heavy guns on the walls of the alliance base. Philly had gotten bored with that in an earlier Conquest battle, and had wandered over the whole area. It's much larger than Philly had thought. She had no idea there were places like the oil refinery or the quarry. They were generally deserted, but now and then those areas were held by horde or alliance. They seemed bored, and who controlled those areas didn't seem to mean that much.

Eventually, the two sides coalesced at the other's keep to try and kill the boss, similar to Altarac Valley.

Philly got lucky. In her last two BGs of the night, the horde won both of the Conquest battles by killing the alliance boss.

Philly now has 3452 honor points. And Philly DINGED to level 84.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Monday/Tuesday (17 Apr) - So Much For Random

Monday/Tuesday (17 Apr) - So Much For Random

The "random" battleground finder was anything but, but Philly didn't really mind that it seemed to be stuck on Arathi Basin. Philly ran a set of four battlegrounds and the first three were AB. The horde was 2-1 in those battles. Philly then got Eye of the Storm, and with that loss went 2-2 on the day. So far. She made decent progress, going from 20% to 35% of the way to level 84. She raised her honor points from 2027 to 2397.

After a break in the action Philly decided to try some questing and mob farming. She thought she could get into the Restless Front in Hyjal, but either she hasn't done the series of quests to open it or she isn't high enough level yet, but the portal was not available to her. So she killed some humanoids in the zone, thinking to collect some embersilk cloth that Wild needed. That proved a poor choice for her time, with little xp and a pitiful amount of cloth. Philly picked up on some quests she had lying around and wound up in the quest series where she got her Jousting bird companion. That was fun, and by the end of those quests she was 46% of the way to level 84.

Later, it was back into the battlegrounds. Another AB (loss), another Eye (another loss), and them Isle of Conquest (loss again). The horde was pretty pitiful in all three. Philly was only able to go from 46% to 52%. Her honor tipped upward to 2556.

I made some adjustments to Philly's user interface. Philly found herself defending bases a lot with the type of battlegrounds she was getting, and got a charge out of DoTing up incoming alliance before she started up the healing. But it was a bit awkward, so I adjusted that. I also set several spells into their own grouping because I wasn't using them as much as I should be.

Philly has added Dailies to her list of things to do now as well. That should speed things up a bit in between the battlegrounds.

On Tuesday night Philly got a win in the Eye and lost a Conquest battle. She finished her evening at 62% of the way to level 84 and with 2761 honor points.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Sunday Night (15 Apr) - Watermelon, Seeds, and Salt

Sunday Night (15 Apr) - Watermelon, Seeds, and Salt

JB caught up with a fresh Siege of Dragon Soul lfr on Sunday. She was in elemental spec in the forlorn hope of getting some gear. JB got her obligatory four bosses down, but of course no loot came her way. Some nice mail boots dropped, but JB was already wearing a pair just like them. Three times tier pieces dropped, but only one of them, the leggings, could be used by shaman. JB lost the roll on the leggings, and walked away empty handed.

For the Sunday night raid, JB switched back to enhancement spec. Our 6:30pm raid didn't get started until 7:15pm, but hey, that's fifteen minutes earlier than it took us on Saturday night. Our DPS group still had the three top DPSers from Saturday, along with a new arrival, a mage who has raided with Wild for a long time. JB knew our DPS would be much improved with her along. Our other DPS, who'd had so much trouble on Saturday, was also back and wearing those leggings JB lost the roll on. Better gear, better DPS, JB hoped. I will make one observation about the low DPSer from last night. The player is an alt of course, and an elemental shaman. JB does 20k plus DPS in her enhancement spec, but in elemental spec she really has to push to keep her dps above 15k. In her latest lfr, JB was 11th out of 17 in dps with 16.3k dps. The gear level difference isn't that different, either - enhancement gear is at i384, elemental gear at i380.

We reassembled in Yor'sahj's chamber and killed our way through the trash mobs. JB led with 25.5k dps on the trash, the mage who'd joined us was 2nd with 21.9k, and even the elemental shaman did 19.2k. The shaman was mostly spamming chain lightning, though, so the numbers will say more when we tackle the boss. It was time to see what we could do.

Our first attempt was pretty forgettable. We let oozes reach the boss, and we couldn't recover from it. It was a wipe. Not an auspicious start, given we'd failed three times the night before.

We righted the ship pretty quickly, though. On our second attempt we brought Yor'sahj down. Here are the dps numbers:

#1: JB, 22.3k dps
#2: mage Od, 20.8k
#3: mage Sb, 19.9k
#4: warlock, 17.1k
#5: shaman 2, 11.9k

I checked the elemental shaman's gear level - it's i381, better than JB's elemental gear. The shaman has no tier bonuses, but then neither does JB. I don't know what the issue is.

We moved on to the boss that Wild hates, because the RG2 raid seems to freeze and do poorly on Warlord Zon'ozz. That trepidation didn't carry over to JB, however, and the G3 raid brought the Warlord down on our first attempt. We've yet to do that in RG2. This fight augments dps so the numbers nearly double. Here are the results:

#1: JB, 36.5k dps
#2: warlock, 32.9k
#3: mage Od, 30.9k
#4: mage Sb, 29.6k
#5: warrior, 18.9k (single tank fight, so one tank went offspec dps)
#6: shaman 2, 16.8k

We made two attempts on the fourth boss, Hagara, but many in the raid didn't have much experience with this boss. It was good practice, but we wiped both times. JB finally met her match against Hagara. The boss has to be moved around a lot, and JB had a hard time staying in melee range of the boss while also avoiding all the nasty things she could be stepping in as well as the hurricanes that I swear followed her wherever she went. Mage Od topped JB on both attempts: 17.5k to JB's 17.0k on the first attempt, and 23.8k to 17.0k on the second. JB will have to work on that. We won't embarrass the poor elemental shaman, but it wasn't good.

Ok, I can't help wonder what the problem is. The strange thing is that there really isn't much to DPSing as an elemental shaman. The standard attack is (1) drop totems and keep them replenished (the Fire Totem being the most important to have up), (2) cast Fire Shock and replenish it whenever it drops off and when switching targets, (3) cast Lava Burst on cooldown, and (4) spam Lightning Bolt in between those things. There are two spell procs that do most of the damage, but they're automatic and there isn't anything special to do but cast them when they pop up. There are only two longer cooldown attacks: usually shaman open with the elemental pet that generally can only be used once in a boss fight, and earthquake, which is our AoE dps spell. That's all there is to it. I don't know who the shaman's main is, but maybe we could get some help for him. I just have to think he isn't keeping up his Frost Shock DoT and/or is missing his big procs.

Anyway, Philly is demanding some attention. Better get at it!

Weekend (14 Apr) - The Girls Rock Out

Weekend (14 Apr) - The Girls Rock Out

Philly played hooky as long as she could, but truant officer DB kept tracking her down. On Saturday she was able to squeeze in three pvp battlegrounds in between doing some volunteer work. Her first foray was in Isle of Conquest. The horde lost badly, but Philly did well with her healing and moved her leveling bar a tiny fraction, from 2% to 4% of the way to level 84. Alterac Valley came later, which Philly likes. The battle is almost always the same, ending with the horde attacking the enemy boss and visa versa in a race for who gets the boss down first. Not this time, though. The alliance decided to make a stand on the long, narrow and snowy path leading to the enemy camp. There were a lot of big battles and small skirmishes and it was a blast! Neither side bothered to try and win the thing, it was too much fun slugging it out. The overall battle became one of attrition, and the horde won it. The first win of the day pushed Philly from 4% to 15% of the way to level 84. The third battle of the set was Eye of the Storm, which the horde pretty much owned the whole fight. We got to where we could kill them coming out of their graveyard and it ended with us holding three bases and the alliance none. Philly is feeling pretty good about her healing, at least as far as the basic spells go. She still needs a lot of practice working in all her other spells. Philly is 20% of the way to level 84. Philly also increased her honor points from 1681 to 2027.

Philly planned to get more battleground time Saturday night, but JB showed up and tried to waylay her. The guild's third raid, G3, runs on Saturday and Sunday. JB has never had a chance to sign up for it, but this weekend decided to see if she could get into the raid. The G3 was formed by a guildie who is an assistant raid leader for the other two guild raids, and he decided that he wanted to run his own raid as well. The G3 raid hasn't been able to get a core group in place, yet, in part because both the G1 and RG2 raids tend to poach their potential raiders during the week.

The raid sign up had 7 signed up with several more listed as tentative. JB was one of the "tentative" sign ups. Raid invites started on time, at 6:30pm, and JB got an invite. Ok, so far, so good. The raid leader, Sb, asked JB if she was dps or healer. Uh oh, this could be trouble. DPS, JB whispered back, main spec melee and off-spec ranged. Sb would be on his mage, but he had two tanks signed up; unfortunately, one of them did not show. And he only had one healer. A lot of discussion and swapping around of alts got us a second healer, but a miscount gave us one too many DPS in the raid. Knowing that JB could not be a regular because weekends are not routinely good raid nights, I offered to step out if he had too many DPS. Not a chance, Sb sent back, we'll figure something out. Stay with us. JB stayed.

We were stuck at nine raiders, missing that last healer, for quite awhile. Getting a PUG was suggested, but the raid leader said no. He's had several very bad experiences with bringing PUGs into a guild raid, and the raid leader always takes the sh--t for it, he said. It took a bit over an hour, but we did get the raid underway. JB was about to engage in a normal mode guild Dragon Soul raid for the first time. JB had no idea what she could be getting herself into.

When the evening started JB was the only shaman in the raid. Then for awhile, there were three shaman in the raid. When the raid finally came together, there were two shaman. JB was in melee spec and the other shaman in ranged spec. We would only be competing with the tier pieces.

We assembled outside Morchok's area and began to buff up. The raid leader asked for a minute to set up the healing assignments. I started to make suggestions, but JB interrupted. Uh, excuse me, but JB doesn't need a healing assignment. Oh ... yea ... ok. It felt very weird not to be included in that essential part of the raid setup.

Once we got started, we cleared through the trash with no issues, although it seemed just a bit slow. The two shaman led the charge, with JB leading all the DPS with 22.8k DPS (24%) and the elemental shaman coming in second with 15.9k dps (17%). Whoa, now that's cool. But it's just trash mobs.

Morchok has taken a beating each week as the first boss in Dragon Soul. He took a look at our group and thought he might have a chance. No way. Again, it took us a little longer to kill him than Wild was used to in RG2, but we did a solid job and Morchok went down. The elemental shaman's DPS slipped a bit and he fell to 4th. JB was surprised and delighted to be the top DPSer again against Morchok. JB did 25.3k dps with the mage coming in 2nd (22.5k dps) and a retribution pally getting 3rd (19.5k dps). After that there was a drop off down to around 15k dps. The healers were doing great, though, and we were quickly lining up for the second boss, Yor'Sahj.

JB figured this would be where her inexperience would show up in the stats. Morchok is a single boss fight, so JB did not have to do any tracking of multiple targets. Against Yor'sahj, however, JB would be helping to kill spawning oozes in addition to the boss and the adds that swarm the raid during the blackout phases. JB also forgot that DPSers had to destroy the Mana Void when it formed. As a healer, I was always anxious for the DPS to kill that void so we'd get our mana back; now JB got to repay the favor, and didn't miss any after that first one.

The fight went pretty well as far as JB could see. We were killing the targeted incoming oozes before they reached the boss and everyone was staying alive. As the raid timer started to tick down the minutes, though, it became apparent we were running behind. We had to go to Bloodlust with what looked like a still too healthy Yor'sahj. We then tried to force it by ignoring the next wave of oozes in an attempt to take Yor down before they reached the raid. We didn't make it, and we wiped. JB (20.3k dps) and the mage (18.6k dps) were the top two DPSers again, but our 4th and 5th DPSers did not break 12k dps,and that spelled our doom.

We tried a second time, came close again (Yor was at 10%), but wiped aonce more. Sb whispered JB after the second attempt: "you are rockin the house homie, top dps in every scenario." It was true, JB had come in at the top again with 21.4k dps. The bottom two DPSers continued to struggle, one improving to 14.2k dps, but the other falling under 10k dps.

Our third and last attempt showed we were getting tired. We started getting sloppy, with oozes reaching the raid and the mana voids taking longer to kill. We wiped again. The mage came close to beating out JB this time, but JB still topped the charts with 20.6k dps to the mage's 19.2k.

JB would not be leading the DPS charts in either the G1 or RG2, not even close. But that doesn't mean that JB can't crow a little at her oh so impressive showing in her first guild run Dragon Soul raid. JB is going to be back Sunday night. The performance of the DPS should be reviewed knowing that these are all alts, some of whom were coaxed into the raid even though they may have felt they weren't ready. That's ok, the G3 is really a learning raid, anyway.

JB stuck around for awhile wanting to get some elemental spec practice in the lfr, but couldn't get a fresh one to pop and finally gave up and went to bed.

Sunday Night's run is coming up ...

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Wednesday (12 Apr) - A Warmaster and a Spine

Wednesday (12 Apr) - A Warmaster and a Spine

If our RG2 raid had been as organized and prompt as we were for this week's raid, we would have long ago downed Deathwing. For some reason, the end of an expansion seems to galvanize the raid. We actually started early on Wednesday night. Everyone was eager to get moving.

In between the battles we learned that our esteemed raid leader, Bk, had just been to see the movie, "Titanic 3D." Some of the other male raiders thought that was worthy of giving him grief. "Theese eese velly funny to me," one raider said in vent. "I am having interesting thought about this and give heem sheet for going to womanly movie." A couple of other raiders wondered what the issue was. "It's a comedy, right? When that ship tilted and people started twanging off the superstructure, I laughed my butt off!" It went on for a bit more. Pretty funny stuff, and it didn't phase Bk at all. He admitted he'd seen the movie at least ten times. It's a great date movie, was his implication.

Later we took time out to congratulate guildies who had wrapped up a very difficult, time consuming guild achievement, "Stay Classy."  To get this achievement the guild has to have members who are of every race and class and every one of them has to be at least Honored with the guild. That works out to:

7 orcs (hunter, shaman, warrior, mage, rogue, warlock, death knight)
9 trolls (hunter, priest, shaman, death knight, warlock, mage, rogue, warrior druid)
8 blood elves (hunter, priest, warlock, death knight, mage, rogue, paladin, warrior)
7 tauren (druid, shaman, death knight, priest, hunter, warrior, paladin)
7 undead (mage, rogue, death knight, hunter, priest, warlock, warrior)
8 goblin (mage, rogue, death knight, shaman, priest, warlock, warrior, hunter)

The reward for getting the achievement is the unlocking of our 8th guild vault slot, the maximum number of slots allowed.

After activating the slot, we all wanted to fill it with the most useless stuff we could think of. Ok, it was funny at the time.

As for the raid on Wednesday night, we had a couple of bumps in the road, but for the most part it went extremely smoothly with only two wipes on the way to downing Morchok, Yor'sahj, Warlord, Hagara, and Ultraxion. This is where we finished last week's Wednesday run. Wild was out for last week's Thursday run, which the raid spent the evening working on the 6th boss, Warmaster Blackhorn. They didn't down him last week, and Wild is now back to help out this week.

Was there loot? Wild won an upgrade to his off-hand, replacing his i384 for the i397 version, raising his gear score to i393. He lost the roll for the i397 Tier 13 chest.

Thursday Night - The Warmaster Blackhorn encounter is one of the most difficult fights in Dragon Soul. The mechanics in normal mode are not that different from the lfr version, but normal mode is far more dangerous and some things that raiders can ignore in the lfr can get the raid killed normal mode.

The battle takes place onboard a flying ship. We assembled on the deck of the ship and the raid leader, Bk, talked strategy and made assignments. The battle began with elite mini-bosses leaping onto the ship. The two tanks picked them up and our DPSers attacked. A small purple swirl appeared on the deck near Wild, and Wild stepped into it, as did two other nearby raiders. A ball of dark purple lanced into the same spot and exploded. All of the raiders standing on it took damage, and that was a good thing. Those were attacks on the ship, and by raiders taking some of the damage, there was less damage done to the ship. Periodically a LARGE swirly forms, and the whole raid has to hustle into it. Damage from the big swirly (I think it's called Onslaught) hits the raid hard, but again, we have to minimize the damage being done to the ship. Meanwhile, flying trash mobs are also attacking, and ranged DPS are assigned to shoot them down.

On our first attempt we didn't pay enough attention to the swirlies, and paid for that when the ship took too much damage and came apart, sending us all to our deaths fall below. Warmaster Blackhorn hadn't even arrived yet.

Attempt #2 went better, but our priest healer went down, and then Wild went down trying to get her battle rezzed. Oops, another wipe. We cleared through all of the mini-mobs and flying mobs and got to Blackhorn on our third try. Note that Blackhorn's flying mount also sticks around and attacks after delivering Blackhorn to the ship. A ranged raider was assigned specifically to attack the mount and "encourage" the beast to flee. We nearly had Blackhorn, but Disrupting Roar complicated our healing and raiders weren't prepared for Shockwaves. We got Blackhorn to 5%, but wiped.

We got off to a bad start on our 4th try, recovered, and made a fight out of it, but wiped again. We got Blackhorn to 12% on our 5th try.

On our 6th attempt Blackhorn fell. This was the RG2's first kill of Blackhorn. The G1 raid had killed Blackhorn three weeks ago, I think, but since then have not been able to duplicate that feat. With this kill, we were even up in the friendly competition with G1. Well, with more than half the raiders participating in both raids (mains and alts), it's not that much of a competition, but both raids still want to be the first to get to the final encounter.

We then got ready for the 7th boss encounter, Spine of Deathwing. I've seen the video of the fight, and read up on the strategy, but I'll admit that the encounter made no sense to me. The fight is nothing like the lfr, and as either healer or DPS, nothing Wild or JB did in the lfr mattered in normal mode.

The walkthru that Bk took us through, though, using the deck of the flying ship as the "Spine," helped quite a bit to visualize what would happen when we made our jump from the ship to the back of the airborne Deathwing. That first jump was a nightmare. The air was full with the parachutes of our raiders, and we landed on the back on Deathwing in a confusing jumble. Four tentacles slashed about the air. The tanks and melee DPS moved to the attack, crowding the right side of Deathwing. Deathwing started to roll to the right. That's the signal for all of the ranged players, including the healers, to move to the left side of Deathwing's back to keep from falling off (actually, we should start moving as soon as the melee raiders do). You can guess what happened. We botched it, and several raiders, Wild included, were tossed off of Deathwing.

This kind of fight is trouble for Wild. I find it very hard see what I need to see on the black, light absorbing back of Deathwing. There are tentacles, and large mobs, and many small oozes, and cracks in Deathwing's armor that all meld together into a messy tapestry that Wild can't make any sense of.

Fortunately, Wild's role is fairly straightforward. Stay with the ranged group. Slide left when the melee move to the right, and visa versa. At the appropriate moment, move forward to the "corruption" but don't STAND in the corruption until the last possible moment. Standing in the corruption HURTS and does very high damage, but standing in the corruption also lets little tentacles latch onto our feet and hold us in place. During that part of the battle we WANT Deathwing to roll, because it will toss several nasty mobs off it's back that would otherwise decimate the raid. There's much more, and the DPS have a lot of things to do. The healing is incredibly intense with things like Fiery Grip and Searing Flames doing truly nasty damage across the raid and to targeted raiders.

We made four attempts, and on our fourth attempt got far enough to handle our first barrel roll to toss off some mobs - and for Wild to run out of mana despite Innervate and pots and careful use of Harmony. Our pally healer was already dead by then. Spine of Deathwing is one very challenging fight.

With the Blackhorn kill, the RG2 raid has downed six of eight Dragon Soul boss encounters. Hopefully, the 7th will come soon.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Wednesday (11 Apr) - This is not about Warcraft

Wednesday (11 Apr) - This is not about Warcraft

Perhaps it's a sign that World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion has gotten stale and, frankly, mostly uninteresting. Or perhaps it's because Baseball season is here and there is a convenient Major League ballpark twenty minutes away with seats reserved for the entire season. Or perhaps it's because the current retro project in progress is so much fun. Most likely, it's because of all of those things.

What is this all about? It's about discovering that I am going days without having anything much to say about Warcraft. Sure, Happy is still doing his thing with the Auction House. But he's always done that. What has changed, though, is that his alliance operative, Lost, barely checks the Auction House, usually only a couple of times a week, and then usually only when Happy is looking for something specific. The alliance family as a whole have retreated into obscurity. Wild still raids, so for at least two days a week there is something to talk about. JB does her lfr's, but there is little more to that than collecting valor points and hoping something of use will drop. Even then, she no longer scrambles to get them done right away, and has yet to bother doing them so far this week. Mists of Pandaria is coming, but before it does Diablo 3 will arrive. But neither are here, yet. This is the first time, for me, that an expansion has completely dried out before the next one was upon me. That is one major downside to the lfr. In Wrath, Wild worked to kill the Lich King right up to the day Cata was released. That goal consumed Wild. Wild has killed Cata's Deathwing uncountable times in the lfr. Yes, Wild wants a normal mode kill, too, but ... if it doesn't happen, it doesn't seem like the loss it would have been if Wild had failed to drop the Lich King.

Since there is so little Warcraft news, what is there to talk about? Well, there's Baseball. The San Diego Padres, my home team, has a 1-4 record in the very early going of the season. The season is 162 games long, you know, 81 of which are here in SD. I've been to three of those five games, all losses. The nights in SD are cold and windy right now. I love going, though, even when the Padres fans are outnumbered in their own park by their opponent, which was the case when the Dodgers were in town. I still love going. Parking is expensive ($20), so last night (Tuesday) I took the trolley for $5. The game went 11 innings and I didn't get home until 11:30pm. I still love going.

I am also spending a great deal of time on a personal project that's also related to baseball. It's also a lot about my past, too, since baseball has been a constant companion and passion of mine since I first discovered a love for it as a 13 year old at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Naval Base. I am a stats geek (can't you tell from my posts on dps and hps, etc?), and baseball is heaven to stats geeks - especially stats geeks who's greatest real life baseball exploits came on slowpitch softball diamonds. And yes, I have all my stats from those many seasons as well.

The project I am working on started out as a cleanup of a bunch of boxes full of old baseball stats sheets I'd created and kept all the way back to that 13 year old boy. Years and years of manual, painstakingly created seasons of baseball played first on paper, and later by computer, from the company Strat-o-Matic (SOM) Baseball. An earlier post covered the cleanup. What was left were the minimum necessary records to turn all of my paper seasons into computer records I could manipulate on a database. In those paper years, playing a full 162 game season with every team was a monumental task. I didn't have the patience for that, nor did I have enough friends to play that many teams. We settled for seasons of 20 or so games and usually 6-12 teams. When I couldn't coerce friends to join my leagues, I played multiple teams myself, sticking with short seasons so I could compile the stats and bask in all those numbers. My current goal is to recreate all those paper seasons and to turn those short seasons into full 162 game seasons. A further goal that is waiting it's turn is to take on all of the Sporting News (TSN) online seasons that I played in, beginning back in 2005. I'll probably start to tie those in once TSN turns over the online game to SOM. I intend to get back into online baseball once that happens.

Speaking of online baseball, there was once a young fellow (well, younger than he is now ;-)  ) who played TSN online baseball as well as Warcraft. Skinnemuva posted this:

"skinnemuva
Rookie

Joined: 11 Apr 2007
Posts: 224

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Display at Top Great stuff 11 Apr 2007 19:03     Send private message Reply with quote
I just got done going through the last three or four pages of this over the last week or so at work (the best time to read Very Happy ). I loved it. I have a 59 NE Druid that is balance as well.

I am almost to 60, but have been holding out because at 59 you really dominate the PVP battle grounds as a balance druid. You should really give them a try. Most people in my guild have been reluctant to try as well, but I have got a few of them to come with me and they have since converted. You won't be disappointed!"

That was posted on 11 April, 2007 - a five year anniversary of sorts, today being 11 April, 2012. And what a strange coincidence this is, since I didn't know that date was skinnemuva's first post on my forum blog until I looked it up thirty minutes ago.

Despite the claim of not liking baseball, here was skinnemuva on a baseball forum site. One day we'll see a ball game together, or at the very least compete in a SOM online baseball season. Stranger things have happened. After all, I once thought Wild would never, ever pvp. Look how that turned out.  

My digging about the past through my old baseball seasons turned up other memories about my days as a computer programmer, and some of the really, really old computers I once used. Remember the Atari? I created a boxing game on that thing using cassette tapes for storage. True.

I've strayed from the original discussion, but that is probably a relief for the readers. Better hope the Wild Family finds more to do in game or we'll all be subject to more of this. Carry on.

PS - Hmm, maybe next I should look up msheaf1's first stumble upon my old TSN forum blog.  ;-)

Monday, April 9, 2012

Weekend (8 Apr) - Snore Fest

Weekend (8 Apr) - Snore Fest

Much of the weekend was taken up with baseball, but various members of the Wild family did try to find some time to get in game.

JB's gear has reached a stagnant point where new gear just isn't dropping for her. She has been pretty much stuck at i384 (enhancement spec) and i379 (elemental spec) for some time now. Her most recent gear acquisitions has come for the elemental spec, replacing her i377 pvp chest piece with a valor point purchased i397. JB had enchants for all of her gear, but much of it was not top tier enchants. With some help from Wild on enchants, JB spent her flower farming money on the best enchants for both of her specs. Some of those enchants cost over a 1,000 gold in mats, and that bit deeply into JB's pockets. The crazy up and down market for herbs, though, has been very good for her. JB also acquired the expertise of AskMrRobot, the website that offers excellent reforging guidance, to fine tune her stats. JB may try a few HoT runs this weekend to fill in where she can still use i378 gear, specifically trinkets. Update: Sadly, JB never got the chance.

Happy has decided that he needs a better outfit than his ratty, smelly,  warrior gear. Naithipe once quipped that Happy should have been renamed Goofy after his transformation into a short stump of a goblin with ears that have the wingspan of a small dragon. His puke green skin doesn't encourage walking about sans shirt, either. Happy has in mind business attire with a sharp hat. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Time is going to have to be found for Philly. Poor DB is going to have to go back to pve if he can't find a killing partner for his battlegrounds. I'm not sure if Philly will ever be ready for rated BGs, though. Update: A thoroughly disappointing weekend for Philly. She never got in game.

Wild won't likely have much to do over the weekend. Wild usually goes fishing on slow weekends, but JB has taken on that role so she can get a chance at a fishing hat or other fishing tackle, most of which Wild already has.

Maybe I'll take another shot at getting the Mists of Pandaria beta installed again.

Then again ... Yawnnnnnnnn ... maybe I'll just go take a nap.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Wednesday (4 Apr) - Blade Magnet

Wednesday (4 Apr) - Blade Magnet

I'm not sure how it happened, but Wild keeps getting stuck with weapons. Yes, having steel thrust at him (not to mention claws, hammers, axes, swords, daggers, polearms, etc) is just part of the business of war, but that's not what Wild meant. When Wild hung up his pre-Dragon Soul mace for the i390 Maw, Wild was excited because it was the best weapon he could get short of running normal mode DS. The Maw served Wild very well. The guild started running Dragon Soul, and eventually Wild got his first i397 weapon, [Vagaries of Time]. Wild loves the look of the Vagaries mace, with it's rotating, cogged wheels. Technically, the Maw was still the better weapon, because of a healing proc that was far more powerful than just about any other weapon proc out there. Wild didn't care, he wanted to use his new mace, and justified it by saying that the additional haste and mastery compensated for the Maw's uber proc.

In Wednesday night's raid yet another i397 weapon dropped: [Scalpel of Unrelenting Agony]. The base stats were the same as those of the Vagaries mace, but the secondary stats included spirit instead of crit, which was a modest improvement. Wild rolled on it, as did some others. When we sorted out who really wanted it, though, everyone was kind of, like, Eh. The shaman and priest healers had the Maw, and they would not part with that healing proc. We had a guildie running his moonkin in a raid for the first time, and he was using an i378 staff. When Wild offered the dagger to him, he said no, because he "wasn't that serious" about his moonkin spec. Wild ended up with the dagger. That moonkin, by the way, ended up getting four i397 pieces of gear - a wealth of druid gear that Wild already had. The dagger was all Wild walked away with. Unfortunately, Wild missed a critical flaw in the dagger. It had no socket. The Vagaries mace did. Sigh. The good news, though, is that Wild's pick up of the dagger didn't hurt him in rolling on later gear - since nothing else dropped that Wild could use. Plus, the dagger is one of the best looking daggers I've seen, and when Wild gets tired of the rotating cogs on his Vagaries, he can use the dagger for a transmog.

The raid itself was one of the RG2's best ever. Wild wasn't supposed to be in the raid, of course. We are going to be at the opening day of the baseball season here in San Diego Thursday night, so Wild won't be available. Usually the raid leader, Bk, wants to have a group that can make both nights, so Wild was in game on Wednesday only in case Bk was short on healers. He was, and Wild got the invite.

We smashed through Morchok so easily Bk figures that next week we can drop to two healers and add a DPS to speed the fight up even more. Wild was so bored he offered to take the explosions (three raiders must absorb them when they pop up) so that the DPS could keep whaling away.

The Yor'sahj fight want just as quickly, and in no time at all we were at the third boss, the Warlord. This one always takes us several tries, and it's so frustrating because it shouldn't be that rough. Bk offered a challenge - bring him down on our first try.

We might have done it, but we got a bounce where the ball went at complete right angles to the direction it should have gone. Someone might have been out of place, but however it happened, the tank and melee had a long run and despite some rather ingenious attempts to redirect it, we ended up wiping. It was a Fail on our challenge.

We more than made up for it on our second attempt, when, ahem, Wild saved the day. Wild was tank healing, and well into the fight the melee and ranged got tangled up too close to each other. When that happens the raid, and the tank in particular, really take some horrendous damage from that ping-ponging ball. The raid leader told Wild later that he almost called for us to just wipe it up and start again, but when the tank failed to die, we recovered and went back to work. Wild did some crazy healing on that tank. We killed the Warlord on our second try, the first time we'd done that, and a great confidence builder.

There was a guildie in game who was doing her rogue quest chain, so we took a break after the third boss, invited her into the raid, and she went to pickpocket Hagara. She failed the first time and Hagara killed her, but got her quest done successfully the second time around. The raid then turned our own sights on Hagara, and killed him on our first attempt.

Shockingly, we still had enough time left to go after the fifth boss, Ultraxion, and his army of dragons. We've spent entire evenings on Ultraxion and the trash mobs. On this night we cleared all of the dragons without a wipe. And then we killed Ultraxion on our first attempt. Five bosses down on our first night.

We even made two attempts on the sixth boss, Warmaster Blackhorn and the flying ship, getting in some additional practice. It was quite a night.

Wild really, REALLY, wishes he could be there Thursday night. Warmaster Blackhorn is definitely going to go down.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Monday (2 Apr) - I'm Going to Regret This

Monday (2 Apr) - I'm Going to Regret This

Priests have too many procs! The other day Wild helped out a druid guildie who wanted to learn to heal. After half an hour she said her head was esploding. I simplified things down for her, and helped her set up and monitor the four key things she needed to do and watch for: lifebloom stacks, swiftmend on cooldown, wild growth on cooldown, keep the Harmony proc active. Keep up with those four things and you've got all the basics.

I started laying out the same things for Philly, and I ended up with a whole page full of stuff. Priests have more spells that proc more "stuff" than I ever remember I was supposed to keep track of. Procs like Weakened Soul, Grace, Renewed Hope, Divine Aegis, Inspiration, Borrowed Time ... and every one requires Philly to react and do something. Or not do something. Or prepare to do something. And that doesn't even count all the spells. My head is esploding.

Philly is going to keep banging away, at least for awhile.

Where has my week gone? On Sunday night JB suddenly realized she hadn't done her two lfr DS runs for the week! It was already late, but she caught a break and picked up a just starting Siege with only 12 minute wait. The group was as good as any random bunch of raiders JB has been in. She was in elemental spec hoping to pick up some gear. The raid raced through all four bosses with hardly a death and not a single wipe or miscue. When the fourth boss, Hagara, lay dead the raid leader applauded us. Applauded! 

JB was also fortunate on the gear front, replacing two i378 pieces with i384s. JB has a new belt, [Girdle of Shattered Stone] and a pair of bracers, [Grotesquely Writhing Bracers]. Her elemental gear level is up to i377.

It was late Monday night when JB was next able to get in game.She queued for fall of Deathwing and was ten minutes into the wait when one of JB's guildies started up a dungeon run to help some other guildies with gear and asked JB to join them. JB switched over to enhancement spec to speed up the run, and we had a good time cleaning out the place. Then it was back to elemental spec and the lfr queue. Eventually JB got her run in and her valor points, although she came up dry on gear.

It's another long maintenance day on Tuesday . . .

JB has 3000 VPs to spend, but can't decide what to spend them on for her elemental spec. The tier equivalent gear is okay, although I hate to spend points on them knowing that the god of rng will hand JB her tier piece from the lfr once she spends those VPs. But the non-tier equivalent stuff - necklace, rings, etc - are loaded with stats like crit and haste that just don't help JB as much as she'd like. I'm pretty sure she's going to end up spending 2200 of those VPs to replace the last pvp piece she's still wearing - her i377 chest piece.

This week is the beginning of the Major League Baseball season. I am planning on catching three games this week starting Tuesday night. I set a goal to go to at least twenty games this season. That would double the number of games I've gone to over the years. I've mostly lived where there are no major league teams. Here in San Diego, and two years in Cleveland, are the only places I've ever lived that had teams. And, weirdly, I never went to a Cleveland Indians game. But, I've gone to games in Baltimore, Detroit, and Yuma.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Weekend (1 Apr) - Let's Hunt Some Alliance

Weekend (1 Apr) - Let's Hunt Some Alliance

Philly went all in this weekend to see if her heart was really into this pvp thing. Very late on Friday night she got into three battlegrounds: Alterac Valley (AV), Eye of the Storm (EoS), and Sands of Time (Sands). AV was the only one where Philly sort of remembered where to go and what to do, but Philly wasn't too worried about that. Mostly, Philly needed practice. Practice remembering what her spells did; practice remembering what buttons cast what spells; and practice casting those spells in something more organized than random pounding on the keyboard.

It was frustrating to have to virtually start over learning how to play a priest again. At least she had time to play around with things. In AV the Alliance were in complete disarray, and even with Philly standing around trying to remember what button to push while battle surged all around her, she only died once and finished a respectable fifth in total healing.

The EoS match was utter chaos as neither side seemed to have a clue. Philly knew enough to try to capture/protect our bases, but nearly all of the battles took place on open roads. Neither side ever captured more than two bases at any given time, so the battle proceeded at a glacial pace. Among the healers were two really good ones, followed by Philly a distant third, and then some not-so-good after Philly. Forced to mix it up on the open roads, and later going one on one with random alliance attacking Philly's solo held base, she died 11 times. The Horde still won, as we sucked just a little less bad than they did.

Philly didn't know what she was doing in Sands, but her healing kept improving and she finished second, dying just twice. We lost, though.

Philly took a break to assess how she was doing and tinker a little with her UI. Then called it a night.

Saturday Morning - Philly did another AV and a Strand in the morning. Horde won the AV with Philly finishing third in healing. Alliance attention to Philly became a real pain, though. Philly started hammering back at the alliance that focused on her. Philly's mana can't support offense and defense both. She died six times.

Philly still needs to integrate all the other spells in her arsenal. I feel like I'm fighting handicapped. In the Strand battle, we were badly out performed and much of the fight that Philly saw was right around our graveyard. Philly died eight times to zealous alliance who delighted in hunting down the priest. Philly paid a few of them back, getting 10 HKs and even one KB. Philly led all healers by a wide margin, but that was because our group was under constant and merciless attack.

Reading back over this, it would seem that Philly has made dramatic jumps in her healing over a short period. I think it's just luck. I don't feel at all comfortable out there, and Philly is particularly defenseless in direct encounters.

Right now Philly feels more inclined to kill things than heal them, and is going to switch to shadow spec for the next round of BGs to see how that feels.

Philly started her BG run at 48% of the way to level 83 and with 511 honor points. She is now at 77% and 1208 HPs.

Saturday Evening - Philly flipped her spec and went shadow for the next six  BGs. Philly had a blast whaling away at the Alliance from the Strand to Warsong Gulch and finally to a last Alterac Valley. Unfortunately, Philly's DPS was quite forgettable and the Horde lost four of those games. As much as Philly liked DPSing with her priest, it was pretty clear that, at least at this stage of experience, level and gear, Philly really sucked at DPS.

Philly decided to go one more round against the Alliance, and flipped back to healing. Philly got her first Arathi Basin of the evening. We crushed them, at one point winning four bases to their one. Philly was second overall in healing, and felt a little bit better with her spell casting.

Philly now has 1681 HPs, three times what she started with. Oh, and she DINGED! to level 83.  :-) 

Thursday (29 Mar) - The Mushroom Strategy

Thursday (29 Mar) - The Mushroom Strategy

The Wild Family thought they had sucked DB deep enough into the pve world of dungeons and elite monsters that the sorcerous mage would surely soon be signing up for raids. Ahh, but the enticement of the pvp battlegrounds and raining arcane death upon the opposing faction was just too delicious to resist. DB has regaled us recently with his battleground exploits and growing piles of kills and gear to raise the mountain of corpses ever higher.

And now, it seems, it may be that DB is pulling a Wild family member, Philly, back into the world of pvp. Philly is level 82, about halfway to level 83. It would take some effort to level up to 85. Philly's main spec is currently shadow priest, but for pvp she would much prefer the disc healing spec, which is her off-spec. Philly once thought she would become a holy priest as a pve dungeon runner and raider, but it turned out that JB slipped in ahead of her in raiding priority.

Philly may still get her chance at pvp. Wild sewed her some new clothes, six pieces of Frostsavage pvp gear. It's modest gear, to be sure, but the good stuff won't come until she reaches level 85. She'd better get to working on it, though. With Mists of Pandaria and even Diablo 3 on the horizon, time will start to get very thin.

The RG2 raid Thursday night started with Ultraxion. Our makeup was the same as Wednesday night, except that our young druid healer was not able to make it. Raid leader Bd, usually on his tank, swapped over to his shaman healer for the evening. Every time I see that shaman healer in action, I wonder if it might be better for JB to change his elemental off-spec to healing. Wild is hard pressed to keep up with Bd's shaman. We'll see.

Along those same lines, there was a mild rift at the end of the raid on Wednesday night. Sb, who has three raiding toons, generally tanks with RG2. He is also the player who started up and is running the new third raid, G3, on Saturday and Sunday. Last weekend was the first full, two day run for G3. The week before the RG2 raid did not run, so Wild signed up for and got to run with the new G3 (as did a few other RG2 raiders who wanted their raiding fix). After the RG2 raid on Wednesday, Sb asked to speak to the raid about his new raid. Sb, like any raid leader, wants to build a group of regular raiders to fill his raid. He had noted that a few of the guildies who had participated in the G3 raid were running in the RG2 raid. From Wild's perspective, that was kind of a "duh" moment. I doubt any of the RG2 raiders planned to permanently switch to G3, and even Sb had no intentions of moving his RG2 tank to G3. Still, Sb wanted to get a clearer idea of what toons were going to commit to the G3. That will sort itself out, I'm sure. Wild is staying with RG2. My Sat/Sun availability isn't steady enough to be a regular raider on those days. I will likely make JB available when I can, but they currently have plenty of interested DPSers; it's healers they need. JB will be taking a hard look at her off-spec. It's not too late to switch from elemental to resto, although elemental is a lot of fun.

The raid was in a good mood Thursday night. The rogue got his usual ribbing, but not nearly so often as on Wednesday night. Lady Hunter made a rare appearance. It was nice to see her in a raid, and we definitely could use her to beef up our ranged DPSers. It took us three tries to clear the dragon trash for Ultraxion, but it didn't take that long and we seemed to have found the right approach to making that successful.

The Ultraxion battle is a case of highs and lows for Wild. The battle starts with bang as we try to maximize the damage to Ultraxion before the dragon starts to wind up his really nasty stuff. Wild got to DPS during that first phase, as usual. Wild added a new attack to his normal Insect Swarm DoT and Wrath spam. Druids have a spell called Wild Mushrooms. It's really part of the arsenal of moonkin druids, and I mostly forget about them when healing. It's not a moonkin only spell, though, and Wild decided to add it to his attacks on Ultraxion.

Wild mushrooms work like mines with a remote detonator. Wild can use up to three mushrooms. Wild placed each of his mushrooms in a tight group in the spot where Ultraxion is fought. If this were a pvp battle, the mushrooms would be invisible to the opposing faction. Wild wasn't sure if the raid could see them or not, but that was quickly determined. "I see mushrooms," someone intoned, speaking like the kid in The Sixth Sense when he said, "I see dead people." Once the battle was joined Wild detonated his mushrooms and ramped up the rest of his assault. And yes, Wild waited long enough to be absolutely sure he didn't detonate them early. Wild wanted no "Fan of Knives" moment with his mushrooms.

After that first assault, the fight becomes one of attrition and tight attention. The raid stays in one spot, never moving. There is little room for error, but it can also be a little boring, sort of like the frog in the simmering pot. Ultraxion's attack grows slowly, but ever more deadly. The DPS have only one task - pour on the damage with everything they have, all the time. The tanks play a game of taunt the dragon that must be played perfectly or the raid dies. For the healers, well, I loved Bd's advice to the DPSers. "Don't worry about anything other than hitting the Twilight button when told to and keep the DPS coming. The healers are the ones peeing in their pants."

By the time Ultraxion has ramped up to full ferocity, the healers could find themselves in all out panic mode keeping raiders alive. There is an urgency that can cause the healers to rush things, over-heal and get into mana issues, or even miss their Twilight button, but that can't be allowed to happen. The incoming damage grows exponentially, and it follows that so does the healing, but the pace of the fight itself never changes. So don't get ahead of ourselves.

On our fourth attempt Ultraxion died. Wild was so focused he kept healing for several moments even after the dragon fell. Now that's concentration. Wild also proudly points to his mushrooms as the deciding factor.  ;-)

We didn't have much time left, but did take two shots at Warmaster Blackhorn (on the flying ship). We go from an encounter with no movement at all to one where standing in one spot will get you killed. We crashed the ship both times, and most of our time went into discussing the fight, but it was fun and with the practice we'll be better prepared for next week. Sb won his first raid drop for his tank after four weeks of raiding. It was just a ring, but he was delighted to get anything at all. May the gods of RNG (random number generator) favor us all next week.