Weekend (26 Feb) - Saturday Night's NOT All Right for Fighting

Weekend (26 Feb) - Saturday Night's NOT All Right for Fighting

It was amateur weekend. Wild and JB suffered through some of the worst lfr Dragon Soul raids I've ever had the misfortune to be a part of.

It didn't help that JB was trying to improve on his elemental DPS, and that Wild had been asked to consider making his moonkin spec raid ready. More on that later.

Queue times weren't too bad, even when queuing up as a DPS, but the raiders that filled those raids had no clue what they were doing. A sampling of the disasters:

* Wild queued into a raid that hadn't waited for everyone to arrive. The staging area for Yor'sahj had already been overrun by oozes and Wild was parachuted right into the middle of them. Dead on arrival. Nasty wipe.

* On another Yor'sahj adventure there were three straight wipes despite a desperate raid leader trying to give instructions to players who paid him no attention at all.

* Twice the raid queue went wacko, dumping Wild out of the raid and then handing Wild a "Deserter" tag despite the fact that Wild had never left the raid.

* JB had similar foibles. In a raid group on the final boss encounter, Madness of Deathwing, one of the healers thought it diabolically funny to start the fight before anyone was ready. He claimed it a mistake. Then did it again on our second attempt. He was kicked and reported.

* Raids falling apart were the norm. JB and Wild are patient raiders, willing to work around problems and help as needed. At least twice that I recall I simply quit raids that even I could tell were going nowhere.

The icing on the cake, for Wild, was when a good thing became a sad thing. In Fall of Deathwing Wild was having his usual unlucky night with drops. Wild needs Tier gloves and shoulders to complete the set, and just one of them to get his Tier 13 4 piece set bonus. The shoulders dropped, but Wild did not win them. The gloves also dropped, and Wild didn't win them, either. However, the player that did win them offered them up for trade. Wild whispered the player, letting him know I was interested and should something he wanted come Wild's way, a trade could be made. When we finished off the run, though, I figured he would be long gone. Not so. The player found Wild and traded him the gloves for free. Another player had wanted the gloves, too, but had made some caustic remarks earlier in the run, and the guy said there was no way he would give him those gloves.

Wild now had four pieces of T13 lfr gear, and his 4pc set bonus. The catch? Well, the lfr resto gloves are i384, and the secondary stats on the gloves do not have haste. The T13 moonkin gloves that Wild was currently wearing came from BH and are i397. It also has 245 haste. When Wild did the math, he learned he was better off using the i397 moonkin gloves than the new resto gloves. Wild just can't win.

Wild and Bd have been talking off and on about getting a moonkin into our raid. Moonkins bring a 5% haste buff to the raid, and are particularly good against some boss encounters - such as the Warlord, where we are currently stuck at. The feral druid, Wy, has a moonkin offspec, which is a possibility, but her cat DPS is so good we'd hate to lose it. Not to mention that her moonkin gear would have to be greatly improved. We wouldn't normally even consider Wild, as Wild is our best healer. However, the other healers have made a lot of progress, to the point that we felt that they and a good fill in could do the healing job without Wild.

Wild seemed to be the best choice, if we decided to test it out. So, for the past two days I've been modernizing my rusty moonkin spec. Gear wasn't an issue. Resto and moonkin specs can largely share the same gear. As a moonkin, I have way more spirit than needed for the spell hit cap, which I can't change without hurting the resto spec. Other than that, the gear was good, including three lfr tier pieces. Glyphs, addons, and spell management took some effort. When Wild started, his baseline DPS was at 16k. That would barely get him into the raid, and wouldn't beat our lowest DPSer. With practice, Wild is now up to just over 19k dps on the target dummy. I'd hoped to get some moonkin practice in the lfr, but with all the mess of the weekend it just got too hard to get my Wild and JB valor points for the week and play with off-specs. If Wild feels up to it I will run as moonkin in the lfr after the Tuesday reset, and before the Wednesday raid.

JB won no drops at all. JB had her positive moments, although even they were slightly tainted by the army of rookies that descended on the lfr this weekend. JB put up her best DPS numbers to date in a Fall of Deathwing run where her overall dps finished 9th among the 17 DPSers, delivering 26.9k dps. The pic below shows the numbers, and I am also posting the numbers for each boss encounter. Each encounter has to be taken separately because boss mechanics greatly affect the amount of DPS being done. In other words, don't feel too wowed by JB's 26k dps - the #1 DPSer did 43k dps. JB was still very happy to finish in the top ten.

Overall DPS Bosses 5-8 Dragon Soul

The Flying Boat Encounter

Ultraxion Encounter

Spine of Deathwing Encounter

Madness of Deathwing Encounter

The boss encounter order is a little out of sync due to a really irritating problem with moving images around. The correct order should be: Ultraxion, Flying Boat, Spine, and Madness.

Wednesday (23 Feb) - Been There, Done That

Wednesday (23 Feb) - Been There, Done That

[PS - Thursday is also included, see below]

The "two steps forward, one step back" process is well underway in the RG2 guild raid group. We have a pretty stable eight regulars now, and all eight were in game and ready to raid at our 6:30pm start time. Even better, we filled the raid by 6:45pm with a solid feral druid who has raided with us before, and a "new" guildie rogue, Fh, who had left the game back in the MM guild days (before the split that created the current MM2). Fh has been working to get both his mage main and his rogue alt back up to current raiding levels and, needing another melee, we gave him a chance.

We plowed through Morchok. He dropped [Vagaries of Time], an i397 caster mace that Wild desperately wanted to replace his i390 lfr mace. I'd never seen it drop before. As a caster mace I could only roll for it as off-spec. Wild rolled a 17. There was a moment when it looked like no one else was going to roll for it. Then the feral druid rolled, also for off-spec. She rolled a 42. Groan. Wild dragged his feet into the chamber of Yor'sahj the Unsleeping, still thinking about his lost mace.

Here we stumbled a bit when, for the second week in a row, we had trouble with healing assignments. When Vl took over the raid leader position (with the approval of the former raid leader, who had been lost to us for weeks with RL issues), she gave Wild the job of making healing assignments. It's not a hard task, and Wild is pretty consistent in setting them up for both trash work and bosses. The problems first started to crop up when Vl (who is also a healer) wanted to tank heal instead of her usual raid healing role. As the healing leader Wild took a good look at Vl's healing and was stunned by her choice of spells and the poor results from those choices. Wild and Vl had two separate sessions in game talking healing. Vl was very receptive, the healing improved, and Wild gave her a chance to tank heal. When Bd returned, Vl remained the raid leader and Bd became the lead tank and strategist. What then happened, which we probably should have seen coming, is that Vl, Wild, and Bd had differing thoughts about who was healing who.

On Wednesday night, Wild made assignments as usual. We were at the tentacle and eyeball trash around Yor. Last week Pl had been the tank healer for the trash, and she got that assignment again from Wild. Pl never saw that assignment because she hadn't joined the special tank/healer channel where such instructions were given. That first trash pull was very ugly - a tank without a healer is a sad thing. We got through it, and cleared the rest of the trash.

Wild set up healing assignments for the boss, but Vl had other thoughts. No sooner had we agreed than Bd weighed in, giving different directions, having not seen the assignments Wild made. He and Vl went off to talk privately. When they came back they agreed with the original assignments Wild had made. In a whisper Vl relayed that she and Bd had gotten confused about changes in assignments from week to week and wanted to stay consistent to avoid confusion. Duh. Wild wanted that, too. But it wasn't Wild who kept changing things. I consistently made assignments based on the prior week's assignments, as modified by Vl and Bd when THEY changed things. This is way too much like a real job. :P 

Anyway, we killed Yor on our third attempt and moved on to our nemesis, Warlord Zon'ozz. Vl had been the main tank healer for both Morchok and Yor, and the tank, Bd, whispered Wild letting me know that he was very pleased with the improvements that had been made. Wild had noted it, too, as her overall healing was now at the same level as Wild and Pl, plus her spell choices had gotten way, way, better.

Our problem with Warlord this week was the melee. Vl did a great job keeping the tank up, with backup from Wild. Wild handled the ranged raiders, and we got pretty good at intercepting that ball and collapsing on the boss right on queue. We were also much improved in getting dispels done quickly. Wild was popping his cooldowns on every phase to keep folks alive, and we were gaining confidence.

The melee, though. Like last week, timing when to get out of the way continued to be problematic. We had made it worse by including the new rogue in our raid. He's a good guy and worked hard to learn the ropes, but he had a long, steep learning curve to overcome, and he was getting us killed on attempt after attempt.

We were able to get in five attempts. The progress we've made was very visible, and I think we are close to really jelling on this fight.

Thursday - Wildshard Speaks

The RG2 raid got our obligatory eight raiders in game on time, but the final two who had joined us on Wednesday could not make it on Thursday. We did get a break when DK Ct joined us. He is one of the best DPSers in the guild but is usually in the G1 raid. We got him for this night. Our tenth was a rogue replacing the rogue from Wednesday. The situation was pretty much the same, though. The rogue had just joined the guild, and had no DS experience beyond the lfr.

There were no issues with the healing assignments at the beginning of the night. We stayed with the makeup from the night before - Vl tank healing, Pl melee group healing, and Wild ranged group healing.

The three attempts at the start proved that we had many parts of the fight well in hand. Ranged and melee movement was much better, dispels were getting done quickly, and overall the fights went much smoother. We were still wiping, however. By the third dark phase the healers were having a great deal of trouble keeping raiders alive. We began tinkering with our approach, trying to find some magic. We set specific orders for use of our big AoE heals: Tranquility and Tree of Life for the two druid healers, and Light Well and Divine Hymn for the priest. We even tried to work in a Tranquility from the feral druid - her cooldown was 8 minutes vs the healers 3 minutes ... but we tried it anyway.

In order to properly time the right spells at the right time in the right phases, call outs on vent became important. Silent Wild, who does not talk on vent, had a problem.

Microphones are not my favorite thing, as anyone who has ever run with Wild knows. Whether reason or excuse, talking in vent is a distraction that causes more issues than it solves. The old mike is trotted out now and again, but is never used, and soon finds it's way back into a box on a shelf. Headphones are also an issue, but that has a more rational root. I have severe tinnitus, which causes loud and often constant high pitched ringing in the ear. Covering or filling my ears with headphones or earbuds makes the tinnitus much worse, to the point I can't hear clearly. I also don't like to be tethered to a cable, which both headphones and mikes usually have.

I'll cut to the chase. On Tuesday I bought a wireless headset with an attached mike. I wanted a wireless gaming mike without the headset, but that apparently doesn't exist. I had expected that I could wrap the headset around my neck and just use the mike, but doggone it, the setup forced all sound into the headset instead of the external speakers. To use the mike, I had to be able to hear sound from the headset. Another dead end.

We made three more attempts, but seemed to be slipping backwards, not moving forward. Sensing frustration, we called for a break. Wild decided it was time to shake things up. I managed to figure a way to perch the headset above my ears, but still close enough to hear (with the volume up pretty high). It was still distracting, but it was workable. I didn't know who was still listening in on vent during the break, but I keyed the mike and said, "Can anyone hear me?"

No one from Wild's cabal was listening. The mage, who did not know Wild's mikeless history, did hear me, giving me a thumbs up that the mike was working.

Everyone came back from the break, and we started tweaking the healing again, trying to find that perfect plan. When talk turned to the call outs, Wild typed in raid chat that Wild would be doing his own call outs. I got a lot of Huh? What do you mean? kind of comments and the chat on vent threatened to drown me out when I keyed the mike. "Hey." That's all I said, but one would have thought that single word had come directly from Heaven. Vent went silent. "Who is that?" someone asked. "WILD!" Lady Hunter yelled. For the next five minutes the only thing on anyone's mind was getting Wild to say something in vent. Lady Hunter declared that she has known Wild for five years and never once heard me say a single word. Which was true.

Wild was quite the celebrity for awhile, but eventually we got back to the task at hand. Wild will not be any kind of chatterbox, I warned everyone, and I still find the headset uncomfortable. The genie can't be put back in the bottle, though. I'm still hoping to find a way to activate the external speakers so that I don't have to wear that headset.

After the break we made five more attempts. We did swap healing roles, at the request of Vl. She felt she was struggling too hard trying to keep the tank alive. Wild swapped roles with her, taking over the tank healing. I would much rather be in the ranged group instead of with the melee, but once Wild got settled it did work out better. They were solid efforts, and we were consistently getting into the third dark phase and pushing the boss down to an even 50% health. But there we stuck, unable to make further progress. 

The healing numbers were the highest we had achieved yet, and all three were pushing 16-18k hps. The DPS stepped it up as well. Ct and our hunter Gv topped 27k dps, the new rogue did 25k, and no DPSer was below 18k.

At this point we're hoping that persistence and practice will ultimately tilt the fight in our favor. We are running out of ideas.

Tuesday - (21 Feb) Kick Me

Tuesday - (21 Feb) Kick Me

Well. JB took her elemental spec into the LFR on Tuesday. JB's gear score is i373, and her dps is admittedly still pretty low given that the minimum gear score is i372. The four bosses in the Siege of Deathwing are not too terribly difficult, though, and JB did fine. JB's luck with drops remained stinky. JB needs better rings, and the lfr was happy to oblige. Three +int rings dropped over the course of the run, but JB won none of them. The only piece she did win was the T13 gloves. She already has T13 gloves for BOTH elemental and enhancement specs. Now she had a third pair. JB offered to trade the gloves for a ring, but nobody wanted them. JB wound up bringing them home. She exchanged the token for the T13 healing gloves and dropped them in the bank. Maybe one day she'll respec to healing.

The second half lfr, Fall of Deathwing, really sucked. First of all, JB had to wait twenty minutes in the queue to get a raid. Second, the raid had already downed the first boss, Ultraxion. JB didn't want to wait another 20 minutes for another group, so she accepted the invite.

The second encounter was the battle on the ship, and that went fine. JB's dps was low - well, it was at the bottom, at around 15k dps. JB was doing the best she could, though.

It was the third encounter, on the Spine of Deathwing, where things went very bad. JB has done this fight several times as melee. Target changes occur often in this fight, and JB always has a little trouble with that. Worse, dps targets are often not the same target that the tank is on, which further confuses JB. As melee, though, she managed to be hitting the right target most of the time, ran away when required, and otherwise stayed close to the main body of the raid.

JB the elemental has had to work at it to stay back and attack at range. That was on her mind as the battle on the Spine began. Everything seemed to be going fine, and then it wasn't going well at all. I don't know what I did wrong, frankly, but it was pretty clear that JB was the cause of our wipe,  when the raid leader makes the comment, "I can't believe that shaman single-handedly caused us to wipe."  That was followed by "everyone vote yes to kick jezzi." 

Somebody gets kicked in almost every lfr. It happens, sometimes with good reason and sometimes not. It was certainly justified this time, I suspect. JB felt a little naughty about seeing her name in raid chat in that context. I wiped a whole raid by myself?

After being dumped from the raid, I went to check on the strategy for the fight. I read three versions, and I'm sorry to say I still don't understand what is happening and what JB should be doing.

One strategy says to Mark one tentacle to be killed. Another strategy says to Mark one tentacle NOT to be killed. Frankly, in the lfr nothing gets Marked for anything. There are things called amalgamations that spawn from dead tentacles. These you apparently don't kill until they reach nine stacks of something. There are bloods (I'm guessing that those are the oozes that clamber around). Then there are tendons, which I'm not sure if that is a special tentacle or something completely different. Then there is barrel rolls and puddles and plates and ...

I'm really confused. I thought dps was pretty simple. Just tell me what I should be killing and when. I have been re-reading the strategies to try and get a better sense of what is going on, and how to quickly target the many different mobs that spawn, and when to kill them and when not to and where to stand, etc... sigh. Wild never had a problem healing this fight. DPS is a lot harder than I thought.

Weekend - (19 Feb) JB Dominates the Weekend, Again

Weekend - (19 Feb) JB Dominates the Weekend, Again

Friday - Building a Spec

Now that JB has gotten her Raider rank with the guild as an enhancement shaman, she has been putting a lot more effort into getting her elemental spec up to speed.

There are three "recommended" specs for elemental shaman, but JB wasn't sure which she should use. Bd has a raiding elemental shaman alt (Br) that seems to do well, so JB patterned her talent spec after Br. She began her off-spec aspirations as a pvp healer, and had originally decked herself out in the best "off the rack" (ie, the crafted Vicious set) pvp gear. Now, her task was to rid herself of that gear and replace it with pve gear of equal or better quality. At the same time, JB was working with Wild and Philly to get her enchants, gems, and glyphs together.

As of Friday, JB had reduced her pvp gear to four pieces, and had an equipped gear score of i365. JB is spell hit capped at 17%.

Once she was ok with the state of her gear (at least for the moment), she had to take on the bigger issue - learning how to be an elemental shaman.

Doing some research, JB was pleased to discover that the spell priorities were fewer and simpler than those JB contends with as enhancement. Spell priorities work like this: Searing totem, Flame Shock, Lava Burst (on cd), Earth Shock (with Fulmination), and Lightning Bolt (filler). These five spells make up all of JB's single target attack. There are two procs that JB has to watch for, and JB has to ensure that the Flame Shock DoT and the Searing totem are always active. And that's it. AoE attacks against multiple targets are pretty simple as well. Finally, elemental shaman like to open a boss fight with a Fire Elemental. Fire elementals get all their spell power from the shaman at the point it is called, so all cooldowns are blown right at the start so that the fire elemental gets the max spell power.

JB read that mana regen was not an issue for elemental shaman because of special procs that restore mana as fast as it's used. JB had a hard time believing that, but it bore out in tests on the target dummy. JB could not run out of mana no matter how hard she pushed. As JB gains more haste to get more spells off faster, the issue may eventually come up. But from all I've read, elemental shaman mana is virtually infinite.

In tests on the Raid Target Dummy, JB was consistently hitting over 12k dps using only her own buffs, which is better than JB did with enhancement at that gear level. She needs 15k dps to be raid ready, but I'm not going to push it. It's an off-spec, not main spec.

JB also spent a couple of hours farming reputation in Mount Hyjal. Revered Hyjal rep is required to get the +int head enchant. As enhancement, JB didn't need that enchant, so never worked on getting the rep. It went pretty fast, though. 

Stay tuned. JB plans to test the waters in normal cata dungeons this weekend. The JPs earned from those runs will go to getting som i378 gear upgrades.

Saturday - No, It's Not Saturday Yet

JB didn't wait until Saturday to test out her elemental spec. Friday night JB was too late in game to join the Firelands run, so she joined the random dungeon queue. For once the queue went quickly. The selected dungeon was Tol'vir, which was predictable. There are nine Cata dungeons the dungeon finder can pick from, but the only two it ever offers is Tol'vir and Halls of Origination. I know why, though. Of the nine dungeons, only three are level 85 only, and once at level 85, the finder won't pick a dungeon rated less than 85. That third level 85 dungeon is Grim Batol, and JB did get that one once in the past. JB also got into a HOO dungeon.

Anyway, JB was locked and loaded and ready to go. JB has done both dungeons many times already, although it was her first time in this spec. The things she learned:

* Chain Lightning is AWESOME! Tol'vir has many mob packs, and spamming chain lightning burned those mobs down in a hurry. The tank was decent, but JB did pull aggro quite a bit. JB eased up at the start of the pull, making a round or two of single target attacks before lighting 'em up with chain lightning, and that seemed to help the tank get a firmer grip on the mobs.

* It's true about elemental spec mana regen. For awhile I checked on mana usage, but after awhile I forgot all about it. The mana regen is that strong and the mana pool was endless. One caution, though: Non-dps spells such as dispels and healing WILL rapidly burn mana down to nothing.

* JB tended to move too close to the fight, a tendency built up by long practice fighting as melee. It wasn't until JB was halfway through HOO that I conscientiously started forcing JB farther back to take advantage of the long range of her spells.

* JB has gotten so used to making sure that Searing totem is active when she fights in enhancement spec, it became a habit JB had to break when using elemental spec. On the final boss JB cast Fire Elemental at the start of the fight instead of Searing totem. The Fire Elemental is very powerful, but it has a 10 minute cooldown, so it's only good for one fight in the dungeon. The two totems share the same cooldown, and can't be active at the same time. JB's Fire Elemental was up for maybe ten seconds when JB automatically cast Searing Totem when I saw it wasn't up. Finger response was faster than brain in that case, and my big DPS attack was wasted.

* Speaking of finger response, despite dealing with fewer spells, the automatic reflex isn't there yet, so JB was a little slow getting off special procs and making sure her DoTs stayed on the target. JB also had moments when she was so in groove she'd discover that her spells stopped working - why? the mob had died and JB needed to target another. Targeting is a bit easier as elemental, since at range it's much easier to be facing the target. Most of the time JB can use the tank as the assist target, but I still have trouble when I try to direct target a mob.

* Her favorite moment of the night was against Siamat, the final boss in Tol'vir. Siamat is on an open platform and periodically tries to knock players off the platform. Siamat also grabs random raiders and flings them around in the air for several seconds. Since JB can cast Lightning Bolt even when moving, JB was able to continue to smack Siamat around, lancing out with lightning bolt from mid-air.

* JB didn't need the Fire Elemental in these dungeons, and despite still learning the spec she did very well. JB was hitting around 12k dps on the target dummy. In Tol'vir JB led the group with 11.1k dps. Overall, JB was extremely happy. 

Saturday - JB The Grinder

The first thing this morning JB checked on the Auction House for gear. JB tried to talk Happy into paying 2200g for an i378 cape, but settled on buying the i353 spirit caller cape for 350g. The plan is to get JB's off-spec ready for Heroics, and pick up the higher ilvl gear from there. However, there were exceptions. AH hound Lost, on the alliance side, found a great deal on i378 bracers for 450g (the horde side was selling them for 1500g). Finally, Happy authorized JB's most expensive need, the [Darkmoon Card: Volcano]. This is a mastery trinket that also has two outstanding on equip procs: A +fire damage proc and a +int proc. This a potent trinket that JB will wear well into Twilight and even the lfr DS. It's that good. The average price was 6k gold. Happy got it for 4k. JB was able to retire an i333 cape, pvp bracers, and an i305 trinket for the new gear. Her gear score improved from i365 to i369. JB has been pleading with Happy to buy the Power Torrent enchant for her dagger, but at 2k gold Happy has balked. Her dagger has Heartsong on it now, but it procs spirit, which is next to useless as a proc for elemental shaman. JB is eventually going to win that argument, although she might be paying for it herself. Update: JB got her Power torrent enchant, and was able to get it pretty cheap. That's because Wild recently took some time to update his two professions, Enchanting and Tailoring, buying a number of patterns. One of those was the Power Torrent enchant. JB got the enchant for the cost of the mats.

There has been no slowing JB down. On Saturday afternoon JB entered her third normal Cata random dungeon, and wouldn't you know Grim Batol came up. All JB had wanted was a quick Tol'vir to get the VPs she needed. GB is a long, multi-boss dungeon, but JB was game. Bring it on.

Our first tank (and you know things aren't what they should be when talking about a "first" tank) got us through the first boss. The tank didn't know the fights, and frankly the rest of us weren't all that forthcoming with information, either. None of us could remember much about this dungeon. So, even though we were successful on the first boss, the tank took his leave after the kill.

We waited a couple of minutes, and a new tank showed up. He saw that we were already past the first boss, and turned around and left.

Our third tank was really slumming. He probably could have soloed the place. That meant we moved fast. We downed another boss, got halfway to the third one, and then that tank left us. Maybe he realized he should be in Heroics instead. Maybe his battleground popped. Maybe he got a better offer from his girlfriend. Whatever the reason, we had lost our third tank. We waited more than five minutes this time. The fourth tank stayed for about ten seconds, and then he, too, booked.

Really? There was nothing wrong with our group. All of us were doing 10k dps or better, the healer was great, nobody died ... ah well. JB had had enough and she, too, said goodbye.

JB still accumulated some JPs from the two boss kills, and went to check on what she might want to buy. JB bought an i378 necklace (replacing a pvp necklace), and an i378 relic (replacing the i346 one she was wearing). JB's gear score rose again, to i371. I wonder if she can hit 15k dps now?

Saturday Night - Wild eventually got some game time, completing the weekly lfr Siege and Fall raids. The tanks were very bad on the Fall run, wiping three times on the first boss, Ultraxion. That raid fell apart completely, which is hard to do. Wild got his 500 VPs for the two runs, but failed to win any Tier pieces, which are the only things left of any value as far as Wild was concerned. Wild has an i390 gear score and most of the i384 gear from the lfr. Our Dragon Soul raid is going to have to step things up for Wild to improve on that.

Thursday Night (16 Feb) - Call it a Learning Experience

Thursday Night (16 Feb) - Call it a Learning Experience

We didn't kill Warlord Zon'ozz on Thursday night. We tried awfully hard - 12 attempts.

There were some challenges. We had a rogue who couldn't do 10k dps. His first time in the raid. But we didn't come close enough to killing Ozz for it to matter.

We had some very strange starts. Twice healers aggroed the boss at the start of the fight, having cast nothing but HoTs on the tank. It happened to Bd (who was on his druid) and to Wild. Wild routinely pre-HoTs tanks and has never pulled aggro. Never. Very weird. We also had Ozz aggro on a bloodworm of all things (tank was a DK), and the ranged raiders had to run halfway across the chamber to intercept the ball. That was actually one of our better attempts, because we were able to recover from it.

We had three druids for healing. One of those druids were baffling Bd and Wild over some really terribad numbers while in Tree form. I know Silver would go nuts over this, but we discovered that she didn't know she could cast lifebloom on more than one target when in tree form. It's hard to even imagine not knowing that with a raiding player.

The melee DPSers with the tank struggled mightily with gauging when to get out of the way of the ball at the appropriate points, despite plenty of warnings in vent. There was some cautious optimism among us faithful, though, when the raider calling it threatened to name the individuals that were screwing it up if they failed to listen.

Wild started out as the ranged healer, with Bd healing melee and Vl on the tank. After a half dozen attempts Vl asked to go back to raid healing, saying she just couldn't keep range on the tank. Wild switched over to tank healing. Wild likes that job best, anyway. Wild was in his element, healing the tank, tossing AoE heals on the raid, helping with the dispels, shifting left or right to intercept the incoming energy ball, and charging to the tank and popping Tree Form during the dark phases.

I know the above may sound like a miserable night, but it wasn't. We may not be very good, but we are earnest, and by the latter attempts we were doing a lot more right than wrong.

I almost titled this post "Signs of Seriousness" and it would have been appropriate. For every one thing that falls apart for us week by week, two things come together.

We didn't get any boss drops, obviously, but we hit the jackpot on trash drops, getting three crafting plans, a plate piece that our DK loved, and a very nice bow for a hunter.

The three druids (overall healing)
We had some numbers pop over 20k hps on some attempts when the Tranquilities and Tree Form healing was really blanketing the raid. Overall, though, the healing shook out like this:

#1: Bd, 14.7k hps, 34.5%
#2: Wild, 13.6k hps, 32.1%
#3: Vl, 9.9k hps, 20.4%

Wednesday (15 Feb) - It's Elemental, My Dear JB

Wednesday (15 Feb) - It's Elemental, My Dear JB

JB ran another Twilight random on Wednesday afternoon, and was surprised and pleased that the chosen Heroic was Hour of Twilight. Finally, another chance at getting JB those pve i378 shoulders. The dungeon did drop i378 pve shoulders, yea! Oh, wait, they're not the ones JB wanted? Nope, they were +int shoulders intended for resto and elemental specced shaman. Silly boss  Benedictus, who was supposed to land JB her +agi shoulders, gave JB another i378 weapon, instead, this time a fist weapon. JB will be able to cover a whole wall with extraneous weapons by the time she is done.

Ok, JB could take a hint. It was time to fully flesh out her elemental spec.

JB visited the Elitist Jerks website to find out about the elemental spec. JB assumned it would be something like Wild's moonkin spec, but other than that she came in empty headed. No comments from the peanut gallery, now, remember all those weapons JB has.

The first bit of news was good. Gear for elemental shaman is the same for resto shaman, other than Tier pieces where the set bonuses are different. JB doesn't expect to be a healer, but it was nice to know that she could, if necessary, change specs between elemental and resto without needing a whole new set of gear. JB then got down to the details, and Happy will be paying for that grudgingly over the course of the next several days as she re-specs and gathers up glyphs, enchants, gems, etc etc.

Once JB gets her elemental spec UI ready, she'll run some target dummy numbers to see how JB does. Elemental uses a spell priority for casting spells, just as enhancement does, but there are fewer spells to worry about. As elemental, JB doesn't have a problem with periods where she can't cast spells because of cooldown issues (like enhancement has); her only spell casting constraint is mana. JB doesn't have many instant cast spells, so movement is a consideration, but JB can talent/glyph some spells so that she cast still cast on the run. I'm liking how the spec sounds, but the proof is when I put it to the test.

It was Wednesday night, so Wild must be raiding. We put together a pretty good team of regulars, and got started on time. Vl was back in the saddle leading the raid, with Bd in the role he likes best - talking. About boss strategies, of which he is expert. Wild had a ticklish assignment, though. Wild is the lead healer, and makes the healing assignments. Vl is the raid leader, although Bd, the former raid leader, often has input. Vl is also a healer, and after Wild had given her some healing advice last week, she was anxious to put it to use. Vl, who is our regular raid healer, wanted to tank heal. I was fine with that, but I wanted her to heal Bd, so that Bd could give me feedback on how she handled it. So I had to talk to Bd as well. Wild got it all sorted out and we were ready to rock.

Dragon Soul's first boss, Morchok, practically threw in the towel the minute we showed up. Morchok is definitely on farm. But he's the only one on farm. We moved on to the ooze king, Yor'sahj.

Last week we had been forced to go to a one tank strategy, because we only had one tank. We got our first kill last week using that strategy, so we decided to go with it again this week. Our tanks were Bd and Ct (a very good tank who can only make our raids part time). Bd had tanked Yor last week, but this week Bd and Ct talked it out and Ct was assigned to tank. Ct was better geared than Bd and we figured that would be easier on the healers. I had already assigned the priest Pl to heal Ct, and decided to keep it that way. Wild would back up Pl when things got nasty, and Vl was back to raid healing.

We also stated our mantra for this fight, in case anyone forgets. And someone always does:

 1- Purple, green, yellow (our ooze kill order)
2 - Stack on the boss for all oozes except green (spread out on green)

Obeying those two rules are the key to success.

We did well on the first attempt, getting Yor to 33%. It was Vl's first look at the one tank strategy and she was impressed. Our second attempt did not go well at all, however, as the DPS struggled to kill the oozes and adds quick enough. When we wiped on the third attempt as well, a little bit of frustration started to seep into the comments. The DPS were chastised for not getting the adds down. The DPS complained that they weren't getting heals. Wild didn't believe that healing was the issue, but since Ct and Pl were doing quite well with the single tank setup (so the problem wasn't the strategy), Wild switched the druid healers around, putting Vl as support to Pl on the tank Ct (which she wanted to do anyway), and Wild took over raid healing.

On our fourth attempt nobody died - except Yor'sahj the Unsleeping.

We moved on to the eyeball and tentacle trash we have to clear around the third boss, Ozz. Wild totally lost control of his healers as both Vl and Bd tried to assign roles that Wild had already put in place. All three of us were talking in vent and/or typing in raid chat and in the tank channel. Bd had created the tank channel so that the tanks could talk without clogging the raid channel. They then thought it was a good idea to add the healers to the channel, too. Then they had a question for the DPS and they ended up in the channel, too. So basically the raid channel was duplicated in the tank channel. Sigh.

The tank was getting impatient. So was Wild. I've got the tank, Wild told our gaggle of raiders. With healing support, the tank decided to take that as a Go, and he and Wild engaged the trash mobs. I guess the other two healers were still confused, because at two mobs went down before anyone but Wild was healing. No problem, Wild kept everyone alive. By the time we downed the first set of trash mobs we were all laughing and making mock accusations. Wild was accused of wanting to take over all the healing for himself. The other healers declared they were switching to DPS alts. Wild told them to go ahead, he could handle it!

We rocked through the rest of the trash, and got ready for Ozz.

Ozz is a fun fight and I like it, but we are still pretty uncoordinated at bouncing that ball of deadly energy back and forth. Wild was in the melee group, and we held together pretty well, moving in and out as needed, and with Wild doing the critical dispelling. Wild has been with the ranged before, too, and it's tougher until folks learn to keep one eye on the ball all of the time. The ranged team has to move as a group to intercept the ball when the tank bounces it back at them. A practiced group can keep the ball on track with little movement needed, but our bounces veered off course enough that the ranged had to shift to intercept. We made three attempts, and got better, but we still let the ball get away from us, wiping each time. We'll get better.

All in all, it was a good run with a group that is starting to settle in as a team. Wild needs to take firmer control of the healers.

Wild has an overabundance of valor points, so after the raid Wild headed to the VP vendor to see what was left to buy. Hmm, pretty much nothing. Wild did have an i378 ring he could upgrade. There are two +int rings for sale. Wild already had one of them, which are unique-equipped, so Wild couldn't buy and use a second one. The other ring was a DPS ring with +hit on it. However, it came with a socket, which Wild's i378 ring did not. Wild did the math, and overall it was an upgrade, so Wild bought it. That was enough to raise Wild's gear score to i390. There is really nothing else Wild needs now except for Tier gear, or the i397 versions of i384 gear Wild got from the lfr, and that only comes from Dragon Soul.

Tuesday (14 Feb) - The Three Things

Tuesday (14 Feb) - The Three Things

The first thing JB wanted to get to was the two lfr Dragon Soul runs. It was her first big test of the new pair of i378 blades that she got from Baleroc in the Firelands on Saturday. In Siege of Deathwing, JB held her own, dealing around 20k dps on average on the bosses. JB had made some changes to her AoE attacks as well, to try and improve on her dps in that area, but the results were mixed. Trash mobs remain a problem for JB and generally lower her overall dps.

Remember that JB paid a 1,000 gold for the i377 pvp shoulders, in the superstitious expectation that the i384 pve shoulders would then drop in the lfr? The T13 shaman shoulders token did indeed drop. Superstition confirmed? Only halfway. JB lost the roll to the other shaman in the raid.

JB did pick up a T13 gloves token and a nice pair of pants, both of which can be used with JB's off-spec. JB's off-spec has a gear score of i364, but that is still mostly made up of pvp gear. Who knows, JB may end up with a pve elemental spec after all.

JB wasted no time getting into the second half of the lfr, Fall of Deathwing. There were no surprises. JB has now already wrapped up her lfr DS runs for the week. JB is still without her pve shoulders.

Oh, bashful JB did forget to mention one other thing. JB won [No'kaled, the Elements of Death] off of Deathwing. It's an axe. An i390 axe. The Best in Slot (BiS) one-hand weapon for shaman at the lfr level. Poor Bonecrusher, I barely knew ye. JB's equipped gear score is now i380.

The second thing was supposed to be Twilight heroic runs, but, this being Valentine's Day, our afternoon was busy with things other than WoW. JB only got in one random Heroic, End Time, and picked up no drops.

The third thing was raid night. JB signed up for the G1 raid, her first Accept of a raid invite since earning Raider rank. Raid invites don't mean the same thing that they once did. For most of Wild's raiding life, raid invites were defined as follows:

Decline: Will not be raiding. Should the raider show up anyway, will not get an invite unless there is a spot open.
Tentative: Will try to make it, but don't count on it. If the raider does make it, after all, will not get an invite unless there is a spot open.
Accept: Will be there on time and ready to raid. Invite priority goes to these raiders first. "Core" raiders have the highest priority, with "fill-ins" next in priority. As always, the needs of the raid come first.

I don't know how it is with other guilds, but MM2 has changed the definitions Wild was used to. The basic definition is the same, but the rules for inviting raiders were changed. Core raiders always have priority, regardless of what they sign up as, or even if they don't sign up at all. For example, if a core raider selects Decline or Tentative, but still makes it to the raid, it's as if he had Accepted.

The problem with the above is that there is no commitment. Both raids struggle with raiders who select Accept and then don't show up. That issue has been raised and guild leaders are trying to improve on that, but our own rules make that difficult. Pressed about selecting Accept, raiders have learned to select Tentative, which lets them off the hook but has no penalty. The raid leader selects his team from whoever is in game. Since Cata, I have yet to see a guild raid where ten raiders had selected Accept. Every raid is a crap shoot, because who knows who'll be there on raid night?

So, you know what's coming. Six guildies had Accepted the raid invite, including JB, on Tuesday night. We had what is for us a pretty good turnout. There were 13 level 85s in game, 11 of which JB knew to be raiders. That information was pretty well known by the time the 7pm raid time came around. However, they had a problem with roles. It got pretty silly for awhile. I counted, I swear, ten times when guildies swapped toons around to get the right mix of tanks, healers, and DPS. I guess that's one of the disadvantages of having a great many raid capable alts. I wasn't in on the raid leader conference in vent, but they could have been considering raid composition for the RG2 as well. Maybe, but I'm not sure we think that far ahead.

Anyway, they didn't get the raid in motion until 7:30pm. According to the guild roster, only nine guildies were in the raid. JB could easily ferret out the roles: 2 tanks, 3 healers, 2 ranged DPS, and 2 melee DPS. That left them short one DPS, which I assume was filled by a friend outside the guild. We have a few of them, too (mains who left the guild, but still have an alt in the guild). On Monday they had wanted 3 melee DPS. If that held true for Tuesday, then JB "could" have filled that last spot. JB got no invite.

This isn't sour grapes, it's just how the raid is run. This is the G1 raid, JB has to remember that. After all of the effort put into getting JB raid ready, who would have known that the biggest obstacle of all was getting an invite?

Monday (13 Feb) - Shoulders of Desperation

Monday (13 Feb) - Shoulders of Desperation

JB has been on a hot streak of gear improvement, but a replacement for her i333 shoulders still eluded her. She had a plan, though. The i378 [Betrayer's Pauldrons] drop from the last boss in Hour of Twilight, Archbishop Benedictus. JB decided to bypass the random dungeon finder and queue directly for Twilight, and was prepared to kill Benedictus as many times as necessary to get those shoulders. JB waited patiently for about twenty minutes before the queue popped. JB's first group banged through the dungeon pretty quickly, but Benedictus did not drop the shoulders. No matter, JB went to sign up again for another round - and found that the dungeon was now locked. It seems that JB can queue randomly as often as she wants, hoping that she gets the Benedictus dungeon, but can only queue for it specifically once per day. That really sucks, because even though JB's odds to get that dungeon randomly is three to one, in reality it's the dungeon Well of Eternity that comes up almost every time. Who knows how long it will take to get an upgrade to her shoulders?

Happy had his own title for Monday - Take a Deep Breath. Every now and then the server seems to take a breather. The Auction House slows to a crawl. The buyers evaporate. The sellers start getting nervous. Prices have been dropping for a couple of weeks. There has been some panic selling, which Happy has grabbed up and banked for future sales. Even the most sought after enchanting mats have been hit. Happy has spent a great deal of gold stocking up on the under priced stuff, but even Happy is starting to get a little nervous.

Happy worries that many raiders are getting maxed out on gear from Dragon Soul already, and if they aren't improving their gear then they don't need enchanting mats. A great many players are now spending their time running old dungeons to win good looking older gear they can use for mogging. Mogged gear needs no enchants. To add to that concern, all that dungeon farming and disenchanting of unwanted gear is increasing the mats available on the Auction House, further forcing down the prices.

Happy believes the market may be already establishing these cut rate prices as the new "normal" price. Mats like large brilliant shards and greater eternal essences have lost a third of their value, and the demand isn't high enough to move that lower price. Paradoxically, demand swings have kept the latest mats, such as greater celestial essences, at astronomical prices, but over the weekend those prices suddenly crashed big time. Happy continues to buy mats that he knows Wild and JB will still need, but has become more cautious and selective of "bargains" that are actually a reset normal price point. This is Happy's version of boss encounters, and he intends to defeat them all. He who has the most gold wins.

JB was in game at raid time on Monday night. This is the G1 raid, run by Mt and Sb. JB was not signed up, but I wanted to learn how well stocked this group is with raiders and, maybe, get JB a spot on their raid. The group made a permanent change to their raid start time this week, moving it from 6pm to 7pm. That will make it a lot easier for JB to be available, as I usually know by then whether we have plans or not for the evening. G1 filled on time, getting nine regulars pretty quickly. They were short one DPS spot, but JB need not apply, as they specifically wanted a ranged DPS. It was nice to know that JB was considered, however. Their raiding days seem backwards, but it makes sense when you think about it. Raid nights are Mon/Tues, but their "first" raid night is Tuesday. On Tuesday they start a fresh raid, with the following Monday being their second night. They are currently working on Hagara, the fourth boss. JB will hang out on Tuesday night, too, hoping to get lucky with an invite, and will also sign up for the raid. If she does get in, she'll have priority for the following Monday night raid.

JB also made a decision and bought the pvp shoulders. She paid a thousand gold of her own money so she wouldn't have to face Happy's glare. She had two reasons for her decision, one practical, and one superstitious. The practical reason is if she really wants in on guild Dragon Soul raids, coming with i333 gear is not the way to get an invite. Secondly, JB figured that if she coughed up all that gold for the i377 pvp shoulders, the shoulders that she REALLY wanted would certainly fall for her this week.

JB wondered how her gear now stacked up with other raid ready enhancement shaman in the guild. Here are the results:

Gear Scores: i350 (2), i354, i364, i375

Of those five above, I've only seen two of them in raids: Nj (i364), and Gc (i375).

JB's equipped gear score: i379

The only thing holding JB back is an open spot in the raid for a melee DPS. That could be a challenge, though, as JB isn't competing with just shaman. The three melee DPSers in the raid Monday night included a paladin, a rogue, and a death knight. All are i380+ raiders.

If JB doesn't get into the guild raid, she will take her chances with a PUG this week. 

And JB is seriously considering making her off-spec pve elemental. Then she'd be able to take on both melee and ranged DPS roles.

Weekend (12 Feb) - Meet Bonecrusher and Gatecrasher

Weekend (12 Feb) - Meet Bonecrusher and Gatecrasher

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

Friday - JB's Luck Turns

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

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

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

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

Saturday - Whining Hunters

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday Night - Wow, Just Wow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the DPS stats for the Baleroc Kill:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday (9 Feb) - Earnest Rabble

Thursday (9 Feb) - Earnest Rabble

Yesterday Wild was lamenting about all that was wrong with raiding in his guild, as opposed to what little was right. Silver, an alliance cousin with unquestioned raid leader credentials and success wished she could come and straighten it all out. Wild would have invited her right that second, but knew that the guild wouldn't listen to any advice but our own. It reminded me of how we got to where we are as a guild that raids. The story has been told so many times Wild can now encapsulate it in a parable called The Tale of Three Raid Leaders.

Once upon a time there were three Raid Leaders named Lady, Knuckles, and Kicker. The Three Raid Leaders were Happy in their guild, and all was well. Each raid leader had the same task: to defend the realm and conquer common foes, but each accomplished the task a different way. Lady loved everyone and made us laugh. Her followers were competent but not exactly well drilled. Knuckles was much more serious but tried to be inclusive and give everyone a chance to help the cause. Kicker drove his followers hard and demanded complete obedience. When the guild came upon hard times there was friction and rancor in the ranks. Kicker ostracized the more social followers of Lady, took control of the guild, and said Good Riddance to Lady and her followers when they left to form their own guild. Kicker and Knuckles did not get along, however, and soon Conflict came again. Knuckles tried to hold things together, but a new Raid Leader arose, Rhon, and led a small following out of the guild to form their own. Knuckles, unable to restore harmony in the ranks, also slipped away with his remaining followers and rejoined Lady. What was once one guild became Four, and each Raid Leader still performs the great task of defending the realm in their own way.

Ok, so it needs work. 

Anyway ... what was I talking about?  Ah yes, raiding. Silver nailed the issue we have in our guild - Consistency. We lack consistency in both the composition of players in our raids, as well as our strategy and approach in defeating bosses. With Bd now back and engaged, things are changing, at least with our own raid, RG2. The other raid, G1, supposedly the stronger raid, remains 3/8 against Dragon Soul despite having the "better" raiders and a lot more time against those bosses than RG2.

RG2 can't boast, since we have been stuck at 1/8 since the dawn of Hour of Twilight.

Raid attendance and composition was still a problem. We were 45 minutes late getting started due to having to hunt down guildies to come to the raid. Two raiders we usually count on had RL issues, and we aren't flexible enough yet to manage that without a struggle. We almost didn't raid Thursday night. We had ten raiders, but one too many DPS, which left us short either a healer or a tank. Ultimately, we decided to take on Yor with an extra DPS, and only one tank. Yor puts a stacking debuff on the tank that gets deadlier and deadlier, so two tanks are needed in order to swap and remove the debuff. With only one tank, healing that tank would be a huge challenge. Two of our healers were Wild and the priest Pl, as usual. Healer Vl was still out because of the death in her family, and our fill in from Wednesday could not make the Thursday raid. So it was that our second tank switched to his druid healer alt to round out the healing. Bd was our main - and only - tank.

Wild was tasked with keeping Bd alive, with help from Fn, the druid alt. Fn is as well geared as Wild, and we were determined that a dead tank would not be the cause of any wipes.

Wild provided the tension relief at the beginning of the run. The trash mobs around Yor are small oozes in groups of three and four. With our two tank setup, the excitable St usually leads those romps through the oozes, leaping directly into the middle of them, as Wild runs in to set up his healing, and the rest of the raid follows and stacks up on the oozes. Of course, we only had the one tank on this night, and it was Bd leading us in, not St. Bd gave us the Go and Wild charged in. Only Bd didn't Leap into the mobs, he sauntered in (at least that was Wild's excuse) and Wild got to the oozes before Bd did. Dead Wild watched while the rest of the guild killed the first ooze pack. It was pretty hilarious, actually. Bd proceeded to leap into the ooze packs from then on, although Wild remained suspicious and took a more cautious charge into the fray.

Our first attempt on Yor went exceptionally well. On our third or fourth ooze spawn, however, we got a really nasty combination of oozes that confused the raid and wiped us.

RG2 has been stuck at 1/8 since the dawn of Hour of Twilight. Well, not anymore. Thursday night, on our second attempt, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping fell to RG2. It's just the second kill out of eight bosses, but it was a major step forward for RG2. Instead of giving up when we couldn't field the raid we wanted, we changed the strategy and did it our way. The extra DPS gave us that little extra push, a lot of credit to the tank for doing everything a tank could do to help his healers, and pats on the back to the healers for refusing to let the tank go down. The tank didn't die, and neither did anyone else. 

We made progress against Warlord Zon'ozz, getting in five attempts. RG2 is now 2/8 against DS. No more, no less.

[Dragonfire Orb] dropped off a trash mob. The i397 off-hand is an awesome piece that had every healer and mana using DPS drooling over. One of the DPS won it. Other raiders got drops off the two bosses we killed. I'm hoping that the kill and the drops draw more guildies to sign up for the raids.

Next week we'll be at it again. I like our earnest rabble, and I like where we're headed.

Wednesday (8 Feb) - Wild's Mounts

Wednesday (8 Feb)  - Wild's Mounts

With the Raven Lord finally in his stables, Wild thought he'd count the noses of all his other mounts:

1 Abyssal Seahorse
3 Qiraji Battletanks (Blue, Green, and Yellow)
1 Drake Mount (Bronze)
2 Kodos (Brown, Great White)
2 Carpets (Flying, Magnificent Flying)
1 Ice Mammoth
1 Raven Lord
1 Swift Green Wind Rider
1 Swift Timber Wolf
1 Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
1 Tyrael's Charger
1 Winged Guardian

Well, there are fewer than I thought. Sixteen. Kind of sad, actually. There are other versions of the above mounts that Wild could buy (if there is a color in its name, there are likely others just like it of different colors), but really has no need for.

Silver pointed out that there is a Flaming version of Wild's Raven Lord. She has one, the lucky wench (sorry, I mean M'Lady - I'm on the 4th book of Game of Thrones where all women are either wenches or Ladies). The mount is a rare drop from Alysrazor in the Firelands, and is aptly nicknamed the Flaming Anzu. Not much chance of Wild getting that. There is another Firelands mount that would be cool to have: The Smoldering Egg of Mallagazor (or something like that) is a Fire Hawk. However, it's an even rarer drop from Ragnaros, the final boss in FL. I think Silver has this one, too, the wen ... well, never mind.

Wild might have to content himself with seeking the Flameward Hippogryph. Like Wild has mentioned before, he doesn't really care to collect mounts. This one looks fun to have, though, and Wild need only head back into the Molten Front and finish a few achievements to get it. I think Wild is going to see how much work that would be.

Wednesday Night Raiding - The Good and the Bad

Our raid leader could not make it Wednesday night. Vl had a death in the family. Our prayers are with her. Vl let Wild know early in the afternoon that she couldn't make it, and that her #2, Sb, would handle the raid.

Getting guildies into the raid was a long, sorry process. For the second straight week, our RG2 raid had been poached by the G1 raid, and we had lost a tank and a DPS that usually runs with us. I was getting pretty annoyed with that, and Wild had a long conversation with Bd after we were done for the night.

The first thing Wild wanted to know was how things were with Bd. It's great that he's back, but given the many Real Life issues that have plagued him I wondered for how long and how often he would be around to raid. Bd told Wild that his work schedule had settled and his other issues were behind him. Bd has three toons that are fully raid ready. Bd said that he is committed to the RG2 raid as his main raid, and will raid with his main toon (a tank). Bd will make his other two toons available to both G1 and RG2 as needed each week.

Here's the real issue, though. The G1 raids on Mon/Tues. The RG2 on Wed/Thurs. The raid reset is on Tuesday morning. So, guildies who want to raid with RG2 can raid with G1 on Monday and still be able to raid with RG2. However, any guildie toon raiding with G1 on Tuesday cannot raid with RG2 that week. They're locked out. What has been routinely happening is that when the raid leader for G1 pulls his raid together on Tuesday night, no consideration is given to the fact that one or more of the guildies he asked to come are guildies that raid with RG2. When Wednesday night comes RG2 ends up filling the last spots in the raid with guildie alts that are not as geared as those plucked up by G1, and lose likely raiders who already raided with G1 and don't really want to raid again that week.

Bd revealed another issue that I knew nothing about. The guild has been successful at bringing more players into the guild. Wild sees the new names now and then, and even ran with some in the LFR. Apparently, the G1 raid leader has been recruiting them for his raid with no consideration for the other raid in the guild. It's not an intentional slight on RG2; it's just that the G1 raid leader has actively sought out the new guildies and the RG2 hasn't. The bottom line is that, whether by accident or design, the G1 raid has been getting the first picks for his raid for both current raiders and new raiders, with RG2 getting whatever was left. It's a wonder we've been able to fill our RG2 raid at all. Bd has been working behind the scenes with the other raid leaders and officers. The intent is to stabilize both raids, firm up raid membership in both raids, and give new guildies the same opportunity to commit to one of our raids.

We were 45 minutes late getting started on our raid, and ran with a third healer (to replace Vl) who was on an alt and had yet to enter Dragon Soul. Our overall DPS was again low, but improved over last week. Bd slipped back into his role of talking through each fight and then tweaking the results with whispers to raiders about things he'd observed. Wild made the healing assignments and got acknowledgement from the other healers. Bd missed it, though, and at the first boss he was going to do that, but Wild chimed in with a "I've already taken care of that."  Pl chimed in, "yea, Bd, we got it." Our three healers were Wild and two holy priests, so Wild set the priests on the tanks and Wild took raid healing.

We had one wipe on the first boss, Morchok, but that was because Wild DCed in the middle of the fight, and was dead when I got back in game. Not knowing Wild had DCed, they tried to battle rez me and of course the brez failed. We brought Morchok down easily the second time around. The new priest healer was well behind the other two healers, though, and Bd asked Wild to take over healing the main tank for the rest of the evening.

Here is where we get to the bad. We made six attempts on Yor, the second boss with the many oozes. We simply made too many mistakes. The fight is not that hard, but it is pretty unforgiving if not done right. To help with the fight, even Wild did some DPS, dropping Moonfire and Insect swarm DoTs on the targeted oozes. We did get better, bringing Yor down to 21% on our best attempt. The G1 raid has downed both Yor and the third boss, Ozz, but they got both bosses just last week after pounding their heads on Yor for weeks, just as we are doing. I'm not discouraged, just anxious to finally get our kill. Once we down him once, the confidence will soar. And I want to catch up with G1!

Tuesday (7 Feb) - The Grind Continues

Tuesday (7 Feb) - The Grind Continues

The reset on Tuesday opened up the lfr once again for Wild and JB to pound through and collect their valor points and, hopefully, get a piece of gear or two. JB still has to get herself out there, but Wild pounded through all eight lfr Dragon Soul bosses on Tuesday night.

The battle was memorable only because Wild and the rest of the raid suffered through not just one, but two bad tanks. Wild rarely complains about tank troubles, as long as the tank is sincere and trying his best. Everybody has to learn sometime, and the lfr is the right place to get in that practice. That wasn't the problem. We started Siege of Deathwing one tank short, but it was easy enough to plow through at the start. Midway through the trash mobs on the second boss, we got our second tank, however, we killed the boss without him because while he was technically in the raid, he had not zoned in yet. We waited for him while killing trash, but he never responded and never zoned in and we kicked him. We got a new tank fairly quickly, and swept through the rest of the Siege.

Wild immediately queued up for Fall of Deathwing. We had some very weak DPS, managed to get through the first two bosses, but one tank got so frustrated about how long it was taking, and he bailed on us. We waited a bit, and got another tank, but oddly enough, he had the same issue as the tank in the Siege - he was in the raid, but not zoned in. We sent him Summons twice, and the talk started about kicking him. Whether coincidence or because he saw the talk of finding another tank, he did finally zone in. This tank immediately demanded that he be given the lead tank role. The tank we did have was doing a good job, however, and the raid leader told the new tank "not likely" and wouldn't do it. The new tank got pretty irate about it, but he was ignored and we started in on the third boss.

Wild started the fight main healing this new tank, but I realized halfway through that the tank was taking almost no damage. Wild shifted all his healing to the other tank (as well as continuing a steady stream of raid healing has I always do), leaving just a single HoT ticking on the new tank. When we finished up the third boss, Wild checked recount to see if anyone else had been healing him, and the answer was no. Apparently this guy was mad that he hadn't been made lead tank and so had simply stood around doing nothing.

Unfortunately, our other tank had to leave. We got a another tank, but the "make me lead tank"  idiot began demanding the lead tank role again and even showed us his uber achievements in completing both normal and heroic Dragon Soul. He immediately began making caustic remarks about the tank that had just joined us. When a vote popped up asking if Wild wanted to kick him, it was an easy choice. He was gone, we got a new tank, and we started in on the final encounter.

We wiped twice on the final encounter, as the low DPS took too long to kill things, but we finally took him down on our third try.

Wild got his 500 lfr valor points for the week, enough to get to 2200 VPs to buy anything he wanted from the VP vendor. Wild, sadly, doesn't think there is anything left to buy that he needs. But he'll check on that at some point before the night's raid.

Wild did get a drop, though. [Ledger of Revolting Rituals] is an i384 off-hand to replace Wild's current i378. It's a relatively minor upgrade and Wild will have to do some reforging as it will drop Wild's +haste rating below the minimum 2005 I need. It's still a nice pickup. Sadly, it's the ugliest piece of gear Wild has ever equipped. That's one piece of gear Wild is definitely going to mog (mm, I hope off-hand gear can be mogged). Wild had a shot at a shoulders token, too, but didn't win it.

As for healing the lfr, Wild has settled into a routine and doesn't pay that much attention to healing numbers. Wild did lead all healers in the Siege. In the Fall, however, there was another druid healer in the raid that did tons more healing than Wild did, and Wild wanted to know why. The short answer was that it wasn't his gear, which was better, but not that better. On a spell by spell basis, Wild's heals were not too far off from the other druid's. The big difference was quantity. That other healer cast a third more heals than Wild did. Perhaps Wild is not pushing himself hard enough. Food for thought.

There are signs that we are getting a little more organized with our raiding. Two recent posts on the guild website reiterated guild policy. The first regarded raid signups, which have been sloppy and getting worse. It might help ensure that guildies that Accepted on the raid calendar actually show up, but it won't help the problem of players signing up as Tentative and then deciding they don't want to go even if they're in game. The second post asked raiders for the days and times they are available to raid. I would guess they want to see if a better day/time might get more guildies to come to the raids. I'm betting fewer than fifteen guildies respond. Am I jaded or what?

Weekend (5 Feb) - JB Earns Her Stripes

Weekend (5 Feb) - JB Earns Her Stripes

Friday night JB asked guild leader and friend Bd to officiate her formal test determining her worthiness for the rank of Raider in the MM2 guild.

The rules were very specific. JB could use all of her self-buffs except for Bloodlust. JB could not use flasks, elixirs, potions, or food buffs, with the exception of the alchemy flask which, JB being an Alchemist, is considered a self-buff.

JB must attack the Raiding Target Dummy for five minutes non-stop while Bd observed. The minimum requirement was a sustained 15k dps.

JB had been practicing, but when the moment of truth arrived she was a bit nervous. The Dummy couldn't hit her back, of course, but having Bd looking over her shoulder was just as nerve racking as seeing your aggro leap to the top when the dungeon Boss decides to notice you.

JB wondered why they wanted to see five full minutes, but it became obvious. After the bout of nervousness subsided, JB settled into the routine, and her dps started to climb.

When it was done, Bd's first comment was, well, that was interesting. He added, you started out pretty slow, barely topping the 15k mark for the first minute (15.5k dps, to be precise). That was good enough to pass the test, but JB really wasn't happy with that result. Then Bd said that by the time JB hit the five minute mark, her DPS was 18.2k dps. Now that's more like it.

Bd was also struck by how consistent JB's damage was, once I got going. He said that other players he's tested had a lot of low points followed by large burst damage. Melee shaman don't have much in the way of burst damage. We don't even have enough spells to keep a constant stream of damage coming, so the single most damage we do is from "white" damage - simple weapon attacks with no spell buff. We do get some burst, from unleashed flames, but we can't control when those proc. We also have our spirit wolves, the best talent we have - but I had learned that while they were cool looking and fierce, they don't really do that much damage. So, a melee shaman's forte is a very steady stream of damage that doesn't depend on big bursts.

Bd told JB she had passed the test.

JB is now officially ranked as a Raider in the MM2 guild, gets access to the raid calendar, and can sign up for all guild raids. Never in the history of the Wild family have there been two raiding toons at the same time.

JB's issues with the lfr got resolved as well, which was more good news. The group queue idea actually didn't work. JB was able to successfully zone into the raid, but when Wild left the raid the lfr dumped JB back out as well. It might have been a timing issue, but it didn't matter. JB had heard back from another GM asking JB to give the lfr another try.

JB queued up solo with the lfr, and waited for twenty plus minutes - and the queue popped, letting JB into the raid. The raid already had three bosses down, but JB wasn't picky. She stayed, got her Deathwing kill and even picked up an i390 +int dagger that will be a nice addition to JB's pvp healing gear. Late Friday night JB queued a second time to get her kills of the first three bosses in Fall of Deathwing. Everything is fine between JB and the lfr now.

Back to the DS run, the two middle fights in the Fall of Deathwing involve a great deal of movement, and require changing targets at specific times. That's something JB hasn't mastered, yet. Fighting on the back of Deathwing is particularly hard, as the whole screen is constantly lit up by pyrotechnics, the ground is covered in oozes, there are tentacles waving about, and the dam mob targets WON'T STAND STILL! Yes, JB has learned the art of the assist and has her regular targeting button close to hand as well. But in all that fiery, flashing mess, JB half the time couldn't even see which mob she had targeted. Ya know, in melee, you not only have to be facing in the direction of your target, you have to be right next to it, too. Poor JB, raised by a druid healer who could cast his druidy spells with his back turned and forty feet away from his target.

Saturday - So Much For PvP

JB spent a good part of Saturday morning cleaning up the mess that was JB's resto spec. It had been so long JB hardly remembered what her spells were called, much less how to use them. The UI had bits of this and that scattered everywhere, completely unsuitable for use. JB was lacking glyphs and sent Philly off to craft what was needed. I decided not to worry about enchants on gear for the moment. The one exception was her i390 blade. Wild provided the enchant Heartsong. It's the second best enchant JB could have gotten, but Power Torrent cost 2k gold, and Wild was quick to state that he healed with Heartsong until Icecrown Citadel finally gave up the i378 weapon that eventually downed the Lich King.

Armed with her enchanted blade and wearing a full set of Vicious pvp gear, JB joined her first pvp battleground in ... well, she couldn't even remember that last time. The battleground was Gilneas, the BG she was least familiar with. She didn't do too bad, though, and the alliance was terrible. We slaughtered them, and JB walked away with a battleground victory.

JB likes to pvp heal, but there was an ulterior motive, as well. She lusted after the pvp weapons, and figured she could earn one - or even a pair - through battlegrounds. She wanted +agi weapons, of course, to further her raiding aspirations. JB figured it was a grind, but at least she could guarantee that she'd get them eventually. Neither Wild nor JB has seen a single non-dagger +agi weapon drop in lfr DS. There are only two: [Morningstar of Heroic Will], which is a rare zone drop and doesn't drop in the lfr at all; and [No'Kaled, the Elements of Death], which is supposed to drop from the last boss. Who knows how long it would take to get one of those, much less the two she needed to dual wield? Nasty rogues would be rolling on it, even though they had access to several daggers.

After her Gineas battle JB visited the pvp vendors to moon over the weapons. She was in for a rude shock.

First shock - Pvpers now have to earn "season points" before being allowed to buy weapons. One i378 weapon JB saw cost 2450 honor points. JB had over 2300 honor points, but nearly all of them were from prior seasons. She would have to earn over 7200 current honor points before she would be allowed to buy the weapon. Not only that, but JB was already wielding i365 weapons - the i378s with crit and resilience for secondary stats were no better than the ones she already had for pve use.

Second shock - There were NO honor point weapons for sale above i378. The high end weapons (i397) have to be bought with conquest points. Conquest points are earned by doing Arena combat or rated battlegrounds. Regular, unrated battlegrounds give only honor points. There was a chink in this bad news, though. Conquest points can be bought with valor points: 250 valor buys 250 conquest. JB could live with farming VPs to get conquest points, but more bad news was coming.

Third, Deadliest Shock - Buying conquest points with VPs does not count toward the season total, which must be reached before the weapons can be bought. In other words, JB would have to earn over 7200 conquest points in rated BGs before she was eligible to buy an i397 weapon.

Summary: JB is never going to do Arena combat. JB has no interest in rated BGs. Therefore, she will never acquire those i397 pvp weapons. JB's interest in pvp abruptly ended. Sigh.

Sunday Special (5 Feb) - Reins of the Raven Lord

Sunday Special (5 Feb) - Reins of the Raven Lord

There are hundreds of different kinds of mounts in Azeroth. The most common are the mounts that first become available to players when they reach level 20. It used to be level 40, and that is when Wild got his first mount. Actually, Wild didn't get his first mount until level 43, because he did not have the gold to buy it until then. Each major city offered a particular type of mount. Wild's home city was Thunder Bluff, and his first mount was a great, rhinoceros like beast called a Kodo. Wild was extremely proud of his Kodo. These common mounts came in different colors for variety. As the game progressed more common mounts were added, including flying mounts. Mounts were so popular that more and more were added, and greater and greater challenges were designed to get the rarer ones.

There are many players who collect mounts and spend much of their time doing whatever is required, for however long it takes, to get them. These players are crazy, of course ... well, not really, but seriously, you can only ride one mount at a time. If you are a mount fan, though, there is nothing more impressive than seeing a player on a mount you know took incredible skill, persistence, and even luck to acquire.

Wild has never been much of a mount collector. Wild's kodo served him well throughout vanilla wow and into Burning Crusade. His first non-kodo mount, if Wild's recollection is sound (an iffy assumption) were the Kiraji bug mounts in the An'Qiraj raid. Wild has several of them, and they are truly cool. Unfortunately, they can only be used inside that one raid. Maybe one day Blizz will set them free to roam all of Azeroth.

Wild collected many other mounts over the seasons, although there were few that he actively went after. One such mount was the great mammoth sold in Dalaran. Wild had to earn reputation with the city of Dalaran and pay a steep fee to acquire it. Wild wanted the mammoth because it came with an extra seat, so Wild could give another player a ride. It also came with a repair npc so that Wild could repair his (and everyone else's) gear anywhere in the world, so long as it was somewhere he could mount up.

The one mount that Wild most wanted, however, eluded him - the Raven Lord, which is one of the most rare and difficult mounts to acquire. Today, there are probably rarer mounts, with more difficult challenges. However, the Raven Lord is wreathed in a rich history and is still sought after even today.

In the Burning Crusade expansion came a dungeon called Sethekk Halls. The bird dungeon, it was sometimes referred to, because it's denizens included many and varied birds, and it was peopled by birdmen. Sethekk Halls was neither the hardest, not the easiest, of the BC dungeons, but it had it's challenges. It was also where the great elite bird, Anzu, held court. The druids had a unique, very challenging quest line that ultimately led to Anzu. A druid who could successfully complete the quest chain and defeated Anzu had a rare chance to win the Reins of the Raven Lord. Only druids could win this mount. Wild did complete the quest chain, of course, and killed Heroic Anzu many times in five man groups. The Reins never dropped.

Later on, all players were given the chance to defeat Anzu and win the Reins, not just druids. However, a druid who had completed the quest chain had to be in the group, or Anzu would not appear. Wild got invites all the time to join groups hoping to win the Reins. Not only did Wild not win one, no one in any group he was in ever saw one drop.

More time passed, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion arrived, and players grew in strength to the point that Heroic Sethekk Halls could be two manned, and soon even soloed. It remained a difficult dungeon, though, for a couple of reasons. First, anyone wanting to battle Anzu still had to be a druid, or bring a druid with him. Second, the birdmen filled the dungeon in large numbers and had a particularly vicious stun that could not be interrupted or broken. Chain stuns by several mobs could still get a player killed. Third, Anzu was the second to last boss and was located very deep in the dungeon. Even a successful run to Anzu took a lot of killing and a lot of time. Wild and a shaman friend tried many times as a twosome. The Reins never dropped.

Wild eventually became strong enough to test Heroic Sethekk Halls all on his own. It wasn't like Wild went after Anzu every day. There were periods where he was busy raiding and leveling and the Raven Lord was far from his mind. But Wild always eventually came back to Sethekk Halls, for a day or a week, seeking that elusive mount.

Solo, Wild went stealthed catform for the first part of the dungeon, avoiding combat. However, the first boss, Darkweaver Syth, could detect stealth and Wild had no choice but to battle him and the five adds that he Summoned. It was a tough battle, but Wild got better at it over time. Then there was a very long stretch in stealth that Wild had to navigate. Mobs packed the place, and birds flew around everywhere. Wild's stealth would hide him, as long as he did not get too close. There were times he did, and Wild would have to fight. Wild did not always win. There were so many mobs.

Players going after Anzu also learned a trick. There was a backdoor out of the dungeon, but it only opened when the last boss, Talon King Ikiss, was killed. So Wild would stealth past Anzu and into the Talon King's chamber and kill him, which opened the back door. What this did is that if Anzu killed Wild, I didn't have to stealth all the way back through the dungeon again to take more shots at him. And honestly, when Wild first started soloing Anzu, Wild died - a lot. Killing Anzu was not just overwhelming him with over-powered gear. Anzu had two phases, one where he could be attacked, and a second when he was immune, and great gobs of ravens descended on Wild. All the ravens had to be killed to knock Anzu out of his immune phase. The ravens could stun, too, and killing those ravens took time. There were raven statues in the room, each of which offered a buff to help Wild in the fight, but still, it was a difficult fight.

On Sunday morning, 5 Feb 2012, Wild made his umpteenth foray into Heroic Sethekk Halls. Wild no longer bothered with the back door. At level 85, dying to Anzu would have to be a rare combination of multiple stuns that kept him from healing himself far longer than likely, and Wild didn't worry about that.

For the umpteenth time, Wild slew Anzu. And this time, the Reins of the Raven Lord dropped.

The Raven Lord is a level 40 mount that cannot fly. But she's a beautiful bird, and every druid should have one. Now Wild finally does.

Wild and his Raven Lord