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.