Still

Still 11/12.

Things about Nefarion 10 man that nobody told me and I didn't find at most of the strat hubs:

• Having a hunter turtle tank the adds with MD glyph and glyph of mend pet makes p3 much easier for picking up the adds and much less strain on the healers, while still keeping raid dps up.
• Nature resist is superpro. If you are hitting one or two crackles in p2, try to spread out nature resist between your platforms, it really helps with crackle.
• The mastery trinket with resist increases from the TB rep faction is great for your tanks. It's one minute CD is a great compliment to a tank's CDs for crackles and breaths.
• Hybrids in the transition helping heal and during p2 helping heal can make or beak a pillar group.

We aim for nef+H Halfus this weekend, if everyone is able to go. Last week with 1.5 hours of solid nef attempts we were seeing p3 pretty consistently. The fight isn't super difficult, it's just got 3 phases that require pretty solid execution.

Feel free to always drop a question in about anything and I can usually help out.

Been a while

The winds of change have pulled me away from my previous place of employment, and I am now in the middle of a career change which is going to be for the better. This and my raiding schedule have kept me away from here.

In more good news, our group is 11/12 now with our first week of Nef starting this weekend (maybe, we may be missing 3 of our cores). We went 9/12 with relative ease, and then Cho and Al'Akir were slightly more difficult due to the fact that I felt our dps was overall low. I went out and found a nice DK to replace our second hunter in the core, but am keeping the hunter with us as a small bench is something that we would definitely like to continue on with. I have begun subbing people in and out depending on the fights/loot available for farm content, so that I have 12-14 geared and knowledgeable raiders ready to go. Our first week with the specific bench we had all 13 people in attempts on Al'Akir due to a DC, a family emergency, and a work emergency. He died with our 3 bench players in on the raid.

More to come in the future.

More good fun times

So yesterday's (remember- we only raid once a week) raid finally saw our set group with 8 of our regulars, and our 2 main fill-ins. This brought great joy to me as our dps chart was competitive for top spot (I was so happy I forced our rogue into mutilate, he hates the spec like I hate BM but when he puts up over 14k next to mine on heavy movement fights and is giving me a run for #1 he understands). And our bottom spot was at worst filled with our OT doing 10k as ret-which sucks horribly as a spec right now- This meant our dps charts look like a bar graph of a steady economy, as opposed to a bar graph comparing the economies of the last 5 decades (hilarious picture btw). You can check us out at World of Logs.

This week saw two new kills- bringing the total up to 5/12. Maloriak was a pushover as soon as we controlled our green phases and stopped letting random people die to random things. And double dragons took a bit of learning, and a 4th healer. As it is a one tank fight we figured we had plenty of dps to make the enrage timer with ease and that living is a much better option than not. In our kill it was our first attempt where we had nobody get phased to the razzle dazzle, and deep breaths. This fight caused me some trouble trying to call the whole fight and be aware of all the mechanics happening as well. What really gave me the best experience to learn it was ultimately a wipe where I tanked the floor from early on and I had them burn a bres to pick up the healer over me, giving me the opportunity to swirl my camera around and focus on abilities coming up. I then got used to seeing how Valiona picks parts of the room and how to convey this to my folks. I decided on counting down, then (because our ranged are stacked up at the time on one side of the room) I call out one of the following "MID" "OUR SIDE" "OTHER SIDE" which denotes where the flames are and we scamper away quickly.

Additionally, I finally got people to realize if they stack up for blackout right as it hits- they can time it so they run in, and run out- minimizing dps loss and damage taken. Also, because a few of the blackouts occur during the 3rd and 4th transitions of dragons, I decided to forgo the world raid marker and instead just slapped a mark on the head of our healing lead- the one in charge of dispelling the debuff.

We recruited another hunter into our group, creating the biggest sharing of armor outside our tanks. This doesn't really bother me all that much though with all the valor points available for gear. This does however make me happy as now we'll be able to support full raids each week as opposed to looking for more people every time.

As we put in our time learning the new fights- and we are now having one-shots on ODS and Halfus each week with only mishaps stopping us on Magmaw (our rogue was like - "yeah, whatever I'll do spikes" and did not have any clue whatsoever greatly infuriating me as I had to explain it to him- after our 3rd wipe...), I would think that next week we'll end up being able to (as in, have the time to) down conclave and get some work in on chimaeron or atramedes.

Things keep going up and up

Originally we needed more ranged. This happened when one of our melee ret dps decided to swap over to his ele sham instead. BL+ moar ranged? Yes, please. Now our biggest issue is we haven't gotten our "starting 10" on for a single raid. In the first two weeks we had 7 of our "starting 10" and 8 in our second week. This has forced me to think about possibly recruiting another dps as I'm thinking that I'd be able to get them well over 50% playing time, and having that spot filled with a consistent person has many advantages:

1. I know how they operate. My probably biggest issue with pugs is simply that I don't know how to push them and I don't get their pushback. I can't rag on them like I do the rest of my raiders (as they rag on me).

2. I don't take risks on a pug's skill. Pugs can be horrible, and they can be decent. I have yet to fill a pug spot with someone who comes in and cleans house- but if I did, I'd be happy about it.

3. I don't have to loathe giving gear to pugs. Last week- ODS drops the hunter chest (Yay me!) but I end up losing the roll to the pug hunter we brought (He did decent enough dps, even though it was horrible dps for a surv hunter- 12k to my 16). Halfus drops the Agi+ trinket... I then realize I have to step up and just take this from him and the other pug hunter (we pulled in another by this time) as that gear will significantly increase my ability to do better which directly effects our raids right now. Gear helps, and we don't have a lot of it atm. Single upgrades to our players will help us push new content.

Anyway, we got do BH to start each week (free epix- yet not a single piece of tier for the raid yet) then move to BRD and got ODS our first week, Magmaw our second along with halfus. I fully expect us to have Double dragons this week and most likely Maloriak. Decent enough progression I think.

P.S. Conclave isn't very hard- yet for some reason our boomkin keeps getting DC'd in it, which leads to major issues as 9-manning that fight is quite difficult due to having to stack at the right times with everyone in the raid performing a location specific role (we end up always silenced from Rohash when he DC's).

Let the raiding begin

Sunday we put together our first raid as a guild. Being as none of us have raided together in over a month, and truth be told- we have never raided in this setup (I'm dpsing as hunter, a warrior dps is now a healer, a few other random changes). I hope it all goes well enough but I'm expecting a few growing pains.

My goals for our first day is go beat up on the TB boss, then get a first kill on at least one of the raid bosses. I'm certain that if people show up prepared we'll have enough skill and gear to take down at least one. I know one of our tanks is already fully decked in all that he needs from heroics, I've only got a 333 trinket (but it's Tia's Grace which is damn near BiS even in it's reg version) and a 333 bow (which if I can't get the BRC or VP weapons to drop, I'll just craft the engi one) and I'm set from heroics. I know a few of our other dps and heals are approaching this as well and I'm thinking that we're going to walk into raids more than "geared."

I've found that this normally happens to my groups- I'll put off raiding the first instances for an extra week or two to allow people to gear up, and my people end up being more than prepared and we all laugh about how we could have been in there a week or two earlier. I did this with Kara (I was fully epic'd from heroics and badges before- it felt unnecessary) and again in Naxx. In the end, I suppose this is a much better plan than just wiping needlessly.

Anyway- the goal this week will be to assist as best as possible the few people gearing up still and preparing by getting everyone to become familiar with strats and bosses before we step in the door. I want to be able to pull a boss less than 5 minutes after looking at him for the first time.

Cataclysm Heroic 5 mans

Well, my guild has ran every heroic 5man there is to offer. Only one boss actually gave us second pause- as none of us knew what to do- the last boss of Grim Batol. Once we realized we needed to burn adds at all costs the fight was fairly simple. 3 wipes and done. I've personally ran all the heroics but stonecore and throne. I have yet to find why they would be "Hard." I can however concur that with a random pug they could become extremely difficult.

Twice now, I've had healers in our guild complain that healing is horrible. Twice now, I've had healers remark that when your group CC's every trash with as much as possible healing trash doesn't feel harder than bosses and feels like it should. In a group with my hunter, a spriest, boomkin, and shaman healer we usually throw out (for the standard 5 trash pack pull) a trap, MC, and hex if he can get it off. I throw down my CC in under 2 seconds of standing in front of the trash, the healer hex's the moment he sees my trap go up, and the priest does the same. We have a blast doing it and it goes MUCH faster than attempting to AoE crap down. Currently it's stupid trying to use AoE when you can do more damage with single target dps. I'm pretty much amp'd for raiding to start again as I do not forsee us having too much trouble with much of the regular modes.

Just remember! As long as your group moves as a cohesive team you will succeed. When you begin to think and act as a bunch of individuals put together in a group you will most likely face difficulty. This game doesn't require much skill, and the most important of that is being a team player.

Paladin, kinda gone?

My friend has played wow on and off from beta until now. Since then he's sold his account twice. After the first time he sold his account, he went and made a new one. After the second time he sold his account, he found out when he wanted to come back to the game that the guy he sold his account to never changed the email (this was before bnet changes), password, or anything else. He ended up using this account the 3rd time he came back.

That was up until a few days ago- when that guy decided to take that account back (as by this time the bnet account matched his name, not my friends').

This was kind of amusing to me as I had originally told him to transfer his toons off that account for his own security, but even that would have been complicated as the names would have had to match. What happened though was he was all of a sudden without an account and without the time required to level from 1-80, let alone 80-85 in a reasonable period of time.

Enter Turiel. My paladin. He leads my guild in achievement points, as the GM, and has more mounts, pets, and titles you can shake a stick at. A full character, my main forever. How do I retire a main when I know that I'll always feel obligated to complete achievements (Long strange trip anyone?), get him gear, and keep him up to date? I realized with the swap to the much better fit for me now hunter, the perfect opportunity has landed in my lap to achieve this. I made another bnet account, he purchased all the games, paid for a transfer of my paladin over, and now he has another account (RAF'd from my original one) and my paladin. I'm able to now go to our raids with both my paladin AND my hunter- at the same time. What better way for me to retire my paladin than to make sure it'll stay active in my own raid guild at the hands of my friend?? Perfect I dare say. (plus, if he ever quits the game the account is actually under my control, so the paladin is never really too far away!)

That being said I know I'll continue to discuss healing in general as well as my hunter's awesome skills.

Heroic Lich King

So someone in our group roped us into deciding we wanted to try out Heroic Lich King.

I personally couldn't make it to last weeks attempts- Oh darn. As much as I don't mind wiping I'm pseudo glad I haven't had to commit myself to this yet as I really hate leaving anything open and with Cata shipping next week it doesn't seem very smart to commit to a new task like this.

That being said apparently it looks as if they should be able to possibly get this fight down next week. Another thing I'm thankful for- I missed day 1 of wipes which allows the rest of the group to spend some time learning each aspect of the fight. True, I may slow them up in an attempt or two, but most of the time I learn at about 25% the time necessary than most of my raiders. Usually from watching a video once I can lead attempts on bosses that people in the raid have already killed and I generally get most of it right.

My schedule is up in the air and I just really don't know if I truly want to be able to go to the wiping this week or not. Time will tell.

The post in which I revised our 10man group

Found out our Fulltime Tree healer isn't going to be able to commit 100% of the time for our group setup. This saddens me greatly. He is one of my favorite people ever to raid with. Truly one of those people if I'd meet IRL who I'd buy a beer.

As problems present themselves, as do solutions- A few weeks back we had two friends who wanted to join in our group who I apologetically had to inform we were already all full up. Turns out they are ok with splitting up and raiding separately as one of them will have ample time to raid while the other not so much. This also means I can take one and not have to worry about taking the other. So, he's willingly offered to be the "first backup" for our tree (he is also a tree, but also a totem-totaller, and a faith bearing priest... so he's given us the first choice for them).

His reason for this decision being that he believes our group to be the most professional and highest in skill on the server. This is probably true up to maybe a tpo 5 standpoint- either way, we rock and people know it. There is not much more gratifying for a game that is essentially rewarding you with digital achievements and pixels than for another person to give you mad props.

Anyway, someone convinced me it'd be a good idea to try out H LK before cata ships- so that's going to be my Sunday. Not exactly excited for it tbh, as I have not heard good things. But I'll figure out how much of a chance we stand about 2 pulls in.

Enjoy your Turkey.

Setup for the 'clysm

Calling things Cata still reminds me of an STD. I just think it's something you'd mock your friend for getting- "HAHA! You just got CATA!!!! HAHA!"

Hell, I guess "The 'clysm" does too...

Business time; Our setup is (was set in stone, then just changed out of nowhere**) put in writing on the wall right now and looks like this:

Tanks:
1. Warrior (new to the group)
2. Warrior

Melee:
1. Combat rogue (apparently he hates Mut)
2. DK (He's game with going either frost or UH, depending on what we need)
3. Ret Pally (formerly on his druid tank**)

Ranged:
1. Hunter (The king of bling himself- yours truly)
2. Mage (Formerly on a warrior in our last setup, and he had a problem with dying... maybe being in cloth will teach him...?)

Heals:
1. Druid
2. Priest (Holy/Disc depending on the fight)

Swing Heal:
1. Druid (He's a boomkin/healer, depending on what we need, which means some progression is 3 heals, some is 2)

As far as buffs go (because the only ones we need are for physical damage ofc-now that I use them that is) we're missing either 5% crit or 30% bleed damage (which only matter to the rogue and me-if I'm MM) so I'll probably have to go get like 3 wolves so I can swap in different colors for different fights. As for the spell buffs, we're just missing spell crit I believe, if our mage goes fire and gives the 10% spellpower buff.

So, we're not sitting horribly all things considered it'll still be the strongest raid I'll have ever been at the helm for in my raiding career.

**The ret pally was originally going to be Holy and we'd have the second druid be full-time boomer, thus keeping up boomer buffs 100% and we'd get the 3% all damage from the mage as Arcane. Then I was informed that he no longer desired to heal and that he wanted to dps as ret- forever shattering my hopes and dreams (not to mention the reason why I went to the hunter in the first place) for a raid group that had consistently more ranged than melee, because we ALWAYS have too much melee.

I returned

So, I kind of (actually did) quit the game for a while. I had only started this blog a month prior to, but I realized that this blog was a part of me trying to find more fun in the game.

Well I started up a while back again. This time I came back ready to play on my own terms again (not attempting to be a business professional IRL AND a hardcore- 4 nights a week raider. It gets tough raiding 20 hours, and working 70 a week. I mean that leaves 78 for "everything else" as in... eating (8+ right there), drinking, hanging with friends, mindlessly doing things I like.). I instead enjoy the game as if I can't log in for a week or so at a time, that's life. If I can log in a bunch and I want to, I do it.

I also re-formed my original guild (which I run) and got back with my original crew (who are all awesome players who also have RL to tend to, and a massive raid schedule isn't what they want). Anyway, the idea is that we will be rocking our old raid schedule: Once a week, 5-6 hours.

Most people look at that and initially say "What can you do in 1 raid day a week??? and a fourth the time that most raiding guilds need??" Well I tell you this, sir: We can do everything we want. So far we are 6/6 in setting goals and achieving them (historically). This means I'll be playing cata (though I'll probably be MS ret, or switch entirely to the spriest) and dominating. This also means we may be looking for a body or two to help out.

Long story short, it's nice to see you again!

Raid times.

Latest bug from our GM- He wants us all to do as much as possible in 10mans... which are to be done OUTSIDE of scheduled raid times...

We are 3 nights a week, tuesday thru thursday, 3 and a half hours a night. AND HE'S BEEN HAVING US DO ToC25 INSTEAD OF SPLITTING RAID INTO MULTIPLE 10s.

This slightly annoys me being as I'm juggling 60+ hours at work a week, a girlfriend who I think is feeling neglected sometimes... and friends/family. I love raiding, but I mean it's been quite crazy lately.

Anywhoo, I realize that I just have to sit sometimes in these situations... That because of my schedule and life I won't be able to make every raid AND every 10man... And I know I'll pass on 10s because they want me in 25s... It's just irritating and all.

Truly, I am probably most annoyed at the inefficiencies they are ran at. Among our guild we have a TON of gear, and a lot of geared alts. Almost every raider has one, or sometimes more geared enough alts to keep up in ICC10. Now, what simply baffles me is that in each group it seems like we have a few mains, a few alts, and a random friend of someones or something... This is great and all in gearing purposes... but then people get all hot and angry over the fact that the 10s aren't making progress... I don't get why we don't make one raid a super-duper stacked out the ass raid who is going to lay down the law to ICC and all of arthas' minions. Then the second set would be almost as stellar... followed by groups that will have more and more alts in them. Instead it is just "we'll be running 3 10 mans this week. Here are the days and times. Please reply"

Yet, I digress. I left my guild that I ran for a reason. I want organization and all, but I refuse to be the one to step up and take the reigns. Being as such I really can't criticize too much...

Or can I?

Princes, and how they screamed like little girls in the end.

Well, I must say... I should never have cleared my recount from last night...

1. Our tanks have enough gear and do (overall) a pretty darn good job.
   
2. Our healers (As I realized last night) are really an amazing team. We had our 1 Disc/1 Holy Priest/2 resto Druids/and ME*.
   
3. Our DPS do decently well. But I feel that they are meeting raid reqiurements rather than exceeding them.

This being said-We have some amazing heavy hitters. All our rogues rip and gnaw and claw eachother for being top dogs, while 2 of our DKs hit like mack trucks. Our 3rd DK who raids was what I would have said was underperforming, settling around 5k, and last night was pulling the potential for her gear. I was quite pleased.

I don't expect every single person who is dealing damage to the boss to do 12k dps. (I wish they would though.) I just expect that when you are in 4pc T9 ilevel245 you do >5k. I would garner the expectations (depending on the fight ofc) that they are capable of hitting 7k in really nice conditions.... Enough about this right now though... Because...

LAST NIGHT, the dps cleaned house... AND avoided shit really well. And let me tell you amigo... Princes is make or break with your DPS ultimately. Here is my quick and dirty explanation of what I do in that fight-->

• Tur bacon's one tank who he will be out of range most of the time (on Mr. Fire Prince.)
  
• Tur Heals like a mofo on the Warlock tank (on Mr. Shadow Prince, easily the easiest one to deal with once your warlock goes pro in catching black balls**)
  
• Tur Heals like a mofo on the Paladin who he enjoys healing because pally on pally action is hawt... especially with AD! (Tanking Mr. I-like-to-blow-shit-up-Prince)


• Tur avoids the crazy crap that all three Princes toss out which are...
  
  



• Mr. Fire Prince sends out big ass balls of fire, if they target you, be leet
  and show how well you can kite! This reduces the damage it does when it gets to you, so turn and run like those mages do!!

  
  

  Mr. Shadow Prince makes the big black balls appear. They aren't good for
  you-insofar as your buddy the warlock tank- he needs them for increasing his
  shadow resist so he doesn't take as much damage when Shadow Prince gets all big and angry!
  

  Mr. I-like-to-blow-shit-up-Prince decides every once in a while he'll cast
  this big explosion that if you are within 30 yards, you blow up... and so does
  anyone around you... GAH! So I'd just stay far away from him and we'd be
  gravy.

This is Fire, stay out of it!

So, with all this going on, and we have 2 or 3 ranged making sure the prince's balls don't drop (GET IT? BALLS DROPPING?) it seems like quite a bit, but just take it a step at a time and try to control the fight. It's really not that long of a fight in the end.



Couple things that could totally help people out:



In our healer setup we broke out into 2 groups for "general spatial placement" even though through the fight you will end up running everywhere. It helped to spread us out among the raid so all the tanks were getting enough heals, and I suppose the raid as well.


I let our raid leader know an idea might be for the ranged keeping the balls up to each have their own mark and to mark the one they will be responsible for keeping up. That way we aren't having 2 stay on one and 1 falling. Seemed to help keep things more organized.


Your melee need to focus on staying alive. As much as I toted how awesome our damage was, this fight really doesn't show your brute force. If they aren't diligent with the explosion dodging or swapping targets the fight is incredibly harder.


Your warlock needs to be a skilled professional. If he isn't, then you may be better off having a tank just run around doing that job. We tried this a few times and it isn't horrible... It's just a lot easier with a warlock. Threat is an issue with a non-lock. Warlocks are surprisingly resilient in PvP gear and stam trinks+tank setup to spell damage. Kinda awesome.

*This is my favorite setup for 25man. I don't *mind*
squeezing a resto shammy between us, but losing any of us makes me cringe, and taking more heals leads into the raid dps issue...

** Do not mistake with Blue Balls, could cause serious damage to your health and personal well-being.