My guilty pleasure.

Of my many, I must admit... I absolutely love pop-music. There is just so much beauty in a catchy tune that is more or less manufactured in a sound studio with no skill by the "artist" at all.

Really, It's true. When I raid, I bounce around in music styles, depending on what I am looking for. Lately it has been this though- Pull up Grooveshark.com, hit the button for "Most popular" and hit "Play all" so I hear what is most recently the most popular. Anything that can hit a top 40 chart is fair game... Ever. As in, I get all the new Gaga, Jason DeRulo, Britney, and what have you. But it's the Afroman, and Tom Petty that really gets me hot and heavy.

Mid-battle going from Taylor Swift to Kanye always makes me smile.

I can't raid without good tunes playing. It used to be just straight techno/trance, as techno has the same effect as classical does on me, helping me focus with no lyrics in the background at all, but I just can't get enough of some of the music and singing along to "Replay" by Iyaz or "One less lonely girl" by the Biebs, simply stellar and out of this world.

Cringe if you will, hate me for doing it, but I love it. It makes raiding more enjoyable for me. I mean come one, if you are going to listen to music while raiding, it better be enhancing your experience!!

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.

LFG Anger

I have to say, This post by ferarro made me think of just the other day in a heroic Gundrak.



I zone in (as tank ofc, becuase I don't like waiting!) where I start putting on my tank set and buff the whole party. I throw up a readycheck (as party lead) and everyone is ready but the healer. I hate to say it, but I was actually in a threat set and knew without the dps, I could still live and be just fine. So naturally I pull, even though the priest said no to a readycheck and had half mana. (I actually assumed he'd do what I do in that situation, sit and keep drinking, as he just clearly stated to me"NO, I AM NOT READY") Where he starts flipping out in chat calling me a baddie asking if I saw the readycheck I threw up!!



Now we kill the first three bosses with me just silently pulling and self-healing as much as I need becuase he thinks somehow it is a smart move to NOT heal your tank. His friend in the run is pulling a whopping 1.2k dps, and decides to thunderfuck mobs I'm tanking. I would have said something being as I was annoyed with the guy about his leet dps... but one of the other dpsers is pulling under him at 1.1k and I wasn't about to be a super-ass.



So instead I calmly type out that either he thunderfucked while not glyphed (which is bad for raiding anyway) or the Boomkin hit typhoon(who was talented in it), I didn't know who did it, but it wasn't real cool, please refrain from this. The healer takes this as "RAWR YOU ARE INSULTING MY GUILDIE AND YOU MADE ME ANGRY B4" So he claims I don't get any more heals. The DK (who is pulling 4k =D) is like Come on... were so close to the end and won't have to talk to eachother.



Here's where I do something out of my element:

Usually I would succumb to nerdrage and just unleash fury upon this poor soul (no really, I can get brutal) becuase lets face it... Most of the people who get angry right from the get-go will end up much much more angry after talking to me. I'm not the greatest, but I'm pretty good at utilizing logic in making my points, which I have found most wow players understand when I walk them through it, yet can't do on their own... I'm also very hurtful if I want to be... ALL THIS ASIDE, because I actually chose to NOT do this! Is that I deleted the mean comments I already had typed out (no really) and filled it with simply this:



TUR:"Hey man, I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was just trying to be helpful as I know not everything is explained and many tanks would get angry at that sort of action, luckily I'm not one of them =D"



BH(Baddie healer):"Well most healers would be pissed if they said no to a readycheck and their tank rushes in."



TUR:"I'm sorry about that, but really I knew what I was pulling and that I could keep myself, and the whole group up against 3 trash mobs. If I pull on a no to a readycheck, I expect my healer to be afk filming a porno, making coffee, or curing cancer, clearly."



DK:(randomly interjects):"This group isn't that bad and were looking at the last boss, lets just kill him and go our merry way."



TUR:"Shhh, didn't you know that all DKs are bad? Jeez, try showing up on recount sometime, baddie."



*Tur pops DP and barrels into the boss, waiting for a 5stack of SoCorr to pop wings and AP trinket and unload on the wittle bossie. All the while taking nothing for damage."



The boss dies



BH:"Hey man, you really are a good tank, take care!"



Moral of the story for me... I was actually nice when things got heated and the guy didn't end up being unreasonable for once(I mean he acknoweledged how awesome I am... He has to be at least awake to the world then!)!! Hallelujiah!

Some posts are just THAT good.

So short, so sweet, so amazing. I don't even read this blog that much yet I have to share it with anyone who stumbles upon mine. Here it is.