Cataclysm!

So I know it's been awhile since my last post, but in my defense, it has been kinda slowgoing prior to Cata release, and kinda 'zomghurryupandlvlbrbeatingasandwichandtakinganapnotimetoplaywithlegos' since Cata release. So I reckon on this fabulous maintenance day, I'll put down my thoughts on Cata for general consumption.

In this first week I've seen 2 toons to 85, and experienced a ton of the quest content, not so much of the dungeon content.  The quests are delicious, numerous, and pretty straightforward (most of them).  The new redesigned questing method is, I think, awesome.  They make the chains all link together, so one quest hub leads you to the next hub, and that hub leads you to the following hub, all the way through the zone.  Gone are the days when you finish up a hub and go 'OK great, wtf do I go now?'  Achievements for completion of all/most quests in every zone to make sure you don't spend hella time wondering if there's more quests in this zone and wandering around aimlessly lookin for that !.

So there's Vashj'ir (sp* on that?).  Underwater paradise if you can stand very angry fish and some far-wandering patrols of naga.  I was actually surprised we didn't see more murlocks here... but I'm not gonna look that particular gift horse in the teeth, ifya feel me.  Blizz did an awesome job with this zone.  It's multi-layered, excellent detail put into the underwater plantlife and varying kinds of wildlife (beasts, fish, and critters).  All in all, I'd have to say this is my favorite of the new zones.  Now, did it not include a water mount and underwater breathing..., maybe a different story, but I have chosen to start all the toons I'm lvling in this zone.

Then, Mt. Hyjal.  I can't speak to this zone as I haven't gone out there to quest, other than to kill elementals for the new JC daily quest.  Maybe one of you, my dedicated followers, can add your thoughts on Hyjal in a comment!, or not, whatevs.

So after one of the above-mentioned starting zones, there's Deepholm.  They located this one in 'the maelstrom', nothing says good questing like starting a line by diving into a zomgbigass whirlpool, but you wind up in an underground (underground, underwater, under azeroth, under someshit, there is no way to fly up and out) cavern, all rocky and black and rocky and dark.  The questline here is just rediculous, it makes one coherent story all the way from the first quest through to the end of the line.  To make that even better, they force you to experience the entire line before opening up the Therazane reputation vendor/daily quests, which will almost guarantee everyone will finish up before moving on, since they are the new #1 place to go for shoulder enchants for all roles.  And as a side note, awesome mining takes place here, no pyrite, but hella elementium, so yeah.

Next stop on your way to 85, Uldum.  Sweet desert setup, really nice environment if you're into the whole desert thing, lots of cool pyramids around, the npc's are... funny lookin and whatnot.  Kinda scattery in the questing, we see alot of different stories, not really a line from beginning to end as much as a group of smaller lines, but that's fine by me.  Big highlight here : Harrison Jones!  There's 3 (or 4, you can kinda split the last one into 2 pieces) questlines for Indy in this zone, he's in familiar territory, underground temples and crazy pyramid junk, and **spoiler** he even meets up with our old buddy Brann Bronzebeard ("You'll find me wherever the action is!"    no shit.).  Good times in this zone, and relatively fast an easy.  Also, my new, all-time favorite quest is located here, toward the middle of the questing...  the Crazed Gnome Massacre!  For this quest you actually encase yourself in a sphere of awesome and go literally faceroll 1000 gnomes!  Nothing beats that...   nothing. ever. ever. I wish it was a daily... but sadly, it's not.

Lastly, there is Twilight Highlands.  I've hit 85 both times in the middle of the line here, so I haven't seen the entire line play out and cannot speak to it's story coming together or not.  What I can say is : who doesn't like helpling dwarves out.  That whole Wildhammer/Firebeard thing is kinda crazy, there's a wedding, some trashed and burning dwarf holes (dwarf = hobbit?), and plenty of kegs of beer.  Some dragon happenings, a funky upside-down octopus with flailing tentacles, and the new Ring of Blood (Crucible of Carnage I think they call it).  This zone looks like your typical coastal land mass in my eyes, nothing exceptionally special about the environment detail, but definitely content rich, you can't go and inch without aggro'ing 3 things that just might kill you.

The new profession stuff is... at least interesting, at best a real PITA.  The first couple days an enormous amount of money was to be made by people gathering and selling instead of trying to craft things off the bat.  I definitely participated in some big money selling those first 2 days, which in turn, financed me to buy 10x the same stuff back to level my professions, about 4 days later.  Wierd how that works, but anyway.  I'm starting to realize that my professions don't match up... I was all set up when they were all lvl 80 to do things across all toons.  Now I'm leveling my miner/alchemist and got no herbage to alchy with.  So then I goto my herber/alchemist to balance that, but who needs 2 alchys off the bat? (small use though, in transmute cooldowns). Then I shoot for my leatherworker/jewelcrafter, so I have gems and ore for JC thru mining earlier, but no leathers.  Then I realize that I dont even have a skinner!  That won't do, so it's time to re-analyze my professions across the board.  I really can't mine on 2 toons at once, so I don't need 2 miners is what I decide, and I drop mining on the paladin and switchin him to skinning to go with his blacksmithing. So the plan was to do the hunter next, but as he can do JC dailys for tokens and buy recipes while he's still 80, and he can't LW worth a damn without any leather... I'm going with the paladin first to provide skins, and a few hours a day mining on the druid will fund his blacksmithing, then, I'll be totally balanced.  So after hunter, it'll be shaman for engineering, though I may go ahead and level his alchemy in the meantime, for an additional xmute cooldown.

Abit lengthy... and I left alot out believe it or not, there's just so much new junk goin on and all sorts of craziness.  It is, as I'm sure blizz intended, going to be a long while before things get comfortable again.  PvP is supposed to start today, Rated PvP next week, my raid is talking about starting up in the beginning of January.  Overall, it's going to be an action packed few months, but I'm ready for the long and tedious gearing up process, bringiton.

In My Boredom...

So purely out of boredom a few months ago I made a new alt on another server, an Undead (read 'really ugly') Priest.  Also out of unconquerable boredom, I decided last week to actually level this new, sad, no BoA havin, ugly, pathetically weak, brokeass, 'nother server alt.  It has been fun, I gotta say, despite being 'used to' having BoA gear and a ton of golds to fund my low-lvls through their journey.  Horde-side questing is interesting, as I've only played one Horde toon before and it were so long ago I can't hardly remember.  Plus, the new patch changed all the environments and a good bit of the quests, so it's all new.  Time to see if the old addage 'if I could go back, knowing what I know now' holds true, starting a new toon on a new server with nothing, at all.  So far, working out OK, made a fisherman and got some gathering professions, theres my income right there *which I didn't know about the first time around.  As it stands, I *should* have enough G for my flying mount by 60, which I didn't get on my first toon (my hunter) until I was already 80.  All in all, I reckon it's fun and semi-instructive.  At very least, it adds a touch of perspective, to all those who have become so elitist and intolerant of 'noobs' in the game I would say: go make a new toon on a new server and see what it's like to not have heaps of gold and BoA's, bags, mounts, guildies, or friends again.

The New Druid

I had a chance to heal on the druid for the first time since patch 4.0, and I gotta say, I'm beginning to warm up to it.  They changed the way alot of my spells work, and changed some of the stats on my gear, but, overall, it seems to work.  So here's a breakdown of the way I see our new stuff.

Regrowth - The new nourish, it casts fast (1.2sec), hits for around 10k, and puts a 6sec HoT (down from what? 12 maybe). This is the big reactionary healing spell.  Also a good base for your Swiftmend.

Rejuvenation - About the same as it was, nice small HoT, instant cast.  Druid's bread and butter. Other option for a base for Swiftmend

Swiftmend - Way more useful than before.  Has the same quality of pushing the remaining heals left on your HoT all at once, but with our new talent 'Efflorescence' it puts a puddle of green goodness under your swiftmend target at an 8y radius that heals anyone standing in it for 60% of the swiftmend amount over 7sec.  Crazy useful, say goodbye to infest, Mr. Arthas.

Lifebloom - About the same, except that now you can only apply it to one target.  Tank healing classic, raid healing... not so useful.  Stack to 3 and watch it blow up for 20k on your target.

Nourish - Slow cast, Small heal.  Shares a cast time with Healing Touch and HT has a way bigger heal.  The one thing that is has (which is arguably useless) is that it refreshes the lifebloom timer if you cast it on your lifebloom target.

Healing Touch - 2.7sec cast, 15-20k heal.  This is our new bigger picker upper, if a regrowth wont do, HT ftw.

Wild Growth - Same old spell, just as useful.  Keep it on cooldown, always, period.  One notable thing, seems the range is increased so, as opposed to before, you will always get it on all 6 possible targets. (20y I think, used to be you'd cast it on tanks and it wouldnt jump to melee, now it'll jump to ranged too)

Tree of Life - Gone are the days of tree healing.  Now you pop Tree as a cooldown,  healing increased, armor increased, buffs Regrowth, Lifebloom, roots and wrath for 30sec.

Thats about the big and small of it, it's a different style of healing is all, no more 'bind every key to nourish and faceroll keyboard = win', it requires new active thinking and abit of trial and error.



Unrelated:  Priest to 80 a few days now and gearing up nicely, shadow and disc ftw.

EndGame. More End than Game

So as we prepare for the next great adventure : Cataclysm, things on the raiding front are dying down, quite literally I'm afraid.  Everything is changing, raids are ending or breaking up, the server economy is all out of wack, and it's impacting gameplay all over the place.

My cheif concern as we head into the expansion is gold, of course.  I'd like enough gold to be comfortable without farming for the first few months of Cata, so I can focus on getting my toons (soon to be 7 lvl 80s with the addition of my currently lvling priest) to 85 and *a few* into some raids, without worrying about not having repair funds.  The server economy is all over the place, people are liquidating their WotLK items and supply is now unpredictable, where you would be certain to sell things at a particular price before, you are now just as likely to find them back in your mailbox instead of gold... very frustrating.  The one upside to this is that if you do have the funds to do some small investing, you can stock up on stuff you know you're gonna use, like buff foods/mats for your lvling to 85.

In the back of my mind I'm already tallying up pro's and con's as to which of my toons I'm gonna level first, or I should say : what order am I gonna level my toons in, since the obvious goal is to have them all to 85 before I start another new one.  Heres what I got : Druid X2, Paladin, Hunter, DeathKnight, Shaman, and soon to be (*by the end of next week I reckon, though I hope and will try for sooner) Priest.  One of my druids, Nym, is my main raiding toon, but I also raid a nice bit on Max *my "main"*, the hunter.  So here's my tentative list, subject to change of course as indecision runs its course. 

Nym - druid #1 - Resto/Bear
Max - hunter - Survival/BeastMaster
Luna - priest - Shadow/Disc
Ned - paladin - Prot/Holy
Dumb - shaman - Resto/Elemental
Ginny - druid #2 - Balance/Resto
Mund - death knight - Tank/(no offspec for this guy prolly, I cannot stand dk dps)

Also, slated for level after Cata release and my 7 get to 85 will be a rogue, a warlock, and I am undecided whether slot 10 should be a warrior or a mage (played both thru lvl 20 and didnt like either one so...  mabye another druid!)

Last subject to broach is raiding.  My 'big' raid that I have been running with since I only had one toon (my hunter) to run on has finally fallen apart.  Mainly due to the new raid lockout system (thx alot blizz), but also for one reason or another, people are just losing interest in spending their repair golds wiping on 25 man bosses.  Some will argue that if you haven't got it down by now, you're bordering on too late.  I tend to agree, but not because we should punish all procrastinators and latecomers, not because we should judge people who got stuck in a fail raid and decided to see it through instead if bailing on them (noble, but silly imo...), but because now that they changed the talents and spells for the new content, group makeups dont work like they used to.  Classes are performing differently than they have been for the past 2 years or so, people are re-learning how to play, so the group makeups are not quite ideal anymore, which, going along with my theory, is by design according to blizz.  They wanna make it so people have to shuffle, so you can't take the same 10 people you ran Naxx and Uld and ToC and ICC with into the next expansion and be all good, you gotta mix it up.  Good for later, bad for now because it screws up our established group mechanics just when we are trying to squeeze in that last Lich King kill before Cata.

So people are taking their time now to farm, grind, level, and some are even taking a much needed break from the game (*what would I do with my days??) so that when Cata hits, we can all level like madmen to jockey for our positions in newly forming raids.

User Interface Addons

So I have *hinted* at my deep and unending love for UI addons... they are more than helpful, they surpass useful, some of them I just cant live (that is to say play...) without.  As patches come out, new addons come and go, but old or new, I'm always lookin for that 'perfect' one, that 'awesome' addon.  Some people you talk to are what I will call 'purists', totally opposed to addons, claiming that all addons are crutches. To a certain degree I would agree, some addons you become so dependent on that you literally cannot play without them, but most of them are inessential *that is to say I use them because I wanna, F what they say. To follow is a list of my addons and their descriptions, more information can be found and most of these can be downloaded at Curse.

AddonLoader - A handy tool to cut down the time on your loading screen, it loads your addons 'on use'. ie: your mail addon loads when you open the mailbox, your auto-vend and auto-buy addons load when you open the vendor, your auction addons load when you visit the auction house.

Ampere - This one is basically your addon selection screen, but in-game.  It puts a list of checkboxes next to a list of addons in your interface/addons menu, where you can check/uncheck to load/unload addons with a simple /reloadui. No more re-logging mid raid to turn on your bossmods or turn off that annoying raid-announce mod. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

ArenaLog - Moderately useful, this addon keeps a list of arena teams you've gone up against as well as a record of your wins/losses against that team. It includes names and classes, so you can compare which team comps you go better/worse when up against.

ArenaUnitFrames - WoW has arena frames built in which will work just as well, but these frames are moveable/sizeable/customizeable where the stock frames are not.

ArkInventory - A very setup-intense addon, but super useful. This mod puts all your inventory contents in one big 'bag', you customize it by groups/categories, so that you always know where to look to find what you want in your bags. It includes a way to make custom categories and assign items to those, so you can keep special things separate. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

AtlasLoot - Very useful loot table mod. This shows you information on everything from crafted items to boss drops to heirloom/pvp/badge/token vendor items/costs. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Auctioneer - Awesome auction addon. This mod comes with an entire suite of addons that make auctioning easy, whether you are buying or selling, or just pricing. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Autobar - A relatively setup-intense addon, but totally worth it. This mod puts categories onto a button, and you can put these buttons on a bar/multiple bars for easy use. (ie: puts all your mounts on a button, click the button to get the last mount you used or a random mount or your favorite mount, hold shift to see the entire mount menu and select one manually) Fully customizeable and dead useful.

BankItems - Simple easy addon that alot of other addons have built in. It puts a button on your minimap that lets you browse the banks/guildbanks/inventories/equipped/mailbox/auctions of all your toons without switching.  It also puts information in your mouseover tooltips as to how many of that item you have and where they can be found. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Bartender4 - Fully customizeable actionbar addon. This addon rocks, nuff said.  *this is one of my 'must have' addons

BlizzMove - Lets you move stock blizzard display windows (mailbox, bank, quest info, etc) and saves their locations for next open.

Capping - Awesome PvP timers, moveable/sizeable, announce timers to /bg /raid or /say. Useful for battlegrounders

Chatter - Chat addon that allows copying/pasting and interactive chat controls, recoloring of text and whatnot *alot of this addon has been built into the new stock blizz chat frame so its not 'as useful' as it used to be.

Decursive - Neat little addon for anyone who will like to cure a disease/poison/curse without having raidframes/healbot open

Deus Vox Encounters (DXE) - An alternative to Deadly Boss Mods, timers and detailed spell info for raid boss encounters. *this is one of my 'must have' addons (unless you are a sheep and like DBM, no shame in that)

Elk's Buff Bars - Great buff addon, sizeable, customizeable, text list of buffs/debuffs with timers. if you dont like the way blizz displays buffs or find it hard to see what buffs you have or how long they have left, this is the mod for you.  *this is one of my 'must have' addons

EveryQuest - Loremaster addon, though slightly useful for questing in general. This mod needs 2 more mods to perform well imo: Handy Notes and EveryQuest Questgivers.  With all 3 you get a complete list of all quests in a zone, plus notations on your minimap and zone map as to where the quest givers can be found and how many quests they have still available.  You can get this mod to interface directly to WoW and find out for your which quests you have already done as well, so if you are goin back to clean up for Loremaster, this mod is the bizniss.

FindTheHealers - (not updated for this patch yet... hope it does soon)  This mod reads from the battleground stats automatically and puts a big ugly nameplate above the healers in the battleground. Excellent for dps healer targeting goodness.

Gatherer - A very useful mod for Miners and Herbalists. It remembers where your nodes spawn, with a shareable list of nodes and stats (ie: percentage of frost lotuses inside an herb node) and a neat little HuD (which I dont use personally) that makes farming/finding a route nice and easy.  *this is one of my 'must have' addons

GearScore - The 'purists' say this is the worst thing to ever happen to WoW, I say dont blame the hammer when you smash your finger. This tool gives you an idea of what a player's gear is like. The reason this addon upsets idiots is that they liken gearscore to skill. This is one of those 'use it as you will' addons, or 'at your own risk' would be more appropriate, if you go bragging in trade chat about your gearscore, you are more likely to be yelled at than patted on the back.

Grid - A neat little raidframe, very customizeable, used for target selection for mouseover macros or for 'keybinder' style healers.

Healbot - My personal favorite addon. If I was going to a deserted island with a broadband connection and I could only install one addon *(that doesnt even make sense...)  This would be the one.  This is the addon that the 'purists' talk about, I literally could not heal without this mod. *this is one of my 'must have' addons (again for clarity) *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Incoming - Easy one-click addon to annouce incoming enemies to your location in a battleground, also one click to announce your all clear.

Jobber - Neat professions screen addon gives you a longer list window as well as tabs to swap back and forth professions without having to close and open. disenchant/mill/prospect/campfire buttons right there as well.

LootFilter - Very useful addon to automatically destroy junk that you pick up. So if you are fishing and you get Tangled Fishing Line, or you are farming humans and get Fur Clothing Scraps, full autodelete when added to the list. Nice time/space saver.

Minimap Button Bag - With all these addons cluttering up my minimap with icons... This addon puts all your minimap buttons in a single dropdown menu button. You can also select which (if any) you want to keep out on your minimap itself. Very useful.

Omen3 - Threat Meter. Absolutely necessary addon for tanks and dps. period. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Overachiever - Nice achievement addon. Compare your achieves with other's links, it suggest achieves for you while you are in the area.  Not very useful, I'll admit.

Postal - Mailbox addon, One button to open all those auctions. nuff said. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Power Auras - Customizeable display for your ability/buff/debuff/procs. HuD style

Quartz - Cast bars, yours, your target's, focus target's. Text, timer, countdown/countup. Very useful. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

QuestHelper - Very useful *once upon a time*, most of it is now built into WoW

RaidBuffStatus - Nice buff monitor addon, for raidwide buffs/announcing. Excellent for raid leaders/staff.

RaidRoll - Lootmaster mod, easy rolls for mainspec and offspec, announce and award.

Recount - Fight data. Dps, damage done, healing done, damage taken, you name it, recount records it. (*if you are in range)  *this is one of my 'must have' addons

Skinner - Custom skins for blizz stock and addon windows.

SmartRes - Raid recovery addon, tells you who's res'in who, and how long its gonna take, no wasted res'
*this is one of my 'must have' addons (if you can res)

TidyPlates - Customizeable nameplate addon, widgets for threat and random junk.

TipTac - Tooltip addon, details incl. target, talents, health, etc. Customizeable and most importantly... moveable.

TitanPanel - Nice addon to display things like your clock, some of your buttons from your minimap can be placed on it, displays your durability and gold/experience per hour, coordinates.

Xperl Raid Frames - Excellent frames for player, target, pet, focus, and least of all, raid. *this is one of my 'must have' addons

A few addons have been removed from my reportioire by the last few patches.  Some of these listed addons haven't been updated, but I expect and *hope* that they will be soon. I'm always on the lookout for more, so if you got a good one, holler @ me.

Patch 4.0

Wow. My first pre-expansion patch day (yes, I'm aware that I'm a nub), and I'm not sure how to cope. Not only did all the talent trees change, almost all the abilities are different, and overall play style (at least on the druid) is totally backwards. With additions and subtractions, I will be forced to relearn how to play, so I'm starting with just the 2 main toons (*since I already didn't know how to play the other 4).

The hunter is kinda the same, I'll have to get used to the new way pets work (incl. collecting alot more different pets), and I'm missing a couple of the shots that I used to have in my regular rotation. I did spend a little time on the Heroic Training Dummy and saw a better number than before, even with the downtime added by waiting for focus to generate *MOAR HASTE*. I am curious to see what happens in a raid setting.

The druid... well lets just say that my whole world is upside-down druid wise. However, I'm still a beast in PvP, maybe even more so than before.  The new talents to proc a heal on yourself when under a certain health for free is awesome to get you out of those sticky 'Im stunned' moments, and they buffed the jargon out of rejuv, which is like so booya. So yeah, PvP resto = confirmed goodness. Idk what the new druid raid healing is gonna be like. Swiftmend has that new awesome AoE thing now that's gonna rival chain heal in its melee healing awesomeness, and the aforementioned rejuv happiness will do great for pulse aoe dmg on the ranged. But...  lifebloom now can only be applied to a single target (not that I used lifebloom an overwhelming lot, but they buffed it, and it's awesome) so we'll have to see how useful that one is gonna end up bein. Tree of Life form is now a cooldown, so some thought is gonna have to go into where/when to best use it to full effect, but that's no biggie.

Then there's the UI changes. In these 'in between' days (in between the patch and whenever the lazy addon developers get their updates out), I'm forced to run a nearly stock UI, which pains me.  Those of you who know me will understand that my deep, deep love for addons (or addon dependency, however you wanna phrase it...) will be causing me some performance issues. But Healbot works, X-perl is gold, and Bartender is only a 'bit' wonky... and that's all I 'really' 'need' I guess.  Step 1: show up  Step 2: mash healbot  Step 3: collect loots. Most missed in the last day? Auctioneer, ArkInventory, Postal, Autobar.

All things considered, I like the patch... for what it is.  I do understand that it's gonna be imperfect while they work out the kinks, and that the classes are gonna be unbalanced until they get the nerfhammer workin, so I will be able to cope with that.  I'll tell anyone, I believe change is inevitable, without change boredom would ensue.  When they change things all you hear is "zomg they changed XXX and I hate it"  but if they didn't change anything the same morons would be "zomg this is the same old crap and I hate it". So while I do have my gripes about my own struggle to adapt, I have a positive outlook, overall, to the coming changes and new content.

LK 25

Tonight I participated in a Lich King 25man kill. Good one for your adrenal gland there let me tell ya. We came in on an extended lockout from last week and just had Sindragosa up, which proved only a minor speebump, downed her 2nd shot and on to LK that easy. LK himself, not so easy... We wiped for about an hour before a break, then about another 4 attempts later, he died. Special thanks to all the raiders in that run, all our hard work finally pays off. Big shoutout to Night Raiders - Feathermoon.  Tebeh ftw, that is all.

So by my estimation (based on Marrowgar kills) we've been at it for approx 26 weeks. The following is my 25ICC boss kill statistics, in order that we progressed through.
Lord Marrowgar - 23
Lady Deathwhisper - 20
Gunship Battle - 20 (8 of which were on Heroic)
Deathbringer Saurfang - 19 (musta missed one...)
Rotface - 20
Festergut - 17
Valithria Dreamwalker - 13
Blood Prince Council - 12
Professor Putricide - 9
Blood Queen - 5
Sindragosa - 2
The Lich King -1

As Cataclysm approaches, I dont know what will become of my raid, things are up in the air of course, but even if this run turns out to be our last, at least we got the bastard!  What a long, strange trip it's been (ya, i know), worth every bit of the headache and repair bill. Wrath of The Lich King = Over.  C'mon Cata

Eventful Day

So I had a fabulous (yes Im manly enough to be comfortable using the word fabulous) few hours of PvP today.  Over 1100 kills before dinnertime... it was a varitable slaughterhouse. Good good times with my people.  I've been making a few new battleground buddies lately, but its always the old bg buds that come thru for you the best. In today's case, my two priest homies, one disc, one shadow, were in our base in WsG defending our flag. While they were farming returns, I went out to run the flag. Couple struggles along the way of course, but druids are so OP that it takes alot to really get in my way. But on my last run, as the horde got all frustrated with my two priests not letting them pick the flag up, they went all in to our base to try and get our flag. I met no opposition, nabbed both speed boosts, used my dash and cheetah form to full potential, my team facerolled the horde, and I cap. I got a surprise achieve too, and I did an actual half jump out of my chair fist pump woot.



Then this evening, back to Uld 25 HMs. Good times, got a couple of the oddball achieves, Set Us Up The Bomb on Mimiron, and Thorim (is this really a) Hard Mode. Couple wipes and an eventual call on We Choose You Steelbreaker, which is a pretty straightforward, yet healing intense fight. Most proud of Freya though, crazy lot goin on in her HM, all the keepers, crazy adds, serious raid-wiping abilities, all in all, its one of those fights that gives you a right good feeling when its finally over. Good times, and good job to the raid.

32753 Kills as of today. C'mon 50k.

The sacrifices we make for guildies.

Because our guild is not a "Raiding Guild", our memebership is not built around raiding. While this is not a bad thing in itself, it does put a small burden on those of us who want to raid.

We build a raid, and like alot of Raid Leaders, ours wants to have a full guild raid. Herein lies the problem : we are obligated (more by a sense of 'trying to be a good guildie' than actual rules) to admit guildies to the raid regardless of their skill level, play style, class, role, performance, or attendance, simply because they are 'interested' in going.  This causes some problems within a raid. Any raider worth his salt will tell you that a full compliment of buffs is the bizniss, it makes you perform at you peak, doing more and taking less damage, or doing better healing using less mana etc.. When you have to admit everyone who's interested, sometimes you end up with a great composition with all the buffs you need, sometimes you get shafted and miss out on crucial buffs/abilities which affects the raid in a big way. This can be categorized as a raid composition problem, but... our Raid Leader can hardly be held responsible due to his 'obligation' to the guildies, thus he lets them bring whoever they want, and if we are missing a shaman for heroism, "oh well". 

We have players of all skill levels in the guild, and it takes being a real raider to realize that there is a very big disparity in the skill levels required for raids. This being said... people who aren't real raiders have no clue, they think if they can get in the door, they have met the requirements for said raid. There is no way a serious 25man raid would ever admit anyone wearing green (uncommon) or blue (rare) gear, and all purples (epic gear) are not the same. Gear goes hand in hand with experience, we want to see people in gear they acquired in 10man ICC, so we know you've seen some of the fights.  In our raid we have people who have never seen the inside of ICC before, no Uld, no Naxx even. People in badge vendor gear that they acquired by running fail heroic dungeons all day every day, which is admirable (hey, gotta start somewhere), but it does not attribute to your skill level at all.  So the raid leading team is required to not only explain the fights, but actually micro-manage what people are doing throughout, and then monitor them through the whole fight (on top of playing their own class) to make sure they are adherent to the tasks they were set. 

Some people dont have what it takes to raid. Simple statement I know, but here's the rub. Most of the people who dont have what it takes are in the worst kind of denial, they think that just because they 'want to go' and they 'can get in' that they are ready. Any real raider will tell you it takes attention, temperament, patience, knowledge, awareness, reaction, anticipation, and a host of other 'actual' skills to be successful in a raid. Some people's playstyle does not include these things, they are laid back, they dont actively think of how best to use their toon's capabilities (ex:  a hunter using misdirect when the tanks have a 4million threat lead on any of the dps... waste of time).

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with a guild raid (as opposed to a raiding guild), in my eyes at least, is that it's hard to hold people accountable. When people screw up, we have to be nice about it, shuffle our feet and try to tactfully help them to come to understand where they went wrong and how they can do better, as opposed to telling them to get it right or gtfo.

Another accountability issue we have been having in particular is attendance. Here we are tripping over our own feet in a big BIG way : we tolerate poor attendance. We miss out on 45+ minutes of raid time filling up the raid, which is no more than the Raid Lead saying every 5 minutes "we are waiting on (fill in names of the 10 guildies who accepted and didnt show yet), let's give em another 5 minutes" then when one shows up it's "we are waiting on (fill in the names of the 9 still missing), I'm gonna start trying to fill their spots".  When we finally do fill, whether it's with the latecomers on the accepted list, or with pugs, does the RL give them a good lashing for starting 45mins late? No. "Thank you for coming".  Which brings me full circle to the root of most of the problems : our Raid Leader.

We talked about what it takes to raid, but what it takes to raid lead goes further on in the list of required skills, too numerous to count out here, and honestly I dont know them all. I do see a few large ones lacking here though. One of them, and I dont know if it is the inherent 'good guildie' implications or just 'I dont care', is the ability to deal with problems that affect the whole raid. You have 15 people there on time and staring at trash inside the instance for 45+ minutes and then you act like it's all good that we are finally starting, instead of being pissed that we are starting late. In fact, 20 mins before raid start this week, I said on vent "Ok, I'm gonna log over and line up for the raid". the raid leader said "Hey wanna try and sneak in a random heroic before the raid starts?"  (which caused him to be around 10 mins late to HIS OWN RAID, by which time myself and several others had been lined up and waiting for 30 mins or more). My advise to him, if he should happen to read this post, would be to start thinking about the raid an hour or more before the raid is slated to start. HE should be the one waiting around, not sticking 20 people inside and making them wait for 45 minutes. You owe it to the people who show up on time and come ready to do the damn thing, to make the raid happen, because you 'promised' them that it would. If the guildies are ever to get better/more serious about the raid, if the attendance/punctuality is to ever get better, if people's skill level is to get any better, it starts with the integrity of the Raid Leader. If you dont take it serious, who will? I, for one, will, and I can tell you that the people who do care get very upset when a Raid Leader doesnt care. I understand the scheduling and the monitoring of people's availibility and the sorting out of who's interested is alot, but it doesnt stop there. I also understand if you need help explaining fights due to your lack of experience yourself in 25man, these things are fine, even expected. But... the raid needs you to be strong and that works both ways, carry who you can, but be decisive enough to cut the fat, people who arent pulling their weight, arent showing up, arent getting better, for the better of the raid. End Rant.

BTW made my 30k kills, and I dropped my tank spec for a few days to try out some moonkin pvp, which is about the funnest thing since Disneyland. Starfalls-R-Us is now open, and we are giving out rain checks.

SotA

This weekend's Battleground *Call to Arms* is Strand of the Ancients.  OH boy, exciting times. For the alliance in my battlegroup, this seems a hard bg to grasp, conceptually. The whole game is about Demolishers (vehicles) vs. Gates (walls). Strategy here is, of course, stop the demos on defense, and stop them from stopping the demos on offense. Sadly, people are caught in what I'll call a 'PvP robot' loop. They manage to kill 1 demolisher, and the 3 players riding in that demo fall out, they proceed to fight the players while the other demolisher rides right past and up to the gate, or the other 2 demolishers, or the other 3 sometimes.  This is not only in SotA, across the board in bg's, people get caught up in racking up the honorable kills and fail to pay any mind to the objectives of that particular bg. Warsong Gulch for example, a competent group of 2 to 3 players can carry the whole team of unfocused nubs to victory, so if the other 7 are locked in the robot loop just killing in the middle of the field, it doesnt matter. This is not true for SotA, here you have to kill the demolishers which have a considerable amount of health, and I (a healer) am often the only one following a demolisher through a broken gate, while my teammates stay behind fighting players with pocket healers that arent gonna die anyway. All in all, this is my most frustrating bg experience, because I know what to do, but I cant accomplish it alone, and noone listens to a strategy. On the other hand, sometimes you get in a beautifully balanced group of people who know what's important and you can actually scrape a win in SotA. Even less often you get an opposing team that is horribad, and even with a scrub team you manage to do exceptionally well, but these are few and very far between. All things considered, I reckon I will be ignoring the *Call to Arms* and shooting for random battlegrounds instead, that way theres only a chance to be stuck in SotA.

28754 kills as the weekend starts, if I cant top 30k by Monday I'll call myself a failure, but I expect 30k tomorrow sometime. I have started spending my honor points and accumulated arena points on a feral pvp set. Though I will be using my PvE tanking spec with it, I think it will be useful in spots, if only as a stun-bot.

Algalon

Today I got in to an established *kinda* raid for Ulduar 25 HardModes. Not the most... attentive group I've seen, but hey, Uld raids are hard to come by, 25man harder still, and I'm not in the habit of looking a gift horse in the teeth... feel me? So it goes alright, and we WAY outgear the place (most of us), so it wasnt gonna be an impossible task but I was not ready. After getting the weekly raid quest out of the way *Razorscale*, we knocked out Heartbreaker *XT-002 Deconstructor* and then With Open Arms *Kologarn*. Just when i think we are moving on they holler that they want to do Algalon. I thinks to myself : "Self, you never did Algalon before, never watched a Tankspot vid even, and to top that off, you heard it was like the hardest fight EVER." So when I'm done crying and have changed my poopy diaper, I listen really hard to the Raid Leader's fight explaination (which, like most fight explanations when you never saw the fight, sounded like "wa wah wa, wa wa wa wah, wah wa wah wah, wah wa."), and away the fight goes. Oh and did i mention you get only 1 hour to attempt it, after that, it's better luck next week. So after about the 3rd raid wipe, I finally start to see whats goin on, and most of the others do too apparently because on the 4th attempt we get him to 7% (*the fight is over at 5%). "OK major progress." I says to myself. 2 more wipes later we didn't even get close. With disappointment in her voice the Raid Leader says "OK run back in, one more attempt left." and we fire it up with 7 minutes left on the hour alotted.

So we did it.  Next week's adventures : Iron Council, Freya, and Mimiron (which was rediculously hard on 10man, i can't even imagine what the 25 will be like)

PvE hunters in PvP

Had some interesting BG action today. A few epic wins, and a few miserable failures. In one notable Arathi Basin, up against 2 PvE geared hunters (who had almost 10k less HP than myself, and I'm a tree), I had more graveyard runs than honorable kills. Though I had 2 melee dps on vent, and called out the hunters' names in /bg chat, noone was killing them. Every time I rolled up to an engagement, all I heard was explosive shots going off in my arse. Gotta love when they consider you a big enough threat to target you first, but gotta hate when they *basically cheating* are wearing their PvE gear, and are basically able to two-shot you. It really gives me perspective for when I play my hunter. So I pose this question to myself : Will I, in the spirit of fairness / purity of PvP, wear my PvP gear on my hunter?, or will I harness today's anger and unleash it upon unsuspecting healers to ease my aching pride? (and my PvE gear is ALOT better than theirs was...)

27,295 honorable kills as of today. Working on that 50k achieve

Nym

First I will introduce Nymthiriel.  This druid was originally my wife's, until she quit playing WoW (which i cannot fathom why she would do such a thing) and i took it over when she was lvl 79. As my main raiding toon, Nym has seen a fair bit of the endgame content. Kingslayer with few hardmodes under her belt on 10man, 25man has healed and tanked 11/12. Nym is definitely my best geared toon, needing very very few upgrades *with the exception of 277 25HM drops, which she hasnt seen.

The second pic here is showing off my Heal UI. One of my favorite things to do is mod my UI, takes alot of time, and gives it that custom look and feel that you just know no other player can reproduce.

For Starters

I have been playing World of Warcraft now for a little over 2 years, and have come to realize that it literally consumes you if you let it. I let it. So here goes nothing, this blog will be the chronicles of a WoW addict, in his daily struggles with fail players, epic battles, repair bills, and gear upgrades.