Finally Rotten

With the Superbowl this coming Sunday, we had to juggle our raid schedule around and push for having our second night on Thursday night. We really didn't know how this was going to play out since Thursdays usually knock out 2 of our main melee DPS players as well as a priest. But tonight's raid started and looked really promising with 3 healers (I sub sometimes as a range DPS with my secondary spec), rogue, ret pally, 2 hunters, moonkin, and our 2 tanks ready to go.

Trash up to Festergut went semi smoothly since we only had 9 people (our resto shaman had something come up that delayed him, lucky bastard). I will say that the trash to Fester and Rotface isn't tough, just annoying. I usually stay DPS on this stuff just to help speed things up. I'm more like the fiber supplement in someone's vitamins, I just help keep things moving along.

Eventually we made it to Festergut and proceeded to one shot him. He's become pretty manageable for us. I know my role and that I need to start helping on the tank healing after the first growth. Everyone seems to know what to do with the spores especially if they see that two are in the same group.

But now we make our way to Rotface. He's been a thorn in our side going on 3 weeks now and it's actually stirred a response from our RL that he's concerned about this obstacle. Raid Leaders and GMs are like that, they a stoppage in progression for too long being a deteriment to the guild. I would say that's probably true in most guilds, but I don't think we're there yet.

So we change our strategy in that we try out putting one group on one leg and another on the other leg (thanks for the idea Boston). This attempt seemed really manageable, but I think it was too new for our raid and people voted it down after the first wipe. I will admit, it was ALOT more manageable for healing. I'm going to bring it up again in the forums and suggest that we try it again. Our current process of just randomly grouping behind him and turning when he turns is becoming more of a "charlie foxtrot" than a strategy. But our attempts proceeded to whittle him down each time, 43%, 38%, 35%, etc. with a minor hiccup of 60% in there.

Finally with 11 minutes left on my flask, we decide to make just another try or two and then call it a night. My job on this fight is increasing hard, but it comes with the nature of being able to heal and move at the same time. Our RL calls me the "Swing Healer" because I can go from throwing a HoT or 2 on the tank, then on the kiting tank, and back to the raid. But I have to be aware of toxin injections on healers because not only do they need a heal, but then I have to cover their assignment as well. Keep in mind, I am like everyone else that I have to stay away from the puddles, slime spray, and whatever else that will kill me. It's a busy fight and while it can be frustrating, I enjoy the challenge. So here we are, things are moving along pretty well. But then we get our first problem, all of a sudden there's 2 larger slimes. Someone failed to drag theirs over when they got injected and letting it merge with the next injection bubble. But the kiting tank did a great job of bringing them together. Unfortunately, we lost a hunter in the kiting process. 30% brings about faster slime injections and bubbles as well as killing a healer. He gets a battle rez from our Moonkin and we push Rot to 20%. We just may do this I start to think. Around 15% we lose another hunter and our rogue. Now it's starting to look tight. Rotface is pushing real hard and slowly people are getting lost in how to turn and then die. A healer dies and our Moonkin drop at 5%. With one other healer still alive with me, I decide to burn a Battle Rez for more DPS and get out moonkin back on his feet. Just as he accepts our tank dies along with his healer. The only people left alive at this point is me, the moonkin, and our prot paladin. Our moonkin gets in a few nukes and dots at 2% and I follow with a few weak DoTs at 1% as we both die. But our Prot paladin kites Rot just long enough to let the dots kill him. Euphoria erupts over vent. Finally we did it. Good job guys.

Monday night ushers in the professor and I'm sure he has alot to teach us.

Welcome back for an old friend

Late Wednesday night after our raid finished, Desirabela rejoined the guild. I'm happy to have her back with us. We haven't had a mage in the guild for a long time. We've tried out a few, but they never came back. I think adding another caster ranged DPS to our mix will be great. We have tons of melee DPS and we make do, but it's really taxing on the healers on some fights. I think this is one of the reasons we end up carrying 3 healers into certain fights.

Anway, I'm rambling again. Welcome back Des. :)

Seriously? 9%?

So our week ended with another night of getting owned by Rotface. I sometimes seriously wonder if we'll get past this guy, but at least we're making progress. Last week we only managed to get him to 52%. Monday night we whittled him down to 9%. I'm not sure what we need to change up. It could be that running 3 healers maybe too much and that we should go with 2. I'm not quite sure. Being a healer I see alot of what's going on and the raid is pretty aware of slime pukes and who's got the toxin and needs to kite it out. Maybe this week, we're successful. I hope so because the next wing was opened on Tuesday.

On other news, my frost mage is leveling a little slow. She's level 72 on the horde side of things and has yet to get ganked. I probably just jinxed it right there, but I've had fun with her. It seems like I'm missing alot of horde quests in the Fjord, but then again this is the first horde toon I've quested with in WoTLK. I'll probably queue her up for some random dungeon/instance. I'm not sure how they determine which to send you too. At level 72, Frostwinch is eligible for Utgarde Keep and the Nexus. I just wish I could find a way to get her some gold for her flying mount and training. I could have her post something on the neutral AH for an insane amount and have Bacon buy it. But Bacon is pretty stingy with the gold and has come to spurn charitable causes, no matter how close the toon is in relation to him.

Plus Bacon has a good reason for hording his gold. He's contemplating making a run for some mounts. He's honored with the Netherwing, so there's some rep to grind (man I hated those days of getting ganked there). He needs all the ground mounts from the major city factions. He could grind PVP marks for the war mounts and cash in tournament marks for those other mounts. So there's alot of potential for him to increase his fleet beyond the same blue saber cat mount, the ram from AV, and the drake from Culling of Strat. I would add flight form to the list, but I can't consider that a mount. It's an ability really. Got any easy to obtain mount ideas? And don't suggest Reins of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake


P.S. Coutdown to Glory of the Hero is at 2.

The Great Tank Debate

Currently alot of hate is getting thrown around in the world of tanks. Warriors are once again upset that another class has stepped in and taken the bull by the horns when it comes to tanking. Paladins have become a forminable class in tanking so much that it's set off the Warrior community. It's caused Warriors to scream and howl about how easy it is to tank as a Paladin and it's not fair. And Paladins cry foul and yell back that it's not their fault that they're good at what they do.

I've seen all this before back in the earlier days of The Burning Crusade. Druids finally got some effective tools and abilities to help them tank. Their dodge was insanely high, as was the armor on their gear, and they were able to generated threat faster than a Democrat spends money. It was quite simple to tank as a druid then and really exciting. But then warriors got mad at the huge numbers of druids who started to tank. Next thing the druid community knows, Blizzard nerfs Mangle and eventually dodge. By the time Wrath came around, the armor bonus was gone too.

So it's no surprise to me that warriors are once again upset and crying for a nerf on paladin tanks to bring balance back. I doubt many feral druids will come out and defend either side. They were told to be silent when the same thing happened to them.

Honestly, I don't have any issues one way or the other. I see this balancing act happening in the healing ranks as well. Every healing class now has similar abilities that allow them to effectively heal tanks or raids. Sure some classes are better than others, but every healing class can perform either role.

I will say that since 3.3 and the new LFG tool was released, I have seen about 75% of the tanks be paladins, and the rest are warriors or death knights. I have yet to heal a single druid tank in a heroic or raid. Tankadins must be the flavor of the month.

Let's Hope Last Week was a Hiccup

Last week our raiding into ICC was cut short due to our shaman getting hacked. Sunday night we managed to get up to Festergut, but the absence of an experienced and geared healer, we had to rely on other people in secondary specs to cover the gap. Unfortunately, this didn't work and it's apparent that we're going to have to work on another option for a backup healer. We had our ret paladin go holy, but then that left us with no replenishment classes. So our prot pally went holy and his gear just isn't Festergut grade material. So we spent the whole night wiping and trying. It was frustrating, but I look at it in a different light. It gave some people the opportunity to see how much challenging some events can be for certain classes.

A good example is in healing. Healing has become a HUGE game of managing player health and mana management. No longer can someone like me sit back and just randomly casts HoTs outside my healing assignments to help out other aspects of the raid team. It just can't be done without gambling and risking the lives of my healing assignments.

With all that being said, we raided a new weekly reset into ICC last night making some adjustments again. We made sure there was a replenishment class and even went with 2 healers on certain fights. For some reason every boss required at least a wipe. It seemed like we were paying homage to the RNG overseers of the game. Unfortunately, we didn't have the DPS to polish off Saurfang and he'll be there with open arms come Sunday night. I did pick up another piece of gear, the gunship battle netted me a new belt. Cord of Dark Suffering. I have a feeling that I better enjoy these gifts from the first wing of ICC, because it could dry up any moment in the later phases of the raid instance.

On a side note, I purchased an authenticator. With the rash of hackings going on, I don't want to be left out in the cold. I have made alot of coin with Bacon and his banking/auctioning alts which I don't want to lose. I'm almost ready to start making a run on my mount collection. At the moment I only have 3.

Glory of the Hero still stands at 4 achievements. They're all easy to get. But getting a reliable group to do them is the challenge.

Power Outage and Hacked Account = No Raid

I login in last night and put my headset on to hear, "... so you kicked Ron from the guild?" Ron is our resto shaman and one of our main healers that we heavily rely on for Icecrown. So all this was quite a kick in the junk when it's the first thing that I hear, but it didn't stop there. Apparently, Ron's account was compromised and the offender was online playing Ron's shaman. Being a small guild and a small alliance populated server, it took no time in finding him grinding fire elementals out in the Stormpeaks. In a matter of a couple of minutes, five of us from the guild surrounded him and harrassed him with personal tells (refraining from nasty expletives of course) until another guildmate logged on with his horde lock. While we let our guildmate pawn the hacker relentlessly, Ron was on the phone with Blizzard telling them the whole story. We eventually got the hacker to log which gave a GM log enough to reset Ron's account login and allow him to login. By then the damage had been done. All of Ron's PVE gear was gone, as was some fish feasts and enchanting mats from the bank. Blizzard did tell Ron that their seeing alot of compromises happening and the one thing in common with these accounts is that they're all clients of Curse. Take from that what you will, but I think I'll continue to do my own manual addon installs for the time being.

Towards the end of this drama, our guild leader logs in and we brief him in on the story. So after he takes all that in, he tells us that our other main tank is out due to a power shortage. Now we're down a healer and a tank which doesn't bode well for a 10 main raid. He decides to postpone the raid for Wednesday, but we still knock out the weekly raid quest. It's been awhile since any of us had tackled EoE and Malygos, but we managed to pull it off.

I finished the night running a few more heroics and knocked 2 more achievements. The few remaining achievements for Glory of the Hero are:
Hadronox Denied
Watch Him Die
What the Eck?
Zombiefest

All of them are pretty easy to get, but I'm thinking the Zombiefest is going to take some patience.

Glory of the Hero -- ALMOST

Last night I transferred my undead mage over to Altar of Storms thus completing my goal of having all my toons on one server. So on the horde side I have my lock, my mage, and my hunter. On the Alliance side I have my druid and shaman. It's kinda funny how I have all the DPS on one side and all the healers on the other. I didn't plan it that way, it just happened. As to how much I play my mage, I don't know yet. But I know I'll quest Northrend with her and see the horde side of the story.

As for Bacon, I joined up with some guild mates and knocked out 4 more heroic achievements. I used to get these randomly as I ran a casual heroic. But I never made it a point to get into a said instance to just get an achievment. Now that I'm only 5 achievements away from Glory of the Hero, I guess I'll do just that.
Here's what I got last night:
The Incredible Hulk
My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time
Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi
Abuse the Ooze

And here's what I have left:
Hadronox Denied
Watch Him Die
Respect Your Elders
Volunteer Work
What the Eck?
Zombiefest

BTW: I'm kicking myself for not adding in the Wowhead script a LONG time ago for links. What a dumb @$$