Yay!!!  Last night was our second 25man attempt.  We were still slightly shy of a full guild run.  I believe 18 of us were guildies and almost all the rest were friends (and old guildies but we won’t go into that…yay drama).  There were 2 pugs.  I believe we picked one of them up as a guild member.  A few more pugs like that then we will have a regular all guild 25 man. (I guess the rest will HAVE to defect from the old guild if they want to continue running with us) 

We ran 25ToC again (because someone mentioned they keep forgetting about Ony….ummm???)  We one shotted everything up to Anub and it was starting to look like we might have to call it there.  /cry  But we pulled it together and BAM! Dead bug.  I managed to get a trophy out of it so tonight is my first tier 9.5 piece (I needed sleep or I would have bought/gemed/and enchanted it last night).  I’m getting the gloves.  I don’t want to replace anything I just bought and it turns out you can mix and match tier 9 and 9.5.  The main reason I went for the gloves is that, while I lose a little crit and a little haste, I get a yellow socket instead of a blue one.  I really hate blue sockets.  It turns out that almost half my sockets are blue.  Fuck blue!  Reckless ametrine FTW!  I need more red/yellow sockets.  I also get more int on the gloves and that is important.  Oh and I am no longer sporting a helm because even the helm I’m using  (which is not tier but better) is just hideous.  /sigh 

As you can see from my enthusiastic gem shout out above, I’ve decided to go with sp/haste as my focus.  I’ve done some reading and there is A LOT of debate over this.  I know int. gives you more mana, more crit, and helps with mp5, but it does not help with haste.  Since shamans are the slowest healers in the game I really think that there is no argument here.  And I know crit is important, but I would rather be able to get off more heals in a shorter period of time then hope for a really big heal at the right time.  

Originally when I spent all my money to regem I thought I would go with a more balanced talent allocation.  I decided to ignore socket colors too because almost half the sockets I have are blue which leaves me with very few options.  (sp and stam, mp5 or I think maybe hit.) Basically all I can put in there is sp.  Unfortunately ignoring the socket color also ignored the socket bonuses.  I discovered yesterday that one of those bonuses was a +5 crit.  I was also missing almost 30 to sp with the bonuses.  That’s almost as good as one runed dragon’s eye.  I already mentioned the other problems I had with this here so I won’t go back into it.  

I decided to go with a quick dragon’s eye and a brilliant dragon’s eye and a runed dragon’s eye for my 3 jewelcrafter allotments.  I then put a royal dreadstone in each of the blue sockets (ugh!).  I still have ungodly mana regen.  I wonder why they still make so much mp5 for shammies when they really don’t need it anymore.  Of course part of my mp5 is due to a trinket.  When I replace that thing I’m going to have to start looking more to my mp5 and I might start missing those blue sockets.  I only have 1 red but I have 5 yellows, 3 of which were filled with a dragon’s eye and luminous ametrines,  so that left me with a decision to make since I’m not as limited on yellows as I am on blues.  My first thought was the reckless ametrine.  The only problem was that I didn’t realize I could not cut a reckless ametrine.  I could only cut the luminous ametrine and I only had 3 jc tokens.  I had no money, and none to begin with, but I had 75000 honor because I randomly do bg’s once in a while (I know I’m a masochist) so I used it.  Since I had all the other gems in place and was only missing 3 enchants I took a look at my gear to decide if I was going to wait a day to get the last jc token I needed.  It turns out that my haste is already at 510 which is really good.  I still want more, but it will do.  I didn’t think that 20 more haste was going to do that much good over all.  Three hundred extra mana from the 20 int., along with the slightly increased crit chance, was definitely a more tangible reward I thought.  So I opted to cut the luminous ametrine.  I’ll update my stats when I get home tonight.  I know I have around 2400sp, 32% crit, 510 haste and more than 520mp5 unbuffed. 

Stats are not everything though.  The real question is how it performs.  I’ve never played another healing class but when you type in holy priest guide on google you get 623,000 hits verses 83,000 for resto shaman.  After the first 3 pages of hits you start getting more into ‘spirit dreaming’ and less into ‘haste vs. spell power’. Holy pallies are only at 159,000 but still a lot more than shamans (and more of the hits are relevant).  Either this is because there are not that many resto shamans, which I doubt is the case, or that resto shamans can be played a lot more on preference than ‘this is what you NEED to have’ which makes it hard to write a guide.  We are not main healers.  Last night I was consistently third highest in heals even though I’m one of the better geared healers.  I’m there for my buffs (earth shield, totems, heroism) and to help the other’s heal.  I know this.  This doesn’t mean I’m not a kick ass healer, but druids and pallies are just better at the straight healing.  They are glad I’m there though.  My preference in healing is CH and HW with regular sprinklings of RT.  I barely use LHW.  Because of this I NEED haste.  Someone who relies on LHW and RT, kind of like a pally does with flash of light, is going to want A LOT of spell power and int for the crit chance.  I was very happy with my healing last night.  I think I need more haste and spell power but I only got low on mana if I neglected my WS and I crit’d at least every 3^rd heal if not more. (30% chance to crit duh!).  My heals could be higher though.  I’d like a 20K crit to be normal not every 5^th crit.  That’s nearly half a tanks life and would be useful in the event I have to hit my ‘Oh Shit!’ macro. 

Well that’s it for this installment.  I need to focus on getting some work done and then….

We ventured into Icecrown Citadel 10 normal tonight and within a couple of hours worth of attempts, Marrowgar was down to 25%.  I suspect when next we take him on, we will get him.  It’s a sutiational awareness, chaoitic fight where the healers can only do so much.  Our DPS bretheren (and us healers, too) need to help out the healing crew by avoiding the major damage from the coldflame and being as close to max as possible during whirlwind.  Well done for our first set of attemps.

Then, just to prove that we’re not total suck, we 1-shot Ony in textbook fashion.  I love face-wiping on progression, and ICC trash respawn with 30 minutes to go in our raid clock made Ony make a lot of sense.  Glad we were able to teach the old girl a lesson

What did I do next?  I did something I rarely, if ever, do.  I went into the new LFG tool with my best tank and my healing buddy (and GM) who went elemental.  We went PuG.  Rocklaw does not PuG as a rule, but this new tool intrigued me and I’m getting badge hungry.  For me, it was the daily random.  What did we get?  You guessed it – Occulus.

Thankfully we completed it.  It was one of the last 3 I need for Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.  Only Old Kingdom and Azjol.Nerub left.

We’ve got some new recruits and an old friend back in the guild.  A resto druid friend who is the significant other of a warlock recent returnee has joined us again.  Old friends from times past rejoining us are what makes this game so much fun for me.  In addition, I was able to blow a couple of cloth cooldowns for another recent returnee who has access to a killer pattern.  Was happy to help.

3.3 is starting out well.  Looking forward to getting deeper into it with my friends in guild.

WoW’s fifth anniversary will land all of you with the promotional pet, the Onyxian Whelp. The promotion is over, now, but I got in on it the last day. Thank you gods, for payday. At any rate, a new patch was released yesterday. It introduced many things, including a Questhelper/Carbonite-esc mapping system to help when questing. It also made all my addons break. Yay patch day. Not to mention all the glitches… I went to do dailes out in Qual’ and it was over-run by the demons from the rift. Nice. Seems all the Netherwing dailies were alright, however. Although I looked for an hour in all the normal spawn spots and found no eggs. >>

Today’s bento has a fruit bar, a pumpkin muffin and two pumpkin tarts, stacked two high. Slices of American cheese, four Oreos, two Treasures, raisins, and the FINAL sweet-potato flavored rise chips.

I find people’s fear of PuG groups amusing.  Most people tend to fear the unknown and in WoW, PuGs are the ultimate unknown.  You just never know what’s in the cards and while I think it can be frustrating at times, it can also be exciting and beneficial.

Lately, I have been on a large number of PuG raids.  The important thing with these raids is to manage your expectations before hand.  You can usually tell in the first 5 minutes whether it will be a successful run or not.  On my realm, ToC 10/25 raids tend to be fairly successful.  However, Onyxia is an absolute crapshoot with probably a 50% fail rate.  I can only guess that people are less strict with who they invite into an Ony raid.

In the last three weeks, I have managed to clear 25 VoA, Onyxia, and ToC (at least up to Anub) in PuGs each week.  Since my old guild only did 10 man raids, this would not have been possible for me otherwise.

Running in these raids will also allow you to meet other good players that you can group up with in the future.  Remember, even if you happen to get in a bad PuG raid, all it will cost you is a little bit of time.  Don’t be afraid to step into the unknown every once in awhile.

We’ve been clearing (or not) T9 content each week, so that’s all cool.  We’ve welcomed some great new folks to the guild as well as a really good old friend (Heya Mop, glad to have you back).  Some of those we’ve taken into Ulduar 10 and I got to help on my favorite fight in the game for Lich King – the Iron Council.  Then we went on to Freya and the DPS check bit us in the ass.  I have some control in Iron Council by keeping folks alive.  Freya needs the DPS to be on the spot and on target.  Nothing I can do to help there except yell expletives over vent, which I choose not to do.  Don’t suck is my only advice to the DPS.

But I’ve become stuck on getting the Savory Deviate Delight recipe, which is the last cooking recipe I can get that I’m aware of (there’s a Horde-only one I may need to send my rogue off to get).  Been killing harpies in NW Barrens for days (I’m told they are the best farming spot), with no luck yet.  Ah well, yet another obsession

As a result of a couple of MC and BWL runs recently, I am on the last leg of the Sceptre of the Shifting Sands quest and need only 2 more elementium ore.  All the Dummies books are in and I have all the mats but two.  Am almost flat broke getting them off the AH at 500-600 per.  Thankfully, we have a BWL run scheduled for Friday.  I really want to see how this thing ends.  The bonus is that I am reassembling a T2 set (have shoulders, legs, chest and head (from pre-buff Ony) so I look the part now).  Everyone agrees that the pally T2 was the best looking set in the game back in the day.  The only missing visible bits are the gloves and belt so once I have those, and once that bastard Vael drops the frakkin’ shield, I will be set.

Reset tomorrow, so more Ony, VoA and ToC 10.  Hopefully the damn Faction Champs will cooperate more this week.

A classic.

I had an interesting and mostly successful week raiding.  All of my major targets (ToC, Ony, VoA) were defeated on both 10/25 man.

My guild only does 10 man raids, so I had to PuG all of the 25 man versions.  As you all know, PuG raids are a crapshoot.  I got really lucky with ToC and got in a very efficient group that rolled right through Anub.  I wasn’t quite as lucky with Onyxia.  It took me 4 different PuGs before I finally got in one that downed her.  My VoA group also dissolved after defeating Koralon.  At least I got all of the triumph raids down, as that was my main goal.

The only negative was that I knocked out these raids early in the week, so I had very little left to do on the weekend.  I don’t really care about achievements and alts, I mainly like to raid.  I spent the weekend trying to find a PuG 10/25 Trial of the Grand Crusader, but I didn’t have any luck.  Do these run on any of your realms?  Are they ever successful?

I like to put together 10 man VOA/Ony runs at the beginning of the week. We were rolling with mostly alts for these easymode raids, although I was MTing on Halleigh (my main).

Ony came down much faster than I expected and landed just as some whelps and a big add came out. Everything got a little messy as I was backing her up and positioning her for phase 3. Notes for next time: tell the ranged to hold off at 45% if we’re about to get an add spawn, ensure adds are managed, and then land her. Anyways, while I was positioning her for phase 3 and the adds were being taken care of, people started dying left and right.

Several unlucky fears + cleaves + tail swipes later we were left with three people alive: Druid heals, myself tanking, and one mage DPS (an alt). Ony was at 1.5m health. I sighed and thought, wipe on Ony 10? Seriously? So easymode…

Of course, she has no enrage timer!

Oh, we took her down. I saw my healer’s mana get low, started popping cooldowns, and figured we were done for, but Innervate for the win! 3 manned from 1.5 mill to zero. Everyone on vent was impressed. Reminded me of some Heigan kills I’ve tanked, except on Ony deaths can just be bad luck.

I love pulling a kill out of what looks like a wipe. It’s a great feeling!

Without going into much detail, we had ALMOST achieved 25-man-ness.  We had to pug in a few.  Sadly, we sucked and it was clear that there were f-tards in the raid that had no business being in a 25-man.

The drama llamas promptly gquit.  Yay!  See ya!

We ran a fresh 10 tonight and smacked all the T9 content available to us (no, we’re not running Grand Crusader – yet).  It feels good to be killing stuff again, rather than scraping my face across the floor as a result of too much stupid in the raid.

Got a fresh new healing mace (sorry – Wowhead does not list the 232 version – no gem slot and slightly reduced stats) last week once it was clear 25-man was not on – always a good day when a new weapon drops.  Still waiting on my old girlfriend to drop my spec-specific hat.

Oh, and I got the Draconic for Dummies off Raggy tonight.  Missed out on Nef the other night due to the fact that my cable modem (brand new) decided that it would suck.  So just a Nef kill and then 10 Elementium Ore (which you see on the AH all the time – not) and the Sceptre….  well.  More work to do there.

Anyway, good to be back to smacking stuff with gusto.  We’re gonna head into Uld 10 tomorrow and see if we can deal with Hodir and Thorim.  The earlier stuff should be regarded as farm, esp with all the new trick gear from ToC 10.

We had a super-smooth ToC-10/Ony-10 run tonight for our 2nd group, earning a few people Salt and Pepper (10) as well as She Deep Breaths More (10) and More Dots! (10). I didn’t have More Dots! so that was pretty exciting.

I was actually pretty lucky in the ToC-10 run since I had won Sunreaver Disciple’s Blade AND Lightbane Focus to replace Perdition. A definite increase in spellpower but a loss of about 1% crit. Definitely worth the trade, IMO.

Some guildies were nice and ran Tômservô through Ramps, Blood Furnace and Shattered Halls to get me from 58-60. I dropped some emblems on the BoA axe and was quite dissapointed when I found out that you couldn’t Rune it. Nowhere does it say that a weapon needs a certain item level to be runed and I couldn’t even return it to the vendor. I filed a ticket so I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’d at least like my emblems back.

I settled on this Unholy leveling build as well. It focuses on doing as much sustained damage as possible and boosting solo potential with Summon Gargoyle, a perma-Ghoul and Bone shield while taking both movement increasing talents (On a Pale Horse and Improved Unholy Presence). The goal is to get from 60 to 80 as fast as possible, right?

So there you are.  You’re in a raid and a boss drops an item that’s an upgrade.  While it’s a nice upgrade you know there might be better on the horizon.  No only that but you’re competing with others for the same gear.  So what do you do?  Do you attempt to win the item, or do you pass and take a calculated risk that the upgrade you really want will drop?  This is a common scenario  that I, and three other hunters were faced with last night.

Our guild did it’s usual VoA and Onyxia 25 runs.  It turned out that we had Wintergrasp at the start of our raid so we went there first.  It also turned out that we were carrying four hunters, which is three t00 many if you ask me.  All of us of course were on the hunt for upgrades.

We downed Koralon and the Windrunner’s Handguards of Triumph dropped.  It was nice upgrade for all four hunters, but only three of the four hunters rolled (I was one of them).  So why didn’t the other hunter roll?  Was it to be nice and see someone else get some gear? No, he was passing on this loot hoping that Onyxia would drop the Rifled Blastershot Launcher, a very nice gun indeed.  In fact I believe that it’s best in slot outside of Trial of the Grand Crusader.  I can understand why he would want this.  In fact I too was tempted to pass on the gloves and hold out for the gun.

Here’s the reasoning behind his decision.  We like to spread the loot around, so whoever got the tier piece was not going to get another item from Onyxia.  Also, one of the hunters already had Talonstrike which meant she wasn’t going to get the gun either.  She also did not win the gloves.  That meant a 50/50 chance of getting the gun if it dropped.  Not bad odds at all.

Here was my reasoning for rolling on the item.  I like to plan things out, and based on the content I’m running I have a list of items that I want to be part of the gear set I take into Icecrown Citadel.  The gloves and the gun are on that list.  All of the items work together to create a very nice set of gear.  While there may be individual pieces that are weighted higher, it’s really the set as a whole that I’m after.  I can’t control what will drop and when it will drop.  So when I see a piece that’s on the list, I roll for it.  Also, these gloves represent what is currently best in slot for my content.  Not only that, but getting them saves me 45 badges and the need to get a trophy out of TotC 25.  So for me, rolling on the gloves was a no-brainer.

In the end Onyxia did not drop the gun, or any other hunter loot for that matter (okay it’s all hunter loot, but nothing we could actually use).  Oh and guess who won the gloves.  Booya!  See what I did there?

]]> http://jadedalt.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/a-pug-tale/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:00:07 +0000 Windsoar http://jadedalt.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/a-pug-tale/

My current guild runs 25-man content, but I’m kind of a raiding hound and I like to try to fit the 10-man content in during the week.  Generally this means going the pug route.  I generally try to get in on guild raids (needing that extra one more) as the synergy between guildmates just cannot be overstated.  A guild knows how to make allowances for the huntard in the back, or the flaky healer, and keeps on trucking.  A pug will take those same poor souls, put them in a meat grinder, and stomp on the remains.  Not pretty.

So last night, I’m larking around town, trying out my new helm (what is with the bell on a chain here folks) and get a whisper from a paladin I’ve grouped with before for Ony-10.  I join up, raid is formed and we all head to the instance.

- Has everyone been here before?

- Yes.

- Aye.

- I rock Ony.

Ok, no long-winded explanations needed.  We have three heals, 2 tanks, and all ranged dps except for a poor warrior who’s trying not to look too platy among all the swishing robes.  Trash is cleaned up easily, although I notice on the first couple of pulls the MT doesn’t seem to be generating a ton of aggro.  The warlocks are soul shattering on every available C/D and the OT seems to be pulling off mobs without any fancy moves.  Maybe he’s just one of those lazy trash tanks… ya, that’s it, right?

We’re standing in front of Ony — buffs go out.  Ready check and ahoy.  I had prepped the tank with an earth shield and riptide so he’d have some nice hot love as he went in to engage the boss — to no avail.  Onyxia engages and *squish* he’s down 53% — a little nervous, I pop another riptide and keep running, stutter stop, cast a big mucking heal, and thank God — he survives to the wall.

Phase one is no big deal — just Onyxia, the tank, and plenty of dps.  Except the warrior — apparently he learned about dragon fights on Sarth where you can stand on the hind leg angled into the body — and he keeps getting tail swiped into the rafters.  After numerous *move, move, MOVE* raid chat instructions he finally gets his head screwed on straight and comes to hug the big momma on her midsection.  Lift off is achieved, the middle gathering takes place, and the tanks begin the whelp roundup.

And fail.  Whelps are everywhere — the warlocks, the hunter, the elemental shaman — all have their share of whelp love.  Apparently, the ele shaman is feeling insignificant in the dps meters and decides an unglyphed Thundershock is just the thing to liven things up resulting in whelps everywhere.  Le sigh… le sigh indeed.

Big add appears, and guess what — the MT decides tanking those is his job.  So the MT and single melee dps are on big adds.  The OT makes his presence known in there, and the first whelps appear — scattered all over the raid, they begin strategically taking down healers.  No problem — because the boss is coming down — just as the second big add is appearing and the first is still standing — and oh, btw, MT stands looking at the dragon descending and doing his version of the pissified head shake going “I’m not picking her up again, no way, see, I’ve got adds — adds of protection yes indeed.”  Ony rips through the locks, the ele shaman, and the healers before the OT picks her up and begins moving.  But by then it’s all over, a wipe.

I lark off to the spirit healer, and strap on my mail undies a bit tighter.  One wipe — it’s not so bad, let’s get some raid instructions and we’ll be fine.  Raid instructions go out — MT is assigned to whelps, couple of ranged dps are assigned to big adds while they’re up and we’re ready.  This time I am prepared for squish tank!  Off he goes, phase one breezy, phase two seems to be going smoother.  Oh noes!  The whelps boss, the whelps!  Swift as lightning my fellow healers are dead.  However, so is the big add and the big mother is coming down.  I sigh, pop a shield on the tank and hope for the best.  And he goes squish — hardcore.  Ony turns, I give a heroic “Eek!” and the OT picks her up and turns her around.

And then begins the longest 3 minutes of my life.  The OT isn’t taking ferocious amounts of damage and the dps is getting hosed in terms of healing love.  Of course, I’m in group with the MT, so my tremor totem is useless for the OT who’s actually tanking the boss, but it’s working. She’s going down — faster than my mana bar at least.  Somewhere, I managed to drop a mana tide and a mana pot.  We are still at 3% and I’m announcing it — the healer is officially OOM.  And then it happens, the pally tank pops Divine Shield making himself completely invulnerable to damage and Onyxia turns to the raid with a gleam in her eye at 2%.  Within seconds myself and the remaining dps are gone.  The pally clicks of his bubble, taunts, and is hammered into the ground.  1% to go.  I…. am…. ripshit.

I run back, I’m looking at Onyxia lounging within her lair and I’m thinking “Is it so hard.  Can we pick up whelps?  Can we pick up Ony without going squish?  Can we use the correct ability that’s been on our hotbar since level 6!  Can we?!”  And I breathe, and I send the paladin, who invited me — a guy I’ve run with before, “Whatcha think?”  He’s embarrassed, he’s frustrated, we’re ready to kill things.  My husband is behind me having a great conversation with the other warlock in the raid,

- So, maybe I should just cast incinerate.

- What if you get a crit?  You’ll doom us all!!!

- *Manly chuckling*

And a niggling voice in the back of my head reminds me — this is why I pug raids.  Yes, there are people with issues, yes, there are some definite coordination problems  going on here — but when do you get to stand all by your lonesome in phase 3 and keep the raid up in a guild run?  I never have to push my character like that in a standard run.  When I was dps, I hated pugs — being a great dps in a bad pug often equals a dead dps because your threat is too high for the underlings you deigned to raid with.  But being a good healer in a pug — you get to be epic, you get to push yourself, and often, you find out “wow, I really did kick ass.”

Btw, Onyxia went down on our third go around — and somehow, miracle of miracles, the MT actually managed to pick her up without going *squish*  Huzzah!

I stand on the rim.

Teetering.

An unanticipated breeze could send me over the edge.

Or at least that’s how most of last night felt.

…

We raid Wednesdays and Thursdays.

According to the calendar, anyway.

Something came up for our MT and two of our core healers on Wednesday. And some DPS was missing.

No problem, we’ll just scrape up some guild mates and do VoA and Ony as neither of those raids are really “progression” anymore.

We did very well against Ony, netting the whole group:

The secret to She Deep Breaths More is to just bring her down in phase 2 so WTF fast that she doesn’t have time to think about breathing. We took her breath away. Haha.

Phase 2 went so fast we only had 1 spawn of whelps and the big guy.

Oh, and our Ony tank DCed right after she landed.

Thankfully he made it back in time to get the achievements.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve got Ony pretty well covered now – a far cry from the first couple attempts where we were 3-healing with 2 shaman in the raid for the fear totems.

One of our tanks sounded like he was dying so we called it a night (a successful one at that, people got some gear!).

…

Last night I was out the 2 healers again. And some DPS.

Start pulling people in again.

This is actually a blessing in disguise for at least one guild mate that just needs the opportunity to strut his stuff and show he’s progression-worthy.

It’s still a fucking nightmare for me getting a gabillion tells and watching guild/officer chat be all clogged with variations of “so are we raiding tonight?”

We hit up normal ToCr with 2 healers, when we normally go with 3.

We had a couple bumpy spots and a wipe (or 3 on the faction champs) but we pulled through and got the full clear.

So here’s where the fail, on my part, enters.

I never particularly wanted to lead raids.

I find it stressful. Mostly because I want to trust everyone to do their job, but forget that maybe we have a different comp and have members that haven’t run the content to death like some of us.

So I remember to get the flasks out of the guild bank.

I even hand out the flasks to the appropriate people.

I then completely and totally forget to actually click the little icon to make me drink one.

Right before Anub when someone mentions their flask is low, I realize that I never took one.

Well that would explain part of why I’m sucking on the meters.

I’m so used to trusting the healers to work it out amongst themselves that I forgot we had a different healing comp.

They figured it out.

The tanks thankfully are smart enough to discuss things between themselves.

I forgot that we didn’t have our normal shaman in the group.

So I forgot to tell him when to lust.

Right when the tanks engaged the Twins I realized I didn’t switch to my Incanter’s Absorption spec.

I’ve never remembered to switch for that fight – the WHOLE REASON I have that spec is for that fight.

I realized at the start of the Anub fight that my Frost Sphere macro was fucked up.

But when it didn’t work the first time, I froze, totally confused.

(Turns out I grabbed the wrong icon off of the macro page, no idea why I had another one that looked similar with an almost identical name.)

Thankfully the add tank put it together pretty quick that something was wrong and death gripped a sphere down.

Overall, my damage for the night was the worst I think it’s been in a long time.

I felt really bad looking at the parse after I loaded it.

Not being flasked hurt a little, but I think I was just off my game.

My positioning on a lot of the fights was awkward.

I was trying to mark the snobolds as they came out and was finding it hard to mark and call it in vent out at the same time – the equivalent of walking and chewing gum I suppose.

During the faction champion fight I was trying to call out the next target and would space on colors and symbols. Just kill the one I want you to kill dammit! Don’t ask me which one, just do it!

And every time I goofed, it made me that much more sluggish to respond to the next situation.

It was just an awkward night for me.

…

I did redeem myself slightly in a 25-man VoA where Koralon again refused to drop my pants.

I’m not even asking for dinner and a movie first, just drop my fucking pants already!

For some unknown reason I decided to further compound my stress for the evening by doing the massive gear upgrade I’ve been planning.

It probably had to do with Lightbane Focus dropping, making it possible for me to pull out the Sunreaver Disciple Blade I had tucked away in the bank.

I’ve been hoarding emblems, hoping to get my pants out of VoA and Crusader Orbs cheap off the AH.

Made a list of every piece that I should be wearing, the gems, and the enchants.

Fuck, I still need that stupid fucking Abyssal Rune out of normal 5-man Trial. Fuck me. I’ll upgrade without it and farm it later. Trinkets are easy enough to switch out.

I need 13 gems just for my sockets and another 3 for the bracers.

My hubby has extra emblems so bought orbs for me and I bought them off him. He also had extra heroism tokens so got me several of the gems I needed and cut them.

(I need to think of something to get him to pay him back, any clever ideas?)

Get my new head arcanum from the Kirin Tor QM.

Fly out to Storm Peaks and get a new shoulder inscription.

Make my Merlin’s Robe.

Make my Bejewled Wizard’s Bracers.

Get my Talisman of Resurgence (yes, I broke down and got it and I’m going to hate it but have already macroed it to my other CDs).

Get my Band of the Invoker.

Get my T9 helm and PANTS since Koralon seems to be frigid.

Get everything gemmed up.

Get everything enchanted.

Realize that I’m a fucking idiot and did not get new shoulders so have a Greater Inscription of the Storm for no reason and there is no same-cost buy back on that item so it’s going to sit in my bank until it becomes BoA or I get T10 shoulders.

The funny thing is, I switched out 9 pieces of gear (and regemmed everything), yet you can only see the change in 2 pieces – 3 if you look closely at my feet.

I also had to respec to regain my missing hit rating (and reduce mana cost on spells again).

So I’m standing at the trainer and merrily plugging my points back in where they should go… and have 2 extra points.

I have no idea where they are supposed to go.

Fuck it.

I can never remember to switch to the IA spec, let’s toss a point in that for giggles and one into the pushback talent and call it good.

My second spec will probably become a variant of the Arcane Shatter spec that I used to use when I did arena and that is experiencing a revival by Rip over at Critical QQ.

I’m sure my spec is missing something important somewhere, but it’s going to have to do for now.

Here are some before and after stat shots:

Before

And…

After

I gained a little over 200 spell power and 2600 mana. Took it in the shorts on mana regen though. Need that stupid Abyssal Rune trinket to get the rest of my haste and I’ll be pretty good for a while.

Now I get to wait a whole ‘nother week before I can *hopefully* get this gear broken in proper in a raid. Maybe I’ll even remember to flask up.

And my new offhand is the shrunken head of a KISS band member.

I might link all the items later. Right now it’s late and I have failed to get to bed at a decent time.

Updates!

Onyxia (10men)
As you can see, our older raiders have bested the broodmother Onyxia shortly after her release into the game. Well done and keep and eye out for future runs.

Ulduar (10men)
We have penetrated deep into the secrets of Ulduar, and stand before the daunting General Vezax! We have got him down to 40%, and should be able to defeat this corrupted jailer of Yogg-Saron, the last boss in the raid.
The more experienced raiders have also done several bosses in hard mode, earning these achievements. Trust us when we say it was absolutely crazy when we attempted it. Congratulations to them as well.

Trial of the Crusader (10men)
We are very pleased to announced that we have FULLY CLEARED ToC 10men! Well done! We will be organising TOC runs in the future whenever possible.

And that wraps up our boss updates!

Soooo….I’m a bit behind here but I have never really had the urge to head into Ony’s Lair.  The guild put together a group to run tonight.  After three wipes we finally got her.  Nothing good as far as loot but it was definitely a learning experience.  And seeing 8k DPS on the charts doesn’t hurt my confidence either (Thanks to phase 2 for that).

For a Rogue there’s not much to this fight.  PHASE 1 – Tank and spank but stay on the side of Ony to avoid tail and talon swipe.  at 60% health you begin PHASE 2 – First Fan of Knives the group of whelps that come out.  Redirect aggro using Tricks of the Trade.  Also your are watching for “Deep Breath” and you must immediately move to a wall in her lair.  After first phase of whelps switch to Guardian Adds (move out of range of guardians during blast nova) until 40% health and then begins PHASE 3 – Another tank and spank with some fears thrown in.  It’s really nothing when everyone pays attention and does their job.

It was short and fun and now that I’ve got an idea of how the fight goes I’m not as worried about Puggin it for 25man.

So after treating them like a pack of 2 year olds and telling them exactly what they needed to do and when, we finally got Ony down!!

YAY for us!  Took 3 attempts I think..maybe 2 – can’t quite remember, either way we finally got her down, hopefully we can repeat ther performance again and get her every week now

We also webnt into TOC and one shot NRB and would have one shot Jaxx had someone not pulled aggro too early.

Was a little annoyed that even as I was explainign things, people were not listening again or using their common sense…but I am thinking I am getting used to that.

Anway Grats to us, only taken us far too long to get it done.

The weird title is my headache-addled brain’s attempt to give you an overview of this latest post. Its actually a convoluted attempt to marry a saying and a statement: the former about the plans of Mice and Men, and the latter about “winging” something.

Recently, my Guildies and I have been running Instances. A lot of the guys are dinging mid-70 and we were thinking of both gearing them and getting used to coordinated play.

Half of the Guild is made up of Rising Force Online veterans, so “coordinated play” should be second nature to us considering how unit-sized battles are common in that MMORPG (Chip War, anyone?). A third (actually half, too, but I’m only mentioning the active ones) is made up of WoW veterans from friends in the Rivendare and Bonechewer servers. When we mean “veterans” we mean the Tier-geared, Epically-Mounted, 10-man Heroic Raiding kind. And then there’s the ones who, although gamers themselves, do not fit in the first two categories. If ECO-WoW is to be a decent, respectable Guild, we have to learn to meld the differing philosophies and personalities into one cohesive command. I mean, there IS Arena to look forward to. Unless the Force calls too persistently.

So, we run the Instances. Its good exercise, and a nice source of good gear for the 70s. For us 80s, it also eases the tedium of the Daily Grind. You won’t know what I mean until you do two sets of Joust Quests everyday. With lag. And for kicks the AI asks you to get him a new sword from the damned frogs. Those goddamned frogs.

Anyway:

The RF vets aren’t much for details and number-crunching (except for one particular player; hi, John. /hug). This doesn’t mean we don’t plan or anything, its just that, lacking a comprehensive database like the one for WoW, we had to “wing” a lot of encounters and dungeons and quests. When you’re on the battlefields of Novus, you quickly learn that there is truth in the adage that no set battle plan survives contact with the enemy. So you do preparatory planning, but its all done in a general sort of way.

Also, what passes for “Instance” runs in RF are our notoriously insane Battle Dungeons where more often than not you get PUGs, so the planning is barely there. You know what you’ll encounter in a BD, but do you know what your unit is bringing to THAT BD? Are you even sure that the guy who claimed he’s a Soul Chandra isn’t really a Chronomancer in disguise?

But we do try to plan our runs. We make it a point to read up on the “announced” Instance. In fact, we in the “High Command” expect everyone to do that least bit of homework as to read up on what’s to expect in an Instance. The idea is you know your Avatar best, what it has, what it can do, how you play it. Then, during discussions, we’ll come up with the best role for you in the run. We love tailoring our runs around the team, not the other way around.

Run optimization, though advisable, can quickly degenerate into a… joust quest. Unless you’re Ryunaito, you probably don’t find joust quests all that fun. Just… necessary. And we want our Raids and Instances to be fun, right?

So maybe that explains why all our “planned” runs end up with much grief. Pre-Upgrade Onyxia was planned and look what happened there. Back when it was just me and Ryu who were high enough to even challenge Blackrock Depths, we planned that one and we had to abort. And what about all the stress we went through planning our first Raid with Magtheridon, only to realize RIGHT AT THE RAID PORTAL that half the team was ineligible to enter due to level constraints. Yeah, we didn’t see that particular caveat in the database, sorry. Dammit, I spent long minutes in the Inn of Honor Hold mapping out the strategy to the Guild only to realize the 7-man, already 3-persons short, would be a 3-man run instead.

Contrast that to the last few runs we did, which were all essentially out-of-the-blue, “for the lulz” even. That was what the first Magister’s Terrace run was about: “hey, Silvanus just dinged 80! Let’s go kill Kael’Thas Part II!!!”

That, too, what the first runs in Nexus and Utgarde Keep were, at least to me. “Hey, anyone want to run Nexus?” was heard after we decked the Headless Horseman for that final time. So, with me, Silvanus, Yronhand (late-70s Dwarf Prot Warrior), Igtenos (then a 77 NElf Rogue) and Ranna (our one and only Drae Shadow Priest), we went in without any real idea what the hell we were getting into. To give you an idea how brainless it was, we were alt-tabbing to look at WoW wiki right before we hit the bosses.

And what about Utgarde? I suppose Ryu planned it, since it was the first thing he told me over Guild Chat when I logged in. But it was supposed to be a run with Ranna. Unfortunately, Ria’s PC had slow net that evening. Instead, Ruciella (then a 68 Drae DK), one of our vets from Rivendare, joined us. She knew where to go and what to expect, and so did Ryu, but for me it was just about going around killing Vyrkul and Scourge. The boss encounters were, like, “so… what does that bastard do? Anything I need to be afraid of?”

Suffice to say, the runs were fun, challenging and in certain instances really exciting. Like with the, “uh… I think we’re lost; where do we go to again?”, in Nexus. Or the “wha; he turned Shadow?” moment with that other boss in Utgarde.

And they were also successful. Granted, the Nexus run had two 80s and the Utgarde had all three Guild 80s (and aren’t Hunters just aggro stealers?), but, regardless, it all went well. Compared to all the stress we went through with the planned runs like Onyxia, Direbrew and the Headless Horseman…

I’m sure the 80s-level Instances will require more planning. The encounters we’ve had with level 80 bosses like the Headless Horseman and Direbrew showed us we have a LONG way to go before we even casually attempt those things. But I think John (Yronhand) was right about not taking the runs too seriously. Too much planning can lead to too much thinking and much paranoia. Which is horrible when your Guild strategist (me, supposedly) is naturally as well as trained to be (IRL; its the work) paranoid. I’m the kind of guy who lays a base in Dawn of War to siege and doesn’t charge it without having three Earthshaker artillery out and the Baneblade, and that’s with the whole map under my control.

After all, there’s something to be said about the plans of Mice and Men. And sometimes, you just have to trust in the Light, trust in your Guildies, and have fun winging stuff like Runs.

Otherwise, it all becomes an Argent Tournament Joust.

Do you REALLY want your Instance runs to be like that?

I never had had the pleasure of doing “old school” Onyxia. The original raid was a little before my time and I never really had to desire to finish her off before she got upgraded in the latest patch. Nevertheless, I am immensely entertained by this gem:

(You gotta feel bad for the guy who lost 50 dkp.)

Since I never did the old Onyxia, I have no real comparison as to whether her new version is easier or harder. I’ve downed the new Onyxia on both the 10 and 25-man raids with multiple characters, so I feel like I’ve done it many times now. A couple of my alts have gotten her hide bag, though none of my alts has been lucky enough to win her head or any other loot.

Maybe because I’ve done it so often, that it seems kind of easy for me. So maybe I am a little biased when I wonder why other people have such a problem on her.

Play WoW long enough and you should notice there are some common characteristics of dragon encounters. Namely, stay away from the head (unless you’re the tank) and stay away from the tail. No head, no tail — what’s left? Ah, the sides. So just stay to her side and you should be fine, right?

Well, then why the fuck are there always whelps in phase one?

(Just to clarify, I’ve mostly done Onyxia with pugs — otherwise there would be a lot of dkp getting deducted here.)

I admit that I get a little tunnel-vision on this encounter, so I don’t always notice who is the moron getting tail swiped into the whelp cave. On the rare occasions that someone isn’t riding her tail, someone else decides to get in front of her, get aggro, and immediately get cleaved.

There also shouldn’t be dead people in phase one. Once in position, she literally stands there until phase two. Phase one couldn’t be any more easier and yet people somehow manage to die.

Deaths in phase one? Now what? Do we wipe it and start over clean? Or waste a battle rez on someone who probably doesn’t deserve it?

Phases two and three are a little trickier, but if you manage to not freak out and always know where you (and Ony) are, there should still be no problem. This is a raid where everyone needs to be clear of their roles and work together as a cohesive unit.

The whelps need to be picked up and AOE’d down. The lair guardians also need to be picked up and burned down as quickly as possible. Everyone needs to avoid the flame breath.

And stay out of the damn whelp caves!

One of the more frustrating things that occurs, is after a wipe, people will decide to leave. The good and bad thing about this encounter is you aren’t saved to it unless she goes down. So basically you can wander from raid to raid until you find one that can get her down.

Oops, one wipe. I’m outta here. Which means we then have to replace. More standing around. Yadda yadda. Summon them in. Ready? Ok.

Wipe.

Someone else leave. Rinse and repeat.

All of a sudden it’s 20 minutes between pulls and people are getting antsy. Sometimes you finally get the right people in and she goes down. Other times the raid breaks up due to frustration.

I’m hoping my guild can soon get enough people to run this on its own. For now, it’s pretty hit-or-miss what outcome you get when it’s pugged.

I know that Onyxia isn’t the most complicated fight out there, but I thought some younger resto druids out there may benefit from a guide to the fight.

The fight, like the old version, is a three phased encounter.

Phase 1

Once your tank gets Onyxia to her tank spot (usually the north part of her lair), you should only have to heal the MT.  Take care to stay to the side of the dragon.  If you get too far towards the head you can get cleaved and if you get too closed to the back you can get tail swiped into the whelp caves (Bad!).  As I mentioned above, during phase 1 you usually only have to heal the tank unless someone does something they shouldn’t.  So keep full HoTs up on the Main Tank and Nourish when needed.

Once Onyxia gets to 65% health, she moves to the middle of the room, flies up in the air and phase 2 begins.

Phase 2

At the beginning of phase 2, everyone needs to group up in the middle of the room.  A lot of whelps will spawn, these need to be AE’d down ASAP.  Be careful not to throw out rejuvs on people too early, because if you get agro from the whelps you will likely die.

After the whelps are dead, (or before if your slow killing the whelps) a lair guardian will spawn.  This guardian will need to be tanked and a healer will need to be assigned to this tank.  As a druid, it is unlikely you will be assigned to this role, but if you are just keep up full HoTs and cast Nourish when needed.  Take care to stay more than 10 yards away from the guardian or you will eat his fire AE and likely die.

As a druid, your more likely role during phase 2 is to raid heal.  While in the air, Onyxia shoot fireballs at people.  That person and anyone else close to them will take some fire damage.  The damage is not particularly severe, but players should still try to keep spread out to mitigate the damage.

The other thing you will need to pay attention for is Deep Breath.  During Phase 2, Onyxia roams from corner to corner in her lair.  From time to time you will receive a raid emote “Onyxia takes a Deep Breath”.  When you see this emote, look at Onyxia, take note of what direction she is facing and quickly get out of her path.  If you do not, you will likely die.  Also, while running for cover, be careful not to get near the whelp caves.

Once Onyxia’s health reaches 40%, she lands and Phase 3 begins.

Phase 3

The moment Onyxia lands she will do an AE fear.  Hopefully the tank will have some type of fear protection so he can position Onyxia (Same place as Phase 1).  After she is positioned, the fight is identical to phase 1 except that she now fears and there are lava eruptions in the room.  Again make sure you stay to the side of Onyxia.  The lava will add some extra raid damage that you will need to deal with, but primary heals should be on the Main Tank.  She will fear the raid every few seconds during phase 3.  As long as no one gets feared into the whelp caves you should have no problems.

The “hardest” part of this fight is Phase 2 and the transition to Phase 3.  Once she is positioned in Phase 3 and all the whelps adds are dead you’ve practically already won.

When my guild does this fight on 10 man, we usually bring 3 healers.  I’m pretty sure that 2 would be sufficient.