So last night we had a team together to see what we could do raiding wise while a lot of the team are on break for Christmas.
After a full clear of ICC (with me getting http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50805 thanks to some nice passing from some of the raid who also could have used it) we decided to try again to do an undying run in Naxx which should have been easier now you can get to Kel straight off and get the hard bits done first.
Now a few of us and Naxx undying have a long and nasty history replete with runs failing due to luck, bugs and off days. The first run I nearly got it on we got all the way to KT and the tank stood in a void zone with him on 2%, then we went through Instructor Rav bugging on us so we couldn't mind control the adds to failing on Sapph when both our ice blocked people ended up at opposite ends of the room and a couple of people got blown up. Its got so bad that one of our main tanks twitches I swear whenever we mention it.
So once again we set forth and this time it WAS going to happen we wanted that damn title "undying".
So we blew through Sapph and KT first with no issues and also cleared that other deathtrap for the unwary Heigan. This was it we thought hard stuff out the way and keep focus and we got this!
Then we get to Grobbulous, now Grobb to be honest has been our whipping boy for ages no one ever died on him anymore. So we started off ok with the main tank kiting away and me picking up adds.
Then I noticed on vent that people were mentioning they were not getting warnings off the boss mods when they had the disease on them and there were some poison clouds in the middle of the room. For me I hadn't noticed as being a healer I have raid debuffs running on grid so I can see who needs healing when they get infected so I dont pay any attention to skulls above my head as grid tells me whats happening.
This doesn't apply to everyone as everyone is not a healer.... Also our boomkins raid UI decided at this point to throw a major mental and pop up with errors all across his screen. This lead to him not being able to see he was in a big poison cloud in the middle of the room dropped by someone else who's boss mods were not working and he went down splat!
I am thinking I will never be Zetter the undying as to be honest most of the guild twitch when you mention doing it again and I think the bloody game it out to prevent me from doing this one achievement.
Zetter
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Sunday, 27 December 2009
LFG Fun take 2
Well another exiting adventure in the Pit of Sauron.
This time everything was going swimmingly the tank has decent hit points nothing amazing but enough the dps was good and we rocked on through the first two bosses.
After the second boss was dead we were ready to head up the hill towards the gauntlet with those summoner mobs. But the tank in his wisdom obviously had a new speed running tactic that he didnt share with the rest of the group and zoomed on up the hill before the mobs spawned.
Now this would have been great if he had told the rest of us but he didn't and this left him at the top of the hill and us at the bottom. Then to top it all off at this impasse the prick dropped the group and left us without a tank. Needless to say then we decided to call it a day with the last boss up.
I swear at the moment speed running is getting out of hand in the rush for badges and with LFG its a consequence free thing to drop a group or basically act like an asshole. Unless there is someone on from the same realm you are immune from being called out as a Twat.
Still here is to you pally tank thanks for letting me die in the ambush by the Giests and leaving everyone in the lurch when you got yourself trapped. We are not Jonny Wishbone psychic extraordinaire and if you had smegging told us what you were planning we would have followed you but as you didn't use that basic human skill of COMMUNICATION I hope to hell anyone you raid with has the sixth sense as I bet you wipe a lot of raids otherwise.
Zetter
This time everything was going swimmingly the tank has decent hit points nothing amazing but enough the dps was good and we rocked on through the first two bosses.
After the second boss was dead we were ready to head up the hill towards the gauntlet with those summoner mobs. But the tank in his wisdom obviously had a new speed running tactic that he didnt share with the rest of the group and zoomed on up the hill before the mobs spawned.
Now this would have been great if he had told the rest of us but he didn't and this left him at the top of the hill and us at the bottom. Then to top it all off at this impasse the prick dropped the group and left us without a tank. Needless to say then we decided to call it a day with the last boss up.
I swear at the moment speed running is getting out of hand in the rush for badges and with LFG its a consequence free thing to drop a group or basically act like an asshole. Unless there is someone on from the same realm you are immune from being called out as a Twat.
Still here is to you pally tank thanks for letting me die in the ambush by the Giests and leaving everyone in the lurch when you got yourself trapped. We are not Jonny Wishbone psychic extraordinaire and if you had smegging told us what you were planning we would have followed you but as you didn't use that basic human skill of COMMUNICATION I hope to hell anyone you raid with has the sixth sense as I bet you wipe a lot of raids otherwise.
Zetter
Saturday, 26 December 2009
LFG Fun
So the guild is essentially on shutdown at the moment for the holiday with a lot of our members either being with the family or possibly in a gutter somewhere after a few too many shandys.
I personally have also been with my nearest and dearest but have been ensuring once again that I partake in my favourite sacrifice to the gods of wow i.e. doing the random daily every day so I can keep collecting my frost badges for my T10 set.
Now mostly random dungeons recently for me have been fun, as a healer I get groups almost immediatly. Probably not as fast as tanks (who I believe get into an instance before they join the LFG queue through some sort of quantum effect) but plenty fast enough for me. Also virtually all of the groups I have joined have been swift although silent (the art of conversation appears to have died in the LFG channel sometimes nary a word is uttered by anyone through the whole run).
But over the last couple of days I have been involved in two amazing groups in the new ICC dungeon Pit of Saron.
The first I joined at the end of the run with their first healer having dropped for some reason before the last boss. I think probably because he died at the keyboard from old age. The tank was well geared with 40K hit points buffed but my god the dps was appalling. A shammy managed to pull the boss before the tank and died, then a hunter got killed from a blast from the frost wyrm so I battle rezzed the shammy and we kept on fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting.
Now this boss as you probably know he casts overlords brand on people for dps this means they have to stop shooting as it damages the tank and for healers your heals also heal the boss. Now as a druid this is a bit of a pain in the ass as my heals kind of dont stop when I want them to being hots but normally the dps just burn his ass down anyhow despite the little boost he gets from me. But not these guys I was actually considering using an innervate as the fight went on so damn long and I never use that in heroics in fact generally I dont even notice my mana dropping. Eventually the boss went down after a fight lasting longer than most raid boss fights.
The second run was in the same place Pit of Saron again. I went in with my insane dps Elemental Shammy guildmate and we got eventually a group together. The issue was I was having trouble working out who was the tank as there were a couple of people on high hitpoints with the highest being 3.3K buffed.
Apparently this was the tank at this point I thought "ah well I Will see how it goes maybe hes stacking avoidance" but I think I was wrong on this. Damn from a healers point of view it was one of the hardest runs I have ever healed the tank was spiking like a yoyo and if you know the bit where you go up the hill to run the gauntlet I don't think I have put out so much Heals Per Second for a long time on one target.
I think the tank forgot that spell caster need to be hit and tanked or they look for other people to play with LIKE ME so at one point I had hots rolling on the tank along with with a full lot on me as I was getting the hell blown out of me.
I can say one thing for random pugs it keeps you on your toes!
Zetter
I personally have also been with my nearest and dearest but have been ensuring once again that I partake in my favourite sacrifice to the gods of wow i.e. doing the random daily every day so I can keep collecting my frost badges for my T10 set.
Now mostly random dungeons recently for me have been fun, as a healer I get groups almost immediatly. Probably not as fast as tanks (who I believe get into an instance before they join the LFG queue through some sort of quantum effect) but plenty fast enough for me. Also virtually all of the groups I have joined have been swift although silent (the art of conversation appears to have died in the LFG channel sometimes nary a word is uttered by anyone through the whole run).
But over the last couple of days I have been involved in two amazing groups in the new ICC dungeon Pit of Saron.
The first I joined at the end of the run with their first healer having dropped for some reason before the last boss. I think probably because he died at the keyboard from old age. The tank was well geared with 40K hit points buffed but my god the dps was appalling. A shammy managed to pull the boss before the tank and died, then a hunter got killed from a blast from the frost wyrm so I battle rezzed the shammy and we kept on fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting.
Now this boss as you probably know he casts overlords brand on people for dps this means they have to stop shooting as it damages the tank and for healers your heals also heal the boss. Now as a druid this is a bit of a pain in the ass as my heals kind of dont stop when I want them to being hots but normally the dps just burn his ass down anyhow despite the little boost he gets from me. But not these guys I was actually considering using an innervate as the fight went on so damn long and I never use that in heroics in fact generally I dont even notice my mana dropping. Eventually the boss went down after a fight lasting longer than most raid boss fights.
The second run was in the same place Pit of Saron again. I went in with my insane dps Elemental Shammy guildmate and we got eventually a group together. The issue was I was having trouble working out who was the tank as there were a couple of people on high hitpoints with the highest being 3.3K buffed.
Apparently this was the tank at this point I thought "ah well I Will see how it goes maybe hes stacking avoidance" but I think I was wrong on this. Damn from a healers point of view it was one of the hardest runs I have ever healed the tank was spiking like a yoyo and if you know the bit where you go up the hill to run the gauntlet I don't think I have put out so much Heals Per Second for a long time on one target.
I think the tank forgot that spell caster need to be hit and tanked or they look for other people to play with LIKE ME so at one point I had hots rolling on the tank along with with a full lot on me as I was getting the hell blown out of me.
I can say one thing for random pugs it keeps you on your toes!
Zetter
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Unlucky Toons
So we did the first four bosses in ICC again and a few nice bits dropped for everyone. Including to our amazement a bow for our hunter Dalno.
Now why were we amazed? Well Dalno has a theory that when you create your toon Blizz does a secret roll and this affects all your rolling chances for loot going forward though some nefarious mechanism. His belief is that he rolled a one on creating his hunter as he is always at the back of the loot / drop train.
Him getting a good item level weapon early in the ICC campaign is unusual to say the least as previous experience does seem to back him up in his theory. I have raided with Dalno through all of BC and Wrath and he does always seem to be unlucky with loot either never seeing stuff drop or losing rolls on it.
The standing joke back in BC was that me must have run Kara 10 zillion times and never seen the gun drop in there until we were well into TK/SSC and then the damn thing dropped when it was not required in fact I think every gun user in the guild had it apart from Dal as when it dropped he was always away for some reason.
Now on while I was playing my pally drops went my way on a fair basis throughout BC and I thought nothing of Dals bad luck except that it was just that bad luck. However I rerolled my main as a druid towards the end of BC and slowly throughout Wrath I have this sneaking suspicion that Dal was right all along and Zetter was another one of those toons who rolled a one at character creation.
He is never lucky ever in rolls or loot drops the decent gear he gets is through hard work farming badges and making items. He generally gets stuff when others have it or decide to pass as we do in guild depending on who is the most needy for the item (great bunch of people who always look to the bigger picture).
So my dear blog readers what do you think are Dalno and I being paranoid? Or does Blizz have a nefarious system running in the background based on your characters hidden "luck stat".
Zetter
Now why were we amazed? Well Dalno has a theory that when you create your toon Blizz does a secret roll and this affects all your rolling chances for loot going forward though some nefarious mechanism. His belief is that he rolled a one on creating his hunter as he is always at the back of the loot / drop train.
Him getting a good item level weapon early in the ICC campaign is unusual to say the least as previous experience does seem to back him up in his theory. I have raided with Dalno through all of BC and Wrath and he does always seem to be unlucky with loot either never seeing stuff drop or losing rolls on it.
The standing joke back in BC was that me must have run Kara 10 zillion times and never seen the gun drop in there until we were well into TK/SSC and then the damn thing dropped when it was not required in fact I think every gun user in the guild had it apart from Dal as when it dropped he was always away for some reason.
Now on while I was playing my pally drops went my way on a fair basis throughout BC and I thought nothing of Dals bad luck except that it was just that bad luck. However I rerolled my main as a druid towards the end of BC and slowly throughout Wrath I have this sneaking suspicion that Dal was right all along and Zetter was another one of those toons who rolled a one at character creation.
He is never lucky ever in rolls or loot drops the decent gear he gets is through hard work farming badges and making items. He generally gets stuff when others have it or decide to pass as we do in guild depending on who is the most needy for the item (great bunch of people who always look to the bigger picture).
So my dear blog readers what do you think are Dalno and I being paranoid? Or does Blizz have a nefarious system running in the background based on your characters hidden "luck stat".
Zetter
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Year In review
I got tagged by Tessy on this from reflections from the pond and it seemed like a fun thing to so as 2009 has been a busy year wow wise for me.
Thanks to Candy from www.furlinedteacup.com/bibleofdreams for kicking it off.
My Warcraft Year in Review
1) What did you do in World of Warcraft in 2009 that you have never done before?
I finally took the plunge into more focused raiding, before I had been happy to just potter along being fairly casual when one of my close in game friends said he was forming a focused 10 man guild I took the step of joining up with him to see if we could really push the 10 man raiding.
2) What was you favourite new place that you visited?
Like Tessy I got to go with Icecrown Citadel not because its new but because it is really the highlight of all I liked about WOW.
I was fascinated when I first started the game with all the lore involving the Scourge and I was really looking forward to facing off against the undead. Lets say so far it hasn't disappointed and Arthas we are coming to get you!
3) What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
In all honesty probably less drama in game. 2009 has had a hell of lot of ups and down and I am just hoping that 2010 will be a stable run in game with good raid progress.
4) What was you biggest achievement in 2009?
For me it was getting the firefighter achievement in Ulduar as to be honest I didn't think I was good enough to be in a team that could do it. After some goes at it and reading up on the fight I thought it was a bit beyond me but we got it and victory was sweet for all the work we put in.
5) What was you biggest failure?
I think not dealing with some issue in my old guild in a very mature way that lead to issues which I think could have been handled better.
6) What did you get really , really excited about?
Joining a small guild being setup from scratch. Previously I have never been a mover if I could avoid it. I prefer my comfort zone and this was a hell of a jump into the unknown not knowing if it would work or not.
7) What do you wish you had done less off?
Probably worrying about missing things in game. I always hate miss things especially 1st kills and used to get stressy if I missed things because of work or other commitments.
8) Whats you favourite WOW blog or podcast?
I would have to say Pink Pigtails Inn I always boggle at how Larisa manages to write so much I just run out of ideas/ time.
9) Tell us a valuable wow lesson you learned in 2009?
If you try enough you can achieve most things in wow if you want them. I would have never thought I could have gotten as far as I have with raiding. I thought hard modes and drakes were for 5 day a week raiders. Really all you need is a group of dedicated people who are prepared to lean and adapt.
10) People I am tagging to complete this Meme
Being new on the scene I don't really have anyone to tag who hasn't been already but I hope my answers are of interest to people.
Zetter
Thanks to Candy from www.furlinedteacup.com/bibleofdreams for kicking it off.
My Warcraft Year in Review
1) What did you do in World of Warcraft in 2009 that you have never done before?
I finally took the plunge into more focused raiding, before I had been happy to just potter along being fairly casual when one of my close in game friends said he was forming a focused 10 man guild I took the step of joining up with him to see if we could really push the 10 man raiding.
2) What was you favourite new place that you visited?
Like Tessy I got to go with Icecrown Citadel not because its new but because it is really the highlight of all I liked about WOW.
I was fascinated when I first started the game with all the lore involving the Scourge and I was really looking forward to facing off against the undead. Lets say so far it hasn't disappointed and Arthas we are coming to get you!
3) What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
In all honesty probably less drama in game. 2009 has had a hell of lot of ups and down and I am just hoping that 2010 will be a stable run in game with good raid progress.
4) What was you biggest achievement in 2009?
For me it was getting the firefighter achievement in Ulduar as to be honest I didn't think I was good enough to be in a team that could do it. After some goes at it and reading up on the fight I thought it was a bit beyond me but we got it and victory was sweet for all the work we put in.
5) What was you biggest failure?
I think not dealing with some issue in my old guild in a very mature way that lead to issues which I think could have been handled better.
6) What did you get really , really excited about?
Joining a small guild being setup from scratch. Previously I have never been a mover if I could avoid it. I prefer my comfort zone and this was a hell of a jump into the unknown not knowing if it would work or not.
7) What do you wish you had done less off?
Probably worrying about missing things in game. I always hate miss things especially 1st kills and used to get stressy if I missed things because of work or other commitments.
8) Whats you favourite WOW blog or podcast?
I would have to say Pink Pigtails Inn I always boggle at how Larisa manages to write so much I just run out of ideas/ time.
9) Tell us a valuable wow lesson you learned in 2009?
If you try enough you can achieve most things in wow if you want them. I would have never thought I could have gotten as far as I have with raiding. I thought hard modes and drakes were for 5 day a week raiders. Really all you need is a group of dedicated people who are prepared to lean and adapt.
10) People I am tagging to complete this Meme
Being new on the scene I don't really have anyone to tag who hasn't been already but I hope my answers are of interest to people.
Zetter
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Fireproof Tree!
So last night finally after numerous false starts including a 3% wipe on phase 4 the brave troopers of Kingdom of Rust finally got Firefighter in Ulduar down. Also this was the final keeper hard mode we had to do so now we can access Algalon to finally go Ulduar 14/14.
After kicking Mimerons bum we finished of by doing the hard mode on General Vezax for all the people who missed out on him last time. This also went well and we downed him in 3 tries this time despite several of the dps not having tried hard mode before and one never having seen him.
Now only Yogg stands in our way with one keeper aiding us to get our drakes!
What can I say what a fight nothing I have done in WOW before was close to this. When it comes down to it Blizz have designed a very nice fight that you just cannot bull through no matter what gear you have. If people don’t spread out at the right point, control the fires, group together when needed and basically keep situationally aware its over.
One top tip I found for the resto druids out there is consider re glyphing with Glyph of Rejuvination this helps a lot during phase 2 when the whole raid is basically taking a spanking and people do drop below 50% health on a regular basis the extra bit of healing helped a lot.
Our setup for this was me (a resto druid), A holy priest and a shaman and on our successful try/ good tries we found it was best for me to concentrate fully on raid healing. In phase 2 where there is constant raid damage I basically concentrated on rolling Rejuvination on the whole raid while the priest and the shaman took care of the spike damage when someone was targeted by rapid burst. This would vary depending on you healer setup of course but this tactic got us through phase 2 with everyone on a consistent basis.
Zetter
After kicking Mimerons bum we finished of by doing the hard mode on General Vezax for all the people who missed out on him last time. This also went well and we downed him in 3 tries this time despite several of the dps not having tried hard mode before and one never having seen him.
Now only Yogg stands in our way with one keeper aiding us to get our drakes!
What can I say what a fight nothing I have done in WOW before was close to this. When it comes down to it Blizz have designed a very nice fight that you just cannot bull through no matter what gear you have. If people don’t spread out at the right point, control the fires, group together when needed and basically keep situationally aware its over.
One top tip I found for the resto druids out there is consider re glyphing with Glyph of Rejuvination this helps a lot during phase 2 when the whole raid is basically taking a spanking and people do drop below 50% health on a regular basis the extra bit of healing helped a lot.
Our setup for this was me (a resto druid), A holy priest and a shaman and on our successful try/ good tries we found it was best for me to concentrate fully on raid healing. In phase 2 where there is constant raid damage I basically concentrated on rolling Rejuvination on the whole raid while the priest and the shaman took care of the spike damage when someone was targeted by rapid burst. This would vary depending on you healer setup of course but this tactic got us through phase 2 with everyone on a consistent basis.
Zetter
Friday, 20 November 2009
OUCH Time in TOC Heroic
Well the guild after a successful kill on Dr Zoidberg (Ze General for his proper name) on heroic mode had only Yogg left to down this reset. As a few of our guildies hadn’t done Yogg we set about the great blob with gusto. After 3 wipes as people got the feel for the tactics we got him down with no one being either dead / driven bonkers.
Overall a good start to the evening especially as at least half the raid had never seen past Yogg phase 1 before.
So with Ulduar cleared and our tails up we started on TOC 10 man Heroic. OMG can anyone say OUCH TIME.
We came close on the Northrend beasts with a wipe at 8% when Mr Icehowl went nuts and blew the raid to bits with an enraged stomp (I ate 48K damage which was nice). I must admit as a healer the damage on the tanks was insane both our tanks are in the I level 232/ 219 area they were eating massive spikes at certain points basically requiring spam healing all the time to keep the tanks topped off in case of a run of big hits.
The 10 man TOC heroics really do require pure 10 man guilds like ours to have farmed 10 man normal TOC to death. You do need to squeeze every bit of DPS, Avoidance, and Healing out of your raid to beat the enrage timers 25 man raiders who are having a bash at 10 man heroics really do have an advantage with being able to access weapons and gear of (I) level 245 before they go into heroic 10 man. Pure 10 man guilds basically don’t get this unless they pug 25 mans or run VOA/ Ony pugs and hope to get lucky.
With the new instances and Icecrown radiance they are supposed to be balancing the loss of tank avoidance with more predictable steady damage that peaks and troughs with boss abilities. This in my opinion can be no bad thing as the heroic TOC Northrend Beasts just seem to be massive spike damage on the tank that require spam healing. Take the twin worms for example our disco priest got a poison on him requiring him to move to the tank to get it burned off by the tanks fire debuff. This means he had to stop casting big heals so he could inch his way towards the tank. I was support healing on the raid and running what HOTs I had time for on both tanks, before I had chance to really run up spam healing with nourish the tank ate 2 big spikes went from hero to zero within a second.
Compare this to Ulduar hard modes and it is completely different Ulduar makes fights more difficult by requiring the raid to tighten up on their performance and use environmental conditions to their advantage. Sure the tanks / raid get hits hard/ more but not insanely so to pass these challenges you need to stop casting at certain points, stand in buff effects, taunt when the other tank gets a debuff and everyone’s favourite DON’T STAND IN THE FIRE!
I am hoping Icecrown will be similar to Ulduar rather than TOC. TOC was a nice filler but I don’t like the fights a lot and oddly enough I miss trash, it was nice to warm up on trash before the fights kicked off. Also the step change from normal to heroic mode massive and the ramp up is of the order of upping the incoming damage to the tank to insane levels.
Zetter
Overall a good start to the evening especially as at least half the raid had never seen past Yogg phase 1 before.
So with Ulduar cleared and our tails up we started on TOC 10 man Heroic. OMG can anyone say OUCH TIME.
We came close on the Northrend beasts with a wipe at 8% when Mr Icehowl went nuts and blew the raid to bits with an enraged stomp (I ate 48K damage which was nice). I must admit as a healer the damage on the tanks was insane both our tanks are in the I level 232/ 219 area they were eating massive spikes at certain points basically requiring spam healing all the time to keep the tanks topped off in case of a run of big hits.
The 10 man TOC heroics really do require pure 10 man guilds like ours to have farmed 10 man normal TOC to death. You do need to squeeze every bit of DPS, Avoidance, and Healing out of your raid to beat the enrage timers 25 man raiders who are having a bash at 10 man heroics really do have an advantage with being able to access weapons and gear of (I) level 245 before they go into heroic 10 man. Pure 10 man guilds basically don’t get this unless they pug 25 mans or run VOA/ Ony pugs and hope to get lucky.
With the new instances and Icecrown radiance they are supposed to be balancing the loss of tank avoidance with more predictable steady damage that peaks and troughs with boss abilities. This in my opinion can be no bad thing as the heroic TOC Northrend Beasts just seem to be massive spike damage on the tank that require spam healing. Take the twin worms for example our disco priest got a poison on him requiring him to move to the tank to get it burned off by the tanks fire debuff. This means he had to stop casting big heals so he could inch his way towards the tank. I was support healing on the raid and running what HOTs I had time for on both tanks, before I had chance to really run up spam healing with nourish the tank ate 2 big spikes went from hero to zero within a second.
Compare this to Ulduar hard modes and it is completely different Ulduar makes fights more difficult by requiring the raid to tighten up on their performance and use environmental conditions to their advantage. Sure the tanks / raid get hits hard/ more but not insanely so to pass these challenges you need to stop casting at certain points, stand in buff effects, taunt when the other tank gets a debuff and everyone’s favourite DON’T STAND IN THE FIRE!
I am hoping Icecrown will be similar to Ulduar rather than TOC. TOC was a nice filler but I don’t like the fights a lot and oddly enough I miss trash, it was nice to warm up on trash before the fights kicked off. Also the step change from normal to heroic mode massive and the ramp up is of the order of upping the incoming damage to the tank to insane levels.
Zetter
Saturday, 7 November 2009
More VOA BS
Well thanks to my mate the PC is battle rezzed. Can you believe it was the power switch that was shorting. So now my reset button is my power switch temporally.
So yesterday I decided to join a VOA 25 man pug seeing as I missed out on all the Wednesday fun. This went fine with the fire boss down and unfortunately no t9.5 leg drop but hey ho Zetter the druid is on of those "unlucky" toons i.e. all he gets is from hard graft.
So we move on to Emalon he's down easily and a pvp + spellpower ring drops I'm thinking hmm may be worth a role as I do dabble in pvp a bit. When suddenly the Raid Leader announces that only people with an area team can roll WTF!
Now I didn't make a bit issue about it just sai I thought it was a bit out of order, to be honest it was only deadly gear and I have enough honour to get what I want.
However I have read about this on Ala recently and it appears to have spread to the Peak now as well.
Personally and I am aiming this at people who are starting to set this rule this sucks. I wouldn't mind but I bet none of you ask people to link say Firefighter Achievement or Secrets of Ulduar before any of the PVP crowd can roll on T9.5 legs.
I can appreciate sometimes it must be a bit of a gyp for someone to win some nice legs who hasn't done a lot of PVP where you may have sweated blood in the arena. But it is the same for a lot of us PVE types who see Jonny Druid get some T9.5 legs while not having set foot in Ulduar or TOC. Dishing out loot in PUGs on the basis of what form of the game someone plays the most is bang out of order especially when you don't announce it before raid start.
So be warned all you VOA PUGers on the Aerie Peak realm it may be worth checking going forward what odd twists the Raid Leader is going to throw your way next!
Zetter
So yesterday I decided to join a VOA 25 man pug seeing as I missed out on all the Wednesday fun. This went fine with the fire boss down and unfortunately no t9.5 leg drop but hey ho Zetter the druid is on of those "unlucky" toons i.e. all he gets is from hard graft.
So we move on to Emalon he's down easily and a pvp + spellpower ring drops I'm thinking hmm may be worth a role as I do dabble in pvp a bit. When suddenly the Raid Leader announces that only people with an area team can roll WTF!
Now I didn't make a bit issue about it just sai I thought it was a bit out of order, to be honest it was only deadly gear and I have enough honour to get what I want.
However I have read about this on Ala recently and it appears to have spread to the Peak now as well.
Personally and I am aiming this at people who are starting to set this rule this sucks. I wouldn't mind but I bet none of you ask people to link say Firefighter Achievement or Secrets of Ulduar before any of the PVP crowd can roll on T9.5 legs.
I can appreciate sometimes it must be a bit of a gyp for someone to win some nice legs who hasn't done a lot of PVP where you may have sweated blood in the arena. But it is the same for a lot of us PVE types who see Jonny Druid get some T9.5 legs while not having set foot in Ulduar or TOC. Dishing out loot in PUGs on the basis of what form of the game someone plays the most is bang out of order especially when you don't announce it before raid start.
So be warned all you VOA PUGers on the Aerie Peak realm it may be worth checking going forward what odd twists the Raid Leader is going to throw your way next!
Zetter
Thursday, 5 November 2009
PC goes BOOOM
Well from the high of Monday I came down to earth with a bump last night.
I was just getting ready to kick of with the guild and another run through TOC and Ulduar when the PC turned itself off.
Now I guess most of you out there have experienced that sinking feeling when something like this happens you know in your heart that something serious has happened. I tried the power switch it was dead, so I unplugged it and when I plugged it back in the PC immediately started up and as soon as the posting beep happened bam it shut down. I fiddled with a few bits but I suspect I have a motherboard failure as the PC shouldn’t switch itself on as soon as it’s plugged in.
So today its round to my good friend in the guild who is an electronics wiz to get him to trouble shoot it which I suspect will be a while as it doesn’t appear to be an obvious fault.
So what did I do last night while my guild was busting out Orbituary in Ulduar? Set up my laptop with all my bloody add-ons and game controller ect ect and update WOW on it so I can at least get by in the raids for the next few weeks, though at severely curtailed resolutions and detail settings.
This has happened to me a few times in my gaming career and if you talk to my afore mentioned friend I am death and dismemberment to anything electronic related its like I have some sort of damn aura that causes things to blow up.
It’s also not hit at a great time finances wise as myself and my beloved wife have just had to shell out on a new car when the gear box fell out of her old one. Overall its bough back to me one of the things I said a few years ago why the hell didn’t I just stick with a basic machine for WOW and get an X box to play other stuff on that just works without all the faffing about!
Zetter
I was just getting ready to kick of with the guild and another run through TOC and Ulduar when the PC turned itself off.
Now I guess most of you out there have experienced that sinking feeling when something like this happens you know in your heart that something serious has happened. I tried the power switch it was dead, so I unplugged it and when I plugged it back in the PC immediately started up and as soon as the posting beep happened bam it shut down. I fiddled with a few bits but I suspect I have a motherboard failure as the PC shouldn’t switch itself on as soon as it’s plugged in.
So today its round to my good friend in the guild who is an electronics wiz to get him to trouble shoot it which I suspect will be a while as it doesn’t appear to be an obvious fault.
So what did I do last night while my guild was busting out Orbituary in Ulduar? Set up my laptop with all my bloody add-ons and game controller ect ect and update WOW on it so I can at least get by in the raids for the next few weeks, though at severely curtailed resolutions and detail settings.
This has happened to me a few times in my gaming career and if you talk to my afore mentioned friend I am death and dismemberment to anything electronic related its like I have some sort of damn aura that causes things to blow up.
It’s also not hit at a great time finances wise as myself and my beloved wife have just had to shell out on a new car when the gear box fell out of her old one. Overall its bough back to me one of the things I said a few years ago why the hell didn’t I just stick with a basic machine for WOW and get an X box to play other stuff on that just works without all the faffing about!
Zetter
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Kicking ass and taking names!
So it’s the end of the first week of raiding in my new guild.
Well strictly speaking its not my new guild as everyone in it are people from my old guild and some raiders from my old guild also join us. Also my alt is still in my old guild. Complicated no? Better to think of us as alternative reality version of AT being slimmer.
Anyway back on track so in the first week of hard try’s we have been blasting through the ten man hard modes.
Concentrating on Ulduar hard modes as to be honest these are a lot more interesting than TOC hard modes (and though I hate to say it at least there is some trash to deal with). TOC is on the radar but with limited time we decided to milk TOC normal for its badges and then push on into Ulduar hard modes with the time we have.
For the first week we have kicked Thoradim’s ass on hard mode to get http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3178, Hordir has lost his rare catch for http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3182 , Steelbreaker has been broken for http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=2941 and we have knocked on wood two times (we tried three and were getting there but time was marching on and we decided to show a couple of raiders Mimeron as they had never seen the full fight).
We also decided to do a few of the TOC achievements so the twin worms went down together for http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3936 and a couple of lucky people in the raid got to play with the twin mistresses for the Lord Jaraxus achievement http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3996.
Not a bad start for our new focused raiding adventures. The question is now can we get our rusted iron drake before Blizz pull them which is probably going to happen with the release of Icecrown.
I must admit this was overall a great week of raid experience for me I don't know why it was more relaxing than normal raids I have been on with everyone know their roles. There was still the usual piss taking going on but it just seemed to be smoother and more focused.
I know we are behind the curve a bit on this achievements and have slightly over the top gear being in L232 stuff mostly but we are certainly roaring up the realms ranking due to a lot of guilds concentrating on 25 mans.
Roll on Icecrown as Kingdom of Rust are coming!
Zetter
Well strictly speaking its not my new guild as everyone in it are people from my old guild and some raiders from my old guild also join us. Also my alt is still in my old guild. Complicated no? Better to think of us as alternative reality version of AT being slimmer.
Anyway back on track so in the first week of hard try’s we have been blasting through the ten man hard modes.
Concentrating on Ulduar hard modes as to be honest these are a lot more interesting than TOC hard modes (and though I hate to say it at least there is some trash to deal with). TOC is on the radar but with limited time we decided to milk TOC normal for its badges and then push on into Ulduar hard modes with the time we have.
For the first week we have kicked Thoradim’s ass on hard mode to get http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3178, Hordir has lost his rare catch for http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3182 , Steelbreaker has been broken for http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=2941 and we have knocked on wood two times (we tried three and were getting there but time was marching on and we decided to show a couple of raiders Mimeron as they had never seen the full fight).
We also decided to do a few of the TOC achievements so the twin worms went down together for http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3936 and a couple of lucky people in the raid got to play with the twin mistresses for the Lord Jaraxus achievement http://www.wowhead.com/?achievement=3996.
Not a bad start for our new focused raiding adventures. The question is now can we get our rusted iron drake before Blizz pull them which is probably going to happen with the release of Icecrown.
I must admit this was overall a great week of raid experience for me I don't know why it was more relaxing than normal raids I have been on with everyone know their roles. There was still the usual piss taking going on but it just seemed to be smoother and more focused.
I know we are behind the curve a bit on this achievements and have slightly over the top gear being in L232 stuff mostly but we are certainly roaring up the realms ranking due to a lot of guilds concentrating on 25 mans.
Roll on Icecrown as Kingdom of Rust are coming!
Zetter
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
SATNAV a blessing and a curse
I have worked at the same place roughly for the past 19 years (sad isn’t it) doing different jobs but the same location. Due to this I know every way to and from work from my house including all the little byroads you can use to avoid traffic build up/ jams.
Now recently they have begun construction on a new link road right past our site that when finished will be a dream as it will mean we get relegated to one of those little backwaters and getting into and out of work will be a joy. But while the building is going on as you can imagine the main route I used to use to get i to work has become a nightmare so I used my knowledge and plotted an alternative using all the little cut through routes I know about to avoid this on my commute.
However due to that wonderful invention of SATNAV (yes I have one too and its damn useful when you do a lot of customer visits so I wont knock them too much. Going round London with a map on your knee it not recommended for a long life!) every other bugger can now find all this little routes only know previously to us “in the know”.
While stuck behind a line of traffic on a route that was previously only taken up by the odd horse I got to thinking had wow to an extent been polluted by the SATNAV culture?
I use and I think so do a majority of people add-ons such as quest helper or similar to make dailies easier and locate the optimum point to get 10 of X to drop. But has this killed off those top secret little farming/ questing spots known only to a dedicated few and has WOW lost a bit of its mystery because of it. Like my commute home local knowledge or in WOWs case game knowledge doesn’t quite have the same impact as it once had because a lot of people have a little arrow on their screen and a calm female voice telling them “turn left here and continue for 200 yards”
Zetter
Now recently they have begun construction on a new link road right past our site that when finished will be a dream as it will mean we get relegated to one of those little backwaters and getting into and out of work will be a joy. But while the building is going on as you can imagine the main route I used to use to get i to work has become a nightmare so I used my knowledge and plotted an alternative using all the little cut through routes I know about to avoid this on my commute.
However due to that wonderful invention of SATNAV (yes I have one too and its damn useful when you do a lot of customer visits so I wont knock them too much. Going round London with a map on your knee it not recommended for a long life!) every other bugger can now find all this little routes only know previously to us “in the know”.
While stuck behind a line of traffic on a route that was previously only taken up by the odd horse I got to thinking had wow to an extent been polluted by the SATNAV culture?
I use and I think so do a majority of people add-ons such as quest helper or similar to make dailies easier and locate the optimum point to get 10 of X to drop. But has this killed off those top secret little farming/ questing spots known only to a dedicated few and has WOW lost a bit of its mystery because of it. Like my commute home local knowledge or in WOWs case game knowledge doesn’t quite have the same impact as it once had because a lot of people have a little arrow on their screen and a calm female voice telling them “turn left here and continue for 200 yards”
Zetter
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Moving on
So yesterday was one of the toughest days I had since I started playing WOW after our GM and raid leader left I had some long chats with a few people I have played with in the guild and decided to pack up my druids bag (or should that be food and water bowl) and leave my home of the past two years with my raid toon to join my old raid leaders small focused 10 man raid team.
It has almost been like leaving a long standing job I tend to be a joiner of stuff for long periods. This is reflected in my work as I have work for the same company for nearly 20 years (a miracle in this day and age) though in different roles I still travel the same route to work every day.Fortunately the parting of ways was handled without a great deal of drama in the guild and despite a bit of shock and surprise we are all still on good terms with me leaving a couple of alts in the guild to chat with friends and keep in touch with people.
I think I had decided either way I was out of raiding in AT even if it was a case of joining another guild to raid who wasn't run by one of the people I knew out of AT. I couldn't raid lead anymore and I did not think it was fair to stay in AT as a raider and I would I think inevitably be drawn back into raid leading again as it has happened before.
I wasn't happy any more raiding in AT and as this takes up a lot of my allotted play time I really needed to make a change to the part of the game I liked doing the most.
Its been a wrench as I have been involved in raiding with AT ever since Kara all through building a 25 man team to do TK/SSC and into the WOTLK. But the new team is almost home from home as there are a fair few others from AT who have taken the plunge with me.
But my days as an officer and a raid leader are over for now and I am back to Pvt grunt tree raider /salute!
Zetter
It has almost been like leaving a long standing job I tend to be a joiner of stuff for long periods. This is reflected in my work as I have work for the same company for nearly 20 years (a miracle in this day and age) though in different roles I still travel the same route to work every day.Fortunately the parting of ways was handled without a great deal of drama in the guild and despite a bit of shock and surprise we are all still on good terms with me leaving a couple of alts in the guild to chat with friends and keep in touch with people.
I think I had decided either way I was out of raiding in AT even if it was a case of joining another guild to raid who wasn't run by one of the people I knew out of AT. I couldn't raid lead anymore and I did not think it was fair to stay in AT as a raider and I would I think inevitably be drawn back into raid leading again as it has happened before.
I wasn't happy any more raiding in AT and as this takes up a lot of my allotted play time I really needed to make a change to the part of the game I liked doing the most.
Its been a wrench as I have been involved in raiding with AT ever since Kara all through building a 25 man team to do TK/SSC and into the WOTLK. But the new team is almost home from home as there are a fair few others from AT who have taken the plunge with me.
But my days as an officer and a raid leader are over for now and I am back to Pvt grunt tree raider /salute!
Zetter
Thursday, 22 October 2009
So its all hit the skids a bit this week.
After a god awful 25 man raid on Monday where we tried out TOC 25 and got comprehensively owned by the Northrend beasts we ended up killing Flame Leviathan with 2 towers up woohoo! (sarcasm btw there).
This catalysed a couple of things in the guild. We lost our guild master who has basically burned out and one of our raid leaders quit for pastures new.
This has been a major blow for me as both people were there when I started in the guild and I know then both in real life, we have hoisted beers together several times and I really like raiding and playing with these guys. We blew through Kara together when I was but a pally noob tanking and healing. On top of this they are both solid raiders who have consistently stepped up to the plate all the way through BC and Northrend.
So I am left with a quandary now, due to a large amount of people joining the guild with the aim of expanding to 2x10 man raid teams (we have always struggled generally having 15-18 people). We really to get everyone involved should go for 25 mans which means Ulduar but do I really want to through Ulduar again on 25 mans?. Especially when the final fight with Arathas is coming in the next patch and there are still a lot of hard modes to do both in TOC and Ulduar.
Or do I stop raiding with my guild and start raiding with people I know at a pace I want pushing the hard modes in 10 man and making progress but leaving my guild high and dry having lost two raid leaders.
I thought 10 man raiding would make things easier after the Burning Crusade but instead you have people wanting to do 25 mans for the Lootz! People wanting to do 10 man for the progression which is less hassle with tighter teams and people like me caught in the middle trying to keep everyone happy.
Maybe I am just a burned out raid leader as the top man Angy Raid leader put in his final post http://angryraidleader.com/. Stop being a whiney bitch Zetter and see how lucky you are. It just doesnt feel like it at the moment.
Zetter
After a god awful 25 man raid on Monday where we tried out TOC 25 and got comprehensively owned by the Northrend beasts we ended up killing Flame Leviathan with 2 towers up woohoo! (sarcasm btw there).
This catalysed a couple of things in the guild. We lost our guild master who has basically burned out and one of our raid leaders quit for pastures new.
This has been a major blow for me as both people were there when I started in the guild and I know then both in real life, we have hoisted beers together several times and I really like raiding and playing with these guys. We blew through Kara together when I was but a pally noob tanking and healing. On top of this they are both solid raiders who have consistently stepped up to the plate all the way through BC and Northrend.
So I am left with a quandary now, due to a large amount of people joining the guild with the aim of expanding to 2x10 man raid teams (we have always struggled generally having 15-18 people). We really to get everyone involved should go for 25 mans which means Ulduar but do I really want to through Ulduar again on 25 mans?. Especially when the final fight with Arathas is coming in the next patch and there are still a lot of hard modes to do both in TOC and Ulduar.
Or do I stop raiding with my guild and start raiding with people I know at a pace I want pushing the hard modes in 10 man and making progress but leaving my guild high and dry having lost two raid leaders.
I thought 10 man raiding would make things easier after the Burning Crusade but instead you have people wanting to do 25 mans for the Lootz! People wanting to do 10 man for the progression which is less hassle with tighter teams and people like me caught in the middle trying to keep everyone happy.
Maybe I am just a burned out raid leader as the top man Angy Raid leader put in his final post http://angryraidleader.com/. Stop being a whiney bitch Zetter and see how lucky you are. It just doesnt feel like it at the moment.
Zetter
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Zetter is Fur Tankz
So after a long time raiding on my druid I have collected a fair amount of Feral gear (much to our beloved Tess from http://www.reflectionsfromthepond.com/ annoyance), my offspec was boomer for a long time so I could help dps in raids and instances.Over the past couple of months it seemed a shame to let all that feral gear go to waste (some of it better than my boomer gear) and I fancied getting back in to tanking again as an offspec. This also has the bonus of allowing me to help out in heroics as either in demand spec.
I went straight over to the fantastic starting guide at Big Bear Butt (http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/07/04/modern-bear-tanking-1-specs-and-rotations/) which set me up with the basics and gave me some great macros to help out. Hence was born Zetter the offspec tank RAAAAAAAA.
So hows it been going? Well my first major task after testing out my key binds and macros in the combat dummies was TOC heroic, a big ask this one but it was a guild run so they tend to me more forgiving than jumping into PUGs.It went great despite on of our hunters wanting to see how good my threat generation and multi mob tanking was by Multishotting everything in site on the confessor (you know it was you Darka!). After this I have done quite a few heroics with little issue.Next stop raid tanking! (disclaimer only when our main tanks are not able to or its a fun run I am still a hard core healer tree)
Zetter
I went straight over to the fantastic starting guide at Big Bear Butt (http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/07/04/modern-bear-tanking-1-specs-and-rotations/) which set me up with the basics and gave me some great macros to help out. Hence was born Zetter the offspec tank RAAAAAAAA.
So hows it been going? Well my first major task after testing out my key binds and macros in the combat dummies was TOC heroic, a big ask this one but it was a guild run so they tend to me more forgiving than jumping into PUGs.It went great despite on of our hunters wanting to see how good my threat generation and multi mob tanking was by Multishotting everything in site on the confessor (you know it was you Darka!). After this I have done quite a few heroics with little issue.Next stop raid tanking! (disclaimer only when our main tanks are not able to or its a fun run I am still a hard core healer tree)
Zetter
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Healing in 25 mans
So last night we were oversubscribed with people for raiding so we pushed into 25 mans with a 23-24 person team and hit Ulduar. Now we did well and got up to the keepers while killing Onyxia in 25 man mode along the way.
As usual I was tree healing and I noticed something in my long absence from 25 mans. Healing was a LOT easier in 25 normal man than in 10 man.
In 10 man we have been running a lot of groups with two healers this generally means that as a healer you need to do a bit of everything tank healing, raid healing, self healing ect ect. Also if one of you drops the ball generally it means the raid wipes or someone dies. Mana becomes an issue during long fights and if you run out there is precious little time to get it back.
In 25 man we had five healers and there are a lot of people to cover each other. For example on the Onyxia fight our pally healer DCed due to the dreaded AOE damage effects and was out for the whole fight. Now in 10 man with 2 healers this would have probably caused a wipe but we managed to get the big git down with 4 of us.
This has got me to thinking 25 mans are still seen as the think to get into. They give better rewards because they are supposedly harder. But in all truth where is the difficulty is it mainly in the organisation of a 25 man raid (i.e. its tougher to get 25 people together than 10 and sort out DKP, , drama what to do ect ect).
Because from a healers point of view the difficulty seems greater in 10 mans as there is no where to hide if you drop the ball everyone will know it as they will be looking at the wrong end of a mace in the face from whatever boss you are facing.
Admittedly the difficulty ramps up in 25 mans during hard mode but so does it in 10 man again as you need to drop healers for DPS to beat the hard timers.
Zetter
As usual I was tree healing and I noticed something in my long absence from 25 mans. Healing was a LOT easier in 25 normal man than in 10 man.
In 10 man we have been running a lot of groups with two healers this generally means that as a healer you need to do a bit of everything tank healing, raid healing, self healing ect ect. Also if one of you drops the ball generally it means the raid wipes or someone dies. Mana becomes an issue during long fights and if you run out there is precious little time to get it back.
In 25 man we had five healers and there are a lot of people to cover each other. For example on the Onyxia fight our pally healer DCed due to the dreaded AOE damage effects and was out for the whole fight. Now in 10 man with 2 healers this would have probably caused a wipe but we managed to get the big git down with 4 of us.
This has got me to thinking 25 mans are still seen as the think to get into. They give better rewards because they are supposedly harder. But in all truth where is the difficulty is it mainly in the organisation of a 25 man raid (i.e. its tougher to get 25 people together than 10 and sort out DKP, , drama what to do ect ect).
Because from a healers point of view the difficulty seems greater in 10 mans as there is no where to hide if you drop the ball everyone will know it as they will be looking at the wrong end of a mace in the face from whatever boss you are facing.
Admittedly the difficulty ramps up in 25 mans during hard mode but so does it in 10 man again as you need to drop healers for DPS to beat the hard timers.
Zetter
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
So the other day I was running round Dalaran in a circle basically chatting on guild to a few people about general things not relating to the game.
Then it occurred to me A) why the hell am I running in circles and B) wouldn’t it be better to do something productive like levelling fishing while chatting.
I have a total of approx 160 days /played on my old main and my current druid main.
I am wondering how much of this in days I have sent running round in a circle in either Shat, Dalaran or Stormwind essentially using WOW as MSN to chat to friends on line. I think maybe it’s because I am a guy and find multi tasking hard. Also in real life I tend to fidget a lot if I am still for a long period and I think this translates to my time in wow.
So ask yourself when you look at your /played how much of it was basically spent on an £8.99 Blizzard driven version of MSN.
Zetter
Then it occurred to me A) why the hell am I running in circles and B) wouldn’t it be better to do something productive like levelling fishing while chatting.
I have a total of approx 160 days /played on my old main and my current druid main.
I am wondering how much of this in days I have sent running round in a circle in either Shat, Dalaran or Stormwind essentially using WOW as MSN to chat to friends on line. I think maybe it’s because I am a guy and find multi tasking hard. Also in real life I tend to fidget a lot if I am still for a long period and I think this translates to my time in wow.
So ask yourself when you look at your /played how much of it was basically spent on an £8.99 Blizzard driven version of MSN.
Zetter
Monday, 5 October 2009
AOE causing Disconnects crit Tree for 30K !
So the Onxyia 25 kill is still outstanding!
I managed to get into a PUG doing it and got assigned to the main tank healing (though it seems at the moment most of the time to get into an Ony 25 you need to have done Ony 25 and be a class there isn’t a lot of in the raid). After a couple of wipes (one of which left me as the only one healing the main tank as the other healer didn’t run in with us) we got to phase 2.
Then the AOE opened up on the Whelps and WHAM DC from server. After a quick relog the main tank was dead and it was soon to be all over. Also for a Brucie bonus the DC and relog had killed all my clique keybinds so I was healing with one hand behind my back as all my major spells go through clique so are all over the action bar in a random order.
I put this down to bad luck and we went again, same thing happened AOE opened up and straight DC again a relog the tank was alive but once again it had taken out clique.
I kicked some graphic settings but whispered the raid leader that I was having issues and if he wanted to bin me no problems. He swapped me to raid healing to reduce the risk (nice guy for doing that) but after one more wipe as is usual with pugs people got annoyed comments of “noobs” where being flung so the group bombed.
I think next time I will reset my system at low graphic mode for this fight to see if that fixes it but unfortunately PUGs tend to be unforgiving of DCs so I need to get it right 1st time.
Zetter
Still missing Onyxia 25 man.
I managed to get into a PUG doing it and got assigned to the main tank healing (though it seems at the moment most of the time to get into an Ony 25 you need to have done Ony 25 and be a class there isn’t a lot of in the raid). After a couple of wipes (one of which left me as the only one healing the main tank as the other healer didn’t run in with us) we got to phase 2.
Then the AOE opened up on the Whelps and WHAM DC from server. After a quick relog the main tank was dead and it was soon to be all over. Also for a Brucie bonus the DC and relog had killed all my clique keybinds so I was healing with one hand behind my back as all my major spells go through clique so are all over the action bar in a random order.
I put this down to bad luck and we went again, same thing happened AOE opened up and straight DC again a relog the tank was alive but once again it had taken out clique.
I kicked some graphic settings but whispered the raid leader that I was having issues and if he wanted to bin me no problems. He swapped me to raid healing to reduce the risk (nice guy for doing that) but after one more wipe as is usual with pugs people got annoyed comments of “noobs” where being flung so the group bombed.
I think next time I will reset my system at low graphic mode for this fight to see if that fixes it but unfortunately PUGs tend to be unforgiving of DCs so I need to get it right 1st time.
Zetter
Still missing Onyxia 25 man.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
What a difference a couple of days make
Well what a difference two days make. After the ups and downs of Monday’s raid I was determined to actually kick a bit of heavier duty butt for the reset on Wednesday.
Spurred on my Tess and Larisa’s success in Ulduar hard modes the other raid leaders and I thought it was time to do some hard mode ass kicking on 10 man. So we assembled a likely group of volunteers for the evening and sallied forth.
We warmed up by one shotting VOA 10 man and our shadow priest got some nice t9 legs and had a try at Heroic TOC 10 man.
This didn’t go so well to be honest as the two healers were me as a druid and our Holy priest and we couldn’t afford more to keep the DPS level up and running. Really we struggled as I think healer wise this fight is made for a pally main tank healer with the super Bacon of Light and us two as raid healer types were having a tough job keeping the tanks up as well as dealing with the raid fireballs and snowbolds that were flying about.
So we decided to make ourselves felt better (and get some gear/ badges) by one shotting Onyxia on 10 man and then coming back and clearing TOC10 on normal.
I landed a nice dps ring for my Boomkin offset as all our spell throwers had it and some of the melee DPS got nice hear including our beloved and permanently grumpy enhancement Shammy who landed not one but two level 232 weapons off the last boss which were a two tier upgrade for him!
After this with two hours left on the raid and somewhat buoyed up by our trashing of the normal raids we headed for Ulduar to have a crack at some hard modes. We did FL with three towers up for a starter which we have done before.
Then we tried XT for the heartbreaker achievement BOOM! One shotted it we lost our lock mid way through but a quick battle rez by me got him in the fight again and XT was dead at our feet sans heart.
Quickly moving on we had a shot at Kologran and the with open arms achievement but missed it by a couple of seconds.
Then we finally with a bit of time remaining went on to Ayriaya and had a shot at doing the crazy cat lady achievement by killing her with both her kitties alive.
There were still the same two healers me as the tree and our redoubtable holy priest and our pally tanks research suggested this was basically the tanks getting the hell kicked out them due to the bleed debuff put on by the kitties.
He wasn’t kidding I was healing the kitty tank and by the end of it I had three hots running on the tank I was spamming nourish like mad and swiftmend whenever it was off CD and I still couldn’t keep up with the damage at the end. The tank finally succumbed to massive bleed and direct damage, me being next on the aggro due to smacking out 80% of my mana in about 30 seconds went next and then they eviscerated the holy priest. But Ayriaya had taken to much of a beating at this point and before the kitties could have the DPS for afters she dropped like a stone and we had the Crazy Cat Lady Achievement as well to round off the evening.
Next Stop Keepers hard modes for Monday!
Zetter
Spurred on my Tess and Larisa’s success in Ulduar hard modes the other raid leaders and I thought it was time to do some hard mode ass kicking on 10 man. So we assembled a likely group of volunteers for the evening and sallied forth.
We warmed up by one shotting VOA 10 man and our shadow priest got some nice t9 legs and had a try at Heroic TOC 10 man.
This didn’t go so well to be honest as the two healers were me as a druid and our Holy priest and we couldn’t afford more to keep the DPS level up and running. Really we struggled as I think healer wise this fight is made for a pally main tank healer with the super Bacon of Light and us two as raid healer types were having a tough job keeping the tanks up as well as dealing with the raid fireballs and snowbolds that were flying about.
So we decided to make ourselves felt better (and get some gear/ badges) by one shotting Onyxia on 10 man and then coming back and clearing TOC10 on normal.
I landed a nice dps ring for my Boomkin offset as all our spell throwers had it and some of the melee DPS got nice hear including our beloved and permanently grumpy enhancement Shammy who landed not one but two level 232 weapons off the last boss which were a two tier upgrade for him!
After this with two hours left on the raid and somewhat buoyed up by our trashing of the normal raids we headed for Ulduar to have a crack at some hard modes. We did FL with three towers up for a starter which we have done before.
Then we tried XT for the heartbreaker achievement BOOM! One shotted it we lost our lock mid way through but a quick battle rez by me got him in the fight again and XT was dead at our feet sans heart.
Quickly moving on we had a shot at Kologran and the with open arms achievement but missed it by a couple of seconds.
Then we finally with a bit of time remaining went on to Ayriaya and had a shot at doing the crazy cat lady achievement by killing her with both her kitties alive.
There were still the same two healers me as the tree and our redoubtable holy priest and our pally tanks research suggested this was basically the tanks getting the hell kicked out them due to the bleed debuff put on by the kitties.
He wasn’t kidding I was healing the kitty tank and by the end of it I had three hots running on the tank I was spamming nourish like mad and swiftmend whenever it was off CD and I still couldn’t keep up with the damage at the end. The tank finally succumbed to massive bleed and direct damage, me being next on the aggro due to smacking out 80% of my mana in about 30 seconds went next and then they eviscerated the holy priest. But Ayriaya had taken to much of a beating at this point and before the kitties could have the DPS for afters she dropped like a stone and we had the Crazy Cat Lady Achievement as well to round off the evening.
Next Stop Keepers hard modes for Monday!
Zetter
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Sometimes you eat the Bear Sometimes the Bear eats you
Sometimes I think WOW playing proves karma really is a living breathing part of life. Take this week for example it appears to have applied totally to me while playing.
On Sunday (not normally a regular play day for me as I spend time with the family and take the kids out) one of my friends in the guild was putting out the call for people to do VOA 25 man. Now I thought meh what the hell could be good could be bad lets give it a go and see how the land lies as I have an hour spare. Well nice group and we one shotted all the bosses and the T9.5 hands dropped for druid healer i.e. me.
I was the only druid healer in the group so the 6 I rolled didn’t matter and also one our kind guild healers even traded me a pvp cloak he won during the run as it wasn’t as good as one he had previously when he looked more deeply into the stats. It was a great hour spend in WOW from a loot gained point of view.
Fast forward to raiding so far this week and Mr Karma has dropped on me with vengeance. Monday we decided to go for Onxyia 25 man with mostly guild and a partial PUG and wiped a lot finally ending without downing her due to people having to leave. Overall it was a really bad luck run with disconnects due to AOE all over the place overloading peoples computers to nasty fears on the tank taking him into the healers for a cleave.
Then yesterday I thought I would pop on for a short while and do the heroic daily. We got a guild run going but then our tank had to go as he was on call and the French had blown up their server he was looking after. After this we got a tank in who basically inspected a couple of the DPS and turned up his nose and left (as hey this is old kingdom serious stuff so much so that I tend to heal/dps as boomkin on the last boss to speed things up).
At this point I had to make dinner so had to leave and eventually wandered back on later in the evening. Got a group was half way through the instance and the world server crashed and reset it, at this point a lot of the group I was with wanted to go to bed so with a half saved instance ID that was the end of my daily for the evening.
Overall this week I think I am now paying back for my lucky glove drop in spades.
Zetter
On Sunday (not normally a regular play day for me as I spend time with the family and take the kids out) one of my friends in the guild was putting out the call for people to do VOA 25 man. Now I thought meh what the hell could be good could be bad lets give it a go and see how the land lies as I have an hour spare. Well nice group and we one shotted all the bosses and the T9.5 hands dropped for druid healer i.e. me.
I was the only druid healer in the group so the 6 I rolled didn’t matter and also one our kind guild healers even traded me a pvp cloak he won during the run as it wasn’t as good as one he had previously when he looked more deeply into the stats. It was a great hour spend in WOW from a loot gained point of view.
Fast forward to raiding so far this week and Mr Karma has dropped on me with vengeance. Monday we decided to go for Onxyia 25 man with mostly guild and a partial PUG and wiped a lot finally ending without downing her due to people having to leave. Overall it was a really bad luck run with disconnects due to AOE all over the place overloading peoples computers to nasty fears on the tank taking him into the healers for a cleave.
Then yesterday I thought I would pop on for a short while and do the heroic daily. We got a guild run going but then our tank had to go as he was on call and the French had blown up their server he was looking after. After this we got a tank in who basically inspected a couple of the DPS and turned up his nose and left (as hey this is old kingdom serious stuff so much so that I tend to heal/dps as boomkin on the last boss to speed things up).
At this point I had to make dinner so had to leave and eventually wandered back on later in the evening. Got a group was half way through the instance and the world server crashed and reset it, at this point a lot of the group I was with wanted to go to bed so with a half saved instance ID that was the end of my daily for the evening.
Overall this week I think I am now paying back for my lucky glove drop in spades.
Zetter
Friday, 25 September 2009
First impressions we make of players and people in general
Well today I have had the joy of contemplating replacing my wife's car as the poor thing I think is about to have terminal gear box failure.
It has been an interesting experience going through car dealers and getting quotes on new car. Now I generally dress comfortably on my days off generally in jeans and T shirts and the razor is optional for the day.
It is quite amusing on how people in these places react to you when you are on about buying a vehicle worth a fair amount of cash. In certain places I got the impression that some of the sales people didn't give me a lot of time as I wasn't in a shirt and tie.
I also have a friend who to be honest is worse than me and could be described as a bit of a slob when he is wandering about and he has noticed the same thing when shopping for large items i.e. being given little attention by sales people as they tend to view that you cant afford the product.
It is interesting that these impressions they form are quite wrong I run a high turnover business unit at my work and my friend earns a very high salary as an IT contractor in the city. We know what we can afford and only go looking for it if its within our budgets.
The upshot of this is at least one person has lost the opportunity to sell a high priced car to my friend due to his attitude when my friend first entered the dealership before a word was spoken.
This got me thinking about how players in WOW can be judged i.e. for grouping for instances or raids. People demand EPIC achievements all the time just to run heroic VH or will kick anyone with the shred of green gear on them as unworthy.
But hold hard a minute group leader could this so called noob possibly be an alt of one of the top guilds on the server having a break or quiet time away from their hectic raiding schedule. This person due to their knowledge of game and super human play style could be able to pump out 4K dps from low gear.
Or could this person be you guilds next great tank / healer i.e someone who can play like god himself but just needs to prove themselves in a group.
I think recently there appears to be too much judgement on initial appearance of players and the perceived skill of them based on the gear they are wearing / achievements done.
So next time there is a group being formed will the leader be the person missing out on that diamond in the rough or the possibility of being looked on favourably by the leet guild on the server. Or will they take a chance and be pleasantly surprised/possibly amazed.
Zetter
It has been an interesting experience going through car dealers and getting quotes on new car. Now I generally dress comfortably on my days off generally in jeans and T shirts and the razor is optional for the day.
It is quite amusing on how people in these places react to you when you are on about buying a vehicle worth a fair amount of cash. In certain places I got the impression that some of the sales people didn't give me a lot of time as I wasn't in a shirt and tie.
I also have a friend who to be honest is worse than me and could be described as a bit of a slob when he is wandering about and he has noticed the same thing when shopping for large items i.e. being given little attention by sales people as they tend to view that you cant afford the product.
It is interesting that these impressions they form are quite wrong I run a high turnover business unit at my work and my friend earns a very high salary as an IT contractor in the city. We know what we can afford and only go looking for it if its within our budgets.
The upshot of this is at least one person has lost the opportunity to sell a high priced car to my friend due to his attitude when my friend first entered the dealership before a word was spoken.
This got me thinking about how players in WOW can be judged i.e. for grouping for instances or raids. People demand EPIC achievements all the time just to run heroic VH or will kick anyone with the shred of green gear on them as unworthy.
But hold hard a minute group leader could this so called noob possibly be an alt of one of the top guilds on the server having a break or quiet time away from their hectic raiding schedule. This person due to their knowledge of game and super human play style could be able to pump out 4K dps from low gear.
Or could this person be you guilds next great tank / healer i.e someone who can play like god himself but just needs to prove themselves in a group.
I think recently there appears to be too much judgement on initial appearance of players and the perceived skill of them based on the gear they are wearing / achievements done.
So next time there is a group being formed will the leader be the person missing out on that diamond in the rough or the possibility of being looked on favourably by the leet guild on the server. Or will they take a chance and be pleasantly surprised/possibly amazed.
Zetter
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Yogg 1 AT 0 and oops we have been slacking in TOC :)
Well its Monday TOC was cleared by two teams the week before so we were at a bit of lose end for Monday so what to do???
I have a great idea yay lets go do Yogg in Ulduar we had left him up from a run two weeks ago for just such an occasion so I thought it would be a nice idea to extend my raid ID and get some other people to see it who didn't make our first kill.
Now a quick back story on this. AT pushed hard into Ulduar for quite a while with one raid team swapping people in and out as we went and finally got to MR Yogg and downed him in one night of hard try's. Now I know this isn't major compared to progress but it was a big effort for us and was a pleasure to finish Ulduar for the first time.
This was coincidentally at the point that TOC was about to hit so after that first sweet kill we like I guess a lot of other people bombed on into TOC as to be honest it was something we wanted to get started on. Hence we really didn't bother with Ulduar except on off days and fun runs (after all Yogg was dead mission accomplished for the AT heroes).
But yesterday after a successful TOC clear on the Wednesday I extended my Ulduar ID from the previous week and offered the chance up in the guild for people to have a crack at the big blob himself.
Several of our regulars offered to bench themselves to give people who had not been before a shot and off the merry team of 10 trotted to give Yogg a good spanking......... 2 Hours later a very battered AT team limped out of Ulduar after having received a rather harsh spanking from said blob.
I think going forward we will need to put more effort into Ulduar as a preparation for Icecrown rather than TOC as I get the feeling TOC was a bit of free loot filler from Blizz. If the same people who did Ulduar are doing Icecrown we need to keep our edge for that from Ulduar rather than be lulled into a false sense of security by the sweet song of TOC.
Zetter slightly scored and hammered tree.
I have a great idea yay lets go do Yogg in Ulduar we had left him up from a run two weeks ago for just such an occasion so I thought it would be a nice idea to extend my raid ID and get some other people to see it who didn't make our first kill.
Now a quick back story on this. AT pushed hard into Ulduar for quite a while with one raid team swapping people in and out as we went and finally got to MR Yogg and downed him in one night of hard try's. Now I know this isn't major compared to progress but it was a big effort for us and was a pleasure to finish Ulduar for the first time.
This was coincidentally at the point that TOC was about to hit so after that first sweet kill we like I guess a lot of other people bombed on into TOC as to be honest it was something we wanted to get started on. Hence we really didn't bother with Ulduar except on off days and fun runs (after all Yogg was dead mission accomplished for the AT heroes).
But yesterday after a successful TOC clear on the Wednesday I extended my Ulduar ID from the previous week and offered the chance up in the guild for people to have a crack at the big blob himself.
Several of our regulars offered to bench themselves to give people who had not been before a shot and off the merry team of 10 trotted to give Yogg a good spanking......... 2 Hours later a very battered AT team limped out of Ulduar after having received a rather harsh spanking from said blob.
I think going forward we will need to put more effort into Ulduar as a preparation for Icecrown rather than TOC as I get the feeling TOC was a bit of free loot filler from Blizz. If the same people who did Ulduar are doing Icecrown we need to keep our edge for that from Ulduar rather than be lulled into a false sense of security by the sweet song of TOC.
Zetter slightly scored and hammered tree.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
PUGs are like a box of Chocolates
As Forrest Gump's mum said "life is a like a box of chocolates you never know what you are going to get". I guess like a lot of people she didn't actually read the little bit of card you get in the box to tell you.
After watching the film the other day this got me thinking about PUGs.
Now recently I have been PUGing a hell of a lot due my drive for http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47241 so I can get the T9 4 piece set. As there are quite a few days I can only nip on to do the daily say "hi" and go off I cant do this in guild runs all the time as a lot of people tend to have done it when I come on. So I drop into the murky world of PUGs again after a long absence when heroics were not worth doing.
Like Forrests mum and looking at the little card to tell you whats in the chocolate box, generally I don't have the time or patience to armoury people to see if they are going to cope in a heroic its just cross your fingers and hope for the best.
As a healer this can be interesting I tend to get into groups easily but the experience can vary from the easy to the ridiculous.
Take the last two days I have run with two different PUGs in fairly similar dailies difficulty wise these being Nexus and Halls Of Stone. But the runs could not have been more different in terms of the challenge to and the speed at which they were carried out.
The Nexus run was a full plate dps affair (well except me I was wearing Bark) with DKs, Pallys and Warriors. Overall the tank couldn't hold threat to save his life and I mainly spent the whole run healing one of the DPS warriors who seemed to be getting hit more than the tank. At one point before the boss in the crystal Garden I got killed and this bunch didnt even notice and proceeded to engage the boss while I was still dead.
We did the run but it was more challenging at times that healing Mimeron in Ulduar as there was threat bouncing all over the place!
Compare this to the run today through Halls Of Stone. The tank was a threat Magnet and the dps were competent. All I did during the run was put Rejuvenation on everyone and the occasional nourish with the last boss going down before I really had time to Blink.
Overall though both were fun runs in their way one was quick with competent people and the other was challenging and pushed me hard to make it a success.
So next time you are in a heroic PUG just wonder will you get the wonderful rich Truffle Chocolate or will it be the hard centre :).
Zetter
After watching the film the other day this got me thinking about PUGs.
Now recently I have been PUGing a hell of a lot due my drive for http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47241 so I can get the T9 4 piece set. As there are quite a few days I can only nip on to do the daily say "hi" and go off I cant do this in guild runs all the time as a lot of people tend to have done it when I come on. So I drop into the murky world of PUGs again after a long absence when heroics were not worth doing.
Like Forrests mum and looking at the little card to tell you whats in the chocolate box, generally I don't have the time or patience to armoury people to see if they are going to cope in a heroic its just cross your fingers and hope for the best.
As a healer this can be interesting I tend to get into groups easily but the experience can vary from the easy to the ridiculous.
Take the last two days I have run with two different PUGs in fairly similar dailies difficulty wise these being Nexus and Halls Of Stone. But the runs could not have been more different in terms of the challenge to and the speed at which they were carried out.
The Nexus run was a full plate dps affair (well except me I was wearing Bark) with DKs, Pallys and Warriors. Overall the tank couldn't hold threat to save his life and I mainly spent the whole run healing one of the DPS warriors who seemed to be getting hit more than the tank. At one point before the boss in the crystal Garden I got killed and this bunch didnt even notice and proceeded to engage the boss while I was still dead.
We did the run but it was more challenging at times that healing Mimeron in Ulduar as there was threat bouncing all over the place!
Compare this to the run today through Halls Of Stone. The tank was a threat Magnet and the dps were competent. All I did during the run was put Rejuvenation on everyone and the occasional nourish with the last boss going down before I really had time to Blink.
Overall though both were fun runs in their way one was quick with competent people and the other was challenging and pushed me hard to make it a success.
So next time you are in a heroic PUG just wonder will you get the wonderful rich Truffle Chocolate or will it be the hard centre :).
Zetter
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Well here we go!
After checking out various blogs on the web I thought I would have a crack myself. At the moment the sites unfinished so please forgive me if it looks unfinished and I havent got any spiffy themes yet.
More to come when I have time to fix it up.
Zetter
More to come when I have time to fix it up.
Zetter
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