Raging Spirits are bastards

I was watching Week 3 of Big Crits (words can not express how much I love this show) and a moment that really stuck out to me was when they were working on the Lich King and their tank was having issues with the Raging Spirits. My sympathy goes to that guy, cause boy howdy those Spirits are huge pains in the butt.

They spawn during the transition phases, immediately knocking down whoever they are cloned from and if not quickly picked up they’ll murder someone in close range. This makes transitions something of a panic time for me. I’m watching DXE to tell me when a new Raging Spirit has been cast, the name of the target (though that seldom helps since I don’t know where these people were standing), and then frantically searching the screen for the Spirit to appear.

I’ve found that the threat plates addon I have is immensely helpful, because as the Spirits appear and grow larger the bar is huge, easy to click on, and easy to grab. Which, then of course brings up the second issue: threat.

My dps are great but they can be very trigger happy. Like, they could beat Dick Cheney in a “shoot a rich guy in the face” contest. So to speak. Anyway, we had several occasions where as soon as the Raging Spirit came up they immediately went to town. I get parried, suddenly fall behind in threat in that crucial first three seconds, and the Spirit manages to disintegrate one of them. On another occasion or two, someone at range would end up out-threating me in that initial window, the mob would turn and then nuke a whole column of the raid. Not pretty.

The best solution I can think of is to force the dps to count to three before they open fire. That seemed to work well in the latter part of the raid night.

Anyway, don’t mind me, I’m just a man-obsessed right now. I am so ridiculously pumped to get back on the Frozen Throne next Wednesday and finally put this to bed.

We’re getting there

Last week we spent 3.5 hours on the Lich King and we consistently getting roadblocked at the second Defile. Last night we spent another 3.5 hours on Arthas, and this time we saw Phase 3 a few times. It’s definitely getting better.

We still have work to do on Defiles, and the slows on Valks were definitely not as optimal as they could be. For the former I’ll continue to hammer home constant vigilance and training everyone to keep an eagle eye on their focus target frame. For the latter I’m looking up the best slows to use. It seems like a DK specced into Chilblains can be a huge help, as well as a Warrior using Piercing Howl. I don’t think we’ve been doing slows correctly at all, and I’m kicking myself for that.

The foundation is there. There are improvements to be made, and I think next week we’ll make a much better showing.

More smooth sailing, &c.

I love Tuesday nights right now. Thanks to the Icecrown buff we are sailing right through 11 of the 12 bosses (which even a month ago seemed an impossible task for a single night), racking up huge chunks of loot, and everyone is in a fantastic mood, joking and having fun.

Apparently our server isn’t doing too well as we head into the summer, one of the major raiding guilds on the server has been completely stalled due to attendance, another from their Shadowmourne guy going on hiatus immediately after getting his legendary (ouch), leading to further hiatuses, followed up by one of the officers emptying out the bank and server transferring.

We’re oddly one of the more active Horde guilds in ICC25 man, which has lead to us getting a few pretty good apps from said disaffected guilds. I will gladly pick those bones, tyvm.

Fuh-nee

Two new guild in-jokes started up fairly recently. One of them, playing on my quickness to stressing out over the roster and other guild management issues, involves my imaginary ulcer being given the name Frank. So now whenever someone does something death-defying or otherwise gives me a quick jolt of stress I let them know that “Frank says hi.”

The other, actually funny one, deals with Zilga (one of the priests) and her jingle about poor dragon positioning and cleaves–Zilga’s gonna eat a cleave, doo da, doo da. On Spinestalker, the last drake before Sindragosa, I’ll drag it up the steps and chase Zilga around attempting to get it to cleave her. She then proceeds to taunt me with “I’ve been cleaved by better tanks than you!” So that’s our little game now.

Last night I also had the opportunity to bring three new raiders into ICC to try them out and get them some gear (again, I love that buff). One of them, a Rogue, did some ridiculous dps on many fights, placing in the top 5 despite being in 245-251 gear. He then over the course of the night picked up seven upgrades. I expect him to be a beast tonight on our LK attempts.

Also tried out a Demo Lock for the first time, something the casters have been lobbying for forever. Unfortunately our top two caster dps weren’t on last night, so I won’t be able to ask how they thought of having some extra SP.

Speaking of sailing

After raid, Morvain and I dragged a group to Uld-10 so we could finish the last achievement for our Rusted Protos. After one full go across Razorscale’s 10 minute enrage timer and then a minute into the next attempt we finally managed to roast the 25th Iron Dwarf we needed for the achievement.

Done and done.

I finished up the night by dragging a few more people into MC for my weekly dose of disappointment re: Thunderfury. And, of course, alas, no binding. Nordic taunted me with the fact he ran the place this weekend (he needs the opposite binding from me) and the one I am seeking dropped. I died a little on the inside. Ok, understatement–I died a lot on the inside

And speaking of slow deaths, more LK-25 attempts tonight! If I post about the kill tomorrow you’ll know it went well (obviously), if silence … er, send flowers.

Scaling up, scaling back

Vidyala asks “How much is too much?” While she’s speaking more existentially, I wonder the same with regards to tanking. How much survivability is too much? At want point do we achieve effective immortality–alphabetically the next step after EH–and no longer fear death?

In my earlier post about armory data mining, there were many folks honestly disagreeing with me on the merits of my recommendations based on the level of content they are tanking. Some stick to heroics and thus seldom, if ever, experience tank death. Some are raiding ICC 10 or 25 and thanks to the buff are pushing past 60k hitpoints.

Those two experiences are like two sections of the same tanking möbius strip. Vastly different content, but the same indelible question: at what point do I hit diminishing returns on my survivability stats?

Actually, let’s scale back that question–is there such a think as too much survivability? Many might say yes, some of them having commented on the data mining post to that effect. I would say there is not. If you think there is such a thing, let me pose this question to you: what odds are you willing to accept for your survival? If you can gear to only die once every 100 encounters, but do 5% more threat than someone who gears to die only once every 1000 encounters, is that a worthy trade-off?

I personally would say no. In my mind I have one primary directive, to survive. Holding threat is secondary. I would always be that latter tank, gearing to prevent as many possible tank deaths as possible even if it means a little less threat. If you lose threat you can always taunt it back, or salv a dps, or what have you. It’s seldom the end of the encounter. If a tank dies, things can rapidly snowball into a wipe. I would posit that 9 times out of 10, a tank death will lead to a wipe more than a tank losing aggro.

So I ask, why would you increase the possibility of the former to prevent the latter?

An example: I saw a discussion of my data mining post elsewhere and someone brought up my commandment not to socket Nightmare Tears. The commenter said they saw a single Nightmare Tear as superior over socketing a single Shifting Dreadstone because, gosh, it’s a lot of stats for one gem. Sure, you lose five stamina, but you gain strength, intellect, and spirit. … And yet, the only bit of that that remotely reduces damage is the 5 block value you get (6.5 after talents).

So the survivability trade-off between a Shifting and a NT is this: Shifting gives you 55 hitpoints, and the Tear will let you ignore 6.5 hitpoints worth of damage when you block (if you block). How does a Tear remotely appeal?

My position is and will always be that survivability comes first. If we’re following the proper rotation and staying caught up on gear and your dps are not knuckle-dragging idiots, threat should never be an issue. We should never have to gem or enchant for threat, it should come organically from our gear. If we need to increase our threat, we put on a cape that has hit, or a pair of boots that has expertise. We don’t regem to gain a few more points of strength.

Coming back to the original question, I would say there is no such thing as too much survivability. Indeed, there’s no such thing as an immortal tank. Even a god can bleed. To that end, I will always gear, gem, and enchant to keep myself as optimally alive as possible. Once I have too much hp, I will focus on mitigation and avoidance. Never threat. That’s not my job.

Another epic weekend

I love weekends where I have the time to do some fun, off-beat raids for stuff that’s old content. It’s a great way to combine my love of raiding with a low-stress environment with my other love–the bottle.

The plan for friday was one of my beloved, crazy, drunk raids. We spent the week farming up gray-quality gear and were going to run Kara completely decked out in what we looted off Northrend humanoids.

Originally the rules were you could wear your lvl 80 rings, trinks, and neck. After Attumen though it was obvious that was too much purple (I had something like 20k hp), so we scaled back to just trinkets. After Moroes we scaled back again to pure grays. I was then sitting at around 12k hp, much more reasonable.

The place was generally easy, but what was keeping us “honest”, so to speak, was the healers going oom every few seconds thanks to having litle to no Intellect, and thus no mana. Not to mention still being very crittable against bosses was interesting.

Maiden was easy, Opera (Wizard of Oz) a faceroll, Nightbane was somewhat terrifying (my brain is trained to be as uptight as possible in that fight thanks to TBC and worrying about fears and crushes), then we accidentally pulled Curator with trash up and wiped. Like I said, keeping us honest. And it was around this point I was starting to get tanked, having run off pre-Curator to take a shot to speed up the process a bit. (Yes, I know, a sad life I lead.)

Aran was fun, and of course someone moved during Flamewreath. Damn kids and their not raiding back in TBC days! Netherspite was interesting to say the least. At one point I may have stood in the red beam for too long…

Not sure how I didn’t get one shot. I must have hit some kind of lucky avoidance streak or something. Certainly not AD. After Netherspite we wiped on Chess for a few hours, or something. Not really. Though, actually, at around Chess things started getting a bit blurry. Apparently we killed Prince, I’m told. Good on us!

At around Curator I suggested we go try ZA in the same gear afterwards, thinking it might provide a little bit more of a challenge. I don’t remember much of ZA but I do remember no really ever fearing for my life. I think we wiped once on… something… but it’s a blank on what. Maybe the Akil’zon gauntlet. I think I died to a Sabre Lash on Lynx boss, but I’m pretty sure I got b-rezzed and avoided a wipe.

Saturday night’s alright for fighting

I spent most of Saturday nursing a hangover and leveling my druid, trying to burn through as much Outland as possible and hopefully jumping into Northrend before we would go to Ulduar later that night. I managed to go from 64 to like 80% into 67, so I’m on the cusp of Borean Tundra, just need to wrap up a few quests and I’ll be good to go.

As for the main event: we rolled in around 7:30 server in an extended lockout going right to Yogg+1 for the drake achievement. We had some issues rounding out the group and filling the last three spots. Razorscale was the weekly, so a good chunk of the guild was already saved to Uld-10. Eventually we managed to scrape together some people and get rolling.

The first few attempts were basically teaching people have never seen Yogg before how to do the fight, and then as a group getting the finer points of the hardmode down. I’m sure somewhere, someone who spent a good chunk of time learning the hardmodes for this fight in the proper gear at the proper time is weeping at the prospect of us facerolling it. Such is WoW.

We had a few wipes as those last few people were figuring it out and Brain Room Team was hitting their stride. Then one attempt they got Yogg to 74% after the first Portal phase, we ended up having something wipe us, then the next go the BRT got it to 63% after the first Portal phase. We kept going, no crazy wipes, everyone kept their Sanity up (though that was definitely no issue considering how fast our dps was making the fight go), and before we knew it–after two portal phases–it was already Phase 3. We quickly synched up into formation and I gathered up Guardians while the others burnt Yogg down.

In no time at all we dropped the guy. Most in the group scored their drakes, while Morvain and I were still missing the Dwarf roasting Razorscale achievement. We’ll have to drag some people back Tuesday and quickly bang that out. The thought that I’m one stupid (easy) achievement away from my shiny (er, not so shiny) drake is kind of distressing.

After Uld we dodged over to BWL for a fun run. No Judgement gear dropped (still need belt, boots, chest), but I got to tank the place in my 5/8 set. That was fun.

Sunday always comes too late

Last night was our big return to 10man hardmodes after taking a few weeks off (mostly my fault for not being able to make them). The plan was to take Anafielle, pick her brain on the hardmodes she’d completed, and burn through them to get the guild progression number up. I felt bad because I knew people wanted to just bang their head against the wall for a while and roll some harder heroic modes, but I just wanted to get as much experience as possible in there as a good base.

It also doesn’t help that I put together the worst comp ever seen in a hardmode. I had one freaking ranged player, a shadow priest. There was a hunter too, but he couldn’t make it, and I replaced him with another melee. (/facepalm)

I’ll do an actual strategy post later this week, but for now just to go over what we did quickly–started with Marrowgar, which was cake with me and Anafielle breaking east/west during Bonestorm and drawing Marrowgar to us. Easy one shot on that, and I scored the Bonebreaker Scepter to boot. After that we hit up Lady Deathwhisper which was much, much easier than I thought it would be. Honestly, the biggest worry I had was my trigger happy dps pulling aggro off of Ana, but they did a good job finally watching Omen for once

Gunship was… Gunship. We did Saurfang on normal after a few heroic wipes finally delivering the message that our comp was damn stupid for even attempting that fight. We then did Blood Council on normal after again realize our ridiculously melee-heavy group was going to be severely disadvantaged. Then did BQL on hard, which seems to be an understatement, because it was hard to really see any difference between that and the normal mode.

After Blood Wing, with an hour to go, we dodged over to Plague Wing and did Rotface on heroic (which is probably my favorite heroic mode so far), then one-shot the Festergut heroic mode. It was ending time, but I managed to cajole everyone into just hitting up Putri and quickly knocking him over. My nagging paid off, as he finally coughed up the Unidentifiable Organ. Hot damn.

Looking forward to the week ahead–another great ICC farm night tomorrow, some serious LK progression on Wednesday. Going to be a good week, I hope.

In defense of AVR

I was crushed yesterday (150% damage!) when I saw the first of forty people to tweet a link to the announcement by Blizz that they were intentionally breaking the AVR mod in the next patch. That sucks.

I was an early and fervent convert to the Church of AVR, and perhaps one of their more vocal evangelists. I forced every raider in my guild to pick it up and quickly spread the contagion to the entirety of the guild, hooking all of them in AVR’s warm, understanding embrace.

That said, I completely understand why they’re breaking the addon. I always felt a bit dirty about using it on fights like Rotface, because it was ultimately a step too far. You didn’t have to think or strategize about stacking on one leg and then shifting to another, you’d just step out of the circle.

Hell, just about every fight in Icecrown Citadel has some major element of “don’t stand in this,” and when there’s an addon that rapidly converts all of those moments into an easy-to-process red circle under your feet, it removes a lot of the challenge of the encounter.

That’s nothing to speak of the fact that the “challenge” of an encounter can be so easily boiled down by a red circle. Perhaps, Blizzard, it’s time for some more innovative encounter designs beyond “stand here… and now… here.”

In the end the only thing I’m truly going to miss about AVR was the ability to mark things on the floor to direct my raiders. I could care less about the encounter-cheesing red circles, it was the god-like powers the mod afforded me to share information directly to the interfaces of others in the run that was amazing. We were able to rapidly learn Sindragosa thanks to being able to have persistent marks on the floor for folks to stand on during air phases.

We could have done the same thing with smoke flares and post-it notes on everyones’ monitors, but AVR streamlined that significantly. It’s going to be a pain to do the fight without my precious marks. But not impossible, of course.

Blizzard already designs encounters with an assumption that people are using Deadly Bossmods, or DXE, or any similar addon. They probably were daunted at the concept of having to design encounters in the future with the assumption that everyone was going to have such spatial concepts instantly presented to them, and found it an easier course of action just to break the mod than have to live in a brave new world where the old saw of standing in stuff wasn’t as potent as it used to be.

At the very least, in the future they should consider giving raid leaders some more control over the screens of their raiders with something similar to the toolset of AVR (be it marking spots on the ground, or drawing arrows and lines). Raid icons, flares, and pings can only go so far.

I feel like, now that AVR is soon to be snatched away from me, I’ve peeked through a crack in the doors to Eden and seen what could be. Blizzard is now slamming them shut, forever keeping those possibilities out of reach. It’s a shame.

Armory datamining tells all

Last week, Armory Data Mining updated itself for patch 3.3.3. The site is fascinating and I recommend checking it out to see how everyone out there is speccing, gearing, gemming, and the like. It’s an interesting peek into the vast multitudes that play this game and how they play it. And, most importantly, it provides a view of how many people are playing the game correctly–ie, by the established and settled baselines widely understood among more top-end players.

While poking through the site I was floored to see just how many people were “doin it rong,” so to speak. As a caveat, I know a lot of surveyed characters may be fresh 80s, or abandoned characters from when the standards were different a year ago (or whenever). However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s shocking how many widely recognized “knowns” are ignored. I’m going to go through a few data points in this post just to show the more interesting things I noticed.

(Note: Unless otherwise stated, percents given are of level 80 Paladins.)

No one is using Shifting Dreadstone. For gems, the popularity (according to the site, popularity correlates to total numbers of gems compared to the number of characters with at least one gem) of red slot gems are 38% for Regal Dreadstones, 21% for Defender’s Dreadstones, and 15% for Dreadstones. Shifting isn’t even on the board, it’s popularity percentage is less than 10%.

You and I both know that when you’re gemming a red socket and going for that socket bonus, you want a Shifting Dreadstone. According to Theck, Agility is 83% as effective as Dodge for avoidance and, thanks to Agility giving Armor, each point of Agility is 4% more effective than Dodge when it comes to reducing damage. The fact that this information is so widely unknown among the surveyed masses is discomforting.

35% of Prot Paladins are using a +stats chest enchant. Look at those numbers. This I can only explain via simple ignorance. The standard for chest enchants should be this: if you’re under the crit cap, enchant +def, if not, enchant +health on your chest. Never, ever should you use +stats. Much for the same reason we avoid Nightmare Tears, the stat spread just isn’t as good as solid defense or solid hp.

63% are using Armsman on their hands. I can see the allure to this enchant, and hell, even at end game there can be some honest disagreement over what is better. Nonetheless, personally, I would always rather enchant for survival than for threat. So while this isn’t egregious or anything (definitely not on the level of no one gemming Shifting), it’s still fascinating to see how vast the appeal of this enchant is.

32% are using Blade Ward. This I’m sure can be explained away by those 32% being completely ignorant of how awful this enchant is. Which is a shame, because if they even did a cursory Googling, they would find that Blade Ward is widely derided as a bad enchant.

Only 15% are using the pvp shoulder enchant. Again, this is probably one of those counter-intuitive, makes no sense to the layman kinds of things, but unless uncrittable, you really want to have that +30 stamina shoulder enchant. The return on investment is much better than any of the Hodir shoulder enchants. It’s somewhat distressing on 15% of the Prot pallies out there have gotten that message.

On the other hand, there is the “holistic” gearing argument–that most of that 85% are T10-geared tanks that have enough stamina and are scaling back to emphasize damage reduction through things like avoidance–which is a valid philosophy at a certain gear level. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that that 85% is made up of just people who need the defense and people who are being holistic.

Glyph of Divine Plea is nowhere near as popular as it should be. GoDP has a popularity (same formula as gems above) rating of 63%. Judgement 60%, Seal of Vengeance 48%, Righteous Defense 26%. Those are my big four. Contrawise, here are some facepalm ones: Holy Light 25%, Flash of Light 19%, Consecration 29%, Seal of Wisdom 16%. The list goes on.

Only 18.4% of Prot Paladins use a 53/18 build. And of those, only 10% use the cookie cutter build we know and love. The rest somehow are across the board on 53/18.

34% of Prot Paladins take Seals of Pure, while only 24% take Crusade. And as we all know, Crusade builds are more threat than SoP builds.

1% of Prot Paladins take Eye for an Eye. What is this I don’t even. I’m hoping this is from a pvp Prot build… oh, how I hope.

62% of Paladins put points into Divinity. There’s some merit to this talent in harder content where trickle-down deaths are frequent and every ounce of healing matters. 62% of Prot Paladins are not currently in that content. This is another case of the talent “sounding” good and people putting points in without determining if the talent is best for them or the content they are currently tanking.

22% of Prot Paladins take Vindication. Sigh.

85% of Prot Paladins take Judgements of the Just. This is somewhat heartening.

54% of Prot Paladins take Divine Guardian. This makes me sad. This talent is so key and has so many, amazing uses that it’s a shame for anyone (let alone 46% of all Prots) to pass this up.

Ultimately, what I’ve learned from perusing the wealth of information compiled by this site is the wide disconnect between those that look up information on the net, and attempt to better their character and playstyle through the resources available to them, and those that wing it or (more likely) are unaware of what kind of treasure troves exist out there for the taking (or have consulted out of date/just plain wrong resources). A lot of what I listed above will more or less seem obvious to you or me (with some debatable exceptions), and yet it all might be considered arcane knowledge to others.

There are many horses out there that must be brought to water, methinks.

Beyond my wildest dreams

Last night was the easiest, smoothest, fastest, and all around best night we have ever had in Icecrown Citadel. I don’t know if something was in the water, or if everyone took their vitamins that morning, or if Anafielle and Valja brought over some powerful mojo with them from their last guild. Either way, something clicked and it was amazing.

First pull was at 6:36 server time, six minutes late, but we made up for it by chain pulling to Marrowgar and keeping a good pace going. After that we basically just steamrolled our way through and up to Saurfang, eventually reaching the first designated break at 7:21 server time.

When everyone was back, the pain train started up again and we burnt through Dreamwalker (where I scored the Grinning Skull Greatboots, finally) and then on to the Blood Wing. The weekly raid quest was for BQL, which had since eluded us. And, by eluded I mean we’ve gotten the quest a few times, just never completed it. The raid always insisted on a few “shaking off the rust wipes” to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level.

Once everyone was there we were off to the races. Minimal marks on the pre-Council trash, just enough to focus down the tacticians one by one. Council was dropped with no trouble, and then we shot up the steps to pull the Blood Queen. The first go was a last second wipe, thanks to losing a dps to a mind control (who, thanks to lag, somehow still managed to get his bite off, though) and a mis-timed Blood Lust. No matter, we quickly regrouped and then downed her with complete ease the second go, managing to snag the weekly quest in the process.

It was now 8:21, a full hour after Saurfang was down, and we were making fantastic time. Off to Plague Wing.

For Festergut, Anafielle and I had an arrangement where I’d get to kite the Rotface ooze if she got to tank Festergut first. I acquiesced and was helpless to stop her relentless march to shaming the dps on that boss. When we switched my devious plan was to call for blust at my 9-stack portion and post a higher spike than her. Unfortunately, hubris got the best of me, and like some trashy Bond villain I taunted her in vent, “and once I get to nine stacks I’ll have blood lust! And then–Wait! No! I didn’t call for–” BLAARGGLAARGAARRGGHH “Nyoooo!!”

She ended up posting some ridiculous dps and apparently scored the 32nd place on the prot pally Festergut rankings. Not too shabby!

Nonetheless, the rest of Plague Wing was fairly uneventful. We steamrolled Rotface, then Putricide as well, posting our cleanest kill yet. When Herr Doktor bit the dust, it was 9 server time, an hour left to go in the raid. Good god, I suddenly realized, we had time to do Sindragosa that night.

So, as we headed over to the Frostwing Halls again we did our best to dash any optimism Ana/Valja might have been feeling after our two and half hour 10/12 marathon. Sindragosa was no where near on farm, we’d probably be coming back tomorrow to finish the job after some aforementioned rust-shaking wipes.

Imagine my surprise when at 10:42 I found myself staring at the corpse of Sindragosa. We two-shot her, after spending an entire raid night on her the week before.

And to top it all off, we have an entire night to spend on Arthas now. Three and half hours of Lich King. Glorious.

Last night was definitely one our best raid nights ever, and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I hope those successes are foreshadowing of a Lich King kill tonight.

New RS trinket feeds my armor fetish

Check out the Petrified Twilight Scale from Ruby Sanctum. 2282 armor plus a free Last Stand-ish effect in the Ardent Defender range. Hot damn.

That puts it at 490 more armor than Glyph of Indomitability, 392 more than the normal Unidentifiable Organ, and 154 more than the heroic UO. The effect is pretty sexy for progression content, or something like Soul Reaper. And, ultimately, you really can’t sneeze at that much armor.

I will be seeking this trinket in earnest, if only to feed that gaping maw in my soul that can only be sated by bonus armor.

Breaking in a new off-tank, &c.

This weekend Anafielle, of Twitter and Tankadin Errant, joined our happy ES family. Tonight’s her first raid with us and I’ve been sitting on a rock, all Rodin-like, think-think-thinking of ways to properly welcome her to our band of misfits.

Now, if I were some kind of jerk tank I’d relegate her all the annoying odd jobs. Like Rotface kiting, maintanking Putricide, holding Valanar, absorbing the Blood Mirror damage on BQL, playing D on Gunship, etc. Problem is, I like those jobs, so that won’t work. We’ve already had our first debate over who gets to tank Festergut first.

Truth be told, I’m really looking forward to this. The two guys that I’ve been forcing to tank our raids since Demogar went on hiatus have been doing a great job, but they were always dps at heart. It’ll be fun to have someone to talk shop with again.

More recruitment

I can feel the Summer Slump’s hot breath on the back of my neck. His sweaty hand clamped firmly on my shoulder. Whispering sweet nothings of doom and raids with only 23 members. I’ve been actively attempting to recruit some more dps to add to the much-needed buffer so even as we shed a raider every two weeks or so, there’s someone ready to step up and get the party going.

The addition of Anafielle and her two healer friends will be key, since it frees up those dps guys so both can stick to dps every raid, rather than one being forced to tank. And the two healers were a load off my mind as to how to deal with one healer burning out and the other going away for a few weeks for her wedding/honeymoon. So that’s one crisis averted, now to add to the raid core.

Anyway, my guild is recruiting dps. If you read this blog and are on the Hoof already, or wouldn’t mind a potential server transfer, check out our recruitment post and maybe app on our guild site if you’re so inclined.

Keeping us rolling

I think right now we’re in a pretty good place in terms of interest from the raid core. We’re knocking on Arthas’ door, so that’s keeping everyone engaged, and we have some ancillary guild goals like Nordic’s Shadowmourne. Once we unlock heroic modes we’ll have that to keep people coming back every week as well. I’m hoping we accomplish that sooner rather than later so we can start rolling in 277 gear.

In the meantime, to add some other activities for some non-ICC fun, I have a list of off-night stuff to drop on the calendar. For example, I think I’m going to push for a white item run of Kara where everyone loads up on common-quality gear then we raid in that, equipping any epics we win along the way. I think it would be fun in the sense there’d be very little danger thanks lvl 80 resists, while not being a complete steamroll if done in current endgame gear.

Things are pretty “steady as she goes” right now. I can live with this.