Good first steps!

Heroic Marrowgar was a joke. Not much harder than normal Marrowgar himself. I found this shocking when, on the first attempt, he was at around 50% health, we were two Bonestorms in, and one person was dead. I was expecting a minor speed bump like when we first did this on Heroic 10 mode. But nope, easy one shot, and the slot machine burped out the purps.

We did LDW on normal, obviously, and then went on for Heroic Lootship. About the only hiccup there was being I was jumping over, a missle hit one of the spiky things on the side of the ship that a Resto Druid was parked on, and the game decided that despite being in midair I was hit as well, so I went flying off sideways into the gap in between the ships. I reappeared in the middle of the deck and sprinted back over to the other side, but by the time I got there and picked up Muradin, three melee were dead. I’ll never hear the end of that.

Normal Saurfang, which we could probably do, but my thinking is find what the baseline for how many easy hardmodes we can do every week is, and then build it from there. To maximize upgrades.

After Saurfang we headed to Putricide’s hallway and cleared the trash to go to Festergut first. This is where things got interesting. Once I was done explaining what was different on heroic mode, and how I wanted everyone in melee to stack on a marked person and switch legs every time a Goo got launched, we had an epic wipe where people consistently got hit. Bah. Eventually we settled into the ES model of progression: slow, steady gains. Within short time we were hitting the enrage timer, so now we just needed to up dps to actually drop the boss.

It was around this time the Fates decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works. First, one of the dps (a warlock) had to drop for a work emergency, so I invited one person to come in and got no response. The warlock that left dropped a summoning stone and hearthed out. I then invited another dps with similar results, no response again.

The first dps I invited (who was having connection issues earlier in the night but assured me they were fixed) then accepted and we summoned him in. He starts running in place and looks like he’s DCing. I sigh and remove him, as the second dps I invited finally accepts and joins the raid. Unfortunately the DCing dps is still there, running in place, and we can’t summon the other guy since there are 25 people in the instance. As the guy finally disappears, the summoning stone disappears as well.

I sigh, and Zilga and I run outside to summon the dps who’ll give us 25 people. Unfortunately once we get near the summoning stone outside, we realize we’re both in different phases and can’t see each other. Another sigh and we both hoof it in as the 25th makes his way to us.

As we reach Festergut’s room again, one of the druids manages to somehow pull Festergut with a Crashin’ Thrashin’ Racer and starts the encounters. Some of us bolt into the hallway and hide while Festergut kills any unlucky afkers or those who stayed behind in the room. As the three or so of us that survived the wipe catch our breath in the hallway, someone trips a hidden trap, and a flood of geists come barreling down towards us. At this point I have to laugh, because it’s officially gotten ridiculous.

Eventually the geists die and we get back to business. Progress starts rolling again and by the end of the night we were wiping at around 4-5% on the last two solid attempts. Disappointing, but at least we know we can get it once people tighten up dodging Goos and the whole not-dying thing.

At 9:30, half an hour before end time, the trash respawns in the hallway. I decide to give everyone a break rather than spending 15 minutes clearing trash for two more attempts on the boss. We just want and quickly demolished normal Dreamwalker for a “shake off” kill.

So with the night over we stood at 2/12 heroics. Not godly, but we made good progress on number 3, who I’m sure we’ll brush off with little trouble tonight, allowing us to knock down #4 (Rotface) and put in solid attempts on #5 (BQL).

Taking it to the next level

This is a pretty exciting night we have ahead of us. After our epic defeat of the Lich King on 25man mode last week, we’ve finally unlocked hardmodes and all the lovely iLevel 277 pieces that come from them. Like Rilgon said in the LK kill post, everyone knows that Heroic Lootship is the second half of the Lich King’s loot table. Like the old guild joke goes, two words: Loot. Pinata. I can’t wait.

Likewise, it’s pretty exciting when you mull about in your head that you’re around to join that elite upper tier of raiders that will be sporting gear 13 iLevels higher than everyone else. Falowin always talks about how he wants to look different than other raiders in his gear, how he wants to look special. I used to deride him as an elitist… but, gawd, that feeling is contagious. I can’t wait to sport an all-blue tier set.

As a guild leader, I think one of the most satisfying parts of this fleeting moment is how it’s given a second wind to our 25man raids. We spent the last few weeks slowly slogging our way up the top of the hill, finally peaking with the crushing of the Lich King, and now get to enjoy a downhill ride littered with progression and amazing loot.

Everyone is more excited about raiding than I’ve seen them in a while. It’s a totally gratifying feeling from this perspective.

Anyway, I look forward to reporting back tomorrow with tales of epic progression and only tank loot dropping.

(A man can dream!)

The Path to nowhere

Count me among the many that were disappointed by the announcement that the Path of the Titans was being scrapped for Cataclysm. I understand that they may have been unhappy with the iteration, and honestly the system had the probability of being ultimately very unwieldy, but the potential of PotT was so huge that I think it was worth the fighting for. There was something majestic about an ancillary system of customizing your character, where we could bask in an extra level of min/maxing. I rue that we’ve been robbed of that.

In the place of PotT, we’ll have medium glyphs. What are medium glyphs?

Medium glyphs are the kind of glyph you’d take if you had more choices.

The example they gave was cooldown glyphs for Fury Warriors. So in that example, major glyphs are the ones that directly affect dps, while the medium glyphs are the ones that are a little weaker that you would understandably avoid.

Also, please change that name. “Medium glyphs” is just about the laziest name they could have given to this feature. I’m sure it’s not final, but, gawd… terrible name. Even for a stand-in.

But I digress. Let’s think about what would constitute a medium glyph for Prot Pallies. Following the definition about the first tier/second tier preferences, I suppose one glyph that immediately jumps to mind as the kind that would be a medium is the Glyph of Salvation. It’s not something we’d take first-string because it’s pretty situation (ok, very situational), but it’d be nice to have full-time. Another glyph that I would love to have, but generally stick with improving threat over it is the Glyph of Righteous Defense.

Thought exercises aside, this discussion is pretty moot because (I think it’s safe to say) the whole stable of glyphs is probably getting seriously revamped. Or the abilities they currently modify are being changed, like taunts maybe going onto the melee hit table. We’ll have new glyphs for new abilities, new ones for old abilities, we’ll see the removal of crappy glyphs, and maybe the redesigning of some standbys. No point in getting too deep down into this at the moment.

And lastly, since we’re talking about glyphs, I’m pretty happy with the decision to let us “remember” glyphs we’ve used and swap them in as we will. This would be pretty handy for a situation like when my guild was learning Heroic Anub 10 back in the day and the Glyph of Holy Wrath was pretty helpful for the adds, so every night we’d do that fight I’d slip in a Glyph of Holy Wrath. Then once the night was over I’d put the Judgement glyph back in. Invariably I ended up with a stack of each Glyph, which I remember costing a bunch.

Hopefully Blizzard will work out some system that scratches that “alternate leveling” itch we all have. Being five levels short with nothing extra to show for it now is pretty lame.

Another rating going away in Cataclysm

Warning: This is a Cataclysm spoiler.

Back in May I asked a simple question: if our Mastery is increased block chance, then wouldn’t Mastery rating be the exact same thing as block rating? At the time it seemed like the answer was indeed yes, and that we’d have a horrendously redundant Mastery.

Of course, like I said at the time, things could very well change–and now it seems like they have.

According to a Ghostcrawler post from the Alpha forums leaked onto a site that promulgates Cataclysm leaks, there will be no block rating in the next expansion pack. As he says,

You may notice there are no items with block rating. If we want shield-using tanks to get block, we add mastery to the item.

Well, that settles that, eh?

Waste of a night?

We downed the Lich King on Tuesday, after extending the lockout, which means that while we could enjoy our hard-wrought victory, we also were completely locked out of ICC25 for the rest of the week. The question became, what the hell do we do on Wednesday?

When we formed the raid last night I threw up a ready check and put it to a vote: Yes for ToGC25, no for Uld25. About seven people chose the latter, the rest were for the former. So the die was cast and off we went.

(Theme of the night: Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos… er, Ulduar.)

Even 23 manning it (some decided to take the night off after our victory), we had no trouble getting through Beasts and Jaraxxus. Faction Champs was a huge pain, giving us just about the worst melee comp ever: the Warrior, the Ret Pally, the DK, the Rogue. Only adding the Enhance Shaman could it have achieved a perfect storm of ballbusting.

Took us a few attempts to down that, but it got done. Then on Twins we went back and forth between trying the door strategy, doing a few attempts that way, then the normal way, then finally killing it.

After that it was around 45 minutes before raid end and we kind of half-heartedly putzed around on Anub before calling it.

So, on the down side, we basically ran progression rather than taking a victory lap. I would have definitely preferred the latter. On the bright side, the heroic Solace and heroic Death’s Choice trinkets dropped, along with another piece that was an upgrade for someone. So, there was some value to be had.

I’m willing to call this a wash.

… And knock ‘im down!

I originally wrote this title in my head last week as the companion to the post titled “Line ‘em up!” My thinking was Tuesday was another easy 11/12 clear and Wednesday would probably be the coup de grace, so the two work well together. Alas, my hubris got the better of me, and Wednesday we spent most of the night working on Phase 2. I decided that night we’d take what we learned and roll it over to immediately jumping to Arthas on Tuesday. The lockout was to be extended, the Lich King was to fall.

And last night was definitely a long time coming. We’ve been working on the fight for a total of four nights now. Which, for a guild that only raids twice a week for about 3 hours at a time, is no mean feat. Lots of blood, sweat, and tears have been shed. Ulcers have expanded like an ill-placed defile. Slowly but surely we clawed our way up there.

Last night I noticed as we were working through phase 2 during the first two hours something seemed different. Defiles usually were a bit scattered in previous weeks, but last night there were invariably perfectly placed out of the way every time. There were a few slip ups but nothing as major as a Defile being accidentally dropped in the middle of the room (aside from the second Defile which was always iffy because of how it lined up with Valks), which meant I never had to act on my threat of immediately wiping raid if Defile was dropped in the middle.

I love when no one calls my bluffs.

And, of course, it was key that even after weeks of defeats everyone stayed overwhelmingly positive. There were some lighthearted moments, mostly involving my propensity for letting Frank (my supposed ulcer has indeed been named) take over in vent. The first time we hit the Phase 2.5 transition with everyone up I yelled in vent to everyone “Don’t screw it up!”

At the time I meant aggro on the Raging Spirits, whom I hate, as you know, but everyone took that more existentially.

The running joke after some wipes was “Frank’s taking over!” which warranted a “There is no Rhidach, only Zuul” at one point. I’m glad no one took my spazzings personally, I’d rather people recognize that I tend to just get … carried away … so to speak. As long as everyone knows I’m not yelling at them, that’s all that matters. I’d be a terrible raid leader if everyone thought that I thought they sucked because of one mistake.

But, speaking of sucking, there was honestly not much of it to be had last night. I already mentioned how pro Defile drops were, which warmed the cockles of my heart. There were some clutch moments in Phase 3 with the Vile Spirits, which we basically had no experience with prior to tonight. Originally my plan was to kite them and have ranged burn them down, but that obviously wasn’t working, so we switched to the tried and true soaking method.

I worked out an order with the Paladins, and in one attempt that was generally leading to a wipe, all the Paladins were out of commission or dead, or Forbearanced, and in our moment of darkness I saw Sheepin (a mage) run into the fray and drop to the ground with a heavy thud, completely encased in ice. He then soaked up a huge chunk of the ethereal doom that was headed our way. It was a pretty clutch move, and something I completely didn’t think of. Major props to him for that initiative.

At around 9:30 server time, thirty minutes before raid end, I had to swap out a dps so we could keep going. Not a big deal, but it pointed out for me the mortality of the raid, we didn’t have much time left. I asked everyone if they could spare maybe an extra thirty minutes and everyone agreed down to a man (or woman). No dissent, everyone was gung ho on a kill tonight.

Right before the dps swap we had one attempt that ended with a 11.6% wipe. It was probably the third or so attempt that brought us into Phase 3, and the first that started with everyone alive in that phase. We kept losing folks to attrition, finally hitting around 15% with 10 people up. Every Harvest Soul fed Frostmourne, and I did my best to kite LK while hopefully the dps burnt down what remained of his health. Unfortunately I bit it at around 13%, though Anafielle sprung into action and picked him up. She, Sheepin, and Slorail (resto druid) did their best but the numbers were against them.

It was a heart breaking wipe, though it cemented for us all how imminent our victory was. Post-dps switch, we had a few more attempts consistently getting into Phase 3. Finally, at around 10 server, we had an amazing go taking us into Phase 3 with everyone up. Two attempts prior I really saw dps pick up as everyone seemed to hit a stride. Raging Spirits were dying before the next came up, Valks were only making it halfway to the edge, rather than 2/3rds of the way. There was an audible click, like someone hit the Pro button.

As we proceeded through that attempt, and steadily made our way through Phase 3, everything was coming together. Soakers were soaking, the remainder Raging Spirit died easily and no one walked in front of his screech. Arthas’ health was slowly but surely depleting.

At around 14% with 23 people up, this wave of calm washed over me. Time slowed down, that throbbing hum in my ears diminished, and I could hear a dulcet voice beckoning. It was Frank, mellifluously whispering, “you may have won this round, but I’ll be back.”

14% melted slowly into 13%; it was happening. You know that absolute moment of clarity you get the first time you are about to down a boss? That point where you realize that, holy hell, this was it. I could feel it, that endorphin rush paired with an enveloping wave of peace.

“Hold it together guys!” I shouted encouragement on vent. “We’ve got this, just lock it down!” 13 became 12. 12 became 11.”One percent to go!” Finally, 10%. “Oh, jesus, here it is! We did! Don’t release, ok?!”

Frostmourne was raised aloft and our lifeless corpses were laid low. You know the rest at this point.

When the dust cleared, there we were. Enveloping Shadows, 12/12 in ICC25 normal. Hot damn. Not bad for a plucky little guild that a year ago couldn’t clear Ulduar!

We’re now the 10th guild on our server to down LK25, and once we start working on hardmodes we’ll probably end up being the 3rd most progressed Horde guild overall. I honestly need to confess that such a possibility was unthinkable to me a year ago. I saw a guild that couldn’t even get passed Ulduar and thought we were doomed to be backbenchers for the rest of the expansion. A lot came together though, we brought in some awesome people, developed as players, brought in some amazing folks to round out the core, and improved as a guild. We deserve every inch of our victory. I am so very proud of each and every member of this guild.

Moreover, I am so very excited for the future. I always knew we were going to get to this point (though there were disagreements about the time table), and I’ve been mentally preparing myself for hardmodes for a month now. Our time has come, let the 277 loot flow like wine.

This was the most satisfying post I’ve ever written.

Blood Draining is not worthless

I spotted this thread on the WoW tanking forums and it brought up something I haven’t post on in a while: weapon enchants. Believe or not, a lot has changed and weapon enchants are a bit murkier now than they were a few months ago. Let’s talk about each of the major contenders.

Mongoose/Exceptional Agility

Up to the early days of ICC, Mongoose had an uptime of about 52% for us, which was damn good. These days, thanks to the retooling Ret got to defang Bryntroll for them, it’s down to as low as 25%.

Mongoose generally is, as Dirgen says in his epic enchants thread on Maintankadin, no better than Exceptional Agility now in terms of average Agility gained. And unlike EA, Mongoose might not be there when you need it. If you want an enchant for armor, I would go with Exceptional Agility.

Blood Draining

I’m a fan of Blood Draining right now because of the content I’m currently tackling and will be tackling in the near future. The beauty in BD is that it’s a free heal when you need it the most, under 35%. And, not to mention TBtL makes its crits 30% more effective. While we can’t stack it as fast without bleeds, having an extra oomph to the heal is a worthy trade-off, I would wager.

Accuracy

For farm content, threat sets, and sets you need to be hit capped for. The best threat enchant, but obviously weak for survival needs.

Conclusion

If feasible, I recommend keeping a stable of three weapons. A slow dps weapon with Accuracy, a tanking weapon with Blood Draining (for dangerous bosses), and a tanking weapon with Exceptional Agility (for less mortality-inducing encounters).

Ditch ‘goose, the RNG has won this battle.

413!

I have no idea how I did it. For the last few months, some friends and I have been talking about going to Blizzcon for the first time, with each statement being neatly hedged by bookend “assuming we get tickets.”

This past week gave us the chance to finally put our money where our mouths were. Tickets first went on sale Wednesday night, right in the middle of our attempts on the Lich King, and I was too stubborn to take a break to go for tickets. Someone else in guild managed to buy 7 tickets across two different accounts, which was somewhat annoying. Even more so, though, because he declared he was intending to scalp them. Pretty disheartening to hear for people who actually wanted to go to the stupid event.

After the incident, five of us coalesced and planned to meet in vent Saturday afternoon to coordinate and strategize our buying attempts.

Come Saturday morning, one of them (Anafielle) was at work and another (Gandy) was apparently napping. It came down to Ildara, Cendra, and I to somehow bring home the bacon.

Come around 12:55 eastern (5 minutes before the tickets went on sale), I began furiously F5ing until that checkout button appeared. I had all my ducks in a row, I was in Chrome (granted, it’s my default browser), already logged into the Blizzard Store, had my credit card set as my default payment method, and was completely in the zone. I was a leaf on the wind, watch how I fly.

I had instructed everyone to not bother to select a quantity, just hit the button as soon as you saw it to get in the queue ASAP and then change quantity after. Just get in the damn queue.

So 12:59 rolls around and I’m completely zen. F5. Is it there? No. F5. There? No. F5. Eventually, what seemed an eternity later, my subcortex catches a flicker of orange on the screen. Go time. I quickly click the button and jump in line.

Apparently I had trained for this moment all my life every time I immediately slammed on the gas whenever a traffic light shifted over to green. My reaction time was razor thin. All those pedestrians were not sacrificed in vain.

My initial queue position was 413. Four hundred and thirteen. As I read that number it slowly dawned on me, I was going to Blizzcon. Holy crap.

While Anafielle was despairing on Twitter, I shared my victory with Ildara and Cendra. Dara managed to get 3000ish in line, Cendra was stuck around 8000ish. I snagged the five tickets for us, and Dara grabbed another three for Palehoof and his two friends.

So, everything worked out in the end, generally. Anyone else get Blizzcon tickets? Or were you stuck in Queue Purgatory?

I’m told this is how I sound in vent

I’ll admit to it. I run the gamut of emotions: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles! Sure, I might offend a few of the blue-noses with my cocky stride and musky odor — oh, I’ll never be the darling of the so-called ‘City Fathers’ who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about what’s to be done with this Rhidach.

But, it’s how I roll.

Line ‘em up …

Last night we did the familiar 11/12 routine, although it was a lot rougher than it’s been in the past. I had all 25 confirmed with two of the invites going to people still gearing up, but then like four of my vets couldn’t make it, so I ended up running a much bigger group of suboptimal people than I intended.

We were killing bosses more slowly than we did last week, and we had some annoying wipes on BQL thanks to one guy getting the very first bite and then DCing, and then the second attempt when a swath of dps died because they absolutely had to run through everyone during air phase to bite others rather than wait six seconds.

The most infuriating part of the night was at the very beginning. We have a guy in guild who is deaf and was generally a player who DC’d every 30 seconds and did terrible dps for the longest time, and as such never got raid invites. Of course in his mind, he was being discriminated against, not we were protecting the raid from someone with a terrible connection, attitude, and performance.

Last week I got ambushed into a meeting with this guy and he threw down the gauntlet demanding a raid invite, claiming he fixed his issues and even got a program that can convert Vent speech to text on his screen, so he won’t have issues with getting directions or whatever over Vent. In fact, he went so far as to accuse me of ignoring him the last time he tried to tell me about this program a month or so ago, which I had no recollection of. I suspected he was lying about that, but I could have been wrong.

Nonetheless, I felt bad that I might not have been giving this guy a fair shake, so I confirmed him for the Tuesday raid. And, just to clarify before anyone thinks ill of me, I was not keeping this guy out of raids because of his hearing. But him saying that that would not be a hurdle for his performance put me more at ease with his being there.

So, imagine my surprise when as we’re buffing up to start the raid this guy types “Damn, [random hunter] isn’t on tonight. He was going to be my translator.” My eyebrow cocks and I ask, “Translator? What happened to that program of yours?”

“Oh,” he replies, “it only works on phones, not on Vent. I told you that.”

What. The. Frak.

If only I wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel to get the raid going tonight, I would have kicked him so fast he head would spin. I was seriously contemplating a gkick as well, because that kind of duplicity is utter bullshit. Anyway, on the bright side, I am completely free of feeling guilty for this guy. I have washed my hands of this.

On a happier note

I finally got the Last Word off of Putricide. Finally. And I love it, such a sick weapon. My only complaint (and this is hardly a complaint) is since the proc happens so much, watching your character in melee is like watching them getting spammed with a spell. The Blessing of Light animation is constantly popping up, every time you melee.

It’s a great weapon though–awesome proc, slow speed, good chunk of strength, nice chunk of stamina. I’m very happy with it.

Tonight’s the night

I’ll refrain from posting a Rod Stewart video, but … actually … eh, yeah, I’ll refrain. Anyway, tonight’s our next night of attempts on the Lich King.

I’ve assembled a pretty strong team, assigned some slight respecs to pick up some slowing talents, and devised a new strategy which I hope will take some of the “oh crap, where do I go?” out of the fight.

I call it the Highway strategy, and it will probably fail miserably, but for the time I like it. I know the lines will disappear during Phase 2 and thus not help at all but this should help point out what I have conceived in my head. Basically star is always and forever the stack point. When the Defile cooldown hits about one second left we all scatter (in an orderly fashion) north or south of the lines so Defiles are dropped out of the way, then everyone back in.

Likewise, with a better slowing arsenal this week, I think Valks should be much less of an issue. So combined with better Defile management and better Valks management, Phase 2 should be less of a teeth-grinding ulcer-fest and generally proceed more smoothly overall.

I have high hopes for tonight. And, if worse comes to worse, we’re extending the lockout next week. Cause this frakker is gonna die. I’m Andrew Jackson and he’s the Federal Bank. It’s go time.