Ah, karma. I bitch and moan about the scarcity of shields, claiming that the best I can hope for is some benighted hand-me-down from one of two fights in LFR, and then Visage of the Doomed has the audacity to drop off of Horridon and make me look like an ass.

I am not embarrassed to admit that when I saw the item on Horridon’s corpse, my immediate reaction was to utter in mumble what someone might charitably describe as a deep, throaty gasp. (Yes, I’m aware how horrific that sentence is. When it comes to shields, even dodge/parry ones, I have no shame.)

I’m not sure I would have to, but I can’t tell you enough how much of a relief it was for that shield to drop. I really thought I was going to be out in the cold for a good, long time.

Things are looking up!

Plucked from the sky

Speaking of looking up, after raid last week (which, I must say, was fantastic) we found ourselves at the end of the night looking at Ji-Kun once more. We executed fights wonderfully and generally made great use of our limited raid time. Thursday lined us up nicely for a full Monday of Ji-Kun progression.

And so it was. Last night we hit Ji-Kun once more and before long it was Bye-Bye, Birdie. I have no idea what was going on with the flying teams, being firmly planted on the ground, but they were completely on top of smashing the nests’ contents. Healers were similarly on top of their arena, and puddles were not in danger of overrunning us.

As for tanking, Voss and I had a pretty good handle on our roles. At one point we noticed that he was having trouble getting back to Ji-Kun post-Down Draft before other people (or, tragically, hunter pets) would, because he’s so damn slow now that he’s a DK. However, he was also the only one between the two of use that was consistently tanking during Down Draft, so there was an easy fix to be had.

We switched up who started tanking the fight, which put me on the ball when Ji-Kun started flapping her wings. Thanks to Speed of Light, I could pretty much stand still if I lined it up with Down Draft, which completely negated the tragedy of Snarf the Wind Serpent getting cut down in his prime. Teamwork!

I must admit, being the optimist I am, I did not expect us to get Ji-Kun last night. I feel like it usually takes us two solid nights to learn a fight, at least according to the trend line from the entirety of Throne of Thunder. With last night only being the second night we hit Ji-Kun for real, by all rights we should have finished up the night disappointedly hopeful. And yet, there we were, victorious, with Ji-Kun plucked from the sky after only thirteen attempts.

The goal this week now has to be a repetition of last week’s farm night success: storm through all completed content and clear a night for progression. It was doable last week, but will it be so this week? With 12 bosses (and ALL THAT TRASH) and only two hours to a raid night, there is a wall coming where we can only kill so many bosses in a night and still have decent time for progression. After all, we’re no spring chickens.

The time may come soon to talk about extending lockouts …

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.