Regression

20 04 2010

Man, don’t you just hate it when your guild stumbles? Fights that you’ve blown by in weeks past come up and give you trouble, and you can’t figure out why. Over the weekend, that was the story of our ICC progression. The first hour and a half were clumsy attempts that didn’t get us out of phase one. Yech.

The last few days, minus Saturday and Sunday, were ordinary. Thursday and Friday both consisted of a random dungeon, followed by a random BG. I know, crazy times. Saturday, things picked up. I logged on around noon, and promptly joined an ICC 25 with some guildies. It was a good run, and we went through the first four bosses without any problems. Predictably, though, things fell apart afterwards. We couldn’t get through Festergut, and I’ve started to realize that it’s a fight where individual responsibility is paramount. People don’t need to think on their own for the first four; they just need to do some minimal movement, and switch to an add when required to. On Fester, movement and positioning is key, and missing a spore can be raid-ending. We had a Hunter who ruined the attempts each time, positioning poorly, not moving his spore, and doing 2.4k DPS. Yeesh. I left and logged, before coming back later in the afternoon and saddling up, once again, for Ironbound Drake achievements. I only need the last two; however, to lock in my spot I needed to be present the whole time. So I demo-gunned through Flame Leviathan (goggles didn’t drop), waited patiently through Razorscale, and DPS’d hard through Ignis and XT. I’ll admit, I was only half-playing through trash pulls, as I threw out a few Chain Lightnings and a Magma Totem before alt-tabbing to surf the web. There were a few highlights from the run, though. Notably, I discovered that if someone on a Mammoth gets Baby Spiced, it won’t scale up, leading to this:

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Looking straight-faced and serious. Also ridiculous.

We finished up the run that day with the Iron Council and Kologarn, capping off the two-and-a-half hour run. I ended the night with some BGs before heading to bed.

Sunday, I logged on mid-afternoon for a continuation of Ulduar. Unfortunately, because our group couldn’t get their act together and we had limited time, we didn’t get Mimiron or Freya down. Firefighter is still hard, but Three Knocks is doable. Instead, we took out Thorim and Hodir, along with Auriaya, and looked to finish the run next Saturday. That’s fine with me; it means that, unlike the last time, I won’t miss out on Vezax. Ulduar ended, and after an hour, it was time for ICC progression. Or, in our case, regression. We got stuck in phase one, due to poor movement, adds not being picked up, or main tank dying, not cleansing quickly enough… you name it. Every problem we could’ve possibly had, we had. We managed to pick things up, though. We positioned ourselves closer to our off-tank, so we’d need less time on the move. We called out adds, and I threw out a Thunderstorm to knock them back where needed. We assigned a specific healer for cleanses, and tightened up the entire phase. Finally, we transitioned smoothly from phase one to two, where we died repeatedly. Again. We lacked the stuns, slows, or maybe just the coordination required for the Val’kyrs. Toss in Defile, and we were wiping it up. A lot. We called it eventually after we ceased making progress in phase two. ICC will be fresh this Wednesday, so we won’t be doing any Lich King attempts (probably), but our plan is to get there at the very least. I hope we can pull that off, since we’ll need all the time we can get on Arthas.


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Take Heed of the Celestial Steed

18 04 2010

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I feel it needs to be said. The big deal in WoW recently: the Celestial Steed and Lil’XT. Blizzard just released both of these, and anyone can buy them from their store for $25 and $10, respectively. Now, WoW.com had a figure that said the queue for these things was at 140,000. That was a few days ago, which means they’ve probably made five, six, maybe even seven million dollars by now. I’m not even surprised, personally; it’s a really cool looking mount, and a really cool pet. I see the steeds everywhere in Dalaran, and in a raid I was doing, there were five players with them. Five.

What. The. Eff.

Maybe it’s because I have very little disposable income, but this just seems really, really dumb. $25 for an in-game horse. A cool horse, admittedly, but one whose uniqueness is diminished when everyone around you is riding one, and one that people will tire of, just like so many other mounts. I remember when I though I’d never stop riding my Great White Kodo. Then, I thought my new Hawkstrider was really cool. But that couldn’t compare to a Wooly Mammoth! That, however, wasn’t nearly as cool as my Black War Raptor. Which in turn wasn’t nearly as cool as my Thunder Bluff Kodo. However, once I started riding that I remembered my Great White, and promptly switched back to my old favorite. Only to abandon it to the badass status symbol that is the Mechano-hog. The story’s the same with my flying mounts too. I quickly replaced my Amber Drake with a Red one, only to change that in for a Hippogryph, before finally settling in with my Red Proto Drake. Even Ruby, though, will probably see a lot less airtime if I can manage to get my Ironbound Drake. For me, Lil’XT is a much cooler choice. It’s a pet, sure, but it still has XT’s voice, and even his abilities. Gimmicky, sure, but not no less than the mount. I won’t be buying either because I simply don’t have the cash, or even the need for either of these. I have flying mounts; I have pets. I don’t have the cash to throw away on items that I’ll end up replacing shortly anyways. I guess what I’ve been trying to get at, in a really roundabout way, is that buying this is dumb. It’s expensive, it’ll get replaced, and it’s something you can’t take out of the game. I know that others will disagree, and that they’re entitled to their own opinion.

But that doesn’t mean theirs is right.


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Things are Heating Up…

14 03 2010

First off, I didn’t get my kilt from Putricide. Not because it drop, but because we couldn’t down him. For whatever reason, we just weren’t on our A-game, and we couldn’t get him down before midnight. The reason it took us that long to get there in the first place was that, rather than start off with our 10-man, we decided to go ahead and run a 25 man ICC Wednesday. Since we were pugging, you guessed it, I ended up leading. This week, however, was an extremely successful PuG. Having two tanks from my guild made a huge difference, and bringing a couple of our own healers didn’t hurt either. Top that off with the 5% buff and we breezed through the first quarter, and even managed to get the Deathwhisper raid weekly done. Saurfang was even a one-shot, and marked the first time I’ve managed to kill him in 25-man leading my own raid. Afterwards, our good luck ran out, with a couple people leaving the raid. We couldn’t find any replacements (who wants to come to a non-fresh run?) and attempted to kill Festergut with only 23. That didn’t work out, so we called our 25-man and jumped right into ICC 10. We killed all the way up to Putricide without a hitch, but some RNG took us out on the attempts we put in. Example: two goo puddles go out, one on me, and one to my right in phase 2. I respond by running forward and left, just as the brown ooze spawns. It targets me, our healers can’t respond quick enough, bam, I’m dead. Something similar happened on another try. Even better: our priest goes down, gets a B-rez. He spawns back, far away from Putricide, and gets pegged by a Malleable Goo that had already been in the air as the B-rez wen’t out, dying instantly. We couldn’t kill Putricide, and despite me having more than enough Emblems of Frost, I’m not spending them until I know if he’ll drop my Kilt. This is made worse by the fact that I can’t make Sunday’s raid, where I’m willing to bet it’ll drop like it’s hot. Damn.

The days since then have been pretty lazy… I’ve leveled Jabba up to 21 with a combination of questing and the Dungeon Finder, and wow, what a difference a mount makes. I’d also forgotten how cool it was to get shoulders for the first time, and to start equipping not-crappy weapons, something the Dungeon Finder has made much easier. Now I’m out of the Barrens and onto Ashenvale, a nice change of environment. Another thing I like about leveling Jabba is how much more laid back it is than the endgame. I’m not trying to put out 7k DPS while avoiding fires, bombs, goo, or anything else. I’m just running around with a wolf, taking out Plainstriders, Elves, or Goblins, or running through an Old World instance. It’s a much chiller game.

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I've got shoulders, dual wielding, and a mount... Life is good.

And, on the subject of Old World Azeroth, I also ran through Molten Core today for the first time. If I had to use a word to describe it, that word would be “big” or “sprawling.” I can see why, with 40 players running through there, but damn. I can’t even imagine gearing up for that content, much less getting attuned. Life at the original endgame would’ve been ridiculous. Also, the sheer number of bosses was nuts, not to mention the fact that there are no teleporters, no clearly marked wings, and the fact that over half of the bosses in there are just normal creature models scaled up and given a fancy name. Laaaaame. It was cool, though, to see Majordomo Executus, the guy my server was named after, even though he got taken out like a chump by Ragnaros. Ragnaros himself was a really epic lookin’ dude, and he absolutely towered over everything. His chamber, too, was coolly design, with the lava spiraling towards where he was summoned in.

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The Epicness that is Ragnaros. Wow.

Of course, we made quick work of the guy, since he wasn’t designed with 80s in mind.

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Me, hurling a rather insignificant-looking Lightning Bolt towards Ragnaros.

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Ragnaros defeated, with his mace as the only memoir left.

As a final thought, I was struck by how hard and tedious MC would’ve been back at the original endgame. Getting forty people together would’ve been bad enough (getting twenty five that aren’t bad is a hassle as it is), but then going through all of that? That would’ve taken hours, to say nothing of getting attuned. The Executus fight would’ve required coordination with CCs, along with a raid comp that could handle it. Follow that up with Ragnaros and his ridiculous amount of health (1.1 mil compared to a few hundred thousand for other bosses) and the fire resistance raids would’ve needed, and it’s headaches all around. Yeesh. I wasn’t around for Vanilla, but going through that, I don’t think I missed too much.


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Bosses Don’t Kill Raids, I Do.

21 09 2009

No, not the bosses in the raids, the raids themselves. I hadn’t been on WoW since around Wednesday, (I even missed Pirate Day completely) and I was eating lunch on Sunday, the day of our raid. And there’s nothing like  getting a call from my GM asking where I am during that lunch, because the raid was waiting. On me.

Yep, our raid was actually in the afternoon, not the evening, and my failure to attend meant we were short a good DPS and a tenth person, so… yeah. Raid didn’t happen, and I caught a ton of flak for it, despite the fact that I said I didn’t mind being replaced, and there’s no shortage of quality DPS if you’re willing to spend a few minutes spamming trade chat, which I guess they weren’t. I still felt like a pretty big heel, and spent the next couple hours doing some 2s before logging out. On a high note, we managed to kill a tree/warrior, for the first time ever… played it so that the druid actually ran out of mana, and a last gasp of burst damage took him out. Definitely the best feeling I’ve ever had doing arena.


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BGs, Progression, Frustration

4 08 2009

In the last three days… wow. Lots of WoW.

Saturday was PvP-tastic. After finishing my Argent dailies, myself and a few other guildies decided to go for the Warsong Gulch PvP daily. Bad, bad, bad choice. We were fighting one of the most intense battles I’ve ever seen, capping the first flag with relative ease, only to hit a brick wall when the Alliance got their act together and came back 2-1. I ran back a flag with cover from our healers and a few DPS to make it 2-2. The battle continued on for another twenty minutes, until the Alliance killed our carrier, and got the final cap. The battle lasted for an hour. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were about to fight three more WSGs that night, and none would be any shorter. And we weren’t going to win any of them. In between the WSGs, I started up a VoA 25 and VoA 10 raid, which, after a few wipes, managed to take Emalon down. It didn’t help that every time we were ready to start, somebody either had to leave or dc’d. Why people join raids when they have to leave before they can down a boss, I’ll never know.

Sunday was our weekly raid night, and it was definitely one of our better ones. We ended up taking nine of our core raiders, and a new guildie who had just been to Naxx25 for the first time the day prior. Since we can typically nine-man most of the raid anyways, nobody really had a problem with it, and we all agreed she could use the gear. We did FL with two towers up, as usual, and wiped miserably on our first attempt. My demolisher driver hadn’t tried the vehicle before, and didn’t quite understand the concept of flinging me onto the FL to destroy the turrets, and our newbie didn’t know what was going on. Second time around, though, was much better; my driver understood his role, and we took out FL with ease, and most vehicles at over 50% health. Razorscale was a one-shot with my trinket a no-show again, and we actually managed to pick up an achievement on XT after killing him in under 205 sec after some great DPS. We moved on, skipping Iron Council and one-shotting Kologarn before two-shotting Auriaya. Hodir was also a two-shot, after we explained the flash freeze concept to our new guildie, before we moved on to one-shot Thorim and Freya; my shoulders didn’t drop (again). Unfortunately, that’s where our success for the night ended. Although we got to phase four of Mimiron every time, we could never finish the deed. Overall, it was a great raid night.

Monday brought a progression night raid one day later, which I was unable to make. When I logged on afterwards, I found out my guild had been forced to pug out a healer and a hunter due to lack of attendance; they’d downed Mimiron, but Vezax stayed up. After getting my dailies done, I saw that a Naxx25 cleanup for Thaddius, saph and KT was forming up, so I decided to join.

I really, really wish I hadn’t.

This is where the “frustration” part of the title is. The raid filled up at around 1:30AM… we didn’t even touch Thaddius until almost 2:15. I have never, ever seen a guild move this slowly. Of course, one our first attempt, people were unable to discern left from right, and we wiped quickly. Typically, when this happens, a guild (well, my guild at least) just forms back up, gets to the boss, and tries it again. Five minutes tops, unless people are being moved around. This took an excruciating fifteen minutes…. we tried, and wiped again. Fifteen minutes later, we were ready for a third try. We pulled and, thank God, we took him out with only two deaths. Moving on to Saph after another fifteen minute wait (see a trend forming?), we incredibly managed to one-shot him, then headed on to KT. This is where the fun started. Fifteen minutes of waiting, we start, things go well until phase 3, people are dumb, we wipe. Only ten minutes of waiting this time; and yet, the same thing happens. This happens four times, and it’s on the fourth time, when we get him to around 700k before dying, that it gets personal. In the last thirty seconds of the fight, with the MT already dead, a couple of people get MC’d. I move forward to hex one of them, get too close to a healer; we both get ice blocked, and we die. No big deal, since everybody was dead within the next ten seconds. Wrong.

As soon as this happens, I get hit by about ten tell-macros from the healer that got iceblocked telling me I’m an idiot. I reply that it didn’t matter anyways, he tells me that I don’t know what I’m doing. I repeat myself, apologizing; he continues to tell me I don’t know how to play my class. Big words, considering that I’m in second place behind a rogue for DPS and my totems are buffing his stats. After three hours of terribleness, I basically tell him to fuck off, and we each let loose with several tells worth of cuss words and anger. There’s silence for about two minutes until a different healer tells me that I caused the wipe and killed another healer three minutes into the fight. I apologize to this new guy, and tell him he’s got the wrong shaman… he doesn’t care, and we exchange barbed remarks for a couple minutes until the fight starts. Incredibly, on our fifth try, I dc twice… and we kill KT. My shield drops. I roll a 22. Failure. It’s at this point that the second healer, who’d accused me of iceblocking someone, sent me a tell that basically mocked me for not getting loot, and for doing poor DPS.

I dc’d twice in the final fight, and pulled 3.3k, and it was good enough for second place damage done, to give an idea of how talented our raid was. Honestly, I don’t care too much about loot… I pass to other guildies, wait my turn for tier, and if I lose a roll, there’s always next week. This, though… this was tasteless. I reply that I dc’d twice, didn’t care about losing the shield too much (I’ve got the Ulduar 10 shield anyways). She replies that I’m obviously annoyed by the lack of loot. I reply I’m annoyed that I’m still getting tells. She tells me that the shield went to a guildie enhancement Shaman. I reply that I had a poor roll, that it wasn’t going to me regardless, and that she shouldn’t tell me how to play my class. She replies that she has an enh Shaman that does 5k DPS. I return that I don’t care, and that it’s a game.

And, my favorite reply (and how I assume she’s a girl or, possibly, a gay dude)): It’s a game that I’m bad at, I caused our wipe, and because of that, no sex with her boyfriend, since he went to sleep. She logged afterwards.

Well, at this point, I decided to be the bigger man. I apologized for the iceblock I didn’t commit with a tell in the mail, and went to sleep. After all, there’s always next week.

Oh, and I decided to name my Mulgore Hatchling Ruber. Only took a week or two to figure out a name!


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Back in Action

1 08 2009

I got back from vacation a few days ago, and it’s good to be back home. And, in WoW, quite a bit has happened. First and foremost, I got back on track with my dailies; no surprise there. With 51 Champion’s Seals, I only need another 10 days of questing, or 9 if I get lucky. Yesterday, however, some interesting stuff happened as I flew back to Dalaran when my dailies were finished. As I hit Dalaran airspace, I got the standard “get off of your mount or it’s parachute time” message. At this point, I realized I’d been flying upwards, so I was a few thousand feet above the city, and I began descending straight down. The 10 second timer ticked away, and I still wasn’t even in sight range of Dalaran. At this point, I got dismounted, my parachute opened, and I began floating down.

Well, not so much down as forward. Which became a real problem when I missed Dalaran entirely.

Failing out as I fall through the sky

Failing out as I fall through the sky

Yep, an entire city to shoot for, and I missed it, and, because I lack a good way to fall thousands of feet and not die, I got to enjoy a relaxing parachute ride down into Crystalsong Forest. Even better, my character’s feet weren’t moving at all; instead, I was falling to the ground with only my arms flailing, taking the fail to a new level, and I couldn’t help but laugh. After making it back to the D, I snagged the daily PvP quest and did a few BGs, logging off later. That fall, though, was the best part of the day.

The next day also ended up with me doing my dailies, before hopping into a few more BGs and a Wintergrasp. With the BGs, I’m fortunate enough to have a guildie who’d snagged a Grand Black War Mammoth from VoA. After getting lucky and getting into the same group, we loaded up with two Tauren passengers in Arathi Basin, and sprinted towards the lumber mill aided by our Crusader’s Aura. We went on to win as I punted people off of the cliff with Thunderstorm… that never gets old.

Entering the fray on a Grand Ice Mammoth

Entering the fray on a Grand Black War Mammoth

Which brings us to yesterday, and one of the closest WGs I’ve ever seen. With us defending as the Alliance made their assault, myself and a group of about ten other people began capturing the western workshop, before moving towards the south; standard Horde defense strategy. This time, though, there were Alliance waiting for us, and, when we finished killing them, we all had five kills. Catapult time. Their western tower went down five minutes into the game as we massed catapults, before moving onward to the middle, which fell soon afterwards. We then captured the Eastpark workshop, killed the third and final tower, and went north, destroying their Eastern workshop. At this point, we all rushed back to defend, as they only had four vehicles left… but it was too late. While we’d been out capping workshops and destroying towers, the Alliance had managed to break through, and those four vehicles managed to win the day. If we’d only had about twenty more people on our side, we probably would’ve been able to win. As it was, we left in defeat, and I proceeded to do some 3s later in the evening before logging.

To close it out, vacation was good, but it’s good to be back to see my friends both in RL and in Azeroth. Looking forward to Ulduar this Sunday; with any luck, that damn trinket will (finally) drop from Razorscale, and I might even pick up some new T8.


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When PuGs Fail

24 07 2009

It was one of those nights.

Logged on whilst on vacation, saw that Wintergrasp was going on, I entered, we won, and I started up a VoA 25 raid, as usual. People joined up, as usual. I kicked a couple kids that weren’t geared, as usual. We took out the trash, as usual. Then the MT pulled Emalon, and “usual” went out the window.

In hindsight, a lot of stuff wasn’t right with the raid; things weren’t optimal, to say the least, although PuGs rarely are. We had five heals and two tanks, the average number, but the MT decided to pull trash when nobody was looking. He didn’t get heals, died, the add took out a third of our DPS, and we wiped when he blew up. It happens once in a while, so I wasn’t worried. When the MT pulled Emalon into the back of the room, and a third of our DPS bunched up and died from a chain lightning, well…. not so good. That brought us to two wipes. After re-organizing the healers, explaining the oh-so-tough concept of tanking the adds on the left, Emalon on the right, and buffing up, I thought we were good to go. I was, of course, wrong yet again. The MT pulled to the back of the room again, only this time, the DPS spread out, so it didn’t matter. This time, the heals didn’t show up to play, and the MT died, wiping us a third time. At this point, the PuG mentality took over. A healer left, then a DPS. Then another, and another. Then both tanks. Then almost everybody else, and the raid was over in under a minute.

I tried to salvage it by keeping those who wanted to VoA 10 as everybody else left. Unfortunately, the utter lack of healers and tanks late at night cut this attempt short too, as the raid never even got off the ground. After ten minutes of searching, on the heals that had stayed left, followed by a DPS. I decided to call it myself, since it was obvious that it was going nowhere. It saddens me, too, because PuGs usually work out, especially on something as easy as Vault. This wasn’t one of those times. This was one of those nights.


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