and, Ulduar 10 redux

I finally had some time last night to play Wow, the first block of time since rejoining Darkfall. Darkfall decided I was there as a friend (not probation) until I re-app'd, so I re-app'd Friday. The guild rule, that they've had forever and still have, is no raiding in non guild raids during guild raid times (whether you are in the guild raids or not). And, no raiding progression 25 mans with other guilds or pugs, period. Makes sense, what if they need you and you are saved? Fail.

So, I got Kuanchichi into a VoA 10 run; I tried to get Viljo but we were miscommunicating so Clara had to cool Viljo's heels in Wintergrasp while that happened. I don't think it was more than 20 minutes. After, we got pulled into an Ulduar 10 run that was mostly alts or mains that aren't able to make the regular raid times.

Oddly enough 5 of the 10 people, I am very used to raiding with. One of them, Kaviaa, had been offline for months and was only just restarting playing again. Which is not quite beside the point of this post.

Darkfall has always made their own strategies. In Siege of Ulduar, (the first 4 bosses), there isn't a lot of variety, and so was pretty straight forward. Once we got past there though, I ended up asking for more and more explanations. Iron Council was not so bad. Kologarn was a wipe fest; I think Darkfall would benefit from adapting Deterrence's strategy there honestly. I mean really. Kologarn is the easiest boss in there, and we had a wipefest forcing Kuan to be heals before we succeeded. Auriya was not so bad, but I was adjusting what I was doing on the fly as they pull her in a different place and kited and kited her up the Shattered Walkway. Hodir, they corner him near the cache to force the NPCs into a small area, both for toasty fire goodness and to make it easier to break them out of the Flash Freezes. By this time Kuan had swapped to heals but even 3 heals can't make up for undergeared alts, people unfamiliar with the fight and/or fight strategy, and a distinct lack of Frost Resist gear. So we called it at that point; I think we'd been in there maybe 3 hours.

Kuan picked up [Pendant of the Piercing Glare] off Kologarn, which means I now get to rework his hitcap and hitcap-minus-1% sets, which I will be doing this afternoon at some point. But I guess this serves as reassurance that Kuan is not terribly undergeared as all the other shaman loot got DE'd or nabbed by a paladin alt for his heal set. And, much as I hate to play for loot, I will be doing Uld 10 weekly now, as I've decided Kuan really needs a different shield.

Last but not least - Drognin came into our Ulduar 10 raid partway through. Drognin is his alt now, so he's one of the toons missing Frost Resist, tsk tsk; but anyhow, so much for worrying about our guild re-apps, with Kuan 2nd overall damage for the run even though he was healing on 2 bosses, and Viljo being regular awesome, we will be put back into promotable guild member ranks again.