Post Hiatus Braindump

Darkfall has been on a bit of a hiatus recently. For the first two weeks after Diablo came out we didn't raid at all. I, and just about everyone else, was busy playing through the story in Diablo 3. Of course, this WoW playing and raiding hiatus has led to a bit of a blogging hiatus.

We recommenced raiding this past Tuesday. It was funny how we were all a bit rusty. There were more than a few wipes on Heroic Morchok. Some of those can be chalked up to our Korchom tank not being used to tanking, but most of them can be chalked up to someone trying to move via left-clicking. It took us Tuesday and Thursday to kill all eight DS bosses, but we made some excellent progress. We killed Morchok, Yor'sahj, and Ultraxion on heroic. None of those were first kills, but it was gratifying to see that we'd not lost progress from our break. We also tried a couple of pulls on heroic Zon'ozz. Sadly, I think he is still my least favorite boss; it's just too easy for the ping ponging ball to go completely sideways and mess everything up. That said I think we'll get him next week, since we did manage to hit the enrage timer. Our healers were sucking fumes by the end, but they did an excellent job keeping us mostly alive until enrage, so we've just got to tighten up positioning and we'll get it.

We also managed to get a few achieves for the rest of DS. Holding Hands and starting on Nozdormu's platform for Chromatic Champion. We'll start on Kalec's platform next week, and hopefully get that achieve. It was lovely to see the Mutated Corruption going down every time before the Elementium Bolt was spawned. It certainly made me fear large smacky death less. In fact, starting on Nozdormu's platform was quite easy. We were missing our fabulous holy priest, but got around not having that cooldown for impale by following the order: Nozdormu > Alexstraza > Ysera > Kalec. So we all hit Dream as often as we could and I saved Icebound Fortitude for the Impale on Kalec's platform. We'd also tried a pull or three on Heroic Blackhorn (boat boss) just for grins. That didn't go well, but no one was really expecting it to, so there were many jokes about how many seconds we'd live.

I didn't schedule our usual Sunday run or Monday fun run. Since we've killed all of DS Sunday would have either been alts or old content. I think that the best thing to do for next week will be to have Sunday be an alt run and set up Monday to be some sort of old content. Possibly Tempest Keep or Serpent Shrine Cavern. My druid needs some more pieces of the T5 druid set.

I do want to get back to the Monday fun runs. I strongly feel that they are what actually knits the guild together. It's all well and good to go through DS and slaughter stuff, but the guild truly becomes a team and friends when we get a change to goof off as a group. And that means smashing through old raids. It's always fun to reminisce about running that stuff for real, and even better to show someone the fight for the first time. Even if some times the bosses don't have time to do more than gape at us before they are dead.

I'm having a lot of fun playing Diablo 3. DraNgNon and I are playing cooperative and it's a ton of fun. We started out with her Barbarian and my Monk playing together. Separately she is leveling a Demon Hunter and I'm leveling a Wizard. Possibly once the Demon Hunter and Wizard are a bit bigger we'll swap to have Barbarian/Wizard and Demon Hunter/Monk playing together. The Barbarian and Monk combo is a lot of fun, but we quite often feel the pain of no ranged. With no ranged along I truly hate the evil trees in Act I, and I'm not a big fan of the wasps in Act II either.

I'm a big fan of the Monk. She is so very stoic and severe. Never joking and always searching for balance and the best way to serve her gods. She is going to get stuff done, and woe to all who get in her way.

My Wizard has an ego the size of a house. He is hilarious, every time he levels or kills more than seven mobs at a time he makes some sort of proclamation that boils down to "I'm the most awesome ever!" He has been running around with the Templar, and the interaction between the two of them is funny. Especially when they were doing the Zoltan Kulle section of Act II. The Templar ranted about foul wizardry and then tripped over his tongue apologizing that he didn't mean the Wizard.

But between the stoic Monk and the Templar's Initiation I miss playing Mornara. The first time I heard how the Templar was chained up and beaten and whipped until he lost his memory I was quite forcibly reminded of how Mornara became a Death Knight. And thinking about this again I realize that Morn is a very no nonsense orc. She is there to make sure that whatever they are fighting against doesn't kill anyone else, and especially not her healers or her dps. She rarely, if ever, does the silly emotes. Not that she doesn't have fun, but she has had a hard life and now has the guild and raid leader responsibilities weighing on her, and really doesn't have time or inclination for goofing off all that much. Though she does often fly her Dragon Kite.

I am looking forward to working on Heroic Zon'ozz more next week. We'll likely try out Hagara on Heroic as well. Though it depends on how much progress we make, if we have a serious set of attempts or just allow people to see the fight and then let it percolate for a week in their brains. I feel like we get the best results, as a guild, when people have a chance to see the fight on heroic before we actually try to kill it.