Just a side note

We did not, actually, down Lurker last night.

We did get him to 3%, with fishies in the water. But at least three of the guild top DPS'ers were "off their game." That makes some sense, considering Kuan topped the meters for caster DPS for all but one try. Including a try where I'd forgotten to flask him. For all of them, his DPS was lower than normal for a 25-man, even after getting the lovely Mindblade Monday.

Weapons and luck

Today, and for a while now, I was feeling pretty crappy. So crappy that I wasn't going to log in to WoW last night. However, DraNgNon convinced me that I should, mostly because we thought that the regular mage tank wouldn't be there and Viljo would be needed for Maulgar.

So we logged in and killed Maulgar after a couple of wipes and then proceeded to one-shot Gruul as is our wont. We have a hard time with the coordination for Maulgar, but we've turned Gruul into a dps fight because everyone is geared.

Gruul dropped the Bloodmaw Magus-Blade!!! And Viljo was at the top of the dkp. So now Viljo is the proud owner of the lovely magus-blade. /swoon And due to the kindness of guildies and generosity of DraNgNon Viljo has the Sunfire enchant. +50 to fire and arcane, woot. I even was able to get the void crystals for that from the guild bank, which makes sense, because we've got at least 200 of them in there.

Then Kuan and Telt went to Kara to finish up last Tuesday's run. We skipped Illhoof due to a lack of aoe and a plethora of melee dps. But we one shot all the other bosses we tried. Which, given Telt's lack of health, quite frankly shocked me that we one-shotted Aran. Anyway, the Nathrezim Mindblade dropped from Prince. The only other caster dps there already had it so Kuan got it!

Yay for shiny new weapons! Yay! We shall surely kill Lurker on Wednesday night!

draNgNon progress 28 Jan

It's been 2 weeks, and time for my progress based on my last list.

Kuanchichi
• Heroic SH • farm for [Major Frost Prot] • 350 on 2H Maces • PvP... at least the daily... • farm up some primals, whee • Learn Cauldron of Major Fire Prot • [Stormwrap] • [Seal of the Exorcist]	• Ran it, missed timer • did not drop • nope • have been somewhat spotty on it • banked some, some to guild • nope • got it! • still no. bad timing
Eeyan
• Honored with Violet Eye • Revered with Scryer • Ogri'la starter quests • [Searing Sunblade] • Onyxia key • Strat run • 375 blacksmithing • 335+ all ranged	• got it • half way • Friendly with Ogri'la • no, not now • nope • and nope • 366 • got it more: Epic Flying Mount!!!!
Aurochh
• Clear Stromgarde • Start on Badlands • Uldaman runups • 280 enchanting	• cleared • nope • nope • 277

Here is my new list. Kuan needs spirit shards, badges, and the recipe for Flask of Supreme Power. Eeyan needs quests for money, badges, and Skyguard rep.

Kuanchichi Alchemy, weapon skillup, gear
• Exalted with Keepers of Time
• Heroic SH, timed
• farm for [Major Frost Prot]
• 350 on 2H Maces
• PvP... at least the daily...
• Learn Cauldron of Major Fire Prot
• [Seal of the Exorcist]

Eeyan blacksmithing, 0.5 quests, epic mount money for Teltanara
• Revered with Cenarion Expedition
• Revered with Scryer
• [Blood Knight War Cloak]
• Onyxia key
• Strat run (for Tier 0 Shoulders and Pants)
• Scholo run (for Tier 0 Hat)
• 375 blacksmithing
• 340+ all ranged

Aurochh leveling, enchanting skillups
• Start on Badlands
• Clear BB quests in STV
• Uldaman
• 280 enchanting

Saturday in Azeroth

Clara has not been feeling well, and the weather was icky, so Saturday turned into Wowday. The intention, was to use it to farm up what we needed for upcoming raids.

First, we took the Alliance toons and set up bags, banks, auctions, etc. Then Clara logged in Teltanara just in time to see one of our guildies announce she wanted her hunter alt through Heroic Mech and needed a healer. She hadn't gotten a group together so I figured why not? and logged in Eeyan. One of the guild locks came (yay, Mech is so much easier with a lock) and we pugged in a tank in blues and off we went!

It was slow going and Eeyan died lots (the Destroyers are apparently immune to Kick and Silencing Shot), but we didn't wipe unduly for a bunch of alts in blues, and we did end up downing all the bosses. Eeyan got 4 badges and a Nether! The group worked pretty well, so we swapped out the lock for a rogue from the tank's guild, and Eeyan for Kuan, and headed down to Caverns of Time for some Black Morass action and some rep.

While we were there, our guild shadow priest (we only have one!) asked for a Heroic Mech run for rep, so once we completely Black Morass Clara swapped to Viljo, the hunter alt swapped to her healy pally, and we ran it again! Hm, I don't even remember who tanked. Amazing how much easier Heroic Mech is when everyone is in epics, though. Turns out the shadow priest didn't even have Sha'tar revered, so now he does, and he went posthaste to pick up his Glyph of Power. That made me happy as he's part of our 25-man raid...

After that we did, actually, do a little bit of farming. But then it was time for a Guild PvP event. The Pally class lead loves to PvP, and we formed up a raid and tried to take over the Deeprun Tram. I'm not so sure we succeeded. But we did get to ride it about for a while. At one point the only other folks we saw on the tram... were other Horde. A new discovery for me: when Horde dies on the tram, they have to corpse run from Eastvale Logging, and entering the tram instance does not recover the corpse, you have to find it too. Anyhow once we were bored of that we raided Darnassus. Horde can access their guild bank from there, go figure.

After that Eeyan and Telt did some regular questing, but by this time it was after midnight, so it was time for sleepies; Clara was starting to feel ikky again. But quite a bit of progress and fun! I think Telt ended up picking up enough badges to get the [Bishop's Cloak]. Eeyan still doesn't have enough badges for anything. That's OK though. Probably once he gets a few more I will blow them on the cloak, instead of stockpiling them for offhand daggar.

Heroic Shattered Halls!

Kuan and Viljo finally just Decided they were going to run Heroic SH. It was the daily, and we need that quest formerly-known-as-TK-attunement-prereq.

We got a resto shaman and swords rogue from our guild to go with us, but the tanks were busy. Right as we were about to give up, Viljo struck up a conversation with an SSC-geared tank in front of the Scryer bank. Don't ever lose sight of the RPG aspect of the game! When you are in town, talk to people nearby! He was happy to tank for us, for the same reasons we wanted to go.

We tried to beat the timers, but none of us had tried the instance on heroic before. Up to the first boss it's about the same, then the timers start and the differences, too.

• there are assassins at the start of the gauntlet
• there is a mini boss, with badge, at the end of it
• sheep have a giant aggro radius, near the Centurions
• the two headed ogre boss, actually, seemed easier
• Kargath cleaves twice in his charging around
• there is an executioner past Kargath. We didn't beat the timer; I don't know if he has a badge.

Even though we did not beat the timer, we did clear the instance for 4 badges, the daily, and a good learning experience. Very confidence building, as we have also recently tried Heroic Arc, albeit with an undergeared pally tank and mage alt, and couldn't down the first boss at all.

gnome banker ftw!

So, we did move our Alliance toons to Greymane. I was an idiot and nuked my AD gnome banker without pulling the 20 or so gold that was left off her, d'oh!

Once we were on Greymane, we again reassessed where these toons were in terms of questiness and gold. And unless we want to entirely ignore game design, they were, well, all in Silithus, in terms of quest progress, gearup, money, etc. Now, Silithus might be 6 minutes from Thunder Bluff but Alliance is not nearly so lucky. We parked them and went back to our fun toons on Hyjal.

So these last few nights, I have taken a few minutes before bed to roll another gnome banker. Run him through the starter area, get him big enough to run to Ironforge. Finally I got him there during Morning Coffee today! Tris and Vhaas just dumped bags, spidersilks, and auctionables on him, and he is all set up.

He's a mage, this time. I dubbed him Dinkusmagus. Heh!

...now, if only Clara could set up a banker alt. Then the Alliance toons can sit there and get poked once or twice a week and grow their gold until they can afford epic ground mounts. *nudge nudge* Ah, well, Viljo needs gazillions of primal manas and Sunfury signets, so perhaps not quite yet.

Gruul and Ogri'la

Last night Darkfall went to Gruul's Lair for our usual Sunday night raid. We downed both Maulgar and Gruul again, but it was a little bit strange. We were missing two of our best geared main tanks and on the Maulgar pull it showed. The new tanks didn't know where to pull to or how to pull only their mobs. So it took us a couple of wipes to get it down. Then we went on to Gruul and one-shot him. It amuses me that Darkfall seems to follow this same pattern every week. We struggle with the coordination of Maulgar and then one-shot Gruul. Admittedly this week it was a bit less smooth to down Gruul. Because we were missing our best geared main tanks the last 5% was done with after the tanks were dead.

After everyone was rezzed the loot was linked. And there were Fallen Hero pants! I bid all the dkp that Viljo had. (I learned my lesson last time: no matter how much you bid, winner only pays 2nd bid +5.) So now Viljo is a proud wearer of the [Legwraps of the Aldor] and has the (slightly lame) 4-piece bonus.


Anyway after Gruul there were some half hearted attempts to finish Kara and do ZA. However Eeyan and Teltanara pulled together a guild group and unlocked the Ogri'la quests. We even had one out of group person so that the warlock-pentagram guy was a bit easier. But now Eeyan and Telt have access to the gold mine that is Ogri'la! Possibly we shall pool their gold soon and Eeyan will get an epic mount first. He is the gatherer after all. And there are few things quite so frustrating as making your way to a mining or herbalism node and seeing a fruity night-elf already taking it.

Loot System, Redux

Clara posted her theory of Blizzard's Loot system a while back now. This system has reached the point of predictability.

Last night it was even more so. After Lurker frustration, we were going to make an attempt at heroic BM, which was both the dailies, but apparently the team that had run ZA the day before (see my previous post) had been unable to down anything at all in ZA and wanted at least to drop Halazzi before reset. So we all agreed to go help.

Well, the guy putting the team together isn't so good at assembling people, and it took a good hour and the guild leader taking over to get a group together we thought could do it. At one point we had two rogues in the group, and one of the rogues offered to drop out for a hunter, becuase he already had the Rogue-y Halazzi drops. He got ignored. The other rogue dropped out, and got replaced by a lock (WTF!). At that point I said, now we are going to see the rogue shoulders drop.

Much later (the guild leader hadn't seen this boss, and neither had our priest, so it took a while...) Halazzi was down, and of course he dropped the rogue shoulders. Which the rogue with us was wearing. So all that, for 2 void crystals. Every class was represented but druids, and only one guy was wearing Halazzi gear... and that's the gear that dropped.

countering the frustration

Our 10pm Tuesday Kara run seems to have died. Most of the toons don't need gear from Kara, after all. I figured it would happen and have been telling myself well, Kuan should be hitting ZA anyhow.

Nevertheless seeing a guild post talking about Kara tunedown annoyed me so, that I decided to take Kuan into heroic Bot since it was the daily; that meant 7 badges after all, and Kuan is still shy on the spiffy badged gear which was clearly put there to shut the ele shamans up about SSC and TK loot tables. Other guildies are of a similar mind so we get an all guild group together, minus a tank. We PUG one in, then, suddenly one of the guild pallies is trying to reassemble a ZA raid, no this is not on the schedule, la la la.

We said too bad, which might have screwed them, but Kuan isn't going to get an upgrade in ZA to help him better handle SSC. He's gonna get it from G'eras. So we cleared Bot in short order. Honestly by the time we were out they had barely started ZA... Yes, I made sure Kuan picked up all his gods-be-damned badges.

Then it was midnight. OK... there's not many on so we swapped to Eeyan and Teltanara and poked around SMV a while. Did the totem-y runups to the Cipher of Damnation chain... picked up enough adamantite to get the next point in BS, taking him to 365, and what should drop but [Plans: Ragesteel Shoulders].

Now, Eeyan has his skillup, and knows how to make those. Yay only 10 more points of BS to go!

Annoyance

I have a theory. My theory is about annoying people and how wherever you go, whatever you do, there will always be someone annoying. Ok, yes, there are certain situations and groups of people, carefully chosen, who won't annoy someone in the group. However, by and large, there will be someone annoying in any group of people.

This annoying person may actually be an annoying butt muncher who does things that piss everyone else off. They may also be just the person in the group you are least compatible with. The person that your brain seizes on as annoying. Mostly though, there is some annoying person who you can't get away from because they are part of your circle of friends or, in this specific case, part of your guild. This particular annoying person was on ignore from many people, several of them officers who refused to post raid signups because they didn't want him in the raid.

Last night the annoying person in Darkfall pissed off the raid leader. The short version of the pissing off is that someone came to the raid flagged, and so half the group ended up with PvP disease. In order for group heals and buffs to work we all had to flag. Now we're inside of Gruul's Lair so this really isn't a problem. But just before we are about to engage Gruul himself this very annoying person refuses to flag. Raid Leader says flag or leave raid. Annoying person hearths and logs off. We pull in another dps and kill Gruul.

(Side note: I was outbid on the Bloodmaw Magus Blade. Dammit!)

Anyway after the raid is over and we're all dispersed, annoying person logs on and /gquits his characters. The Raid Leader gave a little talk about working as a team and no one was really sad to see him go.

The initial people who had been (accidentally) flagged had already logged off. So Kuan and Viljo sent them Delicious Chocolate Cakes to celebrate.

That object is busy right now.

I never do see those words.

So Kuan only got one badge tonight...

Greymane ho!

So our Alliance toons really are neglected. Part of the problem is we have found Honor Hold offputting. Part of the problem is the AD guild, after trying to be a raid guild, fell apart. More of the problem is that AD Alliance seems to be dramarific. The bulk of the reason is that they are not as interesting as our Horde toons.

But they are in the 60s and it's tragic they are shelved. So, we have been talking to coworkers who are transferring their guild to Greymane, and they sent a mail: they want Alliance toons to augment its membership. I talked to the person making the announcement, and we are welcome to join even though they are raiding Kara and we are only playing the Alliance toons casually.

Darkfall is raiding until Wednesday, so we expect Thursday to transfer Vhaas, Khyrie, and Trismestigus to Greymane, after cleaning up banker alts and belongings etc.

draNgNon progress 14 Jan

So it's 2008, and I have decided to put my progress every two weeks. Possibly that was inspired by a 63-hour power outage last weekend. But anyhow, here is my progress based on the last list of 2007.

Kuanchichi
• Heroic SH • farm for Major Prot recipes • 349 on 2H Axes • PvP... at least the daily... • farm up some primals, whee • work on Badges	• nope • Fire Prot!!! • got it • have been somewhat spotty on it • Eeyan used them all! • 49 now
Eeyan
• try a heroic • Onyxia key • Arcatraz key • Strat run • 365 blacksmithing • farm primal fires • clear Thunderlord quests • 335+ all ranged	• Slave Pens • no, but almost • got it • nope • 364 • [Drakefist Hammer] woo! • cleared • 335 Guns
Aurochh
• Clear Stromgarde • Start on Badlands • Uldaman runups • 280 enchanting	no progress on any of this stuff

Here is my new list. My stock of primals is really low, and guild is also asking for farming. Kuan needs badges and spirit shards. Eeyan needs quests for money, badges, and Skyguard rep.

Kuanchichi Alchemy, weapon skillup, gear
• Heroic SH
• farm for [Major Frost Prot]
• 350 on 2H Maces
• PvP... at least the daily...
• farm up some primals, whee
• Learn Cauldron of Major Fire Prot
• [Stormwrap]
• [Seal of the Exorcist]

Eeyan blacksmithing, 0.5 quests, epic mount money
• Honored with Violet Eye
• Revered with Scryer
• Ogri'la starter quests
• [Searing Sunblade]
• Onyxia key
• Strat run (for Tier 0 Shoulders and Pants)
• 375 blacksmithing
• 335+ all ranged

Aurochh leveling, enchanting skillups
• Clear Stromgarde
• Start on Badlands
• Uldaman runups
• 280 enchanting

Mech run of Doooooooom

So I decided this evening that I was going to get home early, take Eeyan farming for his Primal Fires, go to bed early, and then get to work on time.

I got home, not so early, but I did log Eeyan on and took him to Skald. Which was totally camped by people on Netherdrakes, blah! Clara signed on Teltanara and we worked on clearing some BEM quests. As we flew to turn in, our guildie Tobis was all "heroic mech anyone?"

Keen to see the Major Fire Prot recipe, I said I'd bring Kuan, and we soon got a group together. Well, not so soon, the priest had already run heroic mech, and so on. But right around midnight, there we were in in heroic mech, Kuan, Viljo, Ladrean, Addiction, and Tobis.

Keep in mind, that Kuan, with his blue Trinket and Totem, is undergeared, compared to Viljo, Ladrean, and Addiction. And there was poor Tobis, with his Adamantite Rapier and his 11.7K health AFTER FORT, telling us my gear has not yet been restored, my account got hacked and Blizzard is still getting back to me...

...and we wiped on the first pull. TWICE. Addiction was pretty displeased, as we had sucked him in last minute. But, we set out a strategy, and decided we'd not DPS til Tobis had built up sufficient threat, so we went slowly, but surely. On the destroyers, Viljo and I didn't risk UCD messing us up at all, and so when Counterspell was in CD, Kuan did not cast LBs at all, but beat on the destroyer with his mace, and shocked him to interrupt the Charged Fist.

We made it up to Panthaleon, and then we had to strategize. OK, he MCs the second closest person, and we have a lock and a priest so here's how to do the adds, la la la. We'll make the VW the second closest "person". We went for it, and... I got MC'd. I ran behind Viljo, who got MC'd. Wiped. D'oh! OK, so, the pet was a bad idea. Lad will be second closest, as lock dots will keep on ticking even when he's sheeped. We went for it, and... I got MC'd. I ran around beating on people. Then the priest! uhhhH! Wipe Wipe Wipe. And no, that wasn't Tobis' crappy tank gear. That's us pwning each other.

Finally, I was wait a second. My memory got tickled... I pulled up http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html in the browser.

Creatures with random player targeting crowd control abilities such as fear, charm, or sleep will now properly choose a random eligible target rather than just choosing the nearest eligible target.

BAH! That behaviour, documented in Wowwiki and everywhere as intentional, was a bug Blizzard fixed last Tuesday. BAH! Panthaleon MC's randomly! BAH! On that note, we decided 'screw it' and did what we should have done in the first place. Lad can easily pump out 700+ DPS all on his own, Kuan and Viljo are both capable of over 500, and we just mowed him down. Yay! He dropped the DPS pants Tobis wanted in the first place, too!

Then, it was time to take our try at the bitchy fire lady. In general people on Hyjal as far as I can tell only go after her once, she is so annoying. But flushed with our success, we just went after her and kited her around the room. After a while I got tired of the flame things and sent my Rock after them. She died, and lo and behold, Major Fire Prot! Tobis was nice and passed. I was not so nice, and Kuan now knows it! Yay! Yay!

Now I will have to keep running Mech, though, since Viljo still doesn't know it. Ah well. And I'm all conflicted... all those primal fires I've been storing up for Eeyan... Kuan needs them now too. I don't normally mix Kuan's and Eeyan's stuff, except for Primals/motes, Netherweave, Enchant Mats, Raw Gems, and Rep crap (i.e. Savage Fronds).

I gotta say as a last note. It's pretty clear Tobis is a good tank, and this was a good group. We could have peeled mobs off him all the time, and he tanked all the bosses without them going after any of us, when he still had crappy tank gear by any standards.

I am the Mage Tank /flex

On Sunday we had our first official raid in about 3 weeks. It was a guild run of Gruul. Darkfall has done a bunch of recruiting and had more than enough 70s online to fill it all out. So it was our very first all guild Gruul run.

However, this was not the exciting part to me. The exciting part to me was that our regular mage tank was in the air flying home. So about an hour and a half before the raid started I got a whisper asking me if I could do the mage tank thing. I started looking at my stamina gear, and ended up spending the next hour frantically running to and from the bank and AH trying stuff on and putting stam gems, +10 stam armor patches, and +30 stam leg armor on gear. I ended up with 9423 hp unbuffed, which translated to 12k+ health raid buffed.

There was almost a snafu where the RL tried to ask one of the other mages to tank. (She had only 10k+ health fully raid buffed.) Fortunately she and I both spoke up and I got my two assigned healers.

First attempt my entirely inexperience healers didn't realize that I had to be kept topped off ALL the time. So I died the first time my stolen spellshield went away for a sec.

Second time someone else accidentally pulled and a tank died early on.

Third time I do the pull correctly and manage to time my firewards correctly to (I think) not take full damage from the fireballs. Everyone else does their job too and Lo! we kill Maulgar.

I was so nervous ahead of time and so happy that it actually worked! I spent a lot of gold getting my health up there to be able to do the mage tanking and I was just overjoyed to not let the guild (and myself) down. I gave my healers profuse thanks. :)

Anyway after Maulgar we went on to one-shot Gruul. Once again I lost the roll for my t4 pants. But since we one-shotted him I am completely sure that we won't ever be pugging people in again.

WoW as a Drinking Game

Or: What I Did For New Year's Eve

DraNgNon and I were questing as Eeyan and Teltanara. We were wandering about Kirin'Var Village getting quest money and motes of mana. It was relatively early in the evening and we were starting to consider our plans for dinner and the evening.

One of the warlocks, who regularly leads the 7pm Kara run, asked if anyone was interested in a fun Kara run. Our raids have been cancelled for the Holidays due to various people traveling and such. The regular groups and schedules don't apply, so we were all joking around about getting a group. Eeyan and Teltanara volunteered to go, because they are keyed and who knows when they'd ever get to go otherwise. Other people were pvp'ing and expressed a tiny bit of interest.

It didn't look like there were going to be enough of anyone to fill out a raid. So we were all just shooting the shit in guild chat. I jokingly suggested that our fun run be a drinking game. We should follow the "drink when your character drinks" rule. Suddenly everyone was interested. They were running off to mix drinks and swapping to needed classes.

Since it was still a fun run Eeyan came along, and because we needed healers Telt came along. We got one of the main warrior tanks and one of the main druid off tanks. The extremely well geared warlock was leading, and a regular tree druid was the 2nd healer. We filled out the run with a couple of dps warriors, a mage, and pugged in a pally.

Everyone got their drink of choice. DraNgNon and I pulled out a bottle of syrah port from the Savannah-Chanelle vineyard. The main tank mixed "the strongest rum and coke ever". Our tree druid and one of the dps warriors are housemates and brought out the beer. The warlock decided that since he was a little bit sick he should drink screwdrivers.

Then suddenly Eeyan and Teltanara were Raiding! Whee! Raiding! Neither Eeyan or Telt had all the mats they needed for raiding, but they weren't too badly off. We tore through Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, and even Nightbane. Curator also dropped to our first try. We got to Illhoof and had a few problems, but as soon as we all got a talking too about focusing on the chains we dropped him. Aran was a also a challenge, but went down after a couple of tries. (Teltanara just barely had enough health, Primal Mooncloth has NO stamina.) We forged on to the chess event, and of course dealt with that easily too.

Now Teltanara cleaned up on the loots here. She got gloves from Attumen, off-hand from Moroes, bracers from Maiden, a random mob dropped the shadow damage neck for her, and boots from Shade of Aran. The soulcloth vest pattern also dropped twice so the main who was a tailor got it and then she was the only other tailor, so she got that too. Eeyan also cleaned up, but not quite as much. He got his t4 gloves, and the shoulders from chess event.

Anyway after Chess we decided to go on to Prince. We swapped out to mains so Viljo and Kuan went instead of Eeyan and Telt. Unfortunately Prince didn't work out quite as well as everything else. It was pretty late at this time, and after several rounds of really bad infernal placement, we called it. (They alternated landing on the ranged or the tank...)