it just doesn't get old

we ran Ulduar this evening. Kuanchichi even picked up a couple achieves - Nine Lives, Rubble & Roll, a couple from the Freya fight, and Who Needs Bloodlust?. Mornara picked up more. At level 85, Firefighter isn't so hard anymore either, which made Rahlenti happy. And Vesax is a different strategy.

Some folks on the run with us never before got to Vesax in Ulduar. I think once they saw the room, Cataclysm made more sense to them.



But. Once we got to Yogg'Saron, people were tired, didn't know the fight, I had lag spikes, and the wipe was pretty spectacular. It never gets old, becuase it's still a difficult gaming problem to solve. We called it.

Clara's saved off the Raid ID.

Maloriak

So last Sunday the healer I'd pugged in for Bastion came with us again for our attempts on the Ascendant Council. We didn't get it, but we did make good progress for never having pulled that boss before that night. We were regularly getting to the 3rd phase by the time we were done for the evening, and I think we'll kill them the next time we do that fight. Anyway after the raid the pug healer was talking to me about Darkfall. He'd looked at our webpage after seeing my post on the forum and was interested in joining. So, because he'd been running with us the past two raids, I told him to let me know when he wanted an invite and I'd bring him in. His response was "now", and Voila! we had another healer in the guild who would actually show up for raids!

So on Tuesday we went to our regularly scheduled Blackwing Depths run. Again I picked and choose the raiders to come. While I don't feel bad about leaving some people out others should have been able to come as well. So I will try for a 25man BWD next week. /gulp

Well once we got in there it was pretty smooth sailing. We oneshot Magmaw, and got parasitic evening for the raid members who didn't have it yet. And then went on to 3-shot Omnotron. I was quite pleased. Especially since Mornara was the only person who wanted Akirus the Worm-Breaker a rather fantablous 2hand mace.

Then it was deeper into Blackwing Depths to Maloriak.

Darkfall had never seriously tried Maloriak so I was expecting what happened with the Ascendant Council to happen again. I thought we'd make good progress on learning the fight but wouldn't actually kill it this week.

Maloriak is a complicated sounding fight that isn't actually so hard once you get the different things that need to be done assigned to the correct people. And it only took us three wipes to get things working right. On the fourth pull Maloriak fell over dead. It wasn't a perfectly clean kill. There was a fair amount of confusion, especially since that was the first time we'd gotten him to the second phase and weren't sure about the mechanics of that phase. But he died, and it was glorious.


This means that in the past week-ish we've actually killed three new bosses. I'm quite pleased. I am very happy with the people I've been able to bring to the raid. And I'm excited about swapping to 25s next week. We'll have to pug a fair amount of people, but there are too many people getting left out of the current 10s.

Omnotron and Dragon Twins

Tuesday Darkfall went into a fresh Blackwing Descent. I remembered that I'm here to kill dragons and picked and chose from who I wanted to bring to the raid. I have to admit that I intentionally left out people who last time were unable to follow directions on who to target and people who are chronic fire-standers. Unsurprisingly there was some overlap there. I also pugged a healer.

And we pretty handily killed the first two bosses in Blackwing Descent.

It wasn't a one-shot for either of them. It took us a couple of tries for everyone to remember what they needed to do for Magmaw. In that time, our pug healer bailed and I found another one, the alt of one of the people that came to Ulduar for the drake runs. But once we pulled in the new 3rd healer we killed Magmaw in two tries and even got the Parasite Evening Achievement.



Omnotron was harder, because we'd never killed him as a guild before. And, in fact, most of us had never killed him at all. It took several tries for everyone to get a feel for the rhythm of the bosses abilities, especially when the order is not set until you actually see it. But it felt really great to kill the stupid Trons.

***********

Thursday we formed up for Bastion. I again pugged a healer. And off we went. Halfus was one-shot. Just boom, dead. We had a pretty brutal drake combo too, with slate, nether, and whelps, so the boss was hitting pretty hard and there was annoying aoe. But the three tank setup we figured out a week or so ago really works like a charm when the slate dragon is present.

Next we went to the twin dragons. I really wanted to kill them. Darkfall has been having so much trouble with them due to fire standing of various sorts. The fight is really about testing the ability of everyone to get out of the bad at the right time. And there are a variety of different bads and ways you need to avoid them. This is challenging because at present one person messing up usually cascades into a wipe.



But with a really great suggestion from DraNgNon about my placement of the Theralion we managed to get them! And double bonus Darkfall got guild level 20 from the our kill xp.

Kuanchichi the Hater

I've let this blog go a bit, as I started some work on the Darkfall guild website. But never mind that!

I've been personally dismayed recently that Kuanchichi was overtaken in the guild achievement point ranking by a hunter named Spinefalcon. I determined Friday that I would catch up to him, since Kuan was only 90 achieve points behind him, and still needed to finish Hyjal quests/get Cataclysm Loremaster/exalted Guardians.

I logged in Friday to find out that Spine had gotten himself into a Naxx25 achieves run, which catapulted him over 9000 AP. Damn it! So Saturday, we took Mornara and Kuanchichi and cleared all of Hyjal. Dinged all those achieves above. Of course still not near 9000...

Before that, though, I'd decided I was tired of relying on other people for portable repairs. I took Kuan to Dalaran to acquire one. And thus I became a hater. Because apparently this guy Aizzen has nothing better to do with his playtime other than sit in Dalaran in front of the mount vendor and beg.



That was the entire exchange.

On a final note, it really didn't occur to me until a couple hours later that I had now solved a big part of Kuan's bag space woes while farming. w00t!

Rebuilding our raid

Darkfall needs to rebuild the raiding crew, starting with healers, so Kuan stops being stuck with it.

I took the time last Saturday afternoon to improve our website a bit at darkfall-guild.com, and Clara has posted a recruitment notice in the Hyjal forums. A guildie, Earthen, who plays a female Tauren boomchicken, has also been trying to recruit in the cities.

We've already picked up one new person and potentially another; we got 10-man Halfus down last night and are working on Valiona & Theralion. I know that's behind the curve, progression-wise, but we'll catch up.

I'm Here to Kill Dragons

Since becoming an officer in Darkfall a couple of weeks ago I've been leading raids.

Initially it started out with the GL asking for someone to lead raids during Darkfall's traditional raid times: Sun- Tues. Because he now works at those times. The GL would continue to lead raids on Thursday. However, that kind of randomly stopped. He can only raid on weekends now. I think he and his wife are playing together on the weekday evenings. (Which is adorable!) So I've added leading the raids on Thursday as well.

The schedule as it stands right now: Progression raids on Sun, Tues, and Thurs. Older raids for guild achieves on Monday, if people actually want to come. These raids are all from 9pm to midnight Hyjal server time.

I'm okay with this. Honestly I've been leading PUG raids since the end of BC when I put together a PUG for TK: The Eye. During Wrath I did some more with setting up and leading the Uld10 raids that got our drakes.

So now in Cata it shouldn't be quite so intimidating to be leading the Darkfall raids. However, Darkfall are the people I care about. They are my WoW family, and I don't want to let them down or make a fool of myself in front of them. I tend to feel personally responsible when we fail to kill a boss. And I tend to want to avoid conflict, so I'm unlikely to call people out on their problems.

All of this is leading up to me admitting that Darkfall hasn't killed any Cata boss except Argaloth. We've spent multiple nights wiping on Magmaw and Halfus. But either due to a bad dps or a bad healer (or both) we have entirely failed to get either of them down. I think we were close *once* on Magmaw.

I was talking to a coworker about this today, he said:
"Your job is to kill dragons. The guild leader's job is to keep people happy."

And he is totally right.

You can't do 10k dps on Argaloth? We need to find someone else to fill that raid spot.

You can't two heal Argaloth? We need to find someone else to fill that raid spot.

I'm not sure how to evaluate tanks. Maybe: You fail at taunting at the right time at Argaloth? You crumple like a wet paper towel when Argaloth hits you? You fail at using any cooldowns at all on Argaloth?

I need to get my brave on and only let people into the raid who can perform.

There are only two or three people I'm worried about failing that check. Most of our raiders are actually quite good. But in a ten-man it only takes one person who needs to be carried to make everything very hard, And two people being carried makes it impossible.

So tonight, we'll do Argaloth first, if we have TB. And if you can't fulfill your obligations to the raid then we will find someone else to replace you before we go to Magmaw.

I'm here to kill dragons.

RIP Gnoxen

There are some people that I know because of WoW and only through WoW. Gnoxen was one of them. I've known him since Vanilla WoW, when he answered my trade spamming and crafted herb bags for Kuanchichi and Viljo. I added him to my friend list then and kept in spotty touch with him after that. I remember being so pleased when he joined Darkfall in Burning Crusade.

We lost touch for a little bit in Wrath when DraNgNon and I left DF for a bit, and he left not long after due to schedule conflicts. But he was always on my friend's list. And when we did our Ulduar drake runs he was along for about half of it, I think.



I logged in last night to find that Gnoxen had passed away.

BRIAN PHILLIP BAKER
August 28, 1980 ~ January 31, 2011
"We lost our dear son, brother, uncle, grandson, and friend."

Brian Phillip Baker of Vancouver, WA, passed away on Jan. 31st.
He was most proud of his work as a mason. Brian loved fishing, was an avid music fan and movie buff, and could make anyone laugh with his wry observations about life and people. Ever the gentle soul, Brian was loved by anyone who met him and was honored to share his light. He adored his dogs, Chip and Eddie, who were his fiercest defenders, though each only weighed five pounds.
A graveside service will be held Sat., Feb. 5, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. at Park Hill Cemetery, 5915 E. Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, WA.
Donations may be made in Brian's name to Q Center at www.pdxqcenter.org.
Please share your condolences at www.columbian.com/obits.
Published in The Columbian on February 4, 2011

I'd never known his name, or age, or where he lived. I knew him as Gnoxen the Tauren druid. I had fun playing with him. I didn't know he was depressed.

I'm sorry Gnoxen, you'll be missed.