Not Tonight

I will not be picking myself for Yogg Saron tonight. I can't do it when there are FAR better dps-ers signed, however much I might actually want to go, because I understand in the end it's not about doing This One First, it's just about getting it done. Once Yoggy dies (and I have no doubt he will tonight) that's it, the Guild has cleared all the available 10 man content in game. That's a pretty significant achievement. Go us.

Earlier today, not long after logging, I was whispered by someone involved with the Joker Affair. As a result of this I was offered a spot in a 25 man PuG. I have now done ToTC in Large Mode:

I didn't win anything, but I gained a ton of very valuable experience, and 21 Triumph emblems for what was basically two hours work.The fact this can be done in a PuG was something of a revelation, but it does prove that if you can find 25 people who know what to do (and what not to do) with brains and a competant Leader, anything is possible.

Needless to say, I'm sure I can find something productive to do.

Wonders!

Yogg Saron, we can see you!

Vezax died last night, and I have Piller of Fortitude from the trash to show for it. It was a fairly significant upgrade for me as well, and the extra int on it was VERY useful. I'd still like a main hand and offhand though, maybe I can get into the Crusader 5 Man Heroic at some point. Needless to say, as we were able to grasp and down Vezax in one 2.5 hour raid window, I'd expect to see Yoggy buying it VERY soon. Ulduar 10 completion beckons!

After the Raid last night I do as I normally do, cycle the alts, faff about with bags and clearing items. I logged the Hunter just before bedtime... to find a message in my inbox from Joker ^^

Well then.

I have to say I was momentarily stunned. Even if he was made to write it, and even if he didn't mean it, this does go to prove that if you take the time to make people aware, stuff will get done. I have to applaud the Officers of the Guild in question for enforcing this 'punishment', and I have to say that even if Joker learns nothing from the experience, his Guild have maintained a very decent level of honor as a result.

So, next time someone is mean to you, don't just pretend it didn't happen...

The State of the Notion

So, it is with a tear in my eye that I begin this particular update, as I say farewell to not one but two abortive Death Knight projects. I have to be honest, the notion of a Hero Class is great in principle but for me at least, it just didn't work. Should I be utterly wrong about the new races and the new profession next expansion I only hope they bring a Hero Class with a softer side. Having to butcher a friend halfway through my starting quests kinda did it for me. Next time I'd like something that doesn't involve quite so much innocent slaughter, if that's ok.

Anyway, without any more faffage, let us get down to the State of the Alts.


So the Hunter-Formally-Known-As-Main saw a Heroic tour of Naxx across the weekend. What was abundantly apparent from doing Naxx complete (for only the second time) is that the last two bosses are a bloody pushover compared to some of the wing bosses you need to fight to get there. It's great to have done it again, and the guests the Guild took to help us get over the 'it's Summer and we're a bit light on bodies' stage seemed to really enjoy themselves. Rumour has it we'll be in Ulduar 25 on Friday. That's gonna be interesting...


The Alt-That's-Now-A-Main, on the other hand, has had a bit of a rest. Apart from breaking the 250 emblem mark in Ulduar 10 midweek (more on which below) I've been desperately flying around trying to find a Frost Lotus ANYWHERE (did they nerf the drop rate and not tell me?) and stocking up on mats for the 3.2 Jewelcrafting smackdown. I've got to 350 fishing solely via the magic of Marcia Chase (gawd bless her!) and the Lock is close to doing the same. I am asking Greatfather Winter for more cool stuff in fishing bags come December. Deviate Fish and Pygmy Oil are SO last patch...

Talking of Ulduar, we'd like to debut a new feature.


Right, so as a rule I'm not here to blow my own trumpet, except when it's in the cause of spectacular stupidity. Thursday's Ulduar saw a fair bit of that from the Druid Corner. Top of the pile, the incident which demonstrates that Topping the DPS Meters is Dangerous and is to Be Avoided At All Costs...


So, there we are on Holdir, 45 seconds in, with a Toasty Fire to my right, standing in a spotlight and using the Storm Cloud handily provided by the Shaman healer. For a brief, *glorious* moment I'm doing nearly 7000dps. Then I'm dead. One-shotted by Holdir for nearly 30k, coz I pulled aggro from our DK tank. Duh.

Note to Self: leave dps to people who are competant and survive the fight.

Stand by for much more Epic Azerothian FAIL coming soon. It's a certainty.

BOOOOOOOYAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Less of the yelling!

No, I can haz yells as we just one-shotted Freya with a Server Restart counting down in the background. Six minutes to go, and the second bit of hunter loot drops as I'm on my druid for heals.

BOO.

However, I can haz Tier Shoulders for the Druid... \o/

YAY!

Now gief us Server back so we can go do last Keeper and head for Yoggy...

Mammoth!

So, the aquisition of a new mount would not normally be a source of squee-age. However, this is no ordinary mount. This is a Reins of the Grand Black War Mammoth, which is not only one of those 1% drop rate vehicles, it also allows me to carry two passengers. Needless to say this will make moving around low level toons for my son SO much easier :D

It was also a pretty good night as we managed to clear seven bosses in Ulduar: entire outer area, the entire inner area (save the Iron Council who I suspect will be the warmup act on our next visit) and Holdir of the Keepers. I took P last night (it was SO nice not to have to heal) and got two upgrades and a shed-load of achievements.

Today I will mostly be stocking up on flasks and consumables...

Progress Report

So then, where are we?

We've effectively had a week in Ulduar 10. Last Thursday we did the four external bosses and Kologarn. On Saturday we were able to dispatch Auriaya and then had our first ever Assembly of Iron kill, and last night we finally downed Hodir. This is the biggest single period of progress we've had since Ulduar opened.

Ulduar is clearly NOT!Naxx in every single way possible. It's designed to make you move about, to discourage blanket AoE, to make people focus not simply on standing and nuking but also on maximising limited and highly mobile buffs, on positioning and on timing. For anyone who cut their teeth on MC or BWL that's nothing new, what makes the huge difference with 10 people is the margin of error. One death and fights like Holdir can become virtually impossible. We knew we could do him (and I had my doubts up until this point) when we hit his enrage at 5% with 9 of us alive. SO much to focus on in one fight: falling snow, beneficial buffs to maximise, places not to stand and then to stand, massive debuff damage... but when all 10 of us cracked it, it seemed all very simple. Grats to the Priest who grabbed the tier trousers. Never was one piece of tier so well deserved. There is a good chance we'll see Freya tonight. That fight I'm really not looking forward to at all.


This trinket dropped from Kologarn Thursday night. It's possibly the most useful piece of loot I have ever had. Equipped with my DPS set last night it made the vital difference (with an MP5 flask) between me having extra mana on Holdir and me having to use my innervate mid fight. In my tree set (and combined with the lovely green trinket there, the Majestic Dragon Figurine) it's a fantastic way to maximise my MP5 and keep healing for longer. Last night really did show the value of MP5 gear to any caster, but especially to those healing.

I'll do a round-up of the rest of the alt news later, but for now I'm really feeling rather happy with progress.

Lordy!

It's been quite a weekend. No, really it has. It's been HUGE.


See that there? Phear the Heroic Ulduar Achievements!!! Have been talking for a few weeks with someone from another Guild with guys at about the same level of progress as us, and last night they had some spots in a 25. So we went (myself, 5 others) and concluded that our Guild ROCKS. It was a good night, but given the choice I'd far rather be doing any content with the Homies. I am not complaining however for I have Boots of Hasty Revival and some Emblems of Conquest, which I reckon will be useful at some point in the future.

In Hunter News, 3 of the 4 Steamweedle factions are now done. I still have a chunk of Everlook rep to knock off, but it just needs me to apply myself and it's done. I'm 600 rep short of Exalted with the Scale of the Sands after an impromptu Hyjal on Saturday. And with a couple more trips to MC, I will be done. I'll have Flame Keeper as a title before that however, despite the screwup Blizz made with the Midsummer achievement. After that I have a vague plan that involes 75 pets and 50 mounts. I will be changing my name to Noah shortly afterwards.

There is more, but I need to prep myself for a Sunwell Run tonight as we attempt to finish off the Dungeonmaster Quest. To the bank!

He Told Me So

So, my husband was spot on. He said the first week we entered Ulduar they'd nerf it, and I laughed at him. How foolish I am.

We're currently in the process of making further difficulty adjustments via hotfix to the following encounters:

• Ignis the Furnace Master
• Razorscale
• XT-002 Deconstructor
• The Assembly of Iron
• Kologarn
• Auriaya

The difficulty of these encounters is being lowered in multiple ways. Some of the adjustments are live already, others will be live soon. Note that some of the spell tooltips for the encounter will not reflect the hotfixes being deployed until the next patch. As the hotfixes are deployed, the Service Status board will be updated. You can check the current hotfix thread here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16474158165&sid=1

Further adjustments are highly likely to some of the other encounters in Ulduar, but these were the highest priority encounters for us. We want to allow additional players to experience more of the cool Ulduar content.

I'm going to say I'm disappointed, because I really am.

Of course it's great news for many people who I KNOW would never have gotten past the XT-002 in it's pre-nerf state. However, it does (for a brief moment) make me wonder why Blizzard bothered with the testing at all. It also throws up an issue I was going to post on at the time I was on the PTR and I think is worth revisiting now: who actually tests on the PTR in the first place.

Casual raiders don't test content on the PTR. Hardcore guilds do. Casual raiders, by their very definition, have better things to do (like get ready for the patch in Heroics or by grinding mats to make items they'll need to be able to do the new content in the first place) If you want them to test stuff then the current PTR system is a complete and utter waste of time, because by the time they've gotten around to downloading the PTR patch or queued their characters for transfer... well, they're going to not want to waste any more of their time on something that won't give them any satisfaction. Really, if you want more people to get to see the content Blizz, you just need to give it to them. I assume it's easier to make hard encounters less taxing than make easier things more complex, hence the hotfix celebration of the last week. I have to think however there's an easier way. Not sure what it is, and if I think of it I'll be sure to let you know...

Anyway, it's great news for my Guild. Thursday is now our scheduled Jour du Biffage. Reports will of course be forthcoming...

Three Down...

After the Deconstructinator... the road to Ulduar is clear!

It is often noted that this game, like it or not, is a lot to do with luck. Last night we proved that it has very little to do with luck and pretty much everything to do with the people you take. That whole 'bring the player, not the class' adage works pretty well, when all is said and done.

We didn't have two of our players from Sunday: we lost shaman totems and a druid's Leader of the Pack. We gained a Death Knight's fairly awesome dps (nearly 4k in the XT-002 fight) and another DK's superlative tanking, and we one-shotted him with less than 10 seconds to spare to the Enrage. We gained an achievement. We lost two people in the fight, but people went the extra mile, from the Druid healer who moonfire spammed her way through the heart phase to the Pally tank who dealt with the adds. EVERYONE contributed in their own way to the kill, and it happened so fast I still can't quite believe we did it. Gief achievement to convince me!

Ooh look, we did!

After that we decided on Razorscale. We refined our tactic from Thursday (when we wiped horribly), got our mage to start the Event and braced ourselves for the Dark Irons... who never came. No mole machines, no chain lightning... just blue flame balls from above until we got her to 50%, she landed... and we killed her with 2 people standing. Yes it may be an assist, but we'll take the kill thanks very much as it means our hunter got the fourth best pair of gloves currently in game for his class and a priest grabbed a pretty damn fine trinket.

We ventured inside next (Ignis can wait) and took a look at both the Assembly of Iron and Kologarn who, on our first (not very serious) try was taken to 72%. I reckon he'll be the way we go initially as the Iron Council looks like a far more techinically complex fight.

All in all it was a fantastic night. Snacks and respect to the Guild, who yet again showed that it's nothing to do with the classes and EVERYTHING to do with the players... especially if they're DK's :D

Seriously: Good Job Guys!

It's In the Trees, It's Coming...

I'll discuss the Ulduar strangeness in a moment, but first I want to mention summat that made me stop and and think on WoW Insider this morning. It is being suggested in some quarters that Ulduar might be a Guild breaker. As the article says 'Ulduar seems to be where the rubber meets the road with casual raiding. If there's a guild out there who has a few lesser raiders carried along by a few high-level veterans, Ulduar's likely to cause some friction.'

I think, if I'm honest, it all boils down to whether people are prepared to move out of their comfort zones to make progress. Naxx was quite a challenge for the casual raider, but it was well documented. Ulduar is still pretty much unknown territory. However casual you might be there is a point, at least where I stand, where you have to decide whether raid progress is actually what you want from the Game. More importantly it's whether your Guild is prepared to accomodate your point of view if you decide not to raid when the vast majority of people are happy to do so. It's part of the constantly-evolving process that IS this game. Choices, decisions, whether you do X or Y when you log, how important gear and progression in whatever enviornment you find yourself in... all of these can be easily accomodated in this virtual world, assuming that the people who run your Guild are prepared to be flexible and communicate with you as to what is needed and what is expected.

I'm in the process of writing a Mission Statement for the Guild, along with our Officers. It may seem to some a bit pointless, but experience has proved with the people we have that if you communicate with them in an honest and forthright manner there are fewer issues, and confusion is far easier to avoid. So, if we tell people exactly what we'd like to see happen, it should make what we do a lot clearer to everybody. I suspect if I were twenty years younger I would be accused of being 'far too emo' about the whole thing but it works. I would like to think if anyone has a problem in Guild we hear about it and try and sort it by that person coming forward and saying something publically. It doesn't always work, of course, but the fact we're about to celebrate our fourth anniversary on the Server makes me think we must be doing something right.

ANY new development in game has the potential to be a Guild breaker. If the people in the Guild aren't talking or don't understand each other, that's as dangerous as a Boss that wipes you for two weeks straight with no progress. It's all down in the end to communication. Dueg's GM shouldn't have been talking to his Guild in the instance, he should have been talking to them BEFORE they went in. This should have been the topic of discussion after the first run. The more you can make people aware, as quickly as possible, the more chance you have that people will actually grasp the importance of the situation. If all else fails of course, you'll just have to take people in and let them see for themselves.

If they're not prepared, they'll find out soon enough.

And He's DOWN!

Raidgroup: 3 - Ulduar: 0.

I would post you the Achievement for the Deconstructinator, but the server was just reset.

More tomorrow!

Not Quite Enough

So, here is my damage from last night's foray into Ulduar. The 4% is how far we got the X002 Deconstructinator to before he enraged and owned our asses.

I died fifteen times. It was hugely frustrating but at the same time immensely satisfying to be making up our own strategy again for the first time. I have absolutely NO idea how you would be able to do this in 10 man Naxx gear (as has been said is possible by Mr G. Crawler this weekend) unless those people are infinitely better players than I am, because I was at my limit. The entire two and a bit hours, and it STILL wasn't enough :(

Looking at my numbers, and considering what everyone else was outputting, I surmise I'm about 500dps short. So, last night I made some changes:

I have repecced to 57/0/14, which gives me the Master Shapeshifter buff (+4% damage) and Omen of Clarity (chance of free cast) I've put three points in Celestial Focus (+3% spell haste) and removed Dreamstate, instead throwing a point into Intensity (17% of mana regen continues while casting) I have found a combination of gear that lifts me above 1850 damage, but (sadly) is gonna need Snapper Extreme (+30 hit) to push me to cap, so I lose the extra spell damage but gain 400 health.

Will it be enough? I'll let you know on Tuesday when we go back to try and make it 2/14 in Ulduar.

In other news...

Yes, that's W's Lock spells there. The new dailies at the Tournament (plus the Sons quests) were enough to get her almost to 80, the last couple of bars happened in a Halls of Lightning. She's still wearing the vast majority of her 70 gear but can still pull enough dps for Heroics. Next step is to actually get her into some :p

So, that's three of the family levelled. I have NO idea who I'm going to do next...

...and I feel Fine!

So, there are those who have decided, because the professionals went in and cleared out Ulduar in a night and a bit, that it's all a bit too easy. They've decided that the entire raiding experience has been cheapened or debased. They've decided it's the End of Warcraft as we know it.

What a load of utter bollocks.

We went in last night for the first time. Our team could have been better (for a start they could have found a competant Boomkin) but we weren't there to try and clear half the instance, we were there to have a look and judge what we need to be aiming for. We started with 10 man because we thought it was going to be easier. How wrong we were.

Ulduar ISN'T easy. It's not got the advantage of having existed pre-expansion and it doesn't have the advantage of lots of Guild having been there. PTR training aside *before you even get inside* there are FOUR VERY COMPLEX AND CHALLENGING 10 man encounters. See, I did that bit in capital letters. There are ton of new skills to learn for the Flame Leviathan encounter but this does at least allow you a measure of leeway (if you die you can come back in, wait for a new vehicle type to respawn and return to the fray) We downed him on the second try of asking once we worked out you need someone on top of the vehicle and you HAVE to take out the turrets:


As an aside I clearly didn't get Epic Flight Form on Wednesday, and neither did I join the Brew of the Month Club. Blizzard Changes FTL :(

We then spent an hour on Razorscale and concluded that we needed a better strategy than the guides we could find would give us, so we avoided Ignis the Furnace Master and headed straight for the XT-002 Deconstructor.

When we left we'd pulled him down to 34%. It's an incredibly complex fight by my standards, there is a LOT going on and you need to be totally aware of your own health and what is occuring around you. The damaging debuffs come thick and fast and you are required not simply to just stand and dps (which is so often the case in Naxx) but to watch your range to everyone else, to watch your health and to watch the spawning of robots which, if you let them get too close to the boss will bugger up all of your good work. Plus, he's on a six minute enrage timer. Yes, SIX minutes. So it means (if like us you bought two tanks, and two and a bit healers) the dps have to be VERY good.

I suspect we will be spending some time in the Ulduar Car Park. I suspect it is going to take us quite some time to make it to Yogg Saron. If we are as typical of casual raiding as I believe we are, this is going to be a long road before we've cleared the content. In this respect I think Ulduar is a total and complete success. If you think it's too easy you're either spoilt rotten or talking pants, or you've simply not had the chance to be here.

When we finally kill Yogg Saron on 10 man, and we will, it will be one of the hardest fought victories I've ever achieved in game. And we will have earnt it, good and proper.