GnomeDruid

Caliban has now officially completed 3 of the 4 wings of Icecrown Citidel, 10 man.

Thursday we did the front quarter, Plague Wing and Princes. We started off Friday with a kill of the Blood Queen, and then went on the Valithria. I had not successfully done either of those fights before.

Allow me to just say: those fights are NUTS.  I really need to retain the presence of mind to snap screenshots at the time of kill.  Mostly because I find it amusing the proportion of the raid that is often DEAD when that occurs.

1, 2, 4 (three sir…)

After Valithria, we of course went to look at Sindragosa. Many of us had not been there before, so it was a learning experience. I had fun soulstoning myself and jumping down the elevator shaft behind the green dragon room. (Sans equipment).

Luckily, I was able to get my equipment BACK on before the ambush threw me into combat.

Sindragosa is an interesting fight, and we were definitely getting the hang of the varying mechanics by the end of the evening. We got her below 30% at least twice, and the last attempt was dangerously close to 20%. I think they have a strong chance of getting her down on Monday evening.

It's a little chilly in here...

The Ice Tombs were by turns the most fun, and the most frustrating part of the evening. Whenever I would get blocked, I would try to get frozen in a fun position.

If only I’d been wearing the tenta-staff.

The problem with this, is that sometimes my guildmates had trouble counting to four.

You see, four is the number of Frost Bomb’s that Sindragosa drops during her air phase. Unfortunately, there were times (and do note the plural form of that word) where, for some reason, the frost tomb would be broken after the third of them.

When there was one bomb remaining.

Leaving my poor, adorable, gnomish behind to get frost bomb-ed before I could run to the safety of the other Tomb.

Jerks.

In all seriousness, I didn’t mind. I found it incredibly funny (usually). Especially when the guild leader started counting out the frost bombs after the 2nd time it happened.

Especially when his count was OFF.

The little things amuse me. ^_^

As stated, despite the silliness, and the occasional “why the heck did I die to her Frost Nova?”s, we did really really well for what was our first attempt. Good luck getting her down Monday, guys.

The Buff

This week saw the advent of the zone-wide buff in ICC. My guild is torn on it, opinion-wise. We have a couple folks who feel like they’re cheating to use it. They recall our pre-nerf kills on some of the bosses from previous dungeons, and how GOOD it feels to do that, and I totally agree with them.

And then you have the guild members who are okay with getting that little extra boost to get us through a fight we’ve been struggling with for a few weeks, and I totally understand that position, too.

I’m pretty much in the middle of the road when it comes to the buff. So here’s my position on the buff.

• Pre-buff, we can reliably get down the 1st quarter, the Plague quarter and Princes. (Reliably meaning with a minimum number of execution failures. )
• Pre-buff, the guild had gotten down Blood Queen and Valithria.  So, we had, as a guild gotten 10/12 of the ICC bosses down without a buff. This is, in my opinion, NOT BAD for a guild who only raids 3 hours, 3 nights a week.

I have no doubt that we could eventually get those other two bosses down.

Note the use of the word “eventually.” We are a casual guild. While we have some folks who are there nearly every week, the rest of the spots are filled with a rotating menagerie of toons. I don’t want to say we have someone new every week, because that’s not the case. But we often have folks who haven’t raided in a week or two, and don’t have that boss “down”. We’re not that tight, cohesive unit who all know the intricacies of the fight inside out.

I have limited time to play, and the prospect of repeating wiping isn’t really a fun one for me. If the buff makes it easier for a week or two until we get more experience with the fights, and get a little more gear to the point where we can “fudge” a little when the RNG decides to throw us two blazing skeletons at once, then I’m perfectly cool with shutting the buff off.

For now, leave it on. It makes my damage look good.

Gears!!

DOOM.

We had sufficient healers so that Caliban was able to run both nights this week. And I got upgrades!

I traded Cold Convergence for Abracadaver.

Replaced  Brimstone Igniter with Wand of Ruby Claret

And swapped in the Dark Coven Hood for Helm of Clouded Sight.

It’s hard to see in the screenshot, but the hood doesn’t cover your whole face, if you zoom in, you can actually see ‘your’ chin below the face part.  It’s kind of cool.

Plus, I look like a freaky oompa-loompa. I may keep this hood showing for a bit.

I also got the Scourgelord’s Baton, if I ever get another main-hand weapon. Although, at this point, I think the Magharii Chieftan’s Staff is probably the best option available to Cali. Rawr says otherwise, but it’s ‘lock model is borked at the moment. I’m not sure there are any viable 1-handed caster weapons in ICC10.

I take that back, there are several. And one especially tasty one off of Arthas. Hmm. I’ll have to do some calcs to see what combos are better, stat’s wise.

Anywho, past the gnome’s bedtime.

Hope y’all had a good week.

No Comments »

So, Thursday night did rock-eth muchly, despite having some “new” folks in the raid.

Timmy got his fancy schmancy ring, which I have still forgotten to get a gem for.

One toon down, one to go.

Not that Caliban has been raiding lately.

On Raiding and the Gnome

If it’s not clear from the journal, Caliban hasn’t been raiding much lately. And honestly, I’m a little bummed about that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Timov is useful to the guild, and that the raid leaders are willing to let me take him when they need a healer.

But I never intended on making him my “main” in guild. It just kind of happened that we needed healers, and they started pulling Tim in for those fights where they needed a 3rd healer, and … now he’s coming for the full run and Caliban is “benched” in a sense.

No one loves a gnome

Now, I prefer to bring one toon for the whole run. That way, if I happen to have oodles of time on the weekend, I can take the other toon to a pug or friend’s raid. So, I’m not complaining about that.

And, to be honest, It’s only been about 2 or 3 times tops that we’ve brought Tim for the whole time.

When our main paladin healer gets over being sick and comes back, I think I’m gonna talk to the raid leader about it and just let him know that while I don’t mind bringing Tim, it was never my intention to bench Cali or swap mains. I don’t wanna be the guy who gets to bring 2 toons to the raids since we’re pretty much a “one main” guild. So, if I have to choose, I know who it’s gonna be.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find room in my bank for about 400 Festival Dumplings.

No Comments »

Aggro, I has it.

Hey guild, I’m proud of you.

We lost a lot of people at the end of last year and went from 25 man to 10 man progression raiding. That was disheartening.

Some good folks left, and some questionable folks didn’t.

Some weeks, we struggle with the “easy stuff”.

I was, to be quite honest, worried about tonight.

One of our regular, main healers (holy pally) is still out with a cold. In his place, we have the hunter-turned-pally healing for his first time with us. (Not first time healing, but first time running with us as healer)

And then there was the warlock-gone-boomkin that I just … Yeah, I dunno.

And then there were the disconnects, the lag…

It could have been a Really. Bad. Night.

And then we go and 1-shot Festergut, Rotface, AND the Princes, which we NEVER do.

The Professor gave us a little trouble to start with, but after 3 wipes to random stuff, that was THE absolute cleanest kill we have EVER got on him.

Everyone there brought their A-game tonight.

Guild, you can frustrate me, you can make me laugh, you can make me want to go play my un-guilded DK.

And tonight you make me proud to say: Timov <Has Aggro.>

No Comments »

Well, once again I neglected to grab a screenshot, but this one is close enough.

The Sunday 25 run went really well.

And by really well, I mean, we got sloppy on the Good Ship Free Loot, of all things.

One-shot Saurfang (I swear they lowered his energy gain…) and then proceeded to the two Aboms.

We’ve gotten Rotface down before, and we did so again, though as the screenshot shows, it wasn’t the cleanest kill ever made.

Then we went and said hello to Festergut. After a couple buttpulls, and some really close calls, we got him down. It was about the same as above: most of the raid dead as we pounded out his last 1% of health.

It was a first kill for that run, and it felt really good to get him down. I love that a group who runs for 4 hours once a week is that put together.  We’re not blowing through the content like some guilds, but we do a darn good job.

Lady Deathwhisper was kind enough to drop her chest piece, which Tim won. I know I know, I’m a bad druid, there’s no haste on it…. which is true, but the other stats and the extra gem slot made it a significant upgrade over my Shattered Fellowship.

All in all, it was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

No Comments »

I need to remember to take screenshots during raid.

We had a reasonably successful ICC run this week.

Thursday night we one-shot the first quarter, 2 shot Rotface and Festergut, and then said “hi” to the Professor and proceeded to fall apart like a house of cards in a hurricane.

We wisely called it a night.

Tonight we came back and kicked his ass. It took us several tries, admittedly, but we did get him down. Timov got his achievement for the plague quarter.

Then we went on and said “hi” to Valithria. She said “hi” back and the mobs said OM NOM NOM YOU TASTE GOOD and proceeded to roast us till we said “enough!” and ran away like little girls.

Then we went and kicked some Princely ass.

The cool thing is (and kind of the scary thing)… neither of the regular “Main” healers were there. Which means that both nights, it was me, the good priest and when we needed him (Festergut, Valithria attempts) the Tankadin in his off spec.

I know some of the wipes were at least partially my fault. My “oh shit” buttons are still not second nature, and sometimes I reach for Nourish when I should be hitting Natures Swiftness or Rejuve/Swiftmend. And there were some times when I panicked a little and didn’t get heals off in time.

And then there was the Princes attempt where Somehow I got in melee range and got meleed for 30K right out of the gate.

Yeah, I felt REAL competent after that… Hurp de durp, I gonna go stand in melee range! whee!

But, even tho we didn’t get Valithria to more than 75%, I feel really good about what we DID get done, with a bit of an off-crew. And I know that I can 2 heal that, and I know some things I need to work on (and not just coast on the fact that there’s 4-5 other healers backing me up in a 25-man run.

We also manged to get The Orb Whisperer, which was kind of cool.

Now, if we can just get them to drop some caster loot next week, that would be fantastic.

No Comments »

mmm, turnips.

I don’t play a hunter, not even on TV.

However, this post over at wow.com has some interesting points in it.

Point the first: Aggro

Note that in all cases, if you pull aggro it is your fault. It is never the tank’s fault, no matter how incompetent they are. It is our job as DPSers to monitor our threat and adjust accordingly.

Point the Second: Intended Audience

Don’t be angry with people who are poorly geared or just learning the fights. These heroics were designed for them after all, and they’re doing exactly what they should be doing to get geared up.

Point the Third: DPS Meters Suck

(Okay, not really)

Heroics are a horrible metric for your DPS. Your DPS will vary depending on what heroic you get, what classes you’re with, and how well they perform. Generally the better the DPS of the group, the lower your individual DPS will be. Expect your DPS to vary wildly, even between runs of the same instance.

Point the Fourth: Keep a Weather Eye Out

Also, keep an eye on your healer. Both bad tanks and bad DPS can cause mobs to be on the loose (it is not always the tank’s fault). Regardless, if you see a mob loose fire a Freezing Arrow at your healer’s feet. I like to do this even if the loose mob isn’t on the healer yet, just to be safe. Your healer will love you for it, even though she probably doesn’t deserve it given how little she heals your pet.

That’s a lot of quotin’ there, Caliban

Ayup.

I’m gonna back up and say I don’t peruse wow.com that often, they’re not on my RSS feed, and I generally ignore them. Some of their articles (like this one) have some good meat in them. But others seem to brush the surface and never really dig in. If I wanted that, I’d read my own blog (BURN!).

But this article had some good points, until it delved into hunter mechanics that I could really care less about.

Items 1 & 2:

Heroics were intended for leveling and gearing up, folks still need to use them for that purpose. The Frost badges were tacked on after, and we need to not be jerkst to the folks who are still using the heroics as they were originally designed. That stupid hunter from my H-Utgarde Pinnacle this weekend needs to learn this lesson.

Not everyone hits 80 with a full set of T9.0 and knowing every facet of their class. There’s a learning/gear curve. Those of us who ARE rocking ICC gear already need to be aware of this. It may take a few more minutes to get through the instance, but we can get through.

If you want to face roll, group with similarly geared folks that you know. You’ll still get the extra badges if you choose “Random”.

Item 3:

This one is mainly for me. Cali still doesn’t have a proper Destro spec. I have this weird Demo/Destro Felguard hybrid that I normally swap to in instances so I can get a bit more burst damage. It doesn’t even have conflagrate.

But — I can still pull out 2400 DPS or so, which is plenty of DPS for 10-Man Patchwork, and is plenty of DPS for the average heroic.  A 30-second Heroic Group kill (hell, some of the BOSSES go down faster than that now…) doesn’t let a warlock “get up to speed” on their dps.

And that’s totally cool.

Item 4:

Love your healers, and they will love you. I’m not a hunter, but I still have things I can do to help the healer out, especially if the tank is a little … clueless. In Azjol-Nerub I can plant my felguard next to the healer on Aggressive to take out the little things that are gonna bee-line for her.

On my DK, I can death grip a mob going for him and drag it back to the tank (who will hopefully then pick it up…). If necessary, I can pop Icebound Fortitude and tank it for a second or two.

Just because you’re there as DPS doesn’t mean you get to ignore what’s going on around you.

Conclusion:

It is VERY easy to get tunnel vision:

• Get in, get badges, get out.
• Don’t let the bars drop too low….
• Must Max DPS!

But when you focus on one thing, you ignore the other possiblities.

Deep breaths, slow down, and have fun.

And hey … talk once in a while. If I wanted to run an instance with zombies, I’d go subject myself to Culling of Strat again. And at least they go “rawr” every now and then…

Image copied (not hotlinked) from www.biodiversityexplorer.org

No Comments »

What in Hera’s name is WRONG with people? YEESH!

Yes, you guessed it, it’s time for …  MORE PUG FAIL!

Utgarde Pinnacle: The DK

Vladimir of Sen’jin, congratulations. You were the first person I’ve initiated a vote-to-kick on.

You kept pulling when asked not to, you were rude to the original tank, and your childish and unnecessary behavior caused him to leave. You also used “gay” as a derogatory descriptor, which was just icing on the cake. The ALL CAPS thing you  had going on was annoying.

While you were out of the instance ganking lowbies or whatever you do for fun, the healer and the other DPS and i spoke openly about planning to vote kick you as soon as we were able. I almost wish we had waited until just before the final boss to get that extra dig in of wasting your time, but I was also glad to just have you GONE.

You’re on my ignore list. I never have to deal with you again.

Culling of Strathome: The Druid

This instance is annoying anyway. It’s a guaranteed 30 minutes, once you’re past the 5 minute opening sequence. It was quite obvious to me from the start that we had 2 new folks who didn’t know WHAT THE FUCK they were doing.

Two of the DPS left at the outset (right after Rixa the shaman asked if anyone had a Love Fool, not sure if it was related). No worries, replaced them quickly and moved on.

Rixa and Hordekiller i think the Pally-tanks name was, if you don’t know what to do in an instance … ASK. I’d be happy to explain it. But watching you run in the OPPOSITE direction from the little white flag on the mini map made it pretty clear you’d not done Culling before, despite your little conversation about “having lost the drake rolls SO many times…”

Other than that, the run went smoothly, no ones health got low, the gauntlet was a little sticky with the tank not paying attention to where the rest of his group was… and then, Rixa you little shit, you Needed on the Frozen Orb.  Right after you and the tank got your achievements for both normal AND Heroic Culling of Strat at the same time. I should have ignored you before I said “FU for rolling need on the orb” and quit group.

Frozen Orbs: The Principle of the Thing

Okay. I know they’re 10g on the auction house. I get that, when I have 8k in the bank, that’s Not A Big Deal (TM). It is the fucking principal of the thing.

Other than the Emblems of Frost, there are exactly two things that are useful to me out of those instances: Enchanting Mats and Frozen Orbs. I am WELL beyond the gear, and the gold I could make more through dailies and not have to deal with rude asshats.

So when you roll Need on the Frozen Orb, you are basically saying that you are more deserving of that loot than me, or anyone else in the run. That is not the case. I deserve an honest chance to get something useful to me out of the run.

So I will be rolling Need from now on. I will be announcing my intention to do so ahead of time, but I will be rolling Need. Until Blizzard makes those Frozen Orbs auto-greed, I will be rolling Need.

No Comments »

Hello, all you party people. Here is a little update from my corner of the world.

Love is in the Air

I have, in general, ignored this holiday event. I had all the achievements from last year, and they all carried over. I did run through the new questline, and did all of the new dailies precisely once. Did the new boss to get the achievement, and that’s about it. If a friend asked, I would lend them my summons for the day, but I’m not actively pursuing the stuff off the holiday boss.

In a general, abstract “I haven’t looked that closely” sense,  I think the changes they made were a good thing, especially over the RNG screwage of last year.  You still have a chance to not get all the candies you need, but at least you can buy all the candy BAGS you need, without depending on a random drop for those, too.

I have not looked at ALL at the Lunar festival stuff. Hopefully they’ve done something similar, perhaps added one new achievement or something that I can do peacefully and go on my way.

Raiding

Raiding is going well. Has Aggro (my primary guild) is doing 10 mans, and on Friday 1 shot the first 4 bosses, Festergut and 2-shot Rotface. We had a couple wipes on the Princes, made it to Blood Queen with 1 minute to spare on the quest timer, then got our faces et.

I did the whole run on Timov which was nice, since they usually have me run Cali for the first 4, then swap over. I don’t mind it, but it locks both toons to the same instance and locks them out of loot.

On that note, Muradin’s Spyglass is the hotness, and everyone should get one. Except dorf rogues.

On Friday I sat out of raid because I was on call for the weekend. They had rostered me on Cal, and rostered out the warlock who’d gone on Thursday. (We do a random roll, high roll wins, with some fudging for role-balance). That let him follow through, and meant that if I got paged for work, they wouldn’t be waiting on me.

They got a first “kill” on the Dreamweaver event, and got a 2nd kill on Putricide. Go team.

Pug Madness

In general, I love the new PUG system. There are always specific cases of pure suck, however. Three tales of Pug Horror behind the cut.

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Okay. So after a quite spectacular FAIL in Pit of Saron the other day, I am, for my own benefit, posting a review of boss mechanics for both Scourgelord Tyrannus and the Devourer of Souls from Forge of Souls.

Both of these bosses have an ability where they transfer incoming damage to another player in the party.

POS: Tyrannus

(For added humor, remember that “POS” is also the acronym for “piece of shit.”)

Tyrannus is the last boss in Pit of Saron. The main ability he has that causes problems is Overlord’s Brand. Overlord’s Brand causes one of two effects:

• Any damage done by the branded individual is amplified redirected to Tyrannus’ target.
• Any healing done by the branded individual is amplified & mirrored to Tyrannus.

It is very obvious who is branded, as there are little lines of lightning between you and the boss.

What this Means for DPS:

NO DOTS. Which sucks for warlocks (among other classes) because a large portion of our damage comes from the DoTs we cast. Boomkins and Feral druids are also gimped by this. Death Knights can’t use diseases.

STOP CASTING. The minute the warning comes up on Deadly Boss Mods (you are using DBM or some other party fight warning, right?) stop doing anything.

Any damage you do from the second the Brand is applied, will get transferred teh the tanks.

This includes DoTs already on teh target, as well as spells “in flight”. I need to do the fight again with a good group. I don’t recall if there is a cast time, or if it’s an immediate application. If there’s warning, interrupt your own casting.

I could not find anything that stated explicitly whether or not the targeted player’s pet’s damage would also transfer. I pulled my pet back, just to be safe, but it may not be necessary since they tend to count as their own damage source.

What this Means for Healers:

If you have an off spec healer, ask them to help out if you get branded. Otherwise, your heals will still hit the tank, they’ll just also hit Tyrannus.

Pretty much, you hope that the healer doesn’t get branded too much.

FOS: Devourer of Souls

Devourer is the end boss in Forge of Souls, which has a very similar ability to Overlord’s Brand called Mirrored Soul.  (Copy cat…).

Opposite to Brand, when Mirrored Soul is cast, the target begins RECEIVING damage done to Devourer. ALL players must stop DPS immediately so the player who is targeted by Mirror doesn’t go down in a blaze. This includes pets.

As with Brand, all DoT’s, including those already on the target, will transfer damage.

Why this is so Frustrating

First off, it’s frustrating because both mechanics severely gimp the DPS output of many classes. Warlocks, Feral & Balance Druids all have DoT-heavy rotations. For Death Knights, their Diseases are a large part of their DPS, and many of their skills are amplified when their diseases are on the target.

These fights remove a goodly portion of DPS for those classes.  If I was going to play these fights by the book, Caliban would be casting one spell: Shadowbolt (Or incinerate for destro).  That is one spell, as opposed to 3-to-5 in a normal rotation.

As a warlock, I already have trouble doing DPS in heroics. (I REALLY need to do a full Destro spec for the burst damage), and this just makes me feel even more gimp.

Secondly, it’s an idiot check. And when the idiots are killing other people, instead of earning their own special Darwin Award, it’s incredibly frustrating.

In the age of GearScore, people have this notion that they can just face roll these instances. And with the level of gear players currently easily have access to through the badge system, that’s true in a lot of cases. There are some fights where you need to be situationally aware and get out of the fire, but for the most part as long as your IQ is on par with a chimp, you can get through most things.

However, in the Icecrown Citadel 5-mans the difficulty was ramped up severely. You can’t treat them like Heroic Utgarde Keep, you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, and some players just can’t or won’t do so, because they’re so concentrated on — whatever they’re concentrated on. On most fights, 4 competent people can cover for one idiot. On these fights, one idiot can get someone else killed.

And if you have more than one idiot…

No Comments »

it's pretty pUgly in here.

I don’t like the new 5-mans, because they are pug killers. And when all I’m after are my 2 frost badges, they can be endless montages of humiliation and shame.

Case in point, the Pit of Saron pug Caliban got yesterday.

We smashed the instance, up to the gauntlet. Then we had problems.

The tree healer was not right on top of the tank,and the pally tank wasn’t dropping consecrate as often as I’d expect. Therefore, the tree was getting aggro and was lagging behind, and the tank wasn’t looking backwards.

We got through the first half of the gauntlet, but wiped at the end. The tree got dazed, stuck back in the tunnel with a pack of mobs, and splatted. He was unfortunately not close enough to the end of the gauntlet to use the soulstone and survive.

On the run back, I picked up one of the skeletons the tank had skipped and got splatted. We managed to get through the gauntlet in one piece that time, but Tyrannus took us down. Much bitching about fight mechanics (and I hate that fight anyway. It and the Souls guy deserve their own post).

On the way back in, the TANK aggroed the mob she’d skipped and I ended up getting close enough I got in combat, pulling aggro when I tried to help them kill it (sans healer) and died.

4th death in the instance. I thanked the healer for being good, and left.

I’m placing the blame for this one squarely on the tank. I did not see many consecrates while running through the gauntlet. Didn’t see many Avenger shield toss thingies.  I do not think she was doing all she could to make sure the gauntlet mobs were focused squarely on her.

The Tyrannus fight was mechanics and bad luck, I think. And I’m going to review that fight so it’s right in my head.

Timov also got Pit for his daily (I swear they run in streaks), but we rick rolled it, with only one death on Ick & Krick.

The new LFG is great. It can also be really frustrating when I have limited time, just want my badges, and having already spent 15 minutes waiting for a group, get in one that can’t do the instance.

I had a similar bout of stupid in a Culling of Strat instance last week, also on Cali. That group we could have done it if everyone had stuck it out for one more attempt. But half the people dropped, and I wasn’t going to waste time getting a group for a half cleared instance.

I think my new rule is going to be:

• Unless you absolutely can’t, make sure you go with at least 2 people you know.
• After 3 deaths that aren’t my fault, drop group.
• If you are frustrated and it’s past the 15 minute mark, don’t feel bad about leaving.

I play the game for fun. And my time is just as valuable as that of the other folks in the instance. I’m not going to be rude about it, and I’m usually more than willing to give it a chance, but I’m not going to beat my head on the wall repeatedly for the benefit of 4 strangers.

If I determine that the group is not capable of accomplishing what I need accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, I will leave.

*Image from WoWHead, not hotlinked.

ETA: Okay, I feel silly. I don’t pull out the pug pet because I found the butt scooting behavior disgusting. But I just got it. It’s a pug, and it’s wiping. Someone at Blizzard has a twisted sense of humor. Still not going to pull the pet out much, but I think that’s hilarious.

1 Comment »