GnomeDruid

Friday night we couldn’t muster a full raid. We’d done 1st Quarter (obviously), Plague and Blood the night before. They asked me to come on Tim so we’d have enough healers

So, the 9 of us who were there decided to get our free badge from the frost trash. And then the raid leader said “do y’all want to poke at Valithria?” The majority voted yes, I was elected to stay out and heal the raid while the pally and shammy went in the portals.

Knowing how bursty that damage can be, I was a little nervous. But we set up an Innervate/Mana Tide rotation with the shammy and the other druid and away we went.

We 1 shot it.

I’m pretty sure no one died (maybe one).

Once again, I forgot to screen shot it. (or combat log it. I really should get the mod that does that automatically.)

Color me surprised.

On the 1 shot part, not on the screenshot. That’s becoming a matter of course.

I didn’t really feel overwhelmed, until the end when the mobs just came pouring out. I was starting to get that feeling that I was going to have to let someone die and doing my preliminary panic of who it should be.

And about when I was starting to feel overwhelmed, green lightning zapped the remaining baddies and we won!

And I took several moments to breathe because MAN, that was intense.

I still in many ways think of myself as a “backup” healer. The shaman and paladin have been healing since the inception of WoW. I’ve been doing it a little over a year. I still feel “slow” sometimes and know that I tend to take too long to make panic decisions.

That fight, I felt like I was judiciously using Swiftmend as needed, and (I believe) fired off natures swiftness + Healing Touch at least once.

DPS Fu + Tree Fu = Win

While I’m happy for what I feel I accomplished, a lot of the credit has to go to the DPS. Because having done both roles on the Valithria fight, I firmly believe that fight is as much about the raid NOT taking damage in the first place, as it is the healers pumping out as much HPS as they can.

Lemme ’splain.

In order to “win”, you’re reducing the amount of healers you have paying attention to the raid, so they can devote themselves solely to Dreamweaver. This means the healers who ARE on the raid are shouldering more of that responsibility than normal. Having done this myself, it’s very difficult (at least for me) to split my focus and do more than cast a Wild Growth in the direction of the raid.

If the DPS are slow getting the Blazing skeletons down or don’t get away from the abombs and get attacked by grubs, that’s more damage that the remaining healers have to take care of. If the DPS are quick and get the Blazings down, and interrupt the arch mages, and get the &$## away from the dead aboms, that’s that much less damage that the raid healers have to deal with.

So just because it’s a “healer fight” doesn’t mean the rest of the raid isn’t involved. Keeping your head, and being aware of your surrounding is important for EVERYONE in that fight. And as the raid gets better at dodging and at getting the Blazings down first thing, that fight will go smoother for everyone.

Gosh, that was reasonably insightful for a Monday morning, and on a time-change weekend at that…

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Good morning!

I had good pugs this week! Or at the very least, I head-desked enough that I don’t remember the bad ones.

I got Halls of Lightning last night on the Gnome, and it was a fantastic run. Towards the end, this little conversation took place:

For the record, this was in the room just before Loken. I had been in my Pirate Hat and Tentastaff “outfit” since I zoned into the instance. This was the first time anyone said anything.

PicoDPS reported that on Loken, I did 5500 dps, even with my silly clothes on. The rest of the run I was doing between 2500 and 3000 consistently on the trash, depending on whether or not I felt I could safely seed of corruption.

Since that level of dps exceeds that necessary for Patchwerk 25, I’m fairly sure it’s okay for most heroics.

License to Sill-y

I have a wonky sense of humor, if it’s not clear from the site. I do little things to amuse myself.

Delay too long at the start of a raid, and I’m likely to SoulStone myself and leap off the nearest high object, just for my own amusement. (Note: Don’t do this unless you know you have an easy run to your corpse. Not good to have 10 minutes of death sickness because you had to spirit rez. Not that I’ve done that. *cough* >_>)

And since most pugs today tend to be “down to business” and quiet, I need something a little silly to keep myself entertained on my 1001st Nexus run.

So I shall continue to wear the pirate hat and tenta-staff, and continue to post any silly conversations I have over it.

And if someone boots me for it? I shall laugh my butt off and post their name publicly.

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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.

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!!

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.

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