Northrend Dungeon Master

Last night, to get Boon the Northrend Heroic Dungeonmaster Achievement, we went into Heroic Halls of Lightning and Heroic Oculus.

I came as Keiji, The Awesome.

Sitting at a little over 27k health and 27.5k armor unbuffed, with 35% dodge/parry and now with Lichborne, I felt supremely confident that we would pwn Loken and Eregos.

We started with Loken and he did go down like a pansy. That's right. Pansy.

Oh, Lightning Nova? HAVE SOME ANTI-MAGIC SHIELD, bish. Ditto with Ionar, oh, gonna do some static charge thing to me? Uhnuh, I don't think so. BAM.

We got the three achievements for heroic Halls of Lightning: Lightning Struck, Shatter Resistant and Timely Death. Boon died to the slag because he somehow misplaced his bubble. That's right. A paladin. Misplacing his bubble. So sad, so sad.

Then we moved onto Oculus. We didn't do any of the achievements.

We had some... issues. People hopping on their drakes, not waiting for those of us who haven't been there as frequently, and riding off into the wild blue yonder... and getting lots of aggro from the pesky elites flying around. We wound up dying more to trash flappy elites than we did to Eregos. And we did die. A lot.

And on the Mage, when the tank has to kite him out of his frost bombs? Yeah, ranged DPS opening up and grabbing aggro meant that he was constantly frost bombing the healer instead of the tank.

I can see why a lot of people do not like Oculus (and Malygos), because it has nothing to do with your skill as your chosen class, or your gear on your chosen class. To some extent, this is a GOOD thing, you don't have to be uber-elite to down Eregos or Malygos necessarily, just have experience in how to handle your drake and you can have as many DPS or healers or tanks that you want, regardless of what classes you really took in there.

We did finally get Eregos down. I was tanking on a Ruby Drake. Some of it was me learning the best way to use Evasive Maneuvers and Martyr and ... so frustrating. Boon was healing on an Emerald Drake and our three DPS were DPSing on Amber Drakes.

Getting the DPS to realize that doing whatever damage they did with the stacking whatever on the boss was better if more of them were doing it, where it could stack to 10 times? We had one DPS doing 15k damage for the fight, and the other two doing 6k. I kept going, "Whatever DPS 1 is doing, can DPS 2 and 3 do it also?"

I have no idea what it was, other than going in there as Keiji last night, I've been in the Oculus a grand total of ONCE.

But we succeeded and to my surprise, I also earned Northrend Dungeonmaster. Regular, not Heroic. I still need to whomp three heroics, of which I can't remember which ones they are, other than H.AN. *whimper*

Now I'm working on getting badges, badges and more badges to try to work towards getting the chest upgrade for Keiji. And I'll keep trying to run VoA 10/25 to maybe see if the Watcher will treat me as kindly as he treated Kikidas the other day.

Ridiculously Lucky

I (as Kikidas) had been in an OS25, which was an odd run in and of itself because the DK leader tried to not invite other DK's (or melee... curious that, dontchathink?) because of the DK tier token shares it with rogues, druids and mages.

Yet he had like, 5 mages. Go fig.

Anyway, so I finish the OS25 (getting nothing, lesigh), and I'm in Dalaran when the shout comes out that they need reinforcements!

I sigh to myself and note that I need an upgraded headpiece and appppparently, the Titan-forged Hood of Dominance is the one to get if you can get it. And to get it, you need 40 marks of Wintergrasp.

So I go do my duty and "help" take Wintergrasp.

And I see someone call out in LFG that they're forming a VoA25.

And I ask if I can join. And I'm in. And somehow, I'm given assistant. And we fill the raid up. I try for balance, so I didn't invite more than 3 DK's (despite the zillion and ten who wanted in the raid), tried to keep it at 3 mages and hunters, but we wound up with 4 and 4. A few rogues, a few druids, a few warriors, some priests, one pally, a few shaman... but no other warlocks even asked to come in (seriously, no one asked!). So I'm the only warlock.

And the Watcher goes down. And Seraphelia looks at the loot and says, "Damn it, three warlock pieces."

I laugh, certain he's jesting. But he says he isn't. And I nearly kill myself in the Watchers cloud o' gas trying to see... oh frabjabulous day... he isn't kidding.

Valorous Plagueheart Robe, Valorous Plagueheart Leggings and Deadly Gladiator's Felweave Trousers all dropped. And they start the rolls and someone politely points out (it wasn't me, either!) that there's only one warlock. And he asks if I want all of it...

I say, "Oh that would be kind of you, thank you."... okay, what I really said was "YES! :D :D :D"

I am ridiculously, undeservedly lucky.

Pushin' 1800

I took Kikidas into a few heroics yesterday (Thank you, Boon!) and watched as her DPS on bosses climbed from approximately 1400 to about 1800 as I got an upgrade here or there.

Granted, as a mostly affliction warlock, my overall DPS still needs some help... but my DPS on bosses was actually pretty nice. I find myself all nostalgic about the good old days.

My rotation on trash is to slap Corr/CoA on them all and then SB spam until I need to reapply.

My rotation on bosses is currently UA, Corr, CoA, SL, SB until I need to reapply. I think this needs working on. I have improved SB, so I may try to hit SB first to apply the debuff before I apply the others. And with the loss of SL coming soon, I will soon be able to start SB spam far sooner. I think I need to go back to the training dummy and smack it around a bit until I'm sure I have the best rotation I can get out of my hybridized spec.

One of the things I took OUT of my talent build was Dark Pact. I love it and I miss it, but with a pet that sometimes winds up dying in boss AoE/Splash damage, I can't rely on it.

So I'm having to be more conscientious of my mana bar than I have been in the past, in terms of when it's safe to life tap and when I may need to drain life or if the healer has the time to spare to catch me up.

Either way, having fun! And.. given that my guild seems to have way too many melee DPS and no ranged DPS, hopefully in a bit I can be an alternative DPS for when we just can't swing another melee'er into the group.

Heroics and Altisms

Of no surprise to anyone, I've rediscovered the joy of Heroics. Yesterday I ran three or four Heroics with a very nice trio of people, we kept switching out our last DPS with another of their guild members every run for some reason, from the Mighty Froggers on Alleria.

Their website by the way... it's in French. I'm linking it because it's also cool with the little buttons. (I'm easily amused)

I was worried when I first got in the group because they were speaking French, but they switched to English (at least in party chat) and invited me from one run to another.

So Zhiara the Bear, Frostdude the Mage and Gazou the Holy Pally -- Thanks guys!

And then of course, my 'usual group' formed and we waltzed through Utgard Pinnacle. We even got the My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time achievement.

Then our TANK (Posolutely) decided he'd rather go OUT and stare at drunk girls for a while. Pfft. Where's his sense of loyalty?!

So we had to hunt for another tank and just by luck picked up a lovely prot pally named Gamling. And then we ran Utgard Keep and Nexus.

Of course the belt didn't drop for me.

On a side note, I only have 5 more world drop JC recipes to go for Northrend. One is in regular Oculus, one is a drop off of mammoths in Storm Peaks and three are in Heroic VH, Heroic OK and Heroic HoS. Fun fun!

On a side side note, having my altisms linked to my husband (I can only play something linked with one of his characters) is helping reduce the sheer amount of ... leveling I'd be doing otherwise. If not for him, I'd have 7 level 73 people, 1 level 76 and 2 level 80's.

DAMN YOU BOON, DAMN YOU!

Memorable PuG Moments

We all have them, you join a PuG and something happens that sticks in your head, either to someone or something someone said... SOMETHING.

Last night I was looking for a heroic for Kvasira, ideally into one that drops one of those coveted expertise upgrades I spent so much time researching.

But I didn't get into one of those. I got into a pug for Heroic Azjol-Nerub.

It was me, a DK, a prot pally, a mage and I dragged Kyuushi from YouWakeIt in with me to heal it. Boon was busy with Vialora watching the Gator's game.

The first warning came when I was discussing with the tank what buffs to give. He asked if I had the one that reduces threat. Then if I had sanctuary.

Blessing of Salvation hasn't been around since before WotLK came out. Sanctuary, iirc, is a prot only buff.

We didn't get to the first boss. The 'chain pull' of three watchers was where we got stuck on. The tank was doing his best, unfortunately. He was new to either the tanking game or the prot pally game or to the heroics game or something, but he just did not do a good job. The mobs would splinter off and kill the healer or the mage. Or they'd turn and start hitting me. Or the DK.

It was sad. We died I don't know how many times before we said, 'Maybe we should try an easier heroic.'.

So we picked the Nexus. Pretty easy, right? The DK had to go, the mage also had to go (due to repair bill concerns). We picked up one of our guild rogues, Shortwinded, and the tank invited a priest he knew... who was holy, but could 'do good dps'. (Which was about 500DPS max)

We're in Nexus and get to the orc boss in ice. The priest eventually leaves because he isn't helping and wasn't aware that he was brought in to 'dps'. We get a mage.

We keep wiping. I eventually get so tired of wiping that I pop off a DI on the other paladin during one of our wipes. (Repair bill save FTW!)

This is where it gets fun.

He says, "I don't know what's wrong! I can't DO anything!"

We say, "You're DI'd."

He says, "But I didn't do it!"

We eventually politely disbanded, grabbed one of our guild tanks, Balendin, reformed with the PuG mage and had a wonderful quick run thereafter.

Of COURSE the Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle didn't drop for me. I just hope the Nexus isn't Kvasira's Heroic Hellfire Ramparts, Kathe's nemesis in the quest for the Tree-Mender's Belt.

I felt bad for the previous tank, because he was TRYING so very hard. I know nothing about prot pally tanking. Kyuushi was helping him as best he could and told him where he could go to read up on it, as well as suggestions to maybe not tank in heroics first.

One day, we will meet up again, little Prot Pally and we will share a chortle over the misadventures of our youth! I have had my share of 'Oh God, am I really that stupid/bad/horrible?'. I won't SHARE them, because yegads, that would be embarassing, but it's happened.

Brand New Year, Same Old Tricks

If you've been wondering where I have been (and I know you've missed me... it's been over 10 days since I've been around! How did you ever survive?), I was in Florida!

Florida, by the way, is just south of Un'Goro. The raptors are just a bit smaller, but still everywhere. And don't get me started on the size of the pterrodax's!

Anyway... so it's a brand new year. Have you guys made your Resolutions?

I made mine in November, shortly after my birthday. How am I doing with that? Meh. The wagon has fallen off the beaten path, but it's still stubbornly chugging along. Had to fix an axle here, a wheel there, but it's still plugging along.

But enough about the boring real world... how about in WoW?

Just because it's a virtual world doesn't mean you can't make resolutions for it, too.

Want that Traveler's Tundra Mammoth? Is your resolution to farm an hour (or more!) a day for funding?

Drooling over some piece of gear but feel you'll never be able to get into the instance it drops in? Have you decided to work towards bettering your character and your gear in ways you can?

Are you a DPS class that's getting outDPS'd continuously by the tank? Have you looked into what's going wrong? Do you have recount? Do you have appropriate gear for your class? Etc.

Since I'm perfect, I have no Resolutions in WoW.

(I'm kidding.)

We've started to hit Heroics with our Paladins (by 'we', I mean Boon and Kvasira) and ran our first two last night - Heroic Violet Hold and Heroic Culling of Stratholme.

We're going to be venturing into 10-man Naxx this weekend, just for a looksee and to see how many times in one night we can die. Any wagers?

I'm guessing we wipe at least 5 times. On our way to the first boss.

My shaman dinged 78 yesterday and so naturally I made Seraphelia (Boon's Blood/Frost DK) tank CoS at 78 too.

We made it through with only one true wipe. We had people die here and there, and I had to pull out all my tricks to keep my mana up. And at one point, I was tanking when Seraphelia died on a pull. Why did Seraphelia die? Because I thought it would be funny! (No, I'm kidding.)

It was very fun, in my opinion and I think Seraphelia did just swimmingly. The only true wipe was on Mal'Ganis, because no one realized he had a frontal arc AoE and I just couldn't keep everyone alive. (Bad shammy, BAD!)

Seraphelia however, kept giving me the hairy eyeball because we had three 78's in the instance. ("What part of 80 instance do you not understand, K?!")

*giggle*

Oh, it's good to be back.

7500 DPS in H.MrT!

Okay, sure... it was on the little arcane worms and I was SoCing my little heart out... but it was so very pretty to see!

My first instance running deep affliction with Kikidas with the new 51 point talent and ... wow, you don't have time to do anything but CoE-Haunt-UA-Imm-Cor-SL-SB... before you have to start recasting everything again!

I have to play with my rotation, very obviously. Because most mobs were dying before I was done casting even one 'rotation'. I've always been a fan of Corr-SBspam for trash. Boss fights, once that last a while longer, I need to figure out the best rotation for spell casting. Since I'm new to both Haunt AND Unstable Affliction, I need to figure out how to work their cooldowns in with everything else I need to do. It would also help if I could get my DoTimer up and running again.

Overall, my average DPS was 920something. Which is about 100 more than I typically run in your 'average' run.

The boost to tank threat is more than enough to offset my loss of blessing of salvation. I only pulled aggro from Owaru once or twice, and then only because I was being a baaaaaad baaaaaad DPS.

*giggle*

Kathe, Champion of the Naaru

So, in a heroic run to get the 'I wuz here' tag, we did all the heroics to get the Trial of the Naaru quests done. And then at 7 server tonight, we, as a guild first, downed Magtheridon. And in one shot. And with no missed clicks. With new people running the clickers.

It was a beautiful thing.

In the course of turning in the Trial of the Naaru: Magtheridon quest, some of us got the Champion of the Naaru title and others didn't... and we discovered the missing component! The Cudgel of Kardesh!

Egads, we said, thankfully before we did Gruul. So, since there were several of us in the raid that had also not done the Cudgel of Kardesh, a group of five of us splintered off from the raid and cleared to the quest giver in Heroic Slave Pens in 15 minutes. Then we summoned the people who needed the quest in, one by one.

And THEN we hit Gruul's. We one shot (barely!) High King... we had some odd issues, but as I was MTing the High King, I couldn't see what they were, other than jokingly Boon said, "It's just tanks and healers alive."

We two-shot Gruul's, as we had some issues with people standing in the Cave Ins and doing group therapy with Gronn's Grasp or whatever it is called.

The first time we did it... he was at 20 growths and growing, at 15% life. The second time, we did just peachy keen and fine.

So, we said... that's one half of the Cudgel. We still need Nightbane. And tonight is usually our Kara night and tomorrow is our ZA night! Oh noes! What will we do?

What we do is we grab a paladin tank, put together a group of the rest of us that need Nightbane and we zerg Karazhan. We take out Moroes and the Opera like we're taking a walk in the park and then we go and wipe the terrace with Nightbane.

And then we go BACK to Slave Pens, reclear the trash, and turn in the quest.

And FINALLY... I am Kathe, Champion of the Naaru!

I WUZ HERE!

Age and Experience

In our efforts to get everyone ready to down Magtheridon on Saturday for the Champion of the Naaru title, we had one large and one medium hurdle to cross, one that no one was looking forward to...

The timed heroic Shattered Halls and the heroic Shadow Labs runs.

But we decided to try the SH run tonight so if we failed, we would still have two more shots at it.

The lineup was Kathe as tank, Kyuushi as lazer-turkey, Boon as healer, Neshura as hunter and a S4 rogue that we picked up off the LFG channel named Tappout.

We roared through it, saved the Captain, with 13 minutes to spare. Our Unused Axe of the Executioner was really unused. We saved all three.

In the past, we could never get that far, that fast. It took too long, or too many deaths. Is it gear? Is it experience in knowing who to kill, how to kill, where to stand, when to pull?

Gear certainly plays a role, no one will deny that. But I think it's also experience! And kickassedness. (And this bear can't wait for improved swipe mechanics. Because AoE tanking those big pulls in both those instances SUCKS. Especially with trigger happy DPS!)

We completed it in an hour. We entered at 7pm. We finished at 8pm.

So we said... let's try to knock out Slabs!

And we finished that in just over an hour with only one wipe in Blackheart's room. Naturally, in Murmur's hokey-pokey, we lost the two DPS who had never been in Heroic Slabs before, Neshura and Tappout. We almost lost Boon, who had also never been in there before, but holy paladins are sturdy critters.

The rogue was too far in, it looks like the hunter died too far out. The paladin grumped, 'Just how far out do I need to get?'

It's easier for me as the tank. I just go one step past charge range. Then step in once. Similar to knowing how far out to be for melee. Go one step past lacerate/mangle range. Then step in once. It's surprisingly far out. As I always tell new melee to slabs (regular or heroic), his hitbox is much larger than his targetting circle. Too many new melee are standing INSIDE the boss and never get out in time.

(This is similar to my views on spacing melee DPS for Prince in Karazhan. One step out is too far, step in once. As long as you don't take forever responding to enfeeble, and don't run into an infernal, you'll live.)

Welcome to the Blogosphere! and other things

Babygorn, a mage on Alleria, has joined the Dark Side.

Welcome to the dark side, Baby. :)

*looks around stealthily*
FOSHIZZLE

Ahem...

Since they nerfed MrT, I haven't been in it. In fact, except to run it on normal a few times back when it opened, I haven't been anywhere NEAR it.

We went into Heroic MrT the other night. The lineup? Posolutely the gnome warrior, Tasogare the gnome ice mage, Boon the holy paladin, Gobblez the sword rogue and Kikidas the Goddess of Death and Destruction... erm. Kikidas, the dark pact/ruin warlock.

It... was nice. It was easy. It didn't seem like a heroic. It was easier than I remember REGULAR MrT being!

I got a nice pretty trinket and a new enchant. But it was almost anticlimatic! I was expecting death and destruction... not necessarily from me, either!

(Oh, and I got a badge upgrade, finally. I was sitting at 99 badges forever and just never went out and got that one more. Yay new pants!)

Then I went and we took Kava into heroic Slave Pens. Lots of leather drops! Nummy nummy. I work on upgrading Kava and Kiya so that they can be Kara ready! Soon... I will field a Kara run all by myself, multiboxing! (not)

One question that I have... is in a 5-man/heroic... how much hit rating do you need? Is it worth it to wear your 'trash set' that you'd wear in a raid, and only put on the hit rating set for the bosses? Kikidas has three sets. She has her 'top DPS' set - which maximizes my crit rating and my shadow damage, but has less than 100 hit rating, she has her 'hit rating' set - which puts her at 203 hit rating. And then she has her middle of the road set, which puts her somewhere around 130 hit rating and somewhere in the middle of the road in crit and damage.

I forget to swap around sometimes what I'm wearing. And it's really just three or four pieces of gear that I swap out between the various sets. But ... really, what's the line?

Tree-Mender's Belt

Kathe runs Heroic Ramparts until Absitively bleeds from his eyes (and other orifices). The belt doesn't drop. And at 3 badges per run, she was able to afford the 60 badge belt Waistguard of the Great Beast. So she stopped running H.Ramps. (It wasn't really 20 Ramps runs, since there was a Karazhan badge run (18 badges) in the middle somewhere.)

Kava runs her first ever Heroic Ramparts tonight. She is now the proud owner of the Tree-Mender's Belt. It isn't as good for a rogue as other belts out there. BUT I'M GOING TO WEAR IT.

Hate you, Blizzard.

Hellfire Ramparts: Omor the Unscarred

I have been running my druid into Heroic Hellfire Ramparts to try to get the Tree-Mender's Belt out of the chest at the very end.

(By the way, Cartographer sucks in comparison to AtlasLoot for everything except node points. At least IMNSHO.)

So, yesterday while my husband was napping, I tried to get a group together. I drag Absitively into the group with me. Our makeup to begin with was druid tank (me), warlock, rogue, druid healer and a retribution paladin (because the group didn't want to take a sub-geared mage that may miss a sheep or two! Makes much more sense to bring a class that can't CC for longer than 12 seconds per fight and a class that can only sap when there aren't dogs around but not the mage who may miss a sheep or two due to resists... We wouldn't want to have to corpse-run.)

I had a bad pull at the start, and that was my fault. After that, we didn't have any true wipes until Omor the Unscarred. The druid healer stood inside of a group of dogs and died due to aggro that way once, but again, that isn't really my fault if he was standing on top of me. Oh sure, I could have moved, except that I wasn't aware that he had walked up to me when I pulled. So... right. Moving on!

I've gotten the strategy for heroic hellfire ramparts down and engraved into my head. I could recite to you exactly, pull for pull, how to do that instance. Right now. Without seeing a map. Without seeing the instance.

Yes, I'm nuts. I know.

So, despite the fact that I'm basically typing out what to mark, I'm not given leader. Whatever, fine. I have to keep changing the marks, because the leader kept trying to leave the MS Destroyers as not sapped or not killed first. And yeah, because I want that hitting me all fight long! No thanks.

I have to keep telling the retribution paladin to let me hit the mobs first, because I'll pull them in and as they're coming TO me, he starts in on them. And then I have to burn my growl, and then.. oy!

But we muddle on through to Omor the Unscarred, whom you can see if you follow that link, has two completely separate strategies for tanking him in heroic. There's the tank and spank and then there's the range-tank. I explain about the curse (which in heroic is nondispellable) to everyone, stress that our role as melee DPS is to pick up the felhounds and to NOT PULL AGGRO.

We go in. Everything is fine until the retadin pulls aggro off of the warlock. Wipe.

We go in. Everything is fine until the retadin kills us with the Bane, then pulls aggro off of the warlock. Wipe.

We go in. The retadin kills us with Bane. Wipe.

We say, okay, let's try tank and spank. Stop killing us with Bane of Treachery!

We go in. The retadin kills us with Bane. Wipe.

Are you seeing a pattern here? I can't quite figure out what's going wrong!

So the group leader (again, not me) kicks the retadin. Luckily the retadin doesn't do a stand-in on us and he does leave. Then the group leader, I kid you not, says 'Kathe, do you have DPS gear? I'm going to invite a paladin tank.', despite my saying 'I can get a nicely geared rogue in here', as my husband had woken up.

I kid you not. Granted, I was doing as much DPS as the retadin was, but still!

So, range-tank attempt. Fail. Tankadin kills us with Bane. Wipe.

Tank and Spank attempt. Tank gets mana burned and we can't get the felhounds off of him due to consecrate. Fail.

Tank and Spank attempt, sans consecrate. Fail due to the healer getting Bane and felhounds!

So we (okay, I) say 'Let's skip him for now and just kill Nazan!'.

We get to Nazan and I've been DPSing in my tank gear, because frankly, I'm just suspicious. Sure enough, the tankadin dies on Nazan. So I bear form it, pick up the dragon and live. Because I am just that awesome. Rawr. And my belt doesn't drop. F.U. Ramparts!

Then we go back and they want to do a tank and spank again, with me DPSing. Ok. Whatever.

I die to someone's Bane, can't remember who now. But we finally kill Omor.

It was just about the most hideous horrible slog that has ever taken place in Ramparts.

As near as I can tell, after reading the strats on Omor, we should have been fine, except for the Bane and people pulling aggro off of the warlock when attempting the range tank fight. Now, the other druid said that they had buffed Omor in Heroic Ramparts in the last mini-patch. I don't know how true that is, except that I don't think I've ever had that much trouble with Omor, ever. Granted, I'm usually in there with two ranged DPS and one melee DPS, but not always. And I've never had that much trouble range-tanking him. Someone would get over the warlock on threat (not me, I usually ravage once, rip once, then do nothing but kill dogs.) and Omor would become unhinged and go stomping off!

I wanted to cry. I kept apologizing to poor Absitively who turned down an OT position in Karazhan as his warrior to come with me into Ramparts. If my belt had dropped, I'd have been philosophical about the whole thing. But I got nothing out of it. Nothing. (a VC, that's it) It was a horrible horrible run in every single sense of the word!

In terms of learning something though.. I learned that day to watch my mana if I'm NElf pulling with moonfire or hurricane! I once had to keep running away while innervate ticked off enough mana to bear form! That was embarassing.

Heavy Clefthoof and Heroic Underbog

More druid related stuff! I'm OBSESSED!

Actually, it's more that I've hit a ceiling with Kiki right now. My current guild had a setback (see previous blog!) and I don't think I'm going to get further with her right now. So rather than talk more about how awesome I am with my warlock, I've switched tracks.

I'm an awesome druid.

I completed the heavy clefthoof set yesterday. I ran BM twice and didn't get the shoulders from the Chrono Lord. I did get the cloak though and took it as an upgrade over the devilshark cape. Not ideal but...

Then we did heroic UB. No salvation on the insane warlock in the group (love you, Abs!), or on the epic'd out hunter (you too, Werenal!) or on the piddly little rogue (Boon's alt, Dhark, hate him) and I held aggro rather well.

I lost it on the banish's more easily than on the others, because I can't start on them while everyone else is still on the last one. I have to wait until the banish is up, but by that time, everyone is ready to unleash! But with rare exceptions, the banish's didn't get to hit anyone other than me, still. (I didn't play the lacerate game, I went ahead and taunted when they tried to eat someone else.)

Our first wipe was on the four-pull after Hungarfen. The X and the hunter trap decided to ignore everything that I or the hunter was doing to them and decided that the healer, an awesome shaman named Shougeki, looked far more tasty. We did get one down, so it turned into a three pull after that. My method of tab-lacerate-tab-lacerate worked decently even on heroic. I tried to get a mangle in on each, too.

We had a partial wipe on Ghaz'an. The rogue, though he wasn't by the tail, still got tail-whipped into the water, so we were down a DPS most of the fight. We still killed him because 1: he's slow and 2: we had a warlock and hunter kiting him after I died. The method I like to use is pulling him down the path to the wall. I ran up there, barkskinned, moonfired, cat formed, sprinted then turned into a bear when I hit the wall.

Ever notice how FREAING BIG your ass is in bear form? I mean, I always knew it was big (hence 'Big Bear Butt' blogger), but dear lord, it's impossible to SEE when you're in a corner. I had to ask the group to tell me if I was straight because I couldn't see anything but my own ass.

By the way... a warlock can SOLO that boss just by kiting him. (Because warlocks are teh aw3s0m3!)

We had a partial wipe on the first Underbog Lord, who after I died, immediately ate the healer then the hunter, and then was successfully evasion tanked by the rogue and killed by the warlock from 10% down. Apparently, my 23% dodge isn't better than a rogue tank. Why do you need me? Just have a rogue. ><

A wipe while we figured out how to handle Mussleman and Claw (I know, his name isn't really Mussleman, but can you recall how to spell it without having it in front of you? That's what I thought. You know who I mean.). We tried to down Mussleman first then Claw, but I couldn't keep Claw on me that way. He was all over the place. The second time, I had the hunter MD Mussleman on me and we focused on Claw until he went friendly. That worked.

(Kiting no longer works well because according to WoWWiki, Claw ignores the kiter and returns when Mussleman commands him to 'obey', and Claw is not hibernatable in heroic. The 'hug' method worked somewhat well, limited his charges a little bit, but was still on people. 8 yards is too small for most people!)

We had two wipes on Black Stalker until we figured out how to handle the adds. First try, we tried to ignore them and they wound up eating the healer. Well, not eating him, but electrocuting him to death. Though I don't know what the difference is... he still wound up dead. The second time we tried to have the rogue DPS them down and that didn't work either. The last time, I had all yellow gear and one red belt, and we ignored the adds again and this time we did it.

What was the difference between the first and last, other than I was down in armor and hit points due to a red item? No idea. The moon was aligned just right? Who knows.

(Or it may have to do with the hunter not being levitated out of the room and out of LOS, as he was in the first fight. The Stalker isn't very fair.)

And... two days after I get my heavy clefthoof boots... the epic boots drop off of the Stalker. :P

I also completed two quests! 'Oh, it's on!' to get the root from Hungarfen and 'Brain of the Black Stalker'. And I'm now 5900/21000 until Earthwarden!

To my way of thinking, this is a LOT of wipes. But Shougeki pointed something pertinent out. This wasn't a group of overgeared individuals (Owaru/Kikidas/Boon) going into heroic Underbog, this was a group of people in mostly blues, some greens and only one overgeared person (Werenal) going into heroic Underbog. And for that group, we did great.

I was awesome. As a group, we were great. :)

You DO kick ass!

I'm doomed, it seems, to never be able to finish a heroic daily. The last two times I've tried, I've gotten to the last boss that we have to kill, we wipe, then I have to go.

Shadow Labrynth. Murmur. It isn't a raid night (for me, at least). We breeze through -- Vorpil down in under 1 teleport. (Literally, he was at 3% when we had our first teleport - close enough for me to call it - under 1 teleport. With as many DoTs on him, he didn't live long enough to even start ticking down his Rain of Fire.)

We get to Murmur. Our tank and our healer don't quite have the concept of avoiding his sonic boom down very well. So we wipe. And then my new guild leader, Gaj, gives me a tell and says, "Kikidas, we NEEEEEEED you to come to help us kill Hydross the Unstable! We have no hope without you! Come save us!"

Well, I'm paraphrasing.

So I have to leave. I beg one more shot at Murmur, but then as we're heading back in, we have respawn. And I have my guild leader begging me to come save him from the savage horde that is the other 23 people of a SSC raid.

Today. It's 10am. I get in a group to do heroic slave pens, today's heroic daily. We have a few wipes, a few funnies (haha! I died AGAIN! This is hilarious!) and a few obligatory 'Whew, how did we live?' moments.

At one point in time, the rogue we were partying with (I do not know this rogue, to my knowledge.) gives me a tell, out of the blue, with 'You do kick ass'.

Now, to my defense, I did not subtly prompt that comment with any little 'oh, I hope I'm doing enough DPS. Am I doing okay?' or any other such coy attempts to get praise. Nor was there any commentary on the damage meters or anything like that.

It's nice to know I truly am universally loved.

Anyway, we get to Quag, for some odd reason Bite dies so we lack his buff, and we wind up wiping twice. The third time we're coming back in, I look and realize it's almost 2pm! And I have to go to the pharmacy to pick up medicine. The pharmacy is down by where I work. Which is 20 minutes away from my house. The pharmacy closes at 3pm. The weather is something described best in the last part of 'The Day After Tomorrow' where you can see the ice forming out of the moisture in the air!

So I have to leave before we finally down Quagmirron.

But...

I do kick ass.

Impressions given but not intended...

I have an issue with things. Shocking, I know. My issue today is something that happened last night. I HATE being made to feel bad. I hate being made to feel bad by making someone else feel bad. Hate hate hate.

So. Who did I make to feel bad? Why do I feel bad for making them feel bad?

A friend wanted to do heroic Underbog. I say, sure. I need badges. I like heroic UB. It's fun. She needs one more DPS and a tank. I sign up for the DPS. Now the tank.

Another friend offers to tank it. He's a new 70 druid. He only just hit honored with CE. He's only tanked 3 or 4 other instances. I wasn't in charge of the group or I'd have said no... Unfortunately, the person in charge and the other people wanted to do a guild run.

We didn't even get up the ramp before Hungarfen before we called it. Someone died on every. single. pull. Usually the healer. Usually me and the other main DPS too.

Underbog gets a bad reputation and people think it's an easy heroic because UB is a low level instance. And it's short. And it's sweet. And with few exceptions, you don't have big massive pulls -- a four pull is the most you have to handle at once.

And people think they can tank it without any problems with gear that they could tank regular Slabs or SH with. You can't. The giants hit like trucks. If you're shy on CC, you have multiple car-hitting mobs on the tank or healer or wherever the hell they decide they want to be. Even with appropriate CC -- hunter, mage, warlock (my preferred grouping for CC in UB) -- there are pulls where you can't CC and you have to tank multiple truck-sized monsters. A newly keyed, newly 70 tank probably can't handle it.

Some of it was technique. He's a new tank. Some of it was over-geared-DPS in the form of an elemental shaman and myself. We unfortunately didn't take into account his newtankness and acted like he was an established firm tank and didn't let him establish good aggro before we started dotting and casting. Some of it was healer aggro. The tank gear wasn't the best, so he took a lot of damage, so the healer had to heal lots, so the healer got aggro, and the tank didn't have a good hold on aggro, and.. you probably see where this was going. So did we.

Now, I have a druid tank. Granted, she isn't the best druid tank out there, but I've tanked many times with her. I've tanked the HH, the CE, the TK... you initial it, I've tanked in it. (I don't think I've done Shattered Halls or one of the TK's, but I don't recall what ones.) So I was trying to give him tips on aggro, how to up his aggro, how to lower healer aggro, how to hold initial aggro on multiple mobs when the healer is getting lots of initial aggro.

Unfortunately, I think that made him feel bad. :( I didn't mean to have him feel bad.

I have a feeling. I think a lot of people think I'm a snob or mean when I give them /tells with suggestions. I'm not being an elitist. I'm honestly trying to help solve a problem that I see. And I try to do it without shouting it in ventrilo or party chat. I'd hope someone would do that for me if they see me doing something wrong. But I fear it gives the impression that I'm an elitist. It's an impression that is no doubt strengthened by the fact that I took my warlock out of my old guild to raid, even though my old guild is trying to become a raiding guild. This had little to do with a vast majority of the people in the guild and more to do with a few very particular not going to go away issues I had with the way the raids were run and organized.

But I think people think I'm ... an elitist. A mean bitchy snob.

I know I give that impression. I'm a good warlock. I'm a good player. I have alts in every walk of life so I can usually toss my three cents in on any situation that is going on. And it gives that impression.

I'm sure after I left the group (after it was called, and I had to go to bed) that those particular people were talking about how evil I was. :( Well, I'm not SURE, but my paranoid side (what warlock doesn't have a paranoid side? It's the left and right sides of our personalities) insists that they were just waiting for me to leave before they started to talk about me. :(

Things like this make me not want to party with my old guild. Not because of them, but because of me. I'd rather party with a PUG because if I make that tank feel bad by well intentioned advice, or any other person in that group, I don't feel bad if they feel bad!

Right now, I feel terrible. Like I kicked a puppy.

Heroically ready and heroically dead!

Many many people of awesome talent, ability and gear are suddenly able to do heroics that they previously could not do, simply because they did not want to run the same instance.. over and over and over and over again to get the reputation. With the new patch, the reputation required to purchase your heroic key has been lowered to honored.

This is good news to the people I have mentioned above, those of talent, ability and gear! Note I said AND.

Something I've already encountered, and something I'm sure I will be encountering more and more are people who have talent, or ability or gear, but not talent/ability and gear.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'll be the first to say that it isn't gear that makes the player. I've partied with epic'd out idiots and with normally geared genius's. However ... to a certain extent, you need the gear to survive a heroic. You need to do the DPS. You need to do the healing. You need to survive the tanking. Whatever gear it takes to do that, you need to have it.

With the opening of heroics to people who are only honored, we not only get a lot more people trying to do heroics, which is all to the good if you've ever tried for 4 hours to get a tank for a single heroic run.... but all to the bad because now we'll be trying for 2 hours to get a tank for a single heroic run and die and die and die and wipe and die and wipe s'more if s/he isn't appropriately geared. I don't know about you -- I don't mind trying if there's a chance of success. I do mind mindlessly wiping when there isn't a snowballs chance in hell (unless you believe in Dante's version of hell, then it's a different story!) of success.

Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE heroics. I went into heroics with blue gear and after tons of heroic runs, I'm now decked out in pretty pretty purple. And I had a blast doing it! But I was pulling my weight (even if at times it was slightly substandard) and I didn't try to do heroics that required ridiculous amounts of heroicness to complete. I think EVERYONE should do heroics. But just like everything else ... be prepared. Know what you're doing. Know what healing/dps/tankability you need to have to pull it off.

You'll die in heroics. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this. But you shouldn't go from 100% durability to 0% durability and only be at the first boss because a: the tank keeps dying after two hits by a single mob, b: the healer spams their biggest, best heals and the tank just keeps losing health over a period of time until he's dead or c: the tank is doing great, the healer is keeping the tank up, but it's taking too long to kill the mob and the healer runs out of mana.

I love being DPS for just that reason. Even if I'm somewhat slacking in gear or ability, I have two other people who will hopefully make up the difference, though it will make the instance harder. Doable, but harder.

However, this doesn't mean that I should walk into Heroic Ramparts with green gear and 150DPS. That ain't gonna fly. But I do get some slack. A tank and a healer however, poor blokes, need to be at the top of their game because there isn't another healer to take over (in your typical 5-man), or another tank to take over if you just aren't up to doing the job.

Oh, and CROWD CONTROL.

Know what crowd control you can and cannot do. Know how your tank pulls (sap's are terrible with pally tanks, unless there are more than three mobs and even then know how the pally shield is likely to bounce and sap the one that is least likely to be whacked, etc), know what mobs can be mind controlled, sheeped, charmed, cycloned, blinded, gouged, trapped, feared, etc. Even the best tank will have problems if 3 super-elites are whacking on him (or her). Know what your kill order is, and for heavens sake, do not ever ever DoT something that should be crowd controlled until the tank is whacking it! Sometimes there's an accident, I understand that. But I hate hate hate rogues who say 'I was just getting it off the priest!' but OH NOW IT'S POISONED, !@#@*#&!^!. You know what I say to that? DEATHCOIL! Deathcoil gets it off the priest and goes away in 3 seconds, ample time to get it reCC'd.

But I digressed. Crowd control is vitally important in heroics. It just is. Don't argue with me. Accept what I say.

This is why warlocks are the superior crowd control class. We can charm humanoids. We can banish demons and elementals. We can enslave demons. We can chain fear anything except undead (and a few other exceptions).

What can a rogue do? Oh.. I can sap a humanoid... but only before battle... and it can't be reapplied.
What can a mage do? I can sheep a humanoid or a beast!
What can a hunter do? I can trap a single target! Maybe two if I'm really good. (oh, and I can fear a beast every so often)
What can a druid do? I can hibernate a beast or cyclone a target for 6 seconds.
What can a priest do? They can mind control humanoids, so long as the priest doesn't take damage and the priest can't do anything while mind controlling and gains a ton of aggro if the MC'd mob doesn't die.
What about a shaman, warrior or paladin? Nada! Ya'll suck! (just kidding, love you guys! :)

Now, a warlock.. well.. we can charm a humanoid (as long as our succubus stays alive) while banishing a demon/elemental (which can't be broken, just has to wear off). Or we can banish a demon/elemental while enslaving another demon and use it as our minion, still attacking all the while. Oh, and that thing hitting the priest?

DEATHCOIL!