Till I'm killed or you find someone better

Two weeks ago Thursday Nikkyo, our GL, asked if I would be willing to step forward and become a raid leader. My response was basically that if Nik and the other officers thought I was capable and able that I would take the job... till I'm killed or they found someone better.

So that Saturday before ICC 25 started Perp, OG and I were all promoted. Perp would be helping with recruitment, OG would be our public affairs person to the guild members, and I would be leading raids. The current officers that we have were spread pretty thin between real life and general stress. Thus the three of us were promoted to help share the load.

The other official raid leaders are Curinir (who is in the military and thus overseas every few months), Vei and me. Ethren and Nikk are sort of co guild leaders and often have to lead raid themselves. Vei is the paladin tank that I usually co-tank with in raid's. So while I'm happy to help out... I'm kind of sad that I won't be raiding with Vei and Curinir as much in 10's because I will be leading raids as well.

I used to work for the local county government in the Mosquito Control department. It was an interesting job and I worked first hand with an extremely intelligent Biologist. One of the things I at first hated about him is that, if I asked him a question, he would make me go look up the answer and tell him. After awhile though, I realized that he was helping me find solutions on my own. Sure he could have told me... but me researching the answer myself meant that I could do the same the next time.

Well during the last few weekend raids I've felt like I was there again. I would ask a question in officer chat about how we wanted to do something... and he would respond with "well you tell me?" This was infuriating at first because I didn't want to step outside of my comfort zone and make a mistake. I'm very good at following directions... but giving them and coordinating the run is a different matter.

I'm glad he is taking this approach though because I'm settling into my role and becoming more open with my thoughts and idea's. That Saturday raid saw our first downing of Festergut on 25, though I can't take credit for that... but the following day we actually had enough sign ups to run our second night of ICC 25 (amazing what pushing the start time back and hour can do). We did some learning attempts on Putricide, and then I directed them to blood princes. I explained the mechanics and we did a solid learning attempt. The next attempt we killed them.

This past week we added Dreamwalker to this list putting us at 8/12 with some very promising attempts on Blood Queen. Things are definitely progressing now that we are getting 2 ICC 25 man nights in and morale on the whole is going up.

Loot Drama

Our guild has a raider rank that with it comes priority on loot. What that currently means is that raiders can damn near roll on anything and win it over padawans (our raider in training) and members. Well the last few weeks we had raiders rolling on items they already had equipped and even some that were side grades. The outcry from both raiders and members was enough that things had to change.

With new blood comes new ideas. I proposed a loot change and initially the other 2 new officers readily agreed. Slowly the rest of the officers also agreed and in 2 weeks the new system will be fully in place.

Serendipity has never used a DKP system and a majority of guildies have been against using any such system for a long time. However, with the recent unrest a lot of people were starting to think DKP was the best way to go. Well my idea was simply..

BiS Priority

As part of the raider application process in SD every raider has to create a Best in slot list. This list as of current serves absolutely no point other than the fact that someone went to elitest jerks and copied one of their sheets. I thought it was about time we started using these lists for some good.

Thus when an item drops... everybody in the raid that can equip the item for mainspec can roll. Raiders, members, padawans it doesn't matter. However, if a raider rolls and that item is on their BiS list, they get priority on that piece of loot. This ensures that raiders are rolling of gear that they know they need. If no one rolls BiS then whoever had the highest roll wins the item.

One of the big issues we were having with signups is members saying "well what is there for me?" Essentially members were being asked to sign up and fill in but with virtually no shot at getting any loot. This gives them a chance, albeit not the greatest, to walk away with a very nice piece of gear. Raiders can still get gear that may be a temporary upgrade for them without losing the chance to win a BiS piece.

The raiders have another 2 weeks to finalize their lists before it becomes set in stone. Only a well written reason why an item must be changed will be excused. The system will be subjected to peer review (some of our members will be checking up on others for sure) and the penalty for trying to cheat the system is a demotion. All of the lists are kept on our forums and so the date stamp at the bottom of the post will let us know if something has been changed recently without authorization.

Finally our guild will be implementing a Matching system for crafted gear. Essentially if they provide half of the primordial saronites, then the guild will provide the other half from the stock we get out of ICC 25 drops.

I think the matching system is a good idea... even if I already slaved away to craft both BiS tanking pieces for my warrior.

Oh and on that note... my warrior has come a long way sitting now at 33k armor and 46k health unbuffed.

Quick Rant on ICC Buff

So yeah... the ICC buff went live... and I can tell the difference. Last night we went into ICC 10 and One shot every boss from the citadel to the plagueworks and then Blood Princes. Sure we had killed them all before... even multiple times. But we had new people in this run who hadn't even seen these fights and we still one shot them.

I should be happy right?

Well I'm not. At least not entirely. How do I know it was us? How can I be sure that it was because of our improved coordination and execution. The gear we had worked hard on... or the skill of each of the players coming together in perfect harmony. Fact of the matter is I don't. We did the entire thing with a 5% buff to healing, damage, and hit points. Putricide went down in record time for us... was that because we were all dealing 5% more damage?

I scared the hell out of the healers on the initial pull on blood princes and dropped down below 5% health... would I have died without the extra stamina and healing? Or was it because I used every cd I had to stay alive and it was my skill as a tank? I'll never know.

Tonight we are working on BQL and probably VDW after... if we defeat the encounters.... did we really defeat it?

Revised Putricide Strat

I am shamelessly reposting this from a post I wrote on my Guild's Forums under the same title. The pic is me getting my groove on in the abomination... and yes that is the raid UI that I use. Messy as hell I know... deal with it!

Last week while tanking putricide I decided to change up the traditional way of tanking the boss. Normally we start on the far left side (as facing where the boss initially is), then after the green ooze is down or while in the process of downing the green ooze the tank would move putricide to the far side of the room. This process would repeat until into phase 3.

While this strat works... it has some issues namely it is very movement intensive on the healers and dps who have to constantly switch sides of the room. To combat this, instead of moving the boss to the right side of the room (north) after the green ooze, everyone would instead move to the center of the room where there is a giant circle on the ground. The ranged dps and healers form a sort of semi circle around where the gas cloud spawns. This way the ranged dps can begin burning down the gas cloud while it is targeting. Whoever the gas cloud targets will then start kiting as normal around the room but since the healers are all in the center it makes it easier to keep up the targeted player. The melee dps can continue to attack the boss and then switch after the cloud targets someone.

After the Gas cloud is down everyone heads back to the left corner and continues to dps the boss till the green ooze spawns. This repeats through phase 2 and dps just has to be mindful of the transition into phase 3.

Phase 1 is really short and depending on the dps of the group it is beneficial to not move to the center until you push the boss past 80%. You should be able to kill the first green ooze and get the boss to 80% before he has a chance to summon the gas cloud. If you do this it will skip an ooze summon giving you extra time to dps the boss and it will pick up on the gas cloud on his next summon.

During Phase 3 we were letting the stacks build to 3 on the first tank before the second tank takes over. This way it isn't so healing intensive right off the bat. The tanks should also start using cd's after the second stack to reduce the tank damage. After both tanks get 3 stacks you should trade off at each additional stack after. If you manage to get to 5 stacks... you are probably going to wipe from the raid damage so saving dps cd's for phase 3 is very important. Heroism should be used when he gets into phase 3 if available.




Now for driving the abomination you should have a psuedo priority on what you should be doing throughout the fight. Your priority should look something like this...

- Eat ooze Pools
- Slow gas clouds and green oozes
- DPS gas clouds and green oozes
- Keep the sunder armor debuff on the boss
- DPS the boss

Basically as soon as a puddle spawns you should be moving to it to drink up the pool. If the boss is positioned near the pool you can still drink and dps on the boss at the same time because the 2 abilities do not share a global cd. Starting out, you should just finish drinking the last pool, as the green ooze begins to form. At this time don't wait... but run over to the mob and start using the sunder ability on him. Watch his cast bar and just before he finishes casting use the abomination slow ability on him and then continue to melee/sunder the ooze as it moves towards its target.

DPS on the oozes as the abomination really makes burning them down a lot easier for the raid dps. Generally speaking I can get the green ooze to 80% before the first dps even gets a hit on it. That is why this is a higher priority over debuffing the boss. You can ensure that the oozes die before it reaches its target which minimizes risk to the raid. If you are able too.. by all means try and keep the debuff but eating the ooze pools and dpsing the adds should be your highest priority. Its the dps' job to kill the boss after all.

With the strategy above for positioning the boss, you won't have to leave that half of the room to drink the ooze puddles. That means you should be close to where the gas cloud spawns and once again after all your slime pools are gone begin dpsing the gas cloud. The same tactic applies, wait for the gas cloud to almost finish the cast, and then slow the target. Ranged dps should already be attacking it as soon as they are able.

Other hints
-Rogues can vanish just before the tier gas for phase 2 and 3 to avoid getting hit.
-Mages can blink while rooted by the green ooze. This doesn't break the root but can get you 20 yards in a different direction giving extra time to kill the ooze.
-The warrior sunder armor and the abomination sunder ability count as the same thing. If you apply the sunder as a warrior you won't be able to apply the abomination debuff... but it still does the damage.
- The putricide tank can DPS the green ooze and gas cloud while it travels to its target to help get it down faster.

Well then... on with the show

After posting my last entry I attempted to log into wow... only to find that the servers still aren't up from maintenance. So... guess I have time to blog then don't I?

During BC I really only had one main character that I played. Artorin was my first toon and I loved everything about playing a druid. I explored every facet from tanking to healing, from pvp to raiding. I never had more then 9 bag slots at any given time with the many different gear sets taking up the rest of my bag slots. Sure I could of put them in my bag... but seeing the gear kept me inspired to constantly explore the different aspects of playing my druid.

Of course all of that gear was then the very reason that I felt uninspired to level my druid when wotlk was about to be released. I had reached what I felt was the pinnacle of perfection in every role that I played and so replacing gear and relearning the class all over sent me looking for an alternative. Between that time and when I joined Serendipity again, I've explored all the different classes and played nearly every spec of every class in endgame content. I went through pvp and pve on all of them... some more successfully then others.

The thing is though... I haven't striven for perfection on any of them. Sure I play to win, to be better then average. But not once have I tried to reach the pinnacle of what a certain class or spec could do. Gear was always the issue holding me back. I love getting new gear don't get me wrong... but once I reach a certain point... I find getting more isn't going to help me succeed or fail. At that point I was relying on the rest of the group to keep up. Thus when raiding I never strove to get the "BIS" gear. If it came my way I took it... but I never stressed about it... or went out of my way to get the gear.

When I joined Serendipity... that mentality went out the window. Once more I feel the need to reach the pinnacle of perfection in every aspect of my character.

Maybe it is the fact that my warrior's name Skyru is my original gaming name...

Maybe it is the fact that as a tank, I fell the survival of the group rests on my giant plate shoulders.

Maybe it is because I've just about run out of alts so focusing on a single toon is the only solution.

Regardless of the reason the end result is the same.

I am a warrior. I am Vigilant. I am Chaos.

Whether facing the strongest beings in Azeroth exchanging blow for blow, or a dealer of thunder and death to all the Horde in my path... My name is Skyru, and I will be perfect.

Good news everyone!

Killed Putricide on 10 man last thursday and killed blood princes last night. The MT pally that I usually OT for had a computer meltdown which left me main tanking everything while a ret pally tanked in his second spec. Despite the fact that the MT on putricide should be the better geared... I opted for letting the pally tank putricide since I had a lot of experience on driving the abomination. Took us 6 or 7 attempts but we got it.

As I mentioned before I run in group 2... but contrary to the name since I joined that team we have had guild firsts on rotface, putricide, and blood princes. The way things are looking this theme may continue so go us!

Keeping this short because I need to run a heroic on my shaman to get the last primordial saronite I need to make the 264 tanking boots. I feel bad about the lack of posts lately but I'll try to do something about that. Its a weird transition worrying about the progression of one toon instead of all of them. You would think it would be easier but for me it isn't.

Big Blag Update

Its been weeks since my last post... and it isn't because I've lost interest in wow... or blogging. I started this blog as a place to write down my thoughts and ideas. To share them with the world (or no one). I think the reason for this was because I didn't have anywhere else to voice my opinions and thoughts. In some part now being in a guild has diminished that need. Being a part of the guild I am means once again having forums to talk to other players in the guild. I can talk about last nights raid or talk about specs and gear.

As a result a lot of my writing time has gone into the guild forums instead of my own outlet. In addition actually having a main character to focus my energies means I'm constantly planning things out. When I get home I want to spend my time doing the things I plan instead of talking about them. So as a result blogging gets put aside. I feel bad because for some strange reason a few people enjoy reading my blog and there has been quite the void in content since joining serendipity.

Anyway I have some time now with no distractions so here we go with what I've been up to.

Raiding

Well this one should be obvious. With new content, I'm kept quite busy raiding both 10 and 25 man's on my warrior. The last few weeks we have had enough people to run 3 10 man's. Two of the 10 man groups have been doing very well. Group 1 and group 2 (the group I'm in) have cleared up to putricide and have pushed him into phase 3 a few times. Group 3 hasn't has quite as much luck and generally doesn't make it past saurfang. You can tell there is an overflow where the majority of raiders are in group 1 and 2 and the less dedicated (and a few raiders here and there) form group 3.

Well this week they decided to mix up the groups a bit. We have a had some new recruits and a lot of signups for the 10 man and so instead of 2 strong groups and 1 meh group... we ended up with 3... meh groups. I was in group 3 but only by name because the core raiders had been scattered quite a bit but the result wasn't that everyone did great! Instead all the groups managed to do was clear the first wing. I think one of the groups MIGHT have gotten fester down... our group wiped at 1% after 5 attempts.

What really bothered me is that the week before we one shotted everything right up to putricide. We were excited because group 2 was doing awesome and really had a good flow going. In fact we were working on an actual name to call ourselves instead of just group 2.

Serendipity's 25 man progression is doing ok. We finally downed rotface on 25 man after 25 wipes spread over 4 nights (different weeks). My warrior has picked up quite a few upgrades but still no freaking shield! I'm sitting at 42.4k unbuffed and 27k armor. I've lost quite a bit of expertise and gained a crap ton of hit rating (at 10% as a draenei)

Alts

I've only mildly been working on the rest of my 80's. I run the daily heroic on the classes I feel like playing which generally includes my prot pally because getting groups is easy... and my mage because I went back to fire to screw around in heroics and OMG is it fun. Living bomb 2 or 3 things run in and dragon's breath, flamestrike, blast wave (glyphed so no knockback), flamestrike and usually they are dead by then. If not I blizzard and spam pyro on the poor left over mobs.

I still haven't run a single heroic or raid on my priest at all since ICC came out... since my druid hit 80 I haven't had the burning desire to play her and I feel kind of bad. The rest of my dps I kinda have to be in the mood to play.

The biggest reason I have been running the daily heroic though is because of the primordial saronite. I've sold a bunch of these so far which have funded my druids epic flying and lead me to my new special project... which is...

Leveling!

The one class I do not have a level 80 of is a death knight. But I've come close. In fact my horde DK Guine is lvl 77... but as I was approaching lvl 80 I realized how hard it was going to be to gear up a tank without support. I hadn't bothered to level any professions and the thought of grinding reps and dailies.... I just didn't want to do it.

I still want a lvl 80 DK though... so my baby lvl 26 priest Skylu was murdered... and arose a DK taking up my 10th character slot on durotan. I kept the appearance and race the same, a female Night Elf, and even named her skylu (which btw means if any of your friends had that toon when you deleted the old one... the new character will show up on the friends list).

This isn't my first attempt to level a DK on durotan and my last attempt capped out at 74. This time though... I'm giving myself incentive. I already had every BoA item from leveling my warrior so bam! Shoulder, Chest, 2h axe, 2 1h swords, and the haste trinket instantly arrive in my Dk's mailbox along with 4k gold and 20 frostweave bags. This toon is living the high life. I went ahead and picked up dual specs at 58 so that I can tank and dps while leveling. She had a stack full of glyphs and gear before leaving the starting zone. I picked up the skeletal gryphon on my way to honor hold and immediately learned flying and the gryphon at 60.

As soon as she hits 70 she will have epic flying and the tome of coldweather flying so that I can zoom around northrend questing. As it stands right now she is lvl 66 and has tanked everything up to her lvl as far as outland instances go. I skipped over questing in zangar entirely because I hate that zone and will hit 68 shortly while questing in Nagrand.

When I'm not tweaking my warrior (btw I picked up power aura's and I love it), or running heroics on my 80's... I'm leveling skylu to 80.

(oh also my shaman got the Challenger title from last season's arena!)

Guilded review: one Week

In the past week since joining Serendipity I've been in several raids from Naxx 10/25 (our weekly quest), ToC 25, Ony 25 and Icc 10/25. In that time I've gotten way more loot then I feel I rightfully deserve. My warrior went from sitting at around 34k health unbuffed to now over 40k. Overall I've dropped about 1% avoidance but the tradeoff is more then worth it. Sadly I'm still sitting on 2 pieces that are ilvl 200. A tanking cloak from Naxx 10 which will be replaced soon with the emblem of frost cloak, and the crest of lorderon or whatever out of CoS heroic. I've had that goofy shield forever and will be glad to be rid of it though I'll have to wait for the weekly reset for a shot a good replacement.

The highlight for me was on saturday night when we went into ICC 25. I had worked really hard during the week to pick up as many upgrades as I could and it paid off being able to tank in ICC 25. Our guild currently has a bunch of tanks well geared so for 25's one or two of us are going DPS. One of our protadins went retribution for the night which left me Nikkyo and another prot warrior as the tanks. Marrowgar is the only boss I've done on 25 before and I had only ever tanked him on 10 man so this was quite the big step for me. About halfway through the fight the other warrior tank died. Nikkyo and I popped cooldowns while the other tank was battle rezzed and joined back in. Marrowgar was a one shot and low and be hold he dropped the sweet tanking legs which I was lucky enough to win the roll on.

Of course here is where the slight guilt kicks in. This was the first progression raid that I had been on with them and getting loot over the other tanks didn't really feel right to me. Anyway we moved on to LDW whom I've only ever killed on 10 man and it certainly wasn't as a tank. In fact my previous raid group was horribly stuck on this fight and the raid leader refused to listen to suggestions. Serendipity also had not downed LDW on 25 man. This fight places a lot of focus on the tanks so I was really nervous as we initiated the pull. Things were really hectic especially on my side. I for the most part kept my head straight but the other side lost a few dps and ultimately when she transitioned into phase 2... something I've never even seen on 25... we just couldn't get it together and wiped.

Our second attempt went better all around... except I screwed up horribly several times letting 2 or 3 of my melee dps die to the adds before I had solid aggro. We got the transition into phase 2 again but we ended up hitting her enrage. Finally on our 3rd attempt everything clicked and we got into phase 2 without too many people dying... then everything went to hell. I'm not sure what happened but people started dying off left and right including all of our healers. One of our ele shamans started chain healing her little heart out and it was just enough to kill LDW.... with all of 6 raid members left standing... 3 of which were us tanks. She dropped I want to say a tanking ring? and some other crap. I passed on the ring even though it would be an upgrade simply because I knew I was close to getting the rep ring.

The airship battle is just as easy in 25 as it was in 10 except they have 4 cannons! I got to be on the away team and actually use my rocket pack for what it is intended for. I was also on cannon duty which was an interesting and awesome strategy then the way my other raid group did things. When the cannon froze up I just jumped over and taunted MR fancy pants while the melee kicked the crap out of the mage. Then we all jumped back and I hopped into my cannon. The dodge trinket dropped which went to our bear tank Nikkyo.

Saurfang was interesting. Especially since... well we didn't know that 5 adds spawned instead of 4. We did all of this set up and planning and then BAM 5 adds. Surprise? We spent 4 attempts with me tanking. Ultimately though me and the other war tank were tied on avoidance, the pally tank who was dpsing had higher then both of us so he switched back to prot. Apparently the other warrior sucks at dps so I switched to the good old arms spec and pulled out my Awesome (read terrible) dps gear!

The next attempt I had my buddy Curinir whispering telling me how he and the other officers were impressed with how much dps I did in my offspec. I'm thinking cool! But then... see I was in a heroic earlier and my recount bugged out and still wasn't functioning during raid. So I had no clue how I was doing compared to what I normally do... or compared to the rest of the raid. Anyway this next attempt went a little better and finally the attempt after that we killed the damn orc. I was able to look at the logs on World of Logs and find out I did around 4700 dps. Not great... but not terrible considering I don't have a single piece of gear over 219 (except for the 232 ony helm)

We got 2 war/sham/whogivesafuck? tokens one of which went to the other warrior and the other went to the shammy. So every tank got atleast something from the run which was pretty sweet. At this point I noticed that I needed 15 rep... 15... to get the friendly ring. So I asked if we could go kill SOMETHING in the next wing. There were a few people who needed >100 rep so we died to the steamvaults a bit before killing the trash I needed for my ring :D

The rest of the weekend I've spent running heroics to work on my arms set a bit. Working on my dps set is gonna continue to be my focus for awhile then I'll get back to the rest of my alts!