Our Dragon Soul Progress

We got our first heroic kill (Morchoc) the other night, which felt good. We killed Deathwing a while ago, into the second or third week into Dragonsoul, but haven’t really started heroic modes until now. There is of course a lot of discussion of whether Blizzard made DS too easy, both in guild and in general. I try not to get into that discussion, because to me, it actually doesn’t matter what we do as long as we have fun together. When Cata was released, people complained that it was too hard to start with, now it’s too easy, it’s not possible to keep everyone happy anyway.

I have a friend on realm who is on a very casual guild where they try to raid during weekends, but without doing all the planning and organisation that a raiding guild needs to do. She told me they had heard so much about the level of easiness in DS that her guild thought they would give it a shot and maybe clear the first bosses. Well, they killed Morchoc (10 man, normal mode), but that was after 3,5 hours and with 2 people alive. And although they could not get pass trash on next boss, they were genuinely happy for their guild. We consider Morchoc on normal as an extension of boring trash mobs, so it’s hard to understand that, but that goes both ways. Our guild is not hardcore, but most of us were geared in Firelands Heroic gear, which made us rush through normal modes pretty fast. Gear helps, but it’s not everything, we have raid leaders that do their research (or pretend very well!) and lead us through the fights. My point is that for a casual guild without any real raid leaders, knowledge of tactics and low gear on top of that, Dragonsoul might not seem so faceroll.

The heroic modes aren’t, for sure. And I am ok with that, Dragonsoul is supposed to be the last raid before Pandarien, and we will need something to do before that. Farming for the sake of farming is fun the first weeks, then it gets repetitive and ends up in a bunch of Maelstrom Crystals.

Lootship taken using Far Sight spell

We sometimes still go back to Firelands to help last guildie get her legendary staff, and I can’t say I miss it. We ended on 5/7 heroic and although it would have been great to check off the two last, I never expected it. It’s usually like that in my guild, back in SSC Lady Vashj never died. In Ulduar, we banged our heads at Mimiron hard mode but never got to Algalon. In Wrath, we killed Sindarogosa on heroic, but not Lich King. And that’s ok. I know that if I really wanted that, I need to apply to a more hardcore guild. We have been in realm top 10 or right below most of the time, there was a time where we were crap and suffered at 27th or something like that, but we bounced back. At the end, to me, it’s more important enjoying the people you play with, have a laugh and be social rather than raiding 5 nights a week and always worry about not being good enough. I complete understand the ones who do, but I just wouldn’t have time. Or would want to have time 🙂

Thoughts on Dragonsoul? Heroic modes? Missing Firelands at all?

My Firelands “video” from our time there

Visiting Al

Sometimes it’s fun to re-do raids you completed ages ago, just for fun and social. I always hated Al’Akir because I, just like with Alyzrzor, have a problem moving out of hurricanes. But now that it’s easy mode, I like to go there. I also think Throne of the Four Winds is one of the most beautiful raids in game, just like the instance Vortex Pinnacle. All of out guild videos are to be found on YouTube, thanks to the lovely Elias. My favourite is still the video above, from our first meeting with Al’Akir when he was still one of the hardest bosses to kill. I love how fast we die 😀

Oh noes, Guild Drama!

/Gasp! It’s the Drama Lama!

WoW is supposed to be fun and social. Maybe somehow boring or frustrated at certain times. It might seem like a big waste of time every now and then. But it should definitely not make you upset, down, crazy or sad. It should absolutely not give you a little hint of stomach ache every time you log in. Or headaches after you logged off.  And yet, over the last weeks, this is exactly what WoW has been like to me. Not all the time, but a lot more than acceptable. Makes you not want to play, and definitely not blogging about playing.

I love my guild. But it has its up and downs. When I joined here, without being involved in any decision-making or planning what so ever, I had no idea how much politics running a guild involves. I learned fast, and have been used to it for quite some time now. But not like last week. Before raids, during raids, after raids, in whispers, in guild chat, in party chats, on forum, all over!, this  constant static of tension, a background noise of dissatisfaction, moaning and anger. Without going into too many details; our guild has been a 25man raiding guild since beginning of Burning Crusade. I’ll never forgive Blizzard for coming up with the brilliant idea of equalizing 10 and 25 mans on loot and lockouts, it sure killed a lot of 25man guilds. I guess we thought we were pretty safe, but something happened during summer, with less sign ups, less progress, and all of a sudden we find ourselves better functioning as a 10man raiding guild. Which of course is upsetting quite a few. And there are the one who think it’s pretty ok, and who would prefer sticking to it.  But no matter what is done, it’s impossible to keep whole guild happy, which this week culminated in a huge debate, several personal attacks, a rage quit and some seriously heavy forum abuse. Whoa!

Fantasizing about simpler games

I guess when this happens in a guild, it makes you wonder why you can be bothered still doing this. Most people have enough with keeping their real lives sorted, work, family, school, everything. WoW is supposed to be, like I said, fun, somewhere to escape to make time pass, to relax, to get away. Not spending time arguing or trying to sort other people’s arguments. I can be pretty emotional, but trying my best to keep it out of guild. You know that kinda failed when you end up with a sticky “M” key caused by tears in keyboard.

I  could just quit, of course. After this week’s events, I don’t think anyone would have been surprised. But I still want to see the end game boss of the expansion. I still enjoy the game,  maybe it’s because I don’t have anything better to do, but then so be it. I don’t want to quit yet.  Am I am in denyal? Would it be commone sense to leave or move on?  When IS it time, really? Would  I even notice?  Tonight we had for the first time in a while a raid without other concerns that actually getting a boss down. No complaining, no questioning the guild’s direction, no politics. Just pure raiding.  It was sooo nice, like how air can feel fresh and clean after a big storm. I had fun. I had a laugh. I enjoyed the game.  I am sure bad weather will show up again, but I hope I have the same great bunch to stack up under an umbrella with when that time comes. Like I said, I still really love my guild. Even if it makes me go emoooo every now and then 🙂

 

Progress and such

So Firelands is a bit better now. A bit. It’s in the middle of summer and several people are away, so we have done 2 x 10 rather than one 25man raid. So far we have killed Shannox and done some nice progress on the spider boss. I came home not too long ago and had a hard time aiming key at the keyhole, still fairly drunk if I must admit, so I don’t think I’m going to try to write the name right now. Betty? Oh well, I’ll have plenty of time to think about that with tomorrow’s incoming headache.

I guess I could say something about healing on Shannox. But that doesn’t sound like me. I stood still for the most of the time, shaked my tail looking sexy as hell. If you want to read about tactics and such, Alacran over @ Stand in the Blue Circle is a lot better on that. To me, the fight looked something like this:

I still haven’t found out how I should arrange my haste vs crit vs mastery in 4.2, it doesn’t help that we keep swapping between 10 and 25 mans either, since healing assignments usually look different for these 2 setups. But healing in 4.2 is so far fun. Of course it is, shaman healing is always fun! However, I have realised that it could be a lot better, and I have only myself to blame. When I was a newly born healer many years ago, I was told that healbot was my best option. Perhaps it is. But if I knew a bit more back then, I’d consider my other options and get more used to keybinding. The way it is now, I am very depending on my mouse, since most of my heals are bound to it (razer naga with 12 side buttons).

On a fight like Shannox it’s no problem, but with fights with constant moving I sometimes have a hard time moving fast enough while using spells at the same time. This is even more a problem for me in pvp. Using WASD keys for turning, hmm not so pro. And when I move with mouse, there are certain combinations I can’t use the way I am using healbot at the moment. So. I have bought a shiny. It’s a g13 mini keyboard, with 22 keys for binds, and a little joystick for moving. Haven’t tried it yet, but will do very soon, hoping for nice results.

It’s light outside, birds are up and while neighbours and other mortals are ready to get up, walk their dogs and have breakfast, I will crawl into bed. Toodles!

 

Firelands, not so hot?

So yesterday patch 4.2, Firelands, was released. Usually, when there has been a patch with new content, I have been really interested in exploring everything with it. This time, hmm, not that much. Have I reached a point of my wow career where I no longer get excited about new things? It didn’t bother me that I would need to be at work most of the day and be one of the last in guild to have a look at Firelands. After logging in, I didn’t feel like rushing to do the quest chain to get a new cloak, start the dailies in Hyjal or gasp at the new boe drops from trash runs. It just didn’t, and still doesn’t, feel…fun.

I am not planning on quitting game. Not really even considered it. I have felt like this before, and it has passed. I know it will pass this time, too. My enjoyment of game time have up and downhills, I only wish that patch day would take me to uphill. Sadly, it didn’t.

Our  25man raiding team have looked better, but also worse. At least we have managed to get some 25man up and running lately, thanks to new recruits, some people coming back from breaks etc. I am an officer in my guild, and sometimes that can suck a lot of fun from the game. I would sometimes like to log on right before raid start, being told where to go and what to do, being giving a flask and food and, lean back and enjoy the raid. Read forum posts that interested me, reply to them if I felt like it, if not move on. While not raiding, just hide on an alt and do my own things. Of course I can do this every now and then, but I also get a lot of questions, about anything, dkp, recruiting, trials, guild bank, guild progress, people in guild not being happy with someone / something, raids, sign ups, forum, things that are usually easily solvable, but things that still take a certain amount of time.

Perhaps I am taking it too serious, I probably am. But, with Firelands and new raid bosses releases, I feel more pressure than joy. We must make sure we kill new bosses within reasonable time. Must not get too far behind. My guild will never be realm first in anything, we are not hardcore, but for a long time after Cataclysm we were among top ten 25man raiding guilds on server, something that got slightly messed up the moment we started doing heroic modes. I am not too worried about that, but at the same time I want us to keep up with similar guilds, maybe get hands of some more good recruit to strengthen team.

Anyway. These are probably the reasons why I have mixed feeling about a new raid. On the other side, killing Magmaw or Halfus was getting just as fun as poking myself in the eye with a pencil. So I am ready for new head banging. I have done a few trash runs in Firelands already, I like how the zone is outdoor. Pretty huge, hostile, lava all over, fiery mobs, well everything to go with its name really. So far, not too much cc needed, but some mobs hit hard and are also very melee unfriendly. Good thing I can stay at range and watch. Sometimes you just need to sacrifice a rogue. Or three!

Boe epics (list over trash drops here) seem to drop at same rate as on trash im BoT, so I can imagine there will be several incidents of ninja qq’ing in trade chat with all the pugs going on trashruns. Oh, the safety of going with a guild. Priceless. Tonight we will have our first try on a boss on 25man mode, and Shannox is our target. Any thoughts on Firlands yet?

 

 

 

 

Brb Ice Cream Truck…! and other raid excuses

Raiding is serious business!

Lately, we are struggling getting enough sign ups for our 25 man raids. Seems we always land on 22-23, and need to ask people to use alts, go off spec, need to ask non-raiders to help out, waiting for people who might come online later, etc. It’s like a big puzzle, and I don’t like it a bit. Ok, so we are perhaps not by definition a hardcore raiding guild. But when you apply here, you do accept raiding three nights a week and let people know if / when there will the times you can’t make it. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that people sometimes have real life things coming up meaning they will not be able to raid. But funnily enough, it always seem to be the same people! So far, my mum has never decided to celebrate her birthday at Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday between 21 and 00 pm. There have been no in-laws to be visited at these hours, nor any kids throwing up. I try to make my late work nights not happen on same days as raiding by planning ahead, and my broadband is behaving nicely, keeping me online and lag-free at 99 % of the time. 9 raiding hours a week is not a lot, I have no problem squeezing in a full work week, 3 visits to the gym, seeing my family and some friends maybe, without having to decline one or several raids.

Maybe it’s easy for me to say since I don’t have a family of my own, but then again many people who do are there for every raid. Always the same 10 people who can’t make it, sometimes more often than they can. And it bugs me!

Not a valid excuse!

Sometimes people come up with more original reasons for not raiding than the usual birthday, family issues and work nights. I have heard “my kids used up all the broadband capacity so I can’t raid for at least 3 weeks”. One guy said the fan he kept behind pc to keep it cooled, not a built-in fan but the ones which blow cold air ar you,  was broken, so he also needed two weeks off, otherwise the pc would get over heated, shut down all power, not only in his house but possibly in the whole village. Lol? What medieval village would that be?

Maybe they simply came over this site. A raid excuse generator when the regular ones are getting thin. Description goes like this:

Are you sick of raiding for the hundredth time on the off-chance you might get loot? Is there no loot left for you in the game, but you’re stuck running the same instance with the guild that got you all your loot?

Of course- excuses for not raiding is just the start. Then comes all the weird reasons for having to leave a raid! Only two days ago our new trialist, a paladin healer, left before first boss was pulled with the message “Omg my family is accusing me for something I didn’t do! I’m being kicked off laptop!” And there he went. And that’s pretty much a normal excuse compared to what other raid slackers have said before. Here’s a selection from my own Crescent Dawn:

• Party in car next to my house, can’t focus / stop aggro / dps the right target
• Forgot to equip jet pack, wiped raid
• Sorry the dog was on my keyboard, pulled everything
• Not ready for ready check, lactating baby
• Sorry I could not find my target in the middle by the stairs
• Rolled down from sofa, hit autorun, fell off cliff and died. Need repair.
• Damn, spilled my beer on my keyboard, so I went to get a new one. How did you guys do?
• Soft ice machine broken. Need to go.
• My modem is on fire! Need to go!!!
• My neighbour’s car is on fire! Need to go!
• Fire alarm went off, I’m a fire fighter so I need to go.
• I need to go to Singapore. Now.
• I need to go chop wood now. Yeah, I know we are in the middle of Sindragosa, but it’s -20 inside.
• (10 min later, guy who went to chop wood:) Guys, I need to go. I strained my arm chopping wood.

What is the dog doing on keyboard ? Put it down! I have a cat, but she knows better than jump up on furnitures while I’m watching her. And why are the kids up right before midnight anyway? Put them to bed at normal time, maybe? And…get decent internet, stop playing with fire, liquids and sharp objects! At least for those 9 hours a week. Just so the rest of the raid can actually kill something. Pretty please?

Finishing with some raid excuses seen and heard around the World of Warcraft:

• omg hold on the kids just covered the dog with honey and peanut butter
• ex-girlfriend smashing my cable modem
• GTG MY SON GOT HIT BY A BIRD
• brb fishtank is on fire again
• brb there is a strange light outside my house (never come back after this one)
• afk drunk hooker just walked in the room.
• Afk guys, cops are here (never came back)
• Sorry guys gotta go, my cows got out of the paddock and are running loose on the neighbor’s farm
• Over vent “brb guys, i have a problem with my (long pause) goose
• ZOMG BRB ICECREAM TRUCK

What to say, really? Guess best thing is to lol at it 😀 Ever heard some bad excuses during a raid?

My UI

After many years of playing WoW, it’s just recently that I have started working more with my user interface. I was happy with the default Blizzard one, till I decided to get a chat addon since I was missing most of my whispers while raiding. When I got that, the chat windows didn’t really fit with my ui, and I saw a screenshot of someone using Spartan UI, which I though looked quite good. I tried downloading this together with Bartender, but the lack of a menu and only using slash commands to customize it, drove me crazy. I spent days and many hours searching and trying out new addons, interface skins and moving buttons and icon up, down, sideways… Till I was finally happy.

This is the ui I am using now (both in and out of combat) and have been for a while (click to enlarge, I chose to keep original size on image):

What’s all this and what does it do?

These are the addons (well, the ones I use for raiding) I use for my ui:

* Prat (chat)

* SexyMap (minimap)

* Bartender  + Button Facade (icons / bars)

* Recount (Meters)

* ShieldsUp (For shaman shields)

* HealBot + Grid (Unit Frames)

* Deadly Boss Mods + Big Wigs (Boss mods)

* Titan Panel (information plugins)

* Sunn Viewport  (interface skin)

This is my warlock alt’s ui, I don’t raid with her, so have not many addons to improve her play style.

All of these are available at Curse, and I would ofc recommend download the free client so you don’t need to wonder where to place them, when to update them etc.

The Sky is the Limit, really

While searching for tips and inspiration, I came over some several good ones, some bad ones and some that were simply crazy. With everything from naked girls to running horses. I guess this simply shows that there are no limits for how much you can customize your ui to look the exact way YOU want. Some want every kind of information on their screen, some what only the most important, like target and targets’ target.  This also depends if you are playing with key binds or clicking with mouse. The more key binds, the less icons you need on your action bars.

Here are some pictures of ui’s I found while searching on google. If you want to see more custom ui’s visit this and this site, they are from Raider UI of the Week thread at Wow Insider. Much interesting! 🙂

Still here!

Hello!

Been quite some time since I have written here now, but that happens every now and then. Too much work, too little sleep, too bandaged hand. Yes, bandaged! Was going to make an excellent post about how much I was looking forward to the patch, how fun raiding was and more blah blah that would make me look even more geekish, if that is even possible. But! Then! I pulled a Bambi, fell on the ice and big bada boom, could only use left hand for aaages. I have never been known for great coordination. On my CV: walking into a lamppost and got a concussion, falling off a bike and flew through three gardens, got stuck in a hanger and tore down the whole wardrobe (amazing domino effect!)…just to mention some things over the last years. This time it was the stairs.

Icebear claw

Anyway, I still enjoy Cataclysm. Raiding is going pretty well, we only have Nefarian left in Blackwing Decent, and are on top 10 of the 25man raiding guilds. I still think 10 mans are zzzzzo boring, much more fun with chaotic 25 mans (in fact, give 40 mans back!)! Still a bit sulky at Blizzard for making them almost equal, but what to do. The only 10 man raid I have done so far has been on Al’Akir, which went really well! Check it out:

Anyway, it is still early in the expansion and even though it does feel a bit important to progress fast, I am sure we will have most content on farm soon, so good thing that it’s not all cleared in one night. Have you started Cata raiding yet? What do you think? 🙂

Hard like Heroic

Only one week into Cataclysm, but feels a lot more. I was 85 Thursday night last week, got my item level to 329 shortly after and started doing heroics that weekend. First impression: very, very hard. I was pretty concerned when the tank took 25 % damage each hit and my mana pool was down to half after one trash mob down, with 3 to go. I realised pretty fast that I had to change my WotLK play style completely, something I am still working on.

There’s no Boom in Oom

My face is covered in blood, I’m missing several teeth and I’m not sure I have use of my right leg anymore.

Glorious.

I immediately had to bug my healer friends about it. “Omg I just spent 5 hours inside DM and used 38 mana pots, 78 waters and still couldn’t do it. Do I suck? Do I, do I?” Luckily it’s just not me struggling at the moment. We all share the curse called easily oom’d. One hunter not nuking the right add, and all that delicious,  precious 80k mana is gone. One silly mage standing in silly purple spot, and it’s a wipe. Pretty much. Of course there is room for tiny mistakes, I still haven’t seen a heroic completed to perfection, but it is very hard and requires that every group member use their abilities to a maximum.

After some upgrades, I can notice a big difference and can afford to spend a bit more heals. However, while in WotLK I pretty much felt like a slacker if a single party member was below 80 % health, now in Cata, I can’t think like that. If all the dps are more or less alive and the tank still got some hp left at the end of a boss fight, I am very pleased. I guess it’s not about keeping everyone on top anymore, but keeping everyone alive (apart from silly mage standing in silly purple, he can stay there til dead).  If I on top of that got more than 20k mana, big grats to me.

Welcome back, CC

Mobs see me trappin’, they hatin’!

But I’m lovin’!

Balance of the group is also important, of course. All the hexes, traps, bindings, shackles, mind controls and saps are now my new best friends. Some people say CC is still not required, but I haven’t heard a single healer say “pull ’em all”! yet.  There are also differences between the tanks. I still think a pala healer is the easiest to keep up, if he uses holy word on himself, I ♥ him even more. Bear tank was fun and effective, warrior tank left no room for slacking, and dk tank, well, uhm, I  just want to buy them a shield for x-mas. Sure, a decent geared dk tank who actually knows how to play is not that big of an issue, but a “I just dinged 85 and imma  smack those mobs with mah 2 hander” is just a nightmare and /cry all the way.

So do we like?

I think they require some nerf so people have a small margin to make mistakes. Not all of us are hardcore players who can afford perfect tactics.

There is a lot of discussion going on about this, some say they are too easy, many say they are too hard, most seem to enjoy the challenge. I think I am in the last category. There has been times when I have thought “gah I’m going dps from now, this is no fun”, but when the boss is finally dead and you did a good job, that thought is pretty much gone. Til next boss, rinse and repeat. My shaman was resto from day 1, I was 80 before dual spec came out and I leveled as resto all the way. Imba mace poking and 45 min to kill one mob ftw! Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But back to the heroics, true, if you started in WotLK and are used to pulling whole rooms without CC, spamming mana / casts and always be on top, these heroics will probably not feel too great. I guess most of us need to learn to play in a different way. And hopefully we will learn to know our classes better. In late ICC raid there were several hunters which didn’t know what frenzy shot was or what it did, not to mention the time I hexed a mob and a fellow shaman gasped and asked “omg how did you turn that guy into a frog??”. Less of that in Cataclysm and I will be a happy panda. And hopefully not a oom’d one.

Stayin’ Alive

Ok, so getting Undying title now, after x number of patches since Naxx was new, is maybe not a great achievement, but still great fun. Raids seem hard to put together nowadays, people are fed up with current content and waiting for Cataclysm. I still enjoy all kind of raiding, always have, and as long as we can do something where I can heal I’m in.

I was of course the sissy and freaked out the minute someone dropped below 95 % health, Stoffe had trouble with his newly bought Dubaian alligator, Hugo didn’t have to use ankh for once, Simon showed off with the silly Shadowmourne and Torje did mad stunts that made whole raid panic outload on Vent. A good night 🙂