Screenshot Friday

PPP makes such a pretty princess 😉

Raiding and Cataclysm

I had a discussion with a fellow blogger today.  It was enough of a topic to get me to write a post.  So here you go!

**Note, I am referring to regular raiding, not heroics**

Raiding in Wrath spoiled people.  As Rep put it, in Wrath raiding you could drag any old casual off the roster along when you were short someone.  You could feed them the strat and they could perform.  Even if they were the worst player out there you could still down bosses.  Especially in ICC with the pity buff.

I remember doing 25 man ICC with SR when I first dinged 80.  I was still in greens for crying out loud and yet I was carried through to the plague quarter.  I wasn’t alone in being carried either.

Fast forward to Cataclysm.

Raiding is “hard” again.

This is NOT ICC with the 30% pity buff.  This is NOT 10 man raids with 25 man gear.  10 man raiding is TOUGH.  There is less margin for error.  People CANNOT be carried.  Each person HAS to do their job, and do it correctly or you will spend your raid night wiping.

I don’t know about you but I don’t enjoy wiping for 4 hours in a night.

Wiping the entire night is even worse when each wipe has NO progression.

The problem I am seeing people having is they shouldn’t be raiding and yet they are attempting it.

The bare, and I do mean BARE minimum that I would even consider taking someone raiding would require at least these things:

• Fully enchanted
• Fully gemmed
• Fully reforged
• Caps met or close
• Correct gear type

Now I expect these to be at least the correct enchants/gems/reforging for your spec.  This means no Agility plate for the Holy pally.

Sorry Zari.

Now this is NOT min/maxing.  This is the bare minimum needed to perform anything in end game content.  This doesn’t even take into account if you have a decent spec (I’m not talking EJ spec just a logical one) or the ilvl of your gear.  Gear comes later, skill is needed now.

Sorak will point out that I am a big proponent of needing more gear to complete something.  Let me clarify what I mean when I say that someone isn’t geared enough.

• The rdps is not high enough to beat the enrage timer
• The rhps is not high enough to keep the tanks alive

That is it.

That is what I am referring to when I say we don’t have the gear for something.

If you truly still feel that gear is the issue and the problem isn’t those two items then maybe you are doing something you shouldn’t.

There is a clear progression in getting geared to raid.

Quest rewards -> Regular Dungeons -> Rep Gear -> Heroic Dungeons -> Justice Gear -> Valor Gear -> Raiding

While you CAN go into raiding with the lower end of gear you will fail a hell of a lot more.  Unless of course you have a raid full of Zugs.  Then you could probably go in there naked and still do 20k dps.

Nerf Zug, seriously.

Back on topic!

You will hear people say that you need a minimum ilvl of 338-340 for raids.  I would agree with that.  That puts you pretty firmly in the 333-346 range.  You might have a few 318 greens or some 325 blues, but for the most part you have to at least ground out some dungeons or maxed out some reps.

AKA – You worked for it.

Raiding equals work.  People have compared it to a 2nd job.  In a lot of ways it is.  If you want to succeed at your job you work at it.  You do your homework.  You make adjustments when things aren’t done correctly.  As Slice says “You work will not pay you to fail, why should WoW?”

Right now a lot of “casual” raiders are facing the issue of what they need to do since they cannot down bosses.  First and foremost they have to decide if they are willing to put the time and effort into raiding.  Even just the bare minimum listed above.  If that is too “hardcore” then they shouldn’t be raiding.

Just because someone is casual does not mean they are bad.

My words of advice to those who are facing this situation – Sit down with your raiders and find out from them how much they actually want to do.  If they don’t have the time (or the will) to put in the effort to raid in Cataclysm in current content then you guys should re-evaluate if you should even be raiding.  If raiding isn’t in the works then start working on heroics again.

If you do decide that you want to raid then you need to evaluate each raider.  The raid leader/class leader needs to go through the player’s spec and make sure they have met the basic requirements.  If they have not, then they need to fix it before they raid.  Don’t be that person that lets down the 9 other people.

You don’t even need to do major research.  If you can’t be assed to go online and do a google search then you can at least reforge to stats that you like, enchant for stats that you like, gem for stats that you like.

EVERY

LITTLE

BIT

HELPS

I wish you luck!

Screenshot Friday

Pictures from gchat!!

Things we catch our GM saying

More things the GM says

Because I wanted to brag

Just because he has feathers doesn't mean he can fly

Dancing ogre

I came so close to getting burned to a crisp

Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere, but not a drop to drink . . . yet!

As most of you know, PPP hit 85 a while back.  Since then I had been mostly using her to grind out TB dailies and to farm herbs.  I did a few heroics (she only had 4 green pieces when she dinged 85 ^_^) but those were as shadow.  While I was leveling her post 80 she didn’t set foot in a dungeon.  Which considering she was leveled in LFD is kind of odd.  My main reason for this was so she could herb as she leveled.

Yes I am serious.

The other reason was because I knew that Disc healing in Cata kind of sucks until you have some gear.  A fresh 85 (usually) doesn’t have the gear to not struggle.  Even though I had already popped my Cata healing cherry with Tattia (and it didn’t hurt all that much tbh) I was still apprehensive about healing with PPP.

I think a big part of it was because I leveled with the old style of Disc.  The bubble spamming Wrath-era Disc.  Where I could bubble everyone in the group and spam Flash Heal when someone dropped below 75%.  Even though I knew I could no longer play my priest that way I still was slightly worried.

The funny part was I was kind of getting used to playing Shadow.  It isn’t quite like Affliction.  It is more like the ugly redheaded step-child of Affliction.  I still prefer Affliction’s playstyle, but I will admit that Shadow is fun.  While with Affliction you have to watch all of your DoTs and keep them refreshed, you really don’t have too many procs to look out for.  With Shadow I have found you have the DoTs to track but the vast majority is spent building up stacks and using the  procs.  I find that while I am herbing in Uldum I get attacked by every croc and snake out there.  If I end a fight with an orb proc or an archangel proc I feel like I need to pick another fight just to use it.  The closest Affliction has is a Nightfall proc.  Unfortunately that proc has only a few seconds vs 30 some odd seconds for the orb proc.

I know that Slice and Sorak have been trying to figure out what I am planning to do with my priest.  Mostly it involves complaining that I am not healing heroics on her.  Because heaven forbid I level an alt to just farm. :-p

As I mentioned above, I had been grinding out TB dailies on her.  My main goal was to get her the healing trinket.  Well I finally got it on Friday (I think) (Edit: Thursday!) and thus had run out of excuses.  Saturday I got her enchanted up (some basic ones at the least) and then said that I was ready to try healing.

A normal.

Yeah I am doing this the correct way!

AKA the wussy way according to some people.

Slice offered to tank on his pally, Rep brought her mage, Arv nabbed his priest and Sorak brought Sorac, the fury warrior.  Luckily for me Rep & Arv were 81 and Sorac was only 83.  This meant that they wouldn’t be doing too many horrific things to me and we would get a fairly low level dungeon.  I knew it would either be Throne or Blackrock.  Sure enough Throne popped up.

I had no issues.  In fact I was rather bored.  To be fair it is a level 80-81 dungeon and I am heroic ilvl (I did say I had 4 greens) so I overgeared the place, as did Slice’s pally.  So it really didn’t count.  Arv & Rep got a few upgrades.  I think Sorac even got something so the run wasn’t a total waste.

After we finished the run Sorak decided we were done with the “pansy normals” and people switched out to run a heroic.  Arv got on his pally to tank, Sorak got on his rogue, Rep switched to her DK and Slice got on his boomkin.  We queued up and got Heroic Halls.  For one I was excited because lots of bosses = points & lots of chances for gear.  Then the other part of me freaked out because the first part of that place is HELL on healers.

Slice was in vent with me and was teasing me about pulling out my hair.

It never got that bad.

Mostly because when Slice can heal on a toon, he does.  Even if it is dps spec.  He throws out heals on his priest his pally AND his druid, no matter the spec.  I don’t think he can help himself.  So I know that the run would have gone A LOT rougher had he not been there on his druid.  I think he actually spent more time healing than I did.  I finally had to ask him to stop healing so I could see if I could handle it and would ask him for him if I needed it, which I did.

I will say that the fire shield guys SUCK without someone that can deal with their shield.

I use Vuhdo to heal.  I love it.  The problem is I don’t always remember which button combination gives me what spells.  While leveling PPP I didn’t really have to use many spells.  It was mostly bubble and forget it.  The result is I don’t know what half of my spells do, nor do I remember to use the ones that I do know.

PW: Barrier?  Yeah I forget I have that to use.  Pain Suppression? Yep forget that one too.  Power Infusion? Oops! Forgot!

I kept finding myself wanting to use my right mouse button to spam heals.  On my druid this button is Rejuv.  Previously on my priest it was Flash Heal.  I changed it to Heal.  So I’ve been spamming heal.  I have Penance as my left button and PW: Shield as my middle button.  Shift+Left Click is Greater Heal.  Button 4 is remove magic.  Button 5 is remove disease.  And that is the extent of what I remember I mapped. >.<

What I really need to do is update my spells.  I need to put Flash Heal where I will remember it (I specced into Surge of Light, yes I know, but frankly I like it and the free big heal is nice).  I also need to get Prayer of Mending on a button.  99% of the time I forget to cast it.  PS and PI need to be popped on there too.  A big problem I have is because I am Smite specced (and I do Smite, sometimes) I don’t have Vuhdo set up to where I target the person I am healing.  This allows me to keep a mob targeted (and not lose it) so I can Smite.  The issue comes up when I want to use a spell that I either don’t have mapped or if I need to target a person for some reason or another.  Then I either need to remember which F key is which person or I need to click on the party frames.  This of course causes delays etc.

Yes I am fail!  Trust me I am aware of it! :-p

At the same time I don’t know if switching to the targeting (like I have on my druid) would work with my Smite Spec.

Oh well I’ll figure it out with practice.

Other than wiping to the fire shield guys we actually didn’t have any major issues.  I let Sorak die several times.  Mostly because I just cannot heal more than one person THAT much at once.  AKA you pull aggro and don’t lose it, you die.  He was on his rogue.  If he couldn’t drop aggro then he is a bad rogue.

Psst!  He couldn’t drop aggro. 😉

About halfway through the run Arv had to go and we kind of made Rep tank.  She DOES NOT tank heroics.  So thank you again sweetie for tanking! 😀  She did a fantastic job and really wasn’t tough to heal.

Funny thing:  When you go into heroics with a green level chest (hey I did TRY to do regulars) getting a blue heroic chestpiece is a HUGE upgrade and makes healing soooooooooooo much easier.

We did another heroic with a few people switching out.  We got SFK.  Sorak was on his shaman and we dragged Zari in on his shaman too.  Slice tanked and we picked up a PuG DK to dps.  As we grouped up Zari was all “where are the DKs?”  He just HAD to jinx us. >.<

Actually the DK wasn’t bad.  Was kind of a jerk but wasn’t a bad player.

Now that run was VERY easy to heal.  I blame the shamans.  I have a feeling one of them was running healing stream.  I think we only had like 1 or 2 deaths.  The only time I panicked was during the first boss fight where he drains everyone’s life.  Slice was telling me when to use my Barrier (which I had COMPLETELY forgotten about and not used once all day) and I of course used it at the wrong time. /sigh  This led him to ask me why in the hell I had used it when I did.  Yeah I panicked.  It is all good though!  We made it through!  Sorak even said that he wasn’t helping me heal at all!

We did a couple more changes and Fayle decided he was going to tank.  Slice wanted to heal on his pally.  Zari switched to his priest and Rep came back on her DK (she had been afk).  I came along as shadow because I wanted the points and a chance to steal gear from Zari (which I totally did!).

Just FYI – I SUCK at trying to make it around corners without pulling mobs we are trying to skip.  So if you are in a party with me and you are trying to cut corners *cough*Sorak*cough* remember what happens.

Yeah I kind of wiped the group. >.<

In my defense I was trying to eat pasta (brown rice pasta is GROSS when it gets cold) while it was still hot.

Not a very good defense, but there it is!

The elusive wand dropped (first time there and it drops! win!!) and I snagged it.  I don’t know if Zari needed it or not.  Tis mine though!  On the final boss we changed up the specs a bit.  My dps is shit as Shadow (main spec is Disc after all) so Slice went prot, I went Disc and Fayle went dps so we could get the adds down.  At this point I had replaced my helmet, chest and wand (2 of those were green) and OMG the difference!  I actually had been remembering to use my Shadowfiend (I can never think of him as anything other than Nigel thanks to Tam) so I didn’t have any problem with mana.  I actually made mana pots for PPP and have yet to use one.  The boss dropped a staff (woot! upgrade over the Very Manly Staff).  After that run I was “told” I was coming on one on my lock. /sigh

All in all it was a good weekend.  I got boots from the quest reward so there went another green.  Yes my new helmet and boots have hit on them, but frankly I don’t care.  They were upgrades!  It wasn’t like I was taking them from anyone else who could use them.  The only green item I have left are my bracers.  Yes I know I could craft the PvP ones, but I refuse to.  I will get bracers when I get bracers.

As an aside, bracers dropped in the heroic I was in with my lock.  Go figure.

Tonight is raid night and the funny thing is all I want to do is to run heroics on the priest.  I had gotten to where I wasn’t a fan of them.  Now with the new challenge they are interesting again.

Go figure! 😉

Screenshot Friday

Moar Lion sexy dancing!

Raiding: It’s whats for dinner!

Or not in my case.

At least not last night.

Throughout the day Slice likes to armory stalk, err “look up” our raiding roster and the calendar (BTW take your authenticator home babe) to see what we have for raids that week.  Up until recently we actually had to sit people because we had too many sign ups.  My brother and his friends had joined our raiding roster and had really helped with having raiders.

Unfortunately that didn’t last very long.

At first one of his friends (who was a tank) left to play Ultima Online (yes, seriously) then got my brother playing again.  One of the others is the roommate of the tank and he stopped logging in when the tank did.  The other dps/healer had quit logging in a while back; he was hooked on League of Legends.  Most of them now play LoL, UO or in the case of Dub (the tank) Rift.  We also lost Moog to Rift.  He keeps trying to get us to quit WoW and play with him in Rift.

Sorry Moog, not going to happen any time soon.

So that is 5 people gone.

From a 10 man raiding group.

We lost a tank, a flex healer, a melee dps, a ranged dps and a caster dps.

Luckily we have an awesome friend in Repgrind and she has been tanking for us on her DK and leveling a holy Paladin.  On top of Arv (our awesome MT!!) we have Lion as a tank.  Lion has really stepped it up and has made fantastic progress in his playing.  He recently told me that he wants to become AWESOME and the only way to do that is to make sure he is tanking both nights.  Since Lion has been able to tank both Tues & Wed we have been able to allow Arv to come in on an alt and for Rep to not tank both nights.

On farm content we have been able to bring in geared alts and other guildies that haven’t been able to raid with us from the get go.  This has caused some unneeded stress on bosses that are on farm.  Wiping repeatedly to Magmaw and Omnotron when we usually one shot them is NOT fun.  A large part of that is teaching the people the strat if they haven’t seen it, or just not seen it from that role.  It just makes raid nights painful.

Some nights we have no choice but to bring in people who haven’t been farming the content just so we can raid.  With the loss of the guys mentioned above we just have no flexibility.

Anyway!  Back to last night.

Originally we were short a person.  Arv was going to be really late, Lion had a last minute delay and Zug hadn’t signed up.  Luckily Zug could make it (the slacker just didn’t sign up in time) and he got his sister to come in to dps (she is 12 and can’t always stay up late enough to raid with us but is still an awesome dps) because for some reason we thought we were short.  Turns out she would have been replacing Zug but since he was there we didn’t need her and she got to log off.  Lion was still running a bit late so we made Zug tank. ^_^ That’s what he gets for not signing up on time!

We had Arelin (Rep) and Zug tanking.  Slice and Zarm are OP healers and have long since been 2 healing Omnotron.  Sorak came in on his mage, I was on Lyssi.  We had our usual raiders Vysh and Zerl on their mains.  We also had Shirl on her lock and lo and behold we had Zari!  We got to pop his Cata raiding cherry!

Despite some snags (someone hit Magmatron’s shield 3 times >.< and I ran the wrong way from a slime causing me to almost die) we one shot the trons and loot was had.  Zari got a chest piece and Rep got a tanking belt.  I believe she was still using her DPS belt Tel had made for her.

We cleared the trash in front of Magmaw with no issues then moved on to the worm.  We used to 2 tank this but now we are able to 1 tank it.  We decided last night to 2 heal it.  They had tried in the past but the raid damage was just too high and we usually had to play it safe and 3 heal.  Last night we had so much ranged AE/AoE that we felt we could 2 heal.

The first attempt went well up until the chain phase.  Chains went down and Magmaw bent himself backwards OVER the lava.  Everyone was just kind of standing there in shock.  I could target his exposed head but it was showing out of line of sight.  It was the weirdest bug.  By the time he came back down we had already decided to call it a wipe because the lost dps from the head phase killed us.  At this point Lion had logged in and it was decided to bring him in to tank (he needs more raid tanking practice) but that meant we were at 11.  I really hadn’t felt up to raiding so I offered to sit out.

Apparently I am not allowed to do that anymore.  LOL

After I left they wiped 7 more times on Magmaw before they finally got him down.  They 2 shot Maloriak then spent the rest of the night wiping to Chim.  They did finally get Chim down, but at that point it was raid time.  Usually we one shot Omnotron, Magmaw and Chim.  Maloriak tends to give us troubles.  We can typically clear up to Atramedes with over an hour (usually longer) left in raid time. 

Hey it happens when you have people who haven’t seen the fights.  It is the only way for them to get experience.

For a while I had been telling Sorak and Slice that we needed to recruit.  They kept telling me that no we were fine, we had plenty of raiders etc.  Well now they have seen that we just don’t have enough people.  We’ve gotten 3 new people in the guild, but none of them seem to show any interest in raiding.  One is a tank that I recruited through the lower level LFD.  He said that he wanted to tank raids for us, but I think he has been having computer issues.  He hasn’t been online in several days.  The other two don’t even want to run heroics with the guild, not because they don’t like us but because Sorak is scary.

True fact.

So yes, SR is now recruiting.  Ideally we would like a dps with a healer/tank offspec, but if you are pure dps we will not say no.  We would like to get some more casters (preferably a boomkin cause Zarm needs competition for gear) and maybe even a rogue.  We currently only run with one person who can use leather gear.  A mage or another warlock would also be welcome.  When we run with our normal crew I am the only DPS cloth wearer.  Yes technically Slice could use the gear, but he gets all the healer cloth.

Some info – Shadow Rising is on Drak’Tharon Horde.  DT is a PvP server.  There isn’t usually any world PvP unless you are in TB.  Horde VASTLY outnumbers the Alliance on DT.  Drak is a low pop server with a CST time zone.  We raid Tuesday and Wednesday night 7:30 pm – 11 pm CST.  We are looking into doing a 3rd night (possibly Monday night) but that is still up in the air.  We are currently 8/12 and are working on Cho’Gall / Nef.  We haven’t gone to Throne of the Four Winds yet.

We are an adult guild.  This means cussing, sexual innuendos, coarse language and teasing.  We do not tolerate bashing of any kind, except when it comes to goblins and Sorak, those are fair game.  All teasing is in good humor and we all give as good as we take. 

While we are NOT a hardcore raiding guild, we do have several people with hardcore mentalities.  We will not tell you what spec you should play but we will expect you to perform at your best in your choice.  We do not have a “Raider” rank.  Everyone is a Member.  We do have a special Vet status.  For a 500g weekly donation you get your repairs paid for by the guild, you also get enchants and gems paid for by the guild.  We provide flasks/feasts during raids.

We are currently Guild level 21 (the last I checked).  We are a fairly small guild with about 30ish members.  Most people have several alts and can usually be found on them or controlling the auction house with them.  If you have any other questions or want to roll an alt to see how we are in game please feel free to contact me through this post or at our guild website (yeah we don’t use it as much as we should).  In case you are curious here is our armory link.

Even if you aren’t interested in raiding with us you are always welcome to come roll an alt on Drak’Tharon and hang out with us.  I promise not to bite . . .

 . . . hard.

Screenshot Friday

FEAR ME!

Screenshot Friday

Not only did she look just like me, but she was a warlock too!