Month: May 2009

Woot. (Ulduar Reset 6, Night 2)

Kurn / / gear, general, paladins, raiding, ramblings, shamans, ulduar

Went in, did Hodir (1-shot), Thorim (3-shot — with a new tanking tunnel situation) and Freya (1-shot) and then worked on General Vezax.

Got him DOWN.

Most hilarious part of the raid: someone asked if I’d gotten a GM to hack my account and add more mana to my mana pool. Why? I had 30989 mana while raid buffed with:

Flask of Distilled Wisdom, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild and Arcane Intellect.

Then I switched my gear around: T8 chest, 4-pc T7.5, Greaves of the Rockmender, plus my Figurine – Sapphire Owl (with 2×16 int) and… the pièce de resistance… the Pendant of the Violet Eye. That’s right. From my very first Aran kill. Of course, I’m also a JC, so I have 3×27 int gems in various spots in my gear and I’m an alchemist so instead of 65 int from the flask, I get about 98 intellect, with help from Mixology AND Divine Intellect.

Hawt.

So that’s two new bosses in two nights. Things are going well, progression-wise. Yogg-Saron next. It’ll be nice to get Sara to shut the hell up. She’s more annoying than Jaina was.

In other news, some old friends from Apotheosis have made alts on my new server and so I’m transferring my shammy over before she’s hit 77. She’s, uh, still 70. /sigh

But she brings with her a ton of Northern Spices, some gems, a frozen orb, some odds and ends, and 1400g. Not that my pally really needs more money, but it’ll go towards getting the shammy epic flying and cold-weather flying at 77.

Ulduar, Reset 6, Night 1 (plus some bitching)

Kurn / / facepalm, paladins, raiding, ramblings, shamans, ulduar

We didn’t get Mimiron on Monday night. We wiped 23 times on Mimiron on Monday and didn’t get him.

So Tuesday, the goal was to hit Flame Leviathan, XT-002 Deconstructor, Kologarn, Auriaya and then focus on Mimiron until it got *done*.

heroic-keepers

Keepers of Ulduar, bitches. That’s right, Mimiron down. And it only took us six tries tonight! Granted, that’s about … well, it’s more attempts than I want to add up, in total. But Mimiron DOWN.

I spent half the fight dead on the ground. The ONLY Rocket Strike I have taken on that fight, EVER, and it happens on the kill, as I’m running back to my spot from Laser Barrage! I was watching Grid and auto-running towards my spot and by the time I noticed where I was and tried to strafe left to get out of it as fast as I could, it landed on me.

So Mimiron went down, then we did Razorscale, Ignis and Iron Council. So that’s 8 bosses in one night, which is pretty fun. Also fun?

heroic-shattered

Just rackin’ up achievements. :)

Continue reading “Ulduar, Reset 6, Night 1 (plus some bitching)”

Ulduar, Reset 5, Nights 2-3.

Kurn / / gear, healing, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

Maybe I should just do a weekly wrap-up or something…

Then again, I’m having to check wowwebstats to figure out what we DID on nights two and three. The ol’ brain just ain’t what she used to be.

Oh, okay, so Iron Council, Kologarn, Auriaya, Thorim, Hodir and Freya. Righto.

heroic-molgeim

Did six tries on the ol’ Iron Council with Runemaster Molgeim last instead of Stormcaller Brundir last. True, all our tanks were dead, along with oh, 75% of the raid (at least), but we got it on the sixth one! It’ll be less sloppy next time. Me and my priest buddy were on the Steelbreaker tank and he did a great job keeping her up while I cleansed Fusion Punch. Good teamwork. :D

Kologarn was pretty easy, though it was the first time E (the priest) had ever done it. It only took us two attempts, which isn’t too shabby.

Auriaya was a one-shot. They’ve nerfed the living crap out of her and that makes me a sad panda. That said, the priests in my guild love me and keep giving me fear ward. <3

So all that was Wednesday, in the span of about 75 minutes, maybe 85.

And thus commenced the wipes on Thorim.

Thorim. On whom we’d had a perfect kill last week, with 0 deaths. (Or, at least, everyone was up at the end.) Thorim. On whom we had 11 wipes on Wednesday and STILL didn’t kill him.

And then, on Thursday, we had another 5 attempts before we killed him on the sixth.

I would not NEARLY be so frustrated if it weren’t for the fact that I kept losing my damn tank in the tunnel. I solo-heal the tunnel and have done so since our first week of attempts on Thorim. Granted, I hate being the tunnel bitch, but our holy priest can’t handle it, either by himself or with a resto druid helping. ><

But I didn’t understand WTF was going wrong. It just seemed like the tank, a DK, was taking obscene amounts of damage.

The DK is generally blood DPS. But he was speccing Frost as his dual spec in order to OT for us. Last week and the week before, anyways. This week, he was blood. 45/5/21.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0EGqc0Iof0rosZ0xZ0xhhxck:pGi

I’m not a death knight. My DK is level 58 and sits in Stormwind as a glorified bank alt. So I REALLY don’t know what’s available to DKs. But it seems to me that a deep frost build has SO many more things to help mitigate damage than the blood spec he’s got.

I mean, Vampiric Blood and Bloodworms are nice, but they’re no Frigid Dreadplate, Improved Frost Presence or Unbreakable Armor. And Vampiric Blood and Bloodworms are procs or abilities to use, instead of a static 3% less chance to be hit, instead of a flat 2% reduction in damage.

I’m not sure that’s the case, though. I’ve been playing with a spreadsheet to compare the numbers. I wish I were kidding. It LOOKS like, on the mini-bosses in the tunnel, at least, that while tanking as Frost, the DK took anywhere from 40%-60% of the damage he took while tanking at Blood.

Runic Colossus (frost vs. blood):

54k vs. 157k

67k vs. 104k

61k vs. 89k

102k vs. 92k

And the Ancient Rune Giant (frost vs. blood):

30k vs. 95k

115k vs. 157k

100k vs. 174k

Anything could really explain those numbers — who was in the group? Did I get Hand of Sacrifice on him? Was Sacred Shield up? Etc. The sociologist in me is smacking myself for drawing conclusions on such a small sample. So I’m gonna finish comparing some numbers and hopefully they will support me as I petition my RL to make the DK go back to Frost tanking in the damn tunnel.

Right, so Thorim eventually died. :)

On to Hodir! It went well, just a couple of attempts. And he dropped two T8 chests, as he is prone to doing. So I got my Conqueror’s Aegis Tunic. I need to juggle my gear severely. I picked it up because I was using my Heroes’ chest, with Valorous shoulders, gloves and legs to get my pretty, pretty 4pc set bonus, while still using my Ancient Iron Heaume. Now, I’m thinking I’ll swap the Heaume out for my T7.5 helm, put on my T8.5 chest and maybe even go back to the Poignant Sabatons so as not to lose *too* much haste. But the 8.5 chest is just SO much stronger than the 7.10 chest.

Compare the Heroes’ Redemption Tunic and the Conqueror’s Aegis Tunic.

I mean, 17 int, 60 crit, 30 spellpower, but 60 less haste, just at base. Which hurts, which is why I’m wearing the Poignant Sabatons again. But with the yellow gem socket, that means I can drop a 16 int gem in there, which is another 8 int compared to the Luminous Monarch Topaz I’ve got sitting in my Heroes’ chest. So 17+8 = 25 more int than the Heroes’ chest, with 60 crit, 30 spellpower. Uh, yeah. That’s an upgrade. Except it almost isn’t.

Sigh, I have got to learn to do my math before picking things up.

T8 chest, T7 4-pc with Poignant Sabatons:
1304 int
2178 spellpower
30.14 crit
470 haste

T7.1 chest, Heaume and Poignant Sabatons:
1289 int
2154 spellpower
28.99 crit
596 haste

T7.1 chest, Heaume and  Greaves of the Rockmender
1309 int
2151 spellpower
29.5 crit
541 haste

I’m pretty much better off with the Heroes’ chest, the Heaume and the new boots too, aren’t I? Less spellpower and crit, but more haste and int, which will lead to more throughput.

Still, I had to get the chestpiece at some point, and because it’s purchasable with Emblems of Conquest, there was very little competition for it when it dropped. It was me and another holy paladin. I don’t mind paying DKP since I go to virtually every single raid. I can save my emblems for stuff that there IS competition for. Still, I feel a bit bad that I snagged that when my current combination was working pretty well.

Note to self:

Pallymar’s Ulduar BiS Post

and

CharDev.org

are to be checked out before the raids so you know what you’re aiming for. I was a lot more organized for Naxx, Sarth and Maly, to be honest.

Anyways. Speaking of Emblems of Conquest…

50-conquest

Woot. Got that as we killed one of Freya’s adds.

Then we decided screw it, we’d just clear to Mimiron to get started on attempts right away on Monday and then we went to Emalon, whereupon I got the T7.5 prot gloves, I think. Something, anyways. Free of charge, due to it being the previous tier. I really should grab E and go tank something with him healing me. Just to practice a little.

Anyways, no raid this Saturday because of the long weekend in Canada (Happy Victoria Day!) and we head back in to Ulduar tomorrow night for some FUN TIMES with Mimiron. Hah, I can’t wait for E to see how often we can die in one night.

Relatedly, I will be seriously annoyed if we kill Mimiron and Pandora’s Plea drops and I can’t get it because I don’t have the DKP for it. I have been drooling over that trinket since 3.1 was on the PTRs.

Ulduar, Reset 5, Night 1

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

So, Mimiron didn’t die on Monday. Still not entirely sure what the reason for the suckage was, but there was definite suckage going on.

That said, they made me an officer. My friend Majik tells me that I fail at being mediocre. I blame my all-girls, private school education, which had a focus on leadership. I had no idea I had leadership skills until a few years ago, but hey, apparently I do and apparently they’re not all that rusty.

“While we wait, I have a quick announcement. I’m happy to welcome a new person to our Officer corp. She has exhibited exemplary skills and will be a strong asset to the Guild leadership.”

Anyways, that was Monday.

Tuesday, the RL decided to go after FL with towers up — hard mode. So we spent about an hour and a half or so working on +2 towers (Mimiron’s and Thorim’s) before just ruining Mimiron’s tower and doing +1. And I did it in a siege engine, completing my 3-car garage achievement. Woot!

heroic-3car

Then we tried 4-minute Ignis, also known as Heroic: Stokin’ the Furnace, without a ton of success. So we just killed him after about 8 or 9 attempts and then went across to kill Razorscale. After that 1-shot, we had a couple tries on XT before getting him down and called it there.

And then, one of my old healers from my old guild got an invite to my new guild. He’d applied a couple days ago and we’d had the interview on Monday evening, and he transferred over last night. I cannot describe the awesomeness of  having another healer there that I know I can trust. Healing is definitely a weak spot in my current guild and I hope to help fix that… but having this particular healer with us will make a huge difference to my own personal attitude, primarily because he is AWESOME and also because I know how he heals and he knows how I heal. That familiarity is going to be nice — I won’t have to watch his targets out of the corner of my eye, nor will I worry about him missing Pain Suppression.

In fairness to the healers in my current guild, I trust two of the priests a lot, but it’s just not been the same as my old group 4 from Apotheosis. I mean, there was me, this priest, a resto shammy, another paladin (usually) and sometimes a resto druid or another priest. Group 4 was the healer group, usually. And it was fun! We bonded. Group 4 represent! Never mind that this priest is the ONLY member of Group 4 I still speak to… It’s nice to have an actual friend over there.

I feel moderately bad that he’s come over to my new server, though. I left behind a lot of friends on ET, people I’d played with for years. I really needed a fresh start and to establish myself as a healer, not as a raid leader or officer or GM. And I still feel bad about leaving the server and all those people. So that my guild is an opportunity for this priest makes me feel like I poached him, although I didn’t. He told me he wasn’t happy in his current raiding guild and wanted a place that approached it a little more like a job, and was my guild recruiting?

Given that our weak spot is DEFINITELY the healers, I asked him if he was sure, then told the recruitment officer about the possibility. Then he apped and the members were like “interview immediately” and “not sure why he’s got spirit when he’s disc, but other than that, looks good” and stuff. We had his interview and he was offered a spot and that was that.

Hopefully he’ll get into the raid tonight. I’d love to heal with him as soon as tonight. I imagine he’d be on the Steelbreaker tank with me, on the active Kologarn tank with me and I might see if we can get him to run the tunnel on Thorim, although he’s never done it before. Well, that might be a little mean. ;) Really, a holy priest would be ideal for the tunnel with all the prayer of mending, renew, shield, CoH goodness. But I don’t have that many issues, personally, and even a disc priest would have more mobility than me.

Anyways, I ramble, therefore I am.

OH, and at least ONE of my guildies has discovered this blog. I’m kind of glad I’ve left all kinds of names out of my various bitchings. ;) /wave to M. ;)

Still so, so strange…

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings, ulduar

How long is it going to take before I realize that Sundays are off-days in this guild? I’ve been a member for two months and a bit and I STILL feel like Sundays are a raid day.

I blame the, oh, two years in which my Sundays were always dedicated to my old guild. Officer meetings, raids, office hours, etc.

Anyways, not much new to report from Wednesday (except that I was in the tunnels on Thorim and that our kill was perfect with 0 deaths, as opposed to 21 deaths last week) and that Mimiron can kiss my ass. It was my birthday on Thursday, so I didn’t raid, but apparently that’s the overwhelming sentiment with regards to Mimiron on Thursday, too. Guess we’ll have a fun night with him on Monday.

/facepalm /headdesk /sigh

Kurn / / facepalm, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

I really, really, really need to stop logging raids and then going through the parses.

I really do.

Why?

Because it makes me angry.

Last night on Hodir, I set up a Blessing of dammit! Hand of Sacrifice/Pain Suppression rotation for the Frozen Blows portion of the fight.

It would go thusly:

First Frozen Blows: Me

Second: Prot Pally in Healing Gear

Third: Holy Paladin

Fourth: Disc Priest

Fifth: Guardian Spirit or back to me if HoSac was on CD, then restart the whole thing.

I’m going to say that I wasn’t perfect on the night. I wasn’t. I accidentally hit a priest with Hand of Sacrifice on a Flash Freeze instead of the tank on Frozen Blows on an attempt. I laughed at myself for that one, but kept the damn tank up when FB came on.

But… looking at the parse… Oh, God, why do I torture myself?

Log parse below the cut.

Continue reading “/facepalm /headdesk /sigh”

Ulduar, Reset 3, Night 4 & Reset 4, Night 1.

Kurn / / apotheosis, gear, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

I REALLY have to make the effort to update this after every raid night, because they really do start to blur together…

We got Freya on Monday. She wasn’t too bad, once people realized they couldn’t kill all of one kind of a mob all at once. They did that the first attempt and blew the raid to smithereens.

Then we worked on Mimiron.

Trash to him isn’t great, but the tram is fun. The worst part of Monday night was, just before our last attempt, the numbskull of a tank decided to pull the bombs just outside of Mimiron’s room INTO THE GROUP who had ALREADY gotten past them. Blowing us up. And then he laughed about it. SIGH. I told the RL that if that guy pulled that shit again, I’d leave the raid. So I hear on vent “enough screwing around” etc. And then I wrote back to the RL “no, not just tonight. I will leave the raid if he does that shit EVER AGAIN.”

“Oh.”

I understand having fun, but purposely wiping the raid is the lamest of the lame.

Anyways, Mimiron to phase 3, nearly phase 4, on the first night of attempts. Not too shabby.

Of course, last night was Tuesday, so it was back to Flame Leviathan and everyone else.

Last week, they killed Ignis after I had to leave the raid, so when we did him last night, I got two achievements:

heroic-hotpocket

heroic-siege

That’s always nice. :)

We did FL, IG, RZ, XT, Iron Council, Kologarn, Auriaya and Hodir. 8 bosses. No wonder I was so exhausted I nearly fell asleep while trying to write this up last night.

When Hodir died, the priest lead wasn’t in the raid. Which is good. Why? A Fragment of Val’anyr dropped.

And guess who’s second in the guild for the crafting? That’s right. Me.

fragment1

So, hooray for that, I guess. Now that I have one, they basically HAVE to keep giving them to me if the priest isn’t in the raid. ;)

Tonight, Thorim (where I will doubtlessly be running through the tunnels, because I don’t SUCK), Freya (which isn’t a very difficult fight, to be honest) and Mimiron.

It’s nice to get through to new content on the second raid night of a reset, to be honest. In Apotheosis, as much as I loved my guild (and I really did), there were weeks where we wouldn’t get as far as we had in previous weeks. I really don’t understand where we would lose all this speed. Our raids were always glacially slow except in Hyjal when, you know, we couldn’t be slow. And then eventually we mastered BT trash and powered through that stuff, too.

Ugh, I’m seriously beginning to wonder if I’m cut out for this cog-in-the-machine thing. I like it, but it has its own frustrations. At least I KNOW the frustrations that come from being a leader… Whatever else I do, I have GOT to stop daydreaming about the BC days and wishing we could put THAT team, more or less, into Wrath content. It’s hard, because I KNOW we could do better on some things than my current guild. We just didn’t have the people, ultimately.

And it still makes me sad. :(

Ulduar Reset 3, Nights 2-3; Noble Garden & Orphan's Week

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar, world events

Dear Lord, so much to catch up on.

Basically, nothing happened in Ulduar on Wednesday. Except that we died. A lot. On Thorim. What a bitch that guy is.

Thursday, we got Thorim down after about 2 hours, after some practice with a slight change in our strategy that involved me, a holy paladin, being the sole healer in the tunnel. As opposed to Wednesday night. When a holy priest and a resto druid were in there. Or as opposed to earlier Thursday night, when just the one holy priest was in there.

<drums fingers on desk>

Right, so you substitute the LEAST MOBILE healer in the entire game for the two MOST mobile healers in the game for a portion of the fight that includes a lot of running around.

<drums fingers on desk>

I had a couple of hairy moments in general, sure. And one pull, I lost my tunnel tank entirely — looks like it’s because he had two adds on him at once. Maybe a mage screwed up?

Anyways, in the span of 3.5 seconds, he took 45000+ damage and was only healed for 5519 from a non-crit Holy Shock, about halfway through. Nothing I could do, I was still casting.

But apart from that, it worked really well.

So here’s my question: Am I really that awesome or do the TWO healers who did the job on Wednesday truly suck? Because, really, there is no WAY I should have done better in the tunnel than either of them. But I kept the group up pretty much the whole evening. Lost the tank once, lost one mage once. Aaaaaand that was it.

I mean… priests just have way too many tools to not get through that. Prayer of Mending. Renew. Power Word: Shield. Seriously. Just… so many tools. Meanwhile, a druid may have fewer tools, but they have the mobility that I lack. While strafing left and right, they can use Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Rejuvenation… I have Holy Shock followed by an instant Flash of Light IF Holy Shock crits.

So, really. I don’t get it.

Anyways, due to the fact that I was in the tunnel group (and will likely be stuck in the tunnel healing forever, now), I got an achievement.

heroic-takeyouallon

Of course, our Thorim kill was extremely messy. How messy? Four people standing, that’s how messy.

heroic-thorimdead

1 elemental shammy, 1 enhancement shammy, 1 warlock and 1 disc priest.

This is how I died:

Thorim Chain Lightning hits Madrana for 52531 Nature. (23927 Resisted)

Yeah, he kind of enraged, too.

Due to various circumstances, I had to log at that point for over an hour, came back and they just had killed Ignis and then called the raid. No raid Saturday this week or next, so my next raid is Monday.

Which is good, because hi, Noble Garden and Orphan’s Week, you pieces of crap.

Like I said in a previous entry, Kurn gets the world events and their titles, Madrana gets raid stuff.

Thank God, because no WAY was I going to do Noble Garden on Madrana after doing it on Kurn. NO WAY.

Camping/running around for eggs? Dumbest thing in the entire universe.

Laying an egg in Un’Goro when you can only turn into a bunny when a friend casts it on you? Also dumb.

I managed to get it all done, but WOW, did it suck.

kurn-ng

Last achievement was Desert Rose, dropping a flower just across the border from Tanaris in Thousand Needles.

Which meant that I was now free to focus on Orphan’s Week. Oh, the joy.

It’s actually not a hard bunch of achievements… just do some dailies with your orphan, eat some food… and do some battlegrounds. Oh, God, the pain.

First of all, Arathi Basin’s assault a flag is stupidly easy.

1) Get into a fresh AB.

2) Run like hell for Stables, make sure you’re mounted and have your Orphan out.

3) Cap Stables.

Seriously, it was that easy. Not so bad, right? Well, not yet.

WSG’s return the flag sucked. I played like, four games (I know, I know, but remember that I hate to PVP and that four WSG games is equivalent to 100 matches for anyone normal!) and finally got that portion of the achievement while clicking so furiously on the horde PROT WARRIOR with 45k health that I didn’t even realize I’d gotten it when I saw the flag vanish.

kurn-flag-wsg

Woot!

Incidentally, since I don’t BG much (read: at all), I was amused to get:

kurn-damagecontrol

300,000 damage or healing in a single BG on players. Sweet. I always thought I’d get this on Madrana, since I have been known to go in and healbot through things on very rare occasions, but nope, she doesn’t have it yet and Kurn got it tonight.

AV took me three turtles to get the achievement. I did that by miraculously getting Crusader Aura and jumping ahead to Iceblood Tower, hauling out my orphan on the way up and being the first to assult the flag by literally a second. Thank you, goodbye, /afk.

That means all I have left is the flag in EotS (uggggggh, I hate that place, but at least there are many, many flags in the course of one match) and Utgarde Pinnacle. Then I can actually finish the quests with my Draenei Orphan (already did the Human one) and then be done with this accursed holiday.

Probably doing a Naxx 25 tonight (Sunday) for fun — maybe I can actually get an upgraded ring or trinket, maybe my 7.5 chest?