Category: raiding

More 10-man bitching.

Kurn / / facepalm, general, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

madboat10

So why am I bitching when I got an achievement? Basically, because I don’t particularly care too much for achievements and mostly because I then got swapped out on Saurfang (for a DPS, no less) and lost out on 2 emblems and 275 rep, since I’m human. I think, anyways. Don’t you get 250 rep (regularly) for a boss kill?

Anyways, this has me out of sorts. I don’t *want* to do 10-mans with the guild as it stands. I could probably pug it or go with the group I did it with the first week it was released. And then, I’d get all 8 of my badges and all my rep, assuming a decent group.

Honestly, the rep doesn’t bug me as much as the badges do. Being forced to run 10s to get badges to get my tier faster really pisses me off. But until I have… oh, let’s see now… a minimum of 310 badges to get the cheapest combination of 4 pieces of T10… then I’m not going to quit bitching about losing out on badges.

Assuming I get in for all of ICC25 and do my random heroic daily each day and do the random weekly raid (8 + 12 = 20), my total at the end of the week will be 98.

At a rate of 35 badges for the next 2 weeks or so, I’ll have 70 (2 weeks) + 98 (estimated total by next Tuesday) = 168 badges. Which is enough for 2 pieces of T10 and leaves me with 48 left.

Assuming that the next wing opens up after that two-week period, it will have three bosses, Festergut, Rotface and Professor Putricide. That’s up to six more emblems on 25 and up to six more on 10, meaning up to 12 more emblems a week.

Presume it now takes 3 weeks to get into the next wing, not four.

35 + 12 = 47

47 x 3 = 141 more emblems over 3 weeks, assuming you get every badge available to you, even though there are limited attempts on Putricide.

141 + 168 = 309 by the time raids reset on February 2nd and my guess as to when we’ll be able to get into the third wing.

Are you freaking kidding me?

It’s possible that I’m going to have to keep up with this nose to the grindstone thing until FEBRUARY?! And even THEN, I won’t have enough for 4 pieces of tier?!

This is the third reset right now. I’ve missed two days of daily randoms on Madrana and have missed out on one boss fight (2 emblems). I’m six emblems down and two of them aren’t my fault. I cannot continue to lose out on emblems like this or it’s going to take another 2 weeks of dailies to catch up.

This is ridiculous. I need to talk to my RL friend about stuff and how if the guild isn’t going to assure its members that it takes into raid of full emblems, I’ll just pug — to better the guild. How dumb is that? I’m working MY ass off to be able to get “Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.” as my 4pc set bonus. Who do you really think is going to benefit from that? That’s right. THE TANKS WHOSE ASSES I AM KEEPING ALIVE. And they can’t even assure me that I’ll get all my badges in a week?

I spend a lot of time thinking about guilds and communities and some of the failures I’ve seen. I can point to where and why each guild I’ve been in has done poorly or broken up. I know exactly where the problems were.

In this guild, the problems lie in communication. Plain and simple. They need a communications officer to express to the guild what the officers are thinking and planning. If I can be blamed for anything in the past, *lack* of communication was never one of my faults, so this drives me absolutely bonkers.

10-mans. I knew they were a bad idea from the start, when I had to split up my guild into two Kara groups based on availability, social cohesion, group makeup, the ability to summon Nightbane and, oh yeah, skill.

10-mans = Failure

Kurn / / facepalm, gear, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

I really do recognize that Blizzard wants to make WoW raids more accessible. That’s why we’ve seen raids go from 40-man to 25-man and 20-man to 10-man.

But I still think that 10-mans are the biggest headache to manage for guild leaders. When I was a GM, I was like, “You know what? Fuck 10-mans. Run them, don’t run them, I don’t care.”

They’re filled with drama. You organize them in-guild, officially, and people invariably end up getting saved to the wrong run because some people didn’t show. (See: Karazhan.) You let people run them freely and people invariably get hurt feelings because they don’t get to go “with the cool kids”. (See: Zul’Aman.) You encourage them to run on their own with pugs and people invariably don’t go because they don’t feel like pugging raid content and wiping.

I honestly believe that the introduction of 10-man raid content, starting with Karazhan, but becoming more pronounced with Zul’Aman and developing into the headache we now have with Wrath content, has thrown a wrench into the works of any decent raiding guild.

My personal stance on 10s is “fuck that shit”. I view 10s to be inferior in terms of time + energy = reward than 25-mans. Obviously, I’m right in the sense that right now, ilvl 251 stuff drops out of ICC10 and ilvl 264 stuff drops out of ICC25. Stuff that I have that isn’t tier is basically 258 at this point. Almost everything I have is 245 or 258. ICC10 is a marginal upgrade for me from TOC 25 and is probably a downgrade if the piece is from TOGC 25.

But the problem right now is that you have to do 10s for two reasons. One is rep and the other is Emblems of Frost.

Blizzard has come up with this insane scheme to force you to get 400+ Emblems of Frost in order to get your tier gear. You MUST buy the Emblem of Frost version of your gear (ilvl 251) in order to use the tokens that drop in ICC25, to upgrade your tier to ilvl 264.

Thus, because I do want to get the exalted Ashen Verdict ring and because I do want to wear my tier gear, I need to do the following every week:

– ICC10 (not organized formally by my guild)

– ICC25 (regular raid)

– Random Heroic Daily x7

– Random Weekly Raid x1

That gives me 35 Emblems of Frost a week. I currently have 72 and I should have 76 (I missed 2 days of dailies).

This week, my guild is attempting to set up 10s on the forums. So far as I can see, utter failure. I signed up before the other regular holy paladin did and I am, thus far, not on the invite list. Healer 1: resto druid, Healer 2: shadow priest, Healer 3: other holy pally.

WTF is that all about? If you’re going to post and ask for people for your run, you should take those who post first. If you want to set up a super-secret, ultra-uber group, then use the guild calendar or something else so that you can be assured of the people you need.

I don’t care about going with the cool kids or not and I really hate 10-man content with a fiery passion. So I’ll make my own arrangements or whatever and if I miss out on 8 badges and a chunk of rep this week, so be it. But this is indicative of a serious problem in WoW, I think. Any time you split up a raid group that is generally larger (25 in this case) and force them to do the same content on a slightly less difficult scale, you’re going to end up with people who either miss out due to scheduling issues, have hurt feelings because they’re not as good as those organizing the run or, like me, figure that it’s just not worth the headaches to get 8 emblems a week.

This is the first time I’ve aggressively pursued 10-man content because I recognize I need the badges and rep. And into the third reset of ICC, I’m already disillusioned and am counting down the days ’till I can reform my old guild. :P

Note: Should this nonsense continue into Cataclysm, where we need badges for tier, etc, I am definitely organizing groups for the guild as a whole.

Short form of above: Fuck 10-mans.

LFG, ICC and other assorted acronyms.

Kurn / / dps, druids, dungeons, facepalm, healers, hunters, icecrown citadel, paladins, patch 3.3, raiding, ramblings, tanks

As I write this, I’m waiting for a random Lich King Dungeon for my mage, who is now 75, thank you very kindly, and I’m amazed by how long it takes to form a group.

Compared to, of course, level 80 instances that I DPS on my hunter.

Or any level instance when I queue as a healer or as a tank.

Hell, queueing up as a healer AND a tank means you’re never going to ever, ever wait. It’s hilarious. I’ve done the random heroic every day (from Wednesday on) on my paladin, queued as both a healer and a tank and so far, I have tanked: Nexus, Forge of Souls, Azjol-Nerub and Trial of the Champion. I have healed nothing.

Ooh, VH for my mage!

…Interlude for discussion of VH-related fail…

… the DK tank just wiped us on the first boss. Granted, it was the kite boss. But, the DK tank hasn’t dropped death and decay once and he had no presence up WHATSOEVER, much less FROST presence, until wave 5.

By the end of the second boss, the DK tank seems to have learned to drop D&D, has been in Frost Presence and has hauled ass to portals in a reasonable manner.

And yet, by the end of the instance, it appears that the DK tank did not learn from his mistakes. At all.

Happily, the healer was also from Proudmoore, so we queued up for a random dungeon together, with her in her tank spec (she’s a druid) and got the same ele shammy as in VH, plus a priest and a ret pally. We ran DTK randomly and VH (not randomly). How is it possible to reset a dungeon from within the cross-realm LFG interface? We couldn’t seem to reset DTK.

Anyways, it’s nice — my mage made a friend. And is 3 bars from 76!

Right, so, where was I? Oh, yeah, queueing up as a tank AND a healer.

So those are the two roles for my druid, right? So I’ve taken to doing this before I queue:

– check spec.

– put on opposite-spec gear.

– queue for whatever I want.

– get called in to tank or heal and, once zoned, only have to change EITHER spec OR gear to match the role I’m in.

Basically, I’m sitting there in tank spec with healing gear on, but my queues generally go like this:

Tank, tank, tank, tank, healer, tank, tank, healer, tank, tank, tank, tank… tank.

There ARE no tanks out there for lower level instances and so very few at higher levels.

In other news, thanks to some gratuitous trash-farming, Kurn has the Ashen Band of Vengeance while, due to a guild ICC25 and a pug ICC10, Madrana has the Ashen Band of Wisdom. Kurn has yet to kill a single boss in ICC (though not for lack of trying on Deathwhisper 25), whereas Madrana has killed them all twice already, once on 25 and once on 10.

My thoughts on ICC:

– Trash is icky unless you know what you’re doing.

– The first four bosses are basically a review of Black Temple with a hint of SSC and just a sprinkle of Hyjal.

– Marrowgar might be a little overtuned in 10s, but seemed like a pushover in 25. I worked HARD in that 10-man pug, which was mostly some guild’s run. They’re not amazingly geared, but they’re good enough that they shouldn’t have had to struggle as much as they did. This fight steals from SSC’s Leotheras the Blind (whirlwind), Hyjal’s Archimonde (the fire, although it doesn’t chase you) and BT’s Naj’entus.

– Deathwhisper is a little overtuned in 25m, I think. The big Death and Decays are fine, the deformed fanatics/adherents are fine, the resistance to various forms of damage based on mob type, all fine. The MC + the Curse of Torpor need to go or at least  be nerfed on 25 or else your cleansers/CCers HAVE to be on their game. 10m is a freaking pushover in comparison. This fight steals from the Shade of Akama fight, in that you deal primarily with adds until the boss comes out.

– Gunship Battle is HILARIOUS. I love it. The guild one-shotted it, I believe, and the 10-man only took four attempts or so. Got it by the skin of our teeth, mind you. But we got it anyways. :)

– Deathbringer Saurfang. 3 tries on 25m. 2 tries on 10. And I even got this on 10m:

stormingmess10

That’s I’ve Gone and Made a Mess, which was originally a reference to our good ol’ buddy Moroes in Karazhan, because Saurfang originally Garrotted, the way Moroes did.

– The best item in the ENTIRE GAME, hands-down, drops off 25m Deathwhisper: Zod’s Repeating Longbow. I haven’t seen it, but it’s in the drop table at wowhead and OMG. Reference to Superman II? WIN. “Kneel, son of Jor’El! Kneel before Zod!” God, I love that movie. If Kurn can get this bow, ever, I may never replace it. Okay, so I probably would in Cataclysm, eventually, but it would sit in my bank right next to my Rhok’delar.

Other achievements I’ve recently gotten include the BEST-NAMED ONE EVER.

retreating

That’s “We’re Not Retreating; We’re Advancing in a Different Direction.” I got that with my RL friend, the resto druid and three of “our” guildies, although I was on my hunter which not everyone knows about. I laughed my ass off when I got it.

I’ve also been getting a lot of rep while doing the new dungeons. Madrana got these:

mad15

And Kurn got:

kurnknights

Both Kurn and Madrana have gotten:

lfm

Which brings us back to LFG and the dungeon tool.

There I was. Level 71. Tanking, on my druid, in Azjol-Nerub. (As if I don’t deal with Anub’arak enough as it is!) I’m in with a 74 rogue and a 76 DK, as well as a 73 mage and a 72 priest.

I can’t keep aggro off the 76. And have trouble with the 74 at times. And because I’m always taunting off of them, it’s tough to get aggro back from the healer. So I basically stopped worrying about them and worried about the healer. Because, as we all know, if the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault, if the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault and if the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault, right? :D

So the DK is all like “wow tank how come you cant hold aggro?” And I mention that he’s never on my target, so yeah, he’s going to pull aggro. And then I say:

Me: “I’m trying to taunt off the priest and so my taunts aren’t up for you.”

Him: “thats what im doin waht ddid u think i was doin to boss” (I think this was referencing keeping on my target.)

Me: “Watch your Omen. If you don’t have it, get it. Better, run an instance that’s suitable for your level.”

DK: “funny mate funny”

Me: “True, I can’t keep aggro from a level 76. I’m not supposed to.”

DK: “still ur a tank”

Healer: “a tanks job is to keep aggro off the healer, a dps job is to keep aggro off himself now lets stop arguing”

DK, to me: “u cant ever hold agro off all us so stop telling me what to do”

Me: “You really don’t understand the mechanics of this game…”

DK: “what fuck u talkin about now”

DK: “what u think im doin”

Of course, this was all happening during the trash and boss fight for the second boss in Azjol-Nerub. So as soon as we were done:

votekick

I’m going to write three how-tos, I believe. How to Behave as a Tank/Healer/DPS in random dungeons.

The overriding rule to them all is, of course, don’t be a fucktard dick.

Thoughts about healing in TOGC25 & gear stuff.

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

So, I have 5/5 T9 and I have the heroic Breastplate of the Frozen Lake and the heroic Legplates of Failing Light. Breaking my 4pc T9 set bonus to equip both of these pieces kind of makes me sad. I’m a tank healer — I usually heal the MT or OT and beacon the other. Sacred Shield is usually up on both, as I usually heal with another holy paladin. So when we have a situation where I can spare the second or so to refresh Flash of Light on my non-primary target, I do so. Having a Flash of Light hot ticking for over 1000, every second, for 12 seconds, on big-damage fights like Heroic Twins is amazingly effective. This “heal over time” business is actually freaking awesome. And to have the hot going on 2 targets at once? Sweet deal.

But the heroic chest and pants are still better items than their 245 ilvl tier counterparts. And I get up to 710 haste (a bit overkill, but am I really complaining? No.), more intellect (due to the itemization and one extra gem socket on each item, meaning +40 intellect from gems alone)…

So while, logically, I know that the non-set pieces are *better*, I miss my ultra-uber hots.

I decided to try out which benefits me (and the raid) more on Heroic Anub’arak attempts.

For about 7-8 attempts, I wore 3/5 T9 and for the last 7-8 attempts of that night, I wore 4/5 T9.

Altogether, the results are basically the same: people need to stop sniping my goddamn heals. ;)

I think that in certain situations, such as the way we do Twins, it would be more beneficial to the raid if I bomb Holy Light as much as possible and ignore the FoL hot on the second tank, because the Glyph of Holy Light really helps out with healing the entire raid.

But I think that, until our one Anub OT gets to the point of being unhittable, taking the time to hot him up will be more beneficial in keeping him up than helping out on the raid with HL bombs. The guy is taking insane damage because he’s just not geared properly:

[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Dodge
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 11696
[01:01:40.338] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 11776
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Dodge
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior Miss
[01:01:40.550] Nerubian Burrower hits Warrior 1962 (B: 4019)

Yeah, 24,000 or so damage in .212 seconds.

Tonight, we start TOC fresh again. And maybe THIS will be the week the warrior gets the bracers off Maexxna and the belt off of Razorscale to help him with his avoidance set. ><

Observed.

Kurn / / paladins, raiding, ulduar

So on Sunday the 22nd, my guild finally got this:

observed

Yep. Defeated Algalon for the first time. AND it comes with a snazzy title!

astralwalker

Woot!

Algalon is not exactly a difficult fight, honest. It’s just making sure the black holes are closed properly, you don’t stand near collapsing stars, you don’t stand near cosmic smash and that you avoid big bang. Oh, yeah, and the tanks are taking obscene amounts of damage, too. He hits hard and *fast*. To the point where me and the other holy pally use 4pc T8 for the Sacred Shield thing — it’ll proc the damage reduction by Sacred Shield every 4 seconds instead of every 6.

That said, my fellow holy paladin died. Twice. Subsequently, this is how I finished the fight:

algalonmana

That’s right. 816 mana. Divine Plea on cooldown. Divine Illumination on cooldown. Divine Favor on cooldown. Wings on cooldown. Mana potion on cooldown. And I couldn’t run to melee Algalon because if I stopped casting for too long, the tank would die, period. I’d rather get yelled out for being completely oom than be yelled at for whacking on the boss to regain mana and not spam healing the tanks. Basically, it’s a damn good thing we got him down when we did, or else it would have been a wipe. (Incidentally, that total mana pool is a less than my usual buffed mana pool, since I’m in 4/5 T8 instead of 4/5 T9. Normally, it reads 38,989 mana. Which is gross, but I love it.)

So after we downed Algalon, it was back to Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Twins were already down, so we were going to attempt Anub’arak.

We really haven’t had a lot of practice on the encounter, for two reasons:

1) Attendence has been crappy. And I really can’t blame people. TOC is a shitty raid instance.

2) Our MT, who is the add tank on heroic Anub, is trying to do the “I’ll tank all four adds by myself and will not be hit and will block every attack for more damage than they can deal to me” strat.

As I understand it, and I am not awesome at math, Nerubian Burrowers (there are four of them each wave) hit for a base of 6.8k damage. If your tank is wearing a block value set and is 102.4% unhittable (yes, that’s unhittable, not uncrittable), the tank takes 0 damage despite the fact the adds are buffing themselves with haste or something and you can AOE down the adds on top of Anub, doing double damage, basically.

Guess who doesn’t have 102.4% unhittable status? That’s right. Our MT.

So he’ll dodge, parry and block a LOT… and then he’ll be unlucky.

Now, see, here, he blocks a couple of time and COMPLETELY blocks all of the damage:

[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Block (3614)
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Parry
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 10347
[01:23:29.348] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.356] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.509] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Block (4505)

Of course, that’s 7 hits by 4 adds in the same second. Eek.

And then he gets unlucky. In the same second.

[01:23:29.746] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 12616
[01:23:29.762] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 10486
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 2050 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 3651 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Miss
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT Dodge
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 2100 (B: 3410)
[01:23:29.951] Nerubian Burrower hits MT 9392

That’s like, 40k damage. And he doesn’t have much more than 40k health in his block gear.

Surprisingly, this is not what killed us, primarily because us healers are leet.

What killed us on our best attempt was Hand of Protection.

The goal is to basically use as little of the ice as possible on heroic Anub, because the frost orb things do NOT respawn. You get six for the entire encounter. So, when Anub pursues people during the burrows, this is what happens.

Burrow 1, first person chased runs towards a patch of ice we drop at the entrance. It’s far, they stand there and run Anub into the ice.

Burrow 1, second person chased stays with the majority of the raid over by where Anub starts out (which is where we fight him). A paladin (can you see where this is going? haha!) casts Hand of Protection on this second target when Anub is almost on top of them. They wait until the buff is down to about 2 seconds left and then strafe on to the patch of ice they’re standing next to.

Burrow 1, third person chased kites for ~7 seconds.

Burrow 2 works in exactly the same way. And if you have a third burrow, you’re fucked.

So my RL friend, the resto druid and healing lead, assigns us our BOP cooldowns (seriously, I can’t say HOP with a straight face. I’ve tried.).

Since both the other holy paladin and I have 2/2 Guardian’s Favor, this is how it was organized:

I have people on the odd burrows (1/3, if needed) and the other holy paladin has people on the even burrows (2/4, if needed). So the second person on the first and third burrows gets BOPped by me and the second person on the second and fourth burrows gets BOPped by the other paladin.

It was, I believe, our third time getting to the burrow. I’d been BOPping people as assigned.

Burrow 1: I BOP a warlock.

Burrow 2: I’m the person who needs to be BOPped.

The MT/RL says, in raid chat:

“BOP at the last second, Mad.”

And I’m like “boy, I hope the other holy pally read that…”

And then I die to the impales from Anub’arak’s spikes.

The MT/RL says: “or just die.”

So the other pally is like “but I bopped the warlock” and I’m like “no, I did”. My BOP still had 30+ seconds on its cooldown.

It was only after I logged off that I remembered that Hand of Protection CAUSES FORBEARANCE and that there is NO WAY both of our BOPs could have been on cooldown! And since mine *WAS*, he was LYING to me! And made me out to look like a complete, total idiot in the raid!

I was SO angry that I uploaded the logs and checked them… and then I got even angrier. Because I was wrong. And oooooh, I hate being wrong!

[01:43:18.796] Madranah casts Hand of Protection on  Warlock
[01:43:18.903] Other Holy Paladin casts Hand of Protection on Warlock
[01:43:19.016] Warlock gains Hand of Protection from Madranah
[01:43:19.016] Warlock’s Hand of Protection fades
[01:43:19.016] Warlock gains Hand of Protection from Other Holy Paladin
[01:43:29.058] Warlock’s Hand of Protection fades

What the hell is that? That is some really fucking dumb luck right there. That we synched to the point where they BOTH landed on the warlock at EXACTLY the same time is just unfathomable to me. But the logs prove that he didn’t lie. He cast it.

Of course, he shouldn’t have cast it on the warlock. But at least he’s not a lying bastard.

Anyways, that’s basically all the news that’s fit to print.

Wow. Just… wow.

Kurn / / coliseum, general, healing, raiding, ramblings

Heroic Twin Val’kyrs down. Using the DUMBEST STRATEGY I have ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE.

The whole basis of the fight is that there are auras that you should switch to based on what’s happening right then in the fight, and the aura portals are in four spots (two for each) of the room.

But does my guild do this?

No.

On the kill, 3 of us got the light aura, 21 of us got the dark aura. (Did I mention we 24-manned it? No? We did.)

Those 3 were two hunters and a warlock in BT Shadow Resist gear, basically collecting white orbs and dodging as many black orbs as they could.

As I understand it, here are four abilities the twins use.

Light Vortex – surge of light, 16k fire damage to anyone not with light aura every second for 5 seconds.

Dark Vortex – surge of dark, 16k shadow damage to anyone not with dark aura every second for 5 seconds.

Twin’s Pact (Light) – light-coloured shield that people with dark aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)

Twin’s Pact (Dark) – dark-coloured shield that people with light aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)

So, just by describing that, one would think that half the raid is light, half is dark, everyone switches on vortex, right? WRONG.

We healed through Light Vortex.

2 resto shammies, 2 holy priests, 2 holy paladins, 1 resto druid.

It meant popping two Divine Sacrifices that overlapped (even if they don’t stack) AND all four druids in the raid popping tranquility for their groups.

But, by golly, we healed through it.

And the shammy blew heroism at the right time. And they swapped DPS targets on time. And we won!

But it was pure luck.

The order of those four abilities (which happen once a minute, I believe?) is random. But they won’t repeat until the fifth time an ability comes up. And THAT is also random, I believe. So we only got one Light Vortex. Had we gotten two, we would have been SCREWED. I was ready to Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice (which would have killed me) if I had to, but we got through without a second Light Vortex.

Some stats:

Effective raid DPS: 121,717

Effective raid DT(taken)PS: 50,469

Effective raid HPS: 50,966

RAW raid HPS: 91,732

And only 44.4% overhealing.

My RL friend, the resto druid? 9133 effective health per second. To my 4064.7.

Whew.

Shocking.

Kurn / / gear, hunters, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

Two posts in a single day. Good Lord, I know. What’s the world coming to?

It was a productive day. Went out and got my hunter the T9.10 shoulders with 30 Emblems to go with the T9.10 pants I got off Koralon a while back. Serpent Sting critting is hot.

Then went through Ulduar 10 with a pug and did FL, RZ, IG, XT, KO and AU, all for the first time on the hunter. So very, very, very weird to DPS those fights and that trash instead of healing them. Too bad we broke up before Hodir due to mass AFKs/DCs/etc.

Let’s see, what else… Did VOA 25 – no hunter loot. Did Ony 25 – no hunter loot, but I did win the head! So I got the Sparkling Onyxia Tooth Pendant to replace Pendant of the Outcast Hero. Pretty groovy, eh?

I’m at 264 hit rating and have replaced… I think it was 4 or 5 +16 hit gems. I’m cheap at the moment, so I only replaced them with +16 agi, but eventually, I’ll upgrade the T9 at least with +20 agility.

I managed to pull 5k DPS at some point today, albeit on trash. The Explosive Shot nerf has smacked me upside the head, so I’m only pulling about 4-4.5k DPS instead of like, 4.8-5.6k DPS (depending on available buffs, etc). I guess that makes sense, because hi, I’m in shit gear. ;)

Still, Explosive Shot dots are still critting, under ideal circumstances, over 5.5k. I tried Marks after the ES nerf and felt the pain of it and the fact that I don’t have remotely close to the amount of Armor Penetration I’d need to make a Marks spec work nicely. So even post-nerf, Survival’s working well for me. Or at least better than Marks. I find that I’m really accustomed to Survival, too. It felt weird to not be refreshing SS because I was using Chimera to refresh it.

Anyways, enough rambling. Productive day today. Maybe a ToC 10 on the pally tomorrow before the raid. (Incidentally, Tuesday raids have been dropped and all other raid days are now until 2am instead of 3am! Ecstasy! Maybe now I won’t be a freaking zombie!)

Rounding up the last little while.

Kurn / / apotheosis, coliseum, facepalm, general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

First thing… I tried Algalon for the first time tonight, ever. It was 25m. It’s a seriously fun fight. We only got through one Big Bang at most, though. The guild I’m apping to hasn’t killed him on 25m yet and only killed him on 10m for the first time tonight (after the 25m attempts were done). Still, I didn’t fuck up hardcore, so I’m pleased. Still, look at this damage.

[00:00:25.621] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 4639 (A: 7176)
[00:00:25.621] Madranah Flash of Light Tank1 +*0* (O: 6637)
[00:00:25.621] RestoDruid Lifebloom Tank1 +525
[00:00:25.854] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 24051
[00:00:25.854] Tank1 Necrosis Algalon the Observer 74
[00:00:25.868] Tank1 Retribution Aura Algalon the Observer 209
[00:00:26.028] Tank1 Frost Fever Algalon the Observer 353 (R: 88)
[00:00:26.164] Tank1 Retribution Aura Algalon the Observer 233
[00:00:26.343] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 7441 (A: 4659)
[00:00:26.343] HolyPally1 Flash of Light Tank1 +443
[00:00:26.714] Tank1 Plague Strike Algalon the Observer 1131
[00:00:26.726] RestoDruid Lifebloom Tank1 +1066
[00:00:26.897] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 21430 (O: 2249)

And just like that, dead like dinner. My holy light was in the middle of casting and I just needed another half second to make sure it would land… Anyways. I didn’t make a fool of myself, which is nice.

As to the previous guild’s drama…

Continue reading “Rounding up the last little while.”

/facepalm

Kurn / / facepalm, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

Through a VERY odd series of events, I’m having to update DKP from my last guild on Bronzebeard.

Now, since I wasn’t actually at the raids and such, I’m having to go back through their World of Logs parses, along with various screenshots the tank officer sent me.

So I’m looking at a log from Ulduar, where they were doing Thorim, Hodir and Freya.

And, while browsing the log, I see that there was 630,000 damage taken from Biting Cold.

I scratched my head. Yep, just the one attempt…

1) Unnamed Resto Druid Who Doesn’t Know How To Play At All Which Makes Me Wonder Why She Was Even In The Raid: 108,454 damage from Biting Cold.

2) New Holy Paladin Who is Clearly a Moron: 65,148 damage.

3) New Shadow Priest Who, One Must Wonder, Seems To Never Have Done Ulduar Before: 62,135 damage.

4) Long-Time Holy Priest Who Manages To Look Good After That Bunch Of Morons: 39,534 damage.

5) Decent Resto Druid Who Apparently Needs To L2Move His Ass: 39,930 damage.

Seriously?

I just did Hodir this last Wednesday with the guild I’m apping to.

254,051 damage from Biting Cold.

1) Moron Hunter Who Was Dying To AOE All Night: 54,054 damage.

2) Dumb Enhancement Shaman: 48,052 damage.

3) Moron Of A  Mage App: 45,027 damage.

4) Pretty Decent Mage App: 26,270 damage.

5) “Senior” Holy Paladin: 11,226 damage.

Where was I?

13) Me: 2,944 damage.

Where was the resto druid in the raid?

18) My RL Friend: 584 damage.

The level of play is just a LOT higher on Proudmoore in general, I think. I feel badly for people on Bronzebeard.