Category: ramblings

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Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, ramblings

Status of Kurn:

– Level 85

– 525 Skinning/ 525 Leatherworking

– Hasn’t even done all the dungeons yet

– Spent a lot of time skinning and farming volatiles

Status of Madrana:

– Level 83 (God bless you, Holy Radiance!) and 21%

– Only healed Blackrock Caverns, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle thus far (haven’t discovered TotT) and even pugged some of that, with halfway decent results

– Already well through revered with the Guardians of Hyjal

– Hyjal is completely, COMPLETELY done. Doing it all over the course of about a day and a half is very, very different from doing it on Beta, where I did that over the span of about three weeks. It was nice to be able to basically already know what to do for the quests, though. I nearly cried at Save the Wee Animals, though. Still hate that quest!

– I’ve replaced six pieces so far: helm, neck, both rings and both trinkets. RIP 2pc T10. You will be missed.

– Mana issues when fights drag on too long or too many people are taking damage at once. Most of the time, I’m okay, especially if I remember to judge, but sometimes it just isn’t possible.

– Using lots of CDs — HoSac, Divine Protection, BOP, Divine Shield, Lay on Hands have all seen use this weekend, and a lot of it.

– JC to 481, Alchemy to 508. Enough to have both trinkets, although I’m not using my alchemy trinket for my holy set, not yet anyways.

Apotheosis:

– 22 level 85s — 3 tanks and 3 healers in the mix.

– Guild Level 3 early this morning!

– Guild Deadmines/Heroic Deadmines/Heroic Stonecore achievements all gotten this morning/last night.

– Officers have maxed out Herbalism, Alchemy, Inscription, Enchanting, Engineering, Mining, Skinning and Leatherworking. This leaves: Tailoring (OMG, where is all the Embersilk?!), Jewelcrafting (waiting on meta transmutes) & Blacksmithing (waiting on JC to finish with the ore, basically).

I’m still unhappy with the structure of guild achievements and guild levelling and the like. I’m still unhappy with the majority of the instances I’ve seen, thus far. I’m still unhappy that since 3am on Tuesday morning, which is 5 days and 4.5 hours, I have dinged Kurn and am more than halfway through the levelling process with the paladin — it’s just too short. And we’re basically stuck with the 5-levels-per-expansion for at least two expansions, lest we ding 95 for the next one. I’m really not a fan. I couldn’t queue for Blackrock Caverns or TotT with someone who was 85 and someone who was 81 couldn’t join my queue for Stonecore, I think it was. (Maybe Vortex Pinnacle.) The levels and their requirements are really not right and everything feels compressed.

That said, I’m enjoying spending time with my guildies. I’m enjoying saying grats all the time, even if it seems like it’s every two minutes. I’m enjoying NOT recruiting right now, because we are, honest to God, all full up.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have to check up on people who are getting to 85 more slowly, or that I don’t have to check up on people’s heroic-level gear… but it means I can do stuff in-game and on the armory as opposed to on the realm forums, the WoW forums, Wowhead’s forums and MMO-Champion’s forums.

On the agenda for the next couple of days:

– Ding Madrana 85, work on her professions

– Get a BiS pre-raid gear for holy pallies post up (just as soon as I’ve had a good look at the loot tables and such)

– Record the next Blessing of Frost episode on Monday for Tuesday morning release

Oh, and somewhere in there, I should probably sleep for a bit. ;)

How’s your Cataclysm treating you so far?

Whew.

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, cataclysm, ramblings

Kurnmogh is now 85.

It wasn’t hard. I took my time — fishing, farming and the like. My LW is 509 (still…) but my fishing and cooking have actually MOVED. I even did some archaeology. I’ve done some instances.

I’ve only finished two zones entirely; Deepholm and Uldum. Love them both.

I was asked on Thursday why I level my hunter first. There are SO many reasons for my levelling my hunter first.

1) I like playing the hunter solo better than playing the paladin solo. Questing, farming, etc, it’s all about Kurn.

2) Tradition. I level Kurn first. That’s what happened at 60 (I was 60 for a couple of months before I did anything with Madrana) and 70 (levelled her so that I could actually get into a guild) and 80 (Kurn will always be my “fun” toon).

3) Leatherworking. I distributed the professions among the officers as fairly as I could, taking alts into account as well, and we’re power-levelling (as best we can) everyone’s professions. It’s working really well — 525 Alchemy and Inscription! With JC and LW and enchanting getting there, with tailoring and BS coming up. Kurn is the only officer toon who would get a substantial amount of playtime who’s a leatherworker and it helps that I skin, too.

4) Comfort. Knowing the quests and dungeons as a DPS lets me focus on healing when I’m on the paladin. Or at least what to expect as I quest or dungeon. Even with my beta experience, some things were new this go-through. It was great to finish off Deepholm and awesome to actually kill the colossus in Uldum and all those quests, too.

5) Rested experience. With the rested I’ve been accumulating on the paladin, combined with the 5% extra experience from Fast Track (Level 1) that comes from being a Level 2 guild, Madrana’s levelling experience will be quicker than Kurn’s.

6) Bottlenecks. Not levelling my healer ASAP means that I won’t have many other healers to compete with for the entry-level dungeon guild runs. The problem with being a GM who has a blog that’s mostly healing-related is that I have a LOT of healers and they’re all awesomesauce and all chomping at the bit to get in there and HEAL.

7) Okay, yes, part of levelling Kurn first is to satisfy people who mock me for insisting that Kurn is my main and Madrana is my alt. As I explained to a few of my officers a while back, Kurn is who I am and Madrana is what I can do, sort of like how Clark is who Clark Kent is and Superman is what Clark can do. :P

Not a perfect analogy, because I’m not really a 7ft-tall blue-skinned male night elf, but you get the point.

Getting Kurn to level cap first is my way of acknowledging to myself (and to others who care) that Kurn is still my main and Madrana is just who I take with me to work every day. It’s never been more true than in this last expansion where Madrana is who I applied to raid as to no less than four guilds. I never would have dreamt about raiding on Kurn in 25-man heroic ICC, but as Madrana? HELL YEAH.

I may or may not have a slight case of multiple personality disorder when it comes to my in-game identities and toons…

Anyways. Kurn to 85. Next up, Madrana levelling and some more farming of ore and herbs! Oh, and leather. Stupid leather!

Initial Impressions of the Irked

Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, ramblings

Before I start, I want to be clear that I’ve been around the WoW block a few times. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for over five years. I have lived through Burning Crusade and Wrath and a good deal of Vanilla. I have been a beta tester for both Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. I’ve been “that scrub” in T0 gear and, on the flip side, I’ve gotten my ICC 25m drake.

With the exception of Real ID and the proposed use of real names on the forums and such, I have really never been so disappointed with the state of the game. And Real ID has very little to do with the game; that’s an aspect of the WoW community.

This time, I am disappointed with the game content and the game mechanics. I’m not talking about the kinds of mechanics like how Aspect of the Fox lets hunters use Cobra Shot or Steady Shot while moving. I’m talking about how some parts of the game actually work.

1) The Level Cap

On Kurn, I am currently, as I write this, level 84 and 34%. Or, about 7 bars in to level 84, judging by the standard UI. I have played quite a bit in the last couple of days, although I have slept and ate and done a variety of other things normal human beings do.

Am I pushing myself to level? Yes.

I’m on pace with how I normally do in an expansion. The first day or so after launch, I’m 2 or 3 levels into the new cap. The same thing happened this time around. Only this time, I was more than halfway through the available levels. Never mind that 84-85 consists of more than 9 million experience (it does!) – numerically, I felt like I was more than halfway there. That means that the last couple of levels — most of 83 and ALL of 84 — are going to drag. And 84 is definitely dragging. 9.1 million experience is daunting after what, 5 or 6 million? Not like 77-80 didn’t drag, not like 67-70 didn’t drag and not like 57-60 didn’t drag. But it’s going to feel even worse because the drag is compacted into two levels instead of three, and 84 is going to be hell.

Not only that, but I’m replacing gear at an alarming rate on Kurn. Not just the 251-264 mix I had going in, but the new gear. I’ve been through three bows in the last two days.  Three chest pieces. Two helms. Three pairs of bracers.

What on earth is this? I know that the gear has to scale higher and faster than it ever has before, but it feels like I get one item and I’m proud and pleased and then two hours later, it’s replaced. I’d kind of like the chance to hold on to a piece of gear for a week or so before I upgrade it, you know?

2) Guild Achievements/Experience/Reputation

Guild Achievements do not add to Guild Experience. Guild Experience has a cap per day (which supposedly increases the higher level your guild is?). Guild Reputation has a WEEKLY cap.

Let us discuss this.

a) Guild Achievements do not add to Guild Experience, which means that Guild Achievements (like most personal achievements) are basically useless. Have you looked at some of these achievements? If we’re not going to get something out of it, why do it? That’s not really my own perspective; I’m happy to do crazy things for no reward but the thrill. But let’s be serious.

You Don’t Have an Eternity – Guild Edition – 6-minute Malygos. The Eye of the Eternity is, hands-down, the T7 raid instance people hated. Naxx was long, but had a ton of bosses. Obsidian Sanctum was short, but could be easy or challenging.  Malygos? Boring and a vehicle fight, in part. Who in their right mind would go back with some guildies to get this achievement as a guild? (Okay, yes, some people liked it, but my experience says most did not.) It isn’t even your own achievement, so if the guild disbands, you have nothing but your memories.

Where is the motivation if it doesn’t help you get to the next guild level? If I can’t sell these things as something that actively benefits the guild an helps the guild level, what’s the point?

These were shown to us on beta as being part of the guild levelling experience. I know, I know. It was beta. Things change. If I’d known they’d remove guild achievement experience, I would had given feedback for XP to be returned.

b) Guild Experience is capped at a ridiculous amount. Well, ridiculous for me and my guild. Your mileage may vary. I think it was two hours into the launch day when we capped out for the day. It was 3 hours into Day 2 when we were capped out for that day. I understand that they don’t want to discriminate against smaller, less active guilds, but these are guild levels and guild rewards. Shouldn’t the bigger ones and more active ones at least have an advantage there because it IS very difficult to herd a lot of people? I can see the argument both ways, but MAN, it’s ridiculous to spend more than 20 hours a day doing things that ought to count towards guild experience and be limited by a cap.

c) Guild Reputation is currently capped at a weekly limit. Now I admit, I see the point here. If you can grind to exalted with your guild in no time, then there’s no real disincentive to leave your guild. All these guild rewards are supposed to prevent you from guild hopping. I get that.

But, for the love of pete, could they PLEASE give us a standard amount? Some people in my guild are capped for the week at 896 into Friendly. I’m at 2656. Someone else is 4000+ into Friendly. What are these random numbers? Help us understand, Blizzard. We don’t get it and it’s not overly obvious.

Further, many achievements don’t count until people are at a certain rep with the guild. So Tia and her eleventy-one exalted reps won’t count for United Nations until she reaches that cap. My 525 Skinning won’t count for Working as a Team until I’m honored with my own guild. (That said, I think the GM should automatically be exalted. :P Okay, not really, but that’s irksome.)

So having a weekly cap — not just a daily cap, but a weekly cap — on guild rep is just obnoxious. I’d rather not have guild rep at all, to be honest.

3) Swing, Batter, Batter, Batter, Suh-wing!

The nerf bat has been swung and it has completely trivialized things like normal Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides. Stonecore is super easy compared to the various iterations I’ve seen and while the stars and final boss in Vortex Pinnacle were tricky (we ended up zerging the first set of stars, it was hilarious), these mechanics were overcome pretty quickly.

Seriously, no need for CC in BRC or TotT. You can still charge in, pull everything and AOE it all down. Ridiculous. Ludicrous. I am SO unimpressed. I’ve only used CC so far in Vortex Pinnacle on 5-pulls where there are a couple of healers and that’s … boring, really. I’m actually fairly unhappy with the dungeon situation. This leads me to believe that one of two things will happen.

a) These facerollingly easy dungeons lead to facerollingly easy heroics, leading to more disappointment from me. I believe this is where we’re going to end up. Some of my guildies who are 85 are LFGing heroic dungeons and are having moderate success.

b) These facerollingly easy dungeons lead to brutal heroics, leading to everyone in the world sobbing about how Blizzard sucks, at which point they will almost certainly be nerfed.

I’m of the mind that not every dungeon has to be like heroic Shadow Labyrinth or heroic Shattered Halls or heroic Arcatraz or heroic Halls of Reflection. Similarly, I’m of the mind that dungeons don’t need to be as easy as regular Violet Hold.

What I’d like:

– Normal dungeons about the same level of difficulty as heroic Forge of Souls. Basically straight-forward, a couple of tricky pulls, but something you can whip through when you know the fights.

– Heroic dungeons at about a level of difficult just a notch above of heroic Halls of Reflection — without any of the exploits. No standing around the corner in the alcoves, no running BEHIND the Lich King on the path. You know — how it was intended to be run.

Honestly, I thought we were going to get this. I spent enough time on Beta to know that instances were no longer trivial.

And yet now, they are.

What gives? What is up with that?

These are all reasons I am disappointed. These are all reasons I’m not thrilled.

I do like some stuff. I still love Uldum. I still love professions, even if I was only at 475 when someone on our realm got realm first 525 skinning.

I love that my guild officers are banding together and farming our asses off to help the guild by maxing our professions. This isn’t something we’re requiring of the guild, although they should feel free to help out, but the officers are doing everything they can for each other’s professions so that the guildies don’t get ruined at the AH. We’re dropping in all our greens (crafted or looted) for our guild enchanter. Blues are being sold for right now while they’re going for insane amounts of cash. All ore any officer mines goes to the bank — Fog, our JC, is through Obsidium and on to Elementium. Our BS is just about done with Obsidium and will move on to Elementium and we’ll move Fog back to Obsidium. All cloth is being dropped into the bank for Majik, our tailor. Toga maxed out Alchemy with a bit of help, but mostly on his own and then farmed a crapton of herbs for Maj and Inscription. I’m using guild-acquired Volatiles for my LW (509!) and basically, things are going swimmingly!

We also have some people helping us out with dropping in greens and stuff and trading gems and the like. I’m really, REALLY pleased with the level of cooperation and lack of selfishness displayed by the officers and the guild in general.

So I’m disappointed with a few things. I won’t quit or anything, but I’m not thrilled with a few aspects. We’ll see how things change. That’s really the beauty of a game like WoW — nothing is forever. And in this case, I hope that’s applicable.

An Annoyance

Kurn / / apotheosis, cataclysm, facepalm, general, guild, ramblings

Those of you who are long-term readers may recall a post I made over a year ago. On November 9th, 2009, I posted about missing Apotheosis. That followed a post from June 4th, 2009 where I informed everyone to prevent me from doing the whole GM thing again. (And no one did. Typical! ;D)

Basically, I have been working to get Apotheosis back together for over a year.

A year.

While raiding from 11pm-2am with my RL friend the Resto Druid or 9pm-12am with Choice (in need of holy pallies for Cata!), I was also getting back in touch with people. Making plans. Setting up forums. Organizing people. Inviting people back to Apotheosis from my level 4 toon.

When Cataclysm launches on December 7th, that will be the real start of a new era in Apotheosis history. But all the work that went into ensuring there WOULD be a new era in Apotheosis history is crazy. It’s been a long, long road. Assembling officers. Checking in with people. Making sure people are still around and interested. More recently, interviews, loot rules, forums, recruitment videos, 10 and 25-man raids…

I’ve put a lot of effort into this over the last year and certainly a lot since 4.0 hit and I moved Madrana home to Eldre’Thalas.

None of this annoys me.

What annoys me is the people who clearly haven’t put a moment’s thought into expansion plans.

I’m talking about a mage app who applied with a bad spec, bad gems, bad gear and bad grammar who said they’d decided to make the mage their main. Really? Did you decide to make your mage your main five minutes ago? Looks that way from the effort you’ve put into the toon. Nice spirit gems, by the way, and that green trinket is just to die for.

I’m talking about guilds out there who haven’t started retooling their rosters and recruiting. Seriously? How have you not started to prepare, yet? I’ve been preparing for a YEAR and you, yes you, with your raid group that’s 11/12 ICC 25HM while working on HLK attempts, how are YOU less prepared than I am?

It’s true that when you’re running a guild, you have a lot less time to prepare for the future than someone who’s “just” a raider. I’m deluged in emails and private messages this week. I get it. But good leaders don’t assume anything. A good GM and officer team checks in with their members and keeps checking in. Just because I have… 39 people on my Google Docs spreadsheet does NOT mean that come the first planned raid date, we’ll have 39 people ready to raid.

I’ll have to make sure that everyone listed HAS the expansion and is over on Eldre’Thalas. I’ll have to make sure that everyone’s levelling at a reasonable rate or maybe drop them from consideration for that first raid. And depending on how hard it is to finish dungeons and heroics and gear up, we might even have to push our first raid date back a week or two.

This is what annoys me — I’m already working 3-4 weeks down the road and looking at problems that may arise. And so many people aren’t making plans, aren’t trying to work around potential problems, aren’t even bothering to discuss stuff.

I realize that plans aren’t that important in terms of RL priorities, especially during the holiday season, but if you play this game as a raider — or you want to play the game as a raider — how have you not been thinking this stuff through already when I’ve been doing this for a year, now? Raiders and guilds alike, I see so many people completely unprepared and it’s like, well what have you been DOING since Cataclysm was announced?!

The people who haven’t done 4.0 research for their classes just make me sad.

The guilds who haven’t got planned raid dates and deadlines make me facepalm.

These are going to be the people complaining out the wazoo when Cata hits and they can’t immediately queue for a dungeon because they don’t know where the entrance is yet. These are the people who will be mystified that half their guild has left for another guild because they weren’t ready to raid, yet.

I see so much disorganization that is going to lead to a huge wakeup call, which will lead to so much complaining, which, God willing, will not lead to demanded nerfs or buffs.

As a result of this general state of unpreparedness that I’m witnessing, plus my experience in going through the BC and Wrath expansion transitions, here are three predictions:

Fearless prediction #1: Random dungeons will suck for a minimum of 3-4 months, probably closer to 6. Random heroics will possibly suck until people really outgear them, meaning the first raid tier (T11) being available to the general public, so this is looking at when the second raid tier comes out (T12).

Fearless prediction #2: Guilds who have been recruiting and plotting out dates, deadlines and plans will be much better at dealing with issues that crop up mid-January than those who haven’t even started to plan things out.

Fearless prediction #3: I’m not going to feel prepared enough because there’s ALWAYS curve balls thrown at guilds during expansion transitions, but, by golly, Apotheosis will prosper because my officers and I actually care about the people and the guild and we will do what we need to in order to hit those curve balls out of the park.

I feel a bit better for having ranted.

Coming soon: pre-raid gear suggestions!

Stood in the Fire

Kurn / / achievements, cataclysm, ramblings, world events

I’ve always loved dragons. The idea of slaying them, the idea of fighting them, the idea of befriending them and riding them… all amazing things. Onyxia was the classic raid I wanted to do most because HEY! It’s killing a big freaking dragon!!

Granted, I could probably do without Malygos for the rest of my days, but I genuinely like most dragon encounters in World of Warcraft.

So the idea of Deathwing flying around Azeroth roasting things and people is amazing to me. I LOVE this idea. I also decided I wanted the achievement.

First, I found this thread on the WoW forums.

Second, I found this video that shows you where in the Wetlands the guy is standing.

At about 7:30pm on Saturday, I started hanging out at the hills by the Gnoll camp to the southwest of the windmill. (Northeast of the area in the video.) I was joined by a number of guildies. I took some breaks, slept, logged back in aaaaaaaand nothing. A variety of guildies amused me on Mumble and such or even chilled out with me.

I took time out to fill in an ICC10 heroic raid with the guild on my hunter (my paladin is saving last week’s lockout for next week, since we did 11/12 and want to down LK as a guild this last week pre-Cata), which got me the 49 rep I needed in order to get Exalted with the Ashen Verdict. After the run ended, I cut myself a couple of gems and sent them to my hunter and as I was doing so, BAM, one of my newest guildies got roasted in Andorhal in the Western Plaguelands!

I did a quick MC run with some of the guild, on my shaman, then returned to the Wetlands by about 12:45am ET (server time).

And I waited.

Tia waited with me too and I told her to park Tia there and hop on to another toon, if she wanted, and I would tell her if the sky went red.

So Tia, Darista and myself were chatting amiably in Mumble when… the sky goes red.

I had been in the process of taking a sip of Coke, which I nearly spewed in my excitement.

“TIA!” I managed to choke out.

“OH MY GOD!” she said, realizing my tone could only mean one thing.

I slammed on my Fraps record button (which, sadly, did not record my own voice!). Elapsed time from the sky going red to recording is about five seconds.

Here’s the video. You can watch it in HD on YouTube.

So, let’s see. Exalted with Ashen Verdict. Roasted by Deathwing. It’s been a productive night. :D Thanks to all the members of Apotheosis who kept me company!

Oh, and my achievement shot, which I think is hilariously appropriate…

The New Adventures of Old Azeroth

Kurn / / achievements, cataclysm, classic instances, dungeons, ramblings

I don’t know how he does it, but my brother is responsible for the fact that I have so many alts. And on Thursday, I rolled another.

My mage is hanging out on Skywall with Choice because they’re awesome. Similarly, my druid is over on another server with my RL Friend the Resto Druid. My hunter, paladin, shaman and priest are all on Eldre’Thalas, guilded in Apotheosis.

My brother, Majik and our friend Tia were all in their early 20s on some alts earlier this week. Fog’s levelling a warrior, Tia’s levelling a pally and Majik is also levelling a pally tank, as he mentioned on the first episode of Blessing of Frost, our brand-new WoW podcast.

They were all at about the same level and were encouraging me to roll something and “GTF” to my 20s so we could all instance together.

I thought about it. A lot. I didn’t want to be a rogue. A death knight moved me out of their level range, obviously. I also didn’t want to be a DK. ;) I didn’t want to be a warlock, either. I then thought about my mage. I really like my mage. I haven’t gotten to play her much at all during Wrath, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like her.

So I decided I’d level another mage on ET.

But what race? There’s human, the old standby. And gnome, but, uh, no thanks. Then there’s the new combinations of dwarf and night elf. Dwarf was very tempting, since I love the male dwarf casting animations and I love their emotes… but I just race changed my shaman to a male dwarf. Which left night elf? Ugh. I HATE the night elf casting animations. Like, so much. I hate when I have to rez my pet or hearth on Kurn. Makes me cringe.

So I stuck with human. I know. I’m boring. But I’ve found that when in doubt, 10% extra rep is never a bad thing. I’d also get to go through the human quests again (probably the quests I’m most familiar with) and really get a good idea of how things have changed.

So my new mage was born and was promptly given the Tattered Dreadmist Mantle, the Tattered Dreadmist Robe, the Discerning Eye of the Beast and, best of all, the Dread Pirate Ring. Hello, 25% extra experience. How are you this fine day?

Well, I rolled her on Thursday and when I went to bed on Friday, she was 28.

I’ve done:

– the vast majority of Elwynn (LOVE the Hogger change! ADORE flight points everywhere!)

– just about all of Westfall (OMG, Hope! Loved the return of Gryan!)

– all of Redridge (and while it was a little long, it was FAR less tedious than the old quests. And yay for the bridge!!)

– 1 Stocks run, 1 Deadmines run, 2 Blackfathom Deeps runs, 1 SFK run and a few minutes of a Gnomer run — I really dig most of the changes (BFD seems mostly unchanged to me, but I never did run that place much) and the Deadmines was fun because I’ve done the heroic version on beta and it was nice to see it at level. SFK seemed okay. A little faster than previously.

So the mage is having fun.

On Tuesday night, I was exploring the new world a bit on Kurn and went to Strat Undead.

So different! I mean, most things are the same — I recognized a lot of my same, old pulls and even Stonespine is there! — but the chapel’s being rebuilt and Aurius, our friend the paladin to whom you give the Medallion of Faith, is no longer there.

You also no longer need a key.

The bosses are the same, for the most part. Just lower level. And while they don’t seem to drop T0 gear any longer, there are some familiar drops, such as the Chitinous Plate Legguards. There’s also no more 45m run/debuff given to you when you open the gate to the gauntlet. RIP, 45m Baron run.

I also think there are fewer aboms to kill outside of the Slaughterhouse.

Anyways, I hadn’t spoiled myself or done any research about Strat. Spoilers ahead!

The Baron’s gone. In his place is Lord Aurius Rivendare. Without a doubt, this is that same paladin who would come to our aid after giving him the Medallion of Faith. I didn’t even realize it until after I killed him. I suspect I’ll have to quest around EPL to find out what happened to the Baron and why Aurius is now the Lord of Stratholme.

The good news in all this is that I got Rivendare’s Charger.

The funny thing is that I haven’t even tried for it. Sure, I’ve probably killed Baron about 150 times, all told. Probably more, really, when you count Madrana’s kills. I’ve never even seen it drop. I’m certainly not someone who went farming for it daily or even weekly and probably not even monthly. I just lucked out. :)

Thus far: Baron Rivendare – 200+, Kurn – 0. But Aurius Rivendare – 0, Kurn – 1. Heh. I like that record. :)

Random Rostery Thoughts

Kurn / / apotheosis, ramblings

I’m suddenly very happy that we’re not raiding this week because it means that I don’t have to organize anything. Which is good. What with the Shattering and such, I haven’t had a lot of time to do much of anything.

Recruitment is moving along swimmingly, with some of my old Bronzebeard guildies applying, including the ever-awesome Kaleri. I’m very excited at the prospect of healing with her again. Even more hilarious, someone actually applied to Apotheosis after listening to Episode 1 of Blessing of Frost, the podcast that Majik and I have started. And we’re taking him! Hi, Que! We’re looking forward to having you join. :)

The roster… is going to be interesting.

I’m now looking at this collection of people we seem to have acquired. There’s 11 melee, probably about 19 ranged, 9ish healers and 4 tanks. There are a few who have expressed that they may not be able to make the required raids or start days or such, or people we just flat-out haven’t seen or people who are now waffling a bit on whether or not they actually want to join. Which is okay. That’s WHY we have “so many” people interested in raiding.

Last expansion, I learned the hard way that recruitment sucks and is an energy-sapping chore that drains my will to live. This expansion, I’m learning that it’s only THAT bad when you’re desperately trying to grab people because you can’t fill raids.

The major mistake we all made in Wrath of the Lich King was thinking that we’d keep most of our raiders from BC.

Wrong.

We lost: Toga & Ribs to the Horde, one of our tanks and healers to a guild with their RL friends, then during the levelling process, we lost a mage and a warlock as well. Two more DPS left for another guild after a difference of opinion shortly after we started out in Naxx, then we lost (as in, they went AWOL) two officers (a tank and a DPS/healer) and then we lost another officer (another tank). Surprisingly, we were still okay on tanks, but we had just suffered so many losses in other areas that we couldn’t sustain raids.

Naturally, we’re overcompensating a bit in the other direction. The only class we have that has absolutely no competition for a raid spot is our lone rogue. And even then, with 10-11 melee, we’ll want to swap people around now and again.

Since our raid requirements are 75% of raids over a 30 day period, we have to assume that most people won’t attend more than 75%. Sure, some will, most we have to go on the assumption that most won’t. So we’re adding ~25% more people than are typically needed in a given raid night. Except we’re doing it by role, not by overall numbers.

Assume we need 3 tanks for most encounters (although I strongly suspect it’ll be 2 for most and 3 for some) — a fourth tank is the solution.

Assume we need 6 healers for most encounters, with an occasional need for 7. In order to ensure we have enough at all times, we basically need 9.

Assuming 3 tanks and 6 healers, that gives us 16 DPS for a typical raid, sometimes 17. But we need to break that up into melee and ranged:

Assume 7-8 melee DPS, that means we want about 10 on the roster and assume about 8-9 ranged, that means we need about 12. So 22 DPS, 10 healers, 4 tanks. That’s 36 people.

Add in the fact that some people can’t get started with us immediately or are having second thoughts or just flat-out haven’t shown up yet, plus the possibility that some people might actually not be able to perform at the levels we need them to and you suddenly understand why we have about 43 people signed up to start raiding with us. I’m looking at close to 20% of our signed-up people not actually showing up and raiding with us or not being ready for a variety of reasons, which brings us back down to… about 35-36 people.

Doing some raids pre-Cataclysm has been great and has allowed people to see how we work things in raids. Our tanks are getting used to being swapped around and while we’ve never had a surplus of healers online (we’ve had 7 but never sat any because on those occasions, some DPS were having connection issues), I’m pretty confident I can swap healers in and out pretty easily come Cataclysm.

Something that shocked me was the number of old Apotheosis folks on our roster. There’s not nearly as many as I thought there were.

There’s:

Andy – WotLK raider, BC casual, T (since Fated Heroes!), Football (since FH), TD (since FH), Sham (since BC), Hul – WotLK raider, BC casual, Toga (since FH), Maj (since FH), Euph (since BC), Ose (since BC), Kam (since BC), Tia (basically since FH, but she was in another guild for BC and WotLK), Legs (since BC), Dar (since FH), myself (since FH), Dayden (since BC), Fog (since FH) and Shadow (since FH).

That’s 18 out of the 43 people who have expressed interest.

11 others I’ve either raided with or have a SO or friend who raided with us or once upon a time apped to us and then went elsewhere and have spent all that time regretting it. ;)

That’s still only 29/43. That’s like 14 people who are taking a chance on us, who have no prior knowledge, commitment or experience with Apotheosis. That is AWESOME. App after app mention this blog or my enthusiasm and my fellow officers are still like “OUR Kurn? Someone actually READS *our Kurn’s* blog? And her TL;DR ramblings? ***REALLY***?”

I’m really pleased that my enthusiasm and energy for Apotheosis has been coming through to you guys, because I’m not even trying to do that. I’m just trying to document what’s happening with me and the guild. That it’s coming out as me loving this group of people and being very enthuasiatic about raiding with these people is just the cherry on top.

Okay, off to do stuff that has nothing to do with the guild, WoW or even the Internet!

Hope all the Americans out there have a great Thanksgiving, even though the real Thanksgiving was over a month ago. ;)

Oof.

Kurn / / apotheosis, raiding, ramblings

So tired. I was about to fall asleep and then I forgot that I had wanted to put up our Halion 25 kill shot and that dragged me out of bed and back to the computer.

It’s been a busy few weeks. 7 raid nights in 3 weeks of 3 hours each. That’s 21 hours.

In that time:

11/12 ICC 25 normal + 3/12 ICC 25 heroic (Marrowgar, Gunship, Rotface) + Halion on 25

And the LK fight is progressing nicely.

I have stuff to say about the raids, but ultimately, the little details don’t matter as much as the realization that I’m having fun — despite being stressed and a little frantic here and there — and raiding with my peeps. These are my people, the ones I raided with in BC and in pre-BC, in some cases. Some of them found Apotheosis through this blog and have become awesome members of the guild.

They’re my people.

And we’re working together as a team. It’s not perfect yet, but we’re tuning things. We’re getting the hang of EPGP and using that to roll on items. We’re actually all there and zoned in by start time, which astounds me, in a great way, every single time it’s happened. Which is every raid, by the way.

We’ve spent a lot of time wiping on things, but nothing has been so terrible that we’ve just given up on it.

Halion took us two hours tonight. That was probably a good 30-45 minutes more than I thought it would take. But we toughed it out. Most people had never seen the fight before or hadn’t done the fight on 25 in that capacity before. I even had to heal in the Twilight Realm and didn’t die to cutters, cleave or shadow breath. I mean, really. Momentous occasion.

And trash! TRASH WAS SO CLEAN. We lost two or three people TOTAL on all the trash packs in there. It was glorious to have people listen to the instructions.

If the last three weeks have been any indication of what Cataclysm is going to be like… I may have to stop drinking quite so much haterade.

Bed now. Something appropriately paladinesque sometime on Monday.

Progression & Finishing Raid Content

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, cataclysm, general, raiding, ramblings

It dawned on me a little while ago that, although I’ve had a very successful run in Wrath of the Lich King on a personal level, something was missing. Something other than the awesome feeling of progressing with Apotheosis, that is.

Back in the day, pre-Burning Crusade, I wanted to finish raid instances. It always pissed me off that we got through Golemagg, and no further, in Molten Core as the guild Fated Heroes. It always pissed me off that we never did get Onyxia down as a guild. I didn’t care much for AQ20, mind you, but I was SUPER happy we cleared Zul Gurub several times — including Jin’do.

In Burning Crusade, as Apotheosis, we finished every instance we focused on raiding, from Karazhan (including Nightbane) through Black Temple. True, we didn’t even get Kalecgos down in Sunwell Plateau, but we’d spent precisely one raid night there actually trying to kill a boss, so I’ll forgive us that. When you realized that we only killed Maulgar and Gruul eight months after the expansion launched, I think we caught up pretty well by the end of Burning Crusade.

The beginning of Wrath was tumultuous for the guild and we stopped raiding officially in early March of 2009. We didn’t get Thaddius down. Nor did we have any adds on Sarth. And we didn’t even have a key for Malygos.

It was the plan to clear Naxx and get Sarth with 3 drakes. It was definitely the plan.

When I went to Bronzebeard to continue raiding, I was joining a guild that had cleared Naxx and done 3 drakes (like, once?) and killed Malygos. The guild was clearing content at the appropriate level, while content was still current. I had never been in a guild that was doing exactly that. I mean, Apotheosis was finishing up Hyjal and Black Temple when other guilds were farming Kil’jaeden. Fated Heroes was wayyyyy behind the curve when you looked at Eternal Force and Epic Again who were chilling out in Naxx.

So it was exciting for me to be part of a guild that was clearing the content. I got T7 cleared, in T7 gear, including Sarth 3D, pre-Ulduar. That was awesome.

And then came Ulduar. Ulduar launched on April 14th.

That night, my Bronzebeard guild got server-first Shutout (world 26th! I know, not a big deal, but still!). The next night, server-first A Quick Shave (world 905. Much less impressive.) and then, after a solid four hour night of wiping on XT, we got him the next night after that, getting server-second Nerf Engineering.

Server-fourth Antechamber of Ulduar achievement, server-first I Choose You Runemaster Molgeim (world 296) wrapped up April for us.

Things were looking good.

Over time, we did the following hard modes:

4-minute Ignis, Knock on Wood, 4 tower FL, Heartbreaker… and that’s about it, really. Never got Hodir’s hard mode, nor Thorim’s. Never even tried Mimiron and Firefighter. Never saw the Saronite Animus. Didn’t do Steelbreaker last. And I wasn’t in the raid when they did 3 Lights for the fail!priest’s forging of Val’anyr.

TOC came out and Ulduar felt half-finished. No way of trying Algalon and half the hard modes weren’t something we were capable of doing.

I changed guilds in September, to my RL Friend the Resto Druid’s guild.

The guild I joined was ranked 190th in the world, server-second, for One Light. A bit of a difference, no? I didn’t join for progression, but I knew I’d get more of it there than on Bronzebeard, since the guild was barely even raiding due to the emo /gquit of the raid leader.

I showed up and we cleared regular TOC 25 on the Sunday raid and spent some hours on the Monday raid killing heroic Beasts. One night. That’s all it took. My Bronzebeard guild had tried 36? 37? times over two resets to do heroic Beasts. The new guild had been finishing up stuff in Ulduar before focusing on hard mode 25-man stuff in TOC.

So heroic Beasts die Monday, then on Tuesday, they die again and we get heroic Jaraxxus. Heroic Faction Champs on the next reset. Then a MONTH before Twin Valks die, on October 26th.

ICC came out on December 8th.

We spent six weeks working on heroic Anub’arak. And in that time, we also took down Algalon on 25-man. It felt good, having killed every boss in Ulduar, even if not all on heroic. With my new guild, I’d also gotten Steelbreaker Last and 3 Lights, but Algalon was dead and that was awesome. It felt like this guild had finished Ulduar and I was a part of that.

Six weeks of work on heroic Anub’arak with a warrior add tank who insisted on tanking all the adds himself and not wearing the proper block/avoidance gear. This was the abusive RL/MT who just wouldn’t cut anyone slack, but it was FINE if he showed up in his stam gear. Seriously.

And then ICC opened. Until the Plagueworks were opened up on January 5th, we were still raiding TOGC, still trying to get Anub’arak down. It was painful. It was brutal. And we never did it.

We did go 12/12 ICC 25 regular. We went 11/12 ICC 25 hard modes. I even went 11/12 ICC 25 hard modes with a second guild.

But no 12/12. No “The Light of Dawn” title. (Still want to see a video of someone with the Light of Dawn title CASTING Light of Dawn!)

So it dawned on me… I basically did not finish the last three tiers of content in this expansion.

That’s unacceptable.

When did 11/12 hard modes become an acceptable stopping point? That’s like spawning Ragnaros and never killing him. That’s like getting right up there to Illidan and just staring at his face. Seriously. I didn’t get all the hard modes in Ulduar. I got to 4/5 TOGC. I got to 11/12 ICC25 HM.

Why on earth is this acceptable? Why are 4/5 and 11/12 considered “progressed”?

US 202 for Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25) was great. But why did we stop there? Why did I leave when they were doing heroic Lich King?

I couldn’t handle the toxic environment anymore. Every day that I stayed in that guild, I fervently wished I were back on Eldre’Thalas with Apotheosis. But Apotheosis wasn’t raiding. So it was off to Skywall I went, where I was welcomed with open arms and people weren’t total assholes. People were skilled players, good people and they were driven. Why did they stop at 11/12 HM? Time ran out. The patch hit. Official raids stopped.

And so it was time for me to come home.

It’s not an easy thing in this game to find a group of people who are skilled AND friendly, who do things at a reasonable pace, who aren’t a full tier behind.

This expansion, Apotheosis will be that. For me, for my officers, for my guildies. We all deserve a place to be where we can chuckle over accidentally BOPping a tank or mocking someone who failed at an elevator boss. We all deserve a guild where we can buckle down and get something done, even if it is on the infamous last attempt of the night. We all deserve the stability and strength from a solid group of officers who know their classes, who know their roles, who work well together as a team.

We deserve it and Cataclysm will be our time to claim success and joy such as we’ve never seen before. It’ll be the exuberance of a guild-first Vashj kill with the efficiency of Hyjal wave kills. It’ll be the laughter from DIing a tank combined with the skill that allows a group of 10 to conquer the Lich King without really having talked about Phase 3.

Four weeks to go.

Bring it on.