Mend Pet

Last night, about 13 members of Unemployed set out to conquer the two bosses which barely eluded us in our BC raiding days… Kael’thas and Lady Vashj!  We also took out Lurker for good measure.

We weren’t sure we’d be able to manage, because when I formed the group, we had a whole 1 tank and 2 healers.  But our ret paladin offered to respec protection and we found a 3rd healer.

Most of us had never taken Vashj down, and those who did hadn’t done it in quite some time, so our explanation of the fight was still a bit fuzzy.  We forgot to assign someone to kite the Striders so there were fears going off everywhere.  I had also forgotten to set it to Free-for-All before hand so people could loot the Cores.  But we survived and off we went to TK: The Eye.

Here we skipped straight to Kael’thas.  This was a messy fight, and we lost several people.  We couldn’t be bothered to look up what each of the advisors did so we just tanked ‘em.  When Kael went crazy at the end and we started floating in the air, we lost even more people.  But we got him down and…

[Ashes of A'lar]!

So, according to my Kael’thas record… the drop rate on that baby is 100%.  We all rolled on it, and of course my rolling luck landed me with a nice 2.

But congrats to Anduena, our warlock!  It’s her birthday on Tuesday, so I’m glad she could get a pretty sweet birthday present from the guild!

After TK, we still had some time so we ventured into Black Temple.  This place isn’t cake even at 80, in fact even the trash was a bit froward.  We didn’t have time to make it all the way to Illidan… but we’re coming for him next time!

… do not a happy hunter make.  Watch out, I’m about to get my rant on.

Last night was not a good night for me.

First of all, we’ve been having discussions about how to do loot distribution.  Our current system has some flaws, and we’re trying to figure out what’s optimal.

And by “we” I mean “all officers and raid leaders but me.”

It seems like every piece of input or suggestion I add to the discussion just gets passed over.  I spent a good amount of time trying to come up with a nice little flow chart to consolidate the ideas we were working on, because I thought that would help us sort through it and make it simple for the raiders.  I’m pretty sure no one even looked at it.

Fine.  I can take a hint.  My input doesn’t matter.  It’s ok, at least I still get to raid!

But wait, there’s more.

I gave up my spot in Wednesday’s raid so I could get caught up on my sleep from the trip to Las Vegas and be rested up for Thursday.  If all went well, we’d be working on our first kill of Malygos on Heroic, even though we’d never even killed him on Regular.  I didn’t want to fall asleep during that.  A brand new first kill – I’d been a part of none of those yet in Wrath, and I was really looking forward to being part of the first kill of the last boss.

So I came online about half an hour before the raid, I went and did some fishing for some stat food, made sure I had all my bullets and flasks and everything with me, and then started heading out to Transitus Shield.

While on the flight, I switched windows so I could refresh myself on how Malygos works.  Never been there before, figured I should be as prepared as I can be.  Came back in just in time to see my raid invite time out.  No biggie, so I asked for a new one while I ran over to the entrance of the instance.

So I waited.

And hopped on Vent.

Counted the number of people on vent… 26.  Counted the number of raiders now in Borean Tundra or EoE… 26.

There was no room left for me.  I lost my spot to a non-raider paladin.

How could this happen?  Unemployed is so organized… we have spreadsheets for our raid rosters and everything!  Well, the raid leader had decided that if exactly 25 people or less were signed up as available on a given night, he didn’t need to bother filling it out.  I kind of suggested it would be a good idea to fill out anyway, at least for clarity of the rest of the guild, since we are used to that roster setting the raid group in stone.  And also, if he miscounts, no one is going to catch it if there is no roster.

“I thought you were already in here.”  Thanks, that makes me feel much better.

A few kind people offered their spots to me, but I refused.  It’s just as unfair for them to sit out as for me to sit out.  They aren’t the ones who “forgot” me.  I was already upset, no need to make anyone else upset.  And my DPS would have sucked, I’d probably end up trying to attack the raid leader instead of Malygos!

But I knew I was going to miss my last chance at seeing a very first kill, and I knew they’d get him down, which they did.  And I was pissed.

I still am pissed.

Now I am posed with a question.  Why am I an officer anyway?  Guild Events officer – I haven’t run a real guild event in a while.  I have been too busy with all the Las Vegas stuff.  I don’t lead raids, which is what officers are for in a raiding guild.  I don’t give insightful input on any level, I feel like that kid in the school project group who tries to give input but no one really cares what they have to say, they just barely pretend to listen.

Maybe it’s time to step back.

Well, the game is beginning to slow down.  Now that we have a pukka release date of Wrath of the Lich King, people are starting to realize how close it really is, and how the work we put into raids now isn’t going to do a whole bunch of good for us later.  We have had a guild discussion about the direction we want to take.  Our options are pretty much: a) Work on Kael’thas and Vashj, b) Work on Zul’Aman, see if we can get at least one bear mount, or c) Take a break from raiding all together.

Most people opted for the Kael/Vashj idea.  We’d all really feel it would bring a sort of conclusion to our raiding progress.  I agree, plus I’d like that title!   But I wouldn’t mind a bear mount either… and a break would probably do my grades some good.  So really, I’m along for whatever the guild chooses.

Tuesday night, we planned to get some more Tempest Keep, but unfortunately, our luck with A’lar returned.  After a number of attempts, we just couldn’t get him down.  Instead of trying to re-clear all the trash, we gave up and called it a night.  It was very frustrating.

Wednesday night, we didn’t have enough people signed up to do a real 25-man, so we tried to split into two Zul’Aman groups.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough interest to get two Zul’Aman groups going… so we ended up with one.  I felt a bit bad, because that meant that some people who really wanted to go to Zul’Aman couldn’t, but something is better than nothing!

We tried to do it as quickly as possible, but we only managed to get the first timed chest.  We had some confusion in the pull before the Bear boss, and it led to the timer going off when we had him down to 50%.  We still practiced the rest of the run as if it were a speed run, and we got all four bosses down.  We had to reset a couple of times on the dragonhawk boss, so we wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.  But it was good practice!  Hopefully we’ll do better next time.

Thursday night, we continued ZA from where we’d left off – at Hex Lord.  Got Hex Lord and Zul’jin down – it was my first time seeing both fights!  And they’re both pretty fun.  I have decided I really like Zul’Aman.  I like the way the bosses are set up, and I really like how the final boss cycles through each of animal bosses.

I see a lot of ZA in our future… and not so much Kael and Vashj like we were hoping.  I think too many people are just ready for the expansion and can’t be bothered to come… which I can understand.

Tuesday, some Lurker and Leo action.  Not much excitement there, I just want to say that Leo doesn’t seem to drop the Hunter/Warlock/Mage set piece ever!  We had enough time to spare afterwards to head in and take a look at Vashj though!

It’s a pretty complicated fight, and while I have read up on it and tried my best to listen to the raid leader explain our strategy – it’s always so different to be right in on the action.  And in fact, for me it was more like watching a video… because I was the first to get the static charge, and also the first to die from it.  I think the problem was that when the people around me realized that I had the charge, they also ran away, as I did.  So we ran together for a little while, which in turn meant I needed to run even further and I think it put me out of the healer’s range.  Oh well, it was a good place to observe the rest of the attempt!  And we managed to get her down to 69% on our first attempt… not too shabby!

Wednesday night was more of Vashj.  I wasn’t there, but it looks like a lot of learning took place… and there may have been problems with the changes in the fight at 50%, because it looks like that’s about how far the raid could get her.  Instead, I was out enjoying a fabulous meal at Lago, a belated birthday dinner.  I had a Butternut Squash Ravioli, and it was amazing.  I could eat that everyday.  It was really rich and tasted very buttery, but it was amazing.  I finished it off with a great Root Beer Float with Caramel Tequila ice cream in it… mmmm!

Er, I mean… raiding!  RIGHT!

So, Thursday night we took another stab at some progression and headed into Hyjal.  We didn’t have any serious problems on the trash – actually, it went a lot faster than it had before.  We are really getting the hang of it!  Though I’m sure having 4 warlocks and 2 mages to AoE the trash really DOES help a lot. Our first attempt at Rage Winterchill of the night we didn’t quite get him down.  If I remember correctly, we just had too many loses to icebolts and death & decay.

Second attempt we decided to drag Rage over to Jaina, which we had been reluctant to do before.  From about 25% to 4%, the only people we had alive were 3 DPS (myself included), one tank and one healer, plus the NPCs.  It was amazing how long we lasted… but it wasn’t long enough.

But… third time’s a charm!  It went pretty smoothly the last time, and I noticed that the healers really got their macros working to get a heal on the icebolt target, we hardly lost any to it.  Unfortunately, I died do to a small peccadillo - running into the Death and Decay rather than running out of it… but we still managed to get him down!

It really IS a pretty straight forward fight, now that I think about it.

He dropped 2 pairs of leather bracers, DPS and healing.  I thought about rolling on the DPS ones, but I figured there would be someone who needed it more, and I’ll just wait til something more appropriate for me drops!

Oh, and Friday night was ZA, which I wasn’t scheduled for.  But about 2 hours into the raid, I got a whisper asking if I wanted to go heal for a couple bosses on Ferguson!  Whaaaa?  I was a little nervous, because I’ve only raid healed once, and I’ve only been to ZA about 3 times on Brajana, never on Ferg.  But what the heck, it was worth a try!  We went in and got Dragonhawk down and made a couple attempts at the Lynx boss (which I’d never seen before).  It was fun, I should go to ZA more often.

And the best part?  I got my very first [Amani Hex Stick], never had one before… and what happened on my first try?  [Mojo]!  That’s what happened!

The mage who thinks she's a warlock.

Recently, we took down High Astromancer Solarian, which we hadn’t done in quite some time.  And while we were doing it, I realized that I really do love that fight!  But why?

It gives me this feeling – the feeling you get when you are sitting on the edge of your seat hearing lottery numbers being called out.  Will I be the bomb?  Will <insert raid member> make it out in time?  Oooo, suspense!

There is such an excitement to this fight, and it comes from the fact that no matter how well it is going, just one peccadillo and it could all be over instantly.

I even like the fact that you know exactly whose fault it is.  Not that we really point fingers, but that makes everyone so much more aware of what they are doing, because you just can’t hide it if you screw this one up.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets that feeling when doing this fight, at least for the first few times there… you see those flashing charges eminating from somewhere within the DPS ‘pile’ your breath stops -

They aren’t moving – should you move to avoid them?  No, they might go the same way.  Why aren’t they moving?!  They’re going to wipe the raid!  But it was going so well!

But wait… it’s a paladin.  He bubbled out just in time!  *phew!*

And I think the cruelest part of the whole bomb experience is that when you blow up the raid, you yourself don’t get blown up.  You just float gently to the ground as everyone around you takes the fall (pun intended).  You just stand there, surrounded by the bodiesof your raid, who are slightly irked to very irrate (depending on how many wipes that makes it).

What fun!