Mend Pet

Tuesday’s roster was… interesting.  We’ve recently come in to a whole slew of new recruits, which bumped out signups from having about 23 signed up as available to having closer to 33.  Quite nice to have a selection to choose from, and backups in case someone can’t stay!

And the raid itself went great!  We took out Flame Leviathan, XT and Kologarn in 1 shot each.  We also took out Auriaya, and she saw fit to hand over her Siren’s Cry!  Luckily the loot distribution was such that I was next up for gear among the present Hunters, so it’s mine!

It’s a very different feeling, being the first to get a shiny new Hunter weapon from Ulduar.  I was last of our raiding Hunters to get a Naxx ranged weapon, as well as last to get Journey’s End.  I am glad I don’t have to be last again!

We also took down The Iron Council with only a few tries, clearing out the Antechamber on Heroic for the fist time.   I think we can improve on that fight – specifically, next time I will move over to the Stormcaller after the big guy goes down so it’ll be easier for me to interrupt.  It’s nice to have me on interrupts there since I can stay out of range of his Overcharge ability but still get him easily.

Wednesday night we found ourselves face to face with Freya again.  We spent nearly 2 nights on her last week with only once passing into Phase 2… it was a bit discouraging.  But this week went much better!  After 3 attempts, we got her down.  What did we do differently?  Well, not much.  But we learned that Shockwave is the most effective way to freeze the explodey flowers in place, and that for us, the best way to deal with phase to is to have everyone loosely stack, and then alternate between two spots with Freya whenever she drops her seeds.

Thorim… not so nice.  We were having serious issues in the tunnel, and are yet to find the perfect balance of DPS to bring along.  I think we’ll do better next time if we bring one or two more.

Thursday we decided to finally suck it up and finish that darn Siege Quarter.  In only about 2-3 attempts each, we managed to take down Ignis and Razorscale, the bane of Unemployed!  Huzzah!  Rejoice!

We spent the rest of the evening working on Hodir.  We basically got him down… less than 8% left on one of our attempts, so we KNOW we can do it.  And we will next time!  I think everyone was just a bit too tired and losing their coordination nearing the end of the night.

SERVER FIRST!

So that’s 4 new bosses, and 7 achievements in 3 nights of raiding!  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!

This Week in Raiding… is my weekly Saturday post where I allow myself to brag about new gear, bosses, achievements, and such.

Come back next week for another dose of epeen and QQ!

After nearly 2 weeks away from the raid scene, I got back into the swing of things with Unemployed.  we had a big influx of new recruits, and not only have we got enough to run 25-mans, but we have enough to have people waitlisted!

Tuesday night we did a quick no-tower run through of Flame Leviathan, picking up Heroic: Shutout along the way.  We headed straight to XT-002 for playtime afterwards – no messing about with Ingnis or especially Razorscale, our eternal foe.

Unfortunately Pilsner was attacked by GIGANTIC FLYING ANTS and who took over her computer, forcing her to abandon our raiding to do some Raiding of her own (har har).  But thanks to all those extra people we’ve got, we were able to find a suitable substitute.

After making quick work of XT, we proceeded to Kologarn.  We had some issues… one of our new tanks wasn’t having the best ‘luck’ when trying to pick up the rubble, and they continued to lay the smackdown on our healers.  We swapped in a 4th tank and that seemed to do the job.

Auriaya went down pretty nicely on our second attempt, considering it was our first kill of her on 25-man.  It’s a bit of a hectic fight, lots of running and lots of cats.

It was quite a productive day for Unemployed… although I swear there is absolutely NO Hunter gear in Ulduar-25.  The closest thing that we had drop was some staff, but everything else is Plate or Spell Power (or both!)

Wednesday night was not so productive in terms of number of bosses down, but the attempts we had were progressively better as we went.

We hung out with Freya for the better part of the evening, and a couple of times made it -almost- to the second phase.  I’m sure we would have got it the next attempt if trash hadn’t started respawning.

We spent the last hour or so working on Razorscale.  I swear, if there is one boss we will never get down in Uld-25, it’s HER.  We rarely get more than 15% per ground phase, we just don’t have the pure DPS output needed.  It didn’t help that we were missing a shadow priest at that point, either.  I didn’t feel we made any progress on her that night, to be honest.

Thursday night was almost identical to Wednesday.  Freya attemps, Razorscale attempts.  We managed to get Freya to phase 2 once, but it wasn’t the “easy-mode” everyone claimed it to be, at least not on 25-man.

We tried a ‘new strategy’ onRazorscale.  I didn’t think it would work – and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think it did.  What I said would happen did – if we stick a few people at the back where the adds spawn, they will pull healing/ proximity aggro on everything, not just the Sentinel.

We decided to end the night by taking out VOA-25.  I’d never gotten Emalon down, and I’d only seen Archivon once.  Two emblems each?!  We totally need to do this EVERY WEEK.  It’s like, mandatory.  And not at all difficult.

Here’s hoping next week is better!

This Week in Raiding… is my weekly Saturday post where I allow myself to brag about new gear, bosses, achievements, and such.

Come back next week for another dose of epeen and QQ!

Didn’t get around to posting this on Saturday, so it’s a bit late!

We had a couple of no shows last Tuesday, which caused us to be sitting at 23/25 when it was time to get started.  We probably could have gone in and taken out Flame Leviathan with no towers, but we really aren’t ready to go into Ulduar with anything less than a full roster, so we split into 10-mans.  I volunteered to sit out.

I also volunteered to sit on Wednesday, since I felt it was unfair to take someone’s spot when they’d spent all Tuesday night doing the “non-progression” fights that we’d cleared before.

I really didn’t mind sitting out, I was able to relax and play my paladin.  I’ve had a bit of personal stress these last couple of weeks, and I could really use a break.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there are some in the raid who are beginning to get all tangled up in my nerves.  Defeatist attitudes are not welcome in my raid.  I don’t need someone to be telling me that we suck, that we’re useless, and that we’ll never get to Yogg Saron.  I just don’t need and can’t handle that right now.

Thursday night we had several people unavailable, so I was brought in to help move on.  I didn’t feel bad this time as I wasn’t taking anyone’s spot, and it was nice to get a little bit of raiding done last week.  When I got in, several bosses were down – the only kill I’d missed that I’d never been a part of was Freya.  I got to help take out Thorim, Hodir, Ignis and Iron Council.

Ignis was a lot of fun! And we ONE-SHOTTED HIM!  On our first guild attempt! (At least I think it was our first… still, impressive!)

I also got to finally figure out why people keep calling it the “crotch pot”.

I got to be on Construct Killer duty, which was great because I got to make things explode!  Unfortunately I screwed up at one point… my crits are almost always over 5k, and since my crit chance is over 52% when raid buffed, it shouldn’t take me more than 2 or 3 hits to grab a 5k crit.  But there was one Construct I just couldn’t seem to get down.  I was getting crits, but they just weren’t doing the job.  Unfortunately I realized just a bit too late that… I was in Viper.  The only way I’m going to get off 5k+ crits in Viper is if I usually do more than 10k   Well at least I got it sorted out and dealt with next time around.

I hope I get to fill that role again!  It is always nice to have a resposiblity other than my usual “kill everything, except myself” job.

It was a lot of fun, and I was really happy with who I had in my group.  Raiding is best when you can do it with people you like!

This week I am taking an official break from raiding.  I’ve signed up as available if needed for a couple of the nights, but I’m really hoping to get the time off.  I need to get a lot of things sorted out and reorganized, so I can really buckle down.

Raiding as Fire/Frostfire @ CriticalQQ
As Alouette closes in on 80, she’s beginning to set her eye on raiding… but seeing as I have never run a real instance on her, I need serious help learning what’s important to a raiding Fire mage.  Euripedes has some great information for a little spark like me.

Don’t Let Dailies Grind YOU! @ LadyJess
One amazing tip here.  I love that doing the Champion and Valiant dailies nets me credit for two quests at once.  Well, you can do more than just that!

Kiting Boot-camp! @ OutDPS!
Euripides (the Hunter one, not the Mage one) has a nice little guide for a skill that every hunter should have, although it’s become almost a lost art!  This is a great guide for those who never had to do much kiting ‘back in the day’!

iPhone Apps for WoW Players @ Catryalini’s WoW Blog
I bought an iPhone this week!  In fact, the same day I bought mine she wrote this post, so it gave me a good place to start on my path to iPhone App addiction.  Unfortunately, it seems Blizzard has also sent out Cease and Desist orders to several of these apps… so pick them up while they’re still around!

Death By Chocolate @ Sideshow & Syrana
Syrana’s posted a nice little summary of both the good and bad sides of the Noblegarden festival, as well as a short guide.  I know the event is almost over, but it’s a good read anyway!

You can check out all the blogs I read on my list of Other Peoples’ Blogs!

I’m not going to read another post from my Google Reader that has any combination of the words “Ulduar” and “nerf” in the title.  And I certainly won’t dare to venture onto any sort of forums at a time like this.

Have you ever heard the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? For some, the porridge is too hot, for some, too cold.  And then for others it’s juuuust right.

So you’ve managed to clear through 9 bosses already. /cheer! Good on ya! I’m happy for you and your raid.  But I don’t need to hear that obviously Ulduar is too easy because you’ve accomplished this.

Still haven’t been able to get Razorscale or Ignis down? That sucks, I hope you can pinpoint the issues and get through it.  But I don’t need to hear how obviously Ulduar is too hard.

Blizzard is continually balancing these fights. It’s only been out for just 2 weeks, and maybe they didn’t do as much testing as they should have.  Maybe having only the best guilds being the ones who really test boss fights isn’t the best idea, because when things seem just right for them, it won’t be the same for <Goldie ‘locks> when they venture in with raiders who have only experienced WotLK raids in their history.

I’ve had my own issues with Ulduar, and I’ve blogged about them.  But I’m not blaming anything on Blizzard or Ulduar – our guild is out of practise and we’ve never had to coordinate with this particular group combination before.  So much of our raid has changed since our BC raiding days, it’s taking a lot of time to learn the playstyles, strengths, weaknesses and limits of our fellow raiders.

Other guilds are still playing with the same people they’ve played with since vanilla raiding days, and some guilds just have a great group synergy.  These are all factors that influence how enjoyable and successful your raiding experience will be, a much bigger influence than reducing the damage some lightning bolt does could ever be.

So I ask of you, please stop calling out nerf, whether you are for or against it.  Be proud of your group for the strides you’ve made with the content as it is available to us, or work hard to improve yourself so that you can make those strides that you have yet to make.