Al'Akir down, and all is right with the world

Well, nobody I know has disappeared yet, but then I have some pretty terrible friends so maybe the rapture has INDEED happened and we're all just left behind to rot. Even better, <Insomnia> is now 11/12 normal modes!

Took us 30 attempts, including quite a few wipes early on when the main tank was learning how to NOT get knocked off the platform, and for some reason phase 3 was just absolutely a nightmare for us. Nobody was grouping up, people were going up/down too far or not enough, adds were still killing people. We were pretty consistently getting him around 10%, but it just didn't seam to be getting any better. Didn't help that probably 1/3rd of those attempts we had a PUG dps since our warlock had something come up. First mage was pretty bad, only doing 8k dps and he left after 5 wipes or so. Replaced him with a shadowpriest PUG that one attempt did 6700, his highest of the 5+ attempts. But it was that or 9 man it.

Finally our 2nd warlock Pahn came back and magically, everything just clicked for phase 3. Nobody was panicking, everyone was staying close enough for heals but spread enough for lightnings, nobody was moving too far down from the clouds or dieing from them. We finished with only 3 dead, as you can see from the screenie, but man oh man did it just feel smooth that last attempt.

It's amazing the difference between when we started and when we finally downed him 4.5 hours later. All the tornadoes that nobody could dodge were 2nd nature, controlled killing of the adds went form hectic to handled, and most importantly for myself I got phase 3 down. 3D fights have ALWAYS messed me up, World of Warcraft is a poor format for them, and I was absolutely lost for most of the attempts. Couldn't see the clouds, was messing up my rotation, generally was the first one to die from stupidity. It's a good feeling when you have it down and execute it right.

Baby druid shenannigans

This is Arna, my latest alt. I need professional help, I know, but it's so much more expensive than $15 a month! Still, just been a blast leveling her. She was originally gonna be a male druid, but I really can't stand the male tauren models. I want to, I really do! They're freaking MINOTAURS after all! But...well...the hump...blech.

She started the night at level 6, so you can tell how much I enjoyed playing her. Surprising, considering how much I despised playing a rogue. Poor Nelethiel, she'll never level beyond 60, and only exists to get junkboxes for Elladrion's Ravenholdt rep, which she did. Worst 60 levels I've ever trundled through, with the exception of 30~40 when you could literally 2-shot mobs from stealth. Of course they nerfed that, but it was SOOOO fun while it lasted. Otherwise, I hate rogues mechanically. I love their stylings, their theme was quite fun, but their combat system is just not my thang.

So surprise surprise, feral druid is a BLAST. Mostly been bear-tanking those last 12 levels, I love it. Can't wait for feral charge. I think it's the clearcasting that makes the difference, and the fact that you're not screwed if you don't open up from stealth. I can actually go toe-to-toe with mobs, unlike the rogue, and I still get all the perks of stealth. I had actually planned on being mostly resto, but I think I may stay beartank assuming I stay interested all the way to 85. We'll see, the thought of the 80~85 zones a 10th time makes my stomach turn, at least he lowbie cataclysm stuff I've only seen once.

Lag monster rears it's ugly head

Since we had attendace issues we only raided 1 night this week (see last post about me tanking), but we wanted to kill cho'gall to get some more shoulder tokens floating around. Shoulda been nice and easy after last weeks 2-shot, right? So, so wrong. Oh gods, the horror. First our rogue DCs while group is forming, his router died. So we bring in some people that haven't seen the fight or are really geared for it yet. The real problem is that 2 of the people use the same connection, and for some reason this week they get huge lag every time the adds spawn, which is perfect becuase they're the main ranged aoe dps.

Even so, we hit phase 2 every single time, even the time the MT DCed at 30%, but the last wave of adds are always messy. We were so close some attempts too, including a truly disheartening attempt where we died at .7% /sigh. 200k more damage and we woulda been done. As it is, we jus spent 3 hours geting facesmashed by tentacles and oozes, between a few low geared players and the laggy hunters we just didn't have the dps on them that was needed. The first cho'gall kill may not have meant much to me, but now I just want to bathe in his blood and scream at his stupid corpse.

Tankadin HOOOOO!

Tried to post the other day but blogger was down /sadface. Busy week of wow, mostly pugging ZA/ZG on alts. Some good groups, many so-so, quite a few downright painful runs including the huntard of huntards. My warrior just has the WORST luck with groups. I'm just gonna leave this here, for you're perusal.

Yeah. At least he FINALLY got one of the 2-handers off of Jin'do.

Anyways, in even bigger World of Warcraft news I did 5/6 Blackwing Descent a second time and 3/4 Bastion of Twilight for a 3rd, but this time I was tanking! Go me! First time I've really raid tanked since 3.1, and most of the fights I was still quite unsure on, but I definitely learned them FAR better this time than I did following Crowing around (our resident guild rogue), like I had been doing. And best of all, I only caused 3 wipes all night, and only 1 of those was completely my fault! So, yeah, I got that going for me.Even better, I actually got some real upgrades this time around!

Vial of Stolen Memories for my tank set, and even better, Crushing Weight for my dps set. I had really been debating getting the Valor trinket or waiting to next week and replacing my crafted dps chest with a 3rd tier piece in case I get a shoulder token, and I was really leaning towards the trinket. Gotta love it when tough choices get made for you in a way that is completely win-win!

I had a 3rd thing to talk about, but thought escapes me so it mustn't have been terribly important.

The Return of the Space Clown edition

I thought World of Warcraft ditched the whole space clown stuff when we left Burning Crusade? Terathis, baby, you need to color coordinate a bit better than that. As a side note, thats why I wear plain T-shirts with no logos IRL, that poor poor Ramkahen symbol looks so sad :(

Been playing a lot of the new 5 mans, loving the new seven in a row thing, although usually I can't stand more than 2 or 3 without a break. Perfectly suits me where I tend to focus on one character for a while at a time and bounce around between whatever alt catches my interest for a few days, more or less ignoring the rest. Love it love it love it.

Eagle boss in ZA is REDICULOUS after whatever hotfix happened the other night, so many of my pugs have been eaten by that boss. There's just simply WAY more damage being thrown out in that fight than there should be, there's no way its Working as Intended(tm).

Jin'do in ZG is almost as bad, for differant reasons. I finally broke down and made a few macros to explain the fights, I was so tired of typing it out every time, then again when people would invariably drop and get replaced. Can't wait for the Warcraft populace to just KNOW the fight, and not have to wipe 10 times before the group finally figured out how to do it properly. Also, I hate being "that guy" that keeps telling you where you're messing up, and I've had to be "that guy" way too much recently. I've tried to keep the name-calling to a minimum at least, so I got that going for me.

I feel like that fight has 1 too many things going on, and the removal of any one single aspect would change it from frustrating and you gotta do it right to fun (but you gotta do it right). I'm thinking either the chains need less health, or the ghosts need to hit softer, either way it's a NIGHTMARE for melee dps, since the point is to kill ghosts but you CAN'T kill ghosts becuase they hit you so hard. At least Rhelyk can howling blast em pretty good, my paladins spend the whole fight judging and hardcasting excorcism. You'd think you could just dps the chains while ranged takes care of adds, but you can't since you always need to be near a fresh chain in case you get jumped. It's fine for ranged, REALLY easy on my hunter in fact, but melee just have nothing to do :/