Opportunity

Testing the Robot

2011-05-31T23:31:00.000-04:00

Or The post in which I do not make dirty jokes about robots...

A couple weeks ago raiders at Eff were asked to submit their upgrade list to assist with raid scheduling. This was an interesting exercise for me... Of course, I have gear lists. But the lists I usually make are lists of all possible upgrades. So for glove upgrades I had Grips of the Failed Immortals, Hands of the Twilight Council, Flamebloom Gloves, and Shadowflame Handwraps.

I needed a way to narrow down the list of not just gloves, but all of my pieces to just one upgrade for each. Well, the message included this:

"Use Ask Mr Robot if you want to figure it out fast and loose."

Huh. I've heard of Mr. Robot before, but I've never used it. What's this Robot all about anyway?

Turns out, he's about OPTIMIZATION. One of my favorite topics as a computer scientist. My favorite feature, let me show it to you:

It will generate a Best-In-Slot list for any level of gear (level 85 and up) that you're looking at. Until just two weeks ago, that would have been Pre-Raid for me. I ran the crap out of the trolls dungeons until they gave up significant 353 caster cloth. Except for the very first night, these went smoothly enough. It helps to have people along who have done them as raids.

...

Plz can haz Karazhan 5-man?

...

Anyway.

The other options are pretty neat too. I usually tell it to ignore expensive enchants, because... y'know, I'm not rolling in Maelstrom Crystals.

Actually, I tell it to ignore most other things except the Darkmoon Cards. I might see if I can put a Volcano Deck together. Not that I'm in need of gold sinks or anything. I am in need of better trinkets.

According to Mr. Robot, I am in need of a lot of things. My optimize screen is a study in failed (according to Mr. Robot) reforging and enchanting.

I was rather put out by this. Suboptimal? Le angst! I mean, I followed all the appropriate rules of reforging for warlocks. Maybe not the enchanting so much... I generally just use what's available at the time. Still! I'm totally awesome! ...right?

Well... no.

My dps is not what it could be. So let's see if this Mr. Robot guy can help me out.

The Setup

The only buffs that I tested with are the ones that I can provide myself. Also left out: Flask of the Draconic Mind and Severed Sagefish Head.

The Control

See below, to the best of my ability, my standing dps at its maximum. Just me and my imp against the world.

My dps epeen, is it big enough? I'm afraid its not big enough.

The Test

This section is not worthy of a screenshot. You don't need to see me hanging out with the Reforging guy or mindlessly rearranging the enchanting mats I've been hoarding since before the server transfer. Promise.

The Results

After blindly following the mandates of Mr. Robot:

Some Conclusions

Ok, so 700 points of dps increase is not the epic conclusion I had hoped for. Regardless, it is an improvement. For a few seconds, I was definitely afraid I wouldn't see any improvement at all - or worse, a decrease in dps.

It also wasn't the easy fix I could have hoped for. I'll need to research other avenues to determine why my dps isn't meeting my own, possibly delusional standards.

One thing I totally loved though? Thanks to Mr. Robot I'm no longer over the hit cap. I'm a smidgen under it, actually. So close to the hit-cap I can not only taste it - I could have it for breakfast if I wanted to. All with the advantage of no wasted stat points.

Further Research?

The only point of contention I might have is the call for a wrath enchant. I can't wrap my brain around 28 spellpower trumping 50 haste. I mean, I love haste.

Despite the fact that I know haste balancing is kind of delicate with plateaus that must be observed, its difficult for me to accept that sometimes less haste is the way to go. When the numbers back it up, though, I have to concede.

Verdict

The final step, of course, is seeing if I can bring this improvement to life in a raid situation. Until I can do that, there's no saying for sure whether this wasn't just a (highly entertaining) waste of time.

I think Mr. Robot has done all right by my warlock. I look forward to further testing.

Raiding Bicycles

2011-05-12T13:09:00.000-04:00

Or The post in which I search for normalcy.

So, since the last set of posts clearly did not do its job of restarting a normal blogging schedule, here is my next attempt. Some background information will be necessary as a lot has changed since The Elephant.

In the real life arena, Sen and I succeeded at house buying. Last weekend we moved most of our large furniture. And got the internet set up. That was super important. The cats love being in the new house where they can run around and look out a bunch of windows and just generally aren't cooped up in one room. Troy has taken a liking to sitting on my desk - usually in front of my computer screen. And as he's the fluffier of the two, he takes up the entire screen and I can't see anything.

I see this causing problems in future raids.

Speaking of raids, I was actually able to get my warlock "raid-ready". With the end of the spring semester came two weeks of not having to go to campus in order to get my work done - in turn leading to excessive hours spent in Azeroth.

The summer semester starts on Monday, so my time will start being limited again.

So, it's a good thing I joined a guild that has a relatively relaxed attendance policy.

That's right. I joined a new guild.

No, it's not Soulfire like I thought it might be. Which is a good thing, but that's a whole other story.

I not only left Memento, I left Hydraxis altogether.

It was, to me, kind of a big freaking deal. I've server-changed only one other time - and that was to leave a PVP server that I hated with a fiery passion. As fail as Hydraxis tended to be in the raiding department, I would never have left if it wasn't for a simple event hosted by Alas at Eff the Ineffable.

The Fishoree - as it went on my calendar - was a blast. I checked with Alas for what kind of classes the Eff team might need for raiding. I transferred my warlock a week later after making sure Takk, Mord, and Ann were all well aware of my intentions.

You see, Eff is an officer-less guild. You may remember from The Elephant what we were trying to make Memento before it fell apart. No officers - no Council - decisions made by the guild as a whole. Of course I was drawn to Eff like a moth to flame. It's everything I wanted Memento to become.

I've been trying to get back to a regular raid schedule with Eff. Takk made the transfer as well, so I have the best of both worlds - familiar faces and new friends.

So... the point of this post: raiding is not like riding a bicycle.

Once you've mastered the bicycle it essentially never changes. It's always two wheels connected in-line with a seat and some handlebars. Sometimes the front wheel is bigger, sometimes the back wheel is bigger, sometimes the tires are thicker, or the seat is different - whatever, you can still ride it. Because its a bicycle and your body remembers what to do with it.

Such is not the case with raiding. At least not for me.

Its true that the overall mechanics haven't changed - stand in good, stay out of bad, dps the bad guy at appropriate times - my body just does not remember what to do with them.

Without constant practice, you start to lose both the reaction time and the muscle memory associated with a raid situation. You know that when an angry yellow circle appears under your group it's time to gtfo - but it takes an extra second to reach for your movement controls and actually start to gtfo.

Furthermore, a warlock has several methods for moving and continuing to do damage. From the perspective of a Destruction Warlock, I have Conflagrate, Fel Flame, Corruption, and Bane of Doom. It doesn't make for the best dps, but it's better than nothing. But it only works if your brain processes fast enough to use these spells OR if your muscle memory is so good (or has had enough practice - repetition is the key to all things memory related) that you reach automatically for the movement spells while moving.

At the moment neither of these applies to me.

To an extent, the repetition necessary to achieve an appropriate level of muscle memory and reaction time can be fabricated. That's why they added training dummies, after all. They're good for more than just mastering your standing rotation - though they are excellent for that. You can also use them to judge your burst moments - if you unload everything at one time how much damage can you actually do? You can use them to judge your white damage, your dot damage, your moving damage. I'm sure other classes have discovered other uses for them as well.

Of course, to judge your moving damage on a training dummy YOU have to be the one doing all the moving. To face off against a moving target, I recommend Glop, Son of Glop. You have chase after Glop in order to be in range to do moving damage and you need to move continually while Glop is standing still in order to avoid mushroom damage. The only thing its lacking is puddles of good to stand in.

Still, nothing quite compares to a true raid environment. Eff farms on Tuesday nights and Progresses on Friday and Saturday. While it's been a great deal of fun, I don't think I've been able to show my best stuff. Frankly, I'm out of shape. So here's to hoping it won't be too long before I feel comfortable again in the raiding environment.

Raiding is not like riding a bicycle. But it's worth the effort.

A Shaman, adrift

2011-03-31T13:21:00.001-04:00

Hello. My name is Mara, and I'm an altoholic.

With the advent of Cataclysm and the departure of almost everyone from Memento Mori, I have been spending more time with my alts. The new expansion introduced a multitude of new quests and revamped areas to explore. Therefore, in my limited free time, I have been off... y'know... exploring them.

Meet Ellannii, an eager young shaman of the Alliance. Her early levels were spent among the other fortunate survivors on Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles. She enjoys studying the floral life of Azeroth and the various ways in which they can be combined to strengthen herself and her allies.

Deathwing's resurgence into the world coincided with Ellannii's departure from her people's new homeland. She journeyed to Stormwind to assist with the Elemental Invasion and made her oath to Alliance.

Since then, she has earnestly served the Alliance in the Western and Eastern Plaguelands, the Badlands, and the Blasted Lands.

Now, however, her faith in the Alliance is fading.

King Varian Wrynn has called for all able bodied adventures to travel through the Dark Portal and assist those remaining in their never ending fight against the Outlands' demonic denizens.

As in all her previous missions, Ellannii responded instantly. On recommendation, she purchased a gryphon and learned how to ride it. She was told the Outlands are a dangerous place to be without an agile and airborne method of transportation. Despite preferring to keep her hooves firmly on the ground, Ellanni bought Kirna.

Proud and ambitious, Ellannii stepped through the Dark Portal with Kirna at her side... and into hell.

Over and over again Ellannii shook her head, trying to relieve herself of the sound of tortured screaming. Long minutes passed with Kirna standing placidly at her side, before Ellannii realized the screaming was in her head.

In her head and in the earth surrounding her.

Ellannii had been told that her people's home world was broken. But the knowledge that Dreanor was a tortured and devastated world could not compare with the screaming, agonizing reality.

As the screaming continued, Ellannii shook her head a final time and retreated back through the Dark Portal. The relative silence of the earth in the Blasted Lands was a blessed relief. Shaken and weary, Ellannii and Kirna set off for Stormwind to tender their regretful resignation to the King. As far as the little shaman was concerned, the Legion could have the remnants of Dreanor. She was never going back there.

A.D. Temple's Azeroth: Dustwallow Marsh

2011-03-10T11:12:00.009-05:00

My journey, dear friends, begins in the noble city of Theramore.

Theramore is often thought of as a military outpost and is sometime referred to as Theramore Keep. It is true that Theramore is a well fortified island, strategically placed to monitor the desserts and marshes that the Horde sometimes call home.

The militaristic nature of Theramore extends back to its creation. Lady Jaina Proudmoore established the Keep with several military companies prior to the invasion of the Burning Legion. To this day, it remains the Alliance's strongest outpost in Southern Kalimdor.

The recent unpleasantness in Northrend led to the absence of the city's leader for an extended period of time. However, the people of Theramore are both loyal and industrious and, rather than the city falling into disarray without it's Lady, it has seen great growth.

The people of Theramore have been extending their Highway through the marsh, allowing people safe travel through this otherwise dangerous location. The marsh's stinking bogs and unfriendly denizens have claimed many an unwary traveler. Those that stick to the provided highway, now can be reasonably assured of safe passage.

The arrival of the Aspect of Death has done little to daunt the spirit of Theramore. Dustwallow Marsh was largely - but not completed - unaffected by the Aspect's re-entrance into Azeroth.

The changes in Theramore and Dustwallow Marsh are political in nature. With Thrall's departure from his position as Warchief - indeed his departure from Azeroth for awhile - has led to a resurgence anti-Horde feeling in Dustwallow Marsh. The uneasy alliance maintained by Lady Proudmoore and Thrall has been dissolved. Furthermore, the Grimtotems - a clan of of the tauren - have recently been exiled from their traditional home. Distinguished by their black and white markings, they have begun to settle - and cause problems - in Dustwallow Marsh.

Visitors of Dustwallow Marsh may begin, as I did, in Theramore on the island off the eastern coast. Alternatively, Mudsprocket still welcomes visitors from both the Horde and the Alliance in the southern region of the marsh. The Horde outpost in the area remains - visitors may find Brackenwall Village in the Northwest region of Dustwallow Marsh.

Brave Adventurers may be interested in visiting the Wyrmbog - the former home of Onyxia, the black broodmother. The Stonemaul ruins may provide visitors with some insight into the violent culture of the Ogre's. Or, history buffs may find Alcaz Island - the former prison of King Varian Wrynn - to be most interesting

Sources:
The comic image at the beginning, the maps, and the image of Alcaz Island are from WoW Wiki and may be found in the following articles:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Theramore
http://www.wowwiki.com/Dustwallow_Marsh
http://www.wowwiki.com/Alcaz_Island

Information for this post was found in the above articles, the novel The Shattering, and BradyGames' World of Warcraft: Cataclysm game guide.

The remaining images come to you from my screenshot gallery.

The Elephant

2011-03-03T15:00:00.000-05:00

Or The Post that Hopefully Allows me to Revive From my Two-Month Funk

First, a quote from Wikipedia: "Elephant in the room is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.[1]

It is based on the idea that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not there have chosen to concern themselves with tangential or small and irrelevant issues rather than deal with the looming big one."

When I last posted, Memento was looking forward to a guild-wide meeting to determine our path for Cataclysm.

My Elephant - the topic I have, thus far, been unable to discuss is the fact that Memento is no more.

There's more to it than that, of course.

We discussed a lot of things during our meeting. Everyone was there, which impressed me. Takk, Mord, Hippy, Ann, Militia, Batra, Sen, and myself. We talked about what we had and what we wanted.

At the time we all wanted the same thing. Sitting on the bleeding edge of a new expansion gave every one the bug for progression raiding. So we compared schedules and made decisions. Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons were to be for progression raiding. For three weeks, those time slots would be used for running heroics and gearing up. For learning how to work as a team in the big new world that is Cataclysm heroics.

Sen, being a full time engineer, decided to step down from his position as GM. The group chose a replacement... me.

I didn't mind the responsibility. Memento being a small guild, we made a few more changes. We ditched the officers idea and moved forward with our "open-forum" idea. Mord agreed to continue his role as Raid Leader and Militia volunteered to be the Recruitment Guy. I made us a new website and we were all ready to move forward.

Or so I thought.

We floundered through those first three weeks. Most nights we were forced to split up into who was eligible for heroics and who was not. I healed some normal dungeons those week - Disc felt pretty weak at the time.

Then a new, insidious idea began to spread through our happy-meal-sized guild. It would be so much easier to join the progession party if we were not actually a happy-meal-sized guild. But! Instead of recruiting... let's just join a different, bigger guild.

The idea did - and does - cut me like a knife.

But these were my guildies now and I had a responsibility to them. If, in the three week span since our last meeting, they had changed their minds about recruiting for Memento and preferred to raid in a larger, more established environment then that was what we would do.

We had a second guild meeting and decided to look for a new home.

There were some possibilities right off the bat. Militia has always raided on the side with Kaizen and we thought, for awhile, that they might be interested in "absorbing" our little guild.

But... I guess... people weren't willing to wait.

Hippy and Batra, whose attendance was always a little iffy, disappeared entirely.

Militia transferred his characters out of the guild and over to Kaizen without telling anyone.

Mord announced to me - over realID, one day - how totally relieved he was to not be the raid leader anymore. That being free of the responsibility had lifted a huge weight off his shoulders. He, too, had left the guild without telling anyone.

...

Let me go on record for saying it's not okay to leave a guild without notice. You may not want to give them your reason - and most of the time, you don't have to. You do have to say something.

It's not okay to ninja-quit.

It's not okay. It fucking hurts.

...

Time and a shift in priorities has done much to restore my equilibrium on the matter.

Mord went on to join Soulfire Tribe - a guild that successfully runs 25 man raids, 4 nights a week.

Ann joined him soon after - something I expected. As an engaged couple who has been raiding together for awhile, little else would make sense.

Soulfire has extended the invitation to the rest of us still dithering about in Memento. All three of us: Takk, Sen and myself.

I encouraged Takk to take the offer, even as I knew that Sen and I probably wouldn't. Memento has been our home a lot longer than its been a raiding guild, so we're comfortable in the small environment. Even if it's now a home for lost alts - its still ours.

...

I got a new job. The local university lost a visiting professor three weeks into the semester and needed a replacement in a hurry. I met all the necessary requirements. I jumped on it. I now attempt to teach 130 students the ins and outs of Object Oriented Software Development.

Sen and I are attempting to buy a house. I know that no one has ever said that buying a house is an easy thing to accomplish, but they certainly don't tell you that it's rather like playing dodgeball with screwdrivers.

Getting approved for our loan has added a whole new level of stress to our lives. Sen has since turned off his wow account. He has a major engineering exam in April, but he does plan on returning to the game "when things settle down again".

...

I've encouraged Takk to join Soulfire again, since spending time in our dieing guild doesn't get him any closer to his goal of raiding. He's loyal and stubborn and has stuck it out with us thus far. I suspect I will be moving my warlock to Soulfire with Takk soon.

'Ware. Here there be rambling.

2011-01-04T08:27:00.006-05:00

I could have gone with The post wherein I muse about the cyclical nature of life, the universe, and everything but I thought it might be too long.

Today is, in fact, my blogoversary. Its hard to believe that its been a full year since I first starting posting in my tiny corner of the blogosphere. OP was a little different then. A bit more... orange. I went purple in October. At that time I was raiding mostly on my priest and orange is just not a priestly color. I think purple suits both priests and warlocks, which is why I kept it for my links when I went black in December.

A year ago, OP stood as much for "over powered" (which warlocks always are, of course) as it did for opportunity. I like to play up to the stereotypical things said about warlocks. Most importantly, we hate rogues. I learned that ages ago on Arthas, a PVP server. Secondly, we do not get along with mages. We view them as weaklings - glass canons who have no way to escape a beating if something gets close enough to them. They view us as power-hungry and sloppy - snatching at any glimmer of power and prestige. We fight over gear - especially now that mages and warlocks are the only classes that need +hit cloth armor.

Finally, we are the unquestioned gods of caster dps. Even when we're not.

More recently, I have tried to lessen the focus on warlocks. I plan to raid on my priest and, while my warlock will still have plenty to do, OP is about all of my experiences and opportunities in WoW. See wat i did ther?

Even though Cataclysm has been out for nearly a month now, I think everyone is still adapting to the changes. The dungeons are harder. Crowd Control is a requirement, rather than a nice bonus or a neat trick. AOE has all but disappeared in the standard dungeon environment.

This being the New Year, we are surrounded on all sides by change. Perversely, I am flummoxed by the things that haven't changed.

A full year has passed since I was celebrating reaching level 80 on my warlock. Now level 80 is only a milestone in the sense that, after you reach it, you only have 5 more levels to go. I didn't have a lot of spare gold floating around, so I was carefully searching out each drop from the dungeons and trying to get enough emblems of triumph together for any new pieces. I was trying to make sure I leveled my Enchanting high enough to be useful for a raider and I had some help getting enough Dream Shards to collect the high-level patterns.

We took an extremely ragtag pug into Naxxramas and, while it wasn't a complete fiasco, it certainly had its moments of terrible noobness.

Now, I do have some spare gold floating around but it usually gets spent on leveling my Jewelcrafting. I am still carefully searching out each drop I can get from the normal dungeons. I am herding together all the justice points I can for other items. I am rep-grinding with Therazane and Hyjal. I am doing everything I was a year ago.

Our bouts of noobness currently occur in dungeons, but we may get up to some raids in the near future. One can only hope.

A year ago I was getting started on a new project. The "Mara will has a Healer" project. I leveled a dwarf priest, spending most of my time after level 40 in a Random Dungeon learning the fine art of Disco.

Now I'm considering a new project... perhaps several new projects. I haven't ruled out a "Mara will has a Tank" project, though I'm not sure its in the best interest of my blood pressure. I'm still warming up A. D. Temple's Azeroth. Its a struggle to determine where to start, but I think I've got a handle on that now. It will be... an interesting trip to say the least.

A year ago we were fumbling with the idea of a raiding guild. That hasn't changed at all. We gained and lost members. We made great progress at the end. Our triumphs as a guild are a great treasure. Memento is due for that guild-wide meeting to discuss our future plans tomorrow. There's plenty to improve upon, I think. I believe (hope?) we will continue to fight the good fight.

Here's to another year! May all your mobs be weak and all your drops be epic.

Things are Shiny

2010-12-16T10:29:00.013-05:00

I had to wait a couple of days to start Cataclysm, so this marks MY FIRST WEEK in the new expansion. Of course, I'm having an absolute blast. With this also being the end of the semester - also the end of school, period, for awhile - I can drag the fiance back into Azeroth with me. He's not quite as excited as I am, but that doesn't mean we haven't had tons of fun.

This post is broken up into sections, mostly for my own wandering train of thought.

-Mara and Sen are Coming Down the Mountain
-Aioka is Sinking into Vashj'ir
-Under Construction
-Blog Woes
-A. D. Temple's Azeroth

-Mara and Sen are Coming Down the Mountain

My fiance plays an Arcane Mage, Senach. I like to say its proof that Mages and Warlocks can get along... sometimes. Leveling as two casters might sound like a goofy, inefficient idea but we've had 80 (now 82) levels of practice.

I level almost exclusively as Demonology. So we have Flaag, my mighty felguard, to do some tanking if we run into trouble. Sen cranks out the big numbers so things die quickly. I supply the slow damage for adds or extra mobs and the healing for the tank.

Occasionally, if we come up against a "Kill X number of mobs", we'll split up and each tackle half the group separately. Usually, though, we prefer to kill things and experience the quests together.

However, that didn't stop Sen from continuing on while Mara played with some new friends:

Sooooo Cute!

What have they been feeding you?

He does tricks!

I am NOT rubbing that belly!

We did catch up shortly after that to check this place out:

-Aioka is Sinking into Vashj'ir

Meanwhile, Aioka was leveling through the ~~aquarium~~ underwater world of Vashj'ir. In some ways, its a complete nightmare. Full 3D environments and I don't always mix well. Occasionally, when something is attacking me from afar I just have to sit and eat the first bolts of damage just to see where they are coming from.

On the other hand, I think the storyline in Vashj'ir is better than Mount Hyjal. It has great continuity through each of the three sections of Vashj'ir, its deeply engaging, and it actually creates a world where you care about the NPCs around you.

The most common complaint about Vashj'ir that I've heard is that there are too many gathering quests. I can understand the frustration. Having Aioka out on her own means I don't have to share gathering quests with anyone else. And the only one that I found was truly terrible was Fish Lure.

My biggest complaint about Vashj'ir is that, if you're strictly following the storyline, you won't hit the Throne of Tides until the very end. It's extremely impactful that way, but a little less on exposure to the new dungeons.

My first group in the Throne of Tides was worth the wait. Our tank was level 80 and extremely squishy, but the druid healer was on the ball. Most of the time. I went in as a DPS and I am actually more scared now to try healing that I was before. I ran out of mana faster than the healer did. Very frightening. But my Hymn of Hope saw some use. I used my bubble when I thought it might be useful. And I used bandages and health potions on myself to ease the healer's mind.

Didn't stop the squishy tank from dying a lot. But between me, a hunter, and a shaman we were able to bounce aggro around enough to keep all of from eating big damage and the healer kept us alive long enough to kill things.

On trash, its kind of insignificant.

On a boss, its a trip and a half. On one boss, the tank went down at 70%. We dps bounced it around until 4%. Our totally awesome druid healer took it down the rest of the way. It was amazing. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it.

-Under Construction

Some of you might have noticed that this is OP's second major make-over this year. Memento's guild site is under similar construction. We've been trying to get things shaped up for the new expansion. Not that we're anywhere near raiding, yet, but I've think we've got several things to decide on and hammer out before we're ready to tackle anything.

Memento essentially floundered its way through Wrath. Never having a complete 10-man group it was difficult (at best) to accomplish things. For some reason or another, none of our recruits really hung around very long and I think this is something the guild needs to discuss. Being as small as we are, I think we can arrange an all-guild meeting to discuss where we want to go and what we want to be doing.

Additionally, with most of our members in college, it's difficult to determine a night and time where everyone is available. I'm trying to find out at the moment how many nights a week everyone is interested in raiding. It seems obvious to be that our once-a-week attempts at ICC were fairly ineffective. Now, however, several of members have graduated and have their evenings free. Hopefully, we can find more than one night that fits into everyone's schedule.

Memento's distribution of responsibilities is almost nonexistent. Our GM is mostly hands off and everything goes through the Council. As a single body, the Council is expected to accomplish or delegate anything that needs to be done. However, Council members are pretty lax in both identifying things that need to be accomplished and... accomplishing them.

I took it upon myself (maybe rightly, maybe wrongly) to make changes to the Guild Website. Frankly, I think it looked terrible and the forum system is a bit unwieldy (my fault, since I designed it the first time) and Ann and I were just generally dissatisfied with it.

As far as that goes, Ann and I weren't totally sure we'd be sticking with wowstead. If you have a suggestion for a new/different/better guild website provider I would be delighted to hear it.

-Blog Woes

Closer to home, we have the updates here. I think that my dissatisfaction with how my blog looks has a lot to do with my... not knowing what I want to do with it. OP started with a specific purpose - to talk about how I, being level capped for the first time, was handling the multi-faceted beast that is raiding. That was almost a year ago.

Now, I can talk about being level capped for the second time. I could talk about my happy-meal-sized guild and how it handles the transition from Wrath raiding to Cataclysm raiding. I can talk about having a priest as my primary raider. I can talk about Marariel and her adventures in solo'ing/duo'ing content.

I could branch out some with some projects. I could level some tanks and/or some more healers and see where that takes me. I could include some story/fanfiction elements.

My demonology guide was well received. I could scour the internet resources and put together a few more.

What would you like to see?

-A. D. Temple's Azeroth

My first project that I would like to introduce is called A. D. Temple's Azeroth. A. D. Temple is a renown historian from the story I occasionally get to work on. He travels the world investigating historical sites, writes books about the ancient gods and goddesses, and provides assistance to a particular team of cartographers, mostly just for fun.

What I'd like to do is a profile of each zone in Azeroth. I plan to talk about its history, its recent changes (omg, cataclysm), its settlements and people. I have no idea if other people will find this interesting or not. At the least it will be interesting for me and I hope to learn a lot about the world we all (virtually) live in.

At the End of an Era

2010-12-02T10:15:00.004-05:00

If I were starting a wow account for the first time, with all the information I know now, I wonder if I would have picked the same class/race combination to start with.

This thought strikes me from time to time. On the whole, I think the answer is no. As much as I enjoy playing my warlock, it's not what I would now recommend for my younger self if I could step back in time and advise myself on what my first character should be. I would have told my younger self, "Listen. You're going to have a lot of alts. A lot, a lot of alts. And what you will learn to call altoholism, is really just another way for you to say 'sometimes I get bored'. Save yourself some grief and start with a hybrid class." Regardless of the fact that my younger self would not have understood much of that.

This is not to say that there is no value in altoholism. My discovery of hybrid classes has not made me any less likely to create new characters (of both the hybrid and the pure variety). I would like to acknowledge that my use of the word 'altoholism' - sometimes I get bored - may not be the same as another usage or even the generally accepted use of the term. Perhaps it is simply that my use of the term 'altoholism' is lacking in definition.

It would also have been nice for someone to discuss with younger-me the Tank-Healer-DPS triangle. I doubt very much that I would have found the idea of a tank very appealing. But I might have thought that picking a class that could dps and heal would be beneficial. Having the option to switch later if I didn't enjoy my current role should have been a powerful motivator in picking a class.

Why wasn't it?

As much as these thoughts occasionally plague me, I would not actually trade my warlock or my first leveling experience for anything else. If I were given the option to do it all over again (three years ago, of course) I wouldn't take it. I learned and leveled at the pace that I learned and leveled at and that's all it is.

It does, however, generate some other interesting questions.

Does caster dps feel natural to me because my first character was a caster? Or was my first character a caster because caster dps feels natural to me?

I've always favored the mage stereotype in video games. Disciples, Lords of Magic, Final Fantasy... whatever it was, if I played it I played a caster. It wasn't uncommon for me to dabble in the dark side even then. My first character that I ever played in a tabletop RPG was a "Dark Cleric". I'm not sure such a thing even existed at the time, but my DM assisted me in putting a "dark" twist on each of my spells. Grant Life became Steal Life, Cure Poison became Poison, you get the idea.

So, perhaps a warlock was not such an impetuous choice for a first character after all.

Which makes my decisions for Cataclysm that much more difficult.

I'm extremely proud of what I've accomplished with my warlock this expansion. Marariel killed the Lich King. The dungeons I wasn't able to see while leveling - namely everything but Scholomance, Hellfire Ramparts, and the Northrend Dungeons - Marariel solo'ed. It may have been out of order timewise, but after hitting 80 Marariel visisted Karazhan, the Black Temple, and Magtheridon's Lair. Marariel befriended the Netherwing dragonflight. Marariel became an Ambassador of the Alliance.

In many ways, Marariel will always be my main.

But in a week's time, it won't be Marariel powering through the levels to 85. It won't be Marariel racing through the dungeons and quests to start the next gearing race. It won't be Marariel farming loot, experience, and reputation to get ready for raiding all over again.

Marariel will be taking it slow. Exploring a shattered world takes time. The fact that Marariel leveled and learned slowly in the beginning is not something to look back on with regret, but rather a learning experience for the future. Everything I learned about warlocks in that way I learned by doing. Not by reading the forums, Elitist Jerks, or any other guide. I'm looking forward to getting that experience back.

As for rushing towards the level cap, the heroic dungeons, and the shiny new raids - there's an alt for that. Aioka will be running the race - questing as shadow and queueing as discipline - to, hopefully, be in place as a healer whenever Memento is ready to start raiding again.

I know a lot of people are switching their mains for Cataclysm. I am... reluctant to call it that. Warlockery is near and dear to my heart and being a Shadow Priest is not always comparable. However, as I evaluate my experiences I am starting to recognize that flexibility in raiding is important to me. I want that.

Cataclysm is here. Whatever it is that you want, pursue it with everything you have.

Good luck.

I'll see you on the other side.

Azeroth, Burning

2010-11-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

The cinematic for Cataclysm is really very good. It leaves no doubt in your mind that the Earthwarder is extremely angry and that all of Azeroth will feel his wrath. It's also easy to tell that he's probably insane. He not only allows, but requires that goblins force huge plates of Adamantite deep into his skin - they are practically molten when the anchoring spikes are driven in.

Deathwing screams his agony and all of the earth screams with him.

It shudders and quakes - sinking here and rising there - throwing waves as high as mountains about like toys. The great constructs of the mortal races - dams, docks, statues, cities are casually tossed aside.

It made for another day when I wasn't quite sure I wanted to log in. The story, of course, is as deep and intriguing as ever. And of course I want to be a part of it. But I wasn't quite done with the last part of it. I didn't get a chance to finish the quests in the elemental invasion. Frankly, I don't have time to play wow at the moment (expect sporadic updates between here and the new year). So, of course, it is this moment that carries all the change and transition, fascination and wonder, of the new world.

I hate feeling like I am missing something.

I am probably more connected to Azeroth than my characters are.

Azeroth has been my home for several years now. And while I would have cringed at the thought of questing through Darkshore for a third time, I'm not sure I wanted it to change. Azeroth is my escape. If reading is your escape, I would liken it to arriving home one evening to find a new book of your favourite series sitting next to your armchair, but the one you were currently in the middle of is nowhere to be found. You're quite sure that the new will be just as good as - if not better - than the last, but it doesn't change the fact that you weren't done with the last one.

Of course, if I apply that analogy to Icecrown Citadel then I cheerfully skipped ahead and read chapter 12 - the last chapter - while neglecting chapters 9, 10, and 11 simply because I didn't have time.

The epilogue was worth it.

The cinematic that plays after you defeat Arthas is everything I dreamed it could be and more. You see, I had never watched it before. I didn't seek it out online and I avoided that fountain in the center of Dalaran like the plague. It was the center of all evil and my life would surely be shattered if I accidentally clicked on it.

But I wanted to see it.

So, two weeks ago there were a whopping four raiders online for our regularly slotted raid night. Raider attendance has been slipping for awhile now. With the imminent approach of Deathwing (now arrived) people are... less interested in ICC than ever.

When Mord pointed out that there was group in Dalaran pugging for LK only raid, I told him hop on that. Of the four of us: Takk, Mord, Ann, and myself none of us were Kingslayers. Only one of us had experienced the fight before. My sum experience with the Lich King fight was Kae's Strategy comic: here.

The organizing guild, Crucible, had no problems with that. They have three dedicated raiders in their guild and they'd been pugging the LK fight for weeks. I am in awe of their tenacity. Pugging is frequently an agonizing, soul-sucking adventure. I can't imagine doing it against the LK with any group other than the one we put together.

I don't know how they did it, but Crucible found other dedicated non-kingslayers who were patient enough to wipe to the Lich King for hours and intelligent enough to regroup and improve over almost every attempt.

I was explicit in telling the Raid Leader that I had never experienced this fight before and he didn't care. I tell you, my awe knows no bounds. He explained it patiently before we got started. I took notes, dammit. (I might even still have them, though they pretty much amount to: 'Stack for Val'kyrs, spread for defiles' and 'Val'kyrs > Raging Spirits > Vile Spirits > LK'.)

I started this adventure in my destruction spec and kept it the entire time. I picked up Aftermath, Glyph of Demonic Circle, and three stacks of Frostweave Nets for the Val'kyrs. I was going to do the best damn job my little warlock could do.

On many of the attempts I was top damage. *squee*

It's no secret that raid awareness is key for this fight. Awareness and a healthy dollop of luck. We picked up phase one fairly easily. The tanks didn't seem to have any trouble and we moved Necrotic Plague like pros. The raid leader was a priest who also took over plague duty and called out names every time someone needed to move to the adds. It was... new, different, and singularly awesome. I'm accustomed, as I think most are now, to the raid leader also being the tank. I think it's a good thing when that doesn't always have to be the case.

It's not the phases that are the interesting parts of this fight, in my opinion. It's the transitions. I learned so much about my class and my spec during the transitions that I don't think I can even put into words. Certainly, you can go and read about warlock abilities, tricks, and tips. That doesn't - can't - give you the intuition for: Well, we're running into the center now and there is one Raging Spirit still alive. I got all the orbs down, so we're clear on that front. I should Shadowflame this Raging Spirit while we're moving. Definitely some Soulburn+Soulfire if it's still alive. If we're still moving, I can Death Coil, refresh DoTs(Corruption first, then Bane of Doom), or Life Tap. Cool, it's dead, lets play with the Lich King now. Alright stay together for the Val'kyr. Defile is coming; spread, spread, spread! Silly paladin, stop running the same direction as me! We're supposed to be spreading!

And this is intuition that I was certainly not in possession of the first few hours of wiping to the Lich King. It was painstakingly developed over a sum of ten hours of straight wiping to the Lich King. According to Ann's Fish Feast supply, we made a total of 40 attempts.

I'm a little flummoxed here. Having lived through it, I can tell you that 40 attempts in ten hours is a long, miserable adventure and its easy to get discouraged. On the other hand, Crucible had been trying for weeks with upwards of 200 attempts for this seemingly impossible kill. Guilds who downed the Lich King while the content was fresh made more attempts than we did as well.

We did it over three nights in one week. Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. We changed out some tanks and dps along the way. Militia joined us. Mord skipped a night. Takk tanked the Lick King. I tanked the Lick King - accidentally. Crucible was simply awesome and I think those of us at Memento are practically salivating at the chance to build a cooperative raid team out of our two guilds.

I would like to say that I remember each attempt with perfect clarity, but it would be a lie. I remember that in the first few attempts I was petrified of being the One Who Screwed Up and wiped the attempt for everyone else. I eventually took over Orbs duty during transitions 1.5 and 2.5. In the midst of all the chaos and adds and nonsense I found it... soothing.

Of course, the attempts in which Orbs blew half the raid off the side of the platform it really was my fault and I was the One Who Screwed Up and wiped the attempt for everyone else. But no one seemed to mind too much. I made my (very embarrassed) apologies and we went on with the next attempt.

I do remember the last attempt with perfect clarity. Or rather, as much clarity as a confusing mess of not being able to tell who is still alive and how much health does the LK have left and OMG SOOOOOOO CLOSE affords. I remember everything seemed to flow perfectly. DPS was blistering high. We didn't carry any Raging Spirits through the transitions. Cooldowns were blown at appropriate times. Val'kyrs went down like nobody's business. Defiles were well placed. Vile Spirits - the hardest part of the fight for us to learn, as we spent the least amount of time with them - were not permitted to explode on anyone. And no healers were summoned into Frostmourne.

HOWEVER, a tank bit the dust at about 13%. I know that Ann and I had the same reaction: SPAM EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter what spell it is as long as it does damage and lots of it. As if we could single-handedly push the Lich King through his last 3%.

And I remember thinking, when I finally died, 'Damn that was a close attempt! We were ALMOST there.' And then the cheers started up on vent. We weren't almost there, we were there.

Terenas Menethil would like to Resurrect you.

Hell yeah, Terenas can resurrect me.

The last fight with the Lich King was leisurely after that. I took my time casting my spells. I think I might have been in shock. And I waited for the King to fall.

As I said, the final cinematic is beautiful... I knew who the Burning Man was. That much had been leaked to me, despite my desire to not know. I knew of the Immolated Champion. I knew his sacrifices.

I didn't know his sacrifices weren't quite over.

And so, it seems, all new eras are begun in fire and flame.

Kingslayer

2010-11-17T09:58:00.002-05:00

The Lich King wouldn't show me how to summon Val'kyrs. So I killed him.

The Frozen Throne

2010-11-11T13:13:00.011-05:00

Dear Mr. Lich King,

Let me start by saying what an honor it was to dirt nap in your presence last night. I have been studying the arts of DoTs and Minion Management for some time now, but phase one truly showed me that I have much to learn. The way you summoned those ghouls to beat on our offtank was an inspiration! And that Necrotic Plague was beautiful to behold. I hope that one day my DoTs will jump to other targets rather than merely being dispelled. Dispellable DoTs are clearly for the weak!

Of course, your diseases and defiles aren't the only things to admire about you, Kingsley. You have a way with dark minions that I would desperately like to imitate. Sure, yours are undead and mine are demons, but I think we can work something out. I did hear you were looking for a second in command. You don't have to bother torturing those silly paladins. I'm right here.

If you could just show me how to summon the Valkyrs to cart away my enemies I would be forever in your debt.

Yours sincerely,
Marariel

I pledge allegiance... to the scourge.

This guy has got it going on!

I'm just... so proud of my king.

Throwing Hard Tricks

2010-10-28T09:45:00.007-04:00

Last night's raid was an interesting experiment in testing our own limitations. Once again I got to take Mara to kill stuff in the face. Sometimes... when Empowered Imp procs and I get a free, instant-cast Soul Fire all I can think to myself is TROGDOR! Burninating all the peoples! And the Trogdor comes in the night!

We steamrolled through the Lower Spire, which has become fairly commonplace for most raids, I think. I spent some time as Destro and some time as Demo and I haven't really been able to determine a difference in dps yet. Destro is predicted to do about 2k more dps (though, presumably, at the highest gear levels), but both specs seem to be about equal to me.

We were able to visit Heroic Lootship. I didn't notice much a difference between it and regular Lootship, except that it lasted longer. And gave better loot. Not being on the healing team, I don't know if either of our Holy Priests played chicken, but I assume they did not.

I guess this isn't being totally fair to the heroic lootship - we did wipe horribly the first time. Mord was trying to glitch Saurfang and ... missed, I guess.

But the second time the glitch was successful. I got to go over to the other ship and BURNINATE things. Totally fun. Those guys at the back of the ships are called Kor'kron Rocketeers and there's two of them. So I burninated one and Takk was all like 'rawr-ninja-rogue-attack' on the other. Stuff died quickly. But, I did notice (unless its a sad RNG thing) that you can't get Empowered Imp procs on the other ship. While, there's nothing in the tooltips or on wowhead that suggests a limited range, I would still assume its a distance thing.

We had with us a baby Boomkin that hit 80 a couple days ago. Andu has been leveling with us for awhile now and I think its particularly interesting to revisit the boss strategies before each fight from the perspective of having never done it before. Really, it wasn't that long ago for most of us and its just interesting to think about your own growth as a raider and a member of a team.

We were kinda mean to Andu. After the Lower Spire we went to visit the Crimson Halls. I really (really really really) wanted us to be successful here. My priest has seen the Crimson Halls twice, but this was my warlock's first visit.

And we wiped. Hard. Several times against the Blood Prince Council. I did get to try to tank Keleseth. Once. Apparently I sucked too hard to try again. And its killing me because I keep thinking about things I could have done better/differently.

The basic idea is: get threat on Keleseth, stay out of melee range, get dark nuclei, keep threat on Keleseth, win.

Helpful spells: Demon Armor, Shadow Ward

Get threat: Empowered Soul Fire (Instant cast), Empowered Searing Pain. (Guaranteed to crit, with +50% crit on Searing Pain for 6 seconds)
There are some suggestions that a warlock's usual rotation generates quite enough threat to keep Keleseth entertained. But otherwise, Searing Pain should do the trick.

Stay out of melee range: Demonic Circle
In general, Keleseth will not move into melee range to attack. He stays at range. However, if you approach him whether purposefully or accidentally, he will probably one-shot you.

Get dark nuclei: Target nuclei, cast Corruption. Using a dot has the advantage of: if someone else accidentally does damage to it, the next tick of the dot will reset its aggro to you. The disadvantage is, of course, the nuclei may die. The part where this starts to break down is now I'm targeted on a dark nuclei and NOW I CAN'T FIND KELESETH.

Lesson 1: Create a Focus for Keleseth.

Keep threat on Keleseth: Searing Pain. Empowered Searing Pain when possible. The problem with this is that, even if you're not retarded like me and can switch targets efficiently, switching between dark nuclei and running around to get in range of dark nuclei and Keleseth affects the amount of time you can spam Searing Pain.

Lesson 2: Get help. When a dark nuclei spawns in nowhereville, have them call it out so you can find it. Even better, have them bring it into range of you, so you can grab it off them. Obviously, this may not be feasible if its on another tank or a healer.

We were eventually successful. At the end, Mord tanked Keleseth and the other paladin tank who was running with us took Taldaram and Valanar. It would have been nice to see the Wand of Ruby Claret, but I'm not devastated that it didn't show up.

But then... we... stopped. To be fair it was getting late and people needed to leave and stuff. But... but... I need to see the Blood Queen on my warlock.

I was a little sad, but we're going to try and pick it up again next week. Our visiting pally tank and holy priest are from Militia's other guild, so it seems they're free on Wednesday nights. Maybe we can make some good progression again and start maybe, hopefully taking a peek at the Lich King.

In case the announcement got skipped at some point: this is Beating your head against a Brick Wall: Hard Mode.

You Can Has Demons

2010-10-21T08:37:00.017-04:00

At raid last night I (finally!) got to bring my warlock back to ICC to burn stuff in the face. It was seriously fun, totally awesome, and I loved it. It's no secret that I enjoy being dps, sitting in the back, nailing that rotation (excuse me, priority list), and watching the big numbers fly. In celebration, today's post is a guide to Demonology Warlocking in the 4.0.

Because this turned out way longer than I expected, here are some breakers:
Other Guides
The Spec
The Glyphs
The Priority
The Stats, Reforing, and Gems

Don't Panic
You'll have to imagine these letters are large and friendly.

I know rolling a warlock can be a daunting idea. We're powerful casters with intimidating minions and a snappy fashion sense. Don't Panic. There are number of warlocks who are more than willing to help out fledgling power-seekers. (You should stay away from the one's who aren't willing, though, they can be mean.) Here we're going to talk Demonology - the unquestioned master of minions.

As a demonologist you will get an exclusive minion - the fearsome felguard. At lower levels he's a fairly capable tank (though in some situations you will still want your ~~blueberry~~ Voidwalker) and at higher levels he provides some serious melee damage (feel free to take him to dungeons instead of rogues). You will also get an increased chance to create mini-minions from your Bane of Doom spell and a longer duration on your demon guardians. YOU are the pimp of the demon world - rolling with an entire possy of minions. You can even BE a demon, that's how cool you are.

These Aren't the Information You're Looking For
As stated, this all about Demonology. You may want to visit some other guides to get quality information about Destruction or Afflication warlocking. Don't worry. I'll still be here when you decide Demonology is right for you.

Affliction
Poneria over at Fel Concentration and Fulguralis at Killing 'em Slowly had a great discussion about Affliction PvE in the 4.0. Read Ful's post here and Pone's response here.

Destruction
Cynwise at Cynwise's Battlefiend Manual has a fantastic post about Destruction PvE. Find it here.

Growing Up Demo
This guide is aimed at a level 80 warlock in the pre-Cataclysm 4.0. If you're just getting started in the wide world of warlockery, Abi over at Kungaloosh is starting a series of posts about leveling Demo.
Levels 1-10
Levels 10-20

Cata; lol wut?
Abi also has a post about what we can expect the Demonology spec to look like at 85. Find that post here.

Give it all to me in a picture
Here.

If all you want is basic, distilled information above is the link to my own Demonology build and glyph set. It serves me well.

Lets Break it Down
The link above is not the only way to build a demonologist, so let's start with a break down of the talent tree.

Tier 1
Demonic Embrace: Increases Stamina by 4%/7%/10%. Not a necessary talent for PvE builds, but you may want to spend some of your floater points here.
Dark Arts: Increases damage done by your minion. Necessary. Actually, every warlock spec should put some amount of talent points in this talent. As a demonologist, you will want all of them.
Fel Synergy: A 50%/100% chance to heal your pet each time you do damage. Arguably necessary. Most healers will not be paying attention to your minion and in most boss fights some mechanic or another will lead to your minion taking damage. With 2 points here, you won't have to pay attention to it either.

In a nutshell: Put 3 points in Dark Arts and 2 points in Fel Synergy. Revisit Demonic Embrace if you have floater points later.

Tier 2
Demonic Rebirth: If your minion dies, you can resummon at 50%/100% reduced cast time. Arguably necessary. The only other way to get an instant-cast demon is to spend a Soul Shard. During a boss fight, you should have more interesting things to spend shards on.
Mana Feed: You get mana when your minion crits. Necessary. Since they've changed Glyph of Life Tap (it no longer grants a spell power bonus), it's nice to have ways other than Life Tap to regain mana.
Demonic Aegis: Increases the effects of Demon Armor and Fel Armor. Necessary. You should always be using an Armor, so this talent will always be doing something for you.
Master Summoner: Reduces the mana cost of summoning a minion by 50%/100%. Not necessary.

In a nutshell: Put 2 points in Mana Feed, 2 points in Demonic Aegis, and 2 points in Demonic Rebirth. Revisit Master Summoner if you have floater points later and want to. Personally, I like the Demonic Rebirth/Master Summoner combination. Then, if your demon dies, recasting is not only instant its also mana-free.

Tier 3
Impending Doom: Increases the chance Bane of Doom will summon an Ebon Imp by 10%/20%/30%. Also gives Shadowbolt, Incinerate, and Hand of Gul'dan a 5%/10%/15% chance to reduce the cooldown on Metamorphosis. Necessary. More Ebon Imps = More Damage. Reducing the cooldown on demon form is nice too, especially when the three spells listed are Demonology's primary fillers.
Demonic Empowerment: Does something PvP related to your minion. Not necessary - skip this point.
Improved Health Funnel: Increases health granted to your minion via Health Funnel and decreases the amount of health donated by you. Not necessary - skip this point.

In a nutshell: Put 3 points in Impending Doom. Put 1 point in Demonic Embrace or Master Summoner.

Tier 4
Molten Core: Gives you a 2%/4%/6% chance to gain the Molten Core effect when Immolate deals damage which will empower 3 Incinerates or Soul Fires. Necessary. This used to be when Corruption dealt damage, but has been changed to Immolate.
Hand of Gul'dan: New damage dealing spell. Increases chance targets within 4 yards will be critically hit. Necessary.
Aura of Foreboding: Roots enemies in 4 yard radius around Hand of Gul'dan. Not necessary.

In a nutshell: Put 3 Points in Molten Core and 1 Point in Hand of Gul'dan. I would recommend putting 1 point in Aura of Foreboding. The root could be useful, but I wouldn't spend the extra point in increasing the effect by 1 second. Alternatively, put 1 point in Demonic Embrace or Master Summoner.

Tier 5
Ancient Grimoire: Increases the duration of your guardians. Necessary.
Inferno: Increases the radius of Hellfire and allows channeling while moving. Lolworthy, but necessary for moving down the path.
Decimation: Reduces cast time of Soul Fire by 20%/40% when target is below 25% health. Necessary.

In a nutshell: Put 2 points in Ancient Grimoire, 1 point in Inferno, and 2 points in Decimation.

Tier 6
Cremation: Gives Hand of Gul'dan a 50%/100% chance to refresh Immolate. Necessary. If you can time it right, you only need to cast Immolate once per fight. Then, you can refresh with a spell that also does damage.
Demonic Pact: Increases your spell damage by 2% and the raid's spell power by 10%. Necessary. Additional spell damage and spell power is win.

In a nutshell: Put 2 points in Cremation and 1 point in Demonic Pact. Put the 2 floater points in whatever talents make you smile.

Tier 7
Metamorphosis: Transforms you into a demon. Necessary. This is what we came here for, after all.

The extras
At level 80 you have 5 additional talent points to spend. The Tier 1 talents of the other two trees both have extremely useful talents and you could arguably take any combination of those talents that you want. I personally like the ones from the Destruction tree.

Bane: Reduces the cast time of Shadowbolt and Immolate by .1/.3/.5 seconds. I like this one because I like to cast faster. With Shadowbolt being our filler spell, casting it quicker is always a good plan.
Shadow and Flame: Increases the damage of Shadowbolt and Incinerate and has a 33%/66%/100% chance to cause Improved Shadowbolt debuff. The most popular demonology builds put only 2 points in this talent. However, by doing that, we are relying on a Fire Mage to ensure the 5% crit debuff is on the target OR putting our faith in RNG that 66% is enough of a chance. If you never run with a Fire Mage, you may want to put all 3 points in here.
Doom and Gloom: Increases the crit chance of Bane of Doom by 4%/8%.
Improved Corruption: Increases the damage dealt by Corruption by 4%/8%/12%. All specs are also using corruption at the moment for a net DPS increase. Spending points here will make that dps increase even higher.

Prime Glyphs
Glyph of Metamorphosis: Increases the amount of time you spend as a demon.
Glyph of Immolate: Increases the damage of your primary dot.
Glyph of Incinerate: Increases the damage done by incinerate.
Glyph of Felguard: Increases the damage done by your Felguard's Legion Strike.

The first two are necessary. Of the last two, the Elistist Jerks suggest using the Incinerate glyph for higher dps. I would argue that this dps increase is dependent on your Molten Core procs, so your mileage may vary.

Major Glyphs
Glyph of Shadow Bolt: Decreases the mana cost of Shadowbolt.
Glyph of Life Tap: Decreases the global cooldown on Life Tap.
Glyph of Fear: Causes the target of your fear to tremble in place.
Glyph of Demonic Circle: Decreases the cooldown on Demonic Circle.

The first one is necessary. Again, Shadowbolt is the filler spell for Demonologists, so requiring less mana to cast it is extremely helpful. Glyph of Life Tap is another recommendation from the Elitist Jerks - it would allow you to cast it multiple times in a row which may not endear you to your healer(s). Poneria made a great argument for Glyph of Fear. It causes your target to stay in one place instead of running around and aggroing the entire instance. In a PvE situation, this gives warlocks a more reliable CC. Personally, I like Glyph of Demonic Circle. It lets you teleport to your circle more often, which is useful when Valkyrs are trying to drop you off the side of ICC or when Sindragosa is pulling you to her.

Minor Glyphs
None of these are necessary. Amuse yourself with whatever strikes your fancy. I personally like Glyph of Souls for reducing the mana cost of Ritual of Souls, Glyph of Unending Breath for increased swim speed, and Glyph of Kilrogg for maximum kicks and giggles with the Eye of Kilrogg.

The Priority
Now that I've tossed around terms like 'filler spell' and 'primary dot', lets talk about what that means. WoW has moved away from things that resemble hard rotations and into a world of 'priority casting'. This means, you should case whatever spell or ability is the MOST IMPORTANT and move down the line to the next most important spell until you get to some thing that isn't so important but since you should be casting something you cast it (that's your filler).

Metamorphosis
Immolate
Hand of Gul'dan
Bane of Doom
Corruption
*Immolation Aura
*Shadowflame
Decimation + Soul Fire
Molten Core + Incinerate
Soulburn + Soul Fire
Shadow Bolt

*These spells require you to be in melee range. I don't like to be there, so I usually leave them out of my priority. They will increase your dps, but please look out for cleave and other melee nasties.

What does this all mean? Well, you should start by using Metamorphosis whenever it is off cooldown. It increases your damage by 20% for 36 seconds(glyphed). Then, you should ensure that Immolate is always on your target. Then, you should use Hand of Gul'dan if its off cooldown. Then, Bane of Doom and then Corruption. You don't have to worry about clipping your dots anymore, so you can recast your dots before they fall off. However, casting them too often will lead to a net dps loss. I would recommend recasting them about 1-2 seconds before they fall off for Bane of Doom and Corruption. Immolate should be refreshed through the use of Hand of Gul'dan.

Decimation appears when you hit a target with less than 25% health. At this point, Soul Fire becomes a much quicker cast and that should be the only direct damage spell you cast (continue to cast Bane of Doom, Corruption, Hand, and Metamorphosis as necessary). If Molten Core appears on top of Decimation, continue to cast Soul Fire.

Molten Core appears whenever it feels like it. At this point you should cast three Incinerates.

If all your dots are up and neither Decimation nor Molten Core are up, burn a Soul Shard for Soulburn. This will allow you to cast one instant Soul Fire. (I have Soulburn and Soul Fire macro'd together for this purpose.) Soulburn has a cooldown of 45 seconds, so when its on cooldown cast Shadowbolt.

Clear as mud, right? I recommend practicing on a target dummy to really get a feel for how this all fits together. It can take some work to learn the priority and figure out when its best to cast or recast your dots. I mentioned that its possible to cast Immolate only once per fight and keep it up with Hand of Gul'dan. It is possible. However, it involves casting Hand of Gul'dan almost as soon as it goes off cooldown every time. And, unfortunately, a certain amount of Haste rating is necessary.

The Stats
Prior to the patch a demonology warlock wanted all the spell power they could get their hands on. Essentially, this hasn't changed. What has changed is that spell power will no longer be available on armor and that intellect will directly affect spell power.

So let's just stack intellect! Not so fast, there. Demonology warlocks now heavily rely on the "right" amount of haste.

From the Elitist Jerks:
"There is not an optimal amount of haste so much as particular thresholds for Demo locks to avoid. The first, as Warlocomotif mentioned, is at 10% haste. If you have 9.99% haste, your Immolate will last 13.64 sec, which can make it difficult or impossible to refresh with HoG. ... Here is a list of the thresholds to avoid as Demo locks. Note that you are safe if your haste is equal to or greater than one of these thresholds, but you should try to gain (or possibly lose) haste if your haste is slightly lower than any of these numbers:" 10%, 30% 50%.

Also, don't forget that all casters now have to reach the 17% hit cap on their own (unless they're a Draenei).

So your stat priority looks like this:
Hit (17%) > Haste (10%, 30%, 50%) > Intellect > Spell Power = Mastery

Whats this mastery business? Mastery is a passive bonus you can learn at level 80. For demonologists, this gives us a straight 12% bonus to damage done by our minions and by us in demon form. Then, each point of mastery increases this bonus by 1.5% However, mastery isn't going to start showing up on gear until Cataclysm. The only way to get it now is to reforge your gear.

Reforging
Reforging lets you take 40% of a secondary stat and turn it into a different secondary stat. To get some practice, find your nearest reforger and reforge all of your gear with spirit on it. You don't need spirit at all anymore, so anything you reforge it into will be better than spirit.

The Elitist Jerks recommend starting with Hit and I agree for the most part. You may want to first check that your meta gem is activated (remember that the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond - which you should be using - requires 2 blue gems to activate). The only useful blue gems are now Rigid Majestic Zircon and Veiled Dreadstone. I would recommend grabbing two Veiled Dreadstones and try to match +9 or +7 Spell Power socket bonuses. Then, take your spirit and reforge it into hit until you get 17%. After that, turn it into haste wherever possible and mastery otherwise. You may also consider reforging crit into haste or mastery.

Since I touched on the subject of gems, I want to finish that thought. Brilliant Cardinal Rubies and Reckless Ametrines are your best friends. Veiled Dreadstones are generally only useful for activating your meta, getting to the hit cap, or matching socket bonuses for obsessive/compulsive people. (I'm not taking a dig at people with OCD - I cringe every time I put a gem in the wrong color socket.)

The Squishy Deathknight

2010-10-18T09:26:00.000-04:00

Alternative Title: Outdated post is outdated.

I want to try tanking. I've mentioned this before, but it's been a couple weeks now so I thought it might warrant repeating. I have a damage dealer and a healer and now I would like to have a tank.

So I dusted off my Death Knight. And I know - I know - that DK tanks can be a total nightmare for a healer. I remember that from leveling Aioka; I had some truly terrible pug DK tanks.

Regardless, my DK is a level 63 and my next highest crunchy character is a level 36 and I'm lazy. More than that, I've been reserving the level 36 (my paladin) to level with my friend's rogue.

When I started with Feight (oh way back when) I started spec'ing her as blood. I remember doing some of the quests in Silithus and having a blast with the Dancing Rune Weapon. And the creepy little blood worms were actually a plus too. I was always amused when they popped up.

But, I decided that if Feight was going to be a tank prior to the next big patch she needed to be Frost. And I know each DK tree can "technically" be a tank - Takk, especially, is a really good Blood tank - but Frost is recommended for a leveling tank.

So I went out and I did it. I found a nice leveling build and guide and spent the money to respec and to get the glyphs that were deemed necessary.

And then... rather than jump into the random dungeon finder, I went back out to solo quest. Damn, I'm a wuss.

Let me just tell you, solo questing as a Frost tank sucks. I died all the time. And, while it was probably a good opportunity to learn how to manage my tanking cooldowns, I got tired of it very quickly.

I complained a little about it in guild. I mean, really now, I'm a Death Knight. I was one of the Lich King's chosen. I'm invincible. ... Right?

Takk did have some sage advice: "Well, at some point you have to stop expecting to solo group quests."

Huh? But I'm a Death Knight.

Regardless, a proper crunchy should have an offspec, right? I mailed Feight some gold for a dual spec, but rather than go back to my blood dps spec I picked up unholy. Unholy uses diseases (i.e. DoTs) and a pet (the permanent ghoul) to lay waste to enemies. Look! I'm a warlock in plate!

So, I've done some more dungeons since then. As Unholy. (Still a wuss.) I've tried to get all the nooby DK things out of my system like using Death Grip on mobs. "I r not the tank. I do not get to grip things unless the tank asks me to." Repeat as necessary.

Aaaaand.... entering a dungeon with my ghoul on aggressive. Or, using Death Coil on a completely untapped pack because I had the Runic Power and wasn't paying enough attention to which group we were attacking. Lord, I felt like a proper Deathtard.

My biggest problem is probably that, because I'm crunchy I have an automatic "protect the squishies" complex. If something is attacking the healer, I MUST get its attention so that the healer will not take a dirt nap. To be fair, this is not completely unlike my reaction when on Mara. Better the warlock die than the healer. Except. Don't tell any other warlock I said that. Ever.

But now, its even worse. When the tank takes a dirt nap, I start thinking: I wear plate! I can tank the rest of this group down! Which has yet to succeed. I did remember to switch on Frost Presence though. ... Or maybe that was the problem.

Takk was super awesome in giving me advice about rotations and stuff. I was like "Halp, I have only two AoEs, my AoE dps will be teh SUCK." And Takk was all like "Lawl, my unholy AoE dps is the shiznit, here is how to do it gud." And I was all like "That sounds super complicated, how will I ever succeeeeeed?"

Or... you know... something like that.

Of course, here we are one week later and patch 4.0.1 has dropped and this is all completely beside the point. But its about the journey, amirite?

It was better not knowing

2010-10-14T10:58:00.003-04:00

As I'm sure everyone is aware, the huge patch dropped on Tuesday. Last night's raid was a bit lolful as a result, but overall successful. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it, because this week is incredibly hectic. And when it started to look like I might be able to make I planed to go on my priest. I knew precisely what I wanted out of my Discipline spec and the mechanics haven't changed overmuch - just my efficiency with them.

Not that I don't know precisely what I want out of Mara's specs. I just want considerably more time to spend analyzing her gear and rotation before jumping into a raid. A weekend project, perhaps.

However, in the realm of honesty, that's not the only reason I wasn't ready to log on to Mara. I got wind of a terrible tragedy earlier in the week. My demons have gone missing... to be replaced by impostors... and I didn't want to face that.

I read an interesting short story last week about two people who get caught in a Time Loop. They are forced to repeat the same day over and over again. The physics of this (theoretical or invented, I'm not completely sure having not done any research) is quite intriguing. The Time Loop is centralized to their neighborhood. That is, the rest of the world is moving on quite normally but their neighborhood is isolated and forced into an infinitely repeating loop of one Thursday.

This starts to cause a build up of entropy and heat and things start to break down. Things don't really fall apart... they just disappear. Small things first - like papers, pens, etc. Then books, chairs. Eventually walls. There are holes in things. But not like holes you can see through or put a finger through... holes in the reality.

Then the same thing starts to happen to people. And the main character starts dreading waking up each Thursday morning. Because he doesn't know what will be different. What will be missing today? Who will be missing today?

The reason this story is so compelling - quite apart from the interesting physics and the suspenseful and evoking storyline - is that is exactly how I felt when I found out the demon names had been reset.

I didn't want to log in and discover my companions of several years were now gone. I didn't want to be another warlock posting in the lost and found:

"Have you seen my Flaag? He's a cantankerous dude with a huge axe, but he's been protecting me from Big and Scaries for 30 levels now."

"Missing: one dutiful felhunter named Shaan. Tries to eat Ice Barriers off me when I poke Sindragosa with a stick. Cannot finish ICC without him."

Its really very hard to explain, but this has devastated warlocks. The good news is the demon names will revert to what they were before the patch on the next maintenance day. The impostors are temporary.

I still don't know which of my demons are currently taking a vacation, but its a huge relief to know they will be coming home on Tuesday. It was better not knowing who was missing. It will be easier to face the impostors knowing that my minions will be back soon.

Sidetrip

2010-10-07T09:17:00.013-04:00

Sorry, ICC is closed for renovations. No admittance.

Or, it could be and I wouldn't know the difference. Raid last night started auspiciously with our raid leader informing us that he was sick and would not be able to play. Puts us down either a tank or a healer right off the bat and is particularly inconvenient seeing as we... you know... rely on his leadership, being a raid leader and all.

I'm afraid you get a rather one-dimensional view of my fellow raiders when stories are told this way. Because Mord is also an incredibly sweet and supportive guy and signs off with things like "please don't hate me for not coming". So it sucks that he's ill on personal level; not a "dangit, now I can't raid" level.

The sad truth is, however, that raid night tends to fall apart when he's not there. This is probably not a healthy place for our guild to be in.

We thought we might tag along with Militia's other guild, because a couple of us had an ICC-lockout that had only Sindy and Arthas left to face. That had the potential to be awesome! Except that they weren't planning on sending invites until 10, whereas I usually pass out in front of my computer around 11/11:30. Sleep. It is important.

It later turned out that they went off to do Ulduar Hard Modes instead, anyway. To be fair, this is also something I would like to do. Though it looks about as unlikely as fighting Arthas.

Dru found out we weren't planning on tackling ICC right away and bailed to play on another character. This was rather disappointing to me on several levels. At the time we were still planning on getting a group together either to wipe against Sindragosa for a few hours or to start a fresh run.

I think this took the last bit of wind out of our sails. I spent some time following a stupid orc around while he throws stuff at me. This doesn't go so well for me. I hate that stupid quest.

"Prepare a funereal pyre! Marariel has challenged Skyshatter!"

I have nothing to say to you, Skyshatter. I hope you die.

And it sucks because this quest nets you a whopping 1000 reputation with the Netherwing. I need... less than that to hit exalted. I've done all my dailies for today and the only thing stopping me from getting my new shiny RIGHT NOW is a stupid orc with a totally unfair 310% flying speed. Haxx.

It's obviously time to do something else in wow. So, at my ~~insistence~~ suggestion, we took everyone who was online to the Molten Core.

That's right. Good old Molten Core. The instance that took 40 level 60 players days to down. It's good for 11 bosses of varying (though seemingly simple) mechanics. At level 80, four people can take a leisurely (though lengthy) tour through the underground lava pits that house one of the elemental planes most fearsome denizens. Ragnaros.

This is largely the reason I wanted to make sure that MC is something I got done before the expansion hits. I don't know if it has been confirmed or not, but there's good reason to believe that Ragnaros will be packing it up and heading back home. Where he will magically gain 25 levels, a crapton of health and probably new and unique abilities with which to smash raids in the face.

The Eye of Divinity dropped from the Majordomo. This is one of the key ingredients to the Benediction staff and starts the beginning of a beautiful and sad quest. If you have to opportunity, I highly recommend taking your priest to complete this quest.

Other residents of the Core were kind enough to drop pieces of the Felheart Raiment. To be honest, I'm probably unreasonably excited about this. Especially since my bank is already cluttered with old quest items, cloth, enchanting mats, a set of Tier 9, and some handy off pieces (just in case). To add a set of Tier 1 (especially if I collected all 8 pieces) is a tad silly.

But, you know what? I am a tad silly. And I wanted it. I look lovely, right?

I also picked up a matching sword.

And Enchant Weapon: Spellpower. Actually useful for BoA items.

I find it amusing that the human character models look so terribly benign even with giant horns coming out of their heads. "Would you mind awfully if I stacked a few DOTs on you before applying my Shadowbolt to your face?"

Lootship is freaking Boring

2010-09-30T11:43:00.007-04:00

The scene: Raid night. 8:00 pm. Raid is schedule to start in 30 minutes and I am getting everything ready to go on Marariel. (I will be PREPARED.) I buy myself some flasks, farm up some soul shards, and even fly out to ICC so I can be a proper lazy-raid-member-summoning warlock.

Literally minutes before we get a full group, our gracious raid leader calls for a switch. I'm on healing duty.

Clearly, I am failing at fulfilling my duties as an EVIL warlock (tm).

That said, it is your sworn duty as a member of the EVIL Warlock class to complete the Warlock class' one official obligation, which is to ensure that every single raid leader in the universe fervently believes that THE RAID WILL SUFFER A HORRIBLE FATE AND FAIL if there are not enough warlocks in the raid at all times.
-Excerpt from the Super Secret Evil Warlock's Guide.

Of course, I enjoy healing and gearing up my healer is very enjoyable. (Only 58 more emblems of frost until 4pt10! >.>) I mail myself the flasks - huzzah for both priests and warlocks nomming spell power like there's no tomorrow - and switch to Aioka.

The other half of the healing team was Hippy - our druid who sometimes chooses to grace us with his heals. The first two bosses were fairly uneventful. We get to the Gunship Battle and Mord glitches Saurfang so that folks can wail on the Mages, Rocketeers, and Axe Throwers to their heart's content. I throw bubbles at everyone I can reach and then... wait.

And wait some more.

And then Hippy starts to complain that there's nothing for him to do.

So I start really focusing on the health bars. They're not going down.

Don't get me wrong, this is good behavior for health bars. I like it. But we realized that there's not a lot of point to bringing two healers to normal Gunship anymore. (Why, oh why, can't we have heroic Gunship?) Like so many events in raiding, this is just another example of something that... shifts my perspective enough to give me a jolt.

It's certainly not a "lawl, I could solo heal this". It's a "holy cow, I can solo heal this?".

To make it up to Hippy, I let him solo heal Saurfang.

What? That doesn't make it better? Well, I did it anyway. This fight always makes me want to go out and GET DPS GEAR RIGHT NOW. Because if I can go 5.7k in healing gear, who knows what kind of awesomeness I could manage in dps gear.

This week Memento returned to the Crimson Halls (better known as the Blood Wing, I think). This is my favourite place ever. Sometimes I get to CC things! It's so exciting.

The Blood Prince Council was a very lucky one shot. Mord and Militia were tanking again and I was spending most of my time on them. Because, you know, it would be silly for the druid to tank heal. But towards the end I get thrown against the wall by one of those stupid kinetic bombs and suddenly I can't reach EITHER TANK.

I start running towards Militia's position because he needs more healing in the right now sort of way. I spam some Flash Heal and Penance and start to breath easier when Mord totally bites it across the room.

Now I'm totally flipping out. I spam heals at Militia with everything I've got and WE ACTUALLY MAKE IT. I couldn't believe it.

To fill out our group we pugged two hunters - neither of whom were particularly bright. This is important for the next part of the story.

I am equipped with the Blood Queen Addon (as mentioned before) so I get it setup and ready to go as we prep for the fight. We start with a bite list based on dps, when I knew - I KNEW - from last time we did this we'd have better success with a bite list based on who knows wtf to do.

We explain the fight. I explain the addon and how it will post raid warnings and instructions. We die. Repeatedly. People are being mind controlled left and right. This is extremely bizarre to me, because the first time we did this we just wiped. Now we're getting wiped by our own people. Eventually, we gave it up.

Note that is a direct result of not having enough warlocks in the raid. Clearly this proves that any raid without enough warlocks WILL SUFFER A HORRIBLE FATE AND FAIL.

Prospective Raid Leaders should note that having Marariel in your raid is a sufficient number of warlocks. You should not add more unless the alternative is a non-Marariel-sanctioned-mage. Otherwise, you may need two or three.

Significant Win

2010-09-23T08:58:00.002-04:00

I read that Deathfrost Boots are better than the Sandals of Consecration for a Discipline priest. Its the idea that the 16 extra crit on the dps boots is better than the 80 spirit on the healy boots. And this is true if one holds with the idea that both spirit and hit are wasted stats for Discipline. (True on hit, debateable on spirit depending on your mana and regen. Your mileage may vary). I realize Holy is a different ballgame.

This is good news for me in my eventual attempts to get dps gear for my Shadow offspec. Although I realize that because its better than something else, that doesn't necessarily make it good. Wowhead commenters that are good at math go on to state that the Deathfrost Boots are actually 2nd Best in Slot for Discipline. Shut up. And I can make these on my tailor? Right now? Brb. (BiS honors given to these bad boys. A hotly contested item for casters and healers of all armor classes.)

Anyway. The point I'm working up to is that my priest (despite actually healing a large amount of ICC by now) is now actually more than prepared for ICC. So I'm perfectly willing to bring either Aioka or Mara to our weekly run. But not both. Which I told Mord earlier in the week. I can heal or I can dps... Actually on Aioka I can reasonably do both. I'm sort of dreading the day when Aioka does better dps than Mara.

So, Wednesday, I was expecting an evening full of warlocky goodness that ... never manifested. We've recognized that the three-healer combo is definitely a good plan for everywhere beyond the Lower Spite and the Plagueworks. Mord set up the raid with not only himself as healer, my bubble-flinging dorf, but also Ann's Holy priest Ash. Priestly Twin Powers Activate!

The only really interesting consequence of this being that the lootmaster was a healer.

Most of the Lower Spite is old hat by now. Militia came in as a tank again, but on his death knight this time. Things were so ridiculously smooth that both Ann and I went Shadow for the Saurfang fight. I don't have recount set up on Aioka, so I have no idea what her dps was. A respectable 5.5k according to Ann (who has her own blog-home now over at Noob Raid - getting saved to others' fail runs since 2010).

In the heady rush of facing new progression last week (Blood Queen who?) we decided that this week we would tackle the Lower Spire and the Frostwing Halls. Hellooooo Sindragosa. Therefore, we thumbed our noses at the Plagueworks and the Crimson Halls and went right over to the Frostwing Halls. Dreamwalker went surprisingly well. Last week Mord solo-healed the dragon, this week he solo-healed the raid. What a show-off. :p

No, he was nice enough to let two priestlets who have never seen the inside of Nightmare Portal give upping Dreamwalker a shot. I'm happy to say that we did not let him or the rest of the raid down. Binding Heal and Greater Heal got dusted off and put to good use. Penance was kept on cooldown. The only thing I think I particularly failed at was... picking up those stupid green balls in the Nightmare Portal. That's not terribly important, right? Ugh. I'm afraid I'm a bit retarded in full 3D environments. I tend to have trouble in the Occulus too.

The trash runs between Dreamwalker and Sindragosa was totally thrilling in that 'I've never been here before and why are things climbing down the walls at us?' sort of way. The gauntlet was terribly messy for a group that's never been there. Even with Militia very carefully herding us along. It was somewhere in the middle of this that I finally realized I still had my dps trinkets equipped. (1 & 2) Probably when I found out I couldn't tap my Sliver for mana. Oi.

Walking out onto Sindragosa's platform was an awe-inspiring moment. The literal ton of frost whelps gave me the heebie-jeebies. And when you finish wiping them all out, Sindragosa flies in looking every part the avenging dragon who you should probably not poke in the eye or kill her babies. The entirety of vent was treated to a rather unflattering yelp on my part. But hell, that dragon startled me.

But when we had rebuffed and finished laughing at the noob (i.e. me) and I put my proper ~~big-girl~~ healing trinkets back on we were ready to throw ourselves at MOAR NEW CONTENT.

Not to put a damper on the excitement we felt, but it ended rather horribly. It started well enough. We learned to juggle air and ground phases easily enough. I managed my own Instability debuff decently well and if anyone else sucked at it I didn't notice.

Final Phase, however. Oi.

The first two attempts I was the first one to Ice-blocked. The first time I wasn't fast enough getting to the pre-determined 'Ice Block Area' and tombed a whole bunch of people. Whoops. Second time was much better. But then the second tomb is scheduled to come down and we haven't finished beating up the first one yet and the melee hasn't cleared their stacks of whatever and we die. And this goes on for 3 or 4 attempts before we call on account of sleeping.

I think if we manage to get to a point of extending raid lockouts again, Sindragosa needs to be the first (and likely only) fight of the night. Then we might actually have a chance at throwing ourselves at her enough times to start improving.

Militia, however, assures us that we're miles ahead of his other guild in terms of how far we made it in our first several attempts. Apparently getting to the final phase on Sindragosa is significant win.

I don't doubt that we'll continue to get better, I'm just hoping that we have enough time before everyone is done with Wrath for awhile. I know Cata is looming on the horizon, but I'm spending my time with my fingers in my ears going "Can't hear you!".

Progression!

2010-09-16T08:27:00.009-04:00

Alternative Title: 'AMG I SAW THE BLOOD QUEEN'. Because as excited as Tam was to see the Lich King, that's how excited we were to see new content. And it matters very little to us that other people think this stuff is easy and old news by now.

As previously mentioned, Wednesday is our new progression night and last night was excellent. We were actually successful in finding people to extend the lockout, which was a very pleasant surprise. We had to rearrange our team a little bit and I think Ann and I both managed to save both our priests and our casters to this raid ID.

I believe I also mentioned we have two new guildies. Colvar brings us a warrior, a warlock, and a rogue. He's... interesting. He actually seems... skittish. He reacts to our questions and clarifications as if, at any moment, we were going to boot him from the raid/guild/life. He's eager, though. Colvar started the run last week on his warlock, as did I. This week he brought his warrior and switched to his rogue midway through. I think he probably managed to save the most characters to one raid ID.

Dru brings us a tanky-druid and a shaman. Tanks always seem to be in short supply at Memento, so this addition is particularly welcome. He's also eager. Dru organized a short weekly trip earlier in the week that went very smoothly. I think Dru started with his shaman last week and brought his druid this week.

Mord actually came as a healer on his paladin, something that happens very rarely. Militia actually came as Militia; the first time he's been on his paladin in a long time. We ended up with a raid group that looked like this:
2 Tanks (Militia-paladin, Dru-druid)
2 Melee dps (Colvar-warrior/rogue, Batra-dk)
3 Range dps (Ann-mage, Barheim-mage, Goticus-warlock)
3 Healers (Myself-priest, Takk-shaman, Mord-paladin)

Probably could have used a Spriest or a Boomkin, but for us that's a surprisingly well-mixed raid group.

Last week was the second week we managed to go 7/12 in one night, so we started with Dreamwalker. Yeah, started with something that's been a complete failfest in the past.

Takk and I focused on healing the raid while Mord healed the dragon. From the strategies I've read this is somewhat unusual. In general, one healer stays on the raid and two go to the dragon. The sad truth of it, though, is that my priest cannot really be relied on to heal the entire raid in an unfamiliar fight. Takk could have handled the raid with his shaman, but I'm not personally convinced I would have made a difference on the dragon.

In the end it didn't matter too much. We wiped our first attempt at 92%. Our melee were spending too much time running around and one of our tanks died at an inopportune moment. We rallied for a second time and upped that dragon to full 100%. It was a matter of melee knowing where to be, and range calling out Blazing Skeletons, and me managing my mana as best as I know how.

The Blood Prince Council is every bit a beautiful, unholy mess as I could have hoped for. We wiped here several times. For silly reasons. Because its one thing to listen to your raid leader or raid assist to explain the fight. And its one thing to read about empowered blah blah in the guides. And its one thing to watch videos of other people pulling it off. It's totally a different thing altogether to be THERE for the first time with your screen exploding in color and warnings and ALL THE HEALTHBARS ARE GOING DOWN. Which is not the direction they're supposed to go.

And DBM has this handy range feature that tells you who is within X range of you - very nice for Empowered Vortex. But mine kept disappearing for no reason that I could fathom.

As a raid, we had huge issues with getting blown around the room. Whether because of too many people standing too close to vortexes or those cursed Kinetic Bombs, I'm not sure. But it's very disconcerting to FINALLY find a good place to stand where you can reach almost everyone with your healing spells and then get thrown 30 yards across the room. It sucks.

Sure, its a tricky thing. You find out a vortex is near/on you and you have to move 10 yards away from everyone without ranging all of your healers. And when your healers are more or less grouped around the center, this can be difficult.

But it still sucks.

In the end it was messy and unorganized, but we succeeded. Defeating them was an excellent thing, but I'm left wondering if it will take any fewer attempts the next time we try it.

I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to be the ranged tank for Keleseth on my warlock. Not that Militia didn't do a great job, but that I would still really like to try it one day. Maybe after we get some more practice.

So then we went upstairs. To the chamber of the Blood Queen.

Trying to explain this fight to people who have never been there and never watched others do it is an interesting adventure. Especially when your own knowledge base is largely theoretical. We think Militia has been with his other guild, but for everyone else it was our first time.

Several weeks ago, in preparation for this triumphant event I downloaded the Blood Queen addon. And I was the only one who had it. It posts to the raid who is supposed to be biting whom and when. I set it up to give an 8 second warning, since known of us had ever been there before. The first priority list it cranked out was kind of bizarre so I adjusted it. We set out to try it out.

We died EPICLY (still a word in maraland).

There was so much confusion with the red ribbon between people and no one could see what was going on and our pug-mage got bitten first and was like 'wut?'. He couldn't find his target so we told him to bite another dps rather than get mind controlled. Instead, he bit Mord. A healer.

We died.

We died several times, really. And everytime it was "Ok, everyone, chill out. I know this fight looks like a really quick mess, but take your time. There will be a raid warning for when it's time to bite targets and then you have 8 whole seconds to get there. Calm down. Don't worry."

Finally, we got everything settled. Ann arranged to take the first bite, which seemed to help. I got better with my fear ward (not great, but better). It was another success that was messy and hectic but oh so full of excitement.

Personally, I have love/hate relationship with coordination fights. When everything goes the way it's supposed to its a well choreographed dance. Everyone performs their role, there's good communication, genuine support, and the thrill of triumph at the end is truly sweet.

When everything goes wrong, it's huge mess of color and sound and bewilderment. At the end of poorly executed coordination fight there's a tendency towards finger-pointing. It leads to arguments and general bad feeling.

The Blood Queen was kind enough to drop her nail, the much-sought-after wand upgrade (over this well-used piece) for everyone who wears a sissy robe. I got lucky. Aioka's been lucky recently, winning the wand with something like a 48 and the T10 pants from VoA with a roll of 5.

And I realized, my nooblet priest is not so... nooby anymore. She has good gear. Not just 'decent' or 'ok' gear, but good. In some cases, great. I still have some pieces with hit on them and I'm still rocking my PvP bracers, but of the first 10 bosses in ICC I have healed 9 of them. It kind of blows my mind.

Not that it has anything to do with myself. We have a good thing going right now and a great group of people to be going it with. Dru signed off last night with the following message:

"Thanks for letting me be a part of your guild. I've been looking for a long time, and I'm glad I finally found a good one."

Settlin'

2010-09-08T13:25:00.003-04:00

Memento has tentatively settled on a schedule for the semester. Our progression night will be Wednesdays 8-11. Trying to form up a 10-man group that can extend the lockouts from week to week and hopefully get further than our current 7/12.

Tuesdays and Thursdays will be guild nights for alt runs and whatever nonsense we feel like getting into. Last night it was an "alt" run of ICC. A couple a new guild members and new noobraiders went with Ann, Mord(on his rogue), and myself (on Aioka) to do battle with the first 5 bosses in the Citadel.

We wiped to Marrowgar, which sucked. Overall we had some noob-type issues with stacking and switching targets and general raid awareness. Deathwhisper, Lootship, and Saurfang went relatively painlessly. Our Saurfang fight was epically messy. We had only three ranged dps, 2 mages and a Boomkin, which made getting the bloodbeasts down difficult.

We wiped to Festergut twice. People had difficulty understanding what a Collapse Point was (where the range is standing to get spores) and what we meant when we said "Move Out" (run to the collapse point).

The other half of our healing team was a druid. I finally (after two hours or so) made myself relax and focus mostly on the tanks and left the rest of the raid in the very capable hands (limbs?) of said druid. Made my life better and we seemed to encounter less difficulty afterward. Seems like, regardless of whether Discipline is considered tank heals or raid heals, my personal style tends towards tank healing. This thought warrants more experimentation.

What Boredom Gets You

2010-09-02T08:41:00.000-04:00

While its true that the semester is starting up and all too soon time will have to be devoted to studying and homework and research and stuff, I haven't been able to really get into yet. The advantage of this being that I still have time for WoW. The disadvantage being that if I'm not careful I could up rather behind without noticing.

On my happily school-free weekend, Ann and I got a smidge bored. We've been missing out on our regular raid schedule recently and it was just time to show some internet enemies what-for.

So we hopped a pug to Ulduar with Mord.

A pug in which, it turned out, only Ann, Mord, and I had ever been to Ulduar. Everyone else was there because they'd never been and thought it would be fun.

Fun. Right.

I went on Aioka as a "tank healer". As a Discipline priest "tank healing" is a concept that boggles the brain a bit. Don't get me wrong, having only one target to Penance and Flash Heal makes life much simpler. But Flash Heal goes faster in the 8-10 seconds after a Bubble. And if the tank can't have a bubble then someone else is getting it and by the end of the fight everyone in the raid has bubbles regardless of whether I'm technically healing the tank or technically healing the raid. I also Frisbee the tank but since it can go just about anywhere, I count is as a raid healing spell.

Getting up to Flame Leviathan was fairly painless. I went as a gunner, which is what I'm used to doing on Mara. Our little raid went right up to Flame Leviathan and proceeded to pull everything despite frequent commands in the raid channel to definitely not pull.

None of the towers had been taken out and no one really had any idea what was going on and in general it was just bad.

After the wipe, Ann offered Memento's Vent for the raid's use. After some testy words on my part that if we weren't going to use Vent then people at least needed to pay attention to their raid chat.

The raid organizer's (at this point Mord was leading, because this organizer was pretty fail) response to this was "I don't have vent, lol."

We got everyone else into the proper vent channel and got a couple towers down. Went back to the Flame Leviathan and sucked much less. Mord gave very comprehensive instructions for fighting FL. On vent. Which meant our failadin (did I mention the raid's organizer was paladin with all 71 points in protection?) didn't hear any of it.

But a decent number of people, Aioka included, got Orbital Devastation for it.

XT was pretty basic. The tanks took their assignments well. I kept them and the raid alive. I did more overall healing than my shaman healing partner; which was hard to understand. We absolutely did not attempt Razorscale or Ignis.

Clearing the trash up to Kologarn was probably more complex than it needed to be, but we succeeded. Mord handed out assignments and instructions for the fight. We had a rather decent warrior tank who had recently dinged 80 and was very eager to show his stuff.

So eager in fact that when the fight started, he ran right up to Kologarn and off the edge of the cliff into the abyss and died.

The other tanks were not prepared to jump into his spot and, even if they were, I was way too busy laughing to heal them. And it was funny because it was just such a noob thing - on our poor warrior's part for not stopping before running off the edge of a cliff and on our part for not mentioning that there's a huge cliff there and Kologarn has a huge hitbox so don't get any more up close and personal with him than you have to.

This is what we would like noobraid to be about: introducing new players to raiding (while hopefully not getting them killed in silly ways) and helping them to get experience they might not get elsewhere. Especially people like that warrior who are going to be totally awesome and all they need is experience and gear.

I have a feeling we may be seeing more of these this semester since our raid schedule is going to be split. We haven't worked out all the particulars but we are currently planning on running raids 3-4 nights a week. Everyone is free on Wednesdays, so I suggested that for our progression night. Mord will probably run something or other on Monday or Tuesday evenings and I volunteered to lead Thursday evenings. Because I'm crazy like that.

Last night we took our whole 4 guild members who were online into another guild's ICC-25. I'm not really a fan of healing 25-mans but they essentially told me they'd carry me through it and it really didn't matter if I healed or not. I got another "tank healing" spot with two other tank healers. And my overall healing was miserably sad for the whole night. I got a cloak upgrade out of it though.

To be perfectly honest, it was kind of a miserable adventure. One of their members was on one of the Shadowmourne quests. When they died, they asked for a battle-res on a trash pull. I think it was a Culture Shock thing. If you're in one of our ICC runs and you die on trash in the lower spire, you will run back in. Because certainly none of our healers will resurrect you.

The Upper Spire is a different story, sometimes.

And this guild like to talk about random things instead of ... you know ... doing stuff. We were getting ready to face Saurfang and instead of starting the fight some of the people on vent starting debating the 'Agility is for Frost DKs' issue. Which has already been done to death in our own guild, so I was really not interested. I thought about going and starting the fight myself. They could have had most of the conversation while waiting for Saurfang's attention.

It was string of these minor irritations that made the run less than enjoyable overall. Some of the members were whiny and 3 or 4 people throughout the night dropped raid for reasons I just didn't understand.

Here's to crossing my fingers and hoping that everything will settle down again soon.

The Line. I is Walking It.

2010-08-26T09:17:00.004-04:00

A decent amount of the blogosphere is experiencing renewed interest in gender commentary. Gender issues always seem to be kind of a touchy subject and people either want to drive right in and dissect behaviors and stereotypes or they want to dance around the issue.

Forewarning: I'm one of those second types. I prefer to avoid stating strong opinions until I have enough to back myself up and if I think I'm likely to offend someone I prefer to say nothing at all. So if you want to really get into the issues with some people who seem to know what they're talking about and who are much more articulate than I, posts from Righteous Orbs, Bossy Pally, and 'Mental Shaman will all see you in the right direction.

I'm just going to talk about me. Because, you know, that's really what OP is here for. For me to talk about my experiences with that game we all love. WoW has it share of problems, like any other game/community/lifestyle (depending on which discussion you're currently involved in). But sometimes we let these problems distract us from our purpose in interacting with WoW; namely defeating fictional enemies through methods that provide us personal satisfaction. (Die INTERNET DRAGONS!)

I certainly don't say this to demean the gender discussions that others are currently having and that we may kinda-sorta touch on here. Maybe. I have always found gender discussions intriguing. Fascinating. It's something I like to read about or listen to but tend to feel vaguely distanced from.

I followed the discussions on RealID being forced on the forums avidly. When I first read the blue post the idea made me fairly uncomfortable but I didn't let it bother me overmuch. Everything they said sounded reasonable and I am all for getting rid of trolls on the forums. Of course, I wouldn't want my RealID posted for just anyone to see. But, I can also tell you that I've posted on the WoW forums exactly twice.

Then I started reading the replies to the Blue who so foolishly told everyone that publishing his real name was no big deal. Internet savvy posters had his home phone number, address, you name it in minutes. It was like a light clicking on, as I began to understand. I know there are people who can pull a picture your house with no more information than just your last name. I've watched them do it.

I know RealID is a bit tangential to the current topic and that the kind of people who would be interested in doing this sort of thing (apart from proving a point) don't usually need a reason to seek you out. However, a great number of replies to this issue centered around not wanting to share a real name because it would identify them as a woman. To be fair, a number of people also do not want to share their names because it identifies them as belonging to a certain ethnicity, but those discussions seem to be strangely absent.

I don't care if people know I'm a girl. I would care that they knew my real name. I would be perfectly happy to use a singular "alias" for posting on the forums and I don't doubt that the name I would pick would be noticeably feminine.

When I first started playing wow, I didn't hesitate to pick a character that looked like me. Marariel was, and is, my avatar for the WoW universe. She's a human female with dark hair and no bangs because I need to SEE what I'm shadow bolting thank you very much.

Since then I have added 8 other female characters on my home realm. One male character. Chas, over at Righteous Orbs, got into the interesting subject of how unrealistic the male character models tend to be. This is what started me to thinking about my lone male character on Hydraxis. Mathias is a Blood Elf Hunter. He is intended to be a combination of strong and graceful. Despite his tendency to stand away from things and shoot them full of arrows, I've always liked the fact that he looked strong. And I believe that's because I built him as an older brother and protector to Shinai.

They look like siblings, right?

I don't want to get into issues about why I might feel Shinai needs a protector and that sort of gender-based conundrum. I can tell you the answer is simple. I created and played Shinai first and she felt like she needed protection. A mage at low levels seems particularly squishy and I got tired of dying but I still wanted to do the then-new-to-me Blood Elf starting zones.

Chas' discussion of character models led down an interesting path of guys playing girl characters and the guys who sometimes catch grief about it. Memento is not a very big guild and two of our main raiders are guys with at least one female raiding toon. And apart from a few minor inquiries ("Why are you playing a girl character?" "I dunno. I like it." "K. Cool.") most of us think nothing of it.

In our happy-meal-sized guild there are also two females in the raider core. We usually run with a female friend from another guild. And we have strong rules against discrimination of any sort.

I think the place that I'm trying to end up at is this: to an extent I think stereotypes affect you as much as you let them. That isn't to say there aren't sexist and racist people out there. There are. You take steps to protect yourself from them in game as you would outside of game by surrounding yourself with people you trust and not taking outlandish risks. At least, I hope you do.

The following, completely unrelated entertainment is for Ann. Sorry your day is long.

Shawty had them Apple Bottom Jeans
Boots with the fur
The whole club was lookin at her

New things are good, right?

2010-08-18T08:10:00.004-04:00

Summer is drawing slowly to a close. People are finishing up their vacations and settling in for the long haul again. Memento is starting to look ahead to the next semester and the raid time adjustments that need to be made.

Our raid day and times seem to change so frequently, I guess it's sort of a good thing that the only people affected are people I can call up and discuss the problem with. When we recruited we found people for a particular day and time that no longer suits many of our members.

Currently our best times appear to be Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8-11. Too many people managed to get themselves signed up for Tuesday night classes. Wednesday isn't particularly convenient for me, I'll have to rush home from school, but I don't foresee it being a major problem. The updates here at OP will probably also change days accordingly. I like to be able to talk about raid the day after it happens.

Last night, of course, there was no raid. Hydraxis was on the 24-hour maintenance list. We're going to give our anticipated new schedule a trial run this week and see how it happens. I'm looking forward to jumping back into ICC tonight. Assuming our server-hamster is fully recovered, of course.

Being cut off from my usual server-home didn't stop me from playing. Ann, a casual RL friend Vandrellee, and myself trouped over to Ravencrest where another RL friend has a character. We started some new alts in the hope that we can all find some time to play together in the coming semester. It was an interesting experiment... casual RL friend #2 only plays hoard. And all the alts I've ever put any amount of time into are all alliance. Or Blood Elves. Do they really count?

Anyway, I have a new baby druid named Bersera. Thanks to the random name generator for that one. She's a very lovely cow.

Now that I've done the dps thing and the healing thing, I've been practically itching to try the tanking thing. Well, it's bound to happen now. If we get into nonsense with our new hoards it will be as a bear. (Vandy picked a hunter and Ann has a new shaman.) If we stay on the home server for our lulz, I have a paladin at just the right level. (Vandy is a rogue and Ann has a hunter.) So, be sure to send some pity towards Ann and Vandy for being my test subjects as I l2tank.

Better news? If we stick to the home server, we're staring Scarlet Monastery right in the face. I've certainly been there enough times, I think I could reasonably lead a group through there. It's going to be great.

Who's Putricide?

2010-08-11T08:27:00.007-04:00

My return to WoW from vacation was rather lackluster, all things considered. There are real life considerations that come from returning from a long trip; missing deadlines for school being an unforeseen and unfortunate one. So rather than dive back into the pleasant world of Mara and Aioka, I have been spending my time with laundry baskets and portfolios.

Bah.

Anyway, nothing prevented me from last night's raid. I was online 15 minutes before we were due to start and had already completed my jewelcrafting daily. In complete silence, I might add. While it would have been nice to get "Hey Aioka, welcome back. Did you have a nice trip?" I wasn't excessively bummed when it was not forthcoming. But to not even receive a Hi/Hey/Yo/Sup/etc. was rather disappointing.

At raid time, Mord announced he was going to run with his rogue because "we had two good tanks and his healers were already online". ... It's kind of like in school, when the teacher calls your name but you're not expecting it so you look around waiting for someone else to answer. Oh wait, you mean me? Lol.

It was a nice thing. I enjoy healing my crew and we have fun. But if I'm being prefectly honest, I'm extremely nervous about ever having Aioka in a Rotface fight. I don't usually think before I dispel people. So much of my healing is completely reactionary, quick clicks and spams, that to stop and think about something before I do it is tantamount to letting someone die.

While I was still hanging out in Dalaran another person asked if I was heals and if I was interested in their run. I told them I was otherwise engaged, but (re-emphasizing the point from earlier) its nice to be recognized as a healer.

I was in some danger of getting a big head.

Especially after I managed to keep a tank alive with a meager combination of Flash Heal and Bubble. The other healer was busy eating dirt after a surprise Bone Warden trap. I can't pretend is wasn't a near thing, because almost everyone else died. But it was not a wipe.

But right before Marrowgar one of our tanks dropped, necessitating some rearrangement of roles and people. Mord pulled in a different healer, and I switched over to Mara. The result being that neither of my characters got to complete the weekly: being Marrowgar this week.

I was disappointed at first (and even more when both Midnight Sun and Thaumaturge's Crackling Cowl dropped) but I had an excellent time with Mara. I miss a lot of the action when I'm staring at a box of healthbars. I got to roll face without really worrying about if so-and-so was eating too much damage.

And roll face we did. The run went very smoothly and very quickly. Militia's comment: "We should try to balance the raid every week." I was amused. And, in terms of quickly, I went looking down Mara's achievement list again and saw something I found interesting. Below is what time we killed stuff.

Marrowgar - 8:55 (We took awhile to get started.)
Deathwhisper - 9:06
Gunship - 9:20
Saurfang - 9:27 (No time for marks!)
Festergut - 9:54
Rotface - 10:22
Putricide - 10:34

One hour and forty minutes for 7 bosses. Totally awesome.

Also, we downed Putricide. It was a good night.

Blog Fail

2010-08-04T11:54:00.004-04:00

Mara is on vacation. Weeee.

And no, I didn't write any back-up posts to schedule for this week. I am a fail blogger.

I hopped online during raid last night for awhile to scope out the latest drama. Of course there was some. I think I'd really rather just stay out of it. And I don't think OP will disintegrate if I leave out a little bit of Memento's Drama.

I went over to the Exodar and shoved cloth at them until they exalted me. It's the only advantage of having tons and tons Runecloth stocked up. Hail Ambassador Marariel. I guess if that's the only thing I accomplish while on vacation, it's still a worthy achievement.

While I was in the area, I did all the Azuremyst quests I could find. And I'm considering going over to Bloodmyst to do the same thing. Despite having two little dreanei alts, I have never done all of the dreanei starting area. This is not a prelude to a Loremaster attempt. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Summertime

2010-07-28T08:34:00.002-04:00

Summer seems to be an interesting time for WoW. Students have considerably more free time, being free from school, yet guilds everywhere seem to be dragging a bit. A lot of people are attributing it to a pre-expansion lull. And though I was playing last summer, I don't remember enough to make a comparison. I didn't have any level 80 characters and I was working my first full-time, i-have-to-commute-every-day job.

Memento, too, is struggling. As I've mentioned, we have gained and lost players over the last few months. At our present moment in time, we've gained exactly one more player than we've lost. A slightly noobish paladin that happens to be the brother of some other player nobody in Memento can stand. Good times.

So, reduced to our core set of people, Memento is left in the position of pugging 2-4 raiders for anything we want to run. This is not a problem for the weekly and VoA runs. But lately it has been hard to pug spots for ICC.

Have so many people downed the Lich King that its not interesting anymore?

I don't know if this is due to a summer lull or pre-expansion jitters but I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to get to smack Arthas in the face sometime before I hit level 85.

Any pug can go 6/12 in ICC, I think. I mean, certainly if we can do it nobody else should find it terribly difficult. Don't get me wrong, we're good. But we're mostly dps. Picking up good tanks and healers is altogether a more difficult thing.

Also, the idea of there even being a pre-expansion "i have nothing to do" experience blows my mind a little. There's SO MUCH that I want to do before Cataclysm comes out that I don't even know where to start.

For example, all of the Vanilla Dungeons and Raids. I haven't done all of them. I hadn't even done most of them before a couple days ago. I mean, yeah, Aioka was randomed into most of them over the course of her leveling, but most of those never completed. Pugtards at levels 50-58 can't even follow basic directions.

So, I've seen... parts of them. Several bloggers recently have talked about how epic Blackrock Mountain is. Blackrock Depths in particular. So I took Mara and went off to pay Blackrock Mountain a visit. I was halfway through UBS before I remembered I had done it and Blackwing Lair before. So that only left the other two. Of course, Aioka randomed into both BRD and Lower Blackrock Spire several months ago. Doesn't mean I knew how to get around them. Because she was never in a group that completed them.

One particularly memorable event was in LBS. The group wiped to a bunch of dragonkin outside a locked door in the room to the left of the entrance. I now know that this section is the entrance to UBS and we had no business being there anyway, but at the time I just made the run back to Blackrock and waited for the rest of the group. And waited. And waited. After ten minutes or so the "Rez me" and "Res me, I'm lost" started coming in. And the reason I remember this so clearly is because NO ONE SAID 'PLEASE'. If they had, I probably would have done it. Even though I'm totally against it; if anyone had ASKED I would have cheerfully hunted down their broken corpse and shoved their spirit back into it just to continue this already clearly pointless adventure. When the tank, who apparently was smart enough to find the entrance, started in with "Why don't you just res them? ffs" I lost it. I ranted about the lack of courtesy on the internet and how impolite people are and how fucking lazy do you have to be to skip typing "pls" and I ragequit. I quit the game and turned my whole computer off because that's how DONE I was with Blackrock Mountain and retarded random groups.

I can admit now (now that I'm far enough removed from levels 50-60) that both BRD and LBS are epic. They have just a huge scope: they actually look like cities, there are a ton of bosses and mobs to kill, and the storylines that exist there are also pretty epic. The downside of these huge and involved instances is that I spent an unholy amount of time lost. Even with the advantages of the Dungeon Guide and, you know, the internet I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing.

When I got as far as the room outside of Emperor Dagran's room, Ann had to tell me about the two fire braziers that have to be lit within a certain amount of time or the doors won't open. Oh yeah, and the room is packed to the brim with non-elite mobs. This isn't too big a deal for a level 80 warlock who actively enjoys slaughtering things. We've all had those days, I think. And when all you want to do is kill things, wow certainly delivers.

When I finished with BRD, I went over and attuned myself to the Molten Core. I spent a few minutes staring in awe at the Black Forge. Then, because I'm lazy, I asked Ann to group up with me so I could walk into the portal to MC so that when I walked out again I would be back in Blackrock Mountain.

Well, Mord saw where I was headed and thought I was going to try that for my next solo project. He said it couldn't be done. Turns out, it can be done. (Youtube link: Ragnaros) Maybe not necessarily by me, but other warlocks have certainly tried and succeeded. Maybe I will give it a shot one day.

LBS was a bit easier in terms of getting around than BRD. I noticed that in LBS there's mostly only one route to follow. Any other route involves jumping down off bridges and stuff. Which is viable - or so I read. If all you want to do is kill Wyrmthalak, which is all you need for the achievement, you can skip most of everything else. It involves jumping off a ledge in one of the early rooms. If you're anything like me, you'll never find it.

Other things I'm trying to complete before Cataclysm include the Keymaster achievement and Karazhan (also soloable, I've heard). I've done all the Outland dungeons except the Shattered Halls. I've toyed with the idea of chasing the Loremaster achievement. But I haven't committed myself to it. Yet.

Hypocrisy

2010-07-21T11:32:00.005-04:00

Observe carefully. I hope this show of hypocrisy is brief and singular.

I am a hypocrite.

On our Friday ICC-25 run, the one that was full of pugtards, there was a particular mage who was rather more pugtardy than anyone else. Which, in the end, rather made sense as they're from a guild that seems rather marked by their pugtards as this is mage is now the third pug that will never be reinvited to one of our runs.

This mage shall, for the purposes of this post, be called Magetard.

Magetard has an impressive array of gear, ranging from ilvl 200 to ilvl 268. Some pieces are from Naxx, some from Ulduar, some from ICC. Some are tier pieces from a tier that is before my knowledge of raiding. Several are pvp pieces with stamina gems in them.

Before I continue, I do want to make sure it is known that Magetard is not labeled a tard based entirely on his gear. He was labeled a tard because he acted like a tard. As we were clearing the trash before Marrowgar he wanted to know which of the casters had the most spell power. (The answer: As I was in my demonology spec, it had damn sure better have been me.) The reason, I gathered, was because he thought he had the highest and when we assured him that this was not the case he said "Damn :(".

Magetard also tended to offer "helpful" advice continually and spent a lot of the time talking when we wished he wouldn't. This kind of behavior always bothers me. The raid leader is there for a reason. If they want your advice, or your help advising others, they'll ask for it. Otherwise, its their job to know what they're doing and how to impart that information to the other 9/24 people.

Now, Mara's gear spans a similar range (ilvl 200 to ilvl 277). I would probably die of happiness if Blizzard introduced a nice haste trinket somewhere before 25-man Rotface. Or gave us one that we could purchase for emblems. Seriously.

If we ignore the Abyssal Rune, Magetard gets a range of 219-268 and Mara jumps to 232-277. This distinction serves no purpose except to make me feel better about myself.

Anyway. When asked about his gear, Magetard simply says "Oh, you're wondering why I have Ulduar and PvP gear. :p". Well, yes. But no explanation was forthcoming.

Aioka, nooblet priest that she is, has a worse mix of gear. I have two pieces of high level hit gear, and now I have a piece of high level pvp gear. And, damnit, I will heal with them anyway. Because they are better than my current alternatives.

This is where the hypocrisy comes in.

Despite my mixed-bag of gear, Mord was willing to essentially carry Aioka through VoA-10, VoA-25, and an OS-10 zerg run. Of course, nothing priestly dropped in either VoA except for the Wrathful Gladiator's Cuffs of Dominance. Yeah, I'm using them.

When we started pugging the zerg run, one of the dps asked "Why is there a 4k gs priest in here?". Being typically wonderful, one of my guildies said "To keep you from dying". But I was still rather put out. One of the other puggees said "Well, he's doing very well."

Despite being a she, and not a he, I do try to heal my silly dorf butt off when I'm on Aioka. Mord had me healing the raid in OS while Takk was on his Shaman healing the tank. I also got to bubble the tank and hit Pain Suppression whenever I was told. I discovered that binding stuff to your middle mouse button (wheel?) is extremely annoying. Pain Suppression will be moving to a new home.

We died a lot. Mord blamed it consistently on the dps. But then... I was (apparently) taking up a dps slot. One of our charming puggees wanted to know why there were two healers to begin with. I told Mord I wouldn't be offended if he opted to replace me. I bet if I were a pugger I wouldn't stand a chance in someone else's run.

We succeeded when everyone pulled together and executed one totally awesome attempt. It's really very cool to get a chance to practice raid healing. I think its something that doesn't really get practiced. Usually a new healer just has to do it. But I have the advantage of knowing (or perhaps just believing) that if I suck too hard another healer can and will pick up my slack.

This is especially true if I'm healing with Mord; who absolutely dwarfed me in Healing Done and HPS. Haha, pun.

Getting Carried

2010-07-19T10:08:00.005-04:00

Replaced my mother board. Finished my summer class. Should be good to go for awhile.

On Tuesday, Memento returned to TOTC-10 for a full clear. The weekly was Jaraxxus, but some of our members didn't have the achievement so we persisted. It was interesting. I've noticed a theme when we tackle TOTC. Either the Faction Champions are impossible and we essentially throw ourselves against a brick wall for an hour, or they're ridiculously easy peasy. Thankfully, we got the easy peasy variety and we were able to finish off TOTC with very little hardship.

I know there's some confusion because Blizzard was stupid enough to introduce two ridiculously similar sounding instances. Trial of the Champion (5-man dungeon) is denoted, in Maraworld, as TOC; while Trial of the Crusader (10/25 man raid) is TOTC for normal and TOTGC for heroic. Your acronyms may vary.

We went on to do Onyxia for kicks and giggles.

We met a bear-tank; he joined up as one of our pugs for TOTC and came back for Onyxia. Memento is (slowly) building a list of reliable pugs that we can call on to fill our raid slots. The goal is to eventually be able to avoid trade recruitment altogether. Trade has given us some truly horrid pugs.

On Thursday I asked for (and got) a happy-birthday-carry for Aioka in ICC. I only planned on staying for the trash for some reputation, but Mord was in for carrying Aioka through the first four bosses. She got some totally awesome, if hit-oriented, gear upgrades. I won't complain. Regardless of hit, I'd rather heal with the Sister's Handshrouds over the Moonshroud Gloves any day. Same goes for Icecrown Spire Sandals and the Aurora Slippers.

I healed most of the time. ... As a third healer. By which I mean I bubble-spammed everyone and tried not to freak out. Our trees, Hippy and Time, were doing the real healing.

I dps'ed Saurfang though. That was terrible. Militia's Rankwatch addon complained about nearly every one of my spells. Which explains why my dps sucked so hard in Heroic Halls of Stone.

And I knew, I knew, that my ui system was prone to screwing that up. It's supposed to automatically update to the highest rank of whatever spell, but it doesn't. And I neglected to check it. For like... 40 levels.

Seriously, I was using Rank 4 spells when I should be on Rank 9-13.

Anyway, after the Lower Spire, Mara replaced Aioka, no harm done.

We tackled Fester and Rotface, rolled face, etc.

Then, because we're silly, we threw ourselves against Putricide for two or three tries. It was very interesting. We made some good attempts. Got him down to about 50%. I'm sure our big problem was getting the adds down in a timely and efficient manner. I was spastic. It was "Zomg, green add! Zomg, orange add! Zomg, dps Putricide for like 4 seconds!". Rinse, repeat.

The really exciting part is that we are going to (try to) extend the raid lockout for more facerolling attempts against Putricide, Dreamwalker, and The Blood Prince Council. I have my fingers crossed. I have been wanting to try the Blood Prince fight for forever. It looks like such a fun mess.

On Friday we put together an ICC-25 pug. That was interesting. I got accused of ninja-ing loot several times. I was the loot master. I'll just let that information settle for a minute.

...

Yeah. We adopted similar loot rules to the ones DAY uses. The most interesting part being that Primordial Saronites and BoEs that don't get snapped up for MS use are rolled for at the end of the run. So if you leave early, you don't get to roll on them. And if you win something shiny earlier in the run, you don't get to roll on the BoE. It's an attempt to make life fair all around.

So when Lady Deathwhisper dropped some Primordial Saronite for us, the raid complained when I picked it up and put it my bag for safe keeping. Did they think I was going to leave it on the boss until the end of the run?

We laughed about it, but the pugs' inability to pay attention to simple things like loot rules made it impossible for us to make it past the first four bosses. Still, it's always an interesting trip.

The real life monster ate one of our truly awesome guild members. Timesink had to leave us, hopefully for only awhile, but possibly permanently. He will be missed, for sure. Stay sexy, Time. :)

I can haz Alt

2010-07-09T09:03:00.005-04:00

First, a real life revisit: It was not, apparently, the ram giving my computer fits. Me using Sen's ram and Sen using my ram worked well until about an hour into last night's raid. My computer crashed right at the end of a boss fight. Awesome.

I've been told (rather consistently, though I didn't want to listen) that it's probably my motherboard. Le sigh. It will be replaced.

You are now returned to your regularly scheduled tales of noobraid.

We jammed a ton of action into Thursday night's raid. We did the weekly, VoA, and ICC. All in the same night. Crazy, right? It helps that we moved our raid time to an earlier slot. We're not as tired throughout the whole thing and it doesn't severely impact my sleep schedule if we decide to spend another hour rolling face.

Our weekly this week was Patchwerk. I was so freaking excited. You may rightfully wonder why I was so stoked to see Naxx again. It's because my priest hit 80 last week! And our intrepid raid leader allowed my nooblet Discipline priest to actually come and HEAL our weekly raid. Regardless of the heirloom mace she was still toting around.

Don't worry. Mord's not completely crazy. My healing partner was one of our awesome druids and there was another druid in the raid prepared to pick up my slack if need be.

Mord also let one of our deathknights assist with the tanking. I don't remember who was technically tank and who was technically off tank, but it worked well.

Of course, they had my awesome bubbles to keep them alive.

Hitting 80 with Aioka was a seriously great feeling. I have been hoarding gear for months; all carefully collected and crafted with a healing priest in mind. (Heinously ugly gear, unfortunately, but I guess you can't win them all.) Getting to raid with her the first week was truly icing on the cake. Also, Blade of Dormant Memories replaced my heirloom mace. More icing, pls.

Since hitting 80, I've also healed normal Forge of Souls and Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. In many ways, Heroic Utgarde was the easier of the two. It may have helped that I had guildies in the Utgarde run and complete strangers in the FoS run. I enjoy healing for the most part. Doesn't change the fact that sometimes its quite stressful. ("OMG, STOP DIEING.") I have some oh-shit macros for when stuff goes terribly wrong. One for single target omg and one for AoE omg.

I'm starting the long, slow gear-grind of getting my first level 80 alt ready for raiding. Or, at least, I will be starting the long grind when I have a functional wow-playing system again.

After the weekly, I switched back to Mara. ... I didn't really want to. I wanted to take Aioka to VoA - just in case something priestly dropped - and I wanted to take Aioka to ICC - for the trash pulls only, Mara is already exalted with the Ashen Verdict.

Luckily, nothing priestly dropped in VoA. To be honest, I'm not sure why we're still running VoA-10. I think all of the mains have everything that could drop off of Toravon. I mean, there's pvp gear that drops to, but who would want that?

I jest. I hate pvp and make no apologies or excuses about it. It was, as I noted, the end of my dreams for What a Long, Strange Trip its Been for this year at least. Ann, though, has been experimenting with battlegrounds and stuff so I guess it must not be all bad.

No, I'm sure its all bad.

Rolling face in ICC involved taking out the Lower Spire and Festergut. We also bugged the weekly get-both-disgusting-slimes-things-on-you quest. I picked up my last piece of frosty gear. Not much else interesting; it was a very good night.

I think our biggest hurdle to progression at the moment is simply people. And not the quality or types of people we have, but the number. I bet, if we could get a solid 10-man guild run for both Tuesday and Thursday, we could do some serious damage to ICC.

Pretending

2010-07-07T20:26:00.005-04:00

Last night we again pretended to be a leading edge raiding guild and pugged one extra dps for Ruby Sanctum. We should have had an all guild run, but my computer was on the fritz. Sen insisted I go on his computer while he fought with mine.

Something in my computer hates me. We've been fiddling with driver updates for the video card(s) and the chipset and the audio card for days now. We took the whole thing apart practically and dusted it. Applied new thermal to the processor. Nothing worked.

Today Sen swapped his ram with mine and I haven't had trouble since. Which makes absolutely no sense, as our ram is identical in every way.

Just reminds me that no matter how much computer science I learn, I will never know enough.

Anyway. Enough real life. I went on Sen's computer which has none of my addons. A warlock without a DOT timer is a sad, sad thing. I tried to not suck too hard.

We succeeded over all the mini bosses, though Saviana Ragefire took us a couple of tries. We were provided with fairly basic instructions and then completely failed to follow them. This becomes a theme later on.

Being on the range dps side of things, the battle with the third mini boss was all about getting down adds. It felt more like trash than a boss fight. The tanks switched off adds and boss between each wave, so it seemed to be pretty basic for them too.

Then, swoosh, Halion appears amidst an extremely annoying camera shaking event. Mord tries to give us the rundown of the fight. There's three phases. And you need to know stuff for phase one and you need to know stuff for phase two. Then when phase three rolls around, one group needs to remember stuff from phase one and the other needs to remember stuff from phase two. (For an actual strategy of this fight, try here.)

Well, apparently, we suck at phase two. Honestly, most of what Mord tried to explain went in one ear and out the other. I'm not an auditory learner. I can remember information I've heard, but I can't apply it. Nothing really made sense until we started the fight.

This is why I try to tell people my learning curve on a fight tends towards at least three or four tries. I can read strategies, listen to phase information, watch the videos of other people doing it, but it's still not going to click for me until I've actually tried it. Put fingers to keyboard and given it the old college try.

Anyway. Phase two. We die. A lot.

At around our 2 and a half hour mark we throw in the towel. I think it amounted to 5 or 6 tries on Halion, but we were all kind of worn out by the end.

Takk and I were discussing it earlier and I have to agree with him: the problem with Ruby Sanctum is that, unless you actually defeat Halion, you get very little out of it. You get a frostie from each of the mini bosses. And that's it.

Serious Business

2010-07-02T08:24:00.007-04:00

Memento Mori is currently the Land of Eternal Drama and I am not enjoying it. Apart from the general animosity between Mord and Batra, Militia has thrown himself into the ring. I can't imagine why, but I can attempt to explain the sequence of events as I know them.

Last Thursday
We had our first official raid leader test for electing a super official raid leader. :)

I set Sartharion with 3 Drakes as Mord's test. Mord was welcome to choose any strategy, any mix of players, tanks, healers, whatever he wanted. I would have liked to have seen it done the "real" way, in which the drakes get off-tanked and killed one by one.

But Mord opted for the zerg strategy and I did my job and we won. We almost all died, but we won. I was decently happy with the results. I was also (I think) the last person to die before Sarth himself.

Anyway, the council voted and Mord is official now. We didn't include very much pomp and/or circumstance in the promotion. Just a general "huzzah!".

Previously, Batra had told me that Militia expressed an interest in becoming the Death Knight class leader. So I stated talking to Batra about the idea. I have done a minuscule amount of research into DK stats, rotations, gems and enchants. Minuscule. Really.

But I gave the information I gleaned to Batra, because I knew he was regemming some of his gear. Thursday night I noticed he picked up a new meta gem, but it wasn't the one that I'd read was most recommended. So I asked him about it and got "Militia said use this one."

So, while I was in a council-y sort of mood Thursday night, I told Batra that I was slightly concerned about the information he was getting from Militia.

Apparently this is where everything went to hell.

Batra went back to Militia (evidently) about the meta gems, because the next thing I know is that Militia is talking on vent about the merits of Crit metas vs. Agility metas. And at the end of the day... I don't care. Especially since I'd already discussed both gems with Batra and I told him that I would talk to Militia about it if I felt I needed to.

It bothers me that the conversation about DK nonsense and the quality of Militia's information that I was having with Batra did not remain a conversation between me and Batra.

There. That's out there.

Because now that Militia thinks the quality of his information is in doubt, we have been the fortunate recipients of "I know my shit" posts on the forums of our guild website. Awesome.

Tuesday
On Tuesday we pretended that we were a cutting-edge raiding guild and pugged Ruby Sanctum. It was pretty terrible actually. We died on trash a lot. We lost some tanks and some dps and had to re-pug.

We got lucky with our second pug tank. We managed to pull together and find some strategies for the trash groups. We succeeded! For awhile.

We one-shot the first mini-boss or whatever. One our trees pulled him on accident, and we still succeeded. Yay.

Then our tank dropped. Had to go do something with his guild. It was super lame.

But overall, I had a good time. For the time ever - EVER - I was in the new content the night it was released and it was awesome and I felt awesome and even though we got very little accomplished it was an amazing experience.

Then we re-pugged for our ICC10 run. Not as amazing.

I remember we had a hunter. I think the hunter started with us in RS because Militia really wanted him to go away before the ICC run. And he was pretty terribad if I remember correctly.

But. Some cloak dropped in ICC. It had agility on it. The hunter rolled. Batra rolled. Batra rolled higher. I gave it to Batra and here's where thing's get a little sticky.

The cloak (Agility, Expertise, and some other stuff) was not an upgrade for the hunter. At least, that's what I've been told. It was, however, a main-spec roll to which we generally give preference to over off-spec rolls. Batra was in his unholy dps spec which, as I understand it, does not rely on expertise. I believe he has a cloak with Strength and other stuff on it for that spec. So... technically, while Batra wants to switch his main-spec to Dual-wielding Frost, that wasn't the spec he was running in at the time.

Do we really want to get into what should main-spec/off-spec when both specs are dps? Sounds like a mess to me.

And frankly, it never fails to blow my mind that DKs actually want agility on some of their pieces.

Blows my mind.

Anyway. The hunter complained. I told him Batra rolled for it as well and it was clear that he rolled higher. Mord didn't appreciate this either and went on a mini-rant of how DKs do not need agility and agility is clearly a hunter stat and DKs should never roll on agility gear.

Militia seemed to take this particularly personally. Ensue massive debate. Begin large amounts of "The top dps dks of <wherever the f-nonsense> do it this way" and "Well, here's a billion online resources that say they're wrong".

It's rough.

I'm tired of it.

It seems to me that our biggest problem is that both Mord and Militia take these debates and disagreements personally. And once one of them starts to get offended the "I've been doing this a long time. I'm a ba raider and I know what I'm talking about." arrogance shows up out of nowhere. That starts to make everybody mad and everyone sounds like a jerk.

Thursday
A calmer night by far. Some people were missing, so we kept it simple. Weekly, VoA, Mord did Amphitheater with my priest and Takk's rogue. It was good stuff.

Militia says he's been having a hard time dealing with some of the tards we've pugged with recently. I think, in our quest to ignore GS, we've also started to ignore some truly noobish behavior. If we're to enforce our "appropriate gear" guidelines for guildies, it needs to be the same for pugs. If our guild members can't show up in half pvp-gear with bizarre enchants then neither can non-guildies.

I don't think it has to be a matter of "we will only take well-geared players to our raids". But it would be nice to have a "we will only take non-tards to our raids".

In the interest of this initiative, Militia posted a "Red Flags when looking for pugs" where everyone can drop a little bit of their own personal knowledge of what to look for in their own class. I think it's a neat exercise. I stopped to remember some of the really nooby things I did when leveling my warlock. For example, I used Demon Armor constantly. It didn't matter what was going on or what situation I was in. I did not discover the awesomeness of Fel Armor until probably level 78. And now I know from experience that a level 80 warlock who wants to raid wouldn't touch Demon Armor with a 10-foot pole.

It's a nice feeling, being able to share little nuggets of knowledge like that.

Much Better

2010-06-18T08:46:00.005-04:00

As you might imagine, last night's Raid went much better than Tuesday's. Ann, Batra, and I had a guild council meeting before hand which resulted in us being 45 minutes late for raid. We ended up pugging a tank for ICC, which is always an adventure. Our first several trash pulls were extremely messy. A lot of people had issues with threat. There was much dying by characters here and there, but surprisingly little wiping. And despite everything, we rolled face and took out the first five bosses in an hour and a half. We did Festergut, which seems to be easier for our group than Rotface.

Mord did an exceptional job raid leading last night. I think he had his best raid-leading-behavior on because he knows he's being considered for the permanent position. Oh, the prestige of leading Noobraid! I'm not sure how he handles the excitement.

In light of the most recent drama, and some other frustrations, the Council has decided on a stricter enforcing of Memento's rules. Notably the sections that basically say "You shall be appropriately dressed for raid" and "You shall not be a dickhead". Some of our DPS have been known to show up in half DPS gear and half tank gear. Or PVP gear. Or with strange enchants.

And in regards to the gear issues, we've decided to treat this rather simplistically. If everyone raiding that night has the gear for ICC, we'll do ICC. If not, we won't. If a lower geared member wants to raid, they merely have to ask the GM to schedule a raid more tailored to their gear level. Memento is extremely easy going. I don't think any of us have problems visiting Ulduar or TOGC or even Naxx again.

Mord bought me a shiny! Does me very little good unless I can get my hands on some Primordial Saronite, but Ann got a pair and I got to feel important.

My Raiders are Five Years Old

2010-06-16T08:44:00.005-04:00

This post is very likely to offend some guild members. And I'm not going to apologize for that, because I believe that as a writer and as a Councilor for Memento this post deserves my unvarnished opinions.

Let's start with some good news. Memento has gained a new member! Mord's brother has returned from wow-retirement with a Lazer-Chicken named Hippycrit. Naming decisions aside, Memento is happy to welcome new members.

However, the emphasis is on new member, not necessarily new raider. Our general raid roster is already caster heavy and since we've started doing ICC on a regular basis, Hippy comes to us rather undergeared. This is not problem. As I've said, Noobraid is not about GS. I do wonder, though, if he would have been as quickly accepted if he had joined us through normal recruitment channels.

Also, getting a reputation for nepotism just when we're getting a reputation for being cool, good people would be a terrible blow.

The drama started early last night. Mord is our raid leader the vast majority of the time. He and Militia have the most experience in raid leading and Militia generally isn't interested in doing that at this time. So, Mord was filling up the raid group and we got down to this situation: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 6 DPS, and 2 empty slots. I asked Takk to switch to his Shaman for heals so we could fit more guildies into the raid because Batra hadn't joined us yet.

Mord did not seem to be a particular fan of this idea. He seemed to want to include a warrior who has been running with us in ICC. This would have been fine if the warrior, or anyone in the raid group could have switched to filling a tank spot. Which, both of our healers could but that would have left us with even more issues.

Guildies come first. We needed to pug a tank for ICC and this was simply not happening. Our illustrious GM suggested a trip to Ulduar instead, being a particularly nice alternative for our new boomkin to get some gear in a location we could actually handle with only 9 people.

It helped that the weekly was Ignis.

We chased Orbit-uary a couple times before giving up and destroying the towers. Ignis was no big deal. We had some fun with the Deconstructor. Mord asked all the dps to pop their cooldowns when the heart first showed up. So we did. And the heart ate it big time. And then we wiped.

Anyway, we took the Deconstructor out the second try. We tackled the Assembly of Iron and won. Hurray, that counts as progression! Kologarn finished out our night's adventure in Ulduar.

All of that is on-screen goodness. I switched to Demonology at Ignis and had a blast the rest of the night. I am a GIANT PURPLE DEMON. What's not to like?

Behind the scenes was a different story. Batra seemed to be having some severe connectivity issues. He disconnected several times between the start of the run and Deconstructor.

Mord reports to Ann and I that, during one of these disconnections, a toon with the name [Mord's real name]sux was online and harassing him. Specifically telling him what a terrible raid leader he is and saying some fairly personal things that I was not privy to. Mord assumes that this is Batra's doing.

Now, there is a history of animosity between Mord and Batra. I don't know where it came from and I don't think there's a way to fix it, patch it up, whatever. So long as it doesn't impede my real life or the guild, I don't have to deal with it. Because of the personal nature of what was said, we have to assume that it was someone in the guild. It's guild business if one member of the guild is harassing another, regardless of whether or not its done on a alt who is not a member of the guild.

I went with the direct approach and asked Batra if he had an alt by the offenders name. He denied it. This is, naturally, the expected response whether he actually does or not. Maybe I thought I could get lucky, I don't know. I went on to ask Mord's roommate if he'd done it, just to cover the possibility of someone else screwing with Mord's head.

Points in Mord's Favor
* Chances are extremely slim that the harasser was not a guildy and Batra was the only member offline during the incident
* Batra has done something similar in the past in regards to Senach

Points in Batra's Favor
* Batra is careful not to deliberately provoke Mord anywhere a guildy can see or hear. I mentioned the history of animosity. In general, Batra goes out of his way to not direct anything he says at Mord.
* We cannot prove or disprove the identity of the harasser.

For the most part, the Council is the ruling body of the guild. The GM steps in only when necessary. We run into an interesting dilemma when it comes to dealing with this issue, though. We have Batra on one side, a Councilor himself, and Mord on the other side, significant other to Ann, who is also a Councilor. So, in my view, two of the three members of the Council who should be dealing with this are too biased to view the issue rationally.

Which leaves... me.

And, despite being the only unbiased Council member, my initial response is something that most people who know me would agree is typical Mara: Deal with it.

I recognize that this is a big deal. I am given to understand the the offender said some things that even I would want to punch him or her for. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact that there is nothing I can do about it.

If it was something I had witnessed personally, I think I would have been quick to jump on it. Particularly if it happened in guild or raid, or could be easily traced to a specific guild member. Memento has a set of strict "Don't be a douchebag" rules.

At the risk of sounding like my mom, or anyone's mom really, all I have to say is this: This kind of behavior is juvenile and unnecessary and it will not be tolerated. All involved parties will please act like adults from here on out. And if I find out who did it, expulsion from the guild is imminent.

A Week of Awesome

2010-06-04T10:42:00.003-04:00

Memento had quite an interesting week this past week. A week made of awesome, in my opinion. A long week, mayhap, so here are some wall breakers:

I. Tuesday
II. Wednesday
III. Thursday

I. Tuesday

On Tuesday we tackled ICC-10 as is our modus operandi. Our attempt to institute a day time raid earlier in the afternoon flopped horribly, so we started the night with Takk's alt and everyone else had their main raiders. We pugged the necessary extras and got down to business.

This is, in fact, our primary raid healer of complete awesome Time snuggling with one of our pugs. Pure win.

Business on Tuesday included downing the first six bosses instead of the usual four. That's right. Memento went in there, kicked ass, and took names from Rotface and Festergut in addition to the first four bosses.

I'll bet you can't guess what we found in the chest after Deathbringer Saurfang. Go on, guess. Yeah, the fourth or fifth Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff. Where is the love?

And, while had some issues with the spores on Festergut (who doesn't?), things went fairly smoothly. Batra bailed on us 15 minutes before raid was scheduled to end. Which also happened to be right before we were supposed to take on Rotface. Needless to say, our raid leader was pretty upset. But the significant other of one our pugs was willing to come in for just the one fight, despite getting saved to a raid that was probably not going to be continued.

We went in and one-shot Rotface no problem. Raid even ended on time.

II. Wednesday

I don't know about other servers, but Hydraxis has this neato chat channel that I will call DAY in case its supposed to be a secret. Or, at least, in case it supposed to be invitation-only or some other such nonsense.

Anyway, once you've joined the channel, anyone pugging groups during the day can start there to find some talented and eager to raid players.

On Hydraxis, DAY runs ICC-25 on Wednesday afternoons. The rules are simple. If you go, you commit to being there the entire time. Anyone who leaves without warning will not be invited back. The loot system is a basic plus-one, main-spec deal common to a lot of pugs and guilds alike.

25-man raids are certainly an interesting experience for someone who is more or less sworn to 10-mans. I enjoy them, but I find them absolutely exhausting. Frequently there is just TOO MUCH stuff going on.

Still, it was fun and I got a new neck piece on my first run. That right there is enough to get me to go back next Wednesday. It has also helped with an influx of frosties as DAY usually manages to tackle the first six bosses as well. I am just a smidge away from my t10 bonus and more hit than I currently need. I've been running mostly affliction, but with the increase of hit on my gear I will well and truly be able to switch to demonology whenever I feel like it.

III. Thursday

When I said that Memento doesn't generally put stock in GS... it may have been more accurate to say that some members of Memento actively hate GS. Prompted entirely, I would bet, by the "You must have X gs to join our raid" tells that have plagued the pug groups on Hydraxis. I know other servers have this problem as well.

So, Thursday we were taking it easy. Weekly and VoA and frosties for all.

When Mord went off to pug the empty slots he deliberately looked for some less geared players. This may be counter-intuitive for some, but we found that it really just didn't matter. We didn't struggle with Toravon any more than we usually do. He did, perhaps, drop crap gear just to spite out attempts to help under-geared players get free tier pieces. Hmm.

Our weekly was Razorscale. Despite being only 5/12 in Ulduar, I think Memento just always has a great time going in there. There's something about Ulduar that is just so... epic. One of our under-geared pugs got upgrades off of both Flame Leviathan and Razorscale.

And everyone else got Nuked from Orbit and 5 frosties for their efforts.

ICC, GS, and some stuff

2010-05-26T08:20:00.004-04:00

Gearscore is not something that Memento generally puts any stock in.

Yes, gear is important but it's only a indicator as to what a character can do. A full T10 warlock can mop the dps floor with a lot of people. But if the player has no idea what they're doing, a T9 caster of any sort may do as well or better.

But, in perfect honesty, Memento doesn't really care about gear or skill so long as the boss gets dead. Noobraid has always been about having fun and seeing new shinies.

Before today I couldn't have told you what my gs is. I finally trooped over to wtfismygearscore and found out. It's 5190 at this precise moment in time. And I have to confess, I don't even know if that's considered "good" or not.

Slightly more concerning might be my lack of knowledge about my own DPS. Last week a couple guildies and I tried to hop a TOTGC/TOC-25. I told the guy I had three dps interested in going, if he had the spots open. He said 'sure, what's your GS and DPS?'. And, having been nicely sheltered by Memento, I went 'uh........... I have no idea what my GS is. My guild doesn't use it.' And the guy, despite being unable to type a full word correctly, said 'lol, whatev, what's your DPS numbers?'

And in my head I'm still going 'uh..............'. Because I don't honestly know. I'm used to happily traipsing through ICC and paying just enough attention to the meters to make sure I'm not at the bottom of the caster dps list. Or, at the very least, I'm not at the bottom by a very large margin.

Sometimes I look at the recount meter and just go 'oh melee, why must you crush my hopes and dreams?' Because they can lol-9k dps on Marrowgar while the casters sulk around 5k.

So on last night's ICC run I tried to pay a little bit more attention to actual numbers on the meters. On a good AoE pull, I can hit 16k. This totally blew my mind, it was awesome. Seed of Corruption ftw. On a single target pull, I fall somewhere between 4.1k and 5.1k. Although, I should try to find out what my single target is when I'm actually hitting my rotation right.

I frequently forget to hit Life Tap at the beginning of fights. And I frequently refresh Curse of Agony when I shouldn't. It's completely accidental, but that doesn't stop it from happening.

ICC last night had a few more pugs than usual. Es has dropped the late night runs completely; work being too much suck to stay up until 1 am. Takk has some sad computer issues and Dumm had something else to deal with.

Still. We pugged an excellent group that didn't wipe on stuff and didn't need the Saurfang fight explained and who are mostly willing to come back on Thursday and tackle Rotface. Batra got several decent upgrades out of the drops. Casters were left high and dry by the 3rd or 4th Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff in as many weeks. Ann already has it, I'm perfectly happy with my Frost Needle/Chalice combo, and Sen is rocking Quel'Delar.

We had an epic server crash which attacked during the Lady Deathwhisper fight. Put us out for about 20 minutes and accounted for our only death last night.

I love groups that work well together. We had to switch up some stuff after the server crash, but everything continued to go smoothly.

We're working our way up to adding an afternoon raid slot for the peeps that get up early for work. In all honestly, I think we're still too small to pull this off. But I hope to be proven wrong.

Tempest Keep: Flexibility

2010-05-14T08:46:00.003-04:00

I convinced some of the guildies to do some of the level 70 dungeons with Aioka. Takk, Penguin, Sen, and Ann carted my little priesty through The Botanica, The Mechanar, and The Arcatraz. And I think we had a lot of fun doing it.

But then... I especially enjoy it because I can still get gear there that is beneficial for Aioka. Everyone else is there for achievements and because they love me. (I am the lootmaster, after all.)

I'd still like to finish up Steamvault and The Black Morass, but there's plenty of time yet. I'd also like to see Karazhan and the Black Temple, but these are places that even Mara hasn't defeated. Of course, we've only attempted Black Temple and that only with pug groups. I'm sure it would be much easier if we were to do a guild run of them.

The guildies have also been awesome about running the Wrath dungeons with Aioka. It's pretty hilarious to watch Takk roflstomp his way through Utgarde Keep. And it's cool that no ones been a jerk about it yet.

A lot of groups ask: "Are you here on purpose?"

They just have to point to me and everyone understands.

One of these days I will be brave enough to venture into a Wrath dungeon without a guildie. I think.

I switched Aioka's mining profession for jewelcrafting. This was always going to be the plan, but I had originally planned on farming a lot more ore of all kinds. But I got bored and impatient and I didn't want to wait to make the switch anymore. I have been stocking up on ore, bars, and gems for months.

Leveling Aioka's jewelcrafting to Northrend standards took a couple hours and several hundred gold. I think it will be worth it though. If Militia's paladin is going to be missing, that leaves Ann as the only jewelcrafter until Aioka's skill actually becomes useful.

In response to all the confusion with Militia's alts moving around willy-nilly, we've asked everyone in Memento to declare who they want to be their main raiding character and primary role. Apparently there was even some confusion with Aioka. I'm not planning on switching my main. Even though playing a priest is tons of fun, I revel in being an EVIL warlock.

I'm sure Aioka will see some raid action though. And all that's really important is being useful to the guild and making fun and awesome raids happen. Whether I can make that happen by draining the souls of my enemies or by dps'ing health bars in reverse, I'm totally up for it.

Farming ICC

2010-05-12T09:30:00.006-04:00

This is an interesting position to be in. I don't think I ever thought I would be in a position to farm raid bosses (any of them), let alone those in the most recent raid. But that's essentially what Memento is doing right now. We skip off to ICC every Tuesday night, wipe out the Lower Spire, and then (usually) stop.

This has been good for loot. Not so good for progression.

Last night's ICC run went pretty well, all things considered. Batra opted not to come and Es bowed out early again... because they have real jobs and they... like... get tired and stuff.

But that's ok, because we got to play with a hunter friend that we also pugged last week and a shaman that was looking for a casual raiding guild. I think you can guess what happened. Memento gained a new member! Huzzah!

Red is a healy type Shaman and I would have had concerns about how this would affect our healing team - Time (druid) and Voltz (shaman) - except that Militia/Voltz decided to pull all of his characters out of the guild. Except a deathknight. And this done with no warning or discussion.

Ann and I are a little... perturbed... to say the least.

After a bit more investigation, however, I noticed that... while Militia changed guilds on all of his characters they're now in a guild with... themselves. I imagine guild chat is not particularly interesting. Regardless, the fact that he didn't tell us beforehand or come to raid last night tells that some role and/or leader rearranging may be in order.

There's been some discussion about changing some raid times or adding a raid night and some stuff. Ann is heading that project up at the moment, which is just fine with me.

I have been spending a great deal of free time with my priest. Aioka has moved on to the Wrath dungeons - she has emblems of Triumph! I'm so proud.

I still want to go back and do the level 70 BC dungeons. I've never done them and they look so interesting. I tried to queue for one with Aioka and ended up waiting for a tank for an hour and a half. It was quite ridiculous. I'll try and get the guildies to go.

So far all I have gotten is Utgarde Keep, even though it, Nexus, and Azjol-Nerub are all open to Aioka. This "random" thing really gets me. At least they're not pretending to give me satchels of "helpful" goods anymore.

Raiding in Slow Motion

2010-05-05T10:35:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned, a good portion of Memento is part of the college set and we're all finished with classes for the moment. So, we're trying to build on the rhythm we've established over the past several weeks with one Progression Night and one Yay-Guild Night. Tuesday nights will be our ICC 10-man runs and Thursdays will be Vault and Weekly and more ICC if we feel so inclined.

This is to (hopefully) benefit the members of Memento who can't guarantee that they will be available two nights a week. Tuesday night is the one to show up for if you want to see new content (as new a content as Memento can see - which I suppose may not be all that new anymore) and Thursday night is the one to show up for if you want frosties and a chance at T10 drops. But if you want warlock cookies, summons, and soulstones you have to show up for both.

Kidding, of course.

Last night's run was, as stated, an ICC 10-man run. It had it's ups and downs, of course, though it had NEW ups and downs that we hadn't experienced before.

UPS
* We managed an ALL GUILD raid. That's right. All 10 raid-ready players were available and eager to beat up on some scourge.

* We ventured beyond the first four bosses! And I say "ventured" because that sums it up nicely.

* Fat caster loot dropped in the form of Midnight Sun for me and the Mag'hari Chieftan's Staff for Ann. And yes, yes, I know the dagger is a healer weapon. The lack of hit could be a problem for me. But it has 107 more spell power on it. I can't ignore that.

* We can pug just about any class and spec we want. Enough members of the guild have high level alts that they can switch to cover any gap left by a (lack of) pug.

* We did not wipe on Saurfang. We have officially killed each of the four bosses in one try, if not necessarily all on the same night.

DOWNS
* Es had to bail right before Lady Deathwhisper, leaving us one short. We had to pug the last spot. Sad.

* Said puggee/situation led to us WIPING on Lady Deathwhisper. Even more sad. Then, tank assignments went out again because it might have been simply a miscommunication error. But, puggee didn't respond... ever. So we kicked him. Then he responded. In true pug/drama-queen fashion.

* Raid was slow as hell. Waiting for a decent pug after Es left took forever. We start at 10 pm (well, we try to start at 10, but this rarely works out) and it was easily 11:30 before Deathwhisper went down.

* We wiped spectacularly on Festergut.

Now, this last bullet maybe shouldn't necessarily be considered a down. Because, getting to see Festergut is quite an achievement for noobraid, I think. Getting Festergut down below half his HP is an even bigger achievement. We also only made two attempts because it was then 1:00 am and some of us (by which I mean me) have to work early in the morning.

Batra was back on last night with his shiny new DPS spec. He's been missing out on gear for awhile, but hopefully he will be working on that. I don't think he did terribly, overall. His DPS sat around 3k and he didn't do anything monumentally stupid until Festergut. And since none of us know that fight, that's to be expected. He did, however, annoy the crap out of me with those Mohawk things.

Speaking of monumentally stupid and Festergut, I'm pretty sure I wiped our first attempt. I took out all three of us that were standing at range with the Vomit debuff nonsense. This fight is gross.

Moar Sanity Pls

2010-04-30T10:27:00.005-04:00

Good news: The semester is over and I have two whole weeks off from school-type douchbaggery.

Bad news: Memento's main hunter, Es, has now seen more ICC than the rest of us. He pugged a group last night that downed Rotface in addition to the first four bosses the rest of us are used to seeing.

I believe this is his vengeance for missing our ICC runs the past two weeks. I, too, missed the guild ICC run this week due to ~~stupidity~~ computer issues. I got too used to plug-and-play awesomeness that I neglected to update my motherboard drivers. Which means my motherboard pretty much had fits when I introduced it to a shiny new graphics card.

To answer your question, Alerexis, I have no idea when we are going to try other bosses. Hopefully next week. Some of our engineers still have a big project to finish up, but we should all be available for some real ICC head-banging in the next two weeks, if nothing else.

Anyway.

Last night we pugged a tank and healer for 10-man TOTC. There was a movement towards an 25-man run that got shot down. After more than 10 people had been invited. Our bad. Poor communication. Lack of leadership. Whatevs.

Dumm said he wasn't interested in a 25 man run and I said that I wouldn't consider 25 mans to be guild progression (because there would more not-guildies than guildies). So we regrouped, pugged the 10-man and trouped off to the Renaissance Fair. (Go back and read this if the Renaissance Fair bit doesn't make sense. I haven't been able to think of the Argent Tournament as anything else since I read it.)

So... interesting turnout in TOTC. Dumm got paired up with another warrior tank. And Penguin pally healed with a Shaman. Militia's shaman got to dps. The rest of us melted faces. There's some stuff about the end of TOTC being a surprise. So if you're in the one other guild that hadn't done it yet, don't read this entire post. It's a spoiler.

We wiped rather spectacularly on the two Jormungars the very first time. The second time I get the poison and run to the wrong tank (Dumm had the fire). I died. The Jormungar went down, but not without a fight. Militia and I formed the Elitist's Dead People Society. How the other 6 or so people pull off Icehowl, I have no idea. But they do. Rezzes and cookies all around.

Jaraxxus. We eat it a second time. The adds got tanked... by Senach and I. Sen died. I flipped out, but luckily Dumm was on his way to pick up the Mistress of Pain who happened to be especially interested in what I was doing. Our pug shaman eats some green fire. Infernals run rampant. We die.

And my thought is: "This is a group that supposed to be able to handle the Faction Champions? We're DOOMED."

Funny thing, though. We weren't. After all our trouble with the Northrend Beasts and Jaraxxus, the Faction Champs go off with barely a hitch.

I did discover that I have no room in my UI for all the buttons I want to push in a PVP fight. I created another bar with some PVP-only things on it. Like Curse of Tongues - which I thought might be particularly useful on their healers. Some DoTs and Fears made the bar.

Then I found out, when it came time to focus on one target at a time... I couldn't find my normal spells. /facepalm

Anyway, the mages keep some of the more obnoxious folks sheeped. Militia's enhancement shaman is on interruption duty with the paladin, as is my felhunter. I'm cursing and fearing and dps'ing on the main target. I am not, for the most part, DoTing. Because I was afraid my own spastic OMG-PVP retardness would lead me to DoT a sheep target and that would have been a terrible, terrible thing.

And we SUCCEED. On the FIRST TRY. It was a miracle folks, a miracle.

Not only that, but we also succeeded at killing the Twin Valkyrie. On the first try.

Not only that, but we also succeeded at killing Anub'Arak. On the first try.

But that's getting ahead of the story.

Nothing interesting as far as the Valkyrie were concerned. We got the speed kill though, which was sweet. Then we're all kinda staring around. I see the Path of Frost animation go off. And its curious... because I remember Ann saying something about the end of TOTC, but I don't remember needing to walk on water being part of it.

And as the ground DISAPPEARS I remember. And I try - I try frantically - to click off the Path of Frost buff. To no avail. We splat. All of us except Militia and Senach, if I remember correctly. Sound suspicious? It should. Militia put Takk up to it and warned the mages. But not me.

I thought we were in an Elitist Society, Mil? What gives?

Of course, there's a bit of complaining. Takk disappears on us, even though it was Militia's fault, and does not reappear. So Time - our new and awesome Healer/Tank/DPS - popped in as a DPS for the last boss of TOTC.

Like I said, we succeeded. There wasn't much in terms of fat loots. There were some hit boots that Sen and I discussed a bit. Sandals of the Silver Magus vs. the Prelate's Snowshoes.

I got an upgrade! Having a dual-spec in Affliction and Demonology means I run into some issues with the hit cap. The issue being that the hit cap is staggeringly different for Affliction than Demonology. So... if I'm running Affl, I'm severely over the hitcap. If I'm running Demo, I'm just barely flirting with the cap.

My upgrade, thus, was an off-hand that allows to me put away a ridiculously hit-laden staff when running Affliction. Chalice of Benedictus. Shiny, amirite?

Final note: as mentioned, we have another new member in Memento Mori. Time recently reactivated his account and was looking for more laid back raiding environment, which hopefully Memento can continue to provide. He brings us a druid healer, a warrior, and a paladin. Thus far, he has proven to be a valuable addition.

Mythbusting: Fail Pugs

2010-04-21T15:39:00.003-04:00

I think, by now, everyone has had at least one fail pug. In fact, if you have more non-fail pugs than fail pugs, you should certainly thank your lucky stars.

Last night we pugged some empty slots to get us started on a fresh fun of ICC. Batra was back and online, but opted not to go with us. He says he's going to try and get a good DPS equipment set together, since we have an official main tank in Dumm.

The run went quite smoothly. We managed to wipe on trash before Marrowgar, because we didn't have any trap-removing people and we managed to hit two traps at the same time. Very painful. But nobody quit. Nobody even said "lol, noobs". There was no finger-pointing or angryness or anything like that. It was just one of those things that sometimes happens and, while its unfortunate, everyone pulls up their big girl/boy pants and moves on.

ICC general chat on Hydraxis is like trade, but less populated. It made no sense whatsover and there were a couple of "your mom" jokes. And something about a mailbox with a sandwich in it... that Saurfang stole. So thats why we killed him.

Anyway. We wiped on Saurfang again. And then downed him the second try. Again. This is certainly not the worst pattern of fighting we could get into, but its not really the best either.

One of our pug members was Ayliffe again. Who we need to actually remember to look for before we pug melee dps, because he's awesome. His DPS is pretty sweet and he's just generally a great guy to raid with.

It was a fail night as far as caster loot went. Plenty of plate, a couple pieces of mail and leather gear. No cloth. No castery type weapons or trinkets. Which also isn't the worst thing in the world. Even if they did drop, competition for caster items is fierce in Memento. Consequence of having two mages and a warlock as our core dpsers.

Still, we had a great time. Nothing particularly remarkable, except that we finished the wing in under two hours. Like, "Tra la la la la. This is no big deal." I even stayed alive on the gunship this time.

Sarth: Now in Multiple Dimensions

2010-04-16T10:57:00.004-04:00

We now return you to your normally scheduled tales of noobraid. While not guaranteed to be text-wall free (generally the opposite, in fact), I can promise that this post will be free from quotes from Blizzard. You're welcome.

Raid almost, kind of, got started on time! There was a small detail where I was in Dragonblight waiting to start the weekly (Sartharion) and everyone else was headed to Vault. Not a big deal. Although, I think some people see a certain amount of irony in summoning a warlock.

Nothing interesting in Vault. We had a good group. Militia has started healing on his Shaman, so our guild is certainly gaining some diversity in our available characters for raiding even if we aren't technically gaining new players.

Our Vault group was not interested in our plans for the rest of the evening: Sartharion with 3 drakes. So we grabbed some PUGs and headed off into the Obsidian Sanctum.

Now, I don't think anyone can deny that Sarth3D is HARD. You don't have much more than a minute before the drakes enrage. And this is pretty much guaranteed to wipe everyone out. Assuming you still have people alive even at this point after lava walls, whelp spawns, and stupid fire elementals.

We cleared the trash, no big deal. I mistakenly pulled one of the groups because I was CONVINCED that Dumm had already attacked them. I survived much to my amazement, and probably due to the sheer awesomeness of Dumm's tanking and Militia's healing. Oops. I'll try to not do that again. Except for when I'm bored and the Eye of Kilrogg sounds like an exceptionally good idea.

Penguin is on his rogue and he "resets" Sarth so the rest of us can get into position. After several wipes, this simply entailed finding the large pile of bones and standing on it. But for the first attempt, Penguin showed us where to stand to have the best chances of avoiding a GIANT WALL OF LAVA to the face.

When combat actually starts, Dumm picks up Sartharion and we pop EVERYTHING. I was running Demonology - which, in retrospect, I probably should have switched from at least once to see how the two specs are really comparing at the moment - so for me that's Metamorphosis. For Militia, it's Heroism. For Takk, it's Army. It was nuts. Sartharion was down to about 40% in the time it took for Metamorphosis to wear off.

And the combination of my current haste rating and heroism and whatever else was going on was just absolutely shocking. Incinerates were going off in a second. No, really. ONE second. Can has all the time, please?

But anyway, the stars were aligned for that first attempt because Sartharion saw 1% health before me and my 9 friends ate dirt. I think this first one was our best attempt. Not only attempt, to be sure, but probably the best.

We persisted! For the next hour and half we threw ourselves against Sartharion and his twilight drakes. We had pugs come and go. We had a really awesome mage at one point that topped Sen on the meters. Everyone who came in with us did very decent damage. I was quite impressed, all things considered.

After many more wipes and two visits to Jeeves to repair gear, we called it. We were going down consistently when Sarth hit 8-12% health. So, for kicks and giggles, we went and killed two of the drakes and then went back to Sarth to show him a resounding What For.

We had some angsty moments: when DPS wondered "Why don't I have enough deeps to kill a giant, angry dragon?" When tanks wondered "Why can't I stay alive when Sarth hits 10%?" When healers said "Watch your own selves when Tenebron descends because I can't keep you guys and the tank up at that point."

We called the night after that so that sleep could happen for those of us that work on Friday mornings. Next week we return to ICC and attempt to ~~play dress-up with~~ kill some princes. All in all, I think everyone had a very enjoyable night. It was frustrating, sure, but never boring!

Wiping repeatedly on Sartharion has left me severely short on funds. Aioka recently received Tome of Cold Weather Flight so the accumulated gold amongst my characters is not much.

Commentary

2010-04-14T14:12:00.006-04:00

I'm sure these posts are a dime a dozen; but, of course, I can't resist. Blizzard's Cataclysm Class Previews went live a week ago. I confess, I've only read a couple of them so far.

These are my comments and initial reactions to the Warlock Preview. I've had a few days to try and process these out and determine how I really feel about them. I'll post my initial reactions, no matter how silly, along with the better thought out responses now that the information has had time to stew.

There's a lot of information in the Class Previews, which makes this post a bit ridiculously long. If you're only interested in certain sections, here are your wall breakers:

1. New Spells
2. Soul Shard Overhaul
3. Mechanics
4. Talents
5. Really Lame Mastery Bonuses

1. New Spells

Fel Flame (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability Frostfire Bolt, in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of Immolate and Unstable Affliction. Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast.

First reaction: If its similar to anything a mage has, then I don't want it!

Response: Completely contradictory to my first reaction, I'm pretty excited about this. Anything that lets me avoid recasting Imm or UA has to be a good plan. That's a full 1.5 seconds I can spend casting a nuke without losing any benefits of the dots. I can see it's fully useful for both Affliction and Demonology, which makes me happy. It seems as though it would fit quite easily into the Demo's execution phase, but considerably less seamlessly into Affl. Although, that assumes the execution phases don't change too much between now and Cataclysm.

Dark Intent (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times.

First Reaction: More freaking mage nonsense. See Focus Magic.

Response: I'm still pretty unsure about this one. It's not at all interesting to me. I'm sure it will be quite excellent in practice. And I am happy that its better (in a biased, subjective sort of way) than the mage one. And it doesn't say (yet) that I can't cast it on myself. But I just can't get excited about it.

Demon Soul (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown.

First Reaction: Om nom demons? o.O

Response: I don't I have enough information about this to really get excited. The cooldowns that become available will really make or break this spell. It has high potential and I'm looking forward to seeing what Blizzard is going to do with it.

2. Soul Shard Overhaul

Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Burn will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells.

This will complicate my life for awhile while I get used to a new system. And I think Soul Burn is likely to seriously overcomplicate my already messy action bars. I keep a lot of things handy for situational purposes, like Death Coil, Drain Life, and Health Funnel. Now I'll need to create more buttons for situational uses of Soul Burn + Some other spell.

I'm concerned, as are a lot of other warlocks, I think, about the inability to regenerate Soul Shards in Combat. I understand the concept "using a Soul Shard should be a big deal", but I think there's going be a lengthy period of time where people try to figure out when to use them without gimping their dps. In a big fight, too many things can go wrong. I'm not saying what they have here is a bad idea. I'm just concerned about how it's really going to pan out in game.

And, honestly, where did I get these Soul Shards in the first place if not in combat? I had to Drain the Soul of someone/something while also actively managing to kill them. If I managed to do this outside of combat, then my stealth abilities put rogues to shame. I had no idea Blizzard was planning on adding a warlock stealth. Cataclysm really is making dreams come true.

3. Mechanics

When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell.

Heck freaking yes. Clipping my DoTs is something I still manage to do way more often than I should. What is this likely to do to a spell like Curse of Agony? Does the damage just keep increasing? Because that could make my life a whole lot better.

Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.

More Dots, More Dots!

This will complicate things a bit, in that there will be more stuff to monitor. But with other spells automatically refreshing the duration on Imm and UA, then things should even out in the end.

It will certainly make things interesting for our particular Raid Setup. With an unholy DK to apply Ebon Plague (assuming they don't change this) we don't need Curse of the Elements. Which means I can play with things like Curse of Weakness, Curse of Exhaustion, and Curse of Tongues. Fun times.

Hellfire will no longer deal damage to the warlock.

Imps will lose Fire Shield, but will gain a new ability, Burning Ember, which is a stacking DoT.

The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have Soothing Kiss, but will instead have Whiplash, which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards.

Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. Suffering will become a single-target taunt.

Some other stuff that I find less interesting. I used Hellfire to kill myself once. So, while it was useful in that one instance I don't think I'll miss that mechanic much.

Succubus becomes a PVP contender with the Felhunter. Voidwalker attempts to become a real tank. There are no new demons being introduced at this time. This makes a lot of warlocks really sad. Personally, I don't care too much. It would be interesting to have a new demon, sure, but what role would they play?

4. Talents

Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, Demon Bolt. Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target.

Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock's own spells.

A largely uninteresting section in which Chaos Bolt makes a trip into the demonic realm and Metamorphosis attempts to provide unique demon spells that don't suck.

Although, I will be disappointed if they change Demonic Charge and Immolation Aura. Because that combination is very entertaining.

5. Really Lame Mastery Bonuses

Affliction
Spell Damage
Spell Crit
Shadow DoTs

Demonology
Spell Damage
Spell Haste
Demon Damage

Destruction
Spell Damage
Spell Critical Damage
Fire Direct Damage

There's not too much to say about these. Except: Why are none of these about Shadow Damage? Ok, shadow damage over time made the list. But direct fire damage managed to beat out direct shadow damage. Demonic Damage - damage that doesn't even come from the player - beat out direct shadow damage. I am confused by this.

Read the Official Preview here.

What Road Block?

2010-04-09T10:46:00.007-04:00

Last nights Progression run was so full of WIN it's hard to describe. Rather than beat our heads against the wall in either Ulduar or TotC, we took our noobraid on a field trip to ICC.

After the weekly, of course, which was Noth the Plaguebringer. I only mention this because it's really awesome, being able to go "Oh, Naxx? Yeah, we can get that done in about 10 minutes." And have it be true. Ann and I didn't even remember to flask before the fight and we still downed him before he could teleport. Being over-geared is not something I ever really expected to experience, without taking my lock over to the pre-Outland dungeons.

So, ICC. We pug the blank spots: 1 tank, 1 healer, and 1 dps. We get a very decent group. The other healer was a Disc Priest, which some of our "Disc is not for Raid Heals" people didn't think would go well with our Holy Pally. I thought it went quite well, but I'm not on that end of things on my warlock. It was interesting to see what Penance looks like from the receiving end.

Our tank, Dumm, is definitely made of awesome. We're all new to this, of course, but he picks up on everything so quickly. He keeps us squishies from dieing in horrible ways. He's opening up a little in gchat and such. I'm sure the rest of us are pretty scary, though.

*Lord Marrowgar:
This was my second time fighting Marrowgar. My first time with the knowledge that "Hey, Bone Spikes are BAD".

Militia and Pengu were both trying to explain how to not die in Bonestorm which involved going left at one point and right at another. So, naturally, when the first Bonestorm arrives I'm standing there going "Which way is left?"

I survived, though. Whew.

*Lady Deathwhisper:
Also my second time fighting Deathwhisper. I remembered this fight quite well. Or, I thought I did.

Well. After the first wave of adds, all of the dps were just kinda standing around. I was expecting a second, insta-wave. It wasn't until the second wave actually showed up that Pengu reminded us that we should be attacking the giant bubble around Deathwhisper between add phases. Oops.

*Gunship Battle
My first time on the Gunship. I spent the fight dead. And no, I have no idea what happened.

*Deathbringer Saurfang
Militia assigned all the range folks their positions for the fight. Sen and I on one side, Ann and Militia(on his hunter) on the other. So each side could take out their respective Blood Beast. And try to keep it from nomming on the healers. Emphasis on try.

Our first attempt went pretty well. We got him down to below 25% health. Then things kinda went nuts with the Blood Beasts. Someone died on the other side, so Sen was trying to Slow one and Frost Nova the other and we were both trying to dps them down. This was ok until one got Frost Nova'd right in front of one of the healers.

The second attempt was much better. We succeeded, which is always an improvement on not succeeding. Sen and I switched a few things up in an attempt to make the Blood Beasts hate us faster.

And now that I'm thinking about it, I have no idea what tanks, melee, and healers get up to during boss fights. Apart from tanking, healing, and melee dps'ing, of course. I know there's some stuff where the tanks taunt off each other, but that doesn't have any real meaning for me as the only tank I've played is a level 33. And I know there were Bubbles and Penances and Holy Beam of Righteous Light or whatever Holy Pallies have flying around everywhere. And I also know Takk and the pug-rogue were up there beating Sarufang about the face. (While doing more dps than me. Sigh.)

I was very much "in the zone" in which I do everything I can to keep DoTs rolling on Saurfang and kill Blood Beasts quickly and without getting eaten. I had a blast.

So, with the first wing down Memento now has THREE raids in which we can attempt to progress. And, really, I thought ICC was going be Beating Your Head Against a Brick Wall, Hardmode but its... not. Yet.

Road Block

2010-04-07T16:33:00.003-04:00

So, yes, it's been awhile since the last post. Both school and work are DPS'ing me in the face. This will probably not change in the next few weeks, but I will endeavor to dedicate more time to here. Especially since so many interesting things are going on right now.

Memento Mori, over the past several weeks, has:
* Gained and lost not one, but two priests.
* Road Blocked themselves in not one, but two different raids.
* Given up on the idea of Sunday evening being in any way related to the guild.
* Not been on time for anything.

Wow, that wasn't meant to sound all bad. Memento also has:
* Had tons of AWESOME FUN just doing our noobraid thing.

So, our raid healer Sess has gained some serious real life aggro and is unable to meet our raid times at the moment. Pengu has been doing the bulk of the healing now (literally), as a truly awesometastic Pally Healer. I have been working on my priest, whenever I have time. I would really like to try raid healing, I think.

We've been pugging healers and any other blank spots for our raids. VoA has become a standard part of the week. Nothing interesting has dropped since our first run, though. The second week, the same dbag shaman from our Ulduar pug was mistakenly invited back. I was really impressed, actually. He didn't say anything the entire time. At least, that's what I thought until I remembered I had put him on my ignore list. Still, it was overall a short, painless run.

Anyway. Our Road Blocks. Or: Beating Your Head Against a Brick Wall, the Intermediate Version.

In lovely Ulduar, Memento has successfully downed five bosses with a combination of Pengu single-healing and moronic pug healers. Yay, us! We have gone on to wipe repeatedly against the Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, and Hodir.

Some times its poor strategy, some times its lack of communication, some times its just a matter of people standing in too much BAD and not enough GOOD.

And I'm sure it doesn't help that my learning curve, at least, has been an average of three or four fights before I really know what's happening. And even then, I can't say that my situational awareness is all it should be.

While this is frustrating, of course, nothing quite beats the adrenaline and rush of triumph you experience when you DO kill that annoyingly huge dude with the big arms for the first time. (Although, I swear, I got attacked by those stupid eye beams SIX times in a ROW.)

This, Militia assures us, is the essence of raid progression. And really, if you never have any problems can you really say you're learning? If you never struggle, can you get the same rush of "We're so badass" when you succeed? I think not.

Same story in Trial of the Crusader. Some minor issues with the Northrend Beasts. "OMG, I have Burning Bile, where do I go?" ... Yeah, that would be me. I think some other people probably had trouble with that too. Our pugs certainly didn't have any idea what was going on.

Regardless, we survived the Jormungars and the Wendigo and Lord Jaraxxus. Then come the Faction Champions. Oh, them. I hate them. And I hate PVP to begin with. So anything that smacks of PVP breaking into my neat little PVE world is AWFUL.

Which is why PVP is probably going to end my dreams of What a Long, Strange Trip Its Been.

WTB shorter cooldown on Death Coil, pls.

Patch Comments

2010-03-24T20:18:00.001-04:00

Warlocks
Immolate: The damage-over-time component of this spell can now produce critical strikes.

Life Tap: This spell no longer scales with spirit, and instead scales with spell power.

Talents - Affliction
Dark Pact: This ability no longer requires line-of-sight with the summoned demon, and the range has been increased from 30 yards to 100 yards.

Talents - Demonology
Demonic Pact: This effect now has a 45-second duration, up from 12 seconds, and a 20-second internal cooldown.

There's some interesting stuff happening in the most recent patch. The important thing for warlocks (and perhaps casters in general) to note is that Life Tap no longer scales with spirit.

This is good news in that the warlock T10 set is completely devoid of spirit. This is ... iffy news in that all the spirit on my gear now solely exists for Fel Armor and Glyph of Life Tap.

It's implications reach farther than that, however. It seems to me that this is a significant step towards "no more spirit for non-healers". I'm starting get very excited about the ways in which Cataclysm will affect game play. Not needing spirit will probably only be a drop in the bucket.

Although I find it interesting, I'm also a bit annoyed. Sure, it may not have changed yet. But what will be our new go-to gem for filling those obnoxious blue sockets? If not Purified Dreadstones, then what? I think the Glowing Dreadstone may be a good bet (for warlocks, at least). But the Timeless Eye of Zul, Forceful Eye of Zul, and Vivid Eye of Zul provide some food for thought. I know. Its a topsy-turvy world when green gems start to look interesting.

Over at Memento, our recruitment posts won us another member. Dumm brings us a warrior tank. With Batra on hiatus, it's definitely nice to know that our tank slots won't suffer. We're tackling Ulduar again tomorrow night. With Dumm in our ranks we will either pug a dps or 9-man it.

Also, a priest has shown some interest in our small guild. We may be able to call our 10-man roster complete soon. Excited? You bet I am. However, I'm starting to think I use that word too often. I am... eager? That could work.

Changes

2010-03-22T16:26:00.003-04:00

There's been a lot going on, both with Marariel specifically and with Memento.

First, our recruitment posts netted us a new healer. We were very much excited to welcome Shomoru aboard. He's a druid and, despite some crappy internet issues, has been quite the addition.

The negative side (there is always one) is that Shomoru is not available to raid on Tuesday nights. So instead of having Tuesday progression nights and Sunday goofing around time we decided to switch to Thursday progression nights and Tuesday goofing around time. Makes my schedule on Fridays a little less fun, but I will live with it.

Mara abandoned her Destro spec in favor of the currently higher dps Affliction spec. I've been pleasantly surprised by how much fun it's been. Plus, I missed my felpuppy. It's been good to have him back. Competing with Sen (stupid arcane DPS god) upon occasion has been well worth it as well.

Sen, Pengu, and I also hopped a ICC run this week. We had to leave after two bosses, but it was still totally awesome. It always makes me happy to be doing something that some of the other members of the guild say "we don't have high enough dps for that."

Tuesday we did OS, Onyxia, and Vault of Archavon. All totally awesome. Batra tanked OS for us, and I thought he did remarkably well. VoA had a particularly happy surprise for me: Gloves of Future Awesome. I'm a few scant frosties away from 2pcT10 and I am unreasonably excited.

Thursday was a little less awesome. We started our progression of Ulduar. But Shomoru had so much suck internet that we ended up pugging two healers. Worst idea ever. One of the healers I had seen in a previous pug raid. He's a complete jerk and the guy he brought with him wasn't much better. It didn't really make for such a fun night.

Old End-Game

2010-03-15T13:47:00.006-04:00

I was questing with Aioka yesterday, turning in some Bone Fragments in Light's Hope Chapel when it hit me. This was what end-game was all about several years ago. Instead of rep-grinding with the Sons of Hodir, it was rep-grinding with the Argent Dawn. And instead of running Pit of Saron and Halls of Lightning for your next cool drop, it was Stratholme and Scholomance, Blackwing Lair and Dire Maul. You can still get attuned to Naxxramas: the level 60, 40 man raid. This blew my mind.

Honestly, who in their right mind ever went to Dire Maul when they didn't have to? That place haunts my dreams. Aioka's Random Dungeon Finder is broken, because every time (no, really. every time.) she gets put in Dire Maul - West.

Now, I've mentioned I'm a post-BC kid. Wrath is the first time I've been able to participate in whatever was currently "end-game". So, it's true that I'm not (wasn't) as intimately familiar with the older dungeons as the new ones. Except Scholomance, but that's a different story.

But I'm not retarded. So I did a little research and figured out how to at least finish Dire Maul - West. The guildies were awesome enough to get Aioka the key from Dire Maul - East so I didn't have to worry about that any more. Although, seriously, what is it with Blizzard putting noobs in placed they can't get to? I also randomed my way into the side entrance of Stratholme when no one in the group had a key. I got skillz.

Despite this, I still haven't been able to complete Dire Maul - West. Because, even though I've explained to each and every group I've been with that you have to wipe out the 5 mana pylons and then go to the final boss NO ONE LISTENS.

The warrior tank continues to wander around willy nilly killing whatever strikes his fancy at the time being. Then the dk dps sends his ghoul after everything in sight, even though the rest of the group is still drinking their mana juice.

And I know fail-pug stories are a dime a dozen. But honestly, I know how to get through the dungeon. I'm even willing to lead the group through the dungeon, while keeping the clueless tank, the idiot dk, and the over-aggroing lock alive. (Have I mentioned how much I love Power Word: Shield?) But to have a group completely and totally fail to listen to basic instructions? That's as sad as it gets. I even used small words.

On the positive side of things, Aioka hit 60. I could chose to walk away from Vanilla End Game and enjoy myself in the Outland dungeons. I would probably level faster. But I'm masochistic enough to want to finish the quests and dungeons from vanilla that are still littering my quest log.

Side note: Penance is everything I dreamed it would be.

Have I done this the wrong way?

2010-03-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

There was no post on Monday because I wanted to wait until I had something to say that wasn't: "This one guy in my guild did something that I considered to be full of douchebaggery and it hurt my feelings. Wah."

Especially since blogging about one's guild has been such a hot topic recently.

So, this post was inspired by a situation that a fellow blogger went through with her guild. The important, thought provoking post can be read here while all the details can be read about on her blog Righteous Orbs.

Many bloggers feel that keeping their in-game persona and their blog persona separate is necessary for the well being of themselves and their guild. Many don't advertise their blog to their guild for fear that something they say will be bring down the WRATH of the guild. Or, alternatively, that someone in the guild may receive an undeserved reputation because of what has been written about them in a blog.

Thus far, and from this perspective, I have been remarkably rude in regards to my blog. I make no attempt at being anonymous. I will proudly tell you who I am, where to find me, and which other people I'm likely to be spending my time with in-game. I frequently discuss our (mis)adventures in Azeroth. I don't have any qualms about stating who failed at what and when. Although, I do think I need to update the frequency in which I include myself in 'X failed at Y'.

If I didn't tell some of my guild members about my blog, my readership would be 0 (instead of 3). And I have no problems if these guildies feel like sharing the link with others. There is only one member of my guild who I might worry about offending. And he knows I love him irl, despite our frequent disagreements in Azeroth.

So my question, essentially, is: Am I failing at blogging? I recognize that, at the very least, I should ask my guildies permission before I start discussing them in such a publicly available venue. Instead of inviting some of my guildies to look in on my little corner of the interweb, should I have remained anonymous? How much does the situation change when your guildies are people you know and see everyday?

The Fall of Naxxramas

2010-03-03T14:55:00.003-05:00

Memento Mori has officially completed Naxx! Huzzah, cookies for everyone.

More importantly, Memento has gained a healer! Another of Ann's friends has opted to grace our sad corner of the wow-universe with his presence. Penguin brings us a rogue and a paladin. And we are super excited.

We had to pug two dps (Es was out studying for a test - le sigh) and a second healer. We had a few difficulties to start out with. The first healer we pugged was one of those "gogogogogo" people. Our guild is too relaxed and nooby for that. Rush us and we'll probably die. Which we did. After which that healer left.

The second healer ragequit on us over a loot dispute. Remember, this is Naxx loot we're talking about here. You can buy better gear now. And gear you can't buy is only an instance away.

Honestly, though, with this second healer I probably could have handled the situation better. I have, for whatever reason, been assigned the Master Looter position twice now. Which I don't mind, but this guy probably did.

Memento has been going into Naxx with the assumption that no one actually needs the gear that is going to drop. If it turns out that's not the case, all someone has to say is "Hey, I really need that." Anyway, the healer did not appreciate one of the pug DPS rolling on everything.

The third healer stuck with us. Did appreciate. We did the Military, Arachnid, and Construct quarters. And then Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. It was very late by the time we finished. But it was very awesome, none the less. Except I spent the vast majority of the fight with Kel'Thuzad dead. The very first Frost Blast got me. Still, overall I was impressed with how little we died.

We wiped on Razuvious a couple of times. Mostly because Militia was the only one who had ever done the mind control thing.

Not everyone has all of the completion achievements for Naxx, so we'll probably have to do it again at some point. Plus, I'm not sure having our tank and one other person survive Heigan should really count as completion. That Safety Dance achievement is a long way away.

Up next is the Obsidian Sanctum. Some of the guildies think we can complete both OS and the Eye of Eternity in the same night. Well, we'll see!

Purps and the Outlands

2010-03-01T10:23:00.001-05:00

Mara is officially on the purps train. No more blues left in her gear! Very exciting. I got my Nevermelting Ice Crystal from H PoS. As far as I can tell, it's been pretty amazing. More spellpower and extra crits on periodic damage? Yes, please.

Sunday night guild night was not exceptionally exciting. I spent some time with my priest. Aioka has heirloom items now, so she's rocking her discipline spec and mostly leveling through the random dungeon finder. I ran Blackrock Depths with her yesterday and got an amazing group. Fast-pulling tank, but I suppose that's what I get for saying 'Go at your pace'. Healing is fun, but kinda stressful.

Then Ann, Sen, and I hopped into a Black Temple pug with some other 70-80s. That's always an interesting trip. A bunch of post-BC kiddies running around Black Temple with NO IDEA where they are going or what they're supposed to be doing. And that totally includes me.

This also went remarkably better than the last time Sen and I tried this. We made it past Gorefiend to wipe spectacularly on the Reliquary of Souls. Hello, Devourer of Souls v.1. Bit of a mind-trip really.

Tomorrow night should (crosses fingers) be our second attempt at Naxx. I'm very excited.

The Raid that Wasn't

2010-02-24T13:03:00.005-05:00

We didn't manage to get a group together for Naxxramas on Raid night. Too many of our players had real life aggro. Healers sick or with broken computers, dps sick, etc. It happens.

Instead, we held tank tests for Batra and Takkarian. SURPRISE. Batra made it to the def cap. Much congratulations.

I think Takk is even more excited than Batra, lol. Takk says he still doesn't want to tank, even though we generally prefer him.

But anyway, Militia says that anyone who can tank Pit of Saron should be able to handle Naxx in their sleep. Based on stats anyway, completely disregarding the coordination and such that is par for the course in Naxx. So we all sign up for H PoS with Militia dps'ing and we get a random healer and off we go.

It goes... better than last time? When Ann and I did it with Batra a couple weeks ago, it went terribly. This time, we survived Garfrost and Ick even though we wiped a couple times. Then we went on to wipe on trash. Several times.

Militia took over for the run through the gauntlet.

Tyrannius gets downed, everybody is happy. We only had 4 or 5 different healers quit on us. But... Batra didn't pass.

Now, there's a huge difference (in my opinion) between H PoS and Naxxramas. So I'm not sure we established anything other than Batra isn't quite yet ready to tank H PoS. But Militia was able to offer many helpful tips as an experienced tank.

Half of which I'm sure went in one ear and out the other as far as Batra was concerned.

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, so here it is: I love having Militia as our raid leader.

The things I did for (Fool for) Love

2010-02-22T15:41:00.003-05:00

The rest of Fool for Love went relatively painlessly. Except for My love is like a red, red rose. I think we've figured out by now that I have a terrible time with dungeons drops. Even when the drop is guaranteed, like the Bouquets, I can never seem to manage a decent roll on it.

It came down to a point where there was only one day left and I had already tried all three of the heroic dungeons that dropped it. So I descended into the normal level dungeons. The level of noobness was high, but what I discovered was that the level 70/71 players in normal Utgarde Keep frequently played better than the fresh 80s I've had the misfortune to group with in heroics.

Nothing against the fresh 80s. A lot of the time, I'm still in the same category of merely pretending that I have some idea of what's going on. But I assure you, there's no reason for my felguard to be tanking when the group already has an assigned tank. When he died for something like the 8th time, I switched to my destro spec. Felguards cost soulshards, but Imps only cost mana. And yes, I still managed to pull aggro a ridiculous number of times. I managed to stand still, not cast, and still pull aggro. Good times.

Good practice for my destruction spec, though.

I'm down to only one blue in my gear. And - who would have guessed it? - its a trinket I need to replace. A trinket that I've never seen drop, so I haven't even had the opportunity to fail at rolling for it. Deja vu.

Naxxramas

2010-02-17T14:59:00.008-05:00

Also known as "Beating Your Head Against a Brick Wall for Beginners."

Official guild night has, hopefully, become Raid Night. We started in Naxx last night with a 10-man group that will, also hopefully, be making the long haul with us.

It started off a bit slow. We had two healers from Earthbound Warriors: Glendalia and Adorynn. We pugged two melee dps. We wiped on Anub'Rekhan about 6 times. Our melee dps dropped out.

Glendalia found us two more dps from her friend list. Ayliffe, a warrior, sounded interested in becoming a permanent member of our invite list. Shadowhawk, a mage, was nice enough to join us, but has previous raid experience and is probably doing more interesting things than Naxx most of the time.

So, if Es is able to rejoin us next week, we will still have a 10-man group.

The hardest part of the night was working on our coordination. Getting your healers to stand where you want them to is hard. To be fair, though, Adorynn wasn't able to get his vent working.

After our initial trouble with Anub'Rekhan, things actually went fairly smoothly. We wiped again on Maexxxna, because our healers got shut out of the room. But we completed the Arachnid Quarter. And we're funny. We know how to joke around and have a good time. And we have an engineer with jeeves. So we can repair and sell crap without leaving the raid.

We "started" two other wings, but didn't go very far into either one. We were able to down Noth, but failed a lot at Heigan. Turns out our guild can't dance. This was another case of trying to get our healers to understand what was going on. Because they're not in our guild they did not have the required homework the rest of us did. Of course, the homework didn't help the rest of us a whole lot. Exploding floor of death got all of us. And fast.

Same story, different quarter. We downed Patchwerk, but were unable to tackle Grobbulus. It was pretty late by this point. So we agreed to stop and resume with the same raid ID next week.

We haven't done the big kiting fiasco that Gluth is likely to be. We'll do that with our hunter. You're welcome, Es. :)

The thing that concerns me is that, because our group is made up of people from different guilds, we can't require that they get better gear or do some pre-raid homework. Though it would be nice if they did. Not that they have bad gear or anything. I certainly can't talk. It's just a thought.

Finally, NEVER TRUST A MAGE.

During one of our many regroups after a wipe, Senach requested help summoning a "table" and ported half our raid to Darnassus. Including me, the only one who could have summoned everyone else back into the raid without two people going up to the summoning stone.

Didn't we feel stupid.

He really confused our poor warrior.

Thankfully, Militia grabbed another person and went up to the summoning stone. I kicked Sen from the raid. By "accident". I really just wanted my character to punt that little gnome across Naxxramas.

Middle of Feb. Resolution

2010-02-15T15:00:00.005-05:00

It's not New Year's... but its almost the Lunar New Year. That counts, right?

I decided that this year I was going to chase that year-long meta-achievement: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been. I was going to stop punking out and saying "Well, I'll try again next year." If everything works out, there will be a lovely Violet Proto-Drake waiting for me at Christmas time.

Because, in addition to beginning to raid with my guild and in addition to leveling a healer, I needed MOAR stuff to do.

Fool for Love is going moderately well, considering how little I pvp. I snuck into wintergrasp and pitied a love fool there. I didn't realize each love fool was a one-use item.

I need to eat one more piece of candy. And make a few more charm bracelets. And finish pitying the fool.

And I need to obtain a bouquet of red roses, because I can never seem to get it in the dungeons. One group needed on it. That is just not right.

So, as far as I know everyone in the guild has been gearing up for Naxx. One of our dps may be bowing out because of a family commitment. We invited two of our friends from another guild to join us; and hopefully they will. We will need to pug 1 or 2 extra dps. Which should be... interesting.

Batra, instead of signing up for dps position, queued himself for a tank slot. Both tank slots are currently filled. By people who have reached the defense cap.

I'll write about it in my blag

2010-02-10T18:44:00.008-05:00

Explanation of title.

Guild night last night was interesting. We weren't planning anything major because we knew that a large number of people would be absent. But because Ann and I are farming pieces from Heroic Pit of Saron (different pieces, thank goodness), when Batra suggested we do something we all grouped and queued for H PoS.

What a terrible idea.

Ann got stuck in load-screen land or some such and had to restart her computer before we even got started. Our first healer dropped because he got tired of waiting. He was a dbag anyway.

Really, is it that hard to use a name in a pug group? He could have said "You coming Ann?" instead of "you coming mage?". It even has less letters. I don't get it.

Anyway. The initial trash pulls go without much issue. We pick up an extra group at one point, but the warrior dps held them until Batra came and picked them up.

Somewhere around this point Batra asks us "How's my DPS?".

Apart from the obvious answer - terrible - why do you care when you're tanking? Takk did try to explain later about how DK tanks use direct damage to maintain aggro and stuff. Still, you should be more concerned about TPS, I would think. And even if you do care about DPS, why would you ask about it in a pug group? Recount can put it right there on your own screen and you don't have to ask anyone.

We get to the first boss: Garfrost.

I don't even remember the first wipe, it was such a clusterfuck. I do remember running around trying to avoid the huge boulders. Thanks, DBM, for the helpful hints (MOVE).

And then trying to hide behind them to get rid of permafrost. Does this even work?

But anyway, we die. I think we may have gotten hit with adds. Who knows.

Batra says: "Grr".

We run back in. Rebuff. Etc. We stand there in front of Garfrost for few minutes. Batra wonders if we can kill the large skeletons nearby so that they can't jump on us when we pull Garfrost.

For future reference: No, you can't.

Ann told him she thought they were linked, but he death grips one anyway and appears to be totally unprepared for Garfrost to coming running at him.

We die.

The healer and the warrior dps don't even try to res. They just drop group.

Batra asks us if we want to keep trying. I tell him no. I'm not particularly interested in attempting this again.

So we quit. No big.

Batra then asks us in guild chat how his tanking was. Ann takes the fall for this one. She tells him the truth. It was not fantastic. And those are pretty mild words for what I was thinking at the time.

So he whispers her about what was going wrong. She gives him the laundry list with nice and helpful comments about how he could do better. Example? "You should make sure all the targets are focused on you. DKs have a couple aoe effects that should accomplish this." These are all totally my words because I did not actually see the conversation.

His response?

"Have fun in Naxx next week. Apparently I'm too useless to go."

DRAMA.

I don't understand. He's been a level 80 for like, 5 months now. Maybe more, idk. And while I haven't leveled a tank that high, I've read its not particularly difficult to get to the defense cap. I think Takk managed it in three weeks. To be fair, Takk seems to have more time than the rest of us to play. But Batra's still had MONTHS worth of a head start on us.

I feel bad. I do. Because I know Batra irl. And I know he's been looking forward to tanking for our guild. But it's not free. You have to do your research. You have to know your class, know your fights, know how to get and keep aggro. And you have to get to the def cap, dangit!

When do I start spending my frosties?

2010-02-08T14:52:00.008-05:00

I've been farming these heroics for awhile now. I'm obsessive about doing the daily heroic in order to get my two Emblems of Frost each day.

But... what do I do with them?

I suppose the obvious answer is to save them up for 2pc T9/ 2pc T10 combo of doom. But I'm not convinced. I've heard there's a ferocious lack of spirit on the T10 pieces. And I'm gathering that makes getting off pieces a better idea.

What kind of off pieces can you get with frosties? Observe:

Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky
Pros
Awesome White Stats
Yellow Socket
More crit and spell power

Cons
Sad lack of Haste
Socket Bonus is so not happening.

Circle of Ossus
Pros
Direct upgrade in every way
TWO Sockets

Maghia's Misguided Quill
Pros
Serious on-use Spellpower.

Cons
Way more hit than I'd know what to do with.

The belt is the only thing that is as awesome as it should be. Don't get me wrong. They're all pretty sweet. They're just not what I'm looking for. I need better trinkets in a bad way. If I can't buy them with frosties, what else can I do? Not much, considering my guild hasn't actually started raiding yet.

Darkmoon Card: Illusion
Je'Tze's Bell
Both fairly solid options, considering how rarely I'm able to manage my mana. Both also probably expensive.

Nevermelting Ice Crystal
Do want. Added to my 'I will farm that until the cows come home and then some' list.

Sundial of the Exiled
Possibility. A (hopefully) temporary upgrade to the suck I have right now. I may not want to waste the emblems on it, when I could get a ring upgrade instead.

Wait. We did something right?

2010-02-03T17:25:00.004-05:00

Official guild night last night was actually very successful. I am as surprised as you are. All of our 80s were present. As was one of our much loved lower levels. :)

The weekly raid is to kill Patchwerk. This is good news for Memento, as we are looking to start raiding with Naxx. We figured it would be pretty easy to pick up the 2-3 healers we need to start on a week where everyone is looking to go to Naxx anyway.

Well. That's half true.

We did find 2 healers and another DK. All of whom were only interested in going as far as Patchwerk. Le sigh.

Anyways, I've seen NAXX!!!!

We don't have any problems with Patchwerk. It goes awesomely. We even almost hit the speed kill timer. And by 'almost', I mean 'we missed it by one second'. No really. DBM keeps track of this stuff for me.

We lose our three extras. But do we stop? We do not.

Militia switches to heals and Takk takes over MT. We head on over to the Plague Quarter and kill some stuff. We die EPICLY (that's a word. >.>) on Noth the plaguebringer.

It was superfun.

Although, it wasn't a complete wipe. Sen used his ~~cowardly~~ magely invisibility spell and stayed alive. For a little while. He tried to tell us how much we failed. Then he got too close to Noth again. And died.

I laughed.

Excuse me while I drop the f-bomb

2010-02-01T14:54:00.006-05:00

Let me start with a warning: This is a post of anger and frustration. There will be curse words and finger pointing and general blame re-allocation. You have been warned.

Guild night starts up pretty normal. Sen, Batra and I are the only ones online at 8. No surprises there. Takk calls me to say he'll be on in 30-45 minutes. No big. I don't particularly care at this point.

I start the evening frustrated at my roommates after spending a large portion of the day fighting with a virus-infected computer. All I'm looking to do is to get online and to start killing stuff in the most efficient manner possible. The quests in Ice Crown are particularly useful for this. Hopping into a vehicle and man-slaughtering hundreds of scourge is a great stress reducer.

When Takk gets online, we queue up for a random heroic. This lands us in Drak'Tharon with Batra tanking and another awesome healer from Nazgrel. Remember the Moral of the Story? Neither did I when we started Drak'Tharon. If you're going to run heroics, make sure your tank is def capped.

Regardless, we survive Drak'Tharon for the most part. There's a wipe on King Dred. How or why, I still don't know. Throughout the instance, Sen and this healer have been chit-chatting and word gets around to the rest of us that he doesn't have the Bronze Drake from Culling of Stratholme.

Shall we do that one next? Great idea. None of us have ever gone through Heroic CoS without getting to the Infinite Corruptor in time.

Observe me while I eat these words.

In general, CoS is no big deal at this point. Even I can find my way most of the time. We're all on vent at this point too, even though my microphone is kinda wonky. Nothing major happens until wave 6. Batra dies.

Whatever. Takk takes most of the aggro, Sen and I burn stuff to the ground. Healer of Awesome resurrects Batra. Wave 7 hits.

On vent I ask Takk to tank wave 7 so that we can keep moving at a good pace. Batra, surprisingly enough, doesn't appreciate this. He's trying to tell us how we have plenty of time and he just needs to regain his health and we'll keep going.

I'm seething. We do not have plenty of time.

It takes two minutes - two fucking minutes - for Batra to finish healing, find wave 7, and for us to kill it. This does not leave us "plenty of time".

This clusterfuck of suck continues until Arthas is ready to go behind the bookshelf. We have 3 minutes to run the gauntlet of angry scourge and take out the dragonkin at the end. This is possible. Sen, Takk, and I only need about 30 seconds with a boss. We can crank out some pretty awesome dps when shit gets serious.

The gauntlet begins. Sen is arcane blasting scourge away. I'm sending Flaag (my fel-guard) after everything in sight. I have no idea what the dks are doing. We get to the first mob with elites in it. There is no sign of death and decay, or any other form of aoe aggro that means I won't get dps'ed in the face if I start fighting.

Long story short: we die again. Sen's frustrated that we weren't able to help our Healer friend get his drake. I'm frustrated that no one listened earlier in the instance when I said we needed to move faster. Takk is probably frustrated, but none of us know for sure because he dropped from vent awhile back. Smart man.

We try to rush back in there, but its a long run and Batra won't speed up and no one is communicating and nothing works well and we die again. And this time its my fault. At least, thats what I heard Batra told Takk. Heresay. That's what the guild needs.

Regardless. We're now out of time. So all that's left to do is to regroup, calm down, and finish the instance at a pace that suits everyone. Instead, Batra switches to guild chat and starts talking about how ignored he feels because no one is saying anything on vent.

I'm the only one on with a microphone. And I'm not yet convinced it works.

We finish CoS. We're stupid enough to queue for another one. A random one. Random my ass. WoW puts us right back in CoS. Fuck my life.

I pick up the crates this time, because I haven't before and I like new stuff. We make it all the way to AFTER the timer starts. And then Batra drops group. The timer is already running! Luckily, Militia is online to make my life better. He steps in to tank for us. Everything runs smoothly.

Militia reminds us that Batra is not def capped. Oh, right. The moral of the story. Damnit.

Ann believes that it time to have a discussion with Batra about upholding the rules we agreed on. The rules that essentially amount to "don't be a douchebag". Sen doesn't think it will do any good. I can easily believe that its a clusterfuck waiting to happen. I guess we will see how it plays out.

Good news:
I'm hit capped. Exactly 17%. Win.

Playing Nice

2010-01-27T13:22:00.010-05:00

Tuesday night guild night was even more drama filled than Sunday night. Five of our level 80s were present on time. So we signed up for a random heroic. Because that is what we do.

Takk was tanking, Militia was healing, and Sen, Ann, and I were dps'ing. We get Azjol-Nerub. It's not one of my favourites. And we don't get far.

We get down to where the first boss is with his 3 watchers. Takk is pulling the groups one at a time, pretty simple. We're not going for the achievement or anything here. And we die.

We do this several times. And I'm not sure what, exactly, is going wrong. Maybe Sen, Ann, and I just aren't cranking out enough damage. Maybe Militia is not cranking out enough heals. Maybe Takk's just taking too much of a beating. Who knows.

Takk, very discouraged after three or four attempts, suggests we pug someone else and continue. This is not the point of guild night. Guild night for learning to play together and, more specifically, learning to balance each others strengths and weaknesses.

Militia goes to check Takk's gear because he thinks theres a tanking belt that drops in Azjol-Nerub. Instead, he accidentally kicks Takk from the group. Takk logs off and we don't see him for the rest of the night.

So we pug. We finish Azjol-Nerub. Huzzah, huzzah, Emblems of Frost for everyone.

Sen decides he's not interested in doing more dungeons. Batra signs on. We make our way through Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron. Get some phat loot: Prelate's Snowshoes. All in all, a fairly lackluster night.

Week 2

2010-01-25T13:43:00.007-05:00

Second official week of Guild Night and Social Night. Equally uninspiring.

We are having some attendance issues. Truthfully, attendance is not mandatory. But I thought that everyone was on board with creating an actual raid night. Thus far, attendance has been better on Tuesdays so maybe we'll have to return to that being our raid night. I guess this is just one of those things we'll have to tweak and retweak until we arrive at a solution that actually works for everyone.

There's also some drama happening over at Memento. Batra and Senach are really talented at getting on each others nerves. So much so that Batra /ignored Sen during a random heroic last night.

Allow me to tell the whole story. Sen, Ann, Batra, and I randomed our way into Heroic Trial of the Champion. We died a lot. The jousting part I expected to die in. Frankly, I'm terrible at it. But then its time to face Runok Wildmane, Zul'tore, and some other guy.

Lets be perfectly honest here. We're still noobs when it comes to ToC and ICC. Dungeon or Raid, it doesn't matter. But we know a few basics. We know to interrupt the healer. We know to keep the hunter occupied and away from the clothies. We know to stay out of the piles of green crap.

So, to start off I send my felguard after the hunter. I figure, the felguard can keep him occupied until Batra has enough aggro on Runok and whatshisface to spare a second to grab Zul'tore. I'm dps'ing my warlocky heart out on Runok. Several things happen at the same time. My felguard dies. I start to overtake Batra in threat. And an angry hunter starts firing his arrows of doom at me. We die.

At this point, our healer helpfully points out that Batra should be in frost presence. I also point out, as nicely as I can, that he also needs to remember to pick up the hunter. Because having my face peppered with arrows does nothing for our DPS.

Attempt number two goes marginally better. It drags on and on because Runok keeps healing himself. We die.

As we fly back on our spectral gryphons I have a brief discussion with Ann and Sen about interrupting the heals. This is also about the time when I take a few moments to apologize to our healer. I explain that we're all from the same guild and that we're trying to get our tank some experience. Said healer says 'No problem. I'm a GM, I handle this stuff all the time.'

Healer of Awesome, I salute you. This is my shoutout to Otic on Nazgrel. You were amazing. Thank you for your patience with our group.

Otic also points out that Batra is not defense capped. We are aware of this. Painfully and unfortunately aware of this. This time Batra drops the group to the shock and irritation of the rest of us. He cites Sen for always being on his case. I hope this was actually an instance of Sen giving constructive criticism. Sen is the GM, its his job, etc. etc. I don't know.

But, it's a random. We requeue, get another tank, and finish without much trouble. I did get zerged by one of the trash packs that comes with Paletres. That was totally my fault.

So, moral of the story: make sure your tank is defense capped. The random dungeon finder does not care about your stats when it picks a dungeon for you. While we're in the process of recruiting healers and a few more dps we will also be focusing on getting gear for our tanks.

Speaking of gear: I finally got Mark of the War Prisoner! Also picked up the T9 gloves, completing the T94pc bonus I was looking for. Huzzah, huzzah. Finally, picked up a Sword for my main hand. I'm out of greens in my gear, now working on getting rid of blues. A few small upgrades from the heroics. Nothing too exciting.

I can't speak too much about Batra and Takk not being def capped. I'm not hit capped yet. But I'm still working on it. Promise.

Research

2010-01-20T13:47:00.005-05:00

Social night last night. :) We did indeed farm heroics. We farmed enough of them that I was able to buy the T9 leggings I've had my eye on.

I've started to think that with being able to purchase T9 gear with almost-free emblems that the list from the Warlock's Den may be a smidge outdated. Fair enough, I went in search of a new source of information. I found it here. Even more on the plus side, Oath is very entertaining.

I have only one green left to replace in my gear. To that end I've been going to H Violet Hold every day. I still haven't seen that stupid trinket drop.

Limping

2010-01-19T10:05:00.006-05:00

First week of having "official" guild nights... not so amazing. To be perfectly honest, social night (Tuesdays, 9-12) was sent up for a particular friend that lives out-of-state. She was a no-show Tuesday night, but I found out her computer is dead. She won't be back for 2-4 weeks, le sigh. But one of our Council decided not to show either. And told us Sunday that he didn't know there was a meeting, though it's been posted in the Guild Message for awhile now.

Sunday was pretty gimpy too. 3 people showed up around 8. Others trickled in over the next 2 hours. We ended up running some heroics, in which no gear upgrades dropped. Batra tanked for Ann, Takk, and I through heroic Occulus. We were using the random dungeon finder. Two healers bailed on us right in a row because they kept getting attacked by whelps. I think it was Takk's first lesson in off-tanking.

One of Ann's friends rejoined our server. He may take over the main tank position, which I believe relegates Batra to off-tanking. Takk's good, but he's stated that he's not wholly interested in tanking. In general, I'm cool with Militia. He has actual raid experience, which would be a huge boon for us. But... it shows. And by 'it shows' I mean 'he has a tendency to talk down to us because we have no idea what we're doing'. He probably doesn't even realize he does it. Sometimes (really, just sometimes) it rubs me the wrong way.

Regardless, we're still not anywhere near raiding yet. We have no healers. And, while we could probably pug Naxx (or something on a similar level), the goal is to actually build a group for the long haul.

On the bright side of things:
I did manage to upgrade my wand. I'm also close to buying another T9 piece, if I could only decide which one. I'm debating between eventually getting all of the T9 pieces and getting the T9 4pc bonus with the Hood of Fiery Aftermath. Fel Armor makes it complicated. The 30% to spellpower from spirit makes me want to stack spirit. But in the end, a lot of pieces have more spellpower than the extra I would get from having the piece with spirit on it. And my felguard dieing so often makes me want to stack stamina.

Regardless, I've been picking up some small upgrades from heroics. And stocking up on Emblems of Triumph for the T9 pieces. And hoarding Ebonweave and Spellweave for things to make later.

Still saving for fast flying. Almost to halfway. Farming Violet Hold for The Mark of the War Prisoner. Building my enchanting oh so slowly.

Also, Batra got our vent channel set up. I was without a microphone on Sunday, but it was really neat to hear everyone!

Finally, upgraded my interface. It is much awesome now, although I'm still getting used to it. It's considerably cleaner. The main problem I'm having with it is that, when using the random dungeon finder, I can't tell who is the tank and who is the healer. Not a problem when you're teamed up with a death knight and priest. Big problem when you're teamed up with two paladins.

Social Night tonight will probably be running more heroics.

Learning

2010-01-13T13:16:00.004-05:00

So, that quote "You learn something new everyday" is completely true. I've learned lots. I've learned I totally suck at being a Destruction warlock. I've learned that, even though Tailors make some of the most totally badass gear for casters, it takes weeeeeks to get the materials on your own. I've learned that grouping with an Arcane mage is really bad for your ego.

I've learned that, no matter how many times you hit the "Vote to Kick" button it still won't work within the first 15 minutes of a dungeon. (I already knew this, but it was never an issue until we grouped with a really terrible tank and healer on the same run.)

Also, my UI blows. Its way too crowded and complicated. I need to find some methods for simplifying things. I've seen some nice looking ones, but no explanations on how to achieve that. Some research at Curse has given me some nice leads, however.

Established what I hope is a decent compromise for guild night. Sundays, from 8-11, is going to be for running dungeons and eventually raiding. Tuesdays, from 10-12, is going to be just for socializing and hanging out. Possibly for helping the lower level members if they need us.

Got a very nice gear upgrade last night. Skipped the whole list business and went straight in to buying my T9 chest piece with my Emblems of Triumph. It was everything I dreamed it could be.

Next thing I'm hoping to upgrade is my wand.

Small Progress

2010-01-11T12:06:00.003-05:00

It's still not official, but our guild night is going to be Tuesdays. Either from 9-12 or 10-1. It's not perfect for everyone, but I think its the best I can do. Although, Batra did point out that Sundays may be an option. I didn't want to do a weekend time, but I suppose its feasible.

Batra, one of our council members, has been looking into getting a vent server for us. That should be interesting! I'm hoping he can also put us in contact with some healers who would be interested in raiding with us.

The problem I foresee happening, is that most people won't want to start where we would like to start. Sen and I would like to start with some of the old BC raids, just to get a feel for raiding. Especially if we manage to collect a regular group. I think it would behoove us to do some easy-mode stuff so we can see how we'll work together as a team. Of course, I haven't posed this idea to the rest of the guild, so we'll see what happens.

Ran a decent number of heroics over the weekend. Nothing from my list dropped, but I did find a decent upgrade for one of my rings as well as a small upgrade for my dagger. Made it to Revered with the Wyrmrest Accord, which was my goal. Now I'll start with the Kirin Tor for awhile. Also started the Argent Tournament stuff. That will be fun. :)

Purchased Mara's dual spec. Now its time to save up for fast flying. I want to be able to use that mount from H CoS when I get it.

Classes officially resume today, so time may be limited from here on out. I'm hoping, though, that I'll have something new to report at least once a week.

Firsts

2010-01-08T08:36:00.002-05:00

To start I want to say: I love being 80! I thought I would miss leveling. Sounds silly, I know, but I thought I would. But I sure don't so far.

Last night, Sen and I queued for a random heroic dungeon and got Culling of Stratholme. It was:
A - The first time I had done any heroic Wrath dungeon.
B - The first time I had done CoS.

It was also totally awesome. We finished quickly enough for the mount to drop (I didn't win. Maybe next time?), even after our first healer left because our rogue was skinning everything in sight.

I made a list of gear that I need to get in order to be raid-ready. (Yes, I'm that much of a nerd.) And by 'I made a list', I mean 'I relied heavily on the suggestions made by the Warlock's Den'. It's pretty basic at this point. First priority is to get to the hit cap. Then, stack as much spellpower as possible. Because, if you're going to raid Meta/Ruin and not take crap from your leader or companions, you better be able to deliver Demonic Pact in a big way.

Anyway, last night I got my first two pieces off the list. One of them I bought (30g is so freaking cheap at this point, I bought two of them), the other I made (Shadoweave Tailoring ftw). I still have a long way to go, of course, but its a start!

Finally, I think the guildies have settled on Tuesdays, 9-12. It's a decent compromise for everyone involved.

DING

2010-01-06T08:19:00.002-05:00

Marariel hit level 80 last night!

There have been three of us racing to get to 80 before classes resume next week. With one other, we form the leading Council for Memento Mori. Batra hit 80 ages ago; but Ann and I dinged last night! It was very exciting. Our guild master, Sen, should hit 80 today. For the first time in a long time, all our council members will be on the same level. :)

So now its time to start looking at farming heroics and high level crafting items to start getting/making the gear we need to start raiding. For me, its time to start building up gold to purchase epic flying and Mara's dual-spec. And its way past time to level my enchanting profession.

No concrete word from the guildies as to which night of the week would be best for all of us to be online at the same time. We're currently looking at Tuesdays from 7pm to 10pm or Wednesdays from 9pm to 12pm. Tuesday is a problem for one of our council members and Wednesday is a problem for one of our other members. And one of our council members has yet to give his opinion on the matter. I'm enjoying myself, though, I like this organizing stuff!

Introduction by way of Review Meme

2010-01-04T11:57:00.002-05:00

Greetings! I'm Mara, and this blog is going to be my tale from fresh 80 to (hopefully) successful raider. Because my blog is starting at the same time as 2010, I thought this Review Meme would be an appropriate introduction. Found at BlogAzeroth.

What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Participated in a world event enough to get the achievement 'Noblegardner' and my first title: "Marariel the Noble". The most difficult thing about it was trying to put the bunny ears on all the different races. I spent a lot of times outside the crossroads, hoping the right races (and gender!) would come by, before I gave up and bought a port to Dalaran.

What was your favorite new place that you visited?
Storm Peaks. I greatly enjoyed flying around and discovering everything on the map. So many times I had to stop and take screenshots because things were so interesting. And shiny; especially at the tops of the temples.

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A night that is specifically for my guild. Eventually this would be raid night; but in the meantime it would just be a night for my guildies and I to all be online hanging out, running dungeons, and helping our lower level members. We would also like to form an alliance with another guild looking for a mature, easy-going raid environment. At the present, Memento Mori is formed of people who know each other in some way. However, we are scattered all over the place. A night just for us would help us to stay connected during school times.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Progressing as far as I did, lol! I can be a bit a.d.d. when it comes to WoW. Some days I'm all about leveling my main, but others I just want to work on professions. Or I want to pull out another character and work on them for awhile. My biggest achievement was getting Mara to 78, while also leveling a paladin to 33 and a priest to 46, and while getting my DK's professions to 300+.

What was your biggest failure?
Not sticking to goals I had previously set for myself. We wanted to get our guild off the ground in the summer of 2009. This means: establishing our ranks and particular rules, getting our guild bank organized, recruiting, and building the guild website. We didn't get past establishing ranks and rules. Also, I wanted to hit 80!

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The quest chains in Northrend. They're all really interesting and they really match up with the story of Arthas. The details they put into the quests and showing the history of what happened in Northrend has been incredible. It's sparked some interesting questions and debate as well. My roommates and I have even sat around the table discussing the moral implications of the Culling of Stratholme.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
I wish I had created less deathknights. I've played through their starting area almost four complete times. Twice because friends of mine have refused to switch servers, so if I wanted to play with them I needed a character on their server. Callaan went really well: I leveled her out of Archerus and started her on mining. By the time she went to Outlands she already had enough money from selling ore and bars to buy her flying mount. That was all really awesome until my friend cancelled his account. Now it just looks like a huge waste of time. Le sigh.

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?
Kungaloosh by Abi. The Lrn2Meta guide has been absolutely instrumental in planning my spec for endgame and for learning about why particular talents are better than others. And gemming. That was an important lesson. :) Kungaloosh also introduced me to many many other blogs that have been helpful and entertaining.

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.
Patience is essential for everything you do. Sometimes your tank is not very good, or your healer is not paying attention, or the dps attracts about 30 more mobs to play with. Patience and communication goes a long way towards regrouping and completing the goal.