Moar Sanity Pls

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.

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Mythbusting: Fail Pugs

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.

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Sarth: Now in Multiple Dimensions

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.

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