Raiding Bicycles

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.

Azeroth, Burning

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

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

The Frozen Throne

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

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.

Sidetrip

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

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

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!

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'

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

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.

---

Who's Putricide?

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.

---

Hypocrisy

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

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

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.

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Pretending

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.

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Serious Business

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.

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Much Better

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.

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My Raiders are Five Years Old

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.

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A Week of Awesome

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.

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