The Little Druid that Could

Awhile back I was running some regular commentary about my guild and the progress we'd been making in ICC and whatever other random game or real life thought crossed my mind.  Well... I figure since I took more than a month to write the first post of my Kitty primer I should ramble on awhile about what's been going on, starting, of course, with the most important person on the planet...

WARNING: POOPY DIAPERS AHEAD!

Kaethir's Cub

My little one was born, of course, back near the end of March.  She's grown from the measly 6lb 3oz she was at birth to a whopping 10lb 7oz as of a week or so ago...  Needs more meat on her bones, she's not gonna tank any bosses at that size!

She's doing great, no jaundice or major problems, and she's been sleeping through the night almost since the day my wife went back to work.  She's been "talking" for awhile now, smiling and giggling and generally making our lives wonderful.

Not to say she's perfect, but, well, she's perfect! She has of course the times that she decides to poop while you're changing her diaper... four times in a row... but I couldn't have asked for a better infant.  The few times she's cried there's always been a reasonable reason (gas, constipation, or the doctor sticking her with a giant needle) and so far she's just been a wondrous little miracle.

Sorry, I'm a new Dad, sometimes I just have to get mushy about her.

Movies

I don't recall mentioning much of anything about movies before, but I enjoy good Sci-Fi, Adventure, and Action flicks as much as the next person and I wanted to mention that Iron Man 2 and Avatar are both really good films that have come out in the last few months.  You should see them, or so I would have you believe.

Also, I saw an advertisement for The Expendables.  Anything with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Terry Crews is going to be either really, really good, or really, phenomenally bad.  I'm cautiously optimistic.


One final note on movies and then I'll quit.  In a moment of masochism I decided to DVR Transmorphers when I saw it on Encore.  I noticed this little gem pile of awful awhile back in Blockbuster.  Incidentally, it came out a little before Transformers, which was an infinitely better movie.  I watched about 20-30 minutes of it (that I can't get back) before deciding that there was no redeeming quality to it, at all.  IMHO, and in no particular order, it had bad acting, directing, casting, special effects, music, choreography, and writing, and the plot (which seemed like some inane mashup of the Matrix and Transformers) had to have been written by a dyslexic chimpanzee.  Save yourself.

Epic Adventurers and ICC

On with the show.

When last we left our impaled imperiled heroes, Epic Adventurers had finally downed Deathbringer Saurfang in 25-man mode.  We've had a few changes to our raiding schedule since then, but we've continued to press onward.

Our progression 10-man team (which I, unfortunately, am unable to participate in) has downed Festergut, Rotface, and the Blood Princes, while our 25-man team is regularly one-shotting the first 6 bosses (through Saurfang, plus Festergut and Rotface) in one night.

We run a fun/alt 10-man run on Sunday nights, which regularly clears through Saurfang.  The group I led in this past Sunday took a couple of shots at Rotface but couldn't pull it off.

I have been learning more and more about the intricacies of playing a Feral DPS, and I've had occasional opportunities to tank even on our 25-man runs, which has been a blast for me.  I've been topping 8k DPS against Saurfang, without optimizing my gems.  I share some gear between my sets, so it's impractical to completely optimize for either, and I think I've done well with the limitations I have.

The big team is currently stumbling over the Dreamwalker.  The strategy we've been employing is to have just 2 tanks to hold down the baddies, each one generally hanging out at the point of the wall in between the spawn points on each side of the green dragon, with the melee DPS roughly divided up between the sides and the ranged DPS and heals more or less roaming around the middle, assisting wherever it is needed.  Owing to the nature of the fight, we've been running a little healer heavy.

We seem to be having some difficulty keeping up.  I'm not entirely certain where the problem is.  This is complicated by the fact that due to my reduced raiding schedule, I'm not there every week. 

It has been suggested to me that we should use 3-4 tanks, split up the DPS more, and engage the Adds closer to their spawn points.  I'm a little leery of the idea, but I may propose it to our raid leader as something to try.  I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.

Two posts in three days?  Is the ground getting cold for anybody else?