I had an interesting experience Tuesday night that involved pugging into a raid that I ended up leading. At the end, I thought it would make a good blog post and started thinking about how to compose it into a story worth hearing.
So imagine my surprise Wednesday morning when I look at my feeds and see that Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs has posted an article about pretty much the exact same thing. I'm still going to forge onward, however, because I have a slightly different tack than him.
There was over an hour 'till Wintergrasp, I had done a HoR for my chance at a Battered Hilt and Ephemeral Snowflake, I had completed my daily random, and the weekly raid quest was Marrowgar, which I'll get via our weekly trip into ICC anyway. Consequently, I was trying to decide if I wanted to hop over to Alrom and keep working him toward 80 or go do the Argent Tournament dailies and make a little money. I'm always short of the money I want, so I used my Argent Tabard and ported in to start picking up dailies.
Before I got more than 2 picked up, I saw somebody calling for tanks and heals for ToC10.
"What the hell," I thought, "that's my two specs and I can still use a couple of items out of there." I offered to go and was invited.
Upon informing the raid leader that I was tank/heals with a preference for tanking, he asked me to heal. A couple more minutes for them to pick up another tank (which actually flipped once found, from a DK to another bear), and we were "ready" to start.
I say "ready" because other than a definition of the tanks, nothing was really said in vent, I couldn't find another definitive healer in the group (turns out it was a shaman), and nobody really talked about a strategy. AT ALL, despite the fact that they had us all hop into a vent channel.
The shaman was new to raiding (as I later learned), and DID stand in the fire and die. And rez himself in the fire, and die again. And got battle rezzed... and died again, but I'm not sure if that was in the fire or not. Even given that, we lived a surprisingly long time with only me healing. I do an amazing amount of HPS when there's no other healers to turn half of my heals into overheals.
After that fiasco I guessed we were in for a very long run.
One of our only two ranged dps (don't go there), both of which happened to be warlocks, offered to bring his healer in, popped out and came back on a druid (which gave us 4 in the group, another was kitty), and during the interim I took the time to organize the heals, put the shaman on raid healing and split the tanks between the trees. I kept waiting, at this point, for the raid leader to lay out some sort of strategy. Mostly, all that was said was to kill the snobolds and run to the raid if you got one.
We made it through Gormok almost flawlessly on this run regardless, and the worms came out to say hello, and upon this event we ran into problems again. I don't remember all the specifics, but among other things they weren't both turned away from the raid, and at one point I stood in front of one even though it was turned away from the rest of the raid (I know, I'm a fail druid) and I died.
I actually got battle-rezzed and going again, and enough of the raid lived long enough to kill the first Jormungar. Soon after one of the two worms died, though, we had the bear tank, a rogue, and me alive, as everyone else had succumbed in one way or another. The other rogue actually released, thinking it was a wipe. But when the remaining Jormungar went underground, the bear rebirthed the second tree. Once our health was stable again (the burning debuff hit both of the healers), I rebirthed the cat druid, and we were back in business with half a raid.
Icehowl was a piece of cake, although he took forever.
It was one of the most stressful boss fights I've ever healed through, and I absolutely loved the challenge of it. We got congratulated for "epic healz", and thinking back I actually feel bad for not telling the bear what an awesome job he did.
About this point, the original raid leader said something about his DBM being messed up and asked for somebody else to lead the raid, the response to which was crickets chirping over the vent channel.
Despite my experience leading raids and especially ToC10 raids, I didn't exactly leap at the opportunity. I HATE leading PuG raids, with the rare exception of a weekly raid quest like Patchwerk that involves finding enough bodies of the right kinds to fill spots and saying go. I like our guild runs - I know everybody, more or less, and they're generally nice people who won't rip into somebody for screwing up, or go all elitist on me, or generally exhibit behavior that would warrant a kicking. In a PuG, however, there's really no such safety net, and I don't like being the person that has to deal with it. In addition, our guild folks generally know what they are doing, as even the ones that aren't seasoned raiders know enough NOT TO STAND IN THE FIRE. Oh, and one last thing - I've never been a raid leader as a healer. It's a different way of doing things than what I'm used to.
All this went through my head once, twice, maybe three times. Then, at the continued silence, I finally said, "Kaethir can lead if nobody else wants to."
Of course, being the first one to speak up meant that I got handed the reins. Yay me. I found out very quickly that we had a fairly knowledgeable, nice, and well geared group, and ended up not minding leading this raid at all.
I can skip the play-by-play from there on out. I took the time before each boss to lay out the general strategy (with some help from the more seasoned raiders in the group.) We only wiped one time the rest of the way, on our first attempt at the faction champions, despite only having one ranged for permafrost and adds during Anub, three folks learning the fights as we went, and our shaman healer being new to raiding at all. The warlock got lucky, as a LOT of dps caster gear dropped, with him being the only main spec to use it.
It was one of the more enjoyable PuGs I've gotten into, despite the fact that I got handed the lead I didn't want.
Tamarind waxes poetic about what calls people to lead raids and why, despite the fact that it can be stressful, people come back and do it again. I won't comment directly on what he said, but he made me think about why I'm willing to do this when the call comes. To me, it's really quite simple. I know the fights, I know what people are supposed to be doing, I like helping people learn, and perhaps the most important thing of all...
If I'm the one leading, I can't complain about the quality and/or skill of the raid leader. Perhaps, a bit more bluntly, if I'm the one leading, we're not going to screw up because there's no strategy in place, or because the healers aren't assigned, or some other silly thing (although I have been known to occasionally leave a point or two out of the explanation of a fight.) Having cut my teeth, so to speak, leading guild raids in an environment where I could make a few mistakes as a leader and not get reamed for it, I've developed the confidence that I know what I'm doing enough to lead others, provided of course that they're willing to be led.
Finally, a request to all those out there that want to get a raid together but don't want to lead... find a raid leader BEFORE you start the instance. It will make things easier.
Showing posts with label Trial of the Crusader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trial of the Crusader. Show all posts
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Merry Christmas!
We didn't make our 10-man run last night - our guild 25-man, which usually runs on Thursday nights, was scheduled on top of us due to Thursday being Christmas Eve. Instead of fighting for attendance (and probably losing) we went along on the 25-man and I broke out the leafy goodness. We went into Ulduar to get Razorscale for the weekly raid quest (and I picked up the Three Car Garage and Shutout achievements along the way).
We moved on to Onyxia and one-shotted her. I was lucky enough to pick up a Stormrage Cover from her for my healy set, which is amazingly now approximately equivalent to my tanking set despite 95% of my badges going to my tanking stuff.
We downed the Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus before a couple of wipes on the Champions put me out of time for the night. I picked up a Ring of the Darkmender as well. Sometimes, I'm glad I'm not tanking! Our guild rules would have meant I probably didn't get a chance to roll on at least one of the items I won, and there were very few tankish drops I could have rolled on.
On the blog front, I'd like to link a post from the Big Bear Butt himself... Hilarious take on the mindset of a lot of tanks out there. Read it and laugh, and thank me later. I'm also in awe that he took the time to point out A Bear in the Trees. In case you were wondering, it was mostly reading BBB that inspired me to start this little endeavor of mine.
With tomorrow being Christmas Eve and family plans over the weekend, I'm not likely to get a post up again until sometime next week. I've only been going a couple of months, but so far it's been a fun ride and I hope anybody that's found their way here has found some use and/or enjoyment from my inane ramblings. I'm planning on exploring some thoughts on high-end rings, trinkets, and relics soon - I have a feeling my first 100-150 or so Frost Emblems will be spent on this kind of gear... I don't know yet though, I'll have to dig into the specifics of the Tier10 gear.
I hope everyone has a safe and fun Christmas holiday! If you're not inclined to celebrate Christmas, then I hope whatever holiday or holidays you celebrate around this time of year are also safe and fun!
Merry Christmas and see you on the flip side!
We moved on to Onyxia and one-shotted her. I was lucky enough to pick up a Stormrage Cover from her for my healy set, which is amazingly now approximately equivalent to my tanking set despite 95% of my badges going to my tanking stuff.
We downed the Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus before a couple of wipes on the Champions put me out of time for the night. I picked up a Ring of the Darkmender as well. Sometimes, I'm glad I'm not tanking! Our guild rules would have meant I probably didn't get a chance to roll on at least one of the items I won, and there were very few tankish drops I could have rolled on.
On the blog front, I'd like to link a post from the Big Bear Butt himself... Hilarious take on the mindset of a lot of tanks out there. Read it and laugh, and thank me later. I'm also in awe that he took the time to point out A Bear in the Trees. In case you were wondering, it was mostly reading BBB that inspired me to start this little endeavor of mine.
With tomorrow being Christmas Eve and family plans over the weekend, I'm not likely to get a post up again until sometime next week. I've only been going a couple of months, but so far it's been a fun ride and I hope anybody that's found their way here has found some use and/or enjoyment from my inane ramblings. I'm planning on exploring some thoughts on high-end rings, trinkets, and relics soon - I have a feeling my first 100-150 or so Frost Emblems will be spent on this kind of gear... I don't know yet though, I'll have to dig into the specifics of the Tier10 gear.
I hope everyone has a safe and fun Christmas holiday! If you're not inclined to celebrate Christmas, then I hope whatever holiday or holidays you celebrate around this time of year are also safe and fun!
Merry Christmas and see you on the flip side!
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Impromptu Weekend ToC10
I don't often get time to play much on the weekends - family commitments, time with the spouse, and my other two geek-related time consuming hobbies (Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons) combine to form just about the ultimate WoW blockage on the weekends.
Last weekend rolled around with no major plans for Saturday afternoon, I figured I had a good chance to get something done. I haven't had a chance yet to go in to the Icecrown Citadel raids, illness and houseguests had prevented me from having a chance to do ToC last week, and the weekly raid quest was for Lord Jaraxxus's head, so I decided to try to put together an impromptu run for ToC10. Encouraged by the fact that we had cleared it last week, I was hopeful to get a run in before dinner plans with the wife, and started putting a group together about 2:00.
Luckily for me, the two friends that have been my co-leaders for the raids weren't able to get into a ToC10 earlier in the week, so their mains weren't saved, and another guildie who has been bringing her healer almost every time was able to come, so we had most of the core tanks and heals we brought previously. We filled in with one pugged healer and 3 pugged DPS and set off. It took us until after 2:30 to get it all together, but it worked! The breakdown:
Tanks (2):
Bear (me!) and DK
Heals (3):
2 Holy Paladins and 1 Disc/Holy Priest
DPS (5):
2 Hunters, 1 Warrior, 1 Rogue, 1 Enh. Shaman
I was hoping for 3 ranged DPS. Lord Jaraxxus is a little easier with more ranged DPS - there's less need for melee DPS to switch to Mistresses, and those pesky Infernals die that much faster - and gives you more chances to survive issues with Anub. I was confident that this would work, however, so we ran with it.
The Northrend Beasts!
Everyone was familiar with this fight (even though one of the pugs had only seen it on 25-man), so it went fairly smoothly. Gormok went down like the chump he is - I started with him, the other tank taunted off of me, I taunted back... I think that was the last time I taunted until he had barely 30k health left. We lost one of the hunters during the jormungar portion... so when the first worm fell, the other tank picked up the remaining one, and I shifted out and battle-rezzed him. Druids cheat so hardcore. Nobody got hit by Icehowl's charge, so he was easy. One down, 4 to go.
It's difficult, on our server, to pug into good groups for ToC. One of our pugs commented at this point, "finally got a good group!" When everybody knows what they are doing and most of them are geared well for the instance, things tend to go well! :)
We moved on...
Lord Jaraxxus!
A little stategery and we're ready to go for the next boss. Jaraxxus started out normally, although it took a little long to drop the first Mistress - I don't think the melee DPS switched to her right away, but once they did she fell quickly. The infernals came next, and this is where we started to get into a little trouble. It was my fault mostly, I think, for not marking which infernal to focus on. They're already difficult to really hold aggro on (at least for me... maybe I'm doing something wrong...) and without either excess ranged DPS or me marking a clear target it took too long to down them and they ran too wild near the melee, did too much damage, overstressing the healing. There were still one or two of them up when the second Mistress came.
Things got a little crazy after the second set of infernals came. We were already behind due to the craziness of the first round of adds, and at some point, I forget exactly when, the DK, the other tank, went down. I immediately had to stop what I was doing, of course, and pick up Jaraxxus, trying my best to keep the adds aggro'd on me. We lost a couple other folks - three or four in total - but beyond me trying to keep ahold of them we ignored the adds the rest of the way and we'd done enough damage before starting to lose people that he went down just before things were really about to get out of hand. It was a little close, but two bosses down, and no wipes yet!
The Faction Champions!
Our kill order: Priest (not Shadow, I don't remember if he's Disc or Holy), healing Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, Boomkin, Paladin. We wiped once or twice - our first run went pretty well and we downed three of them, especially good considering our hunters forgot to use frost traps and I called out the wrong target after the priest went down. (I was sloppy that day, I don't know why.) The DK pestered the paladin, keeping him (or is it a her?) essentially out of the fight. The rogue went down early the first try due to burst damage, and losing his kick interrupt really hurt.
The champions continue to give us more trouble on our runs than any of the other bosses, and I'm not entirely sure why. We're getting better with them, though, and I consider that a good sign.
The Twin Val'kyr!
We one-shotted them. There was a little confusion as to which people were supposed to be on which side of the room, but the fact that we pull the two of them fairly close together in the center of the room made that a little less important - we had a fairly even distribution of light and dark and that's all that really mattered. None of their special abilities did much of anything, and we didn't have issues with too many of the wrong-colored orbs hitting our guys.
I felt a little bad when I won the Loop of the Twin Val'kyr, as that is just about the only upgrade left in ToC10 for Illorien (our DK and co-leader).
You might think, from what I've said, that we were moving fast! No, one of our pugs complained because it was taking us awhile in between bosses. Admittedly, we had a few folks go afk for a couple minutes for issues that probably could have waited, but we don't fly like that. It's one of the endearing features of our guild, I think, that we understand that people are human and things happen, and we're willing to work with the time people give us. One of our breaks was because all of us leading the raid were a little under the weather and one of us went to make tea because her throat felt like it was wrapped in ropes of fire, and another break happened because one of the healers had a puppy get into a roll of toilet paper. I can understand the desire to get through things fast, but please... people are human, cut them a little slack if they can't stay 100% dedicated to a game for nearly 2 hours at a time.
Anub'arak!
Before we started up the event that drops you into Anub'arak's cavern, our pug shammy opened up a trade and gave me 8 gold. Luckily I figured out what was going on before I hit the water, and clicked off the water-walking buff he had put on me. Our DK escaped a similar fate, but I'm not sure if he saw it and clicked it off or had another method. I gave him his gold back, 'cuz I'm just a nice guy like that, but it was funny anyway.
One of the folks on the raid had never been to Anub before, so we had to explain the entire fight. Much like our last clear, we had a slightly sub-par healer setup - 2 paladins and 1 priest. Determined, however, we set out to vanquish our foe!
Our first attempt was doomed fairly early on. We lost both our hunters to some craziness in Anub's first underground phase. Our shaman made a valiant effort to use his small ranged arsenal to pick up the slack in dropping permafrost, but we lost a healer as well and had an add still up heading into phase 3. We wiped shortly thereafter.
Despite our relative success during our demise, we decided to switch one of our paladin healers to tanking the adds, move the DK to Anub himself and I pulled out my tree gear and filled in the healing slot. In addition to providing a steadier flow of smaller heals for phase 3 goodness, that helped the other 2 healers a bit by providing the Tree of Life aura.
The second attempt was nearly flawless, as we didn't lose anybody until Anub was well into phase 3 and our victory was nearly assured.
It took us about 2 hours in total, and while I was ready (and actually started trying to refill the spots of folks who left) to give ICC a shot, I was out of time.
Tuesday, I expect my little crew will be giving our first shot (or at least, the first shot with me there!) at ICC's 10-man raid. I haven't even had a chance to do the 5-man in heroic mode yet. We'll see what happens though, and I'm hopeful we can get through it!
Last weekend rolled around with no major plans for Saturday afternoon, I figured I had a good chance to get something done. I haven't had a chance yet to go in to the Icecrown Citadel raids, illness and houseguests had prevented me from having a chance to do ToC last week, and the weekly raid quest was for Lord Jaraxxus's head, so I decided to try to put together an impromptu run for ToC10. Encouraged by the fact that we had cleared it last week, I was hopeful to get a run in before dinner plans with the wife, and started putting a group together about 2:00.
Luckily for me, the two friends that have been my co-leaders for the raids weren't able to get into a ToC10 earlier in the week, so their mains weren't saved, and another guildie who has been bringing her healer almost every time was able to come, so we had most of the core tanks and heals we brought previously. We filled in with one pugged healer and 3 pugged DPS and set off. It took us until after 2:30 to get it all together, but it worked! The breakdown:
Tanks (2):
Bear (me!) and DK
Heals (3):
2 Holy Paladins and 1 Disc/Holy Priest
DPS (5):
2 Hunters, 1 Warrior, 1 Rogue, 1 Enh. Shaman
I was hoping for 3 ranged DPS. Lord Jaraxxus is a little easier with more ranged DPS - there's less need for melee DPS to switch to Mistresses, and those pesky Infernals die that much faster - and gives you more chances to survive issues with Anub. I was confident that this would work, however, so we ran with it.
The Northrend Beasts!
Everyone was familiar with this fight (even though one of the pugs had only seen it on 25-man), so it went fairly smoothly. Gormok went down like the chump he is - I started with him, the other tank taunted off of me, I taunted back... I think that was the last time I taunted until he had barely 30k health left. We lost one of the hunters during the jormungar portion... so when the first worm fell, the other tank picked up the remaining one, and I shifted out and battle-rezzed him. Druids cheat so hardcore. Nobody got hit by Icehowl's charge, so he was easy. One down, 4 to go.
It's difficult, on our server, to pug into good groups for ToC. One of our pugs commented at this point, "finally got a good group!" When everybody knows what they are doing and most of them are geared well for the instance, things tend to go well! :)
We moved on...
Lord Jaraxxus!
A little stategery and we're ready to go for the next boss. Jaraxxus started out normally, although it took a little long to drop the first Mistress - I don't think the melee DPS switched to her right away, but once they did she fell quickly. The infernals came next, and this is where we started to get into a little trouble. It was my fault mostly, I think, for not marking which infernal to focus on. They're already difficult to really hold aggro on (at least for me... maybe I'm doing something wrong...) and without either excess ranged DPS or me marking a clear target it took too long to down them and they ran too wild near the melee, did too much damage, overstressing the healing. There were still one or two of them up when the second Mistress came.
Things got a little crazy after the second set of infernals came. We were already behind due to the craziness of the first round of adds, and at some point, I forget exactly when, the DK, the other tank, went down. I immediately had to stop what I was doing, of course, and pick up Jaraxxus, trying my best to keep the adds aggro'd on me. We lost a couple other folks - three or four in total - but beyond me trying to keep ahold of them we ignored the adds the rest of the way and we'd done enough damage before starting to lose people that he went down just before things were really about to get out of hand. It was a little close, but two bosses down, and no wipes yet!
The Faction Champions!
Our kill order: Priest (not Shadow, I don't remember if he's Disc or Holy), healing Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, Boomkin, Paladin. We wiped once or twice - our first run went pretty well and we downed three of them, especially good considering our hunters forgot to use frost traps and I called out the wrong target after the priest went down. (I was sloppy that day, I don't know why.) The DK pestered the paladin, keeping him (or is it a her?) essentially out of the fight. The rogue went down early the first try due to burst damage, and losing his kick interrupt really hurt.
The champions continue to give us more trouble on our runs than any of the other bosses, and I'm not entirely sure why. We're getting better with them, though, and I consider that a good sign.
The Twin Val'kyr!
We one-shotted them. There was a little confusion as to which people were supposed to be on which side of the room, but the fact that we pull the two of them fairly close together in the center of the room made that a little less important - we had a fairly even distribution of light and dark and that's all that really mattered. None of their special abilities did much of anything, and we didn't have issues with too many of the wrong-colored orbs hitting our guys.
I felt a little bad when I won the Loop of the Twin Val'kyr, as that is just about the only upgrade left in ToC10 for Illorien (our DK and co-leader).
You might think, from what I've said, that we were moving fast! No, one of our pugs complained because it was taking us awhile in between bosses. Admittedly, we had a few folks go afk for a couple minutes for issues that probably could have waited, but we don't fly like that. It's one of the endearing features of our guild, I think, that we understand that people are human and things happen, and we're willing to work with the time people give us. One of our breaks was because all of us leading the raid were a little under the weather and one of us went to make tea because her throat felt like it was wrapped in ropes of fire, and another break happened because one of the healers had a puppy get into a roll of toilet paper. I can understand the desire to get through things fast, but please... people are human, cut them a little slack if they can't stay 100% dedicated to a game for nearly 2 hours at a time.
Anub'arak!
Before we started up the event that drops you into Anub'arak's cavern, our pug shammy opened up a trade and gave me 8 gold. Luckily I figured out what was going on before I hit the water, and clicked off the water-walking buff he had put on me. Our DK escaped a similar fate, but I'm not sure if he saw it and clicked it off or had another method. I gave him his gold back, 'cuz I'm just a nice guy like that, but it was funny anyway.
One of the folks on the raid had never been to Anub before, so we had to explain the entire fight. Much like our last clear, we had a slightly sub-par healer setup - 2 paladins and 1 priest. Determined, however, we set out to vanquish our foe!
Our first attempt was doomed fairly early on. We lost both our hunters to some craziness in Anub's first underground phase. Our shaman made a valiant effort to use his small ranged arsenal to pick up the slack in dropping permafrost, but we lost a healer as well and had an add still up heading into phase 3. We wiped shortly thereafter.
Despite our relative success during our demise, we decided to switch one of our paladin healers to tanking the adds, move the DK to Anub himself and I pulled out my tree gear and filled in the healing slot. In addition to providing a steadier flow of smaller heals for phase 3 goodness, that helped the other 2 healers a bit by providing the Tree of Life aura.
The second attempt was nearly flawless, as we didn't lose anybody until Anub was well into phase 3 and our victory was nearly assured.
It took us about 2 hours in total, and while I was ready (and actually started trying to refill the spots of folks who left) to give ICC a shot, I was out of time.
Tuesday, I expect my little crew will be giving our first shot (or at least, the first shot with me there!) at ICC's 10-man raid. I haven't even had a chance to do the 5-man in heroic mode yet. We'll see what happens though, and I'm hopeful we can get through it!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Cue the Final Fantasy "Win!" Music
I had a great night last night, and I'm gonna tell you about it. If you don't want to know, be a grinch and go away.
It all started off with a super powered run through Halls of Lightning for the Heroic Daily. Three pallys and two druids, all overgeared. We churned through it in under 30 minutes. Piece of cake.
Then I moved on to my guild 10-man raid. Let me back up a little before I get into it.
So I made a raid report a couple of weeks ago with the intention of making it a kind of ongoing thing, something I could write about on (at least) a semi-regular basis, probably because failure is not something people like to write about. The trips that followed my last post about it were rife with issues and mired in mediocrity. One night we downed only the Northrend Beasts after wipes on both Onyxia and the Beasts. Another we got through Ony and Lord Jaraxxus, but could only throw ourselves at the faction champions a couple of times before we ran out of time.
So after the last run, I asked if a schedule change would help, and with some responses in the affirmative, we decided to move the next one to a Tuesday night, after the raid reset instead of before. Little did I know how much this would work to our advantage.
Several folks who had been mostly bringing alts were able to bring their mains, and some who weren't able to go on Mondays showed up. We had a whole Epic Adventurers raid for pretty much the first time since three of us decided to start running our own guild raids. Ok, we started out with one former EA member in the raid, but he was replaced after Jaraxxus due to power failure, and he counts anyway.
We also changed the raid order - more than a couple of us need upgrades primarily from the second half of ToC, anymore, so we went with that first instead of Onyxia, with the plan to go get her if and when we churned through Anub.
The raid composition broke down like this (both before and after the character switch; we replaced a feral druid dps with another feral druid dps!):
Tanks (2)
Bear Druid (ME!) and a DK
Heals (3)
2 Holy Paladins and a Priest (Disc I believe, but may be Holy)
DPS (5)
2 Hunters, 1 each Mage, Warrior, and Cat Druid
We one-shotted both the Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus - our crew had been through all of these enough times that all we needed was a little communication amongst the tanks and healers and everybody else filled in perfectly. We had a good showing the first time out against the Faction Champs but couldn't do it, decided to change our strategy a little bit and failed miserably, went back to the first method and powered through.
Against those champions, we were facing the tree druid, the disc priest, the enhancement shaman, the mage, the warlock and the rogue. I stayed in bear form; I am not convinced that I shouldn't have gone cat, or traded out to resto and let one of the healers DPS, but it worked. The DK pestered the shaman the whole fight, our hunters put their interrupting pets on the priest to start, our mage did his best to keep the lock and/or mage polymorphed. Our kill order was druid, priest, rogue, warlock, mage, shaman.
Not sure if that's the best order but it worked for us. The reason we had an issue the first time around was that our priest got rogued 3 times (2 battle resurrections).
We moved on to the Twins. I was a little nervous - the only time I had ever even seen the Twins I was on sub-par hardware that was video lagging to the point that I couldn't do anything about the orbs, and ended up disconnected most of the fight, on top of having a bad connection because I was in a hotel. So I let my co-leader, who has cleared ToC10 several times on non-guild runs, describe the fight.
We wiped once, because I'm a Fail Druid and started before everyone was ready. Really, my OT said "start it up" and I brought them out and ran in, and pallys were still trying to get buffs up, healers were on the wrong side... it was just plain bad. The second try was flawless.
I was extremely excited at this point. We had started late and had barely been going for even an hour and a half and had cleared more than I'd ever really seen in ToC10.
I actually did a reasonable job explaining the Anub fight myself, although my DK reminded me that I'd left out one of the most important things - RUN AWAY from the little adds.
Our first attempt met with failure after a healer went down at the beginning of one of Anub's above-ground phases... the other druid battle rezzed but I mistimed my OS button and went down. It didn't help that I hadn't done a good job of running away and had more than a couple stacks of the debuff from the little adds.
Our second attempt saw my first ever clear of ToC10... The phase 3 damage/survival race was a little rough - we lost 6 of our 10 people and ended with a healer, both tanks, and one dps standing. Pally healers aren't the best bet for that phase, but it worked out in the end. I properly timed my emergency button that run, and we pulled it off. Only a little over two hours on the entire run, and time for Onyxia.
Then we went and beat her down, and even had time at that point to go whack the VoA10 loot pinata. Two hours and 45 minutes, 20 Emblems of Triumph and a few Conquest, a whole pile of loot, and a very satisfying night for all involved.
As always, thanks for reading. I know this isn't the most useful of posts but success is fun to write about....
See you all on the flip side!
It all started off with a super powered run through Halls of Lightning for the Heroic Daily. Three pallys and two druids, all overgeared. We churned through it in under 30 minutes. Piece of cake.
Then I moved on to my guild 10-man raid. Let me back up a little before I get into it.
So I made a raid report a couple of weeks ago with the intention of making it a kind of ongoing thing, something I could write about on (at least) a semi-regular basis, probably because failure is not something people like to write about. The trips that followed my last post about it were rife with issues and mired in mediocrity. One night we downed only the Northrend Beasts after wipes on both Onyxia and the Beasts. Another we got through Ony and Lord Jaraxxus, but could only throw ourselves at the faction champions a couple of times before we ran out of time.
So after the last run, I asked if a schedule change would help, and with some responses in the affirmative, we decided to move the next one to a Tuesday night, after the raid reset instead of before. Little did I know how much this would work to our advantage.
Several folks who had been mostly bringing alts were able to bring their mains, and some who weren't able to go on Mondays showed up. We had a whole Epic Adventurers raid for pretty much the first time since three of us decided to start running our own guild raids. Ok, we started out with one former EA member in the raid, but he was replaced after Jaraxxus due to power failure, and he counts anyway.
We also changed the raid order - more than a couple of us need upgrades primarily from the second half of ToC, anymore, so we went with that first instead of Onyxia, with the plan to go get her if and when we churned through Anub.
The raid composition broke down like this (both before and after the character switch; we replaced a feral druid dps with another feral druid dps!):
Tanks (2)
Bear Druid (ME!) and a DK
Heals (3)
2 Holy Paladins and a Priest (Disc I believe, but may be Holy)
DPS (5)
2 Hunters, 1 each Mage, Warrior, and Cat Druid
We one-shotted both the Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus - our crew had been through all of these enough times that all we needed was a little communication amongst the tanks and healers and everybody else filled in perfectly. We had a good showing the first time out against the Faction Champs but couldn't do it, decided to change our strategy a little bit and failed miserably, went back to the first method and powered through.
Against those champions, we were facing the tree druid, the disc priest, the enhancement shaman, the mage, the warlock and the rogue. I stayed in bear form; I am not convinced that I shouldn't have gone cat, or traded out to resto and let one of the healers DPS, but it worked. The DK pestered the shaman the whole fight, our hunters put their interrupting pets on the priest to start, our mage did his best to keep the lock and/or mage polymorphed. Our kill order was druid, priest, rogue, warlock, mage, shaman.
Not sure if that's the best order but it worked for us. The reason we had an issue the first time around was that our priest got rogued 3 times (2 battle resurrections).
We moved on to the Twins. I was a little nervous - the only time I had ever even seen the Twins I was on sub-par hardware that was video lagging to the point that I couldn't do anything about the orbs, and ended up disconnected most of the fight, on top of having a bad connection because I was in a hotel. So I let my co-leader, who has cleared ToC10 several times on non-guild runs, describe the fight.
We wiped once, because I'm a Fail Druid and started before everyone was ready. Really, my OT said "start it up" and I brought them out and ran in, and pallys were still trying to get buffs up, healers were on the wrong side... it was just plain bad. The second try was flawless.
I was extremely excited at this point. We had started late and had barely been going for even an hour and a half and had cleared more than I'd ever really seen in ToC10.
I actually did a reasonable job explaining the Anub fight myself, although my DK reminded me that I'd left out one of the most important things - RUN AWAY from the little adds.
Our first attempt met with failure after a healer went down at the beginning of one of Anub's above-ground phases... the other druid battle rezzed but I mistimed my OS button and went down. It didn't help that I hadn't done a good job of running away and had more than a couple stacks of the debuff from the little adds.
Our second attempt saw my first ever clear of ToC10... The phase 3 damage/survival race was a little rough - we lost 6 of our 10 people and ended with a healer, both tanks, and one dps standing. Pally healers aren't the best bet for that phase, but it worked out in the end. I properly timed my emergency button that run, and we pulled it off. Only a little over two hours on the entire run, and time for Onyxia.
Then we went and beat her down, and even had time at that point to go whack the VoA10 loot pinata. Two hours and 45 minutes, 20 Emblems of Triumph and a few Conquest, a whole pile of loot, and a very satisfying night for all involved.
As always, thanks for reading. I know this isn't the most useful of posts but success is fun to write about....
See you all on the flip side!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Monday night raid report
I run a guild-hosted raid every other Monday night, 10-man, with the help of a couple of my good friends. We've experimented with a couple of different raid formats and I think we've finally settled on a 10-man version of our guild's 25-man Wednesday night raids. Which is to say, for the moment, Onyxia and Trial of the Crusader, with the loot pinata that is Vault of Archavon if the situation arises properly.
Two weeks ago, we skipped Onyxia because I didn't put that as part of the calendar invite and a few of our folks were saved. Monday night we did it right, although we struggled a bit. Due to the size and nature of my guild, we bring along pretty much whoever we can get, no matter whether they're "properly geared" or not. Last night we had quite a few alts or relatively new 80's along with us, and one wonderful pug healer. One of our healers for most of the night was a druid alt of one of our rogues, as we are perpetually overabundant with DPS and tanks and perpetually short on healing.
As an aside, while as a competitive jerk I would rather we have 10 fully geared mains, I much prefer our guild structure, where folks who are a little behind or haven't had the time to dedicate to getting fully geared with Emblem gear get a chance to go, even if it means we wipe a time or three, and people CAN play their alts if they so desire. It gives folks that only perform one role on the big guild runs or any other runs they do the chance to do something different.
Back to the raid. We had only 2 ranged DPS, a mage that had never been to Onyxia before, and a warlock alt of one of our solid tanks/healers. This makes phase 2 and its craziness all that much harder. The OT for Ony was a DK. We wiped once due to hardware (mouse driver) issues, and once or twice while some of our newer folks (new to level 80 or new role-wise) figured out the intricacies of the fight. One more wipe due to a little bad luck, and then we finally beat her down.
We moved on to ToC and traded out a DPS for a tank, with the OT switching up to take the DPS spot. We brought in a second bear for dual furry tanking. I will admit I was a little nervous as the new bear had a lot less HP than I had expected, but we went with it. After a wipe with Gormok, we got to the jormungar and wiped on them a couple of times. Our alt healer then convinced one of our awesome priests to step in, and on the last attempt of the night we downed the Northrend beasts.
I'm a little out of it this morning, so just a short post and sadly nothing all that interesting to talk about. My one reader will be disappointed, but hey I've got to break down those expectations some day. Thanks for reading!
Two weeks ago, we skipped Onyxia because I didn't put that as part of the calendar invite and a few of our folks were saved. Monday night we did it right, although we struggled a bit. Due to the size and nature of my guild, we bring along pretty much whoever we can get, no matter whether they're "properly geared" or not. Last night we had quite a few alts or relatively new 80's along with us, and one wonderful pug healer. One of our healers for most of the night was a druid alt of one of our rogues, as we are perpetually overabundant with DPS and tanks and perpetually short on healing.
As an aside, while as a competitive jerk I would rather we have 10 fully geared mains, I much prefer our guild structure, where folks who are a little behind or haven't had the time to dedicate to getting fully geared with Emblem gear get a chance to go, even if it means we wipe a time or three, and people CAN play their alts if they so desire. It gives folks that only perform one role on the big guild runs or any other runs they do the chance to do something different.
Back to the raid. We had only 2 ranged DPS, a mage that had never been to Onyxia before, and a warlock alt of one of our solid tanks/healers. This makes phase 2 and its craziness all that much harder. The OT for Ony was a DK. We wiped once due to hardware (mouse driver) issues, and once or twice while some of our newer folks (new to level 80 or new role-wise) figured out the intricacies of the fight. One more wipe due to a little bad luck, and then we finally beat her down.
We moved on to ToC and traded out a DPS for a tank, with the OT switching up to take the DPS spot. We brought in a second bear for dual furry tanking. I will admit I was a little nervous as the new bear had a lot less HP than I had expected, but we went with it. After a wipe with Gormok, we got to the jormungar and wiped on them a couple of times. Our alt healer then convinced one of our awesome priests to step in, and on the last attempt of the night we downed the Northrend beasts.
I'm a little out of it this morning, so just a short post and sadly nothing all that interesting to talk about. My one reader will be disappointed, but hey I've got to break down those expectations some day. Thanks for reading!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Now for the tree part
So I told you Wednesday that I was main spec bear and off spec tree, but that I had never done Onyxia as a tank until last week. Allow me to explain, briefly.
There was a time, back before Blizzard released dual spec, that I was only a feral spec. It's what I leveled in, it's what I wanted to do when I got to raiding, it was just generally the only thing I did. I had no intention of bowing to the will of anybody else for what I played in the game. Then I got to the point where I could be invited to raids and learned a hard lesson.
My guild and especially our raiding crew had, and still has, an overabundance of tanks and a ridiculous shortage of healers. In addition, I was a little slower than a few of our folks at getting to a gear level capable of raiding. As such, the best way to ensure I got invited to raids was to be willing to spend the money before raid time to respec to tree, and spend the money again afterward to spec back. One of our paladins (who prefers to go retribution and DPS) was already doing the same thing. It's a lot easier to cover a little gear shortage on a healer than it is on a tank when doing progression, at least the way our guild runs, and so I started raiding primarily as a tree.
Some of you out there probably already know where this leads. A lot of our guild think of me as a healer only, or a healer first. I'm a tank that happens to heal because if I didn't I wouldn't get to go, dangit. I have found that I enjoy healing given that I get opportunities to bear up sometimes, and I've read a couple of good posts lately on why people heal. I do it because it expands my usefulness and thus the likelyhood I'll be invited to do things. To keep my sanity, sometimes I have to refuse simply because I much prefer to tank, but that's neither really here nore there.
Whilst I would prefer to focus on the bear's view of being a druid, I'll spend a fair bit of time talking about the leafy side of life as well. To whit:
I healed on my guild's weekly run into the 25 man versions of Onyxia and Trial of the Crusader Wednesday night. We've had Onyxia on farm mode since essentially the first night we went in, and last night was no exception. We haven't made any of the achievements yet, but we haven't wiped since that first night.
ToC, on the other hand, tends to give us a few issues.
We've been going at it for awhile now, and have pretty much locked down on the Northrend Beasts as well as Lord Jaraxxus, and last night was no exception as we one-shotted each. The Faction Champions have for quite some time seemed to be our kryptonite.
I've had several friends that play on other servers tell me this is one of the easiest fights. When I say we've had trouble with the tree putting out too much healing, I get told, "The tree doesn't put out enough healing to worry about! If he is, just Banish, Banish, Fear, Fear, Cyclone, Cyclone, Cyclone, and then he dies...." My guild, for the most part, does not PVP, and high-end raid content (with the exception of mind control in the Instructor fight in Naxx) has not required coordinated use of CC in quite some time, especially not on the scale that is needed to make this fight doable.
I know, some of you are saying my guild just needs to "l2p, nubs." Go away.
Before tonight, as a guild, we'd managed to kill 1 or 2 of the Champions a couple of times. Last night, after 3 or 4 wipes, we finally managed to get half of them down. Unfortunately we had lost too many people by that point to be able to keep it up, and wiped again. Then, on our last attempt of the night, we broke through.
Their priest went down, we lost a mage. Their shaman went down, we lost a warlock. We've got CC flying everywhere, 5 druids on the night means cyclones and HoTs going crazy, our raid leader is keeping the warrior busy, our hunters are keeping a broad patch of white in the middle for folks to drag melee across to slow them down, cleanses, purges, dispels, hexes, fears, sheeps, roots, freezes, and just general chaos. The warlock gets a battle rez and suddenly we've got the distinct advantage. The druid falls and it's all downhill from there.
By the end of the fight (it lasted around 15 mins in total) I've dropped tree form and started adding to the dps.
I can't go tonight but my guild is going back in to take our first shots at the Twins.
I can't decide if I'm truly happy or not that Blizzard decided to put a PvP fight in a PvE raid. I'm happy in that it forces each of us to use our class to its full potential, but I'm not in that it is so radically different in the style of play that it has taken a group of relatively seasoned (if somewhat casual) raiders literally over a month to figure out how to get through it. I know this is a little late to be commenting on this as this raid boss has been out for quite awhile, but seeing as I just started this (possibly ill-advised) little experiment in social networking yesterday I'm still interested in getting people's opinions.
On the definite plus side, I picked up a trophy from Icehowl, and will be able to complete my T9 tanking set (three pieces "of Conquest," two "of Triumph") once I gather up the 75 badges to buy the headpiece. Just a ring and trinket or two after that and I can turn my triumph badges to my healing set.
Coming soon: Kae's primer on bear tanking, or working with one, and should you assign healing roles based solely on class or worry about the gear and spec too?
There was a time, back before Blizzard released dual spec, that I was only a feral spec. It's what I leveled in, it's what I wanted to do when I got to raiding, it was just generally the only thing I did. I had no intention of bowing to the will of anybody else for what I played in the game. Then I got to the point where I could be invited to raids and learned a hard lesson.
My guild and especially our raiding crew had, and still has, an overabundance of tanks and a ridiculous shortage of healers. In addition, I was a little slower than a few of our folks at getting to a gear level capable of raiding. As such, the best way to ensure I got invited to raids was to be willing to spend the money before raid time to respec to tree, and spend the money again afterward to spec back. One of our paladins (who prefers to go retribution and DPS) was already doing the same thing. It's a lot easier to cover a little gear shortage on a healer than it is on a tank when doing progression, at least the way our guild runs, and so I started raiding primarily as a tree.
Some of you out there probably already know where this leads. A lot of our guild think of me as a healer only, or a healer first. I'm a tank that happens to heal because if I didn't I wouldn't get to go, dangit. I have found that I enjoy healing given that I get opportunities to bear up sometimes, and I've read a couple of good posts lately on why people heal. I do it because it expands my usefulness and thus the likelyhood I'll be invited to do things. To keep my sanity, sometimes I have to refuse simply because I much prefer to tank, but that's neither really here nore there.
Whilst I would prefer to focus on the bear's view of being a druid, I'll spend a fair bit of time talking about the leafy side of life as well. To whit:
I healed on my guild's weekly run into the 25 man versions of Onyxia and Trial of the Crusader Wednesday night. We've had Onyxia on farm mode since essentially the first night we went in, and last night was no exception. We haven't made any of the achievements yet, but we haven't wiped since that first night.
ToC, on the other hand, tends to give us a few issues.
We've been going at it for awhile now, and have pretty much locked down on the Northrend Beasts as well as Lord Jaraxxus, and last night was no exception as we one-shotted each. The Faction Champions have for quite some time seemed to be our kryptonite.
I've had several friends that play on other servers tell me this is one of the easiest fights. When I say we've had trouble with the tree putting out too much healing, I get told, "The tree doesn't put out enough healing to worry about! If he is, just Banish, Banish, Fear, Fear, Cyclone, Cyclone, Cyclone, and then he dies...." My guild, for the most part, does not PVP, and high-end raid content (with the exception of mind control in the Instructor fight in Naxx) has not required coordinated use of CC in quite some time, especially not on the scale that is needed to make this fight doable.
I know, some of you are saying my guild just needs to "l2p, nubs." Go away.
Before tonight, as a guild, we'd managed to kill 1 or 2 of the Champions a couple of times. Last night, after 3 or 4 wipes, we finally managed to get half of them down. Unfortunately we had lost too many people by that point to be able to keep it up, and wiped again. Then, on our last attempt of the night, we broke through.
Their priest went down, we lost a mage. Their shaman went down, we lost a warlock. We've got CC flying everywhere, 5 druids on the night means cyclones and HoTs going crazy, our raid leader is keeping the warrior busy, our hunters are keeping a broad patch of white in the middle for folks to drag melee across to slow them down, cleanses, purges, dispels, hexes, fears, sheeps, roots, freezes, and just general chaos. The warlock gets a battle rez and suddenly we've got the distinct advantage. The druid falls and it's all downhill from there.
By the end of the fight (it lasted around 15 mins in total) I've dropped tree form and started adding to the dps.
I can't go tonight but my guild is going back in to take our first shots at the Twins.
I can't decide if I'm truly happy or not that Blizzard decided to put a PvP fight in a PvE raid. I'm happy in that it forces each of us to use our class to its full potential, but I'm not in that it is so radically different in the style of play that it has taken a group of relatively seasoned (if somewhat casual) raiders literally over a month to figure out how to get through it. I know this is a little late to be commenting on this as this raid boss has been out for quite awhile, but seeing as I just started this (possibly ill-advised) little experiment in social networking yesterday I'm still interested in getting people's opinions.
On the definite plus side, I picked up a trophy from Icehowl, and will be able to complete my T9 tanking set (three pieces "of Conquest," two "of Triumph") once I gather up the 75 badges to buy the headpiece. Just a ring and trinket or two after that and I can turn my triumph badges to my healing set.
Coming soon: Kae's primer on bear tanking, or working with one, and should you assign healing roles based solely on class or worry about the gear and spec too?
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