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!
Showing posts with label Onyxia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Onyxia. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
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?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
RAWR!... and the bigger they are...
Thus I begin my foray into the blogging world.
Since I don't expect anybody to know who I am, a (very) little about myself before I venture into the real content of my first post. I'm a Systems Engineer at a communications company, I got married earlier this year, and I've been playing WoW since before TBC came out. I didn't get to 70, however, until a month or so before Wrath was released, so most of my end-game experience is colored by that fact. My main is an alliance druid, main specced into bear tanking and offspecced into tree. Enough about me, on to the show!
I had a number of ideas on how to start around here, but on the path of positive thinking, I decided to start with a high note from my past week in the World.
Everybody that's ever pugged in WoW has had at least one experience with a bad group. The leader can't get the right people, the dps keeps going afk, the healer lets the tank die and then says "sorry I was afk/eating/bio/etc." In raids it can often be worse, if pugs come in and don't know the fights, or can't play their class. If you pug, you know how this goes, and just hope that you don't get saved to something before you can escape.
I got an invite to tank a 10-man Onyxia last week from someone I had never met. Apologies to those involved, I can't even remember their names at this point. I happily accept and start looking at the raid composition to see if I might be able to get any of my other guildies that are on invited. That, you see, is where my worry started.
There seemed to be some confusion as to how many healers were there already, and how many we still needed, as well as DPS. By the time I was able to sort it out we've managed to get a full raid invited in - but from what some folks had said, we had only 2 heals. This seems 1 light to me, but I'll let the raid leader do his job - then somebody drops. Another join, and another drop.
By this point I'm groaning on the inside. The raid channel is full of chatter, half of which makes me think I'm the only one around that actually knows anything. I tell myself that it'll be ok, it'll be a rough run but we'll get through it.
I should mention, at some point, that I was being told I'll be the main tank, and while I was confident that I could do it, I had never, at that point, even gone in to Onyxia 10-man, and the 25 man version I had only healed. (Yeah, I know, I said I was main spec tank, I'll address that some other time).
By the time we start in, we've had 3 changes in the last raid spot.
On the first trash pull the raid leader died because somebody wouldn't wait until we could do just one at a time. At this point I'm quite certain we're going to wipe, hardcore.
You know the feeling. It's the same one you get watching horror flicks, when you know something bad is going to happen. You don't always know when, you don't always know how, but you know it's coming, and you can't stop it. It gets even worse as folks try to run past the Warder that's off on the side and ignore it. A couple of folks insist that we do need to kill it, and when a DPS gets a little too close and pulls it I growl at it and hope I have a healer close by. Insert universal expression of exasperation here.
Finally, we get down to Onyxia herself. In what surprises me as a remarkable show of organization, we do set out roles and responsibilities for each phase - I'm taking her in phase 1, in phase 2 the OT (a paladin) will take the whelps and I'll take the larger adds, and when she lands, if I don't have an add I'll take her, if one is still up the OT will take her. The raid leader assigns some DPS roles for phase 2, and off we go.
It was perfect.
Phase 1, I get my furry butt backed up against the far wall. I think the DPS starts going a little early, but it doesn't cause me any issues. What seems like an amazingly few seconds later, she turns and heads south to take off. The whelps spawn and are gathered up by the pally. The AOE starts to burn them down as Ony flies around, and one of the larger adds spawns and comes down the ramp. I pick it up and turn it around.
I really don't realize, at this point, how fast we are going, and I start to get a little worried about how "slow" the dps is going after the add I'm tanking, and the whelps that are still dying around the pally. As my big dude starts to get a little low on life, I'm looking around for where Ony is in case I need to move for a deep breath, as I'm sure it's past time for one, whatever DBM says.
Then Onyxia lands, without ever taking a deep breath. In shock I look for the pally to see if he's moving to pick her up, but can't find him. A couple seconds later my add drops, and I run down the big dragon, berserking through the first fear. I pick her up and get her turned back where she should be, and the DPS goes nuclear. In what seems to me like a remarkably short time from when I first went snout-to-snout with the big girl, she comes crashing down.
My screen spams yellow boxes - More Dots!, She Deep Breaths More, and the achievement for Ony herself, all at once.
To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised.
While I've gotten better, I have occasionally had problems outpacing threat for people with extremely high DPS output. I had no issues, and we had a 5.9k and 5.2k DPS, plus a couple more at 4k+. Hats off to all the folks that were on that raid, despite my misgivings on the lead up, everybody performed to perfection and made a bear happy.
If you've somehow managed to find your way here, I hope you enjoyed my little story. I hope in upcoming posts to do some thoughts on bear tanking, tree healing, life in general, and anything else that happens to strike my fancy. Welcome, and thanks for reading!
Since I don't expect anybody to know who I am, a (very) little about myself before I venture into the real content of my first post. I'm a Systems Engineer at a communications company, I got married earlier this year, and I've been playing WoW since before TBC came out. I didn't get to 70, however, until a month or so before Wrath was released, so most of my end-game experience is colored by that fact. My main is an alliance druid, main specced into bear tanking and offspecced into tree. Enough about me, on to the show!
I had a number of ideas on how to start around here, but on the path of positive thinking, I decided to start with a high note from my past week in the World.
Everybody that's ever pugged in WoW has had at least one experience with a bad group. The leader can't get the right people, the dps keeps going afk, the healer lets the tank die and then says "sorry I was afk/eating/bio/etc." In raids it can often be worse, if pugs come in and don't know the fights, or can't play their class. If you pug, you know how this goes, and just hope that you don't get saved to something before you can escape.
I got an invite to tank a 10-man Onyxia last week from someone I had never met. Apologies to those involved, I can't even remember their names at this point. I happily accept and start looking at the raid composition to see if I might be able to get any of my other guildies that are on invited. That, you see, is where my worry started.
There seemed to be some confusion as to how many healers were there already, and how many we still needed, as well as DPS. By the time I was able to sort it out we've managed to get a full raid invited in - but from what some folks had said, we had only 2 heals. This seems 1 light to me, but I'll let the raid leader do his job - then somebody drops. Another join, and another drop.
By this point I'm groaning on the inside. The raid channel is full of chatter, half of which makes me think I'm the only one around that actually knows anything. I tell myself that it'll be ok, it'll be a rough run but we'll get through it.
I should mention, at some point, that I was being told I'll be the main tank, and while I was confident that I could do it, I had never, at that point, even gone in to Onyxia 10-man, and the 25 man version I had only healed. (Yeah, I know, I said I was main spec tank, I'll address that some other time).
By the time we start in, we've had 3 changes in the last raid spot.
On the first trash pull the raid leader died because somebody wouldn't wait until we could do just one at a time. At this point I'm quite certain we're going to wipe, hardcore.
You know the feeling. It's the same one you get watching horror flicks, when you know something bad is going to happen. You don't always know when, you don't always know how, but you know it's coming, and you can't stop it. It gets even worse as folks try to run past the Warder that's off on the side and ignore it. A couple of folks insist that we do need to kill it, and when a DPS gets a little too close and pulls it I growl at it and hope I have a healer close by. Insert universal expression of exasperation here.
Finally, we get down to Onyxia herself. In what surprises me as a remarkable show of organization, we do set out roles and responsibilities for each phase - I'm taking her in phase 1, in phase 2 the OT (a paladin) will take the whelps and I'll take the larger adds, and when she lands, if I don't have an add I'll take her, if one is still up the OT will take her. The raid leader assigns some DPS roles for phase 2, and off we go.
It was perfect.
Phase 1, I get my furry butt backed up against the far wall. I think the DPS starts going a little early, but it doesn't cause me any issues. What seems like an amazingly few seconds later, she turns and heads south to take off. The whelps spawn and are gathered up by the pally. The AOE starts to burn them down as Ony flies around, and one of the larger adds spawns and comes down the ramp. I pick it up and turn it around.
I really don't realize, at this point, how fast we are going, and I start to get a little worried about how "slow" the dps is going after the add I'm tanking, and the whelps that are still dying around the pally. As my big dude starts to get a little low on life, I'm looking around for where Ony is in case I need to move for a deep breath, as I'm sure it's past time for one, whatever DBM says.
Then Onyxia lands, without ever taking a deep breath. In shock I look for the pally to see if he's moving to pick her up, but can't find him. A couple seconds later my add drops, and I run down the big dragon, berserking through the first fear. I pick her up and get her turned back where she should be, and the DPS goes nuclear. In what seems to me like a remarkably short time from when I first went snout-to-snout with the big girl, she comes crashing down.
My screen spams yellow boxes - More Dots!, She Deep Breaths More, and the achievement for Ony herself, all at once.
To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised.
While I've gotten better, I have occasionally had problems outpacing threat for people with extremely high DPS output. I had no issues, and we had a 5.9k and 5.2k DPS, plus a couple more at 4k+. Hats off to all the folks that were on that raid, despite my misgivings on the lead up, everybody performed to perfection and made a bear happy.
If you've somehow managed to find your way here, I hope you enjoyed my little story. I hope in upcoming posts to do some thoughts on bear tanking, tree healing, life in general, and anything else that happens to strike my fancy. Welcome, and thanks for reading!
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