Mage Powa!!!! Not sure if i'm ranting or not.... 08/28/2013 Raiding update.

    Here we go again.

    I love my raiders, my raid team, and those who work hard to push us through.  I am starting here because I feel it is where I need to start.  Everyone who came to raid this week worked hard, and we got to Council of Elders... where we met an untimely death.

      We had 4 mages this week, and a Shadow Priest, meaning our whole entire Dps group was cloth.  From a DPS standpoint, I have no issue with this.  From a permanent raid team point of view I would like to shift that up.  Simply put, it is not a good thing to have 5 members of the raid rolling on the same gear.  It makes it take longer to gear up, and is frustrating for that poor soul who happens to be the 5th clothie to finally get their pants when they won't drop every week.  So, this is a thing that I want to find a different cure for.

     At this point, their are only 7 set spots on the raid team.  The people guaranteed a spot when they show up are Me, Gwyndolynn, Shaqia, Magilla, Skorpiak, Lotauna, and Easybake.  That leaves 3 spots for me to fill, and I can't fill them all with clothies.  (Ok, I may rant a little on this.  I love people for showing, but we can't run an all cloth raid.)

     That, and I would love to know who I am going to be raiding on.  Whether it be DPS, Tank, or heals, I would love to know which toon to work out first.  But until things are settled, I am stuck swapping every week.  Which is irritating.

      Let's be honest here.  If I have to run with 5 clothies for DPS, I will do it.  However, I would prefer people who want in to get an alt etc.. ready to go.  I am not going to ask Lotauna or Easybake to swap at this point.  It wouldn't be fair to them when they have been working on those characters all Xpack long.  I may look at starting us on flex next Xpack so I can work these people in then paring the team down as needed.  I am unsure yet. Depends on how the cards fall.

      I still would like a Tank or Heals to be recruited.  I am debating for the first time posting on the CTR (Convert to Raid) forums, or the Realm forums.  I have never done this before and I am afraid of the lash back I might get from those who would see the fact that we are extremely casual as a raid team as a bad thing.  I will probably do the CTR forums first, because I know that community is a lot more laid back then the general blizzard forums, and they tend to monitor them pretty well.  That being said when virtual realms are rolled out, we might get an influx of people and benefit from there as well.  We will see what happens.  As much as I want to do normal 10 mans, I would prefer to do the Flex raids and include everybody if that is my option.

       Anyway, I do need to give a shout out for Carixi, raiding with us for the first time in forever.  Also to all the other people who helped out this week whom are not part of our normal raid team, Belevina, Raiinspider, and Amelmi who stepped in Tuesday.  As it goes, on to next week to see what is in store.

     Oh, and keep and eye out for RBGs, we are going to work them out with Mission of Mercy eventually, mwha ha ha.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

     

The Turtle Soup Edition!!! (8/15/2013)

    Before raid yesterday, someone posted as the daily guild message that we would "Dine on turtle soup tonight!" (I suspect Ithuriol) How right they were, but I digress.

    First of all Tuesday's raid was fantastic.  We one shot the first three bosses.  Jin'rokh, Horridon, and The Council of Elder's all went down in less then an hour.  This is important to me, because in order to kill off Throne of Thunder at this point, we need to be killing an average of 6 bosses a night, so this means we are in the time frame we would need to be looking at.

     Anyway, we had a little over an hour to work on Tortos by the time we got to him, and not only did we prove we hadn't regressed on progression, we steadily worked things closer to killing him.  It was apparent by the end of raid, he didn't have long to live.

     Wednesday we went in again.  While we did not one shot Tortos, we did have him dead in under an hour!  Hazzah! Another boss down.  That means we are officially 4/12. We then booked it through the small amount of trash between Tortos and Meagara (Yes, as a matter of fact Blizzard I am being sarcastic here) and got to work on the next boss for about an hour as well.  Once again, we made good progress and I could see next week moving us up to 5 or 6 out of 12.  Not kidding.   I think we really could do it.

     Gratz as always goes to the raid team, Magilla, Creap, Gwyndolynn, Shaqia, Ithuriol, Lotauna, Easybake, Scorpiak, Guiness, and little old me, Lazyeye.  If we had managed this kind of attendance over the last few months, as we have seen in the last few weeks, I have no doubt that we would have finished Throne of Thunder already.  This does kinda segway into my next point.

     5.4 is imminent.  They released the trailer today, (man I am excited to kick some Garrosh Hellscream in the face) and it is awesome.  I am not a fan of the thought of someone in that trailer not being around for the raid. (Spoilers, if you want to know, watch the trailer)  That is the brakes though.

     When 5.4 drops, I plan on pulling us into Siege of Ogrimmar.  We may do one night siege, one night saved progression on Throne of Thunder, I'm not sure yet.  (Throne will be getting a 20% nerf at this time)  But I want to meet the new content head on, and I plan on keeping hitting it, until it starts to break.  I want to cook me some orc!

     This is the plan.  Me, and my shiny new bow (did I mention I got a bow last night?) will lead the way into Ogrimmar, and leave dead members of "the new horde" behind.  Sadly, this means the alliance is going to be wussy, step out of Ogrimmar and leave it to the rest of the Horde after Garrosh is gone, but I digress.  It will be glorious while it lasts.  (So if we just wall Garrosh up, don't kill him, can we stay in Ogrimmar killing Hordies? Just curious)

This weekend, I will give an opinion update.  If you guys want me to discuss anything in particular, let me know.

Lazyeye

Perspectively Motional (Raid update week 8/8/2013)

Yeah, I have no clue what that means as well, but it sounded good.

From my time as a prospector.... on a movie set.

      This week saw some limited progression.  We one shot both Jin'rokh and Horridon, which one shotting Horridon the week after we started on him is a big deal to me.  That means we have the fight figured out for the moment.  Council of Elders on the other hand, gave us more then a little trouble and we spent most of our evening there, until we re-strategized and took them down with most of the night gone.  It was comforting after that to see we hadn't lost all our pow on Tortos, while we didn't get him down in the two pulls we had, we hadn't lost all the progress we had made on him last week.

       

     Sadly this week Khallon bid out raid team goodbye and has moved over to Bridgeburners.  When they aren't running we will have access to his DK Carder if we need him, but for now he has moved on.  We wish him the best over there, and the door is always open should he choose to come back.

      Moldievenom also had a good return this week after a few weeks of no Wow.  This is limited as he starts school in a few weeks and will be gone after that.  Which means, my raid team is as follows.

Me, (Right now Lazyeye the Hunter)

Magilla, (Solid rock and Tank extraordinaire)

Creap, (Tank whom sometimes cross dresses as a 'lock)

Gwyndolynn (Guild leader and doo-dad heals)

Ithuriol, (Never knows if he's heals or deeps, but puts up with us anyway)

Scorpiack, (Now with 100% pure lightening)

Shaqia, (He only heals dwarves, or sometime Tauren)

Lotauna, (The requisite gnome for an alliance raid team)

Easybake, (Yeah, she tops dps charts while sleeping)

Unknown, (This spot is where Moldie or someone stepping in is/has been taking up.)

      I may start looking to fill that last position with someone who can stick with us a little more permanent.  We are starting to make good progression, and with a solid team I think we will start to fly forward.  This last position I would love to be a Agility Leather wearer for loot distribution purposes. (Druid/Monk/Rogue) I will probably start poking in guild first for this person, and then if we don't get it filled, I will start looking elsewhere.  Obviously if we end up with someone who isn't a Agility leather wearer, I'm good with that too.

Yes, he did a new version of this song.

      That is our status for this week.  We march on and forth to victory, and will triumph.  Despite a little bit of a lack of new boss kills this week, I feel we are moving forward,

Lag.

Absent in reality, but not heart (Raid update 7/30/2013)

     I am starting this early, as I will not be in raid tonight.  I am hoping it kicks off well, and I have full confidence in Gwyndolynn and Magilla to keep the ball running.  It may happen next week too as I have a niece coming in from out of town, and will be doing a family dinner that night with the in-laws, and will probably stay and visit afterwards.   Real life > Wow, and we don't get to see this niece all that often.

     Part of the reason is the fact I want to show off my new hunter helm.  Bridgeburners let me run with them last night, and I scored my tier helm off of Twin Consorts.  More importantly I got to see the fights on 10 man from Durumu to Lei Shen.  There were only two fights that I spent the last half floor tanking as well, which made me happy.  (Those fights being Durumu and Lei Shen) I didn't quite crack the DPS that everyone else was pulling, but I don't feel I was too much of a strain on their raid team as well.  Big ups to them though for being gracious enough to invite me along.  I even cleared my transmog so I could look all lizardy and stuff.  Yes, I am arguing for lizardy being an actual word.

      I will be back for Wednesday's raid though, and depending on how things go tonight, I put up a tentative raid for Thursday night, so if things do not happen Tuesday we will still have a chance to get two nights in.  If we do well enough, I may see if people want to raid all three, but that depends on interest.  A lot of us due to jobs/kids/etc... get overwhelmed if we do extra raid nights.  That's not to say it will never happen.

      Alright, Tuesday night rocked without me.  Due to a couple of absences the team pulled in someone from trade chat, and big ups to Izaziss from Crimson Shadows for coming in and helping out.  With his help the raid team downed Horridon so that makes a big win.  I managed to sneak into vent after I got off work and listed to the last bit of raid.

        Then came Thursday night... coming off a fresh win I rejoined the team to go fight the Council of Elders.  At first, this fight summarily destroyed us quickly.  We walked in and died very quickly.  Then our raid team did what they did best.  We paid attention.  Each pull we would take note, people would give suggestions, and we would adjust our strategy to these observations.  We worked hard and worked together, and end of story,

Council of Elders Down!

         So big cheers for Creap, Magilla, Gwyndolynn, Ithuriol, Gwyndolynn, Shaqia, Easybake, Lotauna, Carder (Wednesday's raid), Scorpiack, Armmond (Tuesday's raid) and Lazyeye. (Me)  Yes, I'm egotistical enough to give myself props, I admit it.

        That is three of twelve in Throne of Thunder now.   I did keep the extra raid open for tonight, and if enough people show we will fight Tortos a few times as well.  I would love to take down that villain in a half shell... ok, he's freaking all shell and the few pulls we got in last night took us down quickly.  However since that is how council started I'm looking forward to us taking him down.  We are moving forward, and will be doing some happy damage from here on out.

         I do want to give a shout out to Amelmi for switching to his DK Creap for now.  As one of our tanks is quitting the game soon for Final Fantasy when it re-releases, he is swapping to the second tanking position for now, and doing a darn fine job of working with Magilla.  Also a shout out to Ithuriol who is back as an officer, and hopefully as soon as things settle, I can convince to start working on that second raid team again.  Maybe... I want the first raid team secure first.  Mwha ha ha.

         If we raid tonight, I will do another post to address it.  I just wanted to make sure I shot this out with the same frequency of my other posts.

Lazyeye (I'm going back to one sig for now)