Haven't seen this in forever.... (Raid update week of 11/09/2014)

    Yes, there we are... after years I now have a queue time to log in.  Kinda hurts a little.

     This week was rough.  Tuesday I spent 2 and 1/2 hours pugging trying to work up a save close to Garrosh so we could try and get some folks another shot at a leveling boa for their alts etc...  I managed to get to Nazgrim (Lame) Pug groups tend to stop for 10 minutes between bosses on average I'm learning and part of me died inside.  However, we picked up another save from someone in our raid and started a bit further at Spoils.  We had a rough night of it however, wiping on Thok a few times etc.. and just barely managed to get to Hellscream's door.  We decided to hit him Wednesday but the raid leader (me) had a judgement in error.

     I let the person who had the save swap toons after the first boss went down.  This meant if We had used my save we would have started on Immersius, and would have to fight all the way through Malkorak to get a shot at Garrosh.  On the other side the raider who swapped had swapped after spoils so we would have started on Thok, and had to fight through that again.  We opted to do Heroic ToES instead.  Sadly as we could only take ten at a time we decided to go in two groups.  Second group didn't make it far in before we ran out of time, and I'm hoping in a week or two to give them a shot at their "The Fearless" title.  Why? Because the guild is Fear Itself so it fits greatly.

     Now I would love to tell you the expansion launched yesterday, life was beautiful and everyone was happy.  I can't.  The launch was horrible, filled with latency issues, inability to log in, and wait times.  It made me want to punch something, to swear at Blizzard, to gnash my teeth in frustration, but really, Blizzard wasn't to blame.

     They were attacked by DDoS attacks on a major scale.  Everything we experienced was because a bunch of A-hole hackers decided to have some fun and ruin other peoples experience.  You can argue that some of the blame lies at Blizzards door for not anticipating something like this happening with enough preparations, but at the end of the day, it's the fault of those who illegally decided to flood the servers with false attempts to log in and ruin your day.

      If you want to real a little more (http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/11/14/warlords-of-draenors-launch-failure-and-where-responsibility-li/#continued) Adam Holisky at Wow Insider had this article on it.  But in short, we were on the receiving end of a bunch of douches who wanted to have some fun at others expenses.

     Now as I write this I'm hoping the servers come up soon enough for me to get a couple of quests in before work.  Probably won't, but I can hope.  If not I will have this evening to play.  I am sincerely hoping this unscheduled maintenance this morning weeds out most of the issues we are having.

     Then we can all have fun exploring a beautiful new Draenor.
Lag/Lazyeye

Blizzcon 2014. It's on.

Really not much Wow to talk about.

      Are you surprised? Well you shouldn't be.  With a week left before the next Xpack launches I doubt that blizzard had much to say.  I mean there were a couple of live blogs, I read through them.  Not much revealed there we haven't seen before.  As far as Blizzcon's go this one was kind of Wow light and for once I am glad I am not in a position to go.  As much as I love Blizzard, I would want to go to a Blizzcon where my favorite game was the focus.

      Not that there wasn't some focus.  There was a Warcraft movie panel with some cool art.  Depending on what you want to do, you can got to fightforthehorde.com or fightforthealliance.com and get signed up for news on the upcoming movie.  So far they sent some artwork for tablets, facebook, and/or computers.  I imagine as things move on they will have more stuff to promote what they are doing.

     The question then comes, what does this mean for the announcement of the next Wow expansion.  Traditionally this happens during Blizzcon, and Blizzcon, if it happens wont' be until another year from now.  Traditionally.  Does this mean we will be looking at two years of Warlords of Draenor?
Or the expansion being dropped within a couple months of being announced?

     The second is a thought I don't like.  Since I normally have to budget in two expansions, one for me and one for my wife, I like having some time to figure when to buy in.   I would rather have two years of Draenor, and have them spread the content out a little more efficiently.  If they had waited an extra month, month and a half for each major patch of Mists we wouldn't feel like we were in the middle of a downtime at this point.  (Not that I can say much since we only killed Garrosh a couple weeks ago.)  Dragon Soul was nicer to us as we had Deathwing on Farm for a couple months before Mists dropped.

      In my opinion if we are going to see the next expansion in a year Blizzard will have to make the announcement in July or August. at the latest.  The timing on this would have to be critical since if they make it too early, we are pushing through this expansion looking at what comes next and that doesn't feel good.  Too late and people are scrambling to get the resources to buy the new expansion if you have to budget like most of us.

     The other danger, and I can't remember where I read it, is the thought that if Blizzard cuts down the expansions to two raid tiers instead of the traditional three, topped with the price increase, people will start to complain they are getting less for paying more money.  I think after ten years of no price increase on the monthly subscription for us Americans, that ten dollars is not much to complain about.  I do think, looking at the fact that the price has increased elsewhere that eventually we will see our monthly subscriptions go up.  Not by much, but enough to drive some people off of the game.  Let's be honest.  If they raised the monthly subscription by one cent, people would yell foul and jump ship.
   
     There were some awesome things though, Overwatch looks cool.  I think this won't be the last IP we see Blizzard introduce in the next couple of years.  The best way for them to grow their business at this point I think is sideways into other area's they normally haven't touched.  And they are doing it.  Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone was only the beginning.  Overwatch won't be the last.  I expect to see a lot of cool new things coming from Blizzard.

That's it for now, see you in game.
Lag/Lazyeye

The next Cataclysmic event! 6.0.2! (Raid update week of 10/12/2014)

And now we are in a whole new world....

We will never look like this again!

     Sunday, yes this one starts with Sunday raid night.  Sunday can't say much really.  A few of the main raid team couldn't make it because it wasn't a normal raid night, but we did manage to work on Garrosh for a couple of hours.  We got to phase 2 a couple of times, but didn't really push him as far as we had previously.  We will have to keep working....

      Tuesday was patch 6.0 day.  Everything changed.  We still went in and raided even with a lot of mods not working and everyone in the midst of relearning their classes.  I will say right now I didn't really feel the item squish. that much.  Then numbers popping up of course were lower, but the bosses didn't seem to be going down any slower then normal and we managed to work our way past Galakras for the night.  We only really wiped once, and that was on Galakras because the smash animation at the top of the tower had been updated and was harder to see.  Then some tank ran up the other tower without his healer.  How embarrassing.  For myself.

       Wednesday we picked up where we had finished.  We managed to work our way through a bit more and found our way all the way through Spoils of Pandaria.  Once again everything was pretty much a one shot (Save Malkorak who took us two shots) and we kept moving forward pretty well.  I am of course saving our progress so we are now going to start on Thok next week.  There is no reason we shouldn't get to Garrosh again and have the raid saved to him by the end of next Tuesday at this point.

        So far nothing in 6.0 has surprised me.  I am missing a few buttons, but I can live with that.  I played through the pre-expansion quests, which were better then the Theromore scenario, but still pretty disappointing when you match them up against the pre-expansion events for Wrath and Cataclysm.  I know the bigger the pre-patch stuff the less work is going into the actual expansion, but I still like a nice big meaty lead in.  This just felt like, "Hey, do a handful of quests and smack some orcs.  O.k, good, done, have a pet."  I would have loved to have had to fly across Azeroth hunting down Iron Horde scouts or have to fight against the Blackrock to keep them from making a treaty with this "Iron Horde."  It all feels very small and contained to me, and that is a little sad.

        The one thing that has been wonderful has been all the people I have seen coming back with the new content.  We have seen Khallon, Orheim, Kedec, Sylvanara, and several others who have re-appeared in time for the patch.  I have heard of a few more who are thinking about coming back as well.  Other players have re-appeared in guild but haven't blown stuff up with us again like Deathsprite and Easybake.  I'm very happy to see the returning faces.

Well, that is this week and my quick impression of the patch.  What has your experiences been?  Are you enjoying the changes? How do you like the new character models? (I love them btw)

Lag/Lazyeye.

Another path. (Raid update, week of 10/05/2014)

We are branching into different directions.

      Tuesday we had some issues to start with.  I was tanking, and while I do OK I haven't tanked enough consistently to be amazing at this point.  Scorpy was on his tank as well since both folks who had been tanking weren't able to make raid.  Once again, we found ourselves getting stomped out by Blackfuse.  It wasn't any one thing either.  Scorpy was learning the fight from the tanking side, we had a new belt person because he wasn't there to do belts, and a couple of folks we hadn't played with for a bit.  The new dichotomy  of the make up was what did us in as well as the learning points.  We finally called the raid about twenty minutes early and gave up for the evening.

       Wednesday was a little better.  While it took us a few minutes to get the raid off the ground, we managed to kill Blackfuse in a handful of pulls and one shot Paragons.  We managed a couple of attempts to punch Garrosh in the face, but at the end of the day ended with him still standing.  Hope is not lost however.

       Sunday night we have an extra raid posted this week.  Now, I'm not sure this raid will even happen since a lot of folks have a hard time coming when the raids aren't scheduled, but we are going to try to get one last shot in before 6.0 drops and changes everything.

      Speaking of change, there is one more change we have thrown into the works.

      There is a new guild kicking around the Hellscream server! "Fear Itself!" That's right.  Since Hellscream is connected to Zangarmarsh I decided to start a new chapter over there for folks who want to play around on Horde.  Fear Itself was not taken as a guild name, so essentially we have an Alliance Fear Itself, and a Horde Fear Itself all on the same server.  (leading to my ability to take such screen shots as the one above)

     Now, for the record right now this new guild is just for hanging out, maybe leveling with some friends you already know, and experience the other half of content.  I am not at this point planning on leading any raids over there as I just simply don't have the time.  If someone when the guild is more established wants to do so I will give them my blessing and support, but I don't push for a second raid team anymore.  It has never worked in the past and it's not worth the effort on my part at this time.

      Also, as far as raiding In WoD, I plan on starting about a month after the expansion drops give or take a little.  This will put us right in the middle of December, so it might not happen until Januaryish depending on schedules.  That being said, I want to hop in the saddle and be moving before patch 6.1 comes out and brings us more big raidy stuff.  With the way Blizzard released content in Mists, I'm afraid if we wait too long we will be way behind the curve.

That is the update for this week,

Lag/Lazyeye

So.... Close.... and some upcoming changes. (Raid update week of 09/29/2014)

We are hitting up against the dead line, but we are so bloody close!

         Tuesday was another smooth start.  We didn't one shot Blackfuse, but we downed him on the second go around.  Paragons went down very quickly and we managed to get some time on Garrosh. It was only a couple of pulls and he ate our tanks (one of which was me) alive but we managed to punch him a couple of times.

         Wednesday we had our dedicated Garrosh day.  It took us a few minutes to get started but once we were rolling we made consistent progress.  We managed to get to the point where we were burning through phase one quickly and were pushing through phase two.  We still have a little work to go but I don't think we are far from getting to phase three a few times.  Next week... well we will see.

        With next week we are going to be short a couple of people.  I still want to push and see if we can get the group to work on these fights but depending on who shows it might be rough.  With Blizzard announcing that the PVP season is ending in a couple weeks (most likely on the 14th of October) that is likely patch day for 6.0.  That means, yes I was wrong about when it was going to drop. I can own that.  But it also means that next week will be our last chance to work on Garrosh pre-patch.

          When the patch drops we aren't sure what will happen.  Honestly every time a patch before an expansion has dropped before we have had a small boost to the power of our characters etc... so I'm not too worried.  There is the chance however that we may go into Siege and find out that between the item squish and ability pruning we just aren't performing as well.  Not because the stat squish is a nerf, but because we are not used to our rotations, or translating the damage we are putting out into levels we understand.  Meaning, if I was pulling about 250k dps and now I'm pulling 2k.  How does that translate? Am I doing better or worse?  Honestly until I have seen how others are performing I won't be able to tell.  Neither will anyone else.

          I am also debating other things.  One of the guilds I run with on the side has changed.  When I joined it, it was family friendly clean chat etc...  It still claims to be those things in the guild tab but running with them eventually (I am only occasionally over there) I was shocked to find the environment is now more adult suited from language to subject matter.  This wouldn't bother me as much if I was expecting it, but as I wasn't it was more then a little disconcerting.  I am probably going to sit on the decision for now, but next expansion I may be looking for a new home for a couple of Hordies.  Heck, I may even just start a "Fear Itself" Guild on the Horde side of Zangarmarsh/Hellscream for folks to play in when they are feeling a little Hordie.

         If someone from that guild reads this, understand.  I am not calling you guys out, or being disparaging in anyway.  Guilds and groups over time change.  It is inevitable.  The guild is just not feeling like a fit for me anymore, and that means it might be time to move on.  If I do so I wish you all the best luck in the world, and hope everything continues to work out well for you.

         Well, time to gird up and get ready for work.  See ya'll on next week.

Lag/Lazyeye.  (dropping my priest form the signature since he's just collecting dust now)

Quicker, Faster, Stronger. (Raid Update 9/22/2014)

So, we are getting there

     Tuesday was fantastic.  We managed to one shot Blackfuse for the first time, and then went on to one shot Paragons.  It was a great feeling and I can't complain at all.  We managed to get to Garrosh, but someone's computer blew so we ended up 9 man pulling him a few times just to get a feel for the beginning of the fight.

     Wednesday we spent the whole day on Garrosh.  We were missing one main raider due to a family emergency, and our prayers are with him and his family.  We did manage to get some good progress and things were starting to come together, then near the end focus was gone and we could feel it.  I went ahead and called things a few minutes early and told people to run LFR and to study the video for the fight again before next week.  I want to get him down.

    Now, we are at the door of 6.0.  I am betting on it dropping this Tuesday, though every one else whom I've talked to thinks it will be a week later then that.  Either way time to get things wrapped up is quickly evaporating, and this brings me to a complaint I am starting to have about the next expansion.

     Here is the thing that really is bothering me.  Warlords of Draenor is rumored to be an expansion with only two raid tiers.  That means not only is the expansion ten bucks more this time rounds, but we are getting one less tier of raids then we traditionally have.  I understand the desire to get more content out quicker and that the goal is to have an expansion yearly, but this seems a little small fry to me.

    Now, I understand this might not mean less content overall.  Class systems are being overhauled, we get a whole new world/continent to explore.  There will be ten levels of quests, and apparently each zone will have new content once you hit 100 to explore.   The raid system is revised and updated really for the first time since Burning Crusade.  (Yes flex was added the last patch of Panderia, but now we are seeing the fruits of that labor.)  There is the new space savers, (Toy box etc..,) and I'm sure lots of other things that I can't remember to post here.  So, saying two raid tiers is less is very subjective.

     Of course you have to balance that out against the Cataclysm backlash.  A lot of effort was put into revamping the 1-60 experience and because of it the end leveling experience felt short and was mostly put together out of existing resources.  I enjoyed  leveling through this, but a lot of people where very unhappy with it.  Let's be realistic though, no matter what Blizzard does there will be backlash.  They can't make any decision without someone complaining.  I'm convinced that if they gave one million dollars to feed the homeless of California, they would have people complaining the money should have been donated elsewhere.  But hey that's people.

    How do you all feel about it?  Does ten levels of leveling trump that 3rd raid tier, or do you think they should stick with the three tier model for the expansion.  Personally I am happy with an expansion about every other year, or year in a half as long as we are getting some sort of content and attention.  But what I think doesn't matter at the end of the day.  What is your opinion?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

As the World Falls Down.... (raid update week of 09/07/2014)

Been a crazy week.

      Tuesday was filled with a little disappointment and irritation on my part.  We marched into Flex hoping to start on Paragons to find out that Flex runs can not be saved at this point.  (Why Blizzard, why?)  So it was back to our old nemesis Blackfuse.  We did manage to kill the little green B........ again so not all was lost.  By the time we downed him though it was too late to go on to Paragons.  The best part?  We will have to down him next week too.  I am so not happy with this Blizzard....

       Wednesday we didn't raid.  Once again not enough folks showed up so we ended up running retro stuffs.  Alas, no Ashes of Alar, or Onyxia's mount decided to drop but it was fun anyway.  Once again if we don't have things drop I want to do something as a group, and retro raids seem where it's at right now.

       At this point I am resigned to two things watching the trends.  One, we will not be doing any real raiding on Thursday until Warlords drops.  This is the third or fourth week in a row and the Masses have spoken.  People don't care to show up on the second raid day at this point, so we have one night to push things.  Two, because of point one, we will not be likely to get Garrosh down before 6.0 drops.  After that point when the raid system is updated I imagine that we will be able to save our progress etc... but with only one night a week and the fact 6.0 has hit test realms, I don't think that the patch is more then two weeks out.  Most of the abilities and changes in the patch were tested out on Beta, so I can't imagine it will need much time on the PTR.

      I won't lie, I'm a little disappointed.  I felt after last week and this week, (Two Blackfuse kills back to back make me very happy don't get me wrong) we might suddenly have a chance to get Gary Hellscream down before 6.0 dropped.  Now, unless we get Blackfuse and Paragons down the first night next week, (which is possible) and then have people show up on Thursday to kill Garrosh I think there isn't much chance.  Not that I don't have some faith in our raiders.  But my DBM was counting about 68+ wipes on Blackfuse.  Paragons I don't think will be as hard for us, but Garrosh.  I don't think he's going down easy and I don't think from what I've seen historically much of the raid team will pre-watch study the fight.  Sucks but there it is.  I would love to be pleasantly surprised otherwise.

     This brings us up to WoD.  We are a month and a half away from the next expansion essentially.  (OK, two months, so sue me) and I am not sure how things are going to look when we start raiding again.  I want to start leveling my hunter first, as I am still enjoying using him as my main, but I have a feeling I will need to level a tank right off the bat.  So Lag it will probably be.  Hopefully I can get both characters leveled and ready to raid in a time frame that gives me the option for either with in the first little bit of raiding.  We will see what happens though.

So, that is our week in a nutshell, what is your week looking like?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

We are back! (raid update week of 9/1/2014)

We downed Blackfuse finally.

      Tuesday, we marched in and took down Blackfuse in a little over an hour.  I am very happy because while this isn't the first time we have beat him, it's the first time we have done so without a couple of extra heavy hitters.  Now I know Flex compensates for extra players, but there is a difference between bringing in someone who does about 150k dps and a lock (al la Amelmi) who has topped the chart at 350k plus.  The fact is everyone there where members that have normally been raiding with us.  So when we downed Blackfuse we can say we did it under our own steam.  That is a great feeling.

     Wednesday once again was defeated by the attendance boss.  We ended up destroying Tempest keep and Black Temple for fun instead.  I'm not going to go over attendance, my feelings on this etc.. again.  I have beat that particular horse into the group and I'm tired of rehashing it.  I'm sure I'll discuss it again, but for now I'm resting that demon.

     I am holding this save for now.  We have another month, month and a half before 6.0 drops if Blizzard holds to it's normal schedule.  I honestly think we will see it the last week of September, while Magilla was betting on the first week of October.  I think if they are doing an in game event that any later then mid-October is going to be to late to give us any real time with the introduction to the new content.  I am hoping for another pre-Wrath or pre-Cata type event.  I still maintain it was a mistake to not do any more then a scenerio to open up Pandaria with.  I think that the opening events to different expansions actually gives the players an attachment to the new happenings.  How cool was the Zombie invasion before Wrath? Love or hate it people still remember that event for the city invasions, and the ability to jump around and defend different areas from the scourge invasion.

      The lead into Cataclysm was good as well.  While it didn't have the resonance of the zombie invasion, it was cool to go infiltrate the cult of the damned and work your way into the story before the world got shattered and Deathwing rose.  While that expansion had it's issues, the story at least made you feel involved with everything that was happening.

      If we keep playing we have several more expansions ahead of us.  Blizzard had already stated they are working on the expansion that comes after Warlords of Draenor, and have up to five more after that in the works.  So, for all those who think Wow is dying, be assured, there is a plan.  Do I know if I'll be playing several expansions from now?  No, I don't.  In another ten years my youngest will be nineteen.  I am fairly certain my life will be looking very different at that point in many wonderful ways.  I won't be sad if I'm still a resident of Azeroth in my spare time, but if I'm not longer there that is just the way time works.

     Wow, I walked off into a tangent.

      Anyway, next week we will start on Paragons.  I feel we have a good chance of downing them before the night is through.  Then onto Garrosh.  We will try and plant an axe into the face of good old Gary Hellscream.  (Well, an arrow in my place)  If things work out correctly we may have a chance of beating him before 6.0 drops.  At this point I wasn't expecting to get him down this expansion.  I am happy to have some of that hope back.

NSFW on this video.

      So folks, sharpen your swords, shine your armor.  Make sure your mana is full and your arrows fly true.  For next week we move on, and our foe to go down, is Paragon.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

And it's announced to be announced for Warlords of Draenor! (Raid update for the week of 7/27/2014)

Well, it was going to be a boring week....

      This week we started wing one again.  (I am having a love hate relationship with this wing.  I want to be done with it, at the same time some of our most fun raids as a group have happened here recently.)
We had a few new players to gear, so I stayed on Lazyeye and we blew the place up.  Well, until Sha and then we couldn't get a couple of bugs worked out and he blew us up.  But that was ok.

      Wednesday night we one shot Sha in the face and moved all the way through wing 2.  We have a very smooth run, even one shotting Shamans again.  (Me and Magilla I think have worked out a great system up top for the second boss as we use the three tank method)  Nazgrim took a couple of tries, but it was a good night for all.

       I am still stuck in the conundrum of whether or not we should just stick to the first couple of wings and get some newbies more geared, or keep pushing the last two wings every other week.  I know how it feels to run with a group that is not as organized or doing as well as your normal group is.  It can be frustrating and I know we have lost a couple of raiders over this.  I do think back to the fact that the original thought to our raiding was, that we were going to have fun.  We are accomplishing this a lot of the time when we are running the beginning content.

     This week though we have received the amazing announcement of and announcement.  That is right.  On August 14th, 9:30 am pst we get an announcement of the street date for Warlords of Draenor.  The almighty announcement of the announcement has spoken.  They could have just done an announcement of the date and released the cinematic for the new expansion, but it is so much more powerful when you announce your announcement before hand so people can gather and be announced too from your announcement.

      If you can't tell, I am rolling my eyes at this announcement of an announcement which is pretty much whipped up to give us some news.  Not just any news, but news that we are getting news in the form of and announcement of an announcement.  /eye roll.

     I love Blizzard.  They make great games and I like if not love most of them.  When I see something like this that is just an excuse to garnish some publicity it kinda rubs me the wrong way.  I think they would have gotten just as much response doing a normal release of the trailer and the date on the same day and flooding media sites with it.

    On the bright side this re-enforces my belief that the expansion is coming out in September or October.  Normally they have announced the new expansion's release date with in a couple months of the drop date.  I predict we are getting 6.0 at the end of August, and that the game itself will launch the last week of September.  Let's see how close I come.

Well, that is it for this week.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Endings to Beginnings

This week was a short raid week.

      Tuesday we didn't raid because I was celebrating 14 wonderful years with my wife.

       Wednesday was pretty good.  We had some new blood so we went back and just nuked stuff from wing 1 to half way through wing 2.  We downed Iron Juggs and called it a night.  While we didn't really push any boundaries or progression,  we did have fun and it was a good feeling raid.  We also pulled in two new toons to start gearing and working towards crazy DPS status.

       I really think we are getting closer to the point where WoD drops.  If it is a September/October drop like I have predicted, that means 6.0 will be in all likelyhood dropping in August/September.  That means, we could be a little over a month away from having the first major patch walking into the expansion.

      The beta itself feels pretty good.  Yes, there are still plenty of bugs and glitches that are happening, but for the most part it has looked good.  There are things they have added that I enjoy, like the outline of whatever you are targeted on glowing to all the cameos from people we knew in BC.  (Seeing Akama as a proper Draenei is weird)

      The class changes are taking some getting used to as well.  Playing a hunter without leading with serpent sting, or having to keep Slice and Dice up on a rogue is strange.  I understand why they took these buttons out, but it feels like something is missing in my rotations.  We will have to see how it all turns out.

       It's been a long week with work etc.. this week.  So I am keeping it short.  Oh, one of my favorite things about the Beta thought, is captions like, Amazing in game event here....

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty.

Shaky ground.

Sometimes, things go well and I still worry.

     Tuesday night this week we started on Wing 3.  Though we wiped on Spoils once, and Thok a couple of times we got all the way through and to finish the wing.  What this doesn't say in that sentence is we felt like a cohesive group and things felt smooth as we worked through the wing.  Spirits were good and Everyone seemed to be doing their job just fine.  (My favorite part was the second pull on Spoils where Shaqia and Scorpiack both accidentally dropped on the wrong sides and it balanced things perfectly to get the boss down.)

     Wednesday was not a great night.  Blackfuse is still killing us and it's still from stupid little mistakes.  I had the opportunity to tank this fight for the first time on Lag and it was interesting to me to see how it worked from that perspective.  Believe it or not, this is the first time I've actually wanted Blizzard to leave fire on the floor.  I had a couple of moments where I was tanking the add in fire, then the fire would fade, then the next line of fire would fade as I pulled the add over as well.   We didn't get the boss down.  But I feel once again we are closer.  Shojji now had the conveyor belts down, and when Scorpy got there the belts went smooth.  We just need to work on staying alive down below long enough to punch through.

       Despite this, I feel the group is smoothing out again.  We are getting to another point where we are going to start making progression soon as things are smoothing out.  My worry is that this means we are going to lose a person or two soon as this seems to be the pattern we have been fighting.  Group gets going smooth and starts moving forward, someone leaves to go to another team or leave wow until the next expansion.  My pure hope is that next Xpack we manage to get a team of 15 people or so and maintain it so if someone leaves we don't have to worry about it when a person or two leaves.

       I am looking forward to previewing the raids a little in the beta as well if I get to that point.  As I play mainly alliance, I am mainly working horde on the Beta so as not to ruin my experience on leveling later.  I have not had a lot of time to work there this week, but am hoping to get back in this next week.  I know beta is a lot different from what gets dropped later, but this may help I hope.

      There are things I want to discuss about the Beta at length, but right now seems a bit premature.  It's strange playing a Rogue who doesn't have to keep up slice and dice.  Hunters feel weird not opening with serpent sting.  There are other things like that that seem just different.  The content itself so far is pretty good.  The best part, wait for it,

     We are actually getting some Draenei lore.  Yes, it's coming.. holy crap we are getting some.

Lazyeye.

     

Carry on, carry on!

A lot of things are coming up again.

     Tuesday we had a Flex wing 3 run.  We managed to down Malkorak but didn't get any further.  We kept getting shredded by treasures of Pandaria.  We have lost a couple more players so balancing the group was a bit trickier, and by the end it proved to be just to hard for us to push through.

     Wednesday we went ahead and took a couple whacks at Blackfuse.  The trash almost did us in and he walked all over us.  After a few tries we decided to hop back to wing 2 and took down Galakras just so a few people could have a chance at loot.  Galakras himself was a bigger challenge then normal, because once again we are feeling the absence of those who left us, that used to do a couple jobs like the towers that had to be covered by new folks.

      The problems we are facing right now are the result of 2 things.

      1.  We are playing with several individuals.  Schedules change, needs change, the way we play the game changes.  This leads to people leaving or going elsewhere or looking elsewhere for new challenges.  We have lost more then a few people because we are a laid back group who takes their time to work through content instead of yelling/pushing/being extreme.

      2.  We are in the end of expansion slump.  If your like me this is the time it's hardest to log in and play sometimes.  We have been playing the same content since December, and it feels there is nothing new to see.  This is the period I spend more time on other realms and leveling alts.  It feels extremely harsh this time because Blizzard managed to push out content so quickly in Mists of Pandaria.  In truth we are looking at about the same about of time between final patch and the the new expansion as we always have.  It's just falling because that new content every 3-4 month push they managed that is making it so painful.

      Part of raiding is rebuilding and relearning.  It wouldn't  hit us as bad if we were one of the teams who goes hardcore and has the content chewed up in a month or two, but with the way we raid it means we spend a lot longer on the content, so we have a lot longer to lose and have change happen on the team.  This has hit us particularly hard this time around and it feels like every time we have gained traction the dynamic has been shaken up and we are relearning how to balance with each other.

     I will tell you the one thing that drives crazy is when we get on a run, are downing new bosses every other week and people leave so they can see the content quicker.  I have never understood the desire to jump in with a new group when you are already making progress.  I will admit I have a dark chuckle with myself when these people leave and a two months later the new guild/raid team implode and those folks who are left in the dust are once again looking for a new home.  Some of them come back to us... most keep wandering and I hope they all eventually find a new home that suits them.  When someone leaves I do sincerely with them good luck, I just am not surprised when they don't find it.

    So we trudge on... This next week we will be starting Wing 1 again to once again build and help bring more people into a working position on the team.  I am tired of re-hashing this, but I will keep going on until the new expansion hits.  Then I will get the same break as everyone else as I level my characters, and will be looking forward to the new content with everyone else.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

We Thokked Thok (Raid update week of 5/25/2014)

Very Happy on this one,

      We started out on Tuesday fighting Wing 3.  With a couple fresh faces in tow we took down Malkorak, Treasures of Pandaria and Thok.  Yes, I can proudly say we took down Thok again and this time I don't believe we had some of the power hitters who were helping us out last time.  If we get him down a third time I will label him "farm status."

      Wednesday night we went up against our nemesis, Blackfuse.  This fight is still beating us around a bit and we are filling lots o' pain here.  The hardest part was that on our first pull we got the mother______ down to 12%.  This made my heart swell with joy and I was ready for us to two shot this guy and bring some pain down.  Instead we went back to people standing in the fire, dying early, and so on.  The biggest frustration here is that I know we can down this boss, we just can't defeat ourselves and right now paying attention is our biggest enemy.

       I am going to continue starting on Wing one, then Wing 3 every other week.  This will give us a chance to still get some gear for people missing a piece here and there, and to also push some harder  bosses the next week.  Wednesdays will continue to be wing 4.  I know there will be a lot of frustration on Wednesdays, but we need to keep pushing somewhere or people will get bored.  This is also my attempt to please people who want to push further, and those who want to farm the beginning/build some alts.

       I am really feeling like the time is marching during Warlords of Draenor.  To be honest, my hunter needs little or no upgrades from what we are working on, Siege has been out for six month now, and news is coming slowly but surely.  I am still betting on Beta coming out sometime in June.  Without the million or so players that were promised Beta access for MOP I have a feeling this Beta may be a lot shorter.  I think that we are looking at Blizzard trying to push this out before Blizzcon.  If they take as long as December I feel their numbers will suffer another half to a million subscribers, and not all will come back for WOD.

     I am curious to see how this expansion cycle works.  MOP has seen the biggest drop off in subscribers WoW has experienced so far.  There is always a drop off between expansions, and I'm curious to see how many players come back.  Honestly, if I was so invested in World of Warcraft I might start looking at Wildstar or another option at this point.  As it is, my family and friends are here in game and I'm not likely to go elsewhere and try to rebuild that.

     Starting next week when I queue us up for wing one I am not taking Lazyeye.  I may bring Lag in as Ret to play around and get some more gear for both dps and tanking.  Or if my lock or mage get enough love this weekend one of them might make and appearance.  Haven't decided yet.  Lazyeye will be back when we are pushing wing 3+ when we need the push his deeps brings.

See ya'll next week.
Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

I may be a little bit lost.

Houston, we have a problem.

      Tuesday we started wing one and started working through.  We got past Iron Juggs and called it a night.  It was a pretty smooth raid and we might have gotten further if we had started on time.  No complaints with our performance however, and I'm happy with how we are handling this first bit.

       Wednesday didn't happen.  We didn't have enough folks show up and I didn't want to pug in 3 dps spots to keep moving.  Instead we all jumped on some lower geared toons and ran some LFR together.  Doing LFR in a group makes it tolerable I have found and I think we still had some good time.  But this brings us to where we are.

      I think I want to start pushing progression again.  Since I went back to just going the first few bosses the last two or three weeks, less and less folks are showing up.  My fear of losing people to frustration has led us to a place where we are losing people anyway.  To be fair these folks that aren't showing might have dropped off anyway, but I don't think the lack of challenge has helped.

     This next week we are going to push wing 3 the first night, then wing 4 the second.  I want to see if that pulls some more interest in.  Yes we still have some obstacles to fight there, but I think we may do the first flex on Tuesday forward every other week, and then start wing 3 every other as well.  I'm going to find a way to get things to work.  I want to kill Gary Hellscream dang it!

     But I can't do it alone.  And I can't do it with less then 10 people showing up. If it keeps going this way and we have less and less people showing, I may have to call raiding until Warlords.  Don't make me do that, we have managed to keep a raid team going until the next expansion hit from Wrath on.  I would be very unhappy if this was the first one that defeated us.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Busyness and Mother's day. (raid update for the last two weeks, 05/04/2014 and 05/11/2014)

That's right.  Mother's day killed me and now I'm playing catch up.  Well, work and Mother's Day.

     Last week I will keep simple, we started with wing one and started blasting through things.  Between the two nights we managed to get all they way to Treasures of Pandaria which isn't bad.  That pretty much means we cleared all the bossed up to the point we have been stuck at.  Past that point we have downed Thokk once, and Blackfuse once.  Both times with a little help.  I was very happy with the progress this week.

     Tuesday this week we got off to a good start and moved through the first four bosses of flex one.  We then moved to Galakras where several disconnects and other issues stopped us for the night.  I want to stress the reason we didn't get this boss down was because of the disconnects and other such issues.  We even tried another different trick that ended in flames, but I thought was pretty fun.  Next week It will go better.

     Wednesday didn't happen.  I had texts from a couple of people that said they weren't going to make it.  Then my daughter crashed her bike and had to be taken for stitches right before raid time.  This meant, I logged on, canceled raid, and did what I had to do.  It sucks, but sometimes life happens like that.  My daughter is fine though.  Seven stitches above the right knee and she was good to go.

     It is important to remember that sometimes life trumps game and raiding.  In a perfect world we could itemize every moment of our days into simple little compartments that never overlap.  However things do happen and there are times when you have to step out or miss raid.  Families have emergencies.  Power goes out.  Work calls you in.  So many different reasons that can come up because lets face it.  Life is busy and it's messy.  As time goes by there is just more busy and mess to fit into the same time frame you normally have.

     I am looking forward from where we are.  There are still people missing plenty of loot from the first bit of the raid.  There are still people who are gearing up and have swapped toons.  There is opportunity to work together better and to work on bettering ourselves as players.  In a few weeks we will be back to smacking Blackfuse and Thokk and the later bosses.  We will get back there in time.  We have a good bit of time before the next expansion comes out.  The fact that patch 5.8 is on the PTR and getting ready to load shows they are working on giving some bonuses before 6.0 and the walk up to Warlords happens.  At this point I want to guess we will see the new expansion in September or October if they get stuff rolling.  If they keep having set backs, (and I am assuming that with Zharym's recent tweet about things taking longer then intended.) Then it may take as long as December.  I think that is the last thing that Blizzard or the players want.

Next week will be better.  Soon, we will be moving forward again.

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty.

Critical Thinking. Yes, I Crit. (Raid update week of 4/20/2014)

I've got a lot on my mind this week.

      Tuesday was  a hard day for me.  We went in to Flex wing 3 and got kicked around my Malkorak.  A  lot.  I was already irritated that the raid seemed to have started a bit later then intended (about 20+ minutes by my count.) and was fighting a bad case of the grumps.  It didn't help that it felt like along with skill the raid had regressed to several people calling out ideas at once and folks were calling each other out on mistakes even though it wasn't our policy.  I was a horrible raid leader that night and just let things happen as I honestly was feeling to irritable to jump in and start what would have been a tirade of frustration and yelling.  By the end of the night we did manage to down Malkorak, and Spoils of Pandaria.  Thok ultimately killed us, but we will be back.

       Wednesday was much better.  We went straight to Blackfuse, and once again pull by pull things felt like they were getting better mechanic wise.  The whole mood of the raid seemed more positive then the night before and it showed.  We ended tweaking stategies and our roles a couple of times and on the last pull of the night we got Blackfuse down for the first time.  That means next week we should be fighting Paragons.  Yay progress.

        I have been doing a lot of thinking after Tuesdays raid this week.  The mood had gotten toxic enough that my wife turned off vent part way into the raid.  She eventually came back on but later told me she feels the team has lost the laid back feeling and happiness that we used to embrace.  After taking a 9 month break, and then stepping back in she hasn't been here for all the changes in the raid team and probably has one of the best views to see this.

       Honestly Wednesday morning I sat at work thinking through different ways to address the team and the problems that may have developed over this period of time.  I had speeches in my head that involved Hellfire.  Others that were kind and guiding.  I had gone over rants, rage quitting in the middle of pulls, and logging off in a foul and swearing manner for effect.  There were debates of starting progression over, rage quitting the team, or even rage quitting WoW for a while.  I was in a tumble of dark places and irritation.

       I was going over the issues we are facing.  People calling people out in front of the raid.  (There is a difference between chastising someone after a pull and saying "Hey Lag, Step out of the fire" in the middle of a fight.)  We have two many Chiefs not enough Indians complex where several voices are stepping in and trying to lead things.  We have people who get piss poor attitudes and get ornery with everyone else when things go wrong.  We have DPS who have hit that goal of 125k and instead of progressing further have regressed down to lower numbers.  There are these things and more going on right now.

       Then, as I was realizing all the issues, going over all these speeches and rants one thing occurred to me.  There is one consistent, one issue that needed fixing above all these things.

        And that was me.

        All these issues exist because I have allowed them.  I have been very non-aggressive lately in my approach of raid leading.  I have been very bare minimum on the strategies and watching videos before a pull/fight but I haven't been thinking them through.  I have let other step in, make calls etc.. without me O.K.ing that as their roll or assigning them to that job.  I have allowed all these problems to exist because I have allowed my heart and passion to wander away from the team.

        So now it's time for some critical thinking.

        I am going to start working hard to gain that passion back.  I want to be the one who is leading the team. I want to be aggressive when needed, and gently guide when it is not.  I want to walk into each fighting already thinking about who I want for what role, and where the best use of our assets are.  I want to be the one to make the calls, good and bad when we are fighting a boss.  I am going to make mistakes, but they will be honest mistakes.  I am going to try and be the person I was a year ago who could have told you the mechanics of the vast majority of classes and specs.    I want to get things to a point where they feel right and good.

        Here is my challenge to the team.  Do some critical thinking.  Where are you as far as the raid team goes?  Are you working on improving or are you just scraping the bare minimum.  Are you watching the boss fights before the raid, or are you just hoping that the strategy will make sense when someone explains it without any context to work from.  What are you doing to build the team.  Honestly, a team is better when most of it's people are taking ownership of that little part that is theirs.  Whether that is blowing up DPS charts, healing your butt off, or successfully tanking it doesn't matter.  1/10th to 1/25 of that raid is yours depending on how many folks show.  If you own and work on that part that is yours, we are all stronger for it.

       So get some critical thinking done, and lets blow up some Paragons next week.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Wiping is not always bad.

No really, it isn't.

      Tuesday night we went back to wing three.  Our groove wasn't quiet grooving and it took three tries to down Malkorak.  A few on Spoils of Pandaria, and we ended the night watching a giant T-Rex walk confidently all over our bodies.  Not the worst raid night we have had, but we definitely had some kinks that were kicking us.  Despite it, I decided to start wing four on Wednesday....

      And that Brings us to Wednesday.  Once again Blackfuse laughed merrily as he blew us to bits.  After a bit, I handed the raid to Irritated/Fastlane who has run through this fight before.  We managed to get the boss down and learn some mechanics better at his lead, but alas the boss still won out the night being victorious.  We are however, closer to talking him down.

       That brings us to my topic for the week.  We have wiped a lot to Blackfuse the last couple of weeks.  This has been made more frustrating by internet issues and other problems that have walked into the raid with us as well.  However, between both nights we have made progress.  Every time we learn something from a pull, we are that much closer to killing the boss.

       We don't even have it bad.  We are high progression raiders, and we especially aren't world first raiders.  Those guys log in hundreds of wipes on a single boss very often as they figure out mechanics etc...  They walk in with no guides, no map to follow written by folks that have been to the raid before.  They spend 16 hours a day at times just trying to grind bosses down for a few weeks until the titles are claimed.  We spend four hours a week.

       More over, we want bosses to wipe us.  If everything was a march through one shot we would all get bored and would stop raiding quickly.  There has to be something to keep fighting, but it also needs to feel attainable.  Things should not be an endless wipefest of destruction, but it also can't be so far our of our reach that we get frustrated and walk away.  Blackfuse seems to be about right for this.  We are making noticeable progress without gaining a quick victory.  I appreciate that about this fight.  I felt the same way about Galakras to be fair, and I still hate that fight.

      That's about it for this week.  But tell me, how do you feel about wiping?

Lag

Comcast killed our Raid... (raid update week of 3/30/2014)

Well, they murdered an hour of our time anyway.

      Tuesday night was fantastic.  We went through and cleared the third wing of flex in the one night.  Malkorak went down in one shot, Treasures took a couple.  Then, Thok, the big mighty dinosaur went down.  There was much rejoicing.  That means we have now downed 9 of the bosses in the raid.  So now the test really begins... Wing 4.

      Wednesday we fought Comca... err.. Blackfuse.  He pretty much ate us alive.  And not gently, he ripped our limbs off and slowly slurped them down a piece at a time.  It was not a surprise, as we knew it would be a tough fight going in.  It is definitely a mechanics fight and as soon as we get those down we will be golden.  It didn't help that for the first hour of raid people got dropped by their internet provider (cough* Comcast * cough) in a pattern that moved across Utah.  And hit a bit of Texas.  It was one of those things that couldn't be avoided, and despite being cut an hour short we made some good progress on Blackfuse.  He may still take us a bit to get down, but people were making progress every pull.

     Belevina gets my cheerleader award this week.  Despite the floor tanking fun of Blackfuse he managed to keep up a positive attitude and shared it liberally with the rest of the group.  It is always a good thing to keep the happy vibes flowing.  That fight is going to be work and I imagine it might even be a couple of weeks before we down him.  I may switch that up with doing wings 1,2,3, alternatingly so we are still downing bosses and getting chances at loot.  As it is, I'm happy with this week and I am looking forward to stepping back in next week.

     That positive attitude is something that can not be spoken of well enough.  We had thirteen people in raid last night, and despite the setbacks and internet frustration there was no swearing, anger, or negativity about the issues.  We also didn't get the boss down below 65% but the vast majority of the feedback was constructive and everyone was trying to solve problems rather then tear other players down.  There was a few points where we had almost too much information coming out from several sources, but I would rather have a lot of ideas to sift through then dead silence.

     My next goal is to get the raid team on homework track.  I want to get people to look up boss fights, information on raids etc... so that more then a couple folks are seeing the fights before we get whacked by them.  Now we are looking at the last three bosses in this raid it is becoming very apparent that studying is needed.  We have/had met our dps goal... let's get this goal down too.  Most our dps are still maintaining the 125k dps average, a couple have dropped back down and I am working with them.  At this point bosses health is dropping quickly enough that I'm not too worried about a couple stragglers as long as they are improving.  And they are.  Right now we are running 12-16 raiders, and I have been running with about 4 healers.  (I figure with 10 you do 2-3 heals on a fight.  If we have 3-5 more peeps another healer works.)

     I feel we are finally making some good progress.  I feel things are coming together.  There is still some headbutting between people in the raid, but it's minor enough that I'm not to worried about it at this point.  That being said, I have a minor eye on it.  I have never been an aggressive raid leader, and people are working together in a manner where I don't have to step in often.  Normally, I listen to the ideas... we make choices and roll.  That being said starting next expansion I may look for a strategy master.  We will see.

Epicness

      Next week, we will see how Blackfuse fares.  I am looking forward to pounding that little goblin into the ground.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

We got Thoked. (Raid update week of 3/23/2014)

That's right folks, that happened.

        Tuesday went well.  Belevina has returned to the guild and he brought a ten man raid team with him.  I will not be running with them but I look forward to the addition of people to the guild and hope they find a good home here.  A couple of people from this group hopped into flex with us and we blew through 2nd wing of flex in the night.  Once again the only place we stumbled was Nazgrim who took  a couple of pulls to get down.  All and all it was a good night and I'm happy with it.

       Wednesday was pretty good as well.  We went in and one shot Malkorok.  After that we moved on and blew through Spoils of Pandaria.  And by blew threw, we downed the fight on the second attempt and it's the first time we have downed it.  We then moved on to Thok, whom we made a few attempts on with him stomping all over our faces.  At the end, we had gotten him to fire phase once, and I believe he will go down well next week.  Which means one thing.

       Next week, we will be doing 3rd wing, then 4th wing.  That's right.... Moving on a bit.

       Just a couple of quick things this week.  First of all, I am working on getting my Shaman geared and ready should I need her.   Yes, I'm a masochist and constantly want to be working on getting another toon ready.  By the time Warlords comes out I expect I will have a lot of toons happy and ready to go.

       I also want to thank those who pushed their DPS up.  It shows, it really does.  Our Dps charts look a lot better then they did a month ago.  While we still have a one or two that have been a little up and down they have hit the 125k mark  and I hope they will continue to improve.  I am debating doing some lighter runs on a Sunday or Saturday when I have time to see about getting gear for one or two people on the easier wing (Flex 1)

       The other option is to rotate that first days run between flex wings one, two, and three so that people who are hopping in still might have a chance here and there for a piece of gear they may have missed or want.  We will figure it out.

Anyway, that is short and sweet for this week.  (Been busy) Will catch you all next week.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Making Folks Work For It! Another Rant from Me! Yay! (Raid Update week of 3/23/2014)

Hi, this is your ornery raid leader....

      This week Tuesday was very good.  We managed to get through the second wing of SoO in one night for the first time.  The bonus to this is that we one shot every boss with the exception of Shamans.  Shamans took two shots.  But we huffed, and puffed and blew that house down in a way we haven't achieved before tonight.  I was very happy with our performance.

      Wednesday night was a little more rough.  I almost didn't make raid and was close to having to stay and close at work.  I managed to still get off, but was about ten minutes late.  Magilla and Gwyn had managed to get things started though, and we were in and raiding shortly.  Malkorak took us a few attempts, but we got him down and moved on to Spoils of Pandaria.  Spoils beat us but it also showcased the problem I have been hitting the raid team with.  We Need More Deeps!

      I threw down and Ultimatum.  I want everybody to be at a minimum of 125k dps by the end of two weeks.  If a dps shows up and can't pull that 125k floor, or close to it, they will be asked not to raid with us until they can hit it.

      We are more then a year into this expansion.  People have been hitting these numbers since Mogu'shan vaults in many cases and we are a lot of gear levels above that point.  There are too many resources in this game to not be able to make such numbers.  I put the effort into my hunter to get to 200k average dps on my hunter as my goal.  I have made that.  On fights where I just pew, pew, and I don't have a lot of swapping, moving, and dps stops I hit that 200k consistently.  As a matter of fact I am setting a new goal of 225k.  To do this I am actually going to start working on some key binds/macros I can use to up my deeps.  I wan to make sure I'm not getting complacent in what I'm doing.

      Now you may say "Lag? Why do we need to be able to hit 125k dps?"  And I will say, "Because you owe it to everyone else who shows up for raid to come in and not expect to be carried."   Let's be honest here.  If you are not working to improve, if you are showing up every week pulling substandard dps and dying constantly they your are not part of the team.  You are a detriment.

     That't right.  If you are not pulling the dps to justify being along in raid you are just one more boss that we have to beat.  Not only that, you are a boss we have to beat on top of the regular bosses every time we walk into a fight.  You can look at yourself and know that you are one of the reasons we have to fight so hard to clear every single boss.  You are one of the enemy.  I happily invite you along to help destroy the raid.

     No more.  I want to see improvement, and I want to see it consistently.  I know that our tanks and heals all work hard to keep things going.  Hell, my wife just started playing again 2 weeks ago after a 6+ month hiatus and she has fought tooth and nail to get her heals up to a point where she is feeling competitive again.  She was the one when she quit that dominated the heals charts the majority of the time.  I can tell you right now, she won't stop until she hits that point again.  Why? Because she wants to do her best.  She doesn't want to be dead weight.  She wants to compete on a level that shows that she gives a damn about how our raid team is doing.

      I may not even live religiously to that 125k minimum and I admit that now.  If you have been pulling 60-70k dps for 2 months now, not naming names, and you show up in two weeks pulling 100k.  I may say, "I see you have been working to improve.  Come next week."  Because this isn't about the numbers at the end of the day.

     It's about doing your part to support and build the team.   You are either building the team, or you are tearing it down.  Piece by piece.  I am already loosing one good raider because of this.  I am determined not to lose anymore.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.