The LFR Blue's (Well, purples) in Siege of Ogrimmar

So, I finally got the first two wings of SoO run this weekend... all I can say is, HOLY CRAP.

     LFR right now is rough.  If you walk in, expect lots of wipes and tons of rough going.  There is a big reason for this.  You just can't walk into LFR at this point without knowing the fights and expect to get through it.  Maybe in a month or two when people are more familiar with these, and the gear levels of the people running though is much higher, it will be possible to walk in and expect an easy clear.  Right now, that just isn't going to happen.

     It's not all Doom and Gloom.  Running LFR can get you some pretty sweet gear, 'specially if you haven't finished Throne of Thunder and are still sitting at a ilevel 500ish place.  The gear that drops in LFR is sitting at ilevel 528.  That is a nice bump in numbers if your sitting on mostly LFR gear from Throne of thunder.  It's worth the wipes and frustration. If gear will drop for you.  Make sure you are getting your bonus rolls every week to increase your chance at this gear, a few average ilevels up can make a big difference in a raid.

       Blizzard seems to have tuned LFR a little higher this time.  There are fights, (looking at you Nazgrim) where one person not paying attention or doing their job can screw the whole raid.  Right now the fights seem to take forever to get down, but that will change with gear as people get more gear and experience.  Expect a couple hours per LFR run at this point after you get through the queue time.  It's going to be rough, if you get an easy run, count your blessings.  I feel those are going to be rare for a while.

    Now the real argument is, is this a bad thing?  LFR should be a way to help prepare people for actual raiding with a group.  Not random, but a group of people that work together and tackle harder content.  If LFR is something in which you can just walk in, do nothing, and walk out with loot, you aren't learning anything. (Looking at you Dragon Soul)  So, arguably, LFR should have some toughness to it.

     Where do you draw the line though? This is also an experience you are supposed to be able to get through without having to chat on ventrilo or keep an open communication going.  You are supposed to go in and learn from LFR, but it's supposed to be possible to do so without a lot of detailed strategies involved.

      Basically, LFR has a fine line it should straddle.  If it's too easy, you have people logging in and doing nothing and getting rewarded for it.  If it's too hard, your going to discourage your player base, including the people with limited time who have no other way to raid in WoW.  So, if it's a little tough right now, there is probably a reason.

      Now, if three or four months down the road, if people still are having and insane time then we can make the argument that they tuned LFR too hard.  At that point if there is still tons of trouble and Blizzard doesn't work on tuning the raid down, it will be time to criticize this round of LFRs.

     Until then, hop in, grab your helmet and hold on.  It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

Flexibally funibly, (Raid update 09/12/2013)

Alright... feeling a little better after this week.

      First of all, after Tuesday, I can say that you can feel the nerfs in Throne of Thunder.  That 20% makes a big difference.  We are now on Tortoise again after downing the first three encounters.  Once again we where a little ramshackle of a group, but we made it further and I will save progress from here as we push through Throne until it is defeated, then walk out dusting out hands to never do it again.

      Wednesday we tried Flex-raiding.  Gotta tell you, it was pretty fun, we went in with 12 or 13 people and it seemed to work out all right.  We downed the first boss, and that was with a few people who were a little under geared.  The second fight chewed us up a little more at first, but we made progress each time.

     I am very excited about this feature.  We pulled a few people in, had some fun, and even though we only downed on boss, it was fun and exciting to be fighting new things again.  I loved Emersius.  I thought the mechanics were interesting, and the visuals were pretty cool.  One of the Blizzard interviews I heard had one of the people talking about how they wanted the fight to feel like Morrowgar had in ICC.  When you enter the hall, and you see the big boss waiting at the end.  It is a cool feeling and I think they pulled it off well.  All in all, I am happy this week.

Don't watch if you don't like Spoilers, ending cinematic for Siege of Ogrimmar

     Remember that next week there will be no raiding post, as we will not be raiding.   This weekend should be post-less as well.  I will be in Yellowstone and I'm not sure I will touch the internet while I am down there.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

I promised myself I wouldn't cry. But I might anyway. (raid update 09/04/2013)

     So, I would rather not speak about this week.  But I am obligated to.  That is what I said I would do when I started this blog, and I have to make sure I post something for my 1's of readers.

That falling sensation...

     Tuesday was rough.  Partially because I'm adjusting to tanking the content we are working on, partially because we just keep switching people up a bit.  Scorpiack was nice enough to go heals instead of DPS so we could run, so thank you Scorpy.  Jin'rokh however took 4 attempts to get down.

     This marks the first time in a couple months that we didn't two shot him, when we didn't one shot him.

      Then it was on to Horridon.  There were a couple troubles there.  We just couldn't seem to burn adds down quickly enough between doors.  I was having issues tanking it since it was my second time, and Adds seemed all over the place on my turns picking them up.  Of course I was picking up all the adds I could, it just felt a bit out of control.  Long story short, Horridon did not go down for us Tuesday.

       Last night we gathered to go again, but found ourselves short one heal/tank (I could have swapped and done either.)  As it had taken us 15 minutes to get together and ready, and a few more to ask through guild and check friends who might come, we decided not to pug someone in for just a little over an hour and ran an LFR.

       What does this mean?  It marks several weeks in a row where we have gone backwards in progression.  We have literally fallen backwards as we have kept bringing in new people, and fighting to keep this team going and rebuild.

       This means I will probably start looking outside of guild for a new Tank or Healer.  I will probably work on a permanent roster for the raid team again.  This means that the people that have been pinch hitting for us may be back up raiders for now.  I have been asking and looking in guild for two or three weeks now and no one has come forth to fill this healing/tanking spot.  I am tired of waiting for things to come together and asking nicely.  We need to fix this.

    I can't keep banging my head against a wall.  I need to feel like the team is working and right now it feels like a f*ing mess when we have to retrain and re-adjust to people every week.  It is draining my patience and making me feel like taking a break from raiding myself.  I can't do that though, because the team members that have held through this crap deserve a rebuilt working team.

     So tomorrow, I will probably post on the Convert to Raid, and maybe the Wow Zangarmarsh Forums.  I will start looking for new blood outside the guild.  I would love to build it from inside, but all the interest I am seeing in raiding does not give me a Tank or Healer.  I'm sure we could even work on building one from in the guild if they were interested, but that seems unlikely.

      Anyway, that is the update for the week.  Next week, patch 5.4 drops and the Siege of Ogrimmar opens, hopefully that will breath life into things a bit more.  Cross Realms might brings us some more options too, we will see what happens.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

It's The (Somewhat) Final Countdown!!!

     Alright, we have one week and a couple days to go until 5.4 drops.  This means, time for a quick review of what is coming up and what to expect.  Most of what I cover I will have mentioned before, so if you feel like popping off that's fine.  If not let's look at some, not all, of the things coming up.

     The most obvious thing is the new raid.  This means we get to watch as the best teams in the work work on their world firsts, new content and bosses for us to fight, and a lot of changed game content around this new raid.  I won't say more because if you haven't watched the patch notes, the trailer for 5.4, or anything else, it's not worth spoiling for you.  I am in the camp that hopes that Garrosh is defeated but not dead.  I think it would be interesting to see what a summarily defeated and deposed Garrosh would do.

     New class changes coming.  Fortunately in Mists we haven't had complete class overhauls every single patch like some past expansions (looking at you Wrath) So in most cases you class isn't going to have any significant changes.  Unless your me, all three class/specs I play are getting nerfed.  Disc Priest=nerfed, Prot Pally=nerfed, and as Solarflair of Convert to raid announced, hunters may have a new mount for patch 5.4... it's called the bench.  (Keep in mind that we still are in beta testing so stuff could still change.  It could, really /crosses fingers)

       Cross realms/virtual realms/whatever they are calling them this week are coming as well.  This means that in 5.4 you might find you realm combined with other realm to fix lower population realms etc...  I have gone through this at length already.  Be aware these are not happening the day of 5.4 but they plan on rolling out the realm combinations in the weeks following.  If you don't see it on the first day, that doesn't mean your realm won't be effected.  I am looking forward to being able to break that 11 toon limit to build up my horde side a little more using this personally.

     Timeless Isle.  Listen up people who still need to be geared.  You can take your lowbies here and start grinding out i496 gear.  While this isn't quiet as good as ToT raid finder, it can build you up to the new LFR that last I heard had a 495 ilevel to enter.  I might be wrong on that, but not by much.  There will also be new battle pets, mounts, etc.. on this island so explore away!!!

     Legendaries, if you have been keeping up on your legendary quests then blizzard has said it will be possible to get your legendary cloak on your first day.  It will be some grinding, but they seem to want you to be able to have your cloak from the get go here.  The new world boss, you won't be able to fight until you have one.

     Flex raids... I am tempted to start this tier doing ToT one day, and Flex raids the other.  We have enough interest in raiding I would love to be able to include more people.  I really can't say yet, the raid team is still in flux, and until I know what is happening I don't know where we will land.  Oh, and lets not forget to mention here whilst talking raids, Throne of Thunder will be nerfed by 20% all around.

      And more!!!  I know I am missing stuff here, and feel free to leave you opinion on any of these things, or anything I have missed.  What are you looking forward to in 5.4?  You have 9 days to think about it!

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

Your allowed to Rant. Yes you are. (Raid Update 08/22/2013)

      I was debating sugar coating this post, going through, talking about how everything is all right and being the calm in the midst of the storm.  F*** that.

      We went from a point where we one shot every boss up to Tortos last week, to this week where events made it so we didn't even get past Horridon.  If you are on the raid team you are allowed to be rant, be frustrated and be grumpy as I am this morning.  What happened you may ask?

      We had too much damn change in the last week.

      First of all, we lost Ithuriol to Bridgeburners.  We wish him well over there and hope he enjoys his time.  We may see him in guest starring roles occasionally as he has some characters still in the guild, but that leaves a hole in our raiding roster that needs to be filled.  Preferably by a healer as I don't want to swap who I am gearing again, but I probably will. /sigh.

       Secondly one of our tanks had real life commitments this week, and those always trump Wow.  So the first night I was tanking on Lag again, in a raid I had previously not really tanked in.  The second night I was on my hunter, then my priest when we tried to swap things up a little.

       We also had to pull in a couple people to fill holes, (1 the first night (I still count moldie as a standby for the raid team)) and 3 the next night.  (Two being Ithuriol and Khallon's alts respectively, and we thank them for helping.)  

      I want to point out that the issues we are having are nobodies fault.  There should be no pointing finger's or irritation.  Sometimes you lose people from a raid team, that happens.  Sometimes you have a few extra spots for a night or two, that happens as well.  This week they all just happened to hit us at once, and hopefully next week will be better.  Or I will have a stroke.  I am voting for better.

      I do appreciate everyone working hard in a bad situation, but the situation as it stands may kill any chance of great progress in Throne of Thunder at this point.  Patch 5.4 drops in a few weeks on Sept. 10th, and I am not sure we can get our crap together before then.  Of course I could also be over blowing the situation and I may swap back to Dizzty and find out the raid is fine.  Right now though, I am just so frustrated, and not just for myself, for everyone else on this damn raid team that have worked so hard to get to the point of progressing again.  I owe you guys a better experience then this.

     So, this weekend, I will find a fill in.  I will look mainly at Pally or Priest heals, but will also look at DPSers.  Agility leather, Agility Mail, Strength Plate are all areas that don't have a lot of MAIN spec distribution right now, depending on how things shake up.  At this point, I will push whatever toon I am working on through the legendary quest to get them caught up, and once they are legendary, I plan on getting my other two pushed to that point.

    That's right, I plan on doing the damn legendary quest three times.  Though to be fair both Lazyeye, and Lag are well along it.

     As far as inspirational happy thoughts go, on Sept 10, we get siege of Ogrimmar.  That is a new raid.  New content, and a fresh start for us to start progressing again.  At that point, we will go one night ToT, one night Ogrimmar until ToT is done, and I plan on saving the progression since the new raid finder gear will have a higher gear score then the content we are working on.  We will push forth, and prevail.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

What is Guild Loyalty?

    I am writing this because I was listening to Tauren Think Tank (a Wonderful Podcast) a week or so ago, and they addressed the subject of why people are loyal to their guilds was discussed.  This came as someone had written in asking why with real ID, Cross realm grouping, and other such features people are loyal to their guilds anymore.  He had written up and clarified that he was meaning Loyal to a guild after a guild mistreats you, or doesn't value you as it should, he wasn't just saying you should go guild less.

      We have run out guild for almost 6 years now.  We haven't always been a big guild, or a guild that focused on more then raiding etc...  As a matter of fact, I remember it was at the end of Burning Crusade when we decided to open up to people outside our family, and my mage started porting to the starting areas for all the alliance races and spamming macros to get people to join.  At this point, we were discussing starting to raid, and looking in that direction.  This was interesting to me, because at the time my raiding character, my hunter Lazyeye, was in another guild named Midnight.

     Midnight had made me and my wife officers.  I had already discussed with the guild leader the fact I was also recruiting for Fear Itself, and he knew that I was working on building both guilds in my own way and being careful about not dividing loyalties.  I managed to maintain this without creating any issues and all seemed fine.

     Then me and my wife disagreed with a move the guild leader and co-guild leader (his wife) made.  They had given a character probation, then kicked him the next day before the probation had even truly started (Which didn't match their guild policies btw).  My wife took this personally because she had been the person who would work with this character on fixing the issues people where having with him.  We voiced our opinion to the guild leaders, and the next day, when both where logged out our characters where kicked from that guild.

   This turned out to be for the better.  I was able to fully focus on building Fear Itself, and Midnight imploded shortly afterwards. (The only reason I am using the actual guild name is the fact it hasn't existed on Zangarmarsh since the beginning of Wrath) Several of our friends followed us from Midnight after it fell and joined, and more then a couple are still friends in one fashion or another in game today.

     I mention this, because before we where kicked from the guild... me and my wife where discontent there.  We had discussed leaving already and the kick out the door wasn't ideal but I was more upset with how it was handled, then the fact it happened.  So I look back now, and I wonder why I hadn't left before things reached the point where it ended.  What kept me from leaving before that happened.

    I will tell you.  Attachments to my friends.  Desire to not let their raid team down, when they planned on me being there.  The feeling that I had made enough difference in that guild, that I felt obligated to keep it going.  This all kept me in that guild, splitting my time two ways etc... and those things can keep you locked into a guild today still.

    The question comes back too, does that matter when you can real ID folks from a guild you leave, so you can continue to help them here and there?  What expectations should a guild have on keeping someone?
What should a person expect from their guild?  If you put time and effort into the guilds raid team, do you owe it to them to stick it out or should they thank you for the time you contributed and not worry about you moving on?

     I really don't have the answers here, because I believe that are unique to the individual playing.  There are times I have wanted to work on alts, or considered finding another guild to run with on occasion, but I am always stopped because any effort I put there now, is time I am not putting into this guild that we have built.  I would love to find a night to consistently run older content, but right now it isn't plausible as I have kids and work that comes first.  So if I get that time, it will be folded back into Fear Itself, and not elsewhere.

     I am tied to the guild completely at this point.  I sometimes hide on an alt or two if I want to go level or play quietly, but at the end of the day, my commitments all tie to Fear Itself.  I am not sure what would have to happen to break those ties either.  I have put years of effort into raiding there.  Worked hard to build and maintain the guild.  This thing is my baby.  Short of an all out war with the guild leader (which is never happening) I don't believe I would vacate my home, and at the point I did, I am not sure how long I would play after losing all that I have gained.

What do you think?

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty

   

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.

.A Quick Addition in a halfshell

     Raid did happen Thursday  night.

     By the way, if your reading this, you may be number 1,000 to view my blog!!!  This makes me strangely excited.

     We managed to start at about 9:30 with our raid team ready to go and kick some turtle shell.  Well, something got kicked (rubs his posterior)

      We sallied forth and took down the trash fairly quickly and without too many deaths.  (My hunter is actually using Misdirect for those jerks)  The last healer arrived and we went to work.

      At first every attempt was daunting.  We kept getting destroyed by spinning turtle shells and falling rocks. It was apparent very soon on this fight that survival>dps is one of the keys to success here.  So we started to learn to dodge and anticipate.  I know my biggest lesson was that I did better dodging rocks/turtles/fate by running forward rather then backing off.  I know this seem simple logic, but when you see two turtle shells barreling down towards you, your first instinct is to back away and give them more room.  Running forward or strafing though gives you more speed, so you have more ability to outrun/dodge things.  I started surviving better once I figured this out.

     As the night went on we slowly saw more progression.  People were surviving longer, we figured out the best place and way to hold bats to help kill them down.  With every attempt that life bar on Tortos started to get lower.

     On our last attempt of the night that Health bar was at 20%.

     I believe next week when we get to good old Tortos, he is going down.  We have our system about figured out, and there is no reason to think we won't be killing him soon enough.  Even though we had an extra raid night, and a lot of frustration and repairs, we did what we should do.  We came and fought a giant turtle, much like in real life... ok. Maybe not so much.

     The extra raid night, I feel was successful.  I don't think we will be having extra raid nights every week, but here and there it might not be a bad idea to shoe horn one in.  I don't think I have it in me to do three raid nights every week at this point.  But if we were to do every other week, or even once a month, it might not be a bad idea to get some extra work in.

All in all, still a very good raid week.  2 new bosses down, and a turtle on its way.

Lazyeye

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)

   

Raid update 7/18/2013

     This feels like it has been a long week, and truly it has been.  But let's get to it.

     Yes, up top is proof that Batman watches over me while I work.  I didn't want to do another picture of one of my characters standing, so I picked a random picture for you all, and this one won.

      Tuesday went off well.  Due to one of the tanks moving this week Amelmi stepped onto his Dk Creap, (which honestly was the first toon I think he had in the guild) and filled in.  I stepped on to Dizzty my disc priest and Gwyndolynn took a knee and bowed out to allow others who had signed up to go.  We took down Jin'rokh in short order and moved through the horrible trash (I will never look forward to pointless trash Blizzard!) a lot more efficiently then we had previously.  We spent the rest of the night on Horridon and felt good by the end, and we had made progress to the point of getting past the last door and fighting the Dino himself!

     Wednesday we had exactly 10 people signed up, (though I have to give a nod to Easybake who was on, and signed up as tentative.) So it was a pretty quick trip to Throne of Thunder again.  This time I was on Lazyeye my hunter, as Gwyndolynn was back and healing.

     Now, last night was frustrating, I won't lie.  We didn't get as far as the previous night and something just felt off.  We swapped up strategies a few times to try and figure out where we were falling short, and a couple of switches seemed to have a little effect, but nothing that pushed us through.  I think while we  didn't get as far, a few of us might have a better feel for the fight though.  I even played around with my Beast Mastery spec towards the end, to see if more straightforward damage on the elites would make a difference.

      Horridon, and I've said it before is supposed to be the first wall in this raid.  I have heard of several raid teams that struggled with him for a few weeks.  Once we get past him I expect bosses will go a little more quickly for a little bit.  Well, I hope so anyway.

      On the bright side, and on a personal level, the company I work for (Excellence in Healthcare http://eihnet.com) held it's first Lunch and Learn in Utah, and I think it went well and I looking forward to helping with another one tomorrow.  I will then spend all weekend unplugged from technology camping with my family and some friends, so hopefully I will be locked, loaded and refreshed for next week.

      So, on and on to tomorrow.  Next week is a new week and we will sally forth and hit the Throne of Thunder anew!!!!

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye