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

The Weekend before 5.4....

     So here is some bad mocked up poetry to suffer through as you get ready for patch 5.4....

The Night Before Patch Day
-Horribly done by Ben Marble

It's the night before patch day
And all through the land
The player's are raiding
With sword's firm in hand

Their mods have been loaded and updated with care
In hopes the 5.4 quite soon would be there
And me with my Pally, Aeryn with her priest
Had just settled down, for 5.4 release

When out in Stormwind arose a clatter
I quickly hearthed to find out the matter
To the AH I flew on my mount in a huff
To find out what was the cause of this stuff

The noobs where all crying in fear and in fright
For in trade district there was such a sight.
For in all his glory so grim and so drear
It seemed that Ghostcrawler had suddenly appeared

With his nerfbat so hard and mighty and thick
Everyone trembled at that evil big stick
Then I heard him call in a big booming voice
The people that had helped him by choice

Come Zarhym, come Lore, come Crithto, come Bashiok,
Come Brower, come Hazzikostas, come Nethaera, come Bornakk,
To the Eastern plague lands, to Northrend's great wall!
Now nerf away, nerf away, nerf away all!

And just like the winds in the Maelstrom do fly
They all mounted up and took to the sky
Through the land of Azeroth they flew
Out for the Alliance, and the horde side too!

And then with a shudder I turned to see
Ghostcrawler drooling with maniacal glee
I stepped back and was turning around
When through Stormwind Greg Street did bound

He was translucently cover in a crab shell
His claws where sharpened to give out all hell
His nerfbat he held firm to attack
When all the player's he started to smack

His eye stalks they glistened
His shells dimples how frightening
His nerfbat made noises like
Big strikes of lightening!
His crab mouth was firmly shut with a snap
As dpsers Greg Street started to cap

The Nerfbat swung and gave no relief
As players corpses lay about like a wreath,
His crab legs went clickety clack
That skittered madly as toons he did  wack

He was giant and cruel, a mighty old crab
And I shuddered to see him, and hid in my bag
Then he lifted his nerfbat made up of lead
And gave me a whack on top of my head

He left me they lying all dazed
As he nerfed all players wildly crazed
Sudden as he appeared, he suddenly stopped
And yelled, patch 5.4 can now be dropped!

He flew up into the air his crab legs all twitchin'
Because he had finally finished his mission
But we heard him scream as he vanished out of sight
"Good luck with cross realms! Good bye and good night!"

-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.

Keep yer heads up!!!

     I have to get this off my chest, or at least put some advice out there.

     As you may have heard, Bridgeburners has gone through a transition that meant a bunch of their raiders are now in the guild Exile, and the fate of the guild itself could be guessed as unknown at this point.

     This is all I can say, for this is all that I know.  I only mention this because we have characters in our guild who are tied in different ways to Bridgeburners, through both family and friendship and anytime that a guild that has lasted as long as they have goes through troubles it can be tough on anyone involved.  That being said, it's all I will really say directly about them etc.

      I more want to advice people against gossiping or making any time of supposition about what happened in their guild.  I am sure that if there is a schism here, that I friends I hold in high regard on both sides.  I don't want anyone in our guild to be the cause of hurt feelings because they are sharing opinions or their version of what happened.  I don't want to alienate anyone in or out of that guild right now because any transition is tough.  If that is leaving your guild for another, or finding that the guild you have worked so hard to maintain is suddenly empty, it's tough.

      I am Switzerland on this.  I am not taking sides if there are sides to be taken because, A. I am not involved.  B. I am not involved.  C.  It's not worth my time to dig through other people's crap.  I am hoping that everyone else takes a similar stance.  As much as this disruption saddens me, it would sadden me more if someone in the guild where to exacerbate the problem.

      So, if you HAVE (I advise against poking your nose into other people's business once again)  to find out what happened there is only one person you should talk to.  His name is Cotilion, or Barolt.  He is the guild leader, and this is his baby.  He has the ownership of the guild Bridgeburners so he would be the one person to talk to.  If you want to ask about a ship, you should always talk to the captain.  Now, since I am sure he is going through a tough time with all the upset, I would advise against bothering him too much, we owe him that respect since he has successfully run and managed that guild for a long while.

       And yes, I realize it's semi-hypocritical of my to keep rambling on when i'm advising people not to talk, gossip, or mention this subject in an uninformed or negative manner, but it's me, I ramble a lot.  I also worry about the friendships I've made in and out of guild in the 7 years I've played  this game.  I worry about the people stuff like this effects.  Most of all, I want our guild to be respectful and to be above reproach in any one else's eyes, and we can't do that if we cut other people down intentionally, or unintentionally.

        So, I will close by saying, good luck to the Bridgeburners.  I hope wherever the dice land, it ends up with everyone better off in the long run.

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty.

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

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

    Here we go again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

     

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.