More Dots!

We had a super-smooth ToC-10/Ony-10 run tonight for our 2nd group, earning a few people Salt and Pepper (10) as well as She Deep Breaths More (10) and More Dots! (10). I didn’t have More Dots! so that was pretty exciting.

I was actually pretty lucky in the ToC-10 run since I had won Sunreaver Disciple’s Blade AND Lightbane Focus to replace Perdition. A definite increase in spellpower but a loss of about 1% crit. Definitely worth the trade, IMO.

Some guildies were nice and ran Tômservô through Ramps, Blood Furnace and Shattered Halls to get me from 58-60. I dropped some emblems on the BoA axe and was quite dissapointed when I found out that you couldn’t Rune it. Nowhere does it say that a weapon needs a certain item level to be runed and I couldn’t even return it to the vendor. I filed a ticket so I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’d at least like my emblems back.

I settled on this Unholy leveling build as well. It focuses on doing as much sustained damage as possible and boosting solo potential with Summon Gargoyle, a perma-Ghoul and Bone shield while taking both movement increasing talents (On a Pale Horse and Improved Unholy Presence). The goal is to get from 60 to 80 as fast as possible, right?

From A to D.

“D” over at LFM: Need Healer Plz has a good read today on their blog covering a multitude of different things. One thing in particular that caught my eye was their thinking of swapping mains for Cataclysm and their list of goals between now and then.

C wut I did thar with the title? Like from Abigore to “D”? No? Ehhh I tried.

“D” asked the question – “What are your in-game goals? And do you see the possibility of changing mains when Cataclysm comes out?“

I actually talked about this last night with the wife about what we wanted to do in Cataclysm. I’ve always liked having a main that I raid on and a farming alt, but we both like being self sufficient. I’m 100% on keeping Sammich as my main because I really like raiding as Moonkin and if things start getting stale I can just respec to fill any other role in the game effectively. It’s also an added bonus that he’s max Herbalism and Alchemy to cover flasks/pots for the guild, has epic flying and has been my time sink lately farming rare pets, achievements and titles. So no, I have no intentions on switching mains for Cataclysm.

Going back to the self sufficient thing, I’ll definitely be leveling my Shadow Priest to 85 so I have a max Miner and Jewelcrafter for us and the guild. I don’t think my Priest would go any further than a Mining/JC/dailies bot. My Warlock will most likely not see the light of day because they’re an Herbalist like my Druid and a Tailor which I could care less about.

I would love to have a Skinner and a Blacksmith so I sucked it up a year later and FINALLY started leveling a DK to 80. Tômservô the Unholy Orc Death Knight is going to be casually leveled between now and Cataclysm just so he’s 80 by then. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a pretty large money sink leveling Blacksmithing but Skinning has always been a huge bank. It’ll also be nice to have a plate wearing tank/DPS to run my friends alts/twinks through stuff and I’ll be relieved not to level another caster. At least I have something to spend 130+ Conquest emblems on =\.

So, goals between now and Cataclysm;

• Finish up Loremaster/the Seeker on Sammich.

I’m way far off from this but I think we have plenty of time between now and Cataclysm and I’m tearing through the old-world stuff which is mostly what I’m missing. It’s definitely doable and I’m sure I’ll nab “the Seeker” title on my way there.

• Get the “Bloodsail Admiral” title on Sammich.

I was told that I should wait until I get Loremaster/Seeker out of the way before doing this and it only takes about 3-4 hours. EZ mode.

• Keep up with the Holiday world events.

I’ve always skipped these unless it’s Hallows End but I’ve been doing them as often as possible on my Druid and I’m really starting to like them. It’s an easy way to get rep, vanity pets, achievements and titles, so why not? If I keep it up, the Violet Proto Drake is icing on the cake.

• Level Tômservô to 80, buy his epic flying and max out Skinning and Blacksmithing.

Tôm is 58 so he’s nowhere near 80 right now. On the brightside, he’s a DK and I can easily rollface my way to 80 with zero downtime and 3 pieces of BoA gear. I’m not looking forward to dumping 6k on epic flying for the 4th time but I refuse to farm without one. If I’m quick enough, I should be able to make that money back before Cataclysm. Blacksmithing, on the other hand, is going to be BRUTAL. I hate farming old-world ore and I’m 100% sure that I’ll spend more than I need to leveling it. I’ve heard it’s the worst profession to max out and there is still hesitation in doing it, but I don’t know a Blacksmith and I’d like to have one around just incase.

• In 3.3, farm Triumph Emblems for 4 pieces of Resto T9 on Sammich.

I heal Heroics a lot and find myself healing ToC-10 every so often when another healer can’t make it. I could definitely benefit from the 2 and 4 T9 bonuses as opposed to my hit-heavy Moonkin gear. Although I can still pull my weight, I’d still like to do better.

• In 3.3, farm Triumph Emblems for 4 pieces of Shadow T9 on Schoolgirl.

Since I’ll be leveling Schoolgirl in Cataclysm for Mining/JC I might as well make the level grind as painless as possible. It’s really not that much to get 4 pieces of T9 and maybe even buy the Triumph shoulders or helm (whichever is better), so it’s not a significant waste of time.

So that’s that. Getting Loremaster and leveling the DK farmbot are going to be the most time consuming, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

Weekend Raiding Re-cap.

It was a bitter-sweet raiding weekend for The Clique, but most raids have their ups and downs. We’ve recruited 4 or 5 new people in to the guild and I’ve been a little more open with who I recruit as part of an experiment. Instead of only bringing in people who are totally familiar with the content we’re progressing in and setting a high standard for gear level, I’m talking more with the lower geared people in-game and seeing if I can get a feel for their personality while setting their expectations to be higher than normal.

For example, we had a Ret Pally apply who’s gear was up to par with maybe Ulduar-10/25 but not ToC-25/TotGC. I whispered him in-game and told him that his gear wasn’t up to par with our current progression raids but if he really applies himself and works on his gear, makes sure he’s got the best enchants and gems, etc., that I would offer him a 2-week trial period to do that. If during the 2-week period he really does improve his gear, even if not up to ToC-25/TotGC standards, that I’d extend their trial period as long as they needed as long as they keep improving until they’re up to par for that content. I felt that this let him know that we expect a lot from our raiders but we reward those that put in the time and effort and also let him know that if he doesn’t work on his gear and make the best out of their DPS that they wouldn’t be offered the raid position. So I’m setting my bar lower but setting their bar higher. We’ll see how that works out.

Saturday is our usual ToC-25/Ony-25 clear and this weekend we were trying out a new Prot Pally, Ret Pally, Warlock & Mage and bringing in our usual Hunter sub-in that raids with us often if we need ranged DPS. We had 2 DPS spots to fill in so the Hunter sub-in brought his Mage and Rogue friend. TL;DR - we brought in a few people who were a little undergeared and a few of them had never done ToC-25 before.

We wiped on Beasts during the Jormungar fight because the new tank was kiting Dreadscale away from the people inflicted with the toxin and they couldn’t catch up to him to remove it. The ranged dps/healers were also clumped together a little too much so too many of use were getting hit with the toxin. We had a scare on our 2nd attempt with someone getting hit by Icehowl’s Massive Crash but thankfully our Hunters are pro and tranq shotted it off as he ate our Druid MT alive.

Jaraxxus was a one-shot, due in part that our usual tanks took care of MT/OT duties and our healers are pretty stellar about getting Incinerate Flesh off. The only mistakes were from a few DPS not running out of Legion Flame in time, but not long enough to sit and die in it (see; pro healers statement above).

Faction Champs gave us a bit of grief with a horrible counter-comp and a little lack of planning/coordination on our part. I think we had the Enhancement Shaman, Disc Priest, Holy Pally, Resto Druid, Shadow Priest, Affliction Warlock, Hunter, Death Knight, Arms Warrior and Rogue. It took about 4 or 5 attempts but our new Warlock and I took turns chain CC”ing the Resto Druid while our Rogues stunlocked the Pally and DPS exploded the Disc Priest. One of our Rogues came up with the idea which worked like a charm, so kudos to them. I like when our raiders notice tiny little changes in strategy that actually wind up working.

The Twins were the usual loot pinatas but we were a little shy from getting the Salt and Pepper achievement. We headed in to Anub’arak with about an hour and a half left on our raid clock, but he was our bane last weekend. After a couple of wipes, one of our raiders started giving out the “I’m pretty tired, this is my last attempt” excuses but was immediately reminded by 60% of our guild that our raids go until 1am. It made me happy that even after wiping more than enough times that people still had their chin up and stood up for the guild, rather than joining in on the pity party. It was at this time that one of our officers gave a Braveheart-like speech over vent that I wish I had transcribed – It was epic.

Every attempt it was a new issue. Melee not switching from Anub to the Burrowers, the DK not pulling down an orb behind Anub to make an ice patch for the tanks/melee, healers overhealing during phase 3 making it impossible for DPS to keep up with the healing Anub was getting, people not paying attention and dying to spikes during the submerge phase, one of the off-tanks moving a burrower to a new ice patch but not stunning them when they try to burrow (so we’d have to deal with 3 burrowers + scarabs at the end of the phase). Everyone needs to be on their A-game if we’re bringing a few people who aren’t geared enough for the encounter and unfortunately, everyone wasn’t.

For the second week in a row, after downing him multiple weeks in a row before, Anub’arak lived…

I asked over vent who couldn’t make it the next day to come in, down him and then clear Ony-25 and only 4 people said they couldn’t. No problemo.. but come Sunday night, we had to PuG 8 spots. We all really wanted to see Anub down so I was extremely picky in the PuGs I picked up. 3 of them wound up being saved (which baffles me how people don’t know their saved to something like ToC-25) and we had to replace them but we downed Anub in 2 attempts. The first attempt we died to the enrage timer but the 2nd attempt he died with 20-30 seconds to spare. We cut it a bit close but the new recruits got him down, got their achievement and some made out with an upgrade or two over the weekend.

After making my previous post about being a bit bored during the week when we aren’t raiding, I put up a few optional raids for anyone interested in raiding more. Our raid schedule looked a bit like this..

• Monday – Maly-10
• Tuesday – OS3D-10
• Wednesday – 2 ToC-10/Ony-10 groups
• Thursday – 1 TotGC group, 1 Ulduar-10 group
• Friday – Naxx-10(25)
• Saturday – ToC-25/Ony-25
• Sunday – TotGC/Ulduar group continuation.

So every night people  have something to do if they WANT to raid more, but the only mandatory raids are Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. For the optional raids, outside of OS3D I told people they could bring their alts if they wanted to give them a chance to do something they don’t normally do during our “soopr srs” nights.

Last night I put together the Maly-10 group and we one-shotted him, getting 2 or 3 people their Champion of the Frozen Wastes achievements (myself included). My Druid became my main during the beginning of the ToC-era of raiding so I skipped Maly, Naxx and Ulduar altogether for the most part. I’ve had the damn necklace quest in my log for a while, getting the key the only time I ever did Naxx-10. I also picked up the Ice Spire Scepter for my resto set.

After Maly’s beatdown, people still wanted to do something else short and fun. Since we’re Horde without Gnomes, we decided to go for OS-10 with 2 drakes up which is extremely easy and our guild has done it numerous times in the past. 1 or 2 people constantly not watching their threat, failing to void zones and flame walls and the lower DPS output of some of the alts prevented this from happening so we just did OS-10 like normal. It sucked that we couldn’t get 2 drakes down but it sucks more than the same people failed to the same things over and over again even after being told what they’re doing wrong and how to fix it. Blargh.

OS3D-10 is on the calendar for tonight but a majority of our signups were healers and tanks with only 2 DPS interested in going, so most likely we’ll be cancelling it and seeing if there is more interest next week. I’d prefer the zerg method but that’s not gonna work with that many tanks and healers wanting to go.

The enchanting mats tab in our guild bank was starting to look a bit desolate so our DK tanking friend, my wife’s Mage, her Ret Pally friend, a guild Hunter and myself ran every single heroic in the game, DE’ing 90% of the drops. Our bank is packed now but man, that was brutal! I don’t even have anything to spend the Conquest emblems on outside of maybe gems, but it was worth it and I had a lot of fun (except Oculus, of course!).

To take a little break, I’ve been running heroics with the wife’s Mage alt on my Shadow Priest so she has one less person to worry about gear competition. I still have a lot of fun DPSing on my Shadow Priest but it’s depressing to see the decrease in DPS versus gear level. My gearscore on my Shadowpriest isn’t stellar since I stopped raiding on him in Ulduar-10/25 (it’s around 4480 which is 20 shy of ToC-25) but even if I’m on my A-game I can only pull ~3100 DPS on single targets. At that level of gear on my Moonkin I could clear 4k in my sleep. I’m really hoping the Shadow changes in 3.3 help the spec out a bit and I’d like to try it out first hand.

And finally, on a non-raiding note, I picked my favorite of the 3 banners that Jaedia made for me and made that my official banner. Hopefully you all like it as well!

New banner inc!

Jaedia from The Lazy Sniper is being super awesome and is working on a banner for my blog (w00t!!!), so you may see a few different ones pop up from time to time so I can get a feel for them all.

 

Bored GM LF raids. PST.

..from Icanhascheeseburger.com

Is Icecrown out yet?

With ToC-10/25 being extremely short (we’re clearing them in about 45 minutes – an hour tops if we include Ony in there somewhere), people are starting to get a little bored in the guild. I’ve suggested a few alternatives that we could do after ToC or on Sunday which used to be reserved for 25-man continuations that are no longer needed, but there doesn’t seem to be enough interest.

Wednesday and Thursday are our scheduled 10-man runs. Wednesday we run 2 ToC-10/Ony groups – One at 9pm and another at 1030pm for the players like myself that work a bit later than normal – and Thursday we have 1 TotGC-10 group since we don’t yet have the geared DPS for 2 groups. I’d really like to do MORE raiding than just 45 minutes to an hour during the week and a quick ToC-25/Ony on Saturday.

So what are the options?

• Sarth + 3 drakes.

With the right amount of DPS, you can literally zerg him down without even worrying about the drake adds. It’s an achievement, a title and a shot at a drake mount.

• Malygos.

The gear from EoE-25 is still pretty good at the T9 level of raiding and phase 3 is a lot easier now that it scales with gear level, but the gear from EoE-10 has a 90% chance of being sharded or tossed aside for off-specs. Some people have swapped mains over the last 4 or 5 months and still need the achievement and/or have the quest from Naxx-10 for the necklace so maybe I could convince enough people to go.

• Naxx-10/25.

With ToC not having trash mobs we’re having on hell of a time keeping enough enchanting mats in our guild bank. No greens to DE and most of the gear gets used (which is a good thing) so our only other option has been to shatter Abyss Shards, sell some of our Essence overflow and use that money to buy dusts. Naxx-10 (in our gear level) would take less than 2 hours and no one should need anything from there at this point in the game. I’d run it just to stuff the bank with enchanting mats and maybe even go for the Undying/Immortal title for fun.

• Ulduar.

Our guild still doesn’t have Yogg down. We worked on him for 3 weeks and then stopped doing Ulduar in favor of focusing more on gearing up the raid through ToC. Now that ToC is on farm and is quite short, I wouldn’t mind going back in to Ulduar to work on Yoggy or even hard modes. Some people don’t feel the same way. There are also upgrades for people in Ulduar-25 and Ulduar-10 hard modes. Hell, I could even use Eye of the Broodmother which I’ve seen drop once since Ulduar has been out.

• Heroic achievements.

Some people have their red drake, others don’t. Switching mains twice now, I’m missing quite a few of the heroic achievements (mainly everything in Occulus) and wouldn’t mind throwing groups together just to work on those.

• Old school raids.

Just to keep in the spirit of raiding (and to nab some empty achievements for everyone), plowing through the old vanilla and TBC content could be an option. Some people collect cool looking gear and/or mounts and I know a lot of us don’t have the end-game boss kills from some of those raids. It would also give people a chance to raid on their alts and take a break from their mains for once.

I’m going to run a poll on our guild forums to see what everyone wants to do. I know some people are getting antsy only raiding 2 or 3 times per week for less than an hour but I’d like to get a general feeling of what the majority of the guild wants do with their free time.

Just a little off the top..

Toying around with different themes and I’m in dire need of a new banner. You’ll also notice the name of the blog actually matches what appears in your RSS feed/readers because causing confusion is never a good thing.

Excuse the mess.

*sweeps bodies under carpet*

Lil KT Critter Kill video.

There are plenty of videos out there with the Pandaren Monk, but if anyone is curious about Lil KT’s critter killing Ice Tomb and /cackle, here ya go!

This isn’t me btw. Just a random YouTube video.

Speaking of videos, our resident Arms Warrior frapsed our entire raid last night which went pretty flawless so you might be seeing some boss kill videos with my big owl ass in the way here in the near future.

Pet Collecting for a Cause.

Within the last few months, I’ve become a vanity pet junkie. I’ve spent hours and hours farming for rare drop pets and a decent amount of money on them as well.

Today Blizzard introduced 2 new vanity pets with the Pandaren Monk and Lil’ KT, but there’s a catch! They’re not available to earn in-game!

Each pet can be purchased for $10 USD from the Blizzard Store as long as your account has been merged with Battle.net, but for those of you buying the Pandaren Monk, there is an added incentive. Half of your $10 purchase will be donated to the Make-a-Wish Foundation if you purchase the pet between now and the end of the year. So really you’re just paying $5 for the pet and donating $5 to a good cause.

For some reason, the same incentive isn’t offered for the Lil’ KT pet. As an added bonus, the pets are Bind on Account so you can ship them around to all of your alts.

Since I’m a sucker and give Blizzard entirely too much of my money, I’ll most likely buy both pets eventually. The Lil’ KT pet cackles maniacally and wreaks “icy havoc on critters who dare to cross his path”. That alone is worth $10.

TL;DR Weekend Checklist.

Weekend checklist.

• Spent a whopping 10 minutes completing the 2-day holiday achievement.
• Complained about the Marionette not counting as a vanity pet.
• Struggled in ToC-25 on Anub’arak with bag PuGs in the raid.
• After defending a raiders wife from guild bullies (the ones mentioned in my earlier post), I watched her husband /gquit because our re-scheduled ToC-25 raid started 15 minutes late. You’re welcome.
• Recruited 2 new people and had 2 more applications come in. Huzzah!
• Went to a Halloween party, got plastered and the wife and I won their “scariest costume” contest. We were 1950’s greaser zombies with costumes we made ourselves. I luz Halloween. I hate Jell-O shots.
• Ate sushi at Tomo and went to see Zombieland with some friends. Amazing movie!
• Caught up on the most recent episodes of Ghost Hunters and Destination Truth. I’m a sucker for paranormal shows.
• Got the little crab pet from the Northrend fishing daily.
• Watched the Hitchcock classic “Vertigo” for the first time. Netflix + Xbox Live = Win.
• Witnessed a guild leadership shitstorm toss guild leadership in my lap.

I didn’t spend a lot of time in-game with my extended weekend but sometimes that’s a good thing.

And now for something completely different..

*insert wall of text here*

..and to make a long story short, Clique (the guild) is now in my hands with the former GM quitting and leaving the game around 3am. Good times.

My first order of business as new GM was to do something that was never done before – talk to the officers and spread the workload around.

I’ll be handling recruiting and helping another officer set up the finalized raid groups as well as whatever guild issues come up over time. Officer #1 will be scheduling the earlier 10-man groups and our 25-mans on the calendar while helping me set up the final groups on raid day as well as loot distribution for now. Officer #2 will set up the later 10-man raids and deal with boss fight explainations and raid leading. Officer #3 will deal with raid leading and selling our BoE’s. When we move over to Icecrown, we’re going to be switching to a DKP loot system that Officer #3 will be handling as well.

All of that took about an hour to iron out.

It’s going to be tricky running a 25-man guild while juggling that with recruiting and my RL job but I’m confident in myself and our officers and know that we can make it work without making it a part-time job.