Wipefest, the new Blizzard content?

Nah, it's old hat! From Deadmines to the Black Temple, Wipefest is celebrated daily. And DA along with Dax participated in spades!

Last night's Kara run was meager in the positive aspects. We earned a little rep and learned a little more about the fights. Our problem was execution. A lot of people, including me, were slightly off their game.

We had several deaths on trash pulls, especially the Opera ushers. In previous runs, we might have had one death, but last night, it was looking like we might wipe on one such pull. /facepalm. One of my miscues was allowing my shackle to get free, and when it did, it promptly came over and killed me.

We took two or three shots at Maiden, but it seems the deadly boss timers are off. I need to read more about this fight so I know what is actually going on. I spent half the fight silenced and unable to heal. We stand right in front of the pillars with our backs against them. I can usually reach anyone in need of a heal or decursing. The other two healers are spaced out to cut the circle in rough thirds so healers can always be in range of the raid. The goal is to tank Maiden in the center of the room, so her AoE doesn't hit the raid. As I am writing this, I realize how little I really know about this fight. Time for some studying.

So, we make our way to Opera and have a lot of confidence that we'll be taking down R&J like we did last week. At least last night, no one stuck their Big Bear Butt outside the door and reset the event, but we still couldn't kill them. Either one of the tanks would die, or they would lose aggro. Romulo got away from the tank a couple of times to squish someone and get a heal from Jules. The interrupters had some difficulty coordinating interrupting J's heals and the healers had some trouble keeping the tanks alive. I got the job of Raid healing, which is made easier by targeting Julianne and having my target of target turned on so I can see who gets her DoT. I try to time my heal after the first or second tick of the DoT so that it lands just as the DoT finishes up. That method works pretty good, and I don't waste a lot of mana.

One of the really difficult parts of this fight is picking up aggro on the two after they self rez, AKA the third phase of the fight. When Romulo dies the first time, the mages pop invisibility, the priests fade, and hunters feign death (we don't have any rogues, but I'm sure they'd be vanishing). I have yet to tell if this strat works, because it seems like Romulo is ALWAYS headed for the rail where the DPS/Healers are lined up. The one time we killed them, the tanks were able to IMMEDIATELY pick them up and separate them. This appears to be key to the whole fight.

We'll probably be going back tonight, hopefully armed with more knowledge and a bit more focus, at least on my part.

Daxie, part...uh...

Ding 61.

Karazhan, part II

Last night Dax got the call to Kara again. I'm thinking that DA considers Dax to be an adjunct member of the guild. I'm not sure if they're geared well enough to run with two healers, so Dax gets to be the third one.

The raid is definitely getting better, and the play is better coordinated. Last night, we one shotted both Attunmen and Moroes. That's right, one shotted! I believe this was a DA guild first, and there was much rejoicing.

We cleared to Opera and got Romulo and Julianne again. Cool, we know this fight!

Take 1: Julianne down, Romulo down, started third phase. While pulling Romulo over to the corner by the door, the druid hit the door, turned around and had his butt hanging outside the area. The event reset! This would be our best attempt; everyone was on their guy, I was at full mana, and we had solid control of the fight.

Take 2: Julianne down with one raid member death, battle rez raid member and Romulo decides to kill them! Then, my tank died, and we wiped.

Take 3: I asked to be on raid healing; granted. Julianne down. Romulo down. Tanks have a hard time getting aggro. Then, we couldn't keep them apart. Julianne heals Romulo. Romulo runs amok a bit. We wipe.

The raid was call on account of time at that point. So, how did I do? Adequate. While shackling horses, I did a great job, except when I had to switch targets and my previous target was not dead. I forgot to press my modifier key to switch the focus to the new target. Fortunately, the previous priest's shackle held for the entire time I thought I was shackling it. /facepalm.

Another miscue on my part occurred during Opera, and it involved the very subject that I wrote about yesterday. Trust. See, I got put on one of the Main tanks for healing, and the last time, I got put on raid healing. I did a very good job on raid healing (if I do say so myself!), and I didn't know if the other priest could manage it. I know, I know - That's just dumb! Yes, I admit I had absolutely no reason not to trust the other healer, and if I had, I'm fairly certain that we would have downed Opera.

Was the failure my fault? In part. There were other mistakes, and mine contributed to the pile of miscues, mistiming, and just plain bad luck(since when is critting bad???). It just goes to show you that the little things matter, and I'm sure it just gets worse from here.

How about that PHAT LEWT??? Well, I got 3 Badges of Justice and some offhand. Oh yeah, Moroes dropped that offhand. I can't even remember the name, but

DAX GOT HIS FIRST EPIC KARA DROP!!!!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried to make sure no one else wanted it, but who was I to argue about sharding it!! 8~P

So, tonight, Opera again.

Daxie

Friday evening, Daxie was level 49.

At the end of Christmas, she was 60.

Yes, I had 4 days off, so I was able to play a lot. And, yes, I actually refused my friend's request for help in order to level. And yes, Daxie arrived in Outlands wearing some pretty poor rags, her professions were not 300, and she needed a bath.

But, I got the job done. My goal was Outlands by Christmas. I went through the Dark Portal at 11:30 pm on the 24th! I would like to have her to 70 in two weeks, with her tailoring at 375 (currently it's 0).

So, why the burn all of a sudden? Dax in Kara with Deaths Advocate. I moved Daxie over to DA so that they knew I was committed to helping them progress, and I hope that as soon as Daxie is eligible, to switch over to her in Kara instead of Dax. I've already mentioned that Dax cannot switch guilds, so I think that it's only right that I do everything I can to provide a suitable replacement.

On a side note, Daxie, Shadow priest, HEALED Ramparts on Christmas. I had to rein in the group a bit, but after we slowed down, things went very well. We had a couple of deaths, but no wipes until the second boss. We ended up two shotting him. The last boss wiped us a couple of times as the tank couldn't turn the dragon around and I couldn't keep up the heals. After the second wipe, the MT had to go. But, one of my new DA guildies in the run had already lined up another tank (lvl 70), so we were golden! A nice pair of pants dropped, and Daxie won them!! Completed the quest and got some new shoulders. Woot on her!

Karazhan

Last Friday night, I was working on leveling Daxie and got the call to raid Kara with Death's Advocate. They must not have had enough guildies to start earlier in the week, because we had a fresh instance.

So, we took down Attunman, cleared out the repair guy, and headed to Moroes. Now DA had not gotten him down that I know of. All of the other times I've been in there with them, it's been a wipe fest, with some redeeming qualities. So I was expecting to get some rep with the Violet Eye, learn the fight better, and incur some repair bills.

We did end up wiping a couple of times, BUT....we. finally. took. him. DOWN!!! There was MUCH rejoicing!! We used the "kill all the adds first" strategy, and it worked great! I forgot what dropped, but I do know it was sharded! Everyone couldn't believe that the first Moroes drop was sharded, but nobody could use or wanted whatever it was. The raid leader decided to end the night on that high note.

Saturday, I really had a burn to level Daxie, when Valray asked if I wanted to go to Kara again. Maiden and Opera were on the list; I hated to stop leveling Daxie, but I also knew that I was the last piece of the raid. So, I went.

We cleared to Maiden with no problems, and we cleared out a room with a quest item in it. I died on that pull because my shackle broke early and my reshackle was resisted. We then proceeded to learn the Maiden fight. ha ha.

I still don't know a lot about the Maiden fight. We attempted three times before deciding to move on to Opera. It appears to be mostly a tank 'n spank with positioning. We got the positioning down pretty good, but our coordination needed work as well as tanking in the center of the room. All in all, it was a good learning experience.

So, on to Opera, and we got.......Romulo and Julianne. The more experienced raiders groaned. They said that of all the Opera events, this one was the hardest. Great!

Some of the raid members were looking up the fight on the net, while others were trying to describe the strategy. What I understood from it was this:
1. Kill Julianne. Romulo then spawns.
2 Kill Romulo. Julianne rezzes and rezzes Romulo.
3. Pull the two star crossed lovers into opposite corners of the stage so Julianne can't heal her bf.
4. Get Romulo down to 10% or there abouts. Get Julianne down to 10% or so.
5. Bring them together in the center and nuke the crap out of them with AoE and stuff.

We had some issues. The first issue was actually getting them apart. Pulling them to opposite walls wasn't far enough; it had to be the corners. Then, we didn't stop the DoTs on Romulo in time and he died. Good? No! After about 10 seconds, Julianne rezzed him. At. Full. Health. Crud! The problem with the strat was #5. We didn't get them down that evening.

Sunday. Daxie is on fire, again. And...I get the call AGAIN! By now, Daxie is part of DA, so I'm feeling obligated somewhat to help out on progression with Dax. So, I reluctantly leave Daxie to raid. Opera only this time. Maiden is optional anyways.

After wiping a couple of times, we make some refinements to the fight. 1-3 are still the same, but we have a new #4 and #5.

4. Get Romulo down to 20% and STOP ALL DOTS! Get him down to 10% with normal DPS.
5. Get Julianne down to 10% and kill Romulo. Then nuke the crap out of Julianne before the 10 seconds is up. If the two die within 10 seconds of each other, then you don't have to worry about rezzes.

This strategy worked. We had some execution issues, but we finally got it coordinated. They dropped some hunter lurvin's, so Thoon made out!

One of the biggest bonuses that came out of this fight was trust. As one of three healers, I was the PuG. I haven't been part of the guild, and the other healers don't really know me or my style of healing. So, when I was assigned raid healing, I took it upon myself to....erm....heal the raid.

Raid healing on this fight is fairly straightforward. Julianne throws a DoT on raid members that can potentially kill them if they don't get a good heal. It's not dispellable and hits for pretty good damage. My first strat was to put a Renew on them. Not good. Given time, the Renew would patch them back up, but if they got DoT'd again, they were toast. So I learned as soon as I saw a raid member get hit, to start a Greater Heal on them. By the time the GH was cast, the DoT had run its course and the GH would heal them back up.

On the first couple of attempts, the other two healers were healing the MT and OT, AND they were spot healing the raid. This caused both of them to be low on or out of Mana when the two rezzes happened. At first I was assigned to pick up a third tank for the transition because I had almost full Mana. But after I realized what was happening, I started calling out on Vent who I was healing. "I gotcha So And So", "Healing This Guy", "Healing myself", and the like. I found out later that one of the other healers started interrupting his heals because he heard me call that out. Mana saved!

When this happened, we took down the bosses. Yes, it was still tough,and we tweaked the strat a bit, but minimizing the double healing was a big part of it. Trust. The other healers trusted me to see the needs of the raid and respond accordingly. Communication and coordination are so important in raiding not only to work out the strategy, but also because by them you learn to trust each other. I can see now how a guild can clear Kara in 4 hours. I guarantee you they didn't do that the first hundred times! They learned through the wipes: what strats worked, who does what, and how to place their lives in each other's hands.

Opera DOWN!!! WOOOOOOOT!

What a difference 4 days make

I had the last 4 days off (Thank you President Bush for the 24th off!), and boy, oh, boy, did things change. I'll be writing several posts to update you, my two readers.

The big news is that Daxie is in Deaths Advocate and is busily working her way to 70 in order to raid. So, it looks like when that happens, I'll have two Holy priests. lol.

Wailing Caverns and the joys of having high level guildies

So, I got to be on the receiving end of the "run through" last night. Turion took Daxe and Arywn through Wailing Caverns 2 and a half times. I'm not sure what's up with that loot table, but two of the bosses dropped the exact same thing 3 times! The cloth chestpiece and Venomstrike both dropped all three times we ran the thing! It was nice that the bow dropped the first time, 'cause Arywn is a hunter, but the next 2 times...grrrr.

On the upside, Daxe has 2 of the "of the Fang" pieces and the Serpents Shoulders, so that makes her a happy bear. And she dinged 20 last night, so she's a happy kitty as well!!

Tonight, I'll be in Westfall attempting to find the second half of some medallion, and then, it's off to Moonglade to get my water form. Woot on me!

An update of sorts

I haven't really mentioned levels lately, so I figured I'd give both of you readers a comprehensive update on all my toons:

Daxenos - still level 70
Rysteranch - still level 70
Daxie - 49
Dwarfvader - 48
Daxe - 17

Of the last three, Daxie is the only toon that I can play solo without generating aggro with a guildie. DV is paired up with Turion, and Daxe is paired with Arwyn (Turion's rl wife).

I like leveling; in fact, I get the leveling bug quite a bit, you know, where I get the burn. So, it's difficult to resist the urge to level the crap out of DV and Daxe when my partners aren't on, but I manage to somehow restrain myself and life goes on. This is one of the reasons Daxie gained 11 levels in about as many days.

So far, I've put off my end-game play in order to help get my guildies leveled, but if Daxie gets to 70, and my guildies are still lagging behind, I may consider respeccing her to Holy, picking up tailoring, and moving her to a raiding guild. Maybe. I don't know.

I do know that her leaving wouldn't have the same detrimental impact of Daxenos leaving, and of course, I'd have the same skill set as a healer, so the guilds that know me would be happy to accept Daxie instead of Dax. I'm just going to have to wait and see.

Fishing

Bob the Goat had a good post on secondary professions. His love of fishing is equal in intensity and superior in fidelity than mine. Than being said, I now have a fisherman. erm, person. uh, elf?

Let's review fishing skill levels:
Daxenos - 2.
Rysteranch - 50ish
Dwarfvader - 1
Daxie - 1
Muktuk - 0
Smashhammer (bank alt) - 0
Matboy (mat holder) - 0
Daxe - 100+

From that list, guess who the alchemist is, 8~P.

My logic is similar to a lot of people's in that if I'm fishing, I'm not leveling. Who in their right mind has time to sit around clicking on a bobber????

But, here I am, sitting around Darnasty and Darkshore, clicking on a bobber. I needs me some Oily Blackfish to grind up into some sort of oil that I can mix with some Strange Kelp so I can drink the concoction and breath under water. Sounds appetizing!

There are up sides:
I get the mats for Alchemy for free (gold wise, not time wise).
The hunter I run with gets free kitty food.
There are fishing quests!! Woot, I can do some leveling!
I can keep an eye on the TV and sortof watch a show.

So, my method of fishing? I cast and then position the courser over the bobber. I wear headphones w/ a mic attached, so I listen for the splash that the fish makes when I get a hit. I then click on the bobber without ever looking at the screen. I also play on a laptop, so I move my had from the USB mouse to the laptop mouse controls so I don't accidentally move the mouse.

Voila! I can watch TV and play WoW at the same time......but it's still fishing..../wrists.

The Group in ZF

Last night The Group went to ZF. The group make up was:

Dwarfvader, lvl46
Zyyro, lvl 45
Syenna (Kat), lvl 44, DPS Warrior
Turion, lvl 46
Bloodpebble, lvl 49

We took it slow and easy. Most of the pulls were three mobs, so one was sapped, and DV tanked the other two. Easy Peasy! Picked up the pats solo and cleared to the first 4 mob pull after the right hand turn. I decided to mark the third one in line for the sap, and the last one for off tanking by Syenna. On the sap, I started towards the first mob, and Syenna headed for the last one.

But...the last one wasn't coming with the first two! I called out over voice to stop, but Syenna had already aggroed it. Dang! We could have had a two and two mob pull. Oh, well. We ended up just fine with the original plan, but I will make a note for the next run.

The guy back in the cave was not an issue; I asked Turion and Syenna to each tank one of the adds. We killed the boss first and then finished up the adds. Syenna got a nice pair of new gloves, so woot on her!

We took on the witch doctor next. Now, I've almost always died on this fight on other characters, so it was refreshing to be alive at the end of the fight! Once again, we killed the boss first and the adds second. I don't remember what dropped or who got it. I may have won a leather item...idunno...

We got two rare spawns in this instance. One was on the end of the long straightaway that begins the instance, and the other was at the entrance to the "stairs" area. Cool to see, loot was so so.

After the second rare spawn, we called the run. It was 10 o'clock in Africa on a work night, and I had to get on dinner. So, we didn't do the stairs or even clear the area. Next time, I hope we get a bit more done; Turion and DV now have the quest to get the tablets...

The only wipe happened when I got lost trying to push through the respawns to the front of the entrance. I forgot to turn left...and ran right into a populated area. And everyone was following me....uh, whoops? BP must have Vanished, but the rest of us just died...

"Why, yes, Miss Spirit Healer, I would like to take you up on your offer to damage my equipment and make me sicker than a dog!"

Anchorage, AK

I had a visitor from Anchorage, AK. WOOOOOT!!! ANCHORAGE!!!!!

How's it going??? Termination dust is long gone, eh? Been snow on the ground since mid October? Begich still mayor? The Glacier Brewhouse still make the best brew in town (Moose's Tooth is good, but I prefer the Brewhouse.) Is Lake Otis and Tudor still a mess?

/sigh. I lived in Anchorage for 17 years, and DANG, I miss it. I loved the 400 miles of bike trails, the relaxed atmosphere, the coffee shops (friends don't let friends....drink Starbucks), and the beer! I liked the fact that I was only 5 minutes away from Alaska (my brother lives in Fairbanks and says this like it's an insult!). I also loved working at Providence Alaska Medical Center. I really miss John, Maria, Jackie, and John.

So, fellow Alaskan, I know you only spent 00:00:00 time on my site and immediately left, thanks for dropping by and stirring up my feelings of homesickness.

Trust, tanking, and some other T word

Trust
Trust between a healer and a tank is critical. Since playing DV in The Group, I've gotten a new appreciation for this relationship of trust. I absolutely trust Zyyro (Myk), my healer. I never look at my health bar because I know that I don't have to worry about it; Zyyro has it under control.

I've also gotten a nice look at what I believe is the mentality of most good tanks, which is described as "Let me at 'em, just keep me healed!" I have a real appreciation for Leeroy Jenkins; he's still a numbskull, but I understand his actions better. I'm more antsy to get going after a fight and keep the action going. My work as a priest really helps out here as I'm keenly aware that Zyyro's mana level directly affects my survivability.

I think that this issue of trust is why many PuGs fail; if the tank is always watching his health bar, he's not able to focus fully on the task at hand. Another issue arises when the healer has a different healing strategy than the tank is comfortable with. As a healer, I like to keep the tank in the TOP 50% of their health; yes, I keep a Renew on the tank at all times and have significant overhealing. But, on the other hand, my tank usually doesn't die!

I am at the point to where, as DV, I don't want to be healed by anyone but Zyyro or Turion (who respecced Retro, but still keeps an eye on my health when we're duoing). The one exception that I'm willing to make is to train another healer...that wants to learn and is in my guild or on my friends list. This means just saying NO to PuGs. Will...not....do.

Tanking
Last night's Ulda run was hampered a bit by BP's no show. He's on the road in Africa, so we didn't know if he'd be able to make it anyways. So, the four of us decided to clear out the southern room for a quest and then we went into the instance to provide Syenna (Kat) with an opportunity to practice tanking.

Now, I will admit right off the bat, that I am a control freak. This is a biiiiiiig asset when I tank. I take charge, mark mobs, lead the group, and get all those ugly mobs hating me. And only me. So giving up some of the control (the all those ugly mobs hating me part) was ...... difficult. But, training must take place in order for others to learn what I've learned and to gain the skills necessary to be a good tank.

So, the first bit of advice I give to Kat is that I'm VERY selfish when it comes to tanking. I NEED TO BE THE CENTER OF ATTENTION!!! In my opinion, this NEEDS to be the tank's attitude, unless otherwise arranged. Every mob in the instance has only one hate target, ME! If one of them thinks that they might not like the healer, it's my job to ensure that mob that they don't like me, more. I think that for the DPSer who is learning to tank, this is the hardest concept and practice to work out.

As a DPSer, other than CC, you should be focus firing on THE target and never hitting another target until THE target is dead. Then you move on to the next THE target, and so on. As a tank, depending on your playstyle, you are keeping an eye on all the targets. Whether tab targeting, clicking between mobs, or positioning mobs to see inattentive scumbags (going after someone other than ME), the tank must control all of the mobs and tap those inattentive ones on the shoulder to remind them of who they hate.

Once the new tank gets this concept, then we can start talking about what spells/moves can be used to focus the mobs on the meat shield. So, I had Kat start taunting off of Turion (a pally wearing plate) to help her get the practice down. I also let Zyyro get beat on a bit to help Kat get in the practice of chasing down those inattentive mobs going after HER lifesource (and husband...lol).

All and all, it was a good practice session. I know I didn't learn in a day, and I don't expect anyone else to. That said, I look forward to Thu when Kat and Turion are going to share the tanking duties, and Daxie gets to join the group on DPS.


Turnip
'Nuff said.

The weekend wrapup

*DV tanked RFD and Uldaman with The Group. We kicked some butt!! We got Phat Lewtz!! We worked as a serious team!! Woot on us!

*Daxie was lvl 38 on Saturday evening. By Sunday evening she was 43 and had Whitemane's hat and Doan's Dagger. Thanks Blizted!!

*Daxenos healed a Shadow Labs run by [House of Pain] and tanked by his good friend Kandiltu. Had a wipe or two, but over all, very successful and got Kand's guildies their first Kara frag.

Alt-itis and other fine Indian cuisine, part bazillion

Last night, my coworker convinced me to roll a Night Elf to help out his wife's new hunter. Hmmm, Night Elf, eh? What are my choices....

Hunter, already got one.

Warrior, what, is DV chopped liver?

Priest, I've got two!

Rogue, up close and personal DPS? no thanks.

Shammy/Pally/Mage/Warlock, not on a Night elf!

Druid, hmmmmm....tank, healer, or DPS. SOLD!

And thus, Daxe was born. And noob mobs were pwned!

The Group in RFD

We went to RFD yesterday, but unfortunately, the run was plagued with outside issues. BP was on the road, and his internet connection was iffy at best. We finally got going at 1 pm server time, and I had to leave in one hour for dinner.

Between BP's disconnect issues and taking our time with the unknown instance, we could only make it to the first boss. It was really no issue; the hardest part was the 4 elite spiders that the gong summons. I didn't even try to mark them for a kill order, and there was quite a bit of chaos in killing them. Thankfully, Turion and Tryna can take a hit, so we did just fine.

On the spider boss, I popped Bloodrage, started sundering, and only lost aggro once near the end to a DPSer. The chestpiece dropped, and Tryna won it!! Gratz to her!

We ended after the boss because I had to go. So, all in all, a good run for all the issues we had. Hopefully we can do an unplanned run on Saturday morning, 5 am server time.

Wow.

Well, I shamelessly plugged my blog in a backhand manner on TJ's blog, and holy crap, Batman, I got more than double the visitors than any previous day.

So, writing questionable comments on other's blogs = more traffic here!! muhuhuhahahaha...

It's that or add better content...naaaaaaaaaah.

Crap storm....Concluded

Due to very brisk sales of our blogger line staplers and the high demand of Official Musings of a Nutjob paraphernalia, we here at Musingsofanutjob Gubment Remanufacturing are pleased to announce the release of a limited edition collector's item:

The Official Musings of a Nutjob Stapler:


Included with your one of a kind stapler is an Official Musings of a Nutjob Key, Legend, and Label thingy to help the uninformed identify their favorite Musings of a Nutjob character.



The MGR salesman has cut prices to the bare bones, so supplies will not last very long. For the ultra low price of $1,000,000 (US or Canadian or Euros, we're not picky), you can amaze and astound your friends with your super coolness and sharp sense of style!

Crap storm....Continued

So, I've been forced to reveal my Naruto stapler. While I cannot offer the sale of that stapler, I can guarantee shipment with receipt by Christmas of the rest of my stapler line!

For the low, low price of $1000 (US, non of that Canadian crap), I will send the stapler of your choice to your home....AND I'LL PAY THE SHIPPING!! You heard right! I will pay for the shipping of your official musingsofanutjob manufactured, gubment sponsored stapler to your designated shipping address.

Cash only please, no refunds, all purchases final.

Get 'em while they're hot!!!

Crap storm...STARTED!!

So, I started a little controversy over at TJ's blog about a Naruto stapler. So, now, I have to post a picture of my Naruto stapler. Well, FINE!! Ego, Doom, and all you others, here it is!!!

S&M on WoW

Yesterday The Group took on Scarlet Monastery's Cathedral. From the last time we spent together, I expected a good time and was not disappointed. I sent a little analysis email to the involved (and some uninvolved) parties; since I'm feeling lazy, I'll cut and paste it here!

-----

I did a little analysis of our time in SM and found out several things. BTW, I run an addon (Damage Meter) that helps me with this....ok, it provides all the data for this. I get to make the giant leaps of logic to determine what is right and what needs tweaking (oooo, love that sugarcoating....). I am not a fan of posting damage meters in the instance, but they can be useful for looking at some trends.

What went right - EVERYTHING!!!
1. Bloodpebble topped the damage meter at 37%, Turion was next at 25%, and both rarely pulled aggro off DV (3rd - 24%), if at all. A couple of things that this tells us is that I'm learning how to tank better, and the DPS is holding off until I have firmly established aggro.

2. DV topped the damage/healing taken meter - the hog! The meat shield absorbed 66% of the damage dished out, and I forgot what percent of healing, but it was far above the rest of the group. As it should be!

3. Zyyro topped the healing meter. In fact, he was the only one who did any healing! 100%. I should have bandaged myself just to screw things up....8~P. Even though we have two other healers (I KNOW, I KNOW, KAT CAN'T HEAL!!), neither of them had to pony up some health lurvins for the group.

4. Zyyro very rarely pulled healing aggro. Once again, my tanking skills are improving, but also, I credit Myk with keeping a good distance from the fight (has to get 130% of my threat to gain aggro) and with his style of Renew healing. This kind of healing avoids big spikes which can pull off the mobs that aren't so ticked with me.

5. I got better at positioning the mobs with their backs to the DPSers. The more I think about this, the more I realize that it is my responsibility to position the mobs where I want them. In later instances, it becomes critical for the tank to place the mob/boss a certain way in order to minimize damage to the rest of the group. So, I might as well get the skills now, eh?

What needs tweaking
An interesting item on the report is that Tryna was 4th on the damage meter at 8%, even though she is 4 levels above Turion. I'm curious if it's due to her spec, gear, or something else. Turion, can you reply all to this email and let us know what you're doing to do so much freakin' damage?

----

Turion was kind enough to go through his game play and spells he used. So, RFD is up next on Thursday; I think I'll run Rysteranch through it just to familiarize myself with the place and the fights.

Random Thoughts

One of my favorite columnists is Thomas Sowell. On occasion, he writes a piece on random thoughts on the passing scene. I reckon, this is my version.

Read on a tagline: If you build a man a fire, you keep him warm for a day. If you set a man on fire, you keep him warm for the rest of his life.

I find it interesting that, although my oldest son and I have moments where we can't stand each other, I would have a positively side-splitting time ROFL playing Apples to Apples with him and his friends.

I like pie.

I killed a two inch cockroach the other day; no I didn't get any xp from it and only got goo as loot!

The next time you're in an MRI, take a quarter with you. Put said quarter on its edge in the bore and watch it slowly fall without regard to gravity. It's a pretty neat trick. If you happen to use a Canadian (or non American) quarter, this trick does not work, but will result in a flying quarter!

Black, 2007 Nissan Muranos have, no HAVE, to be the best looking vehicle on the road nowadays. Sooooo sleeeeeeek! Soooooo niiiiiiiiice! VROOOOM! VROOOOM! (I haz one!!!)

I'll be going to an Indiana Pacers game tomorrow night; I've been asking around about borrowing a gun for protection from the players. Of course I'll also be battling nosebleeds, so if you don't see any more posts after this, you'll know one or the other got me.

It's really nice to have friends who are willing to slap you around to clear up your perspective; yesmen and lackeys do their friends no service.

Sure, people SAY that they want to do something about Global Warming, but when presented with a space age personal methane collector, those same people refuse to buy a device that will not only reduce deadly greenhouse gases, but also remove embarrassing odors from their person.

Profession hopping, it's the Gen X thing...

This weekend, I bit the bullet and dumped mining on DV and picked up enchanting. So first Rysteranch got the call to run through Deadmines (VC) and collect some DE stuff. After the second run, I got the bright idea that Dax could make crap out the the linen/wool stuff for DEing purposes.

So, I took Dax through there, and he did even better! No arrow costs. Just PW:shield and start SW:paining the mobs! Collect the money, cloth, and loot! Easy, easy!

DV was able to get his enchanting up past 200 over the weekend and has been able to add a couple of enchants to his existing and future armor sets. I believe he's good to go for DEing drops from The Group that no one wants.

Karazhan

So, last night, here I am on DV, completing some warrior quest in Arathi, and the GM of Death's Advocate (the guild I ran Kara with earlier in the week) whispers me: "Come to Kara with us. :)"

Woooot Woooot! They like me; they really like me! So, log on Dax and get summoned.

The raid was still on Moroes, and I'm not sure how many attempts they had already made that night. We ended up making 3 or 4.

One attempt was an accidental pull by one of the tanks. Whoops, shackle, shackle, keep tank healed...wipe. We were pretty much ready for the pull, but it seemed like my shackle kept breaking early and wreaking havoc on the raid.

The first attempt, we tried the strat that we've tried before, killing all the adds, then jumping on Moroes. I can't remember the specifics of the fight, but I think one of the tanks went down pretty fast, and things went south from there.

Then we switched to the kill the casters, keep the melee shackled and jump on Moroes. As long as the shackles held, we could do a reasonable job on Moroes.

Just a reminder, all of the following analysis is based solely on memory and is subject to misfiring synapses, mis perceptions, ignorance, and flat out wrong information! I have no hard data to back up my views. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The healers can usually keep the tanks going and the shackles up.

The tanks can usually maintain aggro through the blind/gouge situations, so Moroes doesn't go after #3 on the aggro list.

One problem is running OOM during the fight for the healers. We are not to the point where we are running OOM because of the garrotes, at least I don't think we are. It seems that by the time we're dog piling on Moroes, the other priest is low on mana. That said, I have no idea what my mana level is about that time, so take that with a grain of salt! 8~P!

This is the longest fight I've ever been in, and I'm wondering if I should trot out the shadow fiend early, so I can bring him out later for more mana regen.

I use a pot per fight, but I know I need to pot earlier in order to take advantage of the 2 min cool down. I hate overmanaing, if that's a word (like overhealing....), but I think I'll have to start doing that so that I can avoid the OOM situation. I really need to get over my inherent stinginess and become more of a pothead. erm, yeah.

Another area I need to improve in is knowing who is doing what. I just realized last night that we have three tanks, not two! We have two immediately on Moroes and the third on the casters. Crap! Now, thankfully I'm not the guy that needs to unblind one of the tanks, but I DO need to know what my tank is doing and who their target is. While a Moroes Vanish means another Garrote, the up side is that the two tanks get a little respite from his damage. The add tank, for lack of a better word, gets no such breathing room. So depending on who I'm healing, that GH I was just going to chain cast might be mostly wasted because the expected damage didn't happen.

I mentioned shackling, and I'll expound on it now. Mages, I feel your pain! I will never take a mage's sheeping a mob for granted again. Even chain trapping doesn't compare to shackling, although last night I used some of the strategy in chain trapping (ct) to help with shackling.

The advantage that shackling has over ct is that mobs do not have to be pulled into it. They can be shackled in place. Also, if a shackle is resisted, I can immediately start another shackle - no cool down other than the global one. I can also reshackle early to reset the shackle timer. As I've mentioned in another post, I can keep my shackle mob targeted, so I can watch that little timer count down and reapply as necessary while still healing the raid.

The down side? It seems that on these particular mobs, shackles break early. I have not tempted fate by seeing how long my shackle will last; I always reshackle before the timer has completed half of it's duration. Even with the frequent shackling (at cost of my mana!), the mobs still end up running around for short periods, where they wreak havoc on the raid.

So, solutions?

Well, for starters, I need to look for a shackle addon that will give me a bigger indication of when my shackle breaks. That little box on the portrait isn't doing the trick; I need something flashing on my screen or a bigger box by Healbot that I can watch.

I need to employ the chain trapping strategy of moving to maximum distance from my mob to give me time for recasting shackle. There may be a down side to this if I don't have aggro on the mob, and it heads for someone else. I'll have to carefully play around, erm, check that, TEST, yeah, CAREFULLY TEST this strategy to see if it will work as I plan.

Buy some pot! I need to make sure that I have such a quantity of mana potions that I'm comfortable quaffing them without regard to saving them for OH CRAP situations. Yes, I'll have to watch the pot cool down, but in reality, I usually get one shotted, so health pots aren't a concern.

The tanks on Moroes deserve some company at the beginning of the fight. After aggro is firmly established, I need to trot out my slimy little shadow fiend and get some mana lurvin's. With this and the pots (as well as making the most of the 5SR), I should be in good shape for when the dog pile happens.

Hopefully tonight or soon, I will get the +healing to gloves (35, I think), which will raise my +healing to over 1280. I'm still making Primal Mooncloth in the hopes that I'll go to Bot or Arc and get that Whitemend recipe. In the absence of that, I hope to at least have the mats so someone can craft it for me.

Dax in Kara, AGAIN!! WOOOOOOT!!

The Group

I've decided to call our lvl 37-42ish group by an original name...The Group. So, my faithful readers, when you see this label (and maybe title, I haven't made up my mind), you can rest assured that I will be discussing the adventures of, drum roll please:

Dwarfvader - Warrior - Tank extraodinaire
Zyyro - Priest - Healing ma-chine!
Turion - Pally - DPS bad man
Bloodpebble - Rogue - DPS Back stabbin' fool
Tryna - Pally - DPS - Offtank 2 d max

Last night, we decided to start on Scarlet Monastery(SM) Library. We needed to get everyone the Scarlet Key, and the instance was a bit low level for the the two 42's. Perfect place to work on raid icon placement, kill order, sapping practice, and general game play in a group.

We had no deaths! Zyyro (AKA Myk in Africa) did a great job healing; at one point, on the way back through the respawns, we had 5-6 mobs on us! No....Deaths! 'Nuff said (Zyyro elevated to Uber Healer status)!

We tried several combinations of pulls. At the first, we tried sapping one and killing the other on two mob pulls. Too easy! We tried having Tryna(AKA Kat in Africa) offtanking a mob. Too easy! Ok, DV can tank two of these mobs, no problem. We finally settled on sapping one mob on three mob pulls, with DV tanking the remainder. We set a kill order (skull, X, Star- which was the sapped mob). We did not have planned pulls of 4+ mobs, except one where two of the mobs were non-elite.

I got most of my questions answered during this run:
How does Zyyro heal? GREAT!
Can DV tank a couple of similar level elites? You betcha!
Can the DPS focus fire and follow a kill order? Yup!
Are we alert enough to stop runners? Uh-huh!

We did such a good job that we had plenty of time to run through the Armory! So off we went to see what Herod was up to. By this time, we were clicking along very nicely. We pulled groups of 2 and 3 and easily disposed of them. We arrived at Herod's chamber without any hairy events or OH CRAP moments.

So, DV opens the door, and we gaze lovingly down at the holder of our PHAT LEWT. We were all mana'd up, and DV was about to charge in when Turion accidentally ran off the ledge. ACK! Ok, no problem, let me pop Blood Rage, get some...uh, rage, and start the Sundering. WOOT WOOT! Got aggro immediately and never looked back!

I reminded The Group about the Blades of Light whirlwind and that us melee folks need to run to the edges of the circle when he activates it. I would repeat the warning over the voice chat system when I heard it as I ran out of range. He popped it 3 or 4 times before going down, but everyone was on their game and moved. After he went down, we had already decided that all the AoE people (Zyyro w/ Holy Nova, pallys w/ Consecrate, and DV w/ Thunderstomp) would gather in the center of the circle and AoE the incoming mass of mobs. Worked like a charm! I believe Zyyro did the most damage with his AoE, but since I wasn't tracking any of the instance on WWS or some other tool, I don't know.

For PHAT LEWT, Turion got Herod's shoulders. A nice upgrade to what he was wearing; DV already had snagged them on a previous run through.

Up next? Cathedral. Look out Whitemane, we're comin' fer ya!

My healing addons

I have several addons that I use for healing, monitoring buffs, and determining threat.

For Threat, I use Omen. I recently switched from KTM on the recommendation of several blogs and forums. I'll be watching it closely to see how it performs, but right away, I like the fact that the screen edges flash red when I gain aggro and I like the Red text message when I pass 90% of the tank's threat.

For Buff monitoring, I use CT_Buff. It's nice to see the remaining time, in minutes, of my buffs, as well as seeing a visual shrinking bar. My only complaint is, that in a raid with lots of buffers (buffers....lol, I hate buffers), the list gets pretty long and monitoring the buffs you're responsible for becomes more challenging.

For Healing, I use two addons that make my life a WHOLE lot easier and make me appear to be an uber healer...lol.

The second addon I use is Decursive. This addon places a little box for each raid/party member on the screen. If the little box turns RED, that means a left click is required on that box. If it turns BLUE, then a right click is required on the box. Now, recently, the spells changed buttons, but the colors remained the same. Currently, Dispel Magic is mapped to RED, and Abolish Disease is mapped to BLUE. Used to be the other way around, but since the left/right click is still mapped to the same color, my muscle memory is still valid.

The first addon, for Healing, that I use is Healbot Continued. I can't say enough about how important this addon is for me to heal effectively. Sure, I can click like a madman, write macros out the yingyang, and fight against my uncanny ability to click the empty space between two buttons on the casting bar. Or, I can use Healbot. I chose the EASY button.

Healbot, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways, in no particular order:

1. Healbot replaces (optional) the standard party frames with nice big green bars representing health. This is one of the nicest things about it; no more squinting at health bars to see who's dying. It also adds a thin bar beneath the health that represents mana/rage/energy and a thin red bar above that indicates who is being beat upon.

2. Healbot is very nice for soloing. As a priest, I was always casting things upon myself: PW:Shield, Renew, etc. To be able to do so without changing my targeted mob is much faster than targeting myself, casting the spell, then targeting the right mob again.

3. I love being able to keep one mob targeted while healing myself or my party. During my Kara run this week, I was in charge of shackling a mob. No problem, I targeted the mob, cast my shackle, and proceeded to heal my assignments all without clicking off of my shackle. I could see my default shackle timer right on the mob and could reshackle at 10-15 seconds on the counter.

4. Healbot encourages muscle memory healing rather than speedy mouse movement and clicking. By mapping healing spells to certain key combinations, and practicing with them, healing becomes much more reactionary and faster. Now, in order to throw that Renew on the 'lock that's killing himself, I just press Ctrl+right click on his bar. Bingo! 'lock has a Renew, and I go back to nose picking in the 5SR. (BTW, I use a Nostromo N52 gamepad and have mapped the Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys to my pinky row).

5. Healbot places HoT and Prayers of Mending(frisbee) icons at the end of party members' healthbars when those spells are active. The HoTs also slowly fade as the spell runs it course. I can always see where my frisbee is, which means I know to recast it when that pesky 'lock gets it and refuses to pass it on!

6. I can see the whole raid and not just the people in my group. Huge! If I'm on the OT and the MT healer goes down, it's very easy for me to switch to the MT and continue healing with the same style of healing. I don't have to switch to another method of healing due to that person not being in my group.

I'm sure I'll think of other ways that I <3 Healbot, but this post is already a little novelette! If you decide to try it out, make sure you take the time to either learn the default key combos or, do like I did, remap the spells to the different key combos. Also, I've found that remapping the Shift/Ctrl/Alt keys to the column that is reachable by my left pinky makes it much easier, mechanically, to access the different key combos.

Lastly, practice, practice, practice. The hardest part of getting up to speed with Healbot is creating that muscle memory, but once you have it down, healing becomes much easier!

Bring it!!

Last night I asked one of the priests from the Kara raid the other night to give me some feedback on my performance. I asked for an unvarnished evaluation.

Unfortunately, his guild doesn't use WWS or another parser to analyze their performance, so he didn't have any hard numbers to throw down or specific instances of bad play.

He did comment on having a shackle macro, which I implemented today (Thanks Ego!!). I did tell him a little about my interface so he didn't think I was a total slacker...lol. Which, brings to mind another blog post that I need to write...grrrr.

Overall, he said I did well. He also indicated that I had impressed several of the raid members and asked if I was guilded. Without going into much detail, I told him I was GM of a small casual guild and couldn't manage to leave just yet. I asked if I could add him to my friends, and he said yes and reciprocated. He also asked for my alts' names as I indicated I would be spending quite a bit of time on them.

It was very nice to get the positive feedback. I have a bit more confidence in being able to heal Kara, as well as attend to the additional duties that are required.

It starts...

...tonight! Myk and Kat are on board. Bloodpebble is bringin' da backstabbin' DPS. Turion is respecced for damage. And DV has a brand spankin' new breathing system.

Koooooo-shhhhhhh......
Koooooooooo-shhhhhhhh.......
Kooooooooo-shhhhhh.....

Tonight we run the Library in Scarlet Monastery. I do believe that it will be a very easy run; everyone is lvl 36 or above. Mostly the run is to get everyone their SM Key and to work out killing mobs. Hopefully we'll figure out how many mobs DV can tank at a time, if we need to put up a kill order (it's always helpful, but slows things down considerably), and just general game play in a group with our toons.

The schedule is still being worked out; we've decided on two days, but which two days is still being negotiated. I'll have to see how the wife aggro works out; I might not be able to make dinner on those days, which would up my threat(s) level. Then, in January, I'm looking at having a class on M/W that would put me home around 5:30, which would mean I might not be able to have dinner going on any of the days she works....NOT GOOD. Maybe I'll swap the class for another class that's web based. hmmmmm.

Karazhan

I jumped on Rysteranch last night to farm some motes of H2O and saw someone LF healer for kara.

OOOOOOOoooooooooo, I can do that.

PST'd the guy about Daxenos and got the ok!

Woooooooot! Dax is goin' to Kara again!

Since it was the day after the reset, Attunmen was up.

Now, I'm not entirely happy with my performance. I kept my shackle up most of the time, but let it get loose a number of (too many) times. I was assigned to the OT and general raid healing; I did a passable job keeping them healed. On Attunmen, for some reason during the middle of the fight, I jumped to the top of the threat meter by a HUGE amount. Thankfully, although Omen (just switched to this threat meter last night) said I had aggro, the boss didn't come to shmush me.

On to Moroes. We were standing outside the room by the pillars, and I got the bright idea to move to get a better line of sight. All of a sudden, I'm getting beat on by something! Crap, I aggro'd some of the guests.....and wiped the raid.

/cry

It's bad enough that I'm the PuG'd raid member doing just a passable job and now I wipe the raid. Crap.

CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/apologize profusely for wiping, accept the responsibility and ribbing, slam heel of hand into forehead. DOH!

ok. NOW, on to Moroes. We tried 5 or 6 times on this guy. The closest we got him was around 37 or so %. After the 3rd try (or thereabouts) we switched strategies to kill the casters first. I remember reading something about this before, but until it was mentioned, didn't dredge it up from the depths of my memory banks. We still wiped, but we seemed to get to Moroes quicker.

Lessons learned:
1. DON'T get close to the guests!!! And watch where you're going!

2. I watched the MT healer "dangle the tank" by waiting to use Greater Heal to ensure no overhealing. I believe the MT died once because of this healing method and have Renewed (pun intended) confidence in my healing method of always having a Renew on my target while keeping their health in the top 50%.

3. DON'T get close to the guests!!! And watch where you're going!

4. Shackles break early at times, and I need to have an emergency macro that puts PW:shield on me and then reshackles my target. I must keep better track of my shackles. BTW, I did reshackle around 10 seconds or so to ensure I could overcome a resist.

5. DON'T get close to the guests!!! And watch where you're going!

6. I need to reposition myself away from my shackle like I'm chain trapping just in case of an Oh Crap moment. At the very least I'll have an extra second of casting time before I start getting hit.

7. Did I mention: DON'T get close to the guests!!! And watch where you're going!

Other things that I noticed is that, although I couldn't see the other priest's +healing, I could see their mana pools and health. I had the highest amount of both between the MT healer, myself, and the shadow priest. I'm not sure what this means, other than I may have gimped my +healing for +int and +sta. Right now, my +healing is around +1250, and I'm still wearing some AH greens. I have always been reluctant to give up my other stats to add to my +healing; in fact, I've socketed gems that ensure I don't lose my other stats when I upgrade gear. I am, however, missing some enchants that could pump up my +healing by 30 or 50 points, so I need to look into getting those. Like everyone else, I hate enchanting something that I know I won't be keeping, but sometimes you have to spend the money just to get you where you want to go.

And then there was one....

I got an email from Malissa today, and she's decided to leave the guild to join Gerwintassle in a new guild. No, it doesn't appear that she's going to the guild he created with his friend. It looks like a brand new guild where her and her hubby can chill.

ok.

/sigh

So, now I'll be hitting up some guildies to see if they want officer positions. I really like the idea of plurality in leadership, and I wish that I could get at least two people to manage the guild with me at the GM level. I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens.

Another idea...

Well, Turion has come up with a very good idea. He has gotten his wife and his brother to start toons on the server and is committed to helping them level.

That makes 4 people on Eastern time that have free time in the evenings; all we need is one more (or two for subs) in order to start running 5 man instances.

He is in the process of trying to get his sister to play, and there is the possiblility that his brother's girlfriend might play. Five and six.

And, there are already some guildies that play in the evening that are in the thirties and would probably be willing to sub if necessary.

So, what is the idea? Run the 5 man content like a Raid. Set a schedule, farm instances, get the teamwork thing down. If nothing else, we would have a premade team to run all the 5 man instances including Heroics. With a little luck, we could transition to 10 man content when our guild is a bit bigger.

I do have quite a number of questions:
So, has anyone out there done anything like this?

Have you had a 5 man team that has stuck together from VC to ST and beyond?

Is it even possible to balance leveling with running/farming instances?

What kinds of issues might pop up (other than the usual loot drama)?

In reference to my earlier whine, this might just fit the bill. Dwarfvader is chomping at the bit for his phat lewtz, and Turion is coming along as a healer. With the addition of 3 DPSers, I'm hoping we could just live in instances. Of course, we'd have other days to work on professions and the like. The biggest part of this is to get everyone used to group play, set expectations for timeliness/readiness, and GET SOME PHAT LEWTZ!!

So, anyways, I'd love to hear from both of my readers on this if you guys have had any experience on this subject!

One of these days.....

....I'm going to get a clue.

I respecced DV last night to follow Brigin's recommendations for a protection warrior. I really need to research talent points BEFORE I start spending them! Of course, I realize that my game play might differ from Brigin's, so I expect that I'll respec at least one more time.

I also decided to swap out some +str and +agi for a whole lotta armor and +sta on my gear. I kept the old pieces just in case the new ones don't work out the way I hope. Turion respecced also last night to focus more on healing, so tonight should be interesting as we try out the new combo.

Speaking of last night, Turion and I ran with a lvl 25 rogue guildie for a bit in Wetlands. We totally pwned some Orcs and Raptors! I pulled about 5 or 6 at a time and had a BLAST!!!! It was soooo fun to just wipe them out! Of course the mobs were 4 or so levels below me and Turion, so we weren't in any danger. But....MAN THAT WAS FUN!

But, MOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!

/whine

OK, I have to whine; I started whining about Gerwintassle leaving, and now I'm gonna whine some more.

I am GM of a small, casual guild. We have 3 level 70's, two of which are mine. Soon, we'll have another level 70, which is owned by the OTHER level 70 (Mykell).

4 70's and two owners.

The next person to probably hit 70 (Kat) is married to Myk.

Problem? Myk and Kat live in Africa, which is 5 hours ahead of Eastern time and pretty much squashes any Outlands instance runs with the guild during the work week. Grrrr....

'nother problem? I got my first taste of raiding last night and....I liked it. I really liked it. Even though I didn't get any loot, I was happy as a clam. I would really like to raid on a regular basis, but I would have to leave my guild to do so.

'nother problem? My marriage would take a serious hit if I didn't manage the aggro that resulted from raiding, if I could manage it at all. My wife was NOT happy when I informed her that I was in Kara and insinuated that I would like to....uhm....be left alone..../feign death.

/sigh.

The real problem is that I think I could get a slot on a raiding team. Neya has already indicated that he could pull some strings.....that's what makes the situation so....tempting. When I had no hopes of getting on a team or didn't even know what Kara was, I was just fine with fiddling around with my professions and my alts.

Now, I find I really like instances for the teamwork/loot/fun aspects, and my guild is built around casual play. I've even started, as I mentioned, doing run throughs for guildies in hopes of helping them level faster.

Well, I'm not looking for advice or anything, I just had to whine....

/whineoff

Karazhan

So, last night, Dwarfvader and Turion were questing away in Wetlands, when Kandiltu whispers me about going to Kara. "Wha?? Huh?????" was my reply.

I get excited, DV gets excited cause he thinks HE'S going, and then Kand clarifies: We need Dax.

DV is crushed, but reluctantly makes his way to the inn to drown his sorrows in a Flagon of Mead.

Meanwhile, Dax is jumping up and down and squeeing like a little schoolgirl. "I'M GOING TO KARA!!!! I'M GOING TO KARA!!!!!!"

So, after I calm down, irritate my wife, and sell/repair, I accept the summons!

We had quite a lengthly discussion on taking down Attunmen the Huntsman, and how the respawns will happen in pretty short order. I get the star as my shackle target and the main tank as my healing target.

And....we're off! Horsies are pulled and made into glue! I keep up the MT and my shackle with no problems. I reshackle every 10 seconds whether it needs it or not. We have no deaths and are actually 1 minute ahead of the group's record time!

Unfortunately, the Attunmen strategy has to be explained to us newbs, and the record doesn't fall...lol.

For the healer, this is a pretty simple fight. Only the MT and Off-tank should be taking damage, so, hopefully, healers will only have to heal one target. During our run, Midnight got away from the OT for a sec and caused some damage, but nobody died. Once the two became one (eeeeeewwwww), the MT got aggro easily; then it was just a matter of keeping him healed while the DPS burned him down. And, down.....he.......went! There was much rejoicing that the newb priest didn't screw up the whole thing (mostly by me), and the RL distributed the loot. Kand got something, I can't remember. I got a badge of Justice.

As we made our way to a quest turn in for me, a nice green "of the Physician" hood dropped. I indicated to the raid that it would be an upgrade for me and could I pretty please have it? The raid graciously allowed me to grab the piece of trash and wear it on my head!

So, next was Moroes. We went back to the entry, up the stairs and started pulling mobs. We had a couple of deaths - one due to the AoE mage that the healers didn't watch. Whoops! She didn't drop any loot, dang!

We made it to Moroes, cleared the room, and discussed strategy. I got to be on shackle duty and healing MT. We positioned ourselves and shackled just as the pull happened. Both shackle targets were shackled in place, and Moroes was exactly where we wanted him. Good start!

From there, things went south. I got off the reshackle, but Moroes decided that my reign of terror should come to an end and one shotted me. Needless to say, my shackle was free and contributing to the raid's demise. A wipe was called, and everyone ran out of the room to reset the boss.

After rezzes and buffs, we tried again. This time, my shackle was resisted right off the bat, but I quickly applied it again to incapacitate the mob. This time the fight didn't go as well; Moroes must have remembered me from last time, because he one shotted me again after the Vanish. A wipe was called.

We had time for two more tries. The next time looked a lot like the first and second tries. Kand made apologies due to having to leave after the third try. The raid tried to figure out why I was getting Moroes' attention, and they decided that some heavy duty healers were in order. Kand and I thanked everyone for allowing us the chance to be part of the raid and hearthed out.

So, a little Kara experience. /sigh....I need better gear.

Guild news

Well, Gerwintassle, our prodigal leader, has left again. This time, he left to help a real life friend start a guild. This is the same psycho friend that was GM of the initial guild that he, Mal, and I were part of.

I'm not optimistic about that guild's chances of survival. The GM, for some reason, just can't seem to hold it together. So, I'm sure Gerwin will be back, sooner or later.

I'm pretty disappointed, though. The Iron Ring is starting to get some of the guildies to Outlands and a Ramparts run wasn't too far off. With Myk and Kat in Africa, evening Outlands instance runs are out of the question. Weekend runs can be put together if Myk jumps on his warrior as tank.

It's a bit frustrating to take the step back that results from Gerwin leaving, but on the plus side, I've gotten a burn to help people in the guild get gear/quests/xp to accelerate their push to Outlands. This help includes running people through lowbie instances (guildies only!) and escorting people through the Hellfire Penn quests. I know I said I didn't like doing that, but, jeez! it's lonely in Outlands.

So, anyways.....

Dwarfvader makes his presence known

And Van Cleef and Arugal are dead because of it.

Saturday morning, Turion and DV were going to two man VC, but an acquaintance was on, so we invited him - a mage. And at the entrance there was a hunter and a shammy that wanted to join up. Sure, np. We were then officially overpowered for the instance, but what the hey!

Almost immediately I find out that the hunter has not been reading BRK and is, indeed, a huntard.

Growl left on? Check.

Pet on aggressive? Check.

Meleeing? Check.

Sending pet in BEFORE I go in? Check.

Rolling NEED on the Cruel Barb (one handed nice sword that DV needed) AFTER just getting the sweet +7 agility polearm? Check!

I was one steaming little dwarf. But, we easily downed Van Cleef, and we all went our merry way.

Later that evening, I was helping Turion with his Pally quest that sends him into SFK. We were going to two man it to the courtyard, but Kandiltu jumped on his priest and we three manned it.
Getting to the courtyard was pretty easy, and I got some good experience tanking. Kandilto got some good tips on healing. And Turion got his quest item. So, we stood around and figured we'd see how far we could get.

The butcher, no problem. Turion got the green blade from him.

The noble in the dining room, no problem. I forgot who got his mace.

Mr. Pally in the chapel, no problem. I got his sweet shield.

Odo, the blindwatcher, no problem. I forgot who got his belt.

Then, after the bridge, I d/c'd. Crap. It took about 5 minutes to reconnect, and in the mean time, Turion called it a night.

So, by the time I was back, it was just me and Kandilto. O....K.....We figured we'd see how far we could get. We did real well with pulling and didn't get in over our heads. Kandilto was able to shackle some of the mobs, so that helped out greatly.

Ferris (or whatever that big wolf's name is) went down pretty easily. And we took care of the VW's. Then, took care of the wolf master's dogs, but wiped on the wolfmaster. No problem, we were beat down from the dog fight (lol) and figured we'd be able to take him at full health/mana. Well, we were wrong. We wiped two more times; we just didn't have enough DPS to kill him before he summoned too many adds. So we called it a night.

On Sunday, we got another group together and cleared the instance. DV got the noble's ring and the Meteor Shard for loot!

Don't I look fancy!

Dax is about to be prancing about in his new clothes; he just hit 375 tailoring yesterday, and on Wednesday will make his last two pieces of Primal Mooncloth for the Primal Mooncloth Robe.

Let me tell you those last 5 points for tailoring can be nerve wracking. It takes approximately 120 netherweave and 12 Arcane Dust to make 6 Imbued netherweave bolts. Add 2 netherweb spider silk and a rune thread to make either a robe or a tunic and HOPE you get a skill point, as the recipe is yellow!

Dax was VERY lucky. First one gave a skill point. Next one, gave a skill point. Third one.....DIDN'T GIVE ANY POINTS!!!! OH NO, HERE WE GO, I'm going to make 10 million of these stupid things before I even reach 374!

/calm

/Send Rysteranch out for more netherweave.

Start again. Third one....GAVE a skill point! Yay, do a little Hamster Dance. Fourth one....GAVE a skill point. Woot! Jump up and down like a little school girl.

Fifth one......should I make you wait, you know, draw out the suspense and bury the result in a wall of text so that you have to read the whole thing before you find out whether or not I was successful. I don't know; I mean you are my faithful readers and I would be a sick Nut Job to alienate you like that. One the other hand, it would be wickedly funny....I'm not sure why, but I think it would be. Hmmmm, well, I guess I won't do that to you; you deserve better than that! After all, you put up with my shenanigans and what not. So, NO, I'm not going to do that!

Um, where was I? Oh, yeah! FIFTH ONE!!! GAVE A SKILL POINT!!!!!!!!!1!ELEVENTYONE!1 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!! Just sit there and glory in being a 375 tailor.

/sigh

Details, not deheads....

Here's a little rundown of the Shadow Labs experience from last night.

Kandiltu was on tanking duty (he's a pally); we had another pally healing, a 'lock, a shadow priest, and Rysteranch, a hunter on DPS. Everyone in the group was level 70.

We decided to do a full clear, so we worked our way clockwise around the first room. Not much to report; I was on chain trapping duty, so I couldn't crank out the DPS that I would have liked to. About halfway through the room, we figured out that we didn't need the trap, but we stuck with it anyways.

Fast forward to the "Fun Time" room, and the first pull was one of the four armed instructers. Well, one of the groups of....erm.....worshipers(?) decided to come with her. Whoops, wipe. Thankfully, we all died in the room before, so nobody was stuck out of rez range. On a side note, the SP had an addon or a macro that said something funny every time he rezzed someone - I've gotta get that for Dax!

So, after we cleared the room, except for the ogre, we buffed up, sucked it up, and engaged the boss that I think is the hardest in the instance - Blackheart the Inciter. Everyone ended up dying, except Kand and the healer. I ran back to help out and got there just as the ogre died, and Kand died shortly thereafter. There was much loling, high fives, and rezzing.

We wiped once on Vorpil because the SP was not sure of the tanking strategy. The first time, the strat was to go south, then north, then south again with the teleports as the delimiter for changing the direction.

The next try, we switched the strat to go North first, then alternate. This strat worked much better, first because everyone was on the same page, and second because the void walkers were all stuck back in the hall after the teleport. We killed him after the first teleport! I'll definitely have to rememeber this strat the next time I'm in there.

We then proceeded to wipe on the next pull. Kand pulled the first two guys, but for some reason, the next 4 pack came running as well. No problem, we'll just die. After that, the trash came in manageable groups of 4, and we smoked 'em. Well, ok, truth be told, I died a couple of times due to resisted traps or trap cooldowns, but I didn't break my own trap, so I count it as a win!

Murmur......I am so grateful he's at half health for this fight. Of course, Blizzard could have just filled up his health bar with his current hit points, meh. Anyways, everyone got reminders of pulling back pets on the arcane explosion and spreading out. Well, I forgot to pull back PuddyTat and on the second arcane explosion, he was dead. Bad for us, no Ferocious Inspiration for the extra damage. We gave it a valiant try, but we succumbed to death's grasp.

The second try we remembered to pull back our pets on the AOE's, and Murmur went down like a dawg! Got my sonic spear (sorry BRK).

Then we wrapped up the run by killing the Kara key frag elemental and congratulated each other on a good run! One frag down, two to go (and a little BM run).

BRK's gonna be mad....

Just a short post. Rysteranch made his first official visit to Shadow Labs and came away with three completed quests, a key frag for Kara, and.....yes.....Murmur dropped it......a SONIC SPEAR!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOT!!!! FIRST TRY!

/whisper: Don't tell BRK we got it on our first try. He'll send Hobbes after us and will probably resist our feign death.....

BM and I'm not talkin' bowel movements

Last night, Dax begged Neya to get on his uber warrior Trilogy and run Black Morass with him. Neya agreed! Wooooot for me!

Kandiltu, the Pally, was on also and was willing to go as well. We were joined by MSN, warlock, and Brolean (or something like that), hunter.

To tell you something about Trilogy's tanking abilities, you should know he on the Kara farm team for his guild and regularly goes and sees Gruul (and kills him). I believe he is solidly T3 gear with some T4 stuff thrown in (sheer speculation on my part). So, how many times did I pull aggro? 3.

1. I was running around with the group before the big event, clearing stuff, and aggroed a stealthed panther. I brought said kitty to the group which promptly snuffed it.

2. I was merrily healing away at some portal, and the boss decides he likes me. Before he can take a step toward me, Tril has him focused back on the nasty tank, and he forgets all about me.

3. Some whelp thought I'd be tasty - Faded and didn't hear from him again.

That was it. 18 portals, and I only drew aggro 3 times. Now THAT was nice!

My healing technique for this instance is becoming my preferred technique:
1. Frisbee the tank and keep a Renew on him. Anytime the frisbee jumps to a toon that's not getting hit, I throw it back to the tank. This kept a good deal of aggro on the tank and saved me some big heals.

2. Renew everyone else when they start taking damage. We had an off tank in Kandiltu, so I had to watch both him and Tril for spike damage. But for everyone else, I don't believe I had to throw a Greater Heal their way during the fights.

3. For this fight, I drank after every portal and didn't run OOM. I threw out my shadow fiend on the last boss and drank a pot just to make sure I didn't run out, but I never really was in danger of going OOM.

No phat lewtz to speak of, but I did get some sort of large shard. Oh, yeah, and I got a key.

The key.

To Karazhan.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!11!!!ELEVENTYONE!!!!11!!

Headless Horseman dies again....and again....and again....

Sorry I didn't post this yesterday, uh insert flimsy excuse here.

So, on Tuesday, a friend whispered me and asked if Rysteranch could help out on the HHM. Well, I'd never done the holiday event, so I said SURE!

The group was trying to THREE man him with no success, so more DPS was needed. Luckily, that's what my hunter can provide (and quite a bit at that). So, we summoned the dude and wiped.

The adds are a problem on the third cycle of killing the head, and it seems that if the group doesn't get the job done on that cycle, that the wipe occurs. One of my problems was finding the head to DPS it, but the rogue said to target off his target and things would be much better. So I did. And they were. HHM went down like a big dawg. And again. And again.

Three times in a row we killed him, and everyone but me passed on the epic flying brooms. I started to feel guilty, but they all assured me that they had brooms out the whazoo. Cool. I also got a nice sta/att ring.

Then, later in the evening, Dax went with a pickup group. We struggled a bit, but downed him twice before people had to go. Dax got a broom and a nice healing ring.

Fun times! Last night was too laggy to try anything, so I just went to bed.

Kara Key Frags

So, Dax finally has the 2nd and 3rd key frags for Kara. Both of the runs were just for frags, but we did go after Dalliah for the Whitemend pattern (which didn't drop). And after killing her, her partner congratulated us on a job well done. LOL!!

So we killed him.

Nothing noteworthy dropped, but did I mention Dax got his last two frags? Now it's off to Black Morass to get the whole thing put together or whatever needs to happen.

Today, I got a guild group together for Deadmines.

Dwarfvader - Level 21 Warrior - Tank
Turion - Level 20 Pally - Healer
Feralguile - Level 25 Hunter - DPS

That's right we three manned it. We had some interesting pulls, but no one died. Until Van Cleef. We had cleared out everything on the ship, and we knew he'd have two adds. So we killed the adds first....and he called more!!! Crap. Turion went OOM, and my pot cooldown wasn't up yet. I also forgot about Last Stand. I would have leveled on the next kill (2 xp shy) and would have gained full health. /sigh. So close, yet so far.

The hunter survived, but he didn't have the quest. Oh well, Turion has a Pally quest there, so we'll be going back.

And Rysteranch cleared out a number of quests that he hadn't gotten to, as well as gained Honored with the Consortium. The new leatherworking pattern isn't anything to write home about, so I've decided to just grind out the clefhoof stuff and get my leatherworking up to 375. I'd really like to make the rest of the Felstalker stuff.

The weekend wrap up. Part II

I just decided to make two parts, so you, my faithful reader weren't confronted with a wall of text that went on and on like Chuck talking to the robot guys.

Saturday, we had an all guild run of Deadmines. The cast:
Dwarfvader - Warrior Tank
Turion - Pally Healer
StJohn - Shadow Priest DPS
Ken - Warlock DPS
Felonie - Shammy DPS

We had some questing issues that took up a good deal of time. We finally got us all on the same page as far as the two quests for Deadmines, and it was 11 pm or so. We get into the instance and start having role confusion. As tank and lead, I assumed the responsibility of pulling, marking, etc. But the Shammy wants to pull and proceeds to start casting.....whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up there Sparky. It doesn't help that the Shammy is my 17 year old son.

After the first couple of pulls, I see that a review of threat dynamics is in order as Felonie keeps pulling aggro. Then the next pull resulted in my saying very sternly, that I NEED aggro!!! ALL THE MOBS SHOULD BE HITTING ON ME!!!!! WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE TWO SUNDERS!!! It also didn't help that Felonie had no idea of what a sunder was and didn't ask. /sigh.

But, we started working together, and I was starting to get the hang of keeping aggro. The DPS was waiting for the most part until I had established my threat. We mowed down the first boss. We mowed down the second boss with his henchman. Then we come to the Tauren boss with the two stealths. Ken warns me not to aggro the boss, but to pull the stealths. Well, by the time I can see the stealths to target them, I've aggroed the whole group. Crap. I start sundering everything I can get a sword on, and they all start beating on me. Turion is healing the crap out of me and Felonie and StJohn take over when he runs out of Mana. And one by one, we kill them. The boss is last, and we make it through his "Oh, you guys are tougher than I thought" breaks. Woot! He's down!

Pull some trash, beat them up.

Pull some trash, beat them up.

Accidentally pull Cookie and.....wipe. Whoops. We made it back to the entrance and all of the front end mobs had respawned. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. We hung it up.

Good run everyone! We'll get 'em next time!

We all got some valuable experience. For Turion, it was his first time in an instance . For all of us it was definitely the first time any of us had play these particular classes in an instance. I got some great experience in tanking and got a little phat lewtz! It was definitely good to run with the guild, and if nothing else, it brought us closer together as guildmates.

The weekend wrap up.

Sure, it's Tuesday and 10:30 at night. I'm a born procrastinator and have never found something worth doing that couldn't be put off 'til later.

But enough about me. What happened in WoW???? Friday, Rysteranch and Gerwintassle went to Underbog and had some glorious moments and some not so wonderful moments.

The glorious? Gerwintassle tanked the three headed hydra, which went down like an automaker's stock after a recall. He tanked it against the wall while the DPS and healer stood off to the side. Rysteranch's shining moment came by casting Misdirection onto Da Tank and lining up a big ole Aimed Shot. That boss headed straight for Gerwintassle, as we hit it with an Arcane shot and a Steady Shot for good measure. Ghaz'an never took his eyes off Gerwintassle.

Group make up changed after that fight, and Gerwintassle gave up the tank slot to a level 70 Bear.

Another stellar example of hunter play came on Claw and Musel'ek. I got the job of kiting Claw down the passageway to the Ghaz'an tank. When I got there, I happened to lose aggro on him and decided to let him run back most of the way before getting aggro on him again to kite him back. It worked like a charm, Musel'ek went down without any heals, and when the group was ready for Claw, I ran back along side him and called out that he was headed for the healer.

The ugly happened next on the Black Stalker. We wiped. And then, the new tank couldn't find his way back and died at the fins of the frenzies. The healer happened to get too close to the Black Stalker and died a quick death. Finally, we get everybody back in the same spot and attempt the boss again. This time, he goes down and there is much rejoicing. Somebody still died, but I can't remember who. Oh, yeah, and poor PuddyTat died as well.

No phat lewtz, but did finish two quests and got the nifty little everlasting mana/food pod thingamajig.

Some musings

Let's face it. When given the choice between putting a chip implant in your brain and going to Cleveland, most of us would much rather just say no.

I have absolutely no idea about what goes on in that town (except the ALCS this year), and I have no idea why people, including myself think that it sucks. I know the Red Sox certainly didn't have the best of times there recently, but I digress.

What is really on my mind is lake water. A quick Mapquest search reveals that Cleveland is on the shores of Lake Erie, which we all know is a euphemism for Lake Eerie. The chief reason the Indians were chosen for this American League city's mascot is because of the weirdness of this lake. And this was before the "Incident that shall not be named", which due to government regulations and the small bandwidth of our internet connection, we shall not name.

In theory, lake water is mostly made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are in a 2:1 ratio combination. But closer inspection yields interesting results, namely, that there are small bits of plasma and goo associated with Lake Eerie's so called "water". Now, I'm no expert, but I know water. And any hydrogen atom worth it's salt (that's Sodium Chloride to the layman) knows that it's social suicide to be anywhere near goopy stuff such as mentioned. Therefore, I must assume that either the social structure of Cleveland has fallen so far from the norm that such acquaintances are acceptable, or that said relations are kept in secret and not revealed to the general public.

Regardless of the case, I will be making a personal visit to the area to see for myself. Wish me luck.

Dum Dum Dum Dumdedum dumdedum....

That's right, Dwarfvader was back in action last night. The new guy at work is slowly but surely becoming a Warcrackhead, and last night his lvl 15 Pally and DV, at lvl 16, teamed up.

We knocked around Loch Modan and caught him up quest wise to Vader. It really is amazing how much easier playing a warrior is when you have heals! Some fights, Turion would just stand back and heal me, and others, he'd carve on the mobs. I got some great practice at tanking and keeping the mobs' attention. Now THAT, is harder than it looks. Thankfully Pallys wear mail, so I had a little room for error.

The Good: We both gained a level. We mined some ore and leveled some blacksmithing. And we both got some very good practice at our respective roles.

The Bad: We died on a bad Trogg pull. We hate runners. Period. And you can't make us change our minds.

The Ugly: At lvl 17 and 16, we took down Ol' Sooty; it was hilarious, cause all three of us died! I got him down to almost dead, and Turion finished him off with his last swing before dying. I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to loot the corpse if we both released and ran back, so I guarded the body while Turion ran back. I think I was probably wrong and we both could've run back But it all turned out ok, and Turion didn't mind.

Lessons from Tanking.
1. Sure I knew why Tanks always seem to want to go go go - rage just goes away when you sit around. But actually going through the experience gave me a new appreciation for keeping rage as high as possible. I did, however, make sure that my health battery Pally was good on mana before heading off to the next mob.

2, Tanking one mob is a piece of cake.
Two mobs is a little more difficult, but still ok.
Three mobs starts to get a crazy, and I usually end up running after one that's headed for the healer.
Four mobs......MOMMY!!!! Tabbed targeting helps, but is not always consistent. And defensive stance is a must! Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor. Well, you get the idea. I'd throw a Revenge in there a couple of times if it popped up, but I really need to practice this and get it down. BBB posted a macro that I may have to adapt for DV; it has a nifty "mouse over switch mobs to Druid equivalent Sunder Armor". The only thing is, I'm not sure of the mechanics. It appears that you move the cursor over the mob and hit a hot key to activate it. I probably should ask...lol.

3. I need to learn how to deal with runners (both cowards and Healer aggro'd). I know Hamstring will slow them down, but that's only available in Beserker stance. Must find answers.

As with everything when learning something new, I have more questions than I have answers. I am beginning the "I know that I do not know" stage of the learning process, and now must cruise the blogs in search of answers. It's nice to be out of the "I do not know that I do not know" stage, but the real work is still to come.

Shattered Halls

I answered a LFG call for healing SH yesterday. It's really nice to play with folks who know their role/class. Lately, the PuGs I've been getting in have been with good players, and while we may wipe, we don't have a lot of quitting and whining/blame game stuff going on. Now THAT's refreshing.

I learned some new stuff this run. (I ran this before with Rysteranch, but had never healed it) One thing I've never done is a MageTank pull/AoE. There were some groups that the Main Tank called for the MageTank. The first time, the mage died because I didn't realize what was going on. I was merrily healing the tank, and BOOM, the mage goes down. What the?? Ooooooh, MageTank, eh? Um, ok. Shield the mage and keep him healed? Got it! After that, the next couple of pulls went smoothly, and the mage only died one more time.

Note: Make sure to get the fel ash after you loot the quest item from the first boss. Dax figured this out just after the second boss and had to wait until the end to complete the quest. Rysteranch didn't figure this out and has to run SH again to complete it.

So, with Rysteranch, we ran down the hall of fire to the end and cleaned up the mobs. With Dax, we methodically worked our way down the hall, killing as we went. I'm not sure which tactic I like better as I was in different roles each time. More study is required.

So, we did have a bad trash pull where it seemed like all the CC failed. I got aggro a couple of times and finally died. BUT! I had a soulstone and after assessing the situation, I figured we could make it if I rezzed. And, make it we did. Everyone was low on health except the MT, and the poor hunter's pet was dead. But there was much rejoicing at a wipe avoided!

The last boss ended up killing me, and this time I didn't have the soulstone. Poor me. So, I cheered on the others while they finished off the last slivers of health. High fives all around (well, ghostly ones from me), and so so loot was distributed.

And speaking of Phat Lewt, I got me some. I needed the Prayer of Fortitude III book and got an off hand that was a bit of an upgrade. That, a shard I won, and a quest reward were about all I could ask for.

Whatcha got? Not a lot.

Didn't get much play time over the weekend. We went to Gatlinburg, TN for the weekend, and the resort didn't have high speed internet in the rooms.

They didn't have high speed internet....in.....the.....rooms.

They said, "We have dial up in the rooms."

Dial up.

You know, I've heard of that. It's another tool that some parents abuse their kids with. It's just wrong and you can't convince us otherwise. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Dial up....phhhhhht.

Banner Day

OK. So, the title says it all. Where to start...hmmmm.

Rysteranch turned 70. Yeah, that's a good place to start. He had picked up some quests in SMV and had juuuuuuuust turned in some spleens (yummy) and poof, no xp bar!. Have enough money for a flying mount? Nope! I'm about 100 gold short, and I still need to train. I'll get the training done this morning and start questing soon thereafter. The reason I didn't train last night is......

....because Dax went to Shadow Labs last night! First group was a druid tank, mage, hunter, rogue dps, and your's truly on da heals. We wiped once on a bad trash pull in the church room (with Blackheart) and then wiped on Blackheart. Tank said this was taking longer than he expected and bowed out.

No problem, one thing I know a number of are tanks.. Take two, pick up Cyrus the pally as tank and proceed to take on Blackheart. Wipe. This fight really does depend a lot on luck. One good thing I noticed is that if Lightwell is on cooldown, he always creates one, which helps after "fun time" is over.

So, the mage bails with an poor excuse of the pally not being able to keep aggro and the fact that I'm shadow specced trying to heal. As far as the pally and aggro, Blackheart resets his aggro table after "fun time", and the tank ALWAYS seems to lose it. And as far as my spec, my exact response was, "Shadow specced, huh? Hie thee to the armory! I'm Holy specced." He assumed that because he saw a shadow fiend that I was shadow. I gently corrected him.

Take 3. Got a hunter to replace the mage and ROCKED BLACKHEART'S SOCKS OFF!!!!1! He didn't drop anything I was interested in, but we got to finally move on!

Next guy (forgot his name), we got the strategy down. Kite him south, then north, then south again. Well, I totally screwed it up and headed south after the second teleport and died, and the group wiped soon after. The pally said he screwed up something also, so we all accepted the blame and ran back.

Take two. This time we all followed the strat and ....it worked! Sure, I died after the 2nd teleport, and the rogue died then as well, but I was able to keep healing as the big bluish whitish angel, and the rest of the team took....him.....DOWN! (now there's a heck of a compound sentence). The pally rezzed me; I rezzed the rogue; a hunter rezzed a pet. And we were all good.

Murmur. This guy hurts. But thankfully, he warns you with his casting bar when he's going to explode, and Stormlynn the hunter made a macro she spammed when he was going to do so.

First arcane explosion, Stormy spams the macro, and we ignore it. And we pay! Oh....THAT'S what you mean! OK, got it. We survive and continue fighting. We go on learning just how to run backwards or faster to avoid the explosions, and how to fight this guy that holds BRK's coveted Sonic Spear. In short, we ended up one shotting him. Yeah, first try! Woot! He didn't drop the spear (so rest easy BRK) and did drop a mace that the pally drooled over.

Went over looted the first fragment of the Karazhan key, and poof, we're done! It was a great run, and everyone was happy about it. Gratz all around!!!

4 more bubbles....

Yeah, I know, only 1 bubble for poor Rysteranch in the last 24 hours??? Well, I was meaning to farm some more primals and probably hit 70 last night, when Neya (brand new lvl 70 Shammy) whispered me something about "key" and "Kara"....

Huh?

HUH????? KEY FOR KARA????? ZOMGWHATDOIDONOWICANGETKEYEDFORKARA!!!!!

/breathe.....

/breathe.....

/quickly jump on Dax and send Neya an invite before he can reconsider.

And off to Deadwind Pass we go. Quickly complete the two quests there, fly off to Southshore (to the big pink bubble city Dalarian something or other) to get the quest for Shatt to get the quest for Shadow Labyrinth. /exhale!

Got a group together for SL. Pally tank, Shammy DPS, Rogue DPS, Mage DPS, and your's truly Healer.

Well....we did alright. Thankfully nobody started the blame game when the wipes happened. The people who left had to go to raid runs and were sorry they couldn't continue. In fact, nobody left after a wipe unless we were warned ahead of time that they had to go "after one more try".

We wiped the most on the second boss. For some reason, "Time for fun" didn't translate into that for us, lol. I'm not sure how many times we wiped on him - 3 or 4. We also suffered through some personnel changes as raid times came and went. The final combo that worked was Pally tank, 2x Rogue DPS, Druid Healer, Priest Healer. Instead of the DPS race that the fight was supposed to be, we just kept everyone healed and out lasted the stupid ogre. The last "fun time" was when he had just a sliver of health left; oh come on, already, just die!!!

Then next boss brought along more personnel changes, swapping out the druid for another shammy and a rogue for my friend Kandiltu the Pally.

Short story: wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, repair, wipe, wipe.

The long story: We wiped once on a bad pull; the trash in front of the boss had two sapped mobs that awoke just as a pat of 4 was near them. So they came arunning along with the boss! wipe. Next time, took out the last two mobs and then took out the 4 mob pat, no problem. Boss time. Someone said that they thought the voidwalkers either blew up or healed him when they got to him. Well, it turned out to be both...lol. The first time, we didn't pay any attention to the VW's and wiped. The next try, we put two people on the adds and did better, but still wiped. The next couple of tries kinda blur together, but they were....uh.....wipe, wipe, wipe. Well, we ran out of time; I had to get to bed and some of the other guys had to go.

Every instance run has a positive side. Even with the worst PuG (which this group was NOT!), there is something positive that comes out of running an instance. It might be that you learn who not to group with (the extreme negative positive), or you get some PHAT LEWTZ, keys, etc. (the other extreme positive positive).

For this evening of instance play I think I made out great!
1. My first time in SL, and I knew absolutely nothing about the instance. +points for learning.
2. I met some very competent players. +points for networking.
3. I healed, healed, healed. +points for practice.
4. We had situations that went wrong, but we still survived. +points for emergency healing.
5. I collected several Aldor quest items. +points for Aldor rep (now honored).
6. I mined one Addy node. +1 skill point for mining.
7. I got PHAT LEWTZ! (nice wand and healing gloves). +points for DPS and Healing

That is quite the list, if I do say so myself. Yep, I made out great!