Sunday, June 1, 2008

#1

I totally rocked a guild Kara last night and finished #1 on the all important DPS meter (Let's face it, if you are #1 on a meter you are #1 in life...really). My partners in amazing threat generation were Swiftlight, our Holy Paladin turned Retribution Master, and Ledde, our Master Chain Healer turned Weekend Enhancement facesmasher (He is too pro to stop healing, we would cry). It was a holy trinity of face asploding as each of us played off the other ones abilites and skills and for awhile we all played tank because Maulmorr just couldn't keep up with us. Sadly Ledde had to go after Opera if I remember right. So me and Swift continued on in slightly diminished capacity, but it was still hella fun and I finally got enough Badges to get the Sunguard Legplates, for the next time i have to tank a raid.

P.S. Whirlwind is cheating... according to Ledde.



Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Kaz'rogal down!

Sunday's raid was killed because of the holiday weekend. My T5 helmet will have to wait.

Tuesday night's Hyjal went extremely well. We cleared Rage and Anetheron fairly quickly with only one wipe on Anetheron. The evauation of the Alliance Base was pretty funny as we went the wrong way, so those standing got murdered by the spawn and the rest got cut down as they fled the right way. We got to mine for epic gems and ironiclly only our GM was able to pull all epics, I guess Rogues have a use after all.

Once we got settled into the next base we began our first attempt at Kaz trash. As with doing anything the first time you aren't quite sure what to do. Most of the raid got caught trying to DPS gargoyles where they were and when Wave 5 came strolling up myself and the Prot Pally made a heroic attempt to tank all the mobs...yeah it didn't work.

So armed with that knowledge our 2nd attempt saw us clear through the trash amazingly easy, until the last wave our Prot Pally fell over dead and some mobs got loose and killed off the ranged dps. Rezzing 5-6 casters when a boss that kills them by draining their mana is strolling up does not bode well. Regardless we got to around 35%, without using the NPCs.

The third try was the charm, Kaz got wasted. Unfortunately he didn't drop the only thing I care for from him... so I wasn't as happy.

I got to run as Fury, with a ret pally and a windfury totem it made quite an impact. I also cranked out a 2nd Wicked Edge since the last time I was Fury and after looking at last night's numbers I think it was well worth it. On another note I got the tank cape that drops from trash, so I fell yet further into the DKP hole. But I'll overcome, somehow.

:)

Thursday, May 22, 2008

DKP Credit Card

After last night's raid I noticed I became the new champion of DKP spending in our guild. I'm almost like an out of control teenager with Daddy's credit card. Supremus dropped the Pauldrons of Abyssal Fury and I just had to have them... at one point I had sunk as low as -81 DKP and managed to climb back to -19 before I picked up the Ring of the Abyssal Lord last week and now the shoulders yesterday.

...and to make matters worse this Sunday we are planning on finally going back to Void Reaver, who through no small amount of bad luck still hasn't dropped enough T5 Shoulders for me to have one (I'm the only Tank in our Guild without them...I think). I may have better now but I'm closing in on the new badge legs and I need a way to keep the 2 piece T5 bonus (For Warriors it's HUGE) until I get the Helm from Vashj, which is a pure upgrade.

I haven't really explained this to our GM, who might find it odd that I'm getting outdated gear. But we haven't been to Vashj since our first kill and I don't when we will go there again. I have a feeling that I will forever be in the hole... and as a Tank, currently the Main Tank for the time being that is a bad spot to be in.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Vashj Down

Quite possibly the biggest night so far in the history of the Rogue Angels. At roughly 10:50pm CDT Vashj was slain, and we overcame an obstacle few guilds can without falling apart. We really came together on our last attempt of the night and sure enough we had a stable transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3 with everyone alive and rocking hardcore on her.

The night started out a bit nubbish though.

At raid time we looked a bit light and I was briefly afraid we wouldn't be able to go. But we finally got the group set and started a tad bit late. I had to respec Prot again, and will likely stay that way for the forseeable future. (After spending god knows how much DKP on Fury gear... I want a refund...)

We had to skip Hydross because our normal frost Tank is off enjoying the end of school and our backup frost tank left the guild to go join some friends. I wasn't terribly sad about that, but we had to do Lurker to get rid of the trash spawns, and I was going to have to MT it.

Now I know the Lurker fight like the back of my hand, except the MT part since I've never done it before and I stand on the opposite side to try and pick Lurker up if the MT gets knocked back so I can't see where he is. So already I was dreading it, we've wiped on Lurker maybe once in all the times I've been there and now we have a tank with no clue where exactly to stand, and once again the two guys who have done it and could help me are the same two that are on a vacation or not in the guild anymore. I figured a pre attempt warning that my nubness would likely show its head was in the cards, and I'm glad I did.

Wipe 1 was an amazing display of my Pro, I got knocked back into the water then got stuck on the platform so he decided to nom nom some of the other guys while I clumisly made my way back up. Then came the first spout, now when I'm tanking opposite the MT I go down wait, then pop back up. No reason to think it's any different as the MT right? So I popped my head back up just in time to see that he goes a bit past 360 and his spout blew me back into the rocks. I survive and was able to get back into the water in time for a dive, so I was out of position when my add came up and murdered my healer. GAME OVER

Wipe 2 was going along extremely well until I got crushed for 8000, then a regular hit, then 2 crushes in a row for 6600 and 7200... the only logical explanation was that I wasn't using Shield Block, but then if I wasn't what the hell am I even doing as a tank? I swore up and down that I always had it on cooldown..but the #'s don't lie... I dunno...

Luckily the 3rd time was the charm and it was off to Vashj.

As a Guild we attempted Vashj briefly in February but a variety of circumstances caused us to temporarily abandon her. As a casual guild who raids 3 hours a night 3 nights a week we basically had to clear all of SSC in one night to have time for Vashj, and back then we had a lot of attendance issues, or bad luck and end up having to spend two nights clearing which left maybe 2 hours for Vashj. Needless to say it wasn't working.

So we just farmed what we could in SSC and TK until the magical day came when we got to skip Vashj and Kael and go into T6. Which we've done semi-regularly for the past couple of months. Right now we are 2/5 in MH and 3/9 in BT, and progressing fairly fast.

A lot of us want the Scale of the Sands rep rings, and so finally we came back to try Vashj to start on that. Our first night of attempts was last Tuesday (4/29) and we were still pretty meh. We could get 2/4 gens down but that was about it. So we came back Wednesday (4/30) for a full night of Vashj, and we somehow got very very well rounded. Strider Kiting fell into place, Core throwing came into place, and we finally got her to Phase 3, but it was a sloppy one and we wiped. Then later we had an even better transition but hte server gods were not on our side and 6 of us got booted off the server... Vashj was less than 20%. I could have broken something, and we were out of time. Sunday we decided to hit up BT instead and left Vashj for tonight.

We started tonights round of attempts about where we left off Wednesday, still a little rough but we just had to warm up. On the 2nd to last attempt we got to Phase 3 but for some reason a lot of our DPS died and we got overrun.

The last attempt was about as flawless as you could get, and she finally fell. It's amazing that it only took us 2.5 nights of attempts to kill her. But our guild is very good at progressing fast given the small amount of time we raid. I eagerly look forward to Kael'thas now... and I WANT MY T5 HELM!




Thursday, April 17, 2008

17/44/0

17/44/0, better known as Fury... for Warriors it's the subtle art of crazy fast damage all over the enemy's face, and I've been handed the opportunity to switch back to Fury for a hybrid raiding role. I help the other Tanks with trash until we come to the boss. Then I change into my superhero outfit and proceed to go wild, because god knows how awesome 3 fully spec'd Prot Tanks are for DPS.

It's an unenviable position though. Protection Talents do an amazing amount of work for your ability to stay alive and even though my Tank Gear is mainly T5 level if I'm tanking two raid mobs I get lit up like a Christmas Tree rather easily. Then I have to break out the serious damage for bosses, and I'm feeling rusty. The last time I had run a raid as Fury was during our early Gruul attempts. I'm still doing respectable, but I feel I could improve. It's a fine balance between Hit Rating (~220 optimized for raid bosses before food), Attack Power (1829 base), and Crit % (30.2% base).

Currently my miss rate on white damage is 8-9% and it feels like I could get it lower, I've had a talk with my old mentor who made other DPS classes look bad but he was an Orc so he has a perfect racial for this kinda thing. I'm also using some Armor Penetration, around 160 not counting Executioner Procs. It's supposed to be the future and it will definetly come into play when I start collecting T6 equipment.

Either way it's already more DPS than we had when we were all Protection, but it could probably be even better, and I'm definetly going to work on it.


Friday, April 4, 2008

Daily Overload

So with the influx of new daily quests I've gotten around the burnout caused by doing the Ogrlia / Skettis combination every day for months. I could only stomach getting Flak Fire'd to my death so many times. Yes I know you can fly lower, but that is no fun.. of course neither was spending the reward money on repairs.

Since the patch I've made a habit to try and do EVERY daily (except Netherwing / PvP/ Instanced) every day so I can finally achieve my dream of an epic mount. Now that our server is on phase 2 we have 2 extra to do. My routine generally looks like this.

Start with the 4 daily quests on the Isle of Quel'Danas.

Hearth to Shat, pick up the 4 SSO quests, Cooking and Fishing.

Do the 2 quests in Hellfire Penninsula.

Do the Netherstorm Quest

Do the Battery Quest in Blade's Edge

Do the 4 Ogrila quests

Do the Skettis Quest (Skip Escort)

Do the Nagrand Quest

Do the Cooking / Fishing / Residue quest while doing the above quests.

While I've slacked on a couple of days I generally get this done in 2 hours and make out with quite a bit of money. Since that patch I've made 1400g and so far have managed to hang onto most of it. It's an amazing source of money but I'm already starting to feel the burnout creeping in again. I must persist... I'm tired of being a slow flyer.



Sunday, March 23, 2008

Trials of the Zzzz

Spring Break just hasn't been kind to our Guild. Last Sundays Tempest Keep run was called off to poor turnout so Soontir, our guilds uber Holy Priest (and the only one for a long time) suggested a Heroic Arcatraz run. It happened to be the Daily that day and a couple of us needed it for the Trial of the Naaru so off we went. I was dreading actually working on my Trials because most of the heroics you had to do were ones I had never tanked or ones I had never been to on heroic period. I don't like to be the idiot in the group (Quiet guys!).

Arcatraz was one I had been to once months ago when I was Fury and I remember little about it (I dont count numerous Kara Key runs I helped with), but recently another group of guildies had such a horrible run our Feral Tank (Mooire aka Ferocious Bite) swore she would never go back. Our group however (Warrior, Priest, Rogue, Hunter, Hunter) was about as flawless as possible and only had one wipe one of the pulls before Skyriss. We even one shot the first boss and I had never even downed him before.

One down... three to go!

Monday is an off night for the guild and the Daily Heroic was Shadow Labyrinth. One of our Mages (Solaeh) was in a group with some of his former guildmates and asked me to Tank. I'm leary of doing things with people I don't know but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get another part of the Trials out of the way. Things were fairly smooth until Vorpil. I will interject here and say SL was one instance I had never run on Heroic and I hadn't bothered to read up on any changes. So after giving the rundown, changing into my DPS gear and engaging I wasn't prepared for my immediate banish and the following cluster**** that followed. Vorpil 1, Us 0...

We wiped a couple more times and a forming ZA guild run caused Solaeh to run away in search of loot. One of the other guys found a replacement and we resumed bashing our head into a wall. For some reason we just couldn't survive, I hadn't really bothered to check my fellow party members gear level because we had done well up to this point and I was determined to get through this. On the last attempt I popped Rampage early in the fight and that made all the difference. We wiped once more on Murmur due to not fully understanding how the encounter played out but afterwards it was cake.

Two down... halfway done!

Tuesday was supposed to be our SSC night but Spring Break continued to affect our turnout so we did not go. I put it to those online if anyone wanted to assist with the Steamvault portion of my Trial. I got some guildmates together nad in we went. Steamvaults was the one I was most comfortable with, and tried to hurry a little. My impatience wiped us about 2x before Thespia, but can I be blamed for getting feared right into a group of mobs when I could have been sent any other direction? Thespia also posed a bit of a problem because we didn't have a Warlock to banish, but we ended up killing her with ease. After the initial idiot moments we cleared Steamvaults with ease.

The Final Trial remains!

Shattered Halls was another Heroic I had never done before and the fact that this particular Trial was timed always puts me on edge (45 minute Baron can kiss my ***). Our fearless GM and ungodly creater of dps(Gankszor), and his wife, the Heroic Arc hater(Mooire) also needed this Trial so we set it up for Saturday. On the day of the run I grabbed our lonely Holy priest (Soontir) and our Holy Paladin's mage alt (Vahj..err lets call him Slim) and with such an all-star team I wasn't worried about having trouble... and we didn't. We killed Kargath with probably 30 minutes to spare.

Obviously doing the Trials a year ago without the benefit of Tier 5 gear was really a challenging task. But for those of us who were slackers doing it now is just fine... except wiping on trash in Heroics...what a bunch of scrubs. *sigh*