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!