A Potential Twist to Immortal / Undying

I won't really bother with a full-blown post about last nights Immortal attempt, or the associated emotions.

But I will sum it up: I went in not really even thinking about it. The butterflies are definitely gone. Two and a half wings later with no deaths, my interest was piqued. The first false-start on Gothic in four months of raiding, causing one player to be locked on the dead side and the rest of the raid on the live side showed me just how easy it is to piss this one away. Butterflies swatted, dead, kaput. They shall not be allowed to return.

Moving beyond last night, the experience over the past few weeks had me thinking about the overall concept of the Immortal.

(A) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to be for them personally and not for the team. As long as you personally survive each boss fight during one raid lockout, you ding the achieve.

(B) I've read a bunch of posts and comments to posts on other blogs that people want the achievement to count for each boss individually, similar to the 20-man achievement. This week you do a clean kill of Anubrikan and ding that one part of the overall goal. Next week you do a clean kill of Heigan and ding that part of the goal, and so on with each boss being a discrete unit, until you eventually complete them all.


(A) BAH, and (B) DOUBLE BAH

The people voting for (A) are not team players. They should go play Legend of Zelda or something where your game only depends upon your own play. Raiding is a team sport, whether you choose to believe it or not.

The people voting for (B) probably don't deserve a "double bah", but I don't subscribe to that one either.

Don't Stop Believin'

Although the Butterflies are dead, I still believe in the spirit of the achievement.

As the raid progressed last night, and we killed boss after boss with no deaths, my excitement level was definitely increasing.

That's a good thing, I'm here for excitement, so even if the disappointment of that first death is a nuisance, I still value the experience of the night.

An achievement like Immortal / Undying is trying to encourage us to do what we're here to do anyway, but only do it better. Nobody enters a fight thinking "ok, i'd like to die on this one." Well, maybe there is a strat for a Warlock to commit suicide at the beginning of Malygos P3 so he can cast some curse or debuff or something before he plummets to his death, but that's a bit counter-intuitive and an exception to the rule.

Consider the RP Aspect

I'm not a role player, per se, although I do suffer from mood swings that make my Druid Moodyswinger's name an extension of my own personality.

But I can empathize with the RP aspect of a toon dying.

Picture yourself and a band of 24 comrades-in-arms venture off into a dungeon in search of treasure or thwarting evil or rescuing a princess or whatever.

One of you dies in combat. Hell, maybe one of you dies in his sleep. Doesn't really matter, does it?

You're dead.

Makes it pretty hard to enjoy the treasure that the dragon was hoarding or a passionate night with the princess who just fell in love with her heroic rescuer, yes?

Consider the Performance Aspect

Tobold recently wrote about some of his joys and griefs with raiding. One aspect I'll focus on here is the concept of exploring fights blind with no pre-knowledge of boss abilities, contrasted with the execution part of a fight where you have full knowledge of the boss abilities and also techniques used in the past to successfully defeat the boss.

Execution and performance is what I'm all about.

I recognize that not all players share that view, but for me, its all about planning our fight and then performing under the pressure of combat. Mix in just enough random effects to require some improvisation on the fly, and tune it to be very demanding on each player to deliver flawless execution.

Our strategy and approach should be robust enough to mitigate the risks of all the little things that can go wrong.

Sometimes you randomly D/C. Call verizon and have them check your line, maybe that's busted. Stop downloading nudie flicks while playing.

Sometimes the boss does random things that can get ugly. KT iceblock is one such example, the target is random. However, your strategy should plan for this by informing raiders to space out and then during the execution it is up to each player to be aware of their surroundings and find a safe spot amongst the rest of the team.

Sometimes your cat steps on the keyboard. Give him cement boots and throw him in the harbor. Dogs, FTW!

Having a reward for flawless execution is a Good Thing.

Where's the beef?

I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement is dependent upon 24 other people. Success as part of my team is what keeps me logging in and not playing a single-player RTS or RP game.

I'm fine with the fact that my Immortal achievement requires intense focus and attention to detail across an extended period of time and is bound to a single raid ID.

But, here's my beef with the current way Immortal works.

Once you fail, that's it.

There is no longer any benefit for flawless performance during that raid ID. No reason to keep trying. And in fact, the de-motivation that comes with failing Immortal encourages sloppier behavior since people don't care about the run as much once Immortal is disqualified.

Sure, people who die suffer a slightly larger repair bill. Also, people who die on a boss slow us down a bit because they have to rez/run back and rebuff (but we're looting during this time anyways, so this is minor).

Recommendation to Blizzard

Immortal should remain unchanged. You got this one right, but...

Blizzard needs to add a separate, parallel, persistent reward for each flawless boss kill. "Separate" means it has nothing to do with Immortal, the two are totally independent. "Parallel" means that both achievements/rewards can be pursued at the same time. "Persistent" means that this reward is present each time you kill a boss, and not just the first time you ding the achievement.

The reward should be tied to team performance, and not individual performance. Remember, we're not out solo'ing, we all signed up for a team sport when we accepted the raid invite.

Proposal 1: Emblems - Somebody died? No Emblems off of this boss for anyone in the raid.

All bosses, all the time, not just your first clean kill.

And make the Emblem gear f'ing fantastic. Make us WANT this.

Encourage continuous drive towards flawless victory.

Proposal 2: All Loot - A harsher example would be all loot from the current boss. No loot drops if anybody dies. Perhaps too harsh, especially since your first few kills are the sloppiest and hardest, and the loot from those helps subsequent runs be flawless.

I dunno, as I re-read this one, a part of me is liking Proposal 2. No loot until the team figures it out and nails it. Once you prove that, then the loot flows, making it easier each time you come back.

Hmmm, I wonder? Probably too harsh.

Proposal 3: Selective Loot - Make a separate loot table that only drops when the kill is flawless.

In my ideal situation, it'd be the Best-in-slot gear that drops in this mode.

For each "difficulty setting" (id, 0 drakes, 1 drake, 2 drakes, or whatever the equivalent hard-mode indicator is for each boss), include some exclusive items for a clean kill.

The better the reward, the larger the motivation for teams to help eachother improve and help eachother survive. Even after a silly death due to unavoidable D/C on a boss early in the night, there is still a reason for the team to maintain focused.

Potential Pitfalls

One issue I could see with this is that people who die will be kicked out rather than coached on how to improve survival.

Sure, that's always a fear. If they nerf our class, change our utility, homogenize our spells, always fear that leaders will just kick you.

However, this fear would be mitigated by the fact that the Raid Leader would need to replace you with....a person who reliably survives. This is much harder to PuG, since you really never know what you're going to get from an unknown player. I think the challenge to replace you is greater than the effort to try to coach you for improved performance.


Another issue might be that players focus too much on survival and not enough on their responsibilities in the raid. I know I probably DPS a little bit lighter on Immortal attempts, just to be that much more certain to not pull aggro. But you know what? I'm damn well attentive to web wrapped people and I bust them out immediately instead of hesitating to get just one more shot in on the boss while my DPS trinket is up so I can boost my epeen (not that DPS players do that kind of stuff anyway, amiright?).

I doubt my proposals would cause people to stop looking at the meters as the be-all-end-all of raiding, but a boy can dream, can't he?

What do you think?

Is flawless execution worth striving for? Is it something that should just sorta make you smile when it happens but shouldn't expect it as a normal occurrence?

What other ways can Blizzard encourage the team to survive?

My first raid tanking Heigan

Last night was my first attempt at main tanking Heigan in a Naxx-10 alt and PuG run. In case you're new here, I've got next to zero tanking experience, with only a handful of normal-mode northrend dungeons and a single heroic under my Eternal Belt Buckle.

I can't even describe the state of mind as we're standing there in Heigan's room getting ready to pull.

I mean, I know the basic idea. The tank is supposed to keep him moving through the safe zones, trying to keep him as centrally located as possible to allow Melee to stand behind-ish and not get fried.

Yes, I've seen it done dozens of times while I was standing on the platform pew-pew'ing and cursing the tanks for threat-capping the Mages.

But now you want ME to do it? Yeah, right.

I was mentally prepared for a wipe-fest here.

I was wrong, and we one shot it, just barely, through the miraculous efforts of our one surviving healer and the few DPS players who knew how to dance. Some hilights:

1) Walk Backwards - I considered strafing to allow for more movement speed. I decided against it and wanted to just work on the basics. Slow and steady motion from safe spot to safe spot.

2) Spatial Awareness - This was nearly as disorienting as Malygos P3 for me. At one point I lost all track of where I was in the room. Is there one more safe zone towards the door? Or is it time to reverse direction and move back that way? So I flipped a coin in my head, chose to reverse and head back in towards the middle. You chose wisely.

3) Two healers enter, One healer leaves - Our PuG holy priest ate it on the first dance phase, leaving our Holy Paladin the full load to carry, with perhaps some help from the Elemental Shammy. Outstanding work keeping us alive.

4) Battle Rez, FTW - Our PuG Boomkin died on the second dance phase, dead center in the middle of the room. I'll only get a single chance to brez him, as we cruise on by during a dance phase, for the very brief moment we'll be standing stationary in the mid safe zone. Wait for it.....wait for it....first safe zone...wait for it...mid safe zone....NOW...transform out of cat form (yes, I was dancing in cat form for added speed)....find where the hell your brez spell is located (my first raid ever as a druid. say it with me....n.o.o.b.)....begin casting.....holy sht its time to move....finish casting....sccoot your ass out of the fire and keep dancing. What? If f'ing worked? And I'm still f'ing alive? And the owl listened to the Raid Leader and didn't accept the rez until appropriate time so he'd survive and in turn, brez another failed dancer? Elune be praised!

5) Mobile Threat - Generating threat while moving. Backwards. Fun. Not. The hardest part was that I use my keyboard S button to move backwards. Sure, I use mouse movement for forwards and snap turns, but not for backwards. Tied my fingers in a knot trying to keep hitting Lacerate (2), Mangle (3), Maul (4), with the occasional Swipe (5), while also hitting S. I think I was using my middle finger on the S and my index and ring fingers hitting the numbers. Its hard to recall, the whole event is a bit of a blur. Will probably need to map backwards to something else. My mind jumps to mapping the scroll wheel to reverse as a pretty intuitive control, but I'm hesitant to do that because I've been using it for camera zoom out since level 1 nearly two years ago.

6) Feedback on the fly - One of the nice things about working with other alts of mains that I raid with is that we have an established pattern of giving eachother feedback during combat. While focusing on navigating through the safe zones and simultaneously generating threat, I lost track of how close I was to the platform. Too close and he silences your casters, which is pretty much a bad thing what with the silenced heals and whatnot. So one of the guild Officers, using a calm tone with no hint of alarm or judgement, told me I was getting too close. The feedback was soon enough to allow me to correct the problem before it caused a wipe, which was nice, to say the least.

You'd be hard pressed to find this calm, clear, constructive, timely feedback in a PuG. In most one-time-only groups, you'll get either pure silence leading to failure and threats of being kicked out of the group -or- one or two grumbly folks who just tell people they suck and need to L2P. Best results come from healthy communication, and this was perfect.

7) A good scare - I can only imagine the slack-jawed look of astonishment on the faces of my team when I keyed my mic and told them I was lost during #2 above. Lets just say, I'm happy I chose wisely.

So, after 10 minutes, which is what? 4 dance phases? 5? Whatever, it was an eternity. Not too many of us were standing at the end, but a few of us were up, and the boss was down which is victory in my book.

I was trembling. Such a strange mix of adrenaline rush and disbelief that we actually did it.

Sure, we continued on through those stupid mind-flaying eye-stalks and maggots, and beat up loatheb afterwards, but it just sort of blurred together and paled in comparison to that Dance of Dances.

Heigan found a new place in my heart last night, as did the tanks of our guild who make it look effortless week after week.


For those about to dance.....We! Salute!. You!
........
Fieeeeeee-ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I'm still trembling

Short Version: Holy f'ing Dog Sht! I f'ing main tanked f'ing Heigan, having no f'ing idea what the f i was doing. And I f'ing did it! 12 hours later and my hands haven't stopped trembling yet. Major kudos go out to our friendly Ret Paladin disguised as Holy who kept us alive after her co-healer illustrated his lack of dancing prowess rather early in the fight.


Medium Version: Fresh off of tanking my first heroic, me and my alt-guildies were pumped up with confidence and ready to take on the world. So we filled in a PuG raid for Naxx-10 with full intentions of having the PuG DK main tank and me fill in the holes.

Upon discovering that the DK was...shall we say...challenged at following directions? Yeah, lets sum it all up and call it that. Upon said discovery, our little baby bear suddenly became the Go To Girl.

And Holy Sht, what a rush!


Long Version:

You've got a raid scheduled for tonight, but your team managed to clear out all the content in four or five hours earlier in the week leaving nothing for tonight's raid.

Ahhh, so that's what alts are for.

On to the heroics.

Tanking her first Heroic

Violet Hold. Sure, I know, not the toughest instance in the world, but we're new here, so bear (get it?) with us as we learn to tank.

Not a whole lot of fuss here, other than that I was totally undergeared and underskilled tank and our healer is undergeared but overskilled, while the DPS is made up of a collection of hardcore pro tank doing DPS to allow me to learn to tank, and a few alts of varying gear level.

And wouldn't you know it, we kicked its ass!

Noob mistakes galore, but we squeaked through and had a blast. Its always fun to learn new things along side with other people who laugh with you through the inevitable sloppy execution, ignorance of class abilities, fat fingers, untrained reflexes, and general lack of refinement.

Reflections on Tanking Ability

1) Was able to put out respectable single-target threat. Will benefit by tightening up the timing on refreshing lacerate and that other DoT (mangle?), I was likely wasting rage renewing them too soon out of fear of letting my 5-stack of lacerates drop off.

2) When a pack of mobs was under control, I was able to hold aggro on all of them via positioning my fat bear ass so that my swipes and glyphed mauls would hit all the mobs.

3) Total crap picking up a pack of incoming mobs. I tried FFF one, charge another, and then start swiping, and different variants of that cycle. Definitely need work here, and luckily will be saved by the bell that is 360 degree non-targeted swipe that's coming in a week or two. But still need work.

4) Health and survivability was reasonable. I can only really measure this via feedback from my healer, and he said there was no issue, and he's the type of person who'd tell you if you fail, so that's all that needs to be said about that.

Personally, I blame the DPS for #3, because its always more fun to point the finger elsewhere, and we all hate huntards :-) Focus fire. If you pull aggro, run TOWARDS the tank. But I digress, this is about my tanking, the DPS did just fine, so I should segue into a #4 about improving my communication skills to inform the team that I need their help in bringing mobs to me because I'm a noob.

And why not go for the Big Show

Fast forward through two more heroics during which I was DPS'ing as a kitty.

And a guildie asks if anybody wants to try out an alt/pug naxx-10.

Well, no time like the present, I suppose.

PuG a Death Knight who is supposed to be serving as main tank.

Begin the first pull, I'm nervous as balls. All these other people counting on me to keep the damn mobs off of them. And me having the whopping experience of about 7 or 8 dungeon runs tanked, with a single heroic thrown in there.

Trash is fine, even had to whip out a few improvisational moves to correct some sloppy multi-pulls. In my DPS world of Hunting, I have new respect for when a tank says "we're pulling these guys back".

Yadda yadda yadda, we're up to Anubrikan.

DK is on Anub, I'm on adds.

When its time to kite Anub, the DK didn't respond to the continuous, endless pleas from the Raid Leader to kite him. So he just stood there. So the fight was...interesting. But I did my job, took care of the adds, not knowing what to do, I dragged the adds away from the boss into the middle of the room. And threw a litle DPS on Anub when no adds were present.

All in all, a kill is a kill is a kill.

Is when I become Main Tank

RL wants the MT to be a bit more responsive to instructions, so we change assignments a bit.

Ahh, the bear is up front now! Time for some fun.

Lady Farina or whatever the hell her name is. To be honest, every single one of us forgot the "proper" way to kill her, we've been OP and just AoE'ing her down on our mains for so long. I'll admit that I was lying face down in the dirt at the end, died around 4%. Mr. DK did great job picking her up and the team finished her off. I cried for a little while.

Maexxena. A little uglier, however we did one-shot her. I died nearly immediately upon her enrage or whatever it is that she does at 30%. Me thinks I need to use more of the barkskin / survival instincts / frenzied regen stuff at this point. I was mentally ready to , but I was insta-gibbed so fast I didn't have a chance to trigger all of them.

Noth. Suck it! No fuss here. Easy because he doesnt blink/aggro wipe in 10-man, but still interesting to try to pick up all the adds during the teleport phase.

Heigan. TL;DR. Separate post. For the sake of this post, lets just say it was pretty f'ing cool.

Loatheb. Loatheb was fun because you just stand there and pour out the single-target threat. Didn't have survivability issues, no threat issues, pure win.

Mongoose is my new best friend

Got some new staff from the run.

Got my third mongoose enchant in three days.

Loot karma theory remains true, if you want to upgrade it, polish it and the loot will drop.

Confidence Boost

After clearing those two wings, it was bed time, so we called it quits.

I had no idea what to expect coming in to tank my first raid.

I could care less whether our success was because Blizz made raiding too easy or whatever. This was one of the most memorable raid nights I've ever had.

There's tons of room for improvement on both trash and bosses. There's tons of gear I should seek out to make life a little easier.

But the night showed that with the help of my team, I can hang in there and get the job done in a role that's so unlike ranged dps that its practically a different game.

And on the lighter side, hopefully the confidence boost to my tanking ego will ease the pressure to collect a backup set of healing gear, because all the multiple pieces is starting to make my head spin. I'm sure all you veteran hybrids are lmyao to hear that.

Immortal Aggro

Immortal Failure
Achievement far out of reach
Death on second boss


A week or so ago, I wrote about the anticipation and excitement of our first deliberate attempt at Immortal achievement, clearing Naxx-25 without any deaths on boss fights.

Had two players D/C on the second boss, and one player run into the fire (invisible on her video settings), thus disqualifying the achievement about 20 minutes into the raid. Ok, put your feet up for the next 2.5 hours, the pressure is off.

Fast forward a week, and we're back at it, fresh raid ID, fresh expectations of becoming Highlanders. So how'd it go?

Death on second boss

Mind you, a different second boss than last week. This time we had somebody on the dead side of Gothick bite the bullet. Supposedly the DPS on that side were getting too close to whirlwinding mobs being tanked in the corner, leading the healer to need to blast away with larger than normal heals, leading to the healer generating lots of threat, leading to dead healer. I dunno, dude.

So, again, 20 minutes into the night, disqualified from the win.

From there on, it was all slop, all the time.

The highlight being a Gluth wipe that involved a continuous stream of zombie chow just running a train straight to the boss. Kiting was at the biggest all time level of failure. My favorite moment was when I "magically" had wings appear over my toon and I was unable to fire at any mobs for a little while. Did the f'ing pally cast f'ing BoP or f'ing whatever on me? Really? Are you f'ing kidding me? Makes it kinda hard to pull the f'ing chow chows off of the f'ing healers and f'ing boss.

Whatever.

I was able to control the nerd rage a little bit, and had enough composure to only throw soft non-breakable things around the room.

I'd be lying if I said it the experience wasn't upsetting, but then again, us drama queens thrive on getting upset, so in the end, a good evening of entertainment. There's no person to blame, there's no one single specific thing to change, its just that so many variables have to align perfectly, and I fear that we started too late to have enough chances before the upcoming patch that will make the whole point moot.

It Just Doesn't Matter

Like Bill Murray in Meatballs, I'm chanting "it just doesn't matter."

In a week or two, the hopes will pass and I won't be thinking about the fast flying mount that's out of reach.

And a week or two after that, Ulduar will release and we'll all be happily distracted for a while.

It just doesn't matter.

The Silver Lining

All was not sour for the evening.

A big feather in our cap on the Four Horsemen. We took a very slow, calculated approach to the fight to ensure no chain lightning nailed the team. We had good communication from the officers ensuring everybody knew their job, and the team showed good discipline during the execution. That was reassuring to see, although we did lose a player to god knows what in a phase of the fight that really should not have any death.

We also Safety Danced again, which is nice to know we can do that little beauty semi-reliably.

Kick me in the jimmy!

And the real kick in the nuts was when one of the players keyed his mic and we all hear a brief moment of cheering in the background.

Seems that his roommate or friend or neighbor at the LAN center or something just dinged Immortal.

In the immortal words (f'ing pun f'ing intended) of Buzzcut of Beavis and Butthead fame...

Kick me in the jimmy!

Immortal Cocoons

Ok, so yesterday's reference to "butterflies" was a phrase indicating a feeling of anxiety or nervous excitement, and not the airborne phase of a certain insect's lifecycle.

But, to switch it around, if the Butterfly is what we'll morph into when we ding the achievement, then we must still be snug inside our cocoons, still getting ready to spread those wings and fly. I think we're pupas right now or something. Whether the biologically correct term or not, I just like saying the word.

Ain't I poetic? And mature?

How'd it go?

Well, the early parts of the evening went according to plan. Quiet, soothing environment. The calm before the storm.

When I logged in, I started looking over my alchemist to see if there's some other elixirs I'd like to use than my standard Mighty Thoughts / Agi combo.

Brewed up some of the +350 health ones (fortitude?) and some Guru's Elixirs. +20 to all stats is actually pretty cool, and since it buffs agi and also raw stamina which then gets converted to attack power via Survival talents, it is not entirely discarding all DPS enhancement value.

Just like in my good old ice hockey days when, before a game, I'd visualize laying out a incoming winger at the blue line, I mentally pictured the little things l'll be doing to stay alive in Naxx.

We got the team together. You could tell there was an electricity in the air, although, thankfully, nobody was harping on and on about our goal for the night.

Everybody take a deep breath, because we're starting trash pulls.

Patchy

Start the night with our good friend Patchwerk. Normally a testing ground for balls-to-the-wall DPS, HPS, and TPS. But not tonight. Tonight, we're here for one thing only. Ranged DPS wait 10 seconds or so before opening up. Melee DPS hang tight until the RL gives the instruction.

Spent way less attention to DPS than usual, and I refused to check the Damage Meters for the entire night. Despite trying to go so deliberately slowly, we still killed him in less than 3 minutes, which is comical.

25 players enter, 25 players leave.

Grobby

Ok everybody, you know its not polite to fart near your friends, so run to the back before you let loose.

Everything's going fine, gassy folks are positioning right, tanks are picking up slimes, DPS is truckin.

And then the dreaded.....Oh, SHT, [name-of-healer] is D/C'ing.

Ok, don't panic. Another healer calmly calls out that he will heal the DC through any damage. We're focused, we're on target.

And then, maybe 5 seconds later, and the second dread....Oh, FCK, [name-of-dc-healer] just got tagged. She's about to fart in the middle of the room.

But we're a bunch of cool customers, so we all shuffle around the expanding cloud of nasty that's occupying the middle of the room.

Things continue fine for another minute or so.

The exact sequence of what happened next is a bit blurry to me, and I'm not looking over the combat log until later, so this is simply from memory of what I observed during the event.

*) A melee DPS D/C'd. DAMN YOU, INTERNETZ! Whether he then was insta-gibbed by something and died, or if it was over a brief time due to standing in a cloud that follows the kited boss, I'm unsure.

*) A healer got flagged, made the correct move to run away from the huddled masses, but made the incorrect move and ran straight into existing clouds and died. The player says that her screen was not showing any clouds at all, perhaps a visual setting?

So, about 15 minutes into the much anticipated Immortal attempt, phoot, no mas.

Then what?

Despite the three losses, we killed Grob, no surprise there.

Move on to Gluth, still interested in practicing Immortal, and we nailed him perfectly, no deaths, outstanding kiting (IM-very-biased-O) by the hunters and mages.

And then Thaddius and the dreaded Ledge Boss. This is one of those moments that just make you cringe. On a personal level, its been months since I've failed the leap, but it still gets me nervous every single time. On a team level, I havent really tracked it, but it does seem that we lose somebody almost every week.

Nailed it. All 25 across safe and sound.

And then for the real fun. We're trying for the Shocking thing. Simple strat, basically same as we always do. Just run in very wide arcs around the boss as you switch sides.

As the fight wore on, the tension builds more and more and more. Who's going to fkc it up? More importantly, will it be me? Push those thoughts out of your head, focus on your positioning, the boss cast bar, and your own debuff. Run WIDE to the outside when you switch.

The lower the health of the boss, the further you move to the edge of your seat.

And then he dies, and your screen fills up with Shocking achievements, which was pretty damn cool. One shot, everybody survived, no crossed polarity.

From there, since Immortal wasn't an option any more, we went and 20-manned some of the wings, culminating in finishing off the 20-man achievement for many of the players. Topping the highlight reel was 20-man Safety Dance.

What worked?

Although we didn't ding Immortal, I am very happy with the evening. Here's some of the keys that I think build the foundation for when we will ultimately get it done:

1) Communication - Two of the Officers co-led the raid, and the two of them did an excellent job of using calm voices and giving very clear instructions for things that we'd be doing differently versus our normal routine.

2) Pace - There was absolutely no rush. Example: Patchwerk. Its annoying how he paces around. If you're not ready to engage him at the right time, he might walk away and you wait 5 minutes. Or you might rogue distract him or have a MD hunter risk the frogger boss to pull Patch as he walks away. Not tonight. We were very deliberate about all our actions.

3) Control - Although only a series of trash pulls, the combination of large kicking/stomping mobs, roaming patrols, and hidden shades between Gluth and Thaddius often give us issue. The raid showed excellent control and discipline as we smoothly handled this area, allowing tanks proper time for positioning, choosing when to engage, focus firing mobs. Its the small things that make a difference and this segment of the evening was just right.

4) Confidence - Yes, we didn't get Immortal, but we did go in and nail out several achievements, all one shots. Thaddius Shocking and zero deaths was a big win. 20-man Safety Dance builds confidence.

I truly hope the guild wants to keep trying. We showed what our raid is capable of when we focus. We are disciplined. We are focused. We have effective leaders, and members who can follow instructions and deliver results. Immortal is DEFINITELY within our grasp.

What needs to change?

While building on the existing strengths, we definitely need to learn from mistakes and not repeat them. None of these is intended to zing, or single out, the player(s) involved. I'm proud of the effort each raider put in. However, we do need to take action if Immortal is going to happen:

1) Visual Settings - The player who died on Grobbulus by running into the damage. You absolutely must get your visual settings configured properly. We can go to a Naxx-10 before next week's immortal attempt, and just sit in Grobbulus's room, fiddling with your UI until its right.

2) Disconnects - We had a few disconnects. Yes, it does happen, and often times it is out of the control of the player. Sht happens, especially when it comes to computer networking. However, some things might be in your control. For instance, I know if I raid from the house with DSL, incoming calls usually disconnect me, and the Cable Modem house does not have this risk. I will never attempt an Immortal run from the DSL house. Each player might have similar things under their control that can improve our chances.

3) Practice on Each Boss - I do appreciate that we changed modes once Immortal was gone and got a few other achievements. It was nice, it was fun, and many raiders (me included) needed them for the meta-achievement. However, if Immortal is ever to be a reality, we need to visit each boss with every raider thinking only about team survival. If we consistently stop practicing after the actual Achievement is gone, then we will have a tougher time on the later bosses, the first time the sun is shining and we succeed at the early ones.

The Future

Not sure what the future has in store for our Immortal attempts, or how many more weeks we have to shoot for it. Probably 4 more?

The thing I like about Immortal is that it really is simply encouraging something we should be doing anyway. We all want to be alive at the end of the fight, however, things like DPS e-peen, youtube videos playing on a computer next to your WoW monitor, and so on, all get in the way.

The more I think about it, the more I want Blizz to implement a similar achievement in each dungeon, but with a twist. I want it to give some tangible reward each and every time you ding it, not just the first time when you get a title or whatever. I think the game is better when everybody is trying to focus together on survival for every fight during every raid.

Immortal Butterflies

Anybody who participates in my raiding life real-time will likely laugh when they see this post. Hell, even those who don't probably will also, but for other reasons.

As I write, it is tuesday lunchtime, waiting in anticipation for tonight's raid. By the time this post hits the blog, the events I'm anticipating will actually be over and done with.

Tonight is the first night we will be making a focused effort to become Immortal. Clear Naxx-25 without any deaths during boss encounters.

Prep Work

You'd like to think that clearing naxx every week would be prep enough. I mean, don't we all try to survive EVERY fight?

But this is different. Take Patchwerk. If you're shooting for a world speed record, every DPS will be pushing threat as absolutely close to the tanks as night elvenly possible. That runs a risk that a melee dps might eat a strike and bite the dust. I'll leave it as a debate for the readers as to whether that's reasonable or not, but the fact is, it can happen. Going for Immortal? Take your time. Instead of 2.5 minutes, lets kill him in 4 or 4.5. Let the rage-starved second and third tanks stay above you so they eat the strikes. Its why they're here, and its why we love them.

In prep for tonight, we've got lots of conversation going on the forums.

Tweaks to 4H to ensure survival. Tweaks to Thaddius, Heigan, Instructor Raz, and so on. Anywhere we've lost a player in the last several weeks. What went wrong, what do we do to fix it. On fights we havent had recent deaths, we reinforce the keys that make us win.

Then there's the consumables. Push the stamina and defensive stats more heavily than the raw DPS or Healing stats. We know we can kill these things with only 20 players, so go a little extra to help survive.

I'm leaving the decision of swapping a few gems for more stamina (which is also AP for my spec, so not entirely silly) for an impulsive decision close to raid time.

Execution

Once we start pulling, its Go Time. Game Face On!

No other computers on the network downloading anything or playing wow. No iTunes playing. No distractions. No extra sources of lag. No booze.

No "that's what she said" on vent, no matter how perfect the setup is, and how much its killing me to not say it. Lock it up and maintain focus.

Might bring my Immortal Ancona Chicken companion pet, but that's only because she's awesome.


I haven't died in Naxx in ages. Must remember the little things that increase personal and team survival.....

Nobody dies in Maex webs on my watch.

My grobulus farts go where they belong.

I keep my Zombie Chows on the frost so they cannot catch me.

Night Elves CAN Jump! Thaddius ledge boss will be cleared. I know what + and - look like, when to look for them, and what to do when they change.

I do not multishot on Razuvious so I don't mess up the priest MC's.

I assist the tank on the undead side of Gothik as he picks up the adds and I do not pull aggro.

I watch my debuffs and switch Horsemen without standing in the bad stuff.

My MD will be ready when Noth blinks to save my Mages.

I can dance like Swayze and Grey. Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

After eating a spore, I return to my spot to make the 3 seconds my healers get just a little bit easier.

I hide behind ice blocks and I mouse-turn to run out of the snow.

I know how to target the proper Soul Weaver and kill her from range. I know how to spread out to limit ice cube chains. I know how to NOT mana explode my healers. I'm ready to Wyvern Sting and Frozen Arrow any MC'd teammates.

I will not die in the fire.

I will not die in the fire!

Butterflies

Geeky or not, I've got butterflies in my stomach.

And I love it.

Thinking it over, this is exactly what I want out of Achievements. Immortal is pushing us to do something we should be doing anyway. Not like the silly 20-man ones, where Blizz is asking you to tell 5 of your teammates to sit out for no real reason. Stupid. Immortal is spot on. We raid naxx each week, and this achievement is making us do it better.

Anxiety. Tension. Build Up.

The team is depending on eachother to deliver flawless execution.

We might get it, we might not. Obviously I want to nail it, but if it doesn't happen, not the end of the world. Just exciting to be trying, and if we fail, I hope we come back and keep trying.


Tonight, before WoW time, everything will be peaceful and zen. When I get home, with a little help from the uber gf, I'll make some dinner, take the dog for a walk, do some coloring books and some bedtime stories, and then I'll tuck the little one in for the night, sing Twinkle Little Star, kiss her peaceful lil' sleeping forehead as I turn out the light.

Then, keeping with the calm meditative tone, I'll get tomorrow's breakfast and lunch prepared and packed and ready to go, make sure the dog has gone outside and he's curled up in a little ball all snug on his dog bed or the couch, that little rascal, and make sure everything is right with the world, because once I log in....

...its time for Daddy to kick some ass!

Ask Amava - Malygos, Main Assisting, and Teh Suck

Welcome to the wall 'o text that is the latest edition of Ask Amava. Durgan is looking for some ideas about playing Hunter in Malygos, the concept and usage of Main Assist, and also is wondering how some Hunters can perform so poorly despite good gear.

And to top it all off, one little tidbit contained herein comes to you hot hot hot off the press, breaking news!!! just discovered last night. Read on for more!

All excellent questions. Lets take a look...

Malygos Spark Management

How do you see where sparks are coming from, for my first time in there it was really confusing trying to find these sparks that were flying all over the place, and with no DK to gather them up maly even got to eat one.

For those unfamiliar with the encounter, the Malygos fight takes place on a circular platform. During Phase 1, sparks form periodically around the outside of the room, and slowly make their way towards Malygos (who is the one and only mob you're fighting during P1). If a spark reaches Malygos, he does mean things to your raid. If you kill a spark before it reaches the dragon, a little patch of sweetness lands on the ground for a little while. If you stand in the sweet spot, your damage output is amplified greatly (forget the percentage increase off the top of my head, but it is very very nice). Spark Sweet Spots can stack, so if you pile dead sparks on top of one another, your DPS reaches Ludicrous Speed.

Spark placement is a balancing act. Clearly, your first motivation is to kill them before they reach Malygos. However, if you kill them too far away, then your Melee DPS can't stand in the sweet spots, hurting the raid. Its like The Price is Right, you want to get the spark as close to maly as you can without letting him eat it.

In 25-man raids, we generally use 2 methods for spark management. (A) Death Knight grip to bring spark over to where you want it, followed by focus fire for quick death. (B) Boomkin entangling roots to keep sparks from moving while Death Grip is on cooldown. The Boomkin will spend lots of his time scanning for sparks, which I can only imagine hurts his DPS, but he's performing a very valued service in return.

There are more sophisticated techniques that involve tank movement for optimal stacking of 3 or more sparks, but we're only just dabbling with that, so I can't confidently comment on how its done yet. It is this kind of mobile tanking solution that would be required if you want to stack sparks but have no DK available.

In 10's, you have much less wiggle room or extra classes. I've had to be the spark lookout sometimes in 10's. Unfortunately the only advice I can offer is practice. You need to constantly swivel your camera around to look for new sparks. Since P1 is not very mobile, other than the repositioning following a Vortex, it does get easier to figure out where the sparks are forming. Sorry, no quick easy solution here.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Hot Hot Hot off the presses! To make use of Improved Tracking, I generally slap on Undead, Humanoids, or Dragonkin, depending upon where we're going. Sure, since a recent patch, it doesnt matter what type of mob you track, just so long as you dont track minerals and whatnot. Well, discovering half way through Sapphiron that I was tracking "and whatnot", I stumble to quickly select someting. ANYTHING. that isnt a mineral or herb. I landed on Track Elementals.

Fast forward 20 minutes, and we're in malygos, and I'm seeing these strange red dots on my minimap, starting out from the perimeter and moving slowly towards the center.

Track Elementals, Bitches! The sparks show up there, making it much easier to identify and locate their position.

FYI, this is likely NOT breaking news, and I bet others have found it months and months ago. But for me and the hunters I roll with, it was a revelation, so there!

Main Assist

Speaking of assist, I still haven't encountered a group that uses it, and I think it would be such a huge benefit for everyone to be able to just concentrate fire on one thing at a time without guessing what the target is. Any explanation of how to set it up and use it properly would be appreciated.

Main Assist (MA) is a technique wherein a single player in your raid is assigned the aptly named job of Main Assist. The job of this player is to select targets. The job of the rest of the DPS is to assist the MA for selection of new targets.

Very simple in concept, very powerful in results. In a 25-person raid, if you have a 6-mob trash pull, and everybody chooses discrete targets, you'll have 6 mobs at 25% health, hitting just as hard as 6 mobs at 100% health. However, if you focus fire and burn down mobs one at a time, you will quickly remove each individual mob very quickly, thus reducing the burden on your crowd controllers (if you are employing them), and your healers and tanks (we love them).

Using a MA is a very effective way to achieve this focused fire.

1) It starts with the raid leader. The RL needs to assign the job of MA and communicate it out to the raid.

2) DPS needs to have an easy method for assisting the MA. Two good methods are:
a) Assist macro (/assist Player-Name) This works pretty well, just spam the macro as your target reaches the end of his life.
b) ORA2 Tank Frames. If your raid uses ORA2, the RL can designate the MA as one of the tanks (or there might be an actual MA function in ora2), and that player and his target will appear in your ORA2 Tank Frame.

I end up using both 2a and 2b simultaneously. For slow controlled fights, the visual effect of the tank frame is good, and when the stuff hits the fan, I spam my assist macro.

3) As the current mob reaches 10-15% remaining health, the MA should switch targets to the next one, and the other DPS should stay with the current target until its dead. This allows for seamless transition from one mob to the next.

4) If a sudden target change is necessary, the MA should call it out on voice. A good example is when Shade of Naxxramas appears mid-pull. MA needs to be a player who is alert enough and knowledgeable enough to make decisions like that.

When I started raiding 10's in Karazhan, we did not use MA, and personally, I think it led to a harder learning curve for the team at the time.

When we entered 25's and I became the Raid Leader, one of the first things I introduced was the MA, and it's been a part of my raiding ever since.

Hovering Bad Guys in Malygos Phase 2

How do you see those damn flying guys in phase two. I had a hell of a time looking up and trying to find them. Maybe a target macro would be in order, but I'm thinking maybe using assist would be the better solution.

Arrrgggh, Malygos! One of the most visually overwhelming encounters I've done.

First night in there, I was helplessly lost. I couldnt find these flying guys for the life of me, and I was beginning to go crosseyed by the end of the night.

I'm happy to say, its gotten much better.

Four things I do to make Flying-Guy-DPS easier:

1) Camera Zoom: I set my camera to zoom out further via...

/console cameradistancemaxfactor 4

Then zoom out as far as you can. Seeing the full battlefield makes life sooo much easier.

2) Main Assist: Durgan touched upon it in his question, and he's right. Using a Main Assist is outstanding here. Of course, this requires that you have a player capable of targeting the discs without the help of a MA, but oh well. If that guy happens to be you, hopefully a combination of #1 above and #3 below will make your life easier.

3) Tab Targeting: Once the mobs on the ground are dead, you can use Tab button to target new guys. Usually works ok, but its a little tricky visually locating the guy you just targeted. He might be out of range, or he might be slowly revolving around you so that he was in front for Tab to target him, but by the time you start firing, he's moved out of LOS. TAB does help, though.

4) Steady Shot: Ok, so Steady Shot doesn't help me acquire a target, but it does help me stay locked on. As long as your target is vaguely in front of you, your toon will automatically rotate to track your target while you cast Steady Shot. This helps very much as your target moves. Only works when you are safely under a magic bubble and get to stand still for a few seconds.

Last but not least...Teh Suck

One question though, how is that I, a sad little casual running around in my sad crafted purples and a few lucky drops from raids can out dps the other hunters in my raids by anywhere from 1000 to 1500 dps. I don't even know how a hunter with almost all BiS gear can do only 1500 dps

Yeah, I'm not sure where to go with this one. It is definitely true that you come across all types of output from all types of players.

Of course there's the basic stuff which can be Armoried, like:

1) Gear. Just a simple upgrade from the level 70 peacock xbow to my sweet and beautiful Arrowsong led to a nearly 30% DPS increase. I know that's extreme, because it was also a jump in 10 levels, but it proved the point to me that solid output requires solid gear. But Durgan's question addressed gear, indicating the players have good stuff, so we need to look further.

2) Polish. How do the enchants look? Empty gem slots or slots filled with green-quality gems? How's the help arcanum and shoulder inscription look? If you consider each enchant or gem on its own, they feel small, but the cumulative effect across all gear slots adds ~20% to your toon.

3) Hit Rating. This one is tricky. For a player who doesn't spend the time and energy that most blog readers/writers do, the concept of hit rating might go totally missed, since there's not a whole lot in-game to educate you about it. These players might have very good gear, but if itemized incorrectly, might be missing large percent of the time.

4) Spec. Talent points invested in the "wrong" spots can gimp damage big-time. Now, I'm not one to judge, because I think people should more or less do what ever the hell they want with regards to spec. However, raiders I want next to me will have cookie-cutter or very close to cookie-cutter for the talent tree they want to use.

Each of those points above can be armoried, so if the question were more than rhetorical, you can find pretty concrete answers.

But to get deeper than that, how about some of the things I've written about my own experiences?

Lag management - That's a sophisticated term for "spam your buttons". In my own case, I've seen a roughy 1k DPS difference when I spam or don't spam.

Rotation - This can mostly be seen via combat log reports. You can examine the relative percentages of overall damage coming from each type of attack. It should be roughly consistent across Hunters of the same spec. Maybe its a hunter who used to play BM in TBC, and is still pounding a 1:1 steady:auto macro. Times have changed, and so must we.

Kill Command - I remember back in TBC, one of the biggest things I found as I inspected new hunters was the limited KC usage.

Cooldowns - See that trinket? "On Use" means you have to use it. Look at combat log to see what they're doing.

Pet on Vacation - The only PuGs I do anymore are the occasional 5-man, and its not uncommon to see a pet just stand by the hunter's side the entire run. Silly, but very easy to notice.

And lastly...

Teh Suck - This could come out of inexperience, or could in fact be that they just suck. Inexperience can be fixed quickly via practice. But that requires the person to actually care about their performance and be interested in doing something about it. If they just plain old suck, well, that's why we're called Huntards :-)

Free Yourselves

A post at Ms Elf got me thinking. Go read the original, but I'll paraphrase one snippet here. Basically, she's saying that most fights stress healers in ways that they don't stress other players, specifically DPS. If DPS stands in the fire for a brief moment too long, its usually something that a healer could technically make up for. However, if that healer chooses to not correct for that error, and the player dies, everybody screams "where's the heals" rather than "why'd you stand in the fire".

And I'll even add to that by saying that the DPS player will actually look even better on the ego stroking meter, since they were pew pew'ing during those precious seconds that they should have been moving, thus making it a nasty cycle reinforcing bad behavior.

One way to stop the cycle is to instruct healers to not heal DPS who stand in fire for brief moments. We're not talking about players who just flat-out stand in fire, few people have issue letting those folks die. Rather, I'm talking about the ones who are sluggish to move out of it in favor of finishing off that long cast or getting in another shot or two since Bestial Wrath is up. This is a difficult solution because your healers might not see where the damage came from, only that one of their precious babies took damage so they'll heal 'em up.

Another way to fix it is for raid leaders to perform closer scrutiny to combat logs. Examine your DPS players and see what damage they take. Rather than the reactive yelling at healers for failing to heal, lets get proactive and instruct players to more effectively avoid incoming damage. Movement might lower our standings on the beloved damage meters, so this would only work for sophisticated/organized raids, and would never succeed in a PuG where DPS e-Peen is King.

Ms Elf quotes a Blizzard forum post where somebody suggests another alternative. Blizzard could design a mechanic that puts responsibility where it belongs.

The quote uses Anub'rican and his spikes. Make the spikes pin the player in place and they can only damage the spikes, not the boss, until they break the trap and escape.

This would be an outstanding mechanic. HOWEVER, here's the catch I'd like to add. Well, one of two possible catches.

Catch A) The trapped player takes no damage while trapped. Damage done to the trap by the player in the course of escaping the trap will NOT be reported to the combat log. IE, the time in the trap does nothing but sap the epeen of the DPS'er because all the properly alert and mobile players avoided the trap and continue to pew pew.

Catch B) The trapped player takes damage, BUT cannot be healed. So the penalty for DPSing your own trap too slowly is that you die and nobody can help you, thus subjecting you to public humiliation and also no epeen since you do no dps when dead.

I absolutely love the idea of forcing more individual responsibility.

However, I do subscribe much more to "win as a team, lose as a team". My greatest joy in the game is tackling content with my team. The shared experience of knuckling down and defeating challenges together is the most fun for me. So I don't want every fight to be 25 solo players standing in the same raid dungeon.

But it never hurt to mix in a mechanic or two that very visibly places personal accountability on each individual.

Inner Demons in SSC were kind of like this, however they miss the mark. A tank or healer needing to DPS his/her Inner Demon required that player to sort of step out of their normal raid job/duty.

A mechanic that teaches/forces players to move from the fire quickly simply reinforces the behaviors that lead to success through out all raiding.

Lag Sux. QQ.E.D.

Lag is starting to annoy me, so much so that it's inspired me into song....

Old NaxXramas had some lag.

E-I-E-I-Ohhhhh

With some latency here and a frozen screen there.

Here a pause, there a freeze,

Everybody D/C!

Old NaxXxramas had some lag

E-I-E-I-Ohhhh

Sorry, I just had to get it out of my system.

Did we all get nerfed?

One of the cool parts of being in a raid guild with a stable roster is that you can measure changes in your routine or gear (A) absolutely measured against yourself week on week, and (B) relatively measured by the other players in the raid.

So when you head on into Patchwerk, and discover that your own numbers are down 200-300 DPS over the previous week, you've got a place to look for root cause.

First step is to look at your own self. Did your gear change significantly, did you change spec or shot rotation, were you doing anything special that you didn't do last week? No? Ok, what now?

Next step is to look at other members of the same class. Ok, another Hunter who was very close to you last week is also showing the same decrease.

Great. Did they f'ing stealth nerf f'ing Hunters again this f'ing week?

Maybe, maybe not, so to continue the pseudo-scientific process, lets look at the other classes. Ahhh, seems that the entire raid dropped roughly the same amount, give or take some anomalies (dusty miner's leggings, here's looking at you).

Raid composition both weeks covers all the things we need. Timing of Heroism was consistent. All things seem to be aligned properly.

Only factor I can think of is some server-side situation being different, such as server LAG.

I'm starting to hate lag, as even 100ms changes are showing pretty big impact to numbers.

Sure, it doesn't really matter to the outcome in the T7 content that we're farming, I'm just using the encounters to compare week over week. But if boss fights become harder or if enrage timers are more aggressive, a 5-10% DPS loss across the raid due to some stupid server-side garbage or network bottleneck at Blizzard's datacenter is just brutal.

Consistent Pets

One thing that stands out when I review our WoW Meter Online report (like WWS, but different) is the consistency of pet DPS.

You might recall that our pets are what triggered my lag investigation to begin with.

The story went like this....two BM hunters, pretty similar gear, both OP and loving every minute of it, and both putting out pretty similar numbers.

Nerf bat to the crotch, we both respec to SV. We both show decreased output (expected due to nerf from OP to just P), but one hunter shows bigger decrease than the other.

The theory I had was that lag was the answer, namely that Brass was managing lag better than I was. We were both wearing the same similar gear, using similar spec, and similar shot prioritization, but his nerfed output was much better than mine. Continuing with the theory, I figured that as BM we did similar numbers because the automated pet doesn't suffer from lag issues and BM pet does 40-50% of damage. When we went SV, our pets change to 20% of our DPS which means that my poor lag management was showing a more visible impact to my total numbers.

Make sense?

Step one was to more properly account for lag in my shots (spam buttons), and the results were immediately positive.

Step two is complete this week. Comparing last weeks numbers where the two hunters did similar DPS, to this week where the hunters did similar to each other again but ~5% less than last week.

Examine the pet portion of the DPS. SAME! Across weeks, the pets show no noticeable DPS change, while the Hunters and the rest of the damn raid show a consistent decrease across the board. I'm attributing that to either a network bottleneck near the server, or a sluggishness on the server itself.

QQ.E.D.

How to make a Goblin Cry

Goblins are business people. They thrive on information asymmetry to part idiots and their gold, and they strive to earn max reward with minimum effort.

Some Goblins write entertaining, informative articles about economic principles, while taking extreme but misguided positions on working in a team of other people.


Two big things make Goblins Cry:

1) Buying 10 Crystallized Fire for much more gold than 1 Eternal Fire

2) Boosting weak people through content, allowing them to earn epics without equal input (

Well, #1 is a little mis-placed because generally the Goblins are the ones selling the Crystallized, so it only makes them cry if they accidentally purchase an expensive item when there's an equivalent cheap item available. But Goblins are perfect, so they never make those kinds of mistakes ;-)

However, boosting the "dumbs"! That's a sure way to rub a goblin the wrong way.

A Shadow Priest's First Raid

While I was getting ready for our 25-person raid monday night, the uber gf was putzing around in Dalaran and saw some PuG 10-man looking for a Shadow Priest for Vault of Archavon.

She said she's going for it! And what's VoA? pst, its a raid, honey :-)

Woe-fully under hit cap, clad largely in quest greens with a couple Heroic Gumdrop drops, all nice and neatly gemmed and enchanted.

She lets them know she's a recent 80 new to end-game, and they're all good with it.

Rock On!

Luckily, VoA is a quick little run, so for a casual player jumping into a group can have some fun without a major time committment.

So I give my advice (stuff falls from ceiling during trash, move out of it. stalactites fall from ceiling/boss during boss, move out of it. keep vampiric touch up. have fun.) and she's off.


Quick like a bunny, she kills the boss and its on to looting.

And the T7 priesty pants drop, and they're all hers!

Gratz on your first epic, lady!

Boosting to make a Goblin Cry!!!!!!

A Shadow Priest's Second Raid

While all this is going on, we're getting our 25-person raid together. The plan is to do VoA real quick, then head over to one-shot Malygos, and then call it a night.

As it would turn out, some people were already saved to heroic VoA, which is pretty puzzling why we have folks running 25's out-of-guild, but I digress.

So we found ourselves short on players.

Around this time, I excitedly tell the team that the gf just did her first raid, 10-man VoA.

Many cheers, followed by the GM having the sweet idea of inviting her for some Big Leagues action.

And since she's already right there at the portal, all the better.

So, how did it play out....



1) More news to fuel the Goblin fires. Less DPS than the tanks. Taken on the surface, its boosting at its finest. However, when you look beyond the surface and consider these tanks are the best geared and skilled tanks on the server, and the player is in her first 25-person raid ever, 1200 DPS ain't too shabby, and provides a good benchmark as she works on getting a little +hit gear and a spell priority/rotation.

2) Take a look up top. We got your stealth nerf....RIGHT HERE!

No phat priesty lewtz on this run, which truly would have put the nail in the goblinish coffin, but whatever. It was fun as hell.

If only Greedy Goblin could have been there!

I just wish GG could have been there.

It was boosting in the finest form.

And it absolutely made my night!

Stealth Nerf

Short Version

Explosive Shot got kicked in the bean bag.

I normally try to just roll with the changes as they come, and make the best of situations.

But this is starting to get annoying and distracting.

Medium Version

So I take a day or two off from reading blogs.

Then I raid Patchwerk.

DPS decreased by 15% from the previous week. Brass's DPS down 10% over previous week.

So I turn into an emo b12ch.

Then the next day I read some blogs and find out there was a stealth nerf to Explosive Shot.

I'm still emo.

TL;DR Version

Thursday night. Naxxramas speed run, hoping to shave a few minutes off of our time to clear the full place. (just about 2:55, if you don't count the silly, avoidable, due-only-to-ppl-not-remaining-calm-in-the-face-of-some-bad-luck wipe on KT).

Naxx nights are always fun because I love repeating the same dungeon again and again for months Patchwerk is a good place to assess my performance.

No gear or spec changes this week, so the comparison would only be assessing how much tighter my SV shot-priority rotation has gotten over the past week.

I even brought Haste Potion same as last week, based upon the helpful suggestion of one of the commenters on my beloved blog.

Everything seemed to go perfectly. Well, I think I blew one Lock and Load proc, overriding the last tick of one of the Explosive Shots. Also think I had one GDC where I let Serpent Sting expire. But lets not get picky, generally a good performance, IMO.

Dead boss.

/recount toggle

4.1K DPS

WTF?

Last week was a nice and tight 4.8K DPS.

What about Brass? Always good to have his numbers to compare with. He's down from 5.1K to 4.6K.

WTF?

Neither one of us had any idea what the deal was.

For the rest of the night, Brass actually kicked major ass, showing Blizzard what he thinks of the damn nerf. My output was pretty meh, but I did get a new belt which will let me re-do a few gems and get some more agility kicking which is pretty big. But not enough to justify how much I suck compared to what's possible to output.

Then I have a slow day at work read some blogs and wowinsider, and discover that tuesday's reboot contained a stealth (unannounced) nerf to Explosive Shot.

Enough to justify a 10-15% decrease in overall DPS?

If it were just my numbers, I'd just figure I was a noob. But when both hunters see a marked decrease, you know something's up.

Prep for First Raid

A little hordie birdie asked me for some tips on a Hunter's first raid, so here's a few gems to ponder. These are built from my own experience and thoughts, with some conjecture thrown in. Some of this talks about emotions and other such frivolous topics, which is totally taboo in the world of anonymous 1337 Internet supermen who tell mere mortals to L2P.

What follows is less about how many stacks of such and such reagent you should bring, and more about controlling the irrational pressure that the gaming community puts on new people. Most of what you read from the hardcore and most of what you hear from the vocal people you encounter in-game gives the appearance that on day one, you're supposed to know everything, be skilled at everything, and be immune to human emotions.

I say BUNK. A person's first raid can be fun, exciting, and also nerve-wracking. To keep the night focused on the fun/excitement and less on the painful side, here's some food for thought.....

Before the Raid Night

1) You are New, but you are not a noob - The word "noob" comes with such negative connotation in WoW. Forget that crap. But you are new, so accept that (A) you might make mistakes, (B) its totally ok when you do, and (C) someone might call you noob when you do. Ignore them when they say that. Just wait. They'll mess up soon enough, and you can do a Victory Dance in your house when they do :-)

2) Prepare ahead of time - Polish your gear (gems enchants etc), stock up on elixirs and potions and food. You know your raid is friday or saturday? Get your stuff squared away on wednesday or thursday. Make sure your Vent is setup in advance.

3) Scouting - This might sound funny, but your first time in, you might not know where the instance is located. In Conquest's first 25-person raid, I didn't know where Obsidian Sanctum or Naxxramas were, other than what's listed on Wiki, which is "dragonblight". Dragonblight is a big place, and knowing the exact locations beforehand will make you feel less like a noob come raid night.

4) Don't worry about Boss Fights - Here's a place where I diverge from the popular concept of knowing boss fights in advance. If your raid is planning on tackling a large chunk of Naxx in one night, you will be way way way too confused if you try to research each boss. If you're planning on doing only one wing, then definitely read up and try to watch some vids. But 14 bosses is too much to digest. Ask questions if you're unsure of how a boss works.

At the Start of the Raid

5) Be Early - if possible, log in an hour early on the night of the raid, with plans to do nothing but think about the raid. You'll probably be excited and nervous, and allowing as much time as possible will help reduce anxiety. And since you already scouted out where the place is, you'll have plenty of time to get there and help the other early guy summon people.

6) Repair and get Ammo - I don't care what consumables or mats or whatever else you pack. If you only do two things before the raid (A) Repair and (B) Full quiver. Oh, and remember to bring your DPS pet.

7) Growl off, Passive stance - I know, I know. But its at these exciting moments of a first raid that we forget the basics. Growl off, passive stance.

8) Know Your Tanks - Make sure you know who the tanks are. It works somewhat better to Misdirect onto them than onto the other players.

9) Know Your Targeting - For target selection, you should either have a designated Main Assist, a raid icon kill order, or at the very least, a tank who you will use for selecting your next target. Ask about MA or Kill Order at the beginning, and if there's no satisfactory answer, just pick a tank and assist him/her all night.

During the Raid

10) Fire Bad! - Generally, anything funny looking on the floor or flying down from above is bad. Step out of it.

11) Ignore Recount - Whether you run a damage meter yourself or not, I'm sure some idiot is going to post a recount report to /raid at some point in the night. Completely ignore the output of the report, unless you're on top :-P and also completely ignore that person going forward. It is hugely detrimental to team unity when those people spit out those reports. Definitely review WWS after the night is over for constructive feedback, but for now, ignore it.

12) Turn off Viper - Once your mana is full, turn off Viper. Uggy, I hate when I do that.

13) Loot your Badges - ...er...Emblems. Dead boss means (A) Phat Lewts, and (B) Emblems of Something. Don't forget to loot your badges.

After the Raid

14) Sleep. Or Not - If you're like me, you spend the hour after a raid totally wired. The first few raids I was in, it was like two hours before I could even consider falling alseep. It is exciting stuff. But that's just me. Maybe you'll sleep like a baby.

15) Empty Your Bags - I have maybe 15 bag slots filled with raid stuff. I hate when I forget to empty my bags and then head straight out to quest or gather, and suddenly find my bags full. Empty that raid stuff out into your bank.

16) Review WWS - depending upon when the report gets posted, maybe you view it that night, or maybe the next day. Take a look at things like how many misses, or what percent of your DPS came from what abilities.

17) Growl on, Stance of your choice - I always forget to turn growl back on, and then the next day I wonder why the first mobs I solo run right up to me. Noob!

Summary

So there you have it!

Some might be obvious, some might be all emo and carebare and touchy-feely. Some of these are things I do at the start of each and every raid, whether its a farming run through Kara at 70, or a 3 Drake progression night at 80.

Its all about keeping calm and remembering the basics.

Fire hurts. Mobs hit the thing with the highest threat. Empty quivers fire no shots.

I can't wait to hear about how it goes.

It feels good to be alive (at the end of a boss fight)

The funk of dying in the fire is hard to shed. At least for a stubborn mule like me.

So there's been this tiny little storm cloud floating over my head during the raid or two since then.

And getting one-shot by a Mind Controlled mage during a recent KT kill didn't help the situation much either.

Drakes Up, Up, and Away

Went into Heroic Obsidian Sanctum with plans to attempt Sartharion plus two Drakes.

Wiped 10-ish times.

The fight is all about survivability through a variety of effects. Fire on the ground. Fire walls passing by. Enraged fire elementals. Fire breath. On and on with the dangerous environment.

For a Beast Master Hunter, this fight is awful. There's so many things that can kill your pet nearly instantly. And you need to maneuver your pet constantly through the fight, so your DPS is going to take a big hit.

As a result, on the last attempt of the night, having both Amava and Princess Vespa alive and well, was sweet sweet joy.

TIP: Recall your pet during each and every Flame Wall. Even if Bestial Wrath is active at the time. Your pet will be big and red and dead if you don't.

So, for a fragile ego trying to recover from an untimely death, nothing compares to living through a progression kill in a very survival-intensive fight.

Malygos, Two Shots, Two Kills

The Conquest 25-person raid team paid Malygos a visit two nights in a row.

Both attempts were one-shot kills.

Phase 2 and Phase 3 are very challenging (at least for me) survival fights.

Phase 2 has you pouring out the pew pew while trying to remain safe under continuously moving shield bubbles. Phase 3 has you trying to fight the visual vertigo and survive on your stupid dragon vehicle mount.

Living through to the end of both kills is another shot to bolster the suffering ego.

Daddy's Back!

Its good to be back.

I'll keep saying my mantra "I will not die in the fire" 100 times daily for the foreseeable future, but it sure feels good to know that it was just a temporary thing and not a permanent brain fart.

Though, my brain is gassy and I'm sure we'll be back in Storm Cloudsville someday.

Raid Progress Report - Drakes Up, Ho's Down

Just a real quickie for anybody who cares.

First night of new Raid ID's. Three Hours.

1) Heroic Sartharion + 1 Drake (Tenebron) progression attempt. One Shot. Cool as hell, added a bunch of complexity. Pets are so squishy in this fight, Princess Vespa was dead or at my side for much of the fight. /cry Hopefully we'll try 2 Drakes next week.

2) Heroic Malygos second kill attempt. A few shots, but dead dragon in the end. Several players in the raid who weren't part of the progression kill, so should be pretty close to farmable now that they've seen it top to bottom.

3) Heroic Naxxramas - Spider Wing and Plague Wing Cleared. Most importantly: Heroic Safety Dance Achieved with zero deaths on Heigan the Unclean!!!!!!!

Collectively, the DPS was up quite a bit, and nearly all boss kills were Guild records for speed.

Speed through trash was also much improved. That's a good thing, but unfortunately, it may build bad habits over time. Its good because I dislike wasting time unnecessarily. Its bad because we can just sorta pull entire rooms now (through gear and familiarity). With only half the raid, and the other half still standing by a corpse figuring out what to do with the stuff in the corpse's pockets.

Actually, strangely enough, it might be building even stronger need for skill, because clearing 4 or 5 packs of spiders in a single swoop requires you to be a bit on your toes, rather than sitting down, setting up, and just mindlessly AoE'ing small groups at a time.


The goal for the week is to clear everything in two nights.

To do that, Thursday night would need to be Naxx Construct Wing, Military Wing, Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad, and then fly on over to Wintergrasp to take down Archavon.

Given the pace we moved at on Tuesday, seems pretty reasonable, especially with the two iffy ones out of the way (Sarth+Drake and repeat Malygos kill).

That is all.

Monday Night Off

Conquest, the Guild, is only officially organizing 25-person raids. It gives the team focus, lets the leaders recruit around a 25-person roster and Raid Composition, avoids the struggles of maintaining two sets of 10 people and the associated agony of managing Raid ID's.

Our official schedule has 4 nights of raiding per week, with a max of 12 hours.

But what do you do when you beat all the 25-person content in the first 7.5 hours during 3 nights?

For us, it meant Monday night off, so there's some time to catch up on a few dailies, farming some extra mats or sellable gatherables, or some heroics, or whatever of a billion and one things there are to do in the game.

Mid-way through a 4-person Heroic Nexus run, I discover they're looking to rip through 10-man Malygos and Sartharion.

Lets give it a whirl.

Malygos, the Normal Mode

All of the players present have beaten Malygos-25, so the mechanics of the fight are well understood. He just hits less hard in Normal, has fewer adds during Phase 2, only targets one player at a time during Phase 3, and generally has less health. But the mechanics are unchanged between modes.

All 10 players are solid performers. Hell, the whole guild is solid performers. Two tanks, Two Healers, Six DPS. No Nonsense.

Not a one shot, but we did make quick work of Malygos-10, for a fun little achievement.

On to Obsidian Sanctum

Then Sartharion.

Sarth has 3 Drakes in his Sanctum. They're trash mini-bosses.

You have the option of killing them before you engage Sartharion. Or you can leave one, two, or all three up. And if you choose to leave any up, you need to carefully select which ones to keep alive, because they each have different capabilities.

The challenge becomes exponentially more difficult as you keep another Drake alive. And more-so in Normal mode, since you have fewer options for toons to give special duties to.

Blizzard has done a pretty cool job of giving raids options for difficulty settings. Sure, Nihilum (or whatever the current name is) cleared OS in the first day of the Expansion. But did they do it with three drakes up? In both 10 and 25? I'm not taking a shot at them, I'm just saying that once you've beaten everything, there's still new and original things to do. /golf clap for Blizzard.

So with the 10 of us, we took our first attempt at 1 Drake up, Vesperon.

And got our asses kicked. Its a little unclear how to handle the encounter, and the literature out there is very limited. Seems that most folks who have completed the "Drakes Up" variations are staying tight lipped. Which is cool as hell, because it means we have to get creative and not just copy technique we see in a youtube vid.

We actually came damn near to killing him before 3 of the players had to leave.

What to do? Find 3 players?

What fun is that? We didn't have guildies on to fill the team out, and why pug it?

So the 7 of us killed off Vesperon and then killed Sartharion in a Zero Drakes setting.

The fight took 12 minutes with 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 3 dps, which is funny as hell, and had us all fiddling with mana issues like never before.

In 25's, you get substantial mana regen from all the buffs and replenishment effects. In a 7-person raid, you get nearly none.

But we one shot Sarth with 7 people, which was pretty fun.

One thing that is nice about the kill is that we illustrated that we could, if necessary, take three people, and assign them exclusively to managing one of the Drakes. That might not be enough, and lots of strategy planning and trial and error are going to be needed, but it is nice to know some of the boundaries.

Tuesday night will be our first 25-person attempt at 1 Drake up.

Stop the Insanity: Pre-Raid To-Do List

Not a chance that I'll ever stop the insanity, unless I go the pharmaceutical route, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.

Here's the sort of stuff that burns in my brain continuously, and flows out through my fingers during lunch break, gets emailed home at the end of the day, and gets posted (usually) to the blog the following morning....

Stuff to do tonight before the raid:

1) Water the christmas tree. It chain-drinks water like I used to chain chug Fel Mana pots.
2) Knights of Ebon Blade quests, perhaps ding revered. My brain is fried on math and cant tell if 250x6 is enough to get me to revered.
3) Shoulders from Ebon Blade if revered
4) Helm Arcanum from Ebon Blade if revered
5) Check AH mule for gems and mats (see below)
6) Visit Shatt or Hodirs for Shoulder Inscription
7) Do the shoulders from Ebon Blade have a socket? Uggy!
8) Get new chest enchanted with +8 stats. +10 will wait for a better item (4 frikin abyss crystals, my ass)
9) Get Titanium Impact Band crafted
10) Update Outfitter with all this new sht

Mats to procure (AH or in mule's bank):
1) Mats for +8 enchant to chest.
2) Yellow gem (+crit) for chest
3) Replace green gem in legs because new chest puts you over hit cap (I think its a blue socket)
4) Mats for belt buckle
5) Gem for belt - likely +32 AP
6) Mats for Titanium Impact Band


Oye, vey!

We'll see how much time I have. The titanium ring might have to wait. And if I don't ding revered with Ebon Blade, I won't have to do nearly any of this.

Tips for DPS'ing Heroic Malygos

See, I can write a title like that, because on saturday night, one month after the release of WotLK, our second night working on Heroic Malygos, we killed that stinkin dragon! Not even close to world, server, or whatever first. But its our first and it feels pretty cool.

Its a sweet fight, and being the only one that really gave us any trouble, a sweet kill.

A Hunter who's seen way way more TBC raid content than I ever did said this is the most fun fight he's seen, perhaps second only to Kil'Jaeden, the final boss in Sunwell Plateau, which gives a little perspective on the coolness factor.

WWS all wonky

Normally we like to use WWS to epeen analyze our performance. WWS looks all f'ed up for this fight. I think the kill is listed as two separate attempts, with only 6 of our players even showing up in the log for the killing attempt.

So no WWS results, no ego boosting screen shot to share. But, just between you and me, for the killing attempt, Recount showed somebody we all know and love (and are all getting a big sick of hearing about his leet dps skillz) up on top. Boo-ya!

All preening and stroking aside, here's some concrete things that will help Hunters DPS'ing on Heroic Malygos.

Note that the Malygos fight is three distinct phases. Phase 1 and 2 involve doing DPS pretty normally like you would do in any fight, and Phase 3 involves discarding all your normal stuff and using the abilities of a stupid dragon vehicle.

Quickie Linkie

In case you're only interested in Phase 3, jump there. Its the most unorthodox phase, and might have you wondering more than the first two.

1. DPS during Phase 1


2. DPS during Phase 2


3. DPS during Phase 3 - stupid dragon vehicle

DPS during Phase 1

Phase 1 is normal pew pew against a single target. Granted, that single target is one massive dragon with one massive hit box.

As a Hunter, I find his hit box to be annoying, as I have to back up further than is intuitive based on where your arrows are striking. Your arrows appear to aim for his face, and If you stand behind him (which you better because his frontal cone breath is lethal) that impact point looks like it is 30 yards away from you. But you might still be too close to shoot. So back up a step.

Power Sparks are your friend. Effective management of the sparks requires good coordination by the whole raid. Assigned players need to ensure that the sparks die on top of eachother. The rest of the DPS needs to then ensure that they're always standing on a dead spark for a 50% damage boost.

In our killing attempt, we were consistently standing on two sparks, and had a brief span with three sparks, stacking an additional 50% for each spark which was just a wonderful job by the spark handling guys.

Watch your buffs. You might think there are two sparks stacked, but maybe you're only standing in one of them. You really can't tell from the visual effect on the ground, you have to examine your buffs to see the additional one or two sparks.

Don't be too conservative, but you might want to save some of your cooldowns for when sparks are stacked the most. You won't get to two or three sparks until a little later in the fight, so pay attention during learning attempts to get a feel for when your spark handlers generally get the most stacks up.

During the killing attempt, the brief period of 3x Power Spark plus Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire, and my Attack Power trinket....it was one of the coolest things I've seen in the game.

Pet Management during Phase 1

As I've mentioned in the past...recall your pet after each and every Vortex. Pets definitely bug out on the encounter.

Also, during the normal pew pew part of phase 1, look at your pet from time to time. If she's somehow migrated towards the front, recall and then reattack to get her in back.

Pay attention to power spark location. You might squeeze out a little more damage if you recall your pet and have her reattack if there is a spark directly behind the boss. However, if she's not dangerously near the frontal cone, but she is off to the side and standing in a spark, try to leave here there if you can because those sparks are awesome.

DPS during Phase 2

Ok, so phase 2 is a blur. During learning attempts, I was a fail hunter and died more often than I'd like during this phase. But I did get the hang of it, so I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

For this phase, Malygos himself cant be fired upon, and you are fighting a bunch of adds. Some adds are on the ground. Some adds are on hover discs in the air.

Throughout the phase, massive damage is being rained down from the sky, and you have to position yourself under randomly located protective shells.

Maybe my repair bill will save you some grief....

1) Survive - you do no dps when you're a spectator. Our raid had a single person calling out when to move from one shield to the next. This was massively helpful as I could focus more attention on dealing damage, and less (but not zero) attention on shields and mobility. Make sure you are under a shield at all times, other than when your coordinator indicates that you should move. Also, thank your healers again and again because they'll save your ass during this phase.

2) Focus Fire - the raid needs to have a Main Assist. Brass serves as our MA, so my macro /assist Brass gets spammed continuously during P2. The MA should focus first on the ground guys (Lords) and then on the flying guys (Scions). Make sure you allow your tanks sufficient time to pick up all the Lords when the phase begins (/fail when I pulled aggro instantly during a learning attempt and got oneshot for 25k damage)

3) Take your time - when first attempting this encounter, I had a royally difficult time targeting the Scions that fly around in P2. Well, to be correct, I could target them just fine with my assist macro, but I couldnt figure out which direction to point my toon so I could fire at them. Its a really visually complex environment with lots of very nasty, very neon colored stuff happening all at the same time.

My problem was that I wanted to get into my shot rotation too quickly and wasn't taking a heartbeat to actually look around and find my target. To locate the current DPS target, I found the following things to be helpful:

Main Assist - our MA is a hunter. He picks a target that he's typically aimed at and firing upon. Look for his arrows or bullets tracing a path through the sky.

Mind Flay - that's right, if you've got a Shadow Priest pointed in the right direction, flay will show you the way.

Steady Shot - once you actually find the target, casting Steady Shot will automatically rotate your toon as the Scion moves through the air. Great for maintaining aim once you lock on to the target.

4) Survive - I can't express how frustrating it was watching this phase of the fight on the attempts where I was a dead hunter.

DPS during Phase 3

Once P2 is done, the floor disintegrates and you fall really far and land onto a saddle on a flying dragon. That landing must really hurt, if you think about it. But I digress.

Some things that really helped me during P3:

1) Aces High! - Yes, it is a really annoying daily quest. And the rotation you do during the quest is a little different than the rotation you do during the raid. In the quest you have to heal yourself and also dps. In the raid, you'll either heal -or- dps. But the daily quest does give you a feel for movement on the dragon, a feel for the basics of the attacks, and also a good feel for shielding from his burst effect. Fight through the pain and do the daily.

2) 1-1-2 - For DPS during P3, our raid used a 1-1-2 rotation. Gain two combo points via the attack mapped to stupid dragon vehicle action button one, and then hit action button two to do the finishing move and start the DoT. Always, hit #1 twice to build up combo points. Wait for energy. Then hit #2. No matter how much movement or shielding you end up doing, make sure to keep doing this again and again. Every time you convert combo points, you get another stack on your DoT. By the end of the fight we had a couple of raiders with upwards of 20 stacks. 1-1-2. 1-1-2. Say it with me. 1-1-2.

3) Look at your Mini-Map - During early attempts, I totally ignored my mini-map. During the killing attempt, my eyes were 50% on my dragon/battle view, and 50% on my mini-map. Visually, the battle field is totally disorienting and there are no reference points. Keep glancing at your mini-map.

4) Move out of the fire - When a static field shows up, get out of it. /duh. Pre-coordinate your movements. We planned on keeping the raid stacked on top of eachother. Looking at the mini-map, we started the fight all at the directly south (6 o'clock) position of the mini-map. When a static ball hit us, the coordinator (and ONLY the coordinator) instructed the raid to move. Each time he says "move", you move 90 degrees counterclockwise.

If you look at your battle field while moving, you get vertigo and probably die. If you look at your minimap while moving, you successfully get into position and resume attack.

5) Shield - You gotta pop your #5 command to shield when you get targeted with Arcane Surge. If you are doing 1-1-2 rotation, you should nearly always have 2 combo points up, just waiting for enough energy to fire #2. When DBM indicates you are targeted, wait for Malygos's cast bar to complete and the spell is just about to start channeling. If you shield too early, you die.

Note: Because of this fight, I uninstalled BigWigs and installed DBM. BigWigs was not working for me on this fight and DBM was totally correct and easy to understand.

6) 1-1-2 - You will be moving. You will be shielding. By only using 1-1-2 instead of the Wiki-recommended 1-1-1-1-1-2 rotation, you will not have a large amount of time to waste when moving or shielding before reapplying your DoT.

Do not let your DoT expire. By the end of the fight, the difference between most players having 15 stacks of DoT versus having 3 or 4 stacks of DoT is just ridiculous. This is a DPS race and the bigger your stacks of DoTs, the better your chance is. Aces High will only let you practice getting stacks up to about 4 or maybe 5. I've seen stacks as big as 27 during Phase 3.

Still reading?

What's next?

With the kill, Conquest has successfully downed all available 25-person raid bosses.

The next move is obviously to keep farming the current content, but also to work on Obsidian Sanctum. Sartharion has three drakes that we've been killing before initiating the boss event. It gets progressively harder as you keep one or more drakes alive. This week's OS run will feature at least one, perhaps two drakes up, which should be an interesting twist on a now familiar encounter.

Additionally, keep pushing for a variety of achievements and other tweaks here and there to improve clear-time, eliminate wipes, and reduce individual deaths.

Any idea when the next raids will be released?

Yet Another Update to the Improvement Plan

So, using our traditional format, lets examine the current 5 items on the plan:

1) Hodir. Still agonizing my way through this one. Jaded as hell. I dread the flight from Dalaran to Dunder Nifflem. The only saving grace is the K3 land mine quest on the way. However, alliance players doing the quest who decline group invitation and then, horror of horrors, put their land mines in front of mine to deliberately tag a mob that'll then get finished off my my mines? Die a firey death. I remain committed to completing these dailies as often as possible. I also learned about something called Everfrost Chips that can speed up the process. Must find out more.

2) Knights of the Ebon Blade. Haven't really done anything here. This one is here to fill the gap if I find myself with spare time, which I have not found. Rep level with these guys is probably exactly where it was when I last reported in.

3) Shoulders. Still sporting T5. Still hating T5. Saw sweet sweet shoulders drop in Naxx-25, but passed since I already got T7.5 gloves that night. Debating picking up the Kirin Tor shoulders at Honored. They're the entry-level PvP shoulders, but they still represent an upgrade in every category for me besides a smidge of hit. I'm only friendly though, so lets cross fingers for some RNG and Loot Council lovin Thursday or Saturday.

4) Wrists. Vindicators out, Eaglebane in. I was actually gathering the mats for the epic Giantmaim set, when I saw a WoW Head comment indicating that Eaglebane is probably better. Looked them over, and I'm a big fan. Even bigger fan of the 65g pricetag on the AH which is peanuts for the level of upgrade they represented. Obviously, I've got a few upgrade wrist options on my 25-person wishlist, however this is no longer a driver for my Improvement Plan.

5) Cooldown Timer. I haven't really visited this one yet. Looked over some options on Curse, not overly happy with any of them. I suppose I'll just have to take the plunge and try one out. Or take this one off the damn list :-)

I showed the results in a nice fancy epeen post complete with visual aids. Granted, those results are only indicative of progress, and won't always be repeatable. That run had me with an above-expected number of crits, especially for Princess Vespa. But it does illustrate that the few changes made between raids did move things in the right direction.

Coming out of that OS-25 run, Loot Council gave me the token for the Valorous Cryptstalker's Gauntlets, which they tell me is the T7.5 gloves. Lots of people are poo-poo'ing on the Hunter T7 stuff, but I'm a big fan of these. They represent a big jump over the blue heroic drops I was wearing. Throw in a +hit gem and a Crusher +44AP enchant. BTW: Mats for Crusher cost about 350g which sucks just a bit. I'm not cryin about gold, but I'm just sayin.

Also got a very solid reward for doing the lead-in to the Aces High! quest. Nice big chunk of +hit and well rounded other stats. Lacks a gem which is weak, but whatever. Need to get a +8 stats on it before Thursday's raid.

Very excited to try out the new gloves and chest in the second half of Naxx on Thursday night.

The new pieces of the plan.

1) Curse of the Hodir. They're not going anywhere off my list until Exalted. Everfrost Chips need some investigation.

2) Shoulders. Must rid myself of level 70 gear. One attainable option is Kirin Tor pvp shoulders. Need to revisit the loot list for additional options.

3) Legs. Still sporting T5 legs. I did throw one of the fancy new Icy +75AP leg armors on here, but still, their time is up. Maybe RNG will smile upon me Thursday night. Or else I've got to revisit my heroic drop list and start hittin the 5-mans. Or maybe look over a Leatherworking list and see if they've got anything reasonable.

4) Aces High! - This is part of improvement, just not the traditional pew pew improvement. Do this piece of sht daily to ensure you're ready for Malygos Phase 3.

5) Knights of the Ebon Blade. Although progress is not really occurring, I don't want to lose sight of this one as the new helm Arcanum will be a nice grind to have out of the way, if time allows.