Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Our first taste of Kael.

Tonight we went and had our first attemp at Kael'thas in the Eye. This is a fight I had been waiting and waiting for. When I first hit level 70 and spent a bit of time learning about the raids that could be done and the bosses that we could face, this was the guy I set my eye's on. I never dreamed of getting any further than him ... In fact I never even expected to see him before the expansion.

You can have your Illidan and your Sunwell. This is the guy I dreamed of facing and I fear that it may be my last real goal before the expansion. Thats not to say that the guild won't progress further, and thats not to say that I won't enjoy raiding anymore, but it may be the last fight I get truly and utterly excited about.

Here he is


I learned that the latest patch had nerfed the health of the advisor's and I feared that this would make the fight far too easy and spoil my epic fight. These fears was soon proved to be groundless as time and again we wiped going into phase 3. Those damn weapons of his just won't die fast enough. With each and every wipe we got better and better, but then we had respawns on the trash and we called it for the night.

I went away from the raid feeling great, not because we had an easy night, but because we had a hard night of learning a new and difficult boss. It was great and I can't wait for more.

Oh, and as for my incompetent warrior moment. When tanking Lord Sanguinar in phase 3, do not what ever you do, mix up your stance dance (for Berserker Rage) and Shield block key bindings. This can result in you taking two 6k crushing blows and ending up face down on the ground. It happened to me so I know :)

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Who re you People?

First off,

10,000 hits ?!?!? Who are you people and why do you read this drivel.


Secondly,

Sorry for my late silence on the blog but I have spent my time finally getting my little gnome warlock to level 70 and sorting out some RL problems.

Thirdly,

A little pic from after last nights raid where 5 of us went and farmed the hat. When Em heard about it he nearly had a fit as he collects in game pets.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

We Wiped On Gruul

Last night we had an epic raid, with everyone bringing their A-game. It started off with us aiming to kill Karathress and Morogrim in SSC, and we did in 1 hour and 20 minutes. And I didn't die.

What should we do now?

Ok lets go kill Rage Winterchill in Mount Hyjal. Apparently he had been buffed, but it didn't really seem that way as we tore through the trash and then him. Although I must say I was a bit peeved at him. A while ago I finally got my Medallion of the Alliance to replace my Insignia of the Alliance just for this fight, and what does he do? For the first time ever he shoots me more than once with his frostbolt thingy ... Three times all in the space of my trinkets new and improves 2 min cooldown ... the bastard *shakes fist*. Fortunately I was still in my prot gear so I had a huge stack of health to soak up the damage and I didn't die.

Ok we just one shot him, now what do we do?

Lets go test out the trash in Black Temple. This was where the real fun of the night began, thats not to say that we weren't having fun before. In fact we had a new guild member along with us and he commented that he had never heard so many people laughing in any raid he's ever been on.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time running around like headless chickens with shouts of "What the hell does this mob do?", "Which way are we going again?" and "I'm dead!". I was starting to get a little worried though since we were nearly at High Warlord Whatshisface and I had yet to die that night, it would be breaking a long standing tradition if we were to have a 25 man raid and I was to survive the entire night.

Then it happened, just two pulls away from the boss ... a wipe!! And Stunty goes down!!!

But it did not end there, we killed the group that did this, and on the very next pull I was to die again ... this was embarrassing since I was a tank and I was the only one to die on that pull :(

Then we got our first real look at High warlord Whatshisface.


And this is us after engaging him.

I'm somewhere in the pile in the center of the pic. I think we did alright considering 90% of us knew nothing about the fight and when we popped the first bubble half of the raid exploded. That little episode brings me nicely on to the next part of my post.

Before we start getting overconfident I would like to take us back a day to sunday where, like the title say, we wiped on gruul. And here's the screenie to prove it :)


Ok so we had a lot of people new to the fight along with us and this was the result of Half the raid exploding on the first shatter, I was quite in awe of the damage that could be wreaked on a raid .... by itself /Epic Fail

We downed him on the second try and I was pleased to see that nobody died in the first few shatters, although i almost killed our MT when I Intercepted at Gruul to get away from a bunch of people only to realize that the MT had feral charged at him also, resulting in us slooooowly trying to run away from each other, and fortunately we made it far enough away for a wipe not to happen,

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.



Oh and in a show of solidarity (even though I'm not a druid) against BRKWWA .... *Clears throat* "FOSHIZZEL"

Saturday, July 19, 2008

A Long Rambling Post On Arms

First off I did my first ever Karazhan one shot today, and killed Netherspite for the very first time ever. Thats right I've killed Maggy, Gruul, 6/6 in SSC, 3/4 in TK, and one boss in MH... but never killed Netherspite until today. What was amazing in my mind was that we did the entire run with the exception of Netherspite with only one tank.


And while I only managed to achieve second place on the Damage Done, just take a look at the list I did top .... can you tell what it is?


Thats right I topped the death list. It's a running joke in raids that I die the most, and while this is not always true it's close enough as makes no difference. It was during this run that I stopped to ask myself why this is. Well some of it is just plain bad luck and there's nothing I can do about that, but as for the rest ...

The fist answer that came to mind was in fact another question. What does an arms warrior bring to the raid?

So I started to list things off in my mind. The most obvious is that they bring the Blood Frenzy buff increasing physical damage for the entire raid by 4%. The other obvious one was good melee dps. Yet another was the shout buffs. But none of these helped me reach a conclusive answer. So what else does an Arms Warrior bring to the raid?

The answer lies in the question. He's a warrior, and warriors have plate, which is admittedly a very minor advantage in end game, but they also have a large stack of health to go with it, and this is not a minor advantage, it's a bloody great big advantage if you know how to use it.

Yes yes, I know that a dps warrior will almost exclusively be in Berserker Stance and will consequently be taking 10% extra damage, but stop to think for a second, look at the mage, the priest, the shaman and the rogue. They, at the same gearing level as my dps gear, will be running around with ~7k health unbuffed, where as I am running around with 9.5-10k unbuffed. thats a damn slight more than a 10% increase. Don't get me wrong I can and have been one shotted by raid bosses and understand that if anything seriously sets it's eyes on me instead of a tank I'm a goner, but that doesn't mean there is no damage to be taken elsewhere.

Ok, so you have more health than the average dps, how does this explain you dieing so often?


This is because I use my health bar as a weapon and a resource.

Use your health bar as a weapon? Than make no sense Stunty.

Ok let me try and explain. If your a regular reader of my blog, you will have by now seen some screen shots of my UI. I have it all arranged by order of importance and set it out so it's easy to read. I have incoming damage scrolling up at the left of my character, incoming heals scrolling down to the left, and Out going damage floating around at the top of the screen since it's the least important. I have large unit frames for both myself and my target just above my action bars, compact but easy to read raid frames to the top left, and Buffs and Debuffs to the top right.

Why did I go to all this trouble with my UI when blizzard provides you with a workable and functional one? It's because I wanted more information readily available in an easy to process format. This allows me to look at the amount of incoming damage, incoming heals, state of the raid, and then make an informed decision as to whether or not I should allow myself to take more damage to increase my dps time. I can instantly tell if I'm going to be putting too much pressure on the healers, or if the damage I will take will kill me and how much damage I will do in return for this health pay off. And the better you know the fight and the players in your raid the harder you can push this health resource.

25 man raids are filled with AoE damage, and from judging rage, health, heals, incoming damage, position in my dps rotation, my brain is constantly running estimates on whether taking a couple of thousand more damage will provide a significant bonus in dps out put. Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes yes, I just go with my gut instincts on it and it rarely lets me down.

This is the reason why even with my sub par gear (mostly crafted and karazhan/gruuls gear) I can still provide good dps in most fights. But this comes at the price of the "always dead" reputation. Because I push so hard one small mistake is often all it takes to kill me, and I am the Incompetent Warrior after all. Also there are times, usually in the last few percent of a boss fight, where I feel that the extra damage I can do in the time it takes for me to die is actually more than the damage I would do if I were to play it safe and survive, and a quick study of the combat log and the situation after I died have proved me to be right more often than not. There are also times where I know I'm going to die whatever I do, and getting in one last damage rotation has got to be better than running away and dieing anyway.

Told you it was a long ramble about arms, and for the life of me I don't know why I wrote it ... but I'm sure as hell not going to throw it away after spending so long on it.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, July 18, 2008

I Gots Me T5 Glove YAY

Hurray!!!

I got my first piece of Tier 5 gear ... and it was completely undeserved. I was having a completely crap night that night, I mean seriously I stank. The only saving grace was that I was running as dps and not as a tank where having such a bad night would have let everyone down even more.

I had picked up some kind of virus that kept trying to open Internet Explorer, but having banned it from making any kind of Internet connection all this resulted in was it periodically minimizing WoW repeatedly for about 20-30 seconds. I spent most of yesterday tracking it down and eradicating it from my pc, but that night I just couldn't find it. Maybe it was having this happen which threw me off my game so much, but whatever the reason I just didn't bring my A-Game.

On the Lurker Below I was completely mistiming my movements to escape being hit by his whirl which eventually lead to my death close to the end of the fight. At one point I was so low on health that I couldn't risk jumping into the water to escape his Spout and had to run around behind him as he spouted hoping a healer could throw a heal on me as I did so. Fortunately one did, which was lucks since after his spout I misjudged whirls range again and was knocked into the water.

On Leo I kept messing up my damage rotation and misclicking abilities which crushed my dps output in an already melee unfriendly fight. Although on a plus note I did manage to survive for the longest I ever have in phase three. In fact according to the WWS report it was after he died ... if only by a fraction of a second.

Anyway hopefully I can get over this funk and bring my A-Game for the next raid. And to lighten the mood here are a couple of fun events that happened.

My Epic DPS fail on the trash in heroic black morass broadcast over Guild chat.

Click to enlarge
Proof that no one can resist my dwarfish charms. Here is Lady B obviously overcome by my Fiendishly handsome dwarven features, and also my apparently charming voice on vent (or so I've been told, personally I can't stand to hear recordings of my voice and I don't know how other people can).


We had to restrain her for her own good after that.


So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A Server First ... I Think.

Did I suddenly shoot forward in progression to get a server first in the Sunwell Plateau?

This is the Incompetent Warrior here so of course I didn't. Oh no I went retro for the server first. As Ghostlands EU was created with the release of the burning crusades it turns out Ragnaros had never been killed (at least as far as I know). Also a Ghostlandian is trying to craft some legendary item involving the Bindings of Whatshisname and some quest item that drops off Raggy and apparently crafting this item will cause some kind of world event. I, being one of the Burning Crusade noob invasion, haven't really got a clue whats going on so I kept my mouth shut when this sort of thing was mentioned so as not to seem like too much of a noob. But hey the people involved read this blog so the cats out of the bag now :)

Anyway, I hadn't the faintest notion that raggy was going to be killed on sunday until the person organizing the event whispered me asking how many of my guild were going to it since at least two of them said they would. I got an invite and with 24 other poeple the adventure began.

All through the Instance I hadn't the faintest notion of what the hell was going on. We pul mobs I hit mobs, people ninjapull more mobs I hit them too. There was some deal with dousing runes and what not. At one point we almost wiped with 25 level 70's when about 4 packs of mobs were pulled all at once due to a seemingly infectious bout of general incompetence. Yet being over stacked on healers we pulled through.

Only Majordomo and raggy were left to kill when we went in so we killed all of Majordomos adds which counts as beating him. Then looted his chest for some retro epics ... of which I got none :(


Then it was time for Ragnaros himself, I can only imagine what it would have been like to struggle all the way through at level 60 with 40 people in the raid and finaly be greated by this sight.



Even during the fight I hadn't the faintest notion of what was going on except the a couple of times I was sent flying through the air and into lava. I would just intercept back at him and all was good it seems, and it was great fun flying backwards through the air :)

After what seemed to be far too short a time Raggy was down and we were celebrating.

In conclusion I would like to give a big Incompetent thank you to K for organizing this and for inviting me along.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Tips For New Tanks - Part 1

After running as dps behind a couple of "new tanks", players who are new to the tanking role, I thought I'd do a little write up on some tips and tricks for players new to tanking.

Yes it's true I'm going to pretend to be all wise and knowledgeable again, but please remember that I'm only pretending and that you could probably get better advice from hundreds of different sources. Also note that I am not very knowledgeable about the paladin class in regards to tanking.

Tips and Tricks.

1) Let your group know your new to the role: This is a big one since you are likely to be under geared if you're just starting tanking and this will significantly affect your TPS (threat per second). Letting your group know your new will give them the heads up that they may need to adjust their damage or healing out put.

2) Use your highest threat hit on the pull, and use it on your secondary target:
Non-Tanks tend to be trigger happy during the pull, casting unnecessary heals, dotting up mobs, sheeping just before you pull and generally making your life as a tank a living nightmare. So use a big threat hit to start the pull, and if you have two tank two mobs use it on the second on the kill order. This means that when that priest throws the heal before you hit your mobs your already targeting the one that's likely to run after him. If you have to tank three use it on the third on the kill order as this one will be getting the least of your attention during the fight. Warriors are limited to their ranged weapon, but I would recommend feral druids use Moonfire whenever possible to start a pull, and of course pally's have their holly Frisbee

3) Be Aware: Keep an eye on all cc'd mobs in case they break out and need to be brought under control again. A quick taunt on that mob and then switching back to your primary target usually allows the CC'er to do their job without getting squished, or worse your healer getting squished. Also keep an eye on loose casters as they just stand there even when attacking different targets. Is that frostbolt he just cast heading for you? If not then you need to get his attention again. Has someone in your party just died? If so do you need to pick up another mob that they were cc'ing? These are just some of the things you have to keep an eye on while tanking, so the more information you can have your UI show you the better.

4) Set you camera distance to maximum, and use it properly: This is all part of Being Aware. Setting your camera angle to maximum allows you to see as much of the fight as possible. By "use it properly" I mean turn your camera angle to where you can see as many of the mobs as possible, or where you can see the mobs most likely to cause trouble (these would include freeze trapped mobs and seduced mobs). If you have to back yourself into a corner for any reason, move your camera to directly above you. This will ensure that you have the best view possible in this difficult situation.

5) Share the love: When tanking multiple mobs it's very important that you don't leave any unattended for very long. One good way to do this is to move the tanked mobs away from the CC'd mobs and liberally use any multi target damaging ability you have, this would include cleave, Thunder Clap, Swipe, Consecration, and anything else that will hit more than one mob close to you. When tanking only two mobs a focus macro is very useful. To use this select your secondary target and type "/focus". This will set that mob as your focus. Then you select your primary target and every so often use this macro.

Warning: My macros are an ugly affair, please do better if possible.

/target focus
/cast Devastate
/targetlasttarget

This will target the mob you set as your focus, cast devastate on it then return you to your main target. You can replace "devastate" with the name of any spell, Mangle for example. This just makes it easy to maintain threat on two mobs without losing track of your main target, something which is very easy to do

Thats all for this issue of "Tips for new tanks" stay tuned for the next edition where I will be covering Line of Sight Pulls, Moving Casters, Making Use of a Good Hunter (the rare beast that they are), The Time and Place For Thunderclap, and I might even throw in a couple more of my ugly macros especially the one for "on the fly" tanking.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

I Will Not Stand For This!!!

A while ago I read a post by Big Bear Butt on how great the new PvP gear available for honor points was for PvE. My last post states my belief in using every advantage available to me, so I got all excited and started grinding some honor in late night BG's. Today I logged on and decided to check what I should aim for now that I was amassing a few honor points. So I took a trip to Stormwind to see what the biggest upgrade for me would be.

I was shocked, I was appalled, I was more than a little miffed.

Do you know what blizzard expects of me to get any of the gear that is actually an upgrade for me?

They want me to be good at PvP. This is so totally unfair because I suck at PvP. All I wanted was free upgrades and what do they do?

They demand at least a minimal level of competence at PvP. The stuff I can get without having an above starting arena rating is over stacked in stamina, and under stacked in hit rating and attack power, although it does seem to retain an almost equivelent level of critical strike rating.

But you know what makes it worse?

The stuff that is an honest to goodness "I looked at more than the item level" upgrade, needs me to be really really good at PvP. /sulk

Oh well I may as well give arena another go and hope like hell that I get match after match populated with noob opponents ... preferably blind and arthritic noobs just to give me a fighting chance.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Friday, July 11, 2008

If You Ain't Cheetin', You Ain't Tryin' Hard Enough.

This post is in response to the new trend of thinking that T5 boss downs are not worth as much as they used to.

In a way this is true, you can now get T6 equivalent gear and epic gems from the new vendors, and the removal of attunement means that you can skip into the easier early bosses in Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, and many of the older guilds seem to think that this is cheating ... and they are right ... and they are wrong.

Haven't they been cheating too though?

Haven't they taken every possible advantage they could get to down a new boss?

Didn't they get T4 equivalent gear from they old badge vendor to enter T5?

Didn't they use strategies developed by those who got the world first kills?

If you start disregard kills based on the fact that people were useing every possible advantage they could get where does it end?

Taking this line of thought to the extreme, you could say that a boss kill only counts if you go in using only only the gear you had earned through PvE, no bought buff food, potions, or weapon enhancements and no reading up on the encounter before going.

Well I say that if you don't have the best possible gear you can lay your hands on at the time and working on the rest, and you don't have every consumable you can nab, grab, beg, borrow or steal, and if you haven't read strats and alternate strats. Well then I don't think you deserved to down the boss in the first place.

If you ain't cheating, you ain't bloody trying hard enough!

Sorry about the rant, but that attitude just pissed me off. Yes it may have been easier for us than it was for them, but we would have been bloody idiots not to take every advantage we could and continue to do so. The day we stop doing so is the day we should stop downing bosses... or at least deserve to stop downing bosses.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Vashj Down!!

Yesterday we took our biggest step as a raiding guild, yes the title says it all we downed Vashj. SoL is now 6/6 in SSC.


This was it, this was what I had been waiting for. When I decided that raiding was what I wanted from this game this was the feeling I was looking for.

Have you ever seen one of those world first videos where at the end when the boss goes down the voice chat explodes with screaming and cheering?

Well it's not only on world firsts that this happens. As the lady hit the deck vent exploded with screaming, cheering and laughter that lasted at least a full minute. To date I have never experienced anything quite like that feeling ingame. 25 people all cheering and screaming their heads off after trying so hard on the most difficult fight fight we have had to date. It made the previous 27 wipes on her worthwhile ... and then some.

We had 9 previous attempts on her that night and it was our last try as we had gone way over our raid time already. Wipe number 8 was a 2% wipe and I took a screenie thinking that I would be making another "We almost had her" post, this was reinforced with the abortive 9th attempt, which went so wrong when the MT paused right at the edge of her aggro zone and a couple of people ran right on by him causing 3 early death's. This made the victory all the sweeter when it happened.

It took me a good half an hour to calm down afterwards, and the warrior class leader was almost in tears with joy.

Was I blameless for all those wipe we had?

This is the Incompetent Warrior here, of course I caused some of them. They were not directly attributed to me but I played my part in our downfall.

How you ask?

Well it's simple. In this fight everyone has to play their part or the whole thing falls to pieces. I was stationed on the western steps for phase 2 and with a mage and a healer we could keep that side covered ... but if either one of the dps died the other could not handle all the elementals and get the tainted ones as well. I know that when the mage helping me died I would after a short while be forced over the top of the steps onto the outer ring just to stop them reaching Vashj. At that point I could not even see when a tainted elemental had spawned, let alone get to it in time.

One indirect wipe I caused was when my healer had let his healing instincts get the better of him and had started healing everyone in range, I got poisoned by a tainted elemental and died before priesty boy could get to me.

How is that my fault?

I'm a dwarf, my racial is Stoneform, Stoneform removes poison effects ... and I had forgotten I had it :(

Another one was a particularly ill timed Whirlwind on my part. I was at the bottom of the steps attacking an elemental when I tapped to WW button at the exact moment that a Naga spawned directly behind me. Then, where once I saw a dwarf attacking one of those pacifist elementals, all I could see was Naga ... and it was Angry. Needless to say I did not survive long there after.


Anyway thats about all I can say on the subject at the moment, I still get excited just thinking about it. Onwards to Kale'Thas and his cronies /charge

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I Was Livid. Grrrrrrr!!

Just to reassure you and put you at ease, this is not a drama post.

Last night we went to SSC to do The Lurker Below and Leotheras The Blind. Lurker's adds bugged on our first attemp, I was fine with that. We wiped on our first attempt on leo at a low percentage, I was fine with that.

What really ticked me off was that on our second attempt at Leo all three of the adds at the start turned around and Mind Blasted me ... Within 3 seconds!

I spent that entire fight face down on the ground :(

I died so fast I didn't even register on that attempt on Leo.

Now I don't mind dieing if I make a mistake but dieing that fast to something I have no control over just ticked me off.

It's a conspiracy I tells ya Prince has been talking to the higher up bosses and letting them know to look out for the crazy dwarf warrior. Exacting your revenge through other bosses, Prince thats just low. Shame, shame on you /DisapprovingWarriorFace

Anyway I munched a Savory Delight and in my disguise as a Pirate I lasted until 10% and we downed him. Prince must have forgotten to let the other bosses know I sometimes masquerade as a pirate, Muhahahahaha!!

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Some Warriorz Is Not For ... Warriorz?? o.O

Sorry about the title I've just read a few to many lolcatz lately.

Anyway the point of this post is that even though I go on and on about warriors, I know that they are not for everyone.

I have a RL friend that played a warrior basically from beta until he rerolled a druid on my server ... and he loves it. He specced feral and never looked back. He loves the versatility that comes with the spec. The ability to switch gear and provide great dps, ability to off-heal, innervates and battle rez's, he loves all these things that a feral druid brings to the party and I don't think he will ever go back.

I know another guy that plays a warrior and rolled a rogue, and he is a much better player as a rogue than he ever was as a warrior, even though he had played as a warrior for a much longer time.

Conversely I have a holy pally friend that rolled a fury warrior alt, and is reveling in the focused sustained dps that this guy brings, and again is a better player as a fury warrior than he was as a paladin.

This has made me feel very lucky in the fact that I first rolled a class that I love, and I do love it. I love tanking, I love the complex damage rotation of raiding arms, and lately I have come to love the self contained good dps that comes with fury spec.

So my advice would be to experiment with different classes if your a warrior, and if your not a warrior give it a go, you never know you might like it :)

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Raid Progression As Seen By Stuntyone.

I finally figured out why my Editing software was crashing. Turns out that my buggy AVI codec was somehow managing to crash even that, darn that codec, darn it to heck

Click to enlarge


So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Anetheron At 2%

Yes this is another one of those "we almost had the mugger fugger" posts.

We one shotted Rage Winterchill, and on our first attempt on Anetheron managed to get him down to 2% ... the best we were to do on our three attempts at him. Four attempts technically but our third attempt when to pot on about wave four of the trash and a wipe happened before we even saw him.

As an off tank I had it easy during boss fights as I would change into my dps gear and pretend I was a fury warrior. I managed to put out over 700 dps in my prot spec during the boss encounters just by changing gear.

Did I have a flawless run from my point of view?

This is the Incompetent Warrior your talking to here, what do you think?

Of my mistakes during the night the one that sticks out as a true Incompetent Warrior moment was when I ran out to grab my target on a trash wave before they had hit the paladins consecration. Instant aggro from every mobs = Dead Dwarf. It was kind of like presenting myself as starters before the main course of the raid.

Mob1: "Mmmmm... Dwarf.

Mob2: *Drool*

Me: "Oh Crud"

*Nom-nom-nom*

Mob1: "Thats the problem with Drawfs, you have one and then your hungry again 30 seconds later."

Mob2: "Tell me about it, lets get some mage to go."

Steamrolled is the term that comes to mind. I got a rez but at that stage chaos had broken loose mages down, warlocks down, mobs running amok ... Everywhere.

Anyway after we called it quits, a decision was made that made me a very happy dwarf. It turns out that the officers had been discussing this for some time now and it was decided that we were pushing our luck with entering T6 content as we are. Sure we could with a bit more practice handle Anetheron but that would be about our limit. So for the next while we will be concentrating on getting T5 content to farm status, and gearing people up.

This is a very good thing in my opinion. I don't think I should have been allowed into T6 content at my current gearing level. When I mentioned this to the warrior class leader after the raid he asked,

WCL: "Then why do you just not sign up?"

Me: "not ... sign ... up ... ???"

Me: "Sorry I don't get you."

WCL: "hehehe"

The point is that I love raiding, and if I can I will go anywhere people will take me regardless of whether I think I'm geared enough or not.

I'm basically kitted out in T4 gear with a few T5 ancillary drops such as my mace and necklace. this is the reason I have over stacked (according to conventional practice) on evasion. Practically all my gems have some evasion component to them. I did this so that I could effectively tank in high T5 content without getting smushed, or requiring excessive healing.

It's also the reason why when I got the chance I took the T4 shoulder token that Mulgar finally decided to drop. This is because there are a lot of people waiting on T5 defender tokens that have a higher prio rating than I do, and if I waited and saved up for my T5 tokens than in the mean time I would be a much less effective tank until such a time as my turn came up. Also it allowed me to switch out my T4 legs for a slightly better pair without losing my set bonus. So all in all it was a much more effective choice than it seemed at the time.

Anyway, it now seems that I will get a lot more time in T5 content where I feel much better able to preform to an adequate standard. /HappyWarriorFace

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

I Gots Me A Temper.

Why This Post.

I haven't been on Blog Azeroth chat (an AIM chatroom for wow bloggers) much lately, mainly due to having to catch up on work and having smushed my finger, but today I decided to log in to it after my last post for a bit of a chat and to vent a little after wiping on vashj at 3%.

At first everything was nice and normal with all the friendly people that are normally there and I got a /pat and a /comfort and commiseration on what a B#### that fight is. So having vented my frustration I was keeping half an eye on that chat while I went through my daily blog reads (all the blogs on my blog roll plus a few random ones).

While I was doing that I noticed a discussion on one of the proposed or suspected changes in WotLK. a bit into it I started paying a bit more attention and noticed that one of the participants was making a bit of an arse of himself by seemingly confusing stubbornness and pigheadedness with discussion. He struck me as the type of person I've met that can't have a discussion unless it's an argument.

Anyway it got to the point where one of the participants a blogger I respect, got so annoyed that she left the chat. The now (in my opinion) confirmed @sshat (I may be being unfair to the guy but I don't think I am, or care over much), then said "I don't know why someone would write a blog if they are not open to discussion."

That set me off. It just really got my goat. That statement was wrong on just so many levels.

One, what he was contributing could not by any stretch of the imagination be called discussion.

Two, there are 101 reasons for writing a blog and at least half of them in no way involve the opinion of others.

Three, he just attacked someone that wasn't there to defend them self, which in my books is the lowest of the low.

About My Temper

I'm sure that most people in my guild would be surprised at this post, and even that fact that I have a temper. This is because it takes quite a lot to set it off (or in this case just one unreasoning @sshat), but when it does go, oh boy does it go. It happens very fast and the first thing to go is articulate speech, which is then followed by a massive rush of adrenalin, and the last thing to go is a vision not colored red. You've heard the expression seeing red? Well it's based on the fact that the last thing people like me notice before reasoning thought completely flees their head is that their vision is suddenly tinted crimson.

When I was younger (said from the grand old age of 25 :) ) this caused a lot of problems as I could never tell when to remove myself from a situation before I snapped.

Now however it's different and when I saw that line pop up in chat, I immediately noticed the tingling sensation of vast amounts adrenalin being pumped into my system, also I noticed the sudden massive tension in my optical mussels that denoted a real whopper of an anger fit coming on.

I forced a little calm on myself and typed "Thats it I leaving too" and logged out quickly before he said something else and forced me to put my fist through my monitor.

Anyway this means that I probably wont be visiting BA chat again in the near future. Which is a shame since it was such a nice friendly place to hang out, but one prat just ruined that for me as I cannot trust myself to view even his screen name without becoming enraged again.

So until next time this is Stutyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Progress.

Tonight we went to continue our attempts on Lady Vashj. We had 9 attempts on her with the night culminating and a wipe at 3% ... 3 ... Friken ... %.

/Aaaargh!!

/Headdesk

/SheIsSoDeadNextTime

We managed to get past phase two twice in the nine attempts, it was almost three times but on one attempt Deadly Boss Mods wigged out and announced that we had entered phase 3 while one of the generators was still active. This meant that some of the stairs people abandoned their post early, hence wipe time.

I can't help but feel a bit proud that when I went over the WWS report on the night, I noticed that the two times we did pass phase two, two of the tainted cores came from the western steps. Those were my steps I owned them, and by the end of the night I knew them like the back of my hand, and on many an occasion had a very close inspection of them face down on the ground. Let me tell you that traversing three length of stairs with these short legs ain't easy, but I managed ... kind of. Being arms and spec'ing into Improved Intercept helped a lot, meaning it had a 20 second cooldown instead of a 30 second cooldown.

This brings me neatly on to the next part of my post. I can help feal that I was both wasted and made the best use of by being put on the steps. Wasted because it severely gimped my dps. Made the best use of ... well for several reasons. One reason was that when a Tainted Elemental appeared I was there and looting the Tainted core the moment it died. Another was that as an ms/slam warrior I was probably the best suited of the melee classes for the steps. This is because I can unleash substantial burst damage through the use Mortal Strike, Whirlwind and Victory Rush, and only using slam when all the others were on cooldown. Also as I stated earlier spec'ing into Imp Intercept allowed me to traverse the steps faster than any other melee class I can think of.

I also made a few small changes to maximize my dps throughout the entire fight.

One was that I switched out my Figurine - Khorium Boar trinket for my Skyguard Silver Cross trinket. From analyzing the previous nights encounter I noticed that I was landing the vast majority of the killing blows on the elementals. This sugested to me that I'd be better off with the extra 1.5% crit and 140 AP as opposed to 84 AP during Phase 2. As it turned out I remained under the Combat Valor buff for most of phase 2.

Another was that I used Adamantite Sharpening Stones ... for most of each fight. Let me explain. I could only realistically make use of Windfury Totems in phase 1 ... so I did. At the start of phase 2 I would apply a sharpening stone to my axe since I would be far far away from any WF loving. Also I was to discover that due to the nature of phase 3 we were moving around so much that I couldn't use WF then either (the first time we made it to P3 I removed the sharpening stone effect hoping to gain a little WF love ... It was not to be. Unrequited love ... it hurts me so).


Finally I think I shall leave you with our comic moment of the night. During one attempt we had two people calling out over vent that they had the Tainted core, El and KJ. After much confusion it was determined that El was the one who actually had it, but a wipe happened as these things do.

When we were rebuffing KJ apologized saying that "I saw a green thing arc towards me and then my screen turned green, so I though I had the core... but it was just one of the elementals spitting at me." much laughter was had by all.

The lesson here is beware the elemental spit. No matter how much you want to throw it at someone else it's not going to shut off any generators.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Getting To The Good Bit.

SoL has been 5/6 in SSC and 3/4 in TK for a while now and last night we had our first real progression night on Lady Vashj. There were teething problems with the raid as a couple of people had connection issues due to the hotfix and had to be replaced.

Once we got up and running however it was everything I expected a progression raid to be. Wipe after wipe slowly getting better with each passing attempt. From the very start we blitzed through phase one with no problems what so ever, but at our best we managed to get 3 /4 generators down in phase 2.

Phase 2 is what tests the raid to destruction on this fight. Each and every raid member has to do his job and do it well. There are (if you break it down fully) 6 different areas of the fight, 4 groups on the stairs to deal with the elementals, one group to kite and nuke the Strider's and one group to tank and nuke the Coilfang Elites. If any one of these 6 areas falls down the the raid wipes. There is little or no leeway for mistakes to be made although one or two death wont wipe the raid, much more than that will.

I love it :)

This was just the type of fight I've been waiting for, one which tests each and every raid member to their utmost. I've heard that Kael'thas is even more complex and less forgiving ... I just cant wait.

In celebration at my first proper progress raid I we and ground out the mats I needed to have a Red Belt of Battle crafted for me. I might as well preform as best I can, and if that means doing some of that hated grinding, then so be it.

Well I'm off for another night of beating up the Medusa Lady, and getting beaten up in return.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.