Naked Dungeon Challenge #1
So the first time I read Rades’ Minipost: The Naked Dungeon Challenge, I laughed. Out loud. I read that post on the eve of running some dungeons with other guildies in which we spent almost the entire time laughing hysterically in mumble. It was 4 of us, and then we picked up a 5th and he was informed that he needed to bring Tia some wood. And boy did he ever. But here’s the thing. I started thinking of doing the Naked Dungeon Challenge with this group of people and all I could do was laugh to myself at all of the jokes that I knew would be made. So I jokingly tweeted them all about it. 
And it was received by some pretty positive responses. Everyone seemed to be interested in doing this. So much so they started to pick a day and time. So I picked a day, posted something on the guild forums and waited to see how things went.
Here were the rules I set up in the original post on the forums.
Basic Rules
- Everyone takes off their gear and runs naked.
- You can use all current level abilities, pets and spells.
- You can only equip the items you loot in the dungeon.
- Everyone rolls need on everything. The point is to make sure you end up with the “best” loot available at the end of each run. Rolling need helps you get armor slot items filled with usable items, but also keeps the others in your group from being able to get a piece of armor.
- You can craft items, if you have a crafting profession, but you can only use stuff you loot while in the dungeon.
- You have to wear the highest item level item, regardless of stats and usefulness.
- You wear any gear from the previous dungeon into the next. So once all of the Vanilla dungeons are completed you’re not entirely without gear when entering into BC dungeons, and going from BC to Wrath, etc.
Heading to Deadmines, sans clothes.
There were a handful of people who didn’t show and one person who was running late, so we started with Deadmines and a group of 5. Here is me, just after I dumped all of my gear into the bank (because believe me, I’m not about to pay a repair bill for gear I’m not even wearing. Not to mention I needed to clear out bag space in order to hoard all of the amazing grey loot.
While waiting or everyone to log in, I flew over to the entrance to Deadmines. And I made sure that I set my group to normal as opposed to Heroic. I didn’t want any surprises… just. in. case.
There is nothing more ridiculous than seeing a handful of your guildies, standing in front of the entrance to a really low level dungeon, stark naked. And because this entire thing needed to be remembered into the annals of the internet, I (and others I’m sure) took a screen shot of the “we’re about to do this thing” pose in the beginning.
Lots of boobs (even if there were only two sets, there’s plenty there). Lots of loin cloth action. (Do I have a happy trail, wtf is that?!)
Once we got into the dungeons some of us still had quests available for each of the dungeons. So it was a consensus, with the 6 of us there, that if you had quests that awarded loot, it counted and you could complete the quest and equip the item. But all of the other rules also applied.
Just before we hit Deadmines.
I absolutely forgot to take a screen shot of us after Deadmines, but I imagine that it was pretty hilarious. I know that I was the loot whore at first, taking all of the blues. I’m fairly certain that I ended up with an Agility staff that I hoarded from the feral druid. Also, our poor warrior, Ludde (aka Menoetius) didn’t get any weapons, rendering him mostly useless and unable to use most of his abilities.
Just after finishing Wailing Caverns, heading to Shadowfang Keep.
Just as we were roughly halfway through Wailing Caverns, Tia joined us and we headed to Shadowfang Keep. She was a little further behind because she started naked and didn’t get to run the first two. Though she ended up with some pieces of gear, she remained shirtless. Ludde remained without weapons, which was a complete joke by this point. I’m pretty sure I ended with all of the strength weapons I couldn’t even equip.
Standing outside Blackfathom Deeps, after finishing Shadowfang Keep.
There was a lot of oooohhh’s and aahhhhh’s at this point as all of us were starting to get grey gear that was higher level than the green and blues we got from boss kills.
Standing outside Stockades, just after finishing Blackfathom Deeps
After running The Stockade, we ended up with twins. Only Megs had an eyepatch, which made her look like the trollop of the twins. It was hilarious.
Standing in front of Gnomeregan entrance in our Stockade gear.
After Gnomer, Entropia got THE best helm ever. It totally made up for the fact that he (poor guy) was still shirtless. Jaymz and Ludde ended up in some pretty terribly colored gear, none of which matched.
Outside of the Scarlet Monastery, after Gnomeregan.
After some folks mentioned that lame work stuff, and being tired, we figured we’d knock out the two Scarlet Monastary’s before calling it a night. Here’s the final shot of the night after running Library.
The last dungeon of the night, Scarlet Monastery Libarary
And lastly, some of the best shots of the night. I wish I had been dressed in something other than the same purple-y dress all night. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get something different when we finish this off. Overall this was an absolutely hilarious night and I had so much fun. We each kept our gear (well we said we would and I know I did), and I even saved a gearset for naked dungeon runs, so that when we pick this back up again, we can start right back where we left off.
Jaymz dressed in all the colors available for gear... well almost
Entropia's Satellite hat, which I screencaptured at the wrong time.
Entropia and Ludde, now in his pimp outfit. I have no words for this one.
Her outfit after Scarlet Monastery was terrible and made her look like a hooker.
* Note: I need to learn how to turn off names and titles and such, so there’s not as much junk floating around. But I like that stuff when I’m playing, but it completely clutters the screen, so for that I apologize. I really didn’t want to keep people too long while I figured out where to turn that stuff off. I did, by the end, turn it off.
2 comments September 11, 2011 Hestiah
Addons: Useful PowerAuras
So, I spent hours after raid the other night looking for information on how to use/make/create some PowerAuras. I’ve never been the type to want to learn too much about addons. I want to install it and have it just work. Sadly, unless someone else out there posted the exports I couldn’t be bothered to try to figure out how to use PowerAuras to its maximum potential. Many people in my guild have been using PowerAuras for a long time, but I am really really lazy, and I really really didn’t want to have to try to understand some of the menus.
This is intimidating. Yes, if you look only at each individual thing it makes all sorts of sense. But imagine you’ve got 20 minutes before raids and you just installed this addon, and you saw all of this nonsense what would you do? Yeah, I yelped a little bit, closed the window and didn’t look at it again until after a google search yielded me some Resto Druid auras. I stumbled across a blog entry with a handful of really good ones.*
So, after some attempts at Heroic Maloriak I figured I needed to make an aura that would get my attention if I was standing in the Dark Sludge. I needed something more than the DBM warning, which for my UI, seems to get lost in a lot of battle text. Although after some browsing around on the internet I couldn’t find anything that actually worked.
I am not a fan of having to learn insane stuff in order to get a handful of useful bits. Over time I have grown to be extremely dependent on some of my PowerAuras. But I needed some new ones. In particular I needed to know when Nature’s Grace was proc’ing while I was in Boomkin spec. Because I was wasting that proc by not casting like a mad woman and I was getting awfully tired of my mediocre deeps when most of my healing gear should have shows better numbers on that stupid Raid Training Dummy.
So here’s what I came up with for Nature’s Grace. The timer is a little offset from center (which annoyed the crap out of me) at the time when I took the screencap, so I fixed it and I’m fairly certain that the import code has the timer center to the icon.
Nature’s Grace Proc (with timer)
Version:4.16; b:0.2549; g:0.3804; icon:Spell_Nature_NaturesBlessing; buffname:Nature’s Grace; r:0; x:297; texture:101; alpha:0.91; size:0.56; y:-314; timer.b:0.2549; timer.g:0.3804; timer.h:1.28; timer.Texture:Original; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0; timer.cents:false; timer.y:-330; timer.x:298; timer.UseOwnColor:true
Next up are my some of my notification auras. The next four PowerAuras I snagged from another site (which I cannot find for my life, so if these were yours, please tell me and I will gladly credit you). First up is the 80% mana notification. This is good for DPS and Healing as a druid because it lets me maximize the Innervate cooldown. In Boomkin spec, this is less necessary as the switching between the eclipses generates a large portion of mana and often will bring me up over the 80% mark, however as a healer I like to know this. This first PowerAura stays up any time you mana pool goes under 80%. So it won’t work if you have problems with things on your screen. But here it is anyway, for those interested.
Also included in this screencap though is the Clearcasting PowerAura (the green inner circle with tiny timer on the lower left). Back when Blizzard first introduced their version of powerauras, I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. What each of the flashy things meant didn’t make sense to me. So I went with this because it was obvious and made perfect sense. It fit with everything else I had going on with my other PowerAuras. I have thus since turned off my default Blizzard Auras because they’re distracting and I’ve adjusted to using my own.
80% Mana (blue)
Version:4.16; g:0.5373; icon:inv_alchemy_elixir_02; r:0.5843; begin:3; bufftype:9; texture:7; alpha:1; threshold:80; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:1.25; y:-12Clearcasting (green)
Version:4.16; b:0; icon:Spell_Shadow_ManaBurn; buffname:Clearcasting; r:0.051; begin:1; texture:7; alpha:1; symetrie:1; wowtex:true; size:0.95; y:-12; finish:0; timer.Texture:Original; timer.enabled:true; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:BOTTOMLEFT
There is an additional PowerAura to notify me when I’m at 25% mana. This works in conjunction with the 80% Mana aura in that it fills out the empty spaces. This is a good time for me to beg for Hymn or a Mana Tide totem if my Innervate is down (or I had to use my Innervate on someone else, yielding me a pittance of mana).
25% Mana
Version:4.16; g:0.5373; icon:inv_alchemy_elixir_02; r:0.5843; begin:3; bufftype:9; texture:7; alpha:1; symetrie:1; threshold:25; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:1.25; y:-12
The last PowerAura that I found to be hugely beneficial to being a Resto Druid was the Lifebloom one. This one is even more important now that they made the T11 4-piece set bonus a necessity for resto druids. Um, 540 spirit?? Yes please! Since they took away the ability to put Lifebloom on multiple targets (when not in treeform) this is necessary to make sure you get those stacks up on a tank, yourself, a DPS, whoever. Because lemme tell you, this had made a world of difference for mana regen while in combat. This is up if you have less than 3 stacks of Lifebloom out on any target. x
Lifebloom (under 3 stacks)
Version:4.16; b:0.5843; icon:INV_Misc_Herb_Felblossom; buffname:Lifebloom; r:0; stacks:3; texture:15; alpha:0.97; isResting:0; GTFO:2; groupOrSelf:true; combat:true; size:0.3; y:317; inverse:true
And lastly, since I turned off the default PowerAuras from Blizzard, I created one for when Shooting Stars procs. I made it so it looks just like the default except that it changes colors (I wanted to change things up a little bit and have some fun). No screenshot for this one, since it looks exactly the same.
Shooting Stars
Version:4.16; g:0.9216; icon:Ability_Mage_ArcaneBarrage; buffname:Shooting Stars; r:0.9725; x:17; texture:186; alpha:1; size:0.95; randomcolor:true; y:366
In the end, after all of my frustration and all of the lost blankly staring at my screen, I was able to figure it out. Maybe I’ll write up a Noob-tastic How-to. If nothing else, at least these might help someone else out (even if you’re not a druid).
* I spent about an hour trying to find the original druid blog that posted the auras, but I couldn’t find it. If it’s yours, just leave a comment and I will gladly give you credit.
Add comment April 15, 2011 Hestiah
Defender of the Shattered World
Yeah, Hestiah just got it. So excited for the guild Al’Akir kill. So excited for my dark phoenix mount.
So stoked to be officially 1/13 Heroic Modes since we’ve finished off all the normals. Today was a damn good WoW day.
1 comment April 7, 2011 Hestiah
Finally the death of Nefarian
So, it’s been awhile since I’ve been buggered to blog. I know. I had these grandiose plans to find my area on the internet where I would be this amazingly funny writer. Yeah. Well, screw that real life crap. It kinda got in the way. I’m still thoroughly annoyed by it too.
So let’s get down to business. Nefarian. Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way right now. Blizzard decided to sit down and figure out all of the things that have ever been used as a raid strategy in the last however many years and threw them all together for the final boss fights. I can’t even imagine what Sinestra‘s gonna be like, but I’m going to lament about this damn dragon first. Cho’gall is all over the place too, but at least after the first time you kill him (is it a them??) it doesn’t go so badly. There are strategies that help keep healers from going apeshit running around trying to heal everyone.
See, my Raid Leader is a very kind person. She’s effing pretty damn amazing. She knows that I don’t really like tank healing, and so she tries desperately to not assign me as a tank healer. I fell in love with healing when druid were omfg-ah-may-zing raid healers, and I refuse to be pigeon-holed into a type of role. I don’t mind tank healing, and I don’t think I do a horrible job at it, but I love my raid healing. I have this compulsion to heal people anyway, so I guess she doesn’t really have a choice.* Anyway. Cho’gall at least has most people standing in the same general area. Yeah, there are the slimes. Yeah, there’s this corruption crap flying around all over the place. Yes there’s fire. And tentacle butts.** But there is nothing in the Cho’gall fight that compares to the clusterfuck that is the Nefarian fight.
This fight was so bad that we were all truly getting disheartened. I sensed the tension rising amongst my guildmates. I did my own bitching and moaning to my friends about the apparent slacking or perceived slacking. It felt like we, as a whole, had hit our limit. We were pushing and trying and not only were we going backwards (with each attempt being worst than the last one), but there seemed to be an awful lot of finger-pointing. Everyone thought it was someone else. Few people admitted to making a mistake and owning it, but that’s an entirely different blog post for another day.
Today, I want talk about Nefarian. Be is a douche bag. First when you engage Onyxia (omg, can’t she effing die already??!?) it takes a little bit before Nefarian comes down.
ಠ_ಠ
Oh but wait. This shit gets better, you just wait. This time you’re not just facing Onyxia, but Nefarian too. Oh yeah. Yeah. So much shit goin’ on, there’s no time to think!!
In the meantime, while you’re waiting for Nefarian to come down from flying around ominously above you, you’re stuck down below getting hit with electrical shock-y nonsense. Oh yeah, and a tail lash, that is unavoidable… no matter where you’re standing. Really? RLY BLIZRD!?? You had to make this ability unavoidable? And you desperately had to pair it with the electrical shock-y nonsense and then while us healers are already freaking out over OMG LOOKIT THEIR HEALTH!!1! you have to make it so that I can’t cast anything. Fabulous. Thanks. A lot. Not really. DIAF! Whoops, I’m getting ahead of myself now… we’ll get to the fire.
There is a need for 3 tanks on 25-man Nefarian. You need a Nef tank, an Onyxia tank, and an add tank during Phase 1. Healers are going to need to be spread out all over the place with at least one healer on each tank, the add tank healer chasing after the add tank too. As a raid healer, my job is to heal everyone. I will spot heal tanks. Lifebloom whomever seems to be eating the most damage. Rejuvenation, rejuvenation… MOAR REJUVENATION!!***
Oh see, now here’s the good part. After enough electrical-y things nuke the shit out of your raid causing an all-healer panic, there’s a time to kill Onyxia. And then the lava shows up. THE FUCKIN’ LAVA! OMG! Yeah, the lava. 3 pillars. There are 3 mobs who suck to put it simply. They’re like giant imps who cast this absolutely horrible ability that will wipe your whole raid if you’re not good about getting those interrupts off immediately and on time. The groups inevitably have to be split up with a nearly equal number of healers, interrupters and ranged DPS in order for this to go smoothly. Healers will be stressed the hell out all over again, and this is likely the best time to use those healthstones if you haven’t already. Because guess what? There’s more electrocute to go around! Yeah!! I don’t even know where this is coming from, but yeah, it sucks.
Once Phase 2 is over everyone hops down and prepares themselves for Phase 3. We have 3 healers follow our dedicated add tank. For the most part, the entirety of the rest of the fight is trying to keep those adds away from fire and surviving. Eventually the adds will overwhelm your tank and no amount of heals will be able to keep your poor plate-y alive. The hope here is that the rest of your team was able to burn the hell outta that damn dragon.
Collect phat lewts. And you WIN!
The first Nefarian kill was amazing to say the least. It was much anticipated and without a doubt one of the most difficult encounters to have to deal with. Everyone had a job. Everyone has something important to do. Everyone has a role that is vital to the beating of this dragon. I can honestly say, that the Nefarian kill Apotheosis had was sweet and much deserved. Even if that heifer didn’t drop my tier helm token.
Until Sunday… when Nefarian will be found singing his songs while flying around.
ಠ_ಠ
* This is making me more sad because now I think she assigns me to raid heals because my over-zealous need to heal anything moving and top them off keeps me from being very effective at anything else. Crap.
** When you’re in cat form, running, the tentacle attaches itself to your butt. I should have snagged a screenshot of this when a wipe was called and I was running around hoping to get MC’d so I might survive. Imagine my surprise when I saw I had this weird tentacle attached to my kitty bootie instead of a tail. Very unnerving.
*** I don’t actually heal this way, but it’s how resto druids used to heal Pre-Cata and occasionally I’m reminded why we used to heal this way.
1 comment March 12, 2011 Hestiah
Atramedes probably deserved it
The first time I saw Atramedes he was a little tiny whelpling. I don’t play with sound, so I likely missed a lot of the storyline behind it, but all of a sudden, the little guy gets zapped. For at least twenty minutes I couldn’t stop myself feeling sorry for the little guy. Oh ho ho! That little guy eventually becomes Atramedes, the blind ass dragon who is a giant pain in my ass.
Well, y’know what? Atramedes is a douche bag. Blind ass dragon is a pain in the damn ass dragon.
Don’t get me wrong, I realize that the majority of the dragons in WoW are douche bags. I mean, what’s the point of playing a game in which you don’t kill internet dragons?? Yeah, I can’t think of one either.
This one in particular, sends these really pretty sonic rings all around the room, originating from underneath his belly-ish area. The problem with the pretty rings is that I want to stand in them and see what happens? Don’t know what happens? He breathes fire on you. Not only does he breathe fire on you, but you get a hand debuff called death.
Throughout my WoW playing, I’ve always (generally speaking of course) been really good at avoiding all the junk on the ground. Purple circles, rocks falling, brown circles, white circles, blue circles, fire circles, fire patches… you name it, I probably stepped out of it*.
Unlike the horrible time I have staying out of Valiona’s face-eating purple fire of doom, I actually don’t do too badly avoiding Atramedes’ sonic rings of “omg I wanna stand in it” and, yes, of course the fire.
Y’know what I have a problem with? It seems it’s Searing Flame. Not even when it’s cast on me, but when it’s cast on others and I stand there like a dumb ass and don’t move to the left while they’re running right. Oh, no, why would I move when I can just hit 100 sounds and get devastated all over the place. It seems I do my best raiding with my face on the ground, honing in on my awesome skills of death buff. o.O My Raid Leader, however, might beg to differ about being really amazing dead on the floor.
With a monetary incentive, the RL offered 50 gold to the person who didn’t get hit with any of the pretty sonic rings, before 11:30 pm EST. We didn’t reach the time limit, cause, let’s face it, Atramedes was a hungry mutha-effer that night.
I’m fairly certain that by the end of the night Tuesday, everyone was pretty pissed off at Atramedes. I went from feeling really sorry for him to wanting him to die horribly and take his damn sonic discs with him. I keep telling myself that maybe he was just a mean bully of a whelpling and that’s why he was blinded, thus deserving what he got.
* This includes the good things, like Healing Rain, and Efflorescence the first time I’ve seen them. Don’t judge me.
1 comment February 5, 2011 Hestiah
Things to not fail at
So, when your raid leader tells you that you’re a nubcake and need to stop standing in the fire and dying like said nubcake, what do you do? Try to be better about not dying to face-eating-fire and move, right?? Right.
Well, as an advocate of the Don’t Stand in the Effing Fire club, I need to hand over my card and start back over at the intro level courses. How am I supposed to be upset about someone standing in fire when I myself can’t seem to get the hell out of it?
See here’s the thing. Last week (and I’m actually referring to the 18th of January) of raids, we were in Bastion of Twilight. I was there. I was told to stop going into the Twilight realm and stop dying to easily avoidable face-eating-fire breath. I was doing better… that night. As a guild, we hadn’t been to Bastion of Twilight since that Tuesday, and it seems I immediately went back to my nubcake-old self and died, early on, to face-eating-fire.
I’m already not a huge fan of the dragon twins. They’re whores. I have now deemed them the whore dragon twins.
Whore dragon twins
Mind you, there are so many effing more things to dislike about different events. Like the Council stuff Apotheosis started on last night. Wanna talk about a clusterfuck of insanity?? It was trying to do Council last night. It was insane. The dead tanks, the aoe damage, the fire and the waterlogged, and running through fire to remove waterlogged, but not stand in fire. I think the first attempt took all of a few seconds. I said I was ready, but it seems I had no idea just how insane the whole thing would be.
Back to the face-eating-fire part. Don’t stand in it nubcake. Fire is bad for you. This isn’t even the kind of invisible fire that you can’t see. It’s damn purple for christ’s sake, and I still died to it. Part of my problem was not being a tree, I think. As a tree I’m much more resilient to not die to fire.* It’s like not actually being made of wood or something. And I’m purple with an ‘fro. Fire can’t touch the purple ‘fro, man!
Another things (on a more serious note) is that I forget to get away from her face to avoid face-eating-fire. It is such a habit to try to run left or right out of fire simply to get out of it as soon as possible, but really what I want is to high-tail it away from her face. To avoid face-eating-fire. Get it?? I’ve been told this, but practice makes perfect, and it had been awhile since I had practiced. Though truth be told, as often as I face-eat the fire, I don’t understand why the RL even bothers to take me along in the first place.
In the end, I did better about not going into the Twilight Realm, probably one of the only good things about that death buff you get for taking face-eating-fire to the face. There’s no way to screw that up.
Wanna know what the worst part is? When trying to do Council later, I was told “If you get the Waterlogged debuff, just run through the fire, don’t stand in it, just run through it, that way you don’t freeze when the next *whateverbadthingcomesnext* hits.” So I get waterlogged and guess what I do? Run through the fire and get waterlogged off. What happens when Valiona takes her sweet ass time turning to face a direction in which she’s going to breathe her face-eating-fire?
I sit around and wait. I needed that death buff something fierce.
Moral of the story?? Face the dragon that breathes face-eating-fire so that you can see which direction she’s turning before she breathes fire, so that you can gtfo.**
* I’m totally being sarcastic, btw, in case you can’t tell.
** Something, if I get invited along on raids anymore, I will have to be uber-diligent to be better about. Though at this point, if I were demoted to friend and not promoted to raider, I can’t really blame the RL. I fail at this fire so hard.
1 comment January 31, 2011 Hestiah
Achievements Galore!
On Wednesday Osephala put together a group of people who were trying to get the ICC 10man mounts, Reins of the Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher. This means coordinating 10 people’s need for Heroic kill of each of the bosses, and coordinating which achievements we needed and whether or not it can be done on heroic mode. Granted, being 85 and geared for Cataclysm raids meant that for the most part we were over-geared for the content, especially on normal mode. Prior to Wednesday I only had Boned (10) and I’ve Gone and Made a Mess (10).
Wednesday got all of Heroic: Storming the Citadel (10) except for Lady Deathwhisper, mostly because we were going for Full House (10). Instead of Heroic Deathwhisper we went for Full House. We ended up being forced to wipe it up a few times in order to get the right combination of mos up, but once we got it, it felt good. We then went on to take on not just Heroic: The Crimson Hall (10), but finish off The Orb Whisperer from Blood Prince Council and Once Bitten, Twice Shy for a few of the raiders (including me).
The lot of us went on to attempt Dreamwalker on Heroic. With only two healers and trying to get Portal Jockey we found ourselves needing someone, anyone, to take the 3rd portal that spawned. The problem became that if we let just anyone take the portals, Ose and I weren’t able to get in there and get our healing buff/debuff. Another couple of attempts with only two healers and failing, the next attempt included asking the Boomkin Meleia to switch specs to Resto. Lo and behold, with a third healer Dreamwalker on heroic complete including getting the Portal Jockey achievement.
By the end of the night, I ended up with 8 out of the 16 total achievements on the meta towards the Frostbrood Vanquisher.
Now for Saturday, most of the same group is brought together to try to finish off as many of the achievements as we can get. We all successfully finished off Heroic: The Plagueworks as well as all the achievements associated with that wing. Dances with Oozes (10), Flu Shot Shortage (10), and Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion… (10) in one shot. It went really well and surprised many of us that we were able to get it without a whole lot of explanation. Some of the raiders hadn’t done much ICC raiding and had even less experience with the mechanics of these fights.
Heroic Sindragosa and trying to get All You Can Eat (10) wasn’t working out so well. There were simply too many people who hadn’t done the fight before. Too many people who didn’t understand where to stand, where to position the dragon, etc. Instead we all go credit for the Heroic kill and we’ll try the achievement another day.
Many things were accomplished on this day, including getting Kingslayer for at least a handful of the people who were there who had no other toons with Kingslayer titles. Now I realize this is older content, but it’s not so old that we didn’t have our issues or our wipes. Since we skipped a few bosses on Heroic, we weren’t able to tackle the Lich King on heroic either. It was better this way for the same reasons surrounding Sindragosa. We did, however, get Been Waiting a Long Time For This (10), which is a much bigger pain in the ass that one might think. The group of us being overgeared caused one problem. Not enough adds caused another problem. After much wowhead reading, we were able to figure it all out. That was a pretty epic kill. Almost as good as the first time I’ve killed the Lich King.
The funny thing about Lich King is that there is still a lot of worry about Defile and Infest. Don’t get me wrong, these things are still concerns. Anyone can still turn the entire platform where you fight the LK into Defile-fest and wipe the entire rest of the raid by leaving no where to stand. And Infest can still kill you if you can’t get the player’s health up above 90%. I’m pretty sure at one point I ran myself out of mana because I was desperately trying to get the add tank up above 90% and simply wasn’t doing a very effective job of it. A rogue got tossed off the side by a Val’kyr, which isn’t surprising* that someone would end up getting tossed off the side.
In the end, after some confusion regarding what needed to be stacked to 30 and what we were supposed to be doing, we got the achievement. And it felt good.
We went on to kill some Kel’Thezad, Malygos and Halion. It was an amazing night of older content, and a good time with new WoW people. I’m looking forward to getting my dragon and helping everyone else get theirs as well.
* Damn rogues. 
1 comment January 25, 2011 Hestiah
Valiona & Theralion: Revisited
So after much frustration from Sunday night’s ridiculous failure of trying to down Valiona & Theralion, and my inability to stay the hell out of the Twilight Realm, we all came back on Tuesday with some pretty amazing attempts. So our fearless leader decided to change things up a little bit when we got there. This required some explanation because of the changes to how we were going to deal with the Blackout‘s that are being dished out.
Last week, the way we were attempting to deal with these two dragons requires two different marked guild members. One in melee and one ranged. When the blackout went out, if you were ranged you’d stack up on the ranged target, and if you were melee you did the same but staying near the dragon. The problem this was causing was that there weren’t enough bodies to distribute the damage, usually resulting in at least one death (and possibly more). One of the major problems with Bastion of Twilight is the ridiculous quantities of trash mobs that need to be dealt with. By ridiculous quantities of trash I mean so many mobs per group that you run out of raid markers and have to designate “left unmarked” and “right unmarked” or the “unmarked behind circle”, etc. Get the idea?? It’s ridiculous. The first time the guild went through there I was not around to see what “epic trash” actually was, so I had no idea what to expect. Sadly, when I get asked to do something like hibernate a dragonkin, I freeze.
“You want me to what?” Hibernate that mob. “What’s a hibernate??”
I’m kidding. I know what hibernate is, and have actually used it quite a bit during Grim Batol while grinding Heroics, but I hadn’t used it in awhile. It’s just not something I’m used to doing. Ever wonder what happens when your hibernate fails? The raid ends up with a dead druid, that’s what.
One of the problems we were having outside of people just being off their game* there simply weren’t enough melee to soak up the damage. For the first couple of attempts we lost a couple of melee dps. Some of the ranged were told to run up and help soak up some of the blackout damage, but by that point the loss of bodies meant that a wipe was called.
Now, I am not even going to lie about being one of the few people to consistently eat face to Devouring Flames like an effing nubcake. There are few excuses to taking so much damage (and luckily not dying, but that also meant my poor healer or I was spending time healing me when we should have been healing other people) and I knew this needed to be changed. The worst part is that the hooker Valiona actually turns to cast it, so I can see what direction she’s facing. Still I ate it. Mind you, I didn’t know you could just run away from her an take less damage. Apparently the closer you are to her the more damage you take. I didn’t know this, and so I kept trying to run around towards her backside in an attempt to get out of it. Sometimes dying, sometimes not. Either way, avoidable damage that I wasn’t being very effective at avoiding very well.
Something else to remember is that ranged is supposed to be so many yards away from each other. Okay. I can do this. I know I can do this. Except, I ran into melee for blackout and upon running back out again I stopped paying attention to the direction Valiona was facing. I was only paying attention to who was near me and making sure I was within range to heal, but away from people to avoid unnecessary damage. Then there’s my healing.
Ah, fak, Devouring flames to my face!
On Tuesday’s raid, we decided to all collapse on melee. This meant the priest(s) were able to drop lightwell’s near the center, within clicking range for everyone. This also meant that we had the entire platform to spread back out again. The difference between how things were on Sunday versus Tuesday is that all ranged went into melee, not just the ones who chose this time to run in. There weren’t areas of the platform already occupied by people upon the run-out phase. I didn’t spend precious seconds looking for a clear area of ground. We all moved out together. This also meant that we were able head towards her tail.
The guild had a few wipes, but overall I had a much better experience with how things went on Tuesday’s raids. I also felt that I wasn’t nearly as distracted and was able to concentrate on what was going on on the computer screen. Mind you, it’s often hard to give WoW my undivided attention while at home, no matter what room I’m in.**
All in all, I don’t hate the event nearly as much as I did on Sunday. It’s still not one of my favorites since the swirlies that suck you into the Twilight realm have a much bigger reach than their graphic shows (and I have all my graphics turned up). Or not knowing what the portal to get out of the Twilight realm looked like. Or the north, south and middle flames. Ugh, actually, on second thought, these dragons are hookers still.
I did get Drake of the Twins off them, so I can’t hate them too much.
* I was definitely one of those people. I even said so on the guild forums with an apology. I felt as though I were completely distracted nearly the entire night and should have asked to be swapped out with a healer that wasn’t so completely and utterly distracted. Although I was not the only one, according to guildie’s posts on the forums as well.
** I have started playing while in bed, there is another who pays in the same room and a 13-year-old running around the house somewhere. Usually asking fairly ridiculous questions and talking loudly causing me to not hear stuff going on in Mumble.
Add comment January 21, 2011 Hestiah
Celiebugs’ Raid Tips
Sometimes the best raid tips come from a variety of places. And in this case, a variety of ages.
Celiebug breaks down the finer points of raiding in WoW.
brought to you by Osephala‘s amazing genetics and computer skills.
1 comment January 19, 2011 Hestiah
Valiona & Theralion
I’m gonna go ahead and say it right from the start. This even sucks. It doesn’t just suck, it’s one of the most horrible raid encounters I’ve done in Cataclysm so far. Lemme tell you, there are some pretty horrible raid events that have a very large learning curve. None of them make me want to pull my hair out quite like this fight.
I’m unable to understand how I always get hit by the purple effing fire, but I always get hit. I don’t necessarily die, but I always get hit. It doesn’t matter where I stand, or how far away I am, I always get hit. That damn dragon has a thing against me, I know it. Tonight, after what felt like the one millionth attempt, they got those dragons down while I laid there dead
The worst part is how fail I look on the logs. I apparently like to eat fire… with my face and body, so I am almost always standing in front of the damn dragon when she breaths her purple flames of doom. I didn’t die last night, but I took an awful lot of unnecessary damage (like a damn noob). Then I get stuck in the Twilight realm where there are pink orbs of badness you’re supposed to avoid. Not to mention that while there, you’re taking constant damage. Oh yeah, did I mention that I had no idea what to look for to get the fuck outta that place?? yeah, no. I didn’t. So I wandered around, dodging pink orbs of badness looking for the right corner with my way out.
Admittedly, I seemed distracted. I posted on the forums that next time when I’m not feeling 100%, I’ll ask to be swapped out for a healer who is feeling much more on top of things. Maybe it’s the dynamics of the fight that were throwing me off. Maybe I wanted to log onto my finally-level-75 Inscriptionist and work on that so he could make Darkmoon cards. Maybe I was dreading going back to work. Whatever was bothering the crap out of me seemed to affect my performance.
As an advocate for Stay the Fuck Outta Fire, I sure set a bad example last night.
Add comment January 17, 2011 Hestiah
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