Sindragosa!

We killed her!

So- I'm going to put down lots of words that you can read. They're essentially our strategy to the fight. It took us a bit short of three hours allotted to her to kill her- however, due to the long encounter time and the assessing/rebuffing period we got in about 6-7 attempts total (I would guess- maybe more).

Heroes, Frozen in Time

Or a block of ice. Whatever. We decided to wipe on Sindragosa, so we stacked for her Ice Tomb. Apparently, from the inside, its one big thing and we all look fairly ghostly/transparent. I think its a fairly cool effect.

Loot Horse!

Putricide is not a horse, but the silly tanking trinket dropped again. And I didn't get it again. Of course, Alenena is so far geared that its much more of an improvement for the raid for someone else to get it (so long as they tank regularly).

Wide View

Valithria is chaotic and since everyone is so spread out and fighting all sorts of things, its great for battle sequences.

The Edge of Shadow

In other words, Shadow's Edge. A friend got it today- a big deal considering that we're a 10 man raiding group.

Raid Leading

So, I have led a few raids before- mostly Naxx or Retro raids. Other than that, I haven't done much.

Anyways, tonight, I lead our guild on the Weekly and then into ICC.

It was interesting.

I know I have a couple faults. I mean, I don't quite realize when other people die. I mean, I notice it when they die, but I don't make the connection that I need to wait for them to be res'd before pulling.

Also, I'm very aggressive in my pulling strategies. I would rather pull the next group than waiting. Ever. I mean, as a tank, if I see a healer, and its not a boss, I WILL pull. If everyone is buffed and knows the fight and its a boss, I WILL pull.

But I have to temper myself while leading. I can't just make those decisions without seeing who is there and who isn't.

But I also have to make decisions. Normally, I have opinions on why we should go to each of the different wings. But I can't just make suggestions and make someone else take the load. I have decide and then carry out my decision.

I could have spent five minutes deliberating with myself and raid after clearing LS about which way to go. But instead, after not hearing any very strong opinions, I picked one and went with it. And now I realize that it didn't really matter what I picked. I mean, if we were gonna do well, we woulda, but I can't know.

So, it was interesting.

Tomorrow I get to pass responsibility back.

Sucky Wiping

Sucky wiping is sucky.

Sucky wiping is when you're wiping on something repeatedly. And there is no excuse for it.

When I wipe on Valithria, I get mad. Generally this is because there is other stuff out there that I know I can kill. I know that I can kill Festergut and Rotface and Putricide and Blood Princes and Blood Queen.

This isn't a new challenge. Its just something we're not prepared for.

And I don't like it.

We've done the fight enough that everyone should know the kill order by heart.

Everyone should be able to pick out the silhouettes.

Everyone should not have a problem with the fight. But apparently there is a problem.

And it distresses me.

But I digress. I'll have happier news tomorrow.

And then on Friday I'll have time to look at stuff.

Looking at the Beta

So, I haven't looked at the beta information (read: talent trees) in a long time.

WoW.com usually reports the news as it happens. But it didn't.

I was curious if there were some minor builds, and there were. And there were some major builds.

Whats interesting is how I feel about them.

I mean, I like them so much that I don't want to seriously level any toons until Cataclysm hits.

I like them so much- they're just amazing.

Now, to really exhibit my point, go ahead and put together a Blood Tanking spec here and now try it here.

Which one felt like a more natural process? Which one was easier? Which one made more sense to you? Which one had fewer extraneous talents?

For me, the answer to all of those questions is the Cata Beta Build.

The current trees are just so bloated with unnecessary talents. I will (as I've promised before) be looking into the trees but hey. I'll get to it.

Another Wipe

Oooooh! Magic Whirly of Whirly!

Angry Furblog

...is Angry

Shin-dragon-soda!

We finally got some real time in on the dragon.

We quickly downed Blood Princes and Blood Queen.

Then we wiped the floor with us on Sindragosa. We died alot.

We had some issues.

There was lots of dieing.

But we got the first few phases down.

I'm sorry this is a bad post.

Sorry.

Super Awesome Times

So. TOC is Super Awesome.

We did ICC today and we downed Marrowgar and Deathwhisper no problem. In fact, DW had only 2 add phases, which was great for us.

We did the Frost Giant Weekly (the last time we had it we had just started ICC so were WAAAY undergeared).

Then we did gunship.

We did it achievement style.

We did it heroic style.

We did it heroic achievement style.

We did it super awesome style.

Then we proceeded to one shot Saurfang. He got a total of about 102 runic energy. We almost killed him before he got off a SINGLE mark. We were awesome.

We did Rotface, easily one-shot.

On Festergut, Malkhelm was slightly undergeared for his 3 inhale's mode, so got squashed. It was not good. I switched over to Alenena and we rolled over that boss onto P Putricide. I got to be awesome and rolled over everything as an Abomination. Its really fun being an abom.

Then onto Valithria, we focused, we did well and we killed the killers and saved her.

Finally we got to say hello to Lady Dragon Sindragosa. The gauntlet was fun, the trash was fun and then she aggroed.

We ran back to the Gauntlet room, because thats supposed to reset her. It didn't. I managed to get to the elevator and ride it up. I was one of three survivors. The others were FD'd hunters.

We tried again, and, after an explanation, did only a little better. Though we did last through the first air phase. And by we I mean me. Because the other person died when they were hit by the frost tomb. I soaked the first  blast, Ardent Defender saved me on the second and then I bubbled through the third and fourth, leaving me at about 3% when she landed, alone and trying to run away. Then the dragon ate me.

But in any case, we plan on doing Blood Prince Council and Blood Queen Lana'Thel tomorrow (which we have on almost farm) and then fight Sindragosa til she dies. If she dies, then we go onto the Lich King and possibly extend the lockout until that bugger falls to the ground and gives me my Troggbane!

Raid Pacing

I bring this up because there was slow pacing.

I was in a sister guild's ICC 25. I've been in their 10s and 25s before.

In the 10 man, we cleared the first 10 bosses in about four hours total- and Putricide, Council, BQL and Val were first kills for about 1/2 of our players there.

In the 25's the first one we cleared the first six bosses in one go- at least 10 of us in our first 25.

In the second 25, we did ToC and (first two bosses for the weekly) and then we moved over to ICC. We only had 20 people when we started ToC and we scrounged some up while moving towards Marrowgar. In the three hours, we got down the four bosses and the free badge.

Tonight it took us two hours to get the first four- from the start. We didn't move at all for long periods of time. We would wait for everyone to be fully buffed, flasked and present. On trash.

When we got to Valithria we spent an immense amount of time on the explanation. Only one person was new to the fight. Everyone else had at least done it on 10, so they knew the basics. We spent 10-15 minutes on the explanation. It was very, very irritating.

This is just me venting a bit, but if you run a raid, keep on moving.

The Birth of a Meme

There are now several TOC created memes floating around the guild. See, in running ICC, we come across certain encounters that require us to speak up in vent- or wipe (we usually choose option A).

These things have come to be somewhat of a group of memes in our guild. They include, but are not necessarily limited too:

1. I found a trap!
2. Midnight Sun dropped
3. Beast in melee
4. Big Ooze in raid
5. Kinetic Bomb

Lessee here. In the first hall of ICC and the two halls that lead to Festergut and Putricide are traps. We've come up with more efficient systems of trap finding since we started, but often, at the beginning a warlock or a priest would find the trap.

Midnight Sun. Yeah, that thing drops about half the time we do the Gunship Battle. All of our healers have it and several of our not-healers have it.

The blood beasts on Saurfang can be a very big problem if not handled correctly. Whenever someone in melee accidentaly grabs one three or four people call it out in vent. Now, whenever many of us see the model, we call out "Beast in Melee" because we like too.

When we started doing Rotface neither I nor the other tank really could control the Big Oozes, so it was fairly common to see it waddle into the middle of the raid and kill everyone. This combined nicely with the "Beast in Melee" meme.

Finally we come to kinetic bombs. They appear on the Blood Prince Council. Anyways, similar to above, several people call it out. Its just this weird thing that affects all of us.

I don't even understand. What is this post about? How should I know, I only wrote it. Ok, I've gone mad.

Awesomeness and Bad Planning

Last night we only got down the first four bosses in ICC. Tonight we cleared Plaguewerks and Crimson Halls. Now we're really awesome because last week (first Wing Boss kills of those two) took us three days. Admittedly we also got Valithria, but thats one boss. In two days, we downed nine of the ten that we have won before.

On to the bad planning part. Some of us (myself included) after having cleared up to Sindragosa really wanted to see if we could get to her. Plus, we had downed the Valkyr, so there was no trash. That was the bad idea. It was a good idea in concept. We had the same healers as we did on Monday, and equal or better dps for the most part- these were some of our best raiders.

Then we spent an hour wiping on the encounter. This wasn't the fun kind of wiping because either we were wiping from stuff that we couldn't prevent (Curse you RNG gods!) or from stuff we couldn't determine (Curse you unkown stuff!).

After an hour of raiding, we hadn't killed a thing. I mean sure, we had killed lots of adds on Valithria, but we hadn't gotten credit for it. Which made me (amongst others) upset at the encounter.

From there we smartened up and one shot each of our farm bosses and two shot the wing bosses.

So it was ok.

Boss Crotch Syndrome

Often, when tanking a boss (or general trash) with a knockback, you end up against a wall and all you can see is the boss's crotch. Which we do not like. But here, it looks pretty awesome. I love AoE!

Geared

Right now I have three toons geared for ICC.

Vitos (Warlock) is geared to DPS ICC 10 and 25.

Malkhelm (Death Knight) is geared to tank ICC 10.

Alenena (Paladin) is geared to tank and dps ICC 10 and 25 and heal ICC 10.

Malkhelm should gear up fairly quickly and should be able to Tank and DPS both 10 and 25 within a few months. Alenena should be able to heal 25 in a few months as well.

Now, when we bring someone along to raid, I expect them to pull their weight. I don't expect them to have put in nearly as much time as I have gearing, learning my class, raiding etc.... I don't expect them to have gear as good as mine.

But I do expect them to try.

Seriously. I want you to put in some effort. There was a player in tonights raid who had been to ICC with us before. The last time he was there he had gotten some loot. He was a DPS and pulled under 2k with the 25% buff. He returned to ICC with us and had 1 gem and about 10 empty sockets. He did not have any enchants. On the Gunship Battle I admittedly did less. But thats because I was doing the achievement, so I had to jump over and jimmy my position so that the boss wouldn't hit me and we wouldn't wipe.

But he shot the cannon three or four times. And when he was frozen out he stood there. Doing nothing.

In any case this rant reminded me that I need to respec my pally, I think I can get a little bit more survivability out of her. (Meaning, I enjoyed (and still enjoyed) all the effort I put in, I just don't like it when I carry a dead weight).

Lol I forgot a title last night.

A Dead Professor, a Dead Vampire, and well, I guess a Live Dragon, but she disappeared as soon as we saved her so wall we got was this lousy box filled with healing plate and tanking plate. And I couldn't use the belt and the Holy Paladin had dibs on the shoulders.

On the topic of Awesome

Lets talk about The Oasis Contingent. Because we are on the topic of awesome. At nine eastern, I believe Vitos, my warlock was the farthest progressed toon in the guild at 10/12 N10. At nine eastern, TOC was at 7/12 N10. We reliably one-shot (one-shoot) Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship. We generally don't have any issues with Festergut, and now that I really know the fight, few issues with Rotface. Sometimes we have some bad luck on Deathbringer, so he isn't a guarantee, but its getting close.

Today, the raiders voted that they would prefer trying to bash our heads against bosses in ICC rather than RS. On Professor Putricide, we had never gotten past 50%. Tonight, we got past that mark three times, going to phase 3 twice and killing him in the face once. It was an amazing moment, downing a new boss- one that we had never really seen much of before and thought of as very difficult.

We had decided to alot one hour to each of the three progression bosses, Putricide, Blood Queen and Valithria. After clearing the trash up to Bacon Quiche Linguine, we had to explain the fight to the few people who had never seen it before (as we did with PP).

We one shot that boss like TOC has never one-shot (one-shotted) that boss before. For many of us, that was the SECOND new wing of the night completed.  Plus, the second new boss. You can imagine our elation.

We carried on, as brave soldiers and roflstomped Sister Svalna. As a rather strange sidenote, roflstomp is a strange word. If you have ever been rolling on the floor laughing, or even just rolling on the floor, it is difficult to stomp with any degree of force or accuracy. Nonetheless, we forcefully and accurately killed that mini boss.

On Valithria our previous attempts had gotten her up to at best 62%. Now, thats 12% over 50% meaning about 24% of the way. Of course, the fight gets harder as it goes on, so realistically, closer to about 10-15%.

Our first attempt tonight got her up to 97%. That means we got her 94% of the way from 50%. Several more attempts ranged between 63% and 92%. Our final attempt, right before raid time, ended at 100% with the dragon killing all the silly undead.

Yeah, we killed three Progression/New bosses. A most excellent evening.


Then I tried to solo the Sindragosa gauntlet event. Technically I didn't intend to, but my off tank (who I had cleansed out of his abom in PP, while I thought my DI was off CD, but wasn't) triggered the fight in revenge. I had used my bubble to get down the elevator quickly, so Forbearance was up (a huge hamper while trying to solo as a paladin.

I managed to last a minute or two. I think though, if I had switched to Judgement of Light and Seal of Light I could have lasted much longer. The heals would have done wonders to keep me up and Forebearance may have fallen off and therefore I might have been able to bubblehearth away.

RAWR

I'm a Furbolg! Yay!