Two raids in one post

I've been a bit distracted last week with doctor's visits and vet visits so I haven't posted about my raiding with Spoiled Milk last week and it's a new week and we've already done all our raiding with Shadow Rising. So I'm just going to cover it quickly in one post.

Spoiled Milk
This week Spoiled Milk has changed their raid times. They went from raiding three nights a week to only two and the days were switched to help accommodate the raiders who are in school. So Friday and Saturday at 11:30 pm they start. Which I feel makes for a rather late night. But who am I kidding? It's not like I was actually going to be asleep at that time anyway.

Friday night we were all eager to begin the new raid. The first boss took a few attempts but we got it after a few attempts even though half the raid got blown up in the enrage. I lived! They arranged the raid a bit differently then Shadow Rising did. The tanks were in the back and then the rest of the room was divided into the different quadrants. There was one healer on either side of the tanks and one on the other side of the room. Pretty much just spreading them out as evenly as possible. The dps was then split up between the healers. I think the hardest part of the fight is just adjusting to the blobs that come and knowing who's going to get what. But once you get an idea for what the people around you and what you yourself can do you can make better guesses about what pile of adds you're going after.

After getting the first boss we moved on to the second. It's a lot of chaos. Basically we learnt how to deal with all the normal stuff and then moved on to learning how to deal with the first desperate measures, the second one, and then the last one. Once we began figuring it out we began working our way though. When we made it though the six desperate measures with everyone still alive we knew we had a good chance to win. Our raid leader kept a close eye on the percentages and made sure we were focused on the highest health one and burning them close together. It was pretty exciting to accomplish a kill. That warlock sure likes to be ahead of my death knight.

We then moved on to try the third fight. It wasn't happening. Our best attempt hit the enrage timer and wasn't very close. At that point it was getting pretty late. Or perhaps I should say it was getting pretty early. We came back in the next night eager to get to work but we still weren't having much luck. Hopefully this week we'll get closer.

Shadow Rising
Tuesday night and I was tanking. I was pretty excited because I had the legendary! I had found an openraid group that was killing all four and was able to get invited into it. I figured it was a good chance to progress on the questline. I really enjoyed hearing Wrathion and Lorewalker Cho telling my story. And I now had a cape that would prevent me from dying! But that wasn't enough. Nope. I gathered together my meager supply of gold and spent it all to get Tyle the dps cloak. I'm now dirt-poor but I've got two legendaries! Totally worth it.

Anyway, the first boss took a few attempts but we got him down and out of the way and began to work on the second boss. I was tanking He Softfoot. I had a real hard time with the gouge mechanic at first. I felt like dbms timers weren't working right our something. It would count down his ability and I'd be ready and nothing. I'd be back to tanking him and then WHAM! incapacitated. Crap. I'm guessing the countdown is for a cooldown timer and that He doesn't have to use gouge just because it's off cooldown. It's more of a watch out because he could be casting that soon. I just felt awful about how slow I was to figure out how to advoid those gouges. I had tried turning around at first but sometimes he'd still catch me. I figured out the best way for me to avoid them was to just run though He. But I still let a few gouges get though. On the last attempt I thought I was going to prevent them all but one got though near the end. I really don't know how well the fight was going. I was so focused on He and preventing gouge I couldn't see much of anything else. I knew the different phases were being worked though but all my attention was on one thing. Gouge. We reached the end of the night but wasn't able to get them done.

Wednesday I got to come in my dps spec. I was especially excited because the one change I was most looking forward to in the new patch was that frost was getting buffed. I mean look at this:

• Rune of Razorice now causes 3% extra weapon damage as Frost damage (up from 2%), and each stack of Frost Vulnerability now causes the target to take an additional 3% damage from the Death Knight's Frost attacks (up from 2%).

• Frost Strike now deals 115% weapons damage (up from 105% weapon damage).
• Howling Blast now deals 15% more damage.
• Might of the Frozen Wastes now increases all melee attack damage by 30% (up from 20%).
• Obliterate now deals 250% weapon damage (up from 230% weapon damage).

It's a lot of buffs for a lot of attacks! The only one that's not too interesting for me is the obliterate one because I'm dw frost. But that's a lot of buffing. I also had the legendary cloak, new gloves from last week, and a new trinket from the lfr. I was ready to do damage!

But I was really shocked at just how much I was doing. Before I was pushing to break 10k and I was nowhere near reaching Zug and Adoe levels. This week I was in their range. Especially when the bosses were moved together for cleaves. I almost started laughing when I heard Adoe say to use cleave rotations. I pretty much do the same thing whether I'm aoeing or single targeting. And I think Howling Blast was doing a very good chunk of my damage. I think it was just a really good fight to be dw frost instead of 2h. But it was still a shock. I knew the buffs were good. I just didn't realize how freaking awesome they were. Zug was convinced there must have been something more that I did. I'm not sure what it could be. I had some gear improvements but nothing really big... except the trinket and the cloak. The trinket isn't really all that great except for cleaving. But even then... it's not like it was doing as much as the cloak was. 

Anyway, I'm done geeking about how awesome and godly my dps is now. It's going to my head. This patch has left me feeling freaking op with both tanking and dps. Although the tanking op-ness probably comes from all the heroics I've been running. What? They're a good source of vp and much less painful then running lfr. And I can pull everything in sight and laugh because the only person to beat me in damage is the healer who decided they were going to dps instead. The first dungeon I had a healer dps I laughed and thought it was cool. Now I'm just starting to expect it. Although I do regret when the shamans switch to dps because then I don't get their health buff and have 1 million health. 

Wow, I got distracted. Raid... right. Well.... we worked though the phases and we had one attempt get really close but we weren't able to get the fallen protectors. It's a bit sad but hopefully we'll have better luck next week.