Raiding and Other Games

Last I wrote, I was a holy pally just starting raiding with a new guild. The guild has been a good fit for me but I found I was becoming more and more unhappy with being a healer. Luckily for me, we needed a new tank. Our guild leader took over tanking until the end of Blackrock Foundry but since he really didn't like tanking, so he was really looking for someone else to tank. I had just finished leveling up my brewmaster monk and was having a blast with her so I got permission to switch from my pally to my monk at the start of Hellfire Citadel.

 

We're working our way though normals but we have killed the first boss on heroic and we have plans to make the transition from normal to heroic.

Outside of raiding, I've found myself not wanting to play WoW that much. After a bit of thinking I decided that I just needed to play another game for a bit. I thought I could hold out until WildStar was ftp but I've been feeling really restless now. I decided I needed to try something that had caught my attention years ago but I've never felt motivated to actually play the game before. Now I felt a need for change and nothing seems like a larger change than to head into space with Star Trek Online!

I'm not very far along in the game but it's a beautiful game. I love all the customization options that are available. There's also two different kinds of combat, ground and space. Ground is pretty easy to understand but space combat is both really awesome and while it's easy enough to understand, the fact that you're battling in 3-D space while moving along at warp speed makes it difficult. I'm definitely looking forward to exploring more of the galaxy.

Settling into the new guild

I've been pretty happy with my new guild so far. They raid two nights a week but they don't raid too late since they finish at 11 pm for me. It's not a hard-core guild and we've been working though heroic content. Currently 7/10 and have to finish Blast furnace, Kromog, and Blackhand.

It definitely feels odd to be a healer, there's so much stuff to watch out for, along with healing everyone! The other day, I actually thought about my raiding history and realized that I haven't had a main healer since Ulduar came out. There's only been one raid that I mained as a healer. Since then, I've either tanked or dps. I've done some dabbling with healing and I loved being a holy pally during dragon soul lfr but I mostly just stood still casting my aoe healing. I'll admit that I have quite a learning curve to adjust to healing raids now. It's also really different from healing heroic dungeons. I have to remember that I don't have to do all the healing. I can rely on those others healers, especially that disc priest. Ugh, Disc priests and their bubbles make my heals almost unnecessary. They are the only healers I can't beat up on the healing meters, except on the trash pull right before gruul when there's lots of aoe damage, the group pops lust, I use my wings, and just go to town with the aoe healing. Bwahaha, so much healing. I might be too competitive to be a great healer.

When I haven't been raiding, I've been working on my newest obsesssion. Zeetai, is a warrior. One of the only classes I've never had at max level in any expansion. There are several guildies with warrior alts and they have made warriors sound fun, so I figured I would try again. So I made Zee. Zee is currently level 75, the highest level warrior I've ever had. I've been having a lot of fun as a fury warrior.

I've also been spending gold. Not on tokens... although I probably should. But on things like mounts and pets. I didn't expect to ever have enough gold saved up for an onyx panther. I was planning to get the yellow or green one... but the onyx one was at a really good price on the auction house... and so I made it mine. I've made several rather large purchases lately. It seems whenever I start building up gold, I find something on the auction house that I have wanted for some time and can now actually afford to buy. Not only did I get the onyx panther, I also picked up a sandstone drake, and a crawling claw. No more crying because after finishing yet another tol'var artificate  I still haven't gotten the pattern for the claw! Nope, I broke down, I bought it and I have named it Thing. Sigh, I swear, the next big thing I'm buying is a token... possibly.

Finally Summer!

I have finally had my last final! At least for the previous semester. I can't believe that I made it. I had moments where I was convinced I would never make it though the semester, let alone do well. At least, I think I did well, I won't know for sure until next week when grades are finally posted.

I haven't done much with this blog for awhile because I have been obsessed with school. The weeks of classes that I missed because of dealing with my health required that I spend most of my time trying to catch up. I wasn't entirely convinced I could do it and I am so relieved to have this semester over with. But that now means I can focus on other things, such as getting some updates on my blog.

So what has been happening? I have recently changed guilds and this past week was the first time I have run with my new group. It's a trial period for both them and me. I had been contemplating leaving Spoiled Milk for awhile now. Everyone had seemed so excited about new content at the end of Mists but after the expansion released, people began to slowly disappear. This past month, I realized I was the only active player left in my guild. I suppose I could have tried to recruit, but to build a new team from nothing? I didn't have the time because of school, the energy because of school and dealing with other problems, and I didn't particularly want to lead either. I figured once school was done, I would begin looking for a new group.

That was my original plan but last week, I saw a casual raiding group looking for a holy paladin. They were partway though heroics and they sounded like a group that I really wanted to be involved with. I know by now, that I am not particularly interested in being in a top-end raiding guild. I just want to see the content and continue to improve. I had also noticed that while many groups were looking for healers, very few had been looking for holy paladins. I decided to take a chance and respond to the person recruiting. We had a great chat and I warned him that I wouldn't be able to start for two weeks because I needed dead week to prepare for finals. He told me that would be fine and I got a guild invite.

This last week was fun for me. I haven't raided in quite some time so I was rusty. I also had some internet issues Thursday night which caused me to eat more lances and bombs than I should have. I love my family and I love being on a farm, but, sometimes, the internet drives me insane. I suppose I should just be glad that I actually had internet because we had lost it earlier that week and it had been slow since. First-world problems and all of that. Anyway, they were pretty understanding, as far as I can tell, and I hope next week to show them that I won't eat as much damage when I have a better internet connection. Hopefully things will continue to look as good.

Accomplishing goals

I guess I don't have to worry about posting too much. Whoops. I kept thinking about stuff but thinking isn't doing.

But I've gotten several of my nebulous, unwritten wow goals accomplished this past month.

First off I've managed to figure out how to level pets on the pandarian trainers. I have no hope I'll ever catch up to others who have been pet battling for much longer. But I'm enjoying it now. I also managed to get the many pets leveled to complete the celestial tournament. This week has been my third week beating it. I'm pretty stoked about it. I did a lot of prep work for the tournament, making spreadsheets of the pet teams used by different strats from different guides and than piecing together the teams that I had the pets for and than making a list of what pets I still needed to level. I than checked to see what trainers were up that week and made sure all the pets I needed for that strat and the celestial bosses were leveled first.

 And I was really happy to finally get my first celestial pet. It was the cat one of course.

I've also done some hunting on OpenRaid for a group on Saturdays to try and get my infusions. I've found a group that gets all achievements and will do infusions but my connection was spotty the first night so I didn't want to waste the groups time trying to get the blood infusion and last Saturday I wasn't able to attend. I'll have to keep trying and at least it's a really nice group. And I did get the last achievements I needed for the 25 man drake.

My level 70 twink druid has been doing pretty well. The guild has just been running Kara because they're still trying to build the rosters. When I first started with them there was maybe 3 people running Kara but there's usually 6-8 people in the raids now. There's hope that we'll soon be able to start on the next raid.

I'm at the point where my druid has all the Kara gear she could want. There's only really two pieces she needs but what she has is fine. When I was recruited the guild had plenty of people to be healers and tanks so they were just looking for dps. And feral dps is pretty decent but now they are starting to look for tanks. Unfortunately the guild leader decided that guardian druids weren't going to be allowed because that spec didn't exist back in BC. Instead druids will have to tank as feral. I've done some tanking and I have to say I'm a squishy and the crits those bosses make are no joke. So I'm working on leveling up a paladin. But in the meantime, my druid is looking pretty sweet though.

Spoiled Milk's has been plugging along with our raiding. Last week we downed Dark Shaman and Nazgrim. It's still in a muddle about what we're doing. We wanted to raid Tue, Wed, and Fri but unfortunately there's many who can't make it on Fri so we've been finding pugs to finish the runs on normal. There's some fuss about not continuing to work on heroics on Friday but it doesn't work out. It has been decided that every other week we'd extend our lock-outs and try to get more work on bosses instead of wearing ourselves out trying to make it back to our starting point. There's been some grumbling about that but there's only so much that can be done. I don't know how it happened but I've found myself promoted and put in charge of the guild bank. /sigh. Oh well, I have some ideas but I need to get the guild leader and other officers in on them before I mess around with stuff. But I did remove and vendor any grey items I found in the guild bank and organized it. I've only kept track of all the gold that's gone in and out of the bank. It's been fascinating to see who is using the repairs and how often. As to what I'm going to do about that... who knows. I think my role is one that I'm going to have to carve out myself. Scary thought that.

Finally, on a last, note. I've gotten a new mount! It's one I've wanted since Wrath. I was very excited when I realized I had the gold to finally get the final pieces for the crafting of my brand new Mechano-hog! Horray!

What I've been up to

I'm going to put a break in this post because yesterday I got invited to the WoW Beta and I'll save my little bit of discussion about it for after the break.

So I'm still raiding with Spoiled Milk. There's been no new boss kills. We've been having small issues with our kills, but those mistakes mean wipes, which means more time killing bosses. Immerseus is probably the worst one. It's the boss we've been killing the longest and yet... each week we seem to have some issues with the fight. Last week was particularly rough with and we eventually gave up on Galakras because we were having issues with people in the towers being teleported back to the ground. After some research we learned that this was happening because of getting aggro with the mobs on the ground. So this week we did eventually get Galakras but we were still having so many other issues. And we didn't finish the raid on Friday. I think I'm going to have to search open raid for a group that could use a hunter. I really want as many chances to get more heirlooms as I can get.

I've also been working on the cape quest on my shaman. I've really been able to take advantage of the two buffs. She was working on the valor part of the quest when there was the valor buff and now I've been enjoying the rainful of extra runestones and secrets.

My level 70 twink druid is getting some better gear but I really need to give her some love. She doesn't have any professions and her gear is unenchanted and ungemmed. And I can't look at her bracers. They really need to be replaced. The guild she's in has strict rules about what I can and can't do and what I can use and can't use. Sometimes the rules seem silly but the guild leader has his reasons.

I've also done some pet battling. One of my guildies in Spoiled Milk is obsessed with pet battling. He's still fairly new to the game so he doesn't have an incredibly large collection yet, but he's getting there. He's also really good at leveling pets and has even leveled a few for me. I felt that since I now have these level 25 pets I should try to pet level and battle the trainers. I finally managed to beat all the tamers in Pandaria and my friend has even given me advice on how to use the battle against Aki to help powerlevel some pets. I know that there's methods for all the other trainers but I'm still working on figuring out how to do so. My friend is working on the Celestial Tournament. Occasionally he wants to use a pet that he doesn't have so he's been borrowing some of my pets. It works well for me because when I get them back they've been leveled.

Iron Horses and Iron Bosses

It seems that Spoiled Milk's new raid times has been working better, either that or the summer has just given us a second wind. Whatever the reason, we've finally begun to start pushing heroic kills again. It still seems strange to have so many people as part of the raid who aren't guildies, but they are also consistent members of our group so it's been steady. And really, raiding is getting a group of like minded people together to attempt to kill things. And we've gotten some really cool people to come raid with us.

Anyway, one of our guildies saw the iron horse and absolutely had to have it. He put up a hitching post and the whole raid spent several minutes parading around on horseback, before being reminded that we should stop wasting time and start working on Iron Juggernaut.

We had one attempt on Iron Jug last week and we hoped with 3 healers we would be able to survive the second phase and be able to get a kill. Our first attempt went really well and we were close. And the next attempt was close as well. There's something very frustrating about close attempts. But we kept at it and soon we had our very first heroic Iron Juggernaut kill!

We went on to work on Dark Shamans and our closest attempt was to 4%. So very close. But it was getting close to 2 am so we had to admit defeat. We'll be going back on Friday night to finish the raid on normal. I think the finish up is interesting because last week there was only 3 from my guild and one had to leave before we killed Paragons. I'll be curious to see who will turn up on Friday and if I'll be tanking on Tyle or dpsing on Awoi. I'm hoping for dpsing because I'd like to practice using my Beastmaster spec. I felt awful about the raid this week because we didn't have a bloodlust. There were several members who had drums which worked fine and I did have a mastery buff on Tues and spell haste last night... but I feel like an awful hunter for not being able to switch. But my guildies were good about it. They didn't really expect me to switch because they know I don't know how to play bm and they claimed my dps was too good for me to switch to something unfamiliar. But I still think I should learn it, just in case.

Good Week Of Raiding

This was the first week of raiding with our new times. It still feels like half the group is full of pugs which is a little annoying but since most of them are ones that we've raided with before it was still a fun.

Tuesday night we started late because we had to track down a tank. After locating one we were finally able to get started. And we had a really terrible start. I have come to realize that Immerseus is a weird boss. We can either one shot him or spend hours trying to get him down. But after a few attempts we finally managed to pull things together, figure out the problems, and got Immerseus down.

Then we found ourselves facing Protectors. We have made attempts on Protectors but haven't had much success. Our biggest challenge has been handling He's desperate measures. It's been a challenge trying to remember who to throw to, who's already been thrown to, and who can't be thrown to. We've tried to put together a throwing list but we've still had trouble with it. This week one of our warlock's suggested we have the dps throw it in alphabetical order. We figured it wouldn't hurt and for some reason it worked really well. We had one attempt that was really close but the enrage killed us. We were determined that we would get this boss the next time. We got the tank to keep He closer to the other bosses so that we could have more cleave on He and things were going really well. Than we had one of our dps disconnect but we kept going. We were getting close but so was the enrage timer. Unfortunately we hit the enrage timer again but there was enough dots on the bosses so that they were killed with one dps left standing.  It was not a beautiful first kill but a kills a kill!

The rest of the night went well with one-shots on Naru and Sha. Since it was late we called it a night there.

Wednesday we continued with Galakras. While they had gotten heroic galakras last week it was still rough. We had to adjust who went up to the towers and had to do some work getting the waves of adds killed correctly. We finally managed to get a good attempt and called for galakras to be shot down when we realized no one was manning the gun in one of the towers. Oops. We couldn't get the mobs under control for another attempt at shooting down galakras so we had to try again. I volunteered to go to the tower since I could stay at the bottom and help with killing and than use the rope to get to the top when the waves have been thinned down. The attempt went well and we got Galakras down and the fight was so much easier after that. We had our two groups and we killed Galaras without any trouble.

We spent the rest of the night attempt heroic Juggernaut. We didn't get the kill but we feel pretty good about attempting it next week.

Last night we finished up the run on normal. Neither of our tanks could make it so I volunteered to switch to Tyledres and tank. I was really happy at the end of the night when we killed Garrosh because it meant I had the kill on Tyle

Things have been looking up

I know I've been trying to figure out what to do if worse came to worse and Spoiled Milk couldn't turn around their slump and get to raiding again. It's been a worry for all of the raid team but things have finally managed to turn around. We have been slowly filling in our ranks with regular pugs. I'm not certain how I feel about pugs. On one hand they have no obligation to our guild but on the other hand...

I'm not certain Spoiled Milk has ever been concerned with having full guild runs. It's more about a good group getting together, killing stuff, and having a good time. I came into the raid as... well...not really a pug but they were perfectly happy leaving me out of the guild but still having me be a regular member of the raiding group even if I was raiding on an alt. And there's been several other members that were pugs for some time before becoming guildies. One of our warlocks was part of another guild for months before someone finally asked if he wanted to be part of our guild.

But it's not just filling in holes in the raid that we've been attempting to fill. We've also attempted to make the guild a busier place and to try and recruit raiders from our server. The one downfall with that is most of us don't need anything from normal bosses but if a raider is looking for a guild for heroics there are so many more attractive options. But we've hashed out some ideas about things to try in the future. How well it'll work will be interesting to see.

But we'll have new raids times. I'm excited by that. They won't start at such a late hour for me and we have plans for raiding on three nights a week. But the news that has me most excited is that we're going to attempt progression every other week for a bit. We have new guildies who we would like to raid with but they aren't geared. So it's been a bit of a struggle to try and decided whether we should spend time gearing them or keep pushing with pugs for heroics. Maybe it's not possible to have the best of both worlds but we're going to give it a try.

But the news I'm most excited about is that there has finally been progression. The last week of school when I didn't raid because I was panicking about studying and getting things ready for finals, the group had it's first heroic sha kill. It's been a few weeks since then but two weeks ago I got my first heroic sha kill.

Last week we put some attempts on Protectors before calling it quits and killing them on normal but we were able to get heroic sha again without any trouble. Saturday night the internet on the farm disappeared so I couldn't raid. I was informed that they were able to kill heroic galakras. They also teased me about a heroic bow dropping but they were just joking. I'm starting to see a pattern though... they kill stuff when I'm not there XD.

Here's hoping that things stay strong.

Two Heroics in the First Week!

Having killed Garrosh we've now started working on heroics. It's a bit of a double-edged sword because we've only got two days for progress instead of three. That means we either have to kill everything and Garrosh or spend all our time working on heroics. This week we spent working on heroics.

The first one we attempted was Immereus.

It was a very close kill. It took us a couple of attempts to even get past the first phase. But we kept working. Made some adjustments. And managed to get a kill. But it was due to the one warlock left standing.

We put a few attempts on the Protectors but decided to kill them on normal and then attempt to kill Norushen on heroic.

I was surprised by how little the fight changed. Or I might feel that it wasn't much of a change since I got to take one of the first orbs and then just kill stuff. We had to keep really pushing the dps. The enrage timer was really close and it got us quite a few times before we finally managed to squeeze enough dps out to kill Norushen. I was really excited because I got a piece of heroic gear! New pants! They were a perfect upgrade for me since they don't break my 4-piece! 

We tried Galakras a few times but the night was getting late so we've decided to try again next week.

But it's still pretty awesome to have managed to get two heroics in one week. :)

One Garrosh Attempt

I've been a bit busy and distracted with the start of a new semester of classes and I'm really glad with how well the raid's times fit into a school schedule. Thursday we killed the first six bosses and attempted to get some gear for some new people and a few alts. Friday was a night for more serious raiding. We actually extended a lock-out this week and started the night on Thok. It was a very close attempt with everyone but the tanks dead at the end. We moved to Paragons who went down well and I rolled the bow which has better stats then my current one. Next we had to tackle Garrosh. We took a quick five minute break and then began our first attempt of the night. And it was going well. Really well. No one was dying. Mind-controls were being interrupted. We were moving together. Adds were being handled. And Garrosh's health was whittling down. I told myself to just focus and keep doing my job and before I knew it.

Bam! Achievement spam! And I got an heirloom!

And a mount! And a title! I was really excited! I even got most of the raid to stand in a group for a screenshot. Not bad for a first pull. Although I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow since we won't be trying for Garrosh. :)

Week of Raiding mishaps

Last week's raiding was a little off for Spoiled Milk. Thursday night we started late and our druid tank was having computer problems. It kept causing her to lag and even disconnect. We also had to bring in another person because on Thursdays one of our healers can't make the raids. So our shaman dps switched to healing and we picked up one of our friends to fill the extra dps spot. We managed to make it though the first two bosses but it was really rough. Our druid tank disconnected partway though the first boss but it was late enough that our death knight tank was able to solo tank the rest. The second fight went well and we made our way to the third boss. On that fight our druid tank again disconnected and we attempted to solo tank the fight and we were really close when the enrage timer was hit. Our druid tank decided that she couldn't keep holding us back and was tired of trying to work though her computer issues so called it a night. Our pug friend switched to tank and we found a rogue to come in. We made it though the third and fourth boss and called it a night.

Friday night didn't look much better. Our death knight tank wasn't able to make the raid but we already knew who we wanted to fill in the spot. Things went well but usually on Friday we're able to start on the shaman and this time we had two bosses to kill before we could get to them. We also didn't raid as late that night as we usually did. Things went well but we called it a night after Nazgrim.

I was looking forward to Saturday. The day started well and I had lunch with my family and my dad had me drive the skid steer out to the fields to load the last bales of corn onto the trailer. I love driving the skid steer. It doesn't have a steering wheel but two sticks that control movement and direction. Anyway, I started out pretty excited but by the time I had driven the skid steer out to the field and to the barn twice I was starting to feel pretty sick. Thankfully there was only two loads of bales because after that last trip I went back to the house and spent the rest of the day being really sick. It just hit me so quickly. One moment I was feeling awesome and then I was pretty miserable. I spent the rest of the night and most of the next morning being sick. By Sunday afternoon I was though the worst of it. Since then I've been fine. Anyway, I heard that the raid group was able to work though all the bosses and even killed Blackfuse. I'm excited for them although I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't feeling up to raiding that night.

I'm hoping this week will go better and we'll get the Paragons. It's pretty exciting to be so close to the end. I'm really looking forward to being able to kill Garrosh. Hopefully before Christmas!

Slow but Lucky Raid Week

Spoiled Milk didn't raid on Thursday because it was the day US citizens celebrate Thanksgiving.

Friday night got off to a late start. But once we got started we began moving though the bosses quickly. I accidently pulled the first boss but the tanks picked up the boss and things just fell into place. The second boss once again did not give me a ranged weapon and I figured it would be another week of scarce pickings for me. But I was surprised when the third boss dropped a ring and I won it. Then the fourth dropped the trinket that I've been dying to get. Finally on Galakras I finally, finally got a ranged weapon! I might have squealed like a little girl. I was just really excited. I could finally retire the lfr weapon and use a normal one. My weapon ilvl went up about 30 points. Even before upgrading it, the weapon was a huge upgrade for me. I really expected someone to be a troll and roll against me. We finished the night after killing Iron Juggernaut.

Awoi and her awesome weapon

Saturday started slow as well because one of our tanks couldn't make it because he was moving and was still having issues with his internet. We knew who we wanted to bring in but he wasn't on when it was time to raid. We began thinking about replacements and who could switch to tank to try and get the raid going. We had just made a plan when our tank friend logged on. So we quickly brought him into our group and began killing bosses. It wasn't as smooth of a run as Fridays but we still one shot all the bosses from Dark Shaman to Thok. Everyone was really impressed with how much my dps has improved. I used to be the worst of the dps but now I was battling with our top dps. I even won a few fights. It was pretty exciting for me. One of our warlocks mentioned that we were breaking all our kill records and we thought that Thok was a bit easier this week then last week. We even put in a few attempts on Blackfuse. Our best attempt was 12%. I had to learn to do the conveyer belt. I gave up with trying to jump into the pipe at the end or to jump off the platform. I just couldn't make it and I was tired of wasting our raid's rez. I mentioned that I was just going to stay up there until it was done and the other person on the conveyer belt said they were too. I do wonder about the loss of the dps from not getting on the ground but I just can't seem to make it.

We have confidence that we'll get Blackfuse next week. We also think we'll get Paragons since we've heard that it'll be an easy fight. It's pretty exciting because we're soon going to be working on Garrosh! We might even be able to work on some hard modes before the next expansion. But I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Mighty Thok Slain

Spoiled Milk gave Thok a try last week and we were hoping to get the kill this week on Saturday. We had cleared up to Thok on Thursday and Friday and started Saturday at Thok.

It took a lot of work. We switched up having three versus two healers. But finally went with two healers since the only dps that could switch to heals was also our best dps. Without our shaman's dps we just weren't getting enough damage done on Thok. We also switched up the order we opened the doors. We finally decided that the poison door was just overwhelming our healers so we left it for last and hoped we could do enough damage on Thok during the fire and frost doors to be able to finish him before he went on a rampage after the poison door. Our final door order was fire, frost, then poison. It was a pretty close kill but we got him in the end.

Last week our guild had considered mergering with another. After some debate it was finally decided that we would stay in our own guild. I'll admit that I'm relieved. I was nervous about how this merger would take place and how it would affect our raid group. I know we aren't pushing heroics right now and I'm not certain that it's something we will be doing in the next expansion. But that's still some time away and we've got to finish getting though SoO. We're getting closer.

Lost of Raids and other things

Holy cow! It's been almost a whole month since I last wrote.

Things have been a bit crazy. I've had a few more tests and the doctors have finally decided that my pain comes from two sources. One is from acid reflux and the other is nerve/muscle/or something else. They weren't too certain about the second source other then it wasn't anything internal. I'm definitely starting to feel better. I'm currently planning to return to college in January. I'm really excited about it.

Currently I'm helping more around the farm. My dad was cleaning the office windows using the lift when he fell and landed in the holding area. He broke some ribs, the bone in the back of the shoulder, and one of the bones in his back. Things could have been a lot worse. My dad spent a night at the hospital but then he's been home. He had to wear some braces but he's now doing a lot better.

Alright, now for what I've been up to in WoW. Let me think. I've been raiding. And some more raiding. I think I did some raiding on this other night as well. XD

Are late night weekend raid team is currently working on Thok. It's definitely a good fight to be a hunter on but I'm feeling like my lack of gear is holding my raid team back. I try to remind myself that I'm not actually undergeared just not as geared as everyone else. Right now everyone is hoping I can get a weapon drop and maybe a trinket as well. But I have confidence that I'll get something this week. I finally got my legendary cloak on my hunter and things can only get more awesome from there.

My guild leader has also been trying to build a second raiding group. It doesn't raid quite as late at night and it mostly consists of alts and friends from other guilds. We've even got Arv to come dps a few times. Norushen is not very cooperative though. Of the times we've been though we've only killed him once. I'm hoping that as the weeks progress we'll get a more consistent group of raiders and start progressing though it better. But it's still been fun and it's awesome to get to raid with Arv again.

I've also moved several of my toons from Shadow Rising to Spoiled Milk. I was really tempted to leave my death knight in SR but I realized that I haven't been playing her because I know that I'll miss out on any pugs, flexs, or other things that SM is doing and that SR isn't. I do my the SR crew but I'm glad that the SM people enjoy having me hang out with them so much.

I feel like I've gotten a lot closer to them now that I'm "offically" SM. Which is kinda funny because they are currently talking about merging our guild with another one called insomnia. It's a late-night raiding guild and the hope is to be able to have the twenty people for the mythic raiding in the new expansion. I wonder why they think we'll be pushing that content when we aren't even doing heroics now? Insomina is which has me wondering why they would consider absorbing us. It's not set in stone right now and I'm definitely worried about it. I don't want to lose the people I'm currently with. We're hoping to get a flex group with some of the members from Insomina to see how well we mesh together. It'll be an interesting night.

Halfway there!

This week's raiding with Spoiled Milk I was able to take my hunter for most of the bosses. Horray for sporebat! Go Awoi and Eoda!

We cruised though the first four bosses although I did switch to my warlock for the third boss. Since our kill last week was so close we wanted as much dps as possible to ensure a kill. Got it in one shot with everyone alive at the end. That's a huge improvement.

Last week we had gotten several attempts on Galakras and we were optimistic about our chances of getting a kill. Our first attempt was very close. We had less then 1% left before we wiped. There were a few minor mishaps that we felt cost us the kill such as one person went a bit sideways instead of straight back and the explosion killed a few people and a major raid cooldown got used too early. Just small stuff but we felt next time we would have the kill. Unfortunately we bungled the next few attempts and didn't get past the first phase. Eventually we were getting ready to call our last attempts because one of our tanks really needed to leave. And the attempt was good! It's amazing how well that last attempt works. We managed to pull Galakras down and everything went well.

We decided we had enough time for one attempt on Iron Juggernaut and raced off to try. It was a giant mess and a pretty good end for the night.

The next night we were prepared for Iron Juggernaut and I was surprised to find myself raiding on my hunter again. I expected that I would be asked to warlock again so I was pretty nervous. Iron Juggernaut was really easy. We got the kill on our 2nd attempt.

We then made our way to the Dark Shamans. They told me to stop dying so much. I really need to figure out how to keep my hunter alive. My turtle Soup has definitely spoiled me because I have no idea how to keep my hunter alive. I was asked to pull the bosses because I could feign death. Unfortunately I actually had a real death. Anyway, our first attempts on the boss was the two tank strategy but the closest we got was about 40%. One of our dps was clammering for a three tank strat and volunteering to be the third tank. We figured we'd give it a shot. If it worked, great, and if it didn't we wouldn't be out much and we'd get our dps to stop talking about it.

The three tank strat requires one tank on the female shaman and two tanks for the male one. The shamans are pulled apart far enough so that their abilities don't overlap. The raid is divided by melee and range. The range attack the female shaman and the ooze adds while the melee deal with the male shaman. The male group went to the corridor that leads to the next boss. I'm not completely sure how they dealt with stuff except that they stayed close together, moved out of the flame wall, and made sure to drop the poison stream close to the building. Since I was ranged I was far away from the melee. The tank with the female boss pulled her over to the gates that are the entrance to Orgrimmar and tried to stay as far away from the other tank as possible. As ranged I just had to avoid stuff and make sure to slow and kill the oozes.  When the bosses bloodlusted they were pulled together to make sure that we could get as much damage on them both as possible.

Our first attempt with the three tank strat brought the bosses down to 1%. It was very close. This was definitely what would work for us. After a couple more attempts we had another boss kill.

We had a few attempts on General Naz'grim. And while we got close we weren't able to get a kill. Hopefully next week we'll push though and get further along.

Closest Boss Kill Ever!

The past few weeks Spoiled Milk has been beating the first two bosses then banging our head on the third. This week we finally had a breakthrough and accomplished the closest boss kill I've ever seen. We managed to get him just as he enraged and took out everyone. We were really excited to finally have Norushen killed and to move on to the Sha of Pride

The Sha of Pride was easier. After several attempts we were able to eek out another boss kill. And then we decided it was time for a break. We put several good attempts into Galakras on Friday and Saturday night but we weren't able to defeat that dragon. We're hopefully next week will get us closer.

Still it was a pretty good week! 4 bosses killed which is double what we had last week!

On a side note I had a chat with my guild leader. Right now the raid currently has two warlocks in it which is fine, however, one of the regular dps is leaving and out guild leader was looking for new dps to recruit. One of the potential replacements is another warlock. He asked how'd I'd feel about getting my hunter geared up and ready to go and I'm pretty excited about no longer playing a caster. I just have to get my hunter some more gear. She's currently sitting at 514 so I'm hoping for some good lfr and flex runs.

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.

Last One Standing!

First day of the patch and Shadow Rising has their first boss kill from Seige of Orgrimmar!

Immerseus isn't a very complicated fight but it did take some work to learn the various steps and what would work for getting though the phases. Arv and I were tanks, Slice, Van, and Zarm were heals, and Zug, Lyss, Adoe, Shadeey, and Bo were dps.  We originally started out with the tanks close together and the dps either spread out or together but we'd make our way around the room. That wasn't working well for the heals or the dps since they felt they were spending too much time moving around. So we began to split the raid up. Arv and I were on one side of the room with at first just Van was between us but then Zarm and Adoe were between us as well. The rest of the raid were on the other side. My part involved taunting when Arv got the debuff on him and cheesing though the swirl with antimagic shell.

The fun begins when Immerseus reaches zero health and splits into a bunch of blob adds all around the room. The blobs need to be either healed or killed and it was important that we slow them down as well as kill them so that the ones that got though didn't all hit at the same time because they did a ton of raid-wide damage. It took a few trys but then things began to click. 

One try was going particularly well. We were making it though the phases. The Immerseus phase was taking less and less time and his corruption level was slowly decreasing as more and more adds were healed and killed. I could hear someone reminding us to stay focused and keep doing what we were doing. Then I heard someone mention the 10 minute enrage timer. And someone began to count it down. Then BAM!!! Everyone else was dead! Eh? There weren't anymore blobs that I could kill so I just waited for Immerseus to rise up and beat the snot out of me. Instead he came up and the bonus roll appeared! WHAATT!!!! I won!!! It seemed that before everyone had died they had managed to kill/heal just enough blobs that he was now defeated! And since I was still alive... We Won!!! It's such a rush to be the last one standing in an attempt like that. Just imagine how'd awful we'd have felt if I hadn't lived though whatever it was he did. XD

We got some attempts in on the second boss but we've still got a lot to work on for that fight. But it's nice to start our raiding off with a kill.

The lucky twos

Sunday was the last raid night of the week for Spoiled Milk and the first night I've raided with them this week. Wednesday night there were more people then spots to fill so they asked if there were any volunteers to sit out. There were several and so we rolled to see who would get the night off. I won so I went off to finish downloading hearthstone. Thursday night I also didn't raid but that was alright since it meant I could spend some time with Navi, Arv, and Luxy. So when I got to the raid I had no idea where they were at.

I was surprised to see they were still on Dark Animus. The first attempt was bad but we got him on the second. Iron Qon took a lot more time. I think we've gotten a bit spoiled because the past few weeks when we've attempted him we've had two warlocks in the raid. Two warlocks means two portals which means everyone in the 10-man can just click a portal instead of trying to run though the cyclones in the second phase. It took us a couple of attempts but we got them. The next boss was a joke and we were off to attempt Lei Shen.

We'd killed Lei Shen a few weeks ago but we hadn't managed to get another kill since. The first pull went well. We got though the first transition unscathed and then fell apart trying to catch all the bouncing bolts in the second one.

Or new plan was to do more damage so that he didn't charge up the bouncing bolts. XD Nothing like a solid startegy. But it seemed to have worked because the second attempt went really well. We made it though the second transistion and were only down two dps. We kept pushing and managed to get him right as he killed both healers and some other people. I was pretty happy because Vaunt lived! There were two people who got the achievement and overall we were really happy to be able to kill him again.

Ahead of the Curve! Lei Shen has been Lightening Whipped!

Lei Shen killed! Finally!

Shadow Rising wasn't able to raid on Tuesday night because several people weren't going to be able to make it. I was a tad bit late on Wednesday night. Usually I'm hanging around waiting for others but last night the group was already started up. I'm just glad that there was still a spot for me.

After a quick discussion about who was going to which color and where they were going for the second intermission it was time to pull the boss. It didn't go too well.

So it was time to run back and set up for the second pull. Things went really well. Everyone made it though the first intermission and kept things going well thought the second one as well. Entering the third phase everyone was still alive and we were on the final phase. We had one tank death but we had a rez ready for him. It was really exciting to so quickly and easily get our Lei Shen kill.

After a quick screenshot and realizing that we didn't have master looter set most of the raid took off. Seems there's some eagerness to go level in some game called Final Fantasy. Me? I did some leveling there earlier. Slowpoke that I am. Instead I hurried off to go download Hearthstone! Now if it would just hurry up so I can get started.