It hasn’t been discussed at all, he plans to extend the raid until we kill the LK, replacing people as they go on and come back from vacation.
I’m not sure if anyone else could use upgrades from 10 man, possibly our holy paladin since it’s an alt. I know my warrior needs the neck from Marrowgar and the bracers from Saurfang. My shaman, the character I’m using on the LK fights isn’t as geared as the warrior and could use a few upgrades as well. I think it’s more of our raid composition and learning the fight rather than gear. All the gear in the world won’t make my chain heals hit everyone when they’re so spread out and infest is cast.
I think I may be getting burnt out on WoW. I’m able to show for the raids, sort of, but I’m having a real tough time finding the motivation to do much more. It’s frustrating to have it happen so soon after joining a real raiding guild, too, and pledging a long-term commitment.
Right now I’m way more interested in APB than WoW, and I can’t even play APB until my copy of Windows 7 arrives in the mail.
Heehee. I should dig up the screens of what happened when my Undead Mage tried to go sit on “Santa’s” lap in IF…
:dubious: This sounds to me like a recipe for losing your entire guild. If people wanted to bang their heads against a single boss for weeks, they’d be hardcore raiders.
Why are people spreading out? The *only *time *anyone *should be scattered is (a) immediately prior to a Defile (~5 seconds out), assuming that Valks aren’t coming down first or (b) to avoid Vile Spirits in phase 3.
It happens. If you need to take some time away–a day, a week, a month–be sure to notify your RL. Just about the worst thing you can do is no-show, even for a single raid. They won’t be happy, but they should understand that these things happen. They might even be willing to kick you down to a standby/casual rank, if your guild has such a thing, where you can just show up if you feel like it and they’ll use you to fill any slots they’d otherwise PUG.
They don’t have such a thing, because that’s what everyone is. All the raids are basically PUGs that pick from guild members first, then non-guildies. But of course I’ll mention to them if I plan on taking an extended break.
Weird. I couldn’t even imagine trying to plan raids never knowing who was going to show up, and not having any consequences for people who just no-show.
As luck would have it, we’re going to be doing loot from our second Shadowmourne tonight (I didn’t win anything from the first one). We do it by roll–everybody in the raid divides up by which thing they want most and roll off against the other folks who want that same thing–and you can only ever win one thing ever, so it encourages people to choose wisely. I can’t decide if I want to try for the mount or the tabard. The way I roll, I’ll be unlikely to win either, but that’s okay–in about six weeks my DK will finish his Shadowmourne, so I’ll have another chance then.
One reason I get asked to round out raid groups despite being slightly undergeared and inexperienced compared to our top tier raiders is because I follow instructions. Got a reputation for it. One of my deaths in ICC was that hallway where the fog comes out - no one warned me about it, so whoops! Got an apology 'cause they forgot to warn me. But if you tell me about the Bad Stuff I’m usually pretty good at staying out of it.
Then there was the raid where a new guild tank kept asking if I’d been disconnected from vent. No, no he was reassured - I just don’t say much in vent or raid chat during raid. Just tell her what to do, she’ll do it.
I do get lost, though. Often
Anyhow - because I have a certain reliability I do sometimes get asked to fill in for a no-show (you know, the raid no shows that have been mentioned occasionally in this thread?). In some ways it works out better than me being a regular raider.
I complain about being burnt on the game, and then I have a 25-man raid report.
Most progress I’ve seen yet, which isn’t saying much. We one-shot everyone up to and including Rotface, so we finally got to try Valithria Dreamwalker for the first time. Since I’m the guild’s primary Holy Pally (which isn’t saying a lot, I’m just the only Pally willing to mainspec heal), I got put in as one of the people healing El Dragon Verde. I’ve read up extensively on the fight, since Holy Pallies are well suited for it and it’s a neat role reversal, but studying isn’t the same as seeing it in action, and I couldn’t even tell what the portals were doing at first. We wiped several times, and each time I had to keep adjusting my bars and macros a little, and each time we did a little better.
We ended up stopping for the night after like the fifth wipe, though. I don’t know how the rest of the raid was doing, but it sounded chaotic, and we healers had a real problem keeping a cohesive group in the dream. We kept sniping each others’ orbs, and it was rough keeping the buff from falling off. Still, that was fun, and it was a nice little ego boost, since when all was said and done I was healing Valithria for as much as the other three healers combined. Glyph of Holy Light is ridiculously good; it accounted for a full quarter of my healing strength on Val. I need to remember to have a Glyph of Seal of Light with me next time; I didn’t prepare because I didn’t expect that we’d get to her tonight.
Didn’t win anything though, sadly. Lost the roll on Trauma and we didn’t get a Paladin Mark of Sanctification. Weirdly, I did get an upgrade after the raid closed out and I did my random daily, which was HOR. Picked up some nice DPS boots for my offspec. I’ve also got enough badges for a second T10 piece, but both the gloves and shoulders are significant downgrades compared to the 264 pieces I’m using. The helmet is the only acceptable sidegrade, so I’ve got to save up some more for that.
Oh yeah, we had a Pally who normally tanks do the raid as a healer, so he was coming to me for advice on healing ICC and I coordinated Beacons and such with him. Another ego boost, yay. Made me feel like I actually knew what I was doing.
She is NOT A RESTO DRUID, that’s the whole point. She is a hybrid, a moonkin who heals. You seem to have missed the “hybrid” part.
They’re currently not playing, and we’ve never been hardcore raiders. She plays that way because of that thing Arpeers can get away with, “character concept”. I’ve accused her of sticking more to her guns the more people try to grab them from her and she said “yep”, so that’s a factor too. Mind you, why did I recognize that she was doing that? Because my mage is Frost due to character concept, and I go through these cycles of “OMG frost sucks you should be fire” “OMG frost is the bestest” and “OMG frost sucks you should be arcane” and just stick my tongue out at people.
Thanks for the responses on the sword, and congratulations Shot on the mount!
Grats on a nice run, Boss. I’m hoping to get into my semi-regular ICC25 pug tonight; I haven’t had a decent raid in several weeks and I’m really close to getting my Exalted ring. Also, I only need two more Frost Emblems to get my fifth T10 piece (the robes) which will allow me to replace my gloves with the 264 gloves I’ve been carrying around in my bags. So with a little bit of luck I should be able to upgrade three slots tonight, even without winning any rolls.
Congrats! Are you going to be going back in this lockout?
It’s pretty crazy outside. You want to have one tank tasked to pick up aboms (and the worms they drop when they die), one tank to grab the zombies (I think they need to be kited), and one tank to grab the archmages (and interrupt them–plus you need other interrupters sitting on them so that absolutely no FB volleys get off). The skeletons that do the big fire AOE need to go down first whenever they’re out; otherwise, I think you generally want to hit the surpressors, then put ranged on blisterings and melee on archmages, and mob up aboms when there’s nothing else up.
That’s always an awesome milestone to hit. Congrats!
And you seem to have missed the part where that pretty much makes her useless in either role. Now, granted, she can get away with that a lot more if she’s actively RPing in a group dedicated to that. But there’s a huge difference between speccing into a tree that people feel is sub-optimal–e.g., a Frost Mage vs. Arcane or Fire–and making a spec that is completely broken for any role you might want to attempt. The fact remains that as a full Balance/Resto hybrid, the rest of the group is going to have to pick up her slack. The raid would absolutely, 100% be better off, from a performance standpoint, with her in a DPS role as a DPS spec. She may have better heals than your average boomkin, but that job should be covered by the healers; and she’ll have much worse DPS, which means the other DPS need to compensate for what she’s not putting out.
No, we only do one 25-man a week. The guild officers seem to be pretty happy about only making it so far every week and they don’t want the stress of trying to reorganize the same 25 people again. I suppose they could extend a really awesome lockout to the next Thursday, though.
If she’s RPing then “max raid performance” might not, in fact, be her primary goal. RPing and hardcore raiding are not the same thing. Some RPer’s put “character concept” first, not last.
Bottom line, if the people she is with are OK with what she is doing then there is no problem. YOU might not be happy with it, but then, you aren’t in her group.
It’s no crazier then when folks in my guild run an all-[insert particular class here] 5-man or even raid instance. You have to pick your instances with some care, but some of us find the exercise in making “broken” teams work to be either 1) fun or 2) educational or 3) both. No, you’re not going to do the very topmost, elite instances or raids in that manner. So what? The point is to have fun. If she (and her group) are having fun that’s really all that counts.
Interesting. It’s always cool to me to see the way other guilds handle the same fight. We do it a little differently–only two tanks, one on each side (sometimes for the alt raid we have a third tank who “floats” and picks up anything that might get loose). Each tank is responsible for the stuff on their own side (front and back), and they pick up aboms, zombies, and mages (the skellies can’t really be tanked so they don’t bother, and the DPS is supposed to handle the Suppressors). Our priority is skellies, suppressors, mages, and then aboms or zombies depending on which is convenient at the time. This works well for us, both on normal and heroic. The zombies don’t really need to be kited–the tanks can handle the explosive damage, and the rest of the team should know not to be standing next to them when they blow :). The only problem we have sometimes is worms (from the aboms) getting loose and killing somebody before the tank can pick them up. If your healers are good then the frostbolts from the mages aren’t a big deal (on normal–but it’s a good idea to get comfortable with interrupting them, because on heroic they drain mana).
The nice thing about the way Holy Pallies work in Valithria is that we’re pretty much self-sufficient. A side effect of the best method for healing Valithria means that I’m constantly healing myself, and there’s a ton of splash healing from the Glyph of Holy Light aiding to heal anyone I might be near. Nobody has to spend any GCDs making sure I stay alive. In every single wipe I was the last to die, and twice I never even died because I was still in the dream when the encounter reset, so I could walk out of the room without trouble.
It sounds like that might not be the case, though. From what was said earlier, it sounds like some people *do *resent it, and got told to shut up because she’s a healer and her husband is a tank and the group can’t afford to piss them off.
It’s one thing to say “This is what I want my character to be, even though it’s gimped, because I enjoy it and my raid is okay with it.” It’s another entirely to refuse to admit that the character is gimped and force it on everyone because they can’t raid at all without you or your partner. If it’s the former, more power to her; but if it’s the latter…
ETA: Here’s what was giving me that impression:
There’s not one thing in there about her being a competent player. There’s not one thing in there about how her heals are still good enough or her DPS is still good enough. It’s a bunch of “Don’t piss her off, we can’t afford to lose her/her husband.”
All I knew was the big explosion at the end–wasn’t sure if there was AOE, too. Good to know.
I’ve only ever done VDW on Heroic, so when I leared the fight, it was essential to kill every FB. (IIRC they also slow you, which can be a problem for any healer going into the portals.)
IME, the problem with tanking the zombies isn’t the explosion (your DPS should know to get away from that) it’s the debuff they put on the tank. They stack a 10% armor reducing debuff every time they hit a target, up to a maximum of 50% (it also ticks for 2.5k every 3 seconds per stack). It lasts for 6 seconds.
When you add that plus Gut Spray from the Aboms (increases physical damage by 25% for 12 seconds) and then get a bunch of worms hitting on you, and maybe a Lay Waste, well, it’s not too hard to lose a tank.
However, if you can dispell diseases (or your outside healer can do it for you, and is good at it) then it’s less of an issue - the Gut Spray can be dispelled (the armor debuff can’t, AFAIK).
We found that having one tank do the aboms and another do the Zombies and Mages worked better. YMMV.
All the raids are basically PUGs that pick from guild members first, then non-guildies. But of course I’ll mention to them if I plan on taking an extended break.
Lost the roll on Trauma and we didn’t get a Paladin Mark of Sanctification. Weirdly, I did get an upgrade after the raid closed out and I did my random daily, which was HOR. Picked up some nice DPS boots for my offspec. I’ve also got enough badges for a second T10 piece, but both the gloves and shoulders are significant downgrades compared to the 264 pieces I’m using. The helmet is the only acceptable sidegrade, so I’ve got to save up some more for that.
