By the number

Four hundred seventy nine.

Once again, that would be four hundred fucking seventy nine.

479.

FUCK.

/rage

…

Didn’t see that coming

As I posted earlier, I was looking forward to trying the QUEST (which apparently involves a draenei porn star).

Log on Thursday evening bearing bad news – Tir’s semester is winding to a close and he’s slammed with homework/studying.

The GM/raid leader was less than enthused, but understood that school is at least slightly more important than wiping all night.

I was on about 30 minutes prior to raid.

There were 4 of us logged and ready to go.

I ran out to the island and popped into the inn. I had my flasks, my feasts, my pots.

Might as well

Tuesday’s raid sort of ran out of steam… and by steam I mean people. So I might as well post.

Tir’s been having a rough week so missed raid as he was passed out before the raid even started, meaning we were out our strongest healer.

Our normal (new) hunter was MIA for something in RL.

We did have a new warlock to replace the last two we burned through in rapid succession. We need a warlock vending machine. Hell, I would be happy with a Healthstone vending machine.

The warrior was busy, but his girlfriend was playing his character. (Much better than she normally does but she was even more talkative than normal. I don’t think she took a breath the whole night.)

We were short our normal heal and DPS spots on top of the absences.

Almost an hour after raid started we had a temporary hunter, a resto druid, and an ele shaman.

Off to Throne of Thunder!

I just don’t see it

Supposedly WoW lost 1.3 million subscribers.

As I’m sitting here, in queue — again — I just don’t see it.

(Yes, I know most of the losses were in China, but seriously? Couldn’t we have lost a couple hundred off my server? Just not the ones selling cool shit in the AH.)

…

What I do see is a very busy future for me.

I know, I know, I already don’t post here often enough.

But this time it’s going to be for a good reason!

I’m going back to college.

LOL

Laughing out loud… at myself.

Once upon a time, I played the original StarCraft.

Like, I played it a LOT. On dial up connection. Entire days and weekends lost to scampering zerg decimating supply depots. Swearing at Goliaths for being completely incompetent at navigating a fucking 5 foot ramp. My life for Aiur.

I loved playing StarCraft.

I hated the player versus player aspect.

It didn’t start that way.

Finished with the campaign, I eagerly created my battlenet account and moved in to what I felt was the natural evolution of the game – I crushed the computer, now it’s time to play with the big kids.

Except they weren’t big kids. They were whiny, immature, sexually frustrated tweens with only the weakest grasp of the English language or common decency.

StarCraft killed my taste for PvP. Even in WoW, I’ve dabbled with it but it never really clicked as something I could enjoy for the long haul.

So as you can imagine, any game that focuses entirely on PvP has just slipped completely by my radar. Yep, I acknowledge that the game exists and other people might like it, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

And then insanity hits.

Redemption

A quick follow up to yesterday’s post about failing miserably in ToT and not even being able to clear Jin’rok.

We zoned in on Tuesday night with a new hunter to replace the one we lost.

(If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember me talking about calling a raid early when one of our raiders reported he was puking blood but wanted to wait until the raid was over before going to the ER. Turns out he has a stomach ulcer. He was hoping to continue raiding but hasn’t logged since.)

We had a full complement of healers.

We had a PUG warlock to replace our warlock that suddenly went MIA the other week.

(He logs on via remote chat but won’t talk to anyone. Even if he was hacked or sold his account you would think he would log in to vent to give us a heads up on current events…)

So we entered ToT with a full raid, nearly all guilded.

Embarrassment

Things were going so well.

In a new guild.

Making progress with a nearly full roster.

Then the healers that were supposed to join disappeared.

And so did the next pair.

And the next.

So we slogged through a few weeks of Horridon with various PUG healers; all having their own strats, their own opinions, and apparently all having the worst internet connections in the world (judging by the number of “disconnects” we endured).

The funniest thing about all the PUGS we went through, was that the guild was actually functioning appropriately – we were in the right spots and the right time attacking the right targets, it was the PUGs that were all over the board in skill.

And then it happened.

Tir made a tough decision, but one which I am very proud of him for: there are more important things in life than progression raiding.

He told his 25-man guild that he didn’t have the time available to devote to raiding 4+ nights a week and he left.

There should be an account achievement for an absurd amount of faction transfers. That’s right, he came back home to the Horde. (I don’t care that he started as Alliance, he belongs over here under the red and black.)

Not only did he come back to the Horde, but he moved over to Area 52 and brought all his characters into the guild – including his paladin healer, which we desperately need.

So we had an established roster of 9 and a filler healer lined up. We went in to Jin’rok and were already chatting about our Horridon strat now that we had some competent (and consistent) heals.

Except we didn’t get there.

Encounter Design

What started as a random wishful daydream about an X-men Danger Room-style training dummy set up eventually turned into an idea about a raid encounter where the raid itself took very little damage. Trust me, somehow I made that leap.

But if the raid (including the tanks) aren’t taking much damage, what’s a healer to do? Another Valithria/Tsulong-type encounter?

Not quite. But close.

Imagine you zone in to the fight and find Thrall and Garrosh tearing it up. Like most “decorative” NPC battles, they would be locked in a stalemate until the party engages. So sit back, enjoy your Pandaren Banquet and watch the two heavies beat the shit out of each other. Garrosh, of course, has a gajabillion HP and damage reduction shield and probably all sorts of other buffs.

As Promised

I said yesterday I would provide an update on how the raid went last night so here’s a post!

But first, another really stupid thing I’ve done in WoW!

Yesterday I talked about leveling up cooking on my DK (who got his 522 neck last night, FYI) for the express purpose of making mogu fish stews for the mage and getting cooking points at the same time but then I realized that the fish stew was a 600 recipe so I basically just wasted time.

*deep breath after that run on sentence*

Last night I realized I had been doing something STUPID for the past couple of weeks with my priest.

Making Progress!

Alright, it’s been another week-plus since I had time to write, but there’s been valor to cap and bosses to kill.

Not to loot, just to kill. Because I just get gold.

Anyway…

I am now officially 16/16 in T14 content and ready to step up in to T15 Throne of Thunder.

So I had a bright idea.

I should use the +300 food for the new content, really squeak out that extra bit of DPS.

Hmmm…. I’ve got a DK that’s got cooking up pretty close. I bet I could level his cooking really quick and make my little fish stews to get points!