Seeing the Cutting Edge of Progression, Once Again

Lots of raiding over the weekend on Ekat. On Saturday I knocked out the Vault of Archavon for the second time since Patch 3.1 hit, and this time we did it completely differently than the first time. Apparently you can keep Emalon and all his minions over on one side of the room instead of splitting them, and it helps the add tank pick up the new adds after you dispatch and overcharged minion. As a healer, this was a nice improvement. We also only used 2 healers and had no problem, so maybe we were better geared than my previous attempt as a group. I grabbed nothing off Emalon but Archavon dropped another DPS chest, which I had to dump because it was tier 7 and I have the tier 7.5 piece already. Ahh well.

Sunday I was in a group for Eye of Eternity to try and get my neckpiece upgrade finally, but the group was headed nowhere. At the same time Xusha was begging for guilides to fill a Naxx-25 run. I thought that our guild was running it, but it turns out that some other guild was pugging half the raid and The Illuminati filled about half of the PUG slots (7 or so). This included the sweethearts of our guild in Soph and Cantique as well as my child's Godfather Mikola and one of our regular raid leaders Fanroth/Maz. So I came into the raid on Xusha's request and noticed the raid leader was asking for DPS. I asked him if I should stay Holy as it's my main spec and he tells me to go shadow. Before first pull, the loot rules were stated as "open rolls for loot for your main spec, roll 1 for offspec."

This may not seem like a big deal, but it sure turned out to be. Keep in mind I came to the raid to gear myself a bit more hopefully for the guild progression night in Ulduar-10, and I could've guaranteed a neckpiece upgrade by doing EoE instead. So we down Anub'Rekhan (I think) and he drops the healing trinket which is an upgrade over my Egg. So I roll and I win the roll. The second place roller then says "but Ekat's rolling for offspec, right?" on vent. I immediately respond that no, holy is my main spec. Well after a couple minutes the raid leader comes on and says "we've decided that for the purposes of this run, you are shadow." Which means I'm not going to get a single piece of gear I care about, but now I'm saved to Naxx-25. Needless to say, I threw an absolute fit in guild chat. To their credit, Cantique, Soph, and Mikola whispered me to make sure I was OK and even Maz said some nice words in gchat. Xusha remained silent.

So in reality, the raid loot rules were "open rolls for the spec you are raiding, roll 1 for anything else." Now that's the system we use in our guild raids, but for some reason we make it more clear upfront than they did in the PUG, especially when we invite outsiders. I've raided PUGS with both systems, so I don't think it was unreasonable to believe I could roll on holy loot instead of DPS loot. Especially because they asked me to change specs at the beginning of the raid. While I appreciate that DPS is replaceable, but I have collected enough shadow gear to hold my own in a raid just as a convenience to PUG raids and Illuminati raids...not to pursue that kind of raiding. So I had to roll my eyes as a couple other healer upgrades went by. Am I being completely unreasonable on this?

To top it off, the next boss dropped a DPS upgrade that was not a massive upgrade for me, but I won it anyways. At the time they announced me as high roll, I noticed Mikola was second-highest and told them to pass it to him. Well then someone rolls late and ends up second-best, and the piece gets passed to them. Again, not happy as I wanted the gear to stay in our guild either as a slight upgrade for me or a big upgrade for his desired raiding toon. As it turns out, I later was put in the same situation with no late roller and passed a DPS chest to Mikola which was a good upgrade for either of us. Again, I'd rather see Mikola be able to raid with Illuminati on his desired toon (which is not Cazaldora currently though that's all our RL wants) than have a DPS set that's moderately better. So I did get to give him something, which is good. I obviously did not win anything else and we quit after clearing Arachnid, Plague, and Military except for Four Horsemen. I was still supremely steamed about the raid, which I took out on the weeds in my lawn during the break between raids! I guess the one good thing was that the raid got me back into the habit of looking at my surroundings a bit, but not healing meant I was not really preparing for the Illuminati raid. Ahh well.

So after a break, it was time to come back online for Ulduar Night 2, A.K.A. progression night. A bit of background: while I full-cleared Naxx-10 multiple times and was present for our guild's first downing of Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad, I've only been in Ulduar one time since it came out. It was also a progression night, and all we did was kill Auriaya and wipe a few times to Hodir at that point. So I've seen two bosses total in Ulduar, and raid night one this week had a great night, clearing all 8 bosses they had previously downed (Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Ignis, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, and Hodir). So again, I was back on the true progression of the guild, except now we were told to prep for the other three keepers. I just hoped I wouldn't bring the group down, but we had a pretty good healer team of Fiasko (guild leader's alt), Miraelle (guild officer) and Ekat.

We started in the Conservatory of Life, clearing a couple mini-bosses and a bunch of trash. Nothing real bad here as the RL Fanroth knew exactly what we needed to do on each pull and things were explained. We cleared everything leading up Freya herself, and here we are prepping for the fight (also a first look at my raid UI setup).



We had some issues on the first try, as the second time the three adds come up that need to be killed simultaneously, we missed killing the last one within the 15 second window by about 1 second. All of them respawned as did the Ancient Conservator add and we got overwhelmed. The second try went flawlessly, and we added Freya to keep Hodir company in the central chamber of Ulduar as shown below.



The next fight is Thorim, who had very little trash leading up to the boss event. For those who don't know the fight, you enter a room with a balcony where Thorim stands, then clear the mobs in the room to start the event. Your raid splits into a tunnel group that traverses a tunnel full of mobs and a couple mini bosses on their way to Thorim while the rest of the raid stays in the arena room and clears mobs that continuously spawn. Here's a picture of Thorim from my P.O.V. in the arena as the event started.



Our first attempt we lost me to an add that got away and the arena group did not recover despite the tunnel group getting to Thorim and activating him. The second attempt saw the tunnel group get overwhelmed by too many mobs and they died, leaving the arena group to wipe. The third time we got it right with a battle rez or two thrown in, and Thorim was added to the now three Keepers in the central room of Ulduar.



As we walked into Mimiron's room after skipping most of the trash via teleporter, I was awestruck by the room. Ulduar definitely has some cool visuals and this room has to be one of the best. Here's a quick screenie of the area above Mimiron's chamber.



Then I got called on to move past the bomb-ombs (yes that's a mario term, but that's what they are) in another frogger encounter, and we found Mimiron working on his new creation. Here's a view of the shadowy little Gnome who should really be the final boss of heroic Gnomeregan when we outgear Ulduar.



We gave Mimiron a few good tries, learning more and more about the fights as we went along. I probably hurt the group in 2 tries, the first by going down in Phase 1 and not being around to AOE heal through Heat Wave in Phase 2, which is my primary responsibility. The second time I got confused on where I was standing and ended up in Mira's third of the room, so when Edovard was going down no healer had range on him despite it being my responsibility. Ahh well, lots of moving and paying attention and things make this fight a very fun and difficult encounter. We got to Phase 4 a couple of times where the entire robot comes together, but we only got the various parts of his body down to 23-25% (from 50%) on our best attempt. We certainly had a group that could clear the boss, but we were at raid end time and lost our effectiveness in the final two tries. So Mimiron is left for another day, but we conquered Keepers 2 and 3 and learned more than enough to be ready to open up General Vezax and Yogg-Saron very soon.

In summary, a good weekend of raiding, despite the bad time in Naxx-25, which gives me a lot of boost heading into my last week of IRL work before vacation. I capped the night with a cigar on the back porch with the dogs, relaxing and toasting our guild's new success. I hope it continues, and hopefully I can raid a bit more with them to help them out.

Hopes for Icecrown Citadel

Well everybody is testing the Argent Coliseum, the patch 3.2 raid that will drop in a month or so now. But while doing some old world dungeons and making Eitrin the king of Blackrock, I realized that Blizzard should take a page out of their old playbook in making the patch 3.3 raid, Icecrown Citadel. I also just installed Warcraft on my new laptop and watched the storyline of Arthas as the thing slowly installed. The lore behind this expansion is ridiculously rich.

Arthas brought Kel'Thuzad and Naxxramas to Northrend to be a first line of defense, which we crushed. Ulduar is pretty, but it's basically off the beaten path of the true story of WOTLK and is just us saving our own butt from letting Yogg Saron loose. But now with Argent Coliseum, we'll take down Anub'Arak, the right hand spider of Arthas so to speak. Yet in doing all this, none of these dungeons has an epic feel. You just waltz up to the door basically and jump in. This doesn't make Naxxramas and Ulduar feel epic on the outside.

Now compare that to Blackrock Mountain from vanilla warcraft. Blackrock is a massive mountain between two zones and you have a long walk through a picturesque lava-filled mountain to get to the instance portals. You really feel like you are a small cog taking on giants in Blackrock, and the visuals of the lava and the chains is ridiculously well-done. So I propose to Blizzard, please do the same thing with Icecrown Citadel, just with ice instead of lava. Patch 3.3 should have enough content to support a big castle you have to walk through to get to a couple 5 man instances (like BRD and LBRS) leading to an initial 10/25 man (UBRS) and then the final epic raid (10/25 man like a redone Molten Core). They could even stagger the release of the content like they are trying to do with 3.2's raid. This would give people a ton of content and make them feel the payoff of the Northrend and Arthas storylines was worth the wait.

If we just walk up to the door of Icecrown like we do Ulduar, doesn't it take away from the awesome feeling of walking into a mega-bad-guy-zone like Blackrock Mountain? And in turn, wastes one of the great storylines of Warcraft...perhaps the best storyline of all? The only caveat I have is that the linear style of the instances of WOTLK should remain in the new content, as the Blackrock instances are terribly confusing. Nevertheless, I'd rather run those four instances over anything in WOTLK based on the epic feeling you get there. So until we start getting details of 3.3, I'll be praying that this castle...



Looks a lot like this Mountain!

Happy 10th Birthday to Clarissae

Well it's official, all three of the younger members of the AE Team now share a level, that level being 10. This is a good time to really begin to learn what these characters can do, and we'll see how long it takes before we're celebrating the big 2-0 on all of them. Clarissae is almost done with Azuremyst Isle now, and will be making a trip to mecca, I mean the Exodar, before she heads up to Bloodmyst to continue her training. She's also trained up a level in Mining hitting 55/150 and Engineering which is at 67/100. Engineering is a neat profession as it kind of builds on itself rather than requiring fresh mats all the time like Tailoring and Enchanting. I'll get to see how some of these explosives work as I level now.

Here's the DING picture just because I hadn't posted one yet and well, Ekat doesn't get these anymore.




And an update is in order with Clarissa hitting double digits, here's what she looks like in some more quest greens, her new staff instead of a mace, and her heirloom shoulders (can we call them shoulders if they only cover one? /boggle).

Blowout City

22-1.

Let that sink in for a moment. That's the embarrassment my beloved Cincinnati reds put up last night against defending world champion Philadelphia. It stands as the worst losing margin in the 140 year history of the Reds organization. While most people today appear to be wishing there were a mercy rule in Major League Baseball (it was 10-0 in the first inning), I have to say I get some sick enjoyment out of watching a position player come in to pitch like Paul Janish did for the second time this season. Sure, he gave up 5 in an inning of a 15-4 loss and gave up 6 last night in an inning, but it's like watching a little leaguer out there pitching in the big leagues. I can only imagine what the pitching coach went out there to tell Janish last night before he gave up the grand slam that made it 22-1...what advice can you give a non-pitcher on how to pitch??

This game brought my attention to other blowouts in my life. Whether it be my usually awful slow-pitch softball team or my PvP record on my main, I don't have to look far for blowouts in my life. Ekaterinae is a holy priest, which means most of the time in a battleground I look like this:




Now things got better in 3.1 with dual specs, as I could experiment with Shadow and learn the secrets of purple power. One of the best moments in my PvP career was defending Ironforge and Stormwind against an AIE Horde raid, as both throne rooms are close quarters and Mind Sear does about 15,000 DPS when there's 60 raiders in close quarters. I've even taken down some bad Death Knight players at 80 in battlegrounds, at least when I can go mano-a-mano. But anytime I want to heal, Holy just does not cut it. Perhaps there's someone out there who could give advice other than "spec Disc," but until then I'll be experiencing a lot of battlegrounds where I spend as much time in the Spirit of Redemption form as I do in human form. In other words, PvP to Ekat is like last night to the Cincinnati Reds.


Considering Ekat is my achievement hunter, I'm actually thinking about dropping the Shadow spec down the road to pick up Discipline. That way I wouldn't feel as inadequate about single-target healing (although Guardian Spirit with a 1 minute cooldown is pretty spicy for Holy) and could fully immerse myself in this PvP aspect of Warcraft that I just have not experienced enough of to this point.


In other news, Biancae (10) and Arielae (10) are resting up for more leveling work while Clarissae (8) has dinged a couple of times and picked up some heirloom shoulders to make the xp fly by. Clarissae will continue to clean up Azuremyst Island from the wretched results of the Exodar crash, and soon I suspect she'll be on her way over to Bloodmyst.

Achievements Yay!

So I nabbed Clarissa some quests and got her over to Azure Watch, where she picked up her heirloom shoulders from Ekat and some money. Clarissa is trained to learn First Aid, Engineering, and Mining as well as she levels out on the islands. Clarissa dinged to 6 this weekend, and Arielae and Bianca are at 10.

I actually spent a lot of time on Ekat, finishing up another faction at the Tournament (Ironforge) and getting exalted with Darnassus and Ironforge as well. This leaves Gnomeregan as the last faction to champion and get exalted. I also went in search of keys, which led me to BRD as well as the plaguelands for Scholo. Then I ran Scholo, BRD, and LBRS with Eitrin, who finished off his classic dungeonmaster. I need to do Stratholme to be done with that. While in BRD by myself, I took on a couple fire elementals and grinded my unarmed skill to 400, finishing off Master of Arms as well as Knuckle Sandwich. The old school instances continue to amaze me, as they are definitely fun and engaging. Must have been really hard back in the day though.

So Ekat will be working on Keymaster, as she's only 4 keys away now. Also will knock out Strat for classic dungeonmaster and then will move onto classic raids with Eitrin. Fun times!

Oh and a picture because Eitrin is obviously THE KING! :-)

The AE Team

A little history...I started playing back around Labor Day 2008. I had 4 real life friends in the game, one of which has moved on to prepping for Starcraft II. The remaining four of us have been members of The Illuminati on Earthen Ring for about the entire time I've been playing. I started on a human priest (Ekaterinae) because healing always intrigues me, and sure enough I fell in love. Everything has been an absolute joy on this main, even though I leveled her holy all the way to 80! What a grind! I also played around with a dwarf hunter (Vanadae), which is a nice relaxing side project when I want to be alone. I tried a draenei warrior (Aenariel) but never got into it, and once the Death Knight craze had died I tried one of those and got him all the way to level 71 (Navarionae). I bought some tanking gear and ran UK a couple of times, thinking I would find some freshness in the game. However, all I found was a frustrating challenge. I realized a few days ago that each of us in my group of friends has completely different playstyles and goals. I'll refer to them by their main's names to keep it cool.

Aurys loves playing on a million alts (he has 50 toons), he loves PvP and raiding. He's splitting his primary time between his original guild Nights on another server and The Illuminati. He's also the only one who plays Horde-side as well as Alliance.

Eitrin loves leveling toons, and has 1 of each class on Earthen Ring, alliance side. Most over 60.

Mikola loves dailies, and has more money and dailies completed on his 2-3 powerful toons than any of the rest of us.

And as for myself, I love the healing role. I love being the backbone of groups and never having to worry about finding anything other than a tank. I have limited playtime for real life reasons, so I'm only working on 2 mains and 2 alts, all healers. So the new AE Team is officially formed, made up of healers of each class to keep my life interesting in game. I will only play Vanadae and Navarionae when I need to get away from it all...but those toons will likely never see max level and that's the plan. So without further ado, here's the AE Team!

First, the Alliance-side main is Ekaterinae (80), a human priest who has received the lion's share of my playtime and is my achievement and seasonal holiday hunter. She was created in August 2008. Priest healing is so amazing, and her offspec is currently Shadow for dailies but I might make her Discipline for more healing goodness. She's also bankrolling the Alliance-side with a bag business and emblems for heirlooms. She's maxed Tailoring, Enchanting, Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid.




Second, the Horde-side main (and only toon for the foreseeable future) is a blood elf Paladin named Biancae (10). She will be receiving the most of my initial attention on the new leveling plans, at least over the next two. She was created in July 2009 and will be a Miner/Jewelcrafter as well as Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid.




The first Alliance alt is a night elf druid named Arielae (10). She was created back in March 2009 and has been languishing behind my previous set of alts until my recent revelations. Although still subject to change, I believe she will specialize in Herbalism and Alchemy.




The second and final Alliance alt is a draenei shaman named Clarissae (1). She was also started in July 2009 and will be tearing up Azuremist and Bloodmyst Islands very soon. No professions have been selected for her, though Mining and Engineering is where I'm leaning for fun. After all, who doesn't want fun on an alt?




And the team would not be complete without bank alts! Aebanky has been my little pink-pigtailed gnome banker on Alliance side for many months now, and Aetrusty has now joined the fold as a companion on the Horde side, since my mains cannot always go auction housing themselves. So here they are:



So with all that being said, welcome to WoW Trek. I will mostly be talking about these leveling alts and healing in the 4 classes, although there may be days when I talk about other aspects of the game. If you happen to cross paths with any of my toons in Earthen Ring, say hello! I'll be happy to see you.

A Terrible PUG Heroic

I did Pa'troll one time. It was barf city, so I never did it again and rep grinded AC solely through ta-BARD rep just like every other faction in WOTLK. Speaking of rep grinding...

So I get home about half an hour early because the project I was working on needs a partner meeting, and he's not willing to do it until this morning. Plus, wife and Paige were off to King's Island for the afternoon. As it turned out, I ended up with like 3+ hours of unexpected playtime. I started with the Tournament dailies and right as I'm picking up the Edge of Winter in HF, a tell goes out in gchat to help heal on a couple bosses in heroic HoS, which is the daily. I haven't instanced much recently, so I jump on it. Well we get in the instance and it's me and Mannodios (80 lock) from the Illuminati and three from , who I've worked with before but is not the best group of players.

As we're standing there waiting for an AFK'er to come back, the mobs at the front of the instance respawn. It is at this point where I realize this is going to be a challenging group. I whisper Mannodios and ask how long they've been in there, and she says "they are nice people just slow." OK, well now you've got a damn good healer so let's get it done. They had finished only Krystallus, and had wiped I guess like 5-6 times on the Maiden of Grief. I didn't even know that was possible. Anyways, as we're reclearing the opening wing one of the AAG guys is moaning about stomach pains on vent. And his guildies, being nice people, start inquiring about his health. Turns out, the guy just had stomach bypass surgery or somesuch and is having strong stomach pains. So we convince him to call his surgeon and sure enough, he's off to the emergency room, but only after we convince him we'll be OK. Seriously dude, real life health bars are more important than anything in game. /facepalm

AAG cannot find a replacement, so I call out in gchat. And immediately pick up Zao, so another 80 lock from our guild. We get her summoned and go up and beat the everloving piss out of Maiden. I immediately get whispers and party chat bombed from the 3 original members of the group for GREAT HEALS OMG! So they must have been running with a complete moron. I know the next two bosses and especially the Brann event are a couple of the harder overall heroic bosses, so I'm barely optimistic. We clear to the Brann event. Wipe. Wipe. Wipe. I tell them this is our last go, and we manage to all die but right as Brann gets his job done and kills all the boss mobs himself. LOL. So we rez run while Brann has his talking fest and get ready for the final boss. At this point Zao is inspecting Manno and asks, what's up with Moonshroud Robe? Why not Ebonweave Robe? Manno says that she couldn't find the Ebonweave Robe on the AH and so settled for the Moonshroud even though its not optimal. /facepalm

So our first try on Sjonnir goes OK, but not quite good enough. Second try, tank D/C's. Third try, Kelley gets home and doesn't leave a hand open to unlock the door so she bangs on the door until I go open it. We'd literally just pulled when she started banging. With a sigh, I put G-Spirit on the tank and run to the door and back. By the time I get back G-Spirit has just been consumed and I'm at 8% health. I couldn't click the Fel Healthstone in time, so I end up refilling the tank, but it's not quite enough. I apologize to the group and tell them we'll buckle down and get him, and of course we do. Daily heroic quest paid for the repair bill, Zao nabbed some serious upgrades, and Zao and I combined to form a new Ebonweave robe with the Frozen Orb for Manno. I got gold for my cooldown cloth and mats to remake them, Zao got a skill point in Tailoring, Manno doesn't look stupid anymore, everyone wins.

Despite the facepalming nature of the HoS run, it was very satisfying to come in and lead a group to a victory I'm fairly certain they don't get unless they have an overgeared healer making up the difference. In any event, I know I made another close guild friend with Manno for sticking it out and making it succeed, and of course Zao is always cool to run with. I capped the night with lots of quest turn ins for the Dalaran and Tournament dailies, netting probably another 100 gold or more.