I had a very bad feeling about this evening’s Naxx.  Just a vibe.   It turned out, it was completely unfounded. We rolled over three wings and had time for a heroic after.

Our MT and two main DPS were complete beasts. We set guild records for every kill. As an example, Anub went down before the second insect plague. Faerlina’s enrage timer barely went off (after we killed all her acolytes). We had time for two swaps on Four Horsemen, no more.  We HALVED our time on Razz, almost.

That was awesome.

I tried a new healing approach; Renew was only used in special circumstances. Otherwise, I kept to PW:S, Lesser Heal, and Penance when off cooldown. My mana was never in danger of draining.

I’m looking forward to trying this on Iron Council.

One thing I recall from the announcement of the new expansion was the outrage over some of the new class-to-race combos. One that people scratched thier heads over was Gnome priest.

Personally, I scratch my head pondering those people.

Hello there!

Haven’t you ever been in the Clean Room in Gnomeregan?

Who’s this?

Sure, you’re going to say there’s a big difference between a ‘medic’ and a ‘priest’. I agree.

What I am addressing is the people that think that Gnome priests are something out of the Ether.

I disagree. There’s a foundation, right here. The rest … is embellishment.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Incidentally, to those people thinking that Gnomeregan will be restored as a new Gnomish capit0l city, I’d like to give you one reason why it won’t.

The Horde.

If the Alliance gains a new capitol city, and the Horde does not, the tears will be bitter and widespread. The QQ will be epic. Those delicate Orc warriors won’t be able to deal with such an affront.

So, if it DOES happen, there will be a tradeoff.  I wonder what it might be?

Maybe it’ll be half of Ashenvale and the rest of Hillsbrad. We already know they’re swinging Horde, and I have heard of no territory given over to Alliance. So maybe Gnomer will be the tradeoff.

Or maybe something will open up for the Trolls.  ZF?  Or maybe ZG – we’ve already heard of massive changes taking place in STV.

Well. Something to consider.

Last night the guild did its second ever OS +1D run. That’s not what this is about. By all accounts that one was rough, though they got it together for the final attempt and pulled off a flawless execution.

Last night’s Heroic Daily was AN, which, you may recall, has been a nemesis of ours for some time. This time through, our tank tore up the landscape, nailing everything to the floor while our DPS hammered it. I’ve never seen one go more smoothly.  The major difference is that Jasra wasn’t healing – and if you think that just stirred up some navel-gazing, you’re right on.  I think it’s a given, now, that Jas is going to have to go in there and prove something, at least to herself.

We also did GD in a kind of revenge motif considering one of our number had had a bad night there recently.  The team performed flawlessly. Our new palli tank is a real beast, it felt like we were on rails in there. So that for the bad night.

Oh, by the way – my DPS is not, currently, all that stellar. I was the token fifth body on this run.  It was amazing what the GM and our top Boomkin were laying down. I would say they had at least 75% of the DPS covered on that run.  I was hovering around 2K, and happy to have it.  They were 3-4K each. ::boggle::

Anyhow, given the numbers I am seeing now, as well as out of sheer curiosity, I’m thinking of handing over the DPS reigns to Flora for a while after I see K’T downed with my own eyes.  I don’t think I will be able to keep up with the Joneses with this spec right now, and I’m not yet ready to re- or dual- spec for Survival, though it intrigues me and gives me an excuse to have the Kitteh out.  But Flora’s just bursting with potential right now, and I’m starting to get an itch to see how she performs in a real instance or raid.

So Jas ran Grimm’s sweetie’s alt through Uldaman last night. Overheard in party chat:

“I swear, there’s no doubt you’re Floramel’s sister.”

I’m so proud, I’m almost misty over here.

Almost.

DoTs are DoTs are DoTs, sister.

“… and so she said she’d never visit the Scryer’s tier again!”

LAUGHTER ERUPTS

Eventually one orc sits up a bit in his seat. “Well, boys, ladies, if nobody else can top that, I think we have a winner. Everbody pony up and buy one for good ol’ …”

“’scuse me, sir!”

“Eh?”

“I mighta seen something, you could say, might top that, when I was standing duties in Orgrimmar.”

“Orgrimmar?!? Now yer just makin’ stuff up!”

A Blood Elf stamps the butt of his spear on the floor. “You know better than that, soldier. True stories only!”

“Well, I’ll tell you, and you can decides amongst yerselfs, okay?”

The Sarge narrows his eyes; “You better make it worth the wait, Private, or I’ma gonna send you to stand a post in Wintergrasp.”

“Yes sir, as you wish, sir.

Well, it’s like this.

I was standin’ a rotation in Org, which is fine since I get to womanize and drink a lot …”

(several in the room spontaneously cheer)

“… yeah, thanks you … when this Night Elf in cat form (not bad looking, either) comes running up the back alley.

Naturally, we gives chase, but  the Corporal made me go back to my post, just in case she had friends.

I think he just wanted to have more time to beat on her with his axe –”

(more cheers)

“– yeah, I like hittin’ stuff with me axe, too — but anyway … where was I?

Oh yeah!

So I heads back to my post when I sees … well, a nekkid Dorf.”

“That’s it? We get so many naked Dwarfs in Org that they count towards the Census!”

“Aye, that we do, Sarge … but this one was ridin … a chicken.”

The room erupted into chaos. “You expect us to believe that you saw a naked Dwarf ride through Orgrimmar on a chicken?“, the Blood Elf yelled. “Sargent, I thought you trained them better!”

The Sarge glared at the hapless private; “Give me one good reason not to send you off to Northrend this very minute, private!”

“Well, I have this picture what some Goblin took for me.”

“Ugh …. ” the Sarge muttered to himself briefly. “Okay, you glubberthumpers, what are ya waitin’ on? Drinks for the private!”

THE BAR ERUPTS IN CHEERS AND DRINKING.

We returned to Ulduar this weekend and I’m happy to say that XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, and Loot Leviathan all dropped respectfully before us, one shots all.  I seem to be having a problem staying vertical, though.

It also seemed – at least to me – that we didn’t bring our ‘A’ game. There were more than enough people to fill it out, but I didn’t feel the energy. Maybe it was just me.

Ignis did not light my fire

The MT had a thing he wanted to try, so we gave it a shot. I’m not entirely sure if everyone grokked it or not, considering that nobody ever started out where he said to. And as usual our DPS (which was rip-roarin’) had a tenancy to start as soon as he made contact. I finally suggested that he call out when he was settled, and THEN they attack. We promptly had two DPS start early anyway.

One officer offered to drop out to make room for a better DPS. We were pretty sure, however, that DPS was not the issue. As with last week, getting the adds together and killing them is the big thing, and we’re failing on execution.

The Iron Council

Eventually the boss decided it was time for a change of pace, and we went to test the waters with the Iron Council. Initially we failed to manage too well because we were using a 25-man strategy; once we had the chance to realize that we started making headway; phase 1; phase 2 (revenge of the phase); eventually we were left with one guy to take down, the dwarf caster. We had a bit of a deadline which we intended to meet, but we had that ‘five percent go fever’ going, in which nobody wanted to leave it at 5 percent, or 4, or 3. So we made two more attempts…

Iron Council is Down!

Now about that mana thing …

This is a LONG fight. There is easily time for two shadow beast evocations in there, and that’s without a shadow priest talent tree. I had pots. A druid innervated me. I had elixirs. And still, mana – not so much.

I have been doing homework. I’m starting to see that I need to change my habits.  One of the first things, probably, is to get my HoT off of a hotbar.  My mechanic is skewed towards direct heals and bubbles. I need to learn now to drive that better.

Until then … :: sigh :: … MP5 is back on the table as a major player in my gearing decisions.

Epic drops occur in the oddest places.

Mine occured in the checkout line of Target.

I am sad that this is not Bind on Account, and the code given can only be used once.

Still.

Evil super chicken mount.

Booyah.

Our Naxx run tonight was unusual in that we had more applicants than slots. I did volunteer to sit it out, but there were … personality … issues that would have made that problematic.

The GM actually asked me to lead the raid for a moment … talk about blood running cold!

Don’t get me wrong. I think I could do it, or at least as well as we usually do. But, to quote a former demon hunter … I was not prepared.  I told the GM later that given a warning I will be more than happy to give it a try, and live with the results (likely: fail).

As it was, with three melee DPS, two ranged, three healers, and two tanks, we made it through Arachnid Okay but got hung up on Globbulus. Our melee DPS was taking massive damage, and it was just impossible to keep them up. In retrospect maybe I should have handed out healing assignments, but hindsight is 20/20, eh?

Ah well, a couple of peeps got upgrades, so I am “not prepared” to go emo over that.   Given the conversation that followed in vent I’m actually far from unhappy. Progress has odd little zigs and zags.

A story.

Bob was hitting his hand with a rock, over and over again, causing himself much pain.

Sandra asked him why he was doing that.

“I wanted to punish you for wearing that ugly hat,” he said, hitting his hand once more.

Thus is the logic of the /emoquit.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

We took down Sarth+1D last night. Truly, much tougher than one might suspect, or at least if you’re not prepared for it, it falls apart f-a-s-t.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

As you might have guessed, more /emodrama. I give up. Go sit in a hole and weep bitter emo tears. Come back when you can envision yourself typing “I disagree with your desision, GM, and here’s why” instead of “/gquit”.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Headless was kind to us last night, in which he dropped his mount for one lucky guildie (not one I am fond of but oh well) and at least three squashlings, one which I received. /petcheer

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

It saddens me that the esteemed Ratshag at Need More Rage is hanging up his blogging togs, and presumably the rest of the team as well.  Not counting WoW Insider, his was in the first three blogs I started reading, along with BRK (also now gone) and Hydragyrum (formerly “Liquid Silver” over on Vox, currently Almost Evil).   And, due to Meta’s early exposure to his musings, he’s largely to blame for much of the way that this blog came to be. True story!

There are many Ratshag favorites out there, let us share ours:

• What he likes about being a warrior
• The Helm of Evil Laughter. Also, it has groupies.
• That other – tupid – hebet. Redux.
• Emo Kinnavieve
• Quite possibly, we’re not saying, inspiration for this.
• Five words: Nipple chain.  Maybe. Maybe not.

Thanks for the memories, you big glubberthumper.  And you’re always welcome to drop in here if you want a taste of true obscurity.

While Jas was hogging the spotlight in Ulduar this week, I was continuing on in Naxx, with a desire to complete it.

Coming out of Military wing, we had Four Horsemen left and I was looking at relatively pleasing numbers with the Stompasaurus. I had some time to prepare, so I took advantage of it.

First up, the laser kitty was leveled to 80, and the peasants rejoiced. Once I had that, it was time to do some numbers, so off I went to Darnasus (because I needed a trainer close by) to do some comparisons. I was troubled to find that the laser kitty lagged behind by around 100 dps. No matter what I tried, it simply wasn’t going to exceed a Stompasaurus properly talented. Incidentally, I found a talent build that added 200 dps to the lizard’s contribution, so it wasn’t a wash.

Thus armed, I returned.

Our first attempt was a wipe when the shammi in the back corner kind of freaked out and died. This was his first time on 4H and he probably panicked. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell people that all they need to do is keep aggro and live, they freak until they experience one good run.

Tenatively, I volunteered to pull out the Bear and take one corner. After all, I had seen the fight through Jas’ eyes, and I know more on the theory of how it could go. Besides, if a tree druid can do it, so can I!

I’m happy to say that it worked like a charm. I just kept autofire on and kept heals on Bumbles, and it just ticked like clockwork.  BM, foshizzle! RAWR.

Construct went smooth as glass, leaving us with Sapphir -

What?

You want Jas to come in to heal Sapph and KT?

Nooooooooo!

/sulk

/sigh

I’ll be over there trying out the ales.

Saturday was our first ever attempt on Ulduar. It went far more successfully than I would have predicted. We had our ‘A’ team and ‘A’ game – other than the seeming inability to be on time, including myself.

We one-shotted Flame Leviathan and XT-002, and two-shot Razorscale and Kologarn. We were unable to down Ignis, probably because of add management – hard to tell in all the confusion.

Overall it was a fairly pleasant experience considering that drama occurred right before and even during. Boy, we sure can get it.  We don’t have that many people logging it at any time, how can we generate that much drama so constantly?

Well, I’m not sure where this puts us now for raiding. We’re running out of nights to raid everything. We still need to work out Sarth with drakes up, and EoE and VoA are taunting us, and some people have actual lives to attend to as well.  I feel if we keep pushing for naxx raids that we’ll lose the more ambitious toons that want to focus on Ulduar now that we have made our first steps.

I guess I can see that. Nobody raids Molten Core anymore, except for lolz.  Still, those getting geared up are going to have to resort to badge runs and scrounge what they can get, looks like.  The good news is that as small as this guild is, that won’t be many people.

Onoz teh dramaz

So, remember when I said to enjoy the good times when you have them? The underlying sentiment is that they are all too fleeting.

You know where this is going: I was proven right.

The very next night, one of our long-standing founding members and officers – who has been a constant pain in the codpiece – decided to erupt in /g chat with a pile of obscenities and swearing about how bad pugging on our server was, and our server in generally just sucked. A guildy – OK, it was Mrs. Grimm – snapped back, “well, roll on another server, then.”  He immediately /ragequit.

/sigh

I’m done with him. I’m so done with him that I’m considering leaving the guild and starting my own to house all those that want to have nothing to do with him. That might effectively end OCV, because at this point I don’t know if even the GM would stay behind.

For now I’ll consider my options and mull it over some more. I have to decide why I would even bother starting a guild if this game has gotten to the point where I’m willing to go that far. I mean, maybe it’s time to wrap it up, or at least take another break for a few months. Maybe all I need to do is put him on ignore and be done with him.

In more pleasant news

Much to my surprise, raid night at Naxx proceeded as planned. Even more to my surprise, I was invited. I had Jasra parked there since the priest that we had planned on healing in her place was not on (we found out later: wife aggro).

I was unhappy that I was not able to bring out SDI for the proceeds, but as he’s currently only 78, there would be level aggro all over the place.  So out came Reaganomics, the stompasaurus of economic dooom!

I had a bad moment after the Anub fight. I looked at the damage meter and commented that my DPS was sucking big-time at only 1200. The GM disagreed … then I realized I wasn’t merging pet numbers in, as I had been wanting to see how SDI’s broke out from mine earlier.  Once I merged the numbers, I was much happier with my performance.

I came in 3rd in a relatively weak DPS pack. Our top-flight mage and hunter (SV) were leading with around 3500 and 3000 apiece, then me at 2500, then various melee dps starting around 1900. Our tank¹ actually outdid most of the melee DPS, as far as that goes.

Which makes it more astounding how well we ran that raid. We had a couple of wipes, no doubt attributable to some relatively newb blood (including me!), but overall we ran through the place and got 2 1/2 wings done, one of which was Construct, so no ezmode for us.  We got plague wing and Four Horsemen, then we go after KT.

I got two pieces, a neck piece from Anub and a helm from Thadd, which is – by the way – the first helm I’ve had that I wasn’t ashamed to show in a long time. It’s a right proper helm for a Dwarf.

Or the Goddamn Batman.

1. ”All hail K! All hail K!“” [↩]

Location: 67, 77.

Time: 10:38 Server, probably spawned at 10:30

I had parked outside of Nexus because one of the DPS in the group inside was having connection problems. While Jas went off and ground SoH, I waited around in case I was needed. As soon as possible, I was back in the air headed for Zim’Torga. The time: 10:27. I thought I might be able to make it if I hearthed to Dal first.

Arrival at Zim’Torga was 10:33. Chances were slim, but the only guarantee is that if you don’t look, you don’t find it. I’m talking to my sweetie at the time, when all of a sudden words of less than one syllable came out of my mouth. There he was!

/land

/abandon pet¹

/drop freezing trap and stand on it

/tame

Several shakey seconds later, my sweety is cheering in my ear and I’m estatic

Mister SDI is only level 77 now, so I have to level him before I can take him somewhere serious. I’m looking forward to seeing how we do together.

/collapse in heap

As Rosa has pointed out, this has been a great week to be Grimmtooth. Got my green drake, got my laser kitteh, helped recruit a cracking good tank into the guild, might get to RAID again … I’ll take it. Enjoy the good times, laddies and lassies, for you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Here’s to good times.

1. A gorilla named der trihs – figure it out! [↩]

Ugh. One thing us hunter types like is hours and hours of paperwork.

Psyche.

OK, you got me. We pretty much would prefer raiding with the Onyxia Wipe Guy to paperwork. But it’s a necessary evil. There are tons of sites and tools out there that will cater to you and make helpful suggestions on gearing options so that you can plan your gear needs out. Wouldn’t you hate to miss out on a run to Heroic VH in which an actual upgrade dropped? I know I would. Well, by knowing what you need and where it comes from, you can make ready to jump on that open DPS slot before some Boomkin gets it instead.

And yet, it’s not that easy. Sites like Gear Wishlist provide you with raw information, somewhat filtered, but it’s useless without the proper context.

As an example, as a BM Hunter your primary characteristic will be Hit.  Right until you hit the Hit Cap, which is around 263. After that? RAP, Crit, and Haste. And gems? How do they play? I always give an arbitrary +30 RAP for every red, and +10 for every yellow. Blues I kinda don’t know what to do with them.

But you probably see the point here. RAWR or whatever can only address (comfortably) one particular aspect of your character, if there are more than one to consider. Since I’m well beyond hit cap, I don’t really care about +hit unless it drops me below again.  Yet most of the tools out there won’t assume you’re hit capped.

And so, I grind. Grinding of a different type.  Pop an item off the list, compare – by hand – with what I’m wearing. Score it. Move on to the next.

Now, this is paying off well, but it is tedious. And since I prefer to be in-game for this (using Rating Buster to help me zero in on preferred attributes), that means I spend a lot of time just sitting around.

So I’ve taken to camping out. Just me, my mount, and – somewhere – Gondria.  I can sit there hovering over a spawn point, mess with my numbers, and every half hour, fly the route.¹ Then it’s back to hovering.

I’ve chosen the spawn point southeast of Zim’Torga to be the ideal spot to hover. If I get called to action for a run, it’s a quick flight to safety and then either mount up or change out toons. It works out nicely since that spot is the one most likely to get ganked due to its proximity to a quest hub and three different quest areas. The others are more secluded and thus have a greater chance of survival until I get there.

It’s a zen way to kill an hour or two.

My main concern is this: it disrupts the daily routine for the clan if I use the whole session for this, but the more time spent in a contiguous block the better my chances.  On the one hand, I really need to gear up in all respects, including the raiding pet. On the other hand, I do have allotted time slots in which to do this.

In the end, I think I’ll be partially pulling rank, and partially guilting the others into letting me have the time. After all, I’ve been graciously giving my time to the team when my turn pops up, for the past few weeks.

Guilt: it’s what’s for supper.

Oh, and the choice of Gondria? Sure, Skoll is the Sleek New Hawtness, but I really like the looks of Gondria over all of them. It’s that simple.

1. My research indicates that Gondria spawns at the top and bottom of the hour, if he spawns. Know differently? Drop a comment and call me a newb! [↩]

A lot of people get bent out of shape if they can’t get all the achievements for all the holidays and thus get what Flora calls “their big purple strap-on.”   (Don’t look at me!) It really does take the fun out of the holidays, but some of those are pretty gruesome, too, forcing one to do unseemly things, such as PvP.

Here at casa de Grimmtooth we prefer less stress (Meta has to watch his blood pressure) so we set our sights on more achievable goals to start with.  For example, the Green Proto-Drake is a rare “hatch” from the egg you buy from the Oracles for two gold and change.  Now, I’ve been buying that egg every time I could since January, for I would guess around 250 gold total. But it paid off. Oh, yes.

Isn’t she a beauty?¹

Jasra and Flora are still working on theirs, but at last I can finally finish off the Oracle line and start working on the Frenzyheart.

Jas’ Naxx raid finished off last night by clearing two and a half wings plus Sapph plus KT. She got her tier shoulders and a new mace. We’re still not sure if it’s in total an upgrade, but probably so.  Each of the fights took longer, though, than they used to. Partly because they had three healers rather than two. On the plus side, healing was easy peasy. On the minus side … slow. Close to enrage timer on a couple of them.

So I’m wondering if Jas or the Shammi healer should step out and let a DPS step in. :: polishes gun ::

Oh, and to any curious visitors from Tam’s .. hi! Don’t forget to set out a new keg if you empty the one that’s out. And don’t mind the snow tiger, he’s harmless as long as you don’t try to pinch the silverware.

1. Well, might be a he. You have to lift the tail to find out, and that’s one big tail! [↩]