The Undercity

Of Olympics, then I’ll go back to blogging (there’s your reason I seem to have died).

Wowcrendor rocks the videos again, this time poking fun at all the incessant blood elf rap songs that come out as machinima.

To be fair, I rather enjoy the wow rap!   Now back to being swamped.  Just had to share this one.

It’s all about me!

I was planning to make this a new weekly Monday feature but then the game sucked me in on my Druid far too much and I never finished the post.  I know, crazy, me with an irregular posting habit, what is the world coming to!  So yes, once a week (in theory), I plan to indulge my selfish blogger needs and just talk about stuff that’s going on with Latus and Cowtch.  This first one might be a bit longer than most, since there’s a solid month to cover to explain all the changes.

Success on Coilfang

My 10mans were running relatively successfully (it was ToC, and nobody was interested in hard modes save 2 or 3 people… how hard could 10man ToC be at the time!) but things got to a point where I just couldn’t get any upgrades from that, at all, and people were drifting away.  There was never an interest in my group to do a full 10 hard mode run in a way that everybody agreed on.  So, boring repetitive content with zero upgrades was on the menu.  I decided to handpick some of the better player from my old guild <Raging Spears> (RS) and invite them to a Tuesday 25 run.  The guild is first and foremost a social guild and as thus cannot field effective 25 man teams because there are too many non-raiders who think fires are to warm themselves in Northrend, or who manage a whopping 1.5k dps in t8 gear or higher.  So, I had about 15 people confirm from the guild and found a few others from a friendly guild, then pugged the last few spots.  We only raided once a week, Tuesdays, for 3 hours.  Success was moderate.  We would down Beasts and Jaraxxus and then wipe a bunch on FC.  After 3 or 4 weeks, we finally got FC and then wiped on TV a lot.  This repeated a few times until we one shot the first four bosses and then wiped a lot on Anub.  There was at most a rotation of 35 people for the entirety of these runs, so the following was very loyal and people played the part.  We all appreciated downing 1-4 more 25 man bosses than we would have otherwise, and it got a lot of us a chance at gear upgrades and the second level of tier9, not to mention a lot of crafting patterns.

Finally, 3.3 was released and that night the raid went nowhere, we did some 10mans.  Everybody was far too busy, understandably, with the new content.  The next week, we showed up again in ToC and wiped once on Anub, then finally, finally got the content down.  Granted, I had cleared it the week after it fully opened with a pug, but to most of the people in the group it was the first full 25 man clear.  More gear, general happiness, etc…  we then went into ICC25 and downed Marrowgar.  I know, Marrowgar is a pushover for any organized group (even pug), but to us it was a big accomplishment.  We are on a crappy crappy crappy server and raiding guilds are far and few between.  Pugs are even rarer, and here we were, a group of people in social or 10man guilds, finally able to get to the higher levels of raiding.  3.3 allowed the dps to really gear themselves up and we were pushing numbers that would have allowed us to seriously compete with Festergut’s dps check requirements, the tanks would have been ready.  So the group was good.

I vacationed the next two weeks but a few others stepped in and led the runs, I believe Anub was downed at least once more.  Then, when I came back, it turned out that guild drama had hit again.

Gay Coilfang Drama

The guild I was primarily associated with was one of the larger GLBT friendly guilds in the WoW US community, lots of members (pun intended) and all around a great place to be from a social standpoint.  The regular pattern of this guild is such:

-gain lots of guild members.
-some of those raid members start joining pug raids
-non-raiding members complain that raiders aren’t running with the guild
-raiding members drop their pugs and higher content and go back to easy raids with guild.
-raids go slowly, slowly, slowly. with lots of fail.
-those who complained stop raiding because it’s hard.
-pugs are brought in to replace them, good players, raids progress again.
-the ones who complained before start complaining again: you’re bringing PUGS over guildies??
-raiders say “F U” and quit.
-raids slowly die off
-guild gains a lot of members.
-repeat

I’ve been in this cycle twice.  The first time was when Ulduar was released and a 10man group split from the main guild to make their own.  There was increasing irritation at our group for “succeeding” while the other attempts at groups failed.  Plus, we had two pugs in our group of 10.  We should’ve brought guildies.  So, “F U”.

Then drama hit that group (described on this blog around half a year ago or more), and most people ended up going back to Raging Spears because we still all liked the individuals.  Latus never rejoined the guild but all my alts are in it, including Cowtch mah awesomsauce dr00d.

You can bet your ass that the success of the 25 started irritating the complainers, especially since around 8-9 people were not from the guild.  This was, of course, because there were not 8-9 more people who could do the DPS or healing or tanking required for this group to succeed 25 ToC and some of the first ICC fights.  They’re not hard raids, but you still can’t complete them with people doing under 2k dps and dying to every possible boss mechanic.

Those who rarely raided and who have in some cases not even been online for more than 2 weeks out of half a year really stepped up their complaints when I was on vacation.  When I came back, my calendar showed an invite to my own 10man on Tuesday.  Tuesday is, of course, the day all the people in that 10man normally ran the 25 group I was leading and organizing.  The guild forums showed a whole new “the guild will be running raids differently now” thread where we were all posting our raid times.  To my query about the status of 25 man raids, the response was “we will start with ToC but then move on with guild only ICC.”

What that meant: your 25 man runs are not wanted anymore, the guild is pulling out of them.  Ok, I felt like they had messed around with something I had built from the ground up (with lots of help, of course) over 3 months without even consulting me.  None of them ever came to me to discuss it.

So, I looked at a server where some friends had transferred to, Moon Guard (yes, lol RP-PVE, lolol, stfu) and found that their top progressed guild <Iron Dragon> was in dire need of a Warlock.  Applied, got accepted, transferred the next night.

Coilfang is for dr00d

Cowtch stayed behind on Coilfang because I can’t not play with all the people I met there and the people who I knew before.  Morgaina, Sehk, Thymbul, Rimona to name a few… Squintie and then all the Raging Spears gang… I simply enjoy playing with them.  It’s fun.  So Cowtch will stay and play there.  Of course, there are no more 25 man raids happening in the guild, and the original main 10man is pretty much dead, I don’t think it’ll go this week (and it’s only been two weeks since latus transferred).  A combination of things led to this, but it’s happening.  Cowtch will probably end up pugging a few runs here and there with some friends.

Ironically, the new guild for Latus has helped me gear my druid tank a bit differently.  I’m done with the noob tank mistake of just stacking stamina, I’m now going for massive dodge rating.  And from the 5man and 10mans I’ve done, I think I’m doing much better than I used to despite having lost 5k+ health.  I’m building a lot more armor and I have more cooldowns (new trinkets). I like it.

Moon Guard and Real Raiding

Having spent so much time in a social environment out of a mistaken sense of obligation (on one hand) and a genuine enjoyment of the company of many of the people in that environment, being in a raiding guild is HEAVEN!!!

<Iron Dragon> raids 3 times a week, Tuesday to Thursday, 9pm to midnight.  They are not competing for world firsts, not by far, but they are competent and do hard modes.  They have the Celestial Defender title and they can get to Anub heroic with 50 attempts left (haven’t tried H Anub with them yet, so I don’t know how well/badly they do), and we’ve been about 700k health away from downing 25 Putricide last week.  I’m pretty sure he’s going down easily this week.

My DPS is atrociously low.  I’m talking 7.5k on 25 Saurfang and being dead last among all the dps.  Thankfully, I seem to be a competent player and they realize nerves and slightly lower gear come into play.  I felt good that the 25 Putricide attempts had me 6th place in damage done, even though I was still last in DPS.

I have to impress them with my play style and approach enough to be invited to become a regular core raider, since I can’t really get upgrades until then (my frost emblems are not being used until I have a guarantee that I will be in the guild with a chance at upgrading my t10 pieces, otherwise I won’t buy t10 but the offset ones).  I did get a slight cloak upgrade from a regular ToC run, but nothing to write home about.

Last night we did an alt run of ICC10 that I joined, and wiped for 2 hours on Rotface.  We had two druid tanks and they bitched up a storm about keeping aggro on the big slime.  We tried both of them as the slime kiters, we tried the dps warrior’s tank offspec, and we finally tried with Latus the Warlock kiting and had our best attempts of the night right off the bat.  I did volunteer for it… you know, what’s the point of trying to make a good impression if you aren’t willing to take on the hard roles.  I think that was great, I showed I could be trusted with kiting, I showed I knew how to act/react in a fight, and I allowed the 10man to move on and two shot Putricide.

Conclusion

New guild: awesome.

Old guild:

Cowtch: awesome.  10 more triumph emblems and I can finish gearing him up for the best pre-ICC tanking job I can think of.  A stamina set and a dodge set are now in his grasp.  Stamina, he’ll reach about 55k+ raid buffed, dodge, he’ll be sitting at 50% dodge self buffed with no procs/cooldowns.

Latus: switched out his toc10 trinket (Fetish of Volatile Power) and went back to a naxx10 drop (Embrace of the Spider) because ilvl isn’t as important as actually having more dps and damage done. Boo.   He sits around 5.5k-6k in 10mans without a solid group for his own buffs, and 6k-6.5k in 25mans.  Of course, ICC is not a good place for casters in general, especially not warlocks.  So far, it seems very melee friendly.  But, never fear, I’ll keep finding ways to push it up ever so slightly even without gear upgrades, and eventually I’ll be allowed to roll for drops.  Contemplating going back to Affliction to get another 500 dps or so currently.  But Latus was/is a destro lock, ignoring a short stint in Naxx.  Meh.

Baron’s mount: still doesn’t exist.

Wishful thinking but no post before my two week holiday in Mexico (bwahaha).  Last minute packing and getting Merrymaker kinda sealed the deal.  Maybe that quick 10man ICC on my alt also didn’t help.  :O

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Whatever Else You Might be Celebrating, Happy Gaming!

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