Bladez is Back

So it has been a while since I have played World of Warcraft seriously. Last July I had switched my job at work from a primarily evening shift to a day shift. This didn't work to well for my raiding guild since it started raiding at midnight. I was also getting burned out from raiding constantly. Ulduar was on farm, people weren't showing up for raids, frustrations was high and it was a great time to pursue other interests.

During my break 3.2 came out and I found myself leveling up 2 alts. I got both my warrior and my shaman up to lvl 80 and pretty well geared out. Without being on a raiding schedule I was able to have fun, join pugs and get tons of gear but still go out when I wanted to. I had for the most part ignored Bladez considering I was still overly geared for anything I wanted to do and there weren't any big upgrades unless I wanted to raid full time. I also spent weeks at a time not logging into the game at all.

Then a few weeks ago patch 3.3 came out and it was calling my name. 3 new 5 man instances, a brand new raid and the new Dungeon Finder. On top of that everything was dropping emblems of triumph which rewarded gear that was better then what I had. Although I enjoy playing my alts and gearing them up, Bladez is who I love playing. I enjoy tanking and I love doing it on a Paladin. I started using the Dungeon Finder and was chain running heroics. There were so many upgrades to get and I was so overgeared for heroics that I wanted to push myself and the healer but taking 3-4 pulls at once. I survived almost everyone of them to. instances that used to take 45 minutes I had shaved down to 15-20 minutes. Often times the debuff for using the random heroic finder was still ticking down while we were fighting the last boss.

I had the itch to raid again. I was able to get into a few pugs doing ICC and it felt amazing tanking progression content again. I decided to find a new guild to call home. There is a sad feeling when you don't feel like you belong in the game. There is plenty to do but you don't have a team you rely on and they rely on you. I decided to app to Last Hope which has a raiding schedule that fits better with my lifestyle and is constantly pushing the latest content. I put in an app to the website but was told that I have to up my level of gear. At that point I had 33k unbuffed health and I hit the floor running.

I started chain running heroics, pugging raid content, and crafting epics. Since the patch came out I have gotten 75 emblems of frost and over 230 emblems of triumph to max out my tanking gear. Luckily during my crazy heroic runs a battered hilt had dropped and I was able to sell it for 25k. This helped fund my need to enchant and gem all my new gear. I also took this time to max out both Shieldz and Giaz alchemy so that I can transmute my own gems.

Now I am sitting at 40k health unbuffed with a Gear score over 5k and an average item level of 240. There is nothing I can do now outside of running a daily heroic for 2 emblems of frost and getting accepted into a raiding guild. Icecrown Citadel looks awesome and I can't wait to be kicking the asses of new bosses.

Aion Impressions

Summer is here, Yogg is dead and that means there is time to stop and smell the new MMO's. There are a bunch of new MMO's scheduled to be coming out over the holiday seasonand beyond. From Champions Online, DC Universe, Star Wars, Star Trek, and a whole bunch of other games that are trying to carve a niche in the empire that Blizzard currently owns. One of the games that has recently caught my eye is the new Aion game coming to computers this September. I hadn't even heard of Aion til recently. One of our forums post pointed out a trailer to the new game so I decided to check it out. The trailer just looked amazing. The environment's looked varied and beautiful. The combat fun and stylish and characters looked epic in design.

Warcraft while a fun game gets repetitive after 4 years of play. I want a game like WoW but from a different person's attempt to do it better. I check out the website and noticed that a beta is in effect and access is available with pre-order. I head down to my local Gamestop and put down some cash and walk away with a beta code. I proceed to follow the instructions and download the game. I try logging in but unfortunately it doesn't let me in. I do some research and beta's are only open a weekend at a time every other week. So I had to wait until this weekend to try it out. I jump on the servers and start creating my class.

You start out with the ability to join 1 of 2 races. At first glance it looks like a battle of light vs dark. The Elyos which are more angelic in design vs the Asmodians which are more demonic. Whether this is true or not I have no idea but its what I get at first glance. No matter what game I play from Elder Scrolls to Knights of the old republic I always find myself creating a good character. A saviour of the universe out to save the world and whoever needs help on the way. So I decided to create an Elyos male warrior. You get a choice of 4 different classes ranging from warrior, mage, scout, and priest. Each one has eventually splits off into 2 different classes with my warrior being able to be a Gladiator or Templar.

A gladiator is akin to an arms/fury warrior and templar a protection warrior. The one thing I have always liked from Warcraft is that you get character arche types that can do a variety of different roles and if you decided that you wanted to be prot instead of fury you had that option down the road. I'm not sure if Aion lets you change once you pick your sub-class. Considering this was a beta it didn't matter much but that will be a hard decision to make if it is permanent.

So my new warrior named Bladez steps into the world of Aion into Akarios Planes. I look around the world and while it is beautiful lacks some of the artistic brilliance that Warcraft has. This is the beginning zone so there is probably some beautiful zones awaiting for me in the future. I see a man with a blue arrow on top of his head so i figure this is Aion's version of the yellow exclamation mark. I run over to him and get my newbie quest. Go help the farmers with a problem of Kerub's taking over. I go over kill my 3 quest npc's and go back and collect my reward.

If you play warcraft a lot of things are familiar. Movement, inventory management, menus, leveling up, hp, mp, skills are all familiar. But as warcraft players we want to be able to customize everything the way we want. I am so used to being able to right click and swing my camera around to be able to see the environment. I was pissed to find out that I couldn't do it. I searched thought the options but I would just keep running to whatever spot I clicked on the terrain. I was able to change most other bindings but I didn't really need to considering there were very few abilities in the beginning. I continued on my quest of reporting from one person to the next and completing their objectives. What is nice is the fact that they have a built in quest helper. While looking at your quest locations and npc's would be marked with blue text. You could click the blue text and get a little blurb about it or click the locate button and it would put an x on your map.

As I leveled up I got a few abilities but nothing all to impressive. You basically get a strike ability but that strike was able to combo into a new ability that you get at level 3 that has to be used right after the original strike. It had a 10 second cooldown so you were basically left auto attacking until the mob died. I'm sure combat will get better as I level up but I just sat there hoping the mobs life dropped to zero before mine did. A few times I wasn't so lucky. I'm not sure if there is a penalty for death. You basically resurrect where your bind point is and since I didn't have a bind point yet I just arose where the game started. I wasn't sure if you get exp penalty or anything or if you take durability loss but I'm sure there is something there.

I had gotten up to level 5 before i stopped doing roughly around 20 quests. Most of the quests are the traditional kill X mobs, loot X items, or fedex quests. With the type of quests lich king had it felt kinda silly but this is the beginning of the game so I'm hoping things will get better as time goes on. Though like most mmo's there is a certain addicting quality about it. You create a character and you want to make him stronger. You want to get new abilities, more powers, make your swings hit harder and equip new gear. The game deffinatly delivers on that fact. Apparently at level 9 you get your quest to start getting your wings to be able to fly and choose your sub-class.

I enjoyed my time in the game and it was fun. Unfortunately beta's only last for the weekend so I won't be able to play past monday which sucks. I'm not sure If I am going to end up buying the game when it releases. While the game is good I'm not sure if I want to invest $50 into another MMO at this point. It has been said before but nothing is going to be better then Warcraft until blizzard makes something better. Most people who leave to try new things usually end up coming back. Plus by the time the game releases there will be more to do in Warcraft and the holiday season of console games will also start releasing. I might just wait until the price of the box goes down and they fix the majority of the release bugs before I step foot into the live game.

Controlling Chaos

Over the course of Warcraft bosses have been getting more and more complex. Back in Molten Core almost every fight was a tank and spank with very few elements to it. Sometimes it would be decurse everyone, stance dance, or don't stand in the fire. Those elements are fine in the beginning but people start learning and you need to throw new twists at them. The first time I stepped in BlackWing Lair the first boss blew my mind. The idea of a room full of constantly spawning adds that had to be kited while having the boss be mind controlled was unheard of. The first couple of times we tried the encounter it almost seemed impossible. As time went on and many wipes later we were able to control the chaos.

Fast forward to the present we now have an encounter like Yogg-Sarron. Coordinating 25 people on this fight seems a very daunting task. On top of that Yogg has 3 distinct phases and very different strategies for each of those phases. We finally downed Yogg the other day and I must say it is a very fun fight. Now that I've done all the normal encounters in Ulduar I am very happy with the direction blizzard went with the dungeon. Every fight always has 7-10 things you have to deal with. Things such as Death Rays, Brain Links, Sanity, Portals, 3 types of Tenticles, Guardians, Illusions, clouds, and a host of other mechanics force you to always be on your toes on this fight. I can't wait to see what is in store for us in the Coliseum and Icecrown Citadel.

Now that we have the isntance cleared its time to start working on hard modes. I have a love hate relationship with achievements and hard modes. The game should be fun and part of the fun is being rewarded for completing difficult tasks in the game. I hate achievements that are difficult for no reason then for the sake of being difficult and have no reward to them. Dward Medium-rare is one of hose achievements where it is just really really stupid idea of an achievement with no real incentive to doing it outside of it being part of a meta achievement to get a mount. We tried this the other day and it boggles my mind that blizzard things this is an idea of a fun achievement. Achievements such as crazy cat lady and Disarmed are examples of good achievements that require skill but are not stupidly designed.

Then there are hard modes. I love them because they reward you for skill but as the name implies they are hard. Most of the bosses will require top notch healing, tanking, and dps. All this has to happen while dealing with all the other factors you have to deal with on the fight. This means there will be a lot of learning associated with downing the encoutner and that means there will be a ton of wipes as well. Wiping is a natural part of raiding but that doesn't make it any more fun. The fun happen when you finally get to that point where you see you are about to do it and everything just falls into place and so does the boss.

In 3.2 Blizzard is changing the way that PVP works a bit. The biggest change that I am excited for and a bit scared of is the resilience change. Currently resilience only reduces chance to be crit and crit damage done. While that helps a lot on burst a lot of damage a person puts out is not always crit damage. When the patch hits resilience will reduce all incoming damage by a percentage. This should be a better system overall because now you can stack crit and it won't be diminished compared to your overall firepower. What really scares me about this change is how is how much of a buff is it for healers. Most healers can usually heal a wounded target to full health in 1 or 2 GCD's.

As a ret paladin there really isn't much I can do about healing. Most of the time when I face off against disc priest and druids they just stand there and tank my damage. The amount of damage they can withstand is insane while having incredible healing capacity without having to actually cast anything. My only real option is to time my stun or repentance at the right time or be doomed to failure. I don't know why I keep doing it but there is nothing that gets me more frustrated in life then Arena. I love it and am always looking forward to the next battle but loosing to something that you can't really control or by bullshit just gets my blood boiling. I hardly ever curse or throw things around but a match that shouldn't end the way it did will make the people around me very scared.

A big change that I am very excited about in the patch is the way badges are changing. When the patch hits every boss that drops any type of badge will only drop emblems of conquest. The exception to this is the coliseum which will drop the new emblems of triumph. There is an issue I have with hard core raiders and this is the fact that they don't want anyone else who didn't go through what they go through to have a chance at having a shot at what they have. I can understand this to a certain extent. There will always be a sense of competition of being the best of what you do. Being the best guild, having the best gear on the server, or having the top dps of your class are things that drive people forward. But once you are ready to step up and get the newest and greatest items why do you care if someone can get your left overs? If you are getting purples from Ulduar why do you care if a new 80 can start getting purples from Naxx? Once we have the coliseum and start gearing out there people will only start getting conquest badges and start gearing up a level behind you.

I think its awesome for me because it gives me a reason to start running heroics and tier 7 content again. I love doing heroics but I am a goal oriented guy. I need a reward for doing something. Its very hard for me to do anything without a carrot being hung in front of me. I am constantly thinking about how I can maximize my character and often times things that are not getting me to that goal is burning up my precious time. Raiding does cause burnout. There is only so much of one thing you can do before you get tired of it. The core raiding roster of a guild now is not going to be the same as it will be 6 months from now. Often times you need to get fresh faces in there to replace the ones you've lost.

If blizzard doesn't give people a chance to get to a descent level of gear they will fall behind and have no chance of getting into a well established guild. Those well established guilds won't get the recruits that can handle the new content and it becomes a vicious cycle of guilds dying out and what was once many guild fighting for first place becomes a handful of guilds with few choices for anyone who wants to get into the raiding game. A lot of hardcore people would be completely find with this because they like the idea of being in an exclusive club just for the privileged. Blizzard knows what keeps people playing and its smart of them to push there newer players to keep playing.

During the end of Burning Crusade I had to change my hours at work for a promotion. Unfortunately there were no late night raiding guilds at that point and there wasn't much I could do even though I loved raiding. With every new patch blizzard kept giving me ways to improve my character. With the introduction of the isle and new badge rewards I constantly had a reason to keep playing and bring my character up to a descent level. With the way Conquest badges will work there are tons of people out there like me who have no way of gearing up to return to their toons and have a reason to play the characters they love.

3.2 Changes

Blizzard has released some new information on the upcoming Patch 3.2. There are a lot of changes we have been asking for and a few surprises. First up is Protection. The biggest problem protection had was cooldowns. Paladins really only had 1 cooldown that they can use once every 2 minutes. Lay on Hands doesn't really count since its just a big heal and on a 20 minute cooldown. With 3.2 Ardent Defender sees a huge buff. Currently it reduces your damage taken by 30% when you are below 35%. When so many bosses hit for around 20k with around 42k health it really doesn't save lives all that often. Not to say its a bad talent but its really not reliable.

They changed the talent to now reduce any attack that would reduce your health to 35% or below by 30%. This is a huge buff since boss attacks are so hard. On top of that every 2 minutes we get a free guardian spirit on us without having to hit any buttons. This went from being an OK talent to probably the most over powered tanking talent out there.

Block is also getting changed a bit for 3.2. Most Paladins and Warriors don't waste much time on block. If it is a good piece and it has some block value or rating (Conqueror's Helm) we'll throw it on. Most of the time we'll just completely pass it up and go for pieces with pure dodge or parry. Ulduar bosses hit pretty hard and dodging an attack mitigates about 20k damage vs block which usually only shaves off 1.5k damage of that 20k hit.

Block was a much more useful stat back during Burning Crusade when block would push crushing blows off the table all together. If you weren't at 102.4% avoidance/block the remaining percentage was converted to a full 150% crushing blow. So effectively every time you block you would reduce a 10k normal hit from being a 15k crushing blow while probably blocking 500 damage. So in essence you blocked 5.5k damage which is a huge chunk of damage.

Since 3.0 started crushing blows have been removed from bosses so blocks don't have the same impact they once had. Block Value still keeps its high item budget that it once did even though its not really contributing much to reducing damage taken while taking away possible Dodge/Parry. Blizzard's answer to this is to double all block value items. This doesn't affect base block value from shield nor the block value we get from strength. Doing some basic theory crafting I notice that this probably won't matter much. In the gear I choose for tanking I have very little block value. Before my libram I block around 1.2k on any blocked attack. On the gear that I have only around 100 block value so that would be doubled. I would basically block for around 1.4k but with libram probably around 1.8k.

If I were to start changing around my gear and adding block value items to it my dodge/parry would drop a descent amount. There would also be a lot of wasted block rating considering you can't get block value without getting block rating to go with it. Without getting to technical I would probably convert abotu 5% avoidance for 5% block but in return I would have the 40% of the blocks I do block for more. If I were to add about 400 block value to my gear bringing me up to 500 value and then double that with the 3.2 changes. I would probably be blocking 2.3k before libram and close to 3k with libram.

Lets say the average ends up being 2.5k. So if a boss hits for about 20k on a normal hit and he hits 100 times. the 5% I lost to avoidance would be 100k damage. Block would be 2.5k x40 hits would also be 100k. So while it looks like this would mean that they both do about the same amount of mitigation I would still be blocking 35% of the time in my avoidance gear for around 1.5k. That would be around 52.5k damage blocked so I would still be up 47k damage mitigated over my block gear.

With all that being said tanking math isn't perfect. Depending on if you take less hits or make every hit for less the thing that matters the most is do you survive through it long enough for the dps to bring the boss down. Do the healers have a hard time keeping you up? Its hard to measure exactly what is the best way to gear for an encounter and that is why most of us have different sets of gear depending on how the fight itself.


Seals are also seeing a major change all around. First is that they are completely removing Seal of Martyr/Blood. They want to take Seal of Vengeance and make it the primary DPS Seal. They want to make Ret burst less substantial and this is one of the ways they are doing it. We are going to have to get 5 stacks of vengeance up before we can do our full 33% of weapon damage as holy damage. This is not a bad change because we'll be doing full damage on bosses, the dot component of the seal and Righteous Vengeance from talents. Also to reduce burst they are reducing our cooldown of Crusader Strike to 4 sec but at 75% damage. Not bad changes for the sake of balance but we'll have to see how it actually affects our position on the damage meters once people can get some tests on it.

Holy seems to have both some significant buffs and nerfs. The biggest buff comes in the form of Beacon of Light. Currently it only affects your affective healing and paladins are the masters of over healing so a lot of the heal would be lost. That is no longer the case with the changes. The entire heal regardless of over healing will transfer over to the beacon target. This allows paladins to help heal the raid without fear of the tank not having enough heals. Also they are changing the way flash of light and sacred shield interact.

If the target has sacred shield and you heal with flash of light it will leave a hot component on that target. This is supposed to help us with raid healing but I see it being a problem just because we can only keep sacred shield on 1 target at a time and it will cost us 2 global cooldowns to get a heal up on that target. In order to offset this blizzard is cutting our illumination talent from 60% to 30%. They want to give paladins more options instead of just dropping holy lights on the tank without worry of mana. Also in the name of balance they are buffing all mp5 gear by 25%. This will give us more of a choice between gear with crit vs mp5.

Random Ramblings

My guild, Zealous has a lot of talent. I used to be in a guild in BC that was constantly getting server firsts. When I came over to Zealous I had little faith that we would be getting anywhere that fast. Once I saw how much we did accomplish I was pleasently suprised. Biggest problem is getting enough of those people together to get a quality 25 man going. While we got up to Vezax last week we were lacking in numbers to take him down.

Though with all that talent we make a pretty impressive 10 man raid. We decided to blow through some hard modes this weekend and in one night we got Flame Leviathan +2 towers, Ignis speed kill, XT hard mode, Kologram's open arms, Auriaya's crazy cat lady, Hodir 3 minute kill, Thorim hard mode, Freya +1, and up to Vezax all in one night. That is an impressive first night of 10 man raiding.

Yogg is a complicated fight with a lot of stuff going on in all 3 of his phases. Last night our group spent over 4 hours learning this fight. In the beginning we looked like a bunch of stumbling idiots trying to get through phase 1. As the night went on we were constantly getting to phase 2 figuring out all the action that happens inside and outside the portals. We all were feeling how close we were to downing the boss and were salivating to make it happen. We get into phase 3 and try to keep control of what was going on. Over vent we called out to kill adds, face our character around, and keeping everyone alive. Once we finally did take him down there were shouts all over vent. We all had wanted to do this for so long and we finally were able to say we had conquered Ulduar.

If you are a good raider you are always looking for ways to improve your character. Once you know how to play your character to the max potential it usually comes down to getting improvements in gear. As a damage dealer you want your gear to push your dps to the max. As a healer you want to increase your healing throughput and longevity. As a tank you push up your survivability as high as it can go. But once you gear to the point where you never will die under normal circumstances is more gear wasteful?

Going through Ulduar there is a certain gear threshold you have to meet. If you look at many of the encounters there isn't a lot of tank damage. Yes the bosses do hit hard but if you are geared well enough they really don't ramp up in physical damage done. The final boss doesn't even get tanked. Also if you look at the hard modes throughout the instance only two bosses do increased damage.

XT is a dps check and a movement check, Iron Council will auto kill your tanks because of the debuff, Hodir is a dps check, Thorim is a dps race with increased raid healing. Freya does 50% increased damage but her damage wasn't high to begin with. Its more about the damage of the adds and raid damage. Mimiron is another dps check with a stay out of the fire component thrown in. Vezax is about mana management of your raid with an extra add to dps down. Yogg is where things get complicated. The watchers give the raid buffs and provide helpful extras. Not having those means less health and less dps.

As a raid leader and you look at all these encounters you probably notice a trend. Having more dps and being smarter wins most encounters. So if you had a choice of how to increase your raid's chance to down encounters how would you proceed.

As a tank I am pretty happy with my gear. Outside of hard modes I feel as if I have some of the best gear I can get. There is always room to improve but most of it will give me like a .5% increased chance to survive. The other problem is that there is a lot less +defense on the gear in Ulduar. If I were to equip some of the items there I would have to change my other gear around to remain uncrittable.

I am a tank about 60-75% of the time. I go back and forth with our other main tank depending on if we need more dps or more healing. Throwing more dps is usually a better choice if you have a good healing core already in place. A quicker boss death is usually preferred over the alternative. Whenever there is a fight that only requires one tank I usually am asked to switch over to my ret set.

My ret set is pretty solid. Looking through Rawr and Max Dps I have some pretty solid gear and there are only a few pieces out there I can readily receive if I wanted to increase my effectiveness. So considering my tank set is top notch should I spend my emblems of conquest on more tank gear or spiff up my ret set? I'm not going to be at a disadvantage as a tank if I dont get an ugprade anytime soon but if I can push out an extra 100 dps it might be more beneficial to the raid.

What our raid really needs is people showing up constantly. We all have been there where we are pushing content and don't have the people we had the night before. Its frustrating and with as much talent as we have in Zealous we could be in such a better place if only we can fill in the holes.

The Hidden Resource

When it comes to raiding every guild has good days and bad days. You remember the days when you blew through 10 bosses in less then 3 hours of raiding without as much as a hiccup. Then there are days when you have almost half your team dead on every encounter and you sputter your way through the instance. For the most part your core group is the same plus or minus a few people. You know the skill level of the people that you play with is superb but you are still having a hard time. What made tonight different then the awesome day you had last week?

I like to call this hidden resource Resolve. Resolve is a combination of belief, desire, and willingness. My guild leader has a saying "Whether you believe you can do it or can not do it you are right" If you have the belief that the people you are running with have the capacity to down the boss you will do it. If you start doubting yourself and your team you will fail. You also need to have the desire to do it. If you want to kill the boss you will find a way to be more attentive and think on the fly to make sure you do your part to make the boss fall down. The other thing is willingness. We have all had those days when our heart is just not into it. We are going through the motions. We feel like we are doing what we always do but we get lazy. We don't watch our cooldowns well. We might not move quick enough. We're not aware of the variables being thrown at us. This is mostly attributed to "sloppy play".

There are many times you walk into a raid and you see all those familiar faces ready to go but things just don't fall into place the way they should. Also our resolve can change depending on the situation. We can come in with our Resolve resource already being low. Having a bad day, being tired, computer issues, real life problems are all a part of our WoW experience. The better those are the better our resolve is. Through the course of a raid a lot of factors can change individual resolve and resolve of the entire raid. Everyone has those nights when people randomly disconnect and they usually happen at the absolute worst time. There will always be issues of "girlfriend aggro", "parents aggro", "omg my grandma's in the hospital", and the famous "brb putting together a home gym set". Resolve can go up and down depending on who is invited and who has to leave early. Probably the biggest issue for us as a guild is people showing up. You can be amped up ready to kill a new boss but when only 20 people log in and you need 25 playing at max capacity resolve takes a big nose dive.

So as a guild or officer how do you effect resolve. We are not robots and are affected by resolve so we have to take these factors into account. Being human also means we can be pushed into having more resolve. How many times have you been constantly wiping and you have lost your will to fight but your guild leader will come out and start having a "talk" with the guild. Sometimes these are positive in nature. He will talk about about all the previous accomplishments of the guild and how they have done it before with less. Also they will acknowledge the skill and power of each individual in the guild. What can work equally as well is being a prick. Sometimes it takes a harsh leader to whip the group into shape. The acknowledgement of the skill and how there is a lack of it during the encounter. Calling people out and forcing them to do better for fear of punishment. Guild leaders can make individuals fearful of making mistakes, being more attentive, and holding every misstep accountable.

It is important in any raid to try to keep resolve at a high level. Each individual can bring up or down the resolve of the rest of the group. Officers should find ways to pick up on the ques' and promote them in raid. Some guilds thrive on having a joking fun nature throughout raid. Everyone talking on vent, picking fun at each other can lead to a smooth run downing multiple bosses and everyone having a great time. Other guilds need to be serious and focus up. Keeping vent clear for instructions and having one voice keeping order helps make the raid smooth and efficient.

Regardless of any raiding situation there will always be days with ups and downs. Its important that we know when its happening and try to keep resolve high and salvage a failing raid. If we can figure a way to make that happen we'll continue to progress forward and down harder content. If not we will probably end up calling raids early and might even see some of our best raiders and good friends finding themselves a new home.

The Rise and Fall

Its been a lot of fun these last few weeks in Ulduar. We have finally defeated Mimiron and I have got my Breastplate from Thorim and Ring from Leviathin so I am pretty happy right now. We're currently working on the General right now and he seems simple enough that once we get it down right we should do pretty well. We tried him for the first time last night and we only gave it a few attempts but once everyone gets into the groove of things the fight doesn't change much from beginning to end. The only concern I would have is the mana issue. Considering his Aura does not allow any regeneration you need to be more attentive of when to use the Saronite Crystals and for how long.

Over the last few years I have been in a few raiding guilds. My first raiding guild wasn't that serious and while we did have a lot of fun together we would just farm Scholomance and Black Rock Depths. While its nice when you are a fresh 60 you hear about bigger badder content. I was approached by a member of a raiding guild one day while doing some quests in Un'Goro about joining a guild to do Molten Core. I told them no at first but I added him to my friends list. After a few weeks I decided to give them a try after some conflicts in my current guild. I had joined up with Radiant Dawn and got my first taste of 40 man raiding. I thought it was an incredible place and I kept constantly signing up to be on any run that they were doing. We eventually graduated Molten Core and tried to start up Blackwing Lair. We kept banging our heads on the first boss but we eventually got him down. Each boss after that was a struggle as well. It took many nights of wiping before we got Vael down and then the Suppression room had kicked our ass but most of us kept coming back pushing forward. After about a month in our Main tank and officer decided that it he was to good for us and left for another guild. This hurt our guild a lot but we had a really well geared off tank so we pushed forward and kept trying but the damage was already done and Guild Morale was low. We tried to push it as much as we could but we couldn't kill more then 1 boss in BWL. Radiant Dawn had gone Boom.


A lot of members had decided it was time to move on as well and soon we were just a shell of our former self. It made me feel horrible but I knew that to rebuild we would have to run Molten Core a lot and I couldn't do that. I looked through the progression page on the website and followed the links to see if any guilds were recruiting on the server. Me and my best friend were in the guild together so I told him to app with me to the best guild on server. We both applied to Oath and he was accepted and I was rejected. I kept trying to talk to the officers from the guild but I was told there were no spots for paladins. My friend went on and I tried to find a different guild. I did find a pretty good guild and I worked my way up building my reputation with them. Being the new member meant that I had no dkp and probably wouldn't be getting any loot any time soon. Every time I kept talking to my friend the guild was just handing him non stop bloodfang pieces and weapons. He was getting fitted with 2 or 3 pieces every reset and I was jealous. How could anything possibly go wrong with a guild farming BWL and making constant progression AQ40 and Naxx? A few weeks after joining the officers had a falling out. One of the officers wanted to create a new elite guild where he would hand pick and choose the people allowed in and the others respected the people who had brought them this far. The guild fractured off but many of the people decided to stay and form a new guild called Resilience. Oath had gone Boom.


This was my chance in. The guild that I joined was nice but the schedule wasn't perfect and I wanted to raid with my friend. He talked to the guild leader and we were well on our way to killing bosses in Naxxramas. I was the best healer in the guild previous to this one but the healers they had in Resilience had put me to shame. I am usually very competitive and if I'm going to play a role I have to be the best at that role. I research and test out how to play my class but these people were on a higher level. Burning Crusade had come out and Resilience was the leader of the pack. We ended up getting server first on Prince in Karazhan, Grull, and Magtheridon. I had a great sense of pride being in the guild and we worked our way into SSC and Tempest Keep. We had made significant progress into the zone but when you are the best you end up attracting a lot of assholes. Being in a top Guild has a tendency to go to people's head and they think they are better then everyone else. If you are learning a new boss and its not going perfectly you have a tendency to start finding ways to blame people and eventually bail out and try to find something better. There were constant fights and eventually it got so bad that people had abandoned ships. Most of the members of Resilience had decided to form up a new guild and recruit again and they ended up being Paranoid. Resilience had gone Boom.


Right around the time that resilience had gone boom I had gotten a promotion at work but it required that I worked during prime time raiding. I decided that the money was worth more then raiding and I had already started to get burned out. This was a good time to step back and leave the raiding scene for a while. Paranoid continued to have success and ended up beating most of the encounters in Black Temple and Mt Hyjal. I cheered them from the sidelines wishing that I could be up there with them. I continued to play and luckily I could farm heroics for badges and level up alts so I still had a a ton of fun with the game. My best friend was still raiding so he told me about what was going on with the guild. Every so often there would 10 man raiding on weekends so I was allowed to join up for those.


At the end of the Burning Crusade lifespan I saw in trade chat about a guild recruiting for late night raiding. I talked with Damathor and he convinced me to join up. I eventually joined up although raiding wouldn't really start until Wrath was in full swing. Zealous hit the ground running. Within a few weeks we were up and running 10 mans and as we continued to recruits we started up the 25 mans. It took some time to iron out some of the issues with certain members but we had an amazing drive and are now one of the top guilds on the server. Now that Ulduar is out people are at the point of seeing difficult content again. Being on top has a tendency to lead to fostering pricks and there was plenty of pricks in Paranoid. There were a ton of pressure for them to keep on top but there was plenty of fighting and the leadership had splintered off. After being one of the best guilds on the server and almost defeating Yogg everyone abandoned ship as soon as things got tough. Paranoid had gone Boom.


There seems to be a cycle of The Rise and Fall of guilds. If you look at any guild today there is a high chance that it wont be here in 6 months. Even if you look at the people that are there now they probably won't be the same people who are there in 6 months. Raid guilds are constantly changing. People are by nature greedy. They want certain things and they try to find a guild that fits what they want. If they stop providing them with the epics they want or if they get burned out the guild can't really do anything about it. I think this is where a lot of guilds have problems. For most people its not about what you ca do for your guild but what your guild can do for you. To get further and get the gear you need to treat your raiders like clients. The ones that help you get further you have to pamper a bit and you have to advertise to get good people in to make you get further.

Just do it

It is an interesting feeling when you come into a fight for the first time but you have never done it before. Certain people have done it and have a strategy that works and they tell you "kill the big guy, stand out of the fire, win". You always know that there is something more to the fight then just that. What causes the fire to happen and how often does it happen? Does the big guy do anything special I need to watch for? Do I need to move to a designated safe spot when I run out of the fire? Are there any tricks to maximizing my dps/healing/survivability during the encounter?

Blizzard has done an incredible job with a lot of the encounters in Ulduaar. They have many components to them that need to be dealt with and there usually is a lot of different tricks that can be used to maximize dps while also not blowing the raid and surviving. Hodir is a wonderful example. To someone new my guild would probably tell them "Avoid the blue circles on the floor, keep moving, break the flash freezes and get on the mounds". If you have done a fight like Hodir before you know exactly what that means. Every part of that statement is understood and that is basically how the entire fight works. If you are doing this for the first time you might not understand what the hell is going on. The pull happens and you notice you have a debuff but as your reading what the debuff is doing the stacks start building up. You also need to dps to not get yelled at so you start doing your normal rotation. You see the rest of the raid attacking frozen blocks so you go ahead and do that as well. Over vent you hear the words flash freeze and people start scrambling. You see his cast bar but not sure what to do. You may think to get behind him, or spread out, or to stop attacking. Next thing you know you are in a block of ice and have no idea how you got there or how to prevent it from happening again. And all the while not knowing what all the buffs and debuffs going on throughout the encounter.

Then the other side of the argument is that if you are coming to a raid you should have read up on the strat or watched some movies. Fair enough you should be prepared to do a fight and have everything you need to make the fight easier for the raid as a whole. But when is the last time you read a strategy for how to beat a boss in God of War before actually engaging him? Isn't the concept of a video game to learn the fight and the abilities and use what the programmers gave you to figure out how to fight the encounter. Also I'm sure you have watched many movies form different guilds on how to fight an encounter. How many of those guilds have done it the same way compared to the last video you have seen. Also depending on the site you may have different positions or requirements to make that specific strategy work. Plus we all know that there is a big difference between reading up and watching strategies vs actually being in the battle doing your part. Otherwise every guild would watch 1 video and go in and 1 shot every boss.

Also it gets complicated when dealing with the strategy that you end up using. most of the time the strategy you decide to use is never the strategy that you end up using to kill the boss. You will often times find little tweaks that work better with the composition of the raid. The more involved the battle the more tweaks you need to use until you get it right. A lot of arguments usually arise at this point on which one is feasible while dealing with all other components as well. Sometimes the problem is not doing it enough to get the strat down right and if you change it to much it just means learning it all over again. But if you don't make the necessary changes you may never down the encounter.

"Just do it" is something I hear thrown around a descent amount in guild. "This is not that hard" "Get the bosses health to zero before he brings your to zero" is one of my favorites. Every player has a set of tools that he has to use to make the encounter work. The fights in Ulduaar were meant to be challenging and not tank and spank. There are many nuisances to figuring out how to handle each aspect of an encounter individually. Whether it be how to time heals in between flame jets or how to get the different buffs in the hodir encounter its all something we have to learn in the heat of battle. Learning is a big part of progression and I get upset sometimes when I hear "this is not that hard just do it". There is more to it then just do it but you have to trust the people who are fighting by your side. To understand how to push what they do to the max to be able to finally hear those screams on vent when he boss dies.

Time is Epic

Whenever a new patch or update comes out that has a lot of content you see yourself spend a lot more of your free time in game. I've been doing more dailies, fishing, PVP, riding around Dalaran in circles then before 3.1 and that doesn't even cover the time I spend actually raiding the new content. Like most people we have a wide variety of things we enjoy doing. I know personally in addition to being a Wow addict I enjoy watching my tv shows, anime, going to the gym, hanging out with friends, spending time with the family, and a slew of other things. That doesn't even include the daily responsibilities each of us have. So now that I'm spending more of my free time in the game I have felt I have let other things fall behind a bit.

I used to go to the gym at least 3 times a week and since Ulduar came out I've missed a full week. I've recently looked at my DVR and there is a ton of stuff that I usually watch wtihin 24 hours of it airing still sitting there a week later. While I do want to play more I keep trying to push myself away from the game when I don't need to be there. Now that the initial rush of 3.1 is over I'm able to make the choice once again to step outside the house for few hours vs gathering a bunch of gold to spend on repairs.

We had an exciting time in Ulduar again. Every week we spend a descent amount fo time on a new boss. Iron Council, Kologram, Auriaya, and Hodir have taken us well over a full night of learning to get before we can bring down. It's usually not until the next raid night or even 2 days later before we get our act together and get it right. Once we do get it right we usually walk in there and down all of them in our first night after the reset. We're now giving it a go on Thorim. He's pretty straight forward but again its about each person learning their individual responsibility. We got him down to 17% last night and we're gonna go in tonight again and bring him down.

That is if the people show up. We've been having some issues with healers not showing up and not running with a perfect make up. Even still the people who do show up do a good job and we're a resilient bunch and soon we'll be taking down Yogg

Week 2 of 3.1

Alright so we're about to hit the end of week 2 of all the new content that came out in 3.1 Overall I have to say I am happy with what Blizzard has done with its content. Going in I was probably most excited about Ulduar and Dual specs but there are a lot of other things that was added that I have really enjoyed. I love the new fishing changes. The addition of a fishing dailies, fishing in wintergrasp for fish feast mats, and the reduced fishing time make fishing worthwhile again. Also the Argent Tournament is pretty fun. With all the money being spent on flasks and repairs its nice to have some new dailies to complete that will recoup some of those losses. Wintergrasp is also a bit more fun. Even when on defense you can take the offensive and push south into the zone and take out the 3 towers for an instant win. Also adding the timer on the Wintergrasp map makes for a really welcome addition.

PVP

Going into the patch I was pretty much capped out when it came to honor. Compared to pre Wotlk there really wasn't that many choices when ti came to paladins and PVP. You had holy which didn't terribly suck but was extremely limited and then everything else which really wasn't viable. Come 3.0 and the entire face of PVP changed. Holy has new toys to play with in PVP, mostly revolving around sacred shield and holy shock being great ways to keep up people while being Mobile and giving you some wiggle room to nuke heals. Protection which really isn't considered a PVP spec but still a lot of fun. With descent Block Value we could have insane burst potential with Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield, and Hammer of the Righteous we had some powerful tools to use. Couple that with the nice changed they added in 3.1 such as unlimited Divine Plea when attacking and a silence on Avenger's Shield it has become even more viable.

Thought when it comes to PVP my heart is defiantly in Retribution. I wouldn't touch retribution with a 10 foot pole back in BC. Crusader Strike was nice but it still didn't feel like it was where it should be to be really wanted in raids or have the ancillary abilities to make it useful in PVP. With 3.1 all that changed. We have a way to keep going without going OOM in judgement of the wise and we have more attacks to use when it came to actually dealing damage, and a few abilities to use to time to make the different between a win or a death.

During the first week of 3.1 they were calculating Arena points so there wasn't really anything to do during week 1. Also the new items weren't ready to purchase. During the second week they had given us back the our Arena teams but with the rating set back to zero. This is different from previous seasons where they start us off with 1500 and depending on win/loss you would go up and down accordingly. The main problem with that is that if you are an average player or even a bit above average you are going to loose about half your battles. Also depending on what teams you get paired up with it can get downright frustrating to just loose. During the first couple of seasons it didn't matter because as long as you played your 10 games you would get your gear but just a bit slower if you sucked. Last season it was horrible due to the fact that to get anything half descent would require a pretty descent rating and depending on the gear you have, your luck, and how good your partner was it was a tough goal to hit. After playing a lot of games that season I had 3700 arena points that went to waste due to not having anything I could spend on ti that would be better use then my naxx epics.

I love what they did this season. I decided to run a dual pally team for this season and we switch off from either ret/holy for survivability or ret/prot for extra burst potential. With them having everyone start off at 0 gives everyone something to work towards. getting at least 40 points per win makes you feel like you are constantly moving up and getting closer to the point of acquiring some descent loot. Our team did really well and we hit about 1540 after 150 games played before we ran into some bad luck and dropped a little bit. I did have more then enough rating to pick up some sweet 226 furious bracers which could even potentially beat out my pve bracers for raiding.

Raiding

We had cleared all the way up Iron Council last week and we were all excited to continue to get back in there and see how well we could do this week. Since Flame Leviathan was such as joke last week we decided to try and give hard move up with 1 tower. We had tried this with 10 man last week and we kept getting close but something always happened and we would get close but couldn't bring him down. The same thing happened again this week. We spent about 2 hours wiping on the boss with so many close calls. We got him as low as 2% but this being a fight where your health is constantly dropping with no way to recover but to avoid what you can.

We all really wanted to get to new bosses so we dropped the tower and collected our loot. After having a descent amount of trouble with Razerscale and Ignis last week we were all proud of ourselves when we basically one shotted both of them. They had put XT's trash back in and I have no idea what they were thinking with these packs. We wiped probably about 8-10 times trying to get it right and we just ended up brute force killing them with no idea of how we can get a clean kill. We had a few new people on XT so after a few tried he went down easy as well.

We decided to give another hard mode a try this time with the Iron Council. We kept Runemaster as our last target and again things didn't go to well. The beginning of the fight will always be the same spending about 6 minutes burning down the first 2 bosses easy but when it came to getting runemaster down he has a new ability that usually wipes about 70% of the raid. He puts a rune of summoning out randomly in the room and about 20 seconds a bunch of elements will spawn randomly going in different directions then blowing up for 16k each. Get 2 incoming at you at a time and you were basically dead. We had a couple of ideas about how to deal with these but having to wait almost 7 minutes to get to that point then wiping in seconds was pretty demoralizing. Again after a few hours of wiping we ended up killing Stormcaller last.

When it came to doing hard modes its defiantly possible to achieve with the group that we were going with. The problem is many peoples goals are different. We know we can do it but at this point we still haven't even learned the 4 watchers in 25 man yet. I think most people wanted to just move on and try to get as many bosses down normally before we try and go for any hard modes. We moved onto Kolgran which is where we had stopped last week. I don't understand where people get it into their heads that we're going to be 1 shotting these bosses. Sure the 10 man was a lot easier compared to the 25 mans but the heroic version is a different monster. The basic mechanics are the same but you have to deal with the increased damage going around and managing 24 other people as opposed to 10. There is just a shit ton of damage going around in that battle but we got into our groove and ended up defeating the boss after a few hours of learning.

We still have a major problem when it comes to the guild and that is attendance. We have quality raiders but on almost every night this week we were running 1-4 short to begin with. We were constantly bringing in people who had no right being in there. When dealing with a group of people that are working together morale is definitely a huge issue. A lot of people are excited to get in there but when people are constantly not showing up it affects the way we play. If we're constantly dieing to a boss with very little hope of beating the encounter it stops being fun. This is a game that we play and we choose to be here if we want to be here. The moment it starts becoming a game and a job people will stop showing up. There is definitely a delicate balance to pushing forward vs throwing yourself at a brick wall.

We hit the recruitment hard and we have gotten some promising people so I'm hoping in the following week we will get in there with a full group and have some bosses meet there end. We had also tried Auriya this week as well. Again a lot of people went in there expecting to just steamroll through her with little thought after it being so easy in 10 mans. While the basic concept is the same the mechanics are less forgiving. The pull alone takes a lot of coordination. We had to use line of sight just right with building threat and moving adds into the correct position. This definitely took a lot of attempts to get right. Once we did end up getting it right the next time we came in we changed the way it worked. After not getting it right we went back to the original strategy which worked pretty well. The bosses in Ulduar definitely require a lot more coordination and individual responsibilities. With Auriya you have to deal with 4 adds with stacking buffs, a raid wide aoe fear, a aoe damage component that needs to be interrupted during said fear, an add that spawns that pounces all over the place, void zones that spawn throughout the fight, a pack of 20 adds, and a sonic screech that has to have its damage split through the members of the raid. All this on top of the relatively hard physical damage she deals. While definitely doable it will take a lot of tries to get it right. While close to getting it this week we still haven't gotten it especially due to not having a full raid to split the damage component.

10 mans vs 25 mans

On one of the nights we didn't have enough people to raid we decided to do some 10 mans while waiting for people to show up. We split off into 2 even groups. Group A decided to try Flame Leviathan with 1 tower up while Group B had learned its lessen from last week and plow through the first couple of bosses. After doing the 25 man versions of these fights the 10 mans were very easy to deal with especially having higher level gear. Our 10 man group wanted to come back in on Friday considering that was our off night but we ran into the same problem we had hit the previous week where we have a few from Group A and a few from Group B but not the right make up to get a quality run going. Fortunately for us Group A never did get Flame Leviathan down so no one from that group had been saved. We asked and everyone agreed that it was BS that people hadn't been logging on to get 10 mans done and that we should just get 1 group together instead of hoping for enough people to show up for both teams. It usually ends up that our tanks always show up so we ended up pulling both tanks from Group A but one went holy while the other wen fury for our team. This eventually became an issue for Group A if they were going to run they would have to have one of their other toons respec.

Our newly formed Group had some issues in the beginning. We had a hard time with Iron Council so we skipped him and went to Kologran but he was also giving us problems. We had 2 paladins healing so we switched one of them out for a holy priest and the added aoe healing ended up being what we needed to get all the way to Freya. It was definatly more exciting for our group in 10 mans because we all knew that we were very running with a powerful group. Mimiron is next on our hit list and hopefully we can down him tonight.

When it comes to raiding guilds there is definitely a competition that goes on to see who can get the bosses down first. We have been up there on the progression forum being one of the few guilds who could do Sarth 3d. We take that same energy moving into Ulduar. That's is one of the reasons that we push so hard and try certain hard modes. But then the question becomes why are we here in Ulduar. Most of us enjoy being here but we're really here to gear up. You need that carrot dangling in front of you. The possibilities of getting a cool item that is going to help you beat the next guy keeps us going. Sometimes the desire to be number 1 and the desire for loot don't cross perfectly. There are a ton of upgrades in the 10 man that will help us clear the 25 man content. But do we take time out of our 25 mans to get the gear from 10 man and fall behind on the progression curve. Also do we do split off into 2 equal groups that may or may not raid and get 6-8 bosses down or push 1 super group to work on the 12th boss of the instance but gear up half the people.

We all have our goals and are enjoying the content for the most part even if we're not where we want to be. I get frustrated at the end of the night but when I wake up in the morning I go through the events in my head and try to figure out ways to improve for the following raid. I still rush home when my shift is over to jump on and meet up with my social network and take on another challenge together.

Ulduar Impressions Part 3

With so many bosses still up in Ulduar we try to dedicate most of our scheduled raid time to the 25 man bosses. We know they will award us with better loot and that typically we should have the people to take on that content. When we have a good balance of people on its amazing what our Guild can do. If we're short 1 or 2 dps or healers its the difference between beating the encounter vs not standing a chance.

On our off nights we try to pull together our 2 10 man teams. Problem is whoever is in your first 2 sets of groups are forced to stay there during the rest of the week. Come our first off night we had about 17 people online. We had about 6 from Group A and about 7 from Group B and some non raiders on. We waited almost an hour with frustrations running high. We have certain people who always log in and some people who are up in the air when it comes to off nights. Some of our characters have high level alts so Group A ended up running with about 3 alts from Group B team and the rest of the team ended up having to sit it out. The next night the exact opposite happened. Group B was able to go but they had to poach the alts of Group A team. Frustrations usually run pretty high when you have so many people ready to raid but you just don't have the people to pull from. Luckily for us on Monday night almost everyone showed up and we were able to get in there with both groups and get 9/14 bosses down.

As far as 10 man went our first 2 nights were pretty bad. We attempted 1 tower up Flame Leviathan which brings your hopes up but the fight is really hard considering you have no way to heal and if 1 vehicle or player goes down its very hard to recover. Trying Razorscale also brought our frustrations up due to failing on FL for so long and people were tired and making stupid mistakes. We tried the battle a few more times but it wasn't worth it so we called it for the night. Night 2 was a bit better for our 10 man. We knew how Ignis and Deconstructor worked form doing them on 25 man. It was beautiful seeing our strategies being executed flawlessly in 10 man. After those 2 bosses it was time to learn some ones we never tried before

Iron Council

After figuring out how the trash worked again we were up to Iron Council. I had seen video's of this fight from the PTR and people from Team A had already beat the encounter so they offered up some idea's on how to deal with the 3 bosses. Steelbreaker definatley hits hard and I learned the timing of his fusion punch and after wiping a few times I got cleanse timing down. This is probably a very good fight to have a paladin tank on due to the fact they can cleanse themselves and not have to have healer waste a global cool down to remove the debuff. We didn't have much time left in raid and after a few more attempts and people dying to standing in Death runes we decided to pack it in for the night and try again another time.

Our next raid was a 25 man raid and we proceeded to try the 1st level of hard mode on Iron Council. We wanted to kill the medium guy last due to him dropping the discs that start the Algalon quest line. The thing that is annoying about Iron Council its another battle where the first 70% of the fight is not hard at all. Getting stealbreaker and the stormcaller was easy as pie but once we got up to the Runemaster he just decimated the raid when he summoned the Rune of Summoning. When the elements spawned and randomly ran off into different directions almost 75% of the raid was decimated. We attempted the boss a few more times before we know there wasn't much time left before raid end time so we proceeded to 1 shot the boss on normal mode


Kologran

Monday night we came back and we had 2 full 10 man raids awake and ready to take down some bosses. We were having a race with Group A to a certain extent but we were a few bosses behind. We went in and 1 shot the Iron Council since we were all pro's at it form our 25 man raid and proceeded to Kologran. Some people hate the way this boss looks but I love this guy. He is huge and has a very unique look to him and your night fighting his foot like you are usually with other huge bosses. Since our group was on a hot streak with the other bosses from the night we quickly figured out a strat that worked well for us. We alternated tanks when we got 3 stacks of overhead smash and killed the Right arm whenever it spawned. People started getting good at kiting eye beam and healing people who got death gripped so after about 5 or so tried we downed the boss.

We also tried this on our 25 man raid and it didn't go as well. Aoe damage was a lot higher and saving people in the arm was a lot more difficult. I saw this trend in a lot of bosses. 25 man content is a lot harder then the 10 man version. After people saw how easy Kologran was in 10 man version they expected to 1 shot him in 25 man version. They were sorely mistaken and you could see their frustration. I wasn't flustered as much. I knew that when you are fighting a boss you have to learn the boss. You can tell people what to do and how individual abilities work but you have to try it and see what works and what doesn't work on an individual basis. Telling someone to run form the eye is easy to do but when you get targeted by the eye and you start running you may not realise where the best place to go is. If someone is standing next to you you try to go around them to avoid having them be instagibbed as well. After you do it a few times it becomes second nature and you can do it while maxing out your other abilities as well. The guild will get there, we always do. We just have to realise that every attempt we do we are getting better and when all the pieces fall in place so will Kologarn

Ulduar Impressions part 2

Alright so now the guild is getting into a groove in learning new encounters, getting new loot and seeing where our strengths and weaknesses are. We have a couple hours left in raid so we break off into our separate 10 man teams. We try to make them as equal as we can. Considering how easy flame leviathan was on 25 man we decide to give hard mode a try to see how it works. We start by keeping all 4 towers up to see what happens. Once we pull FL all chaos breaks loose. Lashers are coming from everywhere, there are orbital bombardments, fire all over the place and debuffs on us that we have no idea what they do. We proceed to get our ass handed to us so we decide to do him with only 1 tower up.

Since we had 2 teams going we could see on the other side of the fence the other team had already cleared him and were already getting achievements. Both teams had friendly competition going so we felt we had to pick up the pace. We kept up the frost tower and learned how the encounter works with that tower up. An important aspect of that fight is being able to overload FL's circuit so that he doesn't have a huge ammount of gathering speed debuffs. We kept switching strategies and putting diferent people p to destroy his circuits and we got pretty close with a 5% wipe. The thing about FL is that every battle is going to feel close because it all determined by how much health you have considering there is no way to heal yourself. You will live a certain ammount of time but its one of those fights where "Bring his health down to zero before you go down to zero". After 2 hours of wiping and having my durability at all red we decide to just kill him wiht no towers up. Even though we quickly killed him it felt like a loss considering we "gave up".

I was talking to a few of my guildmates and all of us are excited about the new content but we also realize that hard modes will give us better loot. There is a line that ussually gets drawn as to whether we should try the hard modes or just move on because there is loot on those other bosses that we need in just normal mode. Our guild leader is very ambitious and I think that is a great quality about him. Coming from a guild in pre-wotlk where we were number 1 on the server and were constantly getting server first I had less faith in the guild I came into in the beginning. Zealous really did suprise me. Even though Naxx was "easy mode" we were constantly outdoing ourselves. When thinking about encounters such as Sarth+Drakes and 6 minute maly I was very skeptical about us being able to handle the encoutner or even if we had enough quality raiders to meet the requirements. But time and time again we pull it together and get the encoutner down.

I don't think the hard modes are beyond us. My guild can definatley defeat these encounters but its like every other boss where we need to learn how the encoutner works and our own responsibilties and find the little spaces where we can pull out something amazing. With that being said we raid 4 hours a night for 4 nights in a week. That gives us about 16 hours a week of attempts which we ussually stretch to 20 because we wanna give it a couple more attempts or quickly bring down another boss. We are at the point now where we have 5/14 on 25 man and 9/14 on 10 man after our first reset of raiding. I would personally rather go back and spend our 20 hours of raid time getting the next normal boss down getting our upgrades for the raid and move on and learn 1 of the other 14 bosses we haven't downed yet. I like the idea of progression. I like getting a new boss down and working toward the next one. Once we finish off the final boss I would love to come back and try it with 1 tower up because thats the next logical step.

We ended up coming back to Ignis on night 3 of raiding. We had more people log in that night and had a well balanced group. BLizzard implemented a new set of hot fixes on that boss and we were ready to give him a go. We decided to make our strategy less complicated and have the entire raid stand in between. I then kite the scorches in a diamond pattern around the raid and have our Ot's pick up the adds make them molten pull them in the water and have a dedicated mage break them. This strategy coupled with the hotfixes allowed us to one shot this boss.

I have to say I havne't compared a ton of tanking items from Ulduar. What I have seen so far have been slight upgrades and I'm waiting to get a comprehensive list of what is available before I determine what I'm going after. With that being said it has been said that if you wanted to be a min/max main tank you need to have Jewelcrafting as a proffesion. I currently run Blacksmithing which gives me about 48 stam currently and Mining which gives me 50. JC will give me about 52 but it also gives the best trinket for a tank, the monarch crab which gives 63 stam plus 2 extra sockets. I really didn't want to unlearn a profession because the 2 I had already took me forever to skill up and cost a descent ammount of gold. The main reason I didn't
was becausae i knew Ulduar probably would have some descent trinkets for tanks that wasn't blue. I'm really glad I did because the only item I was salivating over was The Heart of Iron. 162 Stam base and a on use ability every 2 minutes for 452 dodge. When the trinket dropped my jaw dropped to the floor and I wept tears of joy. I was 1 dkp over the other tank in guild so I knew it was mine and I knew I wouldn't have to go and train JC up!.