On preparing the raid for Wotlk and loot systems in particular

The Drunken Badgers raid had a successful run of Burning Crusade raiding. By no means leaders we managed to come from behind to end our TBC raiding era as one of the top 20 raids on the server although sadly we never made it to Sunwell, and after the pre lich content nerf patch it didn't seem worth it.

For a guild that formed and began raiding during TBC I like to think this is no mean feat. We certainly learned some lessons along the way and as a result evolved our raiding management in order to achieve the goals that we had set for ourselves. As far as I can tell we also ended TBC with a good reputation on our server as a fun group who know what they are about, which can only stand us in good stead for the future...

So enter the Lich King, and Drunken Badgers are preparing to take on the 25 man content available in the new expansion starting with 25 man Naxx. It was decided that we would commence 25 man raiding in the new year, giving everyone the opportunity to level up at a leisurely pace if they so desired and to also account for the disruptions of the holiday period.

Unsuprisingly most, if not all, of the core raiders of the group hit 80 pretty quickly and started working on gearing up through heroics, 10 man Naxx and various guests spots in other 25 man raids in order to be in tip top readiness for the official commencement of Badger raiding.

During this period the drunken officers have been working on some further changes to raid management, mainly to do with sharing duties to decrease the load previously on the shoulders of only a few individuals. We now have several different raid 'offices' that are shared across 2 to 3 officers. How these officers manage their particular areas in terms of sharing duties is up to them. The offices are loot management, raid leadership, DPS performance, healing performance, tanking performance and recruitment.

I put my hand up to be a loot officer and have been learning how to use the loot mod of choice and with the other raid officers working on refining our loot system still further. Lively discussion took place from near the end of TBC raiding onwards whether we should stay with the current system or look to moving to another. Although generally happy with the way Suicide Kings was working for us we had encountered a couple of specific problems: top spot camping and bottom dwellers.

Top spot camping occurs when a person chooses not to bid on items that would be an upgrade for them in order to hold onto their position in the list so as to be guaranteed their holy grail item should it drop - we like to refer to this within the group as the 'DST' - ie Dragonspine trophy - something many people were after during our Gruul's raiding period. Although it is the individual's choice to hold out for their grail the decision to pass on upgrade loot is seen as detrimental to raid progression on the whole.

Bottom dwelling is where people on the bottom of the list have no hesitation in bidding on items due to their having no guarantee of other loot. Often the bottom dwellers would be subs. Bottom dwelling was further exacerbated by the top spot campers, who were generally regulars.

So we end up with a situation where our regulars are not improving their gear and our subs are making out like bandits.

Personally I never had a problem with the way our use of Suicice Kings functioned, I geared up at a reasonable pace, but I also never held out for a particular item.

The discussions concerning our loot system to me essentially speak to what kind of raid we want to be. In our earlier days we had been concerned with keeping it simple, encouraging a roster of regulars but retaining some fairness to subs - since subs when in attendance helped us achieve success as much as the other attendees. We were initially quite casual, not thinking particularly of progression as our main focus - but rather fun with hopefully some success.

As we have succeeded, so too has our focus evolved. We are now definitely more focused on progression. Therefore in order to achieve progression we have had to look at tightening up performance requirements even further, stepping up recruitment and tweaking the loot system to support progression.

As the passionate discussions have demonstrated progression does not necessarily equate with a loot system that is equable to all. We are trying to arrive at something in the middle. Also, an opinion which I stand by, is that the loot system is not *the* answer to successful progression - that all areas of raid management need to be considered holistically. That said we are doing our best to develop a loot system that gives subs a reasonable chance of receiving loots whilst at the same time rewarding regulars and discouraging camping at either the top or the bottom of the list. Other goals are keeping it relatively simple to explain and manage for the loot officers. We considered DKP and loot council, but both systems have inherent issues which we were not happy with collectively. The problem of a growing point spread in DKP and the lack of transparency and risks of alienation with Loot Council respectively were the main issues. We even considered just going with the in game rolling system but the RNG is RNG factor put people off, myself included.

The system which we will use as we begin 25 man raiding is as follows, naturally if it doesn't work we will make changes, we're certainly not inflexible.

We use Raid Ninja as a sign up tool and it is now mandatory for all raiders to indicate their attendance status for the raid by Tuesday each week (we raid once a week on Fridays). This will net each raider 1/8th of a point whether they attend the raid or not. Attendance at the raid having signed up correctly will net each raider 1 point, if they did not sign up they will earn no points. By the end of a 2 month period each raider must have a point total equal to or greater than 3 to remain a regular. The benefits of being a regular? Only regulars will be on the SK list. The process when a piece of loot drops will be bidding from people on the list (main roles only) then if no bids open need roll to everyone at the raid (again main roles only) and then if no need rolls open greed for offsets etc. Additionally every 2 months the SK list order will be randomly reshuffled to discourage camping.

We're hopeful that this system will be reasonably equitable for all and not too difficult to maintain. The most cumbersome part will be tracking attendance and point awarding - but I'm crafting a google spreadsheet with nifty forumlas with the help of a certain tanky person.

After the system has been in play for a while I'll be sure to post about how it's going.

I can haz bear!

I've been terribly slack about posting lately. I'm afraid that a busy real life (seems like all the birthdays and babies and weddings are all happening at this end of the year) coupled with a sense of ennui has left me feeling a little unmotivated to write, especially when everything is about to change. Yep, the pre-expansion doldrums have finally started to kick in and just like prior to release of The Burning Crusade the question of 'is it really worth doing X or Y' with my toons is starting to rear its' head. There are, however, plenty of things worth doing and with the popular belief that the patch will arrive with the next maintenance the Badgers have been busy.

We've been running ZA for several months now and our once a week extreeeem ZA raid has slowly seen a growing group of people gain their Amani War Bears. As Cynra recently posted we even had an emergency mid week run at a ridiculous time of morning for the Americans and a not so bad but not so early time of night for the Aussies. This Sunday was our last ever run with a chance to get the bear mount if the patch really does hit and yours truly was the only regular raider still without a bear. I'm sure you can imagine how nervous I was! What if we stuffed it up? I wasn't sure what would be worse - if I made a colossal mistake and ruined my own chances or if one of my dear Badgers did and I would be so sad.

I don't think I have suffered such extremes of emotion playing a game since the good old days of blockading in Puzzle Pirates. Firstly one of the people scheduled to come didn't show and we had to find a replacement who would be ok with not rolling on the bear if they didn't have one since this was the final chance for me as a long term regular to get one and was also geared and experienced with the run. Luckily fellow guildie Puppetteer stepped into the breach. The run started really well with everything going super smooth right up until the pulls before the lynx boss. Somehow people got feared and the mobs on each side of the door got pulled and we wiped. We NEVER wipe in ZA any more. I started chewing my fingernails nervously at this point and making strange wheeking noises while Emelin kept chanting at me 'it will be ok, we'll make it' over and over.

So we regrouped, and cleared all the trash and had about 30 seconds to mana up and prepare for the pull. Until that is Puppetteer our dear lock, wandered a little too far into the room and face pulled. Eeeek! Galvanised into action I let rip with a Misdirect to our main tank, everyone sprang into position and the healers out did themselves keeping Mogri (the MT) up while our pally OT Cliff got into cleave sharing position. It was on and everyone unloaded as much firepower as we could muster. Never has a fight seemed to go for so long! We made it with literally seconds to spare and I was the closest I've ever been to a heart attack. The elation after the tension was exhilerating! I got bear! Huzzah!!
To celebrate what is likely the last bear run naturally we had to pose for a photo moment mounted on our bears and then our Moonkin made the excellent suggestion of converging on Ironforge in all our bear-y glory to preen and strut and generally be idiots. This idea met with much acclaim and we hot footed it over there to crack some pony kegs and have a good time doing bear conga lines while people either laughed, cheered or mocked us.
After we'd had our fill of being blithering idiots it was on to Mags. I for one decided that since I'd actually been there and done that I wanted the title to go with it and several Badgers felt the same so Cynra had put in motion the plans for a run. We ended up having to pug it unfortunately which was pretty much full of fail until some people left and we were able to pull in some more guildies who had since logged in. Once we had a higher Badger quotient things went much more smoothly and I'm now the happy owner of at least one BC title. Sadly no Hand of Adal as we were unable to down Kael on our Saturday raid, but still, it's been one awesome weekend for Jez!

Special edit: our irascible rogue recorded our jaunt in IF and has added a very fitting soundtrack, it made me giggle like a loon all over again watching it.

Brewfest! Hic!

The many festival events that occur throughout the year are a really fun aspect of playing Warcraft. Being a Drunken Badger one festival that definitely appeals is that of Brewfest. We've been having a lot of fun doing the daily boss in Blackrock Depths and both Jez and Seph have walked away with some 'lawl' items such as the Direbrew Shanker and useful items such as for Seph the sweet stam trinket Brightbrew Charm. Best of all though both Jez and Seph are now running around on their own Great Brewfest Kodos! Hooray!I also discovered to my immeasurable delight that if you drink enough you really DO see pink elelphants roaming Shattrath! *grin*

Just before Brewfest arrived Blizz also gave a nod to Talk Like a Pirate Day which I took advantage of by turning Jez into a pirate for a while. It was very amusing to me to run around in pirate costume due to my history of playing Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Poor Jezabella, I haven't logged in for a while now. She's just sitting in her villa counting gold these days. Last I remember she was sitting on about 2.5 million, imagine having that much gold in WoW!

Raidus interruptus

I was so pumped about our first visit to Black Temple this weekend. I mean this is the once in a not so distant past end game instance. Big bad Illy waiting to be gibbed. So now we have Sunwell, but hey it's now the penultimate end game instance and that's still pretty d@mn hot. It wasn't so long ago that BT seemed like a dream goal, something that only the uber raids saw.

I did my homework and read up on the fights, watched boss kills vids and got myself organised with plenty of flasks and pots and bandages and all the accoutrements of raiding.

My but it was exciting stepping inside the instance for the first time. The raid was in high spirits and we proceeded in our usual manner: oh look we should kill these guys *face pull* oh these ones have nasty poisonous little buggers that spawn *pewpewpew* owwwwies *multiple people go splat* ok let's consecrate and AoE them down next time. *Repull and mobs go splat* Next!

I love the fact that our raid does awesomely on bosses by regularly gets roflstomped by trash. It makes us all giggle schoolgirl like in vent. Probably because we get our game on after that rather than wiping repeatedly. It might be a different story otherwise.

One of the things that is awesome about our group is that we have people who are quick learners. Something happens, we learn from it, adjust, and success follows. We had our first attempt at High Lord Naj'entus and got him down to about 36% before wiping. We discussed what wasn't working - which was basically our raid positioning and then fired up the encounter again and BOOM boss down.

We gleefully tripped over to Supremus clearing trash on the way and then had our first shot at the big ugly 'warlocks wish they had him as demon-form' dude. Of note for hunters on this fight is having an MD rotation set up to swing the boss back to the main tank at the end of each phase 2. We wiped a couple of times and decided to get our druid tank to main tank with our normal warrior MT soaking the hurtful strikes. On the third shot BOOM another boss down. Similiar to Naj'entus the key was the raid movement - it's important to kite Supremus around the edges of the main tanking area during phase 2 so that there will be no volcanoes on the middle interfering with melee during the tank and spank and phase 1.

Legionkiller dropped which once would have been a 'WOOT' moment for the hunters, but in these days of 2.4 badge loot it was more a 'meh'. The choco-bow is actually better for BM hunters (which all four of the hunters in the raid are). It went to open roll and I won it - it'll actually be good for PVP with that stamina so I'm looking forward to trying it out - and general wootiness for my first T6 level loot even if it's not an upgrade :P

So two bosses down and we're on our way to Akama when *Emergency claxon: WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP* the phone rings, the answering machine picks up and it's Em's sister leaving a message asking where the *bleep* we are since it's her and his dad's birthday lunch and we're an hour late and they are all waiting for us. OH *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*!!!! So we quickly explain to the raid what has happened, apologise and bail so we can get down to Em's sisters place. Man! Family > Warcraft always but D@MN we were in BT man, on our way to (hopefully) down a third boss on our first visit there. Raid first's are exciting and we had to bail >.<

Emelin is completely to blame for getting the dates mixed up. Still we made it down there and had a fun afternoon eating good food, drinking good wine and surreptitiously discussing our wonderings on how the raid was doing in our absence *grin*

I can report that Akama was downed too so that puts the Badger raid at 2/5 Mount Hyjal and 3/9 Black Temple after one visit to each. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

GRAWR!

Oh wow! Everyone you are just not going to believe this! *bounce, bounce, bounce* Yep it's me Seph again and I had an even more fun and exciting adventure! Not only that but Miss Jez approved too. Yep, she really did. She's not all that mean, I felt kind of bad after what I said the other day *shuffles feet* I mean, I know she means well and she's just trying to look out for me and all, and she is kind of like a big sister to me. But, well, you know what big sisters can be like right? *grin*

But after my adventures in Karazhan and even though I did leave a big mess because I fell asleep because I was so tired and sort of left Wild Quillvine in the bottom of my bag and it got all mooshy and stuff, Miss Jez just smiled and sighed a little and told me that I did good in Karazhan and I could just tell that she was working really hard on not giving me a lecture and she didn't. I felt really good about that, like she's maybe going to start trusting me a little more to not mess up. I mean sure there was that one time where I got into a bit of trouble with Dirty Larry from the lower city and Emelin had to come resc.. er... help me but I'm much more responsible now! *wide eyes*

I guess Miss Jez really must be starting to think so because she asked me if I would like to make a visit to that troll infested place Zul'Aman in her place, something to do with needing to stay home and polish her new shoulders. I was to go with some really nice people from the guild and they were all ready to get me to put on my bear suit and help out Mr. Troa the paladin with tanking duties. I felt so honoured that they would trust me, and well kind of overwhelmed *blush* but I wasn't going to say no to an exciting opportunity like that. No way!

And because I wanted to show Miss Jez that she can put her faith in me I straight away made sure to get my leather pants armoured up nice and strong so I could be just a teensy bit more durable, and I made sure I had lot of reagents and some yummy stamina food. I guess I kind of forgot about elixirs but Mr. Troa kindly helped me out and I gave him some gold straight away and we made a pact between tanks not to tell Miss Jez which I thought was really really awesome of him. I guess he understands what it's like to have an older wiser person looking over your shoulder.

I'd never been to see the trolls before and I can tell you I was nervous! Everyone was very relaxed though and nice and no pressure, we're just going to see if we can beat some timers. I was all... uh... ok *shaky grin* sure. Mr Troa was very kind and was talking to me quietly and letting me know what I needed to do and that really helped. I was still a little worried though because even though I'm very strong now sometimes I don't think I SMASH things as hard as I can and then whatever I'm hitting might not think I'm hitting them hard enough and go see what someone else is doing and whether they can hit harder and you know when you are a tanking person that's not very good. No. So I was making very sure that I was on my toes and ready to GRAWR at anything that looked like it wasn't interested in me anymore. A girl has her pride you know! It's kind of insulting when a big ugly decides to lose interest in me. I should to get to choose when I've lost interest in them! Like when they are smooshy bits of clawed up bits on the ground!

As I had never been before I didn't know the way but the guildies kindly summoned me so that was fine and I was able to get future directions straight away. We climbed up the big stairs into the entrance and then we spoke to this explorer fellow and he told us we had to bang a gong. That was fun! I put on my bear suit and was head butting it!

Once we got inside we were only interested in the really big baddies of course but we had to fight our way through a few annoying trolls. I got to practice my animal soothing skills too! I've never really bothered with soothing animals before. Why bother when I can CLAW RIP SHRED and then skin them *big grin*.

We went to see the big bear troll guy first. Mr Troa explained that pally on bear and bear on troll which sounded funny but I was too excited and nervous to laugh, but that was fine because I didn't need to be. We smooshed that guy real quickly and were able to rescue the prisoner too! Well we would later, we wanted to see if we could save some of the others too, because that's the kind of adventurers we are!

Next we went and ran through this gauntlet thing and up to the top of this platform where there is this big birdy nasty. Mr Troa told me to put on the kitty suit for that fight so I did and had lots of fun and it was neat because I didn't have to remember to run in for the storm thing he does. Miss Jez has told me stories about that fight and it felt much easier to me to just keep clawing at Mr ugly birdman and not have to worry about running in. We managed to save the prisoner here too so that was great!

Then we headed over the top of this big waterfall and snuck through a hut and around some ruins and then swam across a lake and killed a few big lynxes and I was looking at their pelts and wanting to skin them but there was no time if we were going to save the next prisoner and when you are on tanking duties that means being up front and ready to take on all comers and I wanted to make sure that all reports to Miss Jez would be good ones! We got to the next big meanie and Mr Troa explained that I would need to stand right next to him and when the meanie called his spirit cat thing I would need to make sure it didn't try and play with the other people. We had a few mishaps but by the time we'd smooshed all the lynxes and such in our path to get to him we'd missed the chance to rescue the prisoner anyway so that was no drama and we got him down after a couple of attempts and Mr Troa told me I did awesome! *blush*

We pushed on and went and killed some more trolls on the way to the last priesty boss - a nasty dragonhawky flame ball throwing baddie. And then the most exciting scary thing of the wholeadventure happened. Mr Troa told me that I would need to be the main tanky person against him! *big eyes* Wow! I was sooooo nervous! When everyone was ready I charged in and SMACK MANGLE LACERATE and so on and on and on and avoid the flame ball things. It felt like I stood there for a long time telling that guy to pay attention to me. We got him though yep! After a few difficulties with the hatcher guys anway. But it was awesome! I was so exhi... exhilar... happy afterwards that I couldn't help dancing about in my bear suit. I think perhaps, even though it wasn't very dignified, that Miss Jez would understand.

Oh and I guess because I was a good bear I got to take a souvenir of my trip home with me too! It makes me look a little bit like a troll but it will be fun for dress ups! And for helping out with healing too *grin*

(boss images courtesy of wow-wiki)

Is you like a nice hot cup of mangle?

Hello! It's Sephiroh here, you can call me Seph. I had such an exciting day yesterday that I just had to come and share it with you. I hope Miss Jez doesn't mind, I sort of didn't ask her or anything. I mean she's a pretty decent person for a hunter and all but she can be a bit... persni... pernikc... funny about things. Sometimes I think all that time fighting the Burning Legion has made her lose what sense of humour she has. Oh! Did I just say that? *blush*

So um anyway! *bright smile* I'm only a young druid but I've been working very hard on making sure I can do my best and help out my friends visit nasty places and beat on nasty people. See that's what Miss Jez says, that you have to stand ready at all times. She says that a lot actually, along with how I really don't know much about the world yet and what was my family thinking keeping me so sheltered and then she starts muttering about some lady called Vashj and then I just know that she's going to disappear for hours into the Lower City and come back later grumpy and smelling like Dwarven Lager. Oh wait, I shouldn't have said that either should I? *blink*

Soooo, yesterday I was talking to some of my friends in the guild and we decided that we would like to go do some adventuring and that the Shadow Laboratory had been causing problems again and we should go and sort them out! We were organising to get the best group and all the important things we would need. You know, like beer, oh but um don't tell Miss Jez about that, she says I'm too young to drink. Unfair I call it! *humph*. Yeah so we were getting organised and then everyone is all 'so Seph will tank' and I was so excited! I've been working really hard at my leather working so I can make myself some nice tough leather gear. I guess my stitching isn't the neatest but that rune thread is nice and strong and I put lots of stitches in! I'm such a lucky druid too since Loa gave me a vest and Mr Mogri who is a very important tanking person gave me some boots and with my leggings that I made it's a matching set! Even Miss Jez was kind enough to make some gems for me so I'm feeling very strong RAWR! Although, with the stuff being so new and all the clefthoof leather is kind of stiff and pokes you uncomfortably sometimes *wince* but I'm all uncrittable and stuff and that's important.

We made it down to Auchindon and into the Shadow Labs and were ready to start. I was a little uncertain at first but I put on my furry bear suit and tackled the nasties that my friends told me to and GRAWR SMASH MANGLE!! It was sooooo much fun!! I know I should probably have a more serious attitude, Miss Jez would say so, but I just don't think she understands what it's like to be a young strong druid and testing your abilities for the first time! I guess there were a couple of moments when I got a little carried away and um my rage got the better of me which caused a little inconvenience *blush* but I soon learned from my mistakes and we made it all the way through and showed that Murmurer thing yes we did! I guess I must have done a pretty decent job because after we finished I got asked to wear my furry bear suit to Karazhan and help out with some of the tanking duties there! *bounces*

I'm sure it wasn't because some of the regular people were missing. Nuh-uh, I don't care what Miss Jez says *pout*. I made sure I had some yummy food and washed the blood off of my leathers and re-oiled them and was ready to go. I even made sure to go and get my shiny new gloves from the nice man on the Aldor Terrace which I got the last time I went to Karazhan in my kitty form. Yep I've been to Karazhan before, I'm not like... you know... completely naive! Just never in the bear suit *grin*. Miss Jez was muttering away but I think she just doesn't understand what fun it is to be able to claw as Kitty or mangle as bear or even put on my pretty robes and help with healing!

I had lots of fun in Karazhan, we finished off the last of those nasty people including the big demonic guy at the top. He sure thinks he's someone, well we showed him, smooosh! We were feeling pretty good after taking down the Prince in one attempt and so we thought we'd go make a call on the ghostly dragon Netherspite. This was my most nervous moment of our adventure since I'd have to help out with handling the red beam and that would be the most important thing I'd done apart from helping those cloth wearing spell caster people not get squished. Our paladin tank kept talking about dancing with the beam which I thought was a little funny and couldn't help giggling but once we started I saw what he meant and I just danced my furry butt off! I even helped out with the green beam when I wasn't doing the red beam shuffle and although it took an attempt or two we got him in the end! Hah! Take that Mr Grumpy ghostly kind of reminds me of Miss Jez on a bad day dragon!

I hope I get to wear my bear suit to Karazhan again soon! It was such fun although I was a very tired sleepy druid afterwards and I slept in and left my leathers in a big smelly pile on the floor, so I'd better go clean up before Miss Jez sees!

Sephiroh goes adventuring in Nagrand

We interrupt the great Night Elf debate of 2008 to bring you this update from Sephiroh. Our druidic correspondent is currently located in Nagrand and having a whale (bear? cat?) of a time...

Nagrand is I think my favourite zone in Outlands, it's a lovely verdant area with wide horizons, and for Sephiroh, full of lots of lovely skinnable creatures that the Nesingwary outfit pay her good coin to kill. You might think that a druid killing lots of animals isn't very well druidic but Sephiroh is all about the fragile balance of the ecosystem and if that means a little culling of the local fauna here and there then she's up for the challenge.

Sephiroh's varied adventures in Nagrand also included, amongst bouncing around in the sky trying to gather eggs for a little goblin bloke, the opportunity to practice the art of diplomacy.
Given the response received it's clear that her skills need work. Ah well, ogres are smelly anyway. At least she didn't try and convince them to kill any demons for her but perhaps the local representative of O.S.P.C.O. should be involved in the next diplomatic foray.

Whilst prowling around the perimeter of another ogre encampment (Nagrand is seriously over run with these lunkheads) Sephiroh happily bumped into a couple of friendly guild mates who convinced her that she should undertake the Ring of Blood challenges for "fun and profit" and "you need to get your staff". Having heard rumours of this Ring of Blood permeating the grass lands of Nagrand Sephiroh was willing to give it a try. As tank you say? Fine, let me shake out the bear suit, it's feeling a little unweildy after running around as rawrkitty all the time.

Sephiroh proceeded to growl and swipe and mangle and so forth as well as getting angry about certain people not allowing her to get aggro, yes you're level 70 and I'm level 67 and there's a little disparity there. Oh you died, whoops, guess you're squishier even if you're older. The final challenge against some Mor..person proved quite tricky with only four of us. We were a 70 lock, 70 resto druid, 68 ret pally and bear tank Seph. We got there in the end with the pally doing heals as well. Result: a glowing sense of achievement and a nice new staff.
Clearly the staff was a popular, if perhaps in some cases... odd, choice. Waving goodbye to her friends Sephiroh excused herself with important business to undertake and zoomed off, her cheetah form soon just a spotted speck in the distance.

Sephiroh was on a mission, well actually several missions but they all had one goal in mind: the attainment of flight form. It took some time and quite a few ogre kills (I did mention there is an absolute plague of ogres in Nagrand right?) but eventually Sephiroh was able to return to the Moonglade and her friendly (actually he's a little taciturn but Seph was in a great mood and didn't really notice) trainer to acquire amongst other new skills, the ability to shapeshift into a lovely black... crow? raven? No more land-locked running for this young druid! To the skies! Squeeeeee!

The DB raid keeps on trucking

The Drunken Badgers raid has been on a heady trip in the last month. We're progressing rapidly through both Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep with our raid today seeing us down Alar and achieve 3/4 in TK. We also had time for several attempts on Kael and got in some good practice learning the fight. I don't think any of use are kidding ourselves that we will down Kael without a lot of messy splatty death.

It really is such an interesting fight with so many components. I commented to Emelin during the raid that it feels like the kind of fight that is very much about knowing when not to do something as well as when to do something. As much as I enjoy a 'balls to the wall' DPS kind of fight where you just stand there and unleash I really really enjoy the kind of fights which require.... well I guess the word is finesse. Today we were successful in completing the first phase and downing the four advisors and then moving on to the weapons. We were able to get as far as having only two weapons still up when the advisors respawned but everytime we got this far we then proceeded to get smoooshed all over the place. Obviously we need to work on the transition at this point.

The main jobs for me in this fight so far are to misdirect the high lady caster biatch onto Emelin our FR tanking lock and tank the Netherstrand Longbow facing it away from the raid. It was so frantic today that I didn't really get to stop and enjoy the fact that I got to first kill, and then loot and use, an awesome legendary weapon. As a matter of fact the hunters also pick up the dagger and sword too. Three legendary weapons at once? OP!

It was kind of a weird feeling see 'big boy' Kael after handing him his butt in heroic Magisters Terrace, especially since some of the mechanics of the fight are similar, the honors definitely went to him today though.

I also got a new shiny purple today which is always nice in the form of the Star-Strider Boots. Now to decide how to gem them, the enchant will be +12 agility naturally.

I got to thinking during the raid today that it's so awesome to be progressing steadily each week. So far since our foray into T5 content we have downed at least one new boss each week if not two. And this has generally been the case for all the raiding I've done with the Drunken Badgers starting with Karazhan. We've had our hiccups and stalls for sure, but they never lasted long. I really feel lucky to not be part of a raid spending weeks and weeks bashing their heads against the same boss. That's not to say that this isn't in our future though! And even if it is, I'm a believer that it's all part of the raiding game.

Still it is nicer to progress.

./grin

Magisters Terrace - the good and the bugged

I don't know about you but I am soooo happy to have a new 5 man to run. Especially when there's the chance to pick up a nifty mount or a vanity pet. Although I have to say I find the raucous screech of the hawkstrider most annoying hehe. Sweet lewts aside I also think MrT is a triumph of in game artwork. It's such a lovely beautifully detailed instance. It's also always a pleasure to run an instance with some greenery as opposed to the dreary 'dungeon/cave' appearance of so many of them.

Friday night a group of us got together to give MrT a drubbing. Our group was composed of a Warrior tank, Demo lock, holy priest, fire mage and yours truly. We did the normal version first to get Emelin and myself keyed and then hit it up in heroic mode. We actually did better in heroic mode - probably because after one run through Emelin and I now knew what to expect. The instance definitely benefits from a group make up possessing multiple CC ability which is what we had with sheep, banish, seduce, fear and my traps. The most exciting moment - the phoenix pet dropped! Woooo! The lucky recipient was Tiffi our mage.

The next day we were all set to run the instance on heroic again for a chance at phat loot and for myself increased rep. I've haven't spent much time looking at the loot from MrT but I'm yet to see a drop that would be a clear upgrade for me. There is a nice chestpiece but since I've just got my hands on the Ranger Generals Chestguard, apparently considered one of the best it's no upgrade. No it's the rep I want as there are several nifty Jewelcrafting designs to pick up.

So a group forms. Three party members had run the instance that morning before the reset. So we head in and clear the trash up to the first boss. Wait... where is the first boss. He was totally AWOL! But the door that opens to the next section once you down him was still shut. Hmmm. Very strange.

We head back outside and I made the stupid mistake of asking in General whether anyone had had any issues with the instance. Yup definite mistake since the responses were all about how I needed to L2P and stop QQing just because you find it too difficult. Ugh. I further explained what had happened and then had people telling me to check my raid ID. That if we dropped group and reformed under a new leader all would be fine and so on. Just to prove ourselves right we did just that. Yep as expected, the boss was still missing although the trash respawned (in this group we had a handy rogue who was able to sneakily investigate). As with any heroic we had all been saved to the instance on the same raid id without needing to kill a boss first. Reforming under a new leader and re-entering did nada. I took great satisfaction in announcing that in General although typically no-one actually listened. Great, we were saved to a borked ID and the instance wouldn't reset until the next day. I'd opened a ticket but with little hope of any quick response we decided to pick up the heroic daily and headed over to lay waste to Steamvaults.

A pleasant suprise was that a Blizz CM contacted me just as were entering StV. It seems this is a known issue and Blizz are working hard at solving it. However there was nothing they could do for us and were sorry for our inconvenience. They did tell me that the issue occured when members of the party left the instance for longer than 30-45 minutes and if this was avoided then there would be no problems. I then pointed out that none of us had left the instance and that there were 3 people who had run the instance before it reset. Therefore what I was in effect being told was the instance had not actually reset. The CM said they would add this additional info to the database.

I had read on the interwebs that raid reset information was displaying incorrectly but I hadn't thought that this applied to heroics and admittedly hadn't read the detail. Considering that heroics have a raid ID I guess I should have realised they came under the same 'jurisdiction'.

Here's hoping Blizz fix the issue soon.

Good times in Tempest Keep

So after the trials and tribulations of the arrival of patch 2.4 as previously moaned about here by yours truly the weekend shaped up pretty nicely indeed. Unfortunately it's ended rather unhappily with Emelin passing on his tummy bug to this poor hunter but let's not go there eh? I'd rather talk about the good times in Tempest Keep.

After our triumph in SSC last weekend the Drunken Badgers raid was ready and raring to go in TK. We were aiming for 3 bosses this week - Solarian, Void Reaver and Alar. Like any good raider I'd done my home work - read up on the fights and watched the youtube strategy vids. I was ready with pots and flasks and food and bandages - all the accoutrement's of a raider heading into unknown territory.

First stop Solarian. We cleared the trash and learned that rushing along at our usual headlong pace should probably wait until we've got the pulls down pat hehe. The Solarian fight was really pretty straight forward. We got her on the 4th try and as you might expect it was only Wrath that caused us any problems. Once people learned to 'run away little girl' we were sweet. Of the loot dropped was the Vambraces of Ending which suprisingly (at least to me) no one wanted. That meant they went to open roll and myself and the other hunters were up for it. I was the lucky winner - which means I've scored in both SSC and TK in our first visits there. Yay!

Next stop - Loot Reaver. We were aware of the news that Mr. Pinata had changed a little with 2.4 and orbs were no longer announced and were sometimes rising out of the floor or coming in multiples. First shot many of us got splatted by them but we learned quickly and downed him second try. Huzzah. Two of the T5 tokens for hunters, mages and warlocks dropped and there were some very happy people.

Now it was time to take on Alar. I found myself thinking that perhaps we should take on the harder bosses earlier in our raiding day as by now I was starting to feel quite tired and my ability to focus was slipping. Alar really is quite a challenging fight - but in this case mostly for the tanks. I was grateful that my main job was to unleash MQoSDPS. We gave it a few shots but were unsuccessful in downing her. We did get to phase 2 and got some good practice in for the tanks as regards positioning and reacting to quills and were pleased with that. I'm quite confident that we'll get her on our next visit.

I'm really proud of the progression our raid has made in the last two weeks and I do so enjoy learning new fights.

Our first foray into SSC and how the guild got there

Over the past month or so the Drunken Badgers have been preparing to start raiding T5 content. This has meant a few changes in our generally casual style of play. I've written before about the fairly lassez faire approach to raiding we've had in the past. Attempting and failing on Magtheridon was ultimately the writing on the wall for us. It was not so much a gear check as it was a teamwork/experience check and as a result we instituted some changes that I guess make us more your 'serious raiders'. The changes included:

Instituting a loot system
After much discussion in the forums we chose to go with Suicide Kings as from our research it appeared to meet our needs the best, be simple enough to use and be mod supported. Our raid is composed of both guild members, out of guild regulars and the odd subs. We needed a system that would reward regulars without disadvantaging subs too much but which also wouldn't result in the chasm between the two which is a problem of the DKP style systems. We trialled Suicide Kings in the last few Gruul runs and have found it works well.

Firmer leadership structure and tougher raiding requirements
Getting more serious means more work. It also means being tougher on performance and the gear required to join the raid. Therefore a raid performance monitor role was assigned to observe the work of the raid and identify weak points. Any issues identified are then referred back to a more senior member of the raid who is the same class as the person who needs some guidance. The requirements for raiding were also tightened up - gear, enchants and consumables all became more important considerations.

Stepping up recruitment
We also decided to get more serious about recruiting regulars and therefore a recruitment officer was assigned and posts were made in appropriate places about joining the raid.

Formalising raid sign ups
To date we had been using the forums and in game chat to line up people to come to the raid. Subs generally had to be online 15 minutes before go time in case a spot became available. This was tough on the subs and also often delayed raid start times if we had trouble finding the final few people required if we were down on numbers. We have now started using the mod Guild Event Manager and require players to subscribe to a particular raid event no later than the Tuesday prior. This makes it much easier to organise subs if needed.

It's funny really, I think some people thought that introducing all these changes would put people off of raiding with us. I would argue the opposite. It's been my experience both in other games and in real life teamwork/management situations that putting some structure and rules in place means that people feel more comfortable - they know you are serious about what you are doing and they feel more comfortable knowing the structures in place. Humans are funny like that. Since we've made the changes we have a firmer group of regulars with more people applying to join the raid all the time.

And this weekend we stepped into Serpentshrine Cavern as a raid for the first time. We were all prepared with flasks and elixirs and pots and food and bandages and ready for massive amounts of repeated painful death.
First cab off rank was Hydross. Most people entering SSC for the first time apparently skip Hydross and go straight for Lurker. That's not the badger way. He was there so let's give him a shot. So we did. And downed him on the second try. Yup. The. Second. Try. We were justifiably proud of ourselves. First time visit and we nailed the sonofagoat. This is in no small part to the work the tanks and off tanks did in getting their frost and nature resist gear together.

Full of high spirits we boogied on over to Lurker. Finally yes finally my 372 fishing skill came in handy hehe. It turned out that Lurker was the more difficult of the fights for us as everyone got used to jumping in and out of the water for spout. We got him in the end but it was on the 7th attempt. Still and all 2/6 SSC on our first visit? Stoked!

And to add to the awesomeness of that experience yours truly picked up a nice new chest piece. WOOT!!!

Next week we are hitting up Tempest Keep as we plan to alternate between SSC and TK week to week. Will be interesting to see if we fare as well in TK as we did in SSC and whether we can keep up the roll in SSC. Leo we're coming for you!

Ve vill haf compliance!

I'd like to dedicate this post to Mr BRK just because I know how fond he is of the particular item of head wear my little magey has equipped in the picture below. I like to think that Katiya is looking particularly dashing as she salutes. Hopefully dashing and also militant enough to drive fear into the hearts of murlocs everywhere.

Katiya has now attained the mighty heights of 41, in no small thanks to friendly guildies who have been kind enough to run her through a few instances. I sometimes wonder if this is doing my learning of the mage class a disservice since I haven't really had to pull my weight in your typical 5-man as I've been leveling. I'm fairly confident that I'm getting the hang of things though.

Turning 40 was exciting for two reasons.

Firstly, I got in contact with my friendly dwarf paladin bank mule (got to level 4 before I gave up on her) and arranged for the purchase of my beautiful Black Stallion. Note to the wise: The lumbercamp in Elwynn is the place to get your riding skill but to get the black stallion head over to Menethil Harbour and the horse breeder near the stables. He always has a black stallion available.Secondly I reached the talent Ice Barrier in the frost tree. This spell is my new very bestest friend. It makes soloing soooo much easier and more efficient.

I also completed my mage quests so Kat is running around with her shiny new frost wand. If things keep on this way Katiya will soon pass poor Sephiroh who is currently mouldering in Outlands at 61.

Trolls have no fashion sense

The Drunken Badgers raid has of late been running a regular raid where we do our Gruul farm and then split into 2 groups and head over to ZA for some troll slaying fun. Sadly, or perhaps happily we will be starting our push into SSC and TK as of next week so there will be no more chance for ZA loots (at least until my weeknight Aussie Kara run gears up enough people that we can start ZA anyway). We can happily say that we are 6/6 in ZA, although only with one of the groups - the one I wasn't in sadly.

Anyway that's not the point of this post, the point in fact is like the title says: trolls have no fashion sense and damn it neither does Gruul.

Upgrades had been few and far between for yours truly recently, for PVE gear anyway, the PVP gearing has continued nicely (more on that in another post). However on a recent run I was lucky (lucky? well you decide) to pick up the Gauntlets of the Dragonslayer from our grumpy friend Gruul, which were pretty much an upgrade on my T4 gloves and let's face it does anyone actually care about the set bonuses for the hunter T4 set? Didn't think so. So I was rather pleased with the lewtz and slapped a couple of +8 agi gems and the AP enchant on them. And then I equipped them.

...

...
ZOMFG they look like freaking OVEN MITTS!

Now I'm all for some colourful raiment, I love the gear that the finger wrigglers (to borrow an awesome description from Ratshag) get around in. Hunter gear however is generally of your more drab variety. Which is fitting to the idea of a hunter being out and about in the wild, blending in to the environment to stalk and kill our prey. So WTF is up with these gloves?

/sob

I mean sure they could be a great fashion accessory as I serve you up some crunchy Tyrantus ribs but they seriously destroy any sense of coordination to my outfit and a girl wants to look her best you know?

And then, to add insult to injury I get a further drop in ZA - the Pauldrons of Primal Fury. Yes an upgrade to my T4 shoulders but yet another blow to my ideal of the fashionable hunter. If I was a troll hunter this look would be pimpin', if I was a dwarf those big broad shoulders would perhaps help me get away with it. But on a skinny boingy eared Nelf? Um no. Decidedly not. And combined with the T4 helm? Hideous doesn't even begin to describe it.
Here's hoping I get some drops in SSC and TK that are more.... harmonious..

It's not the size... ok well maybe it is.

This is for you Xtian!That baby sure is one big fugghernumper of an axe eh?

In other weaponry news, yes you (that's the general you) may buy me one of these for my birthday/Christmas/just because I'm awesome: Frostmourne!

Yes I'm a girl, perhaps that's not a very girly present, but I dare you to say that to my face if I'm weilding that puppy!

Why Warsong Gulch is the Shiznit for hunters

Before I wax lyrical about WSG and why it roxxors for hunters I first want to get all excited about my newest piece of PVP gear: the Gladiator's Chain Helm. I finally amassed enough honour this Tuesday just gone and decided to take the plunge for the helm since it gave me the opportunity to add itemisation with the 2 gem slots and purchase a glyph rather than needing to gather mats for either an enchant or leg armour. I decided to go for the Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond for the meta slot mainly because out of all the hunter suitable meta gems I had the right 'other gem' requirements in my current PVP gear set up and a Shifting Nightseye for the red slot since it has stamina plus agility. I also shimmied on over to the friendly Cenarion Expedition quartermaster in Zangamarsh to pick up a Glyph of Ferocity to slap on my new shiny. So all in all I'm very happy and my resilience is now 113 which although not at all good is definitely a step in the right direction.

So on to what I intend to be the meat of this post. One night this week just gone we were supposed to run Kara, having recently started up an Aussie week night run now that we have enough Aussies in the guild. Unfortunately we didn't have enough people to do the run so we did a quick 'attunement' run of SV, Arc and BM to key up an alt of one of the guildies and then set up a premade to run the PVP daily Warsong Gulch.

Now I confess I used to hate, loathe and outright detest WSG as a battleground. This was before I understood the strategy and how to use my class to good effect though. Now my opinion is thoroughly changed, in fact I believe that WSG is a BG which really allows the hunter class to shine.

Game objective
Capture the flag - a battlefield objective known well by anyone who has played multi-player FPS type games. One side tries to capture the flag of the opposing side and return it to their base whilst making sure that the other side doesn't capture their flag and do same. You can only capture the opposing teams flag if your flag is at it's base. A simple enough premise yes but not always simple to execute. Hunters with our particular skills are able to add a lot of value with this kind of game objective.

Tracking

Using track humans and track beasts it's possible to provide important information about the opposite factions movements. It's important to continually monitor the movements of the opposite team. See a druid heading tunnel toward the flag room? Throw up beast tracking and watch to see which exit route they take to get across the mid. The earlier you can announce to your team which way they are trying to go the better your chances of taking them down and recapturing the flag. I should note here that with patch 2.4 allowing anyone to track the flag carrier after 45 seconds(I think and unless anything changes which is wont to happen when a patch is still on the PTRs) this will make hunter tracking abilities not quite as critical. Still useful though - 45 seconds until you can track is still a long time in a BG.

Trapping
Trapping is great in any battleground and WSG is no exception. Guarding your flag carrier? Head up to the roof and drop freezing traps and flares at the only entrance to the roof. Know which way the opposing teams flag carrier is heading? Drop a freezing trap to slow them down long enough for the defense team to arrive and start taking them down. Inthe mid embroiled in defense? Use freezing or snake traps to assist the other classes in controlling and containing the attack. Which brings me to an important point which applies to all PVP situations.

Contain and control
Every class has skills and abilities which are used to control the action and a hunter is no exception. Whether on offense or defense (and a hunter can do both very successfully) the aim is to control and contain the encounter. From my perspective this means keeping your opponents in one place long enough to take them down. Especially the flag carrier.

I personally tend to prefer playing defense in WSG so here's an example of what I see as a good use of hunter abilities. That druid heading tunnel to grab our flag that I mentioned above? Ok, he's (or she's, but I'm gonna stick with he) exited via our GY and is heading down the that side of the mid avoiding all the shenanigans going on in the centre. Since I spotted him going in I've got track beasts up because I know he'll be in travel form when trying to return to his base. I see him going GY announce it in vent/bg chat and race over having mounted up as soon as I saw him head up the tunnel. No point chasing him into our flag room since he will be more vulnerable in mid and the defense team will be able to get there quicker. So I get in range and dismounting on the run immediately send in Sooty with Intimidation to stun and slow him. I then follow up with Concussive shot to slow him further. With Sooty nibbling at his kneecaps he's forced to shift to caster form and self-heal which slows him down further. I'll get in front and drop a freezing trap and if I get within melee range while doing this I'll wingclip him too. Everything I'm doing is designed to slow him down so that the defense team can arrive and start making druid chop-suey. That said, this also means there is time for the opposing team to send in support. Ok that's fine, keeping up as many slowing effects as possible on the flag carrier I'll also be looking to a) take out any healer support he may have and b) provide support to the defense team - like a rogue beating on the frost mage or our healer and etc. This is where I'll go TBW since now there is danger of CC from the opposing team and start using abilities like viper sting to mana drain healers and casters and multi-shot to cause as much damage as possible. RAWR.

See the other important thing in any battleground apart from controlling the action is supporting your team. So often in BGs I will see this 'everyone for themselves' mentality. Doesn't work, sorry. You heal me I can do more damage and exert more control. I support you as a healer when getting attacked and you'll stay alive longer to provide heals. When everyone plays for themselves it becomes incredibly easy for the other side to pick you off and then you can never gain momentum as a group because you are in a constant round of rez, run back to action by yourself, die again, rinse and repeat. I see this particular mistake made frequently in the other 'node controlling objective' BGs.

So there you go, my opinion of why WSG is a great BG for hunters as a pretty new PVPer. I'd be interested to know, did I miss some other useful abilities or do you think this kind of approach is totally wrong? What are your experiences in WSG or any BG? Play a different class? Tell me how you deal with hunters so I know to try and avoid/control it hehe ;)

A Conundrum: PVP or PVE

It was only a few days ago that I posted about my PVP nubness. Since that time I've been reading up on all the PVP goodness I can at informative blogs like Out of Mana and Shifttusk does PVP. What I have learnt is great but also has me facing a conundrum.

Unlike my "icky" offsider Emelin I am not wont to change my spec everytime the wind changes direction. I've got my 41/20/0 BM raiding build going on and I likes it. Trouble is, from all I've read, and based on my experience to date (little that there is) this build is not going to serve me all that well in arenas. Mainly due to the lack of burst damage and control. BM as we all know is a great raiding spec with it's MQoSDPS, but in Arena you don't have time to get that sustained thing going on. Instead you want to be controlling the action as much as possible with abilities like scatter shot and silencing shot. The Beast Within is awesome but it can mean that your opportunity to win is based mainly on that one 18 second burst of 'I win Lawl!" rather than an arsenal of abilities.

So the question confronting me is: should I respec? Do I want to have to respec every week so that I can both PVP AND raid effectively. Truth is, not really. Reason: I am still trying to save up the gold for my epic riding skill. I know that I could dedicate myself to farming the gold up but that introduces the whole fun equation I've mentioned previously. farming != fun in my world.

Sounds like it's time for some decision making eh?

Ah but wait. There is also another issue - my resilience is truly pathetic. Like awesomely so. I just purchased my Gladiator's Chain Spaulders last night. I skipped on the Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets because the next thing I will be able to afford with Arena points will be the S3 Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets and I'm going to try and balance S1 honour purchased items with the S3 gear as much as I can based on increasing my resilience as much as possible. My health points are also really low for an arena environment too being just under 8k. There's the gem thing too. Although I'm a JC I don't have any resilience recipes. So I will need to buy the gems or farm Halaa tokens for the Sublime Mystic Dawnstone.There's that spending my epic riding skill savings thing again. I also need to investigate enchants and find out what the best faction shoulder enchant is for my new shoulders.

What this is all adding up to is a lot of effort. Did I mention I'm a lazy lazy hunter? I also still need to get the mats for the Nethercleft Leg Armour for my T4 legs.

Methinks I will first work on getting better PvP gear through honour and then look at changing up my spec to allow me to access the S3 arena gear.

I guess the question I ultimately have to answer is: Am I willing to put in the game play time to allow me to do both PVP and raiding successfully or do I decide to do one well and the other not so well.

Time will tell I guess.

*tap, tap* Is this thing on?

Widgets are fun! Widgets are cool! Especially when they use javascript. So I went off and searched (and searched and searched) BRK's archives till I found his post on adding the javascript that allows you to link to items in the Wowhead database and get some nifty roll over action plus pretty coloured text. Let's see if it's working shall we?

Tonight I finally amassed enough arena points to get the lovely Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe huzzah! Now to ponder whether to spring for the Savagery or Major Agility enchant? I suspect being the not so theory crafting huntard that I am that some pestering of my fellow guildie hunters will follow in short order.