After only 1 night and a half of attempting her, the firey bitch went down, pushing The Exodus to 5/7. Well done to Horobi and Carni, who were thrown into the deep end last night, and managed to do their jobs perfectly (air DPS and interrupting on a P1 druid add).
We killed her on the last pull, and just had time to walk across the bridge and get violated by Staghelm's trash before we all had to go.
I'm looking forward to seeing the Staghelm and Ragnaros fights, and moving into HC. It'll be a nice change, after the normal mode grindfest of T11.
Tanking in a pink dress
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Finding our stride
On Wednesday night we struggled to kill Shannox, and barely got a few Baleroc attempts in before we ran out of time for the night. So I hit Sunday night's raid just hoping we'd kill Bale and Beth, and get some time on Ryo. Little did I know what would happen.
2 shot bale (2nd kill)
3 shot beth (2nd kill)
4 shot ryo (guild first kill)
We joked about 5 shotting Alysrazor, but unfortunately that didn't happen :P
We made some good progress on Alys, and everyone was in extremely high spirits throughout the night. After the pain and suffering of T11, I'm ok with this tier being a little easier. We as raiders perhaps were due the break.
So tonight we hit Alys right off the bat. I wasn't expecting to even see her last night, let alone get through all 4 phases with everyone alive. Now it's just an endurance game. Rinse and repeat until she dies, since there is no enrage timer, and healers can't go oom.
The really telling point is comparing ourselves to those in a similar spot : The top teams in Pap en Vleis and Unforgiven 2, the two guilds that most of my raiding team is from. We're now 2 bosses ahead of PNV, and on par with UF2.
Everyone is in good spirits, focused, and having a good time while killing stuff. I wouldn't change a thing :D
2 shot bale (2nd kill)
3 shot beth (2nd kill)
4 shot ryo (guild first kill)
We joked about 5 shotting Alysrazor, but unfortunately that didn't happen :P
We made some good progress on Alys, and everyone was in extremely high spirits throughout the night. After the pain and suffering of T11, I'm ok with this tier being a little easier. We as raiders perhaps were due the break.
So tonight we hit Alys right off the bat. I wasn't expecting to even see her last night, let alone get through all 4 phases with everyone alive. Now it's just an endurance game. Rinse and repeat until she dies, since there is no enrage timer, and healers can't go oom.
The really telling point is comparing ourselves to those in a similar spot : The top teams in Pap en Vleis and Unforgiven 2, the two guilds that most of my raiding team is from. We're now 2 bosses ahead of PNV, and on par with UF2.
Everyone is in good spirits, focused, and having a good time while killing stuff. I wouldn't change a thing :D
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Some Baelrock feral hax
We were told you needed to 2 tank Bale, and that single tanking it wasn't possible in 359. They were wrong.
We solo tanked this in 359 gear. Our DK tank popped AMS for inferno blade, and popped runic weapon for decimation blade (he dodged+parried half of them). Also, since Death strike scales with DMG taken, a DS right after a decimation blade hit was truly amazing. He ended the fight 2nd on healing, right behind our Holy Pally.
The thing I want to mention, however, is what I ended up doing on the fight. I went as kitty DPS, but took all the spell dmg tank talents (2/2 natural reaction, 3/3 perseverance), and kept my FR glyph on. When it was time for me to tank a shard, I went bear, popped BS and SI/FR (and got our disc priest to PS me on the 3rd one when SI/FR were both on CD), and tanked it to around 20 stacks (most dps can only survive to around 10 in our raid). This helped our healers get mental stacks of Vital Spark, which made the single tank strat work really nicely. I also managed to push 16k DPS, in spite of being in bearform for 40% of the fight :) I didn't check, but I suspect the shard gave me some nice vengeance.
The Holy Pally was the first one to heal me, on the very first shard, and this is no doubt why his healing was so insane on the fight.
I thought I'd try this as a gimmick - I honestly didn't expect it to work as well as it did. I can certainly recommend it for any other ferals, if you have a tank that is able to solo tank it, or even if you're MS feral kitty and you have 2 tanks... it's totally worth it.
We solo tanked this in 359 gear. Our DK tank popped AMS for inferno blade, and popped runic weapon for decimation blade (he dodged+parried half of them). Also, since Death strike scales with DMG taken, a DS right after a decimation blade hit was truly amazing. He ended the fight 2nd on healing, right behind our Holy Pally.
The thing I want to mention, however, is what I ended up doing on the fight. I went as kitty DPS, but took all the spell dmg tank talents (2/2 natural reaction, 3/3 perseverance), and kept my FR glyph on. When it was time for me to tank a shard, I went bear, popped BS and SI/FR (and got our disc priest to PS me on the 3rd one when SI/FR were both on CD), and tanked it to around 20 stacks (most dps can only survive to around 10 in our raid). This helped our healers get mental stacks of Vital Spark, which made the single tank strat work really nicely. I also managed to push 16k DPS, in spite of being in bearform for 40% of the fight :) I didn't check, but I suspect the shard gave me some nice vengeance.
The Holy Pally was the first one to heal me, on the very first shard, and this is no doubt why his healing was so insane on the fight.
I thought I'd try this as a gimmick - I honestly didn't expect it to work as well as it did. I can certainly recommend it for any other ferals, if you have a tank that is able to solo tank it, or even if you're MS feral kitty and you have 2 tanks... it's totally worth it.
Friday, July 8, 2011
GM "assistance" with Eternal Ember issue
So on Wednesday night we got our first Eternal Ember drop, off our second Shannox kill. We'd agreed some time ago that the most fair way to assign the legendary was for our top 2 caster dps, a mage and a warlock, to roll on the first orb, and that would randomly assign which of them should get the weapon (as both have been in guild for the same time, have the same flawless performance record, etc).
Our master looter, unaware of what the new blue item was, assumed it was just another crafting orb, and assigned it to me as the RL/GM, as I then drop crafting orbs in the Guild Bank until later. Since I'm a druid on the legendary quest line (even though I'm technically 4th in line, if I'm lucky), it turned out I could be assigned the item (I assume you'd get an error if you weren't on the quest).
Naturally, when this happened, my first response was "NNNNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!", but then I figured no stress, I can just get a GM to help me fix this. So we did the roll, the warlock (Vasjh) won the roll, and I logged a GM ticket :
Garnaph @ Twilight's Hammer 6/7/2011 21:16
"My master looter accidentally gave me [Eternal Ember], as she mistook it for a crafting orb. It was supposed to go to Vasjh. Please help. I've told the master looter to be more careful in future. I'm so sorry."
I had an ETA of 4 days on the ticket, but I figured no rush, it's not like we're going to have 25 orbs within those 4 days anyway.
This morning I got the following scripted copy-paste response :
Rennguht Customer Service Representative 8/7/2011 01:10
"Thank you for contacting the Blizzard customer support team.
Eternal Embers can by design only be looted or assigned to a player who is on the quest “All-Seeing Eye” at the time of creation and is not intended to be traded afterwards. Please be advised that the Game Master team is therefore not accommodating redistribution or transfer requests of Eternal Ember under any circumstances.
Thank you for your understanding and consideration.
Regards,
Game Master Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe"
I had a similar issue when cata first hit. I rolled greed on a chaos orb (even though I'm JC/Alchemy) and won it. I didn't realise it would immediately and permanently soulbind, and that GMs would have a "please go @#$ yourself with a rake" attitude towards helping you clear up these mistakes. I still have that chaos orb sitting in my bank, gathering dust. Just the one, because I learned from this unfortunate misunderstanding.
So in this case, in what is likely to be another once-off (as I'm changing our master looter after this incident), a GM is again completely unwilling to assist. If it was a chaos orb I wouldn't be as stressed out, as you can just run another 5 man to get another. boss kills in firelands are few and far between, and even if you kill all 7 bosses in a week, you're not assured of 7 embers, as they're not 100% drop rate.
So why on earth are GMs so unwilling to help? I used to have an opinion of them as very friendly and helpful. Now I'm starting to feel that they're unwilling to help in any way, and are too lazy to even type an individualised response, resorting to scripted copy-paste replies, after a 2 day wait.
This morning I tried again, posting the following wall of text in reply to the GM :
Garnaph @ Twilight's Hammer 8/7/2011 07:54
"I understand that that is your standard response. However as I stated above, our master looter mistook it for a crafting orb, and that's why it was assigned to me : as the guild leader, as I normally place crafting orbs in our guild bank. By chance I happen to be a druid that's on the quest, but I'm 5th in line for the legendary, and by no means should I have got the quest item.
We performed a roll for the Eternal Ember, as per how we agreed we'd handle this over a month ago, and Vasjh won the roll. He should have got it. I'm not trying to get it transferred after the fact because I changed my mind.
I'm fully aware of how the legendary quest line works. We decided on how to assign these orbs a long time ago, and the Ember was merely assigned to me by accident. It won't happen again, as I've been giving the master looter hell since it happened. I just need you to transfer this one to fix the mistake, PLEASE :(
This isn't a chaos orb that we can quickly run another 5 man to replace. Firelands bosskills are few and far between for our guild at the moment, and the Embers aren't even a 100% drop rate. Having one wasted like this is a massive problem for us."
It would be nice if I could at least get a GM to actually read what I have to say, and hear me out, rather than brushing me off like a moron QQing on forums. I don't need to be told what the legendary questline entails - I read up on everything I needed to some time ago. The response I got was lazy, unhelpful, and a little condescending. I expected better from a "Customer Service Representative".
Our master looter, unaware of what the new blue item was, assumed it was just another crafting orb, and assigned it to me as the RL/GM, as I then drop crafting orbs in the Guild Bank until later. Since I'm a druid on the legendary quest line (even though I'm technically 4th in line, if I'm lucky), it turned out I could be assigned the item (I assume you'd get an error if you weren't on the quest).
Naturally, when this happened, my first response was "NNNNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!", but then I figured no stress, I can just get a GM to help me fix this. So we did the roll, the warlock (Vasjh) won the roll, and I logged a GM ticket :
Garnaph @ Twilight's Hammer 6/7/2011 21:16
"My master looter accidentally gave me [Eternal Ember], as she mistook it for a crafting orb. It was supposed to go to Vasjh. Please help. I've told the master looter to be more careful in future. I'm so sorry."
I had an ETA of 4 days on the ticket, but I figured no rush, it's not like we're going to have 25 orbs within those 4 days anyway.
This morning I got the following scripted copy-paste response :
Rennguht Customer Service Representative 8/7/2011 01:10
"Thank you for contacting the Blizzard customer support team.
Eternal Embers can by design only be looted or assigned to a player who is on the quest “All-Seeing Eye” at the time of creation and is not intended to be traded afterwards. Please be advised that the Game Master team is therefore not accommodating redistribution or transfer requests of Eternal Ember under any circumstances.
Thank you for your understanding and consideration.
Regards,
Game Master Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe"
I had a similar issue when cata first hit. I rolled greed on a chaos orb (even though I'm JC/Alchemy) and won it. I didn't realise it would immediately and permanently soulbind, and that GMs would have a "please go @#$ yourself with a rake" attitude towards helping you clear up these mistakes. I still have that chaos orb sitting in my bank, gathering dust. Just the one, because I learned from this unfortunate misunderstanding.
So in this case, in what is likely to be another once-off (as I'm changing our master looter after this incident), a GM is again completely unwilling to assist. If it was a chaos orb I wouldn't be as stressed out, as you can just run another 5 man to get another. boss kills in firelands are few and far between, and even if you kill all 7 bosses in a week, you're not assured of 7 embers, as they're not 100% drop rate.
So why on earth are GMs so unwilling to help? I used to have an opinion of them as very friendly and helpful. Now I'm starting to feel that they're unwilling to help in any way, and are too lazy to even type an individualised response, resorting to scripted copy-paste replies, after a 2 day wait.
This morning I tried again, posting the following wall of text in reply to the GM :
Garnaph @ Twilight's Hammer 8/7/2011 07:54
"I understand that that is your standard response. However as I stated above, our master looter mistook it for a crafting orb, and that's why it was assigned to me : as the guild leader, as I normally place crafting orbs in our guild bank. By chance I happen to be a druid that's on the quest, but I'm 5th in line for the legendary, and by no means should I have got the quest item.
We performed a roll for the Eternal Ember, as per how we agreed we'd handle this over a month ago, and Vasjh won the roll. He should have got it. I'm not trying to get it transferred after the fact because I changed my mind.
I'm fully aware of how the legendary quest line works. We decided on how to assign these orbs a long time ago, and the Ember was merely assigned to me by accident. It won't happen again, as I've been giving the master looter hell since it happened. I just need you to transfer this one to fix the mistake, PLEASE :(
This isn't a chaos orb that we can quickly run another 5 man to replace. Firelands bosskills are few and far between for our guild at the moment, and the Embers aren't even a 100% drop rate. Having one wasted like this is a massive problem for us."
It would be nice if I could at least get a GM to actually read what I have to say, and hear me out, rather than brushing me off like a moron QQing on forums. I don't need to be told what the legendary questline entails - I read up on everything I needed to some time ago. The response I got was lazy, unhelpful, and a little condescending. I expected better from a "Customer Service Representative".
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