Rage Winterchill

Last night we decided to make a quick foray into Hyjal for a change of pace. The fact that we had two pally tanks certainly helped the decision along. Most of us had read up on the fight a bit.

The interesting thing about this fight is that rather than fighting your way through trash to the boss, it comes to you in waves. Think Black Morass - except all in one spot. If you kill a wave fast enough, you have time to take a drink before the next wave comes along. If you don't, then you'll be overwhelmed by adds (nasty ones at that). Another interesting thing is that it's a very good fight to have your PVP trinket equipped. Rage has a number of abilities that you'll want to trinket (or shapeshift, when possible) out of. One of those abilities is his ice bolt - it does 4250-5750 frost damage AND encases the target in something much like an ice trap - except that it does an additional 2500 damage every second. While I was able to shapeshift out of the frost nova he often did, I couldn't shift out of the frozen tomb...hence the trinket.

So our first attempt(s) went like this:

Wipe on trash wave 6.
Kill all waves of trash and wipe on Rage at around 34%.
Boss kill!

Woot! He's dead!

We'll be heading back to Tempest Keep and SSC the rest of this week. The plan is to return to the fights we haven't seen in a while (in particular, Al'ar, who we haven't attempted since our first kill of him) and get these bosses to the point of truly being on farm. Then we'll start focusing on Vashj and Kael.

On a totally separate note, at the end of the raid, I found myself pulled suddenly (and without notice) into the officer channel. I was stunned...WHAT DID I DO?!? I even blurted that out, I think. And suddenly, I had 3 or 4 officers saying "You're in TROUBLE, Essy!" Argh. I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what it might have been... Well, I found myself drafted. No longer can I listen to someone and then say "well, have you talked to an officer about it?" C'est la vie.

Bye Bye FLK!

We are now 5/6 in SSC (and 3/4 in TK). Vashj and Kael are the only ones that have escaped our wrath!

Tidewalker Washed Away!

Serpentshrine Cavern, Zangarmarsh
April 30, 2008

This just in! Distant Beliefs has downed its third boss in SSC. On its first night ever facing the incredibly ugly Morogrim Tidewalker, Distant Beliefs has sent him to his watery grave. The members of the execution team were seen laughing over his dead body before heading off to make Leotheras the Blind its next target.

SSC Progress

It's late and I'm tired, so I won't go into too much detail. However, after a couple of nights trying, we've now downed Hydross. We might have gotten him down a bit sooner, but our first try was with 4 resto druids, a priest and a pugged pally healer. The fight is quite nasty for resto druids. More on that later.

Most of the Hydross strategies recommend between 8 and 9 healers. We had 6...well, almost 6. Tonight we had 2 restos, a pally, and three priests - one of them seriously undergeared. It took a couple of attempts and getting the timing down, but Hydross is now on our official kill list. Woot!

We moved on to down Lurker and decided to call it quits for the night. Tomorrow we'll be back, jousting at Tidewalker.

We took a group to ZA once we finished up in SSC tonight. I'd run with various folks in the group before, but not run ZA with that exact group. It was good fun and we cleared the first four bosses. I know they want to get in there before it resets on Friday to make a run at Hex Lord. Not sure when that will happen though.

Gruul's and Mag's

So, a lot has been happening lately. On Tuesday, Deressy went to Gruul's Lair for the first time with Distant Beliefs. Her only other attempt there had ended rather quickly so this was her first time to see anything beyond the High King. We had a couple of minor wipes, but downed both Gruul and High King! Woot! Since she wasn't part of the guild, she wasn't able to roll on the T4 gear that dropped (others were wanting it), but she did manage to pick up Cowl of Nature's Breath, which was a very nice upgrade for her.

Tonight she headed into Magtheridon's Lair. This was a progression run - her second time into Mag's (both times with Distant Beliefs). The first time was really not very successful - we had a hard time with the clicking, the staying alive etc. Tonight, the Raid Leader was trying a new strategy - 8 healers. I lost count of the number of attempts we made, and don't really want to count 2 of them at all; not once, but twice, someone right clicked a warlock to start the event - when not everyone was ready or even in the room. If you total up my durability loss for the night, I'd be somewhere around -80%.

We did, however, get better and better with each run. Our best attempt had him down to 10% - unfortunately, we lost a bunch of people to cave-ins and then some folks missed clicking their cube (likely because they were dead), and it ended up our tank and offtank (both pallys) trying to kill him and stay alive. We'll be trying it again on Tuesday, so I'm quite looking forward to that.

Now, I don't use damage or healing meters at all - have always been a bit concerned about people focusing more on the meter rather than on what's best for the raid. But twice last night, I had one of the other healers whisper me to let me know I was 'catching' him on the meter - later I found out I ran second in every fight. Not sure if that's good or bad - I was on raid healing though, so it's no surprise I'd have high heal numbers. What I don't know, and would have like to have seen, is how much of that was overheal. Oh well...maybe if I can find a semi-reliable and very non-intrusive meter, I'll install it.

On a separate note, after a very long and difficult process, *zul and I decided to leave our guild and join Distant Beliefs. We really loved Asgard and the people in the guild, which made this decision even more difficult. However, given some real life issues which may limit our time playing this game, we felt as if we would progress more and see more end game content by making a move. Everyone at Asgard has been incredibly encouraging - I can't recommend that guild enough if you are on Runetotem looking for a guild. They've also picked up one of my favorite resto druids - and one who I learned a lot from (grats, Asgard and Mondas).