10-Man Raids, Adventures in Powerleveling, and the Druid's First Trip to Naxx

This past week, the guild Solannis and I are in decided to put the 25-man runs on hiatus. Basically the recruits coming in weren't outpacing the people getting burned out from Ulduar, so we weren't making much headway. Well, that and they were apparently tired of repeatedly wiping to the adds on Freya because "don't kill the damn water spirit" is apparently a difficult concept. I think some of it's also just the time of year honestly, but regardless that does put us in the situation of being back to 10-man raiding only and that's just fine with me and Sol.

Now don't get me wrong: Sol, Grunzford, Med, myself, and the rest of the team do enjoy raiding in both 10- and 25-man forms. Tanking or DPSing (maybe one day healing) dragons, giants, and other assorted beings with treasure we want for ourselves is what we do best. I even enjoyed 40-man raiding, despite the general headaches I got from some of those runs, which brings me to my point. Finding nine other people you like can be somewhat difficult, but it's doable. Finding 24 other people you like is another matter altogether.

There's also the matter of raid coordination. In a 10-man run, Sol or I can reasonably know each person in the group and what to expect from them and, in the case of a second tank, we can usually do things like tank switches and cooldown usage with a quick call or sometimes without saying anything. In a 25-man run though, half the time we don't really know much about our fellow raiders other than "he's usually around 4k DPS" or "he'll die to the first void zone". It's also just quieter in 10-man runs, so the tanks don't have to shout over someone for tank switches and other pertinent "I will die if the healers don't hear this" situations. Sol says that last one's particularly annoying for Kologarn.

Alright, so with the 25-man raiding out of the way for the week, that left us with time for some low-level work. Our resident mage Malador made it to 65 today, so he's made a fair bit of progress since my post. He has been complaining though about feeling restricted in leveling to Frost. Something about Ice Barrier and the other trees not being time efficient. We've also taken to subcontracting our services to others to help their leveling progress. Well, not so much subcontracting as it is dragging a buddy of mine through dungeons to help him catch up. If nothing else, it's given Grunzford something to do and apparently it's quite efficient as a druid. To hear him describe it, all he does is bounce around and Swipe at things so they chase him, then Swipe everything down in a giant group and Improved Leader of the Pack keeps him topped off. It's so efficient really that Sol, Mordigg, and I never need to do it again, so we'll just add that to his list of duties. Purely out of business sense though - I would never do something like that out of spite, perish the thought...

Chain-running younger adventurers through dungeons isn't all Grunzford's been up to though. Yesterday he got to go on his first trip to Naxxramas. Unfortunately for him though, it was as a cat, so he didn't get any raid tanking experience. Still better than nothing though and he got a few upgrades to show for it. He says he wasn't real happy with his performance compared to some of the other people - it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great (I think he said 9th or 10th overall for damage). Looking at his talents though, I think part of it comes from being built to be a bear instead of a cat and missing a couple of key talents, but most of it is probably lack of practice being a cat outside of doing dailies. I know that if I were asked to do damage instead of tank, I'd probably do just as badly if not worse and I'm pretty sure Sol keeps his two-handed maces skill around 370 just to get out of having to play retadin for some fights.

Team Update: 6/4

It's been a fairly slow week for us, so nothing major to report. I think Sol's 25-man team only made it as far as Thorim attempts last week, so no progress there. This week's already behind since Tuesday's raid got canceled - bad combination of people with other commitments and some raider turnover. It's unfortunate, but you get periods like this in raiding guilds.

For me, it's been mostly tournament dailies. I did try to get into the Ulduar run this week before they called it, but apparently when they say to the contractors like us to send our mains for the job, there's fine print that says "everyone but Ragar". Bah, like I need their repair bills anyway.

Our new bear tank Grunzford has had a fair bit of action this last week. No raids, but a fair number of heroic runs. Only one piece dropped from any of the runs that he cared for, but it's still Emblems of Heroism towards other gear. It also gave him a bit more practice at tanking, so he'll be a bit better prepared for when I line him up with a Naxxramas job at some point.

Speaking of Naxxramas, our resident shadow priest, Matheion, paid that place a visit this past weekend. Some friends of mine from the guild were going with a pick-up group and said they needed a shadow priest, so I sent him along for the practice. To hear him describe it, it wasn't the worst PuG in the world, but they certainly tried for the title. Sounded like your typical PuG screw-ups to me: assigning people to kite on Gluth who aren't built for it and not giving them enough healing, half the raid dying to the dance on Heigan, only one person cleansing curses on Noth, etc. They ended up not finishing the run, but if nothing else he got some Emblems of Valor and a new pair of pants out of the run.

Most of the last week though has been dedicated to our team's mage. Right now he's 43 and slowly making his way towards Outland. Our team's hunter, Lokaja, asked if he could be next, but after buying epic flight training for the priest and the druid within a few weeks of each other, the team bank needs a breather and that means it's the lowbie's time to shine. Besides, I saw him trying to quest a little the other day and I think he and that wolf of his need a bit more training dummy time before they start questing again. I don't know hunter rotations all that well, but I'm pretty sure he's doing it wrong.

We've got a full house (of tanks)

A couple days ago our resident druid Grunzford finally hit 80. The last couple of days have been us trying to set him up with whatever crafted and AH gear we could acquire for him. Not the easiest task since apparently the only leather anyone sells these days has spell power on it, but we managed to pick him up enough gear for a starter tanking set.

He did get the opportunity to tank his first heroic yesterday though. A buddy of mine was looking for a quick heroic run and I volunteered the druid. In retrospect, it may have been a bit much to have his first real tanking experience be in Utgarde Pinnacle, but hey - no wipe, no foul. Besides that's how I learned how to tank in 40-mans ("You guys gonna take it easy on me?" "Hell no, get to work.")

It's a little too early to go making any concrete judgments from that small of a sample of experience, but from what he was telling me, it sounded pretty similar to warrior tanking in that it was a priority list. Mangle's sorta their version of our Shield Slam with Maul being the bear Heroic Strike, so it's "hit Mangle when it's up and use Maul when rage allows". After that it's keeping a stack of five Lacerates up (used only as often as necessary to keep the stack up), Feral Faerie Fire when it's up, and Swipe as their filler strike like Devastate is for us.

There are some slight differences, like how our filler strike is what keeps our five-stack up for us instead being a "use every 13.5 seconds" ability, but the main difference is that they don't have proc-related conditions for their priority list. For warriors, we're always watching out for a Sword and Board proc or for Revenge to come up, but bears appear to stick with their basic priority list. They technically have a proc in the form of Omen of Clarity, but that's just a free hit of any kind rather than a specific ability. Since they've got something to press every cooldown and they all take about the same amount of rage, it essentially just becomes a free Maul in the end.

I'm hoping that in the near future, I'll be able to line him up with some more heroic work or perhaps a raid or two to get some better info on how their abilities work. Most of the raid work that comes our way tends to have "send Solannis" in the notes, but we'll see. If I can find work for the lock, then I can find work for a tank.

Crusader Solannis, the team's newest 80, and some news

Some quick updates since the last couple of days were eventful and we actually remembered to take pictures for once.

First off, Solannis finally finished championing the last of the cities for the Argent Tournament and has earned his Crusader title.

Of course he couldn't resist being a smartass and timing everything out. Not that I'd be any better, but it's still a little silly. It'll be a while before I get those titles though - back when I was questing, they were a little stingier with the reputation.

Next up is our resident priest, Matheion. He finally hit 80 last night, so we celebrated by going to crafting him some gear, spending some Emblems of Valor on bracers, and hitting the auction house for bargains. He still has no idea how to heal though, so for the moment he's focusing on Shadow.

Math did say to pass along a message to anyone currently leveling: if you're 77 or higher and you're not doing the Argent Tournament dailies, drop whatever you're doing and go. Aside from the whole "collecting Champion's Seals" thing, each quest is apparently worth about 24,000 experience each, so it's as close to free experience as you're going to get.

On the raiding front, Sol says they downed Kologarn, Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, and Freya for the first time this week in the 25-man run. Not a bad week's work.

There was one other bit of news. Now what was it?... Oh yeah!
I managed to get some tickets for me and two friends to go to BlizzCon this year. I've been once before, but not as a blogger, so this time I'll have some gadgets to post anything interesting we may find. Of course, this means I'm gonna have to find another human costume for the show since it's apparently in Alliance territory. For some reason, they get all worked up when a Tauren shows up on their doorstep.

Mordigg's first Ulduar

Ragar: Last night the guild did another one of its 10-man Ulduar excursions. This time they requested Mordigg instead of Solannis. Well, technically it was "send whoever you want", but when I mentioned that I'd like to come, it's "anyone other than you". You can almost feel the love.

Mordigg: Yes, nothing to do with the fact that every other tank your guild has is a warrior. It's all out of spite.

Ragar: Yeah, yeah, you and your logic. I'm well aware that from a tactical perspective, it makes sense to mix up the tanking classes. I'd just like a break from doing paperwork. That's enough about me though. How was your first trip into Ulduar?

Mordigg: It went fairly well - cleared the first floor and Kologarn in under two hours. We wiped a few times on Assembly of Iron for some reason. The raid leader called it after that and we'll reconvene during the weekend to finish up. There was one other issue where I wanted to strangle -

Ragar: That's normal.

Mordigg: But I didn't even say who.

Ragar: You don't have to. There are people Sol, Med, and I tune out, but there's only one person for whom "strangle" comes to mind.

Mordigg: Okay, just making sure it's not just me. It's always a little bit of a concern when thoughts like that come up as a death knight.

Ragar: So out of curiosity, what'd the loudmouth do this time?

Mordigg: Well, first off he questioned whether I was crittable after the first Kologarn atttempt. That's just flat out insulting, especially from someone who thinks they know tanking because they know a guy that tanks Naxxramas once in a blue moon. Kologarn is a giant whose hands are taller than I am and who puts a stacking -25% armor debuff on the tank. I'm going to get hit really hard, especially if the other tank's busy with the Rubble and can't taunt off of me when I get a second stack.

Ragar: Yeah, -25% armor hurts, especially since high armor is kinda your thing along with druids.

Mordigg: The other major thing was during Assembly of Iron. When you're fighting Steelbreaker, the other tank has the two other guys off in a corner. Every now and then, the middle one, Runemaster Molgeim, will put a Rune of Power on the ground that bumps up the damage done by anyone standing on it by 50%. Great for us, bad when they're standing in it. Occasionally he'll put one underneath Steelbreaker so I'll have to move him. No big deal, right? First one shows up and loudmouth starts yelling, "MOVE HIM! MOVE HIM! MOVE HIM!" I'll admit I could've handled it a little more tactfully than yelling back, "I can $&*#ing see!"

Ragar: Alright, you've had your first taste of Ulduar and now Sol and I know you're still sorta normal based on the fact that you can still be angry. Any other notes?

Mordigg: Well, there was one point during an Assembly attempt where a feral druid pulled aggro off of me near the beginning. After talking to the other tank, he said, "Yeah, he's kind of a beast. I usually put Vigilance on him, but I forgot." How does Sol deal with that?

Ragar: Don't ask Sol about building threat. His survivability build is the same as his threat build. Infinite Divine Plea made his threat generation kinda ridiculous.

Mordigg: Yeah, well that's not the case for me. My Frost tanking build has decent enough survivability, but threat's always been the thing that it's been weak about. For trash pulls, it's fine - Howling Blast is awesome for stuff like that. For bosses, it's always been a little too dependant upon Rune Strike, which keeps me from using Frost Strike as much as I should. There's always the concern that I'll accidentally use the runic power before Rune Strike goes off and I'll lose a good chunk of threat from that. Not to mention the fact that the changes to Blade Barrier makes Rune Strike come up less already.

Ragar: Yeah, I can see that being an issue, what with your heavy threat attack being the weird love child of Heroic Strike and Revenge.

Mordigg: Regardless it should be less of an issue with the new spec, though I still need to field test it.

Ragar: Okay, walk me through the spec. What's the theory behind it?

Mordigg: Well, it's less runic power dependant than my Frost build, so there's less likelihood of clipping my Rune Strikes. As Unholy I'll be using Scourge Strike instead of Obliterate or Howling Blast for my double-rune attack. Since it's shadow damage, it'll ignore armor and in theory deal more damage than using Obliterate on bosses like I've been doing. The glyph also gives me the potential to refresh diseases on the target, which would let me get a few more Scourge Strikes in before having to refresh diseases.

I still need to see if it's got better or worse AoE threat than my Frost build. Frost has Howling Blast with the occasional one being free, whereas this build has Unholy Blight, Wandering Plague, and Corpse Explosion. Both have the Death & Decay glyph and reduced cooldown, so that's not a consideration.

Ragar: Corpse Explosion?

Mordigg: I had a spare point I needed to spend to go further into Unholy and the other choices weren't that appealing. Besides, I'd heard that it was a little better these days. We'll see when I get the chance to test it.

Ragar: How about survivability? I know this is mainly a threat build, but does it have any extra tricks?

Mordigg: Actually it does. It's got Bone Shield and Anti-Magic Zone along with a better Anti-Magic Shell, so it's really more of an anti-caster survivability build than the other. I'll admit I'm not fond of losing the extra 3% miss from Frigid Dreadplate, but hopefully the mitigation from the glyphed Bone Shield should balance out in the end. We'll find out when the group starts back up this weekend.

Ragar: Well, you have fun with that and try not to kill the loudmouth. I'm not sure our contract covers that.

Mordigg: I make no promises.

Team Update: 5/5

Not much on the raiding front this week - the guild Solannis and I run with took a break from 25-man raiding this week while they recruited some extra members. That left us with 10-man Ulduar and whatever else people came up with to fill the time. Still plenty to do for us though, so we made due.

First up was the Children's Week festivities. I'm still not entirely sure why the matrons think it's a good idea to send children off with strangers who fight dragons, undead, and various other unpleasant things for a living. I can think of some cynical reasons, but I'd hope they're not quite that desperate for the extra space in the orphanage. Regardless, me, Sol, and Medeleth participated and ran around orphans to various parts of Azeroth and Outland. Med complained a bit about it being a "waste of his genius" or something like that, but he's really a big softy. One that toys with demonic forces, but a softy nonetheless. None of us have finished all of the achievements for the title, but I don't see that happening any time soon. The Utgarde Pinnacle run is no problem, but I've got no desire to step foot into a battleground as is, let alone with a kid trailing behind me. Oh well, no big deal. I'm perfectly happy with Chef Ragar and I think Sol's got another title in mind. Med doesn't seem to care all that much, so he'll probably stick with his Silvermoon title.

Speaking of the lock, he actually got a little raid time in this week. The first time was an Ulduar-10 swap: we were going after Hodir and Mimiron, so there was no need for a second tank. After last week's "ta-daa!" incident, Sol and I talked to the raid leader and explained that we have better options available when DPS is required. Admittedly though, Sol could've been a bit more diplomatic than saying, "My Ret gear is garbage. I have no intention of making it anything other than garbage. Grab the lock." Regardless, it worked and Med got another shot at raiding. I don't think we saved the meters from the run, but from what I recall, it seemed like a acceptable showing for someone with 90% crafted or AH gear and below hit cap.

Later in the week he had another shot in a 10-man Naxxramas group; some new people in the guild needed gear, so I talked them into taking Med along for the ride. A couple hours later, Med came out with two new pieces of gear (one that he can't put on till he gets more hit rating though) and enough Emblems of Heroism for a third. All in all, a fairly productive week for the lock.

Not a whole lot of news for the rest of the team (shammy's gone Elemental for the moment, Mordigg's mostly been herb farming), but our priest has been making pretty good progress as of late. He's still got eight more levels to go till he's caught up with the rest of us, but that shouldn't take too much longer. He said something about using a Discipline spec to level in Northrend. Personally I don't understand using that over Shadow, but considering me and Sol leveled as Protection, we're not really in a position to judge anyone. He's still got no idea how to heal though, so that'll be a fun learning curve once he starts instancing.

Sol should probably fix that at some point

Story from Solannis' 10-man Ulduar run last night:

Solannis: Hmm... according to what I'm reading, the only reason we would need an off-tank on General Vezax is if we don't kill the Saronite Crystals to make vapors. Are we going for that achievement?

Main Tank: No, just normal the first time.

Solannis: I should probably flip to my Ret spec then.

Main Tank: Yeah. Next time we come I'll bring my Fury gear so I can dps instead. I don't know how good your Ret gear is though.

Solannis: Okay, you see the gear I have on now?

Main Tank: Yeah, your tanking stuff. What about it?

Solannis: *switches to Jawbone* Ta-daa!

Rest of raid: *facepalm*

Believe it or not, that wasn't a recipe for spectacular DPS. Admittedly though, a good chunk of that was from the fact that Sol's: a) not hit-capped, and b) his weapon skill was apparently something like 365. I guess I'll have to have him start spending Emblems of Valor on Ret gear and the rest of us can start looking for crafted items and pieces on the AH for him.

It does seem a bit odd to go to all that trouble for a set of gear that he won't use that often and doesn't even want to use (his attitude towards Ret is about the same as mine towards Arms and Fury), but until I can start convincing the raid leader that we have a perfectly good warlock ready to swap in off the bench, it's our obligation as contractors to provide what is requested. Sigh, and I was just starting to make back that money from the lock's epic flyer too.