A bad weekend

Basically my raid didnt happen. wont go into too many details, but the nuts and bolts are I couldnt get the people. the people I did get left after an hour, to be replaced with new people, who left after an hour and so on and so forth until I gave up after 3 hours. Partly its cos my guild didnt do their ICC10 run on saturday night (missing a tank) so they rescheduled it for sunday and several guildies who would have run with me didnt because of that. Partly it was the football. Partly cos I refused to take people in pvp gear or who didnt know the tactics. Rather not get saved to a pug that wipes on lady deathw thanks. So i called it.

Well then I saw on trade "lfm icc25 to join a guild run. continuing raid from last night 4/12 in doing plagueworks" oh ho! whats this? So I joined it we wiped 5-6 times on fester and then the raid was called. No achievments for me this week, no frosties this week from the ICC 25 and I cant pug one until after the server reset now I am saved.

So to cheer myself up I am going to go farm skyguard rep for a bit I think. Maybe work on my "insane" title.

Back to the raiding grind stone

Well got back from my holidays on monday. Chilled out on wow, pugged the ICC10 and did the weeklie before the server reset. Got the frosties to get my 4 piece t10 at last. My guild has reached the stage where they are wiping on festergut, struggling to fill out the raid with pugs and generally wondering why so many guild level 80s prefer to pug I guess. Well I plan from now on to hold myself available for them. They usually start progression while I work, but I saw them trying fester on the monday night, I could have jumped in there if I wasnt already saved. The first 4 bosses in ICC are only 8 frosties anyway and theres only bracers and saurfangs trinket that drops that I want from them. So I am stopping pugging ICC10 and will try to enter guild runs with them.

I have turned my eye to running 25 man pugs. Basically every pug I can get into calls it after saurfang goes down. The pugs that go further I cant get into with the achiev for plague works. Now I remember how I got into ICC in the first place, i formed my own pug so thats what I am doing. Starting 15.00 server time on sunday (incidently clashing with the england match DOH!), an achievment run on the plague works, no pvp gear and no bad gems/enchants. Advertsing it already on trade and found a few good people to join it as well as a few guildies who signed up :).

Well then I had the idea to advertise it on the realm server. Bad move on my part. Not only was I accused of looking for boosts (oh come on!! If i was gonna do that I would have offer gold and/or asked for the achievment from my pugs that i was trying to get). I also got my spec picked apart to my dismay as well as general critism of everything from my gems and enchants to my lack of experience and general scrublike scrubness. Well actually the critics did help me, I fixed a few errors in my build and I actually appreciated that scrutiny from some of the top raiders on my server. It can only make me a better player. However it is also obvious that the realm forum is the talking shop for the top raiding guilds and so called "pros/hardcore/elite" and that I wont find the people I am aiming to reach there. ie people with my competence, inexperience, willingness to wipe 170 times to learn the fight and drop the boss and frustraion with the "no achiev no invite noob!" culture.

Now I know WHAT it is I know how to use it, but I will save my recruiting for in game. If I can I plan to try to convince the players who do come to accept saving the raid and doing it again next sunday. If I can do that and we get a few weeks in a row at it who knows? I might even see the LK fight before cataclysm. first things first though; lets see if I can find 24 people who arent interested in football.

My first /ignore in an LFG pug

I never really used /ignore. Always seemed kinda self defeating and childish. After all in a lfg or battleground the chances of meeting that person again are very slim, you probably wont remember them in a month anyway and if the ruck between you was really that bad they will probably ignore you anyway saving you the trouble of seeing their name again in yr ignored list and remembering what they did that wound you up, winding you up. I'd rather not dignify the rude and the moronic with memory of them thank you very much.

On the server itself its different. When I was a very small level 30 something trying to kill an elite without a guild or friends to help me, a kind level 80 offered to help me in return for 12 truesilver bars. So I handed them over and he agreed to do it in an hour or so when he finished his buisness. Ofc he never got back to me and ignored polite queries over the next few days as to when he might spare the time. I didnt ignore him though, I added him to my fr list. I know his name I will remember his name and I wont deal with or trust him again.

Today though I coldly made the caluculation to ignore a shammy healer with a 6.1G score and kingslayer title. It started with the first Hc of the day, ended up in Azjol-Nerub. Now being close to my glory of the hero achievment I asked when i saw it, can we do the [watch him die] achievo please. This was ignored (ofc. not unusual, most pugs wont waste the time they want the emblems and I normally feel the same) and we blasted through the watchers before killing the Elder. Ce la vie.

That was when the healer pops into chat "which worthless scrub wanted to do an achievement?", I replied "nice" (not; "the same one who just did 7k dps while yr other dps did 3 you prick" like I wanted to) and got on with it. After all still normal pug behaviour. Dicks like that forget what its like to be 3 months into the game on your first level 80 trying to do cool shit.

Except thats when the big problem slammed home: after that I never got another heal. Not one. The last boss anub, is pretty intensive with the adds and the damage comes fast. I avoided being impaled on the claws, cos I am not a fuckwit who stands in the fire, but i still get hit by adds, the tank cant be everywhere. Now it could be I am being unfair, after all he healed the other 2 dps, who were standing in the fire (or in this case on top of the growing mound of dirt that signals a claw emerging to impale you). So I had to pot and bandage, fdeath and use deterence and every other defensive abilty I could, ended the fight on 3k hps (the other four were full health) while still putting out the dps. After all its common practice in pug raids not to heal hunters. Maybe hes used to his guild hunters using mend pet on themselves? who knows?

Well the group wanted to go on and do the seasonal boss, yeah I am up for that 2 extra frosties for 5 minutes work. Went in with my now 6k health, all others full health. Guess what? no heals I potted banadged twice, had my wolf die on me and gave up killing adds on the grounds I couldnt afford to pull one with my vollies. I stuck myself on the boss and did 800dps on him until he went vulnerable, then joined in nuking him. Finished the fight, with a health in the low hundreds while everyone else was guess what? full health. Can I stay alive with this guy as my healer? yes unless its an ICC 5 man I think. Do I want to? no way. First the extra mile I have to goto to stay alive affects my dps and risks my reputaion (after all do I want to be on the /ignore list of the best puggers in my battle group for "fking huntard, gear like that and only does 3k?") Secondly though it simply isnt fun. I play for entertainment and to unwind. I have grown a thick skin and ignore the children and their potty mouths, but making it hard work for me is crossing the line.

So thats how hes ended up on my ignore list and now I will never have him affect my play time again!

Still no fester kill

Did ICC25, good geared group, marrowgar was simple, deathwisp even easier, couple of wipes on lootship, one shot saurfang, no problems with stinky and prescious. 3 wipes on fester and raid is called .

What do you say to that? when 25 fellows in epic gear with gscores ranging from 5800-5100 cant progress beyond the lower spire and it keeps happening weekly you have to ask yourself questions as to why its happening. Especially given the undergeared project did the blood princes in blues.

The problems with the lootship occured for 2 distinct reasons. Firstly the tank dies, why? because the dps spend too long tarrying on the other ship. Thats what he said. Begs the question why wasnt he being healed through it, so I watched carefully third time of doing and noticed only 4 of the dps jumping across. The other hunter prefered to stay on the ship shooting at riflemen and muradin. Why shoot muradin? 20% of his damage was done to an unkillable boss. So the tank was hanging about as the bosses melee capabilty started to stack until the tank fell over, then the "jumpers" get killed. All because of slackers.

Again on Saurfang, despite a few off us spelling out in trade that ranged have to focus on the bloodbeasts and you cant let them hit you, if you do they increase the bosses runic power, so Mr Mage if the big purple thing starts eating you, stop dps and run away from it, what happened? Locks and mages single target on the boss, while 3 bloddbeasts eat the healer and it was just myself and a mage trying to kite them all off him. Does it matter? we downed the boss without wiping. We only had 1 healer and one retri paladin die. It was a result? why the hell am I complaining?

Not that it mattered what I said, they were too busy arguing in raid chat over loot and you shouldnt have rolled etc. Meh.

I took a screenshot of deathwhispers demise. Its not a fair damage comparison I know, truth is I was only 6th for overall DPS for the raid itself, but hey every rodent has its day ;)

I need a cunning plan

To be more specfic I need to come up with a way solve my issue of not getting shots at the lich king. The problem is that i can form an ICC pug and we will get 4/12 and thats as far as it goes. I can join another ICC pug. It will goto 4/12. The pugs that will do more I cant get into, without the achievments for plagueworks and possibly crimson halls. So pugging is out.

So the guild. Well the guild a) doesnt have the members to do 25mans where my upgrades would come from b) raids ten man at times when I work and c) even if I shift swap/arrange later start times at work which I could do, the guild wants to hammer the first 4 bosses for gear and emblems each week. The idea of saving progression and puting it on farm AFTER we drop Arthas was seen as stupid. Leave the guild and find one that could give me what i want at times I can make? harder then it sounds decent raiding guilds that raid sunday/monday/tuesday and need a hunter to train arent exactly spamming trade. Thats supposing I wanted to leave my guild which I dont. I am actually happy there and have made some great friends. I am just frustrated.

So whats the answer? How will I kill the lichking before cataclysm? keep puging 4/12 I guess and wait for the guild to get further into Icc, then take holidays off work to go in with them. While trying to think of a cunning plan.

denied

the verdict.

Well I didnt get in. No surprise. A guildie did. He is keeping me upto date with progress inside and showing me the dps logs. They show I would be firmly in the middle if I were in, about 9th-12th place i think, maybe a little higher. I am waiting outside the instance in case they have dps leave after the lootship/saurfang. Not likely I know but hey anything for a real shot at fester and rotface. I figure i will wait here for 2 hrs until my guildie tells me they are in the crimson halls or the raid has been called. Kinda boring watching random allies run into icc now and then, but hey if I do get to kill fester this will all be worth it :)

the waiting game...

Waiting for what? an ICC25 and wether i might join it. Been a good week for me so far. I got home after work tuesday night, 7am weds morn and went to bed. was awake at ten and straight on. Did weekly, daily hc and both voas. also toc 10 and 25 and finally got the hellion glaive!!! yey me. Yesterday i spent a large (read silly) amount of time in an uldar achiev pug after my icc25 wiped on trash. Got a fair few achievs from it as well. Today though, given i fly to malaysia next week for a fortnight i wanted Icc25. Well my pug wasnt working. I only got 10 peeps to join me. I disbanded it after a few left, said reconvene in two hours. The reason why they were leaving ofc is a better pug. A fellow named jakarta wanting achievs for plague works which i dont have, doesnt need the gscore (says only idiots insist on that! yey my kinda leader!) but does need proof that i wont wipe his raid.

What do I say? I watched tank spot and seen putricide. Its an evil fight. Sindragossa afterwards ofc is evil. the crimson council fight is easy enough, but you know something? I am dps. The basics of the fight consist of not being a retard, being aware of the mechanics, putting out appropiate dps and most of all staying alive. Each fight is different and I am watching them all now. Never thought I would be doing that this soon (poverty of ambition eh?) yet i feel excited. I am not hopeful. Jak has all but said I aint coming. His 4.8k gscore shammy was doing 7k he said but he knew the tactics and how is it fair for him to bring untried dps to a fight where ONE member will wipe the raid? I totally agree. I havent seen the fight. He hasnt seen me play to know I am not a huntard. He can NOT know that I am not a moron who has by fluke found ej and thats where i got my talent spec and gem/enchants (its not btw its through my own personal experience of how I play). I will be very surprised if I get into this raid.

Excuse me gotta run. Gonna watch tankspot again again until 14:00 in case i do. wish me luck.

A shadowmouses tale...

about three weeks ago (during some big guild drama that was making it unpleasant to be logged on tbh), another guildie came on and asked for some help. He wanted people to come make lev 1 alts on ally side of another server to sign his new guild charter. The official explantion for this was he wanted support in place for his new worgen character come cataclysm (cough). Well anything for a guildie...

So over I go. made a priest, explored hummie starting area. got to lev 6. left for goldshire. Picked up loads of lev ten quests and promptly started dieing. Alot. As in couldnt do the fucking quests. Ffs just walking into the woods there are bears and wolves at level 9, wide patrol areas (they move about alot) huge aggro radius (this is like being in borean tundra at level 55) I can kill one, but while doing so another adds. So i kill it. Then another add. Then I am OOM. Then I die. I tried running. Doesnt work as i just pull more mobs. So I gave up and went to storm wind.

I wasnt expecting much, but I wanted to check the AH just to see before i deleted the character. Well I had a surprise! I dont know if I have been spoilt or retarded by the horde saurfang AH, as everything that is possible to get is on it, usually by at least 2 suppliers and any auction you post is guarenteed to be undercut within a few hours. There are very few bargains for resale, any bargains you bid on get the bids returned to you within an hour and anything tasty (like a razormaw hatchling) sells very fast. In a nut shell it works very well for a casual raider like me, but I will never make money with it. I rely on my daily Hcs, and tips from my blacksmithing with the odd daily quest when I can be bothered to keep me supplied with flasks, ice blade arrows and repairs for my raiding and pvp..

Well it was like christmas here! the 6 silver i had i turned into 1gold 50 in a matter of 5 minutes. i kept logging in every day, did a ah scan then made bids and did my work etc. No more then 10-15 minutes every day. The shadowmouse was made on a sunday, by the saturday morning she had 119g with stuff still up for auction. I was trading frozen orbs, eternals, borean leather and many other trade mats. I met up with a lev 10 guy who helped me get to 9 and do my quests and I was happy. Kinda had penciled in getting to 250g for the course of the weekend...

Well. Best laid plans of mice and men eh? Shes been retired for a bit, as I level my shammy. Still what a market! goblin heaven :P