To Arms Young Cow

With the creation of Uldaur and it's content, much of it ends
up being 1 tank encounters instead of 2 tank encounters. Since
my compadre in the runs is a Death Knight, many of them end
up being them as the main tank and myself switching over to
DPS "MO"de.

Since our group already brings a fury warrior with the raid
buffs of rampage and battleshout, when I first started doing
dps I specced into arms. This has seemed to work, though
my dps is definitely not high on the charts currently. Mostly
this ends up being a gear issue since I had just started putting
together an arms set, and have mostly pre naxx gear, reputation
gear or a couple of pieces from Badge Gear.

Arms tends to be difficult to run, mostly because of Slams tendency
that if you breathe wrong it messes up the swing timer. Thirst for
blood which procs occasionally from rends, and sudden death procs
tries to even out this damage. Fights like kologarn are a little bit
easier since they require no movement (you can hit both arms and
the head by just standing at the mythical beltline and switching
targets manually). Arms does bring improved Demoralizing shout
and a 5% addon to bleed effects (which does help the fury warrior
dps as well as a rogue we generally carry with us) so there are benefits
to bringing a geared arms warrior.

The biggest push will be for me to raise my dps to get ready to
do hard mode kills and achievement/speed run kills. Most of these
require the 3.5-4.0 dps to be successful. Anything less and the enrage
timer ends up running out. Especially on bosses like holdir, where the
damage dealers have to stay in the white spotlights to get the damage
buffs to be successful.

Last night I was able to pump out 2.3k on Holdir, this included some
inflated numbers since I was able to stay in the white circles due to luck
and some good tank placement. But in the long run I may need a lot
more upgrades or even switching to fury to be able to get over the 4.0
hump for the achievement kills.

Picking up some dps items last night has helped. As a guild we generally
set it so that the Dps roll on the dps items first and then the tanks get
priority on the tanking items and they roll on the dps items as hand me
downs. This has worked for us, and now that we have at least from
Flame Leviathan to Holdir on relatively farm status (still a few hiccups
but nothing major) it'll be easier to concentrate on getting items trickled
down the pike.

The chemistry of our group is coming together again. We have yet
to have two weeks in a row that the same people are with us,
generally it's 1 person or another that isn't able to make it that week.
This week was our holy/shadow priest that wasn't able to make it.
So our setup was a pally/druid/Priest makeup for our healers (our
normal shadow priest was playing the role of healing priest)
and the dps was a little lower than usual. Our rogue wasn't able to
come but the crit buff from our new Boomkin helped a lot.

Sunday we'll be tackling Thorim, which mostly is on easymode
and then mimiron where the test starts again. We were able to knock
him out last week, especially after the change in his movement which
did help a lot in phase 4. General seems to be easier than I expected
and then it'll be starting on the Yogg encounter.

When Raids Go Bad

I started off this Wow Journey as a Prot warrior. That is what
my guild needed. And this was before Dual Speccing, so everytime
you had to respec, 50g out of the pocket (if you had to respec to
often).

So I never really worried that much about getting dps gear. My farming
was mostly done on my hunter, and I just used those mats to level up
my warriors main talents (Bsmithing and Leatherworking).

But with dual Speccing available, and many of the uldaur fights being
1 tank only needed. I started to concentrate on getting some of my dps
gear in order.

My current guild has a fury warrior, so I decided to go with the Arms tree
to balance out some buffs, and arms can do some decent dps as they go.

All this builds up to what occured this weekend. On the Shandris servers
there ends up being maybe one or two advertised pugs on the weekend.
Saturday's tend to be the best spot to pick these up. Especially 25 man
Naxx pugs. Most of my gear is Naxx 10 man dps gear with a few pieces
of Reputation gear thrown in there. So I'm capable in 25 man Naxx.

Lately there seems to be this habit of advertising for 3.5 dps naxx runs,
something that tends to bug me at times. Arms warriors unless they are
uldaur geared or have no ping time to speak of have difficulties reaching the
3.0k dps even raid buffed. Especially in fights where there is a lot of movement.
Slam, which ends up being the big rotation hit other than specials
(overpower and suddent death and bleed effects) resets with movement
or even if you sneeze wrong. miss a slam, your dps goes to the 4 corners
of the earth and doesn't show up on the mob.

So in naxx, I generally average about 2.3-2.4, some bosses like heigan it's
just going to suck a lot because of the movement that's inherent in the fight.
What a Arms warrior does bring to the table is a massive amount of buffs for
bleed effects, improved Demo Shout, etc. something that ends up adding
between 5 and 10% to the raid as a whole. The bleed effects become very
important because raiding as feral druids right now other than bear
just don't exist that often.

So that brings me to my raiding gone bad story. I ended up with a pug
group that came together. Originally I had signed up for a group on our
boards, but through either a mistake or ignorance it was ignored and I never
got the invite. So I picked up another pug group, this one just felt bad from
the start. But I believe in finishing a raid if it's at all possible.

Somehow on the 5th face pull in the slime room I should have realized that
it wasn't going to happen. But I stuck it out for over 7 hours. 7 hours that
I will never get back and probably could have run any number of instances,
or made money or went and petted my cat.

Why did it fail? Mostly cause people were either undergeared, trying to
get easy gear or had just kicked into "I'm going to get drunk and raid" mode.
Being a fan of the occasional brew, I can truly say I've never raided Drunk,
and don't have any intentions to raid completely
smashed. buzzed, well sometimes that's the only way to make it through
some raids, but I try to at least be able to spam buttons.

What should have sealed the deal is that somehow we were able to down
plague wing. And the raid leader won the tier set. Instead of waiting til after
the raid, keep the momentum and going forward. He called for a break, went
back to dalaran and we ended up waiting 20 minutes for him to buy his tier
shoulders, get them enchanted, get them gemmed up and come
back. This pretty well killed any chance of getting farther. After a few more
wipes on gluth (somehow we knocked out Patchwerk and was able to squeak
buy grobby. We couldn't kill gluth. For those in the know, YOU DO NOT WIPE
ON GLUTH unless your on the failboat express. Which obviously we were at
that time.

So where was the fault? Probably in the idea that I didn't cut and run
after the 3rd hour and the facepulls of slimes. If people aren't paying attention,
and they do it again and again then it's time to get into their face, or tell them
to leave or encourage them to leave.

My rules of Raiding and a successful raid has been pretty easy.

1. Set a level that's achieveable without being lazy.
3.5 dps is people wanting an easy run. 2.5 is doable by just about any
class that has taken the time to get geared up and running.

2. Keep Momentum going. 5-10 minute breaks are great when you've
cleared 2 wings in naxx, or done 4-5 bosses (depending on wipes etc).

3. For the love of heaven no, you cannot go and turn in your token to get this
item or this item. it's going to take you longer to get it gemmed and enchanted
and it isn't going to improve you that much.

4. Set the loot rules from the start.

This is an important part of things to me. Many of the pugs that I go on
end up having 3-4 items on reserve. Mostly because it's a majority of a guild
that's hosting the pug run. This is fair as long as it's from the start known and
not just dropped when they get to that item. Where it's a privlidge to go on a pug,
it's also a privlidge for a PUG host to have people to fill in that run. Both must
coexist to be successful.

I have been on one pug run that started off with being open roll and 1 tier
piece per need. After arriving at Saph the run leader had to leave and put
someone else in charge. There were some changes in the pug roster and
ended up with some more of the host pug guilds people. The people who
joined the run decided that they didn't want to see anyone but Guild people
rolling on anything. This is close to just offering scraps to everyone because
they were honored to get to go with an uber group. After this was decided
by people leaving and saying that they could go jump on a pogo stick, the same
loot rules were applied as we continued. The funny thing is that during the last
parts of the run insults from the new pug members were thrown about how
they had to carry the pug players and that all pug players should be shot. Yet
when the dps and survivablity and healing meters came out,they were far below the expectations presented by the puggers. I won't mention any names, and I'm
going to show my defiance about that :-)

5. Keep an eye on the weakest links.

If people are continually going afk, or lagging behind, or seemingly to be
on autoshot or raising a ruckus by rolling on everything, main spec,
off spec and things that they couldn't even equip. Politely tell them to
knock it off, if they continue boot them. one bad apple can ruin an entire
pug quickly. That doesn't mean accidents don't happen and people have to
go afk for emergencies. But it does mean that if their not doing their best, you
have to prioritize yourself for the other 24 members of the run and not the
25th. Even if they are a guildmate.

6. Be ready to know your strats and what to do. and stick to what works.

Everyone has an opinion, everyone has seen this boss, or this boss or this
boss and their guild does it this way. suggestions are great. But in the long
run, decide what strat to use and do it that way. It makes things easier to
not have a 10 minute discussion on how to kill thaddius, do it the way that
you know, and be done and move to the next boss. A thinking raid leader
is a good raider leader.

Hope to see you all pugging soon.

Mo

Preparation Raid - Or how to not be a Guild Butt

It's 5:25 local time. Raid starts at 5:30. You've got the chips, updated your addons,
fed the cat, patted the girlfriend on the head and gave her the remote control
and a kiss on the lips. You've got drink in hand, reset the router, the computer,
holy crap, that's a lot of things to do.

I"ve had the luxury of being on both sides of the raiding coin. My original group really
never were raiders. Carpe Noctem was a group of people who got together, played
and leveled. But we never really got into the 25 man raids (this was Burning Crusade).
Our big dreams was to maybe hit Karazhan once we were geared.

At this time, I was the Main Tank and defacto Raid Leader. Mostly because it defaulted
to me, mostly cause I was the one that tended to show up on time and be ready
to go. Nothing more frustrating than waiting for one or two people to show up and
then get to hear the dagger into the raiding heart, "I forgot we were raiding tonight".

When doing a 10 man group, you have 10 different schedules to juggle, 10 different priorities
and 10 different groups of occurances to deal with. It's the nature of the beast to have
to be flexible with happenings. Especially in a relatively casual raiding guild that Inner Peace
tends to be. But then it has been from time to time that the hammer comes down quickly
to replace someone very quickly. IP's current Main Tank tends to have a very quick sense
of urgency (and I'm not complaining at all).

For me, I start to get prepared an hour early. Mostly cause I hate being late for anything
(I used to be late for everything, but finally had to put my own foot down and change
my attitude when it came to appointments). Where raiding isn't a job, it is an accepted responsibility when you sign up. It's a hobby with a purpose and everytime that you
don't live up to that responsibility you end up wasting that much more time of others
to find your replacement. And many times it's someone who might not be as high of
calibur as you are, or doesn't fit into the created dynamics of the raid group. One more
plate wearer in a swarm of DK's, or one more clothie to roll on items that would be more
useful to kept in guild. All for the sake of forgetting to reset the clock.

When I prepare for raid time, I get my tea made (sweet tea thank you), get my chips or
my veggies or whatever I'm feeling like eating and munching on, get the cats water and food
ready to go, even give them some extra loving so their not begging for attention in the middle
of a fight. With my spare time, being the Main Tank I mentally go over my notes and the
pulls for the night and my personal goals. Can I beat my Threat Per second by a certain amount, on DPS fights can I actually not bring up the bottom of the list. Any nerfs this
week (thank you blizzard, next week Ulduar will end up being no tank and you can bring a
72 to dps).

So why take the time? It's just a raid, not like another raid isn't going to happen next week.
To me, it's important to start off things in the right direction. Raiding is a matter not just of
skill but of momentum. I've been in groups that were able to blow through everything
in no time, but with the same group makeup the next week starting off 10 minutes late
they wiped on the first boss over and over again. All having to do with the attitude
from the start. The tanks become cranky, the Healers get cranky at the tanks, the dps
get bored and it's downhill from there. And you get to enjoy that hefty repair bill and
having accomplished bupkis.

One other thing from raid preparation. I"ve been lucky to have 2 raid ready toons,
my hunter and my warrior are tier geared and ready to rock it. So I keep both of them
parked for whereever I raid. It adds a little bit of time to the preparation cycle. But then
you never know when you need to swap out a dps, and everyone having to run back,
summon and then run back to where the next pull is costs time.

The Few, The proud, The Beginning

The funny part of starting a blog is what to say at first. Everyone
has this grand idea that they will be read. Adored, idolized
in the writing. That somewhere they will have that one idea
that pushes someone to new frontiers.

Me, I'm just not that smart. I play a game. A game I pay 15.00 a month
for and spend time at. It replaces dating at times, watching movies
and breathing fresh air. But I still enjoy it.

If you've entered my world, be fully warned. I don't pull punches,
and everyone will probably get splattered a bit in the melee. If you
are searching for genius Calculations on how to pull out the best
dps you can, wrong place sparky. If you're looking for how to
play a tauren warrior, you might learn something for that too.

But hopefully, you'll just get a glance into my world. And maybe
get a laugh or two.

So for introductions. My main character is a tauren warrior named
Mommar found on the Shandris Server. He tanks for one of the stronger
guilds on the Shandris server named Inner Peace. Haven't heard of us?
Well that's kinda the point. We don't really get into the hubbub about
progression or worrying so much about what epeen needs shining up
this week. We do what we do, we celebrate together and maybe just
maybe you might see us smile a bit.

I've been playing for over 2 year now. I started with Burning Crusade
and have been playing every since. Along with Mo being my Warrior
I have a few other characters. These include a 80 Hunter (who doesn't have
a hunter anymore, their almost as bad as Death Knight's), a 70 Enhancement
shaman, a couple of up and coming toons that I level from now and then
and then a couple of half way forgotten ones.

So sit back, enjoy the show. Share the popcorn and don't be afraid to
ask questions. But just buckle that seatbelt cause you might not always
like the answers I give.