What it means to grow up.

So it is that time where I tell you how I came to play wow. Ish. Mostly I'm about to tell you what it feels like to be a newb.


I chose a druid for my first toon. He made it to level 13 I think. His name was Gongshow. He used a one handed mace and was a Nelf. He did not have cat form. I ran everywhere on him. RAN, and complained how slow he was. I thought a Raid was what our guild did to Tarren Mill. I got mad when they started doing BRS and wouldn't play with me anymore. :(

My next toon was a Warlock. I thought that like any game magic meant arcane. I wore all arcane gear at 60. I was terrible. Absolutely horrendous. Why anyone brought me to a raid was beyond me. I geared up in ZG and even hit exalted. Our guild was bad. When I left for a top end guild, I was still bad. Couldn't break the top 10 in DPS as a WARLOCK in VANILLA. All the other locks could. I was just bad. I ended her career in AQ40. That's how far they carried me.

My next toon was a mage who went all the way to Illidan. Then I settled back on Druid and am looking at Arthas.

I had to help my gf level her druid. We thought resto was a good leveling spec. I had heard cat form did lots of dmg so I would go cat, as resto, and try to kill things. It took... For-eh-Ver.

We are now some of the top healers on our server. We understand things about this game people can't even fathom. We are elite now. Best of the best. But I always remember the terrible start we had. And even now, 5 years later, I respect what it is to be new to the game. So the next time you have some fucking retarded ass feral druid trying to hurricane the aoe packs to "stay competitive" feel free to guide the young blood with information like, feral sucks at aoe. You are a single target attacker like a rogue. Just cry in silence when the mages and locks and fury warriors make you look bad. Then rape their faces on the boss.

Yay for videos

So we made our first video. I wanted to film it but my pc is such a pile of crap that I cannot fraps and play at the same time which defeats the purpose of the former. I did, however, create the intro, which my guildees yelled at me cause the light was too bright. Meh. They'll have to wait for the hardmodes to get a new one. I'm lazy like that. But everyone seems to like the Guild Intro, which is good since it took a few hours to render, let alone design. I let them choose between the videos for the song, they all chose the first one. Spiffy and I both chose the second one, but apparently they no likey the jpop. Some background on that though, I had put the videos on her pc because its more powerful than mine and I needed to test the length with a song, so I randomly chose a song, which just so happened, to not only, meet the length, but also sync up perfectly and allow for an epic ending. It helps if you know the lyrics to get the whole timing thing, but they wanted hardcore technos beatses. I r complied.

The Tree is Back

I is back!

I know, I know. I haven't posted in forever. But I has good reason: I have stuck out on my own.

After a terrible night in ICC beating our heads against the MINIBOSSES of all things, I got into a small skiffy with the GM who I have never met, nor have I ever seen in a raid (And good thing too, because she is fucking terrible). I left the raid because I was not going to be treated like a door mat. And although we were a "family guild" which didn't focus on progression or raiding, which we had JUST discussed in our guild meeting, I was promptly booted from the guild. Needless to say, within minutes, the other two seasoned players left the guild, leaving them with no one who had any real clue as to what raid leading was.

I reached out to them and we formed our own guild. We started with four people, then we took 4 people from the old guild's progression raid team. We proceeded to pug our way into ICC10, clearing the entire first wing with pugs. Most of whom were so good they became regulars and we snatched them for our own guild.

I became a tank and a healer to satisfy our flexibility. Turns out I'm a pretty good tank. Surprise there.

We went from being a no name guild to 10/12 ICC within a few weeks. We only raid ICC 2 times a week for 4 hours. We also spend a day clearing out old content and achievements. We are now on Anub in ToGC 10 (haven't even attempted him in awhile), full cleared on Uld10, Full cleared all the watchers on hard, pulled most of the achievements, and are working on Algalon and Alone in the dark. Once we finally get the hang of p3 sindragosa, we'll work on arthas. Once we get into hardmodes, we'll sweep through the first three wings with little resistance.

Strictly speaking of we are the furthest progressed non-25 man raiding guild on the server.

We have no loot system to speak of. We just limit the first roles to mainspec who have won nothing, 2nd roll is for MS that HAVE won something, 3rd is offspec, 4th is de. Somehow we managed to find excellent players on a terrible server and if we bothered with 25s we'd prolly be a top guild. We're setting up our videos on a private server atm. My PC isn't good enough to fraps on, but I have the editing software and knowhow, so we have to share our files. Slow but whatcha gon' do?

Below are some screenies:
UI Screencap coming soon!

Mah UI and progess from ICC

Alright, so i am no longer in an endgame guild. i miss it, i really do. But where i am at with work and such has inhibited raiding times which most hxc guilds have. Poopie.

But I can still do ICC. Unfortunately, in a casual guild there are things that can get on my nerves. Things like, people not flasking, or people not using Min/Max on their gear, random afks, extensive boss explanations which take longer than the boss kill, leaving after only 3 hours, etc.

Also there tend to be players that are brought in or are dualspecced into a role that they clearly aren't geared in or comfortable with. DeathKinghts wearing caster cloaks, people doing under 3k dps, etc. These things are fine in the entry level raids such as naxx, but once you get into ulduar these trends need to have stopped. Thankfully the regular progression team is at least mostly in line with how to play the game and has yielded some successful raids.

Here, we downed Marrowgar after the first attempt. I died relatively early on making sure an important raid memeber got a brez and moved one second too late. Stupid tree >.<

Here, we have Lady Deathwhisper. This actually took many attempts explaining to the tanks HOW to tank the adds and stop letting the casters focus the poor tree constantly. Then we got to focus on cleaning it up. THEN we focused on going fast enough to beat the enrage timer. Very frustrating, yet satisfying kill.

I believe I died on this one too. I'm sensing a trend...

 

And yes, that's me and my overhealing at the top. And yes, that's a lightwell in the middle. I lol'd at first but then I found I could finish my casts when I was in DnD and click it and make a clean get away! /kermit yell yaaayayayayayaaay!!!!!

We're on Deathbringer and it was going terrible the first night. The second night went better, as we got all the dps on the same side of the room so the adds weren't going different directions. No Boomkin, so I have to heal in caster form and apply root spam on the targets to slow them down. We're getting better at them but the dps isn't strong enough to nuke through the adds and get on the boss quick enough. 

I've decided I'm going to start leading my own runs for Naxx and lesser content to condition the guild to be faster and more focused on raiding. its a casual guild but the two main healers and our top dps are all hxc players. We're just trying to bring the rest of the guild up to where we play.

Day 2254, Ran out of Food. Hunter has been eying my Bear Form :(

Merry Christmas! Yay for pagan holidays!

Update time. The new guild goes great. Feels like a better fit overall. They aren't as progressed as the previous, which in turn wasn't as progressed as the ... erm, preprevious? w/e

We went in and 2 shot Marrowgar though, so that was a nice change of pace. Plus there are a larger amount of people that lead raids in this guild, so no more of that, if soandso isn't on then we all just go kick rocks for the night.

Been diggin the new LFG, got my perky lil pug and my title and today, combined with our ICC and Weekly and Dailies I picked up my first new cloak! Which is a big deal since my luck on cloaks is matched only by my luck with bracers, which I DID eventually upgrade in FoS or PoS, I can't be bothered to remember. Good thing to, because those bands of the great tree were getting a little chaffy.

Anyone else a little miffed that Blizz is just dumping a million pets on us? I mean, I get making raiding easier, but jesus, now there's no real reason to be a pet collector. My BANK ALT has a half dozen already. Kinda irks me a bit.

But here's my big story of the day: Newbies.

Its great i can deck my tank spec in full t9. Its great my alts can be as geared as my main in a week. What isn't great is the people who don't know their class yet. Jumping in a HoR group is hit or miss. There are tons of players popping up now that have the gear, but have no skill to match it. It is like an influx of bad players. As the weeks continue, you will see this trend get worse, I'm sure. And Heaven help us if they implement the LFR feature.

Can you just imagine?

"Hey t9 mage, sheep X"

"Whats a sheep?"

"Hey, T9 Paladin, DI the healer"

"DUI? What are you asking me to do? I AIN'T BREAKIN THE LAW!"

"Brez the Healer!"

"Huh?"

"You know how to hold aggro right?"

"Sure, my main spec is unholy!"

*Wipe*

I know, I know, I'm a pessimist. But at least I set my expectations low. The WoW community in general has yet to let me down, only surprise me on occasion.I just don't have a high bar for people who can't spell "A Lot" properly.

I wanna hear your LFG stories! Good AND bad!

Blizzard goes elitist and Tanks get slapped

Here's a nifty note a lot of people miss:

ICC has bosses that do Gear Checks. WTF is a gear check? In Blizzard terms, a GC is something that a boss does from time to time to make sure you have the appropriate level gear for the instance and if you do not, it kills you. This check is random and completely sucks.

In normal terms: GEAR = SKILL LOLOLOLOL

I hate you blizzard. That's the biggest slap in the face, most elitest and hypocritical thing you have done to date.

Because of this ridiculous addition to the game, I had to deal with our Backup tank unknowingly wipe the raid 15 times. Yeah that was fun. More fun was when our OT, who was MT because our MT decided her head hurt.. again... decided that the wipes were a healing issue. Enter Angry Tree.

I wasn't mad because I got called out. I'm a big tree, I can handle it. I has liquor.

No, what pissed me off was that we had three healers, all who were running heals on her constantly, who she straight told sucked. Her exact words were, I went down because I had no heals.

No heals huh? You mean to tell me that all these heals and absorbs in my healing log are all made up? That this whole time we were bouncing around the room healing each other and forgot that there were tanks to heal? STFU, you selfcentered bitch. My healers are sending me tells complaining that no matter how hard they heal you, you still die. We even made the dps sit back and had the healers only heal the tanks. No dps, no crazy switching. Just tanking and healing. With THREE healers ONLY healing TWO tanks, somehow our tanks went SPLAT!

I can accept a mistake, but telling a healer who is healing you undeserved ass, that they aren't actually healing? Oooooooooooo. You just made my permanent shit list, bitch. Even if I wasn't the assigned healer, I KNOW your ass got healed. This from the same girl who quits raiding early because, I can't focus.

ITS BEEN 2 HOURS! WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T FOCUS?!?!?!

/scream

I'm picking up tank gear now because I can't stand her attitude. I'LL tank in her place. I have two priests who want to heal and a pally who is awesome. I don't need your holier than thou attitude muckin up my raids.

Point of the story? DON'T PISS OFF YOUR HEALERS, YOUR ASS WILL GET BENCHED.

How To Win Frozen Halls

So some info on the new 5 mans.

Forge of Souls:

First boss, Bronjahm, targets a person who should then run to the edge of the room so that the little ball can either be killed before it heals him or so that the tank has more time to try and kite him away if you want to get the achievement.

Run in when he does his vortex and try not to get eaten by the fear into a vortex.

Strategy is simple:
Since you cannot stop the funk, you'll just have to get on up, get on the scene and kill him like a sex machine.

Turning on game sounds is a moral imperative.

2nd boss, Devourer of Souls. Casts TONS of Phantom Blasts on the tank, interrupt all of them for the achievement. Also they hurt tanks. When he jumps from person to person he drops a Well of Souls on the ground. Don't Stand In It. Lasts for 15 seconds, easier than anything to avoid.

MIRRORED SOUL. STOP DPS. COMPLETELY. All dmg done to him will be done to the target as well. As soon as it ends (There's a beam from him to his target) continue nuking.

Unleash Souls is just dumb. He makes a bunch of nontargetable mobs that you can ignore or kite if they hit you too hard. We just ignore them.

Wailing Souls. Think Mimi. Stay out of the blast and move around him.

Remember the Blast and the Mirrored Soul and he's a joke.


Pit of Saron:

First boss, Forge Master Garfrost, is easy. He melees and throws giant rocks. Don't stand under them, but hide behind them to keep permafrost below 8 stacks for the achievement. For the tank to drop it you'll need to burn him to 66% and then to 33% and hide behind a rock BEFORE you get 8 stacks.

He also checks his giant underpants to make sure they are clean.

Second Boss,  Ick. Pull the guys separately as they can be confusing when brought together. Basic Melee and Dodge Giant Blobs of Poison fight. He wil sometimes choose a player to attack and then chase after them, just run away.

He will cast a poison nova that must be avoided. Only an 18yrd range so just move back. 5 second cast.

Explosive Barrage is easy to fight through. He tosses exploding missiles on the ground where you stand, simply move away, wait for the next one to target you, run back and dps the boss, move away from the new ones, move back rinse and repeat.

Now before I mention the 3rd boss, I'd like to discuss the next 2 packs of mobs.

The first pack consists of 4 casters and a crazy witch lady. They suck for melee since the hellfire and when they all hellfire together they will kill you. It isn't too bad if your healer is good to have everyone grab their own target so they aren't together. When one hellfires, you just move to another until he is done or the other begins. Mostly it is a chaotic mess that ranged makes simpler.

The second set of mobs consist of 4 melee and 2 casters. The melee are whatever, but the casters do that annoying naga spell where they cast the ice on the ground and if you get caught in it you die.

Manage them and its cake.

Next is the tunnel TO the final boss. To get the achievement do as follows:

Gather up at the door, prehot/bubble/etc. RUN to the circle on the ground halfway through the tunnel while dodging the Hodir Styled Snowfalls, DON'T GET HIT, stand on the gaint circle under the menacing elemental that isn't there on regular so it scares the bejeezus out of your tank, and aoe them all down. The snow doesn't fall in this circle. Once you are done, heal back up, mobs will continue to spawn in front but not behind. When you are ready, rush the tunnel again and go all the way through it and stand just inside the bosses room, aoe them down. Accept Achievement.(You MUST kill all of them to get the achievement).

3rd boss, Tyrannus, is attackable by ranged during his blahblahblah scene, so have at him. The frost wyrm will spit frost on the ground which will hurt you if it hits you on the way down, so avoid those. Rimefang will target a player for an Icy Attack. Move away from other players as it will ice spike them as well.

Tyrannus will Empower, usually after Forceful Smash, Kite him. Think Anub. Run across the ice patch to slow him down and allow him to be kited.

Overlord's Brand. Any DPS who gets this must STOP DPS or you will kill your tank. Any Healer who gets this STOP HEALING or you will heal the boss. Kill, loot, get saved by your mistress of choice.

Halls of Reflection:

First Boss: Disconnect boss. To defeat this boss you must repeatedly throw yourself at the portal and pray you make it through.

Second Boss: Freeze Frame. This boss will randomly freeze the dungeon for 15 minutes. Immune to all spells and abilities.

Third Boss: RP Boss. To defeat this boss you must fight off Boredom which is cast on the raid. Once you defeat this boss you may face Falric.

Falric: This boss is wave 5 of 10. The first 4 waves are made up of different mobs. Kill the ranged with ranged, the mage will make a copy of itself, just move to the mage to kill both. Kill the priest, derr. Ranged can take out the riflemen. Standing in the hallway allows the tank to get all the aggro.Scourge Imprisonment is handy here.

When Falric become active he will attack. Counteract the fear as much s possible, Hopelessness will eventually reduce healing by 75% and dps by 60% as he loses health.

Repeat the gauntlet.

Marwyn: Don't dispel Shared Suffering unless you can handle the splash dmg, stay out of wells of corruption and extra heals on tank for obliterate.

Lich King:

Stay out of 10 yards from him. In order to get past the walls, you must defeat the waves of undead. Grab them and aoe or single target as you see fit. Keep them off the lady helping you and burn fast. You have 6 minutes to get the achievement. Make it to the end and you get the last boss.

Disconnet Boss Redux: Attempt to run up and collect your reward before the boss DC's you and freezes all the instance servers on your realm.

TIP: Levitate allows you to access the ship.