[2.GuildChannel][AwesomeTank]: Hey, need 1 more DPS for a run through all three new heroics!
...time passes...
[ReallyGreatHealer] whispers: Would you like to join our hFoS group? :)
Eidtalheg sighs
So, why am I sitting here, writing a blog post, like some kind of shut-in Twilight fan? Why am I not laying down a whithering hail of artillery upon the minions of the Lich King?
It is because I sinned against the gods of Geekdom in purchasing, rather than building, my newest PC, which has been nothing but an unstable hulk of silicon and various conductive metals since the day it arrived. As we speak, it is in the shop, where even the most highly-skilled technicians are at a loss as to how so much suck could be concentrated into a single machine.
In other words, if Arthas is victorious, and the civilizations of Azeroth are reduced to shambling mockeries of their former glory, you'll have only Gateway Computers to blame.
Showing posts with label Frustration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frustration. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
You Are Going to DPS Very, Very Slowly...
Some might call me a masochist, but sometimes it feels like a victory just isn't worth claiming unless it's been preceded by hours of futile, mind-numbing failure.
That's what we encountered in Onyxia redux Tuesday night. We had enough interest to put together two 10-man raids, each led by someone who was at least familiar with the encounter at level 60. And, truth be told, our strategy seemed sound: phase 1, burn the dragon while standing well away from her huge ass; phase 2, group up around two tanks to AOE the whelps, dodge Taco Breath, and kill the Guards from range to avoid their Blast Nova; phase 3, burn the dragon while positioning ourselves so as to avoid being feared into the pits-of-many-whelps. E-Z.
Only, not. We spent three hours regularly dieing at the phase 2 -> 3 transition. From my perspective, it seemed that we were losing too many people to Blast Novas and Deep Breaths. This led to an overabundance of adds due to lack of DPS, or, when a healer or tank was the victim, well, we know what happens then. Eventually, we just had to give up.
The odd thing is, when we gave it another shot last night, with many of the same people from Tuesday and a basically identical strategy, we took her down in one try. The only difference I could detect was perhaps a marginal increase in DPS over night one, as the Guards seemed to be dispatched slightly more cleanly than before.
Anyway, after banging our heads against a wall all night, victory was that much more glorious once we found the door. Now, mount farming!
That's what we encountered in Onyxia redux Tuesday night. We had enough interest to put together two 10-man raids, each led by someone who was at least familiar with the encounter at level 60. And, truth be told, our strategy seemed sound: phase 1, burn the dragon while standing well away from her huge ass; phase 2, group up around two tanks to AOE the whelps, dodge Taco Breath, and kill the Guards from range to avoid their Blast Nova; phase 3, burn the dragon while positioning ourselves so as to avoid being feared into the pits-of-many-whelps. E-Z.
Only, not. We spent three hours regularly dieing at the phase 2 -> 3 transition. From my perspective, it seemed that we were losing too many people to Blast Novas and Deep Breaths. This led to an overabundance of adds due to lack of DPS, or, when a healer or tank was the victim, well, we know what happens then. Eventually, we just had to give up.
The odd thing is, when we gave it another shot last night, with many of the same people from Tuesday and a basically identical strategy, we took her down in one try. The only difference I could detect was perhaps a marginal increase in DPS over night one, as the Guards seemed to be dispatched slightly more cleanly than before.
Anyway, after banging our heads against a wall all night, victory was that much more glorious once we found the door. Now, mount farming!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Bleeding Edge
Or, I Cut Myself Raiding.
As is obvious, I haven't been writing much lately. This isn't really for lack of raiding progress, so much as lack of anything very interesting to talk about. Although we have yet to beat Yogg (here's hoping for this weekend), we've easily taken down the two Trial of the Crusader bosses introduced thus far.
Too easily. Really, after Ulduar, ToC just feels like a design cop-out and ramping down in difficulty. Hell, it barely feels like a raid. I'm holding out hope that the remaining encounters will be somewhat more interesting, but at this point I'm much more interested in pursuing Ulduar hard-modes and ultimately Algalon.
As is obvious, I haven't been writing much lately. This isn't really for lack of raiding progress, so much as lack of anything very interesting to talk about. Although we have yet to beat Yogg (here's hoping for this weekend), we've easily taken down the two Trial of the Crusader bosses introduced thus far.
Too easily. Really, after Ulduar, ToC just feels like a design cop-out and ramping down in difficulty. Hell, it barely feels like a raid. I'm holding out hope that the remaining encounters will be somewhat more interesting, but at this point I'm much more interested in pursuing Ulduar hard-modes and ultimately Algalon.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Being Frozen Blows
Or, "Raid Composition Matters".
Last night we spent two hours wiping on Hodir, getting him down to 14% on our best attempt. Seeing as last week's group succeeded in taking him down, the task at hand is to isolate the factors which caused our difficulty.
1. There were a couple of people who had never seen the fight before, and were unclear as to how the Flash Freeze/snowdrift mechanic worked. However, this was soon explained and became less of an issue. Last week's group had at least one newbie as well.
2. Ok, the elephant in the room - the types of healers we had. The Hodir fight is a ludicrous piling-on of raid damage; between frozen blows and biting cold, toasty fires notwithstanding, everyone is taking damage all the time. Now, last week's group was ideally staffed to handle this: they had a priest for various AOE heals and a big ol' stamina buff, and a shaman for, well, what shamans do. Last night, on the other hand, we had a druid and two paladins. That means very little multi-unit healing, and two healers who have to stand still to do anything.
That being the case, I applaud our group, and especially our healers, for getting as far as we did. But I must also resign myself to the fact that beyond filling a role, sometimes class still matters. At least until everyone so outgears the encounter that it doesn't anymore.
Last night we spent two hours wiping on Hodir, getting him down to 14% on our best attempt. Seeing as last week's group succeeded in taking him down, the task at hand is to isolate the factors which caused our difficulty.
1. There were a couple of people who had never seen the fight before, and were unclear as to how the Flash Freeze/snowdrift mechanic worked. However, this was soon explained and became less of an issue. Last week's group had at least one newbie as well.
2. Ok, the elephant in the room - the types of healers we had. The Hodir fight is a ludicrous piling-on of raid damage; between frozen blows and biting cold, toasty fires notwithstanding, everyone is taking damage all the time. Now, last week's group was ideally staffed to handle this: they had a priest for various AOE heals and a big ol' stamina buff, and a shaman for, well, what shamans do. Last night, on the other hand, we had a druid and two paladins. That means very little multi-unit healing, and two healers who have to stand still to do anything.
That being the case, I applaud our group, and especially our healers, for getting as far as we did. But I must also resign myself to the fact that beyond filling a role, sometimes class still matters. At least until everyone so outgears the encounter that it doesn't anymore.
Monday, May 11, 2009
In Before De-claw
It was reported today that, among other things, the latest PTR build has seen the threat of Auriaya's Sentries' Savage Pounce, arguably the most difficult aspect of the fight, cut in half. I could question, as many others already have, the logic behind nerfing content that everyone already seems to be progressing through rather swiftly, but I won't do that.
Instead, I will glory in the knowledge that my Guild and I two-shot the bitch on the first night we attempted it! /flex
After a false start in which our DK tank didn't get behind his pillar quite fast enough after dropping a Death and Decay in Auriaya's path, we went on to achieve a textbook execution of the fight - no one got pounced, no Feral Defenders were left to void zone it up in inopportune places, and everyone stayed bunched up on her crotch like an eager boyfriend.
Hodir... didn't go quite as smoothly. At first, a lot of people couldn't seem to grasp the whole "don't stand in the big circ- NOW! NOW IN THE CIRCLE!" mechanic of avoiding Flash Freeze. Everyone eventually seemed to get the hang of that, but we were still taking too much damage from Frozen Blows for our healers to deal with. It seems frost-resistance gear may in fact be called for.
Overall, for a two-nights-per-week raiding guild, I am quite happy with our progress. I expect us to be knock-knock-knockin' on Yoggy's door three or four weeks from now. Or next week, if Blizzard doesn't get off of their knee-jerk nerfing kick...
Instead, I will glory in the knowledge that my Guild and I two-shot the bitch on the first night we attempted it! /flex
After a false start in which our DK tank didn't get behind his pillar quite fast enough after dropping a Death and Decay in Auriaya's path, we went on to achieve a textbook execution of the fight - no one got pounced, no Feral Defenders were left to void zone it up in inopportune places, and everyone stayed bunched up on her crotch like an eager boyfriend.
Hodir... didn't go quite as smoothly. At first, a lot of people couldn't seem to grasp the whole "don't stand in the big circ- NOW! NOW IN THE CIRCLE!" mechanic of avoiding Flash Freeze. Everyone eventually seemed to get the hang of that, but we were still taking too much damage from Frozen Blows for our healers to deal with. It seems frost-resistance gear may in fact be called for.
Overall, for a two-nights-per-week raiding guild, I am quite happy with our progress. I expect us to be knock-knock-knockin' on Yoggy's door three or four weeks from now. Or next week, if Blizzard doesn't get off of their knee-jerk nerfing kick...
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Oh, no you di'n't!
Oi, what a week.
The guild was hit hard by a rather unexpected dramasplosion, when a simple disagreement over loot procedures brought long-simmering personal differences to a head. Things were said. Prominent members left. Mistakes were made.
That being the case, we are no longer able to put together 25-person Naxx raids, as we had just begun to do, which leaves many of us in the unexpected position of basically stagnating until Ulduar (Malygos and various iterations of Sarth notwithstanding).
So what am I doing? Well, leveling my Death Knight, for one - we're perpetually short on tanks (some of the best of which left in the schism, along with some great healers). On my hunter, I'm mainly just doing dailies for gold (soon, my precious, soon) and rep achievements.
Still, Naxx isn't entirely barren of upgrades - just tonight, I finally replaced my Spaulders of the Black Arrow with Heroes Cryptstalker Spaulders, finally scoring me the 2-piece set bonus, for what it's worth.
I'm hangin' in there - more to come, no doubt.
The guild was hit hard by a rather unexpected dramasplosion, when a simple disagreement over loot procedures brought long-simmering personal differences to a head. Things were said. Prominent members left. Mistakes were made.
That being the case, we are no longer able to put together 25-person Naxx raids, as we had just begun to do, which leaves many of us in the unexpected position of basically stagnating until Ulduar (Malygos and various iterations of Sarth notwithstanding).
So what am I doing? Well, leveling my Death Knight, for one - we're perpetually short on tanks (some of the best of which left in the schism, along with some great healers). On my hunter, I'm mainly just doing dailies for gold (soon, my precious, soon) and rep achievements.
Still, Naxx isn't entirely barren of upgrades - just tonight, I finally replaced my Spaulders of the Black Arrow with Heroes Cryptstalker Spaulders, finally scoring me the 2-piece set bonus, for what it's worth.
I'm hangin' in there - more to come, no doubt.
Monday, March 9, 2009
If You Can't Join 'Em...
Things were pretty slow around here this past weekend. Work kept me away from raiding (another successful Naxx clear!), so I just spent my time doing dailies and farming up the last of the mats I'll need for my sweet ride. I have nowhere near the gold I'll need for the vendored components, but I'm nothing if not patient... *twitch*
In other news, I've also leveled my Death Knight up to level 61, and it's been a lot of fun so far. I've never seriously played a melee class before, and it's an interesting change of pace; I look forward to having a new class to learn the ins and outs of.
With any luck, I'll be able to try my hand at tanking some Outland dungeons with guildies' leveling alts before long :)
In other news, I've also leveled my Death Knight up to level 61, and it's been a lot of fun so far. I've never seriously played a melee class before, and it's an interesting change of pace; I look forward to having a new class to learn the ins and outs of.
With any luck, I'll be able to try my hand at tanking some Outland dungeons with guildies' leveling alts before long :)
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Rug Beneath My Feet, It is Yank-ed
So, after days of refreshing the character copy page, and hours of downloading and installing the PTR client, Eidtalheg's alter ego was finally settled into his new home on Broxigar. Now, let's spend those talent points, and hit up the training dummies!
This program has encountered a critical error and must shut down.
What the? Ok, don't panic, let's try this agai-
THE WORLD SERVER IS DOWN.
...
Really, I will be posting my initial perceptions of patch 3.1, I promise - any day now...
This program has encountered a critical error and must shut down.
What the? Ok, don't panic, let's try this agai-
THE WORLD SERVER IS DOWN.
...
Really, I will be posting my initial perceptions of patch 3.1, I promise - any day now...
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