Be Good

So, yes, I've been MIA lately, but never fear, nothing is wrong.

In fact, everything is going exceptionally right! You see, behind the scenes here, I'd applied to a handful of MA programs in Medieval Archaeology... in England. Well, wonder of wonders, they all offered me a place. So, the next order of business was spending a week or two intensively researching all the programs, seeing what kind of financial aid I can squeeze out of each one, etc., until I finally came to a decision.

Thus, this Fall, I will be attending the U. of Sheffield, in their MA in European Historical Archaeology! Hello, student loan debt, my old friend! And in the meantime, I've been planning and executing the innumerable, redundant steps of the willfully obfuscatory Visa application process, brushing up on my background reading, and teaching myself a couple languages (Damn it, Latin! Why can't you be more like English?).

Needless to say, I've been busy, and when I'm not busy, I'm a tightly-wound ball of anxiety. All of this is to say, I might hop onto WoW from time to time in the next few months, but I'm really not counting on raiding any time soon. After that, between school and an additional five timezones between myself and most of my guild, I'm afraid WoW will be chilling in the recesses of my hard drive. With any luck (bang on wood), a PhD studentship will come along by next year, so that's another 3+ years of madness.

But this is a happy time. This is what I've been working toward since... well, since I was a grade-school kid reading books about the myths and legends of ancient civilizations. So don't think of me as quitting WoW - I just won't be playing it for a long time.

Good News, Everyone!

It's inexplicable, really. We've been trying for weeks to take Rotface down, bringing him as low as 3%, but never quite making it before being overwhelmed. Then, last night, everything just clicked - slime pools were circumnavigated, oozes were kited expertly, and everyone got the hell out of the way when they exploded. Fully expecting to spend at least an hour on the fight, we proceeded to one-shot it. *shrug*

What this meant, of course, was that as soon as we headed over and killed Festergut (who is essentially on farm status now - though he refuses to acquiesce to my demands for footwear), we would be facing Putricide for the first time. It's an interesting fight, and frankly seems less fiddly than the ooze-wrangling of Rotface. There are, in fact, oozes to wrangle, but dealing with them is wholly reliant upon proper player movement and sufficient dps, rather than a somewhat unpredictable pathing A.I.

We made solid progress as we learned the fight, bringing the good Doctor down to ~50% on our last attempt. It will be interesting to see how we handle phase 3; on one hand, no more gas clouds or volatile oozes to deal with; on the other, the tanks and healers will have more to worry about...

In other news, I've made the switch to a Marksmanship spec - having acquired the two-piece T10 bonus, its inherent potential for abuse in conjunction with a properly-timed serpent sting and chimera shots made this a foregone conclusion, and my dps last night definitively bore the assumption out.

A Moment of Your Time

As you are probably aware, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday. Casualties are in the hundreds, at least; estimates reach into the thousands. Exacerbating difficulties in aid and rescue is the damage done to the nation's already weak infrastructure. I suggest making a donation to the humanitarian agency of your choice.



Edit, 1/15/10: Estimates are now placing casualties in the 100,000s. Disease is rapidly becoming a concern.

It Never Gets Any Easier

The guild's raiding has, indeed, progressed beyond Saurfang in the weeks following my last post. In the interim, one group - once - has managed to take down Festergut. Full stop.

It is somewhat analogous to an unholy amalgamation of Patchwerk and Loatheb, except the spores in this fight, rather than boosting your DPS, boost your immunity to the incoming massive raid damage. The DPS is up to you, and boy howdy, do you need a lot of it! Festergut has a five-minute enrage timer, and 9.4 million health in his 10-player iteration. That means, assuming two tanks and two healers, a minimum of 5k DPS from everyone else, or you lose.

Yeah, we lost.

That brings us to tonight's attempt at ToGC. We were feeling cocky - ok, I was feeling cocky - I mean, we've cleared ToC dozens of times, and now we've even got a few pieces of gear from the next tier of content! What could go wrong?

...let's just say they don't call him Gormok the Impaler for nothing. Those poor, poor tanks.