Ahead of the Curve: Lei Shen

Lay the proud Usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow! 

Let us Do or Die!  - Robbie Burns, Scots Wha Hae.


I really like my new Raid Team.

I suppose that they're hardly new any more. I have been raiding with them for three months now, and we've been from one end of the Throne of Thunder to the other. We've exulted in glorious victory together and toiled in hardship and defeat at the hands of our enemies. Good times.

Interesting factoid: The Snails on the stairs to Ji-Kun have killed more of us than Primordius and The Twin Consorts combined. Adversity, thy name is Gastropod.

Anyway, I'm really proud to be part of this group. When I joined them—undergeared and ill-prepared—I was understandably nervous about my performance and acceptance into the group. After all, I was replacing the former Raid Leader—also a Holy Paladin—who knew these people, had more experience with the fights and much better gear. Although I would never had admitted it at the time, my greatest fear was that the raid leaders would realize that I was a talentless hack after the first few pulls and ruthlessly relegate me to Non-Raider-Pariah status permanently.

Isn't it always nice when your Worst Fears don't come true?

To their credit, the group (and guild in general) made me feel right at home. To me, at least, Acquired Taste was an instant fit.

It's nice to have a home again.


AHEAD OF THE CURVE

First of all, I'm really glad that Blizzard has finally implemented this kind of Achievement. It's something I have been advocating for a long time. It finally provides a way to differentiate between people who put in a lot of work to kill a boss while it's current, and the Tourist who goes in after the fact to just look around. I love it!

Acquired Taste runs two different 10-Man Raid Groups. When I joined the guild both groups were at a very similar point in their progression and there was a healthy rivalry between the two as to who would get the next progression kill. Sadly, the Prime-Time raid always seemed a step ahead of the Late-Night Crew, but I'm proud to say that both groups have managed to down Lei Shen and are 12/12.

Despite the fact that the Late Night Crew has had a revolving door of people, we've managed to get things done. Doing a quick count in my head I can think of 6 or 7 different tanks we've used, at least as many healers and DPS that come and go before I can even learn their names. But the personality of the group has stayed constant. It's actually remarkable that we've managed to keep steadily progressing with all the turn-over, and (while I hope they don't read this because I wouldn't want to inflate any egos) it's a testament to Ittymar and Amara, our excellent raid leaders.

We actually downed Lei Shen almost a month ago, but I'm posting this now because last week was special. It was the first week that we downed the entire instance without extending the lockout, and it was the week that I personally got my 12/12 achievement as I had been absent when we first killed Iron Qon and The Twins and the group had extended the lockout to tackle Lei Shen. This week we took them down in order.

Now we're going to start playing around with Heroic modes, which will be another first for me.


NO ONE'S DEAD SO KEEP YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

Apparently, our resident Warlock FRAPSes our raiding nights. This is a first for me; I've never been able to watch myself play the game, and it's especially odd seeing it from another's perspective. It's pretty cool, actually.

Here is our first Lei Shen kill. Look for the Paladin in the full Tier 9 transmog running through bad stuff and generally being out of place all the time if you want to find me. I'm the one calling the tanks impatient at the beginning if you're interested in what I sound like.

Year The Second: An Unexpected Journey

I'm a little rusty at this, so you'll have to bear with me a bit.

I almost didn't realize it, but Tuesday was the second anniversary of the creation of Dwarven Battle Medic. It's an occasion that deserves celebration but is marred by the dust on everything around here and the conspicuous lack of party guests.

Still, it's totally worth it.

There are many reasons why I haven't been posting much lately, and for the sake of your sanity I'm not going to get into them. Suffice it to say that real life has fundamentally altered how I play the game.


LIFE WITHOUT RAIDING

Raiding, once my passion and purpose within in the game, is no longer possible. Scheduled, uninterrupted time simply doesn't exist.

This fact has been the largest contributing factor to the stagnation of Battle Medic: without raiding, what is there to talk about? Looking back on my past posts, I talked a lot about raiding. As a WoW player, being a successful raider (at least, within my own goals) was something I took immense pride in, worked hard to achieve and thoroughly enjoyed. As a result I've had to find other things to do to make my play time enjoyable. It's been a hard adjustment.

Gone are the days where I had a meticulously crafted gearing plan and would chain heroics in order to achieve it. No more meticulous research on mechanics, strategies or min-max gobbledegook. No more pressure to get to a point where I could contribute without letting my Guild or Raid Team down. Instead, I've been playing at a very relaxed pace. And once I got my head around the fact that I am, even if it is against my will, a non-raider, I've been enjoying myself quite a bit.

It's kinda nice not to have any pressure.

But the really interesting thing that is only now just dawning on me is that it brings me full circle to the way I played when I was initially levelling up my first characters. Before I hit max-level for the first time I would never look ahead or research or do anything that would take away from the joy of discovering what comes next. It was, in many ways, a very innocent time. A time when I could enjoy the game on my own terms and not have to worry about whether I was DOING IT RIGHT because it simply didn't matter as long as I was having fun. That's the mindset that I discovered, or rather rediscovered, as I trekked through Pandaria.

So as the second year of Battle Medic winds down and a new one begins I find myself in the strangely familiar position of enjoying the slow, immersive solo game and yet wanting to do more. Now, how do I write about that?

One Year Later...

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln 

One year ago Sunday, I was sitting in my office at work. It was a cold, snowy, miserable Saturday in December, ensuring that only the bravest and most motivated customers would dare visit the lot. In an attempt to stave off a level of boredom that would have resulted in me falling asleep at my desk, I started casually fooling around with Blogger to see if I could find a blog design that would catch my eye. An hour and a half later, I had the basic look that you see here now (unless you're on a feedreader) and my first post up. The rest, as they say, is history.

I've talked before about what motivated me to begin writing Battle Medic, why I chose the name and who my influences were - all really excellent topics for an anniversary post, but I'm not going to go into all that again. But I have been doing some pondering on my experiences and feelings about this whole blogging thing.


SOME VITAL STATISTICS

Because I'm sure there are people out there dying to know...

Over the past year, as of this writing Battle Medic has seen over 41,500 pageviews according to Blogspot's statistic's page. The best month I had was June with 6,136 views. As well, I have a good number of subscribers to my feed, although I don't really have an accurate way to track that. Google Reader tells me that 188 people are subscribed to the blog.

4 of my Top 5 all-time posts in terms of traffic are unsurprisingly due to being linked by the 800 pound gorilla of the WoW blogosphere, WoW Insider, which always results in a 20-fold increase in traffic for a day or two. However, the post that is hanging on in fifth place is my most controversial post, but also the one that I am most proud of writing: On Raiding Disappointment: An Open Letter to Blizzard. Although some people didn't agree with the content of the post, I think that in terms of the way in which the ideas are expressed it is my most powerful bit of writing. I'm glad that it's managing to hold on to a top spot, despite not being linked by WoW Insider.

I'd like to give a shout-out to my top referrers while I'm at it. WoW Insider is, of course, the site that has sent me the most traffic, although it's not as extreme as you might think. Blessing of Kings - the big daddy of Paladin blogs - is second, even beating Google. It appears that a lot of you use Rohan's Blog Roll to find your way here, and I credit getting listed on his site as what really got Battle Medic off the ground in terms of traffic and exposure. Thanks, Rohan! Orcish Army Knife, Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon round out the top referrers.

I am extremely proud that Battle Medic is listed on so many Blog Rolls around the blogosphere, and I thank everyone who thinks enough of my writing that they would add me to their site. It's a thrill every time I run across a blog that I'm unfamiliar with and see my blog listed there as something that they read and recommend.

All told, I have been extremely satisfied with the amount of people that are seeing what I write.

Traffic, however, is not that important if the people visiting are not finding the content engaging, and the only way to really know what you, the reader is thinking is the comments. There are a lot of reasons why a person wouldn't write a comment, but the only thing that is going to make someone (especially someone viewing a post in a reader) to stop what they're doing and respond to a post is if it has a compelling message. Agree with me or not, I value every single comment that I have received on Battle Medic, and over the course of the past year people have commented 572 times on the blog. Now I just need to be better at responding to them.


IMPRESSIONS AFTER THE FIRST YEAR

I can honestly say that Battle Medic has not quite turned out the way I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I am very proud of the posts that I have written, but I hoped that it would have turned into more of a Kurn-esque resource blog rather than the personal game journal that it is now. While I would like to do more analytical posts, I think one of the most important lessons that I learned is that while those how-to and resource posts bring in a lot of views from the search engines, regular readers are more interested in what a blogger thinks about something. It's the personal opinions and viewpoints that keep bringing readers back.

That idea has shaped the evolution of Battle Medic more than anything.

Well, aside from the Dwarfling. I've written about this numerous times - it's almost to the point of getting quite stale - but my life, and consequently my ability to focus on my blog, has changed remarkably since I started a year ago. There have been far too many of the "I'm tired, no time to write" posts for my liking. The last thing I want is to turn this post into another of those, but the Dwarfling certainly has had a big effect on my posting and gameplay.

Still, I have enjoyed writing this blog more than I ever would have thought possible. Before starting it, I didn't realize how much I enjoyed the process and creative release of writing. More importantly, though, I didn't realize that I had something to say. I have opinions on this game and my experiences playing it, and I had no idea that there was a burning need to express them until I started writing about them. It's made me think about the game quite differently.


COMMUNITY

Writing a blog is fun, but interacting with the readers is much more rewarding. It's that interaction that begins to build a community, and the WoW Blogging community is great. It's diverse, engaging and very supportive. I don't think there would be much point in blogging in a void.

Everyone I talk to, whether it be on Twitter, forums or through comments, has been amazing. Support, advice and sympathy have been offered whenever I've been feeling like a grumpy Dwarf, and congratulations are never in short supply when something good happens. And, of course, there is nothing that will generate conversation and comments like posting a picture of the Dwarfling; the internet certainly seems to be taken with her.

I was planning on doing a list of people who have been influential to me and the blog and thank them, but honestly, there are far too many to list. The post would either get too long (it already is... this was supposed to be a short post!), or I would end up forgetting someone important, and I would hate to do that.

However, if you are reading this blog regularly, I thank you. I appreciate how special it is that someone takes time out of their day to read the drivel that I spew onto the interwebs. I hope that what I write is informative, enlightening or at the very least entertaining.

If you have ever commented on Battle Medic, I thank you. Believe me, I know how hard it is to comment on a post. Personally, I find it much harder to write an interesting comment than I do an interesting article. Know that each and every comment, regardless of whether I get off my tuckus to respond to it or not is read and appreciated. In fact, I get a shiver of anticipation every time I see that there is a new one.

If we have ever interacted on Twitter, I thank you. I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon quite late - I still haven't had one year on that yet - but I have a really good number of followers. In my wildest dreams I didn't think that there would be that many people interested in what I have to say.

If you are a blogger and have added me to your Blog Roll, I thank you. If you've ever ReTweeted, linked or written a response to one of my posts, I thank you.

If I have influenced you in some way - to start a blog, join Twitter, think about screenshots differently, or even to ditch all the other races in favour of the clearly superior Dwarves - I thank you. I write this blog for myself, but to know that there are people out there who enjoy what I write enough that it inspired them to do something themselves is very satisfying. I'm glad I could help, and I thank you for valuing what I do here.

And if you read this blog and didn't like it, well, I thank you anyway. Honestly, I get a lot of positive feedback here (the WoW blogosphere is very supportive), and I would love to get some idea of what I'm doing wrong. So thank you for all the constructive criticism in advance.

There... I think that covers just about everyone.


THE FUTURE OF BATTLE MEDIC

Back on that blustery day last December when I pushed the Publish button for the first time, I had no idea whether I would enjoy blogging or whether I would keep up with it. So many of the projects that I take on start out so brilliantly and then fizzle into a small, grey lump of nothing, and I'm glad that I've managed to keep Battle Medic as active as I have, given the circumstances.

I will continue to write this blog as long as there are people reading it. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to increase the frequency of the posting around here, as it's been much quieter than I'd like since August. I look forward to writing another of these posts next year!

This Week In Raiding: The Next Logical Step?

The last couple of weeks have been very exciting for Mountain Top progression. Two lockouts ago we got Alysrazor down for the first time in what can only be described as another "Click" moment. This week marked the first time that we killed all five Firelands bosses that we've downed so far, plus Heroic Halfus in a single night, leaving us a full raid night to work on Majordomo Fandral Staghelm.

I'm pleased to say that, for the first time this tier, Mountain Top took down a progression boss on the first night of attempts. I had heard that the Staghelm encounter was relatively easy, but that the transitions were quite tricky. I think that most of our raid group went into the fight not really expecting a kill, but hoping for some good, solid progress on learning the fight.

It really surprised me, then, when in the midst of a promising pull that was about to turn into a wipe, I look down at the good Majordomo's health and see it sitting at 5%. I was completely gobsmacked. At that point it really felt as if we had really just started working on it, and yet the bastard was already practically dead? For me, that was the moment of emotional elation, and the point that I knew it was only a matter of time before we get our kill. The actual event itself was an anticlimax in comparison.

All that remains.

THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP?

With the death of the Majordomo, Mountain Top is 6/7 and has the end of this tier in sight - at least in the normal modes. This brings up the question: Once a casual guild is 7/7, what's next?

Do we progress into Heroic Modes? Even at this stage in T12, we've only ever attempted Heroic Halfus (the easiest of the T11 Heroic bosses).

Or, do we continue doing regular modes, farming for gear and then bringing in Alts (of which there are plenty in our guild) and less experienced raiders so that they can get geared up?

I think that for a hardcore raiding guild, this question is so easy that it's not even asked. Heroic modes are not just an option, they're the entire point. I have always imagined that for guilds like these, regular modes are merely an inconvenience; a tedious chore that needs to be completed as quickly as possible so that they can get to the real fights.

For a more casual guild, on the other hand, the idea of Heroic Modes gets much more complicated. Questions need to be asked and the Raid Leadership needs to take a critical look at the raid team. Is the team dedicated enough to put in the extra work that Heroic Modes will bring? Will morale hold while relearning a boss that everyone knows can be beaten easily with just the flip of a switch? Does the raid team have enough gear to even make Heroic Modes feasible? At what point do you make the switch? And probably most importantly, Does the Raid Team even want to do Heroic Modes?

For myself, I think that I would like to see this group tackle something really challenging. I'm very impressed with the quality of people that we have in our Raid Team and how far we've managed to come in a relatively short time - despite the many challenges we've faced. We've had to deal with hurricanes, two different medical emergencies, scheduling conflicts, gear drama, raid spot drama and a host of other things that make organizing each raid an epic adventure all on its own. And yet we've managed to make it this far.

I think that we've got enough talent on the roster to make a very good showing on the Heroic Modes if we could get everyone - including myself - committed to working their butts off to sharpen our play.

What I'm afraid of though, is that the desire to do heroic modes - to continue on past 7/7 normal - just isn't there.

I think what happens in a lot of casual guilds is that once the final boss of the instance lies dead at the guild's feet and the rush of emotion dissipates, the idea that "we're done" sets in. Why bother going back once we've already downed the end boss? Oh, the raids continue, but some people take a break, while others start bringing in Alts to get those characters geared up. Raiding continues, but progression stops.

And that's okay, too. Heroic modes aren't for every guild or for every player. If desire and commitment to move forward isn't there, attempting heroic modes isn't going to accomplish anything other than frustrating everybody.

There are many ways to fail at raiding, but there is only one way to succeed: The entire team has to share the same goal, and be willing to put in the blood and sweat needed to make it happen. And this isn't just about raiding, this is true of life in general.


A REALISTIC LOOK AT LOFTY GOALS

At the beginning of Cataclysm, I set myself the goal of finishing the normal modes of each tier while they were still current. I missed out on accomplishing that in Tier 11, but it seems almost certain that my guild and I will succeed in Tier 12.

If Mountain Top does decide to move on to the Heroic Modes, I will be the first one to sign up and will give it every ounce of dedication I have. But I think that if we do simply stall at 7/7 and get no further, I will be satisfied with a job well done. For me, at least, it will be a first and an accomplished goal that I can be proud of.

But I would very much like to test myself against the really hard fights that this game has to offer. I think that doing those fights would make me a better player. Odd as it may sound, I really love working on a new and difficult fight, and there is no sweeter moment than the successful kill after weeks of hard disappointment. I really want to experience that feeling knowing that I'm working on the hardest content in the game.

The real trouble with normal modes is that, no matter how sweet the taste of victory is, there is always the niggling doubt in my head that knows I am working on second tier content. It's like sitting at the kids table at Christmas; you're there and eating the same food, but the experience is lesser.

I would like, just once, to sit at the adults table in WoW. To get the full experience. To look back at a Raiding Tier and say to myself, "Yeah, I've done that shit".

But if I were to look realistically at my ability to dedicate time and effort to working on Heroic Modes, I wonder if I would pass my own criteria for a Heroic Mode raider? Can I dedicate the time, or rather, will the wife and Dwarfling allow me to dedicate the time to be successful? Do I honestly have the skills to be valuable to a Heroic Mode raiding team? Never having tried, I can honestly say I don't know.

But damn, I really want to try.
 
  

Shannox Down - Identifying the Problem

A lot of people read my whining about Shannox in my last post and offered a lot of great tips on getting through the fight. Thank you everyone for your advice and comments.

Dead.

However, frustrated with our lack of success in Firelands, Mountain Top put together an off-night raid last night to take another crack at Shannox before the weekly reset. Sadly, both myself and our regular Death Knight Tank were unable to attend due to family issues.

They one-shot Shannox and killed Beth'tilac as well for good measure. Grats, Mountain Top!

The difference, as it turns out, was changing tanks. The Protection Warrior that replaced our regular DK tank was able to block a great deal of the incoming damage that was insta-gibbing our DK, which made the healing in the last phase a lot smoother and easier to deal with.

Also dead.

Don't get me wrong, our DK is a great tank and there is no one I would rather heal when the going gets tough, but reading the Blood DK forums over on Elitist Jerks confirms that a lot of DK tanks are having problems coping with the damage spikes in this encounter. The self-healing that the Blood spec uses to tank is seemingly less effective during intense, burst damage than the reliable mitigation from blocks that a Paladin or Warrior can expect.

It's no excuse, and it doesn't really change anything for next week when our Death Knight will be back getting beat on by Shannox. We'll still need to figure out a way to prevent him from dying.

But the bastard and his dogs are dead, and that makes me a happy Paladin.

Next up: Admiral McSpinnypants

 
   

A Little Quiet Around Here

"I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out." - Roy Blount, Jr.

I have not abandoned my blog, but it's beginning to feel a little neglected these days. In the past couple of weeks I have been having a very hard time getting quality writing done. I have been struggling mightily with every post that I try to write, and so my blog has been very quiet as of late. The noise of the crickets around here is deafening.

With precious little time at home that isn't filled with satisfying the demands of either the Dwarfling or my Wife and free time at work diminishing as we enter our busy season, I am finding it increasingly hard to find the time or inspiration to sit down and write blog posts. And when I do try to bang out some words, I find myself harshly critiquing things before even getting anything written and so never manage to get very far. I'm probably over-thinking things and making it harder than it needs to be, but words just aren't coming to me easily right now.

It really bugs me that this Blog is as quiet as it is right now. I take a lot of pride in Battle Medic, and to see it wither - even temporarily - is painful to me. I think about it all the time. Not posting feels like a failure, which makes actually sitting down and working on new posts even harder because of the pressure that I'm putting on myself to get new and excellent content up. Filler posts like these are okay, I suppose, but I can't imagine listening to me whine about not posting is terribly compelling to anyone.


WHAT'S COMING

The worst part is that I have a lot of great posts that I want to get posted. Each one has a start, or a concept in my Drafts folder, but I am finding finishing them very difficult. As a result I have slipped quite dreadfully from my goal of three posts per week, and am barely managing one a week at the moment. I thought that in lieu of actually giving all you Battle Medic fans actual content, I would fill you folks in on what I'm currently working on.

• A Dungeoneering Shaman's Journey to 60
• The Druid Dilemma talking about why I don't have a druid even though I've always wanted one
• An article on my Power Auras for Holy Paladins & Resto Shamans
• Holy Paladin Basics guides
• an update on Raiding
• an article on the Recycling of content (ie, the Troll Dungeons)
• an article on the current state of WoW
• Serenity Saz's 15 Days of Screenshots Challenge with a unique Battle Medic flair. I'm actually quite excited about this and looking forward to doing it.

BATTLE MEDIC'S GREATEST HITS

I picked up lot of new readers and new subscribers in April while I was doing the 20 Days of WoW Challenge. With that in mind and seeing as how this is a filler post anyway, I thought that I would share with everyone a list of the posts from the earlier months of the blog that I am most proud of. This feels quite self-indulgent, but I hope that someone who hasn't gone through and read Battle Medic from the beginning finds something interesting.

The First Annual Peevie Awards

What Makes a Main?

Blogservations: Random Thoughts on Writing and Warcraft

On Archaeology and the Trials of Surveying

On Heroics: When is the Nerf Bat Necessary?

Pushing a Boulder Uphill

Favourite Weapon

Professing on Professions

REAL CONTENT COMING SOON

I promise.

  

  

On Timing: The 4.1 Keybind Action Change

Have you ever had something that you do all the time suddenly feel completely uncomfortable and unfamiliar? Like when you write a word that you've written a thousand times before but then look at it and find no connection between the specific arrangement of letters and the meaning, as if you've never seen the word before? It's an odd feeling.

Something like that happened to me after the 4.1 patch.

One of the less heralded features that Blizzard included in 4.1 was a change to the way key presses work. In the past, when you pushed a key down the ability that is bound to that key would not activate until you released the key. Or put more simply, the ability activated when the key was going up as opposed to down.

Blizzard added an option to change this behaviour in the form of a check-box in the Interface>Combat part of the main menu. Having this box checked would change the action of the key press to activate when the key is pressed, rather than released. Blizzard also set this option to ON by default.

For many, this was a welcome and long overdue change. Add-ons have existed for a long time to provide this kind of functionality, and many people have been using them for years. In theory it should save a split-second every time you activate an ability. It's kind of a mystery as to why they did it the other way in the first place, really.

MOMMY, MY BUTTONS DON'T FEEL RIGHT

I swear that I tried to give this change an honest try. I can completely see the advantages of the new key action, and before the patch I was very excited about this change. I figured that it would make healing much more natural and responsive and in the long run would make me a better healer.

However, something happened that I did not expect. Every time I tried to heal things just didn't work right. My timing had been completely thrown off by the change. I would press the button too early and get a That Ability Isn't Ready Yet error and my spell wouldn't cast, forcing me to press the button again and waste precious time. Or I would press the button and it would cast on the wrong target because I had selected the target I wanted a fraction of a second after hitting the button. My timing was off so much that everything felt completely foreign and I was having a really hard time healing.

That split second made a huge difference.

I ended up having to spend more time looking at my Stuf cast bar (which shows latency) so that I could time the button presses just right, which meant spending less time looking at the giant globs of green goo that the boss was using to try to kill me. My fingers just didn't want to cooperate, and were fighting years of muscle memory in trying to learn the new timing.

I tried for a week or so to get used to to it, but I ended up having to turn it off. Once I did everything felt alright again and the natural flow of my healing rhythm returned.

I guess the moral of this little story is that any little change can be a big change. Given more time I probably could have got used to it, or I could have switched to Clique or Mouseover Macros to solve to problem. But the simplest solution was to just turn it off.

Did anyone else have any problems adjusting to the change, or am I just weird?
 
 

Trolling for PUGs: Adventures in Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub

The doors to Zul'Aman, which no one
will ever see from the outside again.

I must admit that I was a little late to the Zandalari party. I always try to stay away from new content when a major patch like this drops for a day or so to let the servers stabilize, so I didn't attempt a run on patch day even though my pocket Tank was asking me to.

I probably should have, however, since my wife and daughter got home the next day after almost a week away visiting relatives, and the Dwarfling was making sure that she was the centre of attention. I didn't actually get a chance until Sunday to try one out.

I was excited to hear that they were bringing these two raids back as extra-difficult 5-man heroics, similar to the Icecrown Citadel heroics. I didn't get a chance to run either of these raids when they were relevant, and somewhat stupidly didn't run them before Blizzard whisked them away from us, so I was going into them completely blind - with only a Wowhead breakdown of the bosses to guide me.


BRING A LUNCH - THIS IS GONNA TAKE A WHILE

Zoning into Zul'Gurub for the first time, it's immediately apparent that it feels a little different than most other 5-mans. It felt big. And though Blizzard was clever to make most of it avoidable, there is a ton of trash there; the place actually feels populated, like a giant troll city should. Seeing it for the first time it's very easy to imagine this place as a raid.

The first run through this incarnation of Zul'Gurub was with a guild group of more casual players: The tank and I are regular raiders, but the DPS, though raid experienced, are not regular raiders these days. Regardless, everybody's gear was more than adequate to run these dungeons, so there was no problems there.

My impressions of this dungeon are that each of the bosses is considerably more difficult than the other Cataclysm heroics. The first boss Venoxis gave us quite a bit of trouble, and feels like it's a test aimed at the healer. The panther boss, Kilnara, gave us a lot of grief as well; it almost feels like that fight could use two tanks. Zanzil was tough as well for our group, but it felt like we were going to get it. Unfortunately I had to quit before we finished him off and I didn't get to see the last boss.

In looking back, it really did feel like a raid. Not just because it took us almost 3 hours to get to Zanzil - by which time Mrs. Fannon was giving me dirty looks, sharpening her kitchen knives and laying out old sheets around my computer to soak up the blood - but because the difficulty of the encounters and the co-ordination required was a lot higher than I was expecting. Thank goodness we were on Ventrilo.


OH DEAR LORD A PUG

The real fun in Zul'Gurub came yesterday when I tried to PUG it using the LFD tool.

Call to Arms was asking for both Tanks and Healers, so I muttered the immortal last words, "What the heck, it can't be that bad, can it?"

Suffice it to say, an hour and several wipes later, we were not past the first boss and I ditched the group. The tank, while her gear was sufficient, had never seen any of the fights before and had no idea what she was doing. In addition, she was completely uncommunicative and so bloody slow; and not she's-just-being-a-cautious-puller kind of slow, either. It was more like the pause-for-five-minutes-with-no-communication-between-each-pull type. I think that she was reading up on the fights while she was tanking the trash. It was quite painful.

At Venoxis, the DPS seemed to think that Green=Good and made sure to stand in it frequently. Neither the tank or the Death Knight seemed to have their interrupt ability bound, or didn't have the first clue when to use it even after I explained the fight and which ability to interrupt.

And a note to the hunter: Jumping over the toxic maze lines will still get you killed. Don't do it, please.

So, yeah, it can be that bad. Best to wait to PUG this instance for a few weeks until people get a handle on it.


FINALLY, SUCCESS!

Can you tell which
items are new?
HINT: They are Brown.

A guildie and I queued up for a random last night and got Zul'Aman. Firstly, what a beautiful instance! Assuming that Zul'Gurub looks more-or-less the same as it originally did, you can really see a difference in visual quality between the two of them.

It was slow - we certainly didn't get the timed run - but successful. Our tank was good for the most part, and while there were a lot of mistakes on the trash, we got though it in reasonably good time - about an hour or so.

It's hard to compare them after only doing each one once, but Zul'Aman definitely seems like the easier of the two. The mechanics of the fights seemed less complex, and the bosses felt like they weren't hitting quite so hard. And the Eagle boss is just plain fun.

The run was made all the more worth it when I handed in the quests at the end and received replacements for a couple of problem areas in my gear: Shoulders and Legs. 353 isn't as good as what Cho'gall drops, and they're not itemized perfectly, but they're a damned sight better than what I replaced. That makes me a happy pally.

The only drawback to these new epics is that they don't go with the Tier 11 armour at all. Still, the skulls are very stylish; I'm sure that they will be all the rage this season.

THE VERDICT

While I agree that these instances are quite difficult and very long, they are a lot of fun. The difficulty will not be all that horrifying once everyone knows what to do, but they certainly aren't instances that can just be facerolled through. There is a silly amount of damage being spewed out of everything in these places, and if someone is not paying attention death will come all too swiftly.

I'm very happy that Blizzard gave us another gearing path as well. It was painfully obvious that there were some glaring holes in the loot distribution, with bracers being the worst. These instances, dropping gear that is halfway between heroic level blues and Tier 11 epics, fill that gap nicely - making for a much smoother and easier gear progression. As well, having quests inside the instances that give very useful gear means there is much less griding required to replace a piece. And is it just my imagination, or do these quests give rewards based on your class?

I'm very happy with what I have seen of the new dungeons so far. They're challenging and fun and provide some much needed loot. I'm also glad to have a chance to see them as relevant content - even if they are not exactly the same as the old raids. I'll talk more about recycling content in another post that I'm working on which should be finished in a few days.
 
 

Day Nineteen: The Stuff in the Virtual Attic

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days. Repent! The end is near!

DAY NINETEEN: THE STUFF IN THE VIRTUAL ATTIC

"Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?" - Natalie Clifford Barney

Last night when I went to the Stormwind bank in the Dwarven District to take a screenshot of what I had in there, I noticed that I have a whole lot of nothing-worth-mentioning.

I am not a sentimentalist when it comes to items. I don't tend to collect a lot of stuff or keep around a bunch of things for nostalgia reasons. The stuff that I keep tends to be things that have a use - even if it is a useless use. My Argent Dawn Commission, for instance, I keep with the vague idea that it may be useful again (which, of course, it won't be any longer with the removal of the Argent Dawn reputation entirely). The 447 Relics of Ulduar are very useful should I ever decide to finish the Sons of Hodir questline and get that reputation up to exalted. I did it on my priest, of course, but kinda stalled out on my Paladin.

I have a dozen Focusing Lenses for some odd reason. I created them while I was levelling Jewelcrafting and while I can't imagine why I want to keep them, I can't seem to bring myself get rid of them. There are some holiday items like last year's Brewfest mug, some Chilled Meat stored up for the day that I finally get off my ass to level Thosif's cooking skill, some more junk left over from the Argent Dawn rep grind I did before 4.0 launched, and a lot of green quality Cataclysm gems that I should have cut and sold off before the vendor price tanked with the release of Patch 4.1. It's all just a whole lot of junk, really.

The Barov Peasant Caller and Spectral Essence from Scholomance are utterly useless at level 85, but it's always nice to have some servants available at your beck and call for when there's laundry to get done. And I love the idea that there is a whole town of invisible ghosts in Caer Darrow that I can go and visit. These two items are the epitome of the useless, useful item.

There are a couple of things, as well, that I am keeping around for nostalgia. My Lost Pavise of the Blue Flight and Grand Marshal's Aegis, for instance, aren't going anywhere - they are the coolest shields that I've seen, and I am a sucker for a nice shield. 

And the cup o' Tea With Sugar (that is the quest reward for completing the epic Battle of Darrowshire given by the tragic Pamela Redpath) is still in my bags. I did this quest at level 80 on my Paladin, along with the rest of the Plaguelands quests. This item has no use in the slightest, but the Redpath storyline in the old EPL was so mournful and brilliant that I cannot bring myself to get rid of this thoughtful gift from that poor, dead little girl.

Oh hell, maybe I am a sentimental hoarder after all.

And how can I get rid of this after the hell required to get it?

Yesterday, DAY EIGHTEEN: FAVOURITE OUTFIT?
Tomorrow, DAY TWENTY: THE FINAL DAY

Day Eighteen: Favourite Outfit?

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days. We're on the home stretch now!


DAY EIGHTEEN: FAVOURITE OUTFIT?

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” - Oscar Wilde

I can honestly say that I don't have the first clue how to respond to this question, so this post will be nice and short.

Being a Wrath Baby, I don't have any tier sets from Vanilla that I keep to memorialize the sixty-seven Molten Core runs that I did. Tier 9 was the first set of tier gear that I ever even had the opportunity to collect, and it was sharded or sold as soon as it was replaced with something better.

Robes by Armani. Shoulders by Gucci. Off-Hand by Louis Vuitton
Not Pictured: Christian Loubouton Combat Boots

As such, I don't really have a Favourite Outfit for any of my characters. If I was held at gun-point and forced to choose one under threat of death or worse (like hearing a Rebecca Black song), I would probably choose the one that Fannon finished off Wrath of the Lich King in and is still wearing today.

There is no real reason for this: It doesn't match, it's not best-in-slot or particularly noteworthy in any way other than the fact that I've had it and been looking at it for so long. Although, that being said, I do think the Tier 10 Shoulder designs are far nicer than the T11 ones: Who wants to carry around bowls of water on their shoulders, anyway?

This outfit is in the photo in my Blog Header, my Twitter profile picture, and in my "signature" on my guild forums; so I've become very familiar with it. And because I've used it so much it has become almost a logo of sorts.

In the end, it will be sold off as I begin levelling Fannon through the Cataclysm content and finding replacement gear. In fact, there are already a couple of new lvl 80 items sitting in the mail waiting to be equipped, so very soon Fannon will have a different look. I don't really get all that sentimental over my gear or what my characters are wearing.

Yesterday, DAY SEVENTEEN: FAVOURITE PLACES IN THE WORLD (OF WARCRAFT)
Tomorrow, DAY NINETEEN: THE STUFF IN THE VIRTUAL ATTIC

Day Twelve: A Day In The Life

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY TWELVE: A DAY IN THE LIFE

"Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and had a cup; and looking up, I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat; made the bus in seconds flat. Made my way upstairs and had a smoke and somebody spoke and I went into a dream..." - The Beatles

In my mind, the true test of any writer is making an uninteresting topic read as if it's the last chapter of an epic novel.

Talking about my typical day is, at this point in my life, like writing a 400 page novel describing whaling in excruciating detail and expecting people to read it and stay awake.

Oh wait. Somebody already did that. Damn you, Herman Melville.

Anyway, literary criticism aside, my days right now are dull. I get up, I go to work, I try to sell stuff while I'm there. If there is nothing else to do I try to squeeze in some writing. Then I go home and take care of the Dwarfling for a while so my wife doesn't pull her hair out in great, screaming fits of exasperation. It's not exactly the stuff of great literature. In fact, I think I can hear the snores from here.

However, given that this is a World of Warcraft blog, I thought that it might be more interesting to let you in on how I squeeze WoW into my day. The Dwarfling has seen to it that my hours of WoW time are restricted, regardless of what plans or agreements I may have made before she showed up. She's the boss now.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am a car salesman at a luxury dealership. There can be an excruciating amount of downtime at my job, so I am able to spend some of my time thinking about WoW during the day. I follow Twitter (my follow list is almost exclusively WoW people) and am able to read a fair number of blogs when things aren't busy.

At about 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, things slow down and most people who come in at that point are just there to pick up their vehicle from Service, which gives me a chance to write. This time of day is when I get the vast majority of my blogging done. I know, I'm horrible for doing this at work - but I don't often get a chance to do it any other time.

Baby aggro is much more
frightening than any Raid Boss.
Please don't ask about the wipes.

When I leave work at 6, I have a half-hour drive before I get home and immediately have a baby dropped into my arms. I love my daughter, and I love holding her, but she is needy in the evening; the price we pay for having her sleep through most of the night, I guess.

So the amount of WoW that I can play really is determined by the Dwarfling. She loves being held, and so putting her down to play results in getting screamed at by both baby and mommy (I'm not really sure which is worse, honestly). Playing WoW one-handed is tricky and not very efficient; especially if I want to run a dungeon or raid where I can't stop and turn it off at a moments notice.

I can normally slip in an hour or so of gaming spread throughout the evening whilst the Dwarfling is napping or feeding off of Mrs. Fannon. It's rare to get any uninterrupted gaming time, except for my two raid nights a week, which my wife has accepted somewhat grudgingly. I can count the number of heroics that I've managed to complete on one hand in the past couple of weeks.

Writing time is very hard to come by at home as well. There is rarely a moment that is quiet enough that I can let my mind wander into the creative space that I pull all of this gibberish from. Most of the time my mind is on other things - diapers, soothers, cranky wife or barking dog.

Still, Dwarfling smiles are worth it.  Azerwhat?

Yesterday, DAY ELEVEN: FAULTS, FLAWS AND BAD HABITS
Tomorrow, PEOPLE THAT I ADMIRE