Dire Aquatic Form

So, Sharon and I have decided to join forces, and merge our blogs into previously mentioned mega-blog juggernaut of death and mayhem. Well, we finally got off our asses and we now have a new home.

I present to you....

Raided M
Adult Situations and Brief Nerdity

Here we'll be sharing our thoughts and opinions on being in a WoW relationship(that is, two people in a relationship who play WoW together, not some kind of in-game creepy relationship), as well as our often differing viewpoints of the game in general. She is also taking over handling recruitment for our guild, interviewing potential members and whatnot and letting the officers know whether or not she thinks they will be a good fit, so I expect there will be some posts regarding that kind of stuff in the near future. I'll be posting the inaugural post over there in a little bit, as soon as I get it written up.

No, I'm not going to rattle off a few lines from Big Bear Butt or Need More Rage and make you guess which post it is. So, in my last post, I mentioned that Sharon and I are working to combine forces into a mega-blog juggernaut of death and mayhem. well, we've run into one small snag. We can't think of a name.

That's where you, my faithful readers, get to be used for our benefit! Did I say that out loud? Just post your ideas in the comments on this post, and one lucky winner will be chosen by a rabid squirrel(this guarantees randomness) to have named our blog! But wait, there's more! Okay, no, I lied, there isn't more.

So, our POV on this whole venture is twofold. We're coming from an angle of the jaded vet vs. the bright-eyed new player experiences and views of the game, and also the benefits and drawbacks of being in a relationship while playing the game together.

In all seriousness, we've been trying to come up with a name for the blog for the past two days, and we're just hitting a wall. we've come up with three names so far, but none of them really have quite what we're looking for; however, they should give you an idea of the type of name we're aiming for. Married to the Mobs(Sharon objects because we're not actually married yet), Love and Pwnage, and GuildMating.

Whoever does come up with a name we end up using will, of course, get full credit, as well as prominent linkage on the new site. Plus, you'd really be saving our creatively-challenged asses.

Just a quick(and somewhat drunken) note to let folks know. It is very likely that, in the near future, I will be moving to a self-hosted wordpress site, with a fairly dramatic change in format. Sharon and I are planning on combining forces and doing a blog from the point of view of WoW in terms of a relationship in which both people play it, and our differing viewpoints on it, with me being a jaded vet and her being new to the game. Watch this space for updates.

OTed Kara last night for the first time, and it was a blast. We cleared through Opera(Wizard of Oz, skipped Maiden) with only one wipe on Moroes due to some bad luck with garrotes. I picked up the gloves off of Attumen, which was a pretty nice upgrade(I had been using green gloves of the bandit).

I held Attumen while the group burned down Midnight, tanked Moroes with the pally tank, and burned down Dorothea while holding Tito, then wound up tanking the Crone when the pally lost his hold on her.

Moroes was probably the most fun of all of it. We held Moroes, and burned down Crispin while he was vanished. The pally tank wound up going down partway through our second attempt, and was battle rezzed, so I wound up main tanking him, and had a blast. Picking up the Crone was fun, too. Running her around to avoid the tornado made it a bit more interesting than your standard tank'n'spank.

We also had some awesome luck on trash. Out of four trash pulls before the performers, we picked up the fire mage/destro lock belt, rogue gloves, and a soulcloth tailoring pattern. Three epics on four pulls was pretty damned cool.

All in all, it was a fun night for me. Unfortunately, due to bedtime scheduling conflicts, Sharon wasn't able to attend(Kara starts right at the kid's bedtime). I'm hoping to find a way to be able to work around this and get her in on the runs. We didn't actually start until around 9:15 or 9:20, and if this is the norm, I'm hoping we can get her in on a regular basis.

Sorry I've been so reticent in updating, lately, but I've been extremely busy as of late within the game. Seems I really meant my resolution to run more instances. Sunday afternoon/evening saw us running 5 instances. Arc keyfrag, SV keyfrag, BM, SV full, and Shattered Halls(god bless pally tanks). The last three of those, I healed, and actually did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. BM was death-free, and my first instance healed as resto. The full SV was pretty smooth, as was Shattered Halls, with only 1 wipe due to some overaggro, and the tank turning around to pick it up with 5 mobs behind him. Never seen a tank go from 80% to 20% that fast.

What I want to tell you all about, however, was the Shadow Lab run from the day before. Specifically, the fight against Blackheart the Inciter. We did SL with the same tank from SH, a paladin. We discovered something, in that instance. Blackheart the Inciter sucks for tanks that rely on mana. After about three wipes where our tank just could not hold the aggro after Time For Fun, we decided to try it with him throwing dps and offheals, and me strapping on my tanking gear. And it was the single most epic 5 man boss fight I have ever participated in.

Our group was me, the prot pally, a holy pally, Sharon, and an enhancement shaman. Within the first two minutes of the fight, the shaman and Sharon had died, I had thrown my innervate on the holy pally and combat rezzed Sharon. Two more minutes, Sharon is eating floor again, and it's just me, the hoyl pally, and the prot pally. They're both keeping me healed, and we're all beating on each other during time for fun. About six minutes into the fight, the holy pally dies, and now I'm really sweating. It's me and the prot pally healing me. Eight minutes in, I throw my innervate on him, the dps is trying to run back in but get MCed near pulls we didn't clear and die. Eight minutes in, my 2nd innervate of the fight goes to the prot pally, and I'm burning cooldowns and trinkets. Nine minutes in, the holy pally makes it back in, just in time to throw two or three heals and watch Blackheart the Inciter die of exhaustion after a brutal, epic, ten minute long fight. As rough as it was, it left me with a really good feeling. We got it done, we got some loot, and we eventually(after much issue with Vorpil, requiring the prot pally to bring his lock for extra dps) got our keyfrag.

The lesson learned? Don't ever assume it's a wipe, like we did about three minutes into that fight.

...this is your wake-up call.

So, the other night, I mentioned we ran Auchenai Crypts, our little levelling/instance group. Everything went pretty smooth, until we hit the first boss. Then it was reality check time. See, most of the stuff we've done instance-wise, we've been over-level, sometimes severely so. Going along, I had an idea that at some point, we would hit a wall, and get a nasty surprise regarding our sometimes non-existent tactics. Ramparts wasn't it, Blood Furnace wasn't it, Old Hillsbrad wasn't it. Shirrak the Dead Watcher was.

We wiped on him, no joke, a minimum of five times. We couldn't dps him down fast enough, and we couldn't avoid the bombs well enough. I would call out on IGC who the bomb was on, and a few seconds later, I'd see their, and sometimes several other people's health drop like a rock. Some of us think it was gear, and for one of us, it was(and we're working on fixing a stamina defecit). However, overall, I think our problem was cruise control.

Up until that point, we were playing the game on cruise control, overpulling, screwing around, not worrying about body pulls, and we did it fairly successfully. Then, we hit that boss, and we just didn't have our heads in the game, and we finally got to a point where it was not acceptable. And it's a damned good thing.

It may seem a funny thing to say, but in a very major way, it was. You see, there were/are some issues within the group that needed to be addressed. Personally, I left them unaddressed because I was worried about offending people, and it hadn't become an issue yet. Now? It's starting to become an issue, one that's causing wipes, and undue stress. So I'm starting to address it.

For example, last night me and Sharon hit Shattered Halls(hate!) with the Shammy(enhancement), a resto druid from the guild, and a pugged mage(pugs don't have specs). I was watching Omen the first couple pulls, as well as target of target, and noticed that the Shammy was consistently out-aggroing me with his crazy crits and balls to the wall dps. This was nothing new, he was a solid 30-50% of my taunts. And that's when it occurred to me. How could he possibly know he was doing something wrong if I never said anything?

So, I mentioned it. "Hey, do me a favor? Watch Omen, and when you're creeping up on me on threat, I need you to dial it back a notch." Turns out, he had his threat warnings disabled. He turned them back on, and other than some pulls that went completely tits up, things were much smoother, me-holding-aggro-over-the-enhancement-shammy-wise.

And I'm sure I have things that I'm doing wrong that I need to be corrected on. Hopefully, we can get this stuff out, all learn what it is we're doing that we shouldn't, and collectively get better at working together.

...it pours loot.

After that Old Hillsbrad run I posted about, we did Old Hillsbrad again the next night, and then Sethekk Halls the night after, and then Auchenai Crypts the night after that, and Underbog last night. Mixed in with that, got some help from the guild and we were able to open up the Ogri'la dailies for about 7-8 people(hooray for dropping raid to loot), and last night before Underbog myself, Sharon, and the lock got some help downing Zuluhed the Whacked and getting Netherwing opened up.

So, now we have ample opportunity to run our dailies and earn back the cash we borrowed(10k between the two of us). We're also fairly close to getting Ally the Shadowprowler's Chestguard(guild mate can craft it and is donating the nethers, Ally has the earths, is farming the shadows, and we're working on the Soul Essence from guild mates in kara runs). We also got her the gloves and boots from the Fel Leather set to hold her over until we can find some upgrades for her out of instances, such as the assassination or wastewalker set.

As for me, my gear is coming along quite nicely. I got my purple pimp hat crafted, got my manimal's cinch(does that make me a manimal?), my ring out of Old Hillsbrad the second time around(and found myself, for the second time, going 'ringringringringringringring' before looting), and I'm close on the Umberhowl's Collar. Next up is 35 agi for my Braxxis', 12 agi for my boots, the Verdant Gloves, and some Mechanar runs for my cloak. Oh, and some Thrallmar rep grinding for my crab design.

So, yeah. Things are looking good. I'm thinking within two weeks, I'll be Kara ready, and so will Sharon. It's just a matter of making her believe she's Kara-ready, which will hopefully come from running more instances. She actually commented on how comfortable she felt with Underbog last night, which hadn't been the case in any of our previous instance runs. Part of it was probably how overlevel we were, one 67 and four 70's running regular Underbog, but I hope part of it has also come from running more instances, and getting comfortable with the pacing I use, how I pull, what's expected from her on saps and whatnot, and just a general acclimation to being behind the swirly portal.

Oh, and a bonehead story from last night. We get past Ghaz'an, and are working on the nether ray/moth pulls, when I see the grace of air totem go down. I'm curious what this is pushing my dodge to with my new tanking gear, so I throw open the character window, looks at my defenses pulldown, and my eyes bug out and I can't stop laughing. "Hey, ?" "Yeah?" "Have you noticed me taking more damage than usual." "Nah, not really. Why?" "Because I've been wearing my dps gear this entire time."