New Gear, new guild...Now What?

It's been a pretty exciting, though very tiring, weekend.

As my previous posts have implied, we made the move from Bronzebeard to Shadow Council late Saturday night. I bought the guild charter on my DK, since I figured it would be easy to get sigs on her then on a level 1 bank toon, and headed out to the troll/orc starting area. With the help of a few great wow_ladies readers, we had the charter signed and turned in before I logged that night.

I spent most of the day on Sunday trying to find and recruit new members. Wow, I remember how much I hated recruiting in the beginning days of LC. Sadly, or happily maybe, by the end of the day I had recruited 5 new people. The level 13 undead something quit when we advised we do not promote boosting after he begged in /g for a deadmines run. Nothing lost there. But we do have a level 74 prot/ret pally, 80 something mage and a 80 survival hunter. Our 4th new member is a level 40ish warrior.

We'll see how the guild growing goes. It's a long tedious process, especially when you're starting a guild with only two people. At least when I had LC growing, I had a couple friends as officers from the beginning, that were helping us find new members.

On a happy note! I'm so glad to be back on a server were people actually use the LFG option!! Eto and I were able to pug several runs of normal ToC and a h-VH run with no problems at all. It's so nice to pop into LFG or Trade and ask for 3 dps and have them in 2 minutes flat, as opposed to sitting in LFG for 3 - 4 hours and never getting a group!

Now my dilemma. I got some pretty good drops last night. A couple really good ones actually. The problem being that now my defense is way over the cap. Currently sitting at 550 defense and feel like I'm wasting stats. Looking at my armory page (like on kalyara in the crew tap) my stats look pretty good to me, I just can't figure out where to drop the defense at.

That leads to another issues. It seems my mitigation needs to go up. Here are my stats with the new gear:

HP: 28,461 (unbuffed)
Dodge - 19.89%
Parry - 15.21%
Defense - 550
Armor - 14,347
Strenth - 855

From what I understand these are the points to keep in mind:
- Dodge is greater then Parry since parry is a direct reflection of your strength (25% gained from)
- Expertise on DKs does not effect spells and most of our abilities are therefor this stat is not as important to us as say a Warrior.

The hard part is I can't seem to find a straight answer that says, X is how much dodge percent and/or parry percent you need. I've read various post that say adding the two together and getting close to 40% is a good starting point. I've read various posts that give detailed math formulas that sound great but make little sense. And then I read further and they go on to inform that those formulas are geared more towards warriors and paladins. *sigh*

So, anyone have any thoughts or ideas to back any of this?

Faded Delusions

So the guild is up and running and currently recruiting.

If anyone is on Shadow Council and interested, we'd be glad to have you.

Faded Delusions is a newly formed guild with experienced leadership. We are a fun, casual, family friendly guild located Horde side. Currently trying to form a core 10man raid group. We believe in being able to play your toon at the spec you choose. We support your decision and will help you learn to raid as we go. If you're in need of gear, have no fear, we'll be starting at Naxx10 level for badges and loots.

We're dedicated to keeping the game fun and keeping the drama out! You can whisper Kalyara or Etolani for more details and invites. Feel free to reply to this post with comments or your toon names and we'll be glad to get in touch with you. We welcome all classes, all levels, all alts and all mains. So if you're just looking for a fun, toss around guild for your alts, we'll take that too.

Happy Hunting all!

I did what?

Main tanked Naxx...seriously? Yep, I did. Well, 2 wings at least. We started, very late, with spider wing. Cleared it in less then an hour and the only wipe came on Maxena. Honestly, I don't think this was any fault of anyone in the raid, just bad timing on the wraps and the enrage. I went down when she was at about 5%. The off tank, who was a prot warrior attempting to dps the fight with a two hander, tried picking her up and went down in two shots. So the group wiped, ran back in and took her down on the second try.

We moved on to Plague quarter next. Honestly, no big problems here but one of my all time biggest tanking highs? That's right...I tanked, successfully on my second try..Heigan. This has always been my favorite fight in Naxx. I love the safety dance. I've always done it from the caster platform as dps, and it took me a few minutes to realize I can stop attacking and run to the next zone and not try to back up to it, before I got the rotation down. The first attempt went on for awhile, with all the dps dying in the first teleport stage. It came down to me and two healers and between us we got him to about 50%. I wiped after my healers did...shhh, I'm not bragging really! Ok, so I am bragging...enough that I had to screenshot it! Cause, if there's not proof, then it didn't happen right?

With the late start, we decided to call it after the second wing and the guild was going to attempt to complete it later. I say "the guild" since I'm not longer a member of it.

We finally put our money where I mouth was and went through with the transfer. Or we're going through with it as I write this post. Patiently waiting for it to complete so we can get settled. I think this was a little more disheartening after last nights run. I think both Eto and I expected Naxx to go horribly and give us more reason to move. Fortunately..and surprisingly it didn't happen that way.

So leaving today was a little more somber then I expected. But it's somewhat necessary for us both. With Bronzebeard being a west coast server the times are just too late for us. A raid starting at 6:30 server for them is 9:30 Eastern time for us. That's pretty late when you have a family and full time jobs to account for.

On a happier note, we did decide on a guild name for the Horde side Shadow Council guild. My tiny bank toon/goblin name holder is currently the proud bearer of the guild charter for Faded Delusions. Now just to get sigs on that charter and get to work. *sigh* Oh well, no pain no growth..or is that no pain, no gain..either way..looks like we have a job to do.

Oh..and no I didn't get any drops from Naxx last night. Eto did get an awesome caster shield off of Maxina though!!

Naxx Nightmares?

Looks like Eto and I hung around long enough to do Naxx tonight. Honestly, I think I actually had nightmares about it last night. We'll see how it goes. But afterwards we are planning to transfer to Shadow Council.

I spent what little gold reserve I had on Kalyara to buy a few item from the AH to resale on the new server. Ebonweave was one of the things that was going almost double on Shadow Council. We'll see how that turns out.

I'll let everyone know how tanking Naxx goes tonight. Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck!

Happy Hunting!

Heroic Happiness

H-DTK was the daily on our server last night! (Still on Bronzebeard for the moment). Needless to say I was a happy Tanker. It's one of the few heroics I've ran on multiple occasions and one that I am very comfortable with. I'll have to say I think last night's run was done in my own personal record time. Guess it goes to show how comfortable I am with my abilities in that instance!

As I mentioned earlier. For now we are still on Bronzebeard. Haven't made a decision yet as to when we're going to do the transfer. Personally, I'm up in the air on going before or after the supposed Naxx run. Right now there are only 5 people signed up, including Eto and I. So it may be a bust anyway. Wouldn't really surprise me with that guild. We'll see but I'd say we'll be back on Shadow Council sometime this weekend if not before.

I'm getting excited about moving my DK to Shadow Council. Probably because I know the economy there and how the AH works, Alliance side at least. I'm looking forward to having access to my farming toons again and making some more gold. Is it slightly odd that one of my favorite WoW pastimes is making money? But that would be why I had my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth pretty early on.

Oh, well..off to read some patch notes for 3.3!! I'm sure I'll have something to say about that soon!

Going Home

Been complaining about Bronzebeard for awhile now. Well, actually since I rolled on that server to be exact. The complaints being mainly about the nonexistent LFG, bad guild, lack of support from my other 80s, etc.

Events from said bad guild and even more so the annoyance of trying to find a pug for HoL for the last 3 days and failing, is finally pushing us over the edge. We've decided to transfer our toons from Bronzebeard to Shadow Council.

Originally, we had thought we would faction and server transfer and put them happily Alliance side with our other toons. After some long debate we've decided we're happy with these toons being Horde and would like to keep the support mainly for future endeavors (Goblins of course!).
So, that's going to save us some real life money! We're only going to have to pay....ahhhhhh!....$125.00 to server transfer 5 toons. *cries* Are we crazy?!? We're going to dump $125.00 into a game?!? Oh well, call us crazy if you wish. But we hate, hate, hate...or I hate, hate, hate Bronzebeard.

Now the question becomes...we are signed up to do a Naxx10 run with the so called bad guild on Friday night. Do we stay for the possible Naxx run and hope for some nice drops before we leave? Or do we go ahead and transfer ourselves off before then?

Honestly, I don't feel any remorse for leaving the guild. Yes, it's ran by a couple so called "friends" of Eto's. Yes, I have used things from the guild bank to level my professions. But in my defense, I have been donating gold to the bank, the gems I took I returned in the form of cut gems and the few enchanting mats I've used to level were returned to the bank as enchant scrolls. I think I've paid my due diligence back to them ten fold. For the last 7 or 8 weeks, I've played as much an active role as they will allow, I've giving to the guild bank, I've done instance runs for people that I didn't need, I've offered advice and assistance...but in the end I don't care to be in a guild that is full of hypocrites. I have never asked to be boosted, given freebies, etc..but I have asked in guild for dps for instances that I've needed for one item or another. Sadly, it's always been to no avail.

It's time for Kaly to go home. To a server where I know people pug..and pug well. A server where I know the AH is a true source of exchange and not a rarely used building collecting dust. Seriously, people don't trade on the AH for a profit? Shocked!

So, the plan:
1. Clear Babibank's inventory and mail everything to the DK.
2. Check the rarely used AH on Bronzebeard to see if there is any need in buying low to sell for a profit on Shadow Council. Highly doubt this, since Shadow Council has a greatly used AH and Brozebeard's economy is slightly off.
3. Drop a couple hundred gold in the said bad guilds bank for any mats I may have used that they could consider not paid back by other things I've deposited.
4. Delete some lowbie toy toons off the roster on Shadow Council.
Keep - Kalyina, Kalyanna, Kalyista, Alirah, Ash and Kalybank. That means I have 4 lowbie rarely played, somewhere below level 20 alts that can be deleted. Oh and I have to hold on to the name holder for my Goblin. Tinkabella was not available on Shadow Council so looks like the baby mage will be called Tinkabell instead. (Just love the idea of a Goblin named Tink)
5. Create the new Horde side Shadow Council guild...hmmm...do I want to be GM again?
6. Actually get my butt in action and do it.

On a side note, Eto and I did duo up to and including the first boss in normal UP last night..several times...praying she would drop her tank bracers. Sadly she did not! But, much tanky love and many thanks go out to Aelystriel for bringing it to my attention that I could be using Tempered Saronite Bracers to get me over the defense cap. See I knew I blogged for a reason....very thankful for the advise and support from my fellow lady tanks!

Tanking Fears

So I'm starting to frustrate my healer. I can see it a little more each day. He's ready to do things that for whatever reason, I don't think I'm ready for. Higher end heroics, VoA, lower end raids, just to name a few.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm so scared of these. I just don't think my gear is really ready for those encounters yet. I have a hard enough time with some of the simpler heroics. Managing heroic Gundrak is still a lot of work for me.

I am 1 point below defense cap for 80 raids. That puts me at 539. It's not gaining or holding threat that bothers me. I've proven that. My dodge and parry percents are pretty good as well but it's my health or the lack there of that worries me. Unbuffed, I range in at a little over 25,000. Trying to get my defense to cap has caused me to have to pass on some of the higher stamina items.

I know I need to farm normal HoL and hope for the defense trinket to drop again. That is easier said then done when no one wants to run normal instances...there are no emblems or epic loot to be had there, so they don't want to bother. Which I can totally understand when you're already running around in epic items, looking for emblems and deciding that normal instances are below you. But sadly, I need that trinket.

I've encouraged Eto to do the daily heroic with his friends and the guild, to go to Ony, to pug VoA..he's a healer, it's not going to take long for him to get snatched up. I can't exactly dps in tank gear and then roll on tank drops. From my experience, most pugs don't want you rolling that way. But frustrated he still is and frustrated I'm becoming.

Honestly, I'm willing to try anything once. I'm willing to try the heroics I avoid. The only exception being I want to do it with people that I know...not pug an instance and make a idiot of myself because I'm not ready. Know what I mean? Surely, I'm not the only one that doesn't want to spend forever apologizing to random strangers for causing them costly wipes, lockouts and headaches to realize you're just not ready for it.

Think it's just something I have to get over or go back to being DPS.

Tanking chaos and guild complaints

Where to start? It was a pretty..eventful...weekend.

Tanked my first raid. Yes..you heard right..though I really just off-tanked. We did OS10 Friday night with the guild. Apparently, they decided I was geared well enough to off tank. Surprisingly, it went very smooth. Except, I was getting and holding aggro a little too well. I was pulling adds off the warrior tank and I'm just not geared well enough to take that much direct damage. So, once I backed off a little it was smooth sailing. I got my T7 glove drop. That was a pretty good upgrade for me. Yay!

Have I mentioned that I hate pugs lately? So this is how it goes....
ME: LFM 3 DPS for h-gundrak, pst
Stupid Mage in whisper: I'll go
-Stupid Mage joins group-
Eto: Yay! Full group
ME: Flying that way
Stupid Mage in party: uh, who's tanking
ME: That would be me
Stupid Mage: Are you in tank gear?
ME: Yes
Stupid Mage: 25,000 health?
ME: Would you prefer to tank?
Stupid Mage: I thought tanks were suppose to have a lot of health.
ME: Your call dude, you're welcome to find another group.
-Stupid Mage leaves group-
-Not so stupid mage joins the group-
It's just Heroic Gundrak...not like I'm trying to tank Ulduar. *sigh*

We finish gundrak without any major problems. It did wipe twice. Once because I attempted to tank the snake boss in the room at the bottom of the stairs, snakes wrapped me and thus causing a wipe. Moved the DPS and healer to the top of the stairs..snake boss went down with no problems. Second wipe was on the last boss. I don't think Eto was expecting me to take as much damage as I did when he went Rhino form. But second try, popped Unbreakable Armor when he transformed and all was well.

Watched, or semi-watched, Eto heal the new Ony encounter with the guild Saturday night. I watched the first attempt, they wiped, then decided to walk away for a bit. Yeah, I was jealous. Think that was magnified after the run when I saw what Eto got off the run. Oh well. Never said I wasn't human. Well..Bloodelf..but we can be jealous too. =(

Got pulled into a Flame Leviathan run last night. I did walk away from it with Ironsoul. =D

The guild is a little odd. They aren't geared or ready in any way for Ulduar but the GM insists on skipping all the early 80 raids in hopes of getting them directly into some of the higher end content. The hidden reason for this...because he's already done everything up to and including most of the ToC10 stuff. So instead of building his guild up and showing them how to work together, which they seriously need, he'd rather skip right to the content he can use.

Sadly, most of the DPS from his so called "old friends" is well below where it should be for their level. I'm not just talking about them being under geared. I'm talking about them needing help understanding the concept of raiding. For the most part, they are pretty well geared, with emblem items and a few drops. But they aren't exactly well spec'd or using the proper rotations to get the max damage they could be doing.

Example...a destro lock, in combination T7 and T8 gear, nice weapons and trinkets, is pulling about 2000 dps. *shudder* I almost shed a tear when I saw this. Not to mention the weeping I did when I saw the Demo lock, in horrible gear, walk into the instance with her Voidwalker out. I inspect her and she hasn't talented into her Felguard. *gawk*

Those are just a few of the things I've seen going on with the DPS I've had in my 5 mans. We have decent mage damage output..but they haven't learned to control it. The raid leaders have to actually tell them when they can start dpsing. Otherwise, we have mages shooting fireballs before the tank even gets to the target.

I find myself more and more annoyed with this guild as of late. They all want to throw advise around and have the attitude that I seriously just started playing yesterday, but they can't play their own toons. Honestly, I accept your advise and thank you for it, but I'm not a noob. Really I know what that is used for and I know how to gear my toons.

I've never been the kind of person to need to stroke my own ego or prove my point. But sadly, right now, I'm ready to faction transfer my lock to the server just to prove girls can play and in this case, better then most of the guys in the guild.

Guild Personalities

GMs and those who have raided long enough will get this. The rest of you can just take my word for it. You raid with these people. You work with these people. These people are closer than your family. You should worry.

The GM- He/She’s sacrificed his health, friends, relationships and probably a couple of jobs to drag you through new content. When the guild isn’t performing, these decisions are in question. Prone to shooting sprees, forum flame wars, and the rapid advancement/gearing of whatever toon the guild “needs”. If you can keep your mouth shut and bide your time, he/she might lose it and quit before you get gkicked. Still, you do like the guy/girl. Or did. Before he/she went crazy. See drunks, below.

The GM's Significant Other - Okay, so he was going to have to quit but he tricked his SO into playing. She loves it. She's terrible. You'll effectively 24 man every boss. Count on 4 constructs in the raid, every attempt. She plays a Belf.

The Raid Leader - When you stand in the flames, he dies a little bit inside.

The Heir Apparent - When the GM goes psycho, ninjas the bank, and gdisbands, you're the guy the guild is gonna look to to to fix the mess. You see it coming. You can't decide if ritual suicide or being the new gm would be more painful.

The Positive Officer - “That was great. Just great. You know, only 5% of guilds have even made it to Supremus, and getting him down to 67% on the second attempt is hawt.” See Stoners, below.

The Negative Officer - “Jesus Christ why are there corpses under all these goddamn volcanoes? It’s Supremus for %@*@s’s sake. GET OUT OF THE DAMN FLAME!” See Drunks, below.

The Healing Officer - Has this job because, as the newest officer who plays a healer, he’s stuck with it.

The Hunter Class Lead - Will tell you that it does actually require skill and preparation to play a hunter well in the end game. Lies frequently.

Metermaid - He's got meters running. Always. Asks for meter postage whenever he's in the top 5, which is rare, as his focus on the meters is preventing him from seeing the volcano he's pathing towards. Pulls aggro. Has yet to realize that 0 health returns 0 dps. If he's healing, you might as well just put him on raid, he's gonna heal them anyway.

Stratman - Has read every strategy on the entire Internet for every boss. Unable to think critically. Knows where his talk key is. Hated by the officers. Likely to play a hunter or mage. If this is also Chick With Accent, below, guild will probably collapse.

The Gay Guy - Affects the gay accent for effect. Upgrade decisions tend to involve lengthy discussions about gear appearance. Learned to use the dressing room function before the ‘v’ key.

The Stay At Home Mom - She’s around children all day and craves adult conversation. Babbles incessantly in vent, forgetting that adult conversation doesn’t usually begin with, “So I was talking to (insert name of four-year-old child) and he says…” Well liked, but frequently muted.

Mr. Mikeless - Has a microphone. Hears the conversation and directions. Once wiped the raid because he started talking and most folks alt-tabbed to see who the hell was speaking. May be your best player.

The Kid - So, you messed up on this guy’s interview and nobody noticed that he was 12. But, he can play. And if he gets a little bit excited when boobies are getting talked about? Hey, he’s young.

The Backbone - Plays a tank. Doesn't have much to say. Made an error once in SSC, or so you heard. Will disconnect when Gorefiend is at 30% and keep aggro while offline for the rest of the fight. Has never said anything negative to the healers. Ever. GL with your progression without one of these. Hates the prima donnas.

The Other kid - Remember that accountant you interviewed for the fury warrior position? And how you wondered how he’d make time to raid during tax season? He couldn’t. His eleven year old daughter took over about that time. She’s been raiding since. Mages, that’s an eleven year-old girl owning you night after night.

The Hunter Who Doesn't Do His Homework - Always good for insightful commentary and clever observation just after a wipe. "Holy Crap Man! I was just standing and shooting and this damn VOLCANO popped on me! When did they put in those volcanoes?"

The Prophet - Kept insisting that you were going to need a melee group for BT, despite the fact hat melee was dreadful for SSC/BT. Badgered the management until they broke. Plays a rogue. Shreds. Loved by the Most Devout.

The Most Devout - This is the guy who gets to play an off-spec in a big-boy raid. He's the fury warrior, the boomkin, or the enhance shammy. He cannot believe that some fate is letting him have this much fun that he's afraid it will all come crashing down. Prays devoutly to his favorite deity that the guild won't collapse because he'll never have THIS much fun again. Ever.

The Drunks - The core of your guild. As raid progresses, their voices in vent are getting just ever so slightly slurre

Level 80 Annoyances

Well...she's 80...I should be happy right? Wrong. Honestly, I find myself wishing she were still questing for xp and levels.

Why?

Things were easier then.
- No Rep grind.
- No gear headaches
- No wondering what to do next
- Various other personal RL reasons

Tanked my first heroic last night. It went pretty smooth actually. We did wipe twice but that was because were trying for an achievement and it didn't go so well. Granted it was a pretty easy heroic for my first try. DTK is pretty simple on heroic. Eto did an awesome job keeping my butt alive.

Happily I was defense capped for heroics. I had to make a few minor changes to my armor to get that number but it was all things I was able to do myself with JCing and enchanting.

Now to just figure out how to get more stamina without loosing the defense. *sigh* I have decided defense caps for tanks is like trying to maintain hit caps for a lock...both suck!