Whats been going on...

Well Heroes Inc. is still alive and well.  Since my last post we have accomplished several things within the now appropriately titled raid group "Shooting Blanks."  Head over to Taxiderm/Chickenpox's blog to get the full story on that. It is quite a read. 

"Twilight Duo" was accomplished two weeks ago.  Killing Sarth with 2 drakes is a solid achievement for any 10 man raiding guild that lacks a full set of 25 man gear.  3 drakes is most likely our ultimate nemisis for "Glory of the Raider," as it pretty much requires the majority of the raid to have 25 man gear, appropriate raid composition, and superior skills. 

This last week our raid also accomplished "Subtraction," and "The Dedicated Few." Basically 7 manning the toughest encounters in the game, again I refer to Taxiderm/Chicken's Blog for a full recount as to why we 7 manned and even 6 manned some of the content! :) The "Undying" and "Shocking" still elude us from Naxxramas.

Last night our raid completed "A Poke in the Eye," downing Malygos with only 8 people.  I healed this fight and it was a very stressful first time healing on Malygos.  Without many instant cast heals, the vortex was leaving the majority of our DPS with less than 20% health by the time we dropped, leaving Bandaidez and I precious seconds to heal the tank and several raid members, knowing losing just one would lead to a wipe due to the enrage timer.  We still need 6 minute Malygos, which I believe is very doable with our group. 

On the PVP front, I have been enjoying my resto role in 2s and in bg's.  My arena partner, Magnusson/Jag is a very good Ret Pally, that knows the PvP game very well and is certainly entertaining to play with.  We have gotten better each week and our timing will only improve in the coming weeks.  I have hopes for a solid 3's and 5's team down the road

Horde alts have kind of been placed on hold for the moment, I am currently a level 62 laser chicken holding out for some of my guildmates to resume levelling. I do not want to venture too far into the outlands alone.   Until next time...

FOR THE...

Horde?

Well.. it appears so. Many of us have chosen to roll horde alts, with some anticipation about the possibility of making them horde mains in the next expansion.  

I have, naturally chosen, with my penchant of loving hybrids, a druid.  I will most likely be balance, since currently Lakini (our current Owl) and I (our current Ele Shaman) often trade top spots in DPS on bosses (along with several others just wanted to make a point about seeing first hand what a boomkin can do), I figured it would be a fun change to undertake.  

I plan on going resto for PVP, as seasons roll on and resilience starts to cap, druids will again be a very powerful healing class, especially with a high survivablity based melee partner (since most of our people are melee it seems, finding a melee dps partner seems somewhat inevitable. )

This change will be a blast, take care and have fun! 

Raid Group

I was going to post the following in response to Lakini's latest post, but I figured I would just do it here. 

I agree with Lakini, if you leave because your "bored" or whatever..stay gone. It is TOTALLY and undeniably unfair to those of us who come consistently and do whats best for the raid group to just let individuals come roll on and recieve what they want, and then leave the game. This ends up not helping any of the other people in the raid progress their toons in the same way we have aided those individuals in progressing their character.  Issues like these become more and more important and larger based on difficulty of content.  I understand things often times are dramatically more complicated than this. And this view can seem simplistic, and we probably will have to deal with much of this in order to continue on as a core raid group. 

Like I said before, I understand that some of this BS is unavoidable in raids. Do I want to see the raids from different points of view? Sure I do, I have a melee character, but I am not even about to CONSIDER raiding with a different class until EACH and every single piece, both on and off spec, is aquired from our primary raiders, or my alt(s) are needed for specific encounters. It is just not the right thing to do. 

I have, for the majority of my WoW experience sacrificed some for raid gain, and that is fine, its what is most important for me.  I pally healed all through the majority of BC (stabbing pencils through my iris sometimes seemed more enjoyable,) I played a resto shammy (alot of fun so not really a sacrifice, but hey its healing!) I went with range dps (I love my Shaman, I am elemental and it will absolutely remain my main spec through the majority of progression content, but it was not my initial desire, as melee is honestly more entertaining).

Basically what I am saying is, I like to do what makes the raid a better raid. That is my priority, I know this is a game, and its everyone's 15 bucks, but it still does not mean you just forget about what other people need and what your group needs. 

Cleared

Heroes Inc. raid group "We Stand in Red Circles" has officially cleared all 10 man PvE content thus far in Wrath of the Lich King.

I am very proud for each individual involved. Alot of the credit has to go to our raid leader, Ellevis (aka Wichita) who is always prepared and does the best job I have ever seen with leading raids.

Secondly our tanks (Donk, Ellevis) and healers (Blackhaus,Starkra,Zadorr) both just do fabulous jobs with cooldowns, effeciency, and threat, as well as know how to handle diverse situations very well.

Also, things would not die without our damage dealers. Although all of us don't seem to live through the entire fights, (red circles, and splashing green poisonus lava do tend to leave most toons unconscious and without a pulse) we can certainly dish it out. Depending on the encounter and specs usually Lakini, Myself, Ofn, and Vunderman are the top 4 damage dealers in our raid with others right there with us. If Dottiez would ever raid with us I am sure he would leave several of us behind.

As a whole our raid composition has really meshed and we are all having a blast clearing content and enjoying each other's company. Grats to everyone who has downed Malygos, as well as those new "Champions of the Frozen Wastes." I have played this game for years and cannot recall having more fun than what I have had in the last 6 weeks or so. Thanks and see ya in game! (PVP Post coming soon)

First Raids

So we went on our first two raids this weekend. Both were alot of fun and successful.

Naxxramas

Patchwerk was owned. We essentially one shot him, he was pulled in error first without knowing all of the trash would blast us back into the Outlands. We learned the hard way that all of the trash comes with Patchwerk, so we cleared the trash and put down the ugly construct.

Grobbulus was also beat down. It took us 4 or so tries to really get it down. He is a very interesting and fun fight. This instantly became one of my top 5 boss fights in the game.

We failed on the 3rd boss in the construct wing, the dog. He really was not too ridiculously hard, it is going to come down to our kiters learning the fight and getting their timing down on the zombies.

Obsidian Sanctum

What a fun, quick raid. This was by far one of the easiest raids I have been on. Sartharion was a joke, just run away from the flame wall and tank and spank him and the adds. Grats on t7 gloves. Beautiful raid environment to boot.

More success and interesting encounters to come!

Updated Heroic Hatred

After running more heroics I thought it was valid to update my hate list. Thus far it includes the Snake boss in Gundrak, Loken in Halls of Lightning, and lets not forget Blackhaus in the Old Kingdom.

I have an update, I now HATE Arthas in the Culling of Stratholme. We are plugging along relatively nicely for the shot at the additional boss.. we down the second boss with 7 minutes left, and boom.. we wait over 2 minutes for Arthas to arrive at the next point. Then he blows at least another minute or longer on his bullshit dialogue. Without his ridiculous timing we would have had an excellent shot at smoking that optional boss and getting a bronze drake.

Heroic Hate List:

• Sladran in Gundrak
• Loken in Halls of Lightning
• Blackhaus in the Old Kingdom (Spec shadow next time? mmk??)
• Arthas in the Culling of Strat (Hurry your soon to be epic incarnation of death ass up!)

Staring at My Coffee Mug

I believe things will all workout in Heroes, Inc. People will hit the level cap and run instances with other people, these things tend to happen in an MMO. Some people may have to spec differently for a while (like me probably going resto).

I understand the goals in Heroes are focused more on the "journey" and not the end of the line, more on community than min/maxing a raid to conquer a particular encounter. All of that is fine, its great, in fact I would not want it any other way.

With that said, some people have expectations that are very very streamlined and in my opinion unrealistic. Wanting a group for every quest and every xp point is the same for me as others have issues with "hand holding" in instances. I like the challenge of busting out levels, sure I read the major storyline, I follow the quests. But I like grouping, and in my opinion the real grouping truly starts at 80.

One issue with me is the whole "instance challenge" situation. I understand wanting a challenging encounter. And trust me, at this stage and the forseeable future, EVERY other heroic boss is a definite challenge regardless of who is in the group. Most of the achievements in heroics are very challenging, in fact some are outright ridiculous and will require months of raiding to get properly geared to complete them. If it is a challenge that is being sought, believe me, for a casual guild like Heroes it could take 8 months to a YEAR, yes a year to get them done.

I will say this, I am very excited to group with all of heroes. I even plan on speccing resto so I can get in as many groups with my friends as possible.

As for raiding, I believe Lakini is exactly right, no matter when raiding starts, stops, blows up, vanishes, or whatever, not everyone will be happy. Bottom line as I see it, no one is in a ridiculous rush to get into Naxx, but everyone is ready and excited to group together! See ya in-game.