And so we move on

Firstly I wanted to apologize to all those who have been visiting my blog when I wasn't, really I should be more active. During the last month (wow has it been that long already?) I was on a hiatus from WoW, not because I was getting burnt out, but because I had family visiting for 3-4 weeks. I only got back to raiding last saturday and boy has it been good. So let me recap what I have achieved in one week of raiding.

Before: 2/5 Mount Hyjal and 0/9 Black Temple.

After: So I came back on saturday, my guild had cleared the first 2 bosses in Mount Hyjal but were wiping on the 3rd boss. The guild's main warrior tank was MIA so I took over the enviable task of main tanking. We go in and 1-shot Kaz'rogal with me tanking, the trash and the boss both on one attempt.

Woot 3/5 MH.

On our Monday raid, we head to BT for some fun, I brought my hunter for High Warlord Naj'entus cause you know, its a one-tank fight really. After 9 wipes my druid is called in to tank. 2 more attempts and one dead warlord.

Woot 1/9 BT

On our saturday raid, we had already cleared MH's first 3 bosses the previous night and this was to be our dedicated night for attempts on Azgalor. We went in and learnt the trash which was the hard part. After learning trash which took us 3 attempts I do believe, we got Azgalor on our second attempt. That officially makes us a T6 armor set geared guild. Oh I snagged me some pretty purples too.....Thunderheart Gauntlets anyone. Though they arent a super upgrade to the Badge gauntlets, they are however making a difference of around 300+ armor for a loss of a very minor stamina and agility. All in all a very happy bear here.

Woot 4/5 MH.

So in one week of my return my guild went up 3 bosses and we also got in some solid attempts on Supremus last night. Its a matter of time before we crack that loot pinata outta the way.

Some old some new

1. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn't.

2. I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.

3. Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.

4. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

5. Don't take life too seriously; No one gets out alive.

6. You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me

7. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

8. Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

9. I'm not a complete idiot -- Some parts are just missing.

10. Out of my mind Back in five minutes.

11. NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck-is-the-room-spinning medicine.

12. God must love stupid people; He made so many.

13. The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

14. Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

15. Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

16. Being "over the hill" is much better than being under it!

17. Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew up.

18. Procrastinate Now!

19. I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts; Do You Want Fries With That?

20. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

21. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

22. Stupidity is not a handicap. Park elsewhere!

23.They call it PMS because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.

24. He who dies with the most toys is nonetheless DEAD.

25. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.

26. Ham and eggs...A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

27. The trouble with life is there's no background music.

28. The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.

29. I smile because I don't know what the hell is going on

Sore

So I realize that I haven't written much for a while now and isn't for lack of excitement but rather but the kinda mood I have been in recently due to an altercation me and some others had with my GM which has for the most part been resolved. Also with work on an upswing at the moment finding time to write a blog entry becomes increasingly harder, not to mention I have family visiting in a weeks time........which is not to say I don't have things to talk about.

Most importantly my guild in the last week downed 3 new bosses. Yup that's freaking amazing and we did it. Last Monday we got Anatheron in Mount Hyjal, unfortunately this was the day the altercation took place and both me and the guild's other main tank didn't attend. However I got a raid invite from another big guild on the server for a Mount Hyjal run and I got to down Anatheron as well. I wasn't one of their main tanks being how they would rather use a guild tank for the encounter, however he died and I was a close second on threat. Now I don't mean to say that the tank was bad or anything, he just wasn't nearly as geared as me is all. So anyway this meant that Anatheron had his eyes focused on me and we were slowly losing the raid due to some mistakes, eventually for about 30% of the fight I had only one healer on me and towards the end the infernal tank died as well and I did tank the boss as well as one infernal to his demise. The total number of survivors...3. Me, a rogue and a healer. It was a moment of glory, which I gladly basked in. I got myself a nice Pillar of Ferocity for my effort (being the only feral druid in the raid) and a standing invite to the guild, which I gracefully declined since I still felt a need to work things out with my GM despite the occurances.

So anyway because of the evident altercation I didn't attend the progression raid on Friday and my guild went to try out Tidewalker which was hard needless to say without a druid tank and what was evidently wrong placement, nonetheless they made some solid attempts and after much coercing I attended the Saturday raid despite things still standing as they were and lo and behold we one shotted Tidewalker. Unless that is you are counting the afk pally running into Tidewalker while we were buffing, luckily he was the only casualty. Needless to say we were happy since not only was the attempt clean but we had 0 deaths....not one person died. Amazing, so we went on to Leo and 2 shotted the guy....after which we went to bed (for those that have real lives :P)

Come Monday we were to make attempts on Fathom Lord, the last hurdle in here before Lady Vashj, so we come in after reading the strats, I tanked the shaman, 2 pallies tanked the hunter with one of them exclusively on the pet, the guild's main tank handled Fathom Lord himself and another warrior stood watch on the priest. Our first attempt was a little chaotic since we were not fully prepared for it. On our second attempt we lost too many dps-ers but got the boss down to 30% despite it and on our third attempt cleaned him up with 2 minutes to spare and only 2 deaths in our roster. Darn snazzy wouldn't you say.

(p.s. Nice pink staff eh..eh)

(p.s.s Not to be used while tanking bosses because the hit in dodge 2.85% is considerable, I hotswapped it once I was dps-ing on Fathom Lord)

This puts us at a respectable 5/6 SSC 2/4 TK and 2/5 MH.

In the end the incident which put a lot of us off was in a way a turning point. The attitude of a lot of people has changed and we have started feeling a sort of synergy building up amongst us, elitist attitudes are being left in the sidelines and raiders are being given a free reign to voice ideas and opinions instead of strats being stuffed down their throats. Overall I am happier for this change and hopefully this is far from temporary in its nature.

How to tell armor class

Just a random thought that came to me this weekend. Sorry for the sad lulz

I think I broke it

Now for a while I have felt that I have reached a stagnant point in terms of gear progression and for me that means that I am not improving. My tanking gear has always been fully enchanted and gemmed for optimal tanking stats and I have one of the best threat generation amongst the tanks that I know, but the experience against Void Reaver where the off tanks were unable to build enough threat leaving me to single tank him made me realize that a bit more threat generation would have gone a long way to prevent me the repair bill. But currently my gear is at the most optimal for my current progression level. Why...ok let me break it down

1) Head : Stag Helm of Malrone: Sure its not the best tanking headpiece but it means I have the 2-set bonus from Tier 4 which most would recall is frikkin awesome.
2) Neck: Necklace of the Juggernaut: This BoJ reward neck piece is possibly one of the best barring the ones which drop in end T5-T6 raids.
3) Shoulders: Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders: Now this is necessary for me because I use Resilience to hit my uncrittability mark and 2 piece bonus means another +35 resilience so irreplacable except with S2 or S3 pieces.
4) Back: Gilded Thorium Cloak: Definitely one of the best in game cloaks for druids with the exception of the BoJ cloak.
5) Chest: Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic: The 2nd piece of pvp gear for my 2-pc bonus. Its in many ways comparable to the Malrone's chestpiece (T4) and in some ways better with the huge amount of stamina on it.
6) Bracers: Band of the swift paw: Definitely one of the best in game with the exception of T6
7) Belt: Waistguard of the Great beast: Now the reason I prefer this belt to the more oft used Belt of Natural power is its relative ease of obtaining it coupled with the hit rating which is sorely missing on bear tanking gear. I also prefer the added agility on it.
8) Leggings: Tameless Breeches: This is one fantastic pair of leggings and can only be outclassed by stuff that drops in Sunwell.
9) Boots: Vindicator's Dragonhide Boots: Fairly balanced stats and with the resilience it gives me the option of losing some defence in case of need.
10) Rings and Trinkets: I currently have the 2 best rings in-game for a druid tank along with 2 of the best trinkets (arguably) making them both irreplacable.

So that leaves me at an artificial ceiling in terms of improvements unless I finally succumb to using macros in lieu of click tanking. Now I like to have a comfortable time tanking without any fear of losing threat to those pesky locks. However my current guild has a couple of extremely well geared locks and by extremely I mean the kind that generate threat in the 900-1100 tps range kinda locks and thats with Salvation. Now under ideal conditions I can put upwards of 1300-1400 tps but as we know conditions arent always ideal and I have had times when the threat of the locks has come close to the point that I have had to put my taunt button ready in case the locks push above me so that I can gain snap aggro.

Now the locks also do this to toy with me since I kinda pride in my threat generation and as a result am always the first dps target tank because of it. So seeing that I am at a ceiling while the dps keeps getting geared had me worried and finally forcing me into doing the thing I hate most....theorycrafting. I finally downloaded Rawr and did some testing with a possible change in spec and last night blew a 110 BoJ and will possibly blow some more for epic gems.

So what did I buy:
1) Cloak: Slikk's Cloak of Placation: More dodge, more stamina (slightly less armor) for increased survivability which my following changes will need.
2) Gloves: Handwraps of the aggressor: These gloves not only have higher stamina but also more agility, strength and haste, making it a higher dps pair of gloves. The haste is a double edged sword for a tank, since it increases the attack speed and as a result it also increases the number of parries and as a result more attacks in the same time period and more incoming damage. Be sure that your healers are capable of handling this change, even though its a minor change but I already have haste on my leggings so this is slowly adding up.

But now I have broken the coveted 2pcT4 bonus making the continued use of the head gear only a waste. So how did I correct that change. I equipped the Grimgrin faceguard. Now this is a questionable tanking helm for a druid, it has a lot of agility and stamina so increases survivability but at a loss of some serious armor. It also has a fairly serious dose of AP and hit making it even more of a threat generator.

So after getting these I socketed them with Solid Stars of Elune for all, and enchanted them exactly the same way they were before. So where do I stand with these changes (in dire bear form unbuffed):
Stamina: 18.7k (gained around 1k HP)
Armor: 30.5k (lost 1k armor)
Dodge: 39+ (gained 2% dodge)
Hit: 54 (gained 24)

and a bit more of stats in other places. RAWR showed that my overall threat generation is up and so is my threat ceiling in an unlimited rage situation. Now to test out how these changes work out and report them in the future to see whether breaking the set bonus was any good.

Until then adios.

Hunter madness

Also some updates on my hunter. Hes grown up into a fine dps machine and is currently roaming outlands as a level 64. On hitting outlands his levelling was minorly halted due to the fact that Thrallmar rep has a pretty sweet bow as a rep reward at exalted, not to mention a very fine Polearm as well. Its a combination of these that I just ran some quests which had hunter gear and left the others to pursue instancing. It got me pretty far and I'm almost half way through honored with Thrallmar and there are still quite a few quests to go.

He's also quite a ways through honored with Cenarion Expedition for their arrows as well as their glyph and followed the routine of using unidentified plant parts and the follow up chain quests to get him most of the way there. I used the rep to buy myself the arrows from friendly rep and also the warden's haubrek.

In the meanwhile I was also collecting Marks of Thrallmar for the delectable Mark of Conquest which I now have. Many a level 70s stomped on me while I worked hard in getting them but it was worth it. On a side note, one level 70 pissed me off enough for me to bring my main and scare him the hell away forever.(Level 70s picking on anyone less than 2 levels below them, unless provoked, is bad form.)

Its also something worthwhile to note that during a Slave Pens run with a level 70 warlock, I outdpsed him(me being level 62 then) by putting out a combined dps of over 540, which needless to say pleasantly surprised me. I must say that Steady Shot greatly increases your dps and simultaneously your threat generation because since I got it, I have pulled aggro of Apollo more often than it should happen.

Currently I am at over 1100AP and around 15% crit(200+dps). My pet has about 5k HP, 8k armor and 130+dps. My raiding guild's hunter class lead has challenged me that I will never outdps his hunter and in the rare event that I do he will owe me 500g. Hopefully with the plethora of advice available online.....he shall pay(BRK don't let me down).

Anyway that's all the updates I have on the youngling....in time he too shall see more of the end game.

Add to my list another success

So Monday, I log onto Argonaut and start prepping for our raid, which is one I rarely attend since it conflicts with my other RL engagements. Anyway I log on, get a raid invite and see that we have 20 guild people for the raid and only 2 tanks.....so we pull a couple more from people's friends list and decide on doing VR (post buff and pre re-nerf). Now the guild's main warrior tank hadn't logged in...fine, nor had any of the other well geared tanks....ummm

Me: "We still running this place with just one decently geared tank and 2 Kara and blues/green geared tanks?"

GL: "Yup"

Me: "....."


So we go in, clear the trash, this being my first time ever main tanking in TK was fun. We only wiped once on trash because one of the tanks didn't heed my call to move his target away from the group which led to them being tossed outside into the path of another group.....wipefest ensued. So we move on, clear all the way there, no more wipes. Now our guild has never downed Void Reaver...ever, we once made a couple of attempts on him post buff but people weren't paying attention to the orbs and as a result dying. So the GL made a change, all healers stood inside the circle and only the ranged dps stood outside. That was essentially like 12 people. Now 3 tanks, melee dps and the healers were going to take the pounding but atleast they didn't need to worry about the orbs.

Those of you who have attempted VR know that he needs multiple tanks because he does a knockback which reduces threat severely, so this way tanks can rotate threat and not lose it to the dps. I realized this was going to be a problem, but after 5-6 knockbacks I still had threat and the other 2 tanks were unable to get Void Reaver off me, when they finally did they moved Void Reaver outside the circle and doomed the healers to an orb resulting in our first wipe. This was on the whole a bad thing, because the dps were being limited by threat generation. However ridiculous my threat generation is, I don't usually manage to hold threat after my second knockback with my regular tanks. So on our third attempt I chaffed an elixir of major agility, ate some agility food and used a scroll of agility to maximize crit and threat generation. This time around my threat generation was huge, the locks didn't come close until much later, the other tanks got aggro only to lose it to me in seconds and we managed to kill him just a couple of seconds after he hit the enrage. I can tell you hit me hard during enrage(somewhere in the range of 19k) but he couldn't one shot me and that was all the time we needed.

VR down.