Archive for the ‘SeaBrat’ Category
September 23rd, 2009
Dateline: September 20, 2009 – 10:53 pm
The Red Devils finally managed to scrape together a raid group and down the last boss for their first full clear of the Colliseum! And let me tell you, it was brutal! We had to pug the last few spots to get started. Even then we didn’t enter the instance until 8:00 and our normal raid time is 7:00! As expected, the pugees didn’t stick around very long. Fortunately they did stay long enough for more Red Devils to log in and we were able to replace them with guildies when they began to mysteriously DC after wipes. That was when we started making some real progress. Bottom line – I’m glad we filled with pugs rather than call off the raid. It worked out this time!
Snyped and I were placed on orb duty, which meant we spent a lot of time targeting and dropping them to the floor to create frost patches for the raid. While we both recognized the importance of this task, it seemed a waste of our higher dps, especially since the raid was having problems getting Anub’arak down quickly enough (that pesky enrage timer). Targeting the damn things was a problem, even with a macro which frequently targeted one behind us. Click targeting was a bigger pain, since you often would target something else even when clicking directly on an orb. And forget tab targeting – way too many other mobs! We stuck it out and tried to find a balance between “enough” frost patches and dpsing the boss.
So, we’ve cleared the Colliseum and are now eligible to commence with heroic mode. Given our random difficulties with all these bosses, we might be better served to committing to a few more regular clears. I suspect we will dive right in, though. That’s just how we roll!
For me… it’s moot. Mrs. Seabrat and I are headed to the Florida Keys on Saturday for two weeks of fun and sun. I’ll post all the pics and info on my Team SeaBrat blog (http://seabrat.blogspot.com/) when we return. The latest patch (3.2.2) has presented me with difficulties logging in, which I know is probably due to one or more add-ons. That leaves me with only two potential raid nights before we leave for the Keys. I wish my guildies good luck in my absence and hope I have both a guild and a job when I return!
August 27th, 2009
Last week, the Red Devils managed to defeat the Faction Champions (UHRAHH)! Unfortunately, their cowardly Horde corpses disappear after defeat, so no screen shot of that one. Anyway, the fight is more of a PvP battle than a typical PvE encounter. The Red Devils is a pretty good raiding guild, but not so experienced in PvP. Fortunately raid leader Xoroth is a PvP enthusiast and was finally able to come up with a strategy and lead us to victory. The solution, for us, was to focus CC on the healers and burn them down one at a time. Once the healers were down, and providing that few raiders had bit the dust, it was a drawn out affair of selecting another target for focus fire. The Horde champions cheat, of course, and their pets do not despawn when the master dies. Not only that, but they have a buff that reduces AoE damage by 75%, so you can forget those spells. Their warlock’s Rain of Fire works just fine on us though. Cheaters!
We downed them again this week, but the fight remains very tough for us. It is complete chaos until the first couple of healers go down. That seems to be key for us. If we can get two down without many losses of our own, we seem to be able to finish. Diminishing returns on CC requires us to swap methods or players between targets. Freeze traps seem to do little more than proc Lock & Load while the trap is either dispelled or breaks very quickly.
This week we were able to bring down the Twin Valkyrs, the new boss in ToC… after we defeated the Faction Champions, of course. As the name implies, there are two; a light and a dark. A series of portals spawn around the arena, also light and dark, which you click to set your own “aura”. You want to have the opposite aura of the one you attack, so get the light aura to attack the dark one. Floating orbs will occasionally spawn and scatter throughout the arena. Again, there are light and dark orbs. You want to run through the ones that match your current aura setting (buff) while avoiding the opposite (damage). To make things a little more chaotic, one of the twins will occasionally cast a shield (again, light or dark depending on which twin is casting) and this is where the confusion set in. Oh, and Michael Jackson made an appearance to perform “Black or White” on Vent. Thanks, Rentfn, but I can’t hear the raid leader now!
Do we match our aura to the shield? Do we attack the caster or the opposite? What aura should each tank have? Is that different than the raid? What about the healers? Wait, what’s my aura now? What should it be? Who do I attack? Where’s the opposite portal? Augghh – I am SO confused! I wasn’t the only one, either. Conflicting commands flew over vent, leading to multiple raid wipes. Eventually enough of us managed to figure it all out and we were able to adapt, improvise and overcome. My method? Assist Snyped, he seems to know what he’s doing! Now if I only knew what his aura was…
August 18th, 2009
The Red Devils have put ol’ crabby wormhead face down on the floor!
After several humiliating attempts at downing Thorim on previous nights, we marched back in last night and finally succeeded in releasing him from Yogg-Saron’s mind control. He thanked us for our efforts, and we didn’t mention how rude he and his cronies had been. We also seemed to have confirmed the bug mentioned on elitist jerks… charging into the arena at the start of the encounter seems to randomly disconnect some of the raid group! When everyone calmly walked onto the arena floor, we had no disconnects. Honestly, having a tank toy with the last mercenary standing while the rest of the raid waited for the DCers to log back in was getting a little tiring!
We now had unlocked the Keepers of Ulduar (again) and circled back around behind where Freya now stood. This was the tunnel down to General Vezax’s lair and we were going to pay him a little visit. We made short work of the guards at the entrance and clambered down the dilapidated hallway to the Descent into Madness. We successfully cleared the three groups of trash mobs and the two patrolling faceless horrors. Now we were ready to take on Vezax.
We had several in the raid that had never participated in this fight and raid leader Xoroth explained our strategy. Finally, it was announced that we would try this and our feral tank Arayia charged into battle. It wasn’t long before several players succumbed to shadow crash (gotta’ watch those, guys) and mark of the faceless (get the hell away from me with that)! Our numbers had been reduced enough that Xoroth announced we would continue “just for practice” instead of just wiping. Apparently the rest of our surviving members thought “to hell with that” and decided we would just go ahead and kill the son of a crab! As a result, we one-shot him!
At last, the Red Devils had managed to clear Ulduar down to Yogg-Saron. We gathered our troops into the small foyer in front of Sara. Xoroth explained the fight as we prepared ourselves for battle. We soon found ourselves overwhelmed by guardians! Stay away from clouds, ok? Clouds are bad! That particular bit of advice seemed to be ignored by far too many and guardians were spawning all over the place. The druid assigned to healing the center tank and DPS charged directly into those clouds! Repeatedly!
Eventually we fired him and assigned another druid to that duty, but we had lost our momentum. At 10:00 pm, it was decided to call it a night and extend the raid lockout time. We will be back this week to finish what we started… after we throw down on the new boss in Trial of the Crusader!
August 14th, 2009
I was reviewing my visitors report and suddenly found several hits from Wasilla, Alaska. Is Sarah Palin a secret WoW blog reader? Inquiring minds want to know!
We can see that Guth (our resident Argentinian guildie) is NOT a reader!
August 12th, 2009
Ok, just to prove that last week was no fluke, the Red Devils ventured back to the Trial of the Crusader to face down the Northrend Beasts and the new boss, Lord Jaraxxus. Once again, we proved our mettle and emerged victorious from battle!
I wish I could say I know the Lord Juraxxas fight, and how we won it, but truthfully – I haven’t a clue! I followed the directions shouted out on vent as best I could, but it was a little like the hokey pokey. Some buffs you run in, some you run out and others you just shake it all about. Anyway… we succeeded despite my woeful state of ignorance and besides… who am I to argue with success! So congratulations Red Devils and Battle On, Heroes!
August 12th, 2009
Last week, the Red Devils defeated the first set of mini-bosses (Northrend Beasts) in the new raid instance, Trial of the Crusader! I say mini-bosses because there are three waves of them to be defeated before the battle is finally over.
The first of these is a massive magnataur, Gormok the Impaler, apparently smuggled in from Icecrown. He carries five Snobold Vassals on his back, each of which has a vial of fire that they toss into the raid (stay out of fire!) before leaping down upon a raid member’s back and opening up a can of whoop ass on them. If you are the lucky recipient of one of these critters, you can’t even attack him since he hops on your shoulders, latches onto the back of your neck and beats you over the head! If you are a caster, or worse… a healer, he pretty much limits you to instant casts only and frequently stuns you. It took a while, but we finally convinced our raid leader these things needed to be focused fired down ASAP (healers first, please). Even though they don’t do much damage, they need to be killed before Gormok is defeated. Otherwise, you will find yourself facing the next wave with Snobolds on your back!
The next wave is a pair of twin Jormungar worms, Dreadscale and Acidmaw. We found this slimy pair of miscreants the most challenging as they required more coordination within the raid. They take turns, with one being “grounded” and the other mobile. After a short period both burrow underground and when they emerge they switch roles. Each has a debuff they can apply to the raid; Acidmaw has a paralytic spray (green) which slows and eventually immobilizes any player afflicted. The only way to remove the debuff is to run to a player under Dreadscale’s burning spray (red). Generally only the tank and possibly any melee on Dreadscale are likely to have that debuff (which cannot be cleansed) so it’s important to know where Dreadscale is and not be too far from his tank.
It’s also important to remain spread out to minimize the number of players afflicted by the paralytic toxin from Acidmaw. And, just to make things more interesting, whichever worm is mobile also drops poison clouds along its path, much like Grobulus in Naxxramas. If you are familiar with the Red Devils and our all too frequent lack of positional awareness you can see how this fight might prove challenging. Everyone has to keep track of two bosses, two debuffs, avoid poison clouds (think fire) and the “red” tank! Eventually, we managed to learn these skills and defeated the two slugs in proper fashion.
This led us to the third and final mini-boss, Icehowl, a huge horned Yeti-like creature also smuggled in from Icecrown. Surprisingly, this was actually the easiest of the three encounters, as Icehowl is none too bright. Stay spread out in a circular perimeter around him as he is being tanked (hopefully more or less in the center). He has an arctic breath (bad, very bad, by the way) which freezes anyone caught in the cone and inflicts 20K frost damage over 5 seconds – hope you’ve been nice to your healers! Soon he will leap into the air and knock everyone back to the arena walls stunning them for a few moments. He uses this time to select a victim and focuses on them for a ferocious headbutt, which believe me – you do not want to receive!
Fortunately, everyone will recover from the stun and get an increased speed buff before Icehowl charges. You want to run to the side… away from the focused player, so keep track of where that is. This is easy to do because he is facing the person he is going to head butt and if that’s you, just pick a side and scoot! Unless you are afk, lagging by 3 seconds, or stuck on something, avoiding the charge is easy-mode. And here’s where the none too bright part comes in… if Icehowl misses his intended target, he smacks his head against the arena wall and knocks himself silly for 15 seconds! This is the time for revenge, so pour it on… he takes extra damage while stunned!
Icehowl is essentially a tank-and-spank, rinse-and-repeat fight. He does have a “frothing rage” buff which increases his attack speed and damage by 50%, but this can be dispelled by anesthetic poison or tranquilizing shot, so hunters and rogues do your part! Everyone… stay spread out, don’t bunch up, avoid his headbutt and you will defeat this knucklehead easily.
July 30th, 2009
Last night the Red Devils actually managed to put together a 25-man raid and even had a few people on the wait list! This was a big change from our latest experiences where we wait until 7:30 or 8:00 (our raid time is supposed to start at 7:00) and then have to call the raid due to a lack of numbers. We have been recruiting heavily and our Guild Leader (Aniraa) has done a yeoman’s job of scouring recruitment sites looking for suitable new members. Her efforts appear to be paying off and I give her a big Red Devils salute. Thank you, Aniraa!
So, we now have some new members that are learning how the Red Devils work together. Given our performance last night, things are looking up for us. We were able to clear Vault of Archavon, then headed to Ulduar and successfully downed Flame Leviathan, XT-002, Razorscale, Ignis, the Iron Council and Kologarn before calling it a night. Not too bad! We only wiped while attempting to do the Iron Council in a hard mode. We made a few attempts, then fell back to the standard approach and easily downed all three Councilmen.
But, that’s not to say we didn’t have some close calls. In particular, we very nearly wiped on Ignis. Fortunately, we had one very savvy shadow priest (Hunterpayne) that was able to keep himself alive long enough to give the finishing blow to Ignis. Everyone else was face down on the floor! Take a look at the screen shot. There’s Hunterpayne in the lower left with his battle bot winding up for another cast just in case Ignis decides to get back up again. The raid frames tell the story… we are all dead. Nice save, Hunterpayne and congratulations on soloing Ignis the Furnace Master!
.
July 18th, 2009
Hello, and welcome to another episode of “This Ain’t WoW”! Those of you over the age of forty may recognize the tag line for this article as the lyrics from the old Jim Stafford song. Even if you are under forty and never heard the song, you may still enjoy the story, so read on! Since very little has been happening within the guild lately, I am left with little else to put in my blog but my own personal stories. I hate to leave all two of my faithful readers with nothing new, so today’s story is about spiders. And my wife, Cheryl (Mrs. Seabrat). That’s her on the left. The gross dude on the right is me.
My wife is a truly wonderful woman and I still haven’t figured out why she has stuck with me all these years, as she seems to possess above normal intelligence. She is spirited and adventurous, enjoys camping, fishing, scuba diving and the great outdoors. As a registered nurse working in a critical care unit, she often deals with things that would simply make me pass out. She just has one little phobia… spiders scare the crap out of her. This isn’t a big problem until one surprises her, then watch out! This normally calm and fearless woman begins to resemble an alley cat rubbed down with bacon grease and tossed into a pack of pitbulls.
So I am the designated spider wrangler in our house, which isn’t that bad since we don’t really have many of them around for me to deal with. Those we do have, however, tend to run pretty large. Typically these are wolf spiders, which don’t use webs to trap their prey. Instead they hunt on the move, much like a wolf and hence the name. Apparently, these dudes can live for three years (or more) and approach three to four inches in length.
Over the years I have rescued Cheryl from numerous occasions of impending doom from one of these threatening monsters. Usually this is accomplished using a newspaper or shoe with little drama or fanfare, their corpses scooped up and flushed down the toilet. I can’t simply toss them in the trash, as that would traumatize her even further knowing the creature was still in the house.
Now when I am in a raid with the Red Devils, I usually am focused on the game and Cheryl tolerates that pretty well. But, when spider duty calls I have to respond to her shrieks and deal with the little buggers IMMEDIATELY. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s always at the most inopportune moments. So, that’s just a heads up to my guildies as to what’s going on with Seabrat when he suddenly disappears!
Anyway, the extent of her fear of spiders was always pretty bad, but there was one particular occasion that turned it into full blown arachnophobia. And I remember it well, because it pretty much heeved me out, too! We were watching TV together when a large dark shape came skittering down the wall (that’s how these spiders move… they skitter), onto the floor and headed directly towards Cheryl. Now you have to understand that when it comes to spiders and Cheryl, there are only two directions a spider moves… directly away from her, or right at her. Of course, she spotted it long before it reached the floor and her panic level skyrocketed off the charts once it hit ground level and headed towards the two of us. I mean, she couldn’t really miss it. It was just about the biggest, fattest wolf spider I have ever seen. To her it must have looked like a watermelon with legs!
Fortunately, the spider’s true course was really more towards me and as a result I didn’t even have to get out of my chair (though Cheryl was already standing on hers) to deal with our intruder. Right foot up, right foot down, smoosh… end of story, right?
Except it wasn’t. I heard a shrill scream, a wooshing sound and then the front door slamming shut. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Cheryl had left the building. I don’t think her feet even touched the floor before she reached the door some 20 feet away. See, as it turns out, that spider was big, but it really wasn’t fat. It was in fact carrying 278,923 baby spiders on its body, of which about 278,900 were now scurrying about the floor! Adult wolf spiders skitter, the babies can only scurry. They can’t train skitter until they reach level 10 and these were definitely level 1 noobs.
I looked down in shock and awe at the ever-widening, dark, circular mass of writhing spiders as they attempted to flee. It really was pretty damn creepy – like something out of a horror film! I realized with sudden dread that I had better do something fast before they scattered too much, or I would soon have to buy a new house! Cheryl would never return to this one if I didn’t fix the problem quickly and completely. I commenced reapplication of both feet in a rapid right/left and up/down fashion. This not only allowed me to quickly annihilate the gathering troops, but also served to dislodge the hundred or so that had scurried up my legs. That second part was highly motivational for me as well and within a few minutes of furious white-boy dancing, I had succeeded in completely decimating their numbers to a few stragglers. These were dealt with individually, after which I surveyed the carnage.
There was a large, dark, roughly circular mass of spider parts and ichor on the floor surrounded by a few smaller specks scattered around the circumference. Thankfully there were no survivors. I checked my legs to make sure I had gotten rid of any potential stealthy surprises, then gathered up a broom, dust pan, spray cleaner and a few paper towels. As I was cleaning up the mess, the phone rang. It was Cheryl calling from the neighbor’s house asking if it was all clear. I told her I was just cleaning up and she could return home safely. This same girl that made it from her chair to the front door in less than 0.001 seconds took nearly five minutes to make the same journey in reverse. She would make one tentative step, then glance around nervously, certain that she would see a wave of spiders heading for her. Finally, she was satisfied that I had indeed secured the premises and returned to her chair.
I returned to my seat and glanced at Cheryl. She was still breathing heavily and visibly trying to relax. I picked up the remote and flipped over to the Animal Planet, one of her favorite channels. I was hoping for a nice show about cats or puppies, or even lions, tigers and bears (oh my). When luck ain’t with you, it just ain’t with you. The screen was immediately filled with the image of an enormous tarantula stalking along a banana leaf!
July 8th, 2009
This is not my usual post, but I wanted to bring it up to both of my readers! Last night, we had a very nice two-hand sword drop in Ulduar… Rune Edge.
This was the first time it had dropped for us, and our melee classes were drooling over it. Given its stats, the hunters were drooling as well! I discussed our loot system in my last post, and when rolls were called one of our hunters won it. This caused immediate outrage among our melee, particularly the one who would have won if the roll had been restricted to melee only. I can quantify dps upgrades using the Hunter DPS spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks. Applying this to the hunter that won, it represented about +135 dps increase over his currently equipped Cryptfiend’s Bite (worth about 300 dps given his current spec and our typical raid buffs) for an expected dps value of 435. We have a good solid hunter core group, and I keep a spreadsheet with gear upgrades for each of them, so I knew that this drop was one of the best in slots for a hunter.
Now, the reason I bring this up is that I would like some defensible input as to why hunters should have been prevented from winning this item over a melee class. I am not looking to prove myself right, rather I would like some well thought out responses regarding this issue. So please, tell me what you think!
June 27th, 2009
At last the Red Devils have successfully downed a new boss in Ulduar in our first progression run of the week. Our new schedule of Tuesday to Thursday has worked well for us, but Sunday continues to be a struggle to get enough players online. Or… maybe it was just a Father’s Day issue.
Anyway, having cleared up Thorim, Hodir and Freya on Wednesday, we were ready to dedicate the night to our newest challenge… Mimiron! I had been fortunate enough to have been part of a successful 10-man raid that cleared Mimiron and General Vezax, and even made a few futile attempts on Yogg-Saron on Monday. I knew what was awaiting us and was fairly certain we would spend the night wiping out on Mimiron. I was almost right, too. The Red Devils are quickly earning a reputation for being unable to down a new boss until threatened with a “This is our LAST attempt” warning from the Raid Leader. Last night was no exception and we successfully downed the V0-L7R-0N Combat System (the last phase of the Mimiron battle) on our ninth and last attempt of the night!
Mimiron is an interesting fight and just getting to his room presented a challenge for those of us that are… how shall I say this? Less situationally aware? Reminiscent of the “frogger” slimes after Patchwerk in Naxx, patrols of bomb-bots skitter the perimeter around Mimiron’s chamber. They aren’t hard to avoid, really, but these things explode on contact and one-shot most players. Fortunately by the fourth or fifth attempt, nearly all of us learned to maneuver through the gauntlet successfully.
I was actually impressed with how quickly the raid was able to learn the various phases of the fight and we quickly made progress to the fourth and final phase. Once we made it to that point, it took only a few more attempts before we were successful. In fact, we very nearly won the eighth attempt, but had lost too many of our dps to finish him off. On our last attempt we still lost quite a few players to laser barrage and proximity mines, and our main feral tank (Lesi) twice to shock blasts. We recovered nicely and in just over twelve minutes we cranked out more than 35 million damage to defeat Mimiron!
Wow Web Stats doesn’t parse the Mimiron fight properly, but World of Logs does. Actually, WWS has fallen behind in updating their parser for Ulduar and I have begun to rely on WOL more. I am more familiar with WWS and prefer the numeric breakdowns it provides for detailed analysis of individual performance. With a little more experience, I am sure I will learn to use WOL just as well.
This post would not be complete without a discussion of the Red Devils loot system and some of our members’ recent complaints in that regard. With the release of Wrath, the Red Devils developed and implemented a new and unique loot system using in-game rolls, combined with a modifier based on your rank in the guild.
Ranks in the guild are based on attendance in raids, with four possible ranks: Friend (<25%), Member (25 to <50%), Raider (50 to <85%) and Elite Raider (85%+). Promotions and demotions are issued every two weeks based on attendance over the past 60 days and players must maintain their attendance levels to keep their rank. This encourages our members to raid and provides them with higher rank (prestige) in the guild for continued participation.
Attendance is recorded based on time, with records kept every 30 minutes during a normal raid and 15 minutes during a “progression” raid. Players that show up on-time and ready get attendance credit, even if the raid is subsequently called off due to insufficient numbers. This system provides credit to the raid even on “wipe nights” when no bosses are downed, encouraging members to participate even on those difficult progression nights.
Ultimately, the only tangible reward for raiding comes in the form of LOOT. As I mentioned earlier, we use the in-game roll system (1-100) combined with a “roll modifier” based on rank. The Friend rank has a modifier of 0, Members have +20 added to their roll, Raiders +30 and Elite Raiders +40. This provides a strong bias for the higher rank members to win their rolls, while still providing a chance for everyone to win loot. The idea was to make the guild more attractive in our recruitment efforts, yet continue to reward our more active raiders with more loot. Recruiting and retaining talented players is crucial to a raiding guild’s success. We need to get them in the door and keep them in order to maintain our active membership at a sufficient level to form a 25-man raid.
But, guess what happens when a higher rank member loses their roll, in spite of the modifier? Whispers galore to one of the officers from the losing party, usually pertaining to how much more they deserved the loot than the winner. Sometimes even veiled threats of a /gquit are made, and occasionally they don’t even bother to be that subtle. Lately, this has been occurring often enough to raise the concern among the officers as to how appropriate our loot system is and if it is serving the guild in the capacity in which it was envisioned.
Personally, I think that it is. I will readily admit that I was not a big fan of the system when first presented to the guild. I had concerns similar to what others are voicing now – that it would allow too much loot to go to players of less benefit to the guild. Now, to me, a member’s benefit to the guild is measured not only by their skill, but also by their attendance in raids. We need people on-line and ready to raid on a consistent basis. We just don’t have the sheer numbers (yet) to always put together a full group for each scheduled raid night. A highly skilled member that shows up once a week is not as valuable (to me) as a lesser skilled one that is there every night.
Our loot system rewards attendance and an Elite Raider is nearly five times more likely to win over a Friend. But, that doesn’t mean the Friend can’t win. They can… and do. And there’s the rub for the guild at the moment. Should Friends be allowed to roll on loot? I think they should, but maybe we need to modify our system a bit. Perhaps limitations on what can be rolled on should be implemented. Time will tell, and many of our officers are beginning to voice their concerns over “deserving” vs. “random”.
