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With our recent attendance problems, the Red Devils have attempted to realign our raid nights to better fit the needs of the guild. This week, we tried dropping our Monday raid and replaced it with Wednesday giving us a revised schedule of Sunday, then Tuesday through Thursday. This week, at least, that seems to work and we conducted successful raids each night! As a result, we were able to attempt a little progression, having downed Ignis for our first kill last week. So last night, we found ourselves facing Thorim once again for the first time in three weeks.

Our only previous encounter with Thorim had occurred at the end of a fairly long raid night and was more of a “let’s see what this guy does” attempt rather than a serious effort. We made several attempts, but the arena group kept wiping before the sneak attack from the hall could be completed. Tonight was a fresh start with a better group composition. This time we kept the arena group better manned and assigned a smaller elite strike force to work their way through the hall and attack Thorim from behind. While this worked better for the arena group who had no problems standing up to the relentless onslaught of mobs emerging from the stadium seats, the strike force kept wiping before they could make their way to Thorim. It is essential for the strike force to complete their journey through the hall and force Thorim into the arena as quickly as possible. Otherwise, Thorim will enrage and wipe the entire raid.

Having been part of the strike force on our previous encounters, I knew we had the skills to complete the mission. This time however, I was placed in the arena – a totally different kind of encounter. Here the team is forced into the center of the arena in a fairly tight group to avoid electrocution from the perimeter sentry orbs. It’s a survival fight while awaiting the arrival of the strike force to rejoin us and start the battle with Thorim. For hunters, it’s an uncomfortable assignment and with nearly all targets too close for ranged combat, we are left with little more than traps and volley. Occasionally a Dark Rune Champion is tanked at sufficient distance to engage at ranged, but most of the fight is volley, volley, volley. If a hunter attempts to move away to get more range, he risks electrocution – not only for himself, but to the rest of the party as the charge jumps to multiple players!

After several attempts with the strike force constantly being overwhelmed, it became clear we were imbalanced. The raid leader, still cautious from our previous night with constant arena wipes, first tried swapping out some of the strike force players. Unfortunately, that group was just too small to be successful. Eventually, extra players were taken from the arena group and placed into the strike force to balance out the two groups. On our ninth attempt our strike force finally succeeded in pushing Thorim into the Arena and we had our first glimpse of combat with him. We quickly arranged ourselves into small groups surrounding Thorim to minimize the damage from his chain lightning hits. Still, we found ourselves too slow at moving away from the sentry orb that was charging and several of our small groups were wiped out by the ensuing lightning charge.

It took a few more tries before we were able to engage Thorim again, but our twelfth attempt was successful and the Red Devils handed out 28 million damage in just over eight and a half minutes to defeat Thorim and claim our rewards (phat loot)!

At this point, it was after 10:00 pm, and several of our raiders were about to turn into pumpkins. Rather than make a few half-assed attempts at Mimiron, we decided to call it for the night and head back to Dalaran. Sunday should give us our first shot at this new boss and given last night’s success, I imagine the Red Devils will be raring to go!

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Well, to say the least, the Red Devils have been having attendance problems lately. Our normal raid schedule is Sunday through Tuesday, then Thursday. For the last few weeks, it seems that we have had to cancel more raids than we have been able to conduct. This has become a serious source of frustration to some of our more dedicated raiding members and an abundance of “conspiracy” theories have emerged. Personally, I think the lack of attendance has been due to the end of the school year, changes in members schedules and conflicts with their other (less important) committments rather than anything more sinister. I mean, come on people… where are your priorities?? Anyway, we’ve gone through these phases before and survived. But diehard raiders want to raid and become cranky when they don’t get their regular “fix”. Believe me, I understand and as the Raid Officer I hate to call off any of our regularly scheduled raids! But when only 15 or 20 people show up, I really don’t have a choice. Well, I guess we could try to pug… no, I really don’t have a choice.

In my time with the Red Devils, the guild has never had a large group of raiding members. Recruitment has always been very selective, and the general issue seems to be not having active raiding members sit out during a raid. The concern is that someone not getting a raid slot would then leave the guild. It’s a valid concern, but one that is certain to cause cancellations when a couple of the “regulars” aren’t able to attend. For example, last night our guild leader and her “betrothed-to-be”, both part of our core raid group, were unable to attend due to a schedule conflict… something silly like her graduation. Entirely trivial and unimportant, but she’s the boss, so what are you gonna’ do?

But, I digress. The point is, we knew ahead of time that both of them would not be in-game and morale was low with lots of grumblings in guild chat about having to cancel yet another raid. 7:00 pm rolled around and I issued the usual guild chat message to “PST for a raid invite”. We quickly gathered up 15 members, then waited as a few more trickled in. By 7:15, we had a total of 23 and Skittltz agreed to lead us into battle. We decided it was time to take on Ignis the Furnace Master, who we had been avoiding since our first skirmish with him weeks ago.

I truly hate the Ignis trash mobs, especially those damn tornados that they spawn! I seem to have difficulty discerning exactly where their “impact” area is. Not only that, but it seems like whenever one does catch me, it then follows me and keeps tossing me up in the air repeatedly. Last night I got tossed three times before I landed, but at least I only took fall damage once! Finally we were gathered in front of Ignis and Skittltz went through the fight explanation (and quite well, I might add). We had our warrior, Cincara, conduct the first pull and things went pretty well, considering many of us hadn’t seen this fight before. Wipe city in just under three minutes.

Our next attempt, we had Fountainhead use misdirection to pull. He cast MD and ran forward to pull. WTF… why do I have the MD buff?? Fortunately for me, Fountain realized his error and didn’t shoot. Hunters, please… there are several addons that will inform the raid of who is misdirecting and their target. Pick one and USE it! Or, at the very least add some yells to your MD macro so the raid knows who cast MD and to whom they applied it. We usually run with four hunters and coordinating MDs is a lot easier that way!

Oh well, since Fountain’s MD was on cooldown, I did the honors and made Ignis mad at Cincara. This battle lasted about the same and we wiped again. Our third try, however, we managed to add resto-shaman extraordinaire, Lackadaisic! Woot… now we had 24 people in our raid! This time, Fountain pulled off his MD flawlessly, Ignis charged towards Cincara and the fight was on! We were heating up Constructs, pulling them into the water and smashing them down. Ignis scurried about breathing flames and making all kinds of boastful threats. He was grabbing people and stuffing them in his nasty old crotch pot, then scorching the ground around the rest of us. Six minutes and thirty-nine seconds later, poor old Ignis was no longer the Furnace Master, but an expired heap on the floor. The Red Devils had successfully defeated him for our first kill ever!

We continued our journey to pay both Auriaya and Hodir our respects, and though we didn’t one-shot either of them, we were able to defeat them both before 9:30! We even managed to fill up our raid with a 25th member, Richard the Warlock, to help us bring the pain and win those fights. Then we had a decision to make… continue to Freya/Thorim, or stop for the night? A number of us voiced concerns that we didn’t have the time to actually finish either of those two before 10:00 and downing the three mini-bosses before Freya might harm our chances at getting a full raid together on Sunday. Skittltz put it to a vote with a ready check and we elected to stop for the night. I remain hopeful that we will be back on Sunday.

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This is not a WoW post, but… since this is my blog I can post whatever I want! Besides, this story will help you get to know me better and perhaps gain some insight as to why I am so twisted! So, sit back, grab a beer and let me tell you about a little thing that happened to me some 20 years ago…

I really love fishing. I always have. As a child, my father would take me out in his little tin boat and we would spend the day on the water. Really good times.

So, as I grew older, I continued fishing and even bought a nice little bass boat after graduating from college. It was the late 1980′s and I would pick up my girlfriend after work on Fridays and head to the lake for the weekend. Like most young people, I lived for the weekend!

Living in the midwest, bass fishing was pretty much the only game in town and I pursued it with a passion. While it’s not really a “contact” sport, it can sometimes result in injury. You know… the occasional hook puncture or fish spine injury. I’ve even witnessed people getting knocked out by flying insects while scooting across the lake at 60 mph, but that is another story. This one is gruesome enough!

My significant other (at the time) and I had gone to Stockton Lake in southwest Missouri for a weekend of camping and fishing. Nothing unusual about that, as we often chose Stockton for weekend trips. We spent Saturday fishing for both walleye and bass, but as the evening approached we focused on working topwater lures through flooded cedar trees in one of the creeks that fed the lake. I was throwing a black and white herring bone pattern Zara Spook, one of my favorite topwater plugs. As the sun began to set, I removed my sunglasses since they were too dark to see through in the waning light. Fishing had been slow and we hadn’t caught much the whole day.

Working the plug past a cedar trunk, I was rewarded with a monstrous strike! This was a nice bass, about six pounds or so. I worked the fish to the boat, putting as much pressure on the line as I felt I could. I didn’t want the fish to make it down into all those branches beneath the surface! I nearly had the fish to the boat and had cleared the cedar tree when the plug suddenly came unfastened from the fish’s mouth. The severe bend in the graphite rod, combined with the stretch in the monofilament line created a basic slingshot that hurled the lure directly into my face at approximately the speed of sound!

I had no time to react and felt the impact of the plug across my right eye. My vision blurred, then turned red. I was a little stunned, but shook my head hoping to clear the cobwebs. They didn’t clear and I soon realized I had a Zara Spook attached to my face! I shook my head again while looking down, hoping it would fall free. It did not. I then tried gently pulling on the body of the plug, but my upper eyelid went with it. I glanced at my girlfriend and, based on her stunned and ashen look, realized I might have a problem. She looked as if she were about to pass out… and I was the one with the new “jewelry/piercing”! I was strangely calm and explained to her that she needed to keep it together as I was counting on her now. With a panic stricken look, she asked “What do I do?”

There was another boat fishing the same creek. I asked her to yell at them for help. She did, and it took a few moments to respond… “yeah, what do you need”?

“He has a hook in his eye!”

“Oh god… we’ll be right there.”

We were rescued by another kind couple. They approached our boat and I asked if they had any hook cutters. I really wanted to get this plug off my face. Sadly, though they said they often do have cutters, they did not have them with them now. They spent a moment examining the mess and quickly suggested that they pilot my boat back to the dock while I lay on the floor trying not to move.

Now, I have been on some very unpleasant boat rides… 32 hour trips home from offshore through 6 to 10 foot seas. In comparison, they weren’t so bad as this one. Even though the water was relatively calm, and the distance short, riding in a small boat with a 6-inch plug with dual treble hooks embedded in your eye is not something I suggest anyone try. You can’t really see anything and to say it felt like I had “something in my eye” would be an understatement.

A small crowd gathered at the dock after we arrived. Our rescuers helped guide me into the back of their SUV. One man in the crowd stepped forward saying “I’m a dentist. I can help”. Really? Forgive me doc, but this problem is about two inches, two very important inches, north of your specialty. I laid back as he examined me, and have to say that the look on his face was not a confidence builder. “I can’t do anything with this” he said, and he slunk back into the crowd.

We were headed to the emergency room, a place I have since become more intimately familiar with than anyone really should be. The closest was a small town called “Butler” (I believe). By the time I walked into the ER, I had been holding that damn plug against my face for about 2 hours. The admitting nurse took one look at me, turned pale and said “You will be next!”

I gave her my insurance card and she turned me over to a strapping young fellow who looked very competent, though a little young to be a doctor. He guided me onto the exam table and told me that the doctor would be right in. I was feeling a little better, now that I had made it to the ER. I would soon be fixed up good as new, right? As I lay there on the table, I saw the doctor as he entered the room.

There is a character actor that played in a lot of westerns in the 1960s and 70s. I don’t know his name, but he essentially played the same role in all of them. Very scruffy and bearded with one eye always squinted, the other one just… wild. Usually played a drunk. Well, that’s who had just walked in the door wearing scrubs and a stethoscope. “Hmmmmm”, he grunted, “ain’t seen nothing like this before”. My confidence was plummeting to all time lows. “Looks like we are gonna’ have to push that hook all the way through”. Not words you want to hear when said hook is in your eye! Actually, you never want to hear those words, but through your eye? I mean, seriously… through my eye!??

I must have looked a little panicked and I have to admit, I probably wasn’t wearing my best poker face. The doctor explained that the hook was not actually in my eye, but in my eyelid and embedded under the orbital brow. I can’t claim to know what an “orbital brow” is, but I had a real good idea of where he meant. He went on to explain that they would numb the area, pull the hook out from under the bone and push it through the fleshy area above my eyelid so they could cut off the barb and remove the hook. I wasn’t real enthused about this plan, but couldn’t come up with any alternatives.

The doctor produced a hypodermic that was a foot long and a half-inch in diameter, or at least looked that way with my currently impaired vision. “This may sting a bit”, he offered as he began stabbing me with this barbaric implement of torture just below my eyebrow and (thankfully) above my eye. I was ready to confess to the assassination of Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald AND Lincoln. Jack Brauer had nothing on this dude. Eventually, he got bored (or satisfied) with his efforts and promised to return in a few minutes after the anesthetic had time to take effect. I remain unconvinced that he was using anesthetic. Formaldehyde, perhaps, but not anesthetic. I thought my right eye was about to burst into flames and the left one was rolling around in sympathy. Now blinded, escape was simply impossible.

All too soon, Doctor Mengele returned with, I swear to God, the smallest pair of wire cutters I have ever seen in my life. I mean, they virtually disappeared into that paw he used for a hand. He grabbed hold of the base of the embedded treble hook and began twisting it savagely… at least from my point of view. The sharp hook point grated across the back side of the bone above my eye. I could feel (and hear) it. He eventually succeeded in freeing the point and began enthusiastically tugging it through my upper eyelid. “There it is” he exclaimed, as the point and barb popped through, at which point he produced those tiny wire cutters and attempted to cut the hook point off.

“Doc, those things are never going to cut through that hook” I said, gasping for breath.

“They’re all we got” he replied.

He struggled with his left hand, his right, then both. Sweat dripped from his brow and, I have to admit, he gave it a real try. “Call Brian in here” he told the attending nurse as he panted for breath. Brian was the strapping young lad that had guided me onto the torture, err… exam table. While not competely excited at having an orderly performing this procedure, I was pretty sure that it couldn’t be any worse. It took Brian both hands and no small amount of effort, but the sharp “ping” of the cutters severing the hook was of great relief to me.

The doctor handily extracted the remains of the hook and then examined my eye. He placed a patch over it and instructed me to see an opthamologist as soon as possible. Me… I couldn’t wait to leave that place. Our rescuers drove us back to the dock and wished us well. I slowly piloted my boat back to our campground (in the dark… with one eye) and hit the sack.

Sunday morning dawned bright and early. My girlfriend and I discussed our options. She wanted to head home, but I really wanted to get some more on-the-water time in. She relented and I headed down to the boat. As I sat there in the bright sun, waiting for her to arrive, my eye began to throb and the wisdom of her words sounded vastly better than mine. I agreed to head home. We loaded the boat on the trailer and broke camp. She was driving, and as we motored up the interstate I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my eye. I pulled down the visor and opened the vanity mirror. It was my contact lens! God knows where it had been hiding, but I was able to remove it from my eye, and on examination found a small hole in the very center of the lens. The hook point had hit the lens, glanced off and traveled upwards under the eyelid. Had I not been wearing contacts, I am certain I would have lost my right eye!

Monday morning, I made an emergency appointment with an opthamologist. He examined me and told me “It’s too late now, but you should have been placed in a dark room with both eyes patched. Your iris was torn loose from the bottom of your eye.” He gave me some very dark glasses and told me to avoid bright sunlight. “You were very lucky” he said. I had to wear the dark glasses, even indoors, for a week.

In retrospect, I was very lucky. I still have good (correctable) vision and have suffered no ill effects. I always carry hook cutters now and they are capable of cutting any hook that I have… even the stoutest saltwater hooks.

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The Red Devils continued their plundering of Ulduar in grand style this week! Our most recent accomplishment was the defeat of Hodir, which was fairly easy compared to our previous battles with Freya. Speaking of which, on our last kill, her lethal Snaplasher managed to put me down for a dirt nap at the beginning of the fight. One dead ‘brat, but the Red Devils managed to finish the job without me. That’s the last time I try to help pound that thing down!

We wandered in to visit Hodir, but our first attempt was Fail City when most of the raid got frozen in the first deep freeze, including yours truly! Despite continuous haranguing from our resident “punk-adin”, most of us did learn how to handle those freezes correctly. Our third try resulted in success and the Red Devils even earned an achievement!

After loot was distributed, we ran out to the main chamber for a group photo with the now much-more-friendly Hodir. You would think after all the daily quests we ran for his group in Northrend he would have been happier to see us!

Then… on to take out Thorim. Our strategy was to split into two groups, one (the melee) would stay in the arena and hold down the fort as the second (ranged) snuck up the back alley behind Thorim. While the sneak attack group was successful in battling their way through the tunnel, the arena group suffered catastrophic losses. This resulted in a massive ball of light flying through the tunnel and one-shotting those of us sneaking through. We kept trying to balance out the two groups, switching players around, but after seven tries, we gave up for the night.

It seems my last blog post with my loot-whining about hunter drops in Ulduar and Vault managed to appease the loot gods! They saw fit to bless me with Conqueror’s Scourgestalker Handguards and Giant’s Bane from Ulduar. This was followed by Furious Gladiator’s Chain Gauntlets from Vault! I also went on an honor-point/badge spending spree and now have a very nice set of PvP gear. Now it takes those pesky ret-adins 5 seconds to kill me instead of 3… woot!

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So, the Red Devils have finally managed to defeat Freya and release her from her bonds. This statuesque babe is the first boss in Ulduar to really cause us to put more effort into our fights. Handling the waves of adds is the real problem here. There are three different types, and each requires a different strategy: Ancient Conservator, Three Elementals and Detonating Lashers. Oh, and all the while, Freya summons “Lifebinders Gift” which is a tree that needs to be nuked down immediately before it heals Freya. We weren’t real quick on downing each wave before the next one was summoned and often found ourselves battling more than one wave at a time! With that many different types of mobs on the field, each with a different strategy, you can imagine how hectic things got!

Needless to say, there was a lot of yelling on Vent by various players as they became frustrated and a lot of contradicting instructions were shouted out. Eventually, we worked out the kinks and finally defeated all six waves of adds. At that point, Freya begins dropping land mines instead of calling more adds. Fortunately, these are relatively easy to avoid and we were able to bring her health down low enough to “release her” and win the battle. The adds are the real trick here, and it takes a lot of coordination to down them successfully. We really have to be on our toes for her, and I expect it will be some time before we can consider her to be on “farm” status.

We even managed to venture in and pay Hodir a visit. Unfortunately, our raid leader suffered a major melt-down during the pre-fight instructions and several raiders just gave up and left the group. Things went downhill rapidly, but we made a couple of attempts just to get the flavor of the battle. Hodir doesn’t look to be nearly the challenge that Freya provides.

Unlike Naxxramas, hunter loot has been very scarce for the Red Devils in Ulduar. I have managed to pick up a set of shoulders (Iron-studded Mantle) and Saronite Mesh Legguards, but by-and-large we haven’t had many hunter drops. Vault has been absolutely miserable to me, and I have yet to pick up ANY loot from my many forays into that instance!

Our resident hunter supreme, Fountainhead, continues to spank me like a bad pony in raids, and I still have not figured out how he does it! Consistently, this man out performs me by 300 to 1,000 dps on just about every fight. Gearwise, we are very similarly outfitted and on paper (The Hunter DPS Spreadsheet), I should be about 300 dps ahead of him. Whatever his secret is, I am glad to have him in our guild even if he does push me into the #2 hunter spot! It’s good to have competition, and he certainly provides it for me!

Oh, by the way, I have found a new addon that seems to be very helpful in choosing which shots to use. Blizzard has successfully changed the hunter class to eliminate any actual shot rotation. We now have to deal with shot priority to maximize our dps. And, with each shot on a different cool down combined with the random Lock and Load proc, this is quite a challenge! Watcher provides a moving bar that shows your prioritized shots as they come off of cooldown. It can be a little distracting, and I am still learning to use it. The trick is to be able to see the shot icon while still maintaining situational awareness. It is one more thing to observe in an already cluttered battlefield, but I think the reward is worth the effort.

On a sadder note, the Red Devils recently lost one of our best raid performers. Since this is the second time this person has left the guild in search of greener pastures, it is unlikely he will ever be accepted back. Which is sad, really. While he was something of a challenge from a guild management perspective, he was truly one of our best in raids. Spartoss, I wish you well and hope you can find a guild that fits your expectations!

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Now that is the way to raid on a Sunday night! The Red Devils welcomed back our delinquent pally/DK, Guth, with open arms. With his DK (Hylden) in tow, we marched into Ulduar to pick up where we left off on Thursday… Kologarn. Of course, we had to reclear the trash to reach him, but accomplished this with little difficulty. We found ourselves face-to-face with Kologarn once again.

A few attempts were made before we developed a winning strategy. We would use the lines on the floor before him as a guide during the battle. Ranged would line up on the first line, the second line would remain open for eye-beam targeted members to use as an escape route. Strafing to the sides along this line would allow them to avoid the eye-beams as well as prevent damage to any bystanders. The third line would serve as the guide for our melee dps. While in theory this should work well, a few raiders appeared to panic and abandoning their guidline, dragged the eyebeam back into the raid. We regrouped and during the final discussion prior to the pull, I suffered an accidental discharge from my Envoy of Mortality. Unfortunately, the errant round struck Kologarn square in the face and his wrath was upon us before we were prepared. Another wipe, courtesy of Seabrat! Even my trusty pet, SeaWolf, was so embarassed that I had to summon her several times before she crept out from the corner in which she had hidden. I was instructed to keep the safety on until the pull had commenced.

We regouped, made our preparations and launched the assault on Kologarn, who exclaimed “NONE SHALL PASS!” “OH YES… WE… WILL!”, we replied! Eye-beams were upon us and we skillfully kited them away from the raid. Rubble adds were summoned and our feral tank (Lesi) quickly scooped them up and pulled them to her corner where they were summarily dispatched. His right arm regenerated and stonegripped selected members of the group. We healed them as they were squeezed and quickly destroyed the right arm again. Kologarn pulled out every trick he had, and we countered them all. He had been defeated by the mighty Red Devils!

Crossing the bridge formed by Kologarns lifeless corpse, we ventured across the Shattered Walkway into the Observation Ring where we found Auriaya patrolling with her escort of four Sanctum Sentries (tigers). She looks… big. Those kitties don’t look too bad, though. We prepared by taking out the guards on both sides of the landing, but got a little careless and managed to pull Auriaya and her brood in the process. Welcome to Wipe City, population… 25 Red Devils.

We regrouped and finished the job on the guards, then began discussing pull strategies. We tried hunter traps and misdirects. Didn’t work… one of the Sentries would always pounce the hunter, killing him. We tried a tank pull, didn’t work… everything targets the tank and he dies, insta-gibbed. Finally, we settled on using a DKs death and decay, with the offtank grabbing the kitties. That seemed to work pretty well, but we found ourselves in a bit of a scattered panic when Auriaya summoned her smaller Swarming Guardians. Seriously, this boss literally has kittens! A larger summon, the Feral Defender, is like a cross between a tiger and a tasmanian devil bothed amped up on PCP. That cat bounces around like it has a turbo-charged pogo stick equipped with no cooldown! And when you do finally manage to kill the damn thing, it leaves an enormous void zone that deals 9,000 shadow damage to anyone in it!

Eventually, we learned to group up and stay in front of Auriaya so her Sonic Screech would be diluted among us. Killing the Defenders off to the side away from the battle zone helped keep the area clear and the DKs were instrumental in deathgripping them away when they were low on health. Stunning them in place and finishing them off in a controlled location was a key part of our strategy. Lucky 13 was the magic number of attempts, and Auriaya lay dead on the floor!

We had managed to defeat two new bosses in Ulduar in one night. It seems the return of Guth is a good omen for the Red Devils.

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Another weeks raiding was upon us, and on Tuesday we re-entered Ulduar in grand style! Flame Leviathan proved to be a simple fight and I was once again aboard a chopper. No last moment heroics were required this time, but I am looking forward to trying out a different vehicle sometime, perhaps as a gunner? Ah, well… maybe next time.

Then we paid our friend, XT-002 a little visit. The hardest part remains to be trying to handle all those crazy adds while maintaining sufficient dps on XT. We pulled it off once again and then headed down to Razorscale.

Like XT, Razorscale’s biggest challenge is add management while dpsing the big lizard. We were up to the challenge and swatted the overgrown flying gecko down for the count. Then, it was time to quit for the night, but… we would be back!

And back we were – just last night. We assembled inside Ulduar and began discussing which boss we should attempt… Ignis, or the Iron Council? We had experienced a crushing defeat at the hands of Ignis last week, but had at least made a few attempts. Of the Iron Council, we had no knowledge. After several minutes of argument, the decision was made to try out the Council. We rode over to the teleporter and zoned in to survey the gauntlet before us. Perhaps overconfident, we wiped on the first trash pull. Those mobs are no pushovers!

Our second try got us through the first gauntlet and found us ready to pull the huge mobs guarding foyer before the staircase. Again, we were unprepared for the full fury of these monsters and managed to wipe in the chaos. A second shot and we managed to make it to the left around the stairs and got our first view of the Iron Council. Holy crap, for a dwarf that Steelbreaker is one big dude! We decided to take him out first.

Our initial pull was short lived as we soon discovered the pressing need to move Steelbreaker out of the Rune of Power and our ranged dps into it as quickly as possible. On our second attempt, we managed to put Steelbreaker on the floor, only to get quickly wiped out by a Rune of Death. Runemaster Molgeim was to be our second target, and on the next attempt we successfully put both Steelbreaker and Molgeim out of the picture! We all scrambled towards Stormcaller Brundir, who was being otherwise occupied at the far end of the room. I didn’t get three steps forward before I found myself dead on the floor. What the hell hit me, I have no idea, but the rest of the raid was fully focused on revenge. Avenge me, Red Devils! Avenge me!

And they did. A few minutes later, the smoke cleared and Brundir lay in silent defeat upon the stone floor of the Iron Council’s chamber. I was quickly resurrected and the loot distributed to the jubilant raid. We had downed yet another boss in Ulduar!

We regrouped at the staircase and cleared the last remaining guards there, then ascended up the stairs, only to be greeted by the enormous Kologarn. When I say enormous, I am in no way exaggerating! This boss is so big he is three targets with each arm comprising a separate target in addition to Kologarn himself! The main target is his right arm (which is on the raids left for the more directionally challenged of us). We needed to focus our dps on that arm until it gets blown off, and then switch our attention to Kologarn until his arm regenerates. However, that arm isn’t giving up without a fight! When it falls to the floor, the resulting pile of rubble springs to life in the form of numerous elemental adds that can wreak havoc on the raid. They have to be finished off quickly in order for the raid to focus on Kologarn. All the while laser beams are shooting out of his eyes (I kid you not) and his left arm sweeps across the raid pummeling us! Not only that, but we were often wiped out by his stanky old breath. Somebody get this dude some breath mints. Seriously!

Time after time, we tried to face this bad boy down. Many times, a wipe was called and our fearless raiders would scatter for the door. All I can say is, Kologarn has a very long reach and Stone Grasped me just before I reached the teleporter! I watched in horror as his laser beams chased our raiders into the teleporter room. Escaping his wrath should result in an achievement! We made a total of seven tries on Kologarn before our Healer in Chief, Peeo, had to log for the night.

With our HIC gone, it was pointless to continue banging our heads against the wall that is Kologarn. Arriving back in Dalaran, we found that the Alliance held Wintergrasp and quickly regrouped then headed for The Vault. Badda bing, badda boom, both Emalon the Storm Watcher and Archavon the Stone Watcher were wiped off the face of Azeroth by the intrepid Red Devils, a terrific end to a night of raiding!

Get yourself some super sticky tar, Kologarn. We are coming back for you on Sunday!

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The Red Devils had successfully defeated the Flame Leviathan and Razorscale earlier this week. Our next test in Ulduar was to face down the overgrown wind-up toy, XT-002! As this ridiculous piece of hardware strutted around doing calisthenics and punching the ground, we sneakily pulled his front guards from their posts and made quick work of those mechanical buttheads.

It was decided to try a “spread out” approach, as XT is known to toss bombs about. We fanned out in front of him and commenced with the dps! One cheeky raider commented that the occasional tantrum displayed by XT sounded reminiscent of one of our tanks in a previous raid! Sadly, these first few futile attempts proved to serve us poorly as light-bombed and gravity-bombed guildies would be out of healer range and quickly succumbed.

After several fruitless “spread out” attempts, a new strategy of a left/right and front/back assault was planned. This seemed to work better, though we found ourselves overwhelmed by his spawns during his rest stops. We decided to stick with the grouped arrangement, making minor adjustments to our attack strategy. We honed our plans, carefully balancing our dps between attacking his exposed heart while preventing the healing spawns from reaching him. Off-tanks were kept busy controlling the larger pummelers and bomb-bots. With each attempt, our confidence grew and we came closer to victory. Our 16th try proved to be XT’s undoing and he fell in a heap to the floor. We had succeeded, putting out 27 million damage in just under 6 and a half minutes! Good job, Red Devils… good job!

A note for my fellow hunters… those little heal-bots don’t have a very large hit box and seem to be able to pass close to your frost traps without setting them off. If you are assigned to use these traps, be careful of your placement to ensure they are triggered. Personally, I think assigning hunters to this duty is an enormous loss of much-needed burst dps on the exposed heart, at least for our group of intrepid raiders. There are far more effective AoE classes that are better suited to the job. Ideally, we should limit our add duty to misdirecting the pummelers to the off-tanks and get back to business on XT! But, a disobedient raider is a liability, and we should do as we are instructed. Our raid leader, indeed the entire raid, is counting on us.

Anyway, after a small celebration over the now inoperative XT-002, we backtracked to Ignus the Furnace Masters fiery lair. His front guards stood no chance against the mighty Red Devils. Our blood was up and we wanted more! We advanced on Ignus, but were soon no more than a smoldering group of corpses littering the stone floor in front of his furnace. Personally, I found myself quickly in the soup, so to speak, as he grabbed me up and stuffed me in his “crotch pot”! This was going to require a carefully planned strategy and after three attempts, we elected to retreat and plan our next encounter with him for another day. You will be ours, Ignus. Oh yes, you will!

In other news, Blizzard has Authenticators back in stock! You can be sure that I ordered mine promptly and it should be here any day. These things are in limited supply, but provide an extra layer of security against hackers. And believe me, you do not want to fall prey to those scumbags! The Authenticator is cheap, only $6.50, a one time cost. Their only downside is how few of them Blizzard has been able to provide to its subscribers. Don’t dawdle… order yours now! Or, if you have an Iphone, you can download an applet to provide the same security.

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Or, “How I Spent Yet Another Vacation From WoW”

Patch 3.1 has arrived, and with it the new raid instance Ulduar. Needless to say, the Red Devils were stoked about this new content. I wish I could report that I was with them during their first attempts, but sadly I was not. Each time I tried to log on to Seabrat, I would be immediately disconnected from the game. I tried repeatedly (always keeping in mind the definition of insanity) without success. I moved the addons folder and the wtf folder to a backup drive and tried again, but nothing worked. I was able to log onto my alts, so I filled out an in-game ticket and spent the night questing and leveling while listening to the raid on Vent. The ticket was still open when I logged off five hours later.

The next day I had an e-mail message from Blizzard stating that they had moved Seabrat to resolve the issue. Sweet! I tried to log onto Seabrat, but the same problem persisted – I would be disconnected immediately. I logged onto an alt, filled out another ticket and went back to leveling. That ticket was also still open when I logged off.

And… the next day I had another e-mail from Blizzard that Seabrat had again been moved to resolve the problem. Again, I tried to log onto Seabrat with the exact same outcome. Sigh, another “alt” night. I filled out another in-game ticket, this time asking that they stop moving Seabrat and investigate the problem further. Moving him was not solving the problem. That ticket was also open when I logged. Meanwhile, my guildies were heckling me by linking their new loots from Ulduar. Grrrr.

Another day dawned with another e-mail from Blizzard. They were “investigating” the problem, yay! I was still unable to log on with Seabrat. This time I posted a message on Blizzards Technical Support Forum then spent the night watching TV.

Saturday afternoon I checked my e-mail and found no message from Blizzard. Then I checked Blizzards Technical Support Forum hoping to find a “blue” response, only to find that my post had disappeared! That was annoying. Why would they delete my post? I decided to try once again to log on with Seabrat and voila! I was in!!

I spent the day trying to catch up on all the 3.1 changes; dual spec, train Black Arrow, spend talent points and re-talent pets, etc. Then I spent quite a bit of time at the training dummies trying to relearn my shot rotation/priority. I’m not really fond of the whole Black Arrow thing, but you have to use it to get Lock and Load procs now since Serpent Sting won’t do it. I still have to keep Serpent Sting up though, which means yet another cooldown to manage and another shot in the rotation. Traps still ensure a Lock and Load proc, so Freezing Arrow becomes more valuable, I just need to have trash mobs available since it simply fails on bosses. It does work well on the Razorscale encounter as there are plenty of trash mobs around to throw a Freezing Arrow at!

I read up on strategies for Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale and XT-002. I was trying to be prepared, but reading strategies really only gives me an idea of what the encounter is about. I have to actually experience it to figure out what is really going on. It’s one of my many learning disabilities. But, I wanted to be at least a little prepared for my first exposure to Ulduar.

Sunday night is a raid night and we had enough people to make an attempt. The boss de’ jour was Razorscale and we made nine decent attempts, but wiped each time. Monday we wanted to regroup and try again, but lacked the appropriate classes and ran Malygos and Sartharion with 2 drakes up. Tuesday, however, we were all business and ready to roll in and exact our revenge on Razorscale.

First though, we had to get past the Flame Leviathan (FL). This was my first encounter with him and I was more than a little intimidated, so I selected a chopper to ride. That seemed to provide the least possibility of screwing up the raid. We battled through the trash and I had a blast honking the horn and spraying mobs with tar. We got ready for FL and all of us chopper drives laid down some tar in front of his door. He charged out into an inferno of flaming tar and began chasing us around. Things were utter chaos, but I tried to make sure to lay down tar in front of FLs path and find players as they were launched off FL after destroying his circuit board. I guess they didn’t trust me and would run away as I zoomed in to pick them up, choosing instead a quick death from splash damage. Hmmm… I was pretty sure I showered before the raid. Must be all that sticky tar on me.

Anyway, we were down almost all of our launched players so I made the decision to abandon my chopper and hop into a Demolisher. I loaded myself into the launch tube and waited to be sent on my mission to destroy FLs circuitry. It was looking like a wipe, but I was hoping to at least get the experience of being launched and seeing the top of FL. Suddenly I was there! I quickly shot down the adjacent circuit and then proceeded to melee the one I was standing next to. That took a bit and I was now the only player left outside a vehicle. Really, I kind of expected a friendly chopper to come pick me up, but that didn’t happen. I started running for the first open vehicle I could find while firing instants at FL. Needless to say, I was soon dead, but my sacrifice had saved the day! FL had been disabled long enough to bring him down. The raid showed its appreciation by rezzing me last and then only because I was loot master! I’m telling ya’… it’s a tough crowd.

Oh well, off to pay our respects to Razorscale. Having been there once before, I was a little more confident on this encounter. The trash is problematic and we had some problems with a sleepy tank, but we were making progress. On our sixth attempt we suffered the ever humiliating 1% wipe. Grrrr… we zoned back in and promptly stomped her into the ground, even earning the “A Quick Shave” achievement! Not only that, but we managed to make our mark in the WWS annals with a top 500 fight ranking (at least at the time of this writing). Way to go Red Devils!

We finished the night playing with the trash before XT-002, but wiped a couple of times and called it. We will be back Thursday better prepared for that encounter.

That brings me to the subject of my personal performance. I usually do pretty well in raids, not great and certainly not well enough to be considered for one of the true “top tier” raiding guilds. Another survival hunter in our guild, Fountainhead, has been competing with me for the top hunter spot and generally beats me out. That’s ok with me, I don’t feel the need to be first place all the time and I do sometimes still beat him. The gap between us has usually been pretty small and I felt we were both doing our part in terms of dps. Now, however, he is about 20% over me and that indicates (to me) that I am not performing at acceptable levels. It could just be the extra five days he had to adapt to the new shot rotation/priority and it certainly isn’t gear. He’s just putting out substantially more shots than I am and I have got to get better at selecting and timing my shots.

Can I, or have I reached the limits of my meager skill? Only time will tell and I will gracefully step down from raiding should I no longer be able to perform to the guilds (and my) standards.

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Alas, poor BRK! I knew him, gentle readers, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr’d in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. (Shakespeare’s Hamlet, mildly edited)

Yes, ’tis sadly true. The godfather of hunters, BigRedKitty, has passed from our realms and the hunter community is lesser for it. While we all support his decision to focus on his wife and family, we also mourn his absence. His intuition, wit, patience and desire to help his fellow hunter were fundamental qualities so often absent in WoW players. Never one to brag or denigrate, BRK was tirelessly cheerful, supportive and entertaining in his approach to hunter education. So tireless, in fact, that it appears his wife and child were deprived of a similar level of attention, thus his decision to withdraw from the playing field and focus on more important things.

BRK, we salute you and hail “fare thee well”.

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