10-man raid night. Last week was a good week for us – we got through Auriaya our first night with only minor difficulties, then on our second night we cleared Hodir and Thorim, both firsts for us.
My cunning plan for this week was to invite all of the local people of our group over to the Geek House so we could actually play together in the same room, chatting while playing. For the record, this proved to be awesomesauce and I hope we make it a regular thing. Our goal for the raid was to clear far enough on our first night that we can take some stabs at Freya the 2nd night.
Hrist, our hate-filled tank of rage, had slightly different plans.
Right off the bat (well — once we got to trash) he started pulling like a demon. I haven’t seen chain pulling like that since our MC days. Once the last trash mob was around 20% health, he shouted at the off-tank to taunt it and then he ran off to pull the next group of mobs. Didn’t matter what they were – huge giants, groups of 5 that are normally cc’d, a couple worm mounds plus a pack of elementals. He wasn’t slowing down for anything.
It was great.
I LOVE chain pulling trash! Who cares that it lets those aoe classes smoke us on the meters. Trash is dull, trash is boring. Let’s get through it as fast as possible and move on to the bosses! New content! Progression!
Despite all this Hrist even managed to live on the lightening ball pairs before Auriaya, where we have something of a team tradition of getting Hrist killed. That did put a bit of a damper of the fun, however.
But Hrist was all business. We blew through FL+1, XT, Kolo Auriaya. There was hardly any time for joking, very little time for chatting in game (fortunately those of us in the Geek House computer room could chat to our heart’s delight), just move, kill, kill, rez the deaders, and kill some more.
We started a bit late, as we usually do, but we still got through Hodir in just two hours. Then we moved onto Thorim where, strangely, we had more wiping than in our first takedown. The first time through the gauntlet crew had a lot of wipes as we learned what was going on with the mobs in there, while the arena team was a rock. This time through the arena team had trouble keeping people alive, while the gauntlet crew flew through the place — in fact, we had to slow down and pause now and again to keep from activating hardmode.
In the end we took down Thorim, then took a quick victory lap over to Razorscale to round out the evening. Now if we can just get people to show up for our 2nd night, we’ll have all night to play with Freya!
So I think we can all agree that I should claim credit for the Geek House for our success!
Yeah, Hrist was definitely a crazy man last night:D
Good times were had at the Geek House:D woot woot!!
I still don’t see how having Cheerleader, You, and Me in the same room could have anything to do with our success? (Oh, and then Cocky Mage jump in when Arust punked out because of a small tiny hole in his roof… CM was a trooper and hung out with us, despite not getting to raid at first…)
Personally, I would attribute the success more to the chain-pulling. It let instinct take over, instead of wishy-washy thought.
I’ll be honest, though, when Hrist shouted out for me to take aggro on the mob, I was curious, “Why? She’s not hurt, she doesn’t have a debuff on her… /shrug, okay, whatever…” then as I taunted, I saw her grab more mobs, and suddenly it became clear. (And in the background, I heard Frost giggling with glee at the chain-pulling… it was a disturbing sound.)
Just curious… I know Hrist the toon is female but in real life is Hrist man or woman? Cuz Frost always says ‘he’ when referring to Hrist but in commie tank’s comment above he says ‘she’.
I am a “he” in real life. Frost thinks of the toon as the real person and Moon (much like myself) thinks of the toon as the graphical representation displayed on your monitor. I say this because we have a male priest, played by a woman, who he calls “she” as well.
Actually, I am pretty sure Frost thinks of everyone as “he” since in many tells to me, he used to call Swamp Chick “he” no matter how many times I corrected him. Unless Frost knows them personally, I presume.
I have a two stage process of how I think about gender in wow:
1.) I assume everyone is a guy by default, until I learn otherwise.
2.) Once I know what the player’s gender is, I always think of them that way, regardless of the toon. It’s especially hard to think of people I know IRL as a different gender – such as Hrist, who I’ve known since high school.
You guys really should do FL+2 or 3, My lame guild on 10man can do 2 easy and 3 is getting easier. Just saying, it’s an easy extra emblem or two and orbs/patterns. Hodir is pretty easy once we figured out the ‘unfreeze mage only, he will free the rest strat’.
We did the players picture thread on our guild site and I can attest that WoW hotties do exist, we’ve got a smokin hot chick who is brutal on failing characters- it’s pretty hot.
I do not question the existence of wow hotties. I know several. However, I assume every character is a guy by default. It’s just a better way to live.
We’ve got a speed-demon tank, too…although we finally got him to make a macro that says “Kotah slips off her chain and starts to charge” so at least we get a few seconds warning prior to the madness!
(Crap. There’s that wierd gender disparity thing again, lol.)
Just to clarify, my comment was just an aside, a remark not regarding or pertaining to anything mentioned earlier.
I have just one comment followed by a question. This dealer of death requires proof. Where is this website with the so called WoW hotties?
This ain’t no smut site! Find your spank bank materials elsewhere.
Frost has repeatedly stated that only through science and a careful examination of the facts can we ultimately for a clear conclusion. The question seems to be if there are, “WoW hotties” .
A buddy of mine met a girl on a plane who played WoW and he said that she was cute. However, not being able to verify his conclusion (and somewhat questionable judgement) I was unable to verify this Loque’nahak of species.
The question was stated in the name of science. I apologize if it was taken out of context. However, the spank bank comment cracked me up….classic.
Wow good work guys! Yeah pulling through the trash quickly is a good way to see a lot of content. Esp when you are only in there two days. The nice we fly through the first night we usually get to see the general. Freya is pretty easy, it’s just a matter of coordinating against the 3 groups. I got to OT on her this week and goddamn it sucks. It’s definitely the harder of the two jobs. Be careful on the west side of the map because there are two patrols that almost overlap so if you move too far forward, then you will pull them both, despite knowing this we do it constantly.
But getting hodir and thorim down on night 1, that’s really great! Mimi is a royal pain and I hope you get some shots in on em after you down freya. The trash there is fucking ridiculous, but there is a cheap way around it if you care to know
I probably had something else to say but I forget what.
I’d like to take this moment to show one of the things wrong with damage meters, and displays of overall damage like Frost likes to do. I won’t take away from that he’s almost always on top (tee hee), but as the other hunter in the raid, in the fifth spot (the other green line), its not as bad as it looks. I was gone for everything after Thorim.
Where as the mage who is in the 4th lowest spot came in after me, and didn’t actually do less DPS than the tank. He just did overall damage.
I like to see Frost stroke his ego as much as I like to stroke my ego, but damage meters don’t tell the whole story.
Ah yes, I forgot that we swapped people at the end. Overall damage obviously is only a good qualitative measurement of dps contribution for people who were there (and alive) the entire time
However, it’s still a much better measure than the supposed “dps” that recount reports.
worldoflogs.com – you know you want to. Also, I finally remembered what I wanted to add earlier. Hrist, if you want more cooldown action glyph of shield wall + improved disciplines == 2 min shield wall with 40% damage reduction. While it still sucks compared to loldk cooldowns, it’s nice to have it available more often. I use it all the damn time now.
We have a tank that goes afk at times, like just before boss fights and then we have to wait for him… for a long time, WTB speedtanks
(
I’m so jealous of the chemistry you guys have!
WTB my own personal Hrist for Silver Hand.
Reading this for the first time today (server is down…bored) , this is a topic that I personally belive to be a key “success element” to every raid group. When ever a group slows down to blog in chat and try to talk over everyone else about who has the best strategy in vent, it’s a garunteed ====. Chain pulling forces members to shut the hell up and focus on thier job/role, thus the sucess rate is enhanced emmensely. Nothing better than a Mt and Ot in sink chain pulling to get the blood rushing to the head rather than pooling in fingers blogging about “what if we”. Let the Tanks off the chain …