Archive for the “Zul'Aman” Category

A spell idea from a really lousy run:

Russian Roulette - A healer spell that when cast, will raise all of the targeted class, but will randomly pick another class and kill it.

Between that, the ASCII stick figures in compromising positions getting sent to wrong channels, the raid warning of “Uptown Girl”, the “CRAPSHOCK!” yell (determined to be an expansion spell, PvP only, with rank 2 being the worst debuff), yeah, we weren’t the most focused. ::still giggling over the insanity::

Okay, not a REAL truck, but that’s about what it felt like. -.-

This past week, I took off of WoW. I had a good reason: the store that I’m going to be managing as soon as it’s finished, stocked, properly licensed, and has one more employee other than the one I hired last week. Right now, it’s in yet another critical phase, with upteen boxes of merchandise all sitting in a (conveniently empty) store next to mine. All of those have to be opened, checked, priced and put out onto the floor. The floor that still needs some guys in here to move some stuff around, since I can’t move huge fricken metal shelving units. Strong? I have my moments, but they’re more nice spurts of “POWER WOMAN!”, not sustained “excuse me, I need to move this house I’m carrying and you’re standing in the way” kinda moments. And when I say umpteen boxes, I’m not kidding. Friday, a semi showed up. Thankfully, it wasn’t all for us. Just the 5 pallets, 42″x42″ square and 6 to 7 feet tall each, stacked high with art supplies and held together with wonderful heavy duty cling wrap. Guess what didn’t fit through a standard size door? You guessed it! So Mom (down visiting and helping get everything set up), The Boyfriend and I frantically unloaded the pallets to get the sidewalk they were on free and clear again.

Oh yeah, the store isn’t in a mall. It’s in the middle of the downtown area on a street, in one of the renovated buildings. Lovely place. Parking’s not great. But damn, the deli 3 stores down is amazing!

So this past week was getting computer systems set up, stock unloaded from trucks, training from the company that sold us the systems, interviewing another prospective employee, having Employee #1 fill out her forms and get started on setting up the teacher supplies section (holy crap teachers have a lot of stuff to buy these days), and close on my house back in Georgia. Yep, house finally got sold. Thank god.

After ALL of that, I’d have to be insane to play WoW, right? Apparently, I’m insane, cos Saturday I walked into ZA after the longest damned time away with a group of guildies. It didn’t start well. We wiped on the last group before the bear boss twice before we got it down and tackled him. We lost out on the timer chests, but we did clear out all of the animal bosses, which was as good a job as we’d ever done when we were serious about it. Then someone said “Hey it’s kinda early, anyone up for a speed Kara run?”

Not only am I insane, I’m a dumbass, too. I heard myself saying “Sure! Count me in on Siana!” Next thing I know, we’re in Kara and cruising along. 3.5 hours later, I left with my badges, tossed them into the bank, then saw I had 100 badges. Wait, wasn’t there something I wanted? Oh hells yes! So Siana is now the proud wearer of Leggings of the Pursuit, gemmed and patched (even if it’s not the patch I wanted, at least it’s something).

The next day, I was in bed most of the day with a headache. That’ll learn me. ::sigh::

Last night was guild ZA run.

Last night, I found my Mojo.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

We’re getting good at ZA. WE still have our stumbles (a couple of “oh god, THAT pull now” spots I can think of), but for the most part, we do good on the 4 animal avatars. Now, we’re really putting time in on Malacrass. Last night was one of our better nights, one that even with the frustration of waiting to get the group filled and into the instance, kinda made it all worthwhile. We finally got to see Malacrass hit below 20%. I know I saw 14% at one point, and someone else said they saw 11% before he started healing himself. The problem we’re running into is that every mana user is running out of mana before the fight ends. Yes, pots, mana oils, you name it are all getting used. Bandages and heal pots are all getting used by everyone to try and help out the healers. Hunters do the Hawk/Viper dance. Mages evocate. Everyone’s doing their damnest to help even the smallest bit, and we’re still dying because our healers start calling out “OOM” with everything on cooldown. I hear the frustration in their voices and know it’s bugging them even more than it bugs me.

At the same time we can be very pleased with ourselves for the work we did on Malacrass last night. We tried a couple of different methods and finally hit a good groove on the kill order of his adds, and really settled into handling the various specials he throws out. We would have had him that one time if we hadn’t all run out of mana, healers and dps alike, all at the same time. So we know we can do it. It’s just a matter of mana.

For those that might miss it, Matticus over at World of Matticus does a “20 Questions” every week or so with other bloggers. This week, I was his unlucky victim choice. Thanks Matt for the questions and thanks Big Bear Butt for poking Matt every time you saw him to ask “Hey, you finished those questions for Nightravyn yet? Wait, where’d she go? Is she hiding from Matt and I again? Oh Nightravynnnnnn!”

Last night was ZA. The four animal bosses? No problem. We have them pretty well nailed down. Malacrass? …ow. Last night was our best attempt at him, and we only got him down to I think 31% before everything fell apart. It’s a very very very fine balance of gear, classes, and specs, and we’re having a bit of a struggle with it. Of course, it didn’t help that at one point, I was feared then knocked out of the room, only to find myself… elsewhere. According to the map, I was in Malacrass’s room, with everyone running around me. According to what I saw on the screen, I was standing in a nice green field that looked like it was part of ZA, might even be Malacrass’s area if you took his building away. I couldn’t see anyone, no one could target me, but boy did those shadow bolts find me. I took pics that I’ll post later tonight.

So last night was very “ow” and we’re not real sure what we can do differently. People were going to be doing more research and seeing what they could find out. Right now, all I know is that my head hurts from thinking and I hate Malacrass.

What is raid hangover? Well, for me, it’s sitting at work the morning after a raid, about to fall asleep, not mentally “here”, the attention span of a mayfly and a slight headache. While the getting to this point may have been fun, I certainly feel as though I’m paying for it now. :;sigh::

Last night was the ZA run. Normally this is the Learning Team running it, except that part of the Learning Team had to bail/didn’t show/resigned from the team. We ended up being quite a few people short, and convinced/bribed some guildies who hadn’t been in ZA before to come with. Thankfully everything went pretty well and even tho we got started late, we managed to get through all 4 animal bosses. Sadly, we had a bit of bad luck with the Eagle boss and weren’t able to take him down within the timer. We did get the Bear boss down in the timer, though, and got tank shoulders out of the chest (quit swearing, Boyfriend, you’ll get them next time).

Tonight is offnight and the offnight raid is an appetizer of ZG fish boss, with an entree of Kara. I’ll be there for the ZG part if I’m not accidentally passed out on the couch, but no Kara for me tonight. Instead, I’ll pick up with Kara on Sunday night. Mmm badges.

ZA was good last night, with us getting our second kill of the 4 animal bosses in one sitting and a couple shots at Malacrass before having to call it a night. I was very pleased when the Bear boss took pity on me and dropped the Pauldrons of Primal Fury finally. The Hunter Class Lead already had them, so it was my turn to snap them up. When I log in tonight, I’ll be frantically trying to get some daily quests done so I can afford to get them gemmed and glyphed. Yep, I’m that broke. -.- And since the usual MA was out last night, I got selected for MA target duties. I don’t normally MA. I think I can count on one hand the times that I’ve MA’d. I can say two things tho: 1. I don’t think I did too badly except for once or twice having trouble targeting the next mob (%@$#%#$ camera and trees) and 2. it certainly took my mind off the upset stomach from dinner.

The other thing going on tonight (other than me trying to farm desperately needed money) is doing something I never had the chance to do before TBC came out: step into Naxxramas. Yep, that’s right. The guild is going to Naxx to check things out before the next expansion changes it. A good chunk of the guild had been there before the expansion, but there’s quite a few of us that haven’t been, whether from not getting attuned, to not being of a level, or like in my case, just simply not having the time to raid at that point. I’m looking forward to it, and it should be interesting to see it now and then see it post expansion. Fun fun!

The guild’s been learning ZA since it came out, two nights a week for two hours at a time. Last week it was decided to ramp it up to one 4 hour stretch on one night so we can start working on getting the 4 animal bosses down in a night. Last night was the first night for the new schedule and it was a little… off.

Nothing big stood out, at least not to me. I noticed that my dps wasn’t up where it had been in previous days, which was odd, since I’d not changed anything. It wasn’t even a difference in 25-man raid buff and 10-man raid buff. I compared to previous ZA runs and it was lacking. So mark that one up to puzzlement. Then we missed the first boss timer. Crap, but we’ll keep going. Boss 2, down after a bit of a struggle and people starting to make confused mutters about “wth?” things. Then Boss 3, the Lynx boss… oh gods.

I’d been there for the first night they tackled him, which turned into the first night we took him down. We’d handled the transitions like pros, everyone “got” the fight, and everyone was thrilled we’d killed him. But last night, we just couldn’t keep the tanks alive. We’d gotten him to 25-30% at one point when in the blink of an eye, both tanks were dead. Wipe again.

Eventually we did kill him, then went to the Dragonhawk boss. We got close a couple of times at taking him down, but no go. ::sigh:: Most of the group was talking about going back Sunday to see about taking him down and trying the next boss. I wish I could go, but events outside the game have claimed me for that day. Ah well. There’s next week. At least for the rest of the team. Next Thursday, I’ll be packing to head out of town for the weekend. I find it amusing that I now think of “oh man, I’ll be missing this raid and that raid and oh man I hope that they don’t down a new boss!” when I have to leave town. Ah raid addiction…

My raiding has been cranked up. On my hunter, I’ve been part of the core of the 25-man team that raids 3 times a week. And I’ve been running Kara on my mage two nights a week. Well I can add 2 more nights of raids to the list, since my hunter was added to the ZA learning team last night.

In the short term, this is probably meaning that I’ll cut back on the Kara raids with my mage. I need a night off from raiding to recover, at least with my real life schedule being what it is right now. And for some reason, I’m not really “feeling” my mage at the moment. I think I’m waiting for the next patch to come out so I can respec. She’s frost right now, but I’m seriously thinking of respecing her to something without having to rely on the water elemental. So for now, she’s somewhat on the back burner. it helps that I’ve found my groove with Siana again. Every so often, I just get burned out on Siana. Something goes wrong for days or weeks, and I just can’t get into that nice killing groove. After a while of playing around with an alt, I get back into the swing of things with Siana again, and all is right in the universe.

Last night was one of those “all is right” nights. I got pulled to ZA while in a rather quiet mood. Lack of sleep recently wasn’t making me too chatty, but I was more than ready to go into ZA. We smashed through the bear boss brilliantly and beat the timer on him. We stumbled a bit with a new strat for the eagle boss, and eventually gave up on the timer on him, but I think we have the strat down on him now. Should be interesting to see how we do next week.

Tonight, sadly, is no raid for me. Too much work, long hours, and no idea when I’ll be getting home, other than close to or after raid starts. Bah, I say, Bah!

Back when 2.3 was on the PTR, I went into ZA with other guildies to start to learn the fights. We had a blast, but I figured that when 2.3 was released, I’d be shuffled out of the group in favor of other members, ones with more seniority. I was okay with it, but sighed and wished that I was going to be going with them. The plan was (and is) they’d have a core team go in, learn the fights, then shuffle people in and out. We’ve done it like that previously with good success.

Monday night, one of the two nights they do the ZA learning runs, I was on my pally, trying to collect Sunken Temple prereq quests and trying to not swear while doing it. Personally, I hate the Bloodpetal quest in Un’Goro. The mobs constantly spam poison, which yes I can cleanse but i find it annoying, the drop rate sucks, and then there’s the devilsaurs. Evil evil evil. I had finished that and was headed to the Feathermoon camp in Feralas to get the flight point and more quests there when I got a poke from The Boyfriend, who is on the learning team (since he’s pretty much the MT for the guild). One of the regular DPSers has dropped from the team from burnout. Did I want to go to ZA? HELL YES!

So I finally got to go back into ZA, remind people that I DID know the bear fight, yes I know where the quest bit is but I was pulled there so fast I didn’t have a chance to grab the quest on the outside, and in general woot mayhem! After the bear boss, we moved on to the Lynx, which they hadn’t killed before. Yey for laptops, me checking sites fast, and being able to contribute to “ooo kill that part of trash first” knowledge. (I r Google queen.) I was there for a guild first kill again, which gave me the warm fuzzies. Then running to the eagle boss since we had time, we downed him too. First time they’ve killed 3 bosses in one night in ZA. Then to cap off the night of the happies, the Guild Leader tells me thanks for coming and “great job tonight, Sia!” Commence purring on my side.

No, no loot other than badges. But I don’t mind. I got to go to new content. I did good with little to no prep time. I didn’t bork the raid. I got an “atta girl.” That’s enough for me. Now to spend Thursday night lurking around on Siana to see if I get to go back and play in ZA again. Man I hope so…