What happens?

I'm going through a difficult phase right now. Maybe some background first.

1. I'm in a crunch phase in my day job currently. Which means I have shitloads of stuff to do and I'm usually staying longer at work, mostly way beyond the time our raid starts. Except on our raiding days, which means I need to work even longer on non-raiding days.

2. The changes to raids in Cataclysm have been announced by Blizzard. I organize and attend 25 men raids mainly because we started as a 40 men raid community, developed to a 25 men raid guild and in the end it has always been that way. I do also feel that 10 mens are more fun. In a way that as an above average player (who I consider myself to be) the influence on a positive outcome of any given fight is bigger in 10 men raids compared to 25 mens. Or to rephrase it: My skill in playing my class is much less significant or relevant in 25 men raids than it is in 10 men raids. To the point that it doesn't actually matter if I play well, we'll still wipe. This has been enforced lately by our Lichking evenings.

3. We're working on the Lichking currently. To make some noticable progress we would need to continue one lockout for a few weeks working only on this encounter but we can't do that just yet, because we still want to farm more equipment for a few weeks. That in itself wouldn't actually be a problem but it seems we're getting worse each week. Last lockout we wiped on Putricide for half an evening. I attribute that to all the guest players in the raid in order to get the raid filled as well as the farm status attitude we're showing lately. And probably to the decreasing quality of raid leading caused by all the factors above.

I severely lack the motivation to raid, not to mention to lead the raid. I don't want to do the 25 men raids but I do them, because we still don't have another full time raid leader, I don't have the time for our 10 men raids because I do the 25 men raids. Burnout...

With the changes in raiding I have the secret vision of a 10 men raiding guild, consisting of the very core of our current raid guild. Most of them know each other since the 40 men raiding times and also know each other in real life. Those are the people that keep me playing WoW in the first place. But what would happen to the rest of the guild? Would the people I intended to be in the "new" guild actually agree to this vision?

Mr. Menethil himself

We had our first full night of progression on the Lichking fight. And I can say in all honesty that this fight rocks.

I can see the fun and exitement to be had when jumping around trying to avoid the black seas of death, killing valkyrs and now and then throwing an arrow at the Lichking himself. In the second phase, that is. We haven't seen anything further.

But I will also say: This fight sucks balls. I can clearly see the frustration when the same raid members keep standing in the puddles. Or the valkyrs drop raid members to death while still being at 70% health. Especially the second point will give us a hard time. It's the same reason we got stuck at the twin valkyrs in ToGC. Our raid is not able to cope with quick target changes. And I'm seriously clueless how to improve it.

What I've done so far is trying to get through that phase as fast as possible by hitting heroism at the beginning and only targetting one valkyr for the whole raid to kill. It still almost reaches the edge. By sacrificing two raid members we're at least able to save one other. I hope after a few hours of training we'll be able to maybe kill two valkyrs simultaneously.

There are strategies and positionings out there, where the valkyrs fly a similar trajectory. This could improve the valkyrs handling but it will thoroughly interfere with the puddle handling. This fight really has certain Archimonde qualities. I do expect that we will expand our ICC lockout at one point to have some serious training on it.

In which my paladin gets beaten up

Metaphorically speaking. You might or might not remember my paladin twink? He's a tank ultimately. He's level 55 now and slowly growing.

There was a time around level 51 when all I kept getting was the lower part of BRD which can be finished in like half the duration of a paladin blessing. Doing 10 times BRD just to level up once would probably have hurt my enthusiasm severely if it wasn't for teh "Eat this" spell, Avenger's Shield. My, I love this spell.

Right now I'm doing full BRD runs almost every time I zone in. Which takes some time to get used to. I need to account for at least one hour which prevents fast after-raid instances almost entirely. So the questing part increases. Starting the Plaguelands right now which will be interesting. I never had an horde character at this level.

I'm currently looking forward to Scholomance and Stratholme. Oh the memories.

When writing about pugs I'm well aware I should focus more on stories about noobs and idiots instead of dull progression reports. Because, let's face it, it's what entertains me the most as well, heh. But sadly I'm really bad at keeping bad experiences in mind to write about it later. Probably some sort of defense mechanism? However I have one good story to tell.

It happened in a pug with my hunter. The paladin healer (I suddenly see paladin connections everywhere now. Considering that 16% of all level 80 characters are paladins currently and I reckon it's worse on lower levels, it's no wonder.) was from my server, which I only noticed after he whispered me afterwards to apologize for the only wipe we had. And it wasn't his fault at all but the tank running to far ahead. He asked me if I would like to join another pug with him so he can prove that he's "not totally unskilled" as a healer. This really made me smile.

PS: Ich hab schon länger überlegt, ob es sich lohnt, den Blog auf Englisch anstatt meiner Muttersprache zu schreiben. Ich lese viele englische Blogs. Ich arbeite in einer englischsprachigen Firma. Zum Leidwesen meiner Gildenmitglieder fallen mir teilweise im Raid nur die englischen Entsprechungen für simple Alltagsworte ein. Ist wahrscheinlich nur eine logische Konsequenz. Und ich habe bei diesem Schritt auch prominente Vorbilder :)

PPS: Oh and thank you Vidyala, you commenting here convinced me to do it :)

Das ist eine Ex-Sindragosa!

Blizzard hat uns mal wieder unter die Arme gegriffen. Am Anfang hatte ich ja noch meine Zweifel, ob das mit den ansteigenden Buffs wirklich so eine gute Idee sein würde, aber inzwischen liebe ich ihn.

Wir haben Sindragosa erlegt. Letztendlich hätten wir es wahrscheinlich auch ohne 10% geschafft, aber wirklich, der Buff macht es so viel einfacher, den Kampf zu lernen. Speziell die 10% mehr Heilung reißen wirklich einiges.

Und eine kleine Änderung in der Eisblockaufstellung in Phase 2 war wichtig, glaub ich. Vorher hatten wir keine Versuche besser als 24%. Der erste Versuch mit der neuen Aufstellung war 20%.

Ich hab den Tipp von Marks-365. Der Raid stellt sich auf einen Fleck, Eisblock eins rennt nach links, 15m aus der Gruppe raus. Sobald der Eisblock steht, alle rüber und bis auf die Maintankheiler hinter den Eisblock. Eisblock zwei rennt 15m nach rechts auf die alte Raidposition. Wenn der Eisblock steht, alle nach rechts hinter diesen Eisblock. Nahkämpfer auf die Eisblöcke, Fernkämpfer auf Sindragosa. Jeder Damagedealer hat die Pflicht, den Stack zu resetten sobald er die Möglichkeit dazu hat. Das solange wiederholen, bis der Drache im Dreck liegt.

Ist irgendwie deutlich einfacher als unsere alte Strategie. Die war relativ kompliziert. Ich hab sie inzwischen verdrängt, so kompliziert war sie.