Finally Some New Tanking Upgrades

It’s been a busy week for me at work so I apologize I have not posted anything new in a while. Last week our Nightbane kill finally produced a shield upgrade for me. This was a nice surprise since I had pretty much just given up on it. I slapped a stamina enchant on it and now I have a better shield and not to mention its much cooler looking.

After our Kara run was finished this left me with exactly 75 badges so I went and bought my leg plate upgrade. This was a much needed upgrade as well and I couldn’t be happier with the stamina these things pack. I would rather have my old leg plate graphic back though; I am not a fan of the whole ZA troll/skull/witch doctor graphic. Which I have commented on before.

More good news is that Friday we zoned into SSC and smacked Hydross with a 1 shot. It was snowing its balls off so half way through the Hydross fight I got disconnected but was able to quickly log back in and resume my roll of holding adds. My ISP is much better than it was in regards to handling weather conditions (I used to be offline for a whole day when it would rain) but it did lag me a bit on Friday. A defense trinket dropped off Hydross which I tossed my MKP (guilds way of saying DKP) at it along with Honorshammer but of course with my luck lately I lost the roll. I like Honor’s a lot so it’s a shame I have to kill him soon, if you enjoy his blog I suggest you read up on it while you can. After the Hydross kill we continued to try to kill Lurker. Despite starting the raid about 1.5 hours late the “raid” as a whole had good energy which was only boosted after a 1 shot on Hydross. We cleared trash to Lurker with no wipes and even got a druid an epic tanking staff and an epic totem for one of our shamans, which was pretty cool. Once we got down to Lurker is when everything turned to sh*t, sh*t meaning people had to start logging, people were going afk, people were jacking around in game and on vent. Any raid momentum we had was quickly lost. We got stuck in a rut of 25 minutes in between attempts because we were replacing people. We kept having to wait for people to fly in and get raid ready because others had left. While we were waiting on these people it’s my thought we should keep giving the boss “learning” attempts even if we only have 23 or 24 people in the raid instead of waiting on others because everyone starts getting lazy and wanting to leave. After waiting so long I feel like the attempts we did get in were only half assed and when a raid slows down like we did maybe it should just be called. Which I hate saying because I think most of you know I’ll wipe on a boss all night for the sake of progression, but if we’re at the point where a lot of people are not really trying it seems like a waste. I do want to finish my SSC thoughts positively though the Hydross kill was handled skillfully as if we have been killing him for months and I’m glad I was there for it hopefully next time we carry that momentum onto Lurker. While writing this I flipped over to my guild site to check our forums and catch up on anything I might have missed over the weekend. Seems the other main Kara group that runs in our guild has challenged my group to a race with a bet of 200g to the group who can clear the fastest. I’m down to give that a shot, even though the other group leader has cleverly “reserved” all the top DPS for his team, which means…they are really gonna be bitter when my group wins. *Directed at Raistlan who started the bet* I guess Raistilan only thinks they can win if they go in with a stacked deck of all the top geared dps? =P. Soon I’ll let you guys know by how big of a time gap we won by, and if by some horrific chance we lose then I’ll let you guys know how bad they cheated. Also while I was on my guild forums I was looking at the “MKP/DKP” chart. Our MKP cap is at “5” which is what I have. I have gone on all our raids but 1(missed due to weather) so even though I have gone to 16 raids I’m still sitting at “5” points and still having never received 25 man loot since switching to a “DKP” system. Since our cap is so low this gives the chance for someone to raid 5 times and be on equal ground to roll against me for an item. This sucks for me, one of the other warriors has rolled against me twice now and won both times and it’s very possible that by the time another item I want drops he could be back at his 5 cap and possibly out roll me again like he did the first two times. I had commented before on how the “5” cap will not function correctly “mathematically” when I typed it up though I just didn’t realize I’d be the one getting bit in the ass. “The second problem is our dkp cap is very low so I’m foreseeing most loot going to rolls. With people going to rolls I feel like we’re diluting the true value of a dkp system. All the people who have crappy rolls will be losing dkp all the time, and with a low dkp cap they will never make significant dkp gains to keep them from always competing with rolls on loot. It’s almost like we don’t need a dkp system if we’re going to do it this way because all it’s doing is going back to rolls anyways.” I feel what would work best “MKP” wise for our guild is to just take the cap off then as an item someone wants drops they can just “buy” the item with however many points they want to put toward it. Such as I would have 16 points right now instead of 5, if something drops and I want to spend 16 points on a new neckpiece then so be it. I feel like this rewards items to the people who raid the most OR donate the most to the guild to help with potions and repair bills. I do see a problem with someone donating thousands of dollars to the guild to “buy” points but that’s either my problem which means I have to farm more and donate or “donation MKP” would need to be regulated in some way. And finally on a sad note we had some guild drama this weekend resulting in the loss of several good players. I kinda got the “down and dirty” of why people left and I have no idea who is right or wrong and to be honest I don’t really care “why” all the drama started. What sucks is that two of the nicest dudes on “WoW” I have ever met left the guild along with some others. I’m really hoping this all blows over and they come back even though that is looking pretty grim. Drama can suck my root. Tonight I hope we go in and Wipe out Gruul and Mag since we havn’t done that yet this week and it would be a big bummer to miss out on free loot. Maybe I’ll win a roll for Gruul’s shield or Mag’s chestpiece if they drop.