L2Math!

The statement that plate tanking pieces drop off of Curator, Attumen, or a shield from Nightbane is a cruel lie. Tuesday the Kara group I am in did a clear from Attumen through Prince. We left Nightbane, Illhoof, and Netherspite for Wednesday, which we went back and did. So a full Kara clear and no loot but a dps ring for me, which I only took because no one else wanted it. I’m sitting at 60 badges right now, I am capable of going and buying a shield but what I really want to use my badges for is the tanking legs then a cape.

Normally in previous posts I would go on a rant and say mean and hurtful things which were probably unfair to these bosses and possibly hurt their feelings because they didn’t drop my loot. I’m going to rise above that this week, stay calm, stay optimistic that next week they will drop my loot, and not say anything harsh about my good friends Attumen ,Curator , and Nightbane…..but…F$*k you creators of AtlasLoot, leading me onto to believe that these drops have a 15% drop rate let alone even exist. I think one of you bastards forgot a period somewhere and it’s supposed to be .15%. The calculations on that mod can kiss my beanbag, there is no way they are correct. If the guy who wrote Atlasloots is reading this, drop me a line, I’ll find you a math tutor. You all should be Tbagged for all eternity for the frustration you have caused millions of wow players with your blatently false calculations. Enjoy Hell F*$kers.
*Yes I realize these drops all do really exists and yes I’m sure the drop rate is spot on I’m just venting and being an ass, Atlasloots is a kickass mod that I wouldn’t ever get rid of and i really appreciate the work those guys did to provide a free mod like that.*

Tonight we plan to raid on Mag which will be really fun and I’m looking forward to it. If we happen to down him then awesome, if not I want to see him just for the experience to say I have been there. At some point though I hope we pick a boss and focus on him till he is dead, much the same thing we did with Gruul. I don’t even care which boss the guild picks, just to have another boss kill notch in my belt would be great.

We had two of our highest dps’ers in the guild leave the other day because we didn’t raid enough, the mage who left I was sad to see go because he really kicked a lot of ass and was an all around nice guy. With them leaving it got me thinking of my thoughts on if we raid enough. Right now we do 1 night of Gruul and then 1 night of progression raiding whether it be Lurker, Void Reaver, or now Mag. That’s only 2 nights a week of 25 man raiding. Although I have to factor in 2 nights for Kara badge farming (it’s certainly not loot farming these days /grumble), and then 2 nights for ZA. 6 days a week of raiding is more than enough for me, it actually leaves me with not enough free time as it is. So Id rather not see us picking up another raid night, I’m happy right where we are. Maybe if we learn the Mag fight fairly easy we could wrap him up with HKM and Gruul in one night as other raiding guilds have done, since they are both pretty short instances. Leaving us still with 1 night for a 25 man progression night. So anyways while I hate to see these guys go I hope we don’t pick up more nights of 25 man raiding, at least not until ZA has been cleared.

Loot Train pushes onward

The loot train chugged onwards this week which made me pitch a happy tent. For starters I grabbed my season 3 helm. I needed a new pvp helm badly, since the helm I was using before was some blue POS with no resilience. Illhoof dropped a nice mace that I will use as an offhand when grinding, and the ZA bear boss dropped some new tanking boots which were a really nice upgrade with loads more stamina. Here are all three items.

Friday evening Oslo (beast hunter), Dirty (resto druid), and I (arms warrior at the time) decided to try our luck in 3v3 arena. Our luck was not good. We went 3-7 for the night, getting owned pretty hardcore in several matches. What sucks about week 1 of a new season is that everyone is set back to a 1500 rating, 80% of the teams we faced totally out geared us. I was on the verge of getting pissed off but my other 2 team mates kept reminding me that it’s a gear issue and we really shouldn’t even be playing teams like this yet. I wasn’t getting mad at my teammates; I was just getting mad at losing. I hate to lose. I held my frustration in check, took the lumps, and we’ll get about 300 arena points for this week’s games. *Off wow topic for a second* Speaking about how much I hate to lose, yesterday (Sunday) I had some family/ friends out. They brought with them Mario Olympics, a newish game for the Wii system. I have a Wii but I really never play it, I just bought one because everyone else wanted one. My little cousins are between 7-12 years old, and wanted to play me. I’m 27 and grown up enough to realize that even if I could beat them in a game I should let them win and laugh and have a good time with it…..pffft F$*k that, I beat their asses and it was amazing fun. Who can beat me playing the crocodile character (who isn’t even that fast ill point out) in track and field? No one is the answer. I didn’t only kick ass on the little kids, I had friends my age over that I smoked also. I didn’t take the gold medal in every single event but the ones I took silver in were the gay events (such as the trampoline or dream racing) that I didn’t want to win anyways (That’s not true, obviously I wanted to win every one this is just my way of dealing with it)… Anyways back to wow. I can’t express how happy I am at the latest changes to devastate. As a prot warrior I can effectively grind for money now. I can even grind better as prot than I can when I’m spec’d for arms pvp. This works out nicely since I’m prot 5-6 days per week. The new offhanded weapon helps with my grinding, that’s the reason I rolled for it (I was the only one who wanted it anyways). Toss on dps gear, duel wield, spam devastate and execute, then move onto the next mob. It doesn’t work as well as a beast master hunter but it gets the job done much better. Last night we killed Gruul again, I had to deal with some lag issues which always sucks my balls but HKM and Gruul went down on one shot each again. It’s amazing that such a short time ago we were wiping endlessly, now the guild makes it look like cake. I’d hate to think that everyone is so focused on not screwing up and killing Gruul because I won’t be their friend any more but that’s probably the case. To lose a friend like me would be devastating, I am an amazing person..… Of course I’m being sarcastic I’m way better than an “amazing person” I’m like “Super Amazing to infinity + 1”, and even if someone did mess up id never hold it against them, my lag makes me goof up all the time.. … I’m just rambling now and not sure if I even know what the hell I’m talking about or being funny which is my intent so I’m going to just put this; Gruul and HKM down again on 1 shot, everyone rocks, and now I’m going to leave work I’m F*$king tired.

Lame ass drops

Ugh, week after week I kill the curator and he never drops the plate pants, same thing with Attumen and the bracers. I’m almost willing to bet I will have earned enough badges to just buy both tanking pieces before I ever see them drop. I had to take out my loot whore aggression somehow last night so when the group zoned out of Kara I snuck back up to curator, opened his metal helmed visor, and pissed in it. It was kind of funny, there were sparks flying everywhere. I still didn’t feel satisfied with that though so I went back downstairs and had an unholy union with Attumen’s dead horse while his undead eyes watched me. I felt better after that, but I did wish I had brought a towel, plate socks are not very good for cleaning up with. Anyways…(i kind of grossed myself out there actually)...I guess buying those 2 tanking pieces with badges isn’t that horrible of an idea since they are better anyways, minus the fact the leg graphic looks like sh#t.

Last night we stopped after curator and tonight I’m assuming we will finish the last half. At least that’s what I’m hoping, I really want to be done with Kara for the week and start focusing on some 25 man runs or at least killing Bear and Eagle in ZA. Group 1 has downed Eagle boss in ZA so now Group 2 has to catch them =).

Nothing else really to post about, I’m going to link up my pictures from SSC the other night because I forgot to bring them in. I think that place is really tight graphic wise, much cooler looking than the eye.

Hope "most" of you had a good holiday

Wow I hadn’t realized it’s been a week since my last post. I was off work a lot around the holiday so that’s why it’s been so long in between posts, speaking of that I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. No wait...I take that back, everyone except the 5v5 teams we played on Sunday, I hope your turkey was rancid and gave you massive bouts of diarrhea. Then I hope you realized you were out of toilet paper and had to drag your ass across the carpet like a dog with worms to get clean. Sunday our 5v5 got together and got our faces stomped, we went 3-7. I think our team was a little to “squishy”. It was me (Arms for arena), Aztk (Holy Pally), Luminati (Holy Priest), Faeye (Shadow Priest), and Dirty (Feral druid). It seems like every team we would play we were facing extremely well geared guys, most of the time we lost we were only losing 9-12 points. The 5v5 team still has not been able to get a solid group going yet, I don’t think we have played 2 weeks in a row where it was the same 5 guys. I don’t think were ever gonna “click” if we’re always finding someone new to take a spot. Hopefully that changes soon, especially since the new season starts today.

On the PVE home front I was able to get my breast plate from Nightbane! After killing him 100 times he finally dropped something for me, now I just need his shield. Since everything resets today it’s probably going to be a Kara badge night, unless a 25 man run is tossed together. As far as 25 man raids go over the weekend we Killed High King Mulgar and Gruul, both were one shotted but neither dropped anything I could use. Even though i receieved no loot it was still fun just going in there and killing them so easily when at first it seemed like Gruul was an impossible boss because we wiped over and over and over. Last night our guild gave Lurker a shot. The trash in SSC seemed to be much easier than the trash in TK, so that was a nice surprise. We were never able to kill lurker, I think people were getting hit on the spout and we also had trouble on the adds. Our last attempt was our best though, we got through the spouts okay and eventually killed the adds but didn’t have enough people left alive to kill lurker. We were in there with only 5 healers, I hear that you are supposed to have 7-8 maybe that would have made the difference?

This Thursday we have a Mag attempt planned. Hopefully I get a spot in the raid and get to check him out, I’m be pretty excited to see him for the first time. I’m totally down for checking out all the bosses and stuff but I hope eventually we go back to focusing on just 1 boss at a time. We had VoidReaver down to 48%, if I had to pick the next raid id say we go give him some more shots since it seems like we were finally learning him. It doesn’t matter who we kill next I love learning new boss fights, I just like to see someone get rewarded at the end of the kill. Preferably “Someone” meaning me. To get that first kill though I think we just need to stick to our guns and keep wiping on one boss over and over until everyone finally gets the hang of it. At least that’s my experience from learning the bosses in BWL,AQ40, and even from recent raids,look at how many times we wiped on Gruul. Wipe + wipe + wipe + sleep + wipe + wipe + wipe = boss kill.

Zombie

Ugh, I am starting to turn into quite the zombie. Last two weeks I have been staying up way to late, last night was no different. Started out the night with a great Gruuls run, full clear with a one shot on each boss. That was the first one night Gruul clear we have had as a guild, it was awesome and now that we have set that bar we can hopefully always clear it that quickly. In my previous post I had stated how much I need new pants, I’m still using blue Felsteel leggings and those have gotta go. Gruul ended up dropping double t4 warrior, druid, priest tokens so I was pumped. I’m not sure if our MKP has been implemented yet or not but both tokens went straight to rolls. I’m not sure which F*$ker at Blizzard didn’t get the memo but I am supposed to win every roll ALWAYS. Both tokens went to druids so Grats to those guys. I hope they realize though that since you took my lootz I’m going to do your sisters in front of a camera and post it all over the internet as payback. Actually that’s a little harsh, Gruul also dropped some dps plate gloves which no one wanted so I picked them up, since I didn’t walk away empty handed I’ll just do your sisters but leave it off the internet. Our Gruul’s run was the tits and I’m really happy I didn’t miss it, can’t wait to go again.

After the Gruuls run was finished I had to make sure I got in my arena games for the week. Me, Slymongoose, and Honorshammer/Dirty(taking turns) went 6-4 last night in our 3v3’s. I got to try out my new axe and I was pleasantly surprised. It hits like a truck on clothies. After our 3v3’s were over I got whispers from my 5v5 team asking if we could get together and get those games in as well. I was happy to do them , I’m an arena junkie any chance for arenas and I’m all over it. Our setup was Arms Warrior(me), Honorshammer(prot pally), Faeye(Shadow Priest), Aztk(Holy Pally), and Slymongoose(marks hunter). We went 7-3 last night which I thought was really good as we didn’t do any skirmish matches and really have not ever played together as a 5v5 before. I should be carrying about 2700 arena points over into season three next week, depending on how much gear has rating requirements I might be sporting the season three arnea helm. I talked to Dirty this morning and told him he missed the 5v5’s because he went to bed early. Dirty was one of the druids who won the t4 pants over me earlier in the night, it’s a shame he missed out on his 5v5 arena points……

I had every intention of going to bed after our 5v5 games because it was already late and I was so tired I couldn’t hardly keep my eyes open. That’s when Luminati asked me if I wanted to go for another shot at Nightbane. Nightbane has two pieces of gear that I really need so how could I pass up on that? Who needs sleep anyways, I can nap at work. I have been running Kara with group 2 lately and we have been tearing every boss up except for Nightbane, he has been a thorn in our side for a long time. Last night Kara was all clear except for him so we formed a group and gave him a shot. There was only one priest in the group last night so even though he kept his fear ward up on me when he could I still had to stance dance a lot. I hate to stance dance it is such a pain in my ass. I already have to make sure I have max threat, keep shield block up constantly, burn my trinkets on cool down, consume healthstones-pots-last stand-shield wall when needed, but to add on the fact of stance dancing is a pain. Anyways I got through my job and the dps/ healers rocked the house last night giving group 2 their first kill. Still no luck on my shield or chest piece, Nightbane is a stingy As$hole. We run Kara again tonight so I’m hoping I can get one of my much needed pieces this week.

Skill > Gear --- I dunno about that

I often hear people say Skill > Gear. I’m starting to think that’s a situational statement, during a normal boss fight you can have a great (play skill) mage in greens VS an average mage in all epics and it’s my belief that the average player would throw out more dps. I feel like Skill > Gear comes into play more in PVP than PVE. True there are some PVE fights where you have a lot of running around/placement, class specific actions, etc but in most cases I think most boss fights come down to a tank/spank strategy with namely one or two special things you have to watch out for which an average player can handle. The reason I’m even posting about gear is my damage taken compared to Lanorah and Honors on our Void Reaver attempt the other night. I was working on a post comparing the stats but Honors beat me to it, it’s a good post found here. Basically what it says though is that I took 7% more damage than honors and 9% more than Lanorah over all the boss fights. In this post I’m just going to comment on the last boss fight because that’s where I think I “tried the hardest”. Right from the beginning of that fight I ran out and had initial agro (more from my hunters misdirect than anything I did I think). Since I was up first and it was also our last attempt of the night I did everything I could possibly do to mitigate as much damage as possible while keeping up my threat. I guess what I’m pointing out here is that even though I tried my hardest, when I was hit I took more damage than honors and even though I popped my trinkets the second they were up I didn’t dodge as much as Lanorah. I’m pretty sure there was no different spell rotation or other player action I could have done to make a noticeable difference. That leaves me with nothing to fall back on except it’s the gear. I am now the least geared tank of the three of us, and it’s starting to show with me taking 9% more damage than our main MT. I have really stepped up my effort to improve my gear so hopefully I can get in on another hot streak in my next couple of runs. Also the badges have been raining down on me so as soon as I have 40 I’ll be buying the shield block trinket, then after that a shield, chest piece, or leg piece depending on what is needed the most. If I haven’t gotten lucky with drops then after I replace my trinket my shield is my main sore spot. I have tried every run a hundred times to get a better one, I just have no luck with a new shield. I should have just worked on my rep or badges and gotten an epic one a long time ago. Right now my shield works about as good as a stack of porn magazines strapped to my arm. Blizzard should change the graphic so people don’t get confused thinking it’s a real shield.

Here is the stats from our last attempt where I lived the longest(I didnt live as long as honors or lanorah or take as many hits so keep that in mind), I think I made a respectable showing of myself but still I didn’t do as well as my fellow warrior Lanorah.

Name Avg Hit Avg Crushing Parry % Dodge % Total boss missed % Dmg Mitigated Raydz: 3660 2% 5208 22% 22% 58.7% 6.1% Lanorah: 3667 2% 5903 24% 22% 62.3% 9.8% Honors: 3612 5% 5722 12% 18% 45.39% 5.9%

Raydz: Lanorah: Honors: Keep in mind though that this is just the last boss fight, overall I didn’t do as well as either tanks. Realistically I’m probably missing some key bit of information and I didn’t do as well as honors either on the last attempt. I’m really hoping once I get the new gear these numbers improve elevating me to thier mitigation levels, because if they don’t that means it’s some action im inadvertantly doing. I don’t want to face the reality of being a shitty tank because then I’ll have to get all depressed, move into my parent’s basement, masturbate to my porn shield while bawling like a baby, and no one wants that. Another observation concerning gear is that in our ZA group last night we kept fumbling with the bear boss. I feel like I can say the problems we had last night came 100% from the gear some guys were using. Even though these guys played their ass off their gear was less than what the instance needed and it showed, so now when I hear Skill > Gear, I don’t know if I always agree with that. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to invite someone to ZA because of their gear, who am I to tell someone no, but it does mean that the rest of the group might have someone else’s short comings to pick up and i dont know if it's fair to them either.

Group 2 Bear Boss Down

Last night I started forming up group 2 for ZA, I wanted that damn bear boss dead so bad I think I was giving myself a complex. First and foremost I want to say thank you to Celoria for helping group 2 out with all the potions! I think I said thank you 10x in game but you really unloaded a lot to help the group, so I thought you deserved another big THANK YOU! I was able to stock up our healers and casters with mana pots, health pots for tanks, and feed everyone helpful foodstuffs. It made a huge difference last night, if you ever need anything from me please just ask!
That being said, after grouping up we zone in and start killing trash up to Bear boss. I forgot to time our trash killing, I won’t forget next time because I want to get an idea of how we are going to do on the “timed” run. We killed the bear on the second attempt. He went down extremely smooth and easy, when I think back to yesterday it’s like… “what the hell was our problem?”. He dropped some lame ass claw that no one really needed which was kind of a bummer, but at least we get to say 1 boss down!
After killing the bear boss we cleared to the eagle boss. The trash on the way to eagle couldn’t be any easier, so that was a pleasant surprise. The bear rider trash on the first boss makes the eagle’s trash mobs look like a joke. The eagle himself on the other hand…his storm is a pain in the ass, and so are his damn bird spawns. We attempted him 4x before the group decided they wanted to jump into Kara for some badges. Our best attempt we got him to 48% I think. Every attempt though we improved significantly and the next time we go in there he will probably die. There is a lot of fun to learning a boss fight where there really is no help from strategies guides or from people who have been there before, makes the boss kill more rewarding in my opinion. ZA so far Bear boss dead – Eagle 50%
So now It’s time to point out what a ninja I am…again…. Two weeks ago in Kara the raid leader forgot to put it on ML on Moroes. Two loot windows pop up on my screen, I click greed on both of them. I just don’t pay attention to that shit, I never look to see what it is, I never need any of that stuff so I just greed, it’s almost like a habit now. I hear a lot of groans on vent and I realize what I did. Everyone else had passed on the loot and I greeded so therefore I got them. I felt like an ass that entire run and apologized over and over, honestly that stuff bugs me when I f*&k up someone else’s loot. Low and behold I inadvertently do it again last night. The raid leader forgot to ML on Attumen, two purples flash up on my screen but this time everyone is yelling in vent for me to pass. Ever since I did that in Kara two weeks ago it’s been forged into a joke about me being stealing every ones epics, so through all the joking everyone actually knew to yell at me to pass. Even if they hadn’t of yelled I learned my lesson and would have passed anyways, which I did. So everyone passes and people start clicking on the boss to get their badge, I did as well. What I didn’t realize is that I had the “loot all items” clicked on in my interface, so when I click on the boss it asks “would you like to bind this item to you” of course I would it’s my badge,I clicked yes. Well it gave me some bracers that were supposed to go to a paladin. I was so angry at myself I was cussing up a storm in vent, I hope I didn’t upset anyone’s delicate ears. So there I was again apologizing to someone because I stole their loot. Ugh ugh ugh, I feel so bad when I do something stupid like that. Basically I guess this whole last section is just a long apology to the paladin I stole the loot from =/ I think tonight were hitting up the eye again for another shot at void reaver, im looking forward to it...as long as its on Master Loot.