Magmaw 10 Man Raid Tonight

Tonight we will be attempting Magmaw 10 man in Blackwing Descent. We tried it last weekend and almost got him down but ran out of time because we attempted Bastion of Twilight 10 man first and that ate up over an hour of our time.

We schedule 2 hours for our raids, 10 am until noon server time on Saturday which is 7-9 pm Friday for me. We have not had any luck at all on the first boss of BoT, after a couple attempts, and hopefully will not attempt it again until we have our core raid team together and have done a couple other raid bosses to get used to working together. We have also scheduled Baradin Hold in the past but that is dependent on the Alliance having control of the hold and that has not always been the case in the past. That is a one boss raid and would be nice to get out of the way but like I said, it is dependent on the Alliance having control of Baradin Hold.

Hopefully we will have a full 10 man raid group ready and waiting and can head right over there at 10:00 am server time to start our raid. Some of the problems we have encountered in the past are people signing up and not showing up on time if at all. People showing up in PvP gear. People not chanted or gemmed correctly or missing glyphs. I believe we have those people weeded/straightened out. I will update afterward how it went.

Random Daily Heroic's 4/6/11 - 4/7/11

My random daily heroic's for the last couple days, on my Druid Wranngar, were Lost City of the Tol'vir and Grim Batol.

There was a time when I used to think that Grim Batol was all but impossible, but now that groups are better geared it is not too bad with the exception of the third boss, Dragha Shadowburner. Dragha Shadowburner is still pretty tough on heroic difficulty. The main reason for this is the dragon breath attack he does while he is mounted on the dragon. He usually does this attack while he also has a fire elemental summoned and it is hard to get out of the dragon's breath and kill the elemental at the same time. If the elemental gets to someone it kills them in one shot when it explodes. It will also kill anyone standing near them. I have been killed quite a few times from going after the fire elemental to kill it only to have the person it is attached to stand there and let it run right up to them. We also had a Mage in our group today that ran up to the fire elemental when it was attached to him instead of running away. Not sure what that was about as a Mage is a ranged fighter. I think the hardest part of this boss strat is to get people to run from the fire elemental when it is attached to them. You would think it is just plain common sense to run from it but it seems very few people have common sense any more. If a group is going to fall apart in this dungeon, this boss is usually where it is going to happen.

Lost City of the Tol'vir is one of the easiest heroic's in my opinion. We usually breeze through that one without any major problems as long as the healer is somewhat decently geared. The last two bosses in Lost City can be a mana drain on a healer so it is best if they have good mana and good regen. I don't mind seeing this one come up for my daily at all, I look at it as an easy 70 valor points.

I am a little bit closer to getting a piece of valor gear and will keep plugging away every day for my valor points.

Daily Random Heroic Dungeon - 4/5/11

Today my daily random heroic dungeon, on my Druid Wranngar, was The Vortex Pinnacle. I ended up running this one twice on heroic through the random dungeon finder.

It was a very smooth run. I did it with a guild member who was on their Mage. My dps was great, it is getting better every day. Completing this earned me 70 valor points which I will be using to buy a piece of 359 gear when I have enough.

We had a really good group and everyone was pulling over 10k dps. Needless to say it went pretty quick, unlike my second run through there, but I will talk about that in a little bit. Everyone in the group was experienced running this instance on heroic so the group pulls, which can be a little tricky, went nice and smooth and the bosses went down fast.

After that I ended up getting Halls of Origination through the random dungeon finder. I did this on Wranngar again with the same guild member who was on a different toon. That went pretty quick too and I ended up getting exalted with Ramkahen while I was in there. One of the reasons this one went quick was the tank only wanted to do the bosses we had to do to complete it. He was only after his 70 valor points. One of the people, a Hunter, was in there for a specific drop off one of the last 4 bosses but the tank wanted to skip that boss. I reminded him that skipping bosses was not his decision alone to make, he was part of a 5 man group and it would be a shame for him to get kicked so close to the end and not get his 70 valor points. He saw the logic behind that and we did the boss the Hunter wanted to do. The Hunter got the item he was after so that worked out well. We went on to do the last boss and completed the instance.

Next I ended up back in The Vortex Pinnacle on Wranngar again. I was with the same guild member who was on yet another toon plus another guild member. The original guild member was healing this one. This run didn't go as smooth as the first run, not by a long shot. The tank was severely under geared, he had 128,000 health buffed. When I looked him up in the Armory I found he had an item level of 329 and was missing 6 glyphs, 8 enchants, one gem and his belt buckle. Basically he should not have been attempting to tank a heroic dungeon. I am a strong believer that 329 item level is too low for a tank or healer in a heroic dungeon. I didn't go into a heroic dungeon on Wranngar until I had a 340 item level because I didn't think my dps would be good enough. If there wasn't 3 of us from the same guild he probably would have been kicked.

Anyway the tank was pretty squishy and he died quite a few times. He died on almost every group pull and the last boss. How he made it through the other bosses is a mystery to me. I ended up switching to bear form and taking over the tanking when he died and that went quite well. I asked the healer if I was squishy and he said I wasn't half as squishy as the tank was lol. The tank died on the last boss because he didn't get into the grounding field.

I didn't get any more orbs today so maybe I will have better luck tomorrow. The orbs are the reason I ran all of these on Wranngar instead of switching over to one of my other toons, he is the only one of them who can use them. Well, that and the fact that I am really enjoying playing him lately.

Wranngar - 4/5/11

I have been working on getting my Druid Wranngar geared and getting his professions and skills up to maximum level.

So far it is coming along well. One week after leveling him to 85 he has a 350 item level, has his Leatherworking, Skinning, Cooking and First Aid at the maximum 525 and his Fishing at 498. I have all the 359 Cataclysm patterns for Leatherworking and am currently running heroic's for Chaos Orbs. I currently have 3 Chaos Orbs but can always use more. Chaos Orbs are BoP (Bind on Pickup) so if I am going to make 359 items I am going to need to run heroic's to get them. Usually when you are making a 359 item for someone else they will supply all the mats and you will supply the orbs for a price. The going rate for orbs is 200g-300g on my server. That means if I make a piece for someone and use 3 of my orbs I will make a profit of 600g-900g on the orbs plus a tip. One Chaos Orb drops off the last boss in every heroic dungeon and it is rolled on by everyone there who can use it. I ran 6 dungeons and got one orb so they are not piling up but over time they will.

Wranngar is geared pretty well now, his item level is 350 and all of his gear is either 346 ilvl or 359 ilvl. I am working on getting the 359 trinket from Baradin's Wardens and have about a week of doing their daily's every day before I can get that. I was running specific dungeons for gear until I got all the 346 pieces I needed with the exception of a weapon. I was hoping to get the polearm from the Lost City of the Tol'vir but didn't have any luck after running it for 5 consecutive days. You can only choose to run a specific heroic dungeon once a day, after that it might come up in the random dungeon queue allowing you to run it again or it might not. I ended up getting the Spear of Trailing Shadows from Baradin's Wardens which set me back some on getting my trinket.

I am also working on my reputation with all the Cataclysm Factions and that is coming along well. I have gotten all the rep pieces I can and am now working on getting my reputation to exalted with the other factions that don't have anything I need. Who knows, in future patches they might get something I need so better safe than sorry.

Expertise - Do You Need It?

As I am gearing my Feral Druid Wranngar I have found that expertise is playing a big role. Wranngar is a Feral Druid that fights in Cat (Kitty) Form. As with any melee character, that is actually striking it's opponent, you can't deal damage if your opponent is dodging and parrying your attacks.

When I first started gearing I wasn't worried about expertise, but as I went along I noticed how many of my attacks were being dodged and parried by whatever I was attacking. Having played ranged or caster characters for so long this was something new to me. Looking into this problem I found that the higher your expertise rating the less chance you have of something dodging and/or parrying your attacks, so I started working on my expertise. As my expertise rose so did my dps. Now I have a 0% chance of my attacks being dodged and a 4% chance of my attacks being parried by a level 87/skull mob. The only place I will be coming across a level 87/skull character is in a raid but as I plan on raiding I will have to work on that some more.

So in conclusion, if you have a melee character your expertise is going to help you do more damage by making your attacks harder, if not impossible, to dodge or parry.

Gearing Wranngar - 3/29/11

I have been working on getting my Druid Wranngar geared up the last few days. When I started working on him again on Saturday he was level 83 and his item level was 292. I got him to 85 on Saturday and as of Tuesday his item level is 338.

I have been running a lot of normal dungeons for gear and justice points and also did a BoT trash run on him where I won Dragonwreck Throwing Axe on a raid roll. I have that on the auction house now and plan to buy some 359 crafted gear when it sells.

I have been doing daily quests for Therazane, Baradin's Wardens and the Wildhammer Clan to get rep so I can buy gear from them. I have the tabards for all the factions except Baradin's Wardens, who don't have a tabard, and Hyjal who aren't even on my reputation list yet. That is ok though, Hyjal doesn't have anything I need at this point so I will level up my rep with them last.

Therazane has the top of the line Cata shoulder chants so getting rep up with them is a must. Wildhammer Clan has a pair of 359 gloves I am working towards and Earthen Ring has the 359 agility ring I have on my Hunter Brieanna, I am going to need that for Wranngar too. I gave up running GB over and over again to get the ring, I am now revered with Therazane and got the 346 ring they have instead. It is a better ring anyway.

Like I said, I will be starting heroics soon, maybe even today, to update my 333 gear with 346 gear. I will be queuing into heroic Lost City and Halls of Origination every day until I get everything I need out of those two. Once I get my item level and dps up a little more I will be queuing into Grim Batol to get the trinket out of there. I will also be getting the 359 trinket from Baradin's Wardens as soon as I have enough Commendations and my rep is exalted so maybe I won't have to do too many GB runs.

More Bastion of Twilight Trash Farming - 3/29/11

I did a couple Bastion of Twilight trash farming runs on my Druid Wranngar tonight and finally got lucky. It was the first time I took him trash farming and while I didn't get anything for him I did get Dragonwreck Throwing Axe by rolling a 92 on the raid roll (1-100).

There was one tank (Warrior) there that really wanted it, he ended up leaving after I won it, but the rules were laid down before we started the first run. The rules were Main Spec (MS) and if no one there had a main spec that could use it then it went to raid roll. He was arguing that because he could equip it he should get it without a roll, but it is really a Rogue weapon. Agility is not a primary tank stat. The raid leader called it and he called a raid roll. Anyway the tank threw a fit and left group and we ended up calling it a night after that.

While I didn't get the helm or trinket I was after I was pretty happy to get that. I put it on the auction house for a starting bid of 9000g and a buyout price of 9999g99s99c. That was a couple thousand gold less than the next highest of the three that were on the auction house. 359 BoE drops go for outrageous prices on my server so I shouldn't have a problem selling it. I looked it up on Thottbot and they said the average buyout price is 6700g. That is about right because 359 BoE drops that have an average buyout price of 7000g - 10000g across servers go for 30000g - 40000g on my server. It is just crazy but I am not complaining. I only complain when I want to buy something ;-p. If it doesn't sell I will try to find a Leatherworker that has a Rogue and see if they will trade a couple 359 crafted leather items for it. I will be doing heroics on Wranngar soon anyway so I will be getting my own orbs to craft 359 leather items with.

Wranngar - Level 85 Feral Druid

I worked on my Feral Druid Wranngar today and got him to 85. He is my fifth 85 and the last of my 80's I needed to level up. I got him a few pieces of gear doing some dungeon runs and questing and got his item level from 292, when I started at 83, to 326 when I called it a night.

I got him Mirage Ring and Tia's Grace, the ring and trinket from Lost City of the Tol'vir, Hieroglyphic Vest from Halls of Origination, Swiftflight Leggings with Wildhammer rep and a couple more 333 quest pieces so he is starting to shape up. I think he has a higher item level than my Warlock Gomorra who hit 85 a while ago.

I will continue to work on him tomorrow and get him more gear. Basically Halls of Origination, Lost City of the Tol'vir and Grim Batol all have something I need so those are the ones I will be running. After my first run tomorrow I will be able to get him a piece of gear with Justice Points. I would eventually like to tank with him.

A Couple Heroic Dungeons 3/25/11

I did a couple heroic dungeons on my Hunter Brieanna today, but not my random daily.

I queued into Lost City of the Tol'vir and Blackrock Caverns with a guild member that wanted to get those two done for the Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achievement. They went pretty smooth and he ended up getting his achievement.

In Lost City we had no problem at all, everything went smooth and it was pretty much a textbook run.

In Blackrock Caverns there was another Hunter besides myself, and he didn't dismiss his pet before jumping not once but twice. Basically if you jump off something your pet will not, they will take the long way around to get to you and drag every mob between you and them with them. That is what happened not once but twice. That same Hunter pulled a side group we didn't need to get at all, causing a partial wipe, I feigned death to get through that one. You have to remember that this is a heroic dungeon where the mobs have a lot of health and hit hard, you don't want to be pulling two groups at once.

When we finally got to the last boss the other Hunter was elected to kite the adds while we killed the boss. I was pretty happy about that because the last five times I have been in there I had to kite the adds. At least he did a good job of that and we got the last boss down without a problem.

Random Daily Heroic - Halls of Origination 3/23/11

Today my daily heroic on my Hunter Brieanna was Halls of Origination. We did the quick version, only the bosses we needed to get it complete. I did it with two other guild members this time.

It was a pretty smooth and easy run, we had no problems at all. HoO is one of the easier Heroics. The only real challenge is the first boss where you have to jump down and throw the switches. On normal you can have one person jump down on each side and throw the switches, on Heroic the switches are "channeled" and it takes about 6 seconds each to "flip" them and the snakes will interrupt you. You need to have the entire group jump down, one person "flipping" the switch and the tank and dps taking care of the snakes. Then you run to the other side and do the same thing. That operation went really smooth, when I am healing I always end up with some poorly geared dps tanking the snakes who uses up all my mana.

After that we did the 4 Elementals, the boss guarding the door to the top floor, then killed Rahj. The last time I was in there on a group run, the tank, a different one from today, insisted we didn't get in the center when Rahj did, leaving people out of range of heals. This tank had a better grasp of the boss and it went off really well, we had no problems with him. I will be picking and choosing which guild tanks I heal for in the future.

Random Daily Heroic - Shadowfang Keep 3/22/11

Today my random daily heroic on my Hunter Brieanna was Shadowfang Keep. I did it with 3 other guild members, we had to PuG out the healer but they were good.

All in all it was a pretty smooth run and went pretty fast. We made it to the last boss without a wipe but our streak of good luck ended there. It was the bullet barrage that got us even though most of us were standing up top on the landing when you come in. Being a ranged dps I took very little damage though out the run and I guess the healer kind of forgot about me because at the last boss I didn't seem to be getting any heals. I ended up dying a second time there, along with a Shaman from guild, but we got the boss down anyway.

All in all it was a pretty good run and got me another 70 Valor Points towards my next 359 ring or trinket.

Viewless Wings

After I completed my random daily heroic yesterday I was able to buy my new cloak, Viewless Wings, for my Hunter Brieanna. It cost me 1250 Valor Points but is worth it. It kicked up my stats a little and is my sixth piece of 359 gear on her. I am thinking about getting either the ring or a trinket next.

We are planning on trying another raid this weekend, hopefully everyone will be ready and not saved. Last weekends planned raid on Baradin Hold didn't go so well as one person had to leave, one person couldn't make it at the last minute, one person was saved and the list goes on and on. It is pretty disappointing when you wait all week for it then all these little avoidable problems occur and you find out you wasted a half an hour and a flask for nothing. I believe Baradin Hold is the shortest raid with only one boss.

Another thing that is a problem is people wearing PvP gear and not having all their equipment up to speed. I inspected a few people and they were missing chants, gems and had PvP gear on. PvP (Player versus Player) gear is for what the name says, PvP. PvE gear (Player versus Environment) gear is for dungeons and raiding. If there was no difference there wouldn't be two different types of gear would there? People have been told repeatedly that PvP gear is not allowed and they still wear it to raids. I guess what this rant boils down to is we do not have a core 10 man team.

Personally I think we should just do some BoT trash farming this weekend to get everyone working together on the same page, get everyone used to working together as a team. I will bring it up again and see what happens. I will be watching the videos of Blackwing Descent, as that is the one we are thinking about trying this coming weekend, and post the links to guild chant so everyone will have the opportunity to know the fights. I would like to at least get the first boss down in one of these raids, any boss, any raid.

Bastion of Twilight Trash Farming

I did four runs of Bastion of Twilight trash farming tonight. Out of the four runs three epics dropped which was a pretty high ratio compared to the other runs I have been on. Out of the first five runs I was on only one epic dropped. Out of the three epics that dropped tonight, two of them dropped on the same run.

It doesn't take too long to do a run and usually you will not do just one. If you can get the group to stay together you can do three, five or even ten runs in a relatively short amount of time if you have a good group that can work together. We had a decent group tonight for our runs so it went pretty quick.

I did these runs on my Hunter Brieanna, which I won't be doing anymore. There is nothing in there that drops for a Hunter. The drops are BoE which means anyone can win and sell them but they are always taken by someone who "needs" them. Last night I saw someone who "needed" a pair of plate shoulders selling them in trade chat afterward. I would not be able to roll "need" on anything because no mail drops so why bother. Any future runs I do I will be taking my priest so I can "need" on the staff which I would equip. The staff did drop last night but, being on my Hunter, I couldn't "need" it.

We are planning to do some guild trash runs in the near future and I will update on how that goes.