It’s been awhile since I’ve done an update, but that’s partly because I don’t know how much there is to update. In the game not a ton has changed. I mean, some things have, but mostly things are the same. However, there are a few things that I’d like to say, and I figure this is as good a place as any to say them.

I Love My Guild
As I often tell the guild, this is something I don’t think I say enough. So I’m going to just say it. I have the privilege to raid with a group of people that for the most part I genuinely enjoy spending time with. Maybe some of them stand in the fire more than I’d like, but as a whole there is no one in my guild that I just can’t stand. And I believe that is a pretty rare thing.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, it’s kind of two fold. Firstly, anytime I use my blog as a brain dump/stress relief/dear diary therapy I invariably get that one comment about how maybe I need a break, or need to find a different community for my raid time. I’m just going to put it out here: I don’t. One of the reasons I started this blog was to get thing out of my head. To put my stress in a medium that isn’t me screaming at my raid.

And you know what? It’s worked. I’m a significantly calmer raid leader because I have a venue where I can dump my thoughts and stresses, and where I can get feedback (or commiserate) on the struggles that I may be facing. I’m pretty open about everything that happens, and I like that. So, I wanted to let people know that I really do love where I am and the people I am with.

I feel that I should start this post off with a warning.  I am incredibly tired right now, and as such I anticipate that this post is likely to be a little on the rambly side.  Why am I so tired, you may be wondering?  Well, partly because I made the grave mistake last night of starting Glee Season 2 after watching Friday’s episode of Fringe.  I thought I would be OK.  But then the Britney episode came on, and it was all down hill from there.  Three hours later (and way past my bedtime) I was still not asleep.  Let me tell you, people who call Warcraft crack must have never seen Glee.  Just Sayin’.

However, that was only one reason.  The other reason is that my dad came to visit this past weekend.  I’ve not seen him for five years, so I was very excited about it.  I toted him all over Seattle – to my favorite restaraunts and attractions.  By the time we got home each night I was exhausted.  In a good way.  I had a great visit with him, and because I don’t have a whole lot more to say about that, have a picture of my dad with a butterfly on his head.

On Raiding

We are still trucking along on Heroic Ragnaros.  In fact over 3/4 of our raid time is spent largely on this encounter.  The fight is still incredibly challenging, and we continue to make progress.  The thing with progress on this fight is that sometimes it’s small and sometimes it’s lateral.  But I feel it’s important to recognize that it’s still progress.

It’s not Monday, and I’m a bit behind on everything, so here is my weekly brain dump on, er, Wednesday.  But with good reason!  Which I will tell you about later.  Maybe.

On Raiding

Things are pretty static on this front, without much to report!  Which isn’t necessarily bad.  We snagged a second Baleroc kill (not without some effort, but it wasn’t too painful) and ended up with a good amount of time to flirt with Heroic Ragnaros for the first time.  Except it was a holiday weekend.  And no matter how many times you ask people to give you a heads up on their holiday intentions, it’s always a scramble at the last-minute when raid time comes.

That means we only got one of two nights to focus on him – but were able to go in an 24 man Heroic Cho’gall and Sinestra on Sunday with a few friends and family members tossed in to help.  Alas, she was stingy with her Shard of Woe, which made us all a little sad.  But Monday, with the healers showing that they don’t believe in vacations and free beer, we were able to go in and play around a bit with the big fire kahuna.  And it was a lot of fun.

I’m quite sure that after week 3 the novelty of finding new and interesting ways to wipe on Heroic Rag will wear off, but for now it’s still fresh enough that people seem to be enjoying the progress.  We have approached the fight with the mentality that this will take months to master, and each night we look at the next small step we need to accomplish to get to the end goal - a kill.  Breaking the massive encounter up into smaller pieces of progression markers makes the encounter a little less intimidating for me, and I’d like to think others as well.  While the end result is still a kill, we are trying to make sure that we don’t burn out our guild trying to get there.  Each small achievement is one more step down that path.  And eventually enough small successes will combine themselves into a large success.

We’ll get a kill on our time, and my only goal is to see that happen before the next content patch.  Personally, I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Happy Monday, Everyone!  Why is Beru so happy on a Monday?  Well, mostly because after some very long travel I am finally back home.  It feels good to come back home after living in a hotel for 10 days and raiding at the mercy of hotel internet for that period of time.  And believe it or not, it feels good to actually cook a meal.  Eating out really does start to lose its luster after about day four (and the five pounds you add in the time you are gone).  Anyhow, I have some musings to dump out of my head after so much time.  Forgive me if they ramble a bit, but I really need this brain dump.

On Raiding

Raiding has been very good to us as late.  Last week we knocked out Heroic Staghelm.  This week we saw Heroic Baleroc tumble after just two nights of work on him.  Not only that, but the raid team surprised me with a one shot on heroic Staghelm and over 30 seconds left on the enrage timer.  Truth be told, I think everyone was expecting a second Staghelm kill to take a few pulls to shore up and most people were as pleased as I was when we walked in, high on our Baleroc kill, and knocked him out fairly easily.  We had a few deaths at the end of the second set of orbs (I let my co-soaker die ) but we pulled it out beautifully.

Heroic Staghelm

Healing Staghelm is a bit odd.  There really isn’t much healing to be done on the fight outside of the orb phases – which are pretty healing heavy.  Other than that it’s mostly just keeping the tank alive and topping up people who took damage from seeds or a leap.  In fact, we have one priest who goes smite spec and DPSes everything but the orb phases.  It hard to tell if I have a good grasp of the best way to heal the fight, as I help to soak an orb, which means I have lower legendary concentration up time.  So it’s hard to tell if I should be doing certain things differently, or if I am doing things properly but see lower healing output than I’d like (comparatively) as a result of lower concentration. 

So, this weekend I saw Cowboys vs. Aliens.  I will come out and say right now that the only redeeming thing about the movie was getting to see Daniel Craig in chaps for two hours.  In fact I’d even go far enough to say that I got more enjoyment out of wiping to Alysrazor all night on Sunday than I did watching that movie.  I mean, to be fair, I really didn’t have high expectations for the movie from the start.  I mean, the concept just seemed…off to me.  Be that as it may, even Brade rated it as “wait for video”!

On Raiding

We have been working on Heroic Alysrazor.  Contrary to what my raid may believe, I find it a really fun fight, but that might just be because I get to run around and cast ALL my heals while doing so.  Feathers own.  Anyhow, we’ve been working on the encounter and have pretty much narrowed a kill down to “everyone surviving”.  If people live, we will win.

We had a 7% wipe last night, after just a night and a half working on the fight.

People have died to any number of things during the fight.  Worms, brushfire, tornadoes, meteors.   You name it, someone in our raid has probably died to it.  Unfortunately, a kill on the encounter will boil down to individual play and survival.  If our raid can live, we will have a kill.  If our raid cannot live, we will wipe.

We are sub 50% after the first burn phase.  We are usually low 30′s for the second burn phase.

As a leader, I feel somewhat impotent on this encounter.  It’s mildly frustrating to have nothing to offer your raid outside of “just please, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, stay out of the bad”.  It’s not something that can be fixed on the macro level of the raid, but rather needs attention at the micro level of each player.  Of course, after a few hours of the fight when I see someone die my inner monologue goes something like this: COME ON! I can bloodly well heal the tank, heal your brushfire eating ass, heal your tornado hitting ass AND still dodge the bad.  WHY IS IT THAT YOU CANNOT DO YOUR JOB AND DO THE SAME?!?!? RAWR!!!

Of course, it’s just a few minutes after having such thoughts that I usually do something stupid and am forced to eat the words of my inner monologue.  I guess that’s karma for you.

I think we will probably spend an hour or so with the fight tonight to see if we can net a kill out of her.  We have a working strategy.  We aren’t failing at the DPS check.  So ultimately, it’s going to be up to each individual to determine our success.  We will either get it done tonight, or we won’t.  I’d like to think that we will – but I watched too many hours of people standing in the bad for it to be a sure thing

What?  You aren’t up on your Harry Potter?!  That’s ok, let me educate you a bit so that my title makes a bit more sense.  You see in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the students are given an assignment that forces them to face their worst fears.  Ron Weasley’s turns out to be spiders.  Of course, later in the book Ron is met with (you guessed it) giant spiders!  How does this play into my musings?  Well, see if you can guess how I spent most of my time yesterday!

On Raiding

We are currently working on our third Hard Mode encounter of this tier – Beth’tilac.  Last night was our second night of work on the giant widow, and our first full night of attempts.  After a few strategy changes from Thursday night, we managed to work her down to 22%, and are very close to a kill.

Of the hard modes that we’ve done so far, this is the one that I’ve found the healing to be the most intensive.  I am assigned to heal one of the cave/broodling/spiderling DPS and it can definitely be a bit tricky, especially when Beth is spewing all over the raid.  In addition to that, the raid damage in phase 3 is brutal.  I find that my mana bar is plummeting and I am still working out how to manage it a bit more so that I have the resources to push through until the very end of phase 3.  I have a few ideas, but won’t get to exercise them until we get back in there for some more attempts.

A while back when Larissa and Tam announced that they were going to close the doors on their respective blogs, they both kind of said the same thing: I just woke up one day and knew I was done.  I often wondered what one thing, one post, one comment, one email, was the catalyst to them walking away.  What was it that, intentionally or unintentionally, ended up being the straw that ultimately broke the camels back.  I’ve always kind of believed that the straw the breaks the proverbial camel’s back would be tiny.  So small that no one would truly realize that it was the thing that caused everything to tumble to the ground. 

When Tam left, I sent him my own private goodbye.  I always felt close to Tam because we entered blogging at the same time, and in those early days often supported each other quite a bit.  Eventually he went left down the road, while I went right, but I always remembered those early days when we kicked at rocks together.  Anyhow, when Tam left one of the things that I shared with him was that I was tired.  And when we responded he told me “I can tell”, he then proceeded to give me some fantastic advice that I have summarily ignored, but that’s really neither here nor there and I digress.

Let’s get back to this camel should we?

On Raiding

As the title hints, today’s musings are going to be somewhat picture oriented.  Partly because I’m in a picture sort of mood, but mostly because I had all these screenshots lying about for a post, and instead of making a million posts, I figured I could wrap them all up into one

Many things have happened since we spoke last week!  First and foremost being that we had extra time in our raid week this week to finish up the last of the achievements that most folks needed for the Glory of the Cataclysm Raider meta.  We still have a few more to trudge through for folks, but the majority of our raid team walked out Wednesday Night looking a bit like this:

Glory of the Cataclysm Raider

We also found the time this week, after several sub-10% wipes, to knock out heroic Rhyolith.  In fact, we went in last night and nailed it so quickly that I regretted our “warm up” on Beth’tilac, as it meant that we didn’t get the opportunity to start Hard Mode work with her.  So it goes!  Gives us a full raid night to circle back for some of the last few achievements folks need for the T11 meta  – and I’m OK with that!  Oh, and here’s the video of our kill.  I may or may not have used Walk This Way as the music for it.  Don’t judge!  I found it hilarious.

I have spent enough time with the encounter in learning it that I feel comfortable enough to go ahead and work on a video guide for the fight, so you should see that here in the near-ish future.

Heroic Rhyolith Video (guide incoming soon!)

Oh, and before I forget.  Guess who got the fire kitty staff from Fandral last night?  That’s right!  THIS TREE!

Fire Kitty!

On Dailys 

I’m still trudging through my dailys each day.  I can’t say that I’m overly thrilled by them, but I will tell you that the other night when I opened up the Druid of the Talon dailys Brade and I had a good bit of fun doing the achievements together.  The kicker of this whole daily mess is that I don’t need anything from them.  But being the pet collector and odd, fun thing fanatic that I am, I find myself obligated to trudge through them to get my toys.  Although I have yet to expand past doing them on anyone but Beru.

Speaking of dailys.  Guess who I found in my Setheria’s roost quest group the other day?  None other than EJ’s Gurgthock himself.  When I noticed I hollered “OMG I HAVE GURGTHOCK” to Brade - and then we both took a few minutes to explore his extremely creative attire while having a good laugh over the whole thing.

I wonder who his tailor is.

Meeting Gurgthock

On My Hands

They are still bothering me quite a bit, sadly.  I’ve been back to the doctor about it again, and they ran blood work for Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I haven’t received the results from those tests yet (someone remind me to call the damn doctor and find out what is taking so long), but I remain on the quest to improve the pain on my own.  You all may recall that I purchased a new chair awhile back – and it’s wonderful.  I absolutely love it.  And while it did solve some of my posture and back pain from extended time spent in the chair, it did not, unfortunately, alleviate all of my hand pain.

And so I continue to make improvements to my home office to try and help.  This past weekend I altered to top of my desk so that I could attach a keyboard tray.  While I know that it’s better ergonomically for me, the jury will remain out on if it makes it less painful for my hands.  I am truly at the point that I’ll try almost anything if I think it will help.

On Non-WoW Activities

I am going to tell you all something that may make you think less of me.  Brace yourselves.

I am completely, 100%, addicted to The Glee Project on Oxygen.  I’ve always been a Glee fan, but I am seriously loving this show, I can’t even tell you.  I have my favorites and my least favorites.  And every week I cross my fingers that my favorites don’t get selected to be removed.  It’s silly, I know, but it’s a lot of fun and a good way to wind down after a long night of Sunday raiding!

Non-Glee related, I am still working through the first Song of Fire and Ice book.  I think I’m about half way through and I’m enjoying it quite a bit.  Even though I watched the HBO series and know what’s going to happen, I still find that the author’s writing is page turning and at times I have a bit of a hard time putting the book down.

And because I can, have a cute picture of my dog.

How was your week?

Monday.  You know, I often ponder why everyone hates Monday so much.  Sure, it’s the start of a new week.  Sure, it means that the long haul to the weekend is just beginning.  But I think I’d love it if someone had a much more positive outlook regarding Mondays.  How about a TGIM button?  No?  Alright, fine.  I suppose instead I’ll offer my (somewhat) weekly brain dump here.  RIGHT AFTER I GO TO KINKO’S FOR TGIM BUTTONS FOR YOU ALL!

On Raiding and Mistakes

We did well this week, and I’m quite pleased with how we performed.  Mostly.  We snagged a heroic Shannox kill in roughly 10 pulls on Wednesday night and then started to put some work on Heroic Rhyolith Thursday evening.  It did not go as well as we’d have liked it to go, and it was clear that we needed to shore some things up in our strategy.  So there was lots of conversation about what to fix, how to fix it, etc.  And we decided that we’d take two hours of time on Sunday to continue working Rhyolith.

The other day on Twitter I was part of a debate surrounding 10 man Heroic Al’Akir.  More specifically - killing 10 man Heroic Al’Akir if you were a 25 man guild.  Now, needless to say, it got me pretty fired up.  To the point I felt myself getting ready to say some very nasty, un-Beru like things that I would not have been at all proud of later.  (It really is amazing how little, yet how much, can be said in 140 characters).  So even though I had so much more to say on the topic, I stepped out of it before I said something that I would later deeply regret. 

Well, I publically stepped out of it anyhow.

At home I ranted, raved and lectured about it to anyone who would listen – with “anyone” being Brade and the dog.  I stomped around the house as I made dinner jabbing my finger into the air everytime I wanted to hammer a point home.  Because, dammit, I had points to make.  Finally Brade, hoping to curve my ranting, looked at me and said “Why are you so worked up about an argument you had with idiots on the internet?”.  He probably also threw around that saying about how you aren’t suppposed to argue with idiots on the internet because they’ll just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience…or something like that.  He tends to make blunt points that are hard to defend that way.

I shut up.  Or at least ceased stomping and ranting and reverted to mumbling under my breath to the dog – at least she would give me her undivided attention…as long as I was with food in the kitchen anyhow.  The truth is, I didn’t really have an answer to Brade’s question.  Why was I so worked up about what these people thought?