First Week of Heroics

I am pleased to report my teams first two weeks of heroic went excellent - definitely better then I expected going in!

During our first week of Siege of Orgrimmar heroic progression I decided we'd give Heroic Protectors a try, a fight that for some is one of the harder of the first four bosses as it relies on a groups strategy and coordination to complete the fight successfully instead of brute forcing your way through. Most gear checks are an example of this, like Patchwerk in Naxxramas; a fight that's easier on mechanics but has a quick enrage timer to beat.

So, we went in Tuesday before last to give Heroic Protectors a shot and I'm just thinking the whole time to myself "Please don't let this be too bad". I knew with the extra upgrades on our gear available to us that it may be easier, but I really didn't think I'd have a group capable of completing many heroics after our struggles with Garrosh. Our first few attempts didn't look so great, we've noticed that these particular bosses have adds that just don't agree with one shots as they don't like sharing their health pulls the first pull as they are supposed to...After those first few pulls, things just started to click and when we got to the time I originally wanted to take a break and continue going through the bosses on normal we were all feeling confident we could make short work of them. We continued until the end of the raid night on Heroic Protectors, with unfortunately no kill by the end of it.

Day two, we come back in and go back to work. Things just seemed to click quickly for us, and earlier then I expected - we got our first Heroic kill!

At the point we killed Heroic Protectors, we had over an hour left to raid and no one wanted to leave it at that. We moved on to the next boss, Heroic Norushen with me being totally unprepared (bad raid lead is bad), did some assignments on the fly and a quick explanation and started attempts. First thing we noticed, this boss really isn't that different from Normal to Heroic modes; things hit harder and there's an extra portal to take, big whoop. Three attempts later, down goes Heroic Norushen! Turns out maybe we should've attempted that one first!

Just one week into heroics and we managed to kill two, I was floored. Nothing could take the grin off my face at that point. I am incredibly proud of my raid team and even more grateful for those that have come in full time and part-time to help us out. We couldn't have gotten those kills without the great group of folks we have <3.

Garrosh takes a fall

It was a long time coming, but Garrosh is finally dead as of this evening. Took a LOT of work and determination to achieve it, but it was worth it to finally see that SoB dead in my opinion. We had a total of 268 wipes over a span of three months, a lot of time to spend on a boss for a group that raid together on a regular basis. Quite a few fill ins, including one on the kill, some days missed due to too many raiders being missing, and group members that either don't pay attention when it's needed or don't take advice that's given to them definitely did not help us get a kill sooner.

Next up, hopefully kill Garrosh again before moving onto Heroic Siege. I'm going to be taking a look at doing Heroic Protectors before attempting Heroic Immerseus; with the group of people that I have we can handle mechanics easier then gear check bosses like Immerseus and Norushen. Have to kill Garrosh again first though.

Unfortunately I am no longer raiding on my priest at this time, with some members of that team leaving it wasn't very productive to continue trying to fill spots with extras every week. We were hoping to get going again when we get some new recruits, but the longer time goes by the less I think that will happen.

Things have kind of gotten to a standstill in guild, with the Warlords of Draenor expansion not even in Beta as of yet we have no idea if we'll have it before the year ends. Recruitment has slowed to a crawl, they opened up Siege of Orgrimmar to be able to be completed cross server so people won't have to leave the server their on to raid. This with the fact that this raid tier has been out a year in September and many have completed the content is getting us back to the end of expansion blues. Hopefully we can continue raiding until close to the next expansion, but we will have to see how things go.

Garrosh times two, new team members and goodbye to Epicism

This week was a pretty great week raid wise - at least compared to the last few. The team I lead made it back to Garrosh with amazing timing, it was great considering we had our shadow priest healing and a member of the other team filling in on his mage. One thing I've noticed on Garrosh, enhancement is totally overpowered, the numbers are insane and I sneeze and the mind controlled people are broken. Wouldn't surprise me if I end up killing someone at one point, managed it while healing already!

 The other crew that my priest Angelcakes heals for had a good week as well, we welcomed two new members to the team - a windwalker monk and a combat rogue and they seem like pretty good fits to me. We've had another new addition in the past two weeks, a frost mage from the same guild as the monk joined us as well and we look to be well on the way to getting back to Heroic progression this week. Would be complete with our third healer, but that will come with time and more recruitment.

We did pull off a second Garrosh kill to end the Hellscream blood drought of the past few weeks, looking towards some progression kills this coming week!                                                                                                      

Within the last few weeks we found out that our prior guild Epicism is no more, the guild still physically exists but GM has been passed off again and there was another large amount of people leaving, including the majority of the officership again. The website is shut down and they are no more outside of game. I've found myself experiencing deja vu about the subject, it's almost as if when we left in November occurred again even though I wasn't involved. I am quite sad that they didn't put more of an effort in to rebuild and just abandoned the cause after two months. I know with who was left things didn't look the greatest for them, but if they got the right people involved and returned to the roots Gale (the founder) left us with I think they could have fought a pretty good fight and maybe scraped by for a bit and god knows maybe made a comeback.

Some days I wish I was there for the end, I know that us leaving was essentially a firestarter and I do have a bit of remorse about it. But, I know that I'm better off where I am now, I had a lot of built up stress in that guild that I haven't found myself experiencing lately. I can't imagine what could have happened if that was allowed to blow up but it would probably have cost more then leaving did.

RIP Epicism, you had a great run until towards the end - just shows what one person can do to a group of people. World of Warcraft may be just a bunch of pixels, but behind every character is a person; it's not wise to take others feelings lightly.

Another week of raiding!

My raiding week is halfway done, 3 raids down and 2 to go! My raid crew did amazing this week, we got 2 progression bosses down in a matter of 2 raid nights! This Tuesday will be more Garrosh progression, woot woot!

 Apps for our guild are finally flowing in so hopefully we'll be able to get some Heroic progression bosses killed soon. It's about time people started to join our awesome group of peeps, it looks like our fresh start is only just beginning.

A New Beginning...

Well, yet again I've slacked off on posting to my blog!

Lots of thing have gone on in the past two months; bit of guild drama in what is now my previous guild, a fresh start with some familiar faces with all of it leading up to now. I have to say night now I'm pretty content with my current in-game situation, I'm busy a lot of the time but I get to do what I enjoy!

Quick overview of what happened:
- A troublesome female joined my old guild and did what most people think female gamers do, caused drama. Our new GM essentially fell for her, it was messy and he was willing to not see it any other way then his.
- The new GM screwed up - badly and would not own up to his own mistakes, instead tried to remove the entire officership because we were at fault supposedly. Bad move since the four of us were in agreement minus the GM.
- A large amount of the guild left, including the four officers and we created our own guild - an inside joke as we called ourselves the Legendary Exiles. Somehow my raid team managed to all come over with us, I was very shocked but I still have my raid team minus one of our tanks that had to leave due to a job change.

And that pretty much sums it up. It was an interesting journey, involved a lot of heartbreak from me due to leaving a guild that I had spent so much time and energy on, but I am happy to report that I am now happier then ever minus the Drama Llama(s). Took us a lot of work to build back the guild that we had; we still have more work to do to keep both of our raid teams going, but we're getting there.

 I am currently the GM of this ragtag group and am still actively raid leading. I'm proud to say that my team has made it to 11/14 bosses down in regular Siege of Orgrimmar to this date. The other team (formerly Anger Management once a name change poll gets completed) have killed Garrosh as of last week! I am currently raiding on both my shaman and my discipline priest (I'm the pretty one in tier 5 in the picture!) so I had the pleasure of being one of the members that contributed to the kill! Very proud of both groups, AM managed to pull together and finally get a well deserved Garrosh kill and the former Team Fail Status, now Team Legendary is still steadily getting progression kills.

Looking forward to continuing our new start with a great group of people, hoping to have some more good news the next time I post here!

Raiding Siege - Week 11

I'm glad to say that we have killed both Nazgrim and Malkorok last Thursday! It was a great night, two progression bosses and I may or may not have distracted everyone by acting like my nutty self mid Malkorok pull...we wiped, but it was great. Looking forward to another great night this evening.

Blizzcon was this past weekend and there was a lot of information pouring out to those who didn't purchase the virtual ticket. My last post covers the majority of changes.

I'm not sure how I feel about a lot of the changes right now, I am glad that my character's race will be showcased by visiting one of their home worlds but I'm hoping everything else doesn't ruin that for me at this point. Will have to wait and see, they hope to have the expansion out before this coming summer so it won't be too long a wait before we get some more information.

Blizzcon Recap!

So Blizzcon was this weekend and here's my quicknotes:

Storyline (spoilers!)
- Garrosh escapes before his judgement and somehow manages to travel to an alternate dimension/timeline to go into the past without screwing up the present. 
- He finds his father (Grommash/Grom Hellscream) and tries to prevent the orcs from drinking the Blood of Mannoroth, thus stopping the chain of events that would lead up to current events. Garrosh uses future technology to create the "Iron Horde".
- Garrosh is not the main villan despite the fact that he started this expansion, his story will end one way or another.
- What are we doing? Entering the new version of the Dark Portal and stopping him and his allied Orc clans of course, at least in the beginning....*I don't really understand this, if it is indeed a parallel timeline like they are speaking of and it shouldn't effect our timeline, why not just let him go?  He must take all the purples with him*

Features:
- Improved models of every race up to Goblin/Worgen (they're hoping to have them finished in time).
- Level 100.
- New talents, you can view what they have planned for them currently here: http://www.wowdb.com/talent-calculator-wod
- The ability to boost one character up to level 90.
- 2 new raids, 7 new dungeons at launch including UBRS making a comeback.
- Change in raid makeup/difficulty (refer to Jungle's post). Raids will be able to be consisted of 10-25 people, like Flex is now except when it comes to what is now Heroic difficulty - renamed Mystic. That will be for 20 man groups only and will not adjust depending on the amount of people. Raid groups will need to progress through three difficulties instead of two, Normal (approx current Flex difficulty), Heroic (approx current Normal difficulty) and Mystic (approx current Heroic difficulty).
- New Arena ladder system that is supposed to help with queue times and finding exploiters.
- Adventure guide to help players identify what raids they are ready for and what content they should be doing.
- New bag features: Heirlooms, toys and possibly tabards using the same feature as mounts and pets. Quest items will no longer take up bag space (about time!). You can craft directly from your bank.
- Garrisons - Personal bases with followers, a mine and a fishing pool. Followers can be hired and sent on quests or raids (if you have enough) to collect things for you. WoW's version of housing.
- New zone, Draenor. Technically Outland prior to it being destroyed. The current area named Netherstorm will be added in a future patch. Alliance's main city will be at what is currently the Black Temple (Karabor). Horde are somewhere that I don't care..I mean at Bladespire Citadel in Frostfire Ridge.
- Removal of dodge, parry, hit, expertise, reforging, some gem slots, meta gems, and some enchanting slots will be removed (ex: all glove enchants).
- As mentioned here earlier, gear will change depending on your spec, say for example on my shaman the gear would switch between agility and intellect.
- Item squish, no more big numbers!
- Bonus valor for completing things with friends, aww <3
- 10 billion dailies each day is supposed to be a thing of the past!

A ton of information to look at, next up last weeks raid!