If It At First You Don't Succeed...

... wipe, wipe again.

Last Thursday I lead a PUG Naxx-25 raid. It took a while to get things rolling and most of the DPS was iffy at best, but we were able to clear out most of the instance in one night.

The roadblock we ran into was Thaddius. For some ungodly reason, about 5-6 people in the raid either could not handle the Polarity Shift. At the first shift, I would undoubtedly have 4-6 fried, smoking husks of raiders at Thaddius's feet. I was employing my tried-and-true stock car strategy for Thaddius: group up, turn left. These fellas, however, just couldn't grasp it for one reason or another. When questioned about their inability to grasp the simple concept of "go around the fata$$ boss to the other side," I got reasons ranging from absolute silence and no acknowledgement of my question, to "sorry my comp sucks," to "that's not how my guild does it."

I don't care about your reason for sucking. I just want you to fix it or get out, you're mucking up my raid.

That's what I said in my head. What I said out loud was more along the lines of "all right, as a reminder to everyone, positives are on the LEFT, negatives are on the RIGHT, and everyone needs to stack up at max melee range. Make sure to go around Thaddius clockwise, meaning to your LEFT, when switching sides on the Polarity Shift." I didn't call anyone out publicly. We also didn't kill the boss.

On Monday, after I had taken care of work, class, dinner, and all that jazz, I logged in to finish what I had started. The only bosses I had left up were Thaddius, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad. It took me 30-45 minutes to form up the raid, and then awaaaaaayyy we went, straight to Thaddius. Same strategy - group up, turn left, positive left, negative right.

On the first Polarity Shift of the first pull, 4 people got fried. 3 of them were DPS, and we hit the enrage because we were short on damage despite burning 2 Heroisms. I wasn't doing this again. Names got called.

"X, Y, Z, and Q, what happened, why'd you die?"

X, Y, and Z told me it was a connection issue - they got disconnected mid-fight (or so they claimed). Q said he flubbed it and went to the wrong side.

"We good now? Everyone know where they're going and stable?"

No objections, so we pulled again.

This time, only X and Y got fried. Thankfully, we were able to kill Thaddius without them.

I'm seriously considering imposing loot restrictions in my PUG's for people who can't grasp the fights. If you spend a fight dead for more than 33% through your own actions (i.e. aggro pull, incorrect switch on Thaddius, etc.), or cannot manage to do 1.5 times as much damage as the tank on the boss, then I'm not awarding you loot for that boss. Gevlon would be proud of this line of thinking, I bet. The sad part is I check everyone's achievements before I invite to make sure they've killed most/all the bosses in Naxx on any difficulty and do a spot check on gearing. These jokers passed my screening, and then went and got themselves cooked on Thaddius.

And now for the happier portion of my post.

Before the raid I had declared that the Key to the Focusing Iris would be looted by me so that I could lead a Malygos-25 PUG as well. We were able to 2-shot Sapphiron (the tank got Deep Breathed on the first breath during the first attempt - he claimed he was behind the block, but his death proved otherwise), and I grabbed that sucker. After a 1-shot of Kel'Thuzad which had absolutely zero complications...

... all right there were a few, as in a few special people not understanding the idea of spreading out to avoid getting Frost Blasted, and others standing in the red swirly death of the void zones...

... I handed out the loot and then proclaimed that we'd be raiding Malygos! Huzzah!

After I filled the holes in the raid voided by those that left, I formed up the raid at the Eye of Eternity. I employed my guild's 6 minute Malygos strategy and had one of my guildie's DK alts take care of spark management. I did this instead of letting the tank go whereever he pleased so that the added damage in phase 1 would off-set any failure by PUGs to shield themselves in phase 3.

I'm glad I did, because several people took beams to the face and took a tumble into the black abyss. We beat the enrage timer handily without them, though. The funniest part is the Malygos-25 kill was my first true attempt at the 25-man version. I got the heroic Denyin' the Scion and Spellweaver's Downfall achievements from the kill.

I can now say that I've successfully PUG'ed every 25-man encounter in WotLK with me at the helm. I'm a WoW-approved cat herder.

Scraptacular

So Siha has awarded me the Honest Scrap award. I always knew that my blog was scraptacular. However, I can only assume that this award is a cancer upon my house, since it's being passed around like a rampant STD. I'm not keeping it. You hear me, internet? I'm not going to contract this MTD (meme-transmitted disease). I'm passing it off before I get some on me.

Nope, not gonna participate. No means no.

Just say no to memes.

What's that you say? By acknowledging the award, I'm now participating? Sonofab*tch.

Fine. Here's what I've gotta do:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.


2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.


3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

I get to infect others now! Listen up, people, you're almost as scraptacular as I am. In no particular order...

• Honorshammer


• Megs


• That insane equine


• Klep, the sound that a one-legged horse makes


• Runycat


• Pike


• and Hofflerand

Now, onward to the real reason you're here - to know things about me. No, wait, the reason you're here is to read about retribution paladins... well, I'm a retribution paladin. So you're learning about a ret paladin. It's just necessarily what you thought you'd be reading. I'm going to get to the meme now, I promise.

1. I have a BA in Sociology that I don't use. I miss Goffman and Simmel being a part of my everyday life.


2. I have an affinity for pasta. I can eat it twice a day for a week and not get sick of it.


3. I don't drink carbonated beverages. Soda, beer, seltzer, champagne... keep 'em away, I won't imbibe.


4. On the other hand, wine is splendiforous. Mmmmm, crushed grape goodness...


5. When no one is watching and I have something sword-like in arm's reach, I might start hacking and slashing at nothingness. I'm weird.


6. I've never been west of Ohio. I have been to 4 or 5 foreign countries and traversed the Atlantic, but I've never been to California.


7. I love roller coasters. The reason I went as far west as Ohio at all is because of Cedar Point, the roller coaster mecca of the northern United States.


8. I have not played any other character in Warcraft higher than level 27 (EDIT: besides my paladin, of course). Unless you count my death knight, which got as high as 58, but that isn't the same, since he started at 55. My paladin is truly my only character.


9. I drink skim milk with my breakfast every morning. Others have expressed disgust at this, and I don't understand why.


10. Karaoke makes my skin crawl. When I find myself in a karaoke situation, I start scanning for exits and escape routes.

I throw out chain letters. But for some reason I don't refuse to do these meme things. Don't ask me why.

They're Dropping Like Flies

First Phae, now BRK. If Matticus or BBB proclaim today that they're quitting blogging, I'm going to cry foul and say this is some elaborate April Fool's hoax.

If it's true, the strongest voices of both druids and hunters in the community have fallen silent within a month of each other.

Playing WoW at a high level and blogging about it while simultaneously juggling a personal life (in real life as opposed to Azeroth) and holding down a full-time job is not without complications. I respect and admire both Phae and BRK for doing both seemingly so well for so long.

I dare say that the loss of his voice in the WoW blogging community is even more impactful than Phaelia closing down Resto4Life. No offense to Phae, but BRK had a larger readership and wider platform, catering to all hunters as opposed to mostly just one spec, and doing so across several mediums - his site, Project Lore, WoW Insider, and YouTube.

Here's hoping that BRK finds a new level of happiness in his renewed private life. The WoW blogging community got noticeably quieter today.

/target BigRedKitty
/salute

May the Light be with you, Mr. Howell.

If The PTR Went Live Today...

... I'd spec this way for PvE.

Now, for the explanation part of the program.

My ret tree has a glaring omission - Seal of Command. I don't plan on using it at all, so why use the talent point when I've got somewhere else to put the point? In any situation that I risk killing myself with recoil damage, I'm going to either use Seal of Righteousness instead or ease off a bit while using Seal of the Martyr and concentrate hard on Sacred Shield'ing and Flash of Light'ing myself. Hopefully these sorts of fights are few and far between.

Seal of Command without the glyph is lackluster, and I don't plan on keeping a glyph and a talent point on me for these occasions.

Anything else I left out of the ret tree was because the talent has little to no PvE application (Vindication, Eye for an Eye, Divine Purpose) or it's a tank talent (Deflection).

As for the prot tree, I grabbed Divine Strength (of course, never leave Ironforge without it!) and a bunch of other goodies. First up, the new talent - Divinity.

Divinity increases healing to the paladin and by the paladin by 1/2/3/4/5%. It is my understanding that this applies to the paladin in question's Judgement of Light, which means it boosts the effective heal on JoLight by 5% on everyone. JoLight also got expanded to ranged attacks too, so yippie! Divinity also double-dips - if I end up Flash of Light'ing myself, it boosts the heal itself by 5% (healing done by the paladin) and then boosts it additional 5% when it heals me up (healing done to the paladin). 10% increase to my Art of War self-Flashes, woohoo!

Now that I've got 10 points in the tree, I can grab Divine Sacrifice, bring me up to 11 points in prot. The new Divine Guardian looks juicy too, though. It boosts the effectivness of Divine Sacrifice and increases the amount absorbed by Sacred Shield, which I plan on using more often now that it plays nice with Sheath of Light. So, I need to burn another 4 points in the prot tree.

Guardian's Favor grants increased mobility (longer duration Hand of Freedom) and decreased Hand of Protection cooldown. It's a solid talent. It usually won't increase personal DPS, but it can prove it's worth by helping you save a zealous clothie with a timely HoP.

The last 2 points I tossed into Toughness for lack of a better choice. More armor and decreased snare duration sounded good to me. Others would say Improved Righteous Fury would be a good choice, but I can't see myself using Righteous Fury on any fight. The only time I'd end up using it is if it were talented and I were fighting Loatheb, and even then I'd need to wait to get a spore to buff it up. Basically, I'm too wary of aggro to try it. And Stoicism/Anticipation don't appeal to me for PvE.

That brings me up to 15, and then I can toss 2 into Divine Guardian. 0/17/54, the new 0/10/61 in my personal opinion.