I’ve been trying to get some raiding done before my account expires– gonna go out with a bang and all that!

10-man ICC is, I am very glad to say, not nearly as lag-erffic as the 25-man version. I did the first four bosses with Tawyn. I liked the Gunship Battle simply because it was airships and I like those (Pike’s Law: anything can always be made more awesome with airships), but the Saurfang battle directly afterwards made me even happier.

Cause I really wasn’t sure what to get and suddenly these adds came out and one was running toward me and without second thought I was Concussive Shot’ing, kiting, jump-shotting… oooh. It felt good. When was the last time we had to do that in a raid? Like… Gluth? (I hated kiting on Gluth by the way. Haaaaated. I always prodded the DKs into doing it.)

But yeah, it was awesome fun, and a great feeling.

Then yesterday I healed a 25man ToC with my Tree.

…apparently I’ve been using rank 13 Rejuvenation. For months. (15 is the max rank.)

I would like to thank the random PuG member with RankWatch for pointing this out. This explains a lot. *cries tree tears*

ToC got hilariously easy by the way, now that everyone pretty much overgears it. Aaaanyways.

I like healing. I’m gonna miss it. <3

Sooo I was chucked an invite to ICC25 today, for the first time ever. Originally I was asked to go healy on my druid, which sort of surprised me because my dear little Tree is still sporting at least two blues, but then we realized that we hardly had any hunters in the raid (for once) and I got to go on my hunter instead. (Five minutes after I logged onto my hunter, about three other hunters joined the raid group anyway, and we eventually wound up with a total of six. As opposed to two druids. Go figure.)

Now.

I’d like to sit here and tell you how awesome this raid was. I’d like to tell you that I was blown away by the fights and by the scenery and by the atmosphere. I’d like to give you all sorts of details on my thoughts on the fights from a huntery perspective. You know, the whole shebang. Unfortunately, I cannot.

Because from the moment I stepped into that raid until the moment I teleported out, I was never over 2fps.

…aaaand I frankly have no idea why.

I shut down all my other programs. I tried sans-Vent. I turned all my video effects down to zero (which meant that I could no longer see stuff on the ground). No dice. The second either a.) A boss or b.) more than one trash mob showed up on screen, I was essentially out of commission.

Now I know some of you guys are used to playing with poor computer setups and have learned to compensate for having a downright atrocious FPS, but I’m quite spoiled and I, well… haven’t. So at the end of every boss fight I’d pull up Recount, look at how absolutely horrific my performance was, and beg my guild to let me leave so they could replace me with someone who could actually contribute.

And my guild, bless their hearts, insisted that I come “see the new stuff” so they kept dragging my sorry butt all over the place.

We only did the first wing, for which I was grateful, because by that point I wanted to curl up in the fetal position somewhere and cry. Though, the Saurfang boss wasn’t too bad. Mostly because it was a Patchwerk-esque fight since I had a viable excuse to Not-Shoot-The-Adds (when you’re sitting at SUB-1-FRAME-PER-SECOND, you’re excused from shooting adds, I think.) So I was able to concentrate on my rotation, as much as I could for having, well, SUB-1-FRAME-PER-SECOND.

I gotta hand props to Wash here for picking up the slack. Lucky guy lives in the game world and doesn’t have to worry about this stuff. *mutters*

Needless to say I don’t think 25man ICC is gonna happen for me. It’s something in that dungeon, I’m quite sure, since I did an Ony25 just the other day with absolutely no issues.

Let’s hope 10-man is at least playable…

OH!

I got a new bow.

I haven’t used a bow since Valanos’ Longbow. Dead serious. The bow animation kind of weirds me out…

…that this happened to somehone who isn’t me:

Still a hunter though. Bwahaha! We shall take over the world, soon enough.

Note: Cause I know someone’s gonna bring up all the Marksman stuff on my bars: I am experimenting with raiding as Marksman when there’s a ret pally in the group already bringing the 3% damage buff, since it overwrites Ferocious Inspiration anyway. I want to get good with Marksmanship, and then someday, I swear to you, I’ll be good at Survival too… maybe… /bangs head into wall

Phase One: Don’t stand behind her! Stand off to her side or something. Misdirect onto the tank. Pewpew!

Phase Two: Onyxia will be in the air, so you can keep shooting her, although your pet won’t be able to reach her. What I’ll typically do here is stick my pet on the “large adds” that show up every once and a while.

Whelps will show up every so often. Once the offtank has a firm grasp on them, Volley to your heart’s content. If your computer is slowish, do not look at the resulting AoE. (You’ll thank me later).

Every so often, Onyxia will do a Deep Breath. You’ll know cause it’ll say “Onxyia takes a deep breath…” This, roughly translated, means “Don’t stand in front of her or you will die.” I’ve found that your best bet here is usually to just get out of the middle and run to the side, as it is surprisingly difficult to keep track of where she is when she’s flying around.

Phase Three: Your pet can attack Onyxia again– yay! Back to a tank and spank, except that Onyxia has this annoying tendency to toss fears around like no tomorrow. Bestial Wrath (and presumably things like the PvP trinket, etc.) will get you out of it, but it won’t be off cooldown nearly enough to save you from all of them. Just grit your teeth and bear it, and don’t stand too close to the whelp caves on the side, lest you are feared into it.

Phase Four: Loots! Whee!

–

I got a gun out of Onyxia-10 a few days back, which means for the first time since Naxx10, I have a non-sucky ranged weapon. Still holding out for the 25-man version, but this will work nicely in the meantime. I think my favorite part about the new gun is how plain-looking it looks from a distance, although it has some nice little details on it if you zoom in. In the plainness is the beauty, I think. I rolled on some epic crossbow in ToC25 but I’m kind of glad I didn’t win it, my plain lil’ gun is better aesthetically. /huggles it

Recruit-a-Friend is insane. Last week my tauren druid was level 38 or something. As of yesterday, she is level 50.

Proof:

(I’m actually leveling as fast as a normal person levels now! Crazy I know!)

At this point the goal is to get her to level 60 as quick as possible for two things: a.) Outlands instances and b.) Wild Growth. Let’s discuss these. Outland instances… I don’t think words can describe how much I love these. It’s really funny cause during Burning Crusade I was like “Well the Outlands instances… they’re okaaaay…” but now that I look back on them, oh my gosh. Have I lately mentioned my undying love for Underbog?

But yeah, healing Outland instances on Tamaryn = one of the best things I’ve ever done in WoW and I can’t wait to do it again.

And Wild Growth I need. I feel like a gimpy tree without it. Nourish is handy but I can live without it. Lifebloom… as much as it saddens me to say it, I’ve used it like… three times since the latest nerf. Poor Lifebloom.

But yeah Wild Growth, give please. *grabby hands*

For the uninitiated in Alpha-Theta-Pike Fraternity, this means I now have in my possession: Two level 80 hunters, one level 80 restodruid, one level 53 hunter and one level 50 restodruid.

You are now free to leave copious amounts of comments about how I really need to branch out and experience more of the game. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you do that. /nod

Don’t worry though, I’ve started the World’s Most Adorable Gnome Warlock Ever and I’m going to pair her up with my long-forgotten paladin and they’re going to be the Team Chaotix to my Hunter/Druid Team Sonic. I’m excited for that.

In other news, I signed up for… something… tonight on Tawyn. I say “something” because it is either going to be “Finishing up 10-man Ulduar, or 10-man ToC”, according to the calendar invite. I’m kind of nervous about it being Ulduar because I’ve only done up to Thorim so far and I’m going to feel like a noob. >.>

It’s funny because I am totally not a raidy-type of person. I mean, I love it, but I can really only do it once a week or so and then I burn out for the week. So, I would actually be pretty okay if tonight’s dealy didn’t happen and then I could do alts instead~ ^^

…toldya I’d get Malygos before Oculus. >.>

Funny story behind this whole thing actually; I’ve been sitting around needing EoE and Oculus for a really long time now. However, I haven’t had much good luck with groups.

Enter my new guild, which– have I mentioned recently that they are all exceptionally nice?– has been really itching to figure out a way to get me into some raids since my schedule does not coincide with their current progression schedule very nicely.

And so, one night when I was actually online (as opposed to mornings, when I am usually online), the guild pulled together a Malygos run… pretty much just for me, and for some guildies’ alts who also wanted the title.

Now enter the funny story. They wanted me to use Ventrilo, which is fair; I typically use Ventrilo for any raid that isn’t OS/VoA. Ventrilo doesn’t work for me on Linux so I told my guild it would be a moment while I hopped partitions over to Windows.

…guess who hasn’t used Windows since the patch? Guess what needed to download? Oh, and then guess who ran out of space on her Windows partition and had to rearrange everything?

Needless to say it was about an hour before I was actually back in game. My addons were completely borked, but at that point I figured screw it, I’d already left my poor guild waiting so long.

And so, before long I was on Ventrilo, the subject of a rather amusing (and truth be told, ongoing) name debate: TAH-win vs. TAY-win. (It’s TAH-win by the way. >.>)

And Malygos went down quite nicely! I had a screenshot of the achievement but it primarily consists of my broken addons throwing error messages in my face (no, seriously. I named it “What Your Addons See When They Die”), so yeah.

Anyways, a couple days after that, aforementioned Really Nice Guild* went to Oculus with me so I could, finally, become Champion of the Frozen Wastes.

It’s a spiffy title, if a bit long-ish, and since approximately 97.5% of the WoW population is currently using that title, I’ll probably retire it soon until a few expansions from now, when it becomes rare.

But it’s nice to have it! <3

P.S. Guess who signed up for Ulduar this week! /excited dance

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* Really Nice Guild, as it turns out, has a blog. They totally aren’t expecting me to link them, but I’m going to because I’m devious like that. /wicked grin

They say every piece of loot has a story behind it, whether it be an exciting tale or a more mundane one. Let me tell you my latest story then…

I am sure most of you know by now that due to scheduling difficulties, I PuG a good portion of my raids. And PuGs are like that proverbial box of chocolates– you never quite know what you are going to get.

So I was sitting around in LFG last night, watching with a rather unamused expression as nobody seemed to be running Naxx. Finally, after several long minutes of running in circles around Stormwind, a glimmer of hope: “LF1DPS for a partially-cleared Naxx.”

Now one of the side effects of my PuGging tendencies is that I have seen most of the starter bosses of Naxx a dozen times, it’s just the last few that I have yet to see. (In my experience, the main thing that prevents most PuGs from getting to those last bosses isn’t so much issues with the group performance, so much as people having to leave and constantly having to stop and find more people, which drags raids on for far too long and makes them end early.) Anyways, I was 100% okay with not downing all the bosses as long as there was a small chance I would maybe get to see the bosses I’ve yet to see, so I tossed the person a quick whisper, and after being informed “Yay, you win!” I was invited to the raid.

They summoned me in. Right in front of Four Horsemen. Not a problem, Four Horsemen is one of those fights I have pretty much nailed by now in terms of strategy and I actually rather enjoy the fight. I looked around at the people I was raiding with, almost all of them were in the same guild. They had a camaraderie to them and seemed to just be having a good old time. Good, gooood, I thought. Shouldn’t be too painful.

The raid leader began explaining the fight via a strategy that sounded unusual to me, but I was up for it. We got into position, and pulled.

…I’m really not sure how to describe how bad the subsequent wipes were. They were racecars careening off of tracks and exploding in a mess of fire and metal on a wall somewhere. They were people slipping at the top of the stairs while holding a bowl of soup and tumbling all the way down, making a huge mess. They were wipes on a fantastic scale. Every time we started again, we would try a different strategy, eventually settling on “burn down Thane”.

…have you ever seen the debuff on one of the Four Horsemen go up to six? Yeah, I didn’t know it could get that high either.

I pulled up Recount for the first time after the third or fourth wipe. I was the only member of the raid doing above 2k DPS. My pet alone was outDPSing someone. And that was when I looked around at these people I was raiding with. They were in blues and maybe a heroic epic or two. This was their first night in Naxxramas. And yet there was something about them, something that I couldn’t pin down…

We tried again, and again. As always, everything ended up in some sort of spectacular wipefest. We had to have a repair break and after yet another wipe the resto druid, who was not in the guild and had been pulled in as a PuG not long after me, began to despair over Ventrilo. “I get online and hope to get into a Naxx group tonight and we’re not even going to down Four Horsemen!” It wasn’t even a complaint or an insult or anything, just a pure sheer cry of sadness and frustration. Inwardly I found myself agreeing with him. And yet…

I thought I saw something out of the corner of my mind’s eye. My subconscious looked up and saw him there; the Deity of WoW Karma, a creature just as powerful and pervasive in this World of Warcraft as Elune, if not moreso. He was giggling at me, and there in my mind he painted a picture…

…a picture of a young group of friends all in one guild, sitting in Deadwind Pass trying to fill up our first ever Karazhan group. All of us excited and so full of hope. We pulled in a few unsuspecting PuGs, and told them right before we went in that we’d never done this before. We downed Attumen, we downed Moroes, and then we hit this wall with Maiden. Couldn’t down her. Pulled the plug on the raid having only downed two bosses. One of the PuGs was really frustrated with us. “You’re all terrible, you’ll never down Maiden!”

And yet we did, the next time we went. And every time we went we got a little farther and every time we went we had one or two PuGs with us.

There were the two people who did Curator with us. We had no idea what we were doing. Sparks were everywhere and we wiped and wiped and wiped. Patiently those two people told us what to do, over and over, until finally we downed that thing.

There was the priest who fell in with our little group and raided with us solidly for about a month, coaching us through Shade of Aran and Illhoof before one day saying goodbye to us and going off to make his own raiding group.

WoW Karma showed me all of this; the memories vivid in my mind. Suddenly a voice from Ventrilo shook me out of my reverie. One of the people in this guild.

“Don’t say that. We will down Four Horsemen. We will,” she said, her voice firm.

There was no room in that voice for uncertainty. I believed her.

We marched back in there for the… seventh, eighth?… time, and we did it. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because that’s how many people in the group hadn’t done it yet and we had to do it that many times for everyone to finally get it (for those of you who don’t know, Naxx bosses are largely “gimmick-based”… most of them have some trick to them that you have to “get”.) It was long and it was strenuous and there were six debuffs on us at one or two points but somehow the tanks tanked through it and the healers healed through it and the DPS was DPS’ing their quest-blue-clad hearts out and I felt like Wash and I had never before DPS’d harder in our life trying to pick up the slack, and we downed Four Horsemen.

We opened the chest; out tumbled some shoulders for me. I won the roll for them with some exorbitantly high number that I didn’t need to roll because I was the only one who wanted them anyway, which meant that I had officially wasted my one good roll for the week. I made a comment on this and was met with good-natured giggles from Vent.

This was followed by wiping on gargoyles and the longest Noth the Plaguebringer battle of all time, and then everyone conveniently deciding to be tired and ready to call it when we were at Heigan’s doorstep (a tad disappointing, I had FRAPS ready and everything so I could try to make a “Teach Your Pet To Dance” movie.)

And so I sat there with sort of a confused look on my face, clutching my new shoulders and my lone two badges, still a little bewildered at what had just transpired.

“I’ve added you to my friends’ list,” said one of the guild members. One who had giggled at my terribly dorky jokes I tend to make in raids. I glanced up at WoW Karma. He nodded at me. I nodded back.

“Thank you,” I said, “And thanks for the group!” and then I took my two badges and my clear conscience, and hearthstoned away.

You know, Tawyn had to deal with a lot of scary stuff today.

A room full of dragon hatchlings in the name of a title…

And the big mother dragon, herself, just for the heck of it…

But nothing, apparently, is quite as scary as a talking tree.

/cower indeed.

(For the record, the guild name is a BIG inside joke; and Onyxia was done with a prot warrior, a resto druid, a warlock, our healadin-turned-retadin, and me. I FRAPS’d the thing and I’d be willing to try to get a video together with annotations about my usage of the new hunter talents and skills, if anybody is remotely interested!)