Not letting that stop us!

As you may already know, my comp is done for. No matter what we tried it just wouldn't turn back on. So Izzy pulled out his old comp, which also had issues, but workable once it turns on. I spent a day downloading the necessary things to be able to raid and have been playing like this for almost 2 weeks now. I'll have to deal until I'm able to get a new comp.

So last week we attempted Heroic Norushen. The first few attemps were a crazy mess of people forgetting their order and if they were to kill their big ad first or last. Once we got it squared away we had a good real attempt where we got him to 3% and the next one was a solid kill with 15 seconds to spare on the enrage timer. I believe we had a total of 7 attempts. Not bad I would say.

This week we went for Heroic Immerseus. At first it was a giant mess off adds, puddles and debuffs, but after just a few attempts we got the hang of it and on our 7th attempt we got him down with no problems. Healing that fight is insane with how much crap you have to watch out for: don't stand in puddles, heal and decurse people, stay out of whirls and swirl... it was fun though. I do enjoy hectic fights, it keeps healing interesting!

So for next week I plan to have us working in Heroic Galakras. Seems to be the next easy heroic to attempt. And from there we'll prob hit Protectors, Sha and Nazgrim, with Jugg and Shamans following.

We've gotten plenty of gear from heroics as well between rolls and loot drops. Izzy got 2 pieces for his priest last night, Bolt-Burster Grips from loot drop and Ichor-Dripping Shoulderpads from his roll, so he's happy as can be with his new BiS shoudlers for his Disc spec. And our lock picked up the Purified Bindings of Immerseus on a roll which made the rest of the casters happy cause that's one less person to roll against when it actually drops. On H Norushen I got heroic warforged Boots of Broken Reliance which is awesome because it's been so long since I've gotten gear that I'm Valor capped, so now I actually have something to spend them on!

In other news, my shaman was picked up by a pug on Tues for SoO reg and she was able to full clear with them in one night :D Not only that but I was loot whoring it up! I ended up with 3 tier pieces, neck, boots and 2 pieces for enhancement! She went up 8 item levels in one night O.o Now that I know I can handle normal Siege I'll be bringing her in on our reg boss kills in hopes of getting some loot and will eventually replace Kaliapy with her once their ilvls are much closer :)

Kiss that computer goodbye :(

This past month my computer has been shutting off for no apparent reason. Last week it did it again, but this time there was just no way to get it to turn back on :(  Izzy opened it up and tried his best to get it working again to no avail. Sigh...  I had to kick Izzy off his laptop this week so I could raid lead since he didn't want to do it. He brought his old comp out for me, but that one too has issues on start up. Once it finally catches it stays on, but who knows how long it will be before this one dies as well. Good news is our tax return will be here by next week and I'll be able to buy a new comp soon enough. In the meantime this will have to do.

Even with my computer issues we had a great week. We finally have a full raid team again (NO MORE PUGS!), and we full cleared with no problems at all. So this week if all goes well we'll be working on Heroic Norushen. I think our team has the DPS for it, so I'm looking forward to kicking his ass this Thursday.

It sounds horrible to say that when I know there are so many people out there already half way through Heroic SoO or more. This is my team though and I love raiding with these people. We have a blast and we've stuck together through this huge bump on the road and I feel like now that we're back on track and we'll be able to plow through heroics before a big nerf comes around.

Not much else going on... Izzy wants to get a new desk when we go computer shopping. He's been talking about re-arranging our bedroom's layout and putting our desks on the same wall. It'll be different raiding side by side instead of giving our backs to each other as we do now. Hopefully I'll remember to take some pictures or maybe even document our entire outing, I'm sure Izzy would just love that! lol

Lots and lots of changes!

After my little rant about Garrosh, just before Christmas, we gave him another go and got him to 2%. Not without some issues of course. Our tank and co-GM decided to voice his opinion about me, a healer, killing the engineers. Mind you we have no issues on phase 1, but he doesn't like me doing it because it's not the way he does it in his progression group.

To make this long and dramatic story short, they demoted me and took over my group to prove some kind of point about their way being the right way to do Garrosh. Their changes made absolutely no difference what-so-ever. People were still dying to the same things. So after 3 hours of raiding we finally killed him, no surprise there seeing as it was bound to happen with the 2% attempt the week before. It seems I wasn't being a team player because I was being told by a so called experienced raider how to kill Garrosh and I just didn't want to listen. So the fact that I've done my research and the fact that he could never give me a valid reason for any of the changes he wanted us to make were not acceptable reasons for not doing things their way. I tried to stick it out a few days after that, but things just weren't the same. So Izzy and I decided to leave the group and join a friend's guild. It was the best decision we could have made. And to my surprise most of team came along with us.

I hate the guild dramas and such, and it seems I've had my fair share of them lately, but what they pulled was completely uncalled for. Everything happens for a reason though, and we're very happy where we are right now. I have full control of my group and yet the GM and officers have been very helpful in filling in on alts and such while we try to get our group going again. As it stands right now, we have one more core spot to fill and hopefully we can get back on track. 

No time for hurt feelings...

After trying to kill Garrosh for 3 weeks with close attempts (8% on phase 3) and no success, everyone is getting a little frustrated. Totally understandable. The problem is mainly due to people going the opposite direction of the rest of the group during Empowered Whirling Corruption and that's when they are not dying to random stupid things, like getting hit by the Iron Star for no reason other than just not paying attention.

We have a pretty cool 10 man group, we all get along fairly well, we joke around and have plenty of laughs during raid time. Everyone in the group is mature and know what they have to do and get it done. It's very rare that I have to say something to them, unless they're having a little too much fun during a boss fight and it's affecting their performance. At that point my tone gets a little stern, I tell them to focus, they do, the boss dies and we all go back to enjoying ourselves.

Garrosh is a jerk though, and he's making me be a bit more harsh with my raid team than they are used to, especially this weekend and some people didn't like that. We've been raiding together for almost 2 months and although I like to generalize it, so as to not single anyone out when people are messing up, some of them wanted to know if it was them in particular. So after 3 hours of wiping on Garrosh people needed to be called out on their mistakes and that's when feeling started getting hurt.

Why are you getting defensive? Did you want me to ask you nicely not to stand in things that will kill you, or stay to please stay in the vicinity of the healers, or not die to stupid shit? Did I need to say pretty please with a cherry on top??? Seriously! Why are you getting me at me for finally raising my voice after 3 hours and 3 weeks of the same mistakes?

Sigh...

Maybe I have a different mind set or just used to raid leaders yelling in general. Is that the biggest difference between 10 and 25 mans? I've raided 25 mans for the past 7, going on 8, years. I've raided hardcore with plenty of heroics and casual with my fair share of bad pugs in between.  I'm used to having an entire 25 man team being yelled at for making the same mistakes after just a few attempts on progression fights and unless I was being disrespected I never took it offensive, much less personal.

So why is there a difference in 10 man? Shouldn't a 10 man team be a more tight-knit group and therefore less likely to get butt hurt for being individually asked to stop screwing up? Or is it because you are so much closer that they take it so personal? Maybe this is more an issue of people just not being used to progression raiding?

Lessons in raid leading at it's best, I suppose. I've been told that sometimes I need to treat them like children, I have 4 of those, so I guess I should have plenty of experience to deal with them then lol.

Bettle.net ap, Flex and Garrosh...

I decided to install the Battle.net desktop app this morning and I have to say it's pretty cool. Here's a screenshot of my desktop so you can see what it looks like:

You can manage your account, get support, change download settings for patches. There is a "news" tab where you can see what's going on with blizzard and all their games. You also have the option of viewing just World of Warcraft updates.

You can see when your Bettle.net friends are on and what game they're playing. There's also a timer showing you how much game time you have left. 

And of course, you have a "play" button, so you can jump right in. I've set mine to launch when my computer starts, so WoW will already be open when I want to sit and play, and the best part is you don't need to log in to the game, it will automatically take you to the last character and server you were playing on! How sweet is that?

I def recommend it, especially if you're like me, who's always going to worldofwarcraft.com to check for updates and patch notes.

In other news, Izzy finally got his Merrymaker and mount yesterday. Of course I had to create 4 characters for him to do Let it Snow to be able to get them! 

We also did flex with the guild and that was excruciatingly painful :( We had a smaller group than usual this week, about 18-20, and a lot of them I don't even know. New members or alts? I have no clue, I was on my shaman and she's not in the guild to check who they were, but it was a mess. Wing 1 was fine, but for whatever reason they decided to Q for Wing 3 after that and that's where the shit hit the fan. After 5 wipes on Malkorok we finally got him down with half the raid dead. The problem seemed to be mainly with dps who, by the way they were acting, were there to get carried and not do a damn thing! I get that it's flex, but please don't make it hard for those that are on their mains to help get YOU gear. Talk about being selfish. Spoils was better but not by much, so I decided for mine and Izzy's sanity not to stick around for Thok. I was getting to the point where I wanted to yell at people, so I decided we needed to go before I went bitch-mode on someone.

Tonight we have our raid and I'm hoping we get to Thok or Blackfude, so we can get as much time as possible on Garrosh. Last week someone suggested we try a new strat, leaving the desecrated weapons up during phase 2 because that would give us 10% more DPS on Garrosh. After seeing how the night went, I've decided to go back to DPSing them down. There was so much running around when we left the weapons up that the 10% we were hoping to gain where lost going back and forth.

If anyone has any suggestions and strat ideas for Garrosh, I would love to hear them. This will be week 3 on him and he seriously needs to die already! We have the heals and we have the dps, but when the empowered desecrated weapon comes out it all falls apart. Our best attempt got him to 17% in phase 2. Any advice you could give me to help our team would be greatly appreciated :)

But they're NOT my characters!

I'm certain that there are a few of you out there that get where I'm coming from here. The last few days I've found myself playing on Izzy's priest more than my own characters! Since he came back to playing I've been trying to get him his legendary cloak, he's on secrets right now and half way through revered with the Black Prince.

Last night we were playing with some guildies, very random stuff like PvPing in Blasted Lands, moved to Hellfire only to end up doing Maly and Grull's. At some point he realized that Winter Veil has begun and after checking his achievements he noticed it's the only thing he needs for his Merrymaker and What a long, strange trip it's been. First words out of his mouth are "you're going to do this for me, right?" >.< /rolls eyes  /facepalm  /wrist

Seriously?

I got mine back in 2008, but the man keeps quitting WoW around the same time every year and always misses his Merrymaker achievement lol. So I literally logged on Kaliapy for 5 minutes this morning to tend to my farm and then switched to Rah when a friend mentioned needing to do the achievements as well. So after spending the day running around trying to get these things done I've finally gotten all of them except for Let it Snow. Which is proving to be a pain in the butt because I can't seem to get ANY snowflakes! These revelers don't seem to like me :P

Between kissing under the mistletoe and running LFRs for secrets that don't want to drop I have done nothing to make gold on MY toons today. Rah hasn't been completely unlucky though, last week he got a Primal Egg which ended up being a Red Primal Raptor, and today he got another! We'll see what it turns out to be in a few days. And because they needed healers for LFR he also ended up with a Phoenix Hatchling in his bags as well.

I complain because I'm a Latin woman and it's one of our specialties :P, but I don't mind it so much. He's working all day and doesn't really have the time to do all these things. So I do it for him to keep him happy and playing WoW :)

Haters will hate...

As some of you know my raid team has been together for 5 weeks now and this is our second week on Garrosh, with no kill yet :( I can tell people are starting to get frustrated, probably because we've killed everything else with much ease and now it feels like we're hitting a brick wall now. We've spoiled ourselves into believing that we would breeze through Garrosh as well. I believe that with this weeks gear upgrades we'll get him.

I myself was dying to stupid things last night and it has a bit to do with the bit of gossip I got from Izzy during raid. Let me give you a little back-story so you understand:

When I left group 2 (solely due to their change in raid days) and made this group, I made the decision of not having any alts in the group. Although I have no issues with alts I don't feel that the dedication is there as it is with a main character. I was able to find core raiders except for 1 tank before our first raid. The GM and her boyfriend, Xinu, offered their alts to help as we needed them until we were set up. Both of their mains are in the guild's main raid group and Xinu is actually their raid-leader. Our entire group had about a 540 ilvl when we started and we've all worked hard for our gear and for those boss kills. After many days of looking for a tank for our group Xinu told us that he would dedicate the time on his monk alt to our group and so it has been for the past 5 weeks. Which leads me to last night's gossip. Group two is run by the GM's son (who's also in the guild's main raid group) and his girlfriend, and while we've progressed to Garrosh, they have been stuck between Galakras and Shamans for the past 6 weeks. They don't have a consistent group, many alts and end up melee heavy a lot of the times, none of which is any of our fault. And so now the GM's son's gf feels the need to complain and pretty much talk shit, saying that Xinu, who is on his alt and just as under-geared as the rest of us when we started, is carrying us. She feels that he should do the same for her group, which I don't get because they hate him anyway, but I guess not enough if it means a stupid boss kill. Oh but wait, her bf is in the main progression group as well, and his alt is in group 2, so why isn't he carrying them all the way to Garrosh? Could it have something to do with the fact that one person can't carry an entire group? 

It's very upsetting for me to hear this because even though I left group 2, I have continued to recruit for them in hopes of getting them consistent raiders. I certainly don't wish them bad, never have. When our group started there was talk of friendly competition within our own groups chatter, never in guild chat and never in a malicious way. When we passed shamans our competition shifted to the guild's main raid group (who are now 3/14H) and that kept us motivated to push forward.

So now after 6 weeks of having a dedicated group we are at risk of losing our tank because this woman is jealous that we are at Garrosh and her group isn't. It has a lot more to do with the family dynamics than anything else, and I hate the fact that it's starting to affect my raid team. How bad will it get when we do get our Garrosh kill and start working on heroics?

Have you ever had to deal with family issues within your guild ranks? How do you deal with people like this, who don't seem to be happy unless everyone is miserable like they are? I'm more determined than ever now to have my team, group 3, succeed!