Our guilds on this big "loot tracking" kick all of a sudden. Since I manage our website I've been managing tracking sorta now too.

pain in my balls (which I don't happen to have), but yea, loot council was getting slack so... this is what I the non-officer am forceing the officers to use: A mod called Headcount in conjunction with THis!

THo! we did finally kill Hodir 25 last night YAY

And I want to state Freya 25 is a pain in the tokus as is Thorim 25.

After I knock out dinner tonight for the hubby and get some family time in I'll hop on Steemwheddle for a bit

I think I do a fairly good explanation for our raids, but it's tough between new people and people who have done a raid a million times and don't need the explanations. Especially when you have 24 experienced people and 1 new.

But the guild hinges upon the few and rare moments when I have to accent a guild explanation with sound effects... or I say "Ruin" instead of rune... sigh. There's practically a fan club for those moments... >.<

All my mics are broken, (cat eats em ebil cat!) so I'm the silent one on vent but horibly chatty in raid.

For Hodir explanation the raid leader was doing, think I typed out /ra Turn on Projected Textures or die in the ice you can't see coming.

Like 10 times.

Rofl

whats fun, and i hope this work in future too, hubby will generally explain the fights to me. I generally need one explanation and I get it.

I think my one problem is going to be I'm not used to afflic/destro when it comes to raids

affliction is merely a matter of keeping your dots up and moving out of the way. they have dumbed down our rotation so much that you end up doing a ton of SB spam.

the roation suggested is:

SB -> haunt -> corr -> UA -> CoA -> SB spam

refresh as needed, then drain soul at 25% and under, while you keep your dots refreshed

ive never played destro so i cant help you there.

there is a lot of movement in the raids (at least the ones ive done) and it helps being able to cast the dots while moving

Our lock used a deep demonology spec (0-54-17 I think?) yesterday, and was sporting hte best numbers he's put up yet, contrary to what EJ says, so that might be worth trying! Good raid buff there!

We never have locks. Rarely if ever do we have a raid with a lock. I have no idea what they do other than go pew pew. I think one of them is demo spec cause I seem to recall seeing a felguard occasionally, but mebe he's dual spec'd.... I really am not sure.

But he normally sits's 2-6 on DPS meters depending on the fight.

I'd use Demo on a raid only for sacrifice. Because the mana regen is sweet when you sac your FelGuard. might be interesting to try out.

Do not Sac your... oh... not all the way just a little.

Yeah, that would work.

Hehehe...now in our guild, the healers always let the locks die....we're the raid sacrifice....*mutter8

I'm a moonkin, I just AOE and do 10k DPS in 10mans.

Heres my rotation Starfall-Hurricane-Eat Sammich-Hurrricane-Munch on more sammich-Hurricane- MOAR SAMMICH!-Hurricane-Mmmm Sammich- MOAR HURRICANE!

So we're battling attendance at this point (or a lack of it, or at least a lack of letting anyone know you're not going to be on time so the raid starts a half hour late! >.<)

So I have to come up with a new bright policy.

Of course this is forcing people to consider loot of core raiders vs casual raiders... which I tend to hate.

Baeron. Our guild is having the exact same problems. Identical. Very fustrtating, but you can't cater to both. Our guilds big debate is attendance over tenur. Does current attendance weigh more on loot attainment than years of dedication to the guild? So do those who have been active and dedicated raiders in he past, but now can't make every raid get passed over for those who can make every raid?

I don't know where it will go with our guild, but for progressions sake I still firmly believe in "gear up the ones who are showing up".

Something both o fyou guys might wanna realize/bring up is that it's the first week of summer, which generally means a lot of vacation since everyone is off of school all of a sudden.

Solution proposed: Core Raiding/Casual. If you miss a raid, you're bumped to casual (unless you let an officer know in advance, that's always the key really). Core raiders get an extra 20 to any roll. (or 15, we haven't decided a number here).

To become a core raider if you're a casual, you have to make three consecutive raids.

Half a demotion is received if you're late for a raid (20 minutes or more, but yah... we're not going to say that, we want raids starting on time). So late twice without Officer notification means casual as well.

The only thing I really don't like here is that we have to address Alt usage. That's always a pain.

When do alts get to roll, when do they not.

Personally, if you're bringing an alt because we absolutely need you to, I don't think there should be a penalty, but if it's just because you feel like bringing the alt, well the alt should lose to main spec rollers. off-spec everything's fair game, so it's three rolls (Main spec main, main spec alt, off spec).

I've got a warrior tank and a elemental shaman, but I get forced to bring both constantly on raids (because when people don't show up, I have to fill out what we need). But if I do this I get seen as a special case. It's not too difficult of a problem to resolve, however, as I just have my warrior as alt status, and he tends to run with a druid tank and a DK tank. Which means there's shield wearing gear I get pref for, and shamans and hunters to compete with, but otherwise I get a fair amount of gear (Also our two other shamans have three pieces of tier 8 each!)

So we're doing fairly well.

I'd like to say that WoW broke on me, and I have to fix it. By fixing I mean reinstalling the whole damn thing cause quite frankly the repair tool can't do it's job right.

We're having the same issues with deciding on loot in my guild at the moment, also I have the same issue with raiding, my shaman is my main and he's resto/enhance and I end up switching spec's 5 or 6 times a raid (which eats up flasks) or end up having to bring my hunter in for the extra dps he does.

Yeah, at this point alot of mediocre guilds are just falling apart on the pressure of Ulduar.

It's a wipefest, but it should be learning and fun (hell, I love wiping ) Well, funny wipes and learning wipes. Stupid wipes are another matter altogether.

But as these guilds shatter, you'll find there are all sorts of golden boys who show up for every raid and learn fights perfectly who were carrying their previous guilds, all of the sudden they're on the free market!

So profit at this point! Recruit, and aim to get the best.

We just picked up a few new people who are phenominal, and they're in blues (and they're pretty much handling Ulduar awesomely). So a week or two of gearing, we've got dream team potential.

I think we have one more week of dualing 10 man ulduars, and we'll be ready for 25 man again (we had a bad week, and a main healer quit >.<)

But optimistic about the future, we're just going to curb to some very nice ranks (create a dog-house rank for core raiders who don't show up that penalizes them 15-20 on their loot rolls. So you can be casual (no penalty, but core raiders have preference when we're filling a raid), so you don't have to show up all the time, core (with good attendance) or dog house core (same as core with the -20 until you show up 3 times in a row and you're back in good standing).

And we're aiming to recruit till we can field an almost full core 25 man group

I play a resto druid for pvp and i cant find a good spec can anyone suggest a good spec ?

everything ive read about resto and pvp is you shouldnt be doing resto as pvp

but that probably didnt help you

Everything I've ever noticed was that Resto druids in a bg of any type turn the tide the other way.

Nothing dies when a resto druid is healing >.<

I'm not sure how your resilience is, that should be a major factor, but that's a gear issue then a spec issue.

There's also a bloody talent that makes it so you can't be knocked back Yah... I'll admit, that's a good one for you.

BTW what server and faction did you guys decide to start rolling on? Think it was SW and ally right?

I was gonna say. As long as the opsing team can't dispel hots. People just don't die with resto druid behind them.

Steamwheedle Cartel and we're Alliance. - See siggy below

Ok cool I may have to roll a character over there to hang out when not raiding!

I wont be on much this and maybe into next week wow wise. I'm moving and the internet at my current place has been down since Friday (Satelite internet is suck).

Also, point here, most druid HOT's, if they're dispelled, just heal for even more! It's frustrating as hell. >.<

You need to dispel everyone AND Silence the druid (and stunlock if possible) just to wear down everyone else.

Fixed it for you.

lol decided to go Resto for pvp on my druid... takes quite a few peeps to kill me and im in 2 pieces of hatefull and the rest val boomkin pieces

I do find lock, Dk, and warriors to be my biggest pains....

I'm trying to work on my pvp skills as elemental shaman. I was grinding up even against a Warrior in full furious (I have full hateful, so I'm two seasons behind?) so that's pretty awesome imo.

DK's... ugh. They're a pain. It's like fighting a rogue in the fact that every swing is another disease. So it's not really worth cleansing them... but if you don't you're dead! And I can't really pour enough damage into the bastards, and then they pop the anti-magic and forget being able to do anything! Grr....

And if I try a thunderstorm right after I get pulled to them to attempt to keep range, the thunderstorm doesn't work :/

Druid knockback works very efficiently, I wish the shaman knockback did as well.

Also, anti-magic shell should be purgable >.<

I don't have trouble with DKs, when they pull me I already got 2 dots ticking 1500+ on them. So I just push them back and pop off lifeblooms on me as I cheetah away, shift out of movements when needed. He/she'll die in a few moments.

Rogues are my biggest enemy, I can't survive threw the stuns. But hey I survive with only 16k HP anyway for everything else XD

Rogues require Elemental Shaman Trickery really. Ok, so they start with the stun, of course (and you probably don't have totems set because you didn't seem em coming).

So you hit thunderstorm (while stunned), send them flying, drop a stoneclaw totem, flame nova, poison cleansing, hit them with flameshock, they charge back in, beat on you (not getting through the stone claw shielding yet), and the flame nova hits them as you hit them with a critted lavaburst! 7k damage (flame shock still ticking).

Hit them with hex, they'll pvp trinket out of it, use earth bind (aoe root initiially), two steps back as you drop another flame nova totem and flameshock, they charge again as you lavaburst, the nova hits, they're stunned again, you can normally clean up with a chain lightningning, and if necessary, elemental mastery instant crit lightningbolt (flameshock lavaburst again if by some crazy luck they're still alive).

That's prolonged fight. They should have been dead after the hex really.

Whee. Right now I have two lvl 80's a 74, and a bunch of lvl 20-50 chars, been working more on achievements than anything.

Sorry I've not bee online much, (forums or wow) been moving so my only net time atm is when I'm at work. We should have all the big furniture move this weekend. And settled by the middle of next week so I'll be back to wow and gaming by then

Aw, Eul! You're horribly missed >.<

Updates - 25 Ulduar went on Tuesday (3 hour run), got Leviathan down with 1 tower (tried two first... UGH), my guild has an issue with getting into tanks and getting going, and following instructions. That was 25 people, full vehicles, etc.

What's annoying is we went on Monday to do Leviathan, we had 12 guildies on, I pugged 8, and we managed Flame Leviathan with 1 tower up, and we did it smoothly >.<

Grr. And most of the officers were missing on Monday, so guess who I think the problems are?

We also downed Razorscale (Quick Shave), Ignis (For the first time... we had 5 wipes though. The MT we were using was slightly undergeared and our healers couldn't keep him up, so we switched him, and switched strategies for the adds (OT grabs an add, holds it in a fire near the water, DK tank waits till it's molten and grabs it into water, repeat). Yeah, you can't play these the way you do on 10 man. It worked amazingly well when we did this (and switched the MT).

Deconstructor two shot (First time our two Tank healers got bombed immediatly and the MT died >.<

But still, a good night overall. Next week I think we'll either do just 1 tower or no towers for speed efficiency for Flame Leviathan (no benefit to doing multiple towers really, unless you get an extra badge per tower?)

But at most we'd leave 1 up, but skipping all the towers (by not talking to the stone guy) saves SOOO much time.

Will have to see what we can get down tonight, I'm thinking Kolo, Cat Lady, Thorim... attempt Freya and Iron Council.

Next week get through Kolo and hopefully Cat Lady on the first night (pending less wipes on Ignis and no extra tower attempts on FL).

Keep 1 tower up, the extra badge is win.

Kolo is pretty heal intesene on 25man, and cat lady with extra cats is annoying.

We normally do flame lev with 1 tower, straight through deconstructor then Kolo and Cat lady in the first raid day. Hit up Hodir next raid if we have 24+ people, if not we backtrack taking out, Razorscale, and IC and if we feel up to it Ignis (we can do Razorscale with 21 Ingis and IC not so much fun).

We're still working on Thorim and Freya, we normally try to get Freya's tree's down before raid reset for the extra badge at least, especially if we're short people (21 is enough to kill the trees at least)

Just an FYI Thorim is alot rougher on 25man than 10. The Group make up has to be exact or you die horrible. Don't even bother if you have less than 25.

Mount changes for 3.2

http://www.wow.com/2009/06/10/upcoming-mount-changes/

I am very excited about this

Wait? How's Hodir? And Freya on 25?!

Even with our low numbers, we've only attempted Freya twice and Thorim once. Both made me cry a bit inside.

Thorim is horrid on 25man, we either have a group that survives in arena but dies in hallway or the other way around. We've tried numerous group make up's and when we finally got close to one we thought could work it was time to call raid.

Freya is just chaos, but we've only had a few attempts on her really and normally at the end of the raid right before resets happen :/ .


Hodir isn't much different on 25man as it is on 10man. We start the encounter with the mages marked. We run in and burn down the ice-cubed NPC's from left to right freeing all of them. DPS goes to Hodir, after the first freeze we only break out the mage NPC's from there on out. The mages take care of the rest of the NPC's after that. Also whoever get's the storm buff they run to the middle of the room (normally near mele) if anybody wants the buff, they run to that person. Honestly, I'll pick up the buff every now and again, but most of the time I'm fire hugging. I'd prefer to be able to straight DPS with no need to move as oposed to jumping around and taking random tick damage the healers shouldn't need to be healing.

As long as nobody dies (ok well you can loose 1 or 2 people) Hodir is cake

Have you done either on 10 man prior to this? I know Freya is kind of crazy even on 10 man. I think with 25 you just have to spread the range out a bit more, and disperse the melee when ever the flowers go crazy.

Some careful aoe control would help drastically (ie: Frost mages, Elemental shamans, DK's. Do some timed roots, frost roots, more frost roots, with a timed aoe Fire Nova (with aoe stun behind it), followed by a thunderstorm to scatter them. You'll find survivability is rather impressive. Snaplasher should be tanked with concecration and Death and decay (and aoe damage, keep 10 feet away from tanking aoe guy, and aoe'd down by range.)

Big tree guy is just a matter of getting under the shrooms.

Overall, i don't see it as a hard fight.

Blizzard is making me sad.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174738

Freya and Thorim are often 1 shotted on 10man (unless Thorim jumps down and despawns fail).

25makes me wanna cry sometimes.

Can't read it Kay

I linked it earlier too


Basically you will be able to get mounts at 20 instead of 30, and 40 instead of 60. The price will go down too.

Also, regular flight will be increased to 150% from 60%

They also just announced the class spec travel forms will be adjusted too.

Druids, shammies and hunters will get their stuff at 16, and locks & pallys will get their mounts at 20 & 40

At least it means it will be easier to increase my mount colloection...

Actually I'm glad they're finally doing something. Sure all of us classic players want any new player to fully experience the drudgery that was "slow mountism" and "lack of mount" but at the same time, it's one of the prime reasons I fail at lvling up my alts. Hell I have a 74 warrior who I never bought any of the flying riding skills for simply because it was to slow for the regular one and to pricey for the epic one.

Now I'll not be afk autoflying on the mind numbingly slow flyer when she reaches 77. I can afk autofly on a somewhat faster flying mount.

Wooh, awesome! Hahahaha, to anyone that just bought new mounts for high costs!

Anyway. 25 Ulduar yesterday... we got Kolo and Iron Council down (2 shots each). Although Iron Council first attempt we had just stupid healers on MT and he died easy... second attempt we forced our favorite priest to switch from shadow to Disc, and yeah, easy.

I think our healers are half braindead :/ We're using 9 >.< I HATE that...

Yes, and we wiped the rest of the night on Cat Lady (ok, we did Kolo, Cat lady wipage, went to Iron Council, went back to cat lady, and wiped the rest of the night).

Mistakes are being maid on this, I think it's just raid instructions to be honest

Which is my fault<.<

Eul - Check other site, have a rebuttle to your shadow priest stuff

Also, any insight on Cat Lady? We're not going to continue (Tues/Thurs is raids and Sun is Nax till people are done gearing up through it >.<) till next week, so not too much of a rush.

On the plus side, we decided that the officers are each going to research one fight for the rest of hte instance inside and out, so that A. We have a clear and clean explanation and B. So that we're not debating what tactic to use every pull.

Cat Lady 25 is all about the pull and set up.

We normally set up with 1 OT far away from the raid and a hunter with a distract shot ready to pull 2 kitty's to that tank. the other tank grabs her and the other cats. Wherever the MT is, the rest of the raid groups up right behind him. We kill the cats first, when a fear happens wherever the MT is, the rest of the raid goes right back to being grouped up right behind him. Prevents pounce and ensures that everyone gets hit by her scream.

Is there a range on her fear? Do you down the adds on the OT, or have him far enough away with a healer at max range and not have to worry about him?

We kill everything, when the defender shows up (the last kitty) we dont dps him. If he dies (which he will just from getting caught in the aoe from when the little ones spawn and from the OT's hits) we have a DK nab him at the last minute to pull it outta the raid and kill it.

Everybody gets feared. Just easier to have everybody feared and pick back up after that. TT and fear wards help on healers and tank if you want to ensure they stay put, but as far as i know nothing is rangeable. I'd like to say we normally have the first 2 cats dead before her first fear, so at that point the OT brings his cats over to the raid.

Our starter pull is this tho. Shammy, runs out to the circlular platform between the stairs platform and hodirs and as she's patting towards us, he drops a root totem. When her and the cats come in to eat said shaman every tank/hunter grab their repsective targets.