Glitches Galore AND Trolled?!

We've been raiding fairly regularly now for the last couple of months. Since the first time we downed Deathwing, we've completed the raid every week, once. Until this last week. We had quite a bit of difficulty with the second half of the raid - a couple of wipes on Ultraxion, so many wipes on Warmaster Blackhorn that we decided to call the raid for the first day there without finishing it. On Saturday, we managed to get Blackhorn down, but not until after several MORE wipes. Then we proceeded to wipe repeatedly on Spine of Deathwing as well, until finally we hit on a winning combination of DPS and skill and took that down as well. We know Madness of Deathwing very well at this point - in fact, every time we've taken it down, we've done it with me as the single tank for the encounter. This means most of our DPS have to be pulling at least 30,000 damage per second in order to kill the Mutated Corruption before it can impale me a second time (an unavoidable death). We haven't had any issues with this, though we have cut it close. This week, however, things started going a bit...cockeyed. It started with a glitch we've had before, in which an enemy refuses to focus on me despite me throwing every taunt I've got at it (Growl AND Challenging Roar), and slamming it with every bit of damage I can muster. This causes the aggro to go everywhere, and the party wiped twice because of this glitch. However, as I said, this is a glitch we've had before - if we keep "resetting the fight" by wiping the party, eventually the mechanic works properly again and I gain aggro immediately upon tossing my Growl at the enemy. And that was true - the third or fourth time through, it worked properly...and that was when we started to see the evidence that something was strange and different with this particular dungeon run - besides other things being a bit more difficult than they usually are all the way through. We had most of our DPS ABOVE 30k damage per second. In fact, four out of five dps were doing over 40k. So why weren't we able to kill the Mutated Corruption before the Elementium Bolt came down? On ANY of the platforms? This wasn't player error - everyone was focused on exactly what they were supposed to be focused on. Everyone was damaging everything they were supposed to. Throwing everything they had at each threat in succession - and no matter what we did, the corruption wouldn't go down before that Bolt came UP. Now we're all good players. We did what we were supposed to do. Another common glitch wiped the party, though. During this last fight, each of the Aspects gives the party a buff to help them through the battle. Thrall is simultaneously the most useless and useFUL one - he gives you the ability to leap between the widely spaced platforms with a gust of wind at the right time to blow you across. The down side to this being that when Thrall's buff fails, which it does occasionally (and it isn't SUPPOSED to - that's the glitch), the player effected by the glitch is dropped to their death...and they are NOT within reach of any battle rez in the game. In a 10 man raid, every bit of DPS counts. Losing one player to a Thrall glitch means we are going to hit the Cataclysm timer on the last platform and the entire party will die. So during that run, though we did everything right, we still died, thanks to Thrall dropping our Warlock in a dramatic fashion as we lept toward the last platform. It was at this point on the second day that we decided to call the Raid again. We had a glitched instance, obviously - if it wasn't one glitch, it was another, and it wasn't getting easier. Tempers were flaring, and the last thing you want is to snap at people because of a game. So we let it go and the raiding party broke up for the second time. We got together again to try one last time - it hurt so bad to have the raid sitting there within fifteen minutes of completion and NOT completing it. So we got the group together AGAIN. Now all five of our DPS were pulling over 40k. We were failing to get the Mutated Corruption down before the second Impale. After the second time, we decided to go with the classic way for this to be performed - we dual tanked it. The idea being that each tank can take one Impale, and before a third goes up, the Corruption will be dead. That worked, and we progressed. Still, though, that last platform was SO HARD. The corruption wasn't down, the Bolt came out, forcing everyone to switch from the Corruption to the Bolt before it killed everyone. The Corruption was still up when Hemorage came down, but we got past THAT. And there we were, blasting everything we had at the Arm Tentacle, trying desperately to finish. The timer for Cataclysm - the party wiping mechanic that goes off if the Tentacle isn't killed in a certain amount of time - was ticking down. We were all focused, we were good. We killed the tentacle with 3 seconds to spare on the timer. The timer didn't stop. Cataclysm went off anyway. Mumble erupted with everyone shouting and cursing at the game - THAT glitch, after all we'd done, that was INTOLERABLE!! It was horrible! How could ANYONE be expected to get that thing down ANY faster?! We BEAT the timer and we STILL died?! Ok, that was it. We were done. The Raid broke up for the final time and we all slunk off, licking our respective wounds and growling about how unfair the game was being. Later on, those of us in our Guild were talking about it. Forget the Cataclysm glitch - there was NO WAY with our DPS numbers that we shouldn't have been able to single tank that fight. So why were the Corruptions staying alive so long? Why was everything so hard to kill? A theory was hit upon, but none of us wanted to believe it...See, since Dragon Soul came out, the Raid has been "nerfed" (made easier) several times. At this moment, all of the enemies in the Raid both do 20% less damage over-all, AND have 20% less health than when the Raid was originally released. At the beginning of the Raid there is an NPC standing by that will allow you to "turn off" this nerf, and make the Raid as hard as it originally was - for those people who feel their guild is prepared for that challenge. The trick is - ANY member of the party can talk to that NPC and "un-nerf" the Raid. There's no warning that it's been done. And right at the very beginning of our Raid, on Friday, we got a couple of jerks in the pick-up part of our group who hated on us for (of all things) using Mumble instead of Ventrillo (both are VOIP programs that allow all of us in the Raid to hear and talk to each other for ease of communication and a lack of a need to type anything). We have a paid-for Mumble server, thanks to a wonderful member of our Guild, so we use Mumble. The jerks insisted Vent was better and refused to use Mumble, then left the group. The thing is - we were already inside the instance. Just inside the portal. Right next to that NPC. You see where I'm going with this, no doubt. The theory we came up with was that just before they left, one of the jerks talked to the NPC and un-nerfed the dungeon on purpose to troll us. There was, of course, no warning or notification that this had been done. Of course, this was just a theory - but the extra 20% health would explain our inability to kill the Corruptions before the second Impale, as well as just how HARD everything kept hitting, with the extra 20% damage from everything. Lona sent in a trouble ticket about it, asking if there was any way we could check and find out if our group had been un-nerfed. Several hours later, our theory became fact when a GM confirmed that our raid lock for the week was to an un-nerfed dungeon. On top of all the glitches, the game itself had been set to "hard mode". No WONDER we hadn't finished it! Yes, we were angry at the jerks for having done it. No there was no way for the GM to find out who in the party did it, because it works as a party-wide thing. However, suddenly not finishing the dungeon seemed like almost more of an accomplishment than it normally would have. We went through all of Dragon Soul, all the way up to the final boss, at it's original difficulty - without even KNOWING it until we got to that point. Our Raid team has come a LONG way from where we were two months ago, barely knowing what we were doing. SO yes, we were plagued with glitches, and ultimately the trolls won the day. Still...I'm very impressed with our performance. This week, we'll take the whole thing down in it's nerfed form in one day - no problem. After all - now we know how much harder it COULD be.

Kalitri, Destroyer's End

This last Friday, I completed a current content regular difficulty 10-man Raid in WoW for the very first time. I wasn't DPS, you know I don't heal - that's right. Not only did I complete the raid (in five hours, with Lona, Nyx, Kata, and our friend Zach by my side), but I TANKED it. I could go on and on about how it was, I could exult over having done it - and I AM very excited that I did. But I think it'd be more interesting to see it from the perspective of the character who did it. I give you Kalitri - a Worgen Druid. And she now proudly carries the title... Destroyer's End * (*Contains spoilers for the Dragon Soul raid bosses and key events within the Raid.)

The Alluded To Gaming Update

So when I did my TAE blog yesterday, I said a lot had happened in my gaming life, too. So I figured I should probably update this blog section as well! The only real question is...where do I start?

I'll start with the raiding jump - and my subsequent confidence jump that came along with it. Along with a nice side helping of drama.

A few weeks ago, my best friend and my brother fell in with another guild who's name I won't post here because of the drama that later ensued, and I'd like our sever to continue to be the nice, calm place it is. They ran regular difficulty level Dragon Soul with that group and didn't get past the 3rd boss. They were figuring it was probably some mechanic issues. The next week they asked me to come with - in fact, a lot of potchkeying was done to make sure I was ABLE and available to come with them, to get around my work schedule. And this was all because they needed a tank - and I am a very, very good bear.

How did someone who used to be incredibly terrified of dungeons at ALL find themselves tanking a regular difficulty end-game raid? Well...I learned, to put it mildly. And I researched. I owe quite a bit of what I know to WoW Insider's Shifting Perspectives column, and it's wonderful advice on everything from rotation to optimal use of cooldowns, to guides and walkthroughs of specific bosses. Here's the main problem, however...

I don't particularly like tanking. Which is weird, because honest, compared to say, kitty DPS, bear tanking is an easier rotation. There are less things to monitor, and with our Guild Mumble (thanks Zach!), I can respond immediately to someone telling me to move or do something. But I really enjoy kitty dps...More than I enjoy my hunter, these days. It's making me glad for account wide mounts and pets are coming in Mists Of Pandaria, because it means I can switch mains completely without feeling the guilt of not having all the pets, mounts, and achievements I've worked so hard to GET on Des.

However, as I've learned, when it comes down to what you want versus what your guild/pack need, the needs of the many definitely outweigh the wants of the one. (Yay for a therian reference and a paraphrased Star Trek quote in the same paragraph.) So I'm a dedicated raid tank these days. And don't get me wrong - I enjoy it. As long as I'm doing it well.

I was so afraid, going in to tanking Ultraxion the first time on reg (having only tanked him one other time on LFR difficulty). I was sure I was going to miss a Fading Light, or an Hour Of Twilight, and I was going to get flattened...but I didn't. In fact, we took him down the first try. I was EXULTANT. I was high on that for hours afterwards - the one fight might not have seemed like a big deal to anyone else, but to me, it was huge. That was the last hurdle I had. I wasn't afraid of Warmaster Blackhorn, despite the chaos of that battle, or Spine of Deathwing, which is a total timing, mechanic, and DPS check, or Madness of Deathwing, which is all in figuring out the order of the platforms so you keep the Aspect's buffs you need the most until the very end. At most, you usually die 3 or 4 times before you figure out what works properly for you. I know once we get there, it won't be long before I have my Destroyer's End title. Which I will wear with pride - because I will have gotten it off of current content, and for the first time I will feel like a real raider.

But as in any situation where there are multiple people, things get in the way. During last week's run, the other guild brought in a tank that...well, he said he was ready. But none of us in the group but him suffered from that delusion. He'd never even raided before, and he wanted to tank it....Yeah. I was main tank, and I ended up calling out instructions to him in Mumble during every fight that had anything for him to do at all. And when it came down to it, and we really needed him to pull it together for Hagara's trash before the boss...he lost it. Repeatedly.

Now, keep in mind - nothing overt was said to him in voice or chat. But after we wiped a couple of times on the chat, one of their guild members remarked to my brother that that he "owed him five bucks". Because the two of them had been talking privately earlier and my brother had said, based on the off tank's reputation, that we'd make it to Hagara and then wipe on the trash. There was nothing to show what he was talking about - he could've been talking about a bet that we wouldn't get through half the raid in one day. Or really anything. It could have been ANYTHING.

The other guildmaster spoke to my brother and asked him what it was about. My brother answered honestly, in private, telling him about the comment and what it was in reference to. The guildmaster then took that and kicked our friend out of their guild for "badmouthing a guildmember" or something like that. Nothing was done in public, and it was very obvious that his GM had been looking for a reason to kick him. They were both ex-military, different branches, and butted heads constantly. So what did we do? We invited the newly un-guilded guy into our guild. :)

Now my brother's building up a hand-picked raid team for us that will meet this Friday and hopefully get at least through Hagara in 2 hours. Then on Saturday we'll meet and tear through Fall Of Deathwing, and come out with our respective "Destroyer's End" title. And I will have tanked an entire raid.

In other game news, I play Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds on my phone...and on my Nook Color. I play Castleville on Facebook when I'm not overwhelmed by the sheer number of quests...and I've recently re-upped my subscription to my favorite hunting game, TheHunter, which has added a whole new area with gorgeous scenery and new species to hunt - Roe Deer and Wild Boar. I can't wait until I have a morning to set aside for a proper hunting expedition.

I think that's it for my gaming news update. :) Expect more posts soon as I can find the time to type!