Noobish-ness

For my non-gamer friends a "noob" is an unseasoned gamer. Someone who makes rookie mistakes and often seems unaware of the basic mechanics of the game. In a raid, a noob will often manage to wipe the party with some easily avoided mistake. A noob will ask questions about seemingly obvious parts of game play. We all start out as noobs. Last night, as a guild we played that way.

The core group of raiders for the guild tends to be pretty seasoned. We've seen all of Naxx and are now comfortable farming it (with a couple exceptions). As a group we've been to over half of Ulduar and brought down bosses using achievement strategies. Many of them have PUG'd all of the raids in the game. We've had a lot of shining moments. Last night was not one of them.

We started our raid on time and figured we would start with an easy victory. On Thursday we had downed Flame Leviatian, XT, Kologarde, and Auriaya with only one or two wipes. We were feeling good. Last night we started with Razorscale and managed to bring the big dragon down with only one death. We're still feeling cocky and decide we'll quickly handle Ignis and then move on to Freya, who we haven't really fought much yet. Ignis had other plans for us. We wiped on the trash getting to him, twice. Our first attempt on Ignis did not last long. We were killed quickly. The adds took too long and he kept killing people in his flaming pot. The second attempt was even worse with at least three adds running rampant through the party. After four or five attempts (they all blur together) we decided to bypass Ignis and head down to Freya. At least that way we could see the fight and learn.

To get to Freya, you need to kill a ton of trash. We had done this once on Thursday but the trash respawns. So we started with the first pull. And wiped. We managed to bring that down only to wipe again two trash pulls later. Wiping on a boss seems acceptable, wiping on a trash pull is just noobishness. We wiped four more times on the trash, including one terribly hurried pull where we grabbed a patrol as well. By the time we cleared the last trash and faced Freya most of us had repair bills of 30 gold or higher. Not good.

Freya has to be one of the most confusing fights in Ulduar. She has four different types of adds that spawn and each has to be treated differently. The detonating lashers need to be AOE'd down until about ten percent and then killed individually. Otherwise they all detonate together and wipe the raid. The three storm adds need to be killed within a minute of each other or they will respawn over and over until they wipe the raid. The ancient protector needs to be killed while standing under the growing and shrinking mushrooms. And the healing tree needs to be dpsed down quickly so it doesn't heal Freya. Oh and did I mentioned that new adds spawn every minute. Once you get through the add spawns, Freya herself is a piece of cake. I don't even remember how many attempts we had on her. Death after death, until shortly before midnight when we figured out the patterns and got lucky with the spawns and managed to bring her down.

We then decided to try the Assembly of Iron. It was 10 minutes to midnight (the designated end of the run) and we figured it wouldn't hurt to see a new fight. I would like to say that we lasted 30 seconds but I think that might be stretching it a bit. We were dead in seconds. It was just another death in a night of wipes. We died on bosses, we died on trash. Our shaman (my cute and wonderful husband) decided to play with the flowers instead of just dying and brought them down on us just as we resurrected. We died a lot. But we learned. The guild has never had a great raid make-up but we make due with what we have. We learned, we brought down Freya, and we saw more of Ulduar. Next trip will hopefully be better but I'd rather be Noobish with the guild, then masterful with a PUG. Expensive night but a good one.

Four Bosses, Four New Items, 8 Deaths

Not sure if I should call it a win or a lose evening.

Ulduar is not my friend! In fact I'm pretty sure it hates me and means to do me harm. Okay has done me harm. We made our second attempt on the raid last night and I found about a million ways to die. Okay 8 ways to die but that was more than almost anyone else. (One of our pallys led the charge in total number) Four of those were wipes. The rest, all me.

I only finished one boss fight last night from a vertical position. Most of the rest of the time I was "decorating the floor" as we like to say. I went from full armor at the beginning of the night to mostly red. It was not a good night for warlock survival. And what hurts the most is that most of them were my fault.

We started with Flame Leviathan and I got to drive a siege engine (tanking vehicle). My very patient gunner was our druid healer. Being new to seige engines I moved in too close to mobs and managed to get myself (and the druid) killed quickly on the trash from the towers. Not my finest moment. We both released and grabbed a new machine. It took us two tries to get the Leviathan down although in our defense we were doing the achievement method. The second time went much better for us but my vehicles health was very low by the end. Right before he died, our vehicle went and both the druid and I died...again.

Then it was on to Razorscale, the giant dragon that I get to harpoon to the ground. I love this fight because I get to play a huge role (mostly because I can teleport back to the harpoons quickly). The group starts by killing the adds which pop up from three towers. That is done until the harpoons are ready to fire. Then I teleport back and fire the harpoons to bring Razorscale to the ground and we all DPS him. He rises back up and it's rinse and repeat until he is at 50%. Then he is permanently grounded and we start the full on fight. It took us three tries to bring him down. The last try everything was going well until he was finally grounded, when he resisted the tank's taunts and came straight for me. I lasted one swipe of his paw and was down for the rest of the fight. He managed to bring down two others before the tanks finally got him under control and the guild brought him down while I anxiously watched health bars and bit my fingernails.

Then on to XT. I hate this fight. I'm not kidding. This is my toughest fight and so far I have not been standing at the end of any of our attempts. When we went two weeks ago it was the only one I died on. This time I died quickly on each of our attempts. Embarrassingly quickly. One of my issues I've figured out is that I have not downloaded the new Deadly Boss Mods. So right before XT pounds the ground (causing all sorts of aoe damage) I get a DBM warning that I have to click on. I'll update that tonight and hopefully it will help a little. The problem with this fight isn't XT himself. It's the adds. The first attempt last night I was helping out with adds and actually surviving a bit. Until one of the bomb guys aggroed me and I died in a small explosion. The second death on this was my own stupidity. I was working XT only, when I saw a robot break past our hunters and head straight for him. If he reaches the boss, it will eat him and recover health. So I aggroed the robot. And couldn't get my soulshatter off in time. He came for me and killed me in two blows. Again decorating the floor while the rest of the group brought him down.

And we finished the night with the two handed giant of doom. (not his actual name. :) ) This big boy (Kologran) is a much more difficult fight than he looks. There is so much that needs to be healed. Jeff kept switching between his hunter and his shaman when we needed extra heals, which was helpful for us. In this fight, you need to kill the giants left hand, and then dps down the body. Kologran brings up adds from his shattered hand, shoots laser beams from his eyes, and grabs people and shakes them when his hand is alive. He's not the toughest fight there but he seems to give us fits. It took us at least three tries to get this one, but minutes before midnight success was finally ours. So far this fight is the only one I can can consistanly stay alive on.

So elaborate fights and many deaths would seem to make for a bad night. And it could have been. But the loot gods smiled upon the only dps cloth-wearing caster in the group. And I walked away with four new items. I've somehow become the group's master looter which is a fun and slightly nerve wracking role for me. I'm not the quickest player in the group and am pretty slow at distributing raid mats. I'm also still learning what potions and injectors go to which player. I hope to have it down by next week but I had to do a lot of asking last night. But apparently being master looter is good luck for me. I picked up a new belt (Conductive Cord), a new set of bracers (Combustion Bracers), a new ring (Emerald Signet Ring), and a new trinket (Eye of the Broodmother). Four new items, four bosses down (okay that was more the guild than me), and 8 deaths. My armor bill was awful. Not sure if I should call this is a win or loss night. But I had a great time with the guild, so I'm calling it a win.

Wonderful Weekend and Ulduar

Okay so it's been a couple of days since I wrote anything. I had no internet access again this weekend so no posting. And this will be short. I've been not feeling well since last night. I was out of town helping a friend move. I know what you're thinking, how exciting, but we actually had a really good weekend. The move itself only took a couple of hours and the hanging out lasted all weekend. It was great to see everyone. We spent a lot of time talking, playing games, and eating. It was really a wonderful weekend. And the last of my traveling weekends for a while. I love to get away but I'm looking forward to being home this coming weekend. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that our guild made their first attempt on Ulduar on Thursday before I left. Several of the regular members had done section of the raid but we hadn't tried it yet as a guild. It went surprisingly well. We started late but managed to bring down four bosses in the span of a couple hours. The first boss we worked on was the Flame Leviathan, who is a machine fight. I don't normally do well with machine fights since my minion often interferes with the controls. But I dismissed my pet beforehand and had no issues. I got to be a gunner, shooting rockets and bombs and enjoyed the fight immensely. 

We then took down Razorscale and I got to play a major role in the battle, shooting the guns that brought the dragon to the floor. We had no real problems with him. XT-002 the girl robot who thinks we are toys, was much more a challenge. We managed to bring her down but I died twice during the fight and we wiped at least once. We bypassed the Furnace Master and brought down Kologran, the giant with the active right hand after several wipes. It was an interesting set of bosses but we had a good time. I look forward to going back.