Finally a hard boss

T.o.C. was cake, Icc is nerfed to hell, and even when it wasn't the mechanics were very forgiving for bad play.

Now we have Ruby Sanctum and Halion.

Thank God for a real challenge. The trash needs you to cc and tank correctly, the mini bosses don't just fall over when you fart at them and OMG HALION!

All in all he has some straightforward mechanics. Don't drop void zones on or near the raid. Don't get hit by meteors. Don't get hit by lasers. And since he is a dragon, don't get breathed on or tail whipped. And that is just normal mode.

Realistically an average raiding guild should be able to pull together and kill him in normal mode. Our first kill lost about half the people by 3rd phase but the rest were able to put our chins down and grind the rest out without mistakes.

And not making mistakes is what this boss is all about.

In hard mode you have only 2 extra mechanics. When meteors drop you get some adds that need to be aoe'd and you have 2 lazers instead of 1. The dps needed is less forgiving so you really cant lose anyone. It's all about not screwing up in your individual job.

We have spent about 16 hours on hard mode halion so far. By far our biggest problem is that he parry hastes. We can handle a 30k or 40k hit on our tank. When we get 2 of those hits in less than 1 second we can't keep the tank alive. In normal mode this isn't as much as a problem because all the mele in twilight realm can stay on his back foot and not get hit by the lazer. In hard mode mele has to stand close to his middle and if they move past the mid point they can get parried and then the boss kills the tank.

Blizzard usually waits a few months then does something to nerf the encounter so that more and more guilds can kill it. My best guess is that they will turn off parry haste and then you will see a huge surge in hard mode kills.

In the end hard mode halion is the type of boss who separates an average guild from a top server guild.

It's been a week

I just realized I haven't posted in a week. My attitude has vastly improved. We had 2 full days of wipes on progression last week. We are looking at the same this week. We completed ICC in one day, all HM except for LK.

Oh and I got to do the last 2 achieves for my ICC 10 drake.

More good news is one of the guilds who are in front of us in progression decided to quit "raiding" and only doing gdkp runs. Another guild who was close but behind us in progression has kind of imploded. Because of these things we have gotten some new recruits who can actually perform really well. Not only that we have enough people to sit and sub instead of barely having enough to fill the raid.

Going this way I think its just a matter of time before we kill all the HM's left in wrath and get the rest of the hard to do achieves.

Curse of the Legendary

There is a phenomenon that happens to people who get a legendary item. They get burnt out and quit or take a break from the game.

If you read this blog then you know I recently got a legendary weapon. I swore that I wouldn't be one of those people. I have huge guild loyalty. I have tons of love for the game. In the 5 years I have been playing this game I have never gotten burnt out.

Well, guess what. It's happening to me. I am getting burnt out for the first time since this game was launched.

I find myself frustrated with people who refuse to follow strategies. With people who have negative or selfish attitudes. We have people who refuse to participate when we show the new recruits our strategy on Sindragosa. They go afk, or stand in the wrong place which just adds to the confusion. We have people who say in vent "lets just go already" when we haven't even explained our strat yet. People who cry about getting yelled at for not following the strat that the officers layed down. We even have people who just refuse to follow the strat because they can get better dps and let other people clean up the mess.

I'm frustrated with poor play. In myself and in others. I live log to World of Logs so I can evaluate my performance after every boss. It's been a while since I have ranked in the top 200 and I can't figure out why. My gear isn't perfect best in slot, but my execution is damn close to perfect on most fights (especially easy ones like festergut and DBS) but I still don't get rankings. Usually I do rank in the 80^th or 90^th percentile of the WoL logs, so I know I am an exceptional player. However I see people in our raids who on a regular basis are in the 40^th or less percentile. They don't try to get better either. They are content to just get carried to gear, and by what I have seen we are content to do so.

I'm frustrated with officers who aren't strict with screw ups. We use EPGP loot system and are supposed to give out deductions for things like not posting when people can't make a raid, or when they keep screwing up after being told not to. These deductions are rarely handed out and when they are it's incredibly inconsistent. This week I was hit with a deduction (fully deserved I was screwing around on blood princes) but the people who completely ignored the strat on Lady Deathwisper by not switching to adds didn't even get noticed. We haven't hit someone for a no post/no show in months.

I'm frustrated with the lack of push for progression. We still have hard mode Lich King and hard mode Ruby Sanctum to kill on 25 man progression. Instead of pushing for those we kill LK on normal and split to 10 mans so we can do those hard modes with 25 man gear. We are a 25 man guild and we used to put progression nights first in the week. Now we are lucky if we get a few tries before it goes to normal so we can "get people loot" as I hear in vent.

I used to worry about none of these things. I was a good little dps'er (or healer back in the day). I came in, tried to improve every time, and didn't focus on others play. My focus was on personal improvement, and guild progression.

I wanted to achieve. When things like the rusted/iron-bound drakes come out, Or the undying/immortal titles I want to achieve those. And I want to do it sooner rather than later. I want to show that I have the ability to do something that others can't and do it when its hard.

And this brings me to the root of my problem. There is nothing really I can really achieve anymore. The thrill of the chase is gone.

I raid because I want to do the next thing. I want to kill that boss I haven't killed before. I want to get the perfect gear set for my spec. I want to rank higher. I want to kill those farm bosses more perfectly.

Well, I killed the bosses. I got the gear. I've ranked, even held first in the world for 3 weeks. And its not in my hands to kill bosses better its a group effort and my group isn't putting forth the same type of effort that I feel we should.

Most of my personal reasons to do the most enjoyable thing in the game for me are gone or dwindling. The only strong reasons for me to stick around are social ones. I truly enjoy most of the people I raid with. I feel strong loyalty to the guild and continue to help kill bosses that do nothing for me so that others can get loot and have a good raid night (I need exactly zero gear from ICC other than 2 of the 277 tokens).

I realize that much of what I am frustrated with is par for the course in a server 5^th guild. You should expect this. What a server 5^th guild does is take a group of people who have differing abilities and goals and pulls them together to kill the bosses. It may be a sloppier kill than a server 1^st guild but its still a kill.

So the bottom line is, yes I am a little burnt out. However I enjoy raiding and the people I raid with. If my outlook has changed because I am no longer chasing, but have achieved my goals, then its something I have to come to terms with.

Sometimes raiding feels like this.

You are chugging along at a good pace then...

Expansion blues

Expansion blues is the phenomenon where people just stop caring about current content because soon it will be made obsolete by the expansion coming out.

Evidence of that is people quitting the game, taking a break, logging on less, and just not trying even when they are on. Guilds may fall apart or go backwards in progression. Sometimes people just stop focusing on raiding and do other things like stockpile gold or finish off long abandoned quests.

In vanilla I didn't see the expansion blues happen that hard. I think it was because no one had known just how worthless your hard earned gear would feel upon your first completion of a quest.
In BC the expansion blues hit hard. We all had been playing for years by that time and hated for our efforts to feel like they were worth less for the remaining months. I even fell pray to the blues and dedicated my time to playing my level 1 twink.
Now that WotLK is winding down people who would put much time and effort into this game are taking the chance to recharge their batteries.

In my guild we had a pretty big exodus right around the time that finals happened in the schools. If there was no expansion looming those people who left would already be back. As it is we have had a few trickle back but most aren't coming back till Cataclysm. For me, this is fine. I don't begrudge anyone the right to pick up or drop this game at any time for any reason.

Because of this exodus we had stalled in our progression run for about 2 months and just recently got back to downing new bosses. We recently killed heroic putricide and sindragosa marking the first forward progress in a long time. The fact is that over half of the people on these kills were recruited after the exodus.

Lately I have been hearing some frustration in the ranks about the attitude and ability of other members. When I hear this sort of thing my hackles get raised. We are a progression guild but not a hardcore guild. For some this is a hard balance to live with. We will kill the content (eventually) but we won't be ruthless about people who under-perform.

Instead of a "sink or swim" mentality its more of a "get everyone in the boat and teach them to row together" mentality. Guilds with the former attitude tend to go through recruits, but down content quicker. Guilds with the later attitude try to make every recruitment count, it just takes longer to get the content down. I personally prefer more of a performance based system and strive at all times to be the top of my game.

In a thread on our forums our GM summed it up nicely

There are two sides to the argument that has come up:
1. You can't raid without 25 people
2. 3-4 months ago a bunch of our current 25 man raiders wouldn't have been accepted into the guild...

...We were never meant to be a guild that taught people how to play and I rarely accepted people into this guild that needed a lot of help/training but with the current state of content (gogo 12 months of ICC by the time Cata comes out) it seems like a necessity.

Really what it means is if you want your guild to keep running content you must make room for people who have potential to be good. And if you are guildless or unhappy with your guilds current progression, it is a chance to move up to a better guild while other players take a break.

Or, you know, you could always just take a break till the expansion and hope your spot is still there when you come back and reacy 85.