Tuesday night, immediately after I logged in, Om whispered me to ask if I was willing to heal their Onyxia run. "It's only 10 man, it will be easy," he says.
Oooh...easy...yeah I'm sure. I'd been pulled into maybe 3 or so other groups and it was just intense failure after intense failures. Tanks never could seem to pick up the whelps fast enough, the lair guardians were being tanked by healers...and that godawful deep breath from Onyxia...Every other attempt I'd been involved with turned quickly from a happy raid group into a writhing nightmare...Needless to say, I was a little hesitant.
We had a little trouble finding a tank, so I offered to switch and explained that my guildie could also heal if he was willing to bring him. Thankfully he said yes and off we went!
We logged into their vent server after being promised that their strategy was a no fail strategy (unless, of course, odd things happened during the encounter...). We listened to their strategy, buffed up, and got ready to go.
Well, the first, second, and third attempts ended shortly after phase 2 began. If you're not familiar with the Onyxia fight...here's how it works.
~Phase 1~ ~ Tank picks up Onyxia and runs her to the wall straight behind where she is resting at the beginning of the encounter. Just avoid the tail and her frontal attacks and life is good.
~Phase 2~ ~ Onyxia takes off into the air once you bring her down to a certain % of health. This phase probably requires the most coordination for the group. She lifts off into the air and you have waves of whelps spawning, Lair Guardians spawning, AND her deep breath to avoid. It's not hard, but raid members really need to be paying attention and aware of their surroundings. Usually the groups focus on killing off the adds and ranged will work on bringing Ony down to 40%.
~Phase 3~ ~ At 40% health, Onyxia will land again. A tank has to pick her up and take her back to where she was initially being tanked. This is the Fear Phase. Every few seconds she'll do Bellowing Roar (or some such thing) which is a fear. It's probably a really good idea to have a shaman in the group to drop a tremor totem for this phase, but I'd imagine Fear Ward might help also.
Now that you know how the fight works, you can see a little more easily why the pug groups struggled so hard on Phase 2. At any rate, this group wasn't getting much farther. After our 3rd wipe, we lost and replaced one member. We pulled in one of the paladins from my guild (Again, thank you for inviting him Om!) and gave it another go.
There was something very different about this attempt. When the whelps spawned, the dps wasn't pulling aggro on them and getting splattered at the beginning of phase 2.
Actually, the only person that died during this fourth attempt was one of the hunters because I was sloppy in picking up Onyxia and didn't turn her fast enough to save him from her cleave. I'm really sorry about that, sir. Well, we got her down.
I think the absolute best part about it was learning a new strategy so that I can lead my own guild against her. Now I can't wait until next week!
Yes. I did. Saturday afternoon, while my husband and daughter were taking a nap I decided to grind my way to exalted with Cenarion Expedition. Rather than going out to Northrend and compete for Lackey Ears, I decided I'd just use Steamvault for rep.
Steamvault, at least for me, was the most efficient way to grind out the rep. First of all, there's no competition for kills. Regular Steamvault is almost hilariously easy to solo as a bear. Actually, heroic Steamvault was fairly easy to solo as well. The only boss that gave me any trouble at all was Thespia. I'm thinking it's because she uses less physical attacks and more magic...but I digress.
At any rate, the rep gains were:
Regular: Non-Elite Trash: 2 CE rep per kill Elite Trash (Naga, Tidal Surgers, Wrekt Slaves): 12 CE Rep per kill Bog Overlord: 24 CE rep per kill Bosses (Hydromancer Thespia, Mekgineer Steamrigger, Warlord Kalithresh): 120 Rep
On Heroic: Non-Elite trash: 5 rep Elite Trash: 15 Rep Bog Overlords: 30 Rep Bosses: 130 Rep
Well, I think that's what the rep gains were. After about the 15th time running it, my mind started to go numb and I didn't think about keeping track of rep gains until after I had finished. I will re-run them both and edit the post with the correct rep numbers.
At any rate, I did earn a few achievements doing this:
I figured I'd snag my Cenarion War Hippogryph as a reward for FINALLY grinding the rep with them. The Cenarion Hippogryph is really, really cool, by the way. If you don't have one, you should get one :) I'll post more screenies when I get a chance. For now, it's back to the real world :(
Just...wow...I didn't create this. Found it while messing around on YouTube and a few of us got a giggle out of it, so I thought I'd share. Credit goes to the creators who reside on BloodHoof.
Alright, so I started a new project Wednesday night. I decided I wanted to get my Guardian of Cenarius title. It's pretty fitting, considering I'm a druid. That, and I like nifty titles that not many people are masochistic enough to grind out for themselves. Wednesday night, I started the grind at around 5100/6000 Friendly and ended at 1030/12000 Honored.
That's a few hundred Twilight Cultist kills, if you're wondering.
I had planned ahead for the grind. I knew the kills would grant reputation with Cenarion Circle until at least Revered. So, I purchased about 220 Encrypted Twilight texts, knowing that if I just killed cultists for rep until I hit revered, I would need 420 texts total to just turn in to get from 0/21000-Revered to Exalted.
I assumed I'd be able to get the remaining 200 or so from kills.
Anyway...I was happily kill grinding when another Ally came over to do the same. A human DK. I asked him to please group with me, as I was only here for the rep and would give him whatever drops he wanted except for the texts. Surprisingly, he agreed. The kill grind goes a LOT faster with more than one person. That's for sure. We were there for nearly an hour together before he decided he'd had enough and was going to log.
I couldn't blame him.
It's a really, really, agonizingly long grind. Agonizingly....long....grind....
Anyway, I kept on with my grinding. I felt bad for missing our guild's 10 man Naxx run, but...I had a good reason for just toughing out the rep grind. I know for a fact, if I would have left the zone, I probably wouldn't have come back to finish it. Ever. And I really want this title...so...I passed on the raid and stuck with my monotonous grind. (To my guild: I'm sorry. I promise I'll make it up to you.)
I was there all night. Toward the end of the evening, close to 10pm Server time...one of my guildies decided to join me with his mage. Again, the kill grind started to move along a lot faster. As it turns out, he was just over 8500/21000 Revered with Cenarion Circle as well.
Oh, you bet. We were both running this marathon to the bitter end. After another hour or so of kill grinding- I told him we should go turn in the texts, since I was reasonably sure I'd be able to hit exalted and have some texts to spare for him to do the same.
I hit exalted with 70 texts to spare and traded them to him. He was about 60 texts short of exalted, so I switched to my DK, ran to the Auction House and bought a stack of 57 of the texts. Expensive, but the least I could do to repay him for coming out and helping me get through it.
We both hit Exalted. It...was...awesome!
Now to grind out Cenarion Expedition rep. I'm currently at 2154/21000, which is a metric furkton closer than I was with Cenarion Circle. I mean, I started at Friendly with the Circle. I'm starting off on Revered with the Expedition.
I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to grind the rep just yet. I've heard a few different ideas. One would be farming Lackey Ears in Northrend. The other is to farm Steamvault for armaments and kill rep. Considering I haven't soloed Steamvault yet, I'm probably going to give that a try, just to see how it goes. It should be kinda fun :)
Lord knows I'll try and solo just about anything. If Mar is interested in running together, it'll make the instance so much quicker and easy to get through. Makes the time investment for rep more valuable than struggling with it alone for hours at a time, right?
Anyway, after making a million Cenarion Circles worth of kills, I'm a very happy druid today. I'm an exalted Cenarion Circler. Now...to make it up to the guild...
Halfway! I'm halfway to my new title: Destinae: Guardian of Cenarius! WEWT!
After I posted this image, I realized that I'm going to be getting two achievements at the same time! 20 Exalted Reputations AND my new title! That's SO AWESOME!!!!
I know, I know. I haven't posted in awhile. I've been busy...ish. There's just been a lot going on. Balz brought home two kittens...and they're a full time job right now. Plus caring for my daughter, my dog, my guild, work...friends...I've been a busy girl.
I'm starting to feel a little like Felicia Day after she was given the "honor" of guild leader by Vork. This is a reference to The Guild. If you've never checked it out, you should. I love the show, personally. At any rate, things with the guild are going both awesome and terrible at the same time. We're definitely raiding more, but we just don't have the participation we need in order to even fill up a 10 man run. That puts 25 man runs in a really hard to reach place for us. We tend to pick up people to fill in the slots that we need filled for all of our runs. I've been trying to recruit, but it's going very slowly. There are only three of us in the guild that have been actively recruiting. I'm not saying that the rest of the guild members are less valuable because they're not recruiting. I'm saying we'd be hammering out 25 man content a LOT more easily if everyone was on board and recruiting and participating.
Recruiting is going slowly. Too slowly, really, but there's a lot to consider. Currently, our guild seems to lack a solid identity. We're sort of a raiding guild, but more of a casual guild. I think if we had more "raid" people, we'd eventually become a raiding guild and slide slightly farther from the more casual thing. *groan* I guess I really need to figure out what exactly this guild is before we start really recruiting heavily. Also, we need to find a way to calm some of the current storms in the guild before we bring new people in. Lately, things have been very tense between our "raiding core" people, the super casual raid participants, and the non-participants. We've had a few explosions recently. I totally understand why. Our raiding "core", aka the people who participate in EVERY raid the guild does are getting a little worn out. We don't have a participation requirement. Our "Core" is the group of people who've realized that they are the foundation of our guild's ability to raid. They participate willingly, for the most part, but they also feel like it's their duty to show up and help carry the group
But, like I said...things are going awesome, too. My Paper Towel Priest's hunter is already level 79, which is very exciting! We have some other members that are very close to level 80. Hopefully, we can get them geared and interested in raiding. Also, we've managed to clear some bosses in Ulduar. We're getting ready to maybe try some Trial of the Crusader soon. I hope...I don't really know...who knows?
So, all in all things are going alright I guess. We've lost a few people, but they weren't really active participants in the whole scope of things anyway. I mean, I don't like losing people. Especially Ragno. I really liked having him with us. But I understand that people need to find a guild that's the right fit for them and aligns with their goals and needs as far as the game goes. Hopefully we get things moving in a more positive and relaxing direction soon.
I'm not going to lie. I am a tired druid right now.
Very tired.
You know though, it's a good tired. Last week, I promoted a new officer to help get our guild more active. I don't think I could have made a better choice! Bel has been an absolute blessing! He's somehow managed to get a few more guildies interested in raiding with us and has really gotten our guild active. He's been amazing. I'm eternally grateful for the hard work he's put in this week alone. He's just what our guild needed. He actually wore me out with raiding this weekend! IT WAS AWESOME! *cheers!*
Let's see...Previously, I had been denied my Naxx25 achievements because of stupid Thaddius. I'd never seen the final 2 bosses on 25-man. Last Friday, he grabbed the bull by the horns and MADE it happen!
Not only that, but we finally started our Ulduar progression. It's posted on our guild site but:
Yeah...check that out! Our guild really owes Bel like thank you letters and flowers, and a new car...whatever he wants...
See, here's the thing. After weeks and weeks of trying unsuccessfully to bring our crew together to start raiding...I had completely given up. I was ready to leave the guild and move on. I'd even promised a tauren that I'd convert my druid to horde and server transfer to come hang out with him, especially since their guild raided so much. He's the one that planted that idea in my head, but at the same time he offered a lot of advice on how to get people motivated. His first suggestion? HIRE SOME DAMN OFFICERS ALREADY! The one man guild administration was failing miserably and we were all pretty frustrated. I had lost all hope. This weekend really helped to revive my spirit...
I mean, we not only destroyed Naxx25 Friday Night, but we started our Ulduar progression. After we called it quits on Ulduar (not enough frost resist gear lol), we moved back into Naxx10 for a gearing/learning run. Well, Naxx10 was a little rough Saturday night. We chalked it up to being tired from Ulduar and called it a night after one quarter.
Yesterday, we went in to try Hodir again. Who knew that trying to stay by the fire while avoiding other random damage was so hard? I was pretty tired though. Maybe this week we can try again and I'll "get it". We've come so far...even if we don't beat Hodir for another month it won't matter.
I'm the happiest guild leader ever! Not only do I have Bel as my right hand man, but our guild actually participated in a lot of activity together this weekend. I'm really impressed with the performance, perseverance, and participation of my guild crew this week. Beautiful, beautiful job guys! *wipes away a tear of joy* Thank you for renewing my hope in our little family!
Another, stranger update: I was asked by one of our guild pvp people if I'd go onto his 3v3 team. I think I might like to, but I don't want to drag his team down. I don't have any pvp gear so far...I pretty much hate battlegrounds...but, I'm thinking maybe if we go into some battlegrounds together, I can learn more and maybe grind out some honor for the pvp gear I need in order to participate. I really wish I knew SOMETHING about arena...it terrifies me. So, Dara, we'll schedule our first skirmish soon...but you probably need to teach me more about pvp 'cuz...yeah I'm fail at it. lol
He's really gotten my husband into PvPing, and they're possibly working on an arena team together also. I'm getting ready to create a PvP officer Rank. I just...need time to get that taken care of. It'll be nice to have a PvP officer, but I hope he's ready for a challenge. It's hard to develop a solid core of PvP players in a PvE oriented guild. We'll see how that all works out...
Hope you're ready for a bumpy ride, Dar...I'm clueless on PvP lol
What a week it's been! I've been a busy, busy bear.
See, things in our guild got sour after yet another failed Naxx25 run. Yes, I know. All the "good" guilds are past Naxx25. I know this. But we're a very new guild on our server, only a few months old, and we were trying to get through Naxx25 in order to snag a few pieces of gear for our members and get them prepared for Ulduar.
Last weekend's raid didn't go that well. I ended the weekend in tears of frustration. My husband was the Guild Master, but he's not around much lately because of work schedule changes, so the weight of the world was left on my shoulders. I adore the two officers we started off with, but we needed more "cooks in the kitchen". One person can't be responsible for ensuring good conduct, getting folks geared, scheduling raids and trying to live a real life on top of that. Given the workload I'm facing at work, I just didn't have the will left to schedule raids and fail at them anymore. I'd given up.
I vented to a really amazing friend about it, declaring that I was just "done". I didn't want to be on the server anymore. I no longer wished to be the one-bear driving force behind our entire guild's activity. I didn't want to prep for raids and have my own guild members ditch anymore. I was just...DONE.
After talking with him at great length, he somehow revived the RAWR in me. He gave me a lot of priceless advice on how to get things moving in a better direction. My husband, who was also quite frustrated at how stagnant things had gotten, was open to my suggestions.
But...
He didn't know that he could really follow through on all of my requests for this change and that, so...
He gave me the guild last night. I'm now the Guild Leader for our guild. O.O Wtf have I gotten myself into?!
I spent the evening rearranging our guild ranks, reassigning permissions, and trying to figure out where to start. The High Council. That's where I started. Okay, well, it wasn't a HUGE start, but I promoted one of our guild members to the High Council.
Instantly, he scheduled a Naxx10 Gear/Badge/Learning/Morale Boosting run. I damned nearly cried tears of joy! FINALLY! Someone else willing to step in and get some momentum building with our crew! If I could have hugged him through the internet, I absolutely would have! Thank you Bel!
The winds of change have stirred up a little bit of uncertainty within our guild. Guys, relax. We're not going to become omgwtfhardkore...
Change is good. I sincerely hope that my guild embraces what we're trying to do here.
Also, I owe an immense amount of gratitude to a great friend for the tough love, advice, inspiration, encouraging words, and the revived spirit to change things. *hug* Thank you, sir.
I also owe thanks to my fellow druids for their gentle guidance and words of encouragement during some of the rougher times, and also for their help and advice and gentle push to get things turned around. *hugs you all* Thank you, guys.
Uh, yeah, the Horde is "HARDCORE!!!" SO hardcore, in fact, that this guy here actually posed for a photo-op with me. We played leap-frog, too. I made sure to omit his name to prevent the inevitable flaming he'd get from fellow Hordies. "zomg u had fun with teh enemee? omgwtfbbqsawce"
Yes, it's another rant. Well, not a rant so much as...I don't know what I'm doing. Just...bear with me, k?
Let me first say this: In general, I like my server, my guildies and my friends on this server. For the most part, it's just good in Dessieland. Then there are moments where, well, I just don't even know why I log in.
Issue #1: Leaving the guild because we don't "run with you enough".
Admittedly, with me, the squeaky wheels get my attention. If you ask me to run with you, I go with you. If you ask me for help, and I'm capable of helping, I help. If you don't tell me you want to run heroics with me, then how am I supposed to know you're interested?
Hmm? I'm a bear, not a mind-reader. Hell, as a tree I might be full of magical abilities to keep stuff alive- but still...I'm not a mind-reader. I didn't bother talenting into that because I didn't realize it was a necessary skill to have.
While I completely understand that people need to find guilds that suit their needs, goals, and personalities...I don't understand the ones that leave because we "weren't helpful enough" or don't run enough heroics for them...
Wait a sec...put on the breaks! We don't run enough heroics? I have all of my Emblem of Conquest gear, plus over 120 extra Emblems to spend on other things. I also have enough Emblems of Triumph for my healing AND tanking shoulders. I officially have enough Stone Keepers Shards to BUY Wintergrasp...
We don't run enough heroics? ORLY...
Have "cliques" formed in the guild? Sure. But do you know why cliques form in the guild? It's simple really. Going back to the whole mind-reader thing...If you don't speak up, we assume you don't want to run. If we ask in guild chat to try to put together a heroic group, and you don't reply to us, we assume you don't want to run. Ninja-invites are bad, mmkay?
/g "Hey Guys, would anyone run some heroics with us?"
So simple. And we're back at my first point. Guildies aren't generally mind-readers. If you want to grind heroics, you have to let us know. If you want us to help, you need only ask. So, generally, we won't randomly invite you unless we know you want to go...
I'm reasonably sure that goes for most guilds out there.
So, now I'm going to be on the lookout for the mind-reading trainer...but anyway...
Issue #2: Fairness
Without getting into great detail- I missed some chat from a friend who I had previously asked to run Brewfest Boss with me (Kodo plzkthxbai). After asking him to go, I realized my bags were full of old gear I don't need anymore. My bank was also full. Ugh...so I spent some time sorting through it. I was pretty much consumed in what I was doing. It's interesting the things we just toss in the bank and forget about. At any rate...I happened to look up a few times and see questions in guild chat- so I responded. I missed a few guild chat questions. It happens. The apparent issue is that I missed this friend's chat to me, and he noticed that I was answering a few things here or there in guild chat...so...He called me out on it.
Maybe I'm a bad Guild leader because I don't have the presence of mind to stare at my chat screen to ensure I am answering every single question/request/etc. This might be a shocker, but, GL's like to enjoy the game too. We don't log in under the assumption that we're expected to stare at our screen and be enslaved to every and all requests. We're aware that we're expected to help more and be more willing to help than maybe others. But we deserve to enjoy our game too...So I fail if I'm expected to stare at my chat screen all night long and not do anything else...
The accusation was that I was ignoring him. *sigh* Really? I scrolled up and was just about to apologize for missing his tells when the whole thing got blown WELL out of proportion...Well, I figured...may as well keep on ignoring him now because we can all see this is just going to be an argument, and a stupid one at that.
Fail.
Ignoring someone who's already mad at you because they think you were ignoring them makes them angrier, evidently.
And so it began...the ranting at me about how I treat him unfairly...a rant that included...*GASP*...the F-Bomb.
Drama...
Let's not consider that I might NOT be ignoring you. Let's not consider that I might be DOING something and happened to catch the guild chat completely by accident after closing my bank vault. No, no, no! Let's IMMEDIATELY jump to the conclusion that I'm blowing you off. Let's stress out the bear over absolute nonsense...
Here, let me lay out some simple math for you, jerk.
Des+Drama+Being Cussed At=Enrage
Des+Enrage=DOOM!
Duh...try thinking before you go off at the mouth. You'd be amazed at what a little self-control can do...
That whole server or faction transfer thing is becoming more and more enticing lately...If it weren't for some true and amazing friends on my server, I'd have taken off last night for sure. Who needs to be sworn at over a stupid game? Seriously now...grow up, k?
Ready for the real kicker? My bags and my bank are STILL full of the same crap as they were yesterday- on account of I was disgusted with the entire evening and gave up on the whole inventory cleansing I had started...So, not only did I get aggravated beyond belief, but I also didn't get my junk sorted out. Grrrrr....
