Shaking It Off

Last night was a tough raiding night, for me, anyway.

We were working on Alysrazor, an encounter for which I had been pretty excited.  But no matter how much I understood the very simple mechanic of the tornadoes, I kept dying.  (Before anyone asks, no, I wasn't keyboard-turning.  This also means I wasn't healing during the tornado phase, either--just trying to stay alive.)

Out of 25 people, I died the most. It was very discouraging.

It got to the point where if I had had any other healer at all to substitute in, I would have sat myself and gone and moped in a corner.

It got to the point where I started comparing this encounter in my head to Teron Gorefiend.

It got to the point where I wondered if I had any place playing this game anymore, or if I should just hang it up and walk away.

Alysrazor finally died.  And although I finished the encounter dead, as well, to tornadoes, there is nothing I can do to improve my tornado performance further until next week.  My fellow Druids did help me out with a small suggestion which made a big difference:  stick with the inner circles.  I hadn't realized the tornadoes were supposed to take the same amount of time going around the center, which would mean that the inner tornadoes move more slowly.  (Basic geometry.)  I thought they all had the same speed.  It was easier those last attempts, when I stuck with the inner circles, and I often found myself looking at my life bar in surprise after the tornado phase, wondering why I was at full health.  (The last time I died, I managed to try to go in between a couple of tornadoes.  Bad idea.)

One way or another, I need to shake off last night and move on.  Because the alternative would be to just quit.  And drat it all, when the day comes I leave the game, I want to do it on my terms, not because I slunk off in defeat.

Maybe my graphics card will come over the weekend, so I can get my computer fixed, and I won't have to use my husband's laptop anymore. Maybe I'll run a few heroics, so I can collect a few more anecdotes to try to relate in my sometimes amusing voice. Maybe I'll bake zucchini bread with some of the first zucchini from my garden. Maybe I'll knit. Perhaps I'll drag my husband out on a walk, in this beautiful monsoon season. Maybe I'll lose myself playing Enya on the piano. Maybe I'll start a blog on the adventures of homeschooling a mildly autistic teenager in preparation for the GED. (She took a practice GED math test yesterday and scored very well, but I'm not intending for her to really get her GED for two more years, as she just turned 15. Found a great on-line two-year program which preps not only for the GED, but also for college. Perfect.)  Maybe I'll get some badges and be able to pick up my new relic.  Maybe I'll study up on Ragnaros, because I have complete confidence Majordomo is going down next time we meet.

Next week is another chance to do it right.

First Tempest 25-man Alysrazor Kill

Two Bosses In Two Days

Technically, if you count the BH boss, three.

We might be a week late, but Tempest stepped it up and killed some Firelands bosses.

Tuesday evening, fresh on the heels of a couple of 10-man Shannox kills the previous weekend, the official 25-man raid downed the hunter and his pesky puppies.

Excited not to have all that trash on the plains anymore, we headed across the valley toward the lair of the giant Red Widow, Beth'tilac.  By the end of raid, the death of the boss was in our minds as a definite possibility, and we returned on Wednesday with every expectation of smashing this spider in short order.

But it took a little longer than we had anticipated.

At the last minute, our Discipline Priest posted on the forum that he would be unable to attend raid Wednesday evening.  As he and one of our Holy Paladins had been the healers on top of the web, healing our DK tank, it meant we needed to change our arrangements a little.  We sent one of our skilled Resto Shamans up with the pally, the DK tank, and five dps.  Then we pulled the boss.

The tank on the web died.

This happened several times.  The more we analyzed it, the more we realized exactly how much we were missing that Discipline Priest.  Over several attempts, we changed things up here and there, reducing the number of dps on the web, so as not to spread out the healers' efforts, switching a healer at one point because one of the healers wasn't sure his allergies weren't affecting his healing, etc.  But the tank still died.  (And the replacement healer handed the reins back to the original one.)

Finally the raid leader asked me if we should put a third healer up on the web.  As all the strategies I had read indicated three healers would be serious overkill (i.e., if you need three healers on the web, something is definitely wrong), and as we only had six healers to begin with (so leaving only three healers on the ground could be an issue), I resisted that idea, despite it being suggested more than once.

With a little more thought, we decided perhaps things would work out better if the DK tanked on the ground and our bear tank went up on the web.

Suffice it to say that it worked.  It didn't work on the first try, but we started making it into phase two more consistently and, finally, in a very sloppy kill, the spider lay dead on the ground.  The only people still alive were the two tanks and a rogue.

But it was a kill!

We took a peek at Alysrazor--just enough to be excited and energized for the next evening.  (Seriously, who wouldn't like that boss entrance?  And this whole place, with the Druid-y connections, is thrilling for this long-term Druid.  Since the "bad guys" are corrupted Druids, it sort of makes me feel like I have a responsibility as a Druid to clean up the situation . . . Druids take care of their own.)

Two out of seven.  We're on our way!  Grats to the Tempest raiders!

Postscript:  By the way, we're recruiting healers.  Our roster has been depleted by a banning (no idea why--he didn't even log on for 25 days until Tuesday) and people deciding they wanted pvp instead of pve.  We could really use a good priest and another Resto Druid, but we'll consider any class except Resto Shaman, as we already have three.

Trash, Glorious Trash

Although I had heard there was a lot of trash when you walk into Firelands, I wasn't quite prepared for the vast field of trash which greeted my view.  (And we thought BoT should be called "Bastion of Trash" . . .)

We spent almost the entire night on trash.

I'm not kidding.  We cleared trash to a certain point, progressing farther and farther into the fiery field, when Shannox finally spawned.  Then we cleared a little more trash to make some room for fighting the boss.  We got munched by the boss a couple of times.  Then we decided we didn't like our spot, but as we moved back to a spot we decided we liked better, closer to the entrance, we realized the trash was going to respawn.

Great.  Good time to take a break.

After the break, we cleared the trash (again) by the entrance.  There were a few, um, exciting pulls, when someone or another was knocked back or just wandered too close to another trash group.  But finally we were ready to seriously take on the boss.

After some discussion and plotting, we did manage to have some decent attempts on the boss.  The tanks figured out how to handle the stacks, which is definitely progress, so the night actually did end on a positive note.

The discouraging thing is knowing when we get in there tonight, we will have to face . . . the trash.  Again.

Considering I died about 7 times on the trash before we even faced the boss, you can guess my level of excitement and anticipation.  (I have really got to figure out why I was getting killed so often.  I wasn't pre-HoTing the tanks.  I wasn't on the top of the healing meters when they were reported to me, as Recount was out of order, so I couldn't look myself.  Why me?  Was it because I commented to the healers in healer chat that this place looked like a place where healing aggro might be a problem?  The very instance was trying to prove me right while having a laugh at my expense? /sigh)

On the bright side, a lot of people raised their reputation with Avengers of Hyjal to Friendly and picked up their new cloaks.  Also on the bright side, we now know a decent amount about what to do and not to do with the trash.  And I think four leatherworking patterns, including the leather hands, dropped and were picked up by our designated leatherworker.  (And a few purple pieces of gear dropped.)

The biggest bright sides of all:  my addons worked, and we had minimal lag problems!  I can't remember the last time a major patch came out and my important addons were all update-ready and operational immediately.  It was quite refreshing to focus on beating our heads against the trash and boss instead of beating our heads against addons and disconnects.  Yay!

You Will Show the Proper Respect!

Many of you will have echoes in your head of a particular speech cadence when you read this title.  You'll see a dark platform in Black Temple, and a boss dressed in armor with bits of brilliant blue.

And if you're like me, you still have a residual knot in the pit of your stomach . . .

Teron Gorefiend had already been killed by Tempest when I transferred to Gorgonnash, but the encounter could by no means be considered farm content by that point.  The raid leaders posted up information about the fight, including a link to an online flash simulator to teach people how to deal with being a ghost.

Remember that?  At regular intervals throughout the fight, the boss would mark one player with the Shadow of Death.  The marked player had to move to the opposite end of the platform and wait for . . . inevitable death.  Yep.  You were going to die and become a ghost.  And when you did, four Shadowy Constructs spawned around you.  And only you (or another ghost who was very efficient and had already killed his own constructs) could kill them.

Talk about pressure.

Here I was, a brand-new Restoration Druid dressed mostly in battleground gear with a few pieces I'd picked up off-spec while being a fail tank, who had never, ever stepped foot in Black Temple (ok, except for the time my friend made me solemnly promise I wasn't going to steal their lockout and took me on a tour up through the Mother Sharaz room, just so I could see the place) with great fear in my heart that I was going to totally let down the raid and be forever condemned in the WoW universe, trying to catch up on boss strats.

It wasn't a good situation.

I had worked on the simulator, as required by the raid leader.  (/wave to my old raid leader, who knows I put him on ignore as soon as he stepped down, but who is cool now.)  But those annoying constructs kept eluding my efforts to kill them on the simulator, no matter how many times I tried and beat my head against my keyboard.

I was desperate.  The only thing left to do was pray that Teron Gorefiend wouldn't pick me.

I know that God loves us and answers prayers.  But He doesn't necessarily answer all of them in the affirmative.  If I'd prayed for the ability to master the encounter, He might have acquiesced, but I'm not sure how much he puts His hand into influencing random number generators.

At any rate, when we were finally facing Teron Gorefiend and the time came for the first person to be marked with the Shadow of Death, Teron Gorefiend chose me.

The first time most people in the raid heard my voice over Vent, I was crying out in desperation and agony, "Noooo!"

I failed miserably.

We wiped.  I had to come to grips with the fact that, yes, I had let the raid down.  But somehow, I didn't find myself forever condemned in the WoW universe.  (Except in the eyes of the raid leader's mod, which whispered exactly how much of a failure you were when you died . . .)  We picked ourselves up, and we faced the boss again.

I don't remember how many attempts it took to kill him that night, but it took a few.  I discovered I wasn't the only one who had difficulty with constructs.  And I discovered that by and large, people were reasonably kind and forgiving, as long as the player was really trying their best.

Over time, I did finally master the simulator, succeeding with consistency.  I was never comfortable with the idea of being the first one marked with the Shadow of Death, but if I was the third or fourth, and had the reasonable hope of one of the more skilled players being around to help out as a ghost if I ran into trouble, I could face the situation with a larger measure of calm.

But somehow, even though I now remember that encounter with a certain amount of colorful nostalgia, I'm glad I don't have to face Teron Gorefiend again as a level 70.