The Week (Or So) That Was

Sometime over the past weekend, I realized I haven’t done much in the way of updating readers on the progress my WoW characters are making, short of the WoW Armory/Latest Achievements widget in the sidebars. I know it’s formulaic, but I want to try summing up the previous week’s gaming on Mondays. Some of these updates will be shorter than others, but others may be a bit longer. And by no means does this mean I might not post something else on a Monday (but chances are I’ll hold it till Tuesday, just to keep the blog karma flowing!).

Naxxramas-25

If I were to pick one word with which to characterize last week’s effort in Naxxramas, that word would be “sloppy.” Sure, we cleared the entire place (again) but it took us all week. I don’t recall the exact order we attacked the various wings, but I believe we did Plague and Military first.

Noth was pretty straightforward, but there was a stupid wipe, and we never wipe on Noth. Still don’t know how we did that. Heigan was a one- or two-shot, but the kill attempt was ugly. Way too many people (including me) died in lava. I have no excuse: I was watching other people instead of watching out for myself. Stupid. Loatheb was actually one of our best boss kills of the week. We only had four healers, so I was a bit concerned (I can’t wait for targeted Prayer of Healing in 3.1!) that we might lose a lot of DPS at the end, but I think we only lost a couple clothies.

Military Wing was…sloppy. I thought we were going to have to use two healers for Mind Control, but our Shadow Priest showed up just in time to fill the raid to 25. The other priest hadn’t done this fight very often, so there was some confusion a couple times on the taunts from one understudy to the other, but we did manage to kill Razuvious. Barely.

Then we actually wiped on Gothik! Horribly, craptastically. Until that night, we had never, ever wiped on Gothik in 25-man Naxx. So we fixed that and got him the second time. I think Live side just killed too efficiently and overwhelmed Dead on the first attempt, but no one bothered to say, “Slow down!”

Then on to everyone’s favorite (I kid!), The Four Horsemen. Amazingly, this was a one-shot! I was healing one of the tanks in the back, and probably did my best healing job ever on this fight, although I did die to something (nope, not a void zone, and not too many stacks). But a battle rez and Innervate had me back in the fight, and amazingly, everyone lived!

The next night we did Construct and Spider Wings. Again, we had fewer healers than I’d have liked, but after a wipe on Patchwerk, we nailed him the second time, although it was pretty close and we only had one tank alive at the end. Did I mention we were pretty sloppy? Without belaboring all the gory details, we stunk up the place on Grobbulus and Gluth, wiping once on each (do you see a pattern here?) then really sucked at Thaddius. We sucked so bad, we called the raid after four wipes: 115K (0.1%), 2%, 3%, and 4%. Yeah, we were on a roll, alright.

So Thursday, back to Thad, and of course we wiped once (horribly) before finally getting him down…16 seconds into the enrage timer! From there, we went to Spider Wing. We were a bit short on people (22 or 23 of us, I think) but we decided to try for Arachnophobia for a couple people who hadn’t done it. Wiping on Faerlina kinda destroyed that plan. Wonder of wonders, we managed to one-shot Maexxna.

We took a couple shots at Sapphiron the same night, sans Frost Resist gear, but our lack of healers and some lower-than-normal DPS resulted in a couple quick wipes and calling the raid. It was only afterwards that I realized one of the healers I designated for MT duty, was probably the LAST person I should have assigned there. I had a total brain cramp, and confused him with a more reliable healer. Epic Fail: Osprey.

Friday night, I stepped up as Raid Leader. I built for Sapph again, and thought we might be able to work on Heroic: The Dedicated Few, so I told everyone to grab their Frost Resist gear. However, by the time we finally pulled, we had a full raid. I decided we needed a kill more than we needed a few people to get the FR achievement. The first attempt was messy, with some bad luck and just some poor decisions all around. The second attempt was pretty much perfect: I don’t think anyone died, and our MT did a super job for his first time as the main tank in this fight. We really didn’t have a good build to do anything else, and a lot of people had other commitments, so we didn’t press on.

That left Kel’Thuzad for Saturday. Suffice to say, another one shot, but a sloppy one-shot: Two (out of three) tanks down, and KT and adds running wild at the end. We killed him, but just barely. Torch of Holy Fire dropped again, but I didn’t have nearly enough DKP to win it. Betrayer of Humanity also dropped, so we had two very happy raiders when all was said and done.

Sunday, we were able (barely) to build for Sartharion. We only had 20 people, so we decided to go for Heroic: Less Is More. I was pretty confident we could do this; Sartharion is not that hard, when people pay attention. People paid attention, and we one-shot the dragon, without anyone dying. FINALLY, something went 100 percent right this week! Let’s hope we can build on our late success this coming week. I even managed to get a pretty decent piece of loot: Illustration of the Dragon Soul. Of course, I’ll never win the Torch of Holy Fire, now, after spending a huge chunk of DKP. Ah, well.

Naxxramas-10

Also this week, Kestrel had the opportunity to get into Naxxramas for the first time. I’ve only run a couple heroics with him, but I’d outfitted him fairly well through the Auction House. However, since I really hadn’t planned to run raid instances with him, he’s still a Beast Master hunter.

Without going into a lot of unnecessary detail (I think there’s plenty of that in the preceding section!), I was able, despite my paltry ~1,500 DPS, to snag a couple pieces of T-7 gear (chest and shoulders) and a new crossbow, which just may be the ugliest hunter weapon ever. Last night, I was able to win some new bracers as well, which put my +Hit up to 259.

Our group was all guild, but mostly alts. Healing was pretty good, but our DPS, individually and collectively, wasn’t enough to be successful against Grobbulus and Gluth. A highlight, though, after wiping on the first attempt, was a nice bonus on Heigan: The Safety Dance. Considering my failure earlier in the week in 25-man, this was a pretty nice redemption.

I don’t know if I will be going back to Naxx-10 soon or not, but I hope I do. My Hunter has always been my first love, and the opportunity to get into even 10-mans with him (I really, REALLY don’t like to PUG) is wonderful. But I either need to re-spec to Marksman, or hope 3.1 goes live.

WoW, Otherwise

If you’ve checked out Osprey’s recent achievements in the sidebar, you’ll notice a bunch of heroic Outland dungeons. I’ve been helping friends with some achievements (and yes, having a few more myself isn’t a bad thing)—after some of our raid nights this week, the stress relief has been quite cathartic.

I also got a couple of my other alts more involved in gold production: Buying ore at low prices on the AH, prospecting it and making gems to sell and cheap jewelry to disenchant. I’m happy to report for the first time ever, my total worth (in game) is above 15K.

State of the Aerie

If you’re reading this at the Aerie (rather than on your feed reader), you know much of the conversion to Thesis is complete. True, it looks a lot like the earlier theme, because I like that theme. But I didn’t like that whenever I tweaked one thing, three others broke. So now I can make changes and not be afraid of breaking everything.

Along with Matticus, and thanks to Anna at Too Many Annas, I’ve started Darren Rowse’s (ProBlogger) “31 Days to Building a Better Blog” program. You’ll probably see some of those efforts here at the Aerie throughout the next month, and, I hope, beyond. I intend to share as many of Darren’s insights here as the material allows, and I’ll try to post those items separately.

As always, I’m interested in your perceptions of the Aerie, good and not-so-good. Feel free to comment on what you like, dislike, and would like to see, either in the Comments or via my Contact form.