Clockwork

It has always been my opinion that team sports have a huge impact on how people work together whether it is working at a place of employment or battling demons in World of Warcraft. Generally somebody that's been on an organized team can see the benefit of what's good for the whole. They also better understand the various roles that each person plays (maybe the difference between a forward and a center), and how things mesh together (think plays).

To further illustrate my point: back in High School, I played water polo. Towards the end of my high school career, things generally went smoothly among the players. We had essentially played with each other for 3 years. We knew who would make the shots from half-tank, who would lose sprints, and who would generally make great defensive plays. We didn't go undefeated or anything, but the games just felt good.

I think Primogeniture has really warped into a smooth guild. Sure, we have our off nights of low attendance or poor performance. But we generally seem to be pretty good at this point at absorbing new people into our culture and getting them to fit with our play style.

Last night was a perfect example of that. It wasn't really the fact of what we did, but how we did it. We went to go collect our weekly gems in Mount Hyjal, and the raid really felt smooth. A couple mistakes led to a wipe or two, but it didn't feel as much of a let down as it used to. We just picked ourselves up, and tried it again, knowing full well that we were going to be successful. We even got a late start, but ended Mount Hyjal way before our anticipated end time. We had a good mix of people, we had the right roles/classes... It just felt good. Even though this has only been the 3rd week we've done this, it felt like a Kara run. We were just running through, joking around, and we got the job done. It was great.

This will also free up tonight meaning that we should be able to take down the first two bosses in Black Temple. Hopefully this trend will continue. This is what guilds should be all about. It's just me hanging out with 24 friends to take down bad guys.

Internet Up and a Couple Bosses Down

As anticipated, the Installer came out on Tuesday, and he replaced the cable to my house. Apparently "up in the hills" where we live, a lot of people pass on having the cable grounded because it weakens their signal (so that's why he didn't ground it before). But the signal from the main box (or whatever) was still too weak, so they had to have another person come out to boost the signal. And yesterday, the cable company finally fixed my signal and brought me "within the acceptable range", so I once again have dependable Internet service. Yeah!

On Monday night, I decided to head over to a guildies house (he's just a couple miles away) so that I could raid. We had a couple hardware issues (my laptop couldn't connect to his network for some reason, so I used his laptop which ended up having issues with the screen, so we plugged in a spare monitor), but once those were out of the way, everything was fine. The raid itself was a success as we took down both Rage Wintherchill and Anetheron.

Just a side note: part of our strategy for taking down Anetheron involved having some dps (namely our mages) stand outside of the Carrion Swarm and focus entirely on the Towering Infernals. It really let everybody else spread out so they wouldn't get hit for the damage, and let us down the Infernals pretty quick too.

Tuesday night, I thought I would have Internet, so I didn't plan on going anywhere. When I figured out I didn't have it, I felt it was kind of too late to set something up again. I know my guild mate wouldn't have minded, but I just have that sense of security of being at home physically just in case something happens. (Yes, I'm well aware that I'm not there mentally.) So, it was off to Civ4 to destroy the Aztecs (Mongols were already dead) and set up a Defensive Pact with the Americans. There's now only peaceful-minded rulers, so I shouldn't have to fight anymore... unless I want to. :) And that might help when I'm trying to figure out where I was in that game when I pick it up again months/years down the road.

Then I was finally able to raid again last night. And what a night. We ventured in to Black Temple for the first time. We were a bit sad that there were exactly zero Hearts of Darkness, but oh well. Our focus was more to go take down High Warlord Naj'entus. And it actually wasn't too bad of a fight. I think we got him down to 30% the first attempt, 10% the next, and we completely destroyed him on the last attempt. Due to the Tidal Shield and the inevitable 8500 damage the entire raid takes when you break it with a Naj'entus Spine, we wanted everyone to be with at least 11k health. That apparently wasn't a problem for a lot of our guild. We had a few clothies (mage, warlock and priest) at 13k. But obviously, the more stam/pvp gear we used, the lower our dps was. The first attempt was learning. The second attempt was focused. And the last attempt, most of us changed out a lot of gear (shot for around 10.5k instead of as much as possible), and that was where the pwnage began. He's got an 8-minute enrage timer, and that was where we died on the previous two attempts. On the last attempt, I think we had about 2 minutes left before the enrage timer. Yeah... we destroyed him.

Mount Hyjal: Rage Winterchill

I'm a bit behind in my posts because I keep forgetting to bring my screen shot in to work. What a flimsy excuse, huh? So since I came to this realization this morning, I figured I should write about our first night in Mount Hyjal on Monday evening. And come to think of it, my screen shot really isn't that exciting, just me using Arcane Explosion around a mass of bodies during about the 8th wave of trash before Rage Winterchill.

For those that don't know, Mount Hyjal can be a very fast instance. Before each of the first four bosses, there are 8 waves of trash that spawn about every 2 minutes. So, in 26 minutes (16 for the trash and roughly 10 for the boss), you can have a boss dead. And if you were to one shot bosses, that's about 2 hours for 4/5 of the bosses. Not too shabby.

Being our first time in there, we, of course, didn't expect to clear the whole instance. In fact, we were planning on killing the first two bosses and that's it. That said, we killed Rage Winterchill in one shot, but didn't quite get Anetheron down. Our Aoe'ing for the trash mobs was suffecient to clear the trash with enough time to eat/drink back to full before the next pull.

The biggest thing about Winterchill is that everyone needs to pay close attention to his Icebolt ability. Mages can Blink or Iceblock out of it, and Pallies can bubble out, but everyone else needs the pvp trinkets equipped so they can get out of the DoT that occurs after the initial impact. The other thing is an ability called Death and Decay. (Which looks like the picture I stole from Wowhead.)

Let me make stop here to explain a little bit about my Hot Key setup. Since I starte playing Wow many years ago, I've always had my less used spells right above my Hot Keyed ones. So, for example, all of my Aoe spells (except for Cone of Cold for some reason) were just above, because I didn't use them as much. A couple nights back I realized that I'm using Arcane Explosion more and more, and that since moving to Arcane Spec, I really hadn't taken the time to properly configure the Hot Keys optimally. Furthermore, I have some silly things like my push to talk is the ` key, while my "oh crap" hot key of Ice Block is the 1 key. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking on Vent and accidently Ice Blocked.

So, Monday night before the raid, I decided to reconfigure my keys. Scorch and Fireball - Out. Arcane Explosion and other often used keys - In. At the time, I thought it might not be a good idea to do this right before a new content raid; in hind sight, it was a terrible idea. Long story short, pretty early on I got hit with an Icebolt. No problem, I'll just blink. Oh crap, that's Icy Veins. Then there was a small blurr where I was flustered, and then I think I even tried to hit other spells... none of which were Blink or Ice Block. And then I was dead. I think there was also a grunt over Vent, that I got made fun of later. I felt like such a noob, that I didn't even suggest Battle Rezzing me. I was dead. I deserved it.

After awhile, the officer running the raid asked for a Battle Rez on me. "Okay," I thought to myself, "I can do this, no problem." Lucky for me, I didn't get hit with another Icebolt, so that wasn't a problem.

Another side note here: There was a really cool article on WowInsider on a macro that I use to boost all of the graphics. It makes the flora and fauna look spectacular. It also increases the distance you can see. Most systems bought in the past year, can probably support most (if not all) of these graphics. They really do look great.

The issue is that because of all of these plants, I couldn't see the Death and Decay on the ground. So... you guessed it, I died again. But we killed Rage, so it wasn't a big deal.

Our attempts on Anetheron were mostly choppy due to the unfamiliarity with the fight. We got through the waves of trash alright. But on our 3rd attempt through the waves, we were having a bit of trouble. And then... my Internet connection went out. And it didn't return until the morning.

So, we killed Rage. That's the good news. And I'll have about a week to get used to my buttons. That's good as well. Everything besides that... well... you already read it; no need to restate.