Not what I had hoped for

We did a guild run of Heroic Nexus - easy mode right? Not so much, we wiped on the Mage chick 3 times...3 freaking times. I hadn't wiped on her since we did it the first time. And then she didn't even drop the bracers that I keep running that place to get. I was just not on my game, and neither was the tank. We seemed to be fighting our instincts and thinking too much about what to do next. That is not the way I usually play, I am much more instinctive.

The good news, though, is our newest 80 Mage got a couple upgrades while we were in there, so it's not all bad.

Patch 3.1 PTR Notes

Moving one step closer, the PTR notes are up for 3.1

This is the patch that will bring us dual specs and make me a very happy Resto Shaman, with an Elemental leaning. Most of my gear should translate pretty well between both specs and I have been consulting lootrank.com to put together a shopping list of DPS-centric gear as I go along.

It looks like the cost for getting your dual spec will be 1,000G, which is about what I had figured. Not a trivial amount, but most 80s won't have a problem handing it over to gain a second spec. I'm wondering if we might be able to add slots later, like we do with our bank? I would envision that cost going up incrementally to obtain each additional slot.

Matthew Rossi at wowinsider.com wrote a great article on the propsed changes, which you can find here.

It looks like Shamans are getting some love, no major nerfs to the way I play. I am not a huge raider, so the Bloodlust change (5 min CD, 10 min Debuff) is not critical to me. Usually we only use it at the final few percentage of the boss fights to speed it up a bit. That may change and will affect hardcore raiders and 25 man progression guilds a lot more that it does for me.

All in all, I like what I am seeing for this patch so far.

My thoughts on recent raiding

A post I made to my guild website:

So...yeah...

After reflecting on the runs we had over the past week, I have come to the conclusion that we probably need to do some more work in heroics to farm gear and badges for gear.

If you would like to PUG the raids, you have my support. But, I'm not sure that we are totally ready to be raiding as a guild quite yet. A couple of weeks of heroics should make a HUGE difference for all of us.

Recruiting is also something that will need to be focused on and I have made a macro that I will be using when I'm around the major cities. I will post it if you want to see it and use it as a template. We have 8 solid players, and 3 or 4 that are possibles based on their schedules, so we really only need to recruit a few more. Another healer, or a respec from the guild, and DPS with CC are our main needs at this point.

What do you think?

I got positive feedback on this post and we have tried a few more heroics. I am always struggling with where a casual guild stops and a progression guild starts. And where do I wanna be, anyway? With a small guild am I being unrealistic with my expectations?

I really like the crew I am playing with and I want everyone to be happy with the content we are doing, and still maintain the balance we have had. I guess it comes down to the fact that I like the people better than the content.

I love my guildies

Our regular OT and I decided to run some Heroic Violet Hold to break up our boredom....bad idea. We got one of those PUGs. You know the one, where the guy barely breaking 1K DPS is harassing the tank and healer and telling us we aren't doing the instance right. He went so far to say that I should go back and do it on regular to learn the fights.

Now, I'm not "pro" or "elite" of any of that, but I am a solid healer. I don't like being called out like that by a Unholy DK only doing 1100DPS. I know he should be doing better, our DKs pump out high mid 2000s regularly.

That wasn't the point of the post, really. The point is this - I love running with my guild, there is no venom or belittling each other. I don't understand why people do it, but I'm glad my crew doesn't.

So for those Limited Warranty guys who might read this - Thank you for being so professional and awesome.

Over the fence we went

We made it over the fence!

Only 9 showed up for the Naxx run, but that is a significant portion of our small guild. Almost everyone was on time-ish, repaired, ready to go.

There was some confusion on where to start, so we tried the first spider boss - I forget the name. We took 3 shots at him with the 9 we had, only Mishandala and me healing. We only got him to around 50% and decided to move into the plague quarter.

Noth the Plaguebringer went down easily for us and Kariki and Mishandala were able to grab some nice upgrades. The night ended shortly after that, as 2 of our team had to study for midterms - eduation comes first.

Overall I was pleased with our performance and we downed a boss. I know some of you laugh and say Naxx is EZMode, but we are pretty casual and didn't raid a lot in BC either. I am proud of the crew that went and we will be downing more bosses in the near future.

Here goes nothing...

I have scheduled a guild run of Naxxramas for tonight. A lot of people have been asking about doing it and I am throwing my hat over the fence*.

I sent an invite using the in-game calendar, and the guild website, to all the level 80s in the guild. I'm hoping that everyone can show up, ready to go and we can get some raiding going. I will be very disappointed if it does not happen. I really think we have a great group of players and we can be successful - if everyone is dedicated. That might be where there is an issue.

Getting this organized has not gone as smoothly as I would like. I have gotten very few responses on raid night and time preferences. We are set for tanks and healers, but the DPS is where we are lacking. I hate to resort to PUGging it, but we may have to.

I have so many thought swirling in my head right now, and some of them will make it to this blog later tonight. Stay tuned.

* "Throwing my hat over the fence" - based on a story I heard once, don't remember where. A guy was trying to decide whether to climb over the fence (for some reason or another) and was having a hard time deciding what to do. So, on impulse he tossed his hat over the fence. Now he is left with two choices - go get it or forget about the hat. It's an expression of forcing yourself into a decision.