PUGing Ulduar

Who said it couldn’t be done?  Yesterday started off innocently enough.  I got bored and joined a pug 10m Naxx group.  Interestingly enough my last guild leader joined the group.  This group carried 3 terrible DPS players through the Spider Wing.  We stopped at the Safety Dance though because on of the healers left.

After I hearthed to Dalaran, “LFM FL 10m Ulduar” scrolled across Trade Chat.  So I whispered back and a little did I know, half the group I was running with migrated to this raid group!  We downed Flame Leviathan with one tower up pretty easily.  Only one of the choppers died.  Two Emblems of Conquest as loot isn’t too shabby.  Too bad the Pyrite Infuser didn’t drop.

Two people dropped from the raid but everyone remaining decided to continue with 10m Ulduar!  One of the Pallies respecced Holy and we looked for a priest and druid healers.  And off we went to do XT-Deconstructor.  I hate that boss’s voice…but we downed him (her?) in 1 try and got the achievement for not allowing him to heal from the scrapbots.

Next we tried Razorscale.  We wiped twice but on our third attempt we had a pretty epic finish.  Everything was going good until our MT randomly died at ~15%.  Our OT picked him up and we got him down to around 1% before he dropped.  Then the rest of raid started falling.  All that was standing was a Rogue and 2 healers.  That rogue legitimately downed 0.5% of the boss’s health by himself!  Epic and fittingly he won the gloves that dropped from Razorcscale.

The last boss we downed was Kologarn.  We wiped once but the second time we downed him no problem.  He was an interesting fight to say the least.  And I won the Spire of Withering Dreams!  We tried some trash and failed, then we tried the Iron Assembly and failed.  But hopefully we’ll be able to pick up the group today.

Guild Drama

Tell me, why did this have to happen to my new guild? In my last post I wrote that I joined a new casual raiding guild and today I was so happy when they decided to pick up that Naxx run we started before. However, all was not meant to be…like usual.

Two individuals in our raid were kind of arguing for no reason whatsoever.  We were wiping against the harder bosses in Naxx and people were getting a little frustrated but our MT just got super pissed at very minor things the rest of the guild was doing.  This completely tore the guild apart.  Most of the 80 raiders began leaving.  I was very concerned about the future of the guild and whether I would have to change guilds/servers/factions.  Well when the dust settled the MT left the guild (along with his crazy 25m rules, heard he was a nice guy in general but his rules were just too strict and he kept yelling) and the guild leader managed to reinvite most of the 80s that left.  Disaster averted!

This is the first time I’ve been in any part of guild drama and at the expense of my guildies (and possibly myself) I’d have to say it was entertaining, although I’d hate to have this happen again.  Well I think this turnover was an overall good thing for the guild and I’ll be sticking around a bit longer in the hopes that this guild does work out.  It has potential: 2 superbly geared mages, 1 amazingly geared resto shaman, 1 amazingly geared warlock, and around 10-15 25m Naxx ready raiders.  Here’s to me not spending a dime on server/faction changes!

In Progress: 25m Naxx

Quickie right here. In the midst of 25m Naxx, just downed Patchwerk. 3.6k DPS, 4th in the raid in DPS. Who says BM can’t DPS?

Edit:  Ok I’ve got some time now to expand this post now.  Well yesterday in Trade chat someone from the guild <Deadman Walking> was looking for DPS for 25m OS.  So naturally I whispered him that I’d DPS for them.  I’ve ran a couple of raids with this guild and they’re very organized and know what they’re doing.  So we downed Sarth no problems.  And of course Hyaline Helm of the Sniper dropped!  Luckily I was only rolling against only one other Hunter and I won!  So I currently own the helm I’ve been wanting for a long time and am expecting to use well into patch3.2.  Not too shabby.  I kind of felt bad though because the person who invited me into the raid was this Hunter that I rolled against.

Then the guild (and 5 pugged individuals, including me) immediately went off to do 25m Naxx.  We downed Spider Wing easily.  No wipes, but the Aged Winter Cloak dropped and I supposedly won it with a roll of 91 but they gave it to someone else.  It’s not that much better than the cloak I currently have so I didn’t complain about it, although the added Crit would’ve been nice…  Anyway they decided to do Construct Wing second and that really made my day.  Or so I thought.

Well the Construct Wing (both 10 and 25m) is where the majority of my gear upgrades lie.  The thing is most Naxx groups I enter are afraid of the Construct Wing.  This time though we were able to down Patchwerk, as my original post spoke of.  We wiped once but that was because our MT dropped midfight.  Bummer, but on our second try we downed him pretty easily.  Like I stated up top I was doing a very solid 3.6K DPS and was forth in their mostly guild run.  This was also with my new helm not fully gemmed and not enchanted!  This makes me feel really good about my DPS.  As most DPSers know, Patchwerk is Naxx’s “gear check” or as my track coach would put it, “gut check.”  You have to down him in 6 minutes or else he enrages and wipes the raid.  If the DPS isn’t there, you fail.  If the tanks don’t know what they’re doing, you fail.  Healers only have to keep the 3 tanks at full the entire time and you just burn him down.  Patchwerk is a pure DPS race boss and many (all) Hunters use it as a fair, raid-environment check of their DPS.  We managed to down him in around 4 minutes.  I have no doubt in my mind that this raid could’ve finished Naxx in another 2 hours even though we were carrying ~2 other lesser geared DPS.

But alas, fait would have no such thing.  Blizzard’s servers in the Chicago area decided to drop when we were about to try Grobbulus and 8 members of the raid dropped.  We waited for around 30 minutes and then the raid leader decided to call it a night.  Unfortunate, but true.  All I have to say is that was definitely the smoothest run I’ve had EVER.  I think I might have to join this guild in a couple days since my guild seems to be failing.  Luckily I know someone in that guild who will hopefully invite me.  I just don’t want to jump ship that quickly and seem like a jerk to my guild leader who I’ve been doing heroics and raids with since February.  I also hope that they continue the raid tonight and I’m able to catch them when they’re about to finish Naxx.

Patch changes!

Ok first off I’d like to say I’ve been really, really busy lately.  Raiding and volunteer work (and Michael Jackson’s death) has really been making me spend my time doing productive things.  Last week I was able to get into a 25m Naxx raid.  My current guild has been joining another guild on the server to do 25 mans.  So we did Naxx, OS and downed Flame Leviathan in 25m Ulduar.

But enough of that.  I’ve got some spare time to talk about Patch 3.2 and BM changes that WILL increase BM DPS output!  First off we originally had a change to Catlike Reflexes.  Not only will it increase dodge, but it will also decrease the cooldown of Kill Command.  This will definitely be a DPS increase but I’m still not sold on this talent just yet.  I don’t think it’ll be much of a change.  Today however I read on MMO-Champion about changes to Animal Handler and the pet talent Wild Hunt.  Now these 2 talents will substantially boost our DPS (hopefully).  Animal Handler now increases pet attack power by 5/10% instead of expertise by 5/10%.  I’m not entirely sure what expertise does since Hunters have absolutely no use for the stat but the AP boost looks nice.  Animal Handler was already a very versatile talent since it reduced the chance your pet’s attacks get blocked/dodged/missed (I think that’s what expertise does) and increases the effect of Master’s Call, which is probably the most underrated Hunter ability.  Now the attack power boost will make you’re already awesome pet even more awesome!  Wild Hunt, a talent all Hunter have at least 1 talent point in (I assume) is also getting buffed.  Only BM Hunters, however, are able to put 2 points in this talent.  According to MMO-Champion, rank 1 has increased the AP boost from 10% to 15% so I’m assuming rank 2 will increase AP by 30%, up from 20%.  The last ability buff I’m going to touch on is Deterrence which is the Hunter “Oh Shit” button (I guess next to Feign Death) when everything hits the fan and you need a couple seconds of invincibility (sort of; maybe for that Feign Death CD to finish).  Now Deterrence doesn’t require you to face the attack and you’ll block all physical and magical attacks (plus a cool new animation!).

So now with the changes to Animal Handler and the buff to Wild Hunt, BM Hunter pets will now gain at least 20% attack power , which in turn affects DPS.  I’m not sure how attack power is calculated though.  It’s either your pet gains a 20% attack power bonus (10+10=20), which I doubt, or your pet gains 10% from Animal Handler and then an additional 30% (presumably), after the 10% bonus from Animal Handler, from Wild Hunt (rank 2).  This second scenario will boost your pet AP by more than 20% I believe.  Well, I’ll leave it up to the number crunchers to calculate the real attack power/damage increase.  All I know is BM Hunter DPS are about to get buffed.  Meanwhile, SV Hunters are about to get nerfed (with changes to Entrapment and LnL that I didn’t discuss because I don’t care for SV) and MM Hunters will remain the same.  This will hopefully lower DPS gap between BM Hunters and SV Hunters.