A look at ToC and rankings

So I spent all last week at home trying to recover from shoulder surgery. I raided the same day I got cut on, but I don't remember a whole lot of it. Typing is still a major challenge, and I'm sure I've lost a second or so on my reaction time. All in all I was able to log a lot of hours though - and got to fill a lot of different slots in random runs throughout the day. We finished GToC in traditional No Dice fashion, and actually saw phase 2 on Algalon. All in all a productive week.

Wintergrasp

At first I couldn't figure out what made the new boss so difficult - and then I realized it. There's fire you have to not stand in! Glory be almighty - this is a new trick we haven't seen before. I'm still baffled by players who die in this encounter due to fire. It's hot, it burns, and your damage is going down while the boss isn't spinning around. If you have a boss mod, it's even easier. I give him a 4/5 rating - just because there's pools of fire to stand in.

There may be more to this fight - but I haven't seen it. I tanked it on 10 and 25 man, and didn't use an OT either time. The 10 man was a guild run, so I think the one guy we pugged died. The 25 was a total PUG, and we prevented a 1% wipe with about 5 folks standing. So many things went wrong, but that's for tomorrow's post.

TOC and GTOC (10)

Everyone knows regular TOC is a joke. We got most of the achievements just doing what we do. I'm fairly certain any competent group can do 10/25 without too many issues.

Heroic mode is another story.

First - I love that they added abilities to the bosses. I hate it when they just up the damage and HP totals by a factor of x and call it "hard mode". The new twists caught us almost every time, but I'm happy to say that we finally got Anub down last night with 3 or 4 shots left. Pugging a tenth spot 90% of the time is getting old.

One thing I really don't like - there's no repairing once you're on Anub'arak. You're stuck in the bottom of this hole, and there's no way to run out, repair, and run back in - without hearthing or getting a mage port that is. I suppose you could leave the raid, get ported to the nearest graveyard, and go again. Still though, it's a pain that was similar to SSC before they put the reagent/repair guy there. Fortunately we have two Engineers in the group - so we can put down Jeeves twice an hour. That and the upgraded squires make it fairly handy (I think they can repair, maybe not).

Guild Rankings

On a final note - our "strict" 10 man progress rankings were finally stripped from us. To be fair, we weren't doing just 10 mans, and I definately am wearing more than the badge 245 pieces. We just weren't regularly guild running 25s, instead getting them as a PUGs. I suppose that we'll have to settle for being ranked in the top 200 or so, but it will be tougher in the long run.

Either way, we're still downing bosses - and the rankings are more for epeen and social status than anything. It's not like we get better loot simply because GuildOx ranks us higher.

Still looking for one more raider. Bladefist, Horde, 6:30-9:30, T/Th/Fri

I'm damn hot as a belf btw. I love my gnome coffin lid for a shield.