We're going to kill the Lich King!

3.3 is tomorrow, and I have never been so excited about a patch. I think it's because I've done Trial of the Crusader to death on both 10 and 25 man, and even completed 10 man Trial of the Grand Crusader twice (the first time a few weeks ago, and again last night). This is the first time I'll be approaching new raid content knowing that I've done everything possible in the last one, and I'm really happy about that. My guild -still- hasn't downed Yogg-Saron, but hopefully sometime before the release of Cataclysm we'll get around to doing that.

We lost some people to boredom and/or real life recently, so we probably won't be doing much in the way of 25 man content, but we still have a really strong 10 man team, so I'm hoping I'll get to do Icecrown Citadel hard-mode progression raiding, and get one of those awesome frostwyrm mounts.

I have all but three slots with item level 245 gear; some crafted, some bought, some from 25 man ToC, some from 10 man ToGC. My two 232 pieces are shoulders and shield, and I have a 200 trinket (from 5 man ToC normal). 42k health unbuffed, which isn't a huge amount worse than the best tanks on my server.

Raiding Ancients (that's my guild, not sure if I've ever said) are ranked 18th on the server for 10 man content, having cleared ToGC 10 with more than 25 attempts remaining. We missed out on the 45 attempts remaining achievement by 50k last night, which was kind of a disappointment. Then had a load of 1-2% wipes, before finally clearing it. I also got an awesome new sword, less than a week after getting the non-heroic version (and a day after spending gold to enchant it).

Not really much else to say. Very, very excited. Expect posts tomorrow after we've done our first Citadel run.

Yogg-Saron

This week, after some excellent progress in our first night in Ulduar (eight bosses down), we were in a good position to finally see the last two bosses of the instance. We only had Freya left to quickly down on Sunday night, then we were on to General Vezax.

Who went down in three tries. First attempt got him to 34%. Second attempt wasn't quite as good - a cast wasn't interrupted which took out the healer on me, and I died shortly after. At this point, our Paladin healer had realised he could solo heal me without any mana issues, so we downed General Vezax on the third try with one tank, two healers and seven DPS (four of which were melee).

We went on to Yogg-Saron, which was a disaster. We wiped twice in about ten minutes because people couldn't handle not standing in the clouds (what the fuck? It's not difficult to avoid them), then people said we should call it because people were getting unfocused. I have a different word for it, but whatever. We still had two days before the reset, which meant Yogg-Saron was (in my mind) going down this week.

Last night we went back to Ulduar, and had some more attempts on Yogg-Saron. Phase one generally went smoothly, with only the very occasional additional add spawn (which we could handle). The first few attempts on the second phase were ugly, with the group ending up spread out, DPS not knowing what they should be targetting, and people running in the opposite direction when they got brain linked.

We finally made some progress, getting Yogg-Saron to 49% before wiping. I was confident that, with a few more attempts, we could reach phase three. The next attempt was awful, with the melee DPS only getting 300k damage done on the brain in 12 minutes of the 15 minute enrage timer. Healer had to leave, we called it less than two hours after the first pull of the evening.

This is where I got annoyed. People having to go and calling a raid due to a lack of replacements I can understand. However, people seem generally unwilling to dedicate any more time to working on Yogg-Saron this week, which I don't understand and find frustrating. Apparently spending two nights wiping on a boss is enough. What the hell? We've spent less than one full night's worth of raiding wiping on the boss, it was just spread out across two evenings.

The raid content is only going to get harder - if they're unwilling to dedicate more than a few hours a week to learning difficult content, we're going to make incredibly slow progress and there's no point in me being here.

I can sort of understand wanting to do ToC for the emblems and loot, but they've already downed the Northrend Beasts this week, and Lord Jaraxxus won't (shouldn't) take an entire raid session to kill. Two attempts at most, otherwise something is wrong. Will we then go back to Ulduar and spend more time on Yogg-Saron, or just do nothing?

Maybe I expect too much

I've been growing increasingly annoyed with the raid groups I've been in recently. Pugs are - in general, and as expected - frustrating. But even what has become my frequent 10 man group has begun to bother me. All highly capable players, but seemingly unable to follow simple instructions in a manner that I find acceptable. I've always been a bit of a perfectionist, I realise that. However, I don't think that the expectations I have of them are overly high.

If I tell them to stack on me (or anybody else), I expect their character to be indistinguishable from that person - not stood within 5-10 yards of them.

If I tell them to stand somewhere, I expect them not only to stand there but to continue to stand there unless they're told they can move, they ABSOLUTELY HAVE to move, or are moved by an enemy.

I expect ranged to actually STAY at range. If they can attack from 30-40 yards away, I expect them to be close to 30 or 40 yards from an enemy unless they're told otherwise.

I expect EVERYBODY (with the possible exception of the other tank) to stay behind me. Not stood with me and certainly not stood in front of me, unless I tell them otherwise.

I know what I want, and I expect to get it. I'm not asking them to be the greatest players in the world ever, just to do simple things in a professional manner.

So, you tell me. Am I asking for too much or is my annoyance justified?

We keep on going with nowhere to go

I haven't updated for a while, so let me catch you up.

My guild - Rebirth - exploded. Guild Leader quit WoW, one officer quit WoW, another officer joined another guild. The majority of the active raiders then quit, and I was left wondering what the hell to do.

I joined a guild with some people from my first guild. They're good people, and competent, but there aren't many of us. I think the most people we've had online that I've seen is six - not enough to put together a raid.

But I have been raiding. Not with my new guild, or at least not with all of them. We've formed a 10 man group of people from a number of guilds, and haven't been doing too badly (we downed Mimiron earlier). When we started a few weeks ago I was the only one who had killed a boss past Kologarn so there were lots of wipes whilst they were learning the bosses.

I've also started PvPing. Nothing hardcore, just the occasional battleground when I get bored and Wintergrasp if I'm doing nothing else when it starts. Retribution PvP - even in crap PvE gear - is surprisingly fun. I used to just do PvP on my first character (a Warrior) and I don't remember it being this enjoyable.

That's about it. Nothing particularly exciting.

When raiding goes bad

So I learnt the hard way that raiding whilst exhausted is not a good idea. While finishing off as much of Ulduar as possible before the reset, I discovered just how much of a bitch the arena in the Thorim encounter is when you've had two hours sleep and can't focus.

We did, eventually, get him down but the majority of the attempts were one silly fuck up after another - mainly healers getting one-shotted by champions because I was too slow on picking them up. Tanking is fun when it goes well (or even mediocre) but knowing that wipe after wipe is entirely your fault definitely makes you feel like a complete idiot.

We went on to down Razorscale, and called it for the week - bringing the number of bosses I've personally downed in Ulduar to 8. Less than the 10 I was hoping for, but we lost a day because of healers being unavailable and had trouble finding replacements when people had to leave early because we'd run two groups earlier in the week. Not to mention wasting a couple of hours on Thorim because of my lack of sleep.