Weekly Raid Rant

Welcome to the Weekly Raid Rant. In this edition, we will look at the raids that my restoration shaman participated in this week.

First off was a PUG trip to Vault of Archavon (25). The good thing was that we one-shotted all the bosses in there. The bad thing was that Koralon only dropped hunter loot, and we didn't bring any hunters. As usual, nobody needed anything from Archavon.

Blizzard really need to split this raid instance into three (or four, after the next patch) individual instances. The people who are geared enough to down Koralon don't need anything from Archavon, and the people who need loot from Archavon don't have good enough gear to down Koralon. This will get even worse when Blizzard adds the fourth boss in here. It's insane to have a raid instance with bosses from four different Tier levels. It's almost like putting Yogg-Saron, Anub'arak, and Arthas in Naxxramas, next to Kel'Thuzad...

The next raid for my brave healer was Trial of the Crusader (25) with the guild's second group. This group consists of alts and players who are not picked in our "main" raid group. For the second week in a row, this group failed to kill Anub'arak. Yes, you read it right: A guild ToC run that fails to kill Anub'arak two weeks in a row.

People played like morons. Not enough dps on snobolds, mistresses, fel infernals, burrowers, scarabs, and valkyrs' shields. No cc or interrupts on Faction Champions. By shear brute force (thanks to several people actually out-gearing the place) we reached Anub'arak with only one wipe. We survived TWO missed stuns on Icehowl, several people getting killed by infernals on Jaraxxus, and a 15 minute long Faction Champions fight. The wipe came at Twin Valkyrs when they managed to heal themselves twice, and we hit the enrage timer.

I've noticed that people are getting sloppier every week when we raid in this group. Instead of improving from doing the fights over and over, people instead start making stupid mistakes and taking stupid risks. As a healer, the only thing you can do is heal your brains out and scream out in agony.

When the raid was called after just one wipe on Anub'arak (since it was obvious it wasn't worth continuing) I needed to use all that adrenaline I pumped into my system, so I went into a PUG Onyxia (25).

This PUG had all a normal Onyxia PUG has: An arms warrior doing 600 dps. A feral druid doing barely 1k dps. Mages that die immediately when the whelps come. Melee that don't run out of fire novas. And two holy paladins that healed LESS than the paladin tank did with his Judgement of Light. After a wipe, we downed the dragon on the second attempt. I ended up doing more than 30% of the total healing in the raid.

The worst healers in PUGs always seem to be paladins these days. Way too often I see paladin healers only spamming Flash of Light and not using Beacon of Light. They end up dead last on the healing meter, even when they are tank healing, and they always do less than 2k hps. Of course there are good paladin healers out there, and they usually blow the other healers away when using their spells in the right way, but they, sadly, seem to be the minority. At least in the PUGs I end up in.

Well, that's the end of this edition of the Weekly Raid Rant. I'm crossing my fingers for a patch release this week. I need new content to rant about.

Did 3.2 Kill Serious Raiding?

Now you probably wonder what in the world I'm talking about. Why would a content patch like 3.2 kill serious raiding? We've gotten even more raid instances to raid! Have I lost my mind?

Well, for our guild, the 3.2 patch killed serious raiding. With "serious raiding" I mean several raid nights a week spent on hard content, many wipes, high repair costs, grinding teeth, and adrenaline pumping.

Since Trial of the Crusader was introduced, our guild can't seem to get enough sign-ups for Ulduar. This is a shame, since we have so much left undone in there. We have several hard modes left, and thus we are very very far off from even seeing Algalon.

It's understandable that people aren't interested in wiping in Ulduar when they can easily farm Trial of the Crusader for shinier epics.

OK. So all this QQ about lack of serious raiding must mean that we have Trial of the Grand Crusader on farm as well, right? Well, no. We are still stuck on Northrend Beasts in TotGC-25. We always seem to lack the dps to kill off the last worm before Icehowl enters the arena. The reasons for lacking dps are two: Gear and people dying when they shouldn't.

So to increase our chances to progress we farm. On Wednesdays we do Onyxia-25, VoA-25, and TotC-25. That usually takes about 1.5 hour. After that we try TotGC-25 for a couple of hours. This means that the guild's entire 25-man raiding takes place in one night.

Later in the week the guild has several TotC-10 runs, and a couple of TotGC-10 runs. Farm. Farm. Farm. We actually farm 10-man content to be able to progress in 25-man content. Is it just me who thinks that is a bit awkward?

In a normal week, I do TotC-25, TotC-10, TotGC-10, and some tries on TotGC-25 on my paladin. I also do TotC-10 and TotC-25 on my shaman. Just guess how tired I am of farming that frigging coliseum? I'm killing the same stinking bosses five times a week! And they fall over easier than a twenty-dollar hooker.

Some people seem to be content with this. Farming easy instances to get shiny epics? What's not to like? Getting big upgrades to your gear without the risk of dying? Sweet!

And while people roll around in the purples from Coliseum, Ulduar is empty and unfinished.

Looking forward, at least Icecrown Citadel is more than one room.....

Busy Weekend

After being away for a week, I had some catching up to do!

On Friday I did a 25-man VoA raid with my resto shaman, which gained him the T9 elemental pants and the T8 resto gloves (so that I now have that imba 4pc T8 bonus). The raid leader was a completely clueless and undergeared tank, but the raid went smooth thanks to a couple of good healers and some very good dpsers.

A group of friends put together a 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader raid just for fun on Saturday. It went better than expected. We only wiped once (an annoying 1% wipe at Twin Valkyr) before engaging Anub'Arak.

I must say, the difference in difficulty between heroic 10-man and heroic 25-man is staggering. Most of us is wearing several pieces of 25-man gear, which of course makes it easier, but still...

We totally screwed up on the first Twins attempt, and still got them down to 1%. I was the last man standing, dpsing them both with everything I got, and sadly with Lay on Hands on cooldown (I had to use it earlier in the fight when my healer died due to getting hit by orbs). The cheering on vent was hilarious, especially when Ardent Defender ressed me and I kept hitting them ladies with my sword until the bitter (second) end.

Anub'Arak, on the other hand, was a hard nut to crack. We did 11 attempts on him before calling it since it was getting late. We got to phase 3 several times (best attempt 26%), but we seemed to lose people too often in phase 2, which made phase 3 very hard.

On Sunday I brought my resto shaman to the guild's second 25-man Trial of the Crusader raid. Since the nerf to Faction Champions, these raids now run smooth and with few deaths. Afterwards, we went to Onyxia and downed her as well. I have now done Onyxia both on 10-man and 25-man on my shaman, but I still haven't done any Onyxia raid on my paladin (you will get your chance Arnax, don't worry).

My wife got the retribution paladin helm from Onyxia, only days after spending 75 Emblems of Triumph on the badges helm. I can understand her frustration :)

We had an Ulduar hardmode raid scheduled for Sunday evening, but it was cancelled due to lack of signups.

I'm spending a lot of my game time on my shaman these days. Healing on my shaman is a lot more fun than healing on my paladin ever was (Arnax can feel safe with his prot/ret dual spec, since I don't see him ever doing any healing). Arnax is still my main, and I always bring him out for the serious stuff. I have loads of reputation and quest grinding left to do on him, but I'm the kind of person who needs variety in the game, and switching from tank to healer (or dps) in raids is a good way to keep the game feeling fresh.

But don't worry. This will not turn into a shaman blog....