Friday Flowchart + Congrats, SiB!

The evening crew of Stands in Bad finally got their Lich King kill.  Congrats, guys!  <3

Although I do now have Survival as a secondary spec, my first LK kill came with Omnomnom the Devilsaur proudly at my side.  Go go Intimidate stun.  It still feels odd to get the kill with my hunter (read: until lately the bastard child 2nd alt) and not the priest that has done all the real work. 

Anyway.  I know what you guys REALLY want…

I Am The Most Nub Hunter

I am the most nub hunter of them all, I swear.  Well…no.  Maybe not the most nub.  I may be a BM hunter but I’m not meleeing.  My gear does not have SP on it.   I have gems.  I even have ENCHANTS. 

What I do not have, sometimes, is a clue.

Ways I Died On LK:

Falling off the ledge during phase transition!
Hugging spirits! (I did not hug orbs)
Not tranqing the big uglies in time oh god the tank is dead it’s eating my face oh fuck!
….defile!

 By far the “falling off the ledge” has to win for nubness.  That said, we did get LK down to 17% percent…which means, of course, that he dies next time.

…meanwhile I’m going to learn to Survival Hunter.    /twitches

Come play with ussssssss.

It’s that time again! Summer slump, raiding burnout, and a little touch of unfortunate drama have left Brotherhood of Oblivion unable to raid 25 man content for a few weeks now. We have a lot of interested people, but we need a few more to round out our numbers. SO. RECRUITMENT TIEMS.

If you’ve been following this blog and BoO’s antics for a while, you won’t believe what I’m about to say, but we need more healers. Especially raid healers, because Amber and I both are like LOL RAID HEALING NO. Sure, I know I can, but I’d rather lay my hands on a tank. Resto druids and resto shamans would be very very much loved, as we do not have one of either as a main (this makes me a sad Ori). We would pet you and give you cookies. I’d also really love to see us have another holy paladin, in part so I have someone to babble about binding every key to holy light and tapdancing on my keyboard with, and also so that I may occasionally go ret and smack things to help my stress levels. :D So tank healers are also definitely welcome. WE LOVE HEALERS.

We also need plenty of dps. Specifically, ranged dps because right now we have mostly melee. There are no dps shaman mains raiding our 25s currently, so one of either smacking or lightening turret flavor would be much loved. Boomkins would also be wonderful! Frankly, we will welcome any dps players who don’t stand in bad things or think that hugging Sindragosa sounds like a good time. /stares

I think that the only thing we are currently not desperately needing is tanks. If you’re a tank who also has a healing or dpsing offspec that you don’t mind using frequently (or the opposite) feel free to also join us, because chances are that you will get to tank at some point. Curse the irregular tank scaling between 10 and 25 man content.

Currently Brotherhood of Oblivion raids from 7-10 server (CST) on Wednesday and Thursday nights, though dates might possibly be moved if needed to work with summer schedules. As of the last time that we did 25s, we were 8/12 and progressing steadily, and our 10 mans are either working on Sindragosa or have danced on her chain smoking corpse. We’re a pretty casual and relaxed guild, but our goal is to have everyone on board and serious about making progress in our raids with minimal goofing around.

Still, we are the guild who does things like this:

so don’t expect there to be a lack of fun, silly times. I know I can never be entirely serious. Other perks include occasional fun time old school raids (BWL this week!) and a weekly Ulduar 10 hardmode group working towards drakes on Monday nights.

Also, a reminder that we aren’t particularly … PG-13 most of the time.

If you’re interested, you can check out our forums ( http://booguild.net ) or poke me in game on either Orithea or Mortaleia and we’ll talk shop (you can also email me at vivalamuffin at gmail dot com !). We’re always glad to let recruits sit in vent and listen to raid fun times to get a feel for what we’re like before coming over.

Open Letter

Dear Love is in the Air,

Please go die in a fucking fire.  You plus Lunar Festival plus 25 of us in a raid plus the USS Lagship Battle = FAIL.

Nothing like spending some time grinding our gears on Lady Douchenozzle only to then run straight into…wiping on Gunship.  And not even our usual lol wiping, no, this was “I’m going to cast Flash Heal and SOMEDAY IT MIGHT ACTUALLY GO OFF oh look the tank died” wiping.  This was “Hey, it’s faster and safer for me to fall off the edge of the enemy ship than it is to try to rocket back” type wiping.  What the FUCK, Blizzard.  I should not be sp strongly reminded of the days when I ran Molten Chore with 256 megs of RAM.

I hate you with the passion as bright as a billion burning suns,
The Priest Who Was Glad She Had Bubbles

But at least it was a full 25 man BoO raid.  Not without its issues but…ALL BOO.

\o/

Hard to Please

For some reason Steve really didn't like this tabard.

A popular phrase in my guild is “eat a fucking muffin”.  I can’t remember exactly where this came from-I think that one of our tanks was telling one of our DPSers to “chill out and eat a fucking muffin,” and we just latched on to the latter half. 

While it amused me to put a muffin on our guild tabard, some others were not as tickled.  They weren’t even amused by the tabard change just before that one, which had the same colors but retained our previous hooded face icon.  Something about purple can get certain knickers in a twist, which is sad becuase my dear Ori loves her some purple.

So, I went and changed it in its entirety.  There are, contrary to popular beliefs, “real” reasons why I felt a need to change the tabard…but I will discuss only one of them here.

Blue is clearly a superior color for a tabard.

Anyway.

Other changes abound for the Brotherhood!  Our ranks have recently swelled, and there is much amusing flailing about by all parties.  No one can keep names straight, and the poor people who joined our guild right before this sudden influx probably suffer the worst.  They hadn’t learned all of BoO’s core yet, and suddenly here are 10 more people and their alts and oh my god what the fuck the alts, the alts, the aaaaallllts!

I feel that “the recruits”-collectively a group that transferred over from Doomhammer, once known as Elysium-are mixing in well.  Last time BoO omnomnom’d a significant chunk of a guild, it went…poorly.  They isolated themselves, refused to run anything but farm content with us, and eventually left en masse over a loot dispute.

I’m not the least bit worried about history repeating itself.  When heroic groups form, they blend both groups, and their names are already liberally sprinkled throughout our raid sign ups.  Considering that they all transferred to play with us I was only mildly concerned…and it’s good to relax on that front.

They’re crazy and pervy and we get along quite well so far!  Of course, they have a few things to learn, still-the guild rule of Let Hunt Die hasn’t fully settled in yet.  Some of them still think he gets heals.  Pfft.

There have, of course, been…kerfluffles.  One guildmate has already gquit over a misunderstanding.  We scarcely blinked our eyes-seeing Sidearm remove his eleventy billion alts from the guild is something most of us have seen before.   If he wants to leave over a minor incident without discussing things with the officers…again…then so be it.

Poor Xindi is far more upset over it than we are.  This has led to some new guild rules:

1) Xindi is not allowed to apologize more than 3 times for the same thing.
2) Xindi is not allowed to feel bad for things that are not her fault.

She will learn these rules in time, too.

ICC, Take Two

So BoO poked it’s head into ICC10.  Trash was boring this time around, resulting in my 1) running in circles and 2) casting Mind Sear.  It was rather amusing to watch our rogue Eviscerate try to disarm the traps and-on at least one occasion-fail miserably and almost get eviscerated himself.  Eviscerate is probably the rarest of rogues: one who receives bubbles from me.  He’s defying my stereotypical hatred of his class…damn it.

Marrowgar, however, was…not easy.  We one shot him, yes (probably in part due to our previous attempts on 25) and didn’t even lose anybody, but it was a near thing.  As a healer, at least, I did a lot of flailing and muttering OH MY GOD OH MY GOD under my breath, particularly when my fleeing from the whirlwind o’ doom resulted in me being no where near my assigned tank.

We did it with a tree, a disc priest, and a holy paladin-perhaps not ideal, but it’s actually a combination I adjusted to in Ulduar.  Since the paladin has Bacon Hax, I tended to sprinkle bubbles on the raid a little more (occasionally a bubble and a sliver of health was all that stood between someone and death-meep!).  This did stretch my mana pool a bit, but a couple of shadow fiends and one lonely mana pot got me through. 

So yes, we one shot Marrowgar, and all agreed that it was glorious.  Then…then we went to Lady Deathwhisper.

Deathwhisper was…not one shot, but like Thorim, the first phase is key.  Once you figure out how to handle the adds, you’re golden.  We had two ranged on the boss, the rest (all melee) all the adds.  We had no way of handling the deformed uglies aside from…well, face tanking them, so we rotated cooldown because they hit like god damned freight trains.  We got her into phase 2 once then wiped, so even though it was time to call it we said…no, no, fuck it, we’re doing this.

Now, historically, we should have walked in there and wiped to something retarded, because this is BoO and that’s just what we DO on the “last try, we were so close!” pulls.  This time however, we handled phase one and and smoothly moved into phase two and…ta-da, loot.

I was really fucking pleased, let me tell you.  I can’t wait until we go back on Monday. 

/rubs her hands together

I will be revising my Marrowgar strat that I posted now that I have a better grip on the fight.

Woo!

Not only did the Brotherhood of Oblivion finally conquer our cockblock (DIAF Anub), but we got a new recruit out of it.  There’s another two that I’m reeling in, as well.  Yay!  DPS!

I am forever amused (and frustrated by) the fact that we have this plethora of tanks and healers and a dearth of solid DPS.  WTF, guys?  Thankfully, most of our tanks and healers can rotate  into DPS slots, but not all of them.   The majority of them are competent at their secondary jobs if not downright excellent, which certainly makes my life earlier.

To my further amusement, our healers are less likely to complain about DPSing than our tanks.  While most healers I know suffer from “back seat healing syndrome” (see how often I drop out of shadow form sometime), none of them seem to flail at others doing their job like a tank will.  Is it because the tanks are more visible?  

And now, let’s talk about…

How To Offer Opinions And Not Look Like A Dick

We have two raid members who are both rather opinionated individuals with a lot of usually solid advice to offer.  One of them is an appreciated, well-liked member of the team…

…and the other is on the verge of being gkicked nearly every raid he attends.  Why are they different?

• Watch your word choice.
• Watch your method of delivery.

“In hindsight, using X at This Time would have been better,” is less hostile than “Gee, using X at This Other Time was a mistake!  Didn’t you see that _____?”  If you are really frustrated and want to vent, find a friendly ear and do it there.  Hint: ventrilo isn’t it.  Tell your Healing Buddy that doing Y was dumb as hell, then suggest far more politely to your raid leader that maybe we could try ___ some time, because you’ve seen it work really well before.

Similarly, commenting in raid chat or in whispers is considered more polite than random vent comments during a boss fight.   So, what what you say and how you say it: it makes the world of difference.

On a related note, if you are not the RL/an officer, don’t call for things like brezzes or heroism.   Sometimes, we forget…but sometimes we have something else in mind, so we’d really rather you not confuse the matter.   A pug, for example, might not recognize that you’re not the RL/officer and go ahead and do it and then…well.   Oops.

I hate bugs.

Last night’s ToC actually did…not go too badly.  We started an hour late because I had issues filling a larger-than-normal number of gaps, but it wasn’t without its benefits.  For one thing, I unknowingly ended up with the alt of a friend  in the raid. We almost didn’t take him due to gear-I wish he’d told me who his main was beforehand.  D’oh!  Thankfully I trust that guild tag in general, so I decided that a slightly undergeared Celestial Darkness person was better than a slightly undergeared Random Person.  You can only imagine my delight to find out it was my buddy Wyre.  Drood in warrior form!

Anyway, we may have picked up a new “regular pug” with the potential to turn into a guildie-and even better yet, they’re shaman flavored.  Yay, shamananans.

Despite the shortened raid time, we cleared up to Anub with minimal issues and got some attempts in on him, which was more than we’d done for the past couple of weeks.  I just want to know why we can handle everything up to that point and then all of a sudden it…falls apart.

Oh well, strat research time!

And now on to Things That Bug Me:

I appreciate opinions and strat suggestions.  I really, honestly, do.  However, once the fight starts?  If you’re not an officer, shut your mouth and don’t call out instructions.   We have seven bloody officers, do you think we any need any help cluttering up vent?  No!  :P  We run all over our own god damned selves just fine without outside assistance…

25s: wooooo!

So last night, BoO made its return to 25s.

Yaaaaaay!

We still need some solid DPS-we pugged a couple, some of our own still need work, and some alts made appearances.  Of course part of the alt fun was because two nublettes decided that it was okay to take their healer mains to a pug Ulduar25 since OMG we have so many heals right?  …and then we’re short a healer come the night of our run.  

Don’t do that.  You know who you are and you of all people should know better.  :P  Yes, we have more healers than you can shake a stick at.  Yes, you have alts that are capable of going into Ulduar25.  But you have no idea if one of our other healers might have connection issues, wife aggro, kid aggro, or whatever at the last minute.   Save your god damn mains for god damned guild runs. 

Let me tell you, the last thing I want on what is still progression content is Josh healing.  Not because Josh isn’t a fine holy paladin-he is-but because I want him tanking.  

Besides, on his pally Josh gets all up in my healing business.  “I think that not having healing assignments on this was a bad idea.”  Really?  It was a one tank fight  (pummelbot bitch doesn’t really count).  Do I have to explicitly tell you that you’re a tank healer and should therefore be on the tank?  And that the raid healers should be on the raid?  Hello?  /thwack 

If we have an excess of tank healers (and we did, last night) then I’m going to be the one on raid bitch duty.  This is fine with me as I’m the most used to it.  I really want to push the tanks to be comfortable with Celaeno, anyway.  Know the Celaeno, love the Celaeno.  I am not the only disc priest.  I do not want to be the only disc priest.   Feel the warm embrace of the other disc priest’s bubbles…  They seem a bit insecure sometimes because she’s not on vent (with reason), but they’ll have to get over it.  I’ll make them.  >:|  

I’m not sure if my tendency to hand out similar healing assignments is good, or bad.  Familiarity vs boredom?  I’m most likely to assign Kotakh the floating “assist on the tanks but watch the raid”  because I know he’ll be on top of it.  And well…raid is raid.  I could switch up the tank assignments, but…Josh wants me healing him.  So.  You try to work with that and make it interesting, damn it!

So about that pattern.

Mim wasn’t a smooth waltz in and one shot, but we still improved by leaps and bounds and he did, eventually, fall.  And drop loot that no one really cared for because we all had better-go figure. 

And as they descended down the shattered hallway, Lyrandre stopped to gape.  In all her years, she’d seen nothing quite like this.  What had rampaged down this hallway with so little care for the timeless beauty?

Oh.  That. 

This fight proved that the healers of BoO are amazing.  Why are we amazing? Because not only did we do a lovely job of keeping the tank up, but we kept the tank up despite one of the DPS failing at shadow crash seven mother fucking times.  And that’s only the one DPS, mind.  A couple of others failed it a less-failtacular but still WTF-inducing 4 times.  Quit staring at the meters, guys.  Seriously. 

Oh and don’t pull aggro.  *stares*

After Mimiron he actually seemed rather easy.

On to Yoggy!

Vezax strat will come out as soon as I…figure out what everyone else was actually doing.