Cataclysm is coming to town

It has been very quite here on my personal wow blog for a long time. But with the new expansion looming I think it is time to pick up blogging once again. I am planning to share some of my experiences and thoughts along with my takes on some of the news that rush by each day.
With the expansion it seems right now that a great deal of players are taking a brief pause from the game and get prepared for the next rush to the new max level. I am planning to make this dash with my druid as well and I have changed my offspecc to a feral tanking spec. I assume that it will me a breeze to find groups for the new dungeons as a tank and with the gear that I was able to snag from all those ICC runs I guess I should be set for the first instance runs.

I am thrilled that blizz stated that crowd control will be again important in the instances of the expansion and I am looking forward to marking the mobs again for shakles, sheeps and traps. Granted, I might shake a fist at my screen once and again if a wipe should happen but rushing through the instances and burning down everything with aoe abilities gets boring quite fast in my humble opinion.
I guess that now is the time to make room in the bank and inventory for all the stuff one will need when the expansion starts. From my experience it might be a good thing to stack up on some flasks, elixirs and potions that one can use while questing and doing the new instances. Also right now on my server old materials go for a suprising amount of gold since some players are preparing themselves to level the tradeskills of the new characters they are planning to roll when goblins and worgen join the fray.
I myself am not really sure what kind of goblin I will roll. I will play one through the starting zone for sure. I am a bit torn converning leveling a new character from 1 to 85. One one hand the world will be completely changed and there will be a lot of things to discover. But on the other hand one has to level through everything again and that will take a lot of time even with the heirloom items. And if you make it to 85, getting all the new toys for that character will take a lot of time as well.
Guess that is something I should take a little bit more time to decide …

A raiding week

This week our raid managed to get almost all goals done that were set for the week. We cleared Naxxramas in a record time for us because we were able to take one more damage dealer than we did before since we only took five healers along. The only thing that we have not been able to accomplish is to down Sartharion with the three adds up. But when we finally manage to get him down and get more secure with that encounter, we will be able to clear the whole 25 man content on one evening.

On one hand I am looking forward to that point since it will free up some time during the week and since our guild will be starting a ten man raid soon this time is well needed. But on the other hand I have to say that it really shows that there is not too much raid content at the moment. I guess that once Ulduar has arrived with the next content patch the situation will change but since we will not be doing the heroic Naxxramas at that point I doubt that Ulduar will take too long to complete when our raid is able to focus on the instance on our regular three raiding nights.

Maybe a thing would be to get a twink run going but I doubt the critical positions would be filled and since the raid group would almost start from scratch again, I doubt that there would be too much interest. So, right now I focus on the good side of things, like seeing the progression of the raid when we get through the instance a bit faster each week and manage to get the achievements that some members still have open on some of the bosses.

Sartharion 3D Training

Starting last week our raid has been trying to down Sartharion with three adds up. Unfortunately we were not able to get it done and, after a long evening of wiping again and again, settled for downing him with only two adds. This beeing the first time for me that he was downed with two adds, the evening ended with an accomplishement for me.

But still wiping for several hours is something of a strain. Especially if there are stupid mistakes happening again and again. I myself died a few times because I did not manage to get out of the blue circles or did not manage to evade the flame tsunami in time. It can get quite frustrating to continue while not seeing any progression.

But then, with all the discussion about the raid content beeing to easy, I found myself thinking that trying out new challenges and getting better with an encounter is one of the main reasons why I like raiding. Sure, getting better gear is a nice thing but ultimately you are going to replace the gear you have quite fast. Yesterday I read a post at Pugnacious Priest that mentioned that raiders already talk about raiding being pointless because the gear will become obsolete really soon when Ulduar goes live.

So, even though it can get frustrating to wipe a lot while training, overcoming the chalenges and improving myself is what makes raiding fun. So bring on some more wipes …

Raid Speed

It is only natural that a raid that does Naxx every week gets faster as time goes by. For some time now, we have been able to clear Naxx on one day in the set time and the last few ids we had some time to spare. Now, to get through even faster we decided to take only five healers along and take one more damage dealer instead.

Some boss fights, most notably Patchwork, was a bit more challenging for the healers but for the most part it went really well. We were able to get through the trash pulls a lot faster and the bosses went down noticably faster as well.

For me as a healer this is both good and a little bad as well. Going through the trash mobs I found myself often running low on mana and having some problems keeping up with the tanks. And since there is a more to heal for the individual healer because there is one healer less, situations can become a bit frantic. Fortunately most damage dealers in our raid know to help us a bit by keeping track of their aggro and using a healthstone or a potion when it gets rough.

On the other hand the boss fights do not take as long as they used to which means that the healers do not run out of mana there. And that means that you do not have to conserve mana as much as you had to before. During very long boss fights mana was somewhat of an issue for me even with all the new spiffy ways to regenerate mana that came with the expansion.

But after all, the most important thing is that the raid frees up time for the rest of the week when the whole content can be done in one session. That might lead to the formation of a second group for the twinks or just plainly to some free time outside of the game. So I guess I will ultimately become a fan ot the five healer setup for our Naxx raid.