Lo-Quality WoW

Last week, the guild leader of Schrödinger’s Cats mentioned that they were in discussion to merge with another guild called Palidrons.  While this doesn’t affect me directly since I never joined their guild, it does potentially affect my “standing” on their raid team.  And I found out yesterday, they formally joined Palidrons.

Palidrons itself I’ve known peripherally.  I know they have history with the Agency, although I’m not sure if they were just affiliated guilds or one split off of the other.  I did a couple of runs with Palidrons and I remember one big 25-man Ulduar between Agency and Palidrons that I was in on.

Why do I remember that?  It’s because a week later, many of the top level Agency raiders left for Palidrons.  And of course Agency rebuilt itself before the Cats split off from them.  So of course people know each other and with the issues we’ve been having getting a full raid put together, I guess it made sense for the Cats to merge over into Palidrons.  Confusing as heck though.

And of course, since I’m still a Plush Kitty Toy, I’m not sure how I get classified.  For the most part, the Cats extended myself and my guildmate as if we were formally part of their guild, including raiding and loot rights.  I don’t know how the Palidrons’ rules work, but I’ll just have to see how it goes.

But with their new allegiance, it meant we were actually able to raid last night after being off most of the week.  It also meant a few new faces to get used to.  And in this case, an interesting contrast in that we had a third hunter in our 10-man Icecrown Citadel run. 

The Cats 10-man team generally always ran with two hunters, their tactics for several of the fights even counts on it, which is why despite my relatively lower dps, I generally get included on their runs.  For most of them, my “normal” hunter partner is named Rodman.  On the times Rodman’s wasn’t available, it would be either a hunter named Checkerz or Ayriana.  And if two of those three were on, I usually sat out voluntarily. 

Why do I bring it up?  Well as anyone reading here knows, I’m a Survival hunter while all the other hunters tend to be Marksman.  And while I generally couldn’t match their dps output usually, it gave an added flexibility that was nice.  Well, last night’s “new” hunter was something I hadn’t seen in awhile, a Beast Master hunter.

For awhile BM’s were the max dps spec and a lot of people used it.  Then Marksman became prime and BM’s became people’s dual spec, mainly to get one of the rare pets in Northrend.  But in all things being equal, the dps outputs go MM > SV > BM, which means you don’t often see BM hunters in raids anymore.

Not that it bothered me to have the BM with us, as I have stated, I think you should play to whatever spec you prefer rather than being “forced” into the “best raid spec”.  It just provided an interesting contrast.  For instance, last night I generally managed to beat the BM hunter in dps but the the BM hunter’s total damage done was higher.  And of course, depending on the individual fight, all three hunters would generally trade dps rank spots. 

So in addition to the hunter named Suntier, we had a “new” healer and a “new” tank with us.  (Although I believe the Warrior off-tank was a guy who was with the Agency but left during that first “split”.)  And of course, with the new people, it made it interesting to see how our tactics, or theirs, differed from the normal.

Now one of the things I loved about the MM Hunter’s I’ve worked with is that they were generally very good about helping to stand close to where I was so I was covered by their Trueshot Aura.  Granted, since they changed the radius effect from 45 yards to 100 yards, it’s not as important anymore, but I know Rodman and myself tend to do it out of habit. 

Now Marrowgar, while we do remain close to each other, we still separate a little to allow us to shoot the other off the bone spike if one of us gets impaled.  This is because we’re in the best position to immediately start the dps while any melee dps would have to come back out to help.  Besides, I’ve got to make sure I help my fellow Hunters right?

I think that Suntier realized that the two other hunters kept bunching together, because pretty soon the BM hunter was also lining up by us.  Actually, for a couple of the fights it was funny because we would literally line up in a line either parallel or perpendicular to the boss or mob we were fighting.  Okay, so I’m easily amused.

Marrowgar was very typical, nothing new there.  Lady Deathwhisper was interesting in that despite the fact that we decided to single-tank her with the off-tank dealing with Donovan (who was the weekly), he still came it to pull aggro off the main tank.  I think it more surprised the main tank than anything else.  And I also know that when we were fighting the mobs, one of the hunters, I think it was Suntier, stayed on Deathwhisper rather than the mobs.  I can’t really be sure because we were all clustered pretty much on top of each other and I had a hard time telling who was shooting what.  In fact I thought my targeting was broken for awhile because I was attacking a mob but I kept seeing shots shoot off to my right towards Deathwhisper.

Then we got to the airship fight, which we did on Heroic mode.  Now for us, we generally toss the two melee dps in the cannons, while the Hunters and any other ranged dps take out the axe throwers.  Healers stay by the railing to heal both the boarding party and the repellers.  Except we were setting up when we realized we only had one melee dps with us!  So I ended up on the other cannon (which I do enjoy anyway).

And I missed the discussion on it but I know I was supposed to be on the boarding party, I just didn’t know who else was on it.  So I was a little surprised when it looked like it was only myself and Rodman going over to take out the battlemage.  We did it, I just think it took a little longer than normal since we usually have at least one more dps doing it with us. 

I did have one heartattack moment though.  When I got kicked out of the cannon when it got ice blocked, I landed right at the same time a rocket landed.  The results of which was blowing me off the ship before I was ready!  Fortunately, I got immediately transported back to the airship. 

Of course, that didn’t quite work when we finally did down the airship and I found myself on the wrong ship.  Normally, since I’m just taking out axe throwers, I keep an eye on the other ships’ health.  This time, since I was on the cannon, I was instead watching my heat meter.  So when I got kicked out, I immediately hoped over only to find the Horde ship going down in flames.  Damn it!

Then it was on to Saurfang on normal.  In one of those things that just happens without us talking about it, generally Rodman takes the right side, facing Saurfang and I’m on the left.  This time, Suntier took up position to my left.  So I shifted so I was left of center.  Suntier also stood practically at the foot of the dias while I was further back. 

While this had us in a slightly different setup than normal, it still worked.  When the blood beasts came out, my threat on it was usually greater than the BM’s, so the fact that the BM was standing close to the dias wasn’t a problem.  And the few times the BM did more initial threat, I was usually able to pull it off of them.  (I think I wasn’t able to do it once but since it was normal mode, it wasn’t as devestating when they got a melee hit) 

From my position, I was also able to help dps Rodman’s target.  For some reason, I think our other ranged dps had lined up on the left side with myself and Suntier.  Not that it was that big a deal since Rodman’s a good kiter but I was glad I could at least give him support from where I was as well.

Lastly, we took on Festergut.  Here again, it’s interesting to realize that we have developed “set positions” without really talking about it.  Generally, I would be the “right wing”, with Rodman on the “left wing” with whomever our third ranged dps as the center position.  Of course, this time we had 4 ranged dps, which ended up as our elemental Shaman in the “center” position with Suntier between myself and the Shaman and a little behind us.  (Sort of like a shortstop position.) 

And again, this worked out pretty well.  We collapsed and spread out well during each spore phase.  Fortunately, each time we had exactly one spore in range and one in melee, so we didn’t have any issues with one group being uncovered.  Pretty easy kill.

Of course by then we were a bit tired and called it a night.  It was nice to see that the new raiders with us last night was able to adjust to our tactics well enough that there was no disruption or even a need to have to talk about it.  And I think that was one of the main reasons for the merger, to be able to call upon competently skilled raiders whenever there was a shortage of people. 

Of course, that returns to me and my status.  What happens when the Palidron’s runs a bit 25-man raid?  Will I even be considered?  Or what happens on a 10-man run when a Palidrons member wants in, will I just be kicked off?  (Although I’ll probably step out if asked anyway)  I guess we’ll see what happens tonight since last night was the reset.  It’s a whole new raid id after all.