Lo-Quality WoW

Been in a really good mood now that I’ve seen the Lich King fall.  I thought it would take the rest of the summer to get to that point.  It does kinda suck that if it wasn’t for the 25% buff, it would have been a lot less of a sure thing. 

Last night I got the invite to the 25-man Palidrons run again.  Which makes me wonder, do the other Palidrons resent the fact that myself and my guildmate are taking up slots in what is otherwise a pure Palidrons run?  My guildmate thinks we’ve earned our spots but considering that part of the reason you join a guild is that they help bring you along even if you haven’t “earned” that spot just yet. 

I really don’t know how it would be if our 10-man raid leader wasn’t the 25-man raid leader as well.  We’re known factors…to him.  Would we be first up if it was someone else leading the raid?  After all, dps is usually the easiest to pick up and that’s the only real role I can play.

Of course, I could always point out that while I’m consistently in the top 10 in dps, I’m usually in the top 5 for total damage dealt in any given fight.  That’s part of the reason they bring me along on the 10-man’s, despite the non-“optimal” survival spec.  I know the fights, the strategies and can adjust on the fly well.  This allows me to be “up” longer than other specs which deal more damage on a per second basis.  If I’m up 60 seconds longer than them, my total damage done is higher right? 

Granted, skills only go so far.  I’m sure I’d be left by the wayside if I was only pulling 4k dps or something.  Heck, I’m surprised they still let me bring my Warrior on their alt runs, she does so poorly in the dps totals and not all of that can be accounted for by gear.  I just don’t know her as well and her output suffers.

I do think it’s interesting to note that 4 out of the top 5 damage output people were people from our 10-man team.  I know our 10-man team is also further along in general.  I think that right there may be an indicator as to why. 

Anyway, that was a weird side-out.  Now, last week I managed to snag myself a Protector’s Mark of Sanctification.  Spent most of the week trying to figure out what piece to switch around.  I finally worked it out that upgrading my helm to the Sanctified Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter’s Headpiece while switching out one of my ilvl264 items for a lesser ilvl251, tier piece was worth it.  My net gearscore was lower but the 4-piece tier bonus more than made up the dps.

Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship were all easy.  Saurfang, I once again found myself on the inner spot instead of the “wing” spot I’m used to.  Makes my “safe” spot much smaller and harder to find since I’m constantly running in to drop my Frost Trap.  And since we only had three Hunters, it meant my traps were front and centered.  Fortunately, the healer in the front-center spot quickly got used to me dashing in front of him and then back out.

I did roll on the Deathbringer’s Will trinket that dropped.  And even the Protector’s Mark of Sanctification that did as well.  But since it was a dkp run, I didn’t get either.  Of course, the question was, would I get one at all?  I know some of the former Cats had been grumbling that it seems that none of them seem to get loot on these runs, and I wasn’t even a former Cat, I was a Cat-associate if anything. 

Since we actually started the raid on time for once, and we were making good time, it was decided to hit Plagueworks instead of Crimson Hall.  I know they prefer Crimson Hall when time is short with it’s two bosses, rather than hitting Plagueworks 3 bosses and 2 mini-bosses.  It was good to be going at a decent pace.

Rotface and Festergut were both cake, more or less.  Festergut had a few too many times when too many people got hit by the Vile Gas then should have, telling me that people weren’t distancing themselves properly.  But there were no issues with the spores or with the oozes on Rotface, so things were generally smooth.

Then it was Putricide’s turn.  Because of our high dps output, we tried an alternative taking strategy.  Instead of tanking by the table, we tanked Volatile Ooze would spawn, to maximize time on target with the melee dps.  For the most part it worked, it just made it a little hard to get around the person who was being rooted if they were a ranged person. 

In face, we did screw up the transition into phase 3.  So we had to spend time dpsing a Volatile Ooze before switching back to Putricide.  That could have been disasterous, especially considering that although we took Putricide down (and I got my The Plagueworks (25 player) achievement), only about 6 people were alive at that point.  Everyone else, including myself, had died during the running around of phase 3. 

But at least I got my dkp question answered when I got awarded a new Protector’s Mark of Sanctification.  Now I’m probably spend a few more days figuring out what to switch out once again.  It would be so much easier if it was an equal ilvl item but more often than not, it isn’t.  Ah well.

Anyway, we actually ended a little earlier than our 10-man time, about 3a.m. server time, but that was because a few people had things to do.  We did manage to clear the trash leading up to Dreamwalker.  I’m assuming we’ll be doing attempts on Crimson Hall and Frostwing Hall tonight.  Blood Council is definitely doable.  Blood Queen, it’s mainly the whole bite issue we need to get straightened out.  Dreamwalker is a coordination thing.  And I don’t think we’ve even tried Sindragosa on 25-man.  It would be nice to see the 25-man version of the Lich King fight though.  We’ll see.