An idle rogue?

 After a long time spent in his mid-30s as my fishing and alchemy alt I eventually put the effort into levelling my dwarf rogue and he hit level 60 on 27 December with 9 days, 21 hours and 48 minutes played. I wasn't really sure what to do with him beyond that milestone other than getting him some half decent gear and the easy raid attunements, and in the end both proved much easier than expected.

A PUG run of Stratholme Living aimed at progressing the In Dreams quest line also netted me the Mask of the Unforgiven, and DM jump runs with some guild mates got me the Satyr's Bow on our 5th and final run for that evening. A single run each of Lower and Upper Blackrock Spire gained me Blackhand's Breadth (so nice not to have to agonise of the rewards for that quest!) as well as the Blackwing Lair attunement, and a group with another guild mate who'd reached level 60 at about the same time helped me through the dungeon steps of the Onyxia quest line which otherwise I had planned on avoiding, and also rewarded the rather useful Skilled Fighting Blade. The Clouddrift Mantle was another straight forward quest reward but otherwise I gained greatly from my alt status with my druid crafting me the Primal Batskin Jerkin and the Devilsaur set, and also scrounging the Nightslayer Bracers during a Molten Core bindings run, as well as ensuring I had the funds available for a Shadowfoot Stabber from the auction house and some Mongoose Boots crafted by our guild's feral tank.

I then felt ready to dip my toes into the raiding waters with a guild run of Zul'Gurub, and although that was very profitable for me, with another excellent quest reward of the Belt of Preserved Heads as well as a drop of the Zulian Tigerhide Cloak it was also nearly the end of my rogue's raiding career as my damage output was frankly awful.

A big part of my low damage I'm sure was my daggers spec and its positioning requirement, however I didn't want to change that since to me swords aren't rogue-y enough, and anyway melee should be behind bosses to avoid cleaves and parries. My raiding DPS inexperience went without saying and there was only one way to resolve that. And gear was no doubt a factor - although by pre-BiS standards I was in pretty good gear, for the average ZG raider my gear was a good way below what's typical nowadays and hence the baseline that log reports were comparing me to.

I was slightly taken aback by how steep the gear/damage curve is - our guild's feral tank was in the same raid on his rogue, with markedly better gear than me and performing much better, but still only doing quite average damage.

On advice from one of my guild's better rogues I decided to focus on Molten Core, with its smaller pulls of much larger mobs and hence positioning being more obvious. I also did a fair bit of work cleaning up my UI for things like clearer combat text and better visibility generally, and made use of the enormous amount of resources that are out there nowadays to help improve play.

And improve I did - in my four raids of Molten Core I've done good to very good iLevel parses of melee-friendly bosses such as Shazzrah and Ragnaros, improved noticeably on some less friendly bosses such as Geddon, such that I feel I was actively contributing to the raid rather than along for the ride.

However my current feeling is not to continue his raiding journey - while it's been great to see a side of the game I've not really tried before, with Burning Crusade somewhere on the horizon I feel there is limited mileage in this. I could probably gear up very slightly more and give a reasonable account of myself in Blackwing Lair, however given the limited remaining lifetime of the game and the need for nature and frost resistance gear in later raids I'm nearing the end of what I can achieve without detracting from my main character and focus. 

Still my rogue, having completed Molten Core, Zul'Gurub and the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj has progressed far further in raiding than any of my characters achieved back in the day.

So he will go back to being an idle rogue (with occasional herbing outings).

Brutal

Naxxramas is definitely a step up in difficulty - or two...

We managed to down one boss - Anub'Rekhan - and get very close on another - the Grand Widow - but that was our lot for the night.

Anub'Rekhan we downed on our third attempt. I had a great bird's eye view of our second wipe, being dead high in mid-air from the spikes, and there's a certain beauty to the way that each player's death makes things that notch harder.

Faerlina was frustrating as we weren't getting the hang of the mind control mechanic so, while we got her down to around 10% on our third attempt, that was the best things got. In a way I'm glad we didn't kill her since that would have given us a false sense of optimism that would have been dashed the following week, this way around I'm fairly sure that we now understand it much better and so should down her this week. I'm hoping that for these mechanical fights once we understand them it will be reasonably straightforward to repeat the feat. Time will tell.

For now I'm looking forward to progression, but wondering if or when we'll hit a wall.

Sort of ready for Naxxramas

I'm looking forward to seeing Naxxramas and should get a peak tonight after our main raid (which will need to be AQ40 given the late release hour). The question of whether I or my guild are ready for it is slightly in the balance.

Emotionally its definitely a Yes. Although there are lots of things I ought to be doing with Duillnar - mainly rep grinds - I'm spending most of my time levelling my rogue at the moment. My Alterac Valley grind is stalled half way through Revered, since apart from one good experience during a battleground weekend those games became an unrelenting series of dispiriting losses with a significant part of the team clearly not trying. I ought to be getting Cenarion Circle rep in AQ20 in order to be able to convert my Qiraji Ornate Hilt into a Mace of Unending Life but it's far easier to find bits of time for levelling than to commit to a third scheduled raid. And the respec costs and lack of achievable targets (other than the idol from Stratholme, which I'd still rather like) have put me off tanking. So fresh content is welcome.

In a way the release of Naxxramas relatively soon after AQ40 seems rushed, but given the increasing number of people taking a break from the game - whether burning out, moving on to new things or otherwise re-examining their real life balance - I think it's no bad thing.

I'm not sure how big the difficultly jump will be though - I'm expecting fairly steep, especially for the final bosses. My guild finally downed Viscidus on 19 October to complete our clear of AQ40, once we'd (a) persuaded enough people to take up engineering and (b) got everyone bringing cleansing consumables. Apart from the occasional welcome clean clear we still usually have trouble somewhere in there though, most commonly from Ouro, the Bug Trio, or maybe the Twin Emperors. We're also often having to raid with a not-quite-full team, or with less core raiders filling up gaps.

So while I'm expecting us to complete a wing or two fairly quickly I'm not sure how much we'll hit a wall further on. I'm really looking forward to some guild first kills (and sort-of the wipes those entail!) but unsure how well we'll be able to keep enthusiasm and attendance up if the curve is too steep.

Overall though the timing seems quite good - certainly a longer wait for the new raid wouldn't help any of the things I'm unsure about.

I (off) tanked a raid!

Outside of main raids the tank shortage in Classic seems to be becoming more pronounced - it's been there for a long while for dungeon groups and now seems to be the case for a good number of my guild's Zul'Gurub runs as well. As a result a couple of times in the last week or so I've had the opportunity to off-tank a raid, fulfilling one of my remaining goals for the game.

The first of these last week seemed to go well but I'm less pleased with last night's raid. In both raids the set-piece boss fights were fine but things weren't always so good with random patrols or some of the large packs that need to be dealt with. On reflection I don't think there was necessarily more of a problem last night but instead a couple of other factors - one that the first raid contained more of our first team damage dealers with a gung-ho attitude that aggro was a price to be paid for enthusiastic DPS, and secondly that I'm becoming more aware and critical of my mistakes.

One reaction is that my current respeccing, as well as being expensive, means that I'm not getting properly settled into the tank role and that I need to be careful of not letting my healing slip. The other, opposite, reaction is that I need to find more opportunities to tank and improve!

Another thought is again that I'm lucky in my choice of a druid main character. My rogue alt has struggled up to level 25 but really my alt is my bear spec. While I do sometimes see loot that I want drop while in the wrong role to legitimately roll on it, I never see it drop while on the wrong character and often I do get the chance to pick up off-spec gear. Not least are the Elementium Threaded Cloak and Taut Dragonhide Shoulderpads from Blackwing Lair and a couple of upgrades from Zul'Gurub in my first two runs as a healer. Along with some recent focus on my bear gear now that nearly all of my possible healing upgrades can only come from one weekly raid I'm feeling happy with where I am gear-wise. So now what I need is experience and skill, which could be trickier!

Full tier 1

After slightly prematurely celebrating over a month ago I finally got the last two pieces of the Cenarion set - the head and the bracers - in Molten Core last night. It was definitely a druid night, both there and with Onyxia lots of set pieces dropped, generally to be sharded as both me, the other resto druid and even the feral had them already. Much chat from the rest of the raid about how soon they would be able to bring their druid alt along.

I'm not sure I quite believe them - although I'm sure lots of alts will make their way into raids as they move more towards farm status, I think the demands of progression and their original motivations for choosing whatever class is their main will keep druids in the minority generally.

Blackwing Lair cleared

It's been a very satisfying week of raiding. Thursday was the start of our third week in Blackwing Lair and we managed to down the Broodlord to Chromaggus on our first attempt at each. This was particularly satisfying for Flamegor after all the trouble he gave us last week, and Chromaggus given it was our first proper attempt. We finished the evening with a "let's take a look" wipe on Nefarian.

Last night we downed Nefarian on our first, very clean, attempt. I got completely stomped by the constructs at the start of phase 3 but fortunately we bring a lot of druids these days so I was able to get a Rebirth and participate with the climax of the fight.

We then split the raid into two groups which each downed Onyxia.

All in all a very satisfying couple of raid nights.

End of an experiment?

Last night, ahead of my second and the guild's fourth venture into Blackwing Lair, I was asked to respec to restoration, probably for the medium term. Our feral druid also respecced so I'm not seeing this as a lack of faith in moonkins but more that the new raid needs a higher proportion of healers than was the case in Molten Core. I'd much rather be raiding and healing than have the spot go to someone else, so I'm now a rather rushed Moonglow spec which I must tweak when I can face the cost of changing it!

I haven't been at the last two raids due to family commitments so have missed the guild's first kill of Broodlord Lashlayer, a much improved performance on Razorgore and quite a lot of wiping.

Wiping was how we started out on Firemaw as well, but with a clear sense of progression on most of the attempts so, while it was a relief to finally get him down, it never felt like it would be a wipe night. We then downed Ebonroc on our first attempt and Flamegor on our second before finishing with a "let's take a look" wipe on Chromaggus.

All in all a satisfactory night of progression raiding in a casual-ish guild.

Third look at Blackwing Lair

I recently unearthed some old screenshots including one from November 2006 of my original priest at Razorgore. I'm guessing we didn't get very far as I don't remember that raid, before seeing the screenshot I'd thought I'd only been there at a higher level (70 or 80?) such that the fights were trivialised.

Fair to say that, even with our current better understanding of gearing and a decent raiding guild, BWL is far from trivial in Classic and rather harder than my guild was anticipating.

On our first visit last night we downed Razorgore and Vaelastrasz at the cost of 7 and 4 wipes respectively. Given the time spent on Razorgore it was quite late, so we called it a night at that point.

I'm glad to see that the new raid will present us a challenge, and it's great to be involved in some guild first kills, as frustrating as the wipes were at times.

Kara Team 3

A while back our Karazhan team 1 disintergrated, due to a combination of summer holidays and other real life commitments. It's now being re-formed, although we're now called team 3. We had our first run last night which went pretty well - over half the raid had good experience of the place (although some where on new characters) and we all seemed fairly well geared. Four bosses down last night, it will be interesting to see how far past the Curator they get tonight, although sadly I can't join them.

Fat lootz: Totem of Healing Rains

Win some, lose some

Had a guild run in Shattered Halls last night, and got my first piece of dungeon set 3 when the Tidefury Shoulderguards dropped from Warbringer O'mrogg. However my enduring memory will be of having the Major Mageblood elixir recipe drop in a group with three alchemists. Ah well, at least there's now someone in the guild who can make them. Really want that recipe..!

I'm progressing nicely through Honoured with Thrallmar and Lower City, less so with the Sha'tar. I'll get there eventually though.

I'm in Karazhan again tonight following the reset. Tuesday's run went very well from a rep point of view - we killed Nightbane and the Prince, which meant I could complete the New Directive quest line. No luck on my rolls for a nice healing mace or neck, but as they went to raid regulars I can't really complain. I did get the Scaled Breastplate of Carnage though, which was otherwise unwanted, as we had no sharder.