Portent Alliance Is Recruiting!

Does this sound like you?

Is schadenfreude your middle name? When I say I have incontrovertible proof that Kil'jaeden has a fetish for draconic bukkake, do you want to know more?  Do you subscribe to the radical notion that your guildmates and raid teammates are people as opposed to little blinky boxes in Grid?  Then Portent Alliance (Sentinels-H) may have a straitjacket with your name on it.

PA is a level 23 guild, currently looking for dedicated players to fill out an "upper-mediumcore" raiding team.  We raid from 8:30 - 11:30 Eastern on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday with old-world mount/achievement/legendary/RP gear farming on Saturdays.  Loot is distributed by EP/GP.  We're 12/12 in normal-mode Tier 11, and the third ranked progression guild on our server.  Currently running one 10-man raid, but we're looking to fill out the ranks enough to run two 10-mans, then move up into 25s.

Our schedule is relaxed, but our attitude is not.  We need people who can commit to raiding, show up on time, be prepared, know the fights, know their class, and be ready to rock a boss's face off.

We're in particular need of raid healers, especially druids, but any class and role is welcome -- we're just in general need of raiders.  Any other questions or requests for information can be directed at our guild leader, Ktok, on Twitter or on his blog, The Glaivecow.

The End of the Beginning

The silence was deafening.

It struck Jezriyah suddenly just how cold it was.  Granted, they were on top of the Citadel itself on a platform made of ice -- the chill was no surprise.  But her vision had been so tunneled since the fall of Sindragosa that now, at the end of the long final battle, it seemed that she was standing at the foot of the Frozen Throne for the first time.

The shock was beginning to break, now, and the ten of them began to grasp the gravity of what had just occurred.  Qoholeth, head bowed in thankful prayer; Alessandrae crumbled on the floor, head in her hands, Ygdrasill on one knee and holding her tight to his chest.  Peccator quietly healing the last of the group’s wounds.  And Udiyvli, ever the leader, shaking snow and sweat from her mane as she walked towards the fallen Prince’s prone body, opening the small cache he had possessed.

“Jezi!”  She gestured briefly, and the hunter walked over, to be presented with one of the stranger crossbows she’d ever seen.  “I think you’re the only one of us who could make use of this.”

Jezriyah took the weapon gingerly, turning it over in her hands.  It was a Scourge weapon at first glance, with all the skulls and spikes and deathly trappings they’d been so fond of.  But its lath was awfully long, and made of a completely different wood than the other pieces of the weapon.  She squinted, and turned it on its side.  “Huh.  Looki’ this, Udi.  S’jes’ a longbow attached to a secon’han’ stock.”

“So it is,” the warrior murmured, brow furrowing.  “And look at the detailing on the front.  That’s not even Scourge, it’s--”

“--elvish,” Jezriyah finished.  Their eyes met for half a second, the same idea flitting across both their eyes.  She bit her lip.  “Linny may know... Tayllia would fa’ certain.”

“Know what?”  Ailinea drew closer, pulling her hood back over her head and tucking her shivering ears underneath it.

Jezriyah reached over and brushed the snow from her friend’s shoulders affectionately.  “Th’ origin a’this weapon.”  She held the bow out with her other hand.

The mage’s breath caught in her throat -- Jezi was certain that was her answer, but she waited for confirmation.  Ailinea ran her fingers over the lath, seeming to feel a remnant of arcane power in it.  “It’s definitely quel’dorei in provenance,” she said slowly.  “And... I can’t speak for certain of who it would belong to, but... it’s much more ornate than anything a lay ranger would have carried in battle.  It must have belonged to a Farstrider of significant rank.”

The three of them exchanged quiet glances.  “Actually askin’ be th’only way ah kin think t’be sure,” Jezriyah murmured.  She looked to Ailinea.  “Would -- would you be willin’ ta come wit’ me?  Ah always feel so out-a-place down there...”

“Of course.”

They approached Qoholeth after he’d finished his prayers and helped Peccator and Bosorn with the last of the immediately-necessary healing.  “Q, dear--”  Ailinea rested a hand on his elbow.  “Do you think you could get us in touch with the right people to obtain an audience with the Dark Lady?  We... need her advice on a subject of some import.”

The priest blinked slowly, before offering a soft smile.  “I find it hard to imagine you’d be able to avoid addressing her, considering what just happened here.”

“A valid point.”  Ailinea glanced between her two comrades.  “We’ll all need some time to rest... and it’s much later than it feels now.  The day after tomorrow, perhaps?”

“Ay, tha’ soun’ good.  Poor Miga’s got ’is leg nearly tore open.”

“Oh, goodness, I didn’t even see that.  Let me go have a look...”

---

Jezriyah did notice a few odd looks as she headed towards the Royal Quarter, but not nearly so many as there would have been were she not accompanied by a blood elf mage and Forsaken priest.  She was grateful for their presence as they stepped into the imposing confines of the Banshee Queen’s throne room.

“Your Majesty,” intoned one of the officials, reading from a scroll.  “Priest Qoholeth of the Undercity, Dame Ailinea Phoenixborn of Silvermoon, and...”  A momentary pause, as usually came from the eastern races.  “Jez... rye-ay, of the Darkspear Tribe.”  It was wrong, but not as badly wrong as it had been said before, so she let it be.  “Veterans of the battle at Icecrown Citadel.”

It was at this last statement that Sylvanas’ gaze turned sharp, her jaw setting as she looked at them appraisingly.  “Thank you, herald.”  She looked around the room briefly.  “You are all dismissed; we require privacy.  You may return after our visitors have left.”

The circled Deathguards bristled.  “My Lady, as your bodyguards--”

“These soldiers are known to me; they pose no risk.”  Jezriyah’s spine straightened uncomfortably at that revelation.  “You will be told when you may return.”

The varied guards and ambassadors in the room all filed out, most of them looking quizzically or suspiciously at the troll as they left.  The doors were pulled shut, and Jezriyah stood awkwardly before the Banshee Queen of the Forsaken.

“Word of Arthas’ fall reached the Undercity almost instantaneously,” Sylvanas said, her voice perfectly even -- if she had any emotional reaction to this news, she certainly wasn’t showing it.  “You and your comrades have won an incomparable victory for all of Azeroth, and not least the Forsaken, including myself.”  Her voice softened.  “It is not often I find myself in a position to offer my sincere gratitude to anyone, but you have all certainly earned it.”

“It be nothin’ compared ta your own sacrifices fo’ your people, Your Majesty,” Jezriyah said slowly, the words carefully rehearsed -- both for content and to minimize her heavy island accent.  “But tha’ is part of why ah wished ta speak wit’ you today.  We... obtained some items from Icecrown after th’ Lich King’s defeat.  One of them in pa’ticular we think may have belonged to you or one of ya colleagues.  An’ we wished ta return it to you if dat were th’case.”

She unwrapped the bundle of linens wrapped around the weapon and stepped forward to present it to Sylvanas, her head bowed slightly.  “It seems t’be an elven longbow, attached to a crossbow stock...”

The room went silent as Sylvanas took the weapon, examining it closely.  Jezi searched her face for some hint of recognition, but found none, until the Queen spoke.  “This is the Heartseeker,” she said brusquely, “or at least it once was.  It did belong to me, though it wasn’t my preferred weapon.  It must have been taken from the Farstrider base after Silvermoon fell.”

Jezriyah bit her lip, unsure how to react to the matter-of-fact way Sylvanas spoke of such terrible events.  “Then ah’m glad to have returned it to you,” she finally said.

Sylvanas scoffed.  “I appreciate the sentiment, I suppose, but I’ve certainly no need for it now.”  She offered the weapon back to the troll, who took it gingerly.

Jezriyah glanced to Ailinea.  “Ah s’pose we could return it to th’ Farstriders fa’ safekeeping, den.”  Her mage friend nodded her approval.

The Dark Lady’s eyes shifted downward to the stout gray wolf at her visitors’ side.  “Whose companion is this?”

Jezriyah smiled without thinking of it, patting her partner’s shaggy mane.  “This be Mig’atali.  He fought wit’ us at th’ Frozen Throne as well.”

“Indeed.  A hunter of your people, then.”  She looked at the troll for a long moment before speaking again.  “What sort of weapon do you use now?”

“Oh--”  She pulled the bone bow she’d salvaged from Icecrown from its place on her back, holding it out for Sylvanas’ inspection.  “I go’ it from some skeleton archer t’ing up nort’.  It ain’ much for finesse, but it hit like an angry kodo.”

The Queen’s nose wrinkled.  “Standard Scourge craftsmanship.  Strength in numbers.  Ten thousand shambling skeletons firing these and something’s bound to find a target.”  Jezriyah couldn’t stifle a soft laugh -- it was just the comment she’d have made herself, and the reminder of the inviolable Dark Lady as a fellow marksman made her smile.

Sylvanas caught the expression and returned it, though in a distant way that seemed to chill the room.  “Silvermoon and the ranger corps have more than enough left to remind them of the scourging of Quel’Thalas.  As the rightful owner of the Heartseeker, I think it fitting that you wield it.  It would serve Azeroth better in the battlefield than displayed on a wall.”

Jezriyah’s eyes shot open.  “I -- yah Majesty, I couldna possibly --”

“Enough.  You are both devoted to the defense of your people and capable of facing the most dire threats our world has seen.  Consider it your just reward for your contribution to the war effort.”  She let her gaze flick between the three of them.  “Have any of you further business?”

They did not, and after another minute or so of formalities, they were escorted back onto the streets of the Undercity.  A few minutes after that, Ailinea had summoned a portal, and Jezriyah found herself back in Orgrimmar under the pounding heat of a Durotar drought.  She thought of visiting her parents, but instead headed to her own small rented room upstairs from Kaya’s gun shop.

The Heartseeker was wrapped carefully in a thick bundle of linen, tucked under the bed with the rest of her battle gear.  She might get it out in a couple of days on the training dummies, get used to firing with a trigger again -- but for now, the war was over.  Azeroth was safe.  It would be a long time before it was needed again.

Back of the Class

My name is Jezriyah, and I am a raider.

Not a terrifically hardcore one, but a raider by anyone's standards.  I have 3 scheduled raid nights a week (it used to be 4, but my raid leader is temporarily leading another group as well right now) with a random VoA/ToC run thrown in once every week or two.  I crunch numbers like a motherfucker, or at least bribe Rilgon with one-liners and gnome porn to do it for me.  I know my role, I practice, I work my ass off.  There's nothing casual about how seriously I take raiding in this game.

I raid with nine other people.  Warrior and paladin tanks.  A resto shaman, disc priest, and holy pally healing team.  One arcane mage, one unholy death knight, one balance druid, one frost death knight (occasionally swapped out for a ret paladin) and me, the hunter -- survival when I have to be for replenishment, marksmanship at heart and when I get my choice.

I raid as a solid 20% of the raid's DPS if I'm doing it right, probably closer to 15% when you account for tank damage and the fact that our boomkin is god-tier.  I raid with my reflexes on full twitch and every door between myself and the rest of the house shut.  I raid my ass off.

Mine is one of two ten-man raid groups in my guild.  There are, in fact, 25 people in my guild who can put together a decent raid.  We cleared the Lower Spire on Saturday (and I scooped THE TRINKET off Saurfang) and could have gone a good bit further if we'd had the time.  But that's where it falls apart.  Our two raid teams have ten people each, and we've got three or four other raid-capable people, but putting together the 25-man involved taking one or two people who just aren't ready for prime time.  We can run a 25, but we just haven't got the manpower to run a 25-man progression raid.  And the scheduling differences throw another ugly kink in it.

I raid without the 5% Rampage/Leader of the Pack buff.  I raid without Mangle or Blood Frenzy, Trauma or Savage Combat.  I raid with a single ilevel 277 item -- the exalted Ashen Verdict ring -- and some 264s from the Frost vendor (and THE TRINKET, which was a fluke of that one 25 we rounded up).  I raid with Quel'Delar and non-heroic Njorndar.

I raid with the weight of the encounter on my shoulders.  I raid with the knowledge that if I hang out in a void zone one tick too long, there's only one person watching my ass, not three, and if I keel over we're most likely going to wipe due to lack of damage.  I raid with a back-of-my-hand knowledge of everyone's abilities -- whose damage will spike immediately, whose will build up, who's not good at moving and may need his name called out when he gets a debuff, whose connection is shaky on certain fights (and which) so if they don't respond for a moment they probably need extra heals and protection.  And of course, the immediate recognition of every voice in the raid.  (If you can manage this level of knowledge in a 25-man, good on you -- but I sure can't.)

I raid.  I raid my ass off.  And when I get the Kingslayer title (hopefully sometime this week or next -- we've just downed Sindragosa this week), I will wear it with pride.  And anyone who tries to assert that doing it with 9 other people and a 15% damage buff makes me any less the savior of Azeroth is gonna get my boot up their ass.

Sometimes, You Gotta Roll Your Own

There's a proliferation of hunter blogs in the world.  I'll wholeheartedly admit that I don't read most of them.  But I do keep an eye on some of the bigger names -- especially those that I know newer or less community-aware hunters are going to flock to.

The one thing I notice a lot of is the use of hard limits.  Numbers telling you when to do certain things with stats.  If you have X armor pen, you gem for armor pen instead of agility.  If you have Y amount of crit, you drop Arcane Shot from your rotation.  If Z is less than A then ... you get the picture.

I understand the thinking behind it: it's simple.  It's a crib sheet, and most of these rules are at least somewhat approaching correct (at least in concept if not execution).  But for us crazy min-maxing motherfuckers, us people batting frantically at Arthas' heels, they... well, I don't want to say they completely fail, but...

They completely fail.

There are certain hard limits in the game for hunters, yes.  Here they are:

• The raiding hit cap is 8%.  If you are Marks, you can put up to 3 points in Focused Aim to drop your gear cap to 5%.  If you are a Draenei, or will always have one in your raid, both of those numbers go down by 1%.
• The hard armor pen cap is 1400.  The soft armor pen cap is 1400 minus any additional armor pen procs you have from gear or trinkets.
• The crit cap is like 104% or some shit.  More than is worth worrying about.  MOAR CRIT.
• The haste cap is irrelevant.  Don't stack haste.  If you get some, fine, but don't chase it.

Those are the hard numbers.  Those are the ONLY hard numbers.  Those are the only magic thresholds that can be crossed to change how you gear/gem/spec your character.  The answer to any other gearing and gemming questions?

Right here.

Import yourself from the armory.  Set up the buffs/debuffs you have in your standard raiding environment.  Hit Update.  Click DPS Scratchpad and write down the number.  Make the changes you're considering, and hit Update again.  Compare the two numbers.  If it went up an amount worth the cost of making the changes?  Do it!  If not, stay put.  (I seem to recall Rilgon would gain like 60 DPS by gemming for armor pen, but it'd cost him like 1300g in rubies to do it.  Wasn't worth it for him; your mileage may vary.)

This is not difficult, guys.  It really isn't.  If you have Windows and Microsoft Office and want it more accessible, you can download Shandara's spreadsheet (which Zeherah's is based off of) here.

I know how tempting it is to find the easy button, but you know what?  At the top levels of raiding, there's not one.  It is really not that much extra work to do your own damn math if it means maximizing your performance and making your guild's kill happen.

Late To The Party

It's been over a month since my last blog post and I still have nothing to say.

I've been active on Twitter still. I attended BlizzCon last month. I played through the first half of the Goblin 5-10 zone, but didn't get to finish it (the third quest took FOREVER because of the number of us killing the mobs, and I never caught up before time got called). I met many fellow WoW tweeters and bloggers. Shenanigans were had. A drunken zombie passed out in my room. I came home with a small army of baby Murlocs and an angry black dragon on a t-shirt.

I was flattered by an invitation to guest on the Blueberry Workshop Podcast over at SES, in which I expound upon my most recent in-game adventures. Short version: the guild has cleared the Trial of the Crusader twice now. I'll hopefully be able to drag a boss-by-boss breakdown of the place out of my ass soon here (like the one I never finished for Ulduar). We tried some hard modes in Ulduar and only managed one of them, but did decently at others. I apparently missed the "understanding armor pen and why it's cool" meeting that all of hunterdom held, and I'm just now starting to grasp it now that it's about to get nerfed. Fun times.

I've kicked around PvP some, but I'm just now reaching the steep bit of the learning curve -- I'm "alright" now, but in order to progress to "decent" I have to start putting a lot more effort into it. Some of my best-beloved guildies (DK, rogue and tree) have put together a quite accomplished little 3s team, and I get a little jealous listening to them do matches on Vent. I'm just not sure if I feel like putting in the work required to make me a decent teammate. Basically, I can either do some intense study and build a PvP technique/spec/gearset, or just continue to tab-target-serpent-silence my way through Wintergrasp and the occasional BG spree, patching together a set with enough resilience to keep me from being eaten alive. Decisions, decisions.

On the personal front... a lot has changed. I'm no longer at my previous job -- which, as I told Rilgon on the BWS podcast, is where I did most of my blog writing. And I'm at that sort of fuzzy young adult stage where I'm still not certain what I want to be when I grow up, and I'm completely out of ideas for what kind of job to look for. So I'm at a loss.

ETA: Also, I have a pet retadin now. Who was sad that he wasn't mentioned in the "personal life" part of the blog post, so here he is. I went to visit him right after BlizzCon, and I miss him and the beach terribly. *blows kisses*

WoW is pretty much the only thing I occupy my time with nowadays, and some part of me instinctively says the answer is to get away from it, to regroup and refocus my energy and build the rest of my life.

Buuuuuut I know that wouldn't work.

So I'm considering doing the next best thing: try and get deeper into the game. Right now it's just what I do by default, because it's where my friends are. Maybe I'll feel better about it if I make it into a legitimate hobby. I've been missing school lately, the whole studying and learning thing -- maybe I can turn Warcraft into that. We'll see. Either way, I hope to be kicking my ass into gear soon and making something more out of this blog. Stay tuned.

Patch 3.2, Summarized

WHAT NOW, VEREESA WINDRUNNER.

WHAT.

THE FUCK.

NOW.

(My guild leader did every single level 80 heroic today. I know he's not the only one, but I wanted to reassure those of us who need to know we're not that bad.)

"Where we port up to? Antechamber?" "No no, the Unclechamber." "... 50 DKP plus. That one HURT, Jez."

(Alternate title: "Hey look! It's a lock pocket!" I was a punning machine Tuesday night.)

So I guess some talk about actual gameplay is warranted here, no? I'm running out of lore musings, fits of RP and pointless memes to toss up here -- I might as well discuss what I'm actually doing in game most of the time these days.

Which, right now, is Ulduar. After some stops and starts early on due to bugged fights and personnel shake-ups, my guild has finally started getting into the place regularly. It's been loads of fun so far -- difficult as crap, but once we got out of the Naxxramas steamroller mindset and back into the familiar "wipe, study, fix, try again" rhythm of true progression raiding, the majority of it has been completely doable.

So here be my impressions of Tier 8 raiding so far...

Emalon was surprisingly simple, mostly due to the utter face-pwning of our DK offtank. She's a newish member who's turning out to be one of the best /ginvites we ever spent. With a few exceptions (mostly guildies) I've had very sketchy experiences with DK tanks, probably due to a lot of them being DPSers who got a level 55 tank for Christmas. Anyway, with a good offtank , there's pretty much nothing to this little punk. It requires just enough coordination and communication that your average post-Wintergrasp PUG will probably fall apart on it, but a friends-of-friends "people that you know don't suck" pickup should be able to handle it just fine. If your guild is good at keeping track of changing situations, he's cake.

Of course, being the only one of your class in the raid and having your T8 PvE pants drop doesn't hurt either. Those were a MASSIVE upgrade from my T7 -- I'm much more impressed with this tier than the last. Ready to wear, too; with just the leatherworking leg enchant and no gems, they were still an improvement. Plus, the socket bonus is just +hit, which I'm drowning in, so I just put two straight +agi gems in them. In MM spec (which I'm admittedly not in for raiding often, wtb retadin/spriest PST) I'm now over 4700 AP and 35% crit, self-buffed. Very, very sexy. I do still need to regem a lot of my stuff from AP/Crit to straight +agi, between my "main spec" getting better benefits from agility post-3.1 and the fact that I'm in my "off spec" most of the time for raid utility reasons.

Anyway. Trollsie gives new VoA boss an 8/10. A fun, simple fight with tier drops... hard to beat that.

Flame Leviathan is simultaneously an incredible drudge and fun as crap. I wish there was less trash leading up to it, because it really does wear thin after a while. By the time we're to the boss, I'm half asleep... but getting to blow away dozens upon dozens of mobs is pretty much always fun. Most of my experience has been on a chopper; this week I got to pilot a demolisher, but aside from being a lot slower the trash wasn't much different. I didn't actually get to do the fight in the demolisher, because we were in the middle of pulling the boss when the sky fell open over my house, we were suddenly getting frequent lightning and quarter-sized hail, and the tornado sirens started going off. By the time that was done with and I logged back on, they'd pulled someone else in to get the kill. Anyway, it's somehow simple and confusing all at once, but it goes by quickly. Trollsie says: 6/10.

Razorscale, I'm proud to say we got down before she was recently nerfed. Back in my day the mole machines popped on opposite ends of the terrace from each other! *shakes cane* But seriously, it's a fun little fight. I generally enjoy alternating adds-boss-adds mechanics (dear, sweet, darling Curator, how I miss you...) and trying to ground the drake in as few passes as possible is fun too. An intial problem we had was being dot-heavy -- we'd get her to around 52% in the second pass, she'd fly off, we'd get adds, then the dots would tick down and she'd hit 50 and come down. Chaos ensued. We've streamlined things since then; barring any hiccups in the transition, we can take her pretty easily. Trollsie says: 8/10.

Ignis the Furnace Master. Please divert the ears and eyes of any children under 16.

...

OH MY GOD I HATE THIS BASTARD WITH SUCH A PASSION. The main reason he's so frustrating is that we've, so far, just had tremendously bad luck on him. We have the technique just about down. We aren't making any huge mistakes. He just tends to eat our healers. Badly. As in, "One healer is in the slag pot already and he hits Flame Jets right as the OT needs a massive heal, so the OT goes down, the add goes after the MT, and while the lone remaining healer is trying to keep the MT up through all that, the healer in the pot gets thrown out directly into a scorch and dies." It is absolutely bananas. The RNG has it out for us on this bitch; apparently Ambrosine of I Like Bubbles and her guild are not faring much better.

The fight itself isn't that bad. It feels a bit gimmicky for me, and I am personally indignant at not being able to shatter the golems myself... although it's nice to have a fight where I'm not on add duty for once. Trollsie says: 7/10 on paper, FUCK YOU/10 in practice. The above-mentioned pun was the only good thing about this stupid fight.

X-002 Deconstructor is fun as hell. He was a massive bitch until we figured out that if you tank him near enough to a scrap pile, he won't spawn bots from those piles. Tank him in between two piles on one side and you only get two streams of scrapbots to deal with. We went from calling a wipe mid-fight because he'd healed back up to 80% halfway through the enrage timer, to getting [Nerf Engineering] on both of our first two kills. We do have a tendency towards bad luck with light bombs hitting right before tantrums (often on the healers... noticing a trend here?) but once we got the new tanking position down, we've been able to drop him fairly reliably. And the mecha-Majin-Buu voiceovers don't hurt, either. Even when your priest gets squashed, it's hard not to giggle when he gets all "I DUN THINK IT BENDS DAT WAY :(" about it. This is hands down my favorite fight so far. Trollsie says: 9/10.

Oh, and before Tuesday's kill, we accidentally pulled both of his add groups at once. Downed them handily. "Damn. Is there an achievement for that?" "If there was an achievement for surviving your own stupidity, we'd all have it already." My guild leader wanted me to note that these two groups pulling together was the "too hard to deal with" bug that led them to pull the Decon trash from the instance altogether early on. Therefore, the fact that we downed the two pulls simultaneously makes us uber.


Kologarn. Urgh. We've downed him twice, but both times by the skin of our teeth. I hate it when progression kills are that close. The first time, we ended up at like 4% with no tanks alive, flailing helplessly at all our cooldowns. The second was a little better, but it was still on the verge of going completely out of hand when he dropped. The fight mechanic is neat (and thank God that damage done to the arms actually damages the boss, otherwise this would have been insane) but we're just plain having trouble dealing with all the focusing and refocusing and moving around that we're having to deal with. Trollsie says: 7/10 when properly executed, 4/10 so far with guild.

And we managed to knock down Auraiya a single time. It's just like everyone's said -- it's all about the pull. The fight is frantic as hell, but in a fun way. I had no damn clue whether we were doing good, bad or otherwise until my Kill Shot started proccing. That Pounce move is an absolute mess. It is a little bit overwhelming, to be perfectly honest, but at least below the overwhelming is a fairly easy kill (we basically one-shotted her, not counting a false start where the offtank didn't break line of sight in time and got eaten). Crazy cat lady falls to berserker wolf lady. And I got [Ironaya's Discarded Mantle] -- which I'd link, were I not at work right now. Suffice it to say they were a solid upgrade from my T7 shoulders, and they have a nice bluish-black version of the T8 shoulder graphics. Still a bit disproportionally ginormous on a troll chick (as most epic shoulders are), but dead sexy nonetheless.

That's Ulduar so far. We got as much down Tuesday as we ever had at all, not counting Auriaya. She's on notice for tonight, along with the Iron Council, Hodir and Freya. The Portents are raiding again -- at top-level, cutting-edge content, for the first time in WoW -- and damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.

On Staying My Blue Arse Put

So as of yesterday morning, I'm yellow-barred on WoW Heroes through Heroic Eye of Eternity. Not only that, but for the first time, all of my enchants are listed as top level (as soon as I get another socket slapped on my new belt, anyway). I have my full ten-man Tier 7 set -- granted, a couple of pieces were sidegrades or slight downgrades to what I had before, but I'm a sucker for matchy shit, and the last two pieces of it got defaulted to me anyway. Be.Imba actually has my "should perform well" line past the end of the 25-man Malygos fight. By all means, gear- and talent-wise, I have every right and ability in the world to just stroll up to any given raid boss currently in the game and shoot the living crap out of it.

The only 25-man content I've seen is Obsidian Sanctum. It happens once a week. I'm not likely to see any of the other heroic content until Ulduar comes out at the very soonest.

My guild be tiny. It's hysterical for me to say that, because we've recently pretty much exploded in numbers. We first started raiding in BC around last... August or September, I wanna say, if not later. And by "started raiding" I mean someone looked at the guild list and said, "Dude, we have ten 70s on." And someone else yelled "OMG, let's go to Kara!", and we did.

As of now, working around alts and schedules and the like, on the average night we can put together a ten-man raid with one to three people left over. Every so often we have a short night and have to grab someone off the guild's collective friends list. We host a Sunday night 25-man Sarth run -- no drakes -- with some of the better people we collectively know from members' old guilds and the like. I'll fully admit to being frustrated -- the random number gods have been good to me, and ADD and farming content don't really mix. I'd pretty much give any non-game-necessary appendage for the chance to see Kel'Thuzad or Malygos on heroic mode, to have a new challenge to work towards and new loot to aim for.

So I guess it's a shame that I'm not gonna do anything about it.

I've heard the tone people use when they say "family guild" -- the same tone you'd use when referring to the "girlfriend" of a guy that you know is gay. I joined my guild the day that I converted my trial account to paid, about six days after Jez was first rolled in early December of 2007. The friend who convinced me to try WoW was already a member, and told me the people were friendly, welcoming and understanding of noobishness. Plus the guild leader and second-in-command both played hunters, so they'd be able to help me along. This was before I knew what raiding was.

Fast forward to a year and some change later. I haven't so much as stepped into 25-man Naxx with these people.

What I have done is every heroic dungeon in the game, some of them multiple times over in pursuit of a single piece of gear for a single person. I've /cheered countless upgrades and /spit on bosses who dropped healing plate instead of the belt the shaman needed. I've sleepwalked through fights I didn't give half a damn for and watched the only upgrade I needed get handed to someone else. I've wiped six or seven times in a row on a boss because one person in the group wasn't getting it (including at least a couple where that person was me).

I've seen a resto druid down Kael'thas Sunstrider with moonfire spam, and a dead Death Knight resurrect herself as a ghoul and bite Sjonnir the Iron-Shaper to death (on heroic, no less). I've seen wipes at 1% on bosses we destroyed the week before. I've spent four weeks going after the Safety Dance achievement before finally barely pulling it off, only to go in later with five people who'd never seen the fight and got it immediately. Hell, I've gotten achievements I didn't know existed before I happenstanced into them.

I've wrapped up raids at 10 PM and still not gotten to bed until a quarter of two, flying my nether ray in circles while nattering on in Vent about life, love, school, politics, religion, and the sexual fetishes of nearly every canon character in the Warcraft universe. (Ask me why Kil'Jaeden is into dragon bukkake. You know you want to know.) I've theorycrafted over omelets at the IHOP across the street from Disneyland, argued lore over drinks at the Anaheim Hilton, and spent three hours hiding behind my favored meat-shield while DPSing down the Blizzard Store Line Boss. I'm currently frantically combing my work schedule for a point at which I can run away to a little lake north of Atlanta to get drunk and barbecue (and probably theorycraft and argue lore) with people I've never laid eyes on before.

A week or two ago, some slap-in-the-face drops and respeccing woes had combined with RL stress and emotional problems to turn me into a sobbing mess of inadequacy issues. I spent a good twenty minutes in tells with my guild leader reassuring me that I was useful to the guild, valuable to have on raids and damn good at playing my class. Comfort I didn't deserve for being so overreactive, but there it was.

If my car breaks down or my flight gets cancelled anywhere between Dallas and Washington D.C. (or in Chicago, or a few choice parts of the west coast), I have a ride and a sofa to crash on.

I've had the time of my life over the last year and change, and I have more and better friends than I thought someone with my lack of social skills ever would.

There are a lot of great raiding guilds on my server. I could get subbed into a raid with any one of them and have a good chance of getting in. I could probably, with a few upgrades, pull top DPS in any given heroic PUG on our realm. I could go take on the biggest and baddest raids in the game, and leave my tiny ten-man "family guild" in the dust.

Fuck it. I'll come back for Malygos at 90.