Oh noes! Prime numbers!

A couple weeks ago we were doing a laid back guild run. I can't remember if it was one where I was doing my kickass awesome "raid-leadering" or not. I should have blogged about this earlier because I've forgotten who said what.

The stage: 10 man Naxx - Thaddius
The setting: I had just split up the raid into two groups and our stabbity stab rogue Atania was assigned to the left platform.

Atania: Oh, is there anything else different about this platform? I've never started here before.
Smart ass guildie #1: Yeah, there are round disks of fire on the ground that you have to avoid.
Atania: What?
Smart ass guildie #2: And not only that, but the disks of fire are numbered. You can only stand in the odd numbered ones.
Smart ass guildie #3: Actually you can only stand in the prime numbered ones.
Smart ass guildie #4(we iz chock full of thems): Yeah, while you are stabbity stabbing away, you must be doing the maths at the same time.
Atania: Sigh... ok lets go.

Thaddius goes down.

K: So how did those prime numbers work out for ya Ata?
Atania: I hate you all...

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K's 25 man Naxx thoughts

Note: Half the raid had left by the time I asked people to get a screenshot

Over the last couple of weeks, our guild has been doing some regular 25 man Naxx raids with two other small guilds. Now I did do some 25 mans in BC, but pretty rarely. Anyways, here are some of my random thoughts and experiences on going from healing 10 mans to 25 mans.

1. OMG there iz too many grid boxes!!! Just look at all those folks in the pic above. Seriously, as silly as it seems, its a big issue of mine with 25 mans. I have my grid boxes set up exactly how I like, counting down my hots and showing lifebloom stacks. I have my boxes sized and positioned perfectly in the 10 man runs. But with 25 mans... there are just too many boxes and I haven't quite decided where I want to position them.

Yeah, yeah I know I can scale it down smaller, but I like the boxes a certain size. Sigh. So sometimes I have to make tough decisions like whose box gets cut off. In these situations, usually feral druids like Fonzy lose out. (Heh just kidding Fonzy).

2. A quieter K: My guildies may have noticed that I do not talk over vent as much in these 25 man runs. I'm not sure if its because there are folks in the runs that are strangers to me, or if Im considering that fact that you shouldn't talk as much in a 25 man run because of the number of folks. But I'm definitely quieter... which I'm sure Jess appreciates because there is less Jess ribbing on these raids.

3. Less healer guilt: In 10 man runs, I am definitely more apt to try to save a naughty dps who has grabbed aggro (ok, ok, maybe its not always their fault and maybe they are not all naughty... but I still call them naughty dps anyways). In 25 mans, there is a little more hardcore triaging going on where I have to make tougher decisions and let people go. Am I saying that I feel less badly if I lose a dps in a 25 man vs a 10 man? Hmmm... maybe. So I feel a bit bad if I lose a dps in a 10 man, whereas I feel a tiny bit bad if I lose a dps in a 25 man. Heh.

4. More people to laugh at: While most people would consider running 25 mans as an opportunity to meet more people, I take it as an opportunity to meet more people to make fun of. Case in point, Sammael, who is always a source of endless amusement with or without clothes.

5. I <3 Rejuv: I love rejuv in 10 mans, but I really really love rejuv in 25 mans. Yeah, I threw out lifeblooms and regrowths and nourishes, but there was a lot of "Rejuv for you, rejuv for you, oh and you too, oh yeah you should have some rejuv too".

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Left Claw finishes Naxx - That's it?

We were able to finish out Naxx this weekend. It was our first entry into the Frostwyrm wing. Sapph was pretty simple and one shot.

Now KT was a bit more difficult in that us healers had to figure out positioning and healing people up in time when they were frost blast. I found that Nourish worked as the best spell for me to cast when people were frost blast. It was a big and fast enough heal.

So now our DK Khayven is running around with a cute pink Hello Kitty axe aka Death's Bite and our Spriest Dest is going to be even deadlier with Wand of the Archlich. Seriously, Dest scares me with the amount of dps she does.

Now I had heard for a long time of course that Naxx was ezmode. Plus as a guild we finished up Naxx probably much later than we could have and we were all pretty well geared. But it was still sort of anti-climactic to finish it so quickly and easily. It definitely was not the same feeling we had when we downed Prince back in Kara. I don't know... maybe Malygos will give us a bit more of a challenge?

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The Naxx Nekkid Bug

You might have noticed that I changed the color scheme of the blog the other day. While I liked the blue background which was purposely done to show my allegiance to the Carolina Tarheels, I thought the page was getting a little hard to read. So I made a drastic change to black, and added a cool black and white photo of a tree. As I told Jess, I decided to try to sophisticate this place up a bit. Jess said I was getting all serious.

Yeah right... me... serious? Case in point, the topic I'd like to discuss today. What is up with the bug that makes you sometimes see raid members without their clothes on? I call it the Naxx Nekkid bug, and I was hit with it last night when I zone into Naxx and see Jess, Alorya, and Heidilux with nothing on but their skivvies. Other guildies have mentioned this has happened to them before, but this is the first time it has happened to me. Thus, here is how I saw Jess tanking:

It was a little disturbing and distracting to say the least. Jess' strategy must have been to stun the bosses or something?

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Gluth and Thaddius down

I would say that our guild takes it a bit easier in terms of progression, in that we aren't rushing each week for progression. There were a couple of weeks there where due to schedules, we just didn't have the time over a week. Now we've probably had maybe 3 complete nights or so of attempts on Gluth. In the past, we just didn't seem to have the right combination of successfully kiting the zombies and the two healers keeping the kiters and the tanks alive. But everything seemed to just come together effortlessly, and Gluth went down very easily. I must say we loved our friend Landroval's earthbinding totem.

We then had our first look ever at Thaddius. The first time, the tanks weren't aware that the first two guys have to be tanked towards the back of the platform, and some lightning thingies hurt us. Second time, yes, people got confused which side was positive and which side was negative. And this second time, I didn't make it onto the platform... my jump sucked and I fell into the lava. But finally the third time, I made it onto the platform (huzzah!), we figured out the sides, and it was pretty easy.

Wut was afk for a while afterwards, which is why we have here the WOW screenshot equivalent of closing your eyes... a shot of Wut's backside in the screenshot. Oh and I won the roll on the T7 leggings, so now I will have to consider how the 4 set bonus to nourish plays into my healing.

So I guess we need to start preparing frost resist gear now?

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We can dance baby!

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Naxx raiding update

Its been a while since I've given a raiding update. Its probably because its been a couple of weeks since we've gone for progression in Naxx due to schedules and what not. But this past weekend we had our second attempt at the Four Horsemen. If you remember, our first attempt a couple weeks ago was quite amusing.

We had our two tanks and other two healers up in the front two corners. Then we had our DK Khayven and warlock Pythagorus in the back with me healing them. Jess had initially told me to stand on the back steps of the little platform the four horsemen start on. But it ended up being too close to both corners and I was getting both of their effect thingies (technical raiding language FTW). And when I moved back, I was out of LOS of the corners due to these stone pillars. So I ended up having to throw some hots on Khay, run over the platform to the otherside to heal Pyth, heal myself, rinse and repeat. I almost lost Pyth a couple of times, but it worked out and the four horsemen were one shot. I forget to take a screenshot.

We then moved onto our first view of Patchwerk. Nothing big here, basic tank and spank. Patchwerk, you were one shot you big silly ogre baby you!

The funniest part of the night (for me at least) came on our walk to Grobbulus. Those damn little frogger slimes. Now let me just say that I have become an expert on Heigan's dance and haven't wiped on Heigan since our first night at him. However, these slimes pwned me. Even when I or Alorya or Ash weren't even close to them, they shot up and ganked us. Damn you slimes, damn you! Seriously, I died more on these slimes than I did the entire night. Poor Ash made it across once and tried to come back to rez me, only to die herself. The ironic thing about all of this is that I was the resident high scorer on Frogger when I took my old school Atari with me to college.

Anyways, in going over to Grobbulus, our two priests levitated us so we could walk over the green slime streams. Here's a funny shot of all of us.

Now Grobbulus was a little more interesting. Our first attempt was a wipe because I think we just had to learn the timing of Grobbulus' clouds and where to put our clouds. It ended up working well for the first people who got the injection to go up on the ramp and we ended up getting him on the second attempt, though there were still a lot of clouds everywhere. Next time we'll have to make sure injected folks go behind the wall. To end the night we did make one attempt at Gluth, but had some trouble with taking down the zombies when we needed to. But now that we've seen it once, I think we'll get him next time.

Some other funny screenshots from the run. Here we are getting ready to run in the tunnel to Gluth.

I love the new summoning portal warlocks can create. It makes me think we're about to watch some puppet show. Though as someone pointed out, probably not a puppet show they'd want their kids to watch!

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The Left Claw ventures into Naxx

This weekend was our guild's first foray into Naxx. Over the weekend, we finished the Arachnid and Plague quarters. My thoughts/impressions:

Here we are with the Arachnid quarter's first boss Anub'Rekhan. I don't really remember anything too particular with this guy, other than thinking that he looked kinda cute and cuddly to me (for a beetle) and that he'd make a very cute mini pet. I didn't get screenshots of the next two bosses in this wing. Grand Widow Faerlina was pretty standard I thought. If anything, I thought we were close to killing some of worshippers too soon. Our offtank BigMu was softening them up too much. Now we did have some trouble with Maexxna. The two healers had some trouble keeping Wut up during his frenzy. However, as it is with all big spiders, his/her life did come to an exterminated end.

Now in the Plague quarter, we started with Noth. Our first try at him went sixteen minutes. Yes, one-six. It was insane. I innervated three times. It started to get comical around the ten minute mark. Thank goodness we had three healers this night. Our next and successful try at him was much shorter.

My favorite encounter so far has to be Heigan and his little safety dance. Here's a shot during the encounter.

Its not a great screenshot, but I wanted to try to capture the crazy green eruptions. For the first attempt, it was only Jess who made it successfully across the floor during the phase two eruptions. I died again on the second attempt. I think what happened to a lot of folks was turning around quickly enough in the final fourth safe zone to run back in to zone three.

We then had a couple of attempts where the only ones left when we went back to phase one was Jess and two healers. But eventually the group figured out the positioning and timing, and I think it was our fifth attempt when we got him down with eight of us up.

Now the last guy in the Plague quarter is Loatheb. After a lot of work up and concern about the fact that we could heal 3 out of every 20 seconds, he ended up being a big nubcake. It probably helped that we had a tree and two priests healing. With my hots and the priests huge group heals, he was oneshot.

All in all it was a successful first weekend of raiding. I generally just performed the following rotation: heal - heal - heal - trinket - heal - heal - heal - fire seed - heal - heal - heal - innervate - heal - heal - heal - make fun of Jess - heal - heal - heal - rinse and repeat.

Afterwards, I had to think back to our first experience in raiding nearly a year ago in Kara. This weekend in Naxx we finished six bosses. In Kara, it took us much much longer to do the first six bosses up to Illhoof. Yes, we are better geared for Naxx now than we were for Kara then... plus we are more experienced with raiding. I know that the second half of Naxx is going to be much more difficult than the first. However, its kinda crazy to me that we're already halfway through it.

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