Matticus from World of Matticus recently made a post where he confessed to a few mistakes (and evil deeds) that he has done in the past. He mentiones, for example, faking a disconnect by quitting Vent and stopping casting spells while he was the bomb on Astromancer Solarian, just because he was in the mood that day to watch everyone go flying. At the end of his post, he asked a simple question,
What’s the most colossal mistake you’ve ever made that you’re willing to admit to?
As soon as I read that question, one instance instantly popped into my mind. This story took place back in March, and my guild had finally reached 5/6 on SSC, and decided to start venturing into TK. We had already downed Void Reaver and Solarian before (putting us at 2/4), but we wanted to finally give A’lar a shot. My raid leader (and my guild leader) specifically requested I be there, as I had demonstrated by ability for being a good add courier the previous raid. I had given him my word. Additionally, I was a little bit behind the rest of the group in terms of gear, as I had been carried to the point where I was. Because of this, I needed as much DKP as I could possibly get.
Unfortunately, I had also just gotten a girlfriend, and it was one whom I don’t see very often. She called the day before the raid and told me she specifically freed up time the next day (the day of the raid) so she could come and see me. You can probably already see the problem I faced. You probably see two options here;
I, however, saw a third option. I spent most of the afternoon setting up WoW on my laptop, and arranging all my add-ons. The evening arrived, and my girlfriend showed up at my door. We went down to my basement, so we could have some privacy (and play with the Wii, which she was a huge fan of). Raid time drew near, and I opened up my laptop and logged in to WoW. Wanting to get the DKP for the night, I did something that was highly discouraged; I joined the raid group even though I wasn’t planning on raiding that night.
However, lady luck was not with me this night, and we were low on tanks, and my raid leader requested I go as our first off tank. I’ll spare you the agony of the whole situation, but I’ll highlight a few more interesting moments.
We wiped once on the boss due to our new warrior add tank having line of sight issues. The raid leader called for a 10 minute recess so we can all recollect ourselves. He took me into a private channel, and told me that he knew that I wasn’t giving it my all, and he had noticed I was in my kitty gear all along. He asked me if I wanted to stay in the raid and actually try, or take the night off (he was generous enough to offer me the night off without giving me a DKP penalty for leaving unannounced). I apologized to my girlfriend, ran to get a mouse (I was on my laptop, remember?), and turned on my music. Surprisingly, this is the one fight where I truly proved myself to the raid leader, and the rest of the guild. We all remember it clearly, because of one little thing that happened.
The way my guild does A’lar is to have two tanks leap frogging A’lar from platform to platform. We then have an add courier (my job) that grabs adds as they appear, and brings them to a fourth and final tank who’s sitting on the bottom floor “collecting” all the adds from the courier. I was already fairly well known from our last attempt a few nights ago, as I was doing my job perfectly, picking up the adds exactly when I needed to, and delivering them successfully each time. I was using my abilities intelligently, and I was positioning myself correctly.
However, it was getting late, and we were all a bit tired. Without realizing it, one of our main tanks (the guild/raid leader!) accidentally positioned himself on the platform in a way that he was out of site of the healers. He quickly died. I was nearby getting ready to pick up the add and noticed him fall. I used Feral Charge to get to the boss as quickly as I could, and positioned myself on the edge so the healers could get me. I tanked Al’ar right there the whole time, and the second he flew away, I threw a battle rez (without waiting for a proper brez request from the raid leader) to the fallen tank. I threw a healing touch on him, as well as a quick Mark of the Wild. I then shifted into bear and properly transported the add to our add collector. The tank was in position and ready to take on A’lar the next time his turn came around. That was the first time we downed A’lar.
Just goes to show you, you can completely mess up and let your raid down, and still end up on top. I wouldn’t recommend it though, ;)
For those who aren’t familiar with it, Be Imba is a website that will fetch your character’s stats from the Armory, and give you advice on how to improve it, as well as tell you about where your gear level is at in terms of PvE progression. It’s missing information on a few specs, and while I like the idea, more often than not I find myself going “duh” when using it. I tried showing it to a friend of mine who recently hit 70, and it told him he had some low level items (greens), and he was at the pre-Kara level. Do you really need a site to tell you that? It’s also rather annoyed at me for having the Feral Charge talent (which it considers to be a PvP talent), although I find it irreplaceable in PvE. Nevertheless, it can be quite useful in helping you realize you forgot to enchant a piece of gear, or that you forgot to replace a “placeholder” item or gem.
The reason I’m making this post though, is I’ve finally managed to achieve the Be Imba ranking of “this character is in top shape,” which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Its recommendation for where I should get gear is slightly off, but still relatively accurate. The only thing that still bothers me is that it’s convinced that my spec and gear is designed for PvP, despite the fact I have a measly 18 resilience in my tanking set.
In similar news, I have teamed up with a classmate from my college to design a website oriented to assist those who want to get a bit more out of services such as Warcrafter, Be Imba, and MaxDPS. Each brings something new and unique to the table, but each is lacking in a few aspects. For example, have you ever wanted to use Be Imba, but want to see the results for gear you don’t have yet (for planning ahead and such)? How about wanting to use MaxDPS, but rather than have you manually input your statistics, have it remember your character, with options for both armory fetching and manual building? And hey, how about something more useful than Be Imba’s “You’re not suitable for Kara yet,” but something along the lines of “Your dodge is a bit low for Kara, most recommend it be at around 30%”?
Enough ranting about that, hopefully there will be a public beta available soon that will let you guys play around and have some fun, and hopefully get me and my friend some useful feedback. Our biggest challenge at the moment is the DPS calculations, which while websites such as MaxDPS provide that, many of them assume impossible things, such as an infinite-rage situation for Warrior DPS, or ignoring the internal 3 second cooldown of Windfury for Elemental Shamans. I’ve even had one website try and convince me that I can achieve a 0.0% chance to miss my target.
For those who are interested, keep your eyes open, there’ll be a public announcement soon. And if everything goes well with that, we have a few other ideas floating around, including creating an in-game addon that will allow you to essentially achieve the same results you get with the website, but have all the calculations done completely in game!
In WoW news, my guild finally decided to take a serious attempt on Al’ar last night, and we managed to down him on our second attempt. My guild saves all the adds that spawn until the second phase, and DPS them all down then, to maximize our damage in Phase II. Unfortunately during our first attempt, our add tank during Phase I tanked them up against the bottom of the ramp, and was killed almost instantly (along with all our melee dps) during Flame Quill. The downing of Al’ar puts my guild at 6/6 SSC and 3/4 TK. Kael, you’re next! This also places us as the 5th most progressed Horde guild on our server, which is quite an achievement! Good job to all.
I’ve also picked up quite a few new add-ons, but would like to throw a special shout out to Align. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it does exactly what it says it does. For the OCD in all of us, Align will draw a grid on your screen, including highlighted vertical/horizontal center lines, to easily allow you to position your frames. That’s all it does. It doesn’t make frames draggable, or move them by itself. It simply draws a grid when you type /align, and removes it when you type it again. If it seems like something you may like, give it a whirl! I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
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