WoD: 20 people it is.

The biggest news for the raiding community is the new raid-size of course. Blizzard just killed of 10's and 25's, and made one size: TWENTY

Yes, yes, they actually renamed some difficulties, and made the flex-system the standard with 3 difficulties, but for every guild who knows they are going to do hero..rrr...mythical, their default size should be 20.

First up, I should mention that, Yes, I see a problem for 10-man guilds. They are really screwed over after most of them gone down from 25 the last 3-4 years. The fact that Innovation during Firelands had a real problem getting 3-4 people,  makes recruiting 10 people at least, a horrific thing. BUT, I do not raid 10s, I actually like 25s. So my reaction to the 10-guild problem is basically; I don't care, maybe a little harsh, but that's the way it is.

For 25s the drop is not that big of a problem.Everyone who has raided in the past, knows that at the end of expansions, people disappear, so going down a notch is not that bad. And with the flex system, you can actually go 25 if more people sign up. But here comes the first problem. Apparantly every difficulty will have their own lock-out...

Innovation doing Firelands with 22 people.

That means you can go out and kill the same boss 4 times a week, and get loot 4 times. That really worked well during Wrath....if you want burn-out. The problem here is the tier-pieces and the trinkets. Getting that trinket, even if lower Ilvl, maybe an upgrade, and everyone knows how much an upgrade 4pTier can be, even if one or two are considerable lower Ilvl.

For a guild like Innovation, that would mean, normal on wednesday/saturday  (current flex-runs for fun), and one of the three raid-evenings should be reserved to try Mythical....  My mind has to do some more work on that, but I don't like the separate heroic/mythical lockout.

An other thing I read somewhere, and heard (fatboss), is that the new fixed 20-man will actually allow Blizzard to bring back some gimmick fights with, for example, mind control. The reasoning behind this is, that with 10s, you cannot expect every class to be present (even impossible), but with 20 you can.....wait...wut?  Innovation is 25, and there are some days we don't have a hunter or a mage, because they are doing something else.

In my experience, the number here is three. If you have three of every class, then you can actually expect to have a certain class present....  anyone for 40man raids? So, unless mind control also becomes a mage-ability or something, I don't think you can actually expect every class to be present. Although being Mythical, you can say that would be the guild's problem,  which I am actually content with...

Innovation taking down Sha with 25

So, basically, the current raiding-guilds should focus their size on 20, instead of 25. This does not seem that big of a problem. Even the social aspect with 5 raiders less is probably barely noticeable. You still want to have a decent raid group. Actually, with 3 raids/week, that makes 60 raidslots. And if you have a 66% attendance rule, that means 30 raiders, instead of the current...37-40...oh.

Ok... I didn't see the 7-10 difference number coming up for the current 25-man guilds....

Back to the hard calculations. I expect a standard-raid seize of 2 tanks, 5 healers and 13 DPS (6 melee/7ranged). So doing the same maths I did in August and September, that leads to a standard guild-size of:

3 tanks, 8 healers, 9 melee, 10 ranged.

So, some changes will be coming....but not yet.

Post 300 : A short evening with Garrosh

So, apparently this is my 300th post. And keeping with tradition I have some nice pictures from this weeks Sunday raid.

Achievement-spam

The key in the end was to focus killing our teammates in the last 20%, and forget about adds...oh, and look, I got myself a heirloom.

One of the many after-kill-pictures.

Mardah hangin' with Vol'Jin, mon.

....  come on, everybody made on like this..didn't they?  :)

Innovation showing off their new mounts.

Good words in a Blizzcon-weekend... but that's next.

I do feel this tier was easier then the previous two. We didn't had any major problems, well, maybe with the Dinosaur, but most fights seemed to be over very fast. Heck, we even managed some genuine one-shots along the way.

The problem I see is the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. The Beta hasn't started for it, and an expansion-Beta takes about 6 months normally?  So, even if the manage to start it up this month, we will not see Outlands part 0.5 before June...  that's a long time do take down Garrosh on Mythi...rrr...  Heroic I guess.  Oh well, at least there are some speculation-posts coming up, and I have a nice title:

  Mardah, Conquerer of Ogrimmar

Bad planning

So, the weekend that Blizzcon is happening, when we finally will know what the future brings, and even at reasonable times to watch in Europe...  I am offline till sunday...well..mostly, I may sneak some peeks in...

What is also a mystery, is how 'easy' this tier seems to earlier. I am now airing for raid start in some minutes, and as far as I know, we are extending the lockout, to kill Garrosh this week.  We had 2 pulls orso last week, and about ten tuesday evening. I do expect him to fall around pul 35, so probably sunday.

Although knowing Innovation, the next guess would be: First pull of today......

First week in 5.4

One week of raiding past us, in a few hours the servers will be up, and the second week will start. And Innovation had a little strange raiding week, so what happened you ask, well..a LOT.

Innovation's first normal raid-day was thursday. As mentioned last pots, we already had a full guild-flexraid on wednesday, and behold, that did help us. It seems so far that the mechanics are the same on flex and normal, only doing less damage on flex.

So before we knew it we killed Immerseus. It seems this is a typical first-boss-loot-pinhata-boss. So, we gathered up our purples, and went outside to the Fallen Protectors. Now, I think we wiped once on them in flex, new mechanics and such, so I was expecting the normal version to be a little harder...  which it was...  it took us 1 wipe more and they where down.

So, after some trash stuff, we encountered another Titan-construct, Norushen. This one only wanted to test us, because it thinks we are full of Pride. Well, maybe we where...  because this one kept us occupied the rest of the night.

On sunday we returned, and make short work of Norushen's Pride-test. We entered the next room, where half of the raid died to irritating trash. After that, we went to work on Sha of Pride... and yes, I am still half expecting a Sha of Happiness...  This Sha had a lot of stuff going, stacking up, freeing prisoners, little adds, big adds, pride-meter, different boss-abilities on different pride-levels, and a nasty DoT.

But, through wiping, you learn, and the longer the night lasted, the lower Sha's Health went. We ended the night with the last two wipes below 10%, one 3.9 and one 4.something if I remeber correctly. So, we knew this one would go down on tuesday.

Tuesday rolled along, and behold, the first wipe was at 4%. So basically where we left Sha on Sunday. The next pull ended in a 0.4% wipe... really... been a while for a wipe like that. Next one he went down. Get the loot, gather up for the killshot-picture, and try not to trip over a big axe someone left behind....ask our Hunter  :)

Jaina, the homicidal priest, teleported us to a ship near the docks of Ogrimmar. And then to the actual docks. We destroyed some cannons, and then we had to shoot a dragon from the sky, while fighting some waves of orcs, and meanwhile making sure that the NPC's weren't killed. That last one was sometimes Hilarious. Our second wipe was because Varian decided to pull aggro of the Tank...  which resulted in a wipe where everyone was still alive...

The pull after that, Jaina decided stand by the towers, she really must like those, where she was out of reach..and promptly died to something. I think the fourth pull actually brought Galakras down, after which the fight was over. The road to Ogrimmar lie open before us.

Problem was, the goblins build a large scorpid-like apparatus with lasers and guns and bombs and more stuff.... we also met up with Baine and Vol'Jin. This fight was at the end of the night. I think the first pull was after 10, while we raid till 11. Basically, I think most of us where getting tired and already happy with this weeks progress, and I actually expected that the raid would be called early.

But, ok, we did had one hour left, so let's do some pulls to see how this boss goes...  two pulls later:

So, after one week raiding, Innovation is 6/14. This has been, in number of Boss Kills, the 'best' raiding week Innovation had since the start of Cataclysm. And also by far the best start of a new Tier. I cannot actually remember a second bosskill in the first week..

This also makes me wonder if these bosses are to easy, or that latter bosses will be much harder? And also the time we have left.  Keep in mind, that last tiers of expansions tend to take a little longer then previous tiers. So, we might be in Ogrimmar for a while. We are John Snow-ed about the next expansion, so I actually expect us to be here for the next 6 months at least... oh well.

Servers will be up soon, time to defeat a celestial, kill a firegod, and see what this week brings...

Innovation eats Heroic Eggs

Last week of Throne, one more evening of wiping, and boy, this was an interested fight.

Ji-Kun Heroic, wipes 22 (although I missed one night), kills: 1

The whole fight revolves around watching boss cooldowns, and being on your nest in time.  I was assigned to group Green, which meant I had nest-wave 3,7,9,13,14. 

On the upper nest my Celestial Allignment was up, and with Mozzie the Shadowpriest, that would be enough, so Gestalt the Rogue could continue stabbing Ji-Kun.

On the lower nest, Gestalt would help, and here happened a fun thing. The moment we where finished with the lower nest, a 'feed young'  was about to happen.  When caught, this would give you a nice buff. One problem, the cooldown for that coincided for group Green with a Downdraft. So we where just standing for 10 seconds on a lower nest, while our teammates probably went ballistic with downdraft, flew up just in time to catch food...

Of course something hiccup during the last fight. Apparantly Henghao the Resto-shammy was killed just before Mozzie and me jumped down to nest 9...  I noticed it a split second to late, and boom, both of us hit the dust. But at 20% only 4 people where down...  

This thursday, Siege of Ogrimmar is on, let's see what the orcs bring us.

Innovation vs. Throne of Thunder, the recap.

Somewhere during the vacation, Innovation took down Lei Shen Normal. It was on a Sunday-evening (which made the tuesday a free day that week), and I was playing on my Laptop. But how did we get there?

We didn't actually started right away with ToT when 5.4 hit. We did kill Jin'rokh of course, but we still had to finish 5.2. According to my post "end of 14th tier" we really started one month after 5.2 came out, and it took us around 3.5 months to clear ToT after that.

But most of this post is from memory, so let's go... (dates are from the screenshots on our website)

11-3 Jin'rokh the Breaker

Not much to say about this one, we had some problems with dead melee at the start, but once we figured out that they died because a ball was pulled through them after a storm he went down fast. Fun part is that we actually never steered him to regulate the tank-drop until we started doing the heroic version.

12-4 Horridon

Oh god, a so called ON-Boss, we had roadblocks with ElegON and GaralON this expansion, and this was the same. A big dinosaur, adds with nasty mechanics everywhere, so a lot of mayhem. But, it is one of those bosses with lots of mechanics that most of the time matter for other roles, so when we found out or path, he went down easily.

25-4 Council of Elders

Looking at the dates, it seems we had problems with this boss, but iirc, we were still doing some T14 for the tier sets during the first month after killing Sha. Actually I only remember one night of wiping. we figured out what was our biggest problem, i.e. Sul, made sure he became empowered second and never again. After that it was just making sure you didn't kill yourself on Mankirk... or something like that  :p

15-5 Megaera

Now Tortos that was...wait Megaera, what happened? Well, there was a guild-meet, so not enough people to raid. So they decided to do a 10 man and plower through Tortos, next raid was full again so we slaughtered the three-headed dragon. This was quickly done, just changing some colors around, think we went with BRBRGRB or something.  Green was 5th...

22-5 Tortos

The turtle on 25 took another week. According to the ten people who killed it, the 25-version was a little harder, mostly due to less adds on 10. Oh well, he went down.

28-5 Ji-Kun

A week later, the Bird was up.. I am seeing almost the same trend in T15 as T14, it takes us about one week for every boss, but after that, not much wiping. This was a fun boss, fly around, kill some birds and move on. The trick is for everyone to follow their path, and don't die..now on heroic..this is a complete different fight....

12-6 Durumu the Forgotten

Eye-boss. Don't move when blue, run to rd, run in circles, do not stand in unseeable blue stuff, follow green, dont get pushed of platform.  Seem hectic,  but once we got the purply swirly stuff under control, it was fairly easy.

18-6 Primordius

I have no idea, and still have no idea how we do this boss. Heroism always comes to early for me, and for me it is mostly getting buffs ASAP, staying out of bad... trying to get no debuff..and then figuring out there's only 3% left...

23-6 Dark Animus

Thumbwrestling for 6 minutes and then OMGWTFKill it quickly. On 25 normal, you can actually do it without the fire running around. So, get aggro on your mob, wait till it gets eaten by the tank, then kill everything the tank pulls, and then kill Dark Animus, again ignoring big adds.  It took us 6 pulls or so. Finetuning the walking was all that was done.

27-6 Iron Qon

Fire (or whatever) tracks around, group up, tornadoes, shields are up captain. A lot is happening, but just as with Horridon in phases. So Learn one phase, then the next. Four days after Animus, so not that hard.

27-6 Twin Consorts

This was a very hard fight, a lot of wipes until we mastered it..well..  remember Lei Shi...  this was easier. Innovation went in, pew-pewee, and we had ourselves a real one-shot. So only one boss left....

28-7 Lei Shen

....which took us a little longer. Which is not that bad, it's the end-boss, it should be harder. There was a lot of changing tactics, when to pull a boss away, and of course, he getting-into-the-groove when Lei Shen stood in the middle. We extended once or twice, and it was vacation of course, which also took some raiders away, myself included. But, in the middle of Summer, he, a little unexpected, went down.

After that.

In the last Month, Innovation also took down Jin'Rokh on Heroic, and we are trying that with Ji'kun, but next week Ogrimmar awaits. In conclusion, we did well. We started a little late, but progressed nicely through the tier.

Now we have to face Hellscream and the flex-raids...oh my....wait, 4 different raid-levels with 6 different I-levels, are they mad?  But that's another post I guess....

The perfect raid?

Last week I put up an archive post considering raid-number-crunching. That post was made during cataclysm, but look, we gained Monks, so let's do it again.

I am using several basic things here. First up is raid spots. In a 25 man raiding guild with 3 nights of raiding you will have 75 raid slots per week. Now if you add a required attendance of 67%  (two-thirds), you'll find that you actually need 37.5 raiders to fill all slots. If all those 37.5 raiders raid twice a week, they will take up 37.5 times 2 is 75 raidslots.

Now we have different roles, so I also will take those apart. And I will listen to "Bring the player, not the Class" so no class will be favored because they may just be the flavor of the month. Although some nice gimmicks may help (looking at warlock portals)

Tanks

Every raid needs 2 tanks at least, raiding through Throne of Thunder, I noticed a lot of fights where three tanks where actually more helpful, and actually 25-raids should need 3 tanks (imho). So if we go with 3 tanks for 3 raids, we get 9 tank-slots. 9/2=4.5 tanks needed. Now if you have a lot of turnover, or tanks actually only raiding twice a week, then maybe you should go for 5, but I'll take the number 4, because not all fights need 3 tanks, and some dps can step in probably. So; 4 Tanks

But which classes? Well, we have three plate-tanks, and two leather tanks. Two classes which use a Shield, the leather classes in the same pool as the leather-dps, so gear to divide among more. I would say at least 2 plate-tanks, and 1 leather-tank, fourth can be anything I guess, now if I would have gone for 5 tanks, it would have been easier...mmm.

Healers

"Every raid needs 5-6 healers, and on hard fights 7" -end quote. So let's go with 6 I assume, and again looking back at the last tiers, six seems to be the number. Throw the number 6 into the equation, and you get 6 times 3 divided by 2 is 9 Healers. Seems a little bit low, but again, a dps might jump in I guess, for now, let's go with 9 Healers

So, which classes? Let's look at gear, monks and druids share the same gear, the rest of the healers dip in other stuff. So two of each healer, except for monks and druids, which together should be 3, thus making it 9.

DPS

So basically, what is left are the DPS, so 37.5 minus 4 minus 9 makes 24.5. I will up the number to 25 here, probably because it always feels DPS have a higher turnover. So 25 DPS

Now it gets more interesting, if we go with 2 for each class, we end up with 22, missing 2.5. If we consider that 4 classes cannot be healers or tanks, the so-called 'pure' classes, we may add 1 each for those to even the score a bit (and also looking at tier-tokens). So, we end up with 26 DPS. Which is one to high...  luckily we can easily drop a rogue because they deserve to...well, more because melee always seems to get the problems in raids, and I had to exclude some-one.




So, a 'Perfect Guild' would have the following composition:

4 Tanks
1 Warrior, 1 Death Knight, 1 Monk, 1 Paladin, 1 Druid (One Tank designated as Main-dps/OT)
9 Healers
2 Paladin, 2 Priest, 2 Shaman, 3 Monk+Druid
25 DPS
3 Mages, 3 Warlocks, 3 Hunters, 2 Rogues, 2 Shamans, 2 Druids, 2 Monks, 2 Priest, 2 Paladin, 2 Death Knight, 2 Warriors

Because the quality of the raider is more important then the class, this is not written in stone, although a 4/9/25 dividing is probably a good template, that all depends on the availability of different players in your guild.

If you have more healers with uncertainty, you could go for 4/10/24 for example.

Now, to actually let these numbers loose on Innovation, but that will be another post....
And there is also another aspect, which I may hit up on next...

Archive: Numbercrunching Innovation

Already a long time ago, I posted this on the Innovation web site, because there was a little mystery why we didn't hade enough raiders. It consist of two parts, the first being the original post. And then a second part, after we had some discussion on forum/guildchat about who was coming. There was a large gap between people being invited iirc, and people actually still playing. Because the forum is being replaced, I save it here (it was the original purpose of the blog).

This is no longer the case, Innovation actually has a bench these days

Although I might just do this again on the current raiders in september, just to see the difference.

This was published on the innovation forums, 23 november 2011

Hello Innovation,

My expertise on numbercrunging has been called upon. with the recent cancelled raids and forced 10-mans, there seems to be a problem in the guild considering availabilty of people. Note, I say availabilty to raid, not actually raiding. When I applied for Innovation, I read that Innovation raided 3 days, and you where expected to turn up at least two. That's something I will take as a basic for the next couple of paragraphs. Every raider in Innovation should be available to raid 2 days/week.

Before I continue, I know real life happens, but normally speaking, there are also people who are available almost all the time, so a little lee-way is already here.

As mentioned in another post, basic mathematics:

3 raids of 25 man equals 75 raidspots/week. If everyone is available 2 days that week, we end up with 75/2=37.5 raiders to make sure we actually have 25 men each night. This same reasoning can be applied to all 4 classes. And because this is Innovation, I will be rounding up a bit. In the end this will lead to 40 active raiders. I will also use the base of 2 tanks/6 healers/16 dps for every raid. 

Tanks

3 raids times 2 tanks is 6 tankspots/week, 6/2=3, so Innovation needs 3 tanks to function properly. But... 3 is low. It actually means that if 2 tanks can't make it (a real possibility), we can't raid. Adding an extra tank would probably solve this (at this moment preferably a Tankadin, because we don't have it), but it is not really needed, we luckily have some plate-dps able to tank very well.

Healers

3 raids times 6 healers gives 18 healingspots/week, 18/2=9, so 9 healers needed. At the moment we have 10, which I actually consider a little bit better then 9, because of the same reason as with tanks. A little extra buffer is not bad. And if needed, some can go dps for a night.

DPS

37 raiders- (9+2)=25 dps left to fill up the roster... we have 24, so one short. But with dual-spec this could be handled.

So, actually... there should not be a problem...And yes, there is a little difference with rounding, but I'll take care of that later. This current number actually has a logical conclusion: If we have to cancel so many raids (or downtune), Innovation-raiders are NOT available 2 days/week.

So, with this information, I changed the numbers a bit. I tried to figure out the best raid-member-configuration. And I made a graph.

I went with the following premises:

• 2 of each healer
• 2 of each dps
• 1 of each tank
• add 1 druid and 1 priest-healer
• add 1 from each 'pure' dps-class (total 4)
• add 1 shaman and 1 druid-dps, because of different roles

With these simple rules, we should need 40 people, giving the chance for fifteen people not to be online. Seems an high enough buffer.

Now don't go all oh-noes-I-am-not-needed. The graph is ideal, If I make a graph considering roles it looks a lot more nicely for everyone:

Now the numbers of melee and ranged can be mixed a little bit considering availabilty. And the question is, do we need another tank? But looking at both graphs, I can make a (and againa simple one) conclusion. We could use 1 more tank (preferable a tankadin), one more ranged (preferable an elemental shaman) and one more melee (deathknight or enhancement shaman), although the latter could also be a ranged (shadowpriest or warlock) considering the unfriendly-ness of current raids towards melee.

If any raider should quit, a replacement should be looked for in the lowest column. E.g. if a mage quits, don't get another mage, but try to get a warlock.

So, a list of people to look for is probably:

• Paladin - Protection
• Death Knight - DPS
• Shaman - Elemental
• Priest - Shadow
• Warlock
• Shaman - Enhancement

For the record, I also looked at long afks's, and a number of 40 should be enough to accomedate for those. Unles more then 7 people are going AWOL, then the officers have something to decide  :p

TL;DR

So with all these numbers an end-conclusion is reached, and an actual plee to my co-raiders. Innovation has the numbers to field 3 25-men raids/week. A little extra buffer couldn't hurt. See the possible recruitlist above, although getting any extra DPS at the moment would also not hurt the number of not-cancelled 25's. But..

I hereby ask all my co-raiders a question, do you want to raid guild-wise, or do you just want to raid sometimes. We are in a guild (or for some in the community :p), and we all want to play. But, and this is my opinion, not the officers, you should also consider your fellow raiders. If you know from yourself that you can only raid once per two weeks, why are you actually a raider in Innovation? Cancelled Raids don't help anyone. And I do ask to at least try to be there twice a week, or thrice per 2 weeks. There are some people who are more available, but that goes only so far. It's not fun to see only 19 signups on the roster. Take a look at yourself, and ask yourself: What do I actaully want, What can I actually DO? We are in a Guild, and, how corny it may sound;

It's not what Innovation can do for you, It's what you can do for Innovation.

Oh, and one other question, all 37 raiders got an invite to next week (not the alts). How long does it take to actually hit accept/decline (or tentative if you are not sure). 

Disclaimer: The long text above is largely mathematical, and there will be different opinions by others, at least I hope so  :p, I ain't the almighty numbercruncher. All opinions are my own, and only my own. I am not an officer, just a fellow raider who wants to raid 25.

Mardah

No officers where harmed making this essay......

This was posted on the Innovation-forums on 24 november 2011

So, after some recent info, I went back to the crunching.

I now looked especially at who accepted an invitation last 2 weeks (7 raids), and went home with that.

Two things. First, to Kris, I now what you typed, but I looked at who accepted, which means even with erratic availabilty I have 8 healers. Secondly, because I looked at actual invites, I lowered the favorable numbers of Healing, Tanks and Melee with 1.

I also took out recent leavers, and added one Retri-paladin (namely Sponchebob, and welcome by the way :p), this way I removed 10 names from the list I use, and added 1.

And now the graph;

Well...  that is a complete different viewpoint... although an extra Melee and Healer wouldn't hurt.. the problem lies with Ranged. Last two weeks only 7 ranged actually accepted an invitation. Which is half of what we actually need. Looking at the graph, we probably need to find 10 more players, luckily, most of them are DPS.

Looking at it from another point; Over the last two weeks we had an average of 19 people signing in. That's 6 raidspots low, which are 18 spots/week, which again with an average attendance of aroun 67% would mean 9 more people are needed. 

Because I also know there are some people coming back shortly (due to RL getting less hectic, or other reasons), I would say, get 9 more people...1 healer, 8 dps.

And looking at what we have now, another possible recruitmentlist:

Healers:

• Holy Paladin OR Priest (no idea which spec)

Melee-dps:

• Enhancement Shaman OR Deathknight

Ranged:

• 2 Warlocks
• 1 Mage
• 1 Shadowpriest
• 2 Elemental Shamans

Actually, another Druid-Dps would also be a posibility... if we weren't swarmed with druids at the moment.

Mardah

REMINDER: This is archive-material, so no longer the case, any numbers above ar out of date..
especially considering we have Monks now.

End of the 14th Tier

So... after some very long nights wiping in Terrace, Innovation finally took down the last boss of...wait..  what.. long nights of wiping?

After completely goofing up elite protectors last week, and still taking it down. And that same night we saved Tsulong... you know..with me doing more healing on the boss then damage and saving his plant, we went back tonight for the next boss Lei Shi.

As normal, no problem with the first three bosses and then...wait..oh yeah... I think the strategy talk lasted longer then the actual one-shot-first-kill. I am not even sure we lost people there.

So, on to Sha.. probably harder...  well...not. It took us two tries to figure out how the platforms worked...  and then everybody stayed alive..tadaa, job done.  Maybe do it once or twice more, but actually, most LFR-T15 stuff is better then what drops here, so I guess we will be focusing on the big dino more now....

Too soon?

Release date patch 5.2 is 28th of februar? So in two weeks? Is this too soon?

The guild I am in, Innovation, is now being crushed by Garalon, the 3rd boss of Heart of Fear. So how did we get here?

19-september-2012  Heroic Madness
One week before Mists, Innovation kills Madness HC, just in time.

19-october-2012  Stone Guards
On the second night in MSV, we take down Stone Guards

7-november-2012 Feng
12-novenber-2012 Spiritbinder
19-november-2012 Spirit Kings
Randomness has always been a problem for Innovation, So we needed two weeks for Feng, but after that, a new kill every week.

3-december 2012 Zor'yok 
Oh, HoF, well..Elegon was buggy somewhere, so we went to HoF and killed this one the first night we where in there iirc.

Christmas-vacation, which means two weeks of non-raiding.

9-januar 2013 Elegon
Finally, in the first raidweek we did in 2013, Elegon dies.

15-januar-2013 Will of the Emperor
MSV cleared

21-januar Ta'yak
Tornado boss down in HoF


Now looking at the big picture, except for Elegon, Garalon and Feng, Innovation only needs one week to master a new fight, what is more remarkable is that Innovation almost never wipes on a boss after the first kill. Since our first Will of the emperor-kill, MSV had been cleared in one night... yeah, we are strange.

Feng took us two weeks, there was some trouble with the last phase, but that was mostly due to lag, so people where a little slow, and the fact that almost everyone needed to blow up the raid at least once.

Elegon was a very different problem. Elegon was a DPS-race for us, and then missing 1-2 dps every week, well... we did kill it with 24 the first time though.

Garalon at this moment looks the same as Elegon, we just need a little more DPS. And then not actually the DPS/player, but another dps-player  :)

If I count quickly, 5 months, around 22 weeks, for 16 bosses...  with a christmas vacation included and a levelling-time. Yes, a new tier is too soon for Innovation now. There is almost no way we could have concluded the tier before that.

Innovation is a normal raiding guild, which means we certainly don't force our members to cap VP every week. The goal for everyone is to have fun, and not to stand to many times in the fire. And with that I think we maybe one of median-guilds. A guild that should get enough time to clear the content at a reasonable pace.

In Cataclysm, Innovation cleared every normal content before the next tier, and in the last tier, which always last longer then others, we even got a Heroic clear. There is not much difference between last-year raiders of Innovation, and the current ones. 80% is still the same. So we should be much further. or we should have been given more time.

The problem here is the number of bosses. The first Tier of MoP has 6 bosses more then the first Tier of Cataclysm. Look where we are, at the 9th boss.  And we are maybe able to take down the first one or two from Terrace, but we haven't been there yet.

So, recapping, or TL;DR-version;
Yes, the new Tier is coming too soon for Innovation, considering the numbers of bosses that are available in the current tier. And remember, around 5 weeks of the last 22 where lost due to levelling and vacation. A few weeks more would have been more lenient to take down, and maybe a late march-release would have been more logical.

But alas, in two weeks, the Thunder King needs to be killed...  once more unto the breach it is then.

[RED:... 3 hours after this post, Innovation killed Garalon and are now battling the enrage timer of meljarak).]

Cataclysm End

Last raiding day of the year,

and we got it down,

on twenty-five.

Cataclysm ends now,

next up..well..

Theramore

So, in a few weeks the Horde will unleash their warriors on the city of the sea-nation Theramore, thereby destroying the city and making a certain mage very angry.

I still remember the first time I was in Theramore. It was on my first character, a dwarf hunter, and he had a quest to go to somewhere else. Mind you, I had only seen the dwarf-route, and I may have visited Stormwind with the Tram. And now I had this quest that wanted me to go to Ashenvale?  Where was that. Luckily I already found out that there was a boat from Menethil to a place called Theramore on the other side of the ocean.

Of course, my level 20-something hunter died horrible in the marshes trying to get to the barrens, but well... it was exploring.

I always found Theramore a little strange, as in, why not do more with it. They have a huge dock...but only one boat goes there. A city with a lot of terrain..  where is the Theramore auction house?  I did find a banker...  but no idea if he has been there all the time.

For those of you who haven't been there lately...  Theramore now has a second gate, which is the start of a very straight road through the marsh connecting some old quest-hubs neatily to each other.

Just over the bridge, I spotted something new, of things to come. And it was not easily missed, with the whole beam shining down.  This lady, one of the Dragonkin, is mostly known for doing the most useless thing in Dalaran. During Wrath and Cata, she stood in the Tower, and if you talked to her, she teleported you to the Caverns of Time...   which was really needed...especially because she was standing right in front of a portal with the same function.  But now she is in Theramore.....  what will her function be there?

Theramore it self is a little questhub...  not many though. There is some struggle with deserters, and there was a questline concerning King Wrynn...which is now ended abruptly.  Alliance however did get a questline where they met up with a legendary man...  Nat Pagle.

Now...  back then  (:p), till patch 2.3 orso, Nat Pagle was the one who could learn you how to fish above skill 225 (iirc).  No problem..if you played Alliance. Now if you where playing Horde, which I did when I reached that level of fishing, you had no idea where he was....  and you had to fight your way through the Marsh to get there.  But alas, here he is...  doing his part in defending Theramore against the creatures of old.

Alas, Theramore will fall...  (which is actually interesting, because it is now actually deep into Alliance territory, instead of being out on the edge...)  So long,  and lets see how it looks in a couple of weeks  (The Fall of Theramore starts 18 september or something like that)

...and on a different note....  Innovation finally managed to grasp the tentacles and took down Zonnoz, making us a 25man guild with 6/8 heroic..  and I am 2 or 3 bosses away from flying a dragon above Stormwind....

My Warcraft-life sofar.

How did I get into this?

So, World of Warcraft, which has been a large part of my life the last 5 years, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. How did I roll into this, and what did I do?

I am actually a quite old warcraft-player. (yes, besides age). I clearly remember playing Warcraft: Orcs and Humans way back in the 90's. When I was still studying that is.  Because the follow-ups were released when I already was working, I didn't know them that well. I did try Warcraft2 I remember, but no idea what I thought about it.

I know I was actually playing the civilization-games a lot (or Birth of the Federation).  Turn-based strategy games. I did try some RPG-games, but non of those actually stuck with me.

Now fast forward to halfway the first decennium of this millennium. There where some large things going on in my personal life. One of which was getting a job with more time to do other stuff.

Now, I heard of this World of Warcraft-game. One of my best friends (Kemwer/Gunho) was playing it, and I sometimes watched it. I clearly remember him doing something called 'tanking' on a character shaped as a female cow. (He was playing a Tauren female warrior in SFK I later learned).

So, somewhere in my first vacation as 'Teacher', I got myself one of those try-10-days-for-free thingies, and I went to Azeroth.  And I made a dwarf hunter (with a bear-pet called Ursa)....

...and well...  I completely forgot about Civ that week, so at the end, I signed up for the real deal (including The Burning Crusade), and made a Blood Elf Paladin on the server Ghostlands called Gowron.

Now this was way before the Zulaman-patch, so yes, I did it uphill in the snow.  No mount till level 40, and the level 60 mount was still pretty expensive. I actually got that mount on lvl64 (with the quest).

I levelled quite slowly, looking at current levelling-speeds.  I remember hitting level 70 somewhere late august, that's around 5 months. I met a lot of people, was in a guild, co-founded another guild (retribution) and killed Prince somewhere end december/beginning januar.

After a little break I joined a guild Gunho was playing in, called XII. And well...  most of the first 100 posts on this blog are about XII. I became Maintankadin, Raidleader, Recruiting-officer and DKP-officer....  which ofcourse was too much.

I had a nice time in XII, even meeting up with the GM who lived in slovenia or something. At the beginning of 2009 I had some problems IRL and with some in XII. So I tried out for Blood and Tears, then the best guild on Ghostland, and they accepted me. BaT and me didn't click though. I left, and played a little around on the server Khadgar with a druid called Mardah.

Although I returned for a short while to XII, doing some stuff in Ulduar and Sarth3D, I actually think I had enough of hardcore-raiding. And when the culling happened, well, I went on to do other stuff.

I levelled Mardah some more, and brought her to Argent Dawn to join Gunho, who was playing there. Not much happened. Somewhere on this blog there are probably more stories. In Januar 2010 another thing happened, Single Abstract Noun.

SAN was formed by Tam, to make a guild for bloggers, and readers, and everyone else. We had a lot of fun those months, now remember this was the ICC-summer. ICC was the Endraid for almost a year, so people got bored, and SAN was exactly what most of us needed. In the end we even did some raids in SAN, but with the start of Cataclysm, SAN was empty.

When Cata started, I started with Gowron, now also on Argent Dawn and in SAN. I reached level 85 fairly quickly, but I disliked (and still do for prot) the Holy Power system. So, instead of getting Gowron raid-ready, I turned to Mardah...  but what would I do if she hits 85?

The answer came in the raiding-community Gunho was in. I already saw some raids in ICC over his shoulder, and well, any guild that keeps him in for over a year, is probably a good one. So an application was fired at the Inno-site, and I was accepted as Boomkin.

And I liked it in Innovation, not the fastest guild, but I had, and still have fun there, some drama sometimes, some hard words, but always solved. And I even went to the guildmeet of Innovation this year, which was hosted by the healing-officer Kris.

And here I am now... well almost... considering that I am writing this in the home of Kris, where I have been the last 6 weeks....

....the road goes ever, ever on....  but watch out for little fury bears.

Time to prepare...

One week till patch 5.0, a month till new expansion...  I am not prepared.

I do have a notion of how to spec....  but not yet sure about rotations. And where to put all those new spells?  Maybe time to redo my UI? I have been playing with this UI for 2 years now.

I should probably find some stuff about reputations, and which I should work on first, you now, the regular things you do before an expansion, but well...  I have been a little distracted the last few weeks..  well a little, call it a lot, something to do with falling in love and stuff.

And for those who don't know, well, she is sort of on the picture below  :p.  Being not in my own country, but with my laptop, we signed up for sunday's raid. Innovation was on Ultraxion-heroic.  And I promptly died the first try because of lag, and some 'how-did-this-al-go-again?'-confusion. Some lag-wipe later, we downed him, and went on to Blackhorn.

Now, Blackhorn was not beaten yet on heroic, but apparantly in our vacation they did try it. So, just having a bad Ultraxion-experience, our fearless leader Eva said: 'We'll give Blackhorn Heroic one try, so everyone experiences what is going on, and then move on to normal.'

...well...  apparantly one try was all we needed, going 5/8 Heroic now.

On another note, some guildmembers of mine have posted a sort-of what-did-I-do-in-WoW on our guildpage, maybe I should do that...although I may have to spend three posts about it  :p

Mardah, Blessed Defender of Nordrassil

So...  after the trainingsession, we took 3 or 4 pokes at Heroic Morchok before he fell down, and nobody took a screenie  :(, which is probably a little hard, because, and I quote our GM, one was in Stormwind and the other in Ironforge....

But, I actually wanted to tell you another story.... about my road to a legendary...which probably completes around patch 5.2 orso.

Be warned, spoilers ahead.

I am telling this by pictures...yada yada, says more then a thousand words, yada..badoom..

Here we are killing of Volcanus, so I can get my branch of Nordrassil. As you can, maybe, see through al the clutter, I am a big Treant with lots of aggro. Yes, tanking boss in tree-form, how cool is that. I still miss the ol' Tree-form, so this was very nice.

Also, you can see my UI nicely, although I have no idea why Healbot is active, normally it is not. I have enough information flying around already.

After you have gotten the branch, you get a 2 hour title, and flowers at your feet, damn hippy-trees.... oh, and see that hatchling, it dances the moonkindance when you target it with /dance, very funny.

After flying to the Amber Ledge to talk to Kalecgos, which by the way, I had to find out on the interwebs, because the quest-text was not that clear, Tarecgosa transported me towards the Nexus. Some story about her being the prime-candidate to follow up Maelcgos, who we killed ages ago it seems. But.....

...she had to be captured. With me lying besides her in the snow, luckily Kalecgos showed up to safe me and infuse me with the essence of the now-almost-dead Tarecgosa, and he asked me to find 1000 cinders in the Firelands...great....

And after those 1000 cinders, I have to collect more stuff, so, probably 15 more clears of FL needed I guess....  well... at least I am exalted with the Avengers of Hyjal now.

Laters

Training-camp?

What's this, what are those people doing in the Hills of Feralas?

Some of us went on a secret mission, to prepare for Heroics.... apparantly, Moonkins are good stomp-soakers...

Mardah, Destroyer's End

Two pulls it took sunday, two pulls after 5 wipes last tuesday....  and the first time we got past platform 4... and we did it, we cleared Dragon Soul pre-nerf, surprising our GuildLeader who was expecting some evening full of wipes....

What remains are the pictures.....

.   

But (apart from T7 which was EZ-mode mostly) this is the first time I cleared a raiding-tier before it ended, or it was nerfed.....  Ok it is on normal, but that's what we were aiming for. Time for Heroic DS.... I don't know, we'll see...

I am just a very happy Tsjikin now.

Random thoughts before the raid....

So, It's now raid-start-time, and I have no idea If I am going to be picked. I know we killed 'lower' DragonSoul last Thursday because I was there, so Ultraxion is next.

Before me I see some of my guildies (I am sitting on the keg). One of our druid-healers (kris), and our DK-tank Morrie. Cisse is sitting besides me, both in flight form btw.

Our OP-almost legendary-wearing-dragonrogue is swearing at our forums, probably they ate his post. And we are al just waiting for the pickups. Calendar shows 15 sign-ins.... blaagh, so no 25...again,we could really use some extra people (hint, hint).

Ah, some people seem to be in DS now, with 17 people online....  still waiting to see what happens. Although normally speaking, I was there last thursday, so I probably be...ooh..invite, last one in it seems.

So, time to get my pre-raid-black coffee, and get my zen-thing going to start, laters  :)

Innovation : LFM

So... my guild Innovation has a little problem, which is summed up by SWTOR or Skyrim or UFO, or something....  not enough people sign up anymore :(

That means we usually have around 17 people signing in for our 25's.... which of course is not enough.

So, if you are a healer (preferably not a druid), or a ranged DPS (again, preferably not a druid), and you like some less-hardcore, more relaxed raiding focused on 25-normal... well...

visit:  the Innovation Web Site

And to give some idea's what we have been doing lately with some 10man normals:

After 17 wipes, on the last pull of 2011

..and after the first raidweek in 2012 (only 3 wipes to our surprise).

Some things to consider. We may accept more druids, but alas, we have a lot of them.... same goes a little bit for Melee and Tanks, although a Tankadin (the irony, considering my past  :p) may be considered.

Oh, and somewhere in the vacation-weeks, we did a little raid to Firelands, and one-shotted Staghelm Heroic??? No idea how that happened though....  too much christmas-stuffing probably...

Happy 2012

Happy new year everyone....

To many ideas in my head, I probably should just hit publish on some of them.

Things running around:

1. Tell something about my luck in LFR's considering gear...NOT
2. Make a non-WoW-related post about Twillight Imperium
3. I am playing Orcs & Humans atm   :)
4. Tell something about Innovation...
   - Last pull of 2011 (number 18), and Blackhorn down.
   - Second (?) Boss-pull of 2012, Staghelm-Heroic down.
   - Innovation is looking for ranged DPS (non-druid), because skyrim/swtor has claimed a lot of people, and we have problems getting 25 together  :(


laters...