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....

LFR wiping and learning, Durumu

Eyes shut...finally. It took about 7 tries.

It's not that hard a fight in theory. run around with beams, drop purple stuff on outside, kill some adds...  but then the disintegration beam goes of, and the dark floor is covered with a darkish purply stuff which paths in it that are safe...a maze...

Now if the maze would have been clear...like green on grey with paths in it, no problem, but the current color-combination makes it really hard to see where to go. So instead of doing a relaxing LFR, you get a frustrating experience where you stare so hard at the screen that your eyes go sore....  and of course, one mis-step is certain doom.

No, I am not looking forward to doing this boss  to many times....

On the bright side...  elite Protectors went down without a glitch..well..not counting the 22 dead people, and we saved Tsulong...where I did more healing on the boss then damage....tonight Horridon is again on the menu...or we hope, because until now, we were on his menu.

To epic gem, or not to epic gem...

So, with the 5.3 PTR starting...tri-specs..really? I demand quatro-specs for druids. And Innovation downing empress at last, and now progressing through Terrace (Tsulong 2%....) and Throne,I was ;forced' to look at weapons, and mostly what the epic gem does to sha-touched stuff.

You see, at our empress-kill, two sha-touched spellpowerdaggers dropped. And I didn't even bid, because I thought it would be a small upgrade over my twice-upgraded Tsulong-staff, and with LFR-wings opening up I thought the 502-weapons probably would be better, and there are a lot around.

So, let's look at the gem...500 Intellect, which means 584 spellpower and 0,23% crit (raidbuffed ofc). I am not sure why we still have Intellect, it seems nothing more then spellpower with some crit attached to it.. why not just call it spellpower and be done with it?

Ok, 0,23% crit, at first I didn't take this with me while making spreadsheets..but I calculated the extra crit from intellect on my current weapon..which was more than 400... (1667 intellect-->461 critrating)

Also..while making this spreadsheet, I found out what I already secretly knew...  Staves are not good. As good as every one-hand/off-hand combination I looked at, was about 165 intellect better than a staff...what a surprise....

I looked at the sha-dagger and all the LFR's one-handers, taking into consideration the different offhands. And not to my surprise... the best current option is from Lei Shi, both the 1H and the OH, the mace actually has more intellect then standard 502-stuff.

But, because Lei Shi will note be available for  more weeks, and I also wanted to look at normal (522) weapons, I choose a more logical combi.

From Durumu (opening tomorrow) a dagger drops with crit and spirit. This one seems to be the best before last bosses, and my suggestion is always use a bonusroll on Durumu. Besides the weapon, he also drop a haste/crit back, spirit/crit shoes, and a spirit/crit ring... all with gem-slots!!

Ok, numbers:

496-Kritak has a massive 8204 spellpower, and 360 spirit and 615 crit, for a total of 975 statpoints.
502-Durumu has 8219 spellpower, and 356 spirit and 476 crit, for a total of 832 statpoints.
and for fun:
522-Durumu has 9871 spellpower, and 438 spirit and 574 crit, for a total of 1013 statpoints.

So, normal Kritak beats LFR-Durumu for around 140 statpoints. Now the question is, do I want to pay 10k for a new epic gem, is that 10k worth 140 orso statpoints?

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).]

Too busy to write??

Almost 5 months, oh my, time does sometimes goes fast. So, well, my last post was on the 18th of september. Innovation just killed Deathwing Heroic, that seems ages ago...

It's not that I haven't been playing, but between work, being in love and lots of stuff to do IN WoW, I actually did the latter. It's either playing or writing about WoW, although I am currently between LFR's with Verulani...  who?

Oh yeah, that's the first time that name comes around. Verulani is my Shaman, formerly known as Mariandel, and she is doing LFR's as my prime-alt. Yus, still raiding as boomer with Innovation, but my altism isn't gone.

And that's one of the things post aren't that forthcoming now, there is so much to do in-game. Raiding, levelling, dailies, LFR, more dailies, pet-battles.....well...more dailies.

Since the the start of Pandaria, I levelled 6 characters to 90. First was my hunter-gatherer, followed by my paladin and then Verulani. Around the last two I already had some of the inccrease-reputation-thingies, so that helped for Verulani.

After those 4 alliance, I gradually levelled ye ole Gowron, to look at the Horde-side, including the invasion-dailies....  and let me spoil something, if Garrosh is not going, the current Horde will break apart..so..  yes, methinks Garrosh will be history soon enough.

After Gowron, I noticed the huge amount of lockboxes I had accumulated on the alliance-side, and now my rogue is also level 90. Currently being levelled is my priest as disco through dungeons...not that fast though...and I also have a monk-mistweaver somewhere.

Monks...  I don't know, I tried low-level tanking, and healing, but didn't like it that much. SO my dorf-monk is now doing nothing...  my dorf-mage has a future again...with a bit of luck, Class Act will happen again...although Innovation already has Class-Act, a journey back to kill the minions of the Lich King seems in order now.

So...  enough to write about after 5 months. Pet battles, raiding, oh and 5.2..and much more, just some quick thoughts.

You don't have to do dailies, I figured out very quick that doing all available dailies will make you mad, and to be honest, I don't think I have been VP-capped in ages... well, by accident maybe.

Pet battles are very addictive, it reminds me of civilization's 'one-more-turn-syndrome', being 'one-more-pet' now. And I do have a lot now, even that achievement-plant-thingie.

Transmog...  yes I transmog, and although the new rules considering weapons are nice, it also is a shame. Just yesterday I went with Verulani into a BG to get some honorpoints because I had a new LFR-mace but no fitting mace to transmog to. In 5.2 I will just transmog it into an Axe....

Innovation and raiding; Innovation is not a hardcore-guild, so we have been happily progressing through the normals. Elegon held us up for about a month methinks, and that honour now seems to lie with Garalon, who is crushing us to death (although we already had a 7% wipe).

Is this slow, probably yes, but Innovation is a 25-man guild, and that can be a problem...the amount of times we had raids with less then 25 the last 4 months is huge, I think about 70% at least, and that is holding us back the most methinks. And what is most strange is that there aren't that many 25-man guilds on Argent Dawn (europe). So there should be more people wanting to raid 25's then the just maybe 100 currently in those few guilds...

Well... next reset MSV will be taken of the roster by Innovation, and we will be starting to look at the Terrace...which I very much like. The Terrace that is, not that gloomy as the other raids, just some open skies, and some sunlight...

Cataclysm End

Last raiding day of the year,

and we got it down,

on twenty-five.

Cataclysm ends now,

next up..well..

Druid with Dragonform... finally.

It took me more then a year, but today I finally got it.

That journey is over.

Thanks to all the people in Innovation, 

who still came to Firelands-Saturday.