Monday update, just a bit late
As I was busy with RL things, my usual Monday update went missing. Which isn’t so bad, as I don’t have that much stuff to post about.
My personal progress is very slim. I can say that without having set foot in any level 80 instance, I am pretty close to hitting the magic 540, so it’s really not as hard to reach as some said. I am only sitting at 537 defense, 21.3k health unbuffed, 20.5k armor, but I haven’t got a single enchantment, and most of my sockets so far have stamina gems in them. I’m still working on the Loremaster of Northrend achievement, and am really getting there. I completed Sholazar Basin on Saturday and Storm Peaks on Monday, so all that’s left are 140 quests in Icecrown and 130 quests in Borean Tundra. One thing this loremaster attempt surely causes is that it’s making me rich. I spent 7k gold last week to buy Artisan Riding, epic flyer and cold-weather flying for my shaman, and since then I have already gone up 5k gold again because gold is just so easy to come by while questing.
Warrior-tanking still feels a bit too powerful for me. I ran normal Gundrak in a group of mostly 80s, was #2 on DPS again, setting a new personal record of 1.1k DPS, and there were times that I had mindboggling values like 3.5k TPS displayed in Omen, on some trash pulls. I would be pissed if I was a druid. The other half is a feral druid and doesn’t do TPS on trash like that. If tanking classes are to be homogenized, we should all be equally strong on multi-mob tanking. Here’s to hoping for a druid Swipe buff.
I have been very inspired by a lot of postings I have seen at Tankspot, regarding Impale/Deep Wounds builds, and I think I might give that a shot as well. Raid results where Deep Wounds did the same damage as Revenge did sound pretty fabulous. It’s the new cookie cutter spec, so I might as well try it. Who wouldn’t want to do more damage? 
I’m currently a bit frustrated and unhappy. Being a member of a casual guild isn’t as easy as it might seem. I recently did a poll to find out how interested everyone is in raiding, and the overwhelming response was that people want to raid, but are in no hurry. That’s cool, I am in no hurry either. Our most ‘hardcore’ member just gquit to join our partner guild, and I felt her app over there was full of disses hinted at our guild, and so was her farewell posting, in a very unpleasant passive-aggressive manner. I don’t mind people leaving, we’re not for everyone, but at least try to be nice about it.
We have eight level 80s atm. Of those eight, two of them run heroics every day and have gone to Naxxramas with other guilds. The rest of them are mostly questing solo-style, skilling up in professions and seem to have no desire to set up instance runs. Me, I am halfway inbetween. I am setting up runs, have done all instances up to Halls of Stone now. But I am still running instances with the druid/shaman combo first, so I have yet to set a warrior foot into heroics or any level 80 instance. I really can’t form a new raiding team if people don’t have their own initiative and drive to gear up, but if we don’t start raiding soon, we will lose those who are getting bored with us. Don’t know how to fix really. I am probably overthinking it, and things might change a lot after Christmas. I think the ease of soloing in WotLK is biting us in the ass. If you can complete whole zones without requiring any groups, the leveling/questing phase has turned into a big single-player game. I did Storm Peaks all by myself, all 100 quests of the achievement, without any outside help.
Maybe it’s just that I am not used to being on top of my game, because in TBC, the other half and I were the ones who were running instances and heroics every day while the rest of the guild wasn’t. Then again, in TBC we were also the ones who actively helped getting other people there, so we could start raiding.
I was thinking of setting a start date of when we would like to start raiding, maybe that would change things a bit, but I don’t know if that would work for sure. I tell you, being casual raid leader has quite the emo-potential. 
WTB patience of a saint to just relax and have fun and not feel like I am millions of lightyears behind everyone else. Taking longer to get there just means less boredom inbetween waiting for future patches.
Gotta say I am loving the changes, but not looking forward to the end game. Why are my feelings so torn? I made a rather long blog post about it today and would like to get your feedback on it:
http://hudshideout.com/blog/?p=1515
I know I should play what I like but I just do not know if I can handle the crappy stress at end game
Hudson´s last blog post..You know Hudson, that angry blogger? He’s back…
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Deep Wounds Spec is my current experiment in progress, which I wrote about today. I suggest you give it a shot, as I’m having a pretty good time with it.
Yakra´s last blog post..Deep Wounds
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hello! well my old guild was casually mixed between hardcore folks who wanted to progress asap, and ppl who just enjoyed quests & alts. Our poor RL had to take a few weeks off the game from all the stress of trying to keep everyone happy. I concluded that it wasnt possible to keep everyone happy; players either had to put up with it or leave. As for our lovely RL… I dont know how she’s doing, havent seen her online for a while. I’m very curious.
Well, you couldnt expect me not to comment on an epeen competition between warriors & druids, could you??? hehe, I wouldnt worry the warrior is too powerful, seems pretty even with other tanks to me. I’ve never had any issues with aoe threat in 5mans. Druids tend to do a ton of damage too – in post-nerf sunwell, I was around 8 in total damage, the pallies were 12/13, and the warrior was 18th
We all had similar gear. Who knows eh?
However, Blizzard have since admitted a bug in mangle – our big hitter – so our damage to mangle will go down 16% in the next patch. But, just these last days, they buffed swipe’s threat by 50%. They were quick to do it – the tone was almost like they didnt care about aoe threat getting too high at least atm.
Make sure your friend uses the glyph of maul, and always hit maul for every swing in infinite rage situations (I have it macroed). Hit beserk every 3 minutes without fail, unless you’re gonna need it for something specific. Play around with swipe and lacerate stacks and see what you like.
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I feel your pain. My guild has 12 80s now. 4 of them are tanks. Due to work schedule and other things (I have my daughter on alternate weekends and I don’t like to play all day while I have her) I haven’t been playing a lot. The other tanks have been running heroics quite a bit and most of the other 80s all have 80 or more emblems of heroism at this point. I have 0. The only 80 instance I’ve run is regular UP. They are doing Naxx this weekend for the first time and I won’t be there as my class and role is already represented. Oh well. Gives me time to level a new baby rogue I just started (inscription is ludicrous by the way. Insanely easy to skill-up and it brings in more money than I know what to do with).
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admin Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
That does sound familiar indeed. Let’s keep up the good spirit then, orc warriors shall prevail!
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I do think you may be over thinking it a little bit. <3
I think things will pick up after the holidays, right now many of our raiders are still levelling, and 8 people at 80 is not a lot to run instances with a casual guild like us. Most of the time when I’m online, there aren’t enough people to run a 5-man at 80, and if there are, we don’t have the right composition – so the alternative is to PUG right now, which a few people have been doing, or work on grinding rep and professions or levelling alts (which is what I’ve been doing for the most part). Once we have more 80s this problem is likely to go away.
So, cheer up!
We’ve had slow times like this before and always managed to pull through. We’ve been pretty successful in raiding 10 mans in BC thanks mainly to the efforts of Q and yourself, despite our late start, and I’m confident WotLK will be even better for us raid-wise, we just have to give our raiders some time to get ready. 
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Nagna Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
What Cariad said! For me personally, December is always a bad month for gaming and progression – I just have too much stuff to do, and WoW tends to get left at the bottom of the list. (I’m also heading off to visit family and will be computerless until after the new year.)
And yeah, when I have been online, there hasn’t been the right mix of classes to run an instance and I hatehatehate to PUG, so I’m not as likely to want to instance when I have time to play. I’m sure the progression will come as the rest of us level up and gear up. After the holidays, though.
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I am in a guild that is now fairly hardcore raiding. However I am one of the few players who are considered casual.
I must admit I would love to join them on their naxx runs etc but don’t feel like committing the time or mental energy required to do so.
Have run 2 heroics so far and look forward to doing more. Figure I will gear up slowly.
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Raiding is a strange thing indeed. When I leveled up, my girlfriend and I joined a mid-progression raiding guild with 3 raids a week. While this guild wasn’t very high in progression it was one of the biggest and most known guilds on horde side. I remember how we talked about having a guild must be fun and how we then can group up easily for 5 mans but how annoying it must be to have raiding nights where we’d have to decide one day before if we want to raid or not. But this guild was huge so we thought we could just somehow disappear in this huge crowd.
Now, 1 and a half year later every week without our fix of raiding 3-4 times a week is strange.
drug´s last blog post..WoW + Epic Mouse = Win
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Our casual guild is also trying to figure out when to start raiding. We recently decided to dedicate to scheduled 5-player runs at least once a week, both in order to give people an opportunity for group play, and to encourage guild cohesion (since in the face of easy soloing, we all drifted off on our own paths).
The other thing that we decided was that we would start raiding sometime in January with as many people that we had in whatever condition they came in. Reports are in from everywhere that the entry encounters in Naxx and elsewhere are pretty easy. Thus, even in our undergeared and undermanned raids, we think we can at least put up a good fight and maybe get a lucky boss kill. Archavon, the Wintergrasp boss, seems like an especially good target for that sort of raid, so you folks may similarly consider some “practice” raids in order to transition from soloing back into raiding.
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I hope it makes you feel better to know that RL things affect all of us. I’ve got so much on my schedule that I’m not even level 72 yet. At times I feel like I’m being left behind but I’m sure it will pass.
Recently I’ve been tweaking my interface. I managed to get Pitbull and Eavesdrop working – thanks for the recommendation!
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I haven’t commented on anything since Wrath came out, I’ve been so busy between raiding full time again and working full time. We killed Sarth + 3 drakes on 25 just this past week so things are slowed down to 2 nights of raiding basically so I finally have time to level an alt and actually read the quests and pay attention to the lore! I’m very excited about this lol.
Deep Wounds is very nice =D Definitely check it out.
I wouldn’t worry about your guildies lack of interest in doing the 10 mans. They are probably just still enjoying the game, leveling professions, doing the quests, etc. There should be a point soon enough where they will get tired of this and want to experience the 10 man raids. I mean there’s alot of content to experience and enjoy by yourself…I’m just doing it backwards, since things have slowed down now I can finally go back and enjoy all of the stuff I missed in the rush to level.
The new raid encounters are “easy” I suppose. I would attribute this to how well known the Naxx boss strats are combined with how very well tuned the raids are because of the extensive beta testing. They seem to be less dependent on gear, with a few exceptions.
Either way just take your time, have fun, and when you get 10 people together I’m sure you all will do really well in 10 mans =D.
Keep up the good work here!
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admin Reply:
December 19th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Those are very encouraging, inspiring words, thanks a bunch.
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I’d echo the comments to revisit the idea of waiting until the holidays are over. Even some Sunwell guilds are taking a break from raiding until then.
Don’t worry that tanks are OP. With decent gear, you’ll need that TPS buffer you have now. My ‘hardcore casual’ guild (raids 2 nights a week, only has Sarth+1) is seeing our top 6-8 raiders at or near 4k with the top dpser (pre-nerf huntards unite) maintaining 5k raidlong. Tanks are back at the bottom of the dps charts now even on 5-man heroics due to gear/stat scaling. Fortunately haven’t had any agro problems to deal with as our tanks are good and dpsers aren’t idiots, and really, threat is less of an issue in LK period.
Also, I didn’t see the comments above, but I’m sure you know by now that swipe is indeed getting a buff even though I haven’t had any problems with our bear tanks in raids or heroics for aoe threat.
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