A loss of momentum
I was really looking forward to posting about raid progress for my raid, but I am afraid we took a good few steps back since I last posted about raiding. It’s been rough to deal with, but I guess as raid leader you have to learn how to deal and keep on moving.
We pushed to get to Mimiron again last raid, but as we didn’t down Thorim on the first day due to lack of time, we didn’t have enough time to tackle Mimiron on the 2nd day. On top of that, I was there on my death knight, as DPS, and all the tank drops that never happened before were raining down on the guild. We did four bosses on day 2, Razorscale, Ignis, Thorim and Freya. Four bosses, four tank drops. Two pieces went to an offspec-tank, the MH went to a tank from another guild who had filled in to help us out, and the trinket went to our main tank who after the raid informed me that she was going to gquit. I kinda deflated, because losing a tank is a huge deal in DotH. Another tank had just faction-transferred out, and that leaves a big gaping hole for our Ulduar progression.
I extended the raid ID, had a full roster for Mimiron attempts, with an excellent lineup. But our second tank from outside the guild was sick, one of the healers dropped out, one of the DPS didn’t show. We tried to fill the raid, to no avail, and so yesterday I had to call a raid completely, for the first time ever since Zul’Aman. It’s likely going to be like this for a while. All I can do is to just keep on organizing raids, hope we can eventually get another tank to fill the second slot, and tank my heart out.
On a more positive note, Naissa transferred her priest to Bronzebeard and she’s been filling a healer spot in our last raid, for her first real visit to Ulduar. It was pretty exciting to show her how cool Ulduar is, I am not tired of that raid yet. 
I am pretty much done gearing Kadomi up with Emblems of Conquest, that didn’t take very long. At the moment I run the heroic daily every day that I can squeeze it in, for my 2 Emblems of Triumph. My new shoulders are 14 days away, I can do it! I already spent 35 of them on my new spiffy ring.
As I usually fill in as DPS instead of healer these days when I am not tanking, my DK is now next in the gearing up process. Combined with that, I am still working on making frost dual-wielding DPS work for me. I like the spec, I enjoy the playstyle, and I feel it requires a lot more skill to make it work, compared to the ‘set in stone’ rotation of a Blood DK. On trash my results are very mixed, without Rime procs I feel pretty gimp compared to blood. Thanks to the Heart Strike nerf in 3.2.2, this will soon no longer be the case, as blood will no longer be so OP on trash pulls. I did a full Naxx clear with my guild and kept switching back and forth between blood and frost. Patchwerk saw me at 4595 DPS, which I think you could call successful. My eyes are shining at the thought of what I’ll be able to do with some T8 gear on instead of my T7, and with a better off-hand than my blue Ebon Blade sword. Exciting.
I’ve been in quite a few guilds now since I started playing WoW (3 years or so now) and I’ve seen this happen quite a lot, it sucks but unfortunately no guild is safe from it
On a more positive note I have seen quite a few guilds survive such problems. There seems to be more raiders around nowadays anyway.
I hope things get better for you *hugs*
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Updates =-.
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My first experience with Ulduar was pretty awesome. I was a little worried that I would seriously noob it up but it went well and it was fun and I’m looking forward to doing it again. Really looking forward to killing Mimiron.
With a group as awesome as the one I saw, I have no doubt that the loss of momentum is only temporary.
I so need to start buying emblem stuff on my priest…. But I’m so distracted by my DK. <.<
.-= Naissa´s last blog ..That Gear Thing … Again. =-.
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“On trash my results are very mixed, without Rime procs I feel pretty gimp compared to blood. Thanks to the Heart Strike nerf in 3.2.2, this will soon no longer be the case, as blood will no longer be so OP on trash pulls.”
Um you might want to re-look at those specs. DW Frost is significantly higher trash dps than Blood 2h. Blood 2h’s “nerf” is actualy negligable for trash as it only affects the bonus damage on the 2nd target of the cleave and not blood boil or DnD.
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Kadomi Reply:
September 14th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
As blood, I have never used BB and DnD on pulls with less than 5 mobs. I was able to provide much better DPS using my single target rotation with added Pestilence, due to the Cleave.
I am pretty sure frost DW DPS has significantly higher trash DPS than Blood, but I have yet to figure out HOW it has that. So far I have used IT/PS, Pestilence, Howling Blast, Obliterate and Frost Strike until HB is back up. Still, this is lower DPS for me than Blood 2H.
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Gornek Reply:
September 15th, 2009 at 12:30 am
I had the same AE threat problem with frost (bladestorm I curse you!) until I switched to the single disease tanking.
You need:
Glyph of Howling Blast (applies Frost Fever with Howling Blast)
Open with DnD, then Howling Blast, then Blood Boil.
Red Runes go to Blood Boil,
Blue + Green to Obliterate or Howling Blast
You could also open with HB, then Blood Boil x2 and Obliterate for more single-target threat.
Open for further suggestions, though
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On your tank problems – don’t get too down about it! These things happen to all of us every so often. Our guild is over four years old now, and I’ve been an officer for nearly three years of that – we had our eighth or ninth tank crisis last month and they all seem like the end of the world at the time.
Hang in there – the tide will turn…
.-= Everblue´s last blog ..PTR latest =-.
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I assume you are talking about Frost DPS here, which is actually fairly simple.
Single Target:
IT-PS-BS-BS-OB-FS Spam(total RP dump) – OB (Spam) – Rinse/Repeat
Aoe:
IT-PS-Pest-BS-HB – FS Dump – OB/HB (as runes and CD allow) Rinse repeat. Basically swap OB for HB as and when possible.
my 2 cents on the other issue:-
As a guild leader/officer I would worry less about the tank leaving and more about reason he/she left. The root needs to be attacked first.
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