Get Me Two

tip of the tongue

2009-11-27T18:51:00.000-08:00

just a taste of the glory!

Goodbye GM2!

2008-02-14T08:10:00.001-08:00

-Grommet

Men play women?....Melime?

2007-11-30T12:52:00.001-08:00

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001369.php

Thought this was interesting

Obs

Ironic sign

2007-11-27T08:43:00.000-08:00

I came across this at a business type office building.

The other side of +hit

2007-11-21T12:30:00.001-08:00

There has been a lot of talk in the forums and among guild members about hit rating, what each class needs, and how to gear for it. It seems like i've been preaching about hit rating for as long as we've been running Kara, so, it may come as a shock to hear angelo talking about decreasing your hit rating for certain situations.. but that's what this post is all about.

A lot of us have been getting new gear with + hit on the item and replacing pieces of gear that are still really good, but just have a different set of stats. For boss fights, the trick is to figure out which pieces of gear will get you to your hit cap and also keep your other stats has high as possible. This can be tricky when you're weighing the pros and cons of several pieces of gear that go in different item slot. But, that's not what this post is about. This post is all about encounters where +hit is worthless, and equipping gear with the least amount of +hit and the most of +nuke.

The most obvious example of when hit is worthless is when we're fighting any piece of trash. For me, i need 202 to max out my hit on a 73+ boss, but only ~60 to max out on a lvl 72 elite trash. Therefore, if i'm fighting trash in my leet +hit pieces and not in my +nuke set, i'm holding back the raid. Trash isn't all too important, since for the most part they go down quick and easy.. but there are some tough trash pulls where all out nuking is helpful.

Other examples of when +hit isn't all too important are boss fights like the one we had last night in ZA. For AOErs +hit is as desirable as congealed duck butter on breakfast toast... same with illhoof. Before entering a fight, you should ask yourself what is most important for your role in the fight.. if it's taking care of adds, sport your nuke clothes.

In closing. I'd recommend everyone get an addon called 'wardrobe'. This addon allows you to easily create sets of gear for any situation. +fire resist set, pvp set, nuke set, boss set are the sets i currently use. It makes switching between as easy as selecting the set name, the addon does the rest.

1 down *Edit.. make that 2

2007-11-16T00:25:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. Get Me Two Blog

2007-11-15T12:20:00.000-08:00

Thanks for killing the blog, Melime.
I don't care how sweet your tits are. You're a douchebag.

GM2 Forums

2007-11-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

It's already been pushed off the top, so if you HAVEN'T been to:

getmetwo.guildomatic.com

and made a new forums account, DO SO NOW! And for the love of god use your main's name as your account name to make it easier on me auth'ing people.

It will make discussions alot easier.

EDIT: also if you'd signed up but couldnt see all the forums, I have auth'd everybody who's signed up so far, so you should be able to now.

Updating Addons

2007-11-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

Great idea by Angelo. Get your addons downloaded now.

http://patch.curse.com/

I'm going to download Omen as a threat meter. Please consider doing the same if you're in the process of updating other addons.

And, if you voted for "/guildkick Grommet" please remember that you can re-cast your vote at anytime. Voting to kick Grommet is like voting for Ralph Nader...it might feel satisfying, but it ain't gonna happen.

dentarg down

2007-11-13T13:54:00.001-08:00

it's 5 or 6 pm server time and dentarg is still down (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/) hopefully it will be up soon, so we can start getting ready for ZA.

If you're looking for something to do in the meantime, i highly recommend downloading the addon updates for 2.3. here is a link to all the new 2.3 addon updates on curse: http://patch.curse.com/

More trips down memory lane ...

2007-11-13T13:02:00.001-08:00

Can be found here. I miss you, feral Nathaniel.

Want a real forum?

2007-11-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

I hope I'm not stepping on toes, but I've taken the liberty of setting up an actual forums for guild use. I'd like everyone to play with it for a little bit and see what they think.

getmetwo.guildomatic.com

So go there, sign up for an account, I'll get the permissions set up as I go along (at first I'll have to add everyone manually to the guild roster, so there's some initial setup) but after that everything should be working fine.

To start out you wont be able to see much, but I'll log on at least a couple times a day to update permissions and then you'll be able to see and post in all the forums.

EDIT: I did it because with the way things are now, as we talk more, important posts on the front page get pushed off the bottom. This will be a way of preventing that from happening, and also separating raid related chat and general chat.

I just think it's a better interface since this is meant to be a blog. By all means if you hate it tell me, but I'd like everyone to at least give it a shot.

Massacre at Honor Hold

2007-11-12T21:28:00.001-08:00

The streets ran red with blood...

Grats to Trog for tanking the entire town.

ZA is a little pussy

2007-11-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

This is what I think of Zul'aman.

One From the Vault

2007-11-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

As we all look ahead to 2.3 and the new adventures that await in Zul'aman, I think we could all benefit from a look back. Here's a classic from the archives of a bold (if not foolish) set of young adventurers who were proving their leetness at an early age. Prepare to be amazed....

Fuck Faces on top of ZA, in T minus 24

2007-11-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

the title says it all.. we'll be at the gates of ZA in just about a day. Jutah should be ready to rock at around the usual time. i anticipate a greater than average turnout of guidlies for the night, so i'd like to get an idea of who anticipates being available to roll. please post your availability.

we only have 10 spots, which are likely to get filled up and some people may be on the sidelines. if you're new to the guild, this will most likely be you, since long time raiders will be given priority.. but that doesn't mean you won't have a shot if somebody has to step out or isn't able to show. anyway, i'd like to try and sort this out ahead of time, to avoid any issues.

"ZA doesn't fuck for free."

2007-11-09T20:03:00.000-08:00

I'm so glad this was said before I chimed in. A couple of people have been asking me to type something out about this whole ZA fiasco before it starts ever since I stopped writing my long winded inspirational posts, and now that we have a date and Tuesday is fast approaching, it's about time that I do.

I REALLY think by the way people are chatting that the consensus is that ZA will be free lootz and I've heard that some raid guild downed the whole thing in 2.5 hours or something like that. There's something that needs to be said about these guilds before you go thinking this is cake.

The guilds doing this are HIGH END raid guilds. These guys have cleared or are on BT. The reason WHY they're on the PTR beating the shit out of these instances is because its the ONLY content they haven't seen. These guys are over geared, and they're fucking GOOD at what they do. They don't make the same mistake twice, and they know the strategies. They are clearing it because their world ranking will depend on how fast they can clear it. So they get all the practice they can so that the second the PTR goes live, they have it cleared THAT day.

Zul Aman will not fuck for free. Let's put bosses in perspective: Prince is a tank and spank boss. We move around occasionally for dead spots (no different that lots of bosses, the dead spots just look different). But ultimately he's tank and spank. Prince has roughly 1.1 million hps.

The FIRST two bosses of ZA have 1.3 and 1.7 million hit points.

They will NOT be easy. Look how long the prince fight is, now add another few hundred thousand hit points. Now also figure that the bosses are doing MORE damage that whole time. and they have goofy phase transitions with more complicated phases.

People are going to need to get their shit together. Look how many raid guilds on our server are stalled on SSC. They've done the gruul and such but get stuck on the first bosses of SSC.

I've done the first bosses, they're EASY by comparison to the other ones. ZA IS as hard as SSC. I've looked at the loot. The healing helm drop is almost identical to my SSC one, minus some stats, but it adds some slots. So they are going to be just as hard to kill.

What this means is no more goofy specs and you're going to need to get your crap together. It's going to be back to consumables. Spec for what you're doing.

I personally will NOT go in healing as ret spec anymore. It's just plain fucking stupid. I do it in kara because it's a joke and I'm over geared. If I'm healing, I'm going to spec healing for that night. It has to be done. This goes for everyone.

Blues need to be replaced. If you're not in mostly purps or rocking at least a +1200ish heal AT THE VERY LEAST, you are a lead weight. This wont be something we can afford to take a couple of weak people into just because we're short. We simply don't have the spare raid slots.

That said, we CAN'T stop kara runs. While ALOT of people have all the gear or are only missing 1-2 pieces, we are in a position where we still need to gear up the other players. Kann and Tigo are still kickin it with Essence Focusers and Crystal pulse shields. They NEED a real healing mace and shield. And let's not even look at the rest of Tigo's gear. I single them out only because the healing mace was the first thing that popped into my head. I know other people are in a possibly similar situation.

(although I'll admit im pretty fucking impressed that with that PoS mace Kann has a +1600 heal, thats fucking impressive dude, now add +150 healing for the difference between your mace and a shard of the virtuous :) You'll be more than fine without it for now though, dont think i meant the mace thing like that)

Going to the ilhoof and netherspite: if something needs to be done, targeting chains or jumping in beams, there's no fucking around. You make the macros you need to make. You use them. You jump in fucking beams, you use the banish cube when it says, you jump in the fucking water when it sprays or whatever the hell is this bosses flavor of the week.

Because truthfully, if it comes down to it, the people that are willing to do this and DO do it are not going to want to take the people that don't. And it will really fucking suck to have to create an A team that goes to ZA and B team that gears up in kara just because a few people don't get their shit together.

On that note, on the attempts, I'm going to start recording fights again. So we'll know if you're fucking up :) DON'T. At least, don't do it repeatedly. Everyone makes mistakes and I accept that, but if you fuck up consistently, expect myself and everyone else to tell you. The stats will be public for everyone to peruse and berate others for their stupid mistakes. This goes for my mistakes too. Nobody is exempt.

That said, I'm fucking excited. Since I started running kara with you guys theres really only been the odd piece of gear here and there that I've needed and most of the stuff i've picked up is just my optional gear on side sets. I'm looking forward to real gear. And I'm excited because I know we're good enough to get it.

Wow, I swore a lot less writing this out than I did in my head when I said this to myself... Also, I would appreciate if you left a comment on your thoughts about this, because I get the idea that I'm on the same page as a lot of people, but that they weren't really willing to say it out loud just yet. I've said it now, so this is your chance to tell everyone if you agree :)

Coming soon...

2007-11-08T11:23:00.000-08:00

An official announcement was made that patch 2.3 will be released next Tuesday. The following Tuesday, arena season 2 will end and the new season will start. This brings new opportunity to the guild as patch 2.3 introduces some new content to explore.

The major topic I'd like to mention is that of the new 10-man instance. Zul'aman is on a tier 4 and above level and will be a challenge. I'm looking forward to the attempts and progress that we can make. It's a chance to show ourselves and others what GM2 can do.

Patch 2.3 also adds new Badge of Justice awards. Karazhan now has a possible 20 badges per run. Zul'aman also has a 20 badges per run maximum. Each boss looks to be dropping 1-2 badges. This means that Kara isn't something that I'd like to drop. After all, ZA only has 6 bosses and has been cleared in around 2.5 hours.

I'm aware that Grommet suggested that we not read up on the new instance and attempt the place without prior knowledge. I must admit that I've developed a habit of reading everything and watching every video out there. So, I guess I shut my mouth and sit back and see how things go. I've always thought that even with strategies and videos, most guilds wipe a few times before actually pulling off a kill.

So, please comment on this topic and let us know how you feel about the new content. Let us know what you think about the time we should put in clearing Kara and also attempting ZA. Some of us are enjoying the one raid night a week concept. Maybe ZA is an after Karazhan place that we should attempt later in the night after GFA dissapears. With a little under a week left, let's hear it.

To end on one last note, I quote Angelo, "ZA doesn't fuck for free."

Obs

This Week

2007-11-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to give you dudes the heads up that I'm out pretty much all week. Mad gfa last night and tonight, possible hockey game tomorrow night, poker tourney on thursday, and Tucson over the weekend. But good luck in kara or whatever. Kaynark and I had fun clearing strangledangle of allies the other day. I recommend that if you're bored.

Also, congrats to Jutah for getting the King's Defender. Sorry I missed out on that. I look forward to seeing it in action (and enchanted).

G

They got hella stam irl

2007-11-02T21:44:00.001-07:00

Grats to Jim and K on the most epic arena match ever.

If you look closely you can see that K is about to break 900k dmg.

The @ post, in case you'd like to contribute:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2720562913&postId=27656880531&sid=1#2

Kara Day Three

2007-11-02T02:19:00.000-07:00

Bosses/events left:
Chess
Netherspite
Illhoof
Nightbane
Prince

post when your available again!

I'm available pretty much any night, but it'll be after I install wow on my step brother's computer at my dad's house in Tennessee. So uh, friday is a maybe but sat-sun is fine, especially if you let me know a time.

Kara day 2

2007-10-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

Everyone post when they are available for day 2, in case you didnt know, day 1 downed moroes and maiden with Holytrogdor tanking (and doing a good job too).

Also I wiped us, again :D

Get Me Two...Titties!!

2007-10-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised that one of us didn't think of this first, but this guild Fusion on Turylon is having chicks send in pics of their titties with signs saying they love Fusion. Pretty funny stuff:

http://www.fusion-guild.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=29

I can only hope that someday, chicks will send in pics of their titties while professing their bare-breasted love for GM2, and will feel honored.

Breaking the silence...

2007-10-29T15:01:00.001-07:00

If anyone still reads this, please post when you can make it to Kara this week. I'm getting antsy to get back in there and clear the place again.

I can be on any night this week. I prefer tomorrow (Tuesday) as the day but it depends on when our main tank can get on.

Obs

The Aftermath

2007-10-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

So we did it. We cleared all of Kara in one night. One 'wipe' on chess and a few close calls brought on by Relapse. I'm filled with a sense of pride. Isn't that stupid? I'm not exaggerating either. I'm actually proud of what we've done.

I think there are a few reasons why we were able to run through the whole thing last night. First and foremost, we had all of our players focused and relatively undistracted (except for Angelo during the Prince fight). Given the focus we had fewer wipes, fewer calls for breaks, and faster pulls. It was great.

The second reason things went so well was that by virtue of our growing guild we didn't have to spend all night waiting for people to jump on. Sadly, while our growth has addressed one issue it also brings new baggage. With only 10 spots open we had beloved guildies sitting on the sidelines waiting for a chance to jump in. I hope everyone will be patient as we try to adapt to our new circumstances. Keep in mind that GM2 was built on the concept of good times and fairness. We'll all do everything we can to make our group work.

-Jutah

Nice Work

2007-10-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to give a hearty "well done" to the elite GM2 crew (and Altimate friends) on the full Kara clear last night. I think the total time was around 4.5 hours, which is totally impressive considering our classic wipe on Chess and a few "lapses" in judgment. Once we start skipping Attuman and Maiden, I think we'll be done in under 4 hours. We need to start thinking of other things to do during the week. I think a celebratory noobz cruize is in order.

New week, new Kara...

2007-10-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

Please post when Kara can go down this week. I'm up for any night but was hoping for tonight to be a possibility. I know Melime and Kay will be on.

Also, any comments on the idea of starting with Opera if we don't have need for the first 3 bosses will help. I know Angelo wants Attuneman and some of the new members want stuff off of them. Also, Mel really wants that enchant off of Moroes.

I'm looking forward to my one night to be aggro free of the wife when playing WoW. Let's make it count and have a solid run.

Obs

More Blizzard-aided WoW on TV

2007-10-23T09:10:00.001-07:00

Taaaaaaaaaacoma

2007-10-22T17:48:00.001-07:00

I think we're all contractually obligated to go buy this truck:

Kara Day 3

2007-10-22T15:59:00.001-07:00

I skipped class tonight, so if you wanna try netherspite again, im down<3

Netherspite

2007-10-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the assignment chart we were referencing last night:

We can do this fight. Just takes coordination and communication.

-Jutah

Kara Day 2

2007-10-20T12:58:00.001-07:00

From the looks of it, day 2 will be either tomorrow or Monday night? I am free anytime Sunday, and Monday night. How is everyone else looking? Does Sunday night seem viable?

Post Your User Interface

2007-10-19T07:44:00.000-07:00

To give you some context this screenshot captures not only my UI, but the faint glimmer of hope that the Sun Eater will drop. Alas, it didn't drop. Shocker.

Kaine Down

2007-10-18T22:29:00.001-07:00

Weekly Fun and Enjoyment

2007-10-18T11:09:00.001-07:00

So Hollow's End is out today and I already spent my five runs of Scarlet Monastery on my warlock. It is quite entertaining to fight the Headless Horseman and see the epic loot he drops. I'm up for grabbing four other guildies on my priest and hitting it up. I've seen the healer ring, caster ring, plate helm, and melee ring drop so I'd like to find out what else he can deal out. The main thing to remember is that they are epic drops, so let's each get our runs in for the day and try to keep it in guild so we can DE the unnecessary crap. Void crystals are nice to stock the guild bank with, or even one's own inventory.

As for Kara, I hope to see the guild get back in and down Illhoof, Prince, Nightbane, and attempt Netherspite. It seems our night two is more difficult to organize. I, myself, can't be on until after the wife is out for the night (I get one unquestionable raid night a week and I spent that one on night 1).

I would like to suggest getting on for heroics. I need some badges and would like to see an exalted bar on my progress screen for once. And Juts, some day the Gods of WoW will allow a Sun Eater to drop...I think. Holytrogdor can tank as well, and I think Seshafi is up to par on it (not prot I'd imagine) but talk to him for a tank if needed.

Also, if anyone spots the 2,3,4,5,and 6 of blessings, let me or Kay know. I'm hunting that deck down for sure, now that I have the epic flyer and dailies to support my lack of control of finances.

I enjoy the group we have and I'm glad the guild leaders have chosen to invite people like they have to the guild. Welcome to all the new guys out there. I hope you enjoy our tight-knit group. Let's keep rolling and looking forward to ZA.

Obs

Zul'aman

2007-10-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Yo GM2,
Angelo and I were talking about how it's sort of lame that new patch content is always spoiled pre release by the test realms, since people are posting everything about it, giving step-by-steps for every boss, quest, etc. and linking all the new items. This takes some of the fun/adventure/excitement out of it all, if you ask me.

So I'm wondering how people feel about NOT reading up on Zul'aman before it comes out, and seeing if we can figure it out ourselves (or at least trying a few times and seeing how it goes). It'd be nice to actually walk into a brand new 10 man with no clue what to expect or how to handle it. This is what these types of games should be about, in my opinion, not simply loading up wowwiki and reading exactly how to do it from someone else. I mean, it's fun downing these bosses in kara, but i think i would feel even better about it if we learned how to do the bosses ourselves, or died valiantly in the attempt...

Just a thought. Comments welcomed.

-G

Jutah

2007-10-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

I'm definately in for tonight. I'm going to bail on work in the next hour or so. I'm GFA-less today so I plan to roll as long as people are willing. Look forward to seeing you all there.

-Juts

Kara going down?!!

2007-10-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've talked to a few people and if possible, let's hit up Kara tonight. I'm hoping Jutah can hop online quick or post on this site to let us know his availability. But Kay, Mel, Trog, and I are good to go tonight for sure. Let's get talking about it with the few hours we have. So, if you read this, please comment and let us know if you're in or out.

I would like to think that if we gave a good 4 (or more) hours, we could accomplish quite a bit.

Obs

Engineering is useful after all

2007-10-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

Gentlemen:
Sort of a crap run tonight. But no worries, we'll down Shade next time. Let's try not to have too many more "" runs. At least we got a check mate.

Check out this sexy stuff that I'll be working toward come 2.3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTp9uYnyGLA&

Finally something more exciting than my purple smoke bombs and rocket boots.

A Few Good Men

2007-10-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

Expect a few new members to GM2 in the coming days if everything goes right. Kimpatsu, best known as the "Rawful, Rawful" shadow priest from our NEC days, joined this weekend. Hopefully he inspires Obscuro to stop being a chump.

Those that ran Kara on Thursday will recognize Seshafi. He comes as part of a package deal with a mage named Chon. Having another guild tank as well as our first mage will definately be a good thing.

We're in a good position to help them gear up quickly given all the kara drops that we've been pasisng on. We should leverage that fact to our advantage as we recruit a few more people. Melime and I were chatting about recruitment and I think he made a great point about recruiting people over gear. Given that we can clear Kara, it's not going to kill us to have an undergeared scrub or two in the mix. So if we're looking ot add a few more, let's grab some cool guys that we can elevate.

-Jutah

Mechanics

2007-10-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

I am going to follow Jutah and Angelo's insightful posts with some mundane, but important, practical issues.

I think Jutah mentioned expanding the guild so that we have less pugs during the raid. I would like to second that motion. We seem to consistently have 1-3 pugs, especially when we begin. I think the recruitment process slows us down a bit as far as our start time, and also leads to a little sloppiness during the actual raid. I'm thinking 1-3 additions, especially a healer and a tank that can do BM. Thoughts?

On a personal note, I have a few rl aggro problems when I stay in kara past 10:30-11:00 pacific time (hence the reason I had to bail last night). I know that a few people share this issue with me, and a few people have the opposite problem (needing to start late). I think if we had a few more guildies, especially those who like to stay on later, we could possibly institute some swap outs to keep the raiding going full steam when some of us need to bail early, and on the other end, we could have enough people to start earlier. The only downside is that some of the swappers would miss some content, but I personally don't mind that. I'm just trying to get in the speed-run mindset here.

Finally, great job on kara last night. Freakin "pro" holytrog was possibly the most entertaining thing I have seen in months.

How Threat Works

2007-10-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Here's some light reading for your workday. I read this a few months back and it really helped me grasp what being a tank was all about. I hope you guys will get some value out of this too:

---------------------------------

Threat should not be looked at as an arcane, mysterious entity that can not be understood or put into real terms. It is based on real and understandable concepts and numbers.

Let's say that 1 Damage is equivalent to 1 Threat. For the purposes of this game, this is the best way to quantify threat, as 1 Damage will produce the equivalent of 1 Threat before any modifiers come into play. The Warrior who is tanking will always want to make sure their threat is at a higher level than the Threat of their party or raid members. Following this, the Warrior can make use of specific abilities which maximize his or her Threat potential. This is done by the intelligent use of abilities, gear, threat-producing talents, and basic positioning in relation to party members.

While 1 Damage is equivalent to 1 Threat, it takes 2 points of Healing to amount to 1 Threat. Also, Threat is only produced by effective healing -- overhealing produces no Threat.

Threat does not decay in combat. It can be reduced through the use of several mechanics such as Knockback. However, under normal circumstances Threat will never decay.

Pulling and Holding Aggro (100/110/130 Rule)
Tank Baseline _______________________ 100%
Melee Range Aggro Gain _______________ 110%
Ranged Aggro Gain ___________________ 130%

The above chart represents the balance of when a player will pull aggro from the tank. To get aggro, a player in melee range must exceed the total threat of the current player with aggro by 10%. If the player is at a range, they would have to produce 30% more threat to fully gain aggro.This has some important implications. First, it gives you breathing room to miss a few attacks and not instantly lose aggro -- that seems to be the purpose of the 10% rule. Second, it means that ranged classes take a heavy risk by moving into melee range with a large amount of threat built up -- the mob will instantly change targets to a ranged target who moves into melee. Third, this means that tank switching can be difficult in some cases.

This is where Taunt comes in. The Warrior Taunt immediately places you at 100% aggro of whoever the highest-Threat player is on the target list for that creature. It also bypasses the 10% rule and does not require you build immediate threat. When tanking, it may be helpful to remember that you can let any player you want build Threat for you on a mob -- all you have to do is Taunt the mob to get everything they worked for and make the mob yours. This is also a good argument for Improved Taunt.

One important note about Threat gained from Taunt is that you will only gain the Threat of the current target of your creature. For instance, a ranged class such as a Mage may have 120% of your accumulated Threat, but due to the 100/110/130 rule has not pulled aggro. You would not receive the Threat bonus from that Mage for using your Taunt prior to him actually being targeted by the creature. If a creature is applying a Secondary or Random-Secondary ability where he temporarily changes targets to someone else -- disregarding his normal Threat table -- you will not gain the Threat of the player he is targeting.

Taunt, as well as Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout, also force your target to attack you through a debuff placed on the creature. This debuff can be helpful when the creature may be in danger of immediately moving to or harming another party or raid member. For instance, some mobs will randomly Intercept nearby players, wiping or diminishing their Threat list. A well-timed Taunt or Mocking Blow can cause a creature that may otherwise not return to you to immediately do so. Challenging Shout can be useful as a six-second buffer for an AOE class to safely damaging several nearby targets at once; it can also be useful in temporarily capturing the attention of one or more creatures that may otherwise kill a nearby player.

Aside from the debuff, Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout are dissimilar to Taunt and will not give you a Threat gain in relation to another player. Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout are six second targetting debuffs; Taunt is three.

Taunt falls under the rules of Spell Resistance. For the purposes of this game, if there are any critical Taunt fights such as the Four Horsemen of Naxxramas, getting 5% Spell Hit will minimize the chance of resists.

This chart shows multipliers to Threat values that affect the amount of Threat players produce.

Ability Multipliers Percent Multiplier
Defensive Stance / Bear Form ________ 130% (1.3) Multiplicative
Defiance / Feral Instinct ____________ 115% (1.15) Multiplicative
Fury / Battle Stance ________________80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Rogue / Cat Form Druid _____________ 71% (0.71) Multiplicative
Blessing of Salvation ________________70% (0.7) Multiplicative
Tranquil Air Totem ________________ 80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Druid (Subtlety) __________________ 80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Priest (Silent Resolve) ______________ 80% (0.8) Multiplicative
Mage (Frost Channelling) ____________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
Mage (Burning Soul) _______________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
Mage (Arcane Subtlety) _____________ 60% (0.6) Multiplicative
Warlock (Destructive Reach) _________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative
Warlock (Imp. Drain Soul) ___________ 90% (0.9) Multiplicative

macros for blacksoul

2007-10-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

yo! here are some of the macros i use on pappas. you'll notice most macros start with /stopcasting. Adding this in will cause you to interrupt any spell that is currently being cast, so it may take some getting used to. The idea behind using /stopcasting is that you can shave off .25 to .5 seconds of cast time due to lag if you use it in conjunction with a castbar like quartz .

You'll also notice that i like to add /use 14 before any dps spell. This causes my trinket to pop as soon as it becomes available. If the trinket is on CD and error message sayin the item isn't ready will display. Adding /script UIErrorsFrame:Clear() to the macro causes this not to display, but you'll still hear the annoying audio. This addon http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/6257/ will get rid of the audio.

Dot macro #1. This macro assumes you have your passive trinket in slot 13 and a trinket you can pop in slot 14. When used, it will pop your trinket and instantly start casting Unstable Affliction. The next time it's used on the same target it will cast Immolate. This is a cast sequence macro, meaning that if you switch targets before you've made it through all the spells in the sequence, you'll start at the beginning of the sequence with the new target and if you switch back to the first target, you'll be right back in the sequence where you left off.

/stopcasting
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/castsequence [nomodifier] reset=target/combat Unstable Affliction,Immolate

Dot macro #2. Similar to dot macro 1, this macro pops your trinket and cast corruption the first time it's used and casts siphon life the next time it's used on the same target. The reason these dots aren't part of dot macro #1 is that they are instant casts which are nice to have on a independent rotation for fights where you have to move a lot.

/stopcasting
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/castsequence [nomodifier] reset=target/combat Corruption,siphon life

Shadow Bolt macro: like the others, pop trinket if available and then cast shadowbolt. this macro really gets a boost when used with quartz.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast shadow bolt

Dark pact/life tap. This will cause you to use Dark Pact if you have an Imp out and will automatically life tap if you don't. If you have an imp out and want to life tap, hold shift and use this macro.

/cast [nomodifier,pet:imp] Dark Pact; Life Tap
/cast [modifier:SHIFT] Life Tap

Drain Life / Soul macro. even if you don't use quartz, stopcasting comes in handy on this macro since usually when you're breaking out drain life or drain soul, you want it to interrupt your current cast if you have one. Normal use will cast drain soul, holding down shift and using will cast drain life.

/stopcasting
/cast [nomodifier] drain soul
/cast [modifier:shift] drain life

Banish Macro to allow you to banish a target and then rebanish the target without having to retarget it. This will allow you to banish moon, switch to skull for dps and then rebanish moon while still targeting skull. It also allows you to cash banish rank 1 if you hold the shift key down.

/stopcasting
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/cast [nomodifier,target=focus,harm] banish
/cast [modifier:shift,target=focus,harm] banish (Rank 1))

Succy macro. Similar to banish, this allows you to easily resedduce without having to retarget.

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]; [target=focus,dead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,help]
/petstay
/petfollow
/cast [pet:succubus,target=focus,exists,harm] Seduction; Seduction

2007-10-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

Yo, Relapse! Here's what I recommend: Get your guy in position at the gates of Karazhan prior to Thursday night. That way when you're done with school you can log in and be ready to come in and melt some faces. I recommend this to all you d-bags. In fact, this should be part of the speed run timing since the summoning process usually takes us a half hour at least. If we could get the pre-kara organization part down to a science we'd all be stoked.

Now if I could just master the Black Morass content...

-Juts

Kara Oct 11 Marathon session

2007-10-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

yo. i wanted to apologize on behalf of jutah for anyone who was confused about the possibility of raiding last night due to the spot on the blog that says 'karazhaz-tuesday.. ' Anyway, his gfa got wind of this blog and found out how bad his gear is for tanking BM. Understandably, she's pretty upset about it. She's been aggro'n him pretty hard, making him take a step away from game play, and instead start researching how to gear up, drop enchants, and up threat. He'll be able to return to the raiding scene this thursday. It sounds like we'll be strap'n in for an epic sesh. so, if you're down for that, be on early.. pack a lunch and plenty of consumables. should be guuuud times.

On a unrelated note, here is a post made by setarcos a few days ago, as a comment under a different post. It's easy to miss, so i thought i'd post it here.

hey guys, just wanted to let you know that my account expires in two days - i've talked to angelo about this and I really want to stay but with homecoming coming up and spending lots of money on band and shit, i don't have the time or money to keep wow going ATM. if my friend decides to renew the account then i'll still be on on the weekdays.

i've really enjoyed playing with you guys, and i hope I've done enough for the guild to redeem myself for all the things you guys have done for me. I'll be back hopefully, maybe in a few weeks or something once i get my grades where I want them and when I get some money back after homecoming...

But for now, thank you all for great times in kara. Wiping again and again on nightbane was one of my fav. experiences since i started up wow again for these 2 months that i've played WOW.

Keep truckin along GM2, you guys are great.

props for putting school, finances, and chasing beaver ahead of wow. I know i couldn't do that if i were in your situation. you're a valuable member of gm2 and we hope you'll return soon.

Thoughts on Kara...

2007-10-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Just to throw out an idea on furthering the Kara experience...

1 - Is it viable to think that if nobody needs the loot off of a boss, we can still kill the boss for gold? We can DE the loot, get the gold drop, and enhance the guild bank.

2 - Tigole stated in Germany that the 10-man instances are extremely popular and that idea will be developed more in Wrath of the Lich King. With us ten being able to kick as much ass as we do, We might only need one or two more additional members to the guild.

3 - Please please please look up and record the loot you need from Kara. Let's touch bases on this so the guild can see what others need as well. This will help when it comes time to down a boss and we know who needs what.

4 - Heroic dungeons are nice. I like primal nethers and I would enjoy the guild's company in taking out a few heroics a week. I think Juts has a shot at the Sun Eater someday, too. I can make both healing and spell dmg spellthreads between my two clothies, btw.

5 - Zul'aman is coming faster than we know. I think by the time it hits, we will be ready for it. Keep in mind that the gear is on a tier 5 level. I would like to think we could pull off a 25 man with Stampede but with how things are, ZA will come just in time.

WTB Pattern: Boots of Blasting

2007-10-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

can everyone keep an eye out on the AH for Pattern: Boots of Blasting? it's a BOE SSC pattern for some BOP regalia. I don't know what it goes for on dentarg, but it's pretty rare. I'll buy it for up to 1k if anyone wants to pick it up if they see it.

thanks,
btbergo

Couldn't Shake Aggro

2007-10-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

Gea. So sorry about missing out on Netherspite last night. I couldn't shake the GFA (or in my case the WA). I'll hope to log on tonight or tomorrow night to rock a new week in Kara. However, the concept of being bored worries me a bit. No sense in running kara if you're not having a good time. After and above all, that's what GM2 is all about. I, for one, have been having a great time with the content. I take satisfaction from the ease with which we blow through night 1 and the challenges of night 2. I'm hoping we can establish a speed run time to benchmark against this week for Attumen to Curator/Shade. Here are my thoughts on what will make for a good speed run:

Zero Wipes
No Dropouts/Replacements
Few Mana Breaks
Quick Transitions From Boss Fights Back To Trash (Speed Looting)
Hot DPS

Given we can pull that off, anyone got an estimate no how quickly we can clear through Curator? What about Shade?

-Jutah

This week.

2007-10-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

Sup ya'll. Any plans for kara this week? I'm probably good for tonight (taking a stab at netherspite), and a couple nights during the week. I'm sure I'll have some gfa throughout, but could probably do 2 nights here or there. I'd like to kill netherspite, and at least be able to say that we've completely cleared kara. that would be something.

As far as gear goes, I'm pretty much just looking for Legacy, and either the big bad wolf sniper rifle or the sunfury bow from prince. I would happily take other hunter drops (there are some decent ones from illhoof, netherspite, nightbane, etc.), but I'm not as excited about those. Legacy is really my #1 at this point. There isn't much left for me from day 1 of kara.

I'm looking forward to zul'aman, because i'm getting sort of bored with wow in general. I just got my last heroic reward (bloodlust brooch) and besides our raids, there isn't much for me to do now. I suppose I could level up my fishing skill, but yawn.

I still have a bunch of group quests in my log, so maybe some of us could clear those out and get some easy g.

Of course, there is always arena, which I haven't gotten too involved with so far. We have a 5v5 team that could use some attention.

..and then there was one...

2007-10-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

One boss left. One freaking boss left as we watched GM2 one-shot wonder Nightbane. I guess I'm still getting off my high from receiving the Nath Mindblade and Nightbane off-hand. Congratulations to those that also received loot. Trog, I'm looking forward to you one day having solid tanking gear so we will be able to avoid slashing our wrists on this tank forsaken server. That shield will drop again.

So, it looks like Saturday is the night that Netherspite goes down. And then, Kara is posted as "farm status" and GM2's nature of speed running instances comes into play. I would like to think that our "A" team could clear up to Prince in 3 hours.

The test realm for patch 2.3 is being talked about so the next 2-3 months are filled with Zul'aman testing. We'll be ready on day one to step up to tier 5 raiding.

With that in mind, I'd like to encourage discussion of what specific items each guild member needs. I'm getting close with my priest and might consider getting my warlock in there for some dps fun. Im really envious of Angelo. With the guild getting down to specific requirements on gear, we can open up a little more to non-guildies and possibly recruitment. I personally enjoy the 10 of us that are the main placeholders but that's to be left open to the rest of you peeps.

Also of note, the guild bank is supposedly prospering. Next patch, there will be an official guild bank. So, let's find out how we can serve some of the guildies with the bank and maybe get some enchants or gold out to peeps. Whatever works, be it that the bank is for purchasing required pots or flasks.

Keep up the progress. Let's keep in mind also that we are to enjoy the runs and not be focused solely on loot. I have fond memories of Kara with events like: 9 manning opera, Kaynark's acquisition of the Belt of Blasting for Angelo, and Setarcos turning into a non-stop typing machine when he is nervous about parent aggro.

Let's get some comments going and have some fun.

Obs

Moving Forward

2007-10-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

Last night we saw some great GM2 highlights with the Kara run. Loot was a little odd, being that most of it went to auxiliary purposes. We watched Angelo's dps sky rocket due to Kaynark's acquisition of the coveted belt of blasting. Opera was rushed into and cleared with nine of us (thank you Setarcos, bandage ftw). So, now let's move on to our second push. When are we available to do it?

I can't tonight but Any night for the rest of the week is possible for me. I want to see Curator, Shade, Chess, and Prince go down.

New week...new Kara?

2007-10-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, it was a good week in Kara and we're seeing progress. We've also seen the guild grow a little as we have picked up another shadow priest. Welcome Relapse. I'm just trying to jump ahead a little and see when we can plan on hitting Kara this week. I've had to deal with some wife aggro and getting a day down would help a lot. I'm open any night so speak up and let's find out when Juts can tank and when the healers can match that time.

Prince dead, Nightbane still annoying

2007-10-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Here's the stats for tonight:

Prince:
Prince Kill #2

Nightbane:
Attempt 1
Attempt 2
Attempt 3
Attempt 4
Attempt 5

Nightbane

2007-10-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

First here are a few tips i picked up from imho on the charred earth. We had one group stand on one side of Nightbane and the other group on the other side, this way USUALLY each side only has to deal with one charred earth, also the groups all stood on top of one person that way we don't have weird charred earths popping up, because they appear under people, not randomly.

Obviously we did pretty well without that strategy, but if you want to make it easier, do that.
I was reading up on this fight and apparently there IS a rain of bones debuff on one person (i know someone said this already but there was doubt as no one noticed it). So the best strategy is for everyone to go to the tank then run away from the guy being affected by rain of bones. Towards where the ranged dps/healers stand (assuming we dont split the groups up like i suggested). Make sure the rain of bones guy gets heals, then focus fire skeletons down, perhaps by letting the Main Tank pick one and everyone assist him. They drop really fast like this and its no problem getting them down before Nightane lands.

Don't heal if possible for the last 10 seconds of the air phase because thats when nightbane starts after his aggro wipe, the misdirect should help but i suggest people pop their healthstones if they need a heal in those last 10 seconds. Do any aggro reducers you can when he lands and let Jutah get sufficient aggro before wailing on Nightbane, like people were saying, we can last a long time in this fight so we don't have to DPS him fast.

Also undead if you have nightbane targeted so you can see him casting bellowing roar (fear) so just hit will of the forsaken if your not out of range. (I'm usually not out of range due to mind flay being relatively short range compared to my other spells).

One other thought is letting kaynark (if hes in group) be second on aggro so if jutah dies he goes straight to kaynark.

Oh and nice job one shotting prince today, imo.

notes on prince

2007-09-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

good times last night on prince even though we didn't down him.. I liked the fact that we were able to run through it and observe the fight a number of times and learn from our mistakes. Hopefully next time i can be on vent for the action.

seems like the biggest thing is making it through phase 2. Jim has some good points on his last post about this. Seems to me, all healing should be on jutah on phase 2 and nobody else... from what i can see, no ranged dps should ever need healing until phase 3 .. and even then, the axes don't hit too hard.

anyway, the main reason for my post is to talk about infernal placement, and a few things we can do. We saw a lot of infernal placements last night, and i don't think any of them were impossible. Here are a few tips based on what i learned and observations:

make sure you have your camera angle zoomed out as far as possible to give you the widest angle of view.
run to X (angelo). as soon as you know enfeeble is going to pop, run to x. Don't run past X, that is just wasting time. I make sure i stand at far enough distance so that you'll be ok where I am.
if it looks like melee is going to be trapped by an infernal, don't wait until enfeeble to see if you can make it out. Run to X, if you don't take any damage, you know you have a safe path, otherwise wait until jutah repositions him. it's better to miss some dps time because you ran out while you were at full health, than be trapped and face certain deathl.
hang on the edge of the AOE. as X, i always like to find the edge and hang there, i've yet to see 2 AOE rings overlap, so hanging on the edge of 1 makes it pretty likely that you'll be ok if one lands on the other side.

The Prince

2007-09-30T09:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a quote from wowwiki about Phase 2:

"Depending on your tank, a badly timed Thrash can take out more than 12k hp within a second. Healers need to keep the tank topped off, and at least one healer should constantly have a large heal ready to keep your tank above 12k at all times. As he has weapons, he also gains the ability to parry incoming attacks from the front. A Thrash followed by a parry can lead to over 20,000 damage done in under 2 seconds."

Phase 2 ends when prince is at 30%.

I think there were three things that killed us last night, all of which we conquered at some point. I have no doubt that next time will conquer all three in the same fight to win.

Phase 2

I think out of our 5-7 fights last night, we were able to push through phase 2 at least twice (I remember prince being at 19% once and 20 something% another time.) I would like Melime's healing suggestions on getting that out-of-phase-2 success percentage up. I think we might need to take wowwki's advice and have one healer dedicated to spamming their big heal in phase 2 regardless of what Jutah's health is. I know it will lead to a lot of overhealing, but I don't think we had any mana problems and I think it is necessary. I can't really think of another solution... Otherwise, we have to rely on luck, or the off chance that I can sneak a nature's swiftness and a big heal in before jutah goes down.

I swear though, there were times when we would have Jutah topped off and he died so quickly, I didn't realize wtf happened.

By the way, when we one shotted Prince last time, I think jutah popped his shield wall at the right time and negated the healing concerns of phase 2. I know the CD on that is very long, but if Jutah has it up, phase 2 will be much easier.

DPS Deaths

I don't think this is much of a problem anymore with everybody succesfully following angelo and kaynark out of the blast zone. I think we would have beat Prince those two times that we healed out of phase 2 if we had all of our dps up. Great job everyone on this part... Grommet, your infernal calls were hot.

Fing Infernal Falling on Jutah's Head

I don't think I really need to explain this one, but it happened at least once and it is just unlucky.

Congrats to everyone for figuring this fight out. With a little tweaking on the healing side and continued coordination from DPS, Prince is going down.

Jim

You win some, you lose some

2007-09-30T00:57:00.001-07:00

Here is the breakdown of each Prince attempt. Have a look at them and see what you may or may not be doing wrong. It's the only way we'll improve.

Attempt 1
Attempt 2
Attempt 3
Attempt 4
Attempt 5
Attempt 6
Attempt 7

If you want my observations on things let me know. But I don't want to come off heavy handed.

Downing Prince...

2007-09-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

I want Prince dead. We one shot him two weeks ago and we have some days here to put together a time to do it again. Tonight is risky for me being that I have the LSAT tomorrow morning (yes Grommet, I want to go to law school). Saturday or Sunday night would work for me I think. Let's get this guy down so we can move on to Netherspite and Nightbane.

random comedy

2007-09-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

grommet as a female orc

Downing Shade

2007-09-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

I think we'll be really glad we got all the way to Shade last night. Porting up there and jumping straight into the pulls before Prince is going to be freaking sweet. I echo what Grommsie has already written. All in all a great night.

The post that Melime made last night on the site is epic. At this point the fun of the game is going to be tuning our group to get the most out of each of our toons. To me this is really exciting. Doing speed runs through Shadow Labs might sound retarded (and it is), but it's a lot of fun. Perhaps one day soon we can put together some speed runs in Kara. To get there we'll all need to make tweeks here and there to get better as a group.

Speaking of Melime, we've got to stop these non-GM2s from stealing of T4 lewts...

-Jutah

Marathon Sesh

2007-09-27T09:16:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all who stuck it out for our mini marathon last night (especially those of you on server time). We knocked out:

Attuman (one healer was afk)
Moroes (with limited CC)
Maiden (with a mispull and down a man)
Wizard of Oz (first time for nearly everyone)
Curator (9 man)
Shade
Chess Event

All considering our user interfaces were jacked, Angelo was on a pos laptop with no addons or macros, Jimcarter was on the phone the entire night, and other members were laggy or surly. Pretty impressive considering everything that went wrong -- we still managed to kick some serious ace. Looking forward to wrapping this joint up and smoking it.

SW on steroids

2007-09-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

http://wowwebstats.com/ezb4zdtdama43 (this link will only work for 2 weeks since I'm not hosting it)

This is the breakdown for our shade fight. I don't post these as some sort of cockwaving competition (even though I did top the healing charts!) and I didn't record all our fights because we haven't been having problems on bosses which means we probably don't need to tune anything as far as Kara is concerned. WWS is a tool.

But to the point. SW stats will tell you some quick facts, but this breaks down EVERYTHING. You'll notice that you can easily pull up the damage done/in and heals as charts, but if you click on a characters name, you will see how much damage EACH attack form did.

So you may ask yourself: Why do I need to know that Grommet's Cat's melee attack did 29% of his overall damage with an 18% crit rate and missed 15.5% of the time and had 0.1% of that mitigated?

The answer is tuning. If you can see what you're doing wrong or what works you'll be able to improve. Not only that but this will give you the ability to see what others are doing right that you may be doing wrong. I've found that looking at what others that share you class are doing better than you is the easiest and fastest way to improve. You'll notice this more in 25 mans when you have more class duplication, but for the rogues which we had 2 of last night it might help.

As a simple act of comparison, let's compare myself and HolyTrogdor. He's about 10% lower on heals than me. No big deal, I'm slightly better geared too, so that will affect things (but shh... I'm also retribution spec'd). But you'll also notice that his overheal is a good 10% higher than mine. If click on each of us you'll notice that holy light (big slow heal, high HPS) accounts for roughly 50% of my healing, and flash of light (small fast heal, lowHPS) the other half. But if you click on trog, you'll see that holy light accounts for almost 70%. This could explain the overheal. Perhaps by the time he goes to heal someone, I've already thrown a flash of light or a chain heal's hit the target.

I used the above case specifically because I don't want to rag on anyone for what they're doing wrong I and specifically told Trog when healing as a paladin to not worry about overheal and just spam away since with decent gear you have practically unlimited mana. So he did what I told him to do if anything. So the above case is a moot point. But I just wanted to show you how the tool can be used.

That being said, if I start recording fights and such and I see that it's being used for dick waving or bitching about people and what they're doing wrong and how they suck so bad, I'm just going to stop posting it. Or at least, I'll keep posting it, but I wont tell you guys the link :)

Kara Availability

2007-09-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

I'll start this process. Sunday would be bad for me, but any other day would be fine as long as I had a day of notice. Maybe Monday makes the most sense, since that has seemed to work in the past for our guild. I assume we only really need one more night for Illhoof, Prince, and Nether.

Well done last night.

Jimcarter

Hit Rating

2007-09-24T17:18:00.001-07:00

Hey all,
Good times as usual in Kara. We definitely have the first 5 bosses down. Don't worry Angelo, you'll be there next time the gloves drop from Attuman! Big Bad Wolf was comedy as usual, but we all did well running (game ball goes to Jutah for getting the hood 3 times in a row and nearly surviving them all). So despite an off week, we still did ok. Maybe tonight we could knock out Shade for fun.

So below is a link to a good article about hit rating (for hunters at least). Basically, you should all figure out what hit rating you need to have in order to never miss a boss. For me, it's 142 hit given my class and weapon skill, which after I re-gem today, I should have. Apparently until you've maxed out hit, there is no more important stat for dps (not ap, not crit, not agi, etc). So check out this link, go scan your class boards and then start stacking the hit gems if you need to, because no hit, no crit.

http://www.tkasomething.com/hitrating.php

-Groms

EDIT: Angelo threatened me for stealing his thunder about hit rating. He inspired this post, but was too lazy to do it himself (his hands are also covered with blisters. True story!). So talk to Angelo about your hit rating. He helped me out a lot and now I got it figured out. I still don't think I ever miss though...

Oh where art thou Medikade?

2007-09-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hey guys I just wanted to let everyone know whats been going on and whats going to be going on with me for the next while. Recently I really haven't been on because of wow burn out. It happens to me every so often and I think I'm just starting to get over this latest attack I guess you could call it :D. The problem is I am currently in the middle of a move from St. George to Las Vegas and I am also going to be taking a break/vacation in Northern Utah for awhile before I head out to Vegas. So that pretty much means I won't be playing any wow during that time since I do not have a laptop. Hopefully when I do move out to Vegas they will have Internet ready wherever I do end up living so I can get back on and such. I did find out that Holytrog respecced to Holy so that should help some with the healing void. It has been fun the last bit with you gents and I wish you luck in your future WoW endeavors.

Medikade

Sunday Night

2007-09-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm logging on tonight and hoping to find a few of you on. I should be on by 8:30 MST/7:30 PST. I'm ready to charge all the way to curator.

-Jutah

Twink Team

2007-09-22T00:37:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a lvl 29 rogue twink and would love some company in Warsong Gulch. I think it would be a rockin time to have 5-10 guildies in a given match plus vent. Tyyler? Stigmatic? Origammer? Level up and get in here. Also, there are some great lvl 28 items you can get using honor and wsg tokens. Check them out before you plan your twink gear.

- Sandyrock

P.S. For those of you who would like to join and don't already have alts, we could use a hunter and a healer.

Update

2007-09-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the bad communication this week. A number of us have been offline the last few days (Angelo and I had some intense gfa and life crises, and Jutah had a rash that needed immediate medical attention). But don't worry GM2, all is well, and Jutah can now sit down comfortably, so he'll be back to his peerless tanking in no time.

But I'm hoping that we resume pounding Kara next week, or maybe even knocking out a few bosses at the end of this week. I wouldn't mind seeing some gloves for Angelo drop from Attuman (pity him, there are very few things he truly wants in life or kara but these gloves are an exception).

I'm hoping to be online Sunday night and sporadically until then.

Later,
G

What's Happening?

2007-09-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, just haven't seen some of you for a while and was wondering what's going on. I guess I'm anxious to get back in Kara and clear it again. So, let's hear some planning and see if it's possible.

Obs

Of Wipes and Men...

2007-09-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

So Netherspite. What a biatch. Here's a video that a few of us like best. Give it a ganders and post your thoughts. I for one plan to make a few macros to help ease the communication burden while we're in the fight. Hopefully we can minimize the chatter on vent and keep things organized. Seemed a like a doable fight and I'm looking forward to our next shot.

It also might be good to add a new entry to the GM2 Lexicon. We have 'GFA', 'BFQ', 'Chums Up' and 'I'm reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal skeptical', but we might need a new term to help us blow off some steam after a wipe. Something that says, "F! I'm pissed we wiped, but I'm having a good time". I can only hope that our Poet Laureate, Angelopappas, is up to the task.

-Jutah

Last Night

2007-09-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

Personally, I really enjoyed last night. Even though we didn't take down nether, we improved quite a bit over the night. I am quite excited to engage him again next week. Good work everyone.

A note on frustration

2007-09-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

I've been told you're on your third week of Karazhan. I mention this because the other night we rolled in and 1 shot prince. Frankly that's extremely impressive and it's a rate of first kills thats simply impossible to maintain now matter how good the group is. Truthfully, this week the run was as fast as any guild that farms it with almost every boss other than the 2 optionals going down in 1 shot (and some rather hilarious attempts on the big bad wolf).

What happened tonight was part of raiding. It sucks, it's frustrating, and it's the only reason why raid guilds break up. If all fights were easy, everyone would be in Black Temple rolling around in plum coloured gear. It's the reason why Altimate (my guild) stopped raiding. We had slowed to a crawl and things weren't dying fast enough. I'll throw out an example for you though.

At the rate you were going (we'll say 3 bosses a week, that's rounding down by alot) look at how far you'd be: Gruul and mag would be down in 1 week (3 bosses with maulgar), SSC cleared in 2 weeks, Eye clear in roughly 1 week. If you look at that, you'd be rolling in mount hyjal in 1 month. It's simply not possible no matter who's playing. It's not a slight against you by any means.

I don't say this to disappoint you. On the contrary, I say it because one of the most exciting things I've ever done in this game is bashed up against a single boss for WEEKS straight, and then finally watched his death throws. It's a thrill and a half (downing Hydross is THE SINGLE most exciting thing I've done in the since the expansion came out by far). But of course, the other half of that coin is the slamming into that boss full force and coming out with nothing but a repair bill. It's something I've come to accept, and you'll never see me bail because after 5 attempts a boss still isn't dead. I'm the first to join the raid, and last to leave.

Of course I would love nothing more than to down every boss on the first try. But it's not going to happen. I can only say that if you stick with it, you'll be rewarded not only with phat purpz, but the smug sense of accomplishment that goes along with killing someone who was sitting in a room minding their own business. And in all seriousness, you guys are doing a fantastic job.

(update: Ilhoof dead and Netherspite will definitely go down soon, grats) :)

Terestian Illhoof - In Theory

2007-09-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

Part of the GM2 tradition has always been to do more than just kill a boss however he may go down, or be happy with clearing an instance even if it's sloppy. One of the things that a lot of us pride ourselves in is efficiency, mastering boss fights and instance speed runs. Juts has done a great job learning the pulls and we've all done well on clearing out most of Kara in a timely manner.

At this point, the one fight that seems to be tough for us is Illhoof (leaving prince out, since we haven't done that one much). He's optional, and not worth grinding if it's going to lead to a bunch of frustration after a bunch of wipes. But, I really think we can get him down to easy mode status like we've done with a lot of the other bosses, and start 1-shot farming him for his loots.

Last time, Melime mentioned that we were not taking the chains down fast enough. I'd have to agree 100% on that. I was ready with my macros, but I hadn't done enough research to determine what my most optimal spell to cast would be.. so, my /cast spell wasn't the best one for the occasion. The demon chains have roughly 13000 hit points. To dps that down efficiently as a group, everyone should cast their most efficient attack(s) so that the group dps exceeds 13k in the least amount of time. If we had all day, we could analyze the fully buffed dps of each of our spells and the cast time, and determine what each party member should cast.. but that wouldn't be practical at all. So, how can we improve our cast selections to something better than just guessing at what will work best? Eavesdrop should do the trick.

Eavesdrop is a nice lil addon that allows you to easily track the dps of each attack that you've done. It will allow to quickly see the normal and crit damage that each of your attacks puts out while fully buffed in kara. 2.1k to 2.4k in damage is what you should aim to hit in the fastest way possible. This is the amount of damage that will be needed if a dps class is chained, and will be more than ample if a healer is chained. Once you have an idea of the time attacks you'll use and the time it will take you to do 2.1k in damage, we can take the cast time of all the attacks and compare them, coming up with an estimated time that it will take to dps the chains.

By knowing how long it will take us to down the chains our raid is suddenly very empowered. Once we have our estimated time for dps'n down the chains, we can also calculate the estimated amount of chain damage that will be delivered and act accordingly. Since any heals directed to the party member in the chains actually heal Illhoof as well, optimizing our healing during this time will be as important as optimizing our dps.

Without any shadow resistance, a party member will take 1.5k shadow damage per second from the chains. We have 3 seconds from the time that Illhoof targets a party member until the time the chains appear. During that 3 second window, the party member to be chained should look at their health and pop an HS or super healing pot if they aren't at 100%. Healers should assist by popping an instant heal (if possible). Once the chains are up, healers should heal based on who is in the chains and how much life they have. If they have ample life (3 to 4k more than the estimated amount of chain dps) heals should be delayed (or not given at all) until the end of the chains and perhaps a heal should be cast that has a longer cast time, so that it won't complete until the member is out of the chains.

Here's how I see a typical sacrifice going. Let's say Illhoof targets Skitzokiller. If Skitz isn't at full health when he gets targeted he pops his HS/Healt pot. In this example let's assume our dps could get the chains down in 6 seconds. That means Skitz is going to sustain 9k (12 x 1.5k) damage while he's chained. Our healers know that he only has 8.7k hit points so they will have to heal him. Heals are cast to keep him up, but not to top him off to 100% health. If Kaynark or angelo are in the chains, healers make sure they're top'd off more since they'll be coming out of the chains with a high probability of imp or kil'reck aggro.

Note in my Inbox

2007-09-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

Got a message today from one of the old New Enemy Conquest guys (Kimpatsu). There had been talk about 4 months ago of forming a guild with their group of friends, but it never happened. Kimp's note basically asked if there would be room for the following players in GM2. Here they are:

They are aware that their profiles have been posted here so please keep any comments above the belt. Lets make sure that if even if they don't get invites to the guild, they will still be cool w/ GM2.

-Jutah

The Day After and the Way Forward

2007-09-13T16:17:00.001-07:00

Week 3 in Karazhan and the Prince is down. I really didn't think we'd stand a chance, so bravo GM2. It's been a lot of fun getting to know everyone and especially experiencing the success we've had to this point. I wonder if I'll think you're all ask cool after our 10th wipe on the first pull of Zul'Aman. That remains to be seen.

What isn't in doubt is that we've got a good thing going in our little guild. Most of us have had a chance to be in other guilds and by virtue of that experience we can appreciate what makes GM2 a fun guild to be in. I had a chance to chat w/ Angelo today about the keys to a successful raid run. We decided that their are three elements that the real life players bring to bear that has a tremendous effect on the overall success of a guild.

Communication - Whether through this website, on vent, or in-game chat we do pretty well at communicating. We need to make sure we keep things positive after a wipe since we're probably not going to one-shot every boss in the game.
Preparation - Props to everyone that has watched the videos posted on the sight prior to the fight. Props to everyone that has gotten their enchants. Props to those that bring their own pots and consumables to the raids. There is room for improvement here, but I think we do better than 90% of the guilds out there.
Patience - This goes back to a point made in under communication. We've got to remember that we're going to go through rough patches. At those times it will be key for everyone give each other the benefit of the doubt....even when Grommet backs into another group of elites.

Those three attributes aren't the easiest things for a group of 10 strangers to pull off. Add the fact that we're all relatively young men and it's even more of a feat. Now that we know we can clear Kara when we hit rough patches it will be even more frustrating. Wiping on Attumen will probably drive some to /gquit, but it shouldn't. We've got a good thing going and I hope it will last. As for the future, there are a few friends of the Utah guys that might join GM2. I'd be interested to hear the guild's thoughts on continuing to grow GM2. Do we want to stay an exclusive 10-man raiding guild or as the kara content gets easier and easier do we consider the 25 man stuff? I'm of the opinion that if we go for the 25 man stuff we do it the GM2 way..adding cool players, helping them get up to snuff, and taking down the content through communication, preparation, and patience. Let me know what you think.

-Jutah

Prince: 1 buckshot to the face, no casualties

2007-09-13T00:27:00.000-07:00

great job all. everyone was prepared, we kept our cool, and sweet lady luck was on our side. not bad for day 2 of week 3.

-paps

OH GOD STOP YELLING! A guide to normalizing vent

2007-09-12T19:18:00.000-07:00

People talking too quiet pissing you off? Deafened from some jerk on the other end with mic levels jacked up to 11 screaming in your ear? I was too!

Here's how you can fix it!

1. Crack open vent. Click on the "Setup" button.
2. Under the "Voice" tab, check off the checkbox under "Output Device" that says "Use DirectSound"
3. Once it's checked, push the little "SFX" button beside it
4. Under the "Sound Effects" radio button, add the "Compressor" option to your list of sound effects in use. It should move it over to the "current" side.
5. Select "compressor" from the list, and then push the "properties" button and a new box pops up.

Use the following settings:
Gain: 15 (this is basically your volume, mines 15, but i know people that have it at -15, play with it)
Attack: 0.01 (all the way left)
Release: 498
Threshold: -30
Ratio: 100
Pre-delay: 4

Save all your settings as you exit back to the main menu.

You can play around with the gain to adjust your volume levels, but now everyone should be the same for you.

Kara Week 3

2007-09-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

Last night was amazing. As long as we focus on what we're doing and keep pushing, we make serious progress. All the boss attempts were routine and we only had one major case of wiping (I love you Gromms).

Congratulations on the loots. Leejin, you better not be /gquitting anytime soon as the gear progression chart skyrocketed for you yesterday. And to the others, good job.

So, get the enchants and gems needed and let's push on. Shade is on farm status practically and the chess event is down. Illhoof is possible but what I really want to see is a great attempt at the Prince.

Today, I work until 1130 server time and then have time with the wife until about 1230 to 1 server. I don't work tomorrow (Thursday) so that is a great possibility. Peace.

Kara Night 2 - 9/12 @ 8:pm pacific

2007-09-12T13:04:00.001-07:00

It's looking like we're ready to make a run on Shade and Prince starting at 8pm pacific. Nathanial is on board for the action. Tonight looks to be a good night to take a serious stab at the prince, so get your flasks ready, LOAD up on mana pots, fel mana pots, health pots, fel health pots, food, and elixirs. Enchant your shit, and be ready to roll.

Study up on the prince fight.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l0zLQrLGZ6w
http://www.bosskillers.com/cgi-bin/bbguild/index.cgi?action=bosspage&bossid=128
http://www.wowwiki.com/Prince_Malchezaar

Kara tonight -- be there or be a dick

2007-09-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Kara week 3 begins tonight suckas! Well, that's assuming angelo can dodge the gfa and GM2 Utah Chapter doesn't have to put in Geek Squad overtime. But Jutah and I would like to knock out attuman through opera if at all possible (and maybe even shade, although let's not get greedy). We think this is doable and should probably be a regular tuesday night event so that we have more time later in the week to tackle prince, which is what most of us want.

Last week we did the first 4 bosses in roughly 2 hours, and hopefully we can be even faster this time since we have strategy down.

Pot up, and sack up.

-Grommet

Terestian Illhoof

2007-09-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Lots of fun last night. Not downing Illhoof was no big thing, seeing as though we've downed him before and he's optional. But, if we want to try him again, we need to make sure we have every edge we can get. Our latest attempt on Illhoof didn't go so hot (much worse than our failed attempts on our first night) and it seemed like there was a bit of confusion about the fight.

The main confusion seemed to be Kil'rek, and where to focus dps. After the first burn of kil'reck, he'd often be left standing after demon chains were taken care of, and we'd keep dps on illhoof. While this can work, it isn't too efficient and can easily cause oom problems and the lock to get burned down fast due to amplified fire damage.
Kil'reck gets resummoned periodically throughout the fight. If he's up, he should be nuked after demon chains before switching back to illhooh.. here's why:

Illhoof takes 25% more damage when kil'reck is down
Kil'reck can't amplify the imp fire bolts if he is down (half damage going to the warlock)
Kaynark can focus his leet dps on illhoof when kilreck is down and Illhoof is more vulnerable

To simplify the fight, dps should be focused on the highest priority target based on rating. Demon chains are highest priority, kilreck 2nd, and illhoof last. The only exception to this would be if Kil'reck was close to be burned down just before demon chains are going to be summoned, if this is the case, dps should go from kil'reck to illhoof until chains are out, dps chains and then burn out kil'reck. Dps should also wait to pop their damage buff trinkets after kil'reck is downed and dps is being switched to Illhoof, in order to maximize the effect of his 25% debuff.

macros:
to quickly target kil'reck:
/tar Kil'reck

to handle demon chains
/tar demon
/cast (your best burst damage)

shadow protection pots and group shadow protection buffs (if available) will also help to protect against chain damage.

Kara

2007-09-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

We definitely saw some major improvements last night. The Curator fight went perfectly, with many of us hardly losing any mana. Angelo got off a couple of big blasts for 26k+ each, and the target macros worked very well. Congrats to angelo on the T4 gloves (even though I know he is still eyeing Attuman's greasy meat hooks). Sorry I robbed several of you of Garona's ring, but no doubt we'll see it again soon.

Shade was also a huge improvement. I'm happy to report that I didn't get stuck in the blizzard once (a problem I had on my first attempt last week). Hopefully we won't be de'ing his loots from now on.

Illhoof was tricky, but it was the first try for many of us. I'm sure we'll get it down with more attempts (and perhaps some more aoe or another lock).

Scheduling will continue to present challenges, as many of us have gfa and other time constraints. But considering how fast we're starting to knock these f'ers out, I'm sure we can start farming this joint soon.

Plus, once we all have what we want from attuman and maiden, we can start skipping them, which would allow us more time to try to down prince and some of the harder dudes.

Good times as usual. I'm embarrassed by the number of drops I got last night, especially considering I wiped the raid and generally played shitty. But I'm sure we'll all be purple in no time.

Later.
-G

Progress

2007-09-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. Good work last night on the little time we spent in Karazhan. For only going at it for two weeks, we've made some good progress. I feel like we can take on the whole place. It's just going to take good effort.

Illhoof seemed to never drop below 20%. We'll get that fight down (I would bring my warlock in if that would be considered help). So, until the next time, I'm going to look up the mats for some pots and cooking buffs to farm.

Congratulations to those that got loot. Grommsies...you're getting the hook up. And just a thought to throw out there, we can go in Kara and take out Attumen, Moroes, and Maiden in around two hours, if that. Opera, Curator, and Shade go down in another 1.5. So let's finish this up and keep on having some fun.

curator tips

2007-09-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

i don't think it's out of the question to 1-shot curator when get around to dusting off our regalia, shining up our pauldrons, and riding back to karazhan to see the looks on their faces. Anyways.. to try and make it go as smoothly as possible, everyone should do the following:

download and install deadly boss mods. once downloaded, load it up and run it in test mode so that you'll be aware of the location the warning bars and things will show up on your screen. you don't want to wait until you get to a raid boss for the first time to figure this mod out.
(dps) create a macro /target astral flare
bind this to a key so that you can spam it as much as possible during the flare phase so we can eliminate as much time between flares

for hunters:
/target astral flare
/petattack
/cast Auto Shot

for other ranged dps classes, i would suggest adding /cast of whatever you best burst dmg spell is after the /target astral flare
save your +damage trinkets for the curators evocation stage, don't waste them on the flares
review the fight on wow wiki and in the videos. if you're ranged dps, find a spot and stay there. Boss mods will tell you if you're too close to somebody. Since the curator pats way back, we have ample time to setup in a nice horse shoe shape. If you're a healer, try and determine where you should be in terms of other ranged dps and other healers in the horseshoe (have no idea how to best do that since it's not my thing).
if you can't afford the mats for a flask, make sure you have a battle elixir and a guardian elixir and mana & health pots or mats for jim to make um

Agreed

2007-09-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

Definitely good times in Kara last night. Sorry for holding everyone up with the supermarket fiasco (but gd, I needed some hot pockets and jergens).

Apart from a strange wipe on Mofo, we sailed through the first 4 bosses. Attuman is easy street, Mofo is no problem when we take out 2 adds and shackle the rest, maiden is a slut, and so far we've done big bad wolf and romeo/juliet (both very doable with good communication, which we had).

I like to pretend Curator didn't happen, because we definitely fell off the cliff at the end. But one thing to take away from it is that we all need to make sure we are prepared for each kara raid. Nobody should be without their essential pots, whatever those are (especially critical pots like mana and health).

We have a number of maxed cooks in the guild, so make sure you know what stat food you like and scoop up some mats (ravager flesh, chunk o'basilisk and warp flesh are really easy to come by). I know fish are a lot tougher, and i'm working on getting my fishing skill up. Others should think about doing the same.

Also, we need to make sure we're popping our pots and watching our cds for them. Angelo had a good post a while back about how and when to do this effectively. Lets all try to get in the habit of doing this, even though buying pots can be pricey (I am rarely without 10 health and 10 mana pots).

If for some reason you have no pots during a boss fight, make sure to communicate with us and someone will bail your ass out, although you'll be forced to suffer angelo's wrath.

I think Curator will be doable with a geared group of 10 now that we have an idea of what to do. I'm looking forward to seeking vengeance this weekend. Saturday or Sunday afternoon will probably work for me. (Sunday might be best). We will communicate more as the week goes on. But for now, good job GM2.

-Grom

Karazhan Success!!

2007-09-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like we can pretty much handle anything inside Karazhan. I enjoyed the run and thought we did very well. We'll continue to progress and improve.

Sorry about dropping out right before the last Curator pull. Let's just say that wife aggro mixed with an exostential meltdown didn't help me at all. I'll live and be able to continue to move on.

So, gratz to the loot winners. It was the first time we saw loot stay totally in the guild. Lokust was amazing and the few disenchants we received will help add to the bank of possible enchants. Good work team.

Kara tonight.

2007-09-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

Sup GM2 -- everyone should try to log in for a Kara run tonight around 7:00-7:30 PST. Bring pots, elixirs and stat food if you got it. Attuman, Mofo and Maiden are definitely going down.

-G

Karazhan, Gear, and Guild Progression

2007-09-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Last week was great times in kara and I’m really enjoying how things are coming together. I think we’re looking good for some solid weeks in the future as we get better organized and more familiar with the fights. We’re still at the point in the guild we’re picking up a couple of non-guild members to fill the group has been essential to help us make runs possible. Hopefully we’ll be filling all spots with GM2, but in the mean time we’ll keep doing things the way we have been.

Picking up randoms has it’s pros and cons. Kara wouldn’t be possible most nights without them, and some of them have been great help (mage from pvp pirates and lokust come to mind.. although lok is hardly a random and pretty much an honorary member of gm2 imo.)Due to the pug members, some drops that would have been very nice to keep in the family have slipped through our hands. Since the bulk of the pot expense and time already spent in the raid (ie. a random jumping in on illhoof) has been shouldered by gm2 members, we should get to have a bit of priority on items. I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to plan ahead of time and reserve certain items for gm2 members. I would suggest that these only be items that are huge upgrades, not just a slight upgrade, so that there would still be plenty of loot for pickups to roll on. To do this, you should be familiar with kara loot http://wow-loot.com/raid_kara.htm and know what bosses we plan on encountering on a particular night. Then, when we pickup a random, we can tell them first thing that item x is off the table but item y and z are up for roll.

Getting essential gear will help us for the end of kara, and maybe one day, we’ll have more than just warsong gulch on farm status. Speaking of essential gear, we have netherspite (http://www.wowwiki.com/Netherspite) coming up if we’d like to take a shot at him. I’m not sure how tough he is, but the quest rewards from http://thottbot.com/q10679 would be very useful after dropping some enchants on them. I’m going to try and finish these quests up, and I’d encourage anyone else who wants to join in, to do so. I’m sure there will be other demon fights coming up that these may help out with.

Desired kara loot for Angelopappas(out of 28 caster items that are good for locks):

gloves from huntsman http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28507
neck from trash http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30666
cloak from prince

I’ll roll or pass on all other caster drops in kara. If the item is a small or medium upgrade I’ll pass to any guild member and roll against non guild.

Please post your desired gear list as a comment and i'll append it to this post.

Jutah's loot list:

Gloves off Maiden: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28518
T4 Gloves off Curator: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29758
Pants off Curator: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28621
Shoulders off Netherspite: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28743
T4 Helm off Prince: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29011
Weapon from Chess Event: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28749
Shield from Nightbane: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28606

Weird

2007-09-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

I wonder why I didn't get getmetwo.blogspot when I created our first blog: http://utah-get-me-two.blogspot.com/. Evs ...

Angelo's Take

2007-09-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Email sent by Angelopappas. Anyone that would like to post on the site please get me (Jutah) your email address and I'll add you as a contributor. Here's Angelo's thoughts:

Great times this week in kara fellas.. tonight we downed illihoof after a lot of stressful tries and got prince down to maybe the low 30%'s or something. we could have done better on prince if we had been more prepared with pots and shi. these long fights definitely test your ability to properly manage your pot intake properly. which brings me to my first order of business pots. these things will add up to a lot of g fast. i think our guild bank's priority #1 should be making sure Jim has the G he needs to supply the guild with ample pots.. hopefully pug members will bring their own shit. burning 3 mana pots, elixirs, etc., per attempt at a boss for each caster will add up to a lot of pots fast. unfortunately the spell damage caster flask isn't introduced until 2.2, so i can't use a flask... but, if you can use a flask, it will probably be a lot cheaper than individual pots that buff you but drop every time you die.

Mana seemed to be a big issue in the long boss fights.. i have a ton of mana options, but the one thing i learned was how to better prioritize them for maximum effect and trying to burn my mana pot cd first and then every 2 mins after. Healer mana was going down fast at times. One other thing that could save healer mana is if Juts tries to use a health pot every 2 mins (probably already does) and maybe say so before he does, so he doesn't get over healed. If jim has an alchemist's stone, fel regeneration and fel mana pots can be great in the pinch.. fel mana pot would also be good for grommet . On the illihoof fight, if he enslaves somebody that doesn't need critical heals to live (non cloth), we should not heal the enslaved target at all. any heals on the enslaved demon will also heal illihoof. According to wow wiki, i was probably taking 2.5k damage per second from the imps. I should have put on my fire resist neck and also packed some major fire protection potion. as far as my seed goes, i should have just put it on illhoof himself, and not the imps. The problem with putting the seed in the imps is that finding an imp with adequate health to plant my seed in.. my cast times started going to shit when i had 10 imps laying into me interrupting my cast, so sometimes the imp i was casting on would die before i got my seed off and it just wasted time. planting it in illhoof guarantees that everyone around him is constantly getting damage and less downtime with my seeds.

Lastly.. the prince fight was epic.. many consider him the last boss of kara, so i think we did pretty tits. considering that nobody was fully buffed with guardian/battle elixirs, food buffs, and most didn't even have mana pots, lasting that long was awesome.

Illhoof and Chess Event - Down

2007-09-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

Apparently the Illhoof wipes didn't sit well with anyone. A few hours after our first crack, there were enough GM2's to make another run at Illhoof. Old friends Lokust and Moofia came with. Illhoof went down on the second try. No loots for the GM2 crew, just some pally gear and a well-deserved belt for Lokust.

After Illhoof we learned a cool trick to avoid a half hour's worth of clearing to get to the Chess Event. The Chess Event was as goofy as I imagined it to be. Luckily a wipe on the chess event means you start over with no repair bill. Took us 2 tries to get through. Drops included more worthless pally gear and some nice boots for your loyal scribe and tank.

With library mobs respawning behind us our options were limited to hearthing out or attempting Prince Mel. Angelo and I were amazed and kind of excited to get our asses handed to us on this one. It seems do-able, but it's going to take some effort and that seems like a good thing. Our second attempt on Prince got him to 34% which we took as a moral victory. At the very least we got some guild experience on him that will come in handy the next time.

Good times had by all. Fun to think we were just barely clearing Attumen & Moroes earlier this week.

-Jutah

Currator Down

2007-09-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

Nice work GM2. The Curator went down on the first try. Gratz to Kaynark who became the first GM2 Guildie to nab some T4 gear (other than those that got the gear prior). Medikade also walked away with some new and improved healing shoulders. Click their links in the guild roster below to see the gear in armory.

We weren't so lucky on Illhoof. We got the bastard to 10% or less 3 times, but couldn't crack it.

Illhoof, Chess Event, and more to come. Illhoof video is on the right. Make sure you turn up the volume because the music is...awesome.

-Jutah

The Curator Goes Down - Tomorrow

2007-09-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

The plan is to get our Kara group together tomorrow at 4pm server time. First stop curator. Take a look at the video posted on the side of ths page. Also consider reading up on the encounter at this link:

http://www.wowwiki.com/The_Curator

The plan is to have:

Jutah tank Curator
Kaynark tank the flares
Angelopappas absorb the hateful bolts by being 2nd on the Curator's passive aggro list.
All dps on the flares until Curator enters a no-add phase...then we pound him.

Hope you can all make it.

The Get Me Two Blog

2007-08-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

We'll try building some functionality into this thing so we can schedule raids the day of. More info to come. Please make sure you subscribe so that updates can be automatically sent to your account.

-Jutah