Wrath Classic Phase One Raids Part 1: Welcome to the Uncanny Valley

The past two nights of raiding were, well, weird.

As in 'fever dream' kind of weird.

Have you ever had a dream where you were performing some action, and everything felt 'off' to you, as if you were talking to someone in the dream and had a sudden Uncanny Valley effect? Or that you were performing an action in a dream which is impossible in real life --such as flapping your arms and flying around-- but everybody in said dream just assumed it was a normal thing?

Yeah, that's what raiding in Wrath's version of Naxxramas felt like to me.

The original Vanilla WoW version of Naxxramas, intended for 40 people, had both that epic feel to it and a lethality that was legendary. Very few raid teams back in Vanilla ever finished Naxxramas*, which likely contributed to Blizzard reusing Naxx as one of the intro raids for Wrath of the Lich King.

But with that recycling of existing content came, well, compromises.

Blizzard had already committed to 25 person raiding in Burning Crusade as the "main" raid**, and they doubled down on it by deciding to create separate 10 and 25 person raids for each raid instance in Wrath. I presume the idea was to allow more people to see the raid content as it was "easier" to get 10 people together than 25 (or 40), but scaling down 25 person content to accommodate a raid 40% of the original size was going to be a challenge.

In the case of Naxxramas, there were already challenges lowering the scope of the raid from 40 down to 25 people, much less a raid with only 1/4 of the original raid size. 

I knew all this in the back of my head, and I'd quickly reviewed some of the fights beforehand, but I really didn't internalize just how much had to be lopped off in Naxxramas until I zoned in.

Or attempted to zone in.

***

Okay, I should back up a minute.

I spent some of the last hour before Sunday's raid trying to make sure I had all that I needed. You know, things like flasks, mana and health potions, stuff like that.

Or enchants to the gear I had.

Deuce, just like OG Cardwyn, had taken Tailoring and Enchanting as professions, and I'd diligently been raising the skill level up to at least reasonable proportions. When I say "reasonable", I don't mean "I went broke in game buying mats in the Auction House so I could level up my skills," but something I could achieve that would get me some enchants I could actually use. 

So, out of a Wrath Classic maximum of 450, I hit 430 on both Enchanting and Tailoring. I had access to the Enchants I needed***, and I spent those last minutes making sure that was done. So I hopped on a Flightpoint over to Wintergarde Keep, where Naxxramas was hovering nearby, and when I arrived I began riding around, looking for the portal spot on the ground just like Classic Naxx had. 

The only thing was that I couldn't find it.

"It's gotta be around here somewhere," I muttered, dodging Scourge in the killing fields underneath Naxx. In Classic, it was a one way trip. You got in, and if you didn't have a Mage, the only way out was to Hearth. There was no exit, which is one of the famous things about Naxx.

And, unlike just about any other raid instance, there wasn't a "Here it is!" identifying stone right outside the entrance to Vanilla/Classic Naxx either.****

I finally broke down and hopped on Google and queried where the entrance to Naxxramas in Wrath Classic was.

Oh.

To quote Gruber when he accidentally pulled two trash packs at once in Classic Naxx: "Oh...... shit."

You see, I still hadn't picked up Cold Weather Flying, which is required for flying of any sort in Northrend. 

I hadn't needed it, because the zones I've been questing in have been accessible via riding, and I'd been summoned to the few 5-person instances that I couldn't get to via riding (Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning). I could deal with just riding around, since I took forever to get a mount on my first toon in WoW Classic*****, and I was perfectly fine with riding in Outland. Or not having an epic (fast) mount out there, either. 

The cost in gold was also a deterrent, because while I originally thought it was going to cost 5000 gold for Cold Weather Flying --or that I had to get Epic Flying first-- neither were the case. Still, the cost was 1000 gold, and I wasn't going to rush to accumulate a lot of gold just to get Cold Weather Flying. Dailies were simply out of the question. I've been there, bought the t-shirt, and after doing dailies in Wrath and Cataclysm (and trying to do dailies in Mists), I simply burned out on it. 

There is no joy in Mudville

For Mighty Casey had struck out burned out on dailies

--Casey at the Bat - MMO Version

Besides, my life has enough work without me creating another part-time job for myself.

So... I hadn't gotten Cold Weather Flying, but I was gonna need it to get to Naxx. And suddenly my gold that I'd felt comfortable with while leveling my skills suddenly.... wasn't that comfortable.

Fun fact: you don't have to go to
Dalaran to pick up Cold Weather Flying.
This was obviously a post Naxx pic, if you
notice the gear Deuce has on, but this
screen cap was merely for demonstration.

I quickly pooled all my gold together and managed to purchase Cold Weather Flying.

Barely.

Just enough for repairs. I think.
And yes, I still have the Spectracles
from TBC Classic in my bags.
Don't judge me.

I flew back to Wintergarde Keep, got in the raid, and... I got summoned to Naxx.

/facepalm

***

Yes, you fly up into the underbelly of Naxxramas, which is where the Summoning Stone actually is. And from there you can walk right into the instance. 

Will wonders never cease?

The interior of Wrath's version of Naxxramas is as it was in Vanilla: green, slimy, glowing, and depressing. What it wasn't was what struck me: Naxx was devoid of tons of trash mobs. 

If there was one truism about Naxxramas, it's that the trash mobs would kill you if you weren't on your game. It typically took only two of the wrong sort of trash mobs to doom the raid, especially if you were just entering Naxx for the first few times and hadn't received any gear upgrades yet.#

But in the new 10 person Wrath Classic version of Naxxramas, the mobs are few and far between. "Paper thin" was how one commenter in Reddit described them, and he's not wrong. I remember dying to Scientist packs leading up to Patchwerk, wiping on Spider packs leading to Anub'Rekhan, and having my innards splattered all over the walls by the Cultist packs leading up to Faerlina, but now... Nothing. 

I almost felt sad about that. Almost.

The size of Wrath Naxx was the same, but with the reduced number of trash packs, it became almost cavernously empty. Some of the packs changed, such as replacing the mobs between Gluth and Thaddius with single oversized giants instead of a group of 4-5 "normal" sized Scourge, and far more mobs were skippable than ever. 

***

The first boss I encountered, Anub'Rekhan, highlighted the changes between Classic Naxx and Wrath Naxx. Original Naxx had that fight beginning with a boss and two adds, and the fight strategy was to kill the adds then have a pair of the raid --tank and a Mage (me, typically)-- babysit the adds as they will spawn scarabs from their dead bodies at some point. (Adds will periodically spawn during the fight, and they too have to be tanked and downed and babysat just like that initial bunch.) If anybody dies in the raid, they will also spawn scarabs too, so the point of the Mage is to freeze the scarabs in place before they escape and start munching on the raid, and then the tank will round them up so the raid can kill the scarabs.

Fast forward to Wrath Naxx, 10 style, and you begin the fight with just Anub'Rekhan. No adds in sight. A pair of adds spawn during the fight, and the off tank can grab those so that the raid can kill them --just like in the Original Naxx fight-- but no scarabs spawn off of them. The only time scarabs will spawn is off of the body of a dead raider, which makes the Anub'Rekhan very much a tank and spank style fight. 

Most of the other Naxxramas fights are like that: there's a shell of the original fight in place, but mechanics have been removed or reduced to accommodate the smaller raid size. Well, and also the expectation that you could potentially finish the entire 14 boss raid in one night.##

***

What do I think of Discount Naxx?

For those of us who ran it in Classic, it feels like "almost" the real thing. I referenced the Uncanny Valley effect, where you get that uneasy feeling when you see a robot or video of someone very close to human, but not quite human###, and that is a pretty apt description. It's not the Naxx I knew; it's a reduced version of Naxx, and there's a shell there, but it's not the same thing.

I mentioned to a few people in raid at the end of Sunday that it felt that the original TBC Classic version of Karazhan was harder than the Wrath version of Naxxramas. "Oh yeah," one person replied. "Remember trying to clear that ballroom right before Moroes?"

"Or Nightbane?" Came another.

"Or Netherspite? Yeah, Wrath Naxx is much easier."

The Sunday portion of the raid concluded with us needing only Gluth, Thaddius, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad to finish up. We'd wiped a few times, since we needed to work out the kinks with a raid composition that included two Mages (the previous week's raid not having any Mages), but in general it didn't feel like anything was out of our league.

But of course, Naxxramas isn't the only raid in Wrath Classic Phase One, and I'll continue these thoughts on those raids later.

*Of our WoW Classic raid team, only one person actually had completed Naxx back in the day. He was a member of the sixth raid team to finish Naxx, and his raid team pioneered the use of bringing world buffs to Naxx. On a PvP server, no less.

**With 10 person raids --Karazhan and Zul'Aman-- replacing the 20 person "catch up" raids in Vanilla. The hardcore early players of Vanilla will also point out that Blackrock Spire --Upper and Lower-- were designed as one whole instance but Upper Blackrock Spire being gated behind a door --you had to quest to get a key to unlock-- was originally a 20 person raid at launch. It was downscaled to a 10 person raid later in Vanilla, which was something I didn't know about. For all I knew, UBRS was a 10 person raid from the start, but that wasn't the case. 

***And Tailoring versions of the same, called Spellthread, for applying to Leg armor and Cloaks. As an Enchanter, I can even Enchant the rings I wear for a bit of an extra boost. The only people who can Enchant rings (or Tailors sewing Spellthread on their own cloaks) are the people who actually own the skill for their own rings; I can't sew Spellthread onto other people's cloaks, unfortunately.

****I know it was a 'feature' of Vanilla/Classic Naxx, but I suspect that it was an oversight due to the original design for Naxx calling for the entrance to be located inside the Stratholme dungeon itself. So, you'd have to run Stratholme --the side commonly known as the 'Undead Side'-- to get to the Naxxramas entrance. You can (or could) still see the entrance to Naxx, sitting unused, inside Stratholme in Classic WoW.

*****That was Azshandra, and I think it took her until L47 or L48 before she had enough gold to afford the Riding skill and the mount.

#Hence Gruber's "Oh...... shit...." moment, when as the raid puller he pulled a trash mob. Instead of coming right for us, one of the mob ran backwards in a small circle, aggroing a second mob nearby and they all rushed in. Gruber was famous for cursing up a blue streak all the time, so you knew things were bad when he very quietly said "Oh shit."

##This is very much a thing, as I've seen it numerous times already.

###Insert Mark Zuckerberg jokes here.

EtA: The comment about Gruber got chopped off. Fixed.

EtA: Fixed "flight" with "riding". Sheesh.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!

Saturday night was a stroll down memory lane.

We returned to Naxxramas to get enough splinters for our third guildie to get her Atiesh.

When TBC Classic dropped on June 1st, she was sitting at exactly 20/40 splinters, and enough people in guild made a commitment to try to get her Atiesh completed that we knew that once things settled down enough* we were going back there.

I got Brig attuned --only got her to Honored with the Argent Dawn, but that's the breaks-- and away she went on Saturday Night.

From the way back machine to 1975 (in the US).

Only 22 started out initially, but we eventually ended up with 26 as some people from the old raid team trickled in. It was a bit rough on Anub'Rekhan at first, as we had only one Mage, but we cleaned things up and got through it. We didn't hit any bumps at all on Patchwerk and Loatheb --the tank was hardly taking any damage at all-- but we did wipe on Noth due to a lack of decursers. So... I hopped on Card and swapped toons for Noth just for the extra decursing boost.**

We made it through three wings --I saw Midnight Haze drop-- and we reached the end of the night after Razuvius in the Military Wing. And that was with 15 people short of a full 40 person raid.

If we managed to get a full 40 person raid together, we could conceivably blitz through the entire instance in one 4 hour raid block. 

***

How'd it feel?

Weird.

Not that I'm not familiar with Naxx, but that I was on a melee DPS toon. The things such as positioning suddenly become much more important when I'm on Brig, and I was called out by somebody saying "Are you asking to be killed?"

"Oh, that's just Brig. It's pretty much his thing."

I couldn't argue with the call out, but the toon in front of me wasn't hitting me at all, sooo.....

But outside of that, and that the positioning on Razuvius was that the melee DPS were LOSing their healers, and the solution was to attack from the side, risking a parry haste to make sure I was left alive. And to be fair, the melee DPS who didn't move all died, so....

But still, I guess I'll get used to it, being down in the trenches in a raid where I'd previously only seen from distance. I am not looking forward to K'T, however, because there will be interrupts that have to go out, and I never had to worry about them on Card.

I might even just show up on Card on some of these runs, because they will need people to decurse and whatnot. But we'll see. I'm not even sure how this is gonna work out given that everybody has to get attunements done for Phase 2.

 

 

*HA! In TBC Classic, it seems that Blizz doesn't want you to settle down, so there's people running to and fro trying to get their attunements done before Phase 2 drops. In fact, that was a direct cause of at least one person having to pass on going back to Naxx. And really, I can't blame them. If the guild wants to commit to Naxx, something will have to be given up.

**She was not the lowest leveled toon in the raid at that point; there was one L60 who made it too. At one point he exclaimed "I've got 600 xp so far in Naxx tonight!"

Ups and Downs

The emotional roller coaster continues unabated, which is kind of weird since the past couple of days' worth of events had nothing to do with any of my toons directly. (Yet.)

The other day I got a whisper from Shintar of Priest With a Cause:

"We killed KT!"

Woooo!

"But also, our usual raid leader ragequit the raid on Sapph
what a night"

Wait, what?

She assured me she'd get a long blog post out of this, and she wasn't kidding. It's well worth a read. But I'm still incredibly proud and happy for Shintar and the rest of the Order of the Holy Fork for beating Classic just before pre-patch. Way to go!

***

As for our BC preparation, the raid lead team was busy reviewing and slotting where each person was willing to go, and we finally got down to the nitty gritty. 

We needed Shamans and we had too many Mages.*

So I put my money where my mouth is and volunteered to switch my main to an Enhancement Shaman.

I'm still going to play with Card, but she's not going to be my primary toon. And neither will Linna, although I'm likely to utilize the boosting service for her. 

So this upcoming week's raid is going to be bittersweet: the last time before pre-patch that I'll have Cardwyn as my main.

***

What will Card do afterwards?

Most likely, she is going to take some well deserved time off. She'll leave the Plaguelands to others for a while, port down to Stormwind, and walk back home to the family farm in Eastern Elwynn. There, she'll spend as much time out in the sun as possible, trying to chase away dark memories from the inside of Naxxramas and Ahn'Qiraq, along with landscapes where the very air takes on a sickly hue. She'd never take the wheat and barley growing in the fields for granted again. 

Things have changed since Card started out. She has several nieces and nephews now; two of the farmhands, James and Robyn, married and moved into a small place Card's Mom and Dad built for them on the northern edge of the fields. They now have a couple of children of their own. Linna is still out there with the Knights out in the Plaguelands, keeping Light's Hope Chapel open and the Scourge at bay.

Mistress Evelyn is semi-retired; Card's family built a small place for her adjacent to the farm buildings so she could continue her pursuits without constant travel to Stormwind. Instead of visiting the children of Eastern Elwynn, they now come to her for lessons. 

The ebb and flow of children suits Card to no end. She gets to play with her nieces and nephews, go fishing at the nearby pond, and even do things she used to hate, such as turning manure. Being out in the sun, in nature, and surrounded by friends and family keeps the darkness at bay. It also serves as a reminder of why she fought in the first place, which can get lost in the heat of the moment.

Perhaps that call will come, a summons to cross the Dark Portal and face Illidan and the Burning Legion, but for now time is Cardwyn's most precious resource, and she intends to use as much of it as possible making herself whole again.

 

 

*Not one or two, but four, including Card.

So That's How We Looked

Okay, I still haven't figured out how to post the video like you can with YouTube --and I blame poor tools by Blogger here-- but here's a link to our K'T kill, as streamed by Mirsh. 

It's also nice to know I'm not the only one who curses while raiding. Good thing the kids are much older, or I'd go crazy trying to censor myself. But somewhere, I think my Grandfather would be proud of me for cursing as much as I do.*

I've always wondered how I sound in raids in Discord, and now I know. You can hear me at the tail end just before the kill saying "We've got him!! We've got him!!"

I can't help but confess that I was focusing on where I was on the screen, hoping that I don't look too much like an idiot. I can't stream, because if I did you'd see my head was on a swivel, constantly looking for those banshees as they bore down on us. And it's not a lot of fun once you hit Phase 2 and you're trying desperately to conserve as much mana as you can for sheeping while wanding and pacing out your potion consumption. 

*A quick story about my Grandfather. During WW2, he and several other people in his division were promoted to Corporal. As they all stood in line, a Captain marched up and down saying "I made you, and I can break you." My Grandfather, never one for tact, piped up and cracked, "If that's the way you feel about it, you can shove it up your ass!!"

My Grandfather was busted back down to Private quicker than you can say WTF...

EtA: Fixed the link. Whoops.

A Short Mid-Week Boost

Courtesy of Shintar of Priest with a Cause (among other blogs).....

She sent it to me with the comment "Everybody who raids Naxx needs to see this..."

And she's absolutely right.

Miscellaneous Musings on a Quiet, Sunny Sunday Morning

I knew this day would come.

Last night I received my usual invite to Blackwing Lair, helped summon people by being a clicker, made and distributed food and water, and organized the Mage Int buffs.*

Then I turned my attention to the reserve listing, and discovered there was nothing Cardwyn needed. Sure, there were a couple of T2 pieces I'd like to get to finish out the set, but as far as gear I could use right now? Not a thing.

One of the pug Mages last night even whispered me, asking what I'd reserved, and I told him that I was good. "I got the Claw last week, and that was the last piece I needed," I replied.

"Oh cool, congrats."

"Thanks. But yeah, I'm just here to help out."

I still could use enchanting recipes out of Molten Core and AQ20, and there's always the need for idols in Zul'Gurub, but Blackwing Lair is the first raid that Card has semi-officially "outgrown". And when I started progression raiding and my gear needs were so great, this moment seemed so far off that I felt Card was never going to get enough DKP to finally finish the task. But in a weird quirk, the opening of Naxxramas helped me out because the official Friday night BWL raid shut down in favor of an extra day of Naxx raiding. Its replacement, the Saturday night BWL run, used a soft reserve system, which meant I could pick and choose the specific pieces of gear to roll on based on who wanted what. And after the people ahead of me in the progression raid finally got the Tear of Neltharion they'd been waiting over half a year for, my turn came with nobody else to roll against. By then, I'd accumulated the other popular BWL Mage pieces, so all I had left were the Tear and the Claw of Chromaggus. And, in two successive weeks, I got both pieces without any other competition in the reserves.**

So here I was, after six months of running BWL, and I finally "finished" it on Card.

It felt... weird, but also freeing. I grew to enjoy running BWL, the goblin packs notwithstanding. There's an ebb and flow to the raid that is comforting in the same way that a well geared MC run simply works. You can make small talk, laugh, joke, make quips about the various methods of dying to goblin packs (my favorite: blinking away from one bomb right into another), and in general just relax. When you have as many regulars as we have, you know the raid is going to be okay. It's only in the details where we have a few anxious moments, like getting a bear tank for said goblin packs, but we somehow manage to work things out.***

And I'm not planning on giving up my spot in BWL for quite a while. I love it too much.

***

In case you haven't noticed, the MMO blogosphere has simply exploded with talk about Valheim, the latest hotness game. Which, I might add, is still in Early Access on Steam.

Yes, a game from a small publisher --that isn't finished-- is getting a ton of exposure in a way that I haven't seen since, oh, No Man's Sky.

The major difference between Valheim and No Man's Sky is that Valheim is complete enough for people to play via Early Access, so you'll know pretty quickly if it's a dud or not.

And by all accounts, Valheim is good enough, and far enough in development, that there's plenty of blog posts discussing it in such a way that the major AAA publishers wished people would talk about their upcoming releases.

That's nice and all, but PC is one place you're not going to see any Valheim posts for quite a while.

The reason? It's in Early Access.

I haven't bought a game in Early Access, and I'm not planning on starting now. I waited until My Time at Portia was officially released before purchasing it. Same with Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and in that case I waited until the final release was on stable ground before purchasing the game. Since that's my policy, I'm going to do the same with Valheim. That's for one really really good reason: I've got a ton of games already purchased that I can play without needing one that isn't finished. And really, I think it more likely that I'll get a PC of my own before I get a chance to play Valheim.

So I salute all of those who took the plunge and are enjoying the game, but I've been George R.R. Martin-ed enough times for me to not jump in.****

***

As long as I live, I will never understand how multiple meters can come up with such disparate results. 

I'm not often one to toot my own horn, but on last Friday's Naxx run I got top DPS. 

Now, to be fair, the top Mage on the raid team lost her buffs on the first pull when an abomination got loose and wandered into the main raid, killing about 8 of the ranged DPS. And if you've ever played a Fire Mage, just whose name ends up on an ignite is a pretty random thing, so the fact that Card showed up there was just luck.

But hey, I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when I had TinyThreat on the threat meters and wasn't paying attention to the DPS meters until I started getting congrats from the other Mages. When I saw the results, however, I felt that I'd finally gotten something right in the Naxx raid. Until I looked at the Warcraft logs.

When I pulled them up, it claimed that while I was the top Mage, I was more back into the middle of the pack. 

Which got me to thinking just how is it possible for the two to be so far off.

The only thing I could figure is that I was out of range for some of the DPS, but that didn't make sense since I didn't really have to move to get into position to cast (Patch came to us instead of the other way around). Now it is possible that the melee DPS started earlier than the ranged, but not that much earlier to make that much of a difference in the TinyThreat DPS meters. For a fight as long as Patchwerk's is, we'd have had to have held off for 20 seconds or more to make that much of an impact. 

So all I can do is shake my head, shrug, and do my best.

***

With all the talk about BC, I thought about revisiting my past and reviving a toon long since retired:

Time to pay the bar tab and get moving.

Yes, Neve will ride again in BC Classic!

*I'm the only Mage designated "Raid Regular" who attends all of the pug raids put on by Valhalla, so I've simply absorbed the job of organizing which Mage buffs which group. (If a guild member attends, I defer to them, but most of the time they're simply happy to let someone else handle this gig.) Once in a while I'm the sole Mage in a raid, such as Zul'Gurub, and when that happens I like to have fun with my posts in raid chat. Such as the time I posted "Mage Int buffs: Cardwyn Group 1, Jaina Group 2, Khadgar Group 3, Rhonin Group 4."

**A soft reserve system means that you can reserve an item (or two, depending on implementation), but other people can reserve that item too. So, if that item drops, the only people who can roll for that item are those who reserved it. Instead of 20+ people rolling, there are far fewer people to roll against, increasing your odds of winning. But for a new L60, a soft reserve system is a godsend: if you DON'T reserve anything, all the gear that drops that doesn't have a reserve on it means that you have first dibs on that gear. There's also no limit on the number of non-reserved items you can win. We've seen in ZG and BWL runs people who are fresh L60s make out like a bandit and take home 6-7 pieces of gear in one setting. And one more thing of beauty about the system is that even reserved people do have a shot at non-reserved gear: all it takes is the non-reserved people to not roll on that first, non-reserved roll, and then a second open roll takes place where anybody who could use the item is invited to roll. It may sound complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it the soft reserve system is fantastic for people needing to gear up. We've accumulated a LOT of regulars to our soft reserve raids because they work so well, even among the most highly rated guilds on the server. I'm also pretty sure that the progression raid as well as Valhalla as a guild has gained people due to Jes' handling of the soft reserve raids. 

***Or rather Jes does. She's a natural leader, and yet she works hard to pull off a smooth raid. She's also pretty well known around the server as one of the go-to people for enchants, so that helps with name recognition, even when she's on one of her alts.

****Can you believe that Patrick Rothfuss' Wise Man's Fear was published 10 years ago? I didn't even realize that until a month ago.

Rise and Fight Again

:We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."

--General Nathanael Greene, Continental Army*

 

I believe I'd been spoiled.

My first full raiding experiences --not counting Zul'Gurub-- were for raids that were already effectively on farm. 

Take the Friday night Molten Core run that introduced me to full 40-man raiding. That first run I spent 45 minutes prior to raid time quickly skimming bosses and trying to figure out what to do without looking like a complete idiot. Actually getting into the raid required me to navigate the auto-invite add-on, which until that moment I never encountered. And when I was told "whisper [name] inv" I thought that was the weirdest message to ever send to someone. I was half convinced that I was the butt of an elaborate prank, but as soon as I sent the message I got the invite and away I went.

But the raid itself? I discovered pretty quickly that the raid was designed for alts and the occasional pugger, so lil' ol' me was surrounded by people who knew the raid far better than I ever hoped to. Because of that, I had an easy time slipping into raiding.

My second 40 person raiding experience actually came with AQ40, as it was on a Monday versus the Friday night BWL run. And that first night the raid team finally downed Twin Emps for the first time, so I experienced success without the pain as well. From that point forward, the progression team made steady progress until they finished all of the nine bosses.

Jumping ahead a few months, and Naxx came calling. The progression team made steady progress once more, and I was confident that process would continue.

And then we ran into Four Horsemen.**

***

I'd never experienced this part of a progression raid: the pounding of your head against a concrete wall.

Spending more than half of a raid night trying --and failing-- to make much in the way of progression against a boss was a humbling experience. I realize that there wasn't much me and the rest of the ranged DPS could do until the complex healing and tanking rotations got themselves straightened out, and that was a long and painful process. 

And I'll be honest in the middle of all of this figuring things out I managed to pull aggro and wipe the raid on two separate occasions. I'm not sure why, but I didn't feel bad when it happened, and I don't feel bad about it now. Perhaps because it was a learning experience my brain basically told my conscience to "shake it off and let's go", or maybe it was that the constant stream of raid wipes had dulled my senses, but I'll never know for sure.

It was at that point that I realized that every raid team has to find a way to climb over that hump, to get past the pesky boss, or be at a risk of the boss becoming their own personal Waterloo. When I saw raid teams --and their associated guilds-- fall apart when they couldn't down Arthas in late Wrath, this is what they faced. The mental strain on raid leadership, not to mention the entire raid team, can be considerable. Cracking under pressure is a very real thing, and I've seen it happen at work.

***

After my nuking the raid last night, that very next try we finally broke through and defeated the Four Horsemen. You could feel the relief in the cheers; we downed our bugaboo, and now we could move forward and bash our heads against another boss. 

This time it is Sapphiron, the undead frost wyrm.

And I will never again take for granted our upward progression. Time to put on a crash helmet and pound my head against a stone wall again.

*Okay, get ready for an info dump on one of my favorite people from the American War of Independence.

Nathanael Greene, nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker", was the person originally charged by George Washington with the job of Quartermaster General: in charge of procuring food and supplies for the Continental Army during the American War of Independence. In the countryside there were bumper harvests, yet the fledgling Continental Army had to beg for scraps. Nathanael managed to somehow keep the army fed, even in the dark days of the winter at Valley Forge, by a combination of persuasion and personal loan guarantees. Without his logistics, the Continental Army would have collapsed long before the entry of the French and the Spanish on the American side.

In 1780 he was given command of the Southern Continental Army, which had been practically annihilated by the British. The first half of the Southern Campaign saw Greene's forces spending most of their time being pursued by the British army, led by Lord Charles Cornwallis, across the Carolinas. Nathanael, like George Washington, knew the importance of actually keeping an army in the field. If the Southern Campaign were to devolve strictly into a guerilla style campaign, the British would never accept the legitimacy of an American victory. Therefore, to win meant beating the British on the battlefield itself, and Greene's forces were badly outnumbered and supplied.

Cornwallis fought Greene on several occasions, beating him on the field of battle, but Greene managed to escape each time and keep the Continental Army largely intact. (At the battle of Guilford Courthouse, Cornwallis' situation was so dire that he ordered his cannons loaded with shot and fired into his own troops, who were engaged in close combat with Greene's.) Once Greene was able to keep his Continentals in the field and safely make across the Dan River to the Virginia colony, Cornwallis turned east expecting support along the Tidewater coastline. You see, Cornwallis' pursuit of Greene's army came at a huge cost, as Cornwallis was forced to abandon his advantage in supplies to chase Greene's more nimble Continental Army.

Once Cornwallis turned east, Greene split his forces, turning south with the majority of the Continental Army to push the British back to Charleston, and allowing his second-in-command, the Marquis de Lafayette, to command of the troops following Cornwallis. The pursued became the pursuer, as Lafayette's forces harassed Cornwallis all the way to the coast, where Cornwallis made his stand at a small town named Yorktown. General Washington and French Forces commander Rochambeau marched their combined armies south, pinning Cornwallis against the coast. When the French fleet defeated the British and closed an escape by sea, Cornwallis surrendered.

The quote above comes from the depths of the Southern Campaign, when it seemed that even Providence itself wasn't cutting the Southern Continental Army a break.

**For some strange ungodly reason, I keep typing "Four Horsement" instead of "Four Horsemen". Beats me why I do that.

When Turkeys Fly

I've mentioned before about our informal Turkey Award, handed out to the person with the most deaths in the progression raids.* And until the other week, I'd successfully avoided taking home that honorary turkey leg.

Well.... The other week that streak came to an end.

I died three times at the beginning of the raid in quick succession, to trash leading up to Patchwerk, and that set the tone for the rest of night. When you don't even get off a cast before an abomination takes you and 8 of your closest friends out, you know things aren't gonna go your way.

That was, ironically enough, the last time I both got Dire Maul Tribute buffs and the spellpower Flask for the raid. 

Obviously those deaths meant my DPS took a big hit --the flask notwithstanding-- but it also meant that I reassessed just what the hell I was doing chasing after all those buffs if I wasn't going to live long enough to make much use out of them. That first death was a fluke, as were the second and third deaths**, but I didn't treat them as one. It was then that I realized a pattern had been forming and I'd ignored it until then: when I got extra sweaty and tried picking up all the buffs, I became more aggressive. When I got the bare minimum number of buffs (Heart of Hakkar and Dragonslayer), I became more conservative. 

The reasoning ought to be obvious: the fewer the buffs, the more likely I wanted to hold onto them, and the less likely I was to charge in on a skitterer pack to try to get to the top of the meters. Likewise, the less likely I was do to something stupid during the Cultist/Acolyte trash pulls and bounce around out of healing range.

It's a simple thing, really: play conservative because you don't help the raid when you're eating dirt. At the same time, you have a conflicting motive to prove you belong, and the most obvious way of doing that is to improve your DPS. And that means buffs, enchants, flasks, etc. etc.

But helping the raid also means getting your Frost Resist gear (Glacial Set, in my case), farming your Tubers for Loatheb, babysitting the bodies for spawning scarabs in Anub'Rekhan, and getting your teammates off the wall in Maexxna. None of which, I might add, are going to enhance your DPS.

***

After a lot of consideration, I decided to step back a bit from my buff pursuits until I could get my survivability back to an acceptable level. I'd still have liked to get flasks for the raid, but the current price of a Flask of Supreme Power is about 180 gold right now, and that's out of my price range.*** I could squeak by at 150 gold, but that was also when everybody and their grandmother wasn't farming Plaguebloom throughout Azeroth.

So, whether I liked it or not, I scaled back my buffing and played it conservatively.

And it worked.

I've not sniffed the top of the leaderboard for the Turkey Award until Monday night, and the only reason I was up there was that I had exactly one death before we started beating our collective heads on Four Horsemen. (We wiped seven times on Four Horsemen, leading to a second place total of eight deaths, shared with 5-6 other people.) And really, death levels outside of Four Horsemen being so low was quite an achievement from my perspective.

I know my DPS suffered as a consequence, but I was fine with that. I was contributing to the raid by being alive, and that was the important part. Now that I've started behaving better, I'm going to start slowing re-adding extra buffs to my pre-raid night routine.

Now if everybody could stop farming Plaguebloom for a for a while, that'd be great....

*We occasionally bring up the Turkey Award for Molten Core and Blackwing Lair raids, but the "formal" Turkey Award is handed out after the progression raids.

**The third in particular was bad because I'd just gotten rezzed up and was drinking when another abomination wandered into aggro range, surprising everybody. The a-bomb hit with an AOE which only dealt a decent amount of damage to everyone. Except me, who didn't have buffs and full health. Alas.

***Spending time and gold getting the Glacial set made sucked up two weeks' worth of farming, not to mention some of the enchants I started farming the mats for. When you run an Undead Set (courtesy of the Scourge Invasion event), a "normal" Fire Mage set, and you start to replace pieces as you get new gear, all those enchants aren't cheap. I can hear the other mages now, saying to not blow your gold on a Flask when you need the enchants, but when you need so much enchanting done (I honestly thought I'd have replaced almost all my gear by now with AQ level gear so I didn't bother enchants then), it's all a bit much.

"Hey, I'm Dead but I'm Early!"*

You won't break me
You won't make me
You won't take me
Under blood red skies

You won't break me
You won't take me
I'll fight you under
Blood red skies

--Judas Priest, "Blood Red Skies"**

 

Okay, I can breathe again.

Our first night in Naxxramas is over, and it only took an hour for me to shake off the adrenaline and finally get some sleep. 

Ironically enough, the couple of hours of sleep that I got turned out to be pretty good sleep, because when I woke up and got some coffee in me, I was able to keep plugging along all day without any need for rest.

***

Where to start?

How about 5 days before, on December 3rd, when the Scourge Invasion began.

 

 

 

The view a minute before it started.

Just a normal day in Azeroth, I suppose. Obviously we players all knew what was coming, but the NPCs were blissfully ignorant.

Of course, all that changed.

The skies darkened and the Argent Dawn
began the call to arms.

I joined up with a group of my fellow raiders, and our first order of business was to fly up to Light's Hope Chapel to check in and discover what needed to be done to beat the Scourge back.

We arrived to find people across Azeroth
answering the call.

We scanned our maps and found that our best bet was to go to Burning Steppes where the region close to Morgan's Vigil was swarming with Scourge. But first, a side trip to Ironforge for a few of us to get some gear, trinkets, and extra potions.

Flying out of Ironforge, we were confronted
with a floating necropolis. That's when you
realize this is a big deal.

When we landed and rode out to the first invasion site, it was chaos. Just like that first battleground I ever found myself in, I just said "go out there and hit somebody."

Blood Red Skies indeed.

This continued for about 45 minutes until I had to drop for other things, but you kind of get the idea.

***

The next day, while Az was farming herbs in Eastern Plaguelands, she came across our goal:

"Young Mage, I have seen Hell. Elune
be with you in that seat of vile darkness."

***

I spent the weekend doing some of the Scourge Invasion, but ironically enough I wasn't able to get online very much as I had other errands to run around town. Even in a pandemic, stuff needs to get done.

But come Monday night, I was nervous. Were we going to be okay? Was I going to be okay? Was I going to look like an idiot in there? Did I have enough gold to cover all the potions I needed?

That last one was bothering me all the way up until an hour before invites went out, and I had to sell some Large Brilliant Shards I'd been stockpiling in order to squeeze all of my requirements in, leaving barely enough gold to cover two or three hefty repair bills. Between all of my toons, I think I had about 25 gold total.

And that 15 gold Card was carrying (Clothies don't need nearly as much gold as Plate wearers for repairs) vanished pretty quickly when I did need to repair my almost completely broken gear twice.

I'm pretty sure I drove my wife nuts by wandering back and forth around the house, sitting down to read up on the strategies, and then getting up again to pace aimlessly. Normally I take a nap to get some rest in, but I simply couldn't do it. So when I zoned in, I was nervous as hell.

Before we buffed and pulled, however, our raid leader had a surprise for us.

Like the Songs from the Raid CD (coming soon, honest!), our raid leader added an extra Discord mic, pulled out a guitar, and sang a Naxxramas and guild themed riff on "Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's entitled "Hey There Valhalla". I hope someone captured the performance, because it was really good. Even the oldest mini-Red approved of Lojze's performance, especially given that Discord isn't the greatest platform for musicality.

"Freebird!" one of my fellow raiders called out after the song was over. If I could have held up a lighter in game, I'd have done it.

After that performance, I calmed down. It was going to be okay. We were gonna do this.

I'm in there somewhere.

We pulled our first piece of trash, and I lived to tell the tale.

That didn't last long, however.

After 3.5 hours, we downed four bosses but were stymied on Heigan the Unclean, wiping 4 times before throwing in the towel as we hit our raid endpoint. In between, we learned that yes, we were ready for this raid, and yes, we are going to die a lot.

I did not win the Turkey Award, much to my surprise. I finished 4th. Ahead of me were three of my fellow Mages, with 17, 15, and 15 deaths each.

Sure, I had to spend almost all of my gold to repair, but it was worth it.

We are going to get better, and we'll figure this out. During my time raiding in AQ40, that's been a staple of this raid team: we wipe, we get back up, we figure things out, and we improve.

We've got this. 

*From Dennis Miller's "The Off-White Album", circa 1987. Back in the 80s and 90s, comic Dennis Miller was well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, and put it to use in his stand-up. This line comes from his commentary about how you live your life following the traffic rules, but in a cruel irony they let your funeral procession run the red lights on the way to the cemetery. "Hey, I'm dead but I'm early!"

**Trust Judas Priest to come up with a piece of music appropriate for the occasion.

A Bit of Raiding Pride

I'll have other posts on the last couple of days later, but in the time (currently 1:20 before first pull) before our first try at Naxx I wanted to point out this little post on Wowhead Classic:

Comparing Kel'Thuzad Strategies from 2006 to Classic WoW's Modern Approach

The reason why I'm pointing this out is that Redditor Marmotzero is also the co-GM of Valhalla (Myzrael-US) and the Raid Leader for the progression raid team. Yes, it's our beloved Lojze*, who keeps the raid going in a smooth and practiced hand. (And if he finds this post, I'd like for him to explain the origin of the "beer pack", which is the tradition of him drinking a beer (his choice) if we complete a tough pull without any deaths.)

And I should mention that the Wowhead article itself does have one glaring error, that Atiesh was not crafted prior to the fight, but the guild in question had all of the components assembled so they could craft Atiesh right after the kill. (See Lojze's comment in the comments section.)

And for those curious about the original Reddit post, here it is.

So let's have a good first run, and maybe we'll see that beer pack tonight!

 

*Who is also the guy who finally convinced me to join as the sixth Mage in their AQ40 runs on Labor Day.