[4.3] 7/8 Dragon Soul

The newest raid content in World of Warcraft has been sort of a roller coaster of experiences for my guild.  In our very first night, on patch 4.3 launch day, we took out Morchock, Zon’ozz, and Yor’sahj.  The boss kills flew by so quickly that in our haste we forgot to take screenshots!!

100% Accurate Morchock Screenshot Reproduction

The next night Hagara and Ultraxion fell before us (we finally remembered an official screenshot for Ultraxion!), and Warmaster Blackhorn died on Sunday.  Our first week of Dragon Soul was over and we were already 6/8 normal modes. It felt kind of surreal.  Almost finished with an entire new raid tier before the first week.

After clearing out Spine of Deathwing on the 11th, we’ve been working on the Madness of Deathwing for the last week.  Part of me feels like we should have had this encounter in the bag by now; he should have died by the 18th, at the very latest.   Another part of me is a little glad we didn’t just blow through the whole instance like tissue.  Well, that second part is a very small part.

We’ve been experimenting with a variety of raid compositions (2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps vs. 1 tank, 2 healers, 7 dps) and different platform orders (“green, yellow, red, blue” vs. “green, yellow, blue, red” vs. “green, red, yellow, blue”), and just haven’t found the right combination of everything for it all fall into place.  We’ve seen phase 2 a couple of times thus far though, so things are looking up.

So far this week, we cleared the first seven bosses completely in one night with minimal fuss, so we’ll have all day Thursday to (hopefully) finish off Madness of Deathwing.  Getting him out of the way before we take a week off for Christmas and New Years would be a relief.

“…with the cataclysm raining down…”

I know World of Warcraft 4.0 launched seven months ago, but the Cataclysm just recently hit me and I’ve been going through a lot of recent changes to the way that I play WoW.

First and foremost, about two weeks ago I left my guild.  It was a really tough decision. I’ve been playing under that tag for over two years now, and it’s the only guild I’ve ever felt was “home.”  Lately, though, I came to realize that the goals of the guild and my goals really didn’t coincide anymore.  That’s totally fine, but it’s time for me to move on.  I wish my former guild all the happiness in the world as they march on through WoW 4.0 and beyond.  Still, I really miss the guild and I miss seeing those people online, in my guild, always ready to hang out in guild chat.

The second biggest change for me is that my husband, who left with me, has decided he wants to try his hand at running a strict 10s guild.  Since my departure from my former guild was somewhat abrupt, I figure I may as well help him out, see it through 4.2, and figure out where things stand after that.  I’m not sure how it will go, running a guild is extremely time consuming and draining, but we already have a solid core of raiders.  I’m super excited about the future possibilities of this group, and it’s great to see how much energy everyone has.

Unfortunately, all this upheaval in our WoW lives happened so late in the current tier of content that my dreams of taking out Sinestra have been thoroughly dashed!  I’ll never be further than 3/13 Heroic, at least not while the content is “current.”  I believe we intend to continue working on BWD/BoT/T4W Heroics even as we make our way through the Firelands.  That will be a lot of fun, but not the same as if we had managed it before 4.2.

So, Firelands and 4.2 brings me to my next big change in Warcrafting; I am going to offspec as a feral kitty.  I know, I can hardly believe it myself.  With my feral druid alt kicking around, I never really thought it made sense to collect feral gear on my resto-specced main as well.  Why have two feral kitty off specs and gear sets when I can use two druids to play with all four specs?!

On top of that, my resto gear can double as balance gear, right?  Well, as I looked into my bags recently, I realized I had nearly a full set of Moonkin gear that was totally distinct from my Tree gear.  My hope to cut down on items that just took up inventory space by doubling up on gear and keeping related specs for each druid has not manifested into reality.  Apparently, it doesn’t really appear to matter which off spec I choose, I’ll never have enough bag space!

Lastly,  I’ve found that I simply enjoy mauling faces as a cat more than harnessing the power of the sun and moon as some sort of owl/bear/elk creature.  There’s something about being melee, all up in the action, that I really enjoy.  Perhaps because it’s so different than what I’m used to as a healer.

The tipping point for my choice came when the feral druid in my new guild recently decided he wanted to go mainspec Balance in 4.2, which means no one will be around to collect that delicious Fire Kitty staff.

Ok, that’s not exactly true; our new Moonkin is going to be maintaining a feral off set of gear in order to sub in as a tank if we need.  Given that we’ll more likely need him to sub in as a tank then me (a healer) to sub in as a melee dps, the first staff that drops is all his.  Also, I hear hunters may like it too?  But whatever.  I’ll (hopefully!!) get it eventually and I’m giddy over the prospect of actually having a somewhat legitimate claim.  I mean, seriously, you don’t get much more awesome than this:

I'll burn you with FIRE while mauling your face off!

I just hope that it doesn’t turn into another Terestian’s Stranglestaff. >.>  I wanted that weapon so much, and, despite running Karazhan week after week after week…after week…I never got it.  Whenever it dropped, there was always someone who really needed it, a hunter, a real feral druid, whatever.  I don’t begrudge them for taking the staff, it was only going to be a show piece for me after all…but, boy, did I want it!

Well, that’s it for now!  WoW 4.2 and the Firelands are just around the corner!