Tuesday 12 February 2013

Too soon?

Release date patch 5.2 is 28th of februar? So in two weeks? Is this too soon?

The guild I am in, Innovation, is now being crushed by Garalon, the 3rd boss of Heart of Fear. So how did we get here?

19-september-2012  Heroic Madness
One week before Mists, Innovation kills Madness HC, just in time.

19-october-2012  Stone Guards
On the second night in MSV, we take down Stone Guards

7-november-2012 Feng
12-novenber-2012 Spiritbinder
19-november-2012 Spirit Kings
Randomness has always been a problem for Innovation, So we needed two weeks for Feng, but after that, a new kill every week.

3-december 2012 Zor'yok 
Oh, HoF, well..Elegon was buggy somewhere, so we went to HoF and killed this one the first night we where in there iirc.

Christmas-vacation, which means two weeks of non-raiding.

9-januar 2013 Elegon
Finally, in the first raidweek we did in 2013, Elegon dies.

15-januar-2013 Will of the Emperor
MSV cleared

21-januar Ta'yak
Tornado boss down in HoF


Now looking at the big picture, except for Elegon, Garalon and Feng, Innovation only needs one week to master a new fight, what is more remarkable is that Innovation almost never wipes on a boss after the first kill. Since our first Will of the emperor-kill, MSV had been cleared in one night... yeah, we are strange.

Feng took us two weeks, there was some trouble with the last phase, but that was mostly due to lag, so people where a little slow, and the fact that almost everyone needed to blow up the raid at least once.

Elegon was a very different problem. Elegon was a DPS-race for us, and then missing 1-2 dps every week, well... we did kill it with 24 the first time though.

Garalon at this moment looks the same as Elegon, we just need a little more DPS. And then not actually the DPS/player, but another dps-player  :)

If I count quickly, 5 months, around 22 weeks, for 16 bosses...  with a christmas vacation included and a levelling-time. Yes, a new tier is too soon for Innovation now. There is almost no way we could have concluded the tier before that.

Innovation is a normal raiding guild, which means we certainly don't force our members to cap VP every week. The goal for everyone is to have fun, and not to stand to many times in the fire. And with that I think we maybe one of median-guilds. A guild that should get enough time to clear the content at a reasonable pace.

In Cataclysm, Innovation cleared every normal content before the next tier, and in the last tier, which always last longer then others, we even got a Heroic clear. There is not much difference between last-year raiders of Innovation, and the current ones. 80% is still the same. So we should be much further. or we should have been given more time.

The problem here is the number of bosses. The first Tier of MoP has 6 bosses more then the first Tier of Cataclysm. Look where we are, at the 9th boss.  And we are maybe able to take down the first one or two from Terrace, but we haven't been there yet.

So, recapping, or TL;DR-version;
Yes, the new Tier is coming too soon for Innovation, considering the numbers of bosses that are available in the current tier. And remember, around 5 weeks of the last 22 where lost due to levelling and vacation. A few weeks more would have been more lenient to take down, and maybe a late march-release would have been more logical.

But alas, in two weeks, the Thunder King needs to be killed...  once more unto the breach it is then.

[RED:... 3 hours after this post, Innovation killed Garalon and are now battling the enrage timer of meljarak).]

Thursday 7 February 2013

Too busy to write??

Almost 5 months, oh my, time does sometimes goes fast. So, well, my last post was on the 18th of september. Innovation just killed Deathwing Heroic, that seems ages ago...

It's not that I haven't been playing, but between work, being in love and lots of stuff to do IN WoW, I actually did the latter. It's either playing or writing about WoW, although I am currently between LFR's with Verulani...  who?

Oh yeah, that's the first time that name comes around. Verulani is my Shaman, formerly known as Mariandel, and she is doing LFR's as my prime-alt. Yus, still raiding as boomer with Innovation, but my altism isn't gone.

And that's one of the things post aren't that forthcoming now, there is so much to do in-game. Raiding, levelling, dailies, LFR, more dailies, pet-battles.....well...more dailies.

Since the the start of Pandaria, I levelled 6 characters to 90. First was my hunter-gatherer, followed by my paladin and then Verulani. Around the last two I already had some of the inccrease-reputation-thingies, so that helped for Verulani.

After those 4 alliance, I gradually levelled ye ole Gowron, to look at the Horde-side, including the invasion-dailies....  and let me spoil something, if Garrosh is not going, the current Horde will break apart..so..  yes, methinks Garrosh will be history soon enough.

After Gowron, I noticed the huge amount of lockboxes I had accumulated on the alliance-side, and now my rogue is also level 90. Currently being levelled is my priest as disco through dungeons...not that fast though...and I also have a monk-mistweaver somewhere.

Monks...  I don't know, I tried low-level tanking, and healing, but didn't like it that much. SO my dorf-monk is now doing nothing...  my dorf-mage has a future again...with a bit of luck, Class Act will happen again...although Innovation already has Class-Act, a journey back to kill the minions of the Lich King seems in order now.

So...  enough to write about after 5 months. Pet battles, raiding, oh and 5.2..and much more, just some quick thoughts.

You don't have to do dailies, I figured out very quick that doing all available dailies will make you mad, and to be honest, I don't think I have been VP-capped in ages... well, by accident maybe.

Pet battles are very addictive, it reminds me of civilization's 'one-more-turn-syndrome', being 'one-more-pet' now. And I do have a lot now, even that achievement-plant-thingie.

Transmog...  yes I transmog, and although the new rules considering weapons are nice, it also is a shame. Just yesterday I went with Verulani into a BG to get some honorpoints because I had a new LFR-mace but no fitting mace to transmog to. In 5.2 I will just transmog it into an Axe....

Innovation and raiding; Innovation is not a hardcore-guild, so we have been happily progressing through the normals. Elegon held us up for about a month methinks, and that honour now seems to lie with Garalon, who is crushing us to death (although we already had a 7% wipe).

Is this slow, probably yes, but Innovation is a 25-man guild, and that can be a problem...the amount of times we had raids with less then 25 the last 4 months is huge, I think about 70% at least, and that is holding us back the most methinks. And what is most strange is that there aren't that many 25-man guilds on Argent Dawn (europe). So there should be more people wanting to raid 25's then the just maybe 100 currently in those few guilds...

Well... next reset MSV will be taken of the roster by Innovation, and we will be starting to look at the Terrace...which I very much like. The Terrace that is, not that gloomy as the other raids, just some open skies, and some sunlight...