I'm back.....

So after driving 3600 miles in 11 days, I am back home. And I had a great time, but I am extremely happy to be home and in my own bed! Some things I have to say. The Denver Zoo is quite nice. It was cool to see Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Arctic Foxes, Arctic Wolves and such. We don't exactly have those in zoos in Texas.... A little too hot for them. Dickinson, ND was very nice. Not too hot, not too cold. And the family reunion was a lot of fun. I really like my wife's side of the family there! We then drove to Little Chute, WI. And let me say, nothing but farmland for 800 miles from Dickinson to Little Chute. We met up with some guildies in Little Chute and had a great time! Even got to go see Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Plus got a lot of cheese. I love cheese!! Overall, it was a great vacation, but now I need to rest up!

We ran into Ulduar on Saturday and Sunday and got all the way to Yogg-Saron, and that was a lot of fun. We didn't get Yogg down but then, we really only tried twice because we were running out of time. I think we will get to Yogg quicker next week. I am still trying to catch up on all my reading about patch 3.2 so I will let you know if I have anything to say about it soon!

Vacation Time

Well, we cleared Mimiron yesterday, and that was a lot of fun. We worked on General Vezax for a bit, but just didn't have the dps and he was healing too much. I think we might have it next time, but starting tomorrow and for the next 2 weeks, Steaky and I are on vacation.

Traveling to Denver, CO to visit my brother and a couple of friends, then off to Dickinson, ND for a family reunion, and then we will be heading to Appleton, WI to meet/visit with some of the other officers in our guild. I can't wait to meet them! We have been chatting for over a year now, but none of us have met in person, so this should be fun!

Anyway, I figure by the time I get back, we should have some more news on the state of bear tanking. Ya'll keep it furry!!

A Bearable Situation

So, like many of you, I do try to keep up on my daily blog reading. I find it interesting lately though that most of the feral bloggers haven't much to say. While the Resto bloggers are still chatting it up and disscussing different things, not much has changed for a while for Bears. And that is a good thing and a bad thing.

It is great that things aren't changing and that means that we aren't too messed up right now. But it also means that nothing real exciting is happening either.

My guild has been running 25 Man Ulduar during the week and my 10 Man Ulduar runs on the weekend. Our 25 man has been plagued by many difficulties. First it is summer, hence fewer online players. So we matched up with a similar guild to run 25 mans. And while this is nice so we have enough players, when our top ret pally can out heal 3 of their healers using only his Judgement of Light, something is mighty wrong. I saw this on the WWS (Eff. Heals) for defeated bosses. He was 4th on heals and also 3rd on damage done and 4th on DPS. I was kind of shocked. Then take into account that their GL is their MT, and while he is okay, he isn't what I would consider a great tank. He dies every fight at least once, and isn't that great at holding aggro. I mean, come on!

However, my 10 man is going well. We had missed several weeks due to people being out of town, so we finally got down Hodir, Freya, and Thorim on Sunday. Only took us 2 attempts each which isn't bad since we had never seen the fights before. We would have taken down Mimiron, but we only had 1 ranged dps, a Boomkin, and 4 warriors, so that kind of hurt us. Hopefully this weekend we will have our Lock. But then we go on break again for 2 weeks, but I can't complain too much since it is actually Steaky's and my vacation that is messing stuff up there.

Anyway, not too much exciting happening for us.....

Just a little fun!

New forms

As I'm sure you all have seen by now, there are new forms for cat and bear.  I have seen them all and they are definately different.  And above all else, I am soooo glad I'm a Tauren!!  I really like their forms better.  

I think it is funny that the Tauren cat forms look male and the Night Elf cat forms look female. If you have the designs in game, why can't males have the Tauren manes and females have the NE cat design? I mean, come on, why would a male NE druid want to look like a female cat?  But seriously, why do the Taurens look like male lions and NEs look like female lions?  I admit the colors on the NE forms don't scream female lion, but the look of the cat does.  And what is the deal with the jewerly?  

Anyway, just a thought for the day.  I can't wait to play around with the different colors and decide which one looks best on Ylee!

Where's the Cloth??? And Leather???

So my guild ran Nazz 10 last night  for a few of us that have alts that are Naxx ready.  We did Spider, Plague and Military and the ONLY cloth drop happened on the 4 Horsemen.  Gown of Blaumeux dropped which is nice for my Shadow set, but dang, not a single healing upgrade.  And I can't even wear it yet because I'm not hit capped and it lowers my hit from what I have now.  

And on my Bear, I haven't seen a single leather drop in Ulduar yet.  Dang it!

Anyway, I'm going to be tanking Ulduar tonight on my Bear and finishing up Naxx tomorrow night. So I'm hoping for some upgrades!!

Tanking stuffs

So I have been working with a couple of new tanks recently, mainly because I'm playing my priest in heroics but I have a few things I would like to mention.  

Make sure your party knows the kill order and that it takes a few seconds for a warrior or a druid to get AOE threat on all the targets.  And if you are the tank, make sure you move and really piss off the ranged casters or rangers (think Nexus).  There is nothing worse than having those guys shoot the crap out of your healers in the back cause you didn't grab them well enough.  

If a target starts running toward someone else, use your taunt button, that is what it is there for.  Don't rely on running after the target, if it gets to your clothie before you get to it, you might be down one clothie.

If a pull or two goes haywire and you struggle to get control of everyone, understand Sh!t happens and learn from it.  Don't throw in the towel on tanking just because of a bad pull or two.  Understand, WE HAVE ALL HAD THEM.  

I know some people don't understand that tanking is more than just running in there and grabbing aggro, but it is.  You have to learn the ins and outs of all the instances better than anyone else in the group.  You have to know what mobs to kill first, what mobs to CC, and where to stand and where to move if you have to move.   

Tanking is about being prepared ahead of time and putting in the time to learn stuff to do it right.  My friends say I make it look easy, well, that is because I do the research and put in the time so that I know what to expect.  Plus I have tanked every single heroic in both WotLK and BC as well as raids and nothing prepares you better than practice!!

Ramblins

So things on my druid are going pretty well these days.  I am pretty happy with the state of bear tanking and cat dps.  I have now specced feral/feral and love it.  My wife however feels that I should keep all this tree gear in case I ever need to heal.  I'm a BEARCAT not a tree, I keep telling her.  I have run quite a few heroics lately on my Disc Priest alt and love it.  I even have been doing some shadow which is different.

Things have been sort of slow on the raiding front, but that is to be expected this time of year.  Everyone wants to go on vacation, or at least spend more time outside.  I can't blame them, I do too!!  We are even taking my mother to Scarborough Faire this weekend as a belated Mother's Day gift.  And of course that is the day my guild chooses to go into Ulduar 25 for the first time.  We have all been on 10 man, but this is the first 25 man we are trying and I'm not going to be there.  /cry

Ah, well, real life and mothers first!  And Lord knows, if Mother ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!! 

The Siege of the Antechamber....

So this past week saw my 10 man group take down the first 4 bosses on Thursday night and then we took down Iron Council, Kologarn and Auriaya yesterday.

Can I just say wow, they nerfed the crap out of the first 4 bosses.  We one shot Ignis and XT and didn't really have much issue with people going down.  I was cat the whole night since my buddy Gurggy the Mighty Warrior was there to tank.  We downed the first 4 bosses in less than 2 hours and called it a night.  It was a lot of fun!  And I am still running top on damage and still helping with innervates and rezzes.  But Sunday I get to tank again!!

Now on Iron Council, at first we had me on the middle and small guys but I just couldn't get the little guy to move so we switched it up.  We had the DK tank (Eximius) on those two while I took Steelbreaker.  He was a lot of fun to tank.  Just remember to call out those Fusion Punches and keep an eye on the ground below him.  I will also mention that if you position your camera correctly, you can see is animation for the Fusion Punch and it is easier to call out so you aren't just watching his cast bar.  Steelbreaker will raise his arm above his head and it gets this bright white glowing spark and that is when he is casting the Fusion Punch.  

Once he was down, I grabbed Molgeim and tanked him.  Make sure someone is dispelling his Shield of Runes and that you move him forward just enough to get him out of the Rune of Power he puts on the ground but stay close enough your melee can stand in it.  Also, when you see the Rune of Death, run!  Don't pass go, don't collect 200 dollars, just get out of there!!  Those hurt if they somehow get combined with him standing on his Rune of Power and hitting you!!  I was made into a bear rug.  /shiver

Then we moved on and wiped out Brundir, and he is pretty easy as long as you run from his Overload and when he hovers in the air, stay away from him while he wanders around the room.  He was really easy to kill if you watched those things!

After this we went to fight Kologarn.  Now, let me pass on something we didn't know ahead of time.  YOU CAN RUN OFF THE EDGE OF THE PLATFORM.  So if you are tanking him, don't run too close and fall off!  ;)  I'm not the one who discovered this but I was laughing way too hard when he said it in vent.   Other than that this guy is a pansy.  His adds he calls are a joke and easy to take down all by my bear self.  Just keep an eye out for his evil eye (laser beams!)

Now we moved on to Auriaya, who really wasn't bad either.  We cleared some trash and got her set up and Eximius pulled for me and I tanked her.  We just kept moving her around the corners so that when her Sentry respawned Eximius could take care of it quickly.  It went quite smoothly.

We then moved onto Hodir but we really didn't have time to try more than like 3 times since some folks needed to get going.  But I think that was a pretty good week!

Four down... 9 More to go.

So my 19 man downed the first 4 bosses in Ulduar last weekend.  It was a lot of fun!  And we got two of the three bosses down for the Iron Council so I know we will get it down this weekend.

We got Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and XT down on Thursday.  Then Sunday we came back and got Ignis and worked on the Iron Council.  

One little hint that may be helpful for Razor is that there are two types of balls of fire that fall from the sky.  Blue balls and Orange/Blue balls.  Now, we all know there are certain things in life you don't want, and this continues to be true.  IF YOU SEE THE BLUE BALLS COMING YOUR WAY, MOVE!  The Blue balls put the blue flame on the ground and kill you if you stand in it.  The Orange/Blue Balls are the fireballs and while they deal damage, they aren't as big a deal.  So, please notice Blue balls = bad, not that you probably didn't already know that!  ;)

What I did learn on XT was that every little bit helps.  I used my Tranquility during the second Tympanic Tantrum and that really helped with the healing for my group.  And I was still top DPS with 5100 so I was happy I could help heal the group and put out the dps.  Also, if you don't know, there is now trash in XT's room that you can pull before you engage XT.  This helps a lot! 

And on Ignis, when you are in the pot, use your healthstones, potions, and lifeblood if you have them.  This will make things much easier on your healers.

Currently I am full cat spec and running with Glyph of Rip, Glyph of Shred and Glyph of Savage Roar.   I am really enjoying cat right now but I also enjoy tanking.  I'm not so fond of healing, but I know that my guild runs short of healers occassionally so I can't just make my two specs bear/cat but I think it would be lots of fun. 

Ulduar

So my guild normally runs 25 man raids, but before we do that, most of us like to run the 10 man versions to get an idea of how things work.  We do this because we are a casual guild and we don't just invite the best of the best for raids.  That being said, we have composed 2 10 man raids and are giving it one heck of a go.  

My groups name is Short Bus All-Stars (SBAS) and we have been running 10 man Naxx together for months now.  The other group is He-Man Woman Haters (HMWH).  Yes, we are odd with our names.

Last Thursday, SBAS went into Ulduar for the first time missing a few of our regulars so we picked up a couple of other folks.  Well, Flame Leviathan is a lot of fun and we downed him pretty quickly.  We then moved on to the trash outside Ignis and I got 1 shot.  Needless to say, I was a bit shocked but we tried a couple of times, but we just didn't have the dps.  So we decided to give Razorscale a go.  That fight is pretty simple and fun also but again, we didn't have the dps for it and a couple of people had to go so we called it a night.

We went back in on Sunday and started with Razorscale.  That was a lot of fun and we were able to get it pretty quickly and he went down!  Yeah!  Then we cleared all the trash in front of Ignis and gave him a go several times, but we had trouble coordinating the iron constructs, we would get them molten and I would take them into the water, but then couldn't get the damage needed to for them to explode.  So the trash ended up respawning before we got him so we moved on to XT.  Now this was an interesting fight since we only had 1 ranged dps.  So to compensate, Steaky respecced to Boomkin and our Pally started healing.  Still, I think this fight would have gone much better had we had more ranged dps to get the adds down quickly.  That was our biggest problem.  On one of our attempts we got him down to 40% with 3 minutes and 40 seconds left, but then the adds just got too much.  Hopefully our ranged dps folks can make it this week.

Overall, some things I learned were:

1.  On Razorscale, keep moving, don't stop.  I seemed to die every time I stopped moving for some reason and it wasn't just the blue flames on the ground.

2.  On the trash outside Ignis, the flame tornado mobs need to be tanked on either side of the wall and be prepared to move away from the tornados they spawn.

3.  Scorch hurts. Don't stand in it longer than you have to.  

4.  Kitty dps on the heart of XT rocks, but keep a lookout for pummelers.

and most of all,

5.  Get a motorcycle for FL, that is way too much fun!!!

P.S.  Got my Glyph of Savage Roar.  Ouch!  But my priest finally got a Book of Glyph Mastery and learned Glyph of Penance.  Now if only she was 80.

It's Hereeeeeee........

Well, Patch 3.1 is here and I'm happy about that.  

However, I'm pissed as hell at Curse and Wow Interface.  I don't ever click on the damn ads, I never even look at them.  All I want is a nice easy way to update my addons regularly.  And when I tried the Curse one, all it did was not update things and give me errors.  I DON'T want that damn thing.  So now I'm back to manually doing it. 

Growl, I am not a happy bear.