Well, I’ve spent a good deal of time lately mostly ignoring my main.  Things had slowed down in my guild, and I wasn’t raiding regularly as I was missing out on the signups.  I spent some time working on my Hunter, who is now reasonably geared in mostly T4 level epics.  I tell ya one thing, he sure can blow through his dailies much faster than my T5 level Resto Druid.  Sometimes I wonder if I should level HIM when Wrath hits.  But, that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve also gotten my Shadow Priest up to 62, and also worked on his trade skills.  He has tailoring at around 365 and his enchanting is up to about 320.  Two very nice trades to have, and I’m glad I picked them up.

But, as you surely know, I was in Black Temple Saturday night.  It’s time to start working on my main again.

One of the reasons he had fallen by the wayside a bit is that he’s more and more difficult to improve.  It seems the further you go in terms of gear, the more difficult it is to reach that next level.  Well, now that I’m officially in T6 content, the time to refocus is here.

For starters, I’m looking at all the badge gear that’s available, to try and find the best bang for my buck.  The healing leather chest is a nice upgrade, but not game-changing.  There is a nice ring, along with a decent pair of gloves, but neither screams out to me.  I already have the awesome pants that are available.

For pure, huge upgrade, there is really only one choice:  The Gavel of Naaru Blessings. I’ve been carrying the Shard of the Virtuous for, like, ever. I just can’t seem to get lucky with any of the other drops, like off the Prince for instance. I also have not taken Lady V down, and she carried a nice healy mace. I think I finally realized that the Gavel is just the way to go.

It’s high time I start farming badges.  It’s going to take some time to get to 150, though, and I hope I can stick with the program.  I’m sitting at 56 as of now, and the last two days have made sure to do the heroic daily.

The good thing about that is that yesterday it happened to be Shattered Halls.  I’ve never finished SH.  I  have actually only TRIED once — it was long ago, it was a pug, and we didn’t get past the gauntlet.  So it was nice to see content I hadn’t seen before, and I also made sure to pick up the quests there as well.  I still needed the Honor Hold revered head enchant, and I’ve needed it for a long time.  I just haven’t had the heart to beg for heroic HH instance runs.  Heart be damned, I’m going to be begging.

Well-geared Resto Druid LFG — anything that gives badges!

One of the earliest posts I wrote for this blog was Casual Raiding.  At the time, my guild (Bandits Reborn) was attempting to do some 25-man content in house.  We did have some success, and to this day occasionally try to run a 25-man in house.  But honestly, it never really was in the cards.

The bandits have been around for over 7 years, having originated in Asheron’s Call.  It’s one of those guilds where there is a core group of members that stick together through different games and incarnations.  We have had a presence in Anarchy Online, AC2, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons and others.  We joined the World of Warcraft bandwagon on day 1, and haven’t looked back. 

The point is that we have a solid core membership. From the very beginning, we were a casual guild.  We have a lively website with much-used forums, a fairly strict recruitment policy, and a dedicated membership.  One thing we have never had and I imagine we never will have is any kind of attendance or gameplay requirements.  Sure, you have to follow certain steps to join the guild in the first place, but once you’re in, you’re in for life.  Most of our members are mature, family-focused people who just like to play together.

Because of that, we are not built for in-house 25-man raiding.  We just aren’t.  You need time commitments and guarantees that our membership cannot provide.  It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the way things are.  We can occasionally get 25 people together for Gruul’s or, more recently, Mount Hyjal, but it’s not all that often. 

Maybe you have a guild like I do.  A guild that doesn’t require anything of you, but just a guild that is there for you to have people to play and chat with, and have a good time.  Like my guild, you probably have a handful or more of people who really really want to take a serious crack at 25-man content.  Maybe you have 6, maybe you have 10, maybe you even have 20.  The point is, you don’t have the 30 or more people you would really need to do it on your own.

So what can you do?  PUG it?  Get all your guildies together, then fill from the LFG channel?

Doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it?

Well, I have good news for you.  There is another, better option.  It’s an option that has worked wonderfully, though not always perfectly, for myself and my guild. 

Form an alliance.  There are casual guilds like yours everywhere, all you have to do is find one or two that you can work with, and work together.  Every casual guild has more progression-minded folks who want to see SSC and BT without sacrificing the benefits of a casual guild.  Put your 10 progression focused individuals with 10 from one guild and 10 from another, and boom!  You’re raiding!

Now, it’s not a piece of cake.  It takes some work.  You’ll have to figure out a way for your guilds to work together, but it’s not impossible.  I believe there are three things that make our alliance run successfully.

• Every guild in the alliance (right now there are six) has representation.  One rep from each guild has a say in any alliance decisions.  They also control who can and cannot raid from within their guild.  If you want to raid with us, you need approval from your guild rep.
• We have three main raiding days, and some of those days have MULTIPLE raids at different times to choose from.  This is important when dealing with casual players, as they often have very different play schedules.  This works great for me, as there is a raid that starts at 8 PM server time on Saturday nights.  I make nearly every one.
• We have a shared website with forums and phpRaid to handle signups.  When you have  as many guilds working together as we do, you need a handy way to handle signups and a place to "meet" and discuss things. 

And you know what?  it works.  I can’t think of another way a guy like me could raid, and do it successfully.  I can really only raid one night a week, so I wouldn’t even fit in most "casual" raiding guilds.  (In my experience they want at least 2 nights a week.)  I’ve personally seen 5 of 6 bosses in SSC go down, and now have seen Supremus go down.  It also just so happens that the Saturday night I usually attend is a sort of "progression" night.  So I was there for the first kill of Morogrim, Fathom Lord Karathress, Leotheras the Blind, and Supremus.  It’s a great feeling.

Anyhow, I hope my success can help some of you out there if you are struggling getting things off the ground.  An alliance CAN be successful with a solid plan and strong leadership.  Sure, we won’t ever be bleeding edge, but I don’t care.  I’m just happy to be seeing things I thought I’d never see.

They said it couldn’t be done.  Well, I guess “they” is a little nebulous.  The fact is I thought it couldn’t be done.  PTD in the Black Temple?  The Unholiest of Unholies?  Yeah right.  Well, as I said recently, I was signed up to do just that last night.  I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about a raid invite as the one I got last night for BT.

Our alliance recently decided to change focus from strictly T4 and T5 raiding to more a mix of T5 and T6.  We’ve done the first couple of bosses in MH, and this week we started on Black Temple.  They went Wednesday night (a night this Part Timer can’t make) and downed Najentus.  So last night was a continuation, and we would be starting with Supremus.  Let’s get started with the rundown.

The area around the Black Temple is one I generally avoid.  Too many random nasties about, and I don’t like random nasty deaths.  About the only time I’m in the area is to do the Armament daily from the Isle of QD.  So most of the area was unfamiliar to me.  Heck, I didn’t even know HOW you got in BT.  It turns out you go through a hole in the side of the temple.  Pretty cool.  Here is a shot of the first thing you see.

Yeah, pretty standard looking cave area.  But this is the Black Temple, baby!  I even DISCOVERED it!  Excluding QD, I haven’t discovered anything since SSC about 4 months ago.  I was a little geeked up already.

Anyhow, as this was a continuation, we just ran through a few areas that had been cleared.  Here is a pic of where they say the first boss was located.

On we went, and finally started clearing trash before the second boss, Supremus.  I’m sure you’ve all seen trash before, so I won’t bore you.  There are some dragon dudes, some worker dudes, some other dudes.  We wiped once by pulling in the wrong place and getting oodles of adds.

After awhile, the trash was cleared, and I got to take some vanity pics while we set up for the fight.

First, PTD the Tree in BT, with dead mobs behind!

Next, a shot of the big bad himself, Supremus.

That’s one big, bad elemental dude. Scary. It turns out he hits for a LOT too!  We started at 8 PM server, and were scheduled to go to 12 AM, a four hour raid.  (A four hour raid. [Gilligan's Island Theme Plays])  Now, I won’t bore you with all the fight details, but I’ll try to sum up.

There are two phases for Supremus.  In phase one it’s a basic tank and spank.  Basically you need two tanks for the fight, one holding the aggro, and the other there to avoid this big, nasty hateful strike that does some 14k or so damage.  The healers’ job is to keep both tanks as close to topped as possible.  If either goes down, it gets ugly fast.

In phase two, Supremus basically randomly picks raid members to, well, pick on.  He targets one player and charges at them.  He charges pretty slow, so you can kite him around.  He does this for a few seconds before switching to another target.  What this means is during this phase everyone is pretty well spread out, and prepared to run if they are the target.  I found that for druids, Cheetah form is the bomb in this encounter.  Special thanks to Matticus for letting me know I could USE cheetah in this battle.  It made getting away from Supremus a piece of cake.  Also during the second phase, volcanoes pop up all over that do huge AOE damage.  If one pops by you, you better move, and fast.

That’s it.  The fight switches back and forth between those two phases at timed intervals.  One of the keys is the switch from phase two back to phase one.  At that point the tanks have to pick him back up FAST and the healers have to get back in position FAST and let loose the healing.  This is the real struggle of this fight, IMO.  Most of phase one and two are pretty easy when you know what to do, it’s the transition that can kill a raid.

Any how, 4 hours later, 10 attempts, and one re-clearing of trash later, Supremus was down.  Sadly, I was down too, but I took a pic anyway.  At fifteen minutes, Supremus enrages, and we killed him at 15 minutes and 1 second.  Wow!  At that point we were also down to one tank, one healer, and about 9 or 10 DPS.  It was CLOOOOOSE, but we got him!

And here is our celebratory pic, after myself and others were rezzed, of course!

And that about wraps it up! We are now 2/9 in BT, and it feels great. I’m so glad I was able to go, and I felt like an important cog in our success. The loot was a DPS neck and DPS leather chest. I actually considered the chest for off-spec, but didn’t take it. I’ll leave you with two other interesting pics I got. One is of the top of the stairs after Supremus, and a familiar looking statue. The pic after that is the room right behind him, which I did not go further into. It looks cool, though!

One other note before the pics.  You can raid casually. Your friendly neighborhood PTD is living proof.  You have to finagle to get it done, but you can.  I only raid ONE night a week, and I’ve now seen almost all of SSC and some of the Black Temple now too.  Don’t think that just because you’re a casual player you can’t raid.  Anyhow, enjoy the next two pics, and thanks for reading! You stay classy, World of Warcraft!

I thought I’d go ahead and chime in on one of  Blog Azeroth‘s latest shared topics.  This comes from Breana of Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick:

What content or goals did you think you would never see, and what have you done? What has surprised you the most? Where do you see yourself in 6 months, after the launch of Lich?

I’ll start with the first part of the question.

What content or goals did you think you would never see, and what have you done?

In all honesty, I never thought I would see very much in terms of 25 man content.  I was always scattered in the way I played the game, and for a long time didn’t devote enough time to any one character to get them ready to raid.  You can see the evidence of this in the fact that I have played since release and still only have two 70s.  I server hopped quite a bit in the beginning, and in retrospect I wish I had just started on Whisperwind, like I should have.  Oh well.

One other thing that helped me along was Blizzard removing attunements.  I don’t know if I would have ever seen SSC if you still had to get attuned, as I have a tendency to carry around those kind of quest chains and not get them done.  Pre-BC, I only ever got attuned to Molten Core.  I never did finish my attunements for Onyxia, BWL or anything else.  My time is at a premium, and I prefer not to spend it running hither and to trying to complete some willy-nilly quest for attunement.

Thanks Blizzard, for removing attunements.

Because of this, I have seen every boss in SSC, and downed all but the Lady V herself.  Well, I never thought I’d get there.

What has surprised you the most?

This weekend I will reach another goal I thought I’d never reach.  Saturday night I’ll be stepping into the Black Temple.  While SSC was always considered well out of reach, I never even considered I’d step into Black Temple, at least not at 70.  I always figured it was a place maybe I’d visit when I had leveled beyond it, but certainly not now.  Frankly, I can’t wait to see what the place looks like.  I really have no idea.  I’ve only watched a video of the Supremus fight, as this is a continuation run and the first boss is already down.  It should be a LOT of fun, and keep your eyes peeled for pics and a rundown sometime next week.

I have no real long-term expectations, but I hope I can at least see a boss or two in BT go down.  Before Wrath.

One other thing that has really surprised me is how well my blog has been going.  When I started out, I was happy that I got over 20 subscribers, and 50 or so hits a day.  Now there are many, many more people who take the time to read my blog, and I’m very thankful for that.  It has been a great outlet for me to invest further in WoW without compromising family time.

Where do you see yourself in 6 months, after the launch of Lich?

I hope that I will have been able to focus on getting one character through the leveling process.  This isn’t to say I expect to be level 80 six months from now, but I hope that I can make a decision as to how I will attack the expansion and the new level cap and work hard at it.  I missed out on a lot in my guild with BC because they were all leveling in outlands while I was in the old world, leveling up an alt druid.  By the time I got to the outlands, a lot of them were well beyond the instances I needed to run.

I don’t want that to happen in Wrath.  With my schedule, I can’t be on the bleeding edge of leveling within my guild, but I think if I focus I can at least stay close.  I just have to decide, will it be my Druid, Hunter, or even my Priest?  The Hunter is potentially the best “leveler” while the Druid would give me the versatility I love.  It’ll be tough to decide.

So there you have it.  I NEVER thought I’d see BT, much less SSC, and I never thought so many people would be interested in reading what I have to say.  Thanks so much for reading!

Hello.  My name is PTD, and I’m an anti Fish-ite.  What the heck does that mean?  Well, it means I hate fishing!  Not that I dislike the people that fish, per se, but just that I couldn’t ever see myself leveling fishing.  I thought it was a HUGE waste of time.

Now, before you go off and judge me, I will say that I did TRY to like fishing on a few occasions.  I started many alts with the intention of working on all THREE secondary professions as I leveled.  It just never worked out that way.  I cooked.  I made bandages.  I didn’t fish.  You see, for me, it was always easy to fit in cooking or first aid while I did other things.  I could always find time to make bandages while waiting for groups to form, and cooking was always a quick stop in any capital city (usually IF for me) after hitting up the AH.  Fishing, though, always seemed like a waste of time.

Cast.  Stare at the screen, waiting for the stupid bobber to move.  Don’t DARE look away from the screen, otherwise you’ll wonder if the bobber moved while you looked elsewhere!  Right click the bobber once it moves, and hope the fish doesn’t get away.  Ugh.  With cooking, or first aid, or any other tradeskill, you can set it and forget it, at least a little.  I can make all the roasted clefthoof I have the mats for with one click.  I can make exactly 17 heavy netherweave bandages with just a few clicks.

Fishing?  Forget about it.  You better be ready to focus, son.

So I think the highest I ever got with fishing was in the mid 40s.  And that was with my old, forgotten alchemist, when I wanted to be able to fish up oily blackmouths.

That was the highest, until yesterday.

I finally faced my fears, and made an effort to level fishing a bit with my priest.  My priest is 62 now, and he had been shelved for a long time when I got him to about level 26.  Leveling had slowed to a crawl with him, and I couldn’t take it.  So at some point he became a tradeskill alt, leveling Tailoring and Enchanting.    That was all good and fine until he capped out his skill due to level.

Anyhow, that’s unimportant to this post. I picked him back up, got shadowform, blah blah blah.  Now he is my “main” alt, and the alt most likely to next hit 70.  He has his Tailoring at 360 and Enchanting at 300.  I am VERY thankful that I did pick him back up, as those two skills are very useful.

“So, PTD, what the heck does this have to do with fishing?”

Well, the other day I found myself in IF with the priest.  I realized that since I had parked him as a tradeskill alt for a long time, I never picked up a secondary tradeskill.  Not a one.  No cooking, no first aid, and yes, no fishing.  In interest of leveling cooking quickly and cheaply, I had read on Lootables.com (where I go for ALL my tradeskill leveling info) that the best way to do that was to fish.

Fine.  I’ll fish.

And they were right.  In no time at all, I had both fishing and cooking up to 150.  Along with that, it was the perfect opportunity for me to level my Enchanting skill a bit to boot.  I’m finally at the point where some people might actually WANT some of the enchants I can do, so I offered up the orange ones that I had mats for in trade for decent prices.  So not only did I get my fishing and cooking up, but I also got up to 311 in enchanting, and MADE MONEY DOING IT!

Woot!

Everything is better if you can make money!

And it helped me realize another miracle, you can actually MAKE MONEY from some professions.  (Poor, ill-informed sod that I am, my two 70s have probably the 2 least profitable tradeskills…Leatherworking and Engineering.  I rarely make much off of either, other than primals occasionally with the Engineer.)  Wonder of wonders, I think I found a new way to pass the time.  Fish in Stormwind while hocking enchants.  Yay for multi-tasking!

So now, dear fish lovers out there, I understand you.  I am ready to admit that I had an irrational hatred of the profession, and I’m here to come clean and ask that you allow me in your ranks.  Heck, if this continues, I may even soften my position on Murlocs.