Monday, August 11, 2008

Monday Musings

I had quite the weekend. A little bit of Avenue Q on Friday, a little bit of booze on Saturday, and a little bit of a hangover Kara on Sunday.

Avenue Q was simply amazing. Even if you're the type to hate musicals, you simply have to watch it if you live in the Greater Toronto Area, or in any other place that is currently doing a broadway run (London, NY, and Vegas, I think). Think of the musical as a version of Sesame Street, but with crack and hookers. The songs are simply amazing, but the Sesame Street flavor of the set and casting simply makes for a wonder piece of sattire of real life, while all at the same time giving the audience a bevy of laughs, cheers, and catcalls. A five-star in my book.

Saturday was my cousin's birthday party. Long story short, relatives happened to drop on by from Boston this weekend, so fun times was to be had by the extended family. A few shots of vodka and rum and a karaoke machine later, Krizzlybear was quite tanked, and had to go to the washroom and "pray to the porcelain gods". I passed out on the couch in the middle of singing My Sharona.

Sunday was my hangover day, and logged onto Bashertin with the hugest migraine and stomach ache. Maybe I oughtta drink more often, since I actually found myself in a winning AV group. We zerged their general and won handily within the first 5 or 6 minutes or so. Got the Olympic tabard, but didn't receive the medal. Poo. A few hours later, we started our Karazhan run, day 2 from our Thursday run.

I can officially say that I have finally participated in a Kara full clear.

This is quite a milestone for me, since I normally am part of the 2nd group for my guild runs, but due to the summer slump and natural tank shortages, participation of DPS members comes down to a first-come, first-serve signup basis. So instead of filling in for lagouts and no-shows, I finally had the opportunity to raid with the guild from start to finish, and simply put, we didn't wipe too much except on Nightbane.

On Prince, the tank wasn't topped off during his phase change and was clearly taking more damage than the healers could handle. One wipe was on Netherspite due to our lock staying a little too long in the blue beam and dying, and a mini-wipefest on Nightbane.

A few noteworthy details about the bossfights include our rogue evasion tanking Netherspite during the second red beam so that the healers could top off the main tank. I got some blue beam love at the end of the fight, because most of the casters had died. I managed my cooldowns so that I could pop a water elemental for last minute of the fight. Killed him with 15 seconds left before his enrage.

Nightbane was a hideous mini-wipefest, as mentioned already. It always came down to aggro issues after he landed, or squishy clothie issues trying to kill the skeletons. Finall killed him on the fourth try, the fight having lasted 9 minutes. I was glad to be a frost mage and not anything else. Cheap frostbolts are quite awesome, especially with mage armor on. I was able to keep squirtle alive despite the multiple charred earth attempts. I will gladly admit that the Dragon boss is perhaps the most intense fight with regards to pet management. You will really need to have your twitch finger on whatever is keybinded to your "pet follow" command. You only have a one -tick margin of error before Squirtle dies.

I had lag issues all the way up until the Chess event, so somehow I was unable to blink to the wall when Aran drew us all in for the arcane explosion. I lagged out while controlling a cleric during Chess, so I dunno how that would make it any more difficult for us to beat it.

The T4 headpiece dropped, but I lost out on DKP to the warlock. Was fair, since I had overbid on the T4 gloves off of curator for a marginal upgrade. I need something to replace my Shadow Council Cowl of Frozen Wrath, even though I have my moments where I just can't seem to do it if given the opportunity.

Tomorrow, I'll write a post about "pet greens," or equipment that you just can't seem to let go of, despite more viable alternatives. Oh, and I changed my blogfont to Arial. I've always been an Arial kind of guy, so I don't know why it took me this long to change it.

3 comments:

Grimmtooth said...

We have a healer dedicated DPSers on Netherspite and one warlock takes it for a whole cycle. As long as the healers are sharp and you go in with at leat 10K buffed health, and you alternate damage with your own green beam, it is moderately acceptable. The upside is that you don't endanger your mages as much, they are far too squishy and have far too much damage potential to risk that way. Two locks are optimum here, with your off healer keeping them upright.

krizzlybear said...

Yeah, it's a little difficult to do Netherspite with 2 healers though. It's a fine balance, because we have excellent DPS to really make up for it. It's just some of the endurance fights like Netherspite and Nightbane that really push the limits of our healers.

Larísa said...

I like the font change. Lots easier to read according to me.

Lag is SO annoying. I fight low fps constantly. Sometimes I set the video options really low to try to help to improve. But that will punish you in some fights. I'll NEVER have spell details low again at Nightbane... Not seeing that charred earth stuff is so annoying. Sometimes I've just had to run around blindly following other people, hoping they were wise enough to get out of it.

The skeletons are a bit annoying, I agree. I put up a fire shield and pot immensly and get out alive (always barely, but still).

I'm so glad I don't have a pet to care about in that fight by the way. Caring for Larísa keeps me occupied.