For most people, we chase one thing. It doesn’t really matter what you do, or how large or small it is. As humans we chase one thing. It could be something as small as opening a drawer and finding clean clothes in the morning, finding that extra hash brown in your McDonald’s bag, or winning a gold medal.

The thrill of victory drives us.

There is something that is required to know this feeling however. The agony of defeat. You can not have light without dark, good without evil, victory without defeat.

Last night as we approached Leotheras the Blind, we talked about the strat videos that we have watched, all the reading we have done, we were truly prepared for this fight. We can already see the Tier 5 gloves on our toons. The hunters are drooling over their set bonus and we don’t even have it yet. To say we were over confidant would be stupid, we weren’t. There was just no doubt that we were getting our 2nd Tier 5 boss kill.

Our first attempt and wipe was just to feel the fight out and to stretch our legs. The inner demons come and our main tank is mind controlled so we wipe it. Now we have seen first hand what happens and are ready.

Attempt 2 (ever):

Flawless pull. Leotheras is released from his banished state. Our inner demons come out and are no match for the wrath that is Defiant. We pass the 50% mark as the anticipation builds. We pass 30% and people’s voices are starting to get a little more excited on vent. We pass 20% and people start dreaming of T5 and start playing sloppy but we hold it together. We pass 15% and the split happens. Our warlock picks up the demon. We pass 10% as the main tank calls burn him. The DPS does just that; and things take a directional turn unexpected. He does his whirlwind and we forget about the agro dump. The DPS is taking so much damage the healers forget about the warlock; he dies. We are now at 3% with almost everyone dead. The DPS doesn’t let up, we are killing this guy. The 1% mark comes and all the healers are dead. Its one druid tank and a mage left; he’s going down. Leotheras decides it’s time to remind us that he owns this chamber and will not be passing out gifts tonight.

I have wondered several times if the 1% wipe is written into the game. I am sure that it is not, we create it ourselves. We do it over and over again. Without the 1% wipe the final victory would not be nearly as sweet.

So we had a guild first last night. We killed all 3 of the bosses that we are able to kill in SSC in one night ... 3 hours no less. Lurker got his revenge however.

We have a rule in Defiant, "Don't Suck." Mistakes are ok, but repeated mistakes, esp if they are stupid ones, are not.

This is generally said before we start, while things are still upbeat, and never used as a put down ... However the joke has become that if you die to Lurker's Spout, you suck and will recieve a /gkick. (ok not really but it's fun).

This has really motivated everyone to relax during Lurker and avoid spout at all costs ... So what does the bastard do? Over rotate during our fight and kill a couple of people.

Bah

This is something that I don’t think most people pay attention to. Although I think they probably should. As of patch 2.1.2, (June 19, 2007), there is no longer an attunement process needed to enter Serpentspine Cavern and The Eye at Tempest Keep. The quest line for the original attunements remains however, and upon completion of both, the player receives the title, “Champion of the Naaru.” The unique thing about this title verses other titles, is this one comes after the players name. Titles were originally introduced as a PvP status pre-BC. There were problems in some countries with this, so the ability to gain these titles was stripped from the game even though players were able to keep what they earned. Therefore from time to time you will see players with names such as Sergeant Benedykt. The title, “Champion of the Naaru” comes after the name and will appear, “Knurd, Champion of the Naaru.” These are extremely long and drawn out quest lines and Blizzard wanted to ensure they still rewarded those players crazy enough to gain their attunement for Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye in Tempest Keep. The Eye attunement quest line includes running and completing, Shadow Labs, the Shattered Halls timed event and Arcatraz on heroic, then finally killing Magtheridon himself. This is after completing the almost 30 quests leading upto the dungeon quests. The attunement process for Serpentspine Cavern is a bit simpler as it involves killing Gruul the Dragonkiller of Gruul's Lair and Nightbane found in Karazhan.

Even after patch 2.1.2, the attunement process for Mt. Hyjal and Black Temple remained in place. As of patch 2.4, March 25, 2008, the attunement processes were removed for both Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal. I feel, however unconfirmed, that Blizzard removed these attunement processes due to the Sunwell badge gear which is on par with T6, therefore allowing players to become geared enough to run these raid instances without doing any of the previous ones. The release of this badge of justice gear and the removal of the attunement processes occured at the same time. The experiences learned from the previous raid instances will greatly aid in the learning curve of Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal however. In order to reward those who had already done the attunement process, and those that choose to complete it still, Blizzard introduced another title into the game. This one is, “Hand of A’dal.” This is another unique title as it also appears after the players name, “<>, Hand of A’dal.”

This one is more difficult to obtain than the first. The Black Temple attunement process involves speaking to an NPC in Fathom-Lord Karathress’s room, killing Al’ar in Tempest Keep, and then killing Rage Winterchill the first boss in Mt. Hyjal.

As scary as this may be, that is the simpler of the two quest chains. The attunement process for gaining access to Mt. Hyjal, (remember this one must come first as you have to kill the first boss here for the other one … or at least it used to), all of the quests for Black Morass and Old Hillsbrad Foothills must be completed in the Caverns of Time, then The Vials of Eternity must be looted from Lady Vashj in Serpentshrine Cavern and Kael'thas in the Eye of Tempest Keep.

I am sure by this point you are wondering why my point is. The gear we are obtaining through raiding is great, but come time for the expansion we will replace all of it. A few pieces we will keep for memory’s sake, but the rest will be sharded or vendored for cash and mats. For the few people that have worked to earn these titles, those will remain in tact until they either stop playing the game, or Blizzard finally turns off the servers.

Myself and a few others have decided that we are going to start working on getting these titles, Champion of the Naaru we should have next week sometime as that one is very easy for us to obtain. I feel that other raiders that have progressed that far in the game should consider doing this as well. It’s the one thing that we will always take with us even if the game is going on 15 years from now.

It should also be noted that once a player passes lvl 70, these titles can no longer be obtained, although players that already have them can display them proudly.

Normally when I do tips on what to do and what not to do to irritate the WoW world that you live in, I don’t name names. I am upset enough about this one that I am going to name this persons name in hopes that someone reads this and avoids this happening to them.

The main question at hand is at which point do you owe it to a guild to help them keep progressing? How long after receiving what I have referred to in the past as an elite piece of gear do you need to stay and help those around you? Yes, it’s your $15 a month, but by taking [Mantle of the Avatar] (T5), (The first set I might add), and the only set of [Boots of the Divine Light] in a guild, you have gimped their ability to progress. Basically that gear doesn't belong to you, it belongs to you and 24 other people who help you get it.

Let me back up just a little bit. We as a guild are now 3 of 6 in SSC, 1 of 4 in TK, and have downed Rage Winterchill. There was a member of our guild named Kruelladevil, who has been in the guild for a while. It has always been known that Kruell hated playing a holy priest, and preferred shadow, but respec’d every time we raided in order to get a raid spot. We raid with shadow priests, and would not have been denied a spot being shadow. We even use a couple of strats on bosses that require them. (See Void Reaver). We have been farming Rage Winterchill and the trash to Anetheron for weeks.

Due to the fact that Kruell is a raider, he was given loot priority just like the rest of us. When we farm Kara/Mag/Gruul, we take alts and such as there is no reason for us to take our T5 raiders in there anymore. Kruell has a Shaman he has started to play more and more. He has been taking it into Kara/Mag/Gruul and wanted to start taking it to T5 level raids instead of his priest. This is an enhancement shaman, so not only do we lose a healer; we in its place pick up a poorly geared, underplayed shaman. Although this isn’t a HUGE loss as Kruell spent more time dead than alive on his priest anyway … He would easily double the number of deaths of the priests. He never did quite get the hang of a little thing called agro management.

Off of the trash drops in Hyjal, Kruell picked up the first pattern for [Boots of the Divine Light] (BOP) that Defiant has recieved. The following week, we drop VR for the first time and he nabs [Mantle of the Avatar]. At this point, Defiant as a whole has invested time, gold, and effort into his now T5/T6 toon. This is two weeks ago. He now this week removes his toon from Defiant, telling us he is no longer going to raid with Kruell, but would still like to take his Shaman on raids with us. Basically he removed the priest so he could get priority with his Shaman.

He's an idiot if he thought we would even consider giving him a drop off hogger after doing this.

If you see Kruelladevil apply for your guild on Greymane, tell him to piss off. You DON’T want him. He will STEAL from your guild. This is just wrong! Now whatever guild a person does this to not only has to replace that person, but are now set back 2 weeks, (assuming those drop two weeks in a row I might add), to replace the gear that was stolen from them.

As an FYI, this is the second time that I know of that he has gimped a guild in this fashion.

I origionally wasn’t going to include this, but it’s just too damn funny to leave out.

We enter SSC last night as usual and start clearing trash. The first several pulls go without issue and are completely flawless. We are approaching Tidewalker, and are facing down the last pull before the Murlocs. We have been chain pulling all night so there isn’t much time between pulls.

I am on mis-direct duty for the off tank so I am out in front of the group. Now we have 3 druid trees with us … Picture this, 4 hunters out in front of the raid getting ready to make a pull. Suddenly a tree appears on the left hand side of your screen. YEAH! Extra healing for the hunters if we happen to get smacked … no wait, where the hell is he going?

Let me ask a question? Has your auto-run ever gotten stuck? I would like to say no, but I am not sure ... I have always just chalked it up to my own stupidity … but I suppose it could have.

So the tree proceeds past the hunters, through the 6 mobs in front of us and off the end of the platform into the water … dying. Mobs come flying at us, completely unprepared .. despite our attempts at saving the pull, we were laughing WAY too hard to be able to do anything other than wipe.

I salute this druid tree for making an unannounced pull that is generally reserved for hunters and their pets, you sir are now an honorary hunter.

In response to a comment left on my last entry, I have done some research and can not find anything confirming that the auto shot no longer clips. I read through the patch notes, (again), scoured over the Elitist Jerks forum, and BRK can not confirm this. If that is the case, it would appear, (if there is a link to this please post it), that it was something that was done in the back ground. I have noticed from my own testing using the addon Little Trouble, that I do still clip auto shots, but with the 3:2 macro DPS is up rather than down for doing it … I know there was an exploit right after the patch came out that would allow you to fire two auto shots off at the same time, but Bliz has fixed this.

On 4/23 Nitehawk wrote:

One point of clarification about clipping. Since 2.3, the mechanics now apparently allow for the autoshot gcd timer to start during a steady. Normally, an autoshot cannot fire for 0.5 seconds after a special. However, as long as you don't cast a steady shot less than 0.5 seconds before the autoshot fires, that 0.5 gets embedded in the steady cast time. This is the genius of the 3:2 rotation. It delays the autoshot, but not by much, and doesn't actually delete it. Of course, if you cut it too close to the autoshot, you are losing a mana-free 1000+point hit (on average). Which hurts. My understanding is that the !cast command helps to prevent this...

I would be interested in any official writing about this as I would think that the GCD would not allow this to occur. This is not to say that it is not correct, I am unsure if it is correct. Enough people read this blog that I am hoping that someone out there can clear this up once and for all, even if just for me. I have also been unable to find clarification on the ! command before the shots other than it's supposed to be there now. I did for the sake of testing remove this from my macro last night, (kept the origional on the bar right next to it just in case), and used that one without it during our SSC run. I saw no difference in my DPS or rotation while using the two macros. They clipped just the same, and gave the same DPS curve.

I did read something that made me smile though …

“Fixed a bug in which Hunters were able to disengage from combat using Feign Death during boss encounters”

Why couldn't this have been "working as intended" like so many things we hate?

On a completely seperate note , I finally buckled down and did two things yesterday ... I am one of the only hunters who didn't fish or cook, but I broke down yesterday and got my fishing to 245, that fishing quest for the skill at 225 is probably the dumbest thing I have done in game to date, and got my cooking skill to 375. This should make my life a little cheaper as I can now cook my own cat food. I am sure that Tygre is relieved as she no longer has to cook for me to make sure Sapphire doesn't starve!