drool … Armored Bloodwing mount

What a nice evil looking Bat! The new store purchasable mount is god damned evil looking, and a pleasure to behold. Blizzard store link for those who can’t wait and have $25 they can spend without regard for charity or child support.

I want this mount.

Ref from MMO Champion: Armored Bloodwing – Items – World of Warcraft. Video after the break.

Guild Level 25, We’ve got those Lions

Insidious ping’ed guild level 25, and we’ve gained those darn nice Lion land mounts. Stoked.

Raid leading Ulduar 25

A few nights ago I led my first 25m Ulduar, and it was certainly a challenge. Raid leaders have always had my respect, and as a participant I tend to follow the instructions from the leaders even if they make little sense. You never know when somebody has a method or tweak that will change the encounters. That said – its a prick of a job.

It is a strange sensation to lead a raid rather than just do my job. Kind of like thinking in two spaces at once, the first is my normal role of melee dps killing the mobs, and the second is watching what else is going on, seeing and correcting the actions of others.

Raid leading seems like a good role to keep the game interesting. I’ve always been an advocate for knowing the roles of other classes, and understanding what powers, strategies, and potential the Tank, DPS and Healer roles use. And now I get why often raid leaders have several alts, in each of the three roles in the game.

My concerns were:

• Trying to give brief instructions to the players who had not seen the content, without covering everything and boring the experienced players to tears.
• Moving at a pace that let us not feel to slow. Now to my mind, the last run was really slow, especially in the first prep. I aim to speed this up significantly.
• Giving advice without being a prick, or sounding too harsh. I hate saying the same thing 3 times, and if a set of players are just not doing what they’re told that irks me. (eg. melee dps need to switch to the XT002 trash if it is getting too close to the boss)
• Being ok, or not being ok when instructions are not followed.

I find in the heat of battle people stick to what they know rather than what they’re told to do in advance. That means that moving them mid fight will help, but also saying it afterward will help too. Post-wipe looks to me to be a good time to outline what we might have to do better. I think it willstick more in everyone’s heads after a small beating.

What went well:

• Considering it was the first time that a lot of the raid had seen Ulduar 25, and first Ulduar run for a few players we did ok.
• Killed Flame and XT, but had a frustrating time with Razorscale.
• Morale was good, they’re happy to be seeing 25m stuff.
• Overall everyone did what they had to in a really efficient way.

What I’ll do next time:

• We tried Suicide Kings for the first time in the run too, and I think there was a lot of confusion. I am definitely going to re-cover the loot rules at the beginning.
• Quick in, and expect players to know the fights. Get in, play, wipe if we need to, then cover next steps. Better to start playing that spend 20 minutes talking about it. Setup and go in 5-10 max for a new group.
• Next run will be Flame, XT, then Kolo. Razor can be killed when we’re all a little better geared and more coordinated.