Rambling Moments

So while I wait for my sister to be distracted by something shiny and leave her computer so I can listen to the Feral Roundtable podcast without being yelled at for downloading and lagging her, I may as well write something!

As I said in my last post, last week we were wiping on Lei’Shen, so we decided to extend our lockout to try it for another week, so if we are able to, we can begin Heroic Modes. So Thursday was decided on for the next raid night (because State of Origin was on Wednesday). Things went better. There seems to be a certain amount of rng involved – if the people heading to the furthest segment get selected before they’re into place it can cause major havoc.

I was trying out Displacer Beast for this, and I think this is the only fight I know of where it’s viable. Arguably Feline Swiftness probably works out with similar results. Benefit of DB for this is essentially a Blink to swirls or into position on the far section during intermission. It is rather frustrating though that the cooldown is 30 seconds for a glorified blink. I also glyphed Stampeding Roar to have a radius of 30 yards. The benefit of this as we get more experienced at the fight is kind of losing it’s value, as people are getting ready to move before the boss reaches 65% (?) health. DB to get to my final destination is pretty helpful but I’m not sure if you could argue that Feline Swiftness would get you there sooner anyway.

See what I mean about ramblings?

Anyway! We were having some confusion on second intermission and when we got through that to the last phase we all promptly died to – I don’t know what. So no boss down. Sad kitty.

We began to try to organise another day of attempts, as, like I said previously, some people can’t make days this week. There wasn’t a day when everyone was available at all. Finally our Warlock took one for the team and cancelled his RL plans for the Friday.

Come Friday, guess what happens? Healer can’t make it. So 9 people show up to an early raid (8:30 instead of 9:30) and spend roughly an hour half discussing our options, half looking for Elite Pugs to kill. Meanwhile I was talking to a priest who’d wanted to join a while back and we didn’t have space, if they’d want to join the group tonight. But they had to go out, so I resorted to advertising in Trade. Ugh. I’ve already mentioned how dead our server is.

You try looking for more for a real raid that isn’t the first boss and trade goes silent(er). There’s still raid guilds on Alliance on Jubei’thos? I bet they ask themselves. Anyway, after about 20 minutes I got a whisper from someone who says their Warlock has the ilvl I was asking for but they’ve never done it (only LFR). “You’re in!” I pretty much tell them.

They were OK dps for their gear but not to the level we needed. Our enhance shaman had gone resto to fill in for the asswipe that hadn’t shown (not being mean because he doesn’t read this; pretty sure he knows how I feel about him). But his dps is epic so we lost that for his healing in offset gear. It just wasn’t enough to push the phase changes in good time. The pug was a cool guy and stuck around through endless wipes with no complaints. Took instruction well, died his job well. When, finally, our healer decided to log on and we subbed him in for the pug. We tortured him telling him he’d made the OT sad, because it was her birthday and all she really wanted was to get Lei’Shen down.

I don’t know if it was the endless wiping we were all gauged to get the fight done as soon as things went right. But with our regular group, I think we got the boss down on the very next attempt, with everyone surviving the last phase. FINALLY!

Yet.. MY TRINKET STILL DIDN’T DROP!
It’s going to be like Sha-touched agi weapon again, or even Death Bringers Will; I won’t get it until everybody outgears the content anyway. Really frustrating. There’s not really any more I can do. I do Lei’Shen sometimes twice a week on LFR and use a coin each time. Statistics say I’ve defeated him in LFR 11 times. Nearly all those times I’ve used a coin also and gotten one piece of loot (the weapon which I don’t need). That’s looking like less than a 10% loot chance? QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ.
Sorry. I feel like I complain about loot a lot.

On a brighter note, all anyone can talk about is the announcement of Flexible raid groups! I’m a little disappointed it will be loot in between LFR and Normal which makes 3 things to run each week if you are after a specific piece of loot. But it can be done across servers – and hopefully open the floodgates for cross server normal and heroic raiding. This will breathe new life into many guilds struggling to get 10 people together. I think many people would rather do a cross realm flexible raid than not raid at all because that one person didn’t show up.

My wistful, wishful thinking hopes against hope that one day Bnet will be linked up between US and EU regions, even if the capabilities to let you group together aren’t possible yet. But I’m not going to hold my breath. It is rather frustrating that I can flick a switch on Diablo 3 and use my real ID to send and receive friend invites to and from friends in the UK, but Blizzard won’t extend a bridge between the two to make the permanent connection. That’s the only thing I don’t really like about Blizzard games like Wow etc. Other games I’ve played, not just MMO’s, allow you to run into people literally from anywhere in the world. WoW it’s kind of like.. you can make friends with anyone, as long as they’re in a similar geographical zone to you. But you European players, don’t you think about going near the US and Oceanic players while on game or on our website.
I’m sad because I have quite a few friends from the UK who play Blizzard games like WoW and StarCraft, but I have no way of contacting them through the game.

More waffling! Signs of my sisters cave don’t appear to signify that it’s safe to download anything at the moment.

All in all, 5.4 can’t get here fast enough and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one thinking that. As 5.3 hasn’t been out long I suppose this won’t be any time soon.

I wonder if I can lure my sister out with something? Food maybe? No.
Drop a hint she should walk the dog?
Drop a hint that she should shower?
Maybe let her German Shepherd into the house. That’s a good distraction.
Sigh. Sisters. Can’t live with them, can’t distract them with food.