Essence of Frustration

It wasn’t looking good for raiding last night. Neither team was going to have enough people to form up their raid. So my ever resourceful Guild Leader decided to combine the teams and form up a Raid.

We made some solid attempts at 4 Tower Flame Leviathan before dialing it back to 2. I know my Guild Leader reads the blog (or did at one point) so let me put this suggestion out there.

Instead of trying for 4 Towers next time, why don’t we try 3? Or if we try 4 Towers and can’t quite get it, why don’t we dial back to 3 instead of 2? It seems we are trying to leap from 2 Towers to 4 Towers. Let me suggest we take it in steps.

We knocked out XT Hard Mode, and moved on Kologarn. We tried to get the achievement where you keep 25 Rubble up the whole fight, but we got overwhelmed somewhere around 20. We killed him and then went and put down the Cat Lady.

Next up was Hodir. Our first attempt was rocking the Hard Mode when suddenly people started dying. I blurted out on vent a “What happened?”

I was so shocked and surprised that the attempt fell apart that I’m concerned it came across as an accusatory “WHAT HAPPENED PEOPLE!” I was more just looking for information, specifically if someone had pulled aggro and I hadn’t taunted.

One thing that I believe I do well is always look at myself first when we wipe. Was there anything that I did wrong? Is there anything I could have done differently to change the outcome?

One of our DPS was a Hunter from Perp’s group. He came up with a neat ‘trick’ for getting the singed debuff up on Hodir very quickly. He speced Marksman for the fight and as soon as he got next to the Cozy Fire, he hit it Rapid Fire skill. As soon as Rapid Fire wore off, he hit Readiness and then Rapid Fire again. Scorched was up in real hurry and it really helped us get ahead of the timer.

It took a couple of attempts, but we got him, and in time for Hard Mode loot. Surely the same staff that dropped all four times we’ve killed hard mode couldn’t drop a 5th straight time. You would think that, but you would be wrong.

I’m sure somewhere in the great World of Warcraft there’s some mage or Boomkin or Shadow Priest whose writing a blog talking about how their Elemental Shamans have Boreal Guards now because it keeps dropping, but they haven’t seen an Icecore Staff. I’m sure of it.

There are only 5 possible drops from the Hard Mode chest. A Tanking Weapon, tank shield, caster shield, plate DPS bracers and the staff. According to Wowhead, the staff drops the most but only by a percentage point or two more than the others.

Bottom line is there isn’t a blasted thing I can do about it. Since my last suggestion didn’t seem to fly, how about this one. When you DE a piece of Hard Mode loot, you get an Essence of Frustration. Combining 4 Essences of Frustration would cause the Rare Cache to respawn and you could reloot it.

I’d love to tell you I just laughed it off, but I didn’t. I was frustrated. Progression is one of the major ‘pillars’ of an MMORPG. Right now I’m kind of stuck, completely at the mercy of the RNG, and that is frustrating. I felt the emotion and dealt with it. By the time we pulled Thorim, I was good.

Thorim is another source of frustration but on a different level. For some reason everytime I try to tank the Tunnel, we miss the timer to activate Hard mode. But if Perp or Ellevis, both Death Knights, tank the Tunnel, we make it easily.

Since Ellevis was DPS and Perp tanking, I suggested that Ellevis go with me into the Tunnel so he could maybe see what if anything I was doing wrong. He opted not too, I think mainly due to time constraints, and he put me in the Arena.

I did pretty well, only losing a Mage on our very last attempt. The rest of my attempts in Arena, while not exactly ‘clean’, at least found the entire Arena alive when Thorim and Sif entered the fray.

Once we get to Thorim, our main issue is keeping DPS alive. I don’t envy the job our Healers have to do on this fight. Damage on the raid is everywhere and Thorim is hitting like a runaway mack truck.

We made some solid attempts, but each time Thorim’s stacks got too high and he started one shotting the tanks.

By that point we had to call the raid. Thorim shall be released on Monday, and my quest for a Shiver and Boreal Guard can begin anew on Tuesday.