More on Vashj and On to TK

Vashj went as well as one can hope the first night on Vashj can go, I think. There were some disagreements about the best uses for various DPS, and looking back, I don't think we made all the best choices. But we definitively came away with a much better understanding of the fight. We had no problems with the first phase, and by the end of the three hours we had 2 generators down. It was slow progress, but it was progress. Our biggest sticking point seemed to be DPSing down the strider. So there will be big DPS changes for next time.

We had 8 healers, 4 on the inside and 4 on the outside. I believe next time I would like to try 3 on the outside and 5 on the inside, since our inside healers were feeling overwhelmed, and our outside healers were finding time to DPS. Two cores came up my side (different attempts), where I was healing a hunter (different hunter different attempts). We alone had no problem taking down the tainted elemental, the hunter tossed the core to me, and I tossed it to another healer standing by the generator. I actually thought it was really fun!

Here was a macro, that I pulled from a strat. video on the Bosskillers that makes tossing the core easier and helps your raid follow where the core is:

/use Tainted Core
/y <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /s <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /Script SendChatMessage ("!!!YOU HAVE THE TAINTED CORE!!!", "WHISPER", "Common", UnitName("target")) This macro will 1. Use the core (ie, throw it to the person who you have selected, 2. Yell and Say who you are throwing it too, so everyone in the raid knows, and 3. Send a tell to the person you threw it to if they somehow missed the previous announcements! Although Vashj went fairly well, and we are hopeful about some of our ideas for changes, we are going to move on to TK. LOKI has previously downed VR, and put him on hold so we could do SSC. We figure Al'ar and Solarian will be easier than Vashj, and we don't want to loose momentum while momentum has been awesome. In other newses, like... last Tuesday I guess, I got the Gnarled Chestpiece of the Ancients from Morogrim for some reasonable emount of DKP. It has more Stam than the Robes if Heavenly Purpose. The robes will stay my main piece of course, but it is nice to have some alternatives that don't totally gimp healing ability. Sadly, they still aren't sexy enough to justify pairing them with my Nordrassil Life-Kilt. We did Kara again this past Friday. This time it was a lot of my real life friends alts. I don't have a high level alt so I went on Aertimus. I was very surprised at the DPS synergy and general output for the lower levels of gear. Of course it helps that we all know what we are doing and work well together! But the neatest part was that, even though I was still on Aertimus, and I have done Kara a ton of times with this group, it felt different since people were playing different classes. I got the Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted off of prince, which was, I believe, the absolute last piece of gear I had interest in from Kara. Again, it has more +heal and Stam than the Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion and options are always nice. Some of my friends passed it to me. That is something I always feel awkward about - who has more of I right or need to a piece of gear? An alt if it is for their main set, or a main if it is for an alt set? We "roll need" on pieces - but is it really "need" for either of us, in that case or is it greed? The final piece of WoW news is that I got added to Resto4Life's bloggroll. No pressure here to keep this thing up, going, and exciting! Anyone reading this better already be reading that site. In the real world, last week I submitted all my paperwork to sub in the district I would really like to sub in. So, hopefully some sub work will be right around the corner!