Of Gnomes and Rogues

After such a great experience PuG’ing last week, I decided to try it again last night.  One of my guildies, Exelus, put out the call in guild chat for a Naxx-25 PuG group he was in.  It was a little before 10pm my time, but I figured it wouldn’t take longer than 2 hours to clear the Military Wing, Sapphiron and Kel-Thuzzad.  I mean, how long could it take? 

I haven’t done much in Naxx-25 – just a couple of bosses and Sapphiron, but I know the 10-man very well and have cleared it on numerous occasions.  Even though it has better loot, I don’t think I would even bother with 25-man if it wasn’t for the achievements.  What can I say?  I’m an achievement whore.  Besides the obvious reason of not having a regular group to do 25-man content with, I also don’t like to do them because everything is so chaotic.  I always have to turn my settings down really low, but even then, its tough to see what’s going on all the time.  And while I imagine that there are regular 25-man groups out there that know each other and work well together, for me, our 10-mans work like a well oiled machine.  Our core group of raiders know and respect each other, which makes the runs go so much more smoothly, quickly and happy (even if we have 1 or 2 new people with us).  I’ve been amazed at what we have accomplished, even though we aren’t focused on raiding (only one or two nights a week for about 6 hours total).  So what if our gear isn’t as “leet” as those who run 25-man?  I prefer the happier, quieter times with my guild in 10-man.

We ended up accidentally starting the Instructor Razovious three times (once to a hunter pet, once to a DK ghoul and once to a priest who’s mind soothe buff wore off and aggro’d everything).  After that, we made it through Gothik the Harvester and the Four Horseman without too many difficulties, just at a slower pace than I’m used to.  Once the Military Wing was cleared, we headed up to take on Sapphiron…and that is where we seemed to get stuck in an awful, Star Trek-like, time loop.  For whatever reason, we just kept wiping.  After about the 3rd wipe I noticed how late it was getting (well past midnight), we wiped a couple more times, and at that point, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I also noticed I was making stupid mistakes – for example on one attempt I hit killing spree, got turned around and ran the wrong way, got tail swiped and then ran back only to be killed by a combo of a blizzard/curse. 

When the raid leader said over vent that we had at least 8 hours till it reset, I started to panic.  We were going to keep at it for 8 more hours?!

We finally defeated Sapphiron and were regrouping/handing out loot when I realized I could go no further.  I messaged the raid leader and said I had to leave, but I would stay a bit while he tried to find someone else to take my place.  No response.  I tried to find a guildie to take over for me, but nothing.  I messaged the raid leader again, but still no response.  I finally had to put it in raid chat that I was leaving, but this of course upset some of the rest of the group.  They had no clue that I had been messaging the raid leader for the last 10 minutes.  I felt horrible since I usually stick with PuG’s until they fall apart of their own accord, but it had been 3 hours already and I just couldn’t stay awake any longer.  The raid leader finally piped in and gave me the all clear to go, so I quickly hearthed and signed off for the evening.

I did manage to pick up my T7.5 breastplate from the 4 Horsemen during the run, which only served to make me feel worse for leaving.  So, boys and girls, my original warning still stands: All PuG’s DO end in tears.

Those that know me will know that I almost never PuG. Even though I’m sure most go off without a hitch, I have great guildies who will run things with me most of the time, so why chance it?** But last night I headed into Wintergrasp and helped successfully attack the keep, and because of my talent of talking incessently in guild chat, I didn’t leave the raid group right after the battle was over. Somehow a raid started to form around me, so I thought I would stick with it to see what happened.

It took about 30 minutes to get a full group together (apparently we were having a tough time finding healers). I brought in a guildie, but he had to leave before we really got underway. Tried to bring in another for heals, but he ended up getting kicked because they had grabbed another healer right before his invite. *Sigh* I must say I didn’t have high hopes, but I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. Once we were underway, the raid leader said he would be judging us on trash pulls, not exactly a great things for rogues…but I was pleasantly surprised that I was number 3 on the damage meters. (Whether or not that’s a good thing for this group is anyone’s guess *grin*.)

We wiped our first three attempts (although the last time we got him down to 17%), and we lost some people, but we were so close that I decided to give it one more go. I will stop and put a disclaimer here: I have never done Emalon successfully on VoA25, but I had done it twice in 10-man with some guildies, so I knew exactly what to expect. I will say that my dps went considerably down from the trash pulls though (from around 3500 to around 2500) on the fight…I think it is due not only to the mechanics of the fight but also to how the tank decided to tank it (every tank is different, so I’ve learned to go with the flow).

For melee (especially those of us silly enough to wear only leather), there is a lot of runing around in this fight just to make sure you (and everyone else) stays alive. Now, when we do it on 10-man, our main tank will pull Emalon to the front right corner and every time he does Lightning Nova, he will pull him to the back right corner and then wash, rinse and repeat. The benefit of this method is that I (and other melee) can get back to dps’ing the boss quicker after a Lightning Nova by running less distance back to the boss and it really doesn’t add any distance in getting to the Overcharged add. Another reason why melee dps will have a tougher time on this fight is because of the Overcharged add. In order to get to it in time (and thus not have the raid wiped), I need to stop dps’ing on Emalon about 5 seconds before the overcharge and start running across the room so I can immediately start dps’ing the add once it becomes overcharged.

I’m happy to say that on the 4th attempt, we were able to successfully down Emalon – yay! I was very excited to see that he dropped some rogue loot: Conqueror’s Terrorblade Gauntlets!! Better yet, there was only one other rogue in the group. I shouldn’t have gotten too exited, however, because I am horrible on rolling for loot (I once ran 5 instances in one day and didn’t win any of the greed rolls). I, of course, rolled a 22 to his 61 and lost. *sigh* There’s always next week, I suppose.

We decided to head on to Archavon next, and we one shotted him. I was even more excited to see that he also dropped some great rogue loot: Deadly Gladiator’s Leather Leggaurds!!! I figured if I couldn’t get the awesome PvE loot, it was time to get some awesome PvP loot! I rolled against the other rogue (yes, he rolled again!) and…..lost the roll again. The raid leader, however, was really cool and told him that since he already won a rogue epic, he was giving me the other piece of rogue loot. Even though I would not have rolled against the other rogue had I won the first piece, I wasn’t really expecting a PuG leader to honor the same personal code I do…so I was very happy that he has a similar one.

So, the moral of this story is: Not all PuG’s end in tears, unless you happen to be the other rogue.

**Okay, not exactly true…almost no one is willing to run Heroic Oculus with me. But then again, I probably wouldn’t run it with them either unless they took a pledge to be nice to gnome rogues for at least 2 weeks straight afterwards.