WoW Journal - 26-September-2005

Another Zul'Gurub raid, with pretty much the same result: we killed the first two bosses. The bat lady this time went down on the first attempt, the snake guy on the second. Still no idea what exactly triggers high priest Venoxis holy wrath, which did up to 26,000 points of damage to some players on our first attempt, but didn't kill anybody on the second try. The third boss, high priestess Mar'li wiped us 4 times before we gave up. Anybody got a good strategy for her? She heals herself whenever she kills anybody, and as we couldn't prevent her from killing people, each attempt went downhill from the first person dying. I was on duty to recapture her attention once she webbed the other tanks and ran to kill the mages, but she is moving faster than I do, and often other people kept attacking her, pulling her off me.

In spite of this reasonable success in ZG, I'm already starting to have enough of that place. Raid started at 7 pm and went until nearly midnight, and far too much of these 5 hours was used standing around. The larger the group, the slower it moves. I much prefer 5-man groups, where there is a lot more action and a lot less waiting.

I was in a very good 5-man group with Raslebol on Saturday, doing Blackrock Depths with a group in which most others were there for the first time. So we did the key quest first, moving via the arena and vault up to Incendius. Then we got the key, opened the huge gate, and went via General Angerforge, Angelmarch, the Grim Guzzler, up to Molten Core for the attunement. There still is more to do in BRD, but our trip already covered a large part of the dungeon. I still need to go further to free the dwarven princess, but there you better skip the key part of the dungeon, and bring a mage and warlock for the Lycaeum.

Another fun 5-man group was with Kyroc to Shadowfang Keep. First time I used my priest for serious group healing, and I was having fun. I leveled Kyroc to level 32 over the weekend, still a long way to 60. I also played my shaman Waldin a bit, teaming up with my wife's mage and leveling to 30.

Looking back at the different activities of the weekend, and what I liked more and what I liked less, going on the raid certainly comes out on bottom. I think I will stop signing up for the big raids, and only go if the guild would otherwise not have enough people to go. I'd hate to take the place of somebody who is enjoying raids more than me.

I just wish I could get more 5-man groups for Raslebol. Friday night was typical, there was a MC raid planned which was cancelled due to lack of people, and lack of healers in particular. Then everybody bombarded our only online priest with tells for a 5-man group. But of course not everybody could go, and several people including me were left group-less. More and more "I'm quitting WoW" posts are cropping up on our guild forums, and many people are playing less than before, especially the casual players who can't find anything useful to do with a level 60 character when they only have one hour to play. It's all a bit depressing.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:04 AM Permanent Link