And some days the bear gets you ....
Yesterday's Kara run was my 'bear' and it got me good. We ran with our reg group (my hunter's raid) last night due to holiday scheds. - not a great night for drops - same tier 4 dropping over and over and over.
Tired raiders make for tough runs. I'm confident that we can get nightbane with our reg raid, we had to PuG a couple ppl in but they did okay. We even picked up another hunter - I think he had a PvP spec, it was evenly split between MM and Surv - but he didn't have Exposed Weakness or even the good shots from MM - sorta made me wonder what was up with that. i thought I knew the basics for hunters - shot rotations, specs etc - that was one I hadn't seen. I won't discount it 'til I can check armory.
Dec 21, 2007
Some days you get the bear
Dec 20, 2007
Kara again
One of the Kara raids has been moved up to tonight, so maybe something interesting will happen. To tell you the truth I'm sorta absorbed with IRL things lately [work, holiday, bear cub] so my heart's not exactly where it oughta be for this one.
In a related item, my raid leader has asked a slew of friends to join him for an old-timey Naxx run on Sat. Now THAT should be fun. I'm a post-BC bear so I'm lookin forward to seeing that before they bump it to Northrend.
Getting down to bidness
Okay, that’s enuff with the bear hugs. Let’s get down to the bear tracks.
I’m a wannabe raider, well – kinda. I AM raiding but I’m just starting out (1 month under muh hide) so I’m what I’d call ‘green’.
But in my travels I’ve managed to find a ton of good things that I think lots of folks could use so I’ll start putting references to ‘em up here.
One recent find was a great chart over on TenTonHammer that shows the minimums for Karazhan. Things like, how much OOM an oomkin or preisty should have, what sorts of armor or stats to look for in a tank, be it bear, warrior or pally. Check that out and use it to help you gear up if you wanna go.
Elitist Jerks I’ve mentioned before – they had a fantastic theorycraft section on bears, and some very solid posts on a lot of classes – I am hoping more people head over there cause I’m looking for a really nice set of posts for all of my alts.
Here's a quick list of sites I used to train myself and also to gear up - some are a little dated so keep in mind when it was written and any changes more recent patches may have had.
The Bear Meatshield Guide
Feral Druid Preraid Tank Gear Guide
Feral Kombat
TBC Bear Tanking List (gear)
Of Teeth and Claws' blog had 3 nice posts I used
Druid Tanking Guide
Pulling for Maximum Threat
Rage Efficiency
I'd also like to throw out something I found incredibly useful - Nihilum's BC rep calulator. It's a neat item that calculates your rep from Armory stats and gives tips on what you need for the next level of rep - i.e. which which zones have quests that give faction rep, so many runs through SV for exalted Cenarion, or XX number of item turn-ins for Aldor/Scryer. Use this in conjuction with Wowwiki to find which quest chains are tied to rep in the zones and you should be a golden bear.
Another thing that many folks use is wow-loot.com. I highly recommend this site. It helped me not only with my own gear but also in directing my guild-mates to good information for their own sets.
I’m not a GM, I’m just an officer in our tiny guild. We have something like 18-22 people and everyone has at least a single alt, some of us are guilty of having more than one as well.
But I take a quiet sense of pride in helping them out. I had always heard “the game doesn’t start til 70” and of course I think everyone has heard that too or perhaps has an inkling its true. But it really is a different world when you hit 70 and can wrangle a spot in a raid like Kara.
I know there's a couple of schools of thought pervasive throughout the game. One seems to think gearing up for something like Kara too hard, too much effort etc. The other set seems to consider it old hat now. While I can see that side of the tree I have to say, if you’ve never been there you’re short-changing yourself on your monthly fee. And if you have - well you know what it's about and best of luck to you on your way to BT. Just remember - the game is about fun. There's no set of rules that says you HAVE to raid, or if you do that you HAVE to act like a member of the Jr. Atilla the Hun Club.
Kara is just… well it just is. It’s new for lots of people, it’s cool lookin, it’s got great music and fun stuff like ghosts dancing the Hokey Pokey AND you get to fight the Big Bad Wolf. Also, it's not that hard though it does take a decent raid leader and a bit of concentration and you’ll probably be there a few weeks with your group – but after that comes so much more to do. If you aren’t PvPin – I’d recommend you at least try it. This ain’t your mom’s cooked spinach.
Dec 18, 2007
Come On You Apes! You wanna live FOREVER?!
I’ve made a great deal of noise recently about a bear who gave me quite a hand when I went looking and I owe him a lot for his patience and knowledge.
But in all deference to him I need to roar a bit about another candidate for legendary raider status as well – though I’m sure there are many, many others I could sing bear praises at (get yer bearplugs out).
i mentioned that my hunter got PuGged into a Kara raid by way of a guildie who knew I’d been looking for a while at the time. When I first started I could tell these cubs knew how to get the huny out of the pot so I kept quiet and took all the advice they felt like imparting.
That’s a good rule of thumb for you cub-lings out there. If you get invited to something, even if it’s nothing more than a small group for quests or a 5-bear instance, shut yer berry hole and let your swipes speak for you. I’m no great shakes as a hunter, I have to make macros for half my actions or I’ll forget what I’m supposed to do next, but my raid leader, Zorlos, seemed to think I was worth something so he’s invested a bit ‘o time in my alter ego. He helped me with my spec and had all sorts of suggestions, all the while being very careful not to act like the south end of a northbound Missouri mule.
I know he hates reading forums and blogs so he probably won't see this. But I have to say - I feel pretty lucky to have met two decent raiders in as many weeks.
I should tell you some of the neat things I’ve learned in the past 3 weeks with this raid. I said earlier that I’d met a near-legendary bear raider, well I shoulda said I met two near-legends. Zorlos’ been around just as long and it sorta turns out that these folks were all in the same 2 or 3 guilds back in the day. Zor’s team sounds like they’ve been with him through thick and thin as well so I’m feeling doubly blessed. No wonder we can one-shot Aran - btw we down Prince regularly now too. Nether made hunter goo outta me but, meh, I feel pretty squishy wearin mail and it's still one cool lookin dragon.
I guess it sorta happens that people and guilds change and grow in different directions, it’s the way of things. That probably explains the splintering of all the old guilds. But any way you swipe at it, my bear buddy is one kind of great raider and Zor's just as good, they're just different. I think it’s a rare treat to see two good raid leaders at work. I marvel at how they can keep a raid rolling in the right direction with goals and objectives in mind, while not losing people or pissing in everyone’s cheerios.
It’s like watching my old platoon sergeant or seeing the guy from Starship Troopers, the one-armed Lt., ‘Everyone fights, no one quits. If you don’t do your job I’ll shoot you myself.”
Of Bears and Legends
The more astute among you probably noticed I’ve posted a few things on the same day this blog launched. I was writing a few thoughts out trying to decide whether or not to launch Smelly Wet Bear when I finally took the plunge. Don’t worry – I probably won’t be posting quite so much when I clean out my computer a bit more.
Anyway,
Good Day, Eh, and welcome to post three.
I wrote Kara Conundrum a short while back and in that post I mentioned that I’d found a raid as a bear OT thanks to the efforts of a polar bear that is in what is probably the dominant raid guild on my server. He ran with his Shammy alt as main healer and picked up a few of his pals to fill out our ranks.
Our first run was Friday and it went fairly well for what amounted to a well geared semi-PuG. I say that a little tongue-in-cheek since slightly more than half of the raid knew each other – though some only a little. We managed to clear Attu, Moroes (though it took a bit longer than it should have) and Maiden. We even took down Curator on our first go – so that should give you an idea of where we were at gear-check wise. Then, feeling good, we ran up to Aran and he very quickly littered his floor with us. So we moved on to Chess and pounded the Horde into the floor for some easy loot.
All in all it was a fun run, if a bit long. I also mentioned in a previous post that my polar friend organized a guild dedicated to the pre-BC raid content as a means of training raiders. I felt a great sense of gratitude toward my bear buddy so when he said he was gonna run AQ40 as a follow up I decided to bust a hump on over there to lend a hand.
Now I should say that while I’ve owned WoW for about a year and a half, I didn’t have a level 58 to take to Outlands when BC hit (alt-itis). So I never saw Molten Core, or Naxx, or AQ20/40 or even ZG pre-BC. Heck, I never bothered with BRD, Strat or Scholo either since I hit 58 after the launch.
So this offer was sorta cool. I could go take a peek at some parts of things I used to hear about and see what all the hubbub was about and maybe learn a thing or two.
It was fun – we had a T5/6 warrior tanking for us and ran through a lot of it in about two hours (even took down a boss they said had only been downed once before, pre-BC), then moved on to MC for a complete run. I even grabbed a 66 pally buddy from my guild so he could see it as well – his brother is the raider in that family so he hadn’t seen MC either. That was also a lot of fun for a post-BCer like myself, but we ran really late so I bailed at 4 AM when they moved from MC to ZG for a mount run – man those cubs wore this old bear out!
I’m really looking forward to our next run but I’ve started noticing a potential issue – raiding on two characters is fun, but I’m getting a little wore out. I might need to cut back on the pre-BC content for a while to catch some needed Z’s. Thank goodness for the week off I’ll get over the holidays. I might even be able to farm up enough to pay for all this raiding.
The Kara Conundrum
Over the course of the last several months I hit 70 on two characters, my hunter and my druid. I was anxious to get into some beginning end-game stuff as a hunter but kept hitting proverbial walls. I’m not in a raiding guild, though we do have raiders, so that was hurdle one. I wasn’t geared right, hurdle two. And finally, I thought I had the right spec, but I didn’t – at the time everyone was looking for MM (I’m BM). Hurdle three ... so sad.
So I shifted out of hunter-mode and threw myself full-time into bear mode and began the process of gaining rep with Cenarion Exp. and hitting all the instances I could to gear up. About then, one of our guild healers got into a regular raid as a demo-lock and got me a spot for my hunter (thanks to 2.3 updates). My luck improved when I discovered that not only did they know the raid, the team melded quickly and after only a couple of weeks we basically one-shot (not one-hit) all the bosses up through Aran. They even had me bring my bear in as a sub one week and were very happy with the results.
While I was busy hammering out rep-instances as a bear I met tons of people – as one does – and was offered a reg. spot in Kara as an OT bear. That was five weeks ago and they haven’t started. The first two weeks they were still working out the details, the next I found out that 2-3 people from another guild kept forgetting the raid or were busy raiding ZA with their own guild. Last week I didn't even see my contact on. This week I've seen him but I've been busy with other stuff and put it off - I probably shoulda said something but it sorta seems like a moot point after so long.
The thing is, I’m not a bear who jumps icebergs when the first snow melts. However, Karma must have smiled on this furball 'cause in the course of my quest for ultimate enlightenment I came across one of the near-legendary snow bears on our server.
He’s a theorycrafting bear from waaay up near Santa, with all sorts of alts. He decided to start his own guild dedicated to training raiders in places like MC, AQ20/40 and the rest of the pre-BC content, while undertaking progression through BC. We got to jawing one night and while I’m sure I pestered him more than I should have the end result was about a week later he offered me a tentative spot in a regular Kara raid starting last week. (No worries guildies, I'm not leaving our guild for another.)
I think it was tentative for a couple of reasons, one he had to talk it over with his raid leader and two … let’s say I think I had one chance to show my stuff – sort of a job interview. That was fine since I didn’t mind taking direction from someone who’s been to the Eye.
But accepting the offer meant accepting a quandary. I hate quitting, anyone or anything. If I had seen my contact from the first Kara offer on during that week I’d have talked it over with him, but for weeks in a row I waited while they kept putting it off. Weeks in a row I was at home and online ... waiting, saving myself for something that never happened.
I’m not a bear who angers easily, so no, I’m not mad, nor do I take it personally, but the weather was warm and the ice got thin last week - so yes, I told the legend from the land of toques I’d accept and I made the leap. I’ll soon tell you all about that ‘cause I landed in a whole new world.
Now in closing I think of two things, first is that I could’ve reached out to my other contact's guild and made some quiet inquires, but I feel like I’ve been there when they needed me and they haven’t returned the favor. And second is, maybe they found someone else and didn't want to tell me (meh - no harm, no foul, no big whup).
Either way it's been nearly a month since I last talked to my contact and that’s more than enough time. I’m stepped off that berg for another. When I see my contact again I’ll talk it over and be upfront with him but basically it’s time to move on.
Keeper of the Golden Toque
Greetings all,
This is little more than a short introduction. I'm the Smelly Wet Bear - aka Agro to most of my guild, less desirable names are sometimes given but I'll never share those outside the den.
Given my geographic location out on the Tundra, the moniker 'polar bear' might've seemed more appropriate, but I know more than a few respectable bears that live in much more frigid zones so I leave that to them. Smelly & Wet because for reasons unknown our guild tends to greet character log ins with, "Something smells... oh, it's [Agro]!" Personally, I think it might be the fish I’ve been carrying around in my bag for a month.
One fine day I was browsing all things bear-related in my quest to get gear for end-game and I came across Big Bear Butt, also a fellow Tundran, who I discovered living in a den 'round a bend in the river from me. Well, as a rule we bears are friendly and sorta like helping each other out and BBB was no exception. Many thanks to him for his columns and several other useful resources such as Elitist Jerks. I’m a much better bear for having read through the wisdom of my forebears.
But it also sparked a desire to pass along what I’ve learned in playing and dealing with the emo that sometimes comes with teams, guilds and real life. I’m not the smartest bear in the woods but I do know my way around a bee hive and I’ve managed to make friends who are of a similar mindset. When an idea strikes me I let it roll around in the ole noggin a while, letting it bang up against a few non-essential brain cells, while I make up my mind about something. But after talkin it over with BBB a bit I realized that sometimes it's best to put your head down and charge through.
Thus was born the Smelly Wet Bear Blog. I am your host, Agro, keeper of the golden Toque. [I'll get to that later and it's of no relation to the Order of the Golden Toque.] and I welcome you to my musings. The intent of this is to share experiences in World of Warcraft, principally from a feral druid's point of view but all are welcome to the den. Troll-posters will be dealt with in the manner all bears deal with such nuisances.
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