I don't usually post unless I have a feeling of eloquence about me, and though I fear it does not always appear in my posts, I do try, but I am tired today. I saw a YouTube clip of Alan Moore reciting one of the better entries from Rorschach's Journal, and the wording is just amazing:

This city is afraid of me; I have seen it's true face. Streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood, and when the drains finally scab over all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waist and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US'... and I'll look down and whisper... 'no'.

We attempted Deconstructor last night about 10 times to no avail. I believe we have found the lynch-pin, however, as when we finally we calling it a night, guntir and our MT decided to try something crazy. Antihope: "Alright Guntir, let's try pulling these mobs without pulling the boss and see if it's doable your way." That's right, we're retarded for not listening to Guntir. Let me restate that: we are not retarded for not having figured out that the mobs on either side of the door when you enter the room are TRASH PULLS (we were doing them with the boss up...), but we ARE definitely retarded for not listening to Guntir.

Anyway, we should have Decon downed tonight, and we'll start working on Ignis again with HOPEFULLY two ranged dpsers. The trick to Ignis is having someone available 100% to nuke the constructs once they get brittle. However, we tried it with a hunter and we tried it with a warlock, and we kept having the same problem: the one ranged dps would get put in the pot, and by the time he came back, there would be two or more constructs because no one could reliably kill the brittle ones without dying in the effort. With two ranged dps classes on the cause, the fight should be much more trivial.

We also did some arenas yesterday, and let me be the first to tell you: the MMR setup from zero rating is bonkers. That is, we would win 47 points and lose 0. It made no sense. The one thing that still worries me is that our MMR was at ~1930 when we started, and we went 9-9 (or something) before Ulduar and gained ~500 team/pr rating. However, I'm worried that our wins bumped our MMR by 0-5 and our losses dropped it by 40-50... only time will tell. In either case, at this point we're looking strong for being able to hit 1850 which is the first tier of season six's weapons... and the staff is amazing. It is better than the one I have currently for both PvE AND PvP (it's better than Journey's End, for instance).

Anyway, we got some good and some bad concerning season six out of those short 18-or-so games: we know that dk+healer is still going to be the flavor of the month, but the dks are going to go Frost and are going to do a ton of damage in frost presence, which is a bit of a change; we know that disc+rogue will still counter us reasonably well if the rogue just sits on me 100% of the fight; we know that we will be seeing WAY more arms+healer teams, and arms does a HUGE amount of damage if you let them sit on you; and we know that double-dps is still a hugely viable comp for twos.

Additionally, we know that dk+healer, warrior+healer, and double-dps are straight forward wins for us, if we play well. The trick for dk+healer (in most cases) is STILL going to be sitting on the dk and mana-burning the healer, as will be the case for warrior+healer. The only real switch to that plan is against druid healers, as they are back to being unstoppable healing machines given the buff to Lifebloom and Nourish... I have to sit on the druid and CC the dk/warrior very VERY hard when we cross paths. Primal Gore makes taking out Druid healers much easier, as when they go bear form they will still take 100% damage from 40% of my overall damage, and reduced damage from the rest... plus with no dispels Guntir has free reign to throw dots up and keep the pressure going (as mana conservation is a concern, but we don't have too much problem against these particular comps with Innervate and ShadowFriend).

Beating double-dps teams is the same story as it always was: split their dps and kill one slowly in a very defense-minded manor. Whenever I get too offensive-minded, we end up losing these matches bouts; I need to dps hard with bleeds, then turtle up and survive the damage while focusing on Cycloning them out of their double-damage situations (particularly against mage+rogue... need to Root/Cyclone the rogue to make him use his cooldowns so Fear/Stuns will be effective, and keep LoS off the mage).

Another team we saw more of was warlock+healer. If the warlock has soul link, kill the pet, wait for him to insta-summon the pet, kill the pet, kill the lock. It isn't a hard strategy to play, and for the most part Affliction damage has been lowered to a manageable level. Additionally, particularly against Affliction locks, in between pet deaths, I need to concentrate on knocking off Curse of Agony to help Guntir's mana situation, if we have all the dots up all the time, it's just WAY too much mana used, even with ProM going crazy between us. If the warlock is destro, I need to kill the pet and watch for CC as destro locks can put out a LOT of damage quickly. Remember that Seduce is a CHANNELED spell that the Succubus has to keep up... I always forget this, and while trying to gib the pet, I never throw a Maim in there to break Seduce on Guntir... though I should... I'll remember this in future bouts.

All things considered, we only really lost to double-dps teams and disc+rogue. If we can face more dk+healer and warrior+healer (or even warlock+healer), we will end up doing very well this season. The only problem is we need to play WAY more matches to get back up to where we used to start... then start the grind again. Hopefully, these 47 wins and 0 losses will continue up above 1000 and we might make it back to 1500 before the end of the week (we're running out of time and I have a lot of stuff to do this week >_<). Dual-specs is making it easier to log on and say "wanna do some matches?" So, that's nice.