Disheartening Defeats

6 04 2010

In the last week, I have done a ton of stuff in WoW. I’ve cleared out UBRS, gotten the Jenkins title and a new pet, saved a ToC 25 run, wiped (and then defeated) Sindragosa, and gotten 10/12 Ironbound (yes, Ironbound) Proto Drake achievements done. Lets put it this way: enough happened that this will be the first of two posts.

On Tuesday I sat down and committed myself to going into UBRS and clearing the place out. What followed was an excruciatingly long, painful, and confusing run. Even trying to find the entrance was annoying. And when you can’t figure out where to walk in, well, it doesn’t help the rest of the instance. The whole place was confusingly laid-out, and getting through (and getting my quests done) meant using a map and plenty of reading on Wowhead. I even died on General Drakkisath when I pulled him without clearing the room, which promptly aggroed onto me. COOL. I did get a Worg Pup pet and the Jenkins title, but even that didn’t go smoothly. Why? Because the first time when I pulled the room, I went inside, hatched all the eggs, and then realized I’d bitten off more than I could chew, and died. FUN. I ran back, pulled a bit less, then threw a magma totem. I clicked Fire Nova as the totem ticked, saw a bunch of big numbers and my game literally stopped due to the graphical strain. I dc’d, logged back in, and saw my corpse on the ground. GREAT. I self rezzed, pulled 2/3 of the room, tossed the totem, and made sure I was zoomed as far out as possible to lessen the strain. The third time was the charm, and I got my Jenkins title, before going through and then wanting to gouge my eyes out from having to deal with UBRS. Now I’m done with it, though, so good riddance. Hopefully I can get Loremaster without having to set foot in a dungeon. I finished the night up with a VoA 25 (nothing dropped) and some BGs.

On Wednesday, I joined up a ToC 25 that was forming, since I’ll be damned if I don’t at least try to get Reign of the Dead. We went through pretty quickly, and lo and behold, the cape from Faction Champs dropped. I rolled a 68, good enough to beat a 67… for second place. Damn. However, the first place roller ended up passing because of the hit on the cape, and I was more than happy to pick it up. We cleared up to Anub’arak, where, and I know this sounds arrogant, I singlehandedly saved the raid. How? One of the adds didn’t get picked up by the off-tank, and burrowed. Uh oh. As he picked up the next two, it came back up, and suddenly he was tanking all three. His health went from 100%, to 75, to 50, to 25, to 1%, and at that moment, I Thunderstormed all the adds away. One of the adds took that opportunity to burrow, the tank got healed to 100%, and he tanked the remaining two with no problems. The big add unburrowed during Anub’s underground phase, and was promptly tanked and killed. Reign didn’t drop, but I was immensely satisfied with my how I’d handled the situation. Later that night, we went to progression. I wish I could say it went as smoothly as the ToC.

I wish I could say that it was really great… unfortunately, it wasn’t too awesome. We started off forty minutes late because a raider got new gear, and had to resocket almost all of his gems. He’d put that off until the raid was beginning. Great. So, we started forty minutes late, and on Lana’thel, where we left off, bam, we wipe. Now, a couple guildies end up getting into a fight, which smoulders for the remaining time in the raid; more on that in a bit. The attempts we put down on Sindragosa afterward got progressively better, but were plagued by disconnects, poor movement, and more. One of our healers would d/c every attempt, which meant that we were essentially trying to 9-man (and 2 heal) a progression boss. Eventually, we managed to get a replacement, and we got the firs two phases down. However, upon getting to phase three, all hell broke loose. People would get an ice block, and not run out, wiping the raid. If they did run out, there was no guarantee that their block would get broken. Our best attempt got her to 15%, but man, it was a long night. We called it for the night at around 1 am, feeling pretty unsatisfied. Our officer chat afterwards was a more intense one than usual; the fight was mentioned, as were the delays in getting started, and our resolution to keep that from happening again. And after this, I got to talk to one of the guildies who’d been in the fight, and had taken it pretty poorly. That lasted another hour. I logged off feeling pretty disheartened that night.


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Zoom Zoom.

6 12 2009

It’s been a good week. On Tuesday, after doing some daily questing, VoA 25/10 (nothing dropped) and picking up the profits from some gem sales, I realized just how close I was to having the gold for the Mechano-hog. After picking up the Titansteel bars (150g a piece, ouch), I still had close to 13k g left. I decided it was time; the ‘hog was getting crafted. The problem was who I was going to get to make it: a lot of people would be happy to take 13k g and keep it for themselves. While looking in trade chat, I got a tell from a guy I’d seen in my Vault group. He’d seemed alright and I knew more about him than anyone else, so I decided to make a leap of faith. I bought him the pattern, had him craft the Cobalt Bolts, then we flew over to the Storm Peaks. Upon arriving at K3, I traded him over everything, and thirty seconds later, the ‘hog was crafted. When I saw the trade window open I was all sorts of relieved and I tipped him another 300g for his services, and for not taking my money and running. I thanked him, and decided to wait until some guildies were on the next day to celebrate and, let’s be honest, show off/gloat a little. I paid some repair bills upon arriving in Dalaran, and had a grand total of 21 gold, 30 silver left. Yikes. I logged off that night with the ‘hog’s key sitting in my inventory, unused.

The next day, I logged on to do the Argent dailies before our weekly ToC raid. I was still eyeing that key, but I held out until raid time. At around 9 pm, bam. One right-click later, and I was astride my chopper, and life was good. It’s been a long grind to get it, and I’ve been working at accumulating the wealth for a couple months now. To quite literally be riding 15k g, well, a lot of people would wonder whether that’s worth it. For me, it definitely is. This is one cool mount set of wheels.

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Idling on my new Mechano-hog!

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Rumbling along the plains of Mulgore.

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The right profile...

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...and the left. Awesome-ness.

I also had a very good feeling about Wednesday’s raid. A few past raiders showed up, and the raid composition ended up being near-perfect for the night. We had two-three of every class, except for pallies, where we had four spread across their three specs. My guild leaders and I were feeling confident enough in the raid that we decided to five-heal instead of six, banking on the extra DPS to get us through Anub. Things got off to a good start, and we one-shotted every boss on our trek to Anub’arak. Then, as we formed up for the fight… a DPS pulled. The raid got smashed, and in the chaos that followed orbs didn’t go down, and adds weren’t picked up, and we wiped in phase one. We brushed it off, reformed, and after making sure the ranged DPS would wait specifically for my command to attack, we tried again. Things went smoothly in phase one, but we hit a rough spot in phase two when a warlock being chased by the spikes stopped running, and died promptly. They took out another DPS before hitting an ice patch. A few minutes later, our off tank died, and the only thing that saved us was a timely pickup by a warrior and a brez. We hit Phase 3, and chose to have our offtank hold the adds as we burned down Anub’arak. Going in, it was already close… the enrage timer was ticking down and we had a lot of health to go. We popped Bloodlust, and hit him hard, and got him with 15 seconds on the timer. Wow. It took close to three months, but we finally got it done. The feeling when we downed him was comparable to Mimiron for the first time; although this fight was probably easier, it’s taken us much longer due to the nature of PuGs. Wednesday was easily the most memorable day of the week.

Thursday and Friday couldn’t compare to Wednesday’s one-too punch, and basically consisted of me doing dailies to get some gold back. After a Crusader orb sale, heavy daily questing and more, I was back at around 1k g, plenty to re-gem and re-enchant the new gear I’ll be getting once 3.3 comes out. Saturday was light on WoW until the evening, when I sat down to do some 2s. It ended up being a fun and incredibly frustrating night. We got off to a strong start, beating two teams above 1700 (one was 1800 ranked), and our rating for the night peaked at 1603. It quickly went downhill, though, and we began fighting a few teams that out-geared us noticeably, or were troublesome comps. We fought at least five different Rogue-Priest teams, and just as many Druid-Warriors. We bottomed out at 1495 and were preparing to quit when we finally won a match after a string of losses. We ended up climbing back up to 1565, ending the night 5 rating higher than where we started. Hurray?

On Sunday I logged on for our weekly ToC and, this week, Ulduar 10. I ended up sacrificing my spot in ToC 10 to help gear out a few newer members, and spent the time doing the Argent dailies instead. Once that was over with, I stepped in for Ulduar. Man, I still love that place, despite how easy its become with our improved gear. We flew through the place, doing FL on easy mode, XT on hard for the achievement, and skipping Razorscale and Ignis. We skipped the Iron Council, one-shotted Kologarn and Auriaya, and got Thorim’s hard-mode without any problems. Freya was simple, although we did wipe on Mimiron when our melee forgot to move out of his shockwave in phase one. Vezax was another one-shot (I hit 8k DPS!), and then we move onto Yogg. We managed to get out of phase one only once, since people couldn’t avoid the large, bright, slow-moving clouds. Argh. We called it and saved it there for the week, and decided to come back later to get it done. Our progress was much faster than before though, and I can’t stress how easy this place has become. I like to think that maybe Starcaller isn’t so far away after all.


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A Pretty WoW-less Week.

1 12 2009

In that last post I said I didn’t see myself slowing down on the WoW, mostly because of the upcoming Thanksgiving Break. Well, I got a few hours in, but internet problems and needing to d/l WoW after installing Windows 7 (which is surprisingly good) kept me out of Azeroth for the better part of the week. Enough of that, though, and on to what I ended up getting done.

Last Sunday was actually WoW’s 5th Anniversary, and I picked up the Feat of Strength and the Onyxia Whelpling just for logging on. I also unintentionally snagged the Stormtrooper achievement from Eye of the Storm during what turned into a relatively quick, convincing win for the Horde. Some 2’s afterwards got us down to 1530 in rating. Later that night, we went back for some more attempts at ToGC 10. As usual, it took a few attempts, but we downed the Beasts and Jaraxxus, before stopping at the Faction Champions. After the tough fighting in ToGC, normal ToC was a breeze, and we were done with the instance in around thirty minutes.

Monday, I logged on to do some questing and the daily heroic. Tuesday, likewise, was a day of questing and little else of note. Wednesday through Saturday saw a net time of around fifteen minutes spent in Azeroth, since I didn’t have WoW until around Friday, and even then my internet was spotty at best.

Sunday, I was back at school, which meant I was able to get back online. We ended up having to PuG out a healer for ToGC 10, which was a disaster. Although he was geared, and he’d done the fight before, it seemed like it was his first time ever seeing the fight. He was a Shaman with a similar gear level as the rest of us, yet he was doing about a third of the healing of our priest and paladin. Needless to say, we wiped a bunch of times before kicking him. At that point, I decided to step up and give healing a try. Our DPS was markedly better this time, and I was able to stay competitive with our dedicated healers. I was watching my mana the whole time, but I never came really close to running out, mostly because I was timing my heals much better. I was throwing out chain heals like crazy in phase one of the Beasts, but once that was done with I was able to relax a bit. We got them down eventually, but were unable to take down Jaraxxus (we had one ranged DPS… killing infernals with melee is generally a bad choice). Still, I was glad to see that I was able to keep up, and it was a good change of pace. Afterward, we two-healed through ToC 10 in twenty-eight minutes, and I snagged the Binding Stone after our other healers passed. 57 mp5 is gonna be very, very nice. Sunday also brought one other thing: my final piece of Furious gear. With it, I’ve evolved from Turtle Sayis into Cool Blue (or Cool Ranch) Sayis. I don’t really like the helm, so I’m going helm-less in both my PvE and PvP specs.  Looking back, I remember my disgust at the Furious set. Looking at it now, it’s actually pretty cool. The shoulders are a step up, the helm’s a step down, but it’s a better look overall. We made some great strides in the arena Sunday, coming out and 8-7, but with a rating increase to 1560 after beating a few 1700 ranked teams. It also didn’t hurt that after healing, I realized I’d been PvP’ing for weeks with healing glyphs on. Oops.

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My cool-blue Furious set. With helm...

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...and without. Much better.

On Monday, the only thing I did was log on to pick up the profits from my Crusader Orb sales (640g!), continue doing the Argent dailies, and run the heroic daily with some guildies. With all of the g I’ve been racking up recently, that Mechano-hog is looking closer than ever.


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Would You Like Some BGs With Your Arenas?

22 11 2009

The last week has been grind-tastic, with both PvP and questing. I wasn’t on too long on Tuesday, but I got into VoA 25/10 runs and nothing dropped. Unsurprising. Later in the night, I did some 2s and 3s, ending the night 40 points lower in 2s, and 40 points higher in 3s. “Win some, lose some” would be the perfect phrase to describe that night.

Wednesday was ToC 25 day, but things didn’t go quite as smoothly this week. According to a guildie watching trade chat, a lot of other PuGs had already formed that night, and it showed. I had a few from weeks prior show up, but it took twice as long as usual to get the group together. Then, after two-shotting the Beasts and one-shotting Jaraxxus, a druid healer left without any notice. Great. We ended up having to 24-man both the Champions and the Twins, who mercifully went down in one try each. But, without a full raid, and with DPS for the evening subpar, Anub’arak was way out of our grasp. We wiped it up twice without ever seeing phase three, and called it for the night. It was a dissapointment to say the least, and I was bitter about the loss that night. Why people join raids when they don’t intend to stick them out is something I’ve never understood. Even then, if someone has to leave it doesn’t hurt to give a heads-up in vent or raid chat. With Thanksgiving break coming up, I don’t know if we’ll be hitting up ToC next week, meaning that downing Anub is that much more distant. Argh.

Thursday I actually got the achievement for 2000 quests completed. Yikes. I’ve been going through and doing everything in Icecrown, both to see how things unfold before the attack on Icecrown Citadel, and for the gold. The quests that put you in Arthas’ shoes were highpoints; what other quest chain starts by dropping you into a seemingly-bottomless abyss? For fun, I also decided to check out the Deadmines. I’d read online that the Alliance had a cool quest chain leading up to it, and that it was a good instance as well. I think that it would’ve been pretty cool to run through if I was the right level for it, and it was surprisingly large. All I could think of was how Horde got Ragefire Chasm instead… lame.

On Friday, I sat down and finally, finally got the last of the PvP mounts. While my guildies were turning in marks for honor, I’d been dutifully saving them, since honor is onetime, but man, mounts are forever. At least, that’s what I had to keep telling myself. After the BG grind (and believe me, those last marks were a grind), I settled down with a warrior friend for some 2s skirmish. We didn’t get too far, but it was still a pretty good time, and a big departure from my usual 2s comp. The matches were quick, too, something that usually can’t always be said when I end up doing 2s.

Yesterday, the questing and arena-ing continued. To my surprise, we hit 1550 in 3s with a sprint in rating from 1440 to a peak at around 1570. We fell down back to around 1480 just as quickly, but it was cool to see happen. Afterwards, I put in some 2s matches to get up past 1550 yet again, all the while questing in between matches. Through the day, I also found some time to fish up some mats for feasts, and run a guildie through Scarlet Monastery. It’s been a busy few days in WoW, and I don’t see that pace dropping anytime soon.


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Hitting 1550, Missing Anub’arak

17 11 2009

Last Wednesday’s raid was fun, and just a little bit heartbreaking. I saw some more familiar faces; two druid healers and a warlock from prior weeks came again, and each said they’d continue to try to make the raid time every week. After filling the remaining spots, we got going with the roughest start I’ve seen yet. On the Beasts, people seemed to be incapable of moving out of Icehowl’s way; usually, at least one person will mess up, which isn’t a big deal. This time, he enraged four different times. The only thing saving us were timely cooldowns from our tanks, good heals, and a tranquilizing shot from our hunter each time. Going into the last crash, around half of the raid was dead… not good. On the final time, our tank finally died leaving Icehowl with around 400k health left. Another druid went into bear form, and bought some precious seconds before dying. After that, he began going from player to player, one-shotting each. I self-rezzed after dying and kept going, and we got him down with five people still alive. Wow. We one-shot Jaraxxus as well, and put the Champions down in two. And, holy shit, the Bastion of Resolve dropped, and I picked it up with a clutch 95. I’d been dreading the moment on the chance that I’d lose, and it was a huge relief to get it on my first try. It’s a nice upgrade to my older Pulsing Spellshield, and it looks cooler to boot! The Twins went down without any major problems, so we decided to put some attempts down on Anub’arak. This week was the closest yet, and the worst because we had him dead to rights. We got to Phase 3 on our first attempt, then hit the enrage timer, and then, two attempts later, had him at 5 million health with enough time to get it done.

Our off-tank disconnected.

The adds he’d picked up went loose immediately, and decimated our healers and DPS as our main tank tried to pick them up. He got them, but he died soon after, and we had a soul-crushing wipe. That was our closest attempt, and we called it after a few more failures. I know now that we can get it done, and every week has brought us closer. Maybe next time we’ll put him down.

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The Horde-tastic Bastion of Resolve

Thursday was a day of PvP, and I chilled out with a couple friends and did BGs for some honor and badges, and finally got enough to get my Relentless Gladiator’s Band of Ascendancy. With myself and my partner sporting our new rings, we decided to get back into the fray and put some 2s matches in. And wow, what a night: we hit 1550 for the first time! We’ve finally started to take out druids, the longtime bane of our comp, and we’re getting ever-more coordinated with what we do, and now we’re starting down the long road to 1650. Hopefully we can keep the good times going.

I was out of town for a few days, so the next time I was on WoW was for Sunday’s raid. We cruised through normal mode and spontaneously went for the Not One, But Two Jormungar Worms achievement (which was cake) before giving hard modes a shot. One of our healers had to leave, which put us short a healer, so… I had to heal a guild raid for the first time ever. I threw on my not-to-shabby healing gear and went to work, but our DPS wasn’t there that night. A big chunk of our core raid group was missing, and our newer members weren’t doing well enough in comparison. And people died in fires; bad. We didn’t make it past the Beasts, but I held my own on the healing meters, even though I was going OOM due to my lack of mp5. It was good to get some validation that I don’t suck at healing, but I think I’ll be sticking with DPS for a long time to come.

Yesterday I managed to get my weekly Vault runs in before the reset, and while the 25-man I joined went fine, the 10-man was absolutely awful. We spent twenty minutes trying to get started with an OT that was lagging, an MT that hadn’t tanked it before, and DPS that kept leaving. We got it done on our third try, then put Emalon down in two. Archavon was easy, and that was all for Monday. It was another reminder of why I like to lead my own raids… the raid leader for the 25 was shady with loot and douchey to the raid, and the 10-man wasn’t communicating or leading. It was a good way to see what I could do to lead better, and I’ll be keeping those experiences in mind this Wednesday.


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Mmmmmm…. PvP.

9 11 2009

Three letters sum up the majority of my WoW time in the last few days: PvP. On Thursday, my partner and I put in some quality 2s matches and our rating increased up to 1450 before we called it an evening. On Friday, pretty much all I did was farm honor and Wintergrasp marks for both the Titan-Forged Ringmail Leggings of Salvation (that’s a mouthful), as well as my Relentless necklace after hitting 1450 again on my 2s team. I snagged the necklace on Friday after turning in almost 200 Stone Keeper’s Shards to get me the extra boost I needed. On Saturday, I spent most of my time on PvP, but I did try out some other stuff as well. I decided to join a Naxx cleanup for some fun, badges, and maybe that shield from KT. That turned out to be a pipe dream. It took us an hour and a half to get through 2/3 of the military quarter, with one of the worst leaders I’ve seen, two poor tanks, and idiotic DPS. Example: in the trash between one boss and the next, there were around 5-10 deaths. Wow. On Instructor Razuvious, we started the pull, ran in, and I got one shot. Nobody picked up Razuvious until two others died, and I ended up ankh-ing, popping Bloodlust (the other Shamans didn’t feel like it, I guess), and finishing the fight. On Gothik, we decided not to split the raid up, and stay on one side. This would bring all of the dead over at once, and the plan was to AOE them down. The only problem was, our tanks and healers weren’t ready, and we died soon after the middle doors opened. We split the raid up, and things went fine. We pulled the next trash with the -30% stats debuff still active, and narrowly averted a wipe with less than half the raid alive when the smoke cleared. After some more clumsy pulls, we put in a failed attempt on the Four Horsemen, and the raid had had enough. Both of our tanks left, healers followed, and I skedaddled out of there fast. Upon leaving and returning to Dalaran, I saw some trade chat spam about the awful-ness of the raid I’d just been in. People always laugh about failing at Naxx, but I think it’s a telling instances. If people don’t pay attention or are just plain bad, Naxx can be a nightmare.

After the Naxx fail, I joined a quick run for Magister’s Terrace, a level 70 instance I’d been wanting to see for awhile. We went through on normal first to get attuned before going through it again on heroic. I’ve gotta say, this place was really cool. I love the Blood Elf architectural stylings, and the music was nice as well. The bosses were cake, of course, but it was still a fun experience. Afterwards, the party leader asked if we wanted to farm Kael’thas for the Phoenix pet on normal mode; I declined, and left. Well, sort of. I decided instead to just farm it myself, since a 70 instance on normal isn’t terribly hard for an 80 in full t9. Or, that’s what I thought. I ended up dying a few times in the instance to Vexallus (an Elemental boss) and a few trash mobs. These things hit hard had some nasty traits. One of the trash casters, I soon found out, stacked a buff that increased his casting speed every time he cast a spell. This hit almost 20 and he was throwing out damage above that of a mob in Northrend. Others poisoned or seduced, and I was soon pulling much more cautiously. In the end, I got to Kael’thas and one-shot him with no problem, and the Phoenix pet dropped on my first time through. I left with a 20-slot bag and the pet, and a renewed appreciation for The Burning Crusade. I picked up the honor farming with some Warsong Gulches and Wintergrasps, and a Black War Wolf and the Leggings I’d been going for. Once I get the Dreadsteed, I’ll finally be able to turn those marks in for honor and not feel bad. I took a break, then came back later that night for some 2s, and we hit 1500 for the first time ever! My partner and I are really starting to get the hang of how to play our comp, although we still have some teams that are just infuriating to play. We called it a night once we hit 1500, and decided to farm even more honor to get our PvP rings. Saturday was a good day.

Sunday I did only two things for around two hours total: H OK, and ToC 10 regular. Pre-raid, I decided to do the daily heroic, and we ran through Old Kingdom in under thirty minutes. Problem was, I’d forgotten to pick up the quest; I still had one for Halls of Lightning. Blargh. I wasn’t too annoyed, since it’s only two emblems of Triumph, but it didn’t make me feel like any less of a noob. Afterwards, due to abysmal attendance, we ended up PuG’ing out spots in our ToC 10 weekly run, and went through with only a wipe on the Twins due to bad luck and poor internet connections (a healer DC’d). Overall, it was a fun, PvP-filled weekend, and I had a good time and got some new stuff. Always cool.


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I Need Raids… Lots of Raids.

6 11 2009

I’ve been doing a lot of instance running and raid leading in the last few days. One of my good friends recently came back to the game, and I’ve been putting some extra hours in to help get him geared up before 3.3 hits. In total, I think I’ve led four in the past few days, to say nothing of the spike in the last week. There’s been success in raiding but instances, well, those are more of a mixed bag.

Monday was the day that made me remember why I don’t run 5-mans very often. After picking up the daily for H HoL, we headed inside with myself, my friend, and three PuGs for the tank, heals, and third DPS spot. Our first pull was fine, and everything was going well until the second room, when we forced to run through the room of adds. When we got past them, and began killing them, our healer couldn’t keep the tank up… ouch. This wouldn’t have been a problem if someone hadn’t pulled the adds nearby, and we ended up wiping pretty hard. I called out in party chat (in caps, no less) that I was going to self-rez. One of our DPS (I think he was a DK, surprise surprise) didn’t get the memo, and released and ran back in. This forced us to run the gauntlet, again, although this time our healer kept the tank up. We went in further, came to the next boss, and I pulled off of the tank. I popped Lust, admittedly, but I was watching my threat, which jumped up from the mid-80s to 100% very, very quickly. My fault, but it didn’t help when he took his time taunting off of me. It’s time like those that I’m glad I wear mail. We moved on further with no trouble until the room before Loken. The trash in that room has always been a headache for me, and this time was no different. We wiped up twice when others pulled nearby adds, and our healer let the tank die on another random mob. We got through Loken in one shot, mercifully, after I threw some extra chain heals down, with my health hovering at around 1-2k. With that, the run was over at last. To sum up my feelings for HoL (and HoS): blegh. I did some BGs, but Monday was otherwise nothing else happened.

Tuesday was raid-lead-tastic. I lead VoA 25/10 and Onyxia 10 in the continuing attempt to help gear up the newbies, and things went really well. We one-shot Kologarn, and my mage guildie got lucky and picked up his 9.3 leggings. We moved on and took out every other boss with ease for the remainder of the 25 and the 10 afterwards. People still died in fires and perished to chain lightning, but checking for achievements when recruiting has helped a lot in recent weeks. The Onyxia run, similarly, went well. We ended up having seven guildies and three PuGs, so we didn’t even use vent. The drake went down in another one-shot. This was definitely one of my better raid leading days, even if it didn’t require much actual leading.

On Wednesday, I PuG’d out the weekly ToC 25, and I saw some good signs that people are recognizing me (and my guild). Ten minutes prior to the raid, I got a tell from a warlock; she wanted to know if I would be running ToC that night. I told her I’d send her an invite, which I did, and she got into vent before I even gave out the info. I PuG’d out several more spots, with a few people from weeks prior sending tells and getting invites. I put the entire raid together in around fifteen minutes, gearchecks included, and then we were off to the races. I can safely say that this, hands down, was our best run yet. We one-shot every boss up to Anub’arak (who we still couldn’t kill), taking down the Champions and Twins with ease. No one got hit by Icehowl on the Beasts, and only one person died in a fire on Jaraxxus. My mage friend got lucky again, and picked up an off-hand, trophy, and an orb. Wow. My shield didn’t drop this week, again, but my cape did. I rolled a 2. I like to think I’m banking up karma, so that when the shield or an item I really want finally drops, I’ll roll a 100 and get out of there. There were a few other cool things about this run; a healer from prior weeks sent me a tell to apologize for not showing up, and to assure me he’d be on for next week. And some loot rolls shook things up a bit, too. Two people rolled 68s for a piece; no big deal, I had them roll again. The first rolled a 99… and five seconds later, so did the other. Whaaaaaaat. A third roll settled it, with a 50 decisively beating a 10, but there was a lot of laughter and chatter in vent after the dual 99 rolls. On a final note, I ran the heroic daily after the raid finished, and finally got my rep with the Ebon Blade up to Exalted, snagging me that achievement, along with Northern Vanguard. Maybe it’s Kalu’ak time? Either way, the last three days have been very, very good.


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Sayis of the Nightfall

2 11 2009

It’s been a busy few days in Azeroth, and I’ve got a bunch of stuff to show for it. Wednesday night’s ToC 25 raid went well as usual, and we one-shotted the Beasts, Jaraxxus, and incredibly enough, the Twins. We managed to two-shot the Faction Champions, and decided to put some attempts in on Anub’arak, where our success for the night came to a screeching halt. Ranged DPS kept jumping the gun, so our off tank couldn’t grab aggro on the adds, and we went to phase two, it was always iffy on whether or not we would make it through unscathed. We hit the enrage timer before getting to phase three each time, and it became clear after about an hour that we just didn’t have the DPS for the fight. My shield and cape didn’t drop again, but that just means the odds are better the next time. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself, since we’ve downed the Faction Champions six times now, and I’ve yet to see it once.

Thursday was PvP-tastic. Instead of 2s, I actually ended up putting in a few hours of 3s matches with a couple guildies. Our Ele Shaman/Arms Warrior/Disc Priest team was actually really fun to play, and we were basically relying on some good burst damage to end a fight quickly. Compared to our 2s matches, which can stretch on for a long time, these were quick, easy wins (or quick, decisive losses). I also did a few BGs, and I can say that Strand of the Ancients is probably my new favorite. The emblems, unfortunately, aren’t getting me any closer to a PvP mount, but it’s a fun way to farm some honor.

On Friday, I got my Nightfall title with a spur of the moment PuG run. I logged on and saw that someone was looking for two more DPS for a Sarth 3D zerg; I sent him a tell, and got an invite a few seconds later. The group formed up quickly, and we went down to OS, and started clearing out the trash. What followed was about thirty to forty minutes of wiping… we got unlucky with the firewalls, and people died in them very, very quickly. The way we were positioning Sarth meant that it was actually easier to jump into the lava to avoid the firewall than to run around, and once the other DPS got that concept, the fight was cake. Everyone pulled over 4.5k DPS, and we all walked off with our titles. I did not, unfortunately, win the drake, but I can’t say I minded at all (I’ll be riding Ruby for a long, long time). I also put in some 2s matches later in the evening, and some BGs as well.

I’d had some RL plans for Halloween, but they fell through, so I ended up just hangin’ out and playing WoW. Saturday brought even more raiding, as I PuG’d out an Onyxia 25 man to help gear out some guildies. I’ll remember this one for a long time, simply because I ended up looking like a scrub raid leader. We pulled trash, and I decided to leave it on Need/Greed, so that everybody could just greed the greens that dropped, and we could move faster. With the trash cleared, we moved in for a close one-shot of Onyxia. Moments later, disaster; a bunch of Need/Greed windows appeared on my screen, and I realized that, yep, I hadn’t changed it to Master Looter. Needless to say, chaos ensued, and nobody was happy with the results. Lesson learned, I don’t think I’ll be making that mistake again. Afterwards, I PuG’d out an OS 25 as well for the same guildies, and we went through that without trouble. We finished up the night with a heroic, and then some 2s.

Sunday was our weekly ToC 10 man, and it was a much sharper run this time. We two-shotted the Beasts once everybody got their act together, and then got Jaraxxus down in three attempts. Then, the Faction Champions. Oh, the Faction Champions. This fight was horrendous; we pulled, lusted, and had someone die within about ten seconds of the start. Three of the Champions were going around the raid as a group, one-shotting anyone they came across. We put in a second attempt, and got the same results, and decided to call it and do normal, which went fine. I did some more 2s for the night before hitting the hay… maybe next week we’ll have a new strategy for that fight, but it’s going to be a tough one.


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How To: Anub’arak

29 10 2009

The floor’s just collapsed from beneath you feet and no, that isn’t deja vu, it’s really Anub’arak, the same boss you killed before in Azjol-Nerub. This fight isn’t terribly difficult, although it requires good DPS and smart healing to get through it. Stay alert, communicate, and this fight will be a breeze.

Short version: Shoot down frost, tank adds on frost, DPS adds and boss, watch out for spikes and smaller adds, burn.

Long version: This is another three-phase fight. Once you aggro Anub, frost orbs will appear in the sky around him. Ranged DPS will need to shoot a few down, causing large patches of frost to appear on the ground. A few seconds into the fight, an add will spawn; this needs to be picked up by the off-tank, and tanked over the frost patches. If they aren’t taken to a patch in time, they can burrow, coming up later and causing headaches for the raid. Ranged DPS should switch to the add, while melee DPS can stay on the boss. Once ranged DPS have killed the add, they can go back to attacking Anub’arak. You should be using cooldowns as much as possible at this point; Bloodlust should be saved until phase three. A second add should spawn, and Anub’arak will burrow shortly afterwards. As ranged (and melee, now) continue to attack the add, spikes will appear out of the ground and begin heading toward a single player. That player needs to get in between a patch of ice and the spikes, otherwise they’ll die. Make sure that you’re not in between that unlucky person and the spikes as well, since they do damage to anyone they touch; you will die within moments if they connect. Ranged DPS neeed to make sure there are plenty of ice patches spread around during this phase.

In phase two, the spikes will actually be the smaller of two concerns. The biggest problem you’ll face here are the multiple scarabs that will appear out of the ground. If they look familiar, that’s because they were the ones crawling around at the start. They’ll chase after a single player, trying to attack them; while the damage they do is negligible, it’s the debuff they give whenever they hit that you need to watch out for. The debuff applies a DoT that ticks for 1000 every three seconds, and it stacks. It’s imperative that you don’t get too many stacks of this, otherwise your healers won’t be able to keep you up. The adds are stunnable, and slowable, so use as many effects on them as possible to keep them from attacking you. Remember, as well, that if a scarab isn’t targetting you, you can hit it with little worry of keeping aggro; it’s tough to gain any kind of threat on these guys before they die. After a short time, Anub’arak will resurface, and the remaining scarbs should be killed before switching back to him. This is basically a return to phase one; an add will appear that needs to be tanked on a frost patch, and if you don’t get him to 30% health, he’ll burrow, and phase two will repeat. Once he’s down to 30%, phase three begins.

The third and final phase is essentially an all-out DPS burn. If you have an add up, you should finish it off before concentrating on Anub himself. He won’t spawn any more adds or burrow, so now it’s just you against him. He’ll begin casting Leeching Swarm on everyone in the raid, which will sap each person’s health by 10%, and add it to his health pool. The trick to this phase is to keep everyone at around 5-6k health (except for your tank, who should be kept at full). This is because penetrating cold is still active, and if someone’s health drops too low, they can be one-shotted by it. Keeping people at full health is also a poor idea, because he’ll recover much more health that way and prolong the phase. You should’ve saved Bloodlust for this phase; pop it and any cooldowns once you’ve killed any remaining adds and burn him down. Once you take him out, congratulations! You just cleared ToC.


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How To: The Twin Val’kyr

26 10 2009

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations; you’re over the Faction Champion hump, and on to a cool, fun, and relatively easy boss fight. This isn’t necessarily a cakewalk, though; if players aren’t careful, they can die quickly, or prolong the fight and cause the Enrage timer to activate. PuGs have trouble with this fight.

Short version: Kill the boss of the opposing essence, grab orbs of the same essence, switch to DPS/avoid damage based on their special attack.

Long version: This boss fight is reminiscent of the underappreciated Gamecube gem Ikaruga, which I’d suggest playing if you’re looking for a break from WoW. Back to the point, though; you’ll be fighting two Val’kyr, Fjola Lightbane, and Edyis Darkbane. At the start of the fight, four different “essences” spawn, two light and two dark; they look like portals. Make sure you click the essence portals, or you won’t have an essence. Standing by them doesn’t matter, you need to click to grab the essence. The trick to this fight is in the use of these essences: you’ll do extra damage to a boss of the opposite type, and be shielded from taking damage from the same essence. However, you’ll still be able to take damage from the opposite element, so beware. As far as positioning goes, you’ll be tanking them by the essences closest to where they spawn, with Lightbane going beside the light essence, and Darkbane going beside the dark essence. I’d suggest giving one boss a skull, and the other an X so that you can call out switches easily.

Start DPS-ing, keeping the bosses relatively close to their respective essences. It’s also good to have ranged and melee by the essences as well; more on why in a bit. Shortly into the fight, light and dark orbs will spawn around the Coliseum, and players will need to grab the orbs of the same essence by running into them, while avoiding the orbs of the opposite type. Getting similar type orbs will give you a few stacks of a debuff that, once it reaches 100, will give you 100% damage done against enemies of the opposite essence. Shorter-term, it also increases your movement speed, allowing you to collect more orbs faster. Ideally, your raid should try to get orbs until everyone is around 90 stacks of the debuff, before having several raiders hit 100 at once. At this point, use Bloodlust and pop all available cooldowns, and prepare to watch your DPS skyrocket. If several players can get this effect and Bloodlust at the same time, well, the Val’kyr will start to go down very quickly. There are two other things to keep in mind regarding the orbs: the Val’kyr can get them as well, and they’ll get a buff to their damage as well. If this happens, your tanks will probably need to pop a cooldown or two. The other thing to note is that touching an orb of the opposite essence will deal several thousand damage; not only is this a pain for healers, but you’ll be taking away an orb that someone else could’ve used.

The important things about this fight are the abilities the Twins will use. There are two: Light/Dark Vortex, an AOE spell, and Twin’s Pact, an interruptable heal for 20% of their health. For the Vortexes, you want to switch to the same essence as the Val’kyr that’s casting it; if Darkbane is casting, go to a dark essence, and if Lightbane is casting, switch to light. This is a simple one to deal with, and being the correct essence will also give you more stacks of the debuff. The tougher one is Twin’s Pact. One Twin will put a shield around herself, and start casting the spell. To interrupt it, you need to do enough damage to break the shield and the interrupt the cast. Everyone needs to focus fire on whichever Twin is casting, even if they’re the wrong essence; I don’t reccomend switching essences to DPS, since the time you waste getting an essence isn’t made up for by the extra damage you’ll do. The Twins will switch on using this ability; for instance, if Lightbane casts it first, then Darkbane will cast it next, then Lightbane, etc etc. If you find that your raid is having trouble dealing with this spell, then consider saving cooldowns for the first Pact, using Bloodlust on the second one, and using cooldowns again on a third cast. If you can get these mechanics down, it’s actually a really easy fight, and a nice break before Anub’arak.


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