It Has Dragons!

Remember Damnation? Roz still has it in his bank. This … might be even prettier. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

I’m running around on Van last night digging up stuff. I’ve already done my dailies as well as a random, so the rest of the night is just cruising around doing whatever I want. Or so I think. I’m lurking in vent because the raid is starting and I want to listen in. Then Lyssi and Slice both whisper me … ‘come raid! Someone didn’t show up.’

Well, I was on standby for just that reason … to cover if they need me. So I logged over and got summoned to BWD. Good thing too, since the other option was to fly on my slow mount from Twilight Highlands. Soooo much easier hopping on my fast drake with Crusader Aura and popping over there from Stormwind. lol. I can usually beat the summons there.

I’ll spare you the boring details. Omnomnom died. Magmaw died. Magmaw dropped PRETTIES!!! (Grom, you’re going to hate me. It took you months of killing the worm to get this thing, and I get it the first freaking time I kill him. RNG is a bitch)

I absolutely LOVE the dragon heads flanking the head of Akirus the Worm-Breaker. You’re likely to see more shots of it later on, because it is just *that* awesome looking.

As for the rest of the raid … Maloriak died and the gloves that won’t drop for Kerick were sharded. (/cry) Chimaeron … well, they do Chim a bit differently. The tanks just tank swap at three stacks of Break, instead of having one tank take all the breaks and the other take all the double attacks. I personally found it easier as far as the tanking is concerned … it doesn’t take much skill to watch for 3 stacks and taunt, although I had issues keeping him (and later Algaloth) off me when it was the other tank’s turn for aggro. I’m not used to that whole Vengeance thing yet! Anyway, I don’t know whether that is harder for the tank heals or not, but it’s easier as a tank to just watch stacks instead of watching for double attacks that are often interrupted by massacre and don’t actually happen.

Atramedes I went DPS. I gotta say … I don’t know HOW you guys stay out of the darn circles. I stood at max range, and yes he has a rather large hitbox, but damn … this one time, the circle went the same way I did and I was in the center of the stupid thing running and yelling AAAHHHHHHHHH and then I was dead.

Raiding Horde: Week 3

Gosh, I originally put the title as week 2. But it’s really week 3, isn’t it? I almost forgot I did dps the first week.

The drake combo this week wasn’t quite as bad, as we have the Nether Scion up with the Storm Rider and Time Warden, instead of the … whatever the drake is that does the MS. Two healers and a tank were going to be late, so we grabbed Lioncourt and as soon as we had two healers in the group, we pulled trash … only a few minutes late, not bad. I got to swap roles this week and tank the boss, while Lion picked up the drakes. I believe we released the Scion and Storm Rider at the same time, as his gear is better than mine and he could take two drakes. He’d never been to BoT before, but his tank skillz are good and we one shot them. I got bracers, yay, less squishy already!

We had some fun times on the gauntlet trash on the stairway. Sorak was doing the flame dudes, and one time it tossed him into the last pack that was left at the bottom of the stairs instead of behind us. Of course, they promptly stomped his little green mail-clad body into a pile of mush and despawned … I holler for everyone to get back to the top of stairs because the whole thing will respawn. We lose a couple people in the ensuing chaos, but we pulled through, and I am still totally LMAO at the sight of Sorak flying down the stairs and going splat.

Twin dragons … last week I went dps. This week, Lion got to go ret. Since I had tanked them over the weekend on Kaly, I had no worries about whether I knew what to do. We one shot them, too. Wewt! They dropped the healing cloak (cry … why you not drop that when I’m healing, huh???)  and a very nice tank trinket with stam and a dodge on-use. Slice had us both link our trinks in raid. Lion has the awesome one off Magmaw, and I had two blues (one of which was the Elementium Dragonling and isn’t exactly a ‘tank’ trinket) so I got that, too. That will help even more, I mean, even all buffed up I was barely hitting 150k health. (Not even geared enough to tank Baradin Hold, right Log???)

Trash leading up to Ascendent Council is mostly uneventful, save for a couple of  epic drops. Lion got the sexy tank shoulders and Zug got a Soul Blade (as if he needed to do even moar dps…I spent half the night taunting stuff off him!)  We make some pulls on them and do a lot of wiping, although we did get them to phase three once. I’ve switched roles on this and am tanking the ice guy. I do enjoy getting to learn each one. Then Zerl has to leave, so we pull Arv in. Now Lion gets to go ret again. More pulls … more wiping .. trash is respawning! Here’s some trash clearing action …

More repair bills, and finally it is time for that magical ‘last pull of the night’. A wipe at 1% is too close to give up on, so we come back, pull the rest of the trash that spawned during our runback (apparently the trash in there does NOT respawn as long as you’ve pulled the boss), and proceed to down them. Hurray!

Here’s a fun shot from our heroic the night before. Yes, more GB. I think it’s the only dungeon on that server.

Boomkin priest ftw! Remind me to whip up a batch of those potions of illusion. Good times.

Pebble!!

Alliance Slice

As most of you who bother to come here already know, Analogue and Reversion were not able to raid this weekend, and neither was Logarithm. This left us without both of our tanks, our heal lead … and our raid leaders. For most groups, that would mean a week off. But not us!

Plan going into Friday night was for me and Grom to tank. Grom has been building a prot offset and has wanted to try it, so this offered up the perfect chance for it. That left two heal slots open since I normally heal, so we got Jhudora to come back and I asked Lore to come on his pally to take my spot. We filled Grom’s dps spot with a priest, Annaliese.

An hour before raid time, though, Lore got a call and had to go deal with a real life issue. Well obviously family > raid, and we did have Annaliese who happens to prefer disc healing over dps anyway, so she fit nicely into the healing team. But now we’re short a dps. Fortunately, Slice had transferred his mage over earlier in the day, so I wait anxiously for him to log on. When he does, I tell him “We need you to raid!” .. he’s like “sure, when?” … “um … now” … /invite Velineda

I didn’t even give him time to finish enchanting his stuff, but he did fine anyway. The raid went quite well, considering the personnel changes. Of course, we had Ado leading, which almost guarantees a smooth raid. Friday night we knocked off Magmaw, Omnitron, and Maloriak. I’ve now tanked both Maloriak and the adds. Most people will say that tanking the  boss is the easier job, but … I think it depends a lot on your individual skillset. Interrupting the arcane storms and ONLY the arcane storms (we have a dps responsible for the add interrupts) is just as crucial to the fight as keeping the adds rounded up, so both jobs require staying focused.

We ended Friday night at Halfus but I think we were all tired by then because it didn’t go well. So we picked it up there on Saturday all fresh. It only took a couple of tries or so and we had him. Much much better. Twin dragons took awhile to learn, although I’m glad to have gotten alot of practice on it. The one other time I tried to tank it, we hadn’t seen much of it and Rev ended up tanking and having me bring in Karius. This time I knew the fight well, having killed it as ranged, melee, and heals, so I was prepared for proper dragon placement.

Once the dragons were finally down, we had only progression fights or Conclave of Wind left. So we went to Throne. That took, um … maybe three tries? Really, the group did great. So now we have almost a full hour left, and all of our farm content is down. Ado asks for suggestions and I’m quick to the punch … OS3D! I wants a dragon. People are of course given the option to opt out on that. So we end up going in with 8 people, and down him in …26s. I’m tempted to try that on 25man. Anyway, I actually got what I came for … thank Elune I rolled good on the one thing I could roll on all weekend. hehe!

BTW, rumors that Slice was the only one playing Alliance this weekend are completely false … I ran into this pretty little dwarf lock in Ironforge the other night …

RAWR!!!