SO. CUTE.

I finally did it! It only took three weeks …

And yes, I know that Zao has the least interesting moveset out of the mini celestials but I’m the type of person who picks the cutest pet first, especially since I know I can eventually earn them all. It was late when I finished, but I couldn’t just log out, I had to run around the island with him for awhile. He’s just too darn adorable.

It wasn’t until I had beaten the three champions and no achievement popped up for defeating all nine of them that I realized the tracking for the achievement is per character. Van has killed everyone but Mari, but I logged on late last night and just took the character that was already parked on the Isle. Oops. Oh well, maybe that group will be up again next week.

The last time I got as far as the celestials, I got stuck on Xu-Fu … mostly because I had no mechs left by the time I got there. This time I managed to beat Zao without using my Clockwork Gnome, so I had at least one left. Ok, let’s go consult Tamer Liopleurodon’s guide. If you haven’t been to her blog, you are missing out. So much awesome pet info! Anyway, based on her strategy, I dug through my available pet list and came up with a pair of Wild Hatchlings to toss in with my Gnome, one Gold and one Jade. Both of these come with Call Lightning. Whichever one I started with, I had it cast call lightning. I was hoping to dodge Feed at the right time with Liftoff, but missed on the first dragon so he did get one cast of it off. When that one died I put in the Gnome and set up a turret. Then I went ahead and swapped him back out, because my lightning was about to fall off and I also didn’t want him to die before his turret was off cooldown again. Fortunately, one of Xu-Fu’s big attacks missed so that kind of balanced out the Feed that hit. I was so excited when my Gnome finished him off that I totally forgot to get a screenshot.

Those of you still trying, don’t give up! I don’t have a lot of the ‘necessary’ pets leveled .. no Anubisath, no Water Spirit, no Crow or Raven, no Chrominius, no Darkmoon Zeppelin or Mechanical Dragonling (although my Zep is getting close) … persistence WILL pay off eventually.

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Saving the Protectors

We didn’t have enough people to raid on Tuesday night. So several of us went and ran around the Timeless Isle together. Being in a group allowed us to get things done that I would not have been able to accomplish solo. Thanks to Arv’s legendary cloak and Expedition Yak, Lyss and I were able to fly over to the Sanctuary. Ty was with us too, and Adoe and Zerl each hung out for a little bit. We cleared all the Yaungol in the side courtyard and got our Blazing Chest. We killed all of teh things to complete Killing Time, although the Elder Great Turtle decided to kill us first. No one got any rare drops, but we all had a good time, and still got to play with guildies even though we couldn’t raid. Thanks for the idea, Lyss!

Last night we had our full group, and had lost a full night of raiding, so we really needed to make up for it and focus. We blew the first pull on Immerseus, which Zarm and I both admitted was our fault. But the next pull was fine, and we ended with most of the raid alive this time, unlike our infamous first kill with only a tank left standing. Soon we found ourselves in front of the Fallen Protectors. Last week we spent an entire night wiping on them. This week, we pulled them once …

How’s that for focus? Not even one dead raid member. (although we may have used a brez shhhhhhhh) You can tell from the victory photo how many of us have been playing on the Timeless Isle.

Left to Right: Wok, Zarm, Adoe hiding behind the head of Zugzuug’s onyx jeweled panther, Lyssianna, Arvash, Vanicus, Sorak, Liyhe, and Tyledres.

That left us almost the entire night to work on Norushen. Here’s a complete reversal of roles … I was explaining the fight. Given my previous aversion to LFR, I normally hadn’t seen the bosses until our guild was standing in front of them. This time, I knew the fight as well as anyone else and even better than some. It’s going to take some more pulls to fully get the mechanics and necessary dps smoothed out, but we made progress on him.

Great night, guys! Hope we have more like it next week. 🙂

Alt Week: Paladin

I hope you don’t have anything else to do today besides read this. It could run a bit long …

Kerick

When I first started playing WoW, paladin wasn’t an option for me. I was rolling Horde to play with my friend, and I wasn’t ready to shell out cash for the BC expansion until I was sure I liked the game. The first contact I had with paladins was when Juna hit 70 and the rest of the guild started teaching me about running heroics. Our tank then was a paladin. At the time I was slightly curious about them, but the Death Knight I rolled when Wrath hit filled the ‘I want to play a belf’ longing. There was sometimes a holy paladin in our Naxx runs, though, and that intrigued me much more than the tankadin had. I knew in the back of my head that I would roll one … someday. But I wasn’t ready yet.

I rolled Kerick midway through Wrath, but I was leveling him as ret. There was no LFD yet then, at least, not when he was FIRST rolled. He was still leveling when it was added though. Not that it mattered, I had no real plans for him at that time, I was just having fun leveling. He did things that I would never get to do again, completing the epic charger questline with the help of my good buddy Gromdred before it was removed from the game entirely.

Grom taught me how to ret, but deep in my heart, what I really wanted to do was to be like this guy …

Those of you who knew him, know how much fun it was to be around Hartbane. He made everything more fun. Even spending a year in ICC without killing the stupid Lich King was fun as long as Hart was leading the raid. So I picked up a holy spec when I hit 68 and went to Northrend, and I learned. I *almost* gave it up when the new Cata changes went into effect. It took some getting used to, as paladin was one of the classes that changed the most, with the introduction of Holy Power and all. I know some paladins who completely tossed the class aside and still have not come back to it.

In Cata, my intention was to stick with Karius as my main, like he had been through the majority of Wrath. But, well … healers are in demand, yo. Queue up for LFR and I guarantee, the role you will be waiting on to fill will be healers. So …

Kerick was the main man through Cata. Although, he would have a co-main before the expansion was over, named …

Vanicus

This is totally Lyssi’s fault. Shadow Rising needed some fillers for their raids. I already had my DK over there, he just needed leveling from 80 to 85. No big deal. I leveled him and started out filling in as off tank/dps in BWD/BoT. But, in the background, I had this little paladin that I’d rolled to learn tanking.

Well, as much fun as tanking for SR was, I really, *really* … well, I’m a healer. That’s it. So Van got respecced and leveled almost entirely through LFD. Whereas Kerick had learned healing late, Van learned from the ground up. Even though I’d been healing for awhile now, I feel like I didn’t really know the class as well as I could have until I did that.

As soon as he was leveled and geared enough, he stepped into the SR raids … as a core member. No more fill-ins, I was officially raiding on two different toons in two different factions. We downed Nefarian not long after I made the switch from Arelin to Van.

You guys know the rest of the story pretty much. The Alliance raid never quite got back together for MoP, so Van is *the* main now.

Kerick does LFR with the remnants of the old gang over in Crits though. I have multiple paladin alts besides these two … Kalethos sitting around at 85 on a server I’ll probably never go back to (maybe I’ll transfer him again someday), Rathanos at 52 who IS leveling as prot although not through dungeons, and at least two others at 30 that, well, I don’t know if they’ll ever get played.

Alt Week: Monk

Of course I have monks. I’m an altoholic, remember?

Giska

My journey into monks started with a conversation with Averry, asking if I had a baby orc he could add to the DPS group for his blog. I already had toons in his guild, so I simply rolled a new one and leveled her up to 10 so he could view her on the armory.

I had so much fun, though, that she didn’t stay at 10 very long. She’s made it to level 50, and also, eventually, made it into the comic on the Command Board. Gurtash did a really nice job drawing her, I love it!

Adryen

As an earlier post indicated, Adryen was rolled to get the undead monk achievement for SR.

Adryen is further along than Giska. Then again, he’s been tightly focused on getting levels, whereas Giska has merrily trotted around, earning zone completion achievements and trying to keep up on her leatherworking. He’s up to 83, so his original goal is in sight. He still doesn’t have professions, really, which is so strange for me. Also, no one has commented on his name which makes me kind of sad.

I do have an Alliance monk as well, Kimchii, but she is only 15. She’s going to try leveling up through LFD as a mistweaver … someday.