Progress on Something New

I didn’t get any leveling done this weekend. I got sidetracked by something. No, no, not a new game. Not D3 either.

Friday night I was running around with Averry. He wanted to go to MC and BWL, and I decided to take Van because he needs rep and also because the character that Averry was bringing couldn’t use 2 handers and I would cry if Ashkandi dropped when no one could mog it. Averry mentioned that it would be more important to have someone who can use the legendary drops in MC. I sort of scoffed at this. I mean, what are the odds of any of those dropping? I’ve seen one binding in all the years I’ve played. So of course, just to prove me wrong, the Eye of Sulfuras drops.

You can guess what I spent the weekend doing, right? I’m going to have to craft a Sulfuron Hammer to fuse with that Eye in order to get my legendary. So off I went to Wowhead.

I happened to have one Sulfuras Ingot in my guild bank, and Kirgra just happens to have a BS skill of 305, when 300 is needed to learn the pattern for the hammer. I also gathered the 20 gold bars, 10 truesilver bars, and 2 Star Rubies that were needed for her to learn to smelt dark iron. This all required two separate trips to BRD however, because I hadn’t even thought about the dark iron until after I went there to get the BS pattern.

So, the hammer requires 8 Sulfuron Ingots, 10 blood of the mountain, 10 Fiery Core, 10 Lava Core, 25 Essence of Fire, 50 Arcanite Bars, and 20 dark iron bars. I remember helping Hartbane gather these things way back when. Well, now it is my turn.

In one run through MC, Kirgra gathered all of the cores and essences. Those are the easy part. She got enough dark iron to craft 7 bars. That is the hard part. It takes 8 ore to make 1 bar. Ouch! And the nodes do not respawn. If I had more than one miner … *eyes Arelin but resists the temptation to transfer him*

Arcanite bars I wasn’t even going to mess around. I bought two stacks of Arcane Crystals and a bunch of Thorium bars on the AH and put Van to work transmuting. You want that hammer you gotta do some of the work, elf! Fortunately, he’s transmute specced, so I only had to buy two extra crystals past the two stacks.

So, what do we have left? Sulfuron Ingots and blood of the mountain. The ingots only drop off of … I should know his name without looking it up after so many runs this weekend. Maybe my brain is blocking it out because I never want to see him again? Oh yeah, Golemagg. Anyway, that’s a chance of getting one per week per character. Thanks to Averry and my many alts, I have 7 already. Blood of the Mountain can be had from mining dark iron nodes, OR can drop off of Molten Giants and Molten Destroyers. I managed to collect 6 of these.

Yes, I actually ran every single alt that is 85+ on Kargath-Norgannon through MC this weekend. Instead of leveling, they were working. AND the route I used to get to Blackrock Mountain was flying up from the Blasted Lands, so I made them all detour to Karazhan and kill Attumen. Obviously the horse didn’t drop or this post would be quite different. Anyway … this still gave me practice on the new classes. AoE practice especially, something I don’t do a lot of when questing (not counting the prot paladin, who pulls as much as he can.) Ok, maybe the balance druid didn’t need AoE practice. The rogue, he just vanished and ran away when he aggroed the packs of core hounds in Magmadar’s room. The shaman learned about fire nova (I didn’t even have it on my bar prior to this.) Adryen found a new respect for the Spinning Crane Kick that all of the other monk players I see use almost to the exclusion of any other abilities. Vorta learned to love Berserk … and hate the long cooldown on it. The prot paladin? Um … he couldn’t kill them. He tanked them all the way through the instance, clear up until Ragnaros died, and then just ran them all to the entrance and escaped out the portal. LOL! It was silly, I know, but I kinda of enjoyed having a wall of drooling monster dogs in my face the whole time. Hey, it gave me nonstop Avenger’s Shield procs! Good times.

So Long, Skadi

Finally, after how many years and more than one losing roll, I got Skadi to cough up a blue proto-drake.

I still need 8 more mounts to get to 200, however, so I have quite the circuit for Van to run each week. I did try Malygos last weekend for the first time and he was easy enough so I’m still not out of Northrend but at least now I don’t have to visit both coasts.

Also, no pics, but while seemingly everyone else and their dog has been busy killing demons in Diablo, I’ve kept working on leveling my classes in WoW. I worked on my enhance shaman last night. Now, keep in mind that I’ve never played a shaman past level 68, and never played enhance until I boosted this one from 1 to 85. So I was pretty proud of myself when she took down Torik-Ethis last night. He’s a level 87 rare mantid, one of those with blade flurry and the tornadoes that can be a real pain as melee. She was level 86 and wearing all quest greens … no ilevel 450 BoA weapons for her. I think I’m getting the hang of it quite nicely. By the end of the night she had reached 87 and joined Huna at the Shrine.

Heroic: Galakras

Good run last night. We one shot Heroic: Protectors and only wiped once on Immerseus, Norushen, and Sha. That left us plenty of time to pick up where we’d left off last week on Heroic: Galakras. This also took only two pulls.

The fight is not very different for me since I am staying on the ground the whole time. There’s just a lot more damage, although we kept that in check compared to last week. It makes a big difference when there isn’t an army of proto-drakes hurling globs of flame into the raid.

I tried to get everyone to stand still long enough for a screenshot. This was the best I could manage …

Well, the drake is there along with all 10 of us, so hey, it counts! So what if I got the backsides of half the raid, for most of them it’s their better side anyway. :p

So, Juggernaut. Remember how I complained about the movement in Heroic Sha? Um, yeah … I take that back. Eff Juggernaut. We made four pulls on him. We did get him to just over 50% though, even through our flailing, so I don’t think it will take us long. Just need to tweak positioning and cooldowns and we’ll survive.

Happy Druid

Ok, last week I mentioned how much fun I was having leveling my balance druid through Pandaria. Several of you expressed disbelief, and Bocat basically said ‘SS or it didn’t happen.’ So Hunahuna is here to show you just how much fun it is.

Um, catching up on gossip in Halfhill doesn’t count, Hunie. Any character can do that. Heck, that’s what some of these commentators have relegated their druids to doing. We want to show them some action!

Yes, working your farm is action, but that’s not quite what I meant. I understand that you’re a druid and feel the need to play in the dirt there, but that isn’t what this post is about! Please help me out here.

Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Here’s some single target action on a named quest mob.

And here we have the glory that is hurricane/astral storm.

Yes, dear, that’s a lovely placement. No, it doesn’t make you a tank.

Curious, though, as to how much she can handle, I pulled four of those Saurok in the cave in the (crap what is that little zone called where the Tavern is?) zone between the Valley and Kun-Lai. These aren’t little low-health mobs like the ones she AOE’d in the above screenshots, but regular, full-health mobs equal to her level. No problem. She mowed them down. Dot, dot, starfall, ooh an instant starsurge proc …yeah I threw in a barkskin and a rejuv but really, she had no problem. Out of all the casters I’ve played with (not counting the warlock who has a pet for that) she *is* the tankiest of all of them.

Oh, and one other thing … I am beginning to understand the druids I’ve seen who bounce around. My other lady tauren, Junahu, is as flat-footed as they come. Of course, she grew up with her pet holding all of teh things while she stood still and shot them. Huna though? Yeah … she bounced circles around the Varian sha during the quest at the Temple of the White Tiger. She might be having TOO much fun. She even flirted with Anduin.

I’ll be totally honest here, out of the 5 characters that I RaF boosted to 85, the balance druid was the last one I would have bet on being the first to the Shrine. But here she is! A couple of the others have made 86, but she is at least a full half-level ahead.

Sha of Anger, meet Huna the Happy Druid. She’ll be coming for you soon!