So Long, Molten Core

So, the 10th Anniversary Event is going away today. I didn’t get everything I wanted from it, and it was a dreadfully long and painful raid for one guaranteed helm (and a mount on your first victory of course). Despite that, I consider it a successful anniversary. If they had nerfed it, it would not have conveyed the epic feeling of the original. It needed to be something that required some dedication and desire. Everyone got a Molten Corgi just for logging in. However, a bit higher drop rate on the pet and enchant would not have hurt anything. Sure, I only ran it a half dozen times or so, but figure 3 to 4 hours for each run and that turns into one full day spent in Molten Core.

Apparently last week when it was extended for an extra week, that was enough to motivate me to gear up the two alts I have at 100. Junahu was first, then Sanbec followed over the weekend. I also ran both of them through LFR Highmaul. Juna was lucky with gear drops, San only got a ring. San also spent a good part of nearly every fight watching from the floor. It’s not that I’m not used to melee considering my ‘main’ is a ret pally. I guess I just never quite realized how much I depend on sacred shield and word of glory to manage my health bar, not to mention divine protection which has a relatively short cooldown. And then there are divine shield or lay on hands in extreme cases. What does my warrior get? Die by the Sword on a long cooldown? That’s it? Really?? Oh, right, and pending victory or whatever every 30 seconds. And a healthstone.

Now that I have those two ready to lolraid, I’m not sure what I will do next. I have a project in the works on Alliance side which requires a fair bit of gold, so I’ve been playing there a lot more, so maybe it’s time to play with Kerick again. San got an upgraded quest reward in Nagrand that replaced his Garrosh heirloom, so it got passed down to Kerick. I just need a chunk of playtime long enough to get him through the jungle and get his garrison set up.

Raiding the Core

So, I dunno what the deal is with the queue for plate wearing dps to get into the Molten Core LFR. Over the weekend I spent well over an hour in queue several times without ever getting in, while a guildy would queue up on a non-plate character and get in within 10 minutes or less. Two other plate-bearing guildmates were also complaining about sitting in queue forever without it ever popping. Last night though, I queued up right away after sending my followers out on missions, and before I could figure out how to beat the pets visiting my menagerie, the queue popped. I almost fell out of my chair. Wuhhhhhh? I mean, I seriously was not expecting it.

I had heard plenty of horror stories in guild chat about how horrible it was. I know from experience that LFR itself can be all sorts of frustration. I also know, however, that it can be a hilariously good time. It just depends on the group you get. This group, fortunately, fell on the fun side. We cleared up to Baron Geddon with little to no difficulty. There was laughter and joking about dps = dispels per second. There were comments that we would surely wipe unless everyone had their molten corgi out, so of course, we had a virtual army of fiery little dogs dragging their butts through the raid.

Things did go a bit sideways once we passed through the tunnel to the Baron’s area, though. Once we managed to clear trash without pulling the boss at the same time, however, we got through it alright. Until we got to the next little bridge with the pack on the other side and the core hound that patrols. Eventually we managed to get everyone to hang back while the tank waited for the dog to pat away, ran halfway across the bridge, tossed his shield into the pack, and drew them all to our side of the bridge. The rest after that, as someone in raid chat pointed out, was cake.

One of the other paladins had some toy that puts a beam between himself and another player. So of course, he put one on every single person in the raid. It made for quite the light show as we traveled to Rag’s chamber.

And then we were there. I gotta admit, Rag’s speech seemed a lot more impressive with 39 other people there, compared to when I solo the original version.

At one point, the fight paused, and I thought it was over until all of these sons of flame came out. Wait, what? I had never fought him at the original intended level, I had always been there on a higher level character and killed him before he summoned adds, so I totally forgot that even happened. I mean, I should have known, given all the time we had spent working on him in Firelands, but I just didn’t make the connection until it actually happened. Soon, though, he really was down.

I didn’t get the pet, but I was happy with my new helm and mount. Maybe I’ll go back again to try for the pet.

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.

Ancient Hysteria

Saturday I was goofing around not really doing much and decided to check my friends list to see who was on. Ooh, hey, check that out. Jorlex is on … and he’s in Molten Core! *whisper whisper*  Not only does he have room, but he’s got a lock there who can summon. Win!

So I hopped over to Juna. Yeah, that’s right … Jor transferred over to the Dark Side awhile back, along with his girl Lanta. They were both there and it was totally awesome to get to hang out with them again. They had just downed Executus and were on the way to Rag, so I missed most of the place (and missed out on the Leaf boo) but I got the achievement AND got something even cooler.

I’d been contemplating going to Azuremyst to get the white core hound, but it’s such a distance to travel for a Hordie. The green ones are just .. well, put it this way, if I had tamed one of them, I would name it Snotball. The actual original Core Hound is the coolest, plus he matches my core hound pup. He still needs a  name, though. Any suggestions?

We took a break for a little bit after that. I took that time to activate my as-yet-unused second spec and put in a group-oriented, DPS-focused talent setup. The first spec is chock full of soloing/questing stuff like Pathfinding (mounted speed increase) and Hunter vs. Wild (stamina increase).  And also took some time to watch L80ETC practice in the Grim Guzzler. Then once Jor and Lanta were done with lunch, we went to ZG.

Hakkar’s mind control is always such fun. I love my ice trap … especially when I get to trap my friends in it. Hey Jor, feeling a little frozen there?

Good times. BTW, you see that lovely heroism debuff there? (bloodlust for Horde, yeah, sorry, I play mostly Alliance) You’ll notice that the party consists of paladin, priest, and hunter. No shamans to be found. Which brings us to the title of the post. Ancient Hysteria is the shiny new core hound-only special ability … which does exactly what herolust does and shares the same cooldown. Awesome, eh? 😀

Thanks again for dragging me along, it’s great to have friends on both sides of the server, and I have so much fun with you guys.

Oh yeah, Juna finished off Keymaster and Seeker over the weekend as well.