No More Tomes

Except for this one, because she’s awesome.

In this terrible screenshot, you can see me receiving the last Tome of Chaos that Sanbec needed to collect. That was also the last boss I needed to get the achievement for that wing, and it was nearly bedtime when we finally downed him, so I dropped out right after. What you cannot see is the 5 stacks of determination it took to down him. Although, from what I hear, it may take more than that to kill Archimonde, which I have saved because I’ve heard I will need to kill him for the next stage of the quest anyway. I didn’t even turn the quest in last night, I will do it tonight.

Now on to actual fun stuff!

Yep, I’m taking a screenshot instead of hitting Herald Volazj. I saw him so many times this past week I figured I’d earned a couple seconds of reprieve.

The bonus last week was Wrath Timewalking Dungeons. This was also the premiere of the badges that you earn in them. It takes 5000 to buy the super awesome horse that I absolutely must have. But I wasn’t going to get him in one week. I had other priorities, because you get a quest to turn in after finishing your first dungeon that awards 500 badges. With those badges, you can buy ilevel 675 gear for anywhere from 25-50 badges each. I figured it was a perfect and easy opportunity to gear up my other 5 max level alts. So they all did at least one dungeon. Karius was the lowest geared going in, not even able to queue for Draenor heroics, but since these scale you down to a set level, his actual ilevel didn’t matter one bit. Voila! Just like that and he is geared enough to queue for Hellfire Citadel … not like he’s going to, but he *could* if he managed to talk me into it. I think my two DKs are still one point off, but a little time in Tanaan would take care of that quickly enough if I cared.

Next time, I won’t have to gear up alts, so Sanbec can just chain run them. And what a good time they were. I did a few heroics at the end of BC, but Wrath is really where my true deep involvement in group play began. I will never love any dungeons as much as I love Wrath’s dungeons. Sure there were a few wipes along the way … people forget that you can’t pull too many things that fear or flamestrike. What was it with fear in those dungeons anyway? I think every single one has some in it.

Anyway, it was great fun and I am looking forward to the next Timewalking event.

One Mount Closer

I am almost at the 200 mounts mark. Thanks to my friend Shudal, I am now one closer. All I had left for the 25 man Ulduar drake was the Flame Leviathan achievement. Yeah, the vehicle fight. If it was something where I could just go slice something up with my sword, I’d have been done long ago. Sure, I’ve been told it was soloable and given advice on how to do it but I just couldn’t hack it on my own. So he invited me along when he went to collect shards and we got it done.

I still like the 10 man rusted version better (which I got at the end of Wrath or very beginning of Cata) but hey … it’s one more I can check off. 198 down, 2 to go!

Thanks again Shudal, you’re awesome! 😀

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.

Hellscream’s Downfall

So .. remember how I quit raiding? I did mention that, right? Part burnout, part desire to do other things on raid nights. Bowling league every other week on a raid night, polka club once a month on another raid night, and my favourite TV show during the last hour of the other raid night each week. Yeah, it means I still have things scheduled, it’s just a lot less time consuming than a 3 hour block, 3 nights a week, every week.

But, this doesn’t mean that I’m against coming in to help out when I’m available and they need me. I might have mentioned being pulled in to kill Mythic Siegecrafter a week or so ago. Well, last night they needed bodies for Mythic Garrosh. I almost went along Monday night but someone else logged on late who hasn’t quit, so I bowed out. But last night they needed me. We *almost* got him in one pull. It didn’t take all night though. Heck, we got him in time for my TV show so I didn’t have to watch it later On Demand.

I never saw an achievement show up, just the heirloom and the bonus roll. It shows up in my achievement pane, but never flashed up on the screen.

At first I was disappointed about getting an heirloom that I already have. But when I thought about it, I realized that nearly half of my max level characters (7/15) are strength-based plate wearers, so actually, that axe is the MOST useful thing I could have gotten.

Yeah, someone chopped him up into a pile of meat.

P.S. Why does Varian look so awesome and my humans look … like …. /cry