Catch up and the long absence

It's been over 5 weeks now since my last post and time sure has gone by fast.

So where have I been? To be honest when I started my absence there really was not a lot going on, there were some real life caused attendance issues slowing raiding and I was not spending much time on WoW outside of that.

The first few weeks were mostly just filled with me leveling my new Mage alt who hit 15 via RaF in the last day of the offer.
I had brought a copy of WoW classic from the Christmas special for $5 US and signed a new email address up for it. I then recruited that email under my main account and just forgot about it.
Somewhere in January I finally got round to buying my first month of game time for the second account and then with plans to dual box them, I forgot about it.
With RaF coming to a close at the end of Feb I got off my behind and finished the payments to net Orth his rocket mount and finally taught myself the art of dual boxing.

I have to say once I got my head around the initial complexity of the task it was quite fun. There were still several issues that I would no doubt sort out if I was to do it again but it worked well enough for the day I had left.
I rolled a Mage on my main account and a hunter on my second and sent them off into Elwynn forest where they quickly leveled through, stomping their way over mobs.
My night of dual boxing finished after an hour or so when they hit 15 in Redridge.

Once my blog break had started and raiding had slowed I decided to keep leveling my Mage without the restrictions that the RaF posed. So later that night she stood in heirloom gear and off she went.
I really was enjoying leveling her, for the first time since my Priest I was having fun on an alt and better still I could level her without my partner who my Priest still waits to level with.

The best part about leveling the Mage is being able to see the new Cataclysm world for the first time. Blizzard have really done a nice job on the revamp, there are so many new quests and zones just flow so much better now. It is great to enter a zone like Redridge and have all your quests flow from 2 or so stories into one zone wide piece of lore.

At the moment my Mage sits at 65 having just finished Hellfire and is ready for the painful 3 level slog needed to get out of tired Outland. After taking 5 character through OL it really is getting old and for the first time since creation the desire to level her has slowed.
However Northrend is next and of those 5 toons that have been through OL only 2 have made it through NR so I hope that it is a little less painful.


Guild wise things are finally looking up. Peoples new born babies are settling in, members who were previously without are finding new jobs and with people gaining more free time and a few new recruits we are now able to run most weeks PuG free with the promise of constant full guild runs waiting on a few more members to return.

As a nice side effect of a more active guild we have finally managed to hit guild level 10, opening up the heirloom cloaks to further boost my Mage's leveling.


With guild members coming back we have finally been able to step the raiding up.

We started with a move deeper into BWD to take on and quickly down Maloriak. This fight is another great fight for rebuke where I can be in charge of the first few interrupts and the other interrupters never have to worry about that one spell.


A Concave kill in the Throne of the Four Winds followed the next week. While this was not our first kill in TotFW, a power cut forced us to over PuG the week before and it had not counted as a guild kill.


That week ended with a few attempts on Atramedes just to see the fight. Even though we were not on him long we were constantly making 50% and left him there confident he would soon fall.

The next week was sent to move into BoT finally and get some work done there.
After clearing out our 3 in BWD we moved to quickly wipe out Halfus and move to the Double Dragons.
The fight was messy to say the least. The PuG's did not listen and very quickly died taking out a DPS and Healer wit them. Down a healer things slowly got worse as the other 2 did not have the mana to keep up with all the damage.
Eventually they got low on health and we pushed hard with the few people who were left.
The last percent of health got closer and closer and then finally not without taking one more with them the Dragons died leaving 3 people including myself alive. It was a one shot, messy as anything but a one shot.


The rest of the night was spent on the Council fight where we got to know the mechanics and were getting to phase 2 and even phase 3 on some attempts.

This catches us up to last week.

Wednesday me and my partner did not raid as I took her out to dinner for her Birthday, the guild however pulled in some PuG's and cleared our 3 in BWD without us. I was proud to see everyone still show up and my officers take over and lead a successful raid without me.

Thursday was spent on Atramedes where despite some close attempts we were unable to down him.

Friday was dedicated to BoT again and this time we had to go deeper. Progression.
As expected Halfus fell quickly and we moved to the Dragons. This week was not a one shot like the week before however there were several new guildies there as well as PuG's. Never the less we got them down and moved to the Council again.

The Council fight was picked up by everyone really quick including those that missed the week before. Nearly right away we were pushing phase 3 where we quickly discovered that we could not bring him down unless all 4 previous bosses were taken to 25% equally and we had all our DPS alive into phase 3.
We had many attempts where we would wipe sub 5% due to having a DPS die early to to a mistake or just plain bad luck. To many times did we push into phase 3 with all alive just to have to Ice boss throw off a Hydrolance right after a Glaciate and kill a DPS because I could not interrupt.
Finally though towards the end of the night we got an attempt without bad luck and easily pushed through the final phase for the kill.


That night ended with a brief look into Cho'gall's chamber.

This weeks raids come tonight and our main goal this week, Cho'gall.

Raid catchup and Rebuke Day

Its been a busy past week and a bit for me and real life has keep me from posting on the large array of things that have been happening since my Rift post.


Our first proper raid week started very nicely 3 weeks ago, with me managing to pick up some new BoE shoulders from the trash Mobs.

That same night we got our first kill of the current expansion downing Halfus with the Dreaded Nether, Slate and Storm combo. This is defiantly a nasty set up and a big thanks goes out to the Mage who we taught to blink and interrupt the Shadow Nova after the Furious howl, you defiantly helped to compensate for the other PuG's in the group with that.


From then on Halfus has been on farm with the combos getting easier each time until this week when everyone had the simplest combo by far; Nether, Whelps and Time.
I'm not sure how much the 4.0.6 changes made to this fight being such and easy combo that will have to wait till next week to see.
Because of the lack of MS or Shadow Nova we were able to release the Nether and Whelps at once cutting the damage almost completely to my new OT who is finally raid ready.
The Time Warden was released very shortly after while the Nether Scion and Whelps were still dieing and once they were all dead it was a nice easy burn to an achievement.


Two weeks ago we got our first Magmaw kill after finally getting some PuG's in that could switch targets and kill the adds quickly. It truly is amazing how much simpler that fight got once people were getting onto those adds quickly.


In fact the fight went so well that our first kill also netted us this achievement.


We also put some attempts into the Omnotron Counsel that week but only managed a 5% wipe before the PuG's had to leave and the raid was called.


Then this week before raids patch 4.0.6 hit and what a mixed bag our 'Rebuke Day' was.
We all got Rebuke trainable baseline at 54 and there was much rejoicing, then we find a stealth change to the way HP is generated and the rejoicing is hidden by anger and confusion.
For many people they just decided to live with the new change and deal with any missed attacks as they came, which is a fair choice and keeping your survivability up is a nice bonus to that. For me being a 10man raider the good and bad went hand in hand. Getting Rebuke changes a lot for our raid as it no longer means that DPS have to watch Shadow Nova or gimp their damage by watching Arcane Annihilator on Omnotron.
To make sure that I am not letting the raid down on interrupts I need to be hit capped which as a result means the HP change has very little effect on me.
Sure I have lost 7% odd Mastery but in exchange I get a boost to Threat/Damage and can interrupt reliably and boost raid damage to.

That brings us to this week where after downing Halfus as already mentioned we moved on to try the Double Dragons.
We had seen this fight briefly the week before but had not put many attempts into them.
As we had already picked up last week we had Phase one and its transition down pack with just a little refinement to do on the Blackouts.
Phase two however was still causing issues with the ranged slowly being picked off. There were revisions made to the strat an we were reliably hitting the 50% mark on transition before we wiped. The night was then called with the plan to come back the next night.

Thursday came around and our PuG from the previous night had to drop due to being called to raid on his main. As a result we left BoT and headed for BWL to start its progress a night early.

A quick pop to town to fill the missing spots and we were in BWL clearing trash to Magmaw while the PuG Mage 'fixed' his internet.
The PuG Mage proceeded to do no damage on trash and spent half the time offline. At the boss we finally managed to get him on vent to find that not only is he a immature 14 year old but he also has very little clue about his class and is running 2k latency.
We proceeded to try anyway and immediately wipe because as I ran in I clipped the windows key while hitting shift to pop wings. Naturally I was tabbed out and ran directly off the edge into the lava.
Hilarity ensued and once we had recovered and several jokes had been made on my behalf we tried again, this time the Mage DC'd again as my AS missed and the PuG Resto Druid pulled aggro and was one shot.
With our bad luck out of the way we kicked the Mage and eventually pulled in a Hunter.
With the group back in Magmaw's room we then swiftly took the bugger down and moved across the hall to Omnotron.

Omnotron went well considering we had several players that had never seen the fight. Once we got past the first 'Never seen the fight' wipes we were making good progress.
Slimes were taken care of quickly, the Flame thrower was handled very well and my shiny friend Rebuke helped AS keep Arcanotron locked down while his shield was up.
A few 10-15% wipes later and they were down, opening the gate to BWD's insides for the first time.


We of cause popped our heads inside for a look around before calling it a night with both PuG's set to come back and our biggest raid night still ahead of us.

Friday came around and despite putting a whole night into them we only managed to get Maloriak and Chimaeron down to 50% each.
It is defiantly nice to have some challenging raid content to work on after WotLK and I can't want to get back in next week, get those guys down and see what the later bosses bring.

The Path to 85

Cataclysm has been out for nearly a week now and while I should have written something about it sooner I have to be honest and say that every last bit of my free time as been spent in Azeroth leaving no time to blog.

Fade back to 10am Tuesday (1pm on Monday PST) and I am sitting at work hardly focusing knowing what tonight brings. We wont be having a midnight release as the servers come up at 9pm our time but I am obviously excited none the less. Just the day before however I find from my local EB Games that there is some "situation" with Cataclysm but no one knows what it is until I get a message to my phone from EB. The message basically reads that due to one EB selling Cataclysm early, all EB's can sell it early starting immediately.
All focus I had left is gone right out the window as I now wait until Lunch time so I can drive across town to pick it up.
12 comes around and that is exactly what I do, it takes my entire hour break to do it but I now have two Cataclysm Collectors Editions sitting under my desk. The next 4 hours were painful but somehow I got through and the it was home free.

Since I had already had the Cata pre download run I simply had to upgrade my account and I was ready to go.
The first thing I did when I logged in was collect my Lil' Deathwing


Then it was a waiting game for 9pm and the message to log out for Cata.
When the message finally came the authentication servers were so heavy hit that I keep DCing for the next 15min. Once I was finally in my first step was to buy Azeroth flying.


From there it was off to Hyjal and an introduction to that gank fest that was leveling.
After 30min of questing and 1 hour of being dead I finally got my first look at the big baddy Deathwing himself.

Boy is that sucker huge.
From there I continued to quest and get swarmed by horde for the next 16 hours. I took a break to do some mining and after six stacks of Obsidian realized that I had not trained my new level of mining and had wasted all that ore.

On the topic of leveling on a PvP server, this was my first ever time leveling on a PvP server and boy was it crazy. The entrance to Hyjal was white with bones.
The census sites put us at a 2:1 Horde to Ally ratio but looking at the numbers visible its more like 5:1.
Several times I would get jumped by a solo Horde member and every time I would beat then down until they ether got 2-7 more friends or ran away into a group of leveling Horde who would lend them a hand.
It still continues like this now at 85 while doing daily where I will be jumped by ether one Horde win then have him return with friends or 2-5 of them jump you all at once and always when your already fighting. This proves that we have the better PvP's and is shown by our constant domination of Tol Barad.

As I finished up my leveling in Hyjal I got to see a wonderful site of the long lost Jarod Shadowsong and the great Cenarius.


From there is was off to Deepholme through the Maelstrom.


I love questing in Deepholme, as great as Hyjal for lore was the quality of quest in Deepholme is just so much better and more enjoyable.
Your character gets a lot more involved for example this guy

who literally grabs you by the face. Least he get what he deserved.

Once I was 83 and my quests were up to date with Therazane I was off to the beautiful Uldum.

The quests here are in my opinion the best in the game, funny, engaging and very diverse.
Among the plethora of NPC you quest for you spend a lot of time working with Harrison Jones seen in this archive file photo.

and work to recreate the better parts of any movie that his name sake is from.


While questing in Uldum you will find possible the greatest quest ever made if you are like most people and hate Gnomes.


What we have here is basically a big ball of fire that you use to run down very large numbers of screaming Gnomes. If this was a daily I think it would win hands down, instead best quest has to go to the daily "Thieving little Puckers" that involves smashing very funny sounding pygmy's with a very big hammer.

After I had dinged 84 and found out that the bug's stopping you from leveling in Twilight Highlands were fixed I popped over there for a bit just to see what it was like. Before I could go I had to help out Varian by escorting Anduin around on some duty's.
After a brief introduction I was met by this very moving piece of dialog.


That was quickly followed with a great 24 reference.



While questing I leveled my Jewelcrafting up to 475 to unlock the new daily's and in doing so unlocked new world drops and the ability to finish a quest for this lovely little tanking trinket with a not to shabby 421 stamina on it.


I finished my leveling off in Vash'jir to raise my Earthing ring rep for the Helm enchant. I had not spent much time there before I dinged but I was not thrilled by the whole being underwater thing.


I went and picked up my GoAK


and it was then off to run my first Heroics which were BRC and HoO. I have to say after how easy the normal instances were while leveling the Heroics are a very welcomed challenge. If the Heroics are this hard I can not wait to see the raid content, but what I have seen if filling me with hope for the perfect level of content.
Also HoO has one of the coolest bosses ever, he is a Flame Marrowgar that you fight on Camels what more do I need to say bar.

A Frostwyrm Dies, A Frostwyrm Born

This weeks raiding was dedicated to one thing, killing Sindragossa's Hard mode and claiming our Frostwyrm mounts.

Our original plan was to extend the lockout and down her on Wednesday due to our Ret Pally/ Temporary Co-Tank only being available that day. However due to having to PuG a spot with a particularly bad Ret Pally coupled with our lack of practice on the fight, we did not make that goal. We did not give up easy though, the team did a great job of working well over time in an effort to get her down that night.

Thursday we came back this time with two PuG's but by the time we got them we were a solid 45 minutes into our time before we truly started. The little time we had was spent working on getting phase 3 under wraps, however we just did not have the time to bring her down.

We skipped raiding on Friday due to multiple people not being able to make it and came back early on Saturday.
None of our PuG's showed up despite having accepted the calender invite, luckily though we finally had more members free and were able to fill a full 10man with our own raiders.
This time we were confidant that we would have here. We had the skill, the practice and the time to put into it.
Every attempt got better and better but despite getting consistently to phase 3 we would always wipe because of something stupid be it and important member stepping to far round and Iceblock (guilty), to much damage being taken (guilty of not popping CD's) or various other little things.
At one point we had a run that while filled with mistakes made it to a sub 5% wipe, we were really close and just needed to tighten it up a bit.
Then we had an attempt where we his phase 3 perfectly and although we lost a few things were going strong. Then on the tank transition we lost my Co-Tank for the night, things got a little dicey from there losing another DPS.
We were 2 down and I had no tank to taunt from me as my stacks continued to rise. We kept pushing forward as we past the 10% mark and I used nearly every tool I had to keep myself up, Glyphed Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, Talented WoG and LoH all got used at least once to keep my up through the breaths.
At the 5% mark before the next Iceblock dropped I called for a burn and watched as her health dropped and the next Frostbreath approached. I had not CD's left and the next Breath would likely kill me but before she could breath.


We had finally brushed off the cobwebs of the last 6 months and claimed the Achievement we should of had a long time ago.


Before the night was out we went and finished H Blood Princes for another members Frostwyrm. Sadly I had assumed that my partner had done H Valithria and that we could finish her Frostwyrm Achievement off with the Council and Festergut, with Valithria already down she was unable to get her mount with us.

We all collected out mounts from the mail

and head to the unphased air space just out of Dalaran for a guild mount shot.


We finally have our mounts, just before Cata I could not be more relieved to have that over with.
Big thanks goes out to not just those that were there on Saturday but also to all the other guildies that have helped out and do not have their mounts, to the handful of PuG's we have used and to my Partner and Real Life friend who both went offspecs in Resto and Prot respectively to help us down Sindy.




On a side note, final Molten Core run of WotLK gone and still no Binding from Garr.

Post 100 and Chasing the Wyrm

Today's post finally brings me to my 100th blog post. When I first started blogging I never thought that I would really last this long let alone get to 100 posts. Heck with the decrease in posts lately I thought it would take a lot longer two.

In WoW we have been working towards finishing off our ICC10 Drakes prior to Cataclysm and this week we set our sites on the last normal mode Achieves we had left, Sindragossa's and the Lich King's.

We did not raid Wednesday or Thursday due to other player commitments so it all had to take place on Friday night. We re extended the raid lockout from two weeks ago and after clearing out BloodQueen we moved right into Sindy.

Sindy was proving to be a challenge because there kept being those little things that went wrong at the start of phase 2 that caused someone to take to many Debuff stacks.
We spent a while wiping but it was obvious that RNG and our own bad day were going to hold us back from doing it normally so we stitched to trying for a Zerg.
The first two zergs went badly but the first went off perfectly, we hit phase 2 without problem but then lost a few people mid phase to bad ice blocks. It came right down to the wire, we had lost a few players and I had just hit my 5 stack as we closed the final few percent. It was to late to call a wipe so we push on with everything we had left and watched helplessly as the Debuff timer reached out to the 6 stack mark. Then just at the last moment

literal moments after the Debuff ticked up to 6, but I have no idea how after she was dead.

From Sindy we moved to LK and while the achievement is much easier we ended up having a more difficult time due to real life things coming in the way such as sick and medicated people falling asleep. While we were constantly getting phase 1 fine we kept wiping on phase 2 so called it a night and planned a follow up raid for the unusual time of 4pm Sunday.

Sunday came and back we went for another attempt. The first few try fell apart when the adds died to quick and we lost the Debuff, the second attempt however went perfectly and a few minutes later.


Now all we have left is Heroic Sindy. Its going to be close with on of our officers only having one night for it but I am confident that we can push through the few blocking Bosses quickly and Take out H Sindy in the small time we have.
Hopefully all going well next week will mark the completement of all ICC10 baring H LK for us. Just in time for Cataclysm on Tuesday, boy is that getting close.

The Long Delay and New Progression

I have really been slacking on my posting lately.
Mostly its because I'm not in WoW as much and when I am its because I am doing the Cataclysm pre quests.

I have really been enjoying the current events, its no Zombie invasion but its still a lot of fun. I just hope the final stages really step it up to rival the zombies.

Outside of those we have been starting to get back into raiding again. We really have not done much since the guild feel apart and we transferred.
However this past week we finally got back into the progression with working on Heroic 10man Putricide.
Our first day started poorly with 2 members missing due to work and other real life commitments. However we quickly pulled in two adequate PuGs and set into a fresh clear.
Our first day was spent clearing out the first 6 bosses into Plague Wing all on Heroic.
It was a very uneventful night really just your typical farm night.

Day two however was to be dedicated to Putricide himself. We had some new faces with us and we were all feeling a little rusty. Those two together did not make a good combination. We by far had the DPS and Heals to pull it off but raid awareness had been dulled by the time away from the fight. We were there for an hour and a half after the late start and while we were making progress to getting our groove back we still had a way to go.

Friday came around and we were all ready to go, we had the raid near full and plenty of time ahead of us. Boy did we use the time ahead of us. We were a man down again due to some raiders under staffed real life jobs and we had to resort to a new PuG to fill the final spot. It ended up being a friend of another PuG but he was rusty to and worse still did not have the last nights worth of practice on the fight.
We wiped for 3 hours on him some times it was a simple mistake. Sometimes it was RNG just deciding to kill us, like the time I turned to SotR a Ooze and got hit hard due to turning just to far, the Ooze then knocked us back where my flask came off mid air leaving me very low on health and I died to fall damage.

The night was coming to a close with 45min left on the raid night and some people having work early the next morning. We had just cleared through trash again and I called this the final try. Phase one went well everything moved where it meant to and we pushed him through nice and quick. Then phase 2 came and that was going well until nearing the 50% mark a screw up from a PuG left both of our PuGs dead. I was tempted to call a wipe with 2 DPS down but left it to push on.
We hit the 35% mark and brought on phase 3 for the first time that was not a clear wipe. However RNG shined on us again and the Plague in combination with a Slime took out another DPS. We pushed on into the final phase and it was getting hectic with so many dead. Me and my Co-Tank started popping all our CD's as the Plague claimed another DPS. It was getting close and I was kitting him round with 5 stacks of De-buff and no CD's left to pop. My heart was racing and I was not sure we would make it but then at the table he started at he fell.


A sigh of relief came over us all as he was finally down and the guild got its first progression kill on the new server. We are now on our way to being back where we want to be.
Next stop Heroic Sindragossa who we are quite looking forward to after Putricide then its just to normal mode achievements until our Frostwyrms.

And the Title to Back it Up.

This post has been a long time coming now, not just because I have not been posting much but also because I have been working on it for many many months now.

Before I get into that lets run down whats been happening in game lately.
Currently our guild is not moving in its Hardmode attempts for Putricide and Sindy due to many players away on holiday and taking breaks from WoW. Mostly we have been filling the time by running BG's, doing Arena and PUGing 25mans. Most 25man's have been quite fail with the one I went on falling apart on Putricide, the sad part was that we almost one shot him but failed due to a useless tank.
Picture this, a T9 and relative geared Warrior that at times held his own in threat against me,I seemed a little low and surly he should not be able to pull that in his gear as he seemed to have no clue.
On Stinky he failed to taunt despite multiple calls on vent from myself and the RL, I managed to bubble with a 10 stack at 200 health yes 200!!!.
From there I started watching him and it just got worse. It wasn't till Festergut that I realized he had been vigilancing me right from the start. When I asked him why his reason was "So I can get free taunts." He refused to stop when asked to. While this might hold up on trash all it was doing for boss fights was limiting my threat and therefor the damage of our DPS. Needless to say I clicked it off every time I saw it on me.
It was an interesting Festergut where I had to hold back on damage because an un Righteous Furyed me with 9 stacks was about to pull off a Defensive Stance him at 7 stacks. He also completely panicked when I did not taunt off him at 8 stacks of the debuff.
Then we were off to Purticide where the third tank took the Abom as RL's friend and I thankfully was given MT duty, the Warrior was only required to hit things yet still managed to get a few killed by screwing up then targeted by the Ooze. Despite a few death we had everyone Brezed and up for phase 3. I started kite at 2 stacks I waited half a second for the taunt the called out on vent, no reply. After a few more calls for a taunt aimed directly at the Warrior the third tank steps in and picks him up moments before the next stack. When that tank hit 2 stacks the taunt was called and nothing happened, I took him from the third knowing I was more geared to handle it but the next stack was coming, thankfully the Warrior taunted before then. After his taunt he proceeded to stop kiting, he stood dead smack in the middle of the slime pool. The third tank, a few healers and myself were all yelling at him "Move the Boss" "Get out of the slime" but it was two late we had lost or DPS and it was a wipe at 2%. From that point on everyone just lost interest and attempts go worse and worse, we called it a night after we knocked out a quick Valithria just a few minutes before the instance server reset.
One good thing did come from that run, I finally got this.


With most of my time spent now in PvP I have once again built a decent PvP set(after deleting my last one because I thought I would never use it).
I joined an 3v3 Arena team with my partner and a hunter from guild and together we hit the 900 mark. Since then the hunter has left and been replaced with another Officer from guild, a DK who is quite good at PvP. With this team of Unholy DK, Prot Pally and Resto Shammy we have worked up to almost 1300 and having alot of fun doing it.
Of cause to go with Arena I have also been doing a lot of BG's netting me all these shiny new Achievements.





Finally I got back to finishing something I started a long time ago, Loremaster.
Originally I worked for quite a while on it and upon reaching 50 quests to go I took a break, I mean hey I had 6+ months till Cataclysm right. when realizing that Cataclysm was approaching fast and I was almost out of time I got back into the grind. Knocking out Kalimdor's last quests was not an easy task, particularly for someone still hated with the Goblins after Bloodsail Rep farming. The first 30 were relatively easy just going place to place picking up available quests.
The next 15 were a little harder, I had to download Everyquest and backtrack through zones finding quests that I had missed.

One particular quest came from my starter zone in Azuremyst Isle. Those that have leveled there will know it, those that don't here is some back story. You are sent to find and help a Night Elf fisherman on a small Island to the south. When you get there you find him alone crying on a wharf and his home has been destroyed by falling pieces of the Exodar as it crashed, to make matters worse the shards have driven the local Owlbeasts crazed and they have eaten his family. He gives you the gruesome task of killing the beasts and pulling his family's remains from their stomachs. That is where I thought the story ended for this poor elf. Little did I know that once that quest is completed a new quest appears to the far north, having always Hearthed or swam back I had always missed it and so had everyone I knew. Hidden behind a log to the opposite side of the Island was this mans Daughter, she had escaped from the Beasts when they attacked and ate her mother. You escort her back across the Island killing Owlbeasts as you go until finally after 3 long years(since I was there) she is returned to her father. It was beautiful to see such a sad story from my gaming past finally have a happy ending.


So now I had met a Titan Avatar,


had feasts in my honor,


helped the Gnomes in recovering their home city,


Collected all my AQ mounts


and saved a mans heart and Daughter.

The final grind was on for the last 3 quests. It would of been easier if the Goblins didn't hate me as I had at least 50 I could have done for them. Instead I choose to grind out Neutral with the Brood of Norzdomu and start the Scepter of the Shifting Sands line.
It took a lot of grinding to get there over the weekend but I was finally Neutral


and off to see a Dragon about a ring and some lore.


Then with the story told of the sealing of AQ and the creation of the Scepter I was done.


Finally a Loremaster.



With Loremaster done I only have one more thing on my list I would like to finish before Cataclysm and that is finish Thunderfury. When will you drop my Binding Garr:( .More than 70 runs under my belt for that thing, statistically I'm well past the 80% chance it should have dropped by now . I guess he just does not like me, or anyone, there are 4 others in my guild waiting for that drop alone not including Rhidach and others in the tanking com unity.

One Light with a Side of Knuckle

This week we took a break from ICC, like most were just getting tired of the same raid every week so we set this weekend as a week dedicated to Ulduar 10 and our Rusted Proto-Drakes.
The week started with our standard RS run and the addition of a new trial Healer to the guild, another paladin that makes the total number of Paladins in guild 1/3. The from there we went into Ulduar and started working our way down the hardmodes including FL+4 and Assembly of Iron for the Key to Algalon. On the way down I kept removing my weapon once I had a threat sorted, I have been working on my 400 unarmed skill for months now with no luck but finally on the last trash to AoI.


From there we kept moving down the hardmode list knocking out Kolo, Cat Lady, Hodir and Thorium before calling it for the night. I have to say even now in our current gear when you 7man Hodir with one ranged it gets close, we had mear seconds left on the clock when we pushed him over that threshold and got the hardmode.

The next day we decided to push for Yogg and knocked out normal Freya and Mim then it was off to Trade to hope like the crazy people we were that we could pick up 2 DPS with the gear and skill to kill him without weighing us down. Obviously it was a long wait particularly since Uld was the raid weekly but near an hour later and many many disappointing whispers we had our team for General HM and One light. What is it about people that makes them think that "LF1M Melee must have done at least normal Yogg" means we need ranged, healers or anyone who has never been to Ulduar before? Its just crazy how many whispers I got from people that in no way fitted what I asked for, many couldn't even understand why I wouldn't invite them.

We quickly two shot general with the first being a wipe due to my own stupidity, I failed to pick up the Animus when I accidentally clicked General before throwing my shield. Of cause I had no threat when people began nucking and being taunt immune I never got it back and everyone died.
Once we had General down we moved to Yogg, we have had bad luck in the past with ether two few players or pugs that just can not do what they need to.
It was a long night of wiping as many got used to what they needed to do and the Pugs got used to us and the fight. As the night's close came closer we were now hitting phase 3 with most people alive usually but with no Druid any dead stayed that way. The attempts we had on phase 3 went rather well until I got over run with adds and died, you see we had chosen our keeper down as Freya which while learning came in very handy but now that we were in phase 3 we desperately needed Thorium.
Eventually we called it a night and left it wondering whether two tanks were needed, while people drifted offline I stat looking for strats for One Light and Alone in the Darkness to see where we went wrong. Then it hit me, I had completely forgotten that the more health the adds have the more damage they deal up to and over 1500% extra each. Least we knew now for the next night.

Finally Sunday came and when raid time hit...we had 4 people online. We knew one member would be late but it was not looking good, however soon we had more on and despite those that came online but would not come to Ulduar we had a group up 2 hours later with the two pugs from last night a new Ret Pally and Druid who both had the Achieve on their mains.
We ran in with desire brewing in our veins we knew we would have this achievement, first shot was straight to phase 3 and despite a ranged dropping early we nuked him down to 10% before wiping first try. Next shot went all to hell with many cloud spawns in phase 1, and people being feared into death lazers but we did again hit phase 3.
With people confident in our next attempt we rebuffed, a slight change of strat to move me and the adds to the back would keep the healing off Yogg and without the melee cleaves to help all range would keep the adds down low while the four melee burned the Death God.
It started a little messy we lost the Pug Ret Pally early to Sara's Fervor and a volley, but with a B Rez he was up again and we pushed a clean phase 2. We hit phase 3 with everyone up and quickly hit our positions. One by one the adds started to build and as each new one came it became harder to keep them at low health, Yogg was pushing low health and our Trial Pally and Pug Priest were healing with all they had as Fire Elementals ripped around and I dropped every CD I had.
People started to get confidant they could see the death coming but we had to hold on and kept it for a few more seconds when

We had done it Yogg was finally down and after all this time we had our Rusted Proto-Drakes.
We may have run with 5 Pugs but they worked hard, fixed their mistakes and came back for the second day to get the mounts.

Congratulations to all those guildies who got their Drakes finally and a very very big Thank you to those pugs who worked so hard to help us.

Uneventful Recap

Its been a slow week in WoW for me with little Cataclysm news after the reveal of Holy Power. Most of my time has been spent ether on other games or working my Priest through Outlands with my Partner.
I did however have big plans for this weekends raids aiming to possibly look at Halion hard mode and spend some time knocking out Putricide hard as well. Unfortunately for us this weekend was plagued once again by real life and several raiders were not able to make it on. We went first and took down an easy Halion normal with only one wipe mostly due to my forgetfulness on boss positioning.
With Halion down we took the fight to ICC clearing out LDW, GS, DBS and BQL all on Hard mode before calling it a night.
Saturday was even worse with one more person away we were to be officially under the 10 we needed for ICC so instead we took 8 of us to Ulduar for some Drake catchup and gear collecting for the Herald of the Titans achievement.

After taking out One tower FL and Ignis, Razor and XT on Hard mode where we could we moved to the Assembly of Iron normal with no Deaths and then made our way to the Cat Lady for a new Achievement.


After that we took out Hodir and then to Thorim for yet another new achievement.


We called it a night after that with some people having dinner coming.
Sunday we went back into ICC 1 man down and after clearing through Festergut and the Rotface achievement It was obvious that we were one man down. Luckily for us one of our first applicants was online and not only was he unsaved but was keen to do his trial on the last half of ICC.
With a full raid team we quickly moved through normal Putriced, Valithria and Sindragossa to face off against the Lich King for the first time in months.

After a break and a quick explanation of the fight the those that hadn't done it before we went in. It was messy and several time we lost someone to something stupid I even nearly wiped us twice when getting Defile on myself and having no warning or /say cloud for it. Despite the mess the group managed to stay together and 10 minutesish later we had the guilds second Lich King kill, 5 people got new titles, the guild had a new member, my partner scored a new Spell Dagger and I picked up Troggbane the tanking Axe to upgrade my normal mode Scepter from Marrowgarr.

Next week we should have more people on and be able to knockout Putricide on hard mode, especially with the increase of the ICC buff to 30%.

Also keep tuned for my thoughts on any new changes coming in the next beta build that should be out later today.