Getting Things Done

Man, if WoW didn't have a screenshot function, that dated pictures, I'd probably forget half of the things of done. First few pics are just ones that should be in older posts, then come new stuff.

Kolologarm. Picture added for posterity.

Iron Councilol. (On easy mode, at least, with the new enrage timer)

Auriaya is a half way interesting fight. I think I'm most excited to see a boss that drops raid wide fears - I swear I spent half of vanilla WoW watching the greater majority of a 40 man raid (read, all non Warriors and Dwarf Priests) running around with purple "I'm feared" skulls over their head. As soon as we stopped trying to over complicate the pull, it went well. I far prefer a hunter flame trap to death and decay, though - with the hunter then running back to the other half circle to LoS mobs, that get picked up as they run by.

Last nights kill really highlighted some of her nerfs, though. Add tanks didn't break a sweat, her sonic scream barley dented the raid's health, and the fear was crazy short.

(Note the tree looking up her skirt).

Hodir is a really fun fight, in my opinion. He chalanges tanks to keep threat in light of other classes awesome dps buffs, requires tons of movement, and allows for sharp tanks to find opportunities to gain advantages (putting distance on him during flash freeze for frozen blows, getting in a sunbeam while letting the melee use one as well).

We got him within the first hour we came back in on last Tuesday (after having spent ~1.5 hours the Sunday prior). The big thing was really just working with people that got Flash Frozen, to make sure they understood how they can *not* get frozen (and removing them if they did) - as well as looking through recount to see who was rocking the damage-taken meters, and seeing where there damage was comming from (biting cold and/or icecicles).


Noblegarden. Was a decent holiday, but I could have stood skipping the last 100-some egg collectings, but I appreciate that all the items needed to do the required achievements were buyable through a reliable grind.

I ran into Vene in the streets of Darlaran the other night. It finally prompted us to get together on vent, and chat some. If you haven't gathered it from his site or comments, he's a really cool guy. I may try to do 2-man a podcast with him at some point, though I have no idea what tank-related aspect we could examine/debate (Suggestions Welcome).

Freya wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Very fun overall, but snaplashers are a pain. In all, she only took us about an hour and a half (including trash). After we completed each type of add wave once successfully, it only took another one or two pulls before she was pushing daisies.


This Mirmiron pic is from then ten man I was doing last week. He's a fiesty robot, and the multiple (highly varried) phases is something I really enjoy. I don't think I've done a fight that changes in the middle quite so drastically since Kael. We didn't get him down on ten, but we weren't too far.
I loved Children's Week. Loved. It normally takes something a little special to coax me into battle grounds, but I usually have a good time when I do. This time around, I got 9 people together, and we did a partial-premade for WSG, AB, and EoTS. PvP is 1000x better on vent, and with people you know. We realized that the battleground would seem an even split until everyone got the achievements we needed, after which we turned on Win-Mode, and crushed the other side. EoTS was a 4 cap, AV was a 5 cap, and WSG was 3-0.

The really, really funny part, was WSG. We decided to have 8 of our people wait in the flag room, where they would destroy the other side when they came in, and return the flag. The one random filler person and myself went to their base, to make it seem like we were taking their flag. They did the same thing. The horde base was full of 10, same guilded, PvE geared players waiting to pounce on the flag carrier. I didn't pick it up, I just burst in and started laughing. They even didn't really hit me hard - I expect most wanted me to take the flag first - but the more impatient ones killed me. We then took the full force of our raid, dropped down into their flag room, and WTFPWNAoE'ed them down (two Ret Paladins, an Arms Warrior, two Warlocks, & a mage - supported by a resto druid and prot warrior, will do that...). We had waited ~40 min for our WSG que to pop (since we were largely premade) - I can hardly imagine having waiting that long, only to get beaten as badly as those horde did.

This week, we decided to do FL with a tower up, as seems popular on our server. We chose Thorim's tower - and it was really, really easy. The extra conquest badge was totally worth the time & practice. I think we'll try a different single tower next week, then both the week after that.

And then Thorim...

Thorim was a little rough. We spent last Sunday on him, without a kill. We did learn tons about what worked for us, though (1 tank, 2 healers, 7 ranged in hallway)(3 Tanks, 5 healers, rest DPS in arena). Little tips that made a difference, included MCing Warbringers for their awesome damage (though we aren't sure about the aura, if its working actually), having a hunter MD the second hallway boss while the rest of the raid kills at least the two acolytes at the bottom of the stairs, and only ever single target focusing the non-commoner mobs in the arena, following a purge-spamming enhansement shaman to take out the shield/hot on the current kill target.

Last night, though, we got it to all work. Hallway group was fast, arena group stayed on top of things, people didn't stand in lightning, and *spread out* in p2. We had a tank or two get knocked down by Thorim late game, but there were too many of us for him to all take out.

...So now I should be caught up. Following this weekend, I'll have comparitivly alot less on my plate. I've got tons more specific stuff about Ulduar I want to put down, and should have time enough to do it.