Yogg Progress, Alts, Ten Man Achievements

The things I have been up to - let me show you them...

Yogg-25 is just barely evading our defeat. 13% on our best attempt.

We didn't get in as much time on Yogg as I wanted last week, on account of having to get some new recruits up to speed on preceding bosses - but last nights fresh raid ID cleared through all four watchers in three hours, with everything being a clean one shot. We only had about fifteen min at the end, so rather then not get through Vezax trash, I had us do Razorscale as a bonus. Then post raid we had Wintergrasp, so 24 of us mollywhomped that place. Good evening overall.

Finished Fire Festival the other day - putting me one holiday (Brewfest) away from What a Long, Strange Trip its Been. I think this holiday is one of the better designed one - I enjoy its mix of traveling, the resulting light PvP, a handful of fun/silly achievements, and the chance to stock up on some unique (but short lived) consumables. Going into the holiday, Aertimus and I had most of the fires done already. I'm glad we finished off the missing few in Kalimdor/Easter Kingdoms early on - the day after we did, was the day that fires got reset, and achievement progress was lost. That would have been crushing (not in a crusher tentacle sort of way - more in a "oh, someone ate the last slice of leftover pizza" sort of way)

My many alts haven't gotten much attention over Wrath, with so much to do on Yakra (achievements, raid prep, ect), but I finally hit 80 on my warlock. Same as with Yakra, I dinged in Grizzly Hills - having done all quests leading up to it, and as many instances as I could get my hands on. The BoA items were really fantastic for leveling - I was using the Staff (with +30 SP enchant), Shoulders (with stam/resil enchant), and double spellpower trinkets. Those will all get passed off to my 64 mage once they're replaced, and we'll see how fast I can tear up outlands on her.

This is really the first time I've been PuGing content behind the curve. The Naxx10 run I went into Monday was utter fail - people bailed after the second time they wiped on Anub, myself included. I decided to go with some less risky endeavours, and instead cleared Heroic VH and UP with PuGs. The only truly infuriating moment was when I was turned away from a Heroic AN group after getting to the instance, because I "wasn't geared" for it (armory is slightly out of date). I guess I missed the memo where Heroics became srs bsns.

I then went on to get in some VoA action, after convincing some raid leaders that knowledge and ability was greater then gear. I went on to embarrass some fully epic players by out DPSing them. The instance failed in its normal function of giving sweet tier gear to fresh eighties, but such is life.

Ten man Ulduar was on fire this week. We started off with FL+3 - which was a comfortable one shot. Then got a one-shot repeat on Heartbreaker (XT Hard Mode), though it failed to drop the sword that our two-handed weapon users can't stop talking about.

On Kologarn, I figured we would give "With Open Arms" a shot (the achievement to not kill any arms). We just went one tank (since there would be no rubble), popped heroism off the bat, and went to town on the torso. When he gripped someone, we only did the ~20% necessary to break them out, and only broke out four people. I told people to not break out or heal the fifth person gripped (as we'd kill the arm) - and of course was the one snatched up. I watched them finish off the boss from my vantage point on the ground.

Then we went for Crazy Cat Lady. Our DK grabbed the boss, I got the two adds, and we ignored the feral defender entirely. Heroism was popped early, and we just zerked her. I was the recipient of some insane heals that kept me up through sentries stacking DoT ticks (that were up to about 14,000 at the end), and managed to stay up long enough for the job to get done.

We put in some Thorim hard mode attempts, but something just wasn't clicking for P3. Not having a priest for mass dispel hurts. After a while, in the interest of clearing at least the other watchers before the reset, we just did him normal. All our practice paid off though, as we managed to all not stand in lightning on the kill.

In general, things are pretty good. I'm waiting for 3.2 changes to settle at least a little before I speak my peace on them, but I foresee some positive (though mild) changes for warriors, and a few good features being added to the game as a whole.