Unexpected Productivity

I missed the first two days of raid this week – all the farm bosses are dead now – so I didn’t expect a lot out of my night as I was late to this, the second night of raid.

After everyone got done with 25, we started up a 10-man Ulduar. After only 3 attempts, we killed Flame Leviathan +4 – one of the most fun (and frantic!) fights I’ve done. Our first hardmode loot was the tanking leggings – great piece there. A bunch of expertise. =)

For some reason I was the one explaining the fights, so that was pretty fun, if a little unexpected. Got to review the new strategy that we used (gunner rotation on one demolisher so both demos could get 10 stack Pyrite), and we brought it off pretty well. Very happy with the way that went, plus the Orbit-uary achievement was awesome!

We moved on to Razorscale and got the achievement for no more than 2 ground phases, which bumped me up to 5700 Achievement Points. I never thought I’d be breaking that barrier with Ulduar hardmodes. =) Tried XT hardmode, but we just couldn’t quite get it – eventually went for the speed kill, but we were about 15 seconds off since one of our DPS died right before the first heart phase. Ah well.

We finished the 10-man with attempts on hard- and medium-difficulty Iron Council; we were having issues early with hard-mode, but we ALMOST had medium. Problems with the lightning elementals held us back – but we’ll get him later this week I’m sure!

All in all, a great night. I’m looking forward to more fun stuff in both 10 and 25 this week.

[Guest Post] Titles of the Dark Titan

Today, a new tradition begins here at Fireball Spam: guest posts. Our first guest poster is none other than the Dark Titan himself – Sargeras! His post can be found below the break.

Veliniya, Champion of the Frozen Wastes

I did it again.

Last night after we finished our Ulduar run for the night (killed FL, XT, and Kolo), I hopped on the paladin and started getting a group together for 10-Malygos: not only was it one of the only two things I had left for the title on my paladin, I really, REALLY wanted the shield, too. After a few false starts (due partially to low raid dps – we had a BUNCH of alts in raid, and some of them were not necessarily awesomely geared – plus we didn’t have anyone with HoTs for a couple attempts, making Vortex NO FUN AT ALL), we got him to P3….and hit the enrage timer 30 seconds later. Fortunately, we got him down on the next try with time to spare – I was pretty happy with my 21-stack of Engulf in Flames on Malygos (without my macro, as I don’t use Bartender yet on my paladin!). No shield, but that was okay.

“Onward to Sarth?” I asked – and indeed, onward to Sarth we went. Easy as can be. Straight one-shot.

Afterwards? What else but HEROICS! With a group mostly composed of people from the Maly/Sarth raid, we went to UK and VH – and just DEMOLISHED both instances. I don’t think I stopped pulling but once in UK. =) That was really fun. In VH, we got the Void Dance achievement too, which was really nice – I think all of my level 80 characters have it now.

I’m really happy about getting Champion of the Frozen Wastes on my paladin – I now have it on all three of my 80s. I have DPSed, tanked, AND healed every fight pre-Ulduar, and I’ve actually done most of the fights that I’ve seen in there on two or more of my characters. Actually, my paladin’s seen more content in there than my mage has, at least on 10-man. Seeing fights from a different perspective than ranged DPS has really helped me as far as fight awareness goes, and I hope to be able to continue playing my paladin (and possibly druid) as well as I have been.

Screenshots below the break!

My new UI!

A long time ago, Fenrír inspired me to change my UI.

I didn’t really change said UI till two weeks ago, though. Yes, indeed – it took that long to get around to it! That said, it’s certainly added a lot to the game for me. I’m still using my old UI on the paladin, though – I like the old layout for tanking still.

Pictures below the break! I think they speak for themselves – I’ll keep the descriptions short.

Crusader Velinath…done. Next up?

I finally finished my Argent Tournament achievements last week, picking up my Crusader title along the way. I met my goal of getting it done before Patch 3.2, so I’m pretty happy.

Shazam! Finally got it done. Hello, 50 Achievement Points!

At this point, I’m wondering what to do next with my mage. Since I finished Crusader, all I’ve done achievement-wise is pick up the Storm Peaks quest achievement, putting me at (I believe) 5680 Achievement Points. Argent Champion achievement should be pretty easy as all I need is 4000 rep from Argent Dawn – which is what, a couple Undead Strat runs at most? I have a healer friend who likes to come along for that too – we both get shots at the mount if it drops which is kind of a nice bonus. I also kinda want to start farming the Raven Lord mount as well – I know some druids who might be interested in that.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is grinding out 100000 Honorable Kills for a few Achievement Points as well as a “of the Horde” title. Rather classy.

My last option at this point is the Insane title, which would involve getting Honored with Bloodsail Buccaneers, Exalted with Steamwheedle Cartel, Exalted with Shen’dralar, Exalted with Ravenholdt, and Exalted with Darkmoon Faire – all simultaneously. It seems really tough, but I think it’d be worth it for the awesome title.  Plus, it’d give me something to do when I’m bored for the next three months.

My next post is gonna be about my brand-new UI! I’m excited!

…and raiding is fun again.

Indeed! CD knocked out a quick 25-Vault, but we were short people for 25-Ulduar so went to 10-man instead. I ended up bringing the Paladin due to a lack of tanks, and we started on Thorim.

Result: Four or five wipes due partially to me failing at Arena tanking again. (For our guild-first progression kill, I tried Arena and failed even worse – when I did Gauntlet, did fine though). Eventually I kinda got the hang of it – at least enough that people stayed alive – and then, of course, Thorim himself is a joke. ^_^ Even with weird lag spikes, I win at taunting off our Unbalancing Strike’d tank quickly. All that aside, the best part of that fight had to have been the tanks NOT both dying this time. =) No mace for Veliniya, but s’ok! I can rock Slayer of the Lifeless for a bit longer. Hoping for Last Laugh tomorrow out of 25-Naxx though. That axe is sexeh!

Anyway, we pressed onwards to our next progression boss, Freya. After some fun with trash pulls (and the main adds – especially the first one, the one that casts Fists of Stone), we cleared out the Conservatory. (Had some epic tanking gloves drop in there too – grats much to our GM on those!) I got to MT Freya, which was nice ^_^ I’m kinda fail when it comes to coordinating and tanking adds that spawn. We had some issues with all three waves on our first couple attempts: the exploding adds would kill us; the set of 3 adds wouldn’t die fast enough, or one would die and get rezzed; and the big tree’s mushroom mechanic sometimes made it difficult for the DPS we had assigned to Eonar’s Gift to be in range of his target. Despite all of that, we prevailed in the end. Out of the chest came…a beautiful tanking plate helmet, and also Paladin/Priest/Warlock T8 gloves.

As an alt, I didn’t really expect to win gears, but I rolled on the helmet anyway. Nobody else needed it – I was amazed – and I ended up getting it! Not only that, but our holy paladin and priest in raid both had gloves that were >= T8, so I won those too…truly awesome.

We decided rather than kill Ignis, Razorscale, or Iron Council, we would head to Mimiron. That was one of the most epic moments as far as trash goes that I’ve ever raided – and I got to tank it! Of course, on teh first pull I accidentally got into the Arachnobot, so that was a mess…but we ended up making our way through to the boat. (Which in itself was awesome.) Finally, we reached the Spark of Imagination, and moved in to attempt Mimiron. We kind of winged our way through it, wiping 4 times before we got out of Phase 1 (after our first attempt, I switched to my mage – finally getting to DPS a progression boss!) – but then it only took us 2 more wipes before we got to Phase 3. Once we had wiped a couple more times, we formulated a pretty decent strategy and managed to get to 50% in P3; we’re headed back in Monday for more.

The best thing about the whole raid was not the loot, or even the progression, though: rather, it was the relaxed atmosphere and the camaraderie in raid that I had come to expect in Cloudy Day runs – the same atmosphere that was missing last night. It was great to be back in that kind of atmosphere, and I think everyone performed better for it. I can’t wait for Monday so we can do it again.

When raiding stops being fun…

…that’s when I know there’s some kind of problem with where I am with raiding.

Last night, I didn’t make raid, but I heard Kologarn attempts went badly. (Eye beams were reportedly the main issue).

Tonight, things went…less than stellar. Razorscale took 3 attempts, and the third attempt was prefaced by a fairly tense speech from our GM/raid leader. Play was sloppy, and I can understand that, but the speech foreshadowed a high-tension raid.

After Ignis’s one-shot (which was full of people yelling whenever an add went in the water, as opposed to our usual calm method with that fight), we moved on to clear trash on our way to Kologarn, and another officer completely blew up on a couple of guildies after damage meters were linked (as they usually are). This is also an officer who NEVER really gets mad; I had not seen anything like this before. Later, once we got to Kologarn, officers were acting very high-strung and frustrated, and again there was a lot of yelling during the fight.

This kind of thing is something that I don’t find fun at all. Usually, raiding with CD is a lot of fun, but tonight – not so much.

I love the guild I’m in specifically because we have fun, and we’re not necessarily dead serious about everything. I mean, maybe CD isn’t a Yogg +0 hardcore guild, but we have FUN while we raid. Tonight was not fun, and it was a little disconcerting.

My hope is that this won’t become a regular thing. If it does, I don’t really know what I’m going to do. Either way, tonight’s raiding attitude came as a bit of a shock, and I hope it doesn’t happen again…

—-

Well, now that I’ve gotten THAT off my chest…personal progression!

I just finished putting together the mats for Sash of Ancient Power, one of the more ridiculously overpowered pieces for mages in the game. Cloudy Day’s guild-bank supplied the Runed Orbs, and I’ll be getting the belt very very soon.

Also, I picked up the bracers from Kologarn, which were a pretty big upgrade. Happily, I think I’ve solved my struggle for hitcapping – now to get the paladin overcapped on Defense….

Lastly, I’m planning on picking up a tier piece either tomorrow or Sunday, so I’ll be pretty well decked out for next week. I’m pretty excited. =)

Flame Leviathan +3…

Our guild just keeps getting better at 10-man progression. It’s amazing. We downed FL-10+3 the night before last after we adopted a new strategy – rather than throwing BOTH Demolisher passengers up, we only threw one – which meant I got to drive around in a Demolisher and throw Pyrite at the boss the whole fight. Naturally, I beat everyone else on the DPS meters by quite a margin. We left up Thorim, Mimiron, and Hodir’s towers; the only thing to worry about was, therefore, ground effects, which made it really easy to avoid things. Adding Freya’s adds to the mix should be interesting.

And here I am rocking DPS meters. Check out Recount in the upper-right orner of the screen!

Yeah, yeah, my UI changed a bit. I’ve got plans to make a post about the new look of said UI soon. =)

Our plan is to attempt +4 next week. I’m excited!!

Once we got FL down, we moved quickly through XT and Kolo to come up against our guild’s nemesis, Auriaya. For some reason we have trouble with her on 25-man especially, but on 10 we usually do pretty well. After a couple false starts where the tank died on initial pull (it happens a lot – I guess there’s a lot of damage going out there), we downed her and moved on to Hodir, a boss I’d killed on my alts but never on my main. It took us 3 attempts and pulling in 2 more people, but we did down him too – and I got a couple achievements out of it!

Of course, I’m still missing a Thorim kill on my mage, despite having that done on my (much less geared) paladin. Ah well, one can’t have everything, I suppose.

Yay, achievements! I've been busy with those. =) I also pretty much destroyed the DPS meters - I can't wait till I get my 2 piece T8 set bonus!

Since this screenshot I’ve also gotten Champion/Exalted Champion of Sen’jin; I know I’m being a bit slow on Tournament stuff, but I am making progress, and expect to have the Crusader title by Monday. My goal was to get it before Patch 3.2, but it seems I’m way ahead there. =) Wonder if I’ll get any benefits for being Crusader next patch, since it’s so Tournament-focused?

More Flame Leviathan progression, and my opinion on 3.2 changes

We just downed Flame Leviathan +2 on 25-man – quite an accomplishment, I’m rather psyched. We’re using the lightning and ice towers, so it’s just a matter of avoiding the beams and launching quickly – and we’re doing all right at that. =) So far, so good – I see a +3 in Cloudy Day’s future, which would be awesome.

 

I noticed in 3.2 that Blizzard’s making heroics and Naxx drop Emblems of Conquest. This seems a little weird to me as it means that new level 80s can instantly get Tier 8.5 gear, and also some off-set pieces that are better than any Naxx gear. I don’t agree with this at all, and think what should have been done is make heroics drop Emblems of Heroism, Naxx 10 / 25 drop Emblems of Valor, and Ulduar 10 / 25 drop Emblems of Conquest. Wouldn’t this make more sense, as 10 and 25 man progression are supposed to be on par with each other? I know that’s how it’s worked in our guild, too – so far, we have equal progression with the sole exception of Thorim being down on 10 man only.

That said, Blizzard’s making Emblems of Triumph drop off of both 10 and 25 man versions of the new Argent Tournament instance, right? (At least I think that’s what I read). Hopefully this means that they’re going to do things right now and create a true tiered loot system instead of just giving free gear to people.

 

I tried some of that Mountain Dew Game Fuel stuff (the Horde version of course). It’s really quite good. I didn’t have a chance to try the Alliance version, however.