Thursday (12 Nov) - Philly's Free Again!

Thursday (12 Nov) - Philly's Free Again!

Wild got into a 25 man Vault of Archovan (VoA) on Thursday night. The Horde had just won Wintergrasp and several PUGs were trying to get raids together. It was around 6pm and Wild was in Dalaran hoping to catch on with the MM guild run. That didn't pan out as they ended up getting off to a very late start (close to 7pm) and would only be running Ulduar, which Wild wouldn't attend because I expected Ulduar would be the destination for the guild run on Friday. Anyway, the only other guildies in game were surveydrood's ten man (currently in Onyxia) and one other shaman friend. Wild and he have jumped on 25 man PUGs a couple of times before, so we asked for invites.

It was hard to tell if there was anyone actually in charge. The raider who handled the invites answered most questions with little more than a "lol guys." He got two volunteers to tank and asked whoever wanted to heal to say "1" in raid chat. That's actually a pretty common way for PUG leaders to see who can do what. Five of us admitted to being healers, but it was left to us what role to take. "Someone heal the two tanks" was the closest we got to direction. So the healers volunteered for roles. Wild raid healed and kept Hots on the two tanks.

Raiders were still filing into VoA when a clump of raiders already in the instance started down the ramp and engaged the first trash mob. It was lucky Wild had already self-buffed and was in tree form as I was the only healer inside at the time. "Wait for the rest of us!" someone called out (actually, everything said was typed in raid chat as we were not using vent). We downed the mob and we kept moving. Raiders joined us along the way and we did eventually get to a full 25.

It was pretty chaotic but fun. Mobs and the occasional raider died, but I have to admit we moved fast. We all arrived at Koralon more or less together. As Wild was learning, for most PUGs there is no discussion of strategy. If you don't know what to do you shouldn't be here, is the assumption. Once everyone was hanging around Koralon's chamber, someone did a raid check to make sure no one was afk, and we charged in. The battle went surprisingly smoothly. The tanks did a good job of holding aggro and maintaining positioning, and Wild danced out of the fires Koralon dropped while blanketing the raid with instant heals. It takes time to bring Koralon down, and it's easy to lose focus and make mistakes the deeper into the fight we go. This raid held together very well, and with the five healers doing their part we only lost a couple of raiders who dallied too long in the fires. Koralon went down. No druid gear dropped, but Wild did get two more triumph badges, bringing his total to 16. Wild needs 25 to get his druid healing relic, but it's been slow going.

While the loot was being sorted out by the loot master the rest of us kept moving, engaging and bringing down the trash on the way to Emalon and his four protectors. While Emalon himself is a much easier boss than Koralon, the fight mechanics to keep the four protectors from exploding and wiping the raid can be tricky. The loot master was still handing out gear when we engaged. Despite the late stragglers, Emalon went down.

There was even less waiting for loot to be distributed after Emalon. A quarter of the raid didn't even slow down and were already headed for Archavon. Ok, so Archavon is a bit of a pushover (or is supposed to be), you'd still like to have more than a third of your raid present when you engage him. "Come on guys, slow down!" a harried loot master asked. Way too late. We were already engaged. The early attack didn't really speed anything up, because until more raiders got there we could do very little other than to try and keep the tank alive. The DPS was on their own until reinforcements showed up. Wild laughed through half of it, as some raiders even went the wrong way and had to double back to get into the action. We finally reached the tipping point in numbers and Archavon fell.

It was the first time Wild has been in a group that got through a full clear of VoA. Wild got no loot (sigh), and I wouldn't recommend doing it that way, but it was definitely entertaining.

Wild was second to a priest in healing. The other druid healer in the raid came in 5th.

Philly, meanwhile was enjoying her new freedom. The ticket Philly sent to a GM (game master) on her heirloom issue has not been answered yet. Erik, saw your note about that. I guess I assumed that if it is an heirloom item and it's bound to your account, then any character in that account should be able to use it. I thought that was the whole point! I also thought the only differences in the selection was role/spec based (ie, caster, tank, melee, etc). I'm sure you are right, though, that this is not really the case, which totally sours me on the concept. I'm hoping the GM will allow me to swap what I have with a cloth item so that Philly can wear it to level. But really, it makes no sense to me.

Philly just shrugged, however, too excited to wait for a resolution. She hopped a flight to Silithus, a high 50s level area of vanilla WoW, where she had a couple of quests laying around. Killing a few sand worms and finding a lost satchel was enough get from being a level 59, 91% of the way to level 60, and DING! Level 60.

Then it was off to Hellfire Peninsula in Outland and the fort of Thrallmar, where Philly paid for her expert riding skill and leaped skyward on her new flying mount! Philly was in heaven.

She did come back to earth eventually, grounding herself in Silvermoon City where she had access to the guild bank, the Auction House, and the Jewel crafter trainer. All three were tucked away in the same location where Happy makes his home as well.

First, Philly took her entire collection of herbs and "milled" them for mats to use in her inscription profession. Any herbs left over were then sent to Melasahnd, who will be handling that from now on and will have to get some game time to skill up.

Melasahnd still had a lot of junk - rocks, gems, wire, etc, from mining and from her short stint as a JC, so she sent all those goodies to Philly. By the end of an afternoon's work Philly had reached skill 136 in jewel crafting, using mostly materials that the family already had in hand. From here on out it will get expensive, but also profitable down the road.

Philly also wanted to start skilling up Inscription again, but she'll have to find a way to get into Dalaran (where the Grand Master trainer is) before she can go any further. Wild will have to talk a warlock friend into helping her out with a Summons.

Still, I'd say Philly was off to a pretty good start.