Weekend (27 Dec) - Too Much Eggnog

Weekend (27 Dec) - Too Much Eggnog

So far Wild's clever strategy of self delusion by pursuing the Cooking profession title of "Chef" while queueing up for the daily random heroic dungeon is working out pretty well. For the second day in a row Wild joined the Find Dungeon queue, offering his services as a moonkin only and not as a healer. The response was not instantaneous this time, but Wild still waited less than five minutes to get a group.

The dungeon chosen was the Nexus, a five boss dungeon. Our group leader was a death knight, and he also tanked. We had a rogue for melee with Wild and a warlock for ranged assault. Our healer was a priest. Using the Find Dungeon system, when Wild accepts the invite the teleport to the randomly selected dungeon is usually immediate. This time, though, a queue pop up appeared showing that four of the five invited players had accepted, but we were still waiting on the healer. I don't know if he hesitated before accepting, or was busy, or it was just a moment of lag, but that was the first time I'd seen that happen. It was just a few seconds, though, and we all arrived at the start of the Nexus.

There was no question of who the tank was this time, and it's usually a good sign when the tank is also the group leader. It was late, long after we'd all opened Christmas presents, ate till we popped, and partied the day/evening away in our own ways - like watching the Chargers football team slaughter the Titans and then cooking up some recipes in game to go along with the pile of fudge and other goodies rustled up for Christmas dinner dessert.

We got started, and on an early pull both Wild and the warlock excitedly assaulted a group of three mobs, laying down a barrage of AoE that drew aggro with all three of the mobs charging into us. The tank/group leader did his best to re-acquire them, but the frantic healer drew another group of mobs into the fray and three of us ended up dying, including Wild. Then, for good measure, when Wild rejoined the group I wasn't watching where I was going, walking directly into another group of mobs and dying a second time. Luckily Wild was far enough from the rest of the group that the mobs only aggroed on me. "dam, sry" I sent over party chat. The group leader was pretty philosophical about it - "no worries, dude, I'm drunk, too."

Things settled down after that, though, and we plowed through the content without any problems, killing the first two bosses. We reached a spot where there was a shortcut to the next boss by jumping down off of a ledge to the floor below. However, two of the players, including the group leader, missed the jump, falling through a hole to the ground many levels below and dying. I thought we'd all taken that in stride, with the group leader making his own jokes about the mistake, and it only took a couple of minutes for them to release and run back to our position in the dungeon. I guess the priest healer didn't see it that way, though, as without any notice or explanation he quit the group.

Ok, so maybe this wasn't exactly the most serious group, but we were doing fine, and I just don't understand people that quit in the middle of a run. I mentioned that in party chat, and the group leader concurred, and added that "the only time I'll quit a group is if we get OCC." OCC is the dungeon Occulus, which also happens to be in the same dungeon group with Nexus. That comment got several laughs, and Wild seconded the notion that I would also quit a group if OCC was the destination. OCC requires players to ride flying dragons, and players have to really know what they're doing to succeed there. One bad player can ruin the whole thing. Wild hates the place and is terrible at flying those dragons, even though Wild has practiced it quite a bit trying to do a repeatable quest that also requires riding flying dragons. It's just not worth doing, and it was interesting to hear that Wild wasn't the only one who felt that way.

It didn't take that long to get a replacement healer, this time a tree druid who was much, much better than the priest. The rest of the dungeon fell to us easily, and Wild had another two Frost emblems.

Wild's overall DPS was 1630, good enough for 2nd behind the warlock. The many trash mob fights involved quite a bit of AoE, and the lock had the edge there. On individual boss fights, though, Wild did much better, getting a high of 2665 DPS. The lock also died several times, pulling aggro off the tank. Wild pulled aggro occasionally as well, but managed to shed it quickly before the mob could do much damage. The tree druid was also a target of trash mobs and Wild got a kick out of saving my fellow druid by stunning or cycloning the mob on him, or just hammering the mob until it decided to attack Wild instead. The druid healer always made sure Wild was healed in those situations.

This group was more fun than others Wild has been on, and that made the time pass a lot quicker. That, and the fact that we missed killing one of the bosses, which the tree druid pointed out after we'd killed the final boss. All that spiked eggnog, you know.

Wild also found his way into the weekly raid on Saturday morning, which this week was Naxxramas. Wild offered to DPS or heal the forming ten man raid, and of course was asked to heal. No problem. Target was Noth, the first boss in the Plague wing. We had another druid also healing, and it was numbingly easy. We cleared the trash to Noth and then killed him, the whole thing taking under ten minutes. After we were done some folks wanted to go kill some more bosses for the triumph badges, but too few hung around. Wild sleep walked through it with an hps of 1395 and still did 43% of the healing; the other druid was at 758 hps and 21%. The pally tank had so little to worry about he did 17% of the healing, all of it on himself. The run was good for 5 frost and 5 triumph emblems, though, a must do each week.

After the Noth run Wild had enough triumph emblems to consider upgrading Wild's moonkin idol. He was still using his i200 [Steadfast Renewal] idol, which gave Wild +70 spell power to one spell, Wrath. Normally Wild only spends badges/emblems on his healing set, but the idol gear slot is important enough to spend on the moonkin set. The new i245 idol, [Lunar Fury], which cost Wild 25 of his 28 triumph emblems, adds +200 crit to all his attacks almost 100% of the time, a pretty nice bump up in total damage.

And of course, the post wouldn't be complete without a report on Wild's gastronomical pursuits.

Wild's Culinary Progress Report:
4 of 11 Achievements accomplished
42 of 91 recipes served

Accomplishments since last report:
Completed Achievements: no new achievements
Recipes made: 13 new recipes cooked up

On the Auction House front, happy spent far more than he made on the day after Christmas, and those weren't sale prices he had to pay to do some restocking. One item Happy didn't have, but had been monitoring for weeks, eternal fires, had been hovering at the 35-45 gold mark, so when prices sunk to 28-30 gold, Happy bought a fair amount of them. They are needed for Philly's JC mats in addition to their resale value. That was early Saturday morning. By Saturday night the price had fallen further to 25g. Risking the wrath of the WoW gods, Happy bought some more. And he'll be praying that come next week those prices will be back up there so he can get his gold back - at a profit. Happy was also not pleased that a market for which he was the only supplier, the top end Jewelcrafting bag Bag of Jewels, now has two new competitors. The bags sell for well over 100g each, but sales are only at about 1-3 per week. That will further cut into Happy's immediate profits, but I fully expect the new sellers to get discouraged with the low buy rate and eventually go away. Happy just doesn't want to get into a price war with them.

Not to be left out, Philly moved her operations from Terokkar Forest to Nagrand, completing a slew of quests on Sunday. She started at 33% past level 67 and wrapped up the day DINGING to level 68. She picked up the extremely powerful Shadow wand she's had in the bank for many weeks, and also earned a new dagger that added nearly 100 extra spell power. Philly is looking pretty good as she starts the march to level 69.

Philly is considering a different kind of levelling strategy than what Wild and JB used. Normally Philly would already be heading for Northrend, where the best loot can be found for the push to level 80. However, since Philly will not be able to use a flying mount in Northrend until she is level 78 (or either Wild or JB decide to change accounts), perhaps there is another way. Philly is thinking about staying in Outland and going after the high level zones of Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm. Not even Wild really did much with those zones as he made level 70 before he finished them. Philly can use a flying mount in Outland, which would maintain her levelling speed. Gear is not really an issue as Philly would only be levelling and doesn't need to get serious about gear until she got close to level 80. When she hits level 78 (and buys her Northrend Winter Flying skill) she'd be ready to jump right in at the higher level zones in Northrend, Storm Peaks and Icecrown, which again, neither Wild nor JB saw much of. Philly will also be doing the daily quests on the Isle of Kel'danas once she reaches level 70. JB learned that those nine daily quests give a lot of xp for just a few minutes work. That's the plan, at least for now.

And Sunday was not over. Wild returned for the guild 25 man ToC raid. More on that in the next post.