Sunday Night (27 Dec) - First Look at Icecrown Citadel

Sunday Night (27 Dec) - First Look at Icecrown Citadel

The bad news was that our 25 man ToC raid could only muster up 18 raiders, and we had to cancel the raid. The good news was that instead of 25 man ToC we decided to give Icecrown Citadel (ICC) a try.

Icecrown Citadel is the new 10/25 man raid instance introduced with Fall of the Lich King (patch 3.3). From the description, it seems that Blizzard took ideas from both Naxxramas and Ulduar in crafting this new, monstrously huge place. There are four wings, like Naxx, with numerous bosses in each wing. There is a final encounter after the four wings have been defeated, just as there is in Naxx. Naxx was a large city - Ulduar was even bigger, so big that teleportation devices were placed inside Ulduar to help get around in there. ICC has also been equipped with teleportation devices, as it is even larger than Ulduar.

When patch 3.3 first came out, there were issues with the map of Icecrown, the zone where ICC is located. The location on the map did not match the coordinates. Or the coordinates did not match where it appeared on the map. Or something like that. Couple that problem with Wild's own, shall we say, less than ideal sense of direction, and - well, let's not embarrass the big cow too much, ok? Wild did find the place, but that was only because he'd been there once before doing the 5 mans the first week of 3.3. Even so, Wild did a lot of spiralling around the great mountain that houses the citadel before finding his way inside. But Wild wants everyone to know that he did find his way without having to beg help from another raider. And now that the coordinates are working properly and ICC is located where the map says it is, he should not have any more problems. He thinks.

This is what the exterior entrance looks like. There are hostiles along the outer ramparts engaged in ongoing battles with npc guards, but they are mostly harmless to players entering and leaving unless the players actually attack them. It's one small area on one side of a very large mountain with a very large citadel built deep into it's rocky core.


A long, level hall is cut straight into the mountain fronting the top of the stairs. It's a cold, empty hall with only one feature - the shimmering instance portal at the far end. Wild stepped through it.


Wild didn't know what to expect when he stepped through, but he was still a bit surprised to find a busy area of bustling npcs. There was an open, semi-circular area just inside, with alcoves to the left and right. The center area was guarded at it's far end, and as Wild watched a large, ungainly creature from deeper within the citadel shambled into range of the defenders. It was a brief fight, and the creature died. Wild looked around a bit more while the raid leader worked on getting the raid assembled. I found someone who could repair broken gear. Very convenient, but Wild wondered uneasily if that meant a lot of gear got broken in here.

Which reminded Wild that the graveyard was also only a short distance away on the lower lip of rock a bit further down the mountain. It's easy to fly off in the wrong direction, though, when returning as a ghost, and Wild whispered to himself a kind of graveyard mantra to keep from getting lost - fly south, and fly UP the mountain! Wild shook himself from thoughts turning to the morbid side.

We continued sorting out the raiders. We had three healers among the original 18, so we all got invited. One of the healers, though, had gotten into an ICC PUG earlier in the week and was locked out. We ended up inviting a very undergeared priest alt of a guildie as the third healer. Wild was the only player who had never been in ICC, so I was pretty wide eyed with wonder at getting my first chance at it. The rest of the raid was composed of well geared, experienced raiders mostly from the raid leader's original ten man Ulduar raid group. In that respect Wild was a guest as the usual second healer for the group couldn't make it.

Once everyone was inside and buffed up, the raid leader made a raid check, and then said, "Well, let's see how we do on the trash."

We did better than we thought we would. The mobs were grouped up sometimes as many as five together. In addition there were rather nasty grey spiders that we tried to split out and solo. The mobs carried a lot of health, and killing them took time, but kill them we did, group after group, spider after spider. We were warned early on that as we moved deeper inside, there would be unseen traps that would release a huge skeletal monster called a Deathbound Ward. When the trap is tripped, they step out from the walls themselves, announcing "I am ... awakened!" Knowing it would happen sooner or later, and having it happen in the middle of a fight, are two different things. The Ward came up behind us - where the healers are, of course - and aggroed on us immediately. We just as immediately died. We would wipe once more when we tripped two traps while in the midst of a fight, but we were undeterred and soon enough we faced the first boss, Lord Marrowgar, located in the Lower Spire.


Lord Marrowgar may be the toughest boss fight Wild has ever had to learn. On it's surface it's no more difficult than many other encounters Wild has seen over the years, and the info on the fight leads one to believe it is not all that difficult. There are a lot of moving parts to the fight, and two repeating phases, but then again Ignis in Ulduar is more complicated. Maybe it was just Wild that found it so hard to gets his leafy paws around it, but we went at Marrowgar again and again and again, to no avail.

After ten attempts and plenty of trips to the graveyard and the repair npc, we called it a night. "Don't be discouraged," the raid leader told us, "we learned a lot and are not giving up. Let's all be back here on Monday night and go at it again." Wild hoped his wounds, and his wounded pride, would survive another night in there.

Monday Night -

Back so soon? At 6pm Wild was in the long hall of the mountain, waiting for the raid to form up. I checked on the list of guildies in game, and it looked like nearly all the raiders from Sunday were in game. The second main healer for the group (who had missed Sunday's run) was also available, which could have meant going without a third healer - but Wild got his invite.

We wasted no time pounding through the trash mobs to reach Lord Marrowgar. Wanting to maintain momentum, the raid leader gave a quick raid check. Wild accepted as I was prepping a whisper to the healing leader, but did not get it sent as we moved directly into combat. Three pretty good healers failed to keep two tanks alive past the first thirty seconds and we wiped. As Wild flew back from the graveyard I sent the whisper I had tried to send before the fight: "Did I miss the healing assignments?" I hadn't, as the other two healers were used to working together and, as I learned, they usually didn't need to make assignments. So none were made. Three healers doing their thing was not apparently going to work on this boss.

Wild was assigned as main tank healer, the priest healing leader gave himself second tank healing, and our top druid healer was assigned HoTs on the tanks and raid healing. We were set.

Lord Marrowgar is a disturbing creature. He floats in the center of a circular chamber. The chamber has patterns etched into the center of the floor below him, and rings carved around the circumference. The legless Marrowgar waves many appendages about in a menacing manner, and pairs of eyes stare out from at least four skinless skulls. There is little information about his past in the lore, so all I know is that he is the Lich King's first barrier of defense of the Citadel.

We engaged again. The following combines a number of attempts, and what we learned on those attempts. This is attempt #5:

The main tank led us toward the center, Wild close on his heals. Wild pre-healed the tank with both regrowth and a stack of lifeblooms as I had already learned that without all those Hots ticking on him he would be dead before he got to the center of the chamber. Marrowgar's reach is much wider than most mobs, and the damage started to mount immediately.

Wild slowed, staying toward the outer edge of the chamber but close enough to heal the tank, who was busy turning the boss away from the rest of the raid. The rest of the raid spread out, staying toward the outer edge but within the quarter of the room to what was now Marrowgar's back. Marrowgar's Cleave could be instantly fatal to anyone but the tank, and when any raider moved into that dangerous half of the room the main tank would start warning the raider off. Wild healed continuously. Every Hot Wild had was on the tank, and even then longer cast spells were needed. Wild had to fit the longer heals in between fleeing the fires that targeted random raiders and raced from Marrowgar outward toward the targeted raider. The fires, called Coldflame because they do frost damage, stayed for awhile, fading from the center outward. As raiders inevitably strayed away from each other, more and more lines of fire appeared, criss-crossing the chamber in ever more dangerous waves. The raid healer had a particularly tough job, as it was very difficult to keep raiders in range with everyone on the move. Wild helped when he could. Bone spikes were also very dangerous - nailing a raider to the ground with high initial damage, and then spilling 10% more of the raiders blood as each second passed until a DPSer could destroy it. So many time in earlier attempts we lost raiders because healing and/or DPSers were not close enough to help in time.

That's phase one. In Phase two Marrowgar breaks from the tank, runs around the room charging random players, doing a whirlwind maneuver called Bone Storm. It took Wild awhile to figure out that this is actually the part where it's supposed to get easier. Ha. The tank doesn't take nearly the damage he does in phase one, and the Bone Storm damage can be healed through. Of course, if you are a squishy wearing cloth or leather, things are a bit dicier as Bone Storm is physical, mitigated only by the strength of armor. The lines of coldflame don't stop coming, either, and Wild found himself chased around, constantly on the move. None of these things would kill a raider all by itself, so the trick was managing to avoid having more than one bad thing happening to you at a time.

When Bone Storm ends, the tank regains aggro and moves Marrowgar back to his tanking spot. This is a dangerous moment, as Wild has to avoid the coldflames, keep from getting into the Cleave window as the tank moves the boss, and still get close enough to heal the tank who is now taking heavy damage again. And if I'm really lucky, not get Spiked. Wild was unlucky, and did get Spiked. But a DPSer cleared it and Wild got some heals while frantically healing the tank. These two phases repeated themselves over and over until either Marrowgar, or us, are dead.

We made a great attempt. And wiped with Marrowgar at 4%.

So we played with the positioning some more, trying to find what worked. We wiped on attempts #6 and #7, not getting anywhere near that 4%.

And it all came together on attempt #8, and Marrowgar died. It only took 18 attempts over two nights to bring him down.

This is one nasty fight. I felt completely drained.

Loot went to the tank and to the priest healer, getting ilevel 251 gear that were nice upgrades for them both. Wild and the rest of the raid got two frost emblems, as every boss in ICC drops them.

Our night was not completely over. We took a teleport to the next boss and took on the trash in front of her. We had one hiccup on the trash, when our pally tank over-committed himself and drew more mobs that we really wanted to deal with. We wiped, but after that we cleared the room and made ready for Lady Deathwhisper.

Lady Deathwhisper is not as tough as Lord Marrowgar, but learning the complexities of a new fight cannot be hurried. We wiped seven times, each time learning something new, but we were out of time and had to grant the Lady another few days of life.

It was a hard two nights of raiding, but Wild has now seen the beginnings of the newest dungeon in the land, ICC, and has a toe on the road to that final battle with the man who started all this - Arthas Menethil, the Lich King.

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.

Thursday (24 Dec) - Christmas Eve Action

Thursday (24 Dec) - Christmas Eve Action

Happy is not sure what is happening with the Auction House, but prices are going through the roof. Happy set a new record in total gold for single day sales this morning (Thursday). While that is nice, what is not so nice is that Happy is burning through stock at an incredible rate, and I've already had to start rationing how much I post for sale. With prices at such as unreasonably high level Happy also has to be very conservative when buying additional stock as I just don't trust that these prices can be maintained, and I don't want to end up having to sell stock at a loss when this bubble collapses. For example, I had a safety net of 200 large prismatic shards in stock, but am now down to my last stack of 20, even after I forced prices up from under 5g to over 20g each. And every shard I put up for sale gets bought. I know, everyone should have these kinds of "problems" but I can't make any gold if I have no stock left to sell.

JB and Philly have been helping Wild out in collecting the ingredients he needs for the many cooking recipes he must make. Wild will be posting status of his cooking achievements toward his goal of earning the title of "Chef" as he gets things done.

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

Accomplishments since last report:
Completed Achievements: The Cake is Not a Lie, and Captain Rumsey's Lager
Recipes made: chocolate cake, rum, crunchy serpent, shortribs, and bad clams

In addition, Wild found time to sign up for the daily random Heroic dungeon early this morning. He signed up as DPS only, as I was curious how long it would take to get a group as a non-healer. The answer? Instantaneously. I'd barely taken my finger off the mouse from clicking "Find Dungeon" when up popped the message asking Wild to Accept. You aren't told what dungeon you will be ported to, or who is in the group, so going the random dungeon route is a little bit like opening Christmas presents combined with Halloween - you're excited about the gaily wrapped box, but there is still a little bit of trick or treat when opened.

The dungeon was Azjul-Nerub, the bug dungeon that Wild has done a number of times now. I still don't have many random dungeon runs under my belt, but for those I've done the thing I find the weirdest is no one bothers to find out who the tank is. In this group there was a paladin, a warrior, and a death knight. The group leader was the paladin, and with no other healing class in the group he had to be the healer. Yet when we started he did the initial pull, instead of whichever of the other two was the actual tank. Asking who was tanking in party chat never gets a response. Strange.

Wild chose the warrior as the tank, and with three mobs descending on us Wild focused fired on the target the warrior grabbed first. Bad choice. Wild immediately pulled aggro off the warrior, the big bug attacked me, along with a second bug, and with the pally having his own problems Wild had to break out of moonkin form to try to heal. I didn't make it, and died. The pally died not long after that. We didn't wipe completely, but it was not a good start.

"Hold aggro much?" asked the pally sarcastically of the tank, which by process of elimination had to be the death knight. "I wasn't ready for your pull," the DK responded, which was probably just as sarcastic a return, since the last person who should have done the pull was the healer, even if he was a heavily armored paladin. So ok, let's try this again.

The DK did the pull this time, Wild set the DK to be his focus, and I was able to pick up the targets correctly after that. We cleared the first room and the first boss, which is actually the toughest fight in this dungeon (JB and DER know this from personal experience, having tried unsuccessfully to two man that encounter). Then our DK said he had to go afk for a couple of minutes. We waited three minutes, and when he didn't show the impatient pally talked the hunter into tanking the second boss, Hadronex, with the his pet. The DK returned while we were in the process of wiping when the pally couldn't keep the hunter's pet alive. Players were openly grousing now in party chat, and things weren't looking good.

However, we went after Hadronex a second time and killed him. Which made the next thing that happened surprising. "I don't have time for this," announced the pally healer, and quit the group. The hunter, who was also our leading DPSer, also quit.

When players quit under the random dungeon system, the game immediately asks if those who remain want to stay, and then goes looking for replacements. You can keep going from where you are currently instead of having to start over, too. One of the three of us remaining decided not to stay, so we were down to just Wild and the DK. In seconds, though, we got a priest healer and two more DPS. We were back in business.

There was just one more boss, Anub'arak. He can be a pain with a bad group, and for all practical purposes we were a new group and had no idea how we would perform. We killed Anub, though, with no deaths, and Wild got his two Frost emblems for completing the daily random dungeon.

All told, Wild spent 40 minutes in the dungeon, from accepting to final kill, perhaps ten minutes more than it should have taken, but still not that bad. Wild's 1742 DPS was nothing to get excited about, but it was second only to the departed hunter's, so Wild finished 2nd out of the five DPSers in the two part group. I'm still trying to convince Wild that doing random dungeons as a DPSer is a great way to get moonkin experience that he sorely needs. Stubborn cow, but I think he's coming around.

Monday (21 Dec) - Will Wild Grind?

Monday (21 Dec) - Will Wild Grind?

On Monday Philly got in some levelling time out in Terokkar Forest near the Outland city of Shattrath. She moved the bar from 11% to 33% of the way to level 68. It wasn't hard, but even with the two heirloom pieces helping the grind, and a very sweet level 68 required shadow damage wand waiting for her in the bank, she just ran out of steam to push things any faster. Level 80 seems to be very far away.

On the level 80 front Wild and JB are in a crucial period right now. With the Fall of the Lich King patch (3.3), the rules have changed greatly. Gearing up for the end game raids (which right now is 25 man ICC) has come down to two methods: (1) be in a guild that raids regularly and successfully in the 25 mans (ToC primarily) and 10 man ICC, as well as offering raid nights for 5 mans and the special "weekly" raid (which replaced the dailies). Unfortunately, that really isn't in place in Wild's guild. Strike one. (2) Grind.

In patch 3.3 one does not need to find a 25 man PUG or a guild doing 25 mans in order to get high end gear. One only has to be willing to spend the time grinding emblems. The two important ones are Frost and Triumph.

Triumph emblems, hard to get before 3.3, and now as easy as grinding random 5 man WotLK Heroics. Two emblems of Triumph drop with every clear of a Heroic dungeon. In theory hard core grinders could do all 15 of those dungeons, winning 30 triumph emblems a day. While that isn't likely for most, it isn't too hard to do, say, 5 a day for 10 triumphs if one had the time. With the new dungeon system there likely isn't even that much down time between dungeon runs, so 3-5 hours depending on the group would be plenty of time. That's every day, day after day, and I guarantee that there are hundreds of players doing that and more in order to fill out those T9 sets, get their trinkets and relics, etc.

Frost emblems are the new, rarer emblems that are used to buy the highest end gear, including the new Tier 10 sets. The main source of frost emblems from a raiding perspective is Icecrown Citadel, the end game 10/25 man raid that is being revealed wing by wing over the next several weeks. In addition to this, however, there are two other ways to get frost emblems. The first random Heroic completed each day rewards 2 Frost emblems instead of triumphs. There is also a weekly raid that rewards 5 frost and 5 triumph emblems. There are hundreds of players who would sell out their mother to make sure they get their once a day random dungeon and the weekly raid target completed to get their 19 frost emblems a week.

I've said before that I don't like grinding dungeons. Blizz has made it much easier, but that doesn't mean I like it any better. If the group of strangers is bad then doing them takes forever (or fails completely), which isn't any fun. If the group of strangers is good then it goes fast, but there really isn't any fun involved - just kill everything as quickly as possible, collect our emblems, and get out of there. Over and over aud nauseum.

Wild is hoping that the guild 10 man raids will include an obligatory weekly raid run before our regular raid. But a lot of guildies get that done in PUGs or on the fly with guildies, which will lock them out for the rest of the week, which would leave the regular ten man group short of people to do it. The random 5 mans could also be scheduled by the guild, and there was talk of doing that, but I strongly doubt it will happen. Wild should just suck up and do it. As a healer I doubt he'd have to wait long to get a group. Wild could sign up only as DPS sometimes for a change of pace, I guess.

The question is whether Wild will actually do it or not. Will Wild grind? The answer is probably - no, at least not consistently enough to keep up with everyone else. Strike two. And Wild will get far behind his fellow raiders. Here's a quick story. When Wild did the three new Icecrown 5 mans, you'll recall that Wild picked up FOUR prizes, all ilevel 232 gear. Wild has a couple of i245 gear, but getting those i232 pieces was a significant upgrade in those gear slots. Wild was proud of that. A good friend in the guild had not done the new 5 mans, and asked Wild about it. In the course of discussing it he asked what Wild had won. When I told him I got 4 pieces of i232 gear - he laughed. He honestly thought I was making a joke, sort of a "I spent four hours in three new dungeons and all I got was this lousy i232 gear" kind of joke. You see, he was decked out in all i245 gear, with a couple of i258 pieces thrown in as well. In a very short time, anyone with less than i245 gear is going to be under geared for any serious raiding. And Wild is still wearing i226, i219, and, gods help him, i213 gear.

Don't worry, though, Wild has a third strategy. He likes to cook, so Wild has decided to earn the Achievement "Hail to the Chef" which requires finding and making literally hundreds of recipes. There are 11 achievements within that main one that must be completed to earn the title of "Chef" which Wild can then display proudly in his name tag. Chef Wildshard will look so very nice. Of those 11 required achievements, Wild starts with two of them completed - Grand Master Cook (for getting to the max 450 skill in cooking) and Our Daily Bread (for doing all five daily cooking quests in Northrend). Lots more to do. And maybe, while Wild is hunting up recipes and ingredients, maybe, just maybe, he'll think to do a random daily heroic or decide to join a PUG for the weekly raid. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Return From Vacation (20 Dec) - Back in The Saddle

Return From Vacation (20 Dec) - Back in The Saddle

Well, we're back. Had a great vacation up in Monterey. Did some site seeing and some hiking, and hit up all of our favorite eateries in the area. We tried a hotel in town that also offered RV spots as it cost less than half what a real RV park goes for in that area. It was essentially a parking lot with RV hookups, but what it lacked in atmosphere it made up for in amenities with a very nice bathroom/shower and complete privacy as we were the only ones there. And of course the price was right and it was a convenient walk to wherever we wanted to go in town.

The wireless connection was as iffy as they usually are in any RV park we've ever stayed in, and I didn't bother even to check email for the few days we were there.

Lots still to do to get ready for Christmas, so there may not be a lot to report on this week. Happy did get his fix on the AH. Had a lot of sales waiting for him, but most of that gold went right back into buying up stock. Prices are up on a lot of mats - good for sales but the higher price Happy pays to replace what he sells, the riskier it becomes as prices are bound to retreat to lower levels at some point. Philly may have to do a garage sale on jewelcrafted items as she has nearly filled an entire bank tab with stuff as she's skilled up. Cut gems and inscriptions in that tab are available for anyone who wants them to use or sell so help yourself.

It did not look like Wild's guild ran on Sunday. Wild didn't make it and hasn't been on yet, but a check on the raid calendar showed only 15 of the 25 needed had signed up. Glad to see there was still some pvp going on while I was gone! Jocelyn might be able to get some time in game Monday night but can't be sure.

On a different subject I saw that the new ATG V season for Strat online is now open for business. I've never played the ATG seasons, but with the new Negro League player set now included I'm going to have to give it a try. I may try to start an "era" league that would include either the 1900 thru 1920's or 1930-1950's so that major league and Negro league players can compete against each other in the negro league era's.

Ok, off to wrap presents!

Friday (11 Dec) - The New Dailies

Friday (11 Dec) - The New Dailies

The changes in how the daily dungeon quests are done is still a little confusing. There used to be two dungeon daily quests, one for normal mode and one for heroic. The quests were for specific dungeons, and they were acquired by visiting the quest givers in the outer area of Violet Hold in Dalaran. Players picked up those quests and then turned them in when completed. Those don't exist anymore. Instead, there is one daily quest (I think there's just one) for dungeons, which is acquired by selecting the random dungeon option in Dungeon Finder. The "quest" is to finish the dungeon, and the reward (emblems and gold) are either automatically added, or there is an npc at the end to talk to complete it. That got Wild in trouble as he failed to talk to Lady Sylvanus (and I'm not even sure she had the ? over her head showing there was a completed quest), leaving the final dungeon, Halls of Reflection, without turning in the quest. Now I don't know how to turn it in, and Wild put in a ticket with a Game Master to find out.

There is also a daily raid quest now, and that one is picked up in the Violet Hold area. On Friday night the guild alt-10 raid made a visit to Naxxramas to kill one of the bosses there, Raszuvious, for that quest. When Naxx was new Raz was a fairly difficult boss because it required mind controlling two of the mobs. With the gear we have now, Raz had no chance at all, even with only two healers, one of them severely gimped with user interface problems. We beat Raz and collected the 5 frost and 5 triumph badges awarded, plus something like 33 gold, for 15 minutes work. Wild already has more frost emblems (the emblems that eventually can be turned in for Tier 10 gear) than he got in two months trying to get the triumph emblems for the T9 gear. Of course, I hear that T10 gear costs a lot more frosts than it cost to buy T9s with triumph. They get you one way or the other, all in the name of keeping us in game grinding away.

The other thing the alt-10 group did on Friday night was die - a lot. We went to 10 man ToC, and we had a world of trouble. For ToC we had three healers: Wild, h-priest, and Tal, a pally healer and alt of someone who is becoming a regular. All three of us were getting finger burns from mashing keys like madmen all night. All of us hovered around 3k healing on most attempts (a huge amount in 10 man), with Wild maxing out at over 3600 hps in one fight. The new gear Wild got in the Icecrown dungeons were a big help, but our problems weren't really related to healing as far as we could figure. Even when later on when one of the healers had to leave, and Sp, Wild's druid healer counterpart, joined us, the problems persisted.

In the early going there was inexperience on the part of the tanks, and there were plenty of tweaks and suggestions from the raid leader, who was DPSing instead of tanking this night. One tank in particular was new to tanking ToC. Eventually, though, he switched from his bear tank to his death knight tank, which is his main, but things did not get any better for the raid.

From Wild's perspective there was just way more damage being done to us across the raid than I was used to seeing in this dungeon, which could be a combination of things without some specific cause. For example, healers seemed to be a particular target for some reason, and we got taken out of action many more times than usual. Tanks had stacking debuffs that grew too high to heal through (which shouldn't happen), DPSers were slow to get out of fire, or get to where debuffs could be removed, etc. We tried to address each and every possible reason for the troubles we were having.

In the end we had to admit that this just wasn't going to happen for us, after nearly three hours of trying and making 12 attempts. The really sad part is that we never got past the second part of the first encounter, Northrend Beasts. We've beaten that encounter more than once in the past, with much less trouble. Momma told me there would be days like this.

On the real life front we will be on vacation the week of 13 Dec (this coming Sunday). We are taking the RV to Monterey, CA, and visiting friends along the way. We used to live there and we still love to get up there when we can. We should be back for Christmas week. So there will be no WoW for the Wild family. We'll have the laptop, but I don't trust my WoW password to the wireless (and not very secure) connections at the RV campgrounds. So DER and his family of toons will have to regale you while we're gone. :-)

See ya'll in a week!

Thursday (10 Dec) - Farming Heroics

Thursday (10 Dec) - Farming Heroics

Don't worry, martin, I'm certain the gods of WoW have some suitable punishment in line for Wild wresting a month's worth of loot in a single day.

Wild may have been the first in the family to try out the Dungeon Finder, but as erik mentioned in his post, it was DER who first used the random dungeon feature to do the daily dungeon quest. DER and JB opted to group up and try the random dungeon as a group. I suspect that the reason Wild's first use of the tool only required thirty seconds to get a group was because Wild is a healer. It would make sense that there would be plenty of DPS available to group with, and so all the tool needed was a tank and a healer to form the group. DER and JB are both DPS, so we had to wait a little longer to get a group. Like five minutes. I agree with erik, I love this tool!

The random Heroic dungeon chosen for us was Halls of Stone, a medium difficulty dungeon with four boss encounters. Now, I might be wrong here, but given the loot drops, which were under ilevel 200, we may have ended up in normal mode vice heroic. Heroic mode loot drops are all ilevel 200. If so that might have been a bug in the Dungeon Finder, or maybe it was a settings issue with the group leader. It's something I'll want to remember to check at the beginning of a run in the future.

In any event, the five of us had no trouble with the instance, downing Maiden of Grief (another lady giant I should perhaps add to the photo of those other "lovely" ladies), Krystallus, Tribunal of Ages, and Sjonnir the Ironshaper. With a decent group these battles can be won through sheer brute force rather than finesse, and that was our approach. No strategy on boss fights, just kill what comes and if we wipe then we'll talk about it. We didn't wipe. DER and JB were certainly the least geared in the group, and we laughed (with a little embarrassment) that the tank did more DPS than we did. JB claimed that it was because the tank was a paladin, not that we sucked. :-) But DER was fine, right around the magic 2k DPS mark, which is what we should be aiming to get to in Heroics, while JB came in, well - not so close to 2k.

I have to admit that JB is struggling a bit with things like targeting, and spell casting speed, and knowing when to use AoE spells and when not to. I am learning not only how to incorporate the finer details of elemental shaman DPS in a group, but at a more fundamental level I need to get comfortable with being a DPS player in general. I don't entirely trust my healer yet, and too many times JB stopped DPSing to heal herself. Just watching the tank's health drop causes a "heal him!" reflex. It's a deeply ingrained habit, courtesy of Wild. That's one reason why I've resisted making JB's alternate spec a healing spec, although that would be very nice to have at times. In HoS Thursday night our healer wanted to leave early. JB was asked if she had a healing spec, which she doesn't. The healer ended up staying. It would have been nice if JB could have helped out there, but at the same time if JB had a healing spec I believe that healing is all she would end up doing. So, JB will have to just keep learning and getting better at this killing thing.

After HoS we decided to go one more round and this time got Heroic Violet Hold as our random dungeon. We were definitely in heroic mode with this one as all the drops were ilevel 200. VH is a single room dungeon, and one of the easiest to do. There are a lot of trash mobs to kill, but the waves are spaced far enough apart that our group had to wait for new ones to spawn. There are two randomly chosen boss encounters and then the final battle with the dragon Cyanigosa. No problems at all. There were two mail armor spell power items that dropped, and JB picked up both of them (chest and shoulders) because they were mail and she was wearing cloth armor in those two slots. The shoulders were virtually identical, with a tiny advantage to the cloth piece, but I think she'll end up equiping the mail armor shoulders. A lot of JB's gear arrived by way of the Auction House, and it's kinda nice to be equipping gear that comes from the dungeons. The chest is an upgrade as it has two gem sockets. Too bad Philly can't yet make the highest end gems yet. Happy will have to open his wallet again.

Speaking of Philly, she's now a level 67 and considering making the jump from Outland to Northrend to continue her (slow) march to level 80. One reason for that is that she has reached a dead end with Jewelcrafting. The recipes we all most want are only available through completing special JC dailies that reward tokens that are used to buy those recipes.

That means Philly has to get into Dalaran, the main city in Northrend, in order to collect the daily quests. Philly anchored herself in Orgrimmar, and asked in trade chat for a warlock to port her to Dalaran. Philly was impatient, so she offered 20 gold (a sizable tip) for any warlock that had thirty seconds to spare. Philly had also cased the area and there were at least two level 80 warlocks hanging around. She hoped one was interested enough to send her on her way. One was. Philly paid the 20g in advance while I could see him start the spell to open a portal. A moment later Philly was in Dalaran.

Her first order of business was to head to the inn and choose Dalaran as her home hearth so that she can return without needing the help of a warlock. Then it was off to the JC shop, where there was an easy non-daily quest waiting for her. She quickly got her her first token. She then picked up the daily, which will take her into Howling Fjord, which she will get done later in the day. Still not sure if she will make Northrend her home for full time questing, though. There is one fairly significant issue - Philly will not be able to fly in Northrend for a long time. That would add a lot of time to her levelling. Something to think about.

Wednesday (9 Dec) - Inside the Frozen Citadel

Wednesday (9 Dec) - Inside the Frozen Citadel

The title is the starter quest, available in Dalaran, that begins the journey to the Icecrown Citadel. Wild was in game about 7:30am Wednesday morning to see if there were any other early birds about in the guild. There were none. Wild was all alone.

Well.

Let's take a look at this new Dungeon Finder. On the main page Wild checked the boxes that he could heal and he could DPS. There were two other boxes, one for tanks, and one to check if you felt you could lead a group. The default choice of dungeon was "random." Wild had something more specific in mind. I checked "Specific Dungeon" and was given a list of all the dungeons and raids in available since WotLK. Older dungeons are not listed, so I guess the trade channel will still ring with requests for groups for the older dungeons.

Wild selected heroic mode "Forge of Souls," which is where the quest is completed. This dungeon must be completed before the other two in the Frozen Citadel can be attempted. I wondered how long this Dungeon Finder would take. The old LFG tool could take forever, or more likely, never. It was a weekday, and early morning.

It took about thirty seconds. An announcement popped up on the screen notifying me that Dungeon Finder (DF) had found a group for me. There was no option to see who they were or what classes I would be joining. My choices were to join - or not. Wild joined, and was immediately teleported directly into FoS. Apparently so were the four others: a paladin, a mage, a death knight, and a warrior. We were all from different servers. The thought occurred to me that these were players I would probably never see again once this was over.

We each completed our quest by talking to Lady Sylvanas Windrunner, known as the Banshee Queen and a famous face in the Scourge war. She gave us another quest. Wild said "Hi" in party chat. That's Wild, the conversation starter. I followed that up with, "Who's the tank?" given that pallies, warriors and DKs could all tank. The mage commented, "Are we really here?" I could empathize - a whole minute had passed since Wild considered joining a group and here we were - five strangers already standing inside the instance. It's was a little unnerving.

Wild got his tank question answered indirectly. Lady Sylvanas was droning on about the importance of defending Icecrown Citadel and the pally interrupted her with "We don't have to listen to that junk." He then engaged the pair of trash mobs down the hall. Ok, now I knew who the tank was.

There were a lot of trash mobs, and a lot of metal and stone walkways and passages and alcoves. The pally tank knew where he was going and had obviously been here before. That was one point in our favor. None of the rest of us had ever set foot in here, I would be bet.

We downed the first pair of mobs and the pally moved on, not waiting to see if we were following. That suited Wild, provided the pally could take the damage and Wild could keep him alive. His trust in Wild grew as we fought each new group, as Wild's trust in him grew as well. This was a good tank. The sheer number of mobs we had deal with in group after group meant the rest of the group taking a lot of collateral damage. There was also an abundance of disease and poison casting mobs, which added to Wild's chores as he was the only one who could clean them off.

A few minutes into this the pally sort of threw a comment over his shoulder without slowing down. "Maybe I should pay more attention to these trash mobs," a reference to a near death when he pulled an extra large number of mobs. Perhaps he was asking in a left handed way if Wild needed him to slow down. Wild was keeping up, so I just smiled at him and let him keep going.

The first boss was Bonjahm, a human who has charge of the Scourge Soul Grinders. The pally gave some quick suggestions. Short and to the point. The pally attacked. Wild healed. Bonjahm began pulling ghost-like "soul fragments" from random players. The suggestion was to put distance between you and the boss when that happens so the fragments have farther to go. They all move toward Bonjahm, and heal him if they get there. It was pretty crazy, but we made it through that phase. In phase 2 the boss went to the center of the room and started a swirling whirlwind that circled him. Wild was caught in it but had the health to survive it long enough to get close enough to the boss to get out of it. The boss was also Fearing players back into the whirlwind, and it was just more than Wild could keep up with. We lost the mage, and the DK. Wild kept up the heals on the rest, and Bonjahm went down.

Wild won [Love's Prisoner], an ilevel 232 necklace so much better than his current one he all but disenchanted the tarnished old one on the spot. Wow, one boss and already Wild had loot!

More trash went down, and then we faced the second boss, Devourer of Souls. It's a big floating head. Ugly, too. It's hard to remember what this one did. Something about wailing screams and lots of wraiths. Oh, and times when we were not supposed to heal or DPS due to mirroring which reflected it back, which I think we ignored. We got him down to around 25%, but by that time the only player standing was the pally tank. Wild had foolishly strayed into a Well of Souls and died. The pally fought one on one for a very, very, long time. Twice I thought he would kill the boss, but because of the mirroring the boss kept gaining health back. We were all cheering him on, but we finally wiped. Wild was truly impressed, though.

Wild managed to stay away from the Wells on the second attempt and I could heal through anything else thrown at me and the tank. After that display by the pally on Bonjahm, I figured as long I kept him and me alive we would be all right. Devourer of Souls went to bed hungry on the second attempt as we killed him. There were more interesting drops, but none for Wild.

What happened at this point was very interesting. We were at the end of this dungeon. Lady Sylvanus showed up and we completed the second quest, and got another. There was also a portal next to her. When we walked through the portal we were teleported into the Pit of Saron, the second dungeon of the three. Wow again.

"Do we continue?" someone asked. The pally was already charging mobs.

There are three bosses in the Pit of Saron. The Pit is a forge where weapons and armor are made for the Scourge. We can't allow that to continue. Forgemaster Garfrost - oh yea, kill trash mobs first, they were endless. Again, Forgemaster Garfrost is the first boss. He's a flesh giant and likes throwing boulders. Standing in the line of fire is very hazardous to our health, but hiding behind the boulders after they come to rest keeps him from stacking frost damage on you. The problem for Wild on this fight was that hiding behind the boulder took me out of line of sight of the tank. So Wild had to risk the frost damage to keep heals on the tank, while jumping back behind rocks when the damage on Wild started to stack too high. He does a lot of other things, but those were mostly just distractions. The pally tank didn't get distracted, and the flesh giant died.

Wild got more loot, this time a dagger, [Surgeon's Needle]. Wild couldn't believe the mage did not roll on this, but I wasn't complaining. Goodbye to both my two hand healing staff AND my moonkin main hand weapon. Both will be replaced by this magnificant new main hand dagger with a ton of spell power and lots of other nice stats. Second dungeon, and second loot win. Wild is much happy.

We move on. Ick and Krick pair up for the second boss encounter, and they really make messes. Toxic wastes, explosive barrages, and poison novas are a nightmare for Wild, who has to try cleaning all that gross mess off himself and the other players while trying keep from staying too long in the stuff. The main target is Ick. When he dies, so does Krick. So we made sure he died.

A cloth belt drops [Braid of Salt and Fire]. Wild asks the mage if he wants it. He doesn't. Who am I running with here, that doesn't need any of this stuff? He certainly isn't tearing up the DPS charts. But hey, it's an upgrade for Wild, and I take it. It's Wild's third piece of ilevel 232 gear.

Scourgelord Tyrannus is the third and final boss. He's a death knight. He hits incredibly hard, and his flying mount likes to throw frost bolts at random players, leaving ice patches that slow down movement. The ice patches are important, because the tank took too much damage for a stand and slug it it out kind of fight. The first Forceful Smash he took ate a big chunk of his health, more than anything he'd come up against yet. Then there was the Unholy Power Buff, that doubles down the damage beyond anything Wild could heal through. During those the tank started kiting Tyrannus, bringing him across ice patches to slow him down and keep him out of melee range until the buff wore off. Wild was kept on his toes both healing and moving to stay in healing range without getting myself caught in ice patches.

We brought him down. Wild was almost relieved when nothing dropped that he could use. Not! But Wild didn't get anything this time.

Another dungeon completed. Lady Sylvanus again did her thing, we completed quests and got a new one, and ported into the third dungeon.

Wild is starting to huff and puff now. It may read like these battles didn't take long, but hours are going by. Someone mentioned something about repairs. Wild looked at his gauge - down to 20%, that's close to the breaking point. Yep, Wild needed to repair, too. "Hearth and come back," the pally suggested. Ok, thought Wild, it's not that far to fly back from Dalaran. Wild hearthed to Dalaran and repaired his gear. He saw a mention in party chat about a dungeon portal. What's that? Wild asked. Look at the minimap, you'll see a green dungeon portal. Right click it and you'll be ported directly back to the dungeon. Wow, will wonders never cease with this new patch?!

One of our group had to leave, though. The mage. He said he was already locked to the third dungeon as he'd started one earlier and then had gotten kicked out. Not sure I would have admitted that, and no one asked the obvious question. Why? But he was gone. Losing a group member before patch 3.3 likely meant ending the group. Within seconds, though, using Dungeon Finder, we had a new fifth member, a shadow priest. Amazing.

The third dungeon is the Halls of Reflection. There are three bosses, and that third boss is the Lich King. My goodness. I think we all got an adrenaline burst just knowing he was in here.

We started the event by talking with Lady Sylvanas once again. A short hallway leads to a central area with an altar where the sword Frostmourne rests. There is a set piece where Lady Sylvanas talks with the ghost of Uther Lightbringer, which brings the Lich King. Uther is banished and the Lich King summons two of his Scourge revived captains, Falric and Marwyn, to teach Lady Sylvanas (and us) a lesson.

The five of us wait to see what will happen next. Falric started by summoning five waves of spirit soldiers. The pally tank had moved us to the opposite side of the room to keep from aggroing too many of the spirits, and we fought them in wave after wave. Once they were defeated, we fought Falric, who wasn't too hard to manage. Marwyn then sent in his own spirit soldiers, much tougher than the earlier ones. We came close to being overwhelmed, but Wild kept death away and we finished them off. Marwyn himself was a different story. Wild worried about Marwyn's Obliterate attack, which even the pally could not take too many of. Wild had to go to bigger heals more often and prayed that I would not have to use my emergency spells too soon or need them when they were gone. In addition, Marwyn was doing group wide shadow damage AoEs that Wild also had to cover for. It was a tight fight, but Marwyn fell.

Imagine how annoyed that must have made the Lich King? The Lich King returned. Lady Sylvanas has defiant words for him, but we are getting worried. Are we really going to fight the King of the Scourge? Now?

Lady Sylvanas and the Lich King engage. We are helpless spectators. Sort of. We could attack the Lich King ourselves, but what if he took notice? Gulp. But Lady Sylvanas is losing. Badly. In desperation she manages to freeze the Lich King briefly. Her advice to us in that moment? "Run!" We do.

Lady Sylvanas follows us, telling us the way to escape. Holy crap, we are being chased by the Lich King! A massive wall of stone and ice then thundered down, blocking our escape. The Lich King summons mobs to descend on us. Wild tried to heal Lady Sylvanas as her health was nearly gone, but the heals would not work on her. While we fought the mobs around us, and kept one eye on the approaching Lich King, Lady Sylvanas put her power to good use by spell bursting down the walls that hemmed us in. Again we ran. The pally chose that moment to mention that if anyone actually lets the Lich King catch them, it was an instant wipe. So don't dawdle!

Again the Lich King dropped walls in our path. Four times those walls dropped. Four times we fought summoned mobs backed into that corner, ever more deadly mobs at that. And each time we survived the assault and Lady Sylvanas broke the walls down.

Finally, we stumbled out onto a half circle ledge. A ship waited, and Lady Sylvanas encouraged us to board. The Lich King reached the last blasted wall, and then cannon fire from the ship closed the opening before he could reach us.

On the boat was a Captain's Chest with the loot. And Wild got lucky once more. [Shriveled Heart] is an off-hand that pairs up very well with the new dagger Wild also got on this run. Four ilevel 232 items on one very long run of three dungeons and eight boss encounters. It took about four hours.

The whole three dungeon adventure was truly epic fun, capped by the exciting Lich King chase.

We dallied a bit, a little unwilling to end it. But after congratulations and looting were finished, there was not much left to say. We each took the Dalaran portal available on the ship, and we each went home to our own Dalaran on our own servers, probably never to see each other again.

PS - The alt-10 did not run Wednesday night. Reading the tea leaves, the raid leader cancelled it so that folks could get into the new dungeons. What we do on friday - well, I don't know at this point. By the way, Wild checked the gear of that pally tank - he was decked out in all i245 gear with two pieces of i258. No wonder.

What a great morning. And an impressive patch so far.

Tuesday (8 Dec) - Stuffing the Sock

Tuesday (8 Dec) - Stuffing the Sock

All the Wild family is clammoring for attention and I've gotten woefully behind on the news. This is going to have to be a quick and dirty run down of the past several days.

This past Sunday Wild got in on the weekly ToC 25 run, which has proven to be a successful restart of guild 25 man raiding. Of course, Icecrown Citadel will have a say in that, but more on that in a moment.

Without the usual fanfare and in the interest of brevity we downed all three Northrend Beasts, plus Lord Jaraxxus, the Faction Champions, and after a protracted fight even the Twin Val'kyr. Then, for the first time, this raid had a chance to battle the final boss, Anub'arak, getting in three attempts before calling it a night. Pd, the non-guild druid healer that is a regular in this group, led all healing by a decent margin, but Wild has been closing the gap and finished second, edging out our uber priest by a tenth of a percentage point.

#1: Pd, 2924 hps, 17.0% healing
#2: Wild, 2520/13.8%
#3: uber priest, 3102/13.8%
The other five healers had 10% healing or less.
Interesting healing fact - 84% of Pd's heals came from Rejuv, a pure Heal over Time spell, while 46% of Wild's heals came from that spell. Pd's gear is maxed out to take advantage of rejuv, and to get that kind of output he has to be spamming the spell non-stop. Wild does his share of rejuv spamming, because that is a key buffer when raid healing, but I also fill in with other spells depending on the situation. And as any good druid will say - there are many ways to heal.

Wild had opportunities for loot, but did not win any of the rolls. What Wild did get was enough Triumph emblems to get his total to 30, enough to go by some shiny new gear. Wild traipsed over to the npc Quartermaster in Dalaran after the run and bought [Runetotem's Spaulders of Conquest], Wild's first Tier 9 set piece.

Philly has been busy as well slaughtering the denizens of Outland and taking their loot as she continued her levelling. Philly is level 66 now and halfway to level 67. She has also skilled up Inscription (430) and Jewelcrafting (427) by quite a bit, as she closes in on the max skill level of 450. Philly's favorite moment levelling so far was the Torgos kill. Torgos is a level 65 elite buzzard that Philly soloed. She died at the same time the bird did, and discovered that the vast Auchindoun edifice was between her ghostly self and her corpse. It took almost four minutes to find a way through and around the ruins of the place to get back to her corpse, rez, and still loot the body of Torgos to complete the quest. That was close. Her new three socket helm did wonders for her stats - courtesy of Torgos.

If I haven't mentioned it before, DER's family has a new member, Andro the warrior (not to be confused with Ando the druid). Andro (level 15) and Wild's Jocelyne (level 14 paladin) have been getting in some battlegrounds when we have a chance. WSG is hard on level teens, so we may level up a bit before we go in again, but it was fun. I'm pretty sure Jocy will be the main pvper for the Wild family for awhile.

That gets us mostly up to date, I think. So how did things go with the new patch, you must be wondering?

At first, not well at all. Blizzard was something they usually aren't with patches - they were cautious and careful. Servers were brought up gradually, over many hours, rather than just turning them all loose at once. This certainly frustrated players on servers that were on the back end of that strategy, but I think it allowed them to find and fix bugs without having to bring tons of servers up and down all day for hotfixes. Someone noted that in North America alone, there are 247 realm servers. By the time Wild's server was available, I think many of the issues had been resolved. I was finally able to login sometime after 5pm. I had already updated every addon that had a patch 3.3 fix, and initially it looked like all was well. But it wasn't. One of my key addons, X-Perl, which manages my "frames" for party, group, and individual players, was broken. I had to set the User Interface (UI) to the Blizzard default. It wasn't until late last night that an "alpha" version (ie, largely untested) became available. Getting the word out that this version looked like it fixes the worst issues was poorly managed, and even this morning I saw chat messages in game pleading for a fix to this addon. So far the untested alpha version has been working.

Tuesday also became the day the Mrs decided that it was time to put up the Christmas tree. I probably needed a break from WoW, anyway, as I was still frustrated with the server not being up yet. We have a new dog that will be seeing her first Christmas this year, as well as some older cats that look forward to "helping" us with the decorations. By the time we finished up, including dinner, it was past 7pm and I was very much in the spirit of the season. The server was up as well, and Wild popped in to see what was up. About twenty guildies were in game, and all of them were in one or the other of the three five man dungeons in the new Icecrown Citadel. There is a starter quest on Dalaran called "Inside the Frozen Citadel" that sends players to the first of those dungeons, The Forge of Souls. Each dungeon must be done at least once, in a specific order. Once that has been done, players can enter the 10/25 raid instance called Icecrown Citadel (ICC).

It took Wild longer than I expected to find the new dungeons. There is no flight path to learn that I could find. On the Icecrown map the Icecrown Citadel is shown to be at the most southern of the zone, but after flying all over that area it became apparent that the map was not accurate. Apparently, patch 3.3 has mucked up the Icecrown map. Eventually Wild found it, on the western side of the zone, above an area known as the Fleshwerks. At least that is where Wild is marked as being at on the map, and that is the direction I have to fly from Dalaran to get there.

There are two entrances. One is an L-shaped tunnel dug into the mountain with all three five man dungeons located in a central chamber that also includes a Meeting Stone. Wild tried to turn in his quest, which requires entering the Forge of Souls (FOS? - not sure what acronym this will become). However, there were so many players/groups trying to enter that all Wild could get was a message stating that no more instances could be made. Maybe on Wednesday. The other entrance to the 10/25 ICC raid is around the corner and a bit higher up on the mountain. It also has a Meeting Stone.

Wednesday morning - Happy got in game first (gotta keep that gold flowing). He immediately noticed something unusual. Nobody was spamming the trade channel looking for people to join groups or raids. The new dungeon finder tool may finally do what no other grouping tool has done - end the looking for group chatter in trade chat. But the reason is not the tool itself, its the fact that Blizzard is bribing us all to use the tool by rewarding players who use the "random dungeon" feature to get extra emblems of triumph and even the new frost emblems (for Tier 10). Nothing like loot to change a person's way of doing things.

Finally, a word about guild raiding. My guess is that Ulduar is dead now. Why fuss with Ulduar for T8 gear when just doing heroics will get players the triumph emblems they need to buy T8/T9 gear (all heroics now drop triumph emblems instead of the T7/T8 conquest emblems, which are now next to useless). ToC "might" still be run, but only to gear up raiders enough to be productive in ICC. All eyes are on ICC now. Where will the guild raid go on Friday night? My bet is 25 man ICC. Won't we all want to see it?

Wednesday night (tonight) is our alt-10 ToC/Ulduar run. Will we stay that course, or will we try to get into 10 man ICC? Will enough of us have completed the three five man dungeon pre-requisite to get in there? I don't know. It's iffy for Wild. Finish three new, high difficulty dungeons between now and 6pm tonight?

Uh, excuse me, but Wild says it's time he got in game and into Icecrown Citadel.

Tuesday (8 Dec) - Patch 3.3 - Fall of the Lich King

Tuesday (8 Dec) - Patch 3.3 - Fall of the Lich King

Maybe I just never noticed, but I don't recall ever seeing a patch that had it's own title. The last expansion pack for WoW was called "Wrath of the Lich King." So, it is a measure of how significant this patch is that Blizz would name it "Fall of the Lich King."

Icecrown Citadel's Frozen Throne is the home of the Lich King himself in this new 10/25 man dungeon that will also introduce Tier 10 gear. Before seeking out the Lich King, however, Icecrown Citadel's Frozen Halls offer three five man dungeons leading into the Frozen Throne. Assuming the game is playable today, I'm certain groups will be flooding into those dungeons, whether geared for them or not. Wild hopes to be a part of that rush to get a taste of the new dungeons.

The opportunity for dungeon crawling also got a boost as groups and raids can now be formed across realms. Blizzard already has cross-realm action in the pvp battlegrounds. Now it's available for dungeons and raids. The immediate advantage may be to folks like JB and DER, as we may be able to more quickly form groups from the larger pool of players. The hard core PUG leaders of Silvermoon server will face an interesting challenge - they'll have more players to choose from (and some would say, dupe and ninja from), but at the same time those players forced to choose PUGs as they had few other options, should now have a lot more choices of who to join.

On the addon front Blizzard has taken aim at addons that manage quests. Philly in particular is interested in seeing how well the new quest tracker works. She currently uses two quest addons called Lighthearted (which provides in game quest tips that players post in wowhead) and Questhelper (which provides mapping directions to quest locations and suggests the order to accomplish them in the shortest time). Philly doubts the new quest tracker will replace either one of those addons.

There is a change that could have a significant effect on low level characters, adding increased health and mana regeneration to speed up levelling. The increased regeneration falls back to normal by level 15, however, too late to be any use for Andro and Jocelyne, who are at or on the cusp of level 15 now. The two might still get some benefit from more favorable spell casting up to level 20, but Andro, a warrior, won't see much difference.

There are multiple and significant changes to almost every class. I don't think that talent points will have to be re-established, but there are good and bad changes for everyone.

For druids, Wild's battle rez cooldown has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. For some fights Wild could be able to rez two people instead of just one, and a battle rez should be up and ready for almost every encounter now. Wild's AoE heal, Tranquility, has also had it's cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10. For moonkin, the powerful Eclipse proc has been "adjusted" to ensure that eclipse procs won't overlap each other. For those who knew how to take advantage of that, it will mean less DPS. Others say that, coupled with nerfs to the Tier 8 set bonuses, moonkin DPS is now broken - again. Among other problems is the fact that most damage comes off of the Eclipse procs, which are of limited duration, and any interruptions or need to move takes time off that proc, reducing damage. Procs are also subject to significant randomness, and bad luck will greatly reduce a moonkin's numbers. Moonkin can still put up big numbers - if they get lucky with proc rate, can stand still, and never get bothered. Right.

Philly wants to interject a comment - Nice buffs! Yes, shadow priests get some lovin' from Blizz, with buffs to Devouring plague, Mind Flay, Shadowform, and Vampiric Embrace. And Philly can now cast her shield on any friendly target, even if they aren't in her party or raid. Wow.

Shaman JB got a buff, too, with Blizz turning one of the shaman's totem's into a spell, Fire Nova. Now JB can drop a fire totem and still be able to use Fire Nova as an AoE, and does not even have to be in line of sight of the target. Nice.

Hot off the presses! Moonkin do get some love! I just learned that the Eclipse proc change included changes to Wrath and Starfire, the two spells that are used during eclipse procs. During eclipse Wrath damage has been increased from 30% to 40%, and Starfire's crit was also raised from 30% to 40%. Go Blizz!

And there is much, much more. But maybe the server is up. Bye!

Saturday (5 Dec) - Old School AQ40

Saturday (5 Dec) - Old School AQ40

Note - Yes, I'm going to cover the path 3.3 changes, but if I don't get this posted now I'm going to get too far behind.

The Temple of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ40) is an old school level 60 forty man raid. Opening the gates of this massive instance required a World Event quest series called "The Scepter of the Shifting Sands" that the entire server could participate in. There is a completely different and smaller 20 man raid that came into being along with AQ40 called the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ20) that Wild and the guild spent literally months running. We were very successful in AQ20, but AQ40 was a titanic struggle. I'd have to go back to those old posts to be completely accurate, but I don't think the guild ever got much past the first boss, Skeram, and I know for sure that no AQ40 raid that Wild was in ever defeated Skeram (Back in the day when Wild's luck demanded that I never be present at a first boss kill :-) ). AQ40 was a rarity in that Blizz decided to make the first boss extraordinarily difficult, sort of a gatekeeper/gear check guarding the great goodies that awaited those who could get past him. Only the final boss, C'Thun, was tougher.

AQ40 was the end game raid dungeon when it was released, eclipsing Blackwing Lair as the best and most difficult raid in the game (until the original Naxxramas was opened). Mostly what Wild remembers of AQ40 was wipe after wipe. The only loot that Wild ever got from there were the bug mounts that could only be ridden inside AQ40, dropped by the very tough trash leading to Skeram. To give readers an idea of just how old this place is in WoW years, let me remind you that the newest dungeons reward Tier 9 and 9.5 gear. AQ40 offered five piece Tier 2.5 gear.

There were only three guildies signed up for the raid, which by design was being run on the birthday of the raid leader, who was also our Guild Leader. I didn't think I would be able to make it, but when the 4pm start time drew near the chores were done and Wild was available. Other guildies popped in, and when Wild got his Summons to the shifting sands of southern Silithus to the far south of the continent of Kalimdor, there were seven of us. "Do you want me healing or moonkin?" Wild asked as he arrived. "Only need one healer, at least at the beginning," the GL told Wild. H-priest was the other potential healer, so Wild immediately volunteered for DPS. "Cool, I'm already in moonkin spec."

Wild was in the middle of revamping his moonkin gear set when he decided to join the AQ40 raid, but he had to put that aside and went with his existing set. We had two tanks, one healer, and the rest of us were DPS. The 7th member of the raid was a last minute invitee who logged in with other plans in mind. Surveydrood was cajoled into joining us and decided to bring his moonkin. That gave Wild a great gauge to compare himself with. Surveydrood was probably the best moonkin in the guild.

Now think about this for a bit. AQ40 is a level 60 dungeon (with the elite bosses at the equivalent of level 63), granted, but tuned to be able to tear the heads off of a forty man raid. We were all level 80, most of us draped in Ulduar and ToC epic gear, but there were only seven of us. The GL figured it would be enough. Provided we could get by Skeram.

The entrance to AQ40 is through a sand swept archway, up a longer series of wide steps, a right turn, and then more steps. Sand is piled everywhere, half submerging the above ground areas. A long ride finally revealed the entrance, and we were in. We all had to break out our bug mounts. Wild has both a blue and a green one, and I went with the green. There are four types, the blue being the most common, followed by green and then yellow. The rarest color mount, red, is so hard to get there is a special achievement for finding one. They can only be ridden inside AQ40, however. None of us had red mounts to brag about, but we were all old codgers who had at least attempted AQ40 when we were still at level 60, and we all had at least one bug mount. Why mounts? Because AQ40 is HUGE, with many long, long, passages, tunnels, and caverns.

I'll tell you what, the seven of us looked very small, standing just inside the instance. The long hallway was at least thirty feet high, bounded by thick walls of stone. Mounted mobs and heavy footed giants patrolled the area. As level 60s we spent many a night wiping just on this trash, never even getting to the first boss. With maybe just the tiniest bit of apprehension, we engaged. At smashed through them with ease.

Make a left turn at the end of the hallway and there is a set of low steps leading to another group of trash mobs. Behind those, Skeram stands in the center dias, flanked by empty raised dias's on his left and right. A long ledge above it all borders the area.

After clearing the area of mobs, we engaged head on against Skeram. The complicated strategy we used as level 60s was replaced with the Ghostbusters strat of "Get him!" We pounded Skeram down to 75% health, and he split into two additional images of himself. There were now three of him. The two images have less health than Skeram, but they all have the same abilities, so it is in effect fighting three bosses at the same time. The images have to be killed first, and we struggled to target the right ones, a difficult task. Wild took his queue from Surveydrood, assuming he would know which one to shoot at (and if he was wrong, at least we were hitting the same target). That plan took a detour when one of the Skeram's Mind Controlled Surveydrood. The deadly moonkin grew to three times his normal size and began blasting the raid. We survived that, and got Skeram (the real one) to 50% health, where he split into three again. We wiped.

Ok, maybe we'd better come up with a slightly more thorough strategy. We had gotten scattered about during the fight, with parts of the raid out of range of healing (ie, our one healer). They wanted to stay with one healer so that they could maximize DPS, so we needed to stay closer together.

It took us four tries, but in the end Wild got his first kill of The Prophet Skeram.

Skeram truly was as tough as we thought. After that fight, we fought through seemingly endless corridors and endless trash mobs, and on the way killed the bosses Battleguard Sartura, Fankriss the Unyielding, and Princess Huhuran.

The second to last of the mandatory bosses are the Twin Emperors, Vek'lor and Vek'nilesh. For that fight the raid needed two healers, so Wild switched to healing gear. The twins are fought across the room from each other. One twin is immune to all physical damage, so only ranged casters can harm him. The other twin is immune to all magical damage, so only melee (and hunters) can harm him. Wild was tapped to main heal the tank on the twin who would be meleed, while h-priest main healed the tank on the other twin. It took awhile to bring them both down, since our DPS was split up, but we were never in any serious trouble and both died.

On our way to the final boss we made a short detour and killed Ouro, one of three optional bosses in AQ40. We never did get to the other two optional encounters as we were a little limited on time.

C'thun is a very creative encounter. C'thun looks like a round, ridged jello mold gone bad. The tub of flesh has feet that circle his body and one very large eye that we were told to stay out of direct line of sight of. It was a small chamber, but even so worms would pop up all over the place that had to be destroyed in between banging on C'thun. Wild was back in moonkin gear for this fight, and h-priest had his hands full running in circles around C'thun trying to heal everyone.

The "piece de resistance" is C'thun's stomach. In Phase 2 C'thun grabs random raiders and swallows them. Yuk. Inside his stomach is a churning green mess of stomach acid that is murderous even for a level 80 because the amount of damage done by the acid stacks quickly. Small islands of flesh offer some respite, but they are defended by more of the worm things. Killing those stomach worms does more damage to C'thun than hitting his exterior body, and the strategy was to kill as many as you could before having to get out of his stomach. Wild must have missed the explanation that there was one island I could get on that would regurgitate me out of the stomach. Wild got swallowed. Wild fought worms. Wild had to drop out of moonkin to heal himself. Wild wondered what else he should be doing and how the heck was he supposed to get out of here? Wild died.

Surveydrood was swallowed a bit later. He rezzed Wild but then learned Wild's lesson, dying right next to me when Wild instantly died a second time, as I still had a massively stacked acid debuff on me.

We lost a third raider to C'thun's stomach, but after a protracted fight C'thun died. We got our Achievement for AQ40.

Of course, the gear in AQ40 was unusable for anything other than disenchanting or vendoring. However, Wild was the only enchanter in the group, and Wild was able to pick up two enchanting recipes that only drop in AQ40: Subtlety and Threat. Both are still valued enchants, and very rare.

After the battle, Wild revisited AQ40 with his video camera. When I get a chance I'll take ya'll on a tour.

Friday (4 Dec) Part 2 - Edge of Ruin

Friday (4 Dec) Part 2 - Edge of Ruin

Before I start on Saturday's run, I need to wrap up Friday night. After the guild finished for the evening on Friday, DER put together a group for Trial of the Champion, the five man version at the Argent Tournament grounds. The Argent Coliseum has a circular central chamber with three long platforms jutting out from the sides. One of those platforms is connected to the chamber via two large saloon doors. It's through these doors that the combatants that us challengers face enter the floor of the chamber. The western platform houses the instance entrance to 10/25 ToC. The northern platform is where we enter for 5 man ToC.

Soon after Wild's guild raid finished, I asked if anyone wanted to join DER and Wild, but as usual no one stuck around after the raid was over. There just isn't much for them to get excited about now, and everyone is waiting on patch 3.3, which may come Tuesday. Anyway, Wild struck out on getting anyone he knew to come. DER checked the LFG tool, and we added two players, both DPS. We needed a tank. We had one for a few minutes, but then he got a better offer and begged off before we actually got started. The two that had joined us also checked their own sources, and finally we got a warrior tank to help us out. The tank was happy to take over as group leader as he had done this fight many times. DER and the other two DPS were geared well enough for 5 man Toc, but they could definitely benefit from the gear that dropped here. For Wild and the tank, this was a for fun fight. We were over-geared for this dungeon, which would make it easier for the others. We set the dungeon to Heroic mode to make it a bit more challenging, and because the loot is better.

We all gathered in the central chamber and started the event. The first challenge was a series of jousting matches. Even lousy jousters like Wild can get through this. Wild died during this part of the fight, but I just released and flew back the short distance from the graveyard, entered, grabbed a new mount, and galloped back into action. Wild wasn't the only one that died, and this part of the fight took awhile to complete, but eventually we dismounted the attackers and defeated them.

The next encounter is called the Grand Champions. On foot and in our normal gear, we faced a random selection of three out of five npc Champions. I don't remember who they were, but the tank engaged them one after the other and the DPS pounded them down. It didn't go quite as smoothly as that, as Wild was kept busy healing mostly the DPSers. A stack of HoTs on the tank were usually all he needed. But Wild also wasn't used to the much lower health (compared to the raiders in Wild's guild raids). Wild goofed and DER died before I realized how much trouble he'd gotten into. We did beat the Grand Champions, though.

Following the Grand Champions we faced Eadric, one of two bosses we could have faced. Eadric has one big trick, and that's Radiance, which stuns any and all that are looking at him when he casts it. Wild has a very simple personal solution - Wild turns his back to Eadric as he doesn't have to be facing his fellow group mates to heal them. It looks odd, I know, as it appears Wild is not engaged in the fight, but it works and Eadric fell.

The final boss is the Black Knight. He has three phases, first as an undead knight, then he returns as a skeleton knight, and finally as a ghost knight. We wiped on our first try. Wild's healing kept pulling aggro on the army of undead that spawns in the second phase, and they tend to explode violently at the wrong moment. I'm afraid I was paying too much attention to keeping everyone else alive and died. Without a healer the DPS fell as well, and even over geared though he was, the tank could not defeat the Black Knight alone.

With some easy adjustments we brought the Black Knight down on our second try. The tank left the group the second the Black Knight fell. Wild whispered him a thank you for helping us out. He whispered back a response sort of explaining why he'd left abruptly, annoyed at some questionable remarks by one of the two DPSers that we'd brought in, and Wild also guessed that he had expected a better geared group. I granted that we had an untested group, but that is the kind of group that 5 man ToC is made for. Learn here to get experience for 10/25 man ToC. Wild gave him credit for sticking it out, though. There were many who would have left before we finished, particularly after the wipe.

As for loot, DER had one item in mind, and was prepared to run ToC as many times as he could to get it. Lucky DER, not only did his wished for gear drop, he was the only person in the group that could use it - the two-handed axe [Edge of Ruin]. Getting a new weapon is always a major thrill and are often major upgrades, as this one was for DER.

As for other loot, Wild got a shocking surprise when I saw [Barkhide Treads] show up in Eadric's loot. This is a leather caster item with +hit and a very fine upgrade for Wild's moonkin set. Matter of fact, when I researched these after the fact, it turns out this is the only leather caster gear with +hit on it at ilevel 219 or higher that is not a Tier piece or a pvp piece. It was a wonderful, unexpected find for Wild.

Since our planned multi-run assault on 5 man ToC was a much faster success than expected, we decided to try the daily dungeon run. I admit that Wild thought he would have it easy with a non-Heroic daily, but when I saw that it was OC, the dungeon that requires fighting on flying mounts, and which he hates . . . well, when DER said, no, we aren't doing the normal daily, we're doing the Heroic daily, Wild was a much happy cow.

Wild was even happier when the warrior tank for our ToC run agreed to come back and tank for us again.

I have to be honest, though. I can't recall if we ended up in Azjul'Nerub or the Old Kingdom (they are located next to each other). Gah, what was I drinking that night? All I remember is that Wild was the only one to die during a trash mob fight because I allowed a second patrol to blunder into me while the tank was quite busy elsewhere. That was a long, lonely run from the graveyard back to the rest of the group, since I was the only one in the group who could rez. I had fun, though. I think. Maybe DER knows. I know we cleared the place, as the triumph badges Wild got from finishing it would come in very handy soon enough.

So ended Wild and DER's successful and rather fuzzy (for Wild) Friday night. Next up - Old School Raid Night.

Friday (4 Dec) - Bedding Freya?

Friday (4 Dec) - Bedding Freya?

There is a lot to cover for this past weekend, with Friday's raid, Saturday's Old School raid, and Sundays raid. So expect two, maybe even three posts as I try to catch up.

Before the Friday raid Wild spent all 28 of his Conquest emblems to buy a new pair of gloves called [Grips of the Secret Grove]. The ilevel 226 leather healing gloves were two levels better than the 213 ilevel cloth gloves Wild had. With that purchase there was little left that Wild could use Conquest emblems for except to pick up some idols just to add to his collection. All the "good stuff" above ilevel 226 required Triumph emblems. Wild had a few of those, too, but not enough to buy anything at the moment. Better yet, perhaps the night's run would be Wild's lucky night, since we would be going after bosses that actually drop things Wild wants.

Our Alt-10 group really likes to show up at the last minute. At 5:45pm there were 3 of us. At 5:57pm, 3 minutes before invites, there were seven of us. And at 6:02pm, we had a full raid. Wild had intended to foist healing assignments off on his druid friend Sp again, but the raid was starting in Wintergrasp's VoA and he had already run that raid earlier with a PUG. A pally healer took his place and Wild went ahead and handled the healing assignments. The raid leader, who is usually the main tank, passed main tank duties to a pally tank alt of another guildie. The pally would main tank for the whole evening, getting a wealth of experience.

Every time Wild does VoA, it seems to get a bit easier. The raid swept through the trash to Koralon and engaged the top boss in VoA with little fanfare. With a pally and shaman for healing, Wild let them tank heal while Wild handled the raid. That worked extremely well and Koralon went down on our first attempt. Koralon drops T9 gear, and he dropped two, but one was for priests only, and the other for priests, mages, and warlocks. We had no priest, so one of the drops was wasted. Tier gear cannot be disenchanted or vendored. It hurt to see it destroyed. We had both a mage and lock, and I think the mage won the other one. Emalon fell next even more easily, and dropped a nice pair of leather pvp gloves, but Wild already had better. The raid didn't bother to kill Archavon, who had even less stuff that any of us could use.

From VoA we headed to Onyxia. Wild likes the Onyxia fight, but at the same time it is monumentally frustrating to him because I always seem to get caught in Onyxia's Flame Breath and killed - more times than I want to count. Wild finally remembered to stuff his Onyxia Cloak from his vanilla WoW days into his bags, a special cloak designed for one thing - to mitigate damage from Onyxia's Flame Breath. Wild vowed he would survive that dragon this time.

We swapped healers for the start of the fight. Sp returned and the pally healer filling in just for VoA left. Wild adjusted the healing assignments to put Sp on the main tank.

We got off to a good start, racing across Ony's chamber to snare her and drag her to the back of the room. After pounding on her for a bit, she took wing, and we scrambled back across the chamber to intercept the incoming crowd of whelps. Things were going smoothly and then Ony wound up for her Flame Breath. Wild took off, following a couple of running raiders, and darned if he didn't catch the tail of the Breath. Even that light touch nearly killed Wild. Nearly. Wild healed himself up and got back into the battle. The second time Ony cast Flame Breath Wild thought he was completely safe, as I'd followed our best melee player and one who never got caught in it - until this time. What? He was baffled, too, saying in raid chat that Ony must have turned at the last minute, something she isn't supposed to do. The melee player lived through it. Wild died. Sigh.

Wild got a rez from the other druid healer, and even avoided two more Flame Breaths successfully on our way to killing Onyxia. It was only after the fight was over did Wild realize that though he had brought the Onyxia cloak with him - he'd forgotten to wear it. Sigh times two.

Onyxia drops a lot of nice stuff, and all of it went to someone who needed it. Even Wild. [Stormrage Hood], an ilevel 232 leather helm, dropped. Based on ilevel, it is better than Wild's currently equipped 226 ilevel helm. But that helm is a Tier 8.5 piece, and in comparing the two the Tier helm is actually slightly better for Wild's current needs. The other druid didn't need it, and no one else could use it, so Wild got it. Actually, Wild got two of them. Yep, two of the same gear dropped. Having two is kind of convenient, as I can enchant/gem one of them specifically for moonkin spec (which I can use immediately) and I'll still have another to use for healing should my stat requirements change and the Tier helm isn't needed.

With Ony down and VoA taken care of, we headed back to Ulduar to continue where we had left off on Wednesday, when we worked over Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, XT-002, Iron Council, Kologarn, and Auriaya (Cat Lady). Those were the "easy" encounters, though. Now we had our choice of four bosses to start with: Hodir (which Wild thinks is a particularly apt name since it's pronounced like "oh dear!"), Freya (the forest lady giant with an entire ecosystem of trash mobs), Thorim (seen a couple of times, but never killed by this group), and Mimiron (arguably the toughest of these four bosses, but which Wild has not yet had the pleasure of meeting).

We decided on Freya. Wild has had one prior night with Freya, and it was a doozy. I like the babe, but her entourage is a big pain. On that proir night it took nine tries to get her to bed . . . uh, I mean get her down . . . ok, never mind. Let's just say on our ninth date she gave up her goodies. ;-)

We were packing bigger guns now, and it showed as we carefully but quickly culled out the bunches of trash mobs, including three mini-bosses. We even accidently pulled two groups at once, bringing eight mobs after us, and survived it. We were feeling real good about Freya. Maybe Freya would remember us from last time? She did. We lasted about thirty seconds before wiping on our first attempt.

Over the course of the evening, we learned new ways to satisfy her with each attempt. When we start the fight, the main tank gets aggro on Freya and just keeps her attention. She has a huge self-healing buff on her at this stage, so it is useless to try to damage her. Think of it as her "wooing" phase, with the tank as the suitor. The rest of us circle her as the first of her entourage arrives. That can be one of several groups of trash mobs, but most often it seems to be a small army of nasty flowers. If we do things right, we all stay in our circle and the DPS AoE's down all of the flowers. Then, in no particular order, we could see exploding Lashers that have a complicated kill order to avoid blasting the raid, water spirit elementals using a druid's Tidal Wave, snaplashers (yet more flower children), and/or an Ancient Conservator, which virtually eliminates all healing and damage done by the raid. At the same time that the Conservator appears, mushrooms start to blossom. Only when under a mushroom can the healers and DPS do their thing. To make things even more interesting, one player will get tapped with a pulsing nature bomb - which will make you very unpopular if you happen to be sharing room under a mushroom with other raiders. And that's easy mode.

Six tries later we still had not brought her down, or even killed all the adds before wiping - but we were getting closer.

On our 7th attempt, we cleared all of the adds, and engaged Freya directly. We had lost three raiders and there were no battle rezzes available, but we had all three healers still alive. The tank and the three remaining DPS blasted away, and the healing stayed ahead of Freya's attacks. We knew it would take awhile with such light DPS, but we also knew we had her. But something was wrong. Freya still had Attuned to Nature, the healing buff that was supposed to drop off her once all her adds were killed. With that buff up it didn't matter how much DPS we had - she could heal through anything and everything we could throw at her. Talk about frustrating! We had this fight won, but it was bugged, and Freya's health never got lower than 98% before she would heal back again. We were forced to wipe so we could get in one last attempt before our evening ended.

On our 8th attempt we again cleared the adds, and a full complement of DPS was on hand to pound on her. For about five loooong seconds, that healing buff stayed on her, and dismay started to settle over the raid - but Freya was just being coy, and it dropped away. And so on our 8th attempt we bedded Freya once again. That woman certainly plays hard to get.

Nothing for Wild among the loot, and our evening was done. Still, it was a good night with four kills: Koralon, Emalon, Onyxia, and Freya.

The raid evening was over, but not Wild's. DER was in game looking for trouble, and Wild was happy to join him. Our target was Trial of the Champion. That's not to be confused with Trial of the Crusader, which is the 10/25 man ToC. Trial of the Champion is generally referred to as 5 man ToC, and it's very different from the 10/25. But that tale will have to be told in another post.