Wednesday (12 Jan) - Bulldozed Over

Wednesday (12 Jan) - Bulldozed Over

Maiy, Kiren, and Sista had a plan for Warsong Gulch. With Kiren holding the alliance by the throat, Sista mangling them, and Maiy keeping us both alive, the horde wouldn't know what hit them. Well ... best laid plans and all that.

In our first WSG match of the evening it was the alliance that didn't know what hit us. A nasty stealthed rogue made it his business to kill clothies, with Maiy always seeming to be his target. Sista felt that rogues dagger a few times as well. There was a paladin Sista tried to kill several times, but he had too many friends. In fact, no matter what we did there always seemed to be more of them than of us. We lost 0-3.

We came at them again a second time. With Kiren (who knows the ways of feral druids) patiently giving Sista tips, she started stealthing up on targets and at least surprised a few horde by her sudden appearance. She didn't have her special stealth attack ability yet, though, so the surprise attack was short lived and not nearly as deadly as that horde rogue. It seemed like there were twice as many of them as us (though of course we are matched ten against ten). Each time we rezzed at the graveyard we were swarmed by horde and we couldn't seem to convince the other alliance players that we should group up and come at them from a different direction. We lost again 0-3.

We asked for an Arathi Basin match, trying to change our luck, but we waited and waited and finally got impatient and headed back into WSG a third time. We lost again 0-3. I don't think our team has ever lost three straight matches that badly before. The horde teams weren't premades, either. Just not a good night for pvp.

Maiy retired for the evening after the pvp matches. Kiren and Sista were looking to level a bit and quickly got a group through the random dungeon finder for Shadowfang Keep. SFK is rated for level 18-21 players and has five bosses. In all the times the Wild family tackled SFK, the final boss encounter was Archmage Arugal and his worgen. Arugal had an annoying habit of teleporting around the chamber he was in, made more frustrating as there were sets of stairs to climb and we had to chase him around. Now that the worgen race has been adopted into the alliance, Arugal became something of an embarrassment and SFK was soon overrun by horde, Arugal defeated, and the place abandoned. It was later occupied by Lord Godfrey, who I guess is well known in alliance lore. He's killed in the battles with Gilneas but is raised again as a Forsaken. After taking on Sylvanas (gotta give the guy credit for spunk) he fled to SFK - where he is now the final boss. SFK also has a level 85 Heroic mode. I'll bet that would be a lot of fun to do.

It's hard to know with a random group how easy or hard a dungeon will be. Kiren's tanking made things a lot easier, and we had a healer who did his job and we had almost no deaths. Almost. I think it was Commander Springvale, the third boss, that killed Sista. But Sista made the classic DPS mistake - she stood within the frontal AoE cone the Springvale casts. Sista had taken so little damage to that point she wasn't really watching what was happening to her health bar. I assume the damage was too high for the healer to overcome - or maybe the healer decided that if I was stupid enough to stand there he'd just let me die.

We had one more death on the final boss, Lord Godfrey (who stood there and took his licking without teleporting around), but overall we pounded through the place pretty quickly. There is a lot of good loot in SFK. Sista got a pile of stuff that she hasn't had time to sort out, yet. Sista also leveled from 19 to 20.

Sista was only planning one dungeon run for the night, but SFK went so well we decided to run one more. After clearing bags and checking in with our class trainers we signed up for another random run. The destination this time was Wailing Caverns, rated for level 17-20. Kiren had also leveled to 20. I remember back in the day when a WC run took three to four hours to complete. It is a huge place, with waterways, multiple passageways on several different levels, and a torturous route through numerous mobs to get to each boss. And there are eight bosses. When Wild was farming WC with low level relatives in tow for xp and gear, Wild would get lost over and over again. Wild's youngsters started asking JB to take them instead.

We had a fairly high level group for WC and it showed. The trash died quickly and the bosses didn't last much longer. Kiren had competition for tanking as another paladin in the group got impatient and sometimes ran ahead to attack things. That could have been a problem as we were always fighting multiple mobs and without basing DPS targets on the tank that could stress the healer. But it wasn't an issue with this group. It took us maybe an hour to clear it. I was amazed at how well Kiren got around the place and located every boss, even the sort of hidden one at the end.

We both leveled again, and again, going from level 20 to level 22. That's three levels total in one night! We scarfed up some more loot as well.

Our team has now taken down Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, and Shadowfang Keep. We're off to a good start.