Tuesday Afternoon (17 Jan) - The Smoldering Darkness

Tuesday Afternoon (17 Jan) - The Smoldering Darkness

JB was still smiling from her Baradin Hold raid victory when Gv, a guild hunter who runs in the same guild raid as Wild, pleaded for help. He and his wife (on Pl) were in the Molten Front. They were confronting a rare, deadly spider named Deth'tilac. It's not hard to kill, but Gv didn't want it killed - he wanted to tame it. Deth'tilac is a rare spawn, and Gv happened to be around when it decided to make an appearance. Rare spawns disappear as randomly as they appear, so Deth'tilac could go on it's way at any moment.

JB offered to come help. She got all the way to Mount Hyjal and halfway to Sulfuron Spire before she realized that she hadn't done the quest chain yet that would open the portal she needed to get to where Gv and Pl were. Wild was needed. Be quick, Gv pleaded once again. JB left, Wild came in game. Wild made the same trip JB did, and got to the portal (which is at the Sanctuary of Malorne, not the Sulfuron Spire - silly shaman). Once inside Malfurion's Breach, Wild couldn't figure out how to get to the Molten Front. Wild staggered about, and found them by blind luck. Deth'tilac was still there. Wild's job was pretty simple. When Gv gave the word, Wild was to attack the spider - and let it kill him. Every time the spider killed someone, it lost 10% of it's health - that was the only way to bring down it's health to the point where Gv could tame it.

We failed on our first try, and Deth'tilac reset to full health. On our second attempt, we got into a groove. Pl, who is a priest, and Wild, took turns dying and resurrecting each other while Gv kept up the taming. Twice the spider got too close, close enough to one shot Gv, but Gv was very quick on the draw with his Feign Death and saved himself both times. Wild was in healing spec and gear, so it took several hits with Moonfire before the spider would even acknowledge Wild's existence - but once it did, Wild was dead meat. And that was a good thing for Gv, who won Deth'tilac over, and now has a very rare combat pet.

Wednesday - Vl got our Wed/Thurs raid on the calendar on Monday. All of those who had raided with us before were invited, as well as every raid level player in the guild. So far only five have signed up - two death knights (one of which is a tank) and three druids. Wild is certain that Gv and Pl will show up, even though they never sign up on the calendar for some reason. Bd signed up as tentative, but that's a long hot. Wild has twenty views of his "Where are you?" post on the guild website, but no responses. The Bd/Lady Hunter situation remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, Wild spent his Wednesday afternoon preparing for the evening raid. Wild needed one LFR DS run to have enough valor points to earn his third T13 piece. Wild intended that piece to be the chest piece, which cost the max 2200 VPs. The T13 chest is a zone drop in DS, so it could drop from any boss. Wild had never seen it drop, so it was time to buy it.

Wild joined a Siege of Dragon Soul raid. We had a kick happy raid leader. Four times he tried to kick raiders, once for rolling need on a BoE drop (the player was a feral druid and it was a leather feral item so he had every right to Need it), but the raid leader kicked him anyway. The attempts to kick raiders "who weren't DPSing well enough" failed. Wild voted no all four times. We weren't having any problems killing bosses, so who cared what the DPS numbers were.

On the second boss, the Chest of the Vanquished dropped. It was the first time Wild had seen one drop that he could roll on. Wild rolled Need. Now, remember how fussy the raid loot system is. Wild and a priest (who probably rolled on a priesty item) waited patiently by the dead boss to make sure the loot was awarded. The rest of the raid had already moved on to the next encounter, but Wild was willing to get kicked rather than lose a chance at that chest token. The chest dropped, Wild saw in chat that Wild had won it, and with damage starting to pop up on the raid screen, Wild hustled through the portal to help heal.

We had beaten down the third boss before Wild remembered to check on that chest piece. Wild opened his bags and - no chest token. No! Not again! Wild knew it had been awarded - but it never made it into his bags. Crap! Or Crab! as my 12 year old niece says.

A seething Wild moved on to the 4th boss, downing him as well, although it was a little ticklish as five DPSers died. Stupid people stand in the wall of ice spikes and die. Anyway, once we were done, Wild made his way back through the portals to the second boss. Maybe, just maybe, Wild would get lucky. When Wild arrived the dead boss was still there. The body sparkled. There was still loot there. Wild checked, and there was his chest token.

Well, now that Wild had the T13 chest from DS, he didn't need to buy it with those valor points. Instead, Wild upgraded his i378 relic to i397. Wild could also have bought the upgraded valor bracers with valor points, but chose to tweak Happy's stout nose by spending 5k gold instead of VPs to get them. That saved 1250 VPs Wild will use somewhere else. Eventually, Wild will use VPs to upgrade from the LFR i384 T13s to the i397 T13s. That's for a later time. Wild's gear is now at i387.

Just before logging off at around 3:30pm, Vl came in game and we chatted a little bit about the night's coming run. Vl had found us a second tank, although only for this one night. So, we had our two tanks, and we had our three healers, and perhaps two DPS. We were still three short, and hoping we could come up with them at raid time. Vl was nervous about leading her first raid, but Wild assured her it would go smoothly. Anyone who has done an LFR knows how to handle the first boss. The second boss is much trickier, but everything about that fight depends on the tanks. Wild will be happy if we kill the first boss. Killing the second one would be amazing. If we get past the very tough second boss - well, we might actually bring down four.

The Raid - Wild tried to keep his expectations in check. This raid group hasn't run in more than three weeks. We've been without our two raid leaders all that time as well. We have a very game, but rookie, raid leader putting a raid together for the first time. We still had only five signed up, but I knew that two others would definitely show (Gv and Pl, who never use the raid calendar). That would make seven. What we got when invites first went out was six. The missing 7th was our tank. Vl brought her own tank, a close friend and well geared DK, named Gr, who was quitting WoW to play SWOTOR. This was his swan song. That put us back to seven. One of our DPSers had a tank toon and so he switched to tank. We cajoled, pleaded, bribed, and coerced, but as 6:15pm turned to 6:30pm and wound it's inevitable way to 6:45pm we stalled at nine raiders. Wild suggested a PUG for the tenth. That was voted down. It would be a full guild raid or not at all.

Gr made a suggestion. Since the most important part of our night was to get "something" going with our raid, he suggested a transmorg run in a raid dungeon we could nine man. I liked the idea. We needed to accomplish something as a team. That would encourage ourselves as well as help interest others. We decided on Ulduar.

Ulduar is a long, 14 boss raid. We were massively over geared for the Wrath era raid, but that didn't mean there weren't tricky parts we had to be careful of. There are many, many achievements to be had in Ulduar, and that was our primary goal. For Wild, it had special significance since Wild never finished that place. For our raid leader, Vl, it was her first visit to Ulduar since she didn't start playing until well after Ulduar was mothballed.

We had a blast in Ulduar. Wild had downed nine bosses during the Ulduar raiding days. On this night, Wild added two more, Miriam and Thorim. Thorim was a real challenge, and some of us died (Wild? Yep.).

We ran out of time with three bosses still to go, but we are going after them on Thursday night. We're also hoping to get a full ten to take on Dragon Soul after we close out Ulduar.

By the way, Wild got a boatload of achievements - 22 in all.