Weekend (13 Sep) - Is it the Weekend Already?
Yes, I went from a Wednesday two parter right into the weekend. There was no ten man raid scheduled for Thursday. Wild showed up anyway, hung around until 7:30pm, but neither raid nor 5 man Heroic came to pass. So Wild crafted some herb bags for Happy to sell, picked up some more Elixir of the Frostwyrm that JB had made for me, and opened the guild bank to stare wistfully at the pattern for [Boots of Wintry Endurance] (which Wild was sill waiting to have sent to him) and called it an evening.
On Friday Wild was signed up for the 25 man run, which was headed back into ToC to take on a new encounter, Lord Jaraxxus. But the Mrs had a reunion invitation from her old work buddies at the city, so Wild had to beg off the raid for a night of beer, good food, and fine friends with lots of gossip about city politics. I'm not entirely sure whether they had enough raiders to run, but I hoped so. Wild wished he could have been there, but I have to admit the beer was good.
JB has been playing hooky from the Isle of Kel'danas and is off her pace to reach level 74. Someone needs to whip her back into shape. But I don't see anyone in the family willing to take her on.
(PS - This is JB, I played hooky for a reason. Find out in Part 2 why Wildshard hates me, the poor cuddly cow. )
Mel and EZ, though, have become fast friends. Mel took EZ into Ragefire Chasm for the 6th time, and this time Taragamon the Hungerer dropped [Crystalline Cuffs], the spell power bracers she wanted. Not sure whether she will wear those or go with the "of the Eagle" bracers she also has. The extra +int and +sta on the eagle bracers might be a better choice. EZ may try to weasel enchants for both from Wild.
EZ then took on a six part quest starting with "The Farstrider Enclave." She was able to do the first five quests solo, but for the finale Mel rejoined her to ensure a quick victory. The prize was [Dawnblade], the weapon EZ has decided to use, with it's +5 sta.
Then Mel and EZ hooked up yet again for another quest chain (seven parts) in the Hillsbrad Foothills called "Battle of Hillsbrad". This was not a quest series that EZ could do by herself, as all of the mobs being faced were from level 22-28. Even travelling between Tarren Mill and the quest areas were fraught with potential danger. For the first quest Mel escorted her back and forth, but that didn't work so well. Mel was so much faster on her mount than EZ that it was hard for EZ to keep Follow on. Too much time was lost getting Follow reset, or they moved so slowly EZ aggroed the various spiders, bears, and mountain cats that often crowd the road there.
The solution was for EZ to pop her Lightning Shield, drop into ghost wolf form, and outrun anything that aggroed on her. Even if they got close enough to attack, eating one of EZ's lightning balls from her shield was usually enough to discourage them. Worst case, when a cat would stun EZ and slow her down, she'd pop out of ghost wolf, drop an earthbind totem to slow down the pursuit, and then pop right back into ghost wolf form and scamper off.
Still, moving both EZ and Mel back and forth for seven quests took time. Mel killed famers, peasants, council members, and others around the Hillsbrad farms; cleared a mining cave to reach a boss to slaughter, and finally made a trip to Dun Garok.
Mel and EZ had heard about Dun Garok from Wild. Back in the day Dun Garok was packed tightly with elite mid-30s level dwarves. While this was not an instance dungeon, it was not a place you wanted to enter with less than a full five man group. There were tight turns, low ceilings, and danger everywhere. Coming out that underground dwarven stronghold alive was a real accomplishment.
The dwarves are still there. There are fewer of the them, though, and their highest level is 28. They are no longer elite.
Mel and EZ were in and out of there in five minutes.
After visiting Varimathas in the Under City to complete the quest series, EZ was awarded [Deadskull Shield]. This is a high armor shield that comes with +7 sta, which is a lot at this level.
EZ had to wait until Sunday to go after the final piece of her twink set, [Talbar Mantle]. Yet another quest series that can easily confuse players trying to that final prize.
There is no beginning quest to pick up, that's the first hurdle. EZ and Mel met up at the entrance to Wailing Caverns, waving hello to the Disciple of Naralex that waits just inside the instance portal. Leaving EZ with the Disciple, Mel moved through the instance hunting the four Bosses of the Fang: Lady Anacondra, Lord Cobrahn, Lord Pythas, and Lord Serpentis. At level 62 Mel could walk right past most of the trash mobs without any of them noticing. The Lords and Ladys of the Fang died easily once Mel found them. The only trouble Mel had was finding Lord Serpentis, but once on the right path, he died as well.
The Disciple of Naralex announced that with the death of the "fanglords" he will be able to awaken Naralex from his eternal slumber. Mel returned to the Disciple and she and EZ started an escort quest with the Disciple. Mel knew where Naralex slept, and had already cleared all the mobs between the Disciple and Naralex. However, the Disciple stopped twice during the escort where we were attacked by small waves of mobs.
Once we all reached a sleeping Naralex in a side chamber, the Disciple began the Awakening. Two larger waves of mobs descended on us while the Disciple was occupied. Once Mel dispatched them, a boss mob, Mutanus the Devourer, rose from the waters nearby. Mel killed Mutanus, who dropped a [Glowing Shard]. This states "This item begins a quest." Well, sort of. What it does is send Mel and EZ to the Barrens shoreside port of Ratchet to talk to Sputtervalve. Suttervalve has no quest, either, but does have a little "talk to me" bubble. Sputtervale tells the duo that they must find and talk to Falla Sagewind.
Off the two go, finally locating Falla at the of a large moutain near The Crossroads. She hands out a Nightmare Shard, and directs that it be given to Arch Druid Hamul Runetotem in Thunder Bluff. At last there is an actual quest to get, [In Nightmares]. Off to Thunder Bluff.
The Arch Druid finally delivered [talbar Mantle] into EZ's hands.
EZ is now pretty much fully outfitted in her twink gear. Wild had to put a Fiery Weapon enchant on EZ's Dawnblade, since Wild has not been able to come up with the bigger weapon enchants. Wild was last seen hunting down pre-BC guildie enchanters to see if they had those enchants.
EZ is all dressed up but she may have to wait to get into a battleground. The San Diego Chargers open the season Monday night and I'll be watching the game.
In regard to access to the Strat boards, I will wait to see if I can post this on Monday. As of Sunday afternoon - well, let me quote Sporting News:
"Sorry for the buzzkill, but this being the first Sunday of the new football season, our servers are getting hammered and it is affecting login functionality, blogs and the forums. Our tech staff has been working non-stop trying to prepare for this situation, but unfortunately the strain on the servers is too great. . . We are still aiming to play tonight's games as regularly scheduled, provided we do not experience more major login problems. The forums and blogs are being kept down for the time being as a precaution. "
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Wednesday Part 2 (9 Sep) - Trial of the Crusader, 25 man Style
Wednesday Part 2 - Trial of the Crusader, 25 man Style
Note: Still catching up on posts. Still having trouble with access to the Strat forums. It comes and goes.
All of ToC takes place on the floor of a coliseum on the Argent Crusader tournament grounds. A single chamber, enclosed by stadium seating like the coliseums of Roman days. There are four broad areas, not all of which are yet available. We would be starting with Northrend Beasts, which as three encounters: Gormok the Impaler, Acidmaw and Dreadscale, and finally Icehowl. There is no pause between the fights. As soon as one is defeated, the next immediately enters. All three encounters must be completed before any loot will drop. Fail at any point, and you'll have to start over from the beginning. This makes for a very long fight; although not as long as the seven waves plus Boss required in Mount Hyjal (back in the day :) ).
Wild was again tasked with main tank healing. For parts of this fight three tanks are required, and that would stretch our healing. Wild has seen this fight only once, in the ten man version. Wild was the only raider with so little experience (or at least the only raider who would admit it when surveydrood asked for a show of hands). That's ok, I wanted him to have to describe the fight, anyway, and I'm sure others got some value out of that.
We did find a 25th raider before we got started, adding a second DK to the raid (the lone DK was so happy the two hugged each other in welcome), but then lost one of our shaman healers to weather problems, and were back to 24. We had two shadow priests with us, so one of them switched spec to healing so we could still have 7 healers.
The battle is started by talking to an npc. The npc waxes poetic about the contests to follow, taking a half minute of our time before allowing the big doors to open for Gormok to emerge.
Gormok is hell on tanks and melee, dealing a lot of damage the healers have to deal with. ranged raiders have it a little easier, but have to watch out for pools of fire (Blizzard loves that trick). Gormok also throws snobolds (small rat-like creatures) at random raiders. The snobolds cling to raiders and try to eat their face off. All DPS turns to attack snobolds as they appear.
It was a rough start. We had a tank die, and many raiders were hanging in the fire too much. Raiders died and had to be battle rezzed. We finally took down Gormok, and no sooner had he died that the pair of jormungars (large snakes) slithered in.
One of the snakes can be tanked in place while the other has to be kited. The snakes also submerge under the floor and then reappear in random locations multiple times during the fight, requiring close coordination with the DPS and the tanks so that the snakes only aggro on the tanks when they emerge. It is extremely hectic and crazy. A lot of raiders died, although the team of Wild and pally were keeping our tank alive.
We survived the jormungars, but the raid was in pretty bad shape when the monstrous yeti, Icehowl, charged into us. We lost a tank quickly, one of our three, and fought Icehowl down to 39% before we wiped. The victories over Gormok and the jormungars counted for nothing. We would have to start again.
Tank deaths occupied most of the discussion. We knew we were light on DPS, and so the fights were taking longer and putting more pressure on the healers. Two of the tank healers said they were running low on mana. That could be mitigated with the three moonkin druids who could share their Innervates and shaman who could drop mana totems. Surveydrood wanted all tank healing to shift to the tank the Bosses were actively targeted. As a group we advised that we would need better communication to let us know who the raid leader wanted us to focus healing on, healing which would not be going to the other tanks that healers had responsibility for. Wild was already putting HoTs on all three tanks, but if I knew which tank needed extra healing I could focus in on that while still keeping an eye on "my" tank. This was a practice all healers know to do, but we were pressed by this "your tank shall never die" mantra to the point we were not as active as we could be had we been allowed to take that risk - which eventually hurt the raid. Priorities had to be set, risks had to be accepted, and finally they were.
We got through the first two encounters on our second attempt, and wiped with Icehowl at 6%. For almost a third of the Icehowl fight we were down to one tank, but we kept him up a very, very long time. Only the Enrage timer kept us from beating him. A 25th raider doing DPS would probably have won it for us.
That second attempt gave us the practice we needed with the changes in our healing. The raid leaders put pressure on the other raiders to stay out of fires, follow directions, and stop doing stupid things that over taxed the healing.
Only four raiders were dead when Icehowl thundered into the Coliseum for the third time. The tanks positioned him dead center and the melee rushed in as the ranged DPS and healers spread out in a circle around the center. Icehowl pummeled the tank, and when things got too bad the tanks would call a switch off and healers for the two tanks would shift most of our focus on that tank. icehowl turned suddenly and sprayed Artic Breath on a quarter of the raid (that's why we spread out), catching Wild and stunning him for several seconds and watching his health dwindle. Not enough to kill, Wild quickly healed up himself and others and was back on top of the tank healing. Wild kpet trying to guess which direction Icehowl would send Arctic Breath next, but I was always wrong. More often than not he'd hit me. A Massive Crash stunned teh entire raid and tossed up against the walls of the chamber. Icehowl chose a target to Charge, and with only an instant to react, we all twisted right and ran as soon as the stun released us. Should the hapless target not move fast enough, the Charge was instant death. Not only that, but a successful Charge increased his damage, while a missed Charge would stun him for 15 seconds of free DPS. You did NOT want to be the raider caught by a Charge.
This time Icehowl fell.
Four more pieces of Tier 9 gear dropped, and everyone got three emblems of triumph. None of the gear bore the druid name. Shut out again.
However, feral druid whispered Wild that not all was bad. There was also a leatherworking pattern, a leather healing chest piece, T9 quality. Feral druid was a leatherworker. He bid on the pattern and won it, and promised Wild that he would make one for himself and for Wild. Now that will be cool. It would take awhile, though, because the mats will take a very long time to put together.
There were two oh by the ways as we prepared to wrap up a very successful evening. The drops from Emalon had never been distributed. They did that (again, nothing for druids) and then Rh asked if Wild was still on.
Yes, I said in raid chat, wondering what this was about.
Rho spoke. "Wild has been very patient - and persistent - about getting runed orbs from the guild bank to craft a pair of boots that are Best in Slot at our level of progression. It's about time you got them." With that, Rh presented Wild with six runed orbs, worth upwards of 2,000 gold.Wild was a happy cow, for more than just the runed orbs.
I hadn't known that feral druid was a leatherworker. It was great that Wild had the orbs, but he also needed someone to make the boots, and no leatherworker had stepped forward. Wild whispered feral druid, asking that if I bought the pattern from the guild and gave it to him, would he make me the boots? Not only yes, he replied, you'd get them the same day I got the pattern. I know, Wild had balked at the dkp cost of buying both the orbs and the pattern, but giving to a good friend and raiding buddy like feral druid seemed perfect.
I hope to let you know soon how good those boots feel on Wild.
Oops, can't forget the numbers. Healing:
#1: uber shaman - 2028 hps, 16.3% healing
#2: uber pally, 2087/14.7%
#3: Wild, 1728/13.6%
#4: EC, 1603/13.1% (EC is a resto druid guildie not usually in our 25 mans)
#5: pally, 1732/11.7%
#6: super priest, 1876/11.6%
#7: vet shaman, 2080/6.9% (who missed the end of the raid)
On DPS we had three raiders over 4k - a hunter led with 4697 DPS, along with our enhancement shaman and our former strategist mage. Eight others had over 3k DPS. How did the three moonkin fair? Glad you asked:
#4: altpriest - 3742 DPS
#5: surveydrood - 3605 DPS
#14: feral druid - 2166 DPS (he really prefers being cat, but we have too many melee already)
Note: Still catching up on posts. Still having trouble with access to the Strat forums. It comes and goes.
All of ToC takes place on the floor of a coliseum on the Argent Crusader tournament grounds. A single chamber, enclosed by stadium seating like the coliseums of Roman days. There are four broad areas, not all of which are yet available. We would be starting with Northrend Beasts, which as three encounters: Gormok the Impaler, Acidmaw and Dreadscale, and finally Icehowl. There is no pause between the fights. As soon as one is defeated, the next immediately enters. All three encounters must be completed before any loot will drop. Fail at any point, and you'll have to start over from the beginning. This makes for a very long fight; although not as long as the seven waves plus Boss required in Mount Hyjal (back in the day :) ).
Wild was again tasked with main tank healing. For parts of this fight three tanks are required, and that would stretch our healing. Wild has seen this fight only once, in the ten man version. Wild was the only raider with so little experience (or at least the only raider who would admit it when surveydrood asked for a show of hands). That's ok, I wanted him to have to describe the fight, anyway, and I'm sure others got some value out of that.
We did find a 25th raider before we got started, adding a second DK to the raid (the lone DK was so happy the two hugged each other in welcome), but then lost one of our shaman healers to weather problems, and were back to 24. We had two shadow priests with us, so one of them switched spec to healing so we could still have 7 healers.
The battle is started by talking to an npc. The npc waxes poetic about the contests to follow, taking a half minute of our time before allowing the big doors to open for Gormok to emerge.
Gormok is hell on tanks and melee, dealing a lot of damage the healers have to deal with. ranged raiders have it a little easier, but have to watch out for pools of fire (Blizzard loves that trick). Gormok also throws snobolds (small rat-like creatures) at random raiders. The snobolds cling to raiders and try to eat their face off. All DPS turns to attack snobolds as they appear.
It was a rough start. We had a tank die, and many raiders were hanging in the fire too much. Raiders died and had to be battle rezzed. We finally took down Gormok, and no sooner had he died that the pair of jormungars (large snakes) slithered in.
One of the snakes can be tanked in place while the other has to be kited. The snakes also submerge under the floor and then reappear in random locations multiple times during the fight, requiring close coordination with the DPS and the tanks so that the snakes only aggro on the tanks when they emerge. It is extremely hectic and crazy. A lot of raiders died, although the team of Wild and pally were keeping our tank alive.
We survived the jormungars, but the raid was in pretty bad shape when the monstrous yeti, Icehowl, charged into us. We lost a tank quickly, one of our three, and fought Icehowl down to 39% before we wiped. The victories over Gormok and the jormungars counted for nothing. We would have to start again.
Tank deaths occupied most of the discussion. We knew we were light on DPS, and so the fights were taking longer and putting more pressure on the healers. Two of the tank healers said they were running low on mana. That could be mitigated with the three moonkin druids who could share their Innervates and shaman who could drop mana totems. Surveydrood wanted all tank healing to shift to the tank the Bosses were actively targeted. As a group we advised that we would need better communication to let us know who the raid leader wanted us to focus healing on, healing which would not be going to the other tanks that healers had responsibility for. Wild was already putting HoTs on all three tanks, but if I knew which tank needed extra healing I could focus in on that while still keeping an eye on "my" tank. This was a practice all healers know to do, but we were pressed by this "your tank shall never die" mantra to the point we were not as active as we could be had we been allowed to take that risk - which eventually hurt the raid. Priorities had to be set, risks had to be accepted, and finally they were.
We got through the first two encounters on our second attempt, and wiped with Icehowl at 6%. For almost a third of the Icehowl fight we were down to one tank, but we kept him up a very, very long time. Only the Enrage timer kept us from beating him. A 25th raider doing DPS would probably have won it for us.
That second attempt gave us the practice we needed with the changes in our healing. The raid leaders put pressure on the other raiders to stay out of fires, follow directions, and stop doing stupid things that over taxed the healing.
Only four raiders were dead when Icehowl thundered into the Coliseum for the third time. The tanks positioned him dead center and the melee rushed in as the ranged DPS and healers spread out in a circle around the center. Icehowl pummeled the tank, and when things got too bad the tanks would call a switch off and healers for the two tanks would shift most of our focus on that tank. icehowl turned suddenly and sprayed Artic Breath on a quarter of the raid (that's why we spread out), catching Wild and stunning him for several seconds and watching his health dwindle. Not enough to kill, Wild quickly healed up himself and others and was back on top of the tank healing. Wild kpet trying to guess which direction Icehowl would send Arctic Breath next, but I was always wrong. More often than not he'd hit me. A Massive Crash stunned teh entire raid and tossed up against the walls of the chamber. Icehowl chose a target to Charge, and with only an instant to react, we all twisted right and ran as soon as the stun released us. Should the hapless target not move fast enough, the Charge was instant death. Not only that, but a successful Charge increased his damage, while a missed Charge would stun him for 15 seconds of free DPS. You did NOT want to be the raider caught by a Charge.
This time Icehowl fell.
Four more pieces of Tier 9 gear dropped, and everyone got three emblems of triumph. None of the gear bore the druid name. Shut out again.
However, feral druid whispered Wild that not all was bad. There was also a leatherworking pattern, a leather healing chest piece, T9 quality. Feral druid was a leatherworker. He bid on the pattern and won it, and promised Wild that he would make one for himself and for Wild. Now that will be cool. It would take awhile, though, because the mats will take a very long time to put together.
There were two oh by the ways as we prepared to wrap up a very successful evening. The drops from Emalon had never been distributed. They did that (again, nothing for druids) and then Rh asked if Wild was still on.
Yes, I said in raid chat, wondering what this was about.
Rho spoke. "Wild has been very patient - and persistent - about getting runed orbs from the guild bank to craft a pair of boots that are Best in Slot at our level of progression. It's about time you got them." With that, Rh presented Wild with six runed orbs, worth upwards of 2,000 gold.Wild was a happy cow, for more than just the runed orbs.
I hadn't known that feral druid was a leatherworker. It was great that Wild had the orbs, but he also needed someone to make the boots, and no leatherworker had stepped forward. Wild whispered feral druid, asking that if I bought the pattern from the guild and gave it to him, would he make me the boots? Not only yes, he replied, you'd get them the same day I got the pattern. I know, Wild had balked at the dkp cost of buying both the orbs and the pattern, but giving to a good friend and raiding buddy like feral druid seemed perfect.
I hope to let you know soon how good those boots feel on Wild.
Oops, can't forget the numbers. Healing:
#1: uber shaman - 2028 hps, 16.3% healing
#2: uber pally, 2087/14.7%
#3: Wild, 1728/13.6%
#4: EC, 1603/13.1% (EC is a resto druid guildie not usually in our 25 mans)
#5: pally, 1732/11.7%
#6: super priest, 1876/11.6%
#7: vet shaman, 2080/6.9% (who missed the end of the raid)
On DPS we had three raiders over 4k - a hunter led with 4697 DPS, along with our enhancement shaman and our former strategist mage. Eight others had over 3k DPS. How did the three moonkin fair? Glad you asked:
#4: altpriest - 3742 DPS
#5: surveydrood - 3605 DPS
#14: feral druid - 2166 DPS (he really prefers being cat, but we have too many melee already)
Friday, September 11, 2009
Wednesday (9 Sep) - Vault of Archavon Expands
Wednesday (9 Sep) - Vault of Archavon Expands
Wild spent an enjoyable Wednesday afternoon collecting his new Tier 8.5 helm. First, Wild used the emblems of conquest from the chain Heroics on Tuesday to purchase a "Wayward Vanquisher" token, then used the token to buy the [Conqueror's Nightsong Headpiece], which is one of five pieces in the Conqueror's Nightsong Regalia set.
The helm has a red socket and a meta socket for gems. Wild wrestled with which of two meta gems to equip: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (with +int and a 2% mana regen chance) or Ember Skyflare Diamond (with +spellpower and +2% int). Wild's current helm was using the Skyflare, but I decided I wanted the Earthsiege for the new one as I wanted to build up Wild's +int while mitigating the loss of mana regen (mp5) that was on the old helm, but not the new one. I would, of course, add a +23 spellpower gem in the red slot.
The meta gem decision created a new challenge. Meta gems only become activated when certain other gems are present in the gear being worn. For the Earthsiege, Wild's gear had to have one each red, blue, and yellow gem socketed. Wild had the red and blue gems covered, but was not using any yellow gems. The only slot in Wild's gear that did have a yellow socket was the chest piece, which had both a yellow and a blue socket. Wild was using red gems (+19 sp) in both of them. I ended up replacing both gems with a yellow (+12 sp, +10 int) and a blue (+12 sp, +5 mp5). By using the correct color gems Wild also got the socket bonus, another +7 sp. Happy grumbled, but he paid the nearly 600 gold for all those high end gems.
The changes significantly increased Wild's health, mana, and haste; it modestly increased spellpower and crit; with the only real loss coming from mana regen, which I hoped would be overcome by the meta gem regen. In terms of pure stats, Wild's gear was comparable to, and in many areas, superior to uber druid's. The main difference there is that uber druid has gear set bonuses that Wild doesn't have.
When Wild logged back in game at 5:30pm, the guild Message of day said "Vault 9-9, stay out of the fire." Wild puzzled over that for a bit, then it hit him. "Vault" is Vault of Archovan (VoA), the dungeon in the pvp zone of Wintergrasp. "9-9" was the day's date, and the fire reference was to one of the boss fights in VoA. Lots of other raiders logging in had the same puzzled comments, but condensed down it meant we were starting in VoA for our Wednesday raid. Assuming we had enough raiders.
At 5:55pm, 5 minutes before raid invites, we had only 16. At 6pm we had 21, and that raised all our hopes. Wild hustled to the Wintergrasp fortress (which was under Horde control for the next hour) and settled outside VoA. Feral druid, who rarely gets a chance to raid in our 25 mans, was in game and had the time - he was invited, to Wild's delight. Lady Hunter and feral druid are real life friends who live near each other. Distressed at how long she's been absent, Lady Hunter had a chance to use a second computer at feral druids house. It wasn't the best setup, but it worked (sort of), and Lady Hunter also got an invite. We entered VoA with 24 raiders, including 7 healers, 5 druids, and one lonely looking death knight (we usually have 4 or 5).
Until this week there were two bosses in VoA. As of Tuesday, there were now three. Koralon is the new boss in VoA, and the gear he drops is Tier 9. Wow.
Koralon is a fire giant, and deals massive amounts of fire damage from multiple abilities. One of the more difficult things to manage in this fight are the fire pools. Koralon places Blazing Embers at the feet of random raiders that kills very fast. Say one thousand one, one thousand tw . . . oops, dead. The pools are very small, too, and it's hard to see them licking at your ankles. Koralon breaths fire on the raid as well, and has lots of nasty tricks the tanks have to deal with.
Wild was assigned as the main tank healer (along with a paladin) for one of the two tanks. I'd keep that primary role throughout the evening. Main tank healing is something of a touchy issue, as I've reported before. "The tank should NEVER die" is the mandate all healers get from our raid leaders. That would come back to bite us just a bit.
We were excited to be working a new boss, and eager to get at him. We engaged. The two tanks would switch periodically during the fight when the fire damage got too high. Both tanks took a lot of damage, and we stayed very focused on keeping them alive. Wild would spot HoT the other tank when I had the chance, and kept up Wild Growth to aid the raid healers, but nearly all Wild's focus was on keeping heals on "my" tank - and keeping Wild's own heels out of the fire pools. We did pretty well on the first attempt, getting Koralon to 39% before wiping.
We got him to 8% on the second attempt, but three times a tank died (the other one, not the one Wild was responsible for). With 5 druids we kept him battle rezzed and back in the fight, but it cost us in DPS raiders who were killed and we didn't have the rezzes for them. We hit the Enrage timer and wiped. The displeasure of surveydrood at the tank deaths was evident.
A third try. Wild had survived until the very end on the first two attempts, but this time I got double shot with a fire pool and the boss's burning breath and died when Koralon was at 12%. I cheered the raid on from my corpse. We brought him down.
Feral druid, who was moonkin for the evening, whispered Wild, noting our two corpses piled together. We would fight side by side for the entire evening - the tree and chicken team.
Koralon dropped four pieces of T9 gear. The top level gear in Ulduar 25 is ilevel 226. This gear is ilevel 245. We were all salivating at the chance to get this gear. The first thing I noticed, though, was that the gear was specific to a class. Not a collection of classes (ie, most tier gear is usable by three or four classes), but a single class. There was paladin gear, priest gear, and I don't remember the other two. But among the four pieces there was nothing with a druid's name on it.
We took on Emalon next, a boss we have downed many times. We struggled a bit, and wiped on our first attempt. We then started to get the warnings that Wintergrasp was close to opening it's doors to another pvp war. When that happened we'd lose access to VoA. Could we make one more attempt? We aimed to try.
We hurriedly started a second attempt and downed Emalon with 2 minutes until Wintergraps closed the doors to VoA. We scrambled out. The raid leader grabbed all the loot (to be distributed later), and we headed enmasse to our next destination, the Argent Crusade Tournament grounds in Icecrown.
Wild was about to get his first look at Trial of the Crusader, the 25 man version, which also drops T9 gear. Coming up in Part 2.
PS - of course, when I tried to post this at 8am PST this morning (Thursday), the forums are again down. I tried both the Firefox browser and Internet Explorer. This sucks.
PSS - Now posted on http://wildfamilytales.blogspot.com/ (Friday)
Wild spent an enjoyable Wednesday afternoon collecting his new Tier 8.5 helm. First, Wild used the emblems of conquest from the chain Heroics on Tuesday to purchase a "Wayward Vanquisher" token, then used the token to buy the [Conqueror's Nightsong Headpiece], which is one of five pieces in the Conqueror's Nightsong Regalia set.
The helm has a red socket and a meta socket for gems. Wild wrestled with which of two meta gems to equip: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (with +int and a 2% mana regen chance) or Ember Skyflare Diamond (with +spellpower and +2% int). Wild's current helm was using the Skyflare, but I decided I wanted the Earthsiege for the new one as I wanted to build up Wild's +int while mitigating the loss of mana regen (mp5) that was on the old helm, but not the new one. I would, of course, add a +23 spellpower gem in the red slot.
The meta gem decision created a new challenge. Meta gems only become activated when certain other gems are present in the gear being worn. For the Earthsiege, Wild's gear had to have one each red, blue, and yellow gem socketed. Wild had the red and blue gems covered, but was not using any yellow gems. The only slot in Wild's gear that did have a yellow socket was the chest piece, which had both a yellow and a blue socket. Wild was using red gems (+19 sp) in both of them. I ended up replacing both gems with a yellow (+12 sp, +10 int) and a blue (+12 sp, +5 mp5). By using the correct color gems Wild also got the socket bonus, another +7 sp. Happy grumbled, but he paid the nearly 600 gold for all those high end gems.
The changes significantly increased Wild's health, mana, and haste; it modestly increased spellpower and crit; with the only real loss coming from mana regen, which I hoped would be overcome by the meta gem regen. In terms of pure stats, Wild's gear was comparable to, and in many areas, superior to uber druid's. The main difference there is that uber druid has gear set bonuses that Wild doesn't have.
When Wild logged back in game at 5:30pm, the guild Message of day said "Vault 9-9, stay out of the fire." Wild puzzled over that for a bit, then it hit him. "Vault" is Vault of Archovan (VoA), the dungeon in the pvp zone of Wintergrasp. "9-9" was the day's date, and the fire reference was to one of the boss fights in VoA. Lots of other raiders logging in had the same puzzled comments, but condensed down it meant we were starting in VoA for our Wednesday raid. Assuming we had enough raiders.
At 5:55pm, 5 minutes before raid invites, we had only 16. At 6pm we had 21, and that raised all our hopes. Wild hustled to the Wintergrasp fortress (which was under Horde control for the next hour) and settled outside VoA. Feral druid, who rarely gets a chance to raid in our 25 mans, was in game and had the time - he was invited, to Wild's delight. Lady Hunter and feral druid are real life friends who live near each other. Distressed at how long she's been absent, Lady Hunter had a chance to use a second computer at feral druids house. It wasn't the best setup, but it worked (sort of), and Lady Hunter also got an invite. We entered VoA with 24 raiders, including 7 healers, 5 druids, and one lonely looking death knight (we usually have 4 or 5).
Until this week there were two bosses in VoA. As of Tuesday, there were now three. Koralon is the new boss in VoA, and the gear he drops is Tier 9. Wow.
Koralon is a fire giant, and deals massive amounts of fire damage from multiple abilities. One of the more difficult things to manage in this fight are the fire pools. Koralon places Blazing Embers at the feet of random raiders that kills very fast. Say one thousand one, one thousand tw . . . oops, dead. The pools are very small, too, and it's hard to see them licking at your ankles. Koralon breaths fire on the raid as well, and has lots of nasty tricks the tanks have to deal with.
Wild was assigned as the main tank healer (along with a paladin) for one of the two tanks. I'd keep that primary role throughout the evening. Main tank healing is something of a touchy issue, as I've reported before. "The tank should NEVER die" is the mandate all healers get from our raid leaders. That would come back to bite us just a bit.
We were excited to be working a new boss, and eager to get at him. We engaged. The two tanks would switch periodically during the fight when the fire damage got too high. Both tanks took a lot of damage, and we stayed very focused on keeping them alive. Wild would spot HoT the other tank when I had the chance, and kept up Wild Growth to aid the raid healers, but nearly all Wild's focus was on keeping heals on "my" tank - and keeping Wild's own heels out of the fire pools. We did pretty well on the first attempt, getting Koralon to 39% before wiping.
We got him to 8% on the second attempt, but three times a tank died (the other one, not the one Wild was responsible for). With 5 druids we kept him battle rezzed and back in the fight, but it cost us in DPS raiders who were killed and we didn't have the rezzes for them. We hit the Enrage timer and wiped. The displeasure of surveydrood at the tank deaths was evident.
A third try. Wild had survived until the very end on the first two attempts, but this time I got double shot with a fire pool and the boss's burning breath and died when Koralon was at 12%. I cheered the raid on from my corpse. We brought him down.
Feral druid, who was moonkin for the evening, whispered Wild, noting our two corpses piled together. We would fight side by side for the entire evening - the tree and chicken team.
Koralon dropped four pieces of T9 gear. The top level gear in Ulduar 25 is ilevel 226. This gear is ilevel 245. We were all salivating at the chance to get this gear. The first thing I noticed, though, was that the gear was specific to a class. Not a collection of classes (ie, most tier gear is usable by three or four classes), but a single class. There was paladin gear, priest gear, and I don't remember the other two. But among the four pieces there was nothing with a druid's name on it.
We took on Emalon next, a boss we have downed many times. We struggled a bit, and wiped on our first attempt. We then started to get the warnings that Wintergrasp was close to opening it's doors to another pvp war. When that happened we'd lose access to VoA. Could we make one more attempt? We aimed to try.
We hurriedly started a second attempt and downed Emalon with 2 minutes until Wintergraps closed the doors to VoA. We scrambled out. The raid leader grabbed all the loot (to be distributed later), and we headed enmasse to our next destination, the Argent Crusade Tournament grounds in Icecrown.
Wild was about to get his first look at Trial of the Crusader, the 25 man version, which also drops T9 gear. Coming up in Part 2.
PS - of course, when I tried to post this at 8am PST this morning (Thursday), the forums are again down. I tried both the Firefox browser and Internet Explorer. This sucks.
PSS - Now posted on http://wildfamilytales.blogspot.com/ (Friday)
Tuesday (8 Sep) - A Hunting (Heroics) We Will Go
Tuesday (8 Sep) - A Hunting (Heroics) We Will Go
Sorry there was no post yesterday. I continue to have problems being able to access the forums. This morning I am again getting the "we're experiencing problems" response using my Firefox browser, but I got it using Internet Explorer. I'm going to post this while I have a chance. This is from Tuesday.
At 6:45pm we sort of knew we were in trouble in getting Lady Hunter's 10 man group going. There were just two of us - Wild and Bd (the warrior tank and raid leader in Lady Hunter's continued absence). At 7:15pm we had added just one more, the off tank/DPS warrior.
Last week Wild and Bd had talked about doing chain Heroics. Bd loves doing Heroics, and does them often. He thinks the world of Wild and would love to get me into some of his Heroics runs, but we just aren't on at the same time that much, and his in game time will get a lot shorter with changes coming in his job. I had told him I'd run Heroics with him any time he found me in game. He's a great friend and tank and running with him is always fun.
So it was not unexpected when Bd asked Wild and the DPS warrior, "wanna do some Heroics?"
Wild had one word for that offer: "Yep! :) " But the DPS Warrior had to leave, so we were back to just the two of us.
The Daily Heroic for Tuesday was The Old Kingdom (OK). Located in Dragonblight, the area has two dungeons, OK and Azjol-Nerub (AN). We figured we'd do both dungeons while we were there.
Before hitting OK/AN, however, we decided to head to Utgarde Keep (UK) first, located in Howling Fjord, which is the normal dungeon daily. Yes, there is a daily for Heroics and a daily for Normal dungeons, which is a misnomer because we do it in Heroic mode. The Heroic quest gives Triumph badges; the other quest gives conquest badges and additional reputation with the faction of your choice.
Utgarde Keep has two dungeons, UK and Utgarde Pinnacle. UP had the normal daily quest, and so we started there.
We rounded out our five man group with Bd's real life neighbor, who was running her warlock alt. She does not raid, so she spends her time levelling alts and occasionally doing 5 mans. Our guilds #1 DPS raider, an enhancement shaman, started life as a rogue, but had abandoned him at level 70 to pursue raising the shaman. Earlier in the day he'd finally gotten his rogue to level 80, and asked if he could join us on his rogue. He warned us that his gear was awful. Ever the optimist, Bd exclaimed, "Perfect! This is a great opportunity to get you some gear!" Finally, just as we were thinking about getting a stranger to fill the group, feral druid popped in game and we immediately talked him into coming with us. He switched to moonkin.
And yes, if anyone is asking, Wild DID pick up the two daily quests before flying off to Howling Fjord.
When Wild did chain heroics the last (and only) time previously, it was as a moonkin in a group that could have run those dungeons without Wild. It was fun and exciting, but there was little pressure. Wild was the healer on this night's run. If anything it was even more fun because Wild was integral to the success of the run.
Bd advised Wild up front that he would be moving fast through the trash mobs, and would not slow down unless Wild got low on mana or called for a halt. The speed of the run really depended on the amount of healing Wild had to do. Fair enough. Wild was ready. Bd also knew that Wild rarely did 5 mans, so at each boss Bd would give a short synopsis of the boss abilities and anything special Wild needed to know as the healer. Those thirty second explanations helped a lot.
There are four bosses in UP, and we plowed through the trash and those bosses in a steady, unrelenting wave of death. Wild never had to call for a halt as I kept the heals flowing. Wild did need to make some adjustments for the rogue. Being melee, he was up close and personal with the mobs, and his gear was just not that good. He kept dying. Fast. I finally decided to treat him like an off tank, and kept a full spread of HoTs on him even when he wasn't taking damage. That gave Wild a second or two to get additional heals to him when he did get hit. Wild used his instant emergency heal on the rogue more times than the rest of the group put together.
We cleared UP. Then we cleared UK just because it was next door. Then we moved from Howling Fjord to Dragonblight and The Old Kingdom. We decided to speed things up for OK, and instead of clearing all of the trash, we cut a swath through only those trash mobs in our immediate path on the way to the bosses.
Everything went smoothly (the rogue stopped dying, too, and was blissfully happy with the bagful of new gear he was accumulating) when things went very wrong against the final boss, Herald Volazj. We wiped.
A group like this should never wipe on a 5 man Heroic boss. Particularly a boss named Harold. "Oooh, I'm so scared! We're up against Harold!" Sorry, that just doesn't work for me. Ok, so it's really spelled Herald, and isn't really his name. I'm calling him Harold anyway.
Well, Harold has a peculiar ability called Insanity. Let me be absolutely honest here. Even after having seen this fight, and then read all of the information and strategies, I still didn't get it. As best I could describe it, Insanity causes shades, or duplicates, of each of us that must be fought and killed as part of the boss fight. There is a fight in one of the pre-WotLK raids (I can't remember which or what boss it was) where something similar was done. However, on the pre-WotLK boss fight each raider had to fight their own duplicate with no help from anyone else. I thought this fight was like that, based on how it was explained.
We started up the fight and after some early combat Harold cast Insanity. Wild kept trying to find his "visage" which is what the duplicate was called for this boss. No visage, and because Wild was out of sync with what everyone else was doing, Wild died, and we wiped.
A new set of explanations, the only part of which that really sunk in was that Wild needed to keep himself alive at all costs. Plus, stay out of tree form, because Wild's visage will heal himself more if in tree form, making the fight harder. Ok. I can heal out of tree form, no problem.
We beat Harold on our second try, which I guess is what matters, but I still don't understand this fight. So here is the best explanation of the Insanity ability I could find:
From wowhead: "Every party member will see the other party members turning hostile, and attacking. It's a phasing event - your friends didn't turn against you, as the Herald suggests, they were merely shifted into a different phase, fighting their own "bad" friends. Each one of the images has 4,000 HP, and casts 1-2 spells specific to the class and spec the original player belongs to. It is recommended to nuke the healer first, or any fast-hitting class if you are the healer yourself. Volazj will remain invulnerable and channeling the spell until the event is over.
Whenever one of the players kills all 4 images assigned to him, he will phase out seeing another of his friends fighting, and will be able to give a hand. When all 20 images are dead, Volazj will become attackable again, and in fact will attack. From now on it's rinse and repeat fight."
So, if I get this right, every player will be in his own mini-instance, fighting against the other four "visage" players. As players kill their four visage opponents, they join with the other players that are still fighting, aiding those fights. Wild, in his own little mini-instance, didn't try to attack and kill the four visages of my friends. I chose just to heal myself and stay alive until help arrived.
Wild's "visage" is a pretty good healer, even when out of tree form and controlled by the computer - and in each of the mini-instances there were grumblings in vent chat about "stupid resto druids who just won't die" throughout the battle. Wild, for his part, stayed alive, wondering what was going on. When other players started to zone in where I could heal them, I did. It took a long time, but we won. Hmm, maybe I'm starting to understand this fight.
After finishing off the "last" boss, we decided to go after the optional boss that only appears in Heroic mode and after killing the other bosses. Amanitar is his name. This boss likes mushrooms, and the whole fight is based on using the "good" mushrooms and avoiding the "bad" mushrooms.
We wiped twice on this fight due to bugs. The first time, the tank, who had backed up to a large fountain so that the boss was turned away from us, suddenly found Amanitar behind him. The boss was in the fountain, which is not an area in play. Supposedly. Amanitar one shot the tank from behind and then wiped the raid.
The second time we changed the tanking location away from the fountain. But after we got through the early part of the battle a flood of new mobs stormed into the fight, surprising the heck out of us and we wiped again.
The third time nothing weird happened, and we killed him. I didn't pay any attention to mushrooms, and it didn't seem to matter. Bugged, or Wild just healed everyone through the damage, I don't know. It worked.
We had planned to take on AN next, but our rogue had to leave, and we called it a night. Wild got a bunch of conquest badges and two triumph badges as well. Time to go buy some gear.
Sorry there was no post yesterday. I continue to have problems being able to access the forums. This morning I am again getting the "we're experiencing problems" response using my Firefox browser, but I got it using Internet Explorer. I'm going to post this while I have a chance. This is from Tuesday.
At 6:45pm we sort of knew we were in trouble in getting Lady Hunter's 10 man group going. There were just two of us - Wild and Bd (the warrior tank and raid leader in Lady Hunter's continued absence). At 7:15pm we had added just one more, the off tank/DPS warrior.
Last week Wild and Bd had talked about doing chain Heroics. Bd loves doing Heroics, and does them often. He thinks the world of Wild and would love to get me into some of his Heroics runs, but we just aren't on at the same time that much, and his in game time will get a lot shorter with changes coming in his job. I had told him I'd run Heroics with him any time he found me in game. He's a great friend and tank and running with him is always fun.
So it was not unexpected when Bd asked Wild and the DPS warrior, "wanna do some Heroics?"
Wild had one word for that offer: "Yep! :) " But the DPS Warrior had to leave, so we were back to just the two of us.
The Daily Heroic for Tuesday was The Old Kingdom (OK). Located in Dragonblight, the area has two dungeons, OK and Azjol-Nerub (AN). We figured we'd do both dungeons while we were there.
Before hitting OK/AN, however, we decided to head to Utgarde Keep (UK) first, located in Howling Fjord, which is the normal dungeon daily. Yes, there is a daily for Heroics and a daily for Normal dungeons, which is a misnomer because we do it in Heroic mode. The Heroic quest gives Triumph badges; the other quest gives conquest badges and additional reputation with the faction of your choice.
Utgarde Keep has two dungeons, UK and Utgarde Pinnacle. UP had the normal daily quest, and so we started there.
We rounded out our five man group with Bd's real life neighbor, who was running her warlock alt. She does not raid, so she spends her time levelling alts and occasionally doing 5 mans. Our guilds #1 DPS raider, an enhancement shaman, started life as a rogue, but had abandoned him at level 70 to pursue raising the shaman. Earlier in the day he'd finally gotten his rogue to level 80, and asked if he could join us on his rogue. He warned us that his gear was awful. Ever the optimist, Bd exclaimed, "Perfect! This is a great opportunity to get you some gear!" Finally, just as we were thinking about getting a stranger to fill the group, feral druid popped in game and we immediately talked him into coming with us. He switched to moonkin.
And yes, if anyone is asking, Wild DID pick up the two daily quests before flying off to Howling Fjord.
When Wild did chain heroics the last (and only) time previously, it was as a moonkin in a group that could have run those dungeons without Wild. It was fun and exciting, but there was little pressure. Wild was the healer on this night's run. If anything it was even more fun because Wild was integral to the success of the run.
Bd advised Wild up front that he would be moving fast through the trash mobs, and would not slow down unless Wild got low on mana or called for a halt. The speed of the run really depended on the amount of healing Wild had to do. Fair enough. Wild was ready. Bd also knew that Wild rarely did 5 mans, so at each boss Bd would give a short synopsis of the boss abilities and anything special Wild needed to know as the healer. Those thirty second explanations helped a lot.
There are four bosses in UP, and we plowed through the trash and those bosses in a steady, unrelenting wave of death. Wild never had to call for a halt as I kept the heals flowing. Wild did need to make some adjustments for the rogue. Being melee, he was up close and personal with the mobs, and his gear was just not that good. He kept dying. Fast. I finally decided to treat him like an off tank, and kept a full spread of HoTs on him even when he wasn't taking damage. That gave Wild a second or two to get additional heals to him when he did get hit. Wild used his instant emergency heal on the rogue more times than the rest of the group put together.
We cleared UP. Then we cleared UK just because it was next door. Then we moved from Howling Fjord to Dragonblight and The Old Kingdom. We decided to speed things up for OK, and instead of clearing all of the trash, we cut a swath through only those trash mobs in our immediate path on the way to the bosses.
Everything went smoothly (the rogue stopped dying, too, and was blissfully happy with the bagful of new gear he was accumulating) when things went very wrong against the final boss, Herald Volazj. We wiped.
A group like this should never wipe on a 5 man Heroic boss. Particularly a boss named Harold. "Oooh, I'm so scared! We're up against Harold!" Sorry, that just doesn't work for me. Ok, so it's really spelled Herald, and isn't really his name. I'm calling him Harold anyway.
Well, Harold has a peculiar ability called Insanity. Let me be absolutely honest here. Even after having seen this fight, and then read all of the information and strategies, I still didn't get it. As best I could describe it, Insanity causes shades, or duplicates, of each of us that must be fought and killed as part of the boss fight. There is a fight in one of the pre-WotLK raids (I can't remember which or what boss it was) where something similar was done. However, on the pre-WotLK boss fight each raider had to fight their own duplicate with no help from anyone else. I thought this fight was like that, based on how it was explained.
We started up the fight and after some early combat Harold cast Insanity. Wild kept trying to find his "visage" which is what the duplicate was called for this boss. No visage, and because Wild was out of sync with what everyone else was doing, Wild died, and we wiped.
A new set of explanations, the only part of which that really sunk in was that Wild needed to keep himself alive at all costs. Plus, stay out of tree form, because Wild's visage will heal himself more if in tree form, making the fight harder. Ok. I can heal out of tree form, no problem.
We beat Harold on our second try, which I guess is what matters, but I still don't understand this fight. So here is the best explanation of the Insanity ability I could find:
From wowhead: "Every party member will see the other party members turning hostile, and attacking. It's a phasing event - your friends didn't turn against you, as the Herald suggests, they were merely shifted into a different phase, fighting their own "bad" friends. Each one of the images has 4,000 HP, and casts 1-2 spells specific to the class and spec the original player belongs to. It is recommended to nuke the healer first, or any fast-hitting class if you are the healer yourself. Volazj will remain invulnerable and channeling the spell until the event is over.
Whenever one of the players kills all 4 images assigned to him, he will phase out seeing another of his friends fighting, and will be able to give a hand. When all 20 images are dead, Volazj will become attackable again, and in fact will attack. From now on it's rinse and repeat fight."
So, if I get this right, every player will be in his own mini-instance, fighting against the other four "visage" players. As players kill their four visage opponents, they join with the other players that are still fighting, aiding those fights. Wild, in his own little mini-instance, didn't try to attack and kill the four visages of my friends. I chose just to heal myself and stay alive until help arrived.
Wild's "visage" is a pretty good healer, even when out of tree form and controlled by the computer - and in each of the mini-instances there were grumblings in vent chat about "stupid resto druids who just won't die" throughout the battle. Wild, for his part, stayed alive, wondering what was going on. When other players started to zone in where I could heal them, I did. It took a long time, but we won. Hmm, maybe I'm starting to understand this fight.
After finishing off the "last" boss, we decided to go after the optional boss that only appears in Heroic mode and after killing the other bosses. Amanitar is his name. This boss likes mushrooms, and the whole fight is based on using the "good" mushrooms and avoiding the "bad" mushrooms.
We wiped twice on this fight due to bugs. The first time, the tank, who had backed up to a large fountain so that the boss was turned away from us, suddenly found Amanitar behind him. The boss was in the fountain, which is not an area in play. Supposedly. Amanitar one shot the tank from behind and then wiped the raid.
The second time we changed the tanking location away from the fountain. But after we got through the early part of the battle a flood of new mobs stormed into the fight, surprising the heck out of us and we wiped again.
The third time nothing weird happened, and we killed him. I didn't pay any attention to mushrooms, and it didn't seem to matter. Bugged, or Wild just healed everyone through the damage, I don't know. It worked.
We had planned to take on AN next, but our rogue had to leave, and we called it a night. Wild got a bunch of conquest badges and two triumph badges as well. Time to go buy some gear.
Posts for Week of 7 Sep 2009
Since I know folks have been having a hard time getting access the SN forums, I am reposting this week's entries for each day. I will also add new posts for the content that I haven't been able to get posted on the SN forums.
Quiet Monday (7 Sep) for the Wild family.
JB maintained her routine of Dailies, and even added a 10th Kel'Danas daily as well as the Shattrath fishing daily. The xp haul moved JB 55% of the way to level 74. She also finished the remaining quests on the Hellfire Peninsula to get to Honored rep with Thrallmar. The quests were no contest for JB as the most difficult mob she faced was a level 63 elite. There is a nice shoulder enchant at Thrallmar Revered rep, but JB will have to run Shattered Halls many times to get there. That's unlikely, and the level 70 dungeon can't be easily soloed.
JB continues to amass rep with the Shattered Sun Offensive. It will take a week more of dailies to reach Exalted, the highest level. There are a lot of nice jewelcrafting recipes at that level, and JB is considering giving up Herbalism to become a Jewelcrafter, along with her already maxed out Alchemy profession. Mel is a Jewelcrafter, fairly low level, but with her high speed DK mount it might be better for her to fast level herbalism instead. The two women are discussing it.
A bored Wildshard noted that he was one daily quest short of achieving Revered with Shattered Sun, so he took a trip out there and did one easy bombing run. It doesn't get him anything, but it was something to do. Wild has also decided to pick up the Heroic daily quest when he logs on each day. That way he'll at least already have it in his quest log if an opportunity comes up to get in a group. Yesterday it was the Ulduar 5 man called Halls of Stone. Wild has never been inside that dungeon. Unfortunately, he wasn't around enough to get in on a group, either.
Wild offered to make the spidersilk gear that EZ wanted (I told you he was bored), since Wild is a Tailor and has both those patterns. Sorry, erik, Wild used up the Spider's Silk that Mel had farmed for the other day. I may send her back out to the Arathi Highlands again to farm some more. On Mel's fierst trip she made two complete circuits of the Highlands and got 13 Spider's silk. The drop rate is low, but it didn't take all that long.
Speaking of EZ, she considered joining Myst, Ando, and Laodike in Shadowfang Keep Monday night, but since she already has [Girdle of the Blindwatcher], there isn't really anything left in there that she needs. I hope Ando and/or Lao got the belt.
EZ is still working on her gear, using the Armory link provided of that level 19 twink as a working guide. That toon has a Heirloom item that does not seem to be listed correctly in the Armory. No way that shoulder will have +50 spellpower on it at level 19. By adding all the other spellpower stats (43) and subtracting from the listed total (64), it appears that the heirloom grants +23 spellpower. That's still a huge advantage. The highest spellpower shoulder I can find that's usable by a level 19 is [Feline Mantle] with +2 spellpower. I obviously made a huge mistake getting a trinket heirloom instead of those shoulders.
Gearing up EZ was a lot easier when I thought she would actually be a melee shaman. In truth she is elemental, despite the talents.
Quiet Monday (7 Sep) for the Wild family.
JB maintained her routine of Dailies, and even added a 10th Kel'Danas daily as well as the Shattrath fishing daily. The xp haul moved JB 55% of the way to level 74. She also finished the remaining quests on the Hellfire Peninsula to get to Honored rep with Thrallmar. The quests were no contest for JB as the most difficult mob she faced was a level 63 elite. There is a nice shoulder enchant at Thrallmar Revered rep, but JB will have to run Shattered Halls many times to get there. That's unlikely, and the level 70 dungeon can't be easily soloed.
JB continues to amass rep with the Shattered Sun Offensive. It will take a week more of dailies to reach Exalted, the highest level. There are a lot of nice jewelcrafting recipes at that level, and JB is considering giving up Herbalism to become a Jewelcrafter, along with her already maxed out Alchemy profession. Mel is a Jewelcrafter, fairly low level, but with her high speed DK mount it might be better for her to fast level herbalism instead. The two women are discussing it.
A bored Wildshard noted that he was one daily quest short of achieving Revered with Shattered Sun, so he took a trip out there and did one easy bombing run. It doesn't get him anything, but it was something to do. Wild has also decided to pick up the Heroic daily quest when he logs on each day. That way he'll at least already have it in his quest log if an opportunity comes up to get in a group. Yesterday it was the Ulduar 5 man called Halls of Stone. Wild has never been inside that dungeon. Unfortunately, he wasn't around enough to get in on a group, either.
Wild offered to make the spidersilk gear that EZ wanted (I told you he was bored), since Wild is a Tailor and has both those patterns. Sorry, erik, Wild used up the Spider's Silk that Mel had farmed for the other day. I may send her back out to the Arathi Highlands again to farm some more. On Mel's fierst trip she made two complete circuits of the Highlands and got 13 Spider's silk. The drop rate is low, but it didn't take all that long.
Speaking of EZ, she considered joining Myst, Ando, and Laodike in Shadowfang Keep Monday night, but since she already has [Girdle of the Blindwatcher], there isn't really anything left in there that she needs. I hope Ando and/or Lao got the belt.
EZ is still working on her gear, using the Armory link provided of that level 19 twink as a working guide. That toon has a Heirloom item that does not seem to be listed correctly in the Armory. No way that shoulder will have +50 spellpower on it at level 19. By adding all the other spellpower stats (43) and subtracting from the listed total (64), it appears that the heirloom grants +23 spellpower. That's still a huge advantage. The highest spellpower shoulder I can find that's usable by a level 19 is [Feline Mantle] with +2 spellpower. I obviously made a huge mistake getting a trinket heirloom instead of those shoulders.
Gearing up EZ was a lot easier when I thought she would actually be a melee shaman. In truth she is elemental, despite the talents.
Welcome!
First of all, Welcome to all of you who have been following this story and have made it over here from the Sporting News site. And a second Welcome to the newcomers!
Wild's daily adventures will be posted here as an alternate site to the Sporting News forums, which has been unavailable and unreliable in recent days (and weeks).
By way of background, this story began as a question about World of Warcraft on the Sporting News message forums way back in 2005. I was playing Strat-o-Matic Baseball online, and had recently started playing WoW. That's how a WoW story ended up on a sports site. I have been writing about my "toons" ever since.
The Sporting News forums have gone through a number of transitions over time, including a complete replacement of their forums a few years ago. When that happened the recounting of Wild's adventures was manually moved with laborious love from the old boards to the new.
As many know, those forums are again in trouble, and have been unavailable for long stretches of time. I hear that we may eventually see a second evolution of replacing the current in house managed boards with a third party site.
The problem right now is that I can't get my entries posted! Not on the forums, not through private messages, not even through SN's own blogger. So I was forced to find another way.
If I can ever get thirty seconds of access to the boards, I will post the URL for the new site and (hopefully) start getting readers over to here.
And for those of you who have already found your way here, Thanks!
Wild's daily adventures will be posted here as an alternate site to the Sporting News forums, which has been unavailable and unreliable in recent days (and weeks).
By way of background, this story began as a question about World of Warcraft on the Sporting News message forums way back in 2005. I was playing Strat-o-Matic Baseball online, and had recently started playing WoW. That's how a WoW story ended up on a sports site. I have been writing about my "toons" ever since.
The Sporting News forums have gone through a number of transitions over time, including a complete replacement of their forums a few years ago. When that happened the recounting of Wild's adventures was manually moved with laborious love from the old boards to the new.
As many know, those forums are again in trouble, and have been unavailable for long stretches of time. I hear that we may eventually see a second evolution of replacing the current in house managed boards with a third party site.
The problem right now is that I can't get my entries posted! Not on the forums, not through private messages, not even through SN's own blogger. So I was forced to find another way.
If I can ever get thirty seconds of access to the boards, I will post the URL for the new site and (hopefully) start getting readers over to here.
And for those of you who have already found your way here, Thanks!
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