Author: Laura Highcove

I did indeed get the [Rift Stalker Hauberk] the other night when we downed Kael. First time it’s dropped, and it only cost me about 16k…which is actually a lot, but since I had about 53k, it didn’t seem like much in comparison. I also got [Rift Stalker Mantle] and [Netherbane] both for much less than I was expecting. Now, Nabith really doesn’t need anything else from Tempest Keep at all, so next time we go there, depending on class composition, I might ask to bring Near to get her vial.

Saturday was another run through ZA on Nabith. [Dagger of Bad Mojo] dropped, but I insisted Therk roll on it too, and he ended up winning it. Still no trinket.

Sunday the session unfortunately didn’t happen. (I was going to get my Pegasus too…) so SD and had lunch and went shopping. When I logged onto WoW, they had not done the ZA run Therk had scheduled. They were looking for a priest for Hex Lord, but needed a healer, so I respecced holy and jumped in with my little 1200 + healing. Unfortunately Drego disconnected as soon as we started, and Lesia and I were unable to keep up the raid as only two healers. We ended up only getting the first chest, but eventually worked our way through the rest of the bosses (with a huge burp on Hex Lord, during which I specced back to shadow). I ended up taking three new healing pieces home, nullifying the money I had spent just earlier that day to boost my healing. Still a little bitter about that, but life does go on.

[Brooch of Nature’s Mercy]
[Hood of the Third Eye]
[Two-toed Sandals]

Well the title on this one is just not coming to me. In all truth, I spent much of the fight terrified I would be chosen, screw up somewhere in my killing of the constructs, thus causing a 1% wipe. The looming ridicule really doesn’t help either, even if it’s all in good fun, but then I’m a hunter, what do I know? Hm, I seem to be extremely bitter for some reason. As such, let’s move on.

Teron himself is pretty small. I did the quest involving him before his real model was in the game, so this was my first time seeing him. I guess it’s nice for the tank to not have to stare at a mob’s feet for the entirely of the encounter every now and then.

So in we went to our little nook-place and started dpsing/healing the heck out of our respective targets. Three brain heals and a heroism for every group was rather nice as we finally got our entire mini army of shamans together in the same raid this weekend. Our first attempt, he didn’t put his little death mark on anyone for the first 30 sec of the fight or so, so by the time the first person died, we already had him near 60% iirc. He wasn’t quite so nice on the rest of the attempts however.

So at an hour past raid end, with respawns at our heels, we went in for our ‘last attempt'(TM). I started fraps just to have a little video so that people could see some of what they were doing. But I’ll be darned if we didn’t go and down him.

So our constructs killers: Blayne, Waldo, and Azurmahn. Gratz to those three for adapting quickly and allowing us to live. For all those who tried and failed, gratz on the experiance. As such, it should be noted that the constructs do not despawn when the boss dies, and waiting for two of them to wipe out the 15-20 people who were left at the end of the fight was annoying and stupid. (And no, I’m not blaming the last person to be ghosted, I’m complaining about a poor design decision on Blizzard’s part.)

Hm, more bitter. I think I’m going to post the kill pic and be done with this.

[Softstep Boots of Tracking] to Ickeris
[Cowl of Benevolence] to Llewyna

Life’s still going. I’m still fairly content with my current situation outside of work, which is just pretty bad in general. But then I still have no clue *why* I dislike work so much. It’s possible that I’m actually completely crazy, and have just convinced myself somehow that I am normal, but that bit of craziness pops up whenever it’s time to think about or go to work.

As for the good I have:
A loving fiancé
A place to live
A working (and pretty decent) computer
Internet
My health
A Job (even if I don’t like it, at least I have it.)
My parents and siblings all alive and healthy.
Friends who don’t think I’m totally horrible.
A plan for the future, that i’m pretty sure God has specifically laid out for me.

So really, not all that bad. I just have to live through the 8 hours, five days a week that I am at work.

In other news, my writing and posting to my blog has been going really well, and I’m proud of myself. I do find myself a little sort of stuff to post sometimes, but I think getting in the habit of posting something (the fact that it can be kinda short really helps) twice a week means that I’m forced to write *something*. It’s not all great, but none of it is horrible. I think this will allow me to keep struggling forward with my writing, and that’s all I could ask for.

In WoW news, I have Nabith, Near, Pandemonium, and Isrio all at level 70. Isrio now has her epic flight form, and after the discovery that with 375 in both mining and herbalism, you can see both nodes on your map at the same time, I am a very happy panda.

As for the guild, we’re still pushing forward. Mount Hyjal is cleared as of Saturday, putting us as the #2 Alliance guild on the server. (Finally pushed past Reason and SPG, who both stopped raiding.)

Tonight we’re planning on downing Kael again for some vials. I *will* get my t5 chest if it drops, and then I’ll finally have that two piece bonus that will hopefully make Raika a lot easier to keep alive.

Current projects include enough money for one more epic flyer for Nabith, and leveling my shaman/warrior duo Jerelyn and Addendum. No rush on the leveling this time though. My only goal is to get them to 70 before LK, so I have time to play them a bit, in case I want to change my main.

We’re also going to work on making the guild less dependant on Koi. I am assured that he’s not going anywhere, but he worries that what happened to Reason and SPG is a direct result of them losing Arc and Axium, and being unable to go on without that leadership. Whether that’s true or not, it holds some truth for our guild. We have been crazy dependant on Koi since day one, so a little less dependence on him would be beneficial. We’ll sew how it goes though. I think Therk’s leading raid tonight, and he’s pretty decent as long as he doesn’t joke around too much.

First off, I would like to state how ridiculously tired I am right now. I was tired last night and yet I stayed up making the movie, watching it over and over, going through Avril Lavine song after Avril Lavine song trying to find one that fit because I simply couldn’t sleep. Well I did get some sleep, but now I’ve been up for about an hour and a half (Probably close to 2 hours by the time I post this.) because, well I’m fricking excited. Archimonde is down. The past is safe, and we have added more t6 to our arsenal.

Okay, so Archimonde is a pain in the butt fight. Everyone has to know what they’re doing, and they have to do it. We spent a day last week and Friday unceremoniously throwing ourselves at Archimonde. For one this, this fight beats on your soul a bit more than any before. Besides the obvious reference to soul charge, like Vashj there is no trash. However unlike Vashj, and even Kael’thas, you don’t get a few phases in and then wipe. No, with Archimonde you are wiped out pretty quickly when you screw up, added to that the long graveyard run (Hey at least Hjyal is the closest portal.) back and you’re left with lots of time to contemplate what went wrong, and a frickload of attempts about which to think. What started out as a reasonably fun encounter got really *really* old after almost two nights of wipes.

But we were getting better at least. We used to spiral down after just one death, no matter the class. We got better at recovery, consistently getting to 60% before all hell broke loose. But it was getting late, things were looking down, but yet no one seemed to lose. And then we got our salvation. Our beloved Fishy Azurmahn (I told you I was tired.) spoke with some of the members from Recon who told us that staying *on top* of your other group members (Like permanently attached at the hip.) really helped to control the fires. That seemed to do it for us, so thank you Recon.

So as for the fight itself. We had one person go down fairly early, but we managed to make it through that and keep going. A million fire trails and a ton of air bursts later, I look up and realize that Archi’s at 30%. At that point, the thought dared to cross my mind that we might actually do it this attempt! However, the main focus stayed on that orange nipple. I would be where I was supposed to be, and trust everyone else to do the same.

And then the next fear happened, and we lost two people at once. The soul charge knocked out another, and I thought it was over. Our saving grace being that Archi did not spam out those soul charges. Our healers had enough time to top us off before the next one hit.

I knew people were struggling at this point. I can’t even imagine what was going through the healer’s heads as they performed spectacularly in keeping everyone they possibly could alive. He was below 20%; the end was in sight. A soul charge knocked into us, and my health dipped. Healthstone and bandage on cooldown, I hit a health pot. The next second air burst on the group and I went into the air with 260 health and a panic that if I did not nail this landing, I would be dead.

We lost more people and as I bandaged, he dipped to 10% and broke off of Koi. We had 16 people up. The number of soul charges on Archi that had not gone off…

But up went the bubble. Vent was exploding, my hands were shaking as I poured my full 1:1 rotation into his tree draining butt. It was not until watching the video afterward that I saw that the Elune bubble was on my buff bar as red. But during the fight I had no clue how long we had to dps. Any second I was expecting us to have run out of time. And then at 3% he exploded. My heart stopped for the briefest of seconds thinking we had run out of time and were about the be wiped out, and then the loot popped up on my screen.

…

It was over, and we were still alive.

[Scepter of Purification] to Azshane
[Savior’s Grasp] to Whiteliter
[Helm of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Amberh
[Helm of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Devv

I’m going to upload the movie, and go back to bed.

So into Hyjal we went, cleared through a few bosses, and decided. Hey, we like progression. Let’s give the next boss a shot. It seemed like a decent enough idea, so we talked to our good buddy Thrall, and lo and behold more trash started spawning. We dove right in, and cleared it out, and Magtheridon’s big brother (Not really.) came out to play with us.

We got him down to about 20% or so, but some shaky healer positions, unlucky dooms without soulstones, and a lot of freaking fire coming out of the sky spelled death for the tank. So we picked ourselves up, brushed ourselves off, and then realized. “Wait…what if the soulstones/battle rezes aren’t up when we get to the boss?” So we decided two wipe twice on trash in order to make sure our revivals were off cooldown.

Truthfully, I was expecting more…hard.

And since Koi did this with the ZA clear, and it seems like a not horrible idea. I give you the winners of the drops off Azgalor’s first kill:

[Gloves of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Lelaine
[Gloves of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Azshane
[Bow-stitched Leggings] to Tzoid
[Design: Inscribed Pyrestone] To Whiteliter
(Unfortunately something about the site won’t let me both link to wowhead for mouseover and color the link purple. Fix that Koi.) Edit: Works on takoumori.com.

So then we raced up the mountain to get more ancient gem veins, and found all these night elves and a huge tree. And there was this guy using life drain on the tree. We went over to ask what was up, and he wiped us out in 51 seconds. (Not that anyone was counting or anything.) We might have to go pay him another visit, along with practicing jumping off the cliff and not dying.

So amidst stumbling around in the darkness that is SSC and TK for attunement purposes, we also stumbled around in BT. From wyrmcaller mobs who oddly enough…call wyrms and seeing Azeroth floating in the sky to dodging the cutest little volcanos with blue fire and getting punted into a corner we downed the next BT boss to stand in our way. Supremus? Yay?

Well yeah, with that out of the way we actually got into some relatively fun and difficult trash. Yay fun and difficult trash! It’s poor for my health as a hunter to have to deal with those stupid dog mobs who can see me at my max range. But yet that has nothing against the rush of adrenaline shooting though my system when I was pulling pats in Shade of Akama’s room only to have a huge thing fade out of stealth right in front of me. Stupid Akama. Let us know when you’re going to be hiding in the middle of the enemy stronghold.

While the melee mourned their missing shaman, we still managed to burn through the encounter like paper. Illidan must be shaking in his boots. Now back to the Teron Gorefiend simulator…

Oh right…pictures. See here’s the thing…I forgot to upload them before coming to work today. Sorry.

Edit:

Why am I having such a hard time accepting Nabith as my main, and the character I want to keep raiding with and perfecting?

Part of it is probably the stigma against hunters in general. In truth there are a ton of horrible hunters out there. The pet aspect makes leveling easy and fun, and thus people who can’t handle classes that are more difficult to level flock to the class. In truth, mastering the hunter class for endgame is no easier or harder than any other class. However, because there are so many, it is much more common for people to run into horribly played hunters than other classes. This negative feel toward bad hunters permeates the attitude toward all hunters in general, and being very sensitive to such things, I have continued to play a class that a vast majority is looking down their nose at.

The other, and probably larger aspect is that Nabith is, as of now, the *only* character I have ever leveled up entirely for myself. Melannie was a priest because priests were hard to come by. Amebil was a warlock because we only had Rosa. Pandemonium was a paladin because we needed healers. (By the time she neared 60 we were really hurting for tanks, so I switched my focus.) Near was a draenei priest because we needed fear ward, and we needed spriests. (Isrio is just kind of a shadow of Near, I don’t really know how to play her, nor do I ever plan on raiding with her.) Now I don’t dislike any of these classes. In fact all of them are fun to play, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I worked hard leveling them up, because then I thought for once, I could actually be useful to the guild, filling one of those hard to fill slots instead of just being another dps. Now I’m not trying to knock dps. Dpsing well takes skill just as much as anything else, but truthfully, dps is a dime a dozen. Whenever we’re trying to put together a raid and we’re short a tank or a healer, I feel like it’s my fault that I don’t have a healer or tank main. Whether or not that’s logical is not really the point, the point is that that’s how I feel. The same way I feel that it’s somehow my fault that I got two excellent upgrades for nothing.

As of now, I plan on keeping my options open for a new main when LK comes out. By that point I plan on having a level 70 hunter, priest, paladin, warlock, warrior, and possibly shaman. I may stick with Nabith, and I may decide to fill a role that is looking thin as we approach LK. We’ll just have to see.