Author: Laura Highcove

So this weekend was a very productive one. I managed to get Near through the entirety of the Karazhan attunement (and even went into Kara last night to down Aran and Illhoof, yay easy four badges). I was also finally able to get Zuluthed the Whacked down, in order to start my netherdrake rep grinding. Plus I was able to find someone to make my [Cloak of the Black Void]. With that I have hit 900 +shadow damage unbuffed. I’m hoping to run Karazhan sometime this week and possibly get some upgrades, but really, the only thing I *want* is that [stupid necklace] off Kara trash.

I also ran Pand though Strat to get a red winter hat, only to find they don’t drop for level 70s anymore. I have to instead go to Durnholde, Botanica, or…one other place. Either way. I also got the first piece of The Postmaster Set. I may go to see if I can pick up a few more pieces. If I take Nab and Pand, the place is pretty easy. I just have to remember to bring food and water.

And in RL news. Last night SD woke me up at 2:30 saying his eye was in excruciating pain. So off to the hospital’s emergency room we trecked to find out he just has the beginnings of a stye. While happy that it was nothing serious, I am still dead on my feet even with an extra two hours sleep this morning. I don’t take missing sleep well at all. Though it gave me time to get through the next chapter in Fire Emblem, which I haven’t played in forever.

Not so long ago, ie Thursday of last week, the priest I have been leveling for the better part of six months finally hit 70. She did so ~30 min before our weekly raid. I was excited. I had been making her gear, and gathering mats for it since she was about level 30, and I asked for a raid invite. Much to my surprise I actually received one, and I happily trotted off to TK, where we were working on Al’ar, with my shiny new purples, only to get heckled from every side about the few greens I had. Despite this, I still kept up on the damage meters. I wasn’t topping them or anything, but I wouldn’t expect me too. Even if I had been in full T5 I still would have gotten hassle.

But then it doesn’t even matter. As yet again I have leveled a character in order to fill a role the guild needed, only to find that character unwanted. As such, I removed her from the guild to save people from the apparent anguish her presence has caused them. Yes, I am miffed. Giving me hassle because I wanted to have a little fun that would not in any way hurt the guild, on a fight that though we had never completed before, we already proved we outgeared? My heart weeps for your loss. Most of the people who have complained have never lifted a finger to help the guild outside actually showing up to raids. But I digress, it is over and done with, and another piece of me is effectively crushed due to jealously and anger.

So I was prepping for the raid tonight, thinking about Kael’thas, and wanting to read over the strat one more time. Thinking how cool it was that we’re 3/4 in TK, and then I realized I was forgetting something.

Yeah, we totally downed Solarian, and the fight left such a little impression on me that I completely forgot she was even a new boss. I mean look, I didn’t even bother to fight for most of it. /shrug

But after that, we went to see the lovely Kael’thas. My sympathies go out to those of you who had to live through phase one when the advisors had more health than they do now. I swear guys, we’re not allowed to down him until I’ve had time to make a fun little TK banner like the one I made for SSC. Now back to getting flasks for tonight…

Yes, the huge fiery bird that we passed by so many times on our way to wipe on the Void Reaver trash has finally fallen. Not much to this boss really. No aggro on the first phase + tauntable = win. The only real issue was getting back to the platforms after a Fire Quill. To help remedy that, we subjected yet another tank to sitting around twiddling his thumbs except when he needed to have precision timing to jump down. Second phase was a little messier, but our healers did a great job of keeping up with the random damage taken in a large room (which seems to be a bit of a theme these days.)

And we got some nice loot off her. Netherbane, Talon of Al’ar, and the damage cloth wrists. (Hm, Koi, did you get that linking code loaded yet?) All in all a very worthwhile fight.

And even though it was past raid time we went to visit Solarian. She was just as squishy as we expected, but some people seem to have forgotten the lesson that our dear Baron Gedden taught us oh so long ago. (Though I admit it’s hilarious to be dpsing away and suddenly have the entire group standing just next to me suddenly disappear.) Once we’re a bit fresher, she’ll fall and then we’ll be off to visit Void Reaver’s trash, who we haven’t seen since starting SSC.

Well it feels more like a dream than anything else. We first saw Lady Vashj on November 10th, the the day after we downed Leo. Since our strategy is grinding right through the trash to the progression boss, we still had the rest of the instance to clear after that Demon Hunter hottie was downed. That took us the entirely of a raid, so in our normal “Hey, let’s go wipe on the next boss cause it’s too late for a real attempt.” we went up to see Vashj.

It was a fairly productive first try. With half the raid hearthing out, and several members nekkid, we still got her to phase 2. (So hard, I kno, rite?) The next two weeks, due to matters out of our control (Tidewalker can rot in hell.) we only got one night each week to play with our beloved coilfang matron. (Seriously, look at this screenshot. Is that not the most beautiful model in the game?)

We were continuously getting to 2/4 generators down, before the striders (yeah…plural) would cause mass chaos in the raid, and we would wipe. So last night, we changed our strat a bit. We gave priority to damage on the striders instead of the naga as we had been doing. As a result, Koi was tanking three of those scythe wielding buggers at a time at a few points, but the Striders were dying with time to spare.

We choreographed perfectly through vent, getting the tainted elementals down, while calling out for help killing the elementals that fell to second priority when that poison spewing invalid would appear. The rest of the raid responded perfectly.

The generators fell, we ripped through the remaining elementals, the strider, and two nagas that had to be pulled off Koi. The hunters looked to the sky for the spore bats we had never seen before. I got dizzy trying to follow those little buggers through the air while avoiding the poison that was already seeping into the ground.

By the time I called hunter dps on Vashj, she was already down to nearly 25%. She went down fast. So much faster than I remember phase 1 ever going. The poison wasn’t that bad at first. Then around 10% we started running out of room. Koi was moving her to any clear spot he could find (down the stairs) and the healers and dps followed after him like good little puppies.

Then her body fell limp into the poison, and vent exploded.

Third night on Lady Vashj, second time making it to phase 3, and she was down.

I won’t be the first to say our guild is undergeared. We haven’t had the farming time the other guilds have had. We downed Magtheridon once. We downed Void Reaver once. The only time we “farmed” were the weeks we downed a new boss. If the progression boss didn’t go down, we didn’t touch the other bosses.

And yet Lady Vashj lays dead at our feet. It’s a good feeling. (So is having this elusive Vashj Vial. Hehe.)

So we played with Leo last week, as we are apt to do when we down a new boss we go wipe on the next one just to see the fight, (Generally people are lazy and haven’t read the strat yet.) for whatever time we have left in the raid.

The strat is pretty easy, all things considered, and after our continued success against Mr. Unstable, I figured most of the large bumps having to do with aggro sensitive fights were behind us. Turns out I was right. Our second pull of the night he was down to an agonizing 1% before he enraged and wiped out the remaining dps.

After that we had a few issues with people learning to tackle their inner demons correctly. Though in general our healers had less trouble than our dps. I don’t know what that says about our guild… And on our last attempt of the night (after many of our bedtimes. 😮 ) we brought down the poor, insane demon hunter with almost a minute left on his engrage timer.

Then he went and dropped double Champion and the tanking belt. /sigh

If you feel like being a jerk, go do it in some other guild.

Karathress had a really rocky start. We attempted him for much of a whole night with our shaman tank getting his butt handed to him. It was most frustrating, but we did quickly find that pulling Mr. Priest back far enough in the hall reset the fight, so that ended up saving us a lot of time on wipe recovery. Whoever didn’t program the totems and pet to despawn when their masters reset needs to be fired.

ANYWAY. We finally tracked down the elusive Cervande (Our main off-tank) who had been held captive by some nefarious overlord (his boss), and threw him at the shaman with a few mad dads, and a flask. That seemed to do the trick as after a few small positioning adjustments, we got the scaled jailor down to 3% before he wiped out the raid in about 10 seconds.

Came back the next night fresh, and with more healers, and took him down. There was no leet 2Her, but we picked up our third and fourth pieces of t5, and healing cloth shoes for the holy priest we don’t have in our guild.

With Karathress down, we headed back to the bosses we had bypassed in the name of progression. Morogrim was one shot by a raid of 23 our second week on him. And tomorrow we’ll clear out Hydross and Lurker before going to play with that hottie Leo. We have our strat all worked out.

I probably should’ve waited till tomorrow to do this, as tired as I am, but I managed to fraps the fight, and tomorrow shall be spent learning the inner workings of Windows Movie Maker.

Tidewalker. What is there to say about Tidewalker? He’s big…and purple…and farts green bubbles? This fight is easy. The strat is almost laughably simple. Execution; slightly harder. I don’t think anyone would disagree that this is a bit of a gear check.

Mostly a healer check. Can you keep up the raid when they all take damage (earthquake), when half (or more) of the healers are suddenly mia for a good 10-20 seconds (watery grave), when two tanks have to grab crazy aggro on two gaggles of murlocs that everyone else has to aoe down (gogo pally tanks), and when the tank is taking OMG SPIKE DAMAGE! Of course it’s also a tank check to survive that OMG SPIKE DAMAGE. As well as a raid health check, to have enough health to make it through the watery grave.

Our healers rose beautifully to the challenge, with only minimal complaints. And things went much better once our second pally tank actually went and specced protection. (ie, he didn’t die if I got graved.)

Like Maggi-poo, it was our first time to the last phase, but everything went off without a hitch. Those of us not dpsing the boss (and thus not seeing that he hit 25%) were correctly informed of the shift into the hallway. All of the nefarious bubbles despawned a good distance away from us, and never gave us a problem.

Of course to add to the excitement, our MT succumbed to the OMG SPIKE DAMAGE at 1%, and the gaggles finished us off after we finished Tidewalker off. Yay DI and SS.

After that we went to play with Karathress a bit. Talks of the leet 2Her abounded as our raid leader stumbled through the strat. Luckily some of us had actually read it beforehand in anticipation of Tidewalker’s imminent demise. We pulled! And I died in 16 seconds. (Tanking the lolshaman with lolwindfury and lolspitfire.) It was impressive. I wish I had a screenshot. I’ll apparently be tanking the priest from now on. 🙂