Category: world of warcraft

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.

Well we made our way through Hyjal, getting more people BT attuned, downing Anetheron with literally four people up, and then trotted up to pay another visit to Thrall. This time successfully taking down the mana burning Kaz’rogal.

Afterward, our esteemed RL decided with our shadow resist sets still in the works, it would be best to forgo the fourth boss and head over to Black Temple. 🙂

So we did that, storming the sewers of the famed temple with the the fury and grace that can only be achieved by <OOB>.

Hehe, my shoulders are watching you.

And on through the new trash, which is always one of the more interesting things about a new end game instance. Eventually trash becomes that monotonus annoying bump in the road that happens to sit between you and the boss that will drop loot. But when entering an instance for the first time, it holds a mystery of its own, and it’s always funny how worthless level 70 elites can bring a t5+ raiding guild to its knees, even if only for a moment.

But enough about that. HL Naj’entus was waiting just up the way for us, with his unique and cool looking model. However, the fight with him is boring as frick. “Dps dps dps, ow, I have a 9 foot spine coming out of mine, can someone get that?, bubble HAX! OMG I HAVE 500 HEALTH HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELZ!”

I mean we downed the idiot in three tries.

But then…

~Choirs of angels sing~

[Halberd of Desolation]

So after our splendid job killing off the leader of the blood elves, we were still without a full raid to tackle Hyjal. It took another downing before we were able to collect a full group with both vials. (Including two priests, yay!) We played around with the trash, and then this weird mob came.

So we killed him. He dropped this cool philanthropy…or philharmonic…quest item! And some trash purples that very nearly went for minimum bid. Bah.

So then we came back the next night and did the same thing again! Only this time a different guy showed up!

This one actually took two tries.

But with that done, we rode our way up the mountain and met this cool orc guy. We’re probably going to chill with him a bit before going farther up the mountain.

By the way, there will be no more throwing of snowballs at the horde’s leader. It’s bad form.

…but not out. 🙂

Okay, let’s see. Solarian went down officially on December 7th. So we had that Saturday, the next weekend, then the weekend before Christmas we didn’t play with Kael due to people doing holiday stuffs, same with the weekend after it, nor did we practice on him the weekend of New Years. So we finally came back to working on Kael last weekend. So this would be our fourth weekend on him, so yeah. Took us a month. /thumbs up

In an attempt to get a little more time on our beloved server’s namesake, I was called up in the middle of watching Monk on Wednesday, with the announcement that we were doing TK. So we cleared out the “rabble” early, leaving us three fabulously open raid nights to wipe to our heart’s content.

But alas, it was not to be. We now had p1->p2 transition under our belts, and Thursday we solidified p2->p3, and started getting p3->p4. Bah, people with their “learning” and “getting better”. We were actually getting to the point where we had free time after p2 to get into position and stuff. It was nuts. Anyway, we made a few changes to adviser kill positioning, and kill order, that seemed to work fairly well.

The kill started out like any other attempt, with a heart wrenching moment in p3 when a tank went down. That lost us a bit of time, but due to the decision that Rosa and Koho had to prove their OPedness, they were left to duo Capernian while the rest of us dealt with the lord of the blood elves and his combustible pets. We tore through shield and egg with the same ferocity, pushing him over the edge to 50% for the first time.

There was a bit of confusion in p5, and some general things that can be cleaned up in future attempts, but as we contented ourselves with simply staying alive, my beloved Kael’thas finally fell.

Dkp was spent, quest items were looted, and I dropped a bomb for one of Kael’s green glowing magic balls. I really just wanted to be the first person to have it. (Plus the neck was a nice upgrade.)

And then we did what any proper and humble guild downing Kael’thas for the first time would do. We went back to Shatt and announced it in the trade channel. I went to turn my trophy to A’dal only to find out that my beloved Kael’thas lives! He hadn’t been working for Illidan all along! (Poor guy has like no friends.) Shock! Awe! Fire! Sha’tar rep++!

And then we hightailed it to Caverns of Time to turn in the vials, get our new rings, and for half the raid to stumble around like blind mice trying to find the entrance to the Hyjal instance.

Once that was done, we played around with some waves of undead, with the “in all but name, leader of the humans” Lady Jaina, before calling it a night around oneish EST.

And I was just lucky enough to fraps the fight (though the video doesn’t start till after The Darkener is down, and there are Omen errors that started popping up the attempt before, and carried over to this one. Either way.

So we decided to celebrate getting another dozen people their Vashj Vials by going out and killing all of the evil in the world.

Kazzak went down first after we played around with his trash, and accidentally pulled him once. Then we headed over to Doomwalker, only to find him already engaged with horde who are members of the Turtle underworld. So we sat back and watched them, a few of us getting caught in earthquake once. But apparently his DOOM was too much, and they fell. So we popped in and took him down. And the turtle guild, as well as our server’s beloved DPS decided to join us in our kill pic. Ahh, you can feel the love.

Earned some eh loot for our trouble, but now we’ll get those cool little icons next to our guild name on wowjutsu…and really. Isn’t that what’s important?

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.