Life after Death

Another attempt at the Friday Five RP challenge. This time the task was to write about "If your char died and was resurrected as a Deathknight, what would happen?"

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The sword felt heavy in her hands, so cold and so hungry. Swinging it experimentally she almost decapitated a passing ghoul and the voice in her head murmured its approval.

Outside her head was clearing now, the voice so calming so seductive whispering through her foggy thoughts. Turning her blood to ice, inciting her to violence. Telling her all about those Scarlet insects, how she had to crush them beneath her black boots. Images flashed through her fractured mind, women screaming as the sword descended, children cowering behind their parents. All superimposed against a fiery red burning sky, so real she could almost taste the acrid smoke.

Never before had she waded in the blood of the fallen, never before had she seen people run screaming from her. It felt so alien but so so right. All the time, the voice was there, tutoring, encouraging, suggesting. The battlefield was a symphony of loathing, the screams of the dying, the singing of the blade and the grunting of the ghouls as they ran about their grisly business.

With time came the hate, these pitiful creatures didn't deserve their lives, their beating hearts. Merely a pestilence on the face of the land, vermin to be purged once and forever. Where once she had brought succour to the wounded, nurtured and healed, now she stormed through the lines bringing her Master's message of death and destruction.

She learned fast, a quick eye and a swifter blade brought passing praise from her instructors, not that it mattered. Whether they rewarded her or flogged her meant nothing. All that mattered was the voice, when it was silent she felt hollow, an empty vessel serving no purpose. Desiring it, craving it, she took to worse and worse acts of depravity. Slitting the throat of an infant in front of its moaning, mewling mother, ripping flesh from bone and crushing skulls under foot.

Then, came that fateful day at Light's Hope. One minute she had been facing off against a young paladin, circling him, enjoying the dance. Then the next, a sudden burst of pain exploded in her mind. The voice.... the voice was gone, leaving a void of nothingness. It didn't stay empty for long though, memories blood soaked and horrible swam through her consciousness burning her. Her armor felt too big, too heavy and her head spun. Slumping to the ground, her scream echoed through her whole being, bringing back haunting memories of women, their mouths open in frozen, gaping screams, women she had slaughtered, wives, mothers, daughters.

Desperate, like a cornered rat she begged the voice to return, nothing. Closing her eyes she threw herself at the throat of the nearest paladin, hoping either his death would return her one true master to her or failing that someone would end her misery by killing her like the rabid and diseased dog she was. Instead, gauntleted hands caught her wrists, disarmed in seconds she was forced to her knees. A cool hand stroked her forehead, voices talked over her, calling her feverish, saying she needed to rest, that it would take time, others, mostly those with a pulse suggesting it would be better to end it now, cut her down like a mongrel cur.

One voice, louder than the others spoke, "enough blood has been shed tonight. She lives". All arguments ceased. Arms lifted her, loosened her armor and carried her away from the muddy field into the chapel. Losing consciousness, her last thoughts were first of all of loss and loneliness, but as her mind faded into blackness, that voice... the man who saved her, who gave her yet another chance.... perhaps there was still some hope.

The Mitts Report

Mitts hit her 50th season today and picked up 2 new mini pets in the process (sprite darter hatching and robo chicken). I'm actually surprised at how much I'm enjoying leveling her. Compared to the Gnomeling's evil enhancement shaman the difference between damage taken per mob is huge even though the difference in damage is minor.

The vanilla wow content is so empty though, its rather sad, this is the first time ever that questing in STV we haven't seen a soul, horde or alliance. Apart from that Shaman encounter I mentioned earlier, we haven't even been ganked at all. A quick check of /who 10/50 proves there are plenty of people leveling, but the majority it seems are alts being powerleveled through instances and so Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms are empty of all adventurers. In fact we have seen more lv 80's running around doing their explorer/loremaster/seeker achievements than we have seen people of similar level. If we were leveling solo or had just bought the game, I think we would have found it rather depressing.

Off the beaten track

One of my first memories of WoW is being a little baby druid and going on a pvp raid to Crossroads, We ran through Darkshore and Ashenvale staring at the scenary and finally we hit the Barrens. The change in music, the giraffes, both of us were just transfixed in wonder. We didn't actually make it to Crossroads as we were having connection problems at the point and we err lost the raid, but to our little lv 12's it was a huge adventure. We had felt Teldrassil seemed so huge so see the world map and all these so very different zones was amazing. We later found Crossroads and in fact those alliance toons probably spent more time in the Barrens than in Ironforge, better weather and all that.

Way before the explorer achievement was added to the game, I loved wandering off the beaten track, staring at the scenary and taking screenshots. Ideally I would love an extra explorer achievement or something to reward the people who don't just run around ticking off a prescribed list of destinations like sheep on package tour, but I suppose the second you give some tangible reward you ruin the point of it. That said, im working on a list of my must sees before you quit, a zone by zone description of the off the beaten track stuff and hard to miss quests. The plan is to start with Arathi but I'm busy doing the AQ quest line chain on my priest so its a little delayed.

PTR Musing

• Serendipity now reduces the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell by 4/8/12%. (Down from 6/12/20%) - this is a fairly big nerf to what was orginally proposed and while I can see the 60 percent reduction assuming of course you had already cast 3 flash heals or 1 binding heal + 1 flash being a tad overpowered, I'm not sure 36 percent will make enough of a difference. Especially since you have already had to use in the best case scenario 2 global cooldowns to stack it to 3. Its always going to be situational just like most of the holy tree.
• Body and Soul *New Talent* - When you cast Power Word: Shield, you increase the target's movement speed by 30/60% for 4 sec, and you have a 50% chance when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases. - I'm in two minds about this talent. Personally I don't agree with Blizzard's philosophy that all talent trees should be fit for pvp and pve. When you have 2 healing trees as priests do, one will always be better assuming equal skill for pvp, its impossible for it to pan out any other way. I can see the movement speed aspect having pve aplications, for example: every guild has at least one guy who usually plays a caster dps who sucks at moving out of stuff, they are far too busy staring at the damage metre to notice they are on fire or standing on a black hole, and this talent could buy them enough movement speed to get them out of danger. In fact on any fight where movement is required this could be fun, finally the ability to finish your cast, shield yourself and then beat the rest of the raid to the safe spot. The chance to remove poison is more iffy, if 2 points in the talent bought you 100 percent chance, then yes, great. But the biggest poison problem for priests in PvP was vipersting which has already been nerfed quite considerably in its own right this patch.
• Noblegarden has been redesigned into a week-long holiday with new items, quests, and more. Various achievements have been added, including the meta-achievement Noble Gardener, which is now required for the meta-achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. - Yay, proper fun things to do rather than just having one day to run around lowbie zones egg hunting.
• Sprite Darter Eggs: May now (very rarely) drop from Sprite Darters in Feralas. Note that only Horde characters can attack and kill Sprite Darters. - about time really. Having faction specific pets is great only if both factions have something unique available to them.
• Tiny Emerald Whelplings: May now (very rarely) drop from Adolescent Whelps in the Swamp of Sorrows. - Hopefully that will up my chance of farming one.
• The achievement Brew of the Year has been removed from the Brewmaster meta-achievement. The achievement Brew of the Month has been added in its place. - All in all, I wish they hadn't given into the QQ on this one. Not because I'm a member of the Club, although I am but because people who weren't interested in the festival fun and frolics before they gave tangible rewards and could be checked off are in my opinion doing it for all the wrong reasons and shouldn't be rewarded when they aren't interested in taking part.
• Horde characters may now obtain the quest CLUCK! from Chickens. While Farmer Saldean won't be selling Special Chicken Feed to the Horde, perhaps "Westfall" William Saldean in Brill might... - Again, just like the Spite darter change this is long overdue for the same reasons.

Over all, I'm fairly happy with all the changes so far. The only real priest nerf is the changes to mana regen and I'm confident if its impossible to function with the new changes, they will be fixed.

Other bits and bobs I'm excited about

Fishing dailies in Dalaran: I might have been a late convert to fishing, but I actually rather like the fishing quests and im glad some new ones have been added. The tasteful jeweled fishing rod, just perfect for doing a spot of city fishing and the crab minipet plus the fact one of them sends you to Shozalar basin and I could happily spent all day there under the rainbow of River's Heart is just chocolate icing on the cupcake (Yes, giving chocolate up for Lent was a huge mistake, went out for lunch yesterday to a place that does fabulous hot chocolate with marshmellows and cream and I couldn't have one, next year I'm so giving up something I dislike).

More cooking recipes: Including one to make jelly, finally dinner parties in Dalaran can be complete.

The Argent Tournament: Knights in shining armour, Ladies in Lakes, jousting, mini pets, and smashing people's faces in with lances..... can't wait. It is if they are building a mini-dalaran in Icecrown, complete with Inns, tents and profession trainers. Everything a wannabe champion might need in the days and months to come.

When you discover you are living with a pyschopath

My warrior and the gnomeling's shaman were happily and innocently leveling in Tanaris this morning, frolicking in the desert sun and generally minding our own business. Then along comes this lv 80 shaman helping a lv 40 bloodelf hunter quest, so what does the big strong tauren do? Naturally he pursues our lowbies and whilst Lylia being the self sacrifical sweetie he is, gave my mount waterwalking and told me to run for it, his ghostwolf couldnt escape from the shaman's epic bear. To be fair, the shaman only killed him once and then left, allowing him to ankh but .....

Why did Blizzard put a portal in Dalaran straight to Tanaris if they didn't want you to teach bullies in the desert a lesson? No the Caverns of Time is not the correct answer to the portal question btw. So we log off, log our mains and hurry off to do some sunbathing. Unfortunately it seemed that Mr hero shaman who bravely pursued two lowbies across the ocean, didn't do so well in PvP versus a lv 80 warrior as he did versus a lv 46 shaman. In the same time it took Lylia to do 18k of damage, the shaman managed a mere 1k to him. I was a late arrival to the party so it wasn't as if the shaman saw me and gave up, he was just a keyboardturning muppet who can't fight or run away from a prot warrior.

So where does the pyscho bit come in? Well Lylia spent the next 2 hours killing them in a variety of locations leaving a trail of skeletons all the way from the Lost Rigger Cove to outside Mudspocket. The moral of this is, there are always bigger fish with bigger teeth in the sea and even if you are the mightiest player on the server, sometimes you will be beaten via quantity which is one reason why we don't gank unless provoked. Hopefully thats a lesson Mr Cow learnt tonight.

Edit: Lylia's guide to successful camping - kill the flight master so your friends (victims) can't leave.

Flying Solo

We gquit this morning. I still have mixed feelings about it, but given the amount of drama, some of it loot related, I got to the stage where I dreaded reading the forums in the morning. I think part of the problem was the guild wanted to be all things to all people. Which as we all know never works, then there were all the asides during forum discussions where people never quite named who they were attacking or exactly what their issue was with, which left a faint bad taste in my mouth because at the back of my mind, I couldnt help thinking, "is that aimed at me" but even if it wasn't and im fairly sure most of it wasn't, I still found it dreadful because it was aimed at someone in the guild. For example three separate people have all used the "door is thataway" (paraphrased slightly due to language differences, actually more than slightly but you get the jist) line in forum posts recently and as someone who actually likes debate and discussion on the forums, I find that so hard to accept, especially in a guild which prides itself on its maturity and friendly community.

So why the mixed feelings? Well, it basically stems from the fact that I tried fairly hard with the guild. I tried to be an active member both on the forums and ingame, in short I tried to do everything right yet all we got in return was the feeling that people thought we were being the unfair ones. For example, Lylia who had being tanking a lot felt he was getting mixed signals about the speed of runs, there are the body pulling camp (mostly ex-hardcore raiders who are edging forward or doing sleep emotes) and then there are the ones who wanted to go slower, so he made a forum post asking for clarification and explaining why its frustating (hoping that both camps would discuss it and come to mutual agreement so he knew what the majority wanted) and then the thread gets a "FFS" post from a Council member which pretty much ends any ability to discuss the topic (and I'm sorry, but if you are an officer/council, you can't turn that hat off at will, it just doesnt work like that).

Now what? Not sure, but I know I don't want to join another guild for the forseeable future. I want to level my alts, do some pvp and possibly do some PuGs (because that way, if they annoy me or upset me I can walk without feeling anything) plus I know there won't be any drama filled forum threads waiting for me in the morning.

On a side note, I'm sure some people will assume we quit because we are "loot-whores" or because we want hardcore raids, they are wrong. Its not about loot, its not about server firsts, we were happy with the ability to raid 2 hours a night when we felt like it. In fact most of it can be attributed to the forums, it appears the pen is indeed mightier than the [foam sword].

Riding in the rain

Mitts reached exalted with Stormwind this morning and got her bloodstained and sticky mitts on a beautiful black stallion.

When I think of warriors I see the polished plate of medieval times, jousting (one of the reasons I'm loving the PTR so much) and damsels in distress, so the warhorse goes perfectly.

Plus Hannibal might have crossed the Alps on an elekk err elephant but I'll bet he didn't have to contend with them constantly getting stuck in doorways. Stormwind and dainty Dalaran just weren't designed with big hairy mammoths and elekks in mind.

Home is where the heart is?

I was rereading a post on player housing the other day and it got me thinking. None of my characters are really city people, big towns and lots of people are great for day trips and shopping but not so good for hanging out in peace and quiet. So where would they like to hang their hats?

Well Mitts found the perfect place whilst out questing the other day.

Moored in Theramore harbour, there stands an empty ship. Flowering herbs grow in windowboxes, a bookshelf to hold the few (mostly unread) books she possesses and plenty of cupboard space for all that heavy armor.

There is plenty of living space with extra chairs and tables, plus hammocks for any drunken overnight guests. The decks provide sunbathing space as well as room for a spot of fishing plus if the surroundings become too boring, there is always the option of uping anchor and sailing off into the sunset. Wonder what the penality for stealing a ship is in Azeroth?

Project M.I.T.T.S

In the months since WotLK went live, I've only really been spending time on my priest. None of the 70 alts have even made it to 71 which is most unlike me. However in recent weeks I've been looking for something new ingame.

Thus project M.I.T.T.S was born. Partly because I was struggling so much to get interested in leveling my shaman/druid or paladin I wanted to try something new. I was sure I didn't want anything with a healing tree or a caster dps and rogues are skanky so that left deathknights or warriors. Currently you can't move in Dalaran without falling over a deathknight and I hate the dirty ashtray look of their aoe so that left warrior.

Now I know Night elves are the best alliance choice especially for tanking since the last racial reshuffle, followed by dwarves but when I closed my eyes and invisioned my little warrior, it wasnt a tall nelf or chunky little dwarf I saw, but a purple skinned, tail wielding alien creature. The plan is to level as prot, primarily to minimise downtime and so I can make fools of any melee dps wishing to pick a fight.

On a side note, the name has more to do with my inability to hang on to two mittens without a piece of string being attached than any exciting acronym.

Of fishes and fog

I've always loved reading Anna's friday 5 and the responses people give. So after weeks of procrastinating, here is my first attempt that I've got around to posting somewhere. Ok, I rather failed at the first hurdle (500 words was way to short once I started to write), but I really enjoyed doing it.

The fog was encroaching faster now, half the dock was already shrouded in its damp embrace. The young priestess sighed and pulled her cloak tighter, whoever named Mist's edge had certainly been accurate. How naive she had been when her instructor's at the temple had told her, "its time to move on", dreaming of Stormwind's golden spires or Ironforge's dark caverns. Instead of an exciting metropolis, they sent her to Darkshore.... "to learn" they said. What could she possibly learn here, there wasn't even books, just picking mushrooms in the woods and fishing. That was obviously no job for a Priestess of Elune, she wasn't a peasant, a cook or a fisherman. Everything was so sleepy, the worse injury seen in the days since she arrived was a tiny scratch a sentinel had received whilst out bear hunting, there wasn't even any blood. Dinner, every night was exactly the same, bread and fresh fish... hence the reason she was out in the freezing cold about to be swallowed whole by the fog.

She fished for another 5 minutes but the weather worsened, Auberdine was completely veiled from her and all noise even the sea was muffled, but faintly, carried by the salty air a sound caught her attention. It sounded like screaming. Grabbing her bucket, she picked up the hem of her gown and ran for the town. Storm lanterns were burning bright and the sentinels were running around, orders being yelled and obeyed. Watching from the misty shadows, she watched one of the younger sentinels lead three horses from the docks, sweat was pouring from their flanks as they rolled their red eyes in panic.

Her sharp intake of breath revealed her position to one of the sentinel commander's, "Priestess come", the urgency left no room for argument. She was lead to the Inn where a sailor was lying on the bed, his shirt soaked with dark blood. He was human, young but his skin was clammy like the fog. There were two other humans in the room, an older woman, veiled and another man, a warrior who raised a thick black eyebrow when he saw the priestess. "No disrespect but is the best you can do?", he turned to the Sentinel "she's a slip of girl, I doubt she could cope with a nosebleed". "Perhaps", the Sentinel replied "but she's the only healer within a days travel and you don't need to be a priestess to know he needs help now". "What happened", the words slipped from the Priestess's lips without thinking, as she stared down at the injured boy. "Shipwreck", the warrior grunted, "can you help him?", "I don't know", her honesty surprised her, earlier on the beach had someone provided this scenario to her whilst she dreamed her way through the fishing, the answer would be have been a fast, aggressive yes, but now, with the smell of blood hanging thick in the cramped room, the two humans and the sentinel all watching her and the boy, the dying boy staring up at her silently begging for help, her mind was empty of spells. She wanted to run back into the fog, perhaps she was destined to be a fisherwoman after all.

Then the woman, silent for so long spoke, her Darnassian was poor but the emotion in words as she pleaded for someone to save her son, brought tears to priestess's eyes. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to block everything out, focusing just on the light, imagining it rising inside her, filling her with its power. Nothing, she tried again, still nothing. Just when she was about tell them all what a fraud she was, that there was nothing she could do, she heard a faint intake of breath and opening her eyes, to her own amazement her hands were encased in golden light. Power was streaming between her and the boy, the ragged edges of his wound were closing up in front of her eyes. Tired, she sank to the floor, only to be enveloped in the elder woman's gown, kisses reigning down on her cheeks.

A whole new World

The first thing I did this morning was skim MMO-Champion for more PTR updates. I then spent the next 20 minutes laughing.

I'm so glad my paladin is nothing more than a gemcutting bot only escaping Dalaran for the jc daily. I can't help wondering if like me the tier designer went to see Aladdin during this winter's pantomine season, its the only explanation I can think of for Ulduar bringing us bellydancing paladins.

Ok, the ladies of the harem, err priests set isnt that much better. Black might be a great colour for our shadowy brethren but its a bit harsh for my tastes. Have to say I love the druid one though, especially the shoulders and helm. Seems a bit unfair though, those ugly druids get a pretty crescent moon balanced on their foreheads and we get a facemask... or a muzzle.

I have given junk food (i.e. chocolate) up for lent so reading patch notes and giggling everytime I see a paladin will be my main source of pleasure for the next 40 days.

Romantic gestures + Warriors = ???

Breakfast at sea

Sometimes the best place for a romantic picnic is somewhere off the beaten track.

Elder Mariposa

Mariposa finally got around to collecting all the coins of ancestry this morning and whilst I don't feel that Elder Mariposa has much of a ring to it, it got me thinking. Where would Elder Mariposa want to spend the Lunar Festival, afterall everyone knows location is key.

Definately somewhere quiet with water and flowers nearby. My first thought was one of the oasises in the Barrens. Beautiful, peaceful and relaxing, either that or at the top of the Twin Pillars in Feralas. Visiting the ancestors should require a bit of effort on the part of the visitee, mountain climbing or wading into lakes at the very least. A physical journey as well as a spiritual one if you will.

Elder Lylia on the other hand wants the opposite of peace and quiet. His perfect location would be in the original incarnation of Alterac Valley, riding Korrak's shoulders into battle. In order to collect his coin you would have sacrifice yourself on the field to prove yourself worthy. If you afked before the battle was done his vengeful spirit would follow you for the remainder of your time playing WoW jinxing your RNG and destroying your epics.

The addition of some angry ancestors would certainly liven up the festival, perhaps Omen should be untethered from the Moonglade as well. A few ghosts running around smiting everyone from their beams of moonlight plus a giant demon dog running around eating people would add a whole new side to the proceedings. It would also make leveling alts at this time of year as much fun as doing it during the zombiefest... but all in all, a small price to pay in my opinion.

So where in the world would your Elder park themselves and their portable mailbox?

Wtb Harpies as a playable race

Ive had a feather fetish ever since I hit my very first harpy in the face with a shadowbolt. Not to mention there are plenty of times when I feel distinctly harpyish so getting to play one ingame would be the icing on the cake.

Dancing naked in the slimes

The naked bug sure livens up raids.. here we see naked paladins ressing those who fail at Frogger (see how kind I am, I cut out the dead so people can't laugh at them).

How to conquer the Old Kingdom

Its our first attempt at a video, so most of the editing is non existent. 

Recommend watching it full screen by clicking on the icon at the top right corner. Its also played back at 4x speed as otherwise it would be longer than Titanic.

A couple of points: 

1. Notice the 50k spell reflects, warriors make mincemeat out of the spellflingers.
   
2. Eyes in the dark... is dispellable, but still very very annoying.
   
3. With the Prince, the fire balls are very predictable. If hes tanked facing your party (obviously the melee still need to run), all the balls should miss the caster group without them having to move. They come out from left, right and straight behind him and as you can see in the video im in no danger of being hit at all.
   
4. Lots of people say on the forums that he does his Embrace of the Vampyr randomly, its not random. He does it 3 times per kill at around 75/50/25 percent, doesn't matter how slowly you kill him.
   
5. As you can see in the video I survive the embrace with only 19k health (fort, commanding shout, food buff), powerword shield does absorb a chunk of the damage and shadow protection helps mitigate it further. I do however swop in some stamina gear.
   
6. The end boss is a joke. The only "hard" part of the fight is the insanity and of course there only being 2 of you makes it pretty simple. The reason we take so long killing each other is delibrate. I kill Lylia's clone as fast as possible whilst he kites mine around, then I join him in his "insanity" and mana up. The reason we don't do it the other way around is because his clone sunders, which means either I have to tank it (losing out on regen opportunities) or he loses a chunk of armor.

The Party's Over

Or how to 2 man Prince Taldaram on heroic as a holy priest/prot warrior combo.

You need a couple of things:

Patience: Its going to take a while. Our first kill took us 14 minutes and 52 seconds, our second was around 11 minutes something.

Stamina: You need enough health to survive the full Embrace of the Vampyr as its highly unlikely either of you will have enough dps to break it early. I recommend wearing some pvp/high stamina gear. With commanding shout I was sitting at 18,500 ish which with a PW:shield left me around the 2-3k mark after the embrace, perfectly survivable. However, the more health the better.

Tactics: The Prince is a very simple fight, he only has 3 abilities, 2 of which are fight defining and 1 which is marginally annoying when you aren't carrying any Dpsers. 

Embrace of the Vampyr =  the reason why you need lots and lots of stamina. You basically have to rely on the fact that you will resist some of the damage with shadow protection.

Flame Sphere = As usual, fire = bad. Run away from these.

Bloodthirst =  Annoying when your dps is a prot warrior and a holy priest throwing out dots and wanding.

Kiting is the name of the game. On our first kill we went for pulling him to the entrance and back, however today we tried a more simplistic and time saving plan involving just sticking to the space below his platform.

Starting from his platform, at the first fire orbs we headed down the steps, tanked him there for a bit before moving in the centre of the room to avoid the 2nd set of orbs and finally heading towards the steps where we entered his area. Its then a case of repeat, repeat, repeat for the next 10 minutes, interspaced with a few embraces ( we have had 3 embraces each time so far which given the fact we shaved a good few minutes off our kill time leads me to suspect it is percentage linked, not time based).

As the healer you want to always stay a good 30 yards away from the tank, which saves you having to do any emergency running and helps the tank leave in a hurry with intervene if needed. Whilst neither of you should get hit by any orbs, prayer of mending is its usual awesome self for running away.

The Embrace of the Vampyr is random so you can get lucky with your tank getting it every single time as we did today, but as long as you keep both of you at as maximium health as possible and shield whenever you see him start his warning speech there should be no issue there. The embrace is partially resistable so shadow protection should be up, and if its the tank who gets it, start casting a greater heal to land just after the embrace with its 100 percent healing debuff runs out to make sure the Prince's melee attacks don't finish him/her off.

All in all, its a very easy fight. Because you are kiting for a most of it, mana shouldn't be an issue, you get plenty of time outside the five second rule. This is particularly true of the Embrace periods, thats my time to wand or lie there thinking of trashy Vampire movies depending on whether I'm the one on the floor or not.

Result: One easily achieved Achievement.

This week in brief

1. We did our first 25 man on Tuesday night, cleared the spider wing without any wipes. Maenxxa is an angel compared to what she used to be like at 60, poor Lylia always ends up kiting at Anub'Rekhan, vanilla WoW his hunter always had to do it and now he ends up tanking her. Think he must be sick of hearing ""Yes, run! It makes the blood pump faster!".

I got a shiney new cloak around 1 hour after I spent 100 gold enchanting the last one. Still not sure about the darkglow enchant thingie, but healing cloak enchants are somewhat lacking in excitement factor. (Edit: tested over the course of an Obsidian run, it gave exactly the same amount of mana as my meta gem, so between both of them I got 16k mana - ok that includes trash but since the meta gives double the mana, the cloak enchant must proc twice as often).

2. I hate the sons of Hodir. If it wasnt for an ice mammoth, I would be so tempted to take inscriptions just so I can skip out on their horrible horrible dailies.

3. The Maiden of Grief is a griefer, manaburning b***h. However with some perservence, sneakiness and thumping your keyboard extra hard she is two mannable on heroic. Still hate her though. No wonder shes all alone in a back room in the Halls of Stone, no one wants to play with such a meanie.

4. Dalaran is too small for all the people running around in it, one of these days one of the mages will sneeze and down will come dalaran, cradle and all. 

5. I wish my Oracle egg would hatch faster, maybe if I make the gnome sit on it...

6. We are now up to 6 heroic bosses defeatable as priest/warrior combo. 3 in the Nexus, 1 in the Occulus and 2 in the Halls of Stone but think we are running out ones that don't test dps too much to be possible. That said we are getting faster and faster at killing the ones we can kill. Our first kill of Ormorok the Tree-Shaper was around 7 minutes, now we are down to 5 minutes.

7. 25 mans are easier than their respective 10 man versions. Anyone else feel thats a bit odd?

8. Obsidian Sanctum with all dragons dead is welfare loot. It actually makes all the effort I went through to get my season 1 on an alt look painful. That said, really enjoyed getting back into raiding. Its been a breeze really, relaxed and fun without a single drama filled second... I can only hope it continues that way.

A Goddess among Penguins

Beware me and my penguin army, conquering Northrend one iceberg at a time.

Molten Core melted

Where once it took 40 heroes, now it takes 2 slightly less heroic types. Techinically Lylia could probably have done it solo since all I did was stand 40 yards away tapping my foot.. prot warriors need more DPS.

Magmadar proved similiarly easy, its hard to believe our MT who happily smashed his way through BWL, AQ40 and Naxx the first time around used to cry like a little girl if we didn't have a dwarf priest in the raid for doggy killing time.

Fun fact: My first ever Rag kill took place on the 6th of Jan 2006. Looks like the place has gone downhill since then.

Dragonslayers

Heroic Nexus

As a direct result of a drink and anger fueled Horde Hunting spree at around 5am on the morning of the 1st we ended up in Coldarra. Since there was a distinct lack of Horde, we were looking for other things to do and the idea of 2 manning at least the first boss in Heroic Nexus was suggested.

It turns out at least 3 (Grand Magus Telestra, Ormorok the Tree-Shaper and Commander Kolurg) are killable with only a tank and healer. Ok it takes a while, around 6 to 10 minutes per boss but there is none of the annoyance factor when your PuG members are dancing on icicles or running into whirlwinds. 

Other places on the list of things to 2 man are Molten Core (although we have to wait for the next patch), ZG (I always wanted a raptor) and the rest of the Nexus.