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.

Happy New Year

With the new year creeping stealthly up on us, (I had this really scary book as a child in which Old Father Time could have passed as an undead), its time to make some resolutions. Now usually I manage to ignore or break all mine by breakfast on around the 4th of jan. This year however will be different (yes I say that every year too), but it really will, I promise. 

So in the short-term I want to:

1. Hit exalted with the gnomes. I always wanted a mechostrider and with the next patch it seems my dreams will finally come true. All in all I expect this to take a couple of hours as I still have all the start zone/Dun Morogh/Loch Modan quests untouched on my Priest.
2. Hit revered with the Oracles. Must start trying to hatch mini-pets as soon as possible. (3 days of doing all the dailies)
3. Hit exalted with the Tuskars. I need that fishing rod and well a pet penguin wouldn't go amiss either. (5 days of doing all the dailies)
   
4. Finish all the quests in the Storm Peaks. We are apart half way there at the moment, so a good days questing should clear that no problem.
   
5. Finish all the quests in Grizzly Hills.
   
6. Make my epic flying carpet, even though im unlikely to ever ride it anywhere. The surfing motion makes me feel seasick. Can't help wondering what the pillow/cushion thingie is held on with though and why can't i take passengers, there is plenty of room on the rug and its not like tailoring gives anything else worthwhile. A gnome panicking and peering over the edge as it clings on for dear life would be cute.
   

Mid-term aims (mostly for the next patch)

1. Exalted with Sporeggar, but Im going to wait until rep gives the same amount regardless of what level you are. That way repeatedly farming heroic Underbog should also produce enough Cenarion Expedition rep to tip Mariposa over into exalted and a hippogriph.
   
2. Exalted with the Timbermaw

Long-term aims

1. 100 000 hks. I recently hit 50 000 with the death of an annoying arcane mage in EotS so imagine this one will really be a long haul. Its annoying that achievements like this one arent account wide as I definately have killed over 100 000 players, just on different toons. Which brings to the really weird part, the other night I thought I would play around on an alt for a bit whilst Lylia finished some work but I just couldn't get into it. For the first time ever, I don't want to mess around doing stuff on other toons, I just want to make my little priest perfect. I feel distinctly odd.

In general I want to work my way through all the achievements. Planning on waiting for the next patch for doing most of the Outlands heroics though as since I hardly played my priest as anything but a pvp toy in the last expansion I'm missing most of those and most of the reps as well.

Earlier this evening we thought we would end the Old Year with a bang so we went and slaughered something from our past. Poor Onyxia looked so happy to see us, lying lonely in her lair, it seemed almost cruel to kill her, but 200g is a lot of money and she has well epics, even if they are outdated ones. (Will put in some screenshots when I sober up).

So on that note, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone.