One Down, One to Go

Last night, following up on a very successful Wednesday night pre-clear (which saw us get all the way to the Keepers of Ulduar, and Thorim down), we continued with a strong push on time to clear Ulduar. We quickly one shot Hodir, Freya, and Mimiron (yes, our first Mimiron one-shot) and we had plenty of time to work on General Vezax. We had previously reached him twice. With just one try the first time and just two tries the second time. Well last night, we reached him with 2 hours to work on him. Luckily, we didn't need all that time.

After a first failed attempt as we got him to 40%, but the healers didn't conserve mana, we had to wipe it and try again. Attempts two through four featured little issues that caused wipes - try three I believe was started off with our pally DPS dying within 10 seconds of the pull due to threat, after which Vezax quickly turned to me after a few crits without my images up and we were immediately down two DPS. So we wiped it again.

But on our fifth try, he went down. I think we got him just as he was about to enrage, so we cut it close, but we did it. He dropped a couple of nice items, including an amazing chest piece for Xenoxa, our new priest healer. The whole night, just one tier piece dropped for me, but it was the helm which I already had. Luckily, almost all the pieces dropping last night went to main specs, so I'm happy to see the raid getting geared up further. And though some may say it was our practice, our awesome healers, and good movement that took down Vezax, I'm convinced it was the power of the Emerald Whelplings...

So we continued on with a couple tries at Yogg'Saron. After a lengthy explanation of phases one and two, we decided to focus just on phase one's explanation, gave that again, and went on in. We had 4 tries or so I think on Sara, and almost got her down, but we never did get to Phase 2. Luckily, we got some practice and I'm certain we'll see Phase 2 next week (as long as we have another good Wednesday run).

Heartbreaker

So there we were, ready to begin our conquest of Ulduar, just looking to down a few bosses before we get some good attempts in at General Vezax and maybe even Yogg'Saron tomorrow. When out of the blue, our raid leader, Aravic asks, "XT-002 Hard Mode?" A few of us (me included) answered no, let's power through and dominate this place so we have more time tomorrow. But I was outnumbered and we gave it a shot. And it looked like we would do it in just one attempt when a void zone popped up in the middle of everyone during a tantrum. Oh well, we knew we had it. We had the DPS, we had the skill. We had it.

Try two, no problems. And there it was, Heartbreaker. Our first Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement. But not the last. I think, given the time, we could master each and every fight on the list. However, it seems like 3.2 is coming soon (a bit too soon in my opinion) and Ulduar will be left in the dust with the Argent Coliseum calling us in.

All of our DPS on that fight was above 3,000. Our three healers all did an amazing job, and our offtank did a great job picking up the pummelers and the sparks while doing a fair amount of damage himself. All around, a great job by all involved, and our shaman healer got a nice new Breastplate of the Stoneshaper.

New Mounts?

Last night, someone in guild chat mistakenly thought that I had over 100 mounts (I have over 100 pets, not mounts). I lamented the fact that reaching 100 mounts is a pretty tough feat as I don't have any of the PvP mounts nor any of the AQ40 mounts. Then I received an interesting whisper - right when you enter AQ40, there are 4 giant guys sitting there. Kill 3 of the 4 of them, run out, and they reset. They all have a pretty high drop rate for three of the four resonating crystals and a low drop rate for the red crystal.

Of course, we had so much fun fighting them, we killed all four along with the patrol that came along. So we then went on and found two more pats down the stairs which we killed and another set of four of those giant guys. So we killed them too. From those, I was able to get a Blue Qiraji Resonating Crystal and a Green Qiraji Resonating Crystal. So I was pretty happy with the run. We of course tried to kill the boss, just the three of us, but had many failed attempts (his mind control is devastating).

So we were just about to leave when the first five enemies respawned - so we killed them, but no more crystals dropped. In the end, I got blue and green while Weser got blue and Xenoxa passed on them all. Thanks guys! They look especially cool when they jump. Unfortunately, their use is restricted to AQ40 only :(

On another note, they reset the fire festival fires yesterday so I was able to quickly zoom around Northrend and Outland collecting the burning blossoms and was able to get enough for the last part of my midsummer fire festival set, dance around the pole, and receive my new title, Flame Warden Tiddlywinks.

Also last night, I was able to get a huge upgrade to my belt. On our Friday night raids of Ulduar 25, we put all of the Runed Orbs into the raid bank. When we have enough, we pass them out to be made into belts. As we had stocked up over 18 orbs, we handed them out last week and only three people had the materials ready to go to have the belt crafted; me, Jizo, and Hemnetcher. So the orbs were passed out and I am now the proud owner of a Sash of Ancient Power. It works perfectly with my set as it has the same amount of hit as my old belt, and though it has 7 less spellpower, it comes with two gem sockets, so it more than makes up for that loss. Best in slot, woohoo!

New Achievements

This wonderful list of changes between the last patch and this patch achievements illustrates some interesting stuff.

Of course, we have brand new achievements for the new dungeon - nothing special there. But we also have achievements for a brand new world event - Pilgrim's Bounty! It's a Thanksgiving themed event and looks like it will be quite fun with new achievements, a turkey pet, and a title of "Pilgrim." It also looks like we'll have a few certain days that award achievements - Day of the Dead (Halloween) and Pirate's Day (Maybe Sept. 19 - Talk like a pirate day?). Note: Pilgrim's Bounty also comes with a lot of new recipes as well.

A change I'm not too excited about is they're making the Rapid Defense achievement which I FINALLY got a lot easier to do - upping the time requirement from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Pretty lame.

Also looks like we have the inevitable new Vault of Archavon boss, Emalon the Flame Watcher.

And my fears were confirmed - they are removing achievement points. In a very interesting move, they are going to take away all the achievement points you earned for 5, 25, 100, 1000 emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, etc. and replace them with Loot 5, 25, 100, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, or Triumph. Hopefully if you have achieved 500 emblems of Heroism and 250 emblems of valor, for example, you'll start at 750 on the "Loot 1000 emblems of heroism, valor, conquest, or triumph."

Not too many other changes. They'll be adding Feats of Strength for certain items - the Winterspring Frostsaber, Black War Mammoth, Epic Brewfest Mount, Gurky from the 2009 Blizzcon, and...proud owner of an Onyx Panther?! Sounds interesting.

Well I'll Be...

I never thought I'd see the day, but there I was, in Arathi Basin with my pocket healer (who didn't stay in my pocket like I trained her...), Xenoxa, and we were just going back and forth with the horde. 2 bases to 2. 1 to 1. 3 to 2. 2 to 3. At one point we had 4 to their 1, but quickly lost that advantage. But as we neared the end, the horde hit 1800 resources about 1 minute before we took back a third node and we hit 1800 not soon thereafter. Then it was a race to the finish. The horde had 2 minutes, 30 seconds until they won, but when we capped and held that third base, the timer switched over. We knew it would be close, at one point, Xenoxa pointed out it'd be 1980 to 2000. What a let down that would be.

But in the end...1990 to 2000! We won! And I got an achievement I never thought I'd see: We Had it All Along *cough*. And not only that, I had picked up the daily battleground quest two days earlier for Arathi Basin, so I just went and turned it in and received Call to Arms!. And with those two achievements, I broke the 6,800 point barrier. Not long now until 7,000!

Of course, the Summer Fire Festival isn't helping much. I finished my fires and juggled my torches, but I can't get the last achievement which requires a full set of Fire Festival gear. I currently sit at 45 blossoms and can only get 10 per day. There's 12 days left, leaving me just 165 blossoms, 35 short of the sandals I need. Hopefully Blizzard will fix this soon so as to not penalize those of us who did the fire festival fires last year. I also can't summon Ahune so I can't get my pet either...