10 Hard Modes

Last night I had the pleasure of filling in for another mage for a 10 man Ulduar hard mode run. As they had started earlier in the week, our focus was to be on Thorim and Hodir. I knew we could do Thorim, as back when the Gold Team was running Ulduar, we would occasionally start the hard mode without meaning to. So we went in, and after 3 attempts, we got Thorim down. And, wouldn't you know, a nice neck upgrade dropped for me - Pendant of the Shallow Grave

We then continued on to Hodir, and though we had gotten close one time on accident when running Gold Team raids, I didn't know how we would do to beat the three minute timer. So I put up my stopwatch and went for it. On our first attempt, we had some fails at the Flash Freeze, so we wiped it and tried again, and without any issue, we took him down. We got some fortuitous placements of light beams and fires, so that helped immensely, and when I could get the Storm Power, I did some amazing damage. So down went Hodir...

Speaking of achievements, back on Thursday, we went for a couple during our Gold Team run in 10 man coliseum. I had missed the week prior when most got Salt and Pepper so we did that again without an issue, but the new one we went for prior to that was on Jaraxxus. We attempted to get Three Sixty Pain Spike. And for us with our DPS, it wasn't really a problem. We almost had to slow down at the end of the kill to wait for another maiden to spawn to get the achievement. But we didn't slow down and we easily pulled off the achievement without a problem.

Isle of Conquest Sneakiness

I was bored yesterday and decided to hit up the Isle of Conquest to see if I could get my Isle of Conquest Victory. Of course, we didn't, but since it was my first "real" time in there (I tried once right when it came out and didn't last long), I decided to run around and do my own thing. First I helped capture the air base and I took a ride around on the airship once we took it.

After riding the airship, I didn't really know what to do. It seemed there were some people on defense, some over at the harbor, but generally, our team was clueless. So, I went sneaking around to all different parts of the map. I found an AFK siege vehicle, killed it, and then killed it's occupant, and then went and capped the oil refinery. While over at the refinery, I decided to see if there were any achievements I could do. And lo and behold, I just had to defend a base to get Isle of Conquest All Star. So since I was already at the refinery, I went up some steps and hid out in the control room, hoping that some other sneaky person would come and cap it, think there was no alliance around, and leave. And it worked like a charm.

A mage came over, capped the refinery, and 10 seconds later, I emerged from my hiding spot, defended the refinery, and got my achievement! I then went back into hiding hoping to lure the mage back. And again, it worked. He came back, I popped all my trinkets and though he almost killed me, I just barely got the last shot in on him. I then went looking to plant some bombs at the gates of the horde base, but before I could find the bombs, the horde had one, but I had my achievement.

It took me back to my days of being a rogue where you could just hide out anywhere you wanted without people seeing you. This time I had to use a control room to conceal my movements, but it was fun running all over the map without anyone impeding my progress. So while the All Star achievement wasn't really picked up in the most daring and dangerous way, it was accomplished and I might make some more forays back into the Isle. And maybe some day I'll figure out what's going on.