Northrend Beasts Tamed

On Wednesday, our ten man group formed up and headed off to the new Coliseum, ready for some fun. We were ready for whatever fearsome opponent would face us on the coliseum floor. After quickly dispatching Gormok and his snobolds, we ran into quite a bit of resistance with the twin Jormungers, Acidmaw and Dreadscale. The first issue was deciding which tank would handle each worm and how they would switch each time the worms. It was decided that Jr, our pally tank would always be on the worm that was grounded, while Aravic, our warrior, would be on the worm that was moving (and being kited the whole time).

After sorting that out, the biggest issue that remains is how to cleanse the poison with the fires. After thinking that maybe we could spin the grounded worm around to always be facing the tank and melee, we decided against it as ranged would be caught in the middle and the worms don't always pop up in the same place, complicating positioning. What finally worked is we had Magnidur and/or Santorum, our DPS DKs stand with Aravic infront of the the worm, gathering up the fire debuff and they would then go out and burn the poison off the ranged if they got hit by the grounded worm. On our one good attempt, we had some issues, and we even needed Aravic to go cleanse at one point, but we got them down. Also, of note is the fact that when one worm dies, the other enrages. However, the enrage is only 50% more damage to whomever is tanking the worm. So it wasn't that hard to heal through. The issue remains that there is no downtime between the three stages of the beasts, so very little regen time, but with proper conservation, our healers did a great job.

The final Northrend Beast is Icehowl, and he's pretty much a joke. Once you get past the worms, you shouldn't have any issues. In fact, we lost two players during the worms and Icehowl was just a pushover. He does some AOE raid damage that the healers must deal with, but nothing too huge and as long as people know that when he knocks you back, he'll pick someone to charge, and you just need to move out of the way, you won't have issues. So even down a healer and a DPS (we run 3 healers on new content usually - and even some late Ulduar content), we easily beat Icehowl.

So down they went. And we'll have to wait until next week to fight the next boss. We got two DPS DK items that both went to Santorum, and that was it for the night. I unfortunately missed last night's Ulduar run, but another Super Simian Sphere dropped and went to Dylana. So now Aravic, myself, and Dy can be the monkey ball trio!

Yogg Down

With the team expecting the patch this Tuesday, we knew Sunday would be our only shot at getting Yogg'Saron down without having to do another full clear of Ulduar when we'd rather be in the Coliseum, so we gathered up at 5pm, found our trusty PUG who had helped us on Thursday, and quickly went after Yogg. On our first attempt, our tank had a fatal error, on our second, we had some issues with clouds, on the third, I think we had problems with people getting into the portals on time due to constrictors, but on the fourth...it was perfection. We had the minimum number of Guardians spawn during Phase 1, we we able to get almost every tentacle down during Phase 2 (one corruptor tentacle remained for Phase 3) and our DPS split perfectly during Phase 3 with myself, Grenchlok (our trusty mage PUG), and Comador on the Immortal Guardians and all of our melee DPS on Yogg - Vetarra, Magnidur, Weser. Our healers, Dylana, Xenoxa and Jizo performed perfectly, and the amazing tank, Aravic skillfully held the immortal guardians, DPSed Yogg'Saron, and managed to keep his sanity about him throughout the whole fight. In fact, everyone stayed sane, enabling us to not only down Yogg and clear Ulduar, but also to receive Drive me Crazy (not pictured)

Afterwards, we went over to try doing Sartharion with 3 drakes via the zerg method. We had one near perfect attempt, but all the other attempts fell just a bit short as we would have someone die in one way or another from not paying attention or not knowing positioning. But on that one near perfect attempt, we had him down to about 160k health, so I think with just a little bit of increased DPS, we'll get OS3D down. But until then, we'll have the wonderful Yogg'Saron victory to revel in.

Another Busy Weekend?

Dang, going back through my screenshots and such, it's quite surprising what I got accomplished this weekend. It started Friday with the Gold Team going to 25 man Naxx. We quickly cleared it, but had some fun when we got to Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. On Sapph, we turned off mage armor, frost resist auras, and anything else that would put our frost resist above 100. After one wipe due to the tank somehow dying, we came back in and quickly took care of him, earning Heroic: The Hundred Club.

We then quickly moved to Kel'Thuzad and thought we would keep our achievements going and proceeded to have the most hectic KT fight I've ever seen. We decided to go for Heroic: Just Can't Get Enough and though we lost one person during that, he was rezzed and we continued on. I unfotunately died somehow from a mana blast that hit me for 20,000 damage. I got rezzed (and it was a good thing they picked me up), since at about 20%, he Ice Blocked our paladin who was tanking two of the adds. So those adds got free and we lost a healer before the main tank, Aravic, was able to pick them up. So we had Aravic tanking KT and two adds for a while until the other add tank could peel one off of him. And we continued the fight like that. Then all hell broke loose. With KT and an add on him, Aravic went down. I immediately went invisible to drop all aggro. Let the healers die I say! I quickly returned from invisibility and DPS'ed with all I had. And we did it. Somehow, a few of us DPS remained and were able to take out KT without a tank. We had just enough to power through him as he moved from target to target one-shotting them. We would have gone to Emalon next, but the Horde held Wintergrasp so we called it an early evening.

Saturday took me back out to Icecrown where I became an Exalted Champion of Ironforge. The day also saw me get my 40th Champion's Seal which I used to quickly purchase pet #91, my Mechanopeep. I had hoped to get a 10 seal bonus like I did when I became a Champion of Gnomeregan, but no luck. Apparently you only get the 10 seal bonus on your first Championing, so it will be 8 days from Saturday (next Sunday) until I can get my next pet - I think it'll be the Elwynn Lamb - a nice change from your normal pet. With becoming an Exalted Champion of Ironforge, I also hit 6,000 achievement points.

Later in the day I was invited to the Black Temple, and after some struggles on the later bosses, we made it to Illidan. Unfortunately, coordination was poor and even though we got him to stage 4, we never got him down and after spending 5.5+ hours in there, I had to leave. It was just too frustrating, and in the end, they never got him down.

Sunday of course brought with it Noblegarden so out to collect eggs I went. I found a nice spot in Dolanaar that I was able to camp with 5 eggs within reach without moving. I quickly picked up over 250 and found everything I needed. I got my Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit for 100 chocolates, but found the Spring Rabbit's Foot in an egg and all the clothing except the dress in eggs. I then went out, did the other quests and quickly earned my title of Tiddlywinks the Noble. After doing my daily quests and taking some time off, I awoke late in the night and went to Azure Watch where I found very little egg competition, and on my 2nd egg, I found the dress and completed every Noblegarden achievement. Yay!

What a Night!

So there we were, the Gold Team had gathered and we were just sitting around the campfire with nothing to do. The Argent Tournament quests were complete, the severed arm had been returned to Olissara, and Glowergold's cheese was safely in his hands again. So...what to do? Let's go to Ulduar!

We quickly formed up and decided that since we defeated the Flame Leviathan just after causing an overload last time, that this time we would NOT catapult our druid and shaman on top of him and just DPS him down. And so it would come to pass that the Gold Team would take down the Flame Leviathan in one attempt and earn the Shutout achievement. What next we wondered? Would we go and attempt Ignis and his flaming naughty bits or Razorscale and his breath of doom?

Since we had the most practice with Razorscale we decided she would be first. The first time through, we decided that we'd try and hold off on the harpoons until all of the watchmen and sentinels were down. However, they just kept spawning and eventually ate us up. We regrouped and adjusted our strategy to just make sure no sentinels were up when we used the harpoons and we easily took her out even though Dylana, our awesome healy tree went down really early. Eleazarjr and Jizo did an amazing job keeping us all up. And what should she drop for me? The Eye of the Broodmother! It's the second best trinket with only the Scale of Fates being better at this current time.


After Razorscale we once again assessed our surroundings. Flaming naughty bits or a spoiled robot? XT-002 it was. We quickly grouped up as Aravic had to return to Dalaran and took him on for the first time. We almost had him killed when some random enemies joined the fight and made quick work of us. We regrouped and then realized that we had not cleared the trash before engaging XT-002. We quickly cleared them, engaged XT-002 again and easily took him down. Utilizing a heroism on the first heart exposure enabled us to quickly get him down as when his heart was no longer exposed, he was already at half health and his heart was exposed again. When all was said and done, he rewarded us with two achievements - Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering! A pleasant surprise after taking him down in (almost) one shot (darn trash).


All in all, an amazing run. Tomorrow we shall gather for four more hours of fun. The Antechamber of Ulduar awaits us.