The Push for 7,000

Last week, we accidentally got a couple achievements while doing heroic Ulduar, so my push towards 7,000 achievement points is going strong. It started on Ignis - I was on construct duty, so it was my job to blow up the constructs when they became brittle. However, one of them got out of my line of sight behind a fire pillar (I just lost track of it), so when the call was made, it was too late for me to go shatter it. Our awesome offtanks quickly picked it up again, made it brittle, and before you knew it, when I shattered one construct, the other one that had been awoken by Ignis was shattered as well. So there we had Heroic: Shattered.

We continued on and we reached Kologarn who refused to let us pass. Normally, we focus all DPS on the right arm and down him that way, but recently we've found that just as he's about to die, his left arm has been DPS'ed enough via incidental damage (swipes, consecrates, death and decays, etc.) that if we just add a bit of DPS to kill the arm, all that damage is transferred to Kologarn and he goes down quicker. So when I saw we were close to killing Kolo and I saw that his left arm was getting low, even when the right arm popped up, I focused DPS on the left arm, knowing the call to kill the left arm would come when the right arm went down. With the extra damage I was able to provide to the left arm before the right arm went down, we were able to get Heroic: Disarmed.

Then, last night, while fighting for control of Wintergrasp, I realized after all was said and done that I was just 8 honorable kills away from 5,000. So this morning, I headed out a little early to the Strand of the Ancients and quickly dispatched of 8 hordies to pick up 5,000 Honorable Kills

Of course, while striving for achievements, I'm still doing my Crusader dailies each and every day (actually, Saturday was the first time since the patch that I didn't get my dailies done - ale comes first). A day before though, while out there, I found my evil twin! Finneal (achievement comparison) was there and he looked almost exactly like me! Just with more achievement points! I can't let that stand. But we did have some fun and we both popped our mirror images just to confuse some people and seeing eight little dopplegangers running around was a sight to be seen.

Lastly, last night, I went into a quick VOA since I really didn't have anything else to do and even though I don't need any items from there, it was fun to do single target DPS. Usually in Ulduar, I have to do crowd control, DPS some bomb bots, or just do things that don't allow me to go all out. Well, on both Emalon and Archavon I was pretty much free to do as much DPS as I could and it showed. I easily topped the damage meters and was quite happy with my performance. And all of this was done without an enchant on my purty new Runescribed Blade.

Emalon:

Archavon:

Quick Raid Recap

We entered into Ulduar last week with our ten man group ready to tear things up in preparation for our Thursday run. We quickly cleared Flame Leviathan with one tower up, XT-002, Kolo, and Auriaya within our two hour time limit and had a couple of attempts on Thorim. We were ready on Thursday to head back in when a freak electrical outage meant the loss of our main tank and a healer, so the run was called. Hopefully this week we'll get through those four and have time to work on Vezax and Yogg.

Friday, our twenty five man team formed up and made our way through Kologarn again and up to Auriaya who had given us issues the week before. This week, it took us just two tries to get her down. We had little time left, but moved on to Thorim, and he again gave us issues (though for most people it was their first time there). This week, I think we can do it.

The strange thing is, on this run, I picked up Constructor's Handwraps, quickly enchanted them on the go and used them for the rest of the run. They replaced my TIER 8 gloves...

The problem I'm facing right now as a Frostfire mage is too much hit rating. Maybe I need to give Fireball a chance since the extra hit will allow me to drop Precision and hopefully do more DPS. But as it stands, I'll be using the handwraps over the gauntlets as they add 6 spellpower, 58 crit, some stamina and spirit at the cost of 44 haste and a socket. Perhaps some more theorycrafting needs to be done on specs and gear...

Antechamber Clear

Last night, the Gold Team, fresh off a stomping off bosses on Wednesday night went back in, eager to learn some new fights. First up was Auriaya, the Crazy Cat Lady. After a couple of quick wipes due to massive incoming raid damage and also another couple of wipes before switching strategies, we took her out. In the end, the strategy of not killing the Feral Defender (it does die due to raid splash damage), worked very well for us. We were able to get her down after two attempts with our finalized strategy and she was nice enough to drop the Raiments of the Corrupted. I wanted these as I knew they were an upgrade and I rolled an 85. Yes! So I tell Matnocuido to roll, figuring if they're an upgrade for me, they'll be an upgrade for him. And what does he go and do? Rolls a 92. Of course. I don't know how he does it, but he always out-rolls me. However, he was nice enough to pass them over to me (he doesn't want to break his 4 piece Tier 7 bonus quite yet) and I happily replaced the Gown of the Spell-Weaver. I gain 20 stamina, 3 armor, 11 crit, 4 hit, and 8 spellpower at the cost of 8 intellect? Hell yeah.

With the new item, I also resocketed a few items, throwing a Runed Scarlet Ruby in my new Raiments and also in my Sandals of Crimson Fury, replacing a Rigid Autumn's Glow. My hit now sits at 340, down from 368. At 368, I was hit capped regardless of who was in the raid - however, there's always a draenei in the raid, so my hit cap is 341 and I'm perfectly fine being 1 point under the hit cap. I like to live dangerously like that...

So after Auriaya, we thought, let's go see Mimiron. Bad idea. For starters, his trash is insanely hard. After a wipe or two here and there, we made it through and then we tried to read about the fight. Mistake #2. He is probably the most complicated fight in Ulduar. So we all paused, watched a video on him, and then thought, hell, we can do this. Wipe after wipe after wipe later, we could not do this. We did manage to get him to phase 3 one or two times (I can't remember - they all blur together), so I'm certain we can kill him with more practice. However, I think next week, I'd rather go see Freya and give her a little kiss.

Once you get through the Antechamber of Ulduar though, there's so many beautiful sights. The first here is just as you start to come to the Keepers of Ulduar, then two of the tram that takes you to Mimiron and then two of Mimiron's workshop.