What a Morning!

It started out boring enough...just out doing my dailies, working on my Champion's Seals for more mounts when a couple guildies decided they wanted to go to normal Trial of the Champion to try and obtain a trinket. So we formed up, but decided, rather than Trial first, we'd do the daily heroic and daily normal at the same time in the Oculus. So off we went. And when we formed up, it was decided we'd go for the 20 minute timer for Make it Count. After quickly downing the first boss, I started the stopwatch and I never had a doubt that we'd make it. We tried a new strategy which I had never tried before and it worked wonders. Here's a quick overview:

• Make sure you know which drakes you want beforehand. We had 2 amber, 2 emerald, and a ruby. It doesn't really matter which you pick, but having 2 amber drakes makes it really easy switching back and forth on the channeled spell and high damage spells. Of course you want the ruby to keep aggro and the emeralds to heal.
• Once you know what drakes you want, immediately go up to the center platform. Previously, I had always been in groups that want to clear the outer platforms first. But no! Go to the middle. By clearing the middle, it gives you an easy way to go from outer platform to outer platform.
• Once you have the center platform clear, go back and then fly straight out to a platform with constructs. By flying straight out to it, you can then fly straight back after you have cleared the platform. Kill as few drakes as necessary to get to the edge of the platform, clear it by pulling the mobs to the edge, and then go back to the middle.
• Repeat for the second platform. Once you're back in the middle, fly around to the second boss and fly straight out to him. Clear most of the drakes above his platform so he doesn't call on them to help during the fight. Quickly kill him and then immediately fly up to the next section.
• Once you are on the next section, land directly on top of the image. He won't aggro until you hit him, so make sure everyone gets there, hit him, and clear the adds. Rince and repeat all around.
• Once you're ready for the third boss, again, land right on top of him and when you're ready, hit him and start DPS. When he lays down his first frost bomb, kite him behind the pillar closest to you. Now, if he lays more frost bombs, ignore them. Heal through them. When he teleports, you're already behind the pillar - wait for him to return and kill him.
• With the boss down, start killing the whelps. You need to get most of them down before engaging the boss as they can do stacking damage. Get ready to engage the boss and then go! You should have about 4-6 minutes left at this point. I think we had 5 minutes left and it took us 2.5 minutes to kill him. So down he went with 2.5 minutes to spare.
• When you're working your way up to the boss, don't worry about loot. Just have someone need it all and then distribute at the end. Every second counts (kind of - you have some leeway, but not much).

So after we quickly rolled through the Oculus, we headed over to the Trial to try and get Eleazarjr a new trinket. Of course, it didn't drop, but we steamrolled that instance as well and then went outside to try it on heroic. One quick run later, I ended up getting both Needy and I've Had Worse. Needy was a long time coming as since the patch, I've been "needing" everything. Since we can now trade soulbound items for 2 hours, I just need everything and trade it or disenchant it. A couple hundred items later, Needy was mine.

As for "I've Had Worse", here's a couple hints - during phase 1, kill the add right away. He only has like 50 or 60k health - so he goes down quickly. Phase 2 is where you'll most likely lose this achievement. It was pretty easy with two mages and two pallies, but this strategy should work for most - right away, start AOE. That's the only way to take all the ghouls down before he can have one explode. Both pallies immediately had consecrate down and both of us mages popped mirror image, dropped a flamestrike on the Black Knight and then used a Blizzard. Once the tank had to move to get out of a death and decay, I switched to arcane explosion to give greater mobile AOE. So all the ghouls went down and it was ours!

So after that, I quickly finished up the dailies I had started, turned in my daily dungeon quests, and was done for a bit. A very good morning. Plus, I got this nice achievement last night (it's pretty easy):

To get The Faceroller, take Eadric down to about 30k health. Make sure there's no DOTs on him and then stop DPS when you get under 20k. The tank shouldn't even be hitting him. Now wait for him to target someone to throw the hammer at. Dispel/trinket out of/spell reflect/grounding totem when Eadric starts to channel and the player targeted will be able to catch the hammer. Your action bar will change and you just need to hit "1" to throw the hammer back at him. This should finish him off and "The Faceroller" is yours!

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.

About Last Friday...

So last Friday, I've just awoken (wow, that's an odd word), and I have my flasks, my food, and my gear repaired, ready to take on Malygos and get my new necklace. But we usually start with Sartharion so I flew down to Wyrmrest Temple to start summoning players in once our group was formed. Then I'm told...we'll be doing Malygos first. Oh good! I have the blue gem for my neck piece (which reminds me, I need to put a +19 spell damage gem in there) and I can equip it for a Sartharion raid. So I hop on the nearest red drake and fly over to Coldarra. Upon arriving there, I'm told, nope - Sartharion first because Aravic is specced for tanking so I hopped on my own Armored Snowy Griffon and flew back.

But then...Aravic is going to spec DPS and let's go to Malygos first so we can down him and spend the rest of the night on Sartharion with one drake. WHAT? Fine. Red Drake, take me back to Coldarra. I arrive, and we quickly explain the fight to Dylana, our third healer for the night, and a new hunter we have picked up from the looking for group channel. After one wipe due to everyone getting used to healing assignments, picking up discs, and using the domes, we assemble once again and quickly take him down just as he's about to enrage (actually, I think he did enrage, but our DOTs killed him just in time). So I get the lovely new neck piece, Weser picks up Black Ice, and we head back to the Wyrmrest Temple.

So here we are now, ready to tackle Sartharion with one drake up - Tenebron this time around. Our first attempt, we decide to have Weser tank Tenebron, EleazarJr will pick up the lava blazes and the whelps, and Aravic will tank Sartharion himself. This doesn't work due to an equipment malfunction and Weser gets crushed by Tenebron leading to a wipe. We then try to have Eleazar tank both Tenebron and the adds, but this just takes too much work running all over the place picking up the blazes and then having to round up all the whelps. So we try another new strategy - Eleazar will pick up all the adds and tank them and Aravic will tank BOTH Sartharion AND Tenebron.

Yes, he's one crazy tank. But it works. Everything is going smoothly - DPS is able to focus on bringing Tenebron down without having to worry about stray lava blazes or whelps from the portal. All we need to do is DPS Tenebron and avoid the fire walls. So Tenebron is in the process of being defeated when...a healer and DPS disconnect. In the chaos of new healing assignments and working on keeping the tank up as he's getting hit by Sartharion and Tenebron, we lose two more DPS - not sure what they were hit by - maybe a stray lava blaze, a whelp, or a lava wall - but we're down to 2 healers, 2 tanks, and 2 DPS. Both tanks have their hands full with Sartharion, Tenebron, and the adds while the healers are both squarely focused on the tanks. Occasionally I would aggro a blaze and have to drag it over to Jr, our pally tank, then hope a heal came in before I got hit by a meteor or another add.

So here we are, with just 2 DPS. Tenebron goes down. I do a little bit of AOE on the adds that Jr has stacked up, but focus mainly on Sartharion. Every time any cooldown is up, I use it. Then, as I see him getting closer to 10% health, I hold my cooldowns in preparation for the quasi-enrage. I knew we wouldn't have the DPS to blow through him in this stage, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that once his initial enrage happens, he calms back down again. So we just had Jr pick up all the extra blazes that spawned, Ivan and I tried to dodge the meteors and DPS all out on Sartharion, and eventually, he went down.

In all, it took us 11 minutes to bring him down. I used my three mana gem charges, conjured a new one, and used two charges on that. I used mirror image a few times and think I even threw in an evocate and an invisibility. It was, quite simply, one of the best fights I've been a part of. The fun in knowing that if I got in trouble, I essentially had to fend for myself, the excitement in knowing that it's just me and Ivan who need to knock down Sartharion and his 7.7 million HP, and the fun in just having to be on top of our games for the full 11 minutes to make this thing work. So we now have the awesome Twilight Assist achievement and though I doubt we'll be doing two drakes this week, I do look forward to the challenge in upcoming weeks.