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.

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!

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.

The (Almost) Undying

Last night, the Gold Team 10 man group had a couple of people running late, so we went into Sartharion before Naxxramas and attempted to 8 man Sarth + 1 drake. We probably could do it, but after one attempt, the two late parties came online, but instead of getting them into the instance, we quickly downed the drake and then 8 manned Sartharion getting us the awesome Less is More achievement.

We then formed up for our 10 man Naxxramas run and blew through the four rings. While doing so, we we able to get Momma Said Knock You Out, Arachnophobia, Shocking, The Safety Dance, and of course all quarters cleared, Sapphiron Down, and we were at Kel'Thuzad with NO DEATHS.

So we all knew what was on the line. Due to our abundance of melee DPSers this night, we had a paladin, Dantis, step out and help heal so we could have extra help on the ice blocks. It was just Jizo (our shaman) and me on the banshees in the first phase and we did a good job, we transitioned to the second phase and all was going well. We had a couple of double ice blocks in the melee area as we still had four melee DPS standing in there jockyeing for position. Then, at 40%, it happened. Our second pally healer, Eleazarjr, got ice blocked. The attempt to call it out on vent was made, but perhaps just a split second too late. Hemnetcher's heal went off a split second too late and with Dantis out of range, Dylana wasn't able to switch off of the tank to cross heal Jr (or so I'm assuming). Either way, we were so very close to The Undying.

Being that close really hurts. Just that one little mistake after a night of perfect one-shots. A night where on almost every boss we not only beat our own record, but shattered it. However, being this close, I know we can do it. There's no question that we have the DPS, the healing, and the coordination. Our team is set. And next week, with the Undying, I know we can get Make Quick Werk of Him. We were just 5 seconds over the timer this last time through and with our other heavy-hitting mage coming back next week and some improved DPS from our shammy, we should easily be able to get him down in time.

Tonight we hit up heroic Naxxramas. Should be fun. Hopefully we'll get our full clear tonight now that we have all four wings down pat.

Given a full clear, that would give me my 500th achievement. Who knows what it will be. I should get Heroic: Arachnophobia early in the raid and then hopefully Heroic: Sapphiron's Demise towards the end, and then Heroic: Kel'Thuzad's Defeat would be #500 and Heroic: The Fall of Naxxramas would be #501. But if we don't get Arachnophobia, it would be quite fitting to have The Fall of Naxxramas be #500.