A New Title and More

I just added my latest title to my ever growing list of titles - Twilight Vanquisher Tiddlywinks. Last weekend, I saw someone looking for 5k+ DPS for a Sarth 3D 25 man attempt. I of course was intrigued, so decided I'd lend a hand. After multiple attempts, at the end of the hour (and on the last try I had before I was leaving for the night), we got him down. We did a classic zerg, but rather than having a druid kite the drake away, the tank held him, which, inevitably led to his demise. We had some people arguing about it, but in the end, we got him down - through a rogue evade tanking Sarth after the tank went down.

It was certainly a crazy fight and through the attempts, I was able to pull more than 8k DPS for the fight - of course, most of it was burst with the heroism at the start, so I was doing 9k+ for a good amount of time, which would then decline as the fight went on. Here's my log for his death (note: it will expire, sorry about that). I ended up doing a sustained 7.7k DPS for the fight.

And while, during the 6 attempts, I died once due to stupidity, there were many others there that I just could not understand how they could not grasp the fight. They'd get caught in flame walls repeatedly, get hit by a void zone, etc. I know it's easy to get caught up in your rotation and the fight does get pretty crazy at times, but there's only two mechanics you need to constantly look out for - flame walls and void zones - that's it! And yes, I died in a void zone once. I moved out of the way from a flame wall and got complacent in my positioning and was watching other things on the screen. But it only happened once...not each and every time like some others were failing on.

Lastly, I did not get the drake (or I would have posted much sooner!). A warlock who did weak DPS barely outrolled me for it. I was stoked when I got my 87, but I didn't think it'd hold up, and the lock ended up rolling a 95. But I got a couple new achievements and a new title, so I was happy.

What's This?

What is this?

But how?

3 Drakes? Awesome. So?

Sweet, but did I win the roll? No. But Comador did, and passed them to me!

And is that it?

So how many points is that?

But how? Did I get more achievements tonight? Why yes!

And?

Is that it?

And thus ends a great night.

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.

Finally...

Last night, while listing auctions on my banker, I saw an advert in trade channel for a raid on the horde bosses. Eh, I usually ignore them because they're usually too disorganized and/or there aren't enough people. Then I see two more people right after that looking for more for the same raid. So I awoke Tiddly, inquired as to the status, and got one of the last 5 spots in the raid. And we were off.

We started in Azshara and then rode south on the river thanks to some Death Knights and we invaded Orgrimmar with little to no resistance. I quickly set a portal up after we downed Thrall and we reformed in Theramore and went to assault Thunder Bluff. With that done, we quickly moved on Silvermoon via the Zul'Aman flight point and then we just had Undercity left after flying to Chillwind Point.

It took us some time to get all 40 people gathered up and ready to go at each position, but we were quick enough within each city, met little to no resistance, and we downed the four bosses, and I have my Black War Bear - mount #73 (and I blew by 5,500 achievement points).

Tonight, the Gold Team is again looking for achievements. We'll be looking to do Malygos with 8 people and then we will give Sartharion + 3 drakes our first attempt. Hopefully all goes well. I believe we'll be going in with 3 tanks, 2.5 healers, and then 4.5 DPS. Go go go!

What to do with No Progress?

Last night, I joined a raid that is a hodge-podge of groups and we went to Malygos with the intention of bringing down Sartharion with two drakes afterward. So after we took down Malygos in a few tries, we went over to Sartharion. We had a couple of players that hadn't seen the fight with one drake, let alone two, so we introduced them in the easiest way possible - threw them into the fire - quite literally. After multiple wipes with healers dying in blue circles or flame walls, we almost got the first drake down. But it never happened. That first drake never went down. We kept having a tank get thrown into the lava or a healer get hit by a tail swipe or the whelps would go crazy and take out DPS.

After a while, what are you to do? How many shots do you take at two drakes without any improvement before moving on and just doing one drake?

On one hand, I understand the raid leader wanting to do two drakes. We can do one without an issue it seems, so two should be a good challenge. However, when you have a healer who dies in the following manner: blue circle, flame wall, blue circle, flame wall, sartharion, flame wall, how can you continue? I think at some point you have to tell that person to shape up or not come. There's no room for error on two drakes, let alone three drakes. So if you have players who consistently make mistakes, they need to leave the raid for the rest of the raid to progress.

At one point though, you just need to call it. We spent two hours banging our heads against a wall, making no progress. I guess that's the limit of most sane people. I'm not sure how much more I could have taken. This after an hour spent on forming up for Malygos, killing Malygos, and then forming up for Sartharion. Three hours for Malygos and Sartharion + 1 drake is insane. However, good came of it.

First, I got achievement #499. Due to people not picking up the hover disks properly, I hopped on one and picked up Heroic: Denyin' the Scion. But the best part of the night was finally taking down Sartharion and getting the Illustration of the Dragon Soul. It's the best in slot trinket for us mages, and after seeing the first three go to healers (who benefit from it, but not nearly as much as DPS benefit from it), I was happy to finally get my hands on it. I now have the top two trinkets for mages in the Illustration and Embrace of the Spider. One day I'll get my T7.5 gloves from Sarth...

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.

Sartharion, Maly, and More

This weekend, while adventuring with young Tozz, Tiddly was invited to go to the Obsidian Sanctum with 24 other adventurers to attempt to kill Sartharion with one of his drakes still alive. After one quick wipe due to some people still not understanding the lava wall and void zones, we quickly reformed, and took him out. Our group then semi-disbanded, but those left decided to go play around in Mount Hyjal. We quickly worked our way to the end, had some problems with a few bad apples deciding to pull the boss when we weren't ready, and then took out Archimonde with ease.

And then last night, after our first few attempts last Monday, we went back to try to bring down Malygos. After a couple of attempts as our death knights perfected their spark grabbing, and a few more wipes due to Malygos glitching right before the vortex (we put hunter pets away and had no issues - seems the bug is back), we took Malygos down after two more attempts. In our first attempt, during the third phase, I was not targeted at all by Malygos and successfully stacked 22 or 23 flame engulfs, but we had too many down to take him out before he enraged. On our next try, we knew we had him where we wanted him. We stacked the sparks perfectly, we took the scions out quickly, and we had over four minutes of the third phase to work him down. Unfortunately, Malygos remembered me this time around and constantly targeted me so I was unable to get past 10 stacks on him. But I survived quite a few until he hit me as I had just added to the stacks and had no energy to work with.

But the rest of our group performed admirably and we took him down. Here's my newly redesigned UI as we gather around to distribute loot:



My new UI builds on the UI I had a while ago prior to Wrath. Fubar lines the top with relevant information, my raid is down the left side which always allows a quick view of our status during a fight and I have tanks and cooldowns right there next to the raid. In the upper-right, I have XLoot and Elkano's Buff Bars and Omen3 (clear) in the middle on the right side.

Above the main black area in the middle, I am using Pitbull for my unit frames (they still need a little customizing), Decursive is above my name and there's more targeting and pet bars over on the right side. I'm still working on it all and will try and get a better shot during a normal battle.

Oh yeah, you've got MalygosCP right there in the middle - an amazing mod. Always gives me a very quick view of Combo Poitns, Energy and Engulf in Flames stacks. If only it could blink if you were targeted or something.

On the bottom panel we have (left to right): chat, map, bartender bars (hidden due to the fact I'm on a "vehicle"), and recount.



Other recent achievements, Heroic: Construct Quarter (last Friday - along with 50 emblems of valor), a Heroic: Twilight Assist on Saturday along with Hyjal, and then of course, last night (not pictured): Heroic: The Spellweaver's Downfall. I now sit at 495 achievements. Wonder what will be #500?

Naxx 8 Man

Last night, for an impromptu Naxxramas run, we formed up at about 6pm and figured we could clear what we left on Thursday. So we started to get going, but we were missing a healer and a DPS. What the heck we said...let's try this 8-man. As it turns out, 8 manning Naxxramas is pretty darn easy. We wiped once on Kel'Thuzad because our DPS pally went down from a void zone and Kel'Thuzad wiped us with 50,000 HP left. But other than that, no encounter gave us any issues. And we did all of this with a new death knight in our party who had only seen about half the encounters.

So hopefully later this week, we'll be able to finish off The Dedicated Few - we just need Patchwerk and the Plague Quarter.

Before Naxx 8-man though, I went to Obsidian Sanctum 25-man. It was an easy enough clear and I managed to piss off a good amount of people with my Toy Train Set (I just can't comprehend how people get upset when others make a train noise. Just move away from it or turn down your speakers if it's too loud. Have a sense of humor people. But on Sartharion, I ended up doing 4,600 DPS. Not too shabby. Especially considering the next highest person on the charts was at 3,300 DPS. So that was a fun run - except for the fact that I was the #2 roll on the Illustration of the Dragon Soul. It went to a pally in our guild, which was kind of annoying. The trinket is BEST IN SLOT for DPS casters. There is NOTHING better in the game for us. The trinket is NOT best in slot for healing types. With this amalgamation of spell power, healing power, etc., there's just too much competition for pieces that are generally very one-sided. This trinket is just one example. No paladin would roll on it if it were spell power if we still had healing power in the game. So I lose out on my BEST IN SLOT item so a paladin (who might not even use it - well, he might, even though there's better options out there - including a Darkmoon card which just takes some time and gold to get - which chances are he won't put the time or gold into getting). C'est la vie.

In other news, Wednesday starts Love is in the Air. Judging by the achievements, it shouldn't be too hard to obtain another title and one more event down towards my violet proto drake. Luckily I did the grinding necessary last year for the Perma-Peddle achievement as they're making it tougher this year, but it isn't required for the meta-achievement. So I should rack up another 140 achievement points and I even get to have some fun in the battlegrounds while doing so.

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.

2 Days, 2 Titles

On Thursday, our rag-tag bunch of adventurers stepped into Naxxramas looking to clear as much as possible, little did we know, a full clear was within our grasp. Taking about four hours, we cleared the whole place in one night, leaving Friday night open for Sartharion and Malygos. We quickly down Sartharion (after a couple of attempts with one drake up) and then made our way to Malygos.

We had seen Malygos one week before, but only got to the final stage a couple of times. But this week, we had over 3 hours to work on him, and we would not leave without him going down! So after about 5 or 6 wipes, including a couple of tries at his last phase, we realized, we didn't have the stacks working for the last phase and we'd never get him down. So we took a break, stepped outside, and went to practice on the daily quest, Aces High. After a bit of practice there, we stepped back in, revitalized, and ready to go. We had a couple of missteps, but in the end, Maylgos was defeated! And there were quite a few people in our raid who obtained the awesome title, Champion of the Frozen Wastes.

Skip ahead a day and the Lunar Festival had returned to Azeroth. I awoke at 7, ready to go get my coins. After collecting about 40 coins, Aravic and Eleazarjr awoke from their slumber and we set out to rescue the elders in the Northrend dungeons. After four heroic dungeons, I was left to go back to coin collecting. I quickly snapped up the rest of the coins throughout Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms and then looked for a group for some other instances. I found a pick up group going to Nexus and we quickly found the elder in there and I was left with just a couple of elders left. I took a quick side trip to Moonglade where I defeated Omen and bought a nice pant suit. I ported back to Dalaran and quickly found a group for my remaining coins in my wonderful guild. We got the coins, and in just under 12 hours, I was Elder Tiddlywinks.



The next morning, I woke up, started fishing for a sewer rat, and was waiting on the last book I need for Higher Learning to spawn when Rylara asked me if I wanted to go kill C'Thun. Heck yeah, I wanted to kill C'Thun! So I ported to Theramore, flew to Cenarion Hold, and made my way into the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. We quickly dispatched of C'Thun (even though I died in his stomach), and I was finally able to complete my Classic Raider achievement!



In all, it's been a crazy couple days. Two titles received, Malygos and C'Thun down, and over 230 achievement points. I'm hoping my book spawns soon so I can receive another pet and my weekend will be complete!

Sartharion 10 Man

Last night, after completing a couple dailies, I was asked to go to the 10-man version of Obsisian Sanctum. After completing the 25-man version just two days prior, I said sure, it can't be that hard could it?

So in we go, we easily clear the three drakes and our tank seems surprised at that fact. I guess he underestimated our awesomeness. There were three of us atop the DPS charts (both in overall damage and sustained DPS) - me, a rogue, and a shaman. Over the whole night we fought for the top spot and in the end, all three of us ended up with about 2,000 DPS on the night. Not too shabbby. I ended up atop the damage meters due to the fact that I didn't have to worry about Sartharion's fireballs or his cleave or his tail swipe as ranged, so the rogue dropped off a bit due to deaths.

But back to the fight. Since only two of us had seen the fight before, we had 8 people new to the instance and a couple of people picking up their first badges of Heroism. So the first couple tries were learning experiences - getting people to see the waves, know the gaps, focus DPS on the fire elementals, etc. That's fine, I can deal with those wipes.

However, it was the next 3-4 wipes that bothered me. We had people focusing DPS on Sartharion instead of the fire elementals, we had people getting caught up in the waves, even though they were all being called out on vent, and we had people getting cleaved or tail swiped even though it's really easy to avoid (yes, as a mage I was forced to stand within melee range and a couple of times had to mitigate my threat due to the 110% grab aggro percentage instead of 130%).

But eventually, we figured him out and had a couple of wipes just due to bad luck - bad positioning of the fire elementals during a wave, or a loose fire elemental hitting the tank during a fireball/cleave. And we just couldn't get him down even though we figured the fight out. Our healer told us we had on chance left before she had to call it a night. And we wiped. But, it was a quick wipe and we convinced her to stay around for one more shot and we got him. Finally! We finally took him down.

And wouldn't you know, he drops just one item I need in the 10-man version, the Gloves of the Lost Vanquisher. The first rogue rolls an 83. Drats! I roll...and 86! Yes, I've finally won a piece of T7. Oh wait...another rogue...95. FRICK! So there I sit with three badges, a 20g repair bill, and 10 achievement points, but no new gloves. I guess it's ok since the rogue that won them was not the rogue at 2000 DPS, but rather around 1300-1400 DPS. So she probably could use them the most. Just a frustrating end to a night where I had to constantly remind a few people to DPS adds instead of the dragon, watch out for the waves, and even helped our tank find the correct way to pivot the dragon during different waves.

In the end, I'm happy we got him down and I'm hoping to make this trip weekly, so I'll have more shots at the gloves. And now that we've done him once, future attempts shouldn't be so ugly. And what did I learn? The 10 man is much harder than the 25-man. We breezed through the 25 man with no deaths, quick pulling, and some great players. Even with some not-so-great players in a 25 man, you can down Sartharion without issues. With just 10 players on your team, if one person screws up, there's no room for error. You'll probably wipe. Lose a healer in the 10 man, you're done. Lose one in 25 man, who cares? The rest pick up the slack. So I'm definitely happy we got the 10 man version of Sartharion down and I'm looking forward to future attempts.

If only I had remembered to open my Oracles egg after the raid. It slipped my mind, I was done playing after the raid, and I logged off. Now, my egg is 12 hours overdue, and I've lost all this time that another egg could have been hatching. Drats again!