Mimiron Down + Tier 8

So last night, after a week of waiting, I got to participate in a Mimiron kill. After a few weeks of banging our heads against the wall, two weeks ago, the Gold Team took him down. Unfortunately, I was not raiding that night, so I missed the fun. Last week, due to a freak power outage, we didn't get a shot at the "Tier 8" bosses. Well, last night, we got our revenge on Mimiron again. After a couple stupid wipes, we got him down and I was lucky enough to receive my second piece of tier 8. After defeating Mimiron, we headed back to Vezax. When you unlock the first door leading to him, you get a really cool hallway to stare down...


After killing some annoying trash, you're standing face to face with the Faceless one and he is quite an imposing sight:


We only had time for two attempts last night, but I made the most of them, maximizing my DPS (and mana) in the second attempt to hit 4200 DPS. I think with a few more attempts, we could have gotten a lot further. I think he will be a challenge for us in the weeks to come.

But, back to my Tier 8, my new helm and gloves make me look pretty intimidating. Especially with the tabard to match.

Randomness

1. Thursday, since we were unable to clear early bosses in Ulduar (10) on Wednesday, we cleared Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Kologarn, Freya, Thorim and Hodir. No drops for me (I need that 2pcT8!).

2. Friday, Ulduar (25) made it to Kolo again, but still having healing issues and problems with beams (naturally, healing issues drive from extra healing of people hit by beams).

3. Tailoring is going well. On to mageweave now. Still a long way to go though. Silk was pretty easy to come by in the Armory of the monastery.



4. Marcia continues to deny me my strand crawler. I've done the fishing day EVERY day and nothing. However, fishing up the bloodtooths is fun when you get to be all read and piss off D.E.H.T.A.



5. Finally got my Chef's Hat. Been fun toting that around with my Chef title.

6. Farming mageweave from the pirates in Tanaris. I tried the ogres, but found the pirates have a slightly less drop rate but give nice rep (12.5 per kill). So it'll be the pirates for all my mageweave. While farming them, I had to go find Cuergo's treasure and on the way to his hiding spot, I found my new best friend, Winkey.



7. Finished off the 400g+5 seal mounts today from the Argent Tournament. Up to 82 mounts now (link will be outdated once I update it again - for the current listing, check the side panel -->).

100 Pets and Hodir Down

Just a quick update...last night, I received word in game that there was a member of the horde who wished to trade Argent Tournament pets. In exchange for a low listing of the Mechanopeep on the neutral auction house, I would have a chance to buy the Sen'jin Fetish. And thus, I received my 100th "official" pet (I still like to count Don Carlos' Famous Hat and the Bloodsail Admiral's Hat as "pets"). Many thanks to Taranwayward for the trade!

After that was finished, I headed up to Ulduar for our run. The night before, we cleared Flame Leviathan with one tower up, XT-002, Kologarn, and Freya in an abbreviated two hour run time. I was lucky enough to outroll Brellis by just one point and won my T8 gloves, Valorous Kirin Tor Gauntlets, and now I have more hit rating than I know what to do with (I resocketed some gems and now have no +hit gems...).

So last night, we went straight to Hodir and had little trouble with him. He dropped a couple of tanking items and we received Cheese the Freeze and I Have the Coolest Friends. We then went back to our nemesis, Mimiron. We spent the next 2+ hours wiping on him. We consistently got him to phase 4, but ran into issues each time. Learning how the P3Wx2 Laser worked exactly, how his ranged attacks work, etc. The problem also was, while we could consistently get him to phase 4, we had issues in phases 1-3 occasionally which would end up forcing us to wipe the raid so we could start over and wasting more of our time. During our best attempt, we got each section to about 20%, which is good, but not that good. I know we can do better, but our massive amounts of melee DPS on this fight make it very tough to master. We forced Vetarra to go respec boomkin, but still, that left 5 melee players as we had 2 ranged and 3 healers. With the rockets, proximity mines, and AOE effects, that's a lot to heal and avoid. I'm pretty sure next week, we'll do the same - clear through Freya or Hodir on night one, then hit up Thorim and Hodir/Freya and finally Mimiron on the next night.

That stupid bot will go down!

Wow, Tier 8 Bonuses

# 2Piece Bonus -- Your Arcane Blast, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, and Fireball spells have a chance to grant you 350 spell power for 15 sec.
# 4Piece Bonus -- You have a chance for the effect of your Missile Barrage, Hot Streak, or Brain Freeze talent not to be consumed when you cast the spells which benefit.

Both of those are pretty amazing. The 2 piece bonus might be better than the two piece Tier 7 bonus, assuming it procs more often than you can use your mana gems (every 2 minutes). However, with the mana regen nerfs incoming with the next patch, losing the 40% mana gem bonus might be tough. Optimally, I'd like to hold on to two pieces of Tier 7.5 and get the two piece Tier 8 bonus as well.

As for the four piece bonus, thinking about it, it might not be as spectacular as I first thought. Given Hot Streak is a very temperamental proc, and given that the effect only has a "chance" to proc, you might, at best get a free pyroblast every couple minutes. I think a 5% bonus crit damage bonus is a little better, even though I'm not running with it right now since I'm still missing the Valorous Frostfire Robe. From what I've heard, the four piece Valorous set with Gothik's Cowl is the way to go (yet that head piece refuses to drop as well...

That Cowl, along with one of two weapon upgrades I'm desperately searching for provide me with the best DPS upgrades at the current point. Here's hoping I can find one of them this Friday...