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.

One Down, One to Go

Last night, following up on a very successful Wednesday night pre-clear (which saw us get all the way to the Keepers of Ulduar, and Thorim down), we continued with a strong push on time to clear Ulduar. We quickly one shot Hodir, Freya, and Mimiron (yes, our first Mimiron one-shot) and we had plenty of time to work on General Vezax. We had previously reached him twice. With just one try the first time and just two tries the second time. Well last night, we reached him with 2 hours to work on him. Luckily, we didn't need all that time.

After a first failed attempt as we got him to 40%, but the healers didn't conserve mana, we had to wipe it and try again. Attempts two through four featured little issues that caused wipes - try three I believe was started off with our pally DPS dying within 10 seconds of the pull due to threat, after which Vezax quickly turned to me after a few crits without my images up and we were immediately down two DPS. So we wiped it again.

But on our fifth try, he went down. I think we got him just as he was about to enrage, so we cut it close, but we did it. He dropped a couple of nice items, including an amazing chest piece for Xenoxa, our new priest healer. The whole night, just one tier piece dropped for me, but it was the helm which I already had. Luckily, almost all the pieces dropping last night went to main specs, so I'm happy to see the raid getting geared up further. And though some may say it was our practice, our awesome healers, and good movement that took down Vezax, I'm convinced it was the power of the Emerald Whelplings...

So we continued on with a couple tries at Yogg'Saron. After a lengthy explanation of phases one and two, we decided to focus just on phase one's explanation, gave that again, and went on in. We had 4 tries or so I think on Sara, and almost got her down, but we never did get to Phase 2. Luckily, we got some practice and I'm certain we'll see Phase 2 next week (as long as we have another good Wednesday run).

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!

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.