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.

So Close...

I know it won't matter, so let's get that out of the way beforehand, but still, I wanted my 100 Emblems of Conquest achievement. If the patch comes Tuesday (which most think it will), all "Collect X Emblems" will be converted to feats of strength. So either way, I don't gain the achievement points, but still, I'm so close that it would be great to have.

Going into last night's run, I had 87/100. We quickly downed Flame Leviathan with a tower up (we tried 2 towers, but left the wrong two up) and then we one shot XT-002 hard mode. That gave me 3 emblems so I'm currently at 90/100. I don't think we'll do any hard modes tonight as we are hoping to finally get Yogg'Saron down.

So that leaves me 10 short. I think I can get one from Emalon, and on our Friday run, we'll down Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002, Kologarn, the Iron Council, Auriaya, and probably Hodir. That's 8 more. So, I will most likely be at 99/100 going into Tuesday's maintenance. Which most likely will have the patch, which will upset me if I don't get that feat of strength. Oh well, after Tuesday, it'll be a combined "Collect X Badges" across all types of badges, so we won't have to worry about it any more. But still.....so close.....

Yogg...again

Not much happening these days. We did our normal Wednesday pre-clear getting all the way through Auriaya and Hodir. Then last night, we went in, experienced quite a few odd happenings, but pushed through and got to Yogg again with an hour left in our raid. After taking quite a bit of time re-learning Phase 1 (too many people coming and going each week), we got it down pretty well. We used to use 2 tanks in 10 man which left us quite a bit DPS short in Phase 2, so we've transitioned to just one tank in the center holding the guardians there while we all DPS around him.

The nice thing about last night is we got quite a bit of practice in on Phase 2. When we were running two tanks, it was just me as the only ranged DPS so I had to take down the 400k HP crusher tentacles all by myself and it just wasn't working at all. So we swapped Eleazarjr out for Comador and got more ranged DPS at the cost of a tank. However, the issue remained that the melee DPS didn't have much to do until the portals opened, and as such, they roamed away from the ranged DPS to take down tentacles, exposing us to mind link issues.

I think we learned quite a bit last week and we're getting closer to taking him down and clearing Ulduar before the Coliseum comes out. Plus, we're having fun doing it.

Tonight we venture back into 25 Ulduar. Hopefully Hodir goes down quickly and we can either go to Freya or attempt to work on Thorim again.

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).