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).

Heartbreaker

So there we were, ready to begin our conquest of Ulduar, just looking to down a few bosses before we get some good attempts in at General Vezax and maybe even Yogg'Saron tomorrow. When out of the blue, our raid leader, Aravic asks, "XT-002 Hard Mode?" A few of us (me included) answered no, let's power through and dominate this place so we have more time tomorrow. But I was outnumbered and we gave it a shot. And it looked like we would do it in just one attempt when a void zone popped up in the middle of everyone during a tantrum. Oh well, we knew we had it. We had the DPS, we had the skill. We had it.

Try two, no problems. And there it was, Heartbreaker. Our first Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement. But not the last. I think, given the time, we could master each and every fight on the list. However, it seems like 3.2 is coming soon (a bit too soon in my opinion) and Ulduar will be left in the dust with the Argent Coliseum calling us in.

All of our DPS on that fight was above 3,000. Our three healers all did an amazing job, and our offtank did a great job picking up the pummelers and the sparks while doing a fair amount of damage himself. All around, a great job by all involved, and our shaman healer got a nice new Breastplate of the Stoneshaper.

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!

New Achievements

This wonderful list of changes between the last patch and this patch achievements illustrates some interesting stuff.

Of course, we have brand new achievements for the new dungeon - nothing special there. But we also have achievements for a brand new world event - Pilgrim's Bounty! It's a Thanksgiving themed event and looks like it will be quite fun with new achievements, a turkey pet, and a title of "Pilgrim." It also looks like we'll have a few certain days that award achievements - Day of the Dead (Halloween) and Pirate's Day (Maybe Sept. 19 - Talk like a pirate day?). Note: Pilgrim's Bounty also comes with a lot of new recipes as well.

A change I'm not too excited about is they're making the Rapid Defense achievement which I FINALLY got a lot easier to do - upping the time requirement from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Pretty lame.

Also looks like we have the inevitable new Vault of Archavon boss, Emalon the Flame Watcher.

And my fears were confirmed - they are removing achievement points. In a very interesting move, they are going to take away all the achievement points you earned for 5, 25, 100, 1000 emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, etc. and replace them with Loot 5, 25, 100, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, Conquest, or Triumph. Hopefully if you have achieved 500 emblems of Heroism and 250 emblems of valor, for example, you'll start at 750 on the "Loot 1000 emblems of heroism, valor, conquest, or triumph."

Not too many other changes. They'll be adding Feats of Strength for certain items - the Winterspring Frostsaber, Black War Mammoth, Epic Brewfest Mount, Gurky from the 2009 Blizzcon, and...proud owner of an Onyx Panther?! Sounds interesting.

Well I'll Be...

I never thought I'd see the day, but there I was, in Arathi Basin with my pocket healer (who didn't stay in my pocket like I trained her...), Xenoxa, and we were just going back and forth with the horde. 2 bases to 2. 1 to 1. 3 to 2. 2 to 3. At one point we had 4 to their 1, but quickly lost that advantage. But as we neared the end, the horde hit 1800 resources about 1 minute before we took back a third node and we hit 1800 not soon thereafter. Then it was a race to the finish. The horde had 2 minutes, 30 seconds until they won, but when we capped and held that third base, the timer switched over. We knew it would be close, at one point, Xenoxa pointed out it'd be 1980 to 2000. What a let down that would be.

But in the end...1990 to 2000! We won! And I got an achievement I never thought I'd see: We Had it All Along *cough*. And not only that, I had picked up the daily battleground quest two days earlier for Arathi Basin, so I just went and turned it in and received Call to Arms!. And with those two achievements, I broke the 6,800 point barrier. Not long now until 7,000!

Of course, the Summer Fire Festival isn't helping much. I finished my fires and juggled my torches, but I can't get the last achievement which requires a full set of Fire Festival gear. I currently sit at 45 blossoms and can only get 10 per day. There's 12 days left, leaving me just 165 blossoms, 35 short of the sandals I need. Hopefully Blizzard will fix this soon so as to not penalize those of us who did the fire festival fires last year. I also can't summon Ahune so I can't get my pet either...

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.

Welcome to 3.2 - Warcraft gets (more) Casual?

Last night, the patch notes for patch 3.2 were released and it appears that it should go up on the PTR some time next week. The patch will bring a new raid instance with 10 man and 25 man versions, and of course, new badges, Emblems of Triumph. In both 10 and 25 man versions, all bosses will drop Emblems of Triumph, which seems fine to me (no differentiation between "normal" and "heroic" modes - though Blizzard is also dropping the terms "normal" and "heroic" to denote 10 and 25 man raids).

However, the change that gets me the most is they will be eliminating Emblems of Heroism and Valor. Instead, wherever you would get a Heroism or Valor badge, you'll now get Emblems of Conquest. So those of us toiling away in 25 man Ulduar for 58 badges to buy a Tier 8.5 piece can now run a couple heroic 5 man dungeons to get the same badges. Or we can do a speed clear or Naxxramas and pick up quite a bit that way. Why let those of us who have spent countless hours in Ulduar 25 to earn the badges be the only ones to get great gear with them? Just give the Emblems of Conquest to everyone and everyone can have free, awesome upgrades!

Now, I somewhat understand why Blizzard is doing this. They basically brought this upon themselves by having so many different badges floating around in Northrend. With each new patch, they need to add new badges. With each new badge, you need new badge vendors. With each new badge, you need some way to incentivize people to run the older instances. This does it. However, it takes it a bit too far. Now if you were to eliminate heroism badges and replace them with Valor, I could see the logic in that. But eliminating both Heroism and Valor and replacing them with Conquest? That just makes it too easy to earn those badges.

Plus, you say you want Triumph badges, but don't have the time to raid? No problem, just do the daily normal and heroic 5 man quests. They'll reward you 2 and 1 badge respectively. Why even bother to raid any more? Let's just run 5-mans! We can get equivalent gear to people who put time and effort into raiding 25 man instances with little bother. Hell, I can run Violet Hold in 20 or 30 minutes. I'll take some Emblems of Triumph for that.

I heard rumors last night that the reason they have to make these drastic changes is to be more prepared for the patch after 3.2 - be it 3.3 or 4.0. Maybe that's true, but I think they've just taken it a bit too far. Why give Triumph for daily 5 man dungeons? Why give Conquest for running a 10 man speed Naxx run? It just dumbs everything down further and gives everyone who hasn't put the time or effort into running the bigger instances a chance at amazing gear. So here I sit, working my butt off for little gear pixels when all I have to do is take a 1 or 2 month break from raiding and I can come back, run some insanely easy 5 mans or Naxx runs and I'll be right back on par with those who ran 25 man Ulduar every week since the patch. It completely trivializes everything we're doing right now. Which is fine if that's what Blizzard really wants to do. But I have the feeling they don't, but they were just backed into a situation with so many badges and emblems that something drastic had to be done. Maybe a bit more forethought would have fixed this problem before it became a problem.

Oh yeah, don't forget this other change:

# The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
# New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

This appears to be the first time ever that Blizzard is removing achievement points. Just last night I received 250 Emblems of Valor and I'm just a few emblems short of 500 Emblems of Heroism (I'll be sure to get it before the patch). But that's 110 achievement points that will be gone *poof* into thin air. Sure I'll get some worthless feats of strength for them, but it sets a dangerous precedent to start taking away achievements from people who have earned them.

They state that new achievements will be added for the new emblems, but at some point they have to go away too - right? Just like Heroism and Valor got assimilated, won't Conquest and Triumph give way to more powerful badges? Or do they not plan on adding any more badges before the next expansion? If they don't plan on adding any more badges, then you can leave the achievements in and force us to run countless heroic 5 mans to get the 1,000 Emblems of Conquest achievement. But if you plan on taking that away from us, let us know now so we don't work towards it, only to have our points taken away.

Edit: I guess I read it wrong, the new achievements will allow you to get ANY combination of emblems. So it'll just be "1000 Emblems" - it won't matter if they're Conquest, Triumph, or Emblems of Extreme Greatness from the next expansion. Either way, getting 1,000 combined emblems won't be too difficult, so maybe they'll go to 5,000 or 10,000. Who knows?

Two Pieces of Tier 8 = New Spec

So, tonight I was lucky enough to roll the highest on my new helm, the Valorous Kirin Tor Hood (which of course means I got Mimiron down - our team did it without me 2 weeks ago). Combined with the Valorous Kirin Tor Gauntlets sitting in my bags, I realized that the only way I could equip them would be to switch talent specs. The Frostfire spec is nice, but I don't need Precision when my hit rating is 428 (420 is what I need with a draenei, but I can't get it any lower).

So with this switch, like I said, I'm at 428 hit rating, and that is after I "downgraded" my weapon from Firesoul to Life and Death. Even though Life and Death has 26 less damage, it has 42 more crit and 3 more haste (the 34 hit rating is ignored because I'm over the hit cap). With this switch I also had to re-gem quite a few items, switching from Potent Monarch Topazes to Reckless Monarch Topazes. I also broke a few gem bonuses, for example, I didn't need the +4 hit on my Kirin Tor Gauntlets, so I threw a Runed Scarlet Ruby in for extra spellpower.

Now I just need to figure out how to get Rawr to work perfectly so I can figure out how I can get back to the Firesoul with the T8 chest...