700

While browsing my achievements, I saw that Less-Rabi was my 700th achievement. Just 286 more to go before Cataclysm!

Achievements and Harvest Festival?

Last night, I quickly logged in looking to do the Harvest Festival achievements, only to realize that the Harvest Festival has no achievements and the achievements that were classified as "Harvest Festival" have now been properly updated to read "Pilgrim's Bounty." So that was a let down. However, the one Harvest Festival quest, to honor Uther was pretty cool, I just don't know why it's a week-long event and why no achievement or feat of strength is associated with it. Similarly, why no feat of strength for acquiring the Green Brewfest Stein? I have one for my yellow and blue steins...

Last night, after a quick run of Halls of Stone for a couple of Triumph badges (which also got me to 36 emblems which in turn bought me a new ring - Band of the Invoker), we thought, let's give this damn Less-Rabi achievement another try. In the past, we had spent hours trying to get the interrupts down correctly, and after two tries last night, we finally got it. Basically, it just took a lot of DPS and a little luck.

For our team, we had our warrior tank interrupt the first transformation - but not right away! The first cast time of transformation takes about 3.5 seconds, so we had our tank wait until the last possible moment to interrupt him. By this time, he was already under 50% so we didn't have the usual 50% transformation. Also, right after the interrupt went off, he knocked us all down, stunning us for a second or two. Immediatly after the stun, we used our interrupts and we got lucky because at that very moment, he attempted to transform. He was at about 20% by this time, so we quickly burned him before another 3 or 4 seconds passed and he had no time to do another transformation. So just two interrupts got us what is probably the most difficult part of Glory of the Hero these days.

After that, Aenador had just one achievement left for her Red Drake, so we hit up Ahn'kahet really quick hoping to get Volazj's Quick Demise for her. When I originally got it, we had a perfectly reflected Mind Flay which helped us get him under 33% while he was casting his first insanity, so we only had one insanity to deal with and we killed him in about 1.5 minutes. This time, I'm not sure what exactly happened, or how exactly it happened, but we killed him in 21 seconds. We had some sick DPS, a nice heroism, and in the end, he didn't get any insanity casts off. It's always fun to put out 7,000 DPS in a 5-man. Congrats Aenador on the new mount!

So now all I have left is Split Personality and Zombiefest. Both should be relatively easy to complete, but we just need to get a group together. Hopefully this weekend I'll finish them off and finally get my red proto drake.

As a follow up to yesterday's post, our 25 man cleared the Trial of the Crusader, then we quickly went and cleared VOA for some more T9 gear and then we went to Onyxia. To my surprise, we one shot her (after wiping earlier in the week in a 25 man PUG). We had just a couple people left up at the end, but she went down and we all rejoiced! So here's the most recent achievements:

I think next week, we'll try for Upper Back Pain or Three Sixty Pain Spike. Should be fun.

Progress Updates

The 10 and 25 man teams did exceptionally well last week, and then I left for a few days, so I didn't have time to post. But the 10 man once again cleared the Trial in about an hour which left us lots of time to work on Jaraxxus on Heroic. And we got him! Unfortunately, we didn't have time to work on the Faction Champions, but hopefully this week, we'll have Jaraxxus down to a one shot.

The 25 man team got down Anub last week. It was a great victory for the team, however, we were all humbled when we took on the Faction Champions on heroic. I think our DPS just isn't there yet, but the healers and tanks did a great job.

On an unrelated note, arcane rules and I'm doling out 6000+ sustained DPS. Woo!

7500, 100, Title, Pet

So, as everyone probably knows, today starts Brewfest! And, with Brewfest, comes achievements, violet proto-drakes, and pets! So this is probably the best day of the year for me. So I started with the two easiest achievements - eating and drinking!

I then continued on with another two easy achievements - since I already had three pieces of Brewfest Regalia from previous years, I just had to dance drunk in Dalaran, port to Shattrath and then jump off a bridge.

So I was left with just two achievements for my awesome Brewmaster title! First up, I defended the Brewfest grounds from the Dark Iron Dwarves and then we went to get even more revenge on them by entering into Blackrock Depths and defeating Coren Direbrew. And with that, What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been was complete!

And with that, I saw new mail, brought out my Argent Squire to get to my mailbox and retrieved what is probably the most beautiful mount in all of Azeroth, the Violet Proto-Drake. He's purple, flies at 310%, and is just downright amazing. Here he is in Netherstorm in all his beauty:

So with the proto-drake, I have now reached 100 mounts! And of course, with 100 mounts, comes a reward of a 101st mount! So I now sit at 101 mounts.

So there are my 100 mounts, however, before learning my 100th mount, I checked my achievement log, and there I sat, at 7500 points exactly. Such a beautiful number. But my 100th mount achievement takes me to 7510.

Of course, with Brewfest, comes an all new pet! My very own Pint-Sized Pink Elekk, my 121st pet. Just 7 elude me still. They will be mine!

97 Mounts

Got my Quel'dorei Steed last night. And yesterday I was wondering what would get me to 100 mounts. Well, I forgot about all this gold I've been hoarding. I can easily go buy a Grand Ice Mammoth, but I'd really like to save a bit more for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. But with Brewfest fast approaching, I won't have enough gold to buy the Mammoth and get 100 mounts on Sunday with the Violet Proto-Drake. I think I might hit up Vetarra or Aenador and see if I can dip into their cash reserves in exchange for a modest 10% return on their money. I only need 3,000g or so. And I could probably pay that back at about 1,000g a week (plus interest).

Either way, I just want to hit 100 mounts and get it over and done with. And then when the 100 pets achievement drops with 3.2.2 or 3.3, I'll already be there ready for that achievement.

99 Seals...

Two days ago I needed 23 seals for a new mount and since you get just 10 per day from the dailies, that meant 3 from the "bonus bags" would allow me to buy a mount. First day went well - I got my 10 seals from dailies and 2! of the four bags had seals in them. Unfortunately, yesterday, I got my 10 seals, but the bags held nothing for me. So the mount has been postponed until tonight. #97 incoming. I think I'm going to go with the Quel'dorei Steed. Then I can get back to work on the faction mounts.

Then this Sunday, Brewfest returns! The Violet Proto-Drake will be mine! #98.

I just have no idea what I'm going to get for #99. My egg hatches soon and maybe I'll get a Green Proto, or maybe I'll get lucky and figure out a way to get my Red Proto, but barring those two options, it'll just be another 10 days of dailies to get an Argent Tourney mount.

Either way, as you can probably tell from all my mount posts lately, I really want to get to 100!

Missing in Action

A couple things to quickly update.

1. The 10 Man Gold Team cleared Normal Trial in an hour last week. We then attempted the Northrend Beasts on heroic again. This time though, we killed them. We tried Jaraxxus a few times, but just didn't have the time or patience to kill him.

2. The 25 Man Gold Team took down the Faction Champions for the first time last week. I hear it was a one-shot. I was out of town. They then quickly took down the Twins, but didn't have time to get through Anub.

3. Just one week until Brewfest!! With it, a new mount. I'm currently at 96 mounts. I am still hoping to get my Red Proto Drake soon (97) then my Violet Proto Drake with Brewfest (98) and finally an Argent Tourney mount will be 99 in a couple days. Then, my special, super-secret mount will be revealed as #100.

4. We went into Naxx last night to get Undying. And, we did. It was not that hard and it took us just over 2 hours to clear all the way through. Not too shabby. Tiddlywinks the Undying sounds good. I do die quite infrequently (when not in raids - where my cloth armor does little to protect me).

5. I was roaming through Stratholme looking for another new mount. While in there, I found my new weapon to look pretty good. (click to enlarge)

95 and counting...

The morning started with a successful Wintergrasp battle with a 25 man Vault of Archavon group immediately afterwards. After 3 wipes on Koralon, we kicked two DPS that were unable to break 1300 DPS, replaced a healer that liked standing in fires, and we downed him. Though I ended up 4th on damage done due to a fire under my feet while he was spinning around doing his flame breath, but I was third on DPS done through the fight. A nice PvP piece dropped, but I lost the roll, however, getting my achievement was well worth the wipes.

After that, we quickly did Emalon and Archavon. On Emalon, my DPS was pretty amazing, putting out 1.42m damage and averaging 4909.1 DPS. On Archavon, not quite the same DPS, but still #1 atop the meters with 845k damage and 4695.1 DPS.

Later though, I found a bored guildie who had a level 80 horde priest and in exchange for a few gold, he let me kill him over and over again in Halaa. After I had enough Halaa Battle Tokens, I went off and farmed my last Halaa Research Token and then went back and was forced to bomb Halaa over and over again to take Halaa back for the Alliance. And with the battle and research tokens, Reins of the Dark Riding Talbuk and Reins of the Dark War Talbuk are mine, bringing my mount total to 95.

I expect to get the Red Proto Drake soon from the achievements, I'll get the Violet Proto Drake when Brewfest starts, and I'll be getting the Red Bearon soon as well. That brings me to 98 mounts. I also have 24 champion's seals right now so in 8 (or 7 days if I run the Trial of the Crusader a few times) days, I'll have another mount from the Argent Tournament. Then, 9-10 days later, my 100th mount. But I'm off to farm Rivendare's mount, so perhaps it will be sooner if I get lucky...