My Poor Kid =/

Hey guys just wanted to check in real fast. I don’t think I have signed onto wow and played since last Wed night maybe? My kid (she is only 1) has picked up strep throat + Tonsillitis. The last few months have just been hell as far as picking up coughs, colds, ear infections (which required the ear tube surgery, and now this. What a mess. Anyways she really doesn’t want to eat or sleep because she is feeling so crappy so my time at home is pretty much holding her and trying to get her to get a little bit of sleep or eat a little something. Which of course makes it impossible to raid. I hope to be back in action as far as raiding mid week (the DR said tonsillitis sticks around for about 12 days). Anyways was just checking in with everyone and tossing out a hello since I havn’t been able to post in a while!

Tanking Weapon Toss-Up

Monday night I found myself spamming general chat looking for a healer to do some 2v2with since all my teams seemed to be inactive this week. A pally healer friend of mine helped me out and I was able to get my 10 games in for the week. We went 4-6 which isn’t bad for never PVPing together before. I did respec as always but now I’m thinking with season 4 around the corner I might just go in as prot to get the points until the next season comes around. This would really help me save up some money for once. I have been really broke lately and having a little bit of extra coin couldn’t hurt. After doing my arena games I jumped into a ZA raid to finish off the last two bosses. Hex lord was one shot (which was really nice) and I think we got the last boss in 3 attempts. He dropped the tanking axe which I was lucky enough to pick up. The axe comes with a gem slot, 20 parry, and 12 hit rating compared to the mallet having 3 more stam, 16 defense, and 14 expertise. I’m still back and forth on which I find to be better the axe or the mace (I like the expertise on the mace but I really dig the parry on the axe + the gem slot). I think maybe what decides overall is that the axe graphic looks tight and the mace looks like sh*t on a stick.

I have to raise the gold for another mongoose enchant (just spent like 400-500 gold on the mace and now It’s going to be a situational weapon..grrr) but here is the axe stats.

Last night I had planned to miss the raid because it was my nieces b-day party but instead I found myself at home with a sick baby. I took my kid to the doctor and somehow she picked up tonsillitis and has been running a consistent temp of around 102 =/. I’m hoping her fever breaks today and she can finally get a good night of sleep. Having a sick kid is not fun and really pulls at the old heart strings. Last night while I was getting barfed on the guild was in Hyjal where they killed boss#2! Grats guys, hopefully I’ll get to see this guy next week.

T5 Helm Obtained

As a whole the guild didn’t do much as far as “raiding” goes this week. TK, Gruul, Mag all went untouched, but that was cool with me. Having a slower week every once in a while I think gives people a little bit of a needed break. We did clear SSC though and the big Vag died again. She dropped defender helm token x2 and I was lucky enough to pick one up. I also flew up to the new badge vendor this weekend, stood around for about an hour trying to work my way through all the lag and horde. Once I was able to finally get him targeted I picked up the badge belt which was a pretty nice upgrade for me. I wasn’t able to gem my new items like I would have liked since the AH was bone dry, I guess from everyone buying their own badge upgrades, which is bull sh#t. People should realize I’m the most important person on my server and therefore should leave at least 2 of everything on the auction house should the chance arise I need something. Once I get a little bit of money I’ll go back and re-gem these so that they are utilized to their full potential.

It looks like the guilds next progression target is Kael. I personally would like to see myself moving forward in Hyjal or BT instead but I think that comes from the fact that I just don’t like TK. In fact I think I hate that instance, the trash sucks and makes the whole instance feel “slow” which leads to my ass getting tired. Compare that first hallway in TK (so much waiting on pats) to the first pull in Hyjal (waves of trash mobs on a timer) and that’s my argument for why TK sucks. However as far as bragging rights I think saying you were around for a progression Kael kill is > than a Hyjal boss 2 kill, so I guess eventually it needs to be done. As far as my next upgrade I think I’m going to shoot for the T5 pants so I can get the four piece bonus, although I have heard it really doesn’t proc that much which will be a bummer. Besides getting two new pieces of loot I really don’t have much to write about, so I guess this post will have to be somewhat short. Tonight I hope to wrap up ZA and I also have to get my arena games in. If you find yourself in an arena against me be nice and give me a free win. =)

Vashj Down!

The big Vajayjay is down!

Friday night the guild zoned into SSC with the only goal being to kill lady Vashj, the remaining bosses would be placed on the back burner for now. Normally I hate when farmed bosses are left alive while trying to progress on a new kill because there is always someone who needs an item from a certain boss and 2 of the 3 left alive dropped tier 5 tokens. In this case though it needed to be done, lately when all the bosses but vashj were down most people would log instead of try vashj attempts, which meant we were not getting any hard core attempts at her. Friday night we spent about 3-4 hours learning the fight, I think our best attempt was around 23%, but it got too late and several people had to log. The raid was called and it was posted we would try again on Saturday. I felt that 23% on our second night ever of attempts on her was great. This boss is known to be a brick wall for most guilds and many cannot get past her even after months of trying. Saturday night we had basically the same group of people ready to give her another shot. I was really happy to see it was almost the same people that way no one would really have to “learn” the fight and we could start getting in solid attempts right off the bat. I think it was on our third or fourth attempt that we got her down.

That was an awesome feeling to finally see her die. I think there were a few key actions that really made the difference between the wipes and the boss kill. 1. The guild communication over vent was excellent. People calling out which area the nagas and striders were spawning. This made it possible for our tanks and kiters to pick up the adds before they killed anyone (My job during the vashj fight was to tank the naga's). We also had great communication on the tainted elementals which allowed the “tainted core” people to adjust positioning fairly quickly so the core could be passed around effectively. 2. We had such strong dps individuals that three of the four “ramps/stairs” to vashj were able to be soloed instead of requiring 2 dps each. This freed up three extra dps to be up top to kill down the nagas and striders before they stacked up. *On previous wipes the adds piling up seemed to be our largest problem, 2 seems to be the safe limit on nagas for me to tank, when i get 3 it really puts alot of stress on the healers and i usually end up dying.* 3. On phase three we had the hunters shoot down the sporebats flying over vashj. This seemed to make a really big difference. With the sporebats dead they weren’t dropping the poison all over the raid floor which allowed the tank to move vashj around much easier and leaving the raid much more room to be safe. Vashj dropped 1 defender (that went to the MT, I think I have enough dkp to beat out the other tanks for the next one to drop), 2 champion (if I’m remembering correctly), and a dps leather belt. *Side note: why does Vashj’s snake hair keep moving even after she is dead? If they are still alive you should be able to kill them for extra loot imo* I feel that Vashj is one of the BC milestones and I can now scratch her off my list of things to beat. That’s an awesome accomplishment and what makes it even better is that it was a guild first, I wasn’t just “ran” through the kill with a guild that has been farming her for weeks. Sunday night we went back into SSC to clear out the remaining bosses. After the Fathom-Lord kill I looted my badges and noticed he dropped the tanking necklace which was a nice upgrade for me.

The main tank has the most dkp of anyone so he pretty much can have any item he wants but he passed on it in preference to his badge necklace. Before bidding can start the server crashes……that’s special. I’m pretty sure it’s because “karma” wanted to bite me in the ass since several of my posts lately have revolved around my need to spend dkp and get loot. maybe “Karma” is trying to teach me not to be so selfish. The instance server comes back about an hour later and FLK has despawned along with his loot. The GM holds bidding on the items even though they have despawned so that he can submit a ticket and have the lost loot recovered and sent to the people who win the bids. The bidding starts and I find myself bidding against a feral druid, which i win the necklace for 400dkp. *I had what i found to be a humerous story posted earlier but i took it down so as to not offend anyone.* Since I won the necklace I’m hoping for it to show up in my mailbox any time now, as of Monday evening I still didn’t have it. If I don’t get it maybe that will teach me a lesson to not be such a loot whore, if I get home today and find it in my mailbox.. well then f&ck you “Karma” I got that shit anyways *flips the bird*

Raydz Public Service Announcment #2!

Don’t view Asian CGI chicks, they f*ck with your head and freak you the hell out.

She now haunts my dreams with her freaky dry eyes, torments me with her f*cked up smile, and to top it all off she refuses to give me a happy ending.

Here she is - but you will regret it


On a side note, core dps wasnt on last night so we did HKM,GruuL,Mag instead of Vashj attempts (lame). Again the gruul shield did not drop (also lame). Tonight is ZA, maybe I can snap up a dragon hawk shield.

Crap night turns Golden -- Winterchill Down!

Winterchill down!
Hyjal was easy - Hydross pwnt us - wtf Last night started out even more rocky than normal, I almost immediately logged off. Raid started an hour late. Druid tank was having a hard time on tanking his mobs so people started ragging on him, causing him to quit the raid and guild. Hunter pulled frost phase aggro on Hydross, not sure if it was hunter or tank tps = 2 wipes (I’m nature tank so I’m not to blame!). **Edited 4/12/08 -** Tanks had a hard time keeping adds in line = 2 wipes Every wipe people are blaming each other, pointing fingers, hunter catches tons of hate and leaves the raid. Several people are replaced. Pull five we finally kill him, small amount of dkp awarded because we sucked so much ass. GM calls people out on how much they are sucking and embarrassing themselves, straighten up your act or leave. Plate DPS shoulders drop. A chance to spend some dkp! I toss up an opening bid of 10 dkp (10 dkp out of 2000dkp so it was a next to nothing bid) to see whom im up against. No matter how much I want to spend my dkp im not going to take an item from a fury warrior who could really use the upgrade. 30 seconds pass by, all other warriors have the item so I win. I still made dkp off the boss kill, my goal is to run it down before I transfer/guild implodes, even with that loot my dkp is still going up.
Pulls to lurker go good, lurker is one shot (thank god), mallet drops! Nice tanking upgrade for me over kings defender. /ready to spend 1000+ dkp (in the past this item has not gone cheaper than 800) /bid opens /Raydz bids 100 /Raydz wins /jaw drops DPS plate bracers also on Lurker. /Raydz bids 10 /Raydz wins
My plan to blow out dkp this week so far is not going well. I ended up coming out of the instance with more dkp than I had and I got 3 pieces of loot. Dkp sitting somewhere around 2200 now. The dps pieces are nice, ill use them for grinding. I have mixed feelings about the mallet, I am totally happy about the mallet stats most especially the expertise rating. I’m not very excited though that the graphic looks like a nautilus with a broom stick shoved up his ass. Yeah I get the “lurker” is a water boss but seriously, the graphic is just stupid.
	+		=
After lurker we stood around for fifteen minutes deciding what to do. Some people wanted to finish up farm bosses, some wanted to do Hyjal, some wanted to go to Vashj. I was up for Vashj or Hyjal even though my confidence in the group wasn’t at an all time high I still wanted to do something new. It was decided lets go play in Hyjal, so many people are just burnt on SSC they wanted a night of something different. Everyone catches a port to Shatt, takes the free port to caverns of time (love that port now) and a few minutes later were going over the strat for Rage Winterchill. The real key to this fight is getting through the 8 waves of undead. My main job was to pick up the necromancers and keep them from shooting healers/pally tank. Me, a healer, and too mages are assigned to necro duty. The last several phases I found myself tanking two necro’s , spell reflecting and bashing when possible, and keeping an eye on the other two sheeped necro’s incase they should pop early. The whole plan went off smooth as butter. 8 waves down, everyone alive, tons of npc’s still running around ready to help kill Winterchill. Smooth as butter until Winterchill shows up that is, and one shots a shadow priest, kills our tank in two hits, pops around the raid killing several of our dps (not sure where our healers were). I’m bashing away at the boss trying to get aggro when he finally turns to me and I start tanking him (Hunter MD’s really saved the raid at this point). Even though a druid and I have established aggro at this point I see about half the raid dead and realize there is just no way we can do this. That is until the npcs and Jaina all join in. Winterchill’s life starts falling at a rate that everyone redoubled their efforts. During the fight you have to constantly be aware to get out of the death and decay (red bubbling stuff on the ground), but other than that this boss turned out to be cake. Last night we one shot Rage Winterchill.
Rage INC!
Tanking Rage
Rage Down!
The same group that got owned by Hydross four times earlier in the night turned around and did an awesome job on a boss encounter none of us have ever done before. What turned out to be a hellacious night turned into a great progression raid night. Nothing dropped off trash or Rage that I could use but it was still well worth it to be there for the kill. I think tonight were going to try to finish up our SSC run and turn our sights onto Vashj, hopefully we stay away from the retarded ass wipes and lean more toward the smooth as butter play style. In regards to my previous post of loot thirst, it looks like I have been given a glass, but everyone here knows that im a loot whore so what im really looking for is a keg =P

Dying from Loot Thirst

Picture a man crawling through the desert dying of thirst mumbling “water….water….” over and over to himself. Now take that image, and picture Raydz (my warrior) crawling through serpent shrine mumbling “loot…loot….”. That’s how I have been feeling the last 2-3 weeks, I’m slowly dying from loot thirst. Full clear of SSC/TK/ZA/Gruul/Mag…(besides kael and vashj)..ZERO tanking drops. My dkp keeps piling up with nothing to spend it on. I’m thinking about wadding it up and stuffing it down my pants to pick up the ladies, since that’s about all its good for at this point. I get the feeling that I need to bid high on everything tanking or even plate dps at this point just to insure I get it, since there is a lot of guild drama going on. I commented before having too much dkp is dangerous because a guild can fall apart at any point. I’m sitting on over 2k dkp at this point which compared to almost all the other raiders this is “a lot”, but I’m not hording it on purpose there is just no tanking loot falling. If something happens to make the guild break up before I spend my dkp I may be forced to kill a lot of people IRL and I don’t want to do that. The ZA run this weekend didn’t help with several of the “frayed” raiders any. Last night we were planning on giving the 3rd timer chest a real hard core run. Our dps was massive, heals were spot on, and MT and the OT were doing fine. Even though It was suggested to do eagle first, then bear, then onto dragon everyone decided they should do bear then eagle to pick up the extra 5 mins first just in case anything went wrong. Clear up to bear, bears dead, 21 minutes on the clock to head to eagle. 21 minutes left means things are looking pretty good for a third chest attempt. We mount up, take off to eagle, start clearing up the ramp. That’s when we notice we have no seed on the birds… The lock is back at bear boss…. AFK….. Everyone starts throwing out all these ideas to kick him from the party, kick him from the guild, who to replace him with, do we have enough time to replace him for the second chest, etc. Everyone talking on vent at once and not paying attention ends up on a ramp wipe. The hunter in the raid goes psycho because he really wants the 2nd chest for the axe and gun, and this is the second time in a row the 2nd chest was messed up due to someone leaving after bear. I’m pretty sure he turned into the hulk at his computer. He was screaming on vent, and just generally losing his mind until he quit the raid and logged, I didn’t laugh out loud at the time, but I found the whole thing quite humorous. What made it even more funny is that when the lock returned he was like “Guys I am really sorry I went afk”…*and then gave the rest of the explanation which is what made it funny*. I understand when RL stuff comes up or even emergencies, so when someone goes afk like that most of the time it’s not their fault and nobody has any right to be mad at them. I was totally expecting the guy to say he had some type of RL problem he had to deal with immediately, and I would have been cool with that. Instead we get a “guys I am really sorry I went afk….but lord of the rings came on”. Now I don’t need anything off chest 1, chest 2, boss 1, boss2, or lynx BUT if I had needed chest 2 I would have been really really pissed, but since I didn’t I just laughed my ass off. I’m not sure If the GM is going to give this guy trouble for it, I guess something should be said because he ruined the chest for everyone else because he wanted to watch LOTR? I can’t wait to hear what the hunter has to say when he finds out why we missed chest 2. I can’t wait for the reset on Tuesday, SSC has GOT to drop something for me this week. There is a lot of unrest going on in the guild and I want to dump these dkp points and make sure I snap up some loot before anything happens.

VR is harder now but still do-able.

Another week goes by, no big news. No new bosses down, many core raiders still out due to spring break wrapping up. I am happy that even though we didn’t have the usual core group the backup guys brought their A game and we were able to still clear our farmed bosses in SSC/TK/Gruul/Mag (This means not Vashj and not Kael but everything else ). My dkp pool is bursting at the seams and of course nothing drops that I need besides a trash mob trinket. I picked this trinket up for like 25 dkp (I’m pushing 2000) so it was really cheap and I’m pretty happy with it. I’ll gladly take the free HP.

Before zoning into SSC I was informed that the OT tank who used to “rank” above me has decided to quit wow. This means the guild lost their nature resist set so they whipped me up a full set in about 30 minutes by everyone cleaning out their banks. This puts me in a hell of a spot because I was bent on spending my earned DKP on 1-2 items in SSC, then transferring back to my previous server to hang out with my old friends/previous guild. The guild really pulled together to get me that set and if I bail now I’m going feel like a total jerk off. Hopefully when I spend my dkp and I’m ready to transfer back I’ll have enough mats in the bank I can pay most of the set back in other materials such as ore/primals and leave on a semi “okay” note. I still need to put the appropriate leg armor on the leg piece but here are the pieces as they are now.

We went into TK killing Alar, Solarian, and decided to give Void Reaver a shot even though he is supposed to be “bugged”. I’m not sure if he is really bugged or if he is just supposed to be hard now. He was buffed and it’s really noticeable making VR much more difficult now. I bet the guy at blizzard who designed this boss was just pissed everyone thought his creation was so easy. “So Bob did you hear everyone calls your guy Loot Reaver now?” *Bobs eyes narrow in malice* “Oh really….I’ll show those bastards.” *bob opens his source code and turns up VR's difficulty level x4* VR is actually much harder now per what the ranged classes say, but as far as tanking him he’s still the same easy fight. Apparently he doesn’t turn now in the direction he throws orbs, and he throws more of them, plus he doesn’t target the person he throws them to so the ranged never know who to get away from. Even though he is harder now we still killed him on our second attempt and passed the T5 shoulders out making several people happy.

Hopefully this week goes better as far as raiding, I’d like to see some more attempts on vashj or get back into Hyjal. On the PvP front nothing exciting, went 50% win/loss on all teams. I did however manage to pick up my veng legs giving me 4/5 veng which is pretty nice. Now I’m just going to keep saving my points now until the next season.

Last night we hit up ZA to try to get our hunter his Trollbane axe from the 2nd timed chest. It didn’t drop, a healing staff did which went to my resto druid RL friend (finally got his ass online to play). We missed the third timed chest by about 2 minutes so I think we’ll hopefully get it in the next couple of tries. I picked up a dps plate chest piece off of eagle but I don’t think I will really use it that much since veng is better in almost every way.

Tonight I think we are going to try to beat the 3d chest timer before our SSC raid begins. I realized I linked several new epics I picked up this weekend but most of them are so situational they will be rarely used, Hopefully I can start spending my DKP on some much needed tanking upgrades.

Did Mag Shrink?

Apparently its spring break for several of our core members this week so finding geared raiders was an issue last night. The officers decided to grab pretty much any level 70 that wanted to come and we headed off to go kill Mag. I went back through my blog to see if I had any previous good screen shots of Mag but I couldn’t find one. The reason I was looking is because last night everyone was commenting on how much smaller Mag looked. I wasn’t sure if I totally saw it or not but he did look different to me. Maybe everyone in my guild is just crazy. I don’t think I read anything about Mag’s graphic being “shrunk” since he is less powerful so I’m curious if it was?

Mag Last Night

I tanked Gruul and Mag last night which was kinda fun, I think I kinda missed being in the MT seat. We had very few tanks on last night so I tanked the first warlock and the second warlock which was mis-directed to me. Tab – sunder- cleave – tab – shield slam – cleave – tab – sunder – tab – taunt – cleave. Etc. That was kinda fun since I normally only tank the last one and both were dead before Mag spawned and I easily picked him up and tanked him against the wall. Mag is much easier now since his nerf, especially the cube rotation. Mag also drops a lot of loot now. 3 chest tokens, his random loot, his head, 20 slot bag, and a bag full of gems which had 3 purples and 2 blues. I picked up a gem which will be made into a 15 stam gem as soon as I find a JC online in the guild who has the cut. Mag also dropped 25g / 3 badges for each player which I thanked him for. I don’t see any reason to ever miss out on the free badges, gems, and 25g in the upcoming weeks it seems like he has been turned into the outlands “onyxia”. HKM and Gruul went smooth as well, each dropping an extra armor token , 10g each, and 3 badges. I’m really enjoying the fact that raid bosses drop badges now, doing 3-4 bosses a night plus going into ZA will give me a steady supply of badges and will hopefully keep me out of Kara as much as possible. In this post I’m going to include a few pictures that I forgot to bring the other day pertaining to my previous post about the new patch.

Already the alliance on my server are calling the new zone "Horde Island" since we have no chance of living long enough to quest there.

Here is one of the waves cresting the hill in Hyjal. Notice the Alliance NPC footmen ready to help. Behind them but out of the picture is dwarf gunmen, sorcerers, and knights which will also help

On our second to last wave people started losing connection in groups which eventually lead to 12 dc'd people and ended in a wipe and our only attempt for the night.(The aboms are cool looking)

Server Disconnects pooped on my first Hyjal.

Tuesday, new Patch Day: Downloading wow patch at work, all pumped up to maybe check out some new 2.4 instances, maybe raid Hyjal, or even do a new daily. Get home and see that my ISP is down. I give them a call, it will be down all through the night. Anger…..Skin begins to turn green, muscles bulge and cloths begin to rip and tear. That’s when my girlfriend says “Hey your mom called today to see if we wanted to stop by for dinner so she could hang out with the baby for a while.” Hmmmm my parents have an internet connection through a different provider that is even better than mine…..I begin to shrink away from the incredible hunk back into the bronzed god that I am and pack up my laptop to play wow there ..and get a free dinner out of it. So first off I log on and like most everyone else head off to IF and then to the new island to see what it’s all about. As of my last view of my server its 4 to 1 horde to alliance, after last night I’m pretty sure it’s more like 25 horde to 1 alliance. Upon landing all I saw was a field of red ganking horde. This may have been the roughest alliance ass raping I have ever had. I had a monstrous rez timer and no-where to run. I’d rez and walk a few feet toward the ocean and die, rez walk die, rez walk die. Finally I got far enough out in the water I went under, swam for a while, beached myself, and then hearthed. The beating was so bad I thought about stealing my kids bottle and curling up under a cover and crying myself to sleep. My first hour in the new patch was not enjoyable. I did do the two daily quests in northern hellfire later on and those were pretty quick and painless. I have been grinding primal shadows for a resist set so I’ll probably work those two quests into my pre-raid schedule. After my quests were done I was informed we were going to head into Hyjal just to see it for kicks since everyone was tired of getting ganked or done with their instance. Hell ya im all down for that. The raid forms up and before long I was checking out the inside of Hyjal. I really dig the idea of participating in “The battle of mount Hyjal” since I enjoyed playing the campaigns and beating the Hyjal map in Warcraft Three. We start the event surrounded by alliance footmen, knights, ranged dwarf gunmen, sorcerers and Jaina Proudmoore. We start the event and floods of scourge start flooding at us on two minute timers. I would charge in and grab the cryptfiends, aboms, or necro’s depending on what wave came out and hold onto as many as I could, the rest were held onto by our pally tank and another warrior. The hunters would peel off a mob from the paladin and kite him over into the npc’s then kite it back into the aoe killing field. This would get all the alliance army to help kill the scourge along with us, which I thought was really cool. First attempt were in there kicking ass tearing through wave after wave with time left to eat and drink. Then all of a sudden tweleve people are instantly disconnected on our second to last wave and unable to log back in. With that many people gone (including the pally tank) we couldn’t do anything about the free mobs raging about and it was a wipe. We hung out for a while waiting to see if these guys could log back in but it turned out they couldn’t so the raid was called. I really think we will be able to one shot this boss on our next attempt, from what I read the waves of scourge are harder than the actual boss encounter. I hope instead of jumping right into SSC tonight we go give Hyjal another shot first. I forgot to bring screen shots to work today to post along with this, but I’ll just include Hyjal pics the next time we head in. As far as the ass raping pictures on the new isle just picture horde everywhere you look with scattered alliance bent over in front of them.

Raydz Public Service Announcment!

I think I’m going to start adding Public Service Announcements to my blog that even though they may be non WoW related I think it’s important that you guys know about them.

Puppy vaginitis is a NORMAL mucous production in young bitches.

Read more about it here. Puppy Vaginitis

1 long ass night = ZA cleared

Woot

Because of the Easter holiday we didn’t have very many people on for Vashj attempts Saturday night so 10 of us grouped up together for ZA attempts. Had I known I was going in with progression psycho paths I might not have went, I was expecting maybe to go kill Bear, Eagle and Lynx but it didn’t stop there. I was in ZA from 9:00pm to 6:30am. In our group we had no one who had been past the 3’d boss in ZA so everything after that was all new territory, but that wasn’t stopping these guys. All the time, effort, and lots of gold (flasks and repairs) paid off though with a full ZA clear. I have now successfully Main Tanked all of ZA and that’s a good feeling. Besides feeling good from clearing ZA, Zul’jin dropped a nice little trinket for me!

My new Trinket

We headed in and beat Bear boss on the timer easily enough. We did not have a Pally tank so we wiped once on the eagle trash ramp which blew our shot at a second timer kill. After making it to eagle boss we quickly one shot him as well. Next we headed out to Lynx and again I would have liked a Pally tank here on the trash, not having one makes too much work for me! There were people in the raid who had been present for Lynx kills but I had never actually seen him die. On our second attempt we killed him and I got to check Lynx boss off my list of bosses to see die for the first time.

Lynx Dead

After the Lynx died the other prot warrior OT in our group said he would step out so we could get a pally tank. From what I read about the Dragonhawk boss is that you absolutely need a pally tank to hold onto the spawned dragon hawk adds. We got our Pally tank in the raid and headed off to clear to Dragonhawk. Since none of us had been to him before we didn’t realize you had to kill the scouts first to keep new adds from coming. That was discovered about half way through and made the trash much easier =). It took us four attempts to learn this fight and defeat the boss. I was really rooting for the shield but it didn’t drop.

Tanking DragonHawk (Cool Boss Graphic I thought)

Dead DragonHawk (No Shield for me, GRRR)

“Alright guys good job, we calling it a night?” I said “Well we are right next to Hex Lord we should just go see what he’s like” says some guy. *Everyone voices their agreement* In my head I’m calculating the time I’ll get to sleep before I have to wake up for Easter church service and then head to the family holiday get together. Already I knew I wasn’t going to get enough sleep and should go to bed, but I couldn’t leave these guys hanging. It took like three pulls and were facing Hex Lord. We start talking about strategies on bosskillers website and what we need to do. I think it took about 8 or 9 attempts and we killed him. This boss is pretty damn hard with his insane shadow bolt missiles going all over the place and his ability to steal skills from raid members. Example: He steals the hunters ability to lay down traps. Also at the beginning of this fight you have to deal with the 4 adds he has surrounding him. We ended up killing 3 and leaving one to be shackled the whole fight which seemed to work well for us. As a tank I have to constantly be aware of what abilities he has so I can move the boss away from traps, shaman totems, bash an array of heals, etc. He’s not an easy tank fight like the previous four bosses are. The Hex lord eventually died and again dropped no tank loot. Grrr 5 bosses down and nothing for me! I was a very sad loot whore.

Looking At Hex Lord

Tanking Hex Lord

Dead Hex Lord

After Hex Lord died the same conversation happens with me wanting to go to bed, and everyone else just wanting to have a few shots at Zul’jin. We open the doors to continue and out pours tons and tons of slaves. Thank god for the pally AOE tanking. After that initial rush of slaves there is no trash on the way to him and so a few minutes later were ready to face off against Zul’jin.

Tons of slaves pour through the doors after Hex Lord when opened

Path to Zul'jin has a neat ruins graphic i thought

Facing Zul'Jin I think blizzard was just to lazy to add a second arm to this boss

Zul’jin goes through five different phases so we figured it would be easiest to learn the phases one step at a time. We knew it was going to be a lot of wiping to learn this boss, and by not really explaining the phases up front we were guaranteeing we wiped on every phase but with so much information out there it seemed like people just needed to see it instead of having it read to them from bosskillers. Special Note to tanks: Every Phase Zul’jin except from 2 to 3 he does an agro wipe so you have to pick up massive agro on him right away every time, losing people in this fight before phase 5 means trouble. Phase 1 is simple enough where the tank holds him, melee hangs back to avoid whirlwind, and he does a knife throw that puts a bleed effect on a random person. This bleed effect is only removed by healing that person to full life (much like the big crab boss guy in slave pens, at least I think slave pens it’s been a while since I’ve been in there). On our first attempt we pushed the boss into Phase two where we promptly wiped.

Phase 1

Phase 2 once learned is also very simple. He turns into a bear which will do this special roar that will paralyze everyone for a certain amount of time (can’t remember how long) and will then do about 5k damage per person when it wears off. The first time the pally didn’t remove the roar from me fast enough so I was frozen in front of bear unable to block,parry,dodge, etc. I was smacked down like a bitch in no time. From then on it was decided that the pally would remove roar from himself, me, then the priest who would pick up removing the roar while the paladin kept me alive. That worked well and we were able to push through phase two with no difficulty. Side note: The pally has 6 seconds before the roar paralyzes everyone.

Phase 2:

Phase 3, WHAT A HUGE PAIN IN MY ASS – WORST BOSS IDEA EVER – MAKES ME MADE ENOUGH TO GO KILL SOMEONE. In Phase 3 Zul’jin turns into an eagle and hovers in the middle of the room. As a tank the boss does no direct attacks so you just dps as much as you can. Why is this boss a pain in the ass? He lets loose about 5 tornados that will chase you around the room, randomly switch targets, or they just go float around the floor in a crazy pattern. You have to avoid the tornado’s and the wall because when a tornado hits you it does 1000 damage. I realize this doesn’t seem like a lot but the tornado can throw you against a wall and then you’re stuck and can be picked up and tossed again over and over till your dead. They also can toss you into other tornado’s which does another 1000 damage and that tornado has the possibility of tossing you into ANOTHER tornado. The melee in this fight have to dodge the tornado’s run up and hit the eagle 2 or three times, then run out again to dodge the tornado’s. We have the easiest part of phase 3. Any spell that requires mana will directly cause the caster 1200 (Im pretty sure its 1200) health. So mages/warlocks have to have constant hots on them so they can DPS the boss. A druid is really your only healer in this phase because flash heals damage you for at least half of the heal in general. This is the longest Phase and possibly the biggest pain in the ass I think I have ever come across for a boss fight. The reason this phase is the longest is because it takes the most time to push him through 20% of his life since the melee has to keep running around and the casters have to wait on life before they can cast again. Our highest damage dealer this phase was our warlock who kept up constant dots.

Phase 3: Cool looking tornado graphics with the feathers and stuff, not cool enough to make me like this shit ass phase though

Phase 4, he turns into a mean ass cat. We handled this boss by everyone stacking up on the cat. He will randomly turn around and do these lighting quick cat claw attacks 10x on a person. It took our healers several attempts to react fast enough to keep our clothies from dying. Each hit was doing around 1000-1500 per hit so if the person got no heals they were dead pretty fast. The cat also turns around and does a charge which would sometimes one shot a clothie but there is nothing that can be done to prevent this except having the clothies wear stam gear which is eventually what we had to do. As far as tanking goes this is a pretty easy phase, just turn him away from the raid and do your thing.

Phase 4:

Phase 5, he turns into a huge dragon hawk. If you made it this far you should probably be able to kill him pretty easy. This is one of the easier phases if people pay attention. He will do a spinning whirlwind of fire which our healers just ended up healing through while our melee stayed on him. What you have to watch out for is the pillars of fire which will erupt from the floor. As a tank you also have to watch for these and be dynamic about moving the boss. If you stay in this pillar for longer than 1 tick you will almost always die. Other than watching out for the fire pillar though it’s an easy phase and we tore him down giving us our first Zul’Jin kill.

Phase 5:

Zul'jin Dead!

As mentioned Zul’jin was kind enough to give me a nice tanking trinket. I still need to get a chest piece and tanking axe from him so I’ll be going back as much as possible. Sunday morning the instance actually reset for us so when I got home from my family day I got online and we went and beat eagle and bear on the timer but missed boss 3’s timer. I logged after boss 3 because I was running on 1 hour of sleep and just couldn’t stay up any longer (bastard dragon didn’t drop my shield). I believe they replaced me and kept going so I’m not sure if I’ll get another shot at Hex and Zul’jin tonight or not, hopefully I will though if they are still alive. If those bosses are dead though I’m f*cking going home and going to bed.

Flood water FTL

Sorry it’s been since Monday when I last updated. I live in Missouri and right now we are getting slammed with flood water. My house is located near two rivers which are both about 40 feet above stage level, by the end of day today they are supposed to be around 43 feet. Luckily the house is located on a hill so it will go untouched by water. If it gets to the point i need to start worrying about the flood hitting me i think its time we start constructing floating cities (think water world) because were f*cked. Even though my house is safe right now its still really causing me alot of problems since all the roads around me have been flooded the fire dept has asked us to evacuate, which we did and are now shacking up at my parent’s house (Yes i realize im lucky in that my property is safe from flooding and i feel extremely bad for the hundreds of familys that have been hit, im just talking about my situation). It’s a very odd feeling when you have to take a boat to cross a major highway. So anyways that’s why I have had such a busy week between volunteer sandbagging, packing up cloths to stay at my parents house, and helping other people move furniture to the second level of their houses because they know they will soon get hit with the flood. *Yeah I know I’m a saint, that’s why women find me irresistible.* Here is a quick news bulletin they recorded yesterday on one of the roads I take to work near my house. Quick Video of them evacuating us. My camera phone sucks because i have dropped it about 100x but I took a snapshot of the road that leads directly to my house, which is under at least 10 feet of water now.

And here is a picture of the fire dept boat I had to take during the evacuation of my subdivision.

Besides the insane flooding I still logged onto wow at night. I had a pretty damn good week too. We have yet to attempt vashj yet this week but all of SSC is cleared and she is waiting on us. Void Reaver dropped his T5 shoulders for me that I picked up for a small amount of DKP and the TK trash also dropped a ring that I picked up which also went pretty cheap.

Comparing shoulder graphics (I think i almost prefer the old graphic)

New Shoulder Stats

New Ring

While these are both good upgrades for me what I’m excited about the most is that FINALLY I got a team to hit 1600 rating in arena’s! Woot F*#king A! If you are some awesome pvp guy and you think this is low and shitty well then...you can kiss my sack.

Since we havnt attempted any new bosses this week my post is somewhat short. Even though I have the body of a bronzed greek god I am beat from sand bagging and my brain isn’t working well enough to come up with anything interesting to say. Tonight I think we are trying Vashj and if she doesn’t die tonight we are going to attempt her again Saturday, I also plan to swim to my house Saturday or Sunday just so I can check up on things and make sure no jackasses are messing with my house. *Man that’s weird to say that* I also may take this opportunity of an evacuated subdivision to walk over to the house those kids live in (the snow ball kids who messed with my house over the winter), collect all their toys and toss them into the river.