That's An Angry Mount

The group I've been killing Heroic Garrosh with gives one of the Kor'kron Juggernauts out via loot council and the second as open roll. Last time I rolled a 7. The time before that I rolled a 13. But not last night...

I really don't deserve it. But I didn't protest and right-clicked on it in my bags as quick as I could. *snicker*

Hellscream's Downfall

When the ten man group I ran with broke up in January I figured my progression days were over. Burned out on tanking I'd been having fun doing damage. Unfortunately I don't really pull numbers that would get me in an upper tier raid group that is still raiding after a year in the Hell that is Siege of Orgrimmar. So I figured I'd never see Heroic Klaxxi dead let alone Garrosh.

Guess I was wrong.

DBM says I had 128 heroic wipes but I now have one victory!

The guild leader wants to see Garrosh on farm to make recruiting easier. More than two months until Warlords come out but this guy is really enthusiastic. I plan on staying involved through all of it. And shamelessly using the title on all my under-geared alts...

General Down Quickly

Joined a guild on a different, higher population server. They got Heroic Garrosh down two weeks ago and are already looking towards WoD. One way they're trying to ramp-up recruitment is to work on ranking strats to attract new bodies. It was a little rough but we did get a server top time on a Nazgrim kill. Looking forward to pushing other fights...

Almost Done in There

Fairly productive week. Got the first nine bosses down on Wednesday, and Thursday with Tortos and Durumu being the only bother. Managed to get Iron Quon down tonight along with the Twin Consorts. This means we'll have a good four hours or so on Lei Shen tomorrow. Should be no problem. *snicker* The kills bumped us into 2nd on the server:

Iron Quon was kind enough to drop Shoulders of the Crackling Vanquisher so I now have the 2pc going. Might have to find a transmog that works with the shoulders… that tongue is pretty amusing:

Brought me up four iLevels so now I'm back in the top 10:

Good times!

WoWProgress and Invisibility

We're working on the damn turtle tonight. Tried a few pulls last night. Some people had to leave last night so I filled in on the shaman. Was good to get a look at the fight but damn. The exact words of the healer on the first pull: "Is this for real?" We all got a laugh but damn. Going to take some coordination.

I'm sure our competitors are working on it too. Yet for now we're still at #3 on the server. The raid leader is going to have monk and paladin tanks for now. Says he'll get me in on the hydra.

Poked around for some ePeen only to find disappointment. For some reason my DK has disappeared from the rankings:

My in-game character sheet shows me at iLevel 504, which would mean I'm the 6th most geared DK on the server. The web portal also shows me at 504. Not sure what I can do but I will explore options! I want my name up there, dammit!! While it still can be…

Our Processes Continue to Process

Another two hours of maintenance. *sigh* Or maybe more! *lol* Not really suprised—just anxious. Would like to get the new first ToT LFR done with the quality, hard-core people. The rest of the rabble will likely make it painful.

With Great Power Comes Great.... Trolling

It's unwise to admit this but supposedly confession is good for the soul. Last night I was doing some last-minute LFRs with various characters. On the Warlock for Spirit Kings I did a Shadowfury during Maddening Shout without even thinking… damned PvP reflex. Naturally people cried so I kept doing it. The third one I did seconds before a Flanking Orders where the tank hadn't moved so I killed at least eight people, possibly eleven.

So we wiped, six people left the raid, cries of outrage sprinkled raid chat, and I hid in the shadows, plotting. Stunning again would be too blatant so I took a different tack. As the shout cast went out I put up an empowered Seed of Corruption then threw out as many Unstable Afflictions as possible to silence the reliable healers. The results?

Top of the Friendly Fire charts! That hunter was right there with me though. *snicker*

The bad part was laughing so hard my sides hurt. Was also difficult to see through the tears. *sigh* Still, it felt good. I tank so often I'm constantly in fear of some asshole doing this type of thing to me. Occasionally it's good to be the asshole. *smirk*

Week One 5.2 Progress

Thanks to yesterday's last-minute before-reset hotfixes we managed to get Council down despite our lack of gear. This snuck us into third overall:

Our healers had some issues so we started two hours late. Everyone was tired though ecstatic to find the third ToT encounter so approachable. Got a few pulls in on Torta yet a healer had to pass out so we called it. It's very likely we'll get up to the birdie this week.

We don't raid today so I'll bet DR and Brotherhood sneak past us for a few days. Was funny to see them scrambling to get a kill or two in as well last night. Saw DR's Badmanwalkin asking for two DPS in Trade Chat even! *lol*

So Many Tanks, Not Enough Raids

Managed to get the DK into LFR on opening day. Unfortunately I did not have time to queue until the evening. Apparently there were many, many tanks and not many healers. Took almost three hours for the queue to finally pop. So, of course, I get one that already had the first boss killed. *sigh*

I was pretty anxious going in opening day. My hope was that only the hard-core people would be level 90 and have the gear score to get in. Thankfully it mostly worked that way as we face-rolled the two bosses and ate/ignored the salient mechanics. Like with Feng the stupid tank I was with kept him in the middle and didn't pick up a crystal. Then on Gara'jal no DPS went down into the Shadow Realm unless they were forced. Oh well.


Was able to get the first boss early afternoon on Friday and the Druid done Saturday morning (only an hour in queue!). Spent a few coins yet only got gold. The Druid did manage to pick up Netherrealm Shoulderpads while the DK got Bracers of Six Oxen. The rest of the bosses today. And looks like I'll be raiding 10-man with a different guild. More on that later.

Nothing to LFG in Four Days

I haven't had all five WoW accounts going in years. It was fun to do the bot swarm in pvp. Also enjoyed the challenge of macros and coordination to solo content. Thought about trying that again a few months ago when the end-of-xpac lull set in. Yet I've had other things to keep my spare time occupied so never got around to it.

On Thursday I decided activate one to do the Scroll of Resurrection thing. Figured I'd get an 85 going on the Horde server my friends from Dark Whispers are on. It got me a free Cata upgrade for the second account along with a mount for the primary account. Could also spend time in-game without being bothered by Battle.net friends. *snicker*

I'd heard the XP requirements for 80-85 had dropped and wow have they ever! Created a Goblin Shaman then used the SoR to pop him up to 80 with resto gear. The queue times were a little slow during the day but not bad overall. Thursday got to 83. Didn't have as much on Friday but still got half-way through 84. Saturday I hit 85 in short order then started the JP farm. Very little questing which surprised me. Queue times started balancing out at 85 so I switched over to DPS.

The AH had a few bargains so I got into the End Time series pretty quick. I wasn't able to gem and enchant everything correctly since the prices on certain things were insane. Even if I had the money I wouldn't spend 500g on the +15 Chest Enchant. Thankfully glyphs were mostly reasonable.

Today I hit the 372 gear score for LFR after five instances. Still had five 333s on: head, shoulders, waist, legs, and trinket. Took almost forty minutes to get into Siege of Wyrmrest Temple. I never broke 10th place but the group moved through it all fast. Since I was DPSing the only bit of loot I got was a healing trinket. *rolls eyes* Only took about fifteen minutes to get into Fall of Deathwing and Spine, as always, was dicey but the group pushed all the way through. So with 1 day, 10 hours played my Goblin experiment completed.

Heroic Yor'sahj the Unsleeping Now Resting Comfortably

This took some real effort – felt great to down this bastard tonight. I proposed tank changes that ended up being used so I even felt valuable. *snicker* We're still #6 on the server (#3 for 25s) but I don't think we'll take too long on Ultraxion.

There's So Much Magic on the Internets

Doing some research for Heroic Yor'sahj the Unsleeping and stumbled across MMO Champion's RaidComp tool. HOW COOL IS THAT?! And why did I not know it was there?!!? *sigh*

Progression Advanced By One Shaman

Heroic Hagara 25 dead'ed. This should have been done earlier and easier but we've had attendance issues. Damn Star Wars.

Eternity Vault Down

Pretty fun raid. There weren't any real surprise mechanics or a lot of bullshit rng to fight. Some trash has to be cleared though it wasn't enough to be painful. A speeder appears at the entrance to take you near the current boss in the event of a wipe. Wanted to throw out the basics of the strats used to get to the end.

Annihilation Droid XRR-3
Seemed like a basic DPS and co-ordination check. There are two turrets with power cells at their base. Kill all the cells and the turrets to get the boss to spawn. At timed intervals a mixture of ranged and melee adds will spawn that have to be killed.

Boss himself has a cleave and knock-back, so melee needs to be on his butt and tank has to aim himself appropriately. Every so often boss will go into "missile mode" with aoe that hits everyone. Raid will los around the dead turrets then resume normal functions once it ends. Rinse, repeat, win.

Gharj
Another pretty straight-foward raid check. Gharj has a point-blank aoe so melee need to be at max hit-box range. Will also to a raid-wide knock back so ranged/heals need to be ready to run out of lava and back onto platform. Boss needs to be tanked at the edge of his platform as he will periodically throw a tantrum and destroy the platform he is on. Seconds before this a rocky path appears and the raid needs to be ready to move once the boss begins his channel. As a Sentinel, I popped Transcendence for the raid-wide movement speed. Lava didn't tick for significant damage (seemed around 450 per second).

Unlock and Anti-Carry
The next two loot drops come from the story. To gain access to the final boss's area there are two locks that have to be opened simultaneously. The raid splits into two groups to accomplish this. Each lock has tumblers that have to match up, one row at a time. The center ring switches between one of six symbols. Each time you move the tumbler left or right adds will spawn, so the goal is to minimize the moves. Here's the order I found:

Yellow <=> White <=> Green <=> Red <=> Purple <=> Blue <=> (back to yellow)

So if the current row is on Green and you need Yellow, going left twice is win. It makes total sense when you see it and sadly I didn't get a picture.

The next encounter is inside the vault where you meet guardians in stasis. I can't remember the "real" name for this, so I call it "Anti-Carry." There are eight guardians that have to be defeated to gain access to the core. Each of these must be SOLO'd. There are two mobs that tanks "should" be able to kill, four mobs DPS "should" be able to kill, and two mobs healers "should" be able to kill. And each must be dispatched individually. If any raid member affects another in any way (heals, buffs, etc.) it's a wipe. There's also a two minute time limit. You have to know your class, be geared, and get shit done. Awesome, imo. They aren't really that bad, maybe 75k health with typical strong-mob abilities. But you have to use your CDs and killing skills.

Soa
Incredibly fun fight!! Basically the boss is DPS'd whenever his shield is down. Boss will Mind Trap a raid member, porting them into another where they have a single mob to kill (think final boss in Scholomance). The Mind Traps must be DPS'd down to release the trapped player. Balls of Lightning also spawn. They pick a player and slowly chase them down, exploding after a time or upon reaching the player. The chosen player has to kite them, and not over other players as the Ball does do some aoe damage.

The boss will periodically freak out and destroy the platform the raid is on. When he start to cast this Freak, raid member need to move immediately to the outer portion of the ring. There will then be fragments of the platform to jump down upon, destroying a lantern on each, then jumping down to the next, until a fresh platform is reached. Rinse/repeat all of the above.

Once at the bottom of the vault, the boss will Mind Trap and summon Ball Lightning more often, creating a soft enrage. At the bottom the tank must now keep the boss under an inverted yellow pyramid so he remains vulnerable to attack. Burn burn burn and win.

All through-out the encounter is the most amusing form of CC I've seen in a while. A random player is picked to be stunned. This is accomplished via a force-like tether that whips the player all around the room, doing some slight damage. It can be dizzying but overall it's hilarious.

Epilogue
Very fun introduction to Ops. Nothing too demanding. Our group finished everything in about two hours. Anyone with former raiding experience and decent gear should experience the same. We actually would have been faster yet the first encounter with the guns bugged on us a few times, wasting maybe 20-30min.

Loot distribution was a little annoying. Though we tried to master loot it was always round robin. Upon opening a chest we found items that were already assigned to specific people. It never assigned anything improperly but it didn't assign it equally. That is, there were eight Jedi Knight drops and four of them went to a single player. The bop recipes were always assignable via Master Loot though.

There were also quest/codex completion problems. I did not get credit for the weekly quest nor did I get the final boss Codex entry, yet all of the bosses are on my lockout. Bug reporting this I got the generic "Thanks for reporting this bug, fuck off" response.

Quirks aside this experience bodes well for SWTOR end-game, imo. :) I managed to walk away with a T1 chest and a 136--which help.