As you guys probably know, we have a new pet talent replacing avoidance. Now that a 90% AOE reduction is baked into pets, culling the herd was replaced in the talent tree exactly where avoidance was. It provides a 3% damage done boose to you and your pet every time it procs, and procs from pet crits on their focus dump ability (claw, bite, or smack).

First, what is it’s uptime? Because this scales with pet crit, raid buffs play a part in this. On a target dummy, I measured a fairly low uptime, however I’ve seen raid parses with 70%-80% uptime.  That’s a pretty nice buff.

Second, what will this change? Mainly, you want to make sure that your pet is never focus starved. If you skipped that single point in go for the throat because you felt you had a better use for it, you might want to reconsider your options now that focus dumps contribute to the uptime on this thing. This also slightly increases the DPS we can get from crit, as our crits give our pet focus.

Lastly- while this is much more of an upgrade for BM hunters, I still haven’t seen any compelling evidence that BM has caught up with marks and survival. At least not yet. I suspect this might happen at later levels of ICC gear, but if you really like BM, the gap between theoretical top DPS has never been narrower. At least not since they nerfed scorpids and steady shot

Another weekend in the books. I hope you all had  good one. Mine was, as always, quite full. It’s gotten to the point where I have something on the calendar every day of the week. Granted, the Ony runs take less than an hour, even as little as 30 minutes when everyone is ready on time and we go right in and take care of business. Others, such as last night’s ToGC-10, take hours because Anub is a _________. (fill in the blank)

Kalyon ran ToC-10 Saturday and got this sexy little Lion’s Maw. Fiak’s enhance shammy was along too, but the mace dropped also, so we each got a shiny new slow 1h. Yes, I did run right to Acherus and respec back into DW thank you very much. And my dps jumped back up. I just like the DW so much better for dps’ing.

Karius ran ToGC-10 last night, and got his first piece of heroic loot. Gloves of Looming Shadow were a very very nice upgrade from the iLevel 226 badge item. His gear is .. well, it blows my mind to look at it. I have nine pieces of 245 gear now. When did I get to be a serious raider? It wasn’t exactly what I had planned. I wanted to raid, sure, but to have Ulduar down up to Yogg and be 4/5 in ToGC-10? I mean really, our realm might be behind (far behind I am told) in progression, but our guild is right up there with most of the guilds on the realm now…and it’s an awesome feeling.

We picked up a bunch of new members last night from another guild. I’m not sure what happened with the one they were in, but they are all geared, experienced raiders. This one certain mage … well, according to wow-heroes, my gearscore is now BETTER than his (holy crap!) but he routinely puts out twice my damage … twice that of any other mage on the server as far as I know. He is widely known to be the best mage on the server hands down. He did almost 10k that night we downed Vezax. Hm .. I have a couple hundred more spellpower and he has a couple hundred more haste. Maybe some regemming is in order.

I hung out with a holy pally from the recruits last night. Seemed like a nice guy at least, as did the others who participated actively in guild chat. So far I like what I’ve seen. The timing was right … the last group of recruits that all came in together have been here long enough to have become integrated into the guild and no longer feel like a separate group of people. Hopefully it will go just as smoothly with these people. It’s kinda crazy thinking back … just two months ago we were barely able to get 10 people together for our first ever Naxx clear, and now …. heck, we had 26 people on at one point last night! And all but 2 or 3 were 80s!! /boggle

Oh yeah, the title of the post … almost forgot. Yesterday Oculus was the daily. One of the benefits of having the guild get big is that there are more likely to be people willing to run it. So it was that both of them got to finish off Northrend Dungeonmaster yesterday.

Karius went first and his group had done it before and were working on achievements, so they elected to all ride bronze drakes and get Emerald Void and Ruby Void on top of all the other crap Karius got for it (Oculus, Heroic: Oculus, Northrend Dungeon Hero, Northrend Dungeonmaster).  I think we spammed gchat with about 15 achievements total between the five of us. Good times.

Kalyon’s group was a little less experienced at it and we did plenty of wiping on the way to our victory. But they are some of my best friends in the guild and we’ve wiped plenty together before. We stuck it out and perfected our strategy and ultimately prevailed. For a DK, Kaly did a pretty nice job of healing on that green drake, too. :p

Happy Monday, y’all. I gotta pretend to work now. >.<

No, not that KT! The one in Tempest Keep. Last night was Classic Raid Night at Crits so 17 of us wandered to Netherstorm to take on Kael’Thas and pray for a mount like this one.

It was all fun and games … lots of turning people into leper  gnomes and skeletons with leftover wands from Hallow’s End, lots of drinking Brewfest Brew and dancing, lots of misdirecting mobs to the level 73 warlock … you know, the usual.

Until we got to KT himself, of course. What a fight! I got mind controlled … and wiped out most of the raid. My scrolling battle text flashes on the screen in big letters whenever I get a killing blow. Ya … I got KBs on at least two people in the raid. Oops?

Next fight went fine though because now we’d seen it once. When someone got mind controlled, they got sheeped. No problem. Achievement spam ftw.

We headed back to A’lar because we had saved him for last … and that’s when the battlegroup went down.  Doh!

Sooo … I talked Trout into logging onto his cute belflock on Dawnbringer. Juna and Teufel had lots of fun bouncing turkeys legs and pumpkin pie off each others’ heads.

He even danced nekkid on the table! I’m sure Arioch will approve.

So we hit all four cities and got our Pilgrims’ Paunch then he had to go to bed. So I got on my little belf pally Galor and did all the quests….and killed a ton of turkeys.

Karius and Kalyon should be getting their titles and pets today, so I’m off to do that now. Bye bye!

Another Thursday, another Ony10, another night of rogue and warrior drops when there are none in the raid. Oh well, at least it’s fast … got the achievement for killing her in less than 6 minutes.

Our 3s team hit 1000 rating last night, so I was able to purchase furious robes. I think that puts my resilience up around 450 now. Hm … I think I logged out in it, brb armory. Meh, 439. I’m getting real good at letting two melee beat on me until the hunter can kill one of them at the same time they kill me. I hate playing double melee teams. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with the new spec though, and at least feel like I’m contributing something to the team now, instead of just being carried by them.

Not much else happening, so … have a great weekend and I’ll see you all back here Monday!

Welcome to Monday, again. Yeah, I’m not thrilled about it either. I AM thrilled about the updates I have for you from my weekend though. You ready for screenshots? Good.

Weekend Raiding

Yesterday afternoon we headed into Ulduar to continue where we left off on Tuesday. We started on Iron Council since we had downed them before, figuring it would be best to warm up on a fight we knew. They dropped this cute little dagger, Stormtip, so now I can bank that uglystick.

From there we headed to Thorim. I was on the arena team. I was a bit nervous about aoe’ing at first. I’ve died on whelps a few too many times I guess, and I’ve never been frost so the whole blizzarding is not really my thing. Didn’t take me long though to determine that it is just about impossible for me to die on this phase, as long as I spellsteal the Runic Shield and the Runic Mending that are cast by the Dark Rune Evokers.

It took a couple tries for the gauntlet team to get their part down right. I was pretty busy concentrating on my own assignment, but it sounds like there are several things to watch out for in there. Anyway, once they got through it intact and Thorim jumped into the fray, the rest was easysauce.

I got the T8 shoulder token off him, and still had the T8 pants token in my bag from Tuesday, so after the raid I said goodbye to T7 set bonus and invited the T8 set bonus over for dinner.

Mimiron was next. I dearly love the hallway leading up to him, hopping in one of the ‘tank things’ as our raid leader called it and jumping into the next pack. Good times. Our resto shaman wasn’t along this time though, so Fiaked got the bombs misdirected to him instead. Too bad he’s smart enough to shield/pain suppress and lived through it. :p

Mimiron is, um .. interesting. We got the first phase down pretty fast, but it took a bit to figure out the second phase. I died on it many times and still don’t know why … I guess too slow spreading back out after the special attack thing. Each try though we got a little closer and a little closer and eventually … we got to the final stage. Yes, the stage that combines all the attacks from the first three stages. omg there is waaaay too much stuff to look out for. Second try on the final stage, it looks like we’re gonna do it. Most of the raid is down, the three sections are at like 5% each …. and my dumb butt is concentrating so hard on getting the dps on them and getting it down, that I stand in one of the runes too long and don’t get out of the way of the laser bomb thingy. @#@$%. The raid leader is calling it a wipe, but the other mage and Fiaked are still up. That’s the second keeper that has been defeated at the end by Fiaked the Greatest Priest Ever nuking. Smite ftw!

From there, we headed down the Descent to Madness to see General Vezax. The architecture on the way there is absolutely gorgeous. Karius had to stop and admire some of it.

The trash on him is fun. Kind of like a mini faction champs. I got to sheep .. hurray! The general himself, though … we only tried a couple of times. We’ll extend the lockout and get some time in on him tomorrow.

Friday night Karius went to ToCr25 because they needed more people, even though he’s not quite geared for it yet. He got an ilevel 245 robe out of it though so he really raked in on the loot this weekend. I had a screenshot of the achievement but you’ve seen enough of those and they’re boring, so you get to look at Kalyon instead because he’s hot.

Arena

So, there was a post a couple weeks ago or thereabouts over at Critical QQ where it was mentioned that paladin wings (Avenging Wrath) can be spellstolen. Well, of course I had a goal from that point on to not only steal wings, but get a screenshot of it. That was more successful than our 5v5 team.

Still working on the sheep with wings.

Oh yeah, Kalyon has his own team now. Fiak trasferred over his druid so we could do some 2s. Since the druid, Fiaks, used to be a female tauren, and Kalyon used to be a female draenei, our team is named We Used To Be Chicks. I think we went 4-12 which was better than both of us expected to do.

The Naked Part

Wut? It wouldn’t be my blog without it. Schubert, you are a bad, bad gnome.

Karius certainly looks happy though.

So, when you first ding 80 you gear up for Heroics in regular dungeons/crafted items before running any, right? You plan ahead and have gear waiting for you, and a list of instances to run to fill other slots.

OR … you have an awesome guild and good friends who are willing to carry you. =P

So, the first dungeon Kalyon ran after dinging 80? HToC, which also happened to be the daily. I’m 100 points under the hit cap, wearing a couple of (ungemmed/unenchanted) purples from Direbrew/Headless Horseman. But hey, I can laugh every 30 seconds like the horseman and drive everyone crazy! I think I’m going to macro it to Death Grip so I laugh whenever I yoink someone in a BG.  Pair that with my awesome Lil KT? Priceless!

Anywho … we kill the Champions, and guess what’s in their chest? Edge of Ruin. *drool* Soooooooo sexy. Absolutely perfect for my tank/pvp offspec. Heck, I was even entertaining thoughts of speccing back to 2H frost dps spec once that was in my bag.

Hold up there, not so fast. The instance isn’t over yet. Eadric is up next. Are you ready for this? I hope you’re sitting down. My enhancement shammy 2’s partner had been after this thing FOREVER. Yes, in my very first heroic, I get Aledar’s Battlestar. Pair that with the Tankard O’ Terror I kept in my bank after Direbrew, and there are no weapon upgrades for me until I get to 10 man Yoggy or 10 man ToC.  So I get to DW Frost my little heart out. Hurray!

Now, I just need to replace the heirloom shoulders/chest and greens …

>.>

Nine

The number of bosses our Tuesday 10 Man has successfully downed in Ulduar.

Our raid makeup changes slightly each week. This week we had double bear tanks, and pally/disc priest heals, with one of the bears swapping to tree for some fights…like that big meanie Hodir. Despite many wipes in the hallway leading to Hodir, however, we killed him quite easily. Or rather, they did. My game crashed shortly after the fight started, so I came back dead. Boo. But I still got the achievements!

Yeah, lovely shot of the ghoul our DK raised from my corpse there at the end, isn’t it? Hehe!

We also hit Ignis for the first time. We did some ez-mode version where he is tanked in the water and so there was none of the kiting and killing adds like in the videos I watched. It was basically a tank and spank with the crotch pot thrown in for fun. Very disappointing, really. I mean, on the one hand I’m glad we killed him and didn’t have to go through two hours of wipes learning the fight like we did on Freya last week. But at the same time … man, I spent time watching that video over and over and it looked like FUN, dammit! Owell. Downing him netted me the achievement for killing all of the Siege area.

Apparently, you also get an achievement for getting thrown in his Slag Pot. Looks like we also got one on Razorscale last night, too. Geesh, I totally forgot about that one!

• Cheese the Freeze (10 player)Defeat Hodir without any raid member being hit by Flash Freeze in 10-player mode
• I Have the Coolest Friends (10 player)Defeat Hodir without any friendly NPC dying in 10-player mode.
• The Siege of Ulduar (10 player)Defeat the bosses of The Siege area of Ulduar in 10-player mode.
• Hot Pocket (10 player)Survive being thrown into Ignis the Furnace Master’s Slag Pot in 10-player mode.
• A Quick Shave (10 player)Defeat Razorscale without allowing her to fly into the air more than once in 10-player mode.

As for Freya and the two hours we spent on her last week … well, this week we one-shotted her! So, we got 8 bosses down last night and just have IC, Thorim, Mimiron, Vezax and Yogg to go. (Yes, I know the post title says 9, but we have killed IC before.) Heck, we could just hit Freya once a week and I’d never have to pick herbs anywhere else again.

Five

Once Ulduar was complete for the night, I hopped over to Kalyon. Just as I was finishing up his tourney quests, Rossini was looking for a tank for regular DTK. Sure, why not! So I switched specs and headed over there, because it’s always fun hanging out with Trout.

Tharon’ja is one of my favorite fights in all of WoW. We killed him while we were all skellys, too, so of course you know I had to screenshot that!

So, you can see how far the blue xp bar goes there … I went back to questing afterwards to try to finish it off. But, another guildy who just hit 75 wanted help with the Amphitheatre in Zul’Drak, so off I was again. Another guildy who hadn’t done it logged on before we started, so he joined in, and Elgar hopped on to heal. Then just after we finished, a paladin showed up looking for help, so we invited him and ran through it all again. Good times.

Ok, finally back to the quests. Soooo … close. Just need one kill. So I set it up in a place that would make for a really nice screenshot. And … here it is! Max level toon number Five!

I suppose I should insert that little script into my Rune Strike macro so I’m not spammed with “You can’t do that yet!” eh? Oh wells.

Is it sad that I have 5 level 80s but they only encompass a total of 3 classes?

Ah, another weekend has passed. So what was I up to? Plenty of shenanigans, for sure.

Elgar wanted to work on his Outland reputations on Saturday and wanted to run a string of old heroics. I was ready for a break from the frantic leveling, so Kalyon went along, figuring he could use the practice tanking.

But first, as we were getting ready to go, the guild’s awesome bear tank decided to have some fun with chum in the fountain at The Eventide. That’s always good for drawing a crowd.

After that we picked up a couple more guildys and headed to Hellfire. Two of us didn’t have enough rep to get heroic keys for any of the other dungeons. We figured we could faceroll our way through them, so the pally stayed ret even though he was tanking. I guess we underestimated things a bit. And yes, the chat on the screenshot says we’re not telling anyone, but they should know by now that I screenshot *everything*. Bwahahahah!

Four dead … four dead … four dead in Hellfire

The rest of Hellfire went well. Elgar even had the key for Shattered Halls, so we got to do all three. Unfortunately, he ended up just short of exalted, so we’ll have to go back later.

From there, we were out of dungeons that people had enough rep to do on Heroic. So .. we went to Magister’s Terrace, and did that twice .. once on regular to unlock heroic, and then again on heroic. Good times.

A short break and some toon swapping, along with me turning in some unidentified plant parts to get honored with Cenarion (thanks Elgey!), and we were on our way again. Kaly got to tank these three. I had a screenshot of the achievement at the end of Steamvaults, but apparently I left it at home. Darnit. Owell. This section was more successful on the rep getting, as Elgar left there exalted, and went and bought himself a tabard and a Cenarion War Hippogryph.

Heroics done, we decided to do the last couple dungeons that our hunter needed for Outland Dungeonmaster. So we hit up … um … brb armory … well, looks like we did both Mana Tombs and Crypts. Wow, we were busy! Since those were on regular and not heroic, Kaly had a lot of fun loltanking them.

Elgar went shadow for the rest of the day and had some fun with mind  controlling mobs. Heck, even when he was disc healing I think he was casting mind sear more than any heals. Gotta admit, he looks pretty awesome in shadowform though … especially on my horse!

After that there was just one more dungeon the hunter needed. The two others along with us needed to log, so Kris took a break from his mad run to 80 and came and tanked The Arcatraz, letting me get some dps’ing time in.

Kris did make it to 80 late Saturday night … ok, early Sunday morning. Kaly is still behind, hitting 78 Saturday and 79 yesterday. But that’s ok … he’ll get there soon. Sometimes you just have to do fun things instead of grinding out quests and xp. Like this …

I squee every time Lil KT frostbolts a Lake Frog. It’s so awesome! Shoosh Kris, KT is waaaay better than that silly monk. =P

So, last night we headed back into Ulduar for the weekly 10 man. This time we *did* have an extended ID from last week, so we went in with only a few bosses left.

We started on Iron Council, who we had tried a couple of IDs ago and given up on after wiping continuously. However, we had learned some things that time, and it only took a few tries before we got it right. Well, before most of us got it right at least. Just… ignore that message on the screenshot there about releasing, would ya? Thanks.

Hmm..wow, yeah … ignore all the skeletons on the floor too. Although, those are nothing compared to what Freya did to us. Hoo, boy. I don’t know how many attempts we made on her. I gave up on counting. We spent a good two hours wiping on her. Finally, the raid leader announces that this will be our last try. You know, I’ve read on other people’s blogs how they’ll keep wiping over and over and then one time, everything just works. Now I know what they mean.  I understand, too, that feeling of getting a boss down after so many defeats. It’s pretty exciting.

She dropped a pretty nice staff, although it’s still not as awesome as that HToC dagger that still eludes me. It has a buttload of hit … yay hit….not! I’m 40 points over the hit rating NOW. I’m going to be waaaay over it with this…and it’s all on my gear, none of it is gems or enchants. Yeah, what a terrible thing to have to complain about, right? Ok, I could whine about it being ugly, too, but I won’t. How about if I complain about how much it’s going to cost to enchant it? Yeah, there we go!

We cleared the trash leading up to Mimiron. I even got to jump in one of the Arachnopod Destroyers. Wewt! Totally cool. Then we got to Frogger 2.0 and the raid leader misdirected a bomb onto the resto shammy. Hilarious! Unfortunately, the raid leader and his better half got disconnected before we could get one try in on Mimiron, so after 10 minutes the raid assist called it there.

So, for those of you keeping score, we have 2 keepers left, plus Ignis, Vezax and Yoggy. It’s probably old scene to a lot of you, but for me … it’s pretty exciting. We’re extending for one more week in an attempt to at least get to see the whole thing. We have one or two spots that change each week but for the most part, we have a real core group, mostly all seeing this stuff for the first time.

BTW, there’s still a debate going on in the comments of my last post on what tank spec I should use for my DK. Feel free to add your own 2 cents, nothing has been decided yet, other than the fact that DW dps is teh fun.

Oh boy, this is gonna be a long one. These weekends off are soooo amazing. So let’s just start at the beginning.

Friday

Karius had been sitting on the Wrathgate quest for a month, waiting for Trout to get one of his characters to it so we could do it together. Of course, being Hallow’s End and all, we had to get some costumes into it. Here we are all ready to sneak into Undercity, ninja style!

Shaatom isn’t gonna sneak, he’s just gonna charge in, waving his axe around menacingly. It’ll work, trust me, they’ll just think he belongs to some undead lock.

Unfortunately, I got dc’ed halfway through and got that bug where it says I’m still online, so I logged onto Kerick and waited for Karius to disappear so I could log back into him. I got back in and we headed into the Royal Quarter. I wasn’t expecting the final fight to end so abruptly though, and we were ported back to Stormwind before I could get any good shots in the throne room. le sigh. Oh well, hopefully this one will make up for it. Man, I want a lock now. haha

And here is a bonus shot from Friday night, just because it turned out so cool…and because it’s not a complete post without Blood and Karius as skellys.

Saturday

Saturday I spent a good portion of the day working on leveling herbing and mining on Kalyon … and trick or treating once an hour because all he needed for the title was the pet. So it was that he happened to be in STV around 3pm server. Ok, maybe it was partly intentional. But after Karius was nice and let a level 50ish lock get the chest last time, there was no way Kaly was gonna be denied. Plus he’s a DK, he’s not *supposed* to be nice. So, with visions of Last Man Standing dancing in his head, he boldly rode to the center of the arena and dropped a Death and Decay. I guess everyone was scared away by his very presence.

My hands were shaking so bad I missed the achievement screenshot, I was so excited, so it’s probably a good thing there was no one to fight. I have wanted this achievement forever and this is the first time I’ve gotten it.

Later that evening and it was raid time. Karius had been invited on the mostly-guild ToC10 this week. I’d read the strats, so I mostly knew what to do, but still … I was pretty nervous since it was my first time in there. I did die on the worms … the tanks were both bears, and the same colour even, so … yeah, I *think* I was running towards the correct one but owell.

I just have one thing to say about faction champions, and I expected this would be my feelings on it but now that I’ve done it I can say for sure … ZOMG. I WANT TO DO IT AGAIN! FUN!!!! /squee. Sporting Rip’s Arcane Shatter spec, I slowed, I spellstole, I sheeped, I shatter combo’d … it was beautiful. Then again, I do PvP and I like arena, so … I can see how pure raiders would hate it, but most of the people in our guild who raid are … well, on our 5man team. LOL!

You know that wand of awesomeness I got in Ulduar recently? Yeah, replaced. And I got new bracers as well. And I’m so far over the hit rating … I think I might have enough badges to buy the EoT robe though. Anyway … here’s the achievement shot.

Now I just need a few more  bosses in Ulduar .. and Malygos.

Then it was time for the last chances at the HH for the year. I wasn’t holding my breath. Karius only stayed for four of the eight summons, helping Kris get stuff he wanted, then Blood swapped his four 80s in one at a time and I brought Kaly in to try for the pet and other goodies. Well, at least that part was a success.

He also got a ring and the totally awesome plate helm for when he hits 80. Kris is a lucky sonofagun though, and got the helm AND the sword .. all on one drop. Oh well, Kaly has a brewfest maiden charm and a Tankard O’Terror in the bank, so

Sunday

Question of the day: What is more lethal than a Dual Wield Frost Knight?

Answer: Two of them =P

Yes, in case you hadn’t gotten it already from the hints and screenies above, Katia got more than a new race/name/gender … (s)he also got new specs. Yes, plural. Seeing Kris dps the HH Friday night was all it took to get me to try out his spec, and I’m tellin you … it is FUN. The belf mage killing NPCs in STV might not agree though. Yes, you may all fall on the floor in shock now .. I engaged in acual world PvP with another player my own level! And won!! (multiple times) And liked it !!! (Fiak will find it shocking at least, maybe no one else will.) But … I still intend to tank some stuff, so I robbed the other alts and bought dual specs … and made that one frost as well, but a 2H tank spec. Got to try it out in Nexus, so far I like it.

Is this long enough now? yeah, I think it is. One last shot … Kaly got to at least pretend that I got a flying horse mount.

Just a few more screenies today from the holiday. Hope everyone enjoyed it and got all the candy and achievements and titles that you wanted. Unless you got a horse, then I hope you get egged. :p

The Bat Crew goes skeletal.

Even the imp is having fun!

Special thanks to The Bat Crew (Cael and Fi, Falconess, and Coach Blood) as well as Fiak, Trout, Momma V, and everyone else who put up with my daily begging and whining for two fulls weeks in my quest to obtain the best mount in the game. Maybe next year … but at least you all made it a lot of fun. I love you guys!

So .. I get to work this morning and everything is moved out of my office and a folding table is moved in to put the computer on. I had to go hunt down a chair. They even removed my toilet. It’ll be nice when it’s done, but in the meantime, this remodeling stuff is about as much fun as being turned into a leper gnome. What does all this have to do with today’s post? Not a darned thing.

I’m loving this weekends off thing, although, it’s going to result in even less housework getting done than before.

Ok, on to the stuff. Here’s what happens when you’re turned into a skeleton and try to do HToC.

Some pretty fancy riding skillz there, eh? But, if you think that’s good, Pouncin has me beat by far.

So, what do you do when you decide that your draenei DK really should have been a human? Your level 80, epic-flight, Champion of the Frozen Wastes draenei DK? You wait for the upcoming race change feature, right? Wrong. You delete and reroll. Well, if you’re completely insane like Blood is, anyway. Gotta admit, though … Kris is a LOT sexier than he was before.

On to some Hallow’s End activities. Wein went to the It Came From the Blog  event sponsored by Robin at Wow.com and had a great time, as usual. We made small groups to go into Southshore and throw stinkbombs. I got to be in a group with both Robin AND Mike Schramm. Oh, and check this out. Is that a Brigwyn?

So, what happens when a group of crazy people have finished their HH summons for the night? They have a bat party!

That was Saturday night. Last night, the mount actually dropped. I lost the roll by one measly point.

I spent the majority of the weekend leveling my hawt pally Kerick.

So, after cheering Momma V as she flew away on her awesome new mount, I popped back over to him. He knows just how to erase the sadness. Wait, what? No! Not like that. Geesh, you people are sick. He rode HIS brand new horsey over to Stonewatch in Redridge.

Yeah baby! Nothing cures depression like beating the everliving snot out of an elite mob 3 levels higher than you … solo. I <3 my pally.

So, last night we went back into Ulduar. We did not extend the raid ID from last week … most of our raid can benefit from drops on the first bosses still, so why skip over it? Not to mention, we have a couple spots that are different each week, and a lot of people who haven’t seen any of the fights  before.

Last week, I gunned in a siege engine. This week, I drove a demolisher. FL was down before I knew it. I still have no clue whether I shot the pyrite barrels in the right spots, but afterwards, my gunner whispered a ‘nice job’ to me.  And you know what? That was probably the highlight of the night. This is a person that I haven’t talked to a whole lot, and haven’t really grouped with, so it was quite a surprise and really made my night.

Razorscale took two tries, but that can pretty much be solely blamed on the fact that the priest got disconnected at the very start of the fight and couldn’t get back on.   Second try went smoothly.

This week we tanked XT on the opposite wall from last week, and had adds from an extra corner, but other than a DPS blowing up part of the raid with a Gravity thingy, he was downed with little effort. He dropped a really nice caster dagger. The raid leader is like ‘well with HToC probably no one is going to need that’ … both mages and the lock rolled. I think all three of us were using the crafted Titansteel Spellblade. Haha! Congrats to Fal, that’s one nice looking weapon.

We skipped Iron Council this week .. ( but I watched the videos for it this time!! Blargh) .. and went right ahead to Kologarn. Another one-shot … priest dies from adds or something right at the end and is hollering in vent that he’s down. Good times. It’s not a successful raid until the priest dies.

From there we went ahead to Auriaya the Crazy Cat Lady. Guess what? I had spent the last half hour of work watching Auriaya videos. Go me! What a crazy fight. I mean seriously, it’s hard to stand in front of the boss when you’ve been so conditioned to not do that. Although, I guess if I think of it like killing Korth’azz in the Four Horsemen fight, it’s not so weird. Our DPS on the adds was slow, so the raid leader told us just to concentrate on the boss while the OT handed the Feral Defender. I did take care of the swarm whenever she cast it though. First half of the fight I kept getting locked out. doh! Yes, I watched the video and STILL screwed that part up. I learned though. Next time, it won’t happen at all. Oh, and I got Nurturing Touch! My previous wand was the iLevel 146 green wand from that quest at Light’s Trust in Dragonblight. What?? It had hit on it and the iLevel 200 ones were only minor upgrades. It’s not like I went to Ulduar with an iLevel 25 offhand. owait ….

On to Hodir. No, I didn’t watch a video. I will before the next raid though. Man, all I have to say so far about it is … fun fight! We did make it to the enrage timer on about our third attempt, so we obviously got to be good enough at staying alive to start learning how to do the fight. We got this! He’s going down next time for sure.

I sucked at screenshots last night.  I didn’t take any. But it’s ok, because I have to go work now, so I’ll just post this one instead. What, did you really think there wouldn’t be a ‘Karius & Blood’ screenie today? Haha, fooled you.

OH!! I almost forgot … Blood came back to the guild last night! Woo!! Welcome back.

Welcome to the first Monday I have worked in … too long. Yes, it was fun being home when everyone went back to work … for awhile. Grocery shopping on Sunday still sucks … no more squeezing all the shopping in during Tuesday morning maintenance.  But Sunday afternoon raiding is all that!

I love the way the colors turned out in this one. I got all four of us casting with glowy hands at once … frost, holy, arcane, and shadow.  Ok, so shadow skelly Elgar is more .. shadow .. and less glow, but still … and hey, I managed to get Cael actually casting instead of watching football! =P

I missed screenshotting the Fall of Naxxramas achievement, but Karius did pick that up yesterday. Toon four to complete Naxx. First one to complete Ulduar? It is well within the realm of possibility!

Of course he also got started on the Hallow’s End achievements. In the course of hitting the candy bins, he’s also only two zones away from Explorer.

Heroics are always going on in Crits. I think I’m up to like 95 Emblems of Conquest. I really should start spending some, eh? Here’s the daily shot of Karius and Bloodfrenzy. =P

Of course, there was time for playing alts as well. Kaladis spent a good amount of time leveling with Blood’s little hunter. I went from 16-21 over the weekend. It’s a good thing he’s so tolerant, because I spent half the time after 20 running around in cat form clawing stuff, even though I’m specced balance and wearing cloth caster gear. >.>

Katia also spent some time running around with … one of Blood’s alts. LOL. He was leveling herbalism, so Katia went around and worked on her mining for a bit. They also took some time out to kill a belf who was killing NPCs at Blood Watch, and then decided to wreak some havoc of their own, taking out some guards at Mor’shan Rampart and then leaving Splintertree Post completely decimated. What? They ARE Death Knights, after all. We killed everything once and left, going back to our gathering.  It’s not like we griefed the place … not there was anyone there TO grief, it’s hardly The Crossroads.

And finally, we must get some nekkidness into this post. Brought to you especially by Elnoriah.

Yeah, ok, fine … the mohawk is cool and all, but c’mon Eld .. NEON GREEN? hahaha

So … I finally made it back to Ulduar. Long-time readers, if you exist out there, may remember the one and only time I got there. I was still a huntard then, and was distracted by the excellent dps the under-geared arcane mage was putting out, wishing I was on Roz. I was so in love with Roz back then. I kinda feel bad, leaving him standing around Dal with nothing to do these days, but zomg is Karius having a blast.

Last time on Flame Leviathan, I drove a demolisher. This time, I got to be a gunner in a siege. FUN! We did wipe once while everyone got the hang of it. But the second time we wiped the floor with him. Oh and we nine-manned it and didn’t have anyone taking out the turrets, either … so we got a nice achievement for it.

From there it was on to Razorscale. We added an awesome DK from the guild to fill out the last DPS slot. Now, we didn’t down him in my one visit before. I remembered it being really hard, with lots of adds. I got nominated to click the harpoon turrets. We wiped once on this, too … I don’t even remember for sure what happened. But we had no trouble on the second try. Here’s the dead dragon shot.

XT – 002 (did I get that right?) was next on the list. I remembered it being quite hectic with lots of adds as well, and coming from four directions. Well, Opp explained that we would be tanking him against the side wall, and only have adds from two corners. Works for me! With two mages in the group, adds were not an issue. This is as good a spot as any to give props to the healers.  I don’t remember ever even getting close to low health. They did great! Oh yeah, and we got an achievement for him, too.

Ok, time for the brag section. Now, this screenshot here is from the recount *only* of the XT fight … so there’s no vehicle stats, or gimmick buffs from the encounter, or anything like that … just a couple totems, focus magic, arcane power, a full stack of arcane blast … I didn’t even have the T7 bonus because at the time I was only wearing one piece of the 3 pieces of that I own. I’ll have to check the screenshot with the actual cast on it to be completely accurate, but either way … this blew my mind.

Yes, that says … biggest arcane blast crit … 26590 … as in … two-six to the five-nine-oh.  It’s a good thing I wasn’t holding down the PTT button when that number flashed on the screen. ^^

Ok, got sidetracked looking at that again. Where was I? Oh yes … we moved on to the Iron Council. Now .. I hadn’t read anything or watched any videos on these guys, so I was flying blind with just Opp’s instructions.  We wiped very quickly to that Punch a few times before figuring out the timing on heals for it and such. Blood was in Ulduar at the same time with his new guild (he found a 25-man raiding guild with an opening for a DPS warrior, wewt!) and we were whispering, and he mentioned interrupting the chain lightning the smallest guy does, so I relayed that info to the raid. Our try right after that was very good, we got the big dude down, and had the second one to 22% before we had some unfortunate losses and wiped. After one more try that was more like the first ones than the last, we decided to visit Kologarn once before calling the raid.

Kologarn was a quick wipe and dissolve the raid the last time I was here. That was then, this is now … we one-shotted the big bully! It was kinda funny, I was dodging the eye lasers and killing adds, and all of a sudden nothing was happening. I turn around and I’m like “oh, he’s dead?” … LOL! Most of us posed here for a kill shot on his head.

Later on, we had Wintergrasp (no, really! We actually had Wintergrasp!! No, you can’t have some of what I’m smoking, it’s the honest to God truth!!!) … and I got invited to VoA-25. I’ll spare you kill shot screenshots since it’s *just* VoA and this post is screenshot heavy already. If you want to see if I really killed all three bosses in there, go to the armory. =P

I’m not sure I was much help in there, I think I kinda got carried … but I did what I was supposed to do and didn’t stand under the falling rocks/in the fart cloud/in the ring of fire. I won Furious bracers! Yayz, real PvP gears!! They were an upgrade even for PvE. >.<

So, with Razorscale and Kologarn down, along with Koralon … in just 11 days at level 80, Karius is officially the farthest in progression of any of my toons. His gear is just a tad bit under Roz’s, and probably better than Juna’s. And I’m going broke gemming and enchanting upgrades. =P

Ok, this is getting long and it’s getting late and I really need to maybe, you know, do some work .. at work. So I’ll leave you with another edition of “Dancing With Blood” because he’s so cool. Grats on the Bronze Drake! You now officially have more epic dragon mounts than I do .. we need to do something about that. =P

I’m running out of titles and things to say every time I get another one of these. You all are probably out there going ‘When are you going to stick with one main!’ Meh … it’s all Karius right now. 

Moar nekkid dancing, because I can.

After Scathalon’s adventures in my previous post, I logged onto Karius to prepare for arena night. Of course, as so often goes, I get invited to heroics almost as soon as I log. Well, why the heck not, Fiak just called and won’t be on for 45 minutes. So it’s off to HToC. To be honest … I don’t even know what dropped. All I know is, it wasn’t for me. Well, actually … I might have gotten Gaze of the Unknown. I think it’s in my bag. I’ll wear it eventually, I promise … just let me enjoy my tier bonus for a little while.

Arena … yeah. Big points this week, baby, we be doin 3 way, er, 3 man now. What could be more fun than dragging a disc priest in pve gear/spec with, like, 6 BGs and 3 WGs worth of pvp experience under his belt, along to some rated 3v3 matches? We lost the first 5 or 6, but in the first win, after I got focus fired and killed, they pulled it off nicely…and the reaction in the guild to Elgar’s ‘Step Into The Arena’ achievement was well worth watching him die so many times. We ended up 2-8, so not really any worse than Jaha and I did in our first week of 2v2.

Well, once that was done (much to Elgar’s relief I’m sure) then it was off to more heroics. First we hit the UP/UK double play. Kaif got his Red Sword of Awesomesauce from Ymiron! Woo!! He’s almost ready to try tanking HToC. UK was quick and easy. Karius hadn’t done it even on regular yet, so he completed the old gray quests for it while we were there, and enjoyed the achievements popping on the screen at the end. He and Bloodfrenzy are in a bit of an unofficial competition to see who can spam guild chat with the most achievements. I think they were neck and neck in the dance competition before this shot. Too bad you missed out, Blood. =P

Then we swapped out one guildy dps for another and hit Drak’Tharon. I picked up the ‘Oh Novos’ achievement in that one.

Hm. Ok, this is out of order, because this stairway .. well, it looks like we’re in UP, so it should have been before the dancing on Ingvar’s corpse shot, but whatever. I can put screenies of Karius and Elgar in their matching ugly shoulders wherever I want. It’s my blog. =P

Well, apparently Elgar had more fun in arena than he let on, because the three of us (Elgar, Jahafil, and Karius) queued up for some AB after the heroics were over. During the course of the Heroics, Blood had finished off Explore Northrend. Well, we can’t have this now. So I hopped on my Merv and started ticking off places I needed to visit in between battlegrounds. Over the course of the ride, I killed two rares and flew over a third that had just been taken out by some warlock.

I felt awful bad about this one, to be honest … especially once I realized she wasn’t even on the achievement list … but to be fair, I checked the zone and the guild for anyone interested first. Sorry Blood, I don’t think I could have kited her long enough for you to make a worgen hunter and level it to 80. I’ll make it up to ya somehow.

I got everything explored except for a couple places each in Icecrown, Sholazar, and Boring. I decided it had to wait though, because it was almost 4am!!11!!!1 … and I had to be at work this morning at 9am. Y’all are baaaad influences.

I teleported back to Dal, said my goodnights … and happened to notice this warrior standing around looking good in his plate armor. Didn’t take him long to lose the armor though … apparently he read enough of the blog to know what it takes to get his picture posted all over it. You’re lookin pretty good without that helmet on, babe. =P

Maybe you shoulda clicked off the Noggenfoggy though, you’re kinda tiny. ^^

Let’s try fixing that, shall we?

Gnomer, it’s photobucket so you won’t be able to see it from work. If you want to see a hot mostly-naked human warrior … come back when you get home.

No screenshots today, sorry. Just gonna ramble.

We hit OS last night. The plan was to try +1. So we tried. We eventually had to accept that it just wasn’t going to happen this time, though, so we got rid of Tenebron and just did Sarth by himself. It’s been so long since I was in there, I forgot how many little adds spawn. I’m pretty sure I got to dps Sarth himself at some point in the fight. =P

Anyway … dragon down, achievements earned. Waitwhat? Achievements with an ’s’? Yup, somehow between dodging flame walls, frost nova’ing fire elementals, and occasionally tossing a few arcane blasts in the general direction of the Onyx Guardian, I managed to avoid the lava bursts and collect Gonna Go When The Volcano Blows. 

Here is where my guild is awesome. The other mage won the tier gloves token. I was still standing around in OS with a couple other people when I get a whisper from her. “I’ve decided these really aren’t better than what I have already. Would you like them?” (I was the second-highest roll) Heck yeah! Two-piece tier bonus? Count me in! I’d missed my bonus on-use trinket. Now I can pop a mana gem when I pop everything else for burst, just like old times.

Yes, I know T10 screenshots are coming out. So? Let me be excited over my T7. When I get enough badges, unless those meanies in Naxx drop a token beforehand, I WILL be getting my Frostfire Shoulderpads. I don’t care if they’re not the top tier. Will I wear something better once I get it? Sure. But I refuse to be denied the right to stand around Dal looking sexy in T7 if I want to.

HToC

So, later that night … like MUCH later, after dailies, and a Strat run … like past my bedtime late … Cael asks if anyone wants to run HToC. Visions of replacing my rep sword with a Spectral Kris distort my sense of time, so I say sure, Grubs says sure, we get a tank. I had to twist Trout’s arm REALLY hard to get him to come dps. He even made me agree to take the blame for him being tired today. Grubs and I get to the stone, we start summoning … PuG tank says “it’s getting too late I have to go” and dumps us.

I love being right about people. I mentioned Bloodfrenzy joining the guild in my last post. Well, he also has a pretty awesome prot pally, so even though he was in the middle of trying to finish tourney dailies before bed, he didn’t hesitate to jump over to the pally and come tank for us. Blood, you’re awesome!

Trout got a couple very nice upgrades, including the … whatever the name of the gun is. Geez, I should know these things, I’m a horrible huntard. Oh, well. See Trout? It was worth staying up for. =P

Way back when, June 3 to be exact, I stumbled on this little blog called Crits and Giggles. It sounded like a place full of altoholics who just enjoy the game and play to have fun, but would like to eventually raid a little. I thought this sounded like just what I was looking for, but unfortunately … they were Alliance. Still, judging from the comment I left there, the idea had been planted in my brain somewhere, even though I was adamantly against it at the time.

So, about three weeks later, my server was down. Looking for something to do, I rolled a DK over on Winterhoof and whispered Trout. I was rewarded with a prompt ginvite. I intended just to visit over there once in awhile, you know, say hi, dance a bit, the usual shenanigans. A week later, I rolled a mage. The rest, as they say, is history.

Karius got to go on the extension of last week’s raid. Spider, Thaddius, Plague, Sapph, and KT left. We warmed up on spider. Easy mode. Thaddius gave us a wipe, but geez … a two shot for the guild’s first kill is not bad at all! Keep in mind here, probably only half of us had any real raid experience. (If you can call clearing Naxx three or four times experience. I’ve wiped a lot more than I’ve killed for sure.)

Plague was fun. Trout, I can’t thank you enough times for encouraging me to get Decursive. It made it soooo much easier than that stupid mouseover macro I was using. I wanted to laugh at Noth’s poor attempts to curse the raid. Ha! He’s a wuss. And Heigan … I lived! Yay!! I didn’t even have run speed increase on my boots. I guess I can go without it, I put Icewalker on the new ones I got because for now I need the hit.

Sapphiron….Sapphiron can kiss my mana strudel. Between dodging blizzards and decursing his stupid Drain Life, I could never get a full stack of Arcane Blast up on his boney behind. But it’s ok, because he ended up like this:

Take that!

Kel’Thuzad was … well, he was easy as far as my point of view went.  I only got mana bombed twice, I only got ice blocked once, I never got a void zone … stand and cast, stand and cast. Yeah I had to eat all three mana gems, evocate twice, and use a mana pot, but …

They tell me the main tank went down and was brezzed. I guess I was too busy figuring out how to get more mana or something. >.>

He dropped my tier helm token! This is the fourth toon I have killed KT on. Can’t say completed Naxx on, really, because I was only level 76 last week when the guild cleared the first half. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve ever had a tier helm. Sadly, I remember when Naxx was the height of progression and there would be loot drama and offers of 1000g to be the one to get the token.

I turned my helm back on for the first time since I had that wizard hat back in the 50’s. Isn’t he sexy?

Of course, the acquisition of new gear had me scrambling to get back to the hit cap, as well as getting new gems and enchants and all that good stuff. Poor Trout had to make me a robe, and an offhand, and a metagem, and I’d already put him to work pre-raid making flasks for myself and Jaha. I even took Elgar shopping with me!

Sorry I kept you up too late. You are awesome! =P

Other Happenings Around the Guild

Saturday night a few of us ran a couple regular dungeons to get one of our up and coming tanks some gear to get defense capped. We pugged a really cool dps warrior, and had a lot of fun with him. Well, he helped some guildies out in another run sometime in the next couple days and was invited to consider joining us. Last night as I’m standing around in Dal, he whispers me to ask if the invite still stands. Hells yeah! I was more than happy to invite him, and he even brought a couple friends along.  So, welcome to the guild, Blood! Here we are having fun Saturday night before starting CoS:

And … since it wouldn’t be my blog without some nekkidness somewhere, here are Karius and Wraebe having a fun drunken time on the last night of Brewfest.

We each puked four times on the last keg. Good times!

… the screenshots you all have been waiting for!

Exploration ding ftw.

Can you see the person Karius is grouped with there? Does the name ‘Jaarka‘ ring any bells? Yes, believe it or not, after holding out for quite some time, Jaarka the orc hunter is now Jaarka the hot nelf. The mission is complete! An astounding success, if I do say so myself. Wait, what? I was supposed to be converting Crits and Giggles to Horde, not converting Ashes of Tirisfal to Alliance? Well, dangit.

Anyway … I know what you all REALLY want to see. After all, I did it for Roz, because he had to show off after Gnomer did.  And THEN …. Schubert had to outdo us all. Well, I can’t beat 9 gnomes, but 4 trolls and 4 humans weigh a WHOLE lot more than 9 gnomes … so there! =P

Doesn’t he just look adorable up on that huge beast?

Level 78 now, he was finally able to be effective in the Direbrew fight. I’ve already got his hit rating over 200. He’s exalted with the Valiance Expedition, and honored with Wyrmrest and the Kirin Tor, so he bought upgrades from both of them. He started on the path to Crusader, and did part of the Sons of Suck questline. The Time-Lost Proto-Drake spawned while he was nearby in Sifreldar Village, but of course, someone beat him to it…darn slow flying. So this kinda made up for that. Slow falling on a flying kodo is pure win.

Now he needs a name. My very first mount in the game was Juna’s Brown Kodo, named Ribeye. Maybe I should keep to the theme. Any suggestions?