Guilded review: one Week

In the past week since joining Serendipity I've been in several raids from Naxx 10/25 (our weekly quest), ToC 25, Ony 25 and Icc 10/25. In that time I've gotten way more loot then I feel I rightfully deserve. My warrior went from sitting at around 34k health unbuffed to now over 40k. Overall I've dropped about 1% avoidance but the tradeoff is more then worth it. Sadly I'm still sitting on 2 pieces that are ilvl 200. A tanking cloak from Naxx 10 which will be replaced soon with the emblem of frost cloak, and the crest of lorderon or whatever out of CoS heroic. I've had that goofy shield forever and will be glad to be rid of it though I'll have to wait for the weekly reset for a shot a good replacement.

The highlight for me was on saturday night when we went into ICC 25. I had worked really hard during the week to pick up as many upgrades as I could and it paid off being able to tank in ICC 25. Our guild currently has a bunch of tanks well geared so for 25's one or two of us are going DPS. One of our protadins went retribution for the night which left me Nikkyo and another prot warrior as the tanks. Marrowgar is the only boss I've done on 25 before and I had only ever tanked him on 10 man so this was quite the big step for me. About halfway through the fight the other warrior tank died. Nikkyo and I popped cooldowns while the other tank was battle rezzed and joined back in. Marrowgar was a one shot and low and be hold he dropped the sweet tanking legs which I was lucky enough to win the roll on.

Of course here is where the slight guilt kicks in. This was the first progression raid that I had been on with them and getting loot over the other tanks didn't really feel right to me. Anyway we moved on to LDW whom I've only ever killed on 10 man and it certainly wasn't as a tank. In fact my previous raid group was horribly stuck on this fight and the raid leader refused to listen to suggestions. Serendipity also had not downed LDW on 25 man. This fight places a lot of focus on the tanks so I was really nervous as we initiated the pull. Things were really hectic especially on my side. I for the most part kept my head straight but the other side lost a few dps and ultimately when she transitioned into phase 2... something I've never even seen on 25... we just couldn't get it together and wiped.

Our second attempt went better all around... except I screwed up horribly several times letting 2 or 3 of my melee dps die to the adds before I had solid aggro. We got the transition into phase 2 again but we ended up hitting her enrage. Finally on our 3rd attempt everything clicked and we got into phase 2 without too many people dying... then everything went to hell. I'm not sure what happened but people started dying off left and right including all of our healers. One of our ele shamans started chain healing her little heart out and it was just enough to kill LDW.... with all of 6 raid members left standing... 3 of which were us tanks. She dropped I want to say a tanking ring? and some other crap. I passed on the ring even though it would be an upgrade simply because I knew I was close to getting the rep ring.

The airship battle is just as easy in 25 as it was in 10 except they have 4 cannons! I got to be on the away team and actually use my rocket pack for what it is intended for. I was also on cannon duty which was an interesting and awesome strategy then the way my other raid group did things. When the cannon froze up I just jumped over and taunted MR fancy pants while the melee kicked the crap out of the mage. Then we all jumped back and I hopped into my cannon. The dodge trinket dropped which went to our bear tank Nikkyo.

Saurfang was interesting. Especially since... well we didn't know that 5 adds spawned instead of 4. We did all of this set up and planning and then BAM 5 adds. Surprise? We spent 4 attempts with me tanking. Ultimately though me and the other war tank were tied on avoidance, the pally tank who was dpsing had higher then both of us so he switched back to prot. Apparently the other warrior sucks at dps so I switched to the good old arms spec and pulled out my Awesome (read terrible) dps gear!

The next attempt I had my buddy Curinir whispering telling me how he and the other officers were impressed with how much dps I did in my offspec. I'm thinking cool! But then... see I was in a heroic earlier and my recount bugged out and still wasn't functioning during raid. So I had no clue how I was doing compared to what I normally do... or compared to the rest of the raid. Anyway this next attempt went a little better and finally the attempt after that we killed the damn orc. I was able to look at the logs on World of Logs and find out I did around 4700 dps. Not great... but not terrible considering I don't have a single piece of gear over 219 (except for the 232 ony helm)

We got 2 war/sham/whogivesafuck? tokens one of which went to the other warrior and the other went to the shammy. So every tank got atleast something from the run which was pretty sweet. At this point I noticed that I needed 15 rep... 15... to get the friendly ring. So I asked if we could go kill SOMETHING in the next wing. There were a few people who needed >100 rep so we died to the steamvaults a bit before killing the trash I needed for my ring :D

The rest of the weekend I've spent running heroics to work on my arms set a bit. Working on my dps set is gonna continue to be my focus for awhile then I'll get back to the rest of my alts!

Looooonnngggg Weekend

Having a fairly normal 9-5 type job I had the luxury of having Thursday and Friday off giving me a nice long 4 day weekend. The RL stuff was pretty typical going to my Uncles for some turkey on Thursday and then going to my parents Saturday for some decorating of the Christmas tree. Ok... so my sister and mother mostly decorated... while the rest of us sat and watched... Star Trek.

Anyway the rest of my RL weekend was pretty uneventful which of course means I spent a lot of time on WoW. My wife found out one of her old high school friends plays WoW and so we both created characters on Nordrassil. Wilderness my brand new female Orc hunter is currently level 14 questing in the Ghostlands, because I've never leveled a blood elf but wanted to experience the lore rich zone. My wife also created a hunter... a male blood elf and the 2 of us together literally destroy everything before us. My wife has been spending more time playing her hunter then me but meh whatever playing a low level hunter is boring when I have an 80 hunter.

Speaking of which I had a lot of fun doing Arena on Arravis with Kobeck's druid Averlexis. We did most of our games last night bringing our rating from 500 something to 1100 which means that I can pick up the furious helm. Before the games I splurged and picked up the Furious legs with arena points and then bought the Furious Shoulders with emblems of Triumph that I had piling up. All in all I'm sitting on 596 resilience so I'm getting there. On the raiding front for Arravis I did Ony 10/25, and ToC 10 man. Still without a good 2h weapon... I swear the weapon upgrades I really need never drop.

Which of course leads to Saravid. I did a TON of raiding on my shaman. I ran VoA 10/25, ToC 10/25, Ony 10/25. So pretty much everything. I got a pair of legs out of ToC 25 for my enhancement set... but I can't really spare the hit to use them not to mention they have armor pen.... and would break my tier 8 bonus. So for now they are sitting in my bags. Most of the raids I ran as enhancement, but I did go as resto when I ran with Phired's guild (one of the regular tanks in or 25 man's) when we did ToC 10. Duo healing with a disc priest was a lot of fun and we cleared ToC without incident. Which was good considering they run starting at midnight... (east coast server west coast guild) and it was Sunday night.

My mage went through VoA 25 and ToGC 10. VoA was funny because the raid had 4 mages... and all 4 of us were at the top of the charts. Korolarn of course dropped nothing useable by us... but then the next 2 bosses all dropped tier gear that none of us needed. ToGC we ran Wednesday night and went through beasts and Jarraxus with only a little difficulty. That of course brought us up against faction champions for the second time. We didn't have any kind of solid strategy and the comp we were up against certainly didn't favor what we brought to the table. I still thought we did well though and on one attempt we killed off 2 of them before wiping. No upgrades dropped (sensing a trend?).

Well after we finished our last attempt on Faction Champs some people had to go and the rest of us swapped out some peeps to go run through ToC 10 reg. Cassi switched from her uber hunter to totally undergeared DK and I switched to my warrior. Hour later and we were done. I picked up a nice tanking neck but still no upgrades I really need... like a freaking shield to replace my crest of lordearon from CoS heroic. Anyway Sunday while I was doing Arena on Arravis I got a whisper from Curinir one of my old guildies and good friend. He was looking for a tank to finish up some of the later parts of Ulduar and wanted to know if I would be interested. I wasn't sure at the time but 2 hours later when the raid was about to go down I figured I had nothing better to do.

The Ulduar raid happened to be a Guild run for Serendipity... my old guild. The old guild leader (who put into place stupid rules leading to my leaving) had quit the game and now my friend and old druid mentor was the Guild Leader. I really had fun playing with some of my old guildies and hope that I can do more runs with them... while still being in a different guild. Anyway... we had Thorim, Hodir, and mimiron still up and they went down in that order. Thorim was a one shot... damn tanking in the arena as a warrior is freaking hectic. Hodir I went Arms and let Nikkyo the bear tank take Hodir. Took us 3 attempts before we got him due to people getting frozen. I wasn't one of them but I was curious and found out that if you are in the middle of bladestorm while the freezing thingy goes off that you won't get frozen.

Mimiron took a bunch of attempts, usually people (including myself, stupid shock blast) dying to stupid stuff. I was tanking the head during phase 3/4 and eating bomb bots om nom nom. With Mimiron dead... we headed to General Vezax. I LOVE the journey down to his room. Some of the people in the raid hadn't been this far in Ulduar... as we were headed down I announced that THIS is why ToC was such a disappointment to so many raiders. Icecrown better be worth the wait. But I digress, General Vezax is the furthest I have ever been in Ulduar before and have never killed him. On top of that I had never done the fight as a tank. So here I was getting ready to stand toe to toe with a boss that could easily kill me and the raid if I wasn't careful.

First attempt went pretty well all things considered and we got him down to 1 mil health. Ethren who is one of the best rogues I know in the game did an incredible job of interrupting of interrupting the flame thingy. I had 2 or 3 interrupts to his 20 and we only had one go off on an attempt because one of the mages was a little overzealous and pulled the boss out of range. I would use shield wall through the big shadowy thingy and run like a little girl when my cd's were er... on cd.

On our 4th attempt the big lobster finally died! I have to say that this is one of my favorite fights so far to tank. Having to watch everything and be ready to run for your life while still putting out as much threat as humanly possible combines all the elements that make a fight great. I was about to start using the 1h dps sword that I had gotten from Anuberak( that I use for PvP ) just to kick out extra threat.

Lanora did ToC 10 and VoA 10... and thats about it for raiding. Llina, Jadedfury, and Skillet got almost no attention. Perhaps when Icecrown comes out.

As an aside... how is it that most of my toons raiding the current tier only got one paragraph each... but I easily wrote 4 paragraphs on just Ulduar? A raid that offers absolutely nothing in terms of gear upgrades... but feels more exciting then ToC and Ony?

So... ya... I'm going to need you to come in Saturday

I'm not dead... I've just been busy. I can usually get a post up at the very least on Friday... but I've been working Saturdays and taking naps when I get home during the week. Of course that is mostly due to going to bed too late playing wow... but w/e.

That is one of the bad things about PvP... it caters to that "just one more round!" mentality that makes WoW so addictive to me. I've certainly been doing a lot of PvP on my non raid nights between arena on my shaman... and grinding out that bloody terrible level 73-76 grind on my warlock.

Skillet has been my latest obsession so far this week. Warlocks are so uber when it comes to PvP and even being terribly geared and at the low end of the bracket, I'm still holding my own. I've certainly noticed a trend lately. There are much more lower level players in this bracket then when there was when my Druid first started leveling through PvP.

I wonder if this is just a trend with the 73 to 76 range. Are people that bored of the early wotlk zones? I mean I am because I've done them 7 times... but perhaps I'm not the only one sick of them. BC had a good amount of mix in the zones, at 66 you could be questing in Nagrand, Blades Edge mountain, or Terrokar Forrest.

The other aspect is that perhaps once people get to 77... they like me, start preparing for 80. At 77 I'm grinding out quests for my head enchant faction, as well as the everlasting Sons of Hodir grind. Level 80 dungeons open up so that people can get their 80 friends to run with them through easy content and start gearing up. Heck you can get into ToC at level 75!

Most of the BG's are unaffected by this shift in players... with the HUGE exception being AV. The horde seem to have a huge advantage in AV because.... well Balinda doesn't one shot your tanks with a crit or crushing blow. Not having a 79 tank with decent gear means serious trouble... especially when Galv can just fear THE ENTIRE group out of the room. I have a feeling AV will adapt to become an eternal turtle with people defending the towers to the bitter end... abandoning the prospect of killing the bosses.

Unless of course that miracle 79 warrior tank comes a long who knows how to use Beserker Rage. But I'm not holding my breathe.

P.S. Oh and bonus to anyone who can tell me where that screenshot was taken.

A good week

It has been a week since I last wrote anything which I kind of feel bad about... but I've been busy in WoW. As you can see from the left I pushed hard this past week and got my warrior to 80... and if you look closely in the backround you can see my wife on her warlock hitting 80! Big grats to her on her first level 80! And grats to me on my 6th... and apparently having no life...

But I digress. We both hit 80 on Friday turning in argent tournament dailies (ok it was planned a bit) but before I could do so much as put a talent point in I had to switch over to Saravid for Ulduar 25.

Our Rogue Behindya (nicknamed B2) had already run VoA in order to get enough conquest badges to pick up his helm and complete the 4piece bonus. So we were one dps short for VoA but had everyone we needed for Ulduar.... so I suggested to bring my wife in!

That's why I love this group. As serious as we are when it comes to raiding, they can be laid back enough to literally take a warlock who just hit 80 not 10 minutes prior into VoA. She did manage to dps above the tank and also did really good at switching targets during Emalon. We had a good time and she thanked everyone and left the group.

We then killed everything in Uld 25 up to the watchers including a first kill of Iron Council. That fight lasted 13 minutes! The most exciting thing for me... is that I had enough conquest badges to pick up the tier 8.5 chest! Which means NO MORE FUGLY PANTS. Ok well they are still fugly... but I can't see them under the 8.5 robe!



Saturday I took my warrior, along with my wife and some other friends and we headed into Naxx 10. I was up late after raid Friday night gemming and enchanting my crafted gear in order to hit the defense cap and have a respectable amount of HP's for Naxx. I weighed in at just under 25k HPs. We cleared spider wing with a little difficulty starting out. We wiped a few times on Anub'rekan but one shotted the next 2 bosses. We headed to Military next and had a little trouble on Instructor. We were a little low on heals and dps but managed by switching some people around. Gothik was a one shot but by the time we got to 4H a few people had to go and we called it there.

Was really different tanking on my Warrior then tanking on my Paladin. I have to say I felt like I had to work much harder to keep threat especially in trash pulls. I'm using a 15/3/53 build but am glyphed for cd's with blocking/sheildwall/last stand. Perhaps its mainly a gear issue at this point and things will get easier... I certainly liked having all of the cd's though and they saved me a few times on trash (I was solo tanking the trash).


After Naxx, the family went out to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. It was a pretty good movie but I have to say I don't like where they deviated from the book at some points.... I don't want to talk about it too much because I'm sure many people haven't seen it yet. After the movie we grabbed some grub and got home with enough time for me to log on and head back into Uld25.

With just the watchers left we headed for Hodir. There are so many more NPC's on 25 man then 10! Ok I guess its just double the amount... but still. I think it took us 3 or 4 attempts including one that went right up to the enrage. I'm glad I can say that when I died... it was because the Hodir smacked me in the face because either the MT would die... or bubble out of an flash freeze and I happened to be next on threat. Damn you pure dps and your threat dumps!

Anyway he died and I'm both sad and glad that I purchased the chest the day before. I was sad because the Tier Token for Shamans dropped... but was glad because half the raid needed the token. We had 6 shamans, 3 hunters, and 2 warriors... I'm going to hold out on Thorim on 10 man giving me my shoulder piece to complete my 4 piece bonus. The stats don't really make a huge difference but OMG that 4 piece bonus is awesome. Awesomeness covered in awesome. Maybe then I can beat B2 in dps!


Nerf Rogues.