Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets

Last night in ICC10, things started out great! We one shot the first four bosses, and made our way towards Stinky and Precious.

Then [Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets] dropped from trash! I was very excited. The first thing I thought was, "what an awesome loot policy it is to allow BoEs be given to participating main spec toons". My second (although hard to say, since they came thick and fast at this point) was something about how wonderful it is to tank along side a Paladin. I was also relieved that Parl's warrior Oddox had the thing already when he rolled for it... and that certain rogues just like to make trouble. You'd think after being made to wait (not be me (or on purpose)) to roll on [Death's Verdict] he'd know better.

The main reson for my excitement was really about the gun's looks. It is a relatively small upgrade, since ranged weapons are teeny stat sticks for warriors... but just take a second look at that thing! It effortlessly combines a bayonet, with a mini-gun-esque front barrel, with pointy!

Things got better from there, and after one shotting Festergut, we faced off against Rotface. We two healed the encounter, and things were looking very promising right from word kgo. By the time the first Ooze combined and exploded Rotface was at about 45% health, and we had pretty good slime merges right through the fight, leading to a kill.

I also really enjoyed kiting the slimes as a Warrior tank. Vigilance is a great tool to keep the healer aggro on an even keel, and if you time it just right... Heroic Throw, Shockwave, Thunder Clap and shouts are enough to keep the big slimes rolling your way.

To top things off I hit exalted with Ashen Verdict and picked up [Ashen Band of Endless Courage].

25k Gold Transaction

My guild recently looted [Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder] and what a wonderous sack it was.

We have a policy of allowing toons in the run to take BoE items as an upgrade for their main spec, but failing that sell the items through our guild bank. The guildie discount for BoE items is around the 65 - 70% mark, which means not only does the toon get a bargain, but everyone else in the run (and the guild as a whole) benefits from the coin (we sell discounted potions / flasks / eternal belt buckles / enchants through the guild bank).

On this occasion, we banked the item after no interest for a main spec upgrade (mostly due to the peculiar itemisation, and us not running a Bear in our raids). When I looked at the auctioneer data for the item, I started to get a little excited. 25k gold seemed... like... a LOT. So I set the guild price at 8k, and went to the AH.

First up, I wanted to list it at an obscene price on the off chance that a guildie wanted it at 8k. 29400 gold would net almost 28k, so I started there. Almost immediately, I received an offer in the mail from someone's bank alt, offering 25k gold. Later in the day I was whispered with offers over 10k, and got the resigned, "some people have too much gold" when I told them our current best offer.

After checking with guildies that could use the upgrade (8k was still a little steep), I met up with our buyer in Dalaran. At this point in the game, the most coin I had amassed across all my toons was 25k gold, so seeing that much in the trade window got my heart beating a little faster. Even my personal throughput of gold through the guild bank of around 20k gold just didn't compare to seeing it all in one lump sum.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I enquired as to who would be wearing the chest... and it turns out it was going to a horde bear tank in one of the more progressed horde guilds on the server. Although I've dabbled in neutral AHs and grabbing the odd recipe or two from the horde AH, I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of monitoring the horde AH for those must have BoE items (and other potential money spinners).

So much to my surprise, we decided to bank the coin to give us a head start in Cataclysm, should the guild changes require any actual gold.

Happy New Year

So, it's been a while since I posted....having been completely distracted with 3.3 and RL work ramping up... so here it goes with another proverbial catch up post.

Before patch 3.3, we managed to complete all but one of my goals for the guild's progression.

• 19/11/2009 - 5/5 TotC 25 man
  
• 22/11/2009 - 4/5 TotGC 10 man
  
• 30/11/2009 - Ulduar 10 hard modes / drake achievements up to and including Hodir
  
• 07/12/2009 - Ulduar 10 Thorim hard mode

The only thing missing from that list was Yogg-Saron in 25 man Ulduar. Hopefully we'll be having another crack at him on Saturday night. We did have a great time with Vezax 25, and the interrupts were so good it almost felt like a holiday for me on our successful attempt.

Zenborg kept his streak alive and managed to clear TotC25 before Borgthor, and was suitably rewarded by getting Moonspirit to craft [Merlin's Robes] for him.

Borgthor managed to sneak into a Sarth+3D 25 man zerg, and walk away with the drake!

Borgelmir came out of retirement, and started pwning some content as unholy. The changes in 3.3 have made it the 'in' spec, but I really enjoyed 3.2 unholy and had a lot of fun spreading my diseases. It was also fantastic to win [Justice Bringer] and then turn down offers of unspeakable mountains of coin to trade it.

Zenborg got into GDKP and had a very nice run through 25 man TotC and came out with an extra 3600g, but that experience deserves it's own post, so keep a look out for that.

Onyxia's Lair came along, which wasn't too exciting but both Zen and Borg enjoy their 25 man helms. The warrior DPS helm is very nicely itemised, and was a great pickup while tanking.

I refined my guild bank purchasing system, devoting my level 20-odd mage to herb and flask storage. We ended the year with a stock of almost 1000 flasks which we sell to guildies at about 60% of market value.

The guild had a couple of weeks off progression raiding over Christmas, and now back in the new year, we're 5/12 in ICC 10 and 3/12 in ICC 25.

Ulduar 10 Cleared!

A long time coming, we two shot Yogg-Saron in Ulduar 10. I think we had up to about 60 attempts on this boss, which makes it by far the hardest boss I've encountered to date, including hard mode bosses. Part of the issue with the number of attempts was the turn over in personnel, I think we ended up having more than 20 toons cycled through our Sunday and Monday night raids before we got the boss down.

Everything came together nicely on the night, and our fantastic brain room team gave us plenty of breathing space upstairs. I really enjoyed solo tanking the encounter, and from the moment we entered phase one, scoring an extra mob early it just felt right.


After he was down, I opened the champagne and we contemplated what to do with the rest of our raid night.

The choice was simple really... Heroic TotC10. After clearing normal TotC10 in under 50 minutes (and the week after in 40), we were all keen to get back into the heroic version. We took a little while to adjust to how quick you need to move out of the fire, the speed at which snobolds should die (I like to think they should be vapourised) and getting the Gormok taunting down. Then we focused on some better execution for the worms, and finally Icehowl was safely pwned in good time before the enrage timer.

We played with a couple of strategies for Jaraxxus before calling it a night. After the all the frustrations with Yogg, it was fantastic to finally get him down. Heroic Northrend Beasts was icing on the cake.

Relegated... to the mobile office

His only company? A portable mailbox and ever loyal (robotic, programmed) man servant.

I'm going to be upfront. I despise the completely backward changes made to Emblems in Wrath of the Lichking. While I spend a fair bit of time in game, I consider myself a casual, but talented player. Going back to farm content (daily heroic for EoTs, heroic farming for EoCs) regularly in order to gear up has crushed my alts... well at least one of them.

Poor Borgelmir has been relegated to his mobile office. Now that I feel compelled to run the daily heroic on my *cough* important toons, I have been just dreading gearing this guy up. His current schedule? Well, it's just as well he's both a jewel crafter and an engineer...

... so here's a day in the life of Borgelmir:

• Get the JC daily, and wormhole to the location (30s)
  
• Kill stuff (30s - 2m)
• Hearth (10s)
• Grab Jeeves (so I don't have to run all the way to the bank) and get the small gems for the JC daily and hand in (20s)
• Scan the auction house in Dalaran (4m)
• Grab bargains for the guild bank, post my own auctions (2m)
• Cut gems for fellow guildies (0 - 30s)
• Logout... no more playtime for you today

10 minutes tops. If he wasn't a 450 JC and 450 engineer, with the capacity to become my primary AH toon... I may have actually ditched him altogether.

of the Nightfall

The story starts with Borgthor, back on 21st August, having a free moment, and watching trade and looking for group vigilantly to find that exciting PuG opportunity. It came in the form of the following, "LF pro tank for Sarth+3D 10 man zerg". I responded immediately, and got the nod. Naturally we then had to wait a while to find a suitable shaman (isn't that always the way?).

The strategy was quite straightforward.

• 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 8 DPS
• Rogue vanishes to reset Sarth, everyone gets into position
• As soon as Sarth appears, pop hero and unload
• Tank picks up 1st drake while continuing to pump high threat into Sarth
• Just before Sarth is at 25% health (drake enrage), a DPSer taunts the extra drake, and runs like hell
• The drake enrages, but Sarth is dead before the drake can 1) kill the DPSer who taunts and 2) make it back to wipe the group

Much to my surprise, everything went like clockwork in this PuG, and we one shot Sarth. I was pleasantly surprised how much threat I was able to generate (given that you need some serious DPS to make it work) and the threat lead I had enabled me to pick up the drake without worrying about slowing the DPSers down (or letting them rip).

I missed out on the drake, but it was such a nice group that we went to do 6 minute Malygos.

We got some momentum behind a guild attempt of Sarth+3D, but it took a little while to fit in the schedule. On 14th September we managed to get a group up and running. Monday nights haven't been easy to organise since we introduced them as an extra 10 man night. Some people have a preference for 25 mans (which we are now running two nights per week) and other people just have a more limited schedule. So... it came as a little bit of a surprise that Zenborg was actually the best available healing option for the fight.

The issue with only needing one tank, one heal and having trouble finding 10 toons up to the challenge was that once we could grab our Pally tank, Borg was no longer required in the tanking department. Next up was the DPS / taunting role. My wife Jondayla has really taken to her kitty offspec, and has been putting out some serious DPS (including in recent hard modes, where a healer go DPS option has given us a great deal of flexibility). So she had the DPS / taunt gig, which left us without a healer. So Zenborg it was. After all, I had recently announced to Jondy, "I finally get priest healing, everything before now was sooo awkward".

By the time we filled out last spot, we had a balance druid, and we decided that the range would give them an advantage in the 'taunt and run' department. In hindsight I could have passed the healing assignment back to Jondy, but I was probably too excited to think of that option.

Our group was

• Prot Pally
• 3x Hunters
• Destro Warlock
• Balance Druid (+taunt and run)
• Feral Druid
• Rogue
• Elemental Shaman
  
• Holy Priest

We had a lot of fun over our many attempts, and it took a little while to get used to keeping DPS up while dodging waves (particularly from the left side was painful), getting the taunt mechanics down, and learning just how awesome binding heal can be.

When we did get him down, it took just 1m48s. Our dedicated DPS were between 4.5 - 5.5k DPS (or equivalent*), and Zenborg was well and truly dead. Congratulations to Helly, who walked away with the [Reins of the Black Proto-Drake].

If you must take a slightly less than ideal healing option, I highly recommend a priest. Spirit of Redemption was absolutely overpowered for that last 15 seconds of totally uninterrupted healing. In most fights it's not that big a deal, but 15 seconds in a 1m48s fight is pretty huge.

Raiding Roundup - 10 Man - Ulduar Hard Modes

Our first night of Ulduar hard modes and achievements was a lot of fun, and went really well.

Nuked from Orbit (Flame Leviathan - 3 towers)

We added Freya's tower to the mix, and our gunners expertly dispatched the flowers as they appeared. It required a couple of attempts, and a lot more pyrite... but we defeated FL with 3 towers up. I think adding in Mimiron's tower will take a lot more in the way of execution than our 3 towers effort but I think we're up for the challenge.

Stokin' the Furnace (Ignis - sub 4 minutes)


We went 2 tanks, 2 heals for this encounter, with Jondy swapping into kitty spec. Given our usual strategy is a zerg, I think we'll be doing it this way from now on. The two healers handled it very comfortably, and he was down before any real spike damage could hit the tanks.

Heartbreaker (XT Hard Mode)


Heartbreaker was a lot of fun, and our first true hard mode kill. I got to go Arms for this fight, and give the heart a good pounding which was great fun. Just to ensure that the heart went down, Jondy switched to kitty in healing gear and gave it a bit of a swipe too. Our kill was a fairly long one I think, with me back into defensive stance to taunt / tank the sparks while ranged brought them down. Next time I think we could be a little slicker in dealing with the sparks for a quicker kill. Zeltan got [Aesir's Edge], which is a fitting reward for the the hard mode.

We had a couple of runs at Iron Council hard mode, but ran out of time. The most exciting part was watching Adirix (holy pally) get Fusion Punch himself and hit the ground. Still not sure why it happened... but it was well worth it. ;)

I found tackling the hard modes quite rewarding, and I think everyone on the night had a great time. However, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to fill a group to go into Ulduar 10. My highest priority for 10 man is to down Yogg-Saron, and recently trying to get the right brain room team has been looking a little bleak. Add to that, people's enthusiasm for TotC10 (both gear and EoTs) and you get ... stuck. The last couple of weeks have seen me alternatively running a second TotC10 group with additional guests, or running guild groups on consecutive nights on different toons. While getting 17-20 guildies through TotC10 is great for the experience and gear, it's just not what I look forward to my 10 man nights for.

To quote myself from a recent conversation with one of my favourite hunters:

I don't raid for loot. Loot comes as a side effect of raiding with great group with decent loot rules. I raid for the challenge of difficult encounters.

When it comes to 25 mans, it is all about the guild. I want to expose a greater selection of guildies to raiding, and help them progress. We even had guildies that picked up the Tier 8.5 chest from Hodir, even though it's available from farming heroics. We often take undergeared, and more casual guildies over PuGing, but perform very well for our two nights per week raiding.

10 man on the other hand, I really want to pwn! It's a chance to form a tight knit group of skilled and dedicated raiders and work on some tougher content. Hopefully we'll be back to that for my next 10 man roundup.