I have the coolest friends...

No updates for a while, means another super sonic catch up post... going backwards this time.

The I Have the Coolest Friends achievement from keeping all the NPCs up on Hodir 10 man was a nice surprise at the end of our first successful attempt, and really capped off a great night of raiding. We condensed our recent two night forays into Ulduar into a single night, and got a new boss, and saw our first (Hunter) tier token. Add in the achievements for A Quick Shave and Nerf Gravity Bombs, it made for a great night.

Ulduar 10: 8/14

I have the coolest friends also sums up how I'm feeling about my guild of late. We're a social guild, so we're not blazing trails through new content, and there's always more to do than we can fit in the schedule... but I've really enjoyed raid leading recently with some polished performances, and having master looting (and DKP allocation) being taken off my hands. We've settled into the DKP loot system, we've added decay, and toons have been pleasantly surprised with the amount of loot that ends up in the hands of first time raiders and new alts (as was I when only one toon rolled on
Surplus Limb).

Next up, we got Malygos down in 25 man mode on 23rd May on our first night working on the boss. I'm not sure if people actually expected us too, since we had more toons sign up for one Ulduar 10 man group, than our Malygos attempt. The less than stellar attendance was a blessing in disguise however, with some diligant pugging, we picked up some of our top DPS for the evening, including some stellar performers on the drakes. As a nice reward, the massive DKP Helly and I sunk into the Key turned into a fantastic neck piece at the end of the night.

Malygos 25: 1/1

The Ancients defeated Heroic Naxxramas on 25th April, shortly after patch 3.1 was released. Since then we have cleared another couple of times (on a fortnightly schedule) and dished out a lot of nice loot. I have been lucky enough to get [Wall of Terror] and [Last Laugh] already, which with a couple of drops from Ulduar 10 man, has me geared out for tier 7, and I finally got the Epic achievement (I believe I owe a certain fellow tank a new gun). I had great fun with our most recent clear, which saw 11 bosses drop in 3 hours flat on our first night, which left us plenty of time to get into Ulduar 25 on the second night of raiding to beat down Flame Leviathan and have a quick look at Razorscale.

Naxxramas 25: 15/15
Ulduar 25: 1/14

So that catches me up on the raiding of late. Since patch 3.1 I've been regularly pugging Emalon, and even helping to gain control over Wintergrasp, although I'm not sold on this whole PvP thing... I'm told I have enough honor to get 'something good' but it just seems like too much work to make space in my bank to store yet another set of gear. Having said that, it could do with a good clean out! Borgthor is my main, so only he has this problem of keeping sentimental gear, holiday bits and pieces and a massive shield collection. Does anyone else have this problem? To give you an idea how bad it is, I still have the full imperial plate set sitting in there.

Borg's DPS gear is coming along, and to my total surprise picked up two (yes TWO) plate DPS pieces in Naxx25 on the offset roll. I have traded in the [Collosal Skull-Clad Cleaver] for [Relentless Edge] which adds an element of awesome to the set, and while the 3.2 speed isn't optimal for ARMS, it was another welcome upgrade! Today's 4% haste buff to ARMS will be interesting to test out... maybe on something more exciting than a test dummy. /hint hint

While I remember... I have to get this down in writing so someone can hold me to it. Getting [Last Laugh] from KT25 gives me the perfect excuse to try out a UA spec on a a few bosses next time we go into Naxxramas!

My DK, Borgelmir (who I haven't formally introduced) is sitting at 71 just doing JC dailies... but might have some motivation to level with alts of friends, my wife, and with Obe returning for at least a little while all having toons within cooeee of his level. I have maxed out JC, but still need some help deciding on a second profession. I'm leaning towards Engineering (BS would be good too but it's out) and Alchemy looked attractive for a while (see next paragraph for why it's not)... What profession do you think my DK should level next?

I've been going crazy on the AH again (with a secret inscribing toon) which had me in the habit of a project I'd wanted to get underway for a long time. Flasks for All! With the subsidised Abyss Crystal trade from raiding, and some sizable "I'm leaving WoW" donations from guildies, The Ancients guild bank had a healthy bank balance to start the project. So as Jondy puts it, I ... "just went nuts". I've turned over about 10k gold in getting the guild bank stocked with flasks, including herbs, vials and even flasks themselves when they are cheap enough. To start with, I would have sessions with Jondayla at the guild bank to churn out flasks, but had totally overlooked our resident elixir masters in the guild! Now with Helly churning out flasks with an impressive proc rate, we can off flasks to our gulidies at between 10 - 30% less than market price as a sustainable process. I've been excited to see how quickly they disappear, and even more excited by the strike rate of guild bank deposits to match.

Well, I think that's me all caught up, happy now Obe? Yes, Obe's return to WoW was the precursor to this post... but to look at the comments section, you'd think the readership for this blog was just me (and my wife (please direct all editing comments to Jondayla)). So... you want updates? Say so via your comments here! ... and help me decide on a second profession for my DK while you're at it!