Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Poke in the Eye


So after another dismal attempt to convince people to come along to 10 man Yogg+1, we settled on the weekly raid, Eye of Eternity.

Since I hadn't got the 8 man achievement, I thought it might be nice to grab that while we were at it. (Spoiler Alert: my secret gnome warlock got this same achievement the day he hit 80 as part of Champ in a Day(tm)).

Pugging was absolutely excruciating. The number of inexperienced toons, the lack of any useful information provided voluntarily to help find a match (my eyes were almost bleeding after looking at so many missing gems and enchants in the armory). In the end I mistook arrogance for competence and took a Ret Pally / Hunter pair that could have been easily replaced by one decent player for a 7 man attempt.

In any case, we managed to have a pick of 3 main spec tanks for our 1 tank spot, so I got to DPS. I bet you can guess what achievement came next!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Twitchie Day(tm) - Part 1 - Northrend Dungeon Hero

Introducing Twitchie (the Gnome Warlock), my not so secret Warlock, and my latest level 80 toon.

For level 80, I wanted to do something special and tear through content that blizzard had decided to make obsolete. So the idea was hatched for Champ In a Day(tm).

Champ in a Day is all about getting the Champion of the Frozen Wastes achievement and title in the first 24 hours of dinging 80. It consists of all the regular heroic dungeons, Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity. While you only need to defeat the last boss of each instance for the achievement, I was going to do this properly, and clear ALL bosses in any of the content I attempted.

To document this on the fly, I signed up for twitter on Twitchie. You can follow his adventures through teeny 140 character snippets at http://twitter.com/twitchietgw .

Twitchie logged off before maintenance at level 79, with 1797 spell power, 109 Hit, 8.58% Crit and 12.11% haste. Quite reasonable stats, including heirloom items which made flying through normal instances a lot of fun.


When I woke up just before 4am and logged on, I was delighted to find Oddox and Therepoman already online and rearing to go. By 0409 I had dinged, and 0414 had trained up, added talent points, an extra glyph and got the superior achievement. My bank was a marvel of craftables, spare gems and enchant scrolls. Twitchie's fresh 80 wowhead profile gives you an idea of the step up in stats, including the superior achievement.

The oven was on, preheating for Croissants for breakfast... The kettle was boiled for coffee... There was a 24 pack of pepsi max cans in the fridge. Twitchie Day(tm) is declared OPEN!

Phase One - Northrend Dungeon Hero

  • 0416 - Violet Hold - seed of corruption mayhem, but no drain soul ticks since bosses are just getting NUKED.
  • 0430 - The Culling of Stratholme - 13k drain soul tick on Salramm, and from memory I think I picked up the drake for good measure.
  • 0452 - Gundrak - achievements aplenty
  • 0510 - Utgarde Pinnacle
  • 0525 - Halls of Lightning -
  • 0540 - The Nexus - Hellyonz (Moordenar) is up early, on his priest Ademar and joins in the fun. We even did a post nerf Chaos Theory, which was a whole new kind of easy.
  • 0600 - Violet Hold - (again) but I'm joined by my wife Jondy on her baby kitty, so we have a full guild group! Hellyonz is toon switching like mad, soaking up those delicious frosties.
  • 0615 - Gun'drak - (again) but Helly is on Xarik, so more frosties flow. Share the Love took a full five minutes, and Oddox grabbed his last achievement for Glory of the Hero!
  • 0630 - Drak'tharon Keep - between eating croissants (thanks honey!), skinning and tweeting, this instance is a breeze ;)
  • 0652 - after amassing 92 EoTs (some from regular dailies post 70) I upgrade to [Helm of Fiery Aftermath]!
  • 0700 - Azjol-Nerub - I snaffle [Rod of the Fallen Monarch]
  • 0715 - Utgarde Keep - queued for this specifically, since there aren't many left to go
  • 0730 - Halls of Stone - Jondy has started on work while I grab another quick run.
  • Work time
  • 0938 - Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom - Twitchie turns a little red when his melee swing is dodged by a healthy mushroom.
  • 1000 - The Oculus - lucky last for Northrend Dungeon Hero, and a well earned upgrade: [Pauldrons of Revered Mortality].
  • 1020 - The Forge of Souls - into bonus material already, and starting on dungeons an affliction lock can really sink their teeth into.
  • 1040 - After chaining dungeons all morning, Oddox and Repo head off for a well earned break.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Twitchie Day(tm) where Twitchie will start moving and shaking in his very first raid!

Sindragosa goes down!



After a fantastic first night in ICC 10, getting 10 bosses in 3 hours... our second night was all about Sindragosa. After some previous attempts where the ground and air phases were cake, but the last phase nightmarish, we added some additional frost resistance gear. FR gear allowed us some slack in execution while we perfected the dance all the way to the enrage timer. With a little less FR and some fine tuning, we downed the dragon on our last attempt of the evening (I'm thinking I should start raids at 10:20pm from this point).

By way of catch up, are 11/12 ICC 10 and 7/12 ICC 25. I was very pleased with our 25 man progress, having gotten Festergut during the 5% buff, one shotting Rotface on the night we got him, and getting down Blood Princes nice and early. However, through some attendance / recruitment issues and a hole in the last 5 DPS positions... we've been struggling for the last few weeks. Adding to the frustration is Rotface's insides being the only thing between me and a new toy.