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.

Revenge and 3.3.3

Thanks for the buff Blizz, I just wish you hadn't have added a cleave effect. This was from the Anub in H AH, so it could have been anything that I hit, but still first heroic and a 12.9k crit? That's not too bad.

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.