Ordos

 

After Kuan and Morn got their fabulous cloaks we were wandering around exploring the bits of the Timeless Isle we'd been unable to reach.  Specifically we were exploring the Ordon Sanctuary. 

We cloaked over there and slaughtered angry fiery Yaungol.  We looted altars and ate fire flowers. We looted that last Blazing Chest. We were just about bored of killing Yaungol when someone asked for more for Ordos. I asked and they claimed that their group would be full soon.  This was a lie, but eventually we had a full raid and were ready to kill Ordos, Fire God of the Yaungol. 

While we were waiting for the raid to fill I perused the Dungeon Journal for Ordos.  Turns out that the Fire God of the Yaungol has a lot of fire attacks! He sets people on fire. He puts pools of fire on the ground. He puts fire trees down that attack the closest people. Oh and there is a pretty limited space to fight him, so be careful with his placement so you don't run out of room before he runs out of health.

Anyway I was hoping that the other tank had some sort of clue, since I'd not pulled him before.  I'd just gotten my cloak a couple of hours before! But no, the other tank was someone's alt. He or she wasn't all that sure about how to tank, let alone how to tank Ordos.

Okay then. Time for some basic crap-on-the-ground tanking.  We'll start him in one corner and work around the outside edge of the room. Hopefully that gives enough space to work in. 

Pull and death by BBQ.

It turns out that when Ordos sets people on fire, they also burn the people around them. So if they don't run away the rest of the raid gets toasted in a fairly fatal fashion, because he sets three or four people on fire at the same time. At least, despite my not having any clue about how much he needed to move, the wipe wasn't Morn's fault.  And since DraNgNon is fully capable of listening when DBM is all "RUN THE FUCK AWAY" it wasn't Kuan's fault either.

Anyway we rezzed and ran back. Feasts were dropped and harsh words were said about "RUN THE FUCK AWAY" or we all die. We lined back up and I pulled Ordos again.  This time I had a better idea of how and where to pull him, so the movement and placement was a bit more smooth. People ran away when then needed to and we slaughtered Ordos with glee and only a few burns. 

Morn even got a fabulous new belt out of it: Greatbelt of the Crendor Who, incidentally makes some amusing WoW videos.

Current Progression

 

This past week we had a pretty good set of raids. I decided to pug even though we only had 5 people online. We actually had heals and tanks so we just needed to get some dps. It worked out, we had different pugs every day of our three raid nights, but they were all pretty good. Oddly, the pugs we picked up on Sunday night were better quality, both gear and skill, then the ones that we had on Tuesday. I can't tell if that was because people weren't busy on Sunday night, or if better people respond when I say we're starting on Malkorok.

Either way, after a rough start on Tuesday we killed Nazgrim on Thursday. On Sunday night we got some pretty well geared people who were done with their guild raids for the week. It took us a bunch of wipes to get the coordination to cover all the purple puddles, but once everyone knew the plan we were good.

We also had a really easy time killing Spoils of Pandaria. It took us one wipe and then we annihilated it. I think a big part of that was that I and the other tank had practiced it when we ran it on Flex three the week before. Both of us had the crate opening rhythm down. Despite that I was still afraid that it would be a wipe when I had trouble opening the first couple of crates on the Mogu side. Fortunately we were able to recover and get everything opened up and then dead in time.

We headed to Thok after knocking over Spoils, and had a couple of good pulls on him. I am confident that we'd have gotten him the next pull, but we ran out of raid time and people had to go to sleep. Sadly our last wipe was my over-aggro fault. Turns out that I'm really looking forward to the removal of Vengeance in the Warlords expansion. Right now it's a bit of a clunky mechanic that can make tank swaps, especially the initial tank swap, really hairy.

It was a pretty good raid. I know that several Darkfall people hadn't been there when we first killed Malkorok, so they got a new kill for that. I was lucky enough to get the nice tanking boots that Malk drops: the Malkorok's Giant Stompers, but warforged for extra awesomeness. And I remain pleased with our speedy kill of Spoils. 

Burnout? Not Today!

 

I had been feeling more than a bit burned out lately. It's the end of the expansion, and it felt like Darkfall was falling apart like it did at the end of Wrath. A bunch of people have stopped logging on and other people have gquit or stealth server transferred. I'd been super stressed and worrying about attrition and progression and generally dreading logging on to raid.

At the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Darkfall had a lot of attrition and turnover and, both personally and as a guild, didn't end up killing the Lich King until much later. It was pretty rough, but DraNgNon and I ended up having a good time by pugging our way through Ulduar to get the achieves and fast protodrake. That was a tremendous amount of fun. It also facilitated the swap of my main to Mornara and polishing my tanking skills. Additionally I honed my raid leading skills, by getting us and a half-regular merry band through Ulduar.

Fortunately I was recently reminded that despite the guild issues the end of Wrath was a lot of fun. I still have many fond memories of Ulduar. And I actually don't mind pugging, even if every so often there is someone who is all "zomg a female tank!!!" I'm pretty good at shrugging that off as long as there are no sexist comments following on to it.  

So I'm feeling revitalized and ready to raid. I'd prefer to have a full Darkfall raid to run with, however, if people aren't going to be around I'm cool with pugging and killing bosses. 

Transmog

As much as I adore the Valorous Scourgeborne look, with all it's black spikes and red accents, it was time for a new transmog for Morn. However I was unpleased with all my options. A lot of the DK sets are far too monochromatic: all blue or rusty red or horrible poisonous green. I was considering the heroic set from Dragon Soul, but I am missing the matching boots, and don't have a pair that wouldn't clash horribly. I was sad and resigned myself to keeping my Valorous Scourgeborne, which wasn't really such a bad thought.

Fortunately I was running DraNgNon's not-so-little-anymore boomkin through the ICC 5mans and I picked up the Pauldrons of the Souleater from the last boss in Forge of Souls. They are pretty striking shoulders. The understated spikes and fiery runes look pretty awesome. So I took a look through Wowhead and the looked at the loot drops from the various ICC 5man bosses, and eventually figured out that the set I now wanted was the Scourgelords's Frigid Battleplate recolor. I went with the Sollerets of Suffering rather than the boots suggested on that page and I think it looks pretty spiffy:

For a weapon I went with the Pit Lord's Destroyer, from the final pair of bosses in the Well of Eternity.

Thoughts On Tanking and Role Models

 

For most of this expansion I've been tanking with a pally co-tank. It has been pretty nice. My pally co-tank is excellent and fun to tank beside. We've been tanking together long enough that we only need a minimum of vent communication to deal with most issues that arise.

However, the other night the pally was out and our dps warrior was convinced to strap on a sword and board. It was odd, but not in a bad way. It was odd because this warrior used to be the main tank of Darkfall back in Burning Crusade.  

When I first started tanking, there were several tanks that I really looked up to. I watched these tanks to try to learn how they were so awesome.  At that time in BC and early Wrath they were warriors and a few bears. At that time Ironspike was a big burly Tauren Warrior.  He's since changed race and gender (and character name) and is a little Blood Elf girl. It's odd that not only is Morn more burly, but since he does dps most of the time now Morn's tanking gear is better, too.  

It was odd and gratifying to be tanking next to Iron. I'd looked up to him a lot in BC and now I was tanking next to him.  It was really weird though, because we hadn't tanked together before.  We both knew the boss fights and did perfectly fine with the mechanics. However, the flow wasn't there. He is currently used to tanking with his monk, and we don't know each other's rhythm.  

Yes, there is a rhythm to tanking. Making sure your CDs are used at the right times for the boss abilities is basic. Rhythm is more about choosing when to use minor defensive abilities vs threat abilities. If you've not tanked with your co-tank before you don't know how much relative threat they put out. Or just when they will taunt, so you have to save an extra CD or threat ability in case they taunt early or late or in case they drop lots of threat at the start of the fight. It's nothing serious, but it is a learning curve.  

More recently our warlock's pally has been filling in for our missing OT. It's interesting to tank with a different pally. It's also fun to watch someone relearn the fights with a different class and spec. I was amused when he did Norushen for the first time on normal; he had an unpleasant surprise with how much stronger normal Norushen purity test realm is than flex. Fortunately I had a battle rez ready for just that situation. 

I've also been tanking next to Hellbovine, and have been having fun with that too. Warrior charge is so annoyingly OP for getting initial aggro on trash packs. It's sometimes hard to not feel useless when he has all the Vengeance. Still it's a lot of fun to tank with him, though.

Once Upon a Time: Mornara

 

Follow on to Shadow's Edge
 

~~~***~~~

The sun was just peeking above the horizon as Mornara made her way to the Trade District of Dalaran. Most of the streets were still in shadow, but various merchants were opening their doors or pulling back shutters.  She got a dark look from someone sweeping off his doorstep, but other than that most people are still too sleepy to pay much attention to her.  

"You stumble about in darkness. There is no light here. No mercy! Icecrown has claimed the souls of better heroes that you."

Mornara trips over the edge of a cobblestone that was hidden by a building's shadow.  She almost falls, but manages to catch herself on a nearby wall.

Mornara pivots so her back is pressed against the cool stone wall. She isn't sure where the voice in her head came from, which worries her. Oh, she knows whose voice it is. The Lich King has a very memorable voice. She just doesn't know why it was in her head right then. 

It wouldn't have been a surprise if she were still in Icecrown Citadel. She would actually expect it there. Ever since the forging of Shadow's Edge she's been hearing his whispers while in the citadel. And if she were still asleep it could quite easily be a nightmare. But hearing voices while you're awake? That's either crazy or about to get enslaved by the Lich King.

Again. 

After a while her breathing levels out and she continues on to the Jewelry shop. They always have extra work, even for Death Knights. Mornara picks up a work order for the day. Some of the parts she needs are not in stock so she heads out of Dalaran to get them. At Krasus' Landing Mornara mounts her drake. The drake surges in to the air with several strong wing beats and Mornara directs him towards the mountains to the north. 

One of the components she needs is a Vrykul Amulet.  However the Vrykul aren't exactly friendly with either the Horde or the Alliance, so their amulets aren't easy to come by.  The closest place to find Vrykul will be in Ymrheim, where the strongest of the Lich King's Vrykul warriors train and live. 
 

~*~

 
Mornara uses the ever present snow to wipe the blood off of Shadow's Edge and then slings the axe onto her back.  Weapon properly cared for, she pulls on one of the runes to heal herself slightly.  Only then does she inspect the bodies in front of her.  The third one has an amulet, which she roughly pulls off his neck and stuffs into her pack.  She still checks the fourth corpse, and grabs several silver from the caster's pockets. 
 

"Never have I had cause to regret sparing your life, mortal. Always, you continue to amuse me."

For a moment the face of the last Vrykul she had killed shimmers. It solidifies as a familiar troll shape. Mornara gasps and starts to reach for her axe. Before she finishes the motion the Vrykul's face is back to it's original shape. Mornara watches the Vrykul corpse closely for another minute.

She shakes her head and then lets out an ear-splitting whistle. Her drake dives down through the clouds and then backwings to a gentle landing. Gentle for a drake, but the breeze blows flurries of snow in her face and tosses her pigtails around. Mornara shields her eyes and then mounts up to head back to Dalaran. 
 

~~~***~~~

At the head of the group Mornara hacked and slashed. Shadow's edge cut a swathe through abominations, geists, and plague doctors. Behind and beside her the rest of the group fought with their own weapons and spells. 

Poison gas and toxic slime had been defeated.  The horrific giant abominations Rotface and Festergut lay dead in their respective chambers. The Professor was still to be fought, and who knew what foul concoctions he had brewed in his laboratory.

The group gathered and then charged up the ramp to the lab.  As the last tauren thundered into the hallway the doors behind them snapped shut.  Mornara and the other tank, another orc, rammed into the doors ahead of them. However, those doors stayed firmly shut. 

"You can't come in here all dirty like that! You need that nasty flesh scrubbed off first!"  The voice came from above and ahead of them, from in the laboratory.

The hallway started to fill with giant beetles. 

 

~*~

The bloated and plague-ridden body of Professor Putricide lay dead in front of the group. 

Underneath the gore and slime that coated Shadow's Edge Mornara could feel a change in the axe she held.  It pulsed with an feel similar to the unholy runes already etched on it. As Mornara watched, the unholy plague slime that coated it was pulled into the blade and only the gore was left on the blade.

~*~

Darion Mograine had inspected the axe after it was infused with the unholy slime of Putricide's death.  He told her that the axe would next need to be fed on blood.  His glowing blue eyes met and held Mornara's own as he informed her that it would require her own blood and her companions' blood.

The way to correctly feed the blade involved being bitten by Blood Queen Lanathel, and then biting the rest of the group. Mornara wasn't too keen on this idea. Lanathel's bites tended to turn you into a ravening vampire.

~*~

The final infusion required for the axe was frost.  Even better than the Lich King was the frost wyrm Sindragosa.  Her frozen breath on the axe and then her death would infuse the final magic into the blade. 

~*~

The axe was infused with unholy, blood, and frost.  The runes etched upon it glowed with the magics contained within.  They pulsed and flared at random. The axe was strong, but needed a way to store the power that the infusions had created.  Thus Darion Mograine sent Mornara back into Ice Crown Citadel to gather crystals from the various leaders that Arthas had favored. 

Love is in the Air

Love is in the air and I want to barf. I have said it before, but I really hate the Fistful of Love achieve and this WoW Holiday in general.

I logged in this evening and before the world had fully rendered around Mornara she had rose petals falling on her. It wasn't even five seconds before Morn was coated in rose petals. Rose petals! Argh!

What if I don't want to avoid cities for the next two weeks? And even if I try to avoid cities I can't avoid my raid; members of whom were already snickering at me for being covered in pink petals...

That Sinking Feeling

 

When I picked up the quest from Wrathion to bring him the Thunder King's heart I had a bit of a bad feeling about it.  That feeling did not decrease in the slightest when he ate the heart and then had some sort of vision. 

Best case with that vision is that he is seeing a Titan influenced danger directed at Azeroth.

Far more likely in my opinion is that the players have once again unleashed Bad Shit (tm) upon the world. 

Remember back in Vanilla, there was that nice troll at the harbor in Tanaris?  We helped him, and he gave us loot and then Hakkar was alive again. So sorry, Troll Priests in Zul'Gurub, you got corrupted by Hakkar and then got executed.

Oh oh, and remember that nice human at Light's Hope Chapel? He promised to get rid of that pesky phylactery from Naxx. Yeah, Father Inigo Montoy, who helped Kel'thuzad come back to life, and then eventually ended up turning into a lich himself.

And don't forget that time that we helped that crazy gnome Millhouse Manastorm get out of prison and then he helped the Twilight's Hammer destroy stuff in Deepholm.

My favorite of course is when players helped Drakuru kill all the trolls in Drak'theron Keep so that he could become a Death Knight.  He then repaid the players by trying to coerce us into slavery for the Lich King (again for Morn) as well as slaughtering a large portion of the Drakkari Trolls, and leading to them killing off their own Loas. Oops.

But the thing that really tickles my memory is when we helped Loken trap Thorim. It was good that we got Thorim back on friendly terms with the Sons of Hodir. But all our actions doing that that just resulted in Thorim getting tentacle raped by Yogg-Saron. We ended up having to fight both Thorim and Loken. Thorim at least we could beat back into his right state of mind. Sadly we killed Loken which brought Algalon to Azeroth and almost led to the destruction of the entire planet. 

Loken/Thunder King is the parallel I'm really seeing here.  We killed someone and brought his body part back to prove death for a quest giver. But that someone, while now bad, wasn't necessarily bad to start with. Both Loken and the Mogu were servants of the Titans. They both seemed to get corrupted, but that point I suspect will be lost upon the Titans who will descend upon Azeroth with re-origination in their overly orderly hearts...

Mornara Profile

Full Name: Mornara
Race: Orc
Homeland: Durotar, maybe? Acherus in memory.
Age:  Physicaly she is a young adult. However, she doesn't seem to age since she was turned into a DK, and she isn't sure how long she was under the LK's control.
Height: Average female orc height. Slightly over 6ft.
Build: Stocky and muscular.
Hair: Black, slightly longer than shoulder length, but always up in two pigtails.
Eyes: Glowing blue.

Philosophy: "If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell."

Personality: Calm, cool, and patient, with a hatred of the Lich King that underlies everything she does. 

Job: Getting hit in the face professionally.  Mornara is a heavily armored adventurer and uses her Blood Death Knight abilities and skills to lead groups that plunder and defeat the enemies of the Horde and Azeroth.

Hobbies: Making beautiful jewelry. Capturing and fighting her battle pets.

Bio: Mornara has been able to piece together bits of her life. She has vague memories of controlling demons before she was captured by the Lich King's forces. After that she's tried to forget what she remembers of days of torture in the cells of the Lich King. She only barely remembers becoming a Death Knight, but after that everything is all too clear.  She vividly remembers slaughtering the Scarlet Crusade and villagers while under the command of the Lich King. Since breaking free of the Lich King Mornara has participated in campaigns in Northrend in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel, against the Twilight Hammer cultists, elementals and Deathwing himself, and in Pandaria against the Mogu, Mantid, and Zandalari Trolls.

Currently Resides:
Summer's Rest Inn in Shrine of the Two Moons in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

 

Death Knight Love Story

I was looking at WoW Insider a couple of days ago and saw an article about Death Knight Love Story. Seeing as I am a big fan of DKs I took a look. As the title suggests this machinanima is a love story with Death Knights. It was only part 1, but was 15 minutes long. Sadly there is no real ETA on part 2, other than roughly six months and no guarantee there.

I was pretty impressed with DKLS. I'm biased because I just adore the DK lore and story, as you can tell from my main and my own fan fics. DKLS had an excellent story and the filming/acting was done with a combo of motion capture and a variety of expensive animation software.

I honestly could have been more impressed with the animation. I can see where they started from the WoW models and tried to upgrade them with more polygons and motion capture. However, for a number of the spell animations and fighting moves I think the film would have been better served by actually using WoW's animations. In particular the animation for Death Grip was kinda jarring. It took me a couple of times seeing it to actually figure out that it was supposed to be Death Grip. Possibly my gripes with the animation are due to the Vimeo playback being abysmal; it was both slow and choppy. I frequently had to pause and wait for the stream to catch up, even when it appeared to have buffer available.

The story, however, was quite intriguing. I am very much looking forward to the second part. It shines an interesting spotlight on Sir Zeliek from Naxxramas. And its yet another take on the process of becoming a Death Knight, and the effect of the Lich King's mind control on those he enslaves.

I strongly recommend everyone watch DKLS. It's got a good story and some decent animation. It makes me want to play through the DK starter area again.

Timeless Isle Explorations

 

DraNgNon and I have been exploring the Timeless Isle.  It kind of reminds me of Vanilla.  There are wandering elites, and mobs can really hurt you if you're not careful.  And by not careful I mean the Ordos Yaungol are brutal, if you so much as take your eyes off their ground effects for a second you're going to be dead. Anyway, we have romped over the island with all of our level 90s, exploring cool stuff and hopping here there and everywhere. 

I also took some time while running around to tame a few pets.  I have three new moths, and hopefully can get more new pets from the rares. It's quite a pain in the ass to get in on a rare kill though.  I'm not really interested in tracking spawn timers or waiting around for a spawn.  So I generally just run over when I see a skull on the minimap.  Most of the time I can get a hit on the mob and get credit for the kill, but sometimes I ride up just as the rare dies.  Annoying, but not unexpected with such a large population on the island slaughtering things.

Timeless Isle also restricts flying. This is super annoying, but does give you a more present feeling of danger.  You can't just hop on your Cloud Serpent and fly up a bit to be safe while you afk for a bit. It also has several areas that you can't get to unless you can fly.  There are a couple of mechanics to get around this restriction. One of them is the gleaming crane statue which tosses you up and gives you a slow fall.  Another is the Legendary Cloak, which takes you (and your alts) across the broken bridge to the Ordon Sanctuary. Note that the Cloak ONLY takes you TOWARD the sanctuary.  If you want to get back, you need to do something so you don't hit the ground at terminal velocity. The third mechanic is the Highwind Albatross. These giant seagulls fly loops around the island. If you hit one it will swoop down and pick you up. Let it carry you around and when you're over where you want, hit it again.  That will stop it, and then you have to kill it to get it to drop you.  You can visit the two mountain tops near the Horde and Alliance flight points this way to get the Sturdy Chests you are missing. You can also hold on for a long ride and be taken up to the Ordon Sanctuary high high up where Garnia spawns. In fact the area where Garnia is can only be reached via Albatross, even if you have a cloak you can't get up that last sheer cliff with out the birdy ride.

Mr. Pinchy

Just over a week ago I was spending a bit of quality time in Outland. I've been working, off and on, on getting Morn the last bits of rep she needs from the Skyguard and Ogri'la. While I was in Skettis I figured it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of fishing. I usually fish at least one or two Highland Mixed Schools, just in the off chance that I'll fish up Mr. Pinchy.

Apparently this was my lucky day. I did catch Mr. Pinchy!

My first wish gave me the Magical Crawdad battle pet!

My second and third wishes gave me Benevolent Mr. Pinchy as a level 70 guardian. Sadly Benevolent Mr. Pinchy can't keep up when I go through portals or fly anywhere, but still impressive looking.

It took me a couple of tries to get a name that would actually stick. Blizz pops a "Mature Language" error when you try to use any variation of Mr. in a name. However, Pinchy is allowed.

Rivendare's DeathCharger

Being a Death Knight has a few advantages. Being an unstoppable juggernaut of death is all well and good, but in this case having Death Gate made it a lot more efficient to run Stratholm dead side over and over.

Sumprush Rodent

I spent some time killing Alliance soldiers for fun and profit down in Krasarang the other night. I had twin goals: reclaim two bag slots and get a Sumprush Rodent. Being able to gather and then aoe on that beach by the Alliance fort is really handy. It took a lot less time than I was expecting to get the last 750 Alliance Insignias that I needed.

Even better the second pet I fought was blue:

Niuzao the Black Ox

My favorite Pandaren Celestial is Niuzao the Black Ox. He's basially the Celsetial of tanking.

He's even got Death Knight eyes!

Morn's New Transmog

For a while now I've had Mornara in the Valorous Scourgeborne gear. It's the gear from Naxx25, and the black armor with red accents looks pretty good. I haven't always been happy with matching weapons, but she currently has a polearm, which only allows a limited selection anyway.

The set I'd really like her transmogged to is the Scourgelord set from ICC10. The set pieces are from ICC10, but the matching boots and belt are from ICC10 heroic. I have the set pieces, but if she ever got the belt or boots from ICC10H I never kept them. Because I am on the Shadowfrost shard quest I just can't make myself run ICC10H. If I have a group that can do that we can also run ICC25 and I'll get shards. So I was resigned to not being able to wear that set due to mismatch boots, and also a lack of reasonably matching polearm.

But then Kuan and Morn were romping through Molten Core, and Shadowstrike dropped. A polearm! And it had two options, one of them had to be decent looking. In fact, it looked good with the Scourgelord gear that I did have.

So I looked more closely at wowroleplaygear.com for the Scourgelord set. Specifically more closely at their comments. They list out a few pieces of gear that could reasonably replace the matching belt and boots. Fortunately I already had the Deathforge Girdle that would go reasonably well, but it did require a quick romp through the Botanica to get the Obsidian Clodstompers.

As an aside, I remember those boots from BC. Viljo was friends with ISD the undead warrior, and ISD was SO HAPPY when he got those boots to drop from H Botanica.

Now Mornara is transmogged to look quite spiffy. The boots don't quite match from the sides but the front and back of them is a remarkably similar color of purple to the Scourgelord gear.

Shadowstrike doesn't have any strong purple accents, but I think it would be too monochromatic if it did. The green goes with her skin quite well.

I do love the just slightly asymetrical shoulders.

Honorary Brewmaster's Keg

Kuan and Morn have been working on achievements here and there. We are currently first and second ranked in Darkfall. (Edit from draNgNon:  Morn is first if you count account-wide achievements, Kuan is first if you count per-character.)  I generally work on Pet Battles while Kuan focuses more on Archaeology. However we work together on scenarios and dungeon achieves. Recently we finished the last few scenario achieves for the Pub Crawl meta. The reward for this was yet another thing to take up bag space: the Honorary Brewmaster Keg.

It actually looks pretty cool, and, amazingly, goes with Morn's Scourgeborne transmog.

Kuan balances his keg on his shield, which looks a little unbalanced.  Here he is consulting with Brewmaster Roland in Shrine of Two Moons about care and keeping of his brewmaster keg.

The last achieve we needed was Monkey See, Monkey Kill. It was a bit annoying to have to rerun until we got all of the different bosses, but not hard just time consuming.

Once you get the meta achieve Mama Stormstout sends you a congratulatory mail.


Thanks for all your hard work crafting some of the finest brews we've ever had!

As a token of our appreciation, the other brewmasters and I have decided to give you this Honorary Brewmaster Keg.

Enjoy!

-Mama Stormstout


Battle for Sen'jin, and Kuan's UI

so I realized a couple days ago I haven't really put any pics into the little rotating slideshow on the left of the blog layout, and set about to find some likely candidates.  I've been slacking on the screenshots lately, it seems.

That said, I found this great screenshot of Kuanchichi and Mornara defending Sen'jin Village as part of the Darkspear Rebellion storyline.  or, it would be great, if 40% of Kuan's screen area wasn't covered in stuff.

(FWIW the two gaps at the bottom get focus target and tooltips, respectively.)  I've been thinking the two chat windows need to be moved, and thus the buttons rearranged, for a while.  Seeing this screenshot makes me think I need a change even more.

Anyhow I think the screenshot is still cool.  Mornara is holding them back while Kuanchichi zaps them all with Chain Lightning from the center of his totems.   ...you just can't see all of "them" becuase of the buttons...

Ahead of the Curve: Lei Shen

Last night Darkfall killed Lei Shen for the first time! We had killed the first 11 bosses last week, and then saved the lockout to work on him this week. We decided to save the lock when we thought the patch might be next week. I and several others really wanted the Ahead of the Curve Achieve.

Of course when we all got Ahead of the Curve, Darkfall got the guild achieve for killing everything in Throne of Thunder:

As I knew it would be the hard part of this fight was the intermissions. Of course, there were some ridiculous wipes early on to Fusion Slash punting you a lot farther in Normal than it does in LFR. But aside from that and a people learning how far away they need to be from Thunderstruck all the learning and work in the fight came from the intermissions.

We eventually went with putting both tanks together and having a mistweaver monk and warlock together for each of the two person quadrants. One three person quadrant was holy priest and two ranged, while the last quadrant was 2 shamans and a dps warrior. It was dicey at times, but that setup managed to keep us all alive through the first intermission.

We squeaked through the second intermission with two deaths right at the end, but fortunately had a battle rez to get one dps back up. The third phase was a mess of wind blowing us every which way while we all tried to dodge Lightning Whip, and pretty much everyone yelling "Die Die DIE!" as the last few percent of his health ticked down.

Once you kill him it's pretty neat how the whole room is burned out.

Iron Qon and Twin Consorts dead

Darkfall had a nice week of raiding this week. We are kind of in the middle of changing up our raid nights. So we had a raid on Wednesday from 10 to midnight server. We kept our usual times on Tuesday and Thursday, but the raid didn't actually start up until 9:30 because of various people being late. Regrettably DraNgNon and I were some of those people on Thursday.

Anway, on Tuesday we smashed through the first seven bosses. Morn won Bo-Ris, Horror in the Night from a coin when we killed Horridon. Sadly Durumu didn't drop his awesome tanking ring, either generally or when I used a coin.

Wednesday I was expecting to pick up after Durumu and kill all the things so that we'd get some tries on Iron Qon. We did handily kill Primordius, but then we had a series of annoying wipes on Dark Animus. We didn't have the same group as when we first killed it so the new person had to learn the fight. Apparently both the new person and old people had trouble with the concept of don't dps the adds until it is your turn. I was boggling a bit, though I will say that no one made the same mistake twice. We did kill Animus in time to get a pull or two in on Iron Qon, so we had a chance to see the wind phase, and lament the lack of a warlock for portals. Morn was lucky enough to be top on EP/GP when the Dark Animus dropped the DK chest token.

Thursday we came in and kicked ass.

Iron Qon we had a miraculous kill on our third or fourth pull of the night. I was expecting a long slow wipe when both healers went down near the start of the wind phase. I used Raise Ally on the first one to die, but could only be sad when the other one died moments later. However, in the spirit of learning the fight we kept going. It really seems to be the case that once you're through the wind phase it's not so bad a fight. I admit that the last phase was a bit hairy. If we'd not had two shaman and a druid to cast off spec heals we'd have died horribly during Qon's ground pounding. I'm pretty sure that we just squeaked out a kill before the next round of AoE that would have wiped us all.

Twin Consorts was pretty trivial. The fight is quite similar to LFR, just with harder hitting abilities and slightly more crap to avoid. Our dps warrior was detailed to run the patterns, mostly because he'd tried it a few times on LFR and also had heroic leap to get into position quickly without running through all the aoe. It actually took us two tries to kill her. The first time we pulled while our frost DK was offline with router issues. Despite that we almost killed them before the berserk, but there was a little bit of confusion about what was happening in the dusk phase. Once our frost DK got his router back in order we came back and handily collected loot.

Then we had a bit of time left over to work on Lei Shen. We had two or three pulls on him. As I was expecting we can use a bit of work on the phases, but mostly we have them down. The hard part of course is the intermissions. Needing to have two platforms that only have two people on them is rough. We'll get him next week though.