Bear Kyrie

Over the past few days I've swapped one of Khyrie's specs from cat to bear. She kept her other spec as resto so she now has dual specs of healer and tank. If I wasn't already used to questing in the world as a tank from Mornara it could be problematic but between that and usually running around with one of DraNgNon's toons it shouldn't be an issue.

Khyrie's old cat spec was handy for dailies and a bit of questing, but I have come to realize that I am just not a fan of playing melee characters. Of course, I used to say that about anything other than playing mage, so we will see if that stays true in the future.

Anyway, over the weekend I did a bit of reading on the Elitist Jerks druid forums. And in an unsurprising turn of events the gear for bears and cats is pretty similar, so all the cat gear I'd been picking up from Timeless Isle stood Khyrie in good stead when she went bear. I did have to swap a bunch of gems and enchants and reforge pretty much anything. Because I'd only been doing dailies as a cat I'd kept that gear with only enough hit to deal with a level 92 mob, not a level 93 boss.

I also had to get a whole bunch of glyphs from Ikoli. With four druid specs I'd been slacking and hadn't picked up all of the bear glyphs. Of course once I had them all I needed to figure out what to actually use. Khyrie currently has some actual bear glyphs, but I am not sure if there aren't better ones for her. And I'm sure that I'll want to swap them out on a fight by fight basis if I ever take her into a normal mode raid.

Once I had glyphs and gear and talents sorted out I set up Khyrie's ability bars for bear. I've tried to keep the same sort of abilities in the same place as I have it for Morn's blood spec. Of course it can't be an exact mapping, but I have her basic single target attacks on my left hand, aoe and interrupts and debuffs on the right, and CDs on the left hand shift. My hope was that even if I wasn't sure about what abilities to use when I went into a dungeon I'd still hit roughly the right thing just by muscle memory flailing.

So then Khyrie was set up to bear tank. I'd even visited the barber shop to keep from being Christmas Bear. It was time, time to actually queue up for a heroic. I made DraNgNon bring Kuan along, just in case Khyrie totally was squishy or unable to hold aggro.

I ended up doing two instances as bear, one with Kuan healing and one with Ikoli healing. It wasn't too bad. I will say that it is a whole different kettle of fish to tank when you're outgeared by 30 or more ilvls. This is not an issue for Morn, but it was difficult to figure out the correct sequence while struggling to hold aggro against some well geared dps. At least their gear kept them from dying when I failed to have enough taunts or aggro to keep the mobs on me.

Despite a bit of initial grumpyness I had a pretty good time bear tanking. The basic bear tools seem to be pretty decent. I don't feel familiar enough with them yet to really compare bear vs. DK. However, I'm sure that familiarity and some comparisons will come with more tanking. I'm also sure that DraNgNon will drag me into a LFR. It should be amusing to have Tylara and Khyrie tanking together.

Story Progression in Pandaria

Patch 5.3 is here. We've got a bunch of new things. Heroic Scenarios, entirely new Scenarios, new battle ground, and new story.

I've tried a few heroic scenarios so far. As one guildie put it, we're just killing raid trash. They don't seem particularly difficult, as long as you know what you're doing. The heroic scenarios easier to do if you have either a tank or a healer in the group, but you'll have a harder time getting the timed extra Valor Points if you don't go with three dps. Basically the heroic scenarios are now a pretty speedy way to get your Valor.

I've done all four of the new scenarios on heroic. They are interesting in terms of the story they advance. It's nice to see the Alliance get some character development, both for King Varian and for Moira Bronzebeard, regent of the Darkirons. Conversely it's both sad and enlightening to see the way that the Horde is being driven apart. Garrosh is after power for the Horde and the orcs from any source. And not only that but he is trying to apply the orcs' cultural values to the other races.

The new story is all about Vol'jin finally being over Garrosh. Well, he was over Garrosh at the start of Cata, but now he's recovered from the assassination attempt. Now Vol'jin has organized the trolls and is actively rebelling against Garrosh. He fully intends to carry out his threat to shoot Garrosh in the back once everyone sees what a terrible leader he is.

Garrosh is, of course, trying to suppress this rebellion. He's got the Troll section of Orgrimmar under martial law. There are Kor'kron enforcers stationed everywhere. If you try to buy anything the vendor they will suggest you go else where, and glance meaningfully at the enforcers.

There is also a set of battles happening in the Northern Barrens and Sen'jin Village. Garrosh is trying to amass supplies to fortify Org, and Vol'jin is trying to get those supplies instead. The player is sent to help Vol'jin's efforts. The Horde get to defend Sen'jin and raid Northern Barrens.

The Alliance also have the Northern Barrens raiding going on. They are basically there because it's sound strategy. Either they help overthrow Garrosh and the Horde is nicer to deal with and peace (or at least a cease-fire) is possible. Or they help weaken Garrosh who has to put more effort into putting down his rebellion. Either way the Horde is weakened by their civil war.

Darkfall is 8/8H Dragon Soul

I extended our raid lockout from last week to give us the maximum time to work on the last two heroic bosses in Dragon Soul this week. It was definitely the right decision, because we managed to get them down tonight. I would have preferred to kill them Tuesday night, but it took us a while to work out the kinks in our strategy for Spine. Specifically how we were maneuvering to toss extra bloods off when we rolled.

We'd been regularly getting to the third plate on Spine before dying horribly on Tuesday night. So I was not surprised that on our second pull tonight we just slaughtered Spine. It was a pretty messy kill, we had three people down at the end, and had used our battle rez and a both Shaman had popped as well. Kuan in particular popped at just the perfect time. Just in time to help slaughter the last tendon, but after the exploding Hideous Amalgamation had gone by, so there was as little strain on the healers as possible.

Heroic Madness is a lot easier that Spine, but still pretty challenging. The fight as a whole felt faster paced than normal. I'll check later to see if the timers are really that much faster or if the increased health of everything just makes things seem to be happening faster. We had several wipes while people learned to run for the parasite and not explode everyone else. And I did need to emphatically remind people to not pad their dps by hitting other arm and wing tentacles early.

Our successful kill I had us save Lust until Kalec's platform. Even with three heals we were only getting a second impale on that platform, and having lust then let us get away with one impale. With the new Glyph of Icebound Fortitude I had my own major damage reduction cooldown up for every platform, which greatly decreased the coordination requirements.

After the kill I had everyone line up for a fabulous screen shot. Complete with new titles and our rogue's legendary dagger wings.

I'm amused by the racial make up of the raid. We're an oddly orc-heavy raid. All the melee dps and tanks are orcs. Both main healers are blood elves. The off-healer is our lone tauren. And the three remaining ranged dps are orc, blood elf and our lone troll (Kuanchichi). It seems like a raid that is actually representative of the horde.

Since we'd had a Life-Binder's Handmaiden drop we all went back to Orgrimmar to get a pretty pic of that. Everyone hopped on their favorite fabulous mount.

I am super proud of the raid and the guild for killing all eight heroic bosses in Dragon Soul. There was a lot of work put in by a lot of people, and this was a really great way to end the expansion.

Heroic Zon'ozz & Heroic Hagara & Deck Defender

Last week we killed Heroic Zon'ozz. It was glorious to see him dead at our feet. It was also interesting how we had to alter the strategy for heroic mode. The healing requirements reminded me of when we were first killing regular Zon'ozz. That fight is just brutal with all the damage, aoe and tank, going out.

It is also amusing that so far, our successful strategy involves sacrificing a rogue. In the first and second black phases we kill the tentacles and then reposition outselves for ball bouncing when the phase ends. But after the third black phase starts we just burn the boss. Lust is popped and all tentacles are ignored. In the two kills we've had thus far we've not managed to kill him until after we're back to the regular phase. So when the void spawns, the rogue is sent out to bounce the ball back into the group. In theory he can use Cloak to not get wiped out by the ball, but in practice we end up with a dead boss and a dead rogue.

After we got Heroic Zon'ozz down last week, we did a few pulls on Heroic Hagara. Just enough to see the mechanics and get a feel for the fight when it's not normal mode.

This week, we again worked on H Hagara after we killed that bastard Zon'ozz. We didn't get her down on Tuesday, but we'd started to get the coordination for lightning phase. Frost phase we didn't have a coherent strategy, and we were still trying different things. So I did a bit of research before our Thursday night raid and at our warlock's insistence (he really needed a bio break) I did a quick mid-raid video review. Honestly, he'd explained the change he thought we should make perfectly fine, but insisted that I watch the video so that he wouldn't feel bad about asking for a bio break... It was kind of cute, though I hope I'm not coming across as an iron-fisted Raid Leader.

Anyway, when we got back from the bio break we changed our ice strategy to just have everyone RUN. Our hunter popped aspect of the pack, frostflake was dispelled immediately, we all dodged falling ice, and ran and ran and ran. The frostflake slowing patches were just barely negated by aspect of the pack. It worked pretty well, though I'm glad we only had one ice phase. There were a few hairy moments near the end of the fight as one melee dps died and got a rez and one of our heals died and popped and then another healer really died. But when the final tally was in, the boss was dead and the rest of us were alive!

We killed H Ultraxion like usual. There was a small amount of confusion about who was taking which Hour, so we only got it on our second pull. We almost managed to recover and get it the first time but I think I messed up the taunts while trying to sort out who could step in to take an hour. I'm pleased that we've got H Morchok, H Yor'sahj, and H Ultraxion pretty firmly on farm status. Too bad that ALL the heroic tokens this week were conqueror. Ah well, our pally, priest, and warlock will be well outfitted.

After Ultraxion we swapped back to normal mode. I didn't want to mess around with H Blackhorn. Instead we assigned quadrants and went for Deck Defender. I was afraid we'd missed a couple of the little purple swirlies. However I was fabulously pleased to be wrong and see the achieve pop up at the end of the fight! This means that we're only missing three achieves for the meta Dragon Soul achieve. Of course, they are the last three heroic bosses, but we're making excellent progress.

We were running a bit late by the end of the night and our new dps warrior had to go. However, we pulled another guildie in for Spine and Madness. I enjoy cut scenes, but I swear that someone always crashes or gets disconnected for the start of Spine. We have one life grip and can save the first person who says they are lagging/crashing, but if there is more than one, well, someone is getting flying lessons from the roll...

For Madness I had though we'd just do Ysera first. Between the lateness and the pulled in guildie being a little undergeared I thought it might be better not to strain for a harder starting platform. However our fabulous priest mentioned that he didn't have Nozdormu for Chromatic Champion. So Noz first it was! Even with a slightly undergeared rogue it was cake. We made sure that there were no blistering tentacles overlapping any other ability, and it was quite a smooth kill. I think that it's currently the case, between our gear and the 25% buff, that there just isn't a hard platform to start at anymore. Yes, they still all require coordination, but, as long as people listen and do their job, normal mode is not hard regardless of where we start. Clearly we're ready for more heroics. :D

Post Hiatus Braindump

Darkfall has been on a bit of a hiatus recently. For the first two weeks after Diablo came out we didn't raid at all. I, and just about everyone else, was busy playing through the story in Diablo 3. Of course, this WoW playing and raiding hiatus has led to a bit of a blogging hiatus.

We recommenced raiding this past Tuesday. It was funny how we were all a bit rusty. There were more than a few wipes on Heroic Morchok. Some of those can be chalked up to our Korchom tank not being used to tanking, but most of them can be chalked up to someone trying to move via left-clicking. It took us Tuesday and Thursday to kill all eight DS bosses, but we made some excellent progress. We killed Morchok, Yor'sahj, and Ultraxion on heroic. None of those were first kills, but it was gratifying to see that we'd not lost progress from our break. We also tried a couple of pulls on heroic Zon'ozz. Sadly, I think he is still my least favorite boss; it's just too easy for the ping ponging ball to go completely sideways and mess everything up. That said I think we'll get him next week, since we did manage to hit the enrage timer. Our healers were sucking fumes by the end, but they did an excellent job keeping us mostly alive until enrage, so we've just got to tighten up positioning and we'll get it.

We also managed to get a few achieves for the rest of DS. Holding Hands and starting on Nozdormu's platform for Chromatic Champion. We'll start on Kalec's platform next week, and hopefully get that achieve. It was lovely to see the Mutated Corruption going down every time before the Elementium Bolt was spawned. It certainly made me fear large smacky death less. In fact, starting on Nozdormu's platform was quite easy. We were missing our fabulous holy priest, but got around not having that cooldown for impale by following the order: Nozdormu > Alexstraza > Ysera > Kalec. So we all hit Dream as often as we could and I saved Icebound Fortitude for the Impale on Kalec's platform. We'd also tried a pull or three on Heroic Blackhorn (boat boss) just for grins. That didn't go well, but no one was really expecting it to, so there were many jokes about how many seconds we'd live.

I didn't schedule our usual Sunday run or Monday fun run. Since we've killed all of DS Sunday would have either been alts or old content. I think that the best thing to do for next week will be to have Sunday be an alt run and set up Monday to be some sort of old content. Possibly Tempest Keep or Serpent Shrine Cavern. My druid needs some more pieces of the T5 druid set.

I do want to get back to the Monday fun runs. I strongly feel that they are what actually knits the guild together. It's all well and good to go through DS and slaughter stuff, but the guild truly becomes a team and friends when we get a change to goof off as a group. And that means smashing through old raids. It's always fun to reminisce about running that stuff for real, and even better to show someone the fight for the first time. Even if some times the bosses don't have time to do more than gape at us before they are dead.

I'm having a lot of fun playing Diablo 3. DraNgNon and I are playing cooperative and it's a ton of fun. We started out with her Barbarian and my Monk playing together. Separately she is leveling a Demon Hunter and I'm leveling a Wizard. Possibly once the Demon Hunter and Wizard are a bit bigger we'll swap to have Barbarian/Wizard and Demon Hunter/Monk playing together. The Barbarian and Monk combo is a lot of fun, but we quite often feel the pain of no ranged. With no ranged along I truly hate the evil trees in Act I, and I'm not a big fan of the wasps in Act II either.

I'm a big fan of the Monk. She is so very stoic and severe. Never joking and always searching for balance and the best way to serve her gods. She is going to get stuff done, and woe to all who get in her way.

My Wizard has an ego the size of a house. He is hilarious, every time he levels or kills more than seven mobs at a time he makes some sort of proclamation that boils down to "I'm the most awesome ever!" He has been running around with the Templar, and the interaction between the two of them is funny. Especially when they were doing the Zoltan Kulle section of Act II. The Templar ranted about foul wizardry and then tripped over his tongue apologizing that he didn't mean the Wizard.

But between the stoic Monk and the Templar's Initiation I miss playing Mornara. The first time I heard how the Templar was chained up and beaten and whipped until he lost his memory I was quite forcibly reminded of how Mornara became a Death Knight. And thinking about this again I realize that Morn is a very no nonsense orc. She is there to make sure that whatever they are fighting against doesn't kill anyone else, and especially not her healers or her dps. She rarely, if ever, does the silly emotes. Not that she doesn't have fun, but she has had a hard life and now has the guild and raid leader responsibilities weighing on her, and really doesn't have time or inclination for goofing off all that much. Though she does often fly her Dragon Kite.

I am looking forward to working on Heroic Zon'ozz more next week. We'll likely try out Hagara on Heroic as well. Though it depends on how much progress we make, if we have a serious set of attempts or just allow people to see the fight and then let it percolate for a week in their brains. I feel like we get the best results, as a guild, when people have a chance to see the fight on heroic before we actually try to kill it.

Volcanic Stone Drake!

The week after the 10% buffs to Dragon Soul rolled out my 10man raid was finished with Deathwing for the week on Thursday night. It seems that I managed to pick up the good pugs on Thursday night. Earthen's group had some pug trouble and ,unfortunately, still had bosses to kill on Sunday. So a few of my group swapped to alts and helped out with that raid. I considered trying to set up a Bastion or BWD achieve run with the rest, but there weren't enough people, and pugging for heroic raids just sounds like pain, especially on a Sunday night when most interested people will already be saved.

However, there were five of us who were looking for something to do. And Kuanchichi, Mornara, and Xildyne were each only missing a few achieves for their Glory of the Cataclysm Hero Volcanic Stone Drake. The other two people in the group, Swiftysarge and Phii were both missing many achieves from the meta. We decided to do a few randoms for some missing valor points, and then to do the runs that Kuanchichi, Mornara, and Xildyne needed.

Our first random was Deadmines. Honestly, it shouldn't be a random dungeon when DraNgNon and I ALWAYS get it on our characters. But it did have two of the achieves we needed: It's Frost Damage and Vigorous VanCleef Vindicator. The frost damage one wasn't too bad to get, though we did get an unexpected explosion that punted a couple of people far away. However, 3 vapors did their thing and achievery was had. One quick boss reset later and then a handy demon flasher to summon our puntees back to us and all was well. Vanessa and her gauntlet was also pretty handily done. All five of us were totally on the ball, not one of us died to either fire or the Mario section in front of Foe Reaper. There were some exclamations on Vent when all 5 of us managed to successfully navigate the Mario gauntlet. Of course, then DraNgNon and I had a horrible lag spike as we were running to the last bit of the Ripsnarl section. We both started swearing as we lagged out, but the rest of the group managed to engage Vanessa with time to spare. They started the fight while we unlagged and realized we were off somewhere in the water... We both calmed down when the achieve flashed across the screen.

Next we did random Stonecore and Throne of the Tides. Phii and Swiftysarge both got achieves in those dungeons.

After that it was starting to get a little late. I wanted to make sure that Kuanchichi, Mornara, and Xildyne all got their drakes so we queued specifically for Lost City of Tolvir. We did Acrocalypse Now, and Kill it With Fire, but the latter bugged out for Swifty so we'll have to get it for him later. Then we must have called for wipes four or five times trying to get Headed South from Siamat. Kuan had spectacular heals but the timing on the add death was tricky to get right. Finally we got it! Glory of the Cataclysm Hero popped up for both Kuanchichi and Mornara! There was much rejoicing! And much chair dancing!

After that we headed to Halls of Origination. I Hate that Song, Straw that Broke the Camel's Back, Faster than the Speed of Light, and Son of A... were all knocked out in short order. My trick for doing I Hate that Song worked fabulously. And all the other achieves were actually really easy to get for Phii and Swifty, especially with DragonSoul gear.

I don't remember the LFD tank who showed me the I Hate that Song trick, but I thank him every time I run HOO. Temple Guardian Anhuur will shield himself and start casting Reverberating Hymn. To get the achieve you've got to not let him sing for more than fifteen seconds total. Before pulling the boss, the tank needs to jump into the pit, grab aggro on all the Pit Vipers down there, and then pull them up to be tanked with the boss. The trick to the achieve is dps who will only single target the boss. If done correctly, all the vipers stay with the tank and two dps can jump down and each hit a lever, letting the remaining dps, tank, and healer stay with Anhuur and interrupt his song almost immediately. If done incorrectly, some idiot dps will cleave or aoe the vipers and when the lever people go down to hit the levers the respawned vipers eat their faces and stop them from pulling levers.

The last instance on the list was Black Rock Caverns. Phii and Swiftysarge both needed a bunch of achieves, and Xildyne needed Ascendant Descending. It was starting to get a little late, and we were all getting a bit sleepy. I accidentally let Steelbender Karsh get eighteen stacks of his debuff instead of just the fifteen needed for the achieve... We also had a bunch of trouble with the Ascendant Descending Achieve, the kiting was actually really hard to get right. But after a couple of calls for wipes we assigned a secondary kiter to make sure that one of the adds didn't fixate on me and it all worked out smashingly well.

By the end of the night we'd run six instances and racked up many achieves. Phii and Swiftysarge were only two or three achieves short of the meta. Fortunately the ones they are missing are relatively easy to get. Xildyne, Kuanchichi, and Mornara were proudly riding awesome Volcanic Stone Drakes around.



And even better, that drake is sent to us by Thrall, because we are just that awesome:


This is totally my new favorite mount.

Too Many Dwarves

Over this past weekend DraNgNon and I helped a guildie friend of ours get Glory of the Hero her Red Proto Drake. She had most of the achieves already, but we did end up needing to hit about 5 Wrath heroics.

Because we are 85, and awesome, three-manned all of this and had a good time joking around while we did so.

While we were getting Abuse the Ooze in Halls of Stone, we each popped various dwarf disguise items. I guess if we have to help Brann we might as well look goofy too?

New Zul'gurub

I like the way they redid ZG, as I've said before. It's pretty reasonably paced and has some interesting mechanics to deal with. The bosses are familiar but not exactly the same.

In particular the end boss is no longer Hakkar, but is Jin'do the Godbreaker. He has some nefarious plans that involve overpowering and taking power from Hakkar. In fact, the party has gotten here just in time, as he's already siphoning power from Hakkar.


Jin'do the Godbreaker yells: Welcome to de great show, friends. Just wait 'til ya see what I got in store for ya.


Spirit of Hakkar yells; Your deceit is unforgivable Jin'do. You spit in the face of a god!


Once you've beaten Jin'do for a bit he jumps into the spirit world and pulls you in with him. There you get to see the chains holding Hakkar imprisoned and do something about them. Once you've destroyed all the chains you also get to see, the now unbound, Hakkar face off with Jin'do. This doesn't go so well for Jin'do...


Spirit of Hakkar yells: You overstepped your bounds, Jin'do. You toy with powers that are beyond you. Have you forgotten who I am? Have you forgotten what I can do?!
Jin'do the Godbreaker yells: No... NOOOO!!!
Spirit of Hakkar yells: be freed, insects. I will deal with you another time.


Poor Jin'do, I'd feel sorrier for him he he hadn't planned to overrun Azeroth once he stole power from Hakkar.

Heroic Lich King

Exactly one week ago I organized Darkfall's Monday night fun raid to go to ICC10 for the second week in a row. The previous week we'd killed everything in the first four wings. So this week we only had the LK left. Unsurprisingly I was able to put together a full DF raid. We actually had a few too many people and a couple people had to sit out.

It took us a bunch of attempts. We had the first phase and those stupid shadow traps down pretty well. Our only real problems were with defile. I hate defile. We went with a strat of popping lust in P2 and then in P3 when everyone jumped out of the sword we all run away to avoid the immediate defile. Barring a few messups due to lag spikes it worked like a charm.




I'm super proud of everyone who was there and the guild as a whole.

Rogues do it from behind

The redone ZG and ZA are pretty fun to run. They have bosses with good mechanics and especially well done dialogue.

Shadowfang Keep

Shadowfang Keep is one of the new dungeons that was updated for Cataclysm. There are some Gilnean undead renegades hiding out there.

I'm rather a fan of the way it's been updated. A lot of the old bosses still have cameos, and the new bosses are interesting. There is also a hefty dose of story/lore spread through the whole instance. Cromush and the Forsaken troops he's monitoring have some nice dialogue.


Baron Ashburysays: I'm trying to convince Godfrey to just kill all of you to end your misery, but he keeps telling me no. More pain and suffering for the lot of you, then!
Forsaken Trooper says: Bastard.

But really the best dialogue is from the bosses. Ashbury is the first boss you have to face. And, as you can see, he's a dick.

It's called Security...

I'm not a fan of Bran, or dwarves in general, with one exception. In fact I'd go so far as to say that I really don't like Bran. And I'd definitely say that I hate the Harrison Jones and Bran quest line in Ulduar.



Bran has been mucking about with all sorts of Titan artifacts in Halls of Stone, Ulduar, and, now, Halls of Origination. You'd think that he'd have learned a bit about them. In particular, the Titans weren't really keen on the inmates taking charge of the prison.

Which, considering that almost all of the mortal races now are descendants of some Old-God-corrupted Titan creations or servants, I think is kind of what is happening. We certainly interfered a lot in Ulduar. You know, killing Loken, and then subverting Algalon. Yes, we did manage to kill Yogg-Saron, but I strongly suspect that if we kill too many of the Old Gods bad things will happen. I mean, the Titans had them on the ropes, and decided not to kill them.

All this basically is my long winded way of saying that Bran is being even more of an idiot than usual. The Titans used a different locking system at each of their installations to make it harder for someone to break into them. It's called security...

Rise of the Zandalari

Rise of the Zandalari (colloquially known as Patch 4.1) downloaded onto my computer yesterday. I'm kind of glad that there aren't new raids since we've only just now gotten a 25man together. But I'm rather dubious about the new 5man heroics.

Here is the patch trailer:


Yeah.... I'm not really sure what is happening.

Oh yes, it's quite clear that the Zandalari are rising and a new troll war is going to start. But WHY?

I ran Zul'gurub at level 60. It was the Zandalari, sent by Rastakhan, who were sending you in to fight the Hakkari and stop them from raising Hakkar. The Zandalari were supposed to be the highest caste of trolls. The priestly caste. The people who were bringers of, well perhaps not peace, but certainly some sort of order. Look at the chat log for Exhal, the Servitor of Rastakhan

Exzhal says: [Troll] Bring forth the prisoner. Place him in the circle of binding.
Zandalar Enforcer:[Troll] Right away, servitor!
Zandalar Enforcer: [Troll] Move!
Exzhal says: [Troll] Kneel, heathen
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Curious. A servitor of Rastakhan that does not know the Hakkari do not converse in the old tongue?
Exzhal says: I said KNEEL!
Exzhal says: Do you know who I am, zealot?
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: You are a fool, soon to forfeit his life. No?
Exzhal says: I could crush you with but a single motion. Do not anger me.
Captured Hakkari Zealot laughs
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: How pathetic. I am infused with the power of the Soulflayer. I fear nothing but the almighty Hakkar. I serve no one but my master, Jin.
Exzhal says: So Hakkar has returned?
Captured Hakkari Zealot laughs
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Do you really need to ask? Can you not feel him? Has the almighty king Rastakhan sent his Servitor and Hand here on a mission of diplomacy?
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Oh yes, old one. Hakkar has returned. Soon the world shall crumble beneath his might. Consumed. Left in ruin...
Exzhal says: We will never allow it... We have banished him once from this world before and we will banish him again.
Captured Hakkari Zealot laughs maniacally
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: FOOL! Do you purport to even have one-tenth of the power you had during the Uprising? The nations were united and still were nearly consumed by the shadow of Hakkar. You stand no chance.
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: And now, those nations that you would have called allies have joined forces with us... Yes, old one, do not look so surprised.
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Bloodscalp, Sandfury, Skullsplitter, Vilebranch, and Witherbark. They all pledge their allegiance to Jin - their souls to Hakkar. You have lost.
Exzhal says: Times have changed. The younger races will join us. You will never succeed.
Captured Hakkari Zealot laughs
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: The young races? The infants? Humans? Orcs? Dwarves? You expect to defeat the Hakkar? To destroy a GOD?
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: It shall NEVER happen. We are legion. We are united. Where are your heroes? Vol'jin sits in sanctuary at the side of the young Warchief, unaware. Zul'jin is missing, probably dead.
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: And... do you expect to defeat the Primal Gods?
Captured Hakkari Zealot smirks
Exzhal says: The Primal Gods? Impossible!
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Is it? Call out to them, Servitor.
(At this point, Exzhal attempt to make contact with the Primal Gods with a spell emote similar to a Hunter switching Aspects. There is no orange-text emote for this.)
Exzhal uses his index finger to make a cutting motion across his neck.
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Where are your Gods now? WHERE, SERVITOR?
Captured Hakkari Zealot says: Strike me down. I shall be reborn... Even more powerful.
Captured Hakkari Zealot lowers his shoulders and exposes his neck
(The Zandalar Enforcer kills Captured Hakkari Zealot with a single swing of his axe. Again, no orange-text emote for this.)
Zandalar Enforcer spits on the corpse of of the fallen Zealot.

Ok so here we have Rastkahan, the leader of the Zandalari, sending trolls to help combat the Hakkari and stop troll armies from spreading across the land. This was in Vanilla and these NPCs are now gone from Yojamba isle.

Now in the current Azeroth we've got some troll leader gathering all the troll forces under his banner to retake Azeroth. All we know about this new leader is that his name is Zul. And that he seems to want to unleash Hakkar again...

I'm really wondering what happened to Rastkahan. Based on the people he sent to Yojamba, he seemed like a pretty level headed troll. I'm deeply afraid that, like the goblins, the Zandalar home island got destroyed by Deathwing. And that Rastakhan's corpse is either a pile of ash or under a bunch of rubble. Maybe both.

I'd like it even better if we get a chance to avenge Rastakhan and help his rightful successor restore the honor of the Zandalari.

Accidental Heroic

Yesterday I was home sick. After napping and other sick related activities, which I shall not go into, I woke up around 4-ish feeling slightly better. I went down stairs to the lounge and puttered a bit. Put some music on, petted the doggies, settled on the futon with some hot chocolate.

I logged in and did some WoW stuff, too. Khyrie got a level or two. Mornara did her daily JC quest and the fishing quest. I hopped on Telt and did the daily cooking and fishing quests with her, too.

Then I thought that perhaps a nice dungeon run with Telt would be a good thing. She's just at the point where normals are pretty ok. In theory, her gear is over the limit for running heroics. However, in practice I think some of the gear that is counting towards that limit is for her damage set. DraNgNon has been agitating for Eeyan and Telt to run heroics. Especially since Eeyan needs Chaos Orbs for the Blacksmithing. So I figured that a normal dungeon would be good for getting some more rep and maybe a piece of gear or two.

I queue Telt up and 7 minutes later the window pops up and I'm healing.

It was an in progress Halls of Origination. The gauntlet part had already been cleared and the group had clearly wiped on Anraphet. But I kept us all alive, and we handily killed him. We go up the elevator and also handily kill Isiset.

Well, perhaps not quite handily. These pulls were taking all of my mana. Even the trash pulls were leaving me with only mana left. It was pretty rough, the everyone was taking a lot of damage. I took a quick look at the tank's health and the dps of the group. The tank had a fair amount of health, was he just stacking stam and not picking up any mitigation stats? Hmm, the dps were actually not doing as much as Eeyan was the other night, in Halls of Origination, but as a group their average was at or above that previous group. So why were things taking so long to die?

Anyway we engage Rahj. Not too bad a fight, even if the mage decided that standing in my healing range was a silly idea. But then Rahj drops dead and Telt gets the achieve for HEROIC Halls of Origination. OMG Heroic! I thought this was a normal. My jaw literally dropped. I had healed a heroic, and I hadn't even noticed. I struggled a bit because I thought it was a crappy group, but, aside from frantically remembering all my mana regeneration tools, it hadn't been all that bad.

I even won the Chaos Orb.

Random Moment of Hilarity/Awesome

Kuan and Mornara were in a heroic Grim Batol last night.

Well technically two of them, but I'm talking about the second. The first was so painful all I am saying is that I am repressing it.

Anyway, Grim Batol. It was us, Ildiavolo, a holy pally who had queued specifically for it, and a mage.

These pugs, both this one and the first GB of the night, make me weep for mages. As I asked in guild chat: is every mage not in Darkfall a blithering idiot? The response seemed to be mostly yes, aside from examples of a few DF mages who have moved on and Talaitha. I weep.

With just a few wipes, we made it through the first two bosses, despite the mage breaking his own sheeps at the wrongest possible times. We're on the third boss, and the adds just aren't dying fast enough. Because I do occasionally have Situational Awareness(tm), I see that both Volo and Kuan are trying to kill the adds, but most of the time one of them has to kite. The mage, is just staying on the boss, except for when he dies to dragon flame....

Well after our 2nd wipe the mage bugs out and drops group with not a word.

As the rest of us are running in the pally pipes up:
"Darn..."
"Who will die to easily avoidable mechanics now?"
Hotfries of Nazgrel, you are my hero.

We all laugh, and a new mage pops into our group. The new mage assures us that he is able to not stand in fire, and can kill things. He knows the fights, and with a small amount of division of labor we proceed to one shot both of the remaining bosses of Grim Batol.

Grim Batol Heroic

Last night DraNgNon and I decided that we wanted to have Mornara and Kuanchichi finish up the Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achieve. This was not a trivial undertaking because the only heroic we had left was Grim Batol. Grim Batol was the first heroic we'd ever gotten from the random dungeon finder. And just barely meeting the requirements to do a heroic was not actually enough for us to get the first boss down then. We're better geared now, so we thought it was time.

I asked around in guild if anyone wanted to join us, sadly people were busy or needed their daily random heroic. So, with more than a little trepidation, I queued just the two of us for Heroic Grim Batol.

Roughly 2.3 seconds later the dungeon popped. I guess tanks really are the missing link these days...

We zoned in with a hunter, a fury warrior, and a pally healer. With the hunter and Kuanchichi that meant we had good crowd control options. I was upfront about never having done the dungeon on heroic. And then off we went!

The first pulls were a bit rough. I didn't die, but it was clear the pally was struggling to keep me alive. I was mentally buckling down to pop every cooldown as it came up every fight.

Then the hunter says "brb", and when he gets back mentions having smoked a bowl. Inwardly, perhaps even outwardly, I wince. Here we go, I think, time for Huntard and The PUG From Fail. The hunter's guild name was even <THAT Guy>.

But before I can say anything in party the dialog box for requeueing after a member has left pops up. The pally has abandoned ship. I requeue and someone (the warrior I think?) says the pally must not like smoking. The new healer joins us and zones in.

It's a troll druid.

Named Ganjja.

Kuan laughs and points out that Ganjja isn't likely to have that issue. We all laugh, and tell Ganjja what had happened. He laughs too. And then off we go again, but this time with much stronger heals. I certainly wasn't afraid of dying on the trash pulls unless I did something very dumb.

Side note: I'm really loving having a druid healer behind me in heroics. I've heard that druids are not doing so hot (pun not intended), but every one I've run a five man with has been super. I really like how the constant stream of heals from their hots mean I rarely plunge in health.

Back to Grim Batol: we oneshot the first boss, and wiped only once on the second boss. The third boss took us 6 or so tries to get down. The fourth boss took about 10 tries to kill. Stupid faceless dudes are a pain in the ass. The grand total of deaths for the instance was 15 for the two lowest people and 18 for the highest person. Through it all the group as a whole discussed strategy prior to every boss pull, and updated that strategy if it proved to not work. There were no recriminations and people admitted it when they messed up thought there was something they could have done better.

And when we finally killed Erudax the achieve popped up for all of us. No one in the group had completed Heroic Grim Batol before. There were cheers and congratulations and compliments all around.



It was a pretty excellent pug. Maybe I am having phenomenal luck. Or maybe I just don't pug all that much. Regardless I want to give a big round of applause to Ganjja, Faragorn and Pez. They were awesome and a pleasure to run with.

plenty of time to spare

The Expansion Cometh!

We will have the Cataclysm expansion in less than 3 hours!

Clara and I decided that yesterday we would go after certain... prerequisites. Namely, getting the Glory of the Hero achieve on Mornara and Eeyan!!! We started out going after Less-rabi, and fell in with a pug that was farming Bilgewater Cartel rep. They were all quite happy to take the time to get whatever achieves anyone in the party was missing as long as we kept chaining the random heroics. We did this for the latter part of the evening.

In the end, Eeyan got Less-Rabi, Share the Love, Watch Him Die, Respect Your Elders, and Zombiefest!, and Mornara got Less-Rabi, Watch Him Die, Abuse the Ooze, and Zombiefest!. We each are one achieve away from Glory of the Hero and will be working on those two as soon as I finish this post.

Oh, and we got quite a bit of Bilgewater Cartel rep, too. Good, I think their tabard is sort of ugly.

Blue Drake

Occulus used to be one of the more annoying heroics in Wrath. People didn't like that you had to ride on drakes and try to kill Eregos. It was hard to navigate in 3D when you weren't sure of where to go. And admittedly before they added scaling to the drakes it was actually hard to kill Eregos. But with the drakes scaling with gear and the current level of gear inflation its actually a pretty easy instance.

However people seem to have built up some sort of allergy to Occulus. They don't like flying on Dragons. They don't wanna have to fly around. So Blizzard started bribing people to go to Occulus. In addition to the regular 2 frost badges you get from completing a random you also get a Cache of the Ley Guardian which always has 2 extra badges, usually has a gem plus, and rarely rarely has Reins of the Blue Drake



Yep, that's Telt on her brand new Blue Drake.

You're welcome?

Right after the ICC10 raid last night Kuan and V did a speedy heroic.

It's always a bit odd to go into heroics. Regardless of who I bring, at this point all my characters are over geared for them. And since Mornara is my newest 80 and is actually still pretty undergeared relative to the Triumph badge median, that's actually saying a lot about easy the standard Heroic is. So Heroics are not as much about the content as a contest with the other players. Unless it's the new ICC5s or TOC5 none of my toons are going to wipe due to not having good enough gear for the content, they will wipe due to someone being an idiot. Either with a bad pull, or fear getting a 2nd group, or dps being aggro-stealing jerks.

Razaruckus from Shu'halo was the pally tank we got last night. His health and gear was a bit low, but still way more than enough to do H Nexus. We smashed through Nexus quite fast. The only one who died was the rogue, who was clearly someone's alt who had forgotten that if a boss does whirlwind it'll hurt.

Anyway after blowing through the instance I whispered Razaruckus saying "ty for tanking". He responded "ty for not pulling aggro". I'm at a bit of a loss how to take his thanks, because I *did* pull aggro a few times.

I meant my thanks sincerely. The bosses died, and, aside from the rogue being dumb, the rest of us didn't. I did pull aggro once or twice, but honestly with V in almost full ICC25 gear that's not surprising. No matter who the tank is at this point I have to be careful with aggro, especially in aoe situations. For the vast majority of the run I kept myself in check and Razaruckus did a good job holding aggro.

So Razaruckus, wherever you are on the internet, you did a good job tanking. I appreciated it.