Kael'Thas

We rank Tempest Keep a while ago and Mornara was lucky enough to win the Verdant Sphere off of Kael'thas.




And this is why we always take a head as our trophy. You can be sure someone isn't going to come back to life if their head is mounted on a pike somewhere.



I always feel bad for Kael'thas. He just wanted to save what was left of his people. If Garithos, the racist human dick, hadn't been, well, a racist dick, then the history of the Blood Elves and Outland itself could have been much different.

better late than never

I'm liking my new guild already.

TK Pug

Kuan and Vilo were offline when Darkfall killed Kael. We were both quite pissed as we are missing that vial remnant, and therefore lack a title and quest completion. Since Darkfall didn't raid this week because of upcoming expansion we weren't going to have a handy guild run to kill him again. So I decided, fuck it, I want to kill Kael. I'd gotten pugs together to go into heroics, a raid can't be too much harder since I can probably still get a bunch of guildies to come along.

So Sunday night I actually managed to get a raid together for TK. I'm the one who didn't talk on Vent for months after joining Darkfall, but here I was leading a raid in TK. I got a lot of help from various people. Had a couple of people doing the marking and pulling, and another couple telling me what mob did what and needed to die where for Kael. Without those people helping out the raid would never have gotten as far as it did get.

We oneshot Al'ar and Void Reaver and then only had time for 3 tries on Kael. Unfortunately he didn't go down in that time. So I told everyone that we'd try again on Monday night, and if they wanted to whisper me at 9pm server.

We tried again on Monday night, and had time for 5 tries, I think. Unfortunately that didn't go much better. We got the positioning for the advisers down and were able to reliably get to phase 4, but the MC in phase 4 just fucked us too hard. So no Kael dead, no Vial, and no title. :( Maybe when we are all mid-70s we can go back and kill him.

Now leading a pug TK raid on Vent was actually breaking one of my cardinal rules in WoW. Namely: don't let random people know that the male troll mage is a girl. My experience in the past has been that once someone knows you're a girl you're not really going to have a normal conversation with them, unless the other person happens to actually be mature. And even if they are mature, most of the guys will take a little bit of time to adjust to the fact that OMG!!1!! UR a Girl!! Girls play WoW??!?!!

So here I am, leading the raid, on vent. I did a little bit of talking, and someone was all "Is a girl leading our raid?" I briefly considered suggesting they leave if that was a problem, but settled for saying yes. There was a bit of talk about, oh good I was kind of afraid if that was a guy's voice. And most of it ended there.

Unfortunately not all of it ended there... There was a resto druid, who was pretty stoned, who hit on me a bit. He had clearly never encountered another female player, or at least another female player who admitted her gender to him. Not really surprising considering his attitude. He was quite surprised when I told him there were at least 2 other women in the raid.

Anyway, not that I didn't already appreciate Drognin and the other RLs we have, but leading a raid is hard. I imagine it'd be easier if it was an all guild run, where you can trust people, at least mostly, to do what they are told.

Black Temple!

So this week both Drangnon and I got to raid. Monday was TK where we killed Al'ar, Void Reaver, and Solarian. This was quite exciting as Both Kuan and Viljo had the quest: Ruse of the Ashtongue. So the phoenix was killed and disguses were worn. I also got some good shots of Kuan fighting Void Reaver. I'll try to post those soon.

Anyway we killed the giant fire chicken, and then went to talk to Akama. Akama was quite happy about this, but still needed more work out of us. Fortunately Tuesday Darkfall was raiding Mount Hyjal. So upon Rage Winterchill's death (and subsequent looting) An Artifact from the Past was completed. We continued on to kill Anetheron, and Viljo got the spiffy shoulders: Hatefury Mantle. Of course Viljo got a new set of shoulders, I just finished putting epic gems in his t5 shoulders...

After Anetheron was dead we all ran to the Horde encampment. I have to say that I liked the waves of trash before Kaz'rogal. It was complete chaos, but so much better to be fighting beside the orcs, trolls, and tauren. Also the gargoyles, while annoying, were quite fun to kite. I think that Viljo will have a better time with the frost wyrms after I spec him back into fire and he has the extra range to reach them. We only had time for one attempt on Kaz'rogal, and we had a one percent wipe. There were a number of people who blew up the raid. Including one, usually stoned, mage who blew up *eleven* other people. Ouch. :(

A'lar

We tried A'lar tonight. Darkfall tried it last week, but this was my first time.

Since Kuan is caster DPS, it's hard to get a decent picture.



That's from phase one, which is easy. We only got one try in on phase two becuase people were lame and bailed in the middle of the raid, leaving us standing around for 25 mins, buffs ticking down, after all the trash had cleared.

Spec for Al'ar

Darkfall is trying Al'ar right now. I'm on puppy duty so I'm not there, and I'm a little bit grateful for that. I have no real idea what spec I would have for Viljo. Clearly my beloved fire isn't going to work against the Phoenix God.

So I'm considering an arcane build with a bit of frost thrown in. A couple of the other mages I respect in Darkfall have things similar to41/0/20 and 40/0/21 as their specs. The one I talked to last night basically said a rotation using Arcane Blast and Frost Bolt was what he used.

As far as those specs go I've altered both of them from what the other mages use. I'm leaning towards the 40/0/21 build, just because I do enjoy having iceblock more than once every 5 mins. I don't know how useful iceblock is for Al'ar, but I suspect it's more useful than Slow.

Anyway thoughts from those of you who play mages that aren't fire? Or anyone at all? And yes I've considered going fully frost but I'm just not a fan of pet management. is the water elemental that easy to control? I'm guessing not, what with it's own frost nova and all.

the end of the world is here

Kuanchichi is in matching gear, having picked up his T5 shoulders tonight.



I did some poking around. The last time he was in matching gear - as far as I can remember the only time - was roughly September 2006. That lasted until roughly Thanksgiving of that year.



For what it's worth, all that gear in the second picture is still in an 18-slot bag in Kuan's bank.

Strats, schmats

Tonight Darkfall went into Tempest Keep for the first time in a month. We dropped Solarian... and seems likely will shard one of her items too, the badged gear is so good nobody really wanted [Star-Soul Breeches]. Then, for only the second time that I know of since the 2.4 patch dropped, we tried Void Reaver again. (I've wanted to try him again for a while now. T5 Shaman shoulders are way less goofy-looking on a troll than T4, and it's all about aesthetics, right?)

Here we are clearing the trash. I know the screenshot isn't spectacular but it gives a good feel for why playing a troll caster just rules.



Anyhow let's face it. Darkfall is lazy and had been relying on the VoidReaverAlarm addon, which relies on the combat log noting the target of the Arcane Orbs. Well clearly that doesn't work anymore. So we went and looked at all these strategies. First a warlock was the bait running around, and we clumped up behind the tank and got pwned by Orbs. Then two hunters were bait, and we stood on his feet and stabbed his toes while one of the priests spammed Circle of Heal on us. This caused him to punt the tank, throw an orb on him for good measure, and smash the priest.

After that, the guild leader decided forget all these strats. Stand on the circle, and just look up damn it. Just like the forums say to. Once we made that decision we just dropped him in one try. It was sort of weird, though; I played in first-person mode the entire fight.


Of course the Shaman T5 shoulder token didn't drop.

Solarian Down!

We killed Solarian!

/dance

Darkfall killed Solarian!! Wheee!!!

We went in there, saw the fight for the first time and got her down to 65%. Then because the RL and everyone had taken so much time with the talking and the downloading of addons, we had trash repops. Fortunately a warlock and a couple of others could rez out of range in Solarian's room. So they summoned us all back in for one last try.

And we killed her that time! It ruled! People were good about grouping up for the adds, and staying near the designated spot for the debuff. The healers kept almost everyone up and didn't run out of mana. I think we had one person die, but they got a battle rez, so we ended the fight with a full group. It was awesome!

/dance

Void Reaver Down

This evening Darkfall downed Void Reaver. It was officially the second time the guild had done that, but the first time that Viljo and Kuanchichi had been there for it.

It was annoying to tromp through all the trash on the way there. However it wasn't painful like the first time we were there two months ago. Of course once we got there the RL decided that we all needed to have VoidReaverAlarm downloaded from curse. So there was a bit of a delay as we all had to relog to do that.

Anyway we had one false start on VR where someone decided they wanted aggro more than the tanks did. And started dps-ing almost immediately. :(

But then we we smooshed VR!! We killed him with 30 seconds to spare! And there were only 24 of us. :) He dropped double hero tokens, which was actually quite considerate with 7 mages, 2 warlocks, and 2 hunters in the raid. So Viljo bid all his dkp and now has the lovely Mantle of Tirisfal! Whee! Tier 5! Whee awesome looking red shoulders!! Wheee!

Tempest Keep

Darkfall (Viljo and Kuanchichi included) went in to Tempest Keep last night. It took us a while to get a full group together, since a bunch of raiders were busy or just missing. But we got it together and headed in.

Whee! New content! Whee trash pulls that need mages! Whee sheeps that break every $%^$#@ seven seconds! Oh wait that last one wasn't whee at all.

Well anyway we got to the room with Al'ar, we bypassed him and went on to the Void Reaver. Void Reaver has a bunch of trash that needs some very coordinated crowd control from both mages and warlocks. That was... interesting. Up to getting to Void Reaver's actual room the trash wasn't too hard, but the trash immediately around VR took us a few wipes to organize ourselves to deal with.

Then we had time for 2 attempts on VR. The first one was basically to let us see what we were up against. I have to say that the stupid arcane orbs confuse the crap out of me. It's really hard to see when they have finished with their explosion. And it's even harder to watch your neighbors for their explosions, even with various mods to help out.

The second attempt was a little more serious. We wiped at 38% of his health. That's not bad, but as several people on our guild boards have pointed out we, as a guild, have got to get better dps. We were missing a bunch of our main raiders, so I'm too not terribly worried. Also as we figure out the orbs there will be less running around like headless chickens or getting killed by your neighbor's orb.