Ironbound Protodrake!

Lately the Monday Fun Raid has been going after meta achieves that will give us drakes. We're killing the heroic bosses in Bastion of Twilight and fighting our way through Ulduar. Another goal is to kill Sinestra.

A week ago in Bastion we had to pug in a few people and we brought along some new guildies. It was a bit slow to start and our group hadn't gelled all that much, but we did pretty well for half of the raid not remembering the fights at first. We got Halfus and Double Dragons down pretty speedily, but the second phase on Elemental Council/Elementium Monstrostity is just so annoying. It's way too easy for one small mistake when kiting the frost orb to wipe out half or three quarters of the raid. I'm confident we can get it if we practice a bit more, and have a more cohesive group. A few of the guildies who came along got the heroic kill achieves for the first two bosses, but most of us already had them. So my plan the next time we go to Heroic Bastion is to save the lockout and just start at the council fight.

Last night we went back into Ulduar25. Kuanchichi and Mornara were only missing ONE achieve from Ulduar25. They both need the Hodir achievement I Could Say That This Cache was Rare. When we did the rest of our Ulduar25 achieves months ago, too many people got trapped in flash freeze so we missed the deadline by a single second. I tried to set up an Ulduar25 raid a couple of weeks ago, however you do actually need at least 15 people for all the necessary vehicles if you're going to kill Flame Leviathan with all four pillars up. There are just too many sources of damage otherwise. So our attempts with 10 or 12 people were not as successful as one would hope.

But last night I stubbornly pugged until we had 15 people. Then I booted the two people who were saved... And found another person to take their place. But still we ended up with 14 people and handily smashed Flame Leviathan flat. We headed straight for Yogg, skipping Ignis, Razorscale, Iron Council, and Algalon. If it had taken less time to get a full raid we'd probably have been able to come back and kill them all. However we had a few wipes on Yogg and then had to call it at 12:30. I put another Ulduar25 raid on the calendar for 2 weeks from now. We'll come back and kill the last 5 bosses then.

I have to admit that all my logic for skipping the bosses we did was mostly to head stright for Hodir. It was selfishly motivated, because I wanted that last Hodir achievement! But even if I hadn't needed the Hodir achieve I'd still have skipped the bosses we could. It's easy to come back and get the early bosses later. But it's a lot harder to get Yogg and two keepers later. Plus I think a number of people have the early achieves already, just because it takes time to get through Ulduar and the early achieves can be really tiresome. Especially the one for Razorscale where you have to wait for her to toast dwarves.

Regardless once the raid was done Kuanchichi and Mornara checked their mail. Brann had mailed them again, the exact same letter as before and there were lovely ironbound protodrakes waiting in their mailboxes.

Don't ask me how it fit in the mail box.

Ulduar: Algalon Defeat Dialogue

Long and long ago I got the key for Algalon's room. I killed him a short time after but forgot to get shots of the dialogue. When we went back and killed everything on 25man a couple of months ago I remembered to take screen shots.


Algalon the Observer yells: Your actions are illogical. All possible results for this encounter have been calculated. The Pantheon will recieve the Observer's message regardless of outcome.


Algalon the Observer yells: Witness the fury of the cosmos!
Algalon the Observer yells: Behold the tools of creation!


Algalon the Observer yells: I have seen worlds bathed in the Makers' flames, their denizens fading without as much as a whimper. Entire planetary systems born and razed in the time it takes your mortal hearts to beat once. Yet all throughout, my own heart devoid of emotion... of empathy. I. Have. Felt. Nothing. A million-million lives wasted. Had they all held within them your tenacity? Had they all loved life as you do?


Algalon the Observer yells: Perhaps it is your imperfections... that which grants you free will... that allows you to persevere against all cosmically calculated odds. You prevail where the Titan's own perfect creations have failed.
Algalon the Observer yells: I've rearranged the reply code - your planet will be spared. I cannot be certain of my own calculations anymore.


Algalon the Observer yells: I lack the strength to transmit the signal. You must... hurry... find a place of power... close to the skies.


Brann Bronzebeard yells: I know just the place. Will you be all right?
Algalon the Observer yells: Do not worry about my fate, Bronzen. If the signal is not transmitted in time, re-origination will proceed regardless. Save... your world...

Amusingly enough, we actually did this with only 10 people, even though it was the 25man raid. Ulduar has some tricky spots still, but Algalon relied on a big hits from the boss to make it a hard fight. With 85s and current gear he's not a hard fight anymore.

I don't remember who ended up getting the reply code, but I was back in Dalaran in time to hear Rhonin yabber on about it.


Rhonin yells: Citizens of Dalaran! Raise your eyes to the skies and observe!
Rhonin yells: Today our world's destruction has been averted in defiance of our very makers!
Rhonin yells: Algalon the Observer, herald of the titans has been defeated be our brave comrades in the depts of the titan city of Ulduar.
Rhonin yells: Algalon was sent here to judge the fate of our world.


Rhonin yells: He found a planet whose races had deviated from the titans' blueprints. A planet where not everything had gone according to plan.
Rhonin yells: Cold logic deemed our world not worth saving. Cold logic, however, does not account for the power of free will. It's up to each of us to prove that this is a world worth saving.
Rhonin yells: That our lives... our lives are worth living.

I'm still quite dubious that it was the right thing to do to defeat Algalon. Between Deathwing and the Old Gods it might not be a bad idea to have the Titans come back and help fix things up. Of course by this point the Titans are going to come back, take one look at us and what we've done to kill Old Gods, beat up Algalon, kill two of the Dragon Aspects and strip the others Aspects of their power, and they will just straight up destroy Azeroth. If the Titans are smart they'll nuke it from orbit and never give us, whatever level we are by the time they get here, a warning or a chance to fight back. If they aren't smart... well perhaps at level 100+ we'll be fighting Aman'Thul and the rest of the Titans.

LFR thoughts: counterpoint

What I'm seeing is that LFR seems to be suited for a certain type of player, the raid PUG-player. The attitude and expertise of these people is very precise, they are very aggressive and bossy, intolerant of wipes, quick to blame, and those that know the fights are clearly pleased with themselves when they know. In fact, they are exactly the people who made raiding Vault of Archavon in WotLK a painful experience. This person is not someone who can deal with progression raiding; the only challenge they are interested in is outperforming the rest of the raid, and when PUG'd in, usually drop group after more than 1 wipe on a boss. With LFR, Blizzard has given them their own playground, exactly suited to them. It's a face roll for any geared character played by someone who knows how to raid. LFR even has a loot system which is not merit based, giving the raid PUG person a perfect target for their displeasure.

I do agree that 25man raids are suffering, but not from LFR, just from the combined lockouts. We can't just go into a 10man to see the fights, then try it on 25. And 10s are easier by far, even if the odds of useful loot decrease significantly. I'm sure Blizzard is seeing this and will deal with it appropriately in Mists of Pandaria. There are quite a few remedies they could apply without significant recoding.

While the various tiers of TOC and ICC was crazy bullshit, I think MoP raids should go back to how Ulduar was done, specifically Hodir and XT, with 10 and 25 on separate lockouts, and "heroic mode" triggered by demonstrating in the fight via a gear check mechanic that the raid could handle it. Well, "heroic mode" isn't the subject of this post. They do not have to distinguish between 10- and 25-man gear. There's really not going to be any harm in letting people go after a boss twice a week.

But if they really want to avoid some people feeling they have to run both, I'd rather see 10 and 25s be separate raids, like in BC; but that would not work well with guild structure as coded in the game and would be the source of "left out" drama. Maybe 10 and 20, instead of 25.

Making of another death knight...

Yogg's brain is a rather scary place. When you take the brain portal in you'll see one of three different memories where Yogg-Saron influenced history in ways that weren't good for the mortal races.

There is the Deathwing making the demon soul, Garona assassinating King Llane, and the Lich King torturing someone into being his death knight.



Before Ice Crown Citadel was broken into, there was some debate as to who the Immolated Champion was. It turned out to be Fordragon. He was poisoned by the Apothecaries and then burned by the red dragons. Neither of these were good for his health. When we see him in Yogg's brain he is prisoner of the Lich King. He is being tortured as Saurfang the Younger (already broken) looks on.

It's always a sad and scary vision for Mornara to deal with.

it just doesn't get old

we ran Ulduar this evening. Kuanchichi even picked up a couple achieves - Nine Lives, Rubble & Roll, a couple from the Freya fight, and Who Needs Bloodlust?. Mornara picked up more. At level 85, Firefighter isn't so hard anymore either, which made Rahlenti happy. And Vesax is a different strategy.

Some folks on the run with us never before got to Vesax in Ulduar. I think once they saw the room, Cataclysm made more sense to them.



But. Once we got to Yogg'Saron, people were tired, didn't know the fight, I had lag spikes, and the wipe was pretty spectacular. It never gets old, becuase it's still a difficult gaming problem to solve. We called it.

Clara's saved off the Raid ID.

A tribute to persistence

Sometimes it just pays to be stubborn. We really did want the Starcaller title, and tonight we went and got it.



Note how our hands are still glowing form bloodlust? I got disconnected halfway through, and hit bloodlust as soon as my UI was back upon login, just to have the achievement ding. Which is partly why the screenshot is messy too. I thanked everyone for waiting til I was back online and got a good laugh.

That's Mornara standing to Kuan's front right.


After this, for good measure, we picked up Obsidium Sanctum with drakes up, and then down'd Halion. The former was also a guild achieve, but the latter did not. It did clear a quest from our logs though!

Algalon

The other night we got a guild group together and tried out Algalon. With only an hour before he despawns for the week I wasn't all that hopeful that we would get him. And sadly we didn't. However we did do a pretty good job learning the mechanics. And I'm confident that we can get him next week.






However it's a bit strange to look at those chat logs. Should we be trying to kill Algalon? He has been sent by the Titans. The creators of the universe. He says very clearly that it's better for the entire universe if they destroy Azeroth and reform it. Who am I, who are we, to try to kill him and stop him from making sure that the right thing gets done?

This seems like yet another case where the player characters are doing something for the wrong reason. Others I can think of off the top of my head are Releasing Hakkar back into the world, Helping Loken capture Thorim (and the subsequent death of Loken which started Algalon investigating), and the Cleansing Drak'Tharon. Oh and don't forget selling Kel'Thuzad's phylactery to someone bad instead of destroying it.

So perhaps we should leave Algalon to do his observation, and let the Titans reform Azeroth.

Nah! I want that title and achieve points. I'm sure the Titans are just way too busy to notice that we've got evil old gods and the Lich King and all sorts of other bad stuff happening on Azeroth. They won't bother coming to check us out. We'll be fine!

Random Ulduar and Drake screenshots

Last gasp of the Ulduar drake run screenshots. I promise.


After you defeat the Keepers, the Gate of the Keepers unlocks. Of course you can't get close enough to open it until you defeat a faceless thing. But it looks very cool when it opens.



Here is the letter that Brann sends you with the drake. Of course they had to give the baby drakes to us! Stupid dwarves can't ride a drake!

Algalon sometime soon...

When you kill the Assembly of Iron on either of their hard modes (Steelbreaker or Runemaster last) a disc drops from them. This disc starts the chain to unlock the door to get to Algalon.

I was too busy going "holy crap I won the roll" to take a screenshot of the disc in my bags. Also you pretty much immediately turn it in at the back of the room in which you fought the Assembly of Iron. Brann and his Explorerer's League lackey help you work the console and you determine that you need to get the sigils from the four watchers. Of course since all four watchers are various sorts of fucked up by Yogg you've got to beat them without destroying their sigils.

How do you do that? I'm so glad you asked. Coincidently enough, its the exact same way you beat them to get your achieves for the 310% speed drake.






I remembered to take pictures of the sigils. They are actually pretty cool. Very thematic, especially when combined into a group of the four of them.




Once you present all four of them to the console. You get Celestial Planetarium Key



So sometime in the not too distant future we'll try Algalon. Once you aggro him you have one hour per lockout to attempt him. After that hour is done he disappears until your next lockout.

OMG SQUEEEEE!

Why yes, that is Mornara riding on a Rusted Proto-drake


Mornara and Kuan have been running a half DF half regular pug of Ulduar 10 for the past two weeks. Over the weekend we got all of the keepers and Vezax. For the past two nights we've been working on getting Yogg+1. It's a brutal fight even in ICC gear, but we finally got it.



Die Yogg-Saron, DIE, you insanity inducing tentacled thing of wrongness.



One of the people who was with us for all of this was Talaitha. She's been playing since vanilla and is an awesome mage. She was very pleased to get her drake as well.



Oh yeah, my drake is fierce and fast and so very awesome! Roar!

Ulduar!

With Cataclysm looming so close Kuanchichi and Mornara are looking at achievements they want to have done. In particular they would both like to have a 310% mount and to have killed everything in Ulduar.

I, personally, am of the opinion that Ulduar has the best story/art in the entire Wrath expansion. Naxx is recycled, and TOC is a big round room. Icecrown Citadel gives Ulduar a run for it's money. I like ICC, but I feel that the story in Ulduar is just so well done. And it's certainly more epic than either the Blood or Plague Wings of ICC. Ulduar has the keepers and Yogg. Though XT I could happily throttle.

Anyway, Kuan and Mornara are on their way towards Rusted Proto Drakes. They still have a ways to go, but I think we have a chance of getting it. Granted the harder ones are left, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere.

In The Mountains

New Shield!

Darkfall down'd Marrowgar again. He drops this kickass shield, which Kuan really wants to replace [Aegis of Damnation].

Of course, he didn't drop it for Darkfall. Disappointed once again, I pouted. And then, Darkfall announced a 2 week moratorium on 25man raids because people didn't want to deal with new content over the holidays.

So, Rahlenti pushed for a brief Ulduar 10 and we killed Ignis for the new "weekly" raid and I convinced everyone to down XT too. Yay, [Pulsing Spell] shield for Kuan! it's only been ... how long ... ? This is only Kuan's 4th shield upgrade since the badged level 70 shield.

Next up, 50 [Emblems of Frost] and that fabulous cloak.

and, Ulduar 10 redux

I finally had some time last night to play Wow, the first block of time since rejoining Darkfall. Darkfall decided I was there as a friend (not probation) until I re-app'd, so I re-app'd Friday. The guild rule, that they've had forever and still have, is no raiding in non guild raids during guild raid times (whether you are in the guild raids or not). And, no raiding progression 25 mans with other guilds or pugs, period. Makes sense, what if they need you and you are saved? Fail.

So, I got Kuanchichi into a VoA 10 run; I tried to get Viljo but we were miscommunicating so Clara had to cool Viljo's heels in Wintergrasp while that happened. I don't think it was more than 20 minutes. After, we got pulled into an Ulduar 10 run that was mostly alts or mains that aren't able to make the regular raid times.

Oddly enough 5 of the 10 people, I am very used to raiding with. One of them, Kaviaa, had been offline for months and was only just restarting playing again. Which is not quite beside the point of this post.

Darkfall has always made their own strategies. In Siege of Ulduar, (the first 4 bosses), there isn't a lot of variety, and so was pretty straight forward. Once we got past there though, I ended up asking for more and more explanations. Iron Council was not so bad. Kologarn was a wipe fest; I think Darkfall would benefit from adapting Deterrence's strategy there honestly. I mean really. Kologarn is the easiest boss in there, and we had a wipefest forcing Kuan to be heals before we succeeded. Auriya was not so bad, but I was adjusting what I was doing on the fly as they pull her in a different place and kited and kited her up the Shattered Walkway. Hodir, they corner him near the cache to force the NPCs into a small area, both for toasty fire goodness and to make it easier to break them out of the Flash Freezes. By this time Kuan had swapped to heals but even 3 heals can't make up for undergeared alts, people unfamiliar with the fight and/or fight strategy, and a distinct lack of Frost Resist gear. So we called it at that point; I think we'd been in there maybe 3 hours.

Kuan picked up [Pendant of the Piercing Glare] off Kologarn, which means I now get to rework his hitcap and hitcap-minus-1% sets, which I will be doing this afternoon at some point. But I guess this serves as reassurance that Kuan is not terribly undergeared as all the other shaman loot got DE'd or nabbed by a paladin alt for his heal set. And, much as I hate to play for loot, I will be doing Uld 10 weekly now, as I've decided Kuan really needs a different shield.

Last but not least - Drognin came into our Ulduar 10 raid partway through. Drognin is his alt now, so he's one of the toons missing Frost Resist, tsk tsk; but anyhow, so much for worrying about our guild re-apps, with Kuan 2nd overall damage for the run even though he was healing on 2 bosses, and Viljo being regular awesome, we will be put back into promotable guild member ranks again.

Uld10

It's summer and that means that raiding attendance is down down down. We did manage to get enough for a Uld25 last Wednesday, and we killed up to Kologarn. However, there weren't nearly enough people for a 25man on either Saturday or Sunday. So a group headed into Uld10.

Saturday's Uld 10 was moderately painful. It was a run specifically for trying to gear up tanks. And unfortunately that means they needed gear. Also one of the tanks was almost passing out from lack of sleep, and the other, well, the other just needs to more practice. We did kill up through Auriaya and Hodir. And to be quite honest I was doing crappy dps. I blame lag, and mostly the fact that after Wed I swapped back to Fireball spec, and I didn't have the rhythm down.

Sunday we had a slightly different makeup and so it was a smoother run. We one shot Thorim and went back to one shot Iron Council. Then Freya went down pretty smoothly. Mimiron was new to about one third of the raid, and it took a bunch of work but we got him too. Mimiron is a fun fight. I really like all the phases, and the art in that section is just excellent. And killing Mimiron got Viljo The Keepers of Ulduar achieve.

Anyway after Mimiron was down it was a wipefest on Vezax. Vezax is a fight that makes me consider rerolling some class that doesn't use mana. After a while we called it. It was clear that those of us who hadn't seen it before were doing a pretty terrible job. And between that and having only 2 healers we were not doing so hot. We were making progress, but it was not swift enough to keep the healers from bursting a vein.

Epic!

What with Skunk Dog and Roommate on Crutches we almost forgot about the raid last night. However, we made it home just barely in time for both of us to get into the raid.

In fact there were still only 21 of us when we did Flame Leviathan with two towers up. We left the Mimiron and Freya towers up. Since we'd never left Freya up before it actually took us a few wipes to get it. I'm glad that we're trying different towers. And it was new and interesting for me since I got to be ammo on a demolisher. However, my driver hadn't ever done it before so he didn't understand that it was necessary to aim when he fired me at FL. So on at least 3 of our attempts I flew over, or landed short of, FL, and had a swift and pointless death.

Anyway after FL we went on to kill everything up to Kologarn. Our 2nd kill was Razorscale and she dropped the Living Flame. Kuan and Viljo were the only two who rolled and Viljo got it with just a tiny bit higher PR. Hopefully it will drop next week and Kuan can get it then. Aside from FL it was a pretty smooth run. We only wiped once on Ignis and Kolo, and didn't wipe at all on Razorscale, XT or Iron Council.

The excellent part of the run were that since we killed 7 bosses and FL was hard mode we got 8 badges of conquest. So Viljo had enough badges to get his Conqueror's Kirin Tor Hood. And enough orbs dropped (three from FL) that there was a 6 pack of Runed Orbs and it was Viljo's turn so he found someone to make the Sash of Ancient Power.

Anyway between the trinket and the new hat Viljo now has his Epic Achievement:


And since both the hat and the trinket had boat loads of hit he swapped from a Frostfire Bolt spec to Fireball spec. I haven't had a chance to pound on a training dummy yet but hopefully both the gear and the spec will increase his dps.

Hodir Defeated

This week Deterrence did a pretty good job pwning in Ulduar 25. Wednesday evening we had quite an effective raid and had our 2nd kill of Auriya. After clearing all of the first two sections of Ulduar we called it a night.

Saturday evening we went in and on our 2nd attempt we defeated Hodir. I say defeated instead of kill or murdered or dismembered or clobbered, because unfortunately none of the Keepers of Ulduar can be actually killed. Thorim, Freya, Mimiron, and Hodir all have their health reduced to 1 hp and then suddenly "come to their senses" and decide to help you if you ask them. I know that they are helpful against Yogg, but I would really like to see Hodir's broken and bleeding body after what we had to go through with his Sons.

Anyway, also on Saturday we tried Thorim a couple of times. However we're still having issued with the division between the tunnel and the arena. Either the tunnel isn't moving fast enough or the arena dies, or sometimes both.

So today we tried out Freya. She is a fight similar in idea to Sartharion. There are three adds and they each drop a badge of conquest. Yay extra badges! This meant, that even though we didn't kill Freya we still got 3 conquest badges. And this meant that Kuanchichi had enough badges to get [Conqueror's Worldbreaker Helm]! Yay for Kuan! This even better than it sounds because that piece has hit and so Kuan could swap in the [Valorous Worldbreaker Shoulderpads] which had been won in a previous Uld10 run and still have enough hit.

After tonight Viljo is up to 51 Conquest badges. I am hopeful that Deterrence can kill enough bosses in Uld on Wednesday for him to get the Conqueror's helm. Perhaps we'll kill Emalon and get some extra badges.

Catching up on Ulduar

So while this weekend is a break, we've been running Ulduar with both 10- and 25-man teams from Deterrence.

Ulduar is basically in 4 wings and Kuan has been in teams that have cleared the first three on 10-man and the first two on 25-man. Viljo has not been so lucky and has cleared the first two only, but has been getting more upgrades than Kuan.

Deterrence has been having an attendance problem on their 25-mans, which has really hampered progress. I mean really with the bulk of the raid in Naxx gear we are not ready to be 21-manning the 25-man bosses. That's not stopping us from trying. Here we are trying Iron Council a month ago with 21.

Ulduar 10!

Yesterday afternoon Kuan and Viljo were on the Deterrence Ulduar 10 team. It was specifically set up to be a different set of people than their normal 10 man group. And despite that it still went pretty smoothly.

We knocked out the first 7 bosses. Auriya was the last boss we killed, and I have to say I really understand why everyone is getting so frustrated with it on 25 man. It's not easy on 10 man, but it's a whole lot easier.

When we killed XT2 he dropped the Plasma Foil. Viljo was the only one interested in using it, so I got it ;D.

Also for all of this Kuan was resto and did an excellent job healing.

wish list

The guild leadership at Deterrence wants me to list my top 5 gear wish list from Ulduar.

Of course immediately upon finding this out, I had a personal crisis when led to Kuan getting AFK'd out of a battleground, and then today is Patch Day. So I get to guess on the Bestest Upgrades since Kuan is sitting in the Armory in his PVP gear.

Anyhow here we go! Here's my guess and I can confirm it later, before I mail the guild officer compiling the list.

25-man Ulduar On Spec
Living Flame off Razor
Wristguards of the Firetender off Ignis
Frozen Loop off Hodir
Pyrelight Circle off Ignis

Belt of the Fallen Wyrm off Razor -
note - Blue Belt of Chaos is a crafted belt from an Uld recipe drop. I want THAT.

Flare of the Heavens off Vesax (hard mode)
Wisdom's Hold off Hodir (hard mode)
Bindings of Winter Gale off Hodir (hard mode)

25-Man Ulduar Off Spec
Steamcaller's totem off FL
Quartz-studded Harness off Deconstructor
Radiant Seal off Assembly of Iron

10-Man Ulduar On Spec
Eye of the Broodmother off Razor
Pulsing Spellshield off Deconstructor
Plasma Foil off Desconstructor (look up if really an upgrade)

Aesuga, Hand of the Ardent Champion off Vesax (hard)