Archive for 2009

D’you remember the times I talked about getting everyone killing Heroic Violet Hold, over and over again? It appears that those days are over. lol

I opted to heal it again today, and wow, did it go smoothly. With the drops I got in Naxx, plus some regemming of my gear, I healed through – from start to finish – with no deaths. Yes! That damned Void Lord nearly killed us all, but I got through it (somehow). I was also able to stay on top of my mana pool, and I kept it from running dry at any point during the run. Cyanigosa was again a pushover. With only our tank taking any serious damage, it was just a matter of keeping her alive. It did take both my bubble and a lay on hands spell at different times in the run to keep me alive, though. I  found that I don’t really watch the fights; I just focus on my Healbot health bars and click on them as needed. Our tank had a habit of leading mobs out of our range though, and nearly died twice or so as a result. She’d be kiting mobs for no reason and I – as well as everyone else – would have to chase them. She’d get down to 40% health or so and I’d have to cast holy light and holy shock to get her back to form. Oh well. She said it’d been a while since she’d tanked… but it had been a while since I healed, too, and that turned out ok, as well.

I ran Trial of the Champions again last night for kicks. I needed something to do, and I’m still after the Banner of Victory, so running ToC seemed like a nice fit. I ended up in a  sweet pick-up group with a pally tank, a shadow priest, a resto shaman and a mage. It turned out to be the smoothest run of that instance I’d ever been on. No pressure, no near-death experiences, and certainly no dying. I got zilch from the run, but it was a good time. Our ‘memory’ foe was again VanCleef, who seems to be who I get just about every run. I also ended up getting the 100 Stone Keeper Shards achievement while I was at it.

In other news, I finally got exalted with the Silver Covenant and earned access to their daily quests. It’s nothing particularly special, but it was worth mentioning, since it was one of my current goals.

It’s been a quiet day or so for me in WoW, with Betasim being back in town and all. I did find time to run Trial of the Champions with some guildies today, though. We ran through it once, and after we killed the second boss (as well as a giant ‘memory’ of Van Cleef), a sweet piece of armor dropped: the Breastplate of Imperial Joust. I wanted to ‘need’ it to replace my Whalebone Carapace, but I was polite and greeded. Unfortunately, my guild leader rolled higher on greed and got it. I jokingly complained, and he said to ‘hush,’ because I was ‘killing (him) on the DPS meters’.  We finished the dungeon with little fanfare, and decided to run it again. We did, and after the second boss, the same chest armor dropped again. My guild’s second-in-command whispered me to ‘need’ it, so I did. Hell yeah! Once we were done, I went back to Dalaran and gemmed it with two Bold Scarlet Rubies. My DPS is sure to go up now!

I went with the guild to 10-man Naxxramas: Arachnid Quarter tonight. The first boss, Anub’Rekhan was a pushover with our teamwork. The second, though, Grand Widow Faerlina, was a pain in the butt. We wiped on her enrage the first time when we jumped the gun to cut her rage short, The second time we tried, we accidentally killed the adds way too quick and left her with 35% or so health, and no adds to kill to quell her rage. We did it, though. I ended up using my bubble and a Holy Light, but with our kick-ass DPS we dropped her. Maexxna was a breeze, as it couldn’t do much damage to us so we just wore him down. In the end I had an average of 2.4k DPS, thanks to our raid’s buffs, and I was putting out 3.19k DPS in the final battle, which allowed me to use Avenging Wrath twice. I also came away with some gear for my holy spec, since I was the only plate-wearer with a caster spec. I got the Chivalric Chestguard and the Frostblight Pauldrons. Nice! I had to leave before we got to the next quarter, though, which was frustrating. Oh well.

EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION, TYPOS AND PICS

I finally ran the Trial of the Champions dungeon (on regular mode). A pickup group, which featured three folks who’d never run it before – myself included, obviously – took a shot at it and cleared it, no problem. We ended up fighting Onyxia as a boss ‘from our past,’ even though I’d never fought her before. lol Anyway, once we killed the Black Knight (all three times), a sweet drop fell that I wanted: the Girdle of Arrogant Downfall. It was a modest improvement over my Girdle of Valorous Defeat, so when I rolled greed on it, I literally had my fingers crossed. Luck was with me, as I won it. Yes! I equipped it right then and there. We left and came back in to run it again, and even with the new belt ungemmed, my DPS went up. We this time fought some big worm-like thing that I didn’t recognize as our ‘boss from our past.’ There was nothing this time through that I wanted, so I passed on most of it. When we were done, I hearthed back to Dalaran and bought up a Bold Scarlet Ruby (have I mentioned that I love the Dalaran auction bot?). I would have bought a Bold Cardinal Ruby, but they were six times the cost (300g versus 50g). The dungeon was fun, the roleplaying aspects were cool, and it wasn’t too hard or too long. I’ll have to go back there. Word has it that there’s a trinket in there I’d like.

Well, I completed Heroic Violet Hold again this evening, making that two clears in one day. How is that possible, you say? Don’t you get locked out after attempting it once per day? The answer: Yes, you can only do a heroic dungeon once a day. However, I did my first run just before the lockout reset in the morning, so my first run technically came yesterday. In any case, completing it made me exalted with the Argent Crusade. This is just another step for me towards the Crusader title I want.

That second Violet Hold run was with guildies and a good friend of the guild, so it was much more relaxing. I forgot how comforting it is to be around people you know! We were going to go tackle Heroic Nexus, but we were just starting to clear out some of the trash mobs when my guild’s second in command said, “sorry,” and hearthed away, before logging off. It turns out that “real life” had called him, and as much as I wanted to run that dungeon, real life takes precedent over WoW any day of the week. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.

Again with the Violet Hold heroic daily. Why is that one so common? Who knows. Anyway, I joined a pick up group with three folks who shared a guild with each other– a druid, a warrior and a shaman – along with a random death knight. We headed in, and up to our first boss it was uneventful. Moragg came out and for whatever reason,  our healer (the shaman) was disconnected. We had to four-man him without a proper healer – and we did it. Yes! Our druid picked up the healing duties while still firing away at the boss. Our healer got back in as we were working our way to the second boss. Cyanigosa at the end was a pain, because I was generating more threat then our tank (the warrior). We won without anyone dying, which was nice, and our group’s improvisation during the Moragg fight was impressive. I even led in DPS with 1.9k, despite having to back off a few times to let the tank re-focus foes (like Cyanigosa).

Well, I won my first Isle of Conquest match today. Actually, that’s a lie. The Alliance won a match while I was there; I was no help. I got ganged up on by – no lie! – six hordies at once near the start, all of them after me alone. Later, there was an undead warlock at the top of one of our towers, burning the hell out of me while I tried to shoot his tanks with the turret. How inconsiderate. Couldn’t he see I was busy?! Anyway, I finally got un-busy (he killed the turret) and turned my attention to him. I swear he was cheating somehow. He had only slightly more HP then me, maybe a thousand or so, but he wasn’t taking any damage from my attacks. WTF?? I literally couldn’t hurt him. I’ve had the same problem was several different foes in IoC. Yesterday, a Draenei death knight and I chased a Tauren shaman all across the map, but we couldn’t kill him. We’d stun him, pin him, pound on him, and yet he’d take next to no damage. What. The. Hell?! He wasn’t using his totems because our battle took us all across the island, so how was he so damned immortal? *sigh*

Anyway, we won today, somehow, even though the Horde held most of the map. Don’t ask me how; I was in our keep, dead. I spent most of the match that way: rezzing in our keep’s graveyard. I did account for the second most Honorable Kills on the Alliance though, even though I had no killing blows. I guess that means that I was wearing everyone down but not finishing anybody. That’s no way to win.

Is it?

Ok, I fell asleep after my Isle of Conquest matches, and I just woke up, so here’s that promised Path of the Paladin post. We pick up in Icecrown at the Argent Tournament grounds.

• 4:51 – I’m going to do the “kill x number of mobs” Argent Tournament dailies quick.
• 4:52 – Whereas I could formerly complete both of the quests – the champions and valiant variants – together by killing anything in Icecrown, they’ve swapped them up by making the champions quest require killing Cult of the Damned members and the valiant’s one involve killing re-animated heroes. Stupid Blizzard, making things harder.
• 4:59 – What’s with these unarmed Cult of the Damned members, with all this magic they’re shooting everywhere, deciding that punching the paladin with the huge sword is a good idea? 15 CotD members slain, and I’m off to kill re-animated heroes.
• 5:01 – Oooh… Saronite…
• 5:05 – The only plus side to the re-animated heroes quest is that almost none of the mobs group-aggro, so you can usually just pull ‘em one at a time. I killed all 10 I needed, so now to go back and turn in these two quests.
• 5:08 – Both quests turned in, and now I’m hearthing back to Dalaran to use the engineer’s auction house to see if I have enough gold to buy some Spiked Titansteel Treads.
• 5:11 – Yup, I sure do. Consider them bought.
• 5:13 – They clash with the rest of my gear aesthetically, but they’re great for my stats, so they stay.
• 5:17 – I also bought a Bold Scarlet Ruby for my Hateful Gladiator’s Scaled Gauntlets, so I’m broke. Again.
• 5:20 – Well, I suppose that’s all for now. I’ll post a longer PotP later.

Ok, my ambition to do a Path of the Paladin post has been overwritten – at least for now – by an infatuation with the Isle of Conquest battleground. It rocks. Period. It’s like a mini-Wintergrasp on steroids.

… ok, that may not have made allot of sense. What I meant was that it’s allot smaller and more concentrated then Wintergrasp, but the gameplay is amped up to an unbelievable degree. Flying battleships, rampant vehicles, multiple capture points that provide the factions with various bonuses… it’s great fun. I boarded the air ship on my second match (the first one lasted about four minutes due to a sudden server restart), and was watching people jump off. I watched, and saw that they got parachutes once they did, so I jumped too… and fell, and fell (“c’mon, a little help here?!” I was thinking), and finally *poof*, parachute time. I got an achievement for getting into the Horde’s courtyard without breaking down a gate, but we lost. In fact, I’ve not seen a victory yet. Seeing as how my server is more or less balanced in power in Wintergrasp – and maybe slightly tilted towards the Alliance – the other servers in my Battleground must have some kick-ass Horde. Either that or our Horde suck. One of the two.