Archive for the ‘Instances’ Category

The other night is I ran a few non-Heroic dungeons with the guild (it was four lvl 85s and a lvl 84). It was all my buds, and we were on vent so that was fun too. Above you can see the lot of us in Stonecore.

Oh no, it’s High Priestess Azil! Whatever will we do??

Kick her ass, of course. The non-Heroic Stonecore was a breeze.

After a protracted process of getting our lvl 84 a high enough item level in Stormwind we headed to Halls of Origination.  Having never been here, I was at a slight disadvantage.

Thankfully vent makes everything easier. It’s so much easier to coordinate over voice then typing everything in the head of the action. The bosses were explained, we blitzed the place, and finally came to the final boss.

He fell with little effort. I learned that, vice Heroics, normal dungeons can be burned through by the tank-and-spank method allot. We rarely had to deviate from that other then to dodge the occasional AOE or floor attack. I wonder what Heroic would be like?

We spent about 15-30 minutes in Stormwind after that just chatting about gear, future dungeons, and how to maximize what we’ve got. One of my buds in the guild pointed me to the Belt of the Ferocious Wolf since I was exalted with the Defenders of Hyjal. He then crafted me an ebonsteel belt buckle for it. That was really nice of ‘im. Thanks dude.

Actually after one of the bosses in Halls, his weapon broke. Of all the things to have happen! It finally allowed me to use Jeeves in a group, who I got while in Ulduar with the same guy. It took me some time to build him, but I was like a proud parent when I did. Yay for engineering!

Happy belated 4th of July, everyone. I slept thought most of the holiday because I’m a lazy dumbass, but I got up in time to see some fireworks in Stormwind this morning. Later I saw more fireworks, this time in Tol Barad.

I didn’t do great, as usual, but I got an achievement. We were on defense and were within a second or so of saving the match. The Horde had 2 building and was converting a third (Slagworks) and we were racing to convert Ironclad Garrison. We were literally just on the cusp of pulling control away from them – seriously, mere seconds – and they grabbed Slags and won. Dammit.

One of my guildies, Luciditii invited me to go run a heroic, and I agreed. I’d not run a Cataclysm heroic yet so I didn’t know how I’d fare. Another guild mate, Drannen joined as well so it was officially a guild run. Drannen (an elemental shaman) had pumped his DPS up and was eager to put his 10-14k to use, and I was eager to see it. Luciditii (resto shaman) came as heals, and I was my usual ret spec. It was, as I said, a learning experience to see if I was capable of running a heroic. Let’s see how it went.

Pâmëløt (an arcane mage) and Jaconsus (a prot warrior) rounded out the group. We cruised up to Corborus who wiped us once. I died because I got hit when he resurfaced which made me feel kinda dumb. Anyway, we killed him on try #2. I also died on Slashhide but the group took him out. Yay for teamwork!

This is where it got interesting. We took time to prepare for Ozruk so I read up on his moves in the dungeon journal. We did ok for a while, but back luck got our tank killed, and soon it was down to Drannen and I to kill him. Yup, two DPS against a boss. The funny part is that we were doing pretty well. I kept myself relatively healed, Drannen pitched in, and with me dodging and striking I swear we could have pulled it off if I hadn’t backed into a second group of mobs. That turned out to be too much and I died. Try #2 was a win and we moved on.

Our first assault on Azil didn’t go so well/ Between getting overwhelmed by adds, Luciditii’s  mouse going AWOL, and  those accursed Seismic Shards, we wiped. While waiting for Luciditii to find a new mouse I was back in the dungeon journal. Eventually I got bored and called out, “Luci! Luci, you better get back here, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!” It got a chuckle from Pâmëløt, anyway.

Round two, as in the last post-wipe battles was a rousing success. I ultimately didn’t get what I really wanted (a chaos orb). Jaconsus and I both rolled need and he got it.  Damn. I guess I’ll have to run a few more to make my goggles. In any case it was a good time and I look forward to doing it again sometime. Thanks guys for taking me!

I logged into the game last night for some quick questing and auction-monitoring and my guild asked me to pitch in on a Summer Fire Festival boss run. Ahune was being a pain in the ass so they brought me along for some extra DPS. We did it, but I almost died three times. Twice from overdrawing those water/air elementals and once after getting launched sky-high while badly hurt (thanks, bubble!). However I more then made up for my lack of death there by going to Tol Barad.

Do you notice a trend in the above pictures? Yes, I’m the only one from my side in any of them. I’m not sure why I only caught pictures of me on my own because I spent a good deal of time in large groups and got a good number of kills but ultimately we lost again and I died something like eight times.

Think about this: ever since I said that my server’s Horde sucked at Tol Barad they’ve beat my ass time and again. That’ll teach me to open my mouth!

Gav found his way into his first Cataclysm dungeon tonight. Four guildies, including myself, took to Grim Batol thanks to the random dungeon finder. We were joined by a helpful gnome mage. Above you can see us ready to face a boss.  Big deal, he fell easy.  However, after our third boss, I was convinced we were done.

After we put down Drahoa Shadowburner I was certain the dungeon was over. No, we had the real final boss left to fight. Great. We wiped twice in the dungeon (once when we overdrew and once when the tank backed into a second batch of mobs and I backed off a ledge to my doom), but Erudax would prove to be a true test.

Keep in mind that I’d never faced him before, and I’d not researched him prior to meeting him. What happened was comedy gold. Here’s how our first encounter with him went.

• We attack him head on
• I don’t see anything wrong with a DPS-heavy tactic, so I burn my Avenging Wrath and Guardian spells.
• My guardian decides to freaking wander off from the boss
• I decide to follow him to see what’s so damn interesting that he’s not hammering the boss
• I see my first Faceless Corruptor and have a serious WTF moment

“Oh,” I said. It was at this point, with our mage dead and the rest of our party hurt (and the Boss still alive and very well) that I realized I had to attack the adds for us to win. My guardian knew that, but did I? Noooo. So that’s all well and good, we just have to… oh, we wiped. Ok, next life we’ll kill the adds and win. Hell yeah! Wait, what the hell is a Shadow Gale? Besides freaking lethal, I mean. I lived through one thanks to my bubble, but the second one killed me. Damn. I asked what I should do about that, and our tank said to stand in the vortex it created, which is great because that’s the exact opposite of what I was doing. Next time, we were all on the same page and kicked Erudax’s ass.

No one was hardly even hurt that time. Funny what happens when you actually know the fight. I got an elementium lockbox during the run so I popped back to Stormwind and made some Volatile Seaforium to open it with. Inside was nothing exciting, so I offered to open a guildie’s box (they’d gotten one too). I visited them in Uldum and tried to blow it open in the trade window only to blow myself up over and over. I finally got it open, and that was that.

It was a good night and I’m glad to have that first dungeon run under my belt. Thanks guild!

Bored this morning after running my Stormwind profession dailies, I opted to clear the new Stockades for kicks. It’s neat that it’s been expanded as far as baddies and story, but it’s still really boring. The only interesting part was killing Hogger and having him drop a pair of shoes called Corpse Runners. I could have used those about 70 levels ago when I fought him originally back in Elwynn Forest as a young pally.

I’m back finally. I’ve been playing allot but not taking many pictures so that’s partially why I’ve been slow to post. Anyway, here’s what Gav’s been up to since patch 4.0.1 hit.

I hit up Wintergrasp as soon as I could and had a ball. I died once, but that was it as we blitzed the Horde in an offensive siege. Word of Glory is a God send sometimes in PvP. I also really dig Blizzard’s new raid frames. They worked wonders in Wintergrasp and eliminated my need for the plugin Grid.

Today I joined my first post-4.0.1 random heroic and it was obvious that I was rusty. It’s been almost a month since my last heroic dungeon, but that’s no excuse for forgetting to take down Crusader Aura for Retribution. I also wasn’t thinking and tried to cast Blessing of Kings on everybody (like I used to have to) when a single cast now covers the entire group. I actually needed to cast Might instead because our druid was already covering out stat buff. It was uneventful until our healer died during a bad pull. Fortunately for us our tank was a blood-specced death knight and all of the DPS could self-heal so we survived. Our druid even battle-rezzed our healer. Go team! I nabbed the Lodi Dodi and King’s Bane achievements on this run as well. It was a good night.

Hey, everyone, how are you enjoying Brewfest? Personally, it’s gone pretty well. I’ve run rams all around Dun Morogh and Ironforge for the last few days, but I finally got what I wanted: membership to the Brew of the Month Club. Yay! I also kill Coren Direbrew about every day. Today I ran a group with a druid tank who said, “everybody on Direbrew, make it quick.” Make it quick, huh?

Ok.

I put out  2k more DPS then the next highest player, almost hitting 5k (4.79k, actually). I think that qualifies as doing my job fast. I netted the Bitter Balebrew Charm to go with the Mithril Pocketwatch I got the other day. Pretty nice, but I want a Great Brewfest Kodo. That’s my ultimate goal right now. Onward, Gavelier!

It’s the Brewfest! I stopped by the Brewfest outside of Ironforge with Gav this morning and did all of the available quests. They included catching Wolpertingers, slaying Pink Elekks, and racing Rams around to deliver beer. I also slayed Coren Direbrew, who was an absolute wuss. We showed up, the tank attacked him and we DPS’d him down. No big deal. The fun part was that I got Direbrew’s Remote. I immediately summoned my personal borer and went to the Grim Guzzler.

I’d never been there, so a couple of nice goblins got the band L80ETC to rock out for me.

That just made my morning.

I queued for a random heroic last night for the first time in I can’t tell you how long (wait a minute, yes I can – 16 days ago) and wound up in Hall of Stone. I dislike the Ulduar heroics for their difficulty. Aside from the Ice Crown Citadel heroics, they’re as hard as heroics come these days. In particular, I dislike the Tribunal of Ancients event in HoS. The mobs inevitably get loose from the tank in the chaos and attack me, attack the other DPS, attack the healer, and attack me (that’s worth mentioning twice). This time it was fairly straight forward, with us kicking the invaders asses left and right. Our party was doing massive damage (sorry, I didn’t have my DPS meter on so I don’t know exactly how much), but our resto druid was the big hero. Our timber-riffic healer kept everyone topped off with aplomb. After that, Sjonnir the Ironshaper was a breeze. No loot, but that’s no big deal. I got my gold and two frost emblems and that’s what I went for.

I mentioned a while ago that Heroic Violet Hold is a breeze so long as Xevozz doesn’t show up. Well, in a recent PUG run, he poked his ugly head out. This was actually the first time I’d ever faced him, but I’d read up on what I was supposed to do so I wasn’t a liability. We whooped his ass and I got a new achievement, Lockdown. We proceeded to ice the rest of the run with little difficulty.

I guess when you way out-gear him and know his tricks, Xevozz isn’t such a pain in the ass as I thought.