Archive for the ‘Instances’ Category

This was the image the greeted me upon joining a PUG a short while ago. The Pit of Saron! I’d never been there before, obviously. Fortunately, we had a great group. One other player had never done it before, but we had a very experienced tank which was very good for our confidence. He calmly described every fight to us for optimal success and kept giving us praise for getting things right. Anyway, upon entering a cave (I joined half-way through) leading to the final boss, the tank said to not cast, heal or hit anything until he gathered all the mobs onto a platform in the middle of the cave. Suicide. Absolute suicide. Or rather, it would be…

… if I wasn’t there.

By the time he got to the platform he 90%+ dead, so right before he died I hit him with my Lay on Hands and we all survived. We entered Scourgelod Tyrannus’ room and gathered ourselves for the battle.
The tank commanded the rest of the DPS to his flanks, and the battle commenced. It was a LONG battle, too. I put forth 3.6k DPS (!) and we killed him with no casualties. Yes! Oh, and as icing on the cake, he dropped the Tyrannical Beheader, and I got it to replace my Edge of Ruin. HELL YEAH!

I hit it with the Massacre enchant and now I’m ready for anything!

Great. The Oculus. I don’t like that place much, but that’s where the Random Dungeon Finder sent me tonight. I ended up in a slick group though, and we blitzed the place. We decided to go for some achievements and rode only Amber drakes into battle. I didn’t do great (my DPS was down for whatever reason) and right before we fought Mage-Lord Urom, our tank dropped. A full minute later, we got a new pally tank. Yay! He too was fast and efficient. This was an easy run! Except…

Lay Guardian Eregos shot me off my drake again near the end of the battle. Fortunately, my party was able to peal him off  of me before he could kill me, so there I was, on the  middle platform, taking pot-shots at him with Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath for the last 10% of his health or so.

Say what you want, but it worked. lol I got the Emerald Void and Ruby Void achievements out of the deal so I’m happy. I got two Forest Emeralds plus two extra Emblems of Triumph out of the Cache of the Ley Guardian, so it was a good run.

Oh, and btw: I completed Explore Northrend and got a snazzy new tabard for my troubles.

A good night’s work.

Bronze Drake! Bronze Drake, Bronze Drake, Bronze Drake! Finally, after countless runs through Heroic Culling of Stratholme, I got the drake. Yay! I was in a PUG that had a malcontent from the start. He finally quit when we ignored him, about two minutes into the run. Apparently an executive decision was made (i.e.  I wasn’t consulted)  to four-man the run. We did, and it was a breeze. We had a mage doing  4.5k DPS, our tank was putting out 3.1k, and I was kinda bringing up the rear at 2.8k. That plus a kick-ass resto shaman was enough to blitz the dungeon, 4-man style.

Ah, memories. I was back in Violet Hold today, for the first time since the day before the Random Dungeon Finder was implemented. Ichoron was a hassle, Moragg was a pushover, and Cyanigosa was her usual sissy self. So long as Xevozz doesn’t show up, Violet Hold is a breeze. I’ve killed Cyanigosa a dozen times now on Heroic. It was nice to do an easy dungeon for once!

Gav was back in action tonight and had another memorable experience. I queued for a dungeon and 23 minutes later, I reached the Trial of the Champion. I died in the jousting phase when I was knocked from my horse and trampled. I quickly re-zoned into the instance and we blew through the champions and the mobs around Paletress. but she was tough. She summoned a shadow Cyanigosa who promptly beat us down. We finally killed her but it took forever. Paletress herself was a pushover. Finally, the Black Knight arrived.  We shot right through his first phase and were doing ok on the second phase until the ghouls he summoned got loose. The spread among us and killed two of us – a DPS and our healer. Another DPS died shortly after the third phase began. That left a bear druid and myself to two-man his last phase. Y’know what?

We did it.

Yeah, we kicked his last form’s ass, but it was touch and go obviously. When it was over the bear was under 40 HP, and I was down there, too. It took my Bubble, a runic healing potion, a handful of Flash of Lights and a lot of luck to keep me alive. We did it though. Yay! We then rezzed everyone and passed out the loot.

It was a good run for all, with no poor attitudes or arguments. That’s how a run should go.

Except… maybe with a little less stress at the end.

Wow, how long has it been since I’ve updated here? Oh yeah – almost two months, not counting my sporadic post last month. Well, I’ve been playing just about as much. Gav’s been sitting on the shelf recently, and none of my alts have gotten much burn either. However, I did log Gav in long enough to do the Midsummer Festival boss, Ahune.

Ahune = Dead. He wasn’t very hard (I’d researched him prior to the battle), and nary a word was spoke during the battle. Kinda boring. Actually, that’s kind of why I’ve taken time off from the game. The same old sterile dungeon runs have gotten old. I’ll certainly be in allot when Cataclysm hits, but as it stands right now, I have little drive to play. Oh well.

Another random heroic, another group minus a DPS at Ionar in Halls of Lightning, the second time that’s happened to me. I wonder what it is that makes DPS drop at that point so often? Anyway, I got tossed into a group and we promptly swept through the end of the dungeon. Once we killed Loken, our mage copped a ‘tude and ranted about him carrying everyone that fight. He did do almost twice as much DPS (8k) as the next highest (4.5k, me), but his attitude was not welcome. I got my rewards – including yet another frozen orb – and left as quickly as I could. I’m growing weary of high-horse riding players complaining that other players are holding them back when we clear runs with no issues. No one died and we were through it in no time.

In unrelated news, Beta, my counterpart on e-AAGH.net, has had a vicious anti-WoW stance since the game came out. I got her to try it for one evening, but that was short lived. Now I learn that she signed up for a ten-day trial and didn’t tell me. Actually, she opted to tell me after it was over. That was cruel, I feel, because I’ve been trying to get someone I know to play with me forever. I’m still upset.

Last night was another long, long night in Azeroth. In three and a half hours I got to chat with guildies, run some heroics with ‘em, and nab enough Emblems of Triumph to get a new helmet.

I first ran a Culling of Stratholme random with a PUG, but we screwed up and forgot to bring Arthas in the last part. Going back to get him got us all killed. Fun! I also missed out on the Bronze Drake again, but this time it was on a fair greed roll, so I have no complaints.

Later a guildie and I, along with a friend of his, ran three more heroics; Oculus, Hall of Stone and Nexus. The first two were relatively uneventful but the Nexus run had problems. First, our tank (my guildie) and a hunter (my guildie’s friend) got disconnected. My guildie got back on quick but his buddy was off for a while. We also had a relatively inexperienced lvl 80 priest for a healer who did fairly good, but we overdrew at one point and I died. Our warlock actually rezzed me with a Gnomish Army Knife.  Our hunter got back on eventually, but by that time we had four-manned about half of the dungeon.

In the end, I got my helmet  and we said so long for the night. It was a very successful night, and I had a good time.

I ran Azjol’ Nerub tonight with a decent PUG, but the final boss gave us trouble. At one point our tank was dying and the healer (a dwarf priest) was struggling to keep up with the damage, so I pitched in with my Flash of Light spell. On another occasion, after a wave of mobs in that battle, our DPS warrior was down to 20% health. Our healer was busy doing who-knows-what (he seemed to think that healing the tank was his only job) so I was going to hit the warrior with a Sacred Shield and then a Flash of Light, but then the boss popped back up. With no time left, I fired off my Lay on Hands spell to put the warrior right. We then finished off the boss as I activated Avenging Wrath to lay the ‘smack down’, as they say.

This was after a Wintergrasp match where I notched a slew of kills and only died once. With a rather balanced match, the Horde had little to no tenacity, making the battles easier. The other day I was in Wintergrasp to see about buying some stuff with my Stone Keeper’s Shards when I was jumped by a Tauren shaman. He hit me with Thunderstorm and caught me off guard. When I finally realized what was happening, I was down to 40% health. Fortunately, I was still on my gryphon so I flew away to heal. When I got back, he was pulling the same trick on a few other players. I landed behind him, and it was Hammer of Justice, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Hammer of Wrath, game over. Seriously, it was one of those kills where it was over before the stun wore off. I hate those when I’m on the receiving end, but proud when I pull it off. This after whopping that Orc warrior in WG the other day. I think I can somewhat hold my own one-on-one with an average-skill or lower PvP player these days. Not bad, says I.

Oh yeah, and that PUG I mentioned at the start? I got a Pug for that PUG, thanks to an achievement. Nice!

This morning was rather boring. I ran three heroics – Oculus, Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom and Gundrak. The Oculus run was interesting since there was no synergy in our group – everyone was kind of doing their own thing, but it came together to make a win. In Ahn’Kahet, I nabbed the achievement Volazj’s Quick Demise for my troubles. In Gundrak, we stormed the place and were done in no time. Then the most interesting part of my morning happened: I went to Wintergrasp.

For the first time in quite a while, I queued up for a Wintergrasp match. The battle saw the Alliance with a near full raid while the Horde attack consisted of – no lie! – less then 10 players.  They wound up with Tenacity x20, which made things harder. I was getting crit for 15k a shot! We eventually got our act together and moved in large packs since the Horde players weren’t going in groups. I don’t care how much tenacity you have – 10 on 1 is bad odds. Or good odds. Depends on which side your on.

In any case, our battle took around 10 minutes, but that’s all I needed to die four times. It was odd, really, that most of the Horde were Blood Elf paladins. They had like one warlock and a warrior, and then a handful of Blood Elf pallys. One in particular was really vicious, accounting for half of my deaths and a ton of other player kills. Still, even he folded under our massive population advantage. Death to the Horde! lol