Archive for the ‘Guilds’ 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!

It’s been PvP Mania lately, I guess. I went to Tol Barad but we lost that in record time so we’re not going to discuss that. Instead, let’s talk about my recent Alterac Valley match. I arrived and buffed up, including a Flask of Draconic Mind. After the match started I noticed something I’d not noticed in prior battles here.

Here you can (sort of) see the Horde passing us on the far side of the valley. It was kind of interesting, the symmetry. When my group arrived on the far side, we cleared out around the Horde’s boss’s building while the rest of our team gobbled up capture sites. Finally we began the assault.

I did my job and we won again. Yeah! Thanks to being on the front lines I accrued the most honorable kills on my faction and we dominated the match.

Later on, my guild hit level 19, so now we’ve got Honorable Mention, which should help me in the battlegrounds.  Not a bad night.

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!

Tol Barad! I entered my first match today and with two other players I got two kills with no deaths. Go me! However, I arrived at the last minute. Literally – there was only sixty seconds left when I got there. Damn it all.

I had earlier been busting ghosts on the Peninsula, and that was fun. It wasn’t too hard, but when I was killing folks in that nearby ‘hood I got attacked by a villager and three bandits, all at once. Thankfully, a combination of Avenging Wrath, Hammer of Wrath, Sanctified Wrath, Divine Storm and Lay on Hands saw me through it. Yay!

You may notice that in the top picture I’m carrying a shield. Yes, I’m going prot for PvP again. However, I’m also considering trying to tank for the guild. We have a critical tank shortage so I’m considering learning how to do that. Wish me luck – I’ll need it.

I mentioned my “Wor” Machine last post. This is him. Wormachine is my worgen hunter (yes, Ernest was taken and yes, I know this because I tried). Here’s a quick pic of Wormachine as a worgen.

He’s pretty cool. The dog’s named Maggie, after my own mutt. A quick side note: I ran into a guildie of Gav’s in Darnassus after leaving the worgen zones and introduced myself. I asked if Wormachine could join, but alas he could not. Not because of any rules, but because the guildie wasn’t of rank to invite me, and no one who was was on. Darn. I’ll have to ask again later when an officer or other higher-ranked player is on. Too bad I can’t have Gav on at the same time: Gav’s got the ability to invite. Anyway, Wormachine is pretty fun, but it’s mostly like leveling Lug again – just with a wicked-cool new race. Wor is here!

Woo hoo! Guild first to 81! I’m not going to hit 85 first, so this was a nice moment in the sun. I also reached the Friendly rep level with my guild. Yay!

They’re not in this picture, but there was this cow (Tauren) dude who was trying to talk to the brain on the right of the screen. No, I’m not kidding. It was hard to see him with the crowd he gathered but I swear it looked like he was throwing rocks at the thing’s brain while saying, “talk! Talk damn you!” Uhm, I’m no scientist but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. You don’t just chuck stuff and something’s brain and it gets chatty. I came through a few times and he was usually hurling stuff and telling it to talk to him. Dumb cow. Eventually he made a crab the intermediary between the two, and guess what? It worked, probably because the crab DIDNT’ TOSS JUNK AT HIS BRAIN LIKE A DUMBASS! Proof that your average crab his smarter then a Tauren.

I joined forces with a  priest at one point and helped her take this big mean thing down. Really. I don’t care if this pic caught me with my axe on my back and my hands at my sides. Seriously, I helped! I naturally led us two in DPS (she was a shadow priest), so yes, I did pitch in. This picture lies.

That’s all for now with Gav. Now I’m going to  go hop on my Wor Machine.

As I was flying about Northrend, running dailies, a guildie was getting achievement in Ulduar. I congratulated him, of course, which set off a chain reaction that was fun and educational. You see, he was trying to kill Ignis the Furnace Master for the weekly raid quest. As fate would have it, his 25-man raid had a DPS spot open, so I was invited. I was unsure about how much help I could be, but I joined in anyway.

This is about where I found everybody, right at Ignis’ doorstep. We got our act together and – after some random arguing over engineering loot –  we set forth to slay the beast.

We did it, obviously, and I got an achievement, to boot. I thanked my guildie for inviting me, and then a weird thing happened. We got talking about my DPS and my gear, and he started lending me advice on how to improve them. I paid attention as best I could and he helped me set an upgrade path via emblems. I found out that for my first upgrade, I need 50 Emblems of Triumph, and – at that point – I had 12. I ran a string of heroics to try and get some more, and it was interesting to say the least.

First up was Azjol-Nerub, which progressed as one would expect a dungeon to go – steady and uneventful. The second one I ran was wild. A pair of players from the same guild were heading up the run and they were trying to break some kind of world speed record, it seemed. They were blitzing through mobs, gathering a ton in one place before turning to fight. This caught the rest of us off guard, but we kept up. Once Keristrasza was dead, I had was up to 27 total Emblems of Triumph, only 23 short of my goal. I queued up again, this time with the server due to go down for Tuesday maintenance in about half an hour. I ended up in Gundrak for the first time, and died on the first set of mobs. Our tank wasn’t very good, our healer had lag issues and our mage went AFK right at the start. We killed the first boss (with the healer and the mage dead), but then the server announced it was going down in 15 minutes. Soon, everybody began bailing and left me alone in the dungeon.

I ‘ported out and logged off as well, with 28 Emblems of Triumph, plus an achievement from the first Gundrak boss. Tonight I hope to get the lost 22 emblems for my new gear. Onwards and upwards!

After a guildie and I ran Azjol’Nerub with a pickup group, we rounded up two more guildies and a guildy’s alt to tackle another dungeon, and wound up in the Heroic Trial of the Crusader.

As you can see, we kicked it’s butt. I not only led in DPS with 2.82k to 2.02 (the next highest), but I managed to upgrade my sword. Yes, the Claymore of the Prophet that I’ve been toting for months is now going into retirement for the Edge of Ruin. I couldn’t be much giddier. It was allot of fun (it’s always more fun to run with your friends) and I got a gear upgrade. What a way to spend an evening!