Archive for the ‘Guilds’ Category

I ran a quick random heroic tonight and ended up in the Hall of Stone. We cleared it pretty quick, but that was to be far from the last of the Ulduar area I’d see tonight.

A guildie reached out to see if any of us needed the weekly raid kill, Flame Leviathan Must Die!. I did, and he talked me in to going. We gathered a group of 10 and set forth.

I was invited to be a gunner, but by the time we got there, somehow that was lost in the discussion and I ended up on a motorcycle. I did pretty good and my bike never fell below 78% health, but it was a learning curve to start. For one, I had no idea what my bike’s powers did. Some screwing around finally taught me that my sonic horn did damage, and my ‘tar’ ability was like Gav’s consecration power. We rolled through the courtyards, and blasted the hell out of… something blue falling from the sky. Sorry, no idea what it was and no one had time to explain. Finally, the Flame Leviathan came out to play.

We killed him too, in short order. I kinda sucked, but I was never in danger, so that was nice. Oh, and I got an achievement for it to boot.

Now all this would be nice enough, but as an engineer I scavenged the Leviathan’s wreckage and came away with 18 saronite bars, 3 eternal shadows, 2 eternal fire, 5 overcharged capacitors, plus the schematics for Jeeves. Nice.

This is just a quick update on current events. Gav ran two random heroics yesterday with some guildies, the first one (Utgarde Keep) with two guildies and the second one (The Nexus) with three. The random healer in our second group had to feel left out. In any case, we cleared both in no time, and I never died. I got some disenchanted gear’s regents, which I promptly put on the auction block.

On another note, I went and bought the XP-bonus shoulders for Gleave, my death knight. With a gryphon and XP shoulders, he’s about as happy at 63 as a death knight can be.

Later, all.

Tonight, I engaged in a dramatic defense of Wintergrasp that was allot of fun and too awesome for words. Suffice to say, I had a great time. This post isn’t really about that though (I just had to talk about it anyway).

I did the fishing daily, Jewel of the Sewers prior to the WG battle, and got a Tiny Titanium Lockbox. When I got back from Wintergrasp, a guildie opened it for me, and boy was I in for a treat! Inside was:

• Six gold and change
• A Sky Sapphire
• A Monarch Topaz
• A Spur Ring of Agility
• A Solid Stormjewel
• And some vendor trash

Nice haul, huh? The Solid Stormjewel alone goes for about 600g on my server’s auction house. All told, this was a huge pick-up for me. I’m happy now.

Oh, and I’m at a crossroads with Gleave (my lvl 63 human death knight) and Crane (my lvl 23 human warlock). I can buy one of the –just one –an xp-bonus heirloom (either Exquisite Sunderseer Mantle for Crane or Strengthened Stockade Pauldrons for Gleave) from Wintergrasp now, but I’m not sure who I want to buy for (meaning: who I’ll actually play and level). I’ll have to think on it.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you folks on Gavelier’s status, so here’s a summary.

• My new guild has talked me into getting on Vent with them, but I had no microphone – or so I thought. I managed to jury-rig my Xbox 360 headset through my Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, and whadya know; I’m chatting. The funniest part was listening to a conversation and piping up finally, prompting a girl to ask – in a very quiet voice – “who’s that…?” Everyone said, “It’s Gav, don’t worry.” I’d been on vent earlier in the day when we went soul searching.
• By ‘soul searching,’ I mean that we went into (non-heroic) Forge of Souls, the new 5-man instance. It was an incredibly smooth run, aided by our kick-ass DPS and the voice chat. What a difference that makes! Anyway, I came out of there with the Plated Grips of Korth’azz for my trouble, and the bosses were pushovers. One more note; with out group we fielded in there, we goofed and pulled a few more baddies then we should have at times, but we never died. Go team!
• Unfortunately, that adventure in the Forge of Souls came after we got our asses kicked in Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom. We barely made it to the first boss (wiping twice on the way), and he killed us easily three times before we called it off.
• We also ran The Oculus tonight for our (mostly ‘my’, guess) random heroic of the day as well, and completed it, netting me two Emblems of Frost. Yay! We wiped on the final boss three times before we lost one of our random members. We replaced him with a guildie and beat the ever-loving tar out of Ley-Guardian Eregos. Well, my guildies did. Like my last trip in there with my old guild, I died before the boss was dropped. Oh well.

Well, that’s about all Gav’s been up to. I lastly wanted to point out that about a month or so ago I netted the ‘Crusader’ title, so I am now Crusader Gavelier. Nice ring, ne?

Tonight was my first random dungeon run, and it was with an all-guild group. We landed in Utgarde Pinnacle, and it was an experience. We didn’t do bad through the first part, but the first ‘gimicky’ boss was a trick. Skadi the Ruthless was tough, and I almost died twice; once via the ice his dragon spat on the walkway and once from his whirlwind attack. But hey, we kicked his ass. Onwards to the next and final boss, King Ymiron. He was a pushover of epic proportions. He ran through his four ‘boat’ abilities in no time and then died at our feet. Hence, we cleared the dungeon. No big deal. I didn’t do too bad, but I did almost get myself killed while walking to the group and accidentally aggroing a series of baddies. Not the best long-life plan, I know.

Well, there’s good news and bad news. Good news is that I’m back. Kind of. I reinstated my WoW account, but I’m not sure how much playtime I’m going to get in. The bad news is that my guild is kaput.

Savagely Dysfuntional apparently had some kind of falling out while I was gone, and all my friends in the guild are gone. Also gone are all but 9 members. Dammit. I bailed on that dying guild since I no longer had a social tie to it and joined a new one called KILLING SPREE. Yes, all caps. I don’t know why, either. In any case, it’s looking good so far. My new guild likes to run heroics and is a social, mature group. We’ll see if that holds over time.

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

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.

Tonight we – my guild – ran another heroic, this time Azjol-Nerub. I was tentative at first, since I wasn’t sure how my DPS would hold up against my guildies. Well, the answer was swift: at least among the group we brought, I was tops. lol Capping 2k DPS allowed me to lead the offense and earned me a “Damn, Gav,” from a guild mate. I also had to tank a few times as the baddies would turn on me. On top of all that (as if that wasn’t enough) I tossed a few heals around to keep us alive. We absolutely blitzed that dungeon, no question. I also got my first nice drop, Flamebeard’s Bracers. The comments on Wowhead say,

These are the highest crit rating bracers available to holy paladins and unless you really like your mp5, they are arguably second only to a drop from Grobulus in Heroic Naxx.

Every holy paladin should make a point of farming for these.

Score! I got ‘em in one run. My guild is great, and I’m still really happy to be in it. They had no qualms with passing out the loot as needed, plus we rolled greed on everything that no one in particular needed. This process netted me another Frozen Orb. lol Now, what to do with it…