Archive for the ‘Wrath of the Lich King’ Category

I’ve been fishing with a Strong Fishing Pole since… well, since as long as I can remember fishing. Today, though, that has changed. I did my fishing daily and got a Jeweled Fishing Pole in my reward bag. This thing looks cool, and it’s a huge bump in fishing skill. This, plus my fishing hat make me a formidable angler.

If you remember the last time I ran Drak’Tharon Keep, I was pushed into my first tanking role to fill in for a short time.  It was successful, but not something I wanted to repeat often.

I ended up back in DTK the other night and after the first room or so, our healer left. The group kinda turned to me (we had a Death Knight, a mage and hunter left, plus myself), and collectively asked if I could heal. I sadly had to say no, since I’d long dropped my Holy spec. If I could have, that would have been funny as hell – one time filling in as tank on the spot, the next trip impromptu healing. At least I wasn’t all alone this time.

DTK has strange memories for me.

In my continuing efforts to increase my DPS and therefore my usefulness to groups, I ran a series of Heroics again this morning. First came Hall of Stone, which was uneventful up to and after the Tribunal of Ages part, where we had to hold out against wave after wave of baddies. I nearly died, and was down to 4.7 HP (with my bubble on cool down from earlier in the fight) and had to chug a runic healing potion to stay alive, but stay alive I did. In fact, it wasn’t until the chaos was over that I learned that only the tank and I had survived. I rezzed everyone else and we completed the rest of dungeon with little fanfare.

As you can see above, I also made it into Culling of Stratholme. This run sticks in my craw and makes me mad thinking about it. The run itself was extremely fast and smooth, but when we killed the Infinite Corruptor, he dropped the Reins of the Bronze Drake. We all greeded on it, except for one jerk  who needed and got it. No one seemed to care but me. I’m still pissed that I didn’t even get a shot at that cool mount.

Finally I landed in the Trial of the Crusader with another good group. We had a little trouble with the Grand Champion jousting portion (we lost track of downed baddies and they each hopped back on a mount at least once). I lost my mount twice, but was wise enough to do so near a new horse so I was back in the saddle – so to speak – in no time. We then killed the Grand Champions on foot with little effort. The rest of the dungeon was a cakewalk. When we defeated Eadric the Pure, he dropped the Legplates of Relentless Onslaught. I wanted to need them because they were better then what I had, but I greeded when it dawned on me that I was getting a new, better piece of leg armor once I left the dungeon. When we were done, I finally had the Emblems of Triumph I needed to buy myself Turalyon’s Legplates of Conquest. I socketed it with a Bold Cardinal Ruby for strength and a Smooth Kings Amber for crit rating. Finally I bought some Icescale Leg Armor to complete the piece. Now I’m ready to work on my next part. Let’s get it on!

I wound up in Gundrak again tonight, and I have to say that with a decent group, it’s not a bad instance. I was with three members from one same guild and a boomkin druid with an odd play style. We quickly blitzed the first boss of two, but when we killed Eck the Ferocious, we had two problems. For one, one of our DPS – one of the trio from the same guild – dropped group. We found out later that he thought that Eck was the final boss (for whatever reason), and once he learned otherwise he joined back up. The bigger problem was that our dumb-bunny druid decided to go sightseeing on his own and got himself killed. I actually noticed him go off on his own and was debating who to follow, the healer and the tank or the druid before opting for the safety of the healer/tank combo. Once we were all back together, we quickly swept through Gal’Darah and finished the run. I say quickly, but between waiting for the one DPS to rejoin, the druid to rez, and the druid constantly making us wait for his cool downs to be up (“oh no, I need three minutes to get my cool downs up. Lets just stand here and wait!”), it took us close to a half an hour to clear the place, and we clearly out-geared it. I had fun though, and I wouldn’t mind running with that bunch again.

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!

It was a battleground-filled night for Gav tonight. My first battle was in an already in progress Isle of Conquest match. When I got there, the Alliance was on the verge of losing their keep. At one point I died and wound up rezzing in the Horde keep, which we had just taken. A contingent of Alliance heroes and myself charged into the Horde keep and killed their leader, winning the match. It would be the only bright spot on the night.

My next random BG found me in Arathi Basin. We got our butts kicked to the tune of 1600-346 or so. Ouch. I – along with a number of other players – swore there were more Horde then Alliance players in the match because they had a large number of defenders at each capture point, preventing us from taking anything back. I did cap the Lumber Mill early in the match – my first ever capture, but with 10 honorable kills to 7 deaths, it was a terrible match.

My third (and so far final) match landed me back in the Strand of the Ancients. We got our butts kicked and were unable to drop even a single wall on our attack, while the Horde rolled up to the relic gate almost unimpeded. I did lead us in killing blows and honorable kills, but I only had 3 killing blows and 10 honorable kills, so it was more that our team sucked then me being really good.

Some days I hate my battlegroup.

Bored this morning, I queued for another random battleground and landed in Strand of the Ancients. Again, I seemed to be a prime target, with the Horde stopping everything else to kill me. I must have some kind of ‘Kill Me Please’ sign on my forehead in Horde-speak. Overall though, I was wicked this match. I landed in the top 10 in killing blows (9), top 15 in honorable kills (62) and damage done (429.1k), and died only five times. Oh, and those ranks? That was Horde and Alliance combined. As far as just the Alliance goes, I was #5 in damage done and #1 in honorable kills. First in Honorable Kills! That’s something I’m proud of. I also got the Drop it Now and Ancient Protector achievements while there as we won the match. Not a bad morning.

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!

I learned something tonight, something wholly unexpected – I can tank for short periods with my current gear. lol I went into Drak’Tharon Keep tonight – more on why in a minute – but after the second boss, our tank bailed. The healer asked me to tank for a while, so I switched to my prot spec, fired off Righteous Fury, pulled out my Teldrassil Protector and my Titansteel Shield Wall and we were off. I had no real problems and we got to King Dred in short order. I’d have done better without my PvP-based setup, like Glyph of Avenger’s Shield, but we had no trouble at all. By the time we got to King Dred, a new tank showed up but he didn’t give me time to go back to ret prior to pulling Dred, so we two-tanked him. After that I went back to ret but then another player dropped, this time our hunter. Something about not running with some certain guild name… we weren’t sure who he was talking about.

Oh, and as for why I was running another dungeon tonight, it’s because I was just a few Emblems of Triumph from getting Turalyon’s Shoulderguards of Conquest.

Yes! I’ve finally upgraded from my stupid Spaulders of the Giant Lords. Nice, huh?

Well I got into WoW tonight, and ended up teaching Ley-Guardian Eregos what-for. Unlike the last two times I’ve gone, I did not die in the climatic battle. I don’t know what the difference was, but no one was terribly injured in the last battle, either. Oh and we seemed to be quick about it, too.