It was kind of sad for me because I followed a contingent to attack the Horde leader, and we did – and I died – but the Horde was just a little faster, and we lost. The next battle was Arathi Basin, where I’ve never won.

I want to point out that I went to AV as ret to try out my new axe, which failed miserably. I decided to go prot in AB, which made a huge difference.

I died once early on when I went into battle thinking I had backup (but I didn’t) and another time during a scrum near the lumber mill. Those were my only deaths though. Thanks to good durability, judicious use of my powers and superb healers, I pretty much locked down the farm. People came and left, but I held it down. A couple times I thought I was screwed only to be saved by the sudden appearance of a healer on our side. Thanks, guys! I ended the match with 2 deaths (least of anyone with at more then 1 kill), 5 killing blows (4th on our side) and 71 honorable kills (best on our side). Go Gav!

Oh, and thanks to running those dungeons last night, I got a mammoth reward.

My Black War Mammoth! Finally!

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.

The seconds match I attended was more even. I got my 5,000th honorable kill this match, which is kinda lame for how often I do WG. We again chased the Horde around the map, slaying them left and right. Afterwards, I found myself exactly 2 stone keeper shards from my Black War Mammoth. Again, for how often I play WG I probably should have already had one, but I used to cash in my stone keeper shards for honor, and a couple hundred went toward heirlooms for my alts. Still, I’m almost there now.

In a recent Cataclysm beta update, Blizzard has tweaked the armor proficiencies dramatically. Now instead of the previous bland ‘plate,’ ‘mail,’ ‘leather’ and ‘cloth,’  we now have Astral Leather, Blessed Plate, Tribal Mail and more. This seems focused on keeping players in their class’s designed armor. I’m all for it, because keeping the different classes in unique armor – and rewarding players for doing so – will result in more differentiation between them and, I feel, result in a more entertaining game. No one wants to play a game where all the classes feel the same,  do they?

Anyway, hop on over the battle.net and see it for yourselves.

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 in Storm Peaks en route to Dun Niffelem, coming from the Argent Tournament grounds and had a surplus of junk to either store or sell. What to do? Why, call your personal butler, of course!

“Hello, Jeeves, would you take this stuff for me? Oh, and what would you give me for a couple stacks of vendor trash? 2 gold? I’ll take it. Good man, Jeeves. I’ll see you around.”

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I found myself in Wintergrasp twice the other morning, once as my prot PvP spec and once as my main ret PvE spec (because I was in a hurry). The first match – the one I joined as PvP – was a thorough butt kicking of the Horde. We had them pinned down to their graveyard and just slaughtered them every time they rezzed. It was fun! I did really well too, and only died once, killing – or helping kill – dozens of the Horde.

The second match (the one I joined while ret) wasn’t so pretty, but it was more entertaining. I joined a little late, only about three minutes late, but already it was a disaster. The Horde was in the eastern side of the keep! After dying over and over again, we finally accrued enough manpower to stand up to them (our numbers started out pretty low for whatever reason). We finally pushed them out of the east side of the keep and down to the Sunken Ring workshop. I and a number of allies then rode back to hold off an attack on the west side of the keep. They got in there, too, but that’s all the farther they got. We had actually dropped all of their towers, but that still left us with 10 minutes to hold out, and we did it. Yes!

I had a good morning.