Mend Pet

Didn’t get around to posting this on Saturday, so it’s a bit late!

We had a couple of no shows last Tuesday, which caused us to be sitting at 23/25 when it was time to get started.  We probably could have gone in and taken out Flame Leviathan with no towers, but we really aren’t ready to go into Ulduar with anything less than a full roster, so we split into 10-mans.  I volunteered to sit out.

I also volunteered to sit on Wednesday, since I felt it was unfair to take someone’s spot when they’d spent all Tuesday night doing the “non-progression” fights that we’d cleared before.

I really didn’t mind sitting out, I was able to relax and play my paladin.  I’ve had a bit of personal stress these last couple of weeks, and I could really use a break.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there are some in the raid who are beginning to get all tangled up in my nerves.  Defeatist attitudes are not welcome in my raid.  I don’t need someone to be telling me that we suck, that we’re useless, and that we’ll never get to Yogg Saron.  I just don’t need and can’t handle that right now.

Thursday night we had several people unavailable, so I was brought in to help move on.  I didn’t feel bad this time as I wasn’t taking anyone’s spot, and it was nice to get a little bit of raiding done last week.  When I got in, several bosses were down – the only kill I’d missed that I’d never been a part of was Freya.  I got to help take out Thorim, Hodir, Ignis and Iron Council.

Ignis was a lot of fun! And we ONE-SHOTTED HIM!  On our first guild attempt! (At least I think it was our first… still, impressive!)

I also got to finally figure out why people keep calling it the “crotch pot”.

I got to be on Construct Killer duty, which was great because I got to make things explode!  Unfortunately I screwed up at one point… my crits are almost always over 5k, and since my crit chance is over 52% when raid buffed, it shouldn’t take me more than 2 or 3 hits to grab a 5k crit.  But there was one Construct I just couldn’t seem to get down.  I was getting crits, but they just weren’t doing the job.  Unfortunately I realized just a bit too late that… I was in Viper.  The only way I’m going to get off 5k+ crits in Viper is if I usually do more than 10k   Well at least I got it sorted out and dealt with next time around.

I hope I get to fill that role again!  It is always nice to have a resposiblity other than my usual “kill everything, except myself” job.

It was a lot of fun, and I was really happy with who I had in my group.  Raiding is best when you can do it with people you like!

This week I am taking an official break from raiding.  I’ve signed up as available if needed for a couple of the nights, but I’m really hoping to get the time off.  I need to get a lot of things sorted out and reorganized, so I can really buckle down.

I thought the backdrop was appropriate.

[Call in the Cavalry]!

My very first Hawkstrider!

And it is impossible for me to ride around on it without humming the Chocobo theme.

I decided to hang out with Ghugh most of the weekend.  I’m finding that the more I play him, the more I love him!  Ret Paladins are so OP.

Got him from 46 to 51 this weekend, as well as a boatload of achievements.

With the help of Bellbell of 4Haelz, I was able to take a stroll through one of my favourite dungeons (we even had a picnic!)

The strangest part of my weekend though was getting the [I Found One!] achievement on Ghugh.  I didn’t bother with any of the Noblegarden stuff (already did it on Brajana and 2 other alts).  But as I was questing through Un’goro, I stumbled upon an egg.  Why would someone put an egg here? And why wouldn’t they open it up?  Who knows!  But it was about as free as an achievement can get.

I also spent some time in Alterac Valley at 51.  Determined to get my [Ice Barbed Spear], I suffered through a 50 minute Alterac Valley war of attrition.  It was painful, as the battleground was full of level 60 Death Knights decked out with 10k HP, when little me had barely 3.5k.  But I got a boatload of achievements as well as picking up the spear, so I certainly can’t complain!

Hope your weekend was as much fun as mine!

It was a busy weekend for me!  Even though I spent it out of town, I still got some major things accomplished.

On Wednesday or Thursday I decided to start buying Nobles cards.  I added up the cost of all the ones on the AH and it was only about 7600 (full decks were going for about 7800-7900).  I managed to pick up my first 5 cards for only 4056g… not bad!

Unfortunately by Saturday I started freaking out.  There had been no Threes on the AH all day Friday… what if I couldn’t get one?  What if Sunday night came around and I only had 7 cards?

So I ended up paying a little extra for my last 3 cards, for a grand total of 7753g.  Still, not too shabby.  Left me with just over 150g to my name, but it was totally worth it!

Unfortunately, I had to switch out my Mirror of Truth for my Darkmoon Card: Greatness, leaving it paired with Grim Toll for the time being.  Yeah, having 1000AP and 300 Agility procs at the same time would be amazing… but without Grim Toll I’m down to 189 hit.

Once 3.1 hits and I’ve got to respec, I’ll probably toss a few points into Focused Aim, since it’ll apply to pet hit.  But right now I don’t mind waiting it out with Grim Toll.

When I got back into town on Sunday night, I sat down to finish off my dailies before bed.  Now that I’m poor, I feel more motivated to do my dailies, so I suppose that’s a good thing!

After I finished up, someone piped in guild chat asking if anyone wanted to run some heroics.  Sure, I was a bit sleepy, but… what the heck!  I almost never run heroics.  A few people wanted to work on their alts, so we pulled a group together and I volunteered us for Heroic Gundrak because I’d never done Gundrak before.  Managed to pick up 4 achievements as well:

• Heroic: Gundrak
  
• What the Eck?
  
• Gundrak
  
• Snakes. Why’d It Have To Be Snakes?

One thing I realized right away was that I’ve never done any regular instances or heroics since I respecced to Marksmanship.  It was different than raiding is.  mobs stay alive barely long enough for a Serpent Sting, but there aren’t really enough of them to justify Volley spam like I’m used to in Naxx.  It took a bit but I finally got back into the swing of things and had a really great time!

We also did Drak’tharon Keep afterward, which was kinda more of the same.  They’re quite similar instances and I am sure I’ll get them mixed up almost every time.

I should run more heroics.

Tuesday night can be pretty much summed up by this achievement:

Patch was our first fight of the evening and we got him down without much effort – with 16 seconds to spare!  It was a good sign, and the rest of the night went equally fast.

In fact, for once we managed to get all four wings cleared in one raid night – we went over our scheduled time by about 10 minutes, but 3 hours is pretty good, I’d say!

I finally picked up Grim Toll.  After much self debate, I decided to trade in my Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood for Grim Toll, and replace the +16 hit gem in my belt buckle to a +32 AP gem.  it’s a bit of a shuffle around, not a huge DPS increase… but it gives me more room to mess around with my hit.  I’m 9 points over now, so it’s not so bad.  And now I’m just a glove slot away from Epic!

Wednesday we didn’t have a very full roster, so we decided to hit up the last 2 bosses in Naxx and finish getting…

We had 2 volunteers sit out, since we actually had 22 people present.

We got our full 22 back together and took out Malygos in 1 shot afterwards!  It was a good couple of days.

Thursday wasn’t so good.  We had only 22 again, but all we had left for the week was Sarth.  Clearly not enough people to bother any 3D attempts… we decided to just do 2 drakes.  It was decided that the tanks needed to be switched up – our add tank and Sarth tank switched places.  I don’t know what the problem was, but we wiped several times.

Personally, I was a bit confused about why we were switching the tanks around in the first place.  We’ve spent the last few months with the same people doing the same roles and getting good at it.  I was told it was because they need to learn to do it.  Alright, I understand if we lose someone, they’ll need to learn to do it.  But that isn’t the case yet!  Why wouldn’t we play to our strengths while we still can?  Then in the event of a major change… we can force ourselves into an evening of wipes.  It just felt very… masochistic.  We didn’t even have a full 25 people to start with.  It just didn’t make sense to me.

We eventually switched back to our normal set up, brought in an extra DPS and switched one DPS for an additional healer.

Afterward we went and had our hand at TK: The Eye again, see if we could pick up another mount.  No luck!  But we did use more of a strategy this time than we did last, which made it less hectic and more interesting!

This Week in Raiding… is my weekly Saturday post where I allow myself to brag about new gear, bosses, achievements, and such.

Come back next week for another dose of epeen and QQ!