Lurker...Dead!

Friday night was my night to lead a Kara team. We had a bit of a rough start, something came up clearing trash to Attumen, and our DPS warrior needed to leave for a couple of minutes. Two minutes turned into fifteen so we found a replacement. Just in time too, as trash respawned even before we could get back to the entry. We had one wipe on Maiden as we weren't really thinking and had the Paly tank him. Not the best idea. We switched to the Bear next go and she went down easy. One shotted everything else up to Prince. We were doing well on prince on our first go until we had an infernal land right on top of him about 1/4 second after an enfeeble, and we lost all 4 melee dps. Got him down the second go. Loots were not quite a good this run. A lot more void crystals. I did grab Fool's Bane off of Ilhoof. That allows me to switch my S1 Axe back to MH and get rid of the BBW's Paw.

Saturday evening we headed to SSC for the first time. Our first target was The Lurker Below. Had a couple of wipes, but we took him down on Try number 3. Not the best drops, but we did get Mallet of the Tides for our Main Tank, which is great. Then we moved onto Hydross. We had a lot of people who had never been here before , and this is a fight that can take a bit of getting used to. We got four tries in, and our best effort got him to 35%. So not a win, but a good go on our first attempt. We just need to make sure everyone stops dps on the phase changes, as that's what was killing us.

Sunday was catch up day for me. Did a bunch of little stuff that I needed to do. I also decided that my raiding gear was a bit to weak for PvP so I went out on bought the ghetto PvP set Seer's Linked Armor I went on the cheap for gems and enchants, as the AH was pretty barren or massively over priced yesterday. I'll recheck for some better gems during the week. But its not to bad for a starter set. With my Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph and my S1 Axe, I'm at 185 resilience, and pushing 9k health unbuffed. I lived a bit longer in BG's and when we did our 5v5 last night, I felt things went better there too. Ended up going 3-7 which for our team with our gear isn't so bad. Should be sitting on over 1000 arena points next week. Not sure what I'm shooting for at this point. A S2 Axe perhaps, or the S3 helm. I'll probably just see what I get in drops by the time I have the points and fill in the gaps the best I can.

Patch 2.4

Well Patch 2.4 is here.
And my initial impression is a positive one. Yes there are some bugs. BG's had some major issues such as realms not showing, and last night on my server, they were constantly crashing. But these bugs should be worked out soon.

Shaman changes. Overall good for Enhancement. Not the buff we were promised in PvP, but still it was something. The tremor totem change has been very nice. The Totem UI I haven't used, as I prefer my xperl frames and Yata. Instant GW is nice. The reduced CD on totems is a bit hard to notice, but still its a nice bonus. I'm missing the longer duration of the damage redution from Shamanistic Rage. In sum I'm not noticing the class changes too much, so while I was hoping for more, all in all its a gain.

AV changes. Haven't had a chance to do any premades yet. The new starting position actually is a benefit for the horde in my opinion. By starting farther back, its much harder for people to just zerg. People are forced to play some defense, and the Horde is much more likely to win in that scenario than the typical n00b zerg that I see every AV weekend.

Quel'Danas. I like it. QD has moved onto phase two, the new dailies are a nice change of pace. Sure with everyone trying to do them it can be a hassle to get your spawns, but its not to bad. The rewards are nice as well. Lots of gold, rejuv pots, scryer/aldor marks, random greens, and even a BoJ so far for me. There is a lot of traveling invloved, so I wish I had my epic flyer, but all in all im pleased

Magister's Terrace. Or Mr. T as I prefer it. Ran it for the first time last night. Pretty fun instance. Intersting boss fights even if several of them are recycled. The first two bosses went to easy as pie. The priestess was a challenge though, and we wiped a couple of times on her. Finally the Kael fight was a real pain. The phoenix really can't be meleed, as he hurts bad. Its very healing intensive as well. I was spamming CH as fast as I could during the anti grav phase to help out the resto shaman. Still we lost people. We finally downed him when I dropped my fire elemental to beat on Kael during the anti grav, and then I anhked after dying and finished him up. Very good loots for a 5 man. Looking forward to wiping on it in heroic eventually.

Maggy Downed

Our second week of 25 man raiding saw us scheduled for Gruul again. High King Maulgar, was a pain as we kept losing add tanks. Took us 3 tries before we got our act together and downed him, but we then proceeded to one shot Gruul. I got Gronn Stitched Girdle to replace Shattrath's Champion Belt. No Dragonspine Trophy though :(

That took a bit over an hour so we decided to move on to the revamped Magtheridon. Dps was great as we took out the 5th channeller right as Maggy broke free. WE did have a bit of a suprise, as we thought the abbysals had been removed. Our locks reacted quickly and feared/banished them. Everything was going smoothly, got the first blast wave, clicked when somehow maggy started to beat on the druid off tank. He started cleaving though melee dps, and in the confusion we missed the blastwave call and wiped. Well. It was out first try at him as a raid, we get one mulligan, and used it to well. Second Go everything went perfect. All Channelers down just as he releases. Tank Picks him up, and we go to town. Our clickers handled their jobs. ( Only one team needed now woot!), and we burned him down fairly quickly. Boss Down, 25 raid members up. Flawless victory.

We are raiders!

Saturday was our first 25 man raid. That's a pretty big step for characters and a guild that didnt exist 2 months ago. We downed the High King and the Dragonkiller, although both took 2 tries. With that success bouying our spirits and plenty of raid time left we decided to try Void Reaver.
We cleared trash, and had a few struggles doing that, but nothing to bad, then we had a go at our first T5 boss. First try didn't go to well, so we regrouped and tried again. Got him to 10% but couldnt take him down. Gave it another couple of tries, but we just couldnt keep enough people up to down him. Still all things considered it was a hell of a shot, and I'm confident we will take him down next time.

Growing

Our little guild is growing up. We are running two Kara teams this week, and still having to put people on back up. < Fire and Blood > is up to 87 members, 52 of which are 70's.(This does include a number of alts.) We have come a long ways in 2 short months since a half dozen of us rerolled level one toons.

I led last nights Kara Run. Well led in the sense that I had the RL icon and was Master Looter. I let the Main Tank handle the marks and pulls and order the CC that he wanted. It was a pretty smooth run, We didnt manage to clear everyone in the alloted raid time, but we one shotted everyone up to Chess. It will take a bit more gearing up for some folks before we are doing full clears in 3 hours. Loot was great. 8 bosses and no void crystals. Not everyone got something, but most did.

I got very lucky with drops. Attumen left me Stalker's War Bands,Moroes was wearing Edgewalker Longboots, and Maiden dropped Gloves of Quickening The mail items no one else wanted, so even though they aren't optimal, they are better than my blues. Our DPS druid didn't want the boots, so I took them ahead of the Druid tank, as they were a large upgrade for me.

So three bosses, three upgrades for me. I'm feeling a bit greedy, even though no one else was remotely intersted in the mail. So what should drop as we are clearing to Opera? Formula: Enchant Boots - Surefooted . There are two other enchanters so we all /roll, 98 for me. My enchanting is only at 364, so I offered to pass if either of them could use it now. But both were much farther away from 370 than I was. So by this time I'm almost hoping that nothing else drops for me. Opera is Red Riding Hood. Big Bad Wolf's Paw drops. I really need a weapon upgrade. I was main handing Gladiator's Cleaver which is more than suffiecent at my gear level, but I was still off-handing Mag'hari Fury Band No one was intersted in it so I gladly took it by default. Luckily the rest of the drops from there on out went to other people. So 15 badges, one formula, and four item upgrades on the run. A very good evening.

Kara Day 2

Curse you Netherspite. Sure you went down easier than George Michael at an interstate rest area, but you choose today to finally drop Skulker's Greaves? 6 months of clearing Kara on Bannonn and I never saw them. First clear on Baelor and they drop. Why is this upsetting. Because just hours earlier Quagmirran dropped Midnight Legguards, and I'd just spend 500 gold gemming and patching them up. So I passed Netherspite's pants to the rogue. *cries*

Day Two of Kara was great, we swapped in a few people who we had on backup Saturday. Two of them new recruits, who were past Kara gear wise, so that helped a lot. But Still one shotting everything in the seconf half of Kara, on the guilds first run is pretty impressive. I see a lot of really good players coming into < Fire and Blood > and it wont be long before we are into the 25 mans. When we rerolled 2 months ago, I never though we'd prrogress this fast and grow like we have. Its extremely gratifying to see.

Karazhan

< Fire and Blood > had their first Kara run today. We did extremely well. We oneshotted Attumen, and Moroes, before running into a bit of trouble on Maiden. That was more due to make up though. 5 Melee and only 1 dispeller. Took as a couple of wipes before we downed her. Opera was Oz and we one shotted that easily as well. Curator was our optimistic goal for the day, and we downed him just after the second evocate. I'm extremely proud of our guild. I know others have done it faster but under 2 months from rerolling to clearing half of Kara is extremely satisfying.