Lo-Quality WoW

It’s been a busy week as we start heading into actual raiding.  And since one of the things they wanted is to have us geared as much as possible, I’ve been trying to play as much as I can, which still isn’t quite that much.  So quite a bit has happened and I may jump around a bit.

So the night after Tol Barad, the Alliance didn’t have it so we went to heroics.  The first we did was Vortex Pinnacle, which is pretty much the only dungeon I have done on normal.  For the most part, the heroic version didn’t give us a problem.  I got my Heroic: Vortex Pinnacle achievement and Lightningflash out of it, so it was good.  Then we did Grim Batol, which wasn’t as good. 

Basically Grim Batol is the dungeon everyone more or less hates at the moment.  The first boss, General Umbriss, spent almost an hour kicking our ass.  We had to adjust our strategy several times before we finally downed him and I got the Skardyn’s Grace out of it.  Then it was Forgemaster Throngus turn to kick our ass, which is where we stopped for the night.  But I did get enough rep to get Terrath’s Signet of Balance, so it wasn’t a complete waste, just frustrating. 

The next night I was on early enough to participate in the Tol Barad battle.  And while I did get the Tol Barad All-Star achievement, but we lost Tol Barad and we were back to heroics.  We did Shadowfang Keep, which was interesting in that I never really did it at an appropriate level with my Hunter.  And the new heroic mode did give us a few hard moment and even more wipes.  Enough that between the previous night and that night, they were wondering just how many Fish Feast I had on me. 

However, other than a hilarious moment of me getting stuck in the fountain, and learning about the “teleport out of dungeon” feature that I didn’t know existed, the run was difficult but doable.  I got my Heroic: Shadowfang Keep achievement and that’s all I cared about. 

The next couple of night I got on late so I missed out on guild runs so I worked on daily quests and other things.  I had also finally picked up the Collector’s Edition of Cataclysm, so I finally got my Lil’ Deathwing and Collector’s Edition: Lil’ Deathwing achievement.  I also somehow managed to get the Digger, Beware of the ‘Unbeatable’? Pterodactyl, Therazane, Cataclysmically Superior, Coming Down the Mountain, Loremaster of Cataclysm, Journeyman in Archaeology, and I had It in My Hand achievements.  Even picked up the Acorn of the Daughter Tree while I was at it. 

A few nights after that, we finally got back into Tol Barad.  And by now we had all studied the fight so we generally knew what to do.  We still did wipe once, when the other tank didn’t taunt at the right time, killing our team.  (It’s very obvious when everyone in group 2 suddenly dies.)  However the second try did the trick.  We got our Pit Lord Argaloth achievement, which was nice to get our first Cataclysm raid fight under our belt.  Unfortunately all the drops were PvP stuff that nobody wanted but it was nice to get 10 of us all in one fight.

After that, we did a quick run through heroic Throne of Tides.  Not as many mis-steps on that run though and I actually studied while I was doing it.  Actually enough so that when my Heroic: Throne of the Tides achievement, the tank was competely surprised that it was my first time there.  It also gave me enough rep to pick up the Softwind Cape from the Earthen Ring.  Also got the Illustrious Grand Master of First Aid achievement, just because I could. 

I know there was another Grim Batol run somewhere in all that, mainly because I remember feeling so happy to get past the first two bosses, the third was relatively easy but then wiping repeatedly on Erudax.  And that’s after switching through two PUG dps, where we dropped both because of poor dps.  Especially on Erudax, the other dps was able to interrupt so we set him on one of the mobs, but by the time myself and the other dps killed ours and turned back, the mob was barely touched!

By this time, we had decided to start serious raiding and that people with the highest ilvl would get preference.  So fortunately I was on early enough to try a completely PUG random heroic, which ended up being Lost City of Tol’vir.  Which, as most PUGs are, was rough.  First we had a Death Knight who would repeatedly attack our CC’d mobs or attack a mob the tank wasn’t attacking.  And then he would get mad that the healer wasn’t keeping him alive.  So he left and we lucked out on getting a better dps. 

By this time, other guildmates had gotten on and they wanted to try a guild heroic run.  Fortunately, we were on Siamat by then.   Unfortunately, we wiped repeatedly there, mainly because almost every time one of us would get knocked off the building.  However, I got my Heroic: Lost City of the Tol’vir and then I was immediately off to join my guildmates. 

And to our horror, we ended up in Grim Batol.  With a PUG healer.  A Priest healer who insisted on using Flash Heal the most, which is rather mana inefficient.  Our tank was spamming his Rune Tap so much that he accounted for 25% of the heals on the run!  But we pushed on through.  I got a Ring of Dun Algaz from Forgemaster Throngus, which replaced one of my lowest ilvl items. 

Actually, one of the things I forgot to mention was I was paired up with our main Hunter, which we haven’t done for awhile.  It’s kinda funny because for a bit we were getting our CC a bit mixed up.  Fortunatley, we both know our job and our class abilities pretty well so we got sorted out in short order.  Which paled in comparisson to the fact that we got our Heroic: Grim Batol achievement!  I also got the related quest done and got the Eradicator’s Bracers, which was great since my previous wrist armor was my lowest ilvl item at 288.   

So feeling pretty good we then got ready for our raid.  Which didn’t happen.  I think I mentioned it before but most of our guild is Australian and with the flooding going on over there, I’m guessing a few people couldn’t make it because of related issues.  So we decided to run another heroic.  However, by then all our tanks had left so we had to PUG one.

We ended up doing Throne of the Tides.  And this was an interesting run in that he more or less said “go CC whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me”.  But then again, he did his job so it wasn’t like he wasn’t backing his confidence up.  Enough so that he was “so do you guys want the achievements?” and we didn’t even blink.  We did get the Old Faithful achievement but we screwed up while trying to get Prince of Tides achievement. 

And then came the most ironic comment.  During the Ozumat fight, all of us died except for the tank, who managed to defeat him.  Our tank then said “thanks guys, I really appreciate running with a competent group for once.”  Considering I know he was sort of surprised when I would go and trap certain mobs without being prompted, or that the time our healer dropped that one of our other dps immediately switched to healing mode smoothly, I’m assuming he was being serious rather than fastidious.

And my personal stupidity.  Now the drops from Ozumat happened to include a Wentletrap Vest.  I had however, just bought the Vest of the True Companion right before this instance, enchanted and gemmed it.  So I was kicking myself at the drop and we ended up disenchanting it.  Then we got out and I realized, that even though I had enchanted and gemmed it, I could have refunded the Vest!  So I was really kicking myself then! 

And that more or less catches me up for the past week.  Hopefully we’ll see everyone on and we can try some of the full raid instances.  I’m still kicking myself though.  Repeatedly.