Lo-Quality WoW

As we head into October, Brewfest hits in Azeroth. And among other things, it marks the fact that we are coming up on the anniversary of when achievements were added to WoW. Why do I remember that? Because when achievements came out, there was a big uproar concerning the What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been achievement, specifically the ones necessary for the Brewmaster, and even more specifically, the Brew of the Month. Why? Because like myself, many people didn’t join the Brew of the Month club because we thought it was a nice, but unnecessary item and would probably still think that way if there wasn’t an achievement related to it.

Now for my hunter, I actually might miss out on the “Brewmaster” title, I just wasn’t as diligent on my dailies for Brewfest as I should have been. I did rack up the Direbrewfest, Down With The Dark Iron, Have Keg, Will Travel, Strange Brew, The Brewfest Diet, and Drunken Stupor achievements. The last one was funniest since I got it completely on accident when I missed a jump trying to get down to the docks in Stormwind Harbor. Fortunately, I had earned Does Your Wolpertinger Linger? last year and now I mainly have to get enough tokens to get the clothes necessary for the Disturbing the Peace achievement, but it’ll be a tight squeeze to accomplish.

Of course killing Coren Direbrew was being repeated often. Especially with several of us having multiple lvl 80 characters, that gives us quite a bit of chance to repeat it over and over and over. The fight itself, while Coren has been raised to lvl 80, isn’t all that difficult. We managed to defeat him even when we didn’t have a designated healer. Considering I was the tank as my warrior on a couple of those, it made it dicey at times but still doable.

Haven’t been doing much in terms of Heroics lately. I do like the changes to the Trial of Champion, namely the fast forward option and removing the need for everyone to run out once the auto-dismount happens. Considering those were my two main complaints about that instance, it was nice to see it corrected to an extent. And I also ran with a group last night to do the Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme. A slightly overpowered group in the first place, we lucked out with excellent mob spawn placement. But when we killed off Infinite Corrupter and the Reins of hte Bronze Drake I was all excited. Until I realized everyone else had passed. Then I found out that the drop rate of those were increased to 100%. The things I miss when I haven’t done an instance in months.

Ulduar 25-man was done with Destinis Lords again. I was debating going since as far as I can tell, they raid one night a week and just go as far as they can and I’m hoping to take out some of the later bosses in Ulduar. I’m sure glad I did.

Again, the three PKTs from last week made it for this one. And because they were still short people, managed to get our retribution paladin to come along. She was worried that she was under-geared but we convinced her to come along anyway. She was also worried about the fights since she hadn’t been there and wasn’t on vent but between myself and our shaman, we were able to give her tips on the guild channel during each fight.

Flame Leviathan was cake. Then at XT, we handled it better even though someone keeps stunning the bomb bots and it’s getting annoying. But more importantly, Twisted Visage dropped and I was practically drooling. And with bated anticipation, I won it and finally managed to get my Epic achievement, which I had begun to believe I would never get. I even beat out another hunter for it. Of course he mentioned that he somehow never rolls over a 20 in raids. And he didn’t! I think his rolls were 17, 12, 15, and 13. I feel sorry for that guy.

Razorscale went well, although again she took to the air and we didn’t ground her until the third try with the harpoons. Our pally died in that fight although I’m not sure how. I think she got stuck in the middle of one of the fire areas and didn’t get out fast enough. Ignis went well this time, although our pally died again and was getting a little down about it. But she had been in the hot pot at the time and the incoming heal had been interrupted by a flame jet.

Kologarn again took a bit to kill but it went better this time. I know one part I was slow running from the eyebeams and by the time I had run to almost the bottom of the stairs before it dispersed and I was down to less than 1k hp. In fact the raid leader called for some healer to catch me since he saw my health was low and he couldn’t heal me. (He didn’t know I had run outside.) We did wipe at least once and I died in an annoying way. We said to wipe and turned to run. And again, just as I was getting to the bottom of the stairs, Kologarn did his stone grip thing on me and since all the healers had run outside, myself and the other two caught up died. But at least we finally got pass him on this run.

At this point our shaman logged off, but he had been dps on this run so it wasn’t too bad. We went for the Assembly of Iron next. This one went relatively well. Or at least I know we ended up defeating them since I ended up with the Iron-studded Mantle shoulder piece. Fortunately it didn’t break my gear set bonus. In fact, it was the fact that it would have broken the other hunter’s set bonus that he declined it and I got it by default.

Next up was Auriaya. However by this time a healer and another dps had dropped out and we never refilled any of the slots. Going into that fight missing 3 people is a pain. In this case, we usually were able to finish off her adds but would die shortly thereafter. We thought part of the problem was the tanks either getting mobbed from the start or an off-tank pulling an extra add by accident. So it was decided we’d use a hunter trap to pull aggro.

This is something interesting from this run. Although I’ve only done two runs with them and our shaman Cavaricci only has done one more than me, we’ve sort of become default people for call-outs. “Key, go place the trap.” “Cav, heroism please.” Which was interesting since I wasn’t the only hunter and our shaman wasn’t the only shaman in the group. In fact I had to point out that the PKT shaman had left earlier when the raid leader kept asking him for the heroism.

Anyway, there was the callout and because Auriaya was almost to the spot they wanted the trap, I had to rush out there, drop the trap, and then rush out of there. “Run, quick run back!” I even switched into Aspect of the Cheetah briefly to get me out of the way. Of course, in the middle of my running back there was a yell of “you forgot the misdirect!” Well, considering I was asked to go do the trap pull at the drop of a hat and thus, wasn’t even sure who my focus was set on for the Misdirection, I figured it was best not to do anything. It didn’t matter in the long run. While we were able to get further this time, we still lost people to the Feral Defender or when her fear caught our healers mid-cast.

And while we didn’t get as far as I liked, we got further than last time. Guildmates got to experience some of the fights and our paladin and myself managed to get some upgrades out of it as well. So pretty successful from a PKT point of view. We’ll see how this weeks run goes.

I also managed to slip into an Ulduar 10-man as well. This one was pure PUG. At first, the raid leader asked if I wanted to come along for a “quick run” of Ulduar. This worried me since most times a “quick run” of Ulduar means just hitting Flame Leviathan but he said we’d go as far as we could.

While I’ve done all three vehicles in the 25-man, I had only done the siege tank in 10-man so I decided this time to start with a chopper. So I stood there for awhile while they filled out the raid slots. Then another guy comes in and waits by the other chopper. We’re just standing there when I suddenly see my aggro flash warning. What? I then glance at my screen and some mobs had somehow come up the ramp and killed the other guy while he was standing there, and since I was the nearest, I was next. Fortunately, a lifetime of cowardice had me prepared and a feign death activated before they got to me while I called out a warning to the rest of the raid. Thus I had an excellent view as the mobs turned, destroyed the other chopper and then run back down the ramp.

Fortunately the chopper respawned, although we still don’t know how he pulled aggro. FL went pretty well. I managed to get the Pyrite Infuser by beating out a warrior for it, although I let him have it later since he was under the hit cap while I am a bit over it.

Then it was on to Razorscale. Again, this was pretty smooth, especially considering we were a PUG, although I think whoever was running the harpoons brought her down a little too soon each time. I know at least once it was with a sentinel still up and another it seemed like the mobs had just appeared when we hear the warning that she was coming down.

XT also died in record time, in fact XT was being hit hard so fast that as soon as we hit the first heart phase, I spent the rest of the fight picking off bomb bots. XT would get out of the heart phase and almost immediately back into it and then spawn more bomb bots and such. We were just sending out that much damage!

Kologarn was next and that fight went pretty well. Although I seemed to be the target of the eyebeams quite frequently. I would run back to my spot from fleeing one eyebeam and then have to run around almost immediately again when I got retargeted.

Auriaya on 10-man went a lot better than the 25-man fight. I think we got her down on our first try. We even killed the Feral Defender a few times, not enough to get the achievement but enough that we no longer had to worry about the damage it was dealing.

Then it was on to Hodir and here’s where things went horribly wrong. I know at least two people hadn’t done it before and I don’t know if anyone else didn’t but didn’t say anything or what. But in this case, we had people either standing underneath the icicles falling or not moving fast enough to get on the ice after it falls. I kept having to switch from dps to chipping someone out of those ice blocks.

After a few tries it was decided to try Assembly of Iron since it’s usually easier. Usually. Our off-tank had trouble getting Stormcaller Brundir out of the rune of power when it was under him and that would mean that his chain lightning devastated us. Also, the healer doing raid heals wasn’t able to keep up. We tried several different method but kept wiping. Then on vent I hear “sorry guys, I have to leave, it’s 8a.m. here.” East Coast guy apparently since I was only at 2.m. Either way, we called it and I got some sleep.

We’ll see how this week goes. I’m hoping for at least on Onyxia run and maybe a few Vautl of Archavon. Oh that’s right, forgot to mention that among the staff and shoulder upgrades, I finally have enough Emblem of Triumph to pick up the Dexterous Brightstone Ring. Hooray for upgrades!