Lo-Quality WoW

Not that I set out to get a new hat, but it just worked out that way. I was actually planning on a short WoW night since the cold has been slapping me around a bit. But any night where I get to experience a new raid instance, pick up a couple of achievements, and get a shiny new hat? Well, that’s a good night.

Started out slow though. Went over to Grizzly Hills to finish a quest or two I never got done. Naturally I had put in a LFG request for a couple heroics and a Naxx. In the middle of one of my quests, I get a whisper asking if I wanted to hit a heroic Keep. Of course, he prefaced it with a “AP/Crit?” request. For the most part I humor people when they ask for that info. The problem is, just knowing my AP and crit rating tells you what I could potentially do. It’s amazing how often I get in a PUG with someone with amazing AP and crit, yet they seriously lag in damage because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Anyway, I had run Drak’Tharon before, I even got my old hat there: King Dred’s Helm. The main reason I wanted to go there was to finish a quest but otherwise, there really wasn’t anything I was particularly looking for. For the most part, I led in dps and damage although the boomkin gave me a run for my money. At the end of it, I ended up picking up the achievements: 100 Emblems of Heroism, and Oh Novos!. Didn’t even realized I had done that many heroic instances for the first. And the second was one of those “special situation” achievements that pop up here and there. Considering that none of us discussed even getting it, it was probably more chance than anything that we got it.

That group briefly tried to figure out what other heroics we could do but it seemed for every other instance, at least one person was already locked. So we broke up and I went off to work on some Wyrmrest Accord rep. While doing that, I heard someone asking for dps for an Obsidian Sanctum 25 man. I hadn’t been there before and it’s so rare that I get a chance for a 25-man, I figured I’d sign up.

The first thing I noticed in the raid group was that we had a lot of druids. I was the 21st person and the raid already had 8 druids! Not that I mind, as long as people do their job, I don’t care what particular class they are. While waiting, I read up on OS and it didn’t seem all that bad, although like most things, reading the strategy and what happens in a fight is a bit different from experiencing it. When we finally had our 25, I took a once over on the group. Interesting mix of classes with only one other hunter. So there was a good chance of me getting any hunter loot dropping.

For a PUG, we did pretty well. Especially considering at least a half dozen people got the Emblem of Valor achievement, which told me this was their first big raid. We cleared the three mini bosss, losing a person here and there and then tackled Sartharion itself. And naturally we wiped because either people weren’t getting out of the way of the lava wave or because dps was not hitting the adds. We quickly form up, make sure everyone knows what to do now, rebuff and they kick that dragon’s butt! This of course netted me the Heroic: Besting the Black Dragonflight achievement. The tier 7 token dropped as well as my new hat, which of course I won, the Hyaline Helm of the Sniper. The helm was the first thing rolled on, and since I won it, as a matter of manners, I passed on everything else.

Took a portal back to Dalaran in time to join the last two minutes of a Wintergrasp fight. I was in there just long enough to get a couple of kills and a couple more Wintergrasp marks. Then, with the server shutdown looming, I went briefly to Stormwind to pick up some new gems for my hat and then to the Ebon Blade to get an enchantment for it. For the most part, the new hat improved everything except my hit rating. Instead of 10 points over the hit cap, I was now 5 points below. Of course there’s the debate going on as to whether the cap is still 9% or if it’s actually 8% now, but I’d rather err on the side of caution and go for the full 9%.

So all in all, I ended up with 3 new achievements, a new 25-man raid under my belt and my first epic item of item level 213. A very good night indeed.