Midsummer

Clara has been sick, and we have been raiding a lot. I will post about the raiding separately.

Anyhow the Midsummer Firefest is happening, and Kuan and Viljo plan on getting all the achieves. We're many days into it already, so we'll have to do it this weekend since Clara has been sick, but Viljo is a firey mage, and wants to be Flamekeeper.

Rogue AoE part CCLXXXVI

In lieu of posting anything of substance I will merely say that I've been having a complete blast with Eeyan's newfound AoE abilities. It's so overpowered it's silly. Here he is in Magister's Terrace.



Eeyan, Teltanara, and Cemaros have been farming older content, for mounts (hence the Magister's), pets, dungeon achieves, etc. It's pretty much: Cemaros Swipe, Eeyan Fan of Knives, Telt Holy Nova, through everything. Eeyan hit Exalted with Lower City, and Revered with Keepers of Time just this evening.



I probably should have done a lot of these long ago. o well.

Ulduar 10!

Yesterday afternoon Kuan and Viljo were on the Deterrence Ulduar 10 team. It was specifically set up to be a different set of people than their normal 10 man group. And despite that it still went pretty smoothly.

We knocked out the first 7 bosses. Auriya was the last boss we killed, and I have to say I really understand why everyone is getting so frustrated with it on 25 man. It's not easy on 10 man, but it's a whole lot easier.

When we killed XT2 he dropped the Plasma Foil. Viljo was the only one interested in using it, so I got it ;D.

Also for all of this Kuan was resto and did an excellent job healing.

Scourge Chat Logs

These are too hilarious not to repost:

Scourge Chat Log #1
Scourge Chat Log #2
Scourge Chat Log #3

Arise, my Champion - if I could find you

Perhaps it was unwise of Blizzard to give Rogues an AoE ability.

Seeker

Kuanchichi just completed his 3000th non-Daily quest.



He is very happy.



This achievement sort of makes up for wiping in Ulduar for hours with an undermanned raid...

Halls of Lightning: Heroic

Tuesday evening we logged Viljo and Kuanchichi on and got immediately pulled into a half guild/half pug run of Vault of Archavon 25. It was actually surprisingly painful. But we did eventually kill both Emalon and Archavon.

After that we logged on Eeyan and Telt and looked for a group to do some sort of heroic with. We were lucky and found a tank and dps who wanted to do Heroic Halls of Lightning. We grabbed a druid for kitty dps, and off we went!

I was completely nervous. HoL, on heroic! Eeeeee! But it actually went pretty smoothly. There were a couple of deaths, but no wipes, and all the bosses died handily. Eeyan was doing over 1600 dps, which came out to be roughly 25% of the total damage. We got the shatter-proof achievement on the second fire giant boss. And we got the speed kill achievement for Loken.

Talking with the DK tank and spriest after the run it turns out both of them recently hit 80 as well. So all of us had mediocre gear but actually seem to know how to play. I was especially pleased when the tank complimented me on healing. Apparently only one other healer has been able to keep him alive while staying in during the nova on Loken. Honestly I don't see how you'd do that fight without staying in. If we stay in I can just time a Prayer of Healing to land right after the nova does and it's all good, especially with the glyph that does 20% of the initial heal as a HoT. That plus a Circle of Healing and then a few renews and the group should be good. It did tremendously help that the 3rd dps was a druid: the Nature Resist was quite necessary.

wish list

The guild leadership at Deterrence wants me to list my top 5 gear wish list from Ulduar.

Of course immediately upon finding this out, I had a personal crisis when led to Kuan getting AFK'd out of a battleground, and then today is Patch Day. So I get to guess on the Bestest Upgrades since Kuan is sitting in the Armory in his PVP gear.

Anyhow here we go! Here's my guess and I can confirm it later, before I mail the guild officer compiling the list.

25-man Ulduar On Spec
Living Flame off Razor
Wristguards of the Firetender off Ignis
Frozen Loop off Hodir
Pyrelight Circle off Ignis

Belt of the Fallen Wyrm off Razor -
note - Blue Belt of Chaos is a crafted belt from an Uld recipe drop. I want THAT.

Flare of the Heavens off Vesax (hard mode)
Wisdom's Hold off Hodir (hard mode)
Bindings of Winter Gale off Hodir (hard mode)

25-Man Ulduar Off Spec
Steamcaller's totem off FL
Quartz-studded Harness off Deconstructor
Radiant Seal off Assembly of Iron

10-Man Ulduar On Spec
Eye of the Broodmother off Razor
Pulsing Spellshield off Deconstructor
Plasma Foil off Desconstructor (look up if really an upgrade)

Aesuga, Hand of the Ardent Champion off Vesax (hard)

Frostfire bolt

I finally had a chance to talk to Swaye, one of the three people run Deterrence. He is a mage and has played one since roughly April of 2005, so he has a couple of months more experience than I do. He wanted to chat with me about my spec and gear and such.

It turns out that when I changed to fireball spec as my raid dps spec I only considered the change in dps. I completely forgot that by moving the sub tree from frost to arcane I lost 3% hit to my fire spells. Which I'm pretty sure is why I've been only mildly pleased with my dps. So Swaye was actually quite nice about pointing out that my gear didn't have the hit needed. I'm so embarassed that I completely forgot that.

Anyway I've since swapped back to frostfire bolt spec. Which I'm just as happy with, since basically no mob is going to be immune to both frost and fire at the same time. Hopefully this gives me a bit better dps.