Late Friday night a couple of us were online and bored. After throwing out a couple of options someone suggested a good old fashion drunk raid, and the responsibility was passed onto me to decide where to go. After some thinking, I decided that we’d finally put to rest an old bugbear that’s haunted us since 3.1: Yogg-Saron.

You might recall from my 2009 in review meme response that my biggest disappointment from the previous year was that the guild never killed Yogg-Saron, mostly because our raid organization was a little more than slightly askew back them. Now, months behind, we were going to do something about it. The plan was to skip worrying about achievements, just go in, kill Yogg, and get out before we all passed out from lateness and alcohol poisoning.

And thus, with a gin and tonic in one hand (yes, I have the drinking taste of an elderly British colonialist) and a mouse in the other, I headed into the titanic prison for the first serious raid in a long time.

This rules were simple, generally following the old Naxx rules: socials after boss kills, when a green dropped whoever won the disenchanted mats could instruct someone else to drink, if you died you drank, if you were b-rezzed you had to finish your drink before you accepted it, if you looted a gray armor/weapon you drank.

We took a pretty direct path, rolling over Flame Leviathan, downing the hard-mode XT somewhat by accident, dropping Kologarn while attempting to solo tank it and skip adds, then killing Auriaya and Hodir (drink if you forgot frost resist gear! … and everyone drinks) in short order. On Thorim we accidentally did the hard mode, even while splitting the group down the middle regardless of how much dps was on either side.

Nordicslayer, usually a dps warrior, and he of not-so-Undying fame, tanked the hallway. Towards the end someone warns him not to stand in the runes being cast and he calls out in vent, half-panicked, “no one said there’d be voidzones!!” He was playing to his reputation, but definitely one of the funnier moments of the night.

The funniest, hands down, though was in Freya’s room. At the entrance, someone of course let go the guild motto of “It’ll only take twenty minutes!” We all laugh and start clearing. Finally, after slogging through all the trash and a somewhat messy job on Freya an achievement pops up. Con-speed-atory, what the hell is that? We all click it and the description comes up: “Defeat Freya within 20 minutes of the first creature you kill in the Conservatory of Life in 10-player mode.”

It actually took 20 minutes. I had to excuse myself so I could go convulse with laughter in the other room. I almost lizzed a little.

Once we got to Mimiron, one of the warriors dc’d and I brought in Falowin to replace him. We engaged Mimiron and were doing great until phase 3 when a shockwave finished off three melee too slow to get out of the way. Thankfully, we probably had twice the raid dps we needed and easily dropped him.

Then is was down to Vezax who was mostly a joke. By this point I was sporting a fantastic buzz and really enjoying the colors and lighting. In short, my tanking was getting somewhat sloppy. But, I was having a great time.

And then we walked over to Yogg-Saron, ran in, and in a huge clusterfrak wiped spectacularly. Like someone flipping a switch, I immediately sobered up in nascent panic.

My dumb, drunken idea was to solo tank it, and that generally worked with a little finesse. By the third attempt I had managed to harness what little buzz remained, allowing me to slow down time and dance among the green clouds under Sara. No one tripped any extra clouds aside from myself right off the bat and we pushed it to Phase 2 nice and clean. Then we moved fluidly as a group, slaying tentacles like a Lovecraftian gardener, and the melee hopped into the brain room when the portals appear. Unlike the first attempt when half the melee couldn’t find a portal and then those that did eventually came our mind controlled, this time they maximized dps on the brain and came out ready to go back in.

The time between brain attacks was minimal because dps was blazing fast, and before I knew it we were on phase 3. I quickly remembered what little I knew about the phase and attempted to pick up all the guardians while keeping my back to Yogg when possible. Falowin counted off health remaining while I jumped into a sanity well and panicked over the flocking numbers of guardians. Suddenly a wave of calm washed over me when the numbers hit the single digits, and finally the Beasts with a Million Maws slumped over. I had killed a god. I was like a Ghostbuster.

Anyway, it was a great night. We had lots of drunken fun, managed to snag a (sadly and hugely late) first kill for the guild, and scored a lot of shards for the guild bank. Most of all it was laid back and truly enjoyable. Something I don’t really get often in the high stress, progression-esque 25mans.

Now, back to the hard modes.

So there we were, in the mountains. Ulduar, to be precise. The mission was to continue our lockout from two weeks ago and finally finish the damn place once and for all. As I have recounted in the past, our history in that place is a bit checkered. Between the endless weeks of attempts to kill Thorim, and the most hellish night ever on Vezax, we hadn’t even seen Yogg in a 25man context.

That was all going to change however.

Actually, no, I lie. No change yet. Instead, true to form we headed into the Conservatory of Life first to knock off one of the two Keepers we needed to drop to head into the basement. “20 minutes, tops!” the rallying cry went out. Ahem.

Once we were done with the six or so wipes we suffered in that room we then one-shot Freya. I tanked all three of the elementals, which might have been a bad idea. Snaplasher still hits for a ton, so sadly I needed to bubble and beg Pain Suppressions for those moments.

Clearly we were more interested in just brute forcing our way through the trash. Sadly, being a tier and a half ahead doesn’t give you as much currency with trash as you’d think it would. Once we actually, you know, coordinated a bit on the pulls, and used some (ahem) CC, the pulls were obviously a lot smoother. Also, it helps when I don’t assume Demo is DC’d (seriously, if we go 20 seconds without him saying anything in vent, it’s safe to assume something is wrong) and pull a different mob nanoseconds before he charges after one of his own choosing.

Mimiron was similarly choppy. It took us a while to get down the hallway because someone started up the tram before everyone was on board, and left myself and the healer contingent behind to rot on the platform. Once we actually grouped up and started the fight, despite warning vociferously about the Shockwave/Nova thing, people still died to it. It’s a ten minute long fight, so I hope they thought about while they did while hugging the floor.

FINALLY after about two hours (two Keepers in two hours! arrgh) we finally got down to Vezax’s room. Cleared out the trash with a liberal application of CC and coordination, and set up for the big guy himself. Interrupt rotations were assigned: three groups of three interrupters basically ordered to get their interrupts off as soon as possible. Everyone is pumped to go…

And then Demo DC’d for 10 minutes. Le sigh.

Alright, well, then he got back. Ok, show time, let’s do this.

First Searing Flames comes up and I’m watching the cast bar and suddenly time slows down as eat decimal on the countdown begins to reduce. Nines become eights, and the numbers to the left of the decimal point get smaller. Oh god, flashbacks. A cloud of red surrounds my field of vision. The blood drains from my face. All I can hear over the ringing in my ears are the screams of pain and horror as a wave of Searing Flames washes over the raid.

Flashbacks. What the flying feck just happened?

Next cast–ok–that was a blip.

Another flame sears us all. Oh god. Interrupters–DO SOMETHING. Anything!

Eventually, Vezax has the compassion to put us down.

Once I’m down having a nervous breakdown on vent, we regroup and lined back up in front of the boss. We rush back in and start going through the motions. First interrupt, group one is up. They nail it. Group two next. Next flames is cast, and interrupted. I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s going to be ok.

We unfortunately wiped on that attempt, cause a few folks didn’t know the deal with Shadow Crashes and mana loss, so burnt out early or got burned up early. Either way, lost a lot of dps early and wiped at 3.6%. Gandy, one of the rogues, actually evasion-tanked Vezax from like 7% to 4%, holding threat only with a wave of the pigtails. Pretty awesome.

Alright, we got it this time. Everyone lines up, charges in. Interrupts go flying. Finally, finally, Vezax drops.

That night the top alliance guild on the server got the server first for Yogg+0. Interesting juxtaposition.

Last night was messier than I would have preferred. We started off with VOA25 and burnt down the three guys in there pronto, mostly scoring some pvp crap. Then we hopped over to Coliseum and started to make our way through it.

Beasts went down somewhat okay, but more people died to silly stuff than I’d like. Jaraxxus was a huge cluster-you-know-what. Two dps pulled off of the DK tank and got killed, and a few others bit it from standing in fires or the incinerate AOEs. The entire attempt was a slow attrition on a ranks and I saw the specter of an enrage wipe looming ahead. We probably downed Jaraxxus with less than a minute left on the enrage timer. Sloppy, sloppy kill.

For Faction Champs, we are basically still learning the fight, and it’s pretty difficult so I’m not going to offer any criticisms of our performance. We did kill them all in probably one of the more epic boss fights I’ve ever done. I think at the end of it were were looking at about 11 people left standing.

The order I put forward (and I’m open to suggestions on this) was burn down the priest first, then the druid. The holy pally was being handled by a rogue, so we skipped her and downed the enhance shammy next. Then the warrior (who I hate), dk, and rogue. Back to the pally, then hunter, shadow priest, and warlock.

I spent most of the fight following around the shaman, taunting him when possible, and cutting down his totems. My main goal was to keep him from getting a windfury proc and one-shotting a healer. I used shield tosses and Arcane Torrent to contribute to the healer burn. After the shaman was dead I shifted attention to the melee, trying to keep them occupied and off the squishies.

Like I said, pretty epic battle, and definitely a kill we earned. Thankfully the Champs coughed up the Juggernaut’s Vitality, which puts me at 39.1k unbuffed health. Delish.

Speaking of gear, I’m having a huge issue with hit rating right now. I’ve been eagerly gobbling up 245 gear, but in doing so I’ve been steadily losing hit. Earlier last month I was capped at 263 on the dot, and now I’m at a measly 108. To remedy this I can add 53 with the T9.45 legguards I’ll be getting in 8 emblems. I might have to enchant my weapon with Accuracy too. Considering the threat nerf we’re getting in 3.2.2, I really don’t want to take my chances with suddenly being so far under the hit cap.

But I digress! So after Champs we started up Twins, which was new to some people… with predictable consequences. First attempt was marked by people dying to Vortexes (I so badly want to call them “vortices”) and Twin Pacts going off. Part of that was me being a huge idiot and calling out during a Lightbane Twin Pact, “Everyone grab light and get Lightbane!!” I think I confused the hell out of people and that was not a bubble sundered.

Of course it also says something about the raiders that they didn’t have the critical thinking to recognize I screwed the pooch on those instructions and compensate. One guy even said “What? I just do what I’m told.” Great ‘tude champ. Yer gonna go far.

So first attempt on Twins was a wipe. Second time we were doing well, but somehow it all went to hell towards the end. The DK tank bought it and I ended up tanking the two of them in the center at like 30%. Somehow we lucked out and didn’t have anymore Twin Pacts, and I somehow managed to hold both through a Vortex. It was pretty crazy, but we got them down.

Then the ground fell out from under us and we got to finally face Anub as a 25man raid… and I totally dropped the ball. I didn’t do my due diligence on this guy, neglecting to look up strategies while thinking that it would be a carbon copy of the 10man incarnation. It wasn’t. The enrage timer is much, much tighter and requires a different approach.

Too late did we realize that having dps focus down both Burrower groups each above-ground phase was a bad idea. We spent about three attempts wiping that way, and only on the last one (declared as such because a lot had to scram after) did we obviously have the right approach. We pushed it to phase 3 easily, but then wiped because the DK is squishier than I am. I’m probably going to have to take Anub from him when that phase starts.

At least I know we can easily kill him tonight. A one-shot hopefully. Assuming everyone shows up.

After that disappointing conclusion to the raid we headed over to Uld10 to continue the Hard Mode Party. Our main goal, as you can imagine, was I Choose You, Steelbreaker, which had eluded us last time we tried it.

This time we had the same issue at the start, people didn’t realize Fusion Punch left a dot that needed to be dispelled, so when I blew up and the DK took over he was killed pretty quickly by being falcon punched to death.

The second attempt we cleaned that up but didn’t have enough dps to down Steelbreaker… although we definitely had the wrong approach by bringing me back to life and attempting to do a second tank switch. That just gave Steelbreaker another chunk of health and more damage to boot. To fix the strategy we had one of the healers go dps (so 2 healer, 6 dps) and we resolved to let the DK blow up if that’s what was going to happen.

So the fight starts, we hit phase 3 (side note: the three sweetest words in the English language are “ fades”) and I get my Overwhelming Power. I pop wings, go to town and at 10 secs on my meltdown the DK taunts and I bright for a safe distance. I explode, get a brez, and settle in behind Steelbreaker to do some measly dps and take over Cleansing duty.

At about 10 seconds on the DK’s Meltdown, Steelbreaker coughs up his purples.

I think tonight we’re going to follow up Coliseum with working on the Freya hard mode.

My favorite season has unofficially drawn to a close. My condolences to everyone who has to shuffle back to school/college/what have you.

BWL. To celebrate the end of summer, along with the demise of Door Boss, I put together a BWL raid on Friday night. It was mostly an achievement run to tick off another requirement towards the Classic Raider achievement, but I also wanted to get the Elementium smelting book for Cendra (to be my reliable Elementium smelter) and collect any ore that would be kind enough to drop. Unfortunately, only one Elementium ore dropped.

We hit a funny bug on Razorgore. Apparently when his MC drops off during a switch, if he has nothing in close range to aggro, he explodes and wipes the raid. This happened twice until we figured out what the deal was. After that I spent the encounter baby-sitting him, and tossing a Hand of Reck on him when MC fell off.

The last time we did BWL we only had four people so Vael was pretty much a no-go. People blew up way too early, and we were still in Naxx gear so we weren’t putting out quite as much damage as we do now. With an additional four people it was no contest. Although of course I still blew up.

It was a fun raid overall, and I walked out with the aforementioned new piece of Ore (bringing me to 5 total), along with the Elementium Reinforced Bulwark, and the Judgement Gloves (4/8 Judgement, now!).

We attempted Heroic TOC 10man last night, but that was a bit of a snafu. DPS was good, but we didn’t have a bloodlust and we kept having Icehowl come out when the worms were at 10-20%. We need to be about 30 seconds faster than we were, which is a pain. I think we can do it, just need a little more gear, a better group makeup, or maybe get fancy with two healers and six dps.

One thing that I think helped healing a bit was we’d start the fight with the DK tanking Gormok, and holding him to four stacks of Impale. Then when I taunted off him, I’d also give him a BOP to knock off his stacks. I’d then hold Gormok to four stacks, and the DK would taunt off me and I would Divine Shield + Divine Sacrifice to drop my stacks and ease up the healing for the closing stretch.

It was annoying that our execution was pretty well-tuned but we just couldn’t kill stuff fast enough. If not for the timed releases we’d be able to do it. But, that’s the point, eh? A challenge to rise to.

Uld10 Hardmodes. After our faceplant in TOC we headed over to Ulduar to stomp our some hard modes for our Rusted Proto Drakes. First one of the night was Orbit-uary which after an introductory wipe we killed it easily the second time. I’m proud to report that I did about 40% of the dps, basically standing still as much as possible and keeping my 10 stack up the entire time. It probably doesn’t hurt I’ve got a lot of 245 pieces to boost my dps.

We then burnt through Heartbreaker and cleared trash to the Iron Council. After downing Molgeim last pretty easily last week we wanted to try our hand at Steelbreaker last. We put in about three attempts before a couple of people had to ditch due to lateness, but honestly it was very easily. The only thing that screwed us up was the first time we were in phase 3 I exploded and killed the other tank (didn’t realize I needed to run for it) and then on our last attempt the tank switch went flawlessly, but then the DK got nuked by three ticks of Fusion Punch. I think I might have been coddling the healers with my self-cleanses.

Playing the auction game a bit. Lastly, in a non-raiding note, I’ve found a new source of enjoyment to the game being a Jewelcrafting tycoon. Once having overcome my crippling laziness, I started buying raw epic gems off the AH and cutting them for resale. Business is ramping up but I’ve already made a few thousand gold, which is pretty nice. I’m attempting to be super careful about not overposting, like only doing three at a time of each cut so I don’t have too many up.

Right now I’m buying the raw gems for about 150-170 gold and then reposting cuts of 210-230, so a slow but steady profit. I find that Bold Cardinal Rubies are selling best right now, but only because I seem to be the only one cutting them at the moment. Today should be a pretty good day for sales with all the raiding and upgrading going on.

I received a foreboding suggestion this weekend:

Let’s go for the rusted proto-drake.

Um, okay, that’s an interesting idea. Sure, we haven’t kill Yogg, but I can’t imagine only one Keeper up would be that much more difficult… right? Oh, we’re screwed.

So that odyssey began last night. And by odyssey, I mean “thing we should have been doing two months ago.” We formed up at normal raid time and entered Ulduar determined to start the arduous process of banging out the various hard modes that make up Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10).

Nuke from Orbit

First on the list would be FL with 3 Towers up. We’ve done this on 25man and it really wasn’t much of any contest. We launched two people at the start, a warlock and ele shaman. They bloodlusted and burnt down the turrets causing a shutdown in record time. I keep a 10 stack of Pyrite up the entire fight and ended up pulling 126k dps. Very, very easy.

Heartbreaker

We actually already had this one, but a few were itching for the Aesir’s Edge so we decided to do it again. I tanked XT on the northeast scrap pile and just enjoyed working through my rotation. On the first tantrum I did a bubble+div sac to take some slack off the healers and then Hand of Reckoning’d him at the last second of his cast bar and cancelled bubble to repick up aggro.

During the fight the warlock actually DC’d, but the healers kept him alive to the point that when he reconnected a minute or two later he was able to jump back into dpsing. The only hairy part was when a certain warrior may or may not have died twice to gravity bomb-induced void zones. Ahem.

No Aesir’s Edge, alas.

I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim

This was an interesting fight to say the least. We approached it like normal mode, I dragged Steelbreaker off to the side and the other two were taken to the other half of the room. Once Steelbreaker was down I went and peeled Molgeim off of the DK tank and held him in my spot, while the dps ran over to kill Bruundir. Once Bruundir was down the real hard mode started and the DK took Molgeim off me so I could turn into Capt. Utility Tank.

When Molgeim is last to die, his two big things are: Rune of Death *really* hurts, and adds are summoned. The adds explode it they reach their aggro target, so ranged needs to dispatch them. I attempted to do my part with Cobalt Bombs and the occasional shield toss, but really I spent most of my time dpsing Molgeim. As long as everyone stays on their toes, it isn’t too hard.

With Open Arms

We already had Disarmed, so we figured we’d give this one a go.

This one’s fun. Basically, you only dps the face and try to avoid doing any damage to the arms. The first two times someone got gripped we broke them out, but it was getting kind of worrisome how low the Right Arm’s hp was getting, so we decided to let everyone die if they got gripped. Three dead raiders later, we got the achievement.

Also, in terms of aggro, I started the fight by building a lead with Avenger’s Shield and an HotR, and didn’t use either for the rest of the fight. I didn’t have any issues keeping aggro with shield slam, Judgement, and Hammer of Wrath (when in execute range).

Crazy Cat Lady

This one was a good gear check for me. I insisted we one tank this and made the DK go dps. We used three healers as well, which I initially doubted but I’m glad we did. At certain points in the fight the damage intake got slightly intense (fears especially) and that extra oomph really helped. In the normal “stand still and do rotation” moments, the damage wasn’t as bad. Damn it feels good to be a shield tank.

I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare

The one hard mode I was truly looking forward to, because it had two pretty sexy tank upgrades for me. Of course, of the two I wanted The Boreal Guard more. I’m a sucker for shields.

We already agreed that if it looked like we weren’t going to get it, we’d just wipe and try again. We had a good group, everyone was competent, there’s no reason we couldn’t down this guy.

So the first go one of the dps died early and we decided it probably was going to be difficult to recover, so we wiped it. Then, the second time we got it to like 30% and that same dps along with the Void Zone Avenger bit it to standing in bad runes. Wiped it again.

Last try, right out of the gate everything went smoothly. Ranged was wailing away, I was keeping the threat ceiling high, no one died to runes. Eventually we pushed it to execute range with a minute still on the clock. Holy shite, I thought, we were going to get it. Hodir drops snowpiles and I scramble on one, ready to leap back into the brink. And then Big Wigs flashes on my screen “Frozen: [Warrior] and [Ele Shaman]“. Oh, and the DK dc’d. Dammit.

“Should we wipe it?” someone asks. 8%, 35 seconds left. Hellz no. Burn that mother down.

The remaining batch of us rip through Hodir and we down him with 26 seconds left on the clock. I immediately sprint over to the frozen cache and spot this sexy beast hiding at the bottom. Like some green-clad stereotype, I leaned into the glowing box, reaching in to grapple the shield, and then popped out with this verdant masterpiece held aloft and triumphant above my head. I could say that I was very excited.

Siffed / Lose Your Illusion

This one was a little more difficult than the others leading up to it. Basically, getting to Thorim in under the hard mode time limit means that during Phase 2 you have Sif flying around and hurling frost bolts at the raid, along with other annoying crap (like freezing people in place). It’s just some added chaos, not too difficult in the great scheme of things. All we did differently was Frost Aura went on when Thorim jumped down and everyone was on their toes with dispels/cleanses and avoiding the lightning bolts.

As you can see we had a little trouble with it. The DK tank died so I ended up tanking Thorim while eating Unbalancing Strikes. If the fight lasted a few more seconds we would have wiped, but we managed to pull it out in the end.

Fun fact: Thorim was actually married to a character from some terrifying Japanese porn.

Some weeks ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no gold in my bags, and nothing particular to interest me in Northrend, I thought I would raid a little and see the inside of Ulduar. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.

Demogar castigated us, “But what’s this long face about, Enveloping Shadows; wilt thou not chase the white whale! art not game for Thorim?”

He went on to explain, “Aye, aye! It was that accursed watcher that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round the Storm Peaks, and round the halls of Ulduar, and round the inner sanctum, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, guildees! to chase that Thorim on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and gives up his purps.”

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Demogar, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Thorim. He piled upon the watcher’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Cairne down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering Thorim; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Last night wasn’t as bad as I originally dreaded. Yeah we started the raid with 24 people in group, but once we got through the Ignis trash (for the second day in a row) we picked up a 25th person. The first attempt was attempted and somewhat shortly ended in a wipe. Eek, I remarked.

On the bright side, while attempting to run out Ignis stuffed me in his fire crotch and recognizing my chance for an achievement I popped LOH and furious Flash healed myself. When I dropped out unscathed I continued running away, but he snatched me up again. The second time I wasn’t so lucky. Oh well, mission accomplished.

Part of the reason we wiped wasn’t due to heals or anything like that, but some confusion with the adds. The person in charge of popping brittle golems wasn’t familiar with the job (not his fault, that was corrected) and one of the other add tanks was doing the job for the first time. The second try both knew then what to do and executed their tasks with ease. So Ignis dropped and my fears that last night would be a repeat of Tuesday’s shite show were allayed.

We then moved on to Iron Council and one-shot them as well. And, proudly, I didn’t get instagibbed at all by Steelbreaker! (Thank you healers).

Auriaya was next and after a false start with the pull we regrouped and put in a seriously attempt. Things were going well until Demo bit it and I took over the tanking, but a lot of people died to pounces or being feared into the void zone.

One particular Shaman, who’s a nice guy, has an awful connection and often DCs. And as you know I’m sure, this is one fight where a DC is really painful, because if he’s standing outside of the stack, the Feral Defender is going to pounce at him, then back at someone else, and back and forth ad nauseam. I appreciate the healers hate letting someone die, but let him go! He’s causing raid damage and keeping him alive gives less benefit than just letting him die.

So anyways, Demo’s dead, I’m tanking, and a lot of dps bit it too. We had something on the order of 12 people left, 30% of Auriaya’s health remaining, and the clock was ticking on her enrage timer. We’re just focusing her down and I’m watching her health slowly tick, popping wings when I can and dpsing as hard as my measly tank damage will allow. Eventually we’re down to 8 or so, 30 seconds, 10% health. Clock keeps ticking, people pouring all they have into her. Then 10 seconds, 5%… her HP keeps going down. Finally at 2 seconds before enrage timer we heard that horrifying shriek as Auriaya’s corpse falls to the floor.

Phew.

After the excitement of that near-wipe died down we shuffled over to Hodir’s hallway and took his frosty behind down as well. I was pretty happy to be able to indulge in a little dpsing for once, since the new third tank didn’t have a dps offset and two tanks is overkill as it is on that fight.

And finally after Hodir we went after Mimiron who’d up til last night we had one-shot every non-progression attempt. I say “up til” because unfortunately we did wipe, and during Phase 4 as well, which hurts because that’s a good 10 minutes or so into the fight. Mimiron is so long that any wipe deep into the encounter is a huge amount of time spent.

One thing that definitely hurt us wasn’t spare heals or tanks eating too much of a plasma blast, it was idiots eating mines or shockwaves. Both in the first attempt, and after phase one of the second, the same two people had died to the same, stupid, shite. A tad frustrating since we explicitly call out in vent “SHOCK WAVE” so you have enough time to take your face off the keyboard and high tail it out of there.

So we’re on phase 2 in the second attempt with those two mouth breathers sucking tile and feeling pretty good about the attempt nonetheless. We get through phase 3 with another person or two down. Still doing pretty well. Then in phase 4 we start suffering serious attrition. People bite it to the intermittent shockwaves, others to the spun-up lasers. It was definitely a race against the clock.

Eventually there were only a handful of us left, once again staring down the enrage timer. Cendra’s reading off in vent the health of the three parts while we furious dps as hard as we can. The second tick down but it looks like we’re not going to make it, when finally in a burst of luck Sated dropped off. Gulliveig blasts off a Bloodlust and we close the gap down to 1% each piece. Then the enrage timer hits 0 and Mimiron turns gigantic and red. It looked like the end, but we successfully dropped the parts to zero at literally the last second.

Probably shouldn’t have been that close, but a kill was a kill.

It’s been a pretty lackluster raid week thus far, but at least we’re only one boss shy of our usually kill count. So, could be worse.

I danced around the issue in my last post but now I’m going to just say it outright: I am sick and tired of Ulduar25. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that Titanguard is an elaborately constructed hoax, or that thanks to a delayed strike of the summer slump we’re having trouble clearing simple farm content.

We started off the night somewhat dimly, with only 24 raiders online and I had each and every one of them invited. We probably had about 18 or so regular raiders, and the rest were people whose time in Ulduar was severely limited. Usually it’s fair to say that doesn’t bode well.

One enjoyable part of the raid was in the run up to and the fight with FL, we had Palehoof in the raid. I seldom mention it but He Of Green Text is one of my guildees and his schedule has precluded him from raiding for a while now.

He’ll soon be able to start joining us regularly which is pretty cool, but in any case, it was pretty funny seeing Pale and his father in the same raid. His dad (also a hunter) joined us at the end of Naxx and started raiding with us regularly through Ulduar. It’s been interesting to watch Pale’s father going from being RAFed up and then slowly but surely getting decked out in better gear (and seeing more content) than his son.

It was–blech, I’ll use the word–cute to listen to them interact in vent during the pre-FL clearing as the father drove and the son was the gunner. Palehoof saying things like “dad I’m out range of the pyrite” and the father giving advice on how to shoot down choppers or pyrite barrels… like something out of a father’s day card. I opened up iTunes, cranked up Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle,” and let it warm the icy recesses of my shriveled, jaded heart.

But anyway, enough of this happy crap.

Actually, on second thought, I’m not going to dwell on this too much, because I’m sure it gets to tedious to read a blog where every other post is “waa waa raidz r harrrrd” (this isn’t LiveJournal fer chrissakes). Suffice it to say, the fallout of all this nonsense is probably when the Coliseum comes out we’re probably dropping down to 10man groups and going through a rebuilding period. Any dps that thought it was ok to coast and do 3k in a raid will soon find themselves benched, and I can’t wait for the questioning of why they’re not taken to raids anymore. The lootz will be less epic, but honestly it’ll be worth it not to drop 80g on repair bills in one night.

(Is it patch day yet? How about now?)

When typing out the title to this post I realized I wrote a similar post way back in March (good gawd, so long ago) about Naxx winding down. And that was a month before Ulduar came out.

We’ve now been delving into the titanic prison for the last 14 weeks and most likely this will be the last full raid week before the next patch drops. Tempus fugit.

The question I keep asking myself is: will Ulduar still be worth doing after 3.2? The short answer is probably no. The gear is a half-tier worse than 10man Coliseum (normal mode), and a tier and a half worse than 25man Coliseum (normal, again). That’s a HUGE jump in iLevel, akin to the jump from Naxx10 to Uld25. Moreover, considering the badge haul is less than what you can get from doing a full Naxx clear, it’d be hard to justify an Ulduar run on those merits.

Obviously though we have unfinished business in Ulduar. Yogg needs to die, and it makes me sad we won’t be able to kill him until we’ve basically “cheated” and powered him down in a higher iLevel of gear. Will we probably keep raiding Ulduar three nights a week (or, at least attemptedly)? Probably not. The Coliseum is small enough we can probably devote a day or two to it, and just use the rest of the time to scratch the raiding itch Ulduar.

I can’t imagine outside of learning the encounters it would take that long to down five raid bosses. Even with a stuttered release of one new raid boss per week.

Also, I’m still trying to wrap my head around a raid instance with five bosses. I wonder what the difficulty tuning is like and if it’ll be as hard as Ulduar was when that first came out, before all the nerfs. Can you imagine how freeing it would be if the Coliseum was relatively easy and you only had to spend one night a week in there for loot better than Ulduar (which requires so much more).

That actually sounds pretty nice…

In any case, after 3.2–basically, starting next week–my WoW habits are going to change considerably. The Daily Heroic will be a bigger priority than ever if I want to eventually deck myself out in all the new emblems loot. Including eventually all five tier pieces, which I’ll need the emblems to purchase. And if raiding does turn into a one or two night affair then I can honestly say I’ll probably become a bit more “casual” in how I spend my time in-game.

PS. Titanguard… damn you Titanguard… tonight is your last chance!