Eh, he can still go rot

Nope, no Rotface-25 kill last night. But we were close. Oh so close. So close I could taste it, and you do not want to know what Rotface tastes like.

Ok, angry poo. There, I said it.

(That would be more funny and less disturbing if you’re familiar with his emotes.)

Anyway, our best attempt we had him at 4.9%, and we spent multiple attempts dancing just about that number.

We were probably approaching the fight wrong too. More interested in the long game, we had six healers and it being a Thursday not our best of the best dps. I think next week we’ll do five healers and try to get him down faster. There’s just no way to hold out once you get to the six-second, crazy Infection time. You just get overwhelmed, it’s a total enrage timer and we were not giving it the proper respect.

I wish there was some magic advice I could offer on this fight, but it’s really just coordination and praying your raiders can pay attention to having Mutated Infections. The dreaded Situational Awareness.

If you have raiders that could walk the Atlantic City beach, step on a hypodermic needle, and not notice… you’re screwed.

Also, Blizz really needs to reduce the hit box on the Big Ooze. That thing could reach across the room and knock me out cold if he wanted to.

All in all it’s nice to have a challenge again. The fact that we have to spend more than one night learning a boss isn’t as soul crushing as I imagined it might be (ToC surely spoiled me). We’ll get him sooner rather than later.

He can go rot

Last night my brilliant idea was to fall back to 10mans and kill Rotface and Putricide so we can convert that experience to easier kills in the 25man. Unfortunate kink in the works: Rotface is really hard in 10man. At least he was for us last night.

Yeah that’s three Big Oozes. We had some spectacular wipes.

Anyway, strike my earlier statement. The boss wasn’t hard, we just weren’t doing the fight correctly. The execution was off, I was trying to juggle too many things at once, people didn’t yet get the hang of dealing with infections.

So tonight we’re going into 25man with no 10man kill, though a wealth of knowledge on how badly the fight can go. So, that’s a plus.

I wish I could decisively say “ok do the encounter this way”, but I can’t. Instead I’m going to take a page from my own book when we were learning Anub’arak, and tell you what not to do when offtanking Rotface.

1. Don’t run in a circle around the room

The tanks rupture in a random pattern, with the only constant being that a quadrant won’t flood twice before the other three flood once. Kiting counter clockwise around the room isn’t going to cut it. Clockwise, neither. You need to half kite; then, once a quadrant clears, bee line for it.

2. Don’t stop moving when kiting the big ooze

The big ooze moves slowly, but not so slowly you can RP walk away from it. You do not want to ever be in melee range of the big ooze, so don’t come to a halt letting someone catch up to you. The room is a circle, your raiders should be smart enough to run a straight line from where they were to where you will be, not try to follow you as you run around the room.

3. Don’t run through a tank spill unless your Hand of Freedom is off cooldown

The spill will eventually slow your movement speed by 50%. You don’t want to run through it unless HoF is available. Otherwise the ooze will significantly catch up to you.

4. Don’t run in front of the slime spray cone

When you see that slime spray emote or DBM warns you it’s coming, check your position and make sure you’re not directly in the line of fire.

5. Triage the dangers of the fight correctly

In terms of deadliness: big ooze melee > running big ooze through raid > running over the tank spill. When presented with the necessity to quickly get across the room and one of those three has to happen, always choose running over the spill if (like said above) your HoF is off cooldown. If not, then skirt the edge of the spill (yes, giving aoe damage to the raid closest to the big ooze, though it won’t hurt that much) until you are safe.

Rotface is a rough fight, fraught with perils galore. As the offtank, yours is the hardest job of the fight–all the responsibility of the raid’s success rests on your plated shoulders. And if you’re the MT, I hate you. Enjoy your sammich!

The Plagueworks opens

Finally, the next wing! Last night was very exciting as all new content nights are. Everyone was pumped, and a little punchy. We didn’t know what to expect, which is always a fun feeling.

For the initial trash I put on the trash spec and started mowing through trash. I felt bad (and hell, still do) because as a Paladin, aoe-tanking a swarm of undead is child’s play, but for a warrior tank and their underpowered aoe threat, it was a huge ordeal for him. He eventually switched to dps spec and I continued to solo tank the trash.

We cleared out both from corners of the room then I moved to one of the back corners. Immediately someone pulls the group in front of the stairs, so I swung around and used a Holy Wrath to grab their attention. Then, apparently a hunter pet dashed off and grabbed the pull in the opposite back corner, so suddenly another pack was incoming. I got those together too and just started aoeing and switching targets as fast as I could. With me belting out an off-key rendition of POD’s “Alive” we slowly aoe’d them all down.

I ended up doing 11k dps, one of the shadow priests did 25k… it was nuts. I know this is just trash, but still, I love my heroics spec.

Anyway, for the first four bosses we did the usual burn through. Deathwhisper is a joke now that her adds and mana shield were so nerfed. Next week we can easily pull one melee off the adds groups on both sides and onto the boss, push it into phase 2 even faster. Gunship was, scarily, almost a wipe when two healers dc’d, Demo died on O, and neither myself or the druid had rocket packs on.

So O turned into the melee quickly jumping over, the healers frantically trying to keep them up, and then them all fleeing as soon as the mage died. It was impressive and I learned a valuable lesson about equipping my damn rocket shirt.

Saurfang was Saurfang. Not much trouble, and even better, when he died I bolted over to the chest and was elated to find not one, but two Conqueror’s tokens in there. Finally! I scored one and still have enough DKP to grab the next one that drops.

After Saurfang the mage (yes, we only have one) darted through the open doors into the next area. Like something out of The Last Crusade, he immediately bought the farm. All we heard was woosh and his head came tumbling back out past us. Another person ran in and made it, emboldening the third who then died to whatever mysterious force was executing people in the next hall.

Apparently this was Frogger 3.0, and traps on the wall would expel gas on people and generally kill them. Unfortunately, they are disarmable by rogues, so our sneaky buddies went to town and we made our way through.

Or, you could just warp up to the Upper Spire. But Frogger is way more fun.

Banging a louie, we entered the Plagueworks for the first time. Picking off some geists and scientists in the initial hall we spotted two giant Gluth look-alikes. I remember something I read from one of Matticus’ PTR reports back on WoW.com that mentioned they share Gluth’s abilities.

We pulled Precious and comically wiped to him the first time, not sure how it was going to go. Once we regathered, what we did was Demo and Purraj (the druid) tanked and switched off aggro on Precious since he applies the mortal wound healing debuff that Gluth had. I hung behind, in heroic spec, and whenever adds spawned I’d use Holy Wrath and pick them all up and help the dps aoe them down. Demo and Purraj kited Precious around the stairway to give me room to grab skeletons.

As for Stinky, again we wiped because we weren’t expecting the decimate+poison aoe combo. And yes, both dogs do decimate, healers need to be ready for that. Anyway, with Stinky his big thing isn’t spawning adds, it’s the periodic poison aoe he does around him. Aspect of the Wild or a Nature Resist Totem helps, since it’s nature damage. Stinky is generally pretty easy, just make sure healers are prepared to quickly get everyone healed a bit so they don’t die to the first poison aoe after the decimate.

Festergut, the big, stinky enchilada that pays a visit the next morning.

Interesting fight to say the least, and a major dps check. Here’s our log of the kill so you can see what we were working with on 25man. 40.4 million hp, 5 minute enrage. Generally that means a lot of dps with five healers and two tanks. I’ve read 7.5k, which seems about right. Also, keep in mind the tanks will be doing around 4k, rather than 2.6k, which will help.

It took us a few wipes to establish some things and for people to hit their comfort zone. This includes the wipe where we had Festergut down to 4000 hp before he enraged and nuked us all. It was horrifying as I’m sure you can imagine.

What we did was figure out it’s generally a good idea to have five to six ranged in the back. Less than that and we got Vile Gas in melee, I don’t know what the magic number in ranged is, probably could have gotten away with an extra spriest or something in the melee pile. Heals stood in melee.

The fight sort of has four phase that rotate. Initially for the first two phases the room has thick orange gas on the floor and he does lots of raid damage but little tank damage. Once you hit the third phase (when he has 2 stacks of his buff) he starts hitting the tank for a lot more. Once he gets three stacks, he’s hitting the tank for around 25k a pop. And he hits fast, so cooldown coordination with healers is a must. We had priests calling out Pain Suppressions on vent while Demo and I juggled our own cooldowns. I also tossed Demo and Hand of Sacrifice and used Divine Sacrifice to help out.

As for tanks, we’re getting a stacking debuff called Gaseous Blight. Each stack increases our damage by 10%, but once it hits 10 stacks we explode. The debuff also takes almost two minutes to fall off. So tanks need to be really quick on switching aggro at exactly nine stacks once the other tank loses their stacks. We had two wipes directly attributable to taunt misses and a tank exploding.

Now, the awesome side of this debuff is the stacking damage increase. When Demo pulled off me, I immediately hopped behind the boss, cast Hand of Salv on myself, popped wings, and poured in the damage. I didn’t think of this at the time, but taking Righteous Fury off would probably also be ideal so you don’t get threat capped by the other tank and can help contribute to getting past the enrage timer.

The other huge thing everyone needs to watch out for are the Gas Spores that spawn. It’s paramount that everyone in raid gets three Innoculate stacks before the end of the last phase when Festergut exhales and does massive shadow aoe. As a tank you can probably live with 2 stacks but most healers and dps will be one shot or severely hurt with less than the full three stacks.

So whoever in melee has the Spore needs to stand directly under the boss so it gets spread to the tanks as well. Dps and tanks should also try to stand as close to Festergut as possible without accidentally turning him around or (in dps’s case) being considered in front of the boss and then creating parries.

Eventually this fight boils down to staying alive long enough through Innoculates to beat the enrage timer. We were riding the timer pretty hard for most of the night but on the last attempt I think the execution clicked for everyone and we eventually killed him with 20 seconds left on the clock.

Tonight is Rotface, and pending a fix of the Putricide encounter I guess that’ll be it for the week aside form 10mans. So far, so good. I like what I’ve seen and I’m a huge fan of the ramped up challenge factor and love how well my guild has been tackling it thus far.

Thanks for the memories Flipmattic

So there I was, last night, home from work and looking to bang out a quick random and get my Emblem of Frost fix before I went out for the night. I queued up and of course the “Your dungeon is ready” dialogue popped immediately (the joys of tanking). I went in and was happy to see the loading screen for Gundrak. One of the quicker ones, and five emblems to boot. In fact, Cold-Comfort calculated the place to have the shortest time-to-emblem ratio.

Anyway, I had high hopes for the place. We all zone in and I look at my grid to see one of the squares was colored green which denoted that person was in a vehicle. A Kor’kron Suppression Turret, apparently, which means he was doing the Assault by Air daily. “I’ll be there in a bit” he says.

Rather than wait for this considerate person, Flipmattic of Nazjatar, I just pulled the first pack and was off to the races. Thankfully, Flipmattic was able to join us in time to roll need on the wand that dropped off the first boss. When someone pointed out that he had a 219 epic wand, he replied “sorry auto-need lol”. Whatever that means.

At this point all signs were strongly pointing to the guy being a ninja, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was an accident and kept going. Second boss down and he didn’t roll need, which at the time reassured me that the previous incident was an accident. It occurs to me in hindsight, though, that he probably couldn’t roll need on whatever the item was, or else he would have.

Third boss down and some cloth items drops and you know that he needed it. At this point the obvious had manifested itself. Everyone just said “lol” in party chat and I scrolled up to Flipmattic’s earlier “auto-need” defense so I could right click on his name and ignore him (and thus never deal with him again). The 15 minutes had yet to elapse, so we couldn’t kick him.

Eck drops and so does his loot. But it was nothing he could ninja, so it went to DE.

Once we got to the last boss and downed him, Flipmattic quickly needed the orb and the other item he could grab, won both, and immediately dropped group.

Indeed.

So, here’s to you, Flipmattic of Nazjatar. With your 2.2k dps in 5/5 232, unenchanted, ungemmed tier 9. Congrats at mastering the art of being a parasite.

Let’s do something about it

With the advent of cross-server instances and the eventual Battle.net upgrades, Blizzard should look into instituting a system like Xbox’s Reputation system. Every WoW player would have five stars and at the end of the instance you could go to a tab on the Dungeon Finder tool and grade the people you just ran with on a scale of 1-5 stars.

There’d be safeguards in place (like if someone was constantly rating people one star and only one star, their contributions would be excluded from the averages) to prevent griefing.

Then when queueing up for a dungeon, the system would first try to match you with people that had the same reputation with you. Considerate, five star folks would only be matched with other five stars (if none available then they get four star people in their group). Contrawise, all the one star ninjaing, gogogo-ing, dropping-during-a-wave-of-mobs-ing jerks would be stuck with others of their ilk.

Sounds like utopia. It’d probably never work.

In the end, it was just a heroic

And I don’t feel that aggrieved over the loss of two dream shards and an orb. I don’t care about the loot; I just care that this little punk is going to keep queueing up and keep pulling this crap on other dungeons. It’s be nice if there was some form of redress against such blatant douchebaggery.

In the meantime, if you’re in the Shadowburn group and get in a random with this guy, just drop group (since we can’t kick right off the bat). Don’t give Flipmattic the satisfaction of carrying him to the end.

Monday, how I loathe thee

Nothing worse than the first day of work after a long holiday weekend.

This long weekend though was pretty productive, though. Not just for Rhidach but for my other alts as well. My shaman, for example, broke past 40 and finally got the ability to dual wield. The play style did an immediate 180 from slightly boring to an awesome flurry of pain. I bought for him two heirloom maces and enchanted both with Crusader, and with Windfury Weapon on both it’s just… awesome. That really is the only word for it.

I need to get this guy to 80 pronto so he can start farming Emblems of Frost–and thereby Primordial Saronite–for Rhidach. The main demands tribute!

Speaking of the Shaman, I’ve did a few random dungeons on him over the weekend. Each had about a ten minute wait, though was seemingly worth it for the chunk of experience and free blue item I would get for completion. The trouble was, of course, getting to the end of the dungeon. I had one really good SM Library run that got me all pumped for the system, but then the next one in the Armory was a disaster. The tank was a Ret pally (not necessarily a bad thing at that low level) whose idea of tanking dropping a consecrate and standing there.

Noticing he was not holding threat at all, I asked why wasn’t Righteous Fury on. “lol never trained it.”

Super.

Anyway, about halfway through the run the hunter finally drove the “tank” away by constantly casting Eyes of the Beast on his pet (a dog named Kitty) and sending it ahead to “scout” thus pulling mobs. So the “tank” quit and eventually I just had someone pass me lead and got Cendra to come in and lay a level 80 smackdown on Herod.

Finally, once I was high enough to be sent to Uldaman I started to see real tanks with–I am aghast–actual SHIELDS on. And what’s more, they use Righteous Fury or Defensive Stance and actually hold threat and try to taunt mobs off you if you accidentally pull. Miracle of miracles.

At least random dungeons break up the monotony of leveling. I can only take so much Monstrous Crab hunting in the Swamp of Sorrows before I feel like I’m going to snap.

As for Rhidach, late Friday night I couldn’t sleep and got pulled into a ToGC-10 pug a guildee was stuck in along with Ildara. Apparently they wiped about 20 times on Twins with the orbs just killing people left and right. After too many wipes a wave of puggers left and I, Cendra, and some others from random guilds came in to fill their spots.

On Twins the strategy they were using was everyone go one color except for one dps whose job was to run around “soaking” the orbs others were not. Maybe that might work, but that one dps focusing on orbs wasn’t working on shields, and we had two heals go off because there wasn’t enough damage to bring the bubble down in time.

After the third wipe on this strategy I proposed what ES does for Twins: two groups evenly split. Tank them in the middle. Of course, we killed them with ease. Superior tanking clearly won the day. Ahem. In any case, one of the Twins dropped the heroic Greaves of the Lingering Vortex, the final piece of gear I was coveting from that raid. And being the only plate tank I had no competition for it.

Then on Anub we wiped a few times since it was like 3 in the morning and everyone was crazy tired. We got it on the third attempt though, and everyone was free to go after being stuck in there for what apparently was hours. Meanwhile I was there for 45 minutes and walked away with a primo piece of gear. Score.

This week looks to be pretty awesome: new wing of ICC (presumably) will make raiding a little more exciting again. Add some spice to the mix of the 1.5 hour clear. Putricide we’re probably going to put off until Thursday so we can do everything in 10man first where the stakes are lower and it’ll give us two days of raid strats to soak up from around the blogosphere/the forums/elsewhere. Totally going to play it safe with the limited attempts counter.

The 10 best posts of Righteous Defense in 2009

Hell, if I wanted to be smarmy I could say “the best posts of the decade,” but that kind of smarm is below me. Making up words like smarm, however, is not.

Um, but I digress. 2009 was the first real year of this blog, which was initially created on December 19th of last year, and sporadically updated, then abandoned for a month, and then kick started for good at the very end of January. Every since then I’ve been churning out posts, 266 in total this year. Some were bad, some were good, some were awesome. A lot were raid stories, or musings on the state of our class, or news about buffs and nerfs, or just silly divergences from the normal stuff.

Below I’ve listed what I personally feel are the 10 best posts of this blog in 2009. Some of them I wrote before I started getting a real audience here so they may be new to you. It’s interesting to see how my writing style and focus of topics changed over the course of the year. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane as much as I did.

10. “The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance”

This post was a bit–er, pardon the pun–random. It sprung from back when my guild would use a roll system for loot back in Naxx and we had folks griping that they were cursed with “bad luck” when it came to rolling on things, or when they rolled high early in the evening they would gripe that they “wasted” their one “good roll” of the night. As the arch-skeptic of the guild, I felt it was my duty to correct such Cargo Cult-level nonsense. Hence, this diversion from tankadinery.

9. Achieving great things in the kingdom of the spiderfolk

This post was from back in the early life of the blog and when every post I did was burdened by some huge word vomit of a title. That was probably one of the longer titles I’ve ever given a post, to accompany one of the wall-of-textiest posts ever.

8. Four characteristics of a great tank, part 1: A sense of ownership

Ah, broken promises. Parts 2 through 4 still do not exist, despite my many fervent attempts to sit down and commit the little bastids to computer screen. I’m a huge fan of the way the series started though, and one day when I finally finish the other parts they will make a magnificent treatise on what it means to be a great tank.

7. Thought of the day: Situational Awareness

This was a fun post to write, and stemmed from reading about the study that I mention wherein. I don’t want to ruin the premise of the post for those of you who haven’t seen it and watched the video, but suffice it to say, it’s a pretty cool exercise on what I would consider a linchpin characteristic of tanking.

6. Why I love Rogues, a raid recap

Not just a run of the mill raid recap! I included in the post, for lulz, a haiku devoted to Falowin (a rogue guildmate who has the unlucky habit of dying on trash). Epically, he responded in the comments with a Shakespearean sonnet, in iambic pentameter no less. Comment of the year for sure.

5. How to gem, via a flowchart

This was the redo of an earlier chart from the days before we had epic gems. I’m a huge fan of how the chart turned out, both in terms of reception and how classy it looks.

4. 5 ways to boost your threat

One of my best “how to” posts, I feel. I also decided to test the blogging cliche of making a numbered list. In terms of visitors brought to the blog, this post has brought the most, bar none. Clearly all my posts should be numbered lists.

3. How to defeat heroic 10man Trial of the Crusader

I loved writing this article, crafting it the morning after a thrilling Tribute to Mad Skill run. I lovingly included as much detail as I could and from what I could tell the guide was an immense help to some people. A few folks emailed me or commented in the original guide saying that it helped them complete ToGC-10, which was an awesome thing to be told. I’m glad it was helpful.

2. Call me Ishmael

Oh Thorim. The bane of ES’s existence in 3.1. The gatekeeper between us and victory in that awful place. And, the impetus for the guild restructuring that followed. Nevertheless, we did eventually kill him, but only right before 3.2 came out. To celebrate the victory I cribbed a bunch of quotes from Moby Dick and retooled them to fit the narrative of Thorim being the Great White Whale to Demo’s Ahab. Hilarity followed.

1. I could say this joke was running

This was a very funny post when I wrote it, giving me the chance to draw on all the nonsense my guild commits during raids. Probably took me longer than it should have because I kept collapsing into fits of laughter. I love my guild, everyone in it rocks. We’re crazy, crazy people.

And I hope ES has as much success in 2010 as it did in 2009, and enjoys even more glory when Cataclysm raiding begins.

A very heartfelt thank you to all my readers. You guys and gals are why I write this blog, not for my own self-aggrandizement (an added bonus!), but to share some laughs, impart some advice, and provoke some discussion. Thank you so much for reading me in 2009 and I hope I live up to my first year of blogging by being a better blogger in 2010.

Have a great New Years everyone, stay safe and have fun!

A night of heartbreak and failure in ICC

Ah… just kidding, another one shot night. I’m just getting tired of doing a raid recap of “oh mang, we iz gud.”

We only had two marks on Saurfang last night (maybe a third at the last second). That’s pretty “gud” though, eh?

Anyhoo, during the course of our sub-two hour ICC-25 run I noticed a couple of things. For example, every week without fail someone just notices the Alliance mobs between Deathwhisper and Gunship don’t give rep. Whoever notices this will find this incredulous. But why would our reputations with the Ashen Verdict improve for killing non-undead folks?

Moreover, I hate when people snark about playing with game sounds on. Maybe if you’re dps you don’t need to pay attention to auditory cues, but as a tank I find it helpful to hear a mob sneaking up behind me. On the Deathwhisper fight it’s increased my chances of surviving a Deformed Fanatic to 100% because I hear the lichess shout out “I release you from THE CURSE OF FLESH” and my first instinct is to immediately back away from the Fanatics I’m tanking. I’m on my toes, not surprised. I don’t know why some people would take it as a point of pride to be potentially caught flat-footed in such a situation. No matter how sweet that iPod playlist you put together may be.

But I digress. I’m hoping for Putricide next week because the same four bosses has officially gotten tired, especially when we’re looking at a 1.5-2 hour clear. If that’s the case, then we’ll probably spend Tuesday next week on the same old, same old plus Rotface and Festergut. Then Wednesday we’ll do 10mans and get everybody familiar with the basics of the Putricide fight. Then Thursday, knowledge in hand we’ll hopefully kill him in under the 10 attempt limit. The less learning wipes we need the better. Plus, god help me, I need a Conqueror’s Mark of Sanctification, which for me is like the Titanguard of this patch cycle.

During the pre-Marrowgar trash I was doing around 9-10k dps with the heroic spec. In-effing-credible. I wish I could do that single target in my normal raid spec!

I wish last night was a bit more interesting (so there’d be something to write about!), but I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a smooth and uneventful run. Stuff will get more interesting in the coming weeks.

Forging Quel’Delar

I’ve been watching the auction house the past few weeks, spying the price on Battered Hilts and hoping that’d they’d soon drop into an “acceptable” price range. I won’t say what “acceptable” might be, but let’s just say you’re talking to the guy that blew 10k gold on Runed Orbs to get the crafted boots and belt back in 3.1. Imagine what I’d spend on a tchotchke.

Nevertheless, I ran a Heroic Forge of Souls last night with some friends and on the pull before Brohnjam–miracle of miracles–a Hilt dropped. My vision was immediately hued red as blood rushed to my head and then, apologizing profusely, I hit the Need button. Everyone there knew I’ve been gunning for the blade for some time so I don’t think anyone particularly cared. Thankfully, I won the roll.

Once we were finished with the heroics I immediately dove into the quest chain, ducking over to Quel’Delar’s Rest to start everything then over to Wyrmrest for some draconic hemming and hawing.

Then I went to Dal for the series of quests there, requiring me to first murder a Silver Covenant agent in the city sewers, …

… do some dirty laundry, assume the identity of the lackey I left rotting in the Underbelly, and then sneak into the Alliance side of town (iz in ur base, talkin to ur manz) in order to procure the book needed to move the chain along.

Once those dirty deeds were done I dragged two buddies with me through regular Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, and Halls of Reflection where I ran into my hero, Uther, who then scolded me for dragging the sword so close to Frostmourne.

I was forced to put Quel’Delar down, but the sword remained whole. Subdued, I dragged the holy blade back to my contact who then directed me to take it to the Sunwell itself.

I knew the quest from spoiling it for myself while 3.3 was on the PTR, but nonetheless, I was having a full-on loregasm here. Of all the races of Azeroth, I’m not so attached to the Blood Elves just for their pretty hair or well-kempt nails… no sir… the lore of the sin’dorei is the clincher for me. The whole story behind 2.4 in particular was always fascinating for me, and produced my biggest regret of TBC, that I never saw the inside of the Sunwell.

Well, thankfully, after a short but awesome event in the Dead Scar and a tussle with Door Boss, I made it inside the holiest of holy grounds to, er, “my people” and was admitted to the inner sanctum of the Sunwell itself.

There I encountered the leaders of the sin’dorei as they ministered over the relatively newly ignited Sunwell. They received me with suspicion initially, but once I cast the reforged Quel’Delar into the holy font, they recognized the gravity of my actions.

You know it, fellas.

With the blade once more blessed by the magic of the sin’dorei, I reclaimed it from the Sunwell and took one more sigh-filled glance at my surroundings. I was like Henry Jones Sr. before the Holy Grail. But, with Demo haranguing me to run an Ony-10, I was forced to bid farewell to the majesty I had beheld.

And thus I returned to Dalaran, claimed Quel’Delar, Cunning of the Shadows, and fell even more in love with Blood Elf lore than I had been before.

Was it dumb to obtain this sword (despite it being a fantastic threat weapon) on my paladin when it could have benefited my DK tenfold more? Perhaps, but I was interested more in what was, without question, an amazing quest chain. It was something I had to experience on Rhidach and Rhidach alone. And, ultimately, it produced one memory I will always cherish in WoW.

Totally worth it.

I was a jerk pug tank

I did something pretty mean over the weekend, and as a much-needed bit of catharsis I’m going to recount it here.

On Sunday I did a random heroic and was assigned to Utgarde Pinnacle. I buffed myself and the other party members up and sprinted off to the races. Once in that first long hallway I noticed that shadowbolts kept flying past the group I was tanking and picking up mobs up ahead.

At first I was willing to attribute it to a misclick by the Warlock, but after the second time it was obvious he was trying to speed me up.

Once at the first boss he declared in /p that we should do the Incredible Hulk achievement. The hunter agreed but the healer said “meh” and I silently agreed. As Svala does her little speech, the hunter picks up an Abom from the side hall and MDs it onto me. I immediately nuked it down. I wasn’t in the mood to carry these dps through an achievement.

Right before the boss starts, the Warlock decides to pull the other Abom waiting in the back of the room. I don’t know what he was thinking he was going to do once it got to him, because I let it squash him like so many gnats, and then picked it up.

No one said anything, the Warlock didn’t peep a complaint; we just downed Svala and continued on.

Nevertheless, the trigger-happy Warlock died a few more times over the course of the instance, mostly because he would pull ahead of me and I’d let the stuff kill him. I don’t think he ever got the message.

I ended up doing 43% of the damage done in that pug. It probably helped that one of the dps was dead most of the dungeon, and the dps as a whole were barely breaking 2k when they weren’t hugging the floor.

Merry Christmas!

I’m sure everyone is either taking the day off or headed out soon, so I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and all the happiness and joy of the season. Enjoy the holiday, be sure to eat and drink too much, and stay safe and warm.