This is Falowin (also known in our guild and among the ranks of the Dark Touched Warriors as “Failowin”). I promised him in my previous post I’d write a little bit on the topic of “why I love Rogues” if he made the raid that night. He did, and unfortunately I didn’t manage to capture a screenshot of his corpse at any point, so I’ll have to deliver on the topic in haiku form.

Fail to win, he says!
Like a Forsaken carpet
He keeps the floor warm

My kidding aside, he’s actually really good dps. And he doesn’t die as much as he used to. Always a plus!

But, I digress. As to the raid recap …

We started Tuesday, as most raid weeks are wont to do, but in a slight panic. 8pm server hit and we only had 20 raiders on, which made the chances of the raid that night look somewhat bleak. We decided the best course of action was 20man FL and hope that a few more people hop on by the time it dies so we can keep going.

Thankfully luck was on our side and we had 25 people before we even pulled FL. The last few trash clears before the Leviathan consisted of people logging on, saying in guild chat “any room in raid?” and being quickly /invited.

So we had our full raid group and quickly downed Flame Lev. But, for the umpteenth week in a row Titanguard refused to drop. Alas. Maybe next week (when I have more dkp than Demo…).

In any case, Tuesday was a banner opening raid night for us, because we overcame the initial rough start and proceeded to steam roll right through Razorscale, XT, Iron Council, Kolo, and Auriaya.

Then with a decent amount of time left we turned out sights on Hodir. I enforced my rule about not leaving trash pulls up because I know, deep down in that shriveled black nugget I call a heart, that some knucklehead is going to bound right into one of those puffing snow mounds after a Hodir wipe, and we’re all going to have to each another 10% dura loss because they weren’t paying attention.

You better believe I body pulled every snow mound from the first pull to Hodir’s cavern.

Once we were at Hodir we kind of reinforced our previous strategy (as much as we had one) and put in a few attempts. Our best shot got him to 20%, which obviously meant we were doing something right (not completely though, there are some changes we need to make to our approach). But, after about an hour or so of wiping, tempers were flaring among some of the guild’s more… impatient… raiders. One of them declared in guild chat “F[e]ck progression. F[e]ck.” And then DC’d. Hrm.

In any case, we put in a few more attempts, but it was getting late, so we called it.

Still not a bad night, and more importantly, I was then 3 badges away from my Conqueror’s Aegis Faceguard.

Then last night we had something of the same issue, 8pm server time hit, and only 20ish raiders were on. With WG in Alliance hands we decided just to form raid, go plug away at Freya’s tree buddies, and wait for the last few souls to come on before we moved to Hodir.

Before we even pulled the first tree miniboss, the raid filled up. We stayed the course and downed the three (giving me my last 3 emblems, woo hoo) and then with all the trash cleared a consensus formed of “hey let’s give Freya a try.”

Surprisingly, the fight is very easy if you can manage the three pack that she summons. The way we handled it was I held Storm Lasher and the Ancient Water Spirit, and a druid tank grabbed Snaplasher and pulled it away. We nuked my two adds to 20% or so, then swapped to Snap and took it out, then switched back to my two to finish the pack off.

We had some initial difficulty, but once people realized how to moderate their dps, and learned to pay attention to the random healing tree that would spawn, we started making progress. We probably had two bad learning wipes, then one really close attempt (Freya had 30 stacks of attunement left when we died), then on the fourth shot we had a flawless execution on all the add summons and took her down. Our first 25man Keeper kill (so to speak)!

Two pairs of the Warrior/Hunter/Shaman pants dropped, which is honestly for the best. I need to get the Saronite Plated Legguards so I can justify to myself passing over the T8.5 dress.

After the rejoicing following downing Freya we hopped over to Wintergrasp and downed Emalon for some extra emblems and to nab some more tier pieces. I know that between Freya and Emalon one hunter got two tier pieces that night.

And of course, the second people stopped paying attention to me, I slipped away back to Dal and grabbed my new helm.

Hawt.

After WG we headed back to Ulduar (disjointed, I know) and gave Ignis a few shots. We initially had some difficulty, but at my suggestion Demo and I swapped spots (him tanking Ignis, I helping with adds) and thanks to his extra cooldown and better survivability (in addition to the syngergy I can give the raid with Divine Sacrifice/Hand of Sacrifice), and my natural acumen dealing with adds, we downed him easily.

Obviously it’s pretty disappointing that the raid was at a disadvantage with me tanking Ignis, but I’m not going to gimp everyone for the sake of my own ego. This is just the state Pally tanking in Ulduar is right now, alas.

Ultimately, it was an awesome night all around. Lots of people got loot, a few people (including yours truly) got their T8 2-set bonuses, and most importantly it gave the guild fresh hope that with a little elbow grease we can meet any challenge in Ulduar in due time.