Ah, karma. I bitch and moan about the scarcity of shields, claiming that the best I can hope for is some benighted hand-me-down from one of two fights in LFR, and then Visage of the Doomed has the audacity to drop off of Horridon and make me look like an ass.

I am not embarrassed to admit that when I saw the item on Horridon’s corpse, my immediate reaction was to utter in mumble what someone might charitably describe as a deep, throaty gasp. (Yes, I’m aware how horrific that sentence is. When it comes to shields, even dodge/parry ones, I have no shame.)

I’m not sure I would have to, but I can’t tell you enough how much of a relief it was for that shield to drop. I really thought I was going to be out in the cold for a good, long time.

Things are looking up!

Plucked from the sky

Speaking of looking up, after raid last week (which, I must say, was fantastic) we found ourselves at the end of the night looking at Ji-Kun once more. We executed fights wonderfully and generally made great use of our limited raid time. Thursday lined us up nicely for a full Monday of Ji-Kun progression.

And so it was. Last night we hit Ji-Kun once more and before long it was Bye-Bye, Birdie. I have no idea what was going on with the flying teams, being firmly planted on the ground, but they were completely on top of smashing the nests’ contents. Healers were similarly on top of their arena, and puddles were not in danger of overrunning us.

As for tanking, Voss and I had a pretty good handle on our roles. At one point we noticed that he was having trouble getting back to Ji-Kun post-Down Draft before other people (or, tragically, hunter pets) would, because he’s so damn slow now that he’s a DK. However, he was also the only one between the two of use that was consistently tanking during Down Draft, so there was an easy fix to be had.

We switched up who started tanking the fight, which put me on the ball when Ji-Kun started flapping her wings. Thanks to Speed of Light, I could pretty much stand still if I lined it up with Down Draft, which completely negated the tragedy of Snarf the Wind Serpent getting cut down in his prime. Teamwork!

I must admit, being the optimist I am, I did not expect us to get Ji-Kun last night. I feel like it usually takes us two solid nights to learn a fight, at least according to the trend line from the entirety of Throne of Thunder. With last night only being the second night we hit Ji-Kun for real, by all rights we should have finished up the night disappointedly hopeful. And yet, there we were, victorious, with Ji-Kun plucked from the sky after only thirteen attempts.

The goal this week now has to be a repetition of last week’s farm night success: storm through all completed content and clear a night for progression. It was doable last week, but will it be so this week? With 12 bosses (and ALL THAT TRASH) and only two hours to a raid night, there is a wall coming where we can only kill so many bosses in a night and still have decent time for progression. After all, we’re no spring chickens.

The time may come soon to talk about extending lockouts …

Well, despite my initial fears that the RNG gods had smitten me for my hubris, I was rewarded with another drop of the heroic Icecrown Glacial Wall. It’s exciting to have the BiS shield in the game, though for some reason it doesn’t carry the same level of excitement that the first one did for me.

Perhaps this is because I’ve seen upgrades to this shield at level 82 on beta. Ah well, dust in the wind, my friends!

On the plus side, the new shield gives me a huge chunk of armor to add to my pile, which makes hitting the raid boss cap all but inevitable. And speaking of, during Saurfang last night somehow I failed to beat my previous record…

I had a Mongoose proc when screenshotting last week, so I think that number was abnormally high. Maybe I’m fine, but I have this lingering doubt that I had the 251 version of the Unidentifiable Organ equipped still after having scored the heroic one on Sunday night (I apologize for not bombarding you with six links for this item, heh). In any case, I’ll need to double check that when I get home.

Tonight I’ll finally re-enchant my Ardent Guard for Major Agility, make sure my armor set is correctly set up, and then prepare for glory.

As for the raid as a whole last night, it was another pretty great night. We knocked out Halion, then everything in ICC as heroic for the first wing, plus Blood Wing, and Dreamwalker. Sindragosa we had to do on normal to get our third Shadowmourner-in-waiting his frost infusion, so he can start accumulating shards as early as next week. The second Shadowmourner, Morvain, is already at 42 shards after five weeks.

We have Heroic Put on deck for this evening. I’m hoping for some major progress to be made, so cross those fingers!

I really don’t feel like writing a same old, same old raid recap (long story short: no Titanguard again, couldn’t kill Thorim again–but at least we know the new strategy works when dps is split right) so let’s talk about something else …

Well, I picked up the Northern Barrier last night intending it to be mainly a threat-set shield, but with the changes to avoidance in the next patch it had me thinking how NB would compare to my current shield of choice, the Wall of Terror.

As it stands right now, the two shields break down as:

WoT

1072 hp
1.63% avoidance
2.23% mitigation chance

NB

1072 hp
1.53% avoidance
.51% mitigation chance

So clearly WoT is the superior choice for a shield right now. What about in 3.2? Well, avoidance in WoT slips to 1.55% due to the sock in the gut that dodge rating is getting. This makes WoT only better by .02% avoidance chance. Assuming one is not block capped then WoT is the shield of choice, but if that block is a wasted stat then NB isn’t a terrible option come 3.2.

Personally my defense rating is a little tight right now so I don’t have the luxury of being able to enchant my shield or chest for stamina. However, that extra 22 defense rating on NB would give me enough breathing room to slap the +18 stamina enchant on the shield. The extra EH would definitely make the Barrier my favored bulwark.

This weekend was just overall a bad time in Azeroth. Bad enough my usual play time was limited by the holiday–seeing your family, who wants to do that?–but also most of what gaming time I got in was marred by various annoyances or disasters.

It started Friday night where a bunch of us were logged in but with not much to do. A Naxx10 was scheduled for the following day, so I couldn’t get saved, not enough people for a 25man raid, and not much interest in anything else. Eventually the guild leader saw a Black Temple pug forming and asked some of us if we wanted to go. I agreed, because I needed the achievement, have yet to see an Illidan kill, and have dark, dirty desires for the Bulwark of Azzinoth (coolest looking shield in all of WoW, by far). I was totally game.

The GL got a few of us into this raid, but had to split soon afterwards. In the end the raid composition was about 12 people from ES and the rest scattered from various other guilds. Just about everyone was lvl 80, except for the raid leader, who was a lvl 72 warrior. The RL had one Warglaive and was aiming for the offhand. Same deal with one of my guildees who needed the same glaive.

Anyways, raid starts and we’re basically steam rolling the whole place.

Slight aside: the most absurd Death Knight ever is main tanking for us, who apparently only knows how to communicate in all caps. Perhaps my favorite line of his was when he was explaining some boss and warned us all that if we wiped he would “STAB [us] IN THE NECK WITH A STRAW FROM MCDONALDS.” As you can imagine, he provided much entertainment for those of us in ES. We spent most of the time in vent making fun of this weirdo.

Now in about an hour’s time we reach Illidan, and the first attempt we wipe, mostly due to me. Like I said, I’ve never done Illidan, and I was told to kite the flames during phase 2. So I do, and drag them away from the glaives which I guess enraged them? I got one shot and the raid wiped. Anyways, once Capt Capslock actually used his big boy words and told me to kite the flames around the circle, I was good to go. We downed Illidan in short order and dontcha know on his corpus is the Bulwark itself. Glory be.

A mainhand Warglaive dropped as well, and that went to a rogue from ES, which was pretty cool, but I didn’t really care about that. I wanted the shield.

The Bulwark of Azzinoth is the absolute dead-sexiest shield in all of WoW. If you’ve never seen it before it is this massive slab of spiked metal that rests horizontally across your back. Just absolute sex, it is.

The RL calls out for rolls, and people start furiously typing their /rolls. RL gets a 10, a couple of warriors get between 15 and 35. Some guy rolls a 40. Then I roll, and get a 60. Oh man, the high roll, it was going to be mine! Ages pass as I wait for further rolls, and none more are produced. The RL then says in raid, “LOL well I’m taking it anyways.”

Feck.

The guy then ninjas the Bulwark of Azzinoth, stating that as a lvl 72 he has better claim to it. Absolute bullshit. Somewhere nearby a flock of birds flees their perch as I loose a torrent of obscenities against the heavens. And of course, completely enraged, I had to call it a night.

So then Saturday morning I wake up and log in for what little WoWing I could do that day, and find out that two of our guildees were hacked in the dead of night, officers both. As you can imagine, the Gbank was cleaned out of anything of worth. One guy’s toon was server transferred (probably to facilitate a gold shuffle), and is still trapped in limbo elsewhere (but at least has control of his account). The other guy is waiting to get his account back.

Well, great.

And then last night when I got home from Easter dinner with the fam, I logged on to do some relaxed Disgusting Oozeling farming (I mean that ironically), anticipating that the scheduled raid probably would not happen. The rank and file had other ideas, and after about opening about 40 Ooze Bags with no pet to be seen, I found myself in Naxx.

We were finishing up a raid that was started Saturday, and right from the beginning I could tell we were cursed. One of the tanks last night was Taunty the Impatient DK, and he was in rare form. Running ahead of the pack and pulling without a healer in sight, pulling more mobs while healers were attempting rezzes, complaining why he wasn’t getting heals, etc. I saw him during Kel’Thuzad just sitting in the middle of the circle during Phase 1, not even moving. Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered to dps the Aboms or whatever. He’d only move when I picked up KT and dragged him into the middle of the circle. Ugh, I hate that guy, he’s a blight.

Long story short, we got to KT, but we couldn’t down him. Too many stupid mistakes on the part of melee, rogues weren’t coordinating kicks, people were dying to voids, unlucky mind controls. It was just chaos. After a few wipes it was pretty late, so we called it.

Hopefully this week turns out better.