The most epic Auriaya kill ever

I seriously need to make sure to always sign off on posts with a little optimism about the upcoming night’s boss attempts, because that does the trick every time. Our one and only goal last night was to down Auriaya, or at least learn the fight some more, and we got her.

But the story isn’t that we downed her, it was how we did it.

It was our fourth attempt and things were starting off very well. The pull went smoothly, no one dying from pounces, and the adds were properly under control. We had learned how tightly we needed to pack to prevent the Feral Defender from being able to pounce, so that damage was kept to a minimum.

After four kills on the FD, we decided it’s damage was minimal enough we could focus on Auriaya so her health was starting to tick down. 60%… fear, interrupt, recovery, good split on the sonic screech… 44%… repeat cycle… 24%… same deal…

Time was starting to tick down on us. She was at around 5% and we were riding the enrage timer hard. At around 1.3% is was declared in vent that she was as good as dead, no worries. And then she feared, and all the dps scattered. The enrage timer ticks the final few seconds. Everyone reforms on the tank and desperately tries to plunk away at that last remaining health.

Only a few thousand hp remain. And then she enrages.

A 92k Sonic Screech immediately wipes out the entire raid.

And then a hunter’s killshot ticks for 11k and kills her.

The achievement flashes on everyone’s screen and we all erupt in shouts and laughter. What an awesome kill! …a little close for comfort, but nonetheless.

Of the loot the Unbreakable Chestguard dropped, which I snatched up (sorry Demo). It’s a nice direct upgrade from my T7.5 chest. Basically BR/BV to more BR/BV, so no avoidance loss, plus a nice gain in stamina and defense (of which I am now stacking WAY too high).

And then after this heroic victory we plunked away at Hodir for a bit, making some significant headway. But then 10 server rolled around and the EST early risers had to go, so we called.

We’ll get him next week.

Finally, some progression

I think it is sporting to say my guild is a bit, er, stalled when it comes to Ulduar 25. Our scheduling of raids has been crap which leads to people not coming on for raid nights (because they don’t know when they are) and then any ad-hoc raids that due form tend to eventually fall apart because we can’t keep a sustainable number of raiders in group.

Last night was therefore a happy rarity, and Ulduar 25 raid. The night was young and we had one farm boss to whet our appetites before we banged our heads against the wall on Kologarn.

Iron Council was a cake walk after a quick initial wipe caused by yours truly. Steelbreaker started casting Fusion Punch while standing in a Rune of Power, so even though he was promptly moved out, he still did this:

Steelbreaker Fusion Punch hits Rhidach for 32564 Nature. (5250 Resisted) (5540 Absorbed)

Ouch. And then:

Steelbreaker melee swing hits Rhidach for 19681 Physical. (1579 Blocked) (1517 Absorbed)

Game over, man.

Clearly I forgot the rather obvious: pop bubblewall before Fusion Punch landed. That 32k hit would have been for only 16k and the subsequent 19k would have been halved as well.

To compensate for my noobishness we made a point of announcing when Rune of Power was being cast so I could preemptively move Steelbreaker before it popped up underneath him, and I was doubly sure to be more aware of bubblewalling if things went bad again.

In any case, second attempt we easily took care of the encounter, although there was definitely a significant attrition occurring during every Overload where one person wasn’t paying attention and couldn’t make it out of the blast radius in time. Silly dps.

After the Iron Council went down it was time to shift focus for that bane of our raiding existence, Kologarn. Of the last five weeks we’ve run Ulduar 25, if I recall correctly, we’ve downed him twice and let him completely road block us three times. How ironic he turns into a bridge then, eh?

I’m happy to report we two-shot the jerk after an initially spotty attempt (where the druid tank ran out to dps the adds, got beam focused, then walked the beam back into the melee stack /facepalm). The tanking set up was yours truly on adds (more on that in a sec) and Demo/said druid nub tank on Kolo. All melee was stacked up on the tanks, and the healers were out with the ranged.

The way I handled adds was I’d sit with melee and dps the arm until it was at about 10%. Then, I’d dash under the right arm, drop a consecrate at 2% or so and when the adds spawned it’d hopefully be timed well enough that the first tick would hit them. A glyph Hammer of the Righteous would trap four in my aggro, and I’d have to follow up with a quick shield toss on the one Rubble that didn’t get hit with HotR to make sure I had them all. When Consecration was off cooldown, I’d drop another and go to town.

That second attempt went very smoothly, despite one terrifying moment when some dps trying to race away from an eye bream almost brought it right to me, and Kolo soon perished. Though, unfortunately no Saronite-Plated Legguards (gawd, I want those so badly).

After Kolo we still had a solid hour of raiding ahead of us to wack away at Auriaya. And wack we did. The first few attempts were basically just figuring out the best way to do the pull. Unlike 10 man, she now had four cats with her, and they needed to be somewhat separated to distribute their stacking buff. All around nastiness.

Despite some pretty solid attempts at the end, we ran out of time. I think tonight if we can get the raid going on time and have a focused body of raiders, we shouldn’t have much trouble with her ultimately. The only thing holding us back in this fight is getting the execution down, and when that happens it’ll be cake.

Ugh, waste of a night

Last night held so much promise. On Tuesday we cleared the first four bosses of Ulduar25, leaving us an easy kill of Iron Council and then plenty of time to work on Kologarn. Instead… not enough people logged on. On Wednesday.

I’m not 100% certain but I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the last two weeks Kologarn has been our roadblock to further progression into Ulduar, and many people just decided they’d take the night off and avoid a difficult boss, then come back the next time to find us surely ready to tackle the T8 bosses.

If that’s the case, I mourn this guild, because apparently a lot of people had that opinion last night. Only 18 people came on for the raid.

And the next raid is scheduled for Saturday. I’m sure you can see where that is headed.

After the 25man raid fell apart, a bunch of us put together a 10man run together, which was very successful. We started with a few attempts at FL with one tower up (which wasn’t too awful, I think we could have downed it if we had devoted more time to it, but we wanted to get further into Ulduar, so it was counterproductive to spend the night on that, unfortunately.

After FL was downed normally we then proceeded to one shot every boss up to Thorim (who we downed after two wipes once we realized we had too much dps going into the hallway group) before we had to call it a night.

So, the 10 man was wonderfully successful, and we are awesomely positioned for Mimiron attempts the next time we go in there.

As for 25 man, er, not so much.

Mmm ketchup

I have a lot to catch up on, so I’ll try to keep it fairly concise. In the week since I last posted we only raided Ulduar 25 this past weekend. The Saturday start was something of a disaster, as over the last few weeks raiding attendance on weekends has been unmitigated crap. Despite not having our usual 25man raiders we managed to down FL, Razorscale, and XT. Not only that, but we started the night by one shotting Malygos and 20 manning 1D Sarth.

I told you all, sometimes I don’t get my guild. And I mean that in a good way.

Of course, then on Sunday we downed Iron Council and spent the rest of the night wiping on Kologarn.

In any case, after the experience of this weekend we decided to switch 25man raids to weekdays (specifically Tues/Wed) to take advantage of having almost 40 people online on those days while barely scraping 25 on Sat/Sun. Keep in mind though not 3 months ago we switched 25man raids to weekends so we’d have more raiding time. How things change!

Now last night was the start of the raiding week, so to capitalize we started off with Emalon25 ( who is soooo easy now that they nerfed him), and then headed into Ulduar. We one-shot FL and what does he drop but this awesome and probably over-budgeted ring. I promptly snatched it up, finally replacing my Titanium Earthguard Ring.

Has anyone noticed that when you down FL your raid still stays in combat? I don’t know if this is a bug or not, because it’s happened the last few weeks. Apparently some random dwarves stay up and just run around after FL goes down, locking us in combat. A DI will typically take someone out of combat, but only for a short while. Right now our only relief seems to be running out, which is a huge pain considering you can’t use teleporters while in combat, and the distance between FL and the entrance is vast.

Anyhoo, after FL we marched over to Razorscale and quickly one-shot her as well. The fight is always a bit surreal now that it’s been nerfed/tuned down a bit. I still remember the ungodly hell it was the first week in Ulduar. So glad this was changed.

After that we went on to down XT after a few attempts, who dropped the Signet of the Earthshaker. Demo didn’t want that, so I took it as well. It’s got a nice amount of stamina and defense, and the block rating will give me some flexibility with gear so I stay block capped while maximizing avoidance elsewhere.

And then after XT we went over to Ignis and downed him after a few tries as well.

So first night and Siege of Ulduar is cleared! That means we have a nice, full night of… er, Kolo wipes… ahead of us. Crap.

Um, but I digress. Let’s back up a sec for some hilarity.

While we were clearing trash to FL there was some unrest in gchat from some dps who were sore they weren’t being taken to Ulduar. Mind you, they weren’t skipped intentionally, just they weren’t invited that night. By the time we got to FL though, one of the sore dps typed this into gchat accidentally:

Oops indeed.

He left the guild immediately after, though he was probably about to get kicked.

It’s kind of a shame, the guy was decent dps even in bad gear. He probably would have been really good in time and with some better gear.

Speaking of further drama, one of the issues bubbling just under the surface concerns two new members we picked up two weeks ago. These two came from the best Horde guild on the server, and for that reason I shall call him Captain [AwesomeGuild]. Now C[AG], I have been informed, is by virtue of his previous guild membership apparently some kind of WoW god. And we are but lowly mortals that walk under this bestriding colossus’ legs.

Because C[AG] was in [AwesomeGuild], suddenly he’s being consulted for every progression boss fight, despite the fact that he joined us two weeks into Ulduar’s release, so I doubt he’s seen more of the place than we have. Case in point, on Kologarn last week we wiped a few times, so offerings were brought to this Ye O Mighty Oracle, and he revealed that a druid main tank would be in order because druids have more avoidance.

Er, wut?

Unless something has changed significantly recently, wasn’t the whole point of druids that they don’t have much avoidance? Don’t they only have dodge as an avoidance stat?

I think this guy’s full of it, and some people are just stroking his ego. To make it worse he has all the personality and charm of any random leet kiddie you might encounter in WoW. For example, a guildee asked in gchat the other day which of two pieces was better for him. Both were similar, but one had hit and one had crit. C[AG] says in guild “HURF DURF HIT CAP OR NOT HIT CAP”. Granted, the answer was obvious, but there was no need to be such a dick.

And frankly, anyone who uses the word “brah” unironically is suspect.

Enough is enough with the nerfs

Full disclosure: If not for the first round or two of nerfs in Ulduar, my guild would not have progressed as far as we did into Ulduar25 this week.

And for sure, that first round or two was definitely justified. The guilds that tend to run raids on the PTRs are often ahead of the curve in terms of gear and tactics, and tuning a dungeon to them invariably tunes it upwards to a difficulty level that the average guild would find hard to meet.

Initially Ulduar was very obviously overtuned for the average guild. And they toned it down a bit. Awesome.

But then they went overboard. Initially one of the big selling points for Ulduar was the challenge it presented. No more would we see forum posts complaining about how easy the raid of the moment was, no more demands for a bigger challenge for these leet dewds.

No, instead, people started complaining that Ulduar was too hard. Geez people, make up your damn minds.

So Blizz dutifully complied with the wishes of the legions of QQers as they are wont to do these days. Ulduar received a swift wack with the nerf bat. And then again. And again. And again.

Now dare I say it, they are making Ulduar too easy.

It’s T8 content for pete’s sake, it’s supposed to be hard! I know this is beyond the level of patience that many on the internets possess these days, but you don’t need to full clear the whole place the first week. It won’t kill you to gear up first and slowly progress.

Because Blizz is incapable of saying no to QQing, we’re going from the original scenario where normal mode Ulduar was initially difficult but after a month or so of farming would be easy, to a new status operandi where Ulduar will be initially of medium difficulty, and after a little farming will be a cakewalk (in normal mode at least).

I know the goal is to make raid content accessible, but honestly, it won’t kill people to farm for two months before they down Yogg-Saron.

The weekend that was in Ulduar

Gah, more catch up on raid recaps! I apologize for the non-posting on Friday. Hectic day so I didn’t get the chance to recap the doings and ongoings of Thursday’s raid. And with this weekend’s raiding, I’m triply behind.

Thursday

Panic attacks aside, if you recall from my previous raid post, we had downed two of the the Keepers and now needed to focus on Freya and Mimiron. I had originally joked that we would save Ignis for last, but it was decided that not having that Siege of Ulduar achievement yet was sort of dopey so we backtracked to take him out.

On 10man you have a little more leeway with the adds, so what we eventually did for a strategy was I tanked Ignis in one of the water pools so scorch would be quenched instantly. Demo would kite the adds up and down the room with the occasional help of a mage and hunter. Everyone basically focused on nuking the boss and we zerged him down. Here’s a link to the WWS to you can see what kind of dps the raid was putting out.

After spending some time on getting Ignis down, we returned to the innards of Ulduar to start on Freya. First of all, the adds in there are absolutely nuts. There are so many, and each pack seems to follow the new formula of one giant mob reducing AOE damage while alive, so no zerging, na-na.

And what a surprise Elder Ironbark turned out to be! He’d periodically get a buff where he could in essence one-shot a tank, so I’d wait in the wings and when he gained that buff I’d taunt him off Demo and run around like a headless chicken hoping not to get clobbered to death. And the physical damage reflection shield he’d get from time to time? Icing on the pain cake.

We spent what was perhaps wayyyy too much time on Freya trash before we finally made it to her. The fight isn’t terribly complicated, it just requires a lot of on-the-fly reaction. She basically heals herself to full until all her buff stacks drop off, and the only way to do that is to kill the adds. So you go through several add phases (I think we did like 8) and then when the buff is gone she’s a complete tank and spank.

I won’t go play by play here, but special notes for my fellow offtanks: when the giant tree is up, drag it under a mushroom quick, because the silence aura means you aren’t generating threat. With the exploding lashers, be careful not to HotR them. You can’t hold aggro, and hitting that many at once is just asking to overwhelm the healers.

On that three-pack, don’t hit the Snaplasher (each time he takes damage he gains a buff that increases damage he deals), so focus the other two and get them down to 10% or so, then nuke Snaplasher 100-0%, then finish the other two off.

Total cake walk once you get the execution down.

With Freya down we still had plenty of time to try Mimiron, but that was assuming we could get through the trash. The trash leading to this guy is crazy nuts. Basically, the mechagnomes explode when they die, which melee needs to watch, and at 20% the arachnopod drivers eject and start dropping turrets. Melee needs to range the turrets because their AOE hurts. Whoever jumps into the arachnopod can nuke the turrets and driver.

Once passed the trash gauntlet we ran into a really epic looking tram. Amazing touch by Blizzard.

And on the other side we were treated to this view of Mimiron’s Spark of Imagination. Nice to see Blizz has clearly not lost thir touch when it comes to level design.

Right outside the Spark is a circular track with bomblings marching about. Watch out for them, this basically Frogger 2.0, and this time Frogger will chase you back to your group!

As for Mimiron, well, we didn’t down him. We were making progress though, getting to Phase 3 on the last attempt. This is definitely a fight where I can shine a bit with my abilities. Because the MT takes these crazy hits+dots, it’s imperative for them to blow cooldowns and get assistance to stay alive. Depending on how fast your dps is, you’re looking at between 3 and 4 rounds of the Plasmas.

The system we eventually worked out was Demo would Shield Wall through the first Plasma, the second he would Last Stand and get Pain Supression, and the third I would Hand of Sacrifice him. If there was a forth I would grab the boss and Bubblewall through it, but we were pushing Mimiron to Phase 2 before a 4th Plasma struck.

I really can’t say more about the fight until we get more licks in, unfortunately. Hopefully we’ll down him tonight during our next attempt.

Saturday

After the previous beatings we had taken in Uld25 shortly after the raid debuted, some of us were rightfully wary of marching back in. In light of the recent and numerous nerfs though, it was reasoned that this was as good a time as any.

The reasoning was a good one, and after stomping FL (the Leviathan Coil dropped again and Demo won it with a 13 to my epic roll of 6, haha) we decided to do XT first. Memories of being sauted by Razorscale as fresh in our minds as they were.

Admittedly we didn’t have our best dps in the raid that night, so XT was a little rougher than it should have been, but we eventually got it down. My big chore was gathering up  the adds, but I tended to do my typical taking too many tasks on my shoulders routine (ie, watching Ildara for BoPs, using Divine Sacrifice during Tantrums if I didn’t have any adds, running over to drop consecrates under the Scrapbots, stunning the walking bombs before they made it to melee, etc.). Exhausting fight, as you can imagine.

We had some hiccups here and there, but eventually we prevailed and what should drop but the sexy, sexy Shoulderplates of the Deconstructor. Which I then nabbed because Demo got the Coil earlier. So everything worked out for the best.

Disturbing aside: thanks to those shoulders, for one brief and shining day in my tanking career, I was hitcapped. /shudder

Following about 9 attempts at getting XT down and finally succeeded, we then went and two-shotted Razorscale. We definitely would have one shot her if not for the fact that a lot of the people in raid hadn’t set foot in Ulduar before, so they were understandly a bit confused at first.

Alas, no tank loots from this boss.

After Razorscale we made some attempts on Kologarn, but it was running late, so we called it.

Sunday

Egads, more Ignis.

After 6 attempts it was looking like we weren’t going to get him down. We tried several different methods and the conclusion we came to was: we had no idea how best to do this fight. The kitting adds method wouldn’t work, because after a few adds were up I was taking 20-25k melees from the boss (nevermind when a full 10 or so were running around) and kiting the boss around wasn’t working because it killed dps.

Despair was starting to set in. Some had to go so new bodies were brought in to fill the gaps. In officer chat we decided to call it if the next attempt didn’t work.

This time we tried something new, as detailed in this godawful illustration:

Basically that blob that somewhat says Ignis is the boss. He would stay stationary and all I would have to do is turn him. First he’d drop the first scorch (red blog thing) to the left, then I’d turn him so the next scorch hit the water and dissipated, then position him to drop the next scorch on the right. Basically the goal was to keep two scorches up at all times so the two OTs could drag constructs over and a boomkin could room them in place to make them molten.

I honestly don’t get my guild sometimes, because despite 6 attempts of only getting him to 70% somehow we banded together and downed him with only 24 people. It boggles the mind how awesome we can be when we all focus.

No Heart of Iron unfortunately. At least we have the boss on farm, so it shall be mine eventually.

One major issue was had last night was despite only doing 7 attempts on Ignis, we basically spent 2 and a half hours trying the boss. We need to work on our downtime, because there were just the longest, stupidest stretches between each try. When Ignis finally went down it was 10:30 and many had work in the morning.

Alas, that it for Ulduar that night.

Of course, because it was still “early” we wanted to do something before everyone logged. We decided to give Emalon25 a go. And, oh boy, am I glad we did, because not only did we learn that thanks to nerfs we can finally farm this guy, but he also dropped my T8.5 gloves!

Awesomely, as the only tankadin, I snagged those. They’re a bit lackluster right now, but when I get the 2pc bonus they’ll be a lot better.

Apologies for the long post!

Great success!

Phew! My fears were alayed and doubts subsided after the raid we had last night. Without going too much into the drama the one-group policy engendered (another topic for another day), it was definitely a good idea to make an “A-team.”

We entered Ulduar last night at about 7 server. We streamrolled through every both we had already seen before (FL, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn, Iron Council, and Auriaya) and about an hour and a half later we were sitting outside the entrance to Hodir’s wing, rested, readied and fully ready to wipe and learn the Keeper fight.

Oh, small loot digression: I picked up the Stormtempered Girdle, finally replacing the only non-BiS Naxx piece I had. Sa-weet. Of course, now I’m 1.4% away from being melee hit capped, so obviously I need to tweak my gear a bit. But, I digress.

Anyhoo, we were expecting some serious wipe-learning. And then we two-shot Hodir.

Of course, we did it easy mode, the primary goal being to learn the fights first,  and worry about the purps later. I think it’s fair to say we have Hodir pretty much down now.

With Hodir down we then switched focus to Thorim (who I was heavily pushing for because I want those shoulders so damn badly… I’m such a sucker for Tier sets).

This fight… hrm… how to sum it up? Ok, so assuming you’re tanking the Arena–which, believe me, if you’re a paladin you probably will be–it’s like you died and went to Tankadin Hell.

Never-ending waves of adds until the Gauntlet team makes it to Thorim. Adds jump randomly down into the arena, seemingly always bee-lining for the healers. You need to be fast with taunts of else they’ll go squish. Hand of Protectioning is a must. And, to top it all off, there’s a delightful silence that will occasionally limit you to only HotR for a few seconds.

Delightful.

This was an interesting fight to say the least, and required every ounce of me. You can see from the screenshot above I may have been a wee bit frustrated, but in the end, we prevailed and Thorim went down.

And in his cache were the Conqueror shoulders! Eek. Of course, not to build up a long story for nothing, I didn’t win them. Moral of the story: always roll last. It seems to be less disappointing to fail to top someone else’s number than to wait in horrible, gnawing suspense for your number to be crushed like so much volleyball.

So Night One is done, and we have 8 of the 13 (let’s be realistic and not count Algalon) bosses down. Thursday we roll back in for Freya, Mimiron, Vezax, Yoggy, and the cherry atop the Ulduar Sundae: Ignis.

No, we haven’t attempted him yet…

Getting caught up with recaps

There’s really not much to write about in terms of Ulduar raiding. This is going to be another lost week, but for different reasons than last week.

For one, we split off into two separate 10man groups on Tuesday, thinking that the more people we get in there, the better. That was a bad idea, because availabilities were inconsistent at best between the two groups, and both have only made it up to Kologarn.

It also did not help that Taunty decided to make a third group Tuesday night only accomplished downing Flame Leviathan and saving people to a fail group that could have run with the first two had they had a little patience.

Not to be completely negative, on Tuesday we also ran FL on 25man quickly to farm a quick Emblem of Conquest and some 226 loot. What should appear in the loot window was none other than:

Wisely, the GL passed it to Ildara, who is the healer with the best raid attendance and also is the best healer in the guild. No one deserved the fragment more.

So anyhoo, next week we are not taking any chances on Uld10. We’ve decided to form one “A-team” group that is made up of the best raiders with the best availability, with the sole purpose of getting as far as possible into the instance. Then, with some new loot and a whole lot of experience, we can go back to running two groups with much more success.

Tuesday is Day 1 for the A-team. I expect good things, but we shall see.

Tankadin loot from Ulduar10

I’ve found the loot in Ulduar10 has been lackluster at best thus far, which of course makes sense, considering I’m sporting 213-226 gear, so not in all cases a 219 will be an upgrade. Just my luck, every pieces that’s dropped so far for tanks has been something I have a 226 piece for: weapon, shield, and neck.

Well, no matter, there is some phat (and non-phat, as you’ll see) purpz to be had, even in 10man!

Flame Leviathan

• Flamewatch Armguards. Lacks the gem slot of the Bracers of the Unholy Knight, but it has more stamina and the hit rating is a nice threat boost. Unless you have a Solid Dragon’s Eye in your Unholy bracers, these are nice.

Ignis

• Gauntlets of the Iron Furnace. Armor pen, what in sweet hell?! This is totally a warrior/DK piece. Our armor pen is called Holy damage.
• Furnace Stone. I’m torn on this trinket. Arguably, the proc is a nice oh-crap button for times when you’re going to take huge chunks of physical damage, and 2.67% avoidance is nothing to sneeze at… buuuut no stamina. I’m probably being spoiled by my Monarch Crab. Worth taking, but pass to a Bear if they want it too.

Razorscale

• Stormtempered Girdle. Considering I’m still stuck with the Waistguard of Living Iron, this is a nice upgrade for me.

XT-002 Deconstructor

• No tank lewtz.

Iron Council

• Cloak of the Iron Council. I’ll probably still with my Platinum Mesh Cloak over this, because I’m not sure I’ll get full value out of that block rating when fully buffed, and expertise is a huge meh.

Kologarn

• Stoneguard. Definitely an upgrade to Slayer of the Lifeless, and an upgrade to Broken Promise if you’re ok with the defense loss. Of course, stick with Last Laugh if you have it.
• Shoulderguards of the Solemn Watch. Not absolutely terrible. But, in my case, the gem slot in the T7.5 shoulders makes them slightly better, so I’d probably pass.
• Mark of the Unyielding. Awesomely itemized neck piece, and better than just about every T7 neck, other than Nexus War Champion Beads (duh).

Auriaya

• Shieldwall of the Breaker. Unless you’re wearing the Wall of Terror, this is worth taking.
• Archaedas’ Lost Legplates. No defense! And too much expertise to boot. Pass.

Hodir

• Token for Valorous Aegis Legguards. Ugh, a dress.
• Signet of Winter. Good ring if you’re already crit-capped.

Thorim

• Token for Valorous Aegis Shoulderguards. (Is this right, I thought shoulders dropped off of Yogg, or is that 25man only?)
• Legacy of Thunder. Equivalent to Stoneguard, but you’d want Stoneguard more so no itemization is wasted on expertise. This also looks ridiculous.

Freya

• Token for Valorous Aegis Handguards.
• Ironbark Faceguard. Considering our T7.5 helm has expertise as well, that makes this an upgrade (believe it or not) due to more avoidance and stamina.

Mimiron

• Token for Valorous Aegis Faceguard.

General Vezax

• Wowhead doesn’t have any 10man loot listed yet, alas.

Yogg-Saron

• Wowhead doesn’t have any loot listed yet, but I think the token for the Valorous Aegis Breastplate is a fair assumption.

Monday night Ulduar raid recap (now with 100% more screenshots!)

Sorry for the delay in this post, my raid recaps are officially a day behind.

If you’ll recall in my last post, I talked about our group’s multiple attempts to down Iron Council, and despite all the wipes, I boasted that the following evening (aka Monday) we would down them easily. Well, we did. Second try and we downed them! Amazingly, it appears that Blizz nerfed the fight starting yesterday, so some of the things we ran into like the short enrage timer and the huge range of Overload, will be less of an issue moving forward. Still, I’m glad we downed the fight pre-nerf.

They dropped Stormtip and the Runetouched Handwraps.

It being wonderfully early, we marched on to Face Boss (aka Kologarn), to avenge his eating Demogar the previous night. Justice would be done.

It took a few wipes to learn the fight, but the strategy we settled on was myself and Demo tanking Kologarn’s body, and then dps switching back and forth killing arms, with calls going out for grips or eye beams. When the arms die they create like five adds, which we found easiest for a (dps) DK to switch to Frost Presence and pick up and kill away from the raid, because of the aoe damage they seemed to be doing.

Kologarn was promptly smashed to bits and his corpus was splayed all over the chasm he was standing it, forming a bridge to the next section of Ulduar.

Unfortunately, in our exuberance to cross, several of the raid members tried to make it to the other side, but instead fell through a bugged bridge and to their death in the pit below.

After about three people died that way, I decided I could do better. Alas, hubris got the better of me, and I joined my comrades in the pit, but somehow survived the fall. I had to DI someone on the edge so I could release my body and get out of there.

Thankfully we could use the teleporters to cross to the other side, haha.

And as for loot, Face Boss relinquished Stoneguard and the Mark of the Unyielding. The sword was inferior to both my and Demo’s Last Laughs (much to my chagrin, I love swords… axes are so un-Paladin-like), so we passed that to the DK for his DW tank set. The Mark of the Unyielding we then dithered back and forth on, because it had some things that made it better than the Nexus War Champion Beads (more defense, no block rating), but no gem slot. Ultimately I won it, but I don’t think I can figure out a way to use it really.

Once we were all across the bridge Auriaya was in our sights. First we would have to deal with two trash pairs on either side of the wide circle, since she had a fear mechanic, and the last thing we needed was to get feared into those.

The pulls turned out to be pretty fun though, they had this mechanic where they needed to be a certain distance from each other, and if pulled further apart they’d get enraged. However, you didn’t want them too close, because every so often a spark will form at one and travel to the other, and if it reaches its destination, the mob will get a huge damage boost. So when a spark formed, we’d walk both at the same time so the distance was maintained, but the spark couldn’t reach its target.

Gotta say, I appreciate all the thought Blizz put into the trash–more than just another AOE-fest!

As for Auriaya, she was a little bit more difficult because of her fear mechanic. Thankfully, we had a shaman, so Tremor Totem was used to keep the healers from scattering. We wiped a few times, but once we fine-tuned our approach she went down easily.

It was definitely a night for tanks, because she dropped the Shieldwall of the Breaker and Mantle of the Preserver. Demo took the shield because he was still stuck with that blue table-thing that Malygos 10 drops, and I had the Wall of Terror. It was definitely an upgrade for him, which was exciting.

After Auriaya we took a break and then cleared the trash to Hodir to give him a few shots before people had to go. Word to the wise about the Hodir hallway: avoid snow mounds when they have a fog above them, because if you get too close like 7 worms will spawn. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to give Hodir any serious attention, but we definitely could have done the fight.

I must say I am very excited about Ulduar now, after the awful start we had there earlier this week. I fully expect we’ll be able to clear the place in a few weeks once we know all the fights.

Oh, and let’s say “hi” to Sara.