This and that

With Brewfest finally winding down, I was glad to be able to earn what tokens I could and picked up the pet miniature pink elekk. If all goes according to plan, I’ll even be able to get the glasses on Tuesday. By a happy chance, one of the Corin Direbrew bags gave the ‘Brew-fast’ ram mount. It’s been a good holiday, but I won’t be missing the ram races anytime soon. I honestly have no idea how people do this on multiple characters each day.

The current guild raid schedule horribly conflicts with my personal life, so there isn’t much I can sign up for beyond the Wednesday fun runs when they manifest. Sadness, but these things tend to be temporary. Even still, I managed to get a fair share of raiding done over the weekend, even if it was just with pugs.

I don’t quite have the stomach for ICC pugs, which is a pity since they are pretty much the only place I’ll be getting gear upgrades at this point, but in ‘lesser dungeons’ there’s still achievements to be had and the experiences themselves.

Ran both 10-man and 25-man VoA for the sole purpose of collecting a few more frosties to add to my stockpile. I’m just a handful shy of new robes and I’m eager to finish. The 10-man went flawlessly. The 25-man. not so much. With over two dozen players, the enemies are drastically scaled upwards and there isn’t much room for stupid. People simply have to know their roles.

In VoA, the big thing is that ranged must switch from battling Toravon the Ice Lord to spinning frozen orbs he summons or they will wipe the party. Healers must be able to dance, avoiding orbs while keeping everyone up. Rogues must not run forward before everyone is rezzed, pull the boss back to the raid before fading and dropping the party. To our credit, we did two of those things right. “Wewillkill”, I’m looking at YOU. After the initial debacle and the people who inevitably drop after a single setback have been replaced, we charged forward and did it the right way.

An hour later I joined an Onyxia-25 group after a couple of guildies advertised for more help. I’d wanted to see the fight again with the graphic pumped up. Since we wouldn’t be doing the whelps, I was fairly certain my system could handle it without disconnecting. The group had challenges. The leader, the ironically named ‘Dragonmaster’, may have been the most insecure raid leader I’ve met. With encouraging messages like “If anyone wants to drop out of the raid now, I won’t think any less of you” and no less than five ready checks before pulling the SINGLE boss we have to fight. Still, he was trying his best, so I won’t fault him. It takes a brave man to put together a raid and everyone starts somewhere, right?

As luck would have it, our party included a decent guy from the VoA-25 I’d just run by the name of “Junkmonkey”. He noted “Where have I seen your name before, Wewillkill?” Oh, crap. I called the rogue out on the VoA disaster and he protested that he had lagged horribly into the fight, then dropped to avoid accusations. Others pointed out that dropping instead of explaining didn’t really help his case, but I was curious to see how it would go down. In the end, Wewillkill stuck around and didn’t do anything untoward. I’m happy to say we were massacred legitimately…twice.

It turned out they –were- attempting the “Many Whelps! Handle it!” achieve and that led to much hilarity the first time. In the end we needed “more dots!” and failed what should’ve been an easy run. After eleven minutes, we wiped in phase 2 with Ony still around 40%. I wasn’t torn up about it, aside from the armor repair bill.

Tagged along in an ToC 10-man and I can now say I’ve done that. Previously, I’d only experienced the raid up to the slaying of a demon lord summoned by a rather self-important gnome. This time I got to see it through to the end. Battles included a ‘pvp-style’ team we had to best, a pair of Val’kyr with very curious light/dark attunement mechanics I won’t go into here, and a rather interesting surprise.

After defeating the Val’kyr, the Lich King shows up, monologues a bit, and shatters the floor of the arena, sending us all falling down into a cavern where the reanimated crypt lord, Anub’arak (last seen in Azjol-nerub), awaited. It was a ferocious fight, but we fared better against it than we did the Val’kyr, and were named Champions of the Crusade.

The final little feather was a battle in Warsong Gulch that we completely dominated, earning both “Warsong Gulch Perfection!” (3-0 victory) and “Warsong Expedience” (victory in under 7 minutes). Considering that WSG is probably my second most-hated battleground (behind Arathi Basin), I was tickled as pink as my elekk.