Big Long Raiding Post

I'm so creative about post titles! Meh, they're to the point at least.

So the last post I've made about raiding was after we kill Primordious. A quick, easy, and relatively painless fight and Shadow Rising was working on Dark Animus.

For the new week we decided to start a new raid but to have someone who wasn't in the raid on Tuesday extend the lockout for Wednesday so we could work on Dark Animus even if we didn't get too far on Tuesday. I think we killed up to Megera before calling it a night on Tuesday. Wednesday's time came and Wok was there so I was able to see the fight as dps. To tell the truth I really didn't notice much of what was going on. I'd just woken up from a nap and was still a little groggy. I knew what I needed to do which was get aggro on an add, not kill it, and just stand around looking pretty. But since I wasn't doing too much I did get a pretty good seat for watching the chaos once I'd managed to rub all the grit from my eyes. Basically Psy and Zug killed their golems so that their anima went into a defunct large one before taking off to help kill other golems. The goal was to put the anima from Arv's and Wok's golems into a defunct large one... although... I'm a bit fuzzy if they were trying to put it into two different ones or the same one... Anyway, chaos but very organized chaos. Eventually it was time to activate a massive golem and then the dark animus. At some point in this Arv stole my golem but I think that was the goal. Anyway, once the Dark Animus was up it was time to stop looking pretty and start killing. I think I did alright although I did get myself killed to some ability. Anyway, the night ended well with a dark animus kill and some time to work on Iron Qon.

Why is it so hard to line up and hold still for a kill shot? I think I got most everyone in this one.

The next week we did the same thing with a new raid on Tuesday and extending to Iron Qon on Wednesday. Wok was off on his boat so I got to tank. It makes me really nervous to learn a fight as a tank. And I think the nerves were getting to me because while I started out alright with the tornadoes in the second phase by the end of the night I was getting whomped by them. The second phase wasn't just giving me fits but causing trouble with others as well. We did push him to the third phase a few times and even once to the last phase but we weren't able to get a kill.

This week we didn't have enough people for a raid on Tuesday. Sorak was off playing Final Fantasy and Van wasn't  feeling good. Those were the only ones that I can remember but there were quite a few missing. Wednesday it was raining so Wok put in an appearance so I was dps. It was decided that instead of working on Iron Qon we'd just start over. It was a really nice stressfree raid. At least for me. We were short a person but was able to pick up a monk healer that we've run with before. The monk is actually a guildmate from Zug's other raiding guild. One of the best blood dk's I've seen. But more about that in a bit. We went though the place fairly quickly and the night was damn awesome on drops for me. I got a new belt which wasn't an ilvl upgrade so much as better stats. I was relunctant to take it but they reminded me that since Arv was on his druid I was the only person who could use it except for Zug. And then they reminded me about how Zug feels about tanking. It made me feel better. I also get a new chestpiece. My first piece of Thunderforged gear! I've got thunderforged gear! But the pieces I was most excited about weren't for my tanking set. On the first boss I had used one of my runes and gotten a one-handed axe! I figured with the one-handed sword I got from raid-finder I was set to make the switch from 2-handed to dw frost. And damn if I wasn't excited. But on Tortos something else dropped. Another 1-handed axe! Since Zug didn't need another weapon it was all mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! I'm finally, finally back to dw frost! ...I might be a little obsessed... just a tad. Anyway, we made good progress on the bosses and called it a night after killing Ji-Kun.

I like Transmog and the ability to turn those axes into swords!

Horray! Three weeks of raiding caught up. But if you thought I was done you're in for a surprise.

It started three weeks ago after our dark animus kill. I was finally feeling awake and a bit disappointed that the raid was done for the night when Zug asked if there was anyone with a dps alt that would like to come raid with his other guild. For awhile now Zug was been raiding with Spoiled Milk on his alt monk healer which is a bit of insanity but if anyone could pull off keeping two toons fulling raiding it's Zug. Since I was feeling keyed up I found myself wishing I had another toon so that I could join in the fun. ...Wait, I do have another toon. I have a warlock who's been raiding before. Sure, I've been leaving her to collect dust and to manage my auction housing but I thought for one night it would be fun to run around on Vaunt again. So I volunteered and found myself in another raid. Which lasted into the wee hours of the morning. It went really well with only Tortos giving us any real trouble. There was an accidental pull on Megera and I fessed up in vent that it was me. Everyone made their way back in and was giving the poor druid tank crap about the pull. That was weird. And she was just as confused and protesting it wasn't her. I spoke again and said that it was me, the lock, who'd pulled. Which followed by everyone saying I had sounded just like the druid. In the end they all decided it was Hua.. I mean Zug..hmmm... I'll go with Hua, his monk's name... anyway it was all Hua's fault since he was the one who invited me. But despite my mess-up I must have done alright, either that or they just wanted more lock cookies, because they invited me to come back the next night to try to kill Durumu. They were full of guildies so I wasn't able to come until the last few pulls when someone had to leave. In the end they weren't able to get Duru that week but I had a lot of fun.

Making a good impression. I'm the dead goblin in the middle of those turtles.

So the next week when they were looking for another dps, Zug asked if I'd come again on my warlock. So I agreed. After a night of raiding and an invite to come back for the next attempt at Duru I mentioned to Zug it would be a lot easier to come into the raids if I was a part of the guild. All of which resulted in a whirlwind talk with the guild leader and a guild invite... yeah, I took the 'lock out of Shadow Rising. It wasn't a decision that was easy. I really enjoy it in Shadow Rising. I've been trying to sneak in as many alts as I can. I've got two! Asking people for an invite sometimes feels so presumptuous, especially with new alts that I'm uncertain if I'm going to keep or if I'm going to reroll. Anyway, I found myself in Spoiled milk and part of their raiding. All of which has me wondering how did that happen again? Oh well. Anyway, we went back in on Thusday night and managed to beat Duru and then to one-shot Primordious. They used the raid finder strat of kiting and ooze killing but it went really well. Dark Animus didn't go so well. There wasn't a strat and I'm not certain they really knew what they were doing. But Hua and I did get quite a few laughs when the raid first ran into the trash before the Dark Animus. I did wonder if I should warn them but in the end I just sat quitely and waited for the yells. They did not disappoint.

I'm not too certain what this week will bring. They had enough of the long-time members on that they didn't need me for the raid. Since the leader and Zug have my battletag I was able to just go off as my death knight or whatever toon I wanted in case they needed me after all. I went off to Naxx25 to attempt to get the perfect weapon to transmog my axes too. I went with a blue sword to complement my current transmog. I was a little worried that it was in Naxx25 and not 10 but it was on one of the easier bosses so I figured it was worth a try. I didn't really expect to get it and would have to farm for weeks. I went in and soon found myself with some trash that just would not die! They had this bone shield that was absorbing everything! I focused hard on one and was eventually able to kill it but figured it wasn't worth the hassle. So dragging my 3 horsemen with me I went and started killing bosses. By the time I was done with the Military wing I had an army of 12 horsemen with me... I have no idea where they all came from but I also had the awesome sword that I had wanted! Lucky weapon night for me! So Thursday comes and there's a spot for me and the guild went off to kill Durumu. It took a few tries. They have a real bad tendency to expose the blue mist. But we eventually got him. Primordious, however, wasn't cooperating. We even tried the easy stand in the middle, ignore oozes, and just burn the boss, but couldn't get him before the healers just ran out of juice.

My army of unkillable horsemen. At least the bosses weren't hard

It's been pretty interesting working with two different raid groups. There's a different mix of personalities and seeing how things can be done. Personally, I like watching the super amazing awesome blood death knight that spoiled milk has. Zug said the difference is that he's really geared but there's definitely more then that. He's a tank. I suppose that's not really much of an explanation but... he's fearless. He pulls first, he charges in, get aggro and just try to pull it off him, suckers! It's been fun watching him because I'm seeing more about what a death knight tank can do. I'm not ready to switch my weapon enchant from +parry to +strength but it's gotten me thinking about how to improve my tanking. It's nice to have someone to look up to. Now if I can just work up the courage to try and talk to him... Someday, maybe.