Adventures in Naxx

And now for Naxx…

Did the guild run of Naxx 10 on Friday and then through a new friend from that, promptly was invited to a Naxx 25 Saturday night.

…

For the guild run, we did not get our warrior/shaman duo back, our warlock called in sick, and the rogue was looking at 2 more hours of patching WoW after reformatting his hard drive.

We snagged a DK OT and disc priest pair, a new warlock and rogue, and I found a hunter that had never completed Naxx on that toon but knew all the fights. The warlock ended up having to leave after the first fight so we got another hunter. That hunter went afk on us right before Sapph so we booted him, grabbed a resto shaman that we knew and our holy pally made use of dual spec to go ret.

Stepping into Naxx 10 this week, we had 3 goals:

• Complete it in under the 5.5 hours it took us last week
• Get the achievement Momma Said Knock You Out
• Get the achievement Arachnophobia

It’s good to have goals…

The run took about 7.5 hours. First goal right out the window. Per Momma, we did do some knocking-out, but wiped on Maexxna. /fail

Last week we were really starting to pull together, this time it went worse than the first time we ran Naxx. Things that we aced last week were just horrible for us. I think I died 21 times this run.

We got hung up on Heigan, skipped him and came back later for him.

The disc priest we pulled in made out like a bandit, I think he got 7 drops. Sapph dropped a helm I was interested in using to swap with my T7 helm until I had enough pieces for the 4-set bonus, but then I saw he was wearing the helm out of H CoS so I let him have it… he seems like a really nice guy and sure could use it more than me.

The rogue was weird, there’s one in every PuG I guess. I don’t think he intended to come off as a lazy asshole, but he does a damn fine job of impersonating one. Our healers have issues (and rightly so) with individuals that won’t run back in a wipe. When 9 other people release and run, it’s kinda rude to just hang out. Not even a, “Hey, I’m going to grab a drink, can someone rez me?” Nope, he would just lie there and expect to be raised. We also learned way too much about the workings of his bowels. I’ll be kind and leave it there.

And the DK did the coolest thing ever. We dropped Sapph (on the 3rd try) and of course the Key to the Focusing Iris drops. As normal, we did open roll for anyone that didn’t have it. He pipes up, “This is a guild run, you should keep that in your guild.”

Wait, what? After hearing the rogue whine about his lack of drops all night (actually told one of the hunters that the hunter should have given a bow drop to him), that simple statement was like hearing another language. You mean not everyone is a greedy loot whore? A guildmate won the roll anyway so it was a moot point, but it was very refreshing.

Speaking of Sapph… did you know he has an enrage timer? So does Gluth! He becomes Clifford, the Big Red Dog. I make no apologies for my atrocious art skills.

Bad dog!

We tried a new tactic on Loatheb and I really like it. Move the DPS into the green circle, pull Loatheb out of the circle and move him around away from spores if they happen to spawn behind him. We were able to keep Fungal Creep up on everyone almost the whole time.

About halfway through the run, I realized I hadn’t switched over to my hit gear. Oops!  I wasn’t missing too often so I just left it that way.

115 dispels for the whole run, that’s a lot of de-cursing! On KT I got 23 interrupts, beating the hell out of the 8 I squeezed in last week. There’s a huge difference in having a warrior beating him in the face with a shield versus a DK. And I think I was more focused. Go go situational awareness!

…

Saturday I log in and the disc priest from the 10-man Naxx gets me into a Naxx 25.

I zone in, all confident, I’ve been here, I’ve done that… except then I realize I haven’t. Every time I’ve been pulled into a Naxx 25 it’s been for KT only and I’ve never been in a successful run for it.

Eeeeeeeek!!!!!

To my credit, I didn’t embarrass myself (that anyone pointed out to me), and no one made any fuss about my achievements popping up left and right for completing each quarter (as well as Heroic Momma Said Knock You Out). I did remember to switch out my hit gear. Some fights I did REALLY well on and blew the other 2 mages out of the water… others, I just did OK.

I think the Noth fight was one of my better. As we go in the raid leader assigns the 3 mages to remove curses. No brainer.

 

Go go Remove Curse!

17 remove curses to my credit, one of the other mages got 1 in… and the last mage was a no show.

That mage should have rocked me in DPS/damage, right? Those 17 remove curses equal a good 10 or more spell casts for me…

Newp, I squeaked past him in overall damage for the fight and beat him out by almost 700 DPS. /flex

I can’t even call him a DPS whore.

I’ll stop bragging now. But it made me feel really useful and that makes me beam sunshine, remember?

 

Gothik the Harvester is proving to be a thorn for me, I’ve been on the “dead” side the last couple times and keep getting squished. It’s like the only time in the whole fucking instance I can pull aggro is when a knight drops on our side.

But, he dropped one of my 2 prizes for the evening: Life and Death!

 

New pretty!

Also got the Thunderstorm Amulet and had to rework all my hit gear… I’m now just a tad over arcane hit cap, but also got more spell power out of it.

There were OODLES of things I wanted to roll on… but someone made a snarky comment about mages rolling on items with MP5 (all 3 mages were rolling, not sure why the frost mage was, my frosty buddy says he can’t go OOM if he tries) so I stopped rolling on most items entirely. But MP5 is HAWT for arcane mages, especially with the new mana regen. Contrary to what the Blues say, I AM feeling it in combat – mostly due to mana totems and Blessing of Wisdom not stacking anymore. /cry

 

I think we got through the first 2 quarters before I died. After that, I think people were getting a little tired because we started getting very deathy. When we rolled into Construct, the last quarter to go, I died 3 times in the first two trash pulls. So did everyone else not wearing plate. Very messy.

Tried Patchwerk 2 or 3 times, but then people had to run away.

Had a good time with this group. My add on that rotates my titles provided some measure of amusement and I received an absolute flurry of whispers when I pulled out Stinker and he ran off after someone’s Bombay cat. (FYI – it also works on the Black Tabby, any of the dark colored cats.) I also got a lot of whispers about my whelplings – got to catch them all!

We’re supposed to meet tonight to finish it up. Hopefully by this time tomorrow I will be able to say I’ve cleared Naxx 25!