Uld 10 x 2.5

We now return to our normally scheduled frivolous posting!

…

Went on my first trip to Ulduar with 24 other people. It was a joint venture between our second alliance guild and another guild that I had not had the pleasure of raiding with before.

One member of their guild had been through Naxx 25 on another toon on another server – months (and patches) ago. We had at least one person that hadn’t even been through Uld 10 yet, but was at least geared through Naxx 25. So it’s a learning run, which I am totally cool with.

Ever fuck up real bad and think the whole situation is going to explode but it works out?

Per my normal role, I was destined to be flung at FL.

Well, we kinda didn’t know that on Flame Leviathan on 25-man you have to toss a healer up there with your DPS…

So me and the other catapult fodder kinda died.

Fast.

Really fast.

And it left my corpse floating at an elevated vantage point for the remainder of the fight.

But… because we failed at that…

Shut up!

We all had a good laugh about that. Random achievements are the best.

Razorscale is one of my favorite fights on 10-man. On 25… it’s a lot more hectic.

On our first attempt, I was 10th in damage and 11th in DPS with a piss-poor showing of 2880 DPS.

And to think they invited me because they think I can do damage. >.<

2nd attempt went smoother, 1st in DPS (4244) and 3rd in damage, but we still wiped.

3rd attempt… the Sentinels were allowed to run amok in the casters. Within the blink of an eye, there was a tidy pile of 5 caster corpses.

They got a battle rez off on one and managed to pull off the whole fight.

So 2 bosses down and I’ve been dead at the conclusion of both.

I hope to hell this is not a trend.

Now, there are 4 mages in this raid. 2 are fire and another is a brother in arcane.

In the shorter fights, we creamed them. But the longer the fight went, they would pull ahead. Damn DoTs.

The other arcane mage was putting me to shame. Similar gear (although he has a LOT more haste – 84 more), similar spec.

Note to self: get off my ass and get over to Elitist Jerks…

Head over to Ignis, try 4 times and decided that was enough.

Meander over to XT and blow that bitch up.

Came in 3rd for DPS with 4979, but only 8th in damage. Chasing down stupid little bots.

But I LIVED!!!

At this point, I’ve got some pretty high hopes. We’ve managed to get 3 achievements without even trying.

Enter the Antechamber.

Hmmm… there are a lot more trash mobs on 25.

Guys, I’m expecting this to be kinda hard.

“Nonsense.”

Wipe.

“OMG Ulduar trash is hard.”

Told you so.

One of our mages had to take a real quick break so 3 mages and a warlock step up to the plate for CC duty.

Less than 3 seconds later we have a banish, 2 rabbits, and a classic sheep wandering about.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I got to SHEEP something in a raid.

/me gets warm fuzzies

Move up to Kologarn and have some discussion about the method.

We decide on the standard (as far as I know) approach of targeting the right arm, adds, body, back to right arm, lather, rinse, repeat.

Wipe.

OK, the ranged group has to keep a corridor clear for the people afflicted with the eye beam to run around like crazy in.

Let’s try right arm, adds, left arm, back to right arm.

Um… this doesn’t sound like a good idea. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it this way…

Wipe.

Still need to keep an area clear. Oh, and the OT really needs to pick up adds.

Wipe.

Seriously. Get the fuck out of the back of the room if you don’t want someone to drag an eye beam across you. If you see that the person next to you is being hit with the eye beam, get the fuck away from them.

Back to the normal right arm only tactic… 50%.

Once again, with feeling… 19%

And again.

Finally.

No one else has dropped anything interesting for me. But now…

[Bracers of Unleashed Magic]

/drool

Rolled a 43.

Fuck me.

[Pattern: Cord of the White Dawn]

/drool

Rolled a 22.

Fuck me.

/sniffle

Well… off to Iron Council.

Wipe.

Wipe again.

Too many people in too many different time zones so we called it there.

Overall, I can’t tell where I placed in damage since we traded out a few people as the raid progressed. I ended up 5th in DPS (which is not how I prefer to track myself) .

So I was terrified I was going to embarrass myself, but I didn’t do too bad.

…

Off to Elitist Jerks.

Hmmmm….

Looks like Arcane Barrage sucks worse than I thought.

OK, new plan!

We shall now clear our Arcane Blast defuff with Arcane Missile, regardless of the presence of Missile Barrage.

And I had already promised myself to cast more Arcane Blasts before clearing the stack.

No longer shall I limit myself to Arcane Blast x3! I shall now judiciously spam Arcane Blast when my mana pool can sustain it and I have trinkets/buffs to go with it.

Now the real bummer is this means that my spiffy fun rotation and juggling Missile Barrage buffs is no more.

But it’s still at least one more button than frost gets to push!

…

Log onto my priest for some heal-tastic fun.

Get into a group with 3 pallies and a rogue.

OMG shit dies fast with 3 pallies.

We destroyed the Armory.

We said please and thank you.

No one did anything stupid.

They stayed in line of sight and took care of runners.

I got a guild membership offer and compliments on mana management.

It was a breeze.

One of the pallies had to run for a bit so we replaced him with a warrior.

Note that we have a tank already. He’s 38 and the warrior is 32. Note that we have had no problems.

Enter the Cathedral.

First pull.

OMFG!

Everyone took 1000 damage all at once, I swear.

Get it all under control.

FYI – The Jade Owl trinket actually manifests a small jade owl that flies around. Very cool.

Warrior, what stance are you in?

“def at the moment”

Can you please switch to any other stance?

“Eh?”

You’re pulling aggro everywhere.

(Funny how that works when you spam Thunderclap in defensive stance. The mobs 3 hallways down came to check out the racket.)

Warrior has left the party.

Whatever, let’s 4-man this shit, just pull it slow.

It’s sad when it’s easier with fewer people…

Right before we got to the end, the original pally came back and we cakewalked it.

Got my spiffy Triune Amulet, and realized that I couldn’t equip it for another level. /impatient

One of the pallies didn’t have the Scarlet Key so we squashed the Library.

Doan finally dropped my robes, but I’m not sure if they are better than my current robe. I need to toss an enchant on that and check it out.

Run back to UC and turn in the quest for clearing SM.

I LOVE the BoA shoulders!

Crazy XP from quest turn in and ding to 39.

/equip Triune Amulet

…

Head into an impromptu Naxx 10 run with our first alliance guild. The prot pally from my guild is in as the OT and several other people are in need of gear.

Tada!

We can dance!

I’ll be honest, I never thought we were going to get that with our prot pally in the group. I can’t recall a time he has lived through it on his druid as a healer, I figured we were hosed with him on DPS and having to do the dance constantly. So many congratz in order and hopefully this means his druid can live through it as well.

I tried out my new aggressive rotation and I’m liking it.

Comparing this Loatheb fight and my previous one (most recent that I can find a screen shot for) I was up 1000 DPS – without even popping a flask.

…

So I finally got off my ass and got a WWS account.

I recorded the Plague wing from that 10 Naxx and loaded it up.

It looks really cool.

But I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with it now.

The file will be up for 15 days, if anyone wants to take a peek and tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do with it now…

http://wowwebstats.com/2akq6rab3pbn3

Yes, there was a lot of downtime in there. We lost a healer after Noth and we screwed around waiting find another. We also had a phenomenally difficult time getting past the eyestalk room after Heigan. Safety Dance? Check! Running through adds? Failboat!

…

Tonight is OS 10, assuming I can scrape up another healer…