Back to Normal

Or at least, what passes for normal around here.

I’ve spent the last whole week waxing philosophical about the leaked changes and then reporting the results from BlizzCon 2009, but I certainly didn’t just sit around picking my nose during that whole time.

I have been one busy little bee. Busy as a whole hive of bees!

First off, I would like to say that this guy sucks:

That’s right, I’ve been out grinding for my Netherwing drakes. This is the second to the last guy available for racing. I can get so close… but then he dives at the pier thing and I lose him. There has to be a way to do it without a pally aura or other speed-boost. People keep saying they’ve done it… I’ll come back and try again when I feel like I don’t have enough pain and suffering in my life.

Thankfully, that prick does not stand in the way of progress and I was able to get:

Whereupon I promptly was flown to Shatt by a very cool drake and picked up a drake of my very own.

And, get this – a lot of people aren’t aware of this little tidbit – once you’ve selected your first drake you can fly back to the Netherwing Ledge where you did all the dailies and there is a drake vendor in the orc camp where you can buy the remainder of the drakes. I think they were 200g each. Of course, I now have 6 Netherwing Drakes.

When I last talked about what was happening I had just respecced to fire and was going to be doing a Naxx 25 to take it for a spin.

During KT we inadvertently got an achievement:

It started with someone not paying attention at the start and pulling a whole section. Then someone said we might as well go for it.

Next thing we know, at least 2 people took the initiative to pull sections – different ones of course – and we had 6-7 abombs in the center.

Naxx 25 Overall Damage

EDIT: THE TOP DAMAGE IS ZUGZUUG.

I have actually done more damage overall in Naxx 25 as arcane spec, but most of that was trash and running with less-geared raid members. This was a raid with mostly very well geared members that were all vying for top damage spots. Where this spec really shone was on the bosses, I felt pretty flipping useless on the trash. I don’t think I’m quite ready to switch specs in between every boss, but I imagine I could really do some damage there. That would take a very patient group to allow me to regen mana in between switches and I’m not sure I could count on that.

I was just behind my buddy Dark for the run… it was only his untimely death on Thaddius that allowed me to even come close to touching his leet fire skillz.

So the verdict is in on fire. I’ll keep it as a raiding spec because it’s the only thing that’s really worthwhile but I am keeping arcane for questing and 5 man content. I will continue to send psychic instructions to Ghostcrawler to just fucking hurry up and buff arcane again so that I may go back to enjoying my class again. (Although I will admit, being able to cast Living Bomb on multiple targets has made the spec *almost* fun.)

Dark realized he didn’t have the Ony achievement on his DK so the 2 of us trundled over to her lair to lay some smack down before she gets revamped.

“So, how does this fight work?”

I have no idea. Every time I’ve been here we just rush in and WTF pwn her. There’s some whelps… she flies… fire? Stuff?

We were doing great until phase 2 and then it all fell apart.

Quick rehash of strategy and we took her by storm the second attempt.

For my efforts, I received:

My tier 2 helm!

This sucker went into the bank and there it shall stay. I’m really excited that they are re-releasing the helms as part of the updated Ony, but I most likely won’t be able to equip it without breaking up a set bonus.

And one more shot just to show off the ponytail:

/sexy

Got pulled into a 10-man Ulduar with the guild, starting on General Vezax.

Now mind you at this point, I’ve never successfully faced the Keepers. Hell, I had only seen Hodir and Thorim. Who cares about linear progression? Not me!

I think we 1-shot the General (I’m glad I wasn’t arcane for that fight) and moved on to Yogg.

All hell broke loose.

At one point we were trying to zone back in after a wipe and someone managed to start the fight.

So there we all are on the entrance steps, freshly zoned in and stark raving mad. While standing on mammoths and motorcycles.

We never did get past phase 2, but did get:

/kiss

Which has to be one of the easiest achievements in the game to get. Assuming you can get to Yogg.

Hodir keeps an eye on me, he was my BFF a time or two when Sara’s buff/debuffs were ripping me apart.

That was enough raiding for a bit so I buckled down and ground Mag’har rep for a couple days. Countless ogres were felled by my arcane blasts and barrages.

It was amusing to watch the low-level Alliance DKs give me a wide berth while I was farming. Made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Much to my surprise, the Mag’har have 8 talbuks for sale, not 6! However, there are the two PvP talbuks that I will probably never be able to get. No one PvPs in Halaa anymore. I would love to see Blizzard make it so that we can turn in the powder crap for research tokens and then turn in an absurd amount of research tokens for the PvP marks needed to get the PvP mounts. Or find a way to get people back in that zone for some good old-fashioned world PvP.

In a nostalgic mood, I headed off with my DK buddy to Blackrock Depths so we could get that achievement before it gets blown up.

Embarrassingly enough, I still had the quest from Thrall to talk to the princess. My little guild spent weeks in here when it was level appropriate and just couldn’t quite finish the instance. Yes, I’ve had that quest in my log since level 40-something.

To celebrate another slot in my quest log, I splurged a bit.

This big guy should make farming the baron’s mount easier. I can pop out and vendor grays each time I reset the instance.

And all that was just in 3 days!