Warcraft Experience

And that was rather exciting! Necros asked if we’d run him thru Scholo last night before the Onyxia raid on Monday. Wanting to help out a guildie I agreed and dragged Smokinjoe along with me (he signed on right as we were grouping). Unfortunately Necros forgot to mention the handy little tid-bit that it was a PUG. No Thanks! Smokin and I were gonna bail so Necros suggested we change it to a 5-man and do guildies only. Phifer came on just then so we had our priest! Spoonholtz was supposed to come along as well but he never showed so a 4-mannin’ we went.

I can adamantly state I suggest doing a 4-man without a tank. Squishees FTW doesn’t work when you get silenced, some of the mobs resist spells, etc. A coupla deaths later and we made it down to the alchemy lab for Necros to continue his epic mount quest.

Some phat loot dropped and my haxxor dice where in full swing It’s a good thing, I’m down to 550g. LOL

- [item]Jeweled Amulet of Cainwyn[/item] and I won! For the life of me I can’t recall what my roll was and I forgot to take a screenie. O well, I won!
- [item]Rattlecage Buckler[/item] – greed roll and I won with a 56
- The [item]Dreadmist Wraps[/item] also dropped and I tried to pass on it but Smokin wanted me to roll. I beat him by 1.

Ras Frostwhisper hooked us up with some cool stuff. The [item]Spellbound Tome[/item], [item]Death’s Clutch[/item], a [item]Corruptor’s Scourgestone[/item] and [item]Essence of undeath[/item]. Since the first two were BOP we passed and greeded for shards. Smokinjoe and Phifer walked off with those.

And of course I was late. But dang it, the 1st is my mom’s birthday and she’s more important! Happy Birthday Mom!

Had an exciting time of it though. My 4-year old niece knocked over and broke a very lovely floor lamp of my dad’s. It had about 10 blue and white flower shaped globes on it and all but 2 shattered. So if anyone knows of a good spot to get replacements, let me know would you? I thought my brother and sister-in-law were going to faint. Luckily Jasmine (my niece) wasn’t hurt but boy can that kid scream – more out of shock than anything I think, since there wasn’t a scratch on her. The glass went all over the living room, dining room and down the hallway. The mad dash to a screaming child by myself, my sis-in-law and my mom was rather funny thinking back on it though. We came from every corner of the house as fast as we could. We set Jasmine in the corner, tossed her older brother and dog outside on the back porch and ripped apart the living room to clean up all the shattered glass. We got it all cleaned up and had a fantastic dinner and opened birthday presents and christmas presents from my grandparents (they were in Tallahassee with my uncle et al for xmas).

As I was about to leave Grandma called and said it was raining realllly bad and to be careful. Knowing Florida storms I hung out for a bit then headed on home. I had a very peaceful drive until I was about 4 miles from the house when the rain hit in buckets. I was sliding all over the interstate, with a truck riding my ass (what is with that anyway? Go around me or back off dude you can see my sliding) in Babbaganoosh’s Firehawk TransAm. I thought I was going to wreck for sure. I hate driving at night because I can’t see very well and especially in his car since I’m not overly familiar with it. I made it home safe and sound with my nerves a bit frayed

I was really trying to make it home for MC but (or so I thought) circumstances were against me. They had one spot left with my name on it so I hopped on after waiting out the *supposidly fixed* queue. I made it in time for our first fight with Golemagg.

Golemagg dropped some awesome stuff last night! Too bad some people had a case of the Gern’s and were rolling like crap.

* [item]Lawbringer Chestguard[/item] – Galvar with a 94. Grats to Galvar! and Smokinjoe your dice suck dude.
* [item]Robes of Prophecy[/item] – Rapunzel with a 86
* [item]Blastershot Launcher[/item] – It went to hunters first and of course, they all passed. It went to an “upgrade” roll for everyone that could use it and Hurtu won with a 96! WOOOT!

Sulfuron
* [item]Nightslayer Shoulder pads[/item] – Kyjethu won with a 21
* [item]Mantle of Prophecy[/item] – Muridis! Default FTW. Go Dil!

Majordomo
* [item]The Eye of Divinity[/item] – only two priests left to roll (Muridis and Rapunzel) and Muridis won with a 98. He was trying the quest when I signed off last night, hopefully he finished it!
* [item]Fireproof Cloak[/item] – Chriara and Garand tied with a 100! Gotta love that. Garand won the tie-breaker roll with a 58.
* [item]Cauterizing Band[/item] – Pagonos won with a 99.

High-rollers tonite gang. Vegas anyone?

We tried to continue our winning streak where we left off on Wednesday but a lot of the people that went the first time didn’t show, so we had to toss together a group led by Ryjaek of some of the original people from Wed and then others that were on.

Babba was loot master again, which seems to work rather well for us. He just does a /20 and happily drops stuff in people’s bags. If we get a coin we can’t use we can just trade it amongst ourselves later on. For the bijous and the primal hakkari items we had the appropriate groups roll. I think it saves time and keeps our mind on playing rather than watching the rolls.

We headed for the panther boss (High Priestess Arlokk) and spent several hours tryin to kick some butt. Unfortunately we could not seem to kill her. We tried several strategies but ultimately we just couldn’t do it.

I think a couple more tries and we’ll take her down without a problem. This was the strategy that we used:

Arlokk’s Abilities

Arlokk has several abilities that she uses in the fight. They are as follows:

Summon: While Arlokk is alive, mobs of Panthers will be summoned around the area you are fighting her in. These mobs will consist of high level elite and non-elite panthers.

Stealth: At 3 points during the battle Arlokk will stealth and vanish from the fight. This leaves the party time to deal with the Panthers.

Hunters Mark: When this mark is placed on a player all panthers will attack that person until it fades. It lasts approx. 2 minutes. While a pain to the marked player who will need healing, it actually makes it very easy for other players to find the panthers and groups them up nicely for AOE effects.

Strategy

Once the gong in the Temple which Arlokk resides in is hit, a rush of panthers will attack the raid as well as Arlokk. The ranged elements of the raid should be by the Gong while the Main Tank should be tanking in the middle of the room. For the first part of the fight, all DPS should be centered on Arlokk.

The healers need to watch out for Arlokk’s “mark” and be sure to spam heal anyone unfortunate enough to recieve the debuff. DPS should be centered on Arlokk until she stealths, and not attacking the panthers because this battle relies heavily on downing Arlokk quickly.

After the first stealth, the party should center on killing the panthers as quickly as possible. When Arlokk returns, the panthers will spawn at an even quicker rate and need to be kept under control (AoE’s, flash bombs, fear, etc, etc). All I can say here is that Frost Nova is your friend and should allow you some degree of crowd control with these mobs. Arlokk should stealth one more time before the final engagement with her.

One very simple way to deal with the adds in this encounteris to have 2 people assigned to tank them at either place where the panthers come out of. A warrior is best, but a paladin with consecration can do the job just fine too. Just have them there the whole encounter and heal them, they don’t take too much damage and you can forget about the panther adds.

On Arlokk’s third repop; the raid needs to down her as fast as possible, simply because of the speed at which the panthers will begin to spawn. At this point it is a race for DPS to down Arlokk, before getting overrun with all the adds that will be popping throughout the last part of the fight.

Some people have noted the use of “Green Whelp Armor” for this fight as it will put attacking mobs to sleep for 30 seconds. It may be a considerable investment for regular leather wearers of the raid to pick this item up. We have also heard of many groups that either get druids to tank in bear form with this armor, or warriors that use it for this fight. Either way it makes the battle, much easier.

Here is another strategy:

6th Boss of the encounter – Panther Boss

Hit the gong to summon her.

She Marks someone and Vanishes, tons of Panther adds appear and attack the marked person.
Now this is a difficult boss these panther adds if killed instantly respawn and most likely they are now elites.

Everyone know what a target Dummy is? In this fight, at least initially, your going to use a living target dummy. Send in whatever tanks you have and bang the gong. One of the tanks is going to get marked. Your not going to Keep him alive. Just keep him alive long enough that the panthers do not overwhelm all the casters before they can do there damage.

Everyone else attack the boss and no messing about. You want max damage as fast as you can get it.

Do not I repeat Do not kill the panthers while the Boss is Visible.

She will transform into a panther-lady-freak and then quickly stealth. When she goes into stealth is time to start dropping the panthers. And drop as many here as is possible.

The key to this fight is to do as much damage as you can in as short a time as possible.
If you have not killed her by the time she has stealthed 3 times your not going to kill her.
In this case bail and get more dps.

This is a Rez and loot Boss. By this I mean count on dying.

Thanks Assweasel1 for the great information!

Just finished running Molten Core as Bolicious instead of Funktea! He won the Ony head on Monday night’s run, and had to work tonite, so he asked if I’d take his mage through instead of mine. What the heck right? I have all my pieces so why not.
We ran a bit late on getting organized but Burthona had issues with his CTMod and finally had to ditch it altogether. 15 min late we started the run but still managed to kick-some butt and finished Shazzrah before 11pm.

It was interesting playing someone else’s character thou let me tell you. None of my buttons were there or anything else. Everyone made fun of me and said I was down in healer camp on the damage meter but screw them! I had fun and it made me contemplate switching to ice/arcane spec. But I’m really attached to my spec.

I’m tired so I’ll post the loot tomorrow.

I’m baaaaaccckkkk….

As usual we had a f-ton of druid and rogue stuff drop and, as usual, none of the Arcanist pieces dropped so I didn’t win Bo anything.

We had an off night last night and fumbled our way through the first part of MC. We had aggro pulls, multiple dog pulls when we weren’t ready, imps, imps and o! did I mention imps…

Lucifron

• [item]Cenarion Boots[/item] – went to a greed roll for a nexus shard. Paganos and Hurtu tied on their first roll with 99s, so a re-roll ensued and Paganos won with a 59. Normally I hold the items for DE’in in 1.9 but since I was on Bolicious, Smokinjoe got them.
• [item]Crimson Shocker[/item] – Saileen with a 97
• [item]Plans: Elemental Sharpening Stone[/item] – Galvar with a 89
• Tranq shot Tome – Galvar

Magmadar

• [item]Medallion of Steadfast Might[/item] – Static with a 83
• [item]Felheart Pants[/item] – Farkhat won with a 89
• [item]Aged Core Leather Gloves[/item] – Deflickshew with a 65
• [item]Schematic: Force Reactive Disk[/item] – Gwadraw won it with a 98

Some mighty interesting things dropped that normally don’t for us. Wonder if Blizz is shaking it up a bit or what the deal is. Is this happening for anyone else?

A quick portal to IF, repair, get some more coffee/BIO and off we went for round two.
Firelord

• [item]>Nightslayer Belt[/item] – Deflickshew with a 1. WOOT – Nice roll

Gehennas

• [item]Nightslayer Gloves[/item] – Deflickshew won by default. Nice night for him, huh?
• [item]Wristguards of Stability[/item] – these are really for Feral Druids and Ryjaek wasn’t there so nexus crystal! Wendra won the roll with a 98 and it headed off to Smokin’s bags for 1.9

Garr

• [item]Circlet of Prophecy[/item] – Chriara won with a 85
• [item]Giantstalker’s Helm[/item] – nexus crystal. Poor Gerty didn’t get to go last night and this would have completed his set. But luckily we made room for someone so they could potentially get an ornage that will quest will get completed in about 2007. Galvar won the roll with a 96
• [item]Obsidian Edged Blade[/item] – went one round with Jose Cuervo.. o wait .. and was on the way to a greed roll when Theseus stepped up to the plate and said he would use it and be glad of it too. Even manned up and said he would take it as his MC weapon instead of greeding it.

Baron Geddon

• [item]Cenarion Spaulders[/item] – Moonwinna with a 41
• [item]Seal of Archmagus[/item] – Alyna with a 98

Shazzrah

• [item]Cenarion Gloves[/item] – Badfun with a 57
• [item]Nightslayer Boots[/item] – Chuckers with a 66

We killed Shazz in 6-7 minutes and finished the run two minutes early. Congrats everyone! Cheers to one more step to completing your sets!

Had a great time last night running Azuregoes, UBRS, and ZG. WOOT! We haven’t done that in a long time and it was great.

Babba and I were on earlier running my alt (Bellisimo) thru the Stockade when someone announced in LMRBO that our lovely blue dragon was up. Finished that run up lickity-split – Thanks honi for busting out the big level 60 to scare those mean nasties away. LOL.

I switched over to Funk and we started gathering a crew together. Chuckers contacted someone in Avanta Corda (I’ll never spell that right) to see if we could group with them so some of their guild came out, so LM, AC and rounded out with some RBO and Lords of the Boogie, and I bet other guilds tossed in for good measure gave it a go. A frickin’ troll was griefing and some idiot wanded Azuregoes – not 1 idiot but 2 on 2 different occassions – before the call went out so some of us the raid started out the fight with the debuff curse on them. We got her down to 50% before we all died. By that time another group had gathered and they wound up killing her.

Trubben needed help getting the blood from Drak for the Onyxia quest in UBRS so he asked if we would go. Poor thing has gone several times and thanks to server resets has never made it all the way thru. A quick portable pizza for Babba and some soup for me and off we headed to UBRS. Sometimes you forget how fun that place is.

Some of the RBO guys were heading there anyway so we teamed up and had a blast. Even had a few 50s in the group so they could get some experience and loot. Calwin, a 54 Priest, got the [item]Devout Mantle[/item] off Solakar Flamewreath (hope he knows how rare that drop is). And when grows up a few levels he’ll be able to use it. LOL. One piece down!

Drak dropped the [item]Brigam Girdle[/item] (Babbaganoosh won the greed roll with a 97 – shard FTW) and Elheem won the [item]Breastplate of Valor[/item] with a 38. Luckily, Burthona just came on so we got to rub that in his face After a bit of grumbling Burthona had the best idea yet – ZG! Hell yea!

A portal to SW and off we headed for ZG. Thank god I still had some water left over from the previous raids.

We took down four boss’ and ended our evening on a high note! I think Friday has tentatively been pin-pointed for a continuation.

Some words from our fearless raid leader (Burthona):

Nice work, all.

We had some great crafting pieces drop, as well as soon fine loot. We encountered a few loot issues that I need to get with Ambiance and Aster and make sure they’re clearly addressed.

With our MC equipment, that place is cake. We crushed four bosses (with only one wipe which was a fluke) in a little less than two and a half hours.

Some thoughts:

* More organization on the pulls could save us a little time. If the mages always know which target they’re sheeping for a given type of mob group, then we can pull that much faster. (Faster pulling makes Burthona wet.)
* I think we had the optimum build for groups last night. Did someone get a screen cap of the group setup?
* It’s difficult enough to hold aggro (from a warrior’s persepctive) with all that phat dps going around, but opening with aimed shot or pyroblast makes it impossible. Save those for after Burthona has a couple taunts and sunders in on the mob, eh?
* Mr. Ding – I lost aggro on him a bit at first, until I hit upon the winning combo – taunt, sunder, revenge, sunder, shield slam, heroic strike, (babba/jadzia has aggro), TAUNT, walk backwards, shield slam, revenge, etc. Tanking him is almost identical to tanking General Drak…with the exception that shield bash seems to keep him from dinging. At least, every time I thought he was doing it, I gave him a bloody nose with my shield and he stopped.

Jeklik (Bat Chick)
- [item]Jeklik’s Opaline Talisman[/item] – Chriara with a 83
- [item]Primal Hakkari Armsplint[/item] – Chuckers

Venoxis (Snake Boss)
OOooo doggie…don’t forget to assign CC (crowd control) before the pull. Forgot to do that, so quick thinking Redcross ran out of the doors and reset the fight.
- [item]Zulian Tigerhide Cloak[/item] – Aierestian with a 74
- [item]Primal Hakkari Girdle[/item] – Aierestian with a 43 (she must have a roll hack. lol)

Mar’li (Spider Boss)
- [item]Mar’li’s Eye[/item] – Muridis with a 98
- [item]Primal Hakkari Bindings[/item] – Asteroidea with a 85

Mandokir (Mr. Ding)
POWN! Only one death!!!
- [item]Primal Hakkari Tabard[/item] – Butters with a 57
- [item]Animist’s Leggings[/item] – Chuckers won the greed roll. shard-licious
- [item]Overlord’s Crimson Band[/item] – Burthona with a 66

That was the best ZG run yet guys. I can’t wait to tackle the back-half!

Yea, I know…I’m running a bit late posting this. Since Sunday was Christmas we post-poned our normal MC run to Monday and added Ony to the list. We started a tad late but we finished it all!

MC

Lava Annihilator – [item]Giantstalker’s Belt[/item] – Kurosawa with a 66

Lava Elemental - [item]Lawbringer Belt[/item] – Gern won with a 17! Great pally rolls guys!

Lava Elemental – [item]Gianstalker’s Belt[/item] – Asterioidea

Sulfuron Priest – [item]Nightslayer Belt[/item] that Chuckers ninja’d with a 97. Welcome back!

Sulfuron
- [item]Pauldrons of Might[/item] – Kobort won with a 25. Personally I think he should have removed his roll and given it to Static or Hurtu. Unforunately it only seems to be the officers that do that. I like how people go on and on about how they are only there for the friendship but have a piece of loot drop that they need and the truth comes out. Try another story guys.
- [item]Shadowstrike[/item] – We didn’t even bother trying to greed roll this polearm and went straight to nexus crystal roll. Viitanus won it with a 100.

Firelord - [item]Cenarion Belt[/item] – Moonwinna with a 89

Golemagg
- [item]Lawbringer Chestguard[/item] – Alahn with a 98
- [item]Arcanist Robes[/item] – Quisver with a 86
- [item]Azuresong Mageblade[/item] – Gwadraw with a 61. WOOOOT No more b*tching from him.
- [item]Sulfuron Ingot[/item] – Bank

Majordomo
- [item]Wild Growth Spaulders[/item] – Moonwinna with a 13
- [item]Gloves of the Hypnotic Flame[/item] – Espinoza with a 37. Dammit I really want those but you could only roll if you didn’t have purple gloves. Well F U too.
- [item]Ancient Petrified Leaf[/item] – Schnitzel

Ya know different stuff than what we normally get on Sunday’s dropped. I wonder if it has anything to with it being a Monday night or just dumb luck. What do you guys think? I’d be interested in giving it another shot and see if there are different drops “assigned” to different nights. Interesting….

Onyxia
- [item]Head of Onyxia[/item] – Bolicious with a 99
- [item]Onyxia Hide Backpack[/item] – Mez with a 100
- [item]Sapphiron Drape[/item] – Rapunzel with a 97
- [item]Halo of Transcendence[/item] – Medikman with a 45
- [item]Dragonstalker’s Helm[/item] with a 96 went to Jadzia

Congrats Everyone!

A couple of us “vets” ran Zul’Gurub with the “newer” 60s last night with Ambianceforc and Asteroidea sharing leadership. They were enormously excited over the progress that we made but I must admit I thought it went rather slow. We were there 4 hours total, including a server reboot and the always-fun issues of getting back in afterwards.

We cleared our way to Venoxis (skipped the Bat boss) and were assigning targets when the dreaded “Server will restart in 14 min” message popped up. Thanks a lot Blizz. Luckily Tuesday is your maintenance day…. We took Venoxis down with little trouble and 4 min left until the server reboot. Wendra won the roll for a Zulian Tigerhide Cloak, which I might add it very nice looking. Babbaganoosh rolled a 42 on the Primal Hakkari Stanchion but passed it to Garand. Saved to the instance FTW. We ran out and quit WoW.

What we learned: make sure your tank on the sheeped/sleeped adds know what they are doing. Ours was a little confused and kept wanting to target the boss before all the zapped creatures were taken care of.

Server reboot. WTF WTF WTF if the stupid server had to be rebooted through no fault of my own and because I was logged out for longer than 15 min because I couldn’t get back in would all of the frickin conjured water and food disappear. Thanks for penalizing me for giving you $30 a month you shits. So after multiple “retrieving character” screens, disconnects and “please try again”s I finally made it back only to discover I had to waste more time to create water and food AGAIN. Maybe if they hurried up and busted out 1.9 I wouldn’t be soooo pissed but anyone with a mage KNOWS how much it sucks to sit and make 4 water at a time.

Then when I finally get it all passed out, haven’t buffed anyone and have no mana the o’ so brilliant leaders are like “pull when you are ready Belata”. The guys are learning, I’ll give them that but if you reached 60 you should realize by now that you have to make sure EVERYONE is ready before you pull.

Of course the instance had reset except the snake boss so we pulled the mobs and headed out again. So we set out for the panther boss and the fishing area. Apparently there is a fishing quest that you have to be level 300 to even do that eventually allows you to spawn a water hydra. Ambianceforce was on the quest (Nat Pagle’s Measuring Tape) and only had to catch 5 fish to summon Gahz’ranka. Instead of leaving him and maybe one helper to fend out mobs we all sat around for like 20 min while he fished. BORING. I even had time to run out to Nesingwary’s Camp and repair. 4g lighter I headed back and they just had summoned the hydra.

What we learned: put a high DPSer in a group that can heal them aka a priest not a moonkin druid and 2 pallys and kill sh*t! Don’t make 19 people stand around because one person is fishing.

We tried fighting Gahz’ranka on land but that was a horrible no-no. He does a knockback that sends you flying in the air and kills you on impact. We also had a fish “landshark” attacking the guys that were down by the water and of course where did our Soulstoner land but by it. He managed to run away from the fish and survive and rez us all to victory. This time we had a warlock cast “underwater breathing” on us and struck out to play in the water. About 5 of us died but we killed him! Woot.

What we learned: fight in the water then knock-back doesn’t matter and have two tanks on the boss so when one gets sent flying the other can jump in, otherwise people die.

Check out the Gahz’ranka video that AmbianceForce made!

Loot: [item]Nat Pagle’s Broken Reel[/item] which Garand won with a 99, [item]Holy War Sword of the Bear[/item] and [item]Adventurer’s Bracers of the Whale[/item].

After our little victory we set off for the panther boss and died twice. By now it was after 11pm CST so we called the raid and handed out loot. A coupla blues, some greens, 9 bijous and 22 coins so not too bad of a run.

DUH! Sorry gang I forgot to post our phat loot from the Sunday run. And BTW you did a great job leading Hurtu!!

Sulfuron
* [item]Mantle of Prophecy[/item] – Medikman with a 80
* [item]Nightslayer Shoulder Pads[/item] – Mez with a 100. Congrats on all 8 of your pieces!!!!!

Lava Annihilator
* [item]Belt of Might[/item] – Druela with a 98. Apparently Dru was spaced out because we mentioned it going to the bank about 5 times before he said he didn’t have it. Geez.

Golemagg
* [item]Sulfuron Ingot[/item] – Bank for Rag’s hammer
* [item]Giantstalker’s Breastplate[/item] – Bahouth with a 86
* [item]Robes of Prophecy[/item] – Phifer with a 77 (he gets his first set piece bonus now – woot)
* [item]Blastershot Launcher[/item] – Jadzia with a 79

Majordomo – which I might add was our best attempt EVER without Burthona and Static. Great tanking everyone!
* [item]Ancient Petrified Leaf[/item] – Jadzia
* [item]Fireproof Cloak[/item] – Aveliana with a 100
* [item]Sash of Whispered Secrets[/item] was passed on by all warlocks and was opened up to shadow specced priests and locks for a greed roll. Aveliana had some hot dice and won with a 75. You go girl!

We tried a couple attempts at Rags and ran out of stoned souls so we quit for the night. Great run everyone!