down with Gruul

As I briefly mentioned earlier, I got to go on my first 25-man raid Friday night, when I went with the guild to rout Gruul from his lair. We've had Gruul on farm for a while now (the guild had recently killed Gruul for the first time when I started playing, eight-ish months ago) so I figured most of the other people would be well- or over-geared and I could do some damage with my suboptimal gear. I was right and it was a freaking blast. Fortunately for me, I had read up on the overall strategy for the raid so I wasn't completely lost and could basically play follow the leader. "There's someone doing my same job. What are they doing? Right, that guy comes third of Maulgar's council. No problem." :-D

Here we are at the entrance, getting organized and buffed for the first pull.

Same time frame, with my character info open, so you can the effects of the buffs. Over 10K mana and health! Also, you can see me contributing to the taunting of the first pull, by mooing at him. Moo!

Trash mobs down, we pressed into High King Maulgar's chamber. While moving to my starting position, I caught this view of the King and his council. Little did they know they were all about to die...

And the aftermath:

HKM dropped [Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender], but I didn't have enough KSP (our version of DKP). Maybe next time! He also dropped [Brute Cloak of the Ogre-Magi], but again, not enough KSP. No worries, though!

Here we are in Gruul's chamber, waiting to rain firey death on his ugly head. He's the one under the giant red arrow, if you weren't sure.

I think I did pretty well for the fight. I managed to keep myself alive until about the third cave-in that I saw, which, well, I didn't actually see until it was too late. Bastard. I kept myself well-separated from the rest for the Shatters and remembered to use Barkskin appropriately. I healed myself a little (one pot, a Regrowth) and kept an eye on the people around me, until falling when Gruul was at about 30% health.

We dropped him on the first attempt, taking less than an hour for the entire raid. Well, about an hour and a half, counting the pre-raid organization, buffing, and random waiting around. Gruul dropped two tokens for the hunter/mage/warlock legs and I decided to forego any of the other loot in hopes of getting the shoulders next Friday.

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I spent much of the rest of my time in-game this weekend charging after gear. Saturday I got a good Mech group together and picked up the [Warp-Engineer's Prismatic Chain] and the second half of my Arcatraz key. I chose the [Sha'tari Anchorite's Cloak], which seemed to be a nice healing cloak for that set of gear. Plus I like the way it looks, so I'm wandering around in it most of the time.

Sunday I got a group together to finish the Gorefiend quests in Shadowmoon Valley and got myself the [Druidic Helmet of Second Sight]. Woo! I need to get it gemmed, then I'm ready to rock and roll with it, but...oh, man...what a goofy looking helmet. I keep giggling at myself as I run around with it on. Heh. At least the Tier 4 headgear looks like antlers. This looks like...I don't know. Giant yellow rabbit ears? Fuzzy bunny FTW!