a question and a new pet

Is a level 70 epic BOE enough motivation to level a new alt?

Last night Waradwen went on a midbee, early Kara fun run, to pick up a few badges and see the Scourge Invasion boss. It was fun to see a new fight and, admittedly, it was almost fun to clear all the trash on the way to him. I've never been into the scullery in Kara or in the animal boss area, so that was fun to explore. The boss fight itself was more annoying than difficult. Our tank did an awesome job kiting him around in a big circle while we blasted him between Blood Mirrors. Love the new pet, too.

After killing the new boss, we were clearing our way towards the Maiden when [The Night Blade] drops! And I won the roll! But now, what should I do? I don't have a rogue, and this sucker just screams rogue. The melee DPSers I have are a shammy and a paladin, and I don't see the point in either of them equipping this bad boy. And I don't want to just sell it to a random dude at the Auction House. Soooo...yeah. I'm probably going to start a new alt. I mentioned yesterday that the priest wasn't a great fit yet... /stabbystabby!

The last thing I did last night before bed was to hop on my hunter, push her to level 32, and get her a badass gorilla. In complete huntard fashion, I forgot to take the appropriate food for the gorilla after I tamed him. Der. Fortunately, it turns out that gorillas will eat halloween candy. And that will make him happy enough to get him back to the closest town. I'm looking forward to testing him out tonight.

Happy maintenance day!

Wednesday's damage report

This is the Recount data from Wednesday night's foray into Kara. Yes, it is partly to gloat about being #1 in damage done, despite being dead for the entirety of the Maiden fight, but mostly it's to highlight the #2, my friend and guildie Linada, who just hit 70 recently and was on her first Kara run. Nerf hunters, yo!

the tower? the tower! rapunzel!

Last night Wara got to return to Karazhan, for the first time in months, and it was awesome. I logged in to do some dailies and fart around for a bit, and what do I see but a Kara group forming, and they need more. Woo! I actually flirted with the idea of respecing to feral, as we were short tanks, but ultimately I got to do what I do best, stand back and blast stuff. Yeehaw.

In a way that's very amusing to me, this was my first trip to lower Kara. Curator, Prince, Nightbane? Killed 'em all. Attumen? Um...quick, to WoWWiki! Heheh. The only boss fight I haven't seen yet are the animal bosses. I don't think they have anything that I want, anyway. Plus, I've heard their grapes are sour. That's just what I've heard.

It was odd at first, being back in boomkin form for a group adventure. All of my recent play as Wara has been solo, so I haven't had to think about threat or aggro or that sort of thing, and my recent group experience has been as Waradwenne, who couldn't pull aggro to save her life. Blessing of Salvation, I needs it.

The Attumen fight was quite straight-forward, as probably most of you know. Starfire, starfire, starfire, keep up faerie fire and thorns when you remember. A few minutes later, dead horse and rider.

Moroes was more of a struggle, and it took three times to get him down. The first round was one of those ridiculously close, can't believe we didn't get him fights, where we honestly got Moroes down to 1% before wiping. I got garroted early and spent probably too much of my mana trying to help keep myself alive, so by the time Moroes was at about 30%, I was OOM and very shortly out of health. The second try was just a complete mess. Among the party guests last night was the arms warrior, and he got loose early and wreaked havoc. I don't know if he really targets the healers on purpose, but it felt that way last night. It wasn't technically a wipe, because the RL saw what was happening and told us all to run out and reset the fight before we all croaked. Smart man, that druid. The third attempt was quick and efficient. We blasted down three of the guests, then were able to keep the fourth shackled while we downed Moroes himself. Fun. And for my trouble, I got a little rubber ducky! Hurrah!

By this time it was getting late for a Wednesday (especially after all the arrangements it took to get the group going in the first place), so we all had enough energy for just one more boss, Maiden. Somewhere between Moroes and Maiden we lost our enhancement shaman, so we were going in a little light, but it felt worthwhile to try. It turns out we can down Maiden with only seven. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say we, because I was one of the corpses. As we were entering her room and positioning ourselves, somebody must have come too close because first our warlock died, then I died. Since we were *basically* set, the tanks were able to corral her and we were able to continue the fight. Our RL came up with a plan: he'd battle-rez me, then I'd battle-rez the warlock. Good plan, right? Well, it probably was, except the Maiden took exception to my coming back to life and thwacked me on the head before I could get my rez off. Bitch. Stoutly, the rest of the group forged ahead and brought her to her knees. Lots of work for two badges, eh? Although, it's not like I did a whole lot. Hmm. Free badges!

So that was my fun for last night. I need to get my raid kit back together, although I don't think I'm out of anything except for flasks. All in all, a most successful evening, and I'm that much closer to having enough badges for the [Crystalwind Leggings].

belated weekend update, continued: Saturday

Saturday's Kara run almost, *almost* didn't go off, and not because we were short a healer. You won't believe me when I say it, but we were short DPS. DPS! Everybody wants to DPS! Fortunately we were able to find a priest from another guild (the guild leader, in fact) and we were off, just a little bit late.

First stop, Prince. Trash clearing went very smoothly and after a few minutes of stratigizing, we were good. In we go to Netherspace, position an imp at a certain mystical spot (not sure why, actually), and after his next patrol we were off. As soon as the tank started running to his position I noticed that one of my group-mates, another DPS-er, disappeared. D'oh! I assumed that the raid leader was going to call off the attempt, but he didn't and we hit Prince hard. The tank did an amazing job holding Prince and we poured on the damage. The infernals fell fortuitously and we got that bastard down to 2%. Two percent! With only nine of us! Unfortunately, his axes went nuts about then and chopped us all down. We ran back, found another DPS to replace the still-missing guy, and tried again, twice. During the second attempt the infernals fell almost directly on top of us each time, and we had some bad falls the third attempt. By that time we were getting fatigued, I think, so we decided to go back to the other targets, then maybe come back at the end of the night.

Next: Netherspite. This was a pretty straight-forward fight. I got assigned the blue beam for half of a round which was pretty cool. I didn't see the giga-crits for uber damage that I was led to believe I would see, but maybe I missed them. It was hard keeping track of what was hitting where and when. I really need to get WoWWebStats running so I can go back and figure out how to improve. I know I need to get better about using and swapping my trinkets, but I'm sure there's other ways to improve my damage output.

Next up, dragon number 2: Nightbane. What an amazingly fun fight! There was so much going on that I didn't get many screenshots until the end, which I'll share with you when I get home. It's a nice picture of me, dead, watching the last 1% of Nightbane's health drain out. It seems to be a recurring theme for me in boss fights, that I die just before the very end of the fight. What a pain. All that time I'm lying there, dead, I know I could be pumping out more Starfires. Hell, even Moonfires at that point. Why conserve mana when the boss is at 2%? I die so freaking fast, though, that I hardly even notice before I'm dead. Hmm. In loot news, Llanion finally got his [Stonebough Jerkin], so grats to him!

By this point we're all fired up and full of ourselves, so we race back upstairs to try Prince again. This time the fight is almost a piece of cake. We get reasonably-placed elemental drops (that is, we didn't get the two elementals that surrounded the tank, like in an earlier fight), and we blast through Phase 3 before the axes do too much damage. Hurray! Prince is dead! So here comes the minor drama.

[Helm of the Fallen Defender] drops. We had been joking all run that this would drop, so our tank could get his Tier 4 helm. I had forgotten that this could represent *my* Tier 4 helm, too. There's two other druids, me, and our warrior tank who could use it. Two of the druids pass immediately; they're happy with their current helms and the drops they've already gotten this run. And I'm torn. Two things are clear to me. 1) We only go as far as our tank takes us; if he's undergeared, we don't go far. 2) I want that helm. By guild loot rules, it's mine. I'm a main, he's on an alt. He's got an epic helm already -- one of the ones crafted from engineering, I think -- and I'm in a blue. A decent blue, to be sure, but this would be a significant upgrade. And I'm now torn. Can I take this drop, knowing how rare tank drops have been in the past? Who am I? I'm new to the guild. The tank has been in the guild for a long time, and is actually one of the acting GLs while the regular GLs are on a hiatus. Nobody else wants to venture an opinion. I keep trying to convince the tank to roll for the helm. That seems reasonable to me. We've both got a claim to the drop and it represents an upgrade for both of us. What would you do if you couldn't decide between two druids? You'd roll, right? He keeps refusing to roll and eventually gives in, citing the loot rules. He's on an alt, I'm on a main. So now I've got this awesome helm and feel absurdly guilty. Am I a loot whore? I sure hope not. I'll probably feel guilty until he ends up getting it, assuming he does.

That wraps up the adventures for Saturday night. When I got back to Kara there was an announcement that somebody had just defeated Kael'thas (the real one, not the Sunwell one) and so there was a buff to Sha'tar rep and damage done in Tempest Keep. I tried to organize a Bot run but we couldn't find a tank. After asking around for a little while and getting no takers, I realized how late it was and decided to turn in. A waste of the buff, but I really didn't want to PuG a tank. DPS I could possibly tolerate, but not a tank. It just seems like a recipe for frustration.

belated weekend update: Friday

The guild I'm in is relatively small (but growing!) so we just have one Kara run per week, with a couple of people swapping toons depending on the fight. Consequently, we break it up into three parts: a Wednesday run for the lower bosses (Attumen, Moroes, Maiden and possibly the beast boss or Opera, depending on how the group is feeling); a Friday run for the first half of the upper bosses (Opera, Curator, Shade, and Chess); and a Saturday run for the big boys (Nightbane, Netherspite, Prince, and Illhoof). Because of Pox Arcanum coolness, I can't run with the group on Wednesday, but I've gotten to run probably three of the last four Fridays. The couple of Saturday runs I was scheduled for didn't go off for want of a healer.

Friday: Kara (Opera through Chess)

The Wednesday run had gone according to plan, so Opera was first up. Romulo and Julienne. Hella-fun. The first two phases were cake. We had a few problems with interrupting Julienne's heals on the third phase (she kept resisting, apparently!), but eventually got them both down. Hurray! I died once, I think, but got battle rezed and was able to get back into the fight.

Next up, Curator, which was a harder fight this time than the first time I did it, for whatever reason. I guess we had less DPS on the sparks (whatever they're actually called), so I ended up using Moonfire more than I might have otherwise liked and was essentially out of mana for the last bit of the fight. I actually kept getting aggro from the sparks, so I even melee-ed (if that's a word) them a little, to build up some minor mana. It's my inner panzerkin wanting to come out, I think.

Shade. Shade was probably the most straight-forward and easiest fight of the night. Everybody was awesome about not moving during the flame wreath (and I remembered the lesson learned from my first fight, that battle rez counts as moving, so I was patient and fought the urge to rez one of our healers until the flame wreath was gone) and I could actually see the blizzards easier, so no worries there. We took him out mere moments after the polymorph phase.

Last was Chess, which was pretty unremarkable. I still don't quite get it -- it feels very random to me -- but it's a nice break after a night of fighting.

In summary, a very fun night in the tower. I think I died twice during the whole night, so that's not too bad, and we one-shot all of the bosses. Well, I guess technically we two-shot Opera, because we did the somebody-get-naked-and-find-out-what-it-is thing, but we dropped them the first time we were actually all there. No loots for me I forgot! From Shade, I got [Boots of the Infernal Coven]. I also got eight Badges which are nothing to sneeze at.

After Kara, a few of us were still sufficiently awake to run another dungeon, so we went to Old Hillsbrad. Former healer turned jack-of-all-trades Llanion has figured out a pretty sweet build for himself that allows him to heal in Kara, DPS as necessary, and learn to panzerkin, so he wanted to test his skills on a moderately challenging instance. It went pretty well, to be honest. I stole aggro from him a few times (unintentionally, I swear, Llan!) but overall it went very smoothly. I even got the [Ravenwing Pauldrons] for my healing set which look hella-awesome.

Next post: Saturday's unbelievably fun destruction of the upper bosses, including the Prince.

awesomest kara run yet

I'll post more details later, but I wanted to share a picture and some quick news with y'all. Last night KMM went into upper Kara and took out Nightbane, Netherspite, and Prince. We one-shot the dragons which was hella-sweet. Prince was a little more...interesting. We got him, though, and he dropped the [Helm of the Fallen Defender] token which I got! I tried to force one of our tanks (who is also the co-GL but was on an alt) to roll for it, but he muttered something about looting rules and alts versus mains and I ended up with it. What a swell guy. Seriously. This whole guild is really awesome and I'm having a really good time playing with them.

Enough sap. I raced back to Shattrath to exchange the token for the [Antlers of Malorne] and there was much rejoicing! And not only because that fugly blue thing can now rest in the bank for a while...

On the left I'm wearing my new regular shoulders (the [Wyrmhide Spaulders]) and on the right I'm wearing my new healing shoulders, the [Ravenwing Pauldrons].

Oh, and before I forget! After the boss kills last night I had enough badges to buy the [Idol of the Unseen Moon]. I probably should have saved up for the trinket but, as I've said before, I'm a serious spendthrift. Only one green remaining!

+3 bosses, +2 purps

A brief note about last night's adventures.

I went in to Kara last night with a great crew from KMM. I missed the first night of the raid, Wednesday, because of Pox Arcanum festivities, but that's no matter. They only got to Attumen and Midnight before having to call it a night, so we had many, many bosses ahead of us.

The first boss was Moroes, which was a hell of a fun fight. We had three sets of shackles, so controlling most of the dinner guests wasn't too terrible. In fact, we were able to one-shot him, probably due to the good cc available. I got garroted once (whee!) but we managed to take him down before we all died. For dessert, Moroes dropped the [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury], which I won on a roll. Woot! I never win rolls!

Next up was Maiden, which was a harder fight. The first time, I got hit immediately by holy fire and died before I knew what was happening. The second time we did better, wiping after getting her to around 30%, I think. The third time, however, we took that bitch down. The first half of the fight was slow, and I kept getting silenced by that repentance thing. As I usually do for boss fights, I was mostly using starfire and trying to keep insect swarm up to conserve mana, but when she hit 40% and I was at nearly full mana, I said to myself, "fuck it," and started spamming her with moonfire and wrath. For her last 5% of health, I was moonfiring her like mad. She died (thud!) and dropped the [Mitts of the Treemender]! The resto druid in the group already had them and I was the only other leather wearer, so hurray! More of a healy item, I realize, but still better than the PVP blues I had just picked up at Thrallmar. Plus, gem slots, so today I picked up a [Sparkling Star of Elue] for +8 spirit and a [Dazzling Talasite] for +4 int, +2 MP5. Those gems should be useful for both DPS and healing. If I end up getting a token for T4 gloves sometime, I'll reconsider, but for now they're nice.

The last event of the night was Opera. Our mage had to leave after Maiden, so there was much joking about us getting Oz. Naturally, we did. As we were prepping, one of the healers kept saying that the kill order was "Dorothy > Tito > War > Straw > Tin." Wait. War? Me? Umm...yeah. He meant Roar, of course, but I was still amused when after we burned down Dorothy and Tito, Roar aggro locked on me and just would not let go. I would stop hitting him and bring him towards the tanks, but then if I even looked at him funny he'd come charging after me. Oh well. I spent the rest of the fight face-down on the stage, watching helplessly as they avenged my death, then took out the remaining bosses. Annoying, but still a fun fight. Our guest priest (who was awesome at removing the holy fire debuffs during the third attempt on Maiden) got the [Blue Diamond Witchwand], and I think we melted the other item. Pally shoulders, maybe? I'm not really sure.

Sadly, by that time it was after 1 eastern (we didn't start until about 9:30 due to a RL problem) and our hunter had to leave. We dithered around for another half hour trying to get a DPS replacement, but it was not meant to be. Tonight, Curator, Shade and Chess, at least. Mmm...more badges...

Kara <3 Moonkins

First, a brief guild update. After much thought and consideration, I'm now a nooblit in Kiss My Murlock. I wasn't going to rush into another guild, but the thought of being guildless at 70 didn't seem very appealing, and this group looks like a great fit for me. I have a dear friend who is already an officer in the guild, so I'm looking forward to getting to play with her more, and frequent commenter and resto blogger Llanion is also a member. Plus, they're fun, casual, and seem to be pretty mature and cool and stuff. I played in-game-mail tag with the current gl and finally caught up with him on Saturday. I'm pretty excited.

Last night Mrs. Wara was asleep, so I was screwing around online. Big surprise, right? Just as I'm trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the evening -- I was thinking about trying to round up a group for Arcatraz...I have like a half-dozen quests in there -- the Kara run starts getting organized. And they need DPS. Guess who's got four hooves and got to go DPS last night? That's right! This guy! I had a fantastically wonderful time and got some freaking awesome loots, which I was seriously not expecting.

The group had already started the Kara run for the week, so the first boss fight was Curator. Having never been there, I spent a few minutes pouring over the WoWWiki entry, had a very nice description from Llanion about what was expected, then we burned him down. Somehow I ended up budgeting my mana just right and was about to go oom when he went down. I need to get better at using my trinkets, but overall I'm pleased with how I did. And guess what he dropped? The [Staff of Infinite Mysteries]. And they gave it to me! Holy freaking crap! Now I really do need to focus on getting the major spellpower enchant mats together, 'cause I'm keeping this bad boy for quite a while, I think. Woo!

The next boss was Shade, which was a tougher fight. It wasn't hard, there was just a lot going on. I died twice on our first attempt, first when I couldn't tell where the blizzard was, then when we all wiped. Someone was battle-rezzed during the flame wreath and that seems to have set it off. But that's okay. The second attempt went stupid-fast and we burned him down before he got to the polymorph phase, which has apparently never happened before in the guild. Yay! He dropped a set of paladin shoulders (and we had no pallys) and [Aran's Soothing Sapphire]. Which they give to me for my healing set! Holy freaking crap, again! The healers (who were incredible, btw) already had it (or better), and the other boomkin didn't want it, so I got it. I really almost couldn't take it. If anybody else had shown any interest whatsoever, I would have gladly passed, but nobody did and they didn't want to d/e when I could use it, so...I did decide then that I was passing on anything else. How could I take so much from this group, when I've been a member for less than a day?

By this point it was getting late, but I we were awake and excited enough to go do the Chess event and get a few more shineys. On the way to Chess, Kara opened her heart again to the boomkins and dropped the [Ring of Unrelenting Storms] off of a trash mob. Happily there was another boomkin who could use it, because I really don't think I could have taken it. Three epics in one night, on my first run in Kara with a new guild? Nope. Impossible. Two epics was too improbable already.

Chess was...odd. I took an orc wolf and had fun tearing up the other side's casters, but I really don't understand what happened. At any rate, we won and got some more loots for our hard work. By the end of the night I had my two beautiful new pieces of equipment, my [Violet Signet] for hitting friendly with the Violet Eye, and six more [Badge of Justice]. Not a bad first night at all, huh?

I've got the Master's Key

So off to Kara I go! Hurray!

A group of guildies and I ran the Black Morass last night and I finished making my Kara key! That was quite a fun instance, too, almost non-stop fighting for the entire time. The worst part of the instance was when I screwed up our first attempt by getting too close to Medvih, starting the fight too soon. Not a huge deal, we just ran out and reset the instance, but it made me feel kinda dumb. Oh well.

I got some nice loot yesterday in addition to the key, so I passed on all of the shards from the boss drops (nothing useful to any of us). I got [Pattern: Stylin' Jungle Hat] from the instance. To celebrate my key, I went to the AH and bought myself [The Bringer of Death] which totally rocks (thanks again for the suggestion, Urthona!). Lastly, while farming the Ethereals, I picked up the [Enigmatic Cloak of Magic] from an Ethereum Prison. Something of a lateral move...I lose some spell crit and intelligence but pick up some stamina and arcane resistance.

In crafting news, I've got half of the [Primal Air]s for my Windhawk kit. Woot! I'm too impatient to farm the elementals myself, so I'm farming them from the AH. Seems to work well enough. I need to get working on those [Primal Nether]s now.

Anybody want to run something?

key weekend

I had a moderately busy weekend in-game and ended up with a few nice new pieces of gear, as well as [Restored Apprentice's Key]. Woot!

Saturday night I was screwing around, PvPing a little, and trying to figure out what I was going to do when the scheduled raid fell through, because not quite enough people showed up. Guild chat was full of people looking for something to do, so I suggested, "We could help Wara get his Kara key," not actually expecting people to be interested. Almost before I knew what was happening, I found myself in a *fantastic* group, plowing into the Shadow Labyrinth. The balance seemed a little odd, but it worked out really well...we had three druids (representing all three branches of the talent tree), a mage, and a shadow priest. The fights weren't too bad, actually, although the fears from Ambassador Hellmaw were a serious pain in the ass and lead to my only death of the instance. For a guy who usually dies frequently, I was very pleased with my ability to stay alive. :) The gear drops weren't particularly useful for me, but I did get the [Brooch of Heightened Potential] from Blackheart the Inciter. "TIME FOR FUN!" Heh. After downing Murmur we swapped in another guildie who also needed the key fragment, grabbed it, then danced around for a bit.

Flushed with triumph and feeling only moderately tired (it was pushing midnight at this point back in reality), we pressed onwards to the second fragment. By this point we had lost our druid healer to PvP and our shadow priest had dropped out, so we were left with two druids and two mages. Not a good group to actually clear the Steamvault, so we decided to just run to the key. After an initial aggro (and subsequent death), I was able to stealth myself through the field of nagas to the pool where the second key fragment lies. Our other druid had the bright idea of giving the mages run speed potions, so between their invisibility and some quick running, they were also able to make it through unscathed. Well, relatively unscathed. Hurray! The second guardian was a piece of cake and we celebrated getting the second key fragment. By this point I was exhausted and called it a night.

Last night we make a quick run into the Arcatraz to pick up the third and final key fragment. Our group last night consisted of a warrior tank, myself and the resto druid from the previous night, and the two mages from the second key frag run. Arcatraz is pretty tough, man! Or maybe I'm just still undergeared and undertalented. We did reasonably well, though, wiping only once after an accidental aggro of a beholder-looking-thing. A death watcher, I guess it was. Before getting the key fragment, we took out Zereketh the Unbound, which was one hell of a fight. I think I acquitted myself well, battle rezing our healer when she went down about two-thirds of the way into the fight and keeping myself alive to spam moonfire at the very end when both our healer and at least one of the mages went down. /flex. He dropped the [Idol of Feral Shadows] which I walked away with. Hurray! We got ourselves resurrected and healed, then beat the snot out of the third guardian and picked up the third key fragment. Before logging I turned in the quest, so now I have the Restored Apprentice's Key in my hot little hooves.

Tonight (tentatively), we're going back in to to help Thrall escape from Durnholde Keep and to help Medivh open the Dark Portal. That means that by late tonight I may be able to enter Karazhan! W00t! Not that I'm actually ready for Kara, of course...my gear is still pretty indecent, although it is improving. I may even be able to consider heroic instances sometime soon...