Frostmane!

There are a ton of screenshots & stories that I have failed to chronicle.   Some time ago, drunk Bryan agreed to my whimsical Adventure idea of rolling Alliance on a Horde server (Frostmane, since Kato & Lemmer were there).   Since then, we created a guild (name not of Bryan's choosing), & then we reconnected with a bunch of the guys who were willing to level up their old Alliance toons (or, in Henry's case, already had 8 level 100 Alliance toons), & even got Darren to reactivate.   The goal is to put together a regular Rated BGs team, although we still have a ways to go.   Here's what we did today (well, one of the things):

I don't know how many BGs we ran (Kato, Birdy, Quik, Henry, & me), but we won all but one. After I let Ryan1 die multiple times in the 1st one I did my best to keep him alive thereafter.   I didn't, but at least I died before he did. lol

I hit 100 on my Druid a few days ago, played a few BGs Feral to get some gear, then dual specced Restoration since we don't have a lot of healers (have you met these guys??).   I spent some time in Proving Grounds learning what my spells do, then jumped into a Valley, then a couple of Strands.   It's easier to heal Valleys because there are encounters that have someone tanking, meaning I can mostly single target heal.   And Alliance always wins Valleys.   I played both Strands playing Defense, because it meant all my heal targets were confined to one area.   And then the guildies got together for some random BGs.

It's Kea's fault

Feel free to click on the pictures to enlarge them.   My, Blogger, you have gotten so helpful over the years.

My buddy got me the Warlords of Draenor expansion plus 2 months of game time as an early Christmas gift, so I had no excuse.   We'd been playing Aion, & GW2, then Wildstar, then Archeage.   I'd been out for 2 years, & my level 85 landed in the Jade Forest in Pandaria.   Right away, the hardest part was...

...to not go fishing.

It's been a month now & I've gotten used to everything Blizzard dumbed down - a whole bunch of my specialization talents had been melted down into eachother, which I actually found confusing as fuck.   I couldn't keep my wand equipped any more (gah!!).   I still had my Vicious & Ruthless gear in my bags, along with my beloved Kalu'ak fishing pole.

It was so hard.

Alysrazor & Baleroc DEWN

I really enjoyed both Alysrazor & Baleroc. I actually don't care much for the Beth'tilac fight; it's not hard but it's just annoying because of all the target switching. Also having to look for the targets to switch to is a bitch; the little spiders come from random directions & I constantly have to be looking for them & the spinners are often out of my range of sight because they are dangling up above my head.

And I am so over AE already. Once you've been Fire spec it's just not fun in any other spec.

For me, Rhyolith is marginally more fun not just because there is less target switching but because it reminds me of that drunken steering game you can play on bar touchscreens. Also, it's completely possible to avoid dying if we end up wiping. Much less running.

I don't have any screenshots of Shannox, although I should. Chances are you wouldn't be able to discern much with all the glowy traps all over the ground, anyway.

Alysrazor took awhile. It was at least 2 Tuesdays, & then we (they... I wasn't on) got her on a Wednesday. Jahni ("Maverick") switched to Fire for air duty on this fight. Thanks Jahni. I did get into the air once, when we lost one of our tanks & she was at fairly low health. Whoever could get in the air & dps grabbed feathers. I managed to stay up there for 3 or 4 hoops & then Fique told me to just die because apparently I was the last one alive & everyone was just waiting. So I dropped to the ground & found myself out of combat; Alysrazor had despawned. And I got to cast my first ever mass rezz.

Alysrazor is actually another boss fight in which it is relatively easy to sneak out of survive a wipe. I didn't even have to use Invis; I just ran to the farthest corner of the area.

We downed Baleroc tonight after (I'm guessing) 5 or 6 attempts. Within an hour, anyway. The hardest part of this encounter was managing the Torment from the shards. I guess the magic number of stacks to switch was 12, at least for me & Jahni. Baron was bored. Thanks everyone for being awesome. This is good shit. =)

Nefarion Down

Nef went down after many attempts, but all of those in one night. I used 2 flasks. A few of our wipes were due to plain old bad timing on the abilities or bad random placement of the pink fire (whatever the fuck it's called).


In phase 1 Justin tanked Onyxia while Ben tanked Nefarion, & probably the hardest part of it was finding a balance between DPSing Nef to as close to 75% as possible & killing Onyxia before she did the sparkly thing. Phase 2 was fairly straightforward, at least for me as DPS. Maybe not so much for the healers.


For phase 3 we had some discussion about the best way for Justin to kite (or just tank) the adds, & in both P1 & P3 the add aggro was inexplicably directed. With regard to the pink fire, our final attempt really was made possible by randomly benign placement of the fire, making it easy for Justin to stay alive & for us to DPS Nefarion with ease.


Getting a decent BBQ picture, however, was very difficult.

The Goblin Barbecue

Thanks to Keegan & his Engineering, we have been able to cook out while raping & pillaging. The Goblin Barbecue only grants 60 stamina & 60 of some other useful random stat so most of us bring our own snacks, but simply having the grill going makes it that much cozier when we can finally declare Miller Time.



And our first Firelands boss, done in the span of one flask.

Cho'gall down (dead, fallen, deceased!)

We had a pretty good run tonight; not only did we have enough raiders in time to start the raid 45 minutes early, but we one-shotted almost everything. Cho'gall took 2 takes. Positioning him on the stairs in phase 2 really helped us get the tentacles down fast. DPS noticing the tentacles also helped.

Baron got a nice helm, I got a nice offhand, & Jordan got nothing.

After Bastion of Thunder we headed to Blackwing Descent & managed Magmaw, Omnotron, Maloriak & Atramedes before Shanti had to go at 11:45.

Al'Akir Down =)

Don't ask how long it took.


Here's the tankspot video on the encounter. I kind of enjoy Aliena's accent.http://youtu.be/neDeFX4iyNk