Tempest Keep

Morning Folks!

Raid group cleared Tempest Keep to Kael last night, getting all the bosses down in 1 go pretty much (solarian needed a reset at 10-15% into the fight due to some bad luck when one of our crew DC'd just as he got the bomb.

So 3/4 Bosses cleared in TK, when the raid was called off 2 of us tried running to Kael, but there were too many spawns there, so we didnt get to see him. Damn! I was hoping to get at least a quick look at him.

So tonight we're gonna clear 5/6 in SSC again or maybe 4/6 then friday night we'll try Vashj again I imagine.

So I'm gonna get another shot at the Tsunami Talisman, and the T5 Legs. Lets hope I get lucky, I've got a lot more dkp than most people so if they drop they will be mine!

But as usual I imagine they either wont drop, or someone else will out bid me..

/sigh

Just a quickie...

Morning peeps!!

I need any level 70 druids to go try something for me.....

Last night 3 of us went to Onyxia to try and kill her.

Druid tank and 2 Paladins.

1 tank, 1 healer, 1 dps.

Phase 1 was easy - she was hitting like a girl.

Then we got her to phase 2, she flew up into the air and we started killing the whelps.

"Onyxia takes a huge breath"

"oh...that hurt..."

So we all corpse run back to the cave, summon in another paladin healer and re-enter. Seriously the trash mobs in there hit harder than Onyxia.

Anyway we buff up and our druid goes into cat form and stealth's around her and gets ready to pounce.

"OK guys lets go!" I shouted and we four brave souls once again entered the jaws of death.

"WTF?!?!?" We all cried as we watched Onyxia start running around the cave totally ignoring the 4 of us as we continued to hit her.

This continued for 10 minutes or so, she just kept wondering around while we kept hitting her.
At about 80% she started moving out of the area where she sleeps.

BAM!!

The four of us were hit for 22-25k

"Oh I forgot to mention that!!" Said the druid, "If you try to kite her out of the area she wipes the raid"

"Darn it.."

So we ran back in for another go...figure we'd see if she'd bug again like that.

Druid stealthed in behind her and off she went on her merry way, completely ignoring us.

This time she wondered into the egg area....damn... what we gonna do now?

She backed herself up against a wall in there and wouldn't come out. We tried going in there after her but the whelps respawn really fast so this was a no go...

Time was running out before people had to go to the raid but we figured if we had some ranged dps with us we could nuke her down even if she was hiding in the whelp bit...

So we're gonna go back there tonight to see if we can pull it off again...we'll get her down though!! Just it might take a while.

Old World Fun'n'Games.

Greetings folks!

I trust you all had a good weekend?

Had quite a bit of fun over the weekend so lets start at the beginning...

Friday Night.

The raid group gathered at SSC for some tries on Lady Vashj. We finally were getting our act together in sorting out the cores and got her to the 3rd phase but there were too many dead to do anything about it.

So that was the end of the evening's raiding fun. I then jumped to IF and respec'd to my pvp build.

Saturday.

Didn't really do much, just a fair bit of PVP - did some pre-made AB's, EOTS, and WSG. Which was really good fun! Our Raid leader and main tank has a 1900 arena team and he's awesome at co-ordinating teams.

Sunday.

Got a rag-tag group of 14 people for a run to Blackwing lair - had 3 attempts on the first boss and then lost a few people. So we went onto Onyxia!

7 men! We got her down in 1 go. Nice work chaps.

I had taken Gwindle as we needed a healer and she was better at healing than firelight.

She got the t2 helm which i was really excited about and each of us got just over 25g.

We then went to Azshara to see if we could find Azeregos (spell check please!)

Wow that's a long fight....really easy though, but looooooong.

Another 30g each as we'd lost 1 person. I got a really nice pattern for a spell damage sword for 59's. Not sure its worth anything, maybe 500-600g maybe as its epic and a really nice item. But i might just learn it on Firelight and maybe get it crafted and try to sell the end item - probably make more money that way. But with it being a level 59 item I'm not sure if it'd be replaced in seconds in outland...

Then in the evening we got a rough group of alts and mains for an embarrassing run into grulls.

We got High King down, but gruul showed us who was boss and we called it after the 4th wipe.

Shocking....

SSE Sadness...and Madness...

Morning Peeps.

I'm a little low today :(

We did really well last night in SSC all bosses to Karathress 1 shotted, but we needed 2 restarts on Karathress due to unlucky pulls. But we hot him down in the end.

I spent most of the time switching gear around to see what sort of damage changes i could make by using my tier 4/5 gear. General consensus was that my warrior gear is way better for me. I just have to watch my Mana. But as long as we have judgement of wisdom on the mob its not a problem really. I think I used maybe 2 mana potions last night and that was on the karathress fight due to no judgement of wisdom on the bosses.

Leotheras didn't drop the trinket.

Karathress did however drop the paladin legs. This was the last item i wanted from the bosses we have on farm in there since I've decided not to go for the mace he drops.

I was out bid by a fellow paladin for the legs at 825 DKP. He only had 24 dkp more than me.

So no loot again for me from SSC. I think tonight we'll take morogrim in SSC, and then go to TK:The Eye after.

Arena Ownage!

Hey Peeps!

No raiding last night, but our pvp team did our matches last night and we did very well.

We went up nearly 150 rating last night in 12 matches!

10 wins 2 losses.

Not bad eh!

This morning after 2.3.3 was quickly downloaded and installed i logged Firelight who I'd parked in Area 52 and ran to the arena vendor...

I stood there for 10 minutes looking at my gear, and thinking what to do...

And what conclusion did i come up with?

I decided that i cant really use any of the s3 stuff apart from the gloves for Raiding. Oh apart from maybe the weapon if we get a high enough rating.

So I'm going to have more armour in my bags! /rolleyes

I think I'm going to bank my tanking/healing gear well maybe just my healing gear as sometimes i might have to off tank...aw but sometimes i have to off heal in 5-mans as well!! gaah!!!

So anyway i picked the Season 3 Helm. This will boost my Resiliance quite a bit for our PvP matches. I cant remember how much, but it was sat at 108 last night, so i imagine it'll be close to 150 or something.

Just need to put a nice meta gem and strength gem in it and we're set!

It has far too little hit rating for PvE use.

We're going to SSC tonight i think - Hopefully for a full clear with only Vashj left.

Hope the trinket drops!!

Tempest Keep 0 - Rage 3

Morning Peeps!

Small Warlock Update Follows...stay tuned for our regular program....

As soon as I got home last night i logged my warlock and quickly handing in the quest to get my Infernal!!

/use Hearthstone

I ran to Goldshire as quickly as my little horsey's legs would take me, picking up some infernal stones on the way.

Bwaahahahahahaa, i thought to myself as i rode down there. Fingers crossed that it was busy.

Damn! It wasn't so busy, but still worth a shot. I summoned the bugger which looked pretty cool.

I dismissed him and he immediately starting slapping me in the face! Ouch! What the hell i let him kill me! Then I watched as he started picking off the lowbies. 6 in total went down before a level 70 druid killed him. I was in stitches!! Call me juvenile, but i thought it was funny as hell.

So back to Paladin news!!

Last night entered Tempest Keep.

We cleared the trash to Solarian First and one shot her. Which was just brilliant. Only the 2nd time for the guild to be there.

She dropped some lovely legs that i won:

Greaves of the Bloodwarder
Legs Plate
1406 Armor
+49 Strength
+46 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Strength
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 31.

Now i won these and I wasn't sure if they'd be an upgrade or not.. I cant remember how i socketed them up, but they pushed my unbuffed AP to just under 2000 and my crit up to nearly 32%

But by replacing my Tier 4 Legs I've lost more mana....

Not that i think its going to be a huge problem really for 2 reasons:

1 - In Raids i very rarely run out of mana, with only a couple of exceptions, but i just chug a mana pot and I'm usually ok.

2 - Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the season 3 legs from my arena points.

So we'll see what happens!

We then went on to Void Reaver and 1 shot him.

For some reason in a moment of insanity i started bidding for t5 shoulders.

350 DKP i spent. I thought that i might as well try to get some of the set...

I'm gonna try and run with a proper pally set tomorrow consisting of t4 and t5 and see what sort of damage I'm doing. I think having some more spell damage for command judgements will more than make up for the drop in attack power?

I dunno what to do!!!

So after VR was down we spent 40 minutes re-clearing the trash in a'lars room to then 1 shot him.

This was a major acheivement as the guild had spent the previous evening wiping 5 times on him.

So grats everyone!

No raiding for us tonight but my arena team have to do our matches tonight. We found a new healer last night as ours has been offline with PC problems.

Warlocks Own!!

Hey people!!

Hope you all had a good weekend and managed to get everything done you wanted!!

No raiding for me all weekend, not even Kara or ZA.

Saturday I was stuck for things to do, so i logged my warlock and decided i wanted to get my Fel Guard.

Starslayer was 47 so i hit the ground running and made 50 by the end of the night!

Just before midnight in fact in the middle of desolace i dinged 50!

I put the talent point into my felguard and started summoning my shiny new minion.

Flaatom appeared beside me shouting "WHO DARES SUMMON ME!!!!"

Flaatom? Flaatom?!?! What sort of sucky name is that! I've decided to call him Fat Tom!

Anyway i did more questing on Sunday, got a guildie to take me to sunken Temple to get the warlock quest done, and now I've got a shiney Sythe!! (even though one of the guildies told me to get the trinket instead, but that staff looks so cool)

He's almost 52 now, and I'm about to hand in the items to get my infernal demon. (i think)

Anyway I really enjoyed playing on my lock over the weekend. With the fel guard he's so imba.

I'm nearly done with felwood and I've started up in Western plaguelands as well. I think I'm gonna stay in Azeroth till I'm 60.

Also I'm going to try and get the full 50-60 dungeon set as the lock one looks so cool!!

I don't care how long it takes me, or the fact that I won't need it, it still looks stunning.

Plus you just don't see people in those old classic armour sets any more!

I have the 3 Bind on Equip parts already so just 5 more to go! Once I'm 54 or so I'm going to blag some 70's to take me into Scholo and strat a few times to get the rest of the bits, then maybe into UBRS to try and get the chest piece.

Did a couple of heroics on Gwindle as well and did the heroic daily quest as well. Which was fun. Got some badges. I need to get a nice epic item for gwindle's chest slot.

Small Update!

Just a quickie.

Didn't do much last night really of note. I grouped for the netherwing quests with a couple of friends which made it go quicker.

Other than that i wasn't picked for the raid and they cleared 4/6 bosses in SSC.

Rather annoyed actually as the trinket i want dropped from Leotheras :(

Karathress didn't drop t5 legs though so thats of some consolation.

No raiding for me tonight either - I've pulled out of the raid to have a small break.

Guild Noob of the Month!

Morning peeps!

Logged on last night to find that someone was trying to finish a run to kara where only the last 2 bosses were needed. Well no-one was interested as most of the group who had gone weren't online so we decided to do a full clear.

Wasn't interested in any loot, just wanted badges.

It was a bit disorganised as we were only there for fun so we had a laugh a long the way.

Maiden did something funny when we took her down. The tanks ran in and started the encounter and i cast Seal of the Crusader. Maiden immediately ran over and 2 shot me! SPLAT!
What the hell? Everyone was like "Huh? what did you do!!" I couldn't explain it!! and its not the first time I've grabbed aggro with SotC either....Anyone else experienced this? some sort of bug?

I bet you're wondering about the title of my blog today...well let me explain...

Since i got trollbane from ZA on friday night I've been trying to get the last 7 points I needed to max my axe skill.

Now from looking at the skills page it had been sat at 343 since friday! and had not moved 1 point in 5 days, or about 1000 mobs probably. So just after Curator was downed i was talking about they guys about this, and they said things like "you need more intellect gear" so i did some killing in my healing gear which gave me like 10k mana, and it still wasn't moving. I had thought it may be to do with my hit rating being too far. Then when i was just about to write a note to a GM one of the guys said:

"Hey you're not looking at 1h skill are you?"

*checks*

/blush
/facepalm
/slapforehead
/blush

Much laughter ensued over vent and one of the officers changed the guild message to "Guild Noob of the month: Firelight"

I was so embarrassed!! What a noobish thing to do!!!

Needless to say my 2h Axe skill was maxed.

So we get Shade of Aran down, and a few people log their mains, I logged gwindle on the hope that i might either get the t4 helm from prince or that really nice spell damage dagger he drops.

So we cleared Netherspite, then Chess, then made our way to Prince.

Oh my god the funniest thing ever happened!! (no not as funny as me not being able to read what skill i was leveling apparently when i asked to change the guild message!!)

Our druid tank pulled Prince. He ran over and one shotted the tank!

We were all like WTF!!!!!

WIPE!

"LOL!!! Senias was in elf form when he pulled!!"

OMG! Hilarious!

We reset and tried again, at about 30% the tank DC'd and we wiped again.

Ok so the tank was gone, he didn't come back...what were we going to do...

We had the guilds Main warrior tank with us but he was dps spec.

He slapped on his tanking gear and everyone was like "oh i dunno if a dps warrior can tank prince"

I said "Come ON! he's in 3x t5, and 2x t4 and has ssc/tk tanking gear! He's almost got more HP than the Prince!!!"

So we just needed to watch our aggro at the start and we'd be fine. It was a slow fight but we got him down.

Prince tanked and spanked by a dps warrior with 1 person missing. Imba.

So the dude was looted and t4 helm dropped for gwindle (yay!)

So 7 badges for Gwindle, and 15 for Firelight. I didn't check to see if he had enough for anything nice from badges loot. I'll do that tonight.

But a really fun night was had by all.

Firelight = Legendary?

Hey Peeps!

Last night my guildies downed A'lar in Tempest Keep!! Guild First!

Sadly I wasn't there so spent the time leveling my Warlock for a bit, giving some advice to a retribution paladin alt in the guild, and doing a 2 man run to BRD to get some Black Iron Bars made up, and crafting a 2h Mace for the paladin.

Something really strange has been happening to me lately whenever I've been logged on as Firelight I get whispers from a lot of people (read paladins) asking for advice, or stats. Now this if fair enough. I mean I'm really highly geared and I've done a lot of research into my spec.

Now this is where thing get a little odd. Last night i was outside the Aldor bank in Shattrath and i got a whisper from a mage just saying "Wow! Grats man!" I was like huh? what? he replied to me saying "Well a retribution paladin that raids SSC and the Eye!"

We then had a conversation - he'd recently transferred over from another server etc etc he introduced me to another ret-paladin who had full vengeful/merciless/gladiator arena gear and knew her stuff.

While we were stood there a holy paladin ran past, stopped and walked back and said:

"Firelight!"
"Yes?" i replied. (Bare in mind I'd never seen this guy before in my life!!)
"Dude you're a legend! Just look at you!!"
/blush
/thanks
"I'm a little flattered but thanks"
"Your raiding status is talked about by all paladins...you're an inspiration to us all!"
/blush
/blush

I was really flabbergasted really! And its not the first time either. Am i really such a rare commodity?

On the same tact I've been mentoring a ret-paladin the past few weeks has finally managed to secure a place in a guild that have just started SSC. They are about the same level as our guild was 4 months ago when i first joined.

He went with them to SSC last night and from what he was telling me had a horrid time. Firstly he wasn't allowed into the enhancement shamans group, rather he was placed into the group with some healers...??? That sanctity aura was really helping them there...

Then when some nice loot for him dropped he was immediately told by the raid leader that the neck item would go to a hunter as he was better dps than him even though the hunter had an epic item already. I mean ffs!!! He's currently using the Cenarian Expedition tanking neck item! I was so close to whispering the guild master and giving him a piece of my mind.

Retribution Paladins are a Support Class! Yes if we're geared right we can do a serious about of DPS, but we're there to give the raid 4 things:

1 - +3% crit chance to ALL attacks from everyone in the raid.
2 - +2% Damage to all in the paladins Party.
3 - Another Paladin buff for all raid members.
4 - Ability to off tank or off heal if its needed.

These 4 things are invaluable and if you let the paladin gear up he'll start out DPS'ing a lot of the raid group! I know this is a fact because i do this every night i raid.

Anyway enough ranting from me!!

Weekend Blast!

Hey people, hope you all had a good weekend.

Friday Night.

Friday we entered Tempest Keep and took down Void Reaver first time as usual. The raid leader then said "Everyone move to Solarian's doorway before having a 2 min bio"
Ooh! We're going to try a new boss! I'd watched a couple of videos and read tactics, and it all looked pretty straight forward. So we cleared the trash to Solarian which didn't take very long at all.

Tactics were explained and we had our first try at her. We wiped 4 times before people realised that they HAVE to pay attention to the bomb! Each and every wipe was down to a bomb going off and killing everyone in the ranged party.

5th attempt we got her down! It is really easy and we were a bit shocked to be honest.

I'll post a video link to it that's on you tube later.

Saturday Night.

I had been signed up for Karazhan, but the run had been cancelled so i was asked to come to Zul'Aman (read Begged!) The team leader wanted people who knew the instance and that meant me! I was hesitant to go due to the fact that we never seem to go for more than the first 3/4 bosses (and don't get me started on the loot)

So we entered, complete the first time trial, both items were sharded. Typical.
Off to the eagle boss - started him with 10 minutes to spare - down he went. He dropped the following:

Mojo-mender's Mask
Head Mail
731 Armor
+34 Stamina
+38 Intellect
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: 2 mana per 5 sec.
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 99 and damage done by up to 33 for all magical spells and effects.
Equip: Restores 9 mana per 5 sec.

Then we opened the time trial chest and i nearly fainted!

I gasped very loudly over vent when the dropped item was linked:

Trollbane
Two-Hand Axe
358-537 Damage Speed 3.6
(125.3 Damage per second)
+39 Agility
+58 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Equip: Increases attack power by 94.

Woweee!! I nearly wet myself when i saw this! Obviously this was quite a substantial upgrade for me!

Plus general consensus is that this was an Alliance first time drop.

I grabbed it up quick and was eager to go get it gem'd and enchanted, but we pressed on to the lynx boss.

He also dropped a nice upgrade for me (although i'm not sure so much about this one)

Skullshatter Warboots
Feet Plate
1105 armor
+30 Strength
+37 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket bonus: +2 Critical Strike Rating.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29.

My current boots are:

Ironstriders of Urgency
Feet Plate
997 Armor
+33 Strength
+20 Agility
+28 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +3 Strength

Both have +12 Agility enchanted on them (the new ones will have when i can find someone to do it) And I'm not sure which is better...
With both the axe and boots equiped I've lost a bit of strength and AP, but gained a fair bit of Crit. I'll post exact figures later if I remember.

So all in all a pretty sweet run so far.

We had issues on the firehawk boss as we had 2 new people in the group, and the tank kept getting confused as to where he should be tanking the boss so the raid leader got cross and called the raid after the 5th reset/wipe.

Sunday Night

I was determined to do some old school stuff last night, and it didn't take long to get 4 other people with me to open up a can of whoop ass on Hakkar and his smelly priests in Zul'Gurrub!
Its been a long time since any of us had been here, in fact i was the only person who HAD been there since TBC was released. So much fun was to be had. Trash fell down quick as we made our way to the first (bat) boss. At one point i commented on the fact it had taken us little under 10 mins to clear the trash to the first boss with 5 men, when it would have taken us 30 mins with 20 back when we were 60.

Group consisted of Me, a DPS Warrior, a Holy paladin, a feral druid and a level 62 alt shadow priest. So 4x 70's and 1x 62.

I mean even i was amazed that this sort of team could cut up the bosses in this place. So first boss went down and wow 40g split 5 ways = lots of moolah!!

After that we moved to Spider boss, and a 70 fire mage joined us.

The warrior had suddenly remembered a really nice head enchant you could get from ZG and got really lucky with drops and managed to get it from his very first ever visit to ZG. (warrior tanks should look it up! its a really nice enchant! +10 stam +10 defence, and +10 dodge iirc)

We took down Spider, Bat, Tiger, Fish and Mandokir bosses before people had to go and prepare for the gruul/maggy raid.

The only boss we had problems on was the Tiger. In the strategy you have to drop both mini bosses down to 20/30% health and the main boss before nuking them down in 20 seconds before they start resing each other. After the first reset - we made some changes and got him down.

The rest of the evening i was pretty bored, but took some amusement in watching a guild trying to take Doom Lord Kazzak.

It really is hard work doing him. Not that he's hard, but once you get started you need to 1 shot him really fast before you have horde/alliance noobs trying to mess things up. plus anyone at all can come watch.

So a fun weekend was had and i returned to ZG for some old-time action.

Hope all of you were able to have a fun weekend as well.

Small Update...

Didn't play much WoW last night, was grinding my rep with the girlfriend due to a lot of raiding lately!!

Needless to say I think i managed to hit revered again last night!!

Anyway before i hit the sack, i popped on to WoW to check my auctions and i /who Rage to see what was going on.

Hmm most of the guild were in Shattrath. I whispered my mate and asked him what had happened in SSC...

He said they had 7 tries on Vashj and couldn't get past phase 1. This really surprised me as on the 6/7 attempts we'd had on the night before Phase 1 was over very quickly!!! :(

Guess they were missing that little bit of Pally Power!!! ;-)

I'm in for tonight's raid, but we're going to the Eye, so i imagine Void Reaver, then the leadership have asked us to brush up on Solarian. From what I've read he's not overly hard - just watch out for when you're the bomb. I've not been able to read much though as all the wow sites are lock out to me at work! Boo! Hissss!!!!

Those crazy guys over at Blizzard have started a Podcast!!

Go check it out!

Lots of new info about 2.4!

I cant wait to be able to do 25 daily quests in a day!

The Most Amazing Night of Raiding Ever!

Good Morning Everyone! (this was supposed to be posted this morning, but work's Internet was down all day *cries*)

entered Serpentshrine Cavern with 1 thing in mind last night...

Clear 3 Bosses.

Our Goal was clear. Hydross, Lurker, Leotheras had to be taken down.

So we all entered - raid started at 8.25pm server time.

Cleared to Hydross - 1 Shot him!
Cleared to Lurker - 1 Shot him!
Cleared to Leotheras - 1 Shot him!

Whats that? Its only taken us just under 2 hours? Press on? OK!

Cleared to Karathress - 1 Shot him!

Hey! That only took 30 minutes! Press on!!

Cleared to Morogrim - 2 Shot him! (We were unlucky with him at the very start and re-started him after only 1 minute of fighting so technically we 1 shot him!!! :P)

Amazing!

5 Serpentshrine bosses down in 3 and a half hours!

I'm still stunned! Everyone was! The raid leaders even gave us a bonus dkp!

So Leotheras and Karathress were there usual Tight non-loot giving selves and didn't stump up with either of the items i was after!

You'd like to think that with 3 items of loot on the list of things i'm after from that sodding place I'd get at least 1 bit!! But NOOOOO. Not 1 thing from the pair of them! B*ST*RDS!!!

But i did walk away with the consolation prize!

Morogrim dropped a nice new shiny cape for me!

Razor-Scale Battlecloak
Back 108 Armor
+33 Strength
+23 Agility
+22 Stamina

And i immediately got myself a +12 agility enchant on there!

My unbuffed Crit is now over 30% Which is nice!

And we all know that more crit = more damage!

I'll update my full unbuffed Stats tonight!

One thing i noticed last night as well was a few times during the fighting i was able to get over 5000 Attack Power!!

Hydross doesn't like it when paladins have over 5000 AP! Even though i was no where near the top of the threat list when he was at 12% i hit around 5200AP and he turned around 1 shot me! I have no idea why!!

So all in all a pretty awesome evening for the guild!!

Vashj tonight then! We've been talking alot about handling the cores and maybe we'll be able to get to the next phase after all 4 cores are in.

Oh!!! And before i forget!!

2.3.2! They buffed our buff!!!

Paladins were due to get Crusader Strike changed from Weapon damage +40% spell damage to 110% weapon damage, but I was totally shocked when I logged and looked at the tool tip it was 115%-116% Weapon Damage!!! Woohoo!!

And boy did it make a difference! Having virtually no Spell damage gear in my main DPS set i saw a big jump in crits from CS. Unbuffed i'm getting 1.5-1.8k CS Crits!

I need to find some way of recording my dps so i can show you guys!

Can anyone suggest anything?

Zul'Aman - Bored Already...

Good Morning Peeps!

Last night we went to Zul'Aman, a small group gathered and we entered the instance.
Bear went down in the time, and we missed out the eagle timed bit by maybe 20 seconds or something which was a real pain!

So we went onto the Lynx and took him down on the 2nd go after the tanks engaged him too close to the doors and there were line of sight issues with the healers.

We called it a night there, as it was quite late due to the start being delayed by nearly 1 hour.
It occurred to me that there really was no point in us doing these same 3/4 bosses over and over again.

We just don't progress through the whole instance as ZA is only scheduled one night a week. This really gives me a severe lack of motivation towards the instance.

Don't get me wrong the loot on some of these guys in here is pretty sweet, the instance itself is fun, but knowing that we'll probably not get past the 5th boss is just disappointing to me!

The 2h Sword the last boss drops is lovely! But unless we can clear the whole place in 1 night i don't see myself getting close to clearing it.

To be perfectly honest I'd rather do a full Kara clear in 1 night but I missed out this week.

Oh well...

Anyway 2.3.2 is downloaded and ready to go! I'm rather interested to see how the 2 small differences to Crusader Strike, and Sanctified Seals is going to affect my raiding.

Crusader Strike is now going to give only 110% weapon damage, with no bonus for spell damage (previously 40% Holy Spell Damage)

This is going to be a nice buff for me i think as i don't think 40% of 72 Spell damage is a huge amount of damage, but 10% of weapon damage is a LOT!

Also an extra 30% more mana back from judgements - that's really nice! should last a lot longer now before i have to chug pots!!

Guess I'll find out tonight as we re-enter Serpent Shrine Cavern! I think after the tries we had on Vashj it was clear we need a bit more DPS - so gear is of the essence! A few more nice upgrades for the guild, a bit more T5 maybe even the 3 upgrades I'm after in there!! GRR!!!
I imagine we'll do Hydross, Lurker, and Leotheras.

If we manage to 1 shot them (which we can do, but sometimes get stuck on Leo) then we'll move onto Karathress.

At least i hope that's what happens.

Unity the number 1 raid group on the server are able to clear The Eye, and SSC in 2 Nights...this is amazing! I cant wait till we can do this!!

Our Time Will Come....

Funniest Story Every!!

Just read this over at Doofy the Paladins Blog!

Go Check it out!!

The Great Shattered Halls Sit In of '07

Lady Vashj - First Thoughts

Hey Peeps! Hope you all had a good weekend!

So Friday night the raid was cancelled due to a lot of cancellations sadly, so we didn't get to try Lady Vashj. So I ended up boosting my mates shaman through Sunken Temple.

Didn't really do very much else over the weekend till Sunday night. I've been doing quests on my warlock when I've got time to spare between doing other things. So he's almost 47. I need to spend some time on him really - wanna get him to outland asap!! I also need to get his herbalism up to his level as well. His skinning is at 225. He's questing in Hinterlands at the moment which can be a little interesting at times as he's about 2/3 levels too low i think!

Anyway I've just been grinding my dailys and i did a little mob killing with gwindle in Shadowmoon Valley over the weekend which always nets plenty of cash. Got a nice blue pattern for some pvp bracers for casters. Not been able to sell it as yet, even though I've seen them go for 200-250g in the past. I'm sure they'll sell soon enough!

So Sunday night we hit Gruuls, Mags and Void Reaver!

I was super happy as out resident enhancement shaman was back raiding again!

O H! M Y! G O D!

Our Main tank was PvP DPS spec for the weekend, so peoples alts and my druid Gwindle got a run as usual in gruuls. I then switched to Firelight for Mags and Voidy.

Seriously its incredible how much of a difference my dps can be with a shaman in the group! And even more so for the Warrior!

Melee were top 3 dps for maggs/void reaver

1 - Warrior

2 - Rogue

3 - Firelight! (ding ding ding JACKPOT!)

Casters couldn't touch us!! It was mental! I loved it!!

Voidy dropped 2 t5 shoulders and I think people were more than a little shocked at how much dkp was spent!

A priest spent 600 dkp, and a shaman 550! Ouch!

But it put my dkp up a bit!! up to 898 now!! hehe!

It just seems my luck that nothing ever seems to drop that i can spend my dkp on! Maybe this week after the reset I'll get my loot!!!

Man I'm such a loot whore!

Yesterday I did heroic Steamvault for the last bit of rep required for exalted with C.E.

Was quite fun! Went in with 3 other guildies and a friend of one of the guildies.

We had:

Ret-Paladin (me!)

Feral Druid (tank)

Warlock

Resto Druid (healer)

Mage (full frost spec)

We cleared the whole instance with no wipes! We were rather surprised to say the least! We almost wiped on the first boss as the healer was cycloned by the boss, then she decided to pop her lightning cloud over the top of her as well! then I died, but was soulstoned, so I res'd and managed to heal the tank while we quickly finished her off! Was rather exciting! I got 3 heroic badges, and made exalted on the last boss!

The darkmoon faire came to Mulgore a day early yesterday as well! So I spent a bit of time down there, and managed to snag about 5 or 6 rare gems and a load of nice leather and herbs! Including 2 fel lotus which i made into Flasks for raiding as 1 fel lotus goes for 30g at the moment!!

So I managed to make some last minute money and just before the raid started I popped to get my Cenarion War Hippogryph!!

I now have all 4 of the flying mounts that you can get in outland without relying on some drop! And I managed to get them all within less than 2 weeks!!

Its amazing how much gold you can make once you get your training really!

Lets break it down!

Flight Training - 5000g

Purple War Griffon - 200g

Borrowed gold for training - 1200g

Purple Nether Ray - 160g

Cenarion War Hippogryph - 1600g

So I've made nearly 3000g since I started the netherwing quests!

I paid back my friend in 3 or 4 days! The money piles in!! It really does!

Anyway so last night we went to do some tries on Vashj.

Loved the bridge opening! How cool does that look!

We had 5 tries in total on her and managed to get her down to the 2nd tainted core used.
Its a very confusing fight at first, as melee after the 1st phase is over I was asked to deal with elementals. The first 2 or 3 tries barely any elementals came where I was assigned to stand I felt really helpless as the rest of the group were wiped out.

I hate the lift at the start of SSC. HATE IT!!

On the 4th attempt we had to corpse run back into the instance and I entered the place and ran onto the lift! Sadly the lift decided it wasn't there when I clearly saw it a moment before!
I popped my bubble which ran out before I hit the bottom. SPLAT!

I landed on the lift again. as my corpse was sent back up the lift one of the priests res'd me I accepted the res and started falling again!!

DOH!

I had enough time to open my bags and take off my mace, and two bits of armour before I hit the ground again! THUD! Managed to save myself 3% durability during the drop! LOL!

That seemed to lighten every ones mood which was needed as countless wiping is a pain in the butt!

It was embarrassing but funny! worth the repair bill :P

No raid for me tonight - need a breather before we start SSC Again tomorrow. Its just ZA Tonight I think anyway.

Exalted At Last!!

So at 8.30am this very morning i logged into WoW and started my dailys to get the last 2 bars of revered!!

30 mins later i made it!

Here's a pic of me with Illidan!

Then i was "saved" by a dragon dressed as a goblin who flew me (really bloody slowly) to Shattrath!!!!

Then Here's me with my Azure Nether Drake!!

Yay! Grats to me!! Wohoo!!!

Now to start farming my gold to get my Cenarion War Hippogryph!!

Tonight We Dine on the Blood of Lady Vashj!

Morning people!

So last night the might Rage ventured into SSC again!

Agenda was Leotheras, Karathress and Morogrim.

We cleared trash to Leo and got ready.

Raid make-up was pretty much the same as the night before but the healing team leader had devised some really complicated healing system the he assured us would be good enough to keep people alive this time.

And he was right! We nuked Leo down on the first try!

I crossed my fingers and hoped that the Talisman would drop.

Some nice plans for some BoP tankadin boots dropped, 2 sets of Rogue/Paladin/Shaman t5 Gloves, and some other crap i don't even remember.

Damn it! I don't think its ever dropped for us yet!

So then onto Karathress - Surely i had to get at least 1 item from him? I mean I'm after the mace and the t5 legs!

It took us 3 attempts to get him down.

1st attempt we lost the tank that was on the hunter dude.

2nd attempt we lost too many dps when we were taking down the caster.

3rd Attempt we got him down!

And once again nothing i was after dropped! 2x Mage/Warlock/Hunter T5 legs dropped and a shaman trinket that our one and only shaman in the party already had from last time we got him. Its at times like this i wish the loot system would actually scan the raid and see if stuff that's class specific was already in the raid so it didn't drop!!

So then onto Morogrim who we one shotted as usual. Managed to get him down in 9 minutes 30 seconds as well which was pretty fast for us! Its usually 2-3 mins longer than that! At least he doesn't enrage you just have to deal with those water bubbles when he starts the 2nd phase.
Anyway some crap dropped, and we called it a night.

So tonight i (hope i) get to see Lady Vashj for the first time! It'll be the 2nd time the guild have tried her, but my first time. Right now its not looking like we'll go tonight there are only 25 sign ups available as we've had 6 cancellations. Also the raid leaders have not approved anyone for the raid yet either.

In other news I'm so close to getting exalted with Cenarion Expedition!

After our first night to SSC this week i gathered a team of myself, 1 of the top healer paladins, and 3 alts who needed rep (2 druids and a hunter) and went to Steam Vaults (normal mode)
We cleared the place in just over an hour! Was incredible! I managed to get 14 Coilfang Armaments in total from the raid and the instance! (I asked people who didn't need them if i could have/buy them and i managed to get a lot!!) So I'm about 2k rep away from exalted!
Netherwing Rep! I've been doing my dailys as much as possible but not been able to do all of them due to time restraints and raiding but in little over a week I've managed to go from neutral to 5k off exalted!

Some days when i decide to go and do my dailys there are loads of people there, but recently I decided to get as much done as i can before work! This morning i did 3 dailys and managed to find 7 netherwing eggs!!!

The island was deserted, the mines were deserted! So I've left Firelight parked on the island so when i log in i can finish the quests i have to do, and i should finish off for the evening only needing 3/4k rep!

All things considered this is easily the quickest I've ever gotten to exalted with a faction in game!
If we don't raid tonight I'm just going to spend as much of the evening farming eggs, killing mobs and farming ore! I get some lovely blue quality gems occasionally from the ores!!

OH!!! I almost forgot to mention!

After we killed Karathress i picked up the quest from Olum that was caged next to karathress. He sent me to the wardens cage in Shadowmoon Valley and talk to Akama.

What followed blew me away!! Rather than the normal exchange between NPC's where you have to read everything, this time the dialogue was spoken! Olum and Akama spoke for a few minutes and then an image of Illidan appeared at the end! The music got all cool as well!! oh it was just fantastic!!

So if i make exalted with Netherwing this weekend I'll get to meet Illidan twice in one week!

The top raid group on our server, Unity, started in Black Temple this week! Took down the first 2 bosses! I can almost smell the air in Black Temple!! We're so close!!

It would also be nice to have a stab at either of the world bosses in Outland! But not sure we have the man power required!

Back to Raiding!!

Hey peeps!!

Well last night the guild returned to the normal raiding schedule and hit SSC running!!!

Wow! Talk about focused!!

We nuked Hydross down in one go and in record time.

We nuked Lurker down in one go and also in record time.

After a quick bio we cleared to Leotheras The Blind.

We we had 3 tries on Leo...and we had some rotten luck! he just didn't want to give up!!

1st try we got him to 10% when he enraged, ok so we needed to focus a little more.

The good thing with a 10 minute enrage time is you know when he's going to enrage and you know you have to clear at least 10% of his health every minute.

2nd try was a real punch in the face! he enraged at 4%!!! FOUR!!!

We were doing really well on that try i felt we had him the bag! But at 6% he started picking off DPS instead of healers like he usually does, allowing the dps to nuke him before we were all dead.

3rd and final try was the ultimate insult! 1%

Vent just went quiet and a couple of mins later when we realised there was no soulstone, or self-res available the raid leader called it a night.

During the trash we had a lot of Nether Vortex's drop so i got my Red Belt Of Battle crafted for me!!!

So my Hit-Rating is up to 131 now!! I'm so close to my goal i can smell it!!!

We're going back to SSC tonight to do Leo, Karathres, and Morogrim! So maybe I'll get that talisman i was after, the mace from karathress, and the t5 leggings! And I've got a lot of DKP to spend!! I'm so gonna waste a lot of dkp! I really hope i get that mace! I'm so waiting for an upgrade!!!

I've had my Hammer of the Naaru since my first ever raid to Gruuls Lair with the guild! So I'm really eager to get something with a bit more oomph!!!

Then the struggle to decide what enchant to get on it!! DOH! Who knows!!

I hope i get lucky with drops!

All the loot I'm getting at the moment is off spec crap no-one wants!! but i am sporting some lovely healing gear!! I got the T5 Lookalike helm and chest so far from SSC!! Just the shoulders to get!! LOL!

But seriously! Other than my belt I updated last night I've not had a proper dps upgrade for weeks!!! Hence I've got a LOT of DKP!

Anyway fingers crossed for me tonight!!

New Years Resolutions for 2008

Well inspired by Galo's last blog I've decided to do a run down of what I hope to achieve for my Warcrafting this year.

I'm going to break this down to toons to make life easier, and give each of them a top 5 things to get done! (in no particular order)

Firelight

1 - Get to Exalted with all factions possible.(Both TBC and Pre-TBC)
2 - See the Black Temple as a Retribution Paladin.
3 - Get Netherwing Mount.
4 - Get Cenarion Expedition Mount.
5 - Clear out all the unwanted crap from my bank that i don't use!

Gwindle

1 - Get full Tier 4(i can dream!)
2 - Get Epic Flight Training
3 - Get Epic Flight Form!
4 - Get to Exalted with as many factions as possible.
5 - Decide what spec i should be.

Other Alts:
Starslayer - Get to 70.
Poobah - Decide if I'm going to delete this guy or not.

************************************************
2007 - A Review.

January 2007

New Dawn, the raid group Firelight was in decides to stop raiding due to imminent release of The Burning Crusade. Firelight at this time was holy and was always top of the healing charts in raids. My pre-tbc end-game content had only got as far as Molten Core 33% clear, ZG 90% Clear, and AQ20 10% Clear.

Feb-Mar 2007 - The Burning Crusade

When TBC was release I was in a nice friendly guild and i found a leveling partner in a mage called Namaskaar! She and i leveled to 70 in just under 12 days RL time. This was also the first time in Firelights history that I spec'd retribution and i fell in love. having leveled 1-60 Holy i didn't know what it was like to truly do dps as a paladin.

Firelight also moved guilds and Joined Divinity - a well respected raiding guild from pre-TBC. I was only in the guild for a couple of weeks before there was a leadership crisis and the guild split in two.
Not having been there for very long i decided to join the guild leavers and we created a new guild called Nemesis. Most of Nemesis were English or Dutch and we all got on really well. We even met up in RL a couple of times.

April-June 2007

I started to get bored of Firelight. Finding groups as retribution was very hard. During my 60-70 I'd gathered a **LOT** of gear. Healing/DPS and Tanking.

So I decided to go Prot. My Gear was ok for normal instances and things were exciting again for a short time. Tanking was something i was quite scared off and had never had a lot of experience of before and the pressure you feel know that 4 other people were counting on you not to mess things up so that the team could complete whatever instance/group quest they were on.

In the mean time I'd started leveling Gwindle again. During my 60-70 she was sat in the early 40's and had become my banker. I got her to 70 in only 16 days /played time! At 50 i respec'd her to boomkin and never looked back.

Nemesis has started to look into go to Karazhan. Firelight was now in a good position to tank Kara, as off tank and did so twice i think.

July-August 2007

Nemesis had progressed to Opera and had started working on the curator. Gwindle had become my main, Firelight was more or less retired. I just didn't feel like playing on him any more. I just missed retribution too much.

Nemesis had slowly started to fall apart. Sadly our friendship that we had created just didn't seem to be enough to keep people playing the Game. Lord of the Rings had come out and people were trying that and a few other core players quit all together.

It was late August when Gwindle was approached by an old friend of mine to join his guild, Thunderblades, to raid kara on a more frequent time frame.

I kept firelight in Nemesis, but this was the beginning of the end for Nemesis. The remaining 70's either went on a long break(only returning in the last couple of weeks) or quit and never came back.

Fire was still in there, but with only 5-6 regular players left all we did was sit in Team Speak and do instance runs for alts all the time.

September 2007

I was doing an instance with Gwindle or a daily, i forget, but was on TeamSpeak with my Nemesis guildies and one of them said "LOL! Someone is trying to recruit a Retribution Paladin!"

I almost wet myself! I immediately logged over to Firelight and got in contact with Slit, the GM of Rage.

He inspected my gear, and was impressed. I was immediately invited into Rage.

October 2007

Having been in Rage a few days i decided to do a lot of research into what i needed to do to better myself.

I started looking through pages and pages of google search results until i found my way onto Blessing Of Kings. I read a lot of Rohans posts and decided to send him an email asking for some help!

He replied and the rest is history!!

I started my blog on the 22nd and I've not looked back since!

Gwindle was inevitably forced to switch guilds to Rage, which i was quite sad about at first as I'd really come to enjoy working with Thunderblades, the GM and Raid leader were really good guys and fun to play with!

Since then As you already know I've become a very valuable member of the raid team, i now consider myself in a full DPS and support role as apposed to just someone the raid group was taking along only for buffs.

I'm really pleased about Firelight progression over the past 3-4 months and i have a lot be thankful for.

Everyone who gave me help by replying to Rohans post and people who have given me help replying to my blog posts.

I don't know where I'd be right now if it had not been for you guys!

Thank You All!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year 2008 Everyone!!

I hope all near and far have had a good couple of weeks holiday!

I had a relatively quiet New years Eve Dog sitting my sisters puppy and house! So a quiet night in watching crappy TV and eating take-away Chinese food!

My sister also plays WoW so I was able to logon briefly the 2 days I was round her place just to complete a few of my Netherwing Dailys.

So I'm now about 8000/21000 into revered with Netherwing which is pretty cool actually! I've breezed through Neutral/friendly/honored really fast and done all the quests that were required.

OMG that quest to use the "alien like" thingamy to "kill" the 73 Elite in Nagrand was a real pain the behind! Took me about 8 attempts to figure out what I had to do and cost me a lot of gold! And the rewards were poop! some crappy green tanking helm! Vendor Trash!

Netherwing Eggs appear to be the bane of my life at the moment. I like to try and find at least 3 or 4 a day when I'm doing my daily quests to give me at least an extra 1000 rep. At the moment I'm able to rack up about 3-4000 rep a day just doing dailys and finding some eggs.

Blizzard seems to like to tease people by putting the eggs near elites as well! Meaning I have to do a lot of naked (down to just my illidari tabard) egg ninja'ing!!

The only one I've not managed to get hold of is the one that spawns on the peir that the netherwing transporters take off from. no matter how I try to get the egg I just cant seem to do anything about the elites and end up dead or just manage to run away from the buggers!
Speaking of the transporters, I've found an "island" that they fly past close enough for me to judge-pull them to me so I can kill them, but it only takes some other dude sat in front of the pier to snag em off me.

That's another annoying thing! I'll spot an egg in the mines and start fighting my way to the egg and some horde bastard strolls up and steals the egg!! being on an RP server I cant attack him or stop him, So I do the nice thing and follow him around to see what he does if he's doing some AOE type pulling I wait till he's AOE'ing, round up a few mobs more than he can handle, walk into his aoe area and bubble up! Bwaahahahahaa!!! That'll teach em!!!

So I'm hoping that I'll reach exalted with Netherwing by the weekend if I get the time. Our guild starts raiding again after the break for Christmas. So it may be over the weekend I manage it.
I guess it all comes down to how many eggs I manage to find! Getting up early in the morning seems to be more helpful with regards to finding eggs.

I've also been started the racing quests. OMG Mulverick is a complete git!! If anyone has any tips on how to beat this mofo I would be greatly appreciative!!

I enjoyed doing the others till now, but this guy is a real pain in the butt!! I imagine the last guy isn't going to be a walk in the park either. I've heard he's got 310% speed mount. While being a paladin I have an advantage as I have +20% I'm not really sure what to expect, especially if he's shooting at me as well!!

The races I also do naked so as not to incur more death charges!!!

Its been a fun run to revered so far, but as usual getting through revered is always a long haul - no matter how many instance runs you do, or daily quests.

My Goals for the forthcoming weeks are as follows:

Make Exalted with netherwing - Get Netherdrake!
Make Exalted with Cenarion Expedition - Get Epic Hippogriff Mount
Get 142 Hit Rating and respec.

Speaking of respecing, I respec'd prot to help out with a heroic instance, and managed to make exalted with Honor Hold (Heroic Ramparts for daily heroic) So after the instance I thought I'd try some AOE grinding in netherwing. Maybe I'm missing something..but pulling 6/7 mobs and consecrating all the time just seemed to drain my mana really fast and I'd end up dead or almost dead? what am I doing wrong? So I headed back to Ironforge and respec'd back to Ret and decided to make a small change to my build.

I dropped 3 points in Blessing of Might, and picked up Vindication (-15 all stats to a mob) This should give me and the raid some more dps which is always nice!

We'll see if it makes a huge difference tonight I guess!!

Anyway that'll do for today!