Updated Ulduar Loot List and My Look

Thank you for sticking around while I try to stay afloat amongst the end of the year grading and Ulduar progression. I am done for the school year in a month and I am hoping I will be a better blogger and blog reader/commenter then. 

Thank you to those who have been sending me e-mails. I always make returning e-mails a priority, so even if you think I have dropped off the face of the internetz send me an e-mail if you need something!

Now some WoW updates!

1. I updated my Non-Heroic Mode 25-Man 3.1 Best in Slot Resto Druid Ulduar Gear List(or whatever the frack I am calling it). I was preparing for the end of mana regen as we knew it like so many others and found that there was much ado about nothing. I did some SERIOUS list revisiting yesterday to better reflect haste options in Ulduar and more clearly mark them vs crit/regen options. 

2. I added the words "Best in Slot" to the title of my gear list - words that I seriously dislike. I dislike the abbreviation "BiS" even more. My issue with it is that best in slot can vary from person to person, depending on how they gem, the state of their other gear and what is reasonable for them to expect to see drop. But... I want my list to be useful to new druids or busy druids who don't have the time to comb through wow-head or mmo-champ or double check those auto generating weighting tools that I refuse to blindly follow. Those people might type the words "Best in Slot" into Google and to them I say welcome and I hope you find my list helpful!

3. Progression update: 

• Iron Council, Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir, Freya, various Leviathan single towers, and other random fun achievements on 25 man down easy.
  
• Thorim took maybe 2 nights or about 5 hours on 25 man. More than I wish to have spent. 
  
• We are working on Mimiron now. We have spent about 4-5 hours so far on 25 man on him.
  
• 10 man is exactly where 25 man is, except Yakra and I have spent more like 10 hours on Mimiron. I... am not going to blame it all on my guildmates... I am not going to blame it all on my guildmates... I am not going to blame it all on my guildmates...

4. Last but not least, personal sexy look update!!! This is HUGE for me! I have been wearing my T5 since... well... T5. But the T8 purple robes are OMG hot HOT HoT! Maybe I dumped WAY too much DKP into them but... the are SEXY. And possibly "Best in Slot" pre-Heroic stuffs. I had to change around some frill items, but I am a VERY happy tree!!!

XT-002, Nerf Gravity Bombs, Nerf Engineering

I think that puts us 7 hours into 25 Man-Ulduar now. We almost threw in the towel before that kill. Apparently Potions of Speed during heroism during the first heart phase was the key. We were NOT expecting to get the two achievements too: Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering. What a nice bonus!!! 

Hi My Name is Aertimus and I am an Ulduar Addict.

First a brief FYI: I updated my Ulduar loot list to include recent loot discoveries. 

The first week of Ulduar is passing as fast as the patch was upon us. After 15 minutes in 25 man, we downed Flame Leviathan and earned the achievements Take out those Turrets and Shutout! We were able to put in attempts on Razorscale and XT-Deconstructor. I'm hoping I will have news of their deaths tomorrow. 

I apparently am an Ulduar addict and ran 10 man Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. Putting in about 11 hours, I think. We downed Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT002-Deconstructor, Kologarn, Auriaya, and Assembly of Iron. Which means we also picked up The Antechamber of Ulduar and I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir. Mostly, I am enjoying how sexy Ulduar looks. Don't want to give away too many spoilers, but here are a few of my favorites: 

And I'm already looking forward to tomorrow's 25 man raid!!!

"Welcome to Three Moths Ago"

When I told a former student I got 6 Minute Maly last night, he wrote THAT on my white board in big red letters.

So much for respect and spelling! I am forced to forgive him since I am the worlds worst speller/user of grammar. I tell my students to learn chemistry, some physics and maybe basic algebra from me - NOT spelling, grammar and foreign languages. 

Also, I must forgive him because he mostly just PvPs on his mage and thinks he is cool for getting the 2nd drake to 60% and only having 'a couple of deaths' on an immortal attempt. 

Well... despite the fact that it was done 3 months ago I am still really excited and proud of LOKI. We killed him with at least 10 seconds to spare. It was intense, especially since we missed it by 1 second last week! I think that should give out DPS a big epeen boost that will hopefully carry into Ulduar. 

Heroic 1 Drake and Heroic Malygos Down!

Edit for the heroic part, since its not really a given.

I'm one step behind Swiftmend - what else is new!

Yakra and I posing with the one, only and very sexy, Alexstrasza.

This fight did not go well for me so I will not hand out advice I am totally unfit to give. In fact, I should be seeking advice. I was not there for the one Drake OS kill, so hence no advice for that one, or even a picture. Maybe I will be there for two!

Welcome new readers who found me via WoWInsider - Shifting Perspectives! I hope you enjoy your reads and I hope you are finding the loot list helpful!

Heroic Naxx Cleared!

I know we are WAY behind the eight ball on this one. However... There have been many Naxx clears, but this it our Naxx Clear!!! (Also, this happened on the 17th, I'm not sure why it is reading as the 18th on my achievements...)

We took the standard super sexy throne picture. 

I also managed to blow my DKP load on the unbelievably sexy (in both look and stats) Torch of Holy Fire! Merry Early Christmas to me!

EDIT: Disaster Averted

Complete disaster was slightly averted. I managed to get things working (but not up to the levels I really want to see). I will DEFINITELY be looking into the advice of the two comments I posted, and hopefully I will be singing your praises tomorrow! 

Despite the disaster that was last night and most of this afternoon, we pulled off a ridiculously fun raid tonight. We cleared BT in 2 hours, 45 minutes. We one shot everything. Trash went REALLY fast, which was nice. But the bosses were too easy... it was fun for one night. But I couldn't do that forever. 

I'm still getting a feel for healing. I'm not sure where to stick Wild Growth in the rotation. And I'm feeling really down on myself for being SO LOW on the healing meters. Any advice on rotations would be appreciated!

I know I don't talk about loot much any more, but I got Memento of Tyrande!!! I'm so excited. I have had twice the DKP of everyone in our guild stock piled for it. Yes, it finally solves my 15 month long internal, emotional, struggle of "what trinket should I be using!" But more importantly, it is a really awesome lore piece. To be honest, I feel a little BAD for Illadin. He was just an angsty teen who had his heart broken. And here, until his dieing day (by my hand of course) he has held on to this memento of his love... *sigh* Isn't it romantic?

The End is Here!

Today was my official last day of summer vacation. Which is funny since I have been in to school every day this week trying to get ahead so I can still have a life when school starts. I think I'm ready! I don't have lunch duty this year and have a last period study hall again which is exciting. Lunch duty was just too boring for me. I have one section of Chemistry with only 9 students so that will be a blast for sure. I have a 9th grade homeroom again (meh). I shall lay down the law and we will get along just fine.

I sort of kind of lead my first raid last Sunday. I normally just do healing and help some with DKP, and Yakra and Ruff really run the raids. But neither Yakra or Ruff were able to be on. Both of our DPS officers were on, and they did their job, but they are brand new. The new healing officer was a HUGE help handing out SR gear mats. And our pally tank did all the marking and trash, which he is very good at and has done plenty of times before. But I was the senior officer and sort of had last call and stuff.

Related to leading my first raid was downing Mother Shaz for the first time, on the first raid I lead, the very first time we attempted her. We used a 3 camp set up: 1 Melee camp and 2 ranged camps (with healers split between the two camps.) We also used Easy Mother. (The key is to not follow it blindly through the raid/tanks, and run even if it says stop if you are too close to the raid/tanks.)
We did healing for Mother Shaz as follows:
9 healers
2 Paladins on the Main Tank
1 Paladin on both Off-Tanks
1 Druid rolling HoTs on all three Tanks
1 Shaman on Melee
4 CoH Priests, Druids, and/or Shamans assigned one to each ranged/tanking group.
(I prioritized druids, then priests to the group(s) with tanks in them, to give the tanks some more HoTs. After that I assigned people to heal their own groups for simplicities sake.)

Last summer I called myself the lucky druid because whenever people wanted gear, if I thought about it really really hard, it would drop. This summer I seem to be an even luckier druid! First I received my e-mail informing me that I had been chosen to buy a FigurePrint! Yakra has been on a business trip this week and has eaten as little as he can so he can pocket the cash so we can buy one. I figure we will get on of Yakra since its not just his WoW character, but his alter ego. (And he likes presents.) And yesterday I got my e-mail inviting me to the Wrath of the Lich King beta. So far it has done nothing but patch and say "connected" on the very pretty blue login screen. I only wish I had more time to play it. I wonder what my students would think if they found out I was in the beta!

In other real life/sort of WoW life news, the great RuffianX spent last weekend at our house. I had freed up my schedule and stress load totally so I was able to relax and have a very nice time. We played board games and went for dinner with some other guildies. Yakra and Ruff went Kayaking and Ruff beat Yakra a bunch of times at brawl. We tried ZA for the bear mount, but missed it yet again, and went for ice cream way late at night.

I've also been hanging out with another RL/WoW friend. We went to college together and were close then. She transfered servers some time back, so I have never gotten to raid with her. Her guild is well into Sunwell now. We are like a year behind them. Then they moved to the other side of the river which put them far away, but since I got the new job I am out her way all the time. So both of us have been busy with raiding and houses, but she has some stuff going on that I want to be able to be there, so I'm making time. And actually its really nice to not have to explain WHY you NEED to be back home by 7:45. So its really cool because I've missed her.

The End is Near!

The end of the summer that is... I enjoy playing stay at home wife WAY too much. I have gotten loads of projects done around the house, have made something along the lines of progress with lesson planning, slept until at least 8 most morning, and been enjoying some extra WoW time. I start in-services for school on Aug 15th QQ

In the LOKI department ~ We recently downed Reliquary of Souls. One night, three hours total. Oh ya! It was in NO way a hard healing fight for us. The first time we got RoS into phase three we downed him/her/it. It really is all about the interrupters, but here is what we did for healing RoS: 2 paladins on the main tank (a warrior in phase 2 and a paladin tank in phase 3); a resto shaman on the melee group; and 2 CoH priests, another resto shaman, and a resto druid assigned to each of the 4 mostly ranged dps groups. Everyone DPS phase 1, a lot of us off DPSed phase 2, and then healed our little hearts out in phase 3. We just kept to our assignments so no heals or time were wasted cross healing.

We have lost some good healers recently, but we had differences. Even though they were good and took some good gear with them, I would rather not have to deal with... well... drama. So it is less stress for me over all. We have more paladins than I really know what to do with. I try to get them all in for the bosses they want the most, and we have done some insane things pally heavy (like 1 druid, 1 priest, and 5 pallies for Azgalor.) And we could use another resto shaman or two who show up for freaking raids! But what else is new with alliance?

As of tonight I have a new co-healing officer! I am rejoicing!!! He is going to be SO much better than the last two other co-healing officers. (I'm still very good friends with one, but he just didn't like to talk that much in raids so he probably wasn't the best.) Aforementioned new healing officer is going to be awesome. He comes to like EVERYTHING, have been in the guild for almost 4 months, has totally the right attitude about progressing and loot, talks in vent, takes healing reports and strats seriously, but still jokes around a ton. And he doesn't think I'm a total freak for having my spreadsheet of my healers!

Our DPS officers have been AFWoW for a month. This is starting to impact my and Yakra's sanity. Ruffles is at least great, makes almost everything, and can do DPS. We have two temporary DPS officer types, just for during raids to coordinate, they don't deal with apps, drama, etc. But what we really need is for our current officers to come back or for two official new officers.

Archimonde Down!

Summer is upon me in all of its glory, and what better way to start it than by downing Archimonde?!

We spent a total of 10 hours on him. Our final solution - go through the WoW Web Stats for the previous night attempts and list every first and second death, why they dead, and applicable comments (like the time I was healing myself through grip instead of shifting out and decurseing myself. I blame the mage...)

And then our 30 minutes "L2 use tears" session before we started attempts on the last night. We spent 30 minutes jumping off the cliff as a group until we were able to do it 3 times in a row without anyone dieing. Then and only then, would the great Ruffianx let us start attempts. No one cratered on any of our 3 attempts. We got him down on the 3rd, the first time we got him to 10%.

Nothing out of the ordinary for how we set up groups. Shaman with tremor totem in each group. Decurser (mage, boomkin, or elf formed ToL druid) in each group (except melee). At least 2 healers in each group (except melee). I was running in the main tank group, in tree form, with a mage decurseing. One melee group in the middle and then each of the other four groups positioned at each cardinal direction.

So here are some things that we learned:
1. Get Boar's Speed on your boots - especially if you are going to be in ToL form. (I really noticed the difference.)
2. Run straight back from Archimonde, with your whole group, if you even think a doomfire is chasing someone in your group. (You need to be near your decurser and healers and you need to not kite the fire around the rest of the raid and box people in.)
3. When you get air bursted use your tears on the early side and then switch into cat form. This way there is no chance of you cratering because of lag and whatnot.

And if thats not enough advice for you, listen to this. (Sorry about the language - but its still really funny...)

Since Someone Won't Let It Die...

...I will post.

Real Life Updates:
I started a new job at the very end of March. I am teaching chemistry and science. I love it. It's been rough coming in at the end of a year and trying to pick up the pieces were the former teacher checked out 3 months ago. My students couldn't balance equations in March. Thats a problem. So there was some frustration. But I love it. My gosh, I love it. Long hours. Long, long hours... but the students are worth it. If anything is worth 125% its them.

I took up drinking... it saves my sanity. (Its not as bad as it sounds.)

I have NOT been even CLOSE to keeping up with post reading. Let me know what I've missed in the last month that I HAVE to read.

WoW Updates:
We downed Kael' after about 3 weeks of working on him. And have downed him 3 times since. So we consider our kill secured. He was a REALLY fun boss to learn and coordinate.

Then we moved on to Hyjal and downed the first 4 bosses in two nights. And then we did it again. Then tried Archie and got him to 65% on the first night. Then we did the first 4 bosses in one night...

Then moved to BT. And did the first two bosses the first night we were in there. I was disappointed by Warlord. I thought it would be more challenging. We are going back to BT Sunday to see how much more we can down.

No fat loots. I don't even know what drops from half the bosses. I again have the most unspent DKP in the guild.

I've been kicking and inviting and promoting and demoting healers more. I want membership and rank to mean more. I think my spreadsheet has been working wonderfully. My healers all seem pretty happy. I know I am happy with them. I continue to be madly in love with LOKI.

So thats it! Thank you to those who have payed attention to my lack of posts, and I look forward to catching up more in a month *sigh*.

Alright Kael', Here We Come!

We pulled Kael' once this past Sunday night. At first I thought it was going to be a dumb waste of time, but once I was in the room with him I definitely had a new boss-gasm. Then we proceeded to live through all of Phase 1 with only 1 death I think. We even 'got through' Phase 2, with only maybe 2 more deaths. Not bad given we had no tanking or healing assignments and no set DPS order on the weapons. Not to mention an extra tank and an extra healer. When all was said and done the magical little DBM boxes looked like this:

Yes, I looted and put on the Mace. I forgot to take a picture though. Other than impressed at LOKIs first attempt, Yakra and I were disappointed at 'how short' Kael's opening speech was, since everyone always complains about it. We decided Blizz must add a word the speech each time a guild attempts him to make it longer.

We are going back tonight and here is the plan I have in mind for my healers: (As always, advice from anyone who has done this before is appreciated!)

All Healers
Phase 1.1: DPS and Raid Heal
Phase 1.2: Heal Sangruinar Tank (TankB)
Phase 1.4: Heal Engineer Tank (TankA)
Phase 4: DPS Shield When Up As Able
Phase 5: Raid Heal During Gravity Lapse

Healer 1 (Druid or Shaman)
Phase 1.3: Lock Tank
Phase 2: Hunter on Bow -> Tank on Dagger and Staff (TankA)
Phase 3: Engineer Tank (TankA)
Phase 4&5: Finish on Engineer TankA ->FR Druid on Phoenixes & Raid

Healer 2 (Pally)
Phase 1.3: Lock Tank
Phase 2: Ax Tank (Also MT on Kael’)
Phase 3: Ax Tank Still, Ready to Heal Kael’ MT
Phase 4&5: MT on Kael’

Healer 3 (Pally, Priest, or Druid)
Phase 1.3: Lock Tank
Phase 2: Sword & Shield Tank (TankB)
Phase 3: Sangruinar Tank (TankB)
Phase 4&5: MT on Kael’

Healer 4 (Priest or Pally)
Phase 1.3: FR Conflagration Druid
Phase 2: FR Druid on Mace
Phase 3: Lock Tank
Phase 4&5: Finish Heals on Lock Tank -> MT on Kael’

Healer 5 (Shaman)
Phase 1.3: FR Conflagration Druid
Phase 2: Sword & Shield Tank (TankB)
Phase 3: Sangruinar Tank (TankB)
Phase 4&5: FR Druid on Phoenixes

Healer 6 (Priest or Druid)
Phase 1.3 -> 1.4: Raid Heal, Ready to Heal Engineer Tank (TankA)
Phase 2: Dagger and Staff Tank (TankA)
Phase 3: Engineer Tank (TankA)
Phase 4&5: Finish on Engineer TankA -> MT on Kael’

Zul'Jin Down! (And Zul'Jin Healing Strat)

Finally, LOKI has managed to drop Zul'Jin!!!
I am ridiculously excited and not in the least bit ashamed that it has taken us this long! We have been doing SSC (well, TK that one week) 3 - 4 nights a week, and the weeks that it was 3 nights raids were canceled for specific reasons (Superbowl Sunday, Valentines Day, etc.) Kara with real life friends is always Fridays. That leaves 2 nights a week that we are supposed to have off that a few of us really STUPID people have been throwing our bodies and consumibles against the brick walls known as Hex Lord and Zul'Jin. In that context, I think it is pretty cool that we downed him!

Yakra main tanked the kill. He is very excited.

Healing for our successful kill was as follows:
Phase 1: Troll Paladin on the MT the whole time. Priest and druid switching to people as they get the Grievous Throw debuff. I stay in Night Elf form and cast max rank Healing Touch (macroed to my Idol of the Avian Heart, of course) on them and lifebloomed the tank in between.

Phase 2: Bear All three healers run around behind the main tank, while all DPS run behind the bear. This allows the shadow priest to use mass dispel on the DPS without it being 'wasted' on a healer or the MT. The pally dispelled the MT then himself. The priest dispelled himself and then me. I shifted back into ToL and kept all HoTs on the MT the whole time. The priest and pally on the MT when they weren't dispelling and me raid healing.

Phase 3: Eagle I will have nightmares about this phase for the rest of my life. I moved into a predetermined corner of the main platform - NOT into one of the wings. The predetermined part was important so that the pally and priest could move near me if I told them they were too far away or out of LoS. I then rolled Lifeblooms on myself and the two other healers. Constantly. I stacked as much heal as my very spirit directed gear allowed and the ticks were for about 670. Yes, this means I took 1,250 damage from the electrical storm about every 1.75 seconds. This is counter to what you are told to do on the Zul'Jin guide on Bosskillers. But now instead of three healers trying to cast as little as possible for this phase, the pally and the priest casted their largest heals almost constantly on the person who had the lowest health at the time. Of course they were very vocal about who they were healing to prevent overheal and DPS did try to bandage whenever possible.

This method has worked the best, by far, for all LOKI Zul'Jin attempts. It does lead to weird things like... me doing "40%" of the healing for the fight and the other two healers each doing "20%" each. I will be looking for Moia's Wow Web Stats report to get a better look at the true healing break down.

Phase 4: Lynx Pally and priest on main tank most of the time, switching to the person being Claw Charged and then casting their fastest heals. I HoTed the MT as much as I could, but most of my time was split between Rejuv'ing (and sometimes Lifeblooming) the people with the Lynx Rush DoT on them and healing the person being claw charged. What I finally ended up doing to heal said claw charged person was Rejuv, Swiftmend, Regrowth, Rejuv. Attempts where I Regrowth'ed first didn't seem to cut it.

Phase 5: DragonHawk Almost all heals on the tank, with the occasional healing and HoTing on the raid. This is really a test to see if you have enough people up to DPS him down before his "soft enrage" timer (too many stacks of the flame whirl debuff.) Just move out of the Columns of Fire ASAP!


This fight makes me want to cry, but my gosh, is it a test of all abilities for everyone involved. As a Resto Druid I have to (1) HT as an elf, (2) Single tank HoT and Raid Heal, (3) Roll multiple stacks of Lifeblooms while moving, (4) HoT and Swiftmend huge, fast bleed amounts, and (5) Have enough mana in the end to keep up the MT as he takes more and more damage. I can't think of a fight that pushes me to the very edges of my abilities more!!!

And after it is all over there is an awesomely cute party with booze and fireworks! My gosh, did I need the booze and fireworks! And loots I suppose too. (Did you know bosses drop loot?! I always forget...) There is nothing on Zul'Jin for Resto Druids, but my very happy, seriously matching, dwarf warrior of a husband got the Chestguard of the Warlord. He also made this video of our kill! (This is his first video so we are all required to be very proud.) If you look closely you can see me be bounced around and zapped over and over again in the corner. Here is a better, downloadable version of our kill.

3 Days Equals 3/4 TK

I have been a busy busy tree the last week. To spare my RL friends who want to read my blog, I start starting with my RL update.

I have been filing out an application for a general/physical science position that would be like my DREAM job right now, in the district I really want to be in. The biggest addition to my app was a GLOWING letter of recommendation from my curriculum design teacher who said I was among the top 3 student teachers he has had in his 27 years and the most outgoing student teacher he has had.

Then I had an interview on Monday for a subbing position in the same district. It was mostly a "do you have all your paperwork and no eye brow ring" type interview. So I got the sub job and I can start on the 25th. Its day to day, so we will see how it goes. Hopefully I will be very busy!

And a transition from teaching to wow - one of my guildmates is a high school student and they knew I was a chem teacher and told me they bombed a chem test recently. So out the window went paying attention for Kara trash and in came all the graphic organizers and short cuts I could e-mail him for naming different types of compounds In a way I was surprised that I could stop playing that fast, but in another way I wasn't, since I love teaching so so much. Now I just hope they can pull their grade up!

And on to the meat of the post: How LOKI roflpwned TK this past week.

On Tuesday we went into Alar. The huge majority of us had never done Alar before. It was a long three hours, we had to clear trash twice. Each attempt we progressed a little more and a little more. Phase One was learned fairly quickly by all our tanks 3 cycling tanks. Healing was fine so long long as they stayed in LOS. Phase Two was, of course, where things became complicated. Bird adds being tanked all over with trees frantically following their tanks. DPS that didn't understand the concept "Don't stand by the door". (Can you tell I assigned myself to healing the off tanks by the door?!) It was fun times all around, but awesome that we got him in only three hours of practice and attempts.

Wednesday was High Astromancer Solarian. Longer trash equaled blah, and we had to clear it twice. However, I think she would have been cake if people understood how to turn on their DBM announcement (I mean it yells "Run away little girl!" at you for Pete's sake!) or downloading SolarianAlarm. Once that was all set and people were canceling their casts to run the heck away, she went down supper easy. Kind of a boring fight I think for me. All I did was raid heal and HoTs the AOEers before all the mobs rushed the raid.

Thursday was Void Reaver. LOKI downed VR more times than I can remember this past summer. I actually have always liked the fight. It is fairly tree friendly as we can cast on the move, while running away from arcane orbs. I get in this happy little back and forth pattern with my (hopefully) competent group, calling out "Group 1&5, left", "Group 1&5, right." All the while I am HoTs, HoTs, HoTs the melee and tanks. The second attempt, we got probably 6 minutes into the fight before resetting it and I checked the healing meters. I had done a little under 40% of the healing, and we had 7 healers in the raid! Yes, shamans and druids have a big advantage on VR, and I am among the best geared healers in the guild - but 40% is uncalled for. People were just dieing too early from orbs. You know that expression, "I'm starting to sound like my parents!" I found myself starting to sound like the resto druid who has been in LOKI the longest: "How hard is it to run away from the orb? The come SO slow. I can run away and I'm a freaking TREE!!!" But VR went down, about two hours total. And to be fair, we have A LOT of people in there who had never seen VR before.

PS: This post is dedicated to Tolsmir, enhancement shaman and LOKI's Physical DPS officer, who has been bugging me to update my blog for the last few days!

More on Vashj and On to TK

Vashj went as well as one can hope the first night on Vashj can go, I think. There were some disagreements about the best uses for various DPS, and looking back, I don't think we made all the best choices. But we definitively came away with a much better understanding of the fight. We had no problems with the first phase, and by the end of the three hours we had 2 generators down. It was slow progress, but it was progress. Our biggest sticking point seemed to be DPSing down the strider. So there will be big DPS changes for next time.

We had 8 healers, 4 on the inside and 4 on the outside. I believe next time I would like to try 3 on the outside and 5 on the inside, since our inside healers were feeling overwhelmed, and our outside healers were finding time to DPS. Two cores came up my side (different attempts), where I was healing a hunter (different hunter different attempts). We alone had no problem taking down the tainted elemental, the hunter tossed the core to me, and I tossed it to another healer standing by the generator. I actually thought it was really fun!

Here was a macro, that I pulled from a strat. video on the Bosskillers that makes tossing the core easier and helps your raid follow where the core is:

/use Tainted Core
/y <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /s <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /Script SendChatMessage ("!!!YOU HAVE THE TAINTED CORE!!!", "WHISPER", "Common", UnitName("target")) This macro will 1. Use the core (ie, throw it to the person who you have selected, 2. Yell and Say who you are throwing it too, so everyone in the raid knows, and 3. Send a tell to the person you threw it to if they somehow missed the previous announcements! Although Vashj went fairly well, and we are hopeful about some of our ideas for changes, we are going to move on to TK. LOKI has previously downed VR, and put him on hold so we could do SSC. We figure Al'ar and Solarian will be easier than Vashj, and we don't want to loose momentum while momentum has been awesome. In other newses, like... last Tuesday I guess, I got the Gnarled Chestpiece of the Ancients from Morogrim for some reasonable emount of DKP. It has more Stam than the Robes if Heavenly Purpose. The robes will stay my main piece of course, but it is nice to have some alternatives that don't totally gimp healing ability. Sadly, they still aren't sexy enough to justify pairing them with my Nordrassil Life-Kilt. We did Kara again this past Friday. This time it was a lot of my real life friends alts. I don't have a high level alt so I went on Aertimus. I was very surprised at the DPS synergy and general output for the lower levels of gear. Of course it helps that we all know what we are doing and work well together! But the neatest part was that, even though I was still on Aertimus, and I have done Kara a ton of times with this group, it felt different since people were playing different classes. I got the Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted off of prince, which was, I believe, the absolute last piece of gear I had interest in from Kara. Again, it has more +heal and Stam than the Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion and options are always nice. Some of my friends passed it to me. That is something I always feel awkward about - who has more of I right or need to a piece of gear? An alt if it is for their main set, or a main if it is for an alt set? We "roll need" on pieces - but is it really "need" for either of us, in that case or is it greed? The final piece of WoW news is that I got added to Resto4Life's bloggroll. No pressure here to keep this thing up, going, and exciting! Anyone reading this better already be reading that site. In the real world, last week I submitted all my paperwork to sub in the district I would really like to sub in. So, hopefully some sub work will be right around the corner!

Vashj!?!

It was Wednesday night, and we pulled Vashj. Not only does that mean we cleared the first 5 bossed in SSC in two days, a first for LOKI, but we PULLED VASHJ. TWICE! Apparently between the downing of the last boss and the pulling of Vashj there is this epic bridge rising out of the water moment. Well, I missed that part. So did 23 other raid members. Why? Because my over excited TANK of a HUSBAND decided to go ahead and open the door without us there. His excuse? He thought it would just slide apart. How he thought we would get across? He didn't think about it. He has been thoroughly shunned and picked on by guild members and even non-guild members and sentenced to the sofa for his foolishness. If he had watched the video strats he would have known, right?!?

So back to the part about how we PULLED VASHJ. Phase one obviously went fine. The first time into phase two our DPS was assigned all wrong *cough* Ruffs fault *cough* and I confused some of our best healers with my hasty healing assignments. The second time, one of our very organized and very high DPSers did DPS assignments and I believe it went much better. I would like to think I helped explain things to the better healers too. Striders were successfully kited. Elites were not successfully tanked, however they were successfully DPSed. Elementals were more or less dieing as the should. My north side had some trouble because my group forgot which way was North *cough* Ruff *cough*. Tainted Elementals were not even close to dieing.

Tomorrow we will spend a solid 3 hours on her. I cannot WAIT!

Fathom-Lord Karathress Down!

I don't know if he dropped like a drunken cheerleader, but he finally did drop. We had a few wipes in the beginning, the first of which I attribute to trying new tanking locations, which just were not working out. It was just a 180 degree rotation around the room, the the MT healer couldn't keep him up during positioning. She seemed to feel bad about it, but I don't think there was anything she could have done. If SHE couldn't keep him up, like, no one could.

Before we adjusted the tanking location I tried to change around healing to fix the problem, and we ended up running with that second plan. I will adjust my below guild to reflect what was finally the most successful. Sadly, even after going back to original tanking locations and going to the new healing plan, our priest healing the hunter and hunter pet tank d/c'ed twice. There was a storm at their house, but we didn't figure out what was going on right away. Once we switched him out, Karathress went down on the next try.

I started out the fight healing the Shaman tank (Yakra, my husband, was tanking him.) Us three healers got hit by every spitfire totem and there was nothing we could do about it. I kept all 5 HoTs on Yakra and threw lifeblooms and rejuv's on myself as much as I could in the rotation. We had a dedicated healer and I don't think there is any other way we could have done it. After the shaman went down, I headed over to heal the main tank (Ruffianx) and both times I made it that far I got killed by the spitfire totem. I still should have had a healer on myself. I'm not sure if the totem hits harder or if there is just too much going on for another healer to keep a squishy tree up. This problem will be reflected in changes to my game plan strategy. Frankly, I feel like crap for being dead for so much of the fight and being at the bottom of the healing meters.

After you down Karathress, and NPC spawns and you can get the first quest in the Black Temple attunement chain. This quest allows you to be a Broken in TK, so a bunch of us went after the raid to have a Broken party in TK. I can hardly believe I am on the BT attunement quest chain!

As if downing him wasn't enough. As if being on the BT attunement chain wasn't enough. I got loot!!! I got my Tier Five Pants! Okay, everyone saw it coming with my 316 DKP - which was the most in the guild, but it was still super exciting. I tossed in a little extra something to our poor rouge who was forced to take bids :P Our GM bid second with 240 DKP, forcing me to cough up 241 DKP. He could have hit me for more. Many congrats followed. I hope the guild thinks I will put them to good use! I gemmed them already, but still need to add spell thread. This puts me at 2/5 T5 (omg crazy!). But most importantly, they are super cute!

In other awesome news, I got mentioned in Leafshines blog! I like reading her blog especially because talks about her guilds triumphs over specific kara bosses and links videos. I will probably not do the video thing, but her blog was one of my inspirations about doing entries for specific boss!

So it was just an all around awesome night! I stayed up late to celebrate and then slept until 1pm this afternoon. Ops! Maybe I should try going outside... or cleaning... what is this real world thing again? And why aren't my pants as cute?