My Account
Navigation
Contributors
Other Links
|
|
Newsies
|
Gamlin Wins the Peacekeeper Blade!
|
|
Newsies Posted: 26
Photo Albums: 1
Pictures Uploaded: 7
Comments Left: 21
|
2009-08-21 09:56:34 with 1 Comment
After last night's heroic, Midela exited early because of a bad cold and a dire need of rest. Thank you very much for coming with us last night for ... what, the third Drak'Theron run in a row? Sheesh!
Gold Group disbanded for the night, after running Drak'Theron in record time. 27 minutes from start to finish, with three minutes left to spare on our blessings! Four more conquest and two more triumph emblems in less than a half an hour is nothing but success.
But it left me, Gamlin, without a run through Trial of the Champion to go for the sword everyone's been talking about... mainly me, actually.
So I flew up there solo, stood outside the entrance and advertised my services as a tank. I was picked up pretty quickly.
After a needless wipe when the hunter's pet needlessly aggroed all three groups of Pre-Paladin mobs by accident (how does one DO that by accident!?), we went on to defeat Eadric and the Black Knight without much trouble. But did Eadric drop the sword?
Yes. Yes he did.
I gasped when it dropped, and instead of any looting drama, the group congratulated me even before I had a chance to roll need. My old sword unenchanted, I discarded it immediately. I had just enough defense to remain uncrittable despite the Peacekeeper Blade's lack of Defense Rating.
I'm very happy to have gotten the sword, but I'm also quite sad that my mates weren't present for the drop. For the past few months, we've successfully relied on each other to make all of our progress, and it was bittersweet that the one item I've been craving had to drop when no one else was around.
Personally, I have just about every item from Heroic Trial of the Champion. I'm only missing the Regal Aurous Shoulderplates, which would be a significant upgrade from my current Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons. There's also a ring I really wouldn't mind having, the Mark of the Relentless. Everything else out of Trial of the Champion I either have, or have improved upon.
I know many of you are still missing out on a lot of awesome equipment out of that place, so I've no doubt we'll be returning again. But this may be one of the first times that I've ever gotten something I've really wanted before a better alternative presented itself. I believe it will be quite some time before this new sword is replaced, so now I must save up for a sweet enchant.
IN OTHER NEWS, I checked out Naxxramas very briefly last night by myself. I alone stood against two abominations and (barely, I might add) stood victorious over their defeated ... re-corpses. I'm dying to check this place out sometime.
Thanks for all your help, guys. :)
Regards,
Gamlin
|
|
|
Newsies Posted: 26
Photo Albums: 1
Pictures Uploaded: 7
Comments Left: 21
|
2009-08-20 11:25:37 with 5 Comments
A funny thing happened last night when we went to turn in our Daily Heroic for the day. Many of were awarded the achievement Proof of Demise, which means the awarded have killed every single final boss in the Northrend Instances as part of the various daily heroics.
Gallysian missed out on this one, because she's not yet completed the quest for Utgarde Pinnacle or for Gun'Drak. Proxeidolon is just missing Utgarde Pinnacle.
But great job to everyone for being part of this triumphant series!
And now, on to the gear check!
Midela's tanking set was equipped, so I have no doubt her DPS set is well beyond the pre-raid cut-off. Everything has officially become... well, trivial. There's not much else left to challenge us in the five man content.
Just because we haven't done it in a while, here's the A.I.L list for the group:
Gallysian: 207.9, 5194
Chantilly: 207.6, 4721
Proxeidolon: 204.5, 4103
Gamlin: 203.1, 5051
Midela: 194.875 (off-set!), 5234
Do we dare even explore the 10-man content? Do we fly up into Naxxramas just to see how people are doing up there? Do we explore Malygos' frozen fancy lair just to see what content we can possibly explore?
Should we dedicate a day this weekend to seeing what's out there, perhaps trial runs to explore the instances and research whether we are even capable of downing trash in a ten-man with only 5-6 people? :)
Regards,
Gamlin
|
|
Runs A'Plenty! Gold Group Completes All Heroics!
|
|
|
Newsies Posted: 26
Photo Albums: 1
Pictures Uploaded: 7
Comments Left: 21
|
2009-08-17 09:56:11 with 7 Comments
Congratulations are in order for the members of Gold Group, who successfully completed the last missing Heroic Dungeon run over the weekend, and gaining the Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement. Ever single boss of every single heroic (aside from Trial of the Champion, which was added later).
Here's a recap of all the gear progress we made over the weekend!
Chantilly bought her first tier gear ever with Emblems of Conquest: Conqueror's Kirin Tor Hood not much excites our casters anymore, but she did want the DPS caster trinket Abyssal Rune. After several runs not getting anything, it finally dropped last night, but she lost it in a fair roll to Weemote. Luckily, we ran the instance a second time immediately after and it dropped again! All our DPS casters have this now, which is a terrific boost to DPS.
Gallysian also bought with her stash of Emblems of Conquest: Conqueror's Worldbreaker Headpiece. Gallysian has the best armor in the guild, and it is excellent that a healer be outfitted so well. Everyone's job is mission critical, but when the healer is spent and the job's not done, we lose. The tank runs out of health, the DPS get slaughtered; it's bad times. After replacing two items yesterday, Gallysian has one item on her person that isn't a level 80 purple, and it's a level 80 blue.
Gamlin made a killing within the last couple days. He finally acquired the level 80 heroic tanking sword, the Red Sword of Courage and TWO heroic Trial of the Champion tanking drops: The Warlord's Depravity and Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger.
Midela was finally able to scrounge enough defense to safely replace her Axe of Bloodstained Ice with her new polearm Marrowstrike . It's always good to see a green replaced by a purple, especially one so critical to a tank's powers of threat (see the comparison here). For DPS, she got a fancy new helm. The Helm of the Violent Fray to be specific.
Proxeidolon didn't get anything Sunday or Saturday, but he did manage a new wand (Wand of Ahn'kahet, named for our final heroic instance) on Friday. Also, last we spoke, he got the Gaze of the Unknown.
In case you missed it, that's 5 hats for 5 people over 5 days. We're Hat-Crazy over at Botany Bay.
Weemote gained an Abyssal Rune, Handwraps of Surrendered Hope ("Socket Makes it Awesome!"), and a Brilliant Hailstone Amulet. His rise through the ranks has officially begun.
Here's the latest guildometer:
Even with Weemote's new purple trinket, gloves, necklace and a new blue hat, Weemote remains off the board. I'm convinced he'll break onto it soon (maybe even after he gems the gear he has). Danny, if you're interested, this site has a wealth of information about how you might tweak your gear and improve your DPS.
Chantilly, Gamlin and Prox dip their hands in Tier 7 range, while Gallysian blows past Tier 7.5. Midela's TANKING set is higher than her DPS used to be, so I have no doubt that her DPS set is also passed the T7 mark.
Moving right along! Great work, everyone!
Gamlin
|
|
Group Rebalanced for Mixed Sucess Runs
|
|
|
Newsies Posted: 26
Photo Albums: 1
Pictures Uploaded: 7
Comments Left: 21
|
2009-08-13 10:18:54 with 1 Comment
Last night we had the pleasure of Weemote's company, an occasion all too rare, and made a couple of attempts at some instances.
First off, it's clear we should not let the success in Violet Hold get to our heads. Certain bosses in the instance command a dominance over our hapless characters (further study is definitely needed on that Ethereal boss with the damned dirty orbs).
With Gallysian's absence last night, we found a willing warlock to come with us. The healer slot vacated, Gamlin donned his Holy gear to give heroic healing a try. The tanking slot now empty, Midela stepped up to fill it.
Results were somewhat mixed.
I excel at healing one or two targets at once, but when everyone's taking damage I'm quickly overwhelmed. Part of that is the class, part of that is the lack of experience. As a result, the tank died quite a few times that could have been avoided, and I would (somewhat humorously) step in to try to keep the boss busy by taunting and running.
The sheer utility missing from last night's instance perhaps hurt most of all, and the Trial run seemed most keen on taking advantage of our weaknesses.
We faced the rogue boss in Phase 1, and with no cleansing totem around I had to burn cooldowns to simply keep poisons off the tank. This gimped my healing powers significantly, especially while Midela was taking damage from a warrior and mage at the same time.
Midela's tanking set is noticably poorer than her DPS set (since I've been hogging all the tanking drops while she's been happily snacking on epic strength gear). This gave Midela a bit of spikey health plunges, when her luck would crap out on her and she would take a few full blast hits in a row instead of dodging or parrying them.
Then came Phase 2, which had us matching wits against the priestess rather than our preferred paladin. Once again we found ourselves missing a totem, Tremor Totem, to be exact, when we regularly found ourselves running around like chickens rather than doing our jobs.
This forced some creative use of lesser used abilities, like Fear Ward. In our second attempt, I had Prox cast that on me significantly before the battle started. Miraculously I timed it near exactly right, and the boss cast the AOE fear spell with five seconds left to go on it and was able to receive a second dose immediately following its consumption. Between them and my bubble, I managed to stay unfeared for almost the entire encounter which had a significant part to play in our survival.
Finally, we arrived at the Black Knight. And once again, Cleansing Totem's absence made itself known. And once again, while I was busy cleansing the diseases, Midela's health took an unlucky turn and sank like a stone.
As previously alluded to, when Midela died in P3.1, I kept the boss taunted until she made her triumphant return. I died very quickly, but Weemote's soulstone allowed me to return to life and keep my taunting on. Unfortunately I died a second time just as Midela was re-entering the instance. I flew back from the graveyard as fast as I could and managed to cast a Lay on Hands on her just as the light was fading from her eyes. A worthy circle of death and rebirth that ultimately ended in a wipe during P3.3, but it still has my vote for Play of the Day.
We did ultimately bring the boss down, and two tanking purples dropped to help boost Midela's tanking set for next time. Earlier in the day, Weemote won a necklace to replace what coincidentilly was the oldest item on his character (a quest reward from Borean Tundra).
Unfortunately, this awesomeness happened on Normal Mode. :( No emblems, no level 219 gear. But we got to see where we are on a rarely seen alternate group setup.
Here's how the internet sees our groups:
Next time we'll do better. :) I'm convinced the group as-is would be just fine on one of the easier Heroics, where we can still get emblems.
Regards,
Gamlin
|
|
Gear Going Up Like Crazy, New Recruits Needed?
|
|
|
Newsies Posted: 26
Photo Albums: 1
Pictures Uploaded: 7
Comments Left: 21
|
2009-08-12 10:42:25 with 2 Comments
If anything, these runs for Conquest emblems and shiny loots from Trial of the Champion have caused a serious jump in our gear as a whole. You might notice heroic instances we're going into for the first time are proving easier than when we were doing them on normal mode.
There's two reasons for it, and they're pretty obvious.
We're very used to the nuances of these instances now. For example, Chantilly even got to catch a hammer from from the paladin and toss it back.
And the gear is the other obvious factor. Prox was smacked with that same hammer right in the face, and not only did he not die, but had thousands of health left over.
So really, what's left? With one more instance to do before we complete every 5-man heroic in the game, we've only got 3 things to do.
1. Run Heroic Trial of the Champion to collect purple loots (iLvl 219)
2. Running Heroics to amass Tier 8.5 badges (iLvl 226)
3. Doing the Heroic Daily to slowly collect Tier 9.5 badges (iLvl 245)
What do we have to look forward to, once we've done 1-3 ad nauseum? As the game exists now, unfortunately, not much. With the gear we'd have, we could conceivably run Naxxramas 10 man, or at least parts of it, with only 5-7 people. But the gear that would drop would be quite a bit worse than what we would have by that point. It might be nice as a sight-seeing tour, like The Nexus was last night.
Patch 3.3 will hit someday, which would hopefully add a bit of 5-man content in there, but eventually we'll get to the point where we need more people to go any further... even if we have to... (gulp)... recruit them.
For now, we've got a bit of work ahead of us locally! Weemote and Mitlan are playing again, on occasion, and they've got some catching up to do!
Here's the guild gear status as it stands. As we all approach that average item level of 200, we start seeing some interesting things from all sorts of armory-mining websites.
be.imba.hu is a purported "Character Audit" website, that takes a look at your gear and determines the most likely avenues of improvement. If you create an account, you can also audit groups or entire guilds. Here's its audit of our level 80s:
After Prox's and Gally's wins last night, they're comfortably past the "Pre-Raiding" frame, which means doing their jobs in the heroics has become "trivial", essentially like it would be if you were to run Deadmines or Scarlet Monastery. You won't be getting too much more gear improvements from these instances alone (though you'll still be inching upward with emblem purchases).
Midela and I, on the other hand, have gone several nights without seeing any useful drops. On the whole, though, as our average item level reports have shown, we're all decently close. (My score shot down after last night because I left my PVP trinket equipped, it's normally equivalent to Midela's). Chantilly passed on both cloth drops at the end of the Trials last night, and now she rests comfortably in the middle.
Our regular group's loot has trivialized all the pre-raid stuff already. All that's left to do now is to trivialize it even further, maybe going for a few of the heroic achievements to keep ourselves entertained.
Or find more people.
Regards,
Gamlin
|
|
Halls of Lightning, Violet Hold, The Oculus, and Trial of the Champion
|
|
|
Newsies Posted: 26
Photo Albums: 1
Pictures Uploaded: 7
Comments Left: 21
|
2009-08-11 12:31:28 with No Comments
Since the last update, we've attempted and completed four more instances on heroic, leaving only one that has not yet been completed: Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. These instances (aside from the Trial of the Champion) itself were completed with relative ease after grabbing up a few of the fancy loots from the new instance, the Trial of the Champion.
Gallysian survived the entire Varos Cloudstrider encounter in the Nexus without dying for the first time, and it was the heroic version!
During Prox's absence for a few hours on Sunday, we completed Heroic Halls of Lightning for the first time with only four people!
Although this is the third time we've completed Trial of the Champion on heroic, we got the achievement last night for facing a mini-boss we'd been missing until now. And with only the predictable wipe during the buggy transition from mounted to unmounted combat, we completed the instance wipe-free!
Gamlin got some new pants and bought his first item with Emblems of Conquest, a pair of iLvl 226 gloves to replace an iLvl 155 pair he's had all year.
Legguards of Abandoned Fealty
Gauntlets of the Royal Watch
Both Proxeidolon AND Chantilly got a new ring from the heroic CoT (from separate runs)!
Sinner's Confession
Gallysian attained exalted status with the Knights of the Ebon Blade and he picked up his pants he's been drooling after. He also got H-ToC shoulders AND a belt to really beef himself up.
Pauldrons of the Deafening Gale
Kilt of Dark Mercy
Girdle of the Dauntless Conqueror
Midela picked up some fine pants from the Trial and bought her first Emblem of Conquest item to replace her gloves with some ripping DPS plate gloves.
Legplates of Relentless Onslaught
Bladebreaker Gauntlets
Here is the guild's average items levels as of today. Gallysian has a significant lead, having zero items below 200 and three items out of Heroic Trial of the Champion. He's also fairly durable, having only one non-mail item. Congratulations to Gallysian!
Gallysian: 204.1
Chantilly: 200.8
Gamlin: 198.6
Proxeidolon: 198.1
Midela: 197.6
Shaltu: 182.8
Weemote: 179.4
Xander: 149.5 (Lvl 75)
Mitlan: 143.6 (Lvl 73)
The only Heroic the group as a whole hasn't done is Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. We'll also need to pick up Halls of Lightning again for Proxeidolon. The dailies take us all over the continent, so we'll hit them eventually! Great to see us moving forward!
Mitlan and Weemote! Let us know your schedules so we can figure out something that will work for you! We'd love to see you guys advance so we can work our way toward 10-man runs (with a few PUGers).
Regards,
Gamlin
|
|
|
Archives
August, 2009
2009-08-20 11:25:37
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Proof of Demise
2009-08-06 13:39:45
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Proposing New Loot Rules
2009-08-04 08:49:57
Guild Damnbledore Murphy
Newsie Post
Patch 3.2 Released Today!
July, 2009
2009-07-11 13:25:30
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Saturday Night Instance!
2009-07-05 19:01:50
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
The Oculus
June, 20092009-06-30 16:54:30
Guild Shaltu Magiteken
Newsie Post
Dee Pee Ess
2009-06-24 23:23:35
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Utgarde Pinnacle
2009-06-23 21:29:29
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
The Culling of Stratholme
2009-06-20 22:32:00
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Halls of Lightning
2009-06-19 11:02:07
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Flexibility is Key!
2009-06-18 12:07:02
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
A Letter to Botany Bayers!
2009-06-17 16:04:41
Guild Chantilly ArcSinew
Photo Album
Deadmines, Naked.
2009-06-16 15:14:03
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Halls of Stone
February, 20092009-02-08 10:23:09
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Newsie Post
Weemote Levels to 80!
November, 20072007-11-25 17:16:49
Guild Chantilly ArcSinew
Newsie Post
Fiery steed pics?
October2007-10-11 09:29:09
Guild Gamlin Boozehunter
Photo Album
Congratulations, Zach!
September, 2007
August, 20072007-08-22 07:55:35
Guild Shaltu Magiteken
Newsie Post
WTS Fiery Enchants!
2007-08-21 05:58:21
Guild Kaicie
Newsie Post
Comming back soon now
July, 20072007-07-18 15:18:13
Guild Botany Bay
Newsie Post
Sigh
June, 2007
2007-06-17 07:28:25
Guild Chantilly ArcSinew
Photo Album
Horsies are pretty!
2007-06-05 09:52:23
Guild Silia Emberstone
Photo Album
It's Payback Time
2007-06-01 08:22:48
Guild Mitlan Icaros
Newsie Post
Help Me!
May, 20072007-05-22 15:07:44
Guild Mitlan Icaros
Newsie Post
Maraudon
2007-05-15 20:54:49
Guild Kaicie
Photo Album
Good times
2007-05-08 08:02:15
Guild Veruca Felisspieler
Newsie Post
About that purple...
April, 20072007-04-20 08:09:45
Guild Shanlo Sharpclaw
Newsie Post
MOVIE TIME!
|
|
