Lethal Shots

Well, for me at least. Over the weekend I went into Ulduar with Soulbound and downed four bosses, three of which I had never downed before.

We started off by clearing out Ignis and Razorscale, neither of which I had downed before. I had seen the encounters, just never been successful. Clearing these two out completed my Siege of Ulduar achievement, which thrills me to no end. After that we went up and tore through Kologarn. I had already downed him before, so nothing new there. After that we decided to work try for the Assembly of Iron. It took a few tries, but we downed them also, completing The Antechamber of Ulduar achievement, which thrills me even more.

Overall the run was a blast. I hate the Ignis fight. I spent both tries laying dead on the floor right from the start, one because I didn’t stop firing quick enough after my MD pull and drew aggro, and the other I was pulled into the pot right off the back and died. Razorscale was fun, though a tad bit hectic. Kologarn is easy. And the Assembly of Iron was a blast. I’d have to say that it is easily my favorite encounter in the game so far. Some of the abilities used by the bosses are awesome. There is just enough movement to make it interesting without being a pain in the ass. Really, it is a well put together encounter.

Anyway, after last weekend I am now 7/14 in Ulduar. I am hoping to clear it out eventually (ok, honestly I doubt I will ever be 14/14, but 13/14 is good enough for me), but with 3.2 and a new raid instance dropping today guild focus may move forward. We’ll still be running Ulduar for gearing, but I’m not sure how far we will get progression wise. But there’s always hope.

While I have heard of it happening before, last weekend was the first time I have ever had the, um, privilege of participating in a three man dance with Heigan. It was interesting to say the least.

Obviously, the encounter started out with a full compliment of ten people, but by around 40% only the tank, a healer, and me (on my Hunter) were left. But we’re a stubborn bunch and refused to let him win. So thanks to the fact that Heigan has no enrage timer, we three continued to dance the dance and managed to take him down to the encouragement and cheers of our dead brethren.

And let me tell you, it took a long, long time.

DPS like crazy during the phase 1, then switch to viper and regen mana during phase 2. Rinse and repeat for what felt like forever. But we did it.

And you know what, that was probably the most fun i’ve had in Naxx in a long time.

Last night I made my first trip into Ulduar. It was a rather short run, but it was still loads of fun. The reason for the shortness of the run was group composition. While we were able to get 10-people together, we were missing tanks and healers. Lucky for us that doesn’t matter in the Flame Leviathan fight.

Since it was my first time in there I was instructed to drive one of the  Siege Engines, which I was told is one of the easier tasks. That was fine by me. Best to learn an encounter from one of the less critical seats. For the trash, my job was basically to tank. It was pretty easy. We proceeded to take out the trash and all four towers. Everything went smooth with no deaths. We did wipe however when we got to the boss. The boss was spawned before everyone was ready (or the fight even explained). We lost a few people quick, so we experimented with him some to get a litle practice and then went ahead and wiped.

Though once we came back in we proceeded to wipe him. I’m calling it a 1-shot since the first pull was not intentional. The fight reminded me a lot of the Little Red Riding Hood encounter in Kara. Hopefully later this week we will be able to go in and clear out a few more bosses.

I don’t like heroic raids. I absolutely love running 10-man raids, but I just don’t like 25-mans. Don’t get me wrong, I have fun in them, but I would much rather be in a 10-man. Why you might ask? Well, the first reason may stem from the terrible FPS I get in them. I get good performance in 10-mans, but throw another 15 people in there and it kills my PC.

But even if that wasn’t an issue I still wouldn’t like them. There is just too many people. With a 10-man, runs start close to on time, while it can take up to an hour to get all 25 people together for a heroic. Vent becomes unbearable. Too many people talking at once means you can’t understand a soul. Wipes can take ages to recover from. All this because of the number of people.

Yet I will most likely continue to run them. Heroic raids are what a large number of my guildies are interested in, which means that is what my guild will strive to run, and I want to run with my friends. Also there is the matter of loot. I want a shot at the best loot in the game, and that means I must run heroic raids (I also think this a motivating factor behind many of my guildies). While I find this to be a bad decision on Blizzards part, there is little to be done about it.

So what does this mean? I will continue to run heroic raids, and hope people want to run some 10-mans too.

Who I am sure also plays a Paladin. Or maybe a Druid. Tough call, but my money is on Paladin.

I spent a couple of hours in Naxx last night, clearing out Arachnid and Plague wings plus Patchwerk. Not the smoothest run, but it went pretty good. What got me worked up though was the loot.

I was the only Hunter in the run, and the only Shaman was Elemental. I get the physical mail items, she gets the caster mail items. Sounds simple, right? But how many mail items dropped? One. And it was a caster piece.

But what did drop? Plate. Lots of it. And if the boss didn’t drop plate, it dropped Leather. I swear the plate wearers love it when I come to a raid. Every time I go to Naxx, I see tons of plate drops.

Anyway, guilds continueing the run tonight, but I’m most likely not going to make it. Real life rears its ugly head again. I wish them luck, but I’m going to be pissed if all the Hunter loot drops tonight.