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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Last night was the big score though.  The token dropped for T7 pants and I managed to win the roll. With that in hand I was finally able to snag my 4th piece of T7. All together I have the shoulders, chest, legs, and gloves, with the gloves being the only piece that is Valorous.

Now this leave me with some testing to do. Sure, tier pieces are nice and all, but do they offer the best stat choices for me. To equip them I will lose a considerable amount of +hit and crit, both of which are crucial to my current build. The +hit I can make up by swapping out a few other pieces, but the crit is going to hurt. I will have to do some testing at the target dummy to see if the extra AP and set bonuses provide more DPS than what I am currently wearing.

As a side note, this is why I rarely get rid of any piece of gear. Stat stacking is all about balance. Upgrading one piece may mean that you need to swap out other pieces to maintain the balance. Once you have an item and have gemmed and enchanted it, make sure to hang on to it because you just might need it later.

My reward for all of this was somewhat bittersweet. I bid farewell to my Nesingway 4000 and replaced it with the wonderful Nerubian Conquerer. It’s a pretty solid upgrade for me, and being the only Hunter in the raid it was defaulted to me. The Nesingway wins hands down on cool factor, but hey, stats is stats.

I’m looking forward to going back. I still need some upgrades from there, plus it’s a hell of a lot of fun. But for now I am spending my time in between working on alts and grinding rep for my shoulder enchant.

Now if the guild can just get past Patchwerk on heoric, we would be set. I don’t think it is a question of gear or DPS. What is giving us problems is the Hateful Strikes. A little more coordination between the healers, tanks, and melee DPS and I think we’ll have it. As they say, Practice Makes Perfect.

Friday night the guild went into 25-man Naxx. This was my first trip into Naxx on Heroic, so needless to say, I was a little nervous. My biggest concern was that I would end up being carried through by my guild. But that turned out not to be the case. It came as a huge surprise to me when I ended up topping the meters on the first boss of the Arachnid Quarter. The rest of the night was much of the same. We cleared the Arachnid and Plague Quarters, one shotting most bosses. The one fight I was looking forward to was Heigan the Unclean. I have read a lot about the fight on other blogs I follow, but this was the first time I ever experienced it myself. I am proud to say that I danced the dance and stayed alive the whole fight.

Saturday, we put together a few groups for 10-man Naxx. The group I was in ended up clearing the Arachnid, Plague, and Construct Quarters in a little over 4 hours. This was only my second trip into 10-man Naxx, so I had some of the same worries as before, but I was comforted by my experience in Naxx the previous night. The run was outstanding in my eyes. We one shot most bosses. And much to my pleasure, my damage meter showed me to be be in the top 3 DPS on almost every boss fight.

Then on Sunday we cleared out both 10 and 25-man versions of VoA and OS. I have already both of those several times, so nothing special there.

I can’t wait for the weekend to roll around so that I can step back into Naxx. Though this time I plan to save my combat log so I can upload it to WWS (or WMO, heard good things about it) since it is more accurate than an in-game addon.

First off, a real life diversion. Last weekend I went to an air show being held at a nearby Air Force base and watched the Thunderbirds perform. Combine their show with some incredible aerial acrobatics done by other performers, and it was a great way to spend a Saturday.

Anyway, back to WoW. I spent the better part of my playtime last week grinding Netherwing rep and leveling Santen. It paid off and Friday night I hit exalted with the Netherwing and got myself a shiny new Nether Drake. (Don’t let me forget to post some pictures later.) Real life kept me pretty busy over the weekend, meaning I spent very little time playing. But Sunday night, I managed to get some time to log on and was promptly invited to a Karazhan run by a former guildie. His guild was wanting to down the later bosses in Kara, but were 1 DPS short, and I just happened to log in at just the right time.

It was a great run, and I got to see some content I had never seen before. We 1 shot Ilhoof, completed the Chess Event, 2 shot Prince, and 1 shot Netherspite. No hunter loot dropped, but I did manage to snag 9 badges. Altogether it was a fun run, and I do believe I scored myself a possible invite back at a later date, if I’m not tied to a run with my own guild that is.

Well, that about sums up the last week in the life of Santyn. I am getting over my latest bout of writer’s block, so check back soon.

The War Bands were a definite upgrade for me, so I called out that I needed them. No else needed them, so I was awarded them by default. (Indecently, my poor DKP is so far negative now that it isn’t even funny.) Now we were left with deciding what to do with the gloves. No one needed them, so it was down to letting someone have them for a side-grade or Dis-Enchanting them. And it so happened that they were a side-grade for me. The gloves gave me a Attack Power boost at the cost of some health and Crit Rating. And being the wonderfully nice people that my guild mates are, they gave them to me at no DKP cost. That right there is why I love my guild and have no intention of leaving them.

Buy anyway. So here i am with only 45 minutes spent in Kara and walk out with 2 pieces of loot. Does it get any better? To make the most of these 2 pieces, I had a guild mate put a Savagery enchant on the both of them, which puts me at just over 1500 AP with Aspect of the Hawk on.

Raiding is good.