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Still no 4set. Like I mentioned 2 weeks ago, I sat out for 1 Illidan raid and of course 3x Conqueror tokens dropped. Then there was a change of tanks, or rather, the changing of a holy paladin to a tank, and last weeks only Conqueror token went to him on tank-prio. Now bosses are dropping Conqueror left and right (much to the amusement of our new straight-out-of-Karazhan imp-bish - more on that later) except for, of course, Illidan. The new rogues are happy, our new new Sherman is happy (we can't seem to hold on to enhancment Shamans & thus we are in a perpetual state of gearing a new one up) and all the offspec-hungry guildies are happy.
Me, not so much.
:(
It wouldn't have been so bad if Illidan hadn't sent Sathrovarr a memo, but he did and now that pesky demon isn't dropping Conqueror either. It feels like back when we were progress raiding Illy and no weapon would drop for me. I guess this means I'll get my 4set once Felmyst is down or something. Maybe the Twins.
Spreaking of - that damned dragon isn't down yet. We banged our heads against Brutallus again this weekend after a shoddy Kalecgos-kill, but he refused to play nice for us. It's a big shame cause as of today we're on a week and a half's raidbreak to try and cure a guild-wide burnout. Most of the core raiders don't need loot from BT/Hyjal anymore. Even though we've stopped going to Hyjal completely, farming BT every Wednesday and then progress-wiping the rest of the week in Sunwell is draining everyone. Some are dodging raids, some are whining and some show up, shut up and just want to get it overwith. It happens. It happened before I joined too, when Kamuf prog-raided TK. They took a break back then too and once it was over they nailed a boss they'd not been able to get down before. Here's to hoping it'll have the same effect this time!
(And maybe there'll be more frequent blog-posts now that I'm not doing much until May 7th.)
I mentioned some new recruits. Since Illy went on farm we've had the obligatory 1-3 people fall off, either to xfers or quitting the game entirely. I'm pretty sure the officers knew it'd happen, it seems like this happens with all guilds that down the "final" boss. At any rate, after some recruiting we've picked up a new afl Warlock, a new enh Sherman (#5 I believe, here's to hoping this one lasts!) and two new Rogues. Nothing terribly interesting if it wasn't for what I previously mentioned - the Warlock is straight out of Karazhan. (If you were reading my blog back in December you'll remember that so was I when I first joined. Hell, I hadn't even killed Netherspite and Nightbane.) As such, his gear was obviously not the greatest.
Let's face it though, a guild like Kamuf can take a player in blues and greens and epic them out in BT/Hyjal in a matter of weeks. Skill, attitude and loyalty are much more valuable assets than gear when it comes to applicants. This guy? He knew he didn't stand a chance but he was bored, it was late at night and he decided he'd give it a go anyway just for the hell of it. He posted a long, well-written application to our forums that was soaked through with personality. He was funny. He wanted to raid. He was taken in and put on trial the next day.
After pretty much half the guild had crawled all over him, inspecting his gear, his gems, his enchants, his rep and told him exactly how tough a job he had ahead of him, he was brought along for the last BT clear before the raidbreak. Being naturally friendly and helpful to newbies (I've worked as an admin on a large message board for 7 years) I'd taken it upon myself to whisper him the tactics from a DPS point of view for each boss so that he'd be somewhat prepared. I must say he did remarkably well for someone who'd never set foot in the place before!
Then Mother dropped multiple Conqueror tokens (of course) and only one of the core raiders rolled on it for mainspec. The new Warlock rolled too, for the hell of it, even though he barely had any DKP. (He is a 'for the hell of it' kind of guy.) His voice on ventrilo when the raid leader offhandedly told him to pick up one of the tokens was a real treat. The poor thing had not expected to end up with tier 6 shoulders on his very first raid into Black Temple and was quite awed and surprised. The next day when we came back for Council and Illidan, he got himself some tier6 pants as well. I don't think there was a happier guy in all of Azeroth and Outland that day. :)
So tired these days once raid ends, no real time and energy for blogging even though I have lots of things I'd like to write about. Kalecgos is on farm, Brutallus is finally down after some heartbreaking 2% and 1% wipes, and we're now progress raiding Felmyst 5 hours a day. It occured to us only tonight that the reason Mass Dispell seems to resist abnormally often is that it's not a shadow based spell, and the priest +spell hit talent only counts for shadow spells. Bugger. Will have to look into that and maybe set up a +spell hit gear to get over-capped just for this fight. And farm more Primal Manas for Cauldrons of Arcane Protection. And mats for Destro pots. And for Pure Death flasks. And Mana pots. And... and....
First in line for t6 chest but not invited to this week's Illidan raid. Of course three Priest/Paladin/Warlock chest tokens dropped, just to rub it in. Oh well, that's the way life goes sometimes I guess. :(
In happier news, Kalecgos is finally down.
We've killed him twice after the 2% wipe, but we haven't killed him right yet. So, no loot :/
The Kalecgos fight is a bit like Karazhan's Romulo & Julianne in that both the Demon inside and the Dragon outside have to die at the same time, with the added complexity that they're in two separate 'worlds' which you keep teleporting between. Additionally, the dragon in his half-elf form is inside the spectral realm with the demon and needs to be kept alive in order for the kill to count. Not the easiest of fights, in other words, but I'm quite pleased with that. Illidan is kind of ridiculously easy once you just get the positioning right, so this is nice. I always enjoyed the timing aspect of the Romulo & Julianne fight anyway.
More progress-wiping inc tonight!
It's unlikely that this will be interesting to many people, but I was so impressed by the tanks and the healers last night that I need to write this down.
We'd put off the last part of BT until the end of the week so we could focus on Kalecgos. Sunday they had him at 2% so the following day they took the exact same group in the hopes that the magic would happen. It didn't, unfortunatly, as one of the 3 tanks had a family emergency bomb land on them in mid-raid. Unable to progress on Kalecgos, they went on to pluck off some BT bosses and got all the way to Mother. Since I wasn't in the raid and the raid was full, one of my good friends logged off his own char and onto mine, knowing that I was first in line for the t6 shoulder token if it dropped. Unfortunatly it wasn't a good night for anyone and Mother stayed up. Sometimes you just can't win.
Enter Tuesday, the last day of the reset, and we have 3 BT bosses left standing: Mother, Council and Sillydan. Afterwards we were meant to go Kalecgos hunting. Mother gets one-shot in probably our best kill to date (and I got my shouders! Woo!) but Council proves tricky. Our main tank suddenly disconnects which happens from time to time, but on this occasion he can't get back on. He's stuck on authenticating. We set up a trivia bot and play a few 20 questions rounds in the hopes that rebooting/resetting IP/other technimagical things will work, but no cookie. One of the Paladins is shipped off to Ironforge to respec. The Samurai Bear is switched from the Rogue to the Paladin, and the freshly specced Tankadin gets to play with the Rogue. Both are tanking these targets for the very first time, but it's perfectly executed. Council down and we're loving this whole 3 tier tokens business. Too bad the t6 legs stink for Shadow Priests.
Main Tank is still offline, so we set things up to let the Tankadin give Sillydan a try. It's 3 hours until end-of-raid and tomorrow everything resets. We really really really don't want to leave him up. (Plan B is to kiss the feet of one of our Horde buddies in the hopes that he'll be persuaded to log on our MT's character and tank for us.)
There are a few wipes - apparantly Blizzard messed around with the Flames of Azzinoth and made them a little harder than they used to be. We die to a couple charges until the Beartanks figure out what's been done and adjust accordingly. There's an embarassing wipe on behalf of all the healers where Tankadin dies 5 seconds into phase 3 because nobody heals him. Whops!
But then! Then everything starts to come together. Sort of.
I go down in phase 2. By then, two of the DPS'ers in my group are already dead and so is the Tankadin. In order to get at Samurai Bears combat rez (which is the only available), the order is given for the other Bear to taunt flame #2 as soon as flame #1 is down. The healers are so focused on the tank-switch that they forget about Dark Barrage. I'm dead in 3 seconds. No chance. Oh well, at least Tankadin is up and buffed before Illidan decends. One of the mages gets a little crit happy before Tankadin has established enough aggro and there goes the 4th person in my party. Clearly group 3 isn't the place to be.
But they plod along even though several of the key DPS'ers are down, and slowly but surely take him down to 30%. There's at least two occasions where Parasites aren't handled where they ought to be and there's a couple more deaths, but they get there. The mage gets a combat rez when somebodys cooldown is up to help with the parasite nuking. Maiev isn't in a friendly mood and keeps putting traps in walls or all the way over by the warlock tank. 4 DPS'ers and 1 healer are down and we keep watching the enrage timer. Thankfully, the Tankadin who has never done this before does everything perfectly and Illidan switches into Demon form at 3%. The warlock tank burns him down with ease. It's the most stressfull kill we've ever had of him, and I certainly hope we won't put him off until the last day again. It's a recipe for disaster: everything that can go wrong will go wrong in such scenarios. Still, it gave our tanks and our healers a chance to shine. They showed us just how far they can stretch, just how adaptable they are, just how good.
One of my chest token dropped. Tankadin took it. Methinks I'm first in line now. /wipes drool
