srsbusiness

On Thursday night Oct 22nd; I got a new tanking weapon. For those of you keeping track, that’s Titansteel Destroyer, Aesir’s Edge, and now Mor’kosh, the Bloodreaver. Much like the edge, I’ve put a pair of Solid Dragon’s Eyes in it, with Stoneskin Gargoyle that’s a ton of Stamina. Until recently I was Jonesing for the Arena weapon Relentless Gladiator’s Decapitator I still think that the Glad weapon is great for EH, unfortunately to use it… you really need to downgrade to ToC 10 gear to keep hit capped while using it. Using either of the tribute weapons goes a long way to keeping EH and Hit up, without having to downgrade anything.

So… back to not caring about arena.

A Tribute to Mad Skill
We formed up for heroic toc groups, and it went better than I expected. I knew we’d get Anub, but I didn’t think we’d 1 shot him. Infact, had it not been for a little flub up on Twins we would’ve actually gotten a Tribute to Insanity. It went great unfortunately we haven’t got the formula down for the second raid yet, so a bit of tinkering and restructuring I think both groups will rip through the instance like a bag of leaves.

Now for the fun part. Though we DID one shot Anub, he also one shot us. At about 4% I died, Someshta hit me with B Rez and I healed myself with everything I had. Then in a “Death of Superman” moment, we killed each other. Good times. I’ll be honest, it was the most fun I’ve had since the first time we killed Twin Emps at 60.

Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10)
Last week I posted about Aahz’s success with this achievement, and as predicted we started working on it this week as a guild. We spent a few hours in Uld last night working on this and managed to get the lion’s share of the hard modes knocked out. The only one we missed was Kologarn’s Disarmed achievement, our DPS kung fu was just too great apparently (seriously, we burned thru XT’s heart without a Lust, no problem). Now, I had 2 of these already (Heartbreaker and I Could Say the Cache was Rare) and I was present for I Choose You Steelbreaker, though somehow got bugged out of it the first time I did it. But, we actually got a lot of achievements last night (8 I think), which is pretty solid for our first attempt at these I think.

Several of the raiders there last night had never seen the hard modes at all, so good work everyone.

The Week in Achievements

Hallow’s End is almost over, and still no mount. But to tell the truth I haven’t really been that interested in doing Horseman runs since I got the title. In fact, I’ve already transfered my alts back to my main account. Since then I’ve started working on my Druid tank again, I power levelled his Mining/Jewelcrafting to 420ish this weekend. That gives me 3 JC Dailies per day! This along with my Shaman alchemist nets me about 500-600g depending on transumtation procs for about 15 minutes of effort. In my continuing effort to hit the gold cap I’m working the trade skills and levels on my remaining alts in all out effort to conquer the Auction House. I’ve had a little bit of luck with the continued quest for the Sulfuron Hammer, I got the pattern on Grimmand before transfering him back to my main account. Now I just need 7 Blood of the Mountain to finish the damned hammer.

Anyhow, that’s it for me this week…

An Eventful Week
Where to begin? Well, I got sick this week pretty bad. So did my wife actually, so for a few days I did nothing but sleep. Work on the house has been put on hold for a bit till I’m feeling better. I’m just getting past it now, but I’ve actually managed to get some stuff done in wow while I’ve been sick. First, I’m another reputation closer to the Exalted title, and conversely to getting a portable mailbox which will lead to a much easier time working on the Insane title.

Face on Fire News
One of our officers Aahz got a wild hair up his ass to try some Uld 10 hard mode action for a trinket, he left with a Rusted Proto-Drake. End result? We’re farming Rusted-Proto Drakes now, trying to get em for everybody before IC drops and these damned things stop dropping entirely. I’m hopefully going to get mine done this week, sadly the sick kept me out of the raid this weekend.

In addition, we also got Anub down in heroic togc. We barely, and I mean just barely missed A Tribute to Skill, we made it to Anub with 47 attempts the first night (we had some goofy bad luck on Champs, after that everything was groovy). Overall, the fight wasn’t too big of a deal, interestingly enough after looking at the WWS Parse of the fight it appears all our DPS were basically a crit from being top DPS lol. (5028.6 to 5452.2) for all the DPS, and both tanks doing 2K (according to Recount). We 2 healed it, with that setup we were managing to get Anub down to 50-60% before first Burrow phase. Overall, the strategy worked well for our raid comp, here’s a link to the WWS Parse.

Gear for the Week
I FINALLY managed to get my trinket Juggernaut’s Vitality, along with a few other various sundries…
Legionnaire’s Gorget
Band of the Twin Valkyr
Trophy of the Crusade x2
Note: Tomorrow after raiding I’ll have the Emblems to get the gloves with the second trophy, which will give me the four piece bonus. I used the other trophy for the helm.

This leaves me free to build up my PR for Heroic 25 loot, and weapons.

I is Legend
I’ve been working on Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros and I’m in the home stretch, today I bought the pattern for the smithed hammer on Grimmand. That leaves me needing only 1 Sulfuron Ingot and 10 Blood of the Mountain to complete the hammer. Hopefully by this time next week I’ll have the thing completed, and it’ll be another thing off of the old honey-do list.

Anyhow, that’s it for me this week, more coming soon.

Post Script
Just after writing this, I logged on for a bit of fun and to try at the daily heroic (I’ve got a Trophy in my pocket that needs Emblems). So, I grabbed a couple of guildies and a couple of pugs and hit H Nexus. Now, normally a heroic 5 man wouldn’t be interesting but on a whim I decided to try something out, I told the group to stay back I wanted to see if I could solo one of the bosses … So, second to last boss Ormorok the Tree-Shaper. It took a bit longer than usual obviously, but I managed to kill him … with my health at full. When I say that Blood is a “Survival” tree, that’s precisely what I mean. A Frost tank could not do that. An Unholy tank could not do that. Because they can’t heal themselves like Blood can, and they can’t mitigate or avoid EVERY attack. Over a long enough time frame, the survival rate of any tank reaches 0, except Blood DKs.

And one other last minute update, I haven’t “gone to the other side” but I did make a Draenei Death Knight last night on my “alt” account. Derleth is my first Draenei, I played alliance before BC. And the guys are definitely a little on the strange side, but I’ve always liked the tentacle faced thing. Now, the point of this guy? For one, it never hurts to have a friend on the inside. Second, I can grab cross-faction rarities and discounts this way. Mainly though, this guy’s just for getting one up on the alliance AH. And “maybe” a few other top secret projects I have in mind.

Also, I would like to take a second to welcome back my good friend and fellow officer at Face on Fire Aahz back, his account was compromised a couple of weeks ago and he’s only just recently gotten everything back in order. Good to have you back big boy. And what a return it’s been, on a whim leading a hard mode Uld 10 run and knocking out every single hard mode in one run (many of these firsts for our guild). Excellent work.

More from Hallow’s End next week. And congratulations to Mathaleron our first The Horseman’s Reins winner this year.

Now, I really am gone for the week, I promise…

RL Invades the Blog
I have to mention this before anything else, last night my wife and I went to
Little Rock to see Robin Williams live, it was definitely an experience I won’t
soon forget. I know, there’s been no shortage of clunkers when it comes to Williams’
acting career. But, his stand up is still quite good. Dirty and irreverent as
ever, but a little self effacing. Robin talked about his experience in rehab (Williams
is a recovering Alcoholic) as well as his recent open-heart surgery. At 58, Williams
still manages to deliver laughs, though I noticed a lack of his "voices"
they were present, but not as prevelent as past performances, which to me is a
good thing. Also present in his act were a healthy dose of old jokes,
the guy’s been at it a while and I don’t expect him to bring 100% new material
to Arkansas. I overheard someone remarking on the recycled material as
we were in line for the John, and I asked the guy. Well, would you be pissed to
go to a concert and hear the band play nothing but songs from the new album, you’d
want to hear at least a couple of established hits right? Same difference.

Overall it was a lot of fun, I can’t say I’ll be going to see the Dane Cook performance
that’s coming up though lol.

Hallow’s Begining
Hallow’s End is a week away, but I’m already getting ready. I had to dig a ton
of alts out of BRD and get them moved to Scarlet Monastery in preparation for
the Horsemanl. Last year I five boxed this guy daily with my Paladin and Shamans,
my Paladin is still wearing the Helmet actually. But this year, it’s all about
my Death Knight. So, I’ve moved everyone over to my second account for maximum
summons. This worked out pretty well for Brewfest, I went with a regular group
of guild mates, and everyone (with the exception of Rukar) got a remote and
both mounts. Poor Ruk just wasn’t online when the Rams dropped. Unlike last
year though, I’m also doing the achievements. I managed to knock out all of
the Bewfest ones, so I’m going to stick with it for the rest of the year. I’m
not really crazy about the color of that Violet drake but I’ll take it.

I finally managed to get my Mechano-hog, actually it didn’t take as long as
I expected. Just a little focus. I’m also taking something of a break from the
Insane title. Right now, I’m working on getting my Argent Squire with the Mailbox
summon before I focus on this achievement further. Meanwhile, I am doing some
casual work on my Inscriptions and Herbalism on Infelice. I’ll eventually have
the achievement, though honestly I think my original estimate of New Years was
a bit over optimisitic. I am sure now that I could do it, but I’m also
just as sure that I don’t want to simply dump all of my gold into just
this achievement. Instead, I’m working on building my gold reserves and getting
the things I need to raise my rep up at a somewhat leisurely pace. I want to reach
max gold by the time Cataclysm comes out and be ready to buy anything I might
want/need once the expansion does drop, similarly I think I’ll probably
have the Insane title by the time Cataclysm goes live.

Get to the Choppa, naow!

The First Mistake of Age, Giving Advice
I’m currently working on a series of guides that I’ll be releasing here on my
blog absolutely free of charge. These guides cover tanking for all four of the
tanking classes, as well as updated resources for said tanks (AddOns, Macros,
useful Videos, etc). Also I’m working on an alt and gold guide, the purpose
being to teach people to manage their alts as well as their gold (make your
alts start making money rather than being money sinks). And finally I’ve got
a guide in the works describing various philosophies of guild and raid structure.
A major part of this is excercise for my writing as I am a rhetoric student,
but I feel if I can possibly help some fellow wow players in the process then
it’s a win/win situation. I’ll have more info about this stuff soon, and expect
the blog to be changing somewhat in appearance as I add some new features.

Well, that’s about it for this week. I leave you the way Robin Williams left
us last night, with a joke attributed to recently deceased broadcast journalist,
Walter Cronkite, who apparently loved a good dirty joke.

A man and his wife are in the throes of sexual congress, when the wife hears
a noise. Both the husband and wife turn to see their son Timmy aghast in the
doorway. Young Timmy rushes out of the room without a word and the father says,
"I’ll go talk to him." The father dresses and makes his way to his
sons room only to find the son angrilly violating his grandmother, the father
says "Timmy, what are you doing?" to which the son replies, "Not
so fucking nice when it’s your mom…"