The Clan of Three Hammers: Hero

This is a 10-part series.  The Clan of Three Hammers: Hero, is the first installment.

Hero. I’ve been called that. I don’t think it’s true, until I reflect on what I’ve done. What I’m doing now, sitting in this shrine turned inn. It’s a strange time we live in, and stranger still the things I’ve seen.

A broken world where the plains remained largely untouched. Our own world torn asunder by the one who should be keeping it. A frozen continent overrun with undead, whose very thoughts are driven by a madman. A place where negative emotions are manifest.

Heroes are defined by their deeds. Heroes do what needs to be done, sacrificing themselves to the cause. Am I a hero because I stood in front of Illidan and walked away when he did not? Am I a hero because I’ve face Arthas? Am I a hero because I chased Deathwing to the Maelstrom, and there, ensured he did not return to the earth?

I spend a great deal of my time on the terrace, looking out across what was once one of the most beautiful places in Azeroth. The changes were caused by one man. Am I a hero because I believe he should be stopped?

Across the wasted pools of the Vale is the Temple of the Moon. There, those who would call me enemy make their temporary home. Those who were led by the man whose lust for power is so great he will stop at nothing. I imagine that across this field is another hunter. An orc, perhaps, or a troll. And she gazes across the devastation and her heart aches just as mine does.

 

Visiting Whisperwind

About the same time as my post about possibly leaving Higher Authority, I had a little conversation with Matty about a guild called Reloaded. They’re on Whisperwind, they’re pretty good sized, she’s in the guild with one of her toons, and there’s this other blogger there too, whom I’ve been connected to via RealID for some time thanks to Blog Azeroth.

So, I thought I’d take a gander over there and see what I could see, and created Grianna, a dwarf mage. I spent an hour or so playing while Matty looked for someone who could get me in the guild, but no one with the right authority was available. The next time I logged in, I’d just missed Logtar, but another guild member was able to give me the guild invite. I played for a while and watched the conversation in guild. It was a lovely mixture of congratulations as various people earned achievements (as well as brief snippets about them, and even some gentle ribbing) and a real honest to goodness conversation about the weather (really, what else is there to talk about right now?) Everyone was friendly and decent, and used complete words and understandable sentence fragments. Even though I was soloing as I leveled, and not talking much, I felt connected. And that felt nice.

Last night, they were doing a Flex raid. Having not been able to connect with Logtar, I signed up for the raid on Grianna, knowing full well that I’d be playing Breige. But I wanted to let him know that I wanted to attend, and this was my best way of doing so at the time. Besides, it amused me to sign up for Seige of Orgrimmar on a level 17 toon.  Shortly before raid time, I dinged 20. That in itself says something about how much I was enjoying playing on Whisperwind. While I was busy leveling, someone put out a call for the Timeless Isle weekly stuffs, though chatting was a little quieter.

Once I connected with Logtar before raid, I switched over to Breige, and the invite was sent. Vent information was found, after something having to do with Bogota, Columbia (that wasn’t the vent info). We started in Wing 1 just to check out how our makeup was going to work, and it went smoothly, except for the trash right before the Sha of Pride, which sounded like a strategic error, and we were quickly dispatching the Sha.  So then we headed to the 3rd wing, and things were a little rough around the edges there.

In a way, since I’m looking at this guild as a possible good fit, it was nice to see how they handled the wipes. Adjustments were made, mechanics explained. Everyone sounded patient, and no one seemed particularly worried that we couldn’t do what we had set out for. Many successes were had and some gear was acquired. For my own part, I picked up two upgrades to Seige LFR gear, and two upgrades to 502 gear, included in those four pieces were two tier tokens, so now I have a two-piece set.

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience, and am seriously considering Reloaded as a new home for at least Breige.

A Tale of Five Panthers

It all started out innocently enough, as these things often do. A new expansion. New mounts to be had. And then, I saw them. Panthers. Glistening panthers made of jewels. Shoryl had to have these for her collection. Not just one, oh no, but all five!  And so our story begins. Shoryl reached level 90 a bit later than I had anticipated, after both Gurdrid and Breige.

She set out immediately upon reaching that height to acquire the favor of the Cloud Serpent trainers, even though the Serpents themselves were old news, as it were. After a few days of toiling for them, she had the patterns in hand. She knew the key – the Orb of Mystery. She also knew the other things that would create the structure. The gems she would need to acquire, the ore that would need to be smelted and transformed. She called a meeting of key members of the guild: Gurdrid, who could collect and smelt the ores. Sveala, who could perform the transmutations required. Breige, who would lead the active acquisition of funds, and Oquae, who had a goldmine in her ability to make adventuring packs.  Even Muirri, who had stayed in Ironforge to do the Guild’s business, was asked to assist, selling those things of interest that were acquired.

Gurdrid set out at once, gathering a great deal of ore. When it wasn’t in need of smelting for Sveala, all of the ore went to Shoryl to be prospected for gems. So much raw material came in, it was impossible to count it all. She toiled relentlessly. Hundreds of crates of ore were sent to Shoryl, until she had acquired 40 of each type of gem: Wild Jade, Sun’s Radiance, Primordial Ruby, and River’s Heart.

All the while, Gurdrid smelted trillium when she could, and ghost iron whenever there wasn’t enough trillium. Sveala took these bars and transformed them into living steel. Had it all been created from ghost iron, the steel alone would have required 3,840 chunks of ore.  Even when the steel needed for the panthers was completed, bars were still sent her way to be transformed and sold. Orbs of Mystery are quite difficult to acquire, and thus are exceptionally expensive.

During this time, Breige showed great initiative in going out into the world to find rare things to sell and performing tasks for the peaceloving Pandaren as an adventurer for hire.

In doing so, she brought in necessary resources – especially by befriending the farming community of Halfhill, and in particular Farmer Yoon. He allowed her to grow amazing plants that could pull ore right from the ground, or catch the slightest tuft of wool from the air. With the sheep she acquired from befriending Chee Chee, there was always plenty of wool to be gathered.

Ore, of course, went to either Gurdrid to be smelted, or directly to Shoryl for prospecting.

The wool went directly to Oquae, who also toiled for Farmer Yoon, planting the enchanting Songbells, and harvesting from them the curious motes of harmony. With these, and the wool, she created Imperial Silk at the nearby fields, and in turn, she made Royal Satchels, which fetch a high price at auction. The bags, and the occasional silkworm or moth, were sent to Muirri, who had an excellent working relationship with several auctioneers throughout Alliance territories.

Muirri, of course, sold the extra steel, the satchels, and any other interesting things the others could find. She kept careful watch over the funds acquired, and when there was enough, would send it to Shoryl.

Shoryl had found a goblin with a ready supply of the orbs of mystery, but he wouldn’t let them go lightly.  She was pleased, however, that he wasn’t aligned with the Horde, and was willing to do business with her, regardless of the high price he charged. Still, in a demand market, the sole supplier of an item is sure to have excellent profits. So she was stuck.

The trick to the Jeweled Onyx Panther, of course, wasn’t as simple as the others. It required that the jewelcrafter first create one of each of the previously crafted panthers, and then fuse them together artfully.  The resulting mount, however, is definitely a sight to see!

When all was said and done, Shoryl once again called together her team. She congratulated them all on the hard work they had done, and how selflessly they had given of their time and skill. Muirri provided the record of funds earned for the incredible number of 8 orbs required to get all five panthers, a total of  144,000 gold. In addition, Sveala created 32 bars of Living Steel, all of which came from ore smelted by Gurdrid. Shoryl herself provided the gems, though mostly through ore mined by Gurdrid or farmed by Breige.

After all that, the Grand Expedition Yak doesn’t seem so expensive, does it?

OLRG: What did I just volunteer for?

I’ve made it to two of the three OLRG events, and they have been a blast. I find it entertaining that we mostly talk about how pretty the raids are, and only bother with strategy when we die.  Might sound familliar?  I will admit that these seem a little less frenetic than other raids that have been done, and I do appreciate the slower pace.   Breige has been the one to lend her archery skills to these events, which has been just dandy.   She’s certainly the best geared (of my toons, not necessarily of OLRG participants. I only look at how nice everyone looks, not ilvls!)

At least she can hide behind her shield!

At the end of the night, we discussed the possibility of hitting Firelands next week. And I… offered to tank. Um. So, about that. Hopefully, my dwarf will forgive me if she has to take an igneous rock nap or two. Hopefully so will the guild coffers.  But, to try and mitigate the trouble, Gurdrid is going to valiantly head out to Timeless Isle and try to complete her set. Since I refuse to tank in LFR (I do not need that abuse, thanks) this will be the first time I’ve tanked since… early in Pandaria, when I embarrassed myself in the Stormstout Brewery.  Hopefully killing a few rares (probably not elites, thanks) will assist in my relearning my buttons. And other important things like looking up my rotations and fixing my bars.

So, while I hope Matty remembers that I volunteered if she couldn’t find another tank, I’m still going to prepare. It would be rude of me to not prepare. Breige is always happy to shoot at things, but Gurdrid will put that giant shield to use if she will be more helpful.

Sometimes Lists Are Scary

I’m a bit of a list maker. I like to know what I need or want to do. This has become a bit more of a habit since I have started to have a bad memory for these things. Getting older sucks.  But sometimes… lists, they are scary. Sometimes having it all written down makes it hard to see what to do next. Sometimes it’s too much.

Case in point. I just made a list of everything I would do in WoW every day if I had no other responsibilities.  It looks like this:

Sveala

• Inscription Research x2
• Living Steel Cooldown

Gurdrid

• Farm

Oquae

• Silk Cooldown
• DE collected greens

Shoryl

• JC Research
• Argent Tournament Dailies

Breige

• Magnificence Cooldown
• Klaxxi Dailies
• August Celestial Dailies
• Farm
• Scenario
• Instance
• LFR
• Farm Leather as needed

Mavgren

• Auctions

Kerridwen

• Farm Herbs/Ore as needed for cooldowns

Muirri

• Quest

And none of that includes Wednesday night Guild Randomness, or Thursday night Dwarven Dungeon Crawls.   To be fair, I raid on most Tuesdays and frequently on weekends, and I can usually get more than one in on those days. Since Blizz has not implemented bonus Valor for raids at this point, it doesn’t matter so much when I do them at all.  For Scenarios and Dungeons, though, getting bonus Valor definitely has its advantages.  So if I could, I’d do at least one of those each day.

But a whole lot of those things, you say, take only a few minutes. (And really, all those profession things – most people don’t have all those professions). And that’s very true, the list in and of itself isn’t that bad. But the length of the list is what is daunting.

And here’s another thing that intrigues me. How many other games that people play do they make lists for? Really, playing a game is about fun.  So, to make myself feel better about my list, which looks a vaguely like work, I thought I’d talk a little bit about why I do these things:

Inscription and JC Research: I don’t like paying for my glyphs and gems off the AH. Auction House purchases can keep you in the poor house, and I have things I’d like to purchase with my gold, like mounts! Also, the random process adds something to it: What will I learn today?

Silk and Magnificence Cooldowns: I find it fascinating to learn what I’ll discover, and also whether I get  a silkworm.  The items from the patterns have also been selling well.

Living Steel Cooldown: This is mostly for money, or, at the moment, for guildies. It’s also fun to see if I’m going to proc a second bar, though I have terrible luck with that when I’m trying to make it to do something with.

Farms: Gurdrid is currently farming motes, but will go back to farming for rep when she’s done making a couple of pieces of gear. Breige is strictly farming for rep right now.  I find farming amusing and relaxing to do, so as an added method of getting things I want, it’s quite worthwhile.

Argent Tournament Dailies: This is literally a means to an end for me. I want the mounts from the Argent Tournament – some for the mounts themselves, but mostly because they’re an easy way for me to get to the next mount achievement, and the KITE!

The rest of Breige’s activities: Breige doesn’t strictly have to do the dailies. She could head over to the Isle of Thunder and jump in there. She’s got good enough gear to get into the next raid I haven’t seen yet, and really, the point of the gear is to get to the next raid for me, not the gear itself. But, I want the achievements that go with the dailies, so I’m doing the dailies.

Scenarios and dungeons are another thing that are a mix between fun and profit. I like doing them, and bonus valor and rep are always a plus. So I try to get them in on days that I want to do group content. I will always opt to do these with guildies first, given the choice. (And will often do many scenarios in a row with guildies, but only one or two with strangers)

Raiding is something I’ve missed for a long time. I haven’t raided since vanilla, and I wasn’t going to raid on a tank, so Gurdrid was out of the question.  I decided on Breige to try and see if I’d like playing her because of Bear’s comments about his hunter, mostly. And I’m finding that I like ranged DPS more than I ever expected.  Even more surprising is that having a pet doesn’t completely suck all the time.  I have no idea whether I’m a good  hunter or not, but I try, and I try to get better. And I like doing it.

Farming Leather, Ore, and Herbs as needed: This is really a support clause. If I want to do other things, I need these resources, and it’s generally cheaper to farm than it is to buy. So I opt for farming, mostly.

Auctions: I think this goes without saying. You make more money selling things on the AH than vendoring them, so Auctions it is.

Muirri: My little monk is closing in on 85 quickly. The monk playstyle isn’t one I would want to use as a main, but I am enjoying it. She’ll likely become my bank toon and hang out in Stormwind doing fishing and cooking dailies once she reaches 85 and nets the guild their achievement.   But I almost always have one toon I’m actively questing on, for when endgame gets boring. It’s a great breakup of activities.

The nice thing that this list does, though, is reminds me why I do what I do. Why is important, particularly for the things that I don’t like doing in and of themselves (mostly, that’s the Argent Tournament dailies.)

 

 

To Have or Not To Have

Some of my fellow bloggers have posted about the sha touched weapon (or weapons in general this expansion). In particular, hunters, and the utter lack of weapons available to us as upgrades from the blue 463 ilvl drops. I’ll admit I haven’t looked much into any other class than hunter, but I will say that across 5 LFRs, there are what feels like a dozen options to get a belt, but only two weapons, and an equally abysmal opportunity for rings and trinkets.  

Can we have a little balance here, Blizz?  I have but one waist. Yet two hands and two… ears? (I’m not sure what that empty slot image is supposed to represent.) Certainly, I have more need of options for trinkets and rings than I do for belts. Really now.

But anyway…

Breige got 5 belts running LFR over the last two resets (an average of nearly one per queue). And one trinket. No rings. To be fair, she did also get two tier pieces, and her sha touched weapon. I find it interesting that my first seven extra rolls all yielded cash. My 8th provided me with the weapon, and the 9th the trinket.  And I’ve gotten several other new pieces of gear, even when I was only rolling for slots that were seriously lacking.

I’m at ilvl 476 already, but still need to gem, enchant, and balanced all the gear (And figured out which darned belt I actually want to use, I have three to choose from) again. Raiding is expensive. Especially since I don’t like listening to guns, so even if I mog nothing else, I gotsta be carrying a bow.

I also find it interesting that I have a total of 7 of the 20 required sigils to move on in the legendary quest line. I’m not particularly worked up about that, though, as it means I’ll have to PvP, and potentially get good at it.  I’m sure the folks who PvP a whole lot aren’t all that excited about those raiders who are just after their legendary in the queues. Unless, of course, they’re on the opposing faction. Although, from what Navi says, winning a hair-raising battleground seems to be much more enjoyable than face-rolling the opponent. But again, I digress…

In a big way, I’m relieved that I got the weapon; but at the same time, I realize that I’m missing out on a certain amount of excitement that comes from finally getting something after weeks of attempting it without fruition. On the other hand, Attumen still owes me a pony, darn it.

And looking at my profile on the armory, I realize that the very first thing I’m going to do when I get home tonight is move my trinket to the other slot, so I can have myself not one but three achievements.

Not Dead… Just Busy

Really, I promise, I’m not dead. I actually even waited until today to post (as opposed to yesterday, which seemed a bad day for that particular title.)

Mounts

I’m up to 136 mounts owned, having collected the Netherwing Drakes. I’ve puttered around with more Argent Tournament, but haven’t gotten to 100 seals yet. Like most things, I tend to go for the most expensive item first, then the lesser items because it makes me feel like it goes faster the longer I do it.

Muirri

Muirri is level 80. I did a headlong run last weekend to finish off that milestone, and headed her right over to Mt Hyjal after completing her level quest. That was the hardest one thus far. I didn’t play for long, though, so she’s sitting carefully on her two hour buff.  I play her mostly on weekends.

Scenarios and LFR

Breige went on a scenario spree! I love scenarios. Short queue times, relatively relaxed environment. The bad apples seem to be few and far between, there, which pleases me. I picked up a few pieces of gear over a couple of evenings of scenarios, the first of which occurred because we had three on for a Wednesday night guild night.

This evening, Breige also ventured into LFR Mogu’Shan Vaults. My first LFR experience. Unfortunately, I got tossed into an already-started group, so missed out on the Stone Guard the first pass through. A second pass put me in at the start,  so I was able to pick them up to finish the front half. I also picked up two pieces of gear. Not wanting to reforge and then potentially have to do it again later, I just waited to put on the new gear, and hopped into the back half of MSV.

Sadly, that didn’t go nearly as well as the front half. I got locked out of the Spirit Kings, though my pet didn’t, so I diligently pushed pet skill buttons while I stood outside the swirling mists. And.. I got pants! Yay, no more PvP Pants! On Elegon I fell the first time the floor disappeared. How embarrassing. But I wasn’t the only one. Other people complained about lag. I can’t claim that was my problem, I wasn’t trying to move, having not realized how the mechanic works. I didn’t use an extra roll on Elegon because I already have slightly better shoulders.  I lived through Will, though. And got my Helm, but not my Bow. So we’ll see if I’m going to be in the bow or no bow school.

I certainly can’t complain about my first week through, though. 4 pieces of gear. 469 ilvl once I switched into the new gear. And, of course, Valor. But not enough of the really good reps to get something awesome. I did pick up the Operation: Shieldwall ring, though, which put me over the edge to 471, so if I really wanted to, I can now do Heart of Fear. I may do that this weekend if we end up having some time. Not sure, though.

Of course, now I have the pants for her planned mog. I guess that means I need to go bug Kael for a certain chestpiece, and figure out how to solo Chess so I can get the bow I plan to use.

Guild Stuff

Since we’ve been doing more as a guild, my guildies have been on more, which meant an evening of running scenarios, as I said, with Jackoby and Yawondergirl, as well as another evening with Phinkbunny. When Phink and I were running, we picked up Danea for a couple, which was fun!   Also, while I was out of town (in Texas, which tried to kill me – not the people, the state) Jack, Yaw and Phink were all on on a Saturday for several hours running Scenaturday, and giving the guild the Scenario Roundup Achievement, and Scenaturday for themselves.

Coincidentally, we’re also now at 89/100 guild challenges. See, this is what it means to be a Tiny guild. We’re level 25, sure. But getting 3 people into a Scenario is easier than getting three of us into an instance!  Also, we have a mere 785 Acheivement points. Why? Because cooking, fishing, and killing critters are the only count-related things we’ve really finished. See, most of us would rather be questing in some capacity than farming. And 100,000 ore is a whole lot, even if every single guild member has an active toon who mines.

 

The Great UI Overhaul, Unit Frames (Part 3)

Where we left off

Unit Frames, or What Is that Mob Up To?

Until recently, I’d always used a large addon like Perl Unit Frames to do this work, but I always found them to be slightly buggy in some way or another, so I went for something that’s both been around the block and has good reviews. You know, or used what Sona selected after she did the research. We play to our strengths, right?  So I selected Shadowed Unit Frames.

As I mentioned before, I like having my character on the left of my bars and my target on the right. Focus and Focus Target just above, and target-of-Target under my target.  Since I’m also dealing with my own pet, I chose to put Sionnach underneath Breige.  Setting those up was easy, I just placed them where I wanted to, selected how I want to see buffs and debuffs, and away we went.  SUF has a few settings worth playing with, like what you want to hide from Blizzard’s UI (say, your cast bar and buffs) and what to show on each frame’s info panel. The nice thing about SUF is that you can use global settings to set up a whole bunch of things the same way, then tweek them individually later.

The next thing to tackle in SUF is party and raid frames. I wanted both to take up the same space on my hunter, since generally I’m not doing any healing, so 25 small frames work just fine for me.  A few selections, and then some sizing was all it took. Be sure, of course, to select when to show or hide each type of frame so that you don’t get overlap. That wouldn’t be helpful.

There were a bunch of additional frames available to me, as well, like tanks and bosses. I wasn’t sure how I wanted that to go at first, so I decided to put them on the left over my chat window. I’ll see how often I need them, and suppress them later if they become a problem.

Shadowed Unit Frames with one Party Member

Once SUF was done, I took a look at Vuhdo, since on my shaman and priest, I use Vuhdo for my party and raid frames for the click functions.  One of the big advantages of SUF is that you can use profiles. I did the bulk of my work in the default profile, but moving over to Sruith, I started a new profile by copying from default. Then I supressed party and raid frames, and set up Vuhdo very similarly. And, of course, set up my spell clicks!

From what I’ve learned over the last 8 years of WoW playing, those two things are the meat and potatoes of my interface. Buffs, maps, and functionality addons come and go depending on my interests and their dependability.

In the next segment, we’ll talk about a few of those functional things, including maps and chat.

 

The Great UI Overhaul, Bars (Part 2)

How often do we see this UI?

Yes, that is a lion. We dinged 25 after Sona noticed we were within a million points of achieving max guild level!  But, back to the task at hand.

Creating Something From Nothing

Someone commented on a Youtube video (that was linked by someone else, and now I cannot find it!) that it is generally easier to build up from nothing than to chisel away at default settings. So very true. And so, here you have it, folks, the default UI.  The first addon I installed was Bartender4. As I mentioned in my last post, Bartender has been with me for some time, probably since shortly after I stopped using one of the larger addons (Perl Unit Frames and similar predecessors).

Bartender has some wonderful functionality, but it’s primary purpose for me is moving and resizing my bars.  Sona uses a two bar approach to her actions. Those bars are placed directly under her feet, making them easily accessible.  I decided I’d try that method, though Breige gets three bars – the top bar is actually a combination of two bars: The pet bar and a 4-button bar that has pet commands that come from my resources.

I was suddenly a little sad when I realized a very useful ferocity pet talent didn’t make it onto the action bar, and to be only functional, I would need to remove the play command. Being able to have a dancing pet is too much fun, so instead I removed the defensive status button that I never use. (I would have removed the attack button, but, well, I actually use that one!)  So I urge all you pet wranglers to take a look at your pet’s spellbook to be sure they have the right abilities out on their bars!

I have additional bars out, which run the bottom of my screen. These contain the buttons that I use when I’m not in combat, like professions, my hearthstone mount and pet summoning, and so on.   I current have my XP and Reputation bars stacked on top of them to make a nice smooth break, but I may be moving my XP bar to just below my two action bars (clearly, much smaller!) as I only reference it lightly.

Yay! Pretty Bars!

Next up, Unit Frames!

Reflecting on a full day of WoW

I took the day off of work today to play WoW.  Now, let’s not get hasty in our thoughts that I might be addicted (I might be, but that’s not what’s at play here.)  You see, I took a vacation day, which I planned a few months ago, because Sona is a Wheel of Time fan. And she is currently gasping about something in the last book of a 14 book series.  She took the day off to enjoy this monumental work of fiction all in one day. Yes, she reads that fast. To keep our vacation time in sync, we tend to take these days together. So, since she wanted to read her book, I planned a day of WoW.

The Plan Was an Unmitigated Success

I had one goal for today. Breige was about 15% into level 89 when I got up this morning. I wanted to get her to 90. Nothing else was on my plate. Just get Breige to 90. She did that at about 3:45.

I knew what the next step of my plan for Breige was, but I wasn’t really prepared to implement it.  Next up was getting her i-level up to 425 435. Tyledres was on, and I asked her if she would like to do some heroics when I got my item level sorted out. She thought that was a grand plan, and I went about trying to do so. I was struggling. I didn’t want to just grab PvP gear. I wanted to do it right.  While I was thinking I only needed to get to 425, I went and picked up some 408 gear to replace my 399 gear. And I went ahead and grabbed the PvP gloves, giving me 426. That’s when I realized I had failed my reading check. So I needed 9 more points. Perusal of the guild bank yielded a Long-Ranged Trillium Rifle and a Ghost Iron Dragonling.

Frustrated, I went to the Auction House and saw the Quick Strike Cloak, realized I could buy the pattern, but hadn’t yet, and made it myself. Still not enough, so back to the AH I went, looking for rings and necks, this time thinking I’d find something I could make on Shoryl. Sure enough, I came away with the knowledge to make some 450 items there. Still shy, I broke down and made the PvP pants, and that pushed me a couple of points over.

Gems and enchants followed – the best I could come up with from my toons, which meant I didn’t have *every* item enchanted that I should have, but I wasn’t running completely empty.

My First Mists Heroics

Then Tyledres and I headed into heroics. Three heroics down, with a noob moment or two on my part (though now I need to remember to turn growl back on on Sionnach before I start doing dailies).  I saw the Pulled Grenade Pin drop in the Gate of the Setting Sun, but the rogue won that. I did, however, come away with a couple of quest upgrades and a couple of drops, so I’m quite happy.

Gate of the Setting Sun was interesting. Tyledres accidentally started the first boss fight while the healer, the gnome (mage?) and I were still outside the room.  While the fight was really long with just a rogue and the tank inside, I could tell we had a good group. When he did Sabotage to one of the three of us outside the room, we would space ourselves so that only one of us took damage, and then the healer healed us back up to full. I suspect some of the success there was I got hit with Sabotage probably eight times in the fight.  The healer keeping all three of us alive meant that those inside didn’t have to worry as much about that damage.  After that everything went smoothly, though (as is typical for me) I died to junk on the ground trying to keep up with the group.

Our healer stuck around for the next dungeon, which turned out to be Scarlet Halls. We had a wipe on our first attempt on Armsmaster Harlan. I died to the first whirlwind, which probably contributed, what with dirt naps causiong a 100% reduction in DPS. I picked up an upgrade via quest reward here.

The final dungeon we did was Siege of Niuzau Temple.  This one was by far the trickiest for me. I died a couple of times, and had to follow other people’s examples to figure out what I was supposed to do on General Pa’valak. When we were finished, I hadn’t realized that I’d not finished the quest Somewhere Inside. So Tyledres and I tromped around the area to find the imprisoned Shado-Pan, which included a bit of killing things. Who needs a healer anyway? (Well, for trash… I sure do on bosses!)  Niuzau was definitely the richest for me, with two upgrades from the bosses and one from a quest.

After I turned in the quest, we sat around and showed off our rarer mounts, and I grabbed a quick screenshot of the two of us on our Winterspring Frostsabers.

Nice Kitty

Achievements

I (obviously) picked up the achievements for completing all three dungeons, but I also picked up a couple more, which were exciting. We got Bomberman in Gate of the Setting Sun; and in Siege of Niuzau Temple, we picked up both Where’s My Air Support and Return to Sender. Those tell me that we just had awesome groups for those runs.  Personally, I also picked up Looking For More; Cataclysmically Superior and Superior. Not bad for a toon who never really got much dungeon love.

Also Coming Back – LBDs!

I’ll be going back to running the Laid Back Dungeons on Wednesdays starting tomorrow!  As we have done in the past, we’ll pick something fun that has a little bit of use for at least one person. It may even be Pandaria Heroics or Scenarios if that’s what the group is interested in. We’ll start at 6:00 Central Time with whomever happens to be on, no need to be there for the whole thing, you can pick up or drop whenever you’d like. We won’t run past 8:30, so I can do silly things like get the dishes done.