Earning Rep and Hard Cash.. Thanks Argent Tournament

Oh sure I have been raiding Ulduar almost everyday and have finally seen Mimiron die a horrible death.. thank god... but what have I been focusing on most? My goal everyday is to make sure I get my Argent Tournament quests every day. I am working on my last horde faction which is Undercity and it will be finished today. Each of my characters have their own thing that they collect or do and my pally is my pet collector. She is close to 75 pets and she still does not have any of the world drop pets. I am going to work on that once I finally get all the Argent pets I will have to start working on grinding some pets. Grinding? Yeah I have this phobia of spending my gold on something I can go and grind for myself free of charge. I might change my mind if I can stand to keep doing the Tournament quests beyond getting my own pets because they are BOE and are selling for upwards of 4k gold on the cross faction AH.

I have now tanked and healed all the bosses thru Mimiron and attempted to tank the General for the first time last night. Some my officers get a little touchy about the issue of alts because so many of us have a whole stable of alts and they feel it dilutes the gear. They can't give me a hard time because A.) I am the GM and I will kick them and B.) I have a tank and healer who just happen to be some of our best geared and I tend to not suck. Sure I have 4 other dps characters that used to continually try to gear but I have pretty much given that up. I finally broke down and dual specced Remy my forever protection paladin as ret and I finally have a decent dps character that will finally get into raids.

Mimi you will be mine!

I have been extremely busy this last week! Between raiding Ulduar 25, Ulduar 1o and Naxxramas 25 this week I have had more than my fill of raiding. Last night was the pinnacle of the week. My 10 man group had Mimiron into phase 4 and at least one of his parts down to 10%. I think this next week we can kick him to the curb. Our 25 man progression is just one boss short of our 10 man progression so things are really looking up. I also decided I would bite the bullet and dual spec my protection Pally to retribution so we can dps when she is not needed to tank. She has a full holy set but I have a holy priest already so I don't see the point of two healers.

I had been playing the AH a bit on my baby shammy but I have been so busy I haven't touched her in at least a week. She is on schedule to have her epic flying mount money before she hits Outland. My priest is on schedule to get her Violet Protodrake when Brewfest rolls around this spring and my pally has a pet collection to work on with both Children's Week and the Argent Tournament going on. She has her first tourney pet, a little mulgore hatchling that likes to do his roadrunner impression every once in a while. I am hoping to get my hands on some of the alliance pets but I will be patient and wait for the price to come down from 4k or higher.

What is my favorite spot in game?
There is a little fishing hole with a water fall and a little camp on the West side of Dragonblight that I really for the atmosphere while I get dragonfin for stat food. There is another one on the east side of dragonblight along the river but it is more of an alliance type camp so it lacks atmosphere.

Something that you have to try!
Did you know that there is a in game log ride? In Grizzly Hills at the north logging camp are two ramps with either an orc or an alliance guy standing beside it and some stairs. You talk to these fellows and off you go on a incredible ride that takes you all the way down to Adventure Bay. This maybe the funnest thing I have ever found in game.

FOR THE HORDE!

Starting to Get the Hang of it

I have been spending most nights in Ulduar either healing or tanking. We have been doing more 10 mans to get people acquainted with the fights. That endeavor has been going well and I hope that translates to a better 25 man Ulduar this weekend. Most of the fights are not technically that difficult but they all have a positioning requirements and area awareness. Once people get the hang of where they should be and when things seem to go pretty smoothly. Razorscale is one fight that has random unavoidable deaths when the same person is fireballed back to back and Hodir has a similar issue when you get two caves ins on the same person. The Cave ins are avoidable because there is a falling snow indication but it is sometimes very hard to tell where that snow is actually falling.

I am tanking 25 mans and healing 10 mans. I have been adjusting to the changes they did to priest healing but so far it feels like the changes were for the best. I am back to topping the healing charts. The 10 man raids are perfect for our new targetable POH (Prayer of Healing) so that we can quickly heal a whole group at a time. On XT-002 I use POH during the tantrums and it works perfect.

Do you have any hints or tips for priests in Ulduar?

Finished by Mimiron and Ready to Start Over

Well last week was exciting. We skipped Ignis and cleared all the way to Mimiron. Mimiron and his invisible landmines and nasty bombs kept us at bay. We got into phase 3 but that was our breaking point. I feel good about the week because we learned a lot strategies and made a ton of progress. I have to admit that by Friday I was tired of raiding would have been happier to do anything including fishing than my normal tanking or healing. I don't think I will never run 10 man Uld again because the gear was mediocre and I really don't need more badges. I will probably run 25 Uld (on my tank and healer) and dps Naxx 25 on my mage.

What were my favorite Changes this week?
The 10% quest experience increase from the heirloom shoulders... My shammy may actually see 80 some day.
Fishing Daily... It is helping me level fishing on all my characters and I have fished up some fun stuff.
Ulduar bosses... Deconstructor is awesome

What disapointed me this week?
The argent tournement... there should have been more or a variety of quests because I am dead bored of them after only 5 days.
Blizzard stating that Uld 10 would be puggable... Yeah good luck with that. The instance is way to hard for pug groups.

My thoughts on Priest changes...
I got a chance to break out my priest this week in Uld 10 and I must say I am very happy with the priest changes. I miss my out of combat mana regen but my in combat mana regen has gone up so I can't complain much. The new renew is very nice with that up front heal and when it crits I get a free heal. The speedy greater heals were awesome. I am looking forward to see how I do on some of the longer fights.

You can see our fights in Ulduar at http://www.wowmeteronline.com/browse/guild/16324

Ulduar... The Funnest Place on Earth

Our guild decided to try a couple 10 man Ulduar groups last night to help learn fights. We downed a few new bosses starting with Razorscale. Razorscale was fairly easy if you ignore the adds while the boss is attackable and just focus on him. We skipped Ignis due to him being highly bugged at the moment and when straight to XT-002. That was a fun fight just listening to the boss and we found that tanking the big adds and just focusing on dpsing the heart and dowing the little adds quickly worked beautifully. Don't kill the heart because that starts hard mode and you might not be ready for that. Then we got a scare walking into Kologarns room. Whoa is he a big fella. We just dpsed his right arm and him avoiding the eye lasors and that only took a couple attempts. The Iron Counsil was probably the biggest challenge yet but after we figure out all the buffs and debuffs we finally did it.

Looking forward to more bosses tonight!

Kicked out of Ulduar ... Again

This makes the second night in a row that my guild has been booted from Ulduar. I figured it would be spotty but this is a horrible tease. We downed one boss (flame leviathan) last night, even managed to get the heroic shutout achievement for him. After clearing a bit of trash we made our first attempt on Ignis (damn he hits hard) and then we were unable to get back in the instance. Tonight we were making progress on Razorscale but 3 attempts is all we got before we were unable to get back in.

I guess I will go level my shammy while we wait for things to get fixed.

The Long Wait...

Works done... done reading patch notes.... now what? I find myself musing over King Wrynn why he would hate the horde. The Horde had nothing to do with his incarceration or the death of his wife yet he seems to blame the Horde for everything. I think if anything Thrall is a bit of a fluffy bunny. He would happily sign a truce with the alliance make piece for all the lands. It is the Alliance that seems to feel that they must kill all the Horde before they can have peace. Having played both sides with much more time on the Horde side I can honestly say that the Horde is the more peaceful side.

That aside they need to hurry this maintenance up so we can get back to play!