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I've been running some Alt-Naxx's to gear up lesser geaered people. Right now, I think we've gotten enough gear the Ulduar makes more sense than Naxx, but in anycase, we did a full clear of Naxx, getting loads of achievements and having a good amount of fun.

Eventually, except for two or three people, it was all people in ICC/TOC gear. Which made many of the fights ridiculously easy, but there were still problems. (Cough plague quarter cough).

We had one of the Gargoyles stoneskin twice. And he was alone. We were focusfiring him and he just waited it out.

Then, we wiped a  on Heigan- because of some dance-failing. It was really fun trying to see how long we could survive as they fight is not very healing intensive nor dps intensive so long as you stay out of the slime.

And then we wiped a coupla times on the gauntlet run.

In all, it was a good good night, but now, since my day is all work, and just work, I need sleep.

Naxxramas Retrospective

A few thing you should know.

1. I started playing the day before patch 2.4 (Sunwell Plateau)
2. I never raided before Wrath (except a couple retro raids)
3. My guild did not make significant progress in Ulduar.
4. We're not a raiding guild, we've gotten to reliably down the lower spire and festergut- usually.

Anyways, a retrospective on Naxxrams!

Lets start with the Arachnid Quarter:

1. Anub'Rekhan: a fairly straight forward fight. It taught how to manage a single add, getting out of non-visual fire, and spreading out.
2. Grand Widow Faerlina: My off tank is a Faerlina, so I don't know if this is anything special. Anyways, another straight forward fight that taught how to manage adds, that you want to kill at a specific time, in a specific manner.
3. Maexxna: Teaches how to deal with incapacitations, either breakable single target, or raid wide.

Plague Quarter:

1. Noth the Plaguebringer:  Noth was another simple fight, decursing and add management were the raiding traits exhibited here- simple stuff really.
2. Heigan the Unclean:  Also known as the "The Dance Boss" Heigan is all about positioning, mobility and knowing where to not stand. He also dropped my first epic: Demise.
3. Loatheb: He taught about positioning, buff management, shoe-throwing and ridiculous healing parameters.

Military Quarter:

1. Instructor Rasuvious: He taught us how to deal with unusual circumstances- meaning, the MC'd adds that needed to tank and be healed.
2. Gothik the Harvester: He worked on making the raid leader be able to balance his raid, by splitting in, and having each group be sure to not hurt the other group by going too fast or too slow.
3. The Four Horsemen: This fight was about debuff management and fulfilling roles you aren't used to. We usually had a ret pally, a enhance shammy, or a affliction lock do tanking- a weird experience for those classes.

Constrcut Quarter:

1. Patchwerk: was a simple dps race and taught us about tank threat and dps threat management.
2. Grobbulus: He helped teach tanks how to kite and other members of the raid how to move to avoid hitting other people with aoe effects.
3. Gluth:  He taught the DPS  how to kite and the tanks how to taunt off at appropriate intervals. He also taught healers how to not panic when everyone almost died.
4. Thaddeus: Again, similar to Gothik, there was the balancing, but then, in phase two, there was movement and debuff management.

Frostwyrm Lair:

1. Sapphiron: This lovely dragon showed what a dragon could do: cleave, breath attack and tail swipe. Additionally, she showed us how some line-of-sight mechanics can work, via her ice-blocks.
2. Kel'Thuzad: KT taught us add management, positioning, cast-interrupting and add/boss tanking.

Looking at it, Naxxramas pretty much taught everyone whatever they could need to know, in simple mechanics. None of the fights were hard to learn, and most of them had a single phase. If they had multiple phases, the phase shifts were distinct- eg, boss being there/not being there and similar situations.

The one thing that it didn't really teach was 'don't stand in the fire'. There aren't any persistent fires anywhere in the instance. The only thing that could be considered as such is Heigan's plague sprays, but that kills players too fast for it to be something that you can run out of realistically.

Gearing Up

I've recently been gearing up my two 80s, with a primary focus on my Paladin- Alenena. Before 3.3 I was gearing Vitos, my Warlock because it was just as easy to get into a group with him and he did much more dps. This makes sense considering he is a pure class, not a hybrid.

Anyways, with 3.3 Al can now offer to tank or dps and can consequently get a group in under a minute easily. Vitos has to wait fifteen+ minutes in general, and if he screws up, many people are very willing to boot a dps who does not perform to their exalted expectations.

In any case, 3.3 hit just as my winter break started so I could really sit down and gear up. Within a week I had 4 pieces of T9. In the month or so since then I've gotten another 3 pieces of tier (one more for tanking and two for dps). Additionally, I've gotten excellent loot from the new 5-mans, finally replacing a year old Demise.

I also got a Triumph ring and trinket as well as a Conqueror's Libram. My average iLv rocketed from 205 (tank gear) to 229 (tank gear). However, there were two pieces that evaded my grasp. Bracers and Back. I did buy one of the 30 emblem Valorous capes, but that left if at 213, which, compared to the rest of my gear, was pretty low. Even worse were my bracers. I had gotten them in my first H-CoS run. They were the blue iLv 200 bracers that dropped off Salramm. Now, they aren't bad, they did in fact serve me well through Naxx, Ulduar, some ToC, and Onyxia. Hell, they were with me when I went to ICC for the first time.

I spent a long time researching where to upgrade them. First there was a iLv 200 Epic drop in Heroic AN. A small upgrade, but one nonetheless- so far, it has not dropped for me. Then there are some other guys who drop much better bracers. Instructor Rasuvious- One of the first bosses in Naxx drops iLv 200 and 213 bracers- depending on 10 or 25 man. The Flame Leviathan, first boss in Ulduar 10, drops 219 bracers. Northern Beasts, first boss in ToC 10, drops 232 bracers. Lord Marrowgar, first boss in ICC 10, drops 251 bracers.

The problem with all those is that I rarely raid, and when I do, they don't drop for me. That makes me sad. In any case, there are two epic level BoE bracers. The 60 Emblem of Valor ones, which cost 900g minimum if you want to buy them because whoever it is could buy 6 epic gems instead, so that hardly makes sense for an iLv 213 at this point in the game. The other BoE bracer is Saronite Swordbreakers. They're a crafted piece and the recipe drops in ToC 10-H or 25 (I think). They require 8 titansteel bars, 4 crusader orbs and 20 saronite bars. There were two of them on the AH when I checked each going for about 3000g. I then chose to look at the actual prices of the materials and determined that, if I got them, I could get the bracers for about half price. I proceeded to do so spending- 1350 in total including a 50g tip for the crafter I found and got me my new bracers. Now I'm very much over def cap (by about 10 points) so I'm going to be regemming and reenchanting some of my gear.