Sindragosa!

We killed her!

So- I'm going to put down lots of words that you can read. They're essentially our strategy to the fight. It took us a bit short of three hours allotted to her to kill her- however, due to the long encounter time and the assessing/rebuffing period we got in about 6-7 attempts total (I would guess- maybe more).

Loot Horse!

Putricide is not a horse, but the silly tanking trinket dropped again. And I didn't get it again. Of course, Alenena is so far geared that its much more of an improvement for the raid for someone else to get it (so long as they tank regularly).

More Mimiron

MOAR MIMIRON!

Mimiron is the best prize

We continued with Ulduar progression today (if this seems a little out of place timewise, you must have time traveled. Congratulations.)

Anyways, we killed Mimiron. I have to say that Blizzard did a FANTASTIC job with the entire thing. The trash, the frogger, the boss, the phases, the mechanics, the characterization. Absolutely, utterly amazing.

I mean, when you start off kill the trash you get arachno-bots you can control. They are soooooooooo cool.

Then, you get on the awesome train from steampunk land of crazy cool and its awesome. Then you travel along the train tracks of trippy-cool and its awesome.

Once you get past that, before you can get into the encounter area for Mimiron himself, you have a bunch of bomb-bots running laps, and you have to run in-between em, frogger style.

Phase 1 I got to tank a mini Leviathan. SOOO COOL! Its a freaking Flame Leviathan. And I got to tank it!

Phase 2 I got to burn a turret. Seriously, its just a turret that spews fire and rockets and stuff.

Phase 3 I tank adds. Boring, but still cool. There was a flying head. It was cool.

Phase 4 I got to tank all of them combined. A mini leviathan with a machine gun, rocket launcher turret body and   a head with laser beams. IN ONE GIANT BOSS MACHINE. SO FREAKING COOL.

One of my guildies wants to kill Freya on a weekly basis for the Alchemy stuff.

I wanna kill Mimiron on a weekly basis cause the boss is the coolest boss I have ever seen.

So awesome.

Awesome.

Awe.

Sum.

Awe.

Power Overwhelming!

Starcraft II comes out on Tuesday. This image is unrelated.

Awesomeness and Bad Planning

Last night we only got down the first four bosses in ICC. Tonight we cleared Plaguewerks and Crimson Halls. Now we're really awesome because last week (first Wing Boss kills of those two) took us three days. Admittedly we also got Valithria, but thats one boss. In two days, we downed nine of the ten that we have won before.

On to the bad planning part. Some of us (myself included) after having cleared up to Sindragosa really wanted to see if we could get to her. Plus, we had downed the Valkyr, so there was no trash. That was the bad idea. It was a good idea in concept. We had the same healers as we did on Monday, and equal or better dps for the most part- these were some of our best raiders.

Then we spent an hour wiping on the encounter. This wasn't the fun kind of wiping because either we were wiping from stuff that we couldn't prevent (Curse you RNG gods!) or from stuff we couldn't determine (Curse you unkown stuff!).

After an hour of raiding, we hadn't killed a thing. I mean sure, we had killed lots of adds on Valithria, but we hadn't gotten credit for it. Which made me (amongst others) upset at the encounter.

From there we smartened up and one shot each of our farm bosses and two shot the wing bosses.

So it was ok.

Boss Crotch Syndrome

Often, when tanking a boss (or general trash) with a knockback, you end up against a wall and all you can see is the boss's crotch. Which we do not like. But here, it looks pretty awesome. I love AoE!

Geared

Right now I have three toons geared for ICC.

Vitos (Warlock) is geared to DPS ICC 10 and 25.

Malkhelm (Death Knight) is geared to tank ICC 10.

Alenena (Paladin) is geared to tank and dps ICC 10 and 25 and heal ICC 10.

Malkhelm should gear up fairly quickly and should be able to Tank and DPS both 10 and 25 within a few months. Alenena should be able to heal 25 in a few months as well.

Now, when we bring someone along to raid, I expect them to pull their weight. I don't expect them to have put in nearly as much time as I have gearing, learning my class, raiding etc.... I don't expect them to have gear as good as mine.

But I do expect them to try.

Seriously. I want you to put in some effort. There was a player in tonights raid who had been to ICC with us before. The last time he was there he had gotten some loot. He was a DPS and pulled under 2k with the 25% buff. He returned to ICC with us and had 1 gem and about 10 empty sockets. He did not have any enchants. On the Gunship Battle I admittedly did less. But thats because I was doing the achievement, so I had to jump over and jimmy my position so that the boss wouldn't hit me and we wouldn't wipe.

But he shot the cannon three or four times. And when he was frozen out he stood there. Doing nothing.

In any case this rant reminded me that I need to respec my pally, I think I can get a little bit more survivability out of her. (Meaning, I enjoyed (and still enjoyed) all the effort I put in, I just don't like it when I carry a dead weight).

Lol I forgot a title last night.

A Dead Professor, a Dead Vampire, and well, I guess a Live Dragon, but she disappeared as soon as we saved her so wall we got was this lousy box filled with healing plate and tanking plate. And I couldn't use the belt and the Holy Paladin had dibs on the shoulders.

On the topic of Awesome

Lets talk about The Oasis Contingent. Because we are on the topic of awesome. At nine eastern, I believe Vitos, my warlock was the farthest progressed toon in the guild at 10/12 N10. At nine eastern, TOC was at 7/12 N10. We reliably one-shot (one-shoot) Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship. We generally don't have any issues with Festergut, and now that I really know the fight, few issues with Rotface. Sometimes we have some bad luck on Deathbringer, so he isn't a guarantee, but its getting close.

Today, the raiders voted that they would prefer trying to bash our heads against bosses in ICC rather than RS. On Professor Putricide, we had never gotten past 50%. Tonight, we got past that mark three times, going to phase 3 twice and killing him in the face once. It was an amazing moment, downing a new boss- one that we had never really seen much of before and thought of as very difficult.

We had decided to alot one hour to each of the three progression bosses, Putricide, Blood Queen and Valithria. After clearing the trash up to Bacon Quiche Linguine, we had to explain the fight to the few people who had never seen it before (as we did with PP).

We one shot that boss like TOC has never one-shot (one-shotted) that boss before. For many of us, that was the SECOND new wing of the night completed.  Plus, the second new boss. You can imagine our elation.

We carried on, as brave soldiers and roflstomped Sister Svalna. As a rather strange sidenote, roflstomp is a strange word. If you have ever been rolling on the floor laughing, or even just rolling on the floor, it is difficult to stomp with any degree of force or accuracy. Nonetheless, we forcefully and accurately killed that mini boss.

On Valithria our previous attempts had gotten her up to at best 62%. Now, thats 12% over 50% meaning about 24% of the way. Of course, the fight gets harder as it goes on, so realistically, closer to about 10-15%.

Our first attempt tonight got her up to 97%. That means we got her 94% of the way from 50%. Several more attempts ranged between 63% and 92%. Our final attempt, right before raid time, ended at 100% with the dragon killing all the silly undead.

Yeah, we killed three Progression/New bosses. A most excellent evening.


Then I tried to solo the Sindragosa gauntlet event. Technically I didn't intend to, but my off tank (who I had cleansed out of his abom in PP, while I thought my DI was off CD, but wasn't) triggered the fight in revenge. I had used my bubble to get down the elevator quickly, so Forbearance was up (a huge hamper while trying to solo as a paladin.

I managed to last a minute or two. I think though, if I had switched to Judgement of Light and Seal of Light I could have lasted much longer. The heals would have done wonders to keep me up and Forebearance may have fallen off and therefore I might have been able to bubblehearth away.

On the gearing process

I was going to talk about the druid talent trees, but decided to hold off on that. Its not really all that interesting to me, and, if it is interesting to you, you can probably find a better source of information than me. If you can't, I wonder why your internet connection will only allow you access to this one site.

Anyways, I've been gearing up my Death Knight. I want him to be able to tank in ICC, because, well, Alenena is bored of the place and doesn't need anything off the first three bosses (including frost) so it is kind of pointless to bring her if someone else who could use the gear could come along.

Now, Malkhelm is about where Alenena was when she went into ICC. She did, admittedly have all 232 or better whereas he doesn't, but my healers are far more impressive these days than when Alenena started, so it should be ok.

Anyways, I've been doubting myself because my gear isn't as good as Al's. I mean, Al can pull a lot more than Malk can. I would not be surprised if she could handle three waves in H-HoR at once while Malk has trouble with just one.

Anyways, can't wait til Cataclysm and I can have a bajillion HP.

Twins!

Although, technically, they are triplets.

And I did at one point during the encounter tank all three of them.

See, the other tank (who was one keleseth) died, so I picked up his friend. But it was a bit chaotic at that point to alt-z and PrntScr.

Also, henceforth, I do not pull. I will pill.

Ulduar

I love that place!

It is soooooo cool.

So much better than ToC. Also, way better than Ruby Sanctum.

See, ToC doesn't really have awesome mechanics. The first few fights in Ulduar aren't that amazing, so I didn't have awesome to compare to ToC.

But in ToC the fights are pretty standards. Ulduar. Now thats a beauty. It requires raid coordination and they use the environment.

They have multiple stages, they flow, they're distinct.

These fights are pure and new to me.

The Iron Council mechanic isn't precisely new (some mobs used it in AQ 40).

Hodir has iceblocks (ala PoS) but it was the first with that. Then, that fight is the pinnacle of "Stand in the fire". I mean, you have friendly NPCs, you have buffs, you have movement. Beauty!

Thorim is really cool, especially going through the tunnels- that was awesome. Next time I want to stay out in the arena and watch that.

Then on Freya, the trees are interesting (the trash mildly annoying, but no biggie). The timed waves and different types of adds make for a very cool, chaotic p1. And p2 is a good burn phase. It still makes the tanks pay some attention and same with the dps.

All in all, what I did was good for me. And I got a boatload of achievements. Win/win.

Raiding!

Very creative title eh?

Anyways, I get to talk about some moderate success!

Yesterday, in our three hour allotment we did the weekly (Patchwerk), 1 shot the Lower Spire and Rotface and two shot Festergut before raid time.

Then we went back in today to try and kill Putricide. We put in three or four attempts (9-manning it, not enough people on). We had incredible amounts of trouble getting the oozes down, which was interesting, we hadn't had that sort of problem before.

Failing there we moved on to kill Svalna without any problems and then marched over to the Blood Wing. There we shanghai'd a guildie who logged on and tried have a shadow priest tank Keleseth, Faer (Bear) tank Valanar and myself (Pally) tank Taldaram. Things we go well until they didn't. A few times someone would grab aggro and Empowered Shadow Lance would kill em. Then there were other similar problems with dying. We tried that three or four times and then moved on to having me tank both Valanar and Taldaram while Faerlina tanked Keleseth. Our first try he got one-shotted even though he had four Dark Nuclei on himself. Our second attempt got them down.

We then moved onto Blood Queen where we had a /much/ better time than on Putricide. Putricide we got to about 85-90% (yeah, thats awful). On Bacon Quiche Lettuce we got down to around 50% on our first attempt because the first bite victem lagged with feet of purple fire and died before he could bass it around. Our second attempt we were slightly disorganized but managed to get her to 26% before her hard enrage. Finally on our third attempt, I called out who would bite who (all I need to do was my 969 rotation). It gets complicated to hold in your head when you have 4 people with the debuff.

Anyways, she took to flight right before people were about to get MC'd and our warlock succumbed. In the next 30-40 seconds we ignored him and burned her down to 11%. If he hadn't been MC'd, the damage we would have gained from one of our top DPS not being MC'd and from not killing our other DPS might have pushed us over the edge to getting a wing boss down.

But we can do that next week. Yay ICC!

Good News Everyone

We did awesome in ICC today.

The Cataclysm Closed Beta has been announced to be starting shortly.

Anyways, because TOC is planning on running Ulduar on Monday for achievements and boss killing (never got very far in there) we skipped this weeks weekly, Razorscale, and just plunged into ICC. Because I was tanking, if a healer was in range, I pulled, so things went fairly smoothly.

We one-shot Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, and The Icecrown Gunship Battle.

We had a little trouble on Deathbringer Saurfang-the first time I could not focus for some reason and bad things happened.

The next attempt nobody is quite clear on our particular failings, but we got to the enrage and bad things happened.

The third attempt we downed him at 7:45. Fifteen seconds to go before the enrage.

We had some fun with the traps in the next section. Our bear kitty-dashed/rocket-booted his way through (I had forbearance on my self because of Divine Protection) and opened up the teleport. One of our priests, who was the Master Looter and therefore stayed behind walked into the flames and died. So, after killing the near valkyr, we sent another priest after her to res. He died, then another priest resed both of them and the first priest died in a fire a second time. Good laughs.

At this point in the raid (and the afk break before Saurfang) I looked at wow.com's information on cataclysm. cool stuff- I should review that someday.

We then two-shot Rotface. The first time I managed to die three times, once while I was rearanging the big ooze to get to a couple people with little oozes, then I got BR'd into an ooze explosion, and then I got BR'd, lasted for a few seconds and then got eaten by a big ooze.

The next attempt, we made it smoothly all the way through, without losing a soul- or either tank. While, this is our third 'guild kill' of this boss, the previous two times we had two heavy-hitting, experienced mages, who I feel contributed a huge amount to our success there.

We went off to one-shot Festergut, and walked up to say hello to the professor.

I was the only person in the group to have seen him die (on my warlock) and was one of about three or four who had been there previously when we had attempted him. In our one try we got him to 67%.

And, I don't believe a single piece of loot was slotted for DE. Some may have gone to off-off specs, but everything was taken for use- a rare enough event.

Now, for our fun fact of the day.

On Rotface, if you have the Mutated Infection on you and you remove it (or die) so that the little ooze spawns, if you kite it over to where the big ooze is, if the the big ooze has already begun its explosion cast, it will consume the little ooze (as the big ooze does) but will destroy itself, thus saving you the trouble of a single little ooze.

On the fifth day...

He hit 60.

I really do have a problem. I really like the way this is going, I'm leveling quickly and smoothly and having quite a bit of fun.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this though. I mean, the rogue- while a fun class- isn't a very interesting class to play while soloing. Most of my work involves spamming Sinister Strike and then hitting Eviscerate. If I see too many mobs, I either Shadowmeld or Vanish. Or, if I think I can take em, I hit Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush and Lifeblood before going back to my normal rotation.

I don't get awesome procs, like Hot Streak, I don't get a pet, I don't get ridiculous crits, I can't even aoe for my life.

But I really am enjoying leveling this toon. Perhaps it is the breakneck pace that I'm leveling him at. Perhaps it is the change of pace from doing a ridiculous number of instances on my other toons. I mean, my main is a tank, and the vast majority of what she does is instances, then my warlock is just to help out other people who need a dps for their instance, my DK was leveled as a tank in the RDF and continues to tank instances, without much questing involved.

My druid is currently being leveled as a feral tank and so he is tanking instances. Perhaps its the fact that I'm not tanking, or that I'm not in instances anymore. Perhaps its the fact that it is something new.


By that reasoning, I should love my new job. I've never had a 9-5 before. I've never had an office job before. I've never been an intern before. I've never worked in the publishing industry before. Thus, if I like new, this is going to be fantastic. Now. Sleep. Because you get to wake up early for 9-5s.

Fancy raiding!

This evening, after our first bit of guild ICC-10, I saw someone lfm for ToC-25, I volunteered and ended up tanking it.

It was really cool, but 25 people is a lot more than 10. So there was a huge amount of lag when I was running it at full capacity.

Here is a nice shot of the entire group. I really like this kind of shot.

Here we see the mass chaos that is the Faction Champions.

Now, the slightly less chaotic Valkyr Twins.

And finally, the kill shot.

Screwing up

I did that today.


We got to the blood prince council without any major hiccups. So that was good.


Our warlock tank got smashed into the floor the first two times we tried it. He didn't have enough orbs and got squished.


I talked to him and earlier he had said that he was willing to try to respec. He did and he managed to survive until the boss got empowered. Then he lost threat. Blasts for 80k hit the squishies who were killing him.


Then at one point he charged before I was ready. So the guy in cloth got hit by the boss who hits with physical damage. The Warlock did not have armor. The caster tank died. Then the boss went wild. (This may have been because his VW had his taunt on so whenever I taunted it got taunted back).


Then the warlock asked for help with increasing camera distance, so I looked up my macro and told him to


"/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax".50)"


However, that is not the proper code. That set his max camera distance to 0. So he was fully zoomed in and couldn't change it.


I looked at the code again (from my source) and it said


"/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",50)"


You'll note that there is a comma, not a period.


So that didn't go well. (I did fix it in the end).




Then I got to play headless chicken running around as the Keleseth tank running all over the room doing my best to pick up Dark Nuclei without killing them or stealing aggro from the other tank, while keeping aggro on Keleseth so that when people got the chance to attack him they wouldn't pull off me and insta-die.


It was ridiculous. And I was a ridiculous screwup. And it was good.


I love raiding for moments like those.

Blood Prince Ranged-Tanks

After running the Blood Princes and having our Keleseth tank we a specialized tank spec/gear, I came up with some specs of my own:

Warlock
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#IcxMbhbhoZ0GchohZVfhVbhuhcb:jdw
In the affliction tree, I wanted to get to Siphon Life and thus put points to improve corruption where I could. I put points into Suppression to decrease the frequency with which the warlock would need to life tap and to increase hit chance so that they can garner more threat. Soul Siphon and Fel Concentration make it so that the lock can cast Drain Life, to make the healers' lives easier. Grim reach allows the lock to hit Kinetic Bombs (disco balls) and the Dark Nuclei from a greater distance. Also, if he gets knocked back, he can get back into action faster. I chose to glyph Siphon Life because it will increase the self healing by a good portion.

In Demononlogy, I didn't put points into the improved healthstone (nor did I use the Glyph) because I feel that it is not as useful as some of the other available talents. Demonic Embrace is an obvious choice and Fel Synergy will help keep your pet up via Soul Link. The pet of choice for this spec would be the Voidwalker and Demonic Brutality helps him immensely. You'll be using him mostly to soak damage via Soul Link and Sacrifice. Fel Vitality gives the Voidwalker a lot more health and increases the mana and health of the warlock- more survivability and less Life Tap. Demoic Aegis helps with Demon Armor. Demon Armor increases armor as well as healing received, a 30% boost is fairly significant. Finally, Soul Link will reduce all incoming damage by 20% and with the glyph, by 25%. This essentially makes your Voidwalker an extra Dark Nucleus.

For Destruction I put points in Bane for faster cast times, meaning that if the warlock needs to hit something quickly- ie: Disco Ball, Nucleus or a runaway boss, he can. Molten Skin increases survivability and Cataclysm is a going to be a great expansion. It also means that the warlock Life Taps less and so he is less likely to get insta-gibbed by an incoming shadow lance. Aftermath helps a little with maintaining threat via Immolate as well as keeping the disco balls up. I put a few points into Ruin, because a big crit with Searing Pain will garner a lot of threat, and that threat will be useful. Intensity again allows the Warlock to cast through being hit by a lance and so can hit what he needs to hit sooner. Searing Pain is probably the best way for the warlock to grab and hold onto things as it has a decent increase in threat. Devestation will also help with Searing Pain and with the Warlocks DPS. Improved Immolate is a point-dump, but it does help with damage and disco balls. Nether Protection can also act as an emergency Dark Nucleus- after getting hit by a shadow lance, it is possible that the warlock will take significantly less damage from the next (of the same class). Keleseth's cast time is about 1.5 seconds, so in an 8 second period he can get off five or six Shadow Lances, more likely than not, one of those will trigger Nether Protection, so it would constantly be up- which is another great damage soak. Soul Leech helps with healing via crits and I chose pyroclasm over emberstorm because it also effect corruption.

Priest
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bVcbuhh0oZfVtZGbcVRfzff:hbfVMc
I need to preface this by saying that my only priest got to level 21 before I stopped, so you priests probably know a huge amount more than I do. Like the Warlock spec, this is just a huge mish-mash of useful talents all thrown in together.

In the Discipline tree, I focused on improving Power Word: Shield, as that should be a useful buffer to have as it essentially adds to your current effective health. If there is a Disc priest in the raid, I don't think that it will be necessary to go that far into the tree, but it could be helpful. Imp Inner Fire is a point dump to get to Imp PW:S. The other points in that tree may not be entirely necessary if the caster does not have any mana problems or there is another Disc Priest in the group. The glyph for the shield just makes you last that little bit longer.

For Holy, I focused on getting some talents to help improve direct damage spells and healing. You can stick renew on yourself and any of your spells that have cast times- Holy Fire, Smite etc... won't be as slowed down, so you can hit the Nuclei more efficiently. Desperate Prayer should be very useful as a 'tanking' button to push when you get almost killed. I'm not sure how good the glpyh of renew is but it can be traded out for Glyph of SW:P.

For Shadow, I focus on more mana regen and getting those DoTs to work. Sticking SW:P onto the Nuclei should bring them to you. Spirit Tap increases mana regen and Darkness helps with threat. Shadow Focus drops mana costs andmakes you more likely to hit- which in turn means more mana. Imp MB lets you cast it more often, which we always like. Mind Flay will probably be the main workhorse of the spec, grabbing Nuclei and the bosses and potentially hitting Disco balls as well. For the rest of the shadow tree we continue to improve Mind Blast and Mind Flay while picking up Vampiric Embrace and Devouring plague for the healing abiltities. We stop before picking up Shadowform, because of the immense threat reduction that would make it very difficult to hold off other players.

As a final note on priests, it may be possible just to get a PvP Shadow spec to do the work and hit dispersion when he begins to cast his empowered lances to avoid that damage.

Mage
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=8&tal=03202520012003212300000000000000000000000000000000000000000533030310203103230132211100
This is Kyabetsu's build exported straight from his armory page. I definitely don't know mages as well as he does, so I'm going to throw together my own and compare the two

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ocbfbubhdfZZVIccobksfzTbk:Rj
Here's what I came up with. 

The Important talents in Arcane are Prismatic Cloak for the damage reduction, Presence of Mind, in case you need to toss out a huge spell to grab aggro back, Improved Blink to dodge more spells and Arcane Shielding to increase the effectiveness of Mana Shield. Arcane Focus allows more hits and consequently more threat.

Fire doesn't really have any damage reduction talents, so its not necessary to go into that tree.

Frostbolt is the main nuke of this, so most of the points are in frost. Precision fills the same roll as Arcane Focus. Arctic Reach is our usual range increment, useful for reasons already mentioned. Frozen core reduces your damage taken further and Cold Snap can refresh the cooldowns on both Ice Block and Ice Barrier. Finish up by improving your frost spells some more, and poof. A spec.

Hunter
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#cVcGzxRZcZe00i0fMhxhA0so
Again, this is a class that I'm not very familiar with, so I had to look at all of the talents and figure out how to best alot them.

In Beast Mastery the Important talents are Endurance Training (for the HP), Imp Monkey (for the dodge), Aspect Mastery (5% damage Reduction), and Spirit Bond which increases heals to you(and has a steady HoT on you).

The Marksmanship talents are just for the hit- if you're capped without em, put em into Surv, where most of the points are. 

For Survival the Important talents are Hawk Eye, for the extra range to snag the Nuclei and K-bombs, Survival Instincts for the Damage Reduction, and Survivalist for the 10% Stam.

You could take all the points in Surv out of there and stick them into BM if you think that filling up that tree would be more effective than what I did. Again, since I don't know Hunters all that well, I don't know what would be best at holding aggro.

While doing this, the hunter pet can either be attacking the main target, or, using a simple macro, can be chasing after the falling K-Bombs:
/tar Kinetic Bomb
/petattack

Shaman
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hec0qcdIthfzqo0xxbcV:s
Finally, another class that I don't know. I'm going to look to amph to point out any obvious deficiencies.

I put points into Enhancement to get Anticipation and Toughness, for the survivability.

The (imo) vital talents in elemental are Elemental Warding for the damage reduction, Eye of the storm for fewest interuptions, Elemental Reach and precision for the normal reasons. And after that I just tossed in points to fill out the tree.
It may be a good idea to specialize in making the shocks really good so that you can just snap one out on a Nucleus (or a K-bomb) if you absolutely need to hit it immediately.

Druid
I ruled out Druids because of class mechanics. The useful talents in the Feral Tree would not affect the druid when it was in a caster for (either normal or boomkin). However, it could (in theory) be done. I just don't know how.

Counter-Wiping

I get to talk about wiping again!

I'm excited!

Anyways, today again, TOC ventured into ICC and wiped repeatedly. However, we also did the amazing and did some counter-wiping. For those of you who don't know, it is the process of taking a wet (or damp) rag and swiping it swiftly over a ledge.

It can also mean downing the boss.

Thanks to some helpful hints, I managed to kite the big Oozes on Rotface (our previous stumbling block) and we won epic loots. I don't know what dropped. I think my healer was I happy, so that made me happy.

We then tried Professor Putricide several times and failed. We got to Phase two each time (the first attempt only barely). I found that as the only melee (other than the OT in the abom). I got to just sit there and wail on the boss. When he dropped slime on me, I would move slightly. I didn't have to worry about the vials because he drops them behind him so I wasn't taking damage.

We did give up on him (it was alright tho). And we moved to the Blood Council.

That fight is an interesting one. First off, I love it because Valanar says "Naxxanar was merely a setback." Which I guess is becoming a WoW theme. Anyways, whilst tanking my boss who had 1hp off to the side, I didn't get to do anything. I did occasionally throw my shield at a Disco Ball to toss it back up, but for the most part I stood there. Even when it became the point where he could take damage, I could have probably stopped all but auto-attacking because of the vast amounts of threat I had. We got a lovely achievement for having no one take more than 23k in a single spell hit due to a visiting mage who has a spec and gear set specifically designed to tank Keleseth. (thank bud).

And I hit Exalted with the Ashen Verdict. I got my new ring, my new title and I missed out on the "first kill" SS.