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I can't help myself from taking idle-raid pictures. They just look so cool!

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.

End-game: Part II

So I did some more raid-tanking this evening.

This is the fourth night of raiding The Oasis Contingent has done. For a long time we were struggling to get one night in a week.

This week alone we have completed the following raid achievements.

Flame Leviathan: First boss in Ulduar, very easy, and about the 20th time or so the guild has downed him.

Ignis the Flame Master: An optional boss in Ulduar. Fairly tricky- The hardest of the first four bosses in Ulduar. About fifth or sixth guild down, three of those during May of last year (before the raiders split off from us).

Northern Beasts: First boss in ToC. TOC has downed them about six or seven times.

Lord Jarraxus: Second boss in ToC. TOC has downed him another four or five times.

Faction Champions: Third boss in ToC. TOC has downed them twice.

Twin Val'kyr: Fourth boss in ToC. TOC has downed them twice.

Anub'arak: Final boss in ToC. This week was guild first.

Onyxia: First, Final boss in Onyxia's lair (go figure). We downed her a couple times at 60, and about four or so times since then.

Icecrown Citadel Trash: The ICC trash, we was actually very fun.

Archavon, Koralon, Toravon: the t7, t9 and t10 bosses in VoA. Lots of achievements going around for all of them. Toravon is the equivalent of a 'easy' ICC raid boss.

I'd like to say more, but I'm tired and lazy and it will make good fodder for another post.

One Coin of Ancestry, coming right up!

I stuck the moonstone I got from an ancestor in the middle of ToC and turned into an Iron Dwarf. The Northrend Elders are Iron Dwarfs. A couple of my guildies wanted me to start handing out the coins. I wish I could have...

Patch 3.3.3.3.3.3.3.3.3.3.3.3.3...

Or so I've been told...

Anyways, since this is the big news in WoW, I've decided to write my take on it.

I am not going to bother posting everything about patch 3.3.3 because this is not a new blog. This is a personal opinion, experiences etc... blog. It simply doesn't make sense for me to post what other people have posted hours or days ago, in less detail. If you want news, check mmochampion or wowinsider.

Anyways, 3.3.3 is going to be a minor update patch. They are going to fix a few things in games, mostly balance issues and they will also be touching up the BG system.

For the BG system they are removing Marks of Honor as well as buffing the HK honor gain. This is wonderful for me because it will allow me to not only get the PvP mounts, but I will also be able to finish off my Lv 60 PvP set.

Additionally, news has been leaked of the upcoming patch 3.3.5 which doesn't make sense to me because 3.3.3 has just been released on the ptr and there has been no mention of 3.3.4.

With respect to 3.3.5, they have announced more bosses for the place below Wyrmrest Temple. This is supposed to be the forerunner to the Cata world event but the bosses will have Lich King level loot tables.

The above fact makes me very sad. Because of the loot levels there will be a corresponding difficulty and I feel that it is very unlikely that TOC will be able to get through the place. I would find it much more agreeable if it were on the same level as regular ICC or perhaps even ToC.

Anyways, I also disagree that if these new dragons are implemented that Arthas is the last boss of the expansion, because there were bosses that came after him.

More Like A-NOOB Twins!

As I've mentioned before ToC is NOT a progression raiding guild. Yesterday night they downed Northern Beasts and Jarraxus for the second or third time. Tonight, I was actually present for the Guild First killing of both the (One-Shotted) Faction Champions (which they've wiped on before) and the (Two-Shotted) Valkyr Twins.

I was going to use the A-Noob'arak instead of Anub'arak joke, but we wiped on him twice. However, we may get him down sometime this week.

In further news, I got two pieces of loot- one a drop off Flame Leviathan and another from emblems.

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.

Wiping

I wiped on ToC 10 tonight. Five times we died on the Northern Beasts. And it was one of the most fun experiences I have ever had while raiding.

I've been in raids before where we have wiped repeatedly, Naxx, Maly, Sarth and Uld, but I didn't have much fun with those. There we were dying for stupid reasons, someone standing in the fire, someone popping AoD.

When I went into ICC for the first time (10-man, I was tanking) it was absolutely thrilling, but after killing the trash and wiping to Lord Marrowgar three or four times, I, like the rest of the pug, got bored and left.

I think part of it was that ToC is a challenge for us. It requires a skill level and gear level just about where we average out. Another thing is the lack of trash, the quick pace of the fights, and the need to be aware of several events.

The fight we were wiping on, the first one, Northern Beasts, is a three part fight where the two tanks taunt off each other because of a stacking bleed. Not difficult, but requires some attention. In many ways it was similar to Gluth.

The second part also requires two tanks, there are two different mobs. One needs to be kited, because, similar to Grobbulus, he farts out toxic clouds. The other is stationary, but on occasion, the two worms burrow and switch roles, requiring some concentration on the part of the tanks.

The final part was fun, especially because at that point the OT, one of the healers, and four DPS had died, so we had a resto druid, resto shaman, frost mage and myself, prot paladin. We could have gone on forever, until the enrage timer blew after a total of fifteen minutes of fighting.

Another part that kept me interested was a specific piece of loot that I knew these guys dropped and would have been a huge upgrade (232 Raid Epic vs. 200 Heroic Blue). Anyways, after our five wipes (hour and a half) we decided to go try our hand at Onyxia.

Me and the other tank pulled the trash outside her room to quickly and we wiped on those. Then we one shot Onyxia, with only one person still dead at the end (of course, we had three druids with Battle Rezes up, a shaman with reincarnation, a warlock who threw out a soul stone, and myself with Ardent Defender). It was the first time since before 3.2.2 that I had killed Ony, of course, back then I could solo her easily and did so regularly.