Azgalor No More

Tuesday was reset day, so we opted to go back to Mount Hyjal. Everything was pretty fresh in our minds from the previous evening. Our target was a progression kill on Azgalor, and the first pieces of Tier 6 for our guild.

I'm getting better at handling the trash waves, though I still need to get better on judging when it's safe to call for AoE. Some waves I would wait too long and the Raid Leader would call it for me, and other waves I call to early, and someone (usually a Warlock) would pull off of me.

I'm also getting better timing my Holy Wrath so it hits the targets I'm after, though here as well, I could still use some improvement. At least twice, I hit nothing with my Holy Wrath which made the pickups very hectic.

We managed to one shot all the farm bosses, and do so much more cleanly than we had Monday night.

I know Dominion's former Prot Paladin would rip Rage Winterchill off the tank 'accidentally'. I'm not sure why he was doing this. I know I could do that, but I don't see the point, unless he was trying to show then he could handle a boss. I feel like I'm helping more on Rage by keeping an eye on people who get frost bolted and cleansing Frost Nova off the melee.

One thing that really concerns me is that a lot of what I do is not going to jump out at you on a Recount or WWS report. I throw a heal, debuff the boss, swing a couple of times, cleanse the melee. I'm not going to top any damage/healing meter, and my numbers are never going to impress you. My concern is that since my contributions are not visible, they are not recognized. I realize I justify my raid spot just from what I bring to clearing the trash waves, but I want to justify my spot on bosses as well.

I'm still working on my Infernal pickup on Antheron. Our guys are doing a great job of running towards the tank spot. My problem is that I don't know where everyone is standing so I'm kind of looking all around and trying to get a fix on the Infernal. Most of the time Vlad (Fire Tank) was already in position, since she tends to know where everyone is.

We had a nice piece of Hunter Mail drop off Antheron, which I linked to one of my former guild's hunters. When I had left Mal Katai, he had asked that I link him some T6 level stuff. I wasn't sure if he meant me getting Tier 6 level stuff or hunter Tier 6 level stuff.

I one uped my performance on Kaz'Rogal. Not only did I manage to stay alive, but I was able to keep my mana above 4k the entire fight. My Judgement of Wisdom returned nearly 40k mana to the raid. I gave each Hunter about half a mana bar's worth of mana to turn into pure MQoSRDPS.

Despite me being about 30 minutes late, we finished him up with a little more than an hour to go.

We had done Azgalor's trash one time and it got messy around Wave 5. I felt like I had a better grasp of what I was supposed to be doing. One of the mobs in these waves are Gargolyes which are flying around. The strat we use is to aggro the Gargolyes and then run under this structure (I'll try to screen shot next week) to line of sight them. Once they are gathered under there, I start Consecrating. While Consecrate is ticking, I run out and grab another one. Meanwhile the raid is working on a Frost Wyrm. It looks tight. (Gotta screen shot that too).

I have to try to keep from chuckling every time the Raid Leader asks over vent "Whose got the Worm?"

I can't say enough about the healers. How they kept my sorry dwarf butt alive during some of those waves was amazing. I know it's blue, but for the later trash waves in Mount Hyjal, Figurine of the Colossus is absolutely amazing.

One trick we use to great success in Mount Hyjal is to station 2 or 3 Rogues near the entrance as the final trash wave is dispatched. Their job is to distract the boss, basically holding him in place for a short period of time. While they are doing that, we all get into positions and prepare for the boss.

After a couple of distracts, he is Misdirected onto the tank (Kee - Warrior).

Hello Azgalor.

(I'm wearing a Shield of Impenetrable Darkness in this pic because my Aldori Legacy Defender broke on the final trash pull of Azgalor, and that's with me not dying the entire time.)
Apparently, he's some long lost brother of Magtheridon and Mannoroth. Seeing how hard Magtheridon, and Azgalor hit, I have even more respect for Grom Hellscream. Can you imagine he soloed one of these guys with a Gorehowl? 2 handed tanking for the win I guess.

I was one of the Doom tanks. My job would be to pickup the Doomguard that spawns. See Azgalor puts a debuff on one of your raid members which causes them to die after a short time. When they die a Doomguard is spawned from their corpse. He does this once a minute. The doomed person would run over to our Doom group. We would have a Warlock come with them to Soulstone them, and then we would pickup the Doomguard and the melee group would help take them down.

This sounds so simple in concept, but my execution left a lot of room for improvement.

We tank the Doomguards back by the Tauren Warriors. The first Doomguard is picked up and dragged to the back to get some additional NPCs involved. I was standing on top of the hill waiting for the second Doomguard to spawn. It was already on a full run for the healers as it spawned, and was out of range for Exorcism before I could see it. Luckily, Vlad caught it with an Intercept. She had left the first Doomguard with the NPCs. I tried to run back to grab it but it was already dead.

So far I was 0 for 2 on Doomguards. I figured out that I was supposed to be standing in between the healers and the Doom spot. I was in the wrong place. Now that I had my position down, I picked up the next one briefly before Vlad overtook me. The other problem I was dealing with is that Azgalor does an zone wide silence. I got silenced just as a I need to Exorcism to pick up a Doomguard.

I think I got maybe 1 Doomguard 'clean' the whole fight. It occured to me later that what I should have done was stand on the Doomed person and drop a Consecrate. I'm looking forward to killing him again so I can really nail it.

The good thing was we hadn't lost anyone to a Doomguard running amok. We blew 3 Soulstones and a Battlerez. We were out of tricks, but Azgalor was nearly out of health.

As one of our mages ran toward us with Doom, Azgalor died! Note to self: Azgalor dying does NOT stop the Doomguard from spawning. We picked it up and killed it quickly.

Dominion had now achieved 4/5 Mount Hyjal.

All through Tier 4 and Tier 5 my token was called Champion, and I shared it with Rogues, and Shamans. I knew these guys had been waiting for Tier 6 for a long time. Two Rogues (Aga and Raz) have had a friendly competition for farming up DKP turnins with the guild bank. I know it's going to be a little while before I get Tier 6, and that's okay.

Then Vlad reminded us that Tier tokens go to Tanks and Healers first. At least two of our main healers are Shamans. So I'm ready to congratulate them.

Oh, but Blizzard decided to change the tokens for Tier 6. In Tier 6, my token is called Conqueror, and it's shared with Priests and Warlocks. So I'm all set to congratulate one of the Priests.

Then the Conqueror token is looted to me.

I had been wondering what Vlad and the rest of the officers thought about my skill with playing a Protection Paladin, but I didn't want to go fishing for compliments. I guess they feel like I'm doing okay, or they wouldn't have looted the token to me. Later, Aga sent me a tell telling me I was doing great and that he was ecstatic to have me in the guild. I owe him a debt of thanks as well, as he was the person who recommended me to Dominion.

Apparently, what Vlad had meant was Tanks first, then Healers, then DPS. The other two tokens went Vlad and Kee. So in one night, every tank but 1 was taken care of.

There were some people who complained about the system. Apparently, Dominion had used the same system in SSC/TK but no one remembered or was there during that time. Some of that ire was directed my way. I wanted the token, but I never asked for the token, never even bid on it. It was simply looted to me. There issue was not with me, but with the system.

Aga, a Rogue, and an officer in the guild, is also on the top of the DKP leader board. He offered his own DKP to purchase the tokens that had been given to the tanks.

With the loot concluded, I take the portal to Shattrah. I grab the Gyrocopter and head up to the Aldor Rise. Only one, small, tiny problem. The Tier 6 vendor isn't in Shat. He's in the Caverns of Time. I grab my handy, dandy Ultrasafe Transporter Gadgetzan, and head back to the Caverns, and pick up my gloves.

I almost couldn't believe it. I had Tier 6 Prot Paladin Gloves.

I compared them to my recently aquired Tier 5s. It's a straight upgrade in all areas except for Block Value and Block Rating. I'll take it, thank you very much. Vlad put the 2% threat enchant on it, and gave me a Runed Crimson Spaniel (+12 Spell Damage). Normally, I would have gone for a +15 stam, but I can feel the threat issues building.

Our crosshairs are now squarely on Teron Gorefiend. Just 5 bosses stand between me and Illidan Stormrage!