Rather Be Fishing? Not Really.
I almost didn’t log into the game last night, but I decided to anyway just to see what everyone was doing, check my auctions, and maybe farm a little bit.
Then I remembered the current bane of my existence, Feralas Ahi. I’ve been trying to catch one from the Verdenatis River in Feralas for my Fishing Quest. When you hit 225 Fishing, you have to go see Nat Pagel, who gives you a quest to catch 4 fish from all over Azeroth. Nat was in Dustwallow Marsh, and Feralas was the closest point to where he was so I thought I’d start there.
I’ve been through 2 of the 10 minute fishing lures, but to no avail.
That’s when my little fishing expedition was cut short by a whisper I got from my GM, Doraeallin.
“Would you be up for a little TK?” TK = Tempest Keep, the 25 man raid in Netherstorm.
My mind went through the complex algorithm that is my decision making matrix, and essentially the result was
Raiding >>>> Fishing.
I had no delusions that our ragtag band of fighters could actually do much in TK, but Raiding is the most fun activity in the game, so even though I knew multiple wipes were ahead of me, I signed up. There just wasn’t much to tank in that river in Feralas.
It took a little bit to assemble the raid, and we needed to do a little arm twisting to fill the last two spots. A couple of guys logged on a little late and told us they would have been on earlier if they knew we were raiding.
Call me crazy, but I think people being upset they didn’t get into the raid is a Good Thing.
What this meant was that when the “I gotta go” started up we had people basically right outside the instance ready to come and replace them. We lost almost no time to change people out.
We zone in and buff up and start working on Al’ar’s trash. I messed up one of the bird packs when I got silenced just as I was going to drop my Consecrate.
As we cleared, we had a trash epic drop, The Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen. This is an AoE tanking ring. Look at that Block Rating and Block Value.
I was really torn on whether or not to bid. The last time I bid on a ring, I got it, but then I lacked the MKP to bid on a shield that dropped.
So I bid 5. Under our system, 5 MKP buys you 1 die to roll. If everyone who wants an item only bid 5, it’s just a fair roll between the bidders. If someone really wants an item, they can bid more than 5. When that happens it goes into an open auction, and the item goes to the highest bidder.
All 3 tanks Lanorah, Brindall and I bid the minimum of 5, so it went to a roll between us.
The Tankadin won the roll. Hello Seventh Ring, goodbye MKP.
We continued on through Al’lar’s trash. We had a bad pull on the big birds (the ones that mana burn, oh joy!).
We continued clearing trash towards Void Reaver. The only pack we had significant trouble with was the first Saw Blade Demons/Big Mechanical/Humaniod pack in Void Reaver’s room.
What would happen was our sheeping mage would be knocked into one of the other groups, causing us to pull them and wipe.
We wiped 3 times on that pull. We decided to pull them back into the hallway just before Void Reaver’s room. We still got knocked around but at least we didn’t get an additional mobs.
When we finally got the pack down, they dropped an epic. It was the Hunter bracers, and one of our hunters picked it up.
There stood Void Reaver.
I switched my Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden for my Justicar Handguards, munched a Blackened Basilisk, and quaffed a Flask of Blinding Light. Fully buffed I was just short of 500 spell damage, and I got the 2 piece Justicar set bonus.
We also brought our Retribution Paladin, Sevenn so I would get Crusader as well as Wisdom up on the mob.
We used 3 tanks on Void Reaver, Brindall (Warrior), Lanorah (Warrior) and I. Brindall went in first, with Lanorah and myself right on his heels.
Our first attempt did not go well. We lost people early on to Arcane Orbs. Our players were trying to watch the graphic of the Orb to know when to move. Those graphics are off. It was especially tough on our healers because their attention is focused on the tanks or the raid that is taking damage. Now they also had to pay attention to the Orbs as well.
Our second try went much better. Our Range and Healers learned and moved. You’ll have to ask Raist or Dora what actually happened because I was focused on threat generation.
Once I got Wisdom up, I built a 5 stack of Vengeance. Void Reaver is a fairly stationary fight, and one where you can constantly swing your weapon at him, so getting a 5 stack up and maintaining was not difficult. After that I popped my wings, slammed his metal body with my shield and went to town with Judgments and Consecration. I held him for 2 or 3 consecutive knockbacks.
At around 30%, we lost Brindall. Now it was just me and Lan. We briefly lost him to the range DPS. We called for everyone to use their aggro dumps and we got him back under control.
We had him down to 10%. Our healers and our DPSers were about dry. We had about 2 minutes until he enraged. Most of our melee DPS was dead from Poundings.
Lanorah had him but was about dead. This was going to be close.
“1% / We got this / Come on / Get all the DoTs on him you can / Moonfire is not a DoT.”
And then he died. Much celebration was had in vent.
He dropped the tanking bracers, Wristguards of Determination. Since I had gotten the ring, I chose not to bid on the Bracers. We’re a tanking team and those other tanks need some loot, too. Lanorah ended up getting the Bracers in a minimum 5 bid roll with Brindall.
Lan has really stepped up his farming for contribution MKP, so I’m going to have to as well to keep up. Under our system, you can purchase MKP at the rate of 2 points a day. 1 point costs the equivalent of 200g of mats for the guild bank.
He also dropped the T5 Paladin Shoulder Token. I was really expecting double Defenders.
The token went to auction bids, and was won for 18 MKP (a very high bid under our system). I didn’t have anywhere near that much MKP. If HKM is any indication, we’ll have plenty of Shoulder tokens to hand out.
The T5 token went to Mowbray, one of our really good Holy Paladins.
I was genuinely happy for both Lanorah, and Mowbray, and for the whole MK team really.
Best of all, last night was really fun, the kind of fun I haven’t had in game in a while.
Then I remembered the current bane of my existence, Feralas Ahi. I’ve been trying to catch one from the Verdenatis River in Feralas for my Fishing Quest. When you hit 225 Fishing, you have to go see Nat Pagel, who gives you a quest to catch 4 fish from all over Azeroth. Nat was in Dustwallow Marsh, and Feralas was the closest point to where he was so I thought I’d start there.
I’ve been through 2 of the 10 minute fishing lures, but to no avail.
That’s when my little fishing expedition was cut short by a whisper I got from my GM, Doraeallin.
“Would you be up for a little TK?” TK = Tempest Keep, the 25 man raid in Netherstorm.
My mind went through the complex algorithm that is my decision making matrix, and essentially the result was
Raiding >>>> Fishing.
I had no delusions that our ragtag band of fighters could actually do much in TK, but Raiding is the most fun activity in the game, so even though I knew multiple wipes were ahead of me, I signed up. There just wasn’t much to tank in that river in Feralas.
It took a little bit to assemble the raid, and we needed to do a little arm twisting to fill the last two spots. A couple of guys logged on a little late and told us they would have been on earlier if they knew we were raiding.
Call me crazy, but I think people being upset they didn’t get into the raid is a Good Thing.
What this meant was that when the “I gotta go” started up we had people basically right outside the instance ready to come and replace them. We lost almost no time to change people out.
We zone in and buff up and start working on Al’ar’s trash. I messed up one of the bird packs when I got silenced just as I was going to drop my Consecrate.
As we cleared, we had a trash epic drop, The Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen. This is an AoE tanking ring. Look at that Block Rating and Block Value.
I was really torn on whether or not to bid. The last time I bid on a ring, I got it, but then I lacked the MKP to bid on a shield that dropped.
So I bid 5. Under our system, 5 MKP buys you 1 die to roll. If everyone who wants an item only bid 5, it’s just a fair roll between the bidders. If someone really wants an item, they can bid more than 5. When that happens it goes into an open auction, and the item goes to the highest bidder.
All 3 tanks Lanorah, Brindall and I bid the minimum of 5, so it went to a roll between us.
The Tankadin won the roll. Hello Seventh Ring, goodbye MKP.
We continued on through Al’lar’s trash. We had a bad pull on the big birds (the ones that mana burn, oh joy!).
We continued clearing trash towards Void Reaver. The only pack we had significant trouble with was the first Saw Blade Demons/Big Mechanical/Humaniod pack in Void Reaver’s room.
What would happen was our sheeping mage would be knocked into one of the other groups, causing us to pull them and wipe.
We wiped 3 times on that pull. We decided to pull them back into the hallway just before Void Reaver’s room. We still got knocked around but at least we didn’t get an additional mobs.
When we finally got the pack down, they dropped an epic. It was the Hunter bracers, and one of our hunters picked it up.
There stood Void Reaver.
I switched my Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden for my Justicar Handguards, munched a Blackened Basilisk, and quaffed a Flask of Blinding Light. Fully buffed I was just short of 500 spell damage, and I got the 2 piece Justicar set bonus.We also brought our Retribution Paladin, Sevenn so I would get Crusader as well as Wisdom up on the mob.
We used 3 tanks on Void Reaver, Brindall (Warrior), Lanorah (Warrior) and I. Brindall went in first, with Lanorah and myself right on his heels.
Our first attempt did not go well. We lost people early on to Arcane Orbs. Our players were trying to watch the graphic of the Orb to know when to move. Those graphics are off. It was especially tough on our healers because their attention is focused on the tanks or the raid that is taking damage. Now they also had to pay attention to the Orbs as well.
Our second try went much better. Our Range and Healers learned and moved. You’ll have to ask Raist or Dora what actually happened because I was focused on threat generation.
Once I got Wisdom up, I built a 5 stack of Vengeance. Void Reaver is a fairly stationary fight, and one where you can constantly swing your weapon at him, so getting a 5 stack up and maintaining was not difficult. After that I popped my wings, slammed his metal body with my shield and went to town with Judgments and Consecration. I held him for 2 or 3 consecutive knockbacks.
At around 30%, we lost Brindall. Now it was just me and Lan. We briefly lost him to the range DPS. We called for everyone to use their aggro dumps and we got him back under control.
We had him down to 10%. Our healers and our DPSers were about dry. We had about 2 minutes until he enraged. Most of our melee DPS was dead from Poundings.
Lanorah had him but was about dead. This was going to be close.
“1% / We got this / Come on / Get all the DoTs on him you can / Moonfire is not a DoT.”
And then he died. Much celebration was had in vent.
He dropped the tanking bracers, Wristguards of Determination. Since I had gotten the ring, I chose not to bid on the Bracers. We’re a tanking team and those other tanks need some loot, too. Lanorah ended up getting the Bracers in a minimum 5 bid roll with Brindall.
Lan has really stepped up his farming for contribution MKP, so I’m going to have to as well to keep up. Under our system, you can purchase MKP at the rate of 2 points a day. 1 point costs the equivalent of 200g of mats for the guild bank.
He also dropped the T5 Paladin Shoulder Token. I was really expecting double Defenders.
The token went to auction bids, and was won for 18 MKP (a very high bid under our system). I didn’t have anywhere near that much MKP. If HKM is any indication, we’ll have plenty of Shoulder tokens to hand out.
The T5 token went to Mowbray, one of our really good Holy Paladins.
I was genuinely happy for both Lanorah, and Mowbray, and for the whole MK team really.
Best of all, last night was really fun, the kind of fun I haven’t had in game in a while.
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