Putting a Bow on Cataclysm
I realize I'm a day late with this post. I'm writing it on Monday, but you probably won't see it until Tuesday with visions of pandas swimming in your head.
With the three End Time heroics down, there’s was only one thing left on my bucket list.
Deathwing.
I knew this weekend would be my last chance, unless I found an achievement hunting group that would go back at Level 90. I asked in guild if anyone wanted to queue with me. Most of them were, understandably, sick of seeing the Deathwing raid. However, Blue, one of my old guild mates, agreed to queue with me on his Disc Priest.
One thing I noticed overall was it seems like people are back to playing Paladins. I know we can fill all three roles, but it seemed like there more Paladins in the raid than any other Plate wearing class.
We started with the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple. Much like the final End Time heroic, it was weird being back in Dragonblight and seeing everything changed. The giant gaping maws reminded me of a Sarlacc.
Everything was pretty chaotic. As I had figured, going as Ret was my best bet. My DPS was in the bottom half the DPSers, but no one complained. If I'm going to be main spec Ret in Mists, I'm going to have to get much better at managing my cooldowns and putting up numbers.
The fights were something of blur. Blue did his best to talk me through the fights. The mechanics seemed pretty straight forward and it helped that Blue could call upon some of our mutual raiding experience like 'hide behind the spikes sort of like Sindragosa'. Some one in the raid shouted which color slime to attack on the slime summoning boss. I tried to follow the crowd and attack whatever mob had a ton of debuffs on it.
It was wild doing a raid in Eye of Eternity again. I'm just so thankful they didn't make us do a phase on dragons like the Malygos fight. It was kind of cool running around with the lightning and shorting out the totems. Up to this point, the entire raid sort of felt like a montage episode of your favorite show where they go back and show clips of the older episodes.
Loot was really strange. Most bosses I got a sack with 25g, but one one boss an epic appeared in my bags. It was a plate DPS belt. Unfortunately, I had purchased the 397 belt already from the Valor vendor, and the belt that dropped was a 384.
I'm kind of curious, since the loot is doled out automatically, how offspec loot is handled? How do you gear up an offtank, or that 3rd healer for your 10 man?
After we completed Siege of Wyrmrest, we decided to queue for Fall of Deathwing.
The first fight was Ultraxion. It kind of reminded me a little of Ruby Sanctum with phasing in and out of the Twilight realm. After Deathwing destroyed the Horde Gunship, we hopped on the Alliance one. Since we are Horde, shouldn't he have destroyed the Alliance gunship, and we use the Horde one? Oh well, more gold for the Gallywix and the goblins to build a replacement I guess.
I love that Blizzard still has that sense of humor. After we defended the gunship, we were led on our parachute drop by Captain Swazye and Ke'anu Reeves. Point Break here we come.
The fight on Deathwing's back was crazy. There was so much going on. I got really confused because people were yelling for us to stop DPS. I stopped and moved out of melee range. I even sheathed my weapon. I wanted to be sure people saw I had stopped. My main goal was not to get kicked out of the for being a fail DPSer. Blue told me to look for a little number on the mobs portrait and stop when it got to 9, but I use ElvUI and I didn't see any number on the portrait.
Eventually we got it down, and I snagged a tier token for a helmet. I'm pretty sure it was that boss, but it might have been the gunship itself. The helm was another 384, and I already had the 397. I wasn't sure if I should grab the Holy, Prot or Ret tier piece. My raid group is still sort of organizing itself and I'm not entirely sure what role I'll be asked to play. Prot would obviously be my first choice, but I'll do whatever the group needs. I ended up buying the Ret helmet. My Prot and Holy sets are in pretty sad shape, and basically its transmog gear at this point.
There was a cool little cut scene, but it again underscored one of the problems I have with current WoW storytelling. We, as the heroes, are there. We are helping Thrall and the Dragons. But at the critical moments, we are little more than bodyguards. It's Thrall who is the true hero, just like it was Tirion and Bolvar in ICC. Is it too hard to have someone from the raid inserted into that cut scene and have them wield the Dragon Soul and bring down Deathwing?
Well, Deathwing goes splosh and for a moment I think its over, but people don't start abandoning the raid en mass, so that's a clue it's not. We did lose four people including two healers, but one of the tanks wasn't watching that I guess, and started the final event. Even down four people, two of them healers, we still go through three platforms. I did what I could with Selfless Healer procs, but if I tried to any major healing, I ran dry in about three spells.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we queued and filled the last four spots. The next pull went better.We moved from platform to platform. When we got to the fourth platform, something happened, I'm really not sure what, but me and about four other people just went splat! The raid was able to hold together and finish Deathwing off.
There was another cool cutscene, and Alexstraza declared the Age of Mortals to have begun. Aggra looks much better in game than she did in the cut scene. Cute and Orc just don't go together well.
It was almost like a graduation ceremony. The Aspects have decided that the mortals are strong enough to guard Azeroth ourselves, and really we've been doing a pretty good job of it for a while now. Look at all the threats we've defeated. Ragnorus (twice!), C'thun, Ke'Thuzad (twice!), Kael'thalas Sunstrider (three times!), Archimonde, Illidan, Yogg-Saron, Alagon, Arthas/Lich King, Nefarion (twice!), Cho'gall, and even Deathwing himself. All vanquished before they could destroy Azeroth.
Now that Deathwing is defeated, I'm ready to move on to the new lands and challenges of Pandaria. I never would have guessed when I left WoW a little over a year ago that I would be back for the expansion, but here I am. I only hope our raid group gets organized and we have a good group to explore the challenges that lie ahead.
With the three End Time heroics down, there’s was only one thing left on my bucket list.
Deathwing.
I knew this weekend would be my last chance, unless I found an achievement hunting group that would go back at Level 90. I asked in guild if anyone wanted to queue with me. Most of them were, understandably, sick of seeing the Deathwing raid. However, Blue, one of my old guild mates, agreed to queue with me on his Disc Priest.
One thing I noticed overall was it seems like people are back to playing Paladins. I know we can fill all three roles, but it seemed like there more Paladins in the raid than any other Plate wearing class.
We started with the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple. Much like the final End Time heroic, it was weird being back in Dragonblight and seeing everything changed. The giant gaping maws reminded me of a Sarlacc.
Everything was pretty chaotic. As I had figured, going as Ret was my best bet. My DPS was in the bottom half the DPSers, but no one complained. If I'm going to be main spec Ret in Mists, I'm going to have to get much better at managing my cooldowns and putting up numbers.
The fights were something of blur. Blue did his best to talk me through the fights. The mechanics seemed pretty straight forward and it helped that Blue could call upon some of our mutual raiding experience like 'hide behind the spikes sort of like Sindragosa'. Some one in the raid shouted which color slime to attack on the slime summoning boss. I tried to follow the crowd and attack whatever mob had a ton of debuffs on it.
It was wild doing a raid in Eye of Eternity again. I'm just so thankful they didn't make us do a phase on dragons like the Malygos fight. It was kind of cool running around with the lightning and shorting out the totems. Up to this point, the entire raid sort of felt like a montage episode of your favorite show where they go back and show clips of the older episodes.
Loot was really strange. Most bosses I got a sack with 25g, but one one boss an epic appeared in my bags. It was a plate DPS belt. Unfortunately, I had purchased the 397 belt already from the Valor vendor, and the belt that dropped was a 384.
I'm kind of curious, since the loot is doled out automatically, how offspec loot is handled? How do you gear up an offtank, or that 3rd healer for your 10 man?
After we completed Siege of Wyrmrest, we decided to queue for Fall of Deathwing.
The first fight was Ultraxion. It kind of reminded me a little of Ruby Sanctum with phasing in and out of the Twilight realm. After Deathwing destroyed the Horde Gunship, we hopped on the Alliance one. Since we are Horde, shouldn't he have destroyed the Alliance gunship, and we use the Horde one? Oh well, more gold for the Gallywix and the goblins to build a replacement I guess.
The fight on Deathwing's back was crazy. There was so much going on. I got really confused because people were yelling for us to stop DPS. I stopped and moved out of melee range. I even sheathed my weapon. I wanted to be sure people saw I had stopped. My main goal was not to get kicked out of the for being a fail DPSer. Blue told me to look for a little number on the mobs portrait and stop when it got to 9, but I use ElvUI and I didn't see any number on the portrait.
| How do you decide what gear to keep for later Transmog purposes? We only have so much bank/void storage space. |
There was a cool little cut scene, but it again underscored one of the problems I have with current WoW storytelling. We, as the heroes, are there. We are helping Thrall and the Dragons. But at the critical moments, we are little more than bodyguards. It's Thrall who is the true hero, just like it was Tirion and Bolvar in ICC. Is it too hard to have someone from the raid inserted into that cut scene and have them wield the Dragon Soul and bring down Deathwing?
Well, Deathwing goes splosh and for a moment I think its over, but people don't start abandoning the raid en mass, so that's a clue it's not. We did lose four people including two healers, but one of the tanks wasn't watching that I guess, and started the final event. Even down four people, two of them healers, we still go through three platforms. I did what I could with Selfless Healer procs, but if I tried to any major healing, I ran dry in about three spells.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we queued and filled the last four spots. The next pull went better.We moved from platform to platform. When we got to the fourth platform, something happened, I'm really not sure what, but me and about four other people just went splat! The raid was able to hold together and finish Deathwing off.
There was another cool cutscene, and Alexstraza declared the Age of Mortals to have begun. Aggra looks much better in game than she did in the cut scene. Cute and Orc just don't go together well.
It was almost like a graduation ceremony. The Aspects have decided that the mortals are strong enough to guard Azeroth ourselves, and really we've been doing a pretty good job of it for a while now. Look at all the threats we've defeated. Ragnorus (twice!), C'thun, Ke'Thuzad (twice!), Kael'thalas Sunstrider (three times!), Archimonde, Illidan, Yogg-Saron, Alagon, Arthas/Lich King, Nefarion (twice!), Cho'gall, and even Deathwing himself. All vanquished before they could destroy Azeroth.
Now that Deathwing is defeated, I'm ready to move on to the new lands and challenges of Pandaria. I never would have guessed when I left WoW a little over a year ago that I would be back for the expansion, but here I am. I only hope our raid group gets organized and we have a good group to explore the challenges that lie ahead.
Comments
Regular raiding still uses the old system, so you master loot or need/greed.
The LFR system came because everyone was rolling Need all the time, even if they already had the item. Sometimes they'd do it so they could pass it to a friend. Sometimes it was just to vendor. So Blizzard made loot independent of everyone else in the raid.