One Head, Two Heads, Red Heads, Dead Heads

The original title of this post was supposed to reference head banging, but more like banging our heads against the brick wall that was Megaera for the past couple weeks, but Lyss offered a different title and I went with a variation of that, lol. More importantly, last night, the hydra finally went down!  Good job SR!

We had to do a bit of shuffling with our raid composition lately, as some guildies had to step out for various reasons.  And with summer already here and peeps wanting to take vacations, I think our raiding and progression might stall a bit.  But we’ve managed to still do well with other guildies filling in.

The raid week started off real good, with a one-shot of all the bosses, including Tortos, Tuesday night.  That gave us plenty of time to work on Megaera on Wednesday.  We tried several different strats and combinations of the fight, each one presenting a different issue.  We used the LFR strat of Green-Red-Green-Red-Green-Red-Green and another variation where we threw a Blue head in at the end, but the damage was too much for our healers and we would only manage to get to the fifth head before wiping.  We then tried a Green-Blue-Red-Green-Blue-Red-Green, but having too many Acid Rains from the Green Heads was blowing us up.

The combination that eventually worked for us was Blue-Red-Green-Blue-Red-Green-Blue.  We found it easier to deal with two of each damage type (Cinders, Torrent of Ice and Acid Rain) and minimizing the amount of Green heads we got, popping lust on the final head for the kill.

We then headed off to play with Ji-Kun for a little bit and surprisingly did quite well.  Our best attempt got the birdie down to 36% before the pools and quills killed us off.  Hopefully we can get her down next week, then we’ll finally be halfway through Throne of Thunder, lol.

Five Point Three Pets

Keeping pet collectors/battlers busy, Patch 5.3 introduced 20 new pets into the mix.  These pets can be acquired from old/new raids, pet battles, zone drops or can be bought with in-game/RL currency.  Here are the available pets and some that I have acquired already.

Karazhan

One of my favorite old raids to run, I ran this the first week of patch 5.3 with six different toons and didn’t manage a single pet drop, lol.  I didn’t even get the Big Bad Wolf as the Opera event once.  But I had some generous friends that helped me with a couple of them.

Tyledres, the Lil’ Bad Wolf – from the Big Bad Wolf from the Opera Event.  A surprise gift from Tyledres, I received this pet on the first day of 5.3.  Thanks Ty!

Stormer, the Menagerie Custodian – from the Curator.  I’m a big fan of mechs and was really excited when they made the Sunreaver Micro-Sentry a pet, which Luxy had given to me as a gift back in 5.2.  This pet shares the same color, just a different color scheme.  I named this pet after a Lego Hero Factory toy that I have that looks pretty close to it.

Ermyc, the Netherspace Abyssal - from Prince Malchezaar.  Cymre has been trying to get me a pet that I didn’t have for a long time now, so she finally managed to do that, lol.  The best part of this pet other than the awesome model?  I don’t have to do the Chess Event anymore! Woohoo!  Thanks Cym!

Fiendish Imp - from Terestian Illhoof.  The last pet I need from Kara and I’ll be done with farming for pets in Kara.

Tempest Keep

I’m glad that a pet doesn’t drop from Kael’thas Sunstrider; I haven’t figured out how to solo him on my pally yet and I’m not sure if it’s possible with the stupid mind-controlling that goes on in that fight.  The rest of the bosses aren’t too bad, though.

Meggatron, the Pocket Reaver - from the Void Reaver.  I originally tried to name my Personal World Destroyer Megatron, but Blizz won’t accept that name for a pet, so I named it Galvatron, which is probably better cause he’s more purplish in color.  After acquiring the Pocket Reaver, I still wanted to give him the Decepticon’s leader’s name, so I settled for a different spelling instead.

Phoenix Hawk Hatchling – from Al’ar and Lesser Voidcaller - from High Astromancer Solarian.  Two more pets to go and farming for Tempest Keep pets will be complete.

Serpentshrine Cavern

I’ve only run this raid twice before patch 5.3, once to get the achievement for completing it and the other to fish up The Lurker Below for The Lurker Above achievement.  Now I have a reason to come back, lol.  Soloing Lady Vashj took me long to do, but it definitely can be done, just make sure to kill the Coilfang Elites before they can fear you and kill the Tainted Elementals quick to get their cores to push the Lady into Phase 3.

Andre Teh Giant, the Tideskipper - from Morogrim Tidewalker.  An homage to the late wrestler of WWF (it will always be this acronym to me, it’s what I grew up with and WWE has never sounded right) and the movie The Princess Bride fame.  His epic fights with Hulk Hogan were always the best.

Tainted Waveling - from Hydross the Unstable , Coilfang Stalker - from Lady Vashj.  Just need these two and the Serpentshrine Cavern will be done.

Collecting all the pets from Karazhan, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern earns you the achievement, Raiding with Leashes II: Attunement Edition and rewards you another pet, Tito.

Isle of Thunder/Giants

The Isles of Pandaria have two pet drops that can be farmed off certain mobs.  I was lucky enough to find them cheap on the auction house, which saved me from having to make trips out to the Isles.

Cera, the Direhorn Runt - can drop from the Direhorns on the Isle of Giants.  Cera from The Land Before Time movie was the only baby triceratops name I could think of.

Col Mustard, the Filthling -  can drop from the Quivering Filths on the Isle of Thunder.  I honestly don’t know why named the Filthling that, maybe it was the only yellow thing I could think of or I just had the game Clue on the mind, lol.

Throne of Thunder

To keep your Living Sandling, Ji-Kun Hatchling and Son of Animus company, there are more pets to collect from the current raid of MoP, Throne of Thunder.  I haven’t gotten my hands on any of these yet, nor seen them on the auction house, but Zari did get a Pygmy Direhorn on a LFR he recently did.  That would go perfect with the Horridon mount I got, so I could finally reunite the family together, lol.

Pygmy Direhorn – drops from Horridon LFR/Normal/Heroic

Living Fluid - drops from Primordius LFR

Viscous Horror - drops from Primordius Normal/Heroic

Other 5.3 Pets

Stunted Direhorn -  awarded from the Brutal Pet Brawler achievement, which involved winning 250 PvP pet battles through the Find Battle system using a full team of level 25 pets.  I’ve maybe done one battle and didn’t bother with it again.  Looks like this will be a project to work on for another time, lol.

Trizilla, the Gahz’rooki - sold by Ravika, the Darkspear Rebellion Quartermaster, for one Radical Mojo.  I’ve always thought that Gahz’rilla from Zul’Farrak was a cool-looking boss and this pet is a nice memento to have of that instance.  I could have picked one of Godzilla’s enemies, King Ghidorah, to name my ‘rooki, but it has no wings, so I decided on a three-headed name for the rampaging monster.

Blossoming Ancient – a pet soon to be available for purchase from the Blizzard Store.

And last, but definitely not the least, Lenneth, the Unborn Val’kyr – a rare drop that could spawn in different spots all around Northrend.  Probably the most coveted pet among all pet collectors out there, I know it was definitely mine.  It’s the closest thing to getting the winged humanoid, Mini Tyrael, without having to drop some serious cash money, unlike a certain ballin’ Tauren Druid I know =P.  There was a mystery in the beginning in how collectors were going to be able to get their hands on one of these Val’ks, but it turned out to be not so difficult to capture one, unlike the Minfernal.  Many of blogging friends can attest to this, as they were capturing it within the first week of the new patch.

It took me a few days of searching around Northrend, but I finally found her all by her lonesome, in the northwestern edge of Sholozar Basin.  She was of Poor quality, but I had a Battlestone ready to instantly fix that.  The battle almost went horribly wrong when I used my Dancing Water Skimmer to battle her first.  I used Water Jet with the intentions of slowly getting the Val’k's health down low enough for capture when the ability suddenly crit for big damage and almost one-shotted her, lol.  It took two Pristine Traps to capture her and she was finally mine, barely averting disaster.

The name Lenneth comes from one of my favorite games to come out of the original Playstation console, Valkyrie Profile.  Next to Final Fantasy VII, this was one of the best RPGs from beginning to end, imo.

from fanpop.com

I think that last image fits the pet perfectly, don’t you think? =)

So how’s your 5.3 pet collection coming along?  Got any interesting names for any of your pets?

Friday Fun Night – Twilight Harbingers

Lyss, Arv and Van on Twilight Harbinger Drakes

After having a week off from doing our Friday Fun Nights, we finally finished the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider meta and got our drakes last Friday.  Grats to everyone that got them!  The mount looks awesome and the model looks like Alexstraza’s dragon form.

All that was left was to complete Madness of Deathwing, starting on Kalecgos’ platform.  We had most of our FFN regulars (me, Lyss, Slice, Stunnah, Van, Bocat, Vaunt and Luxy) and brought in Zug’s sis, Galanna too.  It was a quick run and it only took us an hour to do.

Vaunt and Bocat still need a Madness kill on Ysera’s platform for their drakes and Stunnah is halfway done with the daggers, so we’ll probably be doing DS for a few more weeks.  Thanks to everyone for coming to these DS runs and helping out get these awesome mounts!

Throne of Thunder – Tortos Souped

“Slow and steady wins the race.”  This quote couldn’t have been more appropriate for a fight like Tortos the turtle.  We might have been slow and taken a lot of attempts, but we persisted and finally killed the big guy last night to put us at 4/12 in the Throne of Thunder.  Grats SR!

Tuesday night started out real good, we one-shotted everything up to Tortos with ease, giving us all night to work on the big turtle.  We were short a healer and a tank, so we brought in Chewy on his Drak shammy, Smutt, to fill in for Zarm and Zug went tank for Wok.  We tried to replicate our progress from last week, but we just couldn’t get it together.  Poor Smutt, this was his first time seeing the fight and he kept dying to the Rockfalls in the first three or four pulls.  He wasn’t the only one either, I know I was bad at it and so were others and we also had trouble kicking shells at Tortos in time.  I think we ended the night not even getting Tortos below 50% on any attempt.

We regrouped and went at it again last night with a different setup.  We had Zarm and Wok back, but Lyss couldn’t stay all night to raid and opted to sit out, which left us with Adoe and Shadeey at ranged on shell duty and 5 melee (me, Wok, Sorak, Zug and Psynite) up front with Tortos.  Zug helped the ranged out with dpsing down the Whirling Turtles and would Heroic Leap back into melee range.  We did a lot better avoiding the Rockfalls and rotated through raid CDs during each of  Tortos’ Stomps.

It took us five or six attempts last night, but on the last attempt, everything came together and we finally took down the turtle.

With Tortos defeated, we moved onto Megaera, the hydra boss.  We had some really good attempts our first time on this encounter and even managed to kill five heads on a few of those attempts.  I think once we get our CDs figured out, we’ll be able to kill the final two heads and maybe get a new boss kill next week. =)

Friday Fun Night – Saviors of Azeroth

This past Friday night, the guild went back into Dragon Soul to work on more achievements towards the Glory of the Dragon Soul meta.  We had most of the FFN peeps on: myself, Lyss, Slice, Van, Stunnah, Bocat, Shirl and Vaunt.  Yep, that’s two pallies, two priests and 3 warlocks…I’m glad this isn’t our regular raid comp, can you imagine the competition for tier tokens? ><  No Navi and Lush time around, so I invited Luxy to come along and Lyss brought a warrior friend, Critixix, who turned out to be an alt of Njeri, our long time guild hunter back in Wrath when we raided ICC.

We decided to leave the entire raid on Heroic, so we could do both Heroic Spine and Madness of Deathwing.  Solo-tanking Morchok and his twin was easy and so was Yor’shaj; we even left up two sets of blobs and those who needed the remaining combinations for Taste the Rainbow got that completed.

I guess we really like playing Ping-Pong on Zon’ozz’s fight, we just kept bouncing that Void Orb back and forth so much that a second one spawned right before we killed him.

Hagara, Ultraxion and Blackthorn went smoothly and then it was time for Deathwing.  We had a couple hiccups on Spine; on one attempt, we got to the final tendon, but we had too many people on one side and Deathwing rolled over and threw everyone off.  Another attempt, Van let Blood Corruption: Death run its full duration on someone to see if it would really wipe the raid…which it did. ><  The next attempt went much smoother and we finally got Heroic Spine down.

For Madness of Deathwing, we started out on Nozdormu’s platform to knock out another part of Chromatic Champion.  Everything was going great until we hit phase 2, when the Congealing Bloods came out.  We didn’t realize that they would heal Deathwing up 1% for each blood that reached him.  We tried to brute force it by burning Deathwing down while ignoring the Bloods, but we couldn’t catch up on dps and I eventually got smashed tanking the two Elementium Terrors and eating too many tetanus stacks.  The second attempt, we focused on the Bloods first, killing as many as we could and then the Terrors and used Lust after we cleared the platform.  Soon after, Deathwing fell and Heroic Madness was complete.

For killing Madness of Deathwing on Heroic, you’re rewarded with a pretty nifty title, Savior of Azeroth.

So all that’s left for the meta is doing Madness with Kalecgos’ platform left to start on and then we should have our mounts.  Looking forward to this Friday to finish this up!