She’s a Hordebreaker

…don’t you mess around with her!

With the Barrens event going away in patch 5.4, I wanted to make sure that I got at least one Alliance toon through the quests in the zone and get probably the best title for an Alliance character in the game, “the Hordebreaker”.  Valoree hit 90 back in April and is my only max-level Alliance toon, so she was going to have the honor of earning the title.

So one day last week, I switched over to Val on Winterhoof to start working on the Barrens quests.  I was doing pretty good on time, moving through the quests pretty quickly, until I reached the weekly 150 material gathering quest, the last one needed to get the title.  Even with the 502 boots from Kun-Lai and a handful of blues, I could only handle four or five mobs at the time without getting totally smashed.  I figured this was going to take more than a day to do, so I was planning on just getting one set of materials done and stopping for the day when I saw someone announce in Barrens chat that they were forming a group to kill the Kor’kron Commanders.

Hold on…a Barrens chat with no trolling or anything vulgar and instead useful?  Unpossible! Lol

Now Arv and Ras never got the pleasure of killing any of the Kor’kron Commanders because the Barrens on Drak’Tharon is just, well…barren.  I’m not sure if it is a CRZ, but even if it was, there was no one around when I was doing the weekly on those two.

So I joined a group that already had four others in it and we proceeded to take out the commanders one by one.  We plowed through each commander quick as more and more Alliance came to help.  Here are the five commanders that we encountered:

Ruka the Eruptor

Jessina the Blazing

Kar Greyskull

Speegle Blasttorch

Get out of the fire!

Commander To’karg

Killing the commanders nets you a lot more materials than any other mob in the barrens and they even give you all four types of them: stone, oil, wood and meat.  What would have taken days to solo took only hours to complete and soon I had all the materials I needed to complete the weekly for the achievement and title.

For the Hord-…er, Alliance!

So thanks to all my fellow Alliance on da ‘Hoof for making the grind a lot faster and easier.  I think I’ve had enough messin’ around with my Horde spy and it’s time to move back to my Hordies on Drak to prepare them for Garrosh, lol.

Challenge Modes: An Undaunting Task

“A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.”
– Andrew Bernstein

So it’s been a while since I last posted about running Challenge Modes with the Challenge Mode Noobs.  We’ve been running it on the weekends while we can and Navi‘s been detailing our adventures as we go.  My screenshots have been piling up and I’ve been slacking on posting them, so here’s an image dump of our last runs.

There were three instances I needed to finish up the Challenge Conqueror: Bronze achievement:

Scarlet Monastery

Navi, me, Karn, Luxy and Lush in Scarlet Monastery

Shado-Pan Monastery

Luxy, Navi, Karn, me and Lush in Shado-Pan Monastery

Scholomance

Navi, Karn, me, Luxy and Lush in Scholomance

Completing all the Challenge Modes with a bronze medal rewards you with a sweet title, “the Undaunted”.

With bronzes safely secured, it was time to turn them into silvers.  I already had two in hand; one from an earlier CMN run in Mogu’shan Palace and the other in a CMS (Challenge Mode Slackers – aka my guildies, lol) run in Gate of the Setting Sun.

Temple of the Jade Serpent

Sev, Navi, me, Luxy and Lush in Temple of the Jade Serpent

Siege of Niuzao Temple

Karn, Luxy, me, Navi and Lush in Siege of Niuzao Temple

Scarlet Halls

Luxy, me and Navi in Scarlet Halls

This past Sunday, we tried for another silver in the Scarlet Monastery, but we had trouble with the trash pack after Thalnos the Soulrender.  When we finally figured out how to manage it, it got late and Sev had to go.  I think we’ll be ready this weekend to snag the silver in there.

With those three silvers, that puts me at 5/9 (4/9 for the Frostees), leaving four instance”S” to complete:  Scarlet Monastery, Stormstout Brewery, Shado-Pan Monastery and Scholomance.  Halfway there to our Ancestral Phoenix Mount!

To echo a comment that Luxy made on her most recent post (which you should check out for a hilarious pic of Navi, haha), I really enjoy running these CMs with the CMN (me, Lush, Luxy, Navi and our fifth revolving member, lol).  It can get frustrating at times when we make dumb mistakes on adds or missing medals by seconds, but the rewards for finally getting it are totally worth it.  It may take us one or two or four resets to earn that medal, but we never give up, everyone is a good sport and we just laugh about it after all is said and done.  Plus, what can beat bubble-running through adds and getting your favorite druid healer killed in the process? =P

¡Viva la Darkspear Revolución!

***SPOILER ALERT!!!  The following post contains events from Patch 5.3, so read at your own risk!***

“Da Darkspear never gonna give up.”

– Vol’jin

Patch 5.3 hit last week and the time to end Garrosh’s reign as the leader of the Horde and take back Orgrimmar has begun!  The first thing I did Tuesday was to start the new questline, which involved the new scenarios.  With these new scenarios came Heroic versions as well and weren’t too difficult to complete.  Completing your first Heroic scenario of the day can reward you with a ilevel 516 item, which is a nice upgrade from your standard ilevel 502 drops from LFR Throne of Thunder.

The first scenario you’re given by Lorewalker Cho is Blood in the Snow, which is a story told from the Alliance side, so Hordies get to be transformed into the Alliance, similar to the Culling of Stratholme instance.  This scenario was pretty quick, just be careful of the patrolling mobs, they could make your Heroic run messy.

The next scenario you’re given is the Dark Heart of Pandaria, which involves investigating the hole that the Horde dug up in the Vale of the Eternal Blossoms.  The only tricky parts I found here were pulling too many of the Elementals at the beginning and make sure to keep moving on the last boss.

I also noticed this giant Mogu NPC named Norushen at the end of the scenario.  I wonder what role he has in all of this..

Afterwards, Cho sends you to Sen’jin Village to meet with Vol’jin, Chen and Thrall.  Vol’jin plans on taking over Razor Hill, which will act as his staging grounds for the upcoming assault on Orgrimmar.

Once Razor Hill is under control, Cho will send you on a quest in Kun-Lai to help Seer Hao Pham Roo get to the top of Mount Neverest where he gives you information on the final Sha and rewards you with ilevel 502 boots.

Back in Razor Hill, you’re given a weekly quest to gather supplies from certain mobs in the Northern Barrens to assist in the siege of Orgrimmar efforts.  You need to collect 150 supplies of wood, meat, stone and oil and you’re rewarded with 200 Valor points and a Radical Mojo.  The Radical Mojo can be used to purchase a mini hydra pet, Gahz’rooki, a Brawler’s Guild quest or to convert any of the Kor’kron vestments you find in the Barrens to a ilevel 489 armor piece for your spec.  Kinda pointless for your main toon since they should have better, but would definitely help out any alts that might need it.

After completing the weekly quest, you’re rewarded with an achievement.  If you are Horde, you are also granted the title, “Darkspear Revolutionary”.

Sadly, it’s not a sharable title that you can have on your other Horde toons, so you’ll have to complete the questline again if you want it.  I think the title goes great with any Troll, but my hunter is only 86, so he’s got a long way to go, lol.

Completing the questline on the Alliance side grants you the “Hordebreaker” title, which sounds sooo much cooler.  I’ll have to get working on Val so that she can sport that title in true Alliance fashion.

I thought the story progression for 5.3 was done well, albeit short, but it definitely sets us up for what’s to come in the 5.4 raid.  Look out Garrosh, your time as ruler of the Horde is about to come to an end!

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!

The Heroic Tier 11 Trifecta

A couple of days ago, Adoe and I had a conversation about going back one night and doing some older raid content, like Throne of the Four Winds or Bastion of Twilight, for achievements and titles.  We attempted to get a Heroic Cho’gall kill towards the end of Cataclysm, but we just didn’t have enough dps to burn through him for a shot at Sinestra.

We didn’t have enough people on last night to do more progression work on Wind Lord Mel’jarak and we already cleared MSV the night before, so we decided to head out and do some Tier 11 content instead.

Our first stop was at the Bastion of Twilight.  We quickly brute forced, SR style, through the etinn Helpus Whinebreaker, the duo dragons Therma and Valouise and the Barbershop Ascendant Quartet.  We did the first three on normal, because we wanted to get though it as fast as possible, but looking back, we probably should have just done all of them on heroic.

Cho’gallbladder was more of the same, 30 seconds and he was down and we promptly fell through the floor, a la Trial of the Crusader-style, to meet P Deathy’s booty call, Sexy Sinestra.

We thought we could just mow right through Sinestra, but we were so wrong.  She still has abilities that can even one-shot the best geared level 90 raider, like Wrack and the beam from the Orbs.  You also are forced to deal with all three phases of the fight, so no killing her in phase one.  After the first three wipes, we took a break to watch a video of the fight to learn the mechanics.  After that break, the next attempt had everyone making it through to phase 3 and even though a couple of people ran the orb beams through the raid (lol), we finally killed Sinestra and got what is probably one of the best titles in the game, probably because we kill and ride so many of these damn things!

The next stop on our Heroic tour of Tier 11 was a visit to Uldum to the Throne of the Four Winds.  My first heroic kill of the Conclave of Wind, aka the Three Airmigos, was in an OpenRaid night I did last September.  So we broke some wind, quickly dispatching the trio, and met up with Big Weird Al.

Now I missed killing Heroic Al by less than a percent in the previously mentioned OpenRaid night, so I had no doubt that I would have my revenge this time around.

After riding like the wind for a bit, Sorak suggested that we do some OS3D for mounts for those that needed it.  I mentioned Nefarian and Blackwing Descent and some thought I was kidding.  Well, we did clear the first two T11 raids easily and we had about an hour left in the raid, why not? =P

Blackwing Descent was the last raid Moog/Wok did with us before he left to play something called Rift or Aion or whatever, so this was kinda of a homecoming for him.  Moog came back to us for MoP and has been an awesome monk co-tank with me and I can’t thank him enough for it, Cayle was just tanking the floor way too much, lol.

We again made quick work of another T11 raid, doing it all on heroic, defeating Mag-AwHellNaw-Maw, crushing Omnomnomnom-tron, putting Chimerella to sleep for good, gonging Altomedes and squashing Maloricrack.

Oh, if you kill Maloriak on Heroic difficulty without dying, you also get a nifty title.

Yeah, I had to grab Slice’s title, because I died at the end of the fight and didn’t get it.  I would say this is best title ever, even more than Dragonslayer, but the title is only a temporary one.  Booooooo, lol.  I guess Blizzard didn’t want us clogging up screen space, running around with this lengthy title, but nonetheless, it is still pretty awesome.

And here’s more achievement spam for BWD:

I got my Heroic Atramedes and Heroic Chimeron achievements in a run I did with the Frostees last July too. =)

At last it was Nefarian and Zombie Onxyia time.  Nefarian, the harbinger of Nightmares for me back when he was current content.  We had countless wipes on him, mainly because I couldn’t tank the Animated Bone Warriors right.  And there were night where I couldn’t sleep, just thinking about that fight.  Eventually, I got my act together and got those warriors to die properly, finally putting those nightmares to rest.  Still couldn’t sleep that night, though, only because the adrenaline was still pumping, hours after the kill, lol.

We made several attempts on Nef, most of it were trying to remember how to swim and jump up on the columns again.  And as with standard SR operating procedure, we finally got our kill on the last pull of the night.

So with all our achievements, titles and transmog gear in hand, we called it a night. Next up for another time is Heroic Rags for the Firelord title (which I already got =)) and maybe Heroic Deathwing for the Savior of Azeroth title.  Grats and thanks to all for a fun night!