Progressive Boink

[Hanstock]

you betta get me my mothaphuckin money

[Neil]

Gruul fucking DOWN tonight!! Not the raid's first attempt--a few people are overgeared for it. However, I had never been in there, and I was main tanking. We had a bunch of first timers, and it was our first time as a guild. Took a while to get positioning figured out (people unable to work with shatters...) but we had a ton of DPS so it worked out. Still no T4 for me (even though mine dropped on HKM and Gruul) but oh well. I finally won gloves the other day but no reason to use em without a second piece for the bonus.

[Matt W]

you betta get me my mothaphuckin money

don't make me curbstomp a guy in orgrimmar

[Matt W]

Neil, congratulations on the Gruul kil!! I hear he's a bitch to take down the first time.

WP and Hanstock, sorry I've been neglecting my hunter, but big things are happening in Archimonde. I've made a conscious effort to do the daily heroic each night, and run more instances on my mage to max out my rep and get badge rewards, and picked up this sweet little piece in heroic Sethykk last night: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29355#dropped-by. I'm almost fully epic-ed now, even though I have to use frozen shadoweave for PvP (ugh), but I'm amassing arena points and that should be over with soon.

Combine that with an hour or two of org PvP each night, and I'm amazed that I've gotten my paladin up to 54 1/2, which is exciting because it was the first class I ever played, and levelling it correctly (not like an idiot) has been great, and I can't wait to get into Outland. Not sure if it's gonna be a healer or tank endgame, but I'm leaning towards a healer since it's what I'm used to.

[Matt W]

Venturing into ZA for the first time as we speak. Back with my thoughts and hopefully hilarious SS's.

Ok that was awesome. Really epic looking, and intense instancing that I haven't seen since Blackwing Lair. We only downed the first boss, but made it up to the eagle boss, which we tried three times before calling it a night. I was only there in a semi-PUG with one other guy from my guild, but it was fun to see what was in there, and get my free 20-slot bag.


Little gnome, big temple


Get it because


In action against the bear boss


hehhhhh i don't like to brag but, heh, check the top of the charts.

Was also pretty stoked because after raid buffs, for the first time, I exceeded the 1000 frost damage plateau. For the boss I had to swap in some relatively crappy gear for the extra +spell hit it provided, but I didn't have a single resist in the whole bear fight. It's funny to hear the guys who socket all +spell damage and crit, etc. complain that the boss must be bugged because he keeps resisting. Spell hit might very well be one of the most overlooked stats in the game.

All in all it was a great time, and just seeing some new content was fantastic, since my night usually consists of a heroic dungeon and some organized PvP, with arenas every Monday.

[Neil]

Awesome! ZA is great.

That fucking bear boss, though, still fucking sucks. We've still come just short of getting a chest, even though clearing to him is pretty easy now. Last time we pulled him with about 8 minutes on the timer, had a bad transition at one point which killed the other tank with the boss at around 30%, so we wiped. Then we had one of my taunts get resisted which was another wipe. We killed him, but just can't get over the hump to get that first chest. He hits like a mother.

Then we cleared the gauntlet to the eagle with no problem (which was awesome, because last time we tried we had nothing but problems) but connection issues kept us from getting him down. Then the trash respawned and I had to leave for work about 20 minutes after, so we called it for the day. Resets today though, and I think we're going back in.

Also, I turned on ambient sounds for the Eagle fight (so you can hear when he's about to start his electrical storm and everybody can collapse on the tank) after playing with sound off for probably 6 months, and it's the coolest thing ever. No music, no other game sounds, just the ambient sounds.

[Matt W]

We didn't get a chest on the bear, mainly because we rang the gong and then were kind of like "WELP! We're in here, might as well read some strategies!' We didn't even realize that there was a timer going until it was down to like 13 minutes or something. Then we wiped on the four-pull of the two bear riders and the two trolls right before the boss. (I was the only mage, and we had no hunters or warlocks for additional CC. It was a testament to our tanks that we were even able to get past it.)

Next time, knowing the pulls, having a better group composition, and knowing about the timer from the start, we will get at least one chest for sure.