Why is it called Invincible if I can see it?!
Trolling aside, I got Invincible last week! It took 68 attempts according to Rarity, which means like a few more than that but not many. Pretty lucky honestly. While trying for the mount, I’ve also been collecting tier sets from ICC. I almost have all of them, so I’ll likely finish them up. It’ll be easier now that I don’t have to even bother finishing the raid during my transmog runs!
Memories of Azeroth, the special raid celebrating the 15th anniversary of WoW, was quite different than the LFR version of Molten Core that was part of the 10th anniversary celebration. Having three wings instead of one long instance is huge in opening it up to more players, and I think that’s a good thing. Molten Core LFR was tuned too difficult in my opinion: casual players should be able to experience an anniversary celebration. The tuning on Memories of Azeroth felt very much in line with LFR. There were wipes, but groups could consistently finish it.
The idea behind the raid was pretty fantastic. Three wings, each featuring one of the first three expansions in World of Warcraft. As far as I know, this is the first time WoW has had a sort of boss rush too. In each wing, all three bosses had to be downed without wiping. However, you only see certain phases of the bosses and not all. Between bosses, all CDs are reset, and anyone who died is rezzed.
What seemed off to me was that some fights were so boring and easy that I never saw a wipe on them.
Memories of Fel / The Burning Crusade: Lady Vashj, Kael’thas, Archimonde. This was the easiest wing. I’m not sure I saw a wipe on Lady Vashj or Kael’thas. If so, I didn’t see many.
Memories of Frost / Wrath of the Lich King: Heigan, Anub’arak, The Lich King. This was the weirdest difficulty. Heigan should be incredibly simple. The “dance” of the fight is to simply stand in the one safe quadrant, moving with the group. The safe quadrant shifts in order. But there were wipes. Then there’s Anub’arak. Not only were there definitely no wipes, but there was no challenge at all. That fight is incredibly boring. And then we get to The Lich King, with many, many wipes to defile. Aw, the memories. Wiping is frustrating, but adding some challenge made it fun, and calling out defiles and teaching people was satisfying. Anub’arak was the worst part of this wing. It felt like a waste of time.
Memories of Fire / Cataclysm: Cho’gall, Nefarian, Ragnaros. This wing mirrored the last one pretty closely, except Cho’gall is much easier than Heigan. I’m not sure if we had wipes on him or not. But Nefarian… I don’t even think I saw any mechanics because it was so simple. However, the room filling with lava and later draining made a fun sort of timer so we could be in a DPS race with out past selves in an effort to do better than last time. Ragnaros was challenging for some people, and I don’t mind some wipes as people learn an encounter.
It was a nice stroll through past memories and it makes me long to see full versions of some of those fights. Complex, multi-phase fights felt gutted. I miss the rest of Arthas! Memories of Azeroth makes me with we had more timewalking raids – but broken into wings so I don’t have to do them in one go like Black Temple or Ulduar.
And for my trouble – an Obsidian Worldbreaker! Who wouldn’t love a Deathwing mount of their own? It’s pretty cool!
As you’ve probably heard, Blizzard is cancelling the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game. Most likely this stems from their focus on Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. While I hadn’t played it in years, saying goodbye to a good game makes me a bit sad.
I’m not sure that I ever played a 1v1 match against another player; it was the raid decks that fascinated me. WoW: TCG features raid decks modelled after their World of Warcraft counterparts. In the photo above (taken years ago), one player is controlling the Onyxia raid deck. We had five players banded together to defeat Onyxia. It was a new concept (at least to me) in TCGs, and I enjoyed it immensely. Besides defeating Onyxia, I also defeated Molten Core in normal (it had different difficulties) with five other players.
There were seven raid decks released – Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core, Magtheridon’s Lair, Black Temple, Naxxramas, Assault on Icecrown Citadel, and Battle of the Aspects. Maybe it’s a waste of money, but I suddenly have the strong urge to purchase every raid deck. They’re fun, and I can’t stand the idea of them going away! I’ll pick up Assault on Icecrown Citadel at the very least.
Well, I had a little more progression this week – kind of. We decided to three-man ICC 10. After the first five bosses or so, we decided to switch it to heroic mode. It was totally doable. On Sindragosa, a fourth person joined us. Previously I was 11/12 ICC10H, but now I’m 12/12! It was nice to finally earn Bane of the Fallen King too!
I also got a nice drop – Valius, Gavel of the Lightbringer. I was already transmogged into T10, so this went very well. It was a good night!
The Death of Arthas
I think I’ll need to revisit my favorite WoW memories in the future. My favorite memory is most likely all the fun I had PVPing in general with gem as we leveled. However, my favorite memory of a single, defined moment was our final kill in Icecrown Citadel.
It took a long time for us to kill the Lich King. We struggled for what felt like an eternity. I was worried about the guild getting a kill before we fell apart for the rest of the expansion. I remember eventually having no problem with Necrotic Plague duty. I remember battling Infest. Most of all, I remember the thrill of mastering Defile. One day, it finally happened. We slew the Lich King.
I had an idea of what happened. I’m going to spoil the ending here, but I assume everyone already knows. I knew that the fight ended at 10%, but I didn’t know what happened. The discovery that Arthas had planned for us to reach him made sense yet was exciting. It was so thrilling seeing Tirion burst from his ice tomb and strike at Arthas. King Terenas was a surprise, and his mass resurrection was very cool. And then that cutscene. I accidentally found out about Bolvar, yet the cutscene was still so great. Do you know how hard it is to avoid watching a major lore cutscene ahead of time?
After the kill, I started to tear up. Luckily, Andy knocked on my door so I stopped myself.
To add to the greatness of the fight, I won Halion, Staff of Forgotten Love.
That was the best fight!
What an amazing weekend in WoW! I suppose that picture gives you a clue about part of my happy weekend, but let’s go through in order.
I knew this weekend was going to be packed with action before it even started. How? Because it was Arathi Basin weekend, of course! The Defilers were the last faction I needed to earn the “Conqueror” title. I was around 18,000 out of 21,000 reputation, and a win gives about 140 reputation. What’s the first step to doing well in a battleground? Scaring your enemy of course, and what better way than wearing the face of a wolf on your head?!
It doesn’t look particularly priestly, but I suppose it looks trolly!
On Saturday, it finally happened; I hit exalted! After all that long grinding, I was finally Conqueror Devee! It was a long grind. Keep in mind that I was around 50,000 HKs when I hit my first level cap at 80. Also of note – it’s a grind. It’s not skill. I’m actually not that great!
As an aside, Cynwise posted a great article called “The Problems of PvP Reputation Grinds in Cataclysm” on “Cynwise’s Battlefield Manual” today. It’s a great read (as is the entire blog), and he even /salute’d me for reaching Conqueror!
Then I called a very important meeting with Mooglegem and other Horde commanders in the Hall of Legends. New plan: Get 10,000 more HKs so I can be “Devee of the Horde.”
Then it was off to Icecrown Citadel for my second week of joining Buzzleetgear’s ICC 25H. That’s my T10 in the picture. It’s what I most often picture Devee wearing because I wore it for so long. ICC was the current raid for about a year, and it was also the first current raid for which I was raid-ready, so that tier is very special for me.
I needed two achievements. I needed Portal Jockey on Valithria, and I needed to be bit on the Blood-Queen. Buzzleetgear was nice enough to set me as the second bite! The first bite was for the person working on Shadowmourne. I’m guessing he set me as second since I needed so few achievements, which was nice of him. Then, on Valithria, I was designated the healer to stay outside of the Emerald Nightmare. It went well! I was so nervous about the achievement that I stayed inside Valithria’s hitbox, making sure to set my camera so I wouldn’t see the portals. It was freaking me out! Luckily, we were successful! And then during the Lich King fight, I was set as the ranged stack point. Quite the honor! It took a couple pulls, but we did it again. By the end of the night, I received three heroic tier tokens (and a Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher that you can see at the top of this post). And that brings me to my final screenshot of the day.
How do I look in my Heroic Sanctified Crimson Acolyte gear? Wonderful? Priestly? Amazing? Yes to all of this. I’m looking forward to running with his group more in the future even though I won’t need it. ICC is very fun when you haven’t been running it for a year, and Buzzleetgear is a great leader!
We might not have progressed in Dragon Soul this week, but we still progressed! Mooglegem and I finally Icecrown Citadel 25 Heroic. We couldn’t help but proudly sport our new “the Light of Dawn” titles here.
It seems that every week a paladin named Buzzleetgear leads a ICC 25H on our server. It was a lot of fun, and I’ll look for the run in the future. We had a few problems, but nothing to really bother me.
Going into the raid, I needed seven more achievements to get Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player) and the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher – the four heroic wing achievements, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” on the Blood-Queen, “Portal Jockey” on Dreamwalker, and “Neck-Deep in Vile” on the Lich King. I managed to earn the heroic wing achievements as well as Neck-Deep in Vile. I don’t think the other two achievements should be too hard in the future. I’m definitely feeling excited about the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher being within my reach! I also snagged a heroic tier token. Heroic sanctified tier 10 is a beautiful light blue while the sanctified I had now is orange. The blue looks gorgeous and very “priestly,” I think. I hope I get some more tokens in the future!
Is it sad that my best PVE title is from Wrath?
I had an absolutely terrific World of Warcraft weekend! I got a bunch of new achievements, did some raiding, and found a nice new mount!
Cataclysmically Epic
First, I earned Cataclysmically Epic! Sadly it was with my PVP set though. Still, I’m happy for the achievement and for the progress with my PVP set!
Nat Pagle
Next up, Mooglegem and I ran into Nat Pagle while working on our Molten Front dailies. He has a cute little turtle mount! We have turtle mounts too, so of course we had to mount up with him for a photo shoot. We look good together, don’t we?
Icecrown Citadel 25 Heroic and Achievements
I found a group doing Icecrown Citadel 25-man in trade this weekend. It was advertised as a heroic run, but we ended up doing some bosses on heroic and some on normal depending on the requirements of each fight’s achievement. I got a bunch of achievements, but I’m a little sad that we couldn’t have picked one route or the other. It would have been nice to either complete the meta, complete the raid on heroic, or at least get the title for heroic Lich King 25-man. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful though; it was a fantastic run, and I got a ton of achievements.
The only boss in 25-man that I had already done on heroic was the Gunship Battle. This run, we did Lord Marrowgar, the Gunship Battle, Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, and Valithria Dreamwalker all on heroic. You’ll notice that no entire wing was one on heroic, haha. Still, that’s a lot of progress! We also earned the situational achievementw on Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, the Gunship Battle, Deathbringer Saurfang, which I already had, Festergut, Rotface, Professor Putricide, Sindragosa, and one, Been Waiting a Long Time For This, from the Lich King. We only missed the one on Valithria Dreamwalker and the second Lich King achievements.
Terrible Tirion
We also discovered that Tirion is a terrible raider. He doesn’t listen to directions. We realized we had screwed up the achievement after dropping Arthas to 10%. The raid leader instructed us to rez when the RP was finished and promptly jump off the side so we can wipe and reset the encounter. Now Tirion, when a raid leader calls for a wipe, you’re supposed to wipe! He just kept hacking away at Mr. Arthas. While we all knew that Arthas was powerless to fight back and that Tirion attacks him continually, we assumed that with the entire raid dead, the encounter would reset. Not so. How hilarious would it be for a raid group to wipe, and then come back 20 minutes later to an empty encounter room because Tirion finished off Arthas? In my screenshot, you can just barely make out the spirits surrounding Arthas after I’ve flown far from the Frozen Thrown. As you know, I already mentioned that we did earn one achievement on the Lich King, so you know it ended alright. Our raid leader opened a ticket, and the GM reset the encounter for us. I have no idea how the ticket got answered so quickly. It was at most two or three minutes. He mentioned earlier getting a ticket escalated. Again, no idea.
Swift Brewfest Ram
To round out the weekend, I managed to win a Swift Brewfest Ram! I was pretty lucky! Now, just a couple more days available to try for the Swift Brewfest Kodo!
Polygons & Pixels WebPageless
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 