2 more bosses down

Sunday we went into SSC and took out Fathom Lord after changing our strategy from killing the hunter add first to killing the Shaman add first. Here is the VIDEO. The DPS nuking down the Spitfire totem made the difference in keeping me and my healers alive while tanking him. We also put a separate tank on the hunter pet which worked wonders. I was very excited in that fight to find myself 6th in total damage on the WWS considering I was in my tanking gear which is far from optimal for DPS in kitty. After the Shammy was down I switched weapons to my S1 mace and shifted to kitty and went to work. After that we went to take some attempts at Tidewalker... we didn't get him down... WTB another ret pally... but I did break 1K DPS in the attempts which was fun.

Monday night I took off from raiding as usual which allows some other raiders to get some raiding done and me some much needed wife rep. I am not in a huge hurry for my T5 shoulders in TK since I am going to be wearing my T4 shoulders maybe forever for the 2T4 bonus for DPS and it takes 3T5 to get close to matching the 4T4 tanking bonus armor. Basically my plans are to focus on getting T5 chest or pants next or the Tsunami Tailsman. Those items are the current priority along with Badges of Justice for the 2.4 patch reward gear upgrades.

Anywho, AC took out Solarian on our first night of attempts which is awesome and we are now 4 bosses away from being Hyjal bound... well, not really but it sounds good. We are going to have to farm SSC and TK for at least a little while I suppose to be ready for Hyjal.

My Feral Druid tip for Fathom Lord is to make sure you kill the Shaman add first. I had 32K+ armor over 46% dodge and 21K+ HP and could not be kept up by 2 healers. Getting hit by the totem, frostshock, and his melee hits is just too much. Taking him down first and having the DPS nuke the totem made the difference. Outside of Doom Reaver that is the hardest hitting mob I have faced to date... his hits just come too dang fast. I dodged 51% of his melee and still took 142K damage... ouch. The good thing is by killing him first and nuking down the totem my fire dmg went down from 30K to like 5K which gave my healers that little bit of extra time to keep me alive.

Leothras the Blind is dead!

Well, we went to SSC last night and after just a couple of botched attempts downed Leo for the first time.

A fun fight indeed, and here are a few tips for you raiding feral druids out there...

1. Get Big Wigs! Timers are your friend. Run out and stop DPS 5 secs before whirlwinds and transitions.
2. If you don't get away in time... you can heal yourself through the bleed damage from the whirl. Use a healthstone, then use Healing Touch, Rejuv, Healing Touch, Etc... just make sure you are far enough back when you do this not to get agro. You only have to keep yourself up until the bleed effect wears off.
3. Be prepared to become the MT at any time. When Leo is in demon form you might lose your MT to inner demon. Also, at the end of the fight all hell can break lose and you might be tanking him between whirls if you are the last tanking option standing.
4. Equip your Idol of Terror instead of Everbloom. It will help on getting down your inner demon and will help in case you become the tank.

Here is the VIDEO. That is my big bear butt chasing him around at the end.

Just a quick wish list for my lock toon

[Hat of Wintry Doom]
[Titanium Spellshock Necklace] - replacing [Choker of Betrayal]
[Dark Runic Mantle] - replacing [Duskweave Shoulders]
[Deathchill Cloak] - replacing [Dark Soldier Cape]
[Ebonweave Robe] - replacing [Black Duskweave Robe]
[Black Duskweave Wristwraps]
[Ebonweave Gloves] - replacing [Frostsavage Gloves]
[Belt of Blasting]
[Trousers of the Arakkoa]
[Silky Iceshard Boots] - replacing [Leiah's Footpads]
[Titanium Spellshock Ring] [Ring of Northern Tears]
[Mercurial Alchemist Stone] [Darkmoon Card: Illusion]
[Flameheart Spell Scalpel] [Iron-bound Tome] - replacing [Chilly Slobberknocker]
[Wand of Blinding Light]

Loot Reaver down

We went into TK and downed Void Reaver on our 2nd try. This fight is really easy... hopefully we will have him on farm status for the T5 shoulder drops.

We also attempted Fathom-Lord Karathress this week but just once... killed 1 add before everything fell apart. I would think he will go down next within just a couple of tries.

I went ahead and spent some honor and badges and picked up some tanking upgrades...

Waistguard of the Great Beast
Vindicator's Leather Boots
Slikk's Cloak of Placation

My new raid buffed stats are pretty awesome with over 50% dodge, over 20K HP, and over 32K armor. If I gear up the Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch and Badge of Tenacity and use them around the Idol of Terror proc that is a whole lot of time with well over 60% dodge.

Druid tip of the week...

When DPSing Void Reaver you have 2 choices. Stand in for the ground pound and hope a healer has time to get you to full health before the next one or stand at the edge of the hit box and back up a couple steps before each pound and take little to no damage the whole fight. This does gimp your DPS quite a bit but it is hard to DPS when you are dead. Talk to the raid leader and healers about what they expect from melee DPS.

Mag's Down

Just a quick post since Tuesday was just a restart...

We downed Mag's finally.

My Lock is now 70, please send all Epic Flying donations to my accountant Twikky.

Hydross Down

Hydross is toast. What an interesting fight... I think we have it down now and it really is not too tough, just need lots of DPS it seems to beat the enrage timer. Here is the VIDEO.

Feral Druids tanking the adds in this encounter should manage the fight like this...

1. Go cat form and DPS hydross between tanking the adds... yes your gear sucks and is ugly but you still do more damage in kitty and every bit helps.
2. When the raid leader calls to stop all DoT's continue to Shred and Mangle Hydross only... no more rips.
3. When the raid leader calls to OT for position and transfer Hydross to the other state switch to bear (hopefully you have your points in Furor like a good Feral should) and hit enrage to make sure you are ready for add duty.
4. Stand right under Hydross with the raid pally and as soon as the adds are drawn in by concecrate hit Roar and start spam swiping while tabbing through the targets... do this 1-3 times and then mangle/taunt at least 1 add off the pally so he doesn't die... a second if there are only 2 tanks CCing the adds.
5. As soon as the adds go down shift back to kitty, mangle Hydross start spamming shred.
6. Repeat, Back to 1. with you.

Wed. night is Gruul... again... geesh I hope I get my T4 pants already... cheap only, I mean heck we are already in T5 content so there is really no point on blowing much DKP for these now...

After Gruul should be Mag's Lair and we are ready for our Champion of the Naaru title.

Gruul Down twice this week...

but still no T4 pants dropped... 4 pairs no Defender... ::sad panda::

On another note and leading into my tip of the day Midnight Legguards dropped on my first ever trip to SP Heroic.

My tip to you is to save your money on gems and an armor kit and keep using your Clefthoof Hide Leggings. The loss of expertise is noticeable while grinding and the DPS is only slightly better. I only spent the money to wear mine because I was just tired of the skirt look. What you should do is Arena for Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards or even better farm Netherspite for Skulker's Greaves. 75 badges can buy you Shallow-grave Trousers but you are going to miss the +Hit trust me. Regardless of what you buy for pure kitty DPS socket with all Delicate Living Ruby and forget about the socket bonus.

Doomwalker Dead!

We killed our first world boss last night.

After a unsuccessful first attempt let me give you my Druid tips for living through the last 20% of this boss while he enrages.

1. Have at least 5 really good healers over healing the living crap out of you.

2. Idol of Terror, Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch, Badge of Tenacity when he hits 20% and you taunt him onto you if your Idol buff is not up pop 1 of the 2 trinkets... when that is up, again if Idol buff is not on pop the other one... when that runs out pray your Idol final proc'ed or you might be kissing your big bear butt goodbye... if another tank picks him up before you die be nice and pick him back up if you get back to full health and the Idol procs again.

3. Elixir of Major Agility, Elixir of Major Fortitude, Spicy Crawdad, and any scrolls you might have on you like +Armor or +Agility. I like Flask of Chromatic Wonder but it is way too expensive... once I level my Warlock alchemist alt I will most likely do what she needs to do to make these.

4. Every possible raid buff to increase your HP.

Gear wise I tried to balance mitigation and stamina for this fight... I think I was able to wear Necklace of the Deep with 2 Solid Star of Elune and still be uncrittable. I don't remember my exact gear makeup but I think I was at roughly 30K armor, 20K HP, and 47% dodge.

Congrats to BRK and his shiny new gun Barrel-Blade Longrifle and whoever ended up with the Anger-Spark Gloves... like most men I was too busy checking out the pretty gun in the character screen and completely missed who got the gloves.

Wildfury Greatstaff Dropped!... and other Epic Goodness

Wow, had a big Epic weekend.

First on Friday on my weekly Kara run that I am still doing for gear... see early posts of Kara hates me... I get 4 Epic drops.

Gilded Thorium Cloak
Mixed feelings about this one since I was eying Slikk's Cloak of Placation with that extra dodge... will probably upgrade to it once I hit the armor cap.

Drape of the Dark Reavers
This was a HUGE need for the +Hit

Gauntlets of Malorne
3 of 5 in T4 now... Pants off of Gruul and I will be rocking the 4 piece armor bonus... not sure really how this will compare to my current S3 gear setup though.

Forestlord Striders
For when that itch to heal arises (no one in the group could use or wanted).

But the big haul came Sunday evening in a Morogrim Tidewalker attempt. As we cleared trash Totem of the Maelstrom dropped then guess what dropped... nope, Totem of the Maelstrom dropped again... LOL. However, the last Epic drop of the evening was... Wildfury Greatstaff!

And as it turned out our other Feral druid raider and my Arena partner had missed that portion of the raid going AFK for some reason at the start... sorry Kele :( ... so the staff became mine.

So to sum up, all my bad WOW luck stopped for 1 weekend... YAY!

Lurker down... again

I really don't like this fight much. I absolutely hate attacking things while in the water... hate it. Must be my kitty nature coming out.

Anywho, I tested my new Idol of Terror and I guess I like it pretty well although I have to disagree with it's reported proc rate of 85% in kitty form.

Both Kelektra and I used the idol last night and from looking at the WWS stats it proc'ed about 65% of the time.

On another note, I really need some key gear from Kara still just to get my plus hit up to the cap. Using Romulo's Poison Vial just flat out sucks and I would like to get my CrystalForged trinket back into play.

On the next Lurker fight I will equip my Everbloom Idol to see what kind of a difference in DPS you can expect on a fight that is pretty chaotic for melee DPS.

Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a safe and happy new year.

Jace got presents under the tree in IF and some new gear...

Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic
Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves
Idol of Terror

Coming on the 8th when the faire arrives...
Darkmoon Card: Vengeance

I am very happy with the new gear and I am holding off on the S3 Mace for a little while as I upgrade my gear in both Bear and Kitty for higher survivability and DPS. No DPS gear addition even gets close to the S2 mace in added DPS but the other gear gives me much more in return so for now the mace waits.

Also, Ancestral Ring of Conquest dropped in SSC which was a nice little upgrade.

It's the Holiday's

Christmas time came early... I finally got my T4 shoulders. This is great and my DPS is looking really good, 2 T4 really is awesome for kitty DPS.

I bought the S1 mace while waiting for the needed points for the S2 version and spent my last honor on PvP shoulders for tanking.

Currently I think my DPS and tanking gear is good to go for a while with upgrades being in the nice to have section now instead of the must have... my next goal is to go back to the battle grounds and get a couple items to round out my healing set. I am thinking about re-speccing to resto just for some Heroic runs during our Christmas slow time with raiding.

In other news, I finally got to do a little Zul'Aman... OTed the bear boss and 1 shot him. Yes the belt fell, no I didn't win it... lost my usual roll to a rogue... LOL 94-6... not even close.

Oh yeah, I also got the Tree-Menders belt on a Heroic Ramps run... a nice surprise indeed.