Jindi Ysera

Our third kill of Illidan last night produced one of the best possible loot tables.

Chestguard of the Forgotten Conqueror
Chestguard of the Forgotten Vanquisher
Chestguard of the Forgotten Protector
Crystal Spire of Karabor
Shard of Azzinoth
Warglaive of Azzinoth

Wow. One of each Tier token, THREE weapons, INCLUDING a warglaive?!? Holy shite.

I believe this is only the third warglaive to appear on Ysera, which is pretty crazy. Static has one, and one of the alliance guilds (midwinter?) has one. It’s crazy that the top horde guild, Vindication, doesn’t have one yet, and they killed Illidan a loooong time ago. Our warglaive went to Noteworthy, who for the rest of the night proceeded to get tells, slaps, snubs, cheers, claps, and just about everything else from roughly every person who saw him.

I was given the mace!! Holy crap thanks Agony! There are so many other deserving recipients, I’m a little humbled by it… but I know that it’ll drop again and again, and I’ll be there to help get loot for everybody else!

Also last night, we cleared Hyjal with only one wipe (archi!), and I dinged exalted, granting me the final upgrade to the Scale of the Sands rep ring. I’m now sporting Band of the Eternal Restorer to go with my Blessed Band of Karabor, which were the best rings in the game before 2.4 hit…

We were so juiced after all that good raiding, there was no way we could just log off for the night. First, we formed a crack squad of top men for the daily heroic, which just happened to be Magister’s Terrace (known on Ysera as Mr. T. Can’t call it MT cause that’s mana tombs ;). We kicked the shit out of Mr. T hero in 45 minutes without any wipes, and only one death (no class with AoE spells can resist casting into the HUGE packs of mana worms… and usually that class is a clothie… you do the math ;). Note’s warglaive and my crystal spire were in full effect :) After that, a few of us grouped up for some battlegrounds… myself, Noteworthy, and one of our locks Stevo. As a trio, we were very difficult to deal with… Initially they’d usually target me just for being a Shaman. But I’m ready for that… my 450+ resilience means I can take some hits, long enough for the enemy to get a full stack of DoTs from the lock, followed by a fear. When the time is right, Noteworthy unstealths and proceeds to drop his target super fast, since most of the attention is already diverted to me. As any given round progresses, word gets around that Note has a glaive, and he becomes the target, which is just FINE with me :) When they let me heal, people generally don’t die unless we are vastly outnumbered…. so it’s a pretty great situation. Eventually, after the warglaive fever wears off, they start targeting me again, as it still is the best tactic. Good time, good times :)

Finally, allow me to say how cool it is to get 10g from a boss kill! I’ve made some serious bank this week just from raiding. Oh, and the badges… I now have 305 Badge of Justice. Since I have no need to buy a weapon for healing or dps, I’m not entirely sure what I’ll spend it all on… gems maybe (although I get all the gems I need from the guild, maybe I could like… sell some or whatever)? I probably will be picking up some of the “tier6” badge gear, just so that I have more flexibility to move stuff around while still retaining set bonuses.

I’m still here! It’s been a long time since I posted last, and… a pretty huge amount of stuff has happened. I found a new guild. Agony. They are currently #6 on my realm, Ysera. By sheer luck, they were in need of resto shaman around the time of my last post. Some folks helped me out by recommending that I apply, and by putting in a good word… that was nice :)

In terms of raid progression, the guild hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders since TBC came out. They started with Hyjal and Black Temple in December of ’07, and when I applied in early January of this year, they had killed the first three bosses in each. Since then has been very steady and fulfilling progression. Certainly, not always amazing… we definitely have our share of off nights (standing in fire, let’s say…), but in general it’s been quite good.

Really, though, the progression can be summed up by one single item link! [item]32757[/item]. Roughly 6 hours before all realms were to go down for the 2.4 patch (which introduced newer, harder raid content), Agony killed Illidan. For those 6 hours, we had defeated the world of warcraft :)

For my part, I am not able to maintain the same relative performance levels that I once ‘enjoyed’ (before Agony), though position on the charts is still pretty much the same. The gear upgrades have been coming at a decent rate. Actually the best one had nothing to do with raid progression… the [item]32964[/item] finally replaced the damn kara mace (even though I’m pretty sick of Arena on Jindi… more on that later, maybe). I also am now sporting two pieces of tier 6 ([item]Skyshatter Gloves[/item] and [item]Skyshatter Leggings[/item]), and the two piece bonus (10% reduced cost for Chain Heal) does great things for longevity on those long fights. I’ve updated the gear page with the rest of the current stuff.

In other news, I also have a 70 druid called Geotic. In general, I enjoy playing him more than Jindi in PvE due to the extreme versatility (not ‘versatile with a respec’, I’m talking about ‘versatile with a given spec’) I get to enjoy in the off-tank / dps role. Main tanking is ok, but you’re pretty much stuck in bear most of the time. I prefer shifting a lot, trying to burn as many useful cooldowns as possible in all forms. PvP is also exciting because I have more of an ability to act offensively when I want, and there is no defense better than stealth. Going from shaman which has basically zero CC to druid with feral charge, bash, maim, cyclone, and roots is pretty awesome also!

Then there’s also the 53 frost mage, Xovius. He did levels 1 through about 44 running with a priest friend every step of the way. Then we stopped playing together for a while… the priest kept going while I focused on Jindi. Anyway, the priest is now 70, so the medium / long term plan is to get the mage to 70 and possibly get set up for some 2v2 arena. The mage is definitely the most fun for battlegrounds; warsong gulch in particular is friggin fantastic with a frost spec. In general, I rather dig the tradeoffs that come with the mage class… very good dps potential, but also pretty close to death at all times (even with full health, heh). Doing AoE grinds in PvE will never get old, either… killing stuff out in the world is just so much faster than on any other class I’ve played.

Oh yeah, almost forgot!

Earning that title is definitely the longest-term achievement so far, considering I started earning rep towards that somewhere in my early 20s…

That is all for now :)