Raid Schmaid

So, it's been awhile since my last post here.  Hubby was questioning me about WHY I don't post on my WoW blog, and didn't seem satisfied with the answer that I wrote in my blog about RL instead.

The point is, I kind of lost interest there for a while.  Aurora was maxed out lvl wise, but not so geared that I got invited to raids anymore with the introduction of the TOC 10 and 25 man raids.  The first or second run that we did I was invited in for 10 man.  Now, this was new to the entire group and everyone was just getting a feel for how the fight should go.  It started out ok, but then the kobolds or snobolds or painintheassbolds, or what ever form of bolds they are in that fight.


I am TERRIBLE at switching targets, especially in raid because I raid on a laptop.  It is fine for normal play and what not but it goes SooOOOOoOO slow in raid.  10 man is pretty bad and 25 man is impossible.  So, if I am focused on the boss I can usually do ok just on pure feel as long as I can see anything on the floor (fire, poison, etc) and get out of it in time.  But having to switch the the kobolds to get them off others during the fight was nerve-wracking for me.  Not to mention that when I have a kobold on ME I freak out because I am squishy and also very claustrophobic and don't like relying on someone else to kill the monkey on my back.  I got claustrophobic.  So, after a few tries we made it thru the first boss and on to the jormungar worms.  Not ONE, but TWO jormungar worms.  We wiped a few times, which of course meant we had to start all over.  I kept getting paralyzed but couldn't find the person with the fire debuff to run to to get the poison off me.  Not to mention that the tanks hadn't found out yet that you have to keep the one worm facing away from the group.

I didn't go back after that.  And the group didn't go back to Ulduar at all.  RL doesn't see the point in it as the ToGC gear is so much better.  Up until the past couple of weeks tho I would run VOA with them if we had wintergrasp.  The past couple weeks hubby and Kobeck haven't been raiding though because they are just so fed up with hitting their heads against a wall.  The raid leader insists on starting out on hard mode and then after 2 hours of endless wiping switching to regular mode.  They say this is so people don't come in and leave as soon as they are done w/ regular.  But...  they are losing some of their better players because of it.

So, last week (maybe?), Selgar asked us if we wanted to go run the last 3 bosses on Ulduar.  Someone had an expired instance ID that we could run off of.  So we decided to go.  I had SOO much fun!!!  When the raid group before was running Ulduar (pre 3.2) I got to go for the first few bosses but then had to leave because David didn't feel that I was capable of making it through Mimiron and those other people at the end... haha I am so bad with the names of the bosses.  So anyways, we started out with Mimiron.  I am such a dork that I was extremely excited to even SEE these parts of Ulduar... it was all new to me.

So we managed to get through Mimiron and were working on General Vezax, we wiped several times because I kept killing our top DPS Gandreolf (Hubby's mage)  RL said dps was to wand only until the pool thingies were on the floor and then to go in them and DPS our little hearts out.  Well, problem is... me and hubby were the only ranged DPS, and we had two healers.  So the pool would drop... Gandreolf and Aurora would both run for it and BAM! we're both dead.  Got too close to one another over and over and over again.  Finally, RL says that Gandreolf is the most important and he CAN'T die at the very beginning of the fight... he was pulling off something like 14.5k DPS.

So, we did that for awhile.  I think eventually we downed him, but I don't really remember.  Unfortunately I only have 5 screenshots from that night, and 4 of them are from the train.  I find it funny because when Ulduar was the shiz David had a TON of ss's from the train and even had one as his desktop wallpaper for a good couple of months.  So, my first trip on the train was nothing but the same ol' thing for pretty much everyone in our group.

The 5th SS I have is from General Vezax just before the raid wiped.  I just remembered that during Mimiron hunny was tanking on Skyru, so it was myself and a hunter who were the only ranged DPS.  It made it interesting because when the head was up only one of us was alive.  The first time the hunter died 2 seconds into the head portion leaving me to solo DPS it.  We actually managed to get pretty far, but the rest of the raid wiped on the body, so we all went down.  The next attempt I died just before the head came down, I was DPSing my litte heart out on the body, but I aggroed an add and Skyru wasn't fast enough to steal aggro and I died 1 sec before he got it off me.  This left the hunter to DPS the head alone.  The group made it through that time, and managed to get the whole thing down at the same time.  Aside from the fact that I was dead, it was a fun fight.  One of the things about me being down is that it freed me up to watch the health and aggro bars for the boss and let David know what was going on, leaving him free to do his thing and not having to keep an eye on all that stuff.  I already explained about General Vezax for the most part... so.. on to the ss's that I DO have.

 This is just after getting on the train:  DPS stats are still up from Mimiron

Another of the train:

More train:

Getting off the train

And...finally... General Vezax.  "Ulduar The Descent Into Madness"

I love that.  That title is the only reason I actually have a screenshot of this room.