A good night.

Wednesday night. I love Wednesday nights, since it's raid night. Our first night of a reset, so instances are all fresh and new. A clean slate.

At the beginning of the night, I was all set to rant and rave. Little things irritating me and getting under my skin. I think I may still do so, but I'll keep it short, and I promise that this update will end on a good note.

Flame Leviathan. I don't know why some people have such a hard on for doing this boss on Hard-Mode, but the simple fact is that if people can't get over themselves and figure out the most basic shit like "Who's being catapulted for turrets" and "Siege Engine gunners shoot down the Pyrite carriers so that the Demolishers can rearm", we have absolutely no business even attempting a partial hard mode. Tonight we killed Flame Leviathan from 100% to 0% with not a single person being launched to the turrets. Why? Because people were too fuckin' concerned about getting their Three Car Garage achievements.

A healer hopped into my Demolisher. I sent him/her a tell, saying - "Hey, so you're healing the turret crew?" To my surprise, this healer, who's a freakin' officer, goes "No, I'm just here to gun."

Fuckin' A, people. You think we're up for Hard Mode when people are still being that selfish five weeks in?

Movin' on. This next part will be short.

*Deep breath.*

We've been doing this for five weeks now. You should know what portals to take. Here's a hint - it's usually the one on the bottom of the list!

I can understand if someone has only been to Ulduar a couple times, or is coming in mid-clear. But sometimes I hear the same people, week after week, ask the same question every damn night - "Which portal do I take?"

The answer is always, with only one exception - "The one at the fuckin' bottom of the list!" (That exception, BTW, is if you've cleared Auriaya and you're not going to Freya)


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So, with that out my system.

Once we managed to get past the ugly kill of Flame Leviathan, tonight was a very excellent night for me.

We started with Ignis. Since our main tank was out and our backup tank was having connection issues, I was brought in as the off tank. I was then promptly assigned to holding onto Ignis himself. Seriously; that is a butt load of pressure. I'm not sure I could be a main tank - the occassional tanking scenario (like tonight) was a lot of fun, but as the tank, even one small mistake and you could wipe the raid. Even as a healer I didn't have that much stress.

Even though I died on Ignis at 3%, we downed him without really any incidents. He dropped his axe (Worldcarver), and Relg being the kickass dude that he is passed it to me. So I suppose all that bitching about the RNG in my last blog was a bit premature.

We then went on to Razorscale. DPS was a bit light, but that was attributed to lag, which they can't help. We did get her down, but it was a bit ugly.

Finally, we ended up at XT-002. Lag again caused us a lot of issues and we wiped a few times, but eventually pulled it together and took it down. The Frost Strike/Death Coil sigil dropped, and to my surprise, Relg passed it to me, the only other DK in the raid. Stunned is about the most appropriate word for what I felt.

I'm pretty sure I owe Relg a beer. If you ever read this Relg, you've got one on me.

So, in one night, two very huge upgrades. As a comparison, my Frost Strikes hit for about 8 to 9K damage in a 25 man, fully buffed raid setting. After finishing my enchant and gem swaps, they now hit for up to 10K on a target dummy with only Horn of Winter up. I'm also seeing higher gains from a 2 disease rotation in Unholy Presence, which opens up a lot of possibilities.

I can not wait to try them out in a proper raid setting. Think I'm stuck tanking again tomorrow, though.


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In non-WoW news, I went to see Star Trek today. Kick ass movie, well worth the price of admission. There are significant plot issues, but so long as you can remember that this is Star Trek and can look past the completely pointless villian, then it's a great movie.